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ON THE CIVILIZATIONAL AND ISLAMIC NATURE OF INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM
Ramiz SEVDIMALIEV
Ramiz Sevdimaliev, Deputy Director, Human Rights Institute, Academy of Sciences of Azerbaijan (Baku, Azerbaijan)
Today, two trends are dominating ethnic and interstate relations. First, local conflicts that use limited troop contingents (smaller wars) are becoming more frequent; there is a clear realization that mass armed clashes lead nowhere. Second, contemporary wars and armed conflicts are gradually becoming longer and, therefore, require more material and human resources. Indeed, the world wars of the 20th century lasted for no more than six years each, while armed conflicts take decades and frequently end in the “neither war nor peace” stalemate (Vietnam, Afghanistan, the Middle East, Nagorny Karabakh of Azerbaijan, Abkhazia of Georgia, the Trans-Dniester region of Moldova, etc.).
The forms of contemporary irregular or smaller armed conflicts are varied. Specialists identify several of them as guerilla, or national-liberation wars, terrorist acts, which are actually acts of violence carried out by the minority against the majority, and irregular secret armed actions by special military units (special forces) carried out before regular military operations are launched, at the initial stage of such operations or parallel with them.
In real life contemporary smaller wars are not waged in their pure form; depending on the economic, social, political, ideological, and military context, they intertwine and complement each other. Acts of terror, for example, have an important, though not dominating, role to play in the secret armed struggle of the special services.
As a form of contemporary armed confrontation, international terrorism has several specific features which set it apart from other forms of smaller wars.
First, terrorists employ tactics which contradict the norms of international military law; they consistently use force against non-combatants. In peacetime, they kill or wound civilians, making them the main target against which force is used.
Second, destabilization has an………………..
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