The Challenge of Terrorism and War on Terror: Chinese Response

Terrorism and WoT-Two fundamental Issues: What is terrorism? While many responses can be provided to the question depending on how the word “terrorism” is being defined, there exists a somewhat consensus that it is not a new phenomenon. In the backdrop of debates about the freedom movements, the UN is seized with this issue for the last several decades. It was however, unable to reach to a consensus as on most occasions, a large number of UN members did not agree to declare the acts committed by freedom movements and by the terrorists’ organizations as alike. So the issue of having a consensus definition of Terrorism is still pending today mainly because of the fact that the term “terrorism” is politically and emotionally charged .   

The second issue relates to the dealing with perpetrators. Before 9/11, any act of violence involving the loss of innocent lives, with the motive of creating terror among masses, to draw their attention towards a certain ‘cause’, used to be treated as a “crime” and was presented and proved in the court of law. A legal process, along with mobilizing public opinion against the perpetrators, would then inevitably investigate the motives of the crime as well. However the motives of the attacks on the twin towers and the presence or absence of a “proof” were left untouched while responding it in the form of WoT and consequently, many important questions concerning the incident of 9/11 were ignored ; the argument was that the perpetrators belonged to an international group which had plans to incur mass scale destructions and bring down the global system, which is currently being led by the US.