Today's coverage of terrorism is predominantly of suicide bombers, hijackings, and hostage taking. These terrorist acts seem to dominate the news, but actually the death toll from these acts do not come close to what internal state terrorism does. Yet, the media does not cover the events of state terrorism like they do with religious terrorism. The media never fails to cover the car bombs and shootings in Israel, even though only a few people are dying in the attacks. Yet it takes the media a few thousand deaths or so to cover any of the internal state terrorism actions. This is the case in Russia because Russia's violations against Chechnya go mostly unnoticed and their counterterrorist tactics are mostly overlooked, but when Chechen rebels use terrorist tactics their actions make the top stories. Neither the Chechen rebels or Russia are willing to negotiate, and Russia ironically resorts to terrorist tactics in their counterterrorism policies. When states use counterterrorism as a form of state terrorism, it will breed terrorist reactions, and when this kind of situation happens, neither side can fairly negotiate peace, therefore outside help is required to settle the disputes.
Terrorism is a word that brings up many emotions and connotations, and as many different definitions, but for this paper it will be defined.
Case Study 1.
The Soviet Union has occupied Chechnya for almost two centuries, and when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the Chechens declared themselves independent of Russia. Russia is not willing to give up on Chechnya though, so the Chechens are forced to fight against an overwhelmingly powerful foe. Russia uses fear tactics, bombings, and human rights violations to fight against the rebels. Their plan is to completely wipe out the Chechen resistance, but what Russia is doing has caught the attention of many countries and the United Nations. Russia's occupation of Chechnya and resistance to the Chechen rebels has its own justifiable motives, but their tactical choices to put down the Chechen rebels is a case of state sponsored terrorism.
