Political terrorism
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Political terrorism is a form of terrorism (a tactic of violence that targets civilians) used to influence socio-political events so that gains occur that might not have otherwise happened by peaceful means or by conventional warfare. Criminal terrorists — those who use blackmail, intimidation, and the promotion of fear — are differentiated from political terrorists because the former seek to enrich themselves, whereas for the latter, it is a sine qua non that terrorist action is motivated and justified by the furtherance of an objective cause.
[edit] Terrorist action and thought
Terrorist action is indiscriminate, arbitrary and unpredictable; the rules of war are disregarded; and non-combatants, men, women, and children, are all seen as potential victims. An action is considered to be terrorist when its psychological influences are out of proportion with its physical consequences. Political terrorism is not a single random act, nor it is number of interspersed violent acts; it is a sustained, organized policy of terror that one group of some sort wages on another. Terrorists either reject current moral values as the ideology of the status quo or they hold an amoral outlook, and they claim with their actions that humanitarian considerations can be sacrificed along with human life for a greater political end. In the early stage of an insurgency, a terrorist group may use symbolic violence (such as assassinations) to advertise their cause and alert a population to their threat, but, by necessity, will become more clandestine.
[edit] Justifications of terrorism
The term counter-terrorism is misleading because it implies that a state is not the initiator of violence. The terrorist justifies his action with three arguments that have a moral context.
- The just-vengeance doctrine: Often represented as "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth", the terrorist group believes that the original group deserves to experience actions similar to what they may have previously dealt.
- The theory of lesser evil: It may be claimed that a violent action can deter an even more violent consequence. The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are one obvious example of this argument.
- The ultima ratio argument: The terrorist group may justify its actions by stating that no other means, such as the media or effective political representation, were available to them to express their discontent. The state uses similar arguments to legitimize its violence, and this is why it should always be borne in mind when thinking about terrorism. It is a didactic concept, used by victors, the powerful and the dominant, to isolate its opponents and vilify them as official enemies. It is often said that terrorism is the weapon of the weak, but if terrorism means using overt, destructive violence to create a climate of fear and to subjugate people to powerful abstractions, then it is obviously the weapon of the strong as well.
[edit] Determining political terrorism
There is no adequate scientific or objective understanding of political terrorism. Although it is thought to be the tool of small movements, who lack any power base, and is most successful when waged against an indigenous oppressor, this thinking is too general. There are three main ways of conceptualizing terrorism.
- Frustration-aggression relative deprivation theory: The motivator for civil conflict is the awareness of a discrepancy between what one group (or individual) has and what is the general baseline of the collective. Rising expectations may overtake capabilities, or capabilities of bringing about a change may remain static while expectations are raised. Conflict often arises from the reluctance — or inability — of leaders to fulfil the demands of insubordinate groups, especially when that group is organized and armed with an ideology that sanctions violence as a means to an end.
- A focus on the terrorist: Existential satisfaction that a person gains from serving a cause when he lacks belief in anything but his power to destroy is another conceptualization. This idea can be found in the plays of Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus, and risks portraying the terrorists as a romantic outsider, as a man who uses his own will, actions and freedom, to resolve the tension he feels from living in a fundamentally philistine society. The flipside of this is, of course, seeing the terrorist as a sociopath who is responsible for his actions and must live with their consequences.
- The notion of internal war: Terrorism is the first stage of a conflict that will develop into full-scale guerrilla operations. The idea here is that terrorism is part of the fabric of dynamic social progression.
