Dr.
Tariq Rahman
First, the bare facts. Train blasts in Madrid killed about 200 people. First, the Spanish government blamed a separatist group and then the notorious Al-Qaeda. The people believed the second story and opposed their right-wing prime minister, Jose Maria Aznar, with such fervour that he stepped down handing power to the socialist leader Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero. The new leader immediately pledged to withdraw Spain’s 1300 troops from Iraq if the UNO does not take control by 30 June this year.
Can this serve as an example to the rest of Europe or is it so exceptional that it will merely be brushed aside as an oddity? Further, should it serve as an example or not? There is much that is exceptional here. In most countries if so many people die because of a terrorist attack the government declares a war against the terrorists. The ‘hawks’ tell everybody how right they were when they advocated that the said terrorists be crushed with a heavy hand. The ‘doves’ dare not utter a squeak just in case they are accused of having brought about the deaths of so many people. Then the right wing comes up with more aggressive policies against the terrorists. The public, fuming with anger, attacks the group the terrorists come from on the streets. The right wing government wins the election or gets away by postponing it. The instances of this kind of reaction are numerous. Indeed, that is why weak governments resort to war in order to tide over their difficulties. In a war all love is focused on the ‘in-group’ and all hatred on the ‘out-group’. And nowadays, after 9/11, there is a state of war anyway so all a Western government has to do is to refer to it and raise hell.
In Spain the opposite happened because the people had come out in such large numbers against Aznar’s decision to support the American war in Iraq that it was he, and not the Al Qaeda, who was seen as the ‘fascist’ and the ‘murderer’ (the slogans raised against Aznar after the Madrid massacre). The people hated this policy so much that they clearly perceived that it would lead to some such catastrophe.
When it did happen they hated the Al Qaeda, of course, but they turned to something practical they could do to remove the source of their undeserved suffering. They angrily removed their government which had put them in such mess. Such clarity of thinking is very rare. That is why one is not sure if Spain will serve as an exemplar or remain the odd example out, the exception which proves the rule, in our post Nine Eleven World.
Let us take the case of Britain. Here too almost half of the public refused to go with Tony Blair. And even the half which did support him probably did so because they thought Saddam did have nuclear or chemical weapons which could wipe out London. Now that all this has turned out to be a tale will the British public throw Blair out of office if something terrible happens in Britain? If so, it could actually encourage the terrorists. But if all governments, or the people who support them, feel this way the world will remain perpetually wrong. All wrong policies would be defended, as indeed they are defended, with the excuse that concessions are weaknesses. This means that a mistake once made, a government once chosen, cannot be changed for the better.
This would be the wrong lesson to learn and it would negate the beneficial effects of democracy. For it is only democracy, and no other form of government, in which the people can declare their alienation from their government and get rid of it. Indeed, if there is a lesson to be learnt from Spain it is that the ultimate arbiters of a nation’s destiny are the people and not the rulers or any powerful group of the state’s machinery. It was a people’s protest movement which made Russia withdraw from World War-I. The ruling elite, valuing its sense of honour more than the blood of its people, would have continued the war but the people revolted. Governments try to prevent this in the name of national honour or national interest but actually they try to defend their follies or narrow institutional or group interests. The people generally get fooled but sometimes such rare events happen as they did in Czarist Russia and Spain.
How should the world respond? It should respond first by condemning terrorism of all kinds both by non-state agents and the forces of the state. Along with this it should sympathize with the suffering people of Spain and, indeed, of all countries of the world which suffer because of terrorism of any kind. Then, the world should join voices in praising Spain and wishing it good luck. The other members of the coalition should persuade the U. S to change its policies. I genuinely feel that if the U. S adopts peaceful and just policies---withdraws troops from the world or at least where people protest against them; gives all prisoners a fair trial; persuades Israel to withdraw in its pre-1967 borders---it will help its own people find security which threatens to disappear from their lives. In short, as I have always said, peaceful policies of the U. S are as much in the interest of the ordinary people of that country as they are of people of other countries.
Sometimes I wonder what would have happened had the U. S not reacted to 9/11 as it did. How many thousand people---Afghans, Iraqis, Americans and others---would have been alive today? True, the Taliban and Saddam would have been in power but they could have been dealt with in other ways. If, after having reduced or eliminated the reasons which created the terrorists in the first place, the Americans had slowly isolated and cut down the terrorists the world would have been a safer place now. Humanitarian values which the Western civilization evolved in the last two centuries would not have been under siege as they are today. The fear of sudden, cruel and violent death would not have been the most pressing reality of our globalized existence. Now that Iraq is in chaos the terrorists can thrive there. Afghanistan threatens to descend into anarchy and, of course, terrorists will thrive there if the fighting goes on. Moreover, there is danger of the fighting spreading to Pakistan and having unforeseen effects here. There is so much anger against Guatanomo Bay and other human rights violations that ordinary, decent, innocent Americans find the world shrinking for them. So, which reaction is better---that of the people of Spain or that of the ruling elites of the world’s most powerful countries? Let the reader decide.
Dr. Tariq Rahman