Behind Yemen's Exploding Laser Printers

BEIRUT -- The two bombs concealed in laser printer cartridges and mailed from Yemen to Chicago last weekend have rekindled a global debate about many aspects of the nature and means of the global terror phenomenon: the real aims Al-Qaeda and its affiliates; why such groups continue to thrive and act as they do; the real intentions of those who sent these bombs; the most appropriate counter-terrorism and airport security policies; poverty and its implications; the danger of failed or failing states like Yemen; and a host of other related issues. The more we debate these issues, it seems, the more diverse, diffused and aggressive become those in the terror world who do not hesitate to bombs innocent civilians in the Middle East or around the world.

The news is mostly grim for now. The fact that the bombs were made in a sophisticated manner and one of them reached Europe indicates that terrorists have both the intent and capability to inflict real harm in distant lands, without being detected. If it is true that a rehabilitated former Al-Qaeda member in Saudi Arabia was the source of the warning that intercepted these bombs, then one dire conclusion must be that all the security measures in place to deter terror attacks by air remain flawed in significant ways. Luck played a large part in averting a catastrophe had the bombers planned, say, to detonate the bomb just as the plane was flying low over the city of Chicago as it approached the airport. Luck was not the only factor, though, because the former Al-Qaeda member who turned himself in to Saudi authorities some months ago did so in response to an amnesty program the Saudis had launched a few years ago. So a strategy that seeks to peel Al-Qaeda members away from the organization came into play to some extent.

(As a fascinating side note, we now have a situation where Saudi Arabia helped finance some of the original, mostly Arab, Islamist mujahedeen [holy warriors] who fought the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s, thus unintentionally playing a role in the birth of Al-Qaeda. Then the Saudi Arabian government indirectly bolstered Al-Qaeda’s growth and helped turn its aim against the United States in the early 1990s, when the US armed forces remained in Saudi Arabia for some years after the war to liberate Kuwait in 1991. Saudi nationals made up the bulk of the 9/11 terrorists, and Saudi Arabian targets were also attacked in the past decade and a half. Finally the Saudis appreciated the nature of the threat from an organization whose members and expansion were intimately associated with their country, and launched a serious counter-terrorism campaign earlier this decade to deal with what had become a dangerous threat. One hopes and assumes that Saudi intelligence agencies are working overtime to infiltrate informers into Al-Qaeda and its affiliates, given the opportunities available to them.)

The Yemen bombs indicate that the terror problem will not go away easily or soon, especially since local conditions in many parts of the Arab world, Asia and Africa provide the perfect breeding ground for motivating, recruiting and training home-grown terrorists. These conditions include ungoverned areas beyond the control of central governments, mass resentment against national political authorities, American-led Western militarism, inefficient or corrupt governance systems strongly supported by Western security systems, severe economic and environmental stress, continued Israeli colonization and humiliation of Arab lands, and a non-stop array of Western armies entering Arab-Islamic lands and waging war there at will. This combination of domestic, regional and international grievances ultimately generates mass public discontent, from which small handfuls of individuals break away to engage in Al-Qaeda-like terror, which they see as a defensive jihad to protect the Islamic homeland and community from foreign assault and apostate Arab regimes.

This cycle has been strengthening, widening and deepening in the past two decades, rather than weakening -- because the conditions that create terrorists persist and even worsen in some cases. The grim news is that it takes a long time to address and eradicate this kind of threat -- but we know from other cases in the world that it can be done. It requires a combination of military and police actions, legal moves, socio-economic developmental measures, promoting good governance that addresses mass indigenous grievances, and reviewing the foreign policies of major Western states, including Israel and the United States most particularly.

Unless this entire range of issues is addressed by Middle Eastern and Western states -- as it was by the relevant actors in order to successfully end the terror and fighting in Northern Ireland, for example -- there will be no serious chance of fully removing the threat from Al-Qaeda and its affiliates. The good news is that we know how to do this, if enough honest leaders acknowledge the full nature of the issues at hand.


Rami G. Khouri is Editor-at-large of The Daily Star, and Director of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut, in Beirut, Lebanon.