Terrorisms primary goal is all out domination of their *own*

Submitted by Basat Tayfun (Turkey), Jan 9, 2015 at 19:30

Mr.Pipes is partially correct about the essence of the goals of terrorism. The primary goal of those that have resorted to terrorism are first and foremost concerned with gaining and consolidating power. Whether it is an organization of the Islamist variety (ISIS/ISIL, Al Qaeda, etc) or ethnic-nationalistic (Armenian Tashnaks and Hunchaks, Kurdish PKK, even the IRA) seeks to terrorize its "own". What happens after that is mostly realpolitik.

Even ISIS has taken on the festures of a government -- create/capture sources of revenue and expend resources in the way of their main strategic and tactical goals (basically, create and maintain some form of "state", no matter the its primitiveness or barbarity or sophistication and civility. Of course, to create the "state" there is need for a land with people on it. So, true to anarchists' playbook, any existing needs to be made to collapse. One way is to do it the ISIS way: organize a large force and sieze territory (by destroying whatever is there to create the "space"); the other is to provoke someone (e.g., US) to do it for you (e.g., Iraq). (In reality, ISIS is a beneficiary of the latter, as well.). Of course, individual terrorists, "freedom fighters", etc. may not be aware of this -- a pawn rarely knows what its master has planned in the pursuit of a mate.

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