What Are They Fighting for? A Better World?
PERHAPS close to 150 groups of people throughout the world are at present resorting to violence in pursuit of what they hope will be a better world. Some may disagree about what to call their members—freedom fighters or simply terrorists—but few will disagree that they are becoming increasingly difficult to overlook.
The Star of Toronto, Canada, reports that terrorist activity is on the rise. In 1979, for example, it states, the world community experienced over 3,000 terrorist incidents, such as political kidnappings and assassinations, hijackings, bombings and armed attacks. “And the men who are trying to do something about it,” the paper continues, “see no end in sight.”
What Is It All About?
One dictionary defines “terrorism” as “unlawful acts of violence committed in an organized attempt to overthrow a government.” But some people argue that “acts of violence” designed to overthrow an oppressive government are justified and therefore not unlawful. They may point out that many nations, including some of today’s most powerful, came into being because people rose up in revolt against a rule they considered restrictive or undesirable.
Thus it is, as journalist Walter Nelson admits, “difficult to define who is a terrorist and who is a member of a national liberation movement.” But regardless of what they are called, and although their goals are varied, all these groups have something in common. British author Christopher Dobson holds that it is a “rejection of the society in which they live and the desire to destroy it,” as well as a belief “that violence is essential to make the world a better place.”
In a world that has bled its way through thousands of wars, including two global ones, it is not difficult for these groups to say: ‘Why should it be wrong for us to resort to violence in pursuit of a better world, when powerful nations, both past and present, have seen no wrong in doing so on a larger scale in pursuit of the same thing?’
Who Gets Involved, and Why?
Young people tend to be idealists. Generally they are quite sensitive to injustice. At the same time they are on the lookout for a “cause,” something to give their life direction or purpose. What, they ask, could be more worthwhile than fighting to wipe out injustice in pursuit of a better world?
“Most terrorists of the left have a remarkably good education and high intelligence,” observed Walter Nelson. A psychiatrist at Rome University investigating the Red Brigades discovered that the majority of those he interviewed were from well-to-do, church-going families, university students or graduates who had majored in social sciences.
Of course, “it would be wrong,” the book The Terrorists points out, “to think that all terrorists are intellectuals fighting for idealistic motives.” Some new converts are drawn by the promise of adventure, the tingling sensation of danger, the hope for easy money or the ready availability of drugs and unrestrained sex.
How Do People Get Involved?
The above-mentioned book by C. Dobson and R. Payne answers this question, saying: “They do not simply march up and apply, but gradually become involved after meeting people who share their anxieties about the state of the modern world, but who already have opted for violent solutions to those problems.”
However, those who “have opted for violent solutions to those problems” did not necessarily start out with violence in mind. American journalist Claire Sterling has done much research on “terrorist groups” and she claims that they “all began as offshoots of relatively nonviolent movements that expressed particular political, economic, religious or ethnic grievances.”
It is not difficult for young people to meet up with individuals who “share their anxieties” and their “political, economic, religious or ethnic grievances.” They can easily be influenced by these individuals, particularly when they are living away from home, possibly under the influence of “mind-expanding” drugs, and are exposed to all the various kinds of protest movements for which many of today’s universities have become noted.
Once a person has been introduced into such a group and has been accepted, it is extremely difficult to backtrack. According to a captured German terrorist, a would-be escapee is faced with the same dilemma as that of the soldier on the battlefront who suddenly discovers he is fighting for the wrong cause. Either he keeps on fighting to prevent his being killed by the enemy or he retreats and risks being killed by his own comrades as a traitor. Page 5
Fighting for a Better World?
To create a world that is really better presupposes being able to set up a government that is really better. It is true that some groups have very definite ideas as to what should replace the system they want to destroy. Others have only the haziest of notions, if any. But at least they hope their terrorism will draw public attention to their cause.
A group’s failure to achieve its idealistic goals or to gain widespread support, however, can lead to resignation. Idealism falters, leaving a vacuum that is quickly filled by anger and frustration. These may seek release in violence. Some feel that this is what happened to the group about which Japanese police and psychologists said: “What seems to be important to Red Army members these days . . . is simply violence itself, for its own ugly sake.”
Sheer brutal violence has also characterized the terrorism that has plagued Italy for many years. Some claim that the instability of its government—a new one on the average every nine months since 1945—has contributed to the sense of drift and uncertainty that fosters “terrorist activity.”
No human government, past or present, has ever been viewed by all its citizens—sometimes not even by a majority—as ideal, totally just, completely satisfactory in every detail. And yet this is exactly the kind of government needed for a world that would be truly better.
Thus, in reality, freedom fighters and terrorists, regardless of what they claim and even sincerely believe, are not really fighting for a better world. The most they can possibly achieve is to replace one imperfect government with another one likewise imperfect and, perhaps, in the long run, just as unsatisfactory as its forerunner.
There are people, however, who really are fighting for a better world and are doing so without resorting to violence. Even former terrorists and freedom fighters are among them. In the following article a young German tells about this switch in fighting methods for a better world.
[Box on page 4]
RECENT SHOCKING INCIDENTS
Casualties from terrorist attacks continued to climb in the past two years. Among them the following:
1980
39 killed in Guatemala’s Spanish embassy during hostage-taking incident
Former Nicaraguan ruler Somoza assassinated in Paraguay
13 killed, 215 injured in Oktoberfest bombing, Munich, Germany
84 killed, 160 injured in Bologna, Italy, railroad-station bombing
4 killed, 9 injured in Paris bombing
18 injured at International Convention Center bombing, Philippines
Italian anti-terrorist chief General Enrico Calvaligi assassinated
1981
American linguist Chester Bitterman kidnapped and killed in Colombia
Former speaker of Northern Ireland’s parliament Sir Norman Stronge and son killed
Pakistani diplomat killed aboard hijacked plane
President Reagan of United States shot
13 killed, 177 wounded by grenades at Philippines cathedral
Economics minister of German state of Hessen, Heinz Karry, assassinated
Pope John Paul II shot in Rome
3 Catholic nuns killed in El Salvador
74 of Iran’s ruling party killed in bombing of party headquarters
French ambassador slain in Lebanon
Bomb at U.S. base in Germany injures 20
20 killed by bomb in Beirut, Lebanon
60 hostages held 15 hours in Turkish embassy in Paris
Another bomb in Beirut, Lebanon, kills at least 50 and injures more than 250
President Rajai and Premier Bahonan killed in Iran by bomb blast
Anwar Sadat of Egypt assassinated
2 killed, 99 injured in Belgium synagogue bomb blast