On Monday 7th September 2009, three young British Asians were convicted of plotting to blow up airliners in a suicide bombing campaign. The liquid bombers conviction is seen as a vindication of UK security efforts.
It is easy to applaud the locking up of men who plotted to kill hundreds of innocent civilians. It is not so easy to answer the question as to what breeds a suicide bomber? In the case of these men, it seems it was a belief that their Asian homelands had been occupied unlawfully by a military campaign, led by the US and UK, that had itself killed hundreds of thousands of innocent people. In theirs and in many other minds, the justification of military invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan was based on lies and those responsible for ordering the deaths of innocents are still free and beyond accountability.
There is a war going on – not a war on terror anymore, but a guerilla war of insurgency versus military occupation. We hear the phrase ‘radicalised’ as a catch-all term for a brainwashing process where vulnerable young men and women are manipulated into fighting or giving up their lives for the higher cause of liberty and freedom for their people and homeland. Have our own troops been ‘radicalised’ then? The justification is the same if the methods of engagement are not. But as the commanders of troops on the ground in Afghanistan are only now realising, prolonged military engagement is fuelling the radicalisation of young people and the end of conflict can only come through a process of winning people over – working with people not fighting against them.
The shock to the civilised world when the airliners hit the Twin Towers in 2001 was like nothing our post-World War II generation had ever felt. And anyone who witnessed the terrifying images of the bombing of Baghdad must have felt a numbing certainty that human civilisation is not as civilised as it tries to make out.
The subsequent ‘export of western democracy’ as pursued by George W. Bush and his supporters has caused the world to enter a state of unparalelled fear. There can be no justification for the tragedy of 9/11 and if Bin Laden’s al-Qaeda decided that a Jihad on the west required the suicide of martyrs and the death of innocent thousands to make some insane gesture, then the world cannot tolerate such violent insanity. But the question remains, what breeds a suicide bomber? If the answer includes feelings of fear, hatred, resentment, suffering, brutality, anger, frustration, loss, victimisation, hopelessness, self-preservation, protectionism, beligerance … then there is no ‘quick fix’ that any pummelling by bombs can bring. These senses will smoulder and rage on unless the root causes are dealt with.
We now live in an age where resource wars for water, fuel, land and food will cause ever increasing conflict. Land grabs by those with money from those without will only serve to cause greater conflict and resentment amongst the peoples of the world. If the security forces of the US and UK want to truly vindicate themselves, then an approach is needed to equitable management of global resources and a respect for indigenous culture that removes any ‘us and them’ perception and recognises the wonder of diversity in human society. We cannot command an homogenized democracy be applied across the globe when our own democratic societies are creaking at the seams with internal inequalities, a morally-bereft and blind pursuit of economic growth at the expense of others and, perhaps, a misguided sense of self-importance.
If suicide bombers are an aberration of human civilisation we must ask our leaders to remove the aberrant causes that breed them and not be smug in having put three of them behind bars. We might just bring ourselves some genuine peace in the process.
