Paul Devereaux had spent years studying terrorism in general, and the types that emanated from
the Arab and Muslim world, not necessarily the same type, in particular.
He had long come to the conclusion that the conventional whine in the West, that terrorism
stemmed from the poverty and destitution of those whom Fanon had called 'the wretched of the
earth', was convenient and politically correct psychobabble.
From the Anarchists of Tsarist Russia to the IRA of 1916, from the Irgun and the Stern Gang to
EOKA in Cyprus, from the Baader-Meinhof group in Germany, CCC in Belgium, Action Directe
in France, Red Brigades in Italy, Red Army Faction in Germany again, the Renko Sekkigun in
Japan, through to the Shining Path in Peru, to the modern IRA in Ulster or the ETA in Spain,
terrorism came from the minds of comfortably raised, well-educated, middle-class theorists with
a truly staggering personal vanity and a developed taste for self-indulgence.
Having studied them all, Devereaux was finally convinced the same applied to all their leaders,
the self-arrogated champions of the working classes. The same applied in the Middle East as in
Western Europe, South America or Far East Asia. Imad Mugmyah, George Habash, Abu Awas,
Abu Nidal and all the other Abus had never missed a meal in their lives. Most had college
degrees.
In the Devereaux theory those who could order another to plant a bomb in a food hall and gloat
over the resultant images all had one thing in common. They possessed a fearsome capacity for
hatred. This was the genetic 'given'. The hatred came first; the target could come later and
usually did.
The motive also came second to the capacity to hate. It might be Bolshevik revolution, national
liberation or a thousand variants thereof, from amalgamation to secession; it might be anticapitalist
fervour; it might be religious exaltation.
But the hatred came first, then the cause, then the target,
then the methods and finally the self-justification. And Lenin's 'useful dupes' always swallowed
it.
Devereaux was utterly convinced that the leadership of Al Qaeda ran precisely true to form. Its
co-founders were a construction millionaire from Saudi Arabia and a qualified doctor from
Cairo. It mattered not whether their hatred of Americans and Jews was secular-based or
religiously fuelled. There was nothing, absolutely nothing, that America or Israel could do, short
of complete self-annihilation, that would even begin to appease or satisfy them.
None of them, for him, cared a damn for the Palestinians save as vehicles and justifications.
They hated his country not for what it did but for what it was.
He recalled the old British spy chief in the window table at White's as the left-wing
demonstrators went by. Apart from the usual snowy-haired British socialists who could never
quite get over the death of Lenin, there were the British boys and girls who would one day get a
mortgage and vote Conservative, and there were the torrents of students from the Third World.
«They'll never forgive you, dear boy,» said the old man. «Never expect it and you'll never be
disappointed. Your country is a constant reproach. It is rich to their poor, strong to their weak,
vigorous to their idle, enterprising to their reactionary, ingenious to their bewildered, can-do to
their sit-and-wait, thrusting to their stunted.
«It only needs one demagogue to arise to shout: «Everything the Americans have they stole
from you», and they'll believe it. Like Shakespeare's Caliban, their zealots stare in the mirror and
roar in rage at what they see. That rage becomes hatred, the hatred needs a target. The working
class of the Third World does not hate you; it is the pseudo-intellectuals. If they ever forgive
you, they must indict themselves. So far their hatred lacks the weaponry. One day they will
acquire that weaponry. Then you will have to fight or die. Not in tens but in tens of thousands.»
Thirty years down the line, Devereaux was sure the old Brit had got it right. After Somalia,
Kenya, Tanzania, Aden, his country was in a new war and did not know it. The tragedy was
made worse by the fact the establishment was steeped in ostriches as well.
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Avenger by Frederick Forsyth