Dining with Terrorists: Meetings with the world’s most wanted militants 

Dr Anthony McRoy 

Rees is to be congratulated for producing a readable, at times enthralling book on a vital issue. Frankly, one cannot put it down. Objective yet penetrating, its value is heightened by the fact that it does not only deal with ‘Islamic terrorists’. These days, we could be forgiven for thinking that guerrilla warfare is the sole prerogative of Islamists, but as Rees addresses situations in Colombia, meeting FARC, the Tamil Tigers, the IRA, etc., we can see that the situation was always more complicated than that. One criticism; having met the IRA, Rees should have dealt with corresponding Loyalist groups, especially as in his chapter on Colombia, he meets not only the FARC Marxist terrorists, but their right-wing opponents, and in Kosova he encounters not only Albanians supporting the KLA, but also their Serb mirror-images.


The diversity of guerrilla organisations and their differing, often contradictory aims reveals the central problem concerning ‘terrorism’; not how to stop it, but how to define it. After all, as the famous cliché states, ‘one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter’, p. xv. It must be galling for Americans to read that if this cliché had existed in 1776, Washington would have been labelled as a ‘terrorist’ by the British government. The Apartheid regime labelled Mandela as a terrorist, but we know how most people viewed him. Rees notes that every global effort to give an objective definition of the term since 1996 has failed, p. xvii. 


The problem is complicated by several factors, among them the identification of legitimate targets, and the methods used. Another is the issue of justification – is it unethical to oppose an occupying army that enjoys conventional military superiority? Rees observes that the US invasion of Iraq, not sanctioned by the UN, caused a resistance to emerge which the US often designates, and certainly where ‘foreign fighters’ are concerned, as terrorists’, p. 4. However, Rees asks the pertinent questions of how, if using the same justification as the US and UK, Iraqi troops occupied Britain, what would be the popular reaction, or if Hitler had occupied London in 1940, whether Britons would have accepted his rule, p. xvii?


This is one area which Rees could have developed further. The obvious response to this from the US and UK is that they are democracies, but how do we respond if democracies do not act democratically – at least in their treatment of others? The US may be democratic but it supports an Israeli regime whose treatment of the Palestinians is anything but democratic. Remember also that part of the aim of the US blitz of Iraq in 2003, as Rees observes, was to ‘terrify the civilian population into supporting the overthrow of Saddam Hussein’, p. xvii. Was the US acting democratically or was it guilty of state terrorism?


The global overview of ‘armed militants’ is one of the most fascinating aspects of Rees’ book. From Latin America to the Balkans, from North Africa to Sri Lanka, and from Palestine to Cambodia, the trail of tears is gripping. It is also frequently stomach-turning. The section of the Khmer Rouge and their genocidal policies in Chapter Seven goes over familiar ground, but the display of Man’s inhumanity to Man never fails to shock. When we consider their policies and practices, could we ever consider this group as ‘freedom fighters – even after the 1979 Vietnamese invasion which transformed them into a guerrilla group once more, resisting foreign occupation, and enjoying support from China – and the West, p. 166? If not, then how should we regard the Zionist guerrilla groups such as the Irgun and Stern Gang who terrorised Palestinians with slaughter and ethnic cleansing, or the Serb ‘paramilitaries’ who did the same to Albanians, p. 157? Remember, the latter had the backing of the ‘legitimate’ government of Serbia? Perhaps that is why the media described them as ‘paramilitaries’ instead of ‘terrorists’. 


The ambivalence on definition is best exemplified by considering the Kosova Liberation Army. America at first designated it as a terrorist group, p. 152, and it would have definitely been so-defined after 9/11, p. 154, but America about-faced and effectively supported it. Is the US definition of terrorism therefore based on a group’s opposition to US policy? After all, the US allied itself with Kurdish guerrillas against the recognised government of Iraq, but designates Kurdish guerrillas across the border in Turkey as terrorists – ah, but Ankara is a US ally. Yet when I interviewed British-based Kurds some years ago about the Turkish situation, their spokesman – an Iraqi Kurd – stated that the Turkish situation was worse than its Iraqi equivalent. 


One of the most useful parts of the book is the postscript dealing with 7/7 and its legacy. An interview with a moderate Muslimah who heads Slough Race Equality produces the startlingly frank statement that whatever is said publicly, privately many British Muslims regard Bin Laden as a hero, p. 371. Why? Because of US/UK policy. Salma Yaqoob is quoted as pointing to the hypocrisy of the public response to Ken Bigley’s murder whilst the deaths of Iraqi civilians remain uncounted, p. 374. Defining ‘terrorism’ remains a Herculean task.


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