London, Madrid, Bali, Casablanca, Istanbul, Riyadh and New York — but also, and especially, Iraq — have been victims to terror in its most appalling form. The rational response to these shocking and unthinkable acts of terror is to seek ways to protect us from the violence and hatred, but the phenomenon itself precludes any clear answers or solutions.
Prime Minister Tony Blair has very laudably opened up the prospect of a new approach to defeating terror, by asking that we concentrate on addressing its roots rather than trying to cut off its many heads. The roots of course are deep and they are many. We must not spare any effort in identifying and in removing them.
In looking at the roots, one must examine their structure, their strength and characteristics, but also the past and present conditions of the ground in which they have grown and spread. Probing the ground by no means implies justifying the pernicious roots of terror that have grown in it, just as there are plants which take root in fertile grounds but which wipe out all other life around them. In effect, before there is terror, there is the humiliation, hatred and perceived injustices that Prime Minister Blair was indirectly referring to.
Terrorism, like history, is mostly built on the skeletons, the humiliations and injustices of the past. Too often we tend to forget these, but in the Middle East memories are long and the historical wrongs to remember are many. Far from having dried out the ground of injustices recently, the roots of terror are being nourished more every day.
From the dawn of the 20th century Arab dreams and promises have been betrayed. The Franco-British division of the Middle East, the crushing of Arab independence movements, the creation of the State of Israel and the ensuing wars and occupation are only some of the impossible circumstances that Arabs had to face. Arab land, it seems, has been occupied ever since the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. The authoritarian regimes that emerged after independence were as much a reaction to as a continuation of these injustices.
Today Arab land remains occupied, guns are pointed at honest Iraqis and Palestinians who are simply trying to scrape by a living for their families, innocent civilians are bombed in Afghanistan, Arab prisoners are shamed and humiliated, while many in the West — thankfully less so Blair — allow themselves to simply accuse Arabs of encouraging terrorism and to lecture them about how they should live. Something is very wrong here and I think we are beginning to see the outlines of those roots Blair was referring to.
It is seemingly easy for Western leaders to forget the immense impact which the daily humiliations, dangers and injustices have on the mind of each and every Arab. Arabs are as enraged as anyone else by the terror that is visited upon them and the world by fanatics and extremists, but they also wonder why so little attention is being paid to the continuing hardships and injustices which they have been clamoring to be freed from for so long.
The conditions which Arabs, especially Iraqis and Palestinians, face are often desperate and extreme. Every day they are confronted with humiliating images, whether from Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo or from Israeli-occupied Palestine. Not only are their lives threatened by extremists, they are also aware that every day they may die by the nervous trigger-finger of a soldier who has learned little about their culture or by what Americans so perfunctorily call “collateral damage.” Arabs have become suspects in their own home, and the tactics of occupying forces have reduced their own discernment almost to the level of the terrorists who so blindly kill innocent civilians.
Thankfully, faced with this worsening situation, Blair and a number of Western commentators have started to realize that what they call “the war on terror” is bound to fail, that it is making things far worse, and that it is about time to work seriously at understanding and removing the roots of terror. The equivalent of what happened in London is experienced by Iraqis every day, on top of an increasingly detested occupation and a history of violence, injustice and broken dreams, whether at the hands of the West or at the hands of the dictators who took over and were supported by the West.
The irrational and senseless behavior of terrorists can never be fully understood, but the pains of a people who have lived in these conditions, who saw their brothers expelled from Palestine, Iraq occupied on bad intelligence, and fellow Arabs killed, humiliated or treated as suspects on a daily basis, we must strive to understand. The West may forget or be blind to what Arabs have experienced over the past century and are still experiencing today, but Arabs experience it as a whole, as a string of injustices that accompanies them wherever they go.
We must bring an end to these injustices, to these endless and senseless conflicts. What is more, the solutions have been there all the while. On the Arab-Israeli conflict, agreed documents outlining a just peace already exist. In the case of the Taba agreement there was 99 percent agreement between parties, along with the support of a US president. Rather than today’s baby steps and the continuing construction of a wall of injustice we should be applying that document. On the small disagreements Arabs can compromise, but the big picture is already there.
With regards to the Iraq war, all but the United States and a handful of Western leaders were against the war and its unconvincing justifications from the start. Today the insurgency is spinning further out of control and the American presence is contributing to the worsening situation. It is clear to most of us that it is now time for American troops to withdraw and to be replaced by acceptable and UN-sanctioned forces.
This is where we should be looking, and at last we have come to a real start. The West must acknowledge its failed and destructive policies, as Arabs in their vast majority acknowledge the futility of violence as a method of resistance. It is time for true understanding between peoples, for accepting and confronting each other’s pains and grievances, and for working together to remove the roots of terror and injustice.
The composed, common sense and considerate response of Tony Blair and the British people in the aftermath of the London bombings is a good place to start.
