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The Elusive Definition of Terrorism

Rebels, insurgents, paramilitaries, separatists, militants, guerrillas, insurrectionists, fundamentalists….. are these all terrorists? Or does terrorism claim its own exclusive niche? The exasperating inability to define terrorism is betrayed in the UN 2006 Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy – “we, the States Members of the United Nations….strongly condemn terrorism in all its forms and manifestations, committed by whomever, wherever and for whatever purposes”.

UN Blast in Baghdad © Amnesty International - International Secretariat

The UN has been striving for decades to find a wording for terrorism which, instead of “all its forms and manifestations”, narrows down to a specific method of conducting violence which can be condemned regardless of the circumstances. The absence of an agreed definition matters for many reasons. It blocks the possibility of referring terrorist acts to an international court, as for genocide and other war crimes; it leaves individual countries free to outlaw activity which they choose to classify as terrorism, perhaps for their own political convenience; and crucially it enabled the Bush administration to conjure in the public mind parallels between the 9/11 destruction of the World Trade Center and the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein. The vocabulary of terrorism has become the successor to that of anarchy and communism as the catch-all label of opprobrium, exploited accordingly by media and politicians.

The Just Cause Conundrum

Mandela's cell on Robben Island © Peter Armstrong

The difficulty in constructing a definition which eliminates any just cause for terrorism is that history provides too many precedents of organisations and their leaders branded as terrorist but who eventually evolved into respected government. This has applied particularly to national liberation movements fighting colonial or oppressive regimes, engaging in violence within their own countries often as a last resort. Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya spent years of his life lobbying the British government before his involvement with the Mau Mau rebellion. Another convicted "terrorist", Nelson Mandela, wrote in his autobiography: “the hard facts were that 50 years of non-violence had brought (my) people nothing but more repressive legislation, and fewer rights”.

All countries must deplore indiscriminate acts of terrorism which kill and maim civilians and which create a climate of fear. Countries from Africa and the Middle East have however proved reluctant to endorse any definition of terrorism which fails to place such acts within the broad sweep of history and which disregards the realities of the 20th century. The dilemma for the international community lies firstly in assessing whether a cause is “just” and therefore capable of remedy by political negotiation, and secondly in identifying which “terrorist” organisations are capable of emerging into the legitimate political process.

Hamas Logo © Radio Netherlands

For example, a central aim of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) - to reunite the northern and southern counties of Ireland - was never regarded as a just cause by the UK government, whilst other grievances linked to fair government in the north were accepted as negotiable. Sinn Fein, the political wing of the IRA, is now part of an elected power-sharing government in Northern Ireland. In the Middle East, the vision of a Palestinian state is considered a just cause by all stakeholders but world leaders have so far preferred to negotiate only with the Fatah party, despite the electoral success of Hamas.

These extreme sensitivities in the dividing line between recognition and condemnation are found in other longstanding internal conflicts around the world. Despite a decade of outrages committed by the Communist Party of Nepal, Maoist (CPN- Maoist), its representatives are now integral to constitutional reform currently under way in that country. By contrast, longstanding peace negotiations with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in Sri Lanka have stalled, with the group recently proscribed as a terrorist organisation by the European Union. Potential negotiation dilemmas may also flare up with separatist groups in Kashmir in India and Mindanao in the Philippines.
Global Jihad

al-Qaeda

Simultaneous bomb attacks on the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998 followed by the 9/11 tragedy in 2001 marked the advent of a branch of terrorism whose grievance will find no refuge in political negotiation. Both attacks were traced to the group headed by Osama bin Laden known as al-Qaeda. Its ideology is shaped by the belief that Islam is being degraded and humiliated by “western” values, with particular disgust reserved for those Arab countries, such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt, which are close allies of the US. The plight of the Palestinians symbolises the al-Qaeda perspective. The central goal of al-Qaeda therefore is to expel Americans from Muslim lands and dismantle pro-US Middle Eastern governments. To this end all US citizens and their sympathisers are to be killed, regardless of whether or not they are Muslim.

This extreme form of fundamentalist Sunni Islam adopted by bin Laden and his closest associates is often described as jihadism and is believed to have been inspired by an Egyptian radical, Sayyid Qutb, who opposed the Nasser regime. Fighting alongside the conservative Taliban in Afghanistan may have been a further influence on bin Laden. The manic ideology of al-Qaeda has no roots in mainstream Islam which shares core values of peace and tolerance with the world’s major religions. The Koran teaches that the killing of innocent humans is a crime and that suicide is unacceptable. Nevertheless, the lack of a global leadership hierarchy within Islam frustrates western expectations of authoritative condemnation of al-Qaeda and any terrorism carried out in the name of Islam.
The Jihadis

One of the most infamous terrorists in history, Guy Fawkes, who came within a whisker of destroying the English monarchy and parliament in 1605, was also acting in the name of a maligned and misunderstood religion. King James presented a list of questions to his torturers, headed by the demand to discover “as to what he is, for I can never yet hear of any man that knows him”. Four hundred years later the nightmare of suicide terrorism has likewise prompted frantic efforts to understand the psychological motives of individuals who are prepared to strap dynamite around themselves and trigger the detonator whilst surrounded by defenceless citizens.

Although suicide attacks were carried out by the Japanese in World War 2 and in the 1991 Tamil Tiger assassination of Indian prime minister Rajiv Gandhi, the phenomenon is now especially linked to acts of terrorism inspired by al-Qaeda ideology. Attention is focused on the influence of institutions of Islamic education which in a small minority of cases advocate extreme views which “radicalise” students into beliefs which are inconsistent with mainstream Islam. This is believed to flourish especially in Pakistan where inadequate funding of state education has allowed unregulated madrasa religious education to take hold. About 1.5 million children attend madrasas in Pakistan, some of which are also open to foreign visitors. A number of terrorists belonging to the Jemaah Islamiyah group in Indonesia have been identified as alumni of religious schools there known as pesantrens. In the UK attendance at the radical Finsbury mosque has been traced to a disturbing proportion of known terrorists.

Inadequate democracy and corrupt standards of governance in many Islamic countries may also be a contributory factor in the supply of suicide bombers. Confused young people dislocated from the state and its institutions are vulnerable to the false promises of jihadism.
Counter-Terrorism

Counter-terrorism is a massive global industry which takes place at various levels, ranging from local police investigation of terrorist acts to the invasion of Afghanistan to oust the Taliban and hunt down al-Qaeda leaders. National border control is fraught and trying for all concerned – the US Terror Watch list of suspected world terrorists is now believed to contain over 500,000 names, surely an inflated figure and a source of concern to civil rights groups. Western countries also publish lists of proscribed terrorist groups which link to laws prohibiting membership and movement of funds.

Nuclear plant in Iran

Fear of nuclear or biological attack inevitably dominates counter-terrorist thinking and explains the obsessive attention to perceived "rogue states" such as North Korea and Iran. The US is even not averse to tacit endorsement for allies to fight proxy wars in regions of potential terrorist safe havens; examples may include the Israeli engagement with Hezbollah in Lebanon in 2006 and the Ethiopian invasion of Somalia in 2007.

Over the last 20-30 years the UN has approved 13 Conventions which attempt to eliminate terrorist activity, culminating in 2006 in a broad Global Strategy to Defeat Terrorism which promises a coordinated plan of action thanks to “unique consensus achieved by world leaders”. Such claims to consensus are however undermined by those states that have abused their monopoly of legitimate violence. Although often conducted at arms length, violence sponsored by governments such as Bangladesh, Ethiopia and Zimbabwe has unquestionably instilled fear into their own populations, perhaps encroaching into the domain of terrorism and adding complexity to its classification.
A Tragedy of Errors

NYC World Trade Center burns

The failure of the tools of counter-terrorism to prevent the destruction of the World Trade Center led to the introduction of rhetoric as an additional weapon. The Bush administration packaged counter-terrorism as “the war on terror” with references to a “crusade”. In choosing language which conjured the spectre of a clash between Christian and Muslim civilisations, the Americans reinforced rather than undermined al-Qaeda ideology, uniting rather than exploiting the deep divisions within Islam. It is no wonder that European leaders were horrified. References to a crusade were swiftly abandoned but it was not until the latter part of 2006 that the US moderated its warrior imagery of counter-terrorism.

Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq © Radio Netherlands Wereldomroep

The continuing disaster of the Iraq war has presented unimaginable gifts to the terrorist cause. The decision to invade the country immediately reinforced al-Qaeda claims of western interference in Muslim territories whilst the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib undermined US claims to moral superiority. Recent reports suggest that Iraq has been infiltrated by several thousand foreign fighters who are motivated by jihadism and now gaining experience potentially relevant to future global terrorism.

Whilst considerable damage has been inflicted in Afghanistan on the al-Qaeda leadership and its organisational capacity, the ideology has been ignited by subsequent events, inspiring attacks by Jemaah Islamiyah in South-East Asia, the formation of embryonic groups in North Africa such as Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, and countless cells of potential terrorists exploiting the power and anonymity of internet technology. In the UK alone it is reported that the authorities have detected around 200 separate plots of indiscriminate criminal activity.
The Precipice of Fear

Washington rally to oppose the use of torture © Amnesty International USA

Apart from the climate of fear which citizens must endure, global terrorism also threatens to undo a generation of multilateral endeavour for human development which has aspired to social justice and human rights. Foreign aid budgets are struggling in the wake of security priorities; the US homeland security budget for 2008 exceeds $40 billion, a figure comparable to the current shortfall in annual funding required to meet the Millennium Development Goals. The human rights movement is threatened by waves of anti-terrorist legislation around the world, led by the US Patriot Act, which undermine freedom of speech and association, introduce prolonged detention without trial and intrude on standards of privacy. The US vision of itself as a global missionary promoting “freedom and democracy” has dissolved into cold war politics in which geography matters more than principles. The $63 billion arms deal announced in 2007 for “Middle East allies” will benefit countries such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia with questions no longer asked about good governance.

Some ideals may indeed have to undergo temporary compromise to address the crisis of terrorism but there is an inherent contradiction. The new UN Global Strategy declares that countries which are “conducive to the spread of terrorism” are those characterised by the “…lack of rule of law and violations of human rights, ethnic, national and religious discrimination, political exclusion, socio-economic marginalization, and lack of good governance”. As these are the very conditions indulged by counter-terrorism imperatives, many people understandably will adopt a pessimistic view of a future world of spiralling insecurity.

US Military vehicle attacked in Iraq © REUTERS TV / Christian Science Monitor

Out of despair must come a new approach for which a window of opportunity may exist. The Bush administration is now a lame duck, failure in Iraq is accepted as inevitable, and there are new leaders in Europe. Changes of emphasis may see intellectual rather than military means to expose the al-Qaeda ideology for its medieval undertones and deep anti-Semitism, more energy devoted to integration of mixed ethnic communities, and more resolve to implement the roadmap to a Palestinian state.

Nevertheless, real doubts linger over the capacity of politicians. The fundamental adjustment of attitudes necessary to neutralise terrorism can perhaps be engineered only by good citizenship. We may need to be more tolerant of unfamiliar neighbours, more censorious of the ubiquitous violence of popular media and games, more aware that the manufacture and trade of deadly weapons have no place in the 21st century, and more insistent that world powers cannot continue to disregard the blatant crimes of countries such as Burma and Sudan. If we cannot convey to politicians that global fairness, peace and human dignity matter more than the next shopping trip, then our fate may indeed be akin to the vision of Shelley's The Mask of Anarchy in which the English poet reacted to British government-sponsored violence in 1819:

And each dweller, panic-stricken,
Felt his heart with terror sicken....