When is an act of violence that of terrorism and when is it just a plain heinous one? This is one question that does not lend itself to rigid answers. In fact, the flexibility of the answers had better make room for the many shades of different global legal and political interpretations of the twin acts of violence.
For their part, heinous acts are unambiguous, and are readily evident in the barbarity of their execution and in the sheer lack of rationality in their motives. They usually speak to a depravity of mind that is located in the outer fringes of sanity. The problem however, with defining terrorism is that the word is emotionally and politically charged. While there are specific legal definitions of terrorism found in different variations of several countries’ laws, generally, terrorism is not just an act of violence but, one conducted with a particular purpose of intimidating a population or, to coerce or affect a government policy.
The two acts of violence are only similar in effects but, they elicit vastly different reactions from different people. Most countries the world over, have evolved realistic and competent legal systems to handle heinous acts of violence. Long incarcerations to protect societies from the sheer enormities committed by these bestial human beings provide some kind of preventive and punitive measures against repeat-crimes. However, the globalization of terror nowadays has presented a daunting challenge for most nations whose policy thrusts are seen to be antithetical to the ‘avowed interests’ of the terrorists.
Terrorism, as a political tactic, has a long history that dates back to hundreds of years and has been consistently used by activists when they believe that no other means will bring about the kind of change they desire. The change is so badly desired that failure to achieve it is seen as a worse outcome than the collateral deaths of non-combatant people; oftentimes, this paves the way for the interrelationship between terrorism and religion. When a political struggle is integrated into the framework of a religious struggle such as fighting over the control of ancestral homeland or holy site as in the Arab-Israeli conflict, political goals become equated with spiritual imperatives and the mix produce inflammable and often intractable terror campaigns.
In the United States, the term “terrorism” has political, legal and national security implications. In contemporary times, the country has had a fairly long experience in battling with acts of terrorism over what has been fairly or unfairly perceived as her unconditional support for Israel and the latter’s Zionist policies. It has therefore not been unusual for Islamic Third World countries with the usual traditional concerns of cultural imperialism and frustrations with their various governments, to shape their angst around some fundamentalist beliefs through the help of local clerics, and to turn these into some hate messages against the sole symbol of western imperialism, viz. the United States of America.
The hydra-headed nature of contemporary terrorism continues to defy the national security ingenuity of many countries. It is not helped by the fact that even the very bestiality of acts of terrorism almost the world over, is often vitiated by political colourations that attract sympathies from many groups. From recent history, even few of the liberal democracies of the world have the capacity to fight terrorism to a standstill.
The United States more than any country, is fighting terrorism even though with some limited success. It is virtually the US that has forged that sense of zealous unity (from an unbelievable welter of races and ethnicities) and determination that can take the fight against terrorism to the perpetrators’ door-steps. Unlike in the rest of the world, terrorism neither befuddles the average American sense of liberty and freedom, nor does it blur his socio-political worldviews; it is seen for what it is: an external and misguided attempt through some indoctrination to change the American way of life. It is therefore, fought relentlessly because the Americans believe that to foist an alien socio-political paradigm on them, will be tantamount to the end of American Civilization as the whole world knows it!
In Nigeria and other less-powerful nations, terrorism has not been as effectively fought as it has been in the United States. In the resurgence of nationalism that swept Europe after the Second World War, nationalist identities became a focal point for many people in erstwhile colonial empires. Members of ethnic groups, whose states had been absorbed by others or, had ceased to exist, saw opportunities to realize nationalist ambitions and several of these, chose terror as a method of their struggle. The Irish and the Macedonians had terrorist campaigns as part of their struggle for independence. Even former Israeli Prime Minister, Menachem Begin, was an arrowhead of “The Irgun” in their terrorist campaigns against the British for the creation of a Jewish state
To illustrate the complexity and nuances involved in fighting global terrorism, the case of the Irish Republican Army, IRA, provides a good example. When the British government labeled them terrorists, the IRA continued to enjoy some measure of sympathy because certain people could identify with their political objectives. However, this sympathy and empathy evaporated as soon as the same government was able to establish that the IRA was an organization of cold-blooded career murderers!
Except for the case of the United States where there have been demonstrated efforts by terrorists not only at changing US policy thrusts, but at a more fundamental restructuring of her way of life, acts of terrorism in most countries carry some political distortions that tend to lessen the severity of the punishment than for heinous acts of violence perpetrated by individuals. In Nigeria, despite the heinous bombings by the Boko Haram, despite their advertised goal of wanting to change the Nigerian way of life that is concretized in a heterogeneous and multi-religious society, the federal government is presently fashioning out an amnesty programme for the members of this strange sect. This may be perplexing when one views the scale of destruction and the loss of lives that were attendant to the reign of the members of this cult.
In the context of the American experience of the war on terror, this column believes that the United States President, Barrack Obama, was right to narrow down his focus and pick his fights before declaring the Boston Marathon bombing a terrorist act. Although links to the Chechyn separatists may be tenuous, the fact that the two brothers could have been radicalized by political Islam is a reasonable possibility.
What works in the United States may not work in Nigeria but it would be unimaginable for the USA or other Western nations to want to grant amnesty to members of a sect like Nigeria’s Boko Haram. While tactics of fighting the menace may vary, the sheer scale of destruction to lives and properties on the scale that Nigeria’s Boko Haram has wrought makes one wonder what an amnesty would bring about. For example, the USA has reportedly changed the classification of the surviving Boston bomber from “enemy combatant” which would bring less severe sentence, no death penalty. Many options must be available that could have been looked at for BH in Nigeria rather than their getting an amnesty after all the people they murdered and the properties destroyed.
