Diaspora and terror: The Osama difference

Aboeprijadi Santoso, Journalist, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Most of the perpetrators of the Sept. 11 terror attacks in the United States are educated men with strong political and ideological motives, who have lived abroad for sometime. Yet, for all their claims for the Muslim world, their actions are not likely to incite popular revolts, but may change the politics of diaspora.

In the "diaspora" -- a term originally used for the settling of scattered colonies of Jews but which can now apply to any peoples -- there have been historical figures of various types and importance.

Terrorists or not, they usually have a political mission. They made history while wandering abroad, or wandered abroad in order to make history.

Tan Malaka, for example, spent years in the Netherlands and Europe in the 1920s propagating Marxism and continued his mission in Asia; whereas Soepomo and Ki Hadjar Dewantara in the 1920 brought home to Indonesia from the Netherlands chauvinist and authoritarian ideas, as did the Cambodians Pol Pot and Khieu Samphan, who returned from France to become architects of the Khmer Rouge's terror state in the 1970s.

While the diaspora are politically diverse, each indicates a historic momentum. Some 50 years after Tan Malaka, Indonesia's left wing stranded abroad, the poet Sobron Aidit, in Paris, referring to the tragedy of 1965-1966 following the failed coup attempt, described life in exile as part of "blood, pain and spirit". Men like Osama bin Laden, as a Saudi fighter in Afghanistan's liberation war against the Soviet army in the 1980s, and others who fought against colonial rulers or a repressive army, too, might have a similar experience of "blood, pain and spirit", linking their struggle, home and ideals.

Blood and spirit, thus, symbolize the cause. Another exile, the painter Basuki Resobowo, once illustrated the strong link between the cause and the home country by painting Tan Malaka as one of "few" Indonesian freedom fighters who "never sold his country" since the others, in his view, did just that either for the Dutch, the Japanese, the Soviet party bosses, or the Western imperialists.

There have been, of course, other discourses among the diaspora. Former president Abdurrahman Wahid, while studying and living in Iraq, Egypt and Europe in the 1970s, explored political ideals in search of a cause by learning world religions and expanding his networks with non-governmental organizations and social-democratic parties in Europe. In short, a home front is not just a place, but, once linked to an ideal, it becomes part of the cause.

What is new about bin Laden and his men are that those factors -- a historic and conceptual reference, and a home front as a context for struggle -- seem totally irrelevant to them. Bin Laden said he fights for Islam and would dream of an "Islamic" life. Yet as he carried it anywhere he went, no one seemed to know whom, where and what country or model he is fighting for. Neither did he think it was important to explain them.

The difference, therefore, between men like bin Laden and men like Tan Malaka, is not merely a matter of who is a "terrorist" and who is a "freedom fighter". This may end up in the stereotype of one saying to his adversary that "your terrorist is my freedom fighter". Yet it should be obvious ever since Robespierre at the time of the French Revolution, that terror has always been an instrument of state power; indeed, the greatest political violence had always been a state's creation (Hitler's Holocaust, Stalin's Gulag, Soeharto's New Order).

Meanwhile state terror had changed from being almost a state monopoly to a symbiotic relationship between the interests of state elements and that of groups within society. Like Tan Malaka, bin Laden is a Muslim, who built a political network wherever he was. The former playboy, now a millionaire Islamist, changed from an anti-Soviet fighter, working with the likes of the United States, to a global terrorist with alleged links to Pakistan's military intelligence, the Taliban, and elements of the United States and Saudi Arabia.

Needless to say Tan Malaka was a very different figure of a very different time: A consistent, not fanatic Muslim and multilingual cosmopolite, a Marxist who understood history and societies, but, above all, an anti-imperialist global fighter.

The most significant difference, however, is that for men like bin Laden, their struggle does not need a conceptual definition in social, geographic or in any terms.

Since Afghanistan's struggle of the 1980s, he became first and foremost a global Islamist, who saw the Soviet's withdrawal as the first victory "of Islam over the West" after centuries of defeat.

It follows that the triumph should go global. This ideal is supposed to be realized anytime and anywhere -- it is an anti- historical and anti-sociological idea.

In contrast to Iran's Islamic revolution, the Osamas of this world do not have a specific societal target. When Ayatollah Khomeini decided to end his exile in France and return home in 1979, his country had been embroiled in a mass-based revolt led by the religious leaders -- the Mullahs -- and the middle classes against Shah Pahlevi's despotic rule.

Yet bin Laden seems to assume that he could incite a revolution anywhere without a revolutionary momentum. His agitation, therefore, may lead to unrest and terror, but is not likely to cause a popular revolt.

How different from a few years ago. In 1995 the Southeast Asia expert, Benedict R.O.G. Anderson, in a lecture in Amsterdam introduced "long-distance nationalism." Ethnic groups in the diaspora, he argued, increasingly played a crucial role in the emancipatory and independent movements in their home countries. He cited the rich Sikh groups living in Canada, and the Armenian, Kashmir, Polish, Baltic and Irish immigrants in the U.S. and Europe.

From the 1970s to the 1990s nationalism has been strengthened, not by relying on the resources at home, but by being encouraged, financed and even shaped by comrades abroad. They did not need to pay tax, but could contribute from a distance with "terror" and "heroism".

So too was the role of the East Timorese in Java, Portugal and Australia up to 1999, and the Acehnese in Malaysia, Sweden, Norway and the U.S. Thanks to modern communications, geography becomes less and less important.

Yet the Osamas went far beyond the long-distance nationalists. Geography, home and social context become meaningless. For they took a big step by hijacking a religion for the sake of a great struggle, for which there is apparently no defined cause in terms of time-frame, geographic space or social program; and they did it by manipulating a popular faith, poverty and resentment, with a simple set of bipolar categories of "we" versus "them", using a method of an invisible network of terror.

It is this basic transformation of political discourse and vehicle, manifested by the aggression against the superpower on its own soil on Sept. 11, which makes the great difference.

The "Osamas" great leap forward -- and the U.S. reaction -- has in turn dealt a blow to the Irish nationalist's struggle. Irish-American donors have recently stopped their contributions totaling millions of dollars annually, forcing the Irish Republican Army for the first time to agree to the decommissioning of their weapons.

And the Russians now feel they have international support to crush the "terrorist" rebels in Chechnya. Meanwhile the U.S. authorities have considered putting more organizations on the list of terrorists, and in Europe, the diaspora movements are increasingly being watched.

While bin Laden's method could become a serious threat to democracy and pluralism, at the same time, it can be used as a pretext for a state's actions affecting the civil rights of its citizens.