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Even Osama Bin Laden has a point

19 May 2003


Suicide bombers have big commitment to their cause. That's why they do it. Their terrorists acts do not invalidate the cause, they merely push it up the agenda. That's why, when the cause is popular, terrorism often works.

The renewed spate of terrorist bombings in the Middle East and North Africa encourages a conditioned response. Part of that response is, frankly, racist; part is self-interested; part of it is resigned. The racist element sees the problem as literally uncivilised: an Arab or, more widely, Islamic phenomenon fuelled by distasteful emotional religiosity that one would not expect to encounter in the Church of England. There was a similar British attitude to Irish terrorism, from both sides in that conflict, in the 'seventies and 'eighties. The political passions that led to murder were alien to the English traditions of political discourse and seemed to justify an anti-Irish prejudice. Out of self-interest people avoided Northern Ireland as they now do the Middle East, and out of resignation they sighed over the killings and got on with their lives.

The practice of suicide bombing entrenches this reaction. Suicide remains a Christian taboo that carries over into Western secular society. Suicide assaults the complacency of the success culture. It represents ultimate failure in the pursuit of prosperity and happiness and it is deeply unsettling for those for whom prosperity and the pursuit of happiness are sufficient goals. From the Western point of view suicide bombing is peculiarly barbaric not only because it kills individuals but because it contradicts the Western belief in individual worth.

Because of this, politicians and the media instinctively characterise suicide terrorism as cowardly. More thoughtful commentators have got themselves into a good deal of trouble for questioning this characterisation, despite the fact that self-immolation in support of a cause (any cause) evidently requires a great deal of what we would usually call bravery. The "coward" tag comes from the fact that the victims are defenceless and could not see the attacker coming. It this what distinguishes them from aerial bombers, that the victims of aerial bombardment can see the planes coming and have a chance to run away?

The reality is that all politically-motivated criminal or terrorist acts require a great deal of commitment, idealism and loyalty to the cause. They require the perpetrator to pay a high price in terms of risk to themselves and their liberty. Suicide bombers pay the highest price of all. Committed "terrorist" groups do well in achieving their objectives precisely because they are so committed. Zionist terrorists active in Palestine in the 1940s are a good example; Irish republican terrorists have similarly seen huge progress in furthering their political agenda.
Known Zionist terrorists became respected leaders of the Israeli state; known republican terrorists now have senior political leadership in Northern Ireland. The same pattern can be found with so-called terrorists or self-styled freedom fighters across the world.

It should not be surprising that terrorism works. The power of the gun, the missile and the bomb is well attested. These are weapons of war, designed to kill, and war theorists know well that when it comes to achieving victory commitment is worth a good number of divisions. The very fact that the Palestinian issue remains alive after 55 years and continues to dominate the geo-political agenda demonstrates the truth of this.

Western politicians, faced with the fall-our from this continuing Arab resentment, also speak of "commitment" in order to conjure up an equivalence in this balance of determination. In reality, however, as they approach their "war on terror" they find their own forces bitterly divided. The reason is clear. Successful causes attract commitment because they are attractive. They contain an element of righteousness assaulted, whether in the political oppression of a minority, or of a majority by a minority, or the displacement of a people from its land, or the suppression of a culture or language, or economic hardship, or military occupation. The cause is, naturally, most attractive to the people who are doing the suffering. But if the suffering is genuine, and the cause can be seen to have justice at its root, it will attract wider support from people for whom justice is itself a material political concern.

This is why many Americans backed the IRA. It is why many people in Europe and the U.S. back the Palestinian cause. These supporters deplore the violence of terrorism but they recognise that the violence does not invalidate the cause. Often (as in Palestine) the context of the cause is inherently violent; the violence comes from both sides. That may not justify the violence, but it allows people to separate in their minds the violence from the cause.

These supporters come in all grades. There are those who put their hands in their wallets or their feet on the ground. There are those who talk passionately at dinner parties. There are those who keep their thoughts to themselves. And there are those who do not even have thoughts, not conscious ones, but for whom a niggling feeling somewhere is telling them that something is wrong.

These divisions of the doubters may not themselves bar arms but they mean that the war on terror cannot succeed in its own, simplistic terms. The people of Europe, North America, Japan, Australia and elsewhere have neither the collective will nor the moral certainty to go to the extremes that would be necessary to attempt to neutralise terrorist protest. But terrorism has its limitations, too. It rarely achieves its objectives on its own. Its political function is to draw attention to an issue; to make real progress the terrorists know that they must move at some point into the political sphere.

That movement is hard to orchestrate. Established powers hate to negotiate with terrorists. Terrorists are reluctant to give up the one thing that has engaged the established powers with their cause. In practice the way forward is to address the issue, not the terrorism. Otherwise, if you go to war, you had better hope that your commitment is greater than that of people willing to blow themselves up for their cause.


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