Defining Terrorism

Terrorism is serious issue which holds different meaning to different people depending on their political beliefs and religious associations. What makes it really contentious in nature is the fact that not everyone sees terrorists as brutal assassins- for some they are national or religious heroes and freedom fighters. While to reach a definition of terrorism is not easy, some attempts have been made to define the term. Title 22 of the United States Code defines terrorism as "premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by sub-national groups or clandestine agents" (quoted in U.S. Department of State 1999). Terrorism Act 2000 of Britain views terrorism as "the use or threat . . . designed to influence the government or to intimidate the public or a section of the public and . . . made for the purpose of advancing a political, religious or ideological cause" (United Kingdom 2000). According to Walzer, terrorism is "the deliberate killing of innocent people, at random, in order to spread fear through a whole population and force the hand of its political leaders" (2002, 5). Stohl on the other hand maintains that terrorism is "the purposeful act or threat of the act of violence to create fear and/or compliant behavior in a victim and/or audience of the act or threat." He goes to add that, "terrorism is not simply violence. It includes violent acts intended to influence a wider audience, to send a message" (Stohl 1988, 3-5). These are some of the popular definitions of terrorism which help us understand that terrorism is a pre-meditated act of violence that is used as vehicle to drive an important message home.

Terrorists are not ordinary criminals for in most cases, they have a group or organization supporting them. Apart from this, while criminals would act alone normally for no specific cause, terrorists would always have some message accompanying their violent activities. It would be senseless to believe that terrorists are mentally deranged. There is no accredited research indicating that terrorism is caused by mental disturbance. Professor McCauley in his explanation of terrorist's mindset argues that research indicates that "psychopathology and personality disorder no more likely among terrorists than among non-terrorists from the same background." While it is disturbing to learn this, it is true that terrorism becomes a major problem because there is no fixed psychopathology description of a terrorist. McCauley adds: "terrorism would be a trivial problem if only those with some kind of psychopathology could be terrorists. Rather we have to face the fact that normal people can be terrorists, that we ourselves are capable of terrorist acts under some circumstances." The one thing that research agrees upon is that most terrorists have some ideological or systemic value that they are aggressively adhere to. It is also established that terrorist psyche development is a gradual process- no one would want to go out one day and kill a hindered thousand people for a cause. There is training and brainwashing involved which is supported by terrorist's adherence to a certain ideology. This obsession is further nurtured by terrorist organizations. Terrorists are also believed to have low self-esteem that drives them to take actions that would attract attention. Championing a cause gives them sense of self-worth and this leads to obsession with a group or organization that is engaged in violent activities. Research shows that terrorists "tend to place unrealistically high demands on themselves and, when confronted with failure, [tend] to raise rather than lower their aspirations" (Long, 1990) Inactivity and slow paced life is not acceptable to terrorists and they generally crave excitement which turns them into "stimulus hunters who are attracted to situations involving stress and who quickly become bored with inactivity" (Long, 1990) We must however understand that terrorist psyche is a combination of complex factors and according to Khachig Tololyan, terrorists' "behavior cannot be understood by the crude - or even by the careful - application of pseudo-scientific laws of general behavior" (Rapoport, 2001). He feels that "we need to examine the specific meditating factors that lead some societies under pressure, among many, to produce the kinds of violent accts that we call terrorism" (Rapoport, 2001).