|
A Photographic Journal of Life
in an Afghan Refugee Camp
By Judith Mann
November 16, 2001
Fawzia Afzal-Khan
The Voices
of Muslim Feminists
Mokhiber/Weissman
Kill,
Kill, Kill
November 15, 2001
George
Monbiot
Blasting
Our Way
Toward Peace
Jack McCarthy
Hitchens
Mind-Meld
and Hot Bodies
Steve
Perry
Afghan
Puzzle Palace
RAWA
We Do Not Accept
the Northern Alliance
November 14, 2001
Jensen/Mahajan
The
Press Must Press Harder on Afghanistan
David Vest
The Great Unificator
Harry
Browne
Preventing
Future Terrorism
November 13, 2001
Peter Mahoney
Veteran's
Day, 2001
Rep. Ron
Paul
Expanding
NATO
Is a Bad Idea
November 12, 2001
Robert Jensen
Goodbye to
All That...
Patriotism
Nancy
Oden
My
Day at the Airport
CounterPunch Wire
East Timor
10 Years
After the Massacre
C.G. Estabrook
Instead
of Terror
Alexander Cockburn
Wide World
of Torture
November 11, 2001
Douglas
Valentine
Homeland
Insecurity: The Politics of Terror in America
November 10, 2001
Grover Furr
Seeking an Opposition
to the Afghan War
Bruce
Kyle
Anatomy
of a Green Smear:
Backstabbing Nancy Oden
November 9, 2001
Karen Snell
Torture By
Proxy
John Troyer
A
New Kind of Activism
Tariq Ali
Q &
A About the War
Michael
Colby
Schoolgirl
Gets Booted
for Anti-war Views
November 8, 2001
Mokhiber/Weissman
The
Cipro Rip-Off
Mitchel Cohen
The Smear Campaign
Against Nancy Oden
Steve
Perry
American
Roulette
November 7, 2001
Bahour/Dahan
Placebo Peace
Plan
Tom Turnipseed
Bush
Gives Billions
to His Oil Buddies
Cockburn/St. Clair
Greens, Airports
and
National ID Cards
Dr. Susan
Block
Ayatollah
Asscroft
Brian J. Foley
Bombing Campaign
Not "Self-Defense" Under International Law
November 6, 2001
Mark Scaramella
Where's
That Red Cross Money Going
C.G. Estabrook
Our Torturers
Sheperd
Bliss
Scott
Nearing on War
Resources:
100s of Links
About 9/11
CounterPunch:
Complete
Coverage of 9/11 and Its Aftermath
Five
Days That
Shook The World:
Seattle and Beyond
By Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
Photos by Allan Sekula
(Click Here to Order from CounterPunch
Online at 20% Off Amazon.com's price!)
INSIDE
EXCLUSIVE
TO
COUNTERPUNCH
SUBSCRIBERS
Published Oct. 15, 2001
8-Page Special Issue
War Diary
CIA's Assassination Plan a History of
Torture in US Prisons
bin Laden and Bush
Business Connections
Aisha Ikramuddin on the Hidden Hype
of US Food Bombs
Peter Linebaugh on
Pakistan
Christopher Hitchens' Love for Mrs. Thatcher
Jiang Zemin Tells Bush:
Nuke 'Em
Search
CounterPunch
Read Whiteout and Find Out
How the CIA's Backing of the Mujahideen Created the World's Most
Robust Heroin Market and Helped to Finance the Rise of the Taliban
and Osama bin Laden
Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The Memphis Blues Again:
Six Decades of Memphis Music Photographs
Photos by Ernest Withers
Text by Daniel Wolff
The New Intifada:
Resisting Israel's Apartheid
Edited by Roane Carey
A Pocket Guide to
Environmental Bad Guys
by James Ridgeway
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The
Phoenix Program
by Douglas Valentine
Al Gore:
A User's Manual
by Cockburn
and St. Clair
Buy
This Explosive
New Book at an
Amazing Discount!
Reviews of Gore:
a User's Manual
|
A CounterPunch
Special Report
Robin Blackburn is former editor of New Left Review,
author of the renowned two-volume history of colonial
slavery and currently visiting professor at The New School,
New York. CounterPunch is proud to publish Robin's booklength
report, Terror and Empire, the first extended radical
analysis of the post September 11 world, what the terror war
is all about, and how a just war on terror could be fought and
won.
Terror and Empire
By Robin Blackburn
Chapter 4
Is Terror Ever Effective?
It often seems that the more spectacularly successful
an act of  terror is, the more
counter-productive its consequences. This is especially the case
when the terror is expressive rather than instrumental, inspired
by religion and not politics. The actions undertaken by the activists
that bin Laden has trained have been notable for a wanton disregard
of human life and apparent obliviousness to context. When he
has allied his networks with communities that are oppressed--whether
Palestinians, Chechens, Bosnian Muslims or Kosovan Albanians--his
terror tactics have often weakened and compromised them. But
it would be wrong to conclude that terror is always ineffective.
The cases cited had a front line character, where Islamic populations
live commingled with those of other faiths or none. In states
with an overwhelmingly Muslim population matters could well be
different.
Nationalist movements have sometimes
used terror to undeniable effect--the FLN in Algeria, Irgun in
Israel. This was because they were linked to an over-arching
political strategy, using terror to raise the cost of continuing
occupation by the colonial power, and because there was a complex
of social forces--summoned up by the national movement - which
could take advantage of the confusion. The terror operations
of Islamic jihad in mixed, secularised or 'frontline' zones lack
this characteristic since they energise rather than disrupt their
opponents, and since the community of believers is not a plausible
social basis upon which to construct a new power. The terror
actions of Hamas have divided rather than united Palestinians,
leading to some Israeli 'quiet toleration' of the group in earlier
days. Religious terror sets off reactions which, at least in
many parts of the modern world, it cannot itself profit from.
However in the more unstable and autocratic Islamic states themselves
the terror tactics could work - even if most believers are thoroughly
alienated by them. In these cases the implicit political project
is that of creating a more virtuous and representative state,
something that could well seem appealing in Saudi Arabia or Pakistan,
and possibly in countries like Egypt and Algeria as well.
These dangers could be much reduced by
democratic progress in the Islamic world and the disabling of
Al Qaeda, two objectives that could re-inforce one another. But
if the US puts itself at the head of a coalition to smash bin
Laden comprising Russia, its client states and its most pliant
European allies, then this will cast him in the role of a new
Saladin and perilously exacerbate dangers that are anyway quite
acute. This doesn't mean that the US should do nothing. Its huge
influence over Saudi Arabia and Pakistan give it the opportunity
to undo at last some of the damage of the past. If the Taliban's
sponsors now undertook to weaken bin Laden and Al Qaeda by withdrawing
all financial, material and human support this would be not only
positive but long overdue. But the authorities in Riyadh and
Islamabad may well not feel strong enough to do so, or will comply
with the policy in a half-hearted and ineffective way, allowing
Al Qaeda to escape with most of its resources.
So at a moment when the US president
has unprecedented opportunities for waging war his best policy
would have been to act only indirectly, by turning off the money
flows that have sustained the terror machine, and allow Afghanistan's
Muslim neighbours to take the lead. Bush instead opted to bomb,
and to send US and British forces. This has been the easy bit.
But some leaders and militants of Al Qaeda are likely to escape
and regroup elsewhere, whether in Afghanistan's mountain fastnesses
or, via Pakistan, the wider Islamic world. Washington knows that
even if the first phase of the operation is successful in military
terms, and the Taliban driven out of the main Afghan towns, the
war is not over and the terrorist threat barely diminished--and
US success in Afghanistan could prepare the way for future setbacks
elsewhere.
Chapter
5
Coming to Terms with the Revolution
in the Islamic World
|