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Western EuropeJuly 31 2005

Inclusive agenda needed to combat terrorism

While tighter security is essential in preventing terrorism so, too, is addressing its root causes. This includes tackling disaffection with globalisation, which must be seen to benefit the wider community.
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London’s financial community recovered quickly, and with characteristic British reserve, from last month’s horrific attacks on the capital’s transport system. London survived as a financial centre throughout the blitz and the IRA bombing campaign of the 1970s so it is hardly credible that Al Qaeda – however murderous its intent – can bring London to its knees. All the same, it would make for a more comfortable existence if future terrorist acts could be prevented. Better security and intelligence, as are now being considered, are part of the solution – but only a part.

Nothing justifies terrorism. Even so there is a need to have a grown-up discussion about its causes. The alternative is to forever suffer its devastating impact.

Following the London bombings there are those, Britain’s prime minister Tony Blair among them, who would like to blame the attack on the capital purely on religious fanatics and madmen and leave it at that. It suits their political purposes to do so. Such simplistic explanations obscure a more complex reality.

That the four British suicide bombers, whose bombs on July 7 and July 21 killed 56 people and injured 700, were fanatical is beyond doubt. That they carried out these horrific acts because they ran blindly into some Islamic text and misinterpreted it is fanciful. Only a poor historian would arrive at such a conclusion.

History teaches us that entire countries can be put under the spell of ideology given certain social conditions: Germany under Hitler, Russia under Stalin, Cambodia under Pol Pot. But would we be right in concluding that all the supporters of fascist and communist revolutions and movements that ended up in wreaking havoc on their countries were persuaded to do so because they were mad or fanatical? Or were there other forces driving them to such desperate outcomes?

Causal factor

In the case of the British suicide bombers, American foreign policy and Britain’s uncritical support of it – in Iraq, Afghanistan and Israel – must be considered as a causal factor in any intelligent discussion. Opinion polls of British muslims show that while the overwhelming majority oppose terrorism and acts of violence, the majority also regard US attacks on Iraq and Afghanistan as anti-muslim.

Apparently, all the justifications in terms of security, replacing tyrants with democrats and so on, have not convinced this critical constituency of the worthiness of this western mission. The jingoistic language of the campaign (War on Terror, Operation Crusader, etc) has hardly helped. Nor has the negative publicity generated by the abuses carried out in the Abu Ghraib detention facility in Baghdad and the controversy surrounding Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

Then there is the social situation of the British muslim community. The UK press has made much of the fact that the suicide bombers came from middle class homes rather than poor backgrounds. Again, history demonstrates that terrorists, revolutionaries and suicide bombers often do come from middle class homes (Che Guevara came from a middle class Argentine family, for example), but that they can be misguided into extreme politics and violence by social concern.

In several northern British towns, the Asian muslim population is high and is not integrated with the other communities. Its members felt sufficiently marginalised to riot in 2001 and little has been done to address the situation.

In the wake of the London bombings, the tightening of security and of laws to deal with fanatics and potential terrorists is both inevitable and necessary. But a debate that doesn’t consider why certain communities and groups feel less enamoured with globalisation as do bankers and other professionals, would be a stale one.

Modernisation process

The big danger is that globalisation becomes viewed as the export of an American-Anglo model, rather than as a modernisation process that can be undertaken by all cultures. If American and British leaders want to sell globalisation better, they have to stop presenting their own political and economic model as the only one while national leaders, and senior bankers among them, need to start selling globalisation in their own cultural terms.

Governments everywhere must ensure that the material benefits of globalisation are more equally shared. Only with this multi-pronged approach can some of the causes of terrorism be addressed.

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Read more about:  Analysis & opinion , Western Europe , UK