The Guardian (Lagos)
Edwin Madunagu
4 October 2001
Lagos — "Nigerian government would do anything within its means to support the current efforts to destroy terrorism once and for all in the world", so declared Chief Dubem Onyia, Nigeria's Minister of State for Foreign Affairs. To this self-serving and inane declaration I respond, paraphrasing Ernest Mandel, the late Belgian Marxist: "Nigerian people, especially the youths of today and tomorrow, will do everything within their means to support the definitive banishment from the planet, earth, of exploitation and oppression, injustice and social inequality, violence and terrorism - whether inflected by the state or by members and organisations of the civil society, whether the victim is a single individual, like Dele Giwa killed in Lagos on October 19, 1986 or a multitude like those liquidated or wounded in New York and Washington on September 11, 2001."
The above should, in fact, be my conclusion; but I have been forced to make this leap by someone who is expected to be one of our "commanders" in the global war against terrorism. Having said this, I think every sane person, anywhere in the world must be deeply touched and saddened by the massacre in New York and Washington on September 11, 2001. I believe that if a widely respected secular figure such as Nelson Mandela requests humanity to observe a one-minute silence in honour of those who lost their lives in those bloody events, the request would be carried out world-wide. I have used the words "mourn", "saddened", "touched", "alarmed", etc. Why have I avoided the word "condemn?" I do not use the word "condemn", because it is not useful in the present problem. A useful refrain should be: "Cry not, laugh not, but understand". An event which showed us very clearly that the planet Earth can be destroyed, not only by an "act of God", but also by a deliberate human action carried out by sane people, not acting on the spur of the moment, but going through months or years of training and preparation, is beyond what you visit with condemnation - which is usually a hypocritical invocation. What is required is soberness and understanding.
If state functionaries like Dubem Onyia reject my position, I would ask whether the 1999 destruction of the town of Odi amounted to terrorism. They would, probably say no. Pressed further, they would perhaps concede, but would argue that the bloody action was provoked. Suppose you play a devil's advocate and suggest that the September 11 massacre must also have been provoked, Dubem Onyia would lose his temper and argue that the Odi operation was a state operation, but that of New York and Washington was carried out by criminals. This will bring us not only to the essence of terrorism - the use of violence to achieve political objectives - but also to the distinction between state terrorism and civil-society terrorism. The debate would end there, because a further step would expose the hypocrisy of key reactions to the sad events of September 11 and may lead us, inadvertently, to injuring mass feelings.
There is no state in the world without designated terrorists, enemies of the state that should be liquidated. Russia, the successor-state to the defunct Soviet Union, regards its province, Chechnya, as a terrorist territory. The mighty Russian Army has not been able to defeat the terrorists who have also been blamed for several assassinations and bomb attacks in several Russian cities including Moscow. Germany has been a home of terrorism even before the rise of Hitlerite fascism, but especially since then. It has proved undefeatable. Italy, France and Spain have their fair share of terrorism. The latter, in particular, harbours one of the most resilient terrorist groups in the world: ETA, located in the Basque Region. The Irish Republican Army (IRA) is the "mother" of terrorism in Europe. The kurds, that unfortunate ethnic group, are regarded as terrorists by Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran. Every state in the Middle East is actively engaged in fighting terrorism. The territory under the control of the Palestinian Authority, whether we recognise it as a state or not, is at present in a life-and-death struggle against those it designates as terrorists. The whole of American Continent (North, Central and South), the Caribbean and the Pacific are sites of permanent terrorism. Algeria, Sudan, Senegal, Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Burundi, Rwanda, Uganda, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), etc are among African states infested with terrorism. Both India and Pakistan have been battling the terrorism that developed with the dispute over Kashmir. Sri Lanka has its Tamil Tigers, the Philippines is fighting Moslem terrorists; Indonesian terrorists are particularly blood-thirsty: they measure the success of any operation by the number of human heads they have cut off. In historical terms Chinese terrorists are late entrants into the business of modern terrorism. But they have made their mark as a social force. At home, in Nigeria, we are quite familiar with terrorism, ancient and modern.
Given this global pervasiveness of terrorism, it should be possible to construct a global alliance of states which can credibly aim at eliminating state-designated terrorism. But the problem arises from the simple fact that every subscribing member enters the fighting force not with a pure agenda of anti-terrorism, but with a unique mix of political, economic, and even cultural, goals or at least anticipations. Let us take a few examples. America's goals are clear: to bring both vengeance and justice to those designated as perpetrators of the September 11 massacre; to destroy the capacity of its perceived terrorist enemies to continue their terrorism: to expand America's global dictatorship through the construction of its alliance, and, cynics will add, to see America's accumulated arms, test its new weapons and strengthen the case for further development of its arms industry. President Bush has asked all nations to choose between supporting America in its war against terrorism or be regarded as having gone over to the terrorists. To this Fidel Castro has already replied not only for Cuba but for all of us: We stand against both terrorism and global dictatorship. George Bush also calls the American-led war against terrorism as the "first war of the 21st century" thus dismissing other conflicts; including those initiated by America and those in which there were thousands of non-American casualties. Although nations of Western Europe more or less share America's goals and are prepared to fight behind the supper power non-European nations have mixed agendas. Russia would want its terrorists based in the former Soviet Republics and Afghanistan to be eliminated once and for all. Pakistan is struggling for its very survival as a state. Small and poor countries like Nigeria may hope that their plea for debt forgiveness may, at last, catch a receptive ear. So, a coalition may in fact come into being - but it is bound to be torn by contradictions very quickly.
But whether the coalition breaks down or not, the war against terrorism, as articulated by America, carries immense dangers for humanity. For it could turn out to be, not the first war of 21st century, but a major test of the capacity of terrorists and global dictators to destroy our common planet. For, as William Shirer warned in the foreword to his voluminous study of Hitler's Germany, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: "In our new age of terrifying, lethal gadgets, which supplanted so swiftly the old one, the first great aggressive war, if it should come, will be launched by suicidal little madmen pressing an electronic button. Such a war will not last long and none will ever follow it. There will be no conquerors and no conquests, but only the charred bones of the dead on an uninhabited planet". Anyone who is tempted to say that this is not possible should please look back at September 11 and try to recapture, in slow motion, how the greatest power on earth was taken by surprise and humbled, not by outcasts, but by normal people, professionals that were well trained, young men who could mix with elite, who could check into five-star hotels, who could be saluted by airport and airline officials and smiled at by airline hostesses. People who could bribe (yes, bribe) their way through guarded gates. Such people could even be found among the very small circles that have access to nuclear weapons! The mighty and the powerful should stop and think.
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