Terrorism

The terrorism is that one method characterized for being a succession of acts of aggression and indiscriminate violence, as much towards belligerents as civil, violating the human rights and that it essentially looks for to induce terror in the population of premeditaded form. Within the behaviors forced by the threat of terrorism in this civilian population they include the acceptance of conditions of very diverse nature: policies, economic, lingüísticas, of sovereignty, nuns, etc. When this type of strategies is used by governments officially formed, state terrorism is denominated.

The application of the term terrorism to an act, person or organization, considerably usually varies in regard to the major or minor adhesion that is had by the cause inspires that it, and repeatedly has been used by the dictatorial governments to describe the acts founded on the right to the resistance with the purpose of to justify the use of ilegítimos methods of repression.

Definition

The Dictionary of the Spanish Royal Academy, in its version 2003 that modifies the previous one including one third meaning, defines the term “terrorism” like:

Terrorism
1. M. Dominación by the terror.
2. M.s Sucesión of acts of violence executed to instill terror.
3. M.s Actuación criminal of organized bands, that, repeatedly and in general of indiscriminate way, it tries to create social alarm with political ends.

The DRAE also picks up two meanings for “the terrorist” word, that is to say:

Terrorist
1. adj. That he practices acts of terrorism. Apl. to Reps., u. t. c. s.
2. adj. Pertaining or regarding the terrorism.

The Argentine Penal Code establishes in its article 213 to ter. sanctioned in 2007 that will only be able to consider author of the terrorist crime to which:

“… it will take part from an illicit association whose intention is, by means of the commission of crimes, to terrify the population or to force to a government or an international organization, to realize an act or to abstain to do it, whenever it reunites the following characteristics:
a) To have a plan of action destined to the propagation of ethnic, religious or political hatred;
b) To be organized in international operative networks;
c) To have chemical or bacteriological weapons of war, explosives, agents, or any other suitable means to put in danger the life or the integrity of an indetermine number of people.”

The Spanish Penal Code of 1995 in article 571, where the terrorist crime typifies, defines terrorist like:

“Those that belonging, acting to the service or collaborating with armed bands, organizations or groups whose purpose is the one to subvert the constitutional order or to alter public La Paz seriously, commit the crimes of damage or of fires typified in Articles 346 and 351, respectively, they will be punished with the prison sentence of fifteen to twenty years, notwithstanding the pain that corresponds to them if injury for the life took place, physical integrity or human health.”

The EE. UU. from 1983, with statistical and analytical intentions, they have used the following referring definitions to the terrorism that take shelter in Title 22 of the Code of the Member States, section 2656f (d)

“Terrorism: Premeditaded violence and with political reasons perpetrated against civilian targets by sub-national groups or clandestine agents, generally with the intention to influence a certain public.”

On the other hand, Fernando You will reign has defined the specific concept of international terrorism, like which:

“first of all,… one practices with the deliberate intention to even affect the structure and distribution of the power in whole regions of the planet or on same scale of the global society. In second term, that one whose individual and collective plaintiffs have extended their geopolitical activities by a significant number of countries or areas, in accordance with the deficit of the declared intentions”

Definition of the term realized by elements of the military dictatorships of Latin America

Chile in its Constitution, maintains an article where it de facto establishes particular sanctions against the terrorism dictated during the government of Augusto Pinochet. It indicates to the article 9º:

“Art. 9. The terrorism, in anyone of its forms, is by essence in opposition to the human rights. A law of described quorum will determine the terrorist conducts and their penalty. The people in charge of these crimes will be disqualified by the term of fifteen years to exert functions or charges public, they are or not of popular selection, or director or director of education establishment, or to exert in them education functions; in order to operate social mass media or to be director or administrator of the same, or to carry out in him duties related to the transmission or diffusion of opinions or investigations; nor they could generally be leaders of political organizations or related to the education or of ocal, professional, enterprise, union, student or trade union character, during this term. The previous thing is understood notwithstanding other incapacities or of which by greater time it establishes the law. The crimes to that the previous interjection talks about will be considered always common and politicians for all the legal effects and will not come with respect to them I pardon individual, safe to exchange the death penalty by the one of perpetual military prison.”

In Argentina, at that time the General dictator Jorge Rafael Videla defined in 1978 the deficits of the term terrorism when declaring to the Times of London the following thing:

A terrorist is not only anybody with a firearm or a bomb, but also anybody that spreads to opposite ideas to the Western civilization and Christian.

Evolution of the term

In order to accede to a greater understanding of the nature of the terrorism, a more detailed analysis is advisable, of the evolution in the use of the term.

The word “terror” comes from the language Latin terror or terroris, synonymous of Deimos. In Old Rome, Mars, God of the War, had two children: Phobos and Deimos (Fear and Terror).

Maquiavelo already recommended that for the Prince “he is safer to be feared than loved”.

The word “terrorism” (as well as “terrorist” and “to terrify”) appeared for the first time in France during the French Revolution between (1789-1799), when the Jacobin government headed by Robespierre executed or jailed to the opponents, without respecting the guarantees of the due trial. The term began to be used then like propaganda against the revolutionary government, by his to drive in the line of state terrorism; the same period has been known like Reign of the Terror (1793-1794).

The expression terrorism (originating of the French word of century XVIII terrorisme (“under the terror”) meant then the calculated use of violence or the threat of the same on the part of the State against the civilian population, perpendicularly in order to obtain some political end or monk.

The terror, like political weapon, was retaken in Russia in second half of century XIX, between some groups opponents of the regime czarist. In 1862, the Piotr Zaichnevski wrote up the titled manifesto the Young Russia proclaiming:

We have studied the history of the West and removed its lessons: we will be more consequent than the pitiful French revolutionaries of 1848; but we will know to go more far than the great champions of the 1792 terror. We will not retreat, even if to demolish the established order it needs to us to spill three times more blood than the Jacobin French.

In its present sense, the term was coined extensively by the Nazi propaganda to make reference to the movements of Resistance of the countries occupied by the army German and consolidated by latinomericanas dictatorships of the decades of the 70 and the 80 and Member States, within the framework of Doctrina of the developed National Security from the School of the Américas.

A study of 2003 realized by the American army affirms that they exist more than 100 definitions of terrorism.

By all these factors, many specialists consider the word terrorism a term that in its use has happened in a merely propagandistic concept to disqualify the enemy more than to define a situation of objective form.

United Nations

In spite of the reconaissance of his convenience, it has not been never possible to reach a consensus on the definition of terrorism, basically by the impossibility to secure a rigorous definition that it does not include the terrorist actions of the states. The initial attempt of definition still took place in 1937 in times of the League of Nations:

“Any criminal act directed against a state and directed to or calculated to create a state of terror in the minds of particular people, a group of people or the general public.”

Resolution 51/210, “Measured to eliminate the international terrorism”, adopted in the 88 Plenary Mass meeting, of 17 of December of 1996, proclaims in the I.2 point that the General Mass meeting of the United Nations:

“It reiterates that the criminal acts directed or calculated to bring about a state of terror in the general public, a particular group of people or people for political intentions are unjustifiable in any circumstance, whoever they are the political, philosophical considerations, ideological, racial, ethnic, religious or of any other nature that can be invoked to justify them.”

In a report to the UN specialist A.P. Schmid proposed to take like starting point the concept from war crime, considering that if its definition extends to the time of peace reaches a very functional definition of the acts of terrorism like the “equivalents in time of peace to the war crimes”.

Within the series of explored definitions one of most recent he has been formulated the 1 of December of 2004 including in the Final report of the Group of experts of High level on Amenazas, the Challenges and the Exchanges, named by the Secretary Nations General:

Any act, besides either specified in the agreements and effective conventions on certain aspects of the terrorism, the Agreements of Geneva and Resolution 1566 of the Security Council of United Nations (2004) destined to cause to the death or serious corporal injuries to a civilian or a noncombatant one, when the intention of this act, by their nature or context, is to intimidate a population or to force to a government or an international organization to conduct a battle or to abstain to do it.

It exists in addition what it has been described like an academic consensus, an agreement between the specialists, that according to the formulation of Schmid (1988) can be expressed thus:

“The terrorism is a producing method of anxiety based on the act of violence repeated on the part of an individual or group (semi) clandestine or by agents of the state, by idiosincráticos reasons, criminal or political, in which - unlike the murder - the direct targets of the violence are not the main targets. The immediate human victims of the violence generally are chosen at random (white of opportunity) of a white population, and are used like generating of a message. The trials of communication based on the threat - and the violence - between the terrorist (the terrorist organization), the victims put in danger and the main targets are used to manipulate to the hearings white, turning them into terror target, target of demands or target of attention, according to which its intimidation, its coercion or the propaganda look for primarily.”

Instruments of the terrorism

Within the used instruments to implement this terrorist mechanism, or acts, diverse forms of violence physical against the people are included, as the kidnapping, the torture or the extrajudicial execution; diverse forms of violence moral, as the social pressure or threat previous; diverse forms of violence against the private goods and public, like the destruction of the same with explosive materials or arsonists. Finally, one of the instruments more used by the terrorist groups is the bomb attack against military or civilian targets to bring about indiscriminate deaths or no.

In the case of the state terrorism, the aerial bombings of cities can be mentioned like example. The Aerial Code of The Hague of 1923 established that “the aerial bombing with the intention of terrifying the civilian population is prohibited…”. Nevertheless this rule and other similars never were ratified by the major countries to be able military man. In that frame some authors have mentioned as terrorist attacks the bombing of Guernica in 1936, or the one that realized Member States with atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nakasaki in 1945.

Strategic advantages for the terrorist group

The following points of the nature of the terrorist group must stand out: it acts with premeditation and advantage; its final objective is not the victim or affected object but the attainment of the exchange that it persecutes; it can adopt in tactical a scheme based on the urban guerilla or clandestine military groups; in the politician it can assume an associate public image with one or several parties or organizations, or states that can adopt authoritarian democratic ways or.

It is not necessary to stop indicating, either, that the terrorist acts can be perpetrated by groups nonconsidered terrorist. In the case of civil wars, anyone of the factions in struggle can appeal to them like strategic aid; perpendicularly the guerilla groups appeal to them; also they are used by organizations of a state (that, either does not have the appeals necessary to establish a military conflict formally or does not want to do it) in another one, count or not on the explicit reconaissance of its government; in the same way, from the own state also they have been gotten to create terrorist or paramilitary groups that use terrorist methods within the own territory of the state.

Analysis of the term terrorism

Terrorism is a term that has undergone an abuse of language on the part of the states that deliberately they try to discredit his enemies. Thus the Nazis called terrorists to the Jews who rebelled themselves in Warsaw; in the South Africa of the apartheid one said that many black made activities terrorist; the French said the same of the Algerians who were against the domination of France (and that in some cases terrorist methods used). During century XX it was accused indiscriminately of terrorists to multiple South American guerillas; even nonviolent associations, like the Argentine Mothers of the Plaza of May and Grandmothers of Place of May, also were considered - and still they are it by some sectors like terrorist organizations. In the situation of occupation of Iraq, initiated by the Member States in 2003, it is difficult to draw up to the dividing line between terrorism and resistance.

At present the denominated war against the terrorism or fight against terrorism constitutes a fundamental point in the agenda of the governments and main political parties of the western countries, as much are so one significant part of the political tour around this question. Some points of view maintain that an excessive centralidad is occurring him to the issue of terrorism, major that the incidence that this phenomenon has on the company.

If terrorist he is that one that uses the terror to secure political ends, are some who consider that many recent armies have committed such acts; for example the Syrians in the Lebanon, the Serbs in Bosnia, the Israelis in the Palestinian Territories, the Russians in Chechenia and the Americans in numerous places of the world. When these acts are realized by forces supported by the governments, within their own borders, constitute an agravated modality of the terrorism, denominated state terrorism, which is executed with a favorable balance of power. The terrorism to which reference becomes, usually is much more difficult to determine, since he is the one that is exerted with an unfavorable balance of power. It is difficult to separate “terrorism” of “resistance”. A criterion would be to analyze the groups or organizations under two aspects:

Methods of the terrorist groups

Under the methodologic point of view, terrorist to the group can be considered that perpetrates kidnappings, bomb attacks, murders, threats and coercions of systematic way. Technically, those acts are destined to produce terror in the enemy population and they are defined without a doubt as terrorists. In neutral sense, the term is used often by the press to designate to the groups that execute that methodology.

Terrorist arms

Although practically any thing can be considered a weapon (from a match and a mast of it sweeps to an atomic bomb), the terrorists have used sidearms or semiautomatic habitually. Some fundamentalist groups since Hezbolá has gotten to have antiaircraft missiles. Also the use of homemade bombs of variable power is very common, getting to use in some cases the own corps of the terrorists like vector of approach of the bomb. When what it has been tried is magnicidio to a safe distance of its safety equipment usually they use rifles with sight by telescope.

Generally, the terrorist groups tend to use any element that allows them to achieve its targets with the greater possible mediatic resonance, or are those elements arms coming from the regular armies or acquired in the international market of arms trade or it is average unexpected. Particular relevance has the attack of the World Trade Center of the 11 of September of 2001, in that kidnapped passenger planes were used.

The more common types of bomb usually are:

• cocktails molotov
• Bombs with able to activate timer or at a distance
• Bombs lapa
• Bombs trap
• Grenades of hand

Weapons of destruction massive that have been used by terrorists:

• biological weapons
• chemical arms

There are several precedents of attacks with weapons of destruction massive. One in that chemical agents were used (gas sarín), was the one of the sectarian group Supreme Truth, that invested in a couple of times (in 1994 and 1995) a small device in the meter of Tokyo. An attack realized with biological agents (salmonella) was the happened one in the county of Wasco, in which the right-wing extremists tried to use the attack with political ends, although finally obtained the result in opposition to the being shortages.

Psychological aspects of the terrorism

The complexity of the terrorist phenomenon prevents its apprehension from a unique psychological conception. By the others, the specialized bibliography appears an excess of theories in front of the number of realized empirical studies, partly due to the difficulty to accede to psique of the terrorists to analyze it.

It has, however, several studies of reference on the subject; among them, they emphasize the following:

• between 1979 and 1981 an investigation ordered by the Ministry of the Interior of Germany was realized that it tried to go deep in the biography of suspicious people of terrorism (the majority of extreme left, and a few of extreme right). Besides the consultation of proceedings, manifolds were realized interviews with jailed terrorists. Of the investigation the profile of a professional of the terrorism was deduced on the one base makes specific psychological evolution: initial situation of oppression (social and/or familiar); life in secrecy where contramodelo of its previous life was developed; development of a friend or foe dicotomía that ended at a loss of the sense of the reality.
• Martha Crenshaw (being based on autobiographical testimonies of ex- members and members of the WRATH, PLO, etc.), Marc Sageman (on the call “Yihad”), Khapta Akhmedova and Ariel Merari (on the social environment and relative of the terrorists), Eyad El-Sarraj (on the terrorism it forces suicide on), Brian Barber (on young people of franza of Gaza), Anne Speckhard (through testimony of hostages of terrorists); Jerrold Post, Nichole Argo and Yoram Schweizer (from testimonies picked up in Israeli and Palestinian jails); and Nasra Hassam (from interviews with members of Hamas and Yihad).

Repression of the terrorism

For the repression of the terrorism he is habitual that the debate concentrates in the necessity to choose between the respect for human rights and the national security. Often the repressive measures include the suspension of the constitutional rights.

In Argentina, during the military regime that steered between 1976-1983 general Tomás Arming Sanchez de Bustamante explained the following thing:

The terrorism is an exception fact and of gravity like it protests right proportional. There are norms and you rule that they are not of application in this case. For example, the right to the “hábeas corpus”. In this type of fight, the secret that must surround the special operations, causes that it does not have to be disclosed that have been captured and to who is due to capture. A silence cloud must exist that surrounds everything… and this is not compatible with the freedom of press”.

In some extreme cases she has gotten herself to maintain the necessity that the State removes the children of people considered like terrorists, to clear his identity to them. In Argentina judge Delia Pons, to title of the Court of Hill Minors of Zamora explained the ratios of this measure to the Grandmothers of Place of May with these words:

I am convinced that their children were terrorist, and terrorist is synonymous of assassin. To the assassins I fodder not to give back the children to them because he would not be right to do it. Only on my corpse they are going to obtain the lieutenancy of those children.

Inter-American convention against the Terrorism

The 3 of June of 2002 the Organization of American States (OAS) approved the Inter-American Convention against the Terrorism. The same must like target force all the American states to sanction antiterrorist laws and to establish a continental system of repression of the terrorism, that does not find limitations to act derived from certain legal guarantees, like the banking secrecy, transfer of people arrested between countries, the invocation of the “political crime” or condition of refugee, the right of asylum. After the trial of ratifications, the same in force entered the 7 of October of 2003.

The convention emphasizes especially that the repression of the terrorism cannot in no way affect the human rights of the people:

Nothing of the stipulated thing in the present Convention will be interpreted in the sense that it reduces other law and obligations for Member and of the people according to the international law, in particular the Chart of the United Nations, the Chart of the Organization of the American States, the international humanitarian law, the international law of the human rights and the international law of the refugees.
To all person who is lengthy or with respect to which any encausada measure that is in accordance with the present Convention is adopted will be guaranteed a fair treatment to him, including the enjoyment of all the law and guarantees in accordance with the legislation of the State in whose territory one is and the relevant provisions of the international law. (interjections 2 and 3 of article 15)

Between the remarkable elements of the sanction of the convention the final impossibility stands out to typify the terrorist crime, as well as the lack of consensus to describe it like crime as lesa humanity. Also the affectation of the right of asylum that establishes the convention, to the point has been questioned that Chile, Costa Rica and Mexico made reserve of not accepting it in this aspect.

It is also seen

• Dirty war in Argentina
• The CRAF
• United self-defense of Colombia
• Narcoterrorism
• Guerilla war
• Asymmetric war
• Put Luis Tracks
• Terrorism in Chile
• European Security Advocacy Group
• State terrorism
• Archives of the Terror

References

1. ↑ Terrorism, Dictionary of the Spanish Royal Academy
2. ↑ Terrorist, Dictionary of the Spanish Royal Academy
3. ↑ Antiterrorista Draft law
4. ↑ Magazine ARI, núm. 82 of 2005. Article published by Fernando You will reign. Real Elcano Institute of International and Strategic Studies.
5. ↑ Daily The Times, London, editing 4 of January of 1978
6. '“Deimos & Phobos”' in Theoi Project (English)
7. ↑ Maquiavelo, the Prince, CAP. XVII: “Of the cruelty and the mercy; and if he is better to be loved than feared, or to be feared that loved”.
8. ↑ Heller, Michel (1985), the Soviet new man. Of the utopia to the reality., Barcelona, South American-Planet, ISBN 950-37-0180-5, l$p. 17
9. ↑ Study on definitions of terrorism processed by the army of the EE.UU.
10. ↑ Plaintext of resolution 51/210, “Measured to eliminate the international terrorism”, of the United Nations
11. 'Definitions of Terrorism, United Nations, Office on Drugs and Crime'
12. ↑ Summit the International On the Democracy, Terrorism and the Security
13. 'Definitions of Terrorism. UNODC.'
14. ↑ Doctrina of the Air operations within the framework of the International humanitarian law and the Human Rights, Colombian Forces Aerial
15. ↑ Wolfgang Schmidt: “Of course the bombing of Guernica was to blatant violation of human rights and had to terrorist to character It was accepted that civilians would be harmed” in [http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,479675,00.htm Hitler's destruction of Guernica: Practicing Blitzkrieg in Basque Country, by Jörg Diehl l
16. ↑ Gerson, Joseph (2007). Empire and the Bomb How the U.S. You use Nuclear Weapons to Dominate the World, Pluto Press, Michigan, ISBN 978-0-7453-2494-4
17. ↑ Nosiglia, Julio E. (1985), Spoil of war, Buenos Aires: Cooperative Fertile Ground, l$p. 184.
18. ↑ Nosiglia, Julio E. (1985), Spoil of war, Buenos Aires: Cooperative Fertile Ground, l$p. 55.
19. ↑ Them Pénelopes. History nonofficer. Them Pénelopes. Consulted the 10 of January of 2008.
20. ↑ Organization of American States, OAS, 2002.
21. ↑ Organization of American States, OAS, 2002.

External Links

Wikiquote

• Wikiquote lodges famous phrases of Terrorism.
• European Security Advocacy Group : Fight against terrorism in Europe
• Articles of terrorism (in English) Articles on terrorism in Central Europe. Center of Terrorism of Poland

Listings of terrorist organizations

• Data base of ITC
• Library of the University of the Air
• CDI
• State Department - the USA

Bibliography

• Benegas, Jose Maria. Dictionary of terrorism. Espasa Calpe. ISBN 84-670-1609-4
• Hawala. Informal An Payment System and Its Use to Finance Terrorism by Sebastian R. Müller (DEC. 2006), ISBN: ISBN-10: 3865506569, ISBN-13: 978-3865506566

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