Terrorism and Human Rights (40): Targeted Killings, Pros and Cons

Drone view of Afghan funeral

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The use of so-called drone airplanes to target and kill suspected terrorists is in the news again. Some in the U.S. have voiced what in my view are justified yet somewhat myopic concerns about the supposed authority of the U.S. President to target American citizens on foreign or domestic soil. This is one of many cases in which the value of due process clashes with the need to respond to imminent threats. As usual, the executive has a tendency to focus on the latter.

The concerns that have been voiced recently are myopic in the sense that most drone attacks take place abroad and most victims are foreigners. Let’s therefore limit our discussion to the justifiability of targeting foreigners abroad. (These drone attacks, by the way, are just one form of targeted killing – the British SAS and the Israeli Mossad use or have used human operators to stalk and shoot terrorists at home or abroad).

So, we’re talking about governments carrying out the killings, and the targets are suspected foreign terrorists, insurgents or combatants hiding on foreign soil. Governments try to justify such killings by arguing that they and the targets are engaged in armed conflict: a war if not necessarily a declared one. If indeed we are dealing with a war then the targets do not even have to pose an imminent threat when they are killed. A history of violence and a risk of future violence are sufficient reasons to target and kill them. In a war, it’s deemed acceptable to kill unthreatening and even unarmed enemy forces, as long as these forces are hostile and potentially dangerous elements in an ongoing conflict. Targeted killing is therefore seen as equivalent to the normal and traditionally unlimited wartime right to kill enemy soldiers.

That is also why the possibility of apprehension is not considered a sufficient reason to abstain from targeted killing, although in practice most killings are of people who are difficult to apprehend.

So that’s the governmental story about targeted killing. How should we assess this story? There are some good sides to it, and some bad:

Pros

• If indeed we’re dealing with a war, then concerns about extra-judicial killings, about the absence of imminent threats and the failure to apprehend when possible do not seem justified. That’s a bog “if” of course. One has the feeling that the “war on terror” has been called a war not because it is one but because it yields the right to kill. And one can even question the traditional right to unlimited killing of soldiers during wartime, as Jeff McMahan has done.
• Drone attacks evidently minimize the risks of casualties on the attacker’s side, even possibly down to zero. Drones may also provide cover for soldiers in the field during regular operations.
• Although these things are difficult to measure given the secrecy of the whole affair, it does seem obvious that drone attacks, when compared to standard military attacks, should in principle involve fewer civilian casualties. (An attempt to measure this is presented here. A less rosy view on the matter is here and here).
• Drone attacks may produce leadership vacuums and lead to disorganization in the terrorist organization. Organizational decapitation may hurt terrorist groups more than regular attacks.

Cons

• Drone attacks – especially if they become widespread – mean that the attacking side no longer has skin in the game. As a result, these attacks may remove an important restraint on war. Wars or military adventures may become more common as they become less costly in human terms on the attacker’s side.
• Positing the equivalence with normal wartime killing implies that the drone operators, who are commonly situated far from the battlefield and close to residential areas in the home country, are legitimate targets for retaliation. Ironically, drone attacks may therefore encourage terrorist attacks.
• As already stated, a lot hinges on the use of words. Killing people who aren’t an immediate military threat may be tantamount to extra-judicial execution. And merely labeling those people “combatants” and the operation a “war” isn’t enough to acquire the right to normal wartime killing. It may often be more precise to label terrorist attacks as normal crimes rather than acts of “war”, in which case normal judicial proceedings are more appropriate, which means apprehension and trial, and killing only when apprehension is impossible and a threat is imminent.
• The choice to kill when apprehension is possible means forgoing the possibility to put the target on trial and demonstrate to the world how a civilized country deals with threats. It gives the opposite message that violence is the appropriate form of defense and retaliation.
• Intelligence that could be gathered by capturing and questioning the targets is lost when they are killed.
• The lack of transparency opens the door to abuse, as does the view that an imminent threat is not required.
• Drone attacks often violate the sovereignty of other countries, setting a dangerous precedent.
• Targeted killing may be fatal to the democratic peace theory (see here for more details).

Some of these points carry more weight than others, and some perhaps none at all. Other points could be added. It’s up to the reader to make up his or her own mind, but my view is the following: compared to the general unpleasantness of war, targeted killing isn’t particularly shocking and can even be seen as a step forward. That is, as long as it is really limited to an actual, uncontested war involving real combatants who pose an imminent threat, and a threat that can’t be averted by apprehension and trial.

What is perhaps more shocking than the attacks themselves is the fact that the whole “war” rhetoric has become so vague that anything can be called a war. Is there a crime with which we’re not “at war”? When ordinary criminals – and I consider most terrorists to be ordinary criminals, ordinary except for their particular motivation – can be targeted like enemy soldiers, what is left of criminal justice? Extra-judicial execution then becomes the only form of crime prevention.

More on targeted killing here.

The War on Terror is 11 Years Old Today, With No End in Sight

(source unknown)

The War on Terror, started by the U.S. government as a response to the September 11, 2001 terror attacks and later joined by other governments, is 11 years old today, with no end in sight. It has had and continues to have grave consequences for the human rights of people worldwide. Osama is dead, and the war in Iraq is over, and yet people are still stuck in Guantanamo, drone strikes are more numerous than ever before and the internal security forces of Western states are increasingly powerful. It’s a high price for an uncertain gain.

However, before I discuss the consequences for human rights, I would like to make it clear that I believe, as any rational human being, that terrorism is evil, that it has to be stopped and that democracies have a right to defend themselves against violent, anti-democratic fanatics (see this post for example).

I also believe that democratic governments should be especially vigilant because the freedoms that they are elected to protect, offer opportunities for those who hate freedom, opportunities that do not exist in other political systems. Potential terrorists find it relatively easy to enter a democracy and operate in it. A democracy is a very vulnerable form of government because of the freedom it gives to everyone, even those who don’t mean well.

The freedoms of a democracy can be and are abused, but this, it seems, has frightened democratic governments to such an extent that they have decided to limit these freedoms up to the point that they are in danger of abandoning them altogether, and hence doing the work of the terrorists for them. It can be acceptable to limit certain rights for the protection of other rights (see also this post), but the right to security seems to have taken on an absolute priority, at the expense of many other rights. There is no reasonable balance anymore.

1. Civil liberties

Governments try to defend their countries against terrorist attacks by limiting civil liberties in their territories.

• The right to privacy has been limited: CCTV has become ubiquitous, DNA databases have been created, eavesdropping and wiretapping have been legalized etc.
• “No-fly-lists” have come into force, limiting the freedom of movement of even those who have written critically of the government or attended peace-protests.
• Hate speech laws have been voted to silence jihadist hate preachers, silencing others at the same time.
• “Racial profiling” by the police has turned innocent people into possible suspects, often inverting the burden of proof.
• Habeas corpus has been limited, periods of detention without charge extended, sometimes indefinitely (for “enemy combatants”).

However, in spite of all this, the constraints on a government’s actions within its territory are sometimes still considered to be inhibiting:

• “Extraordinary rendition” has been covertly practiced, allowing suspects to be tortured outside of the territory by professional torturers in other countries.
• Extra-territorial prisons have been created, in Guantanamo, but probably elsewhere as well, where suspects can be tortured or held indefinitely and where the Geneva Conventions supposedly don’t apply.

2. Mentalities

The war on terror has also changed people’s minds and attitudes.

• The media have started to censor themselves. Solidarity with the government at war and the commander-in-chief, or the fear of being perceived as unpatriotic, appeasers, “useful idiots” or even open allies of the enemy have turned many in the media into uncritical supporters of the war.
• Citizens have turned on Islam and Muslims. Xenophobia and more specifically islamophobia have undermined the ideals of tolerance and multiculturalism, and have in certain cases even led to hate crimes against Muslims.
• A ”culture of fear” has been created by the terrorist but also nurtured by irresponsible western politicians. This fear has damaged democracy. Not only have the media relinquished their traditional role as watchdogs. Politicians as well, and especially incumbents, have abused the fear of terrorism to harness support. Alert levels seem to go up just before elections.

3. Preemptive war

The US government has elaborated and implemented the strategy of preemptive war, a war

waged in an attempt to repel or defeat a perceived inevitable offensive or invasion, or to gain a strategic advantage in an impending (allegedly unavoidable) war. (source)

The Iraq war was deemed a preemptive war because Iraq was allegedly about to attack the US with weapons of mass destruction, or supply these weapons to terrorists. Whatever the merits of the case against Iraq – and with the passing of time these seem to become weaker and weaker – the war has been framed, correctly or not, as a necessary stage in the ongoing war on terror. It has, however, resulted in massive numbers of casualties on both sides. The human rights violations caused by the war stand in no relation to the violations caused by terrorism or the violations that could have been caused by Saddam.

In any case, you can’t solve the problem of terrorism by violent means only. Terrorism has causes, and there will be terrorism as long as these causes exist. (Mind you, I don’t want to excuse or justify terrorism).

4. Counter-productive

It is now widely believed, even in US government circles, that the war on terror is counter-productive. Especially the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the torture in Abu Ghraib and the detentions in Guantanamo have produced a backlash and have increased rather than reduced the terror threat. The 2007 National Intelligence Estimate issued the following among its “key judgments”:

The Iraq conflict has become the “cause celebre” for jihadists, breeding a deep resentment of US involvement in the Muslim world and cultivating supporters for the global jihadist movement. (source)

The war on terror has created and exacerbated resentment, hatred of the West and anti-americanism. And with anti-americanism often comes hatred of democracy and freedom, as wellas Islamic radicalization. Apart from the removal of the Taliban in Afghanistan, there is no evidence that any of the strategies in the war on terror has done any good (source). Any even this tiny success seems to be far from certain.

5. Misnomer

There is something fishy about the concept of a “war on terrorism”. This “war” is in fact no such thing. There is no well-defined enemy. Anyone can at any time become an enemy. For this reason, there is no conceivable end to the war. And if you claim to wage a war on terrorism, you might as well claim to wage a war on carpet bombing. Both are tactics or strategies, not something you wage war against.

If you insist on calling anti-terrorist actions a war, then you give too much credit to the riffraff you’re opposing. Rather than deranged criminals they can call themselves soldiers. And soldiers defend something. You legitimize them. You turn a crime into a two-sided struggle in which each side defends its positions. This in turn leads to the view that the war on terror is a war of the West against the rest, bringing back images of colonialism, imperialism and the crusades, again legitimizing the terrorists, helping to consolidate their often internally opposed forces, and making them honorable in the eyes of some ordinary citizens.

I can understand that the concept of a “war on terrorism” is useful for some Western governments, because an executive that is at war has more powers, less oversight, more popular support and less criticism, but it’s a meaningless and dangerous concept. Let’s give it up, or let us at least declare victory in the one we’re now fighting for 11 years.

(This post is hoisted from the archives and slightly revised. The original was published on August 6th, 2008 and is unfortunately still relevant today).

Terrorism and Human Rights (39): Targeted Killing and Democratic Peace

Democratic peace theory states that democracies are less likely to engage in war with each other, for a variety of reasons. One of those reasons is the fact that in a democracy, the people vote, and the people are also those who shoulder the cost of war. In a regime in which the people can influence the decision to go to war, such a decision will only be taken very reluctantly. Conversely, a regime that doesn’t need to listen to its people can easily impose the cost of war. (More here, here and here).

What’s the link with targeted killings of terrorists? Let’s limit the discussion to drone attacks in the context of a war. Killing terrorists in any other context amounts to extrajudicial execution, since those terrorists are criminals rather than combatants and therefore have a right to a trial (unless killing them is the only way to stop an imminent attack). In the context of a war, targeted killings carried out by unmanned drone aircraft are supposed to have certain advantages compared to “normal” military engagement with the enemy. Two of those advantages are that

• drone attacks are said to be more precise and hence less likely to result in civilian casualties, and that
• you can avoid putting your own soldiers in harms way.

The supposed precision of drone attacks is contested, since it’s often difficult to judge from thousands of miles away whether the target is real, whether the informants on the ground are reliable and whether there’s no risk to innocent bystanders. There have been reports of civilian casualties resulting from drone attacks, although the true extent of this problem is difficult to measure since there’s no public information on those attacks.

Officers control and watch images taken by Unmanned aerial vehicles (drones)

In some cases, troops on the ground may be better able to judge these things. It’s also not commonly accepted that it’s ethical to focus on troop safety over and above the risk of civilian casualties. This focus is, of course, understandable in the case of a democracy engaging in a war. Public opinion is powerful in a democracy and doesn’t like it when troops are put in harms way – that’s one of the origins of the democratic peace theory. (It’s sometimes called the body bag syndrome). Hence, a democracy may be particularly tempted to use drone attacks and targeted killings, since a more traditional war is difficult to sell to a powerful public opinion.

If indeed a democracy is tempted to use targeted killings, then the price to pay may be the loss of democratic peace. Targeted killings remove one of the most powerful causes of democratic peace: the high cost of war. By making war less costly on the party initiating the war, targeted killings make war more likely.

[T]o me the reason to prefer human to robotic war is a cold and brutal one: because it brings war home to the citizenry in the form of the dead and wounded, and the citizenry may then be less likely to support future wars except out of clear necessity. (source)

More on targeted killings here.

Related Articles

• Drone attack in Pakistan kills at least 12 (guardian.co.uk)
• Gabriella Blum and Philip Heymann on Targeted Killing (volokh.com)
• Drone attacks to continue, says US official (teabreak.pk)

Updated Set of International (Non-Muslim) Danger Signs

More on islamophobia and the war on terror.

Human Rights Ads (64): Osama Hearts Guantanamo

(source, source)

In one sense this is a bit out of date, and yet in another it’s still relevant. The war on terror is a war of terror: terrorists have succeeded in terrorizing large portions of western populations and their governments, and in provoking them to “show their real faces”. The “imperialists” are still waging war in other countries, detaining people without a trial, torturing them etc. And as long as they do so, the terrorists have what they want.

More on Osama bin Laden, Guantanamo, and the war on terror – especially its counterproductive effects. More human rights ads.

Human Rights Maps (129): London Bombings of 7/7/2005

On July 7th 2005, during the morning rush hour, a group of Muslim young men carried out a series of coordinated suicide attacks on 3 of London’s subway lines and on one double-decker bus. At 08:50, three bombs exploded within fifty seconds of each other on three London Underground trains (the three red circles in the map below), a fourth exploding an hour later at 09:47 on a double-decker bus in Tavistock Square (the red and black circle).

(source)

Here’s some more detail about the specific events and the chronology (click image to enlarge):

(source)

The map below gives some detail about the second attack, close to Russell Square:

(source)

The map below shows the last attack on the bus:

(source)

Read the full story here.

Two weeks later, on July 21st 2005, London witnessed four attempted bomb attacks, this time without much damage because the bombs failed to explode. While the manhunt for the perpetrators was in progress, on July 22nd, the police shot and killed a Brazilian man, Jean Charles de Menezes, at Stockwell tube station shortly after 10:00. Officers had pursued de Menezes from a location under surveillance, believing him to be one of the men wanted for the attempted attacks of the previous day. They apparently believed de Menezes was about to carry out a new attack. Afterwards, the police admitted that de Menezes was not involved in any of the bombings or attempted bombings. Read the whole story here and here. Here’s a map depicting the tragic event:

(source, click image to enlarge)

More maps on terrorism here. Other posts on terrorism are here. More human rights maps here.

Iconic Images of Human Rights Violations (61): Osama Bin Laden Gloats Over 9-11

(source)

Osama bin Laden is seen at an undisclosed location in this television image broadcast October 7, 2001. Bin Laden praised God for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and swore America “will never dream of security” until “the infidel’s armies leave the land of Muhammad.”

More on bin Laden, 9-11 and the war on terror. More iconic images of terrorism here, here, here, here, here and here. More iconic images of human rights violations in general.

Terrorism and Human Rights (30): “The U.S. Coming Home!” (Commemorative 9-11 Repost)

(On this 9th anniversary of the 9-11 attacks, here is a repost of a mock OpEd I wrote some years ago. It’s mocking only in its form, not in its intentions. I guess one day it will become prophetic, I’ll just have to repost it often enough. Warning: none of the opinions expressed here should be mistaken for my own).

(source)

“The date is October the 1st, 2011, exactly 20 days after the worst terrorist attack in US history, an attack in which Muslim extremists used nuclear bombs to inflict heavy damage on 3 American cities, embarrassing the security forces who were on high alert on the 10th anniversary of 9-11.

Today, the whole world was listening to President Obama’s first policy speech after the events. The most shocking announcement was undoubtedly the decision to no longer deploy US troops abroad. The President defended this “Coming Home” decision by the failure of 10 years of military actions in Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Somalia, the Middle East, Nigeria and Indonesia to bring about more security for the American people. Evidence has shown that US involvement abroad, even peaceful and objectively beneficial involvement, rather than promoting US security, actually fosters hate, resentment and fanaticism. The objects of American involvement, even if this involvement means billions of dollars of aid, seem to think that it is fundamentally a ploy to “imperialize” them, a crusade to take away their identity, religion and wealth. Independence, national pride and Allah is what counts for them.

It has also become clear that the US was wrong to think in terms of “frontlines” in its war with Muslim terrorists. The strategy to try to attack the enemy in their homelands, the “first frontline”, rather than wait till they get on American soil, has proven to be ineffective militarily, and possibly even counter-effective psychologically: it has provided fuel for anti-crusader and anti-colonialist rhetoric, convincing ever more young Muslim martyrs and extremist Muslim regimes of the anti-Muslim and hence satanic nature of the Christian unbelievers.

Hercules and Hydra

Unlike an enemy army in a classical 20th century war, this enemy cannot be defeated by an overpowering military attack. The strongest military in the world cannot defeat a relatively small group of undoubting and unthinking amateurs ready to die with a makeshift bomb in their hands. With every amateur it kills it only produces more evidence of the presence of Satan on holy soil. Hence, the more it tries to root out the enemy, the more enemies it creates. The President therefore, wisely in our view, decided to shift focus from the attack to the defensive. Bringing our boys back home to defend the American border, effectively turning the army into a super coastguard and border patrol, should not be viewed as giving in to the enemy, a retreat or a Last Stand. That would only be a return to an inadequate and outdated military logic, useless given the kind of enemy we are dealing with.

Together with measures to prevent homegrown terrorism – which, fortunately, has been a limited phenomenon until now – a relentless border control should indeed be able to offer protection. The borders must, of course, include the entrances of airplanes and ships heading for the US. In order to be independent from foreign security services, the President has asked for legislation allowing only US aircraft and ship to enter the US. If economically necessary, the US will acquire a larger fleet. Anyway, unnecessary travel to the US will be discouraged.

(source)

The economic drawbacks of rigorous border controls will be countered by technological innovations funded by army budgets which become available when budgets for overseas operations start to diminish. The President also asked the citizens to prepare for the possibility of a certain number of years of economic depression. Energy supplies may also suffer as a consequence of the US drawback. Traditional allies will be disappointed by their abandonment. The loss of US military assistance will even endanger the existence of some regimes. Those which are also oil suppliers will resent the US and will disrupt the supply. The President is conscious of the economic impact this will have but asks the scientific community to tackle the problem of oil dependence. Existing alternatives, including nuclear energy, will be developed. Repatriated nuclear warheads, if not necessary for domestic security, will be recycled in the energy industry.

Some allies which are important for the US domestically, such as Israel, will not be abandoned without continued support. Military equipment not necessary for border control and security on US soil, will be handed over to them after they loose the protective umbrella of a US presence in their region. Financial assistance will continue to be possible.

Because US troops will no longer be stationed abroad, US expats can become easy targets for terrorists. The President therefore advises them to make plans to return home as soon as possible. The government will establish funds to incite people to come home and to compensate for damages they will incur. US multinationals will be legally forced to employ local people only for their foreign affiliates. The US government will immediately cease to employ its citizens in development projects in Africa and elsewhere. To alleviate the economic shock this will produce in developing countries, the US will double its funds for development aid for a period of 5 years. These funds, however, will be spend entirely by third parties. No US agencies will be active abroad. The US will also withdraw from NATO, the UN, and all other international institutions.

May God be with us, since it’s excessively clear that nobody else will.”

More on terrorism.

Human Rights Maps (96): US Secret Detention Facilities

The current US Administration, like the previous one although somewhat less enthusiastically, believes that the War on Terror necessitates certain restrictions on human rights. The Bush Administration, in order to respond effectively to what it considered to be the existential threat of Islamic terrorism, claimed that it should be able to torture terror suspects and start preemptive wars. The Obama administration continues the Bush policies of

• targeted killings with drone attacks (akin to extrajudicial executions in certain cases, and a risk to the lives of innocent bystanders)
• suspensions of freedom of information rights
• abuse of arrest powers, suspension of habeas corpus rights, detention without trial and even secret detention
• invasions of the privacy of travelers and others (including wiretapping).

It’s not clear what is currently going on with renditions and secret detention. Here’s a map of secret detention facilities operated by the US during the Bush Administration:

Map of US secret detention facilities, based on information provided by a recent UN Human Rights Council report. (c) Amnesty International. Produced by AAAS.

(source)

While the U.S. has generally refused to disclose the locations of these facilities, the specifics have slowly leaked out. There’s evidence confirming CIA “black sites” in 20 locations around the world where “high value detainees” have been “rendered” and probably subjected to “enhanced interrogation techniques“. There’s a map on the “rendition flows” here.

More on the war on terror. More human rights maps.

Related Articles

• UN Report Documents Secret Detention Practices by U.S., Other Countries (seminal.firedoglake.com)
• Exposed: CIA’s ‘game’ to hide terror detainees (msnbc.msn.com)
• New Evidence About Prisoners Held in Secret C.I.A. Prisons in Poland and Romania (littlealexinwonderland.wordpress.com)
• The secret detainee transfer (philly.com)
• AP Exclusive: CIA whisked detainees from Gitmo (seattletimes.nwsource.com)

The Most Absurd Human Rights Violations (46): Bombs in Breast Implants

I really hope this isn’t true:

Female homicide bombers are being fitted with exploding breast implants which are almost impossible to detect, British spies have reportedly discovered.

The shocking new Al Qaeda tactic involves radical doctors inserting the explosives in women’s breasts during plastic surgery – making them “virtually impossible to detect by the usual airport scanning machines.”

It is believed the doctors have been trained at some of Britain’s leading teaching hospitals before returning to their own countries to perform the surgical procedures.

MI5 has also discovered that extremists are inserting the explosives into the buttocks of some male bombers.

“Women suicide bombers recruited by Al Qaeda are known to have had the explosives inserted in their breasts under techniques similar to breast enhancing surgery,” Terrorist expert Joseph Farah claims. (source)

More on suicide bombers. More innovative terrorism (also here). More on the war on terror in general. More absurd human rights violations.

The Causes of Human Rights Violations (16)

We usually distinguish between three different origins of human rights violations:

• The state. States commit rights violations for different reasons. Rulers may believe that such violations are necessary in order to maintain power, undermine or destroy the opposition, and impose some world view or economic organization of society. Or they may think that some types of violations are necessary evils when faced with certain risks. For example, torture or indefinite detention can appear to be a reasonable price to pay in order to reduce the risk of terrorism. States can also violate human rights unintentionally: lawmakers can draft a legal system that unnecessarily encroaches on private freedom (e.g. the “nanny state“). And, finally, a state can violate rights, not – as in the previous cases – by doing something it shouldn’t do, but by failing to do what it should do: a state that doesn’t provide an efficient judiciary or police force will be unable to protect the rights of its citizens and will be an accessory to rights violations.
• Selfishness. In the case of economic human rights – such as the right not to suffer poverty – it’s often greed, lack of compassion or generosity, or the absence of sufficient and adequate aid and intervention that causes rights violations. Selfishness can cause both individuals and states to violate rights. States, for example, can uphold international trade structure or protectionist legal systems that favor the local economy at the expense of relatively poor exporters elsewhere.
• Culture. Some say that certain elements of cultures and religions lead to practices that violate human rights. And then usually we get a mention of Islam, Shari’a, muslim misogyny etc. Here as well, we see that both states and individuals can use culture as a reason to violate rights.

Regarding the last point, there’s an interesting paper here (or here) claiming that it’s not Islam but oil that causes gender discrimination in Muslim countries.

Oil production reduces the number of women in the labor force, which in turn reduces their political influence. As a result, oil-producing states are left with atypically strong patriarchal norms, laws, and political institutions. I support this argument with global data on oil production, female work patterns, and female political representation, and by comparing oil-rich Algeria to oil-poor Morocco and Tunisia. Michael Ross

Oil production and export crowd out other exports, and hence artificially restrict the manufacturing sector. Compared to oil production, manufacturing uses relatively large numbers of low wage workers, which is why manufacturing has always and everywhere been a booster for female labor participation. Female labor participation in turn has always and everywhere promoted female political representation and women’s rights. The paper shows that, in the Middle East, countries without much oil (like Morocco and Tunisia) do relatively well on gender equality, compared to oil-rich countries. The same is true when comparing oil-poor and oil-rich countries outside the Middle East.

If that’s correct, then it’s still cultural and religious practices and beliefs that cause gender discrimination, but these beliefs are themselves caused by or at least promoted by economic fundamentals. Sounds quite Marxian to me (which doesn’t mean it’s wrong!).

Papers looking into the cultural and religion causes of gender discrimination can be found here and here (thanks to the Monkey Cage for the pointer).

More on oil. More on human rights and risk. More on gender discrimination.

Terrorism and Human Rights (26): Is Terrorism Caused by Unemployment?

girl holding bomb, by Bansky

(source, more Banksy here)

I don’t think I need to spell out the ways in which terrorism is a human rights issue (beyond the obvious violations of the human rights of the direct victims of terrorism there are serious human rights implications of the so-called ”war on terror“).

Some time ago, I linked to a paper claiming that poverty and lack of education do not, contrary to common belief, contribute to terrorism. If this claim is correct, then it has major implications for counter-terrorism efforts. There’s another paper here making a similar claim, looking at the correlation between violent insurgencies and levels of unemployment, specifically in Iraq and the Philippines. One often assumes that unemployment and the economic and social alienation resulting from it, are elements causing or facilitating political violence, and that efforts to promote employment can have a beneficial effect on social cohesion and political loyalty. The unemployed are believed to have the mindset (frustration etc.), the time and the opportunity to radicalize and be radicalized, whereas people who are employed have a lot to lose, economically, from political instability. Positively stated,

insurgency is a low-skill occupation so that creating jobs for the marginal unemployed reduces the pool of potential recruits.

However, the authors find

a robust negative correlation between unemployment and attacks against government and allied forces and no significant relationship between unemployment and the rate of insurgent attacks that kill civilians. … The negative correlation of unemployment with violence indicates that aid and development efforts that seek to enhance political stability through short-term job creation programs may well be misguided.

Some of the reasons given in the paper in order to explain this negative correlation are:

• Counter-insurgency forces usually spend money to buy intelligence from the general population. More unemployment means that the available money can buy more intelligence, hence bring levels of violence down.
• Insurgents also need to live. If there’s a lot of unemployment, they need to spend more time on basic survival and hence can spend less time on violence.
• Efforts to enhance security—establishing checkpoints and the like—damage the economy.
• etc.

The paper deals only with two countries, neither of which is perhaps a very typical case. Moreover, cross-border terrorism doesn’t seem to fit well into the analysis. But still, the findings are interesting.

Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics (26): Objects in Statistics May Appear Bigger Than They Are, Ctd.

I’ve mentioned in a previous post how some numbers or stats can make a problem appear much bigger than it really is (the case in the previous post was about the numbers of suicides in a particular company). The error – or fraud, depending on the motivation – lies in the absence of a comparison with a “normal” number (in the previous post, people failed to compare the number of suicides in the company with the total number of suicides in the country, which made them leap to conclusions about “company stress”, “hyper-capitalism”, “worker exploitation” etc.).

The error is, in other words, absence of context and of distance from the “fait divers”. I’ve now come across a similar example, cited by Aleks Jakulin here. As you know, one of the favorite controversies (some would say nontroversies) of the American right wing is the fate of the prisoners at Guantanamo. President Obama has vowed to close the prison, and either release those who cannot be charged or tranfer them to prisons on the mainland. Many conservatives fear that releasing them would endanger America (some even believe that locking them away in supermax prisons on the mainland is a risk not worth taking). Even those who can’t be charged with a crime, they say, may be a threat in the future. I won’t deal with the perverse nature of this kind of reasoning, except to say that it would justify arbitrary and indefinite detention of large groups of “risky” people.

What I want to deal with here is one of the “facts” that conservatives cite in order to substantiate their fears: recidivism by former Guantanamo detainees.

Pentagon officials have not released updated statistics on recidivism, but the unclassified report from April says 74 individuals, or 14 percent of former detainees, have turned to or are suspected of having turned to terrorism activity since their release.

Of the more than 530 detainees released from the prison between 2002 and last spring, 27 were confirmed to have engaged in terrorist activities and 47 were suspected of participating in a terrorist act, according to Pentagon statistics cited in the spring report. (source)

Such and other stats are ostentatiously displayed and repeated by partisan mouthpieces as a means to scare the s*** out of us, and keep possibly innocent people in jail. The problem is that the levels of recidivism cited above, are way below normal levels of recidivism:

[In the] general population, … about 65% of prisoners are expected to be rearrested within 3 years. The numbers seem lower in recent years, about 58%. More at Wikipedia. (source)

Another post on risk is here. There are more posts in this blog series here.

Political Graffiti (80): 9-11, Just Do It

Normally, I don’t post images of political graffiti that entail obnoxious messages, and certainly not ones that utterly disgust me. However, time for an exception I guess, just to show that a talent in graphics doesn’t necessarily go hand in hand with political intellect:

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Here’s a similar one:

More on 9-11, and more on the war on terror. More political graffiti here.

Terrorism and Human Rights (25): A Theory of No Resort

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In just war theory, the concept of “last resort” means that force, violence and other violations of human rights are allowed only after all peaceful and viable alternatives have been seriously tried and exhausted or are clearly not practical, and when force etc. is clearly the only option. In the current “war on terror“, the use or torture is often justified as a last resort, as the only option available, in certain circumstances such as the “ticking bomb“, to avoid an outcome that is worse than the use of the last resort.

There are many possible and convincing arguments against the use of torture, but one which isn’t mentioned a lot is the fact that justifications for torture emanate from a philosophy that sees risk as something to be completely overcome. Torture is justified as an extreme measure to overcome a last remaining and very small risk. That is evident from the ticking bomb case: the case itself is by definition rare, so the risk that it occurs is very small. Even smaller is the risk that we have to resort to the use of torture as a means to avoid the risk of the bomb going off (if, exceptionally, we find ourselves in a ticking bomb situation, other means short of torture may well allow us to avoid the risk).

This philosophy of using extreme measures to avoid or eliminate as much risk as possible is, I think, mistaken. If I’m right, the justification of torture as one of such extreme measures is void. And don’t say I’m fighting windmills here: this philosophy is omnipresent. Look at the swine flu hysteria for example, or the recent and silly airport and air travel security measures after the “Christmas Day Attack” (e.g. forcing passengers to sit down during the last hour of flight). Maybe we need a theory of no resort rather than a theory of last resort. Maybe we should learn to live with the fact that bad things happen and that often we can’t do a thing about them.

More on just war. More on human rights and risk. More on airport security here and here.

Human Rights Maps (74): The War on Terror, Extraordinary Renditions and Secret Detentions

(source, click on the image to enlarge)

Here’s another version:

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Read this map as follows: extraordinary renditions allegedly have been carried out from the countries in dark blue; detainees have allegedly been transported through those in light blue; to the countries in red. The United States and countries with suspected CIA black sites are indicated, appropriately, in black.

More on rendition, arbitrary arrest and habeas corpus. More human rights maps here.

Related Articles

• Uncovered: Britain’s secret rendition programme (independent.co.uk)
• European rights chief: Rendition flights probes are weak because countries fear upsetting US (foxnews.com)

The Most Absurd Human Rights Violations (19): Death by Leaflet

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Tragically, a young Afghan girl was killed in late June by a box of information leaflets falling from a British military plane over Afghanistan’s southern Helmand province… The box failed to break open mid-air as planned and struck the girl, who later died of her injuries… This is believed to be the first time a civilian has been killed by a box of information leaflets… “If her family request compensation, we will obviously give it consideration,” an official said. (source, source)

Leaflets are dropped regularly in an effort to counter Taliban propaganda, to warn civilians of attacks or to inform them on elections or landmines. They are intended to help the local population and to win the “hearts and minds”.

Reminds me of some self-defeating human rights policies. More absurd human rights violations.

The Most Absurd Human Rights Violations (18): Rectal Terrorism

President Sarkozy’s new domestic intelligence directorate (DCRI) learnt of an attack in Saudi Arabia in which the bomber detonated … a device in his rectum.

Al-Qaeda gave video publicity to its new method tested by Abdullah Hassan al-Asiri, a 23-year-old terrorist, who blew himself apart at a meeting in Jeddah in late August with Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, the Saudi anti-terrorism chief. The Prince was slightly injured in the blast, but al-Asiri, who used a mobile telephone to trigger the bomb, was ripped into 70 pieces, the DCRI report said.

Such a blast, though limited in force, could be catastrophic in a pressurized airliner, say experts. Counter-measures would be draconian. As well as taking off shoes and handing in liquids, passengers could be subjected to X-ray screening or be required to hand in all electronic devices because they could be used as detonators, police commanders told Le Figaro newspaper. (source)

More on airport security, privacy in general, the war on terror, the link between the war on terror and the right to privacy, suicide bombings, and terrorist attacks. More absurd human rights violations. More scatological human rights violations.

Iconic Images of Human Rights Violations (33): London Bombings

(source, read the full story here)

This is an image of the remarkable recovery of the woman in the picture:

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More on terrorism. More iconic images of human rights violations here.

Terrorism and Human Rights (24): Extraordinary Rendition, The Story of Abu Omar, Ctd.

[This post is by guest writer Robert Nijssen who also has his own blog].

Abu Omar is an imam from Egyptian origin, who was kidnapped by the CIA from the streets of Milan. For more information on his kidnapping please refer to my original post here. Last week the Italian trial against the involved CIA operatives was concluded and most of the operatives received substantial jail sentences. Please refer here for the whole story, or here for an interesting counter opinion.

Iconic Images of Human Rights Violations (22): Abu Ghraib

Read the full story of the Abu Ghraib scandal here. More on Abu Ghraib here. More on torture in general here. More iconic images of human rights violations.

Terrorism and Human Rights (23): What the War on Terror is Doing to America

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Read here what the war on terror is doing to the U.S., in particular to its citizens’ freedom and rights (not to mention the freedom and rights of citizens of certain other countries).

The Most Absurd Human Rights Violations (8): The War on Terror and the War on Street Photography

tourist taking a photograph at Times Square, picture by Joe Shlabotnik

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Suspicious looking tourists, beware! If you’re casually taking photographs of street scenes, U.K. police may arrest you. After all, you may well be a dangerous terrorist planning your next attack. That’s what happened to Alex Turner (also a blogger):

Photographer Alex Turner has been arrested by Kent police. … [He was] stopped by two men in Chatham High Street, after he took a picture of a fish bar called Mick’s Plaice. ”I saw a badge attached to one of the men’s waistband and saw the logo of Kent Police. The men asked me why I was taking pictures in the High Street. I told them photography was a hobby”.

Because they neither stated their authority nor properly identified themselves, Turner refused to answer their questions. The men summoned uniformed police. Turner took photographs of two officers as they approached him … and arrest followed. He was handcuffed, held in a police van and then questioned by two plain clothes officers. “They spoke about the threat of terrorism. They were keen to seek my agreement with regards to the views they expressed, both about the threat of terrorism and the suspicious nature of people with cameras and especially those who chose not to provide identifying details about themselves when requested to do so”. (source)

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More on the war on terror. More on arbitrary arrest. More posts in this series.

Human Rights Facts (43): Defense Spending in the U.S.

The data on U.S. defense spending (“defense” being of course a euphemism) are here. (I hope the connection to the issue of human rights is obvious and doesn’t need spelling out). The amounts involved are incredible, and yet you can still find national security hawks who believe that it isn’t enough, or who advocate that cutting some of this spending would be extremely dangerous. The Heritage Foundation, for example, has an article out lambasting the Obama administration for some supposed spending cuts. They have this graph for instance:

Obama's plan on defense spending according to the Heritage Foundation

Now, this graph should be used in every textbook on statistics as a classic example of misinformation and manipulation of data. As Benjamin H. Friedman points out:

It’s true that defense spending will probably decline as a percentage of GDP, assuming the economy recovers. But that’s because GDP grows. Ours [GDP] is more than six times bigger than it was in 1950.

The correct way to measure growth or decline in defense spending is to look at the amounts spent on defense in real, inflation adjusted terms. See the solid line in this graph:

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And then it’s clear that the U.S. spends more now than at the height of the Cold War. Friedman again:

By saying that defense spending needs to grow with GDP to be “level”, you are arguing for an annual increase in defense spending without saying so directly. That’s the point, of course. (source)

Defense hawks want military spending to rise together with GDP growth, whatever the international situation, whatever the threats.

As Matthew Yglesias points out:

Since economic growth causes real wages to rise over time, there is some reason for thinking that a military sized appropriately to the strategic environment would need real increases in spending to maintain its level of capabilities. But one way or another, the crucial issue is that the appropriate level of defense spending is determined by the nature of the strategic environment, not by the pace of economic growth. The US economy grew rapidly during the 1990s but the level of military threats facing the country didn’t—thus, a decline in defense expenditures relative to GDP was appropriate.

One interesting trope both in the substance and rhetoric of this argument from Heritage is the idea that 9/11 ought to have touched off a large and sustained increase in defense spending. On the merits, this is a little hard to figure out. It’s difficult to make the case that the 9/11 plot succeeded because the gap in financial expenditures between the U.S. government and Osama bin Laden was not big enough. Would an extra aircraft carrier have helped? A more advanced fighter plane? A larger Marine Corps? Additional nuclear weapons? One of the most realistic ways an organization like al-Qaeda can damage the United States is to provoke us into wasting resources on a far larger scale than they could ever destroy. The mentality Heritage is expressing here is right in line with that path.

More on military spending. And here‘s more on how to lie with statistics.

The Most Absurd Human Rights Violations (6): Mentally Disabled Female “Suicide” Bomber

How to catch a suicide bomber

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CNN reported some time ago that a

female bomber who killed five people just outside the heavily fortified Green Zone … was mentally disabled and her explosives vest was triggered by remote control. … the latest example of insurgents’ using mentally disabled female bombers to launch attacks.

As the girls from Wronging Rights have rightly pointed out: you can’t call this a suicide bombing.

Surely if you’re mentally disabled and somebody attaches a bomb to you and then detonates it by remote control you are not the bomber, but rather one of the victims?

As a result of this “innovative” tactic, Iraqi police

began rounding up beggars, homeless and mentally disabled people from the streets of Baghdad and other cities to prevent insurgents from using them as suicide [sic] bombers. (source)

Thereby massively violating the rights of those poor people. I guess one could call this preventive human rights violations. Or call it “adding insult to injury”. Whatever. Just goes to show that one absurd rights violation tends to produce a chain of even more absurd violations.

More on terrorism here. And here‘s a list of the worst terrorist attacks.

Human Rights Ads (24): We the People

(an Amnesty International ad)

More on the constitutional consequences of the “war on terror” is here.

Terrorism and Human Rights (21): Extraordinary Rendition, The Story of Abu Omar

[This post is by guest writer Robert Nijssen who also has his own blog].

Imagine this, while walking to your local supermarket a minivan pulls up next to you, two men jump out, grab you and throw you in. This minivan turns out to be the start of a journey that ends in a prison where you are tortured for a year. During this year your family and friends have no idea what happened to you and assume the worst.

This may sound like a second rate thriller but unfortunately it is not: it happened to Osama Mustafa Hassan Nassir (better known under the name Abu Omar). Abu Omar, an imam from Egyptian origin, was kidnapped by the CIA from the streets of Milan. Subsequently he was taken to Egypt where he was tortured because of his known longstanding opposition to the Mubarak regime. For the complete story of his kidnapping please refer here or here.

During the investigation into his disappearance it became clear that already prior to his kidnapping Abu Omar had been under suspicion of terrorist activities. The team of the Italian police investigating these activities however, felt that there was insufficient evidence for his arrest and that, as he did not pose any imminent threat, more could be learned by just observing. The sudden removal of him from his regular working place not only made any legal action against him impossible, it also kept the Italian police from completing their investigation.

Although it seems to be commonly accepted these days that in our fight against terrorism we need to adopt a slightly more ‘practical’ attitude versus human rights, I still find it shocking that somebody can be grabbed from the streets of a country like Italy and just disappear for a year. In that light I cannot deny that there is a certain irony in the fact that in the end this blatant violation of human rights did not only do nothing to improve our security situation but by sabotaging a running investigation it might even have deteriorated it.

As a consequence of the Abu Omar disappearance a number of CIA operatives and Italian officials were charged by an Italian prosecutor in a trial that continues to this day. The Italian government, apparently less affected by human right violations occurring in their own back yard, has been trying to delay the process wherever it can. For more information on the trial please refer here and here.

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For more articles of this author please visit his weblog. More on the “war on terror“.

Human Rights and International Law (17): License to Kill? The Morality and Legality of Targeted Killings of Terrorists

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Just a short follow-up from my previous post on the subject of targeted killings:

The Bush administration took the position that killing members of Al Qaeda, a terrorist group that has attacked the United States and stated that its goal is to attack again, is no different than shooting enemy soldiers on the battlefield. The Obama administration, which has continued to fire missiles from Predator drones on suspected Qaeda members in Pakistan, has taken the same view. (source)

Now it seems that the CIA went a step further and developed plans to dispatch small teams overseas to kill senior Qaeda terrorists (Predator strikes can be unreliable and tend to produce ”collateral dammage”). The plans remained vague and were never carried out, and Leon E. Panetta, the new C.I.A. director, canceled the program last month. Apparently, because it was too difficult to organize and probably also because no one has a clue where the terrorists really are.

In 1976, after the disclosure of C.I.A. assassination plots against Patrice Lumumba of the Congo, Fidel Castro in Cuba and other foreign politicians, President Gerald R. Ford issued an executive order banning assassinations. This ban, however, does not apply to the killing of enemies in a war (obviously, because that would make war impossible). Hence the utility of branding the fight against terrorists a “War on terror“. Convincing the world that you are “at war” with the terrorists, turns them into “simple soldiers” who can be killed at will, like all soldiers in a war (except when it comes to the Geneva conventions, they’re soldiers no more…).

My personal views on targeted killing are here. According to me, whether there’s a war going on or not, targeted killings are morally justified only in certain very specific circumstances. When there is an imminent threat and no other means to stop an attack from happening, targeted killings are justified, whether or not we are “officially” at war. That would not only be morally justified, but also a legal act of self-defense under national and international law (see here for instance). The sovereignty of the country where the killing occurs shouldn’t be an obstacle.

Counterterrorism, in civil democratic regimes, must be rooted in the rule of law, morality in armed conflict, and an analysis of policy effectiveness. Targeted killings are indeed legal, under certain conditions. The decision to use targeted killing of terrorists is based on an expansive articulation of the concept of pre-emptive self defense. … According to Article 51 of the U.N. Charter, a nation state can respond to an armed attack. Targeted killing, however, is somewhat different because the state acts before the attack occurs. In addition to self-defense principles, the four critical principles of international law – alternatives, military necessity, proportionality, and collateral damage – are critical to the decision-maker’s analysis. … Implementing [these] four international law principles … requires the commander to ascertain that the “hit” is essential to national security and therefore proportional to the risk the individual presents. Furthermore, the commander must determine that any alternatives, such as capturing and detaining the individual, are not operationally possible. The commander must also seek to minimize the collateral damage – harm to innocent civilians – that is all but inevitable in such attacks. Amos N. Guiora (source)

And of course the threat must be imminent.

What is not acceptable is targeted killing without any imminent threat, or in circumstances which allow for other types of “disablement”. And neither is targeted killing as a kind of popular and photogenic “poetic justice”, because that is justice without due process. And when we have the chance to apply due process, why not show the world that we don’t just destroy criminals, even less suspected criminals or potential criminals? Extrajudicial executions aren’t OK simply because the targets are more blameworthy than opposition figures in Latin-American dictatorships. It’s not because everyone hates Osama bin Laden that we can simply kill him at will.

The Most Absurd Human Rights Violations (2): The Russian “Solution” to Hostage Crises

The Moscow theatre hostage crisis, Justin Sutcliffe, United Kingdom, The Sunday Telegraph/Images Sans Frontières

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Remember the Moscow theatre hostage crisis?

The Moscow theatre hostage crisis, also known as the 2002 Nord-Ost siege, was the seizure of a crowded Moscow theatre on October 23, 2002 by about 40-50 armed Chechen terrorists who claimed allegiance to the separatist movement in Chechnya. They took 850 hostages and demanded the withdrawal of Russian forces from Chechnya and an end to the Second Chechen War.

The assault on the theatre by Russian special forces was said to be triggered by gun shots inside. The soldiers believed the Chechen gunmen were carrying out their threat to start executing hostages. An incapacitating gas of mysterious origins was pumped in, with fatal consequences. The justification for the assault, however, turned out to be incorrect:

All but one of the hostages killed in the raid had died of the effects of the unknown gas rather than from gunshot wounds. … About 700 surviving hostages were poisoned by gas … Several Russian special forces operatives were also poisoned by the gas during the operation.

They did a similar thing during the Beslan school hostage crisis. Seems the Putin way of counter-terrorism means: making things worse than the terrorists could have done.

More on Russia here and here. More on Chechnya here.

Terrorism and Human Rights (20): Targeted Killing of Terrorists

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Are governments, or even private individuals, allowed to kill terrorists when killing them is the only way to prevent a terrorist attack? Intuitively, I would say “yes”, but only if certain conditions are met: the attack must be imminent, and no other solution is possible. In fact, these conditions limit the possibility to cases such as killing a terrorist with explosives clearly visible, and seen – from a distance - to be moving towards a target.

Most cases will be different and will make it possible for the police or bystanders to disable the terrorist in some other way, short of killing him or her, and without putting themselves at risk. I never understood why the British SAS needed a policy to target and kill IRA terrorists when they were not engaged in an imminent terrorist attack and when they could easily be arrested (see here for the story).

Now, one could reply to this with this question: why should we treat terrorists better than soldiers? In a war, soldiers can be killed almost at will. If an army spots enemy soldiers, it can kill them without violating any law of war, even if these enemy soldiers are not engaged in an imminent attack. So why can’t we kill terrorists in the same way? In fact, we should treat soldiers better, since many of them are conscripts who do not target innocent civilians. Terrorists are (normally) volunteers who target innocent civilians. That makes two aggravating circumstances.

In answer to this, we could state that terrorism isn’t a war; it’s a criminal act. Some things are allowed in a war which aren’t allowed in peacetime. And terrorism is horrible and not peaceful at all, but not everything that is horrible or a breach of peace is necessarily a war. If we are allowed to stop the crime of terrorism with targeted killings - even if the crime is not imminent – then why not normal murder as well? For example, we may know that someone is about to commit (a non-terrorist) murder, but the act is not imminent. If you accept the SAS tactic, you also have to accept the preventive killing of normal murderers.

Some go even further, and accept not only targeted killing in cases without an imminent threat, but also killing after the fact. They would accept the killing of Osama bin Laden, even if he wasn’t planning a non-imminent attack. They would justify this killing based on his past actions. (Another example is the targeted killing by Mossad of the people involved in the Munich Olympics killings, made into a movie by Spielberg). I think that’s just as unacceptable as the targeted killing SAS style. It’s punishment without due process.

More on terrorism.

Human Rights and Risk

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Obviously, we all run the risk of having our rights violated. Depending on where you live in the world, this risk may be big or small. For some, the risk always remains a risk, and their rights are always respected. But that’s the exception. Many people live with a more or less permanent fear that their rights will be violated. This fear is based on their previous experiences with rights violations, and/or on what they see happening around them.

I see at least two interesting questions regarding this kind of risk:

• Is, as Nozick argued, the risk or probability of a rights violation a rights violation in itself? Do people have a right not to fear possible rights violations?
• And, to what extent does this risk of rights violations lead to rights violations?

Robert Nozick

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The first question is the hardest one, I think. It seems that the risk of suffering rights violations is there all of the time, although it may be very small for some of us. If there is a right not to live with this risk, then this right would be violated all of the time. What good is a right that is perpetually violated?

However, it would seem that in some circumstances, where the probability that rights are violated is very high, people do indeed suffer. Imagine that you live in a society in which there is a high probability that you are arbitrarily arrested by the police. Even if you are not actually arrested – and your rights are therefore not violated – you are living in fear. It would seem that a right not to live in fear of rights violations does have some use in these high-risk environments.

But if we limit the right not to risk rights violations to situations in which there is a high probability of rights violations, we will have to decide on a threshold: when, at what level of high probability of rights violations, does the right not to risk rights violations become effective? This means introducing arbitrariness.

And another problem: what if you don’t know about the risk? There may be at certain moments a high probability that your rights will be violated, but you don’t have to be aware of this. In that case, you don’t fear the rights violations, and hence there is no harm done to you. It’s difficult to conceive of a right when its violation doesn’t (always) cause harm of some kind, and hence the right not to risk rights violations seems impossible in this case.

The second question is more straightforward. Everyday we see how the risk of rights violations leads to actual rights violations. The perception of risk, and people’s counter-strategies designed to limit the risk of rights violations, makes them violate other rights. The war on terror is a classic example. Ticking bomb torture is another.

The objective of avoiding risk creates risks, namely the risks that our actions designed to avoid risk cause harm. We may have to learn (again) how to live with risk.

Terrorism and Human Rights (19): The War on Terror and the Right to Privacy

war on terror and privacy Ian Waldie Getty Images

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Just a few more thoughts as a follow-up from this post, this one, and this one. During an apparently never-ending war on terror (what could be the end of such a war?), people are quick to believe their “liberal” governments when they tell them that a bit less privacy is a cheap price to pay for more physical security.

However, many of those governments, because they claim to be “liberal” and “democratic”, feel uneasy about this. After all, if rights are tradeable like this, if they depend on the circumstance and should be surrendered when the circumstances become more difficult, what is left of them? They become a luxury for good times, rather than a safeguard in bad times. (Another sign of this is the way in which the war on terror is eating away at other rights as well, e.g. the right not to be tortured; but let’s stick to the right to privacy here).

Because of this unease, governments claim that the right to privacy isn’t really being sacrificed. ”If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to worry about”. It’s only the terrorists whose right to privacy is being limited. But in the meantime

• DNA databases are being established for almost entire populations
• CCTV is omnipresent
• “data mining” is used extensively (after all, how can you determine if someone is a terrorist if you haven’t first violated his or her right to privacy?)
• etc.

I don’t mean to imply that rights such as the right to privacy are absolute or that there can never be a good reason to limit one right for the sake of another. On the contrary. But limiting rights can only be done when there is a “clear and present danger” for other rights or for the rights of others. A vague and everlasting “war on terror” provokes limits on rights when there’s no such danger. Limiting rights becomes the normal MO of governments keen to prevent such a danger from ever occurring. And that’s unacceptable. Obviously, terrorism is a danger, but governments can only limit rights in order to prevent it when the danger is clear and present, and imminent. A general and vague fear of terrorism will not do.

More on the war on terror. More on privacy.

Political Artist (24): Steve Brodner

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More on war here. And more on Iraq in particular here, here, here and here. Here is a meta-story about US troop deployments overseas. And here something on the war on terror.

Political Graffiti (47): Fuck al Qaida

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More on terrorism.

Religion and Human Rights (16): Anti-Abortion Terrorism

"thou shalt not kill" sign, anti-abortion protest

(source; I found the “what part of…” very appropriate given the current events)

I’ll have more to say about the Tiller case soon, but in the meantime:

The attack on Dr. Tiller is widely referred to as “terrorism” in the blogosphere. Agree or not, it is easy to image an ongoing terrorist campaign run by fringe pro-lifers to shut down abortion clinics. … Should something like that come to pass, I wonder how “War on Terror hawks” would react. My admittedly flawed term is meant to reference folks who believe the executive branch possesses broad unchecked powers to combat terrorism, including the designation of American citizens as enemy combatants, the indefinite detention of terror suspects, wiretapping phones without warrants, [and] “enhanced interrogation techniques“. Would these predominantly conservative officials, commentators and writers be comfortable if President Obama declared two or three extremist pro-lifers as “enemy combatants”? Should Pres. Obama have the prerogative to order the waterboarding of these uncharged, untried detainees? Should he be able to listen in on phone conversations originating from evangelical churches where suspected abortion extremists hang out? Conor Friedersdorf (source)

My personal views on abortion are here.

Terrorism and Human Rights (17): Torture and the Ticking Bomb, Slideshow

I’ll be giving a talk about torture at the next ALSP conference in Edinburgh, Scotland, beginning of July. Here are my slides:

View this document on Scribd

You can read the full paper here or here.

Human Rights Cartoon (53): Privacy and Wiretapping

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An old cartoon that has become relevant again. The defunct Bush administration decided that its war on terror not only required torture and two wars, but also large scale wiretapping of American citizens. (I posted a nice cartoon about this here). How exactly and why they (and others) did it can be read here.

More on the importance of privacy here. And some statistics on privacy are here.

Terrorism and Human Rights (15): Does Respect for Human Rights Reduce Terrorism?

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Here is an extremely interesting paper by James Walsh and James Piazza. Quote:

Some hold that restricting human rights is a necessary if unfortunate cost of preventing terrorism. Others conclude that such abuses aggravate political grievances that contribute to terror. We demonstrate that theory and data support the latter position. (source)

They focus on what they call physical integrity rights, or rights which protect people from physical harm. The more a state respects these rights, the less terror attacks it suffers. It will also be less engaged in some way or other in transnational attacks.

These findings are opposed to two similar and widespread beliefs: unstable states can only guarantee security is they are authoritarian (see here), and even well-developed democracies have to limit some human rights in order to fight a terrorist threat (see here). In the former case, the threat comes usually from within; in the latter case from abroad.

States that seek to preserve human rights and political freedoms are limited in their ability to monitor and detain terrorism suspects, are prohibited from making broad police sweeps to catch terrorist perpetrators and their sympathizers, limit coercive interrogation of suspects, and must afford suspected terrorists access to a lawyer and a public trial. Freedom of assembly and of the press allows terrorists and their supporters to publicize their grievances. … The implication is that states that protect human rights are more vulnerable to terrorist attacks. (source)

In fact, the opposite is true. Protecting human rights, and especially security or integrity rights, reduces terrorism, and violating them promotes terrorism. Terrorism is a complex phenomenon, but I think it true to say that grievances and injustices (and many of those are caused by rights violations) are important motives. Democracies and states that respect human rights supposedly give too much freedom to terrorists, allow them to organize, recruit, mobilize and plan, and make it very hard to efficiently combat terrorists (rule of law, free speech, humane treatment and torture prohibitions etc. are all said to hamper counter-terrorism). But authoritarian regimes create injustices on which terrorists feed. They also make it hard to express and redress grievances in non-violent ways,  and use ruthless methods that only make their opponents more radical, fanatic and popular.

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The authors back this up with data. They link the MIPT measure of terrorism (Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism) with the Physical Integrity Index:

More here and here.

Terrorism and Human Rights (14): The War on Terror and Human Rights

Andrew Sullivan

(source, photo by Nubar Alexanian)

We must be vigilant not to let our civil liberties collapse under the understandable desire for action. To surrender to that temptation is part of what these killers want… The task in front of us is to somehow stay civilized while not shrinking from the face of extinguishing – by sheer force if necessary – the forces that would eclipse us. To be ruthless yet humane: not easy but always vital in warfare. Andrew Sullivan, writing just after 9-11.

A good excuse to remind you of this older post of mine, detailing the effects on human right of the war on terror. Torture is perhaps the most obvious human rights violations that resulted from the war on terror, so there’s a post on this here.

More on the war on terror here.

Iconic Images of Human Rights Violations (4): Guantanamo

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More on Guantanamo. Suggest a new image in this series.

Terrorism and Human Rights (13): Counterproductive Anti-Terrorism, The War on Terror, and the War on Islam

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I mentioned here how the war on terrorism, and more specifically its extension to Iraq (based or not on real facts about terrorism), has been counterproductive and has probably produced more (potential) terrorists than it has eliminated. The two ongoing wars in Muslim countries have enraged many Muslims and have turned their attention to the “American Criminal” and away from the criminals within. They have united the Muslim world, and this unity has reduced the ability and willingness of Muslims to criticize the extremists within their community.

These wars have also offered battleground experience to extremists, including experience in group formation and group discipline. They undoubtedly have led to stronger ties between extremists from different countries who otherwise would never have met.

The wars themselves have to some extent been counterproductive, but the way they have been conducted has made things even worse. Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib will be rallying calls for generations of terrorists.

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The anti-Americanism of many Muslims has been encouraged by the wars on terrorism, but also by the anti-islamism or islamophobia that seems to be increasingly widespread in the West (see here and here). In fact, and despite the recent assurances of President Obama, the war on terrorism is often merged with or morphed into a war on Islam; not a military war per se, but an ideological war.

The specter of “EUrabia” (based on the EU’s supposedly lax immigration policy combined with the high fertility rates among immigrants), of Western Shari’a, of the incompatibility of Western and Muslim morals and ethics (see here), of sleeper cells etc. all seem to produce a widespread rejection of a caricature version of Islam. Islam is reduced to an objectionable monolith on the basis of extremely rare but photogenic outliers.

No wonder many in the Muslim world feel rejected and turn inwards. And inwards often means towards a more pure and therefore more radical form of identity. They in turn make a caricature of western culture and reject it as a whole because of some aspects of it that they deem objectionable. Another way in which anti-terrorism shoots itself in the foot.

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Another point: the fear of militant and political Islam convinces western governments to back some brutal Middle East dictatorships. These are believed to be a lesser evil compared to islamists taking over political power and using it to support terrorists. However, a brutal dictatorship may well be an important cause of terrorism. An interesting parallel with the time of communism, by the way:

David Gardner asks a provocative question in this weekend’s Financial Times: Is the West’s fear of political Islam condemning the Middle East to a generation of poor leadership? Political Islam is the new communism, he argues; the United States fears it so much that it prefers despots to even the most moderate Islamists. The Middle East, by implication, might be going through the same bout of poor leadership that afflicted Latin America and Africa as the Cold War contest played out in their regions. Elizabeth Dickinson (source)

Terrorism and Human Rights (12): War ON Terror, Or War FOR Terror?

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It is now widely believed, even in US government circles, that the war on terror is counter-productive. Especially the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the torture in Abu Ghraib and the detentions in Guantanamo have produced a backlash and have increased rather than reduced the terror threat. The 2007 National Intelligence Estimate issued the following among its “key judgments”:

The Iraq conflict has become the “cause celebre” for jihadists, breeding a deep resentment of US involvement in the Muslim world and cultivating supporters for the global jihadist movement. (source)

The war on terror has created and exacerbated resentment, hatred of the West and anti-americanism. And with anti-americanism often comes hatred of democracy and freedom and Islamic radicalization.

Read more on the war on terror here.

Human Rights Ads (9b): The War on Terror

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A detailed post about the war on terror and its implications for human rights is here.

Political Graffiti (35): Troops Out Now!

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More on war here. And more on Iraq in particular here, here, here and here. Here is a meta-story about US troop deployments overseas. And here something on the war on terror.

Self-Defeating Human Rights Policies (1)

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Things don’t always work out the way we want them to. Almost any significant action has unintended consequences, and in some cases these consequences can turn out to be the exact opposite of what we intended. The road to hell is paved with good intentions, not in the sense that we only start to think about doing good when we’re already on the way to hell, but in the sense that our good intentions result not in more good, but in more harm.

This is the classic distinction in moral theory between consequentialists and deontologists. For the former, an action is morally good if and only if it produces good results, whatever the intentions. For the latter, an action is good or bad depending on the nature or character of the action. A deontologist might argue that lying is always wrong, regardless of any good that might come from it. Immanuel Kant is perhaps the best-known deontologist.

Immanuel Kant

Communism comes to mind as an example of good intentions gone wrong. But human rights activism is no stranger to this either. Some of the best intentioned human rights activism does in fact result in harm being done. A few examples:

• Some western governments have introduced hate crime laws and hate speech laws. They wanted these laws to target Islamist extremists preaching hate in mosques and mobilizing and recruiting terrorists. It turns out, in fact, that these very laws are now used by Islamist extremists to target critics of Islam.
• In a previous post, I mentioned the negative effect of international development aid on democracy.
• If you agree that the U.S. “war on terror” is (or was) at least in part about “protecting our values” and “protecting a free society” then it seems somewhat tragic that this war has led a free society to engage in torture, rendition, arbitrary arrest etc.
• A hasty imposition of democracy (“dropping democracy from a plane“) can lead to ethnic unrest and even civil war. Elections become exercises in ethnic census, and when one group loses, the other rebels.
• In the case of Sudan and Darfur, we saw that the indictment of President Omar Hassan al-Bashir by the International Criminal Court led to the expulsion of aid workers from Sudan, aggravating the plight of his victims. And, of course, making the indictment all the more justified.
• One can also question the need for the bombing campaign against Serbia following the atrocities in Kosovo.

So, I would say it never harms to think first before you act, although no amount of thinking can prevent all unintended consequences.

Terrorism and Human Rights (10): The Little Door to Hell, Torture and the Ticking Bomb Argument

waterboarding torture

I have an article here offering a more profound rebuke of the so-called ticking bomb argument in favor of torture than the one I gave here some time ago. Here’s the introduction:

The most astonishing and shocking by-product of 9-11 is undoubtedly the renewed legitimacy, in the eyes of many, of some forms of torture. Since many centuries, the most brutal dictators have felt the need to lie and deceive about their torture practices, and now we have political and intellectual leaders of the free world openly arguing in favor of the use of torture in certain cases. The most commonly cited of these cases is the one described in the so-called “ticking bomb argument” (hence-forth TBA).

The kind of torture that is supposedly justified by this argument can be characterized as benevolent torture, well-intentioned torture, or even moral torture because it is different from torture as it is commonly used by certain oppressive or authoritarian governments. “Ticking bomb torture” is not a method of terrorizing and subjugating a population, and neither is it a substitute for normal means of establishing innocence or guilt and of punishing criminals. On the contrary, its declared purpose is to protect the population and to avoid a terrorist attack on civilian targets. It is benevolent torture because its objective is not fear or punishment, but safety and security. It is moral torture because reluctance to engage in it would endanger the lives of innocent civilians, and would therefore be immoral. “A society that elects to favor the interests of wrongdoers over those of the innocent, when a choice must be made between the two, is in need of serious ethical rewiring” (source).

Proponents of the TBA readily agree that they discuss an exceptional case which is unrepresentative of torture in general – most real cases of torture have absolutely nothing to do with the example given in the TBA – and which in no way justifies torture that has other, and less benevolent purposes. Yet they believe that this exceptional nature of the case does not render it insignificant or irrelevant. In the setting of a “war on terrorism”, it can be extremely important to agree on the soundness of the TBA because no matter how exceptional the case may be, when it occurs it has important consequences. A clear agreement on the TBA is necessary in order to save many lives.

I will argue in this paper that the TBA is fundamentally flawed because it is based on a number of untenable assumptions, and that it therefore does not justify torture. Moreover, I argue that the TBA, when thought through until its logical conclusions, ends up condoning torture of a much less exceptional and benevolent nature than the torture it started with. In other words, the TBA proves too much. It would not simply put us on a “slippery slope” towards ever increasing levels of torture; it would also destroy our democracy and freedom. It is, in the words of the title of this paper, the little door to hell. The TBA forces, reluctantly and disgusted, a small opening into an area of human activity that is shielded by a very strong moral and legal taboo, and then finds that it has allowed this activity to take over civilization.

Read the rest here:

View this document on Scribd

Here’s the pdf-version.

War Journalism

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[This post is by guest-writer Line Løvåsen].

Living in an “information age”, journalism and media have become major resources. The information revolution was due partly to media activity. Also known as the fourth state power, media in many ways steer the informational component of the world. The media can either strengthen democracy, but in the case of war journalism we see that they can also undermine democracy. And this is no denial of the courage, professionalism and objectivity of many individual war journalists.

War journalism can undermine democracy and can even perpetuate war because it can act as a justification of violence. The way conflict and violence are presented and justified in the media – justified explicitly, but more often implicitly through fear-mongering, double speak, euphemisms and taking sides - can have an effect on a war, on a violent situation and its outcome.

War journalism therefore often favors the agenda of the ruling elites. But acts of war and violence carried out by governments also favor the media, because violence sells. There is a double-sided influence and dependence between journalism on the one hand, and politics and war on the other.

Johan Galtung

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Johan Galtung, the founder of peace studies, discusses the following points regarding war journalism:

• A focus on violence as its own cause-thus decontextualizing violence, not looking at the reasons
• Dualism, always reduces to two parts, and hereof winners-losers, which ignores the possibility of non-violent outcomes
• Manicheanism; the two parts consist of the contradictions good-evil
• Armageddon, violence is inevitable
• Focus on the individual, avoiding structural causes
• Focus on the battlefield and visible effects, not on underlying forces
• Excluding and omitting the bereaved, thus never explaining why there are actions of revenge and spirals of violence
• Failure to explore the causes of escalation and the impact of media coverage itself
• Failure to explore the goals of outside interventionists
• Failure to explore peace proposals, and offer images of peaceful outcomes
• Confusing cease-fires and negotiations with actual peace, peace is defined as victory plus ceasefire
• Omitting reconciliation; and conflicts tend to re-emerge if wounds are not healed (Galtung 1992).

Consider the war on terror. The underlying causes of terror have not been given attention. After 9/11, U.S. president George W. Bush ignored the causes (the reasons stated by Al Qaida, such as disrespect, the Palestionan issue etc.), and claimed that the attack on the U.S. was because Al Qaida hates the western values of peace, freedom and democracy; one international crime became a global war. This had a massive psychological impact, and politicians use this fear and its representation in the media to gain advantage in elections and justification for a range of policies. The masses can be convinced that they are not sufficiently safe in peace or war, and thus are dependent of the guidance and protection of the leaders.

Responses to so-called terrorism may threaten nations more than actual acts of terror committed. Rather than the “terrorists”, it is politicians, through their counter-actions, who define the severity and the impact that acts of terror have on a country. War, as part of the national psyche, is responsible for a higher scale of damage than terror. Moreover, it sows mistrust and reduces the ability of people to come together or unite in order to bring about change.

Clausewitz

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War is prolonged political business, in the words of Clausewitz. And information is the currency of the current age. Tactics for justification and consciousness formation are widely used in this special market place. The influence of power structures on the masses in the Western society has been widely portrayed, in everything from science fiction (The Matrix etc.) to literature. In his book “1984″, George Orwell described how politicians apply a mutation of the English language (called “Newspeak”) in order to shape and mold our consciousness and acceptance, allowing them to justify violence and oppression.

George Orwell

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For example, in Newspeak, words such as torture are referred to as “deep interrogation”. Mercenaries as “security people”. In addition to the misuse of words, you have the double language and manipulation of the mind as tools to force people to accept contradictions. An example of double thinking is the use of projection; where you project your own subconscious unacceptable, malicious desires on to others. Projection helps justify unacceptable behavior, distancing ourselves from our own dysfunction. One example is how “we” have weapons for purely defensive purposes, while “they” have expansionist motives and offensive weapons.

Orwell notes that, instead of exercising the purpose of their profession (that is “the publishing of unbiased information” and hence constraining the ruling elite by informing the public), the media accept the influence of the ruling elite and have in fact joined their ranks, assist them and live in almost . One example of media manipulation and propaganda is the media empire of Rupert Murdoch and his support to different politicians he favors, for example in England. After being supportive of Thatcher and Major, Murdoch switched his support to the Labour Party, and his secret meetings with Tony Blair came to be a political issue in Britain.

Murdoch owns the “News Corporation”, based in New York. Aside from newspapers, magazines and television stations, he also has become a leading investor in satellite television, the film industry, and the Internet. His corporate owned TV-station Fox News has a strong conservative bias, and both Fox News and all of Murdoch’s 175 newspapers favored the Iraqi war.

How the media present, justify or even shape conflicts is one problem. The next is when conflicts are not presented at all. Why are some event shighlighted while others are not? What kind of criteria causes one news item to supersede another? Occidental deep culture is reflected and reinforced by the media in the concepts of hero, victory-defeat and linear time. Nothing attracts more attention than direct, uncensored violence. It is this violence that is a major criterion for determining the airing of the actual event. Rather than focus on the underlying contradictions, the media focus on attitudes and behaviors because they are more newsworthy, and thus psychologize conflict. At the end of it all stands a win-lose-discourse that leaves us unable to explore the root of the situation or to use dialogue to solve it.

War is more profitable (in monetary terms) than peace. Peace is more profitable for long term investments, while war benefits the short term investment of specific factions/stake holders such as arms producers, politicians, and the media. Manipulation by politicians and media is not the only important factor in the continuation of war and power structures. Power structures cannot be maintained without people acting them out (Nietzsche’s “performance of the masses”). War reporting is profitable, it fascinates, but it also instills a sense of fear, keeping the “plebs” docile. The forces that have reshaped the U.S. constitution since 9/11 can be mentioned in relation to this. The legitimacy provided by constituent power allowed President Bush to expand the power of the presidency far beyond its normal limits. Constitutional change can occur through either a legal (formal) or non-legal (informal) political process. Constitutional change in the United States has not typically happened in the former way. After 9/11, president George W. Bush’s administration asserted that the world had changed and the old rules no longer applied. He was able to do so because he enjoyed the immediate support of the American people, a support which was to a large extent nourished by the media.

Violence sells. In a typology of the goals of violence, Galtung mentions different purposes for violence, among them the purpose of entertainment. Here, profit through violence is not a modern phenomenon: Historically speaking, this can be traced as far back as Roman rule, where violence meant revenue in relation to for example gladiators. A more contemporary example is that of the fight between the Spanish bullfighter and Toro. Both are examples of deep cultural values.

So in a sense, the media act as a double-edged sword; profiteering through enacting control. As a result, in a battlefield, journalists can compete with each other in finding the most dramatic story. But not only find them; they cherish them, nurture them, focus on the sensational aspects, and even modify and justify them, all in order to profit. And as a result of this financial profit, politicians earn political profit. And war continues.

References

Galtung, J. & Vincent, R. C. (1992) Global glasnost: Toward a new world information and communication order? Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press
Galtung, J. unpublished manuscript: “The TRANSCEND Approach to Simple Conflicts, C=1″

Terrorism and Human Rights (6): The War on Terror

9/11, burning Twin Towers

The War on Terror, started by the U.S. government as a response to the September 11, 2001 terror attacks and later joined by other governments, has had and continues to have grave consequences for the human rights of their citizens and of citizens of other countries. This is a high price for an uncertain gain.

However, before I list these consequences, I would like to make it clear that I believe, as any rational human being, that terrorism is evil, that it has to be destroyed and that democracies have a right to defend themselves against violent, anti-democratic fanatics (see this post).

I also believe that democratic governments should be especially vigilant because the freedoms that they are elected to protect, offer opportunities for those who hate freedom, opportunities that do not exist in other political systems. Potential terrorists find it relatively easy to enter a democracy and operate in it. A democracy is a very vulnerable form of government because of the freedom it gives to everyone, even those who don’t mean well.

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The freedoms of a democracy can be and are abused, but this, it seems, has frightened democratic governments to such an extent that they have decided to limit these freedoms up to the point that they are in danger of abandoning their values, and hence doing the work of the terrorists for them. It can be acceptable to limit certain rights for the protection of other rights (see also this post), but the right to security has taken on an absolute priority, at the expense of all other rights. There is no reasonable balance anymore. Some have called the war on terror a “war on freedom” (source).

1. Civil liberties

Governments try to defend their countries against terrorist attacks by limiting civil liberties in their territories.

• The right to privacy has been limited: CCTV has become ubiquitous, DNA databases have been created, eavesdropping and wiretapping have been legalized etc.
• “No-fly-lists” have come into force, limiting the freedom of movement of even those who have written critically of the government or attended peace-protests.
• Hate speech laws have been voted to silence jihadist hate preachers, silencing others at the same time.
• “Racial profiling” by the police has turned innocent people into possible suspects, often inverting the burden of proof.
• Habeas corpus has been limited, periods of detention without charge extended, sometimes indefinitely (for “enemy combatants”).

However, in spite of all this, the constraints on a government’s actions within its territory are sometimes still considered to be inhibiting:

• “Extraordinary rendition” has been covertly practiced, allowing suspects to be tortured outside of the territory by professional torturers in other countries.
• Extra-territorial prisons have been created, in Guantanamo, but probably elsewhere as well, where suspects can be tortured or held indefinitely and where the Geneva Conventions supposedly don’t apply.

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2. Mentalities

The war on terror has also changed people’s minds and attitudes.

• The media have started to censor themselves. Solidarity with the government at war and the commander-in-chief, or the fear of being perceived as unpatriotic, appeasers, “useful idiots” or even open allies of the enemy has turned them into uncritical supporters of the war.
• Citizens have turned on Islam and Muslims. Xenophobia and more specifically islamophobia have undermined the ideals of tolerance and multiculturalism, and have in certain cases even led to hate crimes against Muslims.
• A ”culture of fear” has been created by the terrorist but also nurtured by irresponsible western politicians. This fear has damaged democracy. Not only have the media relinquished their traditional role as watchdogs. Politicians as well, and especially incumbents, have abused the fear of terrorism to harness support. Alert levels seem to go up just before elections.

3. Preemptive war

The US government has elaborated and implemented the strategy of preemptive war, a war

waged in an attempt to repel or defeat a perceived inevitable offensive or invasion, or to gain a strategic advantage in an impending (allegedly unavoidable) war. (source)

The Iraq war was deemed a preemptive war because Iraq was allegedly about to attack the US with weapons of mass destruction, or supply these weapons to terrorists. Whatever the merits of the case against Iraq – and with the passing of time these seem to become weaker and weaker – the war has been framed, correctly or not, as a necessary stage in the ongoing war on terror. It has, however, resulted in massive numbers of casualties on both sides. The human rights violations caused by the war stand in no relation to the violations caused by terrorism or the violations that could have been caused by Saddam.

In any case, you can’t solve the problem of terrorism by violent means only. Terrorism has causes, and there will be terrorism as long as these causes exist. (Mind you, I don’t want to excuse or justify terrorism).

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4. Counter-productive

It is now widely believed, even in US government circles, that the war on terror is counter-productive. Especially the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the torture in Abu Ghraib and the detentions in Guantanamo have produced a backlash and have increased rather than reduced the terror threat. The 2007 National Intelligence Estimate issued the following among its “key judgments”:

The Iraq conflict has become the “cause celebre” for jihadists, breeding a deep resentment of US involvement in the Muslim world and cultivating supporters for the global jihadist movement. (source)

The war on terror has created and exacerbated resentment, hatred of the West and anti-americanism. And with anti-americanism often comes hatred of democracy and freedom and Islamic radicalization. Apart from the removal of the Taliban in Afghanistan, there is no evidence that any of the strategies in the war on terror has done any good (source).

5. Misnomer

There is something fishy about the concept of a “war on terrorism”. This “war” is in fact no such thing. It is in essence crime prevention and law enforcement. There is no well-defined enemy. Anyone can at any time become an enemy. For this reason, there is no conceivable end to the war. And if you claim to wage a war on terrorism, you might as well claim to wage a war on carpet bombing. Both are tactics or strategies, not something you wage war against.

If you insist on calling anti-terrorist actions a war, then you give too much credit to the riffraff you’re opposing. Rather than deranged criminals they can call themselves soldiers. And soldiers defend something. You legitimize them. You turn a crime into a two-sided struggle in which each side defends its positions. This in turn leads to the view that the war on terror is a war of the West against the rest, bringing back images of colonialism, imperialism and the crusades, again legitimizing the terrorists, helping to consolidate their often internally opposed forces, and making them honorable in the eyes of ordinary citizens outside of the West.

war on terror graffiti

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I can understand that the concept of a “war on terrorism” is useful for the executives in the West, because an executive that is at war has more powers, less oversight, more popular support and less criticism, but it’s a meaningless and dangerous concept. Let’s give it up.

Limiting Free Speech (3): Hate Speech

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Hate speech (or antilocution, or fighting words) is speech that incites other people to hate a certain group in society defined by common characteristics (race, gender, religion etc.). It usually also incites to commit violence and discrimination based on hatred.

The most famous case is that of the Danish Muhammad cartoons. These cartoons led to worldwide protest and expressions of anger and hate, not only against the cartoonists in question, their newspaper or their country, but against liberals and democrats in general.

However, hate speech is by no means an exclusively Muslim matter. It can be found everywhere where there is hate: it can be racist, anti-gay, islamophobe, etc. It can also be framed in anti-terrorist language: many western countries have initiated legislation outlawing hate speech that is part of Muslim mobilization of terrorists (in militant mosques for example).

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Given the importance of freedom of expression, it is not universally accepted that hate speech can be legally prohibited. There is of course article 20 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights which outlaws hate speech:

Any advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence shall be prohibited by law.

However, contrary to hate crimes, such as attack on gays or muslims or writers/movie makers/cartoonists critical of Islam etc., the basic rule should be that speech as such is not a crime, even speech expressing or inciting hatred, violence or discrimination. Speech is protected by the right to free speech.

However, this right, like many human rights, is not absolute and can be limited when it endangers other human rights (like the right to life and bodily integrity, the right not to suffer discrimination etc.). The general defense of hateful speech has therefore some exceptions. It’s a thin line between hateful words and hateful actions. Impressionable people can be led to violent crimes by hate speech. Hate is taught. The example of the Muhammad cartoons protests is again telling in this respect. Many protesters were encouraged by some Muslim leaders to commit acts of violence.

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But much depends on the circumstances, the context and the manner of speech. Islamophobia in front of a crowded mosque is obviously not the same thing as islamophobia in an obscure publication. Examples of speech, in the wider sense of the word, such as hanging a noose in a tree in the front yard of the house of an African-American family, or spraying graffiti on someone’s car or house, are more of a problem than posting a picture of a Koran in the toilet on a blog or a website. The first examples are clearly intimidation and can force people to sell their houses and move somewhere else. This has human rights implications (freedom of residence and property rights), which the latter examples don’t have (it’s difficult to argue that a photo of the Koran in a toilet, although undoubtedly an expression of hatred, harms anyone’s freedom of religion).

When speech has implications for the rights of some people, it is legitimate to consider limiting this speech, according to the rules set out in the introductory post of this series.

An important distinction here: all this is about hate, not about speech that is merely offensive, insulting, ridiculing etc. That’s the topic of another post. The distinction, however, can be blurred. What is hateful and what is merely offensive is a matter of personal conviction, it differs between groups and it changes over time. Some groups may be more sensitive than others. If one decides to legislate the matter, this can complicate things.

Moreover, what to someone can be seen as hate – for example homophobia – may be a central tenet of someone else’s religion and therefore protected by the freedom of religion. However, the freedom of religion is not absolute either.

And finally, some examples of speech that were once considered to be hateful – such as “nigger” – have been reclaimed by the groups that were previously targeted, and are sometimes even used as a badge of pride.

Another distinction: it is perhaps possible to imagine hate speech that is not directly or indirectly inciting violence and/or discrimination. Obviously, this kind of hate speech is less dangerous. However, like derogatory speech or offensive speech it does create a problem. It perpetuates negative stereotypes, devalues collective identities, deepens social cleavages and conflicts, makes it more difficult for the community to accept new identities, and it makes debate more difficult. So it makes it more difficult to create and uphold a tolerant, diverse society in which there can be civilized debate and discussion leading to better knowledge.

However, is this reason enough for a legal prohibition on hate speech? I don’t think so. Is it reason enough to combat hate speech with other means? Sure. The remedy for harmful speech is not necessarily prohibition but counter-speech, and sometimes it is best to just ignore some kinds of speech. Engaging the hate mongers, let alone prosecuting them, gives them legitimacy, publicity, and under-dog or victim status.

In general, it is not unwise to be concerned about political correctness, thought police and censorship.

Human Rights Facts (12): Support for Human Rights

In a previous post, I gave some data showing the quasi-universal popular support for democracy as the best form of government.

In the current post, I try to do the same for some aspect of other, non-political human rights, such as the freedom of religion, free speech and press, and fair judiciary.

Most of the data are taken from the 2003 report of the Pew Global Attitudes Project.

The data show that for 4 groups of countries in 4 continents, there are clear majorities for the desirability of these rights. They also show the gap between desires and reality. Most of the respondents in these countries feel that their governments do not protect their rights adequately.

In the U.K. there is currently some controversy over a series of infringements on human rights, mostly following 9-11 and the London bombings. Here’s a survey of the way in which these are received by the public: