The Sympathy Loophole
A war on all terrorists.

By Nikolas K. Gvosdev, executive editor, The National Interest & senior fellow for foreign policy and constitutional affairs, Institute on Religion and Public Policy
October 11, 2001 8:45 a.m.

he 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.