Terrorism: The Next Frontier
Dirty bombs, biological weapons, huge truck bombs. Governments around the globe are trying to protect their people against the danger of ever more lethal attacks, but the steps they take can also threaten the very values they seek to defend.
That paradox was at the heart of this week's anti-terrorism conference in Madrid where officials and experts sought a formula for fighting terrorism while preserving civil liberties.
A set of recommendations released by the conference Friday suggests it is possible to safeguard rights while installing a comprehensive global ban on terrorism and removing barriers to anti-terror cooperation between countries.
Recognizing a key problem, the participants called for global acceptance of a single definition of terrorism, one that essentially discredits all violence knowingly directed at civilians, whatever the political goal.
As if to underscore that, the document included mention of Palestinian attacks on Israelis in Tel Aviv, the bloody Chechen hostage-taking at the Russian school in Beslan, and the insurgency in Iraq — all linked to political causes.
The four-day conference was timed to the first anniversary of the train bombings in Spain's capital that killed 191 people and wounded 1,500. The horror of that attack, and the national reflection in Spain this week, gave a somber tone to the deliberations of some of the world's foremost experts on security, religion, finance and international affairs.
Though many of the participants had been swapping ideas on the Internet for months before the meeting, the final document was only seven pages long — much of it directed at the notion that security without freedom is no victory.
Such concerns have already been playing out in the United States and Britain, America's prominent ally in President Bush's war on terrorists.
Critics in America have charged that the Patriot Act — a sweeping anti-terror measure passed following the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 — gives too much power to the government. In Britain, strong opposition to Prime Minister Tony Blair's Prevention of Terrorism Bill this week has centered on whether house arrest, curfews and electronic tagging of suspects without trial is necessary to protect Britain from attack.
Many delegates argued that democracies need to be smarter, more creative and flexible in fighting terror, rather than choose a simpler path that risks a slide toward authoritarianism.
A working group on finance, for example, suggested an international institution under U.N. auspices to track the elusive methods that terrorists use to raise money. Another suggested a trust fund be set up to help poor nations afford to collaborate with other countries in the fight against terrorists.
The dangers from terrorism are growing, all agreed.
Brian Jenkins, a senior adviser to the president of Rand Corp., noted that because of the diffusion of knowledge of weapons, power has descended to groups that are ever smaller — and therefore harder to detect.
"The small bands of irreconcilables, of fanatics, of lunatics have become in our age an increasingly potent force to be reckoned with," he told The Associated Press on Friday. "How democracies are going to deal with that and remain democracies is one of the challenges of the 21st century."
The group embraced U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan's proposal for a comprehensive treaty to ban terrorism and recommended that all countries which haven't signed earlier anti-terror treaties do so.
Although 12 treaties already exist outlawing various aspects of terrorism, Annan said the world body needs a 13th treaty to define terrorism, truly stigmatize it everywhere and prepare a framework for governments to fight it together.
The Club of Madrid, the group of former democratic leaders that sponsored the conference, also asked that a definition for terrorism be created.
The issue has long been delicate, because governments often use violence to accomplish goals — leading to charges of "state terrorism" — and because one group's "freedom fighter" or "martyr" is another's terrorist.
Developing a common understanding on what terrorism is would enable the United Nations and other world bodies to fight it jointly and help countries create laws that would allow for the perpetrators to be prosecuted, it was agreed.
"I know for sure that when trains are being blown up in Madrid, when twin towers are demolished (in New York) ... I have no hesitation to define what that is. That is terrorism," NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer told AP.
By Danica Kirka