Terrorism and a state of panic
published: Sunday | September 14, 2003

Goodleigh

Lloyd Goodleigh, Guest Columnist

IN THE past, some of us have contended that terrorism exists in Jamaica. It has been categorically denied, primarily because defining terrorism in today's world is often a difficult proposition.

For most of us, educated in the twilight of the Modern Age, terrorism was often equated with political rebellion, coloured by shades of cause, justice and martyrdom ­ Jamaica's Tacky against slavery, Russian students and intellectuals in opposition to the Czar, French partisans in opposition to Nazi Germany and Cuban revolutionaries in opposition to Batista.

The paradox with twilight is that often it casts a romantic aura over tragedy. French Nobel prize winner Albert Camus' summation of the terrorism of his age was: "Disillusioned with love ­ united against the crimes of their masters, but alone in despair, and face to face with their contradictions, which they can only resolve in the double sacrifice of their innocence and their life".

SUICIDE BOMBERS

These are the images of my generation. They are probably the images of young Arab men and women willing to become suicide bombers. The old images are no longer that clear. They have become blurred, because they have become entwined with the international drug trade, money laundering, gun runners, plutonium smugglers, slave traders, corrupt private and public sector individuals, extortionists and murderers.

Post-modern terrorism and traditional crime now form a picket fence of offences characterised by criminal activity.

In those circumstances, where do we draw the line between traditional criminality and post-modern terrorism? Any definition trying to capture those complexities is a difficult undertaking.

The United Nations has tried and the Americans are trying. Given their predicament and Jamaican circumstances, the definition that I find best suits Jamaica's plight is "the substate application of violence or threatened violence, intended to sow panic in a society; to weaken or even overthrow the incumbents, and to bring about political change".

Our dilemma is, how do we ascertain where we are on that continuum between panic and overthrow. In my view, we are at the stage of panic. I do not think we are at the point of overthrow. We are confronted by amorphous indistinct organisations, operating in a linear rather than hierarchical way, that currently has, as one of their objectives, panic. They practise deliberate murder in order to engender fear. This fear can make normal mundane human activity such as a shout, loud voices, men running, growling dogs, cars starting, assume threatening proportions, especially at night. They intrude on our ability to carry out conventional activities ­ going to work, a dance, a wake, playing dominoes, going to church, sitting in a bar, walking, taking a cab ­ without apprehension about our safety. They are slowly breaking down the sociability and trust necessary in a civilised society and vital to a young nation. A foreign army of occupation could not have done a better job of immobilising the population.

You must understand what post-modern terrorism is. It is a communication strategy, designed to freeze a society mentally, to disrupt its civil, social and commercial life and to allow the terrorist/criminal the room to operate freely and undetected. In Jamaica it is to conduct criminal activities.

Unlike the political rebellion of yesteryear, today's terrorist/criminal is not willing to die for any cause and has no intention of fighting any organised force capable of inflecting irrevocable damage on them. They don't intend to try and defeat the security forces in a pitched battle. They know fully well that the higher a monkey climbs, the more it is exposed. They like the anonymity and the feeling of invincibility that it brings. Their intention is to keep the security forces off balance, by infiltration and corruption, thereby creating the necessary space for their criminal activities.

The terrorist/criminal knows that by creating panic in the general population, the state will be tempted to take draconian measures that will create resentment, and probably swell the number of individuals willing to turn a blind eye to their criminal activities.

In those circumstances, curfew, sweeps, mass detentions, will prove sterile unless they are accompanied by the ability to locate and legally remove terrorist/criminals from our communities and to prevent certain foreign nationals from crossing our borders. To do this, we need precise detailed information on suspected individuals, their activities and their material support or resources. We have to generate better intelligence, because in the final analysis intelligence that is incomplete and that has not been professionally analysed is not actionable.

CIVILIAN INTELLIGENCE

We need urgently to develop the analytical capability to take bits of information from all available sources, technical, human signals and pull them together to form a composite of who and what we are dealing with. Broad integrative analysis to see where we are, on the continuum between panic and overthrow and to determine what to do about it. This gathering, collating and evaluation of information is best done by a professional civilian intelligence agency.

There is no major democracy that depends solely on the intelligence arm of its uniformed services for its protection. We had better find the resources ­ human, technical and capital ­ to do this before the terrorist/ criminal moves from guns to bombs and before international terrorists start to regard us as a soft target.

It is common sense that an intelligence agency of itself will not solve all the problems related to criminality. It must be established, in a wider framework, whose objectives are: