In the end, I want to quote Abraham Lincoln, who said, ‘Without the assistance of that divine being, I cannot succeed. With that assistance I cannot fail.’

D.P. Sinha

New Delhi, July 2021

Who is a terrorist? Is a terrorist alone in his conscious insanity or is he the product of a process? Does a terrorist want a lot of people dead or a lot of people watching? These questions on terrorism, which is a major threat to humanity, have no easy answers.

During his stint as the UN Secretary-General (1997–2006), Kofi Annan had tried in vain to build consensus among countries about what constitutes terrorism to facilitate greater cooperation across issues, including deportation/extradition and the freezing of assets of suspects. In the 1980s, when two American academicians sought responses related to the attributes of terrorism from scholars, the exercise threw up as many as twenty-two key components.

Yet, there exists some unanimity around a broad set of ingredients that define terrorism: the use of unauthorized, deliberate, wanton violence against non-combatants and civilians for political ends. Terrorism’s raison d’etre is to instil fear in the public, and this deadly challenge must be addressed holistically, according to experts. Terrorists want a lot of people watching and a lot of people listening and not a lot of people dead, according to terrorism expert Brian Jenkins.

Academicians also appear to agree upon a set of factors that contribute towards making a terrorist. These include the existence of perceived or alleged grievances that makes one receptive to new ideas or values, a body of ideology to make sense of the discontent and to propel it towards a certain direction, and the idea of being part of a group, according to academician Peter Neumann. According to psychologist-academician Professor Fathali Moghaddam, the final stage in making a terrorist involves the side-stepping of the in-built inhibitory mechanisms against acts such as the killing of another human being.

As a political phenomenon, terrorism emerged in the late eighteenth century. The term ‘Reign of Terror’ came to be associated with Robespierre, one of the key actors of the 1789 French Revolution, when he began targeting ‘counter-revolutionaries’ in the 1790s. Later, the term ‘terrorism’ came to be associated with Europe’s anti-monarchist forces, nihilists, anti-colonial nationalist forces, left-wing radicals, then right-wing vigilantes. The year 1979, when Russia occupied Afghanistan, marked the emergence of a strand of terrorism that was allegedly state-sponsored and made faith-based claims.

The world has suffered two of the most dastardly terror attacks in this century. One is known as the 9/11 attack of 2001 that killed around 3,000 people. It took place in the United States and was orchestrated by the Al-Qaeda.