Stewart Bell, journalist with National Post, wrote his follow up book "Martyr's oath" just a year after his first book.

Both books are bound to make the reader feel uneasy and angry.

There Is No Peace In Heaven

ÖZGÜ ÖZMAN

Cold Terror: How Canada Nurtures and Exports Terrorism around the World

Stewart Bell's first book Cold Terror looks into how Canada had become an internationally renowned hub of global terrorism, how terrorism was welcome and nurtured by the very same values we love and cherish in this country: Understanding and Tolerance.

Stewart Bell, journalist with National Post, wrote his follow up book "Martyr's oath" just a year after his first book. Both books are bound to make the reader feel uneasy and angry.

Politicians, hungry for minority votes, have been in close ties with terrorist organizations since the beginning and have played important roles in sabotaging the necessary steps needed to be taken by the parliament in dealing with terror.

Public is mostly complacent and ignorant about concepts and labels.

And the media. This is a country where the line between terrorists and freedom fighters had been removed by the media.

In a democracy with so many misdynamics it looks like it is a bit too easy to think all is fair.

We met Stewart Bell at his National Post office in North York.

- How did you take up interest in the subject?

- I am from Vancouver originally and I guess my interest in the stuff began with Air India bombings in 1985. Being from British Colombia, I was moved by the fact that this conspiracy had been hatched and carried out in Canada by Canadians. Even though it was motivated by a conflict, it really had nothing to do with Canadians. Motivations had to do with India and separation of Sikh homeland. That sort of started my interest. And I had always written about extremism or the kind of nasty things especially young people can get involved with, whether it's extreme fringes of the right wing movement or Neo Nazi movement, or Aboriginal movement or Sikh extremist movement.

I came to Toronto to work for the National Post in early 1988 and I started reporting on the subject in a more consecrate way. What I found here was a lot of the mistakes Canada had made, leading up to the Air India bombing.

I find we were making the same errors again and again, with different versions. I was astounded when I looked into it and found out what terrorist activities were going on in Canada. Virtually no Canadians were really aware of it. That's partly because a lot of the stuff that goes on in Canada is not sitting on bombs in a shopping mall; it is supporting conflicts overseas or relating to conflicts what we call "Homeland conflicts". By that I mean wars that are taking part in other parts of the world and have been imported into Canada; they call it the spill over fact. Another part of the world spills over into Canada through migration. For example in early 80's, ASALA within Armenian population had decided to use Canada as a way of advancing its cause by carrying out attacks here. Again, a conflict that had absolutely nothing to do with Canada. It's the exact same kind of dynamics you have with Air India, Tamil Tigers and some Islamist groups. People become very passionate about the conflict in their homeland and decide to take action here to support.

- How do Canadians take it? Do they sympathize with the homeland terrorist activities?

- Some do. Part of it is ignorance. There is no way your average Canadian could ever really understand these things. And it's part of what these groups do, not just fundraising and violence; it's propaganda as well. That's part of terrorism: advancing your message. So I think when you're hearing one side of the conflict and if you really don't know much about it, then sure.

- In your book you talk about politicians' role, justice system's role and public's role in promoting terror. Let's talk about politicians' role first.

Obviously politicians' job is to represent their constituency. In some ridings in Canada there are very large concentrations of populations that are very intensely interested in their homeland conflicts. In BC, there are areas with very large Sikh populations, where their MP's obviously have to be sensitive about those issues. In Toronto there are ridings with heavy Tamil populations. Their MP's are attuned and sensitive to those issues. They bring those issues forward within the government and it has an impact on legislation.

In case of Air India bombing; it was found to be linked to a charity in BC. Right after the bombing there was a lot of push for a law which would regulate the charities in that charities can't be used to raise money for terrorism. That went forward but it was never passed; it was tossed out because some of those MPs were concerned about the backlash that they might face. So there was no terrorism law on the books in Canada until after 9/11. Even though our closest allies UK, US, Australia all had terrorism laws, it took 9/11 for Canada to really do anything. Even after 9/11 Prime Minister Jean Chrétien stood up in the House of Commons and said "we don't have any terrorists in Canada". That's actually quoted at the beginning of my book. Well, all you have to do is walk two blocks of the Parliament Hill to the Federal Court, you could see that there were dozens of cases on the books where the Immigration Department was trying to deport terrorists. I think we do have an issue; and we're always going to have because of the kind of country the Canada is, the kind of country we want to be, that welcomes people from all over the world to come and live here as Canadians.

- What is media's role?

- I am not sure if media has a defined role.

- Let me ask you something specific then. Where the government lists an organization as a terrorist organization, why would the mainstream media choose to use labels like "freedom fighters" or "rebels" instead?

- It's just names. What counts are the actions?

- I guess my question is, as a media person yourself, can you tell me what makes media call a terrorist organization "freedom fighter"? Take PKK for example, terrorist organization by definition, terrorist organization by Canadian law, yet Canadian media has no problem referring to it as rebel group or freedom fighters.

- Terrorism is a set of actions and tactic. It's a tactic that involves the indiscriminate use of violence targeting civilians to bring about some political or religious outcome. What you're touching on though is the labeling. But we do have to be sensitive also though. There are different types of organizations. Take FARC in Colombia. It's a listed terrorist group under Canadian law. But it's different from Al Qaeda. FARC is really more a guerrilla organization that uses terrorist tactics. They hold territory, they have a quasi kind of Government, and they have political left wing revolutionary agenda. So that makes them a guerrilla group or a rebel group. At the same time they blow up judges, they assassinate people, they sell drugs to raise money; these are terrorist tactics. So is FARC a terrorist organization? Well, under a law it is, yes. But realistically it's a guerrilla group that uses the tactics of terrorism in addition to the tactics of guerrilla warfare.

I think the same applies to Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka; it's a guerrilla group that uses terrorist tactics. PKK, where it falls, I don't know.

- And Al Qaeda is a terrorist organization, because?

- Al Qaeda, is it even an organization?

- Is it a matter of size?

- Why does it matter what we call them? Does it matter whether we call them terrorists, freedom fighters, idiots or murderers, suicide bombers, homicide bombers, killers? What's important is what they do. They all call themselves freedom fighters. Everybody who picks up a gun considers himself freedom fighter. That term is as meaningless as a terrorist.

- Let's go back to politicians. You feel that Jean Chrétien set a bad example on the subject. What other examples can you give us?

- You go right back to Mulroney. Mulroney was PM during Air India bombing; it was a conservative government. I don't think they responded to that whole thing well at all. You recall the famous embarrassment where he phoned the PM of India of the time to give his condolences, when in fact the majority of the victims were Canadian citizens. That I think showed the mindset of the time where this wasn't a Canadian problem but someone else's problem.

- Chrétien I believe was a disaster for security. His focus was on budgetary issues and cutting from the military and security. Intelligence budget and work force in Canada dropped drastically during those Liberal years. Paul Martin did some good things. He began to rebuild security intelligence and the military. He brought in the national security policy for the first time. Although he infamously attended a function hosted by the front for the Tamil Tigers, which was a huge propaganda coup which is mentioned in the book also. The conservatives now are trying to position themselves as a Law and Order kind of government; so they take these issues a little bit more seriously. Stockwell Day as the Minister of Public Safety is trying to give the impression that conservatives are stronger on these issues.

- Any changes on the immigration law?

- Main issue has to do with deportation of people that are caught here. Because you know, dealing with terrorists even when you identify them is a very difficult thing to do. What we ask of our government and their security forces is that no attacks happen here. That is the burden we place on them. But how do you do that? How do you stop a terrorist before the bomb goes off? Well, it means arresting people for conspiracy, charging people for membership in organizations; on the immigration side it means deporting people, because they are members of terrorist groups or are affiliated with terrorist groups or have a past history of terrorist group activity. Canada has tried to do that over the years, numbers of people have been caught here. But it's proven to be difficult to remove them because of these standards of the courts that said you can't remove somebody if there is a substantial risk that they might be tortured. So problem is that many people that are involved in these activities come from countries like Jordan and Egypt where torture is daily practice. So you can't get rid of them. How do you deal with that?

- In case of Canada's first terror experience, Armenian Terror in 1982, do you recall how politicians dealt with it?

- I don't really recall. I wasn't aware of it at that time. It was only something that I looked back in retrospect during my research.

- You had an interview with one of the terrorists (Haig Gharakhanian) who was a member of ASALA and took part in assassination attempt of Kani Gungor in 1982.

- Yes, I used that story to show the emblematic way we treated terrorists here, especially before 9/11. He was convicted of involvement in the attack on Kani Gungor. Although Kani Gungor didn't die, he was paralyzed. And yet, Gharakhanian is still here.

According to the Canadian law, if you're not a Canadian, you come here and you commit a serious crime, you are supposed to be kicked out of the country. He was convicted of involvement in a serious crime; got a very light sentence and then the judge felt sorry for him and allowed him to stay. Reason I reported that episode in my book is that I think it's pretty typical of the way we treated people involved in these very serious crimes.

- If those things were to happen today would we deal with them differently?

I think things have changed since 9/11. More Canadians are aware, we have now in place the counter-terrorism law, anti-terrorism act which we didn't have before. The thing we have to be mindful of is that we ask our security forces to stop things from happening. It's a difficult thing to do, but when it works what happens? Nothing. So I think we have to guard against the very understandable tendency to think that because nothing happens, no bomb goes off on a bus in Toronto there is no threat anymore. Because threats are there, and they are very real. They are real because of two things. One, the ongoing homeland terrorism issues; this will always be in the background in Canada. Two, the emergence of home-grown terrorism. Canada's military involvement in Afghanistan has stirred some parts of populations in Canada. They feel that an attack against Canada would be justified. So, I think the threats are there and real and we have to make sure we don't drop our guard just because nothing has happened. I am not saying we need to run around, all be scared and point fingers and hide under our beds. We just need to be alert to these issues and make sure that we give our security agencies and resources what they need in the legislation to deal with these issues so we can go about living our lives.

- You feel there are other countries which are more equipped and on the right track in dealing with terror? What is the ideal situation?

- Ideal would be different for each country. Each country has to find the balance it's comfortable with. Our balance is a little bit out of kilter because we don't quite appreciate the threats.

US are a lot more aggressive in prosecuting terrorists to the point where some Canadian terrorists are being prosecuted by Americans, Abdullah Khadr for example. He is a Canadian and he was arrested here, but it is Americans who are laying charges against him on the allegations of selling weapons to Al Qaeda and Taliban. There was another case, Mohammed Jabarah. Again, Canadians decided that they could not bring charges on him, but Americans did. So when you see cases like that you wonder whether or not our laws are strong enough. British, very similar society in legal framework to us, but I think their laws are stronger than ours, partly maybe because of their experience with IRA in the past. When you look at our closest allies you see that our laws are not as affective as theirs.

June 2008