The Untouched Bastion of Terrorism

Recently, an editorial comment in a Chicago-area newspaper declared, "All of the Arab countries in the Middle East have 80 percent of the terrorists in the world, trying to destroy the United States and Israel." The writer's misguided opinion is understandable given the imbalanced media focus on terrorism perpetrated by Arabs and Muslims, coupled with Hollywood's long-standing love affair with the Arab man as villain. Nevertheless, there is a bastion of terrorism against the United States where we have not sent our troops, and it is a region geographically much closer than the Middle East.

That untouched bastion of terrorism is Latin America. In its just released report, "Patterns of Global Terrorism 2001," the State Department recorded 191 acts of terrorism against the United States from Latin America, the most of any region. That is up from last year's figure of 172, which was up from the figure of 96 from the year before that. In fact, the number of attacks against the United States in Latin America has increased every year since 1996. Compare those numbers with the Middle East, which is popularly perceived as the bastion of anti-American terrorism. In 2001, there were only eight anti-U.S. attacks that occurred in the Middle East. Indeed, since 1996, there have been a total of 33 attacks against the U.S. in the Middle East, a fraction of the number that occurred in Latin America last year alone.

This begs the question of why America has not done more to stop the growing number of terrorist attacks against her in Latin America? Why have not we sent our aircraft carriers, bombers, and helicopter gunships to Latin American shores? Is it because our government feels that only terrorists of the Arab and Muslim flavor warrant attention? I hope not, although every indicator points to this being the case.

There is yet another more important question of why the Bush Administration can only conceive of military force to deal with the terrorist threat. Certainly, military action in Afghanistan made sense because of the anti-American terrorist base there. Yet, as is painfully obvious from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, fighting the fire of terrorism with the even hotter fire of bombs and missiles does not snuff out terrorism. Quite the opposite, it begets even more terrorists and terrorist acts.

A better way to fight the fire of terrorism is with the cool waters of dialogue and engagement. Rather than killing or detaining indefinitely everyone the Bush Administration deems a terrorist, why not engage those elements in the world that are hostile to the United States? Contrary to what some may counter, dialogue and engagement is not "giving in to the terrorists." It is an approach that seeks to learn and eradicate, dare I say it, the root causes of the phenomenon of terrorism. This approach seems to be working in Sri Lanka and Angola, and it should be given another chance in Colombia.

While the methods of terrorists are gruesome and morally reprehensible, the political causes motivating terrorists are frequently legitimate. Although it is of the utmost importance to do everything possible to prevent future attacks, it is as important to use our influence as the most powerful nation on earth to rid the world of injustice, the disease whose symptom is terrorism. Rid our world of injustice, and the plague of terrorism will melt away. Plunging the United States into a seemingly endless war with no clear definition of victory is the wrong approach, which will only put more American lives at risk.

Hesham A. Hassaballa is a Chicago-area physician and writer and is contributing author to the forthcoming book Taking Back Islam due to be released by Beliefnet/Rodale in October 2002.