The enemy of my enemy
February 18th, 2003
In politics as well as personal and social relations, the enemy of one’s enemy can be one’s friend. One’s enemy, however, can also be one’s friend, albeit temporarily, if both of you have a bigger and more threatening enemy to confront.
A neighborhood bully who makes it a habit to fire his gun into the air to frighten everyone, for example, can unite even the bitterest of enemies against him. It is the third party that’s often crucial to the making of temporary alliances between enemies, and not only in a neighborhood. It happens as well in politics, and even in the relations between antagonistic forces within nations as well as between nations that in other circumstances would be at each other’s throats.
This has been demonstrated many times in the 20th century, particularly during World War II, when capitalist United States was in alliance with the socialist Soviet Union against Nazi Germany, which invaded the Soviet Union and killed 20 million of its citizens, and which, by attacking Europe, was only an ocean away from the United States.
Yet these two countries were antagonistic not only to ideology but also to economic, social and political systems. The end of World War II in fact meant the beginning of renewed and even more bitter antagonism between the US and the USSR. The Soviet Union regarded the United States as an imperialist power, whereas the US regarded its then Soviet ally as a totalitarian state, the spread of whose social and economic system would be a direct threat to its capitalist interests. These differences did not stop the making of the alliance—from enemies turning into temporary, mutually suspicious friends.
It happens not only between states; it happens also between groups and forces within countries. In 1936 the civil war between Mao Zedong’s Communist Party of China (CPC) and Chiang Kai-Shek’s Kuomintang Party had been raging for nearly a decade since 1927, when the Kuomintang slaughtered tens of thousands of communists and workers in Shanghai.
The civil war had also cost the Kuomintang dearly in casualties and loss of control over the far-flung northeastern territories of the Chinese mainland. But it was also in 1936 when the Anti-Japanese United Front between the CPC and the Kuomintang was forged, in response to the Japanese invasion. The idea was to temporarily unite against a bigger and militarily superior enemy by at least not attacking each other so that that enemy could be defeated.
The Anti-Japanese United Front (also called the second united front) lasted until 1944, when the Japanese were finally driven out, and them the fighting between the Kuomintang and the CPC’s People’s Liberation Army began with even greater ferocity.
Osama bin Laden, who hates socialists and communists as much as he hates infidels, did not use the term United Front, a concept developed by the Communist International (Comintern) in the 1930s and subsequently applied to such good effect by Mao Zedong in China in 1936. But he did make clear in a voice tape widely believed to be his and released Tuesday last week that his terrorist network al-Qaeda would support Iraq in the event that it is attacked by the United States. Bin Laden went even further: he urged all Muslims to support Iraq, which on the surface validates predictions that a US attack on Iraq, rather than securing the United States and its citizens from terrorist attacks, could on the contrary make them even more at risk.
And yet this is the same bin Laden that once lumped Saddam Hussein with the other rulers of the Middle East who are traitors to Islam. Bin Laden, say military analysts and Middle East experts, despises Saddam Hussein, the ruler of a secular state which claims some kind of “socialism” as ideology—for which bin Laden has only contempt.
Apparently still elated at the fact that he is nowhere near being captured by the United States and by the continuing problems remnants of the Taliban and al-Qaeda are causing the US and the Afghani government, bin Laden even offered “advice” to the Iraqis on how to fight US troops. Among other techniques he urged the Iraqis to lure US troops into the cities, to use camouflage and concealment in the farms, mountains and plains of Iraq, and to use “martyrdom operations”—i.e., suicide bombers.
The United States immediately cited the tape as “proof” of the links between al-Qaeda and the government of Saddam Hussein that it’s been saying justifies a preemptive war against Iraq.
And yet, the tape as translated from the Arabic refers to the Iraqi government as a government of infidels, and seems to be directed primarily at the Iraqis, not to the secular, so-called socialist government of Saddam Hussein and his Baath Party.
Nevertheless, US Secretary of State Colin Powell and other US officials lost no time in claiming that a “nexus” indeed exists between al-Qaeda and the Saddam Hussein government, a nexus that, said Powell, “can no longer be looked away from and ignored.”
If indeed there is such a nexus—meaning some kind of contact and agreement to coordinate operations—bin Laden’s tape itself suggests the contrary. Surely bin Laden and Iraq both knew that one of the consequences of such an expression of support—even if it were for Iraq and Iraqis rather than their government—would certainly provide the US ammunition with which to further press its claim that the Iraq government has been in contact with, and is sheltering al-Qaeda terrorists, including some of those involved in the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York’s World Trace Center.
If the Iraqi government and bin Laden were in league with each other—a US allegation Iraq has repeatedly denied—they would have agreed not to air such a tape at this time unless both were absolutely stupid.
Of course bin Laden never once urged Muslims or Iraqis in particular to support Saddam Hussein’s government. Bin Laden also said that it was acceptable for Muslims to fight for the “socialists” of Iraq because “in these circumstances” the interests of Muslims “intersect in fighting against the Crusaders.” This statement suggests that in his view Muslims, in other circumstances—i.e., without a threat of war by the US against Iraq—would otherwise oppose Iraq’s present rulers.
These nuances, however, are easily lost to news agencies, newspapers and TV news networks, especially US news agencies, newspapers and TV networks. Although these nuances might not have been lost to US analysts, they are easily glossed over for the sake of supporting the claims of their government, however.
That the tape was nevertheless released also suggests that it’s not so much the survival of the Saddam Hussein regime bin Laden is concerned with as the continuing relevance of his terrorist network to Muslim sentiments and aspirations. As it is, al-Qaeda and what it’s doing have been virtually relegated to the sidelines while the planet frets over the consequences of a US war on Iraq. The tape is bin Laden’s way of saying that al-Qaeda is the one group that can act on Muslim resentment.
A war of aggression against Iraq, many analysts including Americans have warned, could have as one of its consequences a wave of attacks on the United States and its allies in the Middle East (including but not limited to Israel), not necessarily because of any conspiracy between the Butcher of Baghdad and the terrorist networks, but because the latter would see both a common cause and political gains in retaliating.
The bin Laden tape does suggest the possibility of coordination between al-Qaeda and the Iraqi government as the latter braces for a war certain to devastate it, and to emerge from which it will certainly welcome support, wherever it may be. To determine whether that already exists, however, hard information is needed.
By itself the bin Laden tape does not prove the reality of any “nexus” Powell claims (Powell has made many unsubstantiated claims before) exists between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein’s government. It proves only that in extreme situations where there is a common perception of a common threat from a more powerful enemy, one’s enemy can be—one’s friend.
(Today/abs-cbnNEWS.com, February 15, 2003}