DEFINITION OF TERRORISM

UNIT 1

TERRORISM

“ Terrorism has become the systematic weaponof a war that

knows no borders or seldom has a face.”

Jacques Chirac

Basic concepts:

Terrorism the systematic use of terror as a means of coercion

Terror 1. a state of intense fear

2. violence committed by groups in order to intimidate a population

or government into granting the demands.

Violence 1. exertion of physical force so as to injure or abuse

2. an instance of violent treatment or procedure

3. instance, turbulent or furious, or often distructive action or force.

Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary

Discussion:

1. The Third World War has already begun.

2. Terrorism can be put down by means of terror.

3. To combat terrorism we should be ready for a great amount of victims and even

to sacrifice our own lives.

PRE – TEXT EXERCISES

I. Practice the pronunciation of the following words:

Criterion, premeditated, target, society, unlawful, perpetrate, pursuit, illegitimate, use, disproportionate, guerilla, warfare, genocide, assault, mayhem, coerce, marginalizing, furtherance, inculcate, criteria, deliberate, Holocaust, disgruntled, divergences, pronounced, asymmetrical, argue, inherently, inescapably, unfavoured, proxies, dissent, destabilize, beneficiary, realm, clandestine, unpredictable, democide, phenomenon, squads minorities, indigenous, clergy, liability, plausible deniability, insurgency, tyrannical, torture, liquidation, purges.

II. Practice the pronunciation of the following proper words:

Walter Laqueur, Brian Jenkins, James M. Poland, Martin Luther King, Jr., Noam Chomsky, the Ku Klux Klan, Xenophon, Tiberius, Caligula, Robespierre, Algeria France, Vietnam, Ireland, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Iran, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Argentina, Augusto Pinochet, Orlando Letelier,Gen. Carlos Prats Bernardo Leighton, Tiananmen Square, Dalai Lama, the Weimar Republic, Jews, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Palestinian Hizbullah, Egypt, Qana Massacre Israeli, Nicaragua, Nietzscheans, Croatian fascist Ustashi organization,, the Rumanian Iron Guard, Slovenia.

TEXT A

DEFINITION OF TERRORISM

There is no universally accepted definition of terrorism. According to expert Walter Laqueur, "the only general characteristic generally agreed upon is that terrorism involves violence and the threat of violence."

This criterion alone does not produce a useful definition, as it includes many acts not usually considered terrorism—war, organized crime, revolution, or even a simple riot.

At its core, the definition of terrorism is not so much a description of a particular kind of violence, like bombing or assassination, but a way to characterize an act of violence relative to the speaker, and their point of view.

"Terrorism," thus is a term that attempts to define, as a separate phenomenon, a philosophy of coordinated violence which tends to have a high degree of social impact on the target society. Terrorist violence may be perpetrated by rebels in opposition to an established social order or it may be inflicted by a state upon its own citizens or those of another state. Terrorism ultimately involves the use or threat of violence with the aim of creating fear not only to the victims but among a wide audience, it is fear which distinguishes terrorism from both conventional and guerrilla warfare. While both conventional military forces may engage in psychological warfare and guerrilla forces may engage in acts of terror and other forms of propaganda, they both aim at military victory. Terrorism on the other hand aims to achieve political or other goals, when direct military victory is not possible. This has resulted in some social scientists referring to guerrilla warfare as the "weapon of the weak" and terrorism as the "weapon of the weakest”.

One 1988 study by the US Army discovered that over 100 definitions have been used. Some examples:

The United States has defined terrorism under the Federal Criminal Code. Chapter 113B of Part I of Title 18 of the United States Code defines terrorism and lists the crimes associated with terrorism. In Section 2331 of Chapter 113b, terrorism is defined as:

…activities that involve violent… or life-threatening acts… that are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or of any State and… appear to be intended: 1) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; 2) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or 3) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping; and… (C) occur primarily within the territorial jurisdiction of the United States… [or]… (C) occur primarily outside the territorial jurisdiction of the United States…”

While the United Nations has not yet accepted a definition of terrorism,the UN's "academic consensus definition,"[1] written by terrorism expert Alex P. Schmid and widely used by social scientists, runs: Terrorism is an anxiety-inspiring method of repeated violent action, employed by (semi-) clandestine individual, group or state actors, for 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) 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.

The European Union employs a definition of terrorism for legal/official purposes which is set out in Art. 1 of the Framework Decision on Combating Terrorism (2002). This provides that terrorist offences are certain criminal offences set out in a list comprised largely of serious offences against persons and property which;"given their nature or context, may seriously damage a country or an international organisation where committed with the aim of: seriously intimidating a population; or unduly compelling a Government or international organisation to perform or abstain from performing any act; or seriously destabilising or destroying the fundamental political, constitutional, economic or social structures of a country or an international organisation.”

League of Nations Convention (1937): all criminal acts directed against a State and intended or calculated to create a state of terror in the minds of particular persons or a group of persons or the general public.

The United Kingdom defined acts of terrorism in the Terrorism Act 2000 as (a)the use of threat of action where the action falls within subsection:

(b) the use or threat is designed to influence the government or to intimidate the

public or a section of the public and
(c) the use or threat is made for the purpose of advancing a political, religious or

ideological cause.
Action falls within this subsection if it:
(a) involves serious violence against a person,
(b) involves serious damage to property,
(c) endangers a person’s life, other than that of the person committing the action,
(d) creates a serious risk to the health or safety of the public or a section of the

public
(e) is designed seriously to interfere with or seriously to disrupt an electronic

system.

British Terrorism Act 2000, defines terrorism so as to include not only attacks on military personnel, but also acts not usually considered violent, such as shutting down a website whose views one dislikes.

Brian Jenkins: "Terrorism is the use or threatened use of force designed to bring about political change."

Walter Laqueur: "Terrorism constitutes the illegitimate use of force to achieve a political objective when innocent people are targeted."

James M. Poland: "Terrorism is the premeditated, deliberate, systematic murder, mayhem, and threatening of the innocent to create fear and intimidation in order to gain a political or tactical advantage, usually to influence an audience."

The following are some further criteria that are sometimes applied, and the acts they exclude from the definition of "terrorism". Note that many incidents often labelled as terrorist fail one or more criteria.

Target - It is commonly held that the distinctive nature of terrorism lies in its deliberate and specific selection of civilians as targets. Furthermore, an act is more likely to be considered terrorism if it targets a general populace than if it purposefully targets a specific individual or group.

This criterion excludes: assassination of a head of state or leader of comparable stature (such as that of United States President John F. Kennedy or Martin Luther King, Jr.), conventional warfare in accordance with the laws of war, attacks on military targets (such as the bombing of the USS Cole), and guerilla warfare and revolution when limited to military targets.

Objective - As the name implies, terrorism is understood as an attempt to provoke fear and intimidation. Hence, terrorist acts are designed and intended to attract wide publicity and cause public shock, outrage, and/or fear. The intent may be to provoke disproportionate reactions from states.

This criterion excludes: the Holocaust and other cases of genocide, which are undertaken to exterminate, not to intimidate, and which are usually hidden rather than publicized. Also, any violence against targets unlikely to attract public notice and having little effect on the populace at large.

Motive - These acts are intended to achieve political or religious goals, not for personal gain. For example, a gang of bank robbers who kill the bank manager, blow up the vault and escape with the contents would normally not be classed as terrorists, because their motive was profit. However, if a gang were to execute the same assault with the intent of causing a crisis in public confidence in the banking system, followed by a run on the banks and a subsequent destabilization of the economy, then the gang would be classed as terrorists.

Legitimacy - Some hold that a legitimate government cannot, by definition, commit terrorism on its own territory. In this view, a state can commit war crimes or crimes against humanity, but these actions are distinct from terrorism.

This criterion excludes: warfare between states, government repression, the Holocaust and other state-sponsored genocide or ethnic cleansing.

Dominance - Some, particularly political conservatives, claim that only acts of "revolutionary" violence should be considered terrorist in nature; in this context, only members of a disgruntled group seen as having a subordinate position within the larger society in which they live are capable of "revolutionary" violence, and any similar acts committed on behalf of the dominant or majority segment of the populace are "reactionary" and hence do not qualify as terrorism (when the "have-nots" do it it's "terrorism," but when the "haves" do it they are defending "tradition," "order," etc.)

This criterion excludes: groups such as the Ku Klux Klan and those who commit racial hate crimes or gay-bashing

Noam Chomsky, points to the claims that distinguish between the targeting of civilians and the targeting of military personnel. If the logic underlying "counterterrorism" is used consistently, the use of military force against civilians must also qualify as terrorism. Violence, Chomsky says, is objective, whereas "terrorism" is relative to the speaker or their point of view. He states: "The wanton killing of innocent civilians is terrorism, not a war against terrorism."

Terrorism, can loosely be defined as the use of violence to bring about a change in a particular social order. It is violence as a means to get political attention for causes that are out of, or contradictory to, the established agenda —which may itself also use asymmetrical and immoral violence to enforce its established political and social order.

The central item that distinguishes terrorism from other kinds of coordinated violence is the often-random choice of targets, giving the appearance of senselessness and chaos.

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