A year after the Madrid train bombings which killed 191 people, injured 1,900 and brought down the Spanish government, it is fitting that the Spanish capital should gather together world leaders, policy-makers and experts on terrorism. Terrorism is international, it knows no borders. It needs to be addressed internationally. As former Brazilian President Fernando Cardoso said yesterday when opening the conference, the world must unite in the fight against it.
No one is going to disagree with that — not Vladimir Putin, not Mahmoud Abbas, not Jacques Chirac, not even George W. Bush. He wanted an international war on terrorism. The problem was that he wanted everyone to march to his drumbeat. The others are just the same. They want the war against terrorism to be fought according to their agendas.
The idea that all governments can work together in the fight against terrorism is pious hope. Not even the Spanish hosts can get their act together. The parliamentary commission investigating the March 11 attacks is getting nowhere because the ruling socialists and the ousted PPP are using it for own political purposes.
Much that is being said and proposed in Madrid makes obvious sense — the plan to end the conference with a set of guidelines to tackle international terrorism that preserves democratic values and traditions; Cardoso’s assertion that unilateral responses risked undermining the international system and increasing disorder; the definition of terrorism as the deliberate killing of innocent lives. Even billionaire financier George Soros’ assertion that the US’ “war on terror” was a violation of human rights because it killed innocent people made sense in that context. Coming on the same day that Pakistan admitted that the former head of its nuclear arms program had given centrifuges for enriching uranium to Iran, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s dramatic plea that the world seize a last chance to ensure that terrorists are denied the means to carry out a nuclear terror attack made chilling sense. But all this is in danger of ending up as fine words, nothing more.
In today’s world of the Internet and e-mail, of mass transportation that allows the potential terrorist to go anywhere with relative ease, of massive funding and easy availability of arms, the ball is in the terrorists’ court. They will always be one step ahead of the game, because they are the initiators of violence and the do not care what happens to them.
The fine words in Madrid will not defeat terrorism because words are not a weapon that the terrorist fears. The only way to defeat terrorism is rigorous intelligence and rigorous action — both military and to deprive them of the resentment and alienation that fills their ranks. The way to that is by ensuring greater justice in the world. That is the overriding need. Terrorism must be fought, if only to contain it. But what are weapons against those who despise everything their enemies hold dear, who are willing to kill themselves for their beliefs?
