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I fully agree with Afsaneh Najmabadi ["Wrong, regardless"] that we must categorically condemn the calamity of 9/11 in no uncertain terms. Yet, we cannot ignore the fact that many decent people in all Middle Eastern countries, while expressing sympathy for the victims, tend to see the pathological attack on America as an understandable response to U. S. policies in the region. To the extend that the war on terrorism pursues murderers and murderous organizations, as distinguished from being a ploy to suppress dissent, it must include a concern for the legitimate grievances that provide moral harbor for the random killers. Over the past year I have lectured on this theme before a dozen university and community groups. Based on the comments I have heard from various audiences, I am convinced that most Americans are anxious to hear explanations on the sources of the resentment many Middle Easterners feel toward Washington. This is a delicate challenge because one has to show the logic of the resentment without sounding soft on terrorists or insensitive to their victims. Below is an example of my attempts to meet the challenge. It is the text of a speech I gave, under the sponsorship of the Vermont Council on the Humanities, in the Vermont State House in Montpelier on February 6, 2002. Modern terrorism blurs the distinction between war and crime. The September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon represent both an act of war against a sovereign state and a crime against humanity. Terrorism has existed throughout history. The most famous predecessors of modern terrorists are the Zealots who fought the Romans in the first century CE, the Assassins who operated in the Islamic world from 11th to 13th century and the Thugs of India who were active for hundreds of years until the late 19th century. (1) Contemporary terrorism can be divided into two general groupings, national and
transnational. National terrorists represent separatist, independent or liberation
objectives. They use violence against innocent individuals as part of a strategy
for identifiable political goals. Transnational terrorism, on the other hand, is
ideological, religious, apocalyptic and amorphous in its justification or demand.
What did the planners and executors of the September 11 attacks expect to accomplish?
Psychological explanations may provide a clue to their mindset, but they cannot help
us find a rational or negotiable purpose in their acts.
Apocalyptic prophecies envision a series of catastrophes as signs of the Messiah's imminent appearance or reappearance. The millenarians are convinced that God sets the exact date of the return, but they nevertheless want to speed the process along through prayer, repentance, self-sacrifice and terrorism. Members of al Qaeda (Arabic for foundation), like all politically motivated terrorists, see themselves as inspired heroes at war against powerful enemies. As a manager of terror, Osama bin Laden claims to speak for Islam and the grievances of Muslims not only against their own governments but, more importantly, against the secular West in general and America in particular. His message has various degrees of resonance among the peoples of the Middle East, not out of sympathy for his terrorism but because the corrupt and cruel regimes ruling them depend on the American power for their survival. The first definition of terrorism in the Oxford English Dictionary refers to "government by intimidation as carried out by the party in power in France during the Revolution of 1789 - 1797." This definition fits the governing system of nearly all contemporary Middle Eastern states. It is indeed a sad truth that various forms of despotism or autocracy reign in the region. In a spectrum ranging from rule by consent of the governed and rule by coercion, I place Turkey at center right and Iraq at the dead end, one resembling a semi democracy and the other a truly criminal state. Except for Israel, the rest of regimes in the area fall somewhere in between.
The familiar images of sex, violence and consumer goods are provocative and give
rise to the kind of expectations that are bound to be frustrated, which, in turn,
causes resentment toward the source of the seductive but inaccessible images. This
resentment, however, has nothing to do with terrorism; otherwise we should be facing
armies of terrorists from Africa, Asia, Latin America and other places where acute
poverty exists. The causes of terrorism are too complex to be reduced to economic
deprivation or cultural alienation. The American government and its allies have done an effective job of responding
to the planners and sponsors of the 9/11 attacks. What remains to be done is to address
the moral harboring of terrorists. We can eliminate terrorists and their training
camps with cruise missiles, precision bombing, and Special Forces, but these instruments
are not helpful in attending to the people who provide a base of popular sympathy
for terrorists or terrorism. We need to persuade the poor, the frustrated, the humiliated
and the oppressed that America does not see them as objects to be manipulated and
abused. Cruse missiles can deal with the terrorists, but they cannot remedy the kind
of hurt and abandonment that enhance the cultivation of new terrorists. To understand how ordinary people could come to resent U. S. policies to such
an extend that they are willing to overlook the cruelty and criminality of terrorist
acts, I will briefly illustrate four instances of American involvement in the political
affairs of the region in the course of which common people came to perceive U. S.
behavior as callous, insulting and humiliating. The anti Soviet Afghan war, the Iran
- Iraq war of the 1980s, the Persian Gulf war 1991 and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
are the four cases I will discuss to illustrate my point. As the war dragged on, a number of Arab states discreetly emptied their prisons
of homegrown troublemakers and sent them off to the jihad with the fervent hope that
they might not return. Over the ten years of war as many as 25, 000 Arabs may have
passed through Pakistan and Afghanistan." (3) This was the time when Osama bin
Laden and America were fighting on the same fight. Prior to the war, militant Islamic fundamentalism had little support in Afghan society. American and Saudi money enabled the Afghan and Pakistani radical puritans to build a movement and wield clout among Afghan warriors. The orphan children of the war were sent to madrasses (religious schools) in Pakistan to study the Koran and learn fighting skills to become future soldiers. Many of these children, often referred to as the children of jihad, were born in Pakistan refugee camps. The young Taliban (religious students) grew up knowing nothing about their own country. They lived and were indoctrinated in a community of brothers, without women - mothers or sisters. These orphan boys only studied or memorized the Koranic injunctions and edicts. As Ahmad Rashid has observed:
In its decade long war with the Soviet Union, Afghanistan suffered more than a million dead and 2 million injured. At the end of the war, there were 6 million Afghan refugees in neighboring Pakistan and Iran. Moreover, most of the wealthy and educated Afghans moved to Europe, North America and Australia. In February 1989, the Soviet troops left Afghanistan but their departure, instead of bringing peace to the country, turned out to be the beginning of a national disaster. Of all the resources the United States devoted to the task of containing the Soviet Union during the Cold War, the amount spent in Afghanistan has to be regarded as the most profitable investment of the period. For the defeat the Afghan fighters inflicted on the Soviet army contributed to and expedited the demise of Communism.
One could expect that Mr. Reagan's successor would want to help the people who were so generously praised by his boss. Instead, President Bush quit Afghanistan and passively watched it to "spun into anarchy [and become] the home of a new and little understood threat; the grieved Arab extremists." (5) In early 1990s, the Arab extremists, under the leadership of Osama bin Laden,
took sanctuary in lawless Afghanistan and transformed al Qaeda, an already existing
militant group in Egypt, into a unique transnational terrorist network. Ben Ladin's
financial resources and organizational skill were crucial to al Qaeda's appeal and
operation. Thomas Friedman has described Osama bin Laden as a cross between Charlie
Manson and Jack Welch. It is hard to improve this description. On August 20, 1998, the United States launched one hundred Tomahawk cruise missiles into Osama bin Laden's residence as retaliation against his presumed involvement in the bombing of U. S. embassy buildings in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam. And then again in May 2001 the Bush administration gave the Taliban $43 million for supposedly outlawing the cultivation of opium. This was a reward for an ally against the drug war. To my knowledge, Robert Sheer of the Los Angeles Times was the only journalist who wrote a critical article about the gift to the Taliban. It is worth noting that in the winter of 2000 a scholar connected to the Republican
party, Zelmay Khalilzad published an insightful article about Afghanistan in The
Washington Quartery, urging American foreign policy makers to reengage in Afghanistan
and try to confront Taliban's sponsorship of terrorism and to regional stability.
Since Afghanistan was hardly on the American radar screen, it is doubtful that either
the Clinton administration or anyone on candidate Bush's foreign policy team even
read the article. Mr. Khalilzad is an American of Afghan origin and after the establishment
of Hamid Karsai's interim government, President Bush appointed him as his special
envoy to Afghanistan.
When Iraq dropped chemical bombs on Iranian troops, Washington chose to be mute.
A number of European states and international human rights organizations raised the
issue but the Reagan administration remained indifferent. Saddam Hussein was considered
an asset at the time and Washington chose to overlook the incident. Days after the
ceasefire took effect in August 1988, Iraq used poison gas against its own Kurdish
population and Washington did not object. Thousands of civilians died as a result
of Iraq's repeated use of chemical weapons, but there was no talk of U.S. or UN sanction
against Iraq. Washinton's silence in the face of Iraq's use of chemical weapons gave
Saddam Hussein the impression that he could continue his weapons program unimpeded.
During the 1980s, US companies sold Iraq more than 1 billion dollars worth of
the components needed to build nuclear weapons and diverse types of missiles, including
the infamous Scud. According to a 1994 Senate report, private American suppliers
licensed by the US Department of Commerce, exported a variety of biological and chemical
materials to Iraq from 1985 through 1989. As the Senate report states, "these
biological materials were not attenuated or weakened and were capable of reproduction.
It was later learned that these microorganisms exported by the United States, were
identical to those the United Nations inspectors found and removed from the Iraqi
biological warfare program." The exports continued to at least November 28,
1989, despite evidence that Iraq had used chemical and biological weapons as early
as 1984. In short, Saddam Hussein interpreted the attitude of the Reagan and Bush
administrations toward him as a green light to pursue his own expansionist agenda. In early March 1991 heavy clashes in Basra, a city in southern Iraq, were reported between Shiites and the Republican Guards, Saddam Hussein's elite troops. The next day Iraq expelled all foreign news reporters from the country and acknowledged that it was facing an internal rebellion. After the signing of the cease-fire agreement between Iraq and the U. S. led alliance, we also learned that Baghdad's 300,000 strong Republican Guard had largely survived the war. When the Republican Guards used helicopter gunships and shelled the civilian demonstrators in Basra and Karbala in southern Iraq, president Bush declared that Iraq's use of the helicopters to suppress the rebellion violated the cease-fire agreement but he did nothing about it. Nevertheless, the Shiites managed to take control of Hilla, a town about a hundred
miles south of Baghdad. During the same period, the Kurds rebelled in the northern
part of country and claimed control of wide areas, including Kirkuk, a major oil-producing
center and fourth largest city in Iraq. After a week of vacillation and issuance
of vague threats, it was reported on March 27 that President Bush had decided to
let Hussein put down the rebellions rather than splintering Iraq. After suppressing
the Shiites in the south, the Republican Guards went north to attack the Kurds. As
the Kurdish irregulars faced Saddam's superior forces, hundreds of thousands of Kurds
fled into the snow-covered mountains, facing the threat of death from starvation
and disease. In short, the United States incited the rebels and then deserted them,
accepting the annihilation of tens of thousands of Kurds and Shiites. The result
was that the rebels' praise for Bush turned to curses. Many came to believe that
Washington purposely betrayed them. Both alternatives involved uncertainty. President Bush chose the second path because it promised to restore American policy to its prewar status. In this scenario, Bush would have liked to replace Hussein with another strongman, but the nature and organization of the Baathist regime precluded such as possibility. The first choice could have shocked the Persian Gulf dictatorships because it would have implied that the United States was willing to cope with the unpredictability of popular political competition. It is no wonder, then, that the president embraced the second option and quickly informed his critics that the war "was not about democracy." Indeed, it soon became evident that Bush's characterization of Hussein as "Baghdad's
dictator" was intended more to please the American public than to condemn dictatorship
in the Middle East. However one might disagree with the decision to let Hussein reconsolidate
his power, it was not too difficult to see the cold logic of the move in persuading
Washington's allies in the Persian Gulf to see American military presence in the
area necessary for their security. In this regard, the emasculated Saddam Hussein
has been quite useful to U. S. strategy over the past decade. From the very beginning Ariel Sharon, a militant and influential promoter of the
settlements, rejected the idea and set out to destroy it. Sharon was opposed to both
the Israeli-Egyptian and the Israeli-Jordanian peace treaties. He was also opposed
to the withdrawal of Israeli army from Lebanon. American officials acknowledge that
Israeli settlements are a violation of the UN Security Counsel Resolutions 242 and
338, but they fall short of admitting that the settlements will negate the central
promise of the Oslo accord in regard to the creation of a sovereign and viable Palestinian
state. Rabin's killer expressed 'no regret' for his deed and simply claimed that he had
"acted on orders from God." On the Palestinian side, Hamas (Islamic Resistance
Movement), the promoter and organizer of terror against Israeli civilians, immerged
in the late 1980s from the poorer segments of Palestinian society. There is a parallel
development between the growth of Israeli settlements in the occupied territories
and the expansion of Hamas as an organization. In early 1990s, Hamas was a marginal
group with limited political influence. Today, it has become a popular movement easily
capable of recruiting suicide bombers. Another "researcher compared the Gaza Strip on the eve of the Intifada to a pressure cooker, containing 'overcrowding, poverty, hatred, violence, oppression, poor sanitation, anger, frustration, drugs and crime'" (11) Fifteen years ago, 2500 Israelis settled in the Gaza Strip controlled 28% of the land. Today, the number of settlers has increased to 6500, and they keep increasing their control of the land. During the same period, the number of Israeli settlers on the West Bank increased
from fewer than 30,000 to over 200,000. So much of the underground water reserves
in both the West Bank and Gaza are diverted toward the settler areas that the settlers
use twelve times as much water as do Palestinians. As a consequence, the amount of
irrigated Arab land in the occupied territories has drastically declined. Even in
East Jerusalem, writes Amos Elon, former senior editor of Ha'aretz, "despite
repeated warnings that unfair treatment of Palestinian Jerusalemites in providing
education, housing, sanitation, and other social services might lead to disaster,
the discrimination against them Öcontinued to this day." (12)
Since the occupation of the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem began in 1967, the population of these areas has more than doubled. This means that the mindset, the perceptions and the sensibilities of nearly 90% of Palestinians living in the territories are shaped by the harsh and humiliating conditions of life under military occupation. Palestinians want their own state. They resent being stateless and ruled by foreign military occupiers who plan to make their lives so miserable that they would choose to leave in mass. It may well be that an independent Palestine will become another dictatorship in the region. As the sorry human rights record of the Palestinian Authority shows, citizens of the future Palestine may have to initiate a new democracy movement against their own entrenched rulers. In such eventuality some Palestinians will probably continue to blame outside powers for their plight, but this type of scapegoating is a symptom of post-colonial mentality and largely benign. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is about nationalism and occupation. Terrorism is largely a bi-product of the stalemate in the conflict. In 1993, when the Oslo accord was made public, 90% of Palestinians were hopeful
that negotiations between the Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority could
result in the creation of a sovereign Palestine and peaceful coexistence with Israel.
Today, over 90% have lost all hope in negotiation with Israelis. They are convinced
that Israel intends to expel them from their land. The continuation of the confrontation
can only serve the religious fundamentalists of both sides who reject the idea of
a peaceful solution to their conflict as sinful treason. Ariel Sharon's landslide victory in the 2001 elections was also the result of
terrorist attacks on Israeli civilians. Similarly, the growing popularity of Hamas
in the occupied territories is the result of settlement expansion and Sharon's policy
of assassination and bombing. In Israel, the violence of the last two years has led
to the development of a mutually reinforcing perception and perspective between Hamas
and Likud hardliners.
When Palestine Liberation Organization under Arafat's leadership began negotiation with Israelis in 1991, Hamas and Islamic Jihad issued leaflets 'denouncing the impending 'conference of surrender' and the 'sell-out of Palestine'" (16) The leaders of these organizations have repeatedly rejected the idea of Israel as a sovereign state. The hard-line elements opposed to dialogue and reconciliation used to represent
a small part of the population on both sides of the divide, but in recent years their
political clout has been increasing along with settlement expansion and mounting
casualties in violent encounters. The more fearful and frustrated people feel in
their everyday life, the more the hard-line fanatics influence their perception,
behavior and expectation. Today, the hardliners control both the Israeli government
and the Palestinian struggle against the occupation. The problem in the U. S. - Israeli alliance arises when the men with most influence over the actual Israeli design for the occupied territories claim to have a religious mission to control the 'biblical land' of Israel; and they quote the Genesis to prove their case: "to your offspring I assign the land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates" (Genesis: 15:18.) The question facing American foreign policymakers is whether they should finance and defend the enactment of revealed edicts. We need an answer soon because the government of Israel is currently using U. S. military equipments to fulfill the mission. There is another voice in Israel to which we should all listen with care. It is the voice represented by Amos Oz:
But this small voice is extremely dangerous for us: it may easily seduce us into forgetting that with or without Arab terrorism, there is no justification whatsoever for the lasting occupation and suppression of the Palestinian people by Israel. We have no right to deny Palestinians their natural right to self-determination. Two huge oceans could not shelter America from terrorism; the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza by Israel has not made Israel secure - on the contrary, it makes our self-defense much harder and more complicated. The sooner this occupation ends, the better it will be for Palestinians and Israeli alike. IT HAS BECOME A TRUISM TO REFER TO AMARICA as the only superpower in the world. To appreciate the global concerns of the United States, it is helpful to see America as the world's last imperial power as well. The American empire is not legally or formally constituted, but it is a de facto reality nevertheless. How else can we describe a nation that commands more than 60 military base complexes in 20 different countries? The CIA coined the term 'blowback,' but it is now widely used in writings on international
relations and American foreign policy. In his new book, Blowback, Chalmers
Johnson defines the term as "the unintended consequences of policies that were
kept from the American people." Then he goes on to add that "what the daily
press reports as the malign acts of 'terrorists' or 'drug lords' or 'rogue states'
or 'illegal arms merchants' often turn out to be blowback from earlier American operations."
(18) Between 1989 and September 11, 2001, Washington quite accurately considered its
support for the Afghan mujahedeen against the Soviet army a success story. During
this period, Afghanistan was hardly an issue on the American foreign policy agenda.
Feminist groups in Europe and North America and international human rights organizations
repeatedly condemned the cruelties of the Taliban, but they were hardly noticed in
the circles of power. Only 3 countries had recognized the Taliban as the legitimate
government of Afghanistan, but the non-recognition was more the result of an abstract
contempt for the medieval ways of the Taliban then out of concern for their victims.
There is a significant middle class with a modern education and a secular orientation
in nearly all nations in the region. These middle classes are currently silenced
or marginalized, but sooner or later they will become influential actors in the politics
of their respective countries. The worldwide democracy movement is bound to reach
the gates of the Middle East and Washington, in the interest of America's national
security and democratic values, ought to encourage and be identified with this eventuality.
The paradox and its challenge are clear: the United States has to acknowledge the
dilemma and begin to search for an innovative approach to the unique circumstances
of each country in the region. The crimes of September 11 were committed by a group of psychopaths, not a people or a nation. Such creatures are rare but known to all human groups regardless of race, religion or nationality. Fanaticism can plague both believers and non-believers; cruel actors are not bound by metaphysics in justifying their acts. In the age of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, the cruelty of terrorism is the ultimate threat we face. Thus while the assault on the agents and sponsors of terror continues, we should do our utmost to deprive the terrorists of the popular sympathy they receive. We must deal with the conditions and circumstances that produce this sympathy. American foreign policymakers can lead the world in meeting this challenge by becoming more sensitive to the daily humiliation and resentment of those who live under the rule of cruel governments. Author Mansour Farhang is professor of Diplomatic History/International Relations at Benningtron College, Vermont. He received his B.A. from the University of Arizona in 1965 and Ph.D. from Claremont Graduate School in 1970. He served as revolutionary Iran's first ambassador to the United Nations, resigning in protest when Khomeini regime refused to accept U.N. Commission of Inquiryís recommendation to release American hostages in Teheran. Early in Iran-Iraq war served as envoy in negotiations with international peace missions. Current advisory board member of Middle East Watch, a branch of Human Rights Watch. Notes 1 - Rapoport, David C., "Fear and Trembling: Terrorism in Three Religious Traditions," The American Political Science Review, Vol. 78, September 1984, No. 3, pp. 658 ó 677. 2 - Stern, Jessica, The Ultimate Terrorists, Harvard University Press, 1999, p. 70. 3 - Bearden, Milton, "Afghanistan, Graveyard of Empire," Foreign Affairs, November/December 2001, p. 24. 4 - Rashid, Ahmad, Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil & Fundamentalism In Central Asia, Yale University Press, 2000, p. 33. 5 - Bearden, p. 24. 6 - Giandomenico Picco, Man Without A Gun: One Diplomatís Secret Struggle to Free the Hostages, Fight Terrorism, and End a War, Times Book, 1999, pp. 88 ó 90. 7 - Blum, William, "Anthrax for Export: U.S. companies sold Iraq the ingredients for a witchís brew" The Progressive (April, 1998). 8 - Ibid. 9 - Mark Juergensmeyer, Terror in the Mind of
God, University of California Press, 2000, p. 47 10 - Benny Morris, Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist ó Arab Conflict, 1881 ó 2001, Vintage Books, p. 564. 11 - Ibid. 12 - Amos Elon, "The Deadlocked City," The New York Review of Books (2001), p. 10. 13 - Avishai Margalit, "Settling Scores," The New York Review of Book (September 20, 2001), p. 24. 14 - Avishai Margalit, p. 23. 15 - Thomas L. Friedman, "Land Or Life?" New York Times (November 19, 1995), Sec. 4, p.15 16 - Morris, p. 615. 17 - Amos Oz, "Struggling Against Fanaticism," New York Times (September 14, 2001), opinion page. 18 - Chalmers Johnson, Blowback: The Costs and
Consequences of American Empire, Owl Books, 2000, p. 8.
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Reflections on transnational terrorism
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