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Author: Aryan

Definition

Terrorism defines as "the systematic use of violence to create a general climate of fear in a population and thereby to bring about a particular political objective,

History

It’s been some weeks now since many Americans woke up to the news of the successful rescue of the Maerske ship Captain, Richard Phillips, from the clutches of Somali pirates off the Eastern Coast of Africa in mid April. Few international incidents turn out as well and end with such finality and clarity. With three clean kill shots by expert U.S. Navy Seals, this situation appeared to be resolved. Most people in the Western world had
occasion to feel proud, if not a little superior. For once the United States seemed to be able to clearly control a situation and the skill of the military was on full display. In the wake of being bogged down by the War on Terrorism, these pirate guys served as useful symbolic stand-ins and this incident a clear win.
The situation has all the earmarks of a made for Hollywood movie; it was life imitating art. There was action, heroism and a happy ending. In an editorial on April 16th, even the quintessentially liberal New York Times “applauded” the effort of the U.S. Navy and noted Phillips’ noble and selfless act of offering himself as a hostage in place of his crew.

Terror by states has a long history. For example, Aristotle wrote critically of terror employed by tyrants against their subjects. The earliest use of the word terrorism identified by the Oxford English Dictionary is a 1795 reference to tyrannical state behavior, the "reign of terrorism" in France. In that same year, Edmund Burke famously decried the "thousands of those hell-hounds called terrorists" who he believed threatened Europe. During the Reign of Terror, the Jacobin government and other factions of the French Revolution used the apparatus of the state to execute and intimidate political opponents, and the Oxford English Dictionary includes as one definition of terrorism "Government by intimidation carried out by the party in power in France between 1789 to1794".

Later exemplars of state terrorism were the police state measures employed by the Soviet Union beginning in the 1920s and by Germany's Nazi regime in the 1930s and 1940s. The bombing of Guernica has been called an act of terrorism, and other examples of state terrorism may include the World War II bombings of London, Dresden and Hiroshima.

Types of terrorism

Generally there are three types of terrorism, which are described below by some points.
1) Coercive terrorist diplomacy: (eg. discreet and controlled, and makes non-compliance intolerable)
2) Covert state terrorism:

1. Clandestine state terrorism (eg. direct participation of states, ex. to weaken a governments or intimidate government officials of another state etc)
2. State-sponsored terrorism (eg. "States or private groups being employed to undertake terrorist actions on behalf of sponsoring state."

1. State-sponsored terrorism (eg. as above)
2. State acquiescence to terrorism (eg. group undertakes terrorism and is not explicitly backed by a state but not condemned either.)