Carlos the Jackal: Romanticizing the Terrorist - Research Paper Example

 Carlos the Jackal: Romanticizing the Terrorist Introduction “Terrorism can be viewed as a warped mirror image of the new economy” Don van Natta, Jr. (cited in, Terrorism, Inc., 108) Terrorism, in the modern context, is no longer an alien occurrence that takes place only at some remote corner in the world. It can no longer be considered as some internal civil strife taking place within the borders of another country, and thus can be quietly overlooked; nor does the slogan ‘one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter’, work in today’s context. Terrorism, in the twenty first century, is a transnational affair that knows no boundary, no religion, is sophisticated, and aims to kill as many innocent people as possible almost anywhere in the world. The reason behind such ruthless and mindless killings, is sometimes shown to be religion (jihad), sometimes nationalism (fight for freedom); or it may be some other warped reason formed within the twisted mind of the terrorist, that knows no humanity, no mercy, and no fear of God. A closer look at the modern form of terrorism will show us that it “has become an “international business,” networked across state borders... [A] network with business activities and funding that cross the globe, and with an increasingly loose affiliation among groups with shared interests or goals” (Terrorism, Inc., 108). In this article I will examine one such terrorist, Carlos the Jackal, and will study research articles that seek to explain his terrorist activities. I will also study the type of research work that has been done in this context to understand what nature of work has been conducted to gather information pertaining to the topic of terrorism in general and Carlos in particular. At the end I will frame two questions that I feel has not been answered in proper details in the gathered information, thus leaving scope more future work. Discussion A close look at the majority of the research articles that I explored to seek information on Carlos- the Jackal, brings out one picture very clearly. Almost all the papers have portrayed the creation of an almost mythical figure based on a person, who at the least, was a criminal and a murderer. This mythical figure, a complete media creation, arose from its shadowy precincts and gave birth to a newfangled way of thinking, where a terrorist is the “incandescent celebrity. Without the Jackal, Osama bin laden would have never become a living myth of international terrorism” (Hamm, 158). This was exactly what the modern age, sophisticated, techno savvy terrorists were looking for, and media played right into their hands by romanticizing this group of anti-socials that under the garb of jihad/freedom fighters were nothing, but ruthless criminals. Since in this process of the mythopoeia of the terrorist, Carlos- the jackal was the point of origin, I will start this article by taking a brief look at this man’s life-story. Brief details of the life-story of Carlos- the Jackal: Carlos- the Jackal was born as Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, on 12th October 1949, in Caracas, Venezuela. His father, a staunch Marxist, named him Ilich after the Marxist leader Lenin (Vladimir Ilyich Lenin) and indoctrinated Carlos with the principles of Marxism right from childhood. In 1959 he joined the Youth wing of the National Communist Party at the age of 10, and in 1966 he went with his father to spend the summer vacation at a guerrilla training camp in Havana, Cuba. After his parents divorced, his mother took him to London where he studied in Stafford House College and London School of Economics. He was admitted into the Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow, an institute infamous as a “hotbed for recruiting foreign communists to the Soviet Union” (BBC News, Carlos the Jackal - three decades of crime). However he was expelled from this University owing to alleged anti-communist activities, and soon joined the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) in Amman, Jordan, where he was trained in the guerrilla warfare. Here he earned the name ‘Carlos’, which was given to him by Bassam Abu Sharif, a top leader in the PFLP. Under this organization he took part in the war against the Jordan government in 1970 (the Black September). However, his first act of terror took place on 30th December 1973, under the directives of the PFLP, when he tried to assassinate a well known London based Jewish businessman. With this started the killing spree that Carlos unleashed, and in 1974 he was a part of the bomb attack that took place in a London bank; used car bombs to blast 3 French newspapers that supported Israel; bombed a restaurant in Paris that killed 3 and injured many; while in 1975 we find that he was a part of the failed grenade attack on the El Al airlines at the Orly airport in Paris. Later, the same year, Carlos murdered two policemen who were without any arms and an informant in cold blood and after this incident created a huge uproar he fled to Algeria. After this incident there was a raid in his London den, and there along with a cache of arms a copy of the book ‘The Day of the Jackal’ by Frederick Forsyth, was also found amongst his other personal belongings. Thus was created the myth of ‘The Jackal’, a name woven out of the fertile imagination of a reporter from the Guardian (Follain, 71). Carlos- the Jackal was a murderer who could be hired for carrying out various kinds of assassination jobs. He worked for the PFLP, Iraq, Cuba, the red army of German, Italy’s red army brigade, Syria and Libya, and was involved in many bombings, kidnappings, hostage taking, hijacking that killed scores of people. In 1982 and 1983 he undertook a series of bomb attacks that killed 12 people while injuring a hundred more, in a vain attempt to seek release of his friend and his girlfriend. His most daring attack was the 1975 Vienna hijacking of 70 people from the meeting of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries-OPEC (Martin, 63). All these years it was seemingly almost impossible to capture this extremely illusive Jackal; however his luck ran out when in 1994 when he was allegedly ‘bought over’ by the French government from the government of Sudan. After receiving information from US, the French government with help from the Sudanese government captured Carlos – the Jackal, from Khartoum. In 1997 he was tried in the French court, and convicted of the 1975 crimes where he had murdered two unarmed policemen and an informant, and sentenced to life imprisonment. As to the number of killings, according to Carlos’s own count, he was personally responsible for murdering 83 people (ibid, 64). A look into the various research articles that discuss Carlos- the Jackal: In almost all the research article that I have studied, Carlos the jackal has been mentioned while discussing a certain specific crime, or while describing the functioning of a terrorist organization. In the latter type, Carlos was shown as an exception since his was a one man show; an individual person who could be hired to assassinate and carry out acts of terror. As for example, in the paper by James Forest titled “Terrorism as a Product of Choices and Perceptions”, the author discusses in great detail the root causes of the modern day terrorism, and tells us that counter-war is the not the ultimate solution to fight terror, until we find out measures to effectively discredit the terrorist organizations, and create a sense of dishonor amongst the civic populace for such groups. Here in this illuminating article we find the author referring to Carlos under the heading ‘On Organizations’ on page 14 of his paper, where he discusses the importance of forming an organization, to carry out terror activities. Here he mentions Carlos as an exceptional case and he says “Of course, while individual terrorists like Carlos the Jackal or Theodore Kaczynski have caused a considerable amount of suffering in recent decades, these exceptions reinforce how difficult it is to overstate the importance of group membership or affiliation in the world of terrorism” (Forest, 14). Another aspect that was noticed while carrying out the research work was the hype created around Carlos- the Jackal by the media. The amount of coverage that this terrorist received is evident from the endless number of newspaper clippings that I found, both in the library archives and while searching for information on the Internet. As I searched for information, and studied one newspaper article after the other one question that kept coming back to my mind was that: which people are responsible for such kind of analysis on terrorists and terror threats; and looking at the hype created around this mass murderer I questioned myself as to whether these analysts are competent enough to handle such sensitive issues. Here Christopher Dobson and Ronald Payne strive to answer a part of my question when they write, “Those of us who examine terrorism and explain its ways are in the front line of the battle against it” (Dobson & Payne, 283). As the part about romanticizing the terrorist I find the answer in, “The glamour side of counter-terrorism comes from the notion that part of the research draws upon classified or privileged information from either surveillance or interrogations of terrorist suspects. Given that police interrogators are rarely sociologists, it is questionable whether such material, delivered second-hand, can provide any telling insights” (Toolis, Rise of the terrorist professors). So much for the hype created around a terrorist and his victims. Many of the research journals have mentioned Carlos- the Jackal as an example of a well known terrorist of the 1970s, who was of the first of his kind to create a terror that was transnational in nature (Jurgen Brauer, 2); a “super terrorist...who provided a “face” for the shadowy world of international terrorism” (Riegler, 5); and as a political terrorist who was international in nature (Copeland, 4). Thus we find that most of the times the writers mention Carlos while researching on the topic of terrorism. These articles are varied in nature. While Brauer discusses the economic aspect of terrorist organizations and their functioning as business operations; Rieglar mainly concentrates on the role of media in writing reports on terrorism and creating hype around it; while Copeland describes the shifting perspectives of the modern day terrorist who is more sophisticated, more technology oriented, and hence more ruthless and extremely dangerous. Forest in his article discusses points as what steps the US government must take in order to successfully combat terrorism, what policies it should create and what strategies it should follow. So while each article takes up a different dimension of terrorism, Carlos- the Jackal is mentioned in all the cases. This is because Carlos was the first identified terrorist who gave this nefarious activity an international and political form and color, while also providing a face to the term ‘terrorist’ which had heretofore remained faceless. Books on Carlos give a detailed account of his life and activities, that trace his journey right from his childhood till the time he was convicted and jailed for life in France (Follain, Jackal: the complete story of the legendary terrorist, Carlos the Jackal; Dobson & Payne, The Carlos Complex. A Study in Terror). Thus we find that in majority of the papers the research work was primarily qualitative in nature, where they examined the criminal activities of Carlos and other terrorists from various newspapers, scholarly articles, research papers, books, and various government publications. Thus the research work was mainly secondary in nature and mostly used to develop theories and models related to terrorism, while sometimes also trying to comprehend the psychological aspects of these criminals. Some papers also contained recommendations where various policies were analyzed and discussed, and suggestions given for better success in tackling terror crimes in the future. Empirical studies conducted on terrorism and political terrorism is significantly low, and mostly the research work that has been carried out is qualitative in nature. Quantitative analysis to some extent has been carried out in the field where the relationship between media and terrorism is explored and it contains mainly content analysis, where various reports are counted and analyzed statistically to find out the type and nature of the communication. Two questions I would like future research to answer or explore are: 1. Since it is now quite clear that war is not the answer to terrorism, what step has to be taken next, and how much has been in this context in the last two years to bring down the numbers of young people who join such terrorist organizations? 2. Since Carlos was from an affluent family, it goes against the much publicized theory that ‘poverty breeds terrorism’; do terrorists have a different kind of mindset that does not depend on the money/religion factor? In this case how will the authorities handle such people with this type of mindset? Or is it something beyond our control, and the world will always have terrorists, whose perspectives would shift to suit the changing times and era? Conclusion: From the information gathered, one thing is clear, terrorism has been much hyped, without much effort to collect statistical data and conduct empirical studies, which would have revealed the actual ground status pertaining to this type of criminal activity. A detailed study into the topics of other types of crimes like child trafficking, illegal immigrations, show us that they have more relevant and a detailed form of numerical representation and statistical analysis, that gives us a better picture. The field of terrorism also needs similar studies that would provide numerical evidences and clearer representations of the ground reality (instead of only theories and models), that would enable the authorities to create more effective policies. Works Cited BBC News. Carlos the Jackal - three decades of crime. 24th December 1997. Web. 12th October 2010. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/42244.stm Brauer, J. Rational Terrorists: How Terrorist Organizations Employ Economic Principles To Conduct Their Beastly Business. Public Lecture, University of North Carolina, Asheville. 20 April 2006. Web. 12th October 2010. http://www.aug.edu/~sbajmb/paper-Rational_Terrorists.p Copeland, T. Is the "New Terrorism" Really New? An Analysis of the New Paradigm for Terrorism. The Journal of Conflict Studies, Winter 2001, Vol. XXI, No. 2. Centre for Conflict Studies, University of New Brunswick. Print. Dobson, C., & Payne, R. The Carlos Complex. A Study in Terror. London: Coronet Books, 1977. Print. Follain, J. Jackal: the complete story of the legendary terrorist, Carlos the Jackal. New York: Arcade Publishing, 1998. Print. Forest, J. Terrorism as a Product of Choices and Perceptions. Combating Terrorism Center at West Point. Prepared for the CATO Institute Conference, “Shaping the New Administration’s Counterterrorism Strategy,” January 12, 2009. Print. Hamm, M. Terrorism as crime: from Oklahoma City to Al-Qaeda and beyond. New York: NYU Press, 2007. Print. Martin, G. Understanding Terrorism: Challenges, Perspectives, and Issues. California: Sage Publications, 2009. Print. Riegler, T. “Terrorology”: Who analyses and comments on the terrorist threat? 2009. Web. 12th October 2010. http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/riegler-paper.pdf Terrorism, Inc., Chapter 6. 19th December 2009. Web 12th October 2010. http://prod.ls.wcm.svvs.pearsontc.net/assets/hip/us/hip_us_pearsonhighered/samplechapter/0205779719.pdf Toolis, K. Rise of the terrorist professors, in The New Statesman, 14 June 2004. [Newspaper Article] Print. Outline Introduction: will contain a brief introduction and explain as to what is meant by the word terrorism and the nature of its functioning as an organisation in today’s context. It will also reveal as to why I have selected to focus on Carlos the Jackal while discussing the terrorism issue. Discussion: will start with a brief glance into the form of data gathered for this research paper. Life story of Carlos- the jackal: It will then go on to shed some light on the life-story of this illusive criminal known as Carlos the jackal and will trace his story right form his childhood till the time of his imprisonment. A look into the various research articles that discuss Carlos- the Jackal: this will take a close look at the type of information that I had gathered will conducting research work into this topic. It will find the nature of work that has done by experts in this line (qualitative or quantitative); whether the writers try to frame some policies and theorise, or do they just provide the basic information and data for others to form the theories. So this section will shed light on the type of work that been done in this line. Next I will frame the two questions that I think needs further exploration and a closer look. Conclusion: would sum the type of research work done on the topic of terrorism (and Carlos) as a whole, and the need for more empirical and statistical information to get a clearer picture of the entire scenario. Read More