State-Sponsored Terrorism

Although terrorism is widely condemned, many countries have given assistance to terrorist groups in the form of money, weapons, training, or providing bases for operations. Every year, the U.S. State Department releases a list of countries that support terrorism, and those countries face stiff sanctions. If a country's support for terrorist groups is not extensive enough for it to be placed on the list, the United States may impose sanctions nonetheless. The United States declared a “war on terrorism” following the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

During the Cold War, a decades-long period of conflict with the former Soviet Union following World War II, the United States provided extensive aid to anti-Soviet and anti-Communist groups in many countries. Likewise, the former Soviet Union was extremely open about its support for leftist groups—so much so that it was criticized for claiming to extensively support groups to which it gave little practical assistance. Some linguistic finesse was necessary: neither country claimed to support “terrorism,” arguing instead that they were assisting, in the terminology preferred by the United States, “freedom fighters,” or armed liberation [Page 556]movements that represented the true will of a given population. Many of these groups, however, would fit into contemporary definitions of terrorists.

The coinage of the phrase “freedom fighters” points to one reason why countries support terrorist groups: supporting terrorist movements, especially those with some popular backing, can actually enhance another nation's standing. The communist government of Cuba, for example, obtained international notice by openly promising to “export the revolution”—that is, to foster and support communist groups in other nations. Muslim governments in Iran and Afghanistan have made much the same promise to militant Muslim groups. While such proclamations can lead to international condemnation and trade sanctions, they can also establish a nation as an ideological leader, a country willing to make sacrifices to help support and export a certain political philosophy.

“Exporting the revolution” can also be a profitable business. Cuba routinely required leftist groups to pay for Cuban soldiers and civilians sent to help, and Bulgaria's government was once notorious for its willingness to sell weapons to terrorist groups at a hefty profit. However, the primary reason countries support terrorist groups is neither prestige nor profits. Instead, a nation almost always supports terrorist groups that share a common enemy with the state, especially when peaceful reconciliation is impossible but war is also not an option. During the Cold War, for example, the United States and the Soviet Union were implacable foes, divided by deep ideological differences. Both countries had extensive arsenals of nuclear weapons, meaning that an outright war could have very well led to global annihilation. Instead of making peace or waging war, both countries supported terrorist groups that operated in other countries and that were in ideological alignment with one or the other of the superpowers.

Obviously, adopting this kind of policy involves risks: if a country supports a group that conducts direct attacks against a second country, the second country may take military action against the first. Thus, during the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union did not support terrorist groups that conducted operations in the other's country. Instead, they would generally support insurgent groups operating in a third country. Thus, the Soviet Union would support an insurgency in countries where the government was seen as friendly to the United States. The United States would then provide arms and assistance to the government to help put down the Soviet-backed insurgent groups. An armed conflict, or “proxy war,” often resulted within the third nation. Supporting terrorism can sometimes lead to outright war. In the 1990s, Pakistan supported militant Muslim groups in the disputed state of Jammu and Kashmir, which is largely controlled by India. These groups attacked Indian targets, raising the hostility level between the two countries to the point of battle between Pakistani and Indian troops.

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