[Originally published in the Herald of Randolph.]
Over the decades, Americans have fought in a wide variety of irregular foreign conflicts. They have fought in the Russian Revolution, Northern Ireland, the Spanish Civil War, the 1948 Palestine Civil War, Bosnia and Kosovo. Americans were even spontaneously involved in the 1956 Hungarian uprising against the USSR! The US Government generally prefers to ignore this kind of activity.
John Walker Lindh chose an inopportune moment to sign on with Al Qaida in Afghanistan and is doing hard time for his troubles. In fact, his conviction can be seen as the moment when the game changed. In the eyes of the American government, it is perfectly all right to go and fight with a foreign group as long as that group does not actually threaten the Unites States. And that is as it should be.
“Terrorism” is a universally condemned word. “Insurrection” is very ambivalent. In this context, we have an extraordinarily legacy left us by the Bush administration. They continuously and probably consciously conflated terrorism with insurgency here at home to keep us on edge and to make insurgents fair game. They did it abroad for both tactical and strategic reasons:
Tactically, after 9/11, they wished to curry favor and support. For example, we went along with Russia when they wanted to designate the Chechens as terrorists when the Chechens clearly were an insurrection looking to rid itself of the Russian occupiers.
During the last eight years, it is hard to find an “ally” of any kind that had an internal security issue whom we failed to support by agreeing to call it terrorism. In short, the Bush Administration was prepared to label any group, specifically including insurgencies, “terrorist” that was threatening to us or our friends.
Strategically, the Bush administration did so to get those countries on our side, first in our “war on terror” and second in what the Neocons referred to as their “fifty year war” – presumably the Neocons’ war against Islam.
Why does any of this arcane argument matter? After all, a killer is a killer whether terrorist or insurgent. It matters for a number of reasons. It determines what tactics we use to combat them in Afghanistan and Iraq, it has a strong effect on how we are viewed in the Middle East and it has a judicial impact on Americans.
Are these struggles really terrorism or are they insurgencies fighting for national liberation? This is a very nuanced issue because insurgencies often use terrorism as a tactic. The US State Department’s list of terrorist organizations includes 45 “terrorist” organizations. Many of those organizations deny using terrorism as a military tactic to achieve their goals. Many of the others do practice terrorism, but they also run municipal governments. Clearly in this context are Hamas and Hizballah, both of which organizations are fighting to free their land (Palestine) for their people. To further muddle the issue, there is no international consensus on a legal definition of terrorism. It is, indeed a confusing and confounding landscape.
The measure of any organization should be its goals, not its tactics. Is it trying to liberate its homeland, or blow up America?
As an example of the dilemma we now face, consider Somalia. A handful of Somali-Americans have recently been indicted for joining Al-Shabaab. Al-Shabaab began life as a militant Islamic youth movement devoted to the establishment in Somalia of an Islamic Republic under Shariya law. Since 2004, it has been primarily involved in insurgent activities against the existing Somali government. Yet, it is designated a terrorist organization by the US Department of State.
The issue here is whether or not Al-Shabaab really is a terrorist organization which is actually threatening to the United States. That would appear doubtful, as the great preponderance of its activities concern internal Somali affairs.
As our military involvement in the Middle East evolves, with more and more of our “friends” in the area being challenged by local insurgencies, it might be well for America to review all of its past designations of foreign organizations as “terrorist organizations”. Many of those designations are absolutely accurate, but many of them come from the Bush era when the criteria used were deliberately aimed at calling anyone we didn’t like a “terrorist”.
In addition, our own citizens are now signing up with foreign civil movements. If they are insurgencies, the Americans probably are not breaking our laws. The least we owe them is to be sure we know just what they really have done and not be swayed by questionable political decisions made in the aftermath of 9/11.
Haviland Smith is a retired CIA Station Chief who served in East and West Europe, the Middle East and as Chief of the Counterterrorism Staff. A former long term-resident of Brookfield, he now lives in Williston.
