So who's a terrorist then?

The NZ Government grapples with some tricky decisions

In February, the prime minister of New Zealand announced that Hamas (aka the Islamic Resistance Movement) had been designated as a terrorist entity. This was in response to the attacks on Israelis on 7 October 2023.

The military wing of Hamas had already been designated as a terrorist entity in 2010, but Hamas also provides public administration and social services. So it’s now illegal to provide them with assistance of any kind. This doesn’t preclude, however, any humanitarian aid to Palestinians and to the people of Gaza.

The attacks on 7 October by Hamas on unarmed civilians were terrorist acts as defined in NZ law, summarised below. The designation of Hamas as a terrorist entity is in line with the US, UK, EU, Canada and Australia.

(For balance, though, the subsequent actions of the Israeli Defence Force are disproportionate, and potentially genocide as argued in the International Court of Justice by South Africa. Both sides may have acted unlawfully.)

Hamas has a helpful friend in Iran, on the other hand, especially Iran’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). The IRGC reports directly to Iran’s Supreme Leader. It’s involved in internal security and in special operations abroad. It controls the Basij Paramilitary Force for internal security and suppression of dissent, which has included the violent suppression of the recent uprising led by Iranian women. And the IRGC’s external Quds (Jerusalem) Force has been involved in planning terror attacks and supporting proxy terrorist organisations.

The IRGC was added to the US State Department’s list of foreign terrorist organisations in 2019 – during Donald Trump’s presidency – and Iranian New Zealanders have been lobbying the NZ government to follow suit. In 2022 the National and Act parties joined the Greens and Te Pāti Māori in urging Ardern’s Labour government to do this. Now that National and Act are in office, however, they say it’s a bit complicated and needs time. NZ First leader Winston Peters is foreign minister, so he’d have to get behind it too.

It is complicated by the fact that the IRGC is a part of a sovereign state’s regular military forces. An official terrorist designation would affect diplomatic relations between the two countries.

So who’s a terrorist then? Here’s a rough guide:

If, in the immortal words Carl von Clausewitz, war is the continuation of politics by other means, then terrorism is the continuation of politics by those without means to wage war.

But then there’s also state-sponsored terrorism, for example the bombing of the Greenpeace vessel Rainbow Warrior in Auckland harbour by French agents in 1985. One person was killed, but the bombs were timed to go off when it was expected that crew would be below decks in their bunks. Luckily, they were up late partying.

During the apartheid years, the African National Congress was deemed to be a terrorist organisation by the South African government. The UK prime minister Margaret Thatcher and US president Ronald Reagan both agreed. Since the end of apartheid, however, the ANC has been South Africa’s party of government. Its former leader, the late Nelson Mandela, was removed from America’s terrorist watch-list only in 2008.

It’s often said that one person’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter. But that confuses violent means with liberation as a goal. And terror has also been used for oppression – the opposite of emancipation.

The word terroriste was originally applied to the Jacobins in the French Revolution, as they used mass violence and executions for their political ends. The English version of the word was used in America at least as early as 1795 in references to the Reign of Terror in France (1793–94). So terror was a tool of a particular kind of revolutionary government. History provides ample evidence, from Robespierre to Stalin to Mao, that government by terror is inhumane and violent. It destroys people and liberates no one.

During the American war of independence of 1775–83, King George III had reason to call his former officer George Washington a “traitor”, but he could not have designated him as a “terrorist” (as Mandela was) because the word hadn’t yet entered the vocabulary. On the other hand, Thomas Jefferson called the King (unfairly?) a “tyrant” in the 1776 Declaration of Independence.

After 9/11, President George W. Bush’s Global War on Terror introduced a whole new level of confusion to the word, as modern warfare was normally between states, or at least recognisable armed forces, rather than against networks of non-uniformed covert actors. Bush’s “shock and awe” assault on Baghdad in 2003 was itself often likened to terrorism. The invasion of Iraq failed the “just war” test, and so an accusation of state terrorism isn’t entirely unreasonable, especially from the point of view of Iraqis who were terrorised, tortured or killed unlawfully. Was it a war on terror, or a war of terror?

The attacks on mosques in Christchurch in March 2019 are rightly classified as terrorist acts – perpetrated by a lone actor. NZ law has a fairly clear definition of “terrorist act”. But if we ask, “Who gets to call whom a terrorist?” we uncover some double standards, or people tip-toeing around sensitive politics, even though we wish for an impartial application of law. The fact that the word terrorism is hard to define, or shifts around, needn’t deter us from using it – with caution. It’s a word that can’t be separated from unequal relations of power, and so it’s bound to be always contested.

What does NZ law say?

The Terrorism Suppression Act 2002 defines a terrorist act as one that purposefully advances an ideological, political, or religious cause with the intention of intimidating a population, or forcing a government or international organisation to do or not do any act – and that intends to cause death, serious bodily injury, serious risk to the health or safety of a population, destruction of or serious damage to property of great value or importance, major economic loss, major environmental damage, serious disruption to critical infrastructure likely to endanger human life, or release of a disease-bearing organism.

Explicitly excluded are actions that occur in a situation of armed conflict in accordance with the applicable rules of international law.

The Prime Minister may designate an entity as a terrorist entity if he/she believes on reasonable grounds that the entity has knowingly carried out or participated in any terrorist act(s).

There’s information about designated terrorist entities and individuals on the NZ Police website.

An incongruous image?

It’s odd to look back at US president Ronald Reagan hosting Afghani Mujahideen leaders in the Oval Office. In 1983, the Mujahideen were fighting Soviet forces that had invaded Afghanistan and hence they were supported by the Americans.

According to the Reagan Library’s online archive, this image records: “Meeting with a group of Afghan Freedom Fighters to discuss Soviet atrocities in Afghanistan, especially the September 1982 massacre of 105 Afghan villagers in Lowgar Province.” Contrary to some social media lore, it wasn’t a meeting with the Taliban, which hadn’t yet been formed.

Nonetheless, at that time, Osama bin Laden, who came from Saudi Arabia, was in Afghanistan supporting the Mujahideen “freedom fighters”. How the wheels of history turn!