http://www.adirondackdailyenterprise.com/include/articles.asp?articleID=5503
Terrorism, Part 1 of 6: Defining terrorism, in its many varieties
By GEORGE J. BRYJAK, Special to the Enterprise
Terrorism
A series by George J. Bryjak
¯Part 1: Defining terrorism, in its many varieties
¯Part 2: Ideology, desperation motivate terrorists
¯Part 3: Biological, chemical and nuclear threats
¯Part 4: Killing in the name of God
¯Part 5: Feminization of suicide bombing
¯Part 6: Anti-terrorist strategies, present and future
It is difficult, if not impossible, to define the emotion-laden elusive term
of terrorism. The violence it conjures up and the violent reaction it
provokes lead almost inevitably to oversimplification.
For sociologist Brian Jenkins, terrorism is the use and threat of violence
calculated to create an atmosphere of fear and alarm to achieve some
political result. While this definition includes the factors typically used
to characterize terrorism (violence, fear, and political goals), for many
people it raises troubling moral questions.
Consider the following fictional scenario: Iraq, 1999 Saddam Hussein and a
cadre of military officers and their families are in attendance at one of
the dictators lavish Baghdad palaces. A group of well armed gunmen overcome
security guards and storm the dining room, automatic weapons blazing.
Everyone is killed, and news of the massacre spreads quickly. Fearing for
their lives, high-ranking members of the government, accompanied by loved
ones, flee the country. The tyrannical regime falls. Were the assassins
terrorists, freedom fighters or some nebulous combination of the two?
During World War II, American, British, German and Japanese pilots dropped
millions of tons of bombs on cities that killed hundreds of thousands of
civilians. Were the flight crews terrorists, or were their bombings a
justifiable action in the context of an all-out war? Certainly these acts
were designed to bring about political results via the use of fear and
violence. Why is blowing up people in a crowded restaurant a terrorist act
while burning to death innocent civilians with incendiary bombs an
unavoidable act of war tolerated by the international community?
Sociologist Mark Juergensmeyer argues that applying the label terrorism to
an event is in large measure contingent on ones global perspective: If the
world is perceived as peaceful, violent acts appear as terrorism. If the
world is thought to be at war, violent acts may be regarded as legitimate.
For most of the (peaceful) international community, the events of Sept. 11,
2001 were clearly terrorist acts. For those sympathetic to the ideology and
goals of Al Qaeda, these attacks were part of an ongoing global war between
Islam and the West. They were acts of warfare in the same manner as the
bombings of Tokyo that claimed approximately 180,000 lives (mostly
civilians) in 1944-45 were acts of war.
While there is no universally accepted definition of terrorism, scholars
generally agree on the various forms of this activity.
¯Political terrorism is a form of unconventional warfare waged against the
state without humanitarian restraints. The goal of political terrorists is
to bring about a significant change in or overthrow the government. The
Palestine Liberation Organization, the New Peoples Army (a Maoist group in
the Philippines), the Red Brigades in Italy, Basque separatists in Spain and
Al Qaeda are political terrorist groups.
¯Vigilante terrorism is conducted by organizations determined to cleanse
society of one or more categories of individuals deemed unworthy of
existence. The Ku Klux Klan, the American Nazi Party, the Aryan Nation and
various right-wing paramilitary groups advocate a racially pure United
States devoid of Jews, African-Americans, Hispanics and Asians. For much of
the 20th century, Roman Catholics were in this family of undesirables.
Literature of the Aryan Nation proclaims that Jesus was not a Jew but an
Aryan and that the lost tribes of Israel were Anglo-Saxon. It says Jews are
the designated children of Satan and must be destroyed. The following is
from an Aryan Nation publication:
Islamic Jihad is the cleansing of Islamic-controlled lands, once the land
is decontaminated, the Jihad is over, on the other hand, our Jihad is more
specific and is strictly and primarily for the extermination of the Satanic
jew, worldwide, we see no borders, nor boundaries ... Whoever harbors or
aides the jew will be considered a jew, thus receiving the same fate, or
worse ... DEATH to the jew!
¯State terrorism is the use of violence by the government against its own
citizens with the goal of terrifying them into submission. As with other
forms of terrorism, the actual victims of psychological and physical
brutalization serve as an example to the target audience the larger
population creating a pervasive atmosphere of helplessness and fear. Acts
of state terrorism are typically carried out by the military, security
forces (secret police) and indirectly by state-sponsored terrorist
organizations (death squads). Undesirable populations such as racial/ethnic,
political or religious minorities are singled out for repression.
Terrorism scholar Harvey Kushner notes that state terrorism often exists in
quasi secrecy. During the 1970s and 1980s, several Latin American
governments began disappearing citizens. People in these countries know
that something bad is happening, and that their respective governments were
responsible, but the details were left to the imagination.
Under the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, a campaign of state terrorism
was waged in Chile against civilians at home and abroad. In Argentina in the
1970s, the ruling junta launched a campaign of annihilation against
subversives. Thousands of individuals disappeared (kidnapped by security
forces), were tortured and were buried in mass graves.
In Rangoon, Burma in 1988, thousands of people demonstrated against one of
the worlds most repressive regimes. Soldiers opened fire on the crowd and
killed hundreds of unarmed protesters. A news reporter described the
murderous scene: I saw machine guns trained and firing on unarmed, peaceful
civilians; soldiers moving methodically through the streets, pausing only to
kill. Students were summarily executed on street corners as an example to
others.
In the three decades of Joseph Stalins rule in the Soviet Union, as many as
20 million people died as a result of state-orchestrated famines,
executions, exposure to Siberian winters and secret police torture. Many
more people have died as a consequence of state terrorism than all other
forms of terrorism combined.
¯Revolutionary and insurgent groups often use enforcement terrorism to gain
the support of local people as well as insure that these individuals do not
collaborate with authorities. In Peru, the Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path)
captured eight civil defense workers in a small village. After a mock trial,
the men were tortured and beheaded. Gaining peoples allegiance through
fear, intimidation and murder has been especially prevalent in the Middle
East. The killing of police recruits and officers in Iraq is a form of
enforcement terrorism. Members of death squads are sending a deadly message
that individuals who cooperate with the Iraqi government and/or the
Americans will be punished.
¯Narco-terrorism refers to violent crimes committed by drug cartels against
political and criminal justice officials who interfere with their (the drug
dealers) illegal activities. Over the past 30 years, hundreds of police
officers, criminal court judges and government officials in a number of
South American nations have been beaten, tortured and killed. In 1989, the
Medellin (Colombia) Cartel blew up an Avianca Airlines passenger plane in
mid-flight, killing 107 people. An anonymous caller told police that the
flight had been targeted to silence five informants on board. How many
politicians and criminal justice officials have been deterred from fighting
drug traffickers as a consequence of these attacks is impossible to
determine.
Sources:
¯Aryan Nations Web site (2005), www.aryan-nations.org
¯Barkan, S. and G. Bryjak (2003), Fundamentals of Criminal Justice, Allyn
& Bacon: Boston
Combs, C. and M. Slann (2003), The Encyclopedia of Terrorism, Checkmark
Books: New York
Kushner, H.W. (2003), Encyclopedia of Terrorism, Sage Publications:
Thousand Oaks, California
Jenkins, B. (1992). Terrorism, pp. 427-453 in Encyclopedia of Sociology,
B.F. Borgatta (editor) Maxwell Publications: New York
Juergensmeyer, M. (2003), Terror in the Mind of God: The Global Rise of
Religious Violence, University of California Press: Berkeley California
Neumanin, L. (Oct. 20, 1991), Aung San Suu Kyis lonely war, San Diego
Union-Tribune
George J. Bryjak was a sociology professor for 24 years at the University of
San Diego. Now retired, he lives in Bloomingdale.
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