First, the republics of Central Asia, like the Arab states, are predominantly Muslim.  Second, they are being ruled by aging autocrats; they have a high number of people that are below the age of 30; a number of them have acute poverty; and they have highly corrupt and inept governments.  Third, even though Islamic practices are not as prevalent in a number of Central Asian
states as they are in the Arab countries, Islamist forces have been active inside the borders of a number of them.  The U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 turned out to be a major setback for the Islamist groups of Central Asia.  A number of them were in that country because they had fled their home countries or they were there to receive insurgent training from al-Qaida.  The most well-known Central Asian Islamist group, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), was cause for much insomnia for
President Islam Karimov of Uzbekistan, Askar Akayev of Kyrgyzstan (who was ousted in 2006, but not by the Islamists), and President Emomali Rahmon of Tajikistan.  No one knows for sure how strong the Islamist forces really are in today’s Central Asia.

While the Islamist groups of Central Asia may not pose a serious threat to Central Asian regimes, the dictators of those countries are fearful of an Arab Awakening-like social movement, which is secular and staunchly pro-democratic.  As such, it can garner
worldwide support and encouragement once it gathers momentum.  It is these features of a social movement that are the constant source of consternation in the capitals of the Central Asian republics, as well as in Moscow and Beijing.

In order to fully comprehend how afraid those countries really are about a potential birth of an Arab Awakening-like social movement inside their own borders, one has to examine the foremost objective underlying the military exercise – Tsentr-2011 – of the Russian-dominated military alliance, the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO).  Aside from Russia, its membership comprises Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Armenia, and Belarus.  Prior to that military exercise, which lasted from September 19 through 27, General Nikolai Makarov, head of the Russian Army, said that the focus would be to deal with any Arab Awakening-like “social uprisings” and “the increasing threat from military Islamists.”

The Central Asian dictators are reported to have been studying how the Arab Awakening was born and grew like a tsunami of change.  Since the global media presented a comprehensive picture of the role of the social media in the awesome surge of
that movement, Central Asian rulers are already reported to be monitoring social media websites within their respective borders.  Nursultan Nazerbayev spoke about “the need to build an ‘impregnable wall’ to prevent any spillover of such revolutions in Central Asia.”  Referring to the Arab Awakening, he also expressed high concern about “an unregulated information space” that posed “threats to regional security and stability in the CSTO member states, especially in light of the latest developments in the
world.”  Kazakhstan is also studying the possibility of constantly monitoring the Internet cafes nationwide by requiring the installation of video cameras.

The Secretary General of the CSTO, Nikolai Bordyuzha, provided a comprehensive view of what CSTO has on its planning board, in terms of what he labeled as “cyberterrorism.”  He said CSTO aims to develop new plans of “information counteraction” to fight cyberterrorism, which, to him, included all cyberspace activities aimed at destabilizing a state.

It should also be noted that Kazakhstan, after studying the fate of former Egyptian ruler Hosni Mubarak, abandoned a previous plan to declare Nazerbayev the country’s unelected leader until 2020.  Instead, the government hastily organized another sham election to “prove” Nazerbayev’s “democratic credentials.”  Another country, Uzbekistan, systematically endeavored to filter out all images of the Arab Awakening from the Internet.

A number of Arab autocrats have found out that a social movement is considerably stronger than their tanks and their repressive security forces.   Those dictators who refused to believe that reality are still fighting, the rulers of Yemen and Syria, for instance. When people are willing to die for what they believe in – in the case of the Arab Awakening, it is the powerful will to be free – no force can crush them.  That may be by why the autocratic regimes of Central Asia (and even of China and Russia) are trembling in anticipation of the time when political change becomes an inevitable reality.  In their hearts they know a paraphrased version of Victor Hugo’s immortal words – no matter how much they attempt to suppress, they cannot resist an idea whose time has come.

President Barack Obama decided to show his “outrage,” since some so-called pundits were upset that he was not showing the kind of passion that George W. Bush had shown after the 9/11 attacks. But, Bush’s record in his so-called “war on terrorism” has been a miserable failure. During his regime, the United States became an occupier of two Muslim countries. That might be one reason why the lone superpower under Obama is facing such an uphill battle in dealing with “violent extremism.” If Obama were to follow Bush’s example, then the United States is likely to face future quagmires and inertias.

Another dim-witted statement that was uttered by one of the “pundits” is when he wondered out loud why Muslims are not condemning what the young Nigerian tried to do. Statements of that nature imply that all Muslims, until every one of them yells at the top of his/her lungs condemning such action over and over again, are condoning terrorism. At no time in the history of human kind was such a reckless notion deemed worthy of air time.

What happened to America’s dealing with terrorism is that, under a new president, another country (Afghanistan) became the focus of it, as if by “winning” in that country the current administration would defeat terrorism once and for all. What the United States is not considering is that there cannot be any victory against the terrorist forces unless it develops comprehensive anti-terrorism policies. Firing cruise missiles or using UAVs to shoot a group of terrorists here and there, or sending Special Forces to take out a few terrorists is not the solution. Actions of that nature only intensify feelings of hatred and revenge against U.S. personnel all over the world. If the United States’ invasion of Iraq taught anything to America, it is that the use of military power (“hard” power) alone is no guarantee of victory.

As President Obama is busy developing some sort of blueprint (I will not call it a strategy, because there is no such thing up to this time), Pakistan and Afghanistan look increasingly precarious places. In both those countries, Islamist forces are on the offensive. Iran, totally unrelated to the latest episode of terrorism, is getting increasingly unstable. The Iranophobes in America are eagerly waiting for the Islamic regime to fall, hoping that the next government will be pro-Western. No one is considering that the alternative to the Islamic Republic might be chaos, which might have its own deleterious spillover effects in Iraq.

Across the Persian Gulf, Yemen is boiling over as another failed state. Northern Yemen and areas of Saudi Arabia contiguous to it have become the new battleground between forces of those two countries and al-Qaida, with the United States increasing its pressure on both of those countries to let loose their hard power on them. America’s answer to problems of al-Qaida is: kill, kill, kill, never mind what happens to Yemen or Saudi Arabia in the process. Farther East to the Arabian Peninsula is the Horn of Africa, which contains Somalia, Ethiopia, and Eretria. Somalia is already the poster child candidate for a failed state, while Ethiopia and Eretria are right behind it.

The question of the hour—indeed, of the decade—is what should be done about all these countries that are steadily becoming havens for al-Qaida. Does the United States have enough cruise missiles to shoot at all of them, ensuring the eradication of all supporters of al-Qaida? Does it have enough drones to fly them on a 7/24 basis on all the aforementioned countries?

In the last presidential election, there was no debate about how to win against the terrorists worldwide. Terrorism as an issue had already fallen way down on the list of American voters’ concerns during that presidential campaign. Candidate Obama made his electoral fortune by banging the drum of the failed policies of Bush, and then insisting that he would go after al-Qaida and would do everything to eradicate it in Afghanistan and in Pakistan. Who could have argued against that without having his/her patriotism questioned? What bears repeating here is that the 2008 presidential election campaign was totally devoid of any debate regarding how to be victorious over global terrorist forces because, by then, the 9/11 attacks were fading in American memories.

That fading process would have continued if not for the fact that Obama remained true to his promise and started the use of hard power in Afghanistan and Pakistan, assuming that he would win where his predecessor had failed.

The widening popularity of al-Qaida on the Arabian Peninsula and on the Horn of Africa, and its sustaining capacity in Afghanistan and in Pakistan, should intensify the feeling in the U.S. that the need of the hour is to develop comprehensive anti-terrorism policies, and not to solely rely on killing (counterterrorism emphasis) and hope that such a measure would also eradicate terrorism. But right now, examining the public debate, one gets the feeling that the American government is in the process of reinventing the wheel. There is the usual blame game that various agencies are still not cooperating; or the process of terrorist monitoring has become so cumbersome that it does not work even when a young man’s father reports to the American embassy that his son might have joined the ranks of the terrorists, yet that young man is allowed to travel to the United States.

Watching the process of recrimination, looking for fall guys, the blame game that is currently in progress in Washington, one wonders whether the lone superpower would ever become invulnerable to the actions of those who attach no value to life, neither of their own nor of others.
If there is a fall guy inside the United States in this whole process of countering terrorism, it is the cumbersomeness related to securing America that has become the chief culprit of making America unsafe. The strength of the terrorists stems from the fact that they operate on the basis of simplicity: one person or a few persons specialize in or invent new ways of creating death and mayhem. All they have to do is to find just one or more loopholes in the cumbersome security processes. At least in incidents of this nature, the culprit is the incompetence of the intricate bureaucracies, which promise to become even more intricate and, in all likelihood, more incompetent in the coming months.

The recommendations of the 9/11 Commission of creating an intelligence czar was a wise one. Instead, Congress diluted most of the recommendations of that Commission by playing politics. Today, we have eight or more intelligence agencies. All of them are busy fighting budget and turf battles and performing the redundant tasks of collecting intelligence. Those types of redundancies are also contributing further to the aforementioned cumbersomeness. As the co-Chairs of the 9/11 Commission observed in their OpEd of January 11, 2010, “The DNI [Director of National Intelligence] has been hobbled by disputes over its size, mission and authority, but forcing information-sharing and enabling the NCTC’s [National Counterterrorism Center] best analysts to do their work should not be subject to dispute.”

What America needs is an anti-terrorism strategy that is geared toward homeland security, but a strategy that also deals with causes of global terrorism that is focused on Africa, the Middle East, and South, Central, and Southeast Asia. Of these regions, Africa—the Horn and the trans-Sahel region, North and West Africa—is where terrorism is likely to run rampant during the next decade. South Asia and the Middle East will remain hotbeds of terrorism from now until at least the middle of the next decade. Central Asia appears calm; however, we know so little about that region because countries of that area are governed by autocrats who want absolutely no outside scrutiny of their tyrannical rule. So, it is a safe bet that one or more countries of Central Asia is likely to experience internal turbulence or even violent regime change. In all likelihood, such change would not result because of terrorist groups, but such groups are most likely to take every advantage of the resultant political turbulence.

If the prognostications of increased transnational turbulence are correct, then it behooves the United States to have trans-regional strategies to counter such events. Merely appointing “czars” and “special envoys” is not enough. However, considering how unprepared the United States has shown itself to be about dealing with terrorism last December, one has little reason to remain optimistic.