The struggle against disorganisation

Caroline Moorehead

THE FINANCING OF TERROR by James Adams

New English Library, f12.95

TERRORISM AND THE LIBERAL STATE by Paul Wilkinson

Macmillan, f7.95

THE WORLD HELD HOSTAGE by Desmond McForan

Oak Tree Books, f14.95

TERRORISM: HOW THE WEST CAN WIN Ed. by Benjamin Netanyahu

Weidenfeld & Nicolson, f14.95

0 bservers at the current Palermo mafia 'maxi-trial', in which 474 men are accused of murder, intimidation, drug traf- ficking and extortion have all been making the same point: that it is excellent that such a trial is taking place at all, but that the police and legal work that have gone into it are only a beginning. Now must come political agreement that it is time to break the mafia's power, and financial measures to dry up their sources of income.

The mafia are, of course, not terrorists but gangsters. But the same point emerges from James Adams' extremely sane and lucid book, The Financing of Terror, one of the best works to appear on terrorism in a field most often dominated by the hyster- ical and the ludicrous. Adams' theory is that it was still perfectly possible, ten years ago, to consider terrorists as a small body of men, manipulated by masterminds, but that it is absolutely impossible to think that way any longer. Over the last decade, he argues, basing his case on a great deal of convincing and dispassionate research, ter- rorist groups have become autonomous, wealthy, and increasingly sophisticated, their leaders experts no longer in dynamite and kidnapping but in high finance and modern technology; while they have been learning by their mistakes, counter terror- ist forces have not.

The Financing of Terror goes a long way towards destroying the old chestnuts of terrorist rhetoric. Though willing to accept that the Soviet Union may indeed exploit terrorist groups as a means of destabilising the West, Adams builds up a picture of an enormous, chaotic, fragmented and grow- ing number of terrorist organisations, ac- Live throughout the world, the links be- tween haphazard rather than coolly plan- ned or directed from a single source. The Soviet Union, generally assumed lavish with terrorist money, is on the contrary very mean; China, on the other hand is generous. Relations between the PLO and the Chinese have, according to Adams, been close since the late Sixties, with China providing 75 per cent of the arms used by the Palestinian revolutionary groups, free, while every piece of Soviet equipment has been paid for. And in Colombia, drugs and the wealth they have brought are of far greater importance than any Soviet or Cuban plans for subversion. Self sufficien- cy seems to have become the order of the day among terrorists, while state sponsor- ship of terrorist groups plays an extremely small part in terrorist incidents.

The solution, argues Adams, is not for democracies to resort to strong military measures, like Reagan's bombing of Libya which, by responding to terror with terror, can only be counter productive, and in the process lead to the gradual destruction of frail civil liberties, but to rethink their counter terrorist strategies and improve their intelligence gathering and contacts. His fears about 'over-reaction' are echoed by Paul Wilkinson in Terrorism and the Liberal State, a much expanded second edition of a book first published in 1977 but whose conclusion remains essentially the same: that democracies do not have to be destroyed by terrorism, and that if a

`liberal democratic state goes down the road of arguing that the end justifies any means, then they put themselves on the same level morally as the terrorists states.'

Wilkinson, Professor of International Re- lations at the University of Aberdeen, makes no apologies for writing an `academic's book'. Terrorism, he says, is far too important a matter to be left to the intelligence agencies and generals. 'Firm- ness and determination', he concludes, 'is the keynote of the approach.'

Terrorism, more than many contempor- ary subjects, has acted as a magnet for extreme positions. The more partisan books usually give warning of their opin- ions with gung ho titles and strident jack- ets. Desmond McForan has called his book The World Held Hostage and has for a cover a picture of a sickle, looking like an implement in a butcher's shop, poised menacingly over an innocent green and blue globe. To further help the slower readers, the publishers have picked out the more passionately held convictions in bold type throughout the text. McForan is a conspiracy theorist, of the school that came to be fashionable after Claire Sterling's book, The Terror Network, arguing that the KGB were the puppeteers of modern terrorism, won favour with President Reagan in the early Eighties. Anarchists, he announces, in a longwinded and ramb- ling confusion of inference and innuendo, have joined forces to undermine the west- ern world; their expertise comes from the Soviet Union, Libya and Cuba, all training grounds for 'ruthless terrorists of all nationalities', and their money from the oil of the Arab states. Their goal? The third world war. McForan describes himself as a freelance consultant for a 'stateside uni- versity and many multinational com- panies.' One can only hope that neither his business seminars nor his students will be swayed by this simplistic rubbish.

After the terrorist attacks of the Seven- ties, when police forces and governments began to take seriously what was happen- ing, a number of mainly right wing re- search groups into the subject were set up. One of these was the Jonathan Institute, founded in memory of the soldier who led the rescue at Entebbe airport and died. Out of one of their recent symposia has come Terrorism: How the West Can Win, with contributions by George Shultz, Claire Sterling, Lord Chalfont, Jeanne Kirkpatrick and others.

Precisely how to define terrorism has long plagued the debate that surrounds the subjects, and continues to obsess the au- thors of this dull and wordy series of essays who return again and again to the existence of a 'network' of professional terrorists seeking to sap the political will of democra- tic societies. A note of excitement is introduced only in the whole hearted en- dorsement of Reagan's bombing of Libya, and the hope that this event will pressurise, even possibly shame, 'Western nations into compliance.'

That terrorism is growing and becoming more brutal is not in question. But the answer to checking it would seem to lie, as both Adams and Wilkinson eloquently argue, not in reiterating banalities about terrorist masterminds, nor in jeopardising hard won civil liberties, but in accepting that terrorism has become big business and by removing the sources of its immense and growing income.