Defining international terrorism: Historical reality and the African experience

Violence is terror and terror is violence. Liberators, freedom fighters, revolutionaries and terrorists have all become labels of convenience. Terrorism, historically, has been institutionalized by some governments to their advantage. Academicians and politicians fail to agree on the issues surrounding terrorism hence defining terrorism has become an academic puzzle. The ambiguity in its definition has also contributed to lack of any universal comprehensive acceptable theory. The literature on terrorism by and large accused weaker nations of supporting terrorism. This paper argues otherwise by using the African experience, slavery and colonization, to question the literature on terrorism. Nations throughout history have used terrorism as a pretext to expand their military atrocities when they cannot achieve their political goals diplomatically. This article concludes that the developed countries use terrorism as a tool for economic development as they occupy and control the resources of the less developed countries. In short, when it comes to terrorism all nations are guilty and the need for global solution must be paramount