One man's terrorist
BY
Who is a terrorist? The man who hijacks a plane and proceeds to kill some or all the passengers? The man who wraps bombs around his waist and drives into a busy shopping mall causing maximum damage? Is your answer yes? Wait a minute. That man may well be a freedom fighter to his kith and kin.
How would you characterise the late Che Guevera? A terrorist or a freedom fighter? What of the venerable Nelson Mandela? Or the late Jomo Kenyatta? Or Yasser Arafat? Or Fidel Castro? Or Abu Nidal? Or the nationalists who fought for Algerian independence? Or Osama bin Ladin?
Your answer would definitely depend on where you stand on each case. If you were an Afrikaner who believed in racism, institutionalised as apartheid, the struggle by the African National Congress (ANC), especially when it entered the phase of armed struggle, would be viewed as the terrorist phase. It was in that mind-set that the racist authorities in Pretoria conveniently put on trial Govan Mbeki, Nelson Mandela and several others in the early 1960s, and promptly sent them to life imprisonment. Their incarceration only intensified the freedom struggle, and it transformed the lives of Mandela et al into legends. Mandela has since moved from prison to the presidency of South Africa and now into retirement. He is today an authentic African legend. He is about the most respected man among the six billion people in the world.
When the young medical doctor, Fidel Castro, dropped his stethoscope and entered the bush with fellow fighters in the early 1950s, he was quickly dismissed by the Batista government and his US backers as a bunch of terrorists, up to no good. On January 1, 1959, Castro and his men threw out the corrupt and rapacious regime and began pursuing a revolution. The revolution consumed the aristocrats and oppressors who had lived off the blood and sweat of the people and brought about a complete change in the social structures of that country. Forty-two years after, Castro is well and alive and still in-charge, to the eternal discomfort of the United States and all his detractors.
Though the world is hardly unanimous on who is a terrorist or what constitutes terrorism, it is difficult not to appreciate an act of terrorism when one sees one. When people or states go beyond the bounds of the law to carry out violent actions against their declared or undeclared enemies or their sympathisers or even innocent people thereby causing grave damage, leaving in their trail sorrow, tears and blood, it is terrorism in full flight.
Terrorism has been with mankind since history. And it is not about to be erased from the human vocabulary. In the 1970s and 1980s, terrorism actually took a life of its own. It became a full-blown industry with a global dimension. And there were those who were in the export department of this fast growing industry. Much of the business, it must be noted, was carried out in the Middle East. Hardly any month passed without a plane being hijacked, a ship sea-jacked, a night club in Europe bombed; some people being kidnapped; threats being issued and people being shot dead.
In 1983, for example, there were 393 terrorist incidents directed at Americans or American property overseas. Those killed were 274 and 118 were wounded. These included the suicide mission on the marine barracks in Beirut, Lebanon; the April 1983 bomb that exploded at the American embassy in Beirut killing 33 and wounding 80.
On October 7, 1985, Palestinians, guns blazing, burst into the dining room of the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro as it was sailing off the coast of Egypt in the Mediterranean Sea. Earlier in June of the same year, some Shiite militants had hijacked TWA Flight 847 in Greece. The high-tension drama played out for 17 days, and all but one of 145 passengers were released safely.
In the 1980s, taking of hostages, especially Americans who were in the Middle East became a routine affair. The Hizbollah group played key roles in many of these attacks. And one man that the West used as the face of terrorism during this period is Abu Nidal. Getting him and neutralising his hold on the terrorist networks became an obsession for the intelligence communities in America and Israel.
In the mid-1980s, the Reagan administration in the United States almost came down because of the delicate business of determining who is a terrorist and a freedom. The Iran -Contra scam was about exchanging arms for hostages (doing business with terrorists) and giving the proceeds to the contras in Nicaragua. Col. Oliver North and co. had determined that the Contras were freedom fighters in spite of the fact that the US congress considered them terrorists. The careers of many people were ruined as a result of the scandal. North lost his job in the White House and the Army, and was convicted. Casper Weinberger, John Poindexter, Robert Mcpharlane and many others paid high price for their creativity in interpreting the law. The Reagan Presidency was saved by sheer sophistry.
One unforgettable act of terrorism, which for many years haunted the Olympic movement, was that carried out by eight members of the Black September Movement in which 11 Israeli athletes were held hostage in the Olympic Village in Munich in 1972. It ended in tragedy with the hostages and hostage-takers all dying in the process of the security men trying to rescue the hostages.
Many of those who were at the forefront of these actions were Palestinians. While Israel and its sympathisers called them terrorists, they were seen as heroes and freedom fighters in much of the Arab world. In fact, many of the governments provided them sanctuaries, from where they hatched their plots.
Some historians have traced the blossoming of terrorism in the modern age to matters directly related to the creation of the state of Israel in 1948. After the gruelling battles to abort the state of Israel from coming into being, many of the Arab nations decided to employ unconventional means to deal with what they considered the eternal enemy. In 1949, King Farouk of Egypt nurtured the idea of sending Palestinian guerrillas - the fedayeen (fighters of the faith) - against Israel. By the early 1950s Gamal Abdel Nasser who had come to power in Egypt beefed the guerrillas.
Over the years, there was a proliferation of militant Palestinian groups: OLP (Organisation for the liberation of Palestine); PLA (Palestinian Liberation Army); PFLP (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine) and El Fatah, meaning Conquest.
The Black September Movement (Ailul al Asswad) which was initially an outgrowth of El Fatah was created at the end of 1970 out of the humiliation and frustration and the desire for revenge. It was as a result of the humiliating treatment members received in the hands of King Hussein of Jordan in September 1970.
With what happened last week, it seems the world is back to the difficult days of the 1970s and 1980s.
November 2001