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Steady
progression of extremism
What
others
say..........
From crisis to crisis, the
world has stumbled, confounded, in its ‘war against terror’, with
polices marked by incoherence and damning contradictions. Meanwhile,
the forces of extremist violence and those who secure their
inspiration from the ideologies of hate are recovering from their
brief disorientation to consolidate their networks and resume
operations. The opportunities of the fleeting consensus that had
crystallized in the wake of the 9/11 attacks have largely
dissipated, and justifications of terrorism are once again
eloquently articulated by those who speak of ‘freedom fighters’ and
‘root causes’, deliberately muddying the waters and obstructing
coherent counter-terrorism responses. And while a narrowly defined
group of terrorists – those that have targeted or are seen to
threaten the US – are hunted relentlessly across the world, the
pursuit of a ‘false peace’ has become endemic among other victims of
terrorism, as ‘world leaders’ pressure democracies to enter into
unprincipled negotiations with terrorists, mass murderers, and the
rogue regimes and state entities that support and sponsor them.
It is crucial, now, to directly
confront these obfuscations, for these have led to ambivalence,
vacillation and error, undermining the international will to respond
adequately to the gravity of the challenge of terrorism. The ‘fellow
travellers of terrorism’ have long drawn their justifications from a
large body of liberal literature that applies the rationale of
revolutionary violence against authoritarian systems to terrorist
violence against democratic systems. Many of the violent movements
derive their legitimacy from a discourse that has been taken from
classical anti-colonial and revolutionary movements, and transferred
uncritically to contemporary terrorist movements based on religious,
ethnic and cultural isolationism. Crucially, the narrow and
exclusionary ideologies that inspire most of the violent movements
in the world today do not concede to other sub-groups and minorities
the very rights that they demand for themselves, and are often
guilty of victimizing and mistreating other cultural, religious and
ethnic groups within their areas of domination.
It must be understood that terrorism
is an ideologically neutral and global method of warfare. While a
single ideological form of terrorism – Islamist fundamentalist
terrorism (neglecting its many internal variations) – has tended to
exhaust much of the international attention and response, terrorism
is in no way uniquely tied to this ideology and has been, and
continues to be adopted as a favoured method of warfare and state
destabilisation by a wide range of actors, of whom many are entirely
unconnected with Islamism. It is consequently necessary to
understand that any apparent successes attributed to the use of
terrorism (including successes in securing a range of ‘intermediate
goals’ – one of which is the survival or persistence of the movement
itself), produces imitators. Terrorism is, consequently, "not the
problem of its victim societies alone. Its impact reverberates
across the globe."1 It is no longer
possible for nations to respond only when their own interests are
targeted. Foreign policies cannot continue to be constructed on a
near term considerations of the ‘interests of state’. It is now
necessary to delegitimise and defeat terrorism in all its
manifestations lest it consumes us.
There is, therefore, urgent need to
identify and neutralise the sources of terrorist mobilisation; to
recognize that there are cultures of accommodation and distinct
cultures of hate. To try to apply the norms of an accommodative
culture to a culture of hate is to place the former at a definitive
disadvantage, and to yield all initiative to the more vigorous,
belligerent, determined and violent side. The cultures of hate – and
the many states and regimes that support such cultures – will have
to be identified and targeted by a coordinated range of policies
that must include coercive diplomacy, economic sanctions,
international isolation, and, where necessary, direct, determined
and non-discriminatory military interventions. The ‘steady
progression of extremism’2 must be
halted. And while counter-terrorist responses will always include
significant military, intelligence and policing components, the war
of ideas and information will remain critical in any eventual
resolution.
l
Ajai Sahni; Faultlines l |
