ABSTRACT
Governments have been directly connected with supporting terrorism as a part of their policies in two general contexts. The two contexts are quite different since in the first case the targets for the terrorist attacks are foreign, while in the second case they are domestic. In the first case, they have used personnel from their own intelligence services as well as dissident groups abroad as tools to achieve foreign policy objectives. Spies, agents, and saboteurs have initiated actions against enemy states in both ‘hot’ and ‘cold’ wars. When governments have had the opportunity in the context of these hot and cold wars, they have also provided direct support to dissident organizations already using terrorist and guerrilla violence against the regimes in enemy or competing states. The groups receiving this support have not usually been directly controlled by the foreign state even if this aid by foreign governments has given the outside supporters some important leverage with the dissidents. If the potential enemy state has been having difficulties with dissidents, foreign governments have often been quite willing to ‘stir the pot’, hoping to bring it to the boil to create difficulties for the other state. In the best of all possible worlds, there is a chance that an allied government will be established to replace an antagonistic one. At the very least, the potential enemy state can be weakened with the provision of such aid to its dissident groups. A more passive way in which states may assist terrorist groups in other countries is by ignoring their organizational activities or fund-raising on their own soil. The second case of government aid for terrorism is when they become involved in providing active or passive support to groups in their own country to deal with political, economic, or social groups that the government fears. Paramilitary organizations, party activists or militias, or death squads may launch the attacks, but the government is able to avoid direct responsibility for the attacks and to retain at least a pretence of ‘plausible deniability’.
