Terror out of control

The message from the terrorist attacks in Paris last Friday is loud and clear. Our world is not safe anymore, anywhere; world powers and the UN organisation representing them have all failed in maintaining orderly and peaceful relations among peoples and nations. And, most alarmingly, terror is becoming a global phenomenon too wild and too strong for any means available to vulnerable countries to control.

The moment we heard of the attacks, we, as many others must have also done, pointed our fingers at Daesh, just as we used to automatically accuse Al Qaeda in similar situations.

It may still be too early to determine who the real perpetrators are, but until investigation proves otherwise, Daesh remains a suitable suspect. In fact, the group did claim responsibility for the attacks, and initial investigations so far point in its direction.

It does not really matter much who committed this latest barbarity. It falls well in line with a vicious wave of large-scale terrorist attacks hitting indiscriminately in many countries and places.

Daesh is becoming the undisputed brand name for terrorism. Many smaller organisations have quickly identified with Daesh all over the Middle East and North Africa, perhaps as an attractive brand for recruitment as well as a weighty force to reckon with. 

Neither in the Arab region nor elsewhere in the world did terrorism start with Daesh, though so far Daesh is the most brutal. It is most unlikely, nevertheless, that the world will turn terror-free after the destruction of Daesh. 

Daesh is no more than a phase, a very vicious phase of cruelty and barbarity, in a firmly formulated trend of self-assertion by resorting to the most lethal and most extreme, horrifying, violence, mostly against easy targets of vulnerable and defenceless civilians.

The first part of this century witnessed the worst acts of wholesale terror mostly targeting civilians, with the major attacks occurring in New York and Washington in 2001; in Madrid in 2004; in London and Jordan in 2005; and now in Paris, for the second time this year.

Other recent attacks of the same kind hit a very busy civilian quarter in the Lebanese capital of Beirut, causing dozens of deaths and injuries. That is in addition to the downing of the Russian tourist passenger plane over Sinai, in Egypt, with over two hundred deaths, which was also claimed by Daesh two weeks ago.

There were dozens of other terrorist attacks in between all over this region. That clearly means that terror has been over the years digging deeper and spreading wider.

It also means that the root causes were left to harden the foundations of terror, incubating conditions away from due world attention: injustice, marginalisation of international law, corrupt politics, utter neglect of the rights of the weak and the poor, double standards, aggression, and absence of values and principles in international dealings.

The UN system, which is no more than the resultant of the common will of UN member states, has failed all along in dealing successfully with any of the above issues; indeed, rarely did it resolve any major world dispute.

If terror is in large part an indirect outcome of desperation, living hardships, hopelessness, social misery and despair such malfunctions have precipitated, it does not mean it can be tolerated or justified, particularly when it is this type of barbaric terror that makes everyone’s life unsafe. 

However, we ought to admit that gentle popular protests and expressions of discontent do tend to escalate when not adequately addressed by the concerned authorities, whether at local or international level.

Neither does any amount of social or political injustice create suicide terrorists. It indeed does not create terrorists, but in the meantime it creates crowds of vulnerable individuals, even groups, ready for recruitment by those evil manipulators who feed on the crises and the misery of the innocent, brainwash them, appeal to their religious sentiment and use them as fuel for their horrific, anarchic, brutal and destructive operations against ordinary and peaceful life.

Invoking religion for justifying actions that violate the simplest and the most cardinal values of any faith is not new either.

“Jihad” — wrongly translated, as religious war — which is now a synonym for “Islamic terror”, was strongly called for as a legitimate struggle by known world powers to utilise Islamic fervour against Soviet presence in Afghanistan four decades ago.

That many of those who were recruited to join a “holy war” to liberate a Muslim country from occupying communist “infidels”, had changed the direction of their guns towards their recruiters did not happen in a vacuum.

Many Western analysts (Robert Pape’s “Dying to Win”, Random House 2005, as one example) linked terror to certain causes, not to justify, but to explain and to help prescribe cure.

Pape does also challenge the assumption that the rising trend of suicide terrorism was mainly linked to Islamic fundamentalism. Religion, however, has been deeply dragged in the conflict, with the worst crimes committed in its name.

Mainstream consensus now is for a two-tier strategy for fighting all terrorist organisations, perhaps with Daesh as a priority due to the threat its actions now entail.

Daesh has first to be fought and destroyed as a force. That is the military phase, which is very urgent.

The ideology Daesh has been poisoning young minds with has to be dealt with next, but that is going to be a long-term process that involves education as well as massive intercultural debate to reinstate the values of diversity; coexistence on the basis of mutual acceptance and mutual respect; and the articulation of citizenry as a unifying factor for peoples and nations.

But there is a lot more to be done if violence, terrorism and lawlessness have to be eradicated from our societies.

World powers must realise that injustice, particularly when perpetrated by democracies and strong states, no matter how localised, can with time transform into many shapes of evil.

There is a lot of injustice around. We should not dream of the perfect world. But with a gradual return to an international order where law is respected, where fairness and justice govern international dealings, and where all existing conflicts are resolved rightly and lawfully, we can expect a much more peaceful world than the one we have now.