State-sponsored terrorism is terrorist violence carried out with the active support of national governments provided to violent non-state actors. States can sponsor terrorist groups in several ways, including but not limited to funding terrorist organizations, providing training, supplying weapons, providing other logistical and intelligence assistance, and hosting groups within their borders. Because of the pejorative nature of the word, the identification of particular examples are often subject to political dispute and different definitions of terrorism.
A wide variety of states in both developed and developing areas of the world have engaged in sponsoring terrorism. During the 1970s and 1980s, state sponsorship of terrorism was a frequent feature of international conflict. From that time to the 2010s there was a steady pattern of decline in the prevalence and magnitude of state support. Nevertheless, because of the increasing consequent level of violence that it could potentially facilitate, it remains an issue of highly salient international concern.[1]
There are at least 250 definitions of "terrorism" available in academic literature and government and intergovernmental sources, several of which include mention of state sponsorship.[2] In a review of primary documents on international law governing armed conflict, Reisman and Antoniou identify that:[3]
Terrorism has come to mean the intentional use of violence against civilian and military targets generally outside of an acknowledged war zone by private groups or groups that appear to be private but have some measure of covert state sponsorship.
The Gilmore Commission[a] of the U.S. Congress gave the following definition of state-sponsored terrorism:[4]
the active involvement of a foreign government in training, arming, and providing other logistical and intelligence assistance as well as sanctuary to an otherwise autonomous terrorist group for the purpose of carrying out violent acts on behalf of that government against its enemies.
The U.S. Government, which has repeatedly engaged in sponsorship of terrorism as a feature of its foreign policy,[5][6][7] provides its own definition in the U.S. State Department's list of state sponsors of terrorism.[8] Authorities and scholars of terrorism and conflict, such as Alex P. Schmid (former Officer-in-Charge of Terrorism Prevention at the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime), Daniel Byman, Richard Chasdi, and Frank Shanty, have pointed to problems in the U.S.' definition, including that it is politicized, analytically unclear,[9] and inherently self-serving.[10]
The use of terrorist organizations as proxies in armed conflicts between state actors became more attractive in the mid-20th century as a result of post World War II developments like the increasing costs of traditional warfare and the risk of nuclear war. Speaking about the effect of nuclear capability on traditional military conflict KGB agent Alexander Sakharovsky said that "In today's world, when nuclear arms have made military force obsolete, terrorism should become our main weapon." Though state-sponsored terrorism persists in the post-9/11 era, some scholars have argued that it has become less significant in the age of global jihadism. On the other hand, Daniel Byman believes its importance has increased. Organizations like Hamas, Hezbollah and Palestinian Islamic Jihad are heavily dependent on state support. According to the US Counter-Terrorism Coordinator's Office this support can include "funds, weapons, materials and the secure areas" that organizations use for "planning and conducting operations".[11]
The Max Planck Encyclopedia of Public International Law notes that international legal institutions currently lack a mechanism to prosecute terrorist leaders who "instruct, support or succour" terrorism. At the conclusion of the Lockerbie trial, some commentators continued to harbor doubts about the legitimacy of the only conviction secured during the trial, and thus also about Libya's involvement. The domestic trial proved to be insufficient to identify those who had given the instructions.[8]
The United States and Pakistan have accused Afghanistan's KhAD agency of being responsible for numerous terrorist attacks on Pakistani soil in the 1980s and early 1990s.
According to a report by the US Defense Department, approximately 90% of the estimated 777 acts of international terrorism committed worldwide in 1987 took place in Pakistan.[12] By 1988, KhAD and KGB agents were able to penetrate deep inside Pakistan and carry out attacks on mujahideen sanctuaries and guerrilla bases.[13] There was strong circumstantial evidence implicating Moscow-Kabul in the August 1988 assassination of Zia ul-Haq, as the Soviets perceived that Zia wanted to adversely affect the Geneva process.[14] WAD/KhAD has also been suspected behind the assassination of Palestinian jihadist Abdullah Yusuf Azzam alongside his son in 1989.[15][16]
Afghanistan's KHAD was one of four secret service agencies accused of perpetrating terrorist bombings in multiple Pakistani cities including Islamabad, Lahore, Karachi, and Rawalpindi during the early 1980s resulting in hundreds of civilian casualties.[17] By the late 1980s, the US State Department blamed WAD for the perpetration of terrorist bombings in Pakistani cities.[18][19] Between the late 1970s and the early 1990s, Afghanistan security agencies supported the terrorist organization called al-Zulfiqar, the group that hijacked a Pakistan International Airlines plane from Karachi to Kabul in 1981.[20] Notable attacks include the Karachi Car bombing and an attempted car bombing on the US Consulate in Peshawar which ended up killing over 30 people in 1987.[21] KhAD has also been accused of being behind the Hathora Murders which terrorized Karachi for 2 years in the mid 1980s.[22]
On 24 June 2017, Pakistani army chief Qamar Javed Bajwa chaired a high-level meeting in Rawalpindi and called on Afghanistan to "do more" in the fight against terrorism. According to the ISPR, the attacks in Quetta and Parachinar were linked to terrorist sanctuaries in Afghanistan which enjoyed the "patronage of Afghanistan's National Directorate of Security (NDS)"[23][24]
India has accused China of supporting the Naxalites in the Naxalite–Maoist insurgency.[25] In 2011, Indian police accused the Chinese government of providing sanctuary to the movement's leaders, and accused Pakistani ISI of providing financial support.[26] India has also reported of China supporting rebel groups in its Northeast states of Manipur, Nagaland and Mizoram.[27][28]
The Chinese government has blocked UN Security Council Sanctions Committee listing of Masood Azhar, the founder and leader of the Pakistan based terrorist organization Jaish-e-Mohammed as a terrorist, thwarting international efforts to disrupt the activities of his group.[29][30]Starting 2009, there have been 4 attempts to put Masood Azhar in the UN Security Council's counter-terrorism sanctions list. All the attempts were vetoed by China, citing 'lack of evidence'. China moved to protect Azhar again in October 2016 when it blocked India's appeal to the United Nations to label him as a terrorist.[31]China also blocked a US move to get Azhar banned by the UN in February 2017.[32] The most recent attempt was on 13 March 2019.[33] However, China pulled the blockade in May 2019, finally resulting listing of Masood Azhar as a global terrorist.[34]
In mid-2020, Myanmar accused China of arming the Arakan Army, which was legally considered a terrorist organisation by the Myanmar government from 2019 to 2021. China has allegedly given the Arakan Army assault rifles, machine guns and FN-6 Chinese Manpads capable of shooting down helicopters, drones and combat aircraft.[35][36][37]
India's Research and Analysis Wing trained and armed the Sri Lankan Tamil group LTTE which want an independent country for Tamils of Sri Lanka, due to the continuous discrimination and violent persecution against Sri Lankan Tamils by the Sinhalese dominated Sri Lankan Government during the 1970s, but it later withdrew its support in the late 1980s when the terrorist activities of LTTE became serious and it formed alliances with separatist groups in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu.[38][39] From August 1983 to May 1987, India, through its intelligence agency Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW), provided arms, training and monetary support to six Sri Lankan Tamil insurgent groups including the LTTE. During that period, 32 terror training camps were set up in India to train these 495 LTTE insurgents,[40] including 90 women who were trained in 10 batches.[41] The first batch of Tigers were trained in Establishment 22 based in Chakrata, Uttarakhand. The second batch, including LTTE intelligence chief Pottu Amman,[42] trained in Himachal Pradesh. Prabakaran visited the first and the second batch of Tamil Tigers to see them training.[citation needed] Eight other batches of LTTE were trained in Tamil Nadu.[43] Thenmozhi Rajaratnam alias Dhanu, who carried out the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi and Sivarasan—the key conspirator were among the militants trained by R&AW, in Nainital, India.[44] In April 1984, the LTTE formally joined a common militant front, the Eelam National Liberation Front (ENLF), a union between LTTE, the Tamil Eelam Liberation Organization (TELO), the Eelam Revolutionary Organisation of Students (EROS), the People's Liberation Organisation of Tamil Eelam (PLOTE) and the Eelam People's Revolutionary Liberation Front (EPRLF). On 4 June 1987, when the Tamil Tiger-held Jaffna Peninsula was under siege by the Sri Lankan army, India provided airdrop of relief supplies to LTTE.[45]
India has been accused by Pakistan[46][47] of supporting terrorism and carrying out "economic sabotage".[48]
In 2017, Kulbhushan Jadhav, an Indian naval officer arrested in March 2016 in Balochistan and charged with espionage and sabotage was sentenced to death. He was accused of operating a covert terror network within Balochistan.[49] Jadhav had confessed that he was tasked by India’s intelligence agency, the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), “to plan and organise espionage and sabotage activities” in Balochistan and Karachi.[50][49]
In November 2020, the Foreign Office of Pakistan made public a dossier containing 'irrefutable proofs' of the alleged Indian sponsorship of terrorism in Pakistan.[51] It contained proof of India's alleged financial and material sponsorship of multiple terrorist organisations, including UN-designated terrorist organisations Balochistan Liberation Army, Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, and Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan.[52][53][54] The dossier was shared with the United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres.[55]
Pakistan has also accused Indian consulates in Kandahar and Jalalabad, Afghanistan, of providing arms, training and financial aid to the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) in an attempt to destabilize Pakistan.[56][57]