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war against global terrorism has barely begun, but already the coalition
is showing signs of strain. Despite Russian Foreign Minister Igor
Ivanov’s admonition that there are no longer any “good” terrorists,
many are scrambling to exempt their pet causes from the roster of
terror. For those who see the insurgencies in Chechnya, Macedonia,
or the Philippines as “anti-colonial” struggles, minimizing or denying
all evidence pointing to connections with Osama bin Ladin and his
al Qaeda network has become paramount. Supporters of Northern Irish
or Basque separatists are eager to have such groups reclassified
as “local” and thus falling beyond the pale of the president’s call
to eradicate all terror networks with a “global” reach.
Bin Laden
must be reassured by these signs. For the last 15 years, he has
built up al Qaeda by skillfully inserting himself into trouble spots
around the globe. By playing upon the latent sympathy of world public
opinion for the causes he has become involved in, he has often deflected
attention away from his own activities — the creation of terrorist
training camps, front companies to launder funds, and so on. Few
wish to remember, for example, that the precursor organization to
al Qaeda at one time even had an office in Brooklyn to raise funds
and recruit members--at a time when bin Laden was perceived as an
associate of U. S. efforts to aid the Afghan resistance.
Bin Laden
learned this lesson well. By melting into the shadows, bin Laden
used popular causes — involvement in the wars in former Yugoslav
or struggles against repressive governments in Central Asia and
the Middle East--to focus attention away from his extremism and
to cause people to view him as an acceptable “lesser evil.”
This loophole
of sympathy must be closed. Groups which eschew political dialogue
and utilize random violence specifically directed against civilian
targets are terrorists — no matter how noble the cause they
espouse.
This means
taking a hard look, not only at all the tentacles which form the
al Qaeda network, but at all groups, even if they are wholly unrelated
to bin Laden. Even if there are legitimate grievances at play, sympathy
for the cause must never become a means to aid and abet terrorism.
Unfortunately,
that distinction has often been lost in the United States, where
a surprising number of terrorist groups have found a fertile field
for fundraising. The IRA, the KLA, and Hamas — to name but
a few — found that American sympathy for a particular cause
could be transformed into financial largesse to fund their activities.
We do not
live in a perfect world. A united Ireland, a Palestinian state encompassing
the entire British Mandate, a greater Albania — are not feasible
or realistic. As a result, the United States — and more importantly,
American politicians who sometimes unwittingly encourage the continuation
of violence by holding out for maximalist solutions — needs
to make some hard policy choices.
Sometimes
aspirations can only be met part way. However, are these outcomes
really so odious as to justify continuing struggle and violence
— Kashmir remaining part of a democratic and secular India,
continued power sharing in Bosnia between Serbs, Muslims, and Croats,
Chechnya as an autonmous republic of the Russian Federation, self
rule in Northern Ireland and the Basque regions?
Groups that
continue to use violence to go beyond these limits, no matter how
justified they may feel in their actions, are only contributing
to the continued destabilization of the world community and must
be ostracized and if necessary, eliminated. Ivanov is absolutely
correct. There are no “good” terrorists. There are simply terrorists.
Let’s not make any exceptions.
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