The Axis Of Terror and The New Economic Weapon

63 BC. Rome, a metropolis of roughly one million souls, stretched its imperial reach from Spain to Syria, and from France to the Sahara desert. That very same year, the Roman establishment found itself spinning around the fog of a terrorist conspiracy aiming at destroying the city. What became famous as the “conspiracy of Catiline” ignited the debate about holding Rome accountable to the bar of civil rights while keeping the legitimacy of eliminating terrorists to preserve homeland security.

Equally worth a mention is that in 63 BC, Mithradates, Rome’s most wanted terrorist was killed. Indeed, in 88 BC, king Mithradates E. Pontus ordered a shocking terror attack against the Roman empire and its citizens. Within a single day, he masterminded a mass bloodbath of selective killing that took the life of 80.000 Roman civilians in Anatolia. The senate of Rome dispatched General Sulla on a search and killing mission against the mastermind of this appalling reign of terror. Distressfully, the conquering Roman army was brought down on a spot of humiliation in the Middle East. Mithradates’ unconventional fighting machine dragged on Rome for decades of anti-terror costly warfare in the region. Consequently, the empire was driven into financial chaos and collapse.

Fighting a long and prolonged war on terror comes always with its financial hurdles and economic bankruptcy. Understandably so that it has become a galactic understatement to say that public opinion is going through a war fatigue mood as far as the global war on terror is concerned. To some extent, today’s costly decade-long war on terror seems to be running on an eerily similar trajectory comparable to the fate of Rome in the Middle East. Some foreign policy pundits are beginning to draw some parallel between Rome and the ongoing war in Afghanistan and the Middle East. Despite the political narratives striving to shoehorn significant military gains in the campaigns against global terrorism, the terror spending spree is hard to sell to many observers. The U.S. congressional budget office estimated at minimum a cost of $ 100 billion to fighting against ISIS in the Middle East. Self tellingly, the $ 6 trillion war on terror in Afghanistan and Iraq is the most expensive war in US history and will weigh down a heavy financial economic legacy for decades to come.

Footing the war bill for Afghanistan and Iraq required $ 16 billion per month on top of the current U.S. public debt that tallies up to $ 18.15 trillion. Washington military paternalism in training and equipping a new Iraqi army costed $ 25 billion while Afghanistan alone swallowed more than $ 65 billion. Yearly, it costs $1 million per soldier to be deployed in Afghanistan. It requires at least a $10 billion annual budget to maintain troops for a period of 10 years in Afghanistan. Thus far, selling the franchise of the freedom agenda in the Middle East has turned out a compendium of military and political failures. The retired U.S. General, Karl Eikenberry, is certainly not sugarcoating the truth when he confessed that American “track record at building foreign security forces over the past 15 years is miserable”.

Unmistakably, the imperial Rome is not Afghanistan by many standards of comparison. Nevertheless, one could easily find a common denominator between the ongoing global war on terror in the Middle East and Rome’s military adventures. Asymmetric warfare is a signature mark of the use of terror as an economic weapon. Fighting global terror is a graveyard of finance. By wreaking havoc on national economies, terrorism is a major cause of economic disruptions and financial bankruptcy. In this respect, prolonged waves of terror attacks represent an economic threat to the countries that took upon their honor to defeat armed extremism at any cost.

The multinational military offensive against Boko Haram costs $30 million per year. An estimated one third of Chadian government spending goes to its military fighting against terrorism in Nigeria. Chad is spending $ 11.8 million per month in the fight against Boko haram. With the declining oil price on the international market, the Chadian government has been contemplating a budget deficit of around $ 226 million. In 2014, Abuja spent one quarter of its 2014 budget to the fight against Boko Haram. This represents 968 billion in Nigerian currency.

The war against Boko Haram is becoming unsustainable for the Cameroonian government that spends 90% of its defense budget to the current insurgency. Food insecurity has become a real threat for the survival of local communities in the far northern Cameroonian villages where Boko Haram has been killing and displacing residents. At least, 70% of local Cameroonian farmers have fled the region due to the ongoing terror. The price tag for defeating global terror will come about by states being erased from the economic map of the world as is the case in Yemen, Somalia, Syria, and Libya.

Bibliography

• Mary Beard, SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome (New York, Liveright Publishing Corporation, 2015)

• Loretta Napoleoni, Terrorism and the Economy: How the War on Terror is Bankrupting the World (New York, Seven Stories Press, 2010)

• Adrienne Mayor, The Poisonous King: The Life and Legend of Mithradates. Rome’s Deadliest Enemy (Princeton University Press, 2010)

Narcisse Jean Alcide Nana is the author of the book, Virus Militarisés (Paris, Edilivre, 1015)