The 9/11 Wars by Jason Burke Page B

time and space. All ideologies are rooted in a context, and radical Islamic militancy is no different. These contexts inevitably change, and charting those shifts is one of the aims of this book.
    Looking at violence leads into other major themes. It is now a commonplace to say that recent years have seen a hardening of identities based around ethnic, faith or other communities in response to the supposed ‘flattening’ of local difference by a process of globalization based in a heavily European or American market capitalist system. This is undoubtedly the case and has been consistently underestimated by policy-makers in London and Washington, who remain convinced of the universal attraction of the liberal democratic, liberal economic model in spite of much evidence to the contrary. But a key element missed by many analyses is the degree to which radical Islam is in itself as hostile to local specificity as anything that has come out of the West. One major current running through the pages that follow is the constant tug of war between ‘the global’ and ‘the local’, the general and the particular, the ideological and the individual. It is this tension that has defined much of the form and the course of the 9/11 Wars. The conflict was launched in the name of global ideologies. It was the rejection of global ideologies by key Muslim populations in the middle years of the decade that changed the course of the conflict. Ironically after years of vaunting the merits of the global, the West’s greatest ally at a critical moment was its opposite: bloody-minded local particularism. The same force was also to work in less favourable ways elsewhere however.
    This book ends with an account of the more recent phases of the conflict, where, even if cause for great concern still exists, the more apocalyptic predictions of a decade or so ago remain unfulfilled. This relative stabilization of the situation is precarious, however. Only a close examination of the previous course of ‘the 9/11 Wars’ and their antecedents can tell us whether what we are currently witnessing is simply a pause before a new cycle of violence or the uncertain early days of a definitive and positive trend towards something that resembles peace.
    This book remains, however, primarily a work of journalism and not of history. It aims, in the long tradition of reportage, to reveal and communicate something about the world and about key events through the voices and views of those who participate in them and are affected by them. Its main aim is to provoke and inform discussion of vital questions rather than confidently lay out certitudes. As new material becomes available, others will improve the accounts of many of the events contained in the pages that follow. Overall I have tried to catch something of the nature of the conflict that has gripped and affected billions of people in recent years. Watching the aerial bombing of Tora Bora in the mountains of eastern Afghanistan in December 2001, with vapour trails from B-52s slicing across the pale sky above the snowy peaks and row upon row of rocky ridges successively lit by the slanting rising sun, a fellow journalist commented as a scene of untold horror and violence and extraordinary aesthetic beauty unfolded before us that only a vast novel really could make sense of what was happening. He was probably right.

PART ONE
     
    Afghanistan, America, Al-Qaeda: 2001–3

PART TWO
     
    Escalation: 2003–4

PART THREE
     
    Europe, the Darkest Days: 2005–6

PART FOUR
     
    Iraq and the Turning: 2005–7

PART FIVE
     
    Afghanistan, Pakistan and Al-Qaeda: 2008

PART SIX
     
    Endgames: 2009–11

1. Bamiyan, Afghanistan. The Taliban’s destruction of the ancient statues of Buddha in March 2001 was not simple fanaticism but a carefully judged act of spectacular violence designed to send a message to various local and international audiences and thus a sign of what was to come.
     

    2. The folksy language and faith