State Sponsorship of Terrorism

The U.S. approach toward state sponsorship of terrorism rests on a flawed understanding of the problem and an even more flawed policy response. The U.S. Department of State’s current formal list of state sponsors includes Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, and Syria. But Cuba and North Korea have done almost nothing in this area in recent years, and Sudan has changed its ways enough that elsewhere the Bush administration credits Sudan as a “strong partner in the War on Terror.” Of those on the list, only Syria and Iran remain problems, and in both cases their involvement in traditional international terrorism is down considerably from their peaks in the 1980s. What seems like a brilliant policy success, however, is really an artifact of bad list management, because much of the problem of state sponsorship today involves countries that are not on the list at all. Pakistan has long aided a range of terrorist groups fighting against India in Kashmir and