Note that this term is defined here in the context of the pre-9/11 era (that is, before the onset of the current ongoing so-called “war on terror” which has clearly added a relatively new gloss to the definition of terrorism). In the pre-9/11 context, then: the term even in that period was clearly fraught with much disagreement; for, one person’s terrorist is another’s freedom‑fighter. Wilkinson (1973) suggests a compromise: to label the terrorist activities of the state as “repressive terrorism” and the terrorism of those attempting to overthrow the state as “revolutionary terrorism.” In making this distinction the purpose is to get beyond the issue of who has legitimacy in using the weapon of terror and instead concentrate on what terrorism is and the role it plays in politics. Terrorism to start with is a political activity, not a criminal activity, in the sense that the object is a political goal (either to overthrow the state or to repress those trying to overthrow the state). As a means to a goal and not an end in itself it is clearly a tactic or a strategy. This strategy is to create among opponents (or supporters of the opponent) a pervasive climate of fear with the hope that the opponent will give in. Among the elements that go toward creating this climate of fear three are of central significance: (a) the victims are always civilians (if the victims are soldiers or guerrillas then clearly it is not terrorism but war). (b) Violence is an integral part of terrorism where its use (regardless of the form it takes: rape, murder, torture, bombings, and so on) will be indiscriminate, arbitrary and unpredictable. (c) It follows from (a) and (b) that terrorism does not subscribe to any “rules of war” nor is it circumscribed by moral restraints of any kind. Whether used by the state or by revolutionaries the fact that terrorism involves victimization of those not equipped to defend themselves, i.e., civilians, terrorism as a strategy for achieving political goals must be condemned. Neither the state (which usually employs terrorism via the agency of hired thugs (right wing death squads in El Salvador and in South Africa are prime examples) nor the guerrillas have a right to subject civilians to violence and death, however just their cause may be. This is one situation where means clearly do not justify ends.[1] In fact a very legitimate argument can be advanced along the lines that those whose consciences have become immune to the death and suffering of their victims caused by their terrorist activities are very likely to use terror as a weapon of choice once they have achieved power whenever they run into opposition—regardless of whether the opposition stems from within or without their own ranks and regardless of whether it occurs via lawful channels. Two examples to support this point: the reign of terror unleashed by Stalin in the Soviet Union in the 1930s and the reign of terror inflicted on the Cambodian people during the period 1975–78 by the Pol Pot regime (these blood-thirsty thugs would later be named, characteristically, as “freedom fighters” by the Reagan Administration following their ousting from power with assistance from the Vietnamese in 1978.)[2] In both cases, the terror eventually spread to their own ranks consuming their own. (Though it is possible that the widespread use of children by the Pol Pot regime to do its dirty work probably further aggravated the situation given that children are less likely to comprehend the value of human life than adults.) Bristol (1972: 2–3) in a brilliant essay on the Gandhian strategy of nonviolence makes the same point with a slightly different nuance:
One of the most insidious results of participation in the use of violence is that, no matter how noble their motives, how great their courage, and how deep the sacrifices they make, violence does produce a change in those who employ it.… So often when hatred, distortion, torture, murder, destruction are used to bring down a ruthless and inhuman tyranny that avowedly needs bringing down, it is discovered that the terror and ruthlessness of the old tyranny reappear in a new guise. All too frequently, in human experience, wars of liberation have been fought with lofty courage and high idealism only to result tragically and ironically in the rebirth of tyranny with new tyrants in charge.
Does terrorism work, however? It depends upon the situation and the nature of the enemy. Hence “repressive terrorism” of the Chilean fascist junta seems to have worked in eliminating the opposition to all intents and purposes, whereas in El Salvador it has not entirely succeeded. In South Africa repressive terrorism succeeded in the short run but the 1990 de Klerk “WOW” speech showed that it ultimately failed. In the Middle East and Northern Ireland “revolutionary terrorism” seems to have achieved little for the Palestine Liberation Organization and the same was true for the Irish Republican Army respectively. In the first case (as happened in the second case) peace is most likely to come as a result of largely political factors involving outside pressures from key benefactors to reach a negotiated settlement where the cost of not reaching such a settlement is rendered much higher than doing otherwise for all parties.[3] One other point: terrorism should not be confused with guerrilla warfare which also uses violence, except that it is targeted exclusively against the military, it obeys the “rules of war” and it is not above moral constraints in how far it can go with violence. Examples of such guerrilla war include that fought by Fidel Castro and Ernesto “Che” Guevara in Cuba against the corrupt U.S.-supported regime of Fulgencio Batista in late 1950s and the liberation wars in the former Portuguese territories in Africa (see below).
One cautionary note about the issue of revolutionary violence: there is today a general distaste in the West for revolutionary violence everywhere.[4] Yet while on the surface this may appear laudatory on closer examination it reveals plain hypocrisy. To begin with a general amnesia clouds the issue: Westerners tend to forget that the historical foundations of Western democracy itself rests solidly on violent revolutionary upheavals: the Puritan Revolution (the English Civil War), the French Revolution and the War of Independence and the Civil War in the United States. (Even the whites in South Africa have their history of revolutionary violence: the Boer War.) More importantly, opposition to revolutionary violence conceals a pernicious hidden agenda arising out of a deliberate tendency for the beneficiaries of the status quo—the rich and the powerful—to equate, in the words of Barrington Moore (1967: 505) “the violence of those who resist oppression with the violence of the oppressors,” and thereby promulgate the falsehood that “gradual and piecemeal reform has demonstrated its superiority over violent revolution as a way to advance human freedom.” Even a cursory examination of history indicates that while violent resistance against oppression by the oppressed has generally been met with universal condemnation, the violence of the status quo has gone unchallenged, even when it has been demonstrably greater in magnitude than the revolutionary violence that rose to challenge it. Take for instance the case of the French Revolution: the number who actually perished at the hands of the revolutionaries (estimated to be about 40,000) were far fewer than those who died as a result of the injustices of the ancien regime. Consequently, as Moore (1967: 104) so rightly reminds us with reference to this fact: “to dwell on the horrors of revolutionary violence while forgetting that of ‘normal’ times is merely partisan hypocrisy.” There is one other point that must be noted on this issue: violence need not necessarily always imply blood‑shed. Violence can also take the form of unjust juridical constraints: a case in point is the entire panoply of laws that made up the apartheid system. Hence the denial of human rights is surely violence. Clearly then there is more to it than meets the eye when politicians in the West decry revolutionary violence: their agenda has little to do with morality; rather it has more to do with the preservation of the status quo upon which rests their hegemonic power. Having said this, however, it should also be pointed out that revolutionary violence, if one can go by the histories of some of the communist nations, e.g., the Soviet Union, China, and Cambodia, is also heavily tainted with the blood of the innocent: the people at the bottom, the peasantry, who were victims of the old order yet again found themselves re‑victimized by the new order. In fact, the rivers of blood of the innocent have, at times, run very deep in these societies.
[1]. There is, however, one exception: when the target of terrorists is not people but property. Since terrorism is usually the weapon of the weak, great mileage may be achieved by revolutionaries if their terrorist activity is restricted to destroying capitalist property—which in capitalist systems is less expendable than people’s lives. The ANC had claimed that its terrorist activities were so targeted, yet awful “mistakes” were made where innocent civilians were killed (see TRC 1999).
[2]. The motion picture Killing Fields provides a glimpse of the widespread terror that the Pol Pot regime unleashed on its own people in the name of “socialism.” Millions upon millions would perish in this self‑created Cambodian holocaust that in its barbarity and magnitude would come close to the Jewish Holocaust in Nazi Germany. And the world would simply stand and watch, as in the case of the Jewish Holocaust—not even the self‑proclaimed champions of civilization, freedom, democracy, etc. would see fit to lift a single finger to assist the Cambodian civilians. Only an invasion by Vietnam in 1978, for other reasons, would put an end to the carnage. Although Pol Pot himself was never brought to account for his crimes (having died in April 1998—possibly as a result of suicide), some of his lieutenants were arrested and brought before the long-delayed U.N. organized genocide tribunal that commenced proceedings in Phnom Penh on November 20, 2007.
[3]. Hence, in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict peace will only come when the Israeli state is subjected to credible international sanctions and the simultaneous suspension all U.S. aid, regardless of the form it takes, to that country.
[4]. Though it appears that in the 1980s this distaste withered away in the case of the Reagan Administration when it began funding counterrevolutionary movements (e.g., in Nicaragua and Angola).