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Obama Calls for Expansion of Human Rights to Combat Extremism Obama Calls for Expansion of Human Rights to Combat Extremism
(about 4 hours later)
WASHINGTON — President Obama on Thursday called on nations around the world to expand human rights, religious tolerance and peaceful dialogue as they struggle to combat a spate of terrorism that has recently struck places as far afield as Australia, Canada and Europe. WASHINGTON — As he sought to rally the world behind a renewed attack on terrorism, President Obama argued on Thursday that force of arms was not enough and called on all nations to “put an end to the cycle of hate” by expanding human rights, religious tolerance and peaceful dialogue.
In an address to world leaders on the final day of his summit on violent extremism, Mr. Obama said that poverty and political grievances fuel alienation that can lead to bursts of killing like those seen in Paris, Copenhagen, Sydney and Ottawa. In addition to building up security forces, he said nations must “put an end to the cycle of hate” through opportunity and freedom. But the challenge of his approach was staring him right in the face. His audience of invited guests, putative allies in a fresh international counterterrorism campaign, included representatives from some of the world’s least democratic and most repressive countries.
“When people are oppressed and human rights are denied, particularly along sectarian lines or ethnic lines, when dissent is silenced, it feeds violent extremism,” Mr. Obama told a gathering of ministers from dozens of countries. “It creates an environment that is ripe for terrorists to exploit. When peaceful democratic change is impossible, it feeds into the terrorist propaganda that violence is the only answer available. The three-day White House conference on violent extremism that Mr. Obama wrapped up on Thursday provided a case study in the fundamental tension that has bedeviled the American struggle with terrorism since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. While Mr. Obama has concluded that radicalism is fueled by political and economic grievance, he has found himself tethered to some of the very international actors most responsible for such grievances, dependent on them for intelligence and cooperation on security operations to prevent future attacks.
“So we must recognize that lasting stability and real security require democracy,” he added. “That means free elections where people can choose their own future and independent judiciaries that uphold the rule of law, and police and security forces that respect human rights, and free speech and freedom for civil society groups, and it means freedom of religion.” “There is a very profound conceptual disagreement about whether the best way to counter violent extremism is through human rights and civil society or through an iron fist,” said Marc Lynch, director of the Institute for Middle East Studies at George Washington University. The Obama administration wants “to project the human rights side, but you look at the people they’re working with and fighting alongside, and there’s a lot more to it than that.”
The president’s remarks came as the summit meeting was wrapping up amid fierce political debate about the administration’s approach to terrorism. More than 13 years after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the United States is still searching for a consensus about how to tackle an enemy more elusive and less structured than the familiar Cold War adversary in Moscow. Elisa Massimino, president of the advocacy group Human Rights First, attended the meeting on Thursday and was struck by the juxtaposition of rhetoric and reality. “We’re sitting in that room with representatives of governments that are part of the problem,” she said. “If the president believes what he’s saying, then the actions that these governments are taking are undermining our supposedly shared agenda.”
The issue has grown more urgent with the rise of the terrorist group calling itself the Islamic State. Mr. Obama, who has prided himself on ending American involvement in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, has opened a new war in the region by launching airstrikes against the Islamic State, but his critics contend that his strategy is too restrained and his own view of the threat is too limited. “That has to stop,” she added, “or we can have summits every month,” but “we’re not going to win.”
In promoting democracy and freedom as part of the solution, Mr. Obama is returning to a theme he has advanced before, and one that his predecessor, President George W. Bush, made the centerpiece of his second inaugural address in 2005. Mr. Obama, like Mr. Bush before him, argued that oppression, corruption and injustice create openings for extremists to exploit disgruntled young people. He singled out religious intolerance especially. A case in point was Egypt, whose foreign minister, Sameh Shoukry, was among those given a featured speaking role on Thursday. Although Egypt’s military has reasserted its primacy and is cracking down on dissent, it has also been one of America’s staunchest collaborators in hunting down terrorists in a dangerous region. Just this week, Egypt launched an airstrike against Islamic State forces in Libya, briefly, at least, taking on an offshoot of the group that the United States has been bombing in Iraq and Syria.
“When people spew hatred toward others because of their faith or because they’re immigrants, it feeds into terrorist narratives,” Mr. Obama told the audience gathered at the State Department on Thursday. “It feeds a cycle of fear and resentment and a sense of injustice upon which extremists prey. And we can’t allow cycles of suspicion to tear the fabrics of our countries.” Critics say the terrorism fight has simply enabled autocratic regimes to go after their political foes without worrying about American disapproval. Egypt’s leaders, for instance, have moved to stifle the Muslim Brotherhood, the opposition group they deem too radical. “It is futile to distinguish between bad terrorists, which must be defeated, and good terrorists, which can be accommodated,” Mr. Shoukry said.
He added that dialogue between countries was important. But he added: “What’s most needed today, perhaps, are more dialogues within countries, not just across faiths but also within faiths. Violent extremists and terrorists thrive when people of different religions or sects pull away from each other and are able to isolate each other and label each other as ‘they’ instead of ‘us.’” Marwan Muasher, the former foreign minister of Jordan who is now a vice president at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said he worried that the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, was becoming a rallying point for the disaffected.
He emphasized solidarity with the foreign ministers he addressed. “We are all in the same boat,” he said. “We have to help each other. In this work, you will have a strong partner in me and the United States of America.” “People who are not happy with the establishment sometimes find in ISIS a counterforce for reasons that might be associated with ideology or might not,” he told a breakfast meeting separate from the White House event. “There is a huge credibility gap” between Arab governments and their people, he added. “Nothing governments are saying is taken or believed by the public in general, and so that needs to change.”
Yet if he embraced a message on democracy and freedom akin to one his predecessor sent, Mr. Obama offered less emphasis on military force than Mr. Bush was known for. Mr. Obama condemned recent terrorist attacks but did not present terrorism as an existential threat in the same way Mr. Bush did. His language was careful and measured, without the same moral indignation summoned by his secretary of state, John Kerry, who just moments before the president spoke referred to terrorists as “murderers and thugs.” The White House acknowledged the disconnect between advocating human rights and teaming up with human rights violators. But aides said it was one Mr. Obama had learned to live with, given the importance of maintaining an international coalition to fight the Islamic State and other terror threats.
Mr. Obama’s speech came after a discussion that involved top ministers from several countries, including Japan and Jordan, both still reeling from the recent murder of their citizens who had been held hostage by the Islamic State, also called ISIS or ISIL. Ministers from France and Denmark thanked the international community for its support following attacks in their countries. “It’s a perennial challenge of the U.S. government that some of our partners are much more aggressive than others in how they define their domestic terrorist challenge,” said Benjamin J. Rhodes, a deputy national security adviser to Mr. Obama. That dynamic is “most obvious in Egypt, where essentially there’s been a very broad brush in terms of who represents a terrorist threat.”
Among others who spoke on Thursday were representatives of countries with authoritarian systems of their own, including Egypt, where the military has reasserted control and cracked down on dissent, and Kazakhstan, which has been ruled by the same former Soviet official for more than a quarter-century. That underscored the awkward alliances the United States has built with governments it otherwise might disparage in the name of fighting terrorism. He said the Obama administration would continue to press allies to balance the fight against terrorists with tolerance of political opponents. “All we can do there is be straightforward,” Mr. Rhodes said. “You don’t want to feed a sense of grievance that goes beyond the groups that are necessary to target.”
Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations secretary general, emphasized that the fight against terrorism should not be used as a justification for tactics that themselves were wrong. “We will never find our way by discarding our moral compass,” he said. “We need cool heads. We need common sense. And we must never let fear rule.” Egypt was not the only country represented at the conference with a spotty record on human rights or democracy. Other nations who sent ministers and officials included Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Uganda and the United Arab Emirates. The prosecutor general of Kazakhstan, still ruled by the former Communist who was in charge when it broke away from the Soviet Union, gave a short speech. Nearby was Aleksandr V. Bortnikov, director of the Federal Security Service, which, as the Russian successor to the K.G.B., has been a partner with the United States on fighting terrorism even as it cracks down on critics of the Kremlin at home.
He added that better political and economic systems would be as important as military responses to terrorism. “Bullets are not the silver bullets,” he said. “Missiles may kill terrorists, but good governance kills terrorism.” In promoting democracy and freedom as part of the solution to terrorism, Mr. Obama is returning to a theme he has advanced episodically in the past, and one that his predecessor, President George W. Bush, made the centerpiece of his second inaugural address in 2005. Mr. Obama, like Mr. Bush, argued that oppression, corruption and injustice created openings for extremists to exploit disgruntled young people.
Nasser Judeh, Jordan’s foreign minister, said world leaders “must address the root causes,” including “political alienation,” unemployment, poverty and illiteracy. “It is all about education, education, education; opportunity, opportunity, opportunity; empowerment, empowerment, empowerment,” he said. “When people spew hatred toward others because of their faith or because they’re immigrants, it feeds into terrorist narratives,” Mr. Obama said. “It feeds a cycle of fear and resentment and a sense of injustice upon which extremists prey. And we can’t allow cycles of suspicion to tear the fabrics of our countries.”
But research presented at the summit meeting suggested that it may not be as simple as that. While many assume that terrorists are religious zealots or politically aggrieved, Peter Neumann, the director of the International Center for the Study of Radicalization in London, said interviews with recruits showed a variety of backgrounds. Some are pious, he said, and some are not. Some have a troubled history, but others would be successful back at home. Some were thrill seekers, some enthusiastic about the totalitarian model offered by groups like the Islamic State, and some mentally ill. Yet, as he embraced a message similar to his predecessor’s, Mr. Obama offered less emphasis on force than Mr. Bush was known for. Mr. Obama condemned recent terrorist attacks but did not present terrorism as an existential threat like Mr. Bush did, nor did he use some of the phrases Mr. Bush used to refer to Islamic radicalism.
Their motivations and personal histories, Mr. Neumann said, “are so different” that it will pose very different challenges to the nations of the world. Republican critics said the conference missed the point, dismissing it as a feel-good exercise when the president should instead be stepping up his military campaign against the Islamic State.
Mr. Kerry, opening the day’s proceedings, said there was no one-size-fits-all solution to the problem. Military action must be married with political, economic and other methods, he said. “As vicious as the Islamic State has been toward Jews and Christians — killing them, cutting off their heads, burning them alive — they are just as vicious to most Muslims in Iraq and Syria who are struggling under their yoke right now,” Senator Tom Cotton, Republican of Arkansas, said on CNN. “The reason they are doing it is because they have more arms and weapons and more soldiers, and no one is standing up to them. That’s what this president needs to do.”
“There’s been a silly debate in the media in the last days about what you have to do,” Mr. Kerry said. “You have to do everything. You have to take the people off the battlefield who are there today. But you’re kind of stupid if all you do is do that and you don’t prevent more people from going to the battlefield.”