On Terrorism, Part 1

October 20th, 2006 |

I originally wrote this in December of 2004. This is the first part

Dec, 26, 2004, reposted October 20, 2006
Dealing With Terrorism-What Is Terrorism-1

The USA has been in a war on terrorism now for several years. And yet, it appears that the USA does not have a legal definition for terrorism. As a consequence, people in the USA are not officially charged with terrorism but other crimes. There is quite an interesting breakdown of this oddity on a web page maintained by the North Carolina Wesleyan College (NCWC) here. Nor is the USA alone in this conundrum. It appears that there is no official agreed-upon UN definition for terrorism either, according to this page maintained by the UN.

Yet several US agencies have similar working definitions of terrorism, as does the UN in a restricted sense. According to the above-mentioned NCWC web page listed above, there are these guidelines:

US STATE DEPARTMENT:

State Department definition, Title 22 of the U.S. Code, Chapter 38, Section 2656f(d): premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience.

FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation)

….the unlawful use of force or violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives. Defense Department definition: the calculated use, or threatened use, of force or violence against individuals or property to coerce or intimidate governments or societies, often to achieve political, religious, or ideological objectives. United Nations definition: any act intended to cause death or serious bodily injury to a civilian, or to any other person not taking an active part in the hostilities in a situation of armed conflict, when the purpose of such act, by its nature or context, is to intimidate a population, or to compel a government or an international organization to do or to abstain from doing any act. Article 2(b) of International Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism, May 5, 2004)

UN (International Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism, see 2[b])

…any act intended to cause death or serious bodily injury to a civilian, or to any other person not taking an active part in the hostilities in a situation of armed conflict, when the purpose of such act, by its nature or context, is to intimidate a population, or to compel a government or an international organization to do or to abstain from doing any act. Article 2(b) of International Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism, May 5, 2004)

However, according to my reading, that specific UN definition excludes acts carried out by a government against its own people. Thus, by this definition, the suppression of Saddam Hussain against the Kurds and other groups is not officially terrorism, nor is the suppression of Chechnya by Russia. This definition is for purposes of choking off financial assets of entities deemed to be “terrorist.”

The UN on another of its pages here outlines an “Academic Consensus Definition.”

“Terrorism is an anxiety-inspiring method of repeated violent action, employed by (semi-) clandestine individual, group or state actors, for idiosyncratic, criminal or political reasons, whereby – in contrast to assassination – the direct targets of violence are not the main targets. The immediate human victims of violence are generally chosen randomly (targets of opportunity) or selectively (representative or symbolic targets) from a target population, and serve as message generators. Threat- and violence-based communication processes between terrorist (organization), (imperilled) (sic) victims, and main targets are used to manipulate the main target (audience(s)), turning it into a target of terror, a target of demands, or a target of attention, depending on whether intimidation, coercion, or propaganda is primarily sought” (Schmid, 1988).

Given the above, I think it is fair to say that terrorism consists of several components:

The use of violence or threat of violence against a civilian or nonmilitary target by an agency that has an agenda to cause a state or institution to either effect, change, or drop a policy.
The violence or threat of violence is aimed at civilians or nonmembers rather than officials of the targeted state or institution, in order to create a sense of dread or fear in that populace.
These activities are to achieve a political or social aim.

In other entries on terrorism, I’ll use my definition (thank you), which really does seem to be based on some kind of legal and academic consensus. I will apply it to the USA’s so-called “war on terrorism,” the use of terror by groups either seeking to overthrow a state power or to achieve a state power, the use of terror by states to implement foreign policy, insurrection and terror, and the efficacy and morality of these actions. I will also cover “gray” areas and hope to challenge some conventional wisdom.

Posted in Terrorism

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On Terrorism, Part 1

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