The dangers of ‘terrorism’

“Terrorism” has been one of the key terms in the Senate investigations on Mamasapano.

Senator Alan Peter Cayetano, ever anxious to show the inflated size of his political testicles, has been one of its most avid users. He has uncritically followed the American line. Crudely put, it says: “‘They'” – the barbaric other – are the terrorists; ‘we’ are the victims of terrorism who will never negotiate with them because ‘we’ ourselves are above the inhumane cruelties of terrorism. ‘We’ are a society of laws. This is what makes ‘us’ exceptional and exceptionally superior to ‘them’.”

There is, of course, nothing exclusively American about this line of thinking. We have heard variations of this theme in other Western countries, going back to the Spanish Reconquista. What is interesting in the current use of the term “terrorism” is its utter disingenuousness and its dangerous implications.

First, it is not true that the government, regardless of is stated policy, does not talk to so-called terrorists. It does, all the time. If it does not do so through back channels or third parties, it addresses them through bombs and bullets. It systematically creates conditions that “drain the swamp,” so to speak, in which so-called terrorists thrive. And even if it ignores them, the government is always listening to them, monitoring their activities, and so biding their time to respond, either by negotiating or seeking to obliterate them.

Terrorism in this sense is a form of communication. If I explode a bomb, or kill your military, it is my way of getting you to pay attention and recognize what I am capable of doing. It works, all the time. Look at Patriot Act in the US and the EDCA in the Philippines. The government enacts laws, builds up its military, and re-directs its budgets to respond to terrorist threats. It is always addressing and always talking with terrorists by other means.

Second: “terrorism” entails acts of terror that are never the sole monopoly of insurgent groups. It is a tactic that states and non-state actors resort to in the contest to gain hegemony and establish legitimacy. Given asymmetric power relations, insurgents will leverage their familiarity with the terrain and their intimacies with local populations to launch guerrilla tactics and surprise attacks. They craft improvised explosives targeting populated areas to maximize effects, attract media coverage and recruit followers.

The state, for its part, has a much larger and flexible repertoire. It resorts to large-scale military invasions, Special Forces, surveillance, militias, incarceration, torture, “salvagings,” forced evacuation, economic sanctions, and so on to create hellish conditions for the population. During the Huk Rebellion and at the height of Martial Law, the military engaged in widespread terrorism against insurgents and their suspected allies. MILF representative Mohagher Iqbal has patiently detailed the long train of sufferings that show how Muslims have been victims of concerted state terror for the last 40 years or so. Just as no one has the monopoly on the use of terror, no one can claim to be exclusively victimized by it.

And this brings me to my third point: terrorism doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Neither is it some “pure evil” outside the realm of human understanding. It is the response to earlier acts of terrorism, whether perpetuated by insurgents or by the state.

Rules of exchange

In this sense, terrorism is a kind of economy that follows rules of exchange. If you visit me with acts of terror, I will be obligated to re-pay you a visit in kind, and with interest. As with revenge, terrorism assures the spiraling escalation of violence. It produces new agents of vengeance: the sons and daughters whose families were killed, now vowing to honor their sacrifices and repay their debts.

From the perspective of the victims, terrorism is a terrible thing, a crime against humanity. But from the perpetrator’s perspective, it is an act of courage, from which virtue and honor spring. Thus does the economy of terror look different depending on which position of the exchange you’re located. 

Senators and pundits like Cayetano who sanctimoniously parrot the American line about terrorism show themselves to be ignorant not only of the deeply troubling and socially catastrophic implications of this term. They also drown out – one can even say “terrorize” – with their hyper-macho voices, the arguments of those who see through the neo-colonial cant of “refusing to negotiate with terrorists.” 

Peace negotiators know the undeniable brutality of terrorism as a symptom of long histories of injustice, as a dehumanizing tactic in the struggle over power and as a dangerous economy that spreads across geographies and generations. They realize that both sides in the war have a responsibility to put an end to it.

This task cannot begin with the bogus claim that “we do not talk with terrorists.” Rather, it entails changing our vocabulary and tone in addressing one another.

It means redrawing the map of pain amid the shifts of power, allowing for mutual recognition and reconciliation.

It is to embrace, as with Iqbal consoling general Leonardo Espina, the other, taking on its loss in the spirit of what Tagalogs call “damayan“: compassion, humility, and the renewed determination to seek peace. – Rappler.com

Vicente L. Rafael is professor of History at the University of Washington, Seattle. He is the author of several books and is currently working on his next one, “Motherless Tongues: The Insurgency of Language Amid Wars of Translation.”