- FileIllegal drugs seized during a police operation.
Bernard Headley, Contributor
THE 16 recommendations set forth in the well-thought-through Report of the National Committee on Crime and Violence are being given, so the media informs us, "detailed consideration" by the PNP Government, and the JLP Opposition-a well received breakthrough in the nation's struggle against an insistent nightmare.
One seemingly trivial area of concern, which the Committee nevertheless thought important to call attention to, was the matter of definition.
The Committee, it seems, wanted the Government to be clear on exactly how it was defining aspects of the crime problem, insisting thereby that wrong or overdrawn definitions can only further complicate and may even worsen what it is we're collectively trying to deal with.
Take the matter of terrorism and its corollary "narco-terrorism".
The definition of terrorism that Committee members apparently liked was one given in a recent edition of The Economist magazine, which the report quoted.
Terrorism, reads the quotation, is a "horribly calculated attempt to use violence to help achieve an objective."
By this "general standard," according to the Committee, "at least some criminal acts taking place in Jamaica may be said to be terrorist in intent and nature."
The Committee cautioned, however, "against the rhetoric in a direction that enlarges the problem or further damages the image of the country, particularly where national security risks are not clearly evident . . . "
Are both the Government's and Opposition's conceptualisation of the nation's crime problem, then, as a war against a type of terrorism correct? What if that conceptualisation were wrong?
Would the Government and Opposition then not, together, be falsely enlarging the problem, frightening away even more visitors and potential investors? And, more gravely, what kind of prescription is likely to ensue from a faulty diagnosis?
Certainly, if the country faces the kind of terrorism as defined in the Crime Committee report, then a responsible Government has a duty to specify in some detail, to a patriotic and responsible citizenry, exactly the nature of that threat.
Only then should citizens be expected to bear gladly the risks, costs and burdens of a "war."
But then, nothing I have heard from the Government, read in news accounts, gathered from objective police sources, or witnessed as a trained observer suggests in any unqualified way, shape or form that Jamaica is under threat from either terrorism or its twin "cousin" narco-terrorism as understood, that is, by specialists in international affairs and in the body of political science literature that has been steadily accumulating since the 1980s.
Taking this position some weeks ago in a Gleaner-invited article, "Narco-terrorism misses the mark" (The Sunday Gleaner, January 20), earned me the ire of one or two readers.
So I welcome the opportunity to elaborate. In doing so, I shall borrow heavily from an academic paper by a colleague criminologist-political scientist, James Inciardi.
My discussion will be in two parts. I will focus first, in this piece, on key definitional aspects of terrorism, then turn directly next week to narco-terrorism, and whether or not that's what we have in Jamaica.
TERRORISM BROADLY DEFINED
In the broadest sense of the term, terrorism is the use of violence for political ends.
Terrorism at various times has thus included the acts of indiscriminate aggression that seem to be a by-product of all forms of war.
But also thrown into the mix would be the violent repression on the part of Governments to quell opposition to its own fractious rules, as currently the case in Zimbabwe (Bob Marley must be turning in his grave).
Also included are acts of protest of all types when violence is involved.
And perhaps most conspicuously are the coordinated activities of revolutionary groups organised to bring about political change, such as those of the Irish Republican Army, Italy's Red Brigade and the many Middle Eastern groups, like the Palestinian Hamas and bin Laden's Al Qaeda, operating under the umbrella of Islamic Jihad.
This certainly suggests that what has been called "terrorism" is not a uniquely isolated form of political activity.
"Rather, it exists on a continuum from aspects of conventional warfare, through assassination, guerrilla warfare and insurgency (i.e., aggression by small military units for the purpose of establishing liberated zones in which an alternative Government can be established), sabotage, state repression, persecution, and torture."
But despite these differences in perspective, there are a few points on which virtually all terrorism specialists agree:
Terrorism is almost exclusively a political weapon.
Terrorism is almost always grounded in ideological (not narrow partisan) politics.
Terrorism is a technique of psychological warfare, accomplished primarily through violence directed at innocent, civilian victims.
The victims of terrorist violence are not necessarily the primary targets.
The effects of relatively small amounts of violence tend to be disproportionate to the number of people terrorised, "or, to cite an ancient Chinese proverb, 'Kill one, frighten ten thousand.'"
CAUSE TO KILL
There are other points on which observers of terrorism agree. Terrorists are not simply vandals or ordinary criminals. They always have a political purpose.
What they do is in the name of "justice," although their conception of "justice" often is wildly at odds with that of the rest of the world: liberating Puerto Rico from the "terrible Americans," freeing animals from the clutches of mad scientists, or killing abortion doctors "to save innocent life."
From the "Assassins" of 11th century Islam to the April 19 ("M-19") guerrillas of Columbia or the Islamic Jihad of the Middle East, there is always a cause to destroy or to kill for.
Moreover, the cause need not involve an immediate wrong. It might be revenge for something generations old, as when Armenians murdered Turkish diplomats in the 1980s, because the Turkish (or Ottoman) Empire exterminated thousands of Armenians a long time ago.
Or, in the 1990s, when Serb nationals in Kosovo slaughtered thousands of ethnic Albanians, because of historic grievance going all the way back to 1389.
None of the original killers need still be alive, but no matter. Some feuds survive in the blood. Irish Catholics are still revenging themselves on Oliver Cromwell.
Keeping these general guidelines in mind, terrorism is likely best defined as "the systematic use or threat of extreme violence directed against symbolic victims, typically performed for psychological rather than material effects, for the purpose of coercing individuals, groups, communities, or Governments into making political or tactical concessions."
And it is within the context of this definition of terrorism that narco-terrorism might be most appropriately examined.
NARCO-TERRORISM
The term "narco-terrorism" was reportedly invented by former Peruvian President, Fernando Belaunde, to describe the situation developing in his country in the early 1980s.
Narco-terrorism suggests an unholy alliance between drugs and terrorism; or, at the very least, a link between drug trafficking and the activities of terrorist groups. While terrorism is a political concept, narco-terrorism is an economic concept.
Drugs and terrorism got linked in two significant ways. The first is that, for the sake of intimidation and deterrence, some drug trafficking groups use terrorist-like activities.
A drug "don" flies up to Miami from Kingston and later that day around the family dinner table he kills, in full view of others, one after the other, half-a-dozen of his lieutenants.
Or deep-sea divers disappear off the country's eastern sea coast and are believed murdered by drug assassins.
Activities like these are what the Jamaican Government, the Opposition and the media refer to as "narco-terrorism," albeit that the violent activities have no connection with what is typically understood as terrorism.
The second and altogether more correct link is the involvement in drug trafficking by insurgent groups for the purpose of financing their revolutionary or insurrectionary ventures.
Trafficking in narcotics coming to serve, under such circumstances either through proxies or direct engagement by the insurrectionists themselves a strictly economic function: that is, for example, to purchase ordinance to blow up a bridge or Government building (maybe a courthouse), or weapons to launch a surprise attack on a military target, say a compound or barracks.
In narco-terrorism, in other words, the guns are the objective and the illegal drug trafficking the means.
A country does not have a narco-terrorism problem when the trafficking, or control of the trafficking, is the end and the guns merely the means.
Next week, a more in-depth look at the short history of the narco-terrorist threat, and at the pertinent question: Is "this" what we have in Jamaica?
Bernard Headley is a professor of Sociology a the UWI, Mona
