Terrorism is the cruellest of crimes; it feeds off the personal suffering by luring governments into actions that abandon hard-earned freedoms of modern civilisation. Gargantuan budgets committed to security mock the lives lost in poor countries to preventable disease and hunger. The dark complexity of suicide attacks has exposed inadequacies of security forces, moral philosophers, psychologists and theologians alike. Failing to take advantage of the universal revulsion at the events of September 2001, the "war on terror" has instead magnified the global threat of terrorism.
Rebels, insurgents, paramilitaries, separatists, militants, guerrillas, insurrectionists, fundamentalists... are these all terrorists? Or does terrorism claim its own exclusive niche? The exasperating inability to define terrorism is betrayed in the UN 2006 Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy - "we, the States Members of the United Nations...strongly condemn terrorism in all its forms and manifestations, committed by whomever, wherever and for whatever purposes".
UN Blast in Baghdad
UN Blast in Baghdad © Amnesty International - International Secretariat
The UN has been striving for decades to find a wording for terrorism which, instead of "all its forms and manifestations", narrows down to a specific profile of violence which can be condemned regardless of the circumstances. The absence of an agreed definition matters for many reasons. It blocks the possibility of referring terrorist acts to an international court, as for genocide and other war crimes; it leaves individual countries free to outlaw activity which they choose to classify as terrorism, perhaps for their own political convenience; and crucially it enabled the Bush administration to conjure in the public mind parallels between the 9/11 destruction of the World Trade Center and the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein. The vocabulary of terrorism has become the successor to that of anarchy and communism as the catch-all label of opprobrium, exploited accordingly by media and politicians.
The Just Cause Conundrum
Mandela's cell on Robben Island
Mandela's cell on Robben Island © Peter Armstrong
The difficulty in constructing a definition which eliminates any just cause for terrorism is that history provides too many examples of organisations and their leaders branded as terrorists but who eventually evolved into respected government. This has applied particularly to national liberation movements fighting colonial or oppressive regimes, engaging in violence within their own countries often as a last resort. Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya spent years of his life in peaceful independence advocacy with the British government before his involvement with the Mau Mau rebellion. Another convicted "terrorist", Nelson Mandela, wrote in his autobiography: "the hard facts were that 50 years of non-violence had brought (my) people nothing but more repressive legislation, and fewer rights".
All countries must deplore indiscriminate acts of terrorism which kill and maim civilians and which create a climate of fear. Countries from Africa and the Middle East have however proved reluctant to endorse any definition of terrorism which fails to place such acts within the broad sweep of history. The dilemma for the international community lies firstly in assessing whether a cause is "just" and therefore capable of remedy by political negotiation, and secondly in identifying which "terrorist" organisations are capable of emerging into the legitimate political process.
Hamas Logo
Hamas Logo © Radio Netherlands
For example, a central aim of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) - to reunite the northern and southern counties of Ireland - was never regarded as a just cause by the UK government, whilst other grievances linked to fair government in the north were accepted as negotiable. Sinn Fein, the political wing of the IRA, is now part of an elected power-sharing government in Northern Ireland. In the Middle Guy Fawkes, one of the most infamous terrorists in history who came within a whisker of destroying the English monarchy and parliament in 1605 was, like the modern jihadis, acting in the name of a maligned and misunderstood religion. King James presented a list of questions to the torturers, headed by the demand to discover "as to what he is, for I can never yet hear of any man that knows him". Four hundred years later the nightmare of suicide terrorism has likewise prompted frantic efforts to understand the psychological motives of individuals who are prepared to strap dynamite around themselves and trigger the detonator whilst surrounded by defenceless citizens. East, the vision of a Palestinian state is considered a just cause by all stakeholders but world leaders have so far preferred to negotiate only with the Fatah party. This approach chooses to ignore the electoral success of Hamas which was based on its proven competence to govern at local level, an attribute equally associated with Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Rebels, insurgents, paramilitaries, separatists, militants, guerrillas, insurrectionists, fundamentalists... are these all terrorists? Or does terrorism claim its own exclusive niche? The exasperating inability to define terrorism is betrayed in the UN 2006 Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy - "we, the States Members of the United Nations...strongly condemn terrorism in all its forms and manifestations, committed by whomever, wherever and for whatever purposes".
UN Blast in Baghdad
UN Blast in Baghdad © Amnesty International - International Secretariat
The UN has been striving for decades to find a wording for terrorism which, instead of "all its forms and manifestations", narrows down to a specific profile of violence which can be condemned regardless of the circumstances. The absence of an agreed definition matters for many reasons. It blocks the possibility of referring terrorist acts to an international court, as for genocide and other war crimes; it leaves individual countries free to outlaw activity which they choose to classify as terrorism, perhaps for their own political convenience; and crucially it enabled the Bush administration to conjure in the public mind parallels between the 9/11 destruction of the World Trade Center and the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein. The vocabulary of terrorism has become the successor to that of anarchy and communism as the catch-all label of opprobrium, exploited accordingly by media and politicians.
The Just Cause Conundrum
Mandela's cell on Robben Island
Mandela's cell on Robben Island © Peter Armstrong
The difficulty in constructing a definition which eliminates any just cause for terrorism is that history provides too many examples of organisations and their leaders branded as terrorists but who eventually evolved into respected government. This has applied particularly to national liberation movements fighting colonial or oppressive regimes, engaging in violence within their own countries often as a last resort. Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya spent years of his life in peaceful independence advocacy with the British government before his involvement with the Mau Mau rebellion. Another convicted "terrorist", Nelson Mandela, wrote in his autobiography: "the hard facts were that 50 years of non-violence had brought (my) people nothing but more repressive legislation, and fewer rights".
All countries must deplore indiscriminate acts of terrorism which kill and maim civilians and which create a climate of fear. Countries from Africa and the Middle East have however proved reluctant to endorse any definition of terrorism which fails to place such acts within the broad sweep of history. The dilemma for the international community lies firstly in assessing whether a cause is "just" and therefore capable of remedy by political negotiation, and secondly in identifying which "terrorist" organisations are capable of emerging into the legitimate political process.
Hamas Logo
Hamas Logo © Radio Netherlands
For example, a central aim of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) - to reunite the northern and southern counties of Ireland - was never regarded as a just cause by the UK government, whilst other grievances linked to fair government in the north were accepted as negotiable. Sinn Fein, the political wing of the IRA, is now part of an elected power-sharing government in Northern Ireland. In the Middle Guy Fawkes, one of the most infamous terrorists in history who came within a whisker of destroying the English monarchy and parliament in 1605 was, like the modern jihadis, acting in the name of a maligned and misunderstood religion. King James presented a list of questions to the torturers, headed by the demand to discover "as to what he is, for I can never yet hear of any man that knows him". Four hundred years later the nightmare of suicide terrorism has likewise prompted frantic efforts to understand the psychological motives of individuals who are prepared to strap dynamite around themselves and trigger the detonator whilst surrounded by defenceless citizens. East, the vision of a Palestinian state is considered a just cause by all stakeholders but world leaders have so far preferred to negotiate only with the Fatah party. This approach chooses to ignore the electoral success of Hamas which was based on its proven competence to govern at local level, an attribute equally associated with Hezbollah in Lebanon.
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