On April 30 the U.S. State Department released the latest version of its
annual report, "Patterns of Global Terrorism." The department's website
included a passage that caught Jamestown's attention--the U.S. government's
official definition of "terrorism."
According to this passage, "The term 'terrorism' means premeditated, politically
motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational
groups or clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience.
The term 'international terrorism' means terrorism involving citizens or
the territory of more than one country."
What is striking about this definition is that it a priori excludes actions by
national governments. It would appear that if Russia's FSB or some other
agency of a national government were to highjack an airliner and crash it
into a New York skyscraper, our State Department would not view this as an act
of "terrorism"-because, in official Washington's view, "terrorism" by definition
includes only violence committed by "subnational" entities.
Jamestown and others have made the point that Chechnya today harbors many terrorists
on both sides of the conflict, including not a few who wear Russian uniforms.
One would think that this point would be unexceptionable to any objective observer
of the Chechen wars, but in fact it often (to be fair, not always) meets with
stiff resistance from officials in both Moscow and Washington. Such bureaucrats
reflect a systemic bias against David and in favor of Goliath, which perhaps should
not surprise us; after all, they work for Goliath themselves.
Chechnya Weekly; 8 May, 2003 - The Jamestown Foundation
Comment: So all those killing, raping and robbing innocent civilians
in the name of a national cause have nothing to worry about. The US will not target
them as "terrorists".