POLITICS: U.N. Wants Strong Message Sent to ‘Perpetrators of Terror’

By Marwaan Macan-Markar Reprint | | Print |

Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK, Apr 20 2005 (IPS) - For the current global campaign against terrorism to succeed, governments must deliver a stark message to the perpetrators of such violence that they are on the losing side of a battle.

That, in short, is what experts in the field are hoping government delegates would pledge at the end of an eight-day U.N. conference being held here.

”This will be a test of this meeting: how strong a message we are sending to the perpetrators of terror,” Antonio Maria Costa, director-general of the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), told IPS. ”Are they (the terrorists) going to feel a bit more uncomfortable or not?”

”The lives of terrorists should be made more difficult,” he added.

Costa’s comments came on the day government delegates at the 11th United Nations Congress on Crime Prevention and Criminal turned their attention to the need for international cooperation to combat terrorism.

Statements read by officials from countries as wide-ranging as Columbia, in Latin America, Sweden, in Europe, and Indonesia, in Asia, made the case that terrorism in all its forms was not acceptable.

But just as important is the need to go after terrorists by mounting collective operations, Muhammad Shoaib Suddle, head of anti-terrorism operations in Pakistan’s police force, said in an interview. ”It cannot be fought in isolation.”

Yet a law-and-order approach is not the only prescription, added Suddle, whose country has been a victim of terrorist strikes perpetrated by Islamic militants. ”The factors that motivate international terrorism must also be tackled, like the basic frustrations the militants feel, the injustice that drives people to such violence.”

Framing the discussion on terrorism at the on-going U.N. congress, which started on Monday and runs to Apr. 25, are the 12 U.N. conventions to combat this global scourge. They include the International Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism, which came into force in April 2002, and the International Convention for the Suppression of Terrorist Bombings, that was put into effect in May 2001.

If fully implemented, these new international rules of engagement make it all but impossible for militants involved in terrorism to operate freely, say U.N. experts.

A limitation that has received increasing international backing over the past five years is the clause about arrests and extradition of suspected terrorists.

”Nowadays, each state is under obligations to extradite a suspected individual -no matter where the act of terror took place – or to detain the suspected terrorist,” Walter Gehr, coordinator of the terrorism prevention branch at UNODC, told reporters.

Previously, militant groups enjoyed being assured protection in a country where they were not involved in violence as, say, members of rebel groups like the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam seeking sanctuary in Britain.

But the acts of terror in the United States on Sept. 11, 2001, brought an end to such arrangements. After 9/11, both the United States and Britain labelled the Tigers as a terrorist group – denying them funds from U.S. and British supporters and also a safe overseas haven.

The drum beat that grew out of the terrorist strikes in the United States – that terrorism was an international phenomenon that had to be countered collectively – did trigger a change in attitude among governments.

Support for the 12 U.N. conventions to combat terrorism was a stark example. From only two countries that had ratified all the 12 treaties out of the global body’s 191 members before the Sept. 11 attack, the number rose to 61 countries ratifying all anti-terrorism conventions.

A high-profile panel appointed by U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan to identify emerging global threats and challenges also amplified this mood. Terrorism was named as one of the six threats the world should worry about. The other five are wars between states, civil wars, transnational crime, nuclear weapons and crises arising from poverty, infectious diseases and environmental degregation.

Yet at the same time, there are experts on non-violence at the on-going congress, which has attracted an estimated 3,000 people from 114 countries, who are making the case for an alternative way to address terrorism.

”People power and non-violent strategies can achieve much more than violence,” Peter Ackerman, founder of the International Centre on Nonviolent Conflict, a Washington D.C. based non-governmental group, told IPS on the sidelines of the congress.

And the way to reduce the grip terrorism has in seeking political change, is to make the case that ”non-violent strategies are far more successful,” he added. For example, he draws on the way brutal regimes in the Philippines, Chile and South Africa were overthrown.

”Non-violent resistance should be encouraged to curb terrorism,” he said.

That message, however, was having little takers among government delegates, most of whom were content on strengthening the law and anti-terrorism units to combat this global scourge.