2006 Australia-Israel Hawke Lecture
The Ethics of Terrorism: Can there be peace and reconciliation?
Thursday 10 August 2006
Co-presented by The Australia Israel Chamber of Commerce and The Bob Hawke Prime Ministerial Centre, UniSA
Delivered by The Honourable Marcus R Einfeld AO QC PhD
Former Justice of the Federal Court of Australia and of the New South
Wales, Western Australian and Australian Capital Territory Supreme Courts
Justice of the Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court
Officer in the Order of Australia
AUSTCARE’s Ambassador for Refugees
UNICEF’s Ambassador for Children
Foundation President, Australian Human Rights and Equal Opportunity
Commission and Australian Paralympic Federation
1. Introduction
I thank the Australia-Israel Chamber of Commerce and The Bob Hawke Prime
Ministerial Centre for their invitation to deliver the 2006 Hawke lecture.
Bob was a great fighter for justice, for Israel and the Jewish people and I
regard it as a great honour to be here to continue this tribute to his
legacy and commitment.
We meet tonight as active participants in a new world. Not a brave new
world, I fear, but rather a bloody new world, in which old polarities of
race, culture and politics are dividing humanity ever wider. This world is
fraught with deep misunderstandings and equally with deep ignorance – both
leading to serious dangers and risks. We live now in a time that those who
established the post war world hoped would never occur again, a time of
constant and divisive warring with the threat of escalation to the point of
no return. How easily we have forgotten the darkness and horrors that
confronted and very nearly tore this world apart only sixty years ago.
2. Genesis of human rights
In the wake of the massive destruction of life and property that was
World War II, an old world, tired and bleeding from its ravages planted the
seeds of a new international order in the form of a document called the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights. By then, the world had witnessed some
of the worst atrocities imaginable. The sheer numbers of people who died
during the World War II numbs the mind: 25 million Russians in the freezing
winters of 1942 and 1943; 15 million civilians throughout the rest of
Europe, innocent victims of fascism, and 6 million Jews and the hundreds of
thousands of Roma (gypsies), communists, social democrats, Catholics,
non-Aryans, homosexuals and humanitarian sympathisers – including 1½ million
children – who were subjected to the rifles, the preposterous death camps
and the Zyklon B Gas of the SS and the Einsatzgruppen.
And perhaps the most staggering statistic of all - the 17 million allied
soldiers who gave their lives in defence of freedom and the liberal tenets
by which our countries have lived for hundreds of years, and their
counterparts on the other side who died in a cause which to most of us
remains a perplexing mystery to this day.
The Universal Declaration was born in the cradle of this value system. It
was a bold and brilliant document full of words, phrases and concepts that
everyone in the free world wanted to hear. It spoke of recognising the
inherent dignity and the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the
human family as the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world.
It observed that disregard and contempt for human rights had resulted in
barbarous acts which had outraged the conscience of mankind. It called for
the advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech
and belief, and freedom from fear and want, as the highest aspiration of the
common people. It declared as essential that human rights should be
protected by the rule of law.
The darkness and horrors of the second World War compelled the international
community to unite in a vow to create a world in which human rights would be
honoured, and in which even the slightest breaches would be rectified lest
they lead inexorably to new regimes of brutality and authoritarian
oppression. And on 10 December 1948, the General Assembly of the newly
created United Nations, under the chairmanship of an Australian (by
coincidence one of Bob Hawke’s illustrious predecessors as leader of the
Australian Labor Party), proclaimed this extraordinary declaration of
humanitarian principles.
Sixty years is but a drawn breath in the context of the thousands of years
of human existence, yet so many of us in the “educated”, “democratic”,
“western”, “liberalist” societies as we call them, plead simple ignorance to
the dangers of cultural polarisation. First and foremost in our minds must
be the quest for knowledge about the realities of living on a multicultural
planet. Having regard to the shocking events in London today, we are surely
faced too starkly with the consequences of ignorance to continue on our
present path.
Language, knowledge, communication and perspective are what I am vigorously
advocating today. The blind fervour that grips so many of us and rouses us
to hate through loose rhetoric and mob mentality is symptomatic of the
almost overwhelming human urge towards polarisation. The odds are that if we
can band together against a common foe, falsely perceived or not, we will
win whatever the battle is.
The question then is – do we know what we are banding against? The recent
terrible outbreak of war in the Middle East has confused many Australians.
Who is right? Was Israel justified in its swift and seemingly merciless
attack on Lebanon? If so, to what extent? How far can we go in order to
safeguard ourselves against others?
To even begin to address these questions, we must first examine what
“terrorism” means.
3. Genesis of terrorism
The word “terrorism” itself is a misnomer of sorts. It was first coined
during France's Reign of Terror in 1793-94, during which leaders of a
systematised attempt to weed out "traitors" among the revolutionary ranks,
claimed terror as the sword of liberation, best suited to cutting swathes
through the repressive elite. However, as the French Revolution soured, the
word soon took on grim echoes of state violence and guillotines as those
very same leaders failed to contain their bloodier instincts and mistook
strength for oppression.
This dark hue is carried through to our concept of “terrorism”. It has
strayed far from its etymological sources, and has now weaved into its
fabric connotations of brutal unthinking violence – a cancerous global
necrosis which makes us all shudder and devoutly hope for a ritual and
exhaustive expunging of the idea once and for all. We freeze and wince as we
watch scenes of ravaged lands and people. We have seen it all – the
assassination of leaders, the hijacking of planes, the bloodthirsty murders
of Olympic athletes, of mothers and babies on a Belfast shopping street, of
revellers at a Bali nightclub, of kids in Israeli kindergartens, buses and
cafeterias, and in Palestinian Refugee camps – and of course the apocalyptic
visions of smoke and rubble in New York City four and a half years ago. We
are rightfully mortified by the carnage and conditions generated by
terrorism. The arbitrary violence of its cycles instils paranoia, hatred
and, above all – fear.
The next question lies in precisely who wishes terrorism expunged.
Perplexing as this may be to those amongst us who lounge in some type of
cultural myopia, it is quite often the case that those they determine to be
terrorists feel precisely the same way about them. The French
revolutionaries fought for their liberty, and conceived of terrorism as
their tool. Today, it is hard to find anyone, including those we in
the West term “terrorists”, who wants to be known as such.
Instead, individuals and organisations branded as terrorists tend towards
titles like "freedom fighters," "urban guerrillas," "faithful martyrs" or
“holy warriors", among other things. Ilich Ramirez Sanchez (aka Carlos the
Jackal), the mastermind of numerous terrorist attacks in the 1970s and 80s,
described himself as a revolutionary and "above all a family man"
1. The adage that one person’s terrorist is
another’s freedom fighter is at the absolute heart of this matter. In the
face of our fraught, reeling world, we can no longer fail to acknowledge one
inalienable fact – terrorism is borne of a clash of ideologies, not
merely the mad, fundamentalist digressions of one.
Let me be clear – like everyone who is sane, I utterly condemn the mindset
behind bombings, shootings, hijackings or assassinations. Terrorism is
nothing other than a deliberate campaign of violence against unarmed
civilians and therefore to be vilified and uncompromisingly rejected to the
utmost extent. These hideous acts should never be the platform with which
international empathy should encourage negotiation.
The fact remains, however, that the dogma behind the brutality is almost
invariably an act of ultimate desperation or frustration at the inability to
bring a desired world view – that is to say: ideology – into existence.
Some argue that delineating precisely who is the brutalist in any given
situation is not an easy one. They cite the conflict in the Middle East as
the perfect and almost impossibly complex example of this.
4. Middle East terrorism
The Lebanese government, which knows very well what a scourge to its
people Hezbollah has been for at least two decades, claims that Israel is
committing state terrorism by using force to defend itself and its people.
Other Arab states which have offered nothing other than words and some money
– and in the case of Syria, the passage of arms and armaments from Iran,
pretends support for Lebanon today when they could for the last years and
more have implemented Security Council resolution 1559 and assisted the
Lebanese army to disarm and remove Hezbollah. Just like they offer words but
little else of support for the Palestinians when they could have settled and
rehabilitated every single person in the refugee camps six decades ago.
Why has virtually the entire Western world labelled Hezbollah and Hamas as
terrorist organisations? The answer is because they label themselves as such
and have never hidden their desire and determination to destroy Israel as a
state and push its Jewish population into the Mediterranean.
But it is even more. The leaders of Iran, including its preposterous
President Ahmadinejad, state quite openly and often that they are not only
determined to destroy Israel, kill Jews, but also establish a pan-Islamic
Shi’ite state without national borders across the Middle East – no doubt
under their hegemony – which would then contain not only no Israel but no
Egypt, no Jordan, no Saudi Arabia, and probably no Syria which is Sunni-led
and run. You can imagine what a launching pad that will be for further
conquests. No wonder the Arab states do not support Iran although they
sometimes speak as if they do. No wonder the West is suspicious and
antagonistic
When people say that Israel is using “disproportionate” force in killing
civilians in Lebanon, I wonder where I have failed. I have spent a good part
of my life fighting to save and improve lives. The most important human
right is the right to life itself. Like you and every decent human being, I
flinch and recoil at the death of unarmed civilians, especially children, in
war, every war, not just this one; every child, not just Lebanese children
precious as they are. I have for years been a UNICEF Ambassador for Children
trying to help the world’s children to survive as refugees or victims of one
ethos or another. Why have I done so badly? Why have I failed so miserably?
In terms of proportionality but not otherwise, I bring myself back to some
semblance of balance by recalling the 123 Israeli children murdered by the
Palestinians in the second intifada between 2000 and 2003; by recalling so
many school buses blown up by Palestinian suicide bombers in the very heart
of Israeli cities and towns; by remembering the carnage I personally
witnessed at Maalot and Kiryat Shmona, small towns in northern Israel, when
kindergartens of little babies where blown up by Arab terrorists.
By recalling the statement of the legendary Israeli Prime Minister, Golda
Meir, when she said:
We can forgive the Arabs for murdering our children. We cannot forgive
them for forcing us to murder their children. We will only have peace with
the Arabs when they love their children more than they hate us.
By remembering current Israeli Prime Minister Olmert’s statement just two
weeks ago when he said:
When we kill their children we regard it as a total failure. When they
kill our children, they regard it as a complete success.
You can criticise Israeli leaders and military on many counts. My
experiences with and exposures to Israelis, and my reading of Israeli
publications now and for many years demonstrate that highly intelligent
Israeli citizens themselves do it everyday. I have done so myself on
occasions. But us armchair generals have an easy job as compared to Israeli
Cabinet Ministers today who have been saying in these last few weeks that
this war will not solve a single problem let alone wipe out Hezbollah. You
can agree with the King of Jordan that even if Hezbollah were wiped out
completely another group would be formed and start up again. Which is the
problem with the so-called War on Terror. The dilemma is that Israel still
has to save its own people from the rockets raining down on them at the
hands of people dedicated to their total destruction. How do they do it
without killing others?
In contemplating your answer to that simple question, of one thing you can
be certain – not even one Lebanese or Palestinian child or civilian adult
has been or would ever be deliberately killed by Israeli fire. Israel is
fighting for her very survival. It is fighting to save its people from
annihilation, let alone the mass of missiles and rockets fired on it in
recent weeks. Hezbollah and Palestinian suicide squads and their Iranian
backers make no secret of their mission to deliberately kill Israeli
children and adults alike.
So much in my view for the concept of disproportionality, tragic and
horrible as it means. As Charles Krauthammer asked in the Washington Post
last week:
What other country, when attacked in an unprovoked aggression across a
recognised International frontier, is then put on a countdown clock by the
world and given a limited time window in which to fight back, regardless of
whether it has restored its own security? What other country sustains 1,500
indiscriminate rocket attacks into its cities – every one designed to kill,
maim and terrorise civilians – and is then vilified by the world when it
tries to destroy the enemy’s infrastructure and stronghold with
precision-guided munitions that sometimes have the unintended but
unavoidable consequence of collateral civilian death and suffering.
Who can disagree with Krauthammer when he wrote:
When one is wantonly attacked by an aggressor one has every right – legal
and moral – to carry the fight until the aggressor is disarmed and so
disabled that it cannot threaten one’s security again.
How much more justified is it if the aggressors use their people as human
shields, fill their houses, mosques, schools and public buildings with
missiles, rockets and other arms, and hide their fighters and weapons on
ambulances.
Yet that is the face of Middle East terrorism. And as Krauthammer pointed
out, the United States did not respond to Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbour by
hitting a Japanese naval base or two or ten. It virtually decimated
Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and even Tokyo. Britain did not respond to the
German blitzkrieg by merely going for the Luftwaffe’s air bases. It simply
pulverised countless German cities and towns where people lived who had
nothing to do with the war at all.
Those who do not find it too problematic to stand firm to their democratic
ideals and pass indignant judgments of condemnation on Israel’s actions
might ask themselves whether our background of democratic comforts has
trained us adequately in the ways of humankind. How often do we reflect
objectively upon the plight of those who have endured and are enduring
suffering beyond the ken of our darkest imaginings in bunkers and under
daily bombardment? And on the other side, what consideration do we give to
those ethical constructs that are based on diametrically different
historical experiences and philosophical traditions to our own? It really is
about time that we actually sat down and thought about all this
without the spectre of social and cultural bias clouding our judgment. We
must surely at least start the process of bridging these gaps?
It is no answer to say that this is all too “political”. Humans are by their
natures political animals. We have organised ourselves into societies based
wholly on political premises – we give up certain individual options in
order to be protected and serviced by the state. In almost every single news
item including sport and other entertainment, we are participating in an
essentially political act of our own formulation. This is how the democratic
model operates – by voting and more importantly, by accepting the results of
our voting we position ourselves as willing participants in a
quintessentially political process – with each and every one of us at least
theoretically having an equal voice. In such a context saying one is not
political is in my opinion irrelevant.
5. History of terrorism
We may resile and grimace at what is happening around us – and there seem
to have been more acts of terror since the so-called War on Terror was
declared than there were in many years before – but we cannot simply dismiss
as modern or mad a phenomenon which has been prevalent since at least the
first century. Certain Zealots of the first century Roman Empire would
publicly slit the throats of Romans and their collaborators. The Thuggee
cult of seventh century India would ritually strangle passers-by as
sacrifices to the Hindu deity Kali 2. The
eleventh century Middle Eastern Shiite sect known as the "Assassins" would
eat hashish before murdering civilian foes. And all this centuries before
Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated in 1914 by a Serb
extremist, sparking World War I 3.
In more modern times, we have witnessed the handiwork of such groups as the
Red Brigade in Japan and Bader Meinhof in Germany, and many other similar
collections, even the Ku Klux Klan in the southern United States, all of
whom have killed people at random for not the slightest rational purpose at
all.
The vestiges of present day Muslim extremists are to be found in the Muslim
Brotherhood, a political force which began in Egypt in 1928. Their goal was
the establishment or restoration of Sharia and Islamic values in the face of
growing Western influence. Generations of violent and radical minority
Muslim groups since have succumbed to this puritanical interpretation of
Islam, including the Taliban, al Qaeda and the Egyptian-born Islamic Jihad.
Today’s targets of these groups may be Americans, Israelis, Christians, Jews
or simply non-Muslims around the world but their real goal is to Islamise,
and thereby to purify, what they affect to believe are decadent Western
practices and activities.
6. State terrorism
Most definitions of terrorism refer to the actions of sub-national
groups, but not of government leaders or states. This blindness conveniently
puts beyond the bounds of the epithet "terrorist" even such dedicated
killers of civilians as Hitler's Third Reich, Stalinist communism, Slobodan
Milosevic’s Serbia, Pol Pot’s Cambodia, and the murderers of Salvador
Allende by Augusto Pinochet’s Chile, backed and encouraged by the CIA
regardless of the views, wishes, and votes of the Chilean people.
This narrow view would also disqualify the wholesale murder of Bosnian men
by Radovan Karazich and Ratko Mladic in the Bosnian Civil War, and the
almost total removal of the intelligentsia and the traders by Idi Amin's
Uganda. These styles of atrocity are mostly defined as human rights abuses
or war crimes, perhaps to make them more amenable to international
passivity, perhaps on some unconscious sovereign level to preserve the
definitional authority of the concept of state. The fact is that they were
all horrendous anti-civilian emanations of states. Violence perpetrated by
governments is terrorism, no less than non-government groups or individuals,
if it involves violence intentionally aimed at killing civilians and
implanting fear and terror in the people in order to force them into
supporting or not resisting the violence.
Equally reprehensible, perhaps even worse, is the prevalence of state-sponsored
terrorism by the provision of sanctuary, weapons, training, or logistical,
financial, or diplomatic support to terrorist groups. Nations such as Iran,
Iraq, Libya, Peru, Guatemala, Syria, North Korea, Cuba and Sudan have all
sponsored groups or individuals on democratic nations' most wanted lists.
During the 1991 Gulf War, Saddam Hussein commissioned several failed attacks
on US facilities in the region. Although the idea that he could have been
associated with al Qaeda is, and always was, absurd, Iraq’s link to
terrorism was alleged by the Bush administration to be his possession of, or
determination to develop or acquire, weapons of mass destruction, as yet
eluding discovery, which it asserted he might share with terrorists who
could launch devastating attacks against the United States.
Some might think this thesis a less than persuasive basis on which to deploy
almost half a million service personnel, with all the consequential risks
that came with the package especially as the Messianic goal of establishing
a western style democracy in Iraq requiring reconciliation of Shia and
Sunni, amongst others was only ever a dream as the events of the last year
have tragically demonstrated. But it was the underlying argument for a war
which has actually resulted in the killing of thousands of the very
civilians whom it was supposed to save.
Many of the perpetrators of state crimes are still free and even continue to
prosper, protected by the governments which have followed. It is these
regimes of the elite – both local and foreign, third world and imperialist –
that have been responsible for introducing, legitimising, institutionalising
and organising violence and terror on a gross scale.
What very few people know or understand, even though the evidence is plain
and plentiful, is that many of these countries have been backed and financed
by the US and other western powers, including Australia. We have only
to bear witness to Australia’s own very personal contribution to a terrorist
regime via the Australian Wheat Board.
Apparently political transparency is a democratic ideal to which we only pay
lip service these days. What makes this brazen perversion of principle all
the worse is the incapacity of those in power to apologise or try and make
amends. Does anyone truly believe that the persons sitting next to us here
tonight or on the bus or train going to or coming home from work are
fundamentalist killers simply because of their ethnic background? I
certainly do not look at the Anglo-Saxons here and think they all belong to
the KKK, or are even vaguely persuaded by that extremist ideology. Why,
then, are so many in this country willing, even eager, to do just this?
The snarling and anger-torn visages of men and women on both sides of the
divide were thrown into stark and horrible relief on our very own shores
this past six months. The Cronulla riots were the result of a thick veil of
misinformation and apathy, wrought by ourselves and by the process of
cultural polarisation that has infected the world post September 11, finally
proving to be too much for those far from the necessary knowledge pools.
How easy it is for the mob to take over. And how easy it is for us to forget
that we are all humans, and thus fallible and capable of as much darkness as
any other human, no matter the race. We as Australians face a period of
immense challenges, and we must not shy away from the task of addressing
them despite the difficulty of doing so successfully, and the impossibility
of doing so quickly.
How, then, do we understand the reasons for believing the incredulously
stupid things we seem to believe in at the moment? How is it that other
cultures believe the same stupid things? How can a bunch of thugs in
Indonesia believe that killing people in Australia will fix one single
thing? How did those criminals who forced their way into the Greater Seattle
Jewish Community Centre last week and killed an elderly Jewish lady
contribute to righting a single wrong, actual or perceived? How will threats
and possible actions against Britain/US flights, or against me and others
working to bridge the gaps solve a single problem?
7. Clash of cultures
The majority of terrorist attacks occur at the volition of factional extremist militants. Whilst the abstruse rhetoric of many magniloquent pack leaders is largely ignored as senseless and offensive, these individuals are self-appointed ambassadors with an impulse to deliver a message that they believe will convince or persuade millions of people around the world to join their crusades, financially and politically, if not bodily. In fact, if and when the message is delivered, as we all hope will not happen, the resistance and the consequent unavoidable damage to innocents will expand and grow “disproportionately”.
Religion
The confusion between following and leading the path of any religion has
been the catalyst for innumerable terrorist attacks. As everyone knows, the
majority of today’s extremist organisations stem from Islam. Generally,
these groups regard their struggle to be part of the war between the
righteous ummah (Muslim community) and the pagan Christian/Jewish
West. Yet this extreme politicised form of Islam represents just one
derivation within a diverse religion, which most others reject as a radical
warped deformation of their faith.
Mainstream Islamic teachings prohibit the unprovoked killing of civilians,
and its tradition, unlike some other beliefs, preaches religious tolerance
as epitomised by some of Mohammed’s teachings, and by the Caliphate’s ninth
and tenth century rule of Spain and the pluralism within the Ottoman Empire.
Indeed, a number of Muslim countries joined the "coalition of the willing"
when George Bush embarked on his "crusade" against terrorism. Some, like
Egypt and Jordan, have suffered for being traitors in the eyes of
extremists.
Much of terrorist Islam terrorises other elements of Islam itself, no less –
perhaps more – than it does the non-Muslim "infidels". Many more Muslims
have died in Iraq by the hands of Muslims than Western forces or any other
group. Contrary to mainstream Palestinians, many in Hamas and Islamic Jihad,
for example, quite openly admit to opposing a democratic Palestinian State
alongside Israel – the so-called "two state solution" – and to seeking,
similarly to Iran and Hezbollah, a pan-national Islamic theocracy across the
Arab world, run something like Iran, which would then include a ‘liberated’
(meaning ‘destroyed’) Israel. Hence these movements have continually sought
to undermine any progress towards peace between these antagonists which
might bring about that result with Western, especially US, support.
Although this situation undermines the notion that terrorism is anchored in
a clash of civilisations, the focal point of global conflict is undeniably
becoming cultural rather than economic. As far as al Qaeda and like-minded
Islamic militants are concerned, their jihad ("Holy War/struggle"),
originally aimed at removing the Saudi and Gulf State autocratic monarchies,
is now pitted against the evils of Western interlopers who in their eyes are
tyrannising Islamic values, not least by the crude politics and economics of
oil. They believe that killing innocent civilians is justified in order to
impose Sharia law and Islamic cultural purity and identity.
On the other hand, no less an authoritative figure than former Iranian
President Sayyed Mohammad Khatami, himself an Ayatollah, said in New York in
November 2001:
Vicious terrorists who concoct weapons out of religion are superficial
literalists clinging to simplistic ideas. They are utterly incapable of
understanding that, perhaps inadvertently, they are turning religion into
the handmaiden of the most decadent ideologies. While terrorists purport to
be serving the cause of religion and accuse all those who disagree with them
of heresy and sacrilege, they are serving the very ideologies they condemn…
4
The role of God
But the matter is much wider than a type of Muslim schizophrenia. Both
sides in many conflicts claim God, often the same God in origin and belief,
as their justification for all types of indiscriminate killing or
persecution which can only be regarded as terrorism. Many, possibly most,
historic wars against civilisations have been waged in the name of God. God
led the people of biblical times into any number of wars with innumerable
civilian fatalities. The Inquisition first let loose in Spain by Ferdinand
and Isabella was a terror campaign of momentous order, released in loyalty
to God. The Christian Crusades and the Ottoman Turkish marches through
Europe were claimed as activities of God.
Hitler's war on the Jews was undoubtedly a consequence of centuries of
discriminatory persecution of Jews by the Catholic Church in Europe because
of their rejection of Jesus and perceived infidelity to God's word as
allegedly expressed by Him. It took the Church until the 1970s – and the
courage of Pope John XXIII – to absolve the Jewish people of all generations
from the appalling calumny of being Christ killers. The Muslim assassin of
President Sadat of Egypt and the Jewish killer of Prime Minister Rabin of
Israel claimed in one way or another to be on a mission of God. And there
are countless other examples.
Undemocratic and repressive states
In addition to religious justifications, terrorists exploit the
repressive regimes under which they live. An overwhelming lack of any form
of real democracy or democratic institutions in many nations suppresses the
free expression of views, disables the potential to resolve problems
internally, and stops groups disunited by culture, history, religion or
language from availing themselves of the internationally recognised
principle of self-determination. Extremist groups often represent the only
form of political opposition and often find a significant number of
sympathisers offering credence to their cause and actions within their
societal bloc.
Just weeks before the attacks in the US in September 2001, Osama bin Laden
released a message accusing Western "infidels" of killing millions of
children in Iraq and Palestine 5. Whilst
the figure is propagandistic and the assertion conveniently forgets Saddam
Hussein’s gross corruption and deliberate failure to take full advantage of
the humanitarian modifications of UN sanctions, the perception that the
sanctions were to blame for the crippling of Iraq’s economy and the
desolation of its people poured more fuel on the fire of support and
justification for revolutionary subversive movements.
Ineffectual states and institutions render citizens powerless to satisfy
even their most basic needs, and offer no prospect of building a better
life. In their place, religious and other institutions have in many nations,
for centuries, provided a haven of substitution where the state has failed,
by supplying food, shelter and other basic human needs in addition to a
divine source of faith. In other words, they offer the asylum of physical
survival while allowing followers to feel spiritually safe, and to derive
comfort from inhaling the edicts of their faith. Out of these institutions
many terrorist organisations have sprung.
Liberation
The converse of weak states is those who refuse to relinquish control
over areas within their territory that have historically been inhabited by
different ethnic groups. Many of the world's thorniest problems and most
dangerous terrorist hot spots include the struggles for independence by
groups such as the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in Sri Lanka, the
IRA in Northern Ireland, the Basque Fatherland and Liberty in Spain, the al
Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, Hamas and Islamic Jihad in the West Bank and Gaza,
Hezbollah in Lebanon and Syria, the Abu Sayaf Group in the Philippines, and
the Kurdistan Workers' Party in Turkey.
In Africa in particular, much conflict has ensued from the fact that the
borders of many former colonies were fixed in the imperialist centres of
London, Paris, Lisbon, Madrid or Brussels without a moment’s thought for the
tribal, even family, divisions they were perpetrating, and the pain and
suffering they were thereby causing. The present agonies in Zimbabwe, in the
lee of Robert Mugabe’s apparent megalomania to rule, are in part a
consequence of these errors.
The discontent of living under the partial or entire rule of a government
with no comprehension or regard for the diversity within its bounds, has
represented, and will continue to provide, the foundation for continued
insurgence in opposition to the status quo.
Capitalism and societal decay
Another important factor in terrorism is the uneven spread of wealth throughout the world, compounded by the societal decay regarded as synonymous with that wealth. It is believed by many Muslims that Western material greed and behaviour, regarded as dissolute and self indulgent, displace other purer values and together lay the foundations for decay. For example, the breakdown of the family is seen by elements in Islam as the unavoidable penetration of shallow, religiously bereft and depraved Western values. In the West, we rightly or wrongly no longer associate such facets of our lives with religion or other categories of identity.
Poverty
However, poverty in all its forms is, without doubt, the greatest single
threat to global peace, security, democracy and human rights. Poverty breeds
instability, instability breeds desperation, desperation breeds fanaticism,
and fanaticism breeds terrorists. Defeating poverty would thwart a major
driving force behind international terrorism. The poorest countries are the
breeding grounds for violence and despair. Whilst we know that the planners
if not the perpetrators of September 11 were wealthy and educated men –
indeed, bin Laden himself is a multi-millionaire from one of Saudi Arabia’s
most affluent and influential families – the caucus of support for and
acceptance of the actions they and others execute, if not the values they
espouse, emanate from the despondent and dejected poor.
It is of course morally incumbent on rich nations to share their wealth with
the poor, just as democratic countries are supposed to arrange their
economies so that their rich citizens do so with others within. But the
clearly established interrelationship between poverty and terrorism means
that it is actually in the political and security interests of rich
countries to increase their assistance to the poor nations.
Since donations have until now rested on the cusp of paltry or worse,
perhaps the realisation that the preservation of developed statehood as we
know it relies on the rapid enrichment of less-developed states, will
provide the requisite impetus for this aid to materialise in meaningful
terms so that the world's poorest people acquire the chance of living long
and fulfilling lives.
Corruption
And it is not only money that is needed. If developing countries and transitional societies are to prosper, the co-ordination of all aid under a system of solid comprehensive honest governance is essential to ensure that it provides a sustained benefit. For many years, both internal and external corruption of both donors and donees have made large-scale development assistance and associated programs anything but constructive, such that they are still often as inclined to failure now as they have been in the past. A concerted effort by developed nations to better fund, monitor and police the implementation of development programs, and a commitment by the assisted countries to themselves play by the rules they enunciate for others, will assuredly assist in the alleviation of poverty.
Aid
On the other hand, the vast majority of poor people do not resort to wilful targeting of vulnerable civilians. Political conditions and enduring feelings, either perceived or real, of indignity and frustration that have little to do with economics are what fuel many of the most extreme actions. It is thus disconcerting to contemplate the likelihood of reduced levels of assistance to developing countries when the risk of further confrontation declines, as occurred in the aftermath of the Cold War, the Gulf War, and the Bosnian and Kosovo wars.
In summary
If there were a single substantive root cause of all, or even most, terrorism, then by fixing that problem we could remove the stimuli of specific terrorist groups without encouraging others. In fact, the causes of terrorism are as varied as humanity, and they have all existed for centuries. And the great majority of peoples enduring hopeless poverty and underdevelopment, with at least equivalent causes as the terrorists, have not resorted to terrorism.
8. Why terrorism continues
Evolutionary warfare
On the one hand, terrorist bombings of civilian targets have never proved
more than an irritant, however tragic and shocking, to a well-entrenched
population which is protected by essentially effective security forces,
although they do serve to incite retribution, increase the level of
hostility to the "other" side, and weaken the influence of moderate forces
on both sides of conflicts which might otherwise be open to peaceful
settlements. Certainly, no one can or should rationally expect that the
Israelis will be driven out of their country by these tactics. Even in
Northern Ireland, where the British might at some time be persuaded to
leave, and even influence and fund Irish Protestants to relocate in England
or elsewhere, terrorism has been counterproductive.
On the other hand, terrorism persists because it works. Success encourages
repetition and repeated success inspires terrorists more than desperation.
While we are far from understanding the asymmetric theatres of warfare
created by today’s terrorists, the nature of terrorism will continue to
evolve as it always has. It was not long ago that we worried about
assassinations, bombings, and hijacking. The impasse was whether or not to
give in to the perpetrators' demands – often the release of colleagues from
captivity.
Today we fear wide-scale acts of terror – such as the use of passenger
planes as airborne missiles directed against densely populated targets,
attacks on water and power supplies, communication facilities and other
essentials to our daily lives, or suicide bombers in public places. The fact
that it was not possible to prevent the murder of dozens of civilians by a
suicide bomber in and outside a major American chain hotel in August 2003 in
Jakarta, one of the most unstable and vulnerable cities in the world, or at
the heavily guarded UN headquarters in Baghdad, suggests that the so-called
War on Terror is not even on target, let alone in sight of success.
The failure to convict the notorious Indonesian cleric Abu Bakr Bashir of at
least supporting the Bali bombing, let alone of heading up Jemaah Islamiah,
was much more the result of the refusal of the Americans to produce as
witnesses the notorious Hambali and other people in its custody at
Guantanamo Bay than by any weakness of the Indonesian legal system. Clearly
comprehensive international co-operation in this War still has a way to go,
especially apparently on the part of its most powerful and vocal advocate.
Terrorist acts are rarely accompanied by specific demands. They are not
contingent or conditional threats, and if they are, the conditions are
deliberately set so high as to be unrealistic, such as the destruction of a
way of life. Given the inaccessibility of such a goal, the terrorist’s
objective is in substance the massive destruction and murder of as many
civilians as possible.
In October 2001 there were reports of a plan to detonate in New York a ten
kiloton nuclear weapon stolen from a Russian arsenal. In early 2002, greater
Tel Aviv narrowly escaped total destruction by fireball when the planned
detonation of a chemical factory was intercepted. Tomorrow we may be faced
with terrorist mass weapons – nuclear, chemical and biological – supplied by
Iran and capable of destroying entire cities and more. There can be no more
intensive impetus for finding ways to rid our world of this scourge.
Rewards
First is what we should not do. Not only must terrorism never be
rewarded, the cause of those who employ it must be made, and must be seen to
be made, worse off as a result of the acts perpetrated. As terrorists have
their own criteria for evaluating success or failure, we must seek to make
them worse off by their own criteria. This need, however, creates its own
dilemma.
At least one element of terrorists’ success is massive publicity. All media
reports about terrorist acts in totalitarian regimes such as China and the
former Soviet Union are suppressed, whereas it is impossible for a democracy
to control the amount of publicity a terrorist act generates. The difference
between the past secrecy of the USSR and the exposure given to the
horrendous murder of schoolchildren in Beslan could hardly be more stark. To
that extent at least, democracies make the terrorists' job easier.
But publicity is not the main problem. A terrorist one day can be a hero the
next. Many founders of new states after World War 2 committed what were
described at the time as "terrorist" acts in their march towards the
achievement of their cause. Many, including the indefatigably non-violent
Gandhi and Mandela, were imprisoned for their actual or perceived
activities, several without any genre of a genuine trial. Some, like
Kenyatta, Mugabe, Begin and Mandela later became Prime Ministers or
Presidents of their countries. At least three so-called "terrorist" leaders
have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and many have received honorary
degrees from leading universities and, like President Xanana Gusmao of East
Timor, have been embraced by political and religious leaders. Apparently
there are good and bad terrorists. The difficulty lies in defining what and
who should be punished, and setting the criteria of accepted rules of law
governing struggles for self determination. Some definitions are relatively
easy. Others are much more problematic.
Lack of punishment
Even when we refrain from outright rewards for terrorists, we fail to
adequately punish their crimes if and when they are caught. Among the worst
cases in history of unpunished terrorists are the members of the Palestinian
Liberation Organisation (PLO) who, between 1968 and 1972, carried out around
50 aircraft hijacks, detonations or other destruction of commercial
airlines, and attacks on shopping malls and markets. Each act built on its
predecessor to demand the freedom of its perpetrators. It is only necessary
to recall that the release of the notorious Leila Khaled from British
custody was secured by the relatively simple device of hijacking a British
Airways (then BOAC) plane full of UK citizens, landing it in the Jordanian
desert, and threatening to blow up plane and passengers.
The pattern became clear – that terrorists engaging in these actions would
be caught but freed soon after to go home to a hero’s welcome. According to
one survey, of the 204 terrorists arrested outside the Middle East between
1968 and 1972, only three remained in prison in 1975.
The PLO was not satisfied with killing innocent civilians. From experience
they knew that their cause would attract more international attention and
similarly scant jail terms if they embarked upon international terrorism.
Despite the capture of three of the terrorists in the attack on the Munich
Olympic village, involving the murder of the entire Israeli team in cold
blood, nobody has ever stood trial for the crimes.
9. Australia and a more restrictive social contract
All these faces of terrorism feed into the communal fear. Paralysis is the consequence of these constant assurances of insidious global destruction. Paralysis even in the face of growing extremism in our own democratic governments and institutions. The question we must ask ourselves is this: How far do we allow ourselves to led away from fundamental liberal and democratic tenets in the name of fighting terrorism?
Mandatory detention
From the detainees in Guantanamo Bay to the children who until very
recently were incarcerated in our own detention camps of asylum seekers, we
have turned a blind eye to “security measures” that border on autocratic. I,
for one, do not advocate letting anyone and everyone who wants to enter this
country to do so nor would I condone a general change to the mix of people
invited to join perhaps the most successful multicultural society in the
world.
Furthermore, every asylum seeker's case must of course be assessed before
acceptance as a refugee so as to be allowed to remain in Australia. But I do
not accept that we need to lock them up for years in conditions worse than
those provided for our own criminals. And I do not agree with their removal
to offshore places whom we bribe to keep them away from Australian legal
processes provided for everyone else, even suspected terrorists.
Security laws
The right to free speech is a valuable and undeniable element of a
democratic society. Indeed there is probably no human right other than the
right to life itself which is more widely acknowledged in international and
constitutional practice than freedom of speech. However, for the protection
of the rights of others, there must be and are limits to this right.
Contrary to widespread belief, there are a large number of legal
restrictions on free speech in a society such as our own. The laws of
defamation, censorship, sedition, obscenity, contempt of court and of
parliament amongst others, all restrict free speech yet serve to protect the
rights of people and create a stable and harmonious society. In addition,
the right of free speech is doubtful, and ought in my opinion to be
tempered, even not exercised, where it causes intense personal gratuitous
hurt and insult to others who have done nothing to deserve the opprobrium.
Rank untruths and sheer prejudice should not be tolerated as elements of
free speech.
But I believe that some of our new security laws, although touted by their
promoters as representing “a combination of best practice from overseas and
innovative solutions that respond to Australia’s security needs”, go too
far. Being susceptible to arrest and detention effectively for “thinking”
bad thoughts is not in my view justified by the need for what have been
called “increased powers to law enforcement and security agencies to enhance
their capacity to prevent attacks.”
Some news outlets and our politicians would have us believe that the only
way to protect ourselves is to let them protect us. I do not agree that more
jails, longer sentences, less immigration and efforts to make us all act
what is sometimes called “Australian” provide answers to the challenges
facing us.
Expensive extended systems of social punishment have never been proved to
reduce crime and indeed increasingly represent a “crime school”. Devaluing
and subverting the very theoretical underpinnings of our legal system,
including attacking Judges and lawyers indiscriminately, ensuring that the
concepts of precedent and discretion are gradually weaned out, will leave us
with only the tokenistic shell of a fair process of justice. Slowing the
rate of multicultural growth will mean that we become less competitive and
less powerful as a nation. And the idea that we must all adhere to a set of
beliefs and behaviour that are only relevant to one particular section of
Australian society – and then only vaguely so – will merely alienate and
frustrate all the others.
Increasing levels of state control over our lives will mean an increasingly
restricted state that touts the promotion of democracy to others but does
not practise itself.
Failures
Look at what has happened, in this country, in the years since 2001:
a. Vivian Solon
In 2001, a seriously disabled Australian citizen by the name of Vivian Solon
was unlawfully removed from the country. She had lived here, as an
Australian citizen, for nigh on 15 years when she was deported to the
Philippines, a country which charged her each day she was there as an
illegal alien. Although grossly incompetent and negligent bureaucracy was
part of the reason she was sent packing from her own country, it was also
the fact that so many powers were vested in inadequately trained officials.
b. Cornelia Rau
The Palmer inquiry into the Cornelia Rau matter, which involved another
illegally detained Australian citizen, this one with mental illness, found
that Immigration officers were “authorised to exercise exceptional, even
extraordinary powers…without training, management and oversight”
6
c. Other cases
And we are told that there are two or three hundred other cases.
10. Australia and human rights
Since the forging of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Australia
has, for the most part, tried to implement the humanitarian standards that
it identifies. As a middle power with a respected human rights record, we
have been looked to and listened to by the international community on human
rights issues. This proud tradition of support for human rights and dignity
casts upon us a great responsibility. As the largest developed democracy in
our region, indeed the sixth oldest democracy in the world, Australia not
only has an obligation to speak out and act against persecution running
rampant in other countries; we have an obligation to prevent and remedy
human rights abuses on our own soil. In an international context in which
Australia sees fit to intervene in the actions of other countries, Iraq and
Afghanistan the obvious recent examples, we must ask whether in all areas of
our lives we are fit to be judged by our own standards, let alone those that
international consensus has agreed upon.
Some people label human rights principles, such as those espoused in
documents such as the Universal Declaration, as foreign ideas imposed upon
us by unattractive regimes or ideologies from elsewhere. But none of the
tenets of the Universal Declaration and the raft of international laws which
followed have in fact been forced on Australia by anyone. For one thing,
when they were passed, the UN was firmly under western control. But much
more significantly, none of their principles are foreign to us or to decent
people anywhere. All of them are recognised and accepted as part of our and
many others’ cultural and legal framework in any event.
The driving force for their enthusiastic adoption in Australian terms is the
evolution of our nation into a society where laws, employment and human
relations reflect decency and honour; where legitimate controversy is fought
and resolved with a passion devoid of stereotypes, and of minority, group or
racial defamation; where a fair sharing of our country’s resources and
benefits is open to every sector of the community; and above all, where
decisions of all kinds stem from considerations of merit and true deserts,
free from preconceptions, prejudices and prejudgments.
11. Towards peace and reconciliation
Education and mutual exposure
Ultimately these principles will only be spread by education. You cannot
legislate to make a person decent. And I do not believe that anyone can or
will blast them into or out of existence. Now, more than ever, there is an
urgent need for the perpetrators of terrorism and their intended victims to
establish firm lines of communication based on an acquired knowledge of each
other's norms of behaviour, aspirations and beliefs. And all of us must be
taught, and must teach our children from their very earliest days in life, a
tolerance and understanding of different ideas and peoples.
For whatever else we do, there is nothing more urgent and more fundamental
to peace and our own consciences than to deliberately and consciously
deflect the racial overtones flowing from the terrorism debate away from
vengeance and violence on particular groups and peoples, to a search for the
ways to solve or at least salve as many of the causes of such outrages as we
can.
It is difficult to extend forgiveness or even understanding for the murder
of innocent civilians, especially children, even if they were caught in a
crossfire not of their making. It is also a tough ask to try to deal with
fanatical martyr-driven hatred which intentionally seeks to kill children
and civilians generally. Amongst other problems is the ignorance of
different civilisations about others.
There is not even a common language of communication readily available. How
many non-Muslims have ever read one line of the Koran? What do we know of
Muslim poetry and literature, of its music and art, of its culture and
philosophies? What efforts are we making to access the personal interests
and aspirations of a billion people as a means of building understanding and
tolerance? What do they really know and understand of us? We have many
faults and our societies make many mistakes but we do cherish our freedom of
thought and association, and the right of our democratic processes to
determine the balance between the advantages and the harms of the pleasures
and practices we pursue.
In my opinion, the only alternative to a search for peaceful solutions is a
long period of cultural confrontation and worse which could get very nasty
and violent indeed. We simply must find ways to get Muslims in our own
communities everywhere to share with us the rich and beautiful elements of
their beliefs and practices, rather than the ugly and insane manifestations
of the few amongst them who do not wish to live in peace with the rest of
us, with all our faults and inadequacies. And to let us share ours with
them.
One of the tasks is to persuade peace-loving Muslims, which surely
constitute the vast majority, to confront and persuade the violent minority
to join the quest for peace and reconciliation.
None of this is or can be beyond us. Most democracies today are relatively
peaceful multicultural societies in which live and let live philosophies
survive, if not flourish. On the other side, I have been in something like
20 Muslim countries in the last several years and have met and talked to
hundreds and hundreds of their peoples. I have met none who want anyone to
be killed, still less to kill anyone themselves. All they want is what we
want – the opportunity to live peaceful lives with their families, to work
for fair reward, and to give their children opportunities for happier, safer
and more prosperous lives than they themselves have had.
I have held in my own arms Muslim children and babies dying of simply cured
diseases like measles and diarrhoea if only we could have got them the fresh
water we throw away every day just cleaning our teeth. I have looked in the
eyes of their parents as the lives of their children ebbed away, and cried
with them because I could not help to save the kids. I have seen no
different sense of love and loss than would be the case with any and every
one of us. If we can do nothing else, can we just tone down the arrogance a
fraction?
12. Conclusion
Terrorism does not have a single cause. Instead, factors including, but
not restricted to, religion, despotic political regimes, historic prejudice,
ignorance, lack of education, intolerance and poverty interact in complex
ways and to different degrees to provide the impetus for terrorising people.
Successful outcomes, publicity, and lack of punishment and rewards provide
additional momentum.
Some commentators draw a distinction between two different types of terror.
The first are those committed for feasibly attainable goals like national
liberation, self determination and freedom from persecution and poverty. The
second are those representing an unfocussed addiction to killing the
innocent for its own sake and for highly unrealistic goals like the complete
removal of a whole population or the global abolition of Western values and
its Islamisation – as is the avowed policy of Iran and of Hamas and
Hezbollah.
These observers suggest that a greater degree of ethical legitimacy can be
granted to the violent activities of the first stream of terrorist groups.
They may be right, and the world has often acted on this basis. The problem
is that it does not stop there. I believe that terrorism cannot, at any
level, be validated. However it may feel, no group should in fact be in such
a hopeless state as to have to resort to terrorism.
At the end of the day, terrorists may win the odd battle for a headline or
even recognition of their cause but history has proved that they will not
win the war on which they are embarked unless and until their cause is seen
to be just and they sit down to negotiate. All wars end. It is far
preferable that, and the fighters should be helped to see why, this step be
taken before wholesale loss of life, and gross expenditure on arms and
armaments to which the sad lot of the people for whom they claim to act has
much greater claims.
As Israeli leaders have stressed in recent days and many moderate Arab
leaders are arguing, Hezbollah or at least its philosophy will not be wiped
out by war. In order to put an end to violent terror, we must create
disincentives to terrorist acts, incapacitate those who carry them out, and
persuade those who might follow them that it is in their own interests not
to proceed with their actions. In the tradition of people like Mahatma
Gandhi, Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King, we must encourage peaceful
negotiation between nations and groups within nations to resolve disputes
and differences.
I am in favour of steps to remove tyrants and brutal leaders but do not
support pre-emptive strikes without broad international support. One reason
is that the illogical lines drawn between such examples as Iran, China and
North Korea which we do not invade, and Iraq and Afghanistan which we do
need a lot of international support to legitimise.
Basically fanatics, good or bad, will always be replaced by others, and it
is mostly impossible to choose when to intervene and when not to do so. In
my opinion, we should not initiate massive state violence to remove
offenders unless there is a wide consensus that there is no other way, and
firm binding international commitments and funds to carry out the necessary
reparations. Instead, however difficult the task, we must devise ways to let
terrorists and their supporters see the benefits of non-violence and then
ensure that genuine non-violent movements receive justice for their causes
and assistance towards their peaceful achievement.
Binding our own country in webs of anti-terrorist measures that leave our
own citizens at risk of state-sanctioned punishment for little cause, is not
a way forward either. We must, above all, learn about our neighbours, about
terrorism and about its causes. The way forward is, and always has been,
education. Money, resources and, most importantly, our very souls, must be
dedicated to the understanding of why other cultures are the way they are,
and how extremist groups can be nullified. It is only through education and
a firm conviction in our own ideals of freedom and justice that we will ever
be in a world finally wrenched free from the malevolence of terror.
It can never be wrong to be right – which on the determination to confront
terrorism we certainly are. But the history of conflict has taught us that
it can also never be right to be wrong. When attacked, creating the need for
self defence, we certainly must fight but we cannot ultimately win this
battle by violence and arms alone. We must win over the hearts and minds of
people and, to paraphrase Nelson Mandela, change their attitudes including
our own. And we must start this task just as soon as we can. In my view,
there is not a moment to lose.
____________
1 Bandura, Albert (1998) "Mechanisms of Moral Disengagement", in Walter Reich (ed.) Origins of Terrorism: Psychologies, Ideologies Theologies, and States of Mind. Washington DC: Woodrow Wilson Centre Press, p.165
2 Rapaport, David (1984) Fear and Trembling: Terror in Three Religious Traditions, in American Political Science Review 78(3) pp658-677
3 Rapaport, David (1998) "Sacred Terror: A Contemporary Example for Islam", in Walter Reich (ed.) Origins of Terrorism: Psychologies, Ideologies, Theologies and States of Mind. Washington DC: Woodrow Wilson Centre Press, p123
4 The Economist, 24 November 2001
5 Anti-Defamation League (ADL)
Osama bin Laden. Online http://www.adl.org/terrorism_america/bin_l.asp
6 pg ix The Palmer Report: Inquiry into the
Circumstances of the Immigration Detention of Cornelia Rau: July 2005