War on terrorism should focus on root causes: Experts

War on terrorism should focus on root causes: Experts

Muninggar Sri Saraswati, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

International experts have called for a new pattern of
cooperation among governments across the globe in their fight
against the root causes of transnational crime, saying no single
country would be able to win the war against it alone.

Hans-J Geissmann of the German-based Institute for Peace
Research and Security Policy at the University of Hamburg
criticized world leaders for only tackling the "symptoms" of many
transnational crimes, including terrorism.

"We know the risks we are dealing with. But the problem is we
have only dealt with the symptoms so far," he said after
presenting his speech to close the Second German/Asian Dialogue
on Security Policy in Jakarta on Tuesday.

Geissmann said the governments should deal with the root
causes of the problems, and find a new kind of international
cooperation.

Some 30 participants of the two-day meeting from 11 countries
agreed that the root causes of transnational crimes included
poverty, injustice and social disorder.

"We need to find a new kind of cooperation in international
relations, something that we are lacking now," Geissmann said.

He also pointed to some "private actors", which he blamed for
inciting injustice in the world that led to hatred, radicalism
and fundamentalism.

Many countries, he said, only focused on handling specific
issues -- which are all the symptoms of transnational crimes.

"We now learn that these specific issues are linked to each
other. Interference of various issues, which now have already
become complex, must be brought back into balance," Geissmann
said.

Similarly, researcher Kusnanto Anggoro of Indonesia's Center
for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) said the dialog
concluded that aside from political commitment, the governments
should respectively translate their policies of eradicating
transnational crimes into practical measures.

"Each country faces its domestic problems in implementing the
policy," he argued, adding that each government needed
international support to fight transnational crimes.

Kusnanto hopes such dialogs would continue in the future in a
bid to explore possibilities to root out terrorism and other
global crimes.

"Perhaps, we need to involve decision-makers in further
dialogs in the hope that they would be willing to accommodate our
proposals," he said.

Earlier on Monday, Rainer Arnold, a member of the German
Parliament, told the same forum that all countries should respond
positively to calls for fighting the root causes of transnational
crimes.

Governments needed to enact consistent security policies of
disarmament, arms control, and non-proliferation and resolutions
of regional conflicts, he said.

Arnold said it would not be enough for them to merely work on
global disarmament and settling regional conflicts.

Maj. Gen. Sudrajat, the director general for defense strategy
at the Indonesian Ministry of Defense, concurred, saying that a
change in security perspectives was essential to cope with
terrorism.

"We can no longer use coercion to fight terrorism and
extremism. It should be faced with ideology. We should also
promote moderation," he said.