What would you Discusss with a Terrorist if you were in the same room?

Novel demystifies war on terror

Posted by: The People in Entertainment June 1, 2014

Prof Richard Jackson says public and academic knowledge of terrorism is limited and frequently based on ignorance and misinformation, roots for dialogue and negotiations to win fight

By Atunga Atuti O.J.

After reading and reviewing Prof Richard Jackson’s new novel, Confessions of a Terrorist, Executive Director, East African School of Human Rights and Editor, East African Journal of Human Rights ..Atunga Atuti OJ had a candid interview with the author.
Q: As a seasoned academic with many scholarly works to your name, what motivated you to venture into work of fiction on the subject of terrorism?
A: It was a very conscious and deliberate decision to write a novel about terrorism at a particular point in my career. I had never considered it before. A number of factors motivated me. After publishing eight academic books and dozens of articles, I realised that only a very small audience ever read my work and it had very little impact on people lives. Academic publications rarely if ever make a significant impact on wider public debates and political culture. I wanted to get my research out into the wider world and I had to find another medium through which to communicate.
I also noted that there were few novels about terrorism that I could recommend to my students as a way of engaging and informing them about the subject. I came to believe that writing a novel might be a more effective way of both reaching a wider audience and engaging my students through a more exciting and engaging medium. Lastly, I felt that fiction allows for greater freedom in expressing certain ideas and perspectives. The academic form, on the other hand, is often very constricted by the rules and strictures of ‘scientific’ writing.
Q: Was it difficult to discuss the issues raised in the conversation between Professor and Michael in a full length research text-book? What value addition does the genre of a work of fiction (a novel) bring to our understanding of the subject of terrorism?
A: Many of the issues raised in the novel have long been discussed in academic texts, often at great length. The problem is not that such literature doesn’t exist, but rather than it is rarely heard, and if it is heard, it doesn’t always stick to the readers minds. As a consequence, public and academic knowledge of terrorism is limited and frequently based on ignorance and misinformation. The value-added of a novel therefore, is that its form is deliberately affective, emotional and invitational: it asks the reader to identify with the characters and to imagine themselves in similar situations.
It uses drama, tension and emotion to pull the reader into another world where alternative realities can be imagined and experienced. This way, new issues, perspectives and arguments can have a more forceful impact and potentially generate new thinking and perspectives. In this case, a novel in which a terrorist is the central character can function to break down stereotypes and counteract misunderstandings and misconceptions about their motives and mind-set.
Q. Africa is dealing with the issue of radicalisation. This is a subject that your novel addresses. What would be your advice to the government and others, faced with the challenge?
A: The biggest problem we are currently facing in relation to terrorism is that we don’t understand (and often don’t want to understand) the reasons why some people and groups feel the need to violently oppose governments and their policies. And because we don’t understand them, we invent reasons and labels for explaining their actions, such as ‘radicalisation’, religious extremism, fundamentalism and so on. In most cases, these explanations are inadequate and misleading. My advice to any government facing violent insurgency is to first have an honest discussion with both the violent actors and their supporters and the groups they come from, as well as academic experts and local people.
Simply ask them why they are prepared to kill and be killed in this struggle? Ask them what they really want and what it would take for them to stop these violent actions? Once a deep, honest discussion has occurred and an in-depth investigation has been undertaken, it will become clear what the political grievances are and what reforms and changes need to occur for the conflict to end. Dialogue and negotiation is the best way to reduce violent attacks and end campaigns of terrorism in the long-term.
Responding with counterterrorist violence has little-to-no effect on the number of terrorist attacks, in the absence of other measures to address the underlying issues. In fact, in many cases, it can actually escalate the violence further. I think we’ve seen this dynamic at work in the East African region: use of force by the Kenyan government has been met by even greater force from the terrorist groups. It’s a cycle of violence and retaliation that can only be broken and resolved through dialogue.
Q: What is your view of images and narratives of terrorists as ‘martyrs and freedom fighter’ vis-a-vis that of terrorists as ‘irrational evil doers’?
A: In any conflict involving violent resistance, there will always also be a war of words and labels. The government will always call its opponents ‘terrorists’ as a way of trying to delegitimise them and demonise them among the public, as the governments of Ukraine, Syria, Israel and others are currently doing. At the same time, the insurgents and their supporters will refer to themselves as ‘freedom fighters’ and ‘martyrs’. None of these labels are particularly useful; they are not objective descriptors and they don’t help us to better understand the conflict or what motivates the fighting.
In an ideal world, we would find more neutral terms that don’t have such powerful connotations and culturally-laden meanings. More importantly, however, this kind of labelling and its consequences does nothing to reduce or end terrorism; it simply reinforces the current cycle of violence, and in many cases, creates new sources of grievance for the terrorists. The torture in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay, for example, motivated a great many new terrorists.
Q. Your books delve into the subjects of responses to terrorist threats and the increasing use of the military as a counter-terrorism strategy, what is your advice to governments which seek to respond to such threats with a sledge hammer?
A: My advice is simple: don’t to respond to acts of terrorism in this way, for a number of reasons. First, governments should always try and adopt policies based on a solid evidential foundation. The fact is that at present there is no solid evidence that employing massive counter-violence against terrorists actually works to reduce or end terrorism. It certainly hasn’t worked in the war on terrorism launched after 9/11. The current state of evidence actually points in the other direction: dialogue and negotiation have a much higher chance of reducing and even ending the violence.
Second, the risks of using a violent sledge hammer outweigh the potential benefits, because counter-violence risks creating new grievances, especially when innocent people fall victim. In effect, it risks escalating the conflict. It also risks undermining the legitimacy of the government and creating sympathy for the insurgents, especially if human rights are abused. There are three key principles which should guide counterterrorism policy: proportionality, legitimacy and effectiveness. That is, governments should respond in a manner which is proportional to the threat; don’t go overboard and enact disproportionate measures which inconvenience and oppress large numbers of people.
Maintain high moral standards and human rights protections; never resort to the same methods and approaches of the terrorists, but make upholding human rights the central value of the counterterrorism efforts. Finally, only enact measures that have been proven to work, or which have some basis in evidence; don’t waste resources on measures which are largely pointless or symbolic. At this moment in the global war on terror, adhering to these three principles would go a long way towards making the world a more peaceful, just and terror-free place.