Why Has It Been So Difficult to Reach an Agreed Definition of Terrorism?

WHY HAS IT BEEN SO DIFFICULT TO REACH AN AGREED DEFINITION OF TERRORISM?

In 2005 Jenny Brockie a presenter of Insight an SBS television program asked a number of people from different ethnic background that” Terrorism' is a word we hear a lot these days, but do we really know what it means? ’’ Here are what they defined terrorism as

WOMAN 1: Usually politically motivated, but any group of people or a person that strikes terror into the heart of innocent people.

WOMAN 2: I think once civilians are particularly targeted, that for me is terrorism.

WOMAN 3: Before this all happened, before September 11, it wasn't a word that got thrown around a lot. Now it is. Now whenever they use the word 'terrorism' they have an image of someone who looks Middle Eastern.

DAVID ERVINE Former IRA Operative: Well, I think terrorism is the expression of grievance. It has to have somewhere to come from, not a region. It has to have people to come from. It has to have a trade to come from, a nucleus or a group, that group of course can be encouraged to do the unforgivable, the unreasonable, the unhuman almost provided it has a sense of something that it can describe for itself, justification, which is "Look what they're doing to us. I am the victim here. I am truly the victim. And even though I make you a victim, I only make you a victim to point out that I am indeed myself a victim." And I think it's the same measurement right across the world.

GENERAL YAAKOV AMIDROR, FORMER ISRAELI INTELLIGENCE: I think that terrorism is when the targets are pure citizens, not as an accident, not as a mistake, but when the terrorists are looking for citizens to kill - mothers, children, old people - is the main target of their action. And this is pure terrorism. There are some soft definition of terrorism but that is pure terrorism.

ALI KAZAK, PALESTINIAN DELEGATION: I'd like to speak about states' acts of terrorism. Now, no one is speaking about states' acts of terrorism, which is very essential. Let me just give you some figures. There are in the last three years 920 Israelis killed - and this is the statistics from the Israeli Army website - 2,913 Palestinians killed, 85% of them are civilians and over 500 children. Now, this is - these are acts of terrorism described in international law as war crimes. Now when we are speaking about terrorism, we have to take this into consideration and we have to deal with the root cause of terrorism in order to put an end to it. Furthermore, occupation and ethnic cleansing are the highest form of terrorism.

As you can see that these are only individual who have different definitions of terrorism.

One mans terrorist could be other mans freedom fighter.

Different labels given to the same individual for the same action, i.e. �terrorist’ and �patriot’

Even, a uniform definition of terrorism will not even exist across the various concerned agencies of a given country. Such is the case with the United States, where the range of definitions listed below is currently applied

Agency Definition

Department of Defense The calculated use of unlawful violence to inculcate fear, intended to coerce or to intimidate governments or societies in the pursuit of goals that are generally political, religious, or ideological.

FBI The unlawful use of force and violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives

State Department Premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience.

It is difficult to define terrorism and what constitutes it. The powerful countries are exploiting this ambiguity. Terrorism is really a strange crime for which not only the individuals but the whole nations and followers of a religion are being targeted and victimised; deceitful and fraudulent methods are employed to hijack and arrest the accused (which itself is terrorism), and on the other hand there is no definition for it under any law. Neither is it a crime under any international law nor any punishment is prescribed for it .The definition of terrorism is not only ambiguous but is non-existent, rather impossible. If there is any definition, it is highly controversial because this is not a legal but a political issue. The politically motivated definition is