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by Stuart Round / February 5th 2007

Diary of a teenage terrorist

The border crossing was nothing out of the ordinary. The usual paperwork; followed by a search of the 18 passengers’ lockers, and then the truck - camping gear, spare parts, the medical kit and other paraphernalia necessary to get an overland safari along the 7,000 miles of African roads between Nairobi and Cape Town. Lastly, they brought out the sniffer dog, a black and tan Alsatian. His loyalty may have been beyond question, but it seemed that his sniffing talents were not. “Any guns on board?” the officer asked when the dog sat down, so I lied, and told him there weren’t, and off we went into South Africa.

Had this officer had more faith in his pooch he probably would have earned them both a medal.  For inside the truck now rolling toward Johannesburg, heat-sealed inside foil plastic wrapping, packed in boxes, hidden in two specially built 4 inch wide voids in the body, were 32 AK47 assault rifles with ammunition, several pounds of TNT, a whole bunch of hand grenades - detonators packed separately, for safety - two RPG7 rocket propelled grenade launchers, and a handful of Makarov 9mm semi automatic pistols; all of which was destined for the military wing of the African National Congress (ANC), UmKhonto we Sizwe.

And so it went on, for 6 years, until we had collectively moved 40 tonnes of small arms to help the South African people liberate themselves from the scourge of Apartheid, and during which time we were happily never caught.  This was the Africa Hinterland Operation set up during the 1980s, in which the ANC established a safari company in London, and to which I, a white British lad, was recruited at the tender age of 19.  Sitting innocent passengers on a powder keg of explosives, we were to head into South Africa in breach of the tourism embargo, and right under the nose of the regime.

Veterans of armed struggle: ANC leader Nelson Mandela with Fidel Castro

To some, this makes me a hero, which is nice but not really deserved.  My heroism was never tested under the beatings, electrodes, and stress positions of the normal South African police interrogation of the time; the long years in prison or the long slow walk to the gallows – still singing songs of freedom – walked by many of my comrades in arms.  To me, they were the heroes of the day.

However, to others I would have been a terrorist, and a murderer.  Legally, this along with many other activities of the period has been declared in front of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and due amnesties given, but morally the question remains.  In today’s age of the War on Terror, can it ever be right to bear arms against the state?

The problem is one of how to define terrorism.  The American Heritage Dictionary says: “The unlawful use or threatened use of force or violence by a person or an organized group against people or property with the intention of intimidating or coercing societies or governments, often for ideological or political reasons” - note that the operative word here is unlawful. Presumably then, the lawful use or threatened use of force or violence by a person or an organized group against people or property with the intention of intimidating or coercing societies or governments often for ideological or political reasons, would be fine. That, I guess, is what we call war.

However, beyond the dictionary definition, it could be argued that there is a popular understanding of terrorism that encompasses any deliberate attack on civilians delivered by non-conventional means.

Used by the ANC in the South African struggle, ‘terrorism’ was a military tactic.  It was a strategic tool to reach a political objective, and it has to be said that in that case it proved to be effective.  Previously, you only needed to fear violence if you were poor and black; the affluent elite could live their privileged existence peacefully, islands amid a sea of suffering.  Whilst used with great caution and restraint, the armed struggle literally exploded that sense of security and helped push the protagonists towards what was eventually an orderly and relatively peaceful transition of power.

In times of war, there is a tendency for the combatants to become brutalised, and for them to dehumanise their enemy.  In the ANC’s case, under the leadership of the late Oliver Tambo this was anticipated and mitigated by the maintenance of strict internal discipline.  Whilst some loss of life was inevitable, it was minimised.  This stemmed from a political understanding that resisted a descent into ethnic sectarianism, a position reflected in the high numbers of white people who were full and active members of the ANC.

A planned attack on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange was abandoned due to the probable extent of civilian casualties.  This not only reflected a concern for the maintenance of international support, but a genuine desire to make a point with as little killing and maiming as possible.  The way in which this tactic is employed clearly does reflect upon the moral fibre of those who employ it. 

There are other cases in history besides South Africa where terrorism has also led to present day democratic government.  Many anti-colonial struggles such as Algeria and Kenya, not to mention the establishment of the state of Israel, which began with the 1946 bombing of the King David Hotel – an early example of what we would today understand as a terror attack.  In Israel / Palestine, the terror continues to this day, and still for the same reason.

London, 7th July 2005. 52 people died and hundreds were injured.

As a military tactic, terrorism is the tool of the militarily overwhelmed.  You might perhaps have the capability to steal and use one tank, for a while, but you could never hope to win a war with it.  The current popular definition of terrorism now encompasses any war of the poor, the stateless or the dispossessed; and it fails because it defines the morality of a military action by the method of delivery of the weapon, and by whether it was deployed by a government. 

The other major component of a terrorist action is of course the victim.  This is usually a civilian in no way individually responsible for the problem, someone chosen by chance to pay the price of the perceived wrongs of society at large.  This is what makes terrorism truly terrifying.  As someone who at the time of the 7/7 London bombings used the Piccadilly line through Kings Cross on a daily basis I can appreciate the impact that this has, and the level of horror involved.  However, as intelligent and rational human beings we should still be able to think beyond our fear.  We should be able to think beyond the indignation at the wasted life, and the revulsion at how it was lost.  At least, we should if we want to begin to understand how anyone could do such a thing.  Perhaps the best place to begin to do so is with that very feeling.

People who perpetrate acts of terror feel entitled to do so by the suffering they, or whoever they associate themselves with, perceive they have already endured.   No-one embarks on a terrorist act lightly, and the sense of putting your own life on the line to execute such an act would only add to whatever sense of entitlement you had to begin with.  The indignation of the victims’ families and society at large afterwards probably only fuels your anger, in that those same people who cry over their ‘own’ when they are hurt, still stand by and do nothing when the victim is you or your kind.  Terrorists may hold different beliefs, but they are rarely crazy or stupid.

We need not look too far back in our own history to see the deliberate targeting of civilians.  The ‘carpet bombings’ of many German cities towards the end of WWII were specifically aimed at civilians; all were held to be guilty through a collective culpability for the actions of their government.  Likewise, the US atomic attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were deliberately aimed at wiping out whole cities.  The rights and wrongs of each of these situations have been and will be debated elsewhere. If we wish to base our definition of terror on the status of the victim, we have examples in our own recent histories that would still be defended by the main architects of today’s war, but which in terms of human tragedy and the suffering of innocents, in terms of sheer terror, put all of today’s terrorist attacks in the shade.

The city of Hiroshima after the US nuclear bombing. Over 200,000 people died when the USA used WMDs against Japanese civilians in August 1945.

Terrorism is an ugly horrible thing, but no more or less than any lawful act of war- as far as the victim or their family is concerned, dead is dead.  One of the results of terrorism is that it confronts us with the kind of suffering meted out by our own governments all the time.   

It confronts the lazy comfort of British, American, wherever you live; life that thinks that terrible things only happen in other places, and it confronts our slightly racist belief that such things don’t happen to people like us. 

It tells us that we live in a global world, and that we are not immune from what ails it no matter how great our military power. 

Most of all, it tells us that even if we have become apathetic and cynical about politics and those who rule us, others still hold us accountable for their actions, and include us in a collective responsibility. 

Where then does this leave us?  With the War on Terror, we have a concept for a war against a military tactic- a concept which is intellectually lazy and very confused.  It misses the point entirely.  After all, was the American state itself not founded on revolution and civil war? 

The answer to the question of morality lies as much in what you are fighting for, as in what you are fighting against.   This is where the phrase ‘War on Terror’ is deliberately ambiguous, because otherwise it would allow for criticism on both sides, rather than the position that the US prefers to maintain: ‘if you are not for us, you are against us’.  As we can now see, the US administration’s obsession with confronting the tactics of Al Qaeda has made the more urgent task of confronting their ideology much more difficult.

When I was a terrorist, my moral guardian was the ‘Freedom Charter’, a document drawn up by a Congress of the People, in Kliptown, South Africa in 1955.  It guaranteed the equal rights of all citizens of the new South Africa regardless of race or gender, including the former oppressors.  It was a visionary document.  It was worth fighting for, it was worth dying for, and today it forms the central core of the South African Constitution.  In 2004, under President Thabo Mbeki, the ANC was returned to government for a third consecutive term with an increased popular vote of just under 70%.

Democracy has never been a gift, and never the property of any empire; it is a right that has always been won at the expense of brave people’s lives in struggle.  Those who now use it as a war cry to invade and attack other countries, and who attempt to impose it by the gun, fundamentally undermine every principle upon which any democracy has ever been founded.  This is more than an abuse of principle, this is an outright hijacking.

It is my hope that enough people who like me believe in secular rationality, science and free thought, will one day reclaim the concept of democracy, and re-instate values based on the things we have in common as human beings - such as a desire for self-determination, free speech, peace and prosperity - rather than either the sectarian interests of a few radical Islamists, or the imperial interests of a few radical born-again Christians and their corporate sponsors.

Morality is not simply a matter of legal definitions; it is also a question of justice.