Definition of Terrorism

Terrorism broadly means the unlawful use of violence and intimidation, especially against
civilians, to achieve political or ideological aims. It primarily refers to intentional violence
during peacetime or in the context of war against non-combatants. The term ‘terrorism’ is
notoriously difficult to define. For one thing, it has evolved over the centuries since terrorist
tactics were first used. Modern-era ‘terrorism’ began during the French Revolution as a positive
concept, referring to the means whereby the nascent revolutionary state consolidated power
and imposed order. It has evolved through numerous phases and meanings since then, but it is
obviously a pejorative term in its current form. The debate on how to define terrorism is
inconclusive. Terrorism involves the use or threat of violence and seeks to create fear, not just
within the direct victims but among a wide audience. The degree to which it relies on fear
distinguishes terrorism from both conventional and guerrilla warfare. Although conventional
military forces invariably engage in psychological warfare against the enemy, their principal
means of victory is strength of arms. Similarly, guerrilla forces, which often rely on acts of
terror and other forms of propaganda, aim at military victory and occasionally succeed (e.g.,
the Viet Cong in Vietnam and the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia). Terrorism proper is thus the
calculated use of violence to generate fear, and thereby to achieve political goals, when direct
military victory is not possible. This has led some social scientists to refer to guerrilla
warfare as the “weapon of the weak” and terrorism as the “weapon of the weakest.”

Counterterrorism
Counterterrorism efforts have been made both at the international level and by state
individually. The United Nations is being increasingly called upon to coordinate the global
fight against terrorism. Eighteen universal instruments against international terrorism have
been elaborated within the framework of the United Nations system relating to specific terrorist
activities. In September 2006, UN Member States adopted the United Nations Global Counter-
Terrorism Strategy. This was the first time that member States agreed to a common strategic
and operational framework against terrorism. The attempts by states to counter terrorism have
resulted in varied counterterrorism attempts and varied responses. In states such as Israel, Sri
Lanka, Spain and the UK, which have experienced long campaigns of nationalist-based
terrorism, tighter state security, often based on emergency legislation, has long been enforced.
Nevertheless, September 11 and subsequent terrorist attacks in places such as Bali, Madrid and
London have encouraged a much broader range of countries to revise, and strengthen, their
arrangements for state security. In many ways, this reflects an attempt to deprive terrorists of
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the advantages they gain from operating in a context of democracy and globalization. Liberal-
democratic societies may be uniquely vulnerable to the threat of terrorism because they protect
individual rights and freedoms and contain checks on government power, while the ‘borderless
world’ that globalization creates affords non-state actors such as terrorist group’s considerable
scope to organize and exert influence.

In the main, state security has been strengthened by extending the legal powers of government.
Twelve conventions now form the core body of international law dealing with terrorism.
Hijacking, for example led to three treaties on airline and airport safety that declared terrorist
acts against civil aviation illegal and sought to ensure the safety of the flying public. States
have reasserted control over global financial flows; immigration arrangements have been made
more rigorous, especially during high-alert periods; the surveillance and control of domestic
populations, but particularly of members of ‘extremist’ groups or terrorist sympathizers, has
been significantly tightened; and, in many cases, the power to detain terrorist suspects has been
strengthened. For instance, UK anti-terrorist measures allow suspected terrorists to be held for
up to 28 days without charge, while in the USA the Patriot Act (2001) permits the indefinite
detention of immigrants. In other cases, however, state security measures have had an extra-
legal or at best quasilegal character.

However, state security responses to terrorism have at least two key draw-backs. First, they
endanger the very liberal-democratic freedoms that attempts to combat terrorism are
supposedly designed to defend. This results in difficult trade-offs between liberty and security
which have provoked impassioned debate in many democratic countries. Second, such
measures may be counterproductive insofar as they appear to target particular groups (often
young, male Muslims), who thereby become more disaffected and therefore more likely to
support, or possibly engage in, terrorist activity. Scholars have argued that the most serious
danger posed by terrorists is their capacity to provoke ill-judged and sometimes extravagant
state responses that, by creating an atmosphere of panic, serve the interests of terrorists
themselves. In dealing with terrorism, Trump suggested using tactics similar to the containment
policy that the United States used against the ideology of communism in the Cold War. Trump
proposed a ban on Muslim immigration to the United States, or later, a ban on immigration
from countries that have a history of radical Islam. Trump claimed it is currently impossible to
tell whether immigrants being admitted are Islamic radicals, or whether their children will
become radicals. He sees the possibility of immigrants’ children adopting extremist Islamic
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views as a reason to ban migration. Trump said this Muslim ban will only be temporary. It is
notable that, under Obama, distinctive changes took place to at least the tone of US counter-
terrorism policy, reflecting particularly the need to redress the imbalance between liberty and
security. This was symbolized by the commitment in January 2009 to close the Guantanamo
Bay detention camp within one year (even though this did not occur within the stipulated time
span) and to cease using the harsh interrogation techniques that had been employed during the
Bush era.

Force-based or repressive counter-terrorism has, in recent years, been particularly associated

with the ‘war on terror’. Military responses to terrorism have been based on two
complementary strategies. In the first, attempts have been made to deny terrorists the support
or ‘sponsorship’ of regimes that had formerly given them succour. This was done most clearly
through the overthrow of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan in 2001, although alleged links to
terrorism was also one of the pretexts for the toppling of Saddam Hussein in 2003. The second
approach is to launch direct attacks on terrorist training camps and terrorist leaders. Thus, US
air strikes were launched against terrorist targets in Afghanistan and Sudan in 1998, in
retaliation for the bombing of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania; Osama bin Laden and the
al-Qaeda leadership were attacked in Afghanistan in late 2001 in their Tora Bora cave complex
in Afghanistan, before retreating, much weakened, probably to the Waziristan region of
Pakistan; and Israel carried out military strikes against Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon
in 2006. Amongst the most concerted attempts to destroy terrorist groups through military
might occurred in Chechnya and Sri Lanka. In response to continued separatist agitation and
an escalating series of terrorist attacks, Russia launched the Second Chechen War, 1999–2000,
which left between 25,000 and 50,000 people dead and devastated the Chechen capital, Grozny.
During 2008–09, the Sri Lankan army carried out a major offensive against Tamil Tigers, which
effectively destroyed the separatist movement as a fighting force and brought an end to the 26-
year armed conflict in Sri Lanka. Estimates of the number of civilian deaths that occurred in
this final phase of the conflict range from 7,000 to 20,000.

Terrorism cannot be combated through robust state security measures alone; in important ways,
terrorism is a ‘hearts and minds’ issue. If a clear ethical line cannot be drawn between terrorism
and counter-terrorism, governments lose moral authority, and this undermines their public
support at home and abroad. For example, controversial practices associated with the
Guantanamo Bay detention camp damaged the USA’s ‘soft’ power and weakened international
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support for the ‘war on terror’, particularly, but not only, in Muslim countries. Securing and
maintaining the moral high ground, by combating terrorism whilst scrupulously upholding
human rights and basic freedoms, therefore makes ethical and political sense. In the debate
over the so-called “war on terror” peace scholars and activists have insisted that terrorism as a
tactic cannot be defeated by war. They have advocated alternative strategies for countering
terrorism based on multilateral action, cooperative law enforcement, and the amelioration of
political grievances.