Terrorism is a hard and relative term to describe and we see many mistakes in how it is expressed by the media now a days. Terrorism is more a psychological tool, not only and not always about killing innocents and causing damage, but more about causing chaos and fear. It is a well spread strategy used by groups, or even by governments to control masses with the use of threats. But it doesn’t mean it is used by every group.
Many groups fighting in Syria nowadays does not use terrorism as a war tool, they do not use psychology to control masses. Of course the fear is present in a warzone, psychological damage is inevitable to those living in such circumstances, but it is most of the time caused by the war itself and not always by groups.
If you take into consideration studies and researches about conflicts and its classification, you will notice that, first of all, the classification of groups made by the mainstream media is totally wrong, great part of the so called "terrorist" are in fact guerrillas and even insurgent groups, controlling territories with well trained army-like battalions holding sophisticated weapons.
In fact, groups like the Islamic State does use terrorism as a war tool, threating the West, and not only that, they also have Terrorist groups as lone wolves and small teams working for them in different regions of the globe, doing terrorist actions such as those seen in the Paris and Belgium attacks.
In the regard of other groups like Jabhat al Nusra, Ahrar al Sham and Jund al Aqsa for example, we don’t see this usage of this kind of terrorism, they don’t send threats overseas. So far they didn't groom any team to attack targets outside Syria nor expressed any will to do so. On the other hand these are relatively big, well armed and trained groups whose objective is to fight against a totalitarian regime. None of these descriptions fit the characteristic of a terrorist group.
What comes close to a terrorism action used by these groups, and is also well spread in official armies, is a war tool that doesn’t really have a global appeal nor is supposed to be used against innocents, that consists in casting fear in their enemies, with the intention of degrading the enemy's morale and damaging their self-confidence and will to fight.
Although with all the complexities of classifying the term, the mainstream media prefers to screw a whole study up and classify them as terrorism apparently because it brings more audience. We should also remember that you can't just call a group as terrorist just because their agenda doesn't fit yours.
Taking into consideration these "terrorist" groups whose project is to fight for their people and overthrown an abusive government without threating other players but their own targets, and without taking advantage of the psychological state of innocent people around the world, I see no reason to don't call them as Freedom Fighter.
Now, the contradictory part of the quote is not about the terms "terrorist" and "freedom fighter" but the way you classify someone as a terrorist. Before judging them, media and governments need to first learn how properly classify them.
Good read. But the government needs a boogeyman to keep the weapon/war industries flourishing. And that boogeyman to scare the people and justify their wars is the "terrorist".
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