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Modern democracy, which may be identified with popular sovereignty, majority rule, constitutional liberties, participation in decision-making at all levels, drive for egalitarianism, protection of minorities and much else, is complicated package. No matter how composite it may look, however, democracy is incompatible with terrorism.[1] Fascist parties excluded, most political groupings and governments have seldom failed to claim a democratic legitimacy. Democracy, which seems to promise a form of government based on the harmony between the rulers and the ruled, is irresistible, at least as a slogan. It is conceivable, on the other hand, only when sectional or public interests are acknowledged and organized for political action.

Another justifiable assumption is that no state is seriously democratic unless opposition is permitted to form and participate in the contest for power. In some in the overall state. In societies where the opposition forces are of this type, democratic institutions lead to clashes more than bringing harmony. In such instances, some kind of unifying principles in the form of an ideology, “guided democracy” and “army above politics” may emerge. Although even such governments are not necessarily without virtue, democracy assumed, during its formative years, the existence and the dominance of rational human beings. Some contemporary analysts believe, however, that the democratic process has its own irrationalities.

A Matter of Definition

Likewise, it is difficult to use term “terrorism” accurately within a legal context. That word, first used during the French Revolution to portray government by intimidation but later expanded to mean many other things, has no completely accepted definition.[2] The international community acting as the League of Nations (L. of N.) and the United nations (U.N) attempted to define the term or the concept.[3] According to Article 1 of a L. of N. Convention (1937), terrorist undertaking are “criminal acts directed against a state and intended or calculated to create a state of terror in the minds of particular persons or the general public”. A U.N. General Assembly Resolution (1985) concentrated on “miserly, frustration, grievance and despair” engendered by “colonialism, racism and situations involving mass and flagrant violations of human rights and fundamental freedoms”.[4] As pinpointed in the U.N. Security Council Resolution (1999), the international community now “[u]nequivocally condemns all acts, methods and practices of terrorism as criminal and unjustifiable, regardless of their motivation, in all their forms and manifestations, wherever and by whomever committed, in particular those which could threaten international peace and security.”[5]

Some individual authorities spelled out the substance of the same word in various other ways. For instance, Crenshaw indicated that terrorism was the result of both emotional pressures and strategic choice considerations. [6] Post suggested the notion of “terrorist psycho-logic” espousing that political terrorists commit violence in consequence of psychological forces.[7] Pearl stein maintained that terrorists were characterized by narcissistic personality trait disturbances traceable to childhood self image injuries.[8] Weinberg, who introduced the role of projective identification and developed the function of the defence mechanism of splitting in the paradoxical terrorist personality, underlined that terrorists with personality trait disorders would not necessarily exhibit striking psychopathology.[9]

One needs to be distrustful of sweeping generalizations. For instance, the U.N. Resolution which refers to colonialism, racism and situations involving human rights is a simplistic supposition. Terrorism occurs in democracies perhaps more than authoritarian regimes. It is discernible in homogenous as well as in heterogeneous societies. It may grow on the basis of historical grievances or blossom on account of economic and political failures. Even economic prosperity, as in Germany, may lead to its burgeoning. Compromise on the part of the ruling government or even yielding to some demands of the t

terrorists, as in post-Franco Spain (1975), may not assure the finale of the fury. As Laqueur expresses categorically, terrorism can be best overpowered in root-and-branch totalitarian states which do not permit any discordance.[10]

Although it is clearly difficult to use the term accurately, at least in a legal sense the man in the street has an image in his mind. For an average person, terrorism implies a defiance of law, a violent conduct against an individual or a group of people or the representatives of an authority, planned to intimate or coerce the latter to meet the demands underlying the terrorist act. It is violence against civilian targets and others by clandestine or at times by state-inflicted (although not necessarily state-tolerated) groups with the intention of inducing shock. On the other hand, the sprinkling of bullets from the gun of an insane person, a hunger strike, sporadic mob violence or clandestine political opposition, each discomforting to the government and some even criminal in legal terms, are not acts of terrorism. Not all forms of violence, however, are easily distinguishable from terrorism. While it is generally believed that assassins act alone but terrorists operate in teams, the murders of Anwar-al Sadat and Indira Gandhi were acting on behalf of political groups. Although it is widely assumed that terrorists function in urban areas, some Latin American groups and the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) have been active in rural regions as well. Describing targeting non-combatants as part of terrorism, some specialists characterized it as wanton attacks on innocent citizens. While those who occupy a building with diplomatic immunity may take anyone who may be there as hostage, the assassinations of Sadat and Indira were the result of carefully selected targets.

Terrorism is customarily considered to be violence from below. Although never a dictator in the modern sense, being checked in the Committee of Public Safety as well as the opposing Hebertist faction, “the Reign of Terror” from above set in (1793-94) as M.I. Robespierre came to dominate the French Revolution. Similarly, the Nazi appeal since 1933 to prejudices widely held in Germany against Jews, intellectuals, liberals, leftists and pacifists, including the Holocaust, constitute terror from above. The outbreak of terror, accompanied by repeated “purges” of the Communist Party and the Soviet administration, both under the undisputed leadership of J. Stalin, also indicated the application of brutal power from above.

An Element of Politics

Although terrorism, on the basis of references above, may be considered as an old form of destructive and cruel behaviour, it has become an increasingly important element of contemporary world politics. In the early post-1945 period, the dominant practice of international terrorism was the so-called “revanchist” violence against the expansion of the Communist bloc in Eastern Europe. Its protagonists were then members of extremist emigrant groups who had found refuge in different Western countries. Although the immediate targets were harassed, events such as the storming of the Romanian diplomatic premises in Bern or the pursuits of the Croatian hijackers in the mid-1950s failed to put the world on its guard. A growing type of international terrorism which emerged in the postwar years was the so-called “radicalism” whose roots were ostensibly to be found in anarchism. This pattern of petite-bourgeois phenomenon embraced some young people who appeared to believe in desperate destruction an alternative to political methods of opposition to the status quo. Sometimes unemployed and often outcasts in the productive and cultural life of societies, they found themselves in the midst of a crisis of moral values. Usually a small minority, they volunteered to symbolize and talk for greater groups.

The last-mentioned groups have long-term objectives as well as immediate targets. Some of them, like the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front, aspire to independence on behalf of a people or nation. Some nurture the limited objective of “removing” someone, obtaining the release of a prisoner, wringing ransom, gaining publicity, provoking to suit everyone concerned as well as all cases away stem from the fact that terrorist acts are committed to several specific purposes. On the other had, all or most of such explicit plans may be designed to serve the same overall ambition.

Clandestine groups are necessarily small in number. It is their isolation from the overwhelming majority that plays a role in inciting them more towards violence. Disregarding the criteria for social development, they are inclined to glorify the subjective factor and play politics and revolution. Like the alchemists of bygone ages, they frequently expect societal miracles from bombs and assassinations. Their opposition hardly promise long-term prospects, but it almost surely discredits the efforts of social forces which could otherwise help achieve desirable goals. In other words, by reducing politics to criminal actions and by accepting violence as the style of struggle, the terrorists of our day, including those in Kashmir, disorganize the authentic forces of change.

Another kind of international terrorism seeks to present itself as commendable instrument and a component part of national liberation movement. It tries to derive its justification from the understanding that the struggle for such and end is a form of expression of the lawful right of peoples to self-determination. During the long Cold War period, the two superpowers as leaders of the Eastern and Western bloc of nations considered the encouragement of the “liberation movements” within territories in the other’s sphere of influence as a requirement of respective national interests. First V.I. Lenin and later Woodrow Wilson, representing the leadership of the two ideologically-competing societies of the post-1919 world, well publicized the principle of a people’s right to self-determination, a criterion still widely conceded as an agreeable dictum. However, if all groups of people which may claim such a right are granted sovereignty and independence, contemplating for a moment that the existing nation-states will consent to their own dismemberment, the membership in the U.N. General Assembly will expand several fold from its present (2000) embrace of 188 countries.

Some brands of terrorism which pretend to be vehicles of “emancipatory” endeavours may well be unconnected with the right of peoples to necessary self-defence. They may be assessed, instead, as dangerous forms of abuse of the anti-colonial and liberator struggle, or indications of a separate aim, with interests of their own. The so-called “anti-colonial terrorism” cannot be on a level with the goals of peoples struggling for national liberation. Such movement does not endorse terrorist acts claiming human lives among innocent civilian populations either in the area of conflict or anywhere else.

One of the dominant features of recent terrorism has been the proliferation of groups motivated by religion, giving that kind of violence a “divide imperative”.[11] Contrary to the bias of some Western circles, it is not only Muslims who produce groups of religious terrorists . In addition to the “holy terror” in parts of Kashmir, legitimization of violence is also discernible among some radical Sikhs in India, white supremacist American Christians, and some Jewish messianic movements is Israel. Strong sectarian elements may also be observed in Armenian, Irish, Palestinian, Tamil terrorist groups. Consequently, “Hamas” asserts that Israel, will exist until Islam will obliterate it, some Jewish fanatics plot the destruction of the dome of the Rock, a Sikh group seeks to “cleanse” Punjab of foreign influences, and white supremacists lay plans to engage in indiscriminate, mass killings.

While teams which purport to represent one or the other ethnic/religious groups call for independence, not only a few such groups aspire for independence, there are also too many areas all over the world with more than one claimant. For some of them the blessings of fusion may make up for the gamble of secession. Many groups however, feel frustrated over the odds of independence, a breeding ground for terrorism, likely to increase rather than diminish in the near future.

[1] Paul Wilkinson, Terrorism and the Liberal State, London, Macmillan, 1979;_________, Terrorism versus Liberal Democracy: the Problem of Response, London, Institute for the Study of Counflict, 1976.

[2] Gaston Bouthoul, “Definitions of Terrorsim”, “International Terrorism and World Security, David Carlton and Calor Schaerf, eds., New York, John Wiley and sons,1978, John dugard, “International Terrorism: Problmes of Definition”, International Affairs, London, 50/1 (January 1974), Two bibiliographical studies: August Norton and Martin Greenberg, International Terrorism: an Annotated Bibiliography and Research Guide, Boulder, Colorado, Westview, 1980; Edward Mickolus, The Literature of Terrorism: a Selectively Annotated Bibiliograhy, Westport, Connecticut, Greenwood 1980

[3] For conventions on terrorism, see: Jonah Alexander et al.eds., Control of Terrorism: International Documents, New York, Crane, Russak, 1979.

[4] U.N. General Asembly, 40^th Session, “Resolution 40/61”, (9 December 1985) in Resolutions and Decisions Adopted by the General Assembly during the Fortieth Session, Supp. No. 53 (A/40/53), Official Record, NewYork, 1986.

[5] U.N., S/Res/1269 (19 October 1999). Emphasis in the original.

[6] M.Crenshaw, “The Causes of Terrorism”, Comparative Politics, New York, 13 (1981), _____, “An Organizational Approach to the Analysis of Political Terrorism”, Orbis, Oxford, 29 (1985), ____, “The Logic of Terrorism: Terrorist Behavior as a Product of Strategic Choice”, Origins of Terrorsim, Psychologies, Ideologies, Theologies, States of Mind, ed., W. Reich, Cambridge University Press, 1990.

[7] J.M. Post, “Terrorist Psycho-logic: Terrorist Behavior as a Product of Psychological Forces”, Reich,

[8] R.M. Pearlstein, The Mind of a Political Terrorist, Wilmington, DE, Scholarly Resources, 1991.

[9] C.A. Weinberg, “Terrorists and Terrorism”, Mind and Human Interaction, Charlottesville, VA, 3 (1992)

[10] Walter Laqueur. The Age of Terrorism, Boston, Little, Brown, 1987,

[11] Bruce Hoffman, “’Holy Terror’: the Implications of Terrorism Motivated by a Religious Imperative”, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, Bristol, PA, 18(1995),

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