"Osama" and the beginning and end of terrorism

That's quite a start to a week: the most wanted man in the world is dead. His name was 'Usāmah bin Lādin, but in 2001 he entered American history as "O-sama", the evil terrorist. Evil he was, too; even though the conspiracy nuts will inevitably crawl out from under their rocks, there doesn't seem to be any substantial reasonable doubt that bin Lādin was indeed behind the September 11th terror attacks.

It's been pointed out by researchers that US history, like all nationalist history, resembles a Biblical narrative. The history of the United States is the history of the chosen American people, wandering through time and facing various enemies, whom they defeat through the help of god and their unique national characteristics that make them superior to other nations. In this perspective, American history is a rogues' gallery of enemies: the King of England and the British, the Kaiser and the Germans, Hitler and the Germans, Stalin and the Soviets, and now "Osama" and the Islamists (or Muslims, for the less discriminating in one sense and more so in another). In each case, the actual factors leading to the conflict, its true nature and the character of both the group and its leader were so hopelessly distorted as to bear almost no resemblance to reality. Instead of actual political processes, events and people, the end result of this process of nationalization of history produced simplistic nursery stories where evil foreigners treacherously attacked virtuous Americans. Any shades of grey and any inconvenient facts were ruthlessly suppressed to make way for a simplistic, flag-waving jingoism.

In the latest case, it's usually presented that after the cold war, there was a brief period of international peace, followed by 9/11, which "ushered in the era of global terrorism" or whatever, making O-sama the designated Great Enemy. Because he, in the memorable phrase-meme, "hated freedom", he orchestrated a terrorist attack that shocked America out of the complacency of the nineties. No doubt in a decade or so, O-sama will achieve an Al Gore-like status of having "invented terrorism" and undoubtedly being somehow responsible for the war in I-raq.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Terrorism is always a question of definition, and like all history-writing, that defining is usually done by the winners. The memorable phrase of the Cold War was "my freedom fighters, your terrorists", and its applicability isn't restricted to those years. If you like, the United States was founded by a terrorist insurgency supported by a foreign power; if you prefer the conventional version, it was founded by heroic freedom fighters. Even characterizing terrorism by its methods is always problematic. Insistence on car bombs, hijackings and suicide attacks restricts terrorism so strictly in time and space that it becomes useless as a general term; focusing on the killing of civilians begs highly inconvenient questions about several wars waged by the defining powers. The terrorist as "non-state actor" would indeed make the American Revolution, as well as the Finnish Civil War, terrorist insurgencies, and make one wonder why the death of an innocent should be more condemnable based on whether his killer was wearing a recognized uniform at the time. Terrorism is very much a cultural phenomenon that eludes strict definition.

If a starting point of sorts had to be selected, my first thought would be to turn to the Russian anarchists of the 19th century. Most people are aware of the caricature of a black-wearing, bomb-throwing ruffian, but few know that it depicts a Russian anarchist. The famous Muhammad caricature depicting the Prophet's turban as a bomb imagined it as exactly the type of cartoon bomb the anarchists were drawn with. Pioneering the non-state-sanctioned political employment of high explosive, the anarchists killed the reforming Czar Alexander II with a bomb thrown into his carriage.

The anarchists had it all: a spectacular terrorist attack gave them a villainous public image, which was seized upon as an excuse for repression around the world. Just as Islamist terrorism is used as fuel for both racist demagoguery and politics today, so back in the day the largely imagined threat of anarchist infiltration of the US was used as an excuse to tighten immigration policies and repress Eastern Europeans.

After the anarchists, various different groups resorted to terrorism as we know it. Some of its most prominent exponents were Zionists in Palestine, who mounted a bombing campaign against the British colonial authorities that is highly reminiscent of what has been happening in the same area over the past half-century. Again, one is terrorism, the other heroic freedom fighting, depending on who you ask.

Neither Islamic or Islamist terrorism begins with O-sama either. The contemporary world was introduced to the figure of the Muslim terrorist by the plane hijackings and other attacks that started in the early Cold War era. Most of the active groups were motivated more by revolutionary socialism than any form of Islamism, and their goal was to publicize the Palestinians' struggle against Israel. These campaigns successfully internationalized the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and planted the seeds of the coming conflict. The global Islamist terror movement as we know it today sprung from these roots and coalesced in the insurgency against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and gathered force in the bitter civil war in Bosnia and the Russian invasions of Chechnya.

Two opposing theories on the fundamental origins of terror are usually put forward. In the religious-apocalyptic view, very popular with the Christian and racist right wings of Western politics, terrorism is simply the inevitable result of Islam, which to them represents pure evil. On the other hand, various left-wing instances champion the idea that terrorism is born from some combination of economic underpriviledge and Western imperialism; in the leftist-apocalyptic view, O-sama is nemesis to Western capitalism's hubris.

Both of these theories are far too simplistic, epistemologically consisting of little else but a dogged determination to explain everything through one's chosen worldview. By the combined logic of these explanations, every Muslim making less than minimum wage should be an enthusiastic terrorist. Taking each theory separately yields the even less plausible dieas that everyone making less than minimum wage anywhere, or every Muslim in the world, should be a potential terrorist. While such a view, especially the latter one, is extremely attractive to many people as a justification for religious persecution, it is also obviously untrue.

The real fons et origo of terrorism as we know it is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This is perhaps the most highly politicized conflict of our time, which has a fantastic ability to suck people thousands of miles away into taking an uncompromisingly blinkered view of it. For several generations now, it has played just such a role for millions of Arab Muslims all over the world. Who could remain unmoved by TV images of bulldozers crashing through living rooms, missiles slamming into apartment blocks and soldiers gunning down rock-throwing children? On the other side, images of schoolchildren killed by suicide bombs and rockets streaking into Israeli suburbs serve precisely the same propaganda function. As a result, anyone prepared beforehand to identify with either side will find ample reason to do so.

This polarization meets with reinforcing tendencies from all over society. For one side, resentment at the Israeli occupation can easily link up with a conspiracy theory mindset that attributes everything from third world poverty on down to a vast Jewish-capitalist-Western conspiracy; for the other, a portrayal of Israel as an innocent victim of terrorism draws strength from memories of the Holocaust, reinforced with islamophobic and racist notions of the barbarian hordes of the third world.

It is this uncompromising, entrenched politicization that is at the root of everything al-Qaida and any other Islamist terror organization stands for: it provides the great narrative of the war between the persecuted true believers and their implacable enemy. Without Palestine, it is impossible to imagine an insurgency in Afghanistan having such global resonance and impact. Without Palestine, there would have been no pre-existing international networks of organizations, people and resources that ibn Ladin could build on to found his terrorist operation. Most crucially, without Palestine, there would be no gripping story to politicize new generations of Muslims into a worldwide conflict against the west. It is Palestine that links the disparate battles fought by Muslims all over Asia into one giant Islamist struggle against the infidel.

Most importantly for America, it is the United States' unwavering support of Israel that irrevocably paints them as the Great Satan. As implausible as the thought no doubt seems to the islamophobes of today, reformists in Muslim countries once looked up to the United States as an example and a source of aid. In the heady anticolonialist days following the Second World War, America's stand against the old colonial powers bought them immense goodwill across the Third World. As the battlelines of the Cold War hardened, more and more of that goodwill was squandered by a foolish insistence on backing anyone who publicly professed anticommunism, no matter what the actual policies they supported. The final nail in the coffin was the politicization of the Israeli-Arab conflict as a part of the Cold War. When the United States threw itself unquestioningly behind Israel, the Soviets became the only source of aid for the Arab countries, and America became their ultimate enemy.

This is why terrorism will not end with the death of 'Usāmah bin Lādin, or why indeed the global terrorism we know today will not end with any single death. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict will continue to keep the fire of Islamist anti-Americanism burning until a resolution can be found. In their recent refusal to capitalize on the truce negotiated by the new Egyptian government, and more generally the total failure of successive US administrations to make any progress in bringing Israel to the negotiating table, the United States have shown that they still refuse to acknowledge the crucial role of this conflict. Really bringing an end to global terror requires a solution in the Middle East, and only the Americans have the political clout with Israel to make it happen. Because they refuse to, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will continue to create new "O-samas" to fight the Great Enemy. In that sense, his death means nothing.