The age of bombs

The evolution of terrorism

Terrorism is the buzzword in the world because a wave of terror has swept from America to Asia and Africa for quite a while now. This is not the first wave of terror; in fact, there have been quite a few. However, with the motives of terrorists being highly complex, it has been difficult to even agree to a universally accepted definition of terrorism.

The history of terrorism is often traced to Jewish terror groups ‘Zealots’ and ‘Sicarii’, which tried to liberate the Promised Land of Palestine from the Roman yoke in the first century AD, whereas, the earliest use of the term ‘terrorism’ is associated with the Jacobin rule (1793-94) during the French Revolution, when Robespierre and his associates let loose a ‘Reign of Terror’ throughout France. Surprisingly, modern terror of “guns and bombs” as we know it, today, started in the third quarter of the nineteenth century, ironically, with the rise of the ideas of democracy and nationalism. Incidentally, this period also coincided with the heyday of naked capitalism and colonialism in Europe, causing some thinkers such as Karl Marx and Nicolai Bakunin to demand active participation of masses in the political governance. As the European ruling classes refused to reform, the Marxists began to advocate the use of violent means to overthrow the rotten political order in Europe.

By the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century two broad strategies adopted by the terrorists came to the fore. One group advocated the formation of a small elite band of revolutionaries, who would be willing to risk their lives by attempting to assassinate individual economic and political personalities in the capitalist countries to ignite the necessary spark for the working classes to start popular revolutions.

By the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century two broad strategies adopted by the terrorists came to the fore. One group advocated the formation of a small elite band of revolutionaries, who would be willing to risk their lives by attempting to assassinate individual economic and political personalities in the capitalist countries to ignite the necessary spark for the working classes to start popular revolutions. The other group disagreed because it felt that the initiation of popular revolutions could result in large-scale bloodshed; instead it thought that the existing oppressive governments could be overthrown just by the selective killing of kings, prime ministers, etc. Consequently, the Russian Czar Alexander II, the Empress of Austria-Hungary, the Italian King Umberto, the French President Carnot, a British Secretary of State for Ireland, etc were murdered by terrorists to bring about the political change. In the process, the Russian Czardom became the worst target of terrorists which can be imagined from the fact that just one of its regions witnessed three thousand acts of terror in the year 1907.  Probably no one country has witnessed so much terror in one year as did Czarist Russia in 1907; nonetheless, it cannot be denied that terrorism has terrorised much more people and states in our time than any other time in history. The question arises whether there is any possible solution to this hydra-headed menace or not?

Statesmen and politicians, particularly in the West argue that if states become democratic in the true sense of the word then the terroristic tendencies cannot grow. This argument is based on the assumption that terrorism grows as a reaction to authoritarianism in which difference of opinion is silenced through coercion, leaving no room for dissenters except to resort to terror tactics to make their voices heard. Hence, the need of a democratic culture which allows openness, tolerates difference of opinion, ensures civil liberties and furnishes peaceful ways and means for human expression of all hues. In other words, democracy is touted as an antidote to terrorism. In Pakistan, this approach was articulated by Bilawal Bhutto, the young co-Chairman of the PPP, who, in the aftermath of the tragic assassination of his mother Benazir Bhutto at the hands of terrorists said, “Democracy is the best revenge”. Other leaders in the world, especially in the West, also strongly feel that democracy is the best answer to terrorism and that is why there have been worldwide calls of “democracy promotion” and “regime change” against those states which are considered to be authoritarian and oppressive. It seems as if there is an intriguing relationship between terrorism and democracy which has been investigated in great detail by Professor Leonard Weinberg of the University of Nevada in his groundbreaking research entitled, “Democracy and terrorism—friend or foe”.

Statesmen and politicians, particularly in the West argue that if states become democratic in the true sense of the word then the terroristic tendencies cannot grow. This argument is based on the assumption that terrorism grows as a reaction to authoritarianism in which difference of opinion is silenced through coercion, leaving no room for dissenters except to resort to terror tactics to make their voices heard.

According to the noted scholar, Samuel Huntington, the modern world has so far witnessed three waves of democracy in which large number of countries turned from non-democratic to democratic rule: 1828 to 1926, 1943 to 1962 and 1974 to date. Interestingly, all these waves of democracy have been also accompanied by corresponding waves of terrorism. With a few exceptions, the countries that emerged as democratic polities also became frequent victims of terrorism — the primary thrust of which was to bring about bloody revolutions meant to topple the capitalist system and the bourgeois state. Historically, the terrorists before World War I were mostly the left-wingers, however, between the two World Wars, the terrorists turned out to be largely the right-wingers such as the ones in Japan, who resorted to wide scale killing of democratic politicians including a prime minister, who, the terrorists felt were an obstruction in Japan’s imperial ambitions in China and East Asia. It was such right-wing terrorists whose violent actions also undermined the Italian democracy and ushered in an era of fascism in the1920s.

The second wave of democracy heralded an era of national independence movements for the peoples of Asia, Africa and the Middle East from the colonial subjugation of Britain, France, Belgium and the Netherlands. This wave for democratic self-determination witnessed terror campaigns by ‘nationalist terrorists’ such as the Mau-Mau in Kenya, the EDKA in Cyprus, the Irgun and LEHI in Israel against Britain whereas the National Liberation Front (FLN) in Algeria and the Viet Minh in Indo- China resorted to terrorism against the French imperialists.

It was during this second wave of democracy that the world witnessed in what Walter Laqueur’s phraseology is called ‘the age of terrorism.’ This terrorism has been mind-boggling in the sense that not only the terrorists attacked governments but also fought pitched battles among themselves. Unlike the past waves of terror which had a clear pattern of objectives, there is no discerning pattern of causes in ‘the age of terrorism.’ The terrorists operating in different countries and regions have had varied motives. The Palestinian groups resorted to terror to bring the Palestinian issue to limelight. Other areas of the Middle East saw the growth of religiously motivated groups, which advocated the use of militant means against all those, who did not subscribe to their brand of ideology. These groups targeted governments, fellow countrymen as well as foreign governments. Such groups were also instrumental in the proliferation of trans-national terrorism. In South and East Asia, the motivation for terror acts has been either ethnicity, regional separatism or religious extremism. Combined together, this terrorism weakened the governments of the day. Although there is no example in which the terrorists took over the state nonetheless in some cases such as Turkey, Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina, they did create enough chaos to undermine democracy and facilitate military take-overs.

According to the noted scholar, Samuel Huntington, the modern world has so far witnessed three waves of democracy in which large number of countries turned from non-democratic to democratic rule: 1828 to 1926, 1943 to 1962 and 1974 to date. Interestingly, all these waves of democracy have been also accompanied by corresponding waves of terrorism.

Another eye-opener of this research is the fact that over seventy percent of the terrorist attacks that have occurred around the world between 1970 and 2010 targeted those countries that had democratic governments including Britain, US, India, etc. Yet another paradox of terror-democracy relationship is the so-called ‘Arab Spring’ of 2011 that was greeted with great enthusiasm by both the champions of democracy in the West as well as the Qaeda leaders, who are the key promoters of terrorism. Does this mean that democratic states are soft targets for terrorists? The findings of researches in this regard have produced conflicting results for different regions. The Norwegian political scientist Jan Oskar Engene while analysing the acts of terror in the West European countries between 1950 and 2000 concluded that “terrorism does not seem to be positively related with freedom. It is not the countries with the highest level of freedom that get the highest levels of terrorism. Rather terrorism seems to be related to lower levels of freedom.” A somewhat similar research was conducted by James Piazza across nineteen Middle Eastern countries. To his enquiry that “Will promoting democracy in the Middle East reduce terrorism, both within Middle Eastern countries and among countries that are the potential targets of Middle Eastern- based terrorists groups?”, the answer is a big ‘NO’. Professor Weinberg also highlights that the argument that strong authoritarian rule results in terrorism is actually untrue and cites three cases in support of his assertion. One, there is no domestic terrorism in North Korea. Two, there was very little internal terrorism in Saddam’s Iraq whereas under a democratic system this country is being torn apart by terrorist violence. Three, the erstwhile Soviet Union under the iron grip of Stalin experienced no terrorism from private groups but the situation is quite the opposite there since its disintegration in 1991.

Having studied terrorism’s relationship with democracy and authoritarianism, I think it is difficult to derive a general principle for its containment because different people in different parts of the world react differently to democracy and authoritarianism. The above mentioned analyses with regard to Western Europe and the Middle East have clearly highlighted this anomaly. The remarks of Norwegian scholar Tore Bjorgo that strong governments whether democratic or authoritarian are less susceptible to terrorism than weak regimes seems a realistic option to tackle terrorists.