The reason why the war on terror now being waged by the US-led international coalition has won the unanimous backing of the world is that it seeks to root out a scourge that threatens human life and peace everywhere. The threat does not come from any particular society, organization or group. Al-Qaeda did not invent terrorism. It was there long before Osama Bin Laden was born or Mulla Omar came to power in Afghanistan. And it will not end when they are caught or killed.
The cause of freeing the world of terrorism will be defeated if it comes to be defined, as the present emotionally charged discourse has done, as attacks on America. If war on terrorism is to become the common goal and passion of all nations and peoples, of the Third World as well as of the First, it will have to be a war against all those forces which employ terror to deny decent people the right to lead their lives in peace. While the United Nations is yet to respond to the appeal made by many nations and leaders for a universally acceptable definition of "terrorism", there is no doubt that the criminal gangs that hold whole nations to ransom will have to be classified as terrorist groups.
Many of these groups came into existence and earned their moral legitimacy as genuine representatives of the deprived and dispossessed sections of the population. However, when they acquired arms to fight their repressive governments, in Latin America or elsewhere, they gradually came to be controlled by mafia groups. While they retained their revolutionary tags in order to give themselves a veneer of respectability, their "revolution" became murder, narcotics, kidnapping and every other crime against humanity.
One such group currently in news is FARC, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. It is about to resume its deadly operations after its leaders and government negotiators ended their talks in an atmosphere of acrimony. After three years of fruitless negotiations on which President Andres Pastrana staked his political reputation, the patience of the Colombian authorities has finally run out and they have broken off talks with the murderous gang.
The FARC forces, estimated to be some 17,000 strong, have been given two days to quit the large area of the country where they had been allowed to run a mini-Marxist state. Colombia seems doomed to yet more violence. The question is: Is the world going to stand by and let these terrorists resume their brutal campaign, in which any civilian who refuses to support them is tortured, mutilated and shot?
The depredations of the FARC may not affect the international community, but their brutal overlordship of some of Colombia’s prime narcotics-growing regions, coupled with their unholy and now unequal alliance with the country’s once-dominant international drugs cartels, has been to Colombians every bit as traumatic as the events of Sept. 11.
The main difference is that unlike the Americans, the Colombians have not been in a position to strike back. Here, it would seem, is a case where the international community, not just America, can examine if it can take a hand in fighting terrorism.
