According to Thakur's paper, submitted at the annual World University Presidents Summit held in Bangkok in July, the root causes of terrorism can be grouped into five categories. These are the lack of democratic institutions and practices; lack of political freedoms and civil liberties; group grievances based on collective injustice; intractable conflicts, and inter-civilisation suspicions.

Thakur said the campaign against terrorism must therefore be anchored in the norms of accountability, the rule of law and the non-derogation of human rights and civil liberties, since terrorism flourishes amid frustration with repressive and unresponsive regimes that spawn angry and twisted young men who take recourse to lethal violence.

"Sometimes the house of worship has been the only alternative rallying point in autocratic regimes," he noted.

But the war on terror must not take place at the expense of fundamental freedoms and basic dignity of individuals. Thakur cautioned: "Success in defeating terrorism can come only if we remain true to those values which terrorists eschew. In resorting to the lesser evil of curtailing liberties and using violence to defeat terrorism, we must be careful not to succumb to the greater evil of destroying the very values for which democracy stands."

Thakur said grievances rooted in collective injustice against ethnic and religious groups generated anger and led to armed resistance when the weak resort to the comparative advantages of "asymmetric" warfare.

"Often, the driving force behind fanatic hatred is individual despair born out of collective humiliation. If relations are based purely on power, with no concession to justice and equity, then peace and stability rest on insecure foundations, on the temporary inability of revisionists to challenge the entrenched status quo, and not on their acceptance of the status quo as the legitimate order..."

Speaking of intractable conflicts as a cause of terrorism, Thakur said long-running conflicts had spawned generations of radicalised populations in Palestine, Kashmir and Sri Lanka. Citing data compiled by Robert Pape, he said 95 per cent of suicide terrorist acts between 1980 and 2004 were aimed at compelling military forces to withdraw from territory that the terrorists viewed as their homeland under foreign occupation.

Thus, territorial liberation, not religion, is their common ground. As for al-Qaeda, its three goals, repeated in many messages over many years, are an end to the US military presence in the Middle East, an end to US support for Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory and an end to US support of corrupt regimes in the Muslim world.

On poverty, Thakur said terrorism highlighted the development-security linkage. At the very least, poverty or the lack of economic development is an incubator for terrorism. Poverty also detracts from the state's capacity to provide universal education through the public sector, resulting in thousands of children going to private religious schools and institutions.

Thakur recommended dialogue as a way to counter inter-civilisation suspicions that lead to terrorism. A dialogue among

civilisations will promote inter-cultural harmony

and defuse hate-based terrorism, he said.

"After 9/11, some sought to resurrect the vacuous and discredited thesis of the clash of civilisations. Islamic terrorists are no more representative of Islam than any fundamentalist terrorists: the Irish terrorists of Christianity or Tamil terrorists of Hinduism...

"The real struggle is likely to be within Islam, not a clash of civilisations between Islam and the rest. And this struggle will be fought most intensely as a war of ideas," he said.

"Perceptions of a US or Western crusade against Islam are likely to alienate many Muslims from the West and drive them into the arms of fundamentalists.

"Instead of viewing terrorism through the lens of a war between civilisations, we have to see it as a war on civilisation or an assault on values and freedoms we hold dear and as a war for civilisation or the collective defence of universal values and freedoms."

 Nophakhun Limsamarnphun

 nop1122@yahoo.com