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James posts reminded me of:

Australian Human
Rights Centre (AHRC)

WORKING PAPER 2004/1
Human Rights, Counter-Terrorism, and Security.
Michael Humphrey [1]
School of Sociology

Give you some excerpts

On 18 Jan 2002 UN Secretary General said “we should all be clear that there is no trade-off between effective action against terrorism and the protection of human rights. On the contrary, I believe that in the long term we shall find that human rights, along with democracy and social justice, are one of the best prophylactics against terrorism.’
Terrorism, as an attack on core human rights, can never be justified but the universalism of that perspective ignores the fact that it privileges the political status quo thereby forgetting how it was achieved. In the history of nationalist struggles against occupation or resistance against dictatorship there are many cases where political violence, what now would be called ‘terrorist violence’, has been justified by the outcome


As the Amnesty International Report 2003 comments ‘governments around the world appeared to take on board the message that human rights standards could be jettisoned in times of emergency’. While terrorism is destructive of human rights counter-terrorism, its opposite, does not necessarily restore human rights.
State & Non-State Terrorism
The reason why the “T-Word” has been misused is because of its definitional vagueness and its rhetorical impact. To describe an act of political violence as terrorism is to declare it illegitmate and immoral. However it is important to distinguish between state terrorism and non-state terrorism, if only because the latter now monopolises all discussion. In addition it is important to recognise that the discourse on terrorism and security is about the justification of counter-terrorism measures. In the name of national security counter-terrorism seeks to ensure the protection of citizens through defensive policing at home and/or offensive military intervention abroad.

One reason why state terrorism goes unrecognised is that often it ‘masquerades as justice’ (Tigar 2001). Non-state terrorism is seen as unethical, politically illegtimate and illegal because its political aim is to produce atrocity, a spectacle of violence that rejects the political legitimacy of the status quo. It does this by producing victims through indiscriminate killing of innocents
It was really not until the post-September 11 anti-terrorist legislation that terrorism was defined as an act of violence which targeted civilians for the purpose of political subversion of the state - to ‘intimidate a population, or to compel a government or an international organisation to do or abstain from doing any act’. [ii] This definition effectively broadened the potential number of acts identifiable as terrorism and introduced ‘intention’ as a criteria for the prosecution of individuals or groups who might want to radically change political, economic and social organisation of countries
After September 11 non-state terrorism is now imagined as ‘globalised terrorism’, terrorism that is extremist, networked, highly symbolic and clandestine. ‘Globalised terrorism’ assimilates all terrorist violence making the WTC attacks, the bombing of a Jerusalem bus, the Bagdad UN truck bombing politically related events. Irrespective of whether or not the perpetrators of terrorist violence are part of international networks with common aims ‘globalised terrorism’ effectively assimilates diverse forms of political violence with the consequence of unifying and amplifying the threat. Differences are further de-politicised by essentialising the terrorist act ignoring the political project behind it thereby reducing terrorism to a problem of security and counter-terrorism policy for the state.

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As well as direct intervention this involves ‘security assistance’ to regimes who will serve US national security interests for which their human right’s record are ignored

Security & Risk Society
The political significance of the emergence of ‘globalised terrorism’ is not just its challenge to state security but the fact that it touches some deep anxieties and uncertainties in contemporary life. On the one hand there are the uncertainties and risk that have emerged out of the social precariousness of institutionalised patterns of existence and on the other the fear of apocalyptic violence and world ending events we have collectively lived within the post-Holocaust and post-Hiroshima and post-Nagasaki by nuclear bombs.
Ulrich Beck identifies the contemporary era as ‘risk society’. He argues that risk has become an organising principle of a globalising world. Risk comes from the social precariousness of institutionalised patterns of existence. What has occurred with the emergence of the ‘risk society’ is that the concept of risk has reversed the relationship of past, present and future. The past loses its power to determine the present and instead future possibilities increasingly determine decision-making. The concept of risk becomes ‘a peculiar intermediate state between security and destruction, where the perception of threatening risks determines thought and action.’ [v] Risk society is 'an epoch in which the dark sides of progress increasingly come to dominate social debate.

There is an increasing polarisation between the globalised (highly mobile) and localised (trapped) worlds and a breakdown in communication between them. And as human experience becomes increasingly bifurcated in these segregated worlds fears and discontent grow. Risk increasingly becomes the organising principle by which governments, even wealthy and powerful ones, seek to manage global complexity.
In ‘our risk aversion culture’ we expect to live in comfort and security
The intensification of focus on individual security as a strategy of national security is shaped by a postmodern moment - ‘the only visible continuity for the individual is the body - hence the centrality of body cultivation in postmodern life’ (Shaw 1995).
The ‘war on terrorism’ is also driven by an almost religious preoccupation with apocalyptic violence and catastrophic endings of out age. The apocalyptic impact of September 11, rammed home by its real-time visual coverage on international television networks, was seductive in conjuring up the sense that we are living in a new era of ubiquitous and even world-ending violence. This new ‘globalised terrorism’ is experienced as, an act of God, something that is beyond human control like floods, earthquakes and fires, The well-known effects of violence which collapse time into the present and make violence seem ubiquitous merely reinforce the experience of epocal change. The same technologies of globalisation that forge the symbiosis between television and terrorism also amplify the effect of violence.


The fear of apocalyptic violence from WMDs was the major justification for pursuing pre-emptive war against Afghanistan and Iraq. However this fear of the emergence of a ‘new global terrorism’ using WMD has been present from the early 1990s, especially after the first WTC bombing in 1993 (Simon & Benjamin 2000). September 11 made this fear a reality and has undermined the premises of contemporary global life and human experience in the West. Firstly, that violence and atrocity happen in Other places and to Other people, and secondly, that the threat of apocalyptic violence could be contained within a balance of nuclear deterrence (terror) managed by (rational) states, what Feldman (1995) calls ‘the logics of violence of modernity’. The September 11 attacks demonstrated that the international order could no longer be preserved by states holding a monopoly over the use of violence because non-state groups threatened to produce mass atrocities in places hitherto largely untouched by terrorism.
Counter-terrorism as ‘war against terrorism’ conjures up the threat of apocalyptic violence and catastrophic events (bad endings) and thereby heightens our consciousness of the uncertainties of world risk society. In this new political environment security is now talked about as a matter of war and self-defence not law and justice. ‘Globalised terrorism’ is reduced to a question of national security but paradoxically in a globalised world this has to be pursued by internationalising national security policy. But rather than reinforcing the international institutions built to promote national security through collective security resort to pre-emptive war is increasingly waged outside the norms of human rights and international humanitarian law undermining the very legal and inter-governmental structures such as the UN established to promote global security.

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While ehe US (UK & Australian) justification for pre-emptive war is the weakness of the UN system to effectively counter the growth of the new global terrorism the actual impact of pre-emptive war is to transform international relations and the terms under which any state can realise national security and achieve profound political and social transformation in the societies targeted. The character of these pre-emptive wars as grand big budget projects which overstate their benefits, understate the risks and proceed with little accountability resemble Bent Flyvberg (et al. 2003)’s concept of ‘mega-project’ - the promotion of multibillion dollar construction megaprojects which systematically and self-servingly misinform parliaments, the public and the media to get these projects approved and built. The formula for approval, to get them accepted by the public, involves underestimated costs, overestimated revenues, undervalued environmental impacts and overvalued economic development effects. Flyvberg describes them as based on rent-seeking behaviour and they usually involve a degree of delusion because close scrutiny would stop these projects ever getting off the ground.

Pre-emptive war in the name of national security has become a ‘mega-project’ aimed at mobilising billions of dollars on highly speculative outcomes - defeating terrorism, democratising Iraq, achieving Middle East peace, and eliminating WMDs. The paradox of the megaproject is that while they are presented as instrumental solutions to big political problems they are ultimately publicly funded projects with little accountability always resulting in enormous cost blowouts with no certainty they will deliver their promised benefits. What characterises these war projects is the lack of risk accountability omitting their real costs which have to include peacekeeping and reconstruction as well as the military campaign. They are politically driven projects which ultimately rely on a risk bearing public.


The Afghanistan and Iraq wars can be understood as megaprojects which involved massive mobilisation of people and resources transnationally to bring about political and social transformation through deconstruction and reconstruction. The commitment was based on the idea of a threatening disaster - the expansion of international terrorism with the increasing likelihood of the use of WMD. In both Iraq and Afghanistan there remain serious security problems which are undermining the reconstruction and nation-building projects. In addition the cost of peacekeeping and reconstruction is escalating
This is not so much a new imperialist age in which the US is unilateralist in its national security policy but one of ‘Empire Lite’ – Michael Ignatieff’s term for the insufficient exercise of power to realise the goals of human rights and democratisation through intervention. If we understand war as a megaproject then effectively what the US has achieved is a huge demand on other nations to internationalise the ‘stabilisation’, democratisiation and rebuilding of Iraq. The success in the war has created an outcome in which the risks will rapidly being shared – recruitment of peacekeeping troops, financial backing, UN collaboration. The struggle at the moment between the US and UN is the extent it will be on US terms. In other words war as a megaproject has been used to dramatically re-shape international relations and the terms of global security by displacing national security risk onto others.


Pre-emptive war as counter-terrorism has changed the international security system not merely by undermining international law and the regulatory role of the UN Security Council. It has made the national security of first world states the main issue of international security. And within these states the issue of individual security has become the primary referent of national security. In the 1990s the main threat of political violence was the threat to populations in the third world from the impact of failed states. Then the demand was to protect human rights and human life through humanitarian intervention. Now with the spread of the threat of terrorism to the first world the security focus has shifted to become how to protect individuals. As security and human rights concerns have have shifted from the third world to the first world with the advent of ‘globalised terrorism’ so humanitarian intervention has been transformed into pre-emptive war.

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Conclusiuon
The growing misuse of the ‘T-word’ is happening as a result of counter-terrorism policies towards ‘globalised terrorism’. However while terrorism is rightly condemned as transgressing core human rights counter-terrorism is not the reverse, the celebration of core human rights values. It is in our collective interest as citizens to ensure that counter-terrorism not only enhances security but upholds the values and institutions it seeks to protect.

Counter-terrorism has now become the major focus for national security policy in Australia and in the West. The threat of ‘globalised terrorism’ it addresses is an aspect of the darkside of globalisation and the growing sense of uncertainty and anxiety about contemporary life. It provides of focus for risk thinking on the one hand and the fear about apocalyptic endings on the other. ‘Globalised terrorism’ as an intentional risk makes visible in a spectacular way the invisible risk we live with daily (Humphrey 2003). Politically it brings to the forefront ‘risk thinking’ as a way of organising contemporary social complexity, a way of colonising the future.

Counter-terrorism as national security creates a sense of ‘emergency’ at home and abroad. Policing and military power are put forward as solutions to the increased risk of ‘globalised terrorism’. However counter-terrorism seeks to achieve the impossible, a risk free world for our risk aversion culture. It conceives of national security as a strategy to broach the gap between individual security and global insecurity. Its solution though is not to make national security a question of global security but the displacement of risk onto others. The concept of war as a ‘megaproject’ captures this process – you get the multibillion project of war to fly by emphasising the gravity of the threat and the enormous benefits of the objectives while minimising the risks and actual costs. Thus war against Iraq was politically sold as a way to remove the possible threat of Iraq’s WMD, to remove Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship and to bring about democratisation and to transform the Middle East. As the costs and casualties of occupation and reconstruction mount daily in Iraq the strategy is to internationalise the burden, to redistribute the risk onto others.
Counter-terrorism as a strategy as a national security policy lacks political imagination because it is trapped in the risk discourse in which the future becomes an organising principle. It does not offer a shared future but one that is narrowly focused on a highly individualised sense of security. Human rights provides a way re-imagine the future based on a set of shared values and rights for everyone.