Thoughts from London

Britain’s sincerity on terrorism on the line
Last Thursday Britain’s Channel 4 telecast a programme called “The year London was bombed.” It was about the IRA attacks on London in 1974.
That documentary was a stark reminder to the British people that political terrorism is nothing new; only the modus operandi has changed.
More importantly, it was a reminder to Britain’s political leadership that the tolerance of terrorism elsewhere or being lackadaisical about terrorist groups outside Britain is a supreme folly.

Whereas the IRA bombings that year were planned and executed by IRA members and sympathisers, many of whom crossed the waters into Britain, the suicide bombings of July 7 and the abortive attempts two weeks later, were carried out by persons born right here or were educated and bred in the UK.

That is not all. While the IRA terrorists planted bombs in bar and restaurants, particularly those frequented by the British military or police, and hurled explosives through windows, the recent attacks some 30 years later, had acquired a greater sophistication with a greater readiness to sacrifice their own lives for religion or politics.

The 7/7 attacks and the failed attempts two weeks later shook Britain. The country that had withstood the merciless Nazi V1/V2 rocket attacks during the last war and the IRA terrorism with a certain stoicism, realised the new danger though the people still went about their daily business without hitting the panic button. The British public deserves credit for that.

Not so the political leadership. Therein lies a contradiction that is worthy of examination because it affects not only domestic Britain but Britain’s relations with other countries and its publicly avowed commitment to fighting global terror.However much Prime Minister Tony Blair and his close advisers argue that the recent London bombings were not motivated by Britain’s unflinching support to President Bush after 9/11 and the arguably illegal invasion of Iraq, there is little doubt this is what provoked, to a significant extent at least, the attacks.

The fact is that a vast majority of the people here were opposed to the Iraq war. London saw a million people on the march against Blair’s decision, which as subsequently discovered, was not only based on false or doctored intelligence but had also been against strong advice from the foreign office and elsewhere.

The government, on the other hand, went to war because Saddam threatened British interests and was linked to terrorism, two counts on which there was no credible evidence.

The US and the UK might have removed a dictator. But they did not crush terrorism or the threat of terrorism. Rather Blair brought a new form of terrorism to the heart of London. In recent times suicide bombing was pioneered by the Hizbollah in Lebanon and seven years or so later adopted by the LTTE that first used the technique in 1987.

Blair’s reaction to the suicide bombings has been to propose a raft of laws that could well violate the European Human Rights Convention to which Britain is a signatory and other UN conventions and treaties.

Human rights activists and others have already condemned some of these proposed laws as a derogation from Britain’s obligation on human rights and a dangerous retreat from Britain’s traditional support for civil liberties.
A connected issue that has raised a major furore here and involved a second country is the killing of an innocent Brazilian who was supposedly running away from the police and was shot dead as a suspected terrorist.
Recent disclosures in the media and elsewhere have proved beyond reasonable doubt that the police had been lying through their teeth when they claimed the suspect ran away when challenged and there was evidence of his criminal intent.

Up to now they have produced no such evidence.
The current reactions of the British Government, the killing of innocents and related matters raise very important issues.
What if the government of a developing country had done what Britain has done and is planning to do? What if Sri Lanka had deliberately shot an innocent man, as British security has done? Such countries would have been condemned in international forums, accused of human rights violations and blamed for a thousand other things including perhaps fathering Adolf Hitler and supporting Pol Pot, two mass murderers.
When our countries are faced with terrorism we should conduct ourselves with the kind of moral rectitude that is expected of a saint while Britain and some other western nations are ready to dump righteousness when they are under threat.

The west is entitled to adopt double-and even treble- standards but others dare not think of such foreign policy and human rights luxuries.
If I remember correctly my lessons in British history it was Queen Victoria’s foreign secretary Lord Palmerston who claimed that he was a conservative at home and a liberal abroad.

Tony Blair is cast in the Palmerstonian mould. All his preaching about poverty and concern for the poor and the destitute, about the global threat of terrorism is nothing more than sounds from the pulpit.
Blair’s concern about terrorism is only when British and possibly his friend George Bush’s interests are perceived as threatened. What happens in the rest of the world is cynically obliterated with the flourish of a Lord Nelson holding a telescope to his blind eye.

Blair, the self-proclaimed master blaster of terrorism who is ready to deport radical Muslim clerics, is either naïve or cynically insouciant to the fact that deporting Muslims or cracking down on Muslims alone are not going to eradicate or minimise terrorism.

Terrorism is a globalised and free market phenomenon as much as the trade an investment his government promotes. Terrorism is not stopped by chopping off one tentacle of an octopus. Any person with average intelligence knows that. It is the head stupid.But while concentrating his ire against radical Muslims, he is turning a blind eye to the potential for terrorism that lies within his own society. In 2000- and that was before 9/11- Britain passed anti-terrorism legislation under which it banned several organisations deemed to be international terrorist groups. But some of them continue to operate and raise money that go to fund terrorism despite these laws.

When the Home Office wanted to include the LTTE in the list, it was the foreign office that was against it, particularly the head of the South Asia Division at the time, Stephen Evans, now Britain’s high commissioner in Colombo.

Fortunately the Home Office ignored his advice. But has that stopped the former head of the South Asian desk from abandoning his line of thinking regarding the LTTE, which according to an Indian intelligence analyst has carried out 250 suicide bombings to date.

Consequent to the assassination of Lakshman Kadirgamar, Sri Lanka appealed to the international community to adopt a tougher stance against the LTTE in keeping with its responsibilities under international law.
Until the end of 2005 Britain holds the presidency of the European Union that has been quite vociferous in the past about the LTTE eschewing violence and violating accepted norms of conduct.

The world will be watching to see how Britain conducts itself as president of the EU. If Britain is sincere about fighting terrorism, its application of the law should be uniform and consciously applied to enhance and ensure its commitment to combat terrorism. It must take the lead.

If it concentrates its energies against one group — the Muslims — and lets others off the hook, it will be seen as indeed a clash of civilisations- in A minor.

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