WHEN TERRORISTS STRIKE at orderly, peaceable societies, they always have an initial advantage because in anything short of a police state, it is unlikely that the levels of security will be in place to thwart them. However, as Sept. 11 and the latest terrorist outrage in Bali have demonstrated, the blows delivered by the attackers stir up an angry hornet’s nest of activity.
Unfortunately not all that activity is either productive or purposeful. In response to acts of terror, the authorities feel that they must be seen to be doing something, anything, even if they are not entirely sure what actions will be the best.
In the wake of the Bali massacre, warnings have gone out to Australians and other Westerners working or holidaying in a range of countries throughout Southeast Asia. These alarms are supposed to be based upon sound intelligence, presumably passed on by the Americans. It is in the nature of such alerts, that the precise source of their information is never defined. We should not forget how the Americans and the Europeans were warned, post-Sept. 11, to brace themselves for other imminent attacks, attacks which never materialized. The exact nature of these threats was never defined. It seems plausible to suppose that the authorities were really only basing their alert on the fact that if there had been one terrorist outrage, there could very well be another. When however, after nothing had happened, people questioned the warnings, they were often told that it was because of the heightened state of security and public alertness, that the terrorists were unable to press ahead with further planned crimes.
What is however true about terrorism and the swarm of incoherent activity it stirs up in societies that have been its victim, is that other evil elements are quick to take advantage of it. The bombing that has just taken place in Kidapawan in the Philippines, slaying six people at a crowded bus station, is being linked to either communist guerrillas or the Moro Islamic Liberation Front. While either of these conjectures could be true, it is also a fact that criminal gangs have long been operating protection and extortion rackets in the area.
Organized crime around the world is generally quick to take advantage of the disruption to normal life caused by terrorism. The heightened state of security does not necessarily rebound on criminal gangs. In many countries, mafias have penetrated the forces of law and order and the legal system, so that they can be forewarned of new security measures. The risks to the likes of narcotics gangs and smugglers in reality rise hardly at all. There is also the unpleasant reality that organized crime has struck deals with law authorities, in return for promised assistance, using their street networks to help identify and track down terrorist cells. Perhaps the most outrageous example of the authorities working hand in glove with criminals was the US Army’s 1943 cooperation with the Mafia in Southern Italy, in return for their, as it turned out, very limited help against the Nazi Germans. As a result postwar Italy emerged with a revitalized Mafia.
There is also a point where criminals and allegedly ideological terrorists merge, as we have seen in Colombia where the FARQ guerrillas sustain their vicious insurgency with narcotics distributed for them by the Medellin cartel.
Terrorism is a high-profile and wicked menace. However, year in, year out, the world’s drug barons arguably kill far more innocent victims and wreak far greater social damage than ideological murderers. Yet the Washington led-response to their activities has never approached the determination currently being deployed against international terrorism.
