ACTS OF TERROR AND ACTS OF REVERENCE
What is Terrorism ?
There is no single definition of Terrorism. One definition is that of terrorism as form of modern barbarism. Another, given by George Shultz, Secretary of State of the US, is that it is a form of political violence. A third defines terrorism as a threat to Western civilization and a menace to western moral values. This definition assumes that all our eastern civilizations breed terrorism and is devoid of no moral values But the definition that is today most popular and lacks any historical understanding of the world is that terrorism as Islamic fundamentalism. It shows no reverence for Islam and its genuine followers.
Webster’s College Dictionary describes “Terror as an intense, overpowering fear” It describes Terrorism as “the use of terrorizing methods of governing or resisting a government”. There are different types of terrorism. First is state terrorism. According to some estimates, the ratio of people killed by the state terror of Zia-ul-Haq, Pinochet, Argentian, Brazilian, Indonesian type, versus the killing of the PLO and other terrorism types is literally one to one hundred thousand. Or to that caused by wars of one nation against each other throughout history versus that by small terrorist gangs is one to one million. State terrorism thus takes the largest toll of human lives. The second type of terrorism is religious terrorism, Catholics killing Protestants, Sunnis killing Shiites, Muslims killing Hindus and vice versa all in the name of god and religion. It may also be called sacred terror. Then there is the terrorism of Criminal group like the Mafia. All kinds of crimes commit terror. This is the terror that the US state is all out to fight in also know as oppositional terror. This focus today is on the political terrorist – Bin Laden.
What causes terrorism?
What are the traits of the political terrorist? First, is the need to be heard, to get his grievances heard by the people. With modern mass communications, this has become even easier. The political terrorist feels victimized, he wants retributive justice for the wrongdoings of his oppressors. Now poverty and deprivation do not automatically translate into hatred. But people whose discontent is rising, are far more likely to succumb to the siren song of terrorism Because they lack revolutionary ideology they indulge in terrorism. Hatred takes the place of revolutionary ideaology, illogic takes the place of logic, and individual violence takes the place of revolutionary mass movements.
Turbulent and impoverished societies devoid of any democratic and human rights produce today’s jehadis. Martyrdom and jehad have acquired a new meaning. They no longer emphasise dying for a cause as much as killing for a cause. As it is the quantum of death that is important, and not the unblemished quality of a martyr’s blood, it is but natural that innocent people become targets for annihilation in such terrorist attacks. As terrorists see sameness within their own ranks, they, therefore, believe that this identical sameness exists between people and the state on the other side. That is way it does not bother them when they kill innocent people to further their cause.
Shock, rage and grief has been aplenty since 11 September. But any glimmer of recognition of why people might have been driven to carry out such atrocities, sacrifing their own lives in the process – or why the US is hated for such atrocities, not only in the Arab and Muslim world, but across the developing world seems almost entirely absent. War confrontation between the west and Islam, has only increased anti-western sentiments in the east and anti-Arab sentiments in the west. To focus on humanity’s differences, creates disharmony and divides communities, societies and nations. Also, given the US record of unabashed national egotism and arrogance, its flawed foreign policies towards West Asia and other parts of the world, and the current unequal distribution of global wealth and power, anti-Americanism is resounding from all quarters of the developing world including Europe.
Terrorists or Freedom Fighters?
It is often forgotten that there is another America which rejects the clash of civilizations theory. Many Americans are unhappy with the war, they advocate the elimination of the causes of terrorism. “This is not a clash of civilizations but a clash over Americans foreign policy” says John Espolsito, director of the Center for Muslim-Christian understanding at the Georgetown University. “A war on terrorism that doesn’t address those grievances won’t change people’s minds about America” . According to the Anti-War committee of Students in Solidarity at the University of Pittsburg, Terrorism is a tactic, not a political or social force in and of itself. The idea that you can wage a “war” against it, is as dishonest as the idea behind the “war on Drugs”. The use of food as a political weapon, indiscriminate aerial bombardment and the arming of gangsterish groups of religious fanatics all count as “ terrorism” by any reasonable definition of the world, and the US has long employed all of them. In defense of these interests the US is prepared to use the label of “freedom fighters” (northern alliance). Maybe some of them will get transformed into “terrorisms” again in a few years! Thinkers now ask, Why should the US alone define what constitutes terrorism? And why should the world accept its definition?
During the Intifada, Yasser Afrafat had been described repeatedly by the great sage of American journalism, William Safie of the New York Times, as the “ Chief of Terrorism”. But by 1998, Arafat is seen standing next to President Bill Clinton and PM Benjamin Netanyahu looking meek and no longer a ‘terrorist’ Terrorists change. Prof Eqbal Ahmed, in his presentation at the University of Colorado in 1998, opines. “The terrorist of yesterday is the hero of today, and the hero of yesterday become the terrorist of today. This is the serious matter of the constantly changing world of images in which we have to keep our heads straight to know what is terrorism and what is not”.
Can War solve terrorism?
Terrorism is a political problem. It needs political solutions, not military solutions. Bertha von Suttner, inspirer of the Nobel Peace Prize and one of its first recipients says, “how can anyone believe that blood stains can be removed by shedding more blood?” in an international Gallup poll, a majority in 32 out 35 countries (the US, Israel and India in opposition) favored a criminal justice response, rather than military action response to the September 11 acttacks. The numbers were clear – 67% in NATO/Western countries and 83%-94% in Latin America favouring a non military approach. Anti war protests are growing throughout the world. Demonstrations against the war are growing in numbers and quality. Www. Peacenowar.net calculated that by 18th October, 1,036,478 people had participated in demonstrations all over the world.
A global war against terrorism will misfire for the following reasons. Terrorism don’t have military installations that we can attack. They live in neighborhoods around the world. You end up bombing innocent civilians, the aged and children. Afghanistan is already a country ravaged by 20 years of war, littered with active landmines, no infrastructure and ghost towns. The call for a global war against terrorism is little more that misplaced frustration and fear, attacking symptoms, not the causes. It will in due course itself become terrorism, a kind of international vigilantism. For war is a tactical and moral mistake. Despite all the smart bombs that hit targets during the Gulf War, the Pentagon’s own estimates are that 93% of all bombs missed their targets! Thanks to US sanctions after the war, more that 5 lakh Iraqis have been sent to an early grave, most of them children. Madeleleine Albright’s declaration that the death of half a million Iraqi children “is a price worth paying” sounds horrendous. In 1998, the Clinton administration fired cruise missiles at a medicine factory In Sudan, mistaking it to be a chemical weapons plant. The result was that half of the countries life-saving drug industry was destroyed. Today’s war like others, will kill innocent people, people just like those killed on Sept. 11.
To meet terrorism eye for eye and tooth for tooth, as Gandhi once said, as to make everybody blind. Jonathon Power says America right now is a repository of exhausted ideas, like dead stars. The arrogance of power have produced its inevitable reaction. America is threatened not by nuclear tipped missiles from unknown rogue nations, by enough that much of the world whilst not agreeing with them understands their frustration. The Americans might wells get Osama’s head and they might even managed to “bomb Afghanistan back to the stone age” but it will not solve the real problem. Bin Laden is the symptom of a disease which has been left undressed; the politics of oppressions and suppression. It is true in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Kashmir and every other place. Unless and until political uncertainties and the circumstances in which religious fanaticism thrives are not addressed, we will see the birth of many more Bin Ladens. Peace researcher opine that it requires America to adopt a new way of looking at the world and understanding the east.
It is sad irony to see the Bush Administration trying to build an international coalition to support war, when there should be a world-wide coalition to eradicate hunger, immunize and educate all children, to provide clean water, eradicate all infectious diseases, provide education and all the basic necessities of life. Military-based humanitarian intervention is not humanism; counter-terrorism is terrorism too. An essay by the World watch ends thus: we must all understand that in the end, weapons alone cannot buy us lasting peace in a world of extreme in quality, injustice and deprivation for billions of our fellow human beings.
Conclusion
Sanat Mohanty a chemical engineer based in Minneapolis tells us:” Sad are the times in a ‘civilized’ world when one fears to talk about peace, when bombing a people satisfies our ‘sense of justice’ a war of good against evil? In the worlds of Gandhi. “A believer in violence murderer, he added to to it and probably invited more. The law of retaliation is the law of multiplying evil”. The western worlds response to global terrorism is all about the alarms and trumpets of war. What the world should be doing is seeing the wrong in itself and correcting itself as the most effective way of correcting the other. The West and USA needs to introspect as to why there is so much anti-western hatred. They can learn from the values of the Father of our Nation: truth, non-violence, the celebration of diversity and above all secularism. There can be no ‘ war on global terrorism’ without a firm grounding in global secularism. The focus can be on humanity’s similarities not differences – thereby instilling and creating a sense of oneness and collective action and thought globally”.
How should the US fight Osama bin Laden? Janathan Power writes: it could start by saying sorry, in the Christian sense of turning the other cheek. America has a lot to be sorry for, for the centuries of slavery, for having stirred up wars in Africa and Asia, for having created a Bin Laden in its Cold War against the USSR and a host of other things. He says: “It will seems extraordinary that a political writer (like himself) should have nothing better to say than ‘say sorry’, but where does hatred take us, where does revenge, where does it end?” To say sorry, is but the beginning. Then the work must start…..to address world problem that should have been addressed long ago, global warming, Palestine, AIDS, the West’s over-consumption of energy, proliferation of nuclear weapons, child labour, children dying in the third world for want of pure drinking water, deteriorating human rights….”
We need to replace acts of terror with acts of reverence. What would these acts of reverence be? They would be acts that seek peace, distributive justice instead retributive justice, conflict resolution instead of force resolution, observing the rule of law and complying to international laws, giving the UN its due place in setting disputes, respecting the soveignty of nations, upholding th rights of every people to choose their social order, guarantee of equality – both economic and social – to people of all faiths and traditions, and most of all the reversal of the an economic order that enslaves three-fourths of humanity. Simply condemning terrorists and declaring war on them in not going to end terrorism. Terrorism will only end when the conditions that breed it in the first place are put an end. Terrorism can only end when people of the world join together to work for an egalitarian and just world order of brotherhood, tolerance, peace, love and nonviolence. The editorial of the Times of India 20th September titled Children of War decscribes the scenes of Afghan children fleeing their country under the threat of American reprisal and living in refugee camps. It asks: what tragic price does the world ultimately for the children of war, the jehadis, and the martyrs and the victims of tomorrow? Let us suffer our children to come into a history different from the tragic chronicles that we wave as proudly as our strife-torn national flags.
Friends stand up and ‘just say No to War’. Let us say ‘never again!’ Never again will we drop bombs that kill innocent people. Never again will we kill because we have been killed. Let us stand up for the sanctity of ALL human life, the rights of ALL people, to live without fear, without hunger, without the threat of attack, by us or by any one. Let us pledge to have Reverence for All life.
Ms. Delia Maria
<shalom2000@rediffmail.com>
