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Brief History of Terrorism

The term “terrorism” was initially coined to describe the Reign of Terror, the period of the
French Revolution from 5 September 1793 to 27 July 1794, during which the Revolutionary
Government directed violence and harsh measures against citizens suspected of being enemies of
the Revolution. So, the terrorism perceived to be the calculated use of violence to create a
general climate of fear in the people and thereby to bring about a particular political objective.
Terrorism has been practiced by political organizations with both rightist and leftist objectives,
by nationalistic and religious groups, by revolutionaries, and even by state institutions such as
armies, intelligence services, and police.

Definitions of Terrorism

Definitions of terrorism are usually complex and controversial, and, because of

the inherent ferocity and violence of terrorism, the term in its popular usage has developed an
intense stigma. It was first coined in the 1790s to refer to the terror used during the French
Revolution by the revolutionaries against their opponents. The Jacobin party of Maximilien
Robespierre carried out a Reign of Terror involving mass executions by the guillotine. Although
terrorism in this usage implies an act of violence by a state against its domestic enemies, since
the 20th century the term has been applied most frequently to violence aimed, either directly or
indirectly, at governments in an effort to influence policy or topple an existing regime.

Terrorism is not legally defined in all jurisdictions; the statutes that do exist, however, generally
share some common elements. Terrorism involves the use or threat of violence and seeks to
create fear, not just within the direct victims but among a wide audience. The degree to which it
relies on fear distinguishes terrorism from both conventional and guerrilla warfare. Although
conventional military forces invariably engage in psychological warfare against the enemy, their
principal means of victory is strength of arms. Similarly, guerrilla forces, which often rely on
acts of terror and other forms of propaganda, aim at military victory and occasionally succeed
(e.g., the Viet Cong in Vietnam and the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia). Terrorism proper is thus
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the calculated use of violence to generate fear, and thereby to achieve political goals, when direct
military victory is not possible. This has led some social scientists to refer to guerrilla warfare as
the “weapon of the weak” and terrorism as the “weapon of the weakest.”

Some definitions treat all acts of terrorism, regardless of their political motivations, as simple
criminal activity. For example, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) defines both
international and domestic terrorism as involving “violent, criminal acts.” The element of
criminality, however, is problematic, because it does not distinguish among different political
and legal systems and thus cannot account for cases in which violent attacks against a
government may be legitimate. A frequently mentioned example is the African National
Congress (ANC) of South Africa, which committed violent actions against that
country’s apartheid government but commanded broad sympathy throughout the world. Another
example is the Resistance movement against the Nazi occupation of France during World War II.
Since the 20th century, ideology and political opportunism have led a number of countries to
engage in international terrorism, often under the guise of supporting movements of national
liberation. (Hence, it became a common saying that “One man’s terrorist is another man’s
freedom fighter.”) The distinction between terrorism and other forms of political violence
became blurred—particularly as many guerrilla groups often employed terrorist tactics—and
issues of jurisdiction and legality were similarly obscured.

In the late 20th century, the term ecoterrorism was used to describe acts of environmental
destruction committed in order to further a political goal or as an act of war, such as the burning
of Kuwaiti oil wells by the Iraqi army during the Persian Gulf War. The term also was applied to
certain environmentally benign though criminal acts, such as the spiking of lumber trees,
intended to disrupt or prevent activities allegedly harmful to the environment.’

Historical Background of Terrorism

Terror has been practiced by state and non-state actors throughout history and throughout the
world. The ancient Greek historian Xenophon (c. 431–c. 350 BCE) wrote of the effectiveness
of psychological warfare against enemy populations. Roman emperors such as Tiberius (reigned
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14–37 CE) and Caligula (reigned 37–41 CE) used banishment, expropriation of property, and

execution as means to discourage opposition to their rule. Much of the world has become
preoccupied with terrorism since September 11, 2001, but the terror dragon has in fact been
marauding the planet for many centuries. Let us look at some of the more prominent episodes of
terrorism over the past three millennia.

The most commonly cited example of early terror, however, is the activity of the Jewish Zealots,
often known as the Sicarii (Hebrew: “Daggers”), who engaged in frequent violent attacks on
fellow Hebrews suspected of collusion with the Roman authorities. Likewise, the use of terror
was openly advocated by Robespierre during the French Revolution, and the Spanish
Inquisition used arbitrary arrest, torture, and execution to punish what it viewed as religious
heresy. After the American Civil War (1861–65), defiant Southerners formed the Ku Klux
Klan to intimidate supporters of Reconstruction (1865–77) and the newly freed former slaves. In
the latter half of the 19th century, terror was adopted in western Europe, Russia, and the United
States by adherents of anarchism, who believed that the best way to effect revolutionary political
and social change was to assassinate persons in positions of power. From 1865 to 1905 a number
of kings, presidents, prime ministers, and other government officials were killed by anarchists’
guns or bombs.

The 20th century witnessed great changes in the use and practice of terror. It became the
hallmark of a number of political movements stretching from the extreme right to the extreme
left of the political spectrum. Technological advances, such as automatic weapons and compact,
electrically detonated explosives, gave terrorists a new mobility and lethality, and the growth
of air travel provided new methods and opportunities. Terrorism was virtually an official policy
in totalitarian states such as those of Nazi Germany under Adolf Hitler and the Soviet Union
under Stalin. In these states arrest, imprisonment, torture, and execution were carried out without
legal guidance or restraints to create a climate of fear and to encourage adherence to the
national ideology and the declared economic, social, and political goals of the state.

Terror has been used by one or both sides in anticolonial conflicts (e.g., those
between Ireland and the United Kingdom, between Algeria and France, and
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between Vietnam and France and the United States), in disputes between different national

groups over possession of a contested homeland (e.g., that between Palestinians and Israelis), in
conflicts between different religious denominations (e.g., that between Roman
Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland), and in internal conflicts between revolutionary
forces and established governments (e.g., those within the successor states of the former
Yugoslavia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Peru). In the late 20th and
early 21st centuries some of the most extreme and destructive organizations that engaged in
terrorism possessed a fundamentalist religious ideology (e.g., Hamas and al-Qaeda). Some
groups, including the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam and Hamas, adopted the tactic of suicide
bombing, in which perpetrators would attempt to destroy an important economic, military,
political, or symbolic target by detonating a bomb on their person. In the latter half of the 20th
century the most prominent groups using terrorist tactics were the Red Army Faction,
the Japanese Red Army, the Red Brigades, the Puerto Rican FALN, Fatah and other groups
related to the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), the Shining Path, and the Liberation
Tigers. The most prominent groups in the early 21st century were al-Qaeda,
the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan, and ISIL.

In the late 20th century the United States suffered several acts of terrorist violence by Puerto
Rican nationalists (such as the FALN), antiabortion groups, and foreign-based organizations. The
1990s witnessed some of the deadliest attacks on American soil, including the bombing of
the World Trade Center in New York City in 1993 and the Oklahoma City bombing two years
later, which killed 168 people. In addition, there were several major terrorist attacks on U.S.
government targets overseas, including military bases in Saudi Arabia (1996) and the U.S.
embassies in Kenya and Tanzania (1998). In 2000 an explosion triggered by suicide bombers
caused the deaths of 17 sailors aboard a U.S. naval ship, the USS Cole, in the Yemeni port of
Aden.

The deadliest terrorist strikes to date were the September 11 attacks (2001), in which suicide

terrorists associated with al-Qaeda hijacked four commercial airplanes, crashing two of them into
the twin towers of the World Trade Center complex in New York City and the third into
the Pentagon building near Washington, D.C.; the fourth plane crashed near Pittsburgh,
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Pennsylvania. The crashes destroyed much of the World Trade Center complex and a large
portion of one side of the Pentagon and killed more than 3,000 people.
Terrorism appears to be an enduring feature of political life. Even prior to the September 11
attacks, there was widespread concern that terrorists might escalate their destructive power to
vastly greater proportions by using weapons of mass destruction—including nuclear, biological,
or chemical weapons—as did the Japanese doomsday cult AUM Shinrikyo, which released nerve
gas into a Tokyo subway in 1995. These fears were intensified after September 11, when a
number of letters contaminated with anthrax were delivered to political leaders and journalists in
the United States, leading to several deaths. U.S. Pres. George W. Bush made a broad “war
against terrorism” the centrepiece of U.S. foreign policy at the beginning of the 21st century.

Types of Terrorism

Various attempts have been made to distinguish among types of terrorist activities. It is vital to
bear in mind, however, that there are many kinds of terrorist movements, and no single theory
can cover them all. Not only are the aims, members, beliefs, and resources of groups engaged in
terrorism extremely diverse, but so are the political contexts of their campaigns. One popular
typology identifies three broad classes of terrorism: revolutionary, subrevolutionary, and
establishment. Although this typology has been criticized as inexhaustive, it provides a useful
framework for understanding and evaluating terrorist activities.

Revolutionary terrorism is arguably the most common form. Practitioners of this type of
terrorism seek the complete abolition of a political system and its replacement with new
structures. Modern instances of such activity include campaigns by the Italian Red Brigades, the
German Red Army Faction (Baader-Meinhof Gang), the Basque separatist group ETA, the
Peruvian Shining Path (Sendero Luminoso), and ISIL (the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant;
also known as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria [ISIS]). Subrevolutionary terrorism is rather
less common. It is used not to overthrow an existing regime but to modify the existing
sociopolitical structure. Since this modification is often accomplished through the threat of
deposing the existing regime, subrevolutionary groups are somewhat more difficult to identify.
An example can be seen in the ANC and its campaign to end apartheid in South Africa.
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Establishment terrorism, often called state or state-sponsored terrorism, is employed by

governments—or more often by factions within governments—against that government’s
citizens, against factions within the government, or against foreign governments or groups. This
type of terrorism is very common but difficult to identify, mainly because the state’s support is
always clandestine. The Soviet Union and its allies allegedly engaged in widespread support of
international terrorism during the Cold War; in the 1980s the United States supported rebel
groups in Africa that allegedly engaged in acts of terrorism, such as UNITA (the National Union
for the Total Independence of Angola); and various Muslim countries (e.g., Iran and Syria)
purportedly provided logistical and financial aid to Islamic revolutionary groups engaged in
campaigns against Israel, the United States, and some Muslim countries in the late 20th and early
21st centuries.

The military dictatorships in Brazil (1964–85), Chile (1973–90) and Argentina (1976–83)

committed acts of state terrorism against their own populations. The violent police states
of Joseph Stalin in the Soviet Union and Saddam Hussein in Iraq are examples of countries in
which one organ of the government—often either the executive branch or the intelligence
establishment—engaged in widespread terror against not only the population but also other
organs of the government, including the military. The persistent element of all forms of
establishment terrorism, unlike that of nonstate terrorism, is that of secrecy. States invariably
seek to disavow their active complicity in such acts, both to evade international censure and to
avoid political and military retribution by those they target.