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Issue 12: October - November 2001

OPINION – This interview with Albrecht Schnabel, academic programme officer with  UN University's Peace and Governance Programme, appeared in Le Monde newspaper on September 25. These are his personal views.

"The West has nothing to
gain by impatiently trying
to impose its standards"

Terrorists have a different notion of politics and the social order. By attempting to extend Western values to the rest of the world by force, we trigger a reflex of rejection. Shock treatment has only radicalized the opposition.

Q: For about a decade, there has been a noticeable escalation in terrorist violence. How do you interpret this phenomenon? 

A: Personally, what surprises me the most is that there have not been more terrorist attacks, especially during and immediately after the Gulf War. That war was a turning point. To speak of “war” today is somewhat naive. The real “war” started ten years ago in the Gulf. Horrified at the continuous U.S. presence in his homeland, Saudi Arabia, and at the continued military action against Iraq, bin Laden declared that he would avenge what he saw as a war against Islamic peoples. It was then that bin Laden formed his organization, after several Arab countries decided to support the United States against Iraq.  This swing into the U.S. camp was interpreted as the end of the Islamic world through a secularization of the states that were progressively distancing themselves from orthodox interpretations of the Koran. Bin Laden’s organization was one of the first to act on a worldwide scale. Most others operate within the borders of their country and attack their own government. Few of them are active on the international stage and target a specific superpower or a “global order,” as bin Laden does.

Q: At present, what evidence do we have that bin Laden is the source of the attacks on the United States?

A: For the time being, there is no proof that Osama bin Laden organized, financed or orchestrated these attacks. There are simply suspicions based on two elements: first, his involvement in other attacks against U.S. facilities, like the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, the bombings of U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya in 1998 and the destruction of the USS Cole in Yemen last year. Furthermore, bin Laden published two declarations of holy war on the United States, in 1996 and 1998. He also announced his intention of bringing the war to U.S. soil. These are the reasons why Washington has declared him to be the prime suspect of the September 11 attack. In such a situation, it is crucial for the United States to produce evidence of bin Laden’s involvement before undertaking any action against him, Al-Qaeda – his organization – the Taliban or Afghanistan. 

Q: Suicide bombings have never reached such a level in the past. Do you think we have entered a new phase? 

A: The use of suicide bombing is not a new phenomenon in itself. This kind of attack has the great "merit" – in the eyes of terrorists – of radically severing links with the organization, as the success of the operation depends on the death of the perpetrator. There is no risk of arrest, interrogation, confessions, etc. If the German (Baader-Meinhof), Italian (Red Brigade) or Japanese (Red Army) terrorist organizations did not undertake suicide bombings, it is because these terrorists did not want to die. They took risks, but they did not seek death. What is different in the case of the bin Laden organization is that instead of Palestinian or Sri Lankan terrorists, generally young, sometimes very young, psychologically vulnerable men, who accept the fact that they will die in the attack, quickly go into action after a brief training period. We see highly trained individuals (pilots, in some cases), who organized their action in minute detail over a long period of time while they behaved completely normally in society. They are professional killers who accept their own death as a result of their act. Here we have indeed entered a new phase, for we will never know exactly how many there are of them, and it seems that there is no limit to their ingenuity in circumventing existing security systems. What’s more, the impact of their operations in the United States could encourage others to follow suit. 

Q: Are there many organizations able to conduct attacks such as those that we have just witnessed? 

A: If we look at previous activity, including attacks against U.S. facilities, capacity, financing, the will to act outside the country of origin and the use of suicide attacks, a good number of terrorist organizations around the world are able to undertake this type of action. I believe it is not desirable to give their names, as it would encourage them to act or confuse their abilities with their intentions. The ability to undertake such actions – or even worse ones, as for example the use of chemical or biological warfare – does not imply that these organizations are about to do so. 

Q: What motivates these terrorists to such a degree? 

A: I think there is an overuse of indiscriminate ideas such as a conflict of civilizations, for there are also regions like Libya and Iran where relations between Islamic and non-Islamic communities have improved. Of course, we can find religious or ethnic motives behind many terrorist actions. But in the case of the actions perpetrated in the United States, I am not sure that the motive is solely religious. Above all, I believe these terrorists have a different notion of politics and the social order. I am presently co-authoring a book on peace and democracy in the Middle East, and I see that Western-style democratization and Western political, economic and social systems cannot simply be transferred wholesale anywhere in the world. To think so is naive. By trying to impose Western values as universal ones, we trigger a reflex of rejection. 

This does not mean that democratization is incompatible with the social systems or religion of these countries. But they aspire to a different kind of democratization. The opening of political and economic systems, responses to the globalization of markets and ideas, must likewise be pursued in a gradual fashion. The shock treatments used until now have only served to radicalize the opposition. On the contrary, we should help these countries to initiate a indigenous process of opening. Results may take time to appear, but the West has nothing to gain by impatiently trying to impose its standards. These countries perceive this impatience as arrogance, a colonial kind of pressure.

The dramatic events that have taken place in the United States should encourage us to think, to consider that we have perhaps taken a mistaken approach. There are problems that cannot be solved by force, and if we wish to counter this upsurge in violence, we must face it in a different way than we have done until now; ultimately, this way of acting could stop support by some states for terrorist actions. It is a mistake to marginalize those who do not play our game – those who do not subscribe to exactly the same political, economic social and cultural values as ourselves – by demonizing them. When we believe that the actions of these states have no legitimacy, we refuse to face them as negotiating partners. And yet this is what must be done before they go on the offensive. Perhaps it is here that we should seek the roots of what is happening and of the hatred for the United States. 

Q: Specifically, how would you reorient the focus on the problems at the origin of these terrorist acts of violence? 

A: In our research on the management of insurgencies, we try to understand why these movements resort to terrorist violence. As a theoretical base for our thinking, we attempt to establish a delicate distinction between those movements that have some legitimacy because they espouse demands made by the general public and those that do not. The response of the international community must be different according to each case. A terrorist organization, whatever it may be, needs popular support to hide, feed, finance and protect it. Without this support, it cannot exist. In many countries under dictatorial regimes, these organizations offer social services to people, and to a degree are well received by the population even though it may not necessarily approve of the methods they use. 

The only way to eradicate terrorism is by attacking the ills that give rise to it by cutting off the popular support it receives through policies of assistance, and above all by intervening less in the internal affairs of countries. Pressure on Israel to re-launch the peace process would also be desirable. In short, there must be a demonstration of good faith, and in this way some Islamic countries could be convinced to join the fight against terrorism. In the case of bin Laden, the solution is not necessarily to bomb Afghanistan, which will make victims of more civilians in a population that already suffered during the war with the Soviet Union and continues to suffer today under the Taliban regime. Such an action will weaken the worldwide support that the United States currently enjoys. Sending troops would not be a solution either – the USSR was unable to beat Afghanistan. The only way is a political solution, but this does not respond to the current expectations, the desire for revenge expressed by U.S. public opinion and that of some of its partners. 

Q: If we follow your distinction between insurrections arising from legitimate aspirations and those that do not meet such criteria, how would you categorize an organization like that of Osama bin Laden? 

Bin Laden’s political objectives cannot be considered as a response to legitimate popular aspirations. He proclaims that he is at war against U.S.-Western imperialism and that he defends the peaceful existence of the Islamic world and its political, social and cultural order. In reality, he does not represent the interests of the Islamic world as a whole, but rather those of a small, extremist minority. 

I believe that bin Laden’s hostility to the United States is based on his personal opposition to its presence in Saudi Arabia and his perception of Americans, who he sees as engaged in a struggle intended to humiliate and destroy Islamic culture and replace it with the Judeo-Christian culture of the West. To a great degree, bin Laden is fighting a personal war. His extremist interpretation of Islam is not that of the majority of Muslims. He also targets civilians, which discredits him in the eyes of many Islamic states and societies that may very well want the United States out of the region, but do not subscribe to methods going against the teachings of the Koran.    

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