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Terrorism
should not overwhelm us
By
Jonathan
Power
November 28, 2003
LONDON - We have to stop looking at terrorism like
it's the end of the world. It is for the people who die
from it. But for the rest of us we have a duty to
ourselves, to the harmony of our families and to the
equilibrium of our countries to keep it in
perspective.
We can gain some clarity by putting Al Qaeda on one
side for a moment. Before Osama bin Laden's organization
came on the scene and gathered speed in the late 1990s
there was no doubt that during the 1980s and early 1990s
there was a decline in terrorist action all over the
world. In fact the main terrorist hot spot was Sri Lanka.
The Tamil Tigers who after 20 terrifying years of civil
war now seem ready for negotiations can teach us a lot.
In particular that the most brutal variants of terrorism
can evolve for no good reason other than that there is a
peculiarly successful kind of charistmatic leadership- in
the persona of the Tiger leader, Prabhakaran, who has
played a role similar to that of Hitler in European
fascism. The Tamils in neighbouring India who are also a
minority are poorer and live in a more unequal society
than their kith and kin but have shown little desire to
emulate this kind of struggle. Indeed the Tigers do not
seem to have been motivated by either religious or social
issues and as a minority they have a better status than
most of the minorities elsewhere in Asia. One suspects
that if the Sri Lankan authorities had done a better job
in tracking down and apprehending the Tiger's remarkable
leader negotiations would have come about long ago.
We can also learn from modern history that terrorist
movements like many other human endeavors enjoy success
for a while and then can wither rather quickly away.
Sometimes this is because there have been sophisticated
negotiations leading to subtle compromises- as with the
IRA and Britain; or Libya with Britain, France and the
U.S.; and indeed with the Palestinian terrorists of the
1980s who massacred athletes and blew up planes.
(Incidentally most of these early Palestinian terrorists
were Christians not Muslims.) Sometimes success came
about because the policing worked- as with the Baader
Meinhoff gang of West Germany. Sometimes because
repression worked- as with many of the military regimes
in Latin America in the 1970s and 1980s, (but at great
cost to the well-being of society).
We should also realize that it is not enough to
explain terrorism in terms of poverty, lack of
opportunity or even ethnic and religious strife. We
should look at where terrorism does NOT occur- for
example the 240 million untouchables in South Asia who
have every reason in the world to rebel never have
engaged in terrorism. In Europe whilst the Catholics of
Ulster, the Basques of Spain and the Chechens of Russia
have taken to terrorism there are many minorities, such
as the Catalans in Spain or the Tatars of Russia, whose
causes are similar, who never have.
Which brings us to Al Qaeda. Yes, most of today's
worst terrorism is led by angry Muslims but while there
is some truth in the notion of the "clash of
civilizations" it is not the whole of it. Many reasons
have been given- from poverty, to Palestinian rights to
religious fervor- yet without the incubation- a quite
unique event- of the Mujahidin resistance to the Soviet
occupation in Afghanistan, aided and abetted in many
crucial ways by the CIA and the Saudi and Pakistani
intelligence services, these free lance terrorists would
never have built up the confidence, the knowledge, the
discipline and the expertise to embark on a worldwide
jihad.
One of the most remarkable of contemporary
developments is the decline of terrorism in Muslim Egypt
even though the problems in society have not much
changed. There is no doubt the much of the inspiration
for Al Qaeda came from Egyptian writers, sheikhs and the
organizational prowess of the Moslem Brotherhood. Yet at
the very time that Al Qaeda was growing, terrorism in
Egypt, after a long and bitter struggle that took the
lives of thousands of innocents and of President Anwar
Sadat, came to an end in 1999. Last year the imprisoned
terrorist leaders of the Gama'a, as the terrorist
movement was called, published a sensational series of
books in which they argued that their actions had not
been in accordance with Muslim law and said they had
forbidden their members to join Al Qaeda.
Al Qaeda is the most virulent terrorist virus the
world has ever known, yet to date apart from September
2001 the fatalities it has caused are less than that of
the Tamil Tigers or the Gama'a in their heyday. There is
no reason why a combination of sophisticated politics and
clever policing cannot make a lot of progress in
defeating it. We don't, as yet, have to initiate more
wars or to sacrifice our standards of justice and our
peace of mind to combat it.
I can be reached by phone +44
7785 351172 and e-mail: JonatPower@aol.com
Copyright © 2003 By
JONATHAN POWER
Follow this
link to read about - and order - Jonathan Power's book
written for the
40th Anniversary of
Amnesty International
"Like
Water on Stone - The Story of Amnesty
International"
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