Bias against understanding terrorism: the failure to learn from Afghanistan

When?

Monday 4 October 2010, 17:00 to 18:30

Where?

Room 19AD04 (AD Building) University of Surrey

Open to:

Public, Staff, Students

Speaker:

Deepak Tripathi (former BBC correspondent)

The events of September 11, 2001 and the “war on terror” have made an undeniable impact on human and international relations. Increasingly, these relationships have come to be seen and interpreted through the prism of counter-terrorism, migration and a selective focus on “religious fundamentalism” of a certain kind, namely Islamic fundamentalism. The result has been a loss of context. The way it has changed media discourse over the last decade is more obvious. However, the nature of scholarship on terrorism and political violence has also come under pressure. The themes of migration and security, democracy and the rule of law have become more salient at the expense of the historical context, which explains imperialism, great power rivalries and other causes of conflict where the Western world has played a crucial role. Francis Fukuyama’s 1989 declaration of “The End of History” has proved short-lived and his prediction that Western liberal democracy would become universal is far from being achieved. Over the last twenty years there have been two major wars and numerous minor conflicts around the globe.

With this context in mind, I will offer a personal critique of the debate about terrorism and political violence as it has evolved in recent years. Focusing on Afghanistan since the early 1970s, I will discuss the war in its various stages and the evolution of a “culture of violence”. I will explain the internal, regional and international dimensions of the Afghan conflict and offer an indicative analysis of the failure to learn from the recent past, let alone long-term history.

Presentation (pdf)

Deepak Tripathi is a former BBC correspondent and editor (1977–2000). During the 1980s he covered conflicts in Sri Lanka and India. He then set up the BBC Bureau in Kabul, where he was resident correspondent. He is author of several books - the latest is Overcoming the Bush Legacy in Iraq and Afghanistan (2010) and another, Breeding Ground: Afghanistan and the Origins of Islamist Terrorism, will be released this autumn. He continues to write for many journals and newspapers, among them: Al-Ahram Weekly, CounterPunch, History News Network, Informed Comment, the Palestine Chronicle and Z Magazine. In the 1970s, Deepak worked for the federal government in Washington, D.C., and he has taken a keen interest in U.S. foreign policy and great power rivalries in South and West Asia for more than thirty years.