Euro-American Challenge And Africa's Response (2)

This treatise seeks, in a modest way, to investigate the correlation between injustice, terrorism and military intelligence, especially whether historical injustices are both the remote and immediate causes of terrorism and further, whether military intelligence operations escalate or serve the cause of peaceful resolution of disputes.

I would like to amalgamate the relevant information at my disposal to examine the historical and philosophical underpinnings of terrorism. The problem I have had with history is that unlike a river, which flows only one way downwards, history often repeats itself and is unpredictable.

Even Theodosius could not explain the phenomenon when we discussed it on the steps of the Areopagus centuries ago. The history of the struggle for human rights was well-documented by the Stoics, who struggled against Hellenistic tyranny.

Using natural law as their philosophical tool, their struggles for human rights portray scenes of coruscating brilliance of the human mind.

All through history, people have engaged in struggles with cosmic proportions to free themselves from oppression, suppression and exploitation. The old orders became desolate by the victories of revolutionaries. Under the double impact of the great geographical discoveries and the Industrial Revolution, European states embarked upon the colonization of nations in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Their methods were harsh and ruthless. The scars of colonial rule and slavery are still visible, centuries after the events took place long ago. These, are still depressingly evident. The memories of colonial injustices serve as the remote causes of modern terrorism.

The refusal by European states to apologise and make amends remains a sore issue in reconciliation. Above all, the condescending attitudes of some Euro-American people often evoke ill-will. Some Euro-American people do not seem to come to grips with African development in all fields. America, which did not colonise Africa, seems to have helped the continent more. Africa is seen as a metaphoric continent that never develops and never reforms. Its people and its leaders are often the butt of cruel jokes and caricaturing.

The use of military intelligence to weaken Arab and African progress are real and powerful. While Africans seem to have surrendered as a result of helplessness, the Arabs have resorted to hard retaliatory measures and they argued that their responses are in self-defence and in defence of Islam, their way of life. Their mode of struggle is characterized by violence and bloodshed.

We remember the Achille Lauro cruise ship incident, in October 1985, the PLO attack at Lod Airport on May 9, 1972, the murder of Israeli Olympic athletes in Munich on September, 5, 1972, the hi-jacking of an American plane and the payment of ransom in 1972, the Abu Nadal group’s attacks at Vienna and Rome airports, resulting in the killings of 19 passengers, the Berlin discothèque bomb that killed Sergeant K.T. Ford, the attack on a Kuwaiti Boeing 747 by Arab terrorists on April 5, 1988 and others too numerous to mention here.

One is horrified by the cheapness of human life. Human rights could have been better protected by international law but there are impediments like the non-availability of legal institutions in some states and the non-ratification of multilateral treaties on human rights. For example, some states have not ratified some human rights and environmental treaties and protocols.

Powerful states use military intelligence to pursue geopolitical goals and to fight terrorism Military intelligence is undeniably an important aspect of statecraft. It has political/military components Military intelligence operates both general and specific intelligence systems. African states and people must invest their energies in the field of military intelligence. It trains the mind and equips a people with the necessary alertness to respond to problems of statecraft.

In Euro-American states, all those holding important state positions are mostly from the military intelligence and diplomatic academies or similar outfits. In some African states neophytes wake up from obscurity and are posted to man political and diplomatic offices for which they have neither the training nor exposure. This has been a major inadequacy in the way some African states run their public affairs.

As a result, when these untrained hands interact with Europeans; their amateurish behaviour is used as a measure to assess African intelligence or the lack of it.

There is a difference between the craft of intelligence and the cult of intelligence. It is a craft when it is used to defend the higher interests of a state. The goals of intelligence methods must be geared towards peaceful ends. It is a cult when it is used to recruit, train both local and foreign staff to undertake actions that undermine other states, their leaders and citizens and in wanton interference in the internal affairs of opponents, be they governments or individuals though paid agents and people with misplaced consciences, who are ready to sell their compatriots for a fee.

African intelligence systems are weak because the technologies they use are made elsewhere and their technological advancement is elementary. Since many top officers are trained in foreign military academies, their independence is partly compromised.

It is indisputable that historical injustices, slavery, colonialism, racism, race-consciousness, xenophobia and other related intolerance lie at the root of terrorism. Those who are determined to seek revenge resort to the BUTCHER’S SOLUTION.

Current trends in the Middle East are pushing the world towards the brink. My fear is that some African states may be pushed to embrace the culture of violence resulting from deprivation, bad governance, extreme poverty and other related afflictions.

Conflicts in today’s world stem, in the main, from arrogance, racism, race-consciousness, blatant injustices in the international division of labour, unequal exchange,, dogmatism, greed, excruciating and gruelling frustrations, disrespect for peoples’ traditions and world -view, imposition of beliefs These have retarded man’s progress in the last two thousand years.

Today, the situation has dangerously moved from bleak to awful as hard talk about a possible Third World is causing concern. There have been overt negations of human rights, justice and humanitarianism by the use of military intelligence outfits in Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, in Gaza, in Pakistan, Darfur etc. As a result, both the insurgents and the counter-insurgents peddle the same logic of tightening the noose around each other, but this noose has limited length. It is, therefore, a lose/lose situation. Human beings are dying. Some Presidents often declare that their armies will fight to the last man .They are the last men!

I shall end this rueful narrative by calling on the United Nations to call an International Conference, where all states and peoples with various levels of discontent can submit their grievances so that a Committee can study both the remote and immediate causes of their discontent so that dialogue and negotiations can take place in the New Year.

The World looked on in 1918 and in 1939. Can we afford to look on again in this hostile epoch when some states are at logger-heads and at nuclear weapons poised?

The world is already very sensitive to injustices. Let us not add insult to injury by denigrating other members of the human family. It constitutes an injury on the Universal mind and will remain in living memory of generations of Africans, Asians and Latin Americans since JEHOVAH ADONAI decided to create coloured people, no-one can change it.

The utmost felony in the denigration of Africans is committed by some of our “leaders” who use every meeting with European officials to solicit for one assistance or the other. At times, they come fractionally close to grovelling. Put under pressure, the visiting officials make vague promises and leave. This is not good at all.

Finally, I now return to those who ridicule properly conferred titles because they did not seem to know what they were amused about. Alexander Pope once said that “A little learning is a dangerous thing. Drink deep or taste not the Pierarian spring. Its shallow draughts intoxicate the brain and drinking restores us again”

The hatred some Euro-American bear against some “black people'” is irrational, unwarranted and injurious to peaceful co-existence among the Sons and Daughters of GOD.