David Pratt: What now for the West’s failing ‘war on terror’?

The first was an observation made on the eve of those very attacks on America in which Osama bin Laden predicted that his martyrdom when it came “will create more Osama bin Ladens”.

The second quote came from an American soldier, Specialist Salvatore Giunta, the first living recipient of the US Medal of Honour since the Vietnam War.

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“The richest, most trained army got beat by dudes in manjammies and AKs,” reflected Giunta, in the wake of an especially vicious battle in Afghanistan’s infamous Korengal Valley back in 2007.

Taken together both remarks speak volumes as to where the West is right now in its so called “war on terror”. Two decades on bin Laden (below) is dead, but in Afghanistan his cadres are once again on the march while in Africa they have turned a number of countries into the new epicentre of global jihad.

In the intervening years since that dark day on September 11, 2001, tens of thousands of Islamist-inspired terrorists have been killed along with hundreds of thousands of civilians caught in the crossfire of the battle to defeat them by the West.

Yet, still the jihadists pose a threat as America departs Afghanistan with its tail between its legs and leaves a power vacuum the likes of which the Islamic State (IS) group and al-Qaeda are rushing to fill.

Ever since President George W Bush declared the “war on terror” nearly two decades ago, Washington’s policymakers have been bedevilled by the challenge of containing jihadist movements in fractured and distant lands like Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia.

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Unpalatable as the thought might be, what’s happening in Afghanistan right now where the Taliban are sweeping across the country taking provincial capitals one after the other is testimony to that US policy failure.

President Joe Biden might have set out to end America’s “forever wars” but instead it could easily be argued that what in fact he has done is give a shot in the arm to a global jihadist movement whose franchise up until now was being contained in Afghanistan and on the backfoot in places like Syria and Iraq.

It’s one thing for Biden to say, as he argued shortly after entering the White House, that if all the US had done so far had not fixed Afghanistan, nothing would. It’s something else again though from failing to “fix’ Afghanistan to making a move that leaves the country in a worse condition than when America went in.

Even worse should it again become a sanctuary for those plotting global jihadist terrorism.

Washington might yet be in for a shock here.

In fact, already American political pundits and counterterrorism analysts are positing the possibility that Uncle Sam might find it harder to stay out of such a fight than Biden imagined and led many to believe likewise.

As The New York Times reminded just the other day, let’s not forget that only 10 years ago it was a US withdrawal from Iraq that opened the door for the terrorists of IS.

One can’t but help feel a real sense of deja vu right now over Afghanistan where the same seems to be happening for the Taliban and whatever transnational jihadist groups it might chose to host again should it take full control of the country.

It’s understandable of course that many Americans will be happy to get shot of their country’s role in taming the Taliban. But I can’t help but feel that Washington washing its hands of responsibility for what happens in Afghanistan will come back to haunt it.

In fact, I’ll go further and suggest that the “war on terror” whether Washington likes it or not will be back on the policy agenda in no time and impossible to ignore.

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The inescapable fact is that right now there are at least four times as many jihadi terrorist organisations as there were back on September 11 2001.

As a recent report to the Security Council by the UN monitoring team charged with tracking worldwide jihadi threats makes clear, there is a consistent pattern here whereby whenever pressure on such groups is eased up, absent or negligible, they thrive. As the report also illustrates it’s not just in Afghanistan where this is happening.

In Somalia, for example, the US military withdrawal and the partial drawdown of the African Union Mission there has left Somali special forces “struggling to contain” the al-Qaeda affiliate Al-Shabaab in much the same way that Afghan security forces are currently experiencing with the Taliban.

It’s the same elsewhere across Africa especially in places like Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso where France is winding down its counterterrorism mission, and the report indicates that al-Qaeda-affiliated terrorists have consolidated their influence and are “increasingly claiming populated areas”.

Twenty years after 9/11 there are those that say Islamist-inspired terrorism has receded as a strategic threat. Certainly, it is no longer normal to hear almost daily of some mass casualty suicide bombing or gunmen rampaging through a theatre or shopping mall. But complacency on this front is a dangerous thing not least when it flies in the face of mounting UN evidence indicating an expanding network of jihadist organisations.

On declaring his “war on terror” all those years ago George W Bush also said that “it will end in a way and at an hour of our choosing”.

But as is evident in Afghanistan currently it is not ending in the way America wanted and arguably the hour was not really of its choosing. While Washington might be in a hurry to put the conflict in Afghanistan behind it, make no mistake the “war on terror” is far from over and the jihadists will play the long game.

As a well-known saying that’s often attributed to a Taliban commander once summed it up: “You have the watches. We have the time.”