2016 Book StateTerrorStateViolence-2 PDF

State – Sovereignty – Nation
Contributions to topical discussions

on the state
Series Editors
R. Voigt
Siegen, Germany
S. Salzborn
Göttingen, Germany
National territory, state authority, and a people form the modern state (Georg Jell-
inek). In a certain territory, a people shapes the institutional form of a nation state
that has been proven successfully for centuries. Since the French Revolution, the
nation state could overcome dissent within a gesellschaft/society that had disinte-
grated earlier versions of power over others that were short of full modern state-
hood. At the heart of the state lies its sovereignty (Jean Bodin); a realm that is not
sovereign is not a real state (Hermann Heller). Yet, from absolute sovereignty to
state failure it is not necessarily a long way. Only a state, however, can guarantee a
people’s security, freedom, and prosperity. No international organization can guar-
antee that.
Just a few years ago, it seemed as if the traditional sovereign nation state had
reached its limit. In the long run, the nation state was supposed to be replaced
by supranational institutions like the European Union—or maybe even a cosmo-
politan global state. Presently, the people’s consent to more integration decreases
while, simultaneously, Eurocracy aims at accumulating even more power. Demo-
cratic legitimacy of political decisions is jeopardized; trust in politics vanishes.
States and institutions like NATO, the E.U., or the U.S. have lost parts of their
meaning and influence in creating a new and future-compliant order. It is in this
situation that the sovereign nation state, the “sparkler of occidental rationality”
(Carl Schmitt), has become the last anchor that provides security and certainty for
the people. In this context it appears to be almost irrelevant whether a nation has
been artificially “made” (Benedict Anderson) or whether the nation is something
pristine—because the concept of the nation state refers to what Cicero has coined
the “fatherland of right,” it does not refer to the ethnically defined and determined
nation state.
Thus, for the political scientist the abstinence from the concept of the state
seems to have come to an end. But what should be the state of the future? The in-
terdisciplinary series State—Sovereignty—Nation aims at discussing this thematic
problem in monographs and edited volumes to which scholars/researchers from
different disciplines present their findings to a wider intellectual audience. The
editors of the book series are particularly interested in presenting all facets of a
state to students of political science and the next generation of political scientists.
More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/12756

Bettina Koch
Editor
State Terror,
State Violence
Global Perspectives
Editor
Bettina Koch
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
Blacksburg, USA
State – Sovereignty – Nation

ISBN 978-3-658-11180-9 ISBN 978-3-658-11181-6 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-3-658-11181-6
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Contents
Terror, Violence, Coercion: States and the Use

of (Il)legitimate Force �� 1
Bettina Koch
Part I Foundations
International Law and the Use of Armed Force by States �� 13

Abel S. Knottnerus
Securitization and Terroristization: Analyzing States’

Usage of the Rhetoric of Terrorism �� 31
Priya Dixit
Part II Cases
From Colonialism to Globalization: State Violence

in Modern India �� 53
Eva-Maria Nag
Violence on the Periphery of the Thai State and Nationhood �� 71

Karin Zackari
Violence from Above, Violence from Below: The State and

Policing Citizens in Mubarak’s Egypt �� 93
Dina Rashed
v
vi Contents
Killing the Chicken to Scare the Monkey: Some Notes on State

Terror in the People’s Republic of China �� 115
Peter R. Moody
Violence by Proxy: State-Sponsored Rebels and

Criminals in Chechnya �� 135
Yelena Biberman
U.S.-Drones Strikes: Acts of Terror, Violence, or Coercion? �� 151

Bettina Koch
Contributors
Yelena Biberman Government Department, Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs,

NY, USA
Priya Dixit Department of Political Science, Virginia Polytechnic Institute &
State University, Blacksburg, VA, USA
Abel S. Knottnerus University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands
Bettina Koch Department of Political Science, Virginia Polytechnic Institute &
State University, Blacksburg, VA, USA
Peter R. Moody Department of Political Science, University of Notre Dame,
Notre Dame, IN, USA
Eva-Maria Nag School of Government and International Affairs, Durham Uni-
versity, Durham, UK
Dina Rashed Department of Political Science, University of Chicago, Chicago,
IL, USA
Karin Zackari Historiska institutionen, LUX, Lunds Universitet, Lund, Sweden
vii
Terror, Violence, Coercion: States and
the Use of (Il)legitimate Force
Bettina Koch
Latest since the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center in 2001, academic as well
as public discourses in the West and elsewhere have shifted towards a perception
that deems violent non-state actors, frequently associate with the term global ter-
rorism, as the main threat to freedom and security. Thus, acts of violence that are
not committed by non-state actors and have not been labeled acts of (global) ter-
rorism seldom make it into the news and do not necessarily receive the public and
scholarly attention they deserve.1
The underlying assumption of this perspective in rooted in Max Weber’s fa-
mous definition of a state as the only “human community within a certain territory
that claims (successfully) the monopoly on the use of legitimate physical force
[Gewaltsamkeit]” (Weber 1980, p. 822). In a realpolitical reading, the state’s mo-
nopoly on the use of force has often been read as absolute because a state has the
legitimate right to defend itself against internal and external threats to its power
(Chaliand and Blin 2007, p. 10). Thus, in this reading, illegitimate use of physical
force is entirely the domain of non-state actors.
In political practice as well as in political theory, this view was never unchal-
lenged, whether the challenge finds its expression in ancient and medieval times in
the concept of tyrannicide, in (peasant) rebellions, or, in modern times, in violent
1
Although other acts of violence, including state violence, do not lack academics’ atten-
tion, most recent studies focus on a particular region or state (Burt 2010; Esparanza et al.
2010; Ganesan and Kim 2013) and, thus, do not draw any attention on the varieties of state
violence.
B. Koch ()
Department of Political Science, Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University,
220 Stanger Street, Blacksburg, VA 24061, USA
e-mail: bkoch@vt.edu
© Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden 2016 1

B. Koch (ed.), State Terror, State Violence, State – Sovereignty – Nation,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-658-11181-6_1
2 B. Koch
struggle against colonialism, authoritarian, or otherwise oppressive regimes. Al-

though Art. 1(4) of Protocol I of the Protocol Additional to the Geneva Convention
grants movements that fight against “colonial domination and alien occupation and
against racist regimes in the exercise of their right of self-determination” similar
rights as states in an international conflict, the addition remained contested and was
never ratified by the United States (Höfer 2013, p. 224).2 In essence, the Protocol
Additional achieves two things: First, by granting liberation movements as “states
in the making” already state like rights, it remains in the state-centered frame that
only state can use force legitimately. Second, it implies the possibility of the il-
legitimate use of force by states or state actors (colonial, alien occupation, racist).
Yet, in the logic of the document, the recognition of a legitimate case of national
self-determination remains in the domain of the international community of states
as represented by the United Nations, but not the people.
A logic that follows the tradition of Max Weber’s definition regards the le-
gitimacy of the use of force as a question of power, while the Geneva Conven-
tion and the United Nation see legitimacy as a problem of (international) law. For
the political scientist and particularly for the political theorist the question of the
legitimate use of force is not necessarily and exclusively a question of power or
(international) law; it is also a normative, a social, or an ethical problem. Wilhelm
Hennis (2009, p. 84) argues in an ethical-normative sense when he notes that a real
“crisis of legitimation takes the form of a conflict of legitimacy, a moral doubt [sit-
tlicher Zweifel] of the possibility of continuing obedience to the legal ruler.” In his
view, legitimacy rests with the people and not with the international community of
states, however defined.
By reframing Hennis’s “moral doubt” in the context of post-colonial struggles,
Enrique Dussel (2013, p. 416) describes an unavoidable conflict between the vic-
timized and the dominant system. “[T]he dominant system becomes intolerable
[…] because of the existence of victims on a massive scale, its intrinsic impossibil-
ity […] becomes a conscious reality in the critical consciousness of the community
of victims.” While the dominant system insists on maintaining the status quo, the
previous foundation of legitimacy has vanished.
Because legitimacy is not just an issue of law, but very much a normative and
social phenomenon that depends on perception and perspective, legitimacy crises
can manifest themselves in a variety of different forms. Usually although not nec-
essarily, they involve the use of violence: a people’s violent resistance, the state’s
For the full text of the Protocol Additional to the Geneva Convention of 12 August 1949,
2
and relating to the Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflicts (Protocol 1), 8
June 1977 see https://www.icrc.org/ihl/intro/470.
Terror, Violence, Coercion: States and the Use of (Il)legitimate Force 3
attempt to maintain power violently, or a combination of both. In some cases states

even refer to terrorist tactics in order to maintain the status quo. While according
to international law, states cannot be terrorist, or as Jeremy Waldron has put it,
“although states may sponsor terrorism by non-state actors, states or state officials
acting in role can’t themselves be terrorists. But no one denies that states can be
terrorizers” (Waldron 2010, p. 61).
Yet, the fact that state terrorism as such is not sanctioned or even acknowledged
by international law does not mean that states do not commit acts of violence that
violate international law and, in sum, may qualify as terrorism as a social fact
(Blakeley 2010; Jackson 2007), although not all actions of state violence neces-
sarily accumulate or involve terrorist tactics. While scholars like Blakeley and
Jackson, who subscribe to the school of critical terrorism studies, more recently
attempted to throw more light on states’ use of terroristic tactics (Jackson et al.
2009, 2010), we see an increasing attempt by states to label more and more expres-
sions of violent or non-violent opposition by non-state actors, including ordinary
citizens, as acts of terrorism. Most recently, Saudi Arabia included in its defini-
tion of terrorism “Calling for atheist thought in any form, or calling into question
the fundamentals of the Islamic religion on which this country is based” (Human
Rights Watch 2014), which, in essence, goes beyond simply criminalizing any vio-
lent or non-violent expression of dissent. The Saudi Arabian case may be extreme;
however, it sheds some light on a strategy that seems to become increasingly com-
mon: the criminalization of dissent in most, if not all of its expressions. From the
perspective of democratic theory, the consequences are severe. Although to a lesser
degree, what is true for a state that terrorizes its population holds also true for a
state that censures all expressions of dissent and intimidates its entire or particular
sections of its population. If a state terrorizes its own citizens,
[i]t damages and undermines the possibility of certain sorts of social interaction, and
in particular the possibility of conversation among the citizens to discuss, criticize,
and evaluate what is going on. This is partly a product of the use of secret police
and informers in the practice of state terrorism. […] By rendering or threatening
to render the population mindless with terror, the intimidator deprives the target
regime of something it needs, a population capable of rational choice (Waldron 2010,
pp. 63–64).
Robert E. Goodin 2006, p. 159) argues in a similar vein when he notes,
The larger political sin of terrorism, then, lies not in the wrong of the political actor’s
thereby securing some ‘unfair advantage’ over her political opponents or in the wrong
of frightening the people. Instead it lies in the way in which terrorism undermines
rational discourse across the political community as a whole. In that way, terrorism
deprives us collectively of the capacity to be genuinely self-governing, reasoning
together.
4 B. Koch
Both Waldron and Goodin reflect on democratic societies; in authoritarian or less

democratic regimes, the effects are similar and even more severe in the sense that
the possibility of political reform based on the recognition of the individual citizen
or subject as a being that carries certain (human and political) rights is jeopardized.
While Waldron and Goodin emphasize the negative impact of terrorizing on public
discourse, although to a lesser degree, the same is in tendency true for citizens who
have to endure acts of state violence that are short of terrorism. To be clear about
the distinction between violence and terrorism, terrorism, in general, is defined as
“the deliberate creation of a sense of fear, usually by the use of symbolic acts of
physical violence, to influence the political behavior of a given target group” (Neu-
mann and Smith 2008, p. 20) that “involves the deliberate targeting of civilians”
(Jackson 2007, p. 248). Violence, more generally, is understood as illegitimate use
of force “against the rights of the Other” and is distinct from coercion, the legiti-
mate use of force (Dussel 2013, p. 409).
While the political theorist has no difficulties in drawing a distinction between
terror, “ordinary” violence, and coercion, in political practice the distinction if of-
ten times blurred. In most instances of state violence, states use, whether intention-
ally or unintentionally, some sorts of terrorist tactics or elements. As Ian Cobain
from The Guardian outlines, after the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center and
the Pentagon, torture, frequently euphemized as “enhanced interrogation tactics,”
in the international community of states became a rather accepted tool, justified
by the (international) terrorist threat. Although not always publicly, more than
50 states, including 20 European states have backed the U.S. in torturing terror
suspects ( The Guardian 6 Feb 2013; see also Siems 2011). The involvement of
other states ranges from tacit agreement to active complicity. Although the use
of torture, in all its forms, is a clear violation of international law, attempts have
been made to justify interrogative torture. More recently, in an interview, Sir John
Sawers, former head of MI6, states that “torturing suspected terrorists produces
‘useful information’.” Specifically, Sir John claims that only through torturing a
terrorist suspect in Saudi Arabia, a terror attack on British soil could be prevented
( The Independent 1 March 2015). The type of torture referred to is interrogative;
it aims at extracting information, which, as implied above, occasionally is seen as
justifiable—despite the absolute ban on torture. Yet, as Henry Shue notes, even if
we accept this constraint, torture has the tendency never to stop at a foreseeable
point (maybe the subject has more information she is unwilling to reveal) and
easily turns into “terroristic torture” that is “used primarily to intimidate potential
opponents of the government from actively expressing their opposition in any form
considered objectionable by the regime.” Eventually, the “victim’s suffering—in-
deed, the victim—is being used entirely as a means to an end over which the victim
has no control” (Shue 1978, pp. 131–132).
The types of violence and/or terroristic tactics applied by a particular regime

depend on the particular regime type in question. For instance, it seems to be self-
evident that democratic regimes are more reluctant in torturing their own citizens;
however, as the example introduced above indicates, this does not mean that the
same reluctance exists as soon as citizens of other states are concerned. But it is
also dependent on cultural, socio-economic, and historic contexts. Yet, neither for
a citizen nor for an academic it is always easy and occasionally even impossible
to determine the nature of an act of violence. Is an act of violence committed by
a representative of the state an act of (ordinary) violence or is it already an act of
terror? While a state will refer to these acts as necessary acts of policing (coercion),
the motivation behind these acts are seldom revealed. Moreover, most, although
not all, of a state’s violent (re)actions remain below the radar of international law
or, more precisely, of international intervention based on international law viola-
tions and, thus, escape legal investigation and persecution by international courts.
Even though international intervention based on a United Nation mandate is not
too common, it does not mean that state violence is not a problem or only a prob-
lem that rarely occurs.
1 Overview of Chapters
This volume aims at shedding more light on the use of (il)legitimite force by states
and, thus, contributes to a counter-narrative to the dominant discourse that focusses
almost exclusively on non-state actors as the main source of violence and terror.
The cases selected for this book intend to highlight a variety of instances for the
use of violence by states and state actors. They also explore how the particular
use of violence, including terrorist tactics, is highly dependent on the cultural and
historic contexts in which the states emerge.
In order to stage the context of international law in which states are expected
to act legally, Abel Knottnerus outlines in the chapter International Law and the
Use of Armed Force by States the international legal framework. Knottnerus, argu-
ing from an explicitly legal perspective, explores how international law influences
state actions. He points out that international law impacts states’ decision making,
it is a means in order to justify decisions involving the use of armed forces, and,
ideally, it demands state actors’ responsibilities. Yet, his chapter also emphasizes
the shortcomings of international law. In addition to the shortcomings in the en-
forcement of international law, Knottnerus stresses the fact that international law
was written for international conflicts, while most conflicts in which states use
armed forces are rather internal than international conflicts. Thus, it is frequently
applied to armed conflicts that are outside the reach of its initial intent.
6 B. Koch
In Securitization and Terroristization: Analyzing States’ Usage of the Rhetoric

of Terrorism Priya Dixit presents “the case that the use of terrorism rhetoric is
itself a way by and through which state actors attempt to establish control over
their citizens and over the space within which state security forces can operate.”
By exploring terrorism as a linguistic practice, she argues that the state’s ability to
label some acts as terroristic and others as not terroristic, can be read as a form of
structural violence.
The following three chapters explore cases in which the particular use of state
violence needs to be seen in the light of the states’ colonial past. All three cases
also emphasize the impact of globalization on the states’ use of violence against
parts of their own citizens and residents. Despite these similarities, all three cases
illustrate the impact of culture and the particularities of the colonial past. In From
Colonialism to Globalization: State Violence in Modern India Eva-Maria Nag de-
scribes India as a “troubled and anxious state: anxious to maintain its territorial
integrity, political legitimacy and authority over its citizens.” She explores how
everyday state violence as experiences in colonial India continues into early post-
colonial Indian as aggression conducted by individual representatives of the state.
Moreover, her chapter discusses the asymmetries of socio-economic and political
power as an at first unrecognized version of structural violence that involves “the
grinding down of material and psychological recourses of the population through
corruption, arbitrary practices and misplaced competition between government
and other agencies in core areas of wellbeing such as health, nutrition and educa-
tion” and manifests “bureaucratic violence.” Her case also illustrates the limits of
electoral and participatory democracy for the “peaceful negotiation of conflicts
over resources, identities, and group rights.” The Indian case, however, is also
not free of the linguistic practice of terroristization as explored by Dixit, targeting
particularly the Muslim minority (Ghassem-Fachandi 2012, p. 60).
Identity and group rights are also essential concepts in Karin Zackari’s contri-
bution on Violence on the Periphery of the Thai State and Nationhood. Zackari
explores the significance of the created (elitist) identity of “Thainess” she inter-
prets as cultural violence. Her chapter discusses the “most violent spaces of the
state” as those “where non-citizens and marginalized groups are identified.” While
framing the conflicts as conflicts between peripheries and centers, the Thai case
indirectly supports Akbar Ahmed’s thesis of an increasing conflict at a global level
not as a clash of cultures, but between central governments and their peripheries
(Ahmed 2013, p. 9). In the context of the crafting of a national(ist) identity that
is bases on European and Japanese fascism ideologies, unchecked military might,
and Buddhist teaching and Brahmanic practices, Zackari examines three particu-
lar incidences: the farmers’ movement, the Deep South insurgence, and the com-
munist threat. As illustrated through the three incidences, state violence takes the
form of structural violence against periphery minorities who also lack the proper
Thai identity. The later also takes the form of exploitation under the conditions of
a globalized market. Her case, however, also represents direct violence, including
“torture, forced disappearance, arbitrary arrests, inadequate facilities for detention
and ignoring the rights of the detained” that are not free of terrorist tactics. The
practice of accusing individuals or groups of being “ant-royal communist” that
goes hand in hand with the refusal to investigate mass killings by para-military
groups or police forces also speaks to Dixit’s exploration of linguistic practices as
a means of (structural) violence.
Police violence is also in the center of Dina Rashed’s discussion of Violence
from Above, Violence from Below: The State and Policing Citizens in Mubarak’s
Egypt. Based on institutional inequalities and authoritarian policies, Rashed identi-
fies two, although related, manifestations of police violence in Mubarak’s Egypt:
state violence against political opposition and violence against “non-politicized
residents of impoverished areas.” She argues that “violence from below was caused
by the unequal distribution of state resources that favored high-ranking state agents
over low-ranking and noncommissioned offers during times of declining state ca-
pacities and neoliberal economic shifts.” Rashed explores how the police violence
in Egypt that involves harassment, surveillance, arrests, torture, and mass killings
contributed to the Arab Spring uprising. Her exploration of the constitutional re-
form of 2007 that entrusted the Ministry of the Interior with absolute power over
defining terrorists refers back to Dixit’s discussion.
In Killing the Chicken to Scare the Monkey: Some Notes on State Terror in the
People’s Republic of China Peter R. Moody takes a tour de force through the his-
tory of communist China in order to identify terrorist practices. Bases on the thesis
that state terror(ism) implies a “deficient governing capacity and legitimacy,” he
identifies specific phases of terroristic and violent state practices, starting with the
“psychology of terror” that was symptomatic for the Cultural Revolution that tar-
gets “black elements” (opponents of the regime) and “bad elements” (criminals).
The concept of “black elements” mirrors the anti-communist violence as explored
in the case of Thailand. While Mao’s death clearly marks an end of revolutionary
terror and political reforms in the 1980s made life much more predictable for or-
dinary Chinese citizens, Moody explores the significance of the reformed system
being “based rather on a system of law than the rule of law.” As already discussed
by Karin Zackari in her case study on Thailand, ethnic nationalism, again, is used
as a means to legitimize violence against ethnic minorities but also for the targeting
of Muslim minorities and, thus, can be read again, at least in parts, as a conflict be-
tween the center and the periphery. Moody concludes by noting that the “‘terroris-
tic’ element in the system persists as a consequence of how the system functions.”
8 B. Koch
While ethnicity and center versus periphery issues are also central in Russia’s
wars with Chechnya, Yelena Biberman draws our attention in Violence by Proxy:
State-Sponsored Rebels and Criminals in Chechnya to two rather under-researched
issues, namely the importance of public opinion and the increasing practice of
“outsourcing violence” by states.3 Biberman illustrate the shift in the Russian strat-
egy of a “public partnership with rebels and criminals during the Second Chechen
War, but not during the first one.” The second Chechen War also marks a rhetorical
shift from an “ethnic conflict” to an “anti-terrorist campaign.” She argues that the
use of proxies publicly “allows states to signal the support of the population from
which the rebels originate, thereby further legitimizing the counterinsurgency cam-
paign.” In this sense, the Chechnya case exemplifies the strategy of undermining
claims for group specific rights, including claims for self-determination, through
public opinion of the majority population and the ability to gain paramilitary sup-
port from section within the (ethnic) minority group.
While all previous chapters analyze the use of state violence that remains within
a recognized territory of a (nation) state, the last chapter U.S.-Drones Strikes: Acts
of Terror, Violence, or Coercion? explores the extraterritorial use of state violence
that is, at least in the standard narrative, short of warfare in the traditional sense.
Bettina Koch discusses from the perspective of international law and from the
perspective of violence and terror as social facts whether the U.S. drone strikes
strategy at the borderlands between Afghanistan and Pakistan qualifies as acts of
(legal) coercion, violence, or terror. While the legality of the strategy is widely
disputed, the case lingers between violence and terror. In this particular conflict
the linguistic practices of labeling the enemy as “terrorists” Dixit has explored
with emphasis on a national discourse can be studied in this particular case in its
trans-national application.
In sum, although with different emphasis, despite the cultural and historic dif-
ferences, all cases discussed in this volume show some similar strategies of le-
gitimizing violence and/or the use of terrorist tactics. Despite the international ban
on torture that is, according to international law, absolute, it continues to have its
place in a state’s toolbox in order to intimidate the majority or minority groups of
a given population. Together with other forms of (structural) violence and terrorist
practices conducted by state representatives, it undermines the possibility for struc-
tural reform and “damages and undermines the possibility of certain sorts of social
interaction, and in particular the possibility of conversation among the citizens to
3
In order to provide some examples, in addition to well-known outsourcing of violence
through private security forces like Blackwater in the last Iraq war, Pakistan, for instance
nurtured jihadist groups in the conflict over Kashmir with India that were later relocated to
the Pakistan-Afghanistan borderlands (Dorronsoro 2012).
discuss, criticize, and evaluate what is going on” (Waldron 2010, p. 63). Because a
state’s use of violence against its own population does not solve any internal con-
flicts—unless the oppression is absolute, it is not too far reaching to suggest that it
rather triggers more violence instead of less.
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Revealed: How torture was used to foil al-Qaeda 2010 plot to bomb two airliners 17 min
before explosion (2015). http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/revealed-
how-torture-was-used-to-foil-alqaeda-plot-to-bomb-two-airliners-17-minutes-before-
explosion-10077722.html. Accessed 1 Mar 2015.
Shue, H. (1978). Torture. Philosophy & Public Affairs, 7(2), 124–143.
Siems, L. (2011). The torture report: What the documents say about America’s post-9/11
torture program. New York: OR Books.
Waldron, J. (2010). Torture, terror, and trade-Offs: Philosophy for the White House. Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
Weber, M. (1980). Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft: Grundriß der verstehenden Soziologie. 5th
rev ed. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck.
Bettina Koch Associate Professor of Political Science/ASPECT at Virginia Polytechnic

Institute & State University. Research: Political theory, history of political thought, com-
parative political theory, politics and religion, political violence in transcultural comparison.
Publication: Patterns Legitimizing Political Violence in Transcultural Perspectives: Islamic
and Christian Traditions and Legacies (De Gruyter 2015)
Part I
Foundations
International Law and the Use of
Armed Force by States
Abel S. Knottnerus
1 Introduction
State violence is defined in this volume as “the illegitimate use of force by states
against the rights of others.” This definition gives a first idea of what state violence
is about, but it does not specify when the use of force by states becomes illegiti-
mate or what the rights of others are, independently or in relation to states. When
does the use of force by states turn into state violence? Based on the given defini-
tion, there are at least three ways in which scholars can answer this question. For
one, scholars can evaluate the ‘normative legitimacy’ of the use of force by states
and philosophize on the moral rights of individuals. When should states refrain
from the use of force and when do they have a moral obligation to exercise their
armed powers? Secondly, scholars can analyze the ‘sociological legitimacy’ of the
use of force by states.1 When does a society consider the use of force appropriate
and when is the recourse to armed powers believed to be illegitimate? Thirdly,
it can be examined when the use of force by states is deemed ‘legal’ or ‘illegal’.
When do states violate legal obligations by resorting to force, and what are rights
and responsibilities do individuals have in a legal sense?
This chapter focusses on what can be called state violence under international
law. I do not seek to assess when the use of force by states is illegitimate in a nor-
mative or sociological sense, but aim to identify the legal obligations of states and
The author is grateful for the detailed comments of André de Hoogh, Bettina Koch and
Andrej Zwitter on earlier drafts of this chapter.
1
On the different dimensions of the concept of legitimacy, see Thomas (2014).
A. S. Knottnerus ()
University of Groningen, Oude Kijk in’t Jatstraat 26, 9712 EK Groningen, The Netherlands
e-mail: Abel.S.Knottnerus@gmail.com

DOI 10.1007/978-3-658-11181-6_2
14 A. S. Knottnerus
the rights and responsibilities that individuals have under international law. More
specifically, I explore how international law regulates the use of ‘armed’ force by
states. In exclusion of other forms of force, such as economic or political coercion,
the use of armed force is understood to be the military actions of states against or
on the territory of other states, as well as the domestic use of armed force by state
agents against civilians and other persons within the jurisdiction of a state.
In the context of this volume, which looks at state violence from different per-
spectives, there are at least three reasons why I think that it is important to consider
how international law regulates the use of armed force by states. First of all, to
the extent that international law is part of the decision-making of states, it has the
potential to constrain states in the use of their armed powers. While it is difficult
to determine how international law exactly influences the behavior of states, it
should count for something that states generally observe their obligations under
international law. Secondly, even if specific decisions on the use of armed force are
not in any way motivated by rules of international law, then these rules still play
an important role in how these decisions are justified. Both at the domestic and the
international level, state agents try to defend their use of armed force in reference
to rules of international law. Finally, and most importantly, international law mat-
ters to the study of state violence because victims can find a form of reparation
on the basis of international law. States, but also individuals that act in a public
capacity can be held responsible under international law for at least some cases of
state violence.
The first part of the chapter discusses how different domains of international
law regulate the use of armed force by states. What are the relevant obligations of
states, and what rights and responsibilities do individuals have under the law on
the use of force, international humanitarian law, international human rights law,
and international criminal law? The second part examines how these rules are en-
forced by international courts. Where can victims of state violence obtain a form
of reparation? Finally, the third part concludes by highlighting some of the main
challenges for the international regulation of the use of armed force by states.
2 Four Domains of International Law
International law consists of various domains (also known as fields, regimes or

bodies of law) that can be distinguished on the basis of their specific subject area.
The use of armed force by states is mostly regulated in four of these domains:
firstly, the ‘law on the use of force’ ( jus ad bellum) comprises rules on when states
are allowed to resort to armed force against another state or against a non-state
actor on the territory of another state; secondly, ‘international humanitarian law’
International Law and the Use of Armed Force by States 15
( jus in bello) regulates the conduct of states and individuals in the course of armed
conflicts; thirdly, international human rights law recognizes that individuals hold
fundamental rights that states are obliged to respect, protect and fulfill in their re-
course to armed force; and finally, international criminal law imposes responsibili-
ties on individuals and governs the international investigation and prosecution of
international crimes, including the excessive use of armed force by states.
2.1 Law on the Use of Force
The cornerstone of the first domain lies in the UN Charter and more specifically
in the prohibition of the use of armed force that is enshrined in Article 2(4) of
the Charter.2 This provision reads that “all members shall refrain in their interna-
tional relations from the threat or the use of force against the territorial integrity
or political independence of any state, or in any other matter inconsistent with the
Purposes of the United Nations.” Against the backdrop of this sweeping prohibi-
tion, the Charter foresees in two grounds on which the use of armed force by states
can be justified: (1) the right to self-defense and (2) the enforcement actions of the
Security Council.
The first explicit exception to the prohibition of the use of armed force is the
right to self-defense. Pursuant to Article 51 of the Charter, all states have “the
inherent right of individual or collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs …
until the Security Council has taken the measures necessary to maintain interna-
tional peace and security.” A right to self-defense may exist in response to an armed
attack of another state, but also in reaction to an armed attack that is initiated by
a non-state actor that operates from the territory of another state. Furthermore, a
right to self-defense may be exercised by a state itself, but it may also ask other
states to assist or act on its behalf. In fact, states may be obliged to assist, as is
the case for NATO member states, who have agreed under Article 5 of the North-
Atlantic Treaty that an armed attack against a member in Europe or North-America
shall be considered an attack against them all.
The right to self-defense under the UN Charter is limited in at least two ways.3
Firstly, the defensive use of armed force must always observe the ‘proportional-
ity principle’. Simply put, one cross-border incident cannot justify the start of a
2
Note that it has been claimed that Article 2(4) also includes other forms of force such as po-
litical and especially economic coercion. The prevailing view is, however, that the prohibi-
tion of the use of force is limited to armed force (Randelzhofer and Dörr 2012, pp. 208–209).
3
It remains contested whether and to what extent there exists a general right of self-defense
under customary international law apart from Article 51 of the UN Charter (Randelzhofer
and Nolte 2012, pp. 1403–1406).
16 A. S. Knottnerus
full-blown war. Secondly, when a state invokes its right to self-defense it has the
obligation to report this immediately to the Security Council and to discontinue its
use of armed force as soon as the Council has taken necessary measures. What this
shows is that the right to self-defense allows for a temporary rather than a structural
response to the threat or use of armed force by another state or a non-state actor.
A second exception to the prohibition of the use of armed force is the use of
enforcement actions on behalf of the Security Council. Under the Charter, the
Council has the primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace
and security. When the Council determines that there exists a threat to the peace, a
breach of the peace or an act of aggression in the sense of Article 39 of the Charter,
it has the legal power to take decisions that are binding for its member states. In
this regard, the Council may also authorize states to use armed force. The Council
has done this several times, such as in 1990 when it approved a US-led coalition
of states to use ‘all necessary means’ to realize the liberation of Kuwait from Iraqi
occupation. Through a resolution of the Charter, a state or a group of states may
thus be entitled to resort to armed force against another state or against a non-state
actor that operates from the territory of another state.
The precise ‘scope’ of the enforcement actions of the Council and of the right to
self-defense has been subject to considerable debate. It is, for example, contested
whether a state can invoke its right to self-defense when using force to anticipate
future attacks and states do often not agree on how a specific authorization of the
Council should be interpreted. Still, the ‘existence’ of the two exceptions that are
explicitly contained in the Charter has not been challenged.
The same cannot be said of two other possible justifications for the use of armed
force that states and commentators have suggested: (1) the protection of nationals
abroad and (2) humanitarian intervention. First of all, some have argued that there
is an unwritten exception to the prohibition of Article 2(4) allows states to resort
to armed force in order to protect or rescue their nationals from the territory of an-
other state. Various commentators have claimed that under customary international
law this exception exists “in limited cases and under well-defined preconditions”
(Randelzhofer and Dörr 2012, p. 228). Most importantly, the foreign state must
either be unwilling or unable to ensure the safety of the concerned persons and the
intervening state should not have any other motives besides rescuing their nation-
als. Other commentators have pointed out, however, that only a few states have
used force to rescue nationals, and that this argument has never been invoked as the
sole justification of a state for resorting to force (Gray 2008, pp. 156–157). Thus,
the existence of the protection of nationals abroad as an exception to the prohibi-
tion of the use of armed force is far from certain.
The legal status of the alleged right to humanitarian intervention—which may

be defined as the use of armed force by states with the aim to protect people from
massive human rights violations by states or non-state actors—is even more uncer-
tain. Several commentators have argued that the Charter, customary international
law and/or the newly developed concept of a ‘responsibility to protect’ foresee in
this exception to the prohibition of the use of armed force (Randelzhofer and Dörr
2012, p. 222). However, each of these three possible legal bases for a right (or
even obligation) to humanitarian intervention raise serious difficulties. Firstly, a
humanitarian intervention as an implicit exception in the Charter seems impossible
to reconcile with Article 2(4) unless one takes a rather “artificial definition” of the
encompassed criterion of territorial integrity (Shaw 2008, p. 1156). Secondly, the
available evidence of state practice and opinio juris—which are the two condi-
tions for the establishment of a rule of customary international law—is sparse and
can hardly be called sufficient at this point in time. And finally, the concept of a
responsibility to protect is mainly political and to the extent that it does have legal
implications, it “stops short of including the autonomous right of individual states
to use armed force against another state” (Randelzhofer and Dörr 2012, p. 225).
All this comes to show that the existence of humanitarian intervention as a legal
exception to the prohibition of the use of armed force—rather than a moral justifi-
cation—continues to be very uncertain.
In short, the different rules on when states are allowed to resort to armed force
provide various rights and obligations for states. The difficulty with applying these
rules is that their exact scope or even their existence remains heavily contested.
More than any of the other three domains that are considered here, jus ad bel-
lum suffers from manifest uncertainties (Kammerhofer 2012). There are several
reasons debit to this, but the most important one is that the relevant provisions of
the Charter were written for inter-state conflicts and with the idea that the Council
would always be able to take a leading role in resolving these conflicts. The reali-
ties that the law on the use of force now must seek to accommodate is that most
armed conflicts are internal rather than between states, and that in many conflicts
the Council will not be able to maintain or restore international peace and security.
2.2 International Humanitarian Law
Apart from jus ad bellum, international law also seeks to regulate the conduct of
states and individuals in the course of armed conflicts. Think, for instance, of rules
on the protection of civilians in occupied territories, but also of rules on prohibited
methods of warfare and the treatment of prisoners of wars. The shared aim of these
18 A. S. Knottnerus
rules is to humanize international as well as internal armed conflicts. Originally

called the ‘laws of war’, they have more recently been termed international human-
itarian law (IHL). While many of these rules are part of customary international
law, the principal sources of IHL are a number of international conventions and in
particular the four Geneva Conventions of 1949 and the two Additional Protocols
of 1977 (AP I and II).
Who are protected by these conventions and protocols? The rules of IHL extend
protection to a wide range of persons. However, the scope and form of this protec-
tion depends on whether a person is or is not directly participating in an armed
conflict—combatants versus civilians—and also on the way(s) in which a person
is participating. As a first rule of thumb, there are three groups of combatants that
each have a different form of protection under IHL: (1) those who are members
of the armed forces of a party to an armed conflict, (2) other persons that take a
direct part in the hostilities and (3) combatants who have become hors de combat
(out of the fight).
The first group can be called ‘privileged’ combatants. Upon capture they are
entitled to the protections of prisoners of war (POW), which means, among other
things, that they should be kept alive, in good health and be treated humanely. Fur-
thermore, as long as these ‘official’ combatants behave in accordance with IHL,
they also have the ‘combatant privilege’ to participate directly in hostilities: they
have the right to attack and kill.
The legal position of the second group of combatants is more complex and un-
certain. Under a number of conditions this group also enjoys a combatant privilege.
For instance, states may be obliged under IHL to grant POW status to captured
members of rebel groups or liberation armies. On the other hand, one of the most
contested questions of IHL is when and to what extent states have obligations with
respect to members of organized armed groups such as Al Qaeda, the Taliban, or
Islamic State (Solis 2010, pp. 205–219).
A third group of combatants are those that have become hors de combat, which
can either be by choice or by force. When privileged combatants surrender or get
wounded, sick or shipwrecked, they are normally entitled POW status when they
fall into the hands of an opposite party. In addition, the first two Geneva Conven-
tions encompass specific provisions that are directed at giving further protection to
wounded, sick and shipwrecked combatants.
In comparison to the three different groups of combatants, civilians enjoy a
more extensive form of protection, at least if they are not directly participating in
hostilities. One of the most basic rules of IHL, known as the principle of distinc-
tion, is that the parties to an armed conflict should at all times distinguish between
civilians and combatants, and between civilian and military objectives. Article
51(2) of AP I stresses that civilians shall “not be the object of attack.” This does
not mean, however, that their protection is absolute. What armed forces must do
under IHL is take the principle of proportionality into account. This second core
principle of IHL is defined in article 51(5)(b) of AP I, which reads that an attack is
disproportionate when the expected loss of civilian life, injury to civilians or dam-
age to civilian objects is “excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military
advantage anticipated.”
In addition to the principles of distinction and proportionality, militarily neces-
sity and unnecessary suffering are considered the other two core principles of IHL.
Military necessity essentially means that “no more force or greater violence should
be used to carry out a military operation than is necessary in the circumstances”
(Solis 2010, p. 258). This principle is inextricably linked to and dependent on the
principles of proportionality and unnecessary suffering. The latter principle lies be-
hind the different rules and specific conventions on prohibited methods of warfare.
As stated in Article 35(2) of AP I, “it is prohibited to employ weapons … and meth-
ods of warfare of a nature to cause superfluous injury or unnecessary suffering.”
In considering the scope of these and other more specific humanitarian rules
that can apply to states as well as to individuals, it is important to realize that IHL
differentiates between two types of armed conflicts. Traditionally, the laws of war
were mainly concerned with ‘international armed conflicts’. The Geneva Conven-
tions of 1949 (as well as AP I) were designed for cases of declared war between
states and any other armed conflicts that would arise between states. In the case of
a ‘non-international armed conflict’ only so-called ‘common’ Article 3 of the four
Geneva Conventions would apply. This provision contains a list of basic humani-
tarian norms, such as that the wounded and sick shall be collected and cared for.
With the adoption of AP II, which was specifically drafted to extend other essential
humanitarian rules to internal conflicts, IHL has started to adjust to the new reali-
ties of armed conflicts. In this respect, IHL has been more ‘progressive’ than the
law on the use of force. Still, many rules on international armed conflicts are more
far-reaching than the rules on internal conflicts.
2.3 International Human Rights Law
The third domain of international law that should be distinguished in the context
of the use of armed force by states is international human rights law. Its princi-
pal sources are the human rights treaties that have been adopted in the course of
the last 70 years. The international legalization of human rights started with the
adoption of the UN Charter (1945) and the non-binding Universal Declaration of
Human Rights (1948), which were complemented in 1966 by the International
20 A. S. Knottnerus
Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the International Covenant
on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. Taken together, these four instruments
recognize a broad list of fundamental rights and freedoms that every human being
should be able to enjoy.
Since the adoption of these first international instruments, which have been rati-
fied by most states, the international human rights system has expanded through
the adoption of a long list of specialized human rights treaties that focus on the
rights of particularly vulnerable groups. Furthermore, several regional institutions
have developed their own human rights systems. The most prominent examples are
the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), the American Convention on
Human Rights, and the African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights.
Apart from their differences in substance and geographic range, there are re-
markable similarities between all these human rights treaties. These similarities
define international human rights law as a distinctive domain of international law.
A first feature that the different international and regional human rights treaties
share is the nature of the obligations that they create for states. These obligations
are quite different from other types of obligations that states have under interna-
tional law (Megret 2010, p. 124). By ratifying human rights treaties, states do not
primarily commit to respect human rights vis-à-vis other states. It is the rights of
individuals within their jurisdiction that states promise to secure and advance.
A second similarity can be found in how states are supposed to discharge their
obligations under human rights treaties. In a general sense, it can be said that states
must seek to (1) respect, (2) protect, and (3) fulfil human rights. States have first
and foremost a duty to respect human rights, which means that they have a ‘nega-
tive obligation’ not to take actions that would violate particular rights. State agents
should, for instance, not torture their prisoners—which would be an (illegal) act of
state violence. In addition, states have a duty to protect persons from certain human
rights violations: they have to ensure that rights of individuals are not violated by
third parties and can be held liable for not offering an adequate level of protection.
This is known as the ‘indirect horizontal effect’ of human rights. Finally, under
international human rights law, states have a ‘positive obligation’ to fulfil par-
ticular human rights. States must, for instance, incorporate the relevant rights into
domestic law and ensure the provision of effective remedies to victims of human
rights violations.
A third feature of international human rights law is that in implementing their
obligations domestically, states have a significant amount of flexibility. While
states are bound by the same (minimum) standards, the implementation of these
standards does not have to be uniform. More than any of the other three domains
of international law that are highlighted here, human rights law seeks to accommo-
date different cultural, geographic, legal and political contexts. This idea of plural
implementation is also known as the ‘margin of appreciation’, a doctrine that has
been pioneered by the European Court of Human Rights.
A fourth similarity among the different human rights treaties is that most rights
are not ‘absolute’ in the sense that states cannot limit them. Under specifically listed
circumstances or through a general limitation clause (such as article 12(3) of the
ICCPR), most treaties allow states to limit the enjoyment of particular rights. For
instance, the right to be free from detention is limited by the possibility of imprison-
ment for criminal offenses. Furthermore, most human right treaties include a ‘dero-
gation regime’, which authorizes states to suspend some of their obligations in case
of a public emergency, such as a natural disaster or an armed conflict. On the other
hand, however, some rights are absolute in the sense that they are non-derogable.
There is no emergency that allows a state, for instance, to torture or enslave people.
The final feature that characterizes international human rights law is its scope
of application. States generally owe human rights obligations to persons that are
within their jurisdiction. This includes both the nationals of a state, but also non-
nationals that reside on its territory (although they may not have the same rights as
nationals). In addition, states may have human rights obligations outside of their
territory, especially when a state has effective control over the territory of another
state or over the enjoyment of a particular right by an individual. In a general sense,
it may thus be said that international human rights law applies regardless of who
the victim of state violence is.4
Core Rights vis-à-vis the Use of Armed Force by States

Which rights intend to protect person from the excessive use of armed force by
states? By resorting to armed force, states can violate any of the rights that are part
of international human rights law. Yet, the rights that are most directly associated
with the use of armed force by states are those that seek to protect the integrity of
the person. This comprises the right to be free from torture and the right to life.
These so-called “core-rights” put important, and to a certain extent absolute con-
straints on the use of armed force by the security forces or the other law enforce-
ment officials of a state (Rodley 2010, p. 209).
The right to be free from torture (and ill-treatment) is guaranteed in all the ma-
jor human rights treaties as well as in the UN Convention against Torture and Other
Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (UNCAT). Article 1 of this
4
Note, however, that the extraterritorial application of international human rights law and
its relation to IHL (in the context of an armed conflict) remain uncertain and relatively unex-
plored areas in international law.
22 A. S. Knottnerus
Convention provides the most widely accepted definition of torture as “any act by
which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental” is intentionally in-
flicted on a person by or with the consent of a public official or other person acting
in an official capacity “for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person
information or a confession.” As defined by UNCAT, torture is thus by necessity an
act of state violence, since it can only be committed by or with the consent of state
agents.5 Moreover, in contrast to most other human rights, the right to be free from
torture does not allow for any exception, such as national security or the infamous
ticking bomb scenario. This means, in other words, that torture is a form of state
violence which is always prohibited under international human rights law.
The right to life is the second core right that seeks to protect the integrity of
the person. With regard to the use of armed force by states, this right prohibits the
arbitrary deprivation of life by the security forces or other law enforcement offi-
cials of a state. Clearly, this prohibition does not mean that state agents are never
authorized to take the life of a person within the jurisdiction of a state. All the ma-
jor human rights treaties recognize that in a number of situations a state may have
to use lethal force, for example, to defend a person from unlawful violence or to
prevent the escape of a lawfully detained person. The use of lethal force by states
agents is, however, only acceptable under international human rights law when this
is absolutely necessary to achieve a predefined objective and when force is used in
a proportionate manner. In this sense, the right to life poses an important constraint
on the use of armed force by states, even though the right is not as absolute as the
right to be free from torture.
2.4 International Criminal Law
The last domain of international law that should be highlighted here is interna-
tional criminal law (ICL). There are several historical precedents to the interna-
tional investigation and prosecution of mass atrocities, the most important being
the Nuremberg and Tokyo Tribunals that were created by the Allied Powers to
prosecute German and Japanese officials in the aftermath of the Second World War.
These Tribunals played a major role in developing the legal notions of individual
and command responsibility for international crimes. As a distinctive domain of
international law, however, ICL mainly evolved in the middle of the 1990s with the
5
Note, however, that the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court does not require
the element of official responsibility. Torture as a crime against humanity or war crime can
thus also be committed by non-state actors.
establishment of the ad hoc tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda (ICTY
and ICTR), which was followed by the opening of the International Criminal Court
(ICC) in 2002.
The scope of this relatively young domain of international law is difficult to
set, as there is disagreement on which offences can be described as international
crimes. An artificial distinction can be drawn between a narrow and a broad un-
derstanding of international crimes. In a narrow sense, international crimes refer
to “those offences over which international courts or tribunals have been given
jurisdiction under general international law” (Cryer et al. 2010, p. 5). This includes
what have been called the four ‘core crimes’ that together form the subject matter
jurisdiction of the ICC: the crime of genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes
and the crime of aggression (or crime against peace). According to the Preamble of
the Rome Statute of the ICC, these are “the most serious crimes of concern to the
international community as a whole.”
Alternatively, a broad understanding defines international crimes as all offences
that have been created through international law. In addition to the core crimes,
there are various treaties that oblige states to investigate and prosecute crimes such
as piracy, slave trade, drug trafficking and terrorism. Moreover, recent plans for
an ‘African Criminal Court’ foresee in jurisdiction over crimes such as corruption,
money laundering and the illicit exploitation of natural resources. Those that pre-
fer to limit the notion of international crimes to the four core crimes have argued,
however, that these other punishable offences under international law should be
labeled ‘treaty crimes’ or ‘transnational crimes’. This would, arguably, reflect that
these crimes are mainly associated with non-state actors (Schabas 2011, p. 89).6
Core Crimes by State Agents

Regardless of the preferred definition of international crimes, it is clear that the
four core crimes are the most recognizable and the most developed part of ICL
when it comes to the use of armed force by states. For present purposes, it is im-
portant to stress that each of the core crimes can be committed or facilitated by
state agents. ICL thus seeks to address some of the most shocking cases of state
violence, in which individuals acting in public capacity are personally responsible
for the abuse of the armed powers of a state. For example, the military commander
6
Note that even if these crimes are not considered international crimes and as such do not
form part of ICL, when state agents are involved in planning or committing any of these
crimes, including terrorism, they do engage in criminal acts of state violence. While the
responsible individuals may not be prosecuted before an international court, they may still
be charged on the basis of the relevant treaties by a domestic court within or outside the
respective states.
24 A. S. Knottnerus
of the armed forces of a state can be personally responsible for the crime of geno-
cide when he or she has ordered, solicited or induced soldiers to destroy—in whole
or in part—a national, ethical, racial or religious group.7
Military commanders, but also other persons acting in public capacity, includ-
ing a Head of State, can be prosecuted and convicted on the basis of ICL, even if
they are not directly involved in killing, raping, or other mass atrocities. The prin-
ciple of command responsibility, as defined in the Rome Statute, stipulates that a
military commander or another person in charge, who knew or should have known
that the armed forces under his or her control were committing or about to commit
mass atrocities, can be criminally responsible for these crimes. This responsibility
is subject to the condition that he or she has “failed to take all necessary and rea-
sonable measures within his or her power to prevent or repress” these crimes. The
underlying idea is that with great power comes great responsibility. In this sense,
ICL can be understood as the ultimate check on the monopoly that states have on
the use of armed force.
3 International Courts
How are the rules of international law on the use of armed force by states en-
forced? The highlighted domains of international law comprise various obligations
for states, and rights and responsibilities for individuals, but what happens if these
rules are not respected? Where can a state file a claim against another state for
violating international law? And where can private actors go, apart from a domestic
court, when a state fails to secure their human rights?
Traditionally, international law lacked effective remedies and functioned on the
basis of reciprocity between states. Where international courts existed, they did not
have compulsory jurisdiction, which meant that they could only rule with the con-
sent of the involved states. Since the end of the Cold War, however, international
adjudication has evolved rapidly and is now in many cases obligatory. “Old style”
international courts have been replaced and complemented by “new-style” interna-
7
In fact, the crime of aggression is specifically designed to punish the excessive use of
armed force by states. As defined by Article 8bis of the Rome Statute—which still has to
enter into force—the crime of aggression means “the planning, preparation, initiation or
execution, by a person in a position effectively to exercise control over or to direct the politi-
cal or military action of a State, of an act of aggression which, by its character, gravity and
scale, constitutes a manifest violation of the Charter of the United Nations [italics added].”
Based on this definition, individuals can be held responsible for manifest violations of the
law of the use of force.
tional courts that have compulsory jurisdiction, issue binding decisions and allow
private actors to initiate litigation against state agents (Alter 2014, p. 5). Based
on these new legal powers, international courts play new and distinct roles in the
international system (Alter 2012, p. 345).
With respect to the use of armed force by states, international courts can, first
of all, fulfill their traditional role as dispute-settler. On the request of the involved
states, they can help to find a peaceful solution for a dispute about a past or still
ongoing armed conflict. Furthermore, several new style international courts can
enforce the rules on the use of armed force by states, in the sense that they assess
whether states and individuals comply with these rules. Most notably, human rights
courts can adjudicate cases on violations of international human rights law and in-
ternational criminal courts (and tribunals) can investigate and prosecute individu-
als that are criminally responsible for the excessive use of armed force by states.
3.1 Inter-State Dispute Courts
The archetypical role of international courts and other international adjudicative

bodies is dispute settlement between states. Today, at least 17 permanent inter-
national courts have a dispute settlement role (Alter 2012, p. 355). Only a few of
them, however, have jurisdiction to deal with disputes over the resort to armed
force by states. The most influential court in this regard, because of its global
reach and general jurisdiction, is the International Court of Justice (ICJ). Since its
establishment in 1945, the ICJ has issued binding decisions on various armed con-
flicts within different parts of the world, including Eastern-Europe, Africa, Latin-
America, the Middle-East, and South-East Asia. Through these rulings, the ICJ has
helped to resolve the particular disputes, but also contributed to the clarification of
the rules on the use of armed force by states.8
The principle underlying the ICJ’s legal powers remains, however, that it only
has jurisdiction with the consent of the involved parties. Until now, 71 states have
deposited an optional declaration through which they recognize that the Court has
compulsory jurisdiction in relation to any other state that has accepted the same
obligation. Military active countries like the US, France, China, Russia, Israel,
Argentina, Saudi-Arabia, Syria, and Turkey have not recognized the ICJ’s compul-
8
The ICJ has also helped to clarify these rules through some its advisory opinions, such
as on the legality of the use of nuclear weapons and on the interpretation of specific peace
treaties.
26 A. S. Knottnerus
sory jurisdiction. This clearly poses a limit on the ICJ’s ability to rule on inter-state
disputes over the use of armed force by states.
3.2 Human Rights Courts
Beyond dispute settlement, international courts are also directly engaged with the
enforcement of the rules on the use of armed force by states. Several international
courts have obtained legal powers to oversee whether states, and to a certain extent
individuals, comply with international law and to specify remedies for victims of
state violence. Human rights courts play an important role in this regard. They al-
low states and—under certain conditions—individuals to file claims against (oth-
er) states for their alleged failure to respect, protect or fulfill human rights in their
recourse to the use of armed force.
As of 2015, there are three human rights courts whose jurisdiction is solely
focused on human rights: the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), the Inter-
American Court of Human Rights, and the African Court on Human and Peoples
Rights.9 Together, they have issued over 15,000 binding decisions on human rights
violations, including many cases on the excessive use of armed force by states
(Alter 2014, p. 73). The lion share of these decisions (98 %) comes from the EC-
tHR, which has compulsory jurisdiction over applications by both state parties and
individuals. Under the condition that they have exhausted their domestic remedies,
individuals can file a case before the ECtHR against any of the 47 contracting
states, which encompasses all EU member states, but also Russia, Turkey and the
whole of Eastern-Europe (except for Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Kosovo).
In comparison to their European counterpart, the legal powers of the Inter-
American and African human rights courts are more limited. The Inter-American
Court can rule on human rights violations by states that have ratified the American
Convention of Human Rights.10 Individuals cannot file a case directly before the
Court—but only indirectly through one of the state parties or through the Inter-
American Commission on Human Rights. In a similar vein, the African Court on
9
In addition, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Court of Justice
and the Caribbean Court of Justice can under certain circumstances rule on human rights
violations. There is also a pending protocol that would extend human rights jurisdiction to
the East African Court of Justice.
10
Of the 35 member states of the Organization of American States, 25 have ratified the
Convention, and 20 have accepted the compulsory jurisdiction of the Inter-American Court.
The US, Canada and several of the English speaking Caribbean countries have not ratified
the Convention.
Human and People’s Rights (ACHPR) has jurisdiction over applications by one of
the 27 state parties to the African Charter and over cases that are referred to the
Court by the African Commission on Human Rights.11 Furthermore, the African
Court allows direct litigation by individuals. Yet, until now only seven African
countries have accepted the Court’s jurisdiction over private complaints.12
Realistically speaking, outside of Europe, most victims of state violence are not
able to file a direct case against a state before a human rights court. In Asia, the
Middle-East, and Oceania there are at this point no regional human rights courts,
whereas the courts in the Inter-American and African human rights system adjudi-
cate only a limited number of cases and have no jurisdiction over human rights vio-
lations in large parts of their respective regions. In this sense, international human
rights law is enforced in a selective manner. There are remedies at the international
level for some but certainly not for all human rights violations.13
3.3 International Criminal Courts and Tribunals
In addition to the human rights courts, international criminal courts and tribunals
(ICTs) are also directly involved with the enforcement of the rules on the use of
armed force by states. The ICC and the two ad-hoc tribunals that have been created
by created by the Security Council (ICTY and ICTR) are the most well-known
ICTs. Furthermore, there are several ‘hybrid’ courts and tribunals that combine
domestic and international elements in their legal mandate—such as the Special
Court for Sierra Leone, the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia,
and the Special Tribunal for Lebanon. Together these different courts and tribunals
form a mixed family of institutions that are tasked with the investigation and pros-
11
This means that only half of the 54 member states of the AU have ratified the African
Charter. Note that since 2008 there is a pending protocol that would merge the ACHPR with
the still non-existent African Court of Justice. The new court would be called the ‘African
Court of Justice and Human Rights’, and would also have criminal jurisdiction.
12
These states are Burkina Faso, Ghana, Malawi, Mali, Rwanda, Tanzania and Republic of
Cote d’Ivoire.
13
To be clear, this does not mean that there are no other important protection mechanisms
in place. At the international level, the Human Rights Council, the Office of the High Com-
missioner for Human Rights and the UN treaty bodies play a crucial role in monitoring state
compliance with international human rights law. They foresee in various procedures such as
state reporting, inter-state complaint procedures and even optional individual complaint pro-
cedures. Still, it should be stressed that these other protections mechanisms do not function
as a ‘world court of human rights’. Their mandate has to be distinguished from the enforce-
ment role that the European, African and Inter-American human rights courts (can) fulfill.
28 A. S. Knottnerus
ecution of individuals who are held responsible for the commission of international
crimes. Through the convictions of high-level perpetrators, but also by allowing
victims to participate in judicial proceedings and by arranging financial compensa-
tion, ICTs play an important role in providing a form of reparation to at least some
victims of state violence.
Among the different ICTs, the ICC is the only court with a permanent and—
theoretically speaking—universal mandate. Under certain conditions, the ICC has
jurisdiction over crimes that are committed within the territory of one of the 123
states that have so far ratified the Rome Statute and over crimes that are commit-
ted by the nationals of these states on the territory of a non-state party (think for
instance of the alleged crimes of UK soldiers in Iraq). Moreover, the Court has ju-
risdiction over crimes committed in non-state parties when these crimes have been
referred to the Court by the Security Council or by the state itself. This gives the
Court jurisdiction over many but by no means all international crimes. Nor does
the ICC have the financial and institutional capacity to investigate and prosecute
all the crimes that fall within its jurisdiction. The harsh reality is that the Court
cannot take up more than a few cases a year.
The ICC thus faces the same challenge as the human rights courts: it can only
enforce the relevant rules of international law in a selective manner. This is not
to say that the ICC is a biased or normatively fraught institution, as some have
claimed. Indeed, states have bound themselves to the ICC and, more generally,
some justice is better than no justice at all. Still, the fact that the Court lacks univer-
sal membership and only has a limited capacity to enforce international criminal
law does show that the international legal framework on the use of armed force by
states can only assist some victims of state violence.
4 Concluding Remarks
In exploring how international law regulates the use of armed force by states, this
chapter has highlighted four domains of international law: under the law of the use
of force and international humanitarian law states have various obligations that
constrain when and how states may use their armed powers; under international
human rights law individuals have rights that states need to respect, protect and
fulfil when they resort to armed force; and finally, under international criminal law,
but also under international humanitarian law, responsibilities are imposed directly
on individuals that act in a public capacity, such as a Head of State, a military
commander or an individual soldier. In these and related ways, international law
seeks to prevent and punish the excessive use of armed force by states, that is, state
violence in a legal sense.
International law and the identified international courts have helped to advance
these objectives. Yet, the international regulation of the use of armed force by
states does also face serious challenges. Some of them lie in the overlap between
the different domains of international law, which has led to different interpretations
of similar legal issues. This problem is known as the fragmentation risk of interna-
tional law. Other challenges follow from the lack of remedies at the international
level. While the influence of international courts on the international system has
increased significantly since the end of the Cold War, there are in many cases no
international remedies for state violence. Especially for international human rights
law and international criminal law, there is the risk that the rules on the use of
armed force by states continue to be enforced in a selective manner, as some states
are subject to the jurisdiction of human rights courts and international criminal
courts and tribunals, whereas others refuse to bind themselves in these ways.
Furthermore, the nature of armed conflicts and the role of states in these con-
flicts have changed so rapidly that international law has not always managed to
catch up. The law on the use of force is a clear example. The provisions in the UN
Charter on self-defense and the enforcement powers of the Security Council were
written for inter-state conflicts and with the idea that the Council would always be
able to take a leading role in resolving these conflicts. Today, however, we find
ourselves in a world in which most conflicts are internal or transnational, and in a
time where wars are fought by drones, where a terrorist can hide in every suburb,
and where the Council is more often divided then united—as the current situation
in Syria painfully illustrates.
Despite these and other challenges, international law and international courts
do play an important role in addressing state violence. For many, there is—and
will likely remain—a gap between what is considered the illegitimate use of armed
force in a normative or sociological sense, and what is deemed the illegal use of
armed force under international law. Ultimately, however, international law does
constrain states in their decisions on the recourse to armed force, whereas inter-
national courts allow at least some victims of state violence a form of reparation
outside of their domestic legal system. For these reasons, international law matters
to the study of state violence.
30 A. S. Knottnerus
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Abel S. Knottnerus is a PhD Researcher in International Law and International Relations

at the University of Groningen. Publication, inter alia: Africa and the International Criminal
Court (Cambridge University Press 2016), with Kamari Clarke and Eefje de Volder (Eds.).
Securitization and Terroristization:
Analyzing States’ Usage of the
Rhetoric of Terrorism
Priya Dixit
1 Introduction: Labeling “Terrorist” Acts
In a December 5, 2014, Christian Science Monitor article about violent attacks in

Kansas City and Austin, writer Dan Murphy asked, ‘US “terrorism?” What’s not
being said about Kansas City, Austin attacks’ (Murphy 2014). He was referring to
two recent attacks in the United States; one, where a man ran down and killed a
15-year old boy outside a mosque in Kansas City, Missouri on December 4, 2014.
The second case was when a man “fired more than 100 rounds at various targets
in Austin, Texas, including the police headquarters, the federal courthouse, and
the Mexican consulate” (Murphy 2014, para 1) on November 28, 2014. Murphy
(2014) asks whether we—the media and the public–are often quick to label an
incident as “terrorist” if its perpetrator is Muslim, while we do not do the same to
other similar acts if they are committed by non-Muslims.
Murphy’s point is worth elaborating upon here. While these two attacks, one
committed by a recently-converted Christian who ran over a boy outside a mosque,
and the other by a man who proclaimed himself to be anti-immigration and anti-
government, received some attention in local and national US media, they were
not described as “terrorism” in much of mainstream US media. Contrast them with
media reports about the shooting in Canada by Michael Zehaf-Bibeau on October
22, 2014. Zehaf-Bibeau attacked a soldier at the Canadian war memorial in Ottawa.
Despite a lack of direct link with known terrorist groups, media focus was on his
‘lone wolf’ characteristics (See Bajekal 2014; Helmer 2014; Whitehead 2014). The
P. Dixit ()
e-mail: pdixit@vt.edu

DOI 10.1007/978-3-658-11181-6_3
32 P. Dixit
Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper called this an act of terrorism and said the
incident was “a grim reminder that Canada is not immune to the types of terrorist
attacks we have seen elsewhere around the world” (Harper 2014, para 2) Moving
back from Canada to the United States, the day after the attack in Canada, on Oc-
tober 23, 2014, two police offers in New York City were attacked by a man with a
hatchet (Lackey 2014). He was shot dead by the police and the act was categorized
as “terrorism”. The New York City Police Commissioner said, “this was a terrorist
attack” while also confirming that the man was “self-radicalized”, had no direct
links to terrorist groups and had acted alone (Quoted in Kearney 2014, para 4).
So, what makes the attack in Kansas City, where the attacker had a history of
sending threatening anti-Muslim messages to the mosque, not terrorism while the
incident in New York City is considered “terrorism”? After all, one could argue
that since the man in New York City did not kill anyone while the young boy
died in Kansas City, the latter incident has more claim on the label “terrorist”. Or,
the more contentious argument—that since the people attacked in New York City
were members of the state’s security forces of a state that is (technically) at war,
then they do not count as noncombatants, making the designation of “terrorism”
difficult to sustain. Reviewing the acts described above, what makes Kansas City
and Austin not terrorism, but Ottawa and New York City terrorism? All these acts
are similar in terms of their outcome—individuals attacking buildings and human
beings they note as being against their beliefs. Indeed, in terms of people killed,
Kansas City and Ottawa both had one person killed (two in Ottawa, including the
attacker) but only the attacker died in New York City and no one died in Austin.
Thus, it is not the number of people killed—or the outcome—that leads to an act
being categorized as “terrorist”. But, there is something more. Here, it is the prac-
tices enacted in response to violent acts, especially practices of labeling. In other
words, it is the historical and contextual practices of labeling that contribute to
some acts being considered “terrorist” and others not.
Relatedly, the commonplace understanding that terrorism is a major threat to
the US state means actions such as those detailed in the so-called “torture report”
become permissible (Ashkenas et al. 2014; Singer 2014).1 The report informs that
actions were performed in the name of countering terrorism and yet it was revealed
that many of those detained and “renditioned” were not charged with anything.
At Guantanamo Bay, over a hundred remain incarcerated as of December 2014.
(Close Guantanamo 2014; McDuffee 2014). As of December 23, 2014, 64 Guan-
1
For more information on the report, please see the American Civil Liberties Union (AC-
LU’s) coverage of torture at: http://www.thetorturereport.org/. Harris and Mak (2014) have
some additional features of the Report. Mazetti (2014) describes how there is a lack of ac-
countability for those authorizing and conducting such acts.
Securitization and Terroristization 33
tanamo inmates had been cleared for release but remained imprisoned and 35 cap-
tives were designated “forever prisoners”, which meant they were never charged
but are not free ( Miami Herald 2014). Of those tortured in the CIA program, an
estimated 26 out of 119 were “unlawfully detained” i.e. were innocent (Zavadski
2014). We might say that these prisoners and especially those “renditioned” in the
CIA program could have been you or me. But, of course, not just any of you or me
since questions of race, class and gender are prominent in who gets labeled “terror-
ist” and who is likely to be kept under surveillance or tortured.
The public knowledge that the US government was complicit in acts of torture
did not translate into actions, calling for an end to such practices though President
Obama did establish rules for “lawful interrogations” (White House 2009). This is
partly indicated by that fact that when the report was released, much of the discus-
sion focused on whether torture is legal and ethical as well as on whether sacrific-
ing human rights for freedom and liberty is permissible. Indeed, a poll conducted
by the Pew Research Center after the release of the Report found that over half
of those surveyed thought the CIA’s methods were justified (Lauter 2014; Pew
Research Center 2014).
We can ask here the question of what is it about the US state/society that limited
the debate to whether torture was permissible, instead of questioning the actions
of the state and its officials who enacted these practices. Here, I mean that these
acts occurred in a context—a social setting, as it were—wherein “rectal rehydra-
tion” (a practice that has no medical knowledge to support it) becomes a normal
reaction to “terrorism” and becomes a permissible counterterrorism tactic. Of the
many abhorrent acts described in the summary of the Report that was released to
the public, the key issue of there being no medical reason or usefulness for “rectal
rehydration” is worth centralizing (Bendery 2014; Rushe et al. 2014). The question
of whether this was for acquiring “actionable intelligence” or about demonization
and gaining control is one that should be asked more often. As such, it is not just
that acts of violence are or are not categorized as “terrorism” but also that specific
actions are taken to counter “terrorism”, actions which would be deemed inhumane
or illegal if they were not done in the name of countering “terrorism”. It appears,
from this brief example, that the use of “terrorism” automatically authorizes states
to use forms of violence that they would otherwise be penalized for.
In this chapter, I present the case that the use of terrorism rhetoric is itself a way
by and through which state actors attempt to establish control over their citizens
and over the space within which state security forces can operate. By demarcating
“terrorists” and “not-terrorists” both domestically and overseas, the state operates
in a way that those deemed “terrorist” can be incarcerated and acts of terrorism
managed. The first part of this chapter draws on the Copenhagen School’s secu-
34 P. Dixit
ritization theory to outline its usefulness for the study of terrorism. Securitization
can and does occur at different levels and, often, social actors ranging from public
persona to state officials tend to securitize particular issues. In this chapter, how-
ever, the emphasis is on how state officials use the rhetoric of “terrorism” and
how certain acts and events become labeled as “terrorist”. Thus, the practices in
relation to “terrorism” remain centralized in our discussion here. This is related to
the Copenhagen School’s centralization of the practices of enacting and relating to
“security”. Some relevant critiques of securitization theory include that it ignored
gender (Hansen 2000) and often avoids discussion of the differential impacts of
securitization according to race, class and gender. A broader account of terroristiza-
tion can respond to these critiques by making explicit the race, class and gender-
related analysis of how the state and its officials utilize “terrorism” and the social,
political and ethical implications of such usage.
2 From Securitization to Terroristization: A Brief Overview
There have been extensive discussions about the meanings and definitions of secu-
ritization. In this chapter, securitization is both an act of naming issues and events
as “security” and also the processes surrounding its emergence and proliferation.
Since securitization is taken to be a process, it is one that depends on how “se-
curity” is used and responded to. Related questions, of course, are who outlines
security? Who relates to this? Who (if anyone) questions this? Jeremy Waldron
claims that security is something we need to discuss in relation to states and their
actions regarding torture, laws, and related actions in the post-9/11 period (2010).
In his discussion of security and terrorism, Waldron provides a far-ranging discus-
sion of the post-9/11 security situation in the United States through ethical, legal,
and philosophical frames. In a discussion about terrorism, Waldron claims that it
is not just non-state actors that can create an environment of terror but states can
and have done such as well (2010, p. 14). This chapter draws on Waldron’s under-
standing of the state’s engagement in violent acts and focuses specifically on how
securitization of specific issues, minority groups, actions, occurs.
Overall, the focus remains on the rhetoric of “security”, especially “terrorism”
and how this has helped create a context in which states’ use of violence often go
unquestioned and unpunished. This means the user of “security” rhetoric, those
who are labeled dangerous (or not dangerous) and the audience are all part of pro-
cesses by which securitization occurs. Moving to terrorism, this is a similar process
wherein terroristization occurs. Thus, the focus in this chapter is on states and how
they use the label of security or terrorism in this case. What are the practices of ter-
roristization that exist in liberal democratic states? How do they operate? What are
the implications of who is included as “terrorist”? Who is considered supporters of
terrorists and who is not? By outlining a securitization-inspired approach to study
terrorism, this chapter hopes to provide tools to better understand the practices by
which some individuals and groups are deemed “terrorist”. On a related note, the
implication of this labeling for and as state violence is a central theme here.
But, first, it is worth describing what is meant by violence in this chapter. Vio-
lence usually means the use of physical force by various social actors. However,
for this chapter, two other definitions are essential: one, that security and insecurity
are products of structural violence that is part of the societal system we all live
in. The definition of structural violence comes from Johan Galtung who defines
it as: “The violence [is] built into the structure and shows up as unequal power
and consequently as unequal life chances” (Galtung 1969, p. 171). Galtung (1969)
makes a distinction between direct violence and indirect violence. Direct violence
requires an actor who has the intention of killing or maiming or making people in-
capacitated in some way. For example, the 2014 revelations that the United States’
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) tortured detainees could be considered a form
of direct violence. Structural violence, on the other hand, is often indirect and is
part of the system within which we live our lives. It is often unseen but its effects
can be noted in unequal access to resources and “unequal life chances.” Galtung
writes, “…structural violence may be seen as about as natural as the air around us”
(1969, p. 173). For example, differences in health and in life expectancies between
Indigenous peoples and non-Indigenous peoples in settler societies (e.g. Canada,
Australia, United States, among others) are partly the outcome of structural vio-
lence over time. Related to this, one can argue that state violence is a form of
structural violence. The state’s capacity to label specific acts and peoples as “ter-
rorist” or “not terrorist” and the related powers to manage them can fall under the
understanding of structural violence.
The second understanding of violence that is relevant here is the concept of
symbolic violence. Here, we can refer back again to Galtung and his understanding
of “cultural violence”. He defined this as “those aspects of culture, the symbolic
sphere of our existence—exemplified by religion and ideology, language and art,
empirical science and formal science (logic, mathematics)—that can be used to
justify or legitimize direct or structural violence” (1990, p. 291). My focus in this
chapter is on how groups, individuals and even issues are conceptualized as threats
to the state but also to societal security. As such, part of the argument is that it
is the states’ labeling of others as “terrorist” that can also be considered violent.
This is especially the case because such labels can (and have) led to physical vio-
lence against those who mainstream society deems to be associated with or actual
36 P. Dixit
“terrorists”. These two key understandings of violence will be used to contextual-

ize the following discussion on securitization and terroristization.
Securitization has been extensively outlined, extended and critiqued. Vuori
(2008) outlines five ways of possible securitization and writes,
Security serves various political functions in various contexts. If the purpose of

securitization studies is to gain an increasingly precise understanding of who can
securitize, which issues (threats), for whom (referent objects), why, with what kinds
of effects, and under which conditions (what explains when securitization has been
successful) (Buzan et al. 1998; Buzan and Wæver 2003), it is useful to investigate
security speech in as many contexts as possible (p. 68).
One of the contributions of thinking and studying terrorism as part of processes by

which actors and issues are considered “terrorist” is that it is related to the use of
“security”. In other words, “security speech” as Vuori (2008) calls it often follows
and is directly linked to “terrorism speech”. After all, one would need to conceptu-
alize and communicate that terrorism is a major threat to state and society security
before policies and practices to manage such terrorism (and thus ensure security)
are established. This means that the use of “terrorism” rhetoric is connected to “se-
curity” rhetoric—terroristization and securitization are interconnected. Without the
use of “terrorism” rhetoric, security would need to be reconceptualized, perhaps as
human security or food security or economic security. If this were to occur, a mili-
tarized response to the insecurity could be more difficult to promote and sustain.
In mainstream conceptualizations of violence and security, “security” is gener-
ally taken to mean a subjective state—one feels insecure due to threats of vio-
lence—or an objective measurement. In this latter understanding, social actors,
whether states or individuals or collectives, can measure security and security can
be increased or decreased. Securitization moves beyond these two conceptualiza-
tions and, instead, focuses on the processes by which something or someone be-
comes categorized as a security issue in the first place and the related practices
that then emerge to manage this issue. Writing in a forum on securitization theory,
Balzacq and Guzzini (2014) make this clear:
Securitization is rooted in the basic idea that the existence and management of certain
issues as security problems does not necessarily depend upon objective, or purely
material conditions…[S]omething acquires a security status as a result of an inter-
subjective process involving a securitizing actor and an audience…One of the central
implications of this idea is that once established, securitization enables policy makers
to immediately adopt whatever means they deem appropriate to curb the threat (p. 3).
Thus, the potential for further terrorism in the period after 11 September, 2001
(“9/11”) was given as a reason for the CIA’s interrogation program. Defending its
inhumane tactics, former Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney said, “I would do it
again in a minute” (quoted in Shane 2014). Despite this, neither he nor any other
US government or CIA official has been prosecuted for their actions and it is un-
likely they ever will be (Bendery 2014).
Securitization thus centralizes the practice of uttering “security” and acting on
behalf of what is known as “security” as foundational to analysis. Describing secu-
ritization, (Buzan et al. 1998) wrote
with the help of language, we can regard security as a speech act. In this usage, secu-
rity is not of interest as a sign that refers to something more real; the utterance itself
is the act. By saying it, something is done (as in betting, giving a promise, naming a
ship) (Buzan et al. 1998, p. 26).
Successful securitization has three steps:
1. the identification of existential threats;

2. the proposing of emergency action;
3. the breaking free of regular rules of security.
Returning to our examples at the start of this chapter, neither the Kansas City nor
Austin attack was deemed to be “terrorism” and thus there was no emergency ac-
tion proposed. In contrast, that terrorism was a major threat to the US homeland
was central to the post-9/11 foreign policy narratives and thus the CIA’s enhanced
interrogation program could and did exist. The “emergency action” here was the
establishment of a secret program, without authorization by the people or their rep-
resentative and known, at first, to only a selected few in the US government. This
also allowed for a “breaking free” of regular rules of security, wherein a public
debate about possible counterterrorism options did not occur and a program which
broke domestic and international laws regarding treatment of detainees continued
for almost a decade. Other examples will be provided later in this chapter.
While “security” remains a contested concept, whose meanings are debated,
terrorism is even more elusive in its meaning. Scholars Alex Schmid and Albert
Jongman, in a comprehensive survey of definitions of terrorism, counted over 100
definitions (Schmid and Jongman 2006). While the multiple and varied definitions
would not always be a problem for a social scientific concept, “terrorism” occupies
a slightly different space in terms of the attendant implications regarding who or
what is to be considered “terrorist” (or not). Kapitan clarifies this as follows:
38 P. Dixit
Lack of unanimity on definitional matters need not be a problem for rhetorical pur-
poses, but policy-making and scholarship require some sort of definition in order to
identify the phenomenon and to justify ascriptions. Otherwise, how can we determine
which actions and agents are “terrorist” and which are not? How else can we fashion
policies and institute legislation to deal with what some regard as a fundamental chal-
lenge to world peace? (2004, p. 22).
As Kapitan points out, a problem with multiple definitions or even what usually
happens—that researchers and policymakers assume everyone is speaking and act-
ing with the same understanding of terrorism as them (which they might not be)—
is that it leads to misunderstandings about who or what is “terrorist” and how they
should be dealt with.
This is why an approach that draws and builds upon securitization theory–an-
alyzing the use of “terrorism” rhetoric in practice—is likely to be of benefit in
studying and understanding violence. Here, I shall focus on elaborating the study
of terrorism in texts and rhetoric—what may be called “linguistic practices”. By
this, I mean we could examine how narratives and rhetoric of terrorism spreads and
how people use the concept “terrorism” in particular contexts—what do they do
as part of their using “terrorism”? Analyzing linguistic practices—narratives and
rhetoric of terrorism—allows for a move away from asking “why” certain acts of
violence are perpetuated to “how” such actions are justified in different sociopo-
litical contexts. It also allows for a broader focus on ways in which states counter
violence, moving away from military-based approaches to one that takes talks and
narratives and local ways of making sense of violence into account.
3 Terrorism as (Linguistic) Practice
One of the key issues in the study of violence and terrorism is to analyze the so-
ciopolitical implications of labeling practices (Jackson et al. 2009). By examining
the rhetoric of “terrorism” and “terrorist,” some key implications about the politics
of labeling can be noted and the current state of theorization regarding states and
violence strengthened. Linguistic practice especially rhetoric has been understood
in many ways, but its common features are believed to include persuasion and the
goal of making others do what one wants.
Securitization theory—which focuses on rhetoric and “speech acts”—thus pro-
vides a useful analytical framework for studying how particular acts, actors, issues,
events become known as a security (terrorism) issue and therefore needing to be
dealt with accordingly. This approach to security, as described above, does not seek
to define security or terrorism (and, relatedly, insecurity), but outlines what the use
of the language of “security” and “terrorism” does in terms of forming boundar-

ies between self and others. Related boundaries are formed between security and
insecurity/threats and construct particular events, identities, issues as “security”
issues and actors.
Securitization has been discussed and debated (e.g. Balzacq 2005; Balzacq
et al. 2014; Buzan and Waever 1997; Eriksson 1999; Hansen 2000, 2012; Jensen
2013; Karyotis 2007; Lisle 2013; Roe 2012; Taureck 2006; Williams 2007). Draw-
ing from those discussions, a similar approach to studying and outlining practices
which represent an issue, individual, states, regions, races and ethnicities, religion,
etc., as “terrorist” can be adopted. This approach may be called “terroristization.”
Securitization began by focusing on the state as the main actor doing the securitiz-
ing but has since expanded to include other levels of analysis as well as other social
actors who may do the securitizing.
A terroristization approach focuses on the usage of the concept “terrorism” in
practice and attempts to outline the social, political, cultural effects of its usage in
specific contexts. A terroristizaton approach thus draws attention to the variability
in the usage of “terrorism” and “terrorist” and sees this variability as grounds for
further research, rather than as a problem. This serves to de-naturalize the notion
of terrorism as an existential threat and of the state as the obvious counterterrorist
entity. It also opens up to question the state’s counterterrorist actions and practices
and the systemic structure within which counterterrorism practices are articulated
and justified. The brief examples provided at the start of this chapter indicate how
the use of “terrorism” is not uniform. It also indicates some of the sociopolitical
implications of this variable usage.
While securitization (and, thus, terroristization) provides a different way of
thinking about and understanding security, it is not without its critics. A recent es-
say by Didier Bigo drew attention to the seemingly static nature of securitization
and securitizing acts and urged for a more dynamic study of security, one that drew
upon fields outside of securitization theory. Bigo (2014) wrote:
It is essential to avoid an approach framed solely in terms of securitization theory,

which often implies presentism by a lack of attention to the space/time structura-
tion that rendered possible an event, sensationalism linked to media pressure, decon-
textualization regarding the specific social universes the security actors come from,
implicit decisionism through the focus on ‘exceptional events’, and lack of attention
to the dispositions of the agents and the contexts…Instead of transforming any dis-
course into a performative speech act, it is necessary to understand how the series of
discourses are usually forged as forms of ex post facto justification of the everyday
practices that enact a governmentality of fear and unease, and to analyse the correla-
tion between these rationalizations via practical justifications and the (in)securitiza-
tion practices of the actors –practices that vary greatly, depending on the field or
social universe in which they are deployed (p. 211).
40 P. Dixit
An example of this would be how Dick Cheney continues to draw upon 9/11 as
the main reason for why the CIA’s torture program is justified. By claiming that
“waterboarding is not torture” and that the actions of the CIA were necessary to
keep the US and its people safe, Cheney draws upon people’s fears and memories
of 9/11 in order to justify acts that people normally would condemn. It is because of
this unease and anxiety regarding terrorism, what Mueller and Stewart (2012) have
called “the terrorism delusion”, that Cheney’s words resonate with many members
of the US public (Pew Research Center 2014). That the likelihood (risk) of dying
in a lightning strike or in one’s bathtub is higher if one is a US citizen (Mueller and
Stewart 2012) is not something that Cheney and others like him who terroristize
various issues and peoples tend to make public. The next section briefly discusses
two ongoing cases regarding terroristization and the US state.
4 The National Security Agency’s Surveillance Programs

and Terroristization of Individuals and Collectives
An illustration of how terroristization processes operate and the ethical, social,

political implications of state practices of categorizing others as “terrorist” is the
United States National Security Agency (NSA) surveillance program. While there
are different aspects of it, in this brief overview I shall focus on two: PRISM or the
program which collected personal data through various internet sources, and the
New York Police Department (NYPD)’s program which conducted surveillance on
the city’s Muslim population.
The existence of PRISM was part of the information that was released by for-
mer defense contractor Edward Snowden in June 2013.2 It is part of a comprehen-
sive, large-scale surveillance program that Snowden himself described as follows:
The NSA has built an infrastructure that allows it to intercept almost everything.
With this capability, the vast majority of human communications are automatically
ingested without targeting. If I wanted to see your emails or your wife’s phone, all I
have to do is use intercepts. I can get your emails, passwords, phone records, credit
cards… (quoted in MacAskill 2013).
Describing the overall surveillance program, Schindler (2013) wrote, “its scope
is truly staggering—one aspect of the program known as Boundless Informant
2
For a comprehensive overview of the developments of this and related programs, please
see The Guardian’s “The NSA Files” web site at http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/the-
nsa-files.
collected 97 billion pieces of data in March 2013” (para 1, quoting figures from
Greenwald and MacAskill 2013). There have been concerns that people’s private
information is being scrutinized and collected without their consent. However, US
government officials claim that PRISM and similar surveillance operations have
helped prevent violent attacks (Reilly 2013; Schindler 2013). The details of the
surveillance program can be found elsewhere (e.g. The Guardian; Electronic Fron-
tier Foundation 2014). Therefore, here, I would like to briefly draw out some of
implications of these practices of state surveillance in relation to terroristization.
One key implication is that the rights of (US and other) people in terms of what
information they would like to make public have been set aside. This abrogation of
rights has been justified in the name of countering terrorism. US President Obama
claimed the programs “make a difference in our capacity to anticipate and prevent
possible terrorist activity” (quoted in Finn and Nakashima 2013). When questioned
about why the programs had remained secret, Obama drew upon terrorism once
again: “If every step that we’re taking to try to prevent a terrorist act is on the front
page of the newspapers or on television, then presumably the people who are trying
to do us harm are going to be able to get around our preventive measures…” (Finn
and Nakashima 2013). As can be noted, “terrorism” is given as the main reason for
why the rights of people are ignored during the surveillance process as well as why
the program had to remain secret. The general rules of security are suspended and
extraordinary methods authorized, as securitization scholars theorized. In other
words, the issue of the state spying on its citizens without their consent and keep-
ing this practice quiet is explained as necessary in order to counter terrorism. It is
the use of terrorism rhetoric that permits what could be considered an illegal act
to be justified.
A related case is the spying conducted by the NYPD upon the Muslim popula-
tion in northeastern United States.3 This was a large-scale data-gathering operation
that was spearheaded by the NYPD. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU
2014b) describes it thus: “Since at least 2002, the New York City Police Depart-
ment’s Intelligence Division has engaged in the religious profiling and suspicion-
less surveillance of Muslims in New York City and beyond.” (ACLU 2014b) The
program covered New York City and a radius of 100 miles beyond it, including
areas of Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Connecticut. Mosques, businesses, individ-
uals, educational organizations were kept under surveillance. The ACLU outlines
modes of surveillance, which include mapping areas where Muslims frequented,
visual surveillance (photography and video), police informants, police “rakers”
The Associated Press first made the story public and the outcome of its investigations can
3
be found here: http://www.ap.org/Index/AP-In-The-News/NYPD.

42 P. Dixit
(whose task was to blend into Muslim communities), tracking individuals and
through electronic (internet) surveillance (ACLUb). Files were kept on individuals
and these files included information on where they worked, how much they earned,
where they prayed and even what they ate (Apuzzo and Goldstein 2014). It was
revealed that no information regarding terrorism was ever collected through this
intense spying (Goldman and Apuzzo 2012).
In short, Muslims in northeastern United States were targeted, kept under sur-
veillance, and put under suspicion merely because they were represented, in the
general imagination including that of the state’s security forces, as potentially dan-
gerous. The effects of such targeting and surveillance practices could be to increase
suspicion among Muslim-Americans and the rest of society, increase a lack of
trust in the state and also contribute to the general public perception that Muslim-
Americans are somehow a cause for insecurity—after all, Joe Public might say,
why were the police spying on them if they hadn’t done something wrong? The
long-term societal impact and the lack of trustbuilding between the police force
and the Muslim residents of the city will continue to reverberate for the foresee-
able future.4 These surveillance operations are both a form of direct violence, in
that the state’s security forces removed key privacy rights of its citizens, but they
also indicate structural violence. The connection between terroristization and state
violence can be noted. In this example, the US Muslim population was understood
as potential terrorists, and thus spying on them was legitimated.
As can be noted here, not everyone in the US was affected by the profiling and
targeting to the same extent. Waldron (2010) adds that the state’s actions to safe-
guard security can and do have uneven impacts upon the people located within its
territory. He writes,
Assuming then that the impact of a government’s actions on people’s safety may be
uneven and in some cases harmful, we need to ask whether it is possible to articulate
any constraints on the extent of the unevenness, for the purposes of a conception of
security… (2010, p. 148).
This understanding of security is tied to legitimacy, in that Waldron challenges us

to think how much of unevenness are we willing to accept (or ignore) in order to
accept the legitimacy of the state. In other words, does the state’s selected profil-
ing and surveillance of Muslims in the US; the torture of over 100 people, many
4
The main NYPD unit which conducted the spying, the Demographics Unit (which was
later renamed the Zone Assessment Unit) was shut down in April 2014 (Apuzzo and Gold-
stein 2014). Further effects of the program are detailed by Friedersdorf (2013) and the City
University of New York (2013).
of them not charged with any crime; and other actions cause us to question the
legitimacy of the US government?
This unevenness of insecurity is also a racial issue– related spying of young,
white males has not occurred despite the majority of the mass murder attacks of
the past few years being committed by such people. Thus, terroristization often has
uneven and unequal impacts on individuals and communities, depending on race
(and often in combination with class and gender). Regarding the lack of attention
to legal rules, one of the key features of terroristization is that the legal system—as
in the case of surveillance but also state-supported torture of detainees—can be
sidelined as extraordinary measures are set in place. The next section follows up
on this by examining the case of the US use of unmanned aerial vehicles or drones.
5 Terroristizing (Muslim) Others: The US, Drones, and

Targeted Killings5
The Obama administration has followed the previous policy of George W. Bush
drones for achieving its counterinsurgency goals. These include surveillance but
also targeting and killing suspected terrorists and militants in various parts of the
world. The Bureau of Investigative Journalism reported that an estimated 2400
people had died in US-led drone strikes between 2009–2014 (Serle 2014). Fur-
thermore, even “targeted strikes” did not always kill their targets at once, with
civilians dying in the often repeated strikes (Ackerman 2014). Despite calls for
transparency, operations of the US drone program remain relatively secret. The
most well-known targeted killing–that of Osama bin Laden–occurred without the
direct use of drones, though they were used in surveillance and mapping prior to
the event. Drones were responsible for other high profile targeted killings such as
that of Anwar al-Awlaki, who was killed in September 2011. A couple of weeks
later, more strikes killed other alleged militants but also al-Awlaki’s 16-year old
son, Abdulrahman. The teenager and al-Awlaki were both US citizens.
While there are different definitions of what “targeted killings” entail, in gen-
eral, they are strikes against specific individuals or small groups that have been
undertaken with government approval. These strikes usually occur from bombs or,
more recently, drone strikes and attempt to minimize “collateral damage”, which
includes damage to civilians who may be near the target as well as large-scale dam-
age to buildings. There are different kinds of strikes which are authorized during
the process of targeted killings. So-called personality strikes are directed towards
5
Some paragraphs in this section are adapted from Dixit (2013).
44 P. Dixit
militant leaders and their close allies; signature strikes, used mostly in Pakistan and
Afghanistan, target training camps and areas where larger groups of people congre-
gate. In North Africa, including Yemen, signature strikes have not often been used.
A 2012 New York Times article claims,
The Defense Department can target suspects in Yemen whose names they do not
know. Officials say the criteria are tighter than those for signature strikes, requir-
ing evidence of a threat to the United States, and they have even given them a new
name—TADS, for Terrorist Attack Disruption Strikes. But the details are a closely
guarded secret—part of a pattern for a president who came into office promising
transparency (Becker and Shane 2012).
This is an important point regarding targeted killings—that it is not just people who
are targets, but spaces and areas are deemed dangerous and harboring “terrorists”.
Terroristization can be noted at different levels here. On the one hand, there is
silencing of criticism of the drones policy itself as well as silence about the pro-
cedures by which a target becomes a target. Who goes on the “kill list” and how
is something that the general public is not told. Considering the dozens of people
imprisoned in Guantanamo without being charged with anything and the number
of people who were not charged with anything but waterboarded and tortured, the
US state’s record in targeting only (potentially) guilty people is open to question.
On the other hand, terroristization is not just limited to individuals or systemic
practices of silencing; village meeting places, training camps, urban areas, etc.
have all become targets of drone strikes—spaces and places are terroristized in the
name of countering terrorism. Regarding the killings al-Awlaki’s son, the teenager
was killed without due process, without being brought to trial and he was under-
age, even though he was a US citizen. (Friedersdorf 2012). Indeed, there is little
to no evidence to show the boy was a threat to US interests. Once again, it was the
terroristization of certain spaces (i.e. the Middle East and North Africa) that ulti-
mately legitimated the policy of killing US citizens without trial. On a related note,
that these killings were relatively uncontroversial amongst the mainstream public
and media draws attention to the practices of counterterrorism wherein state-led
violence is normalized as against “terrorism”.
Here, as in the examples of state-led torture and surveillance, the impact of poli-
cies put in place to counter terrorism actually has the effect of increasing insecurity
and danger for some of the state’s citizens. Indeed, this is something that Waldron
(2010) is keenly aware of. In his discussion of how the state’s pursuit of security
actually makes some people insecure, Waldron writes,
The security that we all crave is security against violent attack, but that is exactly
what many people lose when they are imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay or in “black”
U.S. prisons in Eastern Europe, or when they are “rendered” by U.S. agents to foreign
countries like Syria for torture by their authority. Their security is sacrificed in order
to make the rest of us more safe (2010, p. 185).
6 Conclusion: De-Securitization and De-Terroristization
As has been noted above, terroristization includes actors’ usage of “terrorism”

rhetoric. However, it also includes the establishment and continuation of a system
of practice wherein the state’s actions taken to counter “terrorism” are legitimated
and continue relatively unquestioned by the general public. Examples provided
here included the CIA’s treatment of detainees in the “war on terror” as detailed in
the 2014 “Torture report” as well as US-led drone strikes, including on US citizens.
The surveillance of people and the targeted spying on a particular community are
also part of practices which are justified in the name of counterterrorism. This
means we can look at processes of terroristization in two key arenas here: one, in
terms of how the rhetoric of terrorism is articulated. Two, by outlining how prac-
tices and policies are set in place to counter “terrorism” and how they continue
over time. We can also note where similar actions lead to different labelings, as or
not as “terrorist.” In each of these examples, the state’s actions have contributed in
constituting particular groups as dangerous threats—whether they are individual
citizens who may be sending emails deemed suspicious, or whether they are people
of Muslim background (and in the so-called “Muslim world”).
Securitization scholars have proposed a response to securitization—that is
“desecuritization.” This has a range of meanings, sometimes contradictory (See
Hansen 2012 for a summary). However, for the purposes of this chapter, dese-
curitization is “the shifting of issues out of emergency mode and into the normal
bargaining process of the political sphere” (Buzan et al. 1998, quoted in Hansen
2012, p. 526).6 Hansen reminds us that desecuritization is about reconceptualizing
and reconstituting the friend-enemy distinction and invigorating space for discus-
sions in the public sphere (2012). Desecuritization is thus taken to mean when
those considered “terrorist” or actions that are to counter “terrorism” move away
from the realm of exceptional rules to mainstream or general politics. For example,
when there is a public debate about a system which permitted torture and legal ac-
countability for such acts.
6
Hansen (2012) footnote no. 2 summarizes a series of readings on desecuritization and how
it relates to the ethico-political aspects of security.
46 P. Dixit
Following from this, deterroristization can mean reducing and avoiding the use
of “terrorism” rhetoric altogether. Skoll (2007) outlines the implications of such
an action:
In the nineteenth and early twentieth century growing national bourgeois power
defined terrorism as individualized rebellions—such as assassinations and bombings
against authority figures and private property. In the middle decades of the twentieth
century, terrorism meant civil unrest and tactics used in nationalist and class strug-
gles—kidnappings, airplane hijackings, bank robberies, and so on. In the Cold War,
terrorism was what the Soviet Union did. Today, the world’s hegemon, the United
States of America, defines it through statute as any attack against itself or its interests.
A symbolic challenge … would be a challenge to the power of definition. Its success
remains in question. (p. 126).
This “challenge to the power of definition” is to question the US (and its allies)
use of “terrorism” and how it is understood by, among other practices, asking for
a reflexive understanding of political violence where one group of states do not
have the power to define specific acts as “terrorist” while absolving themselves
from blame.
Another possible deterroristization practice is to interrogate the system within
which spying, surveillance, secret drone strikes and torture have been justified in
the name of countering terrorism. Snowden’s quote is well-suited here:
Sometimes misunderstood is that I didn’t stand up to overthrow the system. What

I wanted to do was give society the information it needed to decide if it wanted to
change the system. (quoted in Vanden-Heuvel and Cohen 2014).
As Snowden points out, deterroristization could be to indicate how the “terror-

ism delusion” (Mueller and Stewart 2012) has taken hold, such that terrorism is
conceptualized as an existential threat to the US (and other) states. This is the
case even though actual incidences of terrorism in the US since 9/11 have killed
far fewer people than mass murder attacks or even lightning strikes (Mueller and
Stewart 2012). Thus, deterroristization, in this understanding, is a call for a differ-
ent relationship between the self (whether the state or the media or the audience
which participates in the securitizing process) and others (those deemed “terrorist”
and those linked with “terrorists” by virtue of their skin color or religion). Here,
deterroristization is an ethical call—a call to recognize the inherent direct and indi-
rect violence of the state which continues to “other” individuals, groups and spaces
in the name of countering “terrorism”. Furthermore, it is a call to articulate a dif-
ferent set of relationships between the states and the people, such that practices that
are supposed to counter “terrorism” become debated in the public sphere prior to
being operationalized and authorized.
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50 P. Dixit
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Priya Dixit Assistant Professor of Political Science at Virginia Polytechnic Institute &

State University. Research: Terrorism and counterterrorism, qualitative methods, popular
culture and world politics, global security. Publications (selected): States and ‘Terrorists’ In
Nepal and Northern Ireland: Social Construction of State Terrorism (Manchester University
Press 2015); Critical Terrorism Studies: An Introduction to Research (co-author) (Routledge
2013).
Part II
Cases
From Colonialism to Globalization:
State Violence in Modern India
Eva-Maria Nag
“India is routinely described as a peace-loving nation. Yet it is a troubled state. And

herein lies a cruel paradox. The Indian state, since Independence, has been prone to
internal violence. This could possibly be a consequence of the very acquisition of
statehood; equally, of course, a result of inadequate experience of statecraft, com-
bined with enhanced means of violence at the disposal of the state. In the process
an old judgement is reaffirmed: that the principal security challenge to India has
historically been and remains the imposition and maintenance of internal order”
(Singh 1999, p. 11).
This article seeks to provide a brief overview of the history and modes of state
violence in modern India. It attempts to explain why such a peace-loving and
democratic state is capable of, and routinely demonstrates its political agency and
authority through both spontaneous and systematic violence against its citizens.
Prima facie Jaswant Singh’s1 analysis is highly compelling in explaining the phe-
nomenon of state violence in the world’s largest democracy. There are persuasive
reasons for highlighting the problem of internal order—India is a subcontinent
rather than a country; it is a nation composed of a large number of ethnic, lin-
guistic, caste-based and region-based social group; it remains locked in territo-
rial disputes with neighbors such as China and Pakistan since attaining political
independence in 1947; there are a number of significant internal conflicts, such
The author is a former BJP politician and diplomat. The BJP stands for Bharatiya Janata
1
Party, the party currently in power in India at the time of writing, and has close ideological
and organizational links to the Hindu nationalist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS).
E.-M. Nag ()
School of Government and International Affairs, Durham University,
The Al-Qasimi Building, Elvet Hill Road, Durham DH1 3TU, UK
e-mail: eva-maria.nag@durham.ac.uk

DOI 10.1007/978-3-658-11181-6_4
54 E.-M. Nag
as challenges to state legitimacy and governability by various so-called Maoist

groups. In short, there are many reasons for describing India as a troubled and
anxious state: anxious to maintain its territorial integrity, political legitimacy and
authority over its citizens.
However, there are three main problems with the above explanation for state
violence. First, the argument for emergence of state violence as coeval with politi-
cal independence runs the danger of ignoring historical continuities. It is highly
questionable whether statehood was indeed suddenly acquired, as Singh suggests,
and whether statecraft was indeed a novel experience for the political leaders and
successive governments of the post-colonial state. Second, while problem of in-
ternal order is undoubtedly important, this part of the explanation appears to be a
unitary justification for state violence and overlooks other reasons, only some of
which relate to internal order. Third, the singular focus on order as the securing
of territorial and political unity interprets order as a problem that is external to
the state. It thus deflects from considerations of the nature of the modern Indian
state, namely from late colonialism to post-colonialism, and in recent years, to the
emergence of “Global India.”
Here I offer a different kind of analysis by focusing on the transition from a
coercive colonial state to an independent state; by arguing there were and still are a
range of reasons for the use of violence; and by contending that the various modes
of state violence—from centralized and systematic aggression to localized and
spontaneous interventions—are necessarily linked to the nature of state-society
relations, in particular depending on agreements between the state and society that
govern the use of force. Even if we accept that theorizing the state and society in
the Indian context is a complex undertaking (see Kaviraj 2010, pp. 11–12), map-
ping state violence is a matter of creating conceptual distinctions between modes
of violence and instruments of violence. Accordingly, it is not simply “the state”
as possessing a monopoly of legitimate violence but the specific position or rela-
tionship of the state vis-à-vis its citizens that defines relationships of violence and
the instruments of violence. One might of course discuss the violence perpetrated
by the key agents of the state—the bureaucracy, police, judiciary, and executive
government. In this context one might examine different types of state violence:
indirect violence towards disadvantaged groups within an overextended and mal-
adaptive bureaucracy (Gupta 2012), the punitive violence of incarceration of indi-
viduals within inadequate judicial systems (Sherman 2012), the physical violence
against individuals and groups by police forces (Chandhoke 2005), or the legal
violence against citizens in a pluralizing, uncertain and unpredictable legislative
and legal system (Randeria 2007). State violence then ranges from violations of
civil liberties to the imposition of draconian laws, from psychological terror to
From Colonialism to Globalization: State Violence in Modern India 55
death. One could thus argue a case that pits the problem of the state violence as a
tension between order and the upholding of civil liberties and basic rights that are
part of citizenship in a democratic and accountable state.
Without ignoring this tension it seems that a further angle of interpretation is
required in order to understand what makes state violence possible. Otherwise “or-
der” and “civil liberties” turn into equally unitary points of explanation of violence
and counter-violence. Moreover, this kind of unitary analysis presupposes both a
perennial (rather than changing) set of problems and a naturally violent response
of the state to these problems. A more accurate picture would be derived from
bringing in role of state-society relations in generating violence, in this case spe-
cific to India. In general terms, the state can be distant from or enmeshed with
its citizens. Furthermore, its authority can be centralized or localized. Its agents
can demonstrate acts of aggression in systematic or spontaneous ways. The more
simple equation thus falters if we view the state not simply as a given but as a com-
posite of structures, agents and processes, all of which change while also display-
ing continuities over time. Consequently, the respective challenges the Indian state
faces or perceives as facing differ—within historical periods and within shifting
understandings of state-society relations.
1 State Violence in Colonial India
That a sovereign, whether a king or a modern state, does not act unilaterally is
in most cases a given. In Kautilya’s Arthashastra, an ancient Indian treatise on
politics, diplomacy and material advantage dated 321–296 B.C., a king is urged to
recognize that “sovereignty is possible only with assistance. Hence he shall em-
ploy ministers and hear their opinion” (Radhakrishnan and Moore 1989, p. 199). In
modern democracies, this has come to refer to transparency, checks and balances
as well as the delegation of responsibilities of the state that include the wielding
of punitive power and maintenance of order. Yet how well does this describe the
predecessor state of India’s modern state, i.e. the British Raj that was made up
of the territories of British India and the Princely States? Two defining features
that continued in part into post-colonial India are worth mentioning: the less than
total dominance of the state and the distance of the state and state structures from
society.
In his study on state violence and punishment in India in the period from 1919
to 1956, i.e. late colonialism to early post-colonialism, Taylor Sherman challenges
conceptions ‘that have tended to assume that the state was able to use the police,
military and bureaucracy to dominate the population of India at will’ (Sherman
56 E.-M. Nag
2012, p. 1). On the contrary, “the everyday state in twentieth-century India tended
to be vulnerable, fluid and replete with tensions.” This study is important in that it
does not deny the dominance of the colonial state but brings this dominance into
line with evidence for its complex negotiations and confrontations with the popula-
tion. Rather than being the single locus of coercive power the state was part of what
Sherman calls “the coercive network.” In facing everyday practices such as firing
squads (on crowds or mutinous groups), arbitrary dismissal from work, collective
fines, imprisonment and punishment the people of India were not only subjugated
to the structures of a central government but were deeply embedded in immediate,
localized and often individual acts of aggression by individual representatives of
the state (Sherman 2012, p. 6).
At the same time the colonial state as well its successors in independent India
remained curiously distant from “society.” The state was not merely external in
that it was a colonizing power with limited, if any, legitimacy, and with an indepen-
dent set of rules and practices that served to impose order and governance within
its territory. It was also external in that it had no easily defined space in society.
This is both an empirical and conceptual interpretation of state-society relations
in colonial India. Sudipta Kaviraj argues that when concepts of the state, citizen-
ship, equality of rights and collective interest were introduced in Europe “these
were seen by the major part of society as a result of experiments in controlling and
reducing irresponsible power and therefore as liberating” (Kaviraj 2010, p. 17). In
India though this turned out to be the reverse: “Society had to be subject to them
because of the irresistible power of colonial rulers. This array of ideas, when seen
in their totality, constituted the invention of a new political world or the re-cog-
nizing of the world, and of the position of the society and the state in their modern
versions—society as a large complex of gesellschaft organizations, and the state as
an impersonal apparatus of public power” (Kaviraj 2010, p. 18).
This dialectic of a monologic modern state in which political, social and eco-
nomic power converged and of traditional Indian gemeinschaft societies thus offers
an insight into the various modes used by the modern state in India to (re)order
society and to enforce its respective agendas, whether it was the exploitation of
resources for the benefit of the colonizing power or the post-Independence agenda
of “development.” These traditional societies did not share the modern state’s or its
elites’ discursive frameworks. They were characterized by asymmetries of politi-
cal, social and economic status and meant that there was no necessary convergence
of political, social or economic power even as these were ordered hierarchically.
Without attempting to romanticize traditional Indian societies and without ignoring
their internal conflicts, it is clear that the colonial state was a disruptive force and
importantly, one that was not well understood in conceptual terms by its population.
In the absence of shared understandings of the structures of state and society and
given the distance between central state authorities and its local representatives in
a vast territory, state violence was often experienced as sporadic and spontaneous
rather than as structural. Not understanding the systemic conceptual and political
map of the colonial state thus meant that (violent) resistance too was sporadic.
It required the emergence of an Indian nationalist elite that was educated in the
liberal discourses of British political thinking to lead to systematic approaches of
resistance, reform and demands for full political independence. Nonetheless, it is
worth noting that this deep disconnect between the state and society continued well
into twentieth century India. The discovery of democracy as a useful instrument of
political and social empowerment by various non-elite social groups did not hap-
pen immediately during or after independence but took time.
Was violence an inevitable fact in the absence of shared understandings and in
the absence of a social contract when understood as a “voluntaristic obligation”
(Wolff 1996, p. 42)? However much the distance in understanding and agreement,
the workings of a modern state, i.e. the rationality of accounting (for territory, for
populations), became an irreversible fact in India. The appropriation of the lan-
guage of bureaucratic rationality, of the common interest, and of property rights
not only provided grounds for confrontation but also negotiation. Interestingly,
the space for negotiation between the parallel discursive worlds was not filled by
a self-defined civil society but by a number of Indian political parties. Of these the
Indian National Congress (INC) under the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi played
a key role in the transitioning of power from the colonial to the post-colonial state.
It is not the purpose of this chapter to delve into the INC’s Gandhian program of
non-violent resistance but to acknowledge the valorization of non-resistance as a
fundamental moment of giving meaning to (colonial) state violence. Rather than
being merely viewed as a brutal but sporadic experience of colonialism it was now
viewed in conceptual terms as a tool of systematic oppression and an obstacle
to swaraj, understood as both individual self-determination and collective self-
government2 (Nag 2003, pp. 164–170).
These political parties, “as they imagined the colonial state for the public, rou-
tinely criticized the conduct of individual members of the police, military violence
and bureaucracy. In doing so, they transformed separate instances of state violence
or discriminatory penal treatment into evidence for the injustice of the colonial
state as a whole” (Sherman 2012, p. 8).The moment of honing in on the injustice of
At the core of the concept lies the belief that self-determination is a natural rights and in-
2
deed the only route to moral autonomy which in turn relates to the goal of self-realization in
accordance with the laws of one’s nature, whether of an individual or of the state.
58 E.-M. Nag
colonialism and its instruments of violence might be seen to lead to an alternative

history, i.e. the rejection of all practices of state violence. Yet, as Sherman notes,
“these endeavours could also open fissures in the population. For example, as na-
tionalists criticized the state for its violence, they ran up against the fact that Indian
members of the colonial forces were in many cases the primary perpetrators of that
violence.” These inconsistencies remain part of the political landscape of modern
India, i.e. ranging from the rejection of violence to its instrumental use in the cause
of the greater good of self-determination and political independence.
2 The Violence of Territorial and Bureaucratic Order
The story of the “greater good” of colonialism as told by the colonial powers was
about the civilizing force of colonialism, the imposition of law and order on un-
ruly and backward societies, and the domination and exploitation of resources for
the good of the country that carried the “white man’s burden.” Clearly, while the
content of the language of the “greater good” changed, the notion itself continued
to be used to justify state violence in democratic and independent India. There
were indeed challenges faced by the post-colonial state that appeared to neces-
sitate this continuity: internal and external threats to territorial integrity and unity;
lack of social cohesion; expanding bureaucratization; and the catch-all agenda of
development.
There are compelling arguments for positing a special relationship between vio-
lence and the state in South Asia and it is worth remembering that the borders of
modern India were drawn by the brutal and bloody disintegration of British India:
from the breakaway of British Burma in 1937, the Partition of British India in
1947 to the “Liberation War” of Bangladesh in 1971. The inheritance of ill-defined
national and contested territories was a heavy burden to bear, at the time and into
the present, resulting in an incomplete and non-exclusive sovereignty of the state
(Mishra 2008, pp. 70–71). The oldest disputes of the Indian state are with China
and Pakistan but also involve Nepal. The best known example for the problem of
territorial ambiguity through contested accession processes is the case of Kash-
mir, although the accession of other Princely States that bordered both India and
(East and West) Pakistan had their own problems, e.g. Tripura, Cooch Behar and
Junagadh.3 The issues of territorial unity, legitimacy and sovereignty generated
3
These states were Princely States that had been ruled indirectly by the British. In 1947
they were given independence with their borders unchanged. However, the only option they
had in the wake of the construction of independent India and Pakistan was to choose to
merge with either India or Pakistan and to transfer full jurisdiction, power and authority
violent reactions to uncertainties on all these fronts. William van Schendel has apt-
ly described the “overcompensated frailty of territorial sovereignty” as the Wagah
syndrome, after the ‘hyperbolic choreography of male aggression daily performed
at Wagah-Atari, the border crossing between Pakistan and India’ (Schendel 2007,
p. 44).
Yet military violence is the not the only legacy or indeed type of state violence.
The ruptures experienced by societies and social orders during the breakup of the
British Raj meant that beatings, shootings, rapes and killings were experienced at
both high and low levels, involving traders, political and military entrepreneurs,
agricultural cultivators and labor migrants, particularly in contested borderlands.
The spillover of borderland violence to intra-state violence is thus a reflection of
individual acts of aggression as well as the drive to territorialize religion and ethnic
identities in attempts to impose modern forms of territorial sovereignty on places
and peoples. The two-fold problem of social cohesion is therefore about historical
asymmetries of discourses, world views and conceptual maps as well as about the
modern concern with measuring and quantifying social orders, ethnicities and lin-
guistic groups with a view to mapping these onto discrete territories.
Bureaucratization is an almost inevitable answer to this conundrum. On the one
hand it is the tool of choice of the modern state in its attempt to impose a rational
and territorial order onto fuzzy social entities. On the other hand, it blends the role
of developing territorial sovereignty of the state with the state’s agenda of modern-
ization and development. Bureaucratization in India ultimately led to a bloated and
overextended state sector and is much criticized, not in the least by those who per-
ceive this as holding the country back from a more promising trajectory of liberal
market based development and growth (see for example Bhagwati and Panagariya
2013). Bureaucracy does not simply hold a country or its people back. Akhil Gupta
has explored the under-researched but highly relevant role of “Red Tape” in per-
petuating day to day structural violence (Gupta 2012). Here, violence does not
occur through direct killings or beating. It is more akin to a war of attrition, the
grinding down of material and psychological resources of the population through
corruption, arbitrary practices and misplaced competition between government
and other agencies in core areas of wellbeing such as health, nutrition and educa-
tion. It is interesting to observe how Gupta’s ethnographic analysis of bureaucratic
violence mirrors “the extensive use of spectacular and arbitrary violence” seen in
of the respective Princely State to the new state. The signing over of territorial sovereignty
was mostly unproblematic but in some cases, as in these examples, there were ambiguities
regarding the legitimacy of the decision taken by the Princes on behalf of their subjects and
regarding the state they merged with, given that both India and Pakistan had strong historical
and cultural claims over these territories and their people.
60 E.-M. Nag
twentieth century India (Sherman 2012, p. 171). The differences between colonial
and post-colonial modes of violence are subtle it seems. The formal principle of the
minimum use of force as espoused by the colonial government was broken by two
factors. First, in late colonialism executive power was devolved from the center of
the Raj to lower echelons of government servants. Second, the state consistently
shielded its representatives from accountability and criticism even when force was
applied arbitrarily and viciously. This was to demonstrate the legitimacy of these
representatives, despite their often illegal actions, and therefore of the colonial
state itself. Bureaucratic violence in modern India too operates at these levels. It
is present in its day to day and immediate dealings with the population at local
levels. Furthermore, it is used to bolster territorial, political and social legitimacy
of the overarching structure of the Indian state that equates development with the
bureaucratic ordering of society. Hence, to note the fact of bureaucratic violence
is to make the point that violence does not merely refer to a direct threat to bodily
integrity but also to the conditions that diminish citizens’ flourishing and their con-
stitutionally assured rights (Fundamental Rights in “The Constitutution of India”).
However, it would be too simplistic and easy to view India’s modern and demo-
cratic state as pitted against its citizens and solely driven by an interest in territo-
rial and bureaucratic ordering and imposition of sovereignty. André Béteille notes
that “it is often said that democracy in India moves from one stage of disorder to
another. A successful democracy does not turn its back on disorder but learns to
cope with it. The accommodation of diverse, even mutually antagonistic forms
of opposition is a way of recognizing disorder and learning to cope with it. It is
through this process that democracy has acquired its distinctive form in India”
(Béteille 2012, p. 40). Disorder in itself need not result in violence. What matters
is what happens within disordered spaces. As such, rights (that are affirmed by the
state) and demands (that are made by society) can be negotiated within a context of
disorder rather than waiting for an ordered context of clear-cut relations between
the state and society.
3 An Indian Social Contract
Democracy in India entails the parallel worlds of state and traditional societies,
conflictual relations between state and society, and relations of negotiation and
participation. The pressures on the democratic state surpass the concern for order
for which there are two distinct causes: the promises of nationalism (economic and
material development; political and social self-determination; respect for funda-
mental individual rights; everyday security and legal certainty), and the expansion
of participatory and democratic spaces. There is now a large literature examining

the relation between state institutions and society in India and it is suggested “that
that the balance has shifted periodically from a ‘demand polity’, in which societal
demands expressed as electoral pressure dominate over the state, and a ‘command
polity’, where state hegemony prevails over society,” so much so that “public insti-
tutions such as the bureaucracy and organized industry, which had previously been
the centres of dominance, were now under pressure from the rising power, espe-
cially of the lower castes, in political institutions such as the legislatures and the
political parties” (Chatterjee 2001, p. 7). That said, this analysis does not consider
the relations of the state and civil society given the latter’s absence in post-colonial
India. As Partha Chatterjee notes,
most of the inhabitants of India are only tenuously, and even then ambiguously and
contextually, rights-bearing citizens in the sense imagined by the constitution. They
are not, therefore, proper members of civil society and are not regarded as such by
the institutions of the state. However, it is not as though they are outside the reach of
the state or even excluded from the domain of politics…. [These] are without doubt
political relations that may have acquired, in specific historically defined contexts, a
widely recognized systematic character, and perhaps even certain conventionally rec-
ognized ethical norms, even if subject to varying degrees of contestation (Chatterjee
2001, p. 8; also see Kaviraj 2001).
The relative success of India’s democratic system leads to a two-fold reading of

state violence. First, state-driven violence is incomplete, i.e. not total, because the
state is not the only dominant player jostling for political space. Second, justifica-
tions for state violence criss-cross between the interests of the state and the interests
of society. What I would like to articulate in this particular analysis of state-driven
violence (rather than society-driven violence or the peculiarly Indian version called
communal violence) is that there a further analytical dimension beyond the “ethics
and economy of violence” (Chatterjee 2001, p. 19). If ethics refers to the legitima-
tion of violence and economy to the feasibility as well as cost-benefit calculations
of violence, it appears that both are derived from the nature of agreements between
state and society that regulate the reasons or justifications for violence and the
instruments of violence. One way of looking at the relationship between the state
and society is to differentiate between the oppressor and the oppressed (Frazer
and Hutchings 2008, p. 91). This distinction is made irrespective of the reasons
given for violence (territorial domination, justice, peace, glory of the state, and so
on). Rather, it is predicated on an understanding of the state as the primary politi-
cal dominator that wields substantial power over the oppressed. Western political
thinking has a long tradition in tracing the roots of this agreement (and subsequent
62 E.-M. Nag
revolutionary disagreement by Marx and others) to notions of a social contract. In

its various forms it entails the surrender of the natural right to self-defense to the
state though the social contract.
How well does this kind of social contract thinking fit with modern Indian think-
ing that put so much emphasis on swaraj as the natural right to self-determination
and self-realization? The answer lies in the hybrid nature of this concept that was
used by traditionalists to justify certain socio-moral orders (offered by the caste
system for instance), by Marxists and socialists to justify resistance to established
political structures (including political parties and representative democracy), and
by liberals to justify the shaping of a modern and enabling state (based on univer-
sal individual rights with strong utilitarian influences). In effect, the dominance of
Western-educated Indian liberal-nationalists in the transition from colonialism to
independence led to a mixing of two notions. One was to accept the modern state’s
monopoly over violence. The other was to propose that the state takes on the right
to self-determination not only through political independence but also through
shaping the (liberal) content of self-determination, i.e. as reflected in the funda-
mental rights set out by the Indian Constitution: right to equality, right to freedom,
right against exploitation, right to freedom of religion, cultural and educational
rights (The Constitution of India, pp.6-15).
Critics have often called the political consequences of this expansion of the
reach of the state as the moment of the roll-back of democracy in India. This also
refers to the challenges faced by the first set of governments of independent India
to put the masses and crowd protestors their leaders had recruited as part of the
independence struggle back into their places. Now they were to be subjects and
citizens rather than unruly agents of change. This particular moment of creating a
new social contract is therefore defined by the expansion of the state into spaces
that would have been occupied by civil society (as seen in European history), by
the genuine belief of the liberal-nationalists that these actions would change soci-
ety for the better, and by the masses’ acceptance of the dominance of nationalist
parties in paving the path to political self-determination and continuing their lead-
ership into the post-independence phase.
This kind of a social contract subsumes three different types of agreements. Each
of these agreements covers different modes of state-society relations and speaks to
different interests. The first is a constitutionally assured social contract that is pre-
mised on the equality of the parties and covers “three interactive meanings of con-
stitutions as texts, constitutional law, and theory/ideology (‘constitutionalism’)”
(Baxi 2008, p. 94). The second type of agreement covers the accommodation of
the interests of diverse groups that seek recognition and self-determination without
weighing in on the question of equality vis-à-vis the state. The third type of agree-
ment has the greatest historical continuity in India and refers to the protection of
weak and vulnerable social groups by the state.
4 State-Centrism and the Indian Constitution
How do the three types of state-society agreements relate to the problem of vio-
lence in modern India? Is it not the case that a nation’s constitution and constitu-
tional practices symbolize the commitment to peaceful modes of governance and
social change? Not necessarily, as Upendra Baxi cautions. This is because “we be-
gin to realize that all constitutions are orders of violence in that they entail ‘shock-
ing’, ‘disappointing’, and ‘deranging’ expectations of large classes of people who
remain progressively disenfranchised (though formally possessed of rights) by
structures and practices of lawless governance” (Baxi 2008, p. 102, following Ben-
tham’s critique of violent constitutionalism). It appears as though the Constitution
offers several different visions of the common good and speaks to different groups
(Menon 2008, pp. 197–198). Of these visions, secularism, democracy, social jus-
tice, national unity and development are the most important ones, and within this
set of goods, “national unity was the primary notion in this vocabulary, in relation
to which the other concepts were construed” (Bajpai 2011, p. 23). The tragedy
that links the Indian Constitution with violent practices—the militarization of law
and order agents, the preventative detention system, the state’s rights to “take”
property without adequate compensation, the constitutional policing of “excesses”
of people’s human rights praxes—has its roots in the dissipation of the notion of
swaraj, or the right to self-determination and self-realization in post-Independence
India. Instead of building on this concept, the Constitution prioritizes the security,
unity and integrity of the Indian state (Baxi 2008, pp. 106–108).
This state-centric discourse was further compounded by the discourse of de-
velopment, a notion that in practical terms meant the ever expanding reach of the
state into day to day interactions of government, society and markets. That there
is resistance, and often violent resistance, to the dynamics of constitutional em-
powerment and simultaneous disempowerment is almost inevitable, especially in
a political society that comprises a vast number of subaltern classes and castes and
only a tiny elite. In more recent times we see the emergence of a shared vision of
India’s growing middle classes and the state that looks to an India on the way to
being a political and economic superpower. This vision is in tune with the belief
of the leaders of India’s freedom struggle—many of whom played key roles in the
formative debates of the Constituent Assembly—that “India had something unique
to offer to the world, and that its age, rich history, size, and talents of its people
64 E.-M. Nag
entitled it to a major role in it” (Parekh 2008, p. 43). This single-minded vision
shared by the state and social elites but not shared in practical or conceptual terms
by the poor and underprivileged has given rise to a vicious cycle of state-driven
and society-sanctioned violence. “Since the state is widely perceived to be corrupt
and in thrall to vested interests, (the poor) respond to its violence with their own.
The state, urged on by frightened middle classes, resorts to even greater repressive
violence” (Parekh 2008, p. 53).
5 The Violence of Ethno-Nationalism
Just as the constitutionally assured social contract privileges certain visions that,
though constructed as universal goods, are not universally shared, agreements that
cover territory-based platforms for self-determination too are not universally ap-
plied and can be seen to privilege certain groups over others. Neera Chandhoke
evokes the example of Kashmir to highlight the role of broken social contracts
between the state and ethno-cultural groups in the spiraling of violence (Chand-
hoke 2005). The challenges of ethno-nationalist movements, particularly within
the boundaries of a vast and diverse country like India, pose problems into the
present day. The Indian state is the author of many of the practices and mechanisms
of power sharing, regional autonomy, linguistic and religious rights, representation
of group interests in decision-making bodies, and decentralization. In theory, these
mechanisms reduce the intensity of inter-group conflicts and conflicts between
the state and diverse groups. Yet in practice the accommodation of diversity is a
complex issue, especially when the federal system of checks and balances fails in
delivering on the contract between the central government and autonomous or de-
volved powers, i.e. states and regional political parties. According to Chandhoke,
the key social contract guaranteeing the Kashmiri state’s autonomy was not bro-
ken by institutional design but by anxious attempts to control the political fate of
Kashmir by three players: the central government, the Kashmiri state government,
and mainstream political parties. Electoral malpractices and extra-institutional
responses by marginalized communities and political parties that used violence
meant that state violence appeared for a long time as localized rather than central-
ized. However, the central government clearly destabilized the normal functioning
of democratic processes and institutions in Kashmir through factionalism and in-
formal bargaining, opening spaces for the violent airing of discontent.
The failure of successive central governments to deliver procedural and sub-
stantive justice, especially socio-economic justice, has been a key factor in the
emergence of state-initiated cycles of violence in the context of mediating diver-

sity and difference. Yet socio-economic grievances are only part of the demands
for justice made by ethno-nationalist movements, not only in Kashmir but also in
other areas marked by violent conflict such as in the northeastern states of Assam,
Tripura, Mizoram and Manipur. The state is deeply embedded in conflicts within
which the central government represents the vested, particular interests of the po-
litical parties in power, overarching national interests in internal security, and the
interests of a representative state. It is in these split roles that it is asked to weigh
in on the issue of identity politics. The hope of India’s nationalist elites at the time
of independence was that social unity, based on universal franchise and individual
rights, would render the question of group identities obsolete or at the least, politi-
cally impotent. Yet this postulation of a secular and Western-inspired construction
of nationalism bred powerful counter-representations that sought to view ethnic,
religious and other identities as primordial and as being the rightful bases of the
state (Gottlob 2007, p. 785). Subaltern Studies theorists like Gyan Pandey and
Partha Chatterjee have long noted that the drive for secular and shallow homogeni-
zation brought about the simultaneous suppression and opening of spaces for con-
flict in modern India. It seems that the much used nationalist mantra of “unity in
diversity” shows the potential for violence in unity as well as violence in diversity.
Seen in this light, state violence is not an inherent characteristic of new democ-
racies that need mechanical fine-tuning of its instruments of representation but is
inherent in political systems within which conceptual arguments have not been
fully played out. The Indian case shows that electoral and even participatory demo-
cratic systems do not always provide the answer to the peaceful negotiation of
conflicts over resources, identities, and group rights. Empirical studies have indeed
shown that the Indian electoral system that rests heavily on group allegiances often
disrupts local forms of cooperation, often stands for the means of capturing state
power and resources, and often leads to social schisms (Rudolph 2000, p. 1765).
Moreover, the relationship between associations and democracy in generating trust
and cooperation rather than violence is complex and indeterminate. It is highly
dependent on the types of associations in question and not only on the type of
state (Rudolph 2000). It remains to be seen whether the emergence of alternative
associative forms of political engagement with the state—whether representing a
majority of the poor or indigenous minorities—will lead to different ways of set-
tling historical scores and present injustices experienced by groups, both in relation
to the state and to each other.
66 E.-M. Nag
6 The Incomplete Sovereignty of the State
A third area of analysis within state-society relations pertains to the role of the state
in protecting the vulnerable. This is one of the oldest functions of governance, pre-
ceding the functioning of modern states, but taken on by the modern state as a core
responsibility towards its citizens. This is especially true of post-colonial countries
that justified independence with the removal of sources of exploitation and impov-
erishment. Although it is argued that the language of a social contract in ancient
Indian thinking is misplaced (Huxley 1996), and that inserting this vocabulary into
historical analyses deflects from more accurate notions of the responsibility of
the king (or government) to help realize a timeless socio-moral order ( dharma)4,
the issue of pastoral and protective care has a long conceptual history. In the Ar-
thashastra we find the following explanation that links state power, its protective
functions and the perennial laws of socio-moral order.
Whoever imposes severe punishment becomes repulsive to the people; while he who
awards mild punishment becomes contemptible. But whoever imposes punishment
as deserved becomes respectable … But when the law of punishment is kept in abey-
ance, it gives rise to such disorder as is implied in the proverb of fishes (A great fish
swallows a small one); for in the absence of a magistrate, the strong will swallow the
weak; but under his protection the weak resist the strong (Radhakrishnan and Moore
1989, pp. 198–199).
This justification of state power and violence seems intuitive. Yet who are the
weak and who are the strong? Are these individuals or groups? Are these margins
or minorities? Are weaknesses absolute or are they about social, political and eco-
nomic asymmetries? Arjun Appadurai describes the modern problem of weakness
and strength using the language of “predatory identities,” arising “in those circum-
stances in which majorities and minorities can plausibly be seen as being in danger
of trading places” (Appadurai 2006, pp. 51–52). He defines these as “identities
whose social construction and mobilization require the extinction of other, proxi-
mate social categories, defined as threats to the very existence of some groups,
defined as a ‘we’.” What lurks behind the interpretation of indeterminate strength
and weakness is therefore not merely about relational power differentials but “an
anxiety of incompleteness about their sovereignty,” a hallmark of the tension be-
4
Dharma is a multilayered Sanskrit term for Law as well as for a life lived in accordance
with the law. It builds on a concept of a harmonious social and moral order and is conceived
as a path of righteous, decent and proper behavior, depending on one’s status within the over-
arching order. While dharma is exercised in many different ways, its opposite is disharmony,
chaos and suffering.
tween majority identities and the constructed purity of national identity. Turning
weaknesses and strengths of positions into numbers is a modern project, and is
sharpened by globalization whereby numbers shift and change in unpredictable
ways, as Appadurai argues. State violence is thus not only about the justification of
the state’s legitimate use of power wielded on behalf of the oppressed. It is also an
outcome of insidious collaborations between the state and (majoritarian) societies
to impose their shared sovereignty and respective identities onto other sections of
society in the name of nationalism and unitary citizenship.
7 Globalization and New Forms of Violence
The relations between the weak and the strong or the disempowered and the em-
powered has taken on a particular salience in the era of the twin metanarratives
of globalization and privatization (Resnik 2013). Both narratives necessitate or at
least elicit certain responses by states to redefine their identities, roles and reach
through processes of “statization.” The inevitable anxieties that follow this uncer-
tain project certainly hold true for the Indian state, crucially at a time when it is
under close scrutiny by the world as an emerging power. The vision underlying this
new found role in the world is shared by the Indian state and by an elite minority,
with both embracing the gains of greater wealth and status that appear to come with
globalization and privatization. Yet there are many losers in this particular version
of the greater good, and so both metanarratives remain contested by others (see
Rao 2010). To be a power and a global player in an age of interdependence the state
acquiesces in many instances to being part of a new kind of architecture of global
governance. This entails at least some hollowing out of sovereignty, especially in
the legal realm where dominance is not easily ascertained. At the same time, stati-
zation also entails the attempt to retrieve back some sovereignty through coopting
the strong, i.e. new elites that are integral to the success of India’s emergence as
an equal inter pares on the world stage as well as majorities that assure its formal
complete reach within society. The state is thus “both weak and strong” (Randeria
2007, p. 8). Randeria claims that “in an age of globalization and economic Empire,
political violence has been replaced by legal violence” (Randeria 2007, p. 2). Civil
or political society too is both weak and strong in this context. On the one hand
legal plurality offers an ever greater range of tools to pursue certain interests, i.e.
through transnational legal plurality, plurality within state law, hybrids of com-
munity-based rights, national law and international law, as well as project law as
dictated by international organizations. On the other hand the state and processes
of statization have become more unpredictable and uncertain. This does not merely
68 E.-M. Nag
signify the big questions of the day about the nature and future of nation states but
also highlights new forms and spaces of violence. These forms of violence look to
continue into the future, as they are integral to the instruments of re-entrenchment
of the powers of the “cunning state” (Randeria 2007).
The state in India thus still wields considerable power and remains the source of
considerable violence. Crucially though, this has not been possible without signifi-
cant parts of society being deeply involved in and having an interest in the shap-
ing of the modern and globalizing state. State-society relations work in two ways
in generating and amplifying political violence. First, the specific nature of these
relations tends to structure the modes of state violence. Violence is legitimized, its
agents empowered and its instruments agreed upon. In this view the space for vio-
lence is negotiated by the state and sections of society. Simultaneously these spaces
open other doors for resistance by other parts of society, leading to triangulated and
often violent relations between the state, complicit society and oppositional soci-
ety. Another way of putting this would be to look at the plurality of the relations
between the state and its diverse societies relations in the context of exploring the
options and limits of state violence. Instances of state violence in India require me-
ticulous examination of these relations before committing to generalizations about
the “ethics and economy” of state violence. It is an uncertain world in which many
states seek to secure growth, goods and status for themselves and on behalf of their
citizens within an increasingly interdependent society of states. This is a tall order
and is cause of much state anxiety in the absence of total sovereignty and in the
context of contested borders, social and political strife and growing economic in-
equalities. Similar to India’s traditional societies, these challenges are not symmet-
rical. State violence then, far from being unitary, is a hydra-headed phenomenon.
Yet, tracing its variations through time and in different, often disorderly contexts
is one way of making sense of the number of expected and unexpected ways it ap-
pears in the world. As India’s will to power grows and its growing middle classes
urge it on, this could be an historical moment where the respective command and
demand polities are in close balance. If so, there will be all the more reason for
much closer inspections of the various “heads” of state violence in India.
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Violence on the Periphery of the Thai
State and Nationhood
Karin Zackari
State violence in Thailand is one of the main targets of human rights advocacy. Ac-
tivists, lawyers and scholars address both the violence as events and the deficiency
in institutional processes for holding authorities accountable. Violations of rights
are generally understood as belonging within the juridical realm, taking as point
of reference a citizen or group of citizens in relation to a state or union of states.
From that perspective the most violent space of the state is where non-citizens and
marginalized groups are identified. These are people whose claims matter little
to the state.1 Human rights organizations and reports are on agreement that Thai-
land repeatedly breach the rights of refugees and fail to protect them from abuse.2
Among the non-nationals on the margins of the Thai state there are more than half
1
They are the precarious workers from Laos, Burma and Cambodia (but also lower classes
of Thai citizens, notably ex-convicts) in construction and in the fishing industry; the Rohing-
ya refugees from Burma being towed out at sea by Thai authorities or, if they manage to enter
Thailand, detained under questionable conditions Indefinite detention in accordance with
Immigration Act, B.E. 2522 [1979], men are held in detention centers, women and children
in social community centers (UNHCR 2015). For a comprehensive report on “push back”
and “help on” strategies, see The Equal Rights Trust, 2014, 3.2.; Letter to Prime Minister of
Thailand from The Equal Rights Trust, 23 January 2009.
2
While being party to core international human rights treaties, including the ASEAN Human
Rights Declaration, 19 November 2012, Thailand is not a signatory party to the international
Refugee Convention nor to its additional protocol (1951; 1967).
Following the custom in Thai language, Thai scholars are referred to by their first name.
This custom is also reflected in the bibliography.
K. Zackari ()
Historiska institutionen, LUX, Lunds Universitet, Box 192, 221 00 Lund, Sweden
e-mail: karin.zackari@mrs.lu.se

DOI 10.1007/978-3-658-11181-6_5
72 K. Zackari
a million stateless persons residing within the Thai borders (UNHCR 2015). The
state-violence Thailand performs towards these groups of people construes a clear
cut between nationals and non-nationals. The Thai state is however also notorious
for committing state violence against those regarded as nationals.
The seeming conflation of national and citizen is not a mere lapse in juridical
terminology. “Belonging” in the state is formally a judicial status, whereas belong-
ing to the nation is first and foremost a social construct. The legal definition of a
Thai national identity is not equivalent to the nationalist identity called Thainess
(kwampenthai), or being Thai. The cultural social construction of the later can lend
itself to legitimization of violations of the judicial status—making national belong-
ing not a simple case of citizenship. State violence is an integral part of nation-state
building and is closely linked to how power is distributed and accounted for in
state bureaucracy. It has been argued that due to factionalism Thailand has not
been able to build stable enduring civil institutions that efficiently could protect
people from and hold state agents accountable for violence against citizens. Fol-
lowing the observation that culture of belonging—Thainess—is used to legitimize
violence against people, I will here focus on the role of cultural state violence in
Thailand. Johan Galtung proposes that cultural violence—language, art, religion,
ideology, science—is the long line throughout a nation-states history of violence
that legitimizes what is more easily identified as direct and structural state violence
(Galtung 2013, p. 46). Cultural violence is expressions of a nationalist discourse
that constructs and reinforces divisions of belonging in Thailand. The question of
belonging, the definition of Thainess, in turn, legitimizes violence against nation-
als, those whose belonging as nationals and citizens is presumed.
I will here suggest that state violence in Thailand happens in a constructed
periphery of state and nationhood. If people are constructed as belonging to this
periphery, state violence directed towards them is more readily acceptable by the
majority society construed as being the center. The social and cultural legitimiza-
tion processes of state violence can also push people, and the violence they are
subjected to, into the periphery of state and nationhood. The periphery of the state
is where violence can be unaccounted for and where impunity exists, the periphery
of nationhood is the space where state violence is legitimized.
I will use three political conflicts to serve as example of how different expressions of
cultural violence has legitimized direct and structural state violence in Thailand: The
farmers’ movements, the deep south insurgency, and the communist threat. As dif-
ferent as these conflicts may first seem they serve the purpose to exemplify different
expressions of a cultural violence, which not only legitimizes state violence but also
obscures political domination. The conflicts stretch over more than half a century and
Violence on the Periphery of the Thai State and Nationhood 73
conflate layers of exploitations3 in Thai nation-state building. Their history contains

both state-violence and resistance to the same, framed in cultural and political strug-
gles. The three conflicts all challenge political and cultural order—making claims to
political participation, making claims to belonging and thus to move people from the
periphery of state and nationhood.
1 Constructing a Periphery of the Thai State and

Nationhood
What I will refer to here as the periphery is a flexible space; it is defined through
its proximity to centers of power. The distance between center and periphery is
first and foremost based on social relationships but these also have geographi-
cal dimensions. The center defined through its domination and the periphery is
identified from the viewpoint of the center. The conceptualization of a rural-urban
divide has had a prominent position as theoretical base in the larger field of Thai
studies. Thongchai Winichakul has pointed out a discursive practice from the early
shaping of the Siamese nation-state to contemporary Thailand: a spatial differen-
tiation of the rural ( ban nok) as less “civilized” than the urban city. Periphery and
center describes relationships of power that encompasses both physical and mate-
rial movements between the rural and the urban areas as well as social movements
within society. People are situated, by state actors and through cultural political
discourse, further or closer to the center of the nationhood. Through contesting
politics, through cultural and social relationships, I see how people can also push
and participate in the move themselves.
The periphery should be understood as part of a continuous construction of
nationals. In the nationalist project the logic of dividing between majority and “the
others” functions to create stronger unities and to establish “belonging.” Depend-
ing on the size of this other and its proximity to the dominating majority in the
center of the state, different policies are applied: integrationist, segregationist, as-
similationist etc. These policies of constructing belongings have strong economic
political rationales behind them. Kasian Tejapira puts this rational at the heart of
the nationalism that has targeted the population of Chinese origin in Thailand.
Kasian writes: “[…] they [the Chinese] constituted the only potent domestic so-
cioeconomic force that could effectively challenge state authority […] yet, their
collective entrepreneurial skills and labor were too precious to the modernizing
efforts of the Thai state for them to be simply killed or expelled. Hence the need
3
To Galtung exploitation is at the core of the “archetypal violent structure” (Galtung 2013,
p. 45)
74 K. Zackari
to ideologically construct and perpetually invoke their un-Thai ethnicity and sta-
tus as ‘settlers’ […]” (Kasian 2001, p. 189). The construction of an anti-thesis to
Thainess to legitimize state violence is at the core of the long line of cultural vio-
lence performed in Thai history.
The spaces of center and periphery for belonging are rooted in the early con-
struction of the Siamese/Thai nation-state. In the late nineteenth century Siamese
internal colonization laid the foundation for a peripheral space of nationhood and
state.4 The initial period of modernization was an explicit transformation of the
sakdina kingdom to a monarchy nation-state with a strong centralized power and
a subjugated people.5 With the centralization of bureaucracy divisions of power
and understandings of territoriality changed (Akin 1975, p. 103 f.; Chaiyan 1994,
p. 59). The royal administration of the nation-state Siam set out to define terri-
torial borders, advancing the state administration to new geographical areas and
collecting data about the people who were now to be defined as judicial subjects
to the state. These practices followed a colonial model—the idea that there were
“civilizationally advanced and backward people” (Mazower 2006, p. 563). The
geographically bounded nation-state came to be defined through a discourse of
civilization coupled with a racial discourse—it was the imagining of a Thai civi-
lization (Streckfuss 1993; Thongchai 2000a, 2000b). Moreover, the modernisers
(a literal and economic elite) had visions of a progressive civilization. Thongchai
argues that the modernisers engaged in “a temporalizing practice, locating and
juxtaposing peoples, including the élite themselves, in a new linear (progressive,
temporal) cosmic order called civilization” (Thongchai 2000a, p. 41). The ethno-
graphic temporalizing practice constructed a Thai people on different stages of the
progress. Far away from the city, there were wild and “possibly un-civilizable”
people. The people closer to the city, farmers and villagers (chao ban nok), held
customs and believes familiar to the urban dwellers but they were also seen as not
keeping on time with the cultural and temporal progress of modernity (Thongchai
2000a, p. 52).
Belonging to state and nation has been conceptualized differently throughout
the 20th century. Under Rama VI (King Vajiravudh 1910–1925), people belonged
despite of ethnicity when they swore allegiance to the monarchy ( phra ma-
hakasat) to religion (satsana), and to race and nation (chat) (Renard 2000, p. 78).
4
Whether or not to use the framework of colonialism is part of an ongoing debate, see e.g.
Lysa 2004; Thongchai 2000a, b. For internal colonialism ( aanaanikhohm phaai nai) see
Chaiyan 1994.
5
Sakdina can be explained as organization of land and manpower through relationships
between four classes: tat (slave), phrai (commoners), nobles and royals. See Akin 1975;
Anchalee 1981; Reynolds 1987.
The educated elite during the previous reign under Rama V (King Chulalongkorn
1868–1910) had introduced the concept of chat—connecting a religious under-
standing of belonging through birth into the same community, with shared cul-
tural traits and extending it to the idea of the political community as a people
under a Buddhist monarchical rule (Murashima 1988, pp. 82 f.). Ethnicity be-
came a more important distinguishing character for belonging in the Thai na-
tion under the regime of Field Marshall Phibunsongkhram (Phibun 1938–1944,
1948–1957). Phibun represented the military side of the coup that had abolished
the absolute monarchy in 1932. Phibun was inspired by European and Japanese
fascism, according to which the national belonging is based on territorial and
historical links. Together with the chief ideologist Luang Wichit Wathakan they
crafted a nationalism that promoted irredentism and presented the Thai people
as a great race above others (Baker and Pasuk 2000, pp. 258–260). To reflect the
majority ethnic group and its inherited link to the geographical unit the name
of the country was changed from Siam to Thailand ( Prathet Thai).6 The mili-
taristic patriotic national anthem linking the Thais through their blood to a free
and progressive nation was also introduced at this time that was marked by put-
ting race and nation ( chat) at center of historical culture rather than the royal
dynasty (Charnvit 1979, p. 167). The 1930s and following two decades is when
national belonging becomes forever intertwined with particular religious and
cultural values (Chai-anan 2002, p. 59) and not least, one national language.7
State-centered nationalism does not suggest a simple dissemination of culture to
the people however contestations and acceptance in the convergences between
state people are not easily deciphered. Through accumulation of resources the
state has the privilege of sanctioning certain culture above others. People, in
order to belong, thus have to relate to a hegemonic nationalism. Dominating the
Thai nationalist sentiment and self-identification is the idea of the Thai nation
as continuously a monarchy with a sovereign people under strong leadership
(Reynolds 2005, p. 33).
At the end of the nineteenth century the Siamese and later Thai nation-state
was shaped geopolitically in relation to the colonizing powers in Southeast Asia
and through modern nationalism—constructing its populous through discourses
of racialization and civilization. In the construction of the nation-state two insti-
tutions stand out as more important than others: first the monarchy and later also
6
Prathet (country) signifies a spatial unit, whereas chat (nation) refers to commonality in
origin (Thongchai 1994, pp. 134–135)
7
National language decrees had been introduced by Rama IV, under Phibun’s regime re-
forms, sometimes violently enforced, were aimed at erasing regional differences (Diller
2002).
76 K. Zackari
the military. In this study they are both defining of the center of the state—the
monarchy as a cultural signifier of the nationhood and the military as its protector.
2 Division of Power—Unchecked Military Might

In the ideal state there are functions regulating the state agents’ violent activities
under an umbrella of monopoly of violence. If we expect the state to be account-
able for violence we want to understand why the state fails, and more, under what
circumstances the state can produce violence and impunity. Political scientists and
historians alike have argued that the particularities of the Thai state—whether demo-
cratic or authoritarian—lies in divisions of power. Chai-Anan Samudavanija argues
that the Thai state has “not a single locus” but loci of power (Chai-anan 1997, p. 45).
Along the same line Craig J. Reynolds calls the Thai state an un-state, i.e. power
is divided through networks of powerful people and not through formal institution-
alization. The Thai un-state is “a multi-centered autocracy with many centers of
power that sometimes do what they want autonomously, without instruction and with
impunity” (Reynolds 2012a). Impunity is an important part of the structural state
violence. Impunity works on many levels of the state: non-state perpetrators being
indirectly protected by police, witnesses not daring to report perpetration in fear of
repression by local authorities, easily exhausted legal means and limited possibilities
to make appeals to higher instances. State agents regularly defend practices of impu-
nity through a security discourse: Security personal are only performing their duties
protecting the state or the nation or the institutions that bind these entities together
(Haberkorn 2013a, p. 204; 2014b, p. 8).
It is widely claimed that participatory politics and long-standing accountable state

institutions have not been established in Thailand because of old structures of
power and political factionalism. Regimes in Thailand rule on basis of personal
relationships invested with influence (itthiphon) and ideals of strong leader fig-
ures—men of prowess (Reynolds 2012b). Comparing nation-state formation in
the post–colonial cold war, Dan Slater defines the political space in Thailand as
determined by “chronically factionalized fighting forces” (Slater 2010, p. 7). On
the civil side of state bureaucracy, factionalism in the Thai polity shifts balance
between different influential networks (elites). Within the military factionalism has
served the purpose of paving way for new influential groups challenging older
strong-men among officers and especially taking control over the First army, based
in Bangkok (Marks 1980b).
Since the first codified constitution of 1932 the annulations, rewritings and
amendments of Thai constitutions can be read as histories of “the realities of power
relations in the process of Thai social and political development” (Thanet 2007b,
p. 33). Until 2014 there has been 19 constitutions and interim charters codifying
divisions of power in Thailand. The basis for the first constitution was the charter
presented on the night of the overthrow of the absolute monarch 24 June 1932,
signed by Rama VII (King Prajadhipok) 3 days later, gave the highest political
power to the people. The coup group ( The People’s Party) promulgated the con-
stitution on 10 December 1932, but a few months later the King used his new con-
stitutional power to ban political parties. After 1932 the military grew to become
the strongest power node in the Thai state (Morell and Chai-Anan 1981, p. 50f).
Civil bureaucracy has never been organized in a way strong or stable enough to
counter-weight the military institution and the military regimes have always been
cautious on legitimizing their rule through constitutional frames. A move towards
strengthening civil bureaucracy was taken in the constitution of 1997 by stipulat-
ing that only elected members of parliament could be prime ministers and thereby
excluding military officers. The constitution was abolished with the 2006 coup
d’état. The tendency of constitutions and charter amendments since has been to
enhance the legal space for the military and its allied networks to conduct national
politics with Bangkok as center stage (Puangthong 2015). The years following the
2006 coup are characterized by political turmoil and state violence. Violence in
central Bangkok in April-May 2010 culminated in 90 killed on the street. A Truth
and Reconciliation Committee of Thailand (TRCT), 2010–2012, investigating the
violence concluded that the root cause of the violence was found in the “inequality
in the social structure”: The conflict they defined as a conflict over democratic rule
in Thailand, centering in Bangkok where state institutions are seated and where the
violence of the conflict is played out on streets (Truth for Reconciliation Commis-
sion of Thailand 2012, p. 221). The conflict did not start in 2006 nor end in 2010
and encompassed more than claims for democratic rule. It is a conflict that chal-
lenges the center in itself, with many roots connecting mass political movements,
capital owners, state bureaucracy, the institution of monarchy and the military in
visions of how society should be ordered.
In what can be best described as a conservative ideal society the function of
the military is to safeguard the highest national institution—the monarchy. Calling
it “the hyphen” in the Thai nation-state, Reynolds suggests that the monarchy is
the institution that connects nation with state (Reynolds 2005, p. 25). More than
any institution, the monarchy has served to culturally unify the nation-state: The
monarchy is at once the symbol of sovereignty and the notion of an ever-lasting na-
tion. Through Buddhist teachings and Brahminic practices the reign has gained an
almost divine status. Through national historiography it is tied to the old kingdoms
preceding Siam—land and power has been vested in this reign. King Bhumibol
Adulyadej (Rama IX, 1946–) ascended the throne when political elite struggles
had weakened the institution. Under the military dictatorship of Field Marshall
Sarit Thanarat (1958–1963), the role of the King was again strengthened. In a time
78 K. Zackari
when cold-war politics dominated the Southeast Asian region, a Buddhist King
was a potential cultural unifier of the nation (Thak 2007, pp. 204 f.). King Bhu-
mibol has throughout his reign referred to the importance of a unified society. His
own position is in direct relation to the people, beyond political organizing of so-
ciety. He is a father figure of the Thai people, acting as a unifier when politics and
democracy “disrupts” society (Hewison and Kengkij 2010, p. 190). The King is be-
lieved to hold specific merits, his power filled with barami (righteous power) mak-
ing his rule benevolent (Connors 2007, pp. 48–49). Some argue that a foundation
for casting the King as semi-divine was laid down under Sarit’s regime with the
US in the background, still the past decades has seen an increase in the discourse
of a monarch holding “magico-divine power” ( saksit) (Jackson 2010, pp. 32–33).
Though the power ( amnat) that military and politicians can hold is different from
the virtues power of the monarchy, the conceptualization of benevolent rule can be
applicable to parliamentarian government. Under the sovereign monarchy power
and influence is distributed and supported in a hierarchically structured society, in
which the ideal government establishes political stability and national unity. In this
system, government is by necessity lead by persons of merit and moral responsi-
bility: Certain public figures considered khon di (good persons) can be trusted to
appoint others for political posts to govern political affairs as seen fit. How exactly
the order of good or benevolent power (both barami and amnat) should be under-
stood is one of the basic political conflicts around which state violence emerges.
One issue is that different versions of governance have turned out to be more or
less compatible with popular political participation; another is the question of rep-
resentation or on what grounds part of the population is excluded from influence.
The ideal of a stable benevolent or “good governance” has in times of political
turmoil been contrasted with chaotic majority participation: it nurtured the right-
wing in the turbulent years between October 1973 and October 1976, it was used
against democracy movements in the late 1980s and 1990s and it has spurred na-
tionalist sentiments following the coup in 2006. The discourse of benevolent rule
is advocated among some elite groups as part of their conception of democracy but
it can also lend itself to authoritarianism, socially legitimizing violence and op-
pression. Puangthong calls this “vicious goodness,” making the point that trusting
a system of good people as political representatives obscures structural violence.
There is a large base of the population, who, without engaging in political claims
making, benefit from a basically conservative order. Puangthong calls them the
masses who turn right (Muanchon liewkwa), whose national ideal is a harmoni-
ously organic society (Puangthong 2010). Ideally, in the discourse of benevolent
leadership the legitimacy of leaders can be eroded when they order a use of vio-
lence, which is perceived as excessive (Poowin 2011). However, where the line is
drawn for excessive violence is decided within a complex division of power.
3 Political and Cultural Concepts as Violence—Unity and

Goodness
The order of power is filled with concepts that merge cultural values and norms
with political ideals. Political and cultural concepts are constantly redefined and
filled with different connotations, and political conflict can focus on defining them.
State practices of imposing normative concepts that ignore political antagonism
and claims belong to what Galtung calls “cultural violence.” In the turbulent times
after the economic crisis in 1997 a range of new political concepts were intro-
duced. Some answered to the felt needs of an uncertain future while connecting
to older political concepts that reinsured a sense of national stability. With the
entrance of IMF the concept of good governance was introduced and soon found
resonance in traditional ideals with deeper cultural roots—the benevolent rule. The
structuring morpheme in the Thai word for good governance is thamma, a concept
connoting righteousness, truth, justice and moral teaching. Scholars and politicians
alike tried to set the standard for the term: Did it mean transparency, checks-and-
balances, efficiency and anti-corruptness? Was it only compatible with democratic
rule? (Kasian 2009) When the military made claim to thammarat8 the concept was
turned into meaning a state whose moral base was upheld by a united and harmoni-
ous people (Kasian 2009, pp. 14–16). When good governance is strongly empha-
sized it has come to mean simply a state rule that takes responsibility, whether for
economic or social stability, whether coercive means are used or not.
More than any other concept, unity (samakkhi) captures the contestations with-
in Thai society through the histories of the nation-state. Unity is used as one of the
foundational concepts to define Thainess but as any other concept it is filled with
connotations that change with society and political order. Samakkhi was introduced
in the beginning of the fifth reign of the Chakri dynasty (King Chulalongkorn,
1868–1910). In spite of the King’s insistence on samakkhi meaning submissive-
ness of the people under one king, the Siamese literati and self-proclaimed nation-
builders assigned it with future oriented aspirations. Samakkhi thus also served the
purposes of those who wanted to see constitutional rule by the turn of the twentieth
century (Copeland 1993, pp. 18–20, 25–27, 33).
Under General Sarit samakkhi was framed as a moral duty combining it with the
word thamma, and it was used to legitimize his own coup d’état as one performed
in “solidarity” with the nation (Thak 2007, p. 101). Samakkhi appeared as a central
concept in the interim constitution following the coup 2006. Under the regime of
General Prayut Chan-o-cha, coming to power through a coup d’état 22 May 2014,
samakkhi became a concept of everyday life—through public speeches by the
The word officially used today is thammaphiban: phiban meaning “to take care of, to guard
8
or to protect.”
80 K. Zackari
general on national television, through songs and cultural events in public spaces.
Opposition is framed as dissenting from core values of the nation that according to
the military regime of 2014 keeps the nation happy and peaceful.9
Cultural violence can be traced through long lasting political conflicts in Thai-
land, serving to establish what or where the center of nation and state is. Three
political conflicts stands out in their longevity pointing towards the incapability of
different regimes at the center of state to uproot causes of conflict through coercion
and cultural violence. In a discourse of disenfranchisement and exploitation of the
majority of the people by elites in Bangkok, resistance to state power has found
its strongest most enduring roots in the Thai rural areas: The farmers’ movements
versus exploitative policies, the communist insurgency, and the southern border
region conflict. State violence generally causes disruptor in a society but various
Thai regimes have sought and found legitimacy for state violence in insisting on
societal unity. The three conflicts exemplify how the Thai state’s cultural violence
serves to sustain the very resentment or violent political resistance that it was sup-
posed to undermine. The conflicts illustrate in different ways how people, despite
their causes being pushed to the periphery contest the power at the center for defin-
ing their belonging and political claims to the state.
3.1 Farmers’ Political Movements
Farmers and village people—organizing in federations, collaborating with urban

students and workers, claiming principals of legality while performing street pro-
tests—have, perhaps more than any other social political movement pushed their
positions forward in relation to ruling regimes. They have managed to keep their
relative status in Thai society despite challenging cultures of subjection. They have
challenged so called benevolent patron-client relationships expressed as landlords
and tenants (Haberkorn 2011, pp. 33, 60), and, not least the urban-rural division of
resources due to the urban dependency on their production and their workforce as
migrant workers in factories.
Culturally farmers hold a special moral status in Thai society. They are referred
to as “the backbones of the nation” but also frequently caught in dichotomizing
political language: they are either capable farmers or dependent poor and their
place is the authentic pre-modern village rather than the political community. The
authenticity ascribed to farmers and rural people is a way of historicizing them
9
The military regime that took power 22 May 2014 under the leadership of General Prayut
Chan-O-Cha is called the National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO). Through arbitray
summons, detention and prosecutions it has curbed dissident thinking and expression, aim-
ing “to control the production of knowledge” (Haberkorn 2014a)
while it is also part of a “discursive differentiation” going back to the ethnographic

studies of the early nation-state formation. Scholars, social activists and politicians
alike have tried to define the essence and sentiments of the farmer and the rural
life. Philip Hirsch calls the village “an arena of struggle between national and lo-
cal identity for control over resources and over concepts of development” (Hirsch
2002, p. 263). In their role as producers of crops and a large percentage of the agri-
cultural export, their plights are recognized as politically important. TRCT, 2010–
2012, concluded that inequality between urban and provincial population was a
root cause of the political conflict, a fairly uncontroversial statement.10 Recognition
of stark inequalities in distribution of wealth and resources has rendered some
support for the farmer’s movement, yet despite economic and political changes
in Thailand during the second half of the twentieth century, the general inequality
between rural small farmers and other social classes have not changed. The rural
community is a highly politicized space in Thai history.
Economic changes in Thailand in the 50s and 60s led to a period of increasing
indebtedness and dependency of small farmers while, at the same time, govern-
ment strategies prevented “the rural population from engaging in organized po-
litical activity” (Turton and Akin 1987, p. 31). Wealth and political influence was
connected on village level causing conflicts between poorer farmers, land-owners
and middle-men over land rent, wages, retail prices, interest etc. (Turton and Akin
1987, p. 81). At the same time an increase in export-crops, putting Thailand on
the top of rice-producers in the world, experienced as exploitation of the rural by
the state and the global market. In the 1970s hundreds of farmers’ organizations
were formed. The Farmers Federation of Thailand (FFT), established in November
1974, was an important force for passing the Rent-Control Act of 1974 that regu-
lated tenancy more favorably for the farmers. At its core it was not a new conflict,
the claims made by the farmers in the 1960–1970s resonated with land reforms
propagated by the Pridi Banomyong clique at the time of the constitutional reform
30–40 years earlier.
During the 1970s farmers moved their political space marching to centers of
power in the urban areas of Chiang Mai and Bangkok. This move stirred up po-
litical elites that tried to dismiss the organized farmers’ political claims. As Tyrell
Haberkorn notes, the farmers “were only exercising their rights as full citizens. The
response to their actions, however, indicate that in reality their rights of citizenship
were never intended to be as full as those enjoyed by the landlords” (Haberkorn
2011, p. 19). In the political turmoil between the October 1973 ousting of military
10
Agriculture makes up 40 % of the total national labor pool but receives only 10 % of GDP.
The report also confirmed that the “income-generating developments are clustered in urban
areas” and that the richest 10 % owned 100 times more land per person than the rest of the
population (Truth for Reconciliation Commission of Thailand 2012, p. 220)
82 K. Zackari
dictatorship and its subsequent return in October 1976, violence against farmers
escalated. Leaders of farmers’ organizations, representatives in committees and
other public forums were harassed and murdered. No one has been held account-
able for that violence and those assassinations (Haberkorn 2009). These were vio-
lent events on both the geographical and the administrative periphery of the state.
When forming an alliance with workers and students in the mid 1970s, the
farmers knocked on the door to a political space not intended for them. They chal-
lenged a position in the order of society and they moved conflicts into urban ar-
eas—closer to state center. They challenged an order of society and that, in turn,
lend authority to state violence turning back against them. In the late 1980s the
political course of organized farmers changed and their political claims became
more related to governing practices than framing the uneven distribution of re-
sources and power as exploitation (Walker 2012, pp. 20–22). In the wake of the late
1990s economic crisis Rama IX (King Bhumibol) introduced sufficiency economy
(setthakit phophiang) as an answer to farmers plight in global capitalism. Propa-
gated as a moral guidance to modest livelihood and less dependency on global
capitalism the focus on economy acknowledged that farmers’ production was not
separated from urban lives. Sufficiency economy was however not a new concept
but had been used to describe farming and village life as subsistence economies
(Bowie 1992). Conservative, liberal and socialist scholars and social movements
embraced these concepts as descriptive of an “authentic” Thai way of living. Thus
sufficiency was also criticized for misrepresenting the rural poor and patronizing
their understanding, engagement in and experiences of capitalism (Bowie 1992;
Isager and Ivarsson 2010b; Walker 2010; 2012, pp. 70–71, 222).
In the late 2000s the Red-shirt movement, consisting to a large part of northern
and northeastern farmers, marched into Bangkok. There was a big support-base
for the movement within the city limits but the Red-Shirts were regularly labeled
chao ban nok (rural people) and in the violence that culminated in May 2010 the
demonstrators were described as “germs” that “invaded” the city. Their appearance
was described as dark and dirty, but the infection they carried was the moral disor-
der of society (Thongchai 3 May 2010; Viernes 2015). Being obviously Thai and
farmers, they have a strong cultural belonging they can claim as their belonging to
the nation–state. The political violence used against them, killing nearly 100 and
injuring more than 2000, therefore was explained through positioning them on the
periphery of nationhood and state—they did not really belong to the core of nation,
or they were betraying it through acts that was considered deviating from moral
norms of an orderly society.
A cultural moral status as basis for national belonging does not necessarily trans-
late to a political belonging. When farmers began to organize, they made claim to
not only belonging to the nation in their cultural status, but to participation in the
political space of Thailand—the real challenge they posed was in making politi-
cal claims. Despite the farmers change in political strategy the counter-resistance
towards them share traits with earlier periods of conflict. The cultural violence sug-
gests that the Thai farmer is part of the self-image of nationhood but the very same
conceptualization of their role in society is used to keep them on the periphery of
political engagement in the state.
3.2 The “Deep South” Conflict
The insurgency in the southern provinces bordering to Malaysia is an example of

the long lines of religious and ethnic dimensions of Thai state violence. Three bor-
der provinces—Patani, Yala, and Narathiwat—have since 2004 been under martial
law to curb insurgency. The conflict is sometimes described as two centuries long
strive for autonomy for the Sultanate of Patani from the Siamese and later Thai
kingdom.11 The area became of major concern to the Siamese king when the Brit-
ish crown began its colonization of the Malay Peninsula in the early nineteenth
century. Under King Chulalongkorn the southern government with Siamese-allied
rajas came to an end and the Thai Buddhist monarchical system won precedence
(Thanet 2007a, pp. 21–23). Theravada Buddhism is the dominant religion but
while not a state religion, the head body of the Thai Sangha (Buddhist community)
is to a large degree a political institution with authority over all Buddhist orders in
Thailand. The King on advice from the Prime Minister currently holding office for-
mally appoints the leader of the Sangha. The Thai state recognizes Islamic teaching
and leaders of the Islamic community. One of the obtrusions by the Thai state that
human rights activists, scholars writing on the conflict and the insurgents them-
selves regularly return to is that Islamic boarding schools (Pondok) have to follow
the national school curriculum. The national school curriculum is very specific on
Buddhist scripts for moral and ethnic teaching but it also acknowledges that stu-
dents of other religions should be instructed on the teachings of their own religion.
Since the Phibun regimes politics from Bangkok towards the south has been gener-
ally assimilations—underscoring unity, peace and order through language, mass
rituals and every-day behavior promoted by the state. There was a brief period
post WWII and before Phibun’s second coup in 1947, when Pridi Banomyong’s
government built better relations with the southern Islamic community. Islamic
family and heritance laws that had been abolished under the first Phibun era were
11
Patani was a Malay sultanate covering the three border provinces.
84 K. Zackari
again recognized, the institution of Chularajmontri/Shayk Al-Islam to mediate be-

tween the Muslim communities and the state was reinstalled, yet until today no one
appointed to the position has come from the southern regions (Thanet 2007a).12
Though political representation is one ground for grudge against the Thai state as
McCargo dryly notes: “Problems of representation are greatly exacerbated where
the legitimacy of the state itself has been widely questioned and challenged. They
are further accentuated when challenges to that state have grown violent, as in
Thailand’s Southern border provinces…” (McCargo 2008, p. 56). Clashes with
Thai officials, police, and attacks on religious teachers and leaders began in late
1947.13 In the 1960s separatist groups began guerilla warfare that in the late 1970s
spread to Bangkok. Insurgency groups who want either separatism or autonomy or
revenge on state officials find legitimacy for their violence in historical suppres-
sion of identity and in the discrimination and repression they are met with from the
Thai state officials.
Torture, forced disappearances, arbitrary arrests, inadequate facilities for deten-
tion and ignoring the rights of detained are recurring accusations directed towards
Thai police and military stationed in the Patani. In the south the 4th army division,
employing by the end of 2009 almost half of Thailand’s armed forces, have be-
come particularly notorious for punitive treatment of civilians. This kind of state
violence normally happen in the periphery of the state, but it has been proven dif-
ficult to hold state agents accountable. In accordance with the Martial Law in effect
since January 2004 and the Emergency decree of July 2005 for Patani, Yala and
Narathiwat, security officials are practically immune from prosecution. In October
2004, in deference of security regulations, 1500 persons gathered to protest the
arrest of six men at the police station in Tak Bai. Seven were shot dead on the spot
and some 1300 were arrested. The army base for detention was a 5–h truck drive
away and in the scarcity of vehicles the military personal ordered the arrested men
to lie like logs, stacked upon each other, in the army trucks. 78 persons died dur-
ing the ride either from suffocation or damaged inner organs. The Supreme Court
forever dismissed the case in August 2013. Most cases of forced disappearance,
arbitrary detention or torture in the south are never brought to the attention of the
courts in fear of retribution or distrust in the legal institutions. Throughout the his-
tory of the conflict there are many events of both state and non-state violence that
have never been properly investigated.
12
Civil laws were introduced in Siam in 1934 exempting Islamic family and inheritance law
in the Greater Patani region.
13
Most well-known is the “Haji Sulong Rebellion,” protests provoked by the arrest of the re-
ligious teacher Haji Sulong who was a strong advocator for autonomy. In 1954 Haiji Sulong
was again arrested and mysteriously “disappeared” (Thanet 2007a).
Looking from the position of the central state, the conflict over the old Patani
Kingdom is referred to as “the deep south.” The “deep south” also reflects the dis-
course of the violence—distant from the central state power the agents of violence
produce victims on the periphery of the state. National belonging through mainly
religion and language is an articulation of the conflict. It does not mean, however,
that the Islamic community is united in its relation to the Thai state. There are
more group-identities in Thailand that come under the umbrella of Muslim and be-
ing Muslim does not in itself render a person or a group un-Thai (McCargo 2012,
p. 112). A component in the positioning of people on the periphery of nationhood is
the non-conformation to or, as in the southern conflict, even resisting Thainess as a
superior national culture. McCargo argues, with reference explicitly to the concept
of unity in the southern conflict, that Thainess is a “totalizing discourse, subsum-
ing ethnic identities, a ‘unity through similarity’, despite the highly constructed
nature of that similarity” (McCargo 2012, p. 116). The southern conflict concerns
issues of inequality, land-rights, agricultural produce and distribution of resources
between urban Bangkok, in the geographically central part of the country, and the
rural south on the fringe of a different nation-state. Cultural violence has been used
both to subordinate people and to legitimize direct and structural violence on the
fringe of terror, as it constructs the Muslim Thai citizens as excluded, despite being
within the territorial limits of the states jurisdiction.
3.3 The Communist Enemy Within
The anti-communist violence in Thailand targets ideological and cultural dissent

and not only organized communists, though it naturally reached its highest activity
during the counter-insurgency in the middle of the cold war. Officially founded in
1942 the roots of the Communist Party of Thailand (CPT) go back to 1927. It was
in rural areas and particularly in the North and Northeast that the CPT operated at
its strongest with armed forces and allied unarmed villages. State violence against
people and groups on the political left throughout the twentieth century was framed
within the rhetoric of a communist threat to national sovereignty due to the inter-
national connections between communist movements, and as a threat to national
unity due to ideological visions of societal structures.
Post 1932 anti-Chinese nationalist policies and the first anti-communist act of
1933, pushed the communist party of Thailand in a nationalist patriotic direction.
They fought the Japanese forces and aligned with the Seri Thai (Free Thai move-
ment) (Prizzia 1985). The early CPT was targeted as Chinese infiltrators and thus
members with Chinese origin were pushed in a national-identity direction—finding
86 K. Zackari
social acceptance through Thai identity (Kasian 2001, p. 25). A person of C hinese
descent, a luk chin (Chinese child) “could become Thai by moving linguistically
from Chinese to Thai, occupationally from a typically Chinese job to a Thai spe-
cialty, and socially from the Chinese to the Thai community” (Kasian 2001, p. 26).
Adopting patriotism and the attributes of national belonging the communists made
claims to be less in the periphery of nationhood, seeking cultural legitimization to
their political claims.
The communist threat prior to the overthrow of the military government in
October 1973 was primarily painted as an external threat coming from the con-
nections with China and Vietnam. Following the uprisings in 1973 and especially
during the years leading up to the right-wing suppression of the left-aligned pro-
gressive democracy movement in 1976, communism was framed as an enemy
within. When the communist movement found broader support among new left-
aligned parties, the growing students and workers movements, their politics were
starting to be perceived as a real problem by societal elites (Slater 2010). On the
left groups calling for more fundamental political change grew stronger, while the
post-dictatorial state did not manage to consolidate. Elite networks that had tacitly
supported liberal progressive movements against the former totalitarian military
state, now saw their interests threatened by class conflicts rising and coming closer
to the power centers. The right wing assessed that political freedom and broader
public influence was a threat to the order of nation-state that they envisioned. This
rational gave them legitimization for direct violence: assaults and killings of politi-
cal activists on the left were numerous and most never accounted for.
In 1975 students brought a particularly gruesome story to public attention. They
revealed that, in 1972, security officials in Phatthalung province had been burning
unconscious and shackled alleged communists in large empty oil-drums (the thang
daeng or Red drum incident). The claim by those involved in exposing the killings
was that thousands were estimated to have died, but a formal investigation by the
Ministry of Interior concluded it could only have been 70 or 80 (Haberkorn 2013a,
p. 202).
Groups were organized by the Internal Security Operations Command and the
Border Police as part of counter-insurgency strategies and against dissident el-
ements.14 These para-military groups, together with the military and the police
were behind the massacre of students at Thammasat on 6 October 1976. They ac-
cused the student movement of being anti-royal communists, thus they were an
The Internal Security Operations Command (ISOC) initiated the street troop Red Gaurs
14
and the propaganda group Nawaphon. In order to counter-act communism in the rural areas
the Border Police organized the Village Scout movement under royal patronage.
internal threat to the conservative ideal of the order of the nation-state. There was
no official investigation carried out and no one was held accountable for wounding
hundreds and killing at least 46.15 After the massacre the political space for govern-
ment opposition was minimal and many students joined the communist insurgency
in the jungles (Marks 1980a, pp. 7–8). The place of 6 October in history has since
been difficult, not only because of the violence and questions of state impunity,
but perhaps even more because it points towards a strained relationship between
progressive liberals and radical socialists in the quest for democracy.
Through their actions and their political claims the communists challenged a
specific version of national politics but they were framed as challenging the Thai
nation at its core. The people in CPT that took up arms against the military state
had sympathies and support in broad bases of the population. In the state fighting
a political enemy the rational for violence had thus to be targeted against Thai na-
tionals. These were no longer simply culturally un-Thai, but anti-Thai—signaling
therefore a real threat to a specific political order.
While focusing on three political conflicts might add questions to a seemingly
blurred line between political and cultural violence they are used to illustrate the
long lines of violence in the relationship between Thai state and people. These
three conflicts are well researched as challenging order of power and governance,
but not always seen as different but related expressions of modern Thai nation-state
violence. The state violence involved covers different ways of constructing the
Thai national as on the periphery of nationhood, and thus as a target for violence
on the periphery of the state.
4 Conclusions
The violations of human rights [in Thailand] has taken several forms: arbitrary arrests
and detention, tortures, executions without trial; restrictions on the freedom of opin-
ion and expression, and on the freedom of press and other mass media; restriction on
academic freedom; suspension of normal judicial procedures; and terrorization and
other aspects of social control over citizens. (Puey Ungpakorn, June 1977, in Puey
2000, p. 129).
Though he might not have known it then, in his speech in the US government
House of Representatives, in June 1977, Dr. Puey Ungpakorn, a renowned Thai
academic, politician and public intellectual living in exile, captured the continuity
Official figures by the National Administrative Reform Council, the military junta behind
15
the coup announced later on the evening of 6 October. Two amnesty bills were passed fol-
lowing the massacre, effectively obstructing any investigation (Haberkorn 2015).
88 K. Zackari
of state violence and impunity in his country of birth (Puey 2000, p. 129). Writing
a history of state violence in Thailand’s twentieth century is writing about different
though entangled narratives of continuities. There is a continuity of state imposed
unity in a narrative of peace and order, while parallel runs a continuous history of
contentious politics and suppressive state violence. Monopoly of violence is es-
sential to nation-state building, but when Tyrell Haberkorn calls it “a recurrent con-
stant, rather than an aberration, within the Thai polity” (Haberkorn 2013b, p. 110)
the reference is to a larger system of unchecked power accommodating impunity
for direct and structural violence.
The Thainess discourse seen as cultural violence contributes to groups-differen-
tiation within the nation as well as constructed cultural and social legitimization of
violence against these groups. First there are the groups whose ethnic identification
positions them as outsiders or on the very margins of the periphery: Muslims on the
border to Malaysia, people from Burma, Cambodia or Laos, minority groups in the
highlands, and the migrants of Chinese origin. The history of marginalization to as-
similations of these racially defined groups is very much a history of economic and
social inequality. Second, the modern Thai nation-state did not just establish eth-
nic boundaries for belonging. Through the discourse of civilization it constructed
spaces for exemption and graded Thainess: creating a periphery of a boundary of
state-subjects, a space where one could be ethnically Thai but culturally, or through
the discourse of civilization, un-Thai. This type of othering runs throughout Thai
history along the unifying isomorphic practices of the nationalist project. It has
lent itself neatly to political interests to suppress political conflicts culturally and
most violently. The nationalist differentiation still aims, with Kasian’s words, at
“establishing and reproducing unequal power relations between the ‘Thai’ state on
the one hand, and ‘un-Thai’ or ‘never-adequately-Thai’ capital and society on the
other…” (Kasian 2001, p. 190).
The cultural violence is exercised in a conflict over culture in itself. It is about
contestations concerning what histories have a place in Thai society, about what
arts and what thoughts and ideas can be expressed without silencing or repres-
sion. A history of state violence is a constituent part of the construction of the
nation. It has been in various regimes’ interest to consolidate the cultural meaning
of Thainess but it is not a simple top-bottom construction. Thainess is lived experi-
ence, of people connecting to constructions of national belonging and without that
response or engagement in Thainess it would not be as forceful. The paradoxes of
violence and unity are challenging. In the name of unity and harmony the Thai state
continues to perform violence: In the same discourse of Thainess in which rhetoric
of unity and harmony finds nourishment, also creates logic for violence.
In the cultural violence there is an intricate contestation over tradition and mor-
als in order of power. Writing a history of state violence in Thailand is writing a
history of the continuity of disruptor. Factionalism and non-consolidation of soci-
etal elites in Thailand have paved way for unstable and at times very authoritarian
states. It has contributed to institutions ineffectiveness and lack in credence for their
legal status. Within complex divisions of power and instable state institutions—no
checks and no balance to account for—a tradition of impunity for state actors have
been let to flourish. If the means, for the people subjected to state violence, to make
claims towards the state are limited, hampered or too easily exhausted a culture of
impunity will grow. The consequences of impunity for victims and claimants—no
or inadequate restitution—positions them in the periphery of both state and nation-
hood, they are citizens but they do not have full access to their right to make claims
on the state, nor having their rights or lives protected by the state.
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Violence from Above, Violence from
Below: The State and Policing Citizens
in Mubarak’s Egypt
Dina Rashed
While attending Police Day celebrations in January 2009, then President Hosni
Mubarak declared that the day would become a paid holiday in recognition of the
“efforts of the police and their sacrifices to achieve the security and stability of the
nation.”1 Although modest celebrations in honor of the police had existed before,
this was the first time that the day was declared a national holiday with schools and
government offices closed. The day’s importance registered the profound change
in the status of the Ministry of Interior (MoI), which controls the country’s police
force, as it asserted its dominance over policies of domestic control. Two years
later, Egyptians took to the streets on Police Day, not to celebrate the country’s
institution of law and order, but to protest the Mubarak regime and its repressive
MoI. While observers and analysts list multiple sources as the root causes of the
Egyptian uprising, it is beyond doubt that the mass protests were triggered by the
violent practices of MoI’s security apparatus. This chapter examines the different
forms of police violence, probing the conditions that facilitated their production
and development. I argue against a mono-causal analysis that attributes police vio-
lence to dynamics of autocratic rule, as this lens fails to capture repertoires of vio-
lence that characterized the last two decades of Mubarak’s rule. Instead, I put forth
a more complex story that identifies authoritarian policies as well as institutional
inequalities in the age of neoliberal economic policies at the heart of state vio-
lence. I argue that two levels of police repression existed: repression from above
1
Excerpt from Mubarak’s speech in Police Academy on January 21st 2009. AlAhram
January 22nd, 2009.
D. Rashed ()
Department of Political Science, University of Chicago,
5828 South University Avenue, Chicago, IL 60637, USA
e-mail: drashed@uchicago.edu

DOI 10.1007/978-3-658-11181-6_6
94 D. Rashed
and repression from below. While the first form of state violence was directed
against political opposition, the second form of police repression was directed at
non-politicized residents of impoverished areas. These two levels of violence are
distinct, but related. I contend that violence from below was caused by the un-
equal distribution of state resources that favored high-ranking state agents over
low-ranking and noncommissioned officers during times of declining state capac-
ity and neoliberal economic shifts. At the same time, the regime’s sanctioning of
repressive measures against political opposition provided a nurturing environment
for low level violence to grow. I adopt an inter-disciplinary approach, putting into
conversation understandings of political repression, policing and organizational
behavior to explain forms of police violence in Egypt.
The chapter first discusses how the literature theorizes police as state represen-
tatives and authorized managers of its force. I then delve into the case study, giving
a brief overview of the development of Egypt’s MoI. The third section probes the
different levels of state violence produced under President Mubarak. In the fourth
section, I examine the institutional inequalities existing within the MoI’s admin-
istrative structure. I finally engage with the institutionalization of violence and
police culture and their impact on the production of state violence.
1 State Violence Between Political and Predatory Policing
State violence, as conceptualized in this volume, refers to illegitimate use of force

against the rights of others. States repress to control or prevent direct and non-
institutional challenges to social, cultural and/or political power (Earl 2011). The
police, as an embodiment of the coercive nature of the state (Waddington 1999;
Bayley 1990), remain at the core of political policing by adopting harassment,
surveillance/spying, arrests, torture and mass killing measures against particular
subordinate groups within their territorial jurisdiction (Davenport 2007).
In the process of controlling society, the police do not function as neutral trans-
mitters of state policies or governmental demands. By applying their discretionary
power over which groups to target, meetings to raid, demonstration to break up,
houses to protect, the police ultimately reshape the contours of state violence (Mar-
enin 1990). The police, like other agencies of the state, have interests of their own
which they seek to protect as they carry out their duties. Besides safeguarding the
force’s institutional interests, individual officers may abuse the badge’s power to
procure personal gains. Lawrence Sherman’s sociological study sheds light on po-
lice corruption by dis-aggregating its levels and highlighting how the nature of the
job, work conditions and organizational characteristics may work towards the pro-
Violence from Above, Violence from Below 95
duction of predatory behavior. Predatory policing develops when officers’ violence

is directed at members of society with the purpose of gaining personal, rather than
organizational, enrichment (Sherman 1974; Gerber and Mendelson 2008). Unlike
political policing, predatory policing does not aim for the systematic repression of
subordinate groups (Gerber and Mendelson 2008).
To understand how the state institution assigned to uphold law and order adopt
predatory behavior, one needs to turn to insights from organizational theory. Schol-
ars have shown that institutions structured on the Weberian legal-rational authority
can develop a dark side when they deviate from prescribed goals, producing harm-
ful, and sometimes destructive, social effects. Organizational sociologists argue
that mistakes and misconduct are products of the organization’s environment, char-
acteristics and cognitive practices of its individuals (Vaughan 1999). Inter-organi-
zational relations and social contexts construct the environment in which an orga-
nization survives. Internal characteristics such as structure and intra-organizational
relations are equally important. The more rigid the organizational hierarchy, the
less opportunities for corrective feedback mechanisms within an institution (Zald
and Berger 1978). Levels of trust between members of the institution impact the
ability to control the behavior of lower units. To the extent that lower participants
fail to recognize the legitimacy of power of their superiors or believe that sanctions
will not be exercised, the ability to control behavior of individuals will be lost
(Mechanic 1962). Finally, as an inhabited institution (Hallett and Ventresca 2006),
the police are bound to be influenced by the predominant cultural understandings
of officers. Law-enforcers may fall on social understandings or expectations to le-
gitimate deviant actions or reconstruct accounts to justify violence against citizens
(Vaughan 1999).
Despite the fact that repressive practices of the state reflect a trend where police
forces and non-military state security services are at the loci of power (Amar and
Schneider 2003) and increasing levels of predation in the global South (Comaroff
and Comaroff 2006), police predatory behavior and institutional challenges have
been under-theorized.2 This chapter aims to fill part of this void to enhance our
knowledge on the dynamics of state violence on multiple levels. First, building a
more accurate theory of state violence requires a better understanding of how dif-
ferent political and socio-economic conditions influence police practices. Cynthia
2
In political science, the police as an institution remains understudied with the exception of
writings on ethnic conflict (C. Enloe 1980a, b; Baker 2003, 2007; Hills 2000) and regime
and policing patterns change (Baker 2003, 2007; Hills 2000). Area studies focusing on the
Middle East has engaged with the police in the context of the legal framework and crimi-
nal justice systems (Crystal 2001; Brown 1997) and historical origins and early formations
(Fahmy 1997; Tollefson 1999; Khalili and Schwedler 2010).
96 D. Rashed
Enloe (1980a) has argued that the reason the police rarely make their way into
political studies is that they do not lead coups d’etat. However police violence
and warrants further exploration since revolutions are often the unintended con-
sequence of their repression, as experiences of the Arab uprisings show. If we
recognize that violent police practices are directly connected to the formation of
resistance against state authority, then understanding modes of repression become
integral to our knowledge of contentious politics. Second, this approach enables us
to understand how issues of low police professionalization produce predatory rath-
er than service-oriented states. By bringing into the discussion how organizational
inequalities and intra-institutional conflict within the security sector produce levels
of state violence, this research problematizes state repression in non-democratic
regimes and argues against a mono-causal explanation of anti-citizen violence that
focuses on authoritarianism. Finally, the chapter sheds light on intra-police cleav-
ages and their challenges to security and order, avoiding the analytic pitfalls of
looking at this institution as a unitary actor.
2 The Evolution of the Egyptian MoI
Egypt has a long history of using police as an institution of force. The first civil-
ian police force emerged in ancient Egypt (Crystal 2001), but the formation of the
modern police is credited to British colonial officials. Similar to their efforts in
other colonies, British officers re-organized the local security actors into a new
professional force that became known as the Egyptian Ministry of Interior by the
end of the nineteenth century.3 Following the Free Officers’ 1952 coup d’état, the
ruling junta worked to consolidate the different institutions of force under their
authority. The police and paramilitary forces helped stabilize the regime through
the day-to-day management of coercion (Janowitz 1977). The MoI became of great
importance that the junta’s leader, Gamal Abdel Nasser, held its portfolio in the
first cabinet following the declaration of the republic in 1953. The MoI had been
under the military’s tight control throughout the period between 1952 and 1971
that only one minister of interior came from within the MoI apparatus.4
However, police forces grow when civilian officials wish to be less depen-
dent on the military for maintaining order (Enloe 1980b). President Anwar Sadat
3
Police professionalization under colonial rule adopted a militarized model, with an empha-
sis on strict discipline over skillful detective work (Tollefson 1999; Crystal 2001).
4
General ’Abd el’Azim Fahmy led the MoI from 1962 to 1965, but was ousted in the wake
of what became known as the ‘Muslim Brotherhood Conspiracy’ (alGawady 2008).
(r. 1970–1981) took steps towards civilianizing Egypt’s executive powers (Coo-
per 1982), diverging from Nasser’s domestic control policies. Sadat worked to
minimize the political influence of the military over domestic affairs, in particular
the management of law and order. Through a number of presidential degrees, the
MoI underwent broad administrative restructuring. The anti-riot unit, the Central
Security Forces (CSF), was upgraded from a main directorate to a General Direc-
torate in 1974 and its staff witnessed a threefold increase in less than a decade.
The number of officers and enlisted personnel increased from 189 officers and
11,690 soldiers in 1969 to 577 officers and 35,576 soldiers in 1977. A new po-
lice academy was established in 1975. But most importantly, the responsibility of
surveillance of domestic political activities shifted from the Military’s Criminal
Investigation unit ( alMabaheth al’askariyah algena‘iyah) and the General Intel-
ligence ( alMukhabarat al’Ama) to the MoI’s Directorate for General Investigation
( alMabaheth al’Ama). As early as 1971, the Mabaheth unit was overhauled and its
name changed to the Directorate for State Security Investigation (SSI). The new
name and structure reflected a greater role, one which emphasized more extensive
duties with respect to monitoring and intelligence gathering (Nasr et al. 2004).
Under Mubarak (r. 1981–2011), the MoI enjoyed increasing political and ad-
ministrative powers. Although the regime showed more tolerance for political
competitiveness during the 1980s (Kienle 2001), the rise of religious militancy
pushed towards an increase in the size of the MoI’s coercive apparatus. Data on
employment and wages reveal a significant growth of the MoI since the mid-
1990s.5 According to governmental statistics, in 1993/1994 the number of MoI
employees stood at 554,623, with those employed as police and security making up
507,031 employees. By the late 1990s, the regime’s repressive practices expanded
to target militant as well as non-militant opposition. The shift took its toll on the
administrative and coercive structure of the MoI. The total number of employees
jumped to 693,600 in 2001/2002 and to about 715,000 in 2002/2003, of which the
number employed in police and security reached 622,687, and 643,114 respective-
ly.6 Augmentation in the MoI apparatus paralleled an expansion in the scope of its
activities. Its extensive penetration of society, as Salwa Ismail argues, approximat-
ed the police project of the state envisioned by eighteenth century European social
5
Statistics and figures in this section are based on the Egyptian government’s reports pub-
lished by the Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAPMAS) and Ministry
of Administrative Development cf. Farouk, 2008.
6
Police and security personnel constitute about 90 % of MoI employees on average. Of the
remaining 10 %, about 51,224 (or 7.2 %) are listed as civil servants within the ministry and
about 20,631 (or 2.9 %) are listed as employees of the Prison Authority. The numbers of
police forces do not include the CSF, whose membership stands at about 425,000 conscripts.
98 D. Rashed
thinkers (Ismail 2012). Officers and informers infiltrated universities, mosques,

professional syndicates as well as most state institutions. Political activists were
asked to inform security personnel, especially the SSI, of their activities. Security
officers worked with certain journalists to plant stories in the media,7 or to exploit
conflict inside potentially threatening opposition parties, as was done with the La-
bor Party in 2000 and the new Ghad Party in 2005 (Dunne and Hamzawy 2008).
3 The Two Levels of Police Violence
Police activities determine the limits of freedom in organized society, thereby bind-
ing the nature of governments that authorize policing to that of the units that carry
out orders and implement policies (Bayley 1990, pp. 5–8). Regimes that depend on
force in effecting citizen’s compliance try to overawe through the prominent dis-
play of their arms through police (Waddington 1999, p. 24). As a force serving the
regime rather than the public, the Egyptian MoI has systematically used coercive
means to force compliance from both opposition activists and ordinary citizens.
The two levels of state violence targeted politicized and non-politicized members
of society. While the first level emerged in response to challenges to the regime’s
political power, the second developed as a result of decline in state resources and
distributional inequalities that regulated the MoI’s labor force. Violence from be-
low targeted ordinary citizens especially in the most impoverished urban quarters
where the state failed to provide services to its residents. In these quarters, lower
ranking members of the force abused the power of the badge to extract resources
illegally from the public.
3.1 Violence from Above: Maintaining the Regime’s Political

Security
Mubarak assumed the presidential office at a turbulent moment. The assassination

of his predecessor revealed the extent to which many of Sadat’s socio-economic
and political policies polarized society. In his first two presidential terms, Mubarak
aimed to alleviate levels of political congestion by permitting opposition forces,
including the officially banned Muslim Brotherhood (MB), some political space to
grow and compete. Yet, the regime faced a serious and immediate security threat
See interview with former Leut. General Abd alRaouf alManawi in AlWafd, January 19th,
7
2011.
from militant Islamist movements, in particular alJihad and alJamaa’ alIslamiya

organizations. As the state attempted to assert its dominance over areas controlled
by these non-state armed actors, confrontations between the government and mili-
tant Islamists shifted to a game of reciprocal violence and vendetta. Public con-
cerns were raised about the MoI’s coercive practices, in particular the detention
of suspects’ family members, as well as the police’s first resort to shoot-to-kill
tactics. Militants responded in kind, targeting specific high-ranked officers and
their family members who served in the police force (Bakr 2000, p. 191). Assas-
sination attempts were made on several ministers of interior including Zaki Badr,
Hassan Abu Basha and Abd elHalim Moussa in 1987, 1989 and 1990. None of
these attempts was successful, but the police did lose about 375 officers between
1991–1997 (Bakr 2000).
In the process of identifying militant cells, the SSI became the most powerful
unit within the MoI. SSI intensified surveillance and monitoring of universities,
mosques, clubs and other places of congregation. Suspects or potential suspects
were often summoned to its offices for informal investigations, with many of its
provincial offices becoming centers of detention and torture. In most cases de-
tainees were held and then released without going through the prosecutor’s of-
fice, erasing any official record of their detention or torture (Human Rights Watch
1992).8
By the end of the 1990s, the repressive machine of the state represented in the
MoI managed to control militant activities in southern Egypt, at the time when the
regime’s political machine became increasingly inept at mobilizing support for its
policies. The poor performance of the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP)
in parliamentary elections clearly reflected this weakness. Mubarak’s ruling elite
became increasingly dependent on the police’s coercive practices to rig election
results and sustain its majority in the parliament. Results of the 1995 and 2000
parliamentary elections reflected the inability of networks of patronage to sustain
a majority for the NDP.9 The supervision of the judiciary over all election sites in
8
For more details on methods of torture and testimonies of detainees see Human Rights
Watch’s extensive report (Human Rights Watch 1992).
9
In the 1995 parliamentary elections the NDP won 318 seats and independents won 112.
About 99 independents were later lured to join the NDP, making the final count of its repre-
sentatives a total of 417 out of 444 MPs. In 2000, the NDP’s performance plummeted even
further and reached its lowest point since 1976. It won 172 seats, while independents won
256. This clear loss of majority was prevented when 218 of the 256 independents changed
affiliation and joined the ailing party. Most of these MPs were originally members of the
NDP but were denied nominations on the party’s slate. They decided to run as independents.
Appalled by its weak performance, the NDP’s leadership was more than welcoming of their
return.
100 D. Rashed
2000 made it harder for the ruling party to freely engage in fraudulent measures.
Following a ruling by the Supreme Constitutional Court, the President issued a
decree mandating that all election sites be put under the direct judicial supervision
to guarantee fair elections. This judicial supervision could not prevent the police’s
interference in politics; tactics to manipulate the results in favor of the ruling NDP
took new forms but were not eliminated (Kassem 2004).10
The rise of the president’s son, Gamal, to the higher echelons of political power
in the early 2000s intensified the regime’s succession crisis, and ushered in new
forms of anti-regime dissent. The regime’s dysfunctional policies and bare nepo-
tism mobilized opposition groups beyond the traditional Islamist movement. The
emergence of the Kifaya movement and other groups such as Independence of
the Judiciary with their emphasis on peaceful demonstrations galvanized opposi-
tion around new forms of action and clear calls for regime change.11 Attracting
activists across religious, economic and ideological lines, the movements’ public
protests revived non-partisan discontent with the regime and the rules it had im-
posed. Participants in peaceful demonstrations who identified with Kifaya or were
mobilized by its slogan suffered the wrath of the MoI. Journalists and activists
were kidnapped and/or physically assaulted as in the case of Abdel Halim Kandil,
an editor and columnist at the opposition weekly Al-Arabi. In November 2004,
four plainclothes men working for the MoI abducted Kandil, stripped him naked
before dumping him in the middle of a desert road. In his column, published days
before the assault, Kandil had criticized the MoI’s violent handling of Bedouin
suspects in the aftermath of terrorist attacks in Sinai.12 Mohamed Abd ElKodous,
10
In many districts police forces stationed outside polling stations under the pretense of
providing security for the stations. In reality the police blocked roads and prevented voters
from getting into polling stations. When several judges asked police officers to step aside so
that voters could get into the stations, they were often reminded by the police that the judges’
authority was confined to the inside space of the stations and that they had no authority over
what went on outside it (Kassem 2004, p. 66).
11
The Kifaya movement grew largely from protests against the US-led invasion of Iraq in
March 2003. The invasion deepened the underlying sense felt by many activists that Egypt’s
security is being threatened. Between 2004 and 2005, members of the movement organized
a number of silent demonstrations in public squares carrying banners inscribed with their
simple slogan ‘enough (kifaya)’. The word was chosen to convey how people felt towards
the rule of Mubarak. Activists and intellectuals who coalesced under the Kifaya umbrella
were alarmed by the inheritance of power that took place in Syria in 2000, and the meteoric
rise of Gamal Mubarak. For more on the political origins of Kifaya see Shorbagy 2007 and
Mansour 2009.
12
Committee to Protect Journalists. “Attacks on the Press 2004: Egypt” http://cpj.
org/2005/03/attacks-on-the-press-2004-egypt.php#more.
the head of the Journalists Syndicate’s Freedoms and Rights Committee and one
of the founding members of Kifaya who openly criticized Gamal Mubarak’s new
guard, became a frequent visitor to the SSI main office for informal investigations.
During the period 2005–2008, he paid six coerced visits to MoI either through
abduction or arrest.13
Police’s use of violence intensified as the president amended the constitution
in what seemed direct support for the succession of his son (Brownlee 2007). On
the day of the 2005 referendum, thugs believed to be working for MoI violently
attacked demonstrators who gathered on the front stairs of the Journalists’ Syndi-
cate in downtown Cairo. Peaceful protestors and journalists covering the protest
were physically attacked. Women journalists, in particular, were targeted, beaten
up and sexually assaulted in public. The crack down on opposition took place un-
der the eyes of numerous high-ranking police officers and the CSF, which had
surrounded the syndicate, allegedly to protect protestors.14 The incident registered
clearly how the MoI’s long practice of reliance on thugs to intimidate the regime’s
opponents was taken to a new level. The practice that had been long used against
rival politicians during election seasons especially in the country side was directed
against intellectuals under the supervision of high police officers. By early 2007,
another wave of constitutional amendments was proposed by the regime, renew-
ing confrontations between the opposition and the MoI. The amendments gave the
president the right to refer any “terrorist crime” to any of judicial court including
military or emergency courts. They also gave the MoI absolute authority over de-
fining “terrorists,” as the article did not specify the nature of a terrorist crime. In
January 2007, during a protest Abdel-Wahab Elmessiri, professor of English litera-
ture and then national coordinator of Kifaya, was kidnapped along with his wife.15
On the eve of a public referendum over these amendments, Elmessiri received
warnings from three senior security officials to cancel the planned demonstrations.
Notwithstanding the anti-regime protests,16 the MoI manipulated the referendum’s
result to reflect public approval.
13
Abd elKodous acknowledged though, that he was not harmed and that discussions with
SSI officers were civil and non-humiliating, but stressed that the vast majority of detainees
do not receive similar treatment. Personal interview with Abd elKodous, winter 2009.
14
Calls for Reform Met With Brutality. Human Rights Watch. May 25, 2005. http://www.
hrw.org/en/news/2005/05/25/egypt-calls-reform-met-brutality.
15
Ahram Weekly, “Undefeated.” July 10–16, 2008.
16
Over 200 demonstrators gathered in downtown, forcing the CSF forces to close off most
of the downtown area. The anti-riot units re-arrested 33 demonstrators, who later entered
into a hunger strike after Al-Dhaher Police Station officers refused to release them despite
102 D. Rashed
The honey moon between the regime and the opposition lasted only for the first
two terms of Mubarak’s presidency. Political violence against dissent metamor-
phosed from being directed against those working to dismantle the state to those
working to affect regime change. Displays of political and economic nepotism
pushed for new forms of dissent that directly challenged the president and not
just his policies. And the MoI with its police, SSI and CSF forces resorted to anti-
citizen violence in a vain attempt to stabilize an ailing regime.
3.2 Violence from Below: Socio-Economic Changes and Citizen

Security
The decline in the state’s financial resources may have started prior to the presi-
dency of Hosni Mubarak, but its impact on the quality of state services was mostly
felt during his rule. Efforts to adopt efficient policies to revamp the state coffers
bore limited results during his first two terms in office. The political leadership’s
oscillation between courting private businesses and adopting quasi-populist rheto-
ric, remnant of the Nasser era, came to halt by the early1990s when it became clear
that the state was unable to continue with its socialist welfarist programs. The first
Gulf War provided the Egyptian state with an opportunity for external debt relief
in return for substantial overhauling of economic policies. International Western
donors were more adamant than before about the government’s adoption of auster-
ity measures. The measures aimed to reduce funds allocated to services, trim levels
of state-employment and implement reforms pushing the economy towards the
free market model (Momani 2004). Some of the 2007 constitutional amendments
absolved the state of its previously-stated socialist responsibilities, replacing the
term “socialist gains” with “private property” and “social justice.” In a sense, the
changes reflected the socio-economic realities of society, since by then there were
little, if any, “socialist gains” left for the constitution to protect.
The shift to neoliberal policies took its toll on the performance of the MoI,
providing conditions of possibility to predatory policing. The economic changes
impacted domestic security in two directions. First, the state’s retreat in the field
of service provision broke networks of patronage that in the past bound the less
impoverished sectors of the population to the regime (Ismail 2006). Decline in the
number of employment opportunities in the urban industrial sector has forced large
numbers of residents to engage in informal and/or illegal economic activities. This
the fact that Qasr Al-Nil Prosecution had ordered their release. Mohamed ElSayed, “Too
little, too late.” Ahram Weekly, March 22–28, 2008.
change in the socio-economic conditions of the labor market has promoted vio-
lence from both state and non-state actors. Anticipating aggressive actions from the
police those employed in the informal sector sought the protection of private armed
actors, physically and socially situating themselves in an illicit world of violence
and impunity (Davis 2009, p. 231). Second, limited fiscal resources deepened the
institutional inequalities that regulated the MoI’s labor force. Unlike the military or
the judiciary, the two state institutions that provided adequate health care, financial
remuneration and other services to their employees, the MoI could not provide
similar services. While income differences existed among commissioned officers
(COs) of the force according to the department they served in, the widest gap ex-
isted between commissioned and non-commissioned officers (NCOs).
Occupying some of the bottom strata of the under-provided state bureaucracy
and the MoI’s coercive apparatus, the NCO ( Ameen alShurta) is himself a resident
of the impoverished areas and therefore a dual participant in its daily dynamics of
poverty and authority. As a state agent who administers political policing, the NCO
gradually gained power over local citizens and ultimately became the enforcer of
predatory policing. In 1998, the Egyptian parliament passed Law 6 on thuggery
( baltagga),17 which gave police officers the power to detain citizens suspected of
undermining public order through displays of aggression and physical strength,
or even through the insinuation that they will cause harm to others. The govern-
ment used this law as the legal basis for the arrest and imprisonment of whom it
considered deviant members of society especially those residing in shanty towns
(‘ashwa’iyyat). The shanty towns were expansions on the peripheries of existing
cities. These areas swelled with immigrants from the countryside who sought bet-
ter services such as jobs or education, and hoped that the state eventually incorpo-
rate their neighborhoods into the boundaries of existing cities. The ‘ashwa’iyyat
provided hospitable environments for low income militant Islamists to live and
network.18 Because the state could not provide the much needed services such as
housing, medical services and education, residents of the shanty towns learned
how to provide for themselves; making illegal extensions of electric and water
lines, relying on religious charities’ free health care and educational services and
constructing apartment buildings without permits. Gradually, these areas were
viewed as ‘zones of relative freedoms,’ where the state had limited supervision
over the social and/or the economic activities of their residents (Bayat 2010).
17
The word baltaga refers to the act of thuggery. Baltagia means those who carry axes in the
Turkish language and has been widely used in Egyptian Arabic to refer to armed thugs. The
singular form of thug is referred to as Baltagi.
18
By the mid-2000s, some 7 million Cairenes lived in the informal housing of the
‘ashwa’iyyat (Singerman 2009).
104 D. Rashed
The state’s absence from the service provision field augmented the unchecked
police powers over the livelihood of residents of these quarters. The Ameen alShur-
ta wielded influence through his ability to summon individuals for investigations
or issue proper permits and official papers in this environment of illegality. The law
gave the police the power to arrest citizens under suspicion and investigation ( ish-
tibah wa tahari). The practice became a source of income for many NCOs suffering
low pay. Numerous NCOs coerced citizens to pay tributes to prevent their arrest
(Ismail 2006, p. 149). NCOs also charged informal fees in return for performing
simple administrative services such as issuing work permits, ID cards, passports or
official papers that were under the jurisdiction of the MoI. By some estimates, the
size of the hidden economy of these tributes has reached about L.E. 500 million
(Farouk 2006, p. 31). Refusals to pay these tributes were often met with threats of
criminalization or torture. Actual and threatened torture of ordinary politically non-
active citizens became rampant, as police stations gradually became regular sites
for anti-citizen violence. One study shows how distinctions between suspects and
accused almost vanished in detention centers as the police liberally used various
means of torture (ElBorai 2006). A nation-wide official sociological study of those
labeled by the police as ‘registered as dangerous’ ( mussagal khatar) showed that
over 55 % were beaten up in police stations, and that torture methods were equally
applied to men and women (Magdoub et al. 2012, p. 402).
Changes in the international system provided the regime with better justifi-
cation for the incarceration of those who it considered deviant than what Law 6
provided. The terror attacks of 9/11 and the so called global “war on terrorism”
facilitated the internment of active Islamists by authoritarian regimes in the Arab
world, Egypt included. After 9/11, Law 6 was hardly used as the legal basis for ar-
resting Islamists, who were then labeled as terrorists not baltagia. Meanwhile, the
police made little use of Law 6 to seriously eradicate drug dealers and thugs who
exploited the shanty towns to embed their illegal activities in the absence of the
state’s formal law and order.
The MoI followed a convoluted policy towards acts of resistance and repression
often invoking labels and practices associated with thugs and thuggery. On one
hand, the government used the term ‘thuggery’ to negatively label and then incrim-
inate some of opposition groups. On the other, it relied on members of criminal
networks and thugs to crack down on political opposition as previously discussed.
An employee-employer relationship developed between the state and criminal net-
works. Drug dealers existed under the protection of some police officers to pro-
vide valuable information on average citizens and opposition alike (Ismail 2012).
More often than not, it was the NCOs who handled the communication between
the officers and criminals. In impoverished quarters, the police even facilitated
the employment of criminals, or those whom they criminalized.19 As low-ranking

policemen, the NCOs’ tasks brought them into daily contact with citizens while en-
joying extensive levels of discretion over the lives of their clients (Levi 1977, p. 1).
4 Intra-Organizational Inequalities
The security challenges of political dissent to autocratic rule, religious militancy

and increased levels of urbanization and economic changes called for an increase
in the size of the state’s coercive machine. The regime’s decision to augment the
security sector through the induction of less-trained masses into the coercive labor
force came with a hefty price: decline in the quality of security service and increas-
ing demands on the state to provide for the new employees.
The 1967 War had an impact on politics of domestic control. Alarmed by the
scope of demonstrations especially in universities in the big cities (Abdalla 1985),
two new apparatus were established to beef up the state’s coercive machine. A new
MoI institute for non-commissioned officers ( Ma’had Omanaa‘ alShurta) was es-
tablished in 1968 in an attempt to boost the investigative work in police stations.
The other apparatus was the Central Security Forces (CSF). Established in 1969
as part of the Ministry of Defense, and later transferred by Sadat to the MoI, the
purpose of this paramilitary force has been to contain potential spread of protests.
Though non-commissioned officers (NCOs) enjoyed relatively higher educa-
tion compared to CSF soldiers,20 members of both apparatus were less qualified
in education and training than officers and therefore received minimal wages and
services. Compared to commissioned officers who receive a law degree as part of
their study in Police Academy, NCOs lack secondary education, receive only 2
years of police training and are far less versed in criminology and legal sciences.
The educational gap within the MoI’s coercive labor force, translated into systemic
built-in organizational and financial inequalities. While a CO can be reprimanded
for violations through administrative means, an NCO could be punished by con-
finement in the barracks, trial before a military court and possible imprisonment,
in addition to several other administrative penalties that impact his income and
rank.21
19
Police officers have relied on drivers of minivans, the main transportation means for low-
income groups, to provide information on the movement of citizens. Personal interviews
with journalists, winter 2012.
20
To be eligible to apply to the Institute of Non-Commissioned Officers, men need to have
completed eight-years of school education. The anti-riot force is made predominantly of il-
literate men, who serve as conscripts in the CSF for 3 years.
21
Police Authority Law no. 109 for 1971 (and 2006 amendments).
106 D. Rashed
In an attempt to improve the financial resources of its repressive arm, the regime
opted to increase state remuneration provided for its security sector by including
them in what it called the Special Cadre. In general, government employees receive
wages and benefits based on their status in the administrative hierarchy, but the
government has resorted to another technique to privilege some employees. Under
the Special Cadre-General Cadre system, some employees enjoy higher wages and
bonuses compared to those employed under the General Cadre.22 Since 1996/1997,
those employed under the Special Cadre system constituted about 13 % of state
employees. Within this privileged 13 %, the largest segment has been employees
of the MoI, making up about 85 %.23 This administrative tool accessed the NCOs
to better pay compared to other employees of similar educational background in
the state bureaucracy; however it could not bridge the financial and resource gap
that existed within the MoI.
NCOs had limited access to two other sources that awarded better benefits and
expansive sums of income for COs: special funds and protection service bonuses.
Special funds are accounts that operate separately from the state’s annual budget
and are used to improve the service of, and provide revenue for, a specific sector or
an institution. In 2000, two laws were issued to allow the MoI to establish its own
special funds; laws 88/2000 and 95/2000 established separate accounts that were
tied to civil police service, prison industries, and police hospitals (Farouk 2013,
pp. 115–120). The laws enabled the MoI to enjoy a bloated coffer that included
174 special funds with the largest having LE 15 billion (about $ 2 billion), accord-
ing to some estimates.24 While most of the revenue of these funds is supposed to
improve services provided for members of the force, numerous officers complain
that unequal distribution of generous bonuses from the special funds still favor the
higher leadership of the MoI and their junior associates.25 Moreover, NCOs remain
outside the benefits provided by the funds as they have no access to COs’ health
care system, pension increases and the distributed bonuses. This may explain the
contradiction between complaints by NCOs and junior officers for low wages and
inflated payroll within the MoI budget.26
22
Some governments resort to the two-cadre system to compensate state employees for job
expenses such as diplomats. Farouk 2008.
23
Employees of MoI are followed by university professors and research scientists, who
make about 11 and 1.9 %, respectively.
24
Interview with Ahmed alHelbawi, head of a newly-formed NCO union, in alWatan, May
15th, 2013. http://www.elwatannews.com/news/details/182511.
25
Personal interviews with mid and high-level police officers 2013–2014.
26
Interview with General Mahmoud Qoutri, Sout alUma October 24th, 2009.
Although security provision is the primary service of the police, an informal

rule has developed to provide extra bonuses for the team of officers securing im-
portant public sites. For example, the country’s mosques that are under the super-
vision of the Ministry of Religious Endowment distribute part of their charity box
revenue to those serving the mosque including the police protection team. The
practice is widespread across production sectors and institutions that it became
institutionalized within the normal law and order system under Mubarak. Banks,
power stations,27 universities as well as touristic locations all engage in raising
another income for those officers in charge of the security of their facilities.28 Bo-
nuses are usually split between the protection team that provides the service on the
ground and the high-ranking generals who constitute the inner circle of the min-
ister of interior.29 The practice privileges those working in the protection of well-
endowed organizations and discriminates against those who serve in less-fortunate
areas such as police stations in impoverished quarters or in MoI departments that
are not tied to other facilities such as CSF units.
The distribution of resources within the MoI has been far from egalitarian.
Formal and informal organizational rules favored the inner circle at the highest
echelons of administration. Junior officers and NCOs received remuneration in-
commensurate to the demands of the job. These financial imbalances are further
exacerbated by the culture that governs intra-MoI relations.
5 Institutionalized Violence and Police Culture
Institutions, as Douglas North argues, structure political, economic and human so-
cial interaction (North 1990, p. 3). But to focus on institutions as set paths that
shape behavior is to neglect the cyclical relation that exists between organizations
and their inhabitants. Institutions are not inert vessels of rules and regulations; they
are inhabited by constituent members and their doings, who at times act in concert
and at others in conflict (Hallett and Ventresca 2006).
Waddington argues that what distinguishes British police’ limited use of vio-
lence compared to the more militarized forms of constabulary force built by British
colonialists is the central notion of citizenship. Citizenship was directly tied to the
27
Reports showed that one public company in the power sector, paid LE 89 million to the
police force for their protection services during the period July 2010 and March 2011. al-
Masry alYoum, January 2nd, 2015. http://www.almasryalyoum.com/news/details/619092.
28
Interviews with state officials whose institutions engaged in police-bonus practice, winter
2014.
29
Interviews with police officers, 2013–2014.
108 D. Rashed
legitimate authority granted to state agents vis-à-vis citizens. The London “bob-
by” was the antithesis of the Royal Irish Constabulary; the distinction was based
on how citizens and non-citizens are to be approached, dealt with and controlled
(Waddington 1999, pp. 20–30). Rooted in colonialist design, the Egyptian case
illustrates how the relationship between the state and its citizens is based on ser-
vice to the homeland and not legitimation of authority. State violence as registered
by police behavior reminds citizens in daily encounters that the police force rule
rather than serve. In its interaction with the public, the MoI shifted gradually from
the emphasis on providing service to the citizenry, to the citizenry’s duty to serve
the state. Abandoning the decades-long motto of “The Police is in the Service of
the People” and adopting a new one in 1995 that stated “The Police and the People
are in the service of the Homeland” best reflects the shift in the institutional culture
of the MoI, one that affirmed the non-subordinate relationship that bind the police
to the public. The change casts doubt on the state’s acceptance that the people are
presumably the source of all authorities.30 Since police are state representatives and
all social groups are asked to serve that state, the citizenry are at a disadvantage in
their conflict with the police. To officers, compliance with police-mandated mea-
sures is service to the state itself.
The two patterns of state violence that emerged in Mubarak’s Egypt brought to
the fore the disharmonious environment that characterized relations within the MoI
coercive force. The intra-organizational relations within the MoI are not only based
on hierarchy but also class. Most COs I have interviewed (high and medium-level
rankings) have shown resentment towards Omanaa‘ alShurta. Officers considered
their NCOs the root cause of corruption and the reason behind the MoI’s tarnished
reputation. Their resentment centered on the NCOs’ low education and poor train-
ing. Few, if any, acknowledged their investigative skills or contribution to good
detective work. This resentment is equally felt on the other side. NCOs feels that
they have been unjustly treated by their ministry and the public. Dissenting NCOs
have argued that they are often used as scape goats as they are made responsible for
the institution’s dirty linen while doing the COs’ dirty work. Most NCOs defended
their repressive or deviant practices as executions of the unofficial orders of their
superiors.31
With their direct access to persons, information and instrumentalities, NCOs
gradually gained discretionary powers (Mechanic 1962), but failed to gain respect
of their superiors. Although the fraternal subculture (Sherman 1974) that character-
30
See interview with General AlManawi.
31
“10 Holes in the Ameen’s Uniform.” ElTahrir, September 15th, 2014.
izes disciplined forces are often defended when facing public complaints, it fails
the test when challenged from within.
6 Police Power and the Production of Violence
The historical development of the MoI since 1952 reveals a long path of associa-
tion with ruling elites and tendency towards policing through coercion rather than
consent. Mubarak’s regime failed to mobilize support to its policies and the MoI’s
coercive apparatus became integral to its survival. The Mubarak era witnessed the
development of predatory policing in addition to political policing. Political and
socio-economic changes provided the environment in which the MoI operated.
Inadequate attention to the force’s professionalization and resource disparities that
characterized internal structure of the institution led to increased levels of state
violence. Organizational inequalities within the MoI facilitated the emergence of
predatory policing in the impoverished quarters of Egyptian cities, while the re-
gime’s political failures and reliance on force to affect citizen compliance permit-
ted abuses by the badge and tolerated destruction of law and order by the very
agents who are assigned to uphold them.
Scholars studying covert conflict in organizations have identified compensa-
tory theft as the appropriation of property by aggrieved parties. They argue that
it is often used as one of the prime strategies to right injustices when employees
feel exploited by their company or superiors in organizations (Morrill et al. 2003).
Theft compensates subordinates for wages and other material resources they be-
lieve superiors unjustly denied them (Morrill et al. 2003, pp. 396–397). The Egyp-
tian case complicates these claims as NCOs adopted a predatory behavior towards
the powerless public rather than their superiors. The case suggests new avenues to
think critically about hierarchies and corruption. The NCOs’ position at the lower
end of organizational hierarchy put limits on their ability to challenge the organi-
zational structure that allowed for what they considered material injustices. At the
same time, the condoning of repressive measures by superior security officers as
part of the state’s policing strategy of political foes made opportunities to prey over
society acceptable.
The 2005 attack on journalists who opposed Mubarak’s constitutional amend-
ments is a case in point. The attack took place in broad day light on the front
premise of the Journalists Syndicate and under the eyes of top tier generals of Cairo
Police Department. In response to national and international outcry unleashed by
the attack, particularly because of how women activists were treated, the govern-
ment was forced to open an investigation into the events. The six-month long
110 D. Rashed
investigation was ultimately dismissed when the Prosecutor General announced

that there was no basis for a criminal case, since the attackers could not be identi-
fied. Not only were the MoI officers absolved of any responsibility for permitting
the violence, some officers who were said to be implicated in the violence later
received promotions.32 The use of plainclothes policemen and/or thugs enabled the
MoI to sanction illegal coercive practices against political dissent without having
to answer to the public or the legal authorities about such practices.
The relationship between top-tier management of the MoI and agents on the
street reflected what Alvin Gouldner called “mock bureaucracy.” Despite claims
to providing protection to citizens, the police engaged in massive abuses that ran
contrary to the very mission they claim to uphold thereby institutionalizing a type
of organizational relations where bureaucratic rules are in place but are largely
ignored or inoperative (Gouldner 1954). The high-ranking officers often spoke
about applying the law but looked the other way as low-ranking officers and NCOs
abused their authority. In the process, junior officers re-defined the de-facto rules
of law and order, especially in the less impoverished quarters.
Police predation should not be viewed as pervasive misconduct within a lone
state institution, but rather as part of a broader social phenomenon that developed
under Mubarak, where under-paid state employees manipulated their professions
for private gain. In a sense, officers’ predation is not that far off from public school
teachers who use the classroom to solicit private tutoring classes, or civil servants
who ask for bribes in return for processing paperwork for the citizens. The neolib-
eral policies that put riskbearing onto private individuals and away from govern-
ments (Wedeen 2013), enabled the emergence of cognitive norms that erased of-
ficers’ guilt and provided justifications for predation at a time of limited resources.
7 Conclusion
This chapter is an attempt to bring into the discussion of contentious politics how
modes of institutional inequalities impact state violence. My aim has been to pres-
ent the complexity of anti-citizen violence and move our discussion beyond the
focus on the MoI as a unified coherent apparatus of coercion. Almost four years
have passed since the burst of the Egyptian uprising, ignited by popular responses
to police impunity and corruption. Yet little has been achieved to decrease levels of
violence on the street. On the contrary, the turbulent and fluid state of the country’s
32
Gamal Essam El-Din, “Unanswered Questions.” Ahram Weekly, January 19–25, 2006.
domestic politics has led to an increase in both state violence and citizen-on-citizen
violence.
Calls for reforming the Egyptian police have been put on the back burner given
the increasing waves of anti-state militancy that engulf the MENA region. Mean-
while, demonstrations by NCOs have not stopped since their first protest started in
February 13th 2011,33 making them the longest professional-based protests since
the uprising. As insurgent street level bureaucrats (Levi 1977), NCOs are capital-
izing on their knowledge and connections of the local to ask for improvement in
their working conditions. Their success to remedy what they consider institutional
inequalities is bound to meet strong resistance from commissioned officers given
the class-based culture that permeate the MoI apparatus, and the limited support
they receive from the public.
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Killing the Chicken to Scare the
Monkey: Some Notes on State Terror
in the People’s Republic of China
Peter R. Moody
The classic role of the state is to protect those subject to it from criminals at home,
enemies abroad, and as much as possible from threats beyond individual control.
The state should of course, protect its subjects from acts of terror. But the state
exercises coercive power, and in some circumstances itself engages in terror, both
against outsiders and against its own people. Intuitively, state terror would seem to
be one feature of illiberal, non-democratic states, of which China is one (although
liberal democracies are probably not totally guiltless either).
Terror is an ambiguous and contentious concept. There may be some who re-
joice in the label “terrorist,” but the term is for the most part used pejoratively, even
propagandistically.
Terrorism includes violence, but not all violence is terror. Terror is generally
analyzed as a tactic used by alienated or dissident groups against established insti-
tutions of power and authority, aimed at killing or otherwise bringing pain to those
subject to that authority, thereby undermining that authority’s legitimacy (Thorn-
ton 2007). Terrorism is not the same as private murder, since it has an ostensibly
political end (whatever additional private motives the terrorist may have as well).
Nor is it, in principle, the same as acts of war, even acts with considerable “col-
lateral damage” (Kasher and Yadlin 2005). It is typically considered a weapon of
the weak, the resort of those without sufficient resources to achieve their will by
the normal political process or by normal acts of war.1
Much recent interest in state terror is a reaction against the sometimes vicious behavior
1
of the United States (with a special emphasis on the use of drones, although this particular
P. R. Moody ()
Department of Political Science, University of Notre Dame,
217 O’Shaughnessy Hall, Notre Dame, IN 46556, USA
e-mail: pmoody@nd.edu

DOI 10.1007/978-3-658-11181-6_7
116 P. R. Moody
Can the state itself be an instrument of terror, or is state terrorism simply a

label to discredit the enforcement of policies one disapproves of? Moby Dick’s
Ishmael, in one of his annoying side discourses on whales and the business of
whaling, says that whalemen call that animal a fish, but the professors disagree:
unlike fish, whales are warm-blooded, breathe air, suckle their young, and have
horizontal rather than vertical flukes. Ishmael concludes that whales are indeed
fish: warm-blooded fish who breathe air, suckle their young, and sport horizontal
flukes. For some purposes this kind of categorization is fine. But it also means that
generalizations and theoretical propositions about fish may not always apply to
the whalefish. Is the relationship between regular old terrorism and state terrorism
merely nominal, or can one generalize and theorize across the categories?
1 Terrorism and State Terrorism
To keep the biological metaphor, terrorism and state terrorism probably do not
belong to the same species or genus, but they may share a common family. In the
classic Weberian concept the state is the social institution holding a monopoly of
legitimate violence.2 But not all violence by the state is legitimate. As a first cut,
then, state terrorism is the illegitimate use of violence by the state for political
ends, whether to consolidate a regime or to preserve it, or by agents of the state
against each other or ordinary people for the sake of political power. Just as non-
state terrorism is a weapon of the weak, the resort to terror by the state or its agents
indicates deficient governing capacity and legitimacy.
The paradigmatic instance of this kind of state terror is the French Revolution.
As Maximilien Robespierre put it, “The revolutionary government owes the good
citizen all the protection of the nation; it owes nothing to the enemies of the people
but death” (Yenne 2013, p. 88). Robespierre considered the Terror legitimate be-
cause “it is supported by the most holy of all laws: the Salvation of the People”
(Robespierre 1794). A Marxian construction would hold that revolutionary terror is
precisely not legitimate since the goal of the revolution is the overthrow of existing
standards of law and political morality for the sake of establishing a new order: in
disapprobation seems more aesthetic than rational), in its own twenty-first century war on
terror. Indeed, that “war” itself has been analyzed as a protracted act of terror, a way the
“northern democracies” assure that the “millions of citizens of the South” remain appropri-
ately cowed (Blakeley 2007). Be that as it may (and the assertion leaves much to be argued
about), this analysis focuses on domestic violence.
2
The analysis here puts to the side for the time being some crucial issues: does the state in
fact hold a monopoly of violence; and what is legitimacy, anyway?
Killing the Chicken to Scare the Monkey 117
effect, the revolution is a state of nature, and more a Hobbesian than a Lockean
one. Those who support the old order are not to be persuaded, because they share
no premises with the new order: they are to be exterminated or intimidated. Once
the new order is established, it will supposedly operate more in accord with rules
of morality and due process, as these are defined within that order3 (“The aim of
constitutional government is to preserve the Republic; that of revolutionary gov-
ernment is to lay its foundation”: Robespierre).
Robespierre also said: “The government in a revolution is the despotism of lib-
erty against tyranny” (Robespierre 1794). This anticipates the scholastic Marxist-
Leninist concept of dictatorship of the proletariat. All states are the executive com-
mittee of the ruling class and exercise dictatorship over class enemies. After the
revolution the ruling class is no longer the bourgeoisie but the proletariat, and the
proletariat exercises dictatorship, arbitrary rule, over the remnants of the former
ruling class and those influenced by its ideas and values. As bourgeois influence
wanes and the proletariat gradually comes to constitute the whole of the popula-
tion, dictatorship gives way to socialist legality.4
2 Terror in Maoist China
Crane Brinton’s (1938) revolutionary paradigm, however old fashioned, does

seem generally to fit both the Russian and Chinese revolutions—early enthusiasm,
terror, Thermidor. When the People’s Republic was established in 1949 much of
aware public opinion welcomed communist rule as a more nearly democratic and
considerably more effective alternative to the defeated KMT (Guomindang). The
communists themselves claimed to be democratic, not in the “bourgeois” sense of
party competition, elections, rule of law, civil liberties, but in the sense of repre-
senting the true interests of the great mass of the “people.”
The Communist party came to power with a popular base in the peasantry,
consolidated partly through terror directed against the established rural elites. The
3
Rightist dictatorships also practice a similar sort of terror, especially in the face of radical
revolutionary challenges. The rationalizations are usually less fancy than those for leftist
regimes, putting more stress on maintaining stability and conventional morality. In all cases
the real reasons may have to do as well with a common human propensity to be mean to oth-
ers while not feeling bad about ourselves.
4
Commentators often note that the Stalin terror really kicked in after the formulation of the
formally democratic Soviet constitution of 1936. Both Stalin and Mao Zedong concluded
that as the class enemy becomes weaker his resistance becomes more desperate and so the
measures against him must become harsher.
118 P. R. Moody
Party appealed to the poor peasants by promising them land, the redistribution
accompanied by mass trials and executions of “landlords” and “rich peasants.”
The victims tended to be the most greedy and oppressive of the local gentry, along
with the most popular and public-spirited. The rural terror served to consolidate a
new rural elite based upon the Party organization (Schurmann 1965). There was
less overt terror in the cities. Within a year or two of the regime’s founding there
were mass campaigns against corruption, directed against both businessmen and
segments of the Party apparatus; and “capitalists” soon had their businesses expro-
priated by the state. The capitalists were not killed and, indeed, were compensated
for their losses, some continuing to receive dividends from their former businesses
until well into the 1980s. Students, teachers, and “intellectuals” generally were
subject to “thought reform.” This was intrusive and often psychologically damag-
ing, but one might not wish to elevate it to the status of terror. The Party controlled
all the mass media and the means of public expression, and hints of opposition
were met by campaigns of personal vilification followed by prison or exile to la-
bor camps, despite constitutional guarantees (after 1954) of free speech. The con-
stitution also guaranteed freedom of “religious belief,” but only certain religious
tendencies received official recognition (anything else was “superstition,” subject
to suppression) and these were placed under indirect Party control through regime-
established front organizations.
The regime styled itself a people’s democratic dictatorship, the Chinese version
of the almost equally curious European people’s democracies. The terms desig-
nated a variation on the dictatorship of the proletariat: except these were a multi-
class coalitions led by the proletariat (read: Communist party), bringing together
all the laboring classes opposed to imperialism and to feudalism. Mao Zedong
explained (1977; originally 1957): There are the people, the great majority, and
then there are enemies of the people. Among the people there are “contradictions,”
differences of interest (for example, peasants want good prices for their produce
while workers want cheap food), but these are settled by democracy (consultation,
compromise, discussion; not by competitive elections). But the contradictions be-
tween the people and the enemies of the people are antagonistic: “you die and I
live.” Antagonistic contradictions are resolved by dictatorship: coercion.5 Certain
categories of persons were defined as enemies (“black elements”): landlords, rich
peasants, counter-revolutionaries (that is, anyone actively opposed to the regime);
“bad elements” (that is, criminals). This status was passed down through the fam-
ily, so in any locality, whenever it became necessary to mobilize the “masses” (in
This thesis was reiterated as late as 2014 (admittedly, an unusually repressive era). Wang
5
2014.
practice, non-party members), there was always a ready supply of class enemies to
“struggle against.” The categories were also flexible: who might be a “people” in
some historical circumstances could become a “non-people” in others; so anyone
who got out of line was in danger of being reclassified and becoming targets of
dictatorship.
When Mao articulated his theory of contradictions among the people he be-
lieved the population generally had either come actively to support the new order
or at least had become reconciled to it. As his then lieutenant Liu Shaoqi had said
around the same time, “The storm of revolution has passed” (Liu 1956, p. 57).
Mao hoped to solicit honest, good-faith public criticism from the public as a way
to re-invigorate a ruling cadre that had become too complacent and too settled into
governing routine. After a long delay, during the spring of 1957 the public did
finally dare voice some criticism, its vehemence surprising Mao if not necessarily
his comrades: the public attacked the Party for its economic policies, its restrictions
on artistic creativity and free expression, its police-state methods, its subservience
to the Soviet Union. The relative freedom of 1956 and early 1957 was followed
by a new turn to dictatorship, with a new category, “rightists”—persons visibly
unhappy with the way things were—added to the list of class enemies.
The return to the storm of revolution brought a new radicalism in economic pol-
icy, the Great Leap Forward, tightening Party control not only over the economy
but over personal life as well. The radical economic policies, and the impossibility
of articulating objections to them, led to famine (Yang 2012; Dikötter 2011). In the
early 1960s there was another relaxation. The problem was that the more relaxed
policy could not be justified by the dominant ideology, and the dominant ideology
could not be criticized because it had become so closely associated with Mao that
any attack on it would amount to an attack on him.
In Mao’s opinion, the problem with the Leap was not that its policies were
unrealistic but that the mentality of the people remained backward: there was still
too much “bourgeois” and “feudal” thought in their brains. The revolution, in order
to succeed, required not merely a transformation of the social system but of the
entire culture: whence the term Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. The pre-
cipitant for this series of events was the tension between the Great Leader and the
Party and government apparatchiks charged with making the country work, and it
took the form of a purge of the Party establishment, of high-ranking functionaries
accused of “walking the capitalist road,” following a “counterrevolutionary bour-
geois line,” but that from the onset extended to the general public as well.6 The
6
It is beyond the scope of this essay to attempt a detailed account of the Cultural Revolution;
for a general overview, see MacFarquhar and Schoenhals 2008.
120 P. R. Moody
Cultural Revolution was an intensification of the revolutionary terror, carried out

against anything allegedly smacking of the old society, whether the imperial past,
the Republican interregnum, or the first 17 years of communist rule. The terror was
backed by the army and by the political police, but its main instrument in the early
days was the “masses” themselves, in the shape of Red Guard groups formed of
high school and college students,7 given license to “make revolution” against the
targeted Party leaders and against ordinary people in general.
The death toll from terror in the Cultural Revolution was huge in absolute
terms, although possibly smaller in terms proportion to the total population than
from the Stalinist purges in Russia.8 A few high-ranking victims were lynched by
Red Guards, but most were kept alive under supervision or else killed by neglect
and abuse rather than direct execution. Like the Soviet Union China had an ex-
tensive system of prison camps, but most victims of the Cultural Revolution were
detained at the local level in their own work units (in so-called “cow sheds”). It
may be arbitrary to classify many of the deaths as instances of state terror, since
they might result from gang fights between Red Guard groups or result from local
feuds and personal jealousies (although this latter is no doubt a major source of
most victims of reigns of terror) (Zheng 1998).
The Cultural Revolution fed on the familiar psychology of terror: who came
under attack was at least as much a matter of bad luck or wrong connections rather
than anything one might have done (and, if it came to that, almost everyone had
done something that others could construe, with imagination and in retrospect, to
be blamable). Persons were under pressure to inform on family, friends, and neigh-
bors, and failure to name names could be taken as evidence that one was oneself
a bourgeois malcontent. Work units were in effect were pressed to come up with
particular quotas of enemies. It was an opportunity to denounce rivals, although
they would also be denouncing you, and to settle old scores. In the classic rhythm
of such things, the accusers of yesterday became the victims of tomorrow.
The use of a mass movement as an instrument of terror, however, meant the
Center was not able completely to control it. The movement fragmented, with Red
Guards fighting each other and harsh factional struggles inside factories and firms.
By late 1967 the country had become so chaotic that Mao and those around him
decided to shut down the mass movement. The army took direct control of Party
committees, governmental organizations, factories, and schools. It rounded up the
7
There were also Red Guard groups in factories, consisting mainly of apprentice and con-
tract workers, those most likely to be dissatisfied with the current setup and resentful of those
who prospered under it.
8
Rummel 1991, attempts to tote up the butcher bill for the various twentieth century politi-
cal movements, awarding the trophy to China.
Red Guards, shipping huge numbers of them off to the farms where, they were
told, they would learn from the masses and become peasants for the rest of their
lives.9 The purge continued, its focus shifting to those around the Chairman who
had pushed the most radical line and on their allies in society.
The messy revolutionary campaign ended in disillusionment. It promised a
new liberation but gave only violence, enduring mistrust, resentment, chaos, and
greater repression. The sordidness of the political maneuvering at both the Central
and local levels left a cynicism about the political system that has lingered for more
than a generation after the events. The main target of the initial campaign was Liu
Shaoqi, who for decades had been Mao’s major ally and collaborator, revealed to
be a “renegade,” a capitalist-roader, a revisionist, a traitor. Mao’s main collaborator
in the overthrow of Liu was Lin Biao, the commander of the army. But in 1971 Lin
(or his family—what actually happened remains unclear (Jin 1999)) allegedly at-
tempted a coup against the Chairman; and if the allegation is correct, it was clearly
pre-emptive move to thwart a coup by Mao against Lin. Lin immediately turned
from Chairman Mao’s best pupil and closest comrade-in-arms to history’s blackest
villain. The treatment of both men did nothing to fortify faith in the Chairman’s
political perspicacity, not that the public, after thinking about it, really believed the
charges against them. The fate of Lin was especially traumatic, not because Lin
was all that popular but because of what it revealed about the shaky condition of
the political system.
The Cultural Revolution did, however, bring all authority into question, and in
a perverse sense contained the seeds of democratic development; the social move-
ments for political reform, with their themes of democracy and rule of law, ac-
tually grew from certain strains of the Cultural Revolution and the Red Guards
(Chan 1992). For the most part, though, the movement implied only violence and
chaos. The general impact was a pervasive distrust of politics and for political
ideals of any sort, a reaction against the politicization of all of life during that era.
Its legacy is the affectless hedonism that has come to permeate Chinese political
culture over the final decades of the twentieth century and the early decades of the
next (Ci 1994).
9
This opened another avenue for pain. The city kids were totally unskilled at farming and
became a resented burden on the local peasantry. The girls were especially vulnerable to
sexual abuse from local cadres. It is not clear whether all this should be considered under the
category of state terror, however: it was, rather, the unintended but foreseeable consequence
of tyranny.
122 P. R. Moody
3 Thermidor
The social turmoil of the Cultural Revolution was over by 1969, but there was no
settled order until well after the death of Mao Zedong in 1976. Terror against politi-
cal enemies, now exercised through the regular instruments of coercion, continued.
At both the Central and local levels factional balances and coalitions kept each
other in check, even as each sought to eliminate the others. Mao’s death left behind
an oligarchy determined, whatever their own differences, never again to be subject
to the personal insecurity they had just survived—once they had eliminated Mao’s
closest entourage, the Gang of Four, about a month after the Chairman’s death.
This spelled the end of revolutionary terror. State terror, in the sense of the ille-
gitimate exercise of violence by political authority, continued, but in muted form
and for the purpose of maintaining a system of power and privilege, not changing
the whole of society. The philosopher Hu Shi, who spent his last years on Taiwan,
once explained that under Chiang Kai-shek there was no freedom of speech, but
under Mao there was also no freedom to remain silent: one had vocally to praise
the current system (Mao’s ultimate successor, Deng Xiaoping, also made a similar
observation). Generally speaking, after Mao’s death those willing to keep their
mouths shut were left alone.
The new rulers staged a show trial of the Cultural Revolution radicals and of
Lin Biao’s supporters—but they were tried at least nominally for supposedly crimi-
nal acts rather than for their political positions, and the trial was said (by its stagers)
to mark a return to legality. The claim is unconvincing only because at the time the
things were done no one would have dared call them criminal. Subsequently, those
who fell from power during Deng’s reign were neither killed, imprisoned, nor pub-
licly vilified, but were allowed honorable retirement, and even sometimes had their
opinions solicited from behind the scenes.
Ordinary people who questioned the existing order were treated more harshly.
Deng Xiaoping came to power at a Party meeting in December 1978. The meet-
ing rehabilitated the major high-ranking victims of the Cultural Revolution and
repudiated the more radical policies that had prevailed since the late 1950s. In the
resulting euphoria there were some who thought that China might actually proceed
to full democracy; and a former Red Guard, Wei Jingsheng, actually argued that
it should and berated Deng Xiaoping for not moving fast enough on this. For this
Wei was sentenced to 15 years’ imprisonment (and was rearrested following is
eventual release, and later exiled to the United States). Wei actually was accorded
the due process of a formal trial, but his sentence was harsh beyond whatever threat
he presented and obviously calculated to deter anyone else who might be tempted
to share similar opinions. During the early1980s there was a vigorous but mostly
behind the scenes and still not well understood campaign against “three kinds of
people,” ostensibly directed against those guilty of violence during the Cultural
Revolution but probably intended to eliminate former radicals from positions of
political influence at the grass-roots level. There was also a more public series of
“strike-hard” ( yanda) campaigns against regular criminals, a reaction to the crime
wave that followed the relaxation of political controls; and these sometimes in-
volved public mass trials and executions in the manner of the early days of the
regime.
Law and legality were major themes of the reforms. During the Mao era, espe-
cially after 1957, law was often regarded as a crimp on the activism of the masses
and decisions were made according to Party “policy,” supposedly reflecting the
true direction of history and the real will of the people. The turn to law no doubt
had the intention of reassuring the now-welcome foreign investors that they had
hopes of recouping their money and that there was a mechanism in place to en-
force whatever contracts they entered into. But it also had the effect of making
life more regular and predictable for the population at large. The term used for
legality was fazhi (法制), “system of law,” rather than the homophonous 法治,
“rule of law.” The latter would imply that the law itself was the supreme arbiter;
the former, rather, implied that law was an instrument of rule. So China was not
quite a Rechtstaat. Law remained in effect the will of the sovereign, and, indeed,
the courts, while supposed to enforce the law, at the same time had to accept the
“leadership” of the Party.
Despite the crackdowns and the persecutions of the likes of Wei Jingsheng, the
early reform period was something of an era of good feelings. Things were hardly
perfect, but materially and psychologically they were immeasurably better than
before and the general trend was upward. But for this very reason there were no
obvious limitations on the scope of liberalization: so the public had little sense of
how far they could push their new freedoms. As the reforms deepened, they also
generated their own social and economic problems. In the old days, and especially
during the Cultural Revolution, profit had been a bad word, intrinsically associated
with capitalism.10 The liberal economic reforms emphasized the role of the market,
and profit became a good thing. But at the same time most of the non-agricultur-
al economy remained under state ownership, and those best placed to enjoy the
profits were those who managed the state-owned firms, whether by skimming the
money directly or through special pricing arrangements and the power to issue
special licenses and permits. The Maoist era was not entirely free of corruption, but
This is despite the fact that in those days the main source of state revenue was the profit
10
on state-owned firms.
124 P. R. Moody
the relative scarcity of cash meant that it mainly took the shape of the appropriation
of privileges or the exchange of benefits. In the semi-market economy there were
enhanced opportunities for “rent-seeking,” for turning political power into money
and, increasingly, the reverse as well (Hu 1995). Pervasive corruption has been part
of Chinese political culture since the mid-1980s.
Also during the Mao era prices had been in effect frozen at the level they had
in the 1950s, when price controls (and the subsequent rationing of the major con-
sumer staples) were imposed to control the galloping inflation of the last years of
the KMT. By the 1980s there was little objective correlation between prices and
the relative value of the resources they were supposed to allocate. The turn to the
market also required price reform, a euphemism for price increases. In the 1980s
there were still a huge number of people alive who remembered the last years
of the KMT, when pervasive corruption and out-of-control inflation did so much
to delegitimate that regime. The reappearance of these phenomena, coupled with
the collapse of credibility of the regime’s ruling ideology, spelled a new crisis of
legitimacy.
The reforms, while benefitting everyone in general, also imposed particular
hardships. In the initial phase the restoration of household farming led to an enor-
mous increase—the greatest in centuries—in the rural standard of living; but by
the mid-1980s the agricultural sector was again lagging in comparison to that of
the cities and it became increasingly difficult for many to earn a living by farm-
ing. It also remained in principle illegal to move to the cities in search of better
work—although actually the massive illegal urban migration, the “blind flow,”
began at that time. Firms now were expected to earn profits in the market place,
and found it hard to continue the numerous welfare benefits to their workers. And
at the same time there was no general system of social insurance run by the state
to take up the welfare burdens previously carried by the workplace. Those work-
ing for state-owned firms had been in effect guaranteed jobs for life (the “iron rice
bowl”), followed by a comfortable pension—more benefits threatened by the new
situation. In the Mao period those with access to political power certainly enjoyed
material privileges not available to others, but the gap in pay among various jobs
was relatively small and disparities in living standard tended to be subtle and con-
cealed. During the 1980s gaps in wealth and income widened: between families
and individuals, between the urban and rural sectors, and between geographical lo-
calities. The general perception was that these new disparities came not from hard
work, superior ability or business acumen, greater imagination in taking risks, or
even good luck—all of these being perfectly acceptable—but, rather, from political
connections, corruption, sharp practice.
These various tensions and contradictions all came to a head in the democracy
movement of 1989. Although the activists were mainly students (a category of per-
sons generally without responsibilities and obligations to others and also, perhaps,
not yet inclined to appreciate their own mortality—and so more willing than the
average person to take risks for the sake of abstract goals), their movement had
general support from society, including many Party cadres.11 The movement was
suppressed, after a long delay, by a return to overt state terror, implemented now
by the army. The events of 1989 indicate that the reform movement had gone as
far as it could within the boundaries of the existing system, and that further reform
would require a change of the system: a change, in the end, the dominant ruling
clique would not allow.
But the viciousness of the suppression also changed the menu of possibilities.
Many of the old-time Party elite blamed the reforms themselves for what they
considered the “turmoil.” Deng Xiaoping, the main sponsor of the reforms and also
the main proponent of violent suppression of dissent, had a more subtle and cynical
view. By its actions in June of 1989 the regime had exhausted its legitimacy. Aside
from direct military might, the only thing left it had going for it was the rising gen-
eral standard of living. Attempts to cut back on reform threatened this standard of
living (and so raised the costs of maintaining the rule of the Party). As the commu-
nist regimes in Eastern Europe and, eventually, the Soviet Union collapsed, Deng
Xiaoping argued that this had nothing to do with lack of democracy and everything
to do with failure to deliver economic benefits. A free market assured economic
prosperity, and was (particularly after the slaughter and the memory it left) com-
patible with political repression. In the spring of 1992 Deng, although retired from
all his formal positions, retained sufficient influence to force the full reassertion
and expansion of the economic reforms. This was the start of China’s economic
boom. The people and their rulers reached what amounted to a new social contract:
the people were free to get rich if they could and, for the most part, live their lives
any way they chose to and could afford; the rulers would run the country and, if
the people had any opinions about how they were doing, they would keep these to
themselves.
Since the early 1990s China has prospered—grown to the world’s second larg-
est economy—under a system of relative economic liberalism and sustained politi-
cal repression. Many commentators and political scientists argue that this kind of
arrangement cannot last, and over the long haul they may be correct, although it
Various social groups did have somewhat different material perspectives. The students
11
seem generally to have been proponents of the free market, while factory workers, worried
about their new insecurity, wanted greater controls over economic activity. But the move-
ment was not really about concrete material interests.
126 P. R. Moody
has chugged along just fine for several decades. Of course, the regime remains
under pressure to keep the prosperity going, and since high levels of growth cannot
go on forever, ruling legitimacy perhaps remains precarious. The regime has, how-
ever, built up some credit for itself, particularly through the cultivation of patrio-
tism (or nationalism), a more potent force than socialism ever was. As far as one
can generalize, the people at large seem proud of China’s growing international
clout. The unhappy experience of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union following
the collapse of communism convinced many, and not solely Party cadres, that on
balance the rulers of 1989 made the correct choice. Particularly as China manages
to sustain economic prosperity while those western societies critical of it falter,
ordinary citizens, while fully aware themselves of the system’s flaws, can come to
resent what they consider to be gratuitous commentary from supercilious foreign-
ers about their country.
Prosperity, of course, is not the entire story; and the tensions in reform that were
taking shape in the 1980s have been expanded and exasperated in the ensuing de-
cades. China suffers from economic polarization, with the benefits of reform very
unevenly distributed; growth has come at the expense of environmental degrada-
tion; access to education and medical care has shrunk; corruption has metastasized.
The poor may not be getting poorer but they are getting rich at a much lower rate
than the rich are. The flood of migrants to the cities provides an exemplary Marx-
ian reserve army of labor; but the migrants remain poorly assimilated and are as-
sociated with crime and vice. In effect, the old Maoist constituencies—workers
and poor peasants—are those least benefited by the reforms (He 1998). The main
beneficiary is a new urban “middle class.” Democratic theory often postulates the
middle class as the carrier of democratic reform; but in China this is not necessarily
the case. Rather, for this new class the existing system, with its political repression
and restrictions on political participation, may be a barrier against violent revolu-
tion born of the rage of the underclass.
Political violence by the authorities outside the officially-sanctioned channels
continues, and a major function of this continues to be to deter undesired behavior
and to intimidate those who might engage in it. While it may be hyperbolic to label
much of this as “terror,” the difference is one of degree rather than of kind. The
Chinese system has evolved to what some call “soft authoritarianism”: rather than
using direct coercion by secret police or “revolutionary justice,” the authorities
will turn to more indirect and sometimes more subtle methods (Winckler 1984),
including forming alliances with criminal gangs to intimidate those who might step
out of line (Wang 2011). The most usual method is no doubt to find some sort of
crime to charge people with, but it may not enter the courts at all. With the decline
of ideology many of the practices of the old society have returned, and particularly
at the local level power is often highly personalized, with the local Party and state
offices merged into older kinship or secret society networks (Hillman 2014), oper-
ating much as gangsters always do. The single-child policy, curiously enough, was
merely that, a policy, not a law. It was enforced with draconian rigor, but could not
formally be brought to court. Enforcement generally was through the use of fines
(which also served to line the pockets of local officials), but also by forced abor-
tions and by tearing down the houses of offending families (Chen and Wu 2007).
At the local level those in power are often able to advance their fortunes through
what amounts to direct extortion, backed by threats of violence against those who
would protest. The land reforms of the early 1980s returned control over farmland
to the household, but the ownership remained with the collective. The local au-
thorities control how land may be used, and so are able to confiscate farms and turn
them over, say, to outside developers desiring to put up a factory, in return for a cut
of the profits. In many cases this sort of development is a more efficient use of land
than agriculture, but the peasant household is unable to make that decision itself.
Peasants may complain to the courts about improper land confiscations, but the lo-
cal courts, under the leadership of the Party (that is, the local bigshots), are unlikely
to offer redress. On occasion the local decisions may be reversed on appeal, but the
ruling is unlikely to be enforced and the successful appellant may have his arm or
leg broken as a hint he should refrain from making trouble.
One feature of the soft authoritarian system is that the discontented may actual-
ly make their feelings known, whereas under the old totalitarian regime complaints
would often go unvoiced for fear of the consequences; and those who actually
did dare show discontent would be ruthlessly and expeditiously suppressed. In the
present situation, discontent is sometimes suppressed and sometimes not; and the
uncertainty is compounded by the authorities resort to illegal or extra-legal meth-
ods.12 Peasant riots or demonstrations against abuses of power, what the authori-
ties style “mass incidents,” have become commonplace (Yu 2009). The Central
authorities have mixed reactions to these demonstrations. At one level they can
serve as ammunition against hard-to-control local officials, providing an opportu-
nity for replacing overly autonomous cadres and allowing the higher-ups to appear
as champions of justice against the oppressed (so deflecting, they hope, anger and
discontent from the system itself). On the other hand, there is a genuine fear of
popular rebellion—an incentive in itself to act to rectify abuses, but also to repress
protests. There is little opportunity for the scattered and sporadic popular demon-
strations to form a coherent oppositional political movement; but individuals who
The use of extra-legal methods, including torture, is admitted in official sources. Xinhua
12
Net (2014).
128 P. R. Moody
become too bothersome can be put away. Since they are often not guilty of a spe-
cific crime (petitioning the authorities seems to be regarded as highly subversive,
but it is also a constitutional right), “black jails”—extra legal detention—serve as
a way to handle the malcontents (Langfitt 2012).
The current authorities, like those of the old empire, fear religion as a potential
unifying cement for social rebellion. The regime is officially atheistic. The laws
and the constitution allow “freedom of religious belief,” but come down hard on
anything perceive to be subversive political activity “under the cloak of religion.”
During the Cultural Revolution any hint of religion was viciously persecuted, but
in the subsequent decades the regime became much more relaxed about it, and has
even come to accept religion as an intrinsic part of the human condition, not some-
thing bound to die out as society becomes more prosperous and better-educated.
Some religions are intrinsically bound with politics in today’s China. Tibetan
Buddhism serves as a natural carrier of Tibetan anti-Chinese nationalism, so the
Tibetan Buddhist church is kept under close control and monks and nuns thought to
be out of bounds are dealt with harshly. With the spread of ethnic nationalism in the
northwest, Islam is also under increased pressure. These grievances were originally
nationalistic, not religious: but ethnic discontent among the Turkic populations
developed at the same time as radical Islamism in the world at large, and the two
movements have a certain amount of cross-fertilization. The Chinese authorities
force imams to undergo political indoctrination and also, apparently, forbid public
officials and students from fasting during Ramadan, punishing those who act on
their religious obligations.
The reform regime has become friendly toward traditional Chinese culture, in-
cluding both Confucianism and some folk religious practices. And the reform pe-
riod has also seen a dramatic revival of religious activity. The authorities are, how-
ever, generally hostile to the numerous new cults that have emerged since the end
of the terror. The best-known crackdown has been against the Falun Gong (Chang
2004), originally a group practicing meditation and martial-arts-inspired exercises,
with a set of beliefs derived from the Buddhist and Taoist traditions. It enjoyed a
wide following in society, including many retired Party cadres and military offi-
cers. The authorities became alarmed when, in 1999 the sect was able, through use
of the new social media, to organize a mass protest against a magazine article criti-
cal of their practices without the prior knowledge of the Party or police. The move-
ment was outlawed. Persecution has in effect forced practitioners, who originally
claimed to be entirely non-political, into outlawry, to “climb Liang Mountain,” and
the movement has become one of the most persistent and consistent opponents
of the regime. It is reported that imprisoned members are regularly abused and
tortured. It is also said, by the Falun Gong media abroad, that prisoners are killed
so their organs may be harvested; but it is questionable whether this is really true.
The position toward Christianity is conflicted. Christianity, like much of the tra-
ditional mentalities, is seen as an aid to governance, inculcating proper private be-
havior and public attitudes and serving to counter the nihilistic hedonism pervad-
ing so much of the urban culture (Wielander 2013, p. 35). On the other hand, par-
ticularly since the installation of the Xi Jinping regime, Christianity is seen as part
of a compound of “universal values,” human rights, American popular culture, and
pornography, put together by the CIA with the aim of undermining China’s moral
fiber and overthrowing the socialist system (Yin2014). The real fear is probably
that the surprisingly vigorous spread of evangelical and charismatic Protestantism
raises fears of a social movement beyond Party control. Since 2010 there has been
a campaign of harassment against Protestant congregations not registered with of-
ficialdom, and, to a lesser extent, against Catholics who resist political control.
There are still those who presume to speak out in defense of human rights and
democracy and against advocates of ethnic separatism. The “terror” is mild stuff
compared to what prevailed in Mao’s day. Generally, there is great latitude in pri-
vate discussion and in academic debate; coercion comes in mainly whenever such
discussion threatens to have political consequences (King et al. 2013).13 Contrary
to what might be expected, as time has gone on and the country has grown more
prosperous, the intolerance of independent political activism has tended to in-
crease—the Hu Jintao regime being harsher than that of Jiang Zemin, and the Xi
Jinping regime harsher than that of Hu. By 2012 the more hardline Party sources
even attacked the concept of “constitutionalism,” in spite of the regime’s simul-
taneous claims to be developing a rule of law (Wang 2013). Lawyers who defend
those prosecuted for exercise of what would generally be considered their human
rights (or who defend criminals affiliated with political factions under attack)
themselves become subject to persecution, the harassment extending even to their
families. Their clients include Christians and many of the human rights lawyers
are themselves Christian. While Chinese Christianity normally strives to be non-
political, there has evolved a close connection between Christianity and the general
human rights movement (Wielander 2013, p. 131).
These responses can be regarded as “terror” in the sense that they are outside
the formally-defined legal system or constitute clear abuses of the legal system;
and their purpose is to keep people intimidated. The resort to informal means of
coercion may be a symptom of an authoritarian system in decay; and, in any case
it remains a sign of state weakness.
This kind of latitude seems not always to extend to those who even look as if they might
13
support ethnic separatism, as evidenced by the imprisonment for life dealt out to Ilham Tohti,
a Uighur professor sentenced to life imprisonment in September 2014.
130 P. R. Moody
4 State Terror and the Nature of the System
The “terroristic” element in the system persists as a consequence of how the system
functions. The system is defined by the unquestioned primacy of the communist
party. The Party has transformed itself from a “revolutionary” to a “governing” (or
“ruling”—the translations would be the same) party and has adapted to a complex
society and growing economy (Shambaugh 2009). It has incorporated into itself
the social and economic elite, so that those who most benefit from the system have
an interest in the preservation of Party rule. At the same time, the political culture
and the Party itself have become pervaded by corrupt practices, the ability to trans-
form political influence into personal wealth. The corruption, and to a lesser extent
the Party’s status as a self-selected, self-perpetuating privileged elite, detract from
the full legitimacy of the political system.
Two general lines of action have been suggested as ways of dealing with cor-
ruption. The first, obviously, is to punish and intimidate those who are guilty. The
other is to address directly the systemic basis of corruption: and everyone (obvi-
ously) recognizes that any actual program requires a mixture of these approaches.
The problem is, however, that at bottom the systemic basis is the unquestioned
primacy of the Party. Some more liberal critics have urged (for decades) that the
liberal reform should go all the way, pushing toward as complete a separation as
possible of the economic and political spheres, with a free market governed by a
full rule of law. If the two realms were entirely separate there would be no point
in bribing politicians in order to receive economic benefits. A complete separation
is no doubt impossible and at the extreme would not even be desirable. But the
Chinese “model” now entails not a real market system, but a profit-based system
allowing constant political intervention in the market, channeling the profits of
economic activity into the trousers of those with political power.
As the CPC (Gongchandang) evolved into a governing party, the leadership
structure became more pluralistic, moving away from the pattern of strong-man
rule. The late Tang Tsou (1995) argued that as a totalitarian system Chinese politics
was and had to be a battle of winner-takes-all. By the twenty-first century, however,
the system seemed to have evolved instead into a pluralistic oligarchy, a collective
leadership of relatively diverse background incorporating a variety of interests and
perspectives, with the various factions or tendencies reconciled to their inability to
exterminate each other and so learning to operate on a system of tacitly sharing out
of offices and even alternating in top office. The system was born of expediency,
however, and did not imply any principled acceptance of pluralism, even among
the ruling elite. Given a limited number of positions and the large number of those
aspiring to them—many monks but little gruel, as the saying goes–there is bound
to be political struggle. But it does not allow open competition of diverse opinions
and interests. Rather, corruption has become what ideological heterodoxy was in
Mao’s day: an accusation that can plausibly be leveled against anyone whose posi-
tion has become weak, serving as an excuse to eliminate him.
But the power struggle had become much tamer than it had been before, less
overtly gangster-like. The problem with the collective leadership was a kind of
immobilism. There was a general recognition of the nature of the problems faced
by the regime, particularly the all-pervasive corruption and pathological social in-
equities. But because so many different interests who benefited from the system
were represented at the top, it was difficult to take any particular line of consistent
action to address the issues (beyond ranting, sporadic persecutions of scapegoats,
and bewailing the loss of the revolutionary spirit and social morality). Xi Jinping,
who assumed primacy in 2012, did embark upon what looked like a more thor-
oughgoing campaign to purge the political system of corruption. The chief villains
in this “tiger hunt,” however, turned out to be the power base of Xi’s more potent
political rivals in the Party (and if Xi follows the Stalinist pattern, the next round
will be directed against the enemies of his enemies14). Xi’s rule also saw a return
of the cult of the leader in a manner unseen since the Mao and early post-Mao era
(Wan 2014).15 This kind of strong leadership may actually lead to constructive
action against systemic problems (for even if Xi is motivated by a desire to con-
solidate his own position, the corruption being prosecuted is certainly real enough).
It would be surprising, though, if it does lead to a genuine rule of law16 and an in-
stitutionalized and legitimated political authority. The political process still has not
after all fully developed beyond the style of a bandit gang, and illegitimate force is
likely to remain one of its instruments.
14
The reference to Stalin made in passing and is meant only as suggestive of an analogy,
but not necessary a full analogy. In China there have been no mass arrests as of this writing,
and no campaign of terror affecting society as a whole. Xi’s targets (with the possible early
exception of Bo Xilai) have not been persons enjoying great respect and prestige among the
general public.
15
Deng Xiaoping was a “strong man,” and at various times did personally dominate the
system; but he neither encouraged nor enjoyed a “cult” centered on himself.
16
Xi’s anti-corruption campaign is very much a top-down enterprise. Ordinary citizens who
bring complaints of corruption against officials remain vulnerable to persecution and pros-
ecution.
132 P. R. Moody
5 A Return to Revolutionary Terror?
The role state terror—illegitimate coercion—in China today is literally reaction-

ary: its function is not to transform the system but to preserve it against forces mak-
ing for change. And it would seem, however implausibly, that one rationale for this
attempt to preserve power and privilege is a fear of a return to revolutionary terror.
Wang Qishan, head of the Discipline Inspection Commission and the man re-
sponsible for implementing Xi Jinping’s purge of the corrupt, has found much food
for thought in the Chinese translation of Alexis de Tocqueville’s Ancient Regime
and Revolution. This work, perhaps less well-known than Democracy in America,
may be more intellectually interesting and profounder as social analysis. One ma-
jor theme is that the French Revolution marked mainly a superficial break with the
past, and its main consequence was to bring to fruition centralizing and rational-
izing tendencies already under way in the absolutist system. The theme most inter-
esting to contemporary Chinese commentators, however, is that the revolution was
not the product of poverty but of thwarted expectations. The reign of Louis XVI
was the most prosperous era France had known; a period of temporary economic
distress seemed to threaten this prosperity, and this precipitated the revolution.
The prosperity, though, was concentrated in a privileged elite, and the mass of
the population had no stake in the perpetuation of this privilege. At the same time
there was a highly-educated intelligentsia full of political ambitions and ideas, but
totally excluded from the political process: how like China today! (Gao 2013).
This background supposedly explains the violence and extremism of the revolu-
tion when it did come. The moral, at least as the current leadership seems to see it,
is that the current prosperity is not backed by a stable political system. Legitimacy
remains largely based on continued prosperity17 and could well collapse in the
event of general economic distress. But the main fruits of prosperity are seen to
accrue to a privileged Party apparatus and their business and criminal connections.
There is a huge opinionated public, expressing itself mainly through the internet
that remains excluded from the political process: and should these intellectuals,
full of abstract ideals, unvented resentments, and zero practical political experi-
ence, ride to power as spokesmen for the dispossessed masses, blood will flow and
chaos will rule.
There actually does seem to be a fear, however far-fetched in the eyes of outsid-
ers, of violent revolution. Who knows?—but in the abstract this seems unlikely.
This is supplemented by nationalism, which, when allowed popular expression, tends to-
17
ward a belligerent chauvinism with the subtext that the current rulers are not doing a very
good job of protecting China’s interests against the arrogance of foreigners.
Social control is sufficiently strong to prevent coordinated action among potential

revolutionaries; and should there be a showdown the disparity of forces between
the population at large and the coercive functions available to the state is rather
greater than that between the Paris mob and the old Swiss guard. The fears do show
a general recognition on the part of the ruling elite for genuine political reform:
but also some sense of the dangers of actually implementing it (for, as Tocqueville
points out, revolution occurs not when things are really bad, but when they are get-
ting better). In the long run there is possibly a danger in forcing things to remain as
they are. But life is a series of short runs, and in the short run repression remains
the easier alternative.
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Violence by Proxy: State-Sponsored
Rebels and Criminals in Chechnya
Yelena Biberman
In November 1999, the Russian government released from prison a convicted em-
bezzler to help wrestle Chechnya’s capital city Grozny from the separatists. Seven
months later, it installed a rebel commander as head of the republic. States often
incorporate nonstate agents with unsavory backgrounds into their coercive appa-
ratus. Blurring the already tenuous boundary between state and nonstate violence
allows them to carry out covert, illicit, and highly controversial actions, such as ab-
ductions, torture, and assassinations. Accordingly, the existing literature identifies
plausible deniability as a leading explanation for why states use violent proxies
(Campbell and Brenner 2002). As Findley et al. (2012, p. 237) explain, plausible
deniability allows states to “subcontract out risk” associated with violence and
evade “costs that accrue when international norms or domestic laws are violated.”
While plausible deniability is certainly an important driver of much of violence
outsourcing, there are times when states deliberately make public their relationship
with violent nonstate actors. Not only did the Russian government use criminals
and rebels to gain and maintain control in Chechnya, it also made no secret of it.
This was all the more remarkable considering the Kremlin’s simultaneous sup-
pression of Chechnya-related public information. Russia is certainly not alone in
overt violence outsourcing. The United States has openly sponsored rebels against
Syria’s president Bashar al-Assad and, later, against the Islamic State of Iraq and
Syria (ISIS). Why would a state overtly partner with armed nonstate groups? Why
would it openly share its “monopoly on legitimate violence” with them, forfeiting
the benefits of plausible deniability?
Y. Biberman ()
Government Department, Skidmore College, 815 N Broadway,
Saratoga Springs, NY 12866, USA

DOI 10.1007/978-3-658-11181-6_8
136 Y. Biberman
This chapter tackles the theoretical problem of states’ overt violence outsourc-
ing with an empirical puzzle: Russia’s public partnership with rebels and crimi-
nals during the Second Chechen War (1999–2002), but not during the first (1994–
1996). It shows that the variation in the two wars stems from the disparity in public
support and the military competence of the regular forces. When public opinion
strongly supported the military campaign and the regular forces were militarily
capable, the Russian state outsourced violence overtly. The public confidence in
the war’s rightfulness and the military’s aptitude, combined with the general indif-
ference the international community exhibited during both wars, muted the stigma
associated with the state’s reliance on “unsavory” characters. Chechen proxies
symbolically turned the war from an ethnic conflict into an anti-terrorism cam-
paign. They signaled Chechen approval of Russian rule and to the brutal methods
employed to reestablish it. However, when public opinion was against the war and
the regular forces were incompetent, overt reliance on proxies would have made
the state appear even weaker and more desperate, thereby undermining its legiti-
macy in the eyes of the Russian public. Consequently, during the First Chechen
War, the Russian state used proxies covertly and minimally.
The empirical exercise reveals the complex relationship between legitimacy
and illegitimate behavior of states. Public consent makes plausible deniability un-
necessary, and may embolden states further to cross the boundaries of legitimate
conduct. Hence, while covert outsourcing of violence is dubious, its overt manifes-
tation may carry deeper implications for democracy.
1 First Chechen War
Chechnya, located in the Caucasus region, is one of Russia’s 21 ethnically-defined

republics. Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, Chechen leader
Dzhokhar Dudayev declared Chechnya’s independence from Russia. The move
was a product of the unsettling history of Soviet-Chechen relations, Dudayev’s
personal experiences, and political opportunity.
Chechen experience with Soviet Russian rule was not without serious griev-
ances. In 1944, Chechens were falsely accused of collaborating with the Nazis, and
the entire population (hundreds of thousands), along with the Ingush, was deported
to Kazakhstan and Siberia. Between one-third and half of the deportees died during
the first year of the exile. Dudayev was among those who were deported, while his
aunt, two cousins, and grandmother were massacred for being “untransportable.”
During the waning years of the USSR, Dudayev served as the commander of a
division of nuclear bomber aircraft in Estonia. When the Kremlin ordered him to
Violence by Proxy: State-Sponsored Rebels and Criminals in Chechnya 137
help suppress Estonia’s bid for independence, Dudayev refused, and even flew the
Estonian flag at his base. He returned to Chechnya as an anti-communist national-
ist leader of the All-National Congress of Chechen Peoples, and won a decisive
victory in the 1991 presidential elections in Chechnya, which now considered itself
independent from Russia.
Russian president Boris Yeltsin responded to Chechnya’s declaration of in-
dependence by sending troops to Grozny. However, Dudayev’s forces prevented
them from leaving the Grozny airport. Yeltsin feared a “chain reaction of further
declarations of independence” by the “more important” republics (Politkovskaya
2003, pp. 17–18). Chechnya’s declaration of independence followed the formation
of independent states in the region after the breaking up of the Soviet Union. How-
ever, unlike Ukraine, Kazakhstan, or Azerbaijan, Chechnya had not been a distinct
Soviet Republic. Its status as an “ethnic republic” within the Russian Soviet Re-
public (and, later, the Russian Federation) made its self-determination more threat-
ening to Moscow. Yeltsin feared that other ethnic republics could follow and lead
to the unraveling of Russia months after the collapse of the USSR. The domino
effect theory was only partially justified. The “contagion” threat may have been
real for neighboring Dagestan, but not for the relatively distant Tatarstan.1
Over the next three years, Yeltsin tried to declare martial law in Chechnya,
but his lack of popularity prevented him from securing the parliament’s support.
He then initiated an economic blockade and launched several unsuccessful coup
attempts against Dudayev. Meanwhile, Chechnya became “a failing de facto in-
dependent state and the base for notorious warlords” (Saradzhyan 2008). Mafia
activity flourished, and it became “a centre of crime, including the trade in arms,
drugs and people” (Eke 2007).
The conflict with Dudayev came at a very vulnerable time for Yeltsin and for
Moscow. The transition from the Soviet Union to the Russian Federation had dev-
astated the Russian economy, international prestige, domestic order, and military
power. On November 26, 1994, the Russian security service (then called the Fed-
eral Counterintelligence Service, and is now known as the FSB) covertly supported
Chechen opposition forces in their attempt to capture Grozny. This black operation
was, as the name implies, kept secret from the Russian public. The goal was to
overthrow Dudayev quickly and quietly.
The Federal Counterintelligence Service recruited tank drivers from an elite
division based near Moscow and supplied them with 40 tanks. The tanks and their
crew supported the local anti-Dudayev forces which, on November 26, 1994, at-
tempted an assault on Grozny. They were “spectacularly” defeated, as the infantry
1
I would like to thank Katherine E. Graney for her insight on this issue.
138 Y. Biberman
“was easily separated from the armor, the tanks were bombed and stopped, and the
tank crews were taken prisoner” (Akhmadov and Lanskoy 2010, p. 14). The failure
of the “poorly prepared and disastrously executed” maneuver left the Kremlin with
“a difficult choice between an ignominious retreat and a decisive military interven-
tion by Russian federal forces” (Trenin and Malashenko 2004, p. 21). On Decem-
ber 31, the army launched a full-scale ground assault on the city, with a mission to
“restore constitutional order” in the rebellious republic.
The war took place at a historic low point for both the country and its president.
The state and military institutions were in dismal condition. The public had little
confidence in Yeltsin’s leadership. An opinion poll conducted in October 1994 re-
vealed that 95 % of Russians were under the impression that real power in their
country lay in the hands of the “mafia” (Lieven 1999, p. 213). Real national output
was falling rapidly, and, by 1994, the withholding of wages and government pen-
sions and allowances became “common practice, with arrears for some extending
months and even years” (Colton 2008, p. 230). The capacity of the Russian armed
forces to carry out combat missions in 1994 was estimated to have been 5–6 times
lower than what it was in 1991 (Thomas 1999).
Preparations for war began in the fall of 1994 (Seely 2001, p. 221). On De-
cember 11, Yeltsin’s decree authorizing the invasion came into force. The plan
was for three columns, starting from points north, west, and east of the republic,
to converge on Grozny (Seely 2001, p. 223). Between 30,000 and 40,000 Russian
troops and several thousand military vehicles (including hundreds of tanks) were to
be used. A government spokesman in Moscow initially denied that an invasion was
underway, even after columns of vehicles were spotted moving through north-west
Chechnya (Seely 2001, p. 225). The military strategy was similar to the one used
by the Soviet forces in Hungary in 1956 and in Czechoslovakia in 1968. Victory
would be achieved through awe—by intimidating Dudayev’s supporters with a
show of force. It relied on the assumption that there would be no large-scale armed
resistance in Chechnya.
At the onset of the campaign, the Russian armed forces were in such disarray
that, as journalist Anatol Lieven (1999, p. 102) observed, “there seemed to be a real
possibility that the unity of the Russian army would crack, and with it the obedi-
ence of junior commanders to the Defense Ministry and the military hierarchy.”
The dissolution of the Soviet Union had a profound and destabilizing effect on the
state of the Russian armed forces. By 1994, Russia’s military budget was dramati-
cally reduced from its Soviet levels. Only half of the $12 billion allocated to the
military had been paid out. “Troops were unpaid, training was sparse, equipment
went disrepaired; morale collapsed,” describes former USSR and Russia-based
journalist Robert Seely (2001, p. 220). “In the sudden absence of purpose, dramatic
lowering of prestige, and multiple day-to-day problems, the armed forces experi-
enced a breakdown of basic discipline, resulting in a sharp rise in offenses ranging
from violence and drunkenness to the illegal sale of weaponry.” The Russian army
had not held divisional or regimental field exercises since 1992. The military was
receiving roughly 30–40 % of its requirements for funding and supplies, and suf-
fered significant shortages of junior officers. Not a single regiment was functioning
at full strength (Oliker 2001, p. 14).
The Russian strategists calculated that, while Chechnya possessed an enor-
mous arsenal of weapons, only Dudayev’s presidential guard stood ready for bat-
tle. “What Moscow did not understand was that because the civilian population,
too, possessed a multitude of weapons, they could quickly be mobilized for com-
bat,” argues Russian scholar Valery Tishkov (2004, p. 69). From early December,
Chechen volunteers, expecting a Russian military attack, began arriving in Grozny
(Seely 2001, p. 170), which, in 1994, had nearly 490,000 residents (Thomas 1999).
More than 300,000 of them fled Grozny to escape the rocket bombardments by
federal forces, but the remaining population “was used as a human shield by the
fighters” (Sakwa 2005, p. 28). The city housed many multiple-story buildings and
industrial installations covering some 100 square miles. The Chechen resistance
has been preparing for the battle of Grozny for at least 3–4 months prior to the
Russian campaign, putting into practice “all the things that the Soviet analysts had
identified as key lessons of World War II” (Oliker 2001, p. 16). The rebels were
well-trained and many of them were veterans of the Soviet military. Most of them
knew Grozny well, and their light weapons facilitated their mobility across closely
set buildings and underground passages.
The Russian armed forces were reluctant to get involved in domestic disputes.
Lieven (1999, p. 103) describes witnessing a “near mutiny” of the western column,
when it encountered unexpected resistance from the civilian population while ad-
vancing to Grozny. On December 13, the column confronted a crowd of Chechen
women performing a zikr (ritual prayer) on the road. They told the Russian soldiers
that to advance they would have to drive over them. The performance of the reli-
gious ritual forced the Russian soldiers to consider whether they were willing to
use force against peaceful civilians. Moreover, if the Russian soldiers decided to
compel the group to disperse, they would not only be using force against civilians,
but also engaging in symbolic violence against local Muslims. The head of the
column announced that he would not harm civilians, and refused to advance any
further. He then walked hand in hand down the village high street with a group of
elderly women, shouting: “It is not our fault that we are here. We did not want this.
This operation contradicts the constitution. It is forbidden to use the army against
peaceful civilians” (Seely 2001, pp. 226−227).
140 Y. Biberman
The roughly 6000 troops that finally made it to Grozny were not adequately pre-
pared for the “urban battlefield or for any other,” as they were composed of “con-
scripts and haphazardly assembled ad hoc units” most of whom had not trained
together before being sent to Grozny (Oliker 2001, p. 14). The poor organization
was reflected in the high rate of fratricide (mistaken killing of Russian soldiers by
Russian soldiers). It accounted for estimated 60 % of Russian casualties in Chech-
nya (Oliker 2001, p. 16).
For a military that could barely organize itself and had recently botched a co-
vert operation involving Dudayev’s rivals, openly trying to organize local proxies
was basically out of the question. Local proxies would, however, have been very
useful. The Russian army had remarkably little understanding of Grozny and the
insurgent movement. It relied on outdated maps and lacked intelligence on centers
of resistance. In order to keep the operation out of public eye, the ground assault
on Grozny was launched on December 31, the day the Russian media were on a
holiday over the New Year. During the subsequent “siege,” which lasted roughly
seven weeks, the city was open to the south and east, which allowed the Chechen
fighters to receive continuous reinforcement and supplies (Lieven 1999, p. 109).
Some accounts of the first Chechnya campaign speculate that the Russian of-
ficials misjudged the country’s military preparedness. Often cited is Defense Min-
ister Pavel Grachev’s promise to win with “one paratroop regiment in two hours”
(Politkovskaya 2003, p. 19). However, just ten days before the start of the war,
Grachev identified serious problems in a top-secret directive. These included the
armed forces’ low level of combat capabilities and mobilization readiness, inad-
equacy of operational planning capability, poor training of soldiers, high suicide
rates and overall number of crimes committed. Grachev most likely “privately
understood the true problems in the force but put on the face of public bravado”
(Thomas 1999). Russia’s military weakness was far from a secret to the Russian
military establishment: a total of 557 officers of all ranks were disciplined, sacked,
or resigned in protest against the first Chechen war, for which they felt the Russian
armed forces were unprepared (Lieven 1999, p. 106).
With the conspicuous Chechnya campaign, Yeltsin was putting his hard-earned
“superpresidency” (Colton 2008, p. 5) on the line. The Russian public was “over-
whelmingly opposed” to the war (Politkovskaya 2003, p. 20), and the political
opposition forces—including the ultra-nationalists and communists—were gaining
momentum. Russian and foreign journalists were allowed to cover the war, and
“the horrors they described had a major impact on how Russia and Boris Yeltsin
would be perceived” (Eke 2007). The Russian television, especially the indepen-
dent NTV station,2 was highly critical of the war. According to the reputable Russia
Public Opinion Research Center (VCIOM), in January 1995, only 16 % of Rus-
sians supported the operation in Chechnya and 71 % opposed the bombardment
of Grozny (Yambao 2003). The prospect of one of their members serving in the
Russian army, let alone in Chechnya, was the stuff of nightmares for many Russian
families. The army was conscription-based, and the conscripts were notoriously
subjected to brutal hazing, the so-called dedovschina, which resulted in hundreds
of deaths per year. The military underreported casualties and purposely misled the
families of soldiers about their ultimate fates—“all of which led to increased scru-
tiny and criticism of the conflict and ultimately weakened Russia’s ability to con-
tinue the war” (Schaefer and Doohovskoy 2013, p. 99).
The objective of the Chechnya campaign was to depose Dudayev’s rule, head-
quartered in Grozny. There was a marked supply of “pro-Russia” elements inside
Chechnya. In fact, by the summer of 1994, Dudayev had little control of the re-
public outside of Grozny (Seely 2001, pp. 163−167). The pro-Russia armed forces
of Dudayev’s opposition controlled the republic’s northern regions (Trenin and
Malashenko 2004, p. 20), and some were also stationed east (Golotyuk 1994) and
southwest of the capital (Seely 2001, p. 163). Grozny was historically a mainly
ethnic Russian-inhabited city (Lieven 2008). It was home to thousands of ethnic
Russians who could potentially serve as collaborators, while, in Moscow alone, the
number of ethnic Chechens, who could potentially fill the ranks of irregulars, was
roughly 40,000 (Tishkov 2004, p. 69). Chechen collaboration could have signaled
Dudayev’s weakness and justified Yeltsin’s war. However, in light of Russia’s un-
deniable military weakness and the public’s disapproval of the war, the use of prox-
ies would have appeared as a sign of ineptitude and desperation.
The Russian military failed to overcome the Chechen resistance and, in 1996,
withdrew its forces under a peace agreement that gave Chechnya considerable au-
tonomy, though not full independence. The Chechen chief of staff who organized
the defense of Grozny, Aslan Maskhadov, was elected president. Under his tenure,
Chechnya plunged into chaos and economic collapse. Maskhadov’s political rival,
Shamil Basayev, established a network of military officers who then turned into
rival warlords. Organized crime and kidnappings became rampant. The number
of armed groups active in Chechnya between the years 1996 and 1999 increased
to 157. Chechnya became the biggest producer, consumer, and dealer in weapons
and narcotics in the region. Pro-regime groups controlled oil pipelines and the il-
legal trade in oil products, while the other organized criminal groups specialized in
2
Over which the government seized control in 2000.
142 Y. Biberman
robberies, kidnappings, and trade in “live” goods. Between 1996 and 1999, more
than 3500 Chechens were kidnapped for ransom (Gakaev 2005, pp. 31–32).
2 Second Chechen War
While public disapproval and military inaptitude characterized Russia’s first

Chechnya campaign, the situation was very different the second time around. Pub-
lic opinion was mobilized for war by a series of apartment bombings, which killed
nearly 300 people in Moscow and elsewhere in Russia. The military and security
establishments underwent a major facelift. Both of these factors emboldened the
newly appointed prime minister (and former head of the FSB) Vladimir Putin not
only to attempt to reinstate Russian rule in Chechnya, but also to do so by openly
delegating much of the violence to nonstate proxies.
In August 1999, Basayev and Saudi-born Ibn al-Khattab led roughly 1500 fight-
ers into neighboring Russian republic of Dagestan with the goal of establishing an
independent Islamic state. To their surprise, instead of a mass anti-Russia uprising,
the village-by-village operation was met with a spontaneous mass mobilization
of Dagestani civilians against the invaders. Viewing the invaders not as liberators
but as religious fanatics, Dagestani villagers organized themselves into vigilante
groups. By mid-September 1999, federal forces, assisted by the local vigilantes
and police, succeeded in recapturing the villages that fell under militant control,
and pushed the invaders back to Chechnya.
During the same month, three Russian cities were rocked by four apartment
bombings, which set off a wave of fear across the entire country. The federal author-
ities accused Chechen separatists for the bombings, and Putin vividly responded:
“If they’re in the airport, we’ll kill them there. And excuse me, but if we find them
in the toilet, we’ll exterminate them in their outhouses.” His message was clear—
anything goes. However, the apartment bombings were not without controversy.
Several prominent figures, including a former FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko
(who died after drinking poisoned tea in London in 2006), accused the FSB of or-
ganizing the explosions. Whatever their origins, the bombings significantly helped
the Kremlin to get public approval for the second Chechnya campaign. As Russia’s
former Finance Minister Mikhail Kasyanov explained, following the bombings,
most Russian citizens “simply closed their eyes and let him [Putin] do whatever he
wanted as long as he saved them from this threat” (quoted in Shuster 2011).
Immediately after Basayev entered Dagestan, Yeltsin appointed Putin as prime
minister and manager of the day-to-day coordination of the military campaign
(Colton 2008, p. 433). On September 23, 1999, the Russian air force bombed
Grozny. Maskhadov initially sought to negotiate with the Kremlin and offered to
cooperate on cracking down on the warlords proliferating on Chechen territory.
Maskhadov’s popularity among ordinary Chechens stemmed from his pragmatism
and emphasis on peaceful solutions. He had condemned Basayev and Khattab’s
invasion of Dagestan (as well as the 2004 Beslan school massacre). He supported
Chechen independence and the rebirth of Chechen religious traditions, and tried
to ban fundamentalist Wahhabism espoused by many of the warlords. Neverthe-
less, following the apartment bombings, the Kremlin denounced Maskhadov and
proclaimed the Moscow-based State Council of the Republic of Chechnya, which
was formed by former members of the Chechen republican legislature, the only
legitimate Chechen authority. Maskhadov responded by calling for a ghazevat, or
holy war, and allied with the warlords against Russia.
In December, the federal troops began a full-scale attack on Grozny, the locus
of Chechen resistance. This time, they were better prepared. The Russian strate-
gists “carefully studied the mistakes of the first war” and consequently made “key
improvements” in multiple areas (Oliker 2001, p. xi). For example, during the
first Chechnya campaign, the multiple ministries and organizations with troops
deployed to Chechnya each had their own competing command structures; coordi-
nation between Ministry of Defense and Ministry of Internal Affairs units, between
ground and air forces, and among troops on the ground was very poorly managed.
For the second campaign, command and control was simplified and improved
with a single hierarchy under the Ministry of Defense; force coordination and syn-
chronization of air and land operations improved dramatically. Consequently, the
Russian troops gained control of about 80 % of Chechen territory within several
months of the second campaign (Trenin and Malashenko 2004, p. 35).
In sharp contrast to the first war, the majority of the Russian public supported
the second Chechnya war. Nationwide VCIOM surveys showed that the majority
of Russians backed tough measures. When asked, in December of 1999, to assess
the actions of the Russian forces in Chechnya, 54 % of the respondents character-
ized them as “humane enough” and only 18 % as “not humane enough” (VCIOM
1999). Table 1 shows responses to a similar question across time, reaffirming sig-
nificant public support for the campaign.
In July 2001, 55 % of the Russian respondents described the “cleansings” car-
ried out by Russian soldiers in Chechnya as “necessary and justified,” whereas
only 24 % as “senseless and inhuman” (VCIOM 2001). When asked how the Rus-
sian government ought to respond should the West apply severe economic sanc-
tions against Russia in connection with the Chechnya campaign, only one-fifth of
the respondents advised seeking compromise. The more popular recommendation
(selected by 38 % of the respondents) was to “ignore them and continue the same
144 Y. Biberman
Table 1 How do you assess the actions of Russian forces in Chechnya: are they severe
enough, not severe enough, or too severe? (VCIOM 1999–2002)
Nov 1999 Dec 1999 Jan 2000 Feb 2000 June 2000 Oct 2002
Severe 48 54 44 43 22 30
enough
Not severe 29 29 38 34 52 49
enough
Too severe 7 8 7 9 9 9
Don’t 16 9 11 14 17 12
know
policies internally and externally” (VCIOM 2000). In sum, while in 1994 the bom-
bardment of Grozny “provoked such fierce protest that the President was forced to
declare publicly that he had ordered it stopped,” in 1999 “no passions were raised
by the deaths of innocent people” (Pain 2005, pp. 68–69).
Not only was the Russian public on board with the second Chechnya campaign,
so was the international community. The Western leaders supported Russia’s first
campaign in Chechnya, and maintained the same position at the onset of the second
war. While they voiced some concern over the use of force against innocent civil-
ians, many “still acknowledged the Russian right to defend its territorial integrity”
(Bowker 2005, p. 231). Following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Putin successfully
framed his actions in Chechnya as part of the “global war on terror.” The Rus-
sian president was the first to call US President George W. Bush to express his
sympathy following the 9/11 attacks. Kasyanov observes that Chechnya “flowed
naturally into the picture of a global war on terror. There was no more criticism…
It just ceased to be a thorny issue” (quoted in Shuster 2011).
One month after the start of the second Chechnya campaign, Yeltsin released
from prison a convicted embezzler and ex-mayor of Grozny—Bislan Gantamirov.
Gantamirov was jailed for misappropriating federal funds allocated for the restora-
tion of the Chechen capital. He was to lead an irregular military outfit compris-
ing his personal supporters and former rebels. It was to assist the Russian federal
troops in gaining control of Grozny.
Rather than keeping secret or denying the role of the criminals and rebels in the
second Chechnya campaign, Russian officials publicly highlighted and sometimes
even overemphasized the role of the gantamirovtsy (“Gantamirov’s men”). “If any-
body is going to enter Grozny, it will be the volunteers of Bislan Gantamirov,”
pronounced the commander of the unified federal group in the North Caucasus
in early December (Federals Unlikely to Storm Grozny 1999). “The main load
of fulfilling tasks in Grozny is on the [Gantamirov] militia,” stated a Russian Air
Force commander in late December, though acknowledged that “the army cannot
be totally excluded” from action (Russia-Chechnya-Grozny 1999).
Gantamirov was initially “an active adherent” of Dudayev. However, in 1993,

after clashing with the Chechen president over oil business revenues, he had be-
come a major figure in the anti-Dudayev movement. He had up to 3000 guerrillas
under his command and controlled all of northern Chechnya (Berres 1999). Gan-
tamirov’s release from prison immediately prompted Russian newspaper Kommer-
sant to speculate that it was intended to help the Russian army to take over Grozny
(Russia-Press-Review 1999). Gantamirov then publicly announced his intent “to
assume command of all armed forces which will be formed out of Chechen popu-
lation” and, afterward, to assume an official political post in Chechnya (Russia-
Chechnya-New-Man 1999).
Russian officials helped Gantamirov to put together an 800-member irregular
armed force. It was charged with “fighting a way into central Grozny pressing
from three directions.” The plan of the Grozny operation envisioned a “‘web-like’
pattern of the presence and action of federal troops in Grozny. With Gantamirov’s
groups in vanguard fighting, the army’s special task units and armour will be mov-
ing to their rear. After Grozny is under the ‘web’, the third stage of the operation
will start, which is destruction of the rebel manpower” (Russia-Chechnya-Grozny
1999).
The gantamirovtsy were equipped with machine guns and other weapons by the
federal forces, though were said to be poorly trained and generally undisciplined
(McMahon 1999). As a former mayor, Gantamirov had unique knowledge of the
city’s terrain. His irregular forces were to help the Russian troops navigate the
“local peculiarities” of Grozny, while also serving as “a kind of a buffer between
the federal troops and local residents” (Alenova and Muradov 1999). Russian of-
ficers said that the irregulars could “save the lives of Russian soldiers by, for ex-
ample, drawing guerrilla fire so that Russian planes and artillery can lock onto and
then pound rebel positions” (McMahon 1999). The Russian military estimated that
4000 out of roughly 10,000–12,000 people remaining in Grozny were rebel fight-
ers (Russia-Chechnya 1999). Others estimated the number of civilians in Grozny
to be as high as 35,000 (Ramazanov and Stepenin 1999, p. 1).
The irregular outfit was accompanied in the city proper by an assault force of
4000–5000 regulars (Oliker 2001, p. 44). The illicit nature of creating and arming
an irregular rebel force was not lost on the leader of the State Council of Chech-
nya Malik Saidullaev, who conducted negotiations on the Russian side to surren-
der Grozny: “I cannot understand why he [Gantamirov] and his supporters were
armed, I cannot think of an appropriate Russian law that allows such an action”
(Muradov 1999, p. 3).
Tens of thousands of insurgents mixed with the civilian population of Groz-
ny, despite the military’s efforts to drive the civilians out of the city. Maskhadov
deemed Grozny “the main theater, the place where the most damage could be
146 Y. Biberman
inflicted on the Russians” due to the Chechen insurgents’ superior cultural and ter-
ritorial command of the city (Akhmadov and Lanskoy 2010, p. 177). The fighters
in Grozny constituted “the core of the resistance” (Akhmadov and Lanskoy 2010,
p. 178). As during the first Chechnya campaign, the Russian armed forces required
assistance in identifying and isolating the rebels in order to gain control of the city.
However, the effective use of gantamirovtsy, which led to Russia’s ultimate victory
in Grozny, would not have been possible without the significant boost in Russia’s
military capacity and prestige prior to the second Chechnya campaign.
The difference in Russia’s military strength in the first and second Chechnya
campaigns was stark. At the beginning of the first Chechnya war, the number of
operational group of the federal forces was 24,000, but, at the start of the second
campaign, it neared 100,000 (Trenin and Malashenko 2004, pp. 131−132). The
principle of volunteer participation of conscript soldiers in combat, which existed
during the first war, was abolished (Trenin and Malashenko 2004, p. 132). Shifts in
the military budget led to improved access to arms and equipment. Military morale
and efficiency were also boosted through improved coordination, which enhanced
the efficiency of the armed forces.
After establishing control in Grozny, Moscow switched its support from Gan-
tamirov to ex-rebel Mufti Ahkmad Kadyrov. Kadyrov’s fighters controlled Gud-
ermes, the second-largest Chechen city, which the Kremlin planned to turn into the
republic’s temporary capital. The federal forces had concluded an agreement with
Kadyrov which involved his guerrillas making Gudermes rebel-free (Berres 1999).
What made Kadyrov attractive to the Russian government was that, while he was
powerful, he was not too powerful. Kadyrov’s influence was at the time limited
to Chechnya’s northern and northeastern regions, where separatist sentiments had
traditionally been weaker and federal controls tighter. Kadyrov had never been
supported by the majority within Chechen society (Trenin and Malashenko 2004,
p. 37), and so was more dependent on the Kremlin than would have been Gan-
tamirov.
The former mayor of Grozny emerged as a war hero. While he was working
for the Russian government, the Russian authorities cultivated an image of Gan-
tamirov as “a courageous man who has a great authority in Chechnya” (Gukasyan
1999). The former mayor of Grozny was also associated with normalcy in the
capital city. Although many Chechens actually despised Gantamirov for betraying
Dudayev, Russian newspapers claimed that Grozny’s residents could “still remem-
ber that it was under Gantemirov that things got back to normal: The markets be-
gan operating, apartment buildings started being rebuilt, and schools and hospitals
opened” (Russia’s No. 1 Guerrilla 1999).
After Gantamirov and his men had served their tactical purpose, the Russian
government then handed over the reins of Chechnya to Kadyrov and his men.
Kadyrov was appointed to head the administration in Chechnya, and his kady-
rovtsy (“Kadyrov’s men”), a mix of ex-rebels, criminals, and inexperienced hope-
fuls, helped to establish Moscow’s control over the rest of the republic. Kadyrov’s
personal contacts with insurgents, religious background, and opposition to Wah-
habism allowed the Kremlin to carry out a successful amnesty program, which
swelled the ranks of the kadyrovtsy. Moreover, the brutality of the federal forces’
“cleansings” operations made the irregular military outfit the only source of physi-
cal safety for many Chechen men. By 2003, pardoned rebels constituted two-thirds
to three-quarters of Kadyrov’s personal army (Souleimanov 2015, p. 105).
The ex-cleric was assassinated in 2004 by Basayev’s forces. Putin then redi-
rected his support to Kadyrov’s son, Ramzan, who was the commander of the
kadyrovtsy. By 2006, the kadyrovtsy squad boasted at least 5000 armed members
(Souleimanov 2006, p. 4). Many of them were integrated into the system of Rus-
sian law enforcement agencies and security authorities. Moreover, control over all
Ministry of Internal Affairs structures of Chechnya was gradually transferred to
Kadyrov’s associates. In 2007, after Kadyrov turned 30 (which made him eligible
for presidency), Putin signed a decree installing him as the acting president of the
Chechen Republic (Human Rights Center Memorial 2006).
In April 2009, under the presidency of late Kadyrov’s son, Russia officially
ended its “counterterrorism” campaign in Chechnya. The kadyrovtsy became noto-
rious for committing numerous human rights abuses, such as kidnappings, torture,
and assassinations, with impunity. According to statistics released by the Chechen
government, there were 477 disappearances in 2003, with the kadyrovtsy com-
monly believed to be responsible for the vast majority of them. The kadyrovtsy
are known to pick houses at random, killing some of the inhabitants and taking
others. Kadyrov has refused to allow journalists near a former chicken farm out-
side Gudermes, which Human Rights activists believe is used as a detention and
interrogation center (Ostrovsky 2004).3 In 2015, the kadyrovtsy numbered 20,000
soldiers (Galeotti 2015). “As long as Putin backs me up, I can do everything—God
is Great!” Kadyrov publicly boasted (Nemtsova 2013).
3 Conclusion
The use of violent nonstate proxies in military operations is a controversial prac-

tice. While states often keep secret their relationship with proxies, there are times
when they intentionally publicize the illicit partnership. This allows states to signal
3
I would like to thank John Schreuer for his research assistance on the kadyrovtsy forces.
148 Y. Biberman
the support of the population from which the rebels originate, thereby further le-
gitimizing the counterinsurgency campaign.
This chapter shows that states use proxies when they can get away with it—
when public opinion and military strength assure impunity. Human rights activists
usually condemn those governments that covertly sponsor nonstate violence. How-
ever, as this chapter suggests, state’s overt use of proxies is no less disquieting. It
is a signal of public consent of extra-judicial violence—the state’s confidence that
its illicit use of violence will not be challenged.
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Yelena Biberman Assistant Professor of Government at Skidmore College. Research:

Political violence, unconventional warfare, and militias; she works on a book manuscript
entitled The Militia and the State. Publication, inter alia: “The Politics of Diplomatic Service
Reform in Post-Soviet Russia,” Political Science Quarterly, 2011–2012.
U.S.-Drones Strikes: Acts of Terror,
Violence, or Coercion?
Bettina Koch
What radicals had previously failed to achieve in my

village, one drone strike accomplished in an instant:
There is now an intense anger and growing hatred of
America (Farea al-Muslimi, a young Yemeni activist).
(Cited in Bergen and Rowland 2013, p. 18.)
In February 2013, a U.S. Department of Justice White Paper surfaced that provides
legal justifications for the killing of U.S. citizens abroad. The White Paper (2011,
p. 1) aims at justifying the use of “lethal force in a foreign country outside the area
of active hostilities against a U.S. citizen who is a senior operational leader of al-
Qa’ida or an associated force of al-Qa’ida.” After the White Paper’s disclosure, the
policy behind the document and particularly its wording triggered controversial
reactions.1 The critique focused primarily on three issues: first, the constitutional-
ity of killing U.S. citizens abroad; second, the vagueness in which the group of
people authorized to determine legitimate targets was defined (“informed, high-
level official”), and, third, the definition of what constitutes an imminent threat
was contested. A New York Times editorial stresses that the document “never tries
to define what an ‘informed, high-level official’ might be.” Moreover, “the authors
Partly, this essay’s argument builds on previous works (Koch 2011, 2013). I wish to thank
Abel Knottnerus and the participants of the political theory colloquium at TU Darmstadt
for their critical comments.
1
For controversial legal views see, for instance, the divers legal opinions at http://opinio-
juris.org/?s=drones.
B. Koch ()
e-mail: bkoch@vt.edu

DOI 10.1007/978-3-658-11181-6_9
152 B. Koch
of the memo seem to have redefined the word ‘imminent’ in a way that diverges
sharply from its customary meaning” ( The New York Times 05.02.2013; see also
_The Times_, 06.02.2013).
Whereas the public critique in the U.S. was primarily concerned with the jus-
tification and (il)legality of killing U.S. citizens by drone strikes abroad, more
recently, a group of former U.S. intelligence and military officers questioned the
effectiveness of the targeted killing strategy. Their report concludes, “[t]here is no
indication that a U.S. strategy to destroy Al Qaeda has curbed the rise of Sunni
Islamic extremism, deterred the establishment of Shia Islamic extremist groups or
advanced long-term U.S. security interests” ( The New York Times 26.06.2014; see
also Porter 2010).2
While the public debates and the military perspective inform our argument, our
main interest here is of a different nature. This essay aims at exploring whether the
strategy of U.S. drone strikes primarily in Afghanistan and Pakistan qualifies as
acts of terror, violence, or coercion.3 Because of the absence of “state terrorism” as
a crime in in international law, the essay focusses on “terror,” “violence,” and “co-
ercion” as social facts (Blakeley 2010; Jackson 2007; Jackson et al. 2009). To put
it with Jeremy Waldron (2010, p. 61), “although states may sponsor terrorism by
non-state actors, states or state officials acting in role can’t themselves be terrorists.
But no one denies that states can be terrorizers.” Because the official justification
for the drone strikes are legal in nature, the essay needs to engage in the legal argu-
ments, although the legal debate is not the essay’s primer concerns.
Independently of the particular case before us, the topic has broader implica-
tions. As Frank Sauer and Niklas Schörnig (2012, p. 370, p. 372) argue, the use
of “killer drones” is particular attractive for democratic regimes: drones promise
“casualty aversion,” avoid a “public-opinion backlash” (no boots on the ground),
and, more generally, they “appeal to the utilitarian and normative characteristic of
democracies.” Yet, as a response, the strategy of drone strikes “may invite guerilla
warfare or even terrorist attacks as a response to their overwhelming conventional
superiority,” which suggests that a military strategy involving drone strikes might
create what is claims to defeat (see also Campos and Gassebner 2013).
2
According to a C.I.A. document released by WikiLeaks (18 Dec 2014; BBC 19 Dec 2014),
the inefficiency of the targeted killing strategy, in the C.I.A. document revealingly and con-
sistently called “assassinations,” was at least internally well known. The wording is of par-
ticular interest because the White Paper aims at demonstrating that the targeted killings do
not qualify as assassinations because of the illegality of assassinations in U.S. law.
3
While the essay’s focus rests on the Afghanistan and Pakistan, similar observation may
hold true for other countries that are subject to drone strikes.
U.S.-Drones Strikes: Acts of Terror, Violence, or Coercion? 153
The essay’s topic, however, is not without challenges. The first challenge relates
to the topic of terrorism and violence more generally: Essential to definitions of
terrorism is the intent to create fear for political ends (Barber 2003; Goodin 2006;
Neumann and Smith 2008). Independent of state or non-state actors’ involvements,
often the motivations behind particular actions are not revealed. As Ruth Blakeley
(2010, p. 20) notes, “in most cases, governments seek to conceal the extent to
which they use terrorism and when such activities are exposed, they tend to be jus-
tified as ‘necessary measures’ or more benignly as ‘police action’.” Thus, reliable
official data of, for instance, civilian victims usually do not exist or, where the data
exist, they are not necessarily available to the general public or the researcher. In
parts, the lack of reliable data can be overcome by news reports or other non-state
sources.
The second challenge is more specific: As it is commonly understood, one of
the key issues about state terrorism is the simple fact that the state targets the very
people it ought to protect. In the case of extraterritorial targeted killings through
drone strikes, the first challenge seems to have disappeared. Instead, questions of
national territorial sovereignty but also of a national government’s complicity in a
foreign nation’s actions emerge.4 Michael J. Boyle (2013, p. 15) even implies that
extraterritorial (violent) actions by other governments “provide a powerful signal
to the population of a targeted state that the perpetrator considers the sovereignty
of their government to be negligible.” Yet, the latter issue relates back to the first
challenge, while the question of territorial sovereignty becomes even messier as
soon as foreign fighters are involved (cf. Bryan 2010).5
While the complexity of the issue is worth noting, the essay’s scope is limited.
After a brief clarification of the terminology used in this essay, we discuss first
the U.S. justification for the drone strike strategy. Thereafter, the essay discusses
the scholarly critique on moral and legal grounds. In addition, consequences for
and effects on the people who live in the Afghanistan-Pakistan borderlands are
discussed. Effects and consequences depend, to a certain extent, on perception. The
perception of an affected population is not necessarily the same as the original in-
tension. The concluding remarks reassesses whether the U.S. drone strikes qualify
as acts of terror or as legitimate use of force.
4
Government’s complicity may have a variety of different expressions. Even if a govern-
ment publicly condemns foreign drone strikes in its territory, it may tacitly agree with or
even actively support the strikes. For the variety of complicities, see Lepora and Good-
in 2013, pp. 31–58.
5
While Bryan emphasizes an important issue, his analysis is driven by a U.S. interests’ per-
spective and is, therefore, not without bias.
154 B. Koch
1 Terror, Violence, Coercion, and the State
As Peter R. Neumann and M.L.R Smith remind us, the term terrorism “is both
popular and its meaning is hotly debated amongst political actors.” It gives “rise to
sensationalism and political name-calling which rarely serves the cause of defin-
ing an intellectual concept” (Neumann and Smith 2008, p. 94). Yet, Neumann and
Smith also emphasis that terrorism is first and foremost a strategy that is indepen-
dent of its actor. Because terrorism as a strategy aims at creating fear to initiate
political change, it is a “particular form of psychological warfare” (Neumann and
Smith 2008, p. 9). To be successful, the strategy must involve a certain degree of
indiscrimination to undermine the “it couldn’t happen to me” notion that would
jeopardize the strategy’s purpose. Thus, Richard Jackson (2007, p. 247) adds that
the strategy “involves the deliberate targeting of civilians.”
To distinguish terrorism from other forms of the use of force, i.e. violence short
of terrorizing Enrique Dussel’s distinction between violence and coercion is use-
ful. Dussel reserves the term “violence” only if it involves the illegitimate (note
that difference to illegal) use of force, whereas legitimate “violence” (force) is
perceived as coercion, not violence. He argues, when legal coercion collapses mor-
ally, it loses its legitimacy and turns into violence and is usually caused by unjust
structures (Dussel 2013, p. 401, 403). Thus, similar to terrorism that depends on
perception (creation of fear), whether a state’s use of force is considered as coer-
cion or as violence also depends on perception and perspective. Therefore, it is not
surprising that some scholars emphasize an interdependence between structural
violence (Galtung 1969) and terrorism (Kramer 1994; Madriz 2001).
2 U.S. Justifications for Drone Strikes
The U.S. drone strikes are one core strategy in the so-called “global war on terror.”
The justification for the targeted killing strategy emphasizes the need of “national
self-defense” (DoJ White Paper 2011, p. 3) and is directed against “an imminent
threat of violent attacks against the United States” (DoJ White Paper 2011, p. 1).
Although the narrative of the White Paper focuses on the killing of U.S. citizens in
foreign countries who are “senior operational leader[s] of al-Qa’ida” (DoJ White
Paper 2011, p. 2), the White Paper treats the killing of U.S. citizens as a special
case that demands additional legal justifications than the killing of non-U.S. citi-
zens abroad. The legal justification needs to be in agreement with an interpretation
of international law and the U.S. Constitution. Thus, the general principles ex-
plored apply to both U.S. citizens and non-U.S. Citizens abroad, although it would
not be unreasonably to assume that the killing of a non-U.S. citizen abroad would
cause more legal challenges than the killing of one’s own citizens. Killing a foreign
national also involves foreign rights of sovereignty. From the U.S. perspective, this
does not seem to be the case or part of the considerations.
The White Paper states that the U.S. is not at war with a foreign nation. Instead,
the U.S. claims to be in “a non-international armed conflict in which one of the par-
ties is a transnational, non-state actor and where the principal theater of operation
is not within the territory of the nation that is a party in the conflict” (DoJ White
Paper 2011, p. 4). Moreover, it compares the case to domestic law in which a police
officer can also use lethal force in self-defense or in defense of others (DoJ White
Paper 2011, p. 9). According to the White Paper, a threat remains imminent unless
it is evident that the person associated with the treat “has renounced or abandoned
such activities” (DoJ White Paper 2011, p. 8).
Operations in a foreign nation’s territory are considered “consistent with inter-
national law principles of sovereign neutrality if it were conducted, for example,
with the consent of the host nation’s government or after a determination that the
host nation in unable or unwilling to suppress the threat posed by the individual
target” because of “the inherent right to national self-defense” (DoJ White Paper
2011, pp. 1–2, 5). Because the White Paper assumes that al-Qaeda leaders “con-
tinually planning attacks” the threat remains imminent; thus, it is argued that it
is feasible to kill a suspected person in “a limited window of opportunity.” (DoJ
White Paper 2011, p. 7). Essentially this interpretation assumes the right to kill
whenever an opportunity emerges.
The U.S. interpretation and justification for the targeted killing strategy is not
without support. Martin Felix Höfer argues that the right to self-defense stopgap
solution in international law can be applied to targeted killing as a possible re-
sponse in cases of property damage or a relatively low number of human casualties
if the principle of proportionality is maintained (Höfer 2013, p. 8, 23, 170). Höfer,
however, admits that his interpretation does not conform to the international major-
ity opinion (Höfer 2013, p. 94). Höfer concludes in deductive deprivation, accord-
ing to the neutrality law’s obligation to tolerate, a state that is threatened by terror
can legally break the territorial integrity of another state that is a terrorist’s country
of stay. The country of stay has to tolerate military actions against terrorists, if
the terrorist causes a serious and imminent threat to the interfering state and if the
threat is causal to the terrorist’s stay in the particular country. In addition, assuming
sufficient and reliable intelligence about an imminent attack is available, it forces
the interfering state to act instantly (Höfer 2013, p. 259).
Yet, although Höfer seems to provide the U.S. with a legal justification for
the targeted killing strategy, which would render the drone strikes into legal and
156 B. Koch
legitimate coercion, it is not obvious whether Höfer agrees with the very defini-
tion of imminence that is essential to the Department of Justice’s White Paper. In
direct response to the critique of the White Paper and the policy behind it, however,
Amitai Etzioni offers a substantial defense of the drone strike strategy. Etzioni’s
account, although it is not particularly convincing, is of interest because it adds
other arguments that are commonly raised in defense of the drone strikes strategy.
First, Etzioni emphasizes that the drone strikes are subject to intensive review
and Congressional oversight (Etzioni 2013, p. 3b) and, thus, operate entirely in
the legal realm. Second, Etzioni objects to trying “terrorists” in civil courts. He
objects to civil courts because it may force the revelation of sensitive sources and
the means and methods of gathering the information. The evidence gathered may
not hold to the standards of civilian courts (Etzioni 2013, p. 8b). For Etzioni, a
person that plans to kill troops, civilians, or allies has forfeited his or her right to
be shielded by the law (Etzioni 2013, p. 9a). Third, he ascribes to the U.S. the right
to act against any person outside U.S. territory if the host country is not willing or
able to assist in the U.S.’s right to self-defense. He notes,
for if Washington had reliable intelligence that some terrorist based in Germany were
preparing to strike us, we would ask the German government to deal with them. If the
German government refused—perhaps on the grounds that German laws do not allow
a response—we surely would neutralize these terrorists one way or another (Etzioni
2013, pp. 9a–9b).
Finally, Etzioni emphasizes that drones should be the first weapon of choice be-
cause of their comparatively low number of casualties that make them “more mor-
ally justified than any other means of warfare available” (2013, p. 12b).
3 Critique: Targeted Killing and Preemptive Self-Defense
As implied at the beginning, the self-defense argument as well as other justifica-

tions for the drone strikes tactic are not unchallenged. Etzioni’s second and third ar-
gument combined, although these are commonly used arguments, are particularly
troublesome. If agencies are unwilling to provide evidence out of fear of revealing
“classified information” or because their evidence would not hold in a civilian
court, how could this be a basis for asking a foreign nation for legal assistant in
arresting or even questioning a person U.S. authorities suspect of planning an at-
tack against the U.S.? If the subject will be “neutralized” nonetheless, it would be
nothing but extra-legal arbitrariness that undermines basic Rechtsstaat principles;
it even falls behind the legal standards established in Magna Carta of 1215. With
respect to the justification of the killing of U.S. citizens abroad and in keeping with
the legal standard of due process as outlined in Magna Carta, it did not came with
much surprise that “Congress was up in arms over the apparent violation of the 5th
Amendment, which states, ‘no person shall … be deprived of life, liberty, or prop-
erty, without due process of law’” (Bergen and Rowland 2013, p. 21). In addition
to due process related issues, critics are concerned about a lack of accountability
(Ahmad 2014, p. 72).
Another problem concerns an underlying assumption in the White Paper that
seems to be shared by Höfer and Etzioni: It assumes the possibility of a more
or less clear-cut targeted killing of al-Qaeda leaders without collateral damage.
Although the DoJ White Paper (2011, p. 6) admits the “risk of an erroneous depri-
vation of a citizen’s life,” it considers the risk as a consequence of “the realities of
combat.”
As Gabriella Blum and Philip Hegmann (2010, p. 90) note, “[k]nown or antici-
pated collateral damage to the innocent is generally prohibited in law enforcement,
but it is legitimate in the boundaries of proportionality in fighting wars.” In addi-
tion, they point out that “[t]argeted killing operations display more clearly than any
other counter-terrorism tactic the tension between labeling terrorism a crime and
labeling it an act of war” (Blum and Hegmann 2010, p. 89). This tension, although
played out through different concepts, is also visible in the White Paper: indepen-
dently whether one considers the targeted killings themselves legal and legitimate,
the White Paper emphasizes that the U.S. is not at war with a particular nation, but
with an international terrorist organization. If one assumes that the targeted killings
are legal actions of national self-defense, the population in any given territory that
is not known as a senior al-Qaeda leader falls under the rights of neutrality. Thus,
any collateral damage to the general population has to be considered prohibited
and cannot be rendered or even justified as “the reality of combat” because the
civilians in a neutral state are not part of the armed conflict. Thus, the reality of
combat undermines the logic of warfare in a neutral state and relates back to the
issue raises by Blum and Hegmann: is terrorism an act of war or a crime?
Yet, the question itself may be somewhat misleading. It suggests that the prob-
lem with terrorism is whether it does or does not relate to warfare. As a set of tac-
tics, and therefore as social fact, terrorism is not restricted to warfare; nonetheless,
as a tactic, terrorism is “as old as warfare itself” (Neumann and Smith 2008, p. 32).
It is not the act that is labeled as “terrorism” that determines whether a terrorist act
is an act of war or a crime, but the context in which it occurs. It is also worthwhile
asking for what reasons, by whom, and why a particular act is labeled as “terrorist”
and a similar act committed by somebody else is not. If terrorist tactics are applied
in a warzone, they are acts of war; if they are applied outside a warzone, they can-
158 B. Koch
not qualify as acts of war. A crime outside warfare cannot be a war crime, even
though the acts committed may be the same. Moreover, as Robert Goodin (2006,
p. 3) notes, “[v]ery much the worst thing about mass-murdering terrorists is that
they are mass murderers, not that they are terrorists.” Thus, the emphasis on terror-
ism (as a tactic, although often times confused with the deed itself), distracts from
the deed itself. To stick to the example, legally, there is usually no confusion how
to respond to mass murderers, whether inside or outside a warzone.
A similar confusion is evident in the discourse whether drones, used in response
to “international terrorism” are a just weapon, compared to other weapons tra-
ditionally used in warfare, and, thus, locate the targeted killing with drones as a
problem of ius in bello. As Daniel Brunstetter and Megan Braun (2011, p. 344)
note, they are only weapons of war in the context of warfare. Outside warzones,
drones are weapons used to cause “acts of violence,” but not “acts of war.” Thus,
both acts and means depend on the circumstances in which they occur and for
the purposes they are used. In warfare, drones may be used for justified and legal
actions as much as they may be used for unjustifiable and illegal action. Unless a
particular weapon as, for instance, lethal gas or cluster bombs,6 is internationally
condemned, the weapon itself is neither just nor unjust. As Stuart Casey-Maslen
(2014, pp. 283-4) puts it, “[d]epending on the case, and one’s appreciation of ap-
plicable law, drone strikes may be extra judicial executions in violation of human
rights or lawful acts in bello.” From the perspective of how a particular weapon can
be potentially used, David Hastings Dunn (2013, p. 1244) considers drones as the
almost perfect weapon for terrorist attacks:
They can be operated anonymously and remotely; they present little or no risk to their
operators; they can be acquired cheaply and easily; their operation can be mastered
simply and safely; and they can be used in isolation or in large numbers (given their
availability and cost) to devastating effect.
Legally, however, it makes a difference whether a drone strike is associate with

warfare; it allows for the application of a different set of laws that also involve the
possibility of a different legal context: in war, some actions are legally permitted,
while some may be at least tolerated that are off-limit in peace.
6
It needs to be noted that, although cluster bombs are banned by the 2008 Convention on
Cluster Munitions, the United States, Russia, Israel, India, China, and Pakistan did not sign
the international agreement.
3.1 Preemptive Self-Defense
The argument of the legality of the U.S. drones strikes in Afghanistan and Pakistan
(but also in Yemen, Syria, or Somalia) focus particularly on the notion of preemp-
tive self-defense. Yet, the very argument and construct of preemptive self-defense
is in the center of critique. The fundamental logic behind the concept of preemp-
tive self-defense, although frequently associated with the U.S., South Africa, and
Israel (Höfer 2013, p. 94), is a justification of old. For instance, Humbert of Ro-
mans in his Opus tripartium, c. 1272–1274, applies a similar logic in defense of
the Crusades and the killing of Muslims in the Holy Land (in Riley-Smith and
Riley-Smith 1981, pp. 103–117; see also Koch 2015). Ironically, the rhetoric of the
Crusades has also been utilized in the “international war on terrorism” (Lusthaus
2011, pp. 6–8).
The main critique against the applicability of preemptive self-defense is based
on international law. The critique is a logical response to the U.S. justification
that argues with Article 51 of the U.N. Charter. Article 51 gives states the right to
self-defense. Yet, Article 2(4) of the U.N. Charter does not allow for “the threat or
use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state”
(cited in Byers 2003, p. 172). As Michael Byers (2003, p. 172) notes, “[t]radition-
ally, this right to self-defense has not been understood to allow the use of force
against terrorists within the territory of another state.” In December 2013, the U.N.
General Assembly even passed a resolution “against the employment of drones
in foreign territories” (Iqbal 2014, p. 68; U.N. Resolution A/RES/68/178). In a
similar vein as the Editorial in The New York Times cited at the beginning of this
essay, the critique of the self-defense argument emphasizes the absence of an “im-
minent threat” that may allow for the application of Article 51. Article 51 requires
that the “necessity of self-defense is instant, overwhelming, and leaving no choice
of means, and no moment for deliberation” (cited in Lee 2008, p. 294). Moreover,
for Benjamin Barber,
[s]tates make poor candidates for preventive war because they are part of an interna-
tional system defined by sovereignty and (under the United Nations Charter) by the
mutual obligation to avoid war except when it can be justified by self-defense or a
threat so imminent that preemption can be understood as a kind of anticipatory self-
defense (Barber 2003, p. 119).
Although defenders of the drone-strikes strategy usually highlight the humanity

of the drone attacks because of their relatively low number of casualties compared
to traditional warfare, the proportionality, particularly in relation to the wrong the
U.S. have suffered, has been questioned (Shah 2010, p. 125; Ahmad 2014).
160 B. Koch
More significant than arguments based on international law are concerns re-
garding the international and long term consequences of a new doctrine of pre-
emptive self-defense that allows one state to target “enemies” in another state’s
territory. The strategy would also allow for the oppression of local movements
of independence (Gray 2002). This concern is also shared by Peter Bergen and
Jennifer Rowland (2013, p. 8) who suggest that the “deployment of CIA drones
to target militants could also provide some unwelcome precedents for countries
such as China, Russia, and Iran as they develop the capacity to target with drones
those individuals that they regard as terrorists.” Moreover, Michael J. Boyle (2013,
p. 3) argues that “drone strikes corrode the stability and legitimacy of local gov-
ernments, deepen anti-American sentiments and create new recruits for Islamist
networks aiming to overthrow these governments.” In addition, “[s]tates with re-
curring separatist or insurgent problems may begin to police their restive territories
through drone strikes, essentially containing the problem in a fixed geographical
region and engaging in a largely punitive policy against them” (Boyle 2013, p. 26).
Stewart Casey-Maslen (2014, p. 290) concludes,
[w]hat the USA may in fact be doing is—implicitly—seeking to introduce the inter-
national law of law enforcement requirement of imminence for the lawful use of
international lethal force into a scenario that it has already classified as an armed
conflict […]. If that is indeed what it is doing, it mangles the law.
Michael J. Boyle goes even one step further when he concludes that “the US will
have normalized murder as a tool of statecraft and created a world where states can
increasingly take revenge on individuals outside their borders without the niceties
of extradition, due process or trial” (Boyle 2013, p. 25).
If these concerns are only partly true, the proportionality of drone strikes, par-
ticularly if one considers long-term consequences, is even more doubtful, although
states that uses drone strikes in response to one particular problem, certainly deny
responsibility for the long-term consequences of the strategy.
3.2 The Targets: Al-Qaeda, the Taliban, Drug Dealers, Civilians?
But who are the targets of the U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan and Afghanistan any-
way? The DoJ White Paper seems to imply that the drone strikes only attack “se-
nior operational leader[s] of al-Qa’ida.” Yet, it also claims that a threat remains
imminent unless it is evident that a person “has renounced or abandoned such
activities.” The emphasis on senior operational leaders of al-Qaeda implies a nar-
rowly defined group of people that may be targeted, while the demand for an active
denouncement implies a far wider scope of potential targets. In addition, the re-
quirement that a suspect has to denounce openly his or her affiliation with al-Qaeda
reverses the principle of “not guilty until proven guilty” into “guilty until proven
not guilty;” it reverses the onus of proof.
While the White Paper’s language is open to a wide range of interpretations, if
one looks at the actual victims of drone strikes, it is rather questionable whether
the targets are, at least primarily, senior operational leaders of al-Qaeda. According
to Peter Bergen and Jennifer Rowland, between 2004 and 2013 about 56 identified
militant leaders have been killed in Pakistan, which resembles about 2 % of all
casualties caused by drone strikes. For Yemen, Bergen and Rowland estimate that
about 6 % of all casualties were in leading positions; Reuters calculated for 2010
about 8 % of senior and middle level militant casualties in Afghanistan and Paki-
stan (Bergen and Rowland 2013, p. 9). A recent Spiegel article based on Snowden
documents suggests that in addition to al-Qaeda leaders, members of the Taliban as
well as drug dealers have become explicit targets of drone strikes ( Spiegel Online
29 Dec 2014).
As documented substantially by the Stanford Law School’s Living under
Drones project (2012), the problem with reliable data does not only concern the
number of the total casualties, it also concerns the question who may and who may
not qualify as civilian victim. Depending on (political) interests, the number of
civilian victims vary from up to 50 civilian casualties for one killed “terrorist” to
the absence of civil victims ( Muslims Today, 22.05.2013; Ahmad 2014, p. 71). Ac-
cording to U.S. opinion, it is sufficient to sojourn near an identified “terrorist” or
to be a male adult who resides in a certain territory to qualify as a legitimate target
( Huffington Post, 29.05.2014).
The later definition relates to the strategy of signature strikes. Contrary to so-
called individual strikes that target known individuals, signature strikes aim at tar-
geting individuals or groups of people based on undisclosed behavior patterns.
Particularly in the Federally Administrated Tribal Areas (FATA) in the Afghani-
stan-Pakistan borderland, jirgas (traditional assemblies of tribal leaders) but also
funerals and weddings have become targets of signature strikes (International Cri-
sis Group 2013, p. 11).
Whereas the individual strikes are already problematic, Kevin Jon Heller’s
(2013) analysis shows how the signature strikes involve substantial violation
of International Humanitarian Law (IHL) and International Human Rights Law
(IHRL). Heller outlines that particularly four signatures can never be legally justi-
fied under IHL: “(a) Military-age male in area of known terrorist activity,” “(b)
‘Consorting with known militants’,” “(c) Armed men travelling in trucks in Al-
Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula-controlled area,” and “(d) ‘Suspicious’ camp in
AQ [Al-Qaeda]-controlled area” (Heller 2013, pp. 97–99). Although some signa-
tures may be legal under International Humanitarian Law, they nonetheless violate
162 B. Koch
International Human Rights Law. Particularly targeting and killing people who are
“‘facilitating’ AQ; being present in an AQ compound; and operating an AQ train-
ing camp” may constitute crimes against humanity (Heller 2013, p. 117). Thus,
one of the main reason for U.S. drone strikes in the region, namely that Taliban and
other local groups harbor al-Qaeda fighters (Tarzi 2012, p. 17), does not justify the
actions taken by the U.S.
Whereas it is already difficult to imagine how a drug dealer in Afghanistan
or Pakistan can cause an imminent threat to the U.S.—the U.S. logic is based on
the assumption that drug dealers aid the militants financially—, it is also doubt-
ful whether Taliban fighters are likely to plan and undertake an attack against the
U.S. on U.S soil. In this context it is of significance to ask who the Taliban actu-
ally are and how they fit into the traditional tribal system of the FATA. The U.S.
policy in the region is based on the assumption of a predominantly tribal culture.
Yet, Shahzad Bashir and Robert D. Crews find it even “paradoxical” that “military
planners and their civilian advisors seized upon the idea of tribe as the essential key
to Afghan and Pakistani identities at a time when the concept had long been aban-
doned by most anthropologists and scholars in related fields” (Bashir and Crews
2012, p. 3). Particularly since the Soviet invasion of the 1970s the existing tribal
structures have been undermined; the invasion also caused an increased Islamiza-
tion in both Afghanistan and Pakistan (Tarzi 2012, p. 19; Haroon 2012, p. 58).7
Partly, the rise of jihadist movements and the emergence of leaders who based their
authority rather on religion than on tribal structures can be seen as an outcome of
Pakistan’s politics that aimed at gaining more political and economic influence
in Central Asia. Initially, Pakistani Taliban movements that crosses the border to
Afghanistan did so with explicit and direct support from Pakistan’s military. “In
addition, the Pakistani jihadist movements, largely born from the Kashmir policy
of Pakistan, had a sanctuary in the border areas” (Dorronsoro 2012, p. 34).
Tribal leaders are part of the state; rivalry over authority and legitimacy with
religious leaders weakens the state. In Afghanistan, the tribal system was also
weakened during the PDPA (People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan) regime
(1978–1992) during which numerous tribal leaders were eliminated. In addition,
7
Ironically, the U.S. Cold War politics under Ronald Reagan also contributed to the in-
creased Islamization in the region. As Eqbal Ahmad ( 2006, p. 265) notes, “The US saw a
God-sent opportunity to mobilize 1 billion Muslims against what Reagan called the Evil
Empire. Money started pouring in. CIA agents starting going all over the Muslim world
recruiting people to fight in the great jihad. Bin Laden was one of the early prize recruits. He
was not only an Arab. He was also a Saudi. He was not only a Saudi. He was also a multi-
millionaire, willing to put his own money into the matter. Bin Laden went around recruiting
people for the jihad against communism.”
the “elders’ sons were not able to follow them directly because they lacked their
authority. As a result, the jirga as the major conflict-resolving mechanism of the
Pashtuns lost much of its authority. The powerful newcomers—on the national as
well as on the local level—are able to ignore jirga decisions with impunity” (Ruttig
2012, p. 109).
While the current emphasis on the Taliban seems to imply that the movement
had always a strong influence in the region, they did not emerge as a movement
until after 1992 (the Soviet withdrawal). Despite the fact that the U.S. consider the
Taliban among their imminent threats,
internationalist jihadist rhetoric has not translated into action among the Afghan
Taliban. There were no Afghans among the plane hijackers on 9/11. ‘There are no
Afghans in al-Qaida’s hierarchy and no Arabs in the Taliban command structure’, nor
has there been a single case in which an Afghan Talib had participated in a terrorist
attack outside the movement’s ‘area of operation’ of Afghanistan and the tribal areas
of Pakistan (Ruttig 2012, p. 124).
Despite the fact that the Afghan Taliban’s agenda is exclusively Afghan and there-
fore nationalist and local, the U.S. response to the Taliban, including attempts to
target Taliban leaders, imply that the Taliban are suspected of plotting terrorist
attacks against the U.S. Because the Taliban still operate within a culture of tribal
identities and because after 2001 tribal communities were “unable to protect the
returnees [from combat] against arrest and being killed,” the “key support for the
Taliban comes from communities who have prisoners in the Guantanamo system”
(Ruttig 2012, pp. 110–111). Thus, targeting Taliban with drone strikes and other
means seems to be at best counter-productive.
4 Living Under Drones
Because the key element of terrorism is to terrorize, it is necessary to explore how

the drone strikes affect the general population in the tribal regions of the Afghani-
stan-Pakistan borderlands. According to some calculations, in 2008 “armed drones
flew over Iraq and Afghanistan for 135,000 h (equivalent to 15 years of flight) and
dropped 187 missiles and bombs” (Shaw and Akhter 2011, p. 1492). Drone attacks
have been described as “lightening [that] comes down in the form of Hellfire”
(Shaw and Akhter 2011, p. 1502). Because fear depends on perception, it is useful
to outline some personal accounts from people who are living in areas frequently
targeted by drone strikes. The following examples are taken from the Living under
Drones project (2012):
164 B. Koch
The drones were terrifying. From the ground, it is impossible to determine who or
what they are tracking as they circle overhead. The buzz of a distant propeller is a
constant reminder of imminent death (David Rohde, U.S. journalist on his experience
while in Taliban captivity).
We are always thinking that it is either going to attack our homes or whatever we do.
It’s going to strike us; it’s going to attack us […]. No matter what we are doing, that
fear is always inculcated in us. Because whether we are driving a car, or we are work-
ing on a farm, or we are sitting home playing […] cards–no matter what we are doing
we are always thinking the drone will strike us. So we are scared to do anything, no
matter what (Haroon Quddoos, taxi driver).
When [children] hear the drones, they get really scared, and they can hear them all the
time so they’re always fearful that the drone is going to attack them […]. [B]ecause of
the noise, we’re psychologically disturbed—women, men, and children […]. Twenty-
four hours, [a] person is in stress and there is pain in his head (Hisham Abrar).
Psychologically, the exposure to the (constant) threat of drone strikes causes “sub-
stantial levels of fear and stress,” a feeling of powerlessness, anxiety, but also “an-
ticipatory anxiety” (when is the next drone strike to happen?). In short, many of
the interviewed persons showed severe symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder
(PTSD). Some persons even showed symptoms at a level that made them unfit
to work, which implies, in addition to the psychological effects, economic and
social consequences (Ahmed 2013, pp. 83–84). In addition to the obvious impact
on life and property, the drone strikes also cause changes in social and communal
behavior. One social effect is the direct consequence of the U.S. strategy of the so-
called “double top” strikes. Central to the strategy is to strike a second time soon
after the first strike has occurred. As a consequence, the double top strikes “have
increased civilian casualties, as families of the victims and emergency services are
now reluctant to come to aid of those injured for fear that they will fall victim to a
follow-on attack” (Boyle 2013, p. 8). The increased number of victims is one part
of the effect; the other part involved a change in social behavior. Where, under
normal circumstances, family members, neighbors, and first aid workers would
come to rescue the injured, they are now reluctant doing so out of fear of falling
victim to a second strike.
Another consequence concerns the ability of local and regional self-organiza-
tion and self-government. As indicated earlier, the traditional conflict-resolution
institution, the tribal jirga has been weakened through a growing conflict over
authority and legitimacy between the traditional elders and religious authorities.
After tribal jirgas have been targeted by signature strikes, the traditional instru-
ment of local governance and conflict resolution has become even further weak-
ened. In 2011, a jirga that was held in Datta Khel, North Waziristan, was hit by
a drone strike; 40 men were killed; only four of the victims were believed to be
militants. (International Crisis Group 2013, p. 11). In the aftermath of the strike,
elders have become far more reluctant to gather for a jirga or other cultural ac-
tivities. Because FATA is governed under FCR (Frontier Crimes Regulations), “it
has no police forces; instead, paramilitary, military, and tribal militia forces keep
order” (Fair et al. 2014, p. 9). Thus, by targeting jirgas, a genuine political element
of self-governance is lost; only relatively unregulated military and paramilitary
units remain to keep order. Similar changes in social and cultural behavior occur in
regions in which weddings or funerals were targeted by signature strikes. To avoid
being targeted at similar occasions in the future, “communities have even become
reluctant to hold funerals lest they attract drone strikes” (International Crisis Group
2013, p. 12).
Yet, these are not the only consequences caused by the drone strike strategy:
first, the drone strikes caused “a backlash of anti-Americanism” and, second, “Is-
lamist parties have used the drone strikes to mobilize thousands of followers” (Wil-
liams 2010, p. 872, 881). Whether the “backlash of anti-Americanism,” particular
in Pakistan, goes beyond FATA is open to discussion. Partly, it is a problem of a
lack or contradiction of information. According to a recent poll, two third of the
Pakistani population have never heard of any drone strikes. In addition, the country
is language-opinion divided: “Pakistan’s Urdu-language media (private television,
radio, and print) is almost universally anti-drone, while Pakistan’s English-lan-
guage publications, aimed at an elite readership, take a slightly more sympathetic
attitude” (Fair et al. 2014, p. 3, quotation p. 13). As outlines earlier, a successful
terrorist strategy must involve a certain degree of indiscrimination to undermine
the “it couldn’t happen to me” notion that would undermine the strategy’s pur-
pose.8 Because the drone strikes are limited to FATA and the local population is
considered at best as second class citizens, the drone strikes are a problem that is
either unknown or is largely perceived as something that cannot happen to me to
people living outside FATA.
5 Drone Strikes: An Act of Coercion, Violence, or

Terror(ism)?
To return to the question raised at the beginning: does the U.S. drone strike strategy
qualify as (legal) coercion, (illegitimate) violence, or as an act of terror(ism)? Of
course, neither the general public nor the scholar has documents at hand that have
According to Shaw and Akhter ( 2011, p. 1491), “only 9 % of Pakistanis” support the
8
C.I.A.’s use of drones on Pakistani territory.

166 B. Koch
been issued by U.S. authorities and explicitly claim, “we use the drone strike strat-
egy to scare and terrorize the local population for the political end of…” Nonethe-
less, Benjamin Barber raises the question “whether any terrorist can have spread
fear more effective than the American government inadvertently has done as it du-
tifully passes on random threats against unspecified targets and warns that further
attacks are a virtual certainty” (Barber 2003, p. 25).
If Barber’s analysis holds true and there is no doubt that the U.S. engages in
terrorist tactics, the question remains whether the U.S. drone strikes qualify as acts
of terror(ism). The problem of terrorizing a population or a part of a population in
itself does not say much about the legality of the individual actions involved in the
strategy. Yet, arguing in a strictly positive sense that the drone strikes are legal is
as problematic as proving the negative. Although the previously outlined concerns
on international law implies negativity, the (il)legality of operations on Pakistan’s
territory is even less clear. Although Pakistan frequently has condemned the drone
program openly, it is assumed that Pakistan’s government secretly approves of it.
Thus, the lack of transparency does not allow for any substantial evaluation of its
legality.
It is also assumed that Pakistan’s governmental opposition to the program is di-
rected rather towards the fact that the program is controlled by the U.S., and not by
Pakistani authorities. Thus, “Pakistan has also sought to acquire greater decision-
making authority over the programme, if not to see it end” (Ahmad 2014, p. 66).
Yet, Pakistani law does not allow for the killing of its citizens without due process.
If the drone program is a violation of national law, whether tacitly condoned or not,
the drone strikes cannot qualify as coercion, because it requires legality and ideally
legitimacy. Here, we have one of the cases in which, as Ruth Blakeley (2010, p. 20)
describes it, the activities are “justified as ‘necessary measures’ or more benignly
as ‘police actions’.”
If the drone strikes do not qualify as a form of coercion, then they must be a
form of violence and, thus, are illegal by nature. But is the violence terroristic?
The examples on the psychological effects on people living under the permanent
threat of drone strikes certainly indicated that the drone strikes strategy is able to
create fear and anxiety. Thus, at least for the Afghanistan-Pakistan borderlands, it
can be assumed, if terrorizing was the desired means to a political end, the means
have succeeded. Because the drone strike strategy did not instantly come to an end
after the psychological effects were publically known, it seems appropriate to as-
sume that the terrorizing effects have been at least tacitly approved if not actively
wanted.
A rather different question remains how successful the strategy of terrorizing
actually is. Whereas there seems to be sufficient evidence that, in addition to the
psychological effects on the population that is directly threatened by drones, the

strategy triggers further radicalization of people in the region, without having a
direct effect on other regions in Pakistan or Afghanistan that do not live under
drones. To end as we began with the young Yemini activist Farea al-Muslimi:
“What radicals had previously failed to achieve in my village, one drone strike
accomplished in an instant: There is now an intense anger and growing hatred of
America” (cited in Bergen and Rowland 2013, p. 18). Thus, what the drone strikes
strategy seems to have achieved in addition to terrorizing the people living in tar-
geted regions, is an increase of violence.
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Bettina Koch Associate Professor of Political Science/ASPECT at Virginia Polytechnic

Institute & State University. Research: Political theory, history of political thought, com-
parative political theory, politics and religion, political violence in transcultural comparison.
Publication: Patterns Legitimizing Political Violence in Transcultural Perspectives: Islamic
and Christian Traditions and Legacies (De Gruyter 2015).

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State – Sovereignty – Nation

Contributions to topical discussions

More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/12756

State – Sovereignty – Nation

Library of Congress Control Number: 2015955139

© Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden 2016

Lektorat: Jan Treibel, Daniel Hawig.

Printed on acid-free paper

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Terror, Violence, Coercion: States and the Use

International Law and the Use of Armed Force by States ����������������������� 13

Securitization and Terroristization: Analyzing States’

Part II Cases

From Colonialism to Globalization: State Violence

Violence on the Periphery of the Thai State and Nationhood ����������������� 71

Violence from Above, Violence from Below: The State and

Killing the Chicken to Scare the Monkey: Some Notes on State

Violence by Proxy: State-Sponsored Rebels and

U.S.-Drones Strikes: Acts of Terror, Violence, or Coercion? ������������������� 151

Yelena Biberman Government Department, Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs,

© Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden 2016 1

struggle against colonialism, authoritarian, or otherwise oppressive regimes. Al-

attempt to maintain power violently, or a combination of both. In some cases states

Robert E. Goodin 2006, p. 159) argues in a similar vein when he notes,

Both Waldron and Goodin reflect on democratic societies; in authoritarian or less

The types of violence and/or terroristic tactics applied by a particular regime

In Securitization and Terroristization: Analyzing States’ Usage of the Rhetoric

Bettina Koch Associate Professor of Political Science/ASPECT at Virginia Polytechnic

© Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden 2016 13

2 Four Domains of International Law

International law consists of various domains (also known as fields, regimes or

2.1 Law on the Use of Force

The legal status of the alleged right to humanitarian intervention—which may

2.2 International Humanitarian Law

rules is to humanize international as well as internal armed conflicts. Originally

2.3 International Human Rights Law

Core Rights vis-à-vis the Use of Armed Force by States

2.4 International Criminal Law

Core Crimes by State Agents

3.1 Inter-State Dispute Courts

The archetypical role of international courts and other international adjudicative

3.2 Human Rights Courts

3.3 International Criminal Courts and Tribunals

Abel S. Knottnerus is a PhD Researcher in International Law and International Relations

1 Introduction: Labeling “Terrorist” Acts

In a December 5, 2014, Christian Science Monitor article about violent attacks in

© Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden 2016 31

2 From Securitization to Terroristization: A Brief Overview

“terrorists”. These two key understandings of violence will be used to contextual-

Security serves various political functions in various contexts. If the purpose of

One of the contributions of thinking and studying terrorism as part of processes by

Successful securitization has three steps:

1. the identification of existential threats;

3 Terrorism as (Linguistic) Practice

of the language of “security” and “terrorism” does in terms of forming boundar-

It is essential to avoid an approach framed solely in terms of securitization theory,

4 The National Security Agency’s Surveillance Programs

An illustration of how terroristization processes operate and the ethical, social,

be found here: http://www.ap.org/Index/AP-In-The-News/NYPD.

This understanding of security is tied to legitimacy, in that Waldron challenges us

5 Terroristizing (Muslim) Others: The US, Drones, and

6 Conclusion: De-Securitization and De-Terroristization

As has been noted above, terroristization includes actors’ usage of “terrorism”

International Law and the Use of Armed Force by States �� 13

Violence on the Periphery of the Thai State and Nationhood �� 71

U.S.-Drones Strikes: Acts of Terror, Violence, or Coercion? �� 151

2 Four Domains of International Law

2.1 Law on the Use of Force

2.2 International Humanitarian Law

2.3 International Human Rights Law

2.4 International Criminal Law

3.1 Inter-State Dispute Courts

3.2 Human Rights Courts

3.3 International Criminal Courts and Tribunals

1 Introduction: Labeling “Terrorist” Acts

2 From Securitization to Terroristization: A Brief Overview

3 Terrorism as (Linguistic) Practice

4 The National Security Agency’s Surveillance Programs

5 Terroristizing (Muslim) Others: The US, Drones, and

6 Conclusion: De-Securitization and De-Terroristization

1 State Violence in Colonial India

2 The Violence of Territorial and Bureaucratic Order

3 An Indian Social Contract

4 State-Centrism and the Indian Constitution

5 The Violence of Ethno-Nationalism

6 The Incomplete Sovereignty of the State

7 Globalization and New Forms of Violence

1 Constructing a Periphery of the Thai State and

2 Division of Power—Unchecked Military Might

3 Political and Cultural Concepts as Violence—Unity and

3.1 Farmers’ Political Movements

3.2 The “Deep South” Conflict

3.3 The Communist Enemy Within

1 State Violence Between Political and Predatory Policing

2 The Evolution of the Egyptian MoI

3 The Two Levels of Police Violence

3.1 Violence from Above: Maintaining the Regime’s Political

3.2 Violence from Below: Socio-Economic Changes and Citizen

5 Institutionalized Violence and Police Culture

6 Police Power and the Production of Violence

1 Terrorism and State Terrorism

2 Terror in Maoist China

4 State Terror and the Nature of the System

5 A Return to Revolutionary Terror?

1 First Chechen War

2 Second Chechen War