Busted Are the Peacemakers

Mary Sanchez

The Christian bible says, "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God." The U.S. Supreme Court, however, says that certain kinds of peace seeking constitute material aid to terrorists. And under current law, that can carry as much as a 15-year prison sentence.

A nonprofit organization called the Humanitarian Law Project challenged the law but was defeated in a 6-3 decision by the Supreme Court this week. The group has long sought to mediate international conflicts, including by instructing insurgent and terrorist groups to abandon violence and pursue human rights grievances in the U.N.

Two groups it has had contact with, the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in Turkey and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in Sri Lanka, are on the U.S. State Department's list of proscribed terrorist groups. Both organizations claim to be fighting for national self-determination, and both are known to commit terroristic acts to advance that goal. The Humanitarian Law Project wanted to establish that its efforts did not violate federal law against giving "material aid" to such groups.

But the court's majority ruled that even humanitarian groups seeking nothing more than to teach conflict resolution and promote nonviolence meet the criteria for federal prosecution. The Justice Department argued that this activity would violate the law's ban on providing "personnel," "service" and "expert advice or assistance" to terrorist groups. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote, "even seemingly benign support bolsters the terrorist activities of that organization."

Most Americans understand the necessity of the federal law forbidding material support to terrorists. You can't donate money to any of the 45 groups on the government's terrorist list, supply them with arms or help them blow up buildings. This provision of the Patriot Act has resulted in about 75 convictions. No doubt, America is safer for it.

But here we are, less than a decade after the World Trade Center fell, with our highest court criminalizing the pursuit of peace. Justice Stephen Breyer provided the voice of reason in remarks from the bench and in his written dissent. He noted that while giving money to a terrorist group for charitable purposes could inadvertently cause harm, as it would "free up other money used to buy arms," there is no such fungibility "where teaching human rights law is involved."

I would not suggest that Osama bin Laden just needs someone imbued with Gandhi's nonviolence philosophy to sit and have tea with him. Our laws on terrorism must reflect that we're up against a different sort of enemy. But we're also battling mindsets. And mindsets can be altered.

In many parts of the world wracked by civil and ethnic strife, it's not so easy to disentangle terrorists from everybody else, which is one of the conundrums faced by the Humanitarian Law Project in Kurdish areas of Turkey. Or think of it this way: Every future terrorist has a mother. Many micro-lending programs seek to curb terrorism indirectly by affecting the status of women. The argument goes that in many Islamic cultures, the blessing of the mother is often sought before a son undertakes a violent form of jihad. A mother empowered by her own business has reached a higher level of influence and will be less likely to be OK with her son heading off to kill himself and innocents.

So what does this decision say to a group that somehow crosses a line and is accused of associating too closely with the woman whose son turns to violence on behalf of a group labeled one of terror?

I'm hardly a pacifist. War, in all of its horror, is sometimes necessary. Gutting our enemy's ability to harm the U.S., by battle and legal measure, is part of that reality. But so are peacekeeping efforts. The danger of this ruling will be if it stifles even the pursuit of such work. Surely, the world still needs peacemakers.

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