The War on Terror, the War on Drugs, and Other Bedtime Stories for Grown Nations

Obama, Clinton and Biden, along with members of the national security team at the Situation Room of the White House during the operation to kill Bin Laden -- Pete Souza, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

By Raïs Neza Boneza

If everything you thought you knew about the War on Terror were nothing more than a mirage—an extravagant shadow-play staged by geopolitical puppeteers—would you really be surprised? After all, the last two decades have taught us two things: nothing sells like fear, and nothing pays like chaos. Enter the familiar cast of characters: Obama, Clinton, McCain, Brennan, Soros, Abedin—names recited like an incantation in the global ritual of “saving democracy,” usually by destroying someone else’s democracy.

But don’t worry. This time, it’s different. That’s what they always say before dropping another bomb.

Bin Laden: The Man, the Myth, the Perpetual Asset

Let’s start with America’s favorite ghost: Osama bin Laden. Hunted for a decade, allegedly found multiple times, yet somehow always allowed to slip away—until 2011, when eliminating him finally aligned with a White House political calendar. Funny how that works.

Why wait so long if he was “Enemy Number One”? Why ignore intelligence in 2005, 2007, 2009?

Well, because a living bogeyman is a very lucrative business model. Ask Boeing. Ask Raytheon. Ask any defense stockholder who suddenly discovered the joy of quarterly dividends.

And then—poof!—the SEAL team responsible for the raid dies in a mysterious helicopter crash months later. A coincidence, of course. Washington runs on coincidences; it’s practically the city’s main export.

Emails, Servers, and the Occasional Sexting Scandal

Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton was busy deleting 33.000 emails—allegedly about yoga and wedding plans, which must make her the most flexible and socially overbooked woman in U.S. history. Too bad some of those emails inconveniently link foreign donors, Gulf monarchies, and groups who—surprise!—funded extremist militias in Syria and Iraq.

Then Anthony Weiner’s laptop appears on stage like an unwanted comic relief character in a Shakespeare tragedy. Suddenly, classified emails resurface in places they were never supposed to be. Yet the media called the whole thing “overblown.” Of course. Nothing to see here—unless it’s your laptop, in which case the FBI shows up faster than Amazon Prime.

Syria, Libya, Daesh: The Franchise

After Gaddafi fell, Libya’s weapons didn’t retire—they simply changed employers. They traveled to Syria; via networks no one officially acknowledges but everyone privately knows. McCain posed with “moderate rebels,” some of whom later turned out to be high-ranking ISIS members. Oops. But it’s fine—errors happen. Especially when your foreign policy is written by weapons manufacturers.

ISIS rose like a startup with excellent venture capital and suspiciously advanced media production skills. They blew up ancient sites—Babylonian, Assyrian, Mesopotamian—erasing the evidence of civilizations older than the Western narrative. Because when you control history, you control the future. And what better way to redesign the Middle East than by erasing anything that contradicts your blueprint?

The Sahel: The New Desert of Convenient Enemies

Fast forward to today. The War on Terror is tired, overused, fraying at the seams. So, the international community reaches for a new franchise: The War on Drugs—Sahel Edition.

If Africa has learned anything from the last century, it’s this: whenever the world’s great powers announce a new “war”—on terror, on drugs, on trafficking, on poverty—it usually means Africa is about to become someone else’s battlefield again.

The War on Terror burned the Middle East. The War on Drugs decimated Latin America. And now both narratives have packed their bags, put on desert boots, and moved south into the Sahel, where they are sold to Africans as “security partnerships” and “stability initiatives.”

The only thing being stabilized is the flow of minerals

Never mind that the Sahel’s instability is fueled largely by climate change, corruption, and the fallout from NATO’s Libya adventure. Never mind that drug trafficking networks have thrived because of collapsing states, not despite them.

Enter Western headlines: “Drug Cartels in the Sahel Threaten Global Security.” Translation: “We found a new justification for military bases.”

Because nothing says “humanitarian concern” like drones circling above Nigerien villages while cobalt and uranium travel safely to European factories.

The War on Drugs and the War on Terror share the same logic: Create a monster. Feed the monster. Pretend to slay the monster. Send the bill to taxpayers.

Narco-Jihadists: Because Two Boogeymen Are Better Than One

We now hear about “narco-terrorists” in Mali and Niger, a term so catchy it deserves. its own Netflix series. Are there traffickers? Yes. Are there extremists? Yes. Are they sometimes the same people? Sometimes. But are they the real threat?

Absolutely not. The true threat is the unholy marriage between geopolitical ambition and moral storytelling—the kind that turns tragedies into market opportunities.

But let’s be honest, the War on Terror was never about terror. The War on Drugs was never about drugs. They were both wars on inconvenient truths—and lucrative opportunities for whoever controlled the narrative. Just ask the Sahel, ask Iraq, ask Syria or ask the families of soldiers whose lives became collateral damage in classified chess games.

A Brief Moment of Lucidity, If Daesh collapsed quickly under Trump, why not under Obama? If narco-networks can be neutralized, why do they grow after every new foreign intervention?

If stability is the goal, why destabilize every country with minerals essential to global supply chains? Unless, of course, chaos is the point.

A destabilized region cannot negotiate. A fractured society cannot resist extraction.

A frightened population cannot challenge power.

In the End, All Roads Lead to the Same Desert

From the caves of Tora Bora to the dunes of the Sahel, the logic remains: Big players create the fire, then sell the fire extinguishers. And when the flames spread? Blame the locals. Call it terrorism. Call it narcotrafficking. Anything but what it really is: A war on sovereignty disguised as a war on vice.

Final Thought, they erased Assyrian history, almost destroyed Timbuktu. They erased Mesopotamian stones. Now they want to erase Sahelian voices. Because the biggest threat to empire has always been memory. And yet—memory persists.

Stories persist. People persist. The mirage is fading. Even the deserts are speaking. And this time hopefully, the world is finally listening.

Raïs Neza Boneza is the author of fiction as well as non-fiction, poetry books and articles. He was born in the Katanga province of the Democratic Republic of Congo (Former Zaïre). He is also an activist and peace practitioner. Raïs is a member of the Transcend Media Service Editorial Committee and a convener of the Transcend Network for Peace Development Environment for Central and African Great Lakes.

This article was produced by Globetrotter.

This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 15 Dec 2025.