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November 3, 2001
Dave Marsh
How
the RIAA (and the FBI)
Cheat Musicians
Robert Jensen
Speaking
Out Against
Waron Campus
November 2, 2001
CounterPunch
Wire
Green
Party Leader Detained at Maine Airport; Prevented from Boarding
Any Plane
Alexander Cockburn
FBI Eyes
Torture
November 1, 2001
Dean Baker
Dying
for Patents
Sami Amarah
US Attempts
to Recruit
Russian Vets of Afghan War
Molly Secours
Where
Are the Voices of Reason? Let the Women
Be Heard
William Blum
Unleashing the
CIA
October 31, 2001
Tom Turnipseed
Terrorize
the Poor,
Subsidize the Rich
Chris Clarke
Thank God
for Berkeley
Steve
Perry
The
Silent Genocide
October 30, 2001
Rep. Ron Paul
War on Terror
Bad as War on Drugs
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Flying
Blind:
The Predator's Problem
Ali Abunimah
Dear Colin
Powell
St. Clair/Cockburn
Atomic
Trains Grounded
Maud Hurd
We Need a Real
Stimulus Package
Dr. Susan
Block
We're
All Afghans Now
Tariq Ali
Busted in Munich
Francis
Beer
Toward
the Terrorist
Anti-World
October 29, 2001
Alexander Cockburn
The Left
and the Just War
John Pilger
Hidden
Agenda
of the War on Terror
David Krieger
Nukes on
the Loose
Jack McCarthy
Neo-Nazis
and 9/11
Marina Kalashnikova
The Brzezinski
Interview
Richard
Manning
Terrorism:
a definitive history
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War Diary
CIA's Assassination Plan a
History of Torture in US Prisons
bin Laden
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Aisha Ikramuddin on the Hidden
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Peter Linebaugh
on Pakistan
Christopher Hitchens' Love for Mrs. Thatcher
Jiang Zemin
Tells Bush: Nuke 'Em
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by Alexander
Cockburn
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The New Intifada:
Resisting Israel's Apartheid
Edited by Roane Carey
Responses to 9/11:
Chomsky, Russell Banks,
Zinn, and Alice Walker
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November 3,
2001
Terror and Indigenous
Peoples
War Without End
By David Price
When President Bush declared war on terrorism
with his neo-McCarthyistic threat to the world that "you
are either with us, or with the terrorists" he struck a
chord with many frightened Americans, but other peoples around
the world heard other important harmonics within this chord.
For many of the world's indigenous peoples, these words brought
terror and anticipation of new levels of outright oppression
from the nation states that repressively surround and manage
them.
In the time since this declaration the
President has not clarified who these new terrorist enemies are,
and the administration and its allies have since carefully avoided
defining just who is and who isn't a terrorist-beyond this initial
defining claim that they are those who are against "us".
The administration understands that any behavioral definition
of terrorism risks exposing the nonsense of behaviorally distinguishing
between such categories of actors as terrorists, freedom fighters
or military forces. The relativist adage that the difference
between a terrorist and a freedom fighter depends on who owns
the newspaper that reports on their actions, seems to be forgotten
by many on the American left who watched Washington play roughshod
with the self determination of peoples of Central America in
the 1980s. While a few pundits note the dangers of engaging in
a war without any identifiable landmark of victory, there are
equally real dangers to many minority populations around the
world if the governments managing their native lands are given
the green light to repress them as "terrorists".
As the United Nation's supports new anti-terrorist
policies we find new levels of cooperation and agreement among
member nations, though these talks occur with an explicit agreement
that terrorism shall remain undefined. Concerns are being raised
by international human rights groups and the German Foreign Minister
that these policies will usher in high levels of State terrorism
against minority populations, but for the most part these objections
have been suppressed in the interest of a new found unity of
purpose.
There are growing fears among anthropologists
and others who work with indigenous peoples around the world
that this new secret war on terrorism will have devastating effects
on indigenous peoples' struggles for human rights and political
recognition. Many fear that Secretary of State Powell-the-coalition-builder
will purchase the cooperation and approval of nation leaders
around the world by adopting policies in which the United States
will not protest or intervene when these states suppress and
annihilate their own ethnic minority populations. When police
and military units use force against these groups their actions
are "legitimate", while the use of these same tactics-even
defensively-by indigenous groups, minority populations or separatist
groups these actions become "terrorism".
As Powell signals Russia that the US
can learn to see their bloody war in Chechnya as part of the
global war on terrorism, this signal is welcomed by other world
leaders wishing a free hand to deal with their own domestic indigenous
troubles. Most of the world's nation states maintain hostile
relations with one or more troublesome domestic groups contesting
power relations; these hostile relations are frequently marked
by violence and counter-violence. The idiom of power dictates
that the violence of the state is legitimized as peace keeping,
while that of the dispossessed becomes terrorism. But acts of
"terrorism" are not limited to acts of violence. The
range of non-violent actions that have in the past been defined
as terrorism is disturbing and have included teaching native
languages and engaging in outlawed religious or cultural ceremonies.
The world is filled with peoples who
have legitimate, historical disputes with the nation states that
rule them. Whether it is the Basques in Spain, the Irish in the
United Kingdom, the Tamils in Sri Lanka, Zapatistas in Mexico,
Chechens in Russia, or hundreds of other groups of native peoples,
there are contentious battles for power that will rapidly become
even more lopsided if the current hysteria of ill-defined anti-terrorism
is allowed to continue. The post-colonial wars of Africa smolder
along ethnic lines in which minorities, and the lesser-armed
are freely defined as terrorists. We need to demand that our
government clarify what deals have been made with other governments
regarding their treatment of natives peoples.
While many of the payoffs to client nations
for joining the US-led coalition before the Gulf War were monetary
(for example, the US forgave half of Egypt's crippling sixty
billion dollar debt for symbolically joining the western coalition),
there are signs that one currency of payoff in the war on "terrorism"
will be the granting of a new degree of latitude for coalition
members to oppress their troublesome internal resistance groups.
Powell seems willing to encourage such potentially genocidal
tit-for-tat arrangements if this will buy him a coalition willing
to risk the wrath of this new yet-to-be-named enemy.
While the current military focus is on
Afghanistan and the surrounding region, the Bush administration's
suggestion that this could be a forty-year war on terrorism much
like the Cold War threatens to bring harm to hundreds of indigenous
groups around the world. Currently, many on the American left
appear divided in their opposition and support for this new Afghani
war, be this as it may, the left must resist the temptation to
transfer this new found fear of "terrorism" into support
for the oppression of indigenous peoples around the globe. CP
David Price is
an associate professor of anthropology at St. Martin's College
in Lacey, Washington. He is the author of A World Atlas to Cultures.
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