Terrorism

The British policeman who announced the arrest of a number of suspects in the latest bomb plot said that the group had been planning “mass murder on an unimaginable, unprecedented scale”. If they were indeed planning to destroy planeloads of passengers above US cities, this was certainly a plan for mass murder...

At first the 7th July bombings in London were attributed to the anonymous, unknown forces of al-Qaida. There was shock when it was revealed that the bombers were brought up in Britain. People wondered how someone could let off a bomb that would inevitably kill people who had been through the same education system, used the same health service, seen the same TV programmes or even been of the same religious faith.

Since the end of the 1980s, terrorism has regularly been at the forefront of the international situation; and for the bourgeoisie of the big powers it has become ‘Public Enemy No.1’. In the name of the fight against the barbarity of terrorism, the two main powers which were at the head of the Western and Eastern blocs, the United States and Russia, have unleashed war in Afghanistan, Iraq and Chechnya.

In the midst of all the statements on the bombings in London, most of which are only notable for their varying levels of hypocrisy, we have become aware of two statements, both from the libertarian and anarchist milieu, that attempt to defend a class position. One is from the libcom.org website, the other from the Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Federation (ZACF) of South Africa.

Never exactly popular in the British media, the IRA and Sinn Féin have complained of a “sustained campaign” being waged against them. The IRA was blamed for the £26.5m Northern Bank raid. Members of the IRA/SF were accused of killing Robert McCartney, as well as removing evidence in a cover-up and intimidating witnesses...

1. By now everyone throughout the world is well aware of the tragic events that have taken thousands of lives and caused tremendous destruction to the City of New York, the so-called 'capital of the world," and the Pentagon, headquarters of the American military in Washington and symbol of the might of US capitalism. The senseless death of thousands of people (many of them workers), the material destruction, the total disregard for human life, the madness of the people who executed these acts, since they died themselves -- are all expressions of the dead-end of a social system which is each day sinking humanity more and more into a bottomless spiral of barbarism, as it sinks further into decomposition. Never before has the US population experienced a man-made catastrophe of this magnitude on its own territory; war and destruction have always been the fate of "others" --especially in the cases when American imperialism has been the power behind the devastation and obliteration of countries and their populations. Thus, in the wake of these events, there is among the American working class and the population at large a veritable feeling of terror, impotence and desperation, compounded with a feeling of solidarity for the direct victims of these barbaric events. However, what is more and more dominant in the social ambiance today is the cynical manipulation by the dominant class of the situation created by this tragedy to stir up hatred and patriotism, to incite the most base nationalistic feelings in order to unite people behind the State, and thus make the population accept the militarization of society and the sacrifices required by the American imperialist adventures around the world.

On 28 August last year, as America tried to build international support for its impending war against Iraq, US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld compared President Bush's international isolation over plans to attack Iraq with the lonely stand taken by Winston Churchill before the Second World War. In the face of appeasers and doubters at home and abroad, he told 3,000 assembled US marines, Winston Churchill realised what a threat Hitler posed to Europe. Similarly, he added, President Bush knew that "leadership in the right direction finds followers and supporters."

We are told that terrorism is a threat to civilised values; that all freedom-loving and civilised nations must unite against it. In truth, the multiplication of terrorist attacks, from New York to Moscow, from Bali to Tel Aviv, reveal how absolutely rotten present day civilisation has become.

When horrific terrorist outrages occur, it's useful to ask who benefits from them. The answer usually sheds light on who could be responsible for these deeds. The Bali bombing on 12 October is no exception to this rule. The accused Indonesian Islamists certainly do not benefit from the Bali bombing. Abu Bakar Bashir, spiritual leader of one of the country's principal Islamist organisation, has been arrested and faces a possible death penalty for alleged complicity. New 'anti-terrorist' laws have been announced in Indonesia, after these were demanded by Australia in the wake of the bombing. Some 400 Australian Federal Police and some FBI agents have rushed to Bali and are working in 'partnership' with Indonesian police investigating the bombing. Australia has also donated A$10 million in 'counter-terrorism aid' - allegedly to assist Indonesia to build an effective 'counter-terrorism' capacity, but really to institutionalise an Australian security presence there and to bring Indonesia closer to Australia's expanding sphere of influence.

The ruthless slaughter of thousands of civilians in New York and Washington, the majority of them workers, in the very heart of the USA, of capitalism's number one economic and military machine, was not only an abominable war crime. It also marks a giant step in the decomposition of the existing social order.

In the nineteenth century, when capitalism was still developing, creating the basis for a world economy and the possibility of communism, there were instances when revolutionaries such as Marx supported national struggles. For example, the struggle for an independent Poland was backed as a way of creating a check on Russian tsarist reaction. The struggle for German unificationtruggle for German unification and against the domination of Prussian militarism was also supported by marxists. Marx and Engels also supported the movement for Irish independence, seeing it as a way of weakening the power of what was then the dominant capitalist nation, Britain, and its use of the Irish question as a means of controlling its own proletariat.

Two hundred dead and more than 1500 hundred wounded, four trains destroyed, human bodies so horribly torn apart that they could only be recognised by their DNA - this is the terrifying balance sheet of the terrorist attack on the so-called 'Train of Death' which violently shook the morning of 11 March in Madrid.

After investigating four controversial killings in Northern Ireland, retired Canadian judge Peter Cory concluded that agents of the security forces were allowed to set up murders, which the army (especially its Force Research Unit), MI5 and special branch were aware of, encouraged and assisted with. As he made his recommendations for full public inquiries there were press reports that the Ministry of Defence was concerned that "further light would be shed on the undercover operations of the FRU after embarrassing disclosures by an ex-soldier under the pseudonym Martin Ingram" (Guardian, 2/4/04).

In Greece in December 15 men were convicted of the nearly 1000 crimes attributed to the November 17 terrorist group during the 27 years of its activity. There had been 23 murders, dozens of bombings and rocket attacks on a range of targets - typically foreign banks and other businesses, military figures, Turkish and German diplomats, tax officers - as well as raids on police stations to restock on weapons.

The slaughter of over 300 people, the majority of them children, at School Number One in the North Ossetian town of Beslan, cannot fail to provoke indignation and revulsion. No less than the terrorist attacks of September 11 2001 in the US, this was a war crime in which, as ever, the most defenceless members of the civilian population are the first victims. In Beslan, the hostages were subjected to intimidation, hunger, thirst and summary executions, while many more who survived the initial explosion in the gym where they were being held were shot in the back by the hostage-takers when they tried to flee.

In the days following the massacre, world leaders have been rushing to express their 'solidarity with the Russian people' and with their 'strong leader' Mr Putin. At the Republican Convention in New York, Bush did not hesitate to include the Russian state's war against Chechen separatism in the global 'war on terrorism' spearheaded by the USA. In Moscow tens of thousands took part in an official anti-terrorist march under banners declaring 'Putin, we are with you'.

Hostage taking has become an almost daily part of warfare today. In Chechnya, in the Middle East, in Africa, wherever imperialist conflicts are out in the open, human beings are abducted, decapitated, massacred and filmed by the media. Capitalism was born in mud and blood, but if the proletariat leaves it with a free hand, it will drown us all in an ocean of suffering and destruction. French imperialism's offensive in the Arab/Muslim world

On 28th June 1914, the Archduke Franz-Ferdinand of Austria, nephew of the emperor Franz-Joseph and inspector-general of the Austro-Hungarian army, was assassinated in Sarajevo by Gavrilo Princip, a young Serbian nationalist. For Austria, the opportunity was too good to be missed. The Austrians had already laid hands on Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1908, their imperialist appetites whetted by the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire. The assassination provided Austria with the perfect pretext to attack Serbia, which it suspected of encouraging the nationalities under Austrian rule in their desires for independence. The declaration of war followed without the slightest negotiation. What ensued is common knowledge: Russia rushed to Serbia’s rescue, fearing to see Austria dominate the Balkans; Germany gave its support to its Austro-Hungarian ally; France in turn supported Russia, while Britain followed; in total, the war that resulted left almost ten million dead, six million mutilated, and Europe in ruins, not to mention the consequences of the war such as the 1918 flu epidemic, which caused more deaths than the war itself.

The intensification of the US offensive aimed at maintaining its world leadership has led it to unleash a new war in Afghanistan, and to deploy troops there, on the pretext of a world struggle against terrorism. As we will show in the article that follows, this military escalation and its conclusion today in a crushing American victory, far from bringing any kind of stability to the world is, on the contrary, the precursor of new wars and new massacres. Since the article was written, the situation has worsened in the Middle East, which is the object of this brief introduction.

As the US and Britain send massive military forces to the Gulf, police in London have arrested people alleged to have handled the chemical weapon ricin. This is part of the British state’s participation in the ‘war against terrorism’. They whip up fear and anxiety over the existence of previously little known substances, and present the capitalist state as a protector against ‘alien forces’ that have insinuated themselves into British society. Against the scare stories of the media, the following article sets out the marxist framework for understanding what terrorism really is.

The formidable ideological campaigns of the European bourgeoisie on the subject of terrorism (the Schleyer affair in Germany, the Moro affair in Italy), fig leaves covering a massive strengthening of the terror of the bourgeois state, have made the problem of violence, terror and terrorism a major preoccupation for revolutionaries. These questions are not new for communists: for decades they have denounced the barbaric methods used by the bourgeoisie to maintain its power in society, the savagery which even the most democratic regimes unleash at the slightest threat to the existing order...