We might never defeat terrorism but we can cut out its causes

IN 1989 Francis Fukuyama, who was then working for the US State Department, wrote a long essay called The end of History.

In his own words, the purpose of that essay was to suggest that "a remarkable consensus concerning the legitimacy of liberal democracy as a system of government had emerged throughout the world over the past few years, as it conquered rival ideologies like hereditary monarchy, fascism, and most recently communism."

He went on to argue in the essay that liberal democracy may constitute the "end point of mankind's ideological evolution" and the "final form of human government." In other words, while other forms of government were characterised by grave defects and irrationalities that led to their eventual collapse, liberal democracy was free from such fundamental internal contradictions. He wasn't arguing that the stable democracies of the world were free from injustice or serious social problems, rather that these problems arose from inadequate application of the principles of liberty and equality on which modern democracy is founded.

At the same time as Fukuyama was writing his controversial essay, a new concept was emerging, in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union. Rather grandly known as the new world order, this was an idea that suggested that democracy and the free market would overcome everything else, that the United States in particular would effectively oversee the introduction of free market principles throughout the world, and that civilisation as we know it would predominate into the indeterminate future.

What happened in Madrid last week was just the latest wake-up call to those who believe that there is only one way that history can develop. The atrocity in Madrid, like the attacks on New York and Bali that preceded it, was the work of deeply fanatical people, prepared to take any number of lives in a cause.

The pain and suffering they meted out to entirely innocent people the vast majority of them working class people going about their daily lives was indefensible at any level.

And it was not just indefensible, it was incomprehensible. If one takes at face value the messages purportedly coming from Al-Qaida in respect of the bombing, the chilling message of that organisation suggests that the motivation was revenge. These people are not killing for a cause, they are killing out of hate.

We don't know yet whether their message is authentic, but (assuming it turns out to be) this is what they said, as translated by the Associated Press: "We declare our responsibility for what happened in Madrid exactly two-and-a-half years after the attacks on New York and Washington. It is a response to your collaboration with the criminals Bush and his allies. This is a response to the crimes that you have caused in the world, and specifically in Iraq and Afghanistan, and there will be more, if God wills it. You love life and we love death, which gives an example of what the Prophet Muhammad said. If you don't stop your injustices, more and more blood will flow and these attacks will seem very small compared to what can occur in what you call terrorism."

What causes such hatred? How can we respond to the level and depth of hatred that allows people to kill and maim so many without remorse, and without any apparent purpose other than hatred and revenge? Of course the world's democratic leadership has to attempt to root out such killers and bring them to justice. Of course there is no cause that can justify the inflicting of such pain.

Of course, if civil rights have to be set aside on a temporary basis in order to guarantee the security of people, we all have to live with that.

But we have known atrocities in our own country over the years. We have struggled to come to terms not just with the acts, but with the motivation behind them. And we have tried to build a peace process that dealt with people involved in a violent struggle on their own terms.

Indeed, it is one of the ironies of our current Irish politics that so much time is taken up with the political tensions between our Government and political system, on the one hand, and Sinn Fein on the other. I'm no sympathiser with Sinn Fein I loathe their politics with a passion but it is the case that first the Irish Government and then the British government embarked on a peace process that recognised, fundamentally, that the IRA hadn't gone away.

THE republican movement was welcomed into the peace process in the clear understanding that it was associated with an undefeated army. From the beginning of that process, it is now clear, a great deal more thought should have been given to the issue of how you successfully demobilise an army when the war is over, rather than just settling for the silence of the guns. That remains the great task of our peace process. But it also remains the great task of history. Those who believed that democracy and the market, having triumphed over communism, would prevail over everything else, made a fundamental mistake. If the response of some elements of the Muslim world, in their resort to terror of the most horrible kind, seems to us to be deeply uncivilised (and it is), then sooner or later we have to look at the nature of the relationship we have allowed to develop with the entire Muslim world.

Is that a civilised relationship? Is our conduct of that relationship as fully based on the principles of equality and liberty as it should be? Do we make any effort, ever, to seek to understand the Muslim world on its own terms? In the Irish Examiner yesterday Harry McGee quoted John Kerry as saying "no American son or daughter should ever again be sent abroad to die for oil." When you look behind a sentence like that, if it means anything it means that American policy towards the Middle East has been centred on oil. How one reconciles the principles of equality and liberty with a lust for control of other people's natural resources is beyond me.

The link between oil and the invasion of Iraq, and the powerful economic interests that are determine to control the rebuilding of Iraq, is too well-established to ignore or deny.

Until we face that truth that we have allowed a relationship to be built with the entire Muslim world that is based, at least in part, on our greed and selfishness, we perhaps should not be surprised that they hate us so much.

Of course, the small core of terrorists don't represent the great mass of the people. And sooner or later, what is now a war on terrorism will give way to a search for a better, civilised relationship.

Perhaps we can defeat terror, though that's doubtful. But it will only be when we can live in justice and mutual respect together that it will be possible to write about the end of history.