Terrorism

I

Introduction

Terrorism, form of politically motivated violence. Terrorism is the threat, or the act, of such violence primarily against civilian targets. Terror is directed not only against the victims themselves but intended against larger, related communities living within and across national boundaries.

During the post-Cold War period terrorist groups graduated from rag-tag groups into sophisticated organizations. Instead of resisting globalization, even the most puritanical groups harness its forces. Most contemporary terrorist groups have become resilient by developing overseas support and operational networks. After the attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001, terrorism, traditionally regarded as a nuisance, graduated from a law and order issue into a national and international security threat.

II

Historical Background

Terrorism has been recurrent throughout history. The secret societies found in some tribal cultures sometimes maintained their status through terror. An Ismaili sect of Shiite Muslims, the Assassins, conducted terrorist campaigns against Sunni Muslims in the 12th century. Protestant and Catholic groups in Ireland terrorized each other after the Reformation. However, systematic terrorism in its modern form received great impetus in the late 18th and 19th centuries, with the propagation of secular ideologies and nationalism in the wake of the French Revolution. Proponents and opponents of revolutionary values engaged in terrorism after the Napoleonic Wars. The pro-imperial nationalism that led to the Meiji Restoration in Japan in 1868 was accompanied by frequent terrorist attacks on the Tokugawa shogunate. In the southern United States, the Ku Klux Klan was set up after the defeat of the Confederacy in the American Civil War to terrorize former slaves and representatives of the Reconstruction administrations imposed by the federal government. Adherents of anarchism across Europe and elsewhere carried out terrorist attacks on high officials, or even ordinary citizens, in the later 19th century, notable victims being Empress Elizabeth of Austria (assassinated 1898); President Marie Sadi Carnot of France (assassinated 1894); and United States President William McKinley (assassinated 1901). The Russian revolutionary movement before World War I had a strong terrorist element (see Russian Revolution).

In the first half of the 20th century such groups as the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization, the Croatian Ustaše, and the Irish Republican Army (IRA) sometimes carried their terrorist activities beyond the boundaries of individual countries. They were sometimes supported by established governments, such as those of Bulgaria and of Italy under the fascist leader Benito Mussolini. State-sponsored nationalist terrorism of this kind led to the assassination of Francis Ferdinand in Sarajevo in 1914, precipitating World War I. Communism and fascism both employed terrorism as a principal instrument of policy, with Leon Trotsky and Georges Sorel (who intermittently represented both extremes of the political spectrum) being especially enthusiastic advocates. The political instability of the 1920s and 1930s included prevalent terrorist activity. After this, terrorism tended to become submerged in the larger conflict of World War II.

III

Post-War Terrorism

The most striking manifestation of terrorism in the post-war era was that after the mid-1960s it became both domestic and international. Several elements combined to make international terrorism easier and more visible: technological advances, resulting in both greater destructiveness and smaller size of weapons; the means available to terrorists for quick movement and rapid communication; the extensive worldwide connections of the chosen victims; and the publicity attendant on any terrorist outrage.

The contemporary wave of terrorism began in the Middle East. Its origins can be traced to the unresolved conflict between the Arab nations and Israel. Such Jewish radicals as the Stern Gang and the Irgun Zvai Leumi had resorted to terrorism against Arab communities and other groups during their struggle for an independent Israel in the 1940s. Their Arab adversaries in the 1960s and beyond chose to use terrorism much more systematically. The expulsion of Palestinian guerrillas from Jordan in September 1970 was commemorated by the creation of an extremist terrorist arm called Black September, while the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), founded in 1964, conducted commando and terrorist operations both within Israel and in other countries.

Since then the world has witnessed three categories of terrorism: ideological (left and right wing), ethno-nationalist (separatist, irredentist, and autonomy), and politico-religious (Christian, Jewish, Islamic, Buddhist, and Hindu fundamentalist).

The early spread of terrorism beyond the Middle East in the 1960s included the ideological and ethno-nationalist types. It was most conspicuous in the three industrial nations where transition from authoritarianism to democracy after World War II had been the most rapid and traumatic: West Germany (now part of the united Federal Republic of Germany), Japan, and Italy.

In West Germany the so-called Red Army Faction, better known as the Baader-Meinhof Gang, robbed numerous banks and raided US military installations. Its most spectacular exploits were the 1977 kidnapping and murder of a prominent industrialist, Hans-Martin Schleyer, and the subsequent hijacking by Arab sympathizers of a Lufthansa airliner to Mogadishu, Somalia. As did the Japanese Red Army terrorist group, the members of the West German gang frequently cooperated with Palestinian terrorists, notably in the murder of Israeli athletes at the Olympic Games in Munich in 1972. By the late 1970s most activists of the Red Army Faction were either imprisoned or dead.

The strength of the Italian terrorists, the most prominent of whom were the Red Brigades, may stem from the country’s anarchist tradition and its political instability. Their activities culminated in the 1978 kidnapping and murder of Aldo Moro, a former prime minister. Left-wing terrorism subsequently declined thanks to police measures, although it by no means disappeared. Right-wing terrorism, however, seemed to increase in Italy, as highlighted by the bombing in 1980 of the Bologna railway station. The historic Uffizi Gallery in Florence was among the targets of a series of terrorist bombings in 1993 alleged to be the work of the Mafia. Many such attacks are now regarded as “black propaganda” exercises engineered by the right wing and other groups seeking to foster a climate of instability favourable to authoritarian rule.

The post-war terrorist campaign waged by the IRA in the United Kingdom grew out of the Irish civil rights movement of the 1960s, which sought improved status for Catholics in Northern Ireland. Growing terrorism by Protestants and Catholics led to the segregation of both communities into zones secured by troops, and the unprecedented militarization of the region. Motivated by a revolutionary ideology and supported by Libya and other sympathetic left-wing governments, the Provisional IRA then began bombings, shootings, and other terrorist attacks in Ireland and elsewhere, targeting both military and civilians. This campaign continued until the IRA declared a ceasefire on August 31, 1994, which although suspended in February 1996, was resumed on September 15, 1997, despite sporadic acts of terrorism by breakaway dissidents continuing to be an issue.

Other Western states also saw the rise of radical left-wing groups, often funded by communist governments in the course of the Cold War. Inspired by vague communist ideologies and typically supported by fashionably leftist sympathizers in the affluent middle classes, the terrorists aimed to bring about the collapse of the State by provoking a violent, self-destructive reaction. In Spain, the Basque-separatist group ETA, which follows a Marxist-Leninist line, has been responsible for hundreds of deaths since the late 1960s.

Terrorist movements in Latin America had their origins in long-standing local traditions of political violence. A new development was the rise in so-called urban guerrilla movements, as terrorist activities shifted from the countryside into the sprawling cities. Shining Path, a Peruvian terrorist group based on Maoist communism, became one of the most notorious examples, using especially bloody and indiscriminate tactics to destabilize the State and provoke repressive countermeasures. In Colombia some members of the cocaine cartels used terrorist tactics to get the government to curtail enforcement of the anti-drug-trafficking laws, part of a trend also seen in Italy in which organized crime copied terrorists to promote its interests.

Developing nations and elsewhere exhibited the phenomenon whereby former terrorist groups became legitimized once they won their battle and gained control of government. Israel and Algeria are only two examples of states whose modern rulers were once classed as terrorists. Some regimes nurtured in such circumstances retained attachments to terrorism once in office. Iran, Libya, and North Korea are known to have officially sponsored acts of terror. In general, though, state-supported terror has been associated with dictatorships, one-party states, and totalitarian regimes—precisely those that employed state terror against their own populations.

IV

Recent Developments

In 1979 two pivotal events catalysed the emergence of Islamist terrorist groups (see Islamic Fundamentalism): first, the success of the anti-Soviet Union multinational Afghan mujahedin campaign culminating in the collapse of the Soviet Empire; and second, the Islamic Revolution where Iran defied the United States and held US diplomats as hostages for 444 days. Since then, several hundred Islamist groups have emerged in Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and in the Caucasus, primarily to wage local jihad campaigns. Today, Islamist groups working with the Al-Qaeda terrorist group pose a significant threat to the US and its allies and friends.

After the massacre at the Olympic Games in Munich in 1972, international terrorism by the PLO declined as its leader Yasir Arafat sought to win greater world sympathy for its cause. The secular nationalist Palestinian groups were then succeeded by the Islamic groups Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Similarly, in Lebanon, Hezbollah, the most dangerous international terrorist group before the birth of Al-Qaeda, emerged. In 1983 the Iranian-supported Hezbollah conducted a coordinated, simultaneous suicide attack in Beirut destroying the US Marine Corps barracks and the French paratrooper headquarters killing 241 US and 58 French personnel respectively. The multinational peacekeeping force withdrew from Lebanon.

In 1988 a bomb planted by the Libyan secret service destroyed Pan American Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing all 259 people on board and 11 on the ground. Two Libyan suspects were handed over to United Nations officials in April 1999; their trial, held in the Netherlands under Scottish law, lasted nine months and concluded in January 2001 with Abdel Baset al-Megrahi being found guilty in a unanimous decision by the special three-judge court, and his co-defendant, Al-Amin Khalifa Fhimah, being acquitted. As a result of both the 1993 Oslo Accords and US sanctions, support for terrorism by Middle Eastern governments declined. Consequently, a number of terrorist groups declined in strength, size, and influence, and some relocated to Afghanistan, a country of international neglect after Soviet withdrawal. By the mid-1990s Afghanistan replaced the Syrian-controlled Bekaa Valley as the main international centre of terrorist training.

The United States has become the number one target of both foreign and domestic terrorists in recent years. In the latter category are included Theodore Kaczynski, known as the Unabomber, and Timothy McVeigh, who in 1997 was convicted of blowing up the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City and murdering 168 people in April 1995. Prior to the terrorist attacks of 2001, the United States had been the target of attacks by Al-Qaeda and associated groups on several occasions. The bombing of the World Trade Center in New York in 1993 killed six people and caused an estimated US$600 million in damage. The US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were bombed in 1998, with the loss of 224 lives. In Yemen, 17 sailors were killed in an attack on the USS Cole, a warship then anchored at the harbour in Aden.

On September 11, 2001, the United States suffered the most devastating terrorist action in its history. In coordinated attacks, hijackers commandeered four airliners and succeeded in using three of them to attack US targets. The hijackers crashed two of the jets into the twin, 110-storey towers of the World Trade Center, causing both of the massive skyscrapers to collapse. The third hijacked jet crashed into the Pentagon, the headquarters in Washington, D.C. of US military operations, inflicting serious damage. The fourth jet, destined for the US Congress, also in Washington, D.C., crashed south-east of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Almost 3,000 people died in the terrorist action, including all 250 that were aboard the four airliners. Further terrorist attacks by Islamist groups associated with Al-Qaeda have occurred across the world since those on the US, most notably using car bombs. In the popular tourist destination of Bali, in Indonesia, Jemaah Islamiyah killed 202 in October 2002. There were similar attacks in Ankara (Turkey), Karachi (Pakistan), Djerba (Tunisia), Baghdad (Iraq), and Jakarta (Indonesia). The bombings of several passenger trains in Madrid, Spain, on March 11, 2004, and the bombings of three underground trains and one bus in London on July 7, 2005, are indicative that terrorism, largely confined to the global south since September 11, 2001, can spill over to North America, Western Europe, and Australasia.