Vengeance is not the point; change is. But the trouble is that in most people’s minds the thought of victory and the thought of punishing the enemy coincide.

Barbara Deming
Non-Violence Theorist
Women’s Rights Proponent

The fight for land has always been raging. Avenging some other people’s incursion into one’s own land becomes a grand spectacle of violence. People, too, revenge against those that take back the land they have comfortably settled on. The former is avenging invasion. The latter is revenging infringement on human rights. Terrorism is not too far from where these concepts lie.

Terrorism comes with a few buzzwords such as oppression, injustice, persecution, revenge, self-sacrifice, patriotism, autonomy, national sovereignty, extremism, death – and all their attendant synonyms. When all these concepts come together in one explosive end, with great force and to an excessive degree, it becomes vengeance.

Blood is spilled at that moment.

Wreaking havoc is said to be the business of radical Islamists. Many a times we’ve heard that they do so out of vengeance. They are out to revenge the persecution of their lot through the millennia (or for much more recent turn of events, with most). The heart of a terrorist is full of hatred and wrath. That, we know. That, we are told. His mind is sharp only in terms of brainwashed dictum and dogma. This, we have an inkling, too.

Their clamor is that of self-determination. That’s a technocratic way of saying they want the piece of land that they have settled on. They want self-rule. That’s a bureaucratic way of saying they want to be able to govern themselves and collect some form of taxes for their own. They want to impose their own brand of law, and be able to perpetuate their definitions of order and control. Their imperialistic streak, though, is coming late in the day. But all these concepts are not unique to radical Islamism.

If one looks closely, there is essentially no difference among the different campaigns of those who want to occupy land. The motive of radical Islamists that want to occupy Somalia or Gaza is the same as the intent of Tamil Eelam in Sri Lanka. Is there really a difference between what Hamas is fighting for and what Fatah wants? To be able to occupy and rule their portion of Mindanao is what Bangsamoro in the Philippines is fighting for. The tribal groups in the Amazon have suffered countless deaths in the hands of farmers who have been quickly inching their way into tribal land.

The conflict in Sudan’s western Darfur region started as a territorial dispute between nomads and pastoralists. Nomads have been encroaching on farming communities in Darfur for many years. Set against the backdrop of ever-widening desertification, the dispute has taken massive proportions. Nearly half a million deaths in gross proportions, to be exact. This dispute has been used for further and wicked political ambition whose price is paid in genocidal proportions.

There are common trends in all these. Tensions, escalating numbers of deaths, and the very reason behind the violence are all the same.

All for the occupation of land.

Singur and Nandigram in India have been hotspots of violence because corporate mafias grab land for the sake of putting up Special Economic Zones (SEZs). Violent attacks meant to neutralize peasants in the rural hinterlands of the state of West Bengal, undertaken by the police and hoodlums who were let loose on the peasants, were done in the name of development. This is one of the uglier angles of the imperialist design of globalization.

‘Neo-colonialism’ is a relatively newfangled fad. Purchase of millions of hectares of agricultural land in developing countries by rich governments and corporations, for purposes of securing their long-term food supplies, is the newest rage. This is said to be the second wave of the ‘scramble for Africa.’ Abu Dhabi buys arable land in Pakistan. Saudi Arabia invests in Indonesia for the farming of a certain rice variety. Laos has sold 15 percent of its farmlands. Libya buys a quarter of a million hectares in Ukraine. Cambodia rice fields will soon go to Kuwait and Qatar. All these are at the expense of the lowly local farmers. It won’t take long before the poor realize that they are actually being wrung in ill-fitting deals. Something is terribly askew with these arrangements, and it will only take some time before local farmers rise up in arms to avenge their oppressive situation. And when they do, chances are they will be branded as rebels.

At the end of the day, it is not about ethnic cleansing, religious fundamentalism, political extremism, or racism that terrorism is all about. It is also ridiculous that protests heading towards armed violence are promptly called terrorism when it is really nothing more than the fight for land, in most cases. There is more to an armed struggle that is carried out with extreme violence, in a grand showcase of vengeance.

Over the long haul, there is more to terrorism than terrorists.

Those who, unfortunately, witness the wrath of the oppressed have not learned the lessons of history.

It is the continuing saga of globalization - yet the biggest imperialist design. And in the attempt to balance the scale, vengeance will never run out of use.

The central fact is that overwhelmingly suicide-terrorist attacks are not driven by religion as much as they are by a clear strategic objective: to compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from the territory that the terrorists view as their homeland. From Lebanon to Sri Lanka to Chechnya to Kashmir to the West Bank, every major suicide-terrorist campaign — over 95 percent of all the incidents — has had as its central objective to compel a democratic state to withdraw.

Robert Pape
Associate Professor
University of Chicago
Author, “Dying to Win”