Terrorists Don't Need States by Fareed Zakaria

April 5, 2004, U.S. Edition

Terrorists Don't Need States
The danger is less that a state will sponsor a terror group and more that a terror group will sponsor a state—as happened in Afghanistan
By Fareed Zakaria

Stepping away from the partisan screaming going on these days, the 9/11 commission hearings and—far more revealing—the panel's staff reports paint a fascinating picture of the rise of a new phenomenon in global politics: terrorism that is not state-sponsored but society-sponsored. Few in the American government fully grasped that a group of people without a state's support could pose a mortal threat. The mistake looks obvious in hindsight, but was, sadly, understandable at the time of 9/11. What is less understandable is that this same error persists even today.

Before the mid-1990s, almost all terrorism against the United States had been backed by a state. The Soviet Union had financed and trained terror groups around the world. Syria, Iran, Iraq and Libya had all sponsored terrorism. The most dramatic attacks on Americans—the Beirut Marine-barracks bombing in 1983, and Pan Am 103 in 1988—had both been encouraged if not planned by governments. Even Saudi Hizbullah, the group that bombed Khobar Towers, the American barracks in Saudi Arabia, got support from Iran.

Around 1997, members of the intelligence community—and others, like Richard Clarke—began focusing on a Saudi man, Osama bin Laden, who they realized was the financier and leader of a new group, Al Qaeda. Few in government shared their concern. In 1997 Al Qaeda was not confirmed to have executed a single terrorist attack against Americans. "Employees in the government told us that they felt their zeal attracted ridicule from their peers," the commission's report on intelligence says.

In due course, some senior officials in the Clinton administration awakened to the threat: CIA Director George Tenet, national-security adviser Sandy Berger and Clinton himself. But they never proposed a full-fledged assault on it. Their one dramatic attack—bombing the Afghan terror camps and Sudanese factory in 1998—proved unsuccessful and led to domestic criticism, and they did not think they could do something more ambitious. The Pentagon, which comes off poorly in the commission reports, was stubbornly unwilling to provide aggressive and creative options.

The Bush team, distrustful of anything Clinton's people said, did not see Al Qaeda as an urgent threat. They held few meetings on it and in other ways were inattentive to it. One example from the panel's report: the senior Pentagon official responsible for counterterrorism is the assistant secretary for special operations and low-intensity conflict. Even by September 11, 2001, no one had been appointed to that post.

The Bush administration came to office with different concerns. During the 1990s conservative intellectuals and policy wonks sounded the alarm about China, North Korea, Cuba, Iran and Iraq, but not about terror. Real men dealt with states.

Even after 9/11, many in the administration wanted to focus on states. Bush spoke out against countries that "harbor" terrorists. Two days after the attacks, Paul Wolfowitz proposed "ending states that sponsor terrorism." Beyond Iraq, conservative intellectuals like Richard Perle and Michael Ledeen insist that the real source of terror remains the "terror masters," meaning states like Iran and Syria.

I asked an American official closely involved with counterterrorism about state sponsorship. He replied, "Well, all that's left is Iran and to a lesser extent Syria, and it's mostly directed against Israel. States have been getting out of the terror business since the late 1980s. We have kept many governments on the list of state sponsors for political reasons. The reality is that the terror we face is mostly unconnected to states." Today's terrorists are harbored in countries like Spain and Germany—entirely unintentionally. They draw on support not from states but private individuals—Saudi millionaires, Egyptian radicals, Yemenite preachers.

Afghanistan housed Al Qaeda, and thus it was crucial to attack the country. But that was less a case of a state's sponsoring a terror group and more one of a terror group's sponsoring a state. Consider the situation today. Al Qaeda has lost its base in Afghanistan, two thirds of its leaders have been captured or killed, its funds are being frozen. And yet terror attacks mount from Indonesia to Casablanca to Spain. "These attacks are not being directed by Al Qaeda. They are being inspired by it," the official told me. "I'm not even sure it makes sense to speak of Al Qaeda because it conveys the image of a single, if decentralized, group. In fact, these are all different, local groups that have in common only ideology and enemies."

This is the new face of terror: dozens of local groups across the world connected by a global ideology. Next week I will explain how best to tackle this threat. But first we need to see it for what it is.