Terrorism, national and international

What is terrorism and who precisely is a terrorist? That is a question that in our troubled time calls for a precise answer.

It is often said that one country's "terrorist" is in another country's "freedom fighter". How then does one resolve the dilemma?

Let us begin by examining the issue carefully.

We can all agree on one point. That those who protest most loudly against the menace of terrorism were themselves at some point of time “terrorists”. The fact is that those who pursue some national or human-rights goal with intense conviction in the justice of their cause, and in the teeth of established opposition - nobody would normally call them "terrorists", especially where they abjure recourse to violent means in the pursuit of their cause. Take as instances, Gandhi in India, Martin Luther King in the US, Nelson Mandela in Africa.

Why? Because they were freedom fighters who practised in the pursuit of their cause legitimate forms of non-violent struggle even while risking popular support.

Thus, it is clear that until such time as we produce such leaders, leaders made of strong moral fibre, violent forms of militancy in the pursuit of popular causes will continue to plague the world.

What is really new about the present state of affairs is that terrorism has now become an exportable commodity - with militants of one stripe or another indulging in what is justly called “cross-border” terror or in the case of the 9/11 events in the US, "cross-ocean" terror. The trouble with violent means employed across national boundaries in the pursuit of a cause, however just or righteous, cannot by any manner of means be regarded as legitiamte in the nuclear-ridden world that we live in. Again, why? Because such terror can ultimately lead to all the horrors of a full-blown war between nations, a threat to the uneasy world peace that obtains.

Examples of this kind of situation are plentiful: the India-Pakistan conflict over Kashmir, the US war on terror in the Middle East – all examples of "inter-nation" terror that can only end up destroying all hope of peace that has prevailed globally since World War II.

Terrorism has also rightly been described as being the ultimate weapon of the weak - or at least of those who perceive themselves as weak in the face of their foes. Such terrorism, I fear, will never end - unless the means that led to the issues connected with it are addressed and resolved.

One's true worry, then, is that any terror that turns "inter-
national" cannot be justified
except perhaps where the terrorist strictly precision-targets his violence at the military structures of the enemy while ensuring that no collateral damage accrues from it, no wanton suffering or loss of innocent lives.If this discipline is not maintained, it places the militant in the same dubious category as his enemy, his oppressor.

In India, during its freedom struggle, Mahatma Gandhi demonstrated such strict discipline when his so-called non-violent followers ran amok, killing the British policemen who were despatched to stop them. His response?He called off the agitation that he himself had started saying it was against his principle of peaceful resistance and non-violence.

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