the terror massacre and the war: six works 

MARTIN SHAW

The depth of the historic turning-point of 2001-2 is fearfully underlined by the latest news from the sub-continent. The latest link in the chain of events that began with 9/11, continued with the Afghanistan war and saw an ever-more barbarous Palestine-Israel war threatens to dwarf them all. All-out war threatens between two of the most populous states on earth, the latest and most enthusiastic nuclear-armed states. Just as the US and Russia announce a new stage in the reduction of their still-awesome nuclear arsenals, India and Pakistan stand on the brink of a war that could lead to the most terrible violence anywhere, worldwide, since the first primitive atomic bombs were dropped in 1945.

Bush is frightening enough: but the combination of Vajpayee and Musharref could prove far more deadly. Academic political and international understanding are almost surreally impotent in the face of this threat. Still mesmerised by America, critical social science offers us little grip on the nuclear militarism of the Asian great powers. While the intelligentsia is preoccupied with the 'new imperialism' - or with Negri and Hardt's fashionable ideas of an amorphous decentred 'empire' - old-style imperialism comes up from behind, replete with threats of devastating war, courtesy of south Asia's rulers.

The Indian elite rules a huge, disparate quasi-empire of over one thousand million people - many more than all the European empires combined at the peak of their power in the last century. The Pakistani generals command a smaller but also impressive model, with over two hundred million souls. In both states, the English-speaking political and military classes seem determined to ape the worst characteristics of the British Raj that they shrugged off almost 55 years ago. Like the European elites of an earlier age, Asia's most powerful rulers preside over powerful imperial centres, their mutually self-destructive rivalry faithfully mirrored in terrible arrogance towards subordinate peoples and the poor alike, as well as their state rivals.

India has stood as a model of 'democracy' for half a century, and it has avoided the extremes of mass death (such as those in anti-democratic China in the same period). But India's democratic virtues go no further than those of the 'democratic' Britain of Asquith and Lloyd George, compared to the Kaiser's Germany in 1914. India's imperial arrogance - its refusal to address the self-determination of Kashmir - stands after all at the heart of the present crisis. The hands of India's Hindu nationalist government are dripping with the blood of Muslims slaughtered by its militants in Gujarat earlier this year, as Arundhati Roy - trenchant critic of the elite's callously disregard of the poor in the Narmada Valley 'development' - desribes. Pakistan is certainly no better - its tenuous, corrupt elite democracy has been periodically snuffed out by military dictators for whom Kashmir and anti-Indian mobilisation are welcome distractions from poverty and oppression at home. Its rulers have indeed been sponsors of both the Taleban and the Islamist terrorists who attack India.

No one should be fooled that the rapid development of both countries under globalising conditions will be an overriding inhibition against military folly. Time and time again rulers have boxed themselves into conflicts from which they can see no way out but to actually use their military hardware. War has already begun in the escalation of border firing which is reducing villages to rubble: its extension seems highly likely, and only time will tell how far the mutually irresponsible elites will take it. The voices of Western leaders are too little, too late, and the UN has been outrageously inactive. What this crisis shows, so far, is the limits to Western-global power. No doubt, as the scale of the possible catastrophe and its huge effects around the world sinks in - these could far exceed September 11 - Western leaders will try again to massage the egos of the rival despots and negotiate a halt to the fighting before nuclear weapons are used. But it is by no means certain that they will exceed. Just as during the Cold War, we should begin to contemplate the thinness of the line that separates us from massive destruction.

The simple answer to this question would seem to be, when it is committed by the Israeli 'defence' forces. 'Brutal yes. Massacre no', writes Peter Beaumont in The Observer, while a correspondent takes me to task along similar lines: 'your reference on theglobalsite to the Jenin "massacre" is highly misleading since it gives the impression that something like Srebrenica happened. What does seem to have happened is that (a) the IDF showed a criminal disregard for civilian life and thereby caused very high casualties and (b) that some illegal executions took place. It will be easy for the Israelis to show that nothing like Srebrenica occurred, and by appearing to make that the issue their critics will hand them an easy victory - especially in the eyes of US public opinion.' 

There is a serious issue here. The term massacre is becoming a litmus test of illegitimate versus legitimate war: 'your killings are massacres; ours are legitimate defence against terrorism/ legitimate resistance to oppression.' Proponents of possible just war, like Michael Walzer, have always made separating war from massacre a key part of their argument. But this is ahistorical: few wars avoid them. The truth is simpler than either apologetics or just war theory. Massacres are not categorically distinct from war, but are a regular feature of what war is about. Deliberate plural killing, carried out in a more or less one-sided way, is all it takes. Massacres come in many shapes and sizes and they are committed by almost all sides in almost all wars. 

The Americans, in their 'war against terrorism', have committed many (albeit 'accidental') massacres of Afghan civilians. I have written therefore that 'repeated small massacres are an understood feature of the new Western way of war' (and no one took me to task for that). The Russian army in Chechnya, the perpetrators of the apartment block bombings in Moscow ... massacres are the stock in trade of armies and guerrillas alike. They can even involve 'mutual' slaughters of combatants, as in the massacres of the Somme.

Certainly, the Israeli army did not do a Srebrenica on a wholly unarmed population. There were Palestinian fighters in the Jenin camp, and many of the victims were fighters. So the Israeli killing and destruction was not simply genocidal, in the sense of being directed only at Palestinian civilians as such. But a 'brutal' action of this kind, with its 'criminal disregard for civilian life ... high casualties and ... illegal executions' can hardly be called anything else than a massacre, in the sense that Tanya Reinhart describes opposite.

Jenin is a striking demonstration of the degeneracy of the Israeli war against Palestinian fighters/terrorists. It is simultaneously a war against the Palestinian people, and for this reason it cannot be just and cannot be fought in a just way. The degeneracy is however mutual. The massacres of Palestinian 'suicide' bombers are genocidal in a simple sense (directed at Israeli Jews as such) albeit as an extension of a war against the Israeli state. The manifest legitimacy of the Palestinian national cause is dragged into the global gutter by these horrific killings, and Arab/Islamic culture is besmirched by the 'honouring' of such murdering 'martyrs'. 

What is clear, then, is that here as always war as such is a huge problem: unjust killing is its norm. Peace 'at any price' may not be the answer. But war between armed forces and groups in densely populated zones cannot aid justice, or  only at an unacceptable cost. It was clearly a historic catastrophe that the recent peace negotiations did not produce a solution. The possible outcomes were not perfect. But it is difficult to believe that either Palestinians or Israelis have benefited from their rejection.

For further development of the general arguments here, see my forthcoming On Slaughter: From War to Genocide (Polity Press)        

The fall of Kabul: challenges of liberation    13 November 2001

For the third time in a decade, bombing has been followed by freedom. The third Western war of the global era, like Kuwait and Kosovo, has left many locals happy. Risks have been transferred to local armies and civilians, as I argue below, but the most tangible benefits so far may also have come to Afghans rather than America. And no one can doubt that the fall of the Taliban is a serious good. Whether or not we agree with the methods, it is important that we recognise the need to build on these indirect benefits of the 'war on terrorism'.

decadence and airpower 31 October 2001

'They have one hope: that we are decadent, that we lack the moral fibre or will or courage to take them on.' Tony Blair 30 October 2001

No one doubts the will of Mr Blair, or President Bush, to defeat al-Qaida and the Taliban, although many question if they really have a workable strategy to achieve these ends. But in referring to 'moral fibre' and 'courage' Blair has raised the stakes. His ends may resonate with principle: but the means stink. The reliance on bombing - which transfers virtually all risk from American and British armed forces to Afghan civilians - is precisely a sign of the decadence that Blair denies.

Bombing is squandering the moral capital of September 11 and no amount of speeches will reclaim it. It says to the world that the West does not stand for the 'warrior's honour', as Michael Ignatieff called it, and it allows the Islamists - despite the huge atrocity of 911 - to reclaim it at least in the minds of Muslims.

Bombing is the Anglo-American way of war, pioneered by Britain in the Second World War and the method of choice for the US ever since. Historically it was the epitome of degenerate war, incinerating civilians in their hundreds of thousands, breaching all moral limits on a huge scale.

True, today's bombing is precision-targeted. It no longer causes mass death on the scale of Dresden, Hiroshima or Vietnam. It may formally fit the requirements of just war. That is debatable, but is largely beside the point. Small accidental massacres - a village here, a house there, with the odd hospital ward and Red Cross store thrown in - are still obscene, when the bombers fly comfortably above the fray. And in today's TV wars they cause huge political damage.

Polly Toynbee argues that those who oppose the bombing are 'soft liberals' or anti-Americans who wash their hands of the plight of the Afghans under the Taliban. However many who share her desire to see Afghanistan free, and have by no means given up on America, doubt that airpower is an appropriate or effective means of achieving its liberation.

Toynbee sees 'hard liberals' who support the war as the ones who are engaging with the problems of terrorism and Taliban repression. However liberals (and socialists) need to be hard-headed, not hard-hearted. They should say clearly that calling the anti-terrorism campaign a war was a 'terrible and irreversible mistake', as Michael Howard (doyen of British military historians) puts it - echoing what this column has said for some time - and that better means were and are available. 

In Afghanistan the war is of course a reality. The American and British governments cannot afford just to switch it off, and there would be consequences for the Afghan people if they did. But if they wish to pose as saviours of the Afghans, they need to do a lot less bombing and a lot more saving. Saving freedom and lives, whether by expelling the Taliban or securing safe passage for relief, is what might just restore some credibility to this campaign. But it will require the Americans to come down from 15,000 feet and into the messy and dangerous realities of life and politics on the ground. 

No American soldier is yet (openly) on Afghan soil, or even an American plane overhead. But already our TV screens are beginning to be filled with piteous pictures of the starving Afghan children.

This starvation is patently not, at the present time, the fault of the United States or the West except in indirect ways. It is much more obvious that the warring Afghan factions and above all the Taliban have brought their people to this state. 

Yet now that America has all but announced its intention to attack their country, the West is becoming responsible for Afghan suffering. America's threats have driven hundreds of thousands more to flee their homes. They have forced the remaining humanitarian agencies from the country. They are seen as worsening the suffering of millions, as well as likely to kill maybe thousands of innocents.

In each major war of the global era, the West has found itself responsible for millions of miserable people uprooted from their homes, and this has had a profound effect on policy. This has never been the Western intention: but still the refugees come, from Kurdistan at the end of the Gulf War, from Kosovo after the first bombs in 1999, and now from Afghanistan before a single bomb has been dropped. And once they come, they have to be looked after. 

So what starts as a 'war on terrorism' may end as social work on a gigantic scale. The camps that George W. Bush will find his forces in charge of will be full of poor, starving, cold refugees, not the  militants of Osama bin Laden. Blankets may turn out to be as important as bombs.

Although the suffering Afghan people could have well done without the new disaster, in other ways this will be no bad thing. The UN, NGOs and every journalist worrying about becoming Bush's poodle now have a cause. The President, Tony Blair and their colleagues will find it difficult to turn their backs.

The fledgling peace movement should take note. It is probably too late to prevent Bush miring himself in Afghanistan. It may well be possible, however, to make sure that increasing proportions of Western energies are devoted to the terrible plight of the civilian population. That is where we should be bending growing efforts.

We will bring them to justice, or we will bring justice to them', promised President George W. Bush in his address to Congress on 21 September. And to other states, at least - but by implication also to any internal critics - he directed the stern message: 'You are either with us or against us.'

Those who are truly for justice will not find themselves in the President's company. If Bush was serious about bringing bin Laden and his collaborators to justice, he would be telling us in which court and on what charges he wishes to see him tried. Instead he has made it clear that the 'justice' he seeks is that of the Wild West, seeking Osama bin Laden 'dead or alive'. 

Bush long ago demonstrated that he is sadly lacking serious ideas of justice and law. Under his governorship, the state of Texas executed more people, including the mentally retarded, underage criminals and those without proper legal representation, than anywhere except China. His cronies abused the Supreme Court to steal the US presidential election for George W. And his contempt for the proposed International Criminal Court has been clear from the start - he would like to renege on Bill Clinton's decision to sign the US up to the Court.

The cause of justice, against the terrorists, is not served by a huge military mobilization that threatens to cause new injustices against innocent civilians. In this war, justice is the third way: to punish the obscene atrocities of the terrorists, without perpetrating new atrocities of war. We are certainly not with the terrorists. But we cannot be with the President. Tony Blair please note.

The slaughter of thousands of innocent civilians in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania is a truly atrocious crime. The appalling truth is that this was an act of audacious simplicity - seemingly four teams of three men apiece, armed with knives and airline timetables, prepared to kill themselves along with others in order to strike a symbolic blow at American power. To cause this devastation required organization. But intelligence, imagination and supreme dedication, rather than investment of large amounts of money or sophisticated weapons, were the resources needed. It could not be clearer how vulnerable our complex societies are to small groups of terrorists.

President George W. Bush says that 'The US will hunt down and punish those responsible.' Truly, the only answer to such wanton lawlessness is international justice. But this means the enforcement of law, through the identification, arrest and trial of all those found to have been responsible for these crimes against humanity. This was how Serbian General Krstic was recently condemned by the International Tribunal for the massacre (of a comparable order) at Srebrenica in 1995 - and how Timothy MacVeigh was condemned for the Oklahoma Bombing. Certainly, those who harbour and support terrorist organizations are as guilty as the direct perpetrators: any governmental leaders who can be shown to be involved should also be put on trial, like former Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, and political measures taken against their regime by the United Nations.

However it is no answer for President Bush to launch military strikes against Afghanistan or any other country suspected to be supporting anti-American terrorists. This is true even if it can be shown - which is clearly very unlikely at this stage, given the demonstrated lack of intelligence - that they were in some way linked to this attack. Any strikes of the kind that President Clinton launched previously against Afghanistan and Sudan will serve a purely propaganda purpose. They will not stop terrorists organizing. They will almost certainly kill innocent men, women and children along with fighters. The families of Islamic militants do not deserve to die any more than the secretaries of American generals in the Pentagon. It gives no respect to yesterday's victims that there deaths are used as pretexts for new killings.

The terrible truth is that, while the perpetrators must indeed be 'fanatics' as Tony Blair called them, people are only prepared to kill themselves for strongly held beliefs fuelled by a deep sense of injustice. If, as seems likely, they were Arab militants, their motivations must include the anger over America's longstanding support for Israeli power. If may be a little too simple to say that America is paying the price for Ariel Sharon, and for Bush's willingness to see the last vestiges of the peace process disappear in the blood of both Palestinians and Israelis. But the longer failure of American policy in the Middle East cannot be taken out of the equation, and almost everyone except the Israeli and American political classes knows that this is the case. The atrocity in America is the most shocking single incident in a long trail of blood, that has until now been spilt elsewhere in the world.

We need to stop the round of slaughter. This will need new policies from American and world leaders, not the reinforcement of old policies by the discredited methods that all too probably played their part in bringing devastation to downtown Manhatten.