Terror and tyranny
What powerful states call terrorism may
be an inevitable response to injustice
by Seumas Milne
Thursday October 25, 2001
The Guardian
For a war that, in the words of US Vice-President Dick Cheney, "may never end",
the enemy is proving embarrassingly hard to define. Of course, we know all about
Osama bin Laden, supposed mastermind of the twin towers attacks, and his Taliban
protectors, and we have become ominously aware of the demands from within the US
administration that Iraq be brought into the frame. But this campaign is intended
to be something grander still. The bombs and missiles now raining down on Afghanistan
have been proclaimed as the curtain-raiser of a war against terror itself, which
will not cease until the scourge of political violence is dealt with once and for
all. The days of toleration for any form of terrorism from Baghdad to Ballymurphy
are, it is said, now over. British ministers may mutter that the war is aimed at
al-Qaida and the Taliban alone - but then they are not in charge. Yet for all the
square-jawed resolution on display in western capitals about the prosecution of this
war, there is little agreement even within the heart of the coalition about what
terrorism actually means. Both the EU and the UN are struggling to come up with an
acceptable definition. The European Commission has produced a formulation so broad
it would include anti-globalisation protesters who smash McDonald's windows; while
Kofi Annan, UN secretary-general, warned wearily that reaching a consensus would
be well-nigh impossible since "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom
fighter". President Bush has pledged that the war will not cease so long as
"anybody is terrorising established governments" and Britain's latest terrorism
legislation outlaws support for groups opposing any regime, including an illegal
one, with violence.
Pacifists apart, however, virtually everyone across the political spectrum supports
terrorism in practice - or, rather, what passes for terrorism under the rubric being
promulgated by western chancelleries. The transformation from terrorist to respected
statesman has become a cliche of the international politics of the past 50 years,
now being replayed in Northern Ireland. Almost every society, philosophy and religion
has recognised the right to take up arms against tyranny or foreign occupation. In
History Will Absolve Me, his 1953 trial speech after the abortive Moncada barracks
attack, Fidel Castro reels off a string of thinkers and theologians - from Thomas
Aquinas and John Salisbury to John Calvin and Thomas Paine - who defended the right
to rebel against despots. In modern times, few would question the heroism or justice
of the wartime resistance to the Nazis or of armed rebellions against British or
French colonial rule, all damned as terrorists by those they fought.
More recently still, the US government trained and funded the armed contra rebellion
against Nicaragua - ably assisted by John Negroponte, the current US ambassador to
the UN and in defiance of the international court in the Hague. Along with its faithful
British ally, the US also backed the Afghan mojahedin (even before the Soviet intervention),
as it is now funding opposition groups waging bombing campaigns in Iraq. So the Bush
administration's problem with terrorism is evidently not about breaking the state's
monopoly of violence.
The right to resist occupation is in any case recognised under international law
and the Geneva convention, which is one reason why routine western denunciations
of Palestinian violence ring so utterly hollow. Having failed to dislodge the Israeli
occupation after 34 years or implement the UN decision to create a Palestinian state
after 54 years, there are few reasonable grounds to complain if those living under
the occupation fight back. But the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestinian,
which last week assassinated Israel's racist tourism minister in response to the
Israeli assassination of its leader in August, is officially regarded as a terrorist
organisation by the US government, which has now successfully pressured the Palestinian
leadership to ban its military wing.
The tendency in recent years, encouraged by the scale of last month's atrocity in
New York, has been to define terrorism increasingly in terms of methods and tactics
- particularly the targeting of civilians - rather than the status of those who carry
it out. Such an approach has its own difficulties. Liberation movements which most
would balk at branding terrorist, including the ANC and the Algerian FLN, attacked
civilian targets - as so mesmerisingly portrayed in Pontecorvo's film Battle of Algiers.
But more problematic for western governments is the way such arguments can be turned
against them. The concept of modern terrorism derives, after all, from the French
revolution, where terror was administered by the state - as it is today by scores
of governments around the world.
If paramilitary groups become terrorists because they kill or injure civilians, what
of those states which bomb television stations, bridges and power stations, train
and arm death squads or authorise assassinations? After days when hundreds of Afghan
civilians are reported to have died as a result of Anglo-American bombardment - while
hundreds of thousands are fleeing for their lives - Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's
remark that the aim was to "frighten" the other side couldn't have more
sharply posed the paradox of terror.
In his City of God, Saint Augustine tells a story about an encounter between Alexander
the Great (the last ruler successfully to garrison Afghanistan) and a pirate captain
he had caught on the high seas. Ordering the pirate to heave to, Alexander demands:
"How dare you molest the seas as a pirate?" "How dare you molest the
whole world?" retorts the plucky pirate. "I have a small boat, so I am
called a thief and a pirate. You have a great navy, so you are called an emperor,
and can call other men pirates." Substitute terrorist or rogue state for pirate
and the episode neatly encapsulates the morality of the new world order.
Political violence emerges when other avenues are closed. Where people suffer oppression,
are denied a peaceful route to justice and social change and have exhausted all other
tactics - the point the ANC reached in the early 1960s - they are surely entitled
to use force. That does not apply to adventurist and socially disconnected groups
like Baader Meinhof or the Red Brigades, nor does it deal with the question of whether
such force is advisable or likely to be counter-productive. Islamist "jihad"
groups, especially networks like al-Qaida with a "global reach" and a religious
ideology impervious to accommodation, are considered by many to be beyond any normal
calculus of repression and resistance. Certainly, the September 11 atrocity was an
unprecedented act of non-state terror. But such groups are also unquestionably the
product of conditions in the Arab and Muslim world for which both Britain and the
US bear a heavy responsibility, through their unswerving support of despotic regimes
for over half a century. It was precisely that blockage of democratic development
that led to the failure of secular politics, which in turn paved the way for the
growth of Islamist radicalism. Groups like al-Qaida offer no future to the Muslim
world, but Bin Laden and his supporters have their boots sunk deep in a swamp of
grievance. As the assault on Afghanistan continues, no one should delude themselves
that cutting off al-Qaida's head or destroying its Afghan lair will put an end to
this eruption.
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