Understanding 21st Century Terror

To understand terrorism it is critical to engage in dialogue with the terrorist to understand the cause. By understanding, it then becomes possible to reduce or even eliminate acts of terror.

From a British prospective we draw on our experience of terrorist acts by the Irish Republican Army, the IRA, whose cause was essentially political, a united Ireland separated entirely from British rule.

The history of the conflict serves to remind us that after the invasion, Irish men and women resisted British rule for 800 years and fought a military campaign against occupation. Ireland was eventually partitioned by an act of Parliament without the consent of the Irish people.

In Ireland we witnessed military intervention to quell riots and ‘internment without trial’ to round up trouble-makers in dawn raids. Religion also played a part because most republicans from southern Ireland were Catholic and many Unionists from the North, Protestant mainly because their ancestors were originally from Protestant British main-land. Religion however was a handy ‘tool’ to gain external support from the Catholic movement in America who provided finance and even weapons.

This was always a political war and death caused by hunger strikes was a weapon to garnish external support from Europe where the Human Rights Council ruled that interrogation techniques used on internees amounted to "inhuman and degrading" treatment.

We should take note however that peace was obtained by using Christianity as a common bond between two leaders (Paisley and Blair) to agree a truce and integration of opposing parties towards a common aim. Thus history is rewritten and the Irish terrorists became freedom fighters.

Knowing all this we can certainly draw parallels to our 21^st century ‘war on terror’, we understand the religious constructs, the military invasions, the internments (rendition), torture at Camp Delta and the British dawn raids on Muslims.

But how did this ‘war’ start and why is it called a ‘war between good and evil? How do ‘de facto’ governments like the Taliban suddenly become ‘terrorists’ and ‘terrorists’ become freedom fighters as they did in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union?

It was the ‘evil of communism’ obsessively promoted and advanced by western societies and the religious fervour that Russia was a ‘Godless’ society that promoted a ‘jihad’ or ‘holy war’ from sympathetic Muslims in surrounding regions as well as support from western governments, so the Afghan terrorist in the eyes of Russia became the mujaheddin or soldiers of the holy war.

But things change.

This was a war between good and evil and Muslim sympathy focused on atrocities against the people of Palestine by Israel. America was seen to support the Israeli actions and became ‘the Great Satan’, now a threat to Muslims world-wide. A dominating, hegemous America turned into a catalyst for ‘global jihad’, this war became asymmetric, jihad soldiers become ‘suicide bombers,’ deadly killers far removed from martyrs of IRA hunger strikes.

The Iraq war and the threat to Iran by America began to change world opinion and as this year closes we note a withdrawal of British forces from Iraq as again we resort to a common belief between leaders that peace must be achievable at all costs to prevent destruction of all we cherish in this world.