Richard defines terrorism critically as an intentional and predetermined strategy of political violence, in which anybody including the states, individuals, or groups can use it for pursuing their personal interests (Jackson 2011). Similarly, those who apply terrorism can abandon it any time meaning terrorists can change from being violence users to peacemakers and good members of a state depending on the situation. Sometimes it is quite difficult to identify a terrorist in a country because of their changing nature. According to Jackson (2011) in his book” Terrorism”, terrorism has a political motivation and is quite different from some other forms of violence by some organized groups. The groups use violence either to extort money or just serial and mass killings of innocent individuals to terrify their targets.

The other difference between terrorism and the normal riots is that terrorism involves a predetermined thought and its execution is intentional. According to Jackson, terrorism is one form of political communication and the targets of the terror are the audiences to the violence and not the victims of violence (2011). Terrorism as a political communication chooses its victims in advance unlike the military war, whose aim is to weaken the enemies and make them unable to cause more harm as Jackson (2008) explains (Jackson 2008) (Jackson 2008). The other intention is to cause fear to the civilians by use of the crude weapons, such as the grenades, bombs, and torture. The main intention of using torture on their opponents is to terrify their supporters and make them lose faith in their preferred candidates. Richard disagrees with the other types of arguments that terrorism does not solely target the civilians. However, he agrees with Goodin that some actions allow the actors to have a claim of legitimacy for other forms of violence (Jackson & Sinclair 2012).

as observed by Jackson & Sinclair (2012) According to Jackson and Sinclair (2012), (KENYA: Deadly Attacks 2014). The other form may be religious terrorism that associates violence with religion (Jackson 2011), even when it has a political influence. Non-state terrorism involves the attacks of the civilians to submit with the aim of bringing a political change in a state or country. Finally, the state terrorism is the intimidation of the civilians to submit and is executed by a third party to instill fear in the cities (Jackson 2011).

Jackson and Sinclair (2012) observe that (KENYA: Deadly Attacks 2014). Here the terrorists attacked the police camp and burned their vehicles. According to Jackson (2011), (Jackson 2011). Some of the bombs may land on the areas that were not the actual areas of the terrorists’ targets, but still the action qualifies to be terrorism. The merits of adopting the above conception of terrorism are that it does not have any artificial or illogical limit to the nature of the actor. The definition does not limit the analysis to peace since the action of the actors in the war, where there is a concentration of the political violence (Jackson 2008). The definition of terrorism includes issues, such as the state terrorism, non-state terrorism, and the gender-based terrorism. (Jackson 2008). In most cases, researchers on terrorism focus mostly on the terrorism perpetrated by the Islamic group, such as the Al-Qaida and Al-Shabaab, as in the Kenyan case. The definition based on this view does not incorporate the violence caused by the political allies against their opponents. According to Richard, some of the terrorism scholars limit their definition of terrorism to conform with protect the interests of the Western powers, and the definitions do not focus on the political actors (Jackson 2008).

For instance, during the cold war, most of the research on terrorism focused on the non-state groups but nowadays any research on terrorism has a focus on religious terrorism, especially Islam (Jackson 2011)(Jackson 2011)Jackson (2008) (KENYA: Deadly Attacks 2014). Some of the actions the Somali people complained about were rape for their women and children by the Kenya Defense Forces and looting of their property.

The critical approach of defining terrorism by Richard provides a means to carry out an evaluation of the actions by any actors in conflict, to enhance the civilian security by reducing the amount of violence.

Richard advises the other Scholars to adopt a more meaningful definition of terrorism that will define all kinds of terrorism activities, such as political and religious terrorism. According to Jackson (2011), majority of scholars associate terrorism with Islam, which gives loopholes for politicians to carry out their attacks on the civilians. The main approaches to defining terrorism according to Jackson should be sensitive to the politics and the actions of the politicians during war times. The scholars wanting to define terrorism should do so independently and should not lean towards the geopolitical interest of the Western states to provide a meaningful approach to terrorism. The researchers should use the Western states overseas operations as examples and case studies when researching on terrorism, but should adhere to the research ethics (Jackson 2011).