Martin Suchanek
“Yes we can!” gloated Barak Obama as he announced to the world that the US has assassinated enemy number one, Osama Bin Laden, reports Martin Suchanek . In Spanish
Initially, it was said that US special forces, collaborating with the Pakistani secret service, had tracked him down near Islamabad. Later reports explained that the USA had acted without consultation with its Pakistani ally. Even if the real truth of all this does not come to light for years, this already speaks volumes about the relationship of the USA to its Pakistani ally and to its respect for Pakistan’s “sovereignty”.
In any event, it is clear that a US special forces unit killed Bin Laden. In his speech, Obama explained that he had wanted to capture Bin Laden and bring him before a US court. The death of “public enemy number one”, however, will do nothing to spoil the celebrations of the US administration. Indeed, it has the advantage that several difficult questions will not now be raised. Who should bring Bin Laden to court? The USA, which clearly regards that as its “natural right”, an international court, or one of the other states that had also been on Bin Laden’s trail? Would not an open trial necessarily raise the involvement of the CIA in the rise of the former US ally in Afghanistan and the commercial connections between the Bin Laden family and US corporations?
A victory for justice?
Barack Obama announced not only a “great victory for America” but also for “justice”. Ultimately, Bin Laden had not been “an Islamist leader but a mass murderer”.
The German Foreign Minister, Westerwelle, explained that the shooting of Bin Laden was a great moment for “genuine democracy”.
The British Prime Minister, Cameron, even explained, “Osama Bin Laden was responsible for the worst terrorist atrocities that the world has ever seen, for 9/11 and for so many attacks that have cost thousands their lives, many of them British.”
Compared to the atrocities of the Bin Laden, it would seem, those of centuries of colonialism, imperialism, world war and genocide, pale into insignificance.
Osama Bin Laden was undoubtedly an arch reactionary and an Islamist who chose the method of individual terror against civilians and whose methods of struggle must be condemned by any Communist, by any progressive person. His “anti-imperialism” was always inseparably bound up with reactionary political and social goals, the establishment of a theocracy and a brutal oppressive regime over its own population, the working class, women, and youth. His “anti-imperialism” was inseparably bound up with reactionary methods of fighting, terrorist attacks on civilian populations in the West as well as against “heretical” Muslims. For him, the struggle of the masses for their own liberation played no role, indeed it was diametrically opposed to his fundamentally elitist politics.
Moreover, his “anti-imperialism” was not directed against the imperialist world system, that is, against its economic and political roots. Rather, his objective was to ensure a greater share of the riches and political influence of the ruling classes in the “Islamic world”. Sunni Islamism was the ideological expression of this struggle, a justificatory ideology that necessarily reflected the values of the ruling classes and the upper middle classes who thought nothing of the deaths of thousands of workers in their struggle to achieve their goals.
The biggest terrorists are elsewhere
On a world scale, however, Bin Laden and Al Qaeda were small stars in the firmament of global reaction. This shows the hypocrisy of the bourgeois media who proclaim the death of Bin Laden as a victory for humanity. The biggest terrorists are not hiding in secret “terror camps” or in little groups of believers.
They sit in the centres of power in Washington, London, Moscow, Paris or Berlin. It is they who maintain a system that condemns millions to hunger every day. It is they who, in the name of the “war against terror”, have set back Iraq by decades with their bombs. It is they who are now dividing up the oil revenues and other riches of that country amongst themselves. It is they who have continued the war in Afghanistan and occupied the country. It is they who have extended the war into Pakistan where the US military regularly undertakes attacks on the civilian population.
The same powers are trying to make use of the popular uprising in Libya to bring the country back under their control, their military and diplomatic interventions are aimed at taking control of the leadership of the rising.
They give their allies, Saudi Arabia and Israel, a free hand when it comes to the oppression of the uprising in Bahrain or the blockade of the people of Gaza.
In short, they are the real terrorists in the world. But, for them, it is not only the Bin Laden’s who are terrorists. For the leaders of the imperialist world and their hired hacks, anybody who fights against the “blessings” of their world order is a potential terrorist, whether they are demonstrators who want to bring down the monarchy in Bahrain, or Palestinians who have elected to the “wrong” government in a democratic election, or Afghans who have taken up an armed resistance against the imperialist occupation of their country and its puppet government.
Bin Laden is dead, the “war against terror” lives on
That is why, in all the speeches of the political leaders of the Western world and their allies, alongside the emphasis on the supposed “historic significance” of the death of Bin Laden, there is always a second message: the “war against terrorism” absolutely must be taken forward. Now, Al Qaeda and other “terror cells” will be even more dangerous because they want to avenge their leader and will plan particularly “dramatic” outrages.
The German government is already talking about raising the “security level” and the necessity to increase surveillance of “terrorists”. There is also talk, after the death of Bin Laden, that the “anti-terror laws” not only cannot be lifted but must actually be sharpened. Thus, the limitation, or even the suspension, of fundamental democratic rights will continue.
Secondly, public opinion must be convinced that the war and interventions undertaken since 2001 in the name of the “war against terror”, must be continued. Although Bin Laden is dead, there are other, perhaps even more dangerous, “terror cells” and these could retreat into the countries occupied by imperialism as soon as NATO, the USA or German troops were withdrawn. In the words of Foreign Minister Westerwelle: “we have not been in Afghanistan in order to fight one man, we are in Afghanistan because we want to prevent the country becoming once again a secure haven for terrorism across the whole world”.
With that logic, imperialists can justify war and occupation in any land they choose, ultimately any spot on the earth could become a “haven” for terrorists. This justification for any “preventative” intervention will not be renounced by Obama or Cameron, Sarkozy, or Merkel or Putin.
Who created the Bin Ladens?
The imperialists’ plundering, and their struggle to redivide the world between the major capitalist powers, has led to fewer and fewer possibilities to integrate the middle layers or even parts of the elites in the countries they dominated. This is what led to the growth of Islamist and anti-Western currents, including terrorist organisations such as Al Qaeda. Because these conditions are still in place, there is still fertile ground for the development of such groups.
But there are also other reasons why even sections of the working class and the peasantry in the Islamic countries have placed their hopes not only in Islamist and Islamic movements but even in the “heroic” individual assassins who could at least strike fear and terror into the imperialist occupiers of their countries. The way to Islamism and terrorism was opened by the defeats and the consequent demoralisation that resulted from the political failures of Stalinism and nationalism.
However, this “popularity” was and is the popularity of passivity, hopelessness and confusion amongst the oppressed who see no possibility of a common liberation struggle for themselves. Throughout history, this has always given rise to the methods of “individual terrorism”, even when the intention has been to provoke activity by the masses. The reactionary class character of Al Qaeda, Bin Laden and this school of individual terrorism can be seen from the fact that they give no thought to be active involvement of the masses, let alone an independent role.
Conversely, history also shows that the decline of such organisations always results from the masses raising themselves and taking their fate into their own hands.
Osama Bin Laden was killed at a time when his political star was already long past its zenith. The threat of “Islamist terrorism”, apart from often being just an excuse to justify the actions of western exploiters, has long given way to a much more fundamental and, for imperialism a thousand times more dangerous, threat from democratic and social revolution.
The revolutions in North Africa and the Middle East have shown a real alternative to all shades of Islamism and individual terrorism: the mobilisation of the workers and peasants, urban poor, youth and the women across all religious barriers. It is this movement that constitutes the real danger for the despots and for the imperialist order of the entire region, indeed in the entire world. It can not only cut the ground from under the feet of the reactionary Islamists like Al Qaeda but also from under imperialist oppression and capitalist exploitation and thus become a beacon for a socialist world revolution.