Bajoran Resistance, Freedom Fighters or Terrorists?

I dunno, on Battlestar Galactica they didn't have any trouble referring to themselves as terrorists on New Caprica.

The Bajorans knew they couldn't win by open war, but perhaps they could make it so expensive to hold Bajor that it isn't worth it for them. As Kira told Damar's men, if you don't attack installations where your own people are stationed they will start putting your own people at every single one of their bases. So of course innocent people were killed in their attacks. They weren't the target, but they were unfortunate enough to be in the same place as their target at the wrong time.

The only reason not to call them terrorists would be to avoid using the term in a positive light. They used terror to attain their freedom.

 

BSG embraced more moral ambiguity than DS9, actively question how good the "good guys" really were.

 

I suspect that was the case before 2001 as well at times.

 

Well put. The main issue is if the Bajoran Resistance deliberately and systematically targeted civilians or if they mainly targeted military outposts, police, etc.

Considering the nature of the Cardassian conquest and occupation, I don't see how there'd be a lot of innocent Cardassian civilian targets, though. If they were a military occupation exploiting slave labor and setting up prison camps and the like, then you'd think that the Resistance would have had to go pretty far out of their way just to deliberately target purely civilian facilities and locations.

 

They did target the homes of Cardassian politicians, though.

 

There's a bit of both, yes, but given how obviously wrong the Cardassians were, I'm inclined to take the Bajorans' side in this. Their objective was to get the Cardassians to leave, and once that was done, there was no more resistance, no more attacks (not counting the Maquis of course, but that was much later). Thus I'm not inclined to call the Bajorans terrorists.

As for Cardassian civilian targets? I doubt the Bajorans would ever deliberately target civilians. But I can also understand why Kira would say "You were all legitimate targets" - because in the end, there was never any logical reason for any Cardassian to be on Bajor EXCEPT to be part of the occupation force. So in a very real sense there never were any true 'Cardassian civilians' on Bajor, except for children of course.

 

Of course, reality is rarely so simplistic. What about Cardassian doctors, or Cardassian journalists, on Bajor? Are they also "legitimate targets?" Kira thinks so, but I'm not so sure.

As an American, I liken it to the question of, how would I feel to learn that an American doing this job or that job in Iraq during the U.S. Occupation of Iraq was targeted? Relief workers, doctors, journalists, translators?

One of the more brilliant aspects of the DSN novels is that their Terok Nor trilogy, IIRC, revealed that thousands of Cardassians who were followers of the Oralian Way -- the religion of the ancient Hebetians (who were mentioned in TNG's "Chain of Command") which has been brutally suppressed and its members persecuted by the Central Command -- moved to Bajor to escape persecution before the Occupation began. So there may well have been a large Cardassian population that found itself subject to attack yet which was itself a victim of the Cardassian government.

Besides -- as I said above, terrorism is not defined exclusively as the use of violence against civilians or third parties. That is an extremely common manifestation of it, but terrorism can also target military personnel. Again, what defines it is the intent to create a sensation of terror in order to sap the enemy of his resolve; "shock and awe" is as much an act of terrorism as 9/11.

 

It's pretty easy to take the Bajoran's side here given what we know of the way Cardassia treated the Bajorans, enslaving them, murdering them, completely subjugating their culture.

But let's not whitewash the Bajoran resistance here. Their main targets were military targets but they didn't worry about collateral civilian damage. Innocent people were killed alongside the guilty.

The reason they can't be compared to Islamic terrorism is that their goal was to force the Cardassians to leave, not to impose their religious law on the world.

 

Were not the Cardassian "civilians" agents of the occupation? Were they not there not only to entrench the occupation, but also to profit from it?

 

Maybe. And maybe not. Maybe it depends on the person. What about Cardassian doctors who take up practice on Bajor? Journalists? Translators?

Kira seems to think so, at least some of the time. She honestly believes that someone who just irons shirts for a living was a legitimate target if they were on Bajor. I don't know that she's wrong... and I don't know that she's right. She says that -- and yet she also says that Aamin Marritza, a file clerk at Gallitep, was a good man who did not deserve to die. So I think Kira herself is probably more divided on this issue than she's inclined to realize.

Things like this are rarely so black and white as we might think -- even if the Resistance is clearly on the right side of history and the Occupation clearly evil, that does not mean that every action taken is justified... but that doesn't mean that any given action that it isn't justified, either.

 

The one Cardassian doctor we meet can clearly be described as profiting from the occupation. He conducted unethical and inhumane experiments on Bajorans in order to advance his research on injuries and diseases. Translators, in all likelihood, would function as an aid to smooth administration, not the expression of the Bajorans themselves. Journalists: perhaps some took an interest in Bajoran concerns, others may have celebrated Cardassian advances on Bajoran, subsequently legitimizing the occupation. I'm sure exceptions could be found on a case by case basis, but no Cardassia could be cleared without some investigation.

Yes, it's not black and white. Oskar Schindler could have easily been a target of the Partisans, and he was well aware that he could be considered a war criminal. That ambiguity comes to the fore in the reflection, though, not in the moment. Indeed, Kira's own affection for Marritza rested mostly on his willingness to admit Cardassian guilt. Given her advice to Dumar at the end of the series, I don't think that she would have a problem killing Marritza if he were a bystander.

 

Bajorans died in the attacks too if they just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Kira definitely thinks that there are people who died in the attacks who were good people and did not deserve to die. She didn't start to realize until Duet that some of those good people were also Cardassian.

But she also knows that if she was not willing to have innocent people as collateral damage, it would have been impossible to fight the Cardassians.

This is all spelled out in Tacking Into The Wind.