Defining Terrorism

"Terrorism" may be the most important,powerful word in the world right now. In the name of doing away with terrorism,the United States is bombing Afghanistan and talking about possible attackselsewhere. Political leaders from many countries are at once declaring supportfor the new U.S. war and seeking to re-name their own enemies as"terrorists."

According to polls, many people in the U.S. believe thatwar on the al'Qaeda network is justified in retaliation for the September 11attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C. The defined enemy of the U.S.military campaign has not, however, been just the people responsible for theSeptember 11 attacks, but "terrorism" in general. The U.S. hasdeclared a "War on Terrorism"--a war which also includes as enemies,as President Bush has made clear since his first public address on the afternoonof the 11, "all those who harbor terrorists." What exactly do thesewords, "terrorism" and "harboring," mean? What definitionsare we using?

Legal definition: seekinginternational consensus
The difficulty of answering this question was statedconcisely in a recent New York Times article: "immediately beyond al'Qaeda,the high moral condemnations of global terrorism rapidly become relative, andthe definition blurred." The international community has been activelyseeking consensus on the definition of "terrorism" for many years, tono avail.

Twelve separate international conventions have beensigned, each covering a specific type of criminal activity seizure ofairplanes, political assassination, the use of explosives, hostage-taking, etc.Broad ratification of these treaties has been difficult to achieve; and the morefundamental issue of creating a comprehensive, binding international conventionagainst terrorism has been set aside, after repeated efforts, as practicallyunresolvable. As the UN puts it, "the question of a definition of terrorismhas haunted the debate among States for decades."

One of the points of heated contention in this debatehas been whether the term "terrorism" should apply to the actions ofStates in the same way that it applies to the actions of non-State groups. It'seasy to see why this question would be so contentious: whatever one's overallview of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, for example, it's pretty easy to admitthat unjustifiable acts of terror and murder have been committed by bothsides. Should the two sides be held equally accountable, even though one is analready-recognized State and one is a national liberation movement? These kindsof questions have been repeatedly raised as will be described below notonly in regard to the Middle East but in regard to State-sponsored acts ofterrorism throughout the world.

Since international consensus has been so difficult toreach, for the purposes of this brief discussion of terrorism and"harboring" I'll use the U.S. FBI's definition: "Terrorism is theunlawful use of force or violence against persons or property to intimidate orcoerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, infurtherance of political or social objectives." How does such a definitionline up with the goals and strategies of the emerging "War onTerrorism"?

Justice
How does a definition of terrorism, such as the FBI's,get applied? Who has the authority to judge what counts as "terrorism"and what doesn't? Is there a level playing field, internationally, for thepersecution of terrorists?

A recent comment made by Syria's Information Minister,Adnan Omran, frames these problems in a provocative, yet also precise andurgent, way: "The Americans say either you are with us or you are with theterrorists. That is something God should say." The original title given tothe U.S. military campaign in Afghanistan "Operation InfiniteJustice" seems to confirm Omran's concern. President Bush has indeedstated, in his address to Congress, that "Every nation, in every region,now has a decision to make: either you are with us, or you are with theterrorists." Is our government in fact equating its judgments, policies,and military actions with the meting out of God-like "infinitejustice"? If so, what kind of moral blamelessness do we ground suchauthority in?

A brief review of some U.S. political and militaryinterventions over the last few decades reveals just how far we are sadly,tragically as a nation from having the kind of virtue and integrity requiredto wage such a war with a clear conscience and certainty of purpose. Followingthe FBI definition, our government has repeatedly, in country after country,used "force or violence" "unlawfully," "to intimidateor coerce a government, [a] civilian population, or [a] segment thereof,"in order to achieve "political or social objectives." I will mentiononly a few examples.

Terrorism and"harboring" of terrorists by the U.S.
U.S. intervention in Nicaragua provides an astounding,but by no means extraordinary, example. First, some background: by 1934, whenthe authoritarian Somoza regime was established, the U.S. had already occupiedthe country militarily on at least four different occasions, establishedtraining schools for right-wing militia, dismantled two liberal governments, andhelped to orchestrate fake elections. In 1981, the CIA began to organize the"Contras" many of whom had already received training from the U.S.military as members of the Somozas' National Guardsmen to overthrow theprogressive Sandanista government. In other words: the CIA "harbored,"recruited, armed and trained the Contras, in order to "coerce" andoverthrow a government, and terrorize a people, through violent means ("infurtherance of political [and] social objectives"). U.S. intervention wentwell beyond "harboring," however, in this case. In 1984, the CIA minedthree Nicaraguan harbors. When Nicaragua took this action to the World Court, an$18 billion judgment was brought against the U.S. The U.S. response was tosimply refuse to acknowledge the Court's jurisdiction.

Another striking example of U.S. terrorist activity wasthe bombing of a suburban Beirut neighborhood in March 1985. This attack which killed 80 people and wounded 200 others, making it the single largestbombing attack against a civilian target in the modern history of the MiddleEast was ordered by the director of the CIA (William Casey) and authorized byPresident Reagan. Another U.S. attack on civilians, the 1986 bombing of Libya,is listed by the UN's Committee on the Legal Definition of Terrorism as a"classic case" of terrorism on a short list that includes thebombing of PAN AM 103, the first attempt made on the World Trade Center, and thebombing of the Oklahoma City Federal Building.

Other instances of U.S. support for, or directengagement in, terrorist acts include:

overthrow of the democratically elected Allende government in Chile in 1973--leading to widespread torture, rape, and murder by the military regime, and the termination of civil liberties
extensive support for a right-wing junta in El Salvador that ended up being responsible for 35,000 civilian deaths between 1978 and 1981
assassination attempts, exploded boats, industrial sabotage, and the burning of sugar fields in Cuba
the training of thousands of Latin American military personnel in torture methods at the School of the Americas
providing huge quantities of arms--far more than any other nation-- to various combatants in the Middle East and West Asia
and massive support, in funds and arms, for Israeli attacks on Palestinian civilians.

The rationale provided for many of these interventions in those case where a rationale was in fact provided was the "war onCommunism." This often served as an alibi, however, for the protection ofeconomic interests: unrestricted access to oil and other natural resources forU.S.-based (and other "First World") corporations.

Double standards
U.S. officials successfully pressured the UN to imposesanctions on Libya for its initial refusal to extradite Libyan agents implicatedin the PAN AM 103 bombing; but they (U.S. officials) have consistently refusedto extradite U.S. citizens all of whom have ties to the CIA charged withacts of terrorism in Costa Rica and Venezuela (including blowing up a Cubanairliner in 1976). We have provided no support for attempts to bring AugustoPinochet (the Chilean military dictator responsible for the atrocities describedabove) to justice probably not only because our own government was so heavilyinvolved in his rise to power but also because the prosecution of such anobvious State-terrorist would open the door, legally, for the likes of HenryKissinger and Oliver North to be tried for having ordered terrorist acts.

The double standards at play, the hypocrisy and badfaith involved, in calling for the world to decide whether it is "withus" or "with the terrorists" should by now be fairly evident. Touse President Bush's terms, our nation has -- tragically -- in realitychampioned "Fear" and suppressed "Freedom" in a greatmany countries, for millions of people. We have been directly responsible foracts of terrorism, and for the "harboring" of terrorists, on an almostunimaginable scale in terms of human death and the creation of fear. When GreenBerets trained the Guatemalan army in the 1960s leading to a campaign ofbombings, death squads, and "scorched earth" assaults that killed or"disappeared" 20O,000 -- U.S. Army Colonel John Webber called it"a technique of counter-terror." This comment can serve as a reminderand warning for us now--not that there are not real terrorist threats to ournational security, but that we have to be incredibly careful about how we defineterrorism, who defines it, and what tactics are used to uproot it. There issomething truly chilling, as the Syrian Information Minister pointed out, in theapparent consensus within the United States that we stand for"Freedom" and all that is "Good" in the world, and that weare somehow entitled and equipped to mete out "infinite justice. "

Blowback
As most of us have read at some point in the last fewweeks, our current attacks on the Taliban and al'Qaeda are complicated,politically and morally, by our military and economic support for the Mujahideenwar against the U.S.S.R. in the 1980s. We provided over $7 billion in arms andfunds, plus training supplied through the Pakistani intelligence agency. Thelesson: lines of distinction between "Good" and "Evil" aredramatically more blurred and complex than President Bush, Secretary Rumsfeld,and most voices in the media seem to want us to think. U.S. funding, training,and supply of arms literally, U.S. harboring of terrorists were a crucialpart of what enabled the Taliban to come to power in Afghanistan. This is whatmilitary analysts call "blowback."

A less frequently discussed but equally importantinstance of blowback is the U.S. role in Iraq. Throughout the 1980s, the U.S.actively supported Iraq as an ally against Iran and as a potentially profitablefuture source for raw goods and market for exports. Though the U.S. governmentwas clearly aware of Saddam Hussein's extermination of Kurds and his developmentof military and chemical weapons capacity (there is ample documentation of theextent of U.S. leaders' knowledge ), the U.S. continued to support Hussein'sgovernment with billions of dollars in export credit insurance. This situationonly changed when U.S. oil access was threatened (by the invasion of Kuwait). Upuntil then, no matter how extreme the fiscal duplicity, military build-up oroutright genocide committed by Hussein's regime, U.S. officials urged"hard-headedness" and a recognition of Iraq's strategic and economicimportance as an ally. Again, this brief outline of a piece of recent historycomplicates the current situation enormously: how can Hussein be"Evil" and "a terrorist," and we "Good" and theworld's defenders of "Freedom," if we funded him through many of theatrocities he's committed, fully conscious that he was committing them? As withAfghanistan, a short memory on our part, together with a preference forblack-and-white thinking, are likely to prove responsible for yet more sufferingand violence now and down the road.

The situation in Iraq is perhaps more complex and tragicthan any other, in terms of the U.S. role past and future. U.S.-imposedsanctions (almost every country in the UN opposes them) against Iraq have so farled to the deaths of approximately one million people. Two Assistants to theSecretary-General of the UN responsible for humanitarian aid to Iraq haveresigned in protest, calling the sanctions "genocide." Our governmentis waging a methodical, hugely violent, daily war against the people of Iraq attacking civilians in numbers that grotesquely dwarf the horrific tragedies ofSeptember 11th. When asked in 1996 what she felt about the deaths of 500,000children caused by the sanctions, then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albrightreplied that it was "a very hard choice," but, all things considered,"we think the price is worth it." (It is worth pausing here, for amoment, perhaps, to try to take in the reality of such a statement.)

Language's dangers
In a world of such extreme violence, hypocrisy, andmoral ambiguity, we need to be careful about whom we listen to, whom we believe,and whose wars we fight.

The term "War on Terrorism" has been quicklypicked up by political leaders seeking to advance a host of different agendasdomestically and internationally. The phrase is likely to be with us for sometime (Secretary Rumsfeld has described the war as "sustained,comprehensive, and unrelenting"), used as the justification for all sortsof military, political, and economic interventions abroad not to mention theremoval of civil liberties at home.

Some examples of international uses:

Russia has been seeking, since September 11, to cast Chechen rebels as terrorists, and Georgia as a terrorist-harboring State, in order to legitimate its use of violence in those two arenas.
In mid-October, the U.S. sent military advisers to the Phillipines, to assist the government in what it describes as a campaign against Muslim "terrorists."
A Heritage Foundation report named Iraq, Iran, Syria, Sudan, and Libya as States which need to be "put on notice . . . that they will not escape America's wrath if they continue to support international terrorism."
Colombian army officials switched, within just a few days of September 11, from calling the FARC and ELN rebels "narcoguerrillas" to calling them "narcoterrorists."
Francis X. Taylor, head of the U.S. Department of State's Office of Counterterrorism, recently stated that these Colombian groups will "get the same treatment as other terrorist groups," including "where appropriate -- as we are doing in Afghanistan -- the use of military power."
The ongoing U.S. policy toward Colombia -- "Plan Colombia" -- involves chemical warfare, just what we fear so greatly now in this country: crop-duster planes spray broad-spectrum herbicides onto the Colombian countryside and the people who live there, leading to widespread illness, displacement, and hunger (as a result of the destruction of food crops).
Ariel Sharon has stepped up campaigns against Palestinians. The Israeli Cabinet, in blunt and ominous language, has issued statements like the following: "Failure to meet these demands . . . will leave us no choice but to view the Palestinian Authority as an entity supporting and sponsoring terror, and to act accordingly." (In fact, since yesterday's retaliatory attacks, the statements have been more explicit: Please Click Here -- Ed)
China is expected to use the justifying rhetoric of the "War on Terrorism" to further crack down on Uighur Muslims, Tibetans, and Taiwan.

Final remarks
On October 4, Amnesty International published a reporton the tightening of security in the wake of September 11. In the report,Amnesty observed that "some of the definitions of terrorism underdiscussion are so broad that they could be used to criminalize anyone out offavor with those in power." We must be careful with definitions; we mustknow what we mean.