Reflections on Controlling Terrorism
Lessons from the Antimafia Struggle in Sicily
By Jane Schneider, Graduate Center, City University of New York and Peter Schneider Fordham University
September 23, 2001
We write as an anthropologist and sociologist who have been studying the mafia and the antimafia in Palermo since the late 1980s. We believe that the profound changes in Palermo and Sicily over the last decade and a half might offer some insight - and some hope - for these troubled times. Above all we think the Sicilian experience suggests a way forward for those who desire to frame our situation in terms that do not immediately evoke the images and rhetoric of the Cold War era - hawks and doves, hard hats and hippies, freedom fighters and peaceniks. The Sicilian mafia is not ideologically driven, nor did it ever have a global reach, or attempt acts of spectacular vengeance on the scale of September 11. It is, however, a secretive organization whose "families" nurture violence. Moreover, after the breakup of the French Connection, in the context of Sicily's becoming a crossroads of global narcotics trafficking, this violence bordered on terrorism. It is on these grounds that we offer the following reflections.
The massacres of the Palermo Prefect General Carlo Alberto dalla Chiesa, in 1982, and the heroic prosecutors Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, in 1992, provoked intense moral outrage among Sicilians and a determination to bring the perpetrators and those who protected them to justice. This reaction, however, was never depicted as a "war" on the mafia. The language used instead was la lotta contro la mafia -- "the struggle against the mafia." It has been a long and uneven, but not unsuccessful struggle, on several parallel fronts.
One is the criminal justice front. Sicilians who were not accustomed to lauding the work of prosecutors and policemen soon came to appreciate, and give their support to, a cohort of brilliant prosecutors and police investigators. Like the leading figure, Falcone, these professionals demonstrated an impressive sociological imagination, grasping the contours of what had formerly been a little known and much mystified phenomenon. The work was dangerous, and Falcone and others paid for it with their lives, but not before developing two critical investigative strategies: tracing the money and (borrowed from the 1970s prosecution of political terrorists in Italy) turning some mafiosi into "justice collaborators." Producing an astonishing amount of new knowledge in a short period of time, these strategies encouraged participants in the broader antimafia struggle.
On a second front, the antimafia struggle challenged the Italian state for having harbored - given aid and comfort to -- the mafia. Throughout the Cold War, the major centrist political parties benefited from votes that mafiosi delivered from Sicily; mafiosi in turn counted on these parties to protect them from effective prosecution. But leaders of the antimafia struggle did not proceed by demonizing the state of Italy per se. Adopting the felicitous expression "pieces of the state," they attempted to identify and shore up political elements committed to reform while demanding transparency from, or the removal of, elements that were covert and corrupt. A similar approach was taken in other institutions - the banks, the church, the health care system, the unions, the university - all arenas where reformers found each other and pressed for change.
Sustaining these efforts was the movimento antimafia, a multi-faceted citizens' social movement. Catalyzed anew by each episode of terror, it poured its energy, in the form of a great deal of volunteer work, into promoting the values of democracy and civility. It is important to appreciate that antimafia Sicilians share both location and history with the mafia. Dedicated to the antimafia struggle, they are nevertheless loyal to their Sicilian identity, and in some cases burdened by a past of ambiguous social relations with mafiosi or their friends and kin. The resulting moral anguish is the more troubling because "Sicilians" are so often treated as a stigmatized category by the wider world. In coping with their anguish, men and women in the forefront of the struggle have found comfort in the declarations of support that they have received from outsiders - for example, a sympathetic press in Northern Italy and Europe.
Antimafia activists in Sicily remain committed. There has been, as well, a series of investigative and prosecutorial breakthroughs. Sicily is today a remarkably different place - changed in ways that no one thought possible a decade and a half ago. At the same time, however, many sense that the gains could be reversed, in part because, although it unfolded on a broad front, the antimafia struggle never adequately addressed deeply rooted problems of poverty and unemployment. If anything, its economic impact, particularly on the construction industry in the major cities, made these problems worse, so much so that the graffito "viva la mafia" can be seen here and there in poor neighborhoods.
Four lessons of the antimafia struggle seem potentially applicable to fighting terrorism. First: be encouraged by inspired police and judicial investigators, globally networked in a collaborative effort to follow the dirty money, "turn" witnesses, and uncover evidence of criminality. We will soon know more about secretive organizations dedicated to producing terror, and these organizations will be more vulnerable to prosecution. Second: expect that state support of terrorism is not unitary - that pieces of many states play or have played a role. This manner of thinking about the web of connectivity surrounding secretive and violent organizations enables us to assimilate the embarrassing fact that pieces of the United States of America contributed to the formation of the Al Qaeda organization following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Responsibilities are multiple, and need to be shared. Third: citizens' movements against violence, and for transparency and democracy, will emerge - have already emerged -- in many Muslim countries and in Muslim immigrant and exile communities around the world. Reflecting an intense moral condemnation of the horrors of September 11, these movements will be critical to weakening the terrorists' political shield and undermining their prestige. Recognizing them and crediting them can help to contradict representations of Muslims as terrorists in Western popular discourse - in turn a contribution to easing the burden that Muslim anti-terrorists bear. And, finally, the world struggle against poverty and desperation is urgent; it cannot be a secondary concern, set aside until the emergency is over.
How far these lessons actually are from current American foreign policy is difficult to know; our attention is riveted on the deployment of hardware and troops while the word "war" has been chosen to summarize what lies ahead. The qualification that the "war" will be unlike any other we have ever known does not adequately dispel what this word conjures: battles between opposing sides, the fear of retaliation, an unrealistic expectation of victory. The alternative word "struggle" (which, by the way, does not preclude military action) should replace the word "war" in our national rhetoric about terrorism. Ultimately, struggles against secretive and violent organizations have their best chance if they go forward along multiple paths: investigations and prosecutions, citizens' mobilizations against corruption and violence, and a concerted effort to address the millions whose children have no future.
© 2001, Jane Schneider and Peter Schneider
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Posted by Putnam on October 3, 2001
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