Protect the Protectors
Samantha Power, Harvard University | August 21, 2008
UN officials and aid workers are frequently killed - both on purpose and accidentally - in Iraq, Algeria, and Afghanistan. ++ In fact, al-Qaeda declared the UN to be a central target. ++ Facing this danger, the UN needs to "nationalize" field operations and replace foreign workers by local nationals. ++ It should also spend more money on security and as a last resort, if a local government refuses to oppose the militants, suspend its programs. ++ We cannot return to a pre-9/11 world, but we must protect humanitarians in an age of terror.
Thu, Oct 2nd 2008, 13:48
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Terrorism is a widely acknowledged anti-political activity either as a mode of protest or gaining publicity. It is the rejection of the Weberian notion of the state, in both its direct and indirect usage of violence and forms a part of the uncivil society.
Any state that ostensibly rewards those who work on International Terrorism by the usage of direct as well as indirect violence – clothed in ethno-political terms immediately delineates itself as being thus anti-political - in its rejection of the modern state, as well as the civil society. As again is common to the practices of the global uncivil society, the realm of the private is de-recognized by such forces and their very anti-political nature stand exposed, apart from the very abhorrence that such a situation would give arise to, in any civilized society. When a state and its populace begins celebrating such a situation as a cause celebré, then state terrorism, unfortunately, becomes a socialized reality that then immediately raise serious concerns about that state’s claims of insurgencies, etc. elsewhere in its territories.
Now, imagine a state that is formed, in a large part, of those very elements that have thus sought to define themselves. One paper entitled The Foregone Conclusions – www.atlantic-community.org points at out a few of the problems that mark the South Asian state of India, in its commitment to combat terrorism. Should such papers draw the ire of many of the similar delineated segments of its population, it says a lot about the mindset that grips the imagination of not only a particular segment of its populace, but also the state itself – where the particular logic of nationalism or academia may demand that a research paper should immediately put India at par with either the United Kingdom or the United States or maybe above in its assumed capacities – discounting its many ground realities. As is common to the practices of the uncivil society that may have permeated the state right to its bones – the usage of direct as well as indirect violence – (sustained over a period of nearly four years now) not only becomes the hallmark of a confused state, but also a state that is at the throes of its fast becoming a state like Iran or North Korea or even Burma.
The usage of indirect violence does not better the situation and betrays a certain stubborn stupidity by those sections of the uncivil society, deeply entrenched in the state’s mechanism. Such situations raise the very issue of the state in question and its legitimacy in the world community. A nuclear armed state that freely exhibits the characteristics of the uncivil society – raises serious strategic concerns in terms of international security and peace – both in strategic-military terms as well as that of the socio-political.
By the same author:
The Trojan Horse: Inside Terror, Part –I: The Labyrinths (Illinois: Wordclay Publishers, USA, 2008).