The Asia-Pacific Security Lexicon (Upated 2nd Edition)

TERRORISM

221 TERRORISM Terrorism is now one of the most fr equently used terms in the contemporary Asia-Pacific security discourse. It is also str ongly contested, with little international consensus on what constitutes either an act of terr orism or a terr orist group. It is clear that terrorism involves some sort of violent activity, but what kind of violence is to be labelled terrorism is a key question.1 Unhelpfully, interpretations range from “any violent threat to existing order” to the assertion that the term “terr orism” is merely a pejorative label with no substantive meaning.2 The origins of the word “terrorism” are usually traced to the French Revolution. In 1792 the Jacobins came to power and launched a bloody purge of counter-revolutionaries that came to be known simply as “the terr or”. Led by Robespierre, the terror was described as “nothing but justice, pr ompt, severe and inflexible” and thousands were executed at the guillotine. Edmund Burke’s 1795 condemnation of the r evolutionaries as “those hellhounds called terrorists [who] are let loose on the people” is the first recorded use of the term. 3 Attempts to define terr orism for legal purposes go back at least as far as the League of Nations. An international convention debated by the League in 1937 described “terr orism” as “all criminal acts directed against a State and intended or calculated to 02 A_Pac Security Lexicon 9/28/07, 2:49 PM 221 222 create a state of terr or in the minds of particular persons or a group of persons or the general public”. However , the convention never came into force because of a lack of ratification by member states.4 Despite ongoing disagreement, there have been a number of attempts to define terr orism by international bodies such as the United Nations. Most of these modern definitions have a common core, namely that terrorism involves the use of violence, usually against civilians or non-combatants, for the purpose of provoking a state of terror in order to advance a specific political, religious or ideological cause. A small sample of national and international definitions is offered below. In 1994 the UN General Assembly adopted resolution 49/60, Measures to Eliminate International Terrorism. This declared that: Criminal acts intended or calculated to provoke a state of terror in the general public, a gr oup of persons or particular persons for political purposes ar e in any cir cumstance unjustifiable, whatever the considerations of a political, philosophical, ideological, racial, ethnic, religious or any other nature that may be invoked to justify them. 5 The International Convention for the Suppr ession of the Financing of Terrorism, which came into for ce in April 2002, defines terrorism as an “act intended to cause death or serious bodily injury to a civilian, or to any other person not taking an active part in the hostilities in a situation of armed conflict, when the purpose of such act, by its nature or context, is to intimidate a population, or to compel a Government or an international organization to do or to abstain from doing any act”. Since the attacks of September 2001, a number of Asia-Pacific governments and regional institutions (both at the track one and track two level) have of fered their own definitions. In its annual Patterns of Global T errorism report, the U.S. State Department acknowledges that, “no one definition of terr orism has gained universal acceptance.” For the purposes of its analysis, however , the report uses a definition of terrorism contained in Title 22 of the United States Code, Section 2656f(d). It says, “terr orism means premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by sub-national groups or clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience.” 6 Interestingly, the TERRORISM 02 A_Pac Security Lexicon 9/28/07, 2:49 PM 222 223 report says that “terr orist acts ar e only one part of a lar ger phenomenon of politically inspired violence and, at times, the line between the two can become har d to draw.”7 In Executive Or der 13224, the U.S. Government takes a broader approach, defining terr orism as a crime not simply against life, but also against “pr operty, or infrastructure; [that] appears to be intended (a) to intimidate or coer ce a civilian population; (b) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coer cion...