The attacks by ISIS-K in Kabul brought terrorism back to center ring.
They also brought back a long-standing, smoldering issue: the definition of terrorist.
Definitions from the FBI, the State Departmemt and other U.S. agencies are so full of holes a typical teenager can play them like a flute.
I won´t waste your time or mine criticizing all of them. The FBI´s definition of international terrorism is a case in point:
"Violent, criminal acts committed by individuals and/or groups who are inspired by, or associated with, designated foreign terrorist organizations or nations (state-sponsored)."
For a list of designated foreign terrorist organizations and nations, click here: https://www.state.gov/executive-order-13224/#state.
Definitions are crucial.
(i) He who makes the definitions defines the situation.
(ii) He who defines the situation makes the rules of the game.
(iii) He who makes the rules has the power and wins the game.
Nice try, FBI. Your definition of terrorist is a bureaupathic power grab. Because the State Department defines who are terrorist organizations, the definition of terrorist is ultimately...whoever Washington says is a terrorist.
Let´s say ISIS-K, the group that killed over 100 people with a suicide bomb at the Kabul airport, in the future decides to align itself with the U.S. government against the Taliban whom ISIS-K already opposes. Washington D.C. appreciates its new friend and removes it from the list of terrorist organizations. Ipso facto, according to government logic, ISIS-K would cease to be a terrorist organization.
Nonsense. A terrorist is an objective phenomenon which can and should be defined by objective criteria -- not according to political or federal employee convenience.
Only one definition fills the bill. It is based on actual behavior, on real history of real people. Hard experience versus bueaucrat whim.
That definition:
"A terrorist is most often a middle class rebel (1) experiencing magnified marginal and/or transitional conditions, who (2) voluntarily (3) goes through certain rites of passage, among which are (4) clique membership and (5) a deliberate decision to commit a criminal act which is almost always (6) violent and usually (7) murder, in (8) the name of higher intentions or convictions without (9) retaining consciously the ambiguity of his criminal act and his higher intentions/convictions. He manifests powerful, unconscious, ambivalent emotions in two ways: (10) converting his intentions/convictions into idées fixes or absolute truths, the opposite extreme from ambiguity, and (11) wielding uncertainty as a weapon. That uncertainty is total, as demonstrated by the fact that (12) everybody -- allies, non-combatants, even himself -- is a potential victim.
A concluding note: it is the syndrome, the running together of components, which counts -- not components in isolation.
By not admitting what he cannot admit, the terrorist guards his secret, even from himself.
By not admitting what he is, the terrorist shows the gravity that admission holds for him. To my knowledge, no terrorist or other middle class rebel ever said what he is.
What he is, is the secret he keeps:
He is a middle class rebel. "
Thomas Belvedere, The Source of Terrorism: Middle Class Rebellion. ISBN 978-1-60145-785-1. Copyright 2009.
ISIS-K members tend to be middle class, hence exemplify the rule.