The
great German military theoretician Von Clausewitz noted that war was an extension of politics by other
means. One should look at terrorism as an extension of war and
hence of politics by different means. There is no universally agreed
on definition of terrorism simply because the looseness of the
term has value for those in authority, to allow them to condemn
all kinds of violent or destructive activities which they do not
like and find inconvenient to deal with. The unifying theme in
non-governmental terrorism is that it is a tool of the weak against
the strong or the tool of two relatively weak forces against each
other.
There are unfortunately many cases of state terrorism against
its own citizens. The Soviet Union and the Nazis by no
means began the
pattern. We have seen it more recently in the former Yugoslavia.
It has in the last 50 years plagued several countries of Latin
America as governments attempted to root out dissident
movements. Hundreds
to thousands of people “disappeared” as governments waged
violent and even murderous attacks on small internal communities
of putative enemies of the state. As an example outside Latin America,
consider Iraq’s actions against its own Kurds.
There are all kinds of individuals and mini-scale groups that may
engage in activities that are atrocious. Atrocious does not imply
terrorism which is politically motivated. We have the case in the
United States of a social isolate who over a decade or more sent
protest messages and bombs to specific people. He severally injured
or killed a small number of people. There are also dissident employees
and associations that come together to implement a goal through
violence. Most of these activities can be handled by routine police
work. Atrocious
does not imply terrorism which is politically based.
The sharp focus today throughout the world is on politically motivated
terrorism, particularly, but not exclusively instigated by factors
outside the target country. For Latin America foreign instigated
terrorism is far less important than that from indigenous dissidents.
The key to understanding terrorism of the latter sort is that without
exception it involves a political cause and a political agenda.
The tools terrorists use are tools of the weak against the strong.
They have three goals. First is to demonstrate that the government
cannot protect you. Second is to evoke extreme responses from the
government. The third goal is to use those extreme responses as
a mechanism for recruiting new people into the movement, for disparaging
the creditability of the government, to highlight its incompetence,
and at least to raise in many peoples’ minds questions about
the relative merits of the terrorists’ political objectives.
In order to implement any violent terrorist action three conditions
have to be made. The terrorist group must have access to its target.
Second, it must have the technical competence to execute its plan.
Third, it must select a target which is appropriate to promote
the three operational goals mentioned above.
There is almost always some merit in the political objectives and
purposes underlining the terrorists’ action. One must consider
before turning to the terrorist tactics, whether or not to meet with
the terrorists to negotiate a mutually agreeable settlement. It sounds
easy in principle, but it is most difficult in practice for governments,
especially in democratic societies, to acknowledge any merit in the
terrorists’ political position. Acknowledgment gives them the
entering wedge for forcing further concessions. Whatever concessions
are made are likely to be followed by the claim that government has
not satisfied a different point, and so on and on. To enter into
the negotiations with implicit or even explicit acknowledgment of
some basis for the terrorists political objectives opens a Pandora’s
Box of endless pressures for further concessions, both by negotiation
and by terrorist actions.
The alternative strategy of relentless, violent pressure on the
terrorists to expunge them from society is hardly acceptable in
any democratic
society. In all likelihood it will promote goal three above. Extreme
measures are likely to bring political backfire on those in the
executive or legislative function. Often a change in Administration,
party
in power, or head of state provides for a fresh opening to begin
discussion and negotiations.
Even in the strongest willed societies, unrelenting violence against
terrorists is found increasingly unacceptable by the global community,
and will involve global or regional interventions either at the
time of violence or later. We are seeing now trials of Milosevic
in connection
with his actions in the former Yugoslavia. The search is still
going on for two of his principal lieutenants. Even if the violent
actions
are successful, they are likely to involve highly personal risks
for and international sanctions against the head of state, the
head of the military, or whoever is or was in charge of the unacceptable
anti-terrorist actions.
Adding to the complexity of dealing with terrorists is that with
the passage of time there is a stabilization of the terrorist group.
They may find it desirable, even necessary, to tie into frankly
criminal activities as a source of funds. We see this now with
the cocaine
cartels in Columbia, where the guerillas are working hand in glove
with drug barons to get money to support their political movement.
It is almost certain that eventually drug dealing will become a
preferred way of raising funds for terrorists since there is a
virtually guaranteed
market.
We have seen a variation on this in Ireland, where terrorist violence
has been going on for many decades. At least two generations of
people have grown up in an environment of violence against the
established
government. What happens when some resolution of the cause of the
terrorism does occur? Prior ties to criminal activity, the lack
of any occupational skills, and inadequate sources of personal
income
may cause the terrorists, after the political situation is settled,
to turn to crime as their only significant source of employment
and income.
Turning now to the question of what are the things terrorists might
do: keep in mind the three goals and the three conditions noted
above. The terrorist has a wide range of choices as to actions
and targets.
But the target should be one which is of great significance psychologically,
so it will carry a message of unstoppable power throughout the
whole country and not be seen as a mere local episode. It might
even have
international significance if it has a high enough symbolic value.
An example is destroying a densely populated resort. International
awareness can scare away foreign investors and tourism as it did
a few years ago in Egypt. One of the earliest, most primitive strategies
is assassination of senior government officials and jurists as
is now practiced in Columbia.
In the modern world, with increasing urbanization and the centralization
of government and corporate functions in big cities, urban areas
have become an attractive place for terrorist activities, with
the countryside as a relatively safe haven for them.
The tools of terrorism are not limited to politically motivated
terrorist groups. In many of the large favelas or barrios, the
incredibly poor
massive shantytowns in many Latin American cities, the local criminal
groups use the tools of terrorism—assassination, extortion,
and physical violence-to keep people in line. Too often the established
local authority is unable and even unwilling to go into these crime-ridden
poverty-stricken areas to root out crime. This is an interesting
illustration of how the tools of terrorism can be used as tools
of strictly criminal activity. The two should not be confused.
Even
criminal links from the barrio gang leaders to corrupt local officials
do not make it political terrorism. There is no political issue
to negotiate.
Terrorism’s target in Latin America is not the poor, but the
middle class, the wealthy, and the government. We see an example
of politically based terrorists in the Basques of Spain. The rebels
are trying to raise the price of resistance to their political objectives
too high for the middle class and the wealthy. Hence those classes
become the targets for all three goals of the terrorist movement,
to demonstrate that the government can’t protect them, the
government’s responses are excessive and ineffective, and
that there is some merit to the terrorist cause. This implies concessions
to the dissidents as the answer.
In many countries the entrance of European and American firms has
been an economic godsend. They supply jobs, they offer opportunities
to use indigenous skills, they provide employment for the middle
class, and they often develop an export market.
Consequently an
attractive goal for the political dissidents would be to use a
well-established
tactic, assassination, to knock off the top foreign leadership
in those foreign businesses, thereby creating a reign of terror
among
the foreign business concerns—upsetting them, shutting some
down, driving some out of the country, or at least reducing their
general economic effectiveness.
This would hit the middle class, the wealthy, and the government
hard. Attacks on the infrastructure could have a high payoff, notably
disrupting telecommunications, the telephone, internet, and the
telegraph, and radio. The inability to communicate would highlight
the impotence
of government.
Attacks on tourists, who are a source of substantial revenue in
many Latin American countries, is attractive. Making them ill or
even
kidnapping or murdering a few tourists can have a dramatically
negative effect on tourism and the economy.
While the attacks on waterworks, the rupture of dams, the flooding
of the countryside, and damage to agriculture are all technically
feasible, they are undesirable in general because they would bring
a net negative ambiance to the terrorists that would thwart their
political goals, which in general favor redistribution of wealth
and income and benefits to the urban and rural impoverished.
The persistence of terrorism is worse when there are multiple clear
fracture lines between the established government and the dissident
group, e.g., along economic, occupational, ethnic, religious, or
geographic lines. Geographic fracture lines can be macro, in the
regional sense, or micro, in the sense of location within a city.
The longest continuing example of this, worldwide, is the dissident
Irish situation going back to 1916, where all five fracture lines
are found.
Stated-based terrorism is a far more important problem in Latin
America than it is in North America or Western Europe and is much
more important
than foreign initiated terrorism. It calls for special attention
because the central feature of that terrorism is that government
is not the friend, but is actually or potentially everybody’s
enemy. The powerful physical forces and limited intelligence of
government when stressed or threatened can move it toward wide
scale, uninformed,
ineffective and grotesque actions. Furthermore, in Latin America
government is or often has been the handmaiden of the extremely
wealthy, who are out to protect their unique prosperity and are
bereft of
any social sense of fairness and equity. They usually resist any
long term plan for improvement in the condition of the masses.
State-based terrorism in general until now has been dealt with
only by a change of government and a radical alteration in the
makeup
of the military. There are factors that are slowly changing the
acceptance of state-based terrorism. Television is the great worldwide
educational
force. It shows what goes on in countries outside that victimized
by state-based terrorism. Foreign education of the middle and wealthy
classes’ children, whatever their preconceptions are, reeducates
some of them to new points of view, particularly toward democracy
and equity. Slowly emerging, but of tremendous importance, is world
government as seen in the growth of the World Court, and more military
interventions by the United Nations to deal with state-based terrorism.
There also are interventions at the local or regional scale, as
in the case of the U.S. invading Haiti.
Whatever has to be accomplished subsequent to the removal of the
leaders of state-based fascism, high on the agenda must be a radical
breakdown in the business-military linkages. Second must be closer
attention by external funders, such as the World Bank, to how much
of their support is skimmed off into the pockets of the wealthy
politically, connected families and the military. Third, there
must be a drop
in arms acquisition. No Latin America country has the justification
for large and lavishly equipped militaries. That money could be
better used for economic programs to redress long term grievance.
Fourth,
the bureaucracy and the police in many Latin America countries,
particularly the poorer ones, are so underpaid that it becomes
an unstoppable
invitation to what in advanced countries is called graft or corruption.
Fifth, radical reform of the civil service, perhaps with fewer
civil servants getting much higher wages, would moderate the temptations
of corruption, especially if accompanied by strong penalties for
those caught taking graft.
Summary
The four forms of terrorist-like violence in Latin America
call for different solutions. First, external political
terrorism is
not likely
to be in any great consequence in the near future. There may
be some cases in which boarder conflicts may raise that
issue.
Second is internally initiated terrorism. This reflects long-term
social issues of justice and equity which are not likely to be
dealt with by an administration or regime which has been intransigent
for
years or decades. Most likely to be effective are calls for a
change of administration and a change in government reflecting
broad change
in public outlook. Those changes are important although not an
absolutely necessary condition for beginning negotiations.
Third, are criminal terrorist-like activities most commonly in
the barrios of large cities. These can be dealt with by the enforcement
of the law and the treatment of the citizens in the barrios with
the same enthusiasm and gusto that the middle class and the wealthy
enjoy. These are fundamental questions of law enforcement. Linked
to that is attention to the often associated corruption of public
officials.
Finally, and most important in Latin America, is state-based
terrorism—sometimes
against helpless indigenous people—either directly by the
state or with its concurrence by big local landowners or foreign
corporations
and most commonly in the recent past by an intransigent dictator
and the intransigent party in power.
When faced with serious political threats the party cannot bring
itself to conciliation and begins terrorist action against the
threat. This politically driven violence can only be stopped
quickly by external
intervention. The United Nations is becoming more confident and
skilled in doing this. The capabilities of regional organizations
to act
are untried in Latin America.
Finally, a single intervention unilaterally, as by the United
States in Panama, is generally unsatisfactory in the long run
because
of the reluctance to continue in place long enough to establish
or reestablish
a new kind of governance and regime.
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