8 - 14 November 2001
Issue No.559
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 8 - 14 November 2001 Issue No.559 |
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Reflections
What is terrorism?
Terrorism is the antithesis of self-determination. But let's stop here for a moment: I've used the "t" word and I need to qualify it at once. Omnipresent even before 11 September and the global "war against terror" ("the urgent task of our time," according to George W), it was rendered totally meaningless a long time ago.
Overlook, for the moment, the competing definitions (e.g. the difference between terrorism and legitimate armed resistance); set aside also the various dated and updated lists of terrorist organisations and terrorism-sponsoring states ordained by the US.
Look for designation. Ask yourself such apparently outlandish questions as, for instance: why are the groups of the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan not terrorists? They are non-state armed groups; some of them, indeed, are backed by Iran (a notable member of the US list of terrorism- sponsoring states); they are engaged in armed violence against the government (abhorrent as it may be -- but there are plenty of despicable regimes); and, if it is atrocities against civilians you're looking for, they've committed their fair share (both during the anti-Soviet "Jihad" and after) -- as recently underlined in a statement issued by Human Rights Watch. Why was Bin Laden a mujahid when he was fighting the government- supported Soviet military presence in Afghanistan and a terrorist when he was fighting the government-supported US military presence in Saudi Arabia? Who decides which governments are "puppets" and which are not -- which are legitimate and which are not?
And what of atrocities? The capacity of states to commit atrocities is invariably much greater than that of non-state groups. Why are state-committed atrocities less morally reprehensible? Recall such US-backed monsters as Indonesia's Suharto, Zaire's Mobutu, Cambodia's Pol Pot, Israel's Sharon... And, if you insist on non-state groups -- what of the Contras in Honduras, the Israeli settlers in Palestine? Why are the Kurds terrorists in Turkey and freedom fighters in Iraq?
US and British officials have described "the war against terrorism" as the greatest military operation since World War II. Yet the enemy, "terrorism," is knowable only on condition of a total surrender of our minds and critical faculties to Washington and London bureaucrats and their slavish, self-interested media friends.
What is terrorism? I have no intention of debating definitions set out in dictionaries and international legal compendia, or of offering a "definitive" definition of my own. I will, however, for the purposes of this discussion, use the term in a very old, very strict and largely value-free sense -- as, for instance, we would use "war" (the most bellicose of warmongers would acknowledge that "war is a terrible thing," while most peace-minded people would concede that, "sometimes, war is the only option"). The objective is not to convince the reader that my usage of the dread word is the correct one, but rather to explain what I mean when I do use it. Terrorism here is strictly a noun, not an implied adjective. I see it as a particular mode of armed violence to which non-state political movements resort, aiming it not at defeating the enemy militarily (as in armed revolutions or liberation wars, for instance), but at serving propaganda purposes, including: intimidation, psychological attrition, declaring the movement's objectives, winning popular support, and so on. As such, two qualifiers immediately come to mind:
1- Not all terrorisms are the same. Terrorism by fascist groups, state-linked paramilitaries or colonial settlers is qualitatively different, morally and politically, from that pursued by, say, South African blacks fighting apartheid, Algerians fighting French colonialism or Palestinians fighting Israeli occupation;
2- Terrorism need not imply atrocities. Indeed, attacks against civilians are, historically, a fairly recent terrorist tactic. Many resistance movements have sordidly internalised the cynical disregard for the lives of non-combatants shown by states via two world wars, the Nazi Holocaust, two nuclear bombs and countless genocidal campaigns. But in the 19th and early 20th centuries, terrorist movements like the Russian Populists or Egypt's Black Hand (an underground terrorist group affiliated to the Wafd Party in the early '20s), would target only especially hated state/colonial-figures and symbols.
Having said this, I could now argue that terrorism as a form of resistance by the oppressed (I'm not interested here in the terrorism of the Contras, or Jewish settlers) is both politically ruinous and morally abhorrent. Fundamentally, the one salient feature of terrorism (irrespective of the relative legitimacy of the cause in defence of which it is pursued) is its anti-democratic nature. Its point of departure is the political apathy of the oppressed people whom the terrorists set out to "liberate." The people are called upon not to act, but merely to cheer on the heroic "saviours" acting on their behalf; sacrificing their lives to "awaken" them. Intrinsic to a terrorist political strategy is a deep contempt for the people's ability to appropriate knowledge and political awareness -- let alone to determine their own future.
And, by its very nature, terrorism works to reproduce the ignorance and political apathy it takes as its point of departure, on an ever-expanding scale. It appeals to people's emotions and baser instincts (e.g. retribution, spectacle, hero-worship) rather than their capacity to reason and make choices. The people, indeed, are not called upon to make choices of any kind -- save to deliver some of their number, as individuals, to the ranks of the self-sacrificing "heroes." They are made spectators to a horrific battle between largely faceless underground fighters and gigantic state machines whose capacity for untamed violence on a massive scale seems to lie just beneath the surface in the most democratic and "civilised" of nations. Little wonder, then, that terrorism is the strategy of choice for intrinsically authoritarian political movements.
Atrocities are not a necessary corollary of terrorism; but it slips so easily into atrocity. The purely military logic of using armed violence against an immeasurably superior armed force obliges the terrorists to seek ever easier targets.
Eventually, in Pakistan today as in Egypt several years ago, the heroes of the Islamic revolution end up shooting defenceless and impoverished Christian fellow-citizens in the nearest village.
Terrorism is a product of intense oppression (and the deep feelings of humiliation and injured human dignity that such oppression generates) and, at the same time, of political helplessness and desperation. It begins from a point in which all avenues for popular self-determination appear closed, and it works to shut them tighter still. Can it be very surprising, then, that terrorism has gained such prominence in today's Arab world?
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