Terrorism and its Glorification  

By

Saad S. Khan

University of Cambridge St. Edmund’s College Mount Pleasant Cambridge

Saad.S.Khan1@gmail.com

Prominent terrorist AbU Musaab Zarqawi was killed recently in Iraq and the the provincial legislature in Pakistani province of Punjab held prayers for him. Is that tantamount to glorifying terrorism? Not sure! Pakistan is not a part of the British empire and the legislators have no reason to fear from the bill banning the glorification of terrorism that came into force in the United Kingdom, this Spring. Recently, Israeli “self defence” forces murdered ten Palestinian civilians who were enjoying a picnic on the Gaza beach. Palestinian government decried it as terrorism while the Israelis denied responsibility. A few weeks ago, a Palestinian suicide bomber succeeded in penetrating into Israel and blew up a dozen restaurant goers after a lull in such attacks. The Israeli government was quick to decry the “terrorist” attack while the Palestinian government had called it a “self-defence” attack and refused to condemn it. The question is which of the attacks was terrorism and which one was an act in self-defence, or is it that both the sides were committing terrorism. In that case, calling terrorism as self defence would constitute, if not “glorifying terrorism”, then at least “abetting and condoning terrorism”--- all of them now “criminal offences” in the United Kingdom, at least, under Tony Blair’s new anti terror codes.

Israelis are so afraid of terrorism that their “self defence Foreign Ministry” barred this writer, as member of Cambridge University delegation, to visit Jerusalem and Palestine recently, because of the fear of exposure of their self defence.

True, neither the Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert nor his Palestinian counterpart Ismael Hanieh, are British nationals, but the immunity of heads of state from crimes against humanity is a story of the yore now. In not too distant past, Chile’s ex-despot and a known criminal, General Pinochet got arrested in UK, although he was released on health grounds, but many others were not so lucky, Saddam of Iraq, Milosevic of Serbia and lately, Charles Taylor of Sierra Leone are among those criminals who could not hide behind “head-of-state” impunity to evade the due process of law.

The new law in Britain, however, is a seminal landmark in humanity’s quest for peace and justice. The acrimonious debate in the months between the introduction of this bill in the House of Commons to its reluctant approval at the House of Lords, sometimes jeopardized the fate of this bill but it is a positive omen that it saw the light of the day as a law. If the notion of glorifying and abetting terrorism gets accepted as terrorism in itself, many a liars will face the music. That Tony Blair’s self assertions that he did not lie to the nation and to the world on Iraq are now taken no more than a joke even here in the UK. His blind following of the United States sometimes hypothetical policy of fighting against some terrorists and financing the others has led some US websites and blogs to yell that calling “Blair as Bush’s poodle is an insult to poodles”. Only shortly after this new terrorism law cam into force, a damning evidence came against Blair’s personal role in financing terrorism--- No, nothing related to Palestine, Iraq or Guantanamo Bay. It is about Uzbekistan where Blair financed terrorism. This evidence is actually a testimony of former British Ambassador and career civil servant, Craig Murray, who was sacked from service by Blair for raising his voice against British abetment of serious abuses in Uzbekistan, before a committee of the European Parliament in Brussels. Craig Murray had been direct witness of many mock trials in Uzbekistan, had seen first hand evidence of torture including acid baths, electric shocks, and the boiling of people to death. His conscience failed to represent a government which was colluding in this savagery. He wrote several memos to his government informing them that Uzbekistan’s Islam Karimov regime was involved in human rights violations, rampant torture and unexplained disappearances at an industrial scale and suggesting a strong diplomatic pressure to stop the abuse. He was pressurized, sacked and harassed and ultimately had a nervous breakdown.

There is no big deal when a government sacks a public servant for speaking his mind: many a governments have streaks of fascist tendencies! What is scandalous for Blair is that, according to Mr Murray, he was called to the Foreign Office where he was offered a “comfortable posting” as Ambassador to Coopenhagen, if he withdrew his notes, and was threatened with a charge sheet for “having issued British visas in return for sexual favours in his office”, if he does otherwise. Can a civilized government stoop too low in vandalizing the life and career of its own citizens when they dare to make a recommendation to defend human rights? It was after seeing this face of some Western statesmen of his time, that Mahatama Gandhi was compelled, when asked what he thought of Western civilization and values, to remark that “it would be a good idea to have ones”.
What happened in the tiny town of Andijan in Uzbekistan last year, when 745 unarmed civilians, most of them women and children, were massacred for protesting against mock trials of 21 local youths for having traded with their counterparts in Kyrgyzstan, was a crime against humanity. And so was the silence over it in the year since, that the so-called civilized world has observed. Islam Karimov is known to be the most ruthless dictator in this world where the slightest dissent is responded to by endemic torture. Al Qaeda and all its likes are no match for Karimov’s security forces, and in fact, the latter are turning ordinary secular dissenters of Karimov into Al Qaeda sympathizers. Yet, the United States gave $120 million aid to Uzbek military forces and another $82 worth of equipment and training to civilian security forces. This means that the United States and its allies are not only condoning terrorism and crimes against humanity but actively supporting and financing it. As for the UK, $500 million worth of public money has been channelled into such ruthless apparatus in Uzbekistan--- which is more than the total British aid to Sub Saharan Africa--- that is leading to swelling in the ranks of West-haters. The US and the British taxpayer is thus subsidizing Al Qaeda. The West is dismantling Saddam Hussain’s torture networks in Iraq, creating their own in Cuba, and subsidizing the ones of Islam Karimov in Uzbekistan.

As for glorifying terrorism and terrorists, one may argue, that the statements of Bush and Blair in support of known tyrants and criminals--- like calling Islam Karimov a “champion of freedom”, Tunisia’s Benali as “island of stability” and Egypt’s Mubarak as “our friend”--- fall in the scope of “glorifying”, and thus at least Mr Blair has, by criminalizing this glorification, unwittingly put his own post-retirement liberty at risk. True, this glorifying clause can be applied selectively in his own country, when Imam of Finsbury Park Mosque of London, Abu Hamza, gets seven years imprisonment for inciting hatred in his speeches, and Nick Griffin, the head of the nationalist and white supremacist BNP party, is set free for lack of evidence on more or less the same charges of inciting racial hatred. But given that courts in Spain and Belgium have acquired universal jurisdiction to try terrorism related offences, which includes--- one would presume--- glorifying it, a time may come that the democratic leaders in the world may find themselves in the docks for having knowingly supported tyrants. As the weekly ECONOMIST wrote recently that it was “not just an ethical point, coddling tyrants has strategic costs too”. One must add that in the years to come the strategic costs may come to individuals also as to States.

The Chancellor of Exchequer and probably and potentially the next Prime Minister of Britain, Gordon Brown believes that “Britishness is not about common blood or culture, about dreaming spires and changing of guards, but is based on a sober set of shared values”. If the new bill defends these values and takes to task any citizen, be he a Prime Minister (like Blair) or a common man, rather than being used for bullying certain sections of ethnic minorities alone, than this terrorism bill will go a long way in making the world a safer place to live.

The writer is the Middle East Editor of Cambridge Review of International Affairs and a widely read analyst on politics, governance and human rights in the Muslim world. Views/Comments of the esteemed readers are welcome at Saad.S.Khan1@gmail.com