Terrorism vs Resistance

Reece Erlich: “Stop using the word ‘terrorist’”

Defining what a terrorist is and isn’t is a major dilemma. What one may consider terrorism, another may consider resistance. So where does one draw the line? Reese Erlich tackles that topic in his latest book“Conversations with Terrorists: Middle East Leaders on Politics, Violence, and empire.”

Erlich is a veteran journalist who has covered U.S. foreign policy for decades. He has freelanced for National Public Radio, Radio Deutsche Welle, the Australian Broadcasting Corp. Radio, the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. Radio, and writes for The San Francisco Chronicle and The Dallas Morning News.

Drawing on firsthand interviews and original research, Erlich argues that yesterday’s terrorist is often today’s national leader and that today’s freedom fighter may become tomorrow’s terrorist. By branding all of American’s opponents as “terrorists,” it makes it more difficult to look beyond the individual or the political group and understand what they are really all about. I caught up with Erlich recently and here’s what he had to say.

What is your definition of terrorist and what is this term often misconstrued, misused, or inaccurately portrayed in the American mainstream media?

In the popular sense, it is anybody who uses violence you don’t like. So therefore al Qaida, Hamas, or Hezbollah are all terrorists whereas the Muhajahdeen fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan and the Contras in Nicaragua were freedom fighters. In my view, terrorism is the use of violence against civilians for political ends. Governments, insurgent groups, and individuals can commit terrorism. They are trying to impact political events by using violence against civilians.

Let’s use the example of the resistance in World War II. They sometimes blew up Nazi soldiers; sometimes civilians were killed inadvertently. But nobody would call them terrorists today because they were aiming at overthrowing the Nazi occupation in Europe and were not intentionally trying to kill civilians. I think we should use that same criteria when evaluating any insurgent group.

You write that government policies can also be acts of terrorism. How do governments commit acts of terrorism and how do you distinguish acts of terrorism versus acting in self-defense or protecting American foreign policy or national security interests?

In the book, I wrote that the CIA hired Saudi and Lebanese agents to try and kill Ayatollah Mohammad Fadlallah in Beirut in 1985. They planted a bomb, it went off, and 80-plus people were killed and many more were injured. Fadlallah escaped alive and uninjured, but many civilians died. The agents who did that on behalf of the CIA knew that civilians were going to be killed. So the deaths of many dozens of people was OK in their thinking of they could get one alleged terrorist.

Israeli officials do the same thing when they drop 500-pound bombs on apartment buildings in Gaza. They know that a lot of civilians were going to be killed. They make up stories about phoning people in advance, do Robocalls, and drop leaflets. They know perfectly well that civilians are going to do die but they figure it is worth it. They think if they can get this one Hamas leader, so what if a bunch of Palestinians die? Maybe they won’t support Hamas now. That’s terrorism.

What is the difference between how the western world views terrorism vs. its adversaries say North Korea, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Venezuela, Cuba, etc?

I think you have to make a distinction among different people. If you look at the communist countries, historically and today, by and large they don’t engage in terrorism. I wouldn’t say they’ve never engaged in a terrorist act, and they certainly engage in violent acts. According to Marxist theory, you alienate potential supporters by intentionally killing civilians. You should be going after military and political targets.

So many of the left-wing insurgent groups intentionally target military, corporate, and political leaders in a battle for power. That doesn’t mean I necessarily agree with them. But they are not terrorists.

If you look at Pakistan, India, or Egypt, on the other hand and depending on the government and the time frame we’re looking at, they sometimes did engage in terrorist tactics. Certainly military and intelligence sources associated with them have engaged in terrorist tactics. The 2008 Mumbai bombing was clearly a terrorist attack. It was designed to intimidate the Indian government by wreaking havoc among civilians and has been linked to the ISI intelligence service in Pakistan. Some of these U.S. allies engage in serious terrorist actions.

What is the difference between resistance and terrorism? How and why do these terms get confused?

The U.S. government vilifies anybody who takes up arms against the U.S. or its allies Everybody automatically becomes a terrorist. Some groups really are attacking civilians, like al Qaida. Others may have used terrorist tactics, but they are seen in their countries as legitimate national liberation groups, such as Columbian Marxist guerrillas (FARC), Hamas, Hezbollah, and the PLO for that matter. All of them have taken up arms and the U.S. condemns them as terrorists.

I have very sharp differences with Hezbollah and Hamas. They are, at the core, right-wing fundamentalist Muslim groups that want to come to power in their respective countries. I would never vote for them. But they are not mainly trying to kill civilians in order to seize power. They have certainly used violence and killed Israeli civilians and engaged in terrorist tactics, but they are viewed by their own people as national liberation groups.

In the case of Hezbollah, they are seen as the only group that is capable of militarily defending Lebanon against continued Israeli attacks. They have a lot of support among Lebanese Sunni Muslims, Christians and Druze.

Hamas won the 2006 elections fair and square in the Palestinian Authority, a little detail the U.S. and Israel likes to forget about. So it does no good to simply vilify them as terrorists. You have to deal with them politically. What do they stand for? Why not sit down and negotiate with them?

In your book, you meet with individuals that many western foreign leaders/governments consider to be terrorists. For instance, you talk with Hamas leader Khalid Meshal. The U.S. considers Meshal and especially Hamas a terrorist organization. How is Meshal and Hamas misportrayed by American government elites and or the mainstream media?

I spend a fair amount of time going into Hamas in the book. It began as a distinctly rightwing fundamentalist group that was tolerated by Israel because Israeli authorities wanted to split the Palestinians at the time, and they saw the PLO as the main danger. But Hamas has evolved and developed a sizeable base of support, as reflected in the elections. But then they faced the problem of “How do you actually govern?”

A lot of their fundamentalist ideology didn’t work because the Palestinians, at their core, are secular. They aren’t interested in a fundamentalist government running them like in Iran or Saudi Arabia. The U.S. and Israel at that time should have acknowleged the changes in Hamas. It wasn’t the Hamas of 20 years ago. There could have been some major breakthroughs.

All you have to do is look at the history of the PLO. I remember when Yasser Arafat was the “chief terrorist,” when Israeli leaders called him another “Hitler.” The PLO began advocating a two-state solution in the early 1980s. But the U.S. and Israeli refused to negotiate the the PLO “terrorists.” Then boom, the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin comes into power and is willing to negotiate. Suddenly, they acknowledge what the PLO had been saying for 10 years. They sat down and negotiated the Oslo Accords. The same thing eventually is going to happen with Hamas.

Suddenly some Israeli politician is going to make a 180-degree turn and realize that Hamas isn’t the horrible group they have been vilifying, and Hamas is willing to negotiate a two-state solution. Meshal made that clear to me, to former president Jimmy Carter, and numerous other people — contrary to all the propaganda in the United States. Under certain circumstances Hamas would accept a two-state solution and agree to a long-term ceasefire with Israel.

Recently, some militant members of Hamas killed settlers in Hebron. Were those acts of terrorism and how do you respond to that incident? How can we view that incident accurately and appropriately?

This is where I disagree with Hamas. They see all of these things as acts of resistance. I don’t. I think there is a distinction between waging a guerrilla war against soldiers and political leaders and simply killing people because they are Israelis. Sometimes Hamas makes that distinction and sometimes it doesn’t.

But what about the argument that the settlers are akin to Israel’s reserve army because they are given weapons to use and what not?

I’ve been in Hebron. Some of these folks are armed occupiers and are no different from the military. I think that is true. I think if you went to other places like Ariel or other settlements, basically you have secular people who are looking for cheap housing and the Israeli government provides cheap mortgages for expanding suburbs. So I think Hamas should make that distinction.

CNN anchor Octavia Nasr was recently fired for expressing sympathy or remorse over the death of Grand Ayatollah Mohammad Fadlallah. How and or why is he and Hezbollah misportrayed in the American media and based on your experiences what is the truth of Fadlallah and/or Hezbollah?

In Lebanon, Fadlallah was considered a moderate on many issues. In the book I quote Lebanese leader Walid Jumblatt, who has gone to war with Hezbollah at various times. Hesaid Fadllalah was quite moderate in many of his policies. He is not Hezbollah’s spiritual advisor. He never was. He saw himself as a Muslim cleric who was trying to unite Muslims of all different political and religious tendencies. On domestic issues, he was in favor of women’s rights and democracy in Lebanon. He issued a fatwa against smoking and upheld science against superstition. Nasr was simply reflecting the widespread sentiment in much of the Arab world.

What other examples of terrorism stands out that Americans do not hear about or receive false information? What do Americans need to unlearn when it comes to terrorism and terrorist organizations?

There is a whole dirty war, basically death squads promoted by the United States around the world. They are called Special Operations. They engage in terrorist tactics. Imagine for a moment that an enemy of the U.S. decided to come into U.S. territory with undercover agents, to kidnap, torture, and imprison American citizens that it considered dangerous. Can you imagine the outrage inside the U.S.? But the U.S. does that. It was done very widely under George W. Bush, but it continues under Barack Obama. The Obama Administration defends it. Look at the most recent court decision not allowing any court hearing for people who were tortured by the U.S. or sent to countries to be tortured.  I think that is an important story that needs to be told.

What do people need to unlearn? I think as a practical matter, stop calling people or groups “terrorists.” Just accurately describe what they are doing and what they believe. Then let people decide whether they like them or not. Just stop throwing around the epithet ‘terrorist.’

Source : http://pulsemedia.org/2010/09/24/reece-erlich-stop-using-the-word-terrorist/#more-27793

The ISI and Terrorism: Behind the Accusations

Authors : Jayshree Bajoria, Staff Writer

Updated: July 26, 2010

1. Introduction
2. Supporting Terrorism?
3. Control over the ISI
4. Resistance in FATA
5. Mixed Record on Counterterrorism
6. The Taliban as a Strategic Asset
7. Allegations of Terrorist Attacks

Introduction

Pakistan's military intelligence agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), has long faced accusations of meddling in the affairs of its neighbors. A range of officials inside and outside Pakistan have stepped up suggestions of links between the ISI and terrorist groups in recent years. In autumn 2006, a leaked report by a British Defense Ministry think tank charged, "Indirectly Pakistan (through the ISI) has been supporting terrorism and extremism-whether in London on 7/7 [the July 2005 attacks on London's transit system], or in Afghanistan, or Iraq." In June 2008, Afghan officials accused Pakistan's intelligence service of plotting a failed assassination attempt on President Hamid Karzai; shortly thereafter, they implied the ISI's involvement in a July 2008 attack on the Indian embassy. Indian officials also blamed the ISI for the bombing of the Indian embassy. Pakistani officials have denied such a connection.

Numerous U.S. officials have also accused the ISI of supporting terrorist groups, even as the Pakistani government seeks increased aid from Washington with assurances of fighting militants. In a May 2009 interview with CBS' 60 Minutes, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said "to a certain extent, they play both sides." Gates and others suggest the ISI maintains links with groups like the Afghan Taliban as a "strategic hedge" to help Islamabad gain influence in Kabul once U.S. troops exit the region. These allegations surfaced yet again in July 2010 when WikiLeaks.org made public (NYT) a trove of U.S. intelligence records on the war in Afghanistan. The documents described ISI's links to militant groups fighting U.S. and international forces in Afghanistan. Pakistan's government has repeatedly denied allegations of supporting terrorism, citing as evidence its cooperation in the U.S.-led battle against extremists in which it has taken significant losses both politically and on the battlefield.

Supporting Terrorism?

"The ISI probably would not define what they've done in the past as 'terrorism,'" says William Milam, former U.S. ambassador to Pakistan. Nevertheless, experts say the ISI has supported a number of militant groups in the disputed Kashmir region between Pakistan and India, some of which are on the U.S. State Department's Foreign Terrorist Organizations list. While Pakistan has a formidable military presence near the Indian border, some experts believe the relationship between the military and some Kashmiri groups has greatly changed with the rise of militancy within Pakistan. Shuja Nawaz, author of Crossed Swords: Pakistan, its Army, and the Wars Within, says the ISI "has certainly lost control" of Kashmiri militant groups. According to Nawaz, some of the groups trained by the ISI to fuel insurgency in Kashmir have been implicated in bombings and attacks within Pakistan, therefore making them army targets.

On Pakistan's western border with Afghanistan, the ISI supported the Talibanup to September 11, 2001, though Pakistani officials deny any current support for the group. [Pakistan's government was also one of three countries, along with the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, that recognized the Taliban government in Afghanistan]. The ISI's first major involvement in Afghanistan came after the Soviet invasion in 1979, when it partnered with the CIA to provide weapons, money, intelligence, and training to the mujahadeen fighting the Red Army. At the time, some voices within the United States questioned the degree to which Pakistani intelligence favored extremist and anti-American fighters. Following the Soviet withdrawal, the ISI continued its involvement in Afghanistan, first supporting resistance fighters opposed to Moscow's puppet government, and later the Taliban.

Pakistan stands accused of allowing that support to continue. Afghan President Hamid Karzai has repeatedly said Pakistan trains militants and sends them across the border. In May 2006, the British chief of staff for southern Afghanistan told theGuardian, "The thinking piece of the Taliban is out of Quetta in Pakistan. It's the major headquarters." Speaking at the Council on Foreign Relations in September 2006, then President Pervez Musharraf responded to such accusations, saying, "It is the most ridiculous thought that the Taliban headquarters can be in Quetta." Nevertheless, experts generally suspect Pakistan still provides some support to the Taliban, though probably not to the extent it did in the past. "If they're giving them support, it's access back and forth [to Afghanistan] and the ability to find safe haven," says Kathy Gannon who covered the region for decades for the Associated Press. Gannon adds that the Afghan Taliban need Pakistan even less as a safe haven now "because they have gained control of more territory inside Afghanistan."

Many in the Pakistani government, including slain former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, have called the intelligence agency "a state within a state," working beyond the government's control and pursuing its own foreign policy. But Nawaz says the intelligence agency does not function independently. "It aligns itself to the power center," and does what the government or the army asks it to do, says Nawaz.

Control over the ISI

Constitutionally, the agency is accountable to the prime minister, says Hassan Abbas, research fellow at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. But most officers in the ISI are from the army, so that is where their loyalties and interests lie, he says. Experts say until the end of 2007, as army chief and president, Musharraf exercised firm control over the intelligence agency. But experts say it is not clear how much control Pakistan's civilian government--led by Bhutto's widower, President Asif Ali Zardari--has over the agency. In July 2008, the Pakistani government announced the ISI will be brought under the control of the interior ministry, but revoked its decision (BBC) within hours. Bruce Riedel, an expert on South Asia at the Brookings Institution, says the civilian leadership has "virtually no control" (PDF) over the army and the ISI.

In September 2008, army chief Ashfaq Parvez Kiyani replaced the ISI chief picked by former President Musharraf with Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha. Some experts say the move signals that Kiyani is consolidating his control over the intelligence agency by appointing his man at the top. In November 2008, the government disbanded ISI's political wing, which politicians say was responsible for interfering in domestic politics. Some experts saw it as a move by the army, which faced much criticism when Musharraf was at the helm, to distance itself from politics.

"I do not accept the thesis that the ISI is a rogue organization," Milam says. "It's a disciplined army unit that does what it's told, though it may push the envelope sometimes." With a reported staff of ten thousand, ISI is hardly monolithic: "Like in any secret service, there are rogue elements," says Frederic Grare, a South Asia expert and visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He points out that many of the ISI's agents have ethnic and cultural ties to Afghan insurgents, and naturally sympathize with them. Marvin G. Weinbaum, an expert on Afghanistan and Pakistan at the Middle East Institute, says Pakistan has sent "retired" ISI agents on missions the government could not officially endorse.

Resistance in FATA

Pakistan's tribal areas along the Afghan border have emerged as safe havens for terrorists. Experts say because of their links to the Taliban and other militant groups, the ISI has some influence in the region. But with the mushrooming of armed groups in the tribal agencies, it is hard to say which ones the agency controls. Also, there appears to be divisions within the ISI. While some within the intelligence agency continue to sympathize with the militant groups, Harvard's Abbas says others realize they cannot follow a policy contradictory to that of the army, which is directly involved in counterterrorism operations in the area.

Pasha, former head of military operations in charge of offensives against militants in the tribal areas, was appointed as the ISI chief in September 2008 amid growing U.S. and international pressure on Pakistan to combat terrorism. It was not immediately clear whether his appointment would lead to policy changes in the spy agency.

Mixed Record on Counterterrorism

Pakistan has arrested scores of al-Qaeda affiliates, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks. The ISI and the Pakistani military have worked effectively with the United States to pursue the remnants of al-Qaeda. Following 9/11, Pakistan also stationed eighty thousand troops in the troubled province of Waziristan near the Afghan border. Hundreds of Pakistani soldiers died there in resulting clashes with militants, which, as Musharraf told a CFR meeting in September 2006, "broke the al-Qaeda network's back in Pakistan."

But Musharraf did crack down on terrorist groups selectively, as this Backgrounderpoints out. Weinbaum in 2006 said the Pakistani military has largely ignored Taliban fighters on its soil. "There are extremist groups that are beyond the pale with which the ISI has no influence at all," he says. "Those are the ones they go after." In 2008, Ashley J. Tellis, senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, wrote (PDF) in The Washington Quarterly that Musharraf tightened pressure on groups whose objectives were out of sync with the military's perception of Pakistan's national interest.

The Taliban as a Strategic Asset

Pakistan does not enjoy good relations with the current leadership of Afghanistan, partly because of rhetorical clashes with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, and partly because Karzai has forged strong ties with India. But there have been increased efforts by the United States to close this gap. The Obama administration's regional strategy unveiled in March 2009 focused on creating new diplomatic mechanisms;  a trilateral summit of the leaders of the United States, Pakistan, and Afghanistan has been one such step toward helping reduce the level of distrust that runs among all three countries. But lingering suspicions about ISI's support for the Taliban continue to pose problems. In an October 2006 interview, Musharraf said some retired ISI operatives could be abetting the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan, but he denied any active links. Zardari too, denies any ISI links with the Taliban or al-Qaeda.  In a May 2009 interview with CNN, he remarked all intelligence agencies have their sources in militant organizations but that does not translate to support. "Does that mean CIA has direct links with al-Qaeda? No, they have their sources. We have our sources. Everybody has sources."

Some experts say Pakistan wants to see a stable, friendlier government emerge in Afghanistan. Though the insurgency certainly doesn't serve this goal, increased Taliban influence, especially in the government, might. Supporting the Taliban also allows Pakistan to hedge its bets should the NATO coalition pull out of Afghanistan. In a February 2008 interview with CFR.org, Tellis said the Pakistani intelligence services continue to support the Taliban because they see the Taliban leadership "as a strategic asset," a reliable back-up force in case things go sour in Afghanistan.

Not everyone agrees with this analysis. According to Weinbaum, Pakistan has two policies. One is an official policy of promoting stability in Afghanistan; the other is an unofficial policy of supporting jihadis in order to appease political forces within Pakistan. "The second [policy] undermines the first one," he says. Nawaz says there is ambivalence within the army regarding support for the Taliban. "They'd rather not deal with the Afghan Taliban as an adversary," he says.

Allegations of Terrorist Attacks

Indian officials implicated the ISI for the November 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai that killed nearly two hundred people. India's foreign ministry said the ISI had links (Reuters) to the planners of the attacks, the banned militant groupLashkar-e-Taiba, which New Delhi blames for the assault. Islamabad denies allegations of any official involvement, but acknowledged in February 2009 that the attack was launched and partly planned (AP) from Pakistan. The Pakistani government has also detained several Islamist leaders, some of them named by India as planners of the Mumbai assault. Gannon says this is an unusual step by Pakistan which never got enough credit in India because the country was in the middle of a national election. "I don't see any evidence" to believe that the ISI was behind the Mumbai attack, she says. However, she doubts the agency has severed all its ties with groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba which it supported to fight in Indian-administered Kashmir. Indian officials also claim to have evidence that the ISI planned the July 2006 bombing of the Mumbai commuter trains, but these charges seem unlikely to some observers of the long, difficult India-Pakistan relationship. The two nations have a history of finger-pointing, and while some of the allegations hold water, there is a tendency to exaggerate.

Following the release of the British report regarding its July 7, 2005 bombings of London's mass transit system--which London insists is not a statement of policy--Weinbaum said it makes "too broad a statement." Though Pakistan does offer safe haven to Kashmiri groups, and perhaps some Taliban fighters, the suggestion that the ISI is responsible for the 7/7 bombings is "a real stretch," Gannon says.

Source : http://www.cfr.org/publication/11644/isi_and_terrorism.html