Military

SHAPE News Summary & Analysis

14 May 2003

BELGIUM-UNIVERSAL COMPETENCE LAW-NATO

• According to AFP, Belgian Foreign Minister attacked a war crimes lawsuit filed in Belgium against the U.S. Commander in Iraq, Gen. Tommy Franks, as an “abuse” of the law. “The United States is a democracy and I don’t see why this lawsuit has not been introduced in that country. Belgium has no pretensions to judge the United States,” he reportedly noted. The dispatch recalls that 16 mostly Iraqi plaintiffs filed the suit under Belgium’s controversial “universal competence” law, which allows charges to be brought regardless of where the alleged crimes took place. Earlier, Reuters reported that a left-wing candidate in Belgium’s upcoming parliamentary elections lodged a war crimes complaint Wednesday against Gen. Franks and a U.S. Marine Corps officer, on behalf of the Iraqi civilians. Lawyer Jan Fermon had presented the complaint to the federal prosecutor’s office despite recent changes in the war crime law to prevent such charges against Americans. The dispatch claims that Fermon is running in Sunday’s elections for the small, far-left Resist group. It quotes legal experts saying the case would be a first test for the revised law and predicting that it would be thrown out by the prosecutor’s office. Another Reuters dispatch reported that Gen. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, warned Tuesday that the threat to file a suit against the commander of US. Forces in Iraq could make Belgium, the home of NATO headquarters, a no go zone for meetings. “I think that’s an issue for the diplomats to settle out. Obviously it’s looked upon by the U.S. government as a very, very serious situation…. Clearly it could have a huge impact on where we gather,” Gen. Meyers reportedly said at NATO headquarters.

NATO-RUSSIA

• Moscow Agentstvo Voyennykh Novostey, reports that in an article published in some Baku newspapers Tuesday, NATO Secretary General Robertson underscored the importance of Russian-Azerbaijani contacts, which have recently shown signs of improving. “Lord Robertson expressed hopes that relations between Russia and NATO will give an impetus to Russian-Azerbaijani cooperation, thus helping settle the region’s problems. He gave assurances that NATO will not take the lead in the peace process in the South Caucasus and added that the conflicting parties themselves should take the first steps toward resolving their disputes,” adds the report.

TERRORISM

• According to the Financial Times, the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) warned Tuesday that Al Qaeda remains “more insidious and just as dangerous” as it was before the Sept. 11 attacks. In its annual report, Strategic Survey, the IISS reportedly said the terrorist group had been “reconstituted” since the U.S.-led campaign in Afghanistan and was still a powerful network that could take “a generation to dismantle.” It estimated that the group had 18,000 operatives in 90 countries. The organization was now believed to have mid-level coordinators who had trained in Afghanistan and were living in dozens of countries, providing their followers with logistics and financial support. Al Qaeda’s leadership could leave “the heavy operational lifting to the local foot soldiers,” the IISS reportedly said, stressing: “If the minions were killed or caught, their spectacular demise .. had moved others to take their place. The process was, in theory, self-perpetuating.” While Al Qaeda developed “new angles of approach to mass casualty terrorism” to penetrate improved U.S. and European defenses, it could also content itself with softer high-value targets over a wider geographical range. Although financial institutions had seized or frozen about $125 million in suspected terrorist assets, Al Qaeda was also still able to draw on “a stream of essentially unregulated cash” in donations from sympathizers, the report claimed.

Suicide bombings in Riyadh Tuesday, which killed at least 34 people, appear to have revived the media’s interest in terrorism.
Under the title, “Case proven—war does not eradicate terrorism,” The Times stresses that the bombs in Riyadh show that the threat of Sept. 11 is not over. “That much is clear. Equally clear is that the present danger is not from weapons of mass destruction, but from murderous gangs with dynamite and cars,” the newspaper says and continues: As Afghanistan was followed by Bali, so Iraq is followed by Riyadh. After waiting out the razzmatazz of war, reality is back in business. A long as Al Qaeda is on the loose—with half the Islamic world regarding bin Laden as a liberation hero—the West is at risk of continued attack. All the bombs and missiles in the world would not have lifted the threat, and apparently not even diminished it. If the money and energy devoted to waging war had gone into diplomacy, espionage and policing, it is at least arguable that whoever in Saudi Arabia knew about the Riyadh conspiracy might have stopped it. What the latest bombs suggests is that the wars changed nothing. They were a sideshow, a diversion of efforts.” The newspaper also charges that the Iraq invasion worsened transatlantic links crucial to monitoring terrorists in Europe and the Mediterranean.
Despite the Anglo-American victory in Iraq, the war on terror shows no sign of abating, observes The Daily Telegraph. The International Herald Tribune comments that the attacks in Saudi Arabia shattered any sense that groups such as Al Qaeda had been rendered unable to organize devastating attacks and underscored their resiliency even after a series of signal successes in the global war on terror.