The Ethics and Efficacy of Political Terrorism Terrorism has become a routine part of our era. But the events of September 11 - the horrific terrorist assaults in New York and Washington - and the US war on Afghanistan in its aftermath, galvanized global public attention to such an extent that as social scientists we are compelled to reexamine the phenomenon of terrorism as such, to disembed it from the highly charged atmosphere surrounding the events of September 11. As one step in this direction, a clearer understanding of the ethics and efficacy of terrorism would be an important contribution to the public debate and to social science itself.(1) The complexities and difficulties of understanding a phenomenon as multifaceted as terrorism, let alone of finding an adequate definition of it, are so great that without clear analytical boundaries one would risk sinking into a complete and contradictory morass. As in the case of many other complex "cluster" concepts, it is better to delimit the terrain of one's investigation so as to maintain clarity in a restricted field, rather than risk confusion and uncertainty in a larger domain of inquiry.(2) My approach is not concerned primarily with an etymological emphasis on the word "terror," with its connection to a psychological state of mind in the victim. Such is the main foundation for many provisional definitions of terrorism (I shall return to this below). I concentrate, rather, on a restricted notion of terrorist acts, and on the relationship between the impact of terrorism and its agent; namely, violence and its perpetrator. Three additional elements of the analysis further limit my focus. First, with respect to terrorist acts, I restrict myself to political terrorism, and exclude criminal terrorist behavior or what some might feel are expressions of "economic" terrorism. Second, within the sphere of political terrorist acts, I focus only on the "international" domain. (What I mean by the distinction between domestic and international terrorism will be made clear in the course of the exposition.).(3) And third, with respect to perpetrators, I confine myself primarily to non-state actors. It is important, however, to include by way of comparison an examination of terrorist regimes, given the importance of this concept to many definitions of terrorism (see below), and in order to distinguish it from my main object of analysis. Terrorism perpetrated by states as a matter of normalized rule, is of an institutionalized type quite distinct from the non-institutionalized but necessarily and openly violent form characteristic of individual acts of terrorism. Any discussion of terrorist regimes must include an etymological focus on the word terror itself, precisely in order to draw attention to terrorism as something that causes and sustains psychological terror. This leads to a broader definition of terrorism than one used to assess terrorist acts. One problem with too broad a definition of terrorist regimes, however, is that if "terror" itself is the main criterion, then one is unlikely to draw sufficient distinctions between democratic and undemocratic regimes or even between different kinds of authoritarian regimes. All regimes invoke terror in one way or another. One could easily fall into the unhelpful ideological posture of labeling all regimes, states, or countries "terrorist."(4) Indeed, the sustainability, diversity of forms, and sheer scale of state terrorist acts and campaigns is qualitatively greater and more dangerous than that of sub-state actors. Culpable states include Pakistan (in Kashmir and Afghanistan), India (in Kashmir and the Northeast), Russia (in Chechnya), China (in Tibet), Israel (in Palestine), Indonesia (in East Timor), and a host of others, with the US itself the worst offender.(5) The American record here is simply awesome to contemplate, both in numbers and scale. It includes the nuclear bombing of civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the use of chemical weapons in Vietnam, where the US killed over two million civilians, and the use of sanctions since the Gulf War which have led to the deaths of 1.2 million Iraqis, of whom approximately 500,000 were children.(6) Given the prevalence of state-executed terror, I believe it is necessary to make a distinction between terrorist regimes and democratic ones. The latter, by this reckoning, are not terrorist governments or states, but they can and do carry out terrorist acts and campaigns internationally and at times domestically. Terrorism and Ethics At first glance, to talk of the ethics of a terrorist act might seem peculiar. Is not terrorism by its very nature ethically wrong? It seems to me that only if a terrorist act can be defined or understood in an evaluatively neutral way can there be a serious discussion of the ethics pertaining to it. There is much to be said, in fact, for just such a morally neutral definition of the terrorist act. The problems of a non-neutral definition are considerable. For example, the old saw about one person's terrorist being another person's freedom fighter is not without significant merit. How would we get out of this relativist trap? Did Bhagat Singh engage in a terrorist act or did he not?(7) Since so many Indians are justifiably proud of Bhagat Singh, seeing him as a heroic revolutionary and martyr, the temptation would be strong for them to deny that he was a terrorist or that he engaged in what could legitimately be described as a terrorist act. However, this is a temptation that should, in my view, be resisted. It makes more sense to recognize and clearly identify certain behavior, including that of Bhagat Singh, as terrorist and yet be prepared to defend it even on moral grounds. To do this is precisely to enter the terrain of discourse about the ethics of terrorism or of the terrorist act. Similarly, why should I or anyone else necessarily regard the assassination of President John F. Kennedy with moral shock or horror rather than with justified indifference or even a certain relief, if not approval? What if one believes, by no means unreasonably, that all US American presidents since the Second World War have behaved like political criminals in their foreign policy and bear principal responsibility for events which in some cases (such as Vietnam) even reach the scale of being considered attempts at genocide? It does not, of course, follow that one is justified in condoning or applauding the assassination of Kennedy or the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan. The conditions under which condoning or applauding such acts as morally legitimate are strict and depend on whether the condoner does or does not belong to a community which is a direct victim of immoral US American policy. Final moral judgment can also be influenced by the presence or existence in that society of other avenues for seeking justice. But the point is that there is a serious issue regarding the ethics of terrorism that is deserving of more thoughtful discussion. Is it possible to have an evaluatively negative definition of terrorism and yet arrive at a judgment that certain terrorist acts could be judged morally defensible? If so, exceptions might apply to certain acts of hostage-taking where there are no eventual casualties or injuries, or of assassinations, provided the political consequences were extremely positive. Two examples that come to mind are the Officers Plot of 1944 to kill Hitler, and the Sandinista capture of the Somoza-dominated National Assembly in Nicaragua, when legislators were held hostage in 1978. The political consequences of the latter action were very positive indeed: no one was hurt, and the act marked the moment when the Sandinistas moved from being a guerrilla organization with some support to becoming a much more powerful force channeling mass support against the Somoza regime, which subsequently collapsed within a year. If it is possible to have an evaluatively negative definition and yet allow for a small number of exceptions, then such an approach would seem far superior to the effort to have an objectively neutral definition. This is because the vast majority of acts deemed terrorist are morally unjustifiable and our definition could be geared to accommodating this majority situation rather than having to gear it to accommodating the small minority of exceptional cases. However, I have yet to be convinced that this intellectual approach is consistent and appropriate. I prefer to go along with the commitment to an ethically neutral working definition of the terrorist act. Defining the Terrorist Act Perhaps the best way to begin the search for a proper definition of the terrorist act is to first be clear about how not to go about defining it. I started off by taking down all the dictionaries I had on my home shelf and looking at their entries for "terrorism".(8) This was itself quite revealing. The two early (1950s) US American dictionaries I had (Webster's and Funk & Wagnall's) were clearly reflective of the dominant Cold War perspectives then prevailing, and were written before the worldwide eruption of combat group terrorist events from the sixties onwards. Here, terrorism was defined specifically with regimes in mind, more specifically with the "totalitarian" Soviet, Communist, or East bloc regimes in mind, in implicit contrast to the democratic regimes of the US and the West. Terrorism was defined here as a negative form of governance or system of rule. My other dictionaries (one belonging to the 1970s and the rest to the 1990s), British rather than US American, did not have definitions of terrorism that linked it to any particular system of rule. Freer from Cold War reflexes, the definitions given here are broader in character, theoretically speaking, and capable of being applied to any part of the world. But these definitions are, in fact, too broad. Since any sensible definition of the terrorist act must link it to a notion of violence, defining the latter in an appropriate way also becomes necessary. If terrorism is to be linked to violence, it is important for our purposes not to use a notion of violence that is too broad. This can be appropriate in certain contexts where we may wish to talk of the violence of poverty, racism or sexism, etc., i.e. of injustice as itself a form of violence. But such a broad understanding is hardly helpful to the present context where we wish to investigate the efficacy and ethics of terrorist acts. For our purposes a stricter definition of violence has to be used, namely the exercise of force such as to physically harm, injure, pain or kill humans. Such a definition excludes damage to property and is independent of the ends or intentions or subjective perceptions of the agents of such violence. It is therefore an objective definition appropriate to the search for an ethically neutral and objective definition of terrorism itself. Thus, our earlier perusal of various dictionaries shows four approaches to a working definition, all of which should be rejected. Terrorism is understood as having one or a number of the following characteristics: (a) organized intimidation; (b) violence against civilians or non-combatants; (c) indiscriminate use of violence; (d) illegitimate use of violence. Each of these understandings carries grave problems. Intimidation is too loose and broad a concept. There are many forms of organized intimidation including systems or structures of psychological intimidation at various degrees and levels. Would these qualify as a form of terrorism? Terrorism need not only have civilians and non-combatants as targets. Terrorist acts can also be inflicted on combatants as well. The attack on General Vaidya in Pune in Western India was still a terrorist act.(9) Similarly, when indefensible violence or extreme disproportion in violence is used against opposing combatants, such as the use of nuclear or chemical or biological warfare, this too can count as terrorism. One does not have to go so far as to use weapons of mass destruction. Simply using tanks or bombers to destroy a militant hideout where the defenders are known to only have rifles can also count as an indefensible terrorist act. Furthermore, certain civilians such as presidents or prime ministers, etc. given their own major responsibilities for conducting warfare can be seen with justice by the opposing side as legitimate targets for terrorist efforts at assassination. As for terrorism being the indiscriminate use of violence, this fails to account for those terrorist acts that involve very specific, indeed highly discriminate use of violence, selective assassinations being the most obvious example. Finally, assigning the label of terrorism only to those acts deemed illegitimate begs all questions about the legitimacy of the "officially" legitimate wielders of violence, i.e. states.(10) Such an approach is far too narrow, for it definitionally excludes even the possibility of state terrorism. Given the prevalence of not just state-sponsored but state-organized and state-executed terrorism, we must be wary of definitions in which such behavior is made unrecognizable as terrorism, and therefore unrecognized and unpunished.(11) An appropriate and serviceable definition of the terrorism of a political act must possess the following properties: a) it should be evaluatively neutral; b) it should not be too broad or too narrow; c) it should be objective. In regard to the last named property, the judgment of whether an act is terrorist or not should be made independently of, and without reference to, the motives or self-perceptions of the perpetrators of that act. For example, the agents of state terrorism rarely see themselves as engaged in terrorist acts. Even the more open minded and morally sensitive of state officials will concede only that the state (especially if it is a liberal democratic state) is sometimes guilty of unfortunate and condemnable "excesses" or human rights "abuses," but never of terrorism. Such a view would effectively exculpate the liberal democratic state of the US from the charge of nuclear terrorism in dropping bombs on the overwhelmingly civilian populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki! The untenability of such an exculpation should be obvious. Once we arrive at a definition of terrorism that is balanced, neutral and objective, we can then more intelligently discuss its efficacy and ethics. I propose the following as a working definition of the political terrorist act: It is the calculated or pre-meditated use or threat of use of violence against an individual, group or larger collectivity in such a manner that the target is rendered physically defenseless against that attack or against the effects of that violence. What makes this a form of political terrorism as distinguished from say, criminal terrorism (murder), is that the act is harnessed to some political intent or purpose and carries a political meaning. The defenselessness can be the result of a) surprise outside of a battle- or war-zone; b) the nature of the target chosen, e.g., its civilian status; c) the nature of the weapons used; or d) enormous disproportion in the violence exercised between the two sides even within a battle- or war-zone, i.e., a gross violation of the principle of minimal or reasonable force. The agents of the terrorist act can be individuals, combat groups, or larger entities like the apparatus(es) of states. Domestic and International Political Terrorism Domestic political terrorism is easy to recognize. It is carried out by domestic agents for domestic purposes. What about international political terrorism? Again, let us start off by first pointing out what is not meant by this. Simply the fact of outside support for domestic agents does not make an act one of international political terrorism. If the February 1993 bomb blasts in Bombay, for example, was the handiwork of an outside agency, say the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) of Pakistan, then this would be an example of international terrorism.(12) But if there was only ISI help for domestic agents perpetrating the act for domestic-related purposes e.g., supposed retaliation for the police-abetted communal riots in Bombay in the aftermath of December 6, then this would not be a form of international terrorism. After all, one state can accept assistance from another and use it to carry out terrorist acts against its domestic population. One need only think here of American support for the Somoza or Pinochet regimes in Latin America, the Shah of Iran, or Mobutu in Zaire. But those specific acts of brutality were nevertheless forms of domestic terrorism. Nor do we mean by international political terrorism the mere fact that an act, say, the assassination of Kennedy, has international repercussions. Nor do we mean by international terrorism the phenomenon of the increasing international spread of terrorism. It is, rather, the existence of any of the following properties that defines an act of international political terrorism. 1) It is carried out by "outside" actors owing allegiance to, or residing in, another country. 2) The cause to which the act is related is extra-national, i.e. the cause is to reorder the existing international system of states, as, for example, in a war of national liberation. 3) The act is primarily directed against an external power or involves direct defiance of an external power or powers. This last category would apply to the US's bombing of Kaddafy's palace in Libya (killing his daughter) for his alleged (allegations subsequently shown to be false) role in an airplane hijacking and bombing during Reagan's first term as president. It would also apply to the famous 1979 US hostage crisis in post-Shah Iran when revolutionary guards declaring allegiance to Ayatollah Khomeini captured the US Embassy and held its employees hostage; or the more recent hostage crisis involving the Japanese Embassy in Peru. While the absence of acknowledged responsibility for the Sept. 11 attacks could suggest ambiguity about its 'status', it is difficult to see how this could have been motivated by anything other than an attempt to 'punish' the US for its foreign policy behavior. The targets chosen symbolized US American military, political and economic might. What evidence there is about those who boarded and hijacked the planes points to people of Saudi and Egyptian origin few of whom were US citizens. The properties outlined in points one and three given above would seem to apply to the Sept. 11 attacks. While not all forms of international political terrorism are linked to perceived (by one side) "wars of liberation," this is the most usual or frequent connection. That is to say, international political terrorist acts are quite often connected to wars declared or undeclared, wars small or large, "wars of liberation" on one side and "counter-insurgency wars" on the other.(13) This connection provides important grounds for helping us to judge both the efficacy and the ethics of the international political terrorist act. The Effectiveness of International Political Terrorism To judge the effectiveness of terrorism generally is to ask and answer the question of how successful it is in helping to realize the cause or overall political goals to which that terrorist act is dedicated or harnessed. This applies as much to evaluating an act of an agent like an insurgency combat group as it does to an act of the state committed to counter-insurgency operations. But important differences between state terrorism and combat group terrorism must be grasped.(14) International terrorism today is usually a form of warfare. Discussion of its efficacy must itself be located in a discussion of the nature of modern warfare, or more precisely, how it differs from war in the past. Through the decades of the twentieth century there has been an inescapable trend towards the greater "democratization of war." It is really in the twentieth century that mass movements, popular guerilla wars and political and social revolutions emerge on a scale, depth and frequency never seen before. Popular mass struggle whether it is violent or non-violent becomes a crucial factor in shaping the politics of the twentieth century. It is reflected in de-colonization, the rise and fall of Communist regimes, the extraordinary defeats of militarily far more powerful opponents by those much weaker, e.g. the US in Vietnam (1963-75) and the former USSR in Afghanistan (1979-89). What is relevant for our purposes about this "democratization" is not so much the greater extent to which there has been citizen mobilization in the larger-scale wars of the twentieth century when compared to those of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Rather, what is more relevant is that the popularity or popular support for a war has become much more important. Popular perceptions about the role and aim of a war, its continuation, and the means to be used, all have much greater impact on the conduct of the war and even on its political effects and outcome than was the case in the past. So one important criterion for judging the effectiveness of a terrorist act related to a larger war is whether or not it increases popular legitimacy or support for the war on the side of the perpetrators of the act or acts in question. Here the differences between state terrorism and the combat group terrorism of its opponents become important. State terrorism has no flexibility. It has one primary aim: to intimidate the opposition; to show, through promoting a fear of consequences of fighting such a war, the futility of the cause to which its opponents are attached. State terrorism against an enemy force runs the risk of alienating the state's own popular base, but the state may be prepared to pay this price if it feels it has succeeded in getting its message of futility across. State terrorism is also relatively inflexible in that it must be directed primarily at the enemy population or armed rebels. The state must protect itself from accusations of inhumanity or lack of respect for the rights of its population. The more democratic the state in question is, the more worried it is likely to be about such accusations. It usually makes every effort to cover up such acts from public scrutiny (domestic or foreign), to deny the existence of such acts, to minimize the degree to which human rights have been violated if such acts become public, or to attack the patriotic credentials of those who uncover or are horrified by the revelation of such acts. Such routine reflexes have, of course, been very much in evidence in regard to the Indian state's reaction to critics of its human rights behavior in Kashmir and the Northeast. The contrast with combat group terrorism is striking. This is politically aimed not only at the enemy government or strike force but also at its home population. The primary purpose of the terrorist act here is symbolic and the last thing the combat group wants is for the act not to be known to a wide public, to remain a secret. In most cases the combat group or movement responsible for the act wants to make that responsibility publicly known. However, in some cases where the primary purpose is revenge and the perpetrators fear negative political repercussions, e.g., a weakening or loss of legitimacy even among the home population, responsibility may not be acknowledged. This might well have been the case with regard to the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi and the behavior of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) if it was responsible for the assault.(15) But as a general rule, combat group terrorism wants public awareness of its act because the act is aimed simultaneously at enhancing the legitimacy and support for its cause amidst the home population and demoralizing the enemy force and its popular support base. Revolutionary Marxists have hit the nail on the head when they say such terrorist acts are "propaganda by the deed" or "reformism with a gun". The traditional Marxist critique of terrorism is not moral but rather tactical/strategic: it is not, on balance, efficacious. Terrorism is condemned because it is seen as an individualist or small group substitution for mass activity or for efforts to generate such mass activity. It is further condemned for being based on a false premise - that the assassination or elimination of supposedly key individuals can somehow bring about a dramatic transformation of the system or of a government's basic orientation or policies.(16) The Marxist view then, makes two claims arising out of its assessment of the inefficaciousness of terrorism: a) terrorism is the politics of the weak; and b) it perpetuates this weakness. However, this view is not fully correct and needs to be substantially qualified. Terrorism is often the weapon of the strong: e.g. of the strong, counter-insurgency state. The stronger side can and does resort to terrorism although the weaker side is more likely to make terrorism a matter of strategy rather than just tactics. This does not, of course, preclude the stronger side from resorting to systematic and regularized terrorism. One obvious but nonetheless very important distinction between state terrorism and combat group terrorism is that the scale of terrorism perpetrated by the former can, and often is, much greater than that perpetrated by the latter. Although the state has more powerful means for engaging in large-scale terrorism, the issue of "availability of means" is not the primary reason why the scale of state terrorism is so much greater. The determining factor is, rather, the contrasting ends held by states vis-à-vis other, much smaller, entities. For example, for all the talk over the decades (talk which has become louder after the end of the Cold War and the break-up of the USSR) about the danger of combat group nuclear terrorism, for decades the real danger has come from state actors. The Sarin nerve gas attack by the esoteric Buddhist cult, the Aum Shinrikyo on March 20, 1995 in a Tokyo subway was really the first time a terrorist group not connected to a state used a chemical agent, potentially a weapon of mass destruction.(17) This act may be a historical marker: the point after which similar such acts have followed. But there remains a lesson to be learnt from the stubborn historical fact that as far as combat group terrorism is concerned even much more easily available capacities to cause mass destruction, such as poisoning a city's water supply, have not been exercised. This is in striking contrast to the scale of mass killings of civilians perpetrated by states, from the killing fields of Kampuchea to Hiroshima/Nagasaki to American saturation bombings and use of chemical warfare in Vietnam, or the chemical warfare in the war between Khomeini's Iran and Hussein's Iraq. For the combat group the terrorist act is a dramatized statement of political intent or commitment and/or has a very specific purpose such as release of prisoners or fulfillment of specific and limited demands. Therefore, there has to be a strong relationship of proportionality between the ends sought by that act and the means used in it. The act itself should not be of such a nature as to alienate popular home support or to rationalize or justify enemy state retaliation against its home population on a scale involving thousands, let alone tens or hundreds of thousands. This is precisely what a terrorist act involving weapons of mass destruction would invite. In short, there is inherent in the very political character of combat group terrorism a powerful factor of self-limitation regarding the means to be used. The main purpose behind the act is the symbolic impact it will have, not the material damage it will cause. Thus, it has never made sense for the combat group to even think of competing with states when it comes to upping the scale of destruction, either threatened or carried out. This brings us to the nub of the issue. It is only the pursuit of "grandiose" objectives that can justify or rationalize the possession, use or threat of use of "grandiose" means, like weapons of mass destruction, or justify large-scale killings in a single act. A struggle for national liberation to which combat group terrorism is often harnessed, is certainly a grand ultimate goal, but each particular act of terrorism has much more limited and specific objectives even as it is part of the larger pursuit of a final grand goal. It is states alone that can most convincingly claim to be pursuing such supposedly grandiose objectives as a matter of regularized actions. These can range from "defending national security," "defending the free world," "defeating world imperialism," "behaving like a world power," "shifting the balance of power in one's favour" by sending a political message to one's perceived rival(s) (almost certainly the main purpose behind the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki), to whatever other grandiose aim the state sees as its cause, role or responsibility. That so many people should nevertheless not wish to face up to the potential and actual dangers of state terrorism by preferring to see the state as capable only of "excesses," represents a deep insensitivity to universalist and state-transcending principles of human rights. But before more fully exploring the issue of ethics, we have still to dispose properly of the issue of efficacy. Here, contrary to the traditional Marxist claims about the inefficacy of combat group terrorism, such acts can and have been politically effective. (This is also true of a great deal of state terrorism.) The Marxist failure to adequately factor in the dimension represented by the democratization of warfare leads to a characteristic underestimation of the importance of the symbolic dimension, and therefore of the potentials possessed by the terrorist act. The Marxist tradition simplifies the relationship between the generation of mass consciousness in the home population and the terrorist act as an external stimulus to it. It also underestimates the potentially demoralizing or de-legitimizing impact it can have on the direct enemy agency and its relationship to its own support base. There are numerous post-World War II historical examples that confirm this. But before looking at an arbitrary selection of them, it should also be said that states have also learnt something in the course of the history of modern counter-insurgency operations worldwide. States have become more intransigent when faced with terrorist demands. This seems particularly so in hostage scenarios where an attritional strategy of "waiting it out" is often seen as providing the best option available to the side (the state) opposing the hostage capture and authorized to negotiate with the captors. In short, most states have much greater resources to deal even with strongly implanted and well-armed liberation movements, and though unable to inflict decisive defeats in the short or medium term, are more confident of success in the longer term through the pursuit of sustained attritional warfare. From the late seventies onwards, states began to engage in, and learn from, prolonged counter-insurgency operations. Usually, though not always, the passage of time and ensuing war weariness has a stronger negative effect on the more weakly armed side even when it enjoys deep and wide political support from its home population. This is true of the Naga struggle for independence in India's Northeast. It is a factor in the LTTE struggle in Sri Lanka for Tamil Eelam. This general trend has also had its impact in diminishing the political value of the terrorist act when carried out by the combat group. This is not to say, however, that we have reached the stage where such acts are never or only rarely efficacious. Precisely because we live in an era of mass communications and in a context where popular perceptions have become more important than ever, the temptation to engage in symbolic politics or to pursue the "low cost" and politically high impact of terrorism has become stronger. Terrorism is here to stay. Four Examples of Effective Political Terrorism 1. Palestinian commando raids on various (including civilian) targets between 1967 and the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982. Before the 1967 war there was hardly a Palestinian military presence that was not controlled by neighboring Arab states. Till 1964 the Palestinian political leadership was largely subordinated to one or the other of the Arab governments. It was only after 1964 that an independent Palestinian political leadership emerged, and only after 1967 that a significant independent armed wing developed and came to prominence, primarily through a) a series of terrorist acts in Israeli territory, and b) increasing control in internecine fighting in Lebanon. At one point in the mid-seventies, Palestinian forces and Lebanese Leftists controlled over 70% of Lebanon. This was overturned only when Syria (with the approval of both the US and Israel) entered militarily into this civil war to establish its area of substantial control. But in regard to the commando raids and terrorist acts in Israeli controlled territory, in a period when Israel had established effective dominance over the other Arab states, especially after the separate peace with Egypt, this was the one way in which the political issue of Palestine was repeatedly publicized and retained on the global political agenda. 2. The Iran hostage crisis of 1979-80. The capture of the US Embassy and its employees for a period of many months had two political effects. Internally, it served to greatly unify pro-government (pro-Khomeini) forces to the detriment of his opponents, such as many Leftist groups that had in fact played a major role in the insurrection that finally toppled the Shah's regime. Externally, the prolonged symbolic defiance of US power had a major demoralizing effect on the Carter administration and was probably the single most important reason for his failure to be re-elected. 3. In Reagan's second term, despite his strong USA rhetoric, the bomb attack in Lebanon which killed 250 US marines probably played a decisive role in Washington's decision not to involve itself directly or militarily in the Lebanese quagmire. 4. The Battle of Algiers (1956-58) was essentially a series of calculated bombings and armed assaults on police, military and civilian targets by a secret and tightly organized network of activists in Algiers owing allegiance to the National Liberation Front (FLN) leading the struggle for Algerian independence from France. Though this urban network was ultimately destroyed (with the use of state terrorism) and armed activity then shifted to the countryside, the events had a major and positive political impact in mobilizing popular support among Algerians for defiance of France, and in helping to convince the French of the enduring hostility of native Algerians to anything short of full independence and freedom from French colonial rule. The Singularity of the September 11 Attacks Before returning to the ethics of terrorism, there is a marked singularity about the September 11 terrorist attacks that seems to overturn the relevance of the distinctions earlier made between combat group and state terrorism. In particular, there are the dimensions of unacknowledged responsibility, and of scale. Till September 11, 2001 one cannot think of a single terrorist act by a non-state entity that had killed more than in the low hundreds, and that very rarely. Here the scale of an act by a non-state actor/agency (regardless of whether or not it had some state support or help) was comparable to acts of states in wartime. True, there have been acts and campaigns by states that easily dwarf the death toll of September 11. But outside of wartime contexts, and in terms of instantaneousness of damage caused by acts of terror, the scale of the attacks of Sept. 11 was exceptional. Also, like the case of the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi by a human suicide bomber suspected to belong to the LTTE, here too, no one acknowledged responsibility for the attacks.(18) What conclusions should we then draw about this break from the normal pattern of terrorist acts by non-state actors? The fact of non-acknowledgement suggests not merely a concern for avoiding specific and focused retribution but a confidence that acknowledgement was not necessary because the home constituency to which the act was addressed was large and wide enough that no overt signal through acknowledgement of the deed was required. That is to say, there was already a presumption that there existed such a widespread bitterness against the US that there is already a huge and widely spread population (not congruent with any 'national' population, real or aspiring) which will in some way judge those September 11 attacks as a form of punishment for presumed American iniquities against that home constituency. The scale of the attack is apparently connected to the much grander size of the anticipated home constituency that might applaud the attacks. Thus the goal of the September 11 attacks would appear to be much wider than has ever been the case in the past. Here a blow was being struck not for some specific purpose related to some specific end, like national liberation of a specific entity from a specific oppressor through an act of pressure, but rather for a more diffuse, general and wider aim such as avenging a pan-Islamic community against a more general and sustained suffering on it imposed by the US. One can easily reject Huntingdon's clash of civilizations thesis for the false picture of the world it presents, yet still recognize that stoking pan-Islamic sentiments may well have been a crucial part of the September 11 perpetrators' motives. It is precisely the approximation in goals to state terrorist acts, i.e., the "grandiosity" of the apparent political goals behind September 11 that best explains the scale of the attacks. It also suggests that bitterness against the US, especially since the emergence of its exceptional dominance after the end of the Cold War, now runs so deep that along with a sense of much greater frustration against the awesome power of a US otherwise unrivalled, there is now a greater determination to impose a much higher scale of suffering on it. It is as if deep frustration that the US cannot be militarily weakened or even politically undermined through symbolic acts of defiance has promoted a desire and attempt to strike at its weakest point (its unguarded and unguardable civilian population and society) irrespective of how provocative this might be. In short, that sense of proportion commonly found in combat group terrorist acts-the wish not to provoke the "enemy" into attacking with far greater might-has been lessened if not lost altogether. This would also mean that whereas earlier acts by combat groups were essentially symbolic, with comparatively minor material damage caused, in the case of September 11 the dimension of planned material damage was a much more important factor in deciding the nature of the act. It is still the case that non-state terrorist actors from Ireland to Spain to those in Kashmir and Sri Lanka and elsewhere, for the overwhelming part, remain within the classical pattern and do not seek to compete with states in the scale of damage caused by the terrorist act. But if there are now even one or a few non-state agencies that do seek to break this mold, then, while it still does not alter the fact that state terrorism remains the single biggest component of the problem of global terrorism (something too easily forgotten otherwise), it would suggest that after September 11 a new threshold has been crossed that is a source of deep future worry. What do we now say about the possibility of not just states but at least a few non-state actors using weapons of mass destruction or resorting to chemical, biological and nuclear forms of attacks on enemy targets, territories and populations? Hitherto, most alarmists warning about the danger of nuclear terrorists have had combat groups, not states in mind. This attitude will be reinforced after September 11. But it is still an exaggerated alarmism that has three objective effects. 1) It helps to justify the possession of nuclear weapons by states, for example, to provide deterrence against such non-state nuclear terrorism. 2) It diverts attention away from the behavior, attitudes and thinking of state elites. The implicit assumption that such terrorists are frighteningly irresponsible when compared to those who run states or influence its policies is simply nonsense and belies all historical evidence. 3) It lets the concept of nuclear deterrence, as advocated, defended or practiced by state elites, off the hook. Deterrence is simply a way of rationalizing the adoption of a fundamentally terrorist way of thinking about nuclear weapons. In spite of the changed circumstances and dangers we face post-September 11, it is not some distinctive breed of footloose or insane nuclear terrorists that is the source of the greatest nuclear danger, but the routinized and disguised terrorism of deterrence thinking by otherwise ordinary, sane, humane, and ethical people.(19) But having said all this, there still remains the question of how we now judge the possibilities of nuclear, chemical, or biological terrorist acts by non-state actors. Technically, there remain many barriers that make it extremely difficult for combat groups to handle such agents of destruction. Politically, there remain the various factors that promote self-limitation in such groups and individuals, as distinct from state actors. Nevertheless, we can no longer rule out with the same confidence or equanimity the possibility of such acts of terrorism in the future or their equivalents, such as the bombing/destruction of a civilian nuclear energy plant. The Ethics of International Political Terrorism As compared to the earlier discussion of terrorism's efficacy, in the case of ethics there is less need to make a distinction between international and domestic political terrorism. Much of what will be argued in this section will have general relevance. But focusing on international political terrorism does make matters a little easier since so much of this kind of terrorism is linked to wars of liberation. Insofar as domestic political terrorism can be linked to "righteous" revolutionary struggle to overthrow oppressor regimes, the present discussion of ethics would apply to these cases as well. Clearly, in talking of the ethics of such kinds of political terrorism we are operating on the terrain of the age-old discourse about the relationship between ends and means.(20) To begin with, any possibility of claiming that a terrorist act is just and should therefore be supported must assume that the cause to which that act is harnessed is itself good and just. This is a necessary even if not a sufficient condition for one to defend such an act. If the cause is itself not believed to be just, as one side will usually consider it not to be, then the act cannot be justified. The justice, therefore, of using terrorist methods is related to the justice or justness of the cause itself. Indeed, to rebel against an "unjust" system can itself be considered a fundamental right of the individual in the Lockean sense. But even when we accept this, it still doesn't answer the question of how to rebel. There are two ways of ethically justifying all violence in the aid of a supposedly just cause. The first is to do so in the name of efficacy. Here the question of what means or methods to be used in pursuit of the given end is no longer a moral but a practical one. It is a question of effectiveness, of tactics and strategy. This is how revolutionaries usually rationalize the use of terrorist threats or acts of violence. Since the end striven for constitutes such a profound transformation of existing society and its values, including its moral ones, why then should the struggle against it be bound by such values, the revolutionary asks, especially when the enemy will not feel bound, even by existing values, in defense of its power? Of this last point there are many examples but a particularly important one was the 1973 US-supported military coup in Chile to overthrow the democratically elected Popular Unity government of Salvador Allende. Chile had perhaps the longest history of representative democratic government of any third world country. Nonetheless, although Allende was re-elected in 1973 with a bigger mandate than in 1970 and had committed himself to the use of peaceful and constitutional methods of political activity, this did not prevent the ruling classes who felt deeply threatened by his policies to resort to the most brutal and undemocratic methods to overthrow him. Allende refused to listen to his own supporters who, in anticipation of the coup and in clear recognition of the turmoil in the country, were clamoring for arming the general civilian public to prevent the coup which so many recognized was coming. The point is not a trivial one. It is what lies behind, for example, Malcolm X's famous dictum concerning the liberation of black people in the US "by any means necessary." That is to say, such revolutionaries claim there should be no weakening of their struggle to achieve a just end by a renunciation in advance of the means to be used. The second way of justifying all violence in the name of a just cause is through an approach that Barrington Moore has aptly called the "calculus of suffering."(21) Here the claim is that oppression can be so extreme that no amount of terrorism by the oppressed can change the overall balance sheet of suffering. In the remarkable film by Gilo Pontecorvo, The Battle of Algiers, this particular approach to justifying terrorist violence was dramatized most effectively. The French authorities had captured one of the principal leaders of the FLN, Ahmed Ben M'Hidi, and were parading him in front of an international press conference. One reporter of a French newspaper asked him that if he thought the cause of Algerian independence was so just, then how could he justify placing home-made bombs in baskets, then in public places, which blew up innocent French women and children? M'Hidi replied that it was terrible that French women and children were killed in this way, but then went on to remind the reporter and the others at the press conference that French planes which flew over Algerian villages and dropped their bombs killed many, many more Algerian women and children. He exclaimed, "I tell you what, give us your planes and we will give you our baskets." However, neither of these two rationalizations (whether of efficacy or of a balance sheet of suffering) is fully acceptable. Each begs a crucial question. Can any form of violence be justified, including cruelty, torture, the killing of children? Merely to ask the question should, one hopes, be enough to elicit the proper reply. No, it cannot. "By all means necessary" is an utterly unacceptable dictum. One must accept that there are some individual rights and social norms that are all but inviolable. That is to say, certain norms (e.g., no cruelty to children, no torture) are, if not absolute, nearly so. If we accept this, as we should, then it becomes possible to formulate general rules regarding the use of permissible or acceptable means in pursuit of just ends. However, much discussion in India on the relationship between means and ends has been strongly influenced by the Gandhian tradition whose approach has been insufficiently subtle, to say the least. Ends, we are repeatedly reminded, cannot justify means. Good ends cannot justify bad means. But another question is rarely if ever asked within the Gandhian tradition: do means justify ends? Do good means justify bad ends? Does building schools and hospitals, for example, justify or even lessen the evil end of maintaining colonial rule? The idea that means must prefigure ends has to be handled carefully. There is genuine merit in the view that the goodness or worth of ends achieved bears some significant relationship to the integrity of means used in pursuit of those ends.(22) But what is this relationship? To what extent can means prefigure ends? Any claim that means must prefigure ends, which is the basic thrust of the Gandhian approach, is ridiculously and unjustifiably rigid. For means cannot only reflect or presage their ends, they also unavoidably reflect their beginnings. Means are doubly determined, both by their putative goals and by their starting points, namely the extant conditions of injustice and suffering (in variable forms of brutality and repression) confronting victims. In the struggle to overthrow slavery or fascism, for example, to expect that means used will not bear some definite relationship to the character and system of this repression is quite unrealistic. Such means can certainly differ significantly from those used to overthrow other kinds of oppression operating in much milder contexts of physical repression and brutality. There is, however, another claim within the Gandhian tradition. Terrible or unacceptable means, it is argued, can negate or nullify ends. What are we to make of this line of argument? Clearly, it depends on what we mean by negating or nullifying ends. All too often this is misunderstood to mean that the very justice of the end sought can be negated or nullified by the injustice of the means used in its pursuit. However, the justice of a cause is never contingent on the means used in pursuit of that cause but is determined independently of those means. This may be a trivial point of logic but it is surprising how often it is forgotten. Nor does this mean that a sympathizer or supporter of that cause cannot condemn or oppose the use of a whole range of means. Of course, one can. But it is to insist that, for example, the justice of the Palestinian cause cannot be negated or nullified or even altered in any way by the iniquity of means (however terrible) that may be used in its pursuit. This does not mean, however, that the justice of that cause stands eternally. That justness is historically constituted and can therefore be historically altered in that it might no longer become a meaningful cause whose value must be adjudicated or placed on the political agenda. So it is historically and theoretically conceivable, for example, that at some future time, few Palestinians may remain concerned about securing a Palestinian nation. If, however, by negating or nullifying, one means that the worth of the achievement or of the realized form taken by the goal desired can be diminished or even fully nullified by the character of the means chosen to pursue it, then this is obviously correct. If the overthrow of South African apartheid had resulted in the institutionalization of say, a reverse apartheid, then many would certainly question the value of the form that the final achievement-the goal of overthrowing apartheid-had taken. The value, many would feel, was significantly diminished even if not fully negated or nullified. Or, to take another example, the use of nuclear weapons against civilian populations in the service of some cause (e.g. the defeat of fascism) could nullify the value of that final achievement however just the goal and the struggle for it might be. Any judgment of the possible indefensibility of the use of certain means is connected not so much to the concrete effect of those means on the form in which the just cause is realized but on the grounds of other general principles, namely ethical principles concerning individual human rights. This is the basis of the well known and very important distinction between the justice of a war and justice in the conduct of a war. Even if opposing sides cannot agree on the justice of a particular war as seen by the other side, e.g., the Indian state and its supporters are not likely to accept the justice of the Naga struggle for independence, both sides can still accept the necessity of justice in the conduct of that war.(23) Thus there can be certain rules of warfare that even pertain to terrorist acts, that can be accepted and respected by all. Following Norman Geras, two such rules would seem to be particularly pertinent in this regard. Rule 1
Rule 2
A second principle to be upheld is that there has to be a distinction between the "combatant," who can be attacked, and the "person," whose rights have to be respected. One can attack a combatant, even kill him or her. In a combat situation one can hardly avoid this. But this does not give the right to calculatedly disfigure or maim an opponent. Moreover, once the situation changes and the status of the opponent is no longer that of being a combatant, then his or her new role must be recognized and the rights associated with that new role, or those rights associated with him or her being a "person," must be respected. Thus prisoners, for example, have definite rights to be fully respected. Of course, these are general. They can hardly be expected to cover all contexts, contingencies or situations. But they nonetheless provide real practical guidelines. When so much of current practice, even in democracies like India, constitute a standing violation and contempt for even these very elementary principles, then we will be accomplishing a great deal if we can generalize respect for such principles and institutionalize their practice regardless of whether our support and loyalty is extended to the combat group in question or to its opposing state or to other power structures. Conclusion To arrive at an ethically neutral view that opposes international terrorism, regardless of the cause in whose name it is perpetrated, it is essential not only to adhere to the rules proposed above, but also to be vigilant in identifying state-executed terrorism. Protective layers of state power and rhetoric too often make such acts unrecognizable. The double standards involved here are not only morally shameful, but also politically counter-productive. They lead to more widespread bitterness and alienation, thereby reinforcing the appeal of those who like bin Laden, claim that terrorism is the only effective form of political retribution against the strong to whom, it would appear uniform principles of international justice do not apply. In this regard, a central issue that must not be, and should not be, avoided, pertains to the nature of the US military assault on Afghanistan. Was this a terrorist war of revenge and imperial expansion as many a longstanding critic of US foreign policy would aver, or was it a just war? In India, the US and elsewhere, there have been many who have argued that this is a just war. Certainly, the Western and Japanese media (and much of the media in India) has treated it as such. If this is accepted then it does not mean the US was not guilty of terrorist acts in Afghanistan. But the nature of its culpability would be qualitatively diminished as compared to a situation where its claim of waging a just war is itself deemed false and unacceptable. In the first case, the focus would shift to the issue of whether the US in waging this just war was using just means, i.e., taking sufficient care not to cause suffering to 'innocents' (civilians but not Taliban soldiers even if they had no connection whatsoever to the events of Sept. 11). We have no consensually accepted account of casualties, civilian or military.(25) But the use of 'daisy cutters' (the most indiscriminate bombs in the conventional, non-nuclear arsenal) and cluster bombs, the fact that there were considerable civilian casualties and hardship to hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of refugees already in a pitiful economic condition, would provide ammunition to those who believe there was misuse of means, and that persistent aerial bombing in a country with no capacity whatsoever to resist such action, is hardly the exercise of minimal, reasonable or proportionate force. There would, however, also be others who argue that in such a full-scale and justified war, civilian casualties were sufficiently restricted to warrant an over-all balance-sheet assessment quite favorable to the US even with regard to the means used in pursuit of the war. The fact that a repressive Taliban regime was overthrown to the approval of many or most Afghans would be a consequence that is seen as reinforcing the US case. Indeed, since Osama bin Laden has apparently escaped capture in spite of the US war on Afghanistan, the primary justification given to the public for having dealt retributive justice for Sept. 11 in this manner now rests on the fact that the Taliban has been overthrown and that Al Qaeda cells in Afghanistan have been eliminated or have shifted elsewhere. Others, of course, would see this outcome as the replacement of one ruthless and authoritarian regime by another regime (comprising the forces of the Northern Alliance and others) also ruthless and authoritarian, whose past record is both better and worse than that of the Taliban.(26) They would also point out that the failure to capture the presumed perpetrator-in-chief, Osama bin Laden, despite the military assault, gravely weakens the consequentialist argument in favour of the war. The nature of this discourse - whether or not the war on Afghanistan was a just form of retribution for Sept. 11 should not be allowed to obscure a crucial fact. Discussions endorsing the justice of the US war on Afghanistan are really a form of special pleading on behalf of a US administration not itself engaged in such pleading! Within 48 hours of Sept. 11, the US government made the following public declarations. It cited Article 51 of the UN Charter claiming the right to act in "self-defense" although the Article in question does not allow for war to be waged against an individual or a group, and demands regular reporting to the UN Security Council, use of force after all other steps have been taken, and so on. Although the US cited Article 51 it had no intention of obeying its provisions and channeling its retaliatory actions through the UN Security Council. The US declared it would make no distinction between suspected terrorist culprits and the country that harbors them - an extraordinary claim not warranted by international law. It also declared that the US was henceforth engaged in a "war against global terrorism" that would take a long time. The US, therefore, talked of an "8 to 10 year program" of combat. In short, the US disregarded all existing international laws and norms. It declared what was, in effect, a unilateral right to define who 'global terrorists' were or are, and to pursue them wherever they may be and in whatever manner the US saw fit. The US gave itself the right to attack any deemed 'enemy' which could be countries and regimes as well as groups or individuals since no distinction was to be made between terrorists and countries/governments harboring them. Being a war, any US action in the future does not have to await the actual perpetration of a terrorist act, but can as in any war, take the form of surprise and pre-emptive attacks on a continuous and repeated basis against any perceived enemy. In short, the US has not so much demanded that its war on Afghanistan be considered a just war but that its declared "war on global terrorism", whose goals, forms, methods, targets, scale and length of time are all to be decided by the US itself, be seen and endorsed as a just war. The war on Afghanistan is thus automatically a just war because it is simply one part of this all-encompassing just war project! The political scope of this US claim is nothing short of breathtaking, and all in the name of fighting a selectively defined terrorism. Both intellectual clarity and moral scrupulousness must now be regarded as vital inputs into the contemporary discourse on international terrorism. Without them, we risk either failing to understand, or worse, legitimizing global political projects whose purposes go well beyond the issue of how best to cope with the problem of terrorism. Notes 1. Key studies on the ethics of terrorism and violence, secular or religiously inspired would include the following: M. Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, New York, 1977; S. Lukes, Marxism and Morality, Oxford, 1985; N. Geras, Discourses of Extremity, London, 1990; P. Bauhn, Ethical Aspects of Political Terrorism, Lund, 1989; W. Laqueur, The Age of Terrorism, Boston, 1987; D.C. Rapoport and Y. Alexander (eds.), The Morality of Terrorism: Religious and Secular Justifications, New York, 1982; M. Juergensmeyer, Terror in the Mind of God, New Delhi, 2001. Selected Bibliography
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