By Shobha Tsering Bhalla
The horrific bomb blasts in Mumbai last week and the suicide bus bombings in Jerusalem the week before are two reminders that suicide terrorism is a growing trend in the fight for political “justice”.
In the Mumbai blasts, in which 52 people died and dozens were wounded, it’s not yet proven that suicide bombers were the culprits (they could well be) but officials have said they were terrorists. In Israel, it has almost become a weekly occurrence.
No thanks to militant groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad, the tactic of suicide bombing has almost become synonymous with Islamic fundamentalism in many non-Muslims’ minds.
That stereotype is reinforced every time we hear of innocent lives being ripped apart by a fanatic’s bomb because, as experts have pointed out, no other religious group uses it the way the Islamic fundamentalists do.
This has obscured the fact that it was not an Islamic group that popularised suicide bombing as a political terror tactic. That credit goes to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).
Also, it is neither Hamas nor Hizbullah that have notched up the maximum number of suicide bomb attacks. Again, the trophy goes to the LTTE. For all its crudeness, suicide bombing seems to be the most potent political weapon. By using terror tactics like suicide bombing, the Tamil Tigers and the Palestinians are much feared and their causes well known and well-funded.
It has not been so with another group of “dispossessed” people – the Tibetans – who eschewed the path of terror. The result? Fifty years after China overran their country, Tibet’s future remains in limbo and the old Tibetan government remains in exile. With no country willing to back the Tibetan cause for fear of displeasing powerful China, the Tibetans’ fight for an independent homeland appears to have become a “boutique cause” championed by Hollywood stars. It is not a mainstream one like that of the Palestinians and the LTTE.
So, is the Tibetan cause less legitimate than that of the Palestinians and the LTTE, or is non-violence a weak and ineffectual tool in scoring political points for dispossessed people? In other words, does terrorism, especially the tactic of suicide bombing, pay?
Ostensibly, it does. After all, didn’t it bring Sri Lanka to the negotiating table and force Israel to pull out of Lebanon?
But that is only for the short term. Terrorism, by its extreme and “immediate gratification” nature does not sit comfortably with rational behaviour and lasting benefits for the parties that resort to it. After all, the Palestinians have been fighting, without success, for a homeland for decades.
Likewise for the LTTE and the Kurds, et al. Which goes to show that terrorism is a blunt tool.
It helped the LTTE and Hamas to get the world’s attention but its horrors have turned the world’s stomach and deflected its sympathy.
History has shown that continuous extreme violence can lessen the impact of the next incident until the names and faces of the dead become little more than statistics. Additionally, suicide bombing is such an abominable act that every time it occurs, it fills us with so much revulsion that only the horror remains. The cause and origin of the conflict get increasingly obscured.
Terrorist experts like Dr Rohan Gunaratna believe the Dalai Lama’s commitment to non-violence is the best way to reach a long-term settlement in conflicts.
For results, look at the derelict townships and the hopelessness on Palestinian faces. Despite wave after wave of headline-gobbling suicide attacks since 2000, the lives of ordinary Palestinians have got much worse and they have lost the world’s goodwill. That is where the Tibetans have scored.
There has been some headway in the political arena too. Last September, US President George W Bush signed the Tibetan Policy Act into law, a promise to engage the Chinese government to reach a negotiated agreement on Tibet.
It goes to show that despite the sound and fury that accompanies terrorism, it is, after all that has been said and done, nothing but murder – a tool of the politically-weak and effete.
It does nothing to achieve solid and lasting goals, which come when you have gained the respect of the rest of the world.
This point was succinctly summed up not too long ago by Dr Haider Abdel-Shafi, who was once a top negotiator of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation: “The suicide attacks have been very, very damaging to us. They deprived us of the sympathy of the world.”
