There are common trends in this global business of hatred. Tensions, escalating numbers of deaths, and the very reason behind the violence are all the same.
All for the occupation of land.
Singur and Nandigram in India have been hotspots of violence because corporate mafias grab land for the sake of putting up Special Economic Zones (SEZs). Violent attacks meant to neutralize peasants in the rural hinterlands of the state of West Bengal, undertaken by the police and hoodlums who were let loose on the peasants, were done in the name of development. This is one of the uglier angles of the imperialist design of globalization.
‘Neo-colonialism’ is a relatively newfangled fad. Purchase of millions of hectares of agricultural land in developing countries by rich governments and corporations, for purposes of securing their long-term food supplies, is the newest rage. This is said to be the second wave of the ‘scramble for Africa.’ Abu Dhabi buys arable land in Pakistan. Saudi Arabia invests in Indonesia for the farming of a certain rice variety. Laos has sold 15 percent of its farmlands. Libya buys a quarter of a million hectares in Ukraine. Cambodia rice fields will soon go to Kuwait and Qatar.
All these are at the expense of the lowly local farmers. It won’t take long before the poor realize that they are actually being wrung in ill-fitting deals. Something is terribly askew with these arrangements, and it will only take some time before local farmers rise up in arms to avenge their oppressive situation. And when they do, chances are they will be branded as rebels.
At the end of the day, it is not about ethnic cleansing, religious fundamentalism, political extremism, or racism that terrorism is all about. It is also ridiculous that protests heading towards armed violence are promptly called terrorism when it is really nothing more than the fight for land, in most cases. There is more to an armed struggle that is carried out with extreme violence, in a grand showcase of vengeance.
Over the long haul, there is more to terrorism than terrorists. Those who, unfortunately, witness the wrath of the oppressed have not learned the lessons of history.
It is the continuing saga of globalization – yet the biggest imperialist design. And in the attempt to balance the scale, vengeance will never run out of use.
“The central fact is that overwhelmingly suicide-terrorist attacks are not driven by religion as much as they are by a clear strategic objective: to compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from the territory that the terrorists view as their homeland. From Lebanon to Sri Lanka to Chechnya to Kashmir to the West Bank, every major suicide-terrorist campaign — over 95 percent of all the incidents — has had as its central objective to compel a democratic state to withdraw.” (Robert Pape, Associate Professor University of Chicago, Author “Dying to Win”)
