VI. Discussion-Jus ad Bellum

• Pages: 139

Application of Force to al Qaeda and Taliban Members

Leslie Green I do not believe that we have distinguished sufficiently between al Qaeda members and Taliban members. Bear in mind that many of the volunteers from the United Kingdom or from other countries who went to join the Taliban had no desire to take part in al Qaeda terrorist activities. These volunteers were concerned with spreading a fundamentalist type of Islam. They were proselytizing, in many cases assisting Islamic colleagues in places such as Chechnya.

The Taliban may indeed not have been the government of the people of Afghanistan. They were, however, the de facto authority in control of most of the territory comprising Afghanistan. If this be the case though, once al Qaeda has been dealt with, the issue of what are we doing in Afghanistan must be raised. Otherwise, we might be supporting a government in frustrating a revolution or a civil war.

Finally, the word terrorism is used with too much abandon. This pejorative has been too widely used and attributed to non-terrorist groups. Governments have always argued that those trying to overthrow them are terrorists. Historically, governments have also taken the position that if the group was fighting a government that was not liked, the group consisted of freedom fighters, fighting for their liberation. Care should be taken to not become involved in what are simply civil wars even when carried out by political ideologies that do not appeal to us. Such civil wars do not rise to the level of terrorist movements simply because we do not like them.

Rein Miillerson There are many governments which use the mantra of the Global War on Terrorism to fight their opponents who may not be terrorists at all. This danger, of course, always exists and can be seen today in both Russia and Central Asia.

Our task is to distinguish between those using terror tactics and those who are not. It is true that in Afghanistan, and also in Chechnya and other places, religious fundamentalists have used terror tactics. So one has to make distinctions between freedom fighters genuinely struggling for independence and common terrorists. Though I believe in many cases, if not in most cases, terrorists are independence fighters and independence fighters are terrorists too since they use terror tactics in order to achieve their aims. There should not be any difference whether their aims are noble, lawful or not. If they use terror tactics, they are terrorists.

Now about the distinctions between al Qaeda and the Taliban. Of course, there are these distinctions. Al Qaeda is a worldwide net, and the Taliban was an endogenous organization operating only in the territory of Afghanistan.

And the United States made these distinctions I believe. The United States demanded that the Taliban surrender Osama bin Laden and other leaders of al Qaeda to it and that the Taliban dismantle the bases used by al Qaeda. The Taliban did not comply with these requests and so the United States used force in self-defense against both al Qaeda and the Taliban.

Perhaps a fine distinction between al Qaeda and the Taliban may be that you could initially attack only al Qaeda and then based upon the reaction of the Taliban, attack them as well. That is to say, if the Taliban come to the assistance of al Qaeda then they too could be properly targeted. This seems to me to be too formalistic, however, and international law does not require making this distinction.

Robert Turner When asked, 'who was the government of Afghanistan on 11 September?,' I would respond by querying whether Somalia had a government a decade ago. It is clearly possible to have states that are so dysfunctional and so split that no authority constitutes the legitimate government. The UN Security Council, acting on behalf of the world community, has taken the position that the Taliban was not the government of Afghanistan, referring to it only as a faction.1 Moreover, the Security Council had ordered all states to immediately cease supporting terrorism, declaring such support a threat to the peace.2 Given that the Security Council had de-legitimized any Taliban claim to act on behalf of the government of Afghanistan, it is hard to argue the case that the Taliban was the government of Afghanistan. In my view then, the Taliban was never the legitimate government of Afghanistan. This of course does not...