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Understanding political violence

Gary Younge

ON MAY 8 in Philadelphia the Federal Bureau of Investigation exposed an alleged terror cell of young Muslims planning an attack on a military base in New Jersey. The authorities say the six men, aged between 22 and 28, planned to kill as many soldiers as they could with assault rifles and grenades.

Once again, those who believe a potential terrorist should be easily identifiable were disappointed. Like school shooters, the men fit the profile of dangerous people who are impossible to profile. They are not drawn from the underclass, nor did they lead segregated lives. They delivered pizzas, worked in stores, and ran their own roofing business. The neighbours suspected nothing; their families are in shock.

They were amateurs, apparently egged on by the FBI informer among them. At some stages they blew hard about jihad. At others they worried about being caught. "I just want to be safe, brother," one of them said. "I got five kids, so I don't want to go down." But they were determined. "As far as people, we have enough," another claimed. "Seven people and we are all crazy ... We can do a lot of damage with seven people."

They could indeed have done a lot of damage. As with the five men convicted in London for plotting to blow up the Ministry of Sound nightclub, the mayhem would have gone way beyond the death and destruction in mind. Had they succeeded, the result would have been a massive clampdown on civil liberties, increased state surveillance of, and random attacks on Muslims, and an end to the growing momentum for troop withdrawal from Iraq.

Individual acts of terrorism will always put the Left on the back foot. Not because the Left holds a sneaking sympathy for terrorists, but because it is so busy explaining the context of their acts and protesting against wars and repression that it all too rarely voices its full-throated opposition to the acts themselves. Contrary to right-wing smears, progressives condemn terrorism routinely. In a sense that is the problem — the condemnations can appear so routine that sometimes it looks as if they just want to tick the box so they can change the subject.

Terrorism is not only deadly, it is by its very nature deeply reactionary. Emerging from the self-indulgent agendas of individuals and small, secretive cells, terrorism is performed by those acting either alone or on behalf of others with whom they have no organic political connection. With no interest in building broader political support or winning over the doubtful, it leaves those in whose name it is committed the most vulnerable. The professed goals of terrorists may be legitimate. But the methods they use set them back.

Creating fear

Terrorism does not rally people to a cause but polarises them on the crudest possible level — fear. That fear provides not only the pretext for brutal and disproportionate retaliation but actively builds public support for it. Handing both the police and the military an excuse to acquire more power, it strengthens the cause not of the poorest and most desperate, but of the state.

This is precisely what has happened since 9/11. Those attacks, followed by the July 7 bombings in London, have set back the cause of Palestine, Muslim minorities, and civil liberties all over the world. And then, of course, there has been Iraq. This does not absolve the British and Americans one iota of their responsibility for the wars they have started, the lies they have told, and the lives they have cost. But those who are interested in context and causes cannot pick and chose: 9/11 set the scene for Iraq just as Iraq has set the scene for subsequent terror attacks.

Immediately following the attacks, opportunists around the world tried to re-brand the war on terror for their own purposes. "What happened in America is the same as that which has been carried out in the U.K., and in particular in Northern Ireland," argued Ulster Unionist leader David Trimble and his newly elected Conservative party counterpart Iain Duncan Smith in a joint article in November 2001. "Osama bin Laden and his followers are no different from those who planned and carried out Omagh, Warrenpoint, Hyde Park, Enniskillen or other atrocities during 30 years of terrorism in Ulster." Such specious logic could not withstand scrutiny any more than the careers of those who uttered them would withstand the test of time. Today Mr. Smith is on the backbenches; Mr. Trimble lost his seat.

Meanwhile, on the day the New Jersey cell was broken, Martin McGuinness, the one-time commander of the Irish Republican Army, was sworn in as the Deputy First Minister at the Northern Ireland Parliament. But if likening the IRA to Al-Qaeda is disingenuous, to contrast them is instructive. It highlights a distinction between the terrorism of individuals and the armed struggle of movements.

For, In certain circumstances, political violence can achieve real progress. Northern Ireland is one such example. Britain did not occupy Ulster by consent but by force. It stands to reason that resistance to its occupation included force. It is unlikely that peaceful, democratic engagement by itself could ever have dislodged Britain's once-unilateral claim on the province. "Power concedes nothing without a demand," argued the abolitionist Frederick Douglass.

But what it concedes, how it concedes it and to whom are all contingent on how those demands are made and who makes them. Political violence cannot forge a consensus but it can force negotiation. Through Sinn Fein, the IRA was rooted in the Republican community. When Sinn Fein got to the table it could speak with authority. When it left, it could deliver on its negotiations because it had credibility.

Much was made of the fact that the African National Congress had a military wing — but it never played a significant role in ending apartheid. Public revulsion at Enniskillen, among other IRA bombings, severely damaged Sinn Fein's credibility in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

What it does suggest, however, is that a more sophisticated understanding of political violence than currently offered by the "war on terror" is necessary — a critique that recognises the bankruptcy of individual terrorism, the potency of social movements and the legitimacy of armed struggle; an analysis that can grasp that while individuals may be jailed or killed aspirations for equality and justice are free to live on and will find new leaders and new methods. —

© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006

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