Giving a press briefing at the UN headquarters, President Chandrika Kumaratunga has take up a position on terrorism, which is at variance with that of the US. She has said she does not agree with President Bush’s approach to ending terrorism through force. "Even if the expression of the conflict may take the most horrendous terroristic forms, we believe that there are justified reasons for it," she has said arguing ‘that legitimate grievances must be considered apart from the acts of violence."
She seems to have a point here in that terrorism derives sustenance from the grievances – both perceived and real – of some sections of society and the resultant frustration of theirs.
But it is wrong to assume that grievances are the only reason for terrorism. They are the fa`E7ade that terrorists use to project themselves as the underdog so as to justify terror in the eyes of the gullible.
Ask even an outfit like Al Queda why it is unleashing barbaric violence and it will claim that it is doing so to save Islam from its enemies despite the fact that it is doing greater harm to Islam than any other organisation. Ask the butchers beheading their hostages in Iraq in that barbaric manner why they are killing those innocent people who are in no way party to the conflict, they will claim some grievances in justification of their dastardly crimes against humanity. Ask the LTTE why they slashed the bellies of pregnant Muslim mothers (at Katankudy in 1990: See the statement by the Federation of North East Muslim Brotherhood – The Island of August 04, 2004) took out the unborn babies and stuffed their mouths with chopped breasts of their mothers, they will tell you they have been doing so to achieve their aspirations.
The consider-grievances-separate-from-violence theory makes it impossible to remove the scourge of global terrorism, which is chipping away at the foundations of civilisation. For, it leaves room for a terror outfit operating in one country to claim, in another, its ‘grievances’ in extenuation of its ‘horrendous terroristic’ violence. It has also led to your-terrorist-is-our-freedom-fighter policy and given the so-called the powerful nations an opportunity to deal with terrorism according to their whims and fancies.
The US policy on terrorism is a case in point. As part of a crusade against terrorism, it has bombed Afghanistan and Iraq into the Stone Age in search of its terrorists and has no qualms about its on-going military campaign even in the face of serious criticism against war on Iraq from many quarters including the UN itself.
But, the US, which employs all its resources to make mince meat of its terrorists, according to its ambassador here, believes that there is ‘no military solution to Sri Lanka’s conflict’, which, it says, has to be resolved through negotiations. In other words, the US is asking Sri Lanka to offer lamb after lamb to the Tigers until they become vegetarians!
It is only wishful thinking that terrorism will cease to be, after ‘justified reasons for it’ or the ‘legitimate grievances’ are eliminated. Terrorists always graduate from grievances to aspirations when a government agrees to redress grievances, thus upping the ante and making it difficult for negotiations to progress. We have seen this happen in Sri Lanka. The LTTE, which once spoke of grievances, is now talking of aspirations.
President Kumaratunga herself has admitted at the UN press briefing that she does not know what to do to make the LTTE eschew violence. She has said she does not know ‘what else the government could do short of handing over the country to the LTTE Leader Velupillai Prabhakaran. So much for the ‘justified reasons’ for terrorism.
There is no reason why the civilised world should, without being taken for a ride by terrorists and their wily allies, hesitate to come down hard on the barbarians unleashing terror.
(http://www.island.lk/2004/09/26/editorial.html)
