November 28, 2012
Terrorism
Who Uses Terrorism?
Terrorism is a tactic
Groups or individuals that employ terrorism may renounce such tactics
and be accepted in the realm of “normal” politics
Sinn Fein (Northern Ireland)
o IRA undertook terrorist attacks against UK to fight for the
Northern Ireland to join the Republic
Yasir Arafat (Palestine)
Terrorism Today
Post 9/11 world: “Super-terrorism”
Terrorism is now increasingly being perpetrated by transnational groups
that operate across state borders and are fighting for a cause that transcends
state borders
o Groups structured as networks, rather than as hierarchal
organizations
o Flow of authority isn’t under one leader
o Harder for countries like U.S. to fight them…you can’t decapitate the
organization by taking out the leader, because there are different cells
in different locations around the globe
o Al Qaeda- still exists in different forms like in Yemen, Northern Africa,
and Sudan that are all interconnected…even though Bin Laden is dead.
Now, there is greater death and destruction- use of technology and
weapons of mass destruction
Globalization makes it harder to locate terrorist groups
o Internet, cell phones, communication technology
Increases the size of the “audience”
o Media operates on 24 hour news cycle
Causes of Terrorism
Group level:
o NOT all violent groups use terrorism
o More likely if group is “weak” in conventional terms
Conventional metrics of military power: training, weapons,
number of fighters, etc.
Individual level:
o What drives individual to be a suicide bomber or join a terrorist group
o ARTICLE: Libya: supplying large number of suicide bombers to civil
war in Iraq.
o Economic deprivation
“Nothing to loose”
o Unemployment
o Religious extremism Preaching radical branch of Islam
o Pride, sense of identity
Groups feel oppressed because of their ethnicity
Post 9/11 “3 Circles of Threat”
1. Leadership of Al Qaeda involved in planning and executing 9/11
o These individual leaders have been caught, captured or killed.
2. Local-based terrorist groups that share Al Qaeda’s ideology
o Loosely affiliated, have same goals
o Hamas, Hizbullah, Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Chechen
rebel groups
3. Biggest Circle of Threat) Individual “jihadists”
o Many are freelancers that have never even come in contact with a real
“member” of Al Qaeda
o How many people are in this category of “potential” terrorist
How does each “circle” of threat require different tools to fight?
Fighting Terrorism- Example 1
Libya under President Muammar Kaddafi sponsored the 1988 bombing of
PanAm Flight 103
o Killed 270 people
o Evidence that government of Libya sponsored this attack
2003- Libya gives up its nuclear weapons program after long negotiations
with U.S.
2008- Libya agrees on deal for compensating families of those killed in
PanAm bombing
Taken off list of state sponsors of terrorism
Widely belief that the Iraq invasion by U.S.A scared them into doing this.
Fighting Terrorism- Example 2
Conflict in Northern Ireland
“Unionists” (mainly protestants) favor union with Britain
“Republicans” (mainly Catholics) who favor joining Ireland
IRA and paramilitary Unionist groups engage in terrorist tactics
Violence, 1966-1998
“Good Friday Accords,” signed in 1998
Sinn Fein/ IRA transitioned to a political party
o Gained many seats
o Majority of official wings of IRA have renounced violence
UK government conceded greater autonomy to Northern Ireland December 3
A Clash of Civilizations
A Clash of Civilizations
1991- Huntington (political scientist) predicted that the fault-lines of
international conflict would now be civilizations instead of states
o Civilizations are the “broadest cultural identity” that people can share.
o Huntington classifies the world by 9 civilizations that are significant
Western
Latin American
African
Islamic
Confucian
Hindu
Orthodox
Buddhist
Japanese
Criticisms:
o It classifies the world based mainly on religious identity
o Is it misleading to imply that everyone can relate to one of these
civilizations? There s a lot of multiculturalism
o It masks serious divisions within the civilizations. (Islam divide-
Sunni and Shi’ite)
o Big danger from policy standpoint- It carries the danger of becoming a
self-fulfilling prophecy.
If leaders start to view the world in terms of these divisions of
civilizations and as conflict between them…it might lead them
to start to undertake antagonistic policies that will generate
the type of conflict this thesis is predicting or making these
conflicts more real.
Post 9/11: Global War on Terror
Global War on Terror (GWOT)
Put forth by the Bush administration
1. Fight against terrorist groups with radical Islamic ideology
2. The idea that t
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