GEOPOLITICS

Once a minor sub-field within the realm of security studies, terrorism studies has now expanded to become a standalone field with credible number of journals, research centres, leading scholars and experts, conferences, seminars, and research funding opportunities dedicated for it. According to Andrew Silk, most of the terrorism studies literature have been published since 2001 and that a new book on the topic is published every six hours (Silke, 2004, p. 109). As for figures, it has been noted that publications on terrorism studies have shot up 234 percent on an average after 2001 compared to the period between 1988-2001. Despite the growth in the publication of many studies on terrorism, as one would survey the length and breadth of the literature produced, they cannot ignore the inherent bias with which most have been written and particularly the absence of state terrorism. This is because many terrorism scholars have inadvertently avoided researching and publishing on state terrorism for various reasons. Some of the reasons could be because governments have effectively controlled the public discourse and understanding of terrorism, like defining it in specific ways using laws, shaping the reportage or overall discussion amongst scholarship within the subject. Here, with this essay, I would dissect the reasons for the ignorance of state terrorism amongst top scholarship within the terrorism studies and how that manipulates the knowledge economy, sustains inherent bias in knowledge production and distorts critical understanding of the field. As far as terrorism is concerned, the need to study state terrorism far outweighs the need to study non state terror as the number of victims, brutality and sheer number of occurrences is way more than the later. The importance to learn about state terrorism lies in analysing the crude comparison between non-state terror and state terror, in which former is responsible for few hundreds or thousands of deaths annually, whereas states have killed, tortured, and intimidated hundreds of millions of people over the past century (Rummel, 1994). This entails the need to explore the reason why the knowledge economy of terrorism studies is overtly biased against non-state actor actions.

As for the structure of this essay, first, I would argue the reason why ignorance of State terrorism is lethal with historical references. I would expose how the definitions of terrorism in current context is flawed and how it acts as a catalyst to sustain the knowledge economy. Second, it is concerned with politics of representation, where I explore the ways in which state terrorism is underrepresented and how over emphasis of non-state terror masks the actual reality. Third, I will establish how terror and its usage has its roots in the very foundational understandings of the entity called State. I would also explore how state terrorism manifests in different forms. Fourth, the core of the essay, will focus on how leading scholars and authors ignore State terrorism and the reason why they do this. I would also explain how this ignorance distorts the understanding of the field of knowledge at hand and how hegemonic structures of the knowledge production is sustained. Fifth, connected with the issue distortion is the very reason for it, where I would explain how Western powers is involved in terrorism, sets the narrative on it, and gets away with it every time. This way, I intend draw out a full wide perspective on the knowledge economy of the subject called Terrorism Studies and how it has inherent biases from the very foundation and how that vicious cycle of knowledge is sustained.

Let’s start with the basics of Terrorism studies, the definitions, and historical perceptions, to understand why this subject is valued so high in the literature among any security studies or political studies around the world. Here I would draw out the biases the definitions operated on and base my core argument on why ignorance of state terrorism is lethal.

It is given that; knowledge and its production is never purely neutral exercise but always works for someone and for something (Jackson, 2008). This is closely related to the ideological effects of the discourse on state terrorism, more importantly the silence on it in the terrorism studies field. The way in which state terrorism is constructed distorts the field as scholarly research and more importantly, sustains the dominant structures of power and fuels the elite and state hegemonic projects (Jackson, 2008). Let us start with the history of terrorism studies for better understanding. In the late nineteenth century, anarchists used terrorism to try and create revolutionary conditions under autocracy, often assassinating several European heads of state and in response the outlaw acts of terrorism was conceptualised on the perspective of non-state violence against governments (Jackson, 2013, p. 119).  Only for a brief period in history was terror been associated with State, that is at Nuremburg trials, when Nazi Leaders were condemned for the crime of terror and here state terrorism was acknowledged. Yet after the incident, we switched back to over emphasis of non-state terror. Ever since that, the media in all its forms and academia has followed the governmental conceptualisation of terror as non-state violence, shaping the narrative and common sense around the subject. 

When it comes to the definition of terrorism, the actor-based notions which excludes states from employing terrorism is untenable, in fact is absurd (Jackson, 2008, p. 9). The problem lies in the perspective on the culprits of such action. Terrorism is to be seen as a violent tactic as much as ambushes are a tactic. There is no sense to argue that certain actors are precluded by their identity from employing the tactic of terrorism. If we go by common terminology, terrorism refers to violence directed towards civilians, which is designed to instil terror or intimidate a population for political reason, then states can clearly be terrorists as well (Cohen & Corrado, 2005). For example, when government agents commit torture, random murder, kidnapping, or assassinations against civilians who support an opposition movement, it is not short of terrorism.   Noam Chomsky has questioned the very attempt by the U.S. government in defining terrorism. The basic problem he identifies with such attempts is that, for the U.S. government its necessary to find a definition of terrorism that will ‘include their terror against us but exclude our terror against them’ (Chomsky, 2013, p. 32). This obscurity in defining terrorism has led to a distorted understanding and has led to a knowledge economy that is heavily tilted in favour of state centricity and Western hegemony. The silence of state terrorism is the result of frequent practice of terrorism scholars of defining terrorism exclusively as a form of non-state violence, thereby excluding states a priori from being able to commit terrorism at all (Jackson, 2008, p. 8). For example, Bruce Hoffman states that terrorism involves violence committed by a subnational group or non-state entity (Hoffman, 1998, p. 43), which is in line with U.S. state department highly influential definition. Another strategy by scholars, is to masquerade state terrorism by arguing that even if state does terrorism, that terror is quantitatively different from non-state terror, as it has different motives, aims ,is done through different means and most importantly is employed by an actor which has the legitimate right to use violence and is bound by established rules relating use of such force (Hoffman, 1998, p. 34). Similarly prominent terrorism scholar Walter Laqueur’s works have side-lined state terrorism pointing it as largely irrelevant to the subject of terrorism studies. Let’s understand the gap in state terror studies more closely.

According to (Jackson, 2008, p. 7), the 100 texts he had examined, the terms ‘state terrorism’ or ‘state terror’ did not appear and provides no basis for its absence. He brings empirical evidence that other scholars have noted like Andrew Silke, that only 12 or less than 2 percent of articles from 1990 to 1999 in the core terrorism studies journals focused on state terrorism (Silke, 2004, p. 206). On the same strand of argument, it is shocking to see that only 12 pages of the 768 in the Encyclopaedia of World Terrorism (1997) examined about state terror in any form (Goodin, 2006, p. 55). John Thakrah’s popular Dictionary of Terrorism also has problem of similar sorts, where only 8 out of 308 pages speak about state terrorism (Thakrah, 2004). It is also noted that the highly influential RAND database which has connections with the U.S. government, has no statistics on state terrorism (Jackson, 2008). This way world renowned scholars on Terrorism studies goes mute on the subject of State terrorism and inadvertently aids the sustenance of the hegemonic state centricity of the knowledge economy. Today, hundreds of new laws, agencies and institutions have been established to fight non-state terrorism and thousands of new scholars have joined the effort to provide useful research in these efforts. Apart from that media have colluded with governments rarely questioning the state’s self-interested definition of terrorism or asking whether war on terror, might turnout itself to be state terrorism (Jackson, 2013, p. 119). This way the state centricity is preserved. Also, if we look at the very nature of terrorism studies it has always had state centric perception, which was first developed to counter left wing insurgent moves during Cold War, in other words it denotes that the focus was to control of anti-state violence. As has been stated elsewhere, whenever a field has been developed around a central focus, its scientific paradigm, set of research questions and key scholars are trained in the same approach and socialised into adopting the same paradigm, setting in motion a process of sedimentation and institutionalisation within the field of studies (Jackson, 2013, p. 118). In effect, the dominant approach slowly becomes the enduring social structure which is exceedingly difficult to alter if not impossible.

Terror has its root in the very existence of the state, as we explore the nuances of what constitutes the institution called the State. It is of great interest to learn that term ‘terror’ shares the same Latin root as the term ‘territory’ and that the fear (terror) of state violence has a central place in the emergence and dominance of the modern state and Western political theory (Hindess, 2006). This way the term contains the echoes of state violence despite its modern emphasis on non-state violence and actions. There are multiple ways state commits state terror, if it is used as threat or means of violence against a group of people in order to terrify or intimidate another group of people as a means of preventing or changing their political behaviour, then it becomes clear that many of state’s actions can qualify to become terror acts. Like for instance, torture is one of the tools which conceals state’s involvement in civilian directed violence which transforms damaged victims into a symbolic message for the target group (Cohen & Corrado, 2005). Also, the use of disappearances as a strategy also sends a strategic message that can demoralise the disgruntled population which had turned against the government. For Example, the Pakistani Military state had employed the strategy of disappearances in the state of Baluchistan to curb the liberation movement by the Baluchistan Liberation Army (BBC, 2024). The state practices of ‘terror bombing’ also falls into the category of state terrorism which is the practice of bombing civilian areas during war time to intimidate the population into submission or to terrify them to pressurise their government, when the location or bombing has no bearing on gaining strategic advantage during warfare (Jackson, 2008, p. 10). For example, the current bombings in the Gaza Strip by Israel or the bombings in Kharkiv by Russia in the Ukraine Conflict. Some analysts even consider the 1999 Kosovo Campaign to fall in this category. State counterterrorism and counterinsurgency can also constitute terrorism when it fails to differentiate between the innocent and the guilty and is highly disproportionate (Goodin, 2006). Even state policies like Nuclear Deterrence, coercive diplomacy, sanctions etc can also be deemed as state terrorism due to the net effect of these on innocent civilian population when they are employed. For Example, the people of Venezuela are tormented with hyperinflation because they chose a government which doesn’t sit in favour with the U.S. government, due to sanctions imposed by the latter (Roy, 2022). State sponsored terrorism also falls into this category as well, which manifests in a different form all together. Some states are accused of providing aid to terrorist groups in range of positive and permissive means, eventually states being the active sponsors that sustain such groups. This can be in the format of ‘ideological support’, military support, financial support, or even direct involvement in terror attacks (Martin, 2003). But the most intriguing aspect is that, in most literature, state sponsors identified are often coincided with the U.S. State Department’s annual list of ‘state sponsors of international terrorism’, which are North Korea, Syria, Sudan, and Iraq and not the Western Powers. Passive state sponsorship is the support for terror activities through the inaction of state on certain groups. Analysts believe that this as significant as action as Daniel Byman notes that many terrorist groups rely on the state’s tolerance of or passivity towards their activities for their success as much as any physical assistance, they receive (Byman, 2005). This is done by not policing the border properly, turning a blind eye to fundraising activities and even tolerating terrorist’s actions to build their organisations and conduct their operations. Here also the narrative picks up in different tone, where the discourse is focussed only on non-state groups and their actions as primary and states that aid them as secondary players. This obscures the involvement of state in the perpetration terror. All this makes the case of studying the phenomenon of state terrorism ever more important but the literature act as barrier to explore the subject. And that is because the scholars in this field have failed the aspirants by conveniently avoiding the subject of state terrorism. Let us explore why.

Many leading scholars like Walter Laqueur, who is deemed as the founder of terrorism studies had openly accepted that states have killed far more people and had caused far more material and social destruction than non state terror, yet he argues that this is simply not the terrorism he wishes to examine further (Laqueur, 1977, p. 6). This is emblematic of the problem of many great authors who acknowledge the fact that terrorism is a strategy of political violence which can be employed by any actor including the State but are reluctant to examine State terrorism in a systemic manner. Paul Wilkinson, Brian Jenkins and the vast majority of terrorism studies scholars join the ranks of Laqueur who have never studied State terrorism in great detail and instead focussed only on non-state format of terrorism (Jackson, 2008, p. 5). It cannot be stated that state-terrorism has not been studied at all by scholars in this field, yet numerically speaking, it forms a very small but important body of research (Stohl, 2006). However, they are numbered in the hundreds compared to the thousands on nonstate terror. Also, most of the literature on State terrorism are produced by scholars outside of the disciplines of international relations and political science like anthropology, criminology, and sociology, where most are not recognised as ‘terrorism experts’ by the media or political institutions. These literatures are situated somewhat on the periphery of the system of knowledge economy.

If we carefully analyse the discourse this system of knowledge production enables, we will see intriguing silences in between. According to (Jackson, 2008), these silences functions as ‘symbolic technology’ that are wielded by particular elites and institutions to; i) structure the primary subject positions, accepted knowledge, legitimate policy responses to the actors and common-sense; ii) exclude and de-legitimise alternative knowledge and practice; iii) internalise a particular social or political order; and iv) construct and sustain a hegemonic regime of truth. This last objective is the end goal of most intellectual institutions of the state. Also, the silences also function ideologically in a number of ways, where it acts as means of distraction or misdirection from uncomfortable subjects, suppression of alternative forms of knowledge, silent endorsement of certain practices as well as setting the boundaries legitimate knowledge. In simple words, here silences often function as extension of power. Sadly these ‘silences’ are somewhat enabled by the very leading scholars on the subject of terrorism studies. Yet we cannot solely blame the academic scholars for this issue in the production knowledge as the system they work and thrive is skewed to produce these silences and biases.

One of the biggest reasons why scholars and their universities are limited by the system to explore on the subject of State terrorism is because as these are publicly funded academic institutions, they have the burden of powerful expectations, that they should produce literature that is useful to the society and norms of loyalty, complicates the process even further as it is used to map what counts as appropriate research and what is to be considered as taboo (Jackson, 2013, p. 120). With this systemic effect, it is risky for any scholar professionally and difficult in practice to secure support as well as funding to undertake studies on state crimes, especially when it involves their own government. The problem comes to head, when policymakers call upon these same scholars on designing policies to deal with challenging social and political issues. Here these issues sediments into a cycle where it creates a kind of echo chamber in which the academic advisers provide the policymakers what they had intended to do anyway, rather than offering any objective advice. In a way, Gramsci’s notion of organic intellectuals becomes relevant as terrorism scholars through institutional, financial, and ideational compulsions of the state, inadvertently become the part of the dominant ideological structures and processes of hegemony (Jackson, 2013, p. 122). The problem is broader structural one, where institutional arrangements, funding structures, scholarly training and widely held assumptions operates in problem solving manner and rather serve to perpetuate and not challenge dominant ideological structure. If we analyse the aspect of scholarly training, students are often not taught to question basic assumptions and ideas, or existing structures of society, instead they are encouraged to study terrorism within the realm of state centric, problem-solving framework and to accept unproven ideas of terrorism as they are made by their predecessors (Jackson, 2013, p. 124). Thus, the perpetual cycle of skewed knowledge production keeps on turning, churning out the myopic, lopsided point of view on terrorism. Anyone who would dare to work outside of the operational structures of terrorism studies could end up facing exclusion, which in practical terms means being unable to get an op-ed in the national newspaper or into media outlets or being shunted out when scholarly experts are called in for advising government on specific matters. Subtle exclusions can take the form of having articles getting rejected from published in mainstream journals, never being cited in major publications by the peers or having their expertise ignored by the media. These so called ‘punishments’ act as stick of deterrence upon the scholars to work only the field necessitated by the state and not to dwell upon the dark secrets of the state like the case of State Terrorism. 

The Academia has also benefitted from this skewed system established by the State, where terrorism induces the politics of fear. First key benefit is the increased funding for research on terrorism and scholars who secure such funding also receive related benefits in terms of career advancement, prestige, and publications. At the University level, this politics of fear has nurtured a massive fee-paying student cohort wanting to study various courses on security, terrorism, and conflict resolution (Jackson, 2013, pp. 127-128). Every major university in the world has dozens of terrorism related courses, which is beneficial to both the individual teachers, who may sell more copies of their books to eager students, and the universities where the students come to study, who gets more income. The net effect of this vicious cycle cannot be undermined or brushed under the carpet. The broader academic, social, and cultural influence of terrorism studies means that this restrictive viewpoint is diffused to the broader society, which generates its own ideological effects. It reinforces state perspectives and priorities and reifies a state centric, problem-solving paradigm of politics where terrorism is viewed as identifiable social problem to be solved by the state and not as a tool used by the same state, and permits the use of violence by the state to curb the same and delegitimise all forms of non-state violence (Burke, 2008). The restricted understanding of terrorism also functions to obscure and silence the voices of those who live conditions of daily terror from the random and arbitrary violence of their governments, some even supported by the Western Powers. It deflects and diverts attention from the much greater state terrorism which blights the lives of tens of millions of people living around the world. In addition, the silence on state terrorism within the field undermine the political struggle of human rights activists against the use of violence by states by curtailing their description of state actions as ‘terrorism’. This way, the net effect of the knowledge economy on Terrorism has disastrous effect on our understanding of the subject and has a huge bearing on our response to the phenomenon as a community. It is also a tell-tale sign of another problem that plagues the subject terrorism studies, which I believe is the crux of the problem and that is of Western exceptionalism. Let’s explore that paradigm, before I begin to wrap the discussion. 

Within the discourse analysis of the literature on terrorism also reveals another silence which is deep and pervasive particularly on Western democratic state terrorism and Israeli state terrorism. If we look at the annual list of state sponsors of international terrorism by the U.S. state department, we would be seeing the names of countries like Iran, Syria, Cuba, North Korea, Sudan, Libya, and Iraq. These lists usually focus on states that are currently considered hostile to Western interests. If we examine these lists over time, we can see that states move on and off from them according to political interests and strategic alliances. This is the perfect depiction of the socially constructed nature of the discourse on terrorism, where facts, meanings and understandings shift according to the whims of Western powers and their interests (Jackson, 2013, p. 120). One day, one state could be a pariah, the other day it could the partner in the region. From this as we shift to what Chomsky have said earlier about the definition of terrorism, we would see that attempts made by Western powers to define it in a way that project attack on them more important than attacks done by them. This us v/s them notion has spawned the silence on state-terrorism committed by the West in both Academia and media, because they know that if scholars and media go deep into details of state sponsors of terror, it will be quickly revealed that western states also sponsor actor who fall in the category of terrorists like the Contras, anti-Castro groups, Lebanese militias etc. This bias can be practically seen in the works of respected traditional terrorism scholar like Daniel Byman, who wrote a book on state sponsorship of terrorism which discusses briefly about US sponsorship, but at very low level, of the IRA terrorist activities, yet goes all out on usual suspects like Iran, Syria and likes of them (Byman, 2005). This illustrates the fact that even when Western traditional scholars set out to explore the phenomenon of state sponsored terrorism, they can’t help but to open the Pandora’s box of Western examples. All the leading Western powers in the world stands accused of State-terrorism be it Britain in its colonies like India, or elsewhere, France in Algeria, Germany in Africa, the U.S. in Latin America and in the Middle East during the ‘War on Terror’ and their tacit support state sponsors of terror like Pakistan, warlords in Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the like. Noam Chomsky had come down heavily on the West’s hypocrisy, where he gives stunning details on this aspect with examples like how these scholars misses out on Washington’s programme of terror in 1970s against Cuba, where Robert Kennedy called for bringing ‘the terrors of the Earth’ to Cuba and that initiated a vicious cycle of clandestine attacks like murder, sabotage and even biological warfare (Chomsky, 2013, p. 33). US also harboured and pardoned the terrorist Orlando Bosch, who was the perpetuator of Cubana Airliner blast in 1976 and then goes on to state that the US will punish those who harbour terrorists during the peak of Global War on Terror. Also, it has also become a sort of principle that these Western powers also don’t investigate their own crimes, as we still don’t know how many people died in Vietnam but in Kosovo these same actors uncovered every bit of the Earth to attribute the crime on Serbians. This way, the Western Exceptionalism sustains it reign through the Academic myopia that the same States have nurtured, from which we can deduce the root cause of why scholars don’t focus much on state terrorism. This is the reality of the World we live in; this is the reality of the politics we see and sadly this is the reality of the destiny that millions of people around the world had endured and continues to endure to this day.

CONCLUSION

The field of terrorism studies is marred by pervasive silence on state terrorism, biases, selectivism, Western Exceptionalism and pure double standards. The myopia in the academia on state terrorism can be somewhat changed eventually with the emergence of critical terrorism studies over the past few years. According to (Jackson, 2013, p. 130), he is optimistic on this field of studies, as more and more undergraduate and graduate students undertake critical perspective at many of the great universities around the world. When they get trained in critical terrorism studies, they will question the current narrative and will form a next generation of scholars who will help establish study of state terrorism more firmly. The establishment of Critical Studies on Terrorism Working Group (CSTWG) within the British International Studies Association has institutionalised a robust network on critical terrorism studies and can act as a model for future development of this field of knowledge.

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