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terrorism

Systematic violence in the furtherance of political aims, often by small guerrilla groups.

Types of terrorism

Terrorist groups include those dedicated to a political programme for their country, usually involving the overthrow of the ruling regime: communist and fascist terrorists fall into this category. Terrorism may also be directed by an ethnic majority against a minority ruling group or against an occupying colonial force. Another motivation behind terrorism can be religious fanaticism, linked with left wing, conservative, nationalist, pan-nationalist, or millenarian ideologies. Systematic violence used to press a single-issue, such as anti-abortionism or animal rights, cause can also be seen as terrorism. In many instances of terrorist actions these motivations overlap.

The resort to terror represents a rejection of the democratic political process, so that terrorist groups are typically clandestine and separate from sympathetic political parties, as is the case with the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and the Sinn Fein party in Northern Ireland.

Political Left-wing revolutionary groups have included the Baader-Meinhof gang in Germany, the Red Brigade in Italy, and the Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) terrorist guerrillas in Peru. Bomb attacks in Italy in 1980 and the UK in 1999 have been attributed to right-wing elements.

Distinctions between political and ethnic terrorism are not clear cut, and some separatist groups are influenced by, or receive support from, the left, despite being nationalists. Terrorism in an outlying region or colony is often assumed to be separatist in its logic, though for instance ‘loyalist’ terrorists have been opposed to the exclusion of Northern Ireland from the UK.

Left-wing political terrorism has, on occasion, provoked retaliation by right-wing paramilitaries seeking to defend the status quo. This has occurred, for example, in Colombia, with the activities of the leftist Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC; Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) and the Ejército de Liberación Nacional (ELN; National Liberation Army) leading to terrorist atrocities by the rightist United Self Defence Forces of Colombia (AUC).

In modern Western societies, terrorism is also increasingly associated with vehemently anti-government populist and ultra-right militias, particularly in the USA, driven by a nihilist brand of fanaticism.

Ethnic Terrorist acts are sometimes carried out by an ethnic majority targeting a minority ruling class, such as in South Africa, the former Rhodesia (now Zambia and Zimbabwe), and Palestine. Afghan resistance to Soviet occupation and anti-colonial movements in Africa and Asia are both examples of an ethnic majority opposing colonial rule. Terrorist organizations that represent the interests of an ethnic group in a particular region, for example the Euskadi ta Askatasuna (ETA) extremists in northwest Spain and the Tamil Tigers in northern Sri Lanka, are often separatist (though they may also be anti-separatist).

Terrorists representing ethnic groups or peoples have included Palestinians (Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Palestine Liberation Front, Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine), Kurdish, Kosovan Albanian, and Irish nationalists in Northern Ireland.

Religious Islamic fundamentalism is a key stimulus of terrorist activity in the early 21st century, centred in Asia and the Middle East, but at times with a global reach, as highlighted on 11 September 2001 with the terrorist destruction of New York's World Trade Center. Osama bin Laden, whose al-Qaeda network has links with other Islamic terrorist groups, such as Egyptian Islamic Jihad, is regarded as one of the key masterminds behind current Islamic fundamentalist terrorism. His primary target is the USA, with a key goal being removal of US military forces from the Gulf area. Bin Laden is said to represent a new breed of ‘stateless’ terrorist. In Algeria, the Islamic Armed Group (GIA) and Islamic Front for Salvation (FIS) have been behind more than a decade of bloody unrest, punctuated by terrorist atrocities.

Terrorist activities Terrorism traditionally involved kidnappings, assassinations, guerrilla warfare, massacres of opponents, and the use of bombs in a variety of ways and against a range of targets - suicide bombs, car bombs, bombs placed in aircrafts, buildings, and buses. The victims targeted are usually political opponents or state security forces, but sometimes they are ordinary citizens, chosen indiscriminately.

By the end of the 21st century terrorists adopted additional, and more difficult to counter, forms of attack. These include the use of biological warfare, pioneered by the Aum Shinrikyō sect in March 1995, who released sarin nerve gas in the Tokyo subway, killing 12 people and injuring several thousand. In October 2001 anthrax was used by terrorists in the USA. The spread of computer viruses, to disable financial and government networks, is another new method of terrorism. Increasingly, terrorist groups use information technology and the Internet to formulate plans, recruit members, communicate between cells and members, raise funds, and spread propaganda. Some terrorist groups are also involved in extortion and drug trafficking to help fund their activities, using complex offshore banking arrangements to launder these funds.

State terrorism State terrorism may either take the form of systematic violence by a totalitarian state against particular sectors of its own populace (as in Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union), or sponsorship of violence against another state. Iran funds and trains members of the Islamic fundamentalist Hezbollah movement, active in suicide bombings throughout Israel in opposition to the 1993 Palestinian-Israeli peace accord. Libya has long supported terrorist activity against Western states, supplying arms to the Provisional IRA in Northern Ireland and being implicated in the bombing of a US airliner over Lockerbie, Scotland, in December 1988. A further five countries are listed in 2001 by the US State Department as state sponsors of terrorism: Syria (which provides safe haven to certain international terrorist groups); Iraq; North Korea; Sudan; and Cuba.

Terrorist or freedom fighter? Organizations that resort to political violence are seen either as ‘terrorists’ or ‘freedom fighters’, depending on the political standpoint of the speaker. Some lack any base of popular support, while others can fairly claim widespread sympathy, both within their community and in the outside world. Two important factors influencing the public attitude to an organization are whether the people it fights for have no (or only a limited) democratic voice, and whether its violence is directed at ‘legitimate’ targets, such as state security forces, or used indiscriminately against civilians. Convicted members of banned ‘terrorist’ groups may become constitutional politicians after liberation, and negotiate with representatives of the state that was once the object of their violence: such leaders include Menachem Begin, prime minister of Israel 1977-83, Nelson Mandela, president of South Africa 1994-99, and Robert Mugabe, prime minister of Zimbabwe from 1980.

Nuclear threat In 2001, the United Nations Terrorism Prevention Branch estimated that as many as 130 terrorist groups could pose a nuclear threat, due to the increase in the smuggling of radioactive material. In the first three months of 2001 alone there were 20 confirmed incidents of smuggling, including thefts from Germany, Mexico, Romania, and South Africa.

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