- In the wake of 9/11, Americans struggled with a baffling
question: Why did they do that to us? The answer we got from the Bush
administration was the terrorists "hate us because of our freedom"
That answer was wrong, careless, even simple-minded, but at the moment
it inspired us to get behind a plan to fight back. We welcomed the invasion
of Afghanistan because we were told the kingpin of al Qaida, Osama bin
Laden, who was said to have master-minded the 9/11 attacks, was holed up
there under the protection of that country's ruling Muslim extremists,
the Taliban. To go after him and his cohorts, the administration launched
the War on Terrorism.
-
- Now, over three years later, President Bush himself has
indicated we have variously disposed of several thousand al Qaida members,
including key bin Laden advisers, although few have gone to trial. However,
terrorism experts estimate the organization not only is substantially regenerated,
but its appeal to other disgruntled activists has been greatly increased
by American actions. Meanwhile hatred of America or dislike of its policies
has grown remarkably in most of the world. . And we still need a good answer
to that question: Why did they do that to us? But we need a forward-looking
answer: Why might they do that again?
-
- Just Where Are We On This?
-
- We are stuck in this odd position, like a captured fly
whirling on a straight pin, because the answer we were given to the question
was incorrect at the time, but since 9/11 our waging of the so-called War
on Terrorism has greatly increased the number of people who may indeed
hate us. Before we get in any deeper, it is vital to find workable answers
to leading questions: What is terrorism? Who is a terrorist? Why does terrorism
exist? Does the War on Terrorism address those issues? Maybe the answers
will enable us to see"what seems patent to many others--why they did
it, and may do it again. Just possibly we might learn what to do about
it.
-
- To get there, we must be absolutely realistic. That
means we must put on the table our own actions and those of our allies,
such as Israel, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Colombia, alongside other
acts of violence now troubling the Middle East and the rest of the world.
-
- No matter who wins in November, the next President must
have answers, because our country is losing too many lives and spending
too many of our national resources, including the goodwill of most of the
world, as we fight in Iraq to win an illegal war, blindly support Israeli
expulsion of the Palestinian people, and, under the flag of the War on
Terrorism, attempt to suppress people whose motive is to expel illegal
invaders. While occupying and destroying Iraqi cities, our government,
and likely the coalition members, appear unwilling to define the enemy.
What Is Terrorism?
-
- This seems an odd question after we already have had
War on Terrorism for nearly three years, but we need agreed definitions
of (1) what is terrorism, and (2) who is a terrorist? None of the official
definitions of terrorism appear to serve us here. For most of the past
100 years, the international community has failed to agree on a definition.
In 1937, the League of Nations proposed the following, but it was never
adopted:
-
- "All criminal acts directed against a state and
intended or calculated to create a state of terror in the minds of particular
persons or a group of persons or the general public."
-
- The FBI adopted its own working definition, one that
is more comprehensive than the League's:
-
- "Terrorism is the unlawful use of force or violence
against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian
population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social
objectives."
-
- Brian Jenkins, an experienced counter-terrorism professional,
states: "Terrorism is the use or threatened use of force designed
to bring about political change."
-
- While the FBI and Brian Jenkins define the term without
specifying a group of actors, the State Department narrows the definition
thus: Terrorism is "premeditated, politically-motivated violence perpetrated
against non-combatant targets by sub-national groups or clandestine agents,
(emphasis added) usually intended to influence an audience." In short,
as State sees it, terrorism is violence carried out against civilians by
groups who are not officials or employees of a government. The State Department
annual report, Patterns of Global Terrorism, is compiled around data that
fit this definition.
-
- The United Nations, while charged with global responsibilities
for dealing with violence, has yet to agree on a definition of terrorism.
Most likely that is because the 15 member Security Council cannot agree.
-
- The ultimate definition, voiced by some unknown wag,
is: "I will know it when I see it." The average definition of
terrorism worldwide is at this level of generality and therefore virtually
useless.
-
- Do Examples Define It?
-
- Examples would define it, if we dealt with the problem
fairly, but fairness seldom enters into the definition. Are people who
oppose the occupation in Iraq terrorists? Or are they just victims of
an unwanted occupation with some spirit left? Are the Chechens, who have
been trying for centuries to gain independence from Russia, terrorists
or just bone-headed and sometimes ruthless nationalists? Are the Palestinians,
who have fought over fifty years for dear life to keep from being forced
out of their ancestral homeland, terrorists? Is a Palestinian woman who,
out of desperation, blows herself up in an Israeli street, taking several
Israelis with her, a terrorist? If she is, why isn,t an IDF tank driver
who uses his cannon to destroy a Palestinian home with the family still
in it? Are the IDF soldiers who have put bullets into the heads of more
than 200 unarmed teenagers since the current Intifada--the Palestinian
uprising"that began in 2000 in any way distinguishable from terrorists?
Where do US pilots who dropped cluster bombs on Samarra, and killed more
civilians than militants in Iraq a few weeks ago, fit in the definition?
-
- One can maneuver through this minefield like a contortionist
dodging knives in an arcade. But it is essential at all times to keep
in mind that the definition of terrorism is at the will of the user. As
a four-star Air Force General, who was speaking on Vietnam, once told a
National War College assembly: "Where you stand depends on where you
sit." That was a cynical portrayal of bureaucratic loyalties, but
in essence your role defines your terms for you. Crass, but useful, because
it alerts you to pay attention to sources:
-
- Who Is Talking, And Why?
-
- The most troublesome issue relates to who uses the term
"terrorism" and for what purpose. There is an intellectual trap
here, because the more cases the term can be defined to cover, the more
broadly based is justification for the so-called War on Terrorism. The
converse is, of course, also true. That leads to such travesties as classifying
the Iraqis who fight to expel invaders from their country as terrorists.
That includes outsiders who for whatever reason come in to help. It also
leads to stretches of the truth such as "al Qaida terrorists are responsible
for the uprising in Fallujah", when in reality even senior US officers
in Iraq say that only a small number of fighters there are not Sunnis and
sympathizers who are trying to take their city and country back.
-
- The most insidious use of the term is to refuse recognition,
de-frock or de-legitimize an opposition group or its members. That problem
hovers over the Chechen rebellion. Putin was happy with the west when he
was able to treat his response to the centuries-old Chechen fight for independence
from Russia as part of the war on terrorism. He is now unhappy indeed,
because recent US and British statements suggest he should negotiate a
settlement. The mere idea of negotiating, Putin knows, would convey legitimacy
to the Chechen rebels.
-
- Where Is The Hang Up?
-
- As a general rule, the politics of what terrorists do
are easier to manage than the politics of what terrorists want. Slash and
burn tactics make the actors look bad, no matter what their motives. Goading
them to do more mayhem is, of course, helpful to keeping the terrorist
label on them. Actions to punish the actors for such tactics are likely
to be politically popular, while actions to respond to their agenda may
involve a politically unpopular re-division of national pies. As a general
rule, it seems easier to keep a society polarized against a trouble making
out-group than it is to persuade interested parties to engage them.
-
- That is certainly true in the Chechen case. In fact,
negotiations conducted with Russian officials by Chechen moderates during
the past few years appear to have reached the verge of a settlement. However,
not long before the recent terrorist attacks, and more than likely among
the motives for those attacks, Vladimir Putin is reported to have denied
that any such talks had occurred and to have disavowed any agreement. What
he did was hand the Chechen ball back to the hardliners. Their response
enables Putin to continue calling the Chechen rebels terrorists, and after
the Beslan massacre, there is said to be broad Russian popular support
for doing so. In this case, the Chechen rebels have set back their own
cause.
-
- The same is true in the Israeli case. Typically and
almost totally one-sidedly the Israelis treat the Palestinians as less
than equal people who are aggressors and themselves as perennial victims.
People who do not buy this line are accused of being anti-Semitic, or
Jew haters. American media, more than any other, go along with this line,
seldom if ever reporting on the daily crimes the Israeli Defense Force
commits against Palestinians, but always reporting what the Palestinians
do in response. Powerful lobbies in the US, such as AIPAC and ADL work
constantly to prevent any criticism of Israeli actions. This is the case
because Israeli leadership and Israeli supporters know that it cannot do
any of the criminal things Israel does (targeted assassinations, destruction
of homes and villages, expulsion of farmers from their land, killings of
teenagers) if those actions are held up for international review. Under
the Israeli model, as practiced from the beginning by leaders such as Ariel
Sharon, no one can be allowed to assert that the Palestinians have any
legitimate grievances or rights, because if those rights and grievances
are recognized, Israel cannot go on doing what it has done consistently
for fifty years to dispossess the Palestinian people. As brave souls such
as Paul Findley and Cynthia McKinney have found, one can lose his or her
job by questioning the sacrosanct Israeli posture.
-
- If one looks at the situations of the sixty or so terrorists
groups annually written up in the State Department report, there are variations
around the foregoing themes, but the norm is some version of them. A perverse
result of the alliances the US has created to fight the War on Terrorism
is that governments are encouraged to treat their dissidents as terrorists,
not to negotiate with them on resolving differences. This is, after all,
a war!
-
- Real Life Cases Are The Hard Part
-
- Terrorism in the abstract is perhaps easier to define
than it is in the specific case. That is because the abstract definition
carries no freight. The accusation in a specific case has to be dealt with,
because when all is said and done, at least a crime has been committed.
But here the FBI definition presents us with a judgment problem because
it implies that force may lawfully be used to "intimidate or coerce
a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance
of political or social objectives."
-
- There is a fence here that depends on the legal standing
of the intimidator. Palestinians, Iraqis, Chechens, Colombia's revolutionary
armed forces, the Philippines, Abu Sayyaf, Indonesia's Jemaah Islamiyah,
and many others face this problem every day, because the characterization
of events rests with the party who has legal standing. A key element of
the War on Terrorism is to deny such legal standing to any so-called terrorist
or terrorist group, because once a group achieves legal standing, e.g.,
as a recognized insurgency such as the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, the group
enters a world where recognition requires conformity to the rules of war,
notably the Geneva conventions. The politics of what the "former"
terrorists want take over.
-
- Former US Ambassador Ronald Spiers in a recent article
(Foreign Service Journal, September 2004) stated that terrorism is a tactic
and one cannot really make war on a tactic. True enough. But counter-terrorism
is also a tactic with component approaches such as: (1) Do not negotiate
with terrorists; (2) capture, confine or kill the terrorists; (3) do not
make any concessions. These are the essences of US counter-terrorism policy.
They do not add up to a strategy for dealing with global terrorism, because
they collectively deal only with the perpetrators of attacks.
-
- Where Does Iraq Fit In This Picture?
-
- How legitimate are US uses of force? The FBI definition
of terrorism implicitly states, as cited earlier, that force be used by
the government to "intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian
population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social
objectives." Strictly speaking, by the FBI definition, those are
lawful terror tactics. How do they work, however, in a situation such as
Iraq where the United Nations, as well as many other national governments,
declared the invasion illegal under international law? The FBI definition
states that terrorism is the "unlawful" use of force. If the
invasion is illegal, the US use of force in Iraq is unlawful; therefore,
it is terrorism as defined by our national law enforcement agency.
-
- Within the past few weeks, Muslim clerics in Iraq, viewing
the wholesale destruction wrought by US forces on the city of Samarra,
stated through a spokesman: "It is the latest in a series of many
criminal acts perpetrated by the greatest terrorist nation on the face
of the earth: the United States." The notion that what is terrorism
depends on where one stands is truly forceful in such circumstances.
-
- Why Is This So Hard?
-
- The elephant in this room is the persistent unwillingness
of political leadership to look at the root causes of terrorism. No two
situations are precisely the same. The fact of present-day national boundaries,
and probably universal reluctance to change them is one factor. Certainly
the Iraqi Kurds are frustrated by this fact. Existence of a selfish and
distinct ethnic, religious, economic, or cultural majority in many unstable
societies is another. Widespread conditions of scarcity, accompanied by
hunger, poverty and disease, are commonplaces of the countries involved.
Population groups who seek to go their own way are often a critical factor.
Variously unrepresentative forms of government in many countries generate
a rising frustration and anger. The stubborn unwillingness of leadership
to bend, to make concessions, is certainly a major feature of most situations.
-
- Chechen, Iraq, Indonesia, Palestine, and other trouble
spots on the terrorism/insurgency landscape are among most serious examples.
Judging from countries that have had significant internal conflicts over
the past decade, easily a quarter of current nation states are in this
kind of trouble.
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- The War on Terrorism Is Self-Defeating
-
- The reason the War is self-defeating goes with the motivations
of terrorists. Such attacks are designed typically to get the attention
of a target group, usually a government and/or its elite. For reasons of
simplicity and safety, terrorists try to mount attacks that minimize their
exposure while maximizing their message. Thus bombs--that always get attention--
are the most common tool. But if the target group or leaders do not respond
properly"that is they respond aggressively rather than seek dialogue
or resolution of differences--the choice of means tends to escalate: Bigger
bombs. More casualties. In those terms, the more harshly the War on Terrorism
is pursued and the more cruelly captured dissidents are treated, the more
likely that terrorist weapon choices will escalate toward weapons of mass
destruction. Such a war is self-defeating and may even prove to be a self-fulfilling
prophecy. The ultimate attention getters may be used to make the point:
You people are not listening!
-
- How Effective Is Force?
-
- Forceful solutions are not working. Russian efforts
to squelch Chechen and other Caucasus drives for autonomy have not worked
for many centuries. US led efforts to keep Iraq together as a single state
are unlikely to work unless the three major groups, Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish,
themselves reach a workable accord. Indonesia faces a similar future of
growing conflict among peoples (such as the Aceh) who seek fully to participate
or to develop in their own ways. In addition to competing Indian and Pakistani
claims to Kashmir, the Free (Azad) Kashmir movement wants to be alone.
Current Sharon designs on expelling Palestinians entirely from the West
Bank and Gaza will be fraught with conflict that may destroy Israel itself,
and Palestinians as well as sympathetic third parties are likely to help.
Many Sub-Saharan African countries are presently fragmenting under the
pressures of disaffected tribal groups and competing power seekers.
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- All of these and many other efforts to quell local dissent
are failing and have failed historically for the same basic reason: The
states/power elites involved have consistently sought to impose a solution
the dissidents do not want, and the matter is important enough for disaffected
people to be willing to die or go to jail for it. It is no coincidence
that the more than fifty countries that have experienced significant internal
conflicts in the past decade generally have one or more dissident/insurgent/terrorist
groups.
-
- Who Then Is The Enemy?
-
- Accumulating flaws in the human condition are the principal
causes of terrorism. This is the enemy we must look in the face. Such
hate as exists among terrorists is a symptom of those flaws. William Pfaff,
writing for the International Herald Tribune, states that "the usual
motives for terrorist outrages" are "nationalism, irredentism
and religion". Those indeed are important motivators, but they are
the dominant motives in only some cases. Actually about half of the terrorist
groups on the US State Department list seek some form of regime change,
but only a few are revolutionaries. Most who seek regime change are trying
to get their government to listen to them or to get a regime that will
listen to them. But they are doing this because they are left out, not
because they fit the William Pfaff categories. Perhaps the real problem
here is that few, if any, of the terrorist groups are driven by single-minded
urges. It is worth reminding ourselves that terrorists are real people
with real problems in real contexts. They are not the cardboard cutouts
of villains that the al Qaida, Osama bin Laden images often convey.
-
- Is The War Missing The Point?
-
- In this context, the superpower focus on al Qaida has
taken the eye off the ball. World terrorism is a great deal more complicated
than the schemes of a disaffected, rich, ambitious outcast Saudi named
Osama bin Laden. The tragedy of it all, however, is that a narrow focus
on al Qaida has blinded American leadership and distracted world leadership
from the vital mission of attacking the causes of terrorism. Whatever
else we do, our leadership must get to work on dealing with the flaws in
the human condition. If we cannot fix those, forget about making terrorism
go away.
-
- For the world as a whole, the least cost choice is to
step back and reorganize, the sooner the better. But a vital requirement
of that reorganization must be a built in recognition that all people are
equal, and all people have rights. To get there, present day statehood
and power structures must be modified. With weapons and explosives so
generally available, there is no alternative but to recognize the goals
of dissidents or to persuade them to accept workable alternatives. Virtually
no global energy is being devoted to this task. Reducing the number of
terrorists or the number of attacks is impossible without accomplishing
this task.
-
- What Are The Answers?
-
- The Bush team touts the War on Terrorism as a silver
bullet. There is no such tool. Rather the actions likely to be effective
embrace a broad range of American policy and practice. Here is a short
list of ten:
-
- 1. Really export American democracy. American democracy
is government by the will of the governed, and everyone in American society
is entitled to have a say in it. What we are doing in Iraq right now is
a fraud. Without asking the Iraqi people, we are building military bases"fourteen
of them"designed to create a permanent US presence in Iraq. To rig
a compliant government for making the basing system acceptable, we have
chosen people who are well known to the leading American companies involved,
or to the CIA, to head up the transition process, meaning to guide it toward
our desired outcome. We are doing our best to eradicate the serious objectors.
That is cynical pragmatism, not democracy, and it centers on US interests
as defined by the neo-cons, rather than on the interests, self-defined,
of the Iraqi people. Enough Iraqis know this so that chaos reigns. Give
them back their country, and let them figure out how to run it.
-
- 2. Promote improvements in justice systems and law enforcement
as the main strategies for dealing with accused terrorists. Under United
States law, all acts of terrorism are crimes. Terrorist attacks are single
acts more often than not, and the appropriate response to them lies in
the realm of crime and punishment. Assure that in all cases the accused
are treated fairly. There is no practical reason why the detection, detention,
and punishment of a terrorist group require more radical treatment than
applied to an international criminal mob.
-
- 3. Stop torturing prisoners at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo
and other holding sites. On this matter, the United States now enjoys a
reputation alongside the most reprehensible 20th century dictators. It
may be that such inhumane practices have produced some information that
was valuable in apprehending individual suspects, possibly even key al
Qaida leaders. However, the costs of torturing prisoners, denying them
due process, sending them to places where torture is a commonplace of local
practice, hazing them, have been morally and politically catastrophic for
the United States. By such means the United States has succeeded in building
an enduring al Qaida organization, while at the same time destroying America's
reputation as the wellspring of democracy and the defender of human liberties.
-
- 4. Enter into alliances with other governments that promote
the first three principles. Encourage those governments to seek accommodation
with their out groups and find ways to bring them into the mainstreams
of national society. Recognize that there are legitimate complaints against
many governments, and that merely taking actions to suppress the complainants
will not make such problems go away.
-
- 5. Consider seriously the issue of state restructuring
under UN auspices. In some instances that may be the only answer that reduces
or avoids long term conflict. There are several cases as clear as East
Timor. The key is to encourage affected governments and groups to enter
a serious dialogue aimed toward solutions. When all peoples are equal,
the world is too crowded to have violent arguments about who belongs to
whom. Present territorial boundaries should be no more cast in stone than
they were when the boundaries of many affected present states were drawn,
often arbitrarily, after World War II.
-
- 6. Support national initiatives to deal with out-group
problems by providing assistance, including real, multi-national financial
and technical resource inputs to ease the transition from one organizational
pattern to another.
-
- 7. Apply the definitions of terrorism that we use on
others to ourselves and to our allies and friends. Somehow we must rid
ourselves and the rest of the world of the miasma created by failure to
adopt a worldwide single definition of terrorism. We were capable of codifying
a democratic set of principles, including a complete set of criminal laws.
Therefore, what keeps us from agreeing on a definition of terrorism other
than the destructive wish to maintain an advantage over other people?
-
- 8. Eliminate the double standard treatment as between
states that have nuclear weapons and states that do not. Live by the same
rules we try to impose on others respecting ownership and use of or access
to nuclear technologies. Today, over 3 billion people live in nuclear weapon
states (the US, Russia, Britain, France, Israel, India, Pakistan, and China).
To paraphrase Abe Lincoln, the world cannot prosper with half of its people
protected by nuclear weapons and half of its people who perceive themselves
vulnerable and threatened by them. The end state appears to be all or nothing.
The correct answer most likely is elimination of all weapons.
-
- 9. Look squarely at our own sins. They include not only
our heavy-handed and unprovoked invasion of Iraq, and our brutal handling
of prisoners, but also our unequivocal support of the Israelis in their
expulsion of the Palestinian people from their homes and businesses. They
include also our alliances with several governments that encourage the
suppression of local dissidents. If we do not recognize these tragic flaws
in our own posture and correct them, there is no chance that global terrorism
can ever be reduced or eliminated.
-
- 10. Help restore the authority of the United Nations
and our commitments to the UN system. Over a period of several years,
we have undermined the integrity and authority of the United Nations by
refusing fully to fund its operations and going our own way when the rest
of the world disagreed with our goals or approaches. We may be the world's
most powerful military state, but we are still less than 5% of its people.
The exertion of that power, especially in pursuit of selfish and even
illegal goals, works only to increase the number and diversity of our enemies.
That places our current awkward situation somewhere between a self-fulfilling
prophecy and a self-inflicted wound. We can recover from this situation
only by a sustained demonstration of responsible world leadership.
-
- Our Choices Are Limited But Real
-
- There is no single or magical cure for terrorism. Promoters
of the War on Terrorism are simply wrong in their choice of remedies. If
we continue as we are, the world will descend slowly into chaos, because
no one actually will be working its problems. The truth about terrorism
is that it feeds on our worst survival instincts. In the eventual outcome,
the weak will be destroyed by the strong, and the strong will destroy each
other. It is vital that we recognize terrorism and the terrorist as symptoms
and that we look to the causes. Treating only the symptoms, especially
with the harsh remedies we now apply, will only make matters worse.
-
- Our people have two choices at this point: (1) We can
go along with the rhetorical war on terrorism that is taking our country
into increasing danger, while we learn to live with the constant fear that
approach involves. (2) We can demand that our leaders get serious about
attacking the deep-seated anger, frustration, and will to violence that
is fed by the horrors at the bottom of the human condition, as well as
distortions in the organization of states. We cannot win by waiting to
be attacked in order to find out who is mad at us. We cannot win by conducting
an international campaign, unless that campaign is truly multinational
and it is directed principally at mitigating the causes of terrorism. We
cannot win if our own campaign is widely seen to be violating human rights
or international law. We cannot win without widespread agreement on what
is appropriate for dealing with human grievances.
-
- We can win in the long run only by reducing the underlying
causes of terrorism or making them go away. That is the truth about terrorism,
and our country must have top political leadership that will deal with
it.
-
- ********** The writer is a former Senior Foreign Service
Officer of the US Department of State and former Chairman of the Department
of International Studies of the National War College. He will welcome comment
at wecanstopit@charter.net
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