Needed: A global strategy to reduce, not increase, terror by Rami G. Khouri The Daily Star 10:23am 3rd Sep, 2004   September 08, 2004    The hostage-taking terror attack against a school in Beslan, Russia, last week that has left over 330 dead, many of them children, was the culmination of a deadly two weeks that saw more than 500 people killed in terror attacks in Russia, including two downed commercial planes and a subway bombing in Moscow. The shocking moral depravity of the attack against schoolchildren - on their first day of the new academic year, no less, a moment of hope, new clothes, new friends - may spark a pivotal new phase in the diffused and confused global "war against terror." How the Russians, Americans, Europeans and, most importantly, we Middle Easterners act now could well determine if terrorism worsens or is gradually contained.    The fact that nine or 10 of the terrorists were identified as "Arabs," and that Chechen and perhaps other women were among the terrorists who struck in Russia, reflects a continuing qualitative leap in the terrorism business around the world. I say "terrorism business" deliberately, because this phenomenon behaves according to the supply-and-demand laws of the marketplace. Terrorism has expanded in response to increased demand for it in the marketplace of disfigured human ideas, sentiments and perceptions - and suppliers like Osama bin Ladin, the anti-Russian Chechen militants, and others have stepped in to provide the supply.    The scale, frequency and nature of terror against civilians have all worsened in the past decade. The Russian attacks reflect the increasingly inhuman targeting of civilians and transnational cooperation among like-minded terrorists. As an angry and rattled Vladimir Putin plans tough measures, it would be a terrible shame if Russia's response only ends up perpetuating the broadly ineffective, heavily military-based anti-terror policies favored by the United States since Sept. 11, 2001, and by Israel since the 1970's. Rather, deeper Russian involvement in anti-terror campaigns should be a catalyst for the entire world to make a serious effort - perhaps the first ever in recent history - to address the scourge of terrorism in a more realistic and effective manner.    If we want to achieve results and not just feel-good revenge, we might start by acknowledging three important but uncomfortable facts.    1. The Arab-Asian region of the world, predominantly Islamic, is the heartland and major wellspring of the spectacular global terror attacks of recent years. The reasons for this must be addressed more intelligently and dispassionately by the people of this region above all, who are collectively degraded by the barbarism that emanates from their societies. Most Arabs identified strongly and willingly with the image of gun-wielding Palestinian or Lebanese guerrillas fighting against Israeli occupation troops; but all of us today are dehumanized and brutalized by the images of Arabs kidnapping and beheading foreign hostages. We must ask and know how and why our societies made this ugly trek. The most important and recurring historical root cause of terror in, and from, the Arab-Asian region is the home-grown sense of indignity, humiliation, denial and degradation that has increasingly plagued many of our young men and women. Israel, the U.S. and other external factors have aggravated this problem, but its root causes are almost totally local and indigenous. Because our own Arab leaderships and societies have not sufficiently come to grips with this, the United States and Great Britain have sent their armies to do it for us - with their incalculably faulty analyses and self-defeating policies that imprison some terrorists but give birth to many other new ones, as we witness in Iraq today.    2. Terror is a global phenomenon that also emanates from other, non-Islamic regions in the world, with most small-scale attacks in recent decades occurring in places like South America and South Asia, not linked to the Arab or Islamic Middle East. We can only stop terror if we accurately understand how its component parts emerged from their particular local environments, rather than wildly imagining a single, global Islamist militant ideology that is fueled by hatred for America. Global terrorism emerged over decades, due to many historical and emotional causes that can be documented and analyzed - and therefore can be redressed or prevented. Realistic and patient anti-terror policies must methodically address the different local root causes of terror, in order to take away the demand side of the business.    3. The prevailing American and Israeli policy of fighting terror militarily, which is increasingly adopted by Arab and other governments, has had only limited successes, because it largely fails to address these root causes that push otherwise normal young men and women to end their lives in suicide missions. You cannot deter a person who wishes to kill himself or herself by threatening to kill them. Terror that largely reflects prevailing social, political and economic forces can only be fought on those same terrains, and not primarily in the military arena. The British experience in Northern Ireland is perhaps the best current example of how an intelligent, inclusive political response effectively brought an end to the terror that harsh police and military methods on their own could not stop.    These are not easy lessons to absorb. Let us hope that Moscow's expected heightened participation in the war on terror sparks that which has been missing from the world scene for some years: a sensible international campaign, with active Arab-Islamic participation, to fight terror effectively by systematically identifying and redressing its actual, rather than its imagined, causes. Threats, imprisonment and military assaults will not end terror. That requires taking away the demand for terror that continues to grow in the hearts and minds of young men and women who tragically seek death as a means to affirm the value of their otherwise worthless lives.    (Rami G. Khouri is the executive editor of the Daily Star).
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