neighboring states, or extracontinental powers. Many remained skeptical of outsiders’ motives and their capacity to bring peace, even when their actions were part of an approved multilateral initiative.
Similar problems have plagued the International Criminal Court (ICC), which was established in 2002 to investigate and prosecute individuals believed to have engaged in war crimes, crimes against humanity, or genocide. Just as the UN Security Council may not intervene without a host country’s consent unless the government has failed to protect its citizens from gross human rights violations, the ICC is authorized to act against alleged human rights abusers only if their national governments and courts are unable or unwilling to do so. However, the ICC’s jurisdiction is far from universal. The international court may investigate alleged crimes in countries that have ratified the ICC treaty, in cases referred to it by the UN Security Council, or when the ICC prosecutor opens a case of his or her own volition. Although 123 UN member states had ratified the ICC treaty by 2017, 70 others had not. Among the holdouts were three permanent members of the UN Security Council that have veto-wielding powers: the United States, China, and Russia. These countries refused to recognize the ICC’s jurisdiction over their own citizens, and they also shielded their allies from the court’s authority. ICC member states have also undermined ICC operations. Although they are technically obliged to comply with the court’s decisions, the ICC has no police or military to enforce summonses or arrest warrants. As a result, alleged perpetrators with powerful allies avoid prosecution, while those without connections are more likely to be held accountable.
Like advocates of R2P, the ICC has been accused of bias against African countries and norms. The court is authorized to investigate human rights abuses worldwide, but nine of the ten investigations it conducted between 2002 and 2017 and all of its indictments, prosecutions, and convictions involved African political and military figures. As a result, some critics have charged that the ICC is simply another neocolonial institution. Criticism from the African Union has been especially sharp, with some African leaders urging AU member states to withdraw from the international court—a step that Burundi took in 2017. However, other African leaders and many civil society organizations have voiced strong support for the court and urged it to expand its protection of African civilians rather than to reduce it. The degree to which the ICC can promote equal justice in an unequal international order remains an open question.
Paradigm 2: The War on Terror
If the roots of the first paradigm can be traced to post–World War II understandings of the need for peace, justice, and human rights to ensure a stable international order, the seeds of the second paradigm can be found in the Cold War struggle between capitalism and communism. From the outset, the United States recognized the power of religion as a weapon against its atheistic opponents, and it mobilized conservative religious groups to fight the communist menace. In Europe, it supported Christian parties and organizations that opposed the Italian, Greek, and French communist parties that had gained strength during World War II and its aftermath. In the Middle East, it backed conservative Muslim organizations and regimes that sought to suppress both communism and radical nationalism. When the pro-Western Shah of Iran was overthrown in January 1979 and replaced by militants who embraced the Shi’a branch of Islam, Washington rallied extremists in the rival Sunni branch to counter Iran’s growing prominence.8 Saudi Arabia, a staunch US ally, promoter of fundamentalist Sunni teachings, and competitor with Iran for regional dominance, joined the United States in its patronage of Sunni militants.
Most relevant for this study is the CIA-led multinational coalition that recruited, trained, armed, and financed Sunni militants from all corners of the globe to challenge the decade-long Soviet occupation of Afghanistan (1979–89). After ousting the Soviets from Afghanistan, the fighters dispersed to their home countries, where they founded new organizations and spearheaded insurgencies, primarily against Muslim states they deemed impious. These Soviet-Afghan War veterans played prominent roles in most of the extremist groups that emerged in Africa and the Middle East in the decades that followed. A brief summary of that history provides the context for the war on terror.
In 1978, a military coup in Afghanistan installed a communist government that was sympathetic to Moscow. It was also brutal, internally divided, and challenged by popular opposition, including an Islamist-backed Sunni insurgency. Faced with instability on its borders, the Soviet Union had two fundamental concerns: first, that the Afghan government would fall and that a new regime would ally with US interests; and second, that the Islamist-backed insurgency in Afghanistan might stimulate similar uprisings in the Soviet republics of Central Asia, which included large Muslim populations. To bolster the Kabul regime, Moscow invaded Afghanistan in December 1979, beginning an occupation that would result in a decade-long war. Determined to secure US dominance over Indian Ocean communication lines and the oil-rich countries of the Persian Gulf, the United States mobilized an international coalition to challenge the Soviet Union in Afghanistan and undermine its authority in adjacent Soviet republics.
For the duration of the ten-year war, the United States and its allies recruited tens of thousands of Muslim fighters from Africa, Asia, Europe, and North America to combat the Soviet occupation. The anti-Soviet recruits, many of whom were inspired by Saudi Arabia’s fundamentalist teachings, referred to themselves as mujahideen—those who struggle to defend the Islamic faith. Spearheaded by the CIA, the endeavor was largely funded by the United States and Saudi Arabia. The CIA provided the militants with sophisticated weapons, including shoulder-fired, heat-seeking Stinger antiaircraft missiles that easily circumvented Soviet decoy flares.9 The CIA and the US Army, Navy, and Air Force Special Operations Forces, along with the UK’s Special Air Service, trained and instructed Pakistani officers and mujahideen leaders in guerrilla and terrorist tactics. Pakistan’s intelligence services trained the bulk of the mujahideen forces on the ground and provided critical logistical, intelligence, and military support, while France, Israel, Egypt, and Morocco also helped train and arm the anti-Soviet forces. Iran played a significant but independent role, training both Shi’ite and Sunni militias.
The CIA and Pakistani intelligence countered Iran’s support for Shi’ite militants in Afghanistan by bolstering Sunni organizations such as that of Osama bin Laden, a wealthy Saudi of Yemeni descent whose family had close ties to the ruling Saudi dynasty and had made its fortune in business and finance. Bin Laden’s organization raised funds, recruited, and provided services for the mujahideen, including a hostel for Algerian, Egyptian, Saudi, and other fighters in Pakistan and a camp in Afghanistan. After the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1989, some Afghan militants—primarily religious students and mujahideen fighters—reconstituted themselves as the Taliban (Seekers of the Truth) and fought regional warlords and other mujahideen factions for political control. By 1996, the Taliban had seized most of the country, imposing law and order in areas rife with corruption, banditry, and the drug trade. Turning to opium and heroin to finance their operations, the Taliban employed brutal methods to impose their own interpretation of Islamic law.
After the Soviet departure, the foreign fighters carried their terror tactics and sophisticated weapons to new battlegrounds around the globe. Soviet-Afghan War veterans were at the forefront of guerrilla insurgencies in Algeria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Egypt, Gaza, Kashmir, the Philippines, the West Bank, and Yemen. They engaged in terrorist activities in Kenya, Sudan, Tanzania, France, and the United States. CIA-backed drug lords and allies, including Osama bin Laden, funded the new networks, joined by Muslim banks and charities.
One of the most significant terrorist networks was al-Qaeda (The Base), which was established from the core of fighters and other volunteers who had passed through Osama bin Laden’s camps. Founded in 1989 with bin Laden as its primary organizer and patron, al-Qaeda advocated jihad against apostate Muslim regimes and their supporters worldwide.10 Although bin Laden considered Saddam Hussein’s secular Arab nationalist regime in Iraq to be apostate, he opposed military intervention by the US-led coalition during the First Gulf War (1990–91); he also denounced the Saudi government’s decision to allow hundreds of thousands of US and allied troops to be stationed in Saudi Arabia, which was home to the holy cities
