State terrorism

State terrorism is a term referring to acts of violence which fit the common international definition of terrorism, but are committed by an official state military or sponsored by a sovereign government. State terrorism thus refers to hostile actions outside of the context of a declared war, which target civilians or show a disregard for civilian life in attacking targets — either people or facilities. The recent emergence of the term state terrorism, represents an attempt by the international community to use terrorism by its literal definition under international law to apply to more than merely non-state actors.

Confines and definition

The definition of any political concept naturally depends on its source—the term "terrorism" is itself a controversial definition, commonly used to characterize the hostile actions of an opposing political view as wantonly destructive. In many cases, acts of terrorism and state terrorism have been carried out with the intention of inflaming hostilities, and may be precursors to full-scale war.

The terms "clandestine warfare" "low-intensity warfare," "guerrilla warfare" and "assymetrical warfare," are similar to "terrorism," and in some situations qualify, but "warfare" in most cases refers to military actions within the context of a war, while terrorism is confined to non-state actors, which cannot themselves declare war. Osama bin Laden's attack on the United States in 2001 was among a very few number of events where a non-state "terrorist" attack was called an "act of war," though neither bin Laden nor Al Qaeda constitute states capable of declaring war.

Some consider that Stalin's purges—political mass-killings within the USSR—also are "state terrorism." There is some term overlap: genocide, and more specifically democide, a crime against humanity, mass murder are also possible descriptions. See also state-sponsored terrorism.

The assassination of dissidents in exile (such as the 1940 murder of Leon Trotsky in Mexico by agents of Josef Stalin) might also be considered an example of state terrorism.

According to Spanish judge Baltasar Garzón, "State terrorism is a political system whose rule of recognition permits and/or imposes a clandestine, unpredictable, and diffuse application, even regarding clearly innocent people, of coercive means prohibited by the proclaimed judicial ordinance. State terrorism obstructs or annuls judicial activity and transforms the government into an active agent in the struggle for power."

A more narrow definition of state terrorism comes from the United States Department of State. It defines state-sponsors of terrorist activity to be those states which provide logistical and financial support for broadly-recognized terrorist groups. Using this definition, the U.S. State Department's 2002 Patterns of Global Terrorism report [1] identified two states, Syria and Iran as state-sponsors of terrorist activity. The report cites the following:

• Syria
  • gives "limited financial support" to the DFLP;
  • gives "diplomatic, political, and logistic support" to Hizbullah;
  • gives "limited logistic support assistance" to Palestinian Islamic Jihad;
  • gives "safehaven and some logistic assistance" to the PFLP; and
  • gives "logistic and military support" to PFLP-GC.
• Iran
  • "contributes funding" to Hamas;
  • gives "financial, training, weapons, explosives, political, diplomatic, and organizational aid" to Hizbullah;
  • supports Islamic Jihad, according to the Egyptian government;
  • gives "financial assistance" to Palestinian Islamic Jihad; and
  • gives "financial support" to PFLP-GC.

State-specific examples

Chile

Chile, under the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, pursued an extensive policy regarded by many as state terrorism against both civilians at home and perceived enemies abroad. On the international stage, the Chilean state's actions included the assassination of former ambassador Orlando Letelier in Washington, D.C., by means of a car bomb, the killing of Gen. Carlos Prats in Argentina in similar circumstances, and the attempted assassination of Bernardo Leighton in Italy.

Cuba

Under the dictatorship of Fidel Castro, Cuba has been accused by nearly every human rights organization in the world of gross and continual abuses in the treatment of its citizenry. This includes extrajudicial killings, political imprisonment, and coercion of its population through control of basic resources.

China

The government of the People's Republic of China has repeatedly engaged in behaviors considered to violate international standards of human rights. Some of these are also considered by many as acts of state terrorism, such as the suppression of the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989.

China has also actively suppressed movements in Tibet which support independence for the Dalai Lama. Some of these actions, such as mass imprisonment and using violence against peaceful demonstrators, would be classified by some as state terrorism.

Germany

In democratic Germany of the 1920s and early 1930s, the national-socialist party's paramilitary organisation SA terrorized political opponents and minorities. Although the SA committed their crimes in the open, they were only forbidden for short periods of time in 1924 and 1932. In 1932 power shifted from SA to the other Nazi party's paramilitary organisation SS. During Adolf Hitler dictatorship of Germany (1933-1945) the SS played a key role in building a system of state terror. It controlled the Gestapo, and is responsible for the persecution and the extermination of the Jews, brutalities and killings in concentration camps, excesses in the administration of occupied territories, the administration of the slave labor program and the maltreatment and murder of prisoners of war.

During the 1950s in East Germany, labor revolts and labor strikes were often put down with what most would consider hugely disproportionate force, the goal likely being to terrorize workers into conforming behavior.

Iraq

Iraq under Saddam Hussein is widely believed to have been responsible for numerous chemical weapons attacks on its own civilian population to stem revolutionary activity and pacify ethnic groups. One of the more famous incidents is the Halabja poison gas attack.

See also Human rights situation in Saddam's Iraq and Human rights situation in post-Saddam Iraq.

Israel

Israel has a policy of directly attacking the leaders of organizations that it considers to be terrorist. These counter-terror attacks sometimes result in the deaths of civilians, leading to accusations against Israel of state terrorism. This practise has also been criticized as "extra-judicial executions".

Various Israeli operations in refugee camps such as Jenin have been condemned as terroristic, while Israelis would point north to Syria's handling of Hama to show that their actions result in far less collateral damage. In addition, the use of bulldozers and other demolition devices to destroy the houses of suicide bombers and houses in the Gaza Strip that contain tunnels to smuggle weapons from Egypt is also criticized as terrorism.

With Israel in particular, those opposed to its policies use "terrorism" to describe everything from holding onto Gaza to building a wall on the Israeli-Gaza border and removing all Israeli presence.

Myanmar

The ruling junta of Myanmar has repeatedly engaged in activities to suppress democratic movements within the country. Many of the junta's opponents, such as Aung San Suu Kyi, believe the goal of some of these is to terrorize the population into compliance. See, for instance, the August 8, 1998 Burma protest.

Soviet Union

Under the reigns of Lenin and Stalin, political opponents of the Soviet regime, as well as perceived "enemies of the people", were subject to incarceration under life-threatening circumstances and execution. Stalin was able to cement his hold on power by intimidating and executing his political opponents, real and imagined.

Spain

During the 1970s and the 1980s, several groups attacked suspected members of Basque terrorist organization ETA. These groups are:

• Guerrilleros de Cristo Rey
• Batallón Vasco Español
• Antiterrorismo ETA (ATE)
• Grupos Antiterroristas de Liberación (GAL)

These groups have been suspected and in some cases proved to include Spanish policemen and to be funded with state secret funds.

Spanish magistrate Baltasar Garzón's investigations led to the conviction of a Spanish PSOE minister and several subordinates for organizing the GAL.

United States

A number of critics have labeled actions of the United States of America as terrorism. For instance, the US has taken sides in various foreign civil wars and conflicts, notably siding with Israel against other Middle East countries, often working with organizations with questionable human rights practices. The CIA, in particular, has been accused of supporting terrorist organizations in other countries. Such support has been labeled state terrorism.

Other actions have also been criticized as terroristic in intent.

The nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II is considered by some as another example of mass killing of civilians which went beyond the laws of war. However, most military historians point to the firebombing of Tokyo and Dresden, which killed many more people, especially civilians, in a much more gruesome and uncontrolled fashion, as compared to the relatively humane and quick atomic bombs. Many supporters of the bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima claim those who label it terrorism overlook the distributed nature of the Japanese industries, which unlike their German counterparts were scattered throughout the cities rather than concentrated in a single factory or industrial area. Many military historians also point to the casualty figures from Iwo Jima and Okinawa, and note that extrapolating those figures to invading the main Japanese islands results in enormous casualties, both Allied and Japanese, orders of magnitude larger than those from Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They also say claim that critics fail to understand, that given the technology of the time, Allied bombers often had trouble hitting even the city that contained one of the large German factories and that hitting a small Japanese manufacturing house would have been almost impossible to do.

Some, particularly critics of the US, claim the UN sanctions on Iraq, which the US helped push for, harmed the people more than the government. A response to this is that other countries in the security council, particularly France and Russia, established backdoors so that they could profit immensely through kickbacks. Similarly, the entire "Oil for food" program has come under investigation for taking kickbacks and bribes from Saddam Hussein. Of course, those opposed to the sanctions again don't offer any viable alternative.

Another example is the use of economic and political pressure on the Allende government in Chile. The United States' military action against Nicaragua in 1984-1985 was criticized by some commentators as terroristic after the International Court of Justice, whose authority the US does not recognize, found the US guilty of "unlawful use of force" [2] . The US Army runs the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation training camp, the successor to "The School of the Americas", in Georgia, USA where some of its graduates have gone on to commit acts of what others consider to be state terrorism in Latin America.

See also

death squad, dirty war