ANALYSIS PAPER
COUNTRY: INDIA
AGENDA: STATE SANCTIONED TERRORISM
ABSTRACT
Politics is about ‘public competition for the acquisition, maintenance and
expansion of state power, understood as the capacity to allocate values or to
take decisions and act upon them’. The line between competition and conflict,
between peaceful and fair fights
for votes by persuasive means, and hostile antagonism which resortsto
disruptive or destructive and even violent means is often crossed.
Acts of terrorism usually, but not exclusively, take place in the context of
political conflict. Conflict itself is not illegitimate but part of the human
existence and can be a positive mechanism of social and political change. As
Wolf-Dieter Eberwein and Sven Chojnacki
put it:
Conflict is crucial for the integration within and between societies as long as
violence is absent, thus a major productive force in the evolution of the
relations within and between societies. If, however, violence is used, conflict is
disruptive if not destructive.
ANALYSIS
The fact that political parties sometimes act as a front for a terrorist group or,
alternatively, that political parties organise for themselves such groups, is a
testimony on how much party politics and terrorist activities can be linked in
some countries. Often terrorism takes place in a context of heightened political
tensions, for instance, around election times. Where control of the state is
crucial for group survival in society, because there are few or no other stepping
stones to power and resources, the struggle to obtain, or maintain, state
power is fierce.
Terrorism is sometimes the only and sometimes one of several instruments of a
political strategy. While there are non- political forms of terrorism (such as
criminal or psychopathological terrorism), the political motivation of terrorism
is one that is often present and stressed by analysts and even more so by
terrorists themselves. Since terrorists generally challenge the monopoly of
violence of the state and its ability to protect its citizens, terrorist acts obtain
political significance even when the motivation for them is not primarily
political but religious, criminal or psychopathological. In a political conflict, the
use of terrorism might be confined to one side, which gives the conflict a
marked asymmetry. If the terrorist side manages to ‘pull’ the other side into
using similar tactics, the moral distinction between attacker and defender tends
to erode quickly— something which has very serious consequences for society.
Often the opposition is not in a position to ‘play in the same league’ as those
holding state power. The power asymmetry can ‘force’ it to respond on a
different level. Violence by the state can be countered by nonviolent campaigns
for pragmatic reasons (no weapons are available), as well as for principal
reasons (the desire to hold the moral high ground in a conflict in order to attract
international support). On the other hand, there are situations where the state
holds the moral high ground and the terrorists use provocations from the
repertoire of violent politics to upset a democratic government. The fact that
terrorism is more frequent in democracies than in non-democracies is a
testimony to the wide use of this strategy. Acts of political terrorism occur next
to a multitude of other political acts, some violent, some not, some
conventional, some not, some by the terrorist themselves, some by like-minded,
but less violent people, who share their goals without approving of their
methods. Special cases are the presence of ‘bad neighbours’ and imported
Conflicts. Terrorism might not be home-grown but imported by other
State- or non-state actors. International terrorism is either an externalisation
Of domestic terrorism of another state or is linked to state terrorism or state-
sponsored terrorism. There are several causal factors e.g., the support of a
foreign government for a repressive regime may motivate members of the
armed opposition to victimise members
of the public of the foreign backer of the local regime.
Alternatively, support for local terrorist groups has been utilised as a war-by-
proxy device by states unwilling or unable to engage directly in armed conflict
with another state. Due to this interrelatedness of domestic and international
political conflict and terrorism, a study of the second without a study of the first
is methodologically flawed. Due to globalisation, the permeability of borders
and state interdependence, the internationalisation of terrorism and other forms
of political violence is a fact.
CONCLUSION
Terrorism needs to be studied in the broader contexts of political conflict,
taking into account both governing state and opposition parties and their allies
in society. Since neighbouring and other states and societies often also have an
interest. And involvement in local politics, a really comprehensive approach
must also include their activities, especially if they amount to state sponsorship
or state support of terrorist organisations. War has been defined as a
continuation of politics by other means, and terrorism, too, is sometimes seen as
a continuation of politics.