Big Bang for terrorism

Michael Ivens

CONTEMPORARY RESEARCH ON TERRORISM edited by Paul Wilkinson and A. M. Stewart

Aberdeen University Press, f45

THE AGE OF TERRORISM by Walter Laqueur

Weidenfeld & Nicolson, £17.95

THE PROVISIONAL IRA by Patrick Bishop and Eamonn Mallie

Heinemann, f12.95

In the last century the literature on terrorism has increased at a rate vastly exceeding the activities of terrorists. The victims of terrorism, too, show an increase. Terrorist incidents are now increasing at the rate of 25 per cent per annum; in 1985 and 1986 terrorists killed over 1,700 and injured more than 2,500 people. The one sluggish aspect of terrorism is the small amount of money devoted by the Western democracies to combating it.

The export of terrorism by one nation (Libya) has led to air attacks in retaliation by another (USA). In the future, nuclear, chemical and germ war terrorism could result in retaliatory war, with these same methods being used on the aggressor.

The practice of terrorism goes back a long way to the Zealots, Assassins and Thugs. The literature of terrorism is also ancient. The Greeks and Romans approved of tyrannicide as did John of Salisbury in the 12th century and George Buchanan in the 16th. The literature swelled in the 19th with anarchist and Russian social revolutionary contributions. In the 20th century Lenin, Mussolini, Goebbels, Gadaffi and Khomeini have added their approving comments.

Writers from Dostoevsky, Conrad, Hen- ry James, G. K. Chesterton and Stevenson to Sartre, Camus, Yeats, O'Casey, Mal raux and Koestler, have been fascinated by the figure of the terrorist. Countless popu- lar novels celebrate him (or her) as villain or hero. Films on the subject have been many but are usually poor box office.

Comments by contemporary terrorists tend to achieve more in terms of length than content. The political prolixity of the Baader-Meinhof gang and the Red Brigade has degenerated to the anti-intellectualism of the French Action Directe and the Belgian Cellules Communistes Com- batants.

The subject is, however, a fascinating one — of men and women pursuing ex- tremes, and three recent books do not disappoint in their pursuit of the humanly unpalatable.

Paul Wilkinson and A. M. Stewart have produced no less than 36 essays in their symposium Contemporary Research on Terrorism and cover the whole terrain from religion (Messianism, the Jihad or Holy War and Liberation Theology) to the contemporary history of terrorism (it flourishes in liberal democratic societies, is sorted out in tough ones like Turkey and avoids the really totalitarian states such as the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany or Chi- na); it has important studies on narco- terrorism with the overlap between drug dealing and terrorism; terrorism and the media (bombing for publicity), kidnapping and the psychology, sociology and sexolo- gy of terrorism (it all depends). J. M. Post in his contribution makes the important point that 'the group acting across borders is significantly less con- strained than one operating within its own national boundaries, and we believe it is with such groups that the greatest danger lies.' He adds, gloomily: 'the danger to which the West is alienated by a particular act is probably not a major disincentive.' Nicholas Berry has a hard-headed essay on the efficacy of terrorism and indicates the dangers of the state alienating most people (as did the Shah) by attacking moderates. Remove the terrorist fish rather than the surrounding pond is the moral.

New developments in IRA protection rackets are recorded by James Adams in his essay on 'The Financing of Terror'. It's no longer the crude method with three or four men marching onto the premises and beating up the owner and breaking his windows if he doesn't pay up. Now the IRA runs its own security companies with `the concealed threat of a beating or shooting to back up a profit bid'. The bombing and stoning of buses was sound business practice: it led to an IRA trans- port monopoly in Catholic areas of Belfast. The IRA's taxi firms, Falls Taxis and People's Taxis, 'have around 350 cabs and employ 800 drivers'.

The Protestants followed suit and oper- ate around 90 cabs in the Shankhill Road and Shore Road areas. The really big financial deals, however, were the IRA frauds on building sites; they collected vast sums for income tax from employees and handed out tax exemption certificates.

Contemporary Research on Terrorism is long but fascinating and readers will emerge expert on terrorism and with enough plots for several dozen best-selling novels.

Students of terrorism quite rightly genu- flect to Walter Laqueur. His Terrorism, published a decade ago, was rightly hailed for its brilliant historical account of terror- ism and its literature. There was a certain ambivalence as Laqueur seemed some- times to be saying, 'Terrorism is fascinating but it's not as important as all that. Let's keep it in perspective.'

Now Laqueur has decided that although terrorism isn't as important as nuclear wars, mass extermination and original sin, nevertheless it's important. State- sponsored terrorism, narco-terrorism and the possibility of terrorism leading to wars have stiffened him up.

The Age of Terrorism has the literary qualities of his earlier book plus the brilliant history of terrorism and its litera- ture. Onto it has been added much fasci- nating material on developments in the dangerous craft, its practitioners and mo- tives.

Laqueur is clear-minded and no roman- tic. He observes the cruel streak in terror- ists: Macedonian, Croatian and Irish (going back to 1813 when the practice of cutting the victim's Achilles tendon was first noted). He adds, 'criminals have frequently shown greater humanity than terrorists; most of them are out for profit, not for psychological satisfaction.'

He adds to this the United Red Army atrocities at Karui-zawa, near Tokyo, where terrorists tortured and buried alive their colleagues for anti-revolutionary fail- ings and the Weather Underground who dined in the room with those whom they had killed and shoved a fork into a victim's stomach.

Laqueur has many wise comments. Khomeini is not a conservative but an innovator. He is not in the mainstream of Islam, and Muslim theologians almost from the beginning stressed the need to stamp out muharriba (terrorism). In the attacks of Al Jihad al Islami (the most militant of the terrorist sects) `only five or six were carried out by people bent on committing suicide (three or four in Beirut, one or two in Kuwait), that of the perpet- rators some were not Shi'ites, some were mentally disturbed, and the others were apparently under the influence of drugs.'

He rejects the fashion to rate almost all national movements fighting for autonomy as being 'progressive', even though their success would lead to Balkanisation on a world scale. Some desires are impossible of fruition and do not merit the massacre of the innocent or the descendants of the guilty.

After the world view of Laqueur and the Wilkinson-Stewart studies, The Provision- al IRA by Patrick Bishop and Eamonn Mallie is a provincial affair but a well researched study for all that.

Gerry Adams makes many appearances. His cold-blooded balance between com- municating green, rosary nationalism to old Catholic ladies and Noraid contribu- tors, and his enthusiasm for an Irish- Marxist state to his Communist suppliers, made me feel even a warmth towards Ruariri O'Bradaigh who on being offered Adams's hand told him sourly, 'I'll shake hands with any man, any time, not just for the cameras.' Bishop and Mallie make this conclusion: 'The history of republicanism since Wolfe Tone has shown that as long as there is a British presence in Ireland it is an ineradicable tradition. The events of the last 17 years have only planted its spores deeper.'

Walter Laqueur and Paul Wilkinson could comment on that. History shows than even the most recalcitrant terrorist organisation can eventually be defeated. But it is harder for liberal democracies.