ABSTRACT
One issue that is frequently raised with the analysis of terrorism concerns the need to deal with state activities that qualify within the defi nition of such violence. The defi nition utilized in Chapter 2 and all the following chapters required that at least one of the actors involved in the terrorism either as a perpetrator or a target be a non-state group. Covert attacks by one state against another were thus excluded, as were actions undertaken by nations and intelligence agencies during wartime, although state support of existing terrorist groups was not excluded. Government activities that seek to generate terror against its own citizens, however, remain an important concern in the study of terrorism. The types of activities that might qualify would include the intentional use of secret police and the apparatus of the state to induce fear and compliance in a population, government acceptance of or active complicity in the activities of death squads and other vigilante groups, and government involvement in genocide and ethnic cleansing.
