uExpress.com: Georgie Anne Geyer by Georgie Anne Geyer -- (05/29/2007) NETWORK OF TERROR SPREADS IN SHATTERED MIDEAST SOCIETIES

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05/29/2007

NETWORK OF TERROR SPREADS IN SHATTERED MIDEAST SOCIETIES

WASHINGTON -- Anyone who knows anything about cancer knows that the danger point comes when the cancer suddenly and unexpectedly appears in another supposedly "clean" part of the body. As when, say, breast cancer, an implacable traveler, reappears in the bloodstream or the bones.

That there are stunning similarities between what happens medically in the body of man and what occurs sociologically and militarily in the societies of men is far less noticed -- but just as frightening and dangerous.

Think of what has happened in only the last week in the Middle East. In northern Lebanon, in the long-established Nahr el-Bared Palestinian refugee camp, out of the blue arose a new al-Qaida-related insurgent group, Fatah al-Islam. Within days and even hours, the recurring hell of the Middle East was loosed and refugees poured out of the camp in terror.

Now think about the symbolism. There had been none of this kind of terror networking in these northern camps. Indeed, since this camp was established in 1949 to accommodate refugees from northern Palestine after the creation of Israel, it has housed one of the more formal and conservative of peoples.

But it was soon established that these new "insurgents" or "terrorists" -- or whatever they really are -- had arrived at the camp only recently, that they marched in one day with brand-new weapons, ready to fight. As of this writing, they remain there.

Two points grip you:

The first is found in the words of French scholar Bernard Rougier, author of "Everyday Jihad: The Rise of Militant Islam Among Palestinians in Lebanon." "The main point is that these camps are no longer part of Palestinian society," he told The Washington Post. "They are only spaces -- now open to all of the influences running through the Muslim world."

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The second is that, as even CNN has now reported, Iraq, where we were supposed to be "containing terrorism," is now clearly EXPORTING insurgents to other regions -- to Lebanon, to Syria, to Gaza, to Bangladesh, to Kurdistan.

And so, on the one hand, you have weakened societies -- "only spaces" -- that have become vulnerable to the "new answers" of "new insurgencies," and on the other hand, you have Iraq set up as a school for terrorists with American troops and policy providing the constant inspiration for their fight.

This, of course, is not the way the Bush administration -- despite everything that has gone so terribly wrong -- sees it.

They see terrorists as born, not created by history, bearing the mark of Cain, not the mark of circumstance. There is a scarlet "T" written on their foreheads at birth and the only answer is to destroy them. This kind of thinking, of course, relieves the thinker of any responsibility for the presence of the insurgent-terrorist-whatever in our innocent midst.

In this view, we are guilty of nothing: not of supporting any and all policies of Israel against the Palestinians, not of overthrowing governments in the Middle East, Asia and Latin America, nor of bombing some of them into oblivion. The "born terrorist" theory, you see, allows us to remain seeing ourselves as wholly innocent creatures of the torment.

What's more, there is not much real give in the administration's policies. True, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and other American diplomats met Memorial Day weekend with the Iranians in Baghdad (a good first move, but limited, since the Iranians have most of the power, due to our incredible stupidity in Iraq). But by all reports, President Bush is more utterly convinced than ever of his righteousness.

Friends of his from Texas were shocked recently to find him nearly wild-eyed, thumping himself on the chest three times while he repeated "I am the president!" He also made it clear he was setting Iraq up so his successor could not get out of "our country's destiny."

The truth of the steadily deteriorating situation in the Middle East is, of course, quite different. The Palestinian people of 40 and even 30 years ago were formal, conservative people who remained closely tied to their family, clan and religious groups. Theirs was a highly stratified society, which has now been shattered.

They have been maddened by deliberate steps -- just as Iraq has been pared down to its sectarian core hatreds by deliberate steps the American occupation forces have taken.

Freud said, "There are no accidents." Geyer says, "There are no consequences without reasons behind them."

The president now says that we have a "post-surge strategy." After four disastrous years, still another "strategy"! Once again, it involves training the Iraqi military and destroying terrorists, and now, "working with the tribes." This will not work either, but no one really seems to care.

Meanwhile, the main new event -- an important one -- is that we can actually see the next step. In the institutional vacuum that is a camp like Nahr el-Bared, a few hundred men trained and tempered in Iraq can make a huge difference. At the same time, the Turkish military is ready to go into northern Kurdistan, al-Qaida operatives from Iraq are popping up in hitherto untouched places, and the American military's advice to its troops is, "Get down with the people -- listen to them!" Only four years and thousands of bombs and night missions too late.