The US government´s single overriding goal since September 11 has been to defeat terrorism. Determined as this campaign has been, it remains to be seen whether it is merely a fight against a particularly ruthless set of criminals or also an effort to conquer the logic of terrorism. Is it a struggle against only Osama bin Laden, his al-Qaeda network and a few like-minded groups? Or is it also an effort to undermine the view that anything goes in the name of a cause, the belief that even the slaughter of civilians is an acceptable political act?
The answer to these questions will, in the long run, determine the success of the campaign. If it is conceived broadly, as it should, the fight against terrorism must be understood as a campaign for human rights. That is because it is the body of international human rights and humanitarian law, and its limits on permissible conduct, that explains why terrorism is not a legitimate act of war or politics. It is the human-rights cause that stands for the principle that civilians should never be deliberately killed, regardless of the cause.
Yet the urgency of the effort to defeat particular terrorists has tempted governments to compromise human rights. Many of the governments joining the fight against terrorism have yet to decide whether this battle provides an opportunity to reaffirm the principles of human rights or a new reason to ignore them; whether this is a moment to embrace values governing means and ends, or an excuse to subordinate means to ends. Their choices will not determine whether any particular perpetrator is captured or killed. But over the long term it will affect the strength of the ends-justify-the-means rationalisation that underlies terrorism. Unless the global anti-terror coalition firmly rejects this amorality, unless the rules of international human rights and humanitarian law clearly govern all anti-terror actions, the battle against particular terrorists risks reaffirming the warped instrumentalism of terrorism.
The fight against terrorism should be seen only in part as a matter of security. It is also a matter of values. Police, intelligence units, even armies all have a role to play in meeting particular terrorist threats. But terrorism emanates as well from the realm of public morality. It may never be possible to understand the pathology that led a group of men to attack thousands of civilians on September 11. But it is essential to understand the mores that would countenance such mass murder as a legitimate political tool. Sympathy for such crimes is the breeding ground for terrorism, and sympathisers are the potential recruits. Building a stronger human-rights culture – a culture in which any disregard for civilian life is condemned rather than condoned – is essential in the long run for defeating terrorism.
The Consequences of Neglect
A human-rights culture as an antidote to terrorism is needed especially in the Middle East and north Africa, where al-Qaeda seems to have attracted many of its adherents. This region, however, hardly has a monopoly on terrorism. Armed groups have attacked civilians to sow terror in the United Kingdom, Spain, Sri Lanka, India, Colombia and many other places. Yet today global attention has focused on al-Qaeda because of the target of its antipathy – the world´s superpower – and the magnitude of its alleged crimes.
Unfortunately, the willingness of most western governments to tolerate abuses in the region has tended to undermine a human-rights culture. Most prominent has been the west´s failure to rein in Israeli abuses against Palestinians and its refusal to restructure sanctions against Iraq to minimise civilian suffering. This neglect has incited intense regional anger as the death toll mounts from Israeli-Palestinian violence and as Iraqi sanctions drag on with no indication that Saddam Hussein will acquiesce to United Nations´ demands.
Less remarked upon, though still highly damaging, has been the west´s feeble commitment to human rights in places such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt. In Saudi Arabia, the native land of Osama bin Laden and 15 of the 19 presumed hijackers of September 11, the government imposes strict limits on civil society, severely discriminates against women and systematically suppresses dissent. But the west has contented itself with purchasing Saudi oil and soliciting Saudi contracts while maintaining a silence toward Saudi abuses. Egypt, the native land of the alleged September 11 ringleader and other key al-Qaeda leaders, features a narrowly circumscribed political realm and a government that does all it can to suffocate peaceful opposition. Yet as a partner for Middle East peace, the government has secured massive US aid and tacit western acceptance of its human-rights violations.
In societies where basic freedoms flourish, citizens can press their governments to respond to grievances. But in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and many of the other countries where Osama bin Laden strikes a chord of resentment, governments restrict popular debate about how to address society´s ills. As the option of peaceful political change is closed off, the voices of non-violent dissent are frequently upstaged by a politics of radical opposition.
In a cycle of self-fulfilling prophecy, the west has quietly accepted this pattern of repression because it fears the instability of the democratic alternative. Regional governments have played on this fear brilliantly. By silencing mainstream political opponents, they have created an environment in which they can credibly portray themselves as the only bulwark against extremism. They can credibly claim that human rights must be suppressed in order to be protected, that democratisation would lead to its own demise. The stark choice, they posit, has been reduced to blocking political liberalisation, as the Algerian military did in 1992 to head off an Islamist victory at the polls, or repeating the Iranian experience of 1979, in which the west´s backing away from the authoritarian Shah led to a repressive theocratic state.
The challenge for the campaign against terrorism is to recognise the role that governmental repression plays in creating this dilemma. An immediate democratic transition may not be possible in such a warped political environment, but steps can and should be taken to begin to provide a meaningful array of electoral choices. Of course, in a democracy there is no guarantee of any particular political result. But if pressure is put on authoritarian governments to allow a spectrum of political options, the likelihood increases that democracy will lead to governments that respect human rights.
A number of Middle Eastern and north African governments have begun the process of liberalisation without empowering extremists. In recent years, Morocco and Jordan have become more open societies, Qatar and Bahrain have begun to loosen political restraints and promised to hold elections, and Kuwait has allowed an elected parliament (though with limited powers, and no voting rights for women and many other native-born residents). Even in Iran, a gradual and partial political opening has corresponded with the emergence of a movement demanding respect for civil liberties.
Although the correlation is not always neat, these experiences suggest that the appeal of violent and intolerant movements diminishes as people are given the chance to participate meaningfully in politics, and to select from a range of political parties and perspectives. Promoting this range of options should thus be a central part of any anti-terrorism strategy for the region. But if the west continues to accept repression as the best defence against radicalism, it will undermine the human-rights culture that is needed to achieve the ultimate goal of defeating terrorism.
The Global Coalition
A similar challenge exists outside the Middle East and north Africa. In the days following September 11, various governments tried to take advantage of the tragedy by touting their own internal struggles as battles against terrorism. Russian president Vladimir Putin embraced this rhetoric to defend his government´s brutal campaign in Chechnya. Chinese foreign minister Tang Jiaxuan did the same to justify his government´s response to political agitation in Xinjiang province. Malaysian deputy prime minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi defended administrative detention under his country´s long-abused Internal Security Act as "an initial preventive measure before things get beyond control". A spokesman for Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe justified a crackdown on journalists who reported on his government´s abuses as an attack on supporters of terrorism.
Russia´s experience showed that this cynical strategy could work. Shortly after September 11, German chancellor Gerhard Schröder and Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi said that Russia´s actions in Chechnya must be reassessed. The US government, which in April had supported a UN resolution condemning atrocities in Chechnya, began to play down its concerns over human rights and play up alleged links between Chechen rebels and the al-Qaeda network.
Uzbekistan had a similar experience. The US State Department is required each year to name "countries of particular concern" for their repression of religious freedom. With its torture and long prison sentences for Muslims who seek to pray peacefully outside the state- controlled mosque, Uzbekistan is an obvious candidate for this list. But as a front-line state for the war in Afghanistan, Uzbekistan avoided being named when the State Department issued the latest list in October. (The State Department also left Saudi Arabia off the list despite admitting that there is "no religious freedom" there.)
The message sent by this inconsistency was that violence becomes intolerable based not on whether civilians are attacked but on whose civilians are attacked and who is doing the attacking. To build a coalition on these terms hardly promotes broad public support for the human-rights culture needed to defeat terrorism.
Another impediment to building such a global culture is Washington´s resistance to enforceable human-rights standards. That is not to say that the US government ignores human rights; most US citizens enjoy a wide range of rights protections. But Washington has never been willing to subject itself to binding international human-rights scrutiny. Even after September 11, when the Bush administration suddenly needed global cooperation to fight terrorism, its resistance to international human-rights law remained strong.
The best illustration of this is the administration´s intensifying hostility toward the International Criminal Court (ICC), a potential forum for prosecuting future crimes against humanity. With the number of countries that have ratified the ICC treaty growing rapidly – 47 of the 60 needed to bring it into force were secured as of the end of 2001 – it is a virtual certainty that the treaty will come into effect in 2002. But Washington opposes the court because it theoretically could be used to scrutinise the conduct of US armed forces. Just two weeks before the bombing began in Afghanistan, the Bush administration endorsed proposed legislation that would permit sanctions against governments that ratify the ICC treaty (other than Nato members and certain other key allies) and would even authorise invasion of The Hague, where the court will be based, to liberate any US citizen who might find himself in the dock. The administration thus shows itself willing to seek global cooperation to protect its own citizens, but determined to undermine a global institution that many governments see as essential for protecting others.
This resistance to accountability, replicated in international negotiations on climate change, nuclear weapons, biological weapons, small arms and racism, contributes to global unease about Washington´s use of force. The US government seems to assume that if its policy is to respect international humanitarian law, its military conduct should be beyond reproach. Few elsewhere share that view. And Washington´s refusal to submit to any independent enforcement machinery handicaps efforts to encourage others to respect international human-rights law.
The West´s Indifference
In the west, the magnitude of the September 11 crimes has led many to accept a scaling back of certain rights in the name of enhancing security. If everyone faced heightened scrutiny, the public might have resisted, or at least limited, this trend. But because anti-terrorism efforts have focused largely on a minority – young men from the Middle East and north Africa – the public has been more willing to countenance rights restrictions. Governments have been quick to take advantage of this.
The most egregious illustration was president Bush´s order establishing military commissions to prosecute non-US citizens. The order was troubling, first, for the breadth of the crimes over which it would have jurisdiction. It authorises tribunals to try people accused of membership in al-Qaeda, involvement in the undefined crime of international terrorism or harbouring anyone charged with these offences. The tribunals´ scope could thus extend far beyond any traditional use of military tribunals – to address offences by combatants in war – to reach people who might be charged with acts far removed from Afghanistan or any other armed conflict.
Second, the order was virtually devoid of procedural protections. Standing alone, it raised the prospect of suspects being tried, convicted and even executed with no appearance before an independent tribunal, no right to appeal, no right to a public trial, no presumption of innocence, no right to confront evidence or testimony, and no requirement that proof be established beyond a reasonable doubt. While promising "a full and fair trial", the order explicitly rejected scrutiny of the military commission´s rulings by any other court. It also ignored the Uniform Code of Military Justice – the procedural code used for regular courts-martial – which would have ensured most rights of a fair trial. Administration officials have suggested that some of these due-process transgressions will be remedied through the adoption of additional regulations, but none had been issued by the end of 2001.
Such indifference to human-rights standards makes it difficult to ensure that justice is done and can be seen to be done. It also threatens to silence Washington´s routine objections to similar military tribunals used against alleged terrorists (including US citizens) in Peru, Nigeria, Russia and other countries around the globe. Those protests will be hard to sustain when tomorrow´s military dictators need only photocopy the Bush order to secure a highly effective mechanism for repression.
Other governments have shown a similar tendency to subordinate human rights to the fight against terrorism. Australian prime minister John Howard, stoking post-September 11 fears of foreigners, built his candidacy for re-election in November around his summary expulsion, in blatant violation of international refugee law, of asylum seekers who had reached outlying Australian territory. Proposed EU-wide security measures include a broad definition of terrorism that threatens freedom of association and the right to dissent, a European arrest warrant to facilitate transfer of terrorist suspects without safeguards for a fair trial and a re-evaluation of the right to seek asylum in light of new security considerations. A new British law permits the prolonged arbitrary detention of foreigners suspected of terrorist activity.
These steps matter because it is profoundly more difficult to promote the values of human rights if some of the most visible and powerful proponents seek to exempt themselves from the same standards. Such exceptionalism has grown since September 11, as governments seek to justify extraordinary constraints on rights in the name of combating extraordinary threats. Yet in the long term, this trend will prove counterproductive. If the logic of terrorism is ultimately to be defeated, governments must redouble their commitment to international standards, not indulge in a new round of excuses to ignore them.
