Very often we are used to hear the word conflict. Conflict can have a different meaning for different people. For some people conflicts may involve fighting, war, arguments, and disagreements. Well from the third week lecture I got a better understanding of conflicts. The word conflict is a Latin word which means to strike together. It refers to coercive behavior initiated by one contending party against another. The main aims of the opponent are to defuse, harm, or even eradicate their rival.
The conflicts may be different in their nature. It ranges from individuals, nations, and international organizations. A party in conflict may experience intra-parties strife, or may be manipulated by a much stronger. It is important to remember that a conflict may occur in a structured environment in which parties’ behaviors are allocated. What do we meant by a structured environment? A structured environment determines a way of behaving which may be legitimate or illegitimate. Besides, the unstructured environment is where each party is a threat to the other one and act violently against each other. Obviously we can understand that in a conflict each party aims to achieve its goals.
There are different types on conflict but here in this article I wanted to focus a bit in a new insight that I gained during the lecture I attended. It is the irredentism and separatism. It is something new for me that caught my eye. Irredentism is any position advocating annexation of territories administered by another state on the grounds of common ethnicity or prior historical possession. The word irredentism comes from Irredenta, an Italian word that refers to Austro-Hungarian over mostly Italian inhabited territories such as Trentino & Triesto. An example to understand better the irredentism may be the Kurds in the northern part of Turkey, Iran and Irak, where they want to be as the Kurds in Kurdistan country.
What is separatism? Separatism is a social system that provides separate facilities for minority groups. A disposition toward schism and secession from a larger group. Prof. Donald Livingston has commented on this. Historically in Europe, it was Communists who often talked of self-determination and attempted to foment ethnic discontent against “oppressors.”
Apart from irredentism and separatism our discussion was about the terrorism. My opinion about freedom fighter is that they have their goal acquiring something valuable, something that it is highly desired. This may be to free an occupied country from the occupier, freedom for liberty. Freedom fighters usually come from oppressed or marginalized groups that have been deprived of something important, such as a homeland, and their struggle is to obtain it or gain it back. In other words, if there is a sinful motive in the dreams and actions of a freedom fighter, it is likely the sin of greed.
However, a terrorist cannot be called a freedom fighter. The meaning of terrorism is a calculated use of violence against civilians in order to attain goals that are political or religious, o ideological in nature. A CSS forum gives an example of a terror happening in the world. Terrorists are less concerned with acquisition than they are with destruction. They are usually clever enough to cloak their motives by hijacking the popular will of an oppressed people, but their wrath is not appeased when they acquire what they say they want. For example, would the war against Israel be over once the Palestinians got their own homeland? Most likely it would not. The real goal of terrorist groups is not acquiring but destroying. Terrorism is thus qualitatively different from armed movement for freedom and liberty. Terrorism is not like greed; it is an extreme form of destructive envy.
Comments