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State terrorism is terrorism conducted by a state against its own or another state's citizens.Selden & So, 2003: p. 4. It contrasts with state-sponsored terrorism, in which a violent non-state actor conducts an act of terror under sponsorship of a state.
Governments accused of state terrorism may justify these actions as efforts to combat internal dissent, suppress insurgencies, or maintain national security, often framing their actions within the context of counterterrorism or counterinsurgency. Accused actions of state terrorism are normally also criticised as severe violations of human rights and international law.
Historically, governments have been accused of using state terrorism in various settings. The exact definition and scope of state terrorism remain controversial, as some scholars and governments argue that terrorism is a tool used exclusively by non-state actors, while others maintain that state-directed violence intended to terrorize civilian populations should also be classified as terrorism.
However, others, including governments, international organisations, private institutions and scholars, believe the term terrorism is applicable only to the actions of violent non-state actors. This approach is termed as an actor-centric definition which emphasizes the characteristics of the groups or individuals who use terrorism; whilst act-centric definitions emphasize the unique aspects of terrorism from other acts of violence. Historically, the term terrorism was used to refer to actions taken by governments against their own citizens whereas now it is more often perceived as targeting of non-combatants as part of a strategy directed against governments.
Historian Henry Commager wrote that "Even when definitions of terrorism allow for 'state terrorism', state actions in this area tend to be seen through the prism of war or national self-defense, not terror." While states may accuse other states of state-sponsored terrorism when they support insurgencies, individuals who accuse their governments of terrorism are seen as radicals, because actions by legitimate governments are not generally seen as illegitimate. Academic writing tends to follow the definitions accepted by states.. Most states use the term terrorism for non-state actors only.
The Encyclopædia Britannica Online defines terrorism generally as "the systematic use of violence to create a general climate of fear in a population and thereby to bring about a particular political objective", and states that "terrorism is not legally defined in all jurisdictions". The encyclopedia adds that "establishment terrorism, often called state or state-sponsored terrorism, is employed by governments—or more often by factions within governments—against that government's citizens, against factions within the government, or against foreign governments or groups."
While the most common modern usage of the word terrorism refers to political violence by Insurgency or conspirators, several scholars make a broader interpretation of the nature of terrorism that encompasses the concepts of state terrorism and state-sponsored terrorism. Michael Stohl argues, "The use of terror tactics is common in international relations and the state has been and remains a more likely employer of terrorism within the international system than insurgents." Stohl clarifies, however, that "not all acts of state violence are terrorism. It is important to understand that in terrorism the violence threatened or perpetrated, has purposes broader than simple physical harm to a victim. The audience of the act or threat of violence is more important than the immediate victim."
Scholar Gus Martin describes state terrorism as terrorism "committed by governments and quasi-governmental agencies and personnel against perceived threats", which can be directed against both domestic and foreign targets. Noam Chomsky defines state terrorism as "terrorism practised by states (or governments) and their agents and allies".
Simon Taylor provides a definition of state terrorism as "state agents using threats or acts of violence against civilians, marked by a callous indifference to human life, to instill fear in a community beyond the initial victim for the purpose of preventing a change or challenge to the status quo." These acts of violence can include both the types of state violence that some argue ought to be considered terrorism, such as: genocide, mass murders, ethnic cleansing, disappearances, detention without trial, and torture; and more widely accepted methods of terror including bombings and targeted killings.
Stohl and George A. Lopez have designated three categories of state terrorism, based on the openness or secrecy with which the acts are performed, and whether states directly perform the acts, support them, or acquiesce to them..
Later examples of state terrorism include the police state measures employed by the Soviet Union beginning in the 1930s, and by Germany's Nazi Germany in the 1930s and 1940s. According to Igor Primoratz, "Both the sought to impose total political control on society. Such a radical aim could be pursued only by a similarly radical method: by terrorism directed by an extremely powerful political police at an atomized and defenseless population. Its success was due largely to its arbitrary character—to the unpredictability of its choice of victims. In both countries, the regime first suppressed all opposition; when it no longer had any opposition to speak of, political police took to persecuting 'potential' and 'objective opponents'. In the Soviet Union, it was eventually unleashed on victims chosen at random.".
Military actions primarily directed against non-combatant targets have also been referred to as state terrorism. For example, the bombing of Guernica has been called an act of terrorism. Other examples of state terrorism may include the World War II bombings of Pearl Harbor, The Blitz, Dresden, Chongqing, and Hiroshima.
An act of sabotage, sometimes regarded as an act of terrorism, was the peacetime sinking of the Rainbow Warrior, a ship owned by Greenpeace, which occurred while in port at Auckland, New Zealand on July 10, 1985. The bomb detonation killed Fernando Pereira, a Dutch photographer. The organisation who committed the attack, the Directorate-General for External Security (DSGE), is a branch of France's intelligence services. The agents responsible pleaded guilty to manslaughter as part of a plea deal and were sentenced to ten years in prison, but were secretly released early to France under an agreement between the two countries' governments.
During the Troubles, an ethno-nationalist conflict in Northern Ireland from the 1960s to the 1990s, the Military Reaction Force (MRF), a counterinsurgency unit of the British Intelligence Corps, was tasked with tracking down members of the Irish Republican Army (IRA). During the period when it was active, the MRF was involved in the killings of Catholic civilians in Northern Ireland.
In November 2013, a BBC Panorama documentary was aired about the MRF. It drew on information from seven former members, as well as a number of other sources. Soldier H said: "We operated initially with them thinking that we were the UVF." Soldier F added: "We wanted to cause confusion." In June 1972, he was succeeded as commander by Captain James 'Hamish' McGregor.
In June 2014, in the wake of the Panorama programme, the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) opened an investigation into the matter. In an earlier review of the programme, the position of the PSNI was that none of the statements by soldiers in the programme could be taken as an admission of criminality.
In December 2023, Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel condemned the alleged genocide of Palestinians in Gaza and called Israel a "terrorist state".
The 2024 Lebanon pager explosions, which killed 39 people and wounded nearly 3,500, have been widely attributed to Israel. Iran referred to the attacks as "Israeli terrorism". Leon Panetta, the former-CIA director, also termed the attack terrorism.
Multiple UN report reference Israel's involvement in State terrorism.
As of October 2023, the following states and organizations have designated Russia as terrorist or a sponsor of terrorism:
In the Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings, the former Major-General and Commander of Vlakplaas, Sarel “Sakkie” du Plessis Crafford gave the following three reasons for the Apartheid state's policy of extra-judicial killings:
The most notorious of the Vlakplaas operatives were Eugene de Kock and the askari Joe Mamasela, who were linked to several high-profile extra-judicial killings, including that of Griffiths Mxenge. Following South Africa's transition to democracy, de Kock was later tried and convicted on eighty-nine charges and sentenced to 212 years in prison.
British Foreign Office documents declassified in 2021 revealed that during the Indonesian mass killings of 1965–66, British propagandists secretly incited anti-communists including army generals to eliminate the PKI, and used black propaganda, due to Indonesian President Sukarno's hostility to the formation of former British colonies into the Malayan federation from 1963. British Prime Minister Harold Wilson's government had instructed propaganda specialists from the Foreign Office to send hundreds of inflammatory pamphlets to leading anti-communists in Indonesia, inciting them to kill the foreign minister, Subandrio, and claiming that ethnic Chinese Indonesians deserved the violence meted out to them.
Britain has been accused of involvement in state terrorism during the Troubles, an ethno-nationalist conflict in Northern Ireland from the 1960s to the 1990s by covertly assisting loyalist paramilitaries.
Declassified documents from the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta in 2017 confirm that U.S. officials directly facilitated and encouraged the mass murder of hundreds of thousands of suspected Communists in Indonesia during the mid-1960s. Bradley Simpson, Director of the Indonesia/East Timor Documentation Project at the National Security Archive, says "Washington did everything in its power to encourage and facilitate the army-led massacre of alleged PKI members, and U.S. officials worried only that the killing of the party's unarmed supporters might not go far enough, permitting Sukarno to return to power and frustrate the Johnson Administration's emerging plans for a post-Sukarno Indonesia." According to Simpson, the terror in Indonesia was an "essential building block of the quasi neo-liberal policies the West would attempt to impose on Indonesia in the years to come". Historian John Roosa, who commented on documents which were released by the U.S. embassy in Jakarta in 2017, said they confirmed that "the U.S. was part and parcel of the operation, strategizing with the Indonesian army and encouraging them to go after the PKI." Geoffrey B. Robinson, a historian at UCLA, argues that without the support of the U.S. and other powerful Western states, the Indonesian Army's program of mass killings would not have happened.
The National Assembly of Venezuela designated the colectivos as terrorist groups due to their "violence, paramilitary actions, intimidation, murders and other crimes", declaring their acts as state-sponsored terrorism.
Bruce Hoffman has argued that failing to differentiate between state and non-state violence ignores the fact that there is a "fundamental qualitative difference between the two types of violence". Hoffman argues that even in war, there are rules and accepted norms of behaviour that prohibit certain types of weapons and tactics and outlaw attacks on specific categories of targets. For instance, rules which are codified in the Geneva and Hague Conventions on warfare prohibit taking civilians as , outlaw reprisals against either civilians or POWs, recognise neutral territory, etc. Hoffman says "even the most cursory review of terrorist tactics and targets over the past quarter century reveals that terrorists have violated all these rules." Hoffman also says that when states transgress these rules of war "the term 'war crime' is used to describe such acts".
Walter Laqueur has said those who argue that state terrorism should be included in studies of terrorism ignore the fact that "The very existence of a sovereign state is based on its monopoly of power. If it were different, states would not have the right, nor would they be in a position, to maintain that minimum of order on which all civilized life rests." Calling the concept a "red herring", he stated: "This argument has been used by the terrorists themselves, arguing that there is no difference between their activities and those by governments and states. It has also been employed by some sympathizers, and it rests on the deliberate obfuscation between all kinds of violence..."
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