Title: Terrorism - Types of terrorism | Britannica
Headings: Types of terrorism
Types of terrorism
History
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Content: Establishment terrorism, often called state or state-sponsored terrorism, is employed by governments—or more often by factions within governments—against that government’s citizens, against factions within the government, or against foreign governments or groups. This type of terrorism is very common but difficult to identify, mainly because the state’s support is always clandestine. The Soviet Union and its allies allegedly engaged in widespread support of international terrorism during the Cold War; in the 1980s the United States supported rebel groups in Africa that allegedly engaged in acts of terrorism, such as UNITA (the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola); and various Muslim countries (e.g., Iran and Syria) purportedly provided logistical and financial aid to Islamic revolutionary groups engaged in campaigns against Israel, the United States, and some Muslim countries in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. The military dictatorships in Brazil (1964–85), Chile (1973–90) and Argentina (1976–83) committed acts of state terrorism against their own populations. The violent police states of Joseph Stalin in the Soviet Union and Saddam Hussein in Iraq are examples of countries in which one organ of the government—often either the executive branch or the intelligence establishment—engaged in widespread terror against not only the population but also other organs of the government, including the military. The persistent element of all forms of establishment terrorism, unlike that of nonstate terrorism, is that of secrecy. States invariably seek to disavow their active complicity in such acts, both to evade international censure and to avoid political and military retribution by those they target. History
Terror has been practiced by state and nonstate actors throughout history and throughout the world.