If you want to escape terrorism don’t ask Rohan Gunaratna what train to catch.
With his new co-authored book The Terrorist Threat in Southern Thailand (deliberately unread by this author, as I’ve had my fill of fiction reading for the year) Rohan Gunaratna is perhaps hoping for the most improved award and a plaque on the wall of the Pentagon.
Gunaratna’s last foray into the southern insurgency produced a book (Conflict and Terrorism in Southern Thailand, 2005) of such breathtaking incompetence that I find myself almost admiring his tenacity to tackle the Southern insurgency once more in 2009. Or perhaps the first book was a draft and this is the real thing? In which case, let’s hope he thanks his many reviewers.
The blurb for the new book promises astute analysis and recommendations for policy regarding the insurgency in Thailand:
“the authors find that there is the possibility that this predominantly localized conflict could escalate into an international Islamic jihad. In addition to analyzing the insurgents' capabilities and opportunities, the authors provide a critique of government policies and make astute suggestions for resolving the conflict.”
The use of the word “astute” implies shrewd judgment and perceptive treatment. I can only hope that Gunaratna has removed the many errors that appeared in the first draft. In my extended review of that book (“War on Error and the Southern Fire” Critical Asian Studies, 2006) I noted just several of the errors thus:
"Most books have some errors, but few books that aspire to such authority contain as many as this one. The mistakes are both historical and contemporary. The authors’ positioning within terrorism studies (knowing a little about lots of conflicts) might explain the flippant attitude to historical context and facts: the authors have nothing more than a casual acquaintance with the history and modern-day politics of Thailand and presumably assume that their readers are not well informed either. Below, some errors are presented.
One example demonstrates the authors’ ignorance of one of the most important events in southern history: they mistakenly describe Haji Sulong, an important southern Muslim leader of the twentieth century, as the leader of the 'Dusun Nyiur incident' in April 1948. He was, in fact, in jail at the time. (The authors return to this event and attribute the leadership to another person, without realizing they are writing about the same event using a different transliteration, naming it the 'Duson Nyor Revolt' For the same event the authors have created two different leaders, two different names, and a different estimation of the numbers killed.)
At times inaccuracy slides into prejudice: the authors speak of the threat potential of Islam, writing, 'The presence of a significant Muslim community in the rest of the kingdom, including Bangkok…has the potential to disperse the threat beyond its current epicenter in the south'. This failure to differentiate between militant violent politics and the Islamic faith in Thailand reveals nothing but prejudicial ignorance.
Topping the list of errors is the claim that Thai Rak Thai MP Wan Muhammad Nor Matha lost his seat in the 2005 elections, which saw TRT lose all of its seats in the border provinces (88). He did not; in fact he retained his seat as a party list MP (based on total national vote of the party). That the authors are mistaken about the status of Wan Nor, one of Thailand’s leading Muslim politicians and a key, though controversial, member of the Wadah group, illustrates their failure to do the basic background work. Negligence becomes absurdity when the authors claim that the 1993 bombing at the Hat Yai railway station was directed at non-Muslim citizens since, they claimed, 'few Muslims use this train station'(36). Hat Yai railway station is a gateway into the border provinces; it is the last major stop before Malaysia and many of its passengers are Muslims."
I am happy to provide Mr Gunaratna with a more extensive list should he wish, but I didn’t hear from him after the review.
Inventing Terror Groups.
When thinking of Rohan Gunaratna’s science fiction expedition into the Southern Insurgency I am always reminded of Graham Brown’s debunking of the kind of ill-informed terror analysis that confidently assumes its facticity, and in particular the contribution of Zachary Abuza, a fellow traveler in the style of Gunaratna (see Brown, G. K., 2006. “The perils of terrorism: Chinese whispers, Kevin Bacon, and Al Qaeda in Southeast Asia - A review essay.” Intelligence and National Security, 21 (1), pp. 150-162.)
Brown reveals disregard for evidence and context, and somewhat revealing errors, the kind that exemplifies Gunaratna’s first book on Thailand. Brown writes
"Much of Abuza's analysis of Malaysia is devoted to the 'Kampulan Mujahidin Malaysia' (KMM), although this is [citing Abuza] 'only one of many radical organizations, [including] the Al-Ma'unah, Kampung Medan, and older groups such as the Islamic Revolution Cooperative Brigade' (p.24). Kampung Medan, however, is not any kind of organization, but rather a place where an incident of ethnic rioting took place. Abuza appears to have misunderstood the newspaper article which he cites as his only source here, containing the following sentence: 'On whether a Government white paper to address the Al-Maunah, Kampung Medan and KMM groups would be tabled in Parliament, [Home Minister] Abdullah [Ahmad Badawi] said it would be done after the cases in court were completed'. Casual reading of this sentence by an uninformed observer might well lead to the erroneous conclusion that Kampung Medan is the name of an organization and thus, if his role is indeed that of an uninformed observer, Abuza might be forgiven this error."
If you buy Gunaratna’s latest book on Thailand, do so with a generous spirit and forgiving mind: keeping up with Al-Qaeda and its affiliates is a difficult task and casualness is part of the terrain. Apparently policy makers who seek expert terror advice don’t seem to care, so why should we?
What is troubling about such mistakes - and they are legion - is the way they enter broader commentary, as people continue to cite the work. Casual mistakes and over-calls by Gunaratna get picked up by others and circulated - reinforcing the distance between policy discourse and reality.
Why, if people know the fundamentally flawed record of such authors, does such work keep getting cited (positively and as authoritative). It can only be that bullshit trumps a concern with accurate representation and truth (as much as we can honestly struggle to establish what is true).
In his short work on On BullShit philosopher Harry Frankfurt was pained by our generalised indifference to bullshit, our willingness to just brush it aside rather than face up to the way it structures and perpetuates purposes that are less than benign. Frankfurt writes of bullshitters : “the truth-values of [his/her] statements are of no central interest to him [her]; what we are not to understand is that his [her] intention is neither to report the truth nor to conceal it”. The intention rather is to "suit his purpose". Bullshit steers us away from the way things are - and in this instance serve alarmist ends by feeding generalised prejudices and ignorance about complex questions of power and inequality. Prejudice or a willingness to serve never had much need for facts.
Showing posts with label Terrorism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Terrorism. Show all posts
April 6, 2008
Thailand: The Silent Insurgency
From New Matilda 27 March.
Newmatilda.com
The Silent Insurgency
By Michael Connors
The bombing of an elite hotel last week shattered any illusion of safety in Thailand's insurgent Southern border provinces, writes Michael Connors
Last week a cook and a security guard were killed by a car bomb at the C.S. Pattani Hotel. I've stayed at the C.S. Pattani a number of times. It's the kind of place the novelist Graham Greene would have acutely observed, its archaic Arabic façade and grand staircase ripe for a vignette of spooks and opportunists thickly in congress. Better still, the hotel is stuck in the middle of an insurgency - not in Iraq but in the Malay-speaking Southern border provinces of Thailand.
The conflict, known as the "Southern Fire" to the Thai, has claimed just over 3000 lives in the last four years. It is now one of the most violent conflicts in Australia's neighbourhood - and the least talked about in the international media.
The C.S. Pattani Hotel is the one place in Thailand's South where security is considered tight and bombs and assassin's bullets are unlikely to reach. For that reason, anyone who goes to the South normally stays there. At any time one might find former prime ministers, ambassadors, Red Crescent officials and ambitious freelance journalists imbibing tea or discreetly drinking a beer.
In my stays I've met militant Malay nationalists who want a political solution to the conflict, peace-activists seeking reconciliation between Buddhist and Muslim communities, Imams of a fundamentalist bent who deplore violence, and widows and bereaved daughters whose husbands or fathers have been lost in the conflict.
The car-bombing, which claimed two lives and injured a dozen others, was a turning point, signalling that there is no safe ground in the area, not even for the elites who frequent C.S. Pattani. Many see it as a signal that the insurgency is about to get worse.
The border provinces of Thailand have been a frequent site of disturbance, repression and insurgency since they were formally annexed by Siam in a 1909 agreement with the British, who in return were given parts of the north of present day Malaysia.
In the face of nearly a century of Thai programs of cultural assimilation that verged on colonialism, the Malays of the South have maintained their own distinct identity and language. Many officials in the Thai State have finally begun to understand this fact, but at glacial pace and without comprehending the political implications that a second nation exists within Thailand.
No solution appears to be in sight - in part because few people understand what is actually happening - and few Thai nationalists are willing to even talk about autonomy, let along grant it to the region.
While many believe the Southern conflict is largely driven by nationalist politics, some want to paint the insurgency as primarily Islamist. Certainly, there is evidence for this. Moreover, terrorism experts speak of the extending tentacles of JI into the South, or suggest the potential internationalisation of the conflict, which may well mean a role for Al Qaeda. But it is worth bearing in mind that, as Dr Mike Smith noted a decade ago, terrorism experts "know a little about a lot of conflicts".
Serious scholars of the conflict are much more cautious in attempting to explain its nature and causes. It's not hard to see why. Different insurgent groups come and go (at least in name); intelligence reports are cooked up, serve a purpose and then retired. Inexplicable acts of violence by the State are ignored while alleged insurgents are rounded up and forced to attend re-education camps to learn the value of national unity.
Then there is the dual system of justice. While some alleged insurgents face court and trial, not a single State official has faced criminal charges related to the 30 extra-judicial killings in the Krue Se Mosque in April 2004. After the reprehensible killing in October 2004 of 78 Muslim men, who died after they were stacked one on top of the other and transported for hours in military trucks, the Government claimed the victims died, in part, because they were fasting for Ramadan. The Thai State has also yet to open a proper inquiry into the mass graves found in Pattani where upwards of 300 corpses lie.
In contrast to the predictable statements issued by terrorism analysts, a new documentary film on the South by Thai filmmaker Ing K sheds much light. The film, Citizen Juling, has been described as a road trip into Thailand's soul.
It follows the life of Juling, a Buddhist who went to live in the South to teach arts. She was brutally bashed and left comatose, allegedly by local Muslim women whose children Juling taught. Her story becomes the canvass upon which the whole "Southern Fire" is drawn.
In following the footsteps of Juling and those touched by her story, Citizen Juling does something no terrorism analysis can do. It brings into genuine dialogue the frustrations of Muslims and Buddhists alike, it offers insights into the pain of violent loss, and it reaches beyond the clichés of the War on Terror to tell a very human story of idealism and betrayal.
A powerful documentary that mixes the ordinary and revealing life of Malay Muslims in Thailand with a quietly probing study of violence and its odious ramifications, Citizen Juling may finally make the world take notice of what is happening in the South of Thailand.
La Trobe University and the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) are jointly hosting a free screening of Citizen Juling in Melbourne on March 28. Click here for details. You can read a longer analysis on the South here.
Newmatilda.com
The Silent Insurgency
By Michael Connors
The bombing of an elite hotel last week shattered any illusion of safety in Thailand's insurgent Southern border provinces, writes Michael Connors
Last week a cook and a security guard were killed by a car bomb at the C.S. Pattani Hotel. I've stayed at the C.S. Pattani a number of times. It's the kind of place the novelist Graham Greene would have acutely observed, its archaic Arabic façade and grand staircase ripe for a vignette of spooks and opportunists thickly in congress. Better still, the hotel is stuck in the middle of an insurgency - not in Iraq but in the Malay-speaking Southern border provinces of Thailand.
The conflict, known as the "Southern Fire" to the Thai, has claimed just over 3000 lives in the last four years. It is now one of the most violent conflicts in Australia's neighbourhood - and the least talked about in the international media.
The C.S. Pattani Hotel is the one place in Thailand's South where security is considered tight and bombs and assassin's bullets are unlikely to reach. For that reason, anyone who goes to the South normally stays there. At any time one might find former prime ministers, ambassadors, Red Crescent officials and ambitious freelance journalists imbibing tea or discreetly drinking a beer.
In my stays I've met militant Malay nationalists who want a political solution to the conflict, peace-activists seeking reconciliation between Buddhist and Muslim communities, Imams of a fundamentalist bent who deplore violence, and widows and bereaved daughters whose husbands or fathers have been lost in the conflict.
The car-bombing, which claimed two lives and injured a dozen others, was a turning point, signalling that there is no safe ground in the area, not even for the elites who frequent C.S. Pattani. Many see it as a signal that the insurgency is about to get worse.
The border provinces of Thailand have been a frequent site of disturbance, repression and insurgency since they were formally annexed by Siam in a 1909 agreement with the British, who in return were given parts of the north of present day Malaysia.
In the face of nearly a century of Thai programs of cultural assimilation that verged on colonialism, the Malays of the South have maintained their own distinct identity and language. Many officials in the Thai State have finally begun to understand this fact, but at glacial pace and without comprehending the political implications that a second nation exists within Thailand.
No solution appears to be in sight - in part because few people understand what is actually happening - and few Thai nationalists are willing to even talk about autonomy, let along grant it to the region.
While many believe the Southern conflict is largely driven by nationalist politics, some want to paint the insurgency as primarily Islamist. Certainly, there is evidence for this. Moreover, terrorism experts speak of the extending tentacles of JI into the South, or suggest the potential internationalisation of the conflict, which may well mean a role for Al Qaeda. But it is worth bearing in mind that, as Dr Mike Smith noted a decade ago, terrorism experts "know a little about a lot of conflicts".
Serious scholars of the conflict are much more cautious in attempting to explain its nature and causes. It's not hard to see why. Different insurgent groups come and go (at least in name); intelligence reports are cooked up, serve a purpose and then retired. Inexplicable acts of violence by the State are ignored while alleged insurgents are rounded up and forced to attend re-education camps to learn the value of national unity.
Then there is the dual system of justice. While some alleged insurgents face court and trial, not a single State official has faced criminal charges related to the 30 extra-judicial killings in the Krue Se Mosque in April 2004. After the reprehensible killing in October 2004 of 78 Muslim men, who died after they were stacked one on top of the other and transported for hours in military trucks, the Government claimed the victims died, in part, because they were fasting for Ramadan. The Thai State has also yet to open a proper inquiry into the mass graves found in Pattani where upwards of 300 corpses lie.
In contrast to the predictable statements issued by terrorism analysts, a new documentary film on the South by Thai filmmaker Ing K sheds much light. The film, Citizen Juling, has been described as a road trip into Thailand's soul.
It follows the life of Juling, a Buddhist who went to live in the South to teach arts. She was brutally bashed and left comatose, allegedly by local Muslim women whose children Juling taught. Her story becomes the canvass upon which the whole "Southern Fire" is drawn.
In following the footsteps of Juling and those touched by her story, Citizen Juling does something no terrorism analysis can do. It brings into genuine dialogue the frustrations of Muslims and Buddhists alike, it offers insights into the pain of violent loss, and it reaches beyond the clichés of the War on Terror to tell a very human story of idealism and betrayal.
A powerful documentary that mixes the ordinary and revealing life of Malay Muslims in Thailand with a quietly probing study of violence and its odious ramifications, Citizen Juling may finally make the world take notice of what is happening in the South of Thailand.
La Trobe University and the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) are jointly hosting a free screening of Citizen Juling in Melbourne on March 28. Click here for details. You can read a longer analysis on the South here.
September 14, 2007
How Terrorism Experts Get it Wrong
Excerpted from “War on Error and the Southern Fire: How Terrorism Experts Get it Wrong” in Critical Asian Studies, 2006
Michael Connors
Citations in the original.
…Terrorism studies has its origins in studies of violence in the Middle East and in
Western Europe. In decline during the 1990s, the sub-discipline found new impetus
after the 11 September 2001 attacks in the United States. What does terrorism
studies offer? Over a decade ago, Mike Smith noted that twenty years of
terrorism studies had failed to generate much genuine insight into the dynamics
of local conflicts. The literature tended toward high-level generalizations
around tactical modality and causality that emerged from superficial comparative
analysis of incommensurable conflicts (for example, the IRA and the Red
Army Faction in West Germany).10 Smith asked: “So who are the experts on terrorism?
Answer, there are no experts, just people who know a little about a lot of
small conflicts.”11 This insight is significant, for it implies that so-called experts
on terrorism have little to offer relative to conflicts they are unfamiliar with.12 As
will be shown, [Rohan Gunaratna’s] Conflict and Terrorism is a good example of Smith’s thesis: forall its pretense about being an up-to-date manual on the violence in South Thailand, the book was produced by authors who seemingly know little about Thailand,
but who are equipped with the language of terrorism studies.
Burnett and Whyte, in their more recent review of terrorism studies, or
“terrorology,” note that during the 1990s a complex interaction of government-
sponsored research programs, think tanks, and academics produced a
discourse on “new terrorism” that informs post-9/11 commentary. The “new
terrorism” (hereafter without quotation marks) thesis claimed to be about a terrorism
that dispensed with traditional structures of hierarchy and command,
that was prone to use weapons of mass destruction, that was indiscriminate in
its targets, and that was pathological and beyond rational engagement.13 Such
ideas have informed much of the contemporary writing on terrorism, leading to
a politicized academic literature siding with the U.S.-driven “war on terror”
(hereafter without quotation marks). Conflict and Terrorism shares some of
these traits, although its conclusion that Thailand remains as yet a localized
struggle allows it to escape from an overzealous application of the new terrorism
thesis. Nevertheless, it is the shadow of the threat of new terrorism that
lurks behind the book’s examination of international linkages, and explains
why the book will interest terrorism analysts (59–68).14
Something also needs to be said about the current context in which writings
on terrorism are produced. This is a period in which terrorism analysts operate
in a tense civilizational, geopolitical, and ideological context that inevitably colors
their output. Even if Samuel Huntington’s “clash of civilizations” thesis is
pure ideological and ethnocentric fury, it has captured the disposition of some
terrorism analysts who can but view Islam with suspicion; this is so for the authors
of Conflict and Terrorism (104). It is also noteworthy that the securitization
of U.S. foreign policy, whereby economic liberalization policies have been
trumped by pressure to conform to U.S. security policies, has led to greater
claims on U.S. allies in the so-called war on terror, leading to a global retreat
from human rights and democracy.15 In the West this has meant highly politicized
news reporting, often quoting academics sympathetic to the war on terror.
These reports typically conflate local conflicts with “terrorism” and downplay
human rights abuses. Conflict and Terrorism does raise some concerns
about excessive use of force in Thailand, but it tends to see the state as being
forced into repressive measures as a result of terrorist strategy (see discussion
below on Tak Bai). Furthermore, the intensification of relations between intelligence
agencies and universities provides an opportunity for some analysts to
conform to state policies and agendas and to downplay issues of “state terror.”16
It is true that many terrorism analysts are legitimately concerned with the root
local causes and trigger factors for acts of terrorism, and attempt broad-based
analyses that run counter to state interests. Such work shows up the shallow nature
of some media and academic commentary.17 But the pressure to follow
state interests and the rewards this subservience brings have increased in the
post-9/11 environment, increasing the number of opportunists in the field.18
This politicized environment has lowered the bar on the standards of analysis
and research for some terrorism analysts.
For the well-connected terrorism analyst, research extends to connections
with intelligence agencies and access to secret documents—selectively offered,
of course. Often welcomed into the corridors of power, s/he is the civilian face
of networks of intelligence that have their own agendas to advance. The politically
significant function of such opportunists, who identify or work closely
with governments, is to take the conclusions of intelligence agencies into the
public sphere in modified form, and lend such conclusions legitimacy by virtue
of being an apparently independent mouthpiece.19 Backed with megabucks for
research, sought out by police commissioners and security ministers, and
courted by media, such analysts feel free to comment on any act of terror anywhere,
anytime. This commentary-promiscuity is why they so often get it wrong.
Michael Connors
Citations in the original.
…Terrorism studies has its origins in studies of violence in the Middle East and in
Western Europe. In decline during the 1990s, the sub-discipline found new impetus
after the 11 September 2001 attacks in the United States. What does terrorism
studies offer? Over a decade ago, Mike Smith noted that twenty years of
terrorism studies had failed to generate much genuine insight into the dynamics
of local conflicts. The literature tended toward high-level generalizations
around tactical modality and causality that emerged from superficial comparative
analysis of incommensurable conflicts (for example, the IRA and the Red
Army Faction in West Germany).10 Smith asked: “So who are the experts on terrorism?
Answer, there are no experts, just people who know a little about a lot of
small conflicts.”11 This insight is significant, for it implies that so-called experts
on terrorism have little to offer relative to conflicts they are unfamiliar with.12 As
will be shown, [Rohan Gunaratna’s] Conflict and Terrorism is a good example of Smith’s thesis: forall its pretense about being an up-to-date manual on the violence in South Thailand, the book was produced by authors who seemingly know little about Thailand,
but who are equipped with the language of terrorism studies.
Burnett and Whyte, in their more recent review of terrorism studies, or
“terrorology,” note that during the 1990s a complex interaction of government-
sponsored research programs, think tanks, and academics produced a
discourse on “new terrorism” that informs post-9/11 commentary. The “new
terrorism” (hereafter without quotation marks) thesis claimed to be about a terrorism
that dispensed with traditional structures of hierarchy and command,
that was prone to use weapons of mass destruction, that was indiscriminate in
its targets, and that was pathological and beyond rational engagement.13 Such
ideas have informed much of the contemporary writing on terrorism, leading to
a politicized academic literature siding with the U.S.-driven “war on terror”
(hereafter without quotation marks). Conflict and Terrorism shares some of
these traits, although its conclusion that Thailand remains as yet a localized
struggle allows it to escape from an overzealous application of the new terrorism
thesis. Nevertheless, it is the shadow of the threat of new terrorism that
lurks behind the book’s examination of international linkages, and explains
why the book will interest terrorism analysts (59–68).14
Something also needs to be said about the current context in which writings
on terrorism are produced. This is a period in which terrorism analysts operate
in a tense civilizational, geopolitical, and ideological context that inevitably colors
their output. Even if Samuel Huntington’s “clash of civilizations” thesis is
pure ideological and ethnocentric fury, it has captured the disposition of some
terrorism analysts who can but view Islam with suspicion; this is so for the authors
of Conflict and Terrorism (104). It is also noteworthy that the securitization
of U.S. foreign policy, whereby economic liberalization policies have been
trumped by pressure to conform to U.S. security policies, has led to greater
claims on U.S. allies in the so-called war on terror, leading to a global retreat
from human rights and democracy.15 In the West this has meant highly politicized
news reporting, often quoting academics sympathetic to the war on terror.
These reports typically conflate local conflicts with “terrorism” and downplay
human rights abuses. Conflict and Terrorism does raise some concerns
about excessive use of force in Thailand, but it tends to see the state as being
forced into repressive measures as a result of terrorist strategy (see discussion
below on Tak Bai). Furthermore, the intensification of relations between intelligence
agencies and universities provides an opportunity for some analysts to
conform to state policies and agendas and to downplay issues of “state terror.”16
It is true that many terrorism analysts are legitimately concerned with the root
local causes and trigger factors for acts of terrorism, and attempt broad-based
analyses that run counter to state interests. Such work shows up the shallow nature
of some media and academic commentary.17 But the pressure to follow
state interests and the rewards this subservience brings have increased in the
post-9/11 environment, increasing the number of opportunists in the field.18
This politicized environment has lowered the bar on the standards of analysis
and research for some terrorism analysts.
For the well-connected terrorism analyst, research extends to connections
with intelligence agencies and access to secret documents—selectively offered,
of course. Often welcomed into the corridors of power, s/he is the civilian face
of networks of intelligence that have their own agendas to advance. The politically
significant function of such opportunists, who identify or work closely
with governments, is to take the conclusions of intelligence agencies into the
public sphere in modified form, and lend such conclusions legitimacy by virtue
of being an apparently independent mouthpiece.19 Backed with megabucks for
research, sought out by police commissioners and security ministers, and
courted by media, such analysts feel free to comment on any act of terror anywhere,
anytime. This commentary-promiscuity is why they so often get it wrong.
September 8, 2007
Fact and Fiction in the War on Terror
Fact and fiction in the war on terror
The Age, Melbourne
April 7, 2005
Michael Connors
Looking for an exciting and lucrative career? You may have seen the recent recruitment advertisements for Australia's premier intelligence agency, the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO).
They invite applications from people who can think outside the box. Such banal management-guru speak nicely glosses over the kind of thing you might be required to do if you are recruited, including having people think inside a box - namely a 5-by-5 room for interrogation. These are the boxes that generate most of the intelligence on terrorism.
And it is this intelligence that is increasingly cited in the many authoritative books on terrorism. It seems it is now respectable to include in a list of references things such as Terrorist 489: Intelligence Debriefing, CIA, Our Part of Cuba. If intelligence or counter-intelligence is not your thing, what about writing a book on the War on Terror?
It used to be globalisation that sold books. Now it's terror. Readers can't get enough of thinly researched - but polemically driven - books exposing the inner sanctums of terror networks. The great thing about writing books on current affairs is that opinion trumps fact. In the lazy world of prejudicial common sense that the war on terror has ushered in, you can build a writing career as long as you toe the right line, genuflect in the direction of Big Daddy (authority in all its rotundity), and repeat sanctimonious tripe about the need to repel barbarians at the gate.
If you take the right approach, you might have a bestseller in the making. Judging from the dozen or so books I have looked through, any person who can implausibly claim to have interviewed an informant has a chance of writing a bestseller. The more masked informants, the better the book will sell. When you do research have a mask on hand, just in case you get a photo opportunity. If you manage to score a few interviews, the blurb for your prospective book may read "Using unused sources, this book offers new news on a problem that is new".
Problematically, but unavoidably, if you are going to write a book on terror you have to demonstrate some knowledge of Islam. To do this, it helps to produce a glossary of strange-sounding words that you have never encountered before. Use italics to suggest a scholarly approach to languages that you do not understand. Where possible, make a reference to the crusades as this will add historical depth to your work, but do get the century right (check Encyclopedia Britannica).
To give the work a feeling of authenticity, try to begin chapters with references to dusty roads and villages only to be found off the beaten track.
Best of all, put yourself in the narrative. Paint a self-portrait of a wilful and seasoned traveller, seeking out sinister operatives in faraway places. Make sure you refer to how the Islamic Morning Prayer (Fajr) interrupts your sleep when you are on the road - people like to identify with the writer. You need not be concerned that your arguments are flimsy; there is a ready-made trick to give the appearance of being informed. All you need do is cite and recite. Read through the footnotes of various books on terror and you will discern a pattern of repetition: citation and recitation. Say something over and over again, and supply a footnote.
The CIA Factbook seems to be a constant star in many bibliographies. Using such sources will establish as fact even as flimsy a premise that al-Qaeda is everywhere. There are many other sources. You can quote anyone who has an affiliation with the proliferating number of Institutes of Strategic Studies. Don't be afraid to contact any organisation with acronyms such as ISS, ISIO, SISS. Such organisations have on hand a number of media-savvy researchers eager to be interviewed and cited about any topic. Make sure your sources, real or unreal, do not say anything original, challenging or thoughtful.
If they do, someone will want to know who they are, and you might find yourself in an ASIO interrogation room, explaining that the informant doesn't exist. The ASIO operative will, no doubt, think you have impeccable journalistic ethics, and try and break you down. Lawfully, of course.
To maintain rapport with the reader, it is important that you do not disturb society's sense of proper proportion - tragedies that happen to our people are capital "T" tragedies. The following opening line is obligatory for any book on the right side of the War on Terror: "The Tragedy of 7/11". Make sure you engage a proofreader to spot embarrassing mistakes.
Finally, don't worry about being caught out for being shallow, ignorant and a poseur - this has not hurt the careers of some prominent professors.
The Age, Melbourne
April 7, 2005
Michael Connors
Looking for an exciting and lucrative career? You may have seen the recent recruitment advertisements for Australia's premier intelligence agency, the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO).
They invite applications from people who can think outside the box. Such banal management-guru speak nicely glosses over the kind of thing you might be required to do if you are recruited, including having people think inside a box - namely a 5-by-5 room for interrogation. These are the boxes that generate most of the intelligence on terrorism.
And it is this intelligence that is increasingly cited in the many authoritative books on terrorism. It seems it is now respectable to include in a list of references things such as Terrorist 489: Intelligence Debriefing, CIA, Our Part of Cuba. If intelligence or counter-intelligence is not your thing, what about writing a book on the War on Terror?
It used to be globalisation that sold books. Now it's terror. Readers can't get enough of thinly researched - but polemically driven - books exposing the inner sanctums of terror networks. The great thing about writing books on current affairs is that opinion trumps fact. In the lazy world of prejudicial common sense that the war on terror has ushered in, you can build a writing career as long as you toe the right line, genuflect in the direction of Big Daddy (authority in all its rotundity), and repeat sanctimonious tripe about the need to repel barbarians at the gate.
If you take the right approach, you might have a bestseller in the making. Judging from the dozen or so books I have looked through, any person who can implausibly claim to have interviewed an informant has a chance of writing a bestseller. The more masked informants, the better the book will sell. When you do research have a mask on hand, just in case you get a photo opportunity. If you manage to score a few interviews, the blurb for your prospective book may read "Using unused sources, this book offers new news on a problem that is new".
Problematically, but unavoidably, if you are going to write a book on terror you have to demonstrate some knowledge of Islam. To do this, it helps to produce a glossary of strange-sounding words that you have never encountered before. Use italics to suggest a scholarly approach to languages that you do not understand. Where possible, make a reference to the crusades as this will add historical depth to your work, but do get the century right (check Encyclopedia Britannica).
To give the work a feeling of authenticity, try to begin chapters with references to dusty roads and villages only to be found off the beaten track.
Best of all, put yourself in the narrative. Paint a self-portrait of a wilful and seasoned traveller, seeking out sinister operatives in faraway places. Make sure you refer to how the Islamic Morning Prayer (Fajr) interrupts your sleep when you are on the road - people like to identify with the writer. You need not be concerned that your arguments are flimsy; there is a ready-made trick to give the appearance of being informed. All you need do is cite and recite. Read through the footnotes of various books on terror and you will discern a pattern of repetition: citation and recitation. Say something over and over again, and supply a footnote.
The CIA Factbook seems to be a constant star in many bibliographies. Using such sources will establish as fact even as flimsy a premise that al-Qaeda is everywhere. There are many other sources. You can quote anyone who has an affiliation with the proliferating number of Institutes of Strategic Studies. Don't be afraid to contact any organisation with acronyms such as ISS, ISIO, SISS. Such organisations have on hand a number of media-savvy researchers eager to be interviewed and cited about any topic. Make sure your sources, real or unreal, do not say anything original, challenging or thoughtful.
If they do, someone will want to know who they are, and you might find yourself in an ASIO interrogation room, explaining that the informant doesn't exist. The ASIO operative will, no doubt, think you have impeccable journalistic ethics, and try and break you down. Lawfully, of course.
To maintain rapport with the reader, it is important that you do not disturb society's sense of proper proportion - tragedies that happen to our people are capital "T" tragedies. The following opening line is obligatory for any book on the right side of the War on Terror: "The Tragedy of 7/11". Make sure you engage a proofreader to spot embarrassing mistakes.
Finally, don't worry about being caught out for being shallow, ignorant and a poseur - this has not hurt the careers of some prominent professors.
Terror in the therapist's chair
Terror in the therapist's chair
By: Michael Connors Wednesday 20 July 2005
New Matilda
Terrorism is all too real in its deathly intent. It is not a furphy, a mere distraction from the impulses of US imperial expansion. But without understanding broader geo-political imperatives we become mendacious about the world we live in. To paint terrorism, as it is conventionally understood, as the gravest threat facing us is to accept a certain view of the world. Last week I suggested (link here) we join the War on Error - and one of the errors that needs to be addressed is the portrayal of terrorists as subhuman and irrational.
After the London bombings a good many people were horrified by a mindset that could entertain death and destruction for seemingly inscrutable reasons. Rightly so. This wasn't abstract horror, the kind we all feel about the endless and needless deaths resulting from war somewhere. This was a visceral response, let's call it repulsion, towards the London bombers: after all, the Leeds lads had it all: football matches, English butties, Yorkshire prettiness, and still they bombed us.
Now in a world where borders are internal - in culturally segregated communities - a new question for the twenty-first Century: why does someone become a suicide bomber in the West? Before London the evasive answer was: They envy our freedom, they are humiliated by our success, they resent that they can never be, truly, one of us. They secretly desire to be so. But what of the London bombers, hailing from within?
To deal with what appears to be extreme cases of anomie, experts will now subject us to endless psychological profiles and references to cult indoctrination. Even the cities of the West will be profiled. We may be told that the nature of life in bleak urban-scapes characterised by materialism, racism and rising levels of violence suggests some counter-intuitive answers. It may be that 'terrorists' do not so much 'envy' us as they feel disappointed with us and the apparent meaningless of our lives. This is a familiar story, one of the West failing to live up to its rhetoric. Some of this may be useful, providing limited insights about why some people are vulnerable to the suggestion that they ought to die for the sake of what they perceive as a higher cause. It's all been done before.
Armies of social scientists tried to figure out the attraction of communism - what was it that attracted people to deviant forms of political behaviour. Mothers? Toilet training? Exaggerated sense of injustice? It seems even the most trivial social slight can lead people to ghastly deeds. Let the psychologists of terror write their highly cited papers, let them devise schemes to wean children from terror. Let the doctors of multiculturalism revisit theories of liberal tolerance. But the bombs will still explode, as long as the West refuses to sit in the therapist's chair, preferring instead to gaze at itself admiringly, while applying billions of dollars of cosmetics. Instead of truth in international politics we have Public Relations as an eyelash job.
Let us put it another way. Who drops bombs knowing that, even if this is not their intent, it will kill thousands of civilians? Who organizes covert operations so that sometimes it is hard to make sense in a world of intelligence/counter-intelligence? Who disavows torture and ships people to states where torture will be applied? The answer is that our governments do. They are also the ones who get to define terrorism, so that killers in uniform possess a form of moral impunity. The fact is that the London bombings are a norm of militarised global behaviour. That is the world we live in.
The difference is that the norm is now not only knocking on our door, the door is being opened from the inside. When we hear reports that ordinary people in the Middle East say things such as 'now they know what it is like for us', the crash of the walls of privilege that have separated us from so much suffering is audible.The association of politics and blood is powerful. It's the stuff of nationalism; it's the stuff that fuels revenge killings.
As revulsion at the spilling of British blood drives many people back into the misnamed War on Terror, it becomes increasingly necessary to ask of ourselves and others why it is that we do not feel similarly repulsed (really, not abstractly) by the actions of our governments. As we rush towards an Orwellian future of identity cards and lawful incarceration without charge to deal with terrorism, we have to ask what measures are in place to deal with the use of the world's largest war machines possessed by the flawed democratic states of the west.
The war against terror, in its broadest sense as a war against all forms of indiscriminate violence for political ends, was lost when it went back to church. When the main moral compass consists of good and evil, the powerful politics of demagogy and propaganda take over – Christian and Islamic. As our leaders call on Muslim leaders to rein in the extremists, to weed out the perverters of the holy word, why do they not ask the same of their own Christian leaders?
The answer is that they would be out of a job. London blood will now be used to advance the security apparatuses that are so implicated in the violence they profess to eradicate. This is not the way forward. The most productive response to terrorism is not to stand behind our leaders in the name of blood. Instead, we need to stand against them in the name of a more just world. One big step in this direction is to recognise the moral bankruptcy of western states just as we recognise the moral bankruptcy of terrorism in all its forms. The alternative is more blood and eyeliner.
By: Michael Connors Wednesday 20 July 2005
New Matilda
Terrorism is all too real in its deathly intent. It is not a furphy, a mere distraction from the impulses of US imperial expansion. But without understanding broader geo-political imperatives we become mendacious about the world we live in. To paint terrorism, as it is conventionally understood, as the gravest threat facing us is to accept a certain view of the world. Last week I suggested (link here) we join the War on Error - and one of the errors that needs to be addressed is the portrayal of terrorists as subhuman and irrational.
After the London bombings a good many people were horrified by a mindset that could entertain death and destruction for seemingly inscrutable reasons. Rightly so. This wasn't abstract horror, the kind we all feel about the endless and needless deaths resulting from war somewhere. This was a visceral response, let's call it repulsion, towards the London bombers: after all, the Leeds lads had it all: football matches, English butties, Yorkshire prettiness, and still they bombed us.
Now in a world where borders are internal - in culturally segregated communities - a new question for the twenty-first Century: why does someone become a suicide bomber in the West? Before London the evasive answer was: They envy our freedom, they are humiliated by our success, they resent that they can never be, truly, one of us. They secretly desire to be so. But what of the London bombers, hailing from within?
To deal with what appears to be extreme cases of anomie, experts will now subject us to endless psychological profiles and references to cult indoctrination. Even the cities of the West will be profiled. We may be told that the nature of life in bleak urban-scapes characterised by materialism, racism and rising levels of violence suggests some counter-intuitive answers. It may be that 'terrorists' do not so much 'envy' us as they feel disappointed with us and the apparent meaningless of our lives. This is a familiar story, one of the West failing to live up to its rhetoric. Some of this may be useful, providing limited insights about why some people are vulnerable to the suggestion that they ought to die for the sake of what they perceive as a higher cause. It's all been done before.
Armies of social scientists tried to figure out the attraction of communism - what was it that attracted people to deviant forms of political behaviour. Mothers? Toilet training? Exaggerated sense of injustice? It seems even the most trivial social slight can lead people to ghastly deeds. Let the psychologists of terror write their highly cited papers, let them devise schemes to wean children from terror. Let the doctors of multiculturalism revisit theories of liberal tolerance. But the bombs will still explode, as long as the West refuses to sit in the therapist's chair, preferring instead to gaze at itself admiringly, while applying billions of dollars of cosmetics. Instead of truth in international politics we have Public Relations as an eyelash job.
Let us put it another way. Who drops bombs knowing that, even if this is not their intent, it will kill thousands of civilians? Who organizes covert operations so that sometimes it is hard to make sense in a world of intelligence/counter-intelligence? Who disavows torture and ships people to states where torture will be applied? The answer is that our governments do. They are also the ones who get to define terrorism, so that killers in uniform possess a form of moral impunity. The fact is that the London bombings are a norm of militarised global behaviour. That is the world we live in.
The difference is that the norm is now not only knocking on our door, the door is being opened from the inside. When we hear reports that ordinary people in the Middle East say things such as 'now they know what it is like for us', the crash of the walls of privilege that have separated us from so much suffering is audible.The association of politics and blood is powerful. It's the stuff of nationalism; it's the stuff that fuels revenge killings.
As revulsion at the spilling of British blood drives many people back into the misnamed War on Terror, it becomes increasingly necessary to ask of ourselves and others why it is that we do not feel similarly repulsed (really, not abstractly) by the actions of our governments. As we rush towards an Orwellian future of identity cards and lawful incarceration without charge to deal with terrorism, we have to ask what measures are in place to deal with the use of the world's largest war machines possessed by the flawed democratic states of the west.
The war against terror, in its broadest sense as a war against all forms of indiscriminate violence for political ends, was lost when it went back to church. When the main moral compass consists of good and evil, the powerful politics of demagogy and propaganda take over – Christian and Islamic. As our leaders call on Muslim leaders to rein in the extremists, to weed out the perverters of the holy word, why do they not ask the same of their own Christian leaders?
The answer is that they would be out of a job. London blood will now be used to advance the security apparatuses that are so implicated in the violence they profess to eradicate. This is not the way forward. The most productive response to terrorism is not to stand behind our leaders in the name of blood. Instead, we need to stand against them in the name of a more just world. One big step in this direction is to recognise the moral bankruptcy of western states just as we recognise the moral bankruptcy of terrorism in all its forms. The alternative is more blood and eyeliner.
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