Schneier on Security

Winter • July 22, 2010 1:58 AM

@Woofle:
“Of course you are correct. I was going to try and continue my one-upmanship but I just can’t locate that wikipedia article on two troops of Chimpanzees fighting over a banana tree…”

Chimpanzees are much to “civilized” to need such a meager object to make war over. Chimpanzees will try to exterminate the male members of another group just for existing. They do not need a pretext.

However, no one has reported wars under Bonobos yet. Genetically, we are squarely in between these two species.

However, war has been endemic under humans from the very start. As Jared Diamond already wrote, “if two Papuas met in the highlands of New Guinea, they would desperately try to find some mutual relatives or friends just to have a reason NOT to bash each others head in” (I am paraphrasing from memory here). Mr Diamond has been known to mix facts sometimes, but the area has been infamous for widespread head hunting before the Indonesian pacification.

And there is a chapter in “Millennium” (Tom Holland) about the 9th+10th century, aptly called “Knigthmare”, about the rise of the castles and knights in medieval Europe. Modern day Afghanistan/Tribal Pakistan comes to mind while reading that.

Winter

Winter • July 22, 2010 7:17 AM

@SnallaBolaget:
“The definition of terrorism is: “The calculated use of violence (or the threat of violence) against civilians in order to attain goals that are political or religious or ideological in nature; this is done through intimidation or coercion or instilling fear.””

How does head hunting fit in?

This was a widely spread practice (Amazon, Indian ocean). It consisted of small raids to terrorize and weaken competing villages. The direct motivation was revenge (alleged witchcraft) and pure rivalry. The well known effect was driving away competing clans.

The Hashshashins would fit in, I think?

Roman policies were often based on pure terror. Colonial policies, in general, too (Central Africans learned mutilating enemies from the French and Belgians, scalping was an invention of American “head” hunters). But these were the “governments” so that cannot be terrorism, can it?

The same for Spartans against the native helots.

Berber war bands looting northern Iberia and France out of Iberia in medieval times. Normans in England after the 1066 conquest. But that would be the “legal government” again.

Just calling it “terrorism” if it is not state run is rather arbitrary, I think. Terror is often used against the enemies. Any enemy by any actor.

Winter

Winter • July 22, 2010 8:43 AM

@SnallaBolaget
“Installing fear is one thing, terrorism is another.”

So you file “head hunting raids”, “Spartan death squads”, “Hashshashin suicide assassins”, “Roman decimation”, “Norman retaliations”, “Scalp rewards”, and chopping off arms and legs (Africa) under the same header as fear of spiders and clowns?

All my examples were of the worst atrocities known to man. They are about enslavement, death squads, and whole counties laid to waste. How you ever can dismiss head hunting raids as simply “scary” is beyond me.

The examples were also all about actors using deadly violence against civilians to instill mortal fear for political and economical reasons. Except for the scalp rewards, which were part of a genocide campaign.

So, explain to me, why should the word terrorism be reserved to marginal political groups resorting to violence against civilians with the aim to instill terror?

Does it mean that the Taliban became terrorists only because they were toppled? And they immediately stop being terrorists the moment they are back in power?

What word would you suggest to the same acts, but perpetrated by the “legal” government?

Winter