Following the recent violence in the Middle East, I have for a little while now been fumbling about what is really terrorism and what is assumingly legitimate resistance against a ruling force? I don’t bother much with what happend 60 years ago, but the background for asking is that my homeland was occupied by Germany between 1940-45. Back in those days some people, including some in my family, actively opposed the Germans using various methods, including violence.
The methods they used were:
Assassination with guns (often in the streets)
Car bombs and bombs placed inside administrative buildings
Blowing up infrastructure (offices, railways, factories, police stations, etc.)
The people they killed were:
German soldiers and military personnel
German civilians working in administrative positions for the German government
Local collaborators (civilians)
When are actions such as these terrorism and when are they part of legitimate resistance?
I’m not especially interested in referencing this question to the ongoing Israel-Palestine conflict (I don’t want to see posts renaming the 6 Days War to the 7 Days War, and so on), but I think examples from conflicts around the world would bring the debate forward.
I would also like to put down the following two premises for the debate:
The basis for this debate should be our current international law regulating warfare and occupations, though arguments maintaining that international law is not good enough is OK.
The good versus evil argument is void (akin, they are bad so we can do whatever we want, or: the end justify the means)
Depends on who was targeted but probably not terrorism.
** Car bombs and bombs placed inside administrative buildings*
Comes close. Depends on if the buildings were military or not.
** Blowing up infrastructure (offices, railways, factories, police stations, etc.)*
Again depends on their military value. And the purpose. If it was to destroy military capacity it was a war effort; if it was to evoke fear in the Germans and thus cause a policy change, then it was terrorism.
*The people they killed were:
German soldiers and military personnel
German civilians working in administrative positions for the German government
Local collaborators (civilians)*
The first is not terrorism, the second I would say was. The last seems less terrorism then an “extrajudicial execution.”
When are actions such as these terrorism and when are they part of legitimate resistance?
The definitions are not per se mutually exclusive, that is, a cause can be legitimate and the means be abhorrant. Is there ever a time that an end justifies the means? Is terrorism ever justifiable as a means? An interesting question.
Just as a matter of political expedience, I suspect that in a few months time the resistance forces in Iraq will be labelled terrorists. The resultant definition creep may muddy up the language, but it’ll play very well into justifying Iraq as part of the “war on terror.”
That is indeed an excellent question, Alien. Clearly, the Irish Republican Army never considered themselves terrorists, nor the Basque seperatists. Its pretty much the judgement of history, and that judgement is rendered by who writes history. After WWII was over, for instance, the astonishing fact emerged that over 90% of the French population was actively involved with the Resistance, including every single politician in the country! Its a wonder the Germans managed to hold on as long as they did, given those circumstances.
In my mind, it would have to be choice of targets: any group that held themselves strictly to military and/or collaborationist police can justifiably call themselves “resistance” or “guerillas”. Hamas is terrorist, no question. But the Isrealis are fudging the line with thier callous disregard for innocent bystanders.
I think you need to make a distinction that there was a declared state of war in WWII. Maybe I’m making distinctions where none should exist but I can’t shake the feeling that there is something different between some country outright attacking and occupying your country and a people who have lived somewhere for ages but deem they deserve their own government (or other special treatment).
Certainly limiting your attacks to the miltary and collaborators makes it far easier to say your cause is military in nature and not simple terrorism.
A rather clear distinction between WWII resistance movements is that for the most part they attacked a foreign occupying military and the apparatus of a foreign occupying power. Rarely did you hear of French resistance attacking civilian targets for the sheer sake of killing a lot of people, or sneaking into Germany to kill German civilians. For one thing, it wouldn’t have worked anyway, since killing civilians was what Nazism was all about.
The exact location of the line between terrorism and resistance may be hard to place, but I think any reasonable examination would place WWII resistors on the resistance side of the line. Their efforts were clearly directed towards damaging the military and occupational force of a hostile empire.
The same cannot be said of, say, al-Qaida. The destruction of the WTC was clearly meant for the express purpose of killing as many civilians as possible. Were al-Qaida to expend their efforts on attacking Saudi government targets or even U.S. armed forces targets, they would have legitimate claims to being a resistance movement. But they don’t.
The IRA lies somewhere in between. They clearly expended much effort on attacking the apparatus of British government. However, they DID kill a great many civilians on purpose, and in the case of Northern Ireland, the UK was not a foreign invading power; Northern Ireland had, after all, voted in a free election to be part of the UK, and had a democratic voice in the governance of that state.
“Terrorism” like “racism” is just a label we put on things we con’t like but labels do not help clarify things at all and often there is no clear-cut line. This is like trying to set a dividing line for what is racism. It confuses the issue more than clarifies it. It is better to grade things in terms of where they fall in the scale of right or wrong.
No question that killing foreigners who are occupying your homeland is not wrong.
No question that killing foreigners who are in their own homeland minding their own business is very wrong weather done by “terrorist” means or by conventional means.
Sailor, I (more often than not) find myself in agreement with your political views, but you do realize that the above statement essentially gives carte blanche to any attacks on US or UK forces in Iraq, right?
I think it’s legitimate, Antonius, to state that Iraqi resisters who attack U.S. and British forces in Iraq are not terrorists. Iraq is an occupied country; if Iraqis organize themselves and conduct military attacks on the occupiers, that’s not terrorism by any commonly accepted standard. We may not like it - we may even think it’s wrong or a moral level, and those who choose to engage in it may violate some of the technical law of war. But it’s not TERRORISM.
To use another example, a German infantry officer leading his men in ordinary combat against American troops in 1944 France was fighting for the wrong side in support of an evil cause, but he was certainly not a terrorist. If that officer followed the laws of war his actions would, in fact, be generally regarded as honorable. As evil as the Nazi regime was, many of its ordinary soldiers fought with great courage and honor, and are regarded as such - hell, Erwin Rommel is still regarded as something of a hero. I would argue that Iraqi soldiers during the war, and its resisters today, can logically be extended the same consideration.
Kinthalis stole my response. I’d also like to add to his/her very succinct explanation. Back in the 60’s peace movement organizers were considered terrorists by the federal government. Ditto for civil rights workers. Nowadays “terrorist” is just a buzz word used to evoke a particular reaction.
AmericanMaid: I tend to disagree. In spite of the political spin doctoring various political administrations (and one in particular) may put on any group’s actions, there are by the Law of Land Warfare, distinct differences between legitimate resistance fighters and terrorists.
As of now, the Iraqi holdouts are pretty much in the category of legitimate resistance fighters, however much we may feel them to be wrong (hell, they are!). But to date, by limiting their attacks to U.S. and Coalition armed forces personnel, they have remained on the respectable side of the line.
That may change depending upon their future actions. If Hamas had a single brain cell between them, they would limit their attacks to Israeli military and civillian government personnel, and avoid Israeli civillian casualties at all costs. It would rob Israel of their (arguably) moral position of “just defending ourselves from anti-semitic, anti-Zionist Islamic/Palestinian fundamentalists.”
Labelling political opposition activists as “terrorists” or “criminals” was old during the American Revolution; it’s a propoganda tactic, and may or may not have anything at all to do with how such opposition conducts itself and its opposition operations
IOW: look at their actions, and heed the label at your own risk.
Quite so, pretty much exactly like before the US declared victory and officially began the occupation. Of course, I wouldn’t describe that as “carte blance.” Unless they follow the rules of the Geneva Convention, any captured guerillas will not be entitled to POW status and can be tried, imprisoned, and possibly even executed for their attacks. Moreover, whether or not they are following the GC (which is quite unlikely, I would guess), such guerillas may be attacked and killed in either offensive or defensive operations.
Just because they’re not terrorists (despite Bush’s idiotic and counter-productive insistence to the contrary) does not mean that they have some sort of immunity for attacks on enemy soldiers.
What is the target of the attack? The more the attackers focus on the enemy’s military and immediate political support structure, the stronger the argument that they’re not terrorists. Note that I’ve used the term “immediate” political support, by which I would suggest the institutions of government.
The second is the means. Do the attackers choose a method of attack that is focussed on the target, likely to harm only the intended target, or do they choose a method of attack that inevitably will cause extensive damage to non-targets? Note that this doesn’t mean that if a single civilian gets killed, the attackers are automatically terrorists; if we accept “collateral damage” for nation-states making war, then something of the same sort has to be recognized for freedom fighters/resistance movements. But if the group takes measures to eliminate or reduce the chances of “collateral damage”, then that suggests they are not terrorists.
By this approach, the WTO and the Pentagon attacks were both terrorist. So are suicide bombers on public transit, or car bombs in the centre of a city. But other attacks that have occurred in the recent past would not be. For example, my personal opinion is that the attack on the USS Cole was not a terrorist attack: it was a military target, and the attack was carried out in a way that the only people jeopardised were the crew (military personnel) and the attackers themselves. Similarly, the IRA mortar attack on 10 Downing Street several years ago would not meet my definition of a terrorist attack, since it was a focussed attack on the highest echelon of what the attackers considered an occupying power.
Antonius, I’m not quite sure I follow your point here. Are you suggesting that an attack on the US/UK forces is by definition a terrorist attack? They are an occupying force. For an Iraqi who opposes the invasion, why would US or UK military forces not be a legitimate target?
The WTC was an attack against a civilian target but the Pentagon was, clearly, a military target. Also note, for example, that the USA bombed a civilian neighborhood in Bagdag, killing civilians, an an attempt to get Saddam Hussein (which seemed to fail).
The Pentagon’s status as a “military” target is irrelevant in this case. It was a purely private organization that attacked, without there being any state of war nor ongoing threat against the state of Afghanistan at the time.
Isn’t it possible that a group could be both a resistance movement and a terrorist group? To use the example given by the OP, the groups that sprung up in occupied Europe in WWII were clearly resistance groups…their goal was to harass the occupying German forces and, in a best case scenario, get them to withdraw.
However, these resistance movements sometimes used terrorism to accomplish these goals. By killing people who were collaborating with the Germans, for example, their goal was to frighten those who were tempted to collaborate; to let them know that, if they did, they put their lives in danger. This is pretty clearly terrorism; the use of fear or terror to convice the society to change their actions.
So it seems to me that we’re setting up a false dichotomy here. It’s possible for a group to be both.
So you are saying the same act is qualified differently depending on who does it? If done by a “private organization” it is terrorism but if done by a country then it is not? Then how come the US accused Iraq of terrorism?
I disagree. An act is what it is regardless of who does it. Al Qaeda waged war on the USA and the Pentagon and the Cole would be legitimate targets. I do not consider that terrorism. WTC yes. Those, No.