On September 11, 2001, a terrorist group Al Qaeda committed an act of terrorism against the United States and resulted in deaths and sufferings of thousands of U.S. citizens. Afterwards, the Unites States waged war against Afghanistan accusing the latter of assisting Al Quaeda and the terrorist acts. This paper reviews the mechanism of suppressing the act of terrorism under international law and evaluates the U.S. war against Afghanistan.
Under current international law, there is no definition of act of terrorism nor a comprehensive treaty suppressing act of terrorism. The reason is that states could not agree the acceptable definition of terrorism as indicated by the words, "one person's terrorist is another person's freedom fighter." So, the international society adopted a "piecemeal approach" toward the act of terrorism and made 12 universal treaty on the terrorist acts such as the 1971 Convention for the Suppression of Unlawful Acts Against the Safety of Civil Aviation and the 1997 International Convention for the Suppression of Terrorist Bombings. Moreover, the 1998 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court may play an important role on suppressing the act of terrorism by punishing act of terrorism under the name of "crime against humanity". Further, the International Humanitarian Law prohibits the act of terrorism during armed conflict situation.
The United States called the attacks on September 11, 2001 as "an act of war". However, the act was not an act of war, which international law and practice define as a military attack by one nation state upon another nation state. There are much differences and consequences in how you treat an act of terrorism compared to how you treat an act of war. Normally acts of. terrorism are dealt with as a matter of international and domestic law enforcement while acts of war are dealt with by means of military force. Therefore, the U.S. government had to handle this matter in a lawful, effective, and peaceful manner by using the 1971 Montreal Sabotage Convention to which both the United States and Afghanistan are party, not by resorting to war against Afghanistan.
In conclusion, I hope the United States, the most powerful country in the world, must play a leading role on preventing and suppressing act of terrorism by using lawful means and procedures under international law.