Abstract
Asafa Jalata’s book, Phases of Terrorism in the Age of Globalization, spans five centuries of Euro-American domination over political, economic, and cultural practices in the world. Throughout the book, Jalata remains as objective as possible. But, admittedly, the author connects to victims of state-sponsored terrorism. When describing the blatant double standards practiced by hegemons of the capital world system, Jalata writes, ‘Since I have no capacity to change this lack of international support for the [indigenous] others, it pains me and frustrates me. Furthermore, what is disturbing to me is that the U.S. government, my government, financially, militarily, and diplomatically supports terrorist regimes’ (p. 45). Compounding Jalata’s frustrations are the color-terror-and-intellectually blind masses who benefit economically from colonial terrorism.
These decedents of first capitalists practice strategic silence and embrace historical amnesia. They profess modernity as a civilizing destiny – a Euro-American-White-Christian blessing to the human race. However, as Jalata argues, the emergence of nation-states was preceded by terrorism and not the cause of it. The terrorism prominent in the world today is a byproduct of colonial terrorism and the subsequent establishment, maintenance, and perpetuation of the capitalist world system.
Jalata utilizes a critical, comparative method ‘to examine the dynamic interplay among social structures, human agency, and terrorism’ (p. 4). Whereas the first three chapters orient the reader to the author’s conceptual and methodological approach to terrorism, the middle chapters (4–6) compare the interplays between terrorism and the development of the capitalist world system. Jalata captures a method to colonial terrorism common among White-Euro-American-Christian-Capitalists. These modalities share three essential traits: (1) establish a doctrine predicated on the concept of law of ownership in order to expropriate territories, bodies, and resources through violence; (2) dehumanize indigenous populations as heathens so terrorist acts become conflated with missionary work; (3) utilize clandestine tactics such as co-option of native leaders, erasure of indigenous culture and lifestyle, strategic assassinations, and manufactured conflict between natives. Consequently, the indigenous are forced to either accept colonization or invite genocidal violence.
Chapters 7 and 8 offer the most thought-provoking case studies in the book. In Chapter 7, Jalata compares Ethiopian and Sudanese terrorism and its relational connection to the capitalist world system. Again, he emphasizes the double standards utilized by Western powers who, on the one hand, support struggles for self-sovereignty in South and West Sudan but, on the other hand, overlook the brutal terrorism employed in Ethiopia. Because the regime in Sudan relies more on the Middle East for support, terrorism becomes a moral issue for the West. Concerns over human rights are at the forefront of any international diplomacy involving Sudan. Conversely, ‘Ethiopian state terrorism and vast human rights violations are tolerated by the West, China, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the United Nations’ (p. 131). With a stake in Ethiopia, the West appears willing to compromise any moral obligation to human rights to ensure capital flows out of Ethiopia remain undisturbed. Jalata concludes Chapter 7 with a plea for more accountability to the suffering of others.
In Chapter 8, Jalata examines Israeli/Palestinian terrorism. This chapter offers a compelling analysis between state sponsored terrorism and the reactionary terrorism state violence inspires. The key finding in this chapter is that terrorism cannot be viewed in isolation. This conclusion connects with the paradox found implicit throughout the book. Driven to reconcile the intellectual disregard for terrorism’s role in creating and maintaining the capitalist world order and to expose the epistemological/cultural/physical genocide deployed against the colonized, Jalata’s conceptualization of terrorism affirms and creates as much as it negates and destroys. The ‘will to power’ brought about by/through/from terrorism is at once deceptive and tautological.
Indeed, a subtle, yet profound, logic resonates throughout Asafa Jalata’s book, Phases of Terrorism in the Age of Globalization. Although embedded in between binaries presented in each chapter and concealed within the solutions proposed at the book’s end, this sensibility is never made explicit. Nonetheless, the notion that terrorism is a ‘crime against humanity’ and an aspect of the capital world system that began in the late 15th century implies a paradox that is not only foundational to the capital world system but also an essential expression of it (p. 27). First, the capital world system pursues conformity at all costs and relies on violence/terrorism/war/genocide – Jalata’s continuum – to achieve this end. Second, violence/terrorism/war/genocide subsumes the end it seeks and becomes an end unto itself. Terrorism begets terrorism. Thus, if terrorism constitutes a crime against humanity, the adverse desire entails creating a new world system that replaces the paradox found in the current form. The capital world system must be undone by affirming the humanity that is inherently negated by the terrorism tantamount to the modern condition. Jalata’s call to power is directed at the under-represented, misled, and abused. His call corresponds to the human potential to act collectively, as a human race. When this bottom-up potential is achieved, humanity can begin to address the implicit question Jalata leaves lingering at the book’s end: If violence defines reality, then how do the ‘wretched’ create a world as it ought to be, without violence?