Terrorism guide
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| UN Blast in Baghdad © Amnesty International |
Unequivocally traumatic in its impact, the crime of terrorism eludes simple analysis. The dark complexity of suicide attacks has exposed inadequacies of security forces, moral philosophers, psychologists and theologians alike. Countermeasures tend to compromise the freedoms of the majority and have been exploited by unscrupulous governments quick to label dissent as terror. Security budgets appear gargantuan in the context of lives lost to preventable disease and hunger in poor countries.
updated October 2010
The Elusive Definition
Rebels, insurgents, separatists, guerrillas, insurrectionists, freedom fighters, fundamentalists... are these all terrorists? Or does terrorism occupy its own exclusive niche?
The exasperating inability to define terrorism is betrayed in the vague terms of the UN’s Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy approved in 2006. It resolved to "strongly condemn terrorism in all its forms and manifestations, committed by whomever, wherever and for whatever purposes."
The UN has been striving for decades to find a wording which narrows "all its forms and manifestations" into specific circumstances which can be labelled as terror. Civilian populations deserve something better to account for the constant fear of indiscriminate death and injury that is the impact of terrorism.
The absence of an agreed definition matters for many other reasons. It blocks the possibility of referring terrorist acts to an international court, the recognised sanction for genocide and war crimes.
It leaves individual governments free to outlaw activity which they choose to classify as terrorism, perhaps for their own political convenience. And crucially it enabled the US administration of former president Bush to conjure in the public mind connections between the 9/11 destruction of the World Trade Center and the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein.
The vocabulary of terrorism has therefore become the successor to that of anarchy and communism as the catch-all label of opprobrium, exploited accordingly by media and politicians.
Just Cause Dilemmas
A definition which denies the possibility that terrorist acts might be motivated, at least in part, by a just cause has to navigate the minefield of history. There are many examples of organisations and individuals who graduated from hunted terrorists 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 dedicated years of his life to peaceful advocacy of independence 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". Countries from Africa and the Middle East have therefore been reluctant to endorse any definition of terrorism which fails to capture the broad sweep of history.
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 can be trusted to participate in the legitimate political process.
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. Other grievances linked to governance 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. Another group completing the transition from proscribed terrorism to establishment politics is the Communist Party of Nepal, Maoist (CPN- Maoist), which now holds the largest number of seats in a democratically elected parliament.
A very different endgame occurred in Sri Lanka where long years of internal violence concluded in 2009 with the obliteration of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). The cause of an independent Tamil state failed to gain sufficient international sympathy to outweigh disquiet over the group's alleged terrorist methods.
In the Middle East, the vision of an independent Palestinian state is considered a just cause by world leaders. But negotiations have so far excluded representatives of Hamas which is proscribed as a terrorist organisation. Nonetheless, as with Hezbollah in Lebanon, the political wing of Hamas claims legitimacy through demonstrable popular electoral support.
These extreme sensitivities in the dividing line between political recognition and exclusion will dictate resolution of other longstanding internal conflicts around the world - separatism in Mindanao in the Philippines, and in the Kurdish regions of Turkey and Iraq, and insurgency in the “Maoist corridor” across central and eastern India.
Global Jihad
Over the last decade these examples of potentially negotiable causes within the nation state have been accompanied by more fundamental grievances against the world order. Simultaneous bomb attacks on the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998 followed by the 9/11 tragedy in 2001 heralded this globalisation of terror.
These attacks were traced to the group headed by Osama bin Laden known as al-Qaeda. Brought up in Saudi Arabia, bin Laden is believed to have been inspired as a student by Egyptian Sunni fundamentalist exiles who taught that Islam was being degraded and humiliated by "western" values.
Fighting alongside the mujahideen against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the 1980s was a further crucial influence. Bin Laden believed that these small groups of fanatically motivated fighters could reproduce their success to further his dream of extreme global jihad (armed struggle). His contacts database (al-Qaeda in Arabic) duly seeded the terrorist group.
The plight of the Palestinians is a rallying call for al-Qaeda whose central goal is to expel Americans from Muslim countries and dismantle pro-US Middle Eastern governments, especially Israel. Fatwas issued by bin Laden call for US citizens and their sympathisers to be killed, regardless of whether or not they are Muslim.
Whilst considerable damage has been inflicted on the al-Qaeda leadership by US and NATO action in Afghanistan, the ideology proved capable of cloning itself in countless small local cells of potential terrorists. Countries such as the UK and US remain in a constant state of alert to uncover plots of indiscriminate criminal activity.
More substantial jihadi groups also draw strength from real or imagined association with al-Qaeda, many of them demonstrating the capacity to inflict terror across national borders. The 2008 attack on Mumbai, which paralysed the city for almost three days, has been traced to the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT). This Sunni group has long been engaged with the goals of “liberating” Muslim Kashmir and overthrowing the Indian government
Yemen has become a major concern after the foiled 2009 Christmas Day attack on a Northwest Airlines flight over Detroit was traced to Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). And the Islamist militant group in Somalia, al-Shabab, has unsettled the African Union peacekeeping role through the murder of football fans in Uganda.
The Jihadis
The tactic of suicide bombing, believed to have been pioneered by the Tamil Tigers, has been central to al-Qaeda missions and is now adopted by the Taliban. The nihilistic ideology of al-Qaeda has no conceivable association with a just cause; nor can it claim any roots in 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. It is therefore far from self-evident how these terrorist groups find a ready supply of followers, the jihadis.
Attention is focused on the influence of Islamic education. Charismatic leaders in a small minority of institutions have been able to 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. Under pressure from foreign donors, the madrasas are now increasingly subject to government closure or reform.
In Indonesia a number of terrorists belonging to the Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) group 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.
Attempts have been made to construct psychological profiles of individuals who succumb, not just to this indoctrination, but also to accept the role of triggering a suicide detonator whilst surrounded by defenceless citizens.
In Islamic countries such interest focuses on the sense of political impotence created by inadequate democracy and corrupt governance. In Europe, there are suggestions that young Muslims from immigrant families suffer identity problems in reconciling differences between western lifestyles and their upbringing.
War on Terror
The trauma of the attack on the World Trade Center moved former president George W. Bush to articulate his response as the “war on terror", invoking visions of a crusade.
In choosing the language 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.
Subsequent invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, the latter without UN approval, fulfilled al-Qaeda accusations of western interference in Muslim territories. Revelations that provisions of the Geneva Convention for the treatment of prisoners-of-war were being flouted through torture and illegal detention presented unimaginable gifts to the terrorist cause.
The moral vacuum created by the war on terror has emboldened governments around the world to act with impunity against political opponents, ethnic minorities and separatist movements, in the name of counter-terrorism or national security.
From Tibet to Tehran, Cairo to Chechnya, the state monopoly over legitimate violence has been exercised to instil fear into populations, replicating the goal of terror. The influence of 21st century terrorism has been felt far beyond the geo-political horizons of its perpetrators.
The new Obama administration promised to restore moral authority, acting swiftly to end illegal methods of interrogation. However, government documents issued as recently as 2010 continue to insist that “the United States is currently at war with Al Qaeda and its associated force.”
Imran Khan, leader of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf Party, explains the need for a new narrative to counter terrorism as a crime rather than a religious war, from OneWorld TV
Counter-Terrorism
Counter-terrorism is a massive global industry active at various levels, from local police investigation of terrorist acts to the international search for al-Qaeda leaders. Western countries publish lists of proscribed terrorist groups which link to laws prohibiting membership and movement of funds.
Over the last 20-30 years the UN has approved 13 Conventions which deal with aspects of terrorist activity. However, without agreement on fundamentals such as a definition of terrorism, the progression to a comprehensive UN treaty bestowing international powers of action will remain impossible.
The 2006 UN Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy addresses all the key components of counter-terrorism but its claims of "unique consensus achieved by world leaders" are mocked by the limited powers currently extended to the UN.
National criminal laws and bilateral arrangements therefore comprise the basic tools of counter-terrorism. Led by the US Patriot Act, such laws have been inclined to encroach on freedom of speech and association, to introduce prolonged detention without trial and intrude on standards of privacy.
A major report submitted to the UN Human Rights Council in 2010 revealed the alarming extent to which governments have resorted to arbitrary secret detention.
National border control is fraught and trying for all concerned. Oppressive security at US airports and the presence of hundreds of thousands of names on Terror Watch lists failed to prevent the attempted Detroit bombing by Nigerian student, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.
Fear of nuclear or biological attack inevitably dominates counter-terrorist thinking. It accounts for concerns over potential development of advanced technology by "rogue states" such as North Korea and Iran. Efforts to prevent the theft of fissile material have been slow to get off the ground and the use of a “dirty” nuclear device remains a real threat.
Counter-terrorism sucks out finance as well as freedoms in its slipstream, threatening to undo a generation of multilateral endeavour for human development. Foreign aid budgets are struggling in the wake of security priorities.
The estimated US homeland security budget for 2011 is $44 billion, a figure comparable to the shortfall in annual funding required to meet the Millennium Development Goals. Such spending priorities reflect the imperative of calming a country’s collective fear, the soft underbelly of emotion that terrorists are most adept at exposing.
Rehabilitation
On his first day in office in 2009, President Obama announced his intention to close the Guantánamo Bay detention camp within 12 months. Failure to achieve this deadline, caused in part by difficulty in finding countries prepared to resettle the incumbents, has drawn attention to the importance of rehabilitating convicted or potential terrorists.
The blunt instruments of counter-terrorism are increasingly supplemented by more cerebral approaches, exposing the al-Qaeda ideology for its medieval undertones and deep anti-Semitism. In Indonesia, success against JI has been attributed in part to the advocacy work of converted terrorists to “deradicalise” their former colleagues in prisons. A UK government programme, Preventing Violent Extremism, is dedicated to “winning hearts and minds” in a civic environment.
Saudi Arabia has been at the forefront of developing the soft tools of counter-terrorism, now offering rehabilitation centres specifically catering for ex-Guantánamo detainees. The government accepts the imperfections of the process, acknowledging a failure rate of about 20%.
Rebels, insurgents, separatists, guerrillas, insurrectionists, freedom fighters, fundamentalists... are these all terrorists? Or does terrorism occupy its own exclusive niche?
The exasperating inability to define terrorism is betrayed in the vague terms of the UN’s Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy approved in 2006. It resolved to "strongly condemn terrorism in all its forms and manifestations, committed by whomever, wherever and for whatever purposes."
The UN has been striving for decades to find a wording which narrows "all its forms and manifestations" into specific circumstances which can be labelled as terror. Civilian populations deserve something better to account for the constant fear of indiscriminate death and injury that is the impact of terrorism.
|
| Devastation in New York © Radio Netherlands Wereldomroep |
It leaves individual governments free to outlaw activity which they choose to classify as terrorism, perhaps for their own political convenience. And crucially it enabled the US administration of former president Bush to conjure in the public mind connections between the 9/11 destruction of the World Trade Center and the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein.
The vocabulary of terrorism has therefore become the successor to that of anarchy and communism as the catch-all label of opprobrium, exploited accordingly by media and politicians.
Just Cause Dilemmas
A definition which denies the possibility that terrorist acts might be motivated, at least in part, by a just cause has to navigate the minefield of history. There are many examples of organisations and individuals who graduated from hunted terrorists into respected government.
|
| Mandela's cell on Robben Island © Peter Armstrong |
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". Countries from Africa and the Middle East have therefore been reluctant to endorse any definition of terrorism which fails to capture the broad sweep of history.
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 can be trusted to participate in the legitimate political process.
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. Other grievances linked to governance in the north were accepted as negotiable.
|
| Maoist rebels in Nepal © Naresh Newar / IRIN News |
A very different endgame occurred in Sri Lanka where long years of internal violence concluded in 2009 with the obliteration of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). The cause of an independent Tamil state failed to gain sufficient international sympathy to outweigh disquiet over the group's alleged terrorist methods.
In the Middle East, the vision of an independent Palestinian state is considered a just cause by world leaders. But negotiations have so far excluded representatives of Hamas which is proscribed as a terrorist organisation. Nonetheless, as with Hezbollah in Lebanon, the political wing of Hamas claims legitimacy through demonstrable popular electoral support.
These extreme sensitivities in the dividing line between political recognition and exclusion will dictate resolution of other longstanding internal conflicts around the world - separatism in Mindanao in the Philippines, and in the Kurdish regions of Turkey and Iraq, and insurgency in the “Maoist corridor” across central and eastern India.
Global Jihad
Over the last decade these examples of potentially negotiable causes within the nation state have been accompanied by more fundamental grievances against the world order. Simultaneous bomb attacks on the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998 followed by the 9/11 tragedy in 2001 heralded this globalisation of terror.
|
| Osama bin Laden © Radio Netherlands Wereldomroep |
Fighting alongside the mujahideen against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the 1980s was a further crucial influence. Bin Laden believed that these small groups of fanatically motivated fighters could reproduce their success to further his dream of extreme global jihad (armed struggle). His contacts database (al-Qaeda in Arabic) duly seeded the terrorist group.
The plight of the Palestinians is a rallying call for al-Qaeda whose central goal is to expel Americans from Muslim countries and dismantle pro-US Middle Eastern governments, especially Israel. Fatwas issued by bin Laden call for US citizens and their sympathisers to be killed, regardless of whether or not they are Muslim.
Whilst considerable damage has been inflicted on the al-Qaeda leadership by US and NATO action in Afghanistan, the ideology proved capable of cloning itself in countless small local cells of potential terrorists. Countries such as the UK and US remain in a constant state of alert to uncover plots of indiscriminate criminal activity.
|
| Islamic Militias in Mogadishu, Somalia © IRIN News |
Yemen has become a major concern after the foiled 2009 Christmas Day attack on a Northwest Airlines flight over Detroit was traced to Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). And the Islamist militant group in Somalia, al-Shabab, has unsettled the African Union peacekeeping role through the murder of football fans in Uganda.
The Jihadis
The tactic of suicide bombing, believed to have been pioneered by the Tamil Tigers, has been central to al-Qaeda missions and is now adopted by the Taliban. The nihilistic ideology of al-Qaeda has no conceivable association with a just cause; nor can it claim any roots in Islam which shares core values of peace and tolerance with the world's major religions.
|
| Pakistani school children © IRIN News |
Attention is focused on the influence of Islamic education. Charismatic leaders in a small minority of institutions have been able to 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. Under pressure from foreign donors, the madrasas are now increasingly subject to government closure or reform.
In Indonesia a number of terrorists belonging to the Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) group 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.
Attempts have been made to construct psychological profiles of individuals who succumb, not just to this indoctrination, but also to accept the role of triggering a suicide detonator whilst surrounded by defenceless citizens.
In Islamic countries such interest focuses on the sense of political impotence created by inadequate democracy and corrupt governance. In Europe, there are suggestions that young Muslims from immigrant families suffer identity problems in reconciling differences between western lifestyles and their upbringing.
War on Terror
The trauma of the attack on the World Trade Center moved former president George W. Bush to articulate his response as the “war on terror", invoking visions of a crusade.
In choosing the language 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.
|
| Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq © Radio Netherlands Wereldomroep |
The moral vacuum created by the war on terror has emboldened governments around the world to act with impunity against political opponents, ethnic minorities and separatist movements, in the name of counter-terrorism or national security.
From Tibet to Tehran, Cairo to Chechnya, the state monopoly over legitimate violence has been exercised to instil fear into populations, replicating the goal of terror. The influence of 21st century terrorism has been felt far beyond the geo-political horizons of its perpetrators.
The new Obama administration promised to restore moral authority, acting swiftly to end illegal methods of interrogation. However, government documents issued as recently as 2010 continue to insist that “the United States is currently at war with Al Qaeda and its associated force.”
Imran Khan, leader of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf Party, explains the need for a new narrative to counter terrorism as a crime rather than a religious war, from OneWorld TV
Counter-Terrorism
Counter-terrorism is a massive global industry active at various levels, from local police investigation of terrorist acts to the international search for al-Qaeda leaders. Western countries publish lists of proscribed terrorist groups which link to laws prohibiting membership and movement of funds.
Over the last 20-30 years the UN has approved 13 Conventions which deal with aspects of terrorist activity. However, without agreement on fundamentals such as a definition of terrorism, the progression to a comprehensive UN treaty bestowing international powers of action will remain impossible.
The 2006 UN Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy addresses all the key components of counter-terrorism but its claims of "unique consensus achieved by world leaders" are mocked by the limited powers currently extended to the UN.
National criminal laws and bilateral arrangements therefore comprise the basic tools of counter-terrorism. Led by the US Patriot Act, such laws have been inclined to encroach on freedom of speech and association, to introduce prolonged detention without trial and intrude on standards of privacy.
A major report submitted to the UN Human Rights Council in 2010 revealed the alarming extent to which governments have resorted to arbitrary secret detention.
National border control is fraught and trying for all concerned. Oppressive security at US airports and the presence of hundreds of thousands of names on Terror Watch lists failed to prevent the attempted Detroit bombing by Nigerian student, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.
|
| A mask to shield from bio-terrorist attacks? © Radio Netherlands Wereldomroep |
Counter-terrorism sucks out finance as well as freedoms in its slipstream, threatening to undo a generation of multilateral endeavour for human development. Foreign aid budgets are struggling in the wake of security priorities.
The estimated US homeland security budget for 2011 is $44 billion, a figure comparable to the shortfall in annual funding required to meet the Millennium Development Goals. Such spending priorities reflect the imperative of calming a country’s collective fear, the soft underbelly of emotion that terrorists are most adept at exposing.
Rehabilitation
|
| Washington rally to oppose the use of torture © Amnesty International USA |
The blunt instruments of counter-terrorism are increasingly supplemented by more cerebral approaches, exposing the al-Qaeda ideology for its medieval undertones and deep anti-Semitism. In Indonesia, success against JI has been attributed in part to the advocacy work of converted terrorists to “deradicalise” their former colleagues in prisons. A UK government programme, Preventing Violent Extremism, is dedicated to “winning hearts and minds” in a civic environment.
Saudi Arabia has been at the forefront of developing the soft tools of counter-terrorism, now offering rehabilitation centres specifically catering for ex-Guantánamo detainees. The government accepts the imperfections of the process, acknowledging a failure rate of about 20%.
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