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by Robin Cook
The G8 must seize
the opportunity to address the wider issues at the root of such
atrocities
The Guardian,
Friday July 8 2005
I have rarely seen
the Commons so full and so silent as when it met yesterday to hear of
the London bombings. A forum that often is raucous and rowdy was solemn
and grave. A chamber that normally is a bear pit of partisan emotions
was united in shock and sorrow. Even Ian Paisley made a humane plea to
the press not to repeat the offence that occurred in Northern Ireland
when journalists demanded comment from relatives before they were
informed that their loved ones were dead.
The immediate
response to such human tragedy must be empathy with the pain of those
injured and the grief of those bereaved. We recoil more deeply from loss
of life in such an atrocity because we know the unexpected disappearance
of partners, children and parents must be even harder to bear than a
natural death. It is sudden, and therefore there is no farewell or
preparation for the blow. Across London today there are relatives whose
pain may be more acute because they never had the chance to offer or
hear last words of affection.
It is arbitrary
and therefore an event that changes whole lives, which turn on the
accident of momentary decisions. How many people this morning ask
themselves how different it might have been if their partner had taken
the next bus or caught an earlier tube?
But perhaps the
loss is hardest to bear because it is so difficult to answer the
question why it should have happened. This weekend we will salute the
heroism of the generation that defended Britain in the last war. In
advance of the commemoration there have been many stories told of the
courage of those who risked their lives and sometimes lost their lives
to defeat fascism. They provide moving, humbling examples of what the
human spirit is capable, but at least the relatives of the men and women
who died then knew what they were fighting for. What purpose is there to
yesterday's senseless murders? Who could possibly imagine that they have
a cause that might profit from such pointless carnage?
At the time of
writing, no group has surfaced even to explain why they launched the
assault. Sometime over the next few days we may be offered a website
entry or a video message attempting to justify the impossible, but there
is no language that can supply a rational basis for such arbitrary
slaughter. The explanation, when it is offered, is likely to rely not on
reason but on the declaration of an obsessive fundamentalist identity
that leaves no room for pity for victims who do not share that identity.
Yesterday the
prime minister described the bombings as an attack on our values as a
society. In the next few days we should remember that among those values
are tolerance and mutual respect for those from different cultural and
ethnic backgrounds. Only the day before, London was celebrating its coup
in winning the Olympic Games, partly through demonstrating to the world
the success of our multicultural credentials. Nothing would please
better those who planted yesterday's bombs than for the atrocity to
breed suspicion and hostility to minorities in our own community.
Defeating the terrorists also means defeating their poisonous belief
that peoples of different faiths and ethnic origins cannot coexist.
In the absence of
anyone else owning up to yesterday's crimes, we will be subjected to a
spate of articles analysing the threat of militant Islam. Ironically
they will fall in the same week that we recall the tenth anniversary of
the massacre at Srebrenica, when the powerful nations of Europe failed
to protect 8,000 Muslims from being annihilated in the worst terrorist
act in Europe of the past generation.
Osama bin Laden is
no more a true representative of Islam than General Mladic, who
commanded the Serbian forces, could be held up as an example of
Christianity. After all, it is written in the Qur'an that we were made
into different peoples not that we might despise each other, but that we
might understand each other.
Bin Laden was,
though, a product of a monumental miscalculation by western security
agencies. Throughout the 80s he was armed by the CIA and funded by the
Saudis to wage jihad against the Russian occupation of Afghanistan. Al-Qaida,
literally "the database", was originally the computer file of the
thousands of mujahideen who were recruited and trained with help from
the CIA to defeat the Russians. Inexplicably, and with disastrous
consequences, it never appears to have occurred to Washington that once
Russia was out of the way, Bin Laden's organisation would turn its
attention to the west.
The danger now is
that the west's current response to the terrorist threat compounds that
original error. So long as the struggle against terrorism is conceived
as a war that can be won by military means, it is doomed to fail. The
more the west emphasises confrontation, the more it silences moderate
voices in the Muslim world who want to speak up for cooperation. Success
will only come from isolating the terrorists and denying them support,
funds and recruits, which means focusing more on our common ground with
the Muslim world than on what divides us.
The G8 summit is
not the best-designed forum in which to launch such a dialogue with
Muslim countries, as none of them is included in the core membership.
Nor do any of them make up the outer circle of select emerging
economies, such as China, Brazil and India, which are also invited to
Gleneagles. We are not going to address the sense of marginalisation
among Muslim countries if we do not make more of an effort to be
inclusive of them in the architecture of global governance.
But the G8 does
have the opportunity in its communique today to give a forceful response
to the latest terrorist attack. That should include a statement of their
joint resolve to hunt down those who bear responsibility for yesterday's
crimes. But it must seize the opportunity to address the wider issues at
the root of terrorism.
In particular, it
would be perverse if the focus of the G8 on making poverty history was
now obscured by yesterday's bombings. The breeding grounds of terrorism
are to be found in the poverty of back streets, where fundamentalism
offers a false, easy sense of pride and identity to young men who feel
denied of any hope or any economic opportunity for themselves. A war on
world poverty may well do more for the security of the west than a war
on terror.
And in the privacy
of their extensive suites, yesterday's atrocities should prompt
heart-searching among some of those present. President Bush is given to
justifying the invasion of Iraq on the grounds that by fighting
terrorism abroad, it protects the west from having to fight terrorists
at home. Whatever else can be said in defence of the war in Iraq today,
it cannot be claimed that it has protected us from terrorism on our
soil.
r.cook@guardian.co.uk
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