Terrorism
nkdat...@my-deja.com
Saturday, November 20, 1999, New Delhi
Opinion
Ideology of the sword
(Ash Narain Roy)
The biggest threat that the nation-state faces today emanates from
terrorism which is widespread geographically and diverse ideologically.
Modern terrorism thrives on its ability to hit where it hurts the most.
While the hallmark of the earlier terrorists was that they wanted a lot
of people watching and not a lot of people dead, modern terrorists see
death and destruction as an end in itself.
Old terrorists sought to change the world, as they were fired by
apocalyptic visions. The practitioners of modern terrorism believe the
world is beyond redemption.
Irish terrorists, the Italian and Japanese Red Brigades, the Baader-
Meinhoff gang in Germany, Islamic and Jewish fundamentalists have all
sought to spread their ideology by the sword.
Terrorists’ machine-gun fire has interrupted the prayers of dozens of
worshippers and cut short the journey of bus, rail and air passengers.
Dozens of countries are bleeding from terrorism of one hue or another.
Terrorists based in South and West Asia have spilled blood in far-off
lands — the streets of Buenos Aires, New York, Nairobi, Dar-e-Salaam
and Moscow. No one seems to be safe from the danse macabre.
Most ideologies of the 20th century have been discredited by historical
events. If communism is the god that failed the Left, liberal-democracy
too has failed to deliver the goods.
Monarchy, democracy and communism have all failed, so goes the
argument. Something which has not been tried in modern times is
religious absolutism. Islamists are therefore banking on God who cannot
fail.
They have sought to fortify themselves by myth, nostalgia for the
golden age and the spectre of a diabolical West. But fundamentalism is
by no means confined to Islam.
The evangelical movements seeking to interpret the Bible literally,
Jewish groups wanting to establish a theocracy, Slavophilism, Hindutva
are also a kind of fundamentalism. Guy Sorman calls it “post-modernism
or neo-romanticism”.
Peter Partner in God of Battles: Holy Wars of Christianity and Islam
says that all wars were once holy in the sense that gods of battles led
them. If Islam was spread by the sword from its earliest days,
Christian crusaders too sought to recover the Holy Land by butchery.
That happened centuries ago. Today’s jihad launched by self-serving
leaders of Islam can no longer be seen as a heroic enterprise of
salvation. The likes of Osama bin Laden engaged in terrorist activities
in Kashmir, Chechnya, Dagestan, Xinjuan and Central Asian republics are
murderous fanatics and mercenaries. There is nothing holy about their
jihad.
Yesterday’s enemies often become today’s icons and friends turn foes in
the cunning passages of history. After all, history is the geography of
time. Osama bin Laden, Islamic guerrilla godfather and now the world’s
most wanted man, commanded the CIA-funded Arab warriors and fought
along side Mujahideen fighters against the Russian expeditionary forces
in Afghanistan in the 1980s.
Today, he has trained his guns against his own patron. Attacking him
with Tomahawks has further given the Saudi renegade the status of a
state or “a nation unto himself”, as a US intelligence official
admits, “in a war with America”.
Perhaps no single individual can be blamed for spawning Islamic
terrorism, fanaticism and orthodoxy as bin Laden, the prime suspect for
the 1995 Riyadh, 1996 Khobar and August 1998 bombings of US embassies
in Kenya and Tanzania.
Bin Laden is the archetypal ‘stateless’ modern mercenary, not beholden
to any government or ideology. At the same time, without the rise of
Islamic fundamentalism and the fading glory of secular pan-Arabism,
once inspired by Gamel Abdel Nasser, bin Laden would not have become
the rallying point for thousands of Islamic militants from dozens of
Islamic countries.
If he has become a cult hero to many of his followers around the globe,
the autocratic Arab regimes and the well-entrenched Gulf monarchies are
equally to blame, for they have derided democracy and have sought to
buy off dissent with their oil riches.
The mullahs often exploit frustrations bred by poverty and system
corruption while presenting themselves as attractive alternatives to
the Westernised secular elites.
The fundamentalists have built wide popular support by virtue of these
elements staffing grassroots welfare organisations like hospitals,
clinics and day-care centres that are run through mosques. The likes of
Hassan Abdullah al-Turabi of Sudan and Sheikh Muhammad Husein Fadlallah
of Lebanon, the two most prominent exponents of Islamic fundamentalism,
have offered the self-esteem the young generation is clamouring for.
While Islam has been projected by the fundamentalists as a religion of
compassion, justice and equality, the likes of bin Laden and Chechen
warlords like Basayev and Khattab have sought to project Islam as an
emblem of defiance, intolerance and crude militancy. Their names evoke
images of car bombs, holy wars and historic revenge.
“In the name of God, God the merciful, God the compassionate’. These
words are uttered a dozen times a day by these warlords as well. But
pathology alone can offer an explanation for their acts of barbarity.
Islamic terrorists crossing swords with the nation-state in Central
Asia, Chechnya, Dagestan, Algeria and Egypt aim at nothing less than
the extirpation of all manifestations of Western and secular intrusion.
Hence the campaign to kill writers, unveiled women, foreigners etc. The
innocent citizens are caught in the crossfire of a dreadful war not of
their making. The warlords are more feared than respected even in a
country like Afghanistan where the Taliban rule the roost. With bombs
in Moscow, Chechnya and Dagestan and the Central Asian Republics
wrestling with Islamic fanatics and kidnap gangs, the entire Caucasus
is in danger of falling off the map.
The ghost of Tamerlane, the scourge of the late 14th century, who
inspired awe and fear both in Asia and Europe, seems to have stirred
again.
Islam in Central Asia was an ideology of power and empire building in
the 8th and 9th centuries. Then these societies were primarily nomadic.
Things are different today. Even though the post-Soviet societies are
still coming to terms with modern concepts of democracy and secularism,
countries like Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and
Tajikistan have progressed significantly.
Central Asia is faced with double transition, to capitalism and to
democracy. That has made the region easy targets of bloodthirsty
bandits.
How does one deal with such elements? It is not enough to say that they
pose a threat to the West as does Judith Miller in her book God has
Ninety-Nine Names. Islamic campaign is casting a dark shadow over even
regimes that are themselves perceived as fundamentalist.
Saudi Arabia and Turkey, the two countries which have sought to extend
their influence in Central Asia, are themselves getting nervous about
the rise of freelance terrorists. The West has often tended to
trivialise the issue. Islam replaced the communist threat in the post-
cold war era and the new enemy was Islamic fundamentalism.
What the US and the West seem to fear is not Islam’s holy war, but
losing control of the vital region of Central Asia and beyond. War
against international terrorism cannot be waged in isolation. The
West’s double standards have encouraged some of the rogue states to
wage a war on others.
The world knows Taliban is the nursling of Pakistan. Not content with
having one finger in the Kashmir pie, Islamabad is trying to pull out a
plum in Central Asia as well. It is not enough to haul up the likes of
Osama bin Laden. The need is to deprive them of the vital oxygen. The
effective way to contain Islamists’ threat is to put them on the wrong
side of the moral issue.
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