Terrorism is a crime, but this can mask the fact that it is primarily a tactic of asymmetric warfare, often used by those who are less powerful against those who are, at least in formal terms, more powerful. The purpose of the terrorist is to use the creation of powerful feelings of fear to leverage greater impact. The human rights that had been declared by the humanists and liberals of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries would not be guaranteed merely by an appeal to a rational moral conscience. All attempts at normal political negotiation, social and economic development and incremental human rights improvements failed to end the terrorist campaign. As a result, some countries had been experiencing the return of terrorism, and not only in historically unstable regions such as the Middle East. The police and army chiefs repeatedly told the Government but that there was no military or security solution to the problem of terrorism.