“One man’s terrorist is another man’s Freedom Fighter.” Such is a popular bromide that wittingly or not serves to obscure any essential difference between those who participate in organized violence and destruction by various means -- and for even more widely divergent reasons. What they all have in common is a mindset that the perpetrators are entitled and the victims are either themselves not as important in some way or unfortunate casualties in a larger struggle. Terrorism will then be defined in terms of motivation and tactics. The history will be explored with an emphasis on what provided incentives and gave it meaning.

Mass media provided terrorism a conduit to the masses and leadership alike thus making it feasible, because it is essentially an audacious form of political communication, explained terrorism specialist Alex P. Schmid and Polemological Institute Sociologist Janny de Graaf. As freedom of speech developed and the technology became widespread from the eighteenth into the nineteenth centuries, newspapers became more commercially oriented. Some specialized in political/social advocacy and others were unabashedly self-promotional. Lurid stories of “catastrophes, scandals, crime and war” were the product of the latter type of periodical, thus creating a venue for violent agitators. Destroying the enemy “was no longer the primary goal. The goal was to reach public opinion, to send a message that made all the powerful tremble and gave the powerless hope.” The victims were thus merely means to have a “certain effect upon others” instead (De Graaf).

Terrorism can be based upon a multiplicity of orientations such as actor, victim, cause, environment, means, political, purpose and target among others. One of the main subtypes -- the actor-based -- is characterized by “one group of actors and another,” explains UN Terrorism Prevention Branch Officer-in-Charge Alex P. Schmid and violent political movement specialist Albert J. Jongman. An intra-state conflict will have “agititational” and/or “enforcement” terror. Vigilantism [in which the motivation is defending the “established order”] that is directed against crime or ethnic/social groups can use terror tactics. These are more social than political. Political forms -- such as revolutionary [guerilla] and reactionary [paramilitary] terrorism -- include violence employed to secure complete regime change, radical “structural-functional” transformation within the system and regime-sanctioned “extranormal” violent suppression (Schmid).
 
Terrorists can indeed be distinguished from warriors, according to Center for Strategic & International Studies scholar John Ewers, given that terrorists do not “discriminate between combatants and noncombatants” and actually target the latter. Further, they unnecessarily put civilians at risk thus placing “soldiers and terrorists...on the opposite ends of the lawful combatant spectrum.” Col. Ewers also cites as illustration GPW Article 4(A)(2) that confers POW status only to those led by “responsible” commanders, wearing distance-identifiable signage, openly carrying arms and conducting themselves lawfully (Ewers).

A soldier can be seen as a member of a “national organization and is trained for specific military tasks.” Further, explains Council on Foreign Relations Middle East Forum director Judith Kipper, a soldier is “not ever an independent actor” while a terrorist “may or may not be part of a group or cell who is willing to kill innocent civilians” (Kipper). “The issue is not the difference between the two,” offers Columbia University’s International Security Program director Richard K. Betts, “but the legitimacy of tactics used in war -- terrorists are considered to be illegitimate because they target civilians deliberately” (Betts).
 
Few will openly embrace terrorism and will attempt then to distance themselves by means of semantics. As the International Policy Institute for Counter-Terrorism’s director Boaz Ganor observed, the Arab League’s position neatly exemplifies the mindset. They declare that they are against terrorism, but assert that acts “aimed at ‘liberation and self determination’ are not in the category of terrorism.” Thus, nearly any means can be used to justify the end. Some observers have gone on to explain that terrorism targets the innocent. The mistake here, Ganor asserts, is that connotively ‘innocence’ is a “subjective concept, influenced by the definer’s viewpoint” thus rendering the term terrorist “meaningless and turns it into a tool in the political game” (Ganor).

Inherent in this calculus is the double-standard as to who the parties are. Tragically, sociopathic [i.e. it’s acceptable if it happens to the OTHER group] ethnic rivalries continue to loom when dealing with mass civilian killings. Croatia is being slow to comply with requests to turn over certain indicted war criminals. Even though Zagreb understands that EU accession hinges in the balance, the Croatian leadership must balance the diplomatic/economic potential benefits with the likely domestic fallout of turning over people like general Ante Gotovina. He and others like him stand accused of killing and displacing tens of thousands, but are also seen as “national heroes” by their compatriots who are reacting to this EU stipulation by becoming more sympathetic to “extremist nationalism” and an increasing willingness to endure the consequences of international isolation as a matter of pride (Anastasijevic 12).

Dehumanization on the basis of sex may be amongst the oldest of justifications for atrocities against noncombatants. Rape has been used as a terror tactic for centuries, but recently is being regarded as more serious act. Patriarchal cultures will use it as means to demoralize the families of the victims – the men in particular – given that the women themselves are regarded as subhuman means to ends. “Only in the last fifty years,” according to Maryland District Court Law Clerk Stephanie K. Wood, has rape been legally regarded as a “prosecutable war crime.” Thus [unless it was included in a list of other offenses], not one person was brought to the dock for the huge number of rapes that occurred during WWII (Wood).
 
It was classified instead as an “indignity or an attack on women’s honor” in the 1949 The Fourth Geneva Convention rather than a “serious human rights violation.” This definition made it so that “preconditions of virginity or chastity” were required so that some women were more entitled to protection than others. Recent events drove home that this definition was insufficient. The organized rapes in Rwanda against the Tutsis led to widespread HIV infections, forced inter-tribal pregnancies and life-threatening [because they faced utter abandonment] stigmatization for the victims. Thus, senior Rwandan ministers responsible for orchestrating the systematized atrocities are being tried in the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda for crimes against humanity and genocide (Wood).

The double-standard can be sectarian as well. Middle East scholar and author Douglas E. Streusand explains that for Islam, the world is “divided into Muslim and non-Muslim zones, Dar al-Islam (Abode of Islam) and Dar al-Harb (Abode of War) respectively.” Thus, there is the implication that “perpetual warfare” exists until all of humanity submits to Islam. Dr. Struesand notes that there is considerable variation on such obligation among Muslims in which peaceful coexistence can be at least temporarily allowed, noting that forcible conversion is not officially advocated (Streusand).

When a belligerent who at least recognizes [and attempts to adhere to] some limits in the conduct of warfare encounters an adversary who does not, the contrast is striking. As California State University Classics professor Victor Davis Hanson observed of the challenges early on in Operation Iraqi Freedom, one side will “feed and heal Iraqi prisoners; they shoot ours -- and sometimes their own who surrender.” Coalition forces sought to minimize civilian casualties while the enemy would use human shields. While their enemy wore chemical protective gear, Saddam’s forces did not, “secure in the knowledge that we will not do what they would” (Hanson).

This difference in the conduct of war speaks to a difference in culture that leads to the moral permissibility of terrorism. Western thought on limiting harm to civilians and treating prisoners humanely goes back as far as Ancient Greece. Our warfare morality however, observes Dr. Hanson, “hinges not on the number killed but on the manner and conditions under which they are slain.” Thus, we can justify thousands killed in WWII fire bombings, but not summary executions of dozens of captured soldiers (Hanson).

Neither numbers, status nor manner of killing are relevant for those considering themselves among The Chosen. Instead, it is what side one is on. All is permitted to the Righteous side; none is permitted the other because there can only be one Devinely sanctioned group. The most explicit and voluminous articulation of this point of view was aptly articulated by Egyptian scholar Sayyid Qutb. Executed by Nasser in 1966, Qutb was likely, as observed by the Times of London’s Middle East editor Robert Irwin [among others], to be one of the Founding Fathers of modern Islamism. Citing obscure thirteenth century history as foundation, Qutb and his ideological descendants held that the Koran allowed for no peaceful coexistence with any other way of life – even within Islam. One interpretation of Divine Will led Mullah Omar to be content with creating a single country governed by Shari‘a, while the al Qaeda version would settle for nothing less than “global jihad that will end with all men under direct, unmediated rule of Allah” [presumably through his chosen human intermediaries] (Irwin). In either case, no limits could be allowed for those acting under the Almighty’s direction -- and no tolerance allowed for those who are deemed as not.

Quoting from Hadith 390, the virtual Islamic Library Witness Pioneer notes: “I have been commanded (by Allah) to fight people until they testify that there is no true god except Allah, and that Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah, and perform Salat and pay Zakat. If they do so, they will have protection of their blood and property from me except when justified by Islam, and then account is left to Allah.” This passage is explained as meaning that non-believers who pay tribute may be spared, but goes on to assert that defensive war is not sufficient to be a good Muslim. “The real distinction of Islam lies in its enjoining Muslims to wage war for upholding the truth besides fighting for their own defense.” Any place wherein Islam is not practiced is by definition a place of “darkness, heresy and tyranny” that must be liberated as it is the realm of man-worship. Thus, true “Muslims are bound to fight such evils and finish them by means of Jihad” (Witness Pioneer).

Tactics outside the norms of warfare can also be rationalized in terms of nations. Often states will surreptitiously provide support for terrorist operations in other countries in order to secure the benefits of aggression without the risks of formally declared war. For example in the long-festering conflict in Kashmir, alleges retired Indian Brigadier and Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses Senior Fellow Gurmeet Kanwal, Pakistan was in the late 1990s “endeavouring to spread the cult of militancy and terrorism” in the region in order to “create an ethnic and sectarian divide and trigger a communal backlash.” Brigadier Kanwal explained that such support illustrated Pakistan’s “increasing frustration and desperation.” As is typical in these proxy wars, seemingly random civilian-targeted violence and military flare-ups were coincident with “political and diplomatic offensives” that were directed to sow political discord, tie up military resources and drain the economy (Kanwal).

Those who target civilians as a tactic in asymmetrical warfare typically exploit two natural advantages, according to career diplomat and former Iraqi administrator L. Paul Bremer III. The targeted nations must exert effort to “protect all their points of vulnerability around the world” while the initiator can “attack the weakest point” as opportunity and capability permit. Further, such attacks are typically only a fraction of the cost of strengthening security and mustering a response. “Thus,” Bremer adds, “the new terrorism reverses the conventional wisdom that, in military operations, the offense must be three times as strong as the defense” (Bremer).


The strategic aim is, explains Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Study professor Michael Walzer, to cause the general population to “feel themselves fatally exposed and demand that their governments negotiate their safety.” Dr. Walzer makes distinctions between revolutionaries, political assassins and guerillas who in varying degrees target official/military assets as well as civilian infrastructure. All of those self-impose limits upon who is to be targeted. Some will put non-combatants at risk by hiding amongst them. Such tactics put them outside the coterie of true soldiers. However even lawful combatants will join the other groups in accepting civilian ‘collateral damage.’ The important difference is that such civilian losses must be justified as being proportional to the value of the objective (Walzer).

Try as they may, terrorists’ apologists will attempt to blur such differences they hope make terrorism merely a matter of perspective. Thus, a moral equivalency can be argued between ousting a government held into power by force and suicide bombings in public markets with the aim of undermining steps toward limited representative government. All that is left, then, is to abandon any ideas of universal principles of human rights/natural law in favor of factionalism and modern tribal warfare.

---

Bremer III, L. Paul. “A New Strategy for the New Face of Terrorism” The New Era of Terrorism: Selected Readings. Gus Martin, ed. Dominguez Hills, Calif: Sage Publications 2004.

Schmid, Alex P. and Albert J. Jongman. Political Terrorism: A new guide to Actors, Authors, Concepts, Data Bases, Theories and Literature. New Brunswick: Transaction Books, 1988. 

Kanwal, Gurmeet. “Proxy War in Kashmir: Jihad or State-Sponsored Terrorism?” Strategic Analysis: A Monthly Journal of the IDSA April 1999 (Vol. XXIII No. 1) 

Wood, Stephanie K. “A woman scorned for the "least condemned" war crime: precedent and problems with prosecuting rape as a serious war crime in the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.” Columbia Journal of Gender and Law, Winter 2004 v13 i2 p274(54) 

Anastasijevic, Dejan. “War Crimes Suspects Cause Collateral Damage.” Time International (Europe Edition), March 28, 2005 v165 i13 p12 

Hanson, Victor Davis. “Fighting Fair and Foul: 'Asymmetrical warfare' in the Land of Saddam.” National Review, Apr. 21, 2003. 

Irwin, Robert. “Is this the man who inspired Bin Laden?” The Guardian. Nov. 1, 2001

Walzer, Michael. Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations. New York: Basic Books, 2000. 

Ewers, John. Personal electronic communication. Apr. 29, 2005. 

Kipper, Judith. Personal electronic communication. Apr. 29, 2005. 

Betts, Richard K. Personal electronic communication. Apr. 28, 2005. 

Ganor, Boaz. “Defining Terrorism: Is One Man’s Terrorist Another Man’s Freedom Fighter?” International Policy Institute for Counter-Terrorism.  

Witness Pioneer. “Making Judgment of people keeping in view their evident actions and leaving their hidden Actions to Allah” The Book of Miscellany 2002.  

Streusand, Douglas E. “What Does Jihad Mean?” The Middle East Quarterly. Vol. IV, No. 3, Sept. 1997. 

De Graaf, Janny and Alex P. Schmid. Violence as Communication: Insurgent Terrorism and the Western News Media. London: Sage Publications, 1982.