Father, Son And Holy War

My apologies to Anand Patwardhan, but I can't resist thetemptation to borrow the title of his film as an apt description of what ishappening in the world right now (i.e. October 2001, the month after theterrorist attacks in the USA). Whether the father is Saudi billionnaire Mohammedbin Laden, with his close ties to the Saudi royal family, the son is hisestranged offspring Osama, who is enraged every time he thinks of infidelAmerican troops stationed on the holy soil of Saudi Arabia, and the holy war isthe jihad which the latter has declared against America and Americans; orthe father is George Bush Sr, who started it all with his war to defeat SaddamHussein by gradually exterminating the people of Iraq, the son is George Jr.,who has trouble opening his mouth without putting his foot in it, and the holywar is the crusade the latter has declared against, well, let us say vaguelyspecified enemies who happen to be Muslims - in both cases, the themes ofreligious communalism, militarism and machismo are inextricably intertwined.

There is even an uncanny similarity in the ways that thetwo sons think, if we ignore the cowboy rhetoric of one ('wanted - dead oralive', 'smoke 'em outa their holes', etc.) and the pious expressions of theother ('may God mete them the punishment they deserve', etc.). Bush tells us,'either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists' (statement of 20/9/01);Osama tells us the entire world is divided into 'two regions - one offaith…and another of infidelity' (statement of 7/10/01). In other words, theyboth want us to believe that the population of the world is divided into twocamps, one headed by Bush, the other by bin Laden.

If this is true, then we are heading into an epoch ofunlimited violence and terror. South Asia is right at the centre of theconflict, and could suffer the most from it. For example, if the war goes onmuch longer, General Musharraf could be overthrown by even more extremistcommunal forces in Pakistan, who would then have nuclear weapons in their hands.On the other side of the border, there could well be a hidden agenda behind theBJP-led government's enthusiastic support for the US war. What do they hope togain from it? Not US mediation in Kashmir to put pressure on Pakistan to stopcross-border terrorism - Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh made it very clear thatmediation would not be welcome. Belligerent speeches by Kashmir's Chief MinisterFarouq Abdullah and Home Minister L.K.Advani, as well as aggressive firingacross the border the same day that corruption-tainted Defence Minister GeorgeFernandes regained his ministry, suggest that what they want is the US go-aheadto do exactly what Big Brother is doing: i.e. to bomb Pakistan as the US isbombing Afghanistan, on the same pretext of 'a war against those who harbourterrorists'. That could be the prelude to a nuclear war.

For those of us who are opposed to both camps, the only wayto avert such a catastrophe is to build a viable third alternative - a newnon-aligned movement for human rights and democracy - at top speed. This willbecome obvious when we take a closer look at the two camps which have alreadyconstituted themselves. But first we need to be clear what we are talking aboutwhen we refer to 'terrorism'.

What do we mean by 'terrorism'?

The first kind of definition of terrorism is lack ofdefinition. Eqbal Ahmad, after going through at least twenty US documents onterrorism, came up with a surprising (or perhaps not so surprising) discovery:not once was terrorism defined. And he concluded that this was quite deliberate:'If you're not going to be consistent, you're not going to define' ('Terrorism:Theirs and Ours', Alternative Radio programme). Since September 11^th,we find the definition chopping and changing, according to expediency. First itis made clear that only acts of violence against US citizens are acts ofterrorism; the same acts against citizens of other countries don't count. Whensome governments whose support the US wishes to retain question this, thedefinition is expanded slightly. At no point are similar acts of violencecommitted or supported by the US defined as terrorist.

Ranged against this are counter-definitions by anti-globaliserslike Vandana Shiva, who classify hunger, poverty, unemployment and environmentaldegradation as terrorism; we can call this an economic reductionist type ofdefinition. One problem is that it is so wide that it becomes impossible todefine a strategy to fight it; it is a bit like trying to make tables, chairs,beds, windows and doors with a tool-kit consisting entirely and solely of ahammer: you end up unable to make any of them. Another problem is that terrorismas political violence is nowhere acknowledged, so that it becomespossible to join hands, as Vandana Shiva has done, with terrorists of the SanghParivar in the struggle against globalisation. I would say that even disasterslike Bhopal and Chernobyl, which kill and injure tens of thousands of victims,should not be classified as terrorism, because they occur in the pursuit ofeconomic gain and therefore require different remedies (e.g. health and safetyand environmental legislation which makes them impossible).

The US is not the only state whose definition of terrorismshifts according to who is the perpetrator and who is the victim. In Sri Lanka,the UNP and its supporters defined the JVP and Tamil militant groups as'terrorist' when these groups committed admittedly horrific acts ofindiscriminate violence, but even more violent responses by the state andstate-sponsored paramilitaries were, supposedly, not terrorism. The militants,on the other hand, denounce state terrorism, but would not call their ownactions terrorist. In Kashmir, violence against civilians by militants fromPakistan are called terrorism by the Indian state, which does not, however, givethe same name to its own violence against Kashmiri civilians; conversely, thePakistani state refers to the militants as 'freedom fighters', and denouncesIndian state terrorism. It is not possible to fight something without knowingwhat it is.

Against this miasma of rhetoric, and taking off fromdictionary definitions of 'terrorism', I would say that acts of terrorism areacts or threats of violence against ordinary, unarmed civilians carried out inthe pursuit of a political objective. It should be irrelevant whether theperpetrators are state parties or non-state parties, and other characteristics(like skin colour, ethnicity, gender, religion, nationality, sexual orientation,disability, social origin or anything else) of the perpetrators and victimsshould likewise be irrelevant. Further, the stated political objective shouldnot come into the picture either, whether it is a religion, nationalism,national interest, national security, national liberation, democracy, socialism,communism, infinite justice or enduring freedom. A murderer's claimed motivedoes not change the fact of a murder.

In this connection, we need to dispense with another term:'collateral damage'. In the context of terrorism as defined above, it makes nosense, because the purpose of terrorism is not to kill or injure people,that is merely a means to some political end. For example, in the case of the 11September attacks, we cannot know for sure the motives of the hijackers becausethey are all dead, but if we assume for the sake of argument that they were insome way connected to Osama bin Laden , then the demands are very clear: the USmust stop supporting Israeli aggression against the Palestinians, stop thebombing of Iraq and lift the sanctions against that country, stop supportingcorrupt regimes in the Middle East, and move their armed forces out of SaudiArabia. The purpose was not to kill all those people in the aeroplanes, theWorld Trade Centre and Pentagon; they were merely collateral damage.

Does that sound outrageous? Of course it does. Because weare not used to hearing dead Americans referred to as 'collateral damage'. Butshouldn't it sound equally outrageous when Bush, Blair and their cohorts justifythe killing of Afghani civilians in the bombing as 'collateral damage'?'According to Michael Tonry, Professor of Law at the University of Minnesota,"In the criminal law, purpose and knowledge are equally culpable states ofmind. An action taken with a purpose to kill is no more culpable than an actiontaken with some other purpose in mind but with knowledge that a death willprobably result. Blowing up an airplane to kill a passenger is equivalent toblowing up an airplane to destroy a fake painting and thereby to defraud aninsurance company, knowing that the passenger will be killed. Both are murder.Most people would find the latter killing more despicable" (MalignNeglect, p. 32)' (A.J.Chien, 'The Civilian Toll', Institute for Health andSocial Justice, October 11). So let us forget about collateral damage. Murder ismurder, and mass murder is mass murder. Terrorist acts which result in massmurder can additionally be defined as crimes against humanity.

It seems to me that this could be a functional definitionof terrorism or acts of terrorism, which can be agreed upon by pacifists as wellas those who believe that armed resistance to armed aggression is justified.Fighting between combatants would not count as terrorism. Only minimal greyareas are left; for example, those cases where settlers on land seized fromothers by acts of terrorism either defend their gains with arms or are defendedby armed forces, as in the case of Israeli settlers in the occupied territoriesof Palestine, whom Nigel Harris graphically describes as 'Jewish Taliban andZionist Red Necks' ('Collapse of the Peace Process', Economic and PoliticalWeekly, 15/9/01). In such cases, I would say that adult settlerscannot be regarded as innocent unarmed civilians, whereas children can. Anotherproblematic case would be one where a politician who advocates and promotes thetransfer of populations (a crime against humanity according to the NuremburgPrinciples articulated to prosecute Nazi war criminals), such as IsraeliMinister Rehavam Ze'evi, is assassinated. All one can say is that if that isterrorism, so was the attempted assassination of Hitler.

The bin Laden-Taliban camp: communalist terrorism

I prefer the term 'communalism', as used in South Asia, tothe more commonly-used 'fundamentalism', for two reasons. (1) Communalism,meaning an adoption of identity based overwhelmingly on membership of acommunity, with corresponding isolation from or hostility to others - rangingfrom opposition to intermarriage with them to genocidal massacres of them - is amuch broader term. It can encompass identities based not only on differentreligions, but on different ethnic groups, and on sects within the same religion(Shia and Sunni, Protestant and Catholic, etc.) (2) Claims of fundamentaliststhat they are defending the 'fundamentals' of their religion have convincinglybeen contested by theologians of those same religions; it is therefore amisleading term, suggesting that more humane interpretations are somehow lessauthentic.

Attacks like those of 11 September were unprecedented inthe US, but not in our countries. Indeed, almost nine years earlier we felt thesame horror and fear when a terrorist attack brought down the Babri Mosque,accompanied and followed by anti-Muslim riots which took a death toll similar tothat of the US attacks. So unlike several consecutive US administrations whichhave supported and still continue to support communal forces in our countries(more about this later), many of us, especially women, have long recognised thedire danger posed to women's rights in particular, and human rights anddemocracy in general, by communal terrorism, and have been battling against itfor decades.

The hell that women have gone through under the Taliban -girls and women denied education, women not allowed to earn a living, even ifthe only alternative for them and their children is death by starvation, notallowed to go out except covered from head to foot by a burqa and accompanied bya male relative, brutal punishments including stoning to death or being buriedalive if they break any of the draconian rules imposed on them - these are onlythe most extreme examples of the violation of women's rights which is much morewidespread. And while patriarchal authority in its Islamic form receives thewidest publicity, let us remember that other forms - like the common practice offemale infanticide in India, bride-burning, ill-treatment of widows, and thelynching of young people who have out-of-caste relationships - can be just asbarbaric. Other forms of communal terrorism may provide more space for women,and the LTTE even encourages them to become suicide bombers, but all this ispremised on blind support for the supreme leader. The penalty for independentthought, expression or action, as Rajani Thiranagama and Sarojini Yogeshwaranfound out to their cost, is death.

The suppression of women's rights goes along with a moregeneral authoritarian control over what members of the religious or ethniccommunity may or may not say and do. Depending on the degree of power thecommunal group enjoys, punishments for those who refuse to abandon the strugglefor human rights and democracy can vary from social boycott, to beatings (e.g.Asghar Ali Engineer), to death (notably Neelan Thiruchelvam). But the greatestviolence is directed outward, towards other ethnic/religious communities.Massacres of the type that the Taliban inflicted on non-Pashtun tribes inAfghanistan (and which warlords of those tribes also carried out when they werein a position to do so) are familiar in India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh.They have been carried out in the name of Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Sinhala,Tamil and a whole number of other ethnic nationalisms. The victims, startingfrom the Partition riots, add up to millions dead, apart from massivedisplacement and destruction of livelihoods.

Nor is this kind of terrorism confined to South Asia.Rwanda, East Timor and the Balkans have recently seen horrific communalkillings. They can even be seen as genocidal, if genocide is seen not as anattempt to exterminate a people from the whole face of the earth but, rather, toclear them out of the territory controlled by a particular ethnic or religiousgroup. How can we explain such terrorism? This is important if we wish to combatit. One popular explanation is that terrorism is a response to oppression, but Iam not happy with this. If this is true, why is it that millions of exploitedand oppressed people throughout the world never become terrorists? Why is itthat women, who are the most oppressed of the oppressed, rarely go down thispath, since it is not biologically impossible, as the female fighters of theLTTE show?

Secondly, there is a fine line between explanationand justification, and I fear that this explanation slips over the lineinto justification. Thus, for example, Steve Cohen, who correctly makes a cleardistinction between Jews and zionists, actually blurs the distinction when hegoes on to explain zionism as a response to anti-semitism (That's Funny, YouDon't Look Anti-Semitic). That, I feel, is an insult to all those Jewishpeople who suffer anti-semitism without endorsing ethnic cleansing. It isentirely legitimate and understandable for people who suffer constantpersecution and regular pogroms to wish for a place where they can live insecurity and dignity. It is quite something else to create this place byclearing out the majority of the indigenous population by murderous terror. Thesame goes for Sri Lanka Tamils: the craving for a homeland where one can be safeand enjoy equal rights is absolutely justified; trying to create it by drivingout and killing ordinary Sinhalese and Muslims is not justifiable, as all myresearch suggests that the majority of Tamil people would agree.

Thirdly, this explanation ignores terrorist movementswithin Europe and the US, like those who were responsible for the Oklahomabombing and are now suspected of spreading anthrax. This newspaper report ishighly revealing:

The FBI's domestic terrorism unit is investigating thepossible role of illegal militia groups in the spate of anthrax outbreaks inFlorida and New York. Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma bomber who killed 168 peoplewhen he blew up a federal building in 1995, was a supporter of one such group,the National Alliance.

Others have threatened to use biological weapons, includinganthrax, botulism, and ricin, in their struggle against what they see as aglobal conspiracy between the US administration and the United Nations to disarmand enslave them. Every state has its own "patriot" group ofdisaffected right-wing Christian radicals opposed to central government andfederal regulations. Most are organised along paramilitary lines. The FBIestimates their numbers at up to 40,000, with the larger militias in backwoodscountry areas. They claim they are mobilising to fight the "New WorldOrder".

In places like Idaho, Texas, Montana and West Virginia,they wear army surplus camouflage uniforms and train with assault rifles andexplosives against the day when they might have to defend themselves againstdirect interference from the federal authorities. They range in outlook from PatRobertson, a failed 1988 presidential candidate, with his vision of a"Christian America" to the sinister Posse Comitatus, Aryan Nations andMinnesota Patriots' Council, who favour armed insurrection…