OPINION

“Et Tu Barack”

The United States of America, which has never really had a terror attack taking place on its soil (save for Pearl Harbour 1944, WTC 1995 and WTC 2001) came up with a very regrettable rhetorical statement, ‘we don’t negotiate with terrorists’. It sounds nice when you are talking about a group of dudes in Waco Texas armed with Kalashnikovs, websites and a few manuals designed on Microsoft Publisher.
However, it has become disturbing that friends of the US have also adopted that approach, forgetting that their ‘terrorists’ are armed with RPG 7 launchers, Kalashnikovs, speed boats, medium range missiles and suicide bombers. If those folks in El Paso Texas developed such capabilities I swear to you the US government would break bread with them. We didn’t negotiate with the Boeremag because they didn’t have an executive committee and we had already fucking infiltrated them and they couldn’t light a match without the National Intelligence Agency knowing beforehand about it. We negotiated with PAGAD and gave some of them carrots for sticks, that’s why South Afrika is not facing any big internal threat right now.
What’s the point behind this post? It’s because when Israel was slaughtering Palestinians in January it kept saying it will not speak to Hamas because they are declared by the US and the European Union to be a terrorist organisation. Actually Hamas is the democratically elected government of Palestine which the US, Israel and European Union refused to acknowledge the minute the results were announced because they wanted Fatah to legitimize the occupation of Palestine.
John Pilger wrote in one article that such an attitude was self-defeating given that you don’t negotiate with your friends but your enemies. You drink beer and tea and chat to your friends and negotiate strongly with enemies, and negotiating with them does not mean you like them or legitimize them and their struggle but you acknowledge that they do exist and they are not just going to disappear because you don’t want to talk to them. After you have negotiated using your corny middlemen and emissaries you still need to reach the deal with your enemy – not your emissary or middleman.
Imagine where South Afrika would be if the Boers decided they would only engage liberation movements through emissaries? There wouldn’t be enough whites left here because the patience of the darkies would have worn thin and a race war broke out.
I am writing this post in the wake of the barbaric attack on Sri Lankan cricketers in Lahore Pakistan on the 3rd of March 2009. Pakistan knows about the existence of these rogue elements within its ranks who some have links to its intelligence community but it does nothing to engage with them to understand what is it that they want and give it to them if it can be given. It takes the US position of not negotiating with terrorists – who today killed foreigners and hurt the most promising cricket playing bunch in the world. Even their own Tamil Tigers have never attacked them.
I reckon the US must stay away from some of these situations because it doesn’t appreciate the complexity of these country’s situations. Immediately it started training the Philippino Army and advising it on how to fight ‘terror’ we started seeing abductions of tourists by the Abu Sayaff, three years ago it aerial bombed Somalia when there was relative calm under the Islamists and then the current anarchy spiraled. It started ‘advising’ the Pakistan Army some few months ago and now this. It now executes cross border assassinations in the border district of Pakistan and Afghanistan, killing women and children and the situation results in the Taliban reportedly chopping people’s hands. When will the US leave domestic issues of other countries’ to them to solve.
Today’s attack in Lahore can be squarely laid at the door of Barack Obama’s White House, because until the Israeli-Palestinian question has been solved, there’s no other conflict that will have a resolution in the world today.