NOWADAYS, is terrorism glorified? Just recently, prominent terrorist Abu Musaab Zarqawi was killed in Iraq, and the Punjab Assembly held Fatiha responsible for his death. Is this not tantamount to glorifying terrorism? Perhaps. Punjab is no longer a part of the British Empire, though, and the MPAs have no reason to fear the bill banning the glorification of errorism, which came into force in the United Kingdom this spring.
Lately, Israeli "self defence" forces murdered ten Palestinian civilians who were enjoying a picnic on the Gaza beach. The Palestinian government decried it as terrorism, while the Israelis denied responsibility. Then a few weeks ago, a Palestinian suicide bomber succeeded in penetrating into Israel and blew up a dozen restaurant diners after a lull of such attacks. The Israeli government was quick to decry it a "terrorist" attack, while the Palestinian government called it a "self-defence" attack and refused to condemn it.
The question is: which of these attacks were terrorism, and which ones were an act in self-defence? (Or is it that both sides were committing terrorism?) Calling terrorism self defence would constitute -- if not glorification of terrorism, then at least as "abetting and condoning terrorism" -- all of which are now considered "criminal offences" in the United Kingdom under Tony Blair's new anti-terror codes.
Israelis are so afraid of terrorism that their "self defence Foreign Ministry" recently barred this writer, as a member of the Cambridge University delegation, from visiting Jerusalem and Palestine, because of fear of exposure of their self defence.
True, neither the Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert nor his Palestinian counterpart Ismael Hanieh are British nationals, but heads of state having immunity from crimes against humanity is now a story of the yore. In the not the too distant past, Chile's exdespot and a known criminal, General Pinochet, was arrested in the UK, although he was released
on health grounds. However, many others were not so lucky, including Saddam Hussein of Iraq, Slobodan Milosevic of Serbia, and lately, Charles Taylor of Sierra Leone. These are among the criminals who could not hide behind the "head-of-state" impunity to evade the due process of law.
The new law in Britain, however, is a seminal landmark in humanity's quest for peace and justice. The acrimonious debate during the months between the introduction of this bill in the House of Commons to its reluctant approval at the House of Lords sometimes jeopardised its fate, but the bill shows great potential now that it has became law.
If the notion of glorifying and abetting terrorism is accepted as terrorism itself, then many liars will face the consequences. Tony Blair's assertions of not lying to his country and to the world about Iraq are now taken as a joke even here in the UK. His blind following of the nited States and his sometimes hypothetical policy of fighting against some terrorists and inancing others has led some US websites to coin the phrase: "Blair as Bush's poodle is an insult to poodles."
Shortly after this new terrorism law was passed, strong evidence arose against Blair's personal role in financing terrorism, but not in relation to Palestine, Iraq, or Guantanamo Bay. It was concerning Uzbekistan, where Blair financed terrorism. This evidence is actually the testimony of former British Ambassador and career civil servant, Craig Murray, who was sacked from the service by Blair for speaking out against the British abetment of serious abuses in Uzbekistan before a committee of the European Parliament in Brussels.
Craig Murray was a direct witness to many mock trials in Uzbekistan. He saw first-hand the evidence of torture -- including acid baths, electric shocks, and the boiling of people to death. His conscience failed to represent a government which was colluding in these atrocities. He ven wrote several memos to his government to inform them of Uzbekistan's
Islam Karimov's regime human rights violations, rampant torture, and unexplained disappearances at an industrial scale, and he also suggested a strong diplomatic pressure to stop such abuse. He was pressurised, sacked, and harassed, and he ultimately had a nervous breakdown.
According to Mr. Murray, he was called into the Foreign Office where he was offered a "comfortable posting" as Ambassador to Copenhagen if he withdrew his notes, and if he did not cooperate, he would be threatened with a charge sheet for "having issued British visas in return for sexual favours in his office." Can a civilised government stoop so low as to vandalise the life and career of one of its own citizens, when it dares to make a recommendation to defend human rights? It was after seeing the faces of some Western statesmen of his time that Mahatma Gandhi was compelled, when asked what he thought of Western civilization and values, to remark that "it would be a good idea."
What happened last year in the tiny town of Andijan in Uzbekistan, when 745 unarmed civilians, mostly women and children, were massacred for protesting against mock trials of 21 local youths? Karimov's regime traded with their counterparts in Kyrgyzstan to escape these crimes against humanity. The civilised world lived through the silence of this act throughout the next year.
Islam Karimov is known as the most ruthless dictator in the world, a world where the slightest dissent is responded to with endemic torture. Al Qaeda and its supporters are no match for Karimov's security forces, and in fact, the latter are turning ordinary secular dissenters of Karimov into Al Qaeda sympathizers.
Yet, the United States gave $120 million in aid to Uzbek military forces and another $82 worth of equipment and training to civilian security forces. This means that the United States and its allies are not only condoning terrorism and crimes against humanity, but they are actively supporting and financing it. As for the UK, $500 million has been channelled into such
ruthless apparatus in Uzbekistan -which is more than the total British aid to sub-Saharan Africa -- leading to a swelling in the numbers of West-haters. Therefore, the taxpayers in the US and UK are subsidising Al Qaeda. While the West is dismantling Saddam Hussain's torture networks in Iraq and creating their own in Cuba, it is also subsidising the ones of Islam Karimov in Uzbekistan.
As for glorifying terrorism and terrorists, one may argue that the statements of Bush and Blair concerning known tyrants and criminals support such an idea; they called Islam Karimov a "champion of freedom," Tunisia's Benali an "island of stability," and Egypt's Mubarak "our friend." At least Mr Blair has, by criminalising this glorification, unwittingly put his own post-retirement liberty at risk.
True, this glorifying phrase can be applied selectively in Blair's own country. For example, when the Imam of Finsbury Park Mosque of London, Abu Hamza, receives seven years imprisonment for inciting hatred in his speeches, and when Nick Griffin, the head of the nationalist and white supremacist BNP party, is set free for lack of evidence on more or less the same charges of inciting racial hatred. But given that courts in Spain and Belgium have acquired universal jurisdiction to try terrorism related offences, which includes -- one would presume -- glorifying it, a time may come when democratic leaders in the world find themselves behind bars for having knowingly supported tyrants. As the weekly Economist wrote recently, it was "not just an ethical point, coddling tyrants has strategic costs too." One must add that in the years to come, strategic costs may come to individuals as well as to the United States.
The Chancellor of Exchequer and potentially the next Prime Minister of Britain, Gordon Brown, believes that "Britishness is not about common blood or culture, about dreaming spires and changing of guards, but is based on a sober set of shared values." If the new bill defends these values and takes to task any citizen, be he a Prime Minister (like Blair) or a common man, rather than bullying certain sections of ethnic minorities alone, then this terrorism bill will go a long way towards making the world a safer place to live.
Saad S Khan is the Middle East Editor of Cambridge Review of International Affairs and a widely read analyst on politics, governance, and human rights in the Muslim world.