We live in a violent age, and terrorism is a phenomenon of extraordinary,
extreme and unsettling violence. Yet, I recall the words of the
poet: “Why do you weep, good sirs? The earth is old, and
there is not a single spot, but has in its dust, the dust of man…”
Violence has been with us since the beginnings of history, and
so have the instrumentalities of terror. What is it then, about
the phenomenon of terrorism today that provokes such an urgency
of response? Why do we gather from the world over, transcending
all concerns and considerations of race, of religious affiliations,
of nationality, even of strategic advantage and historical grievance,
to discover how we can contain and counter this scourge?
The truth is, terrorism has emerged as the gravest threat, not
only to individual nations, not, indeed, just to the entire civilized
world – as is finally acknowledged now – but, possibly,
even to the long-term survival of the human race itself. Terrorism
has become the new face of warfare in the present era, and warfare
in this century has equipped itself with weapons of limitless
destruction. These weapons and their source technologies are,
of course, still substantially within the control of stable nation
states, but recent events undermine all complacency on this count.
We are now very close to the threshold of access by terrorists
– or by rogue nations allied with them – to weapons
of mass destruction that can draw nations into ‘total wars’,
that can plunge entire continents into disorder, and that could
send the whole world hurtling towards an oft-prophesied Armageddon.
The trajectory of terror over the past decades has been startling.
I recall the early years of terrorism in Punjab, and an incident
in which eight militants, armed with revolvers, opened fire in
a marketplace. At the end of half an hour of shooting, they had
killed under a dozen people. But, when the AK-47 entered the conflict,
an exchange lasting no more than a few seconds could inflict a
greater loss of life. On September 11, 2001, however, we saw a
succession of incidents – incidents in which not weapons,
but civilian aircraft were employed – that snuffed out some
4,000 lives in a single co-ordinated series of attacks that lasted
under an hour and a half. The subsequent postal attacks involving
Anthrax – and their sheer dispersal across so many countries
in different parts of the globe – while they failed to inflict
major loss of life, do underline the potential dangers that could
arise if more active and potent biological weapons fell into the
hands of individuals and organisations who shared similar motives,
and an equal intensity of hatred and contempt for the lives of
others.
How did this come about? Any objective assessment would force
us to the conclusion that we are all culpable – this terror
has been seeded and nurtured under the umbrella, at best, of our
own benign neglect and, at worst, has profited from our active
succour and support. In my own engagements with counterterrorism,
I was confronted with many situations where intelligence agencies
of many Western countries knew far more than our own police or
intelligence formations did about the activities of terrorists
in the Indian Punjab, and especially of their support structures
abroad; but, far from sharing this information, they constantly
obstructed our efforts by diplomatic denials and entirely unreasonable
demands for ‘evidence’ – and, irrespective of
what was provided, the evidence was never enough. This has been
a persistent characteristic of the discourse of terrorism, where
disputes over definition – the constant refrain, ‘one
man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter’
– and the insatiable demands for ‘evidence’
become devices, not of an honest exertion to arrive at the truth,
or of an effort to protect the rights of the innocent, but stratagems
to shield the guilty, and to manipulate terrorist violence to
strategic or political advantage.
It is interesting in this context that, in the wake of the September
2001 attacks in America, it was precisely these demands for evidence
and for clarifications on what constituted ‘terrorism’
that were most persistently voiced by those sympathetic to the
terrorist cause. More significantly, even after the evidence piled
up, taking the issue beyond the realm of doubt, even, indeed,
after the world had seen video tapes of Osama bin Laden boasting
about the brilliance of his planning of the attack on the Twin
Towers of the World Trade Centres, these voices continued to bleat
away without let, insisting that the evidence was fabricated,
that the tapes were doctored, that there was a Jewish-American
conspiracy to demonise Islam, that – incredibly –
the Americans and the Jews themselves had engineered the attacks.
The problem is that an unyielding moral ambivalence has persisted
over the years regarding the character of acts of terror. This
ambivalence has, of course, undergone some dilution since ‘9/11’,
but it is yet to disappear in its entirety from the international
discourse on the subject. While the crude partisanship of unending
demands for evidence and absolute universality in definitions,
and of the ludicrous ‘conspiracy theories’ that abound
are easy to counter and dismiss, there are far more insidious
expressions of this ethical ambiguity. The most powerful and tenacious
line of intellectual reasoning, in this context, is the ‘root
causes’ thesis that has embedded itself in the liberal-democratic
and ‘human rights’ discourse on terrorism. Much of
this discourse is, of course, motivated – orchestrated by
front organisations of terrorist groups who seek to exploit the
instrumentalities of democracy to destroy democracy. Some of it,
however, is well-intentioned, but simply and essentially misconceived.
Broadly stated, the ‘root causes’ theory suggests
that terrorism is directly ‘caused’ by certain social
and economic conditions of deprivation, poverty, unemployment,
illiteracy, legitimate political grievances, historical wrongs,
etc., and that no counter-terrorism initiative has any possibility
of success unless these ‘root’ grievances are redressed.
There is no empirical basis to this theory, and it is largely
supported on the ‘authority’ of various streams of
Marxist and revolutionary literature, of anecdotage, and on the
personal and intuitive interpretations and observations of its
proponents. Indeed, the limited empirical research that has, in
fact, been carried out on the subject, has failed repeatedly to
establish any consistent correlation between these various ‘root’
social and economic conditions and the resort to terrorist or
other patterns of mass violence.1 The
root causes theory is, in fact, evidently contrafactual even on
a general overview of the available data and information. It reflects
an ‘ivory tower’ approach to the analysis of conflicts,
high levels of intellectual indolence and neglect, and the obdurate
refusal by its advocates to actually engage with the realities
of various conflicts on the ground.
Its impact, however, has been extremely unfortunate. While it
is intended by its more honest adherents to provide a basis for
constructive and humane policies and practices of conflict resolution,
it has progressively been translated into a justification and
an alibi for terrorism. Within countries, it has established itself
as an obstructive argument against any effective counter-terrorism
policies, initiatives or legislation based on the use of legitimate
force by the state. Internationally, it has undermined co-operation
to contain and destroy expanding
terrorist networks, to extradite and bring known terrorists to
trial, and to penalise state sponsors of terrorism.
As is increasingly evident, where any honest effort is made to
resolve the problem – and not merely to exploit existing
loopholes in definition and procedure – it is entirely possible
to arrive at requisite definitions, criteria of evidence and common
grounds of action against terrorists. As with all human affairs,
our conceptual framework on these matters will have to be tentative,
and no ‘absolutes’ can be decreed for all time. Nevertheless,
the growing international consensus on this has been clearly reflected
in more than one resolution of the United Nations. Thus, the United
Nations’ Declaration on ‘Measures to Eliminate International
Terrorism’:
- Strongly condemns all acts, methods and practices of terrorism
as criminal and unjustifiable, wherever and by whomsoever committed;
- Reiterates that criminal acts intended or calculated to provoke
a state of terror in the general public, a group of persons
or particular persons for political purposes are in any circumstances
unjustifiable, whatever the considerations of a political, philosophical,
ideological, racial, ethnic, religious or other nature that
may be invoked to justify them;
- Calls upon all states to adopt further measures in accordance
with the relevant provisions of international law, including
international standards of human rights, to prevent terrorism
and to strengthen international co-operation in combating terrorism.2
The clarity and strength of this language, as of the subsequent
anti-terrorism
Resolutions,3 including those passed
after ‘9/11’ are, however, misleading. The ‘Global
War against Terrorism’ is yet to crystallise into workable
institutional, procedural and legislative structures, both in
the international arena, and within nations. The US has, of course,
initiated a massive, unprecedented diplomatic effort to mobilise
world opinion in favour of this ‘Global War’, and
its ‘Coalition against Terrorism’ now includes a number
of ideologically disparate nations – some of which are and
have been open conflict over extended periods of time. The operative
structures of this ‘Coalition’, moreover, are a series
of unconnected bilateral Joint Working Groups between the US and,
separately, each of these countries. The ‘Coalition’
is, consequently, not integrated into a multi-layered
structure that creates a space for complex exchanges of information
or cooperative action between its various members, but is essentially
held together by the ‘hub’ of current US interests.
Participants in this Coalition, moreover, are bound by nothing
more than their commitment – which is often little more
than a rhetorical stance and, at least in some cases, even this
has been secured through coercive diplomatic efforts. There are,
on the one hand, no binding international conventions on the basis
of which certain actions – such as the extradition or punishment
of terrorists – can be mandated. Even if such conventions
were to be ratified by some nations in the future, it would take
substantial time, perhaps years, to bring national legislation
in line with the requirements of such conventions and to pass
enabling legislation. In the meanwhile, the co-operative effort
against terrorism would have to rely exclusively on the varying
intentions of the participating states.
The difficulty is intensified as a result of the very wide divergence
between legislative and judicial systems and standards of policing
and law and order management in various countries. The deterrence
of any crime depends overwhelmingly on the certainty and swiftness
with which it invites punishment. Unfortunately, terrorism does
not even find mention on the statute books of many countries,
terrorists often tread the murky ground between crime and politics,
and there is neither universality nor consensus on the appropriate
legal, political and security response to terrorism. India, for
instance, is among the worst cases of such ambiguity, with terrorists,
on the one hand, being brought under the scope of the Prevention
of Terrorism Ordinance and, on the other, being invited as parties
to negotiations with special envoys of the country’s Prime
Minister. Until such confusions are entirely cleared, and the
political community – national and international –
adopts a completely uncompromising stand against terrorists, and
translates this stand into policy, legislation and practice, the
war against terrorism will continue to be waged under an extreme
handicap to the forces charged with the defence of democracy and
civilisation.
There is, consequently, urgent need for democracies to examine
the ideological basis of their constitutional orders, and to come
to terms with the fact that the freedoms and rights, they have
been instituted to defend, are entirely inconsistent with the
use of terrorist violence on any grounds, and that harsh punitive
measures and narrowly targeted use of force are necessary and
integral to the responses mandated by the challenge that terrorism
constitutes to the future of pluralistic and liberal societies.
Such an examination cannot last forever, and it must be carried
out, and produce the requisite transformations, within a timeframe
that has been imposed by the pace of events, and by the impatience,
the dynamism and the contempt for democracy and due process that
are the source and strength of terrorist violence.
NOTES
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For one – perhaps the only – such study
on terrorism in Punjab, see, Harish K. Puri, Paramjit Singh
Judge and Jagrup Singh Sekhon, Terrorism in Punjab: Understanding
Grassroots Reality, New Delhi: Har Anand Publications, 1999.
For international empirical research on causal elements in
other patterns of mass violence, see for instance, Bingham
Powell, Contemporary Democracies: Participation, stability
and violence, Washington DC: Congressional Quarterly Press,
1982; Matthew Krain, “Contemporary Democracies Revisited:
Democracy, Political Violence and Event Count Models,” Comparative
Political Studies, Seattle, April 1988, http://www.wooster.edu/polisci/mkrain/CPS-1998.pdf.
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A/RES/51/210, 16 January 1997, Fifty-first
session Agenda item 151, RESOLUTION ADOPTED BY THE GENERAL
ASSEMBLY [on the report of the Sixth Committee (A/51/ 631)]
51/210. ‘Measures to eliminate international terrorism’. gopher://gopher.un.org/00/
ga/recs/51/RES51-EN.210
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See, for instance, UN Security Council Resolution
No. 1373 (2001) on Suppressing the Financing of Terrorism
and Improving International Cooperation, Adopted on September
28, 2001; UN Security Council Resolution No. 1368 (2001) Condemning
the Terrorist attacks on the US, Adopted on September 12,
2001; UN Security Council Resolution on Freezing the finances
of the Taliban and Ban on flights to Taliban-held territory
October 15, 1999. South Asia Terrorism Portal; Terror Tuesday;
United Nations; www.satp.org.
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