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State-Sponsored Terrorism in Perspective |
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Ishtiaq Ahmad |
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in Veryan Knan, ed., Beacham’s Encyclopedia of Terrorism (Washington, DC: Beacham Publishing, 2010).
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Terrorism is generally understood as an organized violent act by non-state actors against unarmed civilians to create mass fear in a targeted state. But terrorism is also committed by a sovereign country or a government, both domestically and internationally. State-sponsored terrorism literally implies a state’s use or support of terrorism against another state or against its own people. Since terrorism has essentially become an international phenomenon over the last three decades, the expression ‘state-sponsored terrorism’ is now commonly used to describe a state’s support of international terrorism. Any country that deliberately employs terrorism or aids and abets terrorist groups as an instrument of its foreign policy against another country is categorized as a state sponsor of terrorism or simply a terrorist state. This chapter places state-sponsored terrorism as a specifically international phenomenon in a theoretical perspective and explains its historical evolution, various forms, practical manifestations and consequences for regional and international peace. It also clarifies what the term ‘state-sponsored terrorism’ actually refers to and what it does not in the contemporary literature on terrorism or in its application to inter-state relations as currently perceived by the international community
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