Tanja Nijmeijer fought at a young age with the FARC, the ‘Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia’, a Marxist-Leninist guerrilla group which has waged war on the Colombian government from the jungle for 60 years. She was involved in acts of violence. Does this make her a terrorist? A 2023 documentary about her life mainly highlights her idealistic side but does show both sides of the coin.

Tanja Nijmeijer has been called both a revolutionary (by herself) and a terrorist (by others) and is on Interpol’s most-wanted list. The documentary Tanja—Dagboek van een guerrillera (Tanja—Diary of a guerrilla), directed by Marcel Mettelsiefen, gives us Tanja’s life in a nutshell: she describes how she became involved with the FARC and how her thinking has developed over the years. Her mother, who received no signs of life from her daughter for years and had to get all her information from the media, also gives her side.

Tanja was born in 1978 and spent her childhood in the far north of the Netherlands. In 1998, she visited Colombia as a student in training to become an English teacher. She became involved in the conflict between the established order and the FARC, which she joined in 2002.

When the Colombian state began to waver under the ongoing violence, the US military entered the conflict. Tanja worked her way up in the FARC and became a significant player. She was romantically involved with one of the FARC leader’s nephews until 2010 and, from 2012, she even took a prominent role in the peace negotiations which led to an agreement between the FARC and the government in 2016.

In the documentary, she denies that she can be equated with a terrorist. She says she fought in a revolutionary war with a clearly defined goal, which she claims is very different from the type of attacks by, for example, al-Qaeda. She is asked questions about the tension between ‘acts of war’ and ‘terrorism’. But this distinction gradually becomes blurred by the facts presented in the film, even as the film increasingly portrays Tanja herself as a rebellious peacemaker and great reconcile.

The documentary leaves open the question of whether Tanja’s actions actually killed people. Tanja is accused of taking part in the kidnapping of three American citizens and she was involved in the bombing of a passenger bus which resulted in no casualties. But, as the documentary states, tragic deaths could just as well have occurred in this type of attack. And how exactly did this bombing contribute to military objectives? The film argues that the FARC wanted to target those at the heart of business and government and thus targeted the environments frequented by such people. But can one describe these as legitimate military targets? Was the FARC truly less terroristic than other terrorist groups?

Tanja describes in her diaries that she saw the flaws of the movement very clearly—corruption, sexism, favouritism, and financial reliance on drug production and distribution. She also mentions that the ultimate goal, the foundation of a new kind of society based on equality, camaraderie, and communality, gradually vanished behind the horizon. Nevertheless, she remains loyal to the movement, even after Colombian media translated and published parts of her critical diary in 2007.

‘How do you deal with this?’ the interviewer asks her. ‘Are you nostalgic when you think about your family?’

‘It was a great sacrifice’, Tanja says, looking bright-eyed into the camera, fierce and confident, wearing an army cap, with an automatic weapon gleaming against her shoulder. ‘But if I had chosen to be with my family, I couldn’t have been here. It’s one or the other. This is the route I chose. I am convinced that this sacrifice must be made.’

‘The guerrilla [movement] is your family?’ the interviewer asks. ‘Yes, of course’, Tanja replies with a smile. ‘The guerrilla [movement] is even much more than that. I have this to say to the world: I am a guerrilla fighter for the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, and a guerrilla I will remain until we win or until I die.’

It is clear why the FARC did not execute Tanja after her critical diary fragments fell into enemy hands. She is very mediagenic. Her eyes shine and she speaks with a disarming charm; she is obviously ready to fight and die for what she believes in. Energy, fanaticism, and drive emanate from her. The documentary relies heavily on this, and it seems to choose Tanja’s side. With her recurring ‘You know…?’, the viewer is made to feel like a confidant: You know this situation—you understand what I am talking about.

In this way, the documentary stands up for Tanja. Is that just? I had to let the film sink in for a long time.

I cannot deny being intrigued by the ‘abysmal’ (my word; see below) choice she made. She has shown herself able to let go of all her certainties and to fight for her ideals without restraint. In my 2022 book Wees Afgrondelijk (Be Abyssal), I describe the kind of inner transformation that this requires: a leap of faith associated with a willingness to burn bridges behind you. At the macro level of geopolitics and ideology, the birth of any worldview comes from just such a leap.

Her Marxist-Leninist guerrilla warfare was more important to this young lady, who literally had her whole future ahead of her, than her family. Tanja could have died at any moment, blown up by bombs dropped from American planes or as a result of one of the many dangers of the jungle. These risks are intertwined with the destiny she chose to follow, and she seemed to accept them completely—she was truly willing to die for the cause.

In choosing this path, she consciously opted to reject the bourgeois existence that loomed in the 1990s. When the Berlin Wall came down and the Soviet Union dissolved itself, the monomaniacal fear of communism and nuclear war gave way to a wider range of uneasy projections of the future. Liberal democracy became hegemonic: there were no longer any existential challenges or serious alternatives to it. And the highest virtue of liberal democracy was that it was easy; it offered comfort and material prosperity.

However, as Nietzsche prophesied, bourgeois-capitalist existence is too boring and too flat for a truly heroic soul. It would not do justice to the human appetite for intense passions, perilous adventures, and absolute justice. Tanja Nijmeijer, preeminently Nietzschean, made the choice to dedicate her life to a revolutionary mission and to subordinate her individual identity to a collective war effort.

If you grew up in Colombia, such a choice would perhaps be understandable. Suppose you were born in such a country. The government is corrupt and cares little about the people born into poverty. Any politician who does not allow himself to be bribed and does not collude with the existing networks of power is destroyed by smear campaigns in the mass media.

In this situation, you try to climb up through hard work, but criminals and corrupt officials make this impossible. Inflation makes building a decent life an even more unlikely prospect, and all the rules serve only to strengthen the position of the people who already have money and power. What tangible option does one have in this situation other than to try and effect change through revolution? The last glimmer of hope lies in armed uprising. But Tanja herself came from a rich country with a family that loved her: she involved herself in a conflict that had very little to do with her. This was an extraordinary choice.

Every revolution starts with good intentions but ends with new elites replacing the old ones. Even in the so-called egalitarian communes of the 1960s and 1970s—in which even sex partners were shared—the male leadership figures had more access to the women. Any levelling in the name of equality requires a distribution mechanism, and therefore authority, and therefore inequality in power. And even if property is divided equally, jealousy remains—it is just shifted to personal qualities such as beauty, intelligence, musical talent, or whatever else.

Organised violence of any kind requires hierarchy, and these hierarchies persist after the original aims of the violence have been achieved or have fallen away. Dissident voices must be suppressed in order to keep spirits high and to ensure an atmosphere of solidarity. Those who have fought and suffered in battle then think that they are more entitled than others to the fruits of victory. Every revolutionary order thus takes on the shape of the old order that it deposed.

It is not without reason that Tanja’s descriptions of the internal corruption within the FARC are reminiscent of Orwell’s Animal Farm. In that story, the oppressive farmers who were driven out and the pigs who took their positions of power became, in the end, indistinguishable.

Ultimately, however, Tanja does not go all the way. Although she says halfway through the film that she will either triumph as a revolutionary or go down fighting, things turn out differently. She begins to see that the balance has turned. The Colombian government has grown stronger, backed by the US, and the FARC’s attacks and its business model—based on kidnappings and drug money—have turned popular opinion against them. Although the FARC cannot be completely destroyed—it is still difficult to wipe out a guerrilla army in a jungle—the battle is no longer winnable for them either. Tanja decides that a compromise must be made, and peace must be sought.

The hardened jungle warrior transforms into a figure of reconciliation, gets an international platform, and everything seems to improve. This about-face doesn’t seem to cost her much. She remains as mediagenic as ever, blazing with militancy as well as charm. Was giving up her ideals a bitter pill to swallow? In the end, the status quo wins, but we get little idea of how this affected Tanja psychologically.

As a viewer, you are left with mixed feelings. Tanja Nijmeijer is a fascinating person, a beautiful woman, passionate and eloquent as well as temperamental. The film colludes with her in portraying the case for her as sympathetic while downplaying the case against her—or at least she herself manages to do so when she gives an account of her choices. The viewer feels inclined to forgive her for almost anything. But how deserved is such forgiveness? After all, the FARC killed many innocent people and was responsible for a great deal of human misery.  

The questions raised by Tanja Nijmeijer’s life and choices are perennial, and maybe even unanswerable. A final thought: perhaps the documentary not only offers a portrait of the past but also hints at a possible future. Given the current state of affairs, might we see revolutions breaking out in the streets of Europe itself once again? The disappearance of the middle class under the pressures of globalisation and immigration, the ever-growing gap between the established order and the ‘populists’/‘nationalists’, vast inequalities across the continent not only in wealth but also in social mobility… With people like Tanja Nijmeijer among us, and with the ineradicable human impulses she represents, revolution certainly cannot be ruled out.

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Moreover, with the widespread use of the internet as a propaganda tool, the number of channels through which young people can be radicalised and recruited to commit crimes has multiplied. Extremists today use social media to perpetuate myths about their religious and political supremacy.

It is no coincidence that ISIS managed to recruit thousands of young men and women beyond the borders of Syria and Iraq. They brainwashed people through online speeches and videos based on distorted realities. Extremist propaganda material remains available online and offline, and extremists use it to radicalise people.

In 2020, the national coordinator for the Prevent counterextremism programme, Chief Superintendent Nik Adams, warned that young and vulnerable people, including those with mental health issues, were being exploited. In his view, as reported in the Independent, ‘terrorists who “self-radicalise” using online material are a now a greater threat to the UK than those directed by Isis.’

Such a situation requires frontline efforts to counter both online and offline threats of radicalisation. The UK Government’s 2011 counter terrorism strategy, ’Prevent‘, was designed to stop people from being drawn into radical Islamic and far-right extremism alike through dialogue and rehabilitation efforts.

The objectives of Prevent included the need to ‘respond to the ideological challenge of terrorism’ and its promoters; to ‘prevent people being drawn into terrorism’ and give those who were affected ‘advice and support’; and to ‘work with sectors and institutions where there are risks of radicalisation’ (3.21).

However, Prevent faced strong resistance in certain quarters, including from some British Muslim individuals and organisations. For instance, in 2015, the former chief superintenant with the Metropolitan police, Dal Babu, said that that ‘most Muslims are suspicious of the scheme and see it as a tool to spy on them,’ according to a report in the Guardian. For Babu, Prevent had become a ‘toxic brand’.

In a joint letter to the Guardian in 2016, a group of around 380 academics, lawyers, students and others argued that Prevent ‘damages the fabric of trust in our society, silences Muslims and dissent, and institutionalises Islamophobia at a time when the far-right is gaining influence in many parts of Europe.’ But this analysis was arguably wrong, because it does not represent the ground realities.

The former chief crown prosecutor Nazir Afzal, a British Muslim who lives in Birmingham, has been a strong supporter of Prevent. He argued in an interview with The Times in 2017 that ‘Prevent is simply safeguarding… It’s not about criminalising. It has done phenomenally good work. It’s stopped at least 150 people from going to Syria, 50 of them children.’

As reported in another Times article from 2017, Afzal warned that there was an ‘”industry” of Muslim groups’, such as Cage and Prevent Watch, which were ‘spreading misinformation about the Prevent strategy.’ According to the same article, ‘Critics have called the organisation [Cage] apologists for terror.’ [The article is currently the subject of a legal complaint from MEND, which has itself been accused of promoting Islamism – Ed.]

Altogether, it seems next to impossible to reach a consensus on how to use Prevent so as to effectively deal with the radicalisation of young and vulnerable Muslims. For now, they remain at risk.

Clearly Prevent is no silver bullet. It needs to be constructively revisited, scrutinised and reformed from time to time like any other policy. However, scrapping a policy based on mere assumptions and unfounded fears is arguably short-sighted, especially when the threat posed by Islamist ideology remains alarming in the UK. In 2021, MI5 Director General Ken McCallum said in his annual threat update that ‘alongside all the focus rightly being given to State Threats, Islamist Extremist Terrorism remains a potent, shape-shifting threat.’

The extremist ideology does not need a territory to establish its dominion. The Islamic state might have fallen in Syria, but there are still individuals in the UK and abroad who are deeply influenced by their radical religious ideology and who remain loyal to the cause of establishing a Caliphate. This increases the threat of individual radicalisation.

According to Matt Jukes, Assistant Commissioner at the Metropolitan Police and Head of their Counter-Terrorism Policing Unit, ‘while some recent attacks have been carried out by asylum seekers, the majority of the terrorist threat to the UK is home-grown, and posed by British-born extremists.’ This demonstrates the urgent need to address religious radicalisation within the country.

Narratives such as the idea of ‘western imperialism’, the claim that ‘Islam is under siege’ and that ‘Western society is hostile to Islam and Muslims,’ are relentlessly peddled by radical preachers. Their aim is to alienate vulnerable young Muslims and push them down the path of violence and revenge. Such preachers also advance conspiracy theories, including the influence of the Jews over international media, and advocate wife-beating and the ideology of the ‘jihad against the infidel West.’

One Muslim cleric, Abubaker Deghayes, while addressing the congregation of a mosque in Brighton, is reported as saying, ‘Jihad by fighting by sword, this jihad is compulsory upon you.’ Following a trial at the Old Bailey, he was recently convicted of encouraging terrorism.

In January 2022, Malik Faisal Akram, a British national, reportedly took four Jewish people hostage at a synagogue in Colleyville, Texas, in a bid to secure the release of Aafia Siddiqui, a convicted terrorist. The incident was described by US President Joe Biden as ‘an act of terror,’ and by UK Foreign Secretary Liz Truss as ‘an act of terrorism and anti-Semitism.’ However, mere condemnations are not enough. What is needed is for society to address the crucial question of what drew Akram to commit this crime in the first place.

Akram was not an isolated fan of Siddiqui, or merely an anti-Semite who travelled to the United States from the UK to witness Siddiqui’s glorious release. Rather, his actions were motivated by religious devotion: his last conversation with his brother in the UK, in which he ‘promised’ that he would ‘go down a martyr,’ demonstrates that he was a product of the same toxic rhetoric that manipulates religious discourse to gain leverage and influence. His case illustrates the way in which Islamist radicalisation is not only divorced from reason, but also lacks compassion and empathy towards fellow human beings who happen not to be Muslims.

Impressionable young people who listen to radical preachers may grow up to distrust their fellow citizens and governments. Some disturbing examples of this phenomenon have been uncovered by Ed Husain, a former radicalised Muslim. Husain, who is now an author, political advisor, and Professor at the Walsh School of Foreign Service in Georgetown University, presented these findings in Among the Mosques: A Journey Across Muslim Britain, published by Bloomsbury in June 2021.

Husain shows how mosques in the UK are exerting control over Muslim-dominated areas such Bolton, Dewsbury, Bradford, Birmingham, and Blackburn. In these areas, a Taliban-like lifestyle is widely followed by orthodox Muslims. According to Husain, nearly 50 per cent of the mosques in the UK are controlled by the Deobandis – the radical Islamist sect which has inspired and created terror organisations such as the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Concerns about the radicalisation taking place in certain British mosques and madrassas have been raised in the past. But because there is such sensitivity around multiculturalism and relations between Muslims and the rest of British society, these concerns have often been overlooked or dismissed. More moderate or pluralist Muslims, such as Qanta Ahmed, have found themselves being criticised for ‘speak[ing] up against political Islam’ by organisations such as the Muslim Council of Britain, which Ahmed describes as ‘highly politicised’.

Back in 2015, David Cameron, then Prime Minister, announced a crackdown on madrassas attached to mosques in a speech to the annual Conservative party conference. According to a report in the Guardian, Cameron claimed that ‘pupils in some madrasas were taught not to mix with children from other religions, were beaten, and fed conspiracy theories about Jewish people.’

Cameron’s announcement prompted outrage among so-called representatives of the Muslim communities. Sheikh Ibrahim Mogra of the Crown Hills madrassa in Leicester, for example, said that the proposal to register madrassas and require them to be inspected by Ofsted would be ‘seen as once again picking on the Muslim community because of the actions of the few,’ according to the Guardian.

Extremist ideologies have not gone away. In 2021, the Manchester Arena Inquiry held an evidence session into the conduct of Didsbury Mosque, which had been attended by Salman Abedi, the Manchester Arena bomber responsible for the deaths of twenty-two and the injury of many more on 22 May 2017. The chairman of Didsbury Mosque, Fawzi Haffar, ‘denied that the mosque…had issues with extremism’, according to a National Secular Society report.

However, in a statement issued by their solicitors, the families of the victims reproached Haffar for his ‘complacency’, responding that, ‘Whilst there is no evidence that Manchester Islamic Centre and Didsbury Mosque played a direct role in radicalising Salman Abedi, it is clear that they failed in the years before the bombing to take adequate steps to challenge extremist ideology.’

As reported on the BBC, the same inquiry was also informed that a ‘significant’ amount of extremist material supporting the Islamic State was found in the possession of Salman Abedi’s elder brother, Ismail, when he was a teacher at Didsbury Mosque, ‘including music encouraging suicide missions.’ A former imam, Mohammed El-Saeiti, had given a ‘sermon speaking out against terrorism and Islamic extremism at the mosque’ while Salman Abedi was there, according to the Manchester Evening News. He subsequently ‘received death threats on social media over his address.’ His evidence was disputed by the mosque.

The glorification of jihad through religious sermons as a way of inciting gullible young people to violence remains a matter of concern not just in the UK but across Europe. In France, for instance, three mosques were recently shut for varying periods because of charges including the spreading of Islamist propaganda and anti-Semitic remarks. In late 2021 the interior minister, Gérald Darmanin, also announced a crackdown on 76 mosques suspected of being ‘breeding grounds of terrorism.’

In Austria, after an Islamist killed four people in a deadly attack in Vienna in 2020, the authorities have been taking steps to fight ‘political Islam’. Some have criticised these as likely to marginalise Muslim civil society: as with Prevent, finding an approach that will gain general acceptance is fiendishly difficult.  

Religious beliefs can be a force for good or bad. On the bad side, they can be used to brainwash vulnerable people and drag them down to the path of violence in the name of defending their faith.

What is urgently needed in Britain in 2022 is an honest and transparent debate among public authorities, the media and other relevant parties about Islamist radicalism and how best to counter it. Adopting a strategy of appeasement to avoid seemingly unpleasant situations only encourages extremists to continue spreading their invidious ideology. It also increases the possibility of more situations like the Batley Grammar case, in which an RS teacher was suspended by his school, in response to pressure from an angry mob of protesters, for showing ‘blasphemous’ cartoons in the classroom.

In the long term, appeasing religious extremists will not lead to greater harmony and integration between people of different cultures and beliefs, who have to learn to live together somehow. This is because Islamist extremism, just like far right nationalism, seeks to drive a wedge between different ‘identities’ and exploit people’s fear of reprisal.

The problem is that failing to intervene in minority communities, including Britain’s Muslim communities, out of a mistaken notion of tolerance, will harm those who most need protecting – the young and the vulnerable.

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