How to Beat the Political Terrorists
Nate Hower-Haken Saturday, 17 December 2005
In past decades, policy makers and international relations practitioners underemphasized the significance of culture and religion. Now the pendulum has rightly swung in the other direction, especially in light of 9/11 and our difficulties in Iraq. But in the midst of this paradigm shift, a very popular and dangerous theory has emerged that suggests that Muslim culture and religion fuels the emergence of Islamic terrorist groups.
Bernard Lewis provided the most comprehensive intellectual support for this theory by tracing the political clash of cultures through the centuries (Lewis 1990). Samuel Huntington's (1993) less nuanced presentation has also taken root to some degree among our political elites. But Mahmood Mamdani and a host of other academics from many different disciplines argue that both have serious flaws built into their analysis. Critics rightly assert that Lewis and Huntington have misunderstood the nature of "culture," the sociological dynamics of boundary formation, and the origins and objectives of terrorism.
Misunderstanding Culture
Kevin Avruch has argued that the popular conception of culture stems from a nineteenth century worldview and needs to be updated. He enumerates six commonly held and inadequate views on culture: 1) culture is homogenous; 2) culture is a thing; 3) culture is uniformly distributed in a social group; 4) an individual belongs to a single culture; 5) culture is custom; 6) culture is timeless (Avruch 1998, 12-16). In reality, Avruch says, culture is dynamic. People are multicultural. Individuals ostensibly within the same culture remain very diverse, and yet they find ways to communicate. There are no perfectly clear "fault lines" between cultures as Huntington suggests when he argues, "the fundamental source of conflict in this new world will not be primarily ideological or primarily economic. The great divisions among humankind and the dominating source of conflict will be cultural" (1993, 22). Mamdani counters that cultures cannot be cordoned off from one another by national boundaries.
"It does not make sense to think of culture in political — and therefore territorial — terms. States are territorial; culture is not ... We need to think of culture in terms that are both historical and nonterritorial. Otherwise, one is harnessing cultural resources for very specific national and imperial political projects" (2004, 27).
If Huntington's main flaw is that of reifying culture, mistakenly describing it as a thing uniformly distributed among a group, Lewis makes the mistake of believing culture to be timeless. He looks back over a period of fourteen hundred years, identifies several instances of conflict between Europe and the Middle East, and leaps to the conclusion that these instances are all outbreaks of the same culture-based conflict.
"Rather than recognize that each encounter was fueled by a specific political project—the making of a political entity called "Christendom," the Castilian monarchy's desire to build a nation-state called Spain following its conquest of neighboring territories, modern European imperial expansion, and so on—Lewis claims that these "clashes" were driven by incompatible civilizations" (Mamdani 2004, 26).
Misunderstanding Boundary Formation
Charles Tilly proposes three mechanisms of social boundary formation: invention, borrowing, and encounter (2003, 29). Of the three, Huntington and Lewis base their arguments only on social encounter. They believe that "our" social network grew and developed in isolation, while "their" social network grew and developed separately. Then when "We" encountered "Them" fourteen hundred years ago, a boundary formed.
"Encounter involves initial contact between previously separate (but internally well-connected) networks in the course of which members of one network begin competing for resources with members of the other, interactively generating definitions of the boundary and relations across it." (Tilly 2003, 30).
It seems never to occur to them (especially Huntington) that boundaries can be shifted, borrowed, invented, deactivated, and/or manipulated. Granted, Lewis does admit that it would be a good idea for us to learn to respect and appreciate the accomplishments of the Muslim World in the hope that they will reciprocate (1990, 60). But this recommendation rings somewhat hollow in light of the rest of his analysis. Huntington and Lewis also seem to assume that a boundary will inevitably lead to violence. They observe that there was once conflict across this boundary (during the Crusades, etc.), and conclude that we should therefore prepare for more. Huntington says we need to defeat them. Lewis says we can only hope that they decide to become more like us. In either case, the Us/Them boundary is assumed to be objectively real and an inevitable source of conflict.
But Tilly points out that collective violence is more complicated. For one thing, political entrepreneurs can redraw boundaries by "organizing, linking, dividing, and representing constituencies" (Tilly, 30). And if political entrepreneurs collaborate with violence specialists, those boundaries can become dangerously polarized.
"Polarization generally promotes collective violence because it makes the us-them boundary more salient, hollows out the uncommitted middle, intensifies conflict across the boundary, raises the stakes of winning or losing, and enhances opportunities for leaders to initiate action against their enemies" (Tilly 2003, 22).
In truth, Huntington and Lewis are acting in the manner of political entrepreneurs themselves, hardening the boundary between an imaginary Us (the Judeo-Christian World) and an imaginary Them (the Islamic World). If Our violence specialists buy their analysis, we could be in for some real trouble.
Misunderstanding Terrorism
To say that Islamic terrorists are terrorists because they are Muslim is analytically problematic. It narrows the focus so much as to ignore the broader context. For example, during Operation Condor thousands of people were systematically tortured and assassinated in Latin America on the basis that they were potentially leftist. The U.S. was aware of these incidents, but did nothing to stop them while maintaining close ties with the perpetrators (Dinges 2004). After all, we were afraid of the leftists too.
According to the State Department, terrorism is defined as "politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience" (Tilly 2003, 233). This makes the clandestine agents of Operation Condor unambiguously terrorists, their objective being to maintain and consolidate political power. No one tries to explain Operation Condor through what Mamdani calls "Culture Talk." We don't say that they were Latino terrorists, or Catholic terrorists.
It is tempting to do this with political Islamic terrorists, however, for two reasons. First, it is sometimes difficult to discern the political objectives of non-governmental insurgent groups who use terror. As Tilly says, American journalists sometimes interpret terrorist attacks as being utterly "senseless" (Tilly 2003, 237). And if it is senseless then one can only assume that it must be "cultural." O'Neill, however, lays out some possible strategic objectives:
"Though the general purpose of terrorism has been to alter the behavior and attitudes of specific groups, this has not excluded the simultaneous pursuit of one or more proximate objectives, such as extracting particular concessions (e.g. payment of ransom or the release of prisoners), gaining publicity, demoralizing the population through the creation of widespread disorder, provoking repression by the government, enforcing obedience and cooperation from those inside and outside the movement, fulfilling the need to avenge losses inflicted upon the movement, and enhancing the political stature of specific factions within an insurgent movement" (1990, 25).
The second reason it is tempting to use Culture Talk to explain Islamic terrorism is that al-Qaeda, Hamas, and Hizbullah, Isb-I-Islami, and so on, all use religious language to describe their goals.
Mamdani does not deny that these people are religious. This is why he uses the term "political Islam" to describe them, rather than "Islamic fundamentalists" (2004, 37). In other words, it is not the Muslim in them that makes them terrorists; it is their political ambition.
Mamdani goes on to trace America's role in cultivating and facilitating these same terrorist groups during the Cold War, particularly in Afghanistan. Because the Soviets were ideologically atheist, it made sense to support the religious insurgents. As Mamdani recounts, we heavily subsidized various mujahideen groups, mainly through Pakistan's secret service, the ISI.
The combined result was to flood the region not only with all kinds of weapons but also with the most radical Islamist recruits. They flocked to ISI-run training camps in Pakistan, where they were "ideologically charged with the spark of holy war and trained in guerilla tactics, sabotage and bombings." The Islamist recruits came from all over the world.... (2004, 126).
Throughout this period, we supported many right-wing dictatorships in the Middle East, sometimes for decades. On its own, this strategy precipitated blowback. For example, Sayyid Qutb of the Muslim Brotherhood managed to effectively associate the U.S. and Westernization with the dictatorial regime of Nasser in the minds of oppressed Egyptians (Mamdani 2004, 56). The irony is that the intellectual movement Qutb started in the 50s and 60s was the same group we tapped as proxies in our war against Communism in Afghanistan during the 80s. One consequence of this policy was that we generated, facilitated, and mobilized an international network of militias and insurgencies that were unapologetically anti-Western. But that was okay with us because they were anti-Soviet as well, and it was the Soviets who had the atom bomb.
With the end of the Cold War, we had attained our political objective, so we went home to enjoy our peace dividend. But the political Islamic groups had not yet attained their goal: after all, there continued to be pseudo-Western corrupt regimes in power all over the Middle East. And now, thanks to our proxy war in Afghanistan, there was a group of heavily armed and well-connected militias who were eager to overthrow these regimes and felt their objective was finally within reach.
However, because they were so decentralized and widely dispersed, mobilizing the many insurgencies against corrupt governments required the construction of a common enemy against which the movement could coalesce. That was why political entrepreneur Osama bin Laden staged the 9/11 attacks. A strategy aimed at provoking repression is not new. The same use of terror was used to great effect in Algeria's War of Liberation against France. Conveniently, we responded to 9/11 in much the same way as the French did to the Algerian terrorist insurgents. Indeed, "before 9/11, the United States called for reconciliation in the face of societal terror. After 9/11, this stance was reversed. Instead of reconciliation, there is now a policy of zero tolerance and a demand for justice" (Mamdani 2004, 256).
Certainly this is understandable, and perhaps even right. Just because al-Qaeda wanted to provoke a strong backlash does not mean taking action against terrorism is wrong. Still, it is hard to deny that our subsequent attacks on the Taliban and in Iraq, together with incidents like Abu Ghraib, have reinforced the boundary between Us and Them that political entrepreneur Sayyid Qutb delineated before his execution in 1966.
Now we face a series of interlocking political Islamic insurgent groups who claim to speak for the Middle Eastern masses. To the extent that they can convince the masses that they represent them, they win. And we play into their hands when we talk about a "clash of civilizations."
Huntington and Lewis' Victorian understanding of anthropology needs to be abandoned. Religion is very important, even critical; culture exists. But as Jesus himself demonstrated, these realities have no inevitable political or territorial consequence. This is not merely an abstract intellectual exercise: how you understand "culture" will have very important implications for your politics. "(A)ll the usages and understandings (of ‘culture') come to be attached to, or can be attached to, different ideological or political agendas" (Avruch 1998, 7).
If Tilly is right, then Huntington and Lewis are preaching a very dangerous message. They are advocating hardening the boundaries, polarizing the categories, raising the stakes. If we continue in this vein, violence will only increase. What we need to do is develop cross-boundary ties and communication channels, build up the middle, deactivate the fringes, and establish a sustained and transparent dialogue. Then the boundaries will shift, and the political terrorists will lose.
Works Cited
Avruch, Kevin. 1998. Culture and Conflict Resolution. Washington DC: United States Institute of Peace.
Dinges, John. 2004. The Condor Years: How Pinochet and His Allies Brought Terrorism to Three Continents. New York: The New Press.
Huntington, Samuel, 1993. "The Clash of Civilizations," Foreign Affairs. Summer, vol. 72, no. 3, pps. 22-49.
Lewis, Bernard. 1990. "The Roots of Muslim Rage." The Atlantic Monthly, vol. 226, no.3, pps. 47-60.
Mamdani, Mahmood. 2004. Good Muslim Bad Muslim. New York: Pantheon Books.
O'Neill, Bard E. 1990. Insurgency and Terrorism: Inside Modern Revolutionary Warfare. Herndon: Brassey's, Inc.
Schneider, Kathy. Political Violence, lecture. October 25, 2005.
Tilly, Charles. 2003. The Politics of Collective Violence. New York: Cambridge University Press.