Is Terrorism about Just Sowing Bombs?

Jacob Waiswa
Peace and Conflict Center
P.O. Box 7062,
Makerere University
Kampala-Uganda
jwaiswa@arts.mak.ac.ug

Terror is an act intended to instil fear in a target population or person. The causes are search for identity, oppression, ignorance, psychological and instinctual causes. Humans like animals are terrorists.

They will do anything to drive enemies and competitors for resources away. Frustration and internalized aggression build over time when young people fail to reach their potential share the ‘pain’ at an opportune time. Once expressed the ‘pain’ manifests itself in horrendous acts.

Development of terror philosophy comes at a time perpetrators think there is no alternative means to attain their goals. The means are unhealthy if turn out to be a norm, ritual or just religious.

In recent times are tools for religious, cultural, economic and political survival. Verbal threats, kidnapping, shooting at weaker targets are elements of the game to attract attention, to dominate others and to attain the human needs highly competed for.

Marginalized communities, do all they can in order to be heard to attract attention of the wider audience and respond to their suppressed, politicized, demeaned and misunderstood demands. Resistance by both parties against each other cause full scale confrontation ensues –leading to destruction of life and property.

Uganda’s political history is famed for that, let alone the history of mankind, the tribal movements that were characterized by ethnic violence. Characteristic underpinnings of them all were strives for economic and political power (glory and prestige) –all at the cost of greater destruction of life and property.

In the past it could be concluded that perpetrator of terror were ignorant in the sense that at the time of the terror trigger, there had been an end to reasoning and ability to solve or to find alternative solutions for sustainable development in diversity of issues –such that –diversity itself is a source of wealth.

From the recent past, Uganda has faced gruesome attacks from the allied democratic front in the western region of the country in which 80 students were burnt alive and 100 more abducted in 1998.

Memorable, too, was the suffocation of civilians (70) to death in 1989 Mukura, Teso region of Uganda. Consented religious terrorism also featured, when in 2000, 1000 worshipers died in an inferno. Terrorism exhibited from recent riots in Uganda cannot be underestimated. An estimated 40 people died in just three years.

The 9/11 terror attacks in the US shaped the face of terrorism in the world both in conceptualization and usage. It was not only about instilling fear, but a motivated action to impose one’s doctrine –political or religious –through detonation of bombs in civilian locations. Religion was used to sustain such terror.

First, names were a measure to determine religiousness and subsequent qualification of a given a person as suspect for the terror attacks. The prompt questions night patrol police in Uganda will today ask when met late in the night will be about the tribe confirmed by the name, and to confirm whether he (fond of males) can speak the language very well. It is until the night walker confirmed he will be free. It is now a big time norm after the July 11th 2010 Kampala bomb attacks.

Liberation movements will use the word terrorism to drum up international sympathy and support while unconscious of the equally terror acts they implicate on civilians directly or indirectly in the course of the rebellion. On the other hand the government will use the word terror to demonize opposition and drum civil hatred against it while increasing their support in the populace.

That continues up to the diplomatic stage when the unbalanced and unrepresentative united nations security council easily imposes their concept of terrorism by others rather than by them, and using terrorism phrase to arouse support of the same amount of terrorism they soon ‘democratically’ agree to pursue against a nation in question that has been bitterly isolated.

It is in the best usage of the term terrorism if it encompasses any action that perpetuates fear as its ultimate –be it at policy formulation, in aspects of mismanagement and abuse of office, killing of civilians by security agents, and verbal abuses and insults.

Indeed, there is terrorism in everyday life like; child abuse, genital female mutilation, poor performance in government institutions, swindling of government or donor funds, and insensitivity of the misery and suffering of the people. It is important to note that terrorism is not one sided. It is a cycle of events affecting one another in which people are involved.

Soon, when the terrorized revenges with the same amount of terrorism he or she was subjected to, the winner like in a race, would have done most terrorism. Because the very weak, denationalized and voiceless are forced in oblivion through marginalization and brutal suppression, they can be innovative enough to make themselves listened to the fact that, actually, they have a right to exist as individuals, citizens or as nations –without undue arrogance of others.