Arabs blame US for terror rise
By Samia Hosny, dpa
Cairo - Some six years after the September 11 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, many in the Arab world say the US-led "war on terror" is spurring terrorism everywhere and that the world is less safe as a result.
"The world is much worse than it was before the war on terror," said Egyptian terrorism expert Dia Rashwan. The US-led campaign "created two main hotbeds for terrorism: Iraq and Afghanistan," Rashwan says.
According to Rashwan, the war on terror has given the al-Qaeda network and its ideological brethren ammunition to legitimize their terror ideology and continue their media campaign for the hearts of Muslim youths.
"Al-Qaeda has changed from a medium-sized group to a big network; it has become a franchise and a model for potential self-recruiting terrorists," Rashwan says.
The apparent failure of US strategy in Iraq combined with a comeback of the Taliban in Afghanistan are creating a general feeling of "schadenfreude" in the Arab world.
A former member of Egypt's militant Jihad organization, Kamal Habib, says the US was betting on Iraq and Afghanistan to become beacons of democracy for the Islamic world but this strategy has turned sour.
Habib, who recanted his extremist religious views after years in prison, says al-Qaeda is now drawing more legitimacy as injustices caused by US policies against Muslims increase.
"The fact that the latest suicide bombing in Algeria was carried out by a 15-year-old child is a proof of the growing influence of al-Qaeda", says Habib, who was in the past close to Ayman al-Zawhiri, al-Qaeda's second-in-command.
A Saudi commentator, who may be in the minority, however broke ranks with Arab critics of US policies and its war on terror.
Mashari al-Zaydi said in a column in the Saudi-owned newspaper al-Sharq al-Awsat that bin Laden and his admirers, as many as they are, ought to speak out about the crimes of al-Qaeda in Iraq and how they have added to the wave of killings and destruction in the country.
Lashing out at bin Laden's lamenting Iraqi victims killed by US troops, al-Zaydi said: "Don't preach and don't overuse the story of killings in Iraq. We want to believe your sensitive feelings about those who are killed but daily realities won't let us believe you."
Al-Zaydi heaped scorn on Arabs' tendency to blame the US for their woes, saying six years after the 9/11 attacks nothing has changed in the Arab world, and that some may even be waiting for another "blow to America" inspired by the 9/11 attacks.