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The war against al-Qaida and Islamist terrorism must be waged ideologically as well as through military and intelligence means, a Singapore-based counterterrorism specialist says.
 Rohan Gunaratna, Singapore-based counterterrorism specialist |
“If you really want to destroy [terrorism], you must kill the ideology” of the Islamists who have misinterpreted the Quran, said Rohan Gunaratna, author of “Inside al-Qaida: Global Network of Terror.”
“This is a fight between moderate Muslims and extremists [Muslims], not the West and Islam.”
He called on Western nations to work with moderate Muslims and concentrate on people-to-people relations – financing educational institutions and other groups – rather than relying too much on government-to-government relations as in the past.
Gunaratna said the world is in a state of conflict because of the ongoing terrorist attacks. The United States has launched a security crackdown following Sept. 11, but other nations have not done enough. Fighting terrorism must be a “daily feature” of life, he said.
Gunaratna told a conference last week in Hawaii that he believes terrorists in Iraq will continue attacks until power is turned over to Iraqis.
Gunaratna said the United States does not have the necessary intelligence capabilities to halt the attacks in Iraq because of its location in the middle of hostile nations like Iran and Syria.
“Iraq is very clearly now the land of jihad,” said Gunaratna, associate professor at the Institute of Defense and Strategic Studies in Singapore. “There’s very little we can do. … We will continue to suffer losses as long as we stay.”
Regarding al-Qaida, Gunaratna said the terrorist group is training and financing smaller local terrorist organizations to conduct attacks in Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Europe as part of a shift in targets. Gunaratna says al-Qaida has been weakened from the U.S.-led war on terrorism but is still dangerous and able to conduct attacks in those places rather than in United States, Western Europe and Australia, which has tightened security against attacks and stepped up intelligence-sharing.
The hardening of targets has forced al-Qaida to shift to less-defended targets, such as business and population centers and in countries that are friends and allies of the U.S.
The bombings in Turkey were an example of the shift, he said.
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