A Better Way to Tackle Terror

By Scilla Elworthy, openDemocracy.net. Posted July 28, 2005.

The five days between July 6 and July 10 were for Londoners a mini-epic of emotional intensity. Between exultant celebrations of the successful 2012 Olympic Games bid and proud commemoration of the sixtieth anniversary of the end of the second world war, the city's transport networks suffered a coordinated assault of four bombings that killed 56 people and injured 700.

The pattern of events produced a familiar narrative in response: that Londoners -- and British people generally -- are good at pulling together in a crisis. This narrative, drawing on a broader sense of historical continuity and solidarity, encourages the British to feel that they can find themselves not merely in standing together, but in being prepared to fight together.

But 2005 is not 1945, and the bombings of "7/7" present a different kind of threat. The long, bloody conflict in Northern Ireland shows that if terrorism is approached as war, it cannot be defeated. If superior force could subdue terror, the mightiest military machine in history would by now surely have prevailed in Afghanistan and Iraq.

What is needed instead is intelligence: intelligence of the obvious kind (tracking people down, stopping flows of money, cutting supplies of weapons and explosives) and of a less obvious kind (intelligence that understands the mind of the extremist). A reaction that asserts "these people only understand force" or "these people are psychopaths" does not help. It is potentially more useful -- though much more difficult -- to understand why people are furious enough to commit extreme acts of political violence, often involving their own deaths.

The Power of Humiliation

Terrorism is a calculated act of political violence intended to create maximum public disruption and response. The ultimate aim is psychological intimidation -- to create an environment in which people no longer feel safe. The intelligent response is also, in turn, psychological.

What might it feel like to be Osama bin Laden, or any militant Islamic fundamentalist? Perhaps this:

"The attractiveness of popular western culture -- largely American culture -- is overwhelming. It spurts images and possibilities of fulfilled individual desire (the pursuit of happiness in high consumption environments) and is profoundly corrosive of other societies. It may not entirely dissolve but it certainly modifies them ... spiritual pollution squirts in faster and faster over satellites and cables, like a long term toxic attack"

[see Paul Schulte's essay in Brad Roberts, ed., Hype or Reality? The New Terrorism and Mass Casualty Attacks (CBACI, 2000)].

Such an experience of western culture, one quite commonly expressed across the middle east, can produce seething hostility and aggressive, disgusted reactions. Add to this the humiliation felt by Palestinians, Afghans and now Iraqis as they are forced to submit to roadblocks, strip-searches, curfews and their homes being raided. The theme of humiliation recurs throughout reports and opinion surveys. A March 2004 poll sponsored by ABC News, NHK (Japan), ARD (Germany) and the BBC, with fieldwork by Oxford Research International, found that 41% of Iraqis thought the war had humiliated Iraq.

The act of scrawling an obscene insult -- "Fuck Iraq and every Iraqi in it!" on a bedroom mirror during a house raid -- may appear an isolated, inconsequential event, but a single act of this sort can reaffirm nationalist tendencies in an entire neighbourhood and colour its perception of the American mission.

United States Marines, searching for insurgents in Ramadi, randomly kicked in the doors of houses to shout at the women inside: "'Where's your black mask?' and 'Bitch, where's the guns?'" These soldiers were not taught in advance to respect human decencies and Iraqi cultural norms; the violation involved here is also of the honour of male family members, who in response are likely to seek retaliation for the mistreatment of their wives and sisters.

Humiliation and degradation are ancient and explosive weapons of war, and inevitably produce a backlash. In cultures where the concept of honour is profound, those who humiliate and dehumanise do so at their peril. In doing so, they put a much wider group of citizens at risk.

In Iraq, the sense of powerlessness of ordinary people under Saddam Hussein has been compounded by the humiliation of the invasion and the failures of reconstruction. Alistair Crooke, intelligence officer and former European Union security adviser, directly experienced the US assault on Fallujah. "If you haven't experienced it you can have no idea what it feels like being subjected to bombing of this kind", he says. "The houses which were destroyed had nothing to do with the resistance fighters, who slept in alleyways. And, because bombs were attached to doorbells, the US troops killed the first person they saw as a matter of course. This kind of trauma generates intense hostility", says Crooke. "Even if you are an observer, you can't trust your emotions."

Scilla Elworthy is (with Gabrielle Rifkind) author of the report Heart and Minds: human security approaches to political violence, published by the think-tank Demos on 21 July 2005.

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