terrorism

Terrorism is a tactic. Its use is highlighted when one power is far more powerful than the other, and the latter has no realistic option for direct confrontation.

Some major countries have internal terrorism problems. My research into terrorism has made me aware of the Chechens and Dagestanis in Russia, the Tamil in India and Sri Lanka, the Kurds in Turkey, the Basque in Spain, and the Uyghur in China.

I looked at a lot of maps of the regions of conflict, mostly helped by the Perry Castaneda Collection at the University of Texas, which publishes many (dated) CIA maps.

WHen I was younger I treasured Penguin's Historical Atlasses of the World, by Colin McEvoy. This interest in maps, from a dozen I made before the invasion of Iraq to software I wrote to make more meaningful political maps, is longstanding, although I must emphasize that they are models of the world, and not the world itself.

In this case the internet provided the lucky break. Because when one searches about Basque terrorists, one learns Basque is also a language, and the same is true for Chechens, Dagestanis, Kurds, Tamil and Uyghurs.

I looked at the CIA maps, and I looked at linguistics maps produced by, among others the Encyclopedia Britannica, Professor Boeree of Australia, and others.

At some point I noticed that for all the big internal terrorism problems I noted above, the belligerents fall on different sides of a fundamental linguistic divide.

Terrorism is fundamentally linguistic in origin, I said, and I was on my way.