[Robert's-Theory of Terrorism in Gestalt Psycholgy] TERRORISM TODAY
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Robert Nyakundi
Feb 9, 2010, 6:30:07 AM2/9/10
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The Elusive Definition of Terrorism
Rebels, insurgents, separatists, guerrillas, insurrectionists, freedom fighters, fundamentalists... are these all terrorists? Or does terrorism claim 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 down "all its forms and manifestations" into specific circumstances which can be labelled as terror. Civilian populations deserve something better than routine condemnations for the climate of fear of indiscriminate death and injury that they suffer.
The absence of an agreed definition matters for many other reasons. It blocks the possibility of referring terrorist acts to an international court, as for genocide and 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 US administration of former president Bush 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 therefore 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
A definition which eliminates any just cause for terrorism has to navigate a minefield of precedent. History provides too many examples of organisations and individuals who evolved 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 spent years of his life in peaceful independence advocacy with 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". Countries from Africa and the Middle East have therefore been reluctant to endorse any definition of terrorism which fails to place such acts within 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 are capable of emerging into 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 fair government in the north were accepted as negotiable and, Sinn Fein, the political wing of the IRA, is now part of an elected power-sharing government in Northern Ireland.
Jerusalem's disputed Old City © Out There News
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. As with Hezbollah in Lebanon, the political wing of Hamas can demonstrate a degree of popular electoral support which suggests that the group may be part of a long term solution.
These extreme sensitivities in the dividing line between political recognition and exclusion 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), it now holds the largest number of seats in a democratically elected parliament.
By contrast, long years of internal violence in Sri Lanka concluded in 2009 with the obliteration of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). The political fate of the Tamil minority remains uncertain. Potential negotiation dilemmas may also flare up with separatist groups in Mindanao in the Philippines, the Kurdish regions of Turkey and Iraq, and the “Maoist corridor” across central and eastern India.
top
Global Jihad
Over the last decade these examples of potentially negotiable causes within the nation state have been accompanied by more sinister 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.
Both attacks in Africa 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 is a rallying call for al-Qaeda whose central goal is to expel Americans from Muslim lands and dismantle pro-US Middle Eastern governments, especially Israel. To this end all US citizens and their sympathisers are to be killed, regardless of whether or not they are Muslim.
Afghanistan's Taliban ruler Mullah Omar © Radio Netherlands Wereldomroep
This extreme global jihad (armed struggle) of fundamentalist Sunni Islam adopted by bin Laden and his closest associates 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 epicentre of global jihadism may be migrating from the Middle East to South Asia. As well as the success of the Taliban insurgency, a sequence of spectacular terrorist atrocities threaten to destabilise Pakistan and India. The 2008 attack on Mumbai, which paralysed the city for almost three days, has been traced to the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), a Sunni group long engaged with the goal of expelling “Hindu” India from Muslim Kashmir.
top
The Jihadis
The nihilistic ideology of al-Qaeda and its imitators 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. 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. This nightmare form of attack has 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.
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 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 with proven susceptibility to indoctrination. 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.
top
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.
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 Counter-Terrorism Strategy. Although the Strategy addresses all the key components of counter-terrorism, the "unique consensus achieved by world leaders" extended only limited powers to the UN.
In the absence of a comprehensive UN treaty, national criminal laws and bilateral arrangements remain 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.
Human rights campaigners point out that erosion of established rights is potentially self-defeating. The UN Global Strategy declares that countries which are "conducive to the spread of terrorism" are those characterised by "violations of human rights, ethnic, national and religious discrimination, political exclusion, socio-economic marginalization, and lack of good governance.” Many counter-terrorism laws open paths that lead to these shortcomings.
A mask to shield from bio-terrorist attacks? © Radio Netherlands Wereldomroep
National border control is fraught and trying for all concerned - over one million names feature on the US Terror Watch list. This FBI compilation lost all credibility during 2008 with the discovery that it contained the names of Nelson Mandela and his ANC colleagues. Western countries also publish lists of proscribed terrorist groups which link to laws prohibiting membership and movement of funds.
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.
top
War on Terror
Failure of the conventional tools of counter-terrorism to prevent the destruction of the World Trade Center led to the introduction of rhetoric as an additional weapon. Former president George W. Bush packaged 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. 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.
The US decision to invade Iraq without UN endorsement fulfilled al-Qaeda accusations of western interference in Muslim territories. The country’s reputation then plummeted further with revelations that provisions of the Geneva Convention for the treatment of prisoners of war were being flouted through torture and illegal detention. The names of camps at Bagram in Afghanistan, Abu Ghraib in Iraq and Guantánamo Bay in Cuba have come to symbolise the loss of moral authority of the former unipolar world.
top
The Moral Vacuum
Washington rally to oppose the use of torture © Amnesty International USA
The debacle of the war on terror presented unimaginable gifts to the terrorist cause. Whilst considerable damage was inflicted on the al-Qaeda leadership, 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.
The moral vacuum has had much wider consequences. Governments around the world have been emboldened 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, Colombia to Chechnya, the state monopoly over legitimate violence has been exercised to instil fear into populations, replicating the goal of terror. In this way, the influence of 21st century terrorism has been felt far beyond the geographical horizons of its perpetrators.
top
The Price of Fear
Under mounting pressure from human rights campaigners and from his own Special Rapporteurs, the UN Secretary-General presented a report to the General Assembly in 2008 titled “The protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism.” The document amounts to a sharp reminder to world leaders that decades of hard-won individual freedoms should not be thrown away by overbearing self-preservation.
Global 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.
Whilst there have been no major terrorist incidents in the US since 2001, the homeland security budget for 2009 is $44 billion, a figure comparable to the shortfall in annual funding required to meet the Millennium Development Goals. Such distorted spending priorities reflect the imperative of calming a country’s collective fear, the soft underbelly of emotion that terrorists are most adept at exposing.
US President Barack Obama © Reproductive Health Reality Check
A window of opportunity may exist for a new approach. On his first day in office in 2009, President Obama announced his intention to close the Guantánamo Bay facility. He began his historic speech at Cairo University with a greeting of peace, spoken in Arabic, before rejecting the language and values of his predecessor.
There are signs that the blunt instruments of counter-terrorism may give way to 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.
--
Posted By Robert Nyakundi to Robert's-Theory of Terrorism in Gestalt Psycholgy at 2/09/2010 02:30:00 PM
Rebels, insurgents, separatists, guerrillas, insurrectionists, freedom fighters, fundamentalists... are these all terrorists? Or does terrorism claim 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 down "all its forms and manifestations" into specific circumstances which can be labelled as terror. Civilian populations deserve something better than routine condemnations for the climate of fear of indiscriminate death and injury that they suffer.
The absence of an agreed definition matters for many other reasons. It blocks the possibility of referring terrorist acts to an international court, as for genocide and 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 US administration of former president Bush 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 therefore 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
A definition which eliminates any just cause for terrorism has to navigate a minefield of precedent. History provides too many examples of organisations and individuals who evolved 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 spent years of his life in peaceful independence advocacy with 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". Countries from Africa and the Middle East have therefore been reluctant to endorse any definition of terrorism which fails to place such acts within 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 are capable of emerging into 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 fair government in the north were accepted as negotiable and, Sinn Fein, the political wing of the IRA, is now part of an elected power-sharing government in Northern Ireland.
Jerusalem's disputed Old City © Out There News
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. As with Hezbollah in Lebanon, the political wing of Hamas can demonstrate a degree of popular electoral support which suggests that the group may be part of a long term solution.
These extreme sensitivities in the dividing line between political recognition and exclusion 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), it now holds the largest number of seats in a democratically elected parliament.
By contrast, long years of internal violence in Sri Lanka concluded in 2009 with the obliteration of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). The political fate of the Tamil minority remains uncertain. Potential negotiation dilemmas may also flare up with separatist groups in Mindanao in the Philippines, the Kurdish regions of Turkey and Iraq, and the “Maoist corridor” across central and eastern India.
top
Global Jihad
Over the last decade these examples of potentially negotiable causes within the nation state have been accompanied by more sinister 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.
Both attacks in Africa 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 is a rallying call for al-Qaeda whose central goal is to expel Americans from Muslim lands and dismantle pro-US Middle Eastern governments, especially Israel. To this end all US citizens and their sympathisers are to be killed, regardless of whether or not they are Muslim.
Afghanistan's Taliban ruler Mullah Omar © Radio Netherlands Wereldomroep
This extreme global jihad (armed struggle) of fundamentalist Sunni Islam adopted by bin Laden and his closest associates 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 epicentre of global jihadism may be migrating from the Middle East to South Asia. As well as the success of the Taliban insurgency, a sequence of spectacular terrorist atrocities threaten to destabilise Pakistan and India. The 2008 attack on Mumbai, which paralysed the city for almost three days, has been traced to the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), a Sunni group long engaged with the goal of expelling “Hindu” India from Muslim Kashmir.
top
The Jihadis
The nihilistic ideology of al-Qaeda and its imitators 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. 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. This nightmare form of attack has 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.
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 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 with proven susceptibility to indoctrination. 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.
top
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.
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 Counter-Terrorism Strategy. Although the Strategy addresses all the key components of counter-terrorism, the "unique consensus achieved by world leaders" extended only limited powers to the UN.
In the absence of a comprehensive UN treaty, national criminal laws and bilateral arrangements remain 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.
Human rights campaigners point out that erosion of established rights is potentially self-defeating. The UN Global Strategy declares that countries which are "conducive to the spread of terrorism" are those characterised by "violations of human rights, ethnic, national and religious discrimination, political exclusion, socio-economic marginalization, and lack of good governance.” Many counter-terrorism laws open paths that lead to these shortcomings.
A mask to shield from bio-terrorist attacks? © Radio Netherlands Wereldomroep
National border control is fraught and trying for all concerned - over one million names feature on the US Terror Watch list. This FBI compilation lost all credibility during 2008 with the discovery that it contained the names of Nelson Mandela and his ANC colleagues. Western countries also publish lists of proscribed terrorist groups which link to laws prohibiting membership and movement of funds.
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.
top
War on Terror
Failure of the conventional tools of counter-terrorism to prevent the destruction of the World Trade Center led to the introduction of rhetoric as an additional weapon. Former president George W. Bush packaged 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. 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.
The US decision to invade Iraq without UN endorsement fulfilled al-Qaeda accusations of western interference in Muslim territories. The country’s reputation then plummeted further with revelations that provisions of the Geneva Convention for the treatment of prisoners of war were being flouted through torture and illegal detention. The names of camps at Bagram in Afghanistan, Abu Ghraib in Iraq and Guantánamo Bay in Cuba have come to symbolise the loss of moral authority of the former unipolar world.
top
The Moral Vacuum
Washington rally to oppose the use of torture © Amnesty International USA
The debacle of the war on terror presented unimaginable gifts to the terrorist cause. Whilst considerable damage was inflicted on the al-Qaeda leadership, 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.
The moral vacuum has had much wider consequences. Governments around the world have been emboldened 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, Colombia to Chechnya, the state monopoly over legitimate violence has been exercised to instil fear into populations, replicating the goal of terror. In this way, the influence of 21st century terrorism has been felt far beyond the geographical horizons of its perpetrators.
top
The Price of Fear
Under mounting pressure from human rights campaigners and from his own Special Rapporteurs, the UN Secretary-General presented a report to the General Assembly in 2008 titled “The protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism.” The document amounts to a sharp reminder to world leaders that decades of hard-won individual freedoms should not be thrown away by overbearing self-preservation.
Global 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.
Whilst there have been no major terrorist incidents in the US since 2001, the homeland security budget for 2009 is $44 billion, a figure comparable to the shortfall in annual funding required to meet the Millennium Development Goals. Such distorted spending priorities reflect the imperative of calming a country’s collective fear, the soft underbelly of emotion that terrorists are most adept at exposing.
US President Barack Obama © Reproductive Health Reality Check
A window of opportunity may exist for a new approach. On his first day in office in 2009, President Obama announced his intention to close the Guantánamo Bay facility. He began his historic speech at Cairo University with a greeting of peace, spoken in Arabic, before rejecting the language and values of his predecessor.
There are signs that the blunt instruments of counter-terrorism may give way to 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.
--
Posted By Robert Nyakundi to Robert's-Theory of Terrorism in Gestalt Psycholgy at 2/09/2010 02:30:00 PM
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