One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter?!

Author: Rover

Often, regrettably, the terms terrorist and freedom fighters (or rebels) are used interchangeably by many, but these two terms are very distinct and should only be used in the correct context. For instance when discussing terrorism in Sri Lanka, major human rights agencies (like Human Rights Watc), ceasefire monitors (Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission) and international media (like BBC, AFP, REUTERS ect.) use these terms randomly, confusing the public about what terrorism actually is. Furthermore, a jaded cliché of those who justify terrorism (eg. MIA – Maya Arulpragasam) is “one man’s terrorist is another man’s’ freedom fighter”, a clear indication that they do not distinguish the two terms.

Confused public is a major problem, especially in democracies; since the democratic process depends heavily on how well informed the public and the representatives of the public are, to address crucial issues in governance. In other words, rule of the people, by the people, for the people is disrupted when the people are misinformed.

Terrorism can be broadly defined as intentionally terrorizing civilians/people of a country to achieve a political goal. However methods used by terrorists to terrorize can differ, such as random shooting, suicide bombings, poison gas attacks, hostage taking ect. The political goals that the terrorists strive for can be as diverse as creation of separate state, spreading of a fanatic ideology, facilitating anarchy so that illegal and immoral practices like pirating and smuggling can be carried out, release of a fellow captive terrorist, ect. Terrorists use this environment of fear and confusion in the general populace to achieve their political goals. Never in the history have any of these groups been concerned about defending the ideals they actively trample on (for example human rights). Terrorists will only honor the democratic ideals once these groups give up violence (renounce violence).

Consider Khmer Rouge, the terrorist organization headed by the infamous Pol-Pot. They did not only attack the Vietnamese forces but also attacked Vietnamese civilians, intellectuals (even non-intellectuals with eye defects that wore spectacles were assassinated!). The ultimate human cost of that conflict was nearly 3 million people; there is no way that all these people are militants, and most of those who died were civilians. Khmer Rouge instilled in the populace a sense of terror or that 'no one is safe'. Even after the conflict has ended, these regions are still paying for the atrocities of the Khmer Rouge.

What did the innocent that died in the 9/11 attacks have against the Jihadis? Basically nothing. Jihadis attacked these innocent civilians to instill a sense fear (or terror) in the greater population (at lease that was the Jihadis aimed for). Terrorists revel on the fact that there is a lack of connection between the cause that they are fighting for and the innocent people that suffer; or in other words, they strive to confuse and terrorize at the same time.

Freedom-fighters do battle against repressive governments and their armies, not against the civilians that they aim to protect/uplift. They don't terrorize civilians to achieve a political goal.

In 1940s, when Nazis overran France, and later tried to suppress the French Citizens by various means, the French Resistance Movement (FR) was born. FR hardly ever tried to instill a sense of fear among the civilians, but only carried out a campaign of attrition against the far more powerful Nazi army and the Vichy regime (the French government that collaborated with the Germans). However, the Vichy regime and the Nazis resorted to terrorist activities. They took large numbers of French civilians as hostages, and for each of the “subversive” acts the FR carried out, several hostages were killed. The Vichy regime tried to put the blame of these killings indirectly on the FR. However, the people realized who the real aggressor was and kept supporting the FR, and even women and children were involved active duty, not necessarily combat duty. The actions of FR enabled Allies to sweep through France quite rapidly after Normandy landing in 1944, and also helped numerous allied soldiers, pilots and spies who were stranded in enemy territory to head back to allied territory.

There are also freedom fighters that do not resort to violence. Mahatma Gandhi and his Satyagrah movement, which can be defined as the resistance of tyranny by mass civil disobedience, is one of the best examples. It is ludicrous to equate something like this with LTTE's unmitigated violence.

LTTE are definitely not freedom fighters, but terrorists, and should be identified and treated as such. BBC and other agencies, by trying seemingly to be neutral in reporting a conflict do a lot of harm to legitimate governments that try to maintain democracies and the rule of law. The atrocities committed by LTTE terrorists are too numerous to list, but is not confined to suicide bombings of public buses and public gatherings, killing of intellectuals (mostly Tamil intellectuals), attacking and killing entire villages, attacking places of worship, assassination of representative of civilians like President Premadasa and Ex-Prime minister of India – Rajiv Gandhi ect.

Some argue that there is state sponsored terrorism as well; sure, but there are two quite distinct categories. First there are regimes that sponsor terrorism: as Bejamin Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel, correctly asserted, terrorists can’t exist without the support of states that support terrorism. Most of the terrorists groups come into being through the support of repressive states, examples are numerous – India initially supporting the Sri Lankan terrorists (many organizations including the LTTE), Iran, Libya, and Iraq supporting numerous middle Eastern terrorist groups, Pakistan’s support of Laksha-E-Toiba ect.

Second there are democracies that fight terrorism using sometimes unconventional methods, and these regimes are often branded, by those who are sympathetic towards actual terrorists, as “state terrorists”. The use of unconventional methods (military intelligence operations ect. – but NOT DELIBERATE killing of civilians), experts say, are needed to counter terrorism.

To compound the situation, democratically elected regimes only get on average a four year term to rule a country, and they have to respect the will of the people during that time and in contrast, terrorists have an unlimited amount of time to do whatever they want to do. For example, Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksha has the support of the Sri Lankan citizen to wage the war against the LTTE terrorists, but he has only a short amount of time to do this, but through unity of command,he has been doing this successfully (and there is absolutely no need to perpetuate a problem if it can mostly be dealt with quickly). Though I concur that addressing the root causes that giving rise to terrorism is the best method to make sure that ideologies connected to terrorism do not manifest, one cannot do this during the short four year period while fighting a terrorist regime. So democracies are forced to fight terrorism when and where they see it.

Democracies who fight terrorism also take a huge risk both with its own people and the international community. If the people decide that the war is not going anywhere, and the government has misused its power in suppressing the terrorists, the people can then change the government, they can make way for a more moderate set up (like what happened in the US – Bush being replaced by Obama); IC can contribute to this through many means. So in a democracy, there is a MECHANISM TO CHANGE a repressive regime. Lets’ take Sri Lanka as a general example, for the last 30 years, the LTTE has been fighting the Sri Lanka Government (SLG). Though the LTTE has gotten more and more violent throughout these 30 years, killing up to about 75,000 people, GSL leadership has changed seven times (though the top leader, the president, didn't change so many times, the setup of the government changed). Sometimes, there had been fairly liberal governments and sometimes more autocratic (or Hawkish one might say) governments, and which government next comes into power is decided by the people. So repressive “state terrorism”, if it exists, and if the majority are troubled by it, that government can be defeated when it becomes a problem. However for a terrorist group like the LTTE, the only change is towards causing more violence and problems to civilians, to get at its goal, and there is no non-violent, short term and simple method to get rid of these terrorist groups.

On top of these constraints democracies face in combating terrorism, terrorists groups also exploit the situation by providing access only to agencies and organizations that are only sympathetic/supportive towards their cause, opening up a way for misinformation. Through this sort of pussy-footing, by these supposedly responsible and exemplary organizations like the BBC, with terrorists, and warping of the truth, it is only a matter of time before all what we hold dear (democracy and the associated ideals) will be defeated by terrorists through the very same democratic processes that terrorists seek to annihilate!

Hence, these two terms, terrorists and freedom-fighters, considering the enormous burden that the free (democratic) world endures due to terrorism (terrorists), should never be equated or trivialized.