J Albrechtsen The Australian December 17, 2014 Don’t let terror attack divide us MUCH has been said and will be said about the evil events that gripped a city and a nation. We mourn the deaths of two innocent Australians. Words can’t express the grief. We pay tribute to the brave police and emergency services; they put their lives on the line for us and deserve our gratitude. Our political leaders have said the right things, none more so than Tony Abbott, Bill Shorten and NSW Premier Mike Baird. Baird said it best on Monday: “We are being tested in Sydney today but we will face it head-on. We will remain a strong and democratic civil society. We will get through this.” They, too, deserve credit. But there is more to say. This was terrorism. The aim of Man Haron Monis, who took innocent people hostage, holding up an Islamic flag, was to instil fear. His goal was to fuel division. Comments posted on Channel 7’s Facebook page — such as “send them back” — provide a glimpse into the darker side of those who will use this tragedy to divide us. This is what terrorists want. They want Muslims to hate non-Muslims and vice versa. We must not let them. The shallow responses deserve our contempt, too. Innocent people taken hostage, those who worked at Lindt, those stopping for morning coffee, were facing God knows what when journalism professor and greenie Wendy Bacon tweeted: “clearing of cars in CBD gives you an idea of how pleasant carless city might be (despite context)”. Shame on her. This is terrorism, not an opportunity to push ridiculous environmental dreams. But it does not end there. More must be said today and in coming days, even as we come to grips with the deaths and profound injuries, physical and psychological, of the victims. As Greg Barton, from Monash University’s Global Terrorism Research Centre, told Sky News yesterday, we should not dismiss this as simply an act of a troubled man. Yet that’s what the ABC has been keen to do by repeating, again and again, the words of Monis’s former lawyer Manny Conditsis, who says this is a case of just “damaged goods”. “He could have been any other damaged individual and I hope there will be no linkage to terrorism per se,” he told AM yesterday. Remember when the 2009 terrorist attack at Fort Hood in the US was whitewashed by authorities as “workplace violence” even though the Muslim killer screamed “Allahu Akbar”? Words matter. We must call out terrorism for what it is. Barton says the profile of Monis matches, in many ways, the profile of so many men drawn to Islamic State, looking for a “redemptive narrative” for their lives. There is a spectrum, and this killer falls on that spectrum, he says. Islamic State wants to draw these men out, encourage them to kill, using random acts of terrorism for their own glory. When asked how this event fits into terrorist acts here and overseas, Barton said it sits bang in the middle of what we expected. We should remember that. As the Prime Minister said earlier this year, following police raids in Sydney: “The regrettable reality is that to mount the kind of attacks which ISIL (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) in Syria and in Iraq has in mind for Australia, all you need is a determined individual who will kill without compunction, a knife, an iPhone and a victim.” This is terrorism at its most frightening. Random, lone-wolf attacks. Little chatter, making it difficult, but not impossible, for police to arrest the perpetrators. In September, Sydney man Omarjan Azari was arrested, charged with conspiring with the most senior Australian member of Islamic State, Mohammad Ali Baryalei, and others “to do acts in preparation for, or planning, a terrorist act (or acts)”. Baryalei is alleged to have told Azari to behead a random member of the public in Sydney’s CBD. That is what Azari was allegedly planning. At a state level, we must look at our bail laws. Why was Monis, a man charged with numerous serious offences, on bail? At a national level we must ensure our terrorism laws are sufficient. Could Monis have been the subject of a control order? Was Monis, a sheik, radicalising others? All these and more questions must be answered. As the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s director Peter Jennings said on Monday night, the efforts of self-styled clerics and others to radicalise young men have been more successful than our attempts at deradicalisation. For those who have bought into this narrative, there is no return. Perhaps that will silence any further suggestions that people who act in the name of Islamic State are just clowns, as Liberal Democratic Party senator David Leyonhjelm said a few months back. They are not. And to those who have been quick to demand that the US act in Syria — blaming America for the emergence of Islamic State — there is only so much the West can do. What we can’t do is instil in the hearts and minds of people in Arab countries the need to end the sectarian divisions, the bloodshed, the corruption that has led to civil wars. As Thomas Friedman wrote in TheNew York Times in September, these civil wars have been assisted and encouraged by countries such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey. He cited a secret 2009 US study signed by then secretary of state Hillary Clinton, exposed by WikiLeaks, that private “donors in Saudi Arabia constitute the most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide”. A few months ago US Vice-President Joe Biden delivered broadsides in off-the-cuff remarks at Harvard against the Saudis, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates for funding terrorist groups. Turkey has done next to nothing to secure its border. Thousands of militia have crossed from Turkey to Syria. Biden was forced to apologise. As for Qatar, as Friedman wrote, it’s an ally in this fight on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, against us on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and takes the weekends off. Until people in the Arab world see this for what it is — an Arab problem to be solved by Arab people — it will not end. And the horrors will be felt thousands of miles away in peaceful countries such as our own.
Posted on: Wed, 17 Dec 2014 06:41:22 +0000
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