CONCEPT OF TERRORISM

The concept of terrorism is so many ample and contested that a definition that could be acceptable everybody has never been found to the U.N..

In a broad sense we can define terrorism all the finished actions within armed struggles that don't aim at hitting the opposing armed forces but at scattering the terror among the civil populations. In this sense it always has been broadly used from the antiquity to our days to weaken the will of hting  of the hostile people and the examples could be unfortunately endless.We limit ourself for the past to remember perhaps the most impressive case: the Mongolian hordes driven by Gengis Khan killed all the inhabitants, anybody excluded, of the cities that made them resistance: the Mongolian empire was constituted for the most part without hting because in front of this terrible perspectives most cities submitted without trying even not the resistance.

To pass to recent times in the Second World war the aerial weapon was broadly used with the purpose to terrorize the populations: at first they were the Germans, first in Spain (famous the example of Guernica, immortalized by Picasso)  and above all with the bombardments on England (the small town of Coventry was completely destroyed by the Germans so that in Italian was coined the term ' coventrizzare'). Subsequently they were the Americans that used the bombardments said 'a  carpet': sadly famous the case of Dresden, center without any military value completely destroyed with the death of at least 200.000 people. But we also remember the appalling bombardments of the Japanese cities above all of Tokyo and the same throwing of the atomic bombs. We also remember the thick retaliations of the Germans, the deportations of whole populations completed by Stalin: the list would be unfortunately endless.

Neverthless to the only of the present treatment we tighten to PURE EXPOSITIVE PURPOSE AND WITHOUT ANY JUDGEMENT OF VALUE  the concept of terrorism  to how much it's commonly and currently indicated: actions of irregular groups (that is that don't have uniforms, insignias that make them recognizable) that  prevalently kill civilians  to the purpose to terrorize the opposing part.

Rises the not simple problem to distinguish the terrorism from the 'Resistance'. The term 'Resistance' was coined during the Second World war to point out the fact that even if the armies had surrendered a more or less ample part of the citizens continued a 'resistance' against the occupant recurring to actions of war. The resistants were generally called 'partisan.' They yet  never hit any civilians but only armed soldiers (on the other hand in the taken countries there were no civilian foreigners). Therefore the difference between terrorism and resistance would come to consist in the fact that the second one hits armed soldiers while the first one prevalently some civilians.

Generally the 'terrorists' contest  the substantiality of this difference ing civilians and soldiers e  affirming to be some resistants or of the revolutionaries.