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From
crisis to crisis, the world has stumbled, confounded, in its ‘war
against terror’, with polices marked by incoherence and damning
contradictions. Meanwhile, the forces of extremist violence and
those who secure their inspiration from the ideologies of hate
are recovering from their brief disorientation to consolidate
their networks and resume operations. The opportunities of the
fleeting consensus that had crystallized in the wake of the 9/11
attacks have largely dissipated, and justifications of terrorism
are once again eloquently articulated by those who speak of ‘freedom
fighters’ and ‘root causes’, deliberately muddying the waters
and obstructing coherent counter-terrorism responses. And while
a narrowly defined group of terrorists – those that have targeted
or are seen to threaten the US – are hunted relentlessly across
the world, the pursuit of a ‘false peace’ has become endemic among
other victims of terrorism, as ‘world leaders’ pressure democracies
to enter into unprincipled negotiations with terrorists, mass
murderers, and the rogue regimes and state entities that support
and sponsor them.
It is crucial, now, to directly
confront these obfuscations, for these have led to ambivalence,
vacillation and error, undermining the international will to respond
adequately to the gravity of the challenge of terrorism. The ‘fellow
travellers of terrorism’ have long drawn their justifications
from a large body of liberal literature that applies the rationale
of revolutionary violence against authoritarian systems to terrorist
violence against democratic systems. Many of the violent movements
derive their legitimacy from a discourse that has been taken from
classical anti-colonial and revolutionary movements, and transferred
uncritically to contemporary terrorist movements based on religious,
ethnic and cultural isolationism. Crucially, the narrow and exclusionary
ideologies that inspire most of the violent movements in the world
today do not concede to other sub-groups and minorities the very
rights that they demand for themselves, and are often guilty of
victimizing and mistreating other cultural, religious and ethnic
groups within their areas of domination.
It must be understood that terrorism
is an ideologically neutral and global method of warfare. While
a single ideological form of terrorism – Islamist fundamentalist
terrorism (neglecting its many internal variations) – has tended
to exhaust much of the international attention and response, terrorism
is in no way uniquely tied to this ideology and has been, and
continues to be adopted as a favoured method of warfare and state
destabilisation by a wide range of actors, of whom many are entirely
unconnected with Islamism. It is consequently necessary to understand
that any apparent successes attributed to the use of terrorism
(including successes in securing a range of ‘intermediate goals’
– one of which is the survival or persistence of the movement
itself), produces imitators. Terrorism is, consequently, "not
the problem of its victim societies alone. Its impact reverberates
across the globe."1 It is no longer possible
for nations to respond only when their own interests are targeted.
Foreign policies cannot continue to be constructed on a near term
considerations of the ‘interests of state’. It is now necessary
to delegitimise and defeat terrorism in all its manifestations
lest it consumes us.
There is, therefore, urgent need
to identify and neutralise the sources of terrorist mobilisation;
to recognize that there are cultures of accommodation and distinct
cultures of hate. To try to apply the norms of an accommodative
culture to a culture of hate is to place the former at a definitive
disadvantage, and to yield all initiative to the more vigorous,
belligerent, determined and violent side. The cultures of hate
– and the many states and regimes that support such cultures –
will have to be identified and targeted by a coordinated range
of policies that must include coercive diplomacy, economic sanctions,
international isolation, and, where necessary, direct, determined
and non-discriminatory military interventions. The ‘steady progression
of extremism’2 must be halted. And
while counter-terrorist responses will always include significant
military, intelligence and policing components, the war of ideas
and information will remain critical in any eventual resolution.
It is this war that Faultlines has engaged in for over
four years now. The current volume is another small battle won
in the ongoing struggle against extremism and terror.
Ajai Sahni
New Delhi
July 18, 2003
NOTES
-
K.P.S. Gill, "Statement on the Launch of
the South Asia Terrorism Portal," March 11, 2000, http://www.satp.org/satporgtp/kpsgill/terrorism/Mar11.htm.
- Robin Wright, Sacred Rage, New York: Touchstone,
2001, p. 13.
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