The Global Context 

Alamin Mazrui

(Ohio State University) 

Statement presented at the Workshop on the Kenya Anti-Terrorism Bill (2006),

Sponsored by the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights,

Safari Park Hotel, Nairobi (Kenya), May 22, 2006.

                                                                                                                      

                      There is enough circumstantial evidence to convince even the most skeptical observer that Kenya's Anti-Terrorism Bill is part of a global project of the USA precipitated in part by the tragic attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. It is true, of course, that Kenya has had its own internally-induced forms of terrorism with Kenyans themselves as the primary target. Notorious among these were the politically engineered massacres in Rift Valley and Likoni/Kwale that became the subject of the Akiwumi Commission. But successive Kenya governments have not found it imperative to enact any special legislation to address this peculiar crime of "ethnic cleansing" which, in every respect, conforms to the definition of terrorism provided in the Bill – i.e. "the unlawful use of violence or threat of use of violence, with intent to advance a political, religious, ethnic, ideological or such other cause; and includes any unlawful use of violence or threat of use of violence with intent to put the public or section of the public in fear."

          It has been argued, of course, that the attempts to forge an international alliance at the legislative and institutional levels to combat terrorism have been triggered by the recent internationalization of the crime itself. But, in fact, terrorism had gone international long before the September 11, 2001 attacks in the USA. Kenyans certainly remember the 1980 anti-Israel bombing of the Norfolk Hotel, the 1998 anti-American bombing of the American Embassy in Nairobi – leaving a number of the Kenyan dead that is proportional to the American dead in the World Trade Center attacks –, the 2002 anti-Israeli blast at the Paradise Hotel in Kikambala, and the attempted downing of an Israeli aircraft in the same period. All these were manifestations of international terrorism. For several years Israel experienced a wave of terrorist activities that were also international in scale. The list of pre-9-11 incidents of terrorism that can be described as international, in other words, is quite long. But because the majority of the victims of these terrorist attacks were non-Americans, the world community as a whole did not find it necessary to create any international organizational and legislative structures against the crime.

          Neither did the USA itself introduce anti-terrorist legislation when it was subjected to  internal terrorism carried out by its own (American) people. The bombing of the government building in Oklahoma by William MacVeigh and his associates and which led to the loss of hundreds of American lives, for example, did not inspire any special legislation. Nor has the long-standing and recurrent terrorist attacks against people of color by White American racists in that country.

          It was not until the USA was attacked by the "Other" that there began a mushrooming of anti-terrorist legislation globally. Hitherto, the US government was too racially arrogant to believe that there was any species of human beings "out there" smart enough to organize and execute any grand attack on its own soil. September 11, 2001 changed all that. It was only then that the USA passed its own anti-terrorist legislation in the form of the draconian Patriot Act, and proceeded to pressure other countries to follow suit.

          What is clear, then, is that when the USA defines terrorism as international its does not necessarily refer to the scope of its intended target(s) – for that target has been AMERICA primarily – but to the scope of its strategic operation. And for the USA, the anti-terrorist laws that are being promulgated in various countries as a direct result of American pressure are important only to the extent that they can protect American lives against the machinations of the "Other." Part VII of Kenya's Anti-Terrorism Bill provides for international assistance and extradition arrangements in combating terrorism. It is easy to see that the provision is intended to arm the American government with the necessary intelligence from various international sources to enable it pre-empt terrorist attacks against Americans. If, in the process, the exchange of information ends up saving Kenyan lives, that outcome is quite incidental in the American view. There is little doubt that the US government does not place the same value on the lives of the "Other" (especially the lives of people of color) as it does on (white) American lives.

          The Kenya and other anti-terrorist legislations that have recently been put in place in several countries are yet another demonstration of the hegemonic side of the American face of globalization. What we are witnessing is the extraordinary subordination of world opinions and memory to American power. Take, for example, the offensive against Iran because of its efforts to harness nuclear energy. The entire world is being mobilized to condemn this relatively modest Iranian initiative. At the same time, however, there is total amnesia about the danger posed by the club of nations that already possesses nuclear weapons. Some of the members of this nuclear club (like the USA) even have records of utilizing such weapons of massive destruction against innocent civilians, as in the case of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Those who attempt to possess nuclear capability are depicted as the evil force while those already possessing nuclear weapons are projected as potential innocent victims. And the world continues with its chorus, "Amen."

          Similar efforts to erase our memory have been in process since September 11, 2001. The history of Africa once revolved around the colonial moment: We talked of pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial Africa. Later, events on the continent became compounded by the dynamics of a new temporal division, Cold War and post-Cold War. Now there is a new periodization that is being imposed: pre-9-11 and post-9-11. I just completed reviewing a book on globalization and language of instruction policies in Africa, Asia and the Middle East for the Comparative Education Review. I was shocked by the extent to which language-in-education policies in several countries are being conceptualized in terms of the pre- and post-9-11 frame.

          The same arrogance of power that once informed European colonial powers in relation to the colonized, has now become the hallmark of American foreign policy under Pax-Americana. And it is precisely this arrogance of power that led one American news anchor person, Katie Couric, to describe the bombing of the World Trade Center as "the worst terrorist act in history" (NBC Today, March 11, 2002) – not in American history, mind you, not even in recent history, but in the entirety of human history!!! As Africans we are thus expected (at best) to confine to the subconscious the terror of Black enslavement, and the terrorism of colonialism and Apartheid.

          This sense of American entitlement to define a world and a history that we share (by virtue of its status as the only super-power) is, in fact, one of the reasons it has continued to attract the wrath of sections of the world's population. Furthermore, because of the very logic of maintaining the status of "the most powerful", the USA has long been in the business of manufacturing enemies – real and imagined. According to John Woods, the esteemed professor of Middle Eastern Studies at Chicago University, for example, "Almost immediately after the collapse of Communism, Islam emerged as the new evil force" in the imagination of the American government (New York Times, August 28, 1995). This led to a trend of demonizing Islam and Muslims in the American media, a subject that has been discussed extensively by the late Edward Said among other scholars. Because the Muslim world appeared most resistant to American cultural infusion, it was singled out for a political and, sometimes, military offensive.

          Equally important a factor in the terrorist targeting of America, has been America's own record as a terrorist state. This is the subject of Noam Chomsky's The Culture of Terrorism (2002) and of some of his other writings, and to a lesser extent of Ali Mazrui's Islam: Between Globalization and Counter-Terrorism (2005). Some of America's acts of terrorism have been quite direct. The USA is reported to have used cluster bombs in its attack on Benghazi, Libya, in 1988. The US terrorist bombing of Sudan's Al-Shifa pharmaceutical plant in August 1998 is said to have been more devastating to the Sudan – in both actual and silent death toll and on the socio-economic well-being of the society at large – than the September 11, 2001 bombings were to the USA (Noam Chomsky, 9-11. New York: Seven Seas, 2001: 45-49). The illegal US invasion of Iraq has also entailed numerous acts of terrorism that have been reported by human rights organizations.

          Apart from direct state terrorism, there has been state-supported terrorism by private movements. We know that the USA subsidized Jonas Savimbi's UNITA which was not known to be fastidious about its methods of struggle. It continued to have a love affair with the terrorist Apartheid regime in South Africa even at its moments of great ruthlessness. It armed Osama bin Laden (the leader of Al-Qaeda) and the Taliban in Afghanistan in their struggle against the Soviet Union: These were the same forces that later turned their terrorist rage against the USA. The USA has been a bulwark behind Israeli terrorism against Palestinians. Israeli reprisal raids are often a case of counter-terrorism – though equally insensitive to civilian lives and often more brutal and destructive in effect.  The first Gulf War against Iraq started on a note of liberation of Kuwait, but it soon turned into a terrorist orgy.  More recently the USA has been supporting warlords in Somalia in its bid to pre-empt the establishment of an Islamist regime. Some of these warlords have openly employed terrorist methods. Certainly there is no reason to exclude all these forms of state-sponsored terrorism, be they direct or indirect, from moral scrutiny.

           Section 36(1) of the Anti-Terrorism Bill makes reference to "a counter-terrorism convention" to which Kenya is or is expected to be a party. This provision is again quite in accord with American interests as well as its orientation. For counter-terrorism – the exercise of using terrorist strategies to fight against terrorism – has been part of the recent history of the USA. But are Kenyans willing to share the responsibility that is implied in this section of the Bill, of American counter-terrorist offensive? This question brings me to my conclusion.

            It is important that Kenya assesses the issue of terrorism in terms of its own security interests. Kenya has been a target of repeated anti-American and anti-Israeli attacks because of the perception that it has a special relationship with the USA and Israel, nations that have oppressive legacies to one degree or another. Unlike South Africa, for example, Kenya, has been unwilling to condemn American atrocities world-wide (including the invasion and occupation of Iraq). Under the circumstances, the introduction of American-engineered anti-terrorist legislation can heighten rather that diminish the danger of terrorism in Kenya. Let us remember that both Spain and Britain became targets of terrorism only because the two agreed to be part of a military coalition of the willing headed by the USA. The push for anti-terrorist legislation world-wide and for a counter-terrorism convention is part of an attempt to forge a political coalition of the willing (which, no doubt, has military consequences). The danger of being a member of such a coalition is that Kenya may be transformed from an indirect target of terrorism (aimed at America and Israel) to a direct target (aimed at its own people and institutions). Is Kenya willing to pay this price and endanger, more directly, the lives of its citizens just to protect America against terrorism?

          We all appreciate the wisdom in the saying that "power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." We are yet to appreciate the reverse formula: that "powerlessness too corrupts, and absolute powerlessness corrupts absolutely." State and state-sponsored terrorism is an aspect of the corruption that power generates: It has repeatedly been used by the USA to punish those nations and organizations that are unwilling to tow the American line. Non-state terrorism, on the other hand, is an aspect of the corruption fostered by powerlessness, a powerlessness that has risen to new proportions under the neo-liberal order. That powerlessness in its absolute desperation, in other words, is a fertile ground for non-state terrorism. Rather than allow itself to be pressured into enacting anti-terrorism legislation and joining the political coalition of the willing, therefore, Kenya would do well to take full advantage of the World Social Forum that will be hosted in Nairobi in January 2007 to join the leadership of the growing forces calling for a new world order that will be respectful of diversity and different models of politico-economic development, and that will seek to eliminate the state of abject poverty, powerlessness and desperation that abounds among peoples of  the "Third World."

  May 22, 2006.