Stopping terrorism

The hostage crisis in Peru has taken us back to the 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s, when taking hostages -- be they people on planes, in embassies or on trains -- was very much in vogue. Now, in the era of cyberspace, the method belongs to a bygone time. The few remaining revolutionary groups in the world can easily turn to the Internet to publicize their causes, whatever they may be. Some who have done this are likelier to receive sympathy, or at least find sympathetic ears, than if they resort to the kind of terrorism that the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement is using.

By raiding the residence of the Japanese ambassador in Lima and taking more than 500 hostages, including dozens of foreign ambassadors, the self-proclaimed Marxist group have grabbed world headlines. But they get very little sympathy, if at all, and plenty of condemnation. Even the majority of Peruvians, whose cause they claim to represent, despise them.

Drawing attention appears the stronger reason behind the decision of the 20 rebels to take the VIPs captive rather than the release of their colleagues from jail. But as the stand-off continues, the world is more interested in knowing about the ordeal the hostages are going through, rather than the cause the rebels are fighting for.

Even Marxism, the ideological outfit of the rebels, and the more radical Maoism that is adhered to by the Shining Path, a more extreme rebel movement in Peru, are no longer embraced by the early major proponents of the ideologies. Russia has turned to liberalism and free trade and China is profiting from the experience with free market economy.

The hostage-taking crisis, therefore, is out of tune with the changes of time and reality.

Some of the released hostages may have praises about the strong disciplines shown by their young captors, and about how kindly they were treated inside the embassy, but they are still a bunch of terrorists, whose method cannot, and must not be tolerated.

Terrorism, in whatever outfit it comes, never succeeds, even when it was most popular 15 or 30 years ago. There is no reason to believe that the 1990s will be any different. This is not only because counterterrorism has significantly improved, but because there has been a tacit agreement among most governments in the world never to allow terrorism to prevail on anyone's soil.

The lesson of the 1960s and 1970s is that terrorism can be contagious, spreading quickly to other parts of the world. The United States, most other Latin American countries, and even Indonesia, all have as much at stake as Fujimori in ensuring that terrorism be defeated. The Peruvian president has taken the right stand of not negotiating with the rebels, let alone giving in to their demands. The bottom line is that the risk of allowing terrorism is far greater than the political risk of losing the remaining 100 or so people still held captive by the rebels.

But the Peru crisis spawns another lesson for developing countries, besides dealing with counterterrorism: that wide disparity between the rich and poor breeds discontent, which can lead to rebellions and eventually terrorism. In this era, where ideological differences matter very little, Marxism and Maoism are likely to be convenient labels for the movements. Underneath their ideological masks, these movements represent people disenchanted with the economy, more so than with the political situation.

Fujimori's free market reforms may have improved the economic trends in his country, but Peru, like many Latin American countries, suffers from gross inequality between its rich and poor. His reforms have aggravated the situation, with the rich becoming richer and the poor becoming poorer.

The lesson from Peru is that while the best way of dealing with terrorism is not to deal with it at all, one must still find the very causes of that terrorism and solve the problems at their roots.