I decided to take advantage of my current assignment at the NATO Centre of Excellence -- Defence Against Terrorism (official spelling) in Ankara, Turkey and exercise academic freedom by writing down some of my thoughts and observations regarding the hottest topic in today's world affairs -- global terrorism.
Many years ago I graduated from pharmacy school followed by several years of hands- on practice as a U.S. Naval officer. During this period I developed an interest in the chemotherapy treatment of cancer patients. I would now like to use my past experience in battling cancer, together with the knowledge gained in my present occupation, to compare terrorism to cancer and the fight against terrorism to cancer treatment.
At times chemotherapy must be very aggressive and is often damaging to the very human life that medical professionals are trying to save from a deadly malignancy. Many patients wonder if going through such an aggressive and painful treatment is worth it-just to have a chance to live, often with pain and deformities and always with a constant fear of recidivism. Naturally, some patients go through stages of denial and let their cancer take its course, hoping for the disease to somehow resolve itself. Typically these misguided victims look for cancer survivors who survived the illness without traditional medical intervention. Some resort to religion and prayer while others to alternative medicine, or to a combination of many different things, some of which may give false hope while causing more harm than good. However most of us if faced with this type of challenge to our health would hope and pray for a miracle but depend on medical professionals to be the instruments of healing.
Medicine however is not what I want to talk about at this time, except as an illuminating metaphor. Like the rational and realist cancer patient, we should not be satisfied just praying or hoping away the threat of global terrorism. Humanity is currently faced with little choice but to battle our social cancer, terrorism, with all the consequences for collateral damage it may cause-somewhat similar to the side effects caused by aggressive cancer treatment. Of course we have a choice to do nothing and simply hope for a miracle that one day soon all terrorists will realize that what they are doing is not kind and decent to the rest of us, nor is it an acceptable or an effective means of achieving their political goals, and stop their destructive activity.
I am not a scholar and I could never compete with politicians, diplomats, academicians or intellectuals in a struggle to characterize define or even eloquently express what terrorism is and what causes it (the entire United Nations (UN) can't seem to agree either). I am simply a U.S. Naval officer who for the last few years has been working with this tremendously complex issue. Unfortunately during my career I have been a witness and otherwise exposed to terrorist attacks as well as antiterrorist actions. It did not take me long to realize that terrorism is a crime against humanity and in most of my personal experiences those who were branded as terrorists were first of all criminals who were trying to advance some political agenda through their brutally criminal actions against innocent people. These criminals soon learned that murder and terror was a simple, often effective, efficient and safe way for them to get greater society into disarray and simultaneously rally other sympathetic radicals, such as suicide bombers, around the "greater cause", this in turn often equated to additional funding for their organizations. Simply put the tactics of terrorism work, innocent people suffer while criminals profit.
Permit me now to take a step back and make some points from not too distant history. Recently the newly appointed U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates responded to President Vladimir Putin's less than diplomatic remarks about the United States by referring to the Cold War era as "less complex times" and "almost nostalgic" for these unpleasant, but yet much more stable days. Days when everything came down to two ideologies: Communism verses Democracy and Capitalism, represented by the costly game between Moscow and Washington.
In those days the West was in the West and the East was in the East, encamped on either side of an easily identifiable Iron Curtain. Although both sides possessed enough weapons of mass destruction to destroy the world several times over, structures and processes such as hotlines, summits, treaties as well and huge bureaucracies were maintained to keep things under control, to keep the Cold War from getting hot.
Today we do not have the good-old "Cold War", but we did inherit and even "improved" on those huge bureaucracies- burdens which our new adversary does not have or have need for.
For a brief period following the collapse of the Soviet empire it appeared that ideological differences which had existed between the two empires, trying to influence and divide up the rest of the world, were fading away. More or less the democratic free-market approach was accepted by all but a few minute holdouts of the former soviet block countries. Euphoria erupted as the possibility of "world peace" became more than just part of a Miss America's speech, and swept through much of the West.
Unfortunately, the somewhat unpleasant but familiar and even comfortable "Black and White" conflict of Cold War was replaced by a very "Gray," confusing and ambiguous new world order of the post-Cold War world, a world for which the CIA, FBI, MI6, FSB or any other "guardians" of security and stability were totally unprepared (Israel perhaps being the only exception). Even though it was not a new trend, and has been around for millenniums, it appears that the world only now learned that no government was prepared to deal with the now accelerating and expanding phenomenon called global terrorism. Although for years the world was provided with plenty of warning signs for all to see, like plenty of warning was given regarding very harmful affects of sunrays and tobacco usage and just like the misguided cancer patient, nations seemed to have collectively opted to hope for some sort of a miracle.
In the last five years most of my friends and colleagues seem to have forgotten the collective feeling of euphoria of possible world peace, which fifteen years ago seemed reachable. Now, for an indefinable reason, the sensation of a return to the past, if not to a "Cold War", than defiantly a bit of "Cool" war is emerging on the horizon. All this is happening against a backdrop of global terrorism that brings to mind the most debased and ruthless human conduct imaginable going back as far as the Dark Ages. By and large, having common goals and a common enemy, Russia and the West, for what appear to be petty interests or shear arrogance, are once again gearing up for a Cold (or Cool) War, instead of uniting to fight a common enemy, one that has gone" Hot" and is fighting to the death. Sounds silly? I would say it's asinine, because we, as a community of developed nations, cannot even agree on who the enemy is; and define terrorism in such way as to allow for united, universal response. Unfortunately, it is much easier and comfortable to return back to a style of business similar to the good old days, one that is easer to grasp and reference like the US versus Soviet Union relationship which existed for close to 50 years. It is almost beyond belief that despite the terror events that have occurred throughout the world over the past several years; the world community has been unable, or to be more precise, unwilling to formally define what is terrorism actually is, who are terrorists, what exactly is meant by defense against terrorism. Every time the UN tries to define terrorism, all it accomplishes is to clearly demonstrate how disunited they are and how counter-productive the UN's measures are in fighting or countering terror tactics. The most glaring example of this failure is the United Nations' absolute impotence in sanctioning a member-state that disseminates rhetoric for the total destruction of another member-state, while at the same time is developing the technology for nuclear weapons. It seems that even if terrorists' organizations were paying-members of the United Nations, the UN would not be able to do anything to curtail their activity.
As a result, terrorism continues to spread around the world just like cancer cells in a human body while world politicians just like a team of inexperienced, but arrogant physicians can not agree on the diagnosis of the disease, isolation of cancer cells and the best treatment of the illness. The European Union (EU) is still in the process of defining what the EU is all about, so they surely have not had the time to define something as intangible as terrorism. In this united Europe each country has its own approach to combating and defending against terrorism. An abundance of well-known TV and radio stations as well as humanitarian, cultural and countless other Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), which are sponsored by Middle East-based terrorist organizations and governments, operate freely in Europe propagating their bloody agenda. If by some chance, after a great deal of political pressure and legal due process, such organizations get shut down, all they do is move to another EU country and continue to operate with little to no interruption to their deadly programs. NATO has a somewhat cohesive statement on the subject of terrorism, but it is going through a major transformation process, and again each NATO country has its own agenda and definition of terrorism, terrorist organizations and their make-up. So, at the end of long meetings and expensive studies it appears that no one has a true and clear definition of terrorism.
In actuality terrorism could be anything at anytime and anywhere: linking together almost every type of criminal activity - anything from disruption of water and food supplies to an attack on a military patrol to human and illegal drug trafficking, money laundering and fraudulent fund raising. An entire sovereign country could be a terrorist state with all of its daily bureaucratic processes and national wealth directly or indirectly supporting terrorism. Therefore, terrorism may absorb or reach into every aspect of life, in some cases, and into every government in every country in the world. Again, just like normal cells mutate into malignant ones in a human body.
I do not have a good, answer to this very multifaceted problem. I can't even begin to articulate such complex crisis that terrorism has created for us. However, I do have some observations and would like to share them with anyone who believes that we must fight global terrorism in all its forms. This particularly concerns our political leadership which sends my brothers- and sisters-in-arms to fight against that very loosely defined threat we call terrorism.
Allow me to analyze and discuss this issue further: During my 22-year career with the US Navy my service included postings in Russia, Kazakhstan, Georgia, Poland and now Turkey. While serving with the UN and NATO I worked closely with military, police and national security officers from over thirty different countries. All of these brave and honorable people in uniform had one thing in common, regardless what flag patch they wear on their sleeve, all wanted to protect their homelands, their citizens and their way of life. For the US and many other nation's military men and women, it does not matter if it is our own countrymen and families whose freedoms and lives are being threatened. Most men and women serving in the armed forces are willing to fight and put their lives in harms way to protect those that cannot fight or defend themselves, and who only want to live their lives in peace and safety. For most of us in the military it is not important if the people we defend have different skin color, practice different religion or speak another language. All these things do not matter as long as these people, our global neighbors, strive to live in relative peace.
So, whom do we fight now? From whom do we protect innocent people? Every time I bring up this subject with my international colleagues, some proud Turkish officers point out to me that each and every time PKK terrorists attack peaceful villages inside of Turkey, Turkish Special Forces (SF) try to search and destroy these terrorists, but they can only pursue to the northern border of Iraq. Once the terrorists cross the border from Turkey to Iraq the coalition (meaning U.S.) forces do not allow Turks to cross the border to capture or kill these terrorists. On a particular occasion Turkish SF continued the pursuit across the border, to "fight terrorism where it lives " as stated by President George W. Bush in one of his speeches to U.S. troops engaged in the fight against terrorism; however, in that case a US Special Operations team captured and apprehended the Turkish forces chasing the terrorists into Iraq's territory. So, in the end US antiterrorist forces arrested Turkish antiterrorist forces while the "bad guys" retreated to safety to catch up on their rest and recover so they could murder another day. By no means do I imply that US or Turkish elite fighting men did anything wrong. Both followed their orders as is expected of real warriors and both did it well. What I question is, how did these brave men end up in such a dangerous and idiotic circumstance? Based on this situation it would seem that Turkish citizens have the right to complain about the double standards practiced by the US. Unless president Bush by stating "fighting terrorism where it lives " meant it applies only to the Americans.
On the other hand, I wish Turkish citizens would question the actions of the Turkish government for not only harboring an infamous Saudi businessman, one of the top men on the UN terrorist watch list - for providing major financial support to Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups, but also that Turkish authorities, under pressure from some Turkish politicians, let this terrorist flee the country with all of the funds that were supposed to be frozen in Turkish banks.
Another case-in-point of this disunity is when Russian officers point out to me that the British government gives asylum and even citizenship to a known Chechen terrorist(s), responsible for some of the most hideous terror attacks in Russia. I understand and feel for these Russian officers; my wife and children were in Moscow at the Nord Oste stage performance the day before the entire theater was taken hostage by such terrorists. It is sickening to even consider that a beacon of inspiration for democracy and an exemplary model for law and order such as the United Kingdom, which has suffered a great deal from terrorism, could possibly harbor someone who was implicated in something like the Beslan school butchery. Recently, a very respected senior Russian General stated in his speech, "Russia is against such double standards, especially when it comes down to a known terrorist and we all must work these things out among each other." I am confident that most of us fully agree with him - we all must work this out, but who is going to start? Russia? I am not so sure. I do not think that President Putin knows of this good general making such statements on behalf of Russia, since the general's own commander-in-chief regularly hosts Hamas' top leadership in the Kremlin addressing them as "Defenders of Liberty". It is just as itchy to think that a world-leader like President Putin is not aware of Hamas being a well-known terrorist organization adamant on the destruction of an entire state.
Another example of such political "brilliance" was recently exhibited in Poland. The Polish government sent many of their good men to fight the war on terror around the world, including in Afghanistan and Iraq. These are brave and devoted men, I served with them, they believe in what they do and they do it well. However, while these Polish men fight and die defending innocent lives against terrorists, their own government dedicates an entire city square in Warsaw, the capital of Poland, to General Dudayev. I have asked several of my Polish brothers-in-arms who is this General Dudayev and what did he do for Poland, but for some reason none of them could recollect him from their Polish history lessons. I know of many great Polish heroes who could have been honored by their people, but Polish politicians decided to honor a known Chechen terrorist, who most likely did not know one thing or cared about Poland. I can go on for pages and pages giving similar humiliating and exasperating examples, particularly when it comes to Western Europe. However, at this point I do not believe it will be constrictive. For any government to tell those of us in uniform to engage in the war against terrorism while supporting terrorism in another form is self-defeating comparable to my grandfather being told in 1941 by his Red Army commander to engage in the war against Blitzkrieg, while Stalin was hosting Hitler for a family dinner.
Well, as I said in the beginning of this article, I do not have the answers to deal with global terrorism. I only have a hope that, as it often happens during prolonged major crisis, great leaders will emerge to lead the great nations and the righteous in overcoming the evil. My wish is that Turkey will be once again led by a man such a Kamal Ataturk, Poland by a Marshal Jązef Pi sudzki, Great Britain by another Sir Winston Churchill and the United States by a president such as Theodore Roosevelt - so that great men such as these could rally other leaders of the new and old world democracies, of our small world and all of us together could get rid of this deadly cancer which is threatening our way of life and our very existence. Just like teams of medical professionals work in unity by creating medical consortium to fight life-threatening diseases, knowing it very well that any other way the cancer will win and life is lost.
My optimism is supported that true leaders will surface; leaders who will be inspired by the ones such those as mentioned above and will place the people who entrusted them through a democratic process, before selfish political ambitions. So that those of us in uniform could be given a fair chance to search-and-destroy this cancer called global terrorism. This deadly cancer which strangles our world.