Stephen Pollard: America's get-tough attitude is succeeding beyond Afghanistan

Islamic extremists saw America as a soft target that never fought back

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In the week after the US air strikes on Afghanistan began on 7 October, nine major anti-American demonstrations were held in the Middle East. In the second week, three were held, in the third week, one, and in the fourth week, two. Since then, not a single one has been staged in any Middle Eastern country – nor in Indonesia, India or Nigeria, all of which had mass demonstrations in the aftermath of 11 September. Today, as Martin Indyk, the former American Ambassador to Israel, put it last week: "The Arab street is quiet."

As the fall of the Taliban becomes an inevitability, Associated Press reported that "Pakistani holy warriors are deserting Taliban ranks and streaming home in large numbers." In the streets of Peshawar, where a few weeks ago riot police charged mass crowds which cheered attacks on America (and, of course, Israel) and burnt effigies of US President George Bush, today "portraits of Osama bin Laden go unsold" and the few policemen present look like "a bunch of old friends on an afternoon stroll".

Why do you think the protest have stopped? Apathy? Sudden support for America? Of course not. One reason, and one reason only: fear.

For two decades, since the Iranian revolution in 1979 and the Ayatollah Khomeini's message of "Death to America", the US has suffered appalling terrorist casualties. Over 200 marines died in the Beirut car bombing in 1983. Another 301 people (including 13 US citizens) were murdered in the embassy bombings in Tanzania and Kenya in 1998. America's response was to do pretty much nothing. After the 1983 bomb, president Ronald Reagan packed up and came home, and after the 1998 bombs president Bill Clinton ordered pinprick air strikes which, even if they hadn't missed the worthwhile targets, would have been little more than symbolic displays of anger.

The Islamic extremists saw America as a soft target that never fought back, no matter how much it was attacked. The message was clear: America was there for the taking. And the more daring the attacks, the more street cred and thus the larger following the militants gained. Mr bin Laden's jihad against the West, and Taliban leader Mullah Omar's call for the "extinction of America" did not seem like ravings but calls to arms by militant leaders whose inspirational, daring exploits garnered ever more support.

The result was a calamitous cycle of more and more terrorism, a feeble American response, growing Arab support for the terrorists, still more terrorism, and so on.

Now, at last, America has responded with genuine force and deliberate action. And guess what? The anti-American demonstrations, the mass face of the terrorists, have stopped. It has been repeatedly pointed out since 11 September that in the Arab world, the strong are seen as deserving respect and the weak contempt. America has effectively turned the other cheek in response to previous terrorist attacks, and has thus been treated with contempt. Its previous behaviour had not prepared its enemies for what has happened since 11 September. Instead of retreating yet again, it has been roused to genuine action, with a determination that is clear to all but the most willfully blind of observers. This time it has been pushed too far and, started to do what it should have done long ago – meet terror with crushing force.

Victory in Afghanistan (which is not overturning the Taliban but hunting down Mr bin Laden and al-Qa'ida) is essential, and America is clearly prepared to do all that it takes. But developments in Afghanistan will only ever be the least significant aspect of events. Critically, the message is getting home that the US will now respond with clinical, remorseless force to attacks on it. And that will have implications way beyond Afghanistan and Mr bin Laden.

It is possible to see militant Islam as merely the latest in a series of "next big things" in the Arab world, each of which has its moment and then, when it fails, dies, to be replaced by something new. Nasser's Arab socialist nationalism once looked unstoppable; but once it became clear it was a failure, it vanished, to be replaced a generation later by militant Islam. For the past 20 years, this latest Arab extremism has been given a clear run, with the US offering only a perfunctory response to its initial forays into terror. Through her inaction, America has been the greatest recruiting agent for Mr bin Laden's al-Qa'ida and other extremist movements. The more daring the terror, and the more unimpressive the response, the greater the lure of a movement that appeared to be winning against the Great Satan.

The biggest brake on the attractions of militant Islam will be what is happening now in Afghanistan and over the next few months and years elsewhere – clear evidence that America will no more lie back and take it. The lesson will be learnt that terrorism is not winning and that, far from breaking the morale of the American people, it has only stirred them to action.

Two outcomes are then possible. Even if the traditional pattern continues and the terrorists' failure destroys their mass support, the most likely scenario is that terror will nonetheless continue and will have to met with continued American force.

But there is a more optimistic alternative. The second largest Muslim community in the world (after Indonesia) is not Iran, Pakistan or Saudi Arabia. It is, with 150 million believers, India. And yet, even though they are a minority dominated by Hindus, Indian Muslims do not see America as the cause of their ills or flock to join militant terrorist outfits. The reason, of course, is that India is a democracy – market-based and multi-ethnic. Democracy is the answer, as it always has been. Everything possible must be done to promote it.

But that moral has to be placed in the context of the overriding lesson of the past few weeks: so long as Americans sat back and took what the terrorists threw at them, the terrorists prospered. It is only now that America has started to fight back that there is a realistic possibility of beating militant Islam and denting its appeal.

stephenipollard@hotmail.com

The writer is a senior fellow at the Centre for the New Europe, Brussels