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Contributions from
the Column
Media
Howard W. French: Africa’s troubles and global attention
Mahmood Mamdani: US-caused terrorism
M.C. Behera (Ed.): Rural development misses out
Harald Müller and Niklas Schörnig: Armaments and their limitation
02/2007 |
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How to create Islamist terrorism
Mahmood Mamdani:
Good muslim, bad muslim.
America, the Cold War, and the roots of terror.
Three Leaves Publishing, 2005, 304 p.,
$14.95, ISBN 0-385-51537-5
Mahmood Mamdani was born in Bombay, grew up in Kampala (Uganda), taught for a considerable length of time in Tanzania, and is now a Professor at Columbia University in New York. This varied background is reflected in his book.
The author does not limit himself to the Islamic world in his search for the roots of international terrorism. Rather, he refers to the US military strategy in the last phase of the Cold War and describes, for example, American involvement in the wars in Angola, Mozambique, Nicaragua, El Salvador and Afghanistan (after the Soviet Union invaded that country).
His thesis is that, after the Vietnam War, the USA no longer wanted – or at least was not able – to carry out military interventions itself, and therefore started to wage proxy wars from the 1970s on. In doing so, US administrations relied on terror to undermine revolutionary and nationalistic movements, and even elected governments. In 1976, the US Congress restricted legal opportunities for covert intervention in wars in Africa, Asia and Latin America. The CIA therefore supported rightist guerrilla organisations, funding them through dubious channels, drug trafficking not least among them.
Mamdani says that this strategy culminated in Afghanistan. An “infrastructure of terror” developed here in the 1980s, which was part of an international network and driven by fanatical holy warriors. Strife did not end after the Cold War finished, but rather continues to strike fear into people’s hearts today.
Mamdani explains that the methods employed by the counterrevolutionaries supported by the USA included kidnapping and murder, laying mines in ports and streets, as well as bombing hospitals, schools and power stations.
For example, figures from the US State Department reveal that Renamo (which had US assistance) was responsible for 95 % of the attacks on the civilian population in Mozambique in the 1980s, including the murder of 10,000 civilians. In that country as well as in Angola, the US administration cooperated closely with South Africa, which at the time was internationally ostracised as the country of Apartheid.
Mamdani recalls incidents which make it seem strange, for example, that the American government currently includes the Lebanese Hezbollah on its list of terrorist organisations. With few exceptions, the Shiite Islamists have attacked only military targets over the last 15 years. In the summer 2006 war, they only launched rocket attacks on Israeli cities after the Israeli air force had already started to destroy Lebanon’s infrastructure.
Mamdani does not go into detail on anything new. He does, however, place into a political context conflicts which are geographically distant. This is the strength of the book. He rejects culturalistic explanations for the current terrorism along the lines of “Islam is a religion of violence”.
One question remains unanswered: Why do people in Central America, the Caribbean and Southern Africa not feel the same need for revenge as the Islamic world apparently does? After all, the USA caused similar suffering there. It would take a comparative study of the respective conflicts to answer that question; and Mamdani has not done that research.
Albrecht Metzger
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