Immediately after September 11, 2001, President
George W Bush addressed the American people, defining
policy in the simplest terms. "Every nation in every
region now has a decision to make. Either you are with
us, or you are with the terrorists." In declaring a "war
on terrorism", he defiantly stated his intent to pursue
nations providing aid or safe haven to terrorism,
suggesting every nation had a decision to make on the
issue.
Nearly three years later, the White House
has yet to define clearly what constitutes a terrorist
organization. The failure to do so has increasingly
limited the Bush administration's success in making the
United States and the world a safer place. Filling the
gap, individuals and groups are adopting their own
definitions of terrorism, with worrying, potentially
disastrous results.
Coalition of the
willing The administration's refusal to define
terrorism served the White House well in the early days
of the "war on terrorism". Employing "terrorism" as a
catch-all term for a potpourri of movements and
organizations, Washington was in a position to label
just about anyone opposed to its policies a terrorist
organization. Its subsequent inability to prove in a
court of law, in the few cases accorded judicial
procedure, that individuals and groups so identified
were actually terrorists or terrorist organizations
proved a later embarrassment.
The failure to
define terrorism, what could be termed the "Opaque
Corollary" to the Bush Doctrine, also served the
administration well in the run-up to the invasion and
occupation of Iraq. Desperately searching for recruits
to its "coalition of the willing", the White House was
eager to add any number of diverse groups to the State
Department's terrorist list if it meant the host country
might then support US policy in Iraq. For example, the
list of terrorist organizations in the current issue of
the Patterns of Global Terrorism report includes the
Anti-Imperialist Territorial Nuclei in Italy, the Great
Islamic Raiders-Front in Turkey, Red Hand Defenders in
Ireland, and the Riyadus-Salikhin Reconnaissance and
Sabotage Battalion of Chechen Martyrs, a Chechen
guerrilla group.
None of these organizations was
listed in the Patterns of Global Terrorism report issued
just before September 11, and none of them would appear
to pose an immediate threat to the United States,
certainly not on a par with al-Qaeda. But all of them
are recognized opposition groups in countries the White
House courted for support as it prepared to invade Iraq.
Official terrorist groups Since many
people are not familiar with the Patterns of Global
Terrorism report, it might be helpful here to discuss
briefly its format and content. The report is issued
annually by the US Department of State, normally in the
late spring of the year, and covers events in the
previous year. For example, Patterns of Global Terrorism
2003 (www.state.gov) was first released in April 2004.
Each report contains two lists of terrorist
groups. The first is the group of "Designated Foreign
Terrorist Organizations", which an earlier report
described as those groups "designated by the secretary
of state as foreign terrorist organizations (FTOs),
pursuant to Section 219 of the Immigration and
Nationality Act, as amended by the Antiterrorism and
Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996". This designation
carries legal consequences, as it is unlawful to provide
funds or other material support to an FTO, and their
representatives can be denied visas or otherwise
excluded from the United States.
The second list
provides information on "Other Terrorist Groups", which
are loosely defined as terrorist groups active in the
course of the year. In theory, terrorist groups whose
activities were limited in the course of the year are
not listed, but this distinction is honored in the
breach. For example, the Abu Nidal organization is
listed in the current report, but the accompanying text
says it "has not staged a major attack against Western
targets since the late 1980s". There is also no
suggestion in the report of non-Western attacks by the
group in recent years. Abu Nidal died in 2002.
Both lists provide a wide-ranging, varied record
of most unlikely partners in terror. The list of
"Designated Foreign Terrorist Organizations", for
example, includes Basque Fatherland and Liberty, the
Communist Party of the Philippines/New People's Army,
and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia.
Similarly, the list of "Other Terrorist Groups" includes
the Japanese Red Army, the Lord's Resistance Army of
Uganda, and the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement of
Peru. As should be clear even to the casual observer,
the bulk of the organizations on both lists share
nothing in the way of background, ideology, objectives,
or organization.
Then there is the problem of
volume. There are 76 groups on the latest list of
official terrorist organizations, which is 32 more than
were listed in 2000, a net gain of almost 75%. In a very
real sense, the terrorist list is one of the few places
the Bush administration has demonstrated a serious
commitment to a policy of inclusion.
The United
States now has some 5 million people on its terrorism
watch list. By listing virtually every terrorist
organization in the world and every person in those
organizations thought capable of a terrorist act, the US
has lost focus and created a bureaucratic nightmare. The
Bush administration needs to define what terrorism is
and which terrorist organizations pose a serious threat
to the United States. Al-Qaeda and its affiliates would
be a good place to start.
War on
Islam The failure to define terrorism is
producing other serious consequences. The Bush
administration emphasized from Day 1 that the "war on
terrorism" was not a war on Islam; however,
administration supporters and others have increasingly
defined it in exactly those terms. Buried in the heart
of the 9-11 Commission Report is a shocking conclusion.
In the chapter titled "What to Do?", the commission
concludes that the enemy is not just terrorism, what it
terms "some generic evil", but specifically
Islamist terrorism (report's emphasis). With the
stroke of a pen, the authors of the 9-11 report appear
to have redefined the "war on terrorism", converting it
into a "war on Islamist terrorism" alone.
Three
days before the 9-11 Commission released its report, the
Committee on Present Danger (CPD), a group founded in
the early days of the Cold War, announced its
reactivation. Chaired by Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona,
Senator Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, and former
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director R James
Woolsey, CPD is a bipartisan group of mainly
foreign-policy hawks, including a number of well-known
neo-conservatives such as Kenneth Adelman, Jeane
Kirkpatrick and Norman Podhoretz.
In describing
"The Nature of the Global Threat", CPD explains on its
website (www.fightingterror.org) that it has been
reactivated "because of the threat posed to America -
and democracy everywhere - by Islamist terror
organizations". Its posted Mission Statement reads in
part: "Our mission is to educate the American people
about the threat posed by a global Islamist terror
movement; to counsel against appeasement and
accommodation with terrorists." In a Washington Post
op-ed published on July 20, the same day as the CPD
press conference, Senators Kyl and Lieberman argued that
"the world war against Islamic terrorism is the test of
our time".
Substituting Islamist extremism for
terrorism as the enemy, both the 9-11 Commission and the
Committee on Present Danger appear to play into the
hands of Osama bin Laden. He warned that the United
States is not really concerned about terrorism, but
instead is at war with Islam itself.
Islamist
vs non-Islamist terrorism None of this makes any
sense in the context of the administration's report on
the Patterns of Global Terrorism. The most recent report
lists 76 organizations as either "Designated Foreign
Terrorist Organizations" or "Other Terrorist Groups". Of
the total, only 36, less than half, are Islamic in
orientation and membership. The remaining 40 groups, 53%
of the total, have nothing to do with Islam. Examples of
the latter are the Cambodian Freedom Fighters, Irish
Republican Army, and Peru's Sendero Luminoso.
Equally important, of the 36 organizations that
are Islamic in orientation and membership, 29 of them -
or 80% - are country-specific. Examples are the Abu
Sayyaf Group, Muslim separatists long active in the
Philippines, and the Armed Islamic Group, seeking to
establish a Muslim state in Algeria. At least six of the
organizations in this category are focused on the
India-Pakistan struggle for Kashmir, and another three
are Chechen separatist groups. Five of the organizations
are trying to coerce the Israeli government into
changing its policies and vacating Palestinian
territories.
In short, while most of the 29
country-specific Islamic groups employ religion in
support of their agenda, their goal is to persuade
established governments to make significant political
and territorial concessions. Moreover, while many of
these groups sympathize with al-Qaeda, area specialists
agree that almost none of them appear to have
command-and-control ties with the Osama bin Laden
organization.
Time to define
terrorism The Bush administration's failure to
define terrorism is contributing directly to the growing
confusion about the nature of America's enemies in the
"war on terrorism". Struggling to show progress in the
war, the White House has eagerly applied the al-Qaeda
label to virtually any Islamic group threatening
terrorist attacks. With little or no proof, regional
terrorist groups invariably have been labeled al-Qaeda
supporters or affiliates. In so doing, the
administration has contributed to the false impression,
despite data to the contrary in its own Patterns of
Global Terrorism report, that the sole enemy is a global
conspiracy of Islamist groups. An Islamist definition of
terrorism plays well with conservative elements in the
US electorate, especially after the recent attacks on
Christian churches in Iraq; but it is clearly wrong as
the government's own terrorism report amply
demonstrates.
The United States is sliding
toward disaster, identifying the wrong enemy and
fighting the wrong war. The Bush administration needs to
get the country back on track, defining clearly the
threat it faces. At the same time, it needs to reach out
to the Muslim community around the world, emphasizing
this is not a war on Islam. Failing to do so, White
House rhetoric stressing the "war on terrorism" will
last for years, if not decades, and could become a
self-fulfilling prophecy.
Ronald Bruce St
John, an analyst for Foreign Policy in Focus, has
published widely on Middle Eastern issues. His latest
book on the region is Libya and the United States:
Two Centuries of Strife (Penn Press, 2002). This
article is posted with permission fromForeign
Policy in Focus.
