January29, 2007:
Terrorist movements, like wars, are easier to start than to stop.
With terrorists, the problem is usually the hardcore believers, who continue to
fight on when most of their fellows have given up the struggle. This is what is
going on in Iraq, but there are several other current examples of this. The IRA
(Irish Republican Army) got going in the 1970s (as a resurgence of the
organization of the same name from earlier in the century). After about thirty
years of violent attacks, most of the IRA accepted peace offers. But several
diehard factions continued to kill. As long as a few of those lads are still
out there, the IRA violence won't be over until those holdouts die of old age,
or are captured. Another recent example is the ETA (Euskadi Ta Askatasuna, or
Basque Homeland and Freedom). Basque is an ancient language, related to no
other in the world, except possibly some in the Caucasus. The Basque people
straddle the Spanish-French border, but are mainly in northwest Spain. They are
the only cultural survivors of the people living in European before the
Indo-European tribes (Celts, Slavs, Latins, Germans, etc) arrived over 6,000
years ago. The Basques are survivors, and the ETA is the latest in a long line
of radical separatist organizations. Founded in the 1950s, ETA used terror
tactics for decades, until many Basques accepted peace offers from the Spanish
government in the 1970s. But, as is usually the case, hardcore members fought
on, with even more determination than the IRA. There are thought to be several
hundred of them left, and they are still killing people. Like the IRA, old age
and more arrests are the only way to stop the ETA violence.
There
are several other organizations out there, similar to the IRA and ETA. The
current Islamic terrorist organizations will follow the same pattern. This can
be seen happening throughout the Arab world over the last half century, as many
terrorist organizations get destroyed, only to have some of their ideas, and a
few survivors, show up in new outfits. What happened, and is happening, in Iraq
is the Baath party (Saddams power base, which started out as a terrorist
organization in the 1950s), refusing to give up after Saddam was overthrown in
2003. Joining forces with al Qaeda (which can also trace it lineage back to the
1950s), both tried to convince the majority of Iraqi Sunni Arabs to join with
them in their fight against the Kurds and Shia Arabs (80 percent of the
population) and the "foreign occupiers, to put Baath back in power. While often
described by the mass media as a civil war, the Iraq situation is just another
mess created by terrorists trying to fight vastly outnumbered and win. It
rarely works. The result, in the Iraq case, is the majority of Iraqis now want
to expel all the Sunni Arabs from the country. This has been underway for
several years now, and nearly half the Sunnis are already gone. That sort of
expulsion is also all too common, and usually involves some terrorism as well.
Terrorism is expensive, more so to the terrorists than to their victims.