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[Previous entry: "Ferrets in need"] [Main Index] [Next entry: "Canal Hotel supplemental"] 25 August 2003: "Terrorism and the Canal Hotel Bombing"
The Economist runs a weekly obituary, and unsurprisingly this week's is devoted to the late Sérgio Vieira de Mello. However one may feel about the institution of the United Nations as a whole, I don't see how anyone can read the record of someone like Vieira de Mello's and not see at least some good in the organisation. A cement truck laden with explosives plows into the Baghdad headquarters of the United Nations and, presto-chango, there are "terrorists" in Iraq. That's right, not "guerrillas," not "resistance fighters," but "terrorists." And the press is appalled at their wickedness. Suddenly journalists and pundits who could scarcely bring themselves to utter the T-word now find themselves compelled to use it. Strange how when a U.S. serviceman is killed while guarding a hospital or when Israeli women and children are obliterated on a city bus, the perpetrators are often referred to as "militants," "extremists," or simply "bombers" and "gunmen." But when U.N. officials are the victims... Pardon me. Considering who does the talking, it isn't strange at all.I do not find this as strange as Phillips makes it out to be, and this has everything to do with the thorny problem of what terrorism actually is. Terrorism is an extremely problematical concept; like art or literature, we (believe we) know it when we see it, but more often than not others do not see things quite the same way. More importantly, it has proved extremely difficult to establish a set of objective, universally agreed-upon criteria which clearly and indisputably define an act of terrorism. Let's take a dictionary definition as an opening example; Merriam-Webster OnLine defines terrorism as "the systematic use of terror especially as a means of coercion." That gives an indication of the concept, but it is unworkable as a set of criteria. After all, much of the reason any state has a criminal justice system is to dissuade its citizens from breaking the law for fear of being arrested and prosecuted, which is clearly a "systematic use" of fear (and the difference between fear and terror is merely one of degree) "as a means of coercion." Unless we accept that every state in the world in effect practices terrorism, in the case of democracies with the consent of their citizens, this definition is not practicable in determining what constitutes terrorism. In 1937, the League of Nations attempted to formulate a definition, which was included in a convention which was never passed. It defined terrorism as All criminal acts directed against a State and intended or calculated to create a state of terror in the minds of particular persons or a group of persons or the general public.This is an improvement, but it's still far from perfect. Armed resistance in Nazi-occupied Europe during World War II would have met all the criteria set out in this definition:
Nevertheless, UN General Assembly Resolution 51/210, "Measures to eliminate international terrorism" uses remarkably similar language: The General Assembly, [...]Unfortunately, all this definition does is shift the question from "when is a specific activity one of terrorism?" to "when is a specific activity criminal?" (which is typical for the UNGA.) The definitions proposed by the League of Nations and the UN General Assembly provide no resolution for the oft-cited dilemma that "one man's terrorist is an other man's freedom fighter." Dutch academic Alex Schmid (who happens to be a former colleague of my mother) in 1988 came up with what the UN Office on Drugs and Crime describes as an "Academic Consensus Definition": Terrorism is an anxiety-inspiring method of repeated violent action, employed by (semi-) clandestine individual, group or state actors, for idiosyncratic, criminal or political reasons, whereby—in contrast to assassination—the direct targets of violence are not the main targets. The immediate human victims of violence are generally chosen randomly (targets of opportunity) or selectively (representative or symbolic targets) from a target population, and serve as message generators. Threat- and violence-based communication processes between terrorist (organization), (imperilled) victims, and main targets are used to manipulate the main target (audience(s)), turning it into a target of terror, a target of demands, or a target of attention, depending on whether intimidation, coercion, or propaganda is primarily sought.This is probably the most comprehensive and specific definition that can be achieved. It is, however, terribly cumbersome. That is insufficient reason to discard it, of course, but it is perhaps better kept in reserve for reference. Schmid himself seems to have acknowledged the cumbersome nature of this definition, as in 1992 he attempted to produce a more concise definition. Taking the existing consensus on what constitutes a "war crime" as his starting point, he suggested defining acts of terrorism as "peacetime equivalents of war crimes." Indeed, that covers most of the activities we generally consider the core acts of terrorism: deliberate attacks on civilians, the taking of hostages and the killing of prisoners. However, it is very much open to dispute whether terrorism should be limited to acts committed in peacetime, if for no other reason that formal declarations of warfare are extremely rare nowadays. Many terrorist organisations style themselves as military units (e.g. the Provisional Irish Republican Army, Red Army Faction, Red Brigades, etc.) engaged in insurgent warfare against some oppressionist state, and who is to say they are wrong? More than a few UN Member States have been founded on remarkably similar lines (not least the United States). More germane to the original topic is the fact that a state of armed conflict continues to exist in Iraq at present, which means that by this definition no violent activity, however heinous, can be construed as terrorism. In their book The Ethics of War, Barrie Paskins and Michael Dockrill offer another definition. First, they coin the term "evasive warfare"; this is a mode of warfare in which insurgents avoid combat with the counter-insurgents when the situation offers no advantage to the insurgents. The insurgents evade combat by hiding in the forests or pretending to be non-combatants when they not actually fighting†. Examples include the resistance offered by Spanish guerillas against the French during the Napoleonic Wars, clandestine resistance activities against the Nazis in Occupied Europe and various wars of decolonisation such as Algeria. Paskins and Dockrill define terrorism as "the indiscriminate waging of evasive warfare." This requires some clarification; while the actual evasion is conducted by the insurgent side alone, Paskins and Dockrill argue that "evasive warfare" is waged by both the insurgent and the counter-insurgent side, albeit in different ways. An urban guerilla who sets off a car bomb in a public area is engaged in terrorism; conversely, an occupying army which shoots a number of randomly selected civilians in reprisal for the wounding or killing of one of its soldiers (as the Germans routinely did during World War II), so as to dissuade a reoccurrence, is also engaged in terrorism. There are, of course, some grey areas. Let's take a hypothetical example based in history: Prior to and during World War II, Dutch population records listed the religion of every person on file, which greatly aided the Nazis in identifying Jews. Moreover, IDs could be checked against population records, which allowed forged IDs to be identified. For the Dutch resistance, destroying municipal population records was therefore a major priority. The obvious way to destroy these was by using an incendiary device; however, these records were usually kept in fire-proof cabinets which were only left open during office hours. Unless one could gain access to the keys, the only viable option would be to bomb the municipal building during office hours, which would be guaranteed to cause civilian casualties. Especially in the latter half of the war, the keys were entrusted to civil servants deemed "politically reliable" by the Nazis; getting the keys off such a collaborator might require measures such as taking his family hostage and threatening to kill them. On the other side, we have the example of the Israeli policy of "targeted assassinations" of senior members of Hamas and similar organisations. While the legality (and legitimacy) of this policy is open to question, it is not indiscriminate. However, expediency dictates that the weapon system of choice in these assassinations is the helicopter gunship (supplemented by the F-16), and all too frequently, collateral damage is inflicted by the use of high explosive ordnance (rockets and/or missiles). In both examples, it is possible to argue that the means used are indiscriminate (and thus acts of terrorism), but it is equally possible to argue that the methods are proportionate to the objectives, and that collateral damage is sometimes as inevitable as it is regrettable. But let's leave that for another day, and return instead to the column by Lowell Phillips that sparked this entry. Phillips' column is based on the premise that there is something odd, even hypocritical, about the switch on the part of the media from using the term "guerilla" to using the term "terrorist" to refer to the same people. I would argue that there is nothing inconsistent about this change; if we bear the definitions offered by Schmid, Paskins and Dockrill in mind, as long as the guerillas in Iraq struck at Coalition military personnel or members of the Coalition Provisional Authority, they were not committing acts which met an objective definition of terrorism. I don't expect anybody to like it when GIs are sniped at, but just because you don't like it doesn't make it terrorism. The bombing of the Canal Hotel, on the other hand, was not directed in any way at the occupying powers, which is what made it an act of terrorism. Thus, the status of the persons reponsible changed from "guerillas" to "terrorists"; I see no inconsistency in that. Phillips' reference to "Israeli women and children [being] obliterated on a city bus" is a red herring; this event, while undeniably an act of terrorism, did not take place in Iraq, and is thus irrelevant to the matter of insurgency in Iraq. Phillips also notes that: It's odd that there were no "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter" rationalizations in this instance.I would conclude that the journalists in question have a better understanding of what constitutes terrorism that Phillips does. Actually, I'd conclude that damn near any blog reader probably has a better understanding of any subject you might care to name than Lowell Phillips does, as evidenced by this sentence: The fact is that the United Nations has troops ready to send on interventionist missions all over the world at the drop of a hat, but it somehow couldn't protect staffers in an office building.Straight out of the fucking Tinfoil Hat Brigade Field Manual, that one. Let me point out a few things:
To be blunt, having skimmed the the rest of Phillips' oeuvre, I can't say I'm impressed. This guy's such a terminal reactionary moron I can't be fucked to provide an actual fisking, but you only have to read this column to understand what a pratt this guy is. It's rare to see such naked homophobia these days. I'll be happy to address what's wrong with that column for those of you who don't see the problem, but that's another topic, and thus another post. * - The civil administration of an occupying power includes police organisations, which generally play a part in fighting insurgents. In certain instances, occupying civil administrations also conduct other activities, the obstruction of which may be a legitimate goal. For instance, the tracking down, rounding up and deportation of Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe was conducted by the civil administration. For this reason, it cannot be assumed a priori that civil administrations can not be a legitimate target of armed insurgency. † - Note that the Protocol Additional (I) to the Geneva Conventions permits this kind of behaviour; Article 44, paragraph 3 of the Protocol states: In order to promote the protection of the civilian population from the effects of hostilities, combatants are obliged to distinguish themselves from the civilian population while they are engaged in an attack or in a military operation preparatory to an attack. Recognizing, however, that there are situations in armed conflicts where, owing to the nature of the hostilities an armed combatant cannot so distinguish himself, he shall retain his status as a combatant, provided that, in such situations, he carries his arms openly:Italics mine. Clearly, this was written with resistance movements such as those in Nazi-occupied Europe in mind. |
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