Egyptian Cinema as a Tool in the Struggle Against Islamic Terrorism

The cinema has been used by Egyptian regimes, from the monarchy until Mubarak, to resist the political agenda of Islamic radicals and terrorists. Edward Said and others describe Islamic terrorists’ images in the Western media as “Western fantasies.” Nevertheless, for Egyptian intellectuals, terrorists were and remain a stark reality. In Egypt, the entire state apparatus was set in motion to fight Islamic terrorism. The state was unprepared for the massive popular uprising of 2011. While the direction that Egyptian culture will follow after Mubarak remains unclear, an important objective is to study pre-revolutionary Egyptian cinema and to understand its ideological tendencies.     

The political process of Boko Haram insurgency onset: a political relevance model

ABSTRACT

As more data emerges on the Boko Haram phenomenon, the controversy over the roots of the insurgency persists. While some emphasise transnational motivational factors based on the Salafist ideology, others focus on diverse local structural factors, including the economy, religion, and politics. Although this article acknowledges the importance of these factors, it argues that these are ubiquitous contextual factors which insufficiently explain the location and timing of the insurgency. By introducing the Political Relevance Model, this article theorises the insurgency onset by focusing on the agency of the local political elites and their relationship with the sect. It finds that the insurgency is rooted in an initial mutually beneficial relationship between the local political elites and a politically relevant group that turned sour, resulting in the attempt by the elites to withdraw the group’s earlier privileges using state coercion which the group frames as state repression requiring violent resistance. These agents have, in their interest, framed this struggle to resonate with the people.     

重新定义恐怖主义

长期以来,学术界存在着这样的观点,一是认为给恐怖主义下定义没有必要,理论意义和实践意义都不大;二是认为要在国际范围内给恐怖主义找到一个客观的定义几乎是不可能的。本文意在强调,建立一个客观的、能为国际社会所接受的恐怖主义定义不是没有希望的;而一个有效的、反对恐怖主义的国际联合行动迫切需要这样一个定义。本文认为,恐怖主义不仅仅是一种政治暴力行为,还是一种社会思潮和政治主张,忽略这一点将会给反恐斗争带来许多“盲点”。     

Terrorism as Cancer: How to Combat an Incurable Disease

ABSTRACT

This paper provides an alternative framework that conceptualizes the threat posed by terrorism based on an epidemiological approach that views it as a chronic disease like cancer rather than as a military, ideological, or socio-economic problem. After highlighting the similarities in the causes, behavior, treatments, and challenges of combating terrorism and cancer, this paper presents a staging system policymakers can use to educate the public and allocate counterterrorism resources more efficiently. This approach encourages policymakers to see terrorism for what it is (an all but inevitable facet of modern life that can be managed but never fully eliminated), and not what they wish terrorism to be (a national security problem that can be solved, defeated, or vanquished). It provides policymakers with a useful model to conceptualize the threat and treat terrorism in a comprehensive manner, from preventing future attacks to effectively responding to them when they will inevitably occur.     

Inferno Terror: Forest Fires as the New Form of Terrorism

ABSTRACT

Between the 18th and 26th of November 2016, 220 different locations went up in flames in the Israeli forest. Israeli firefighters were powerless to contain the fires, so army and police units had to contribute. Thousands of civilian volunteers also joined the fight against the fire. The Israeli firemen were unable to curb the continuously blazing fires, which is why the Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, asked and received international support. The operation lasted for eight days, more than 1,700 fires were eliminated, but the conflagration caused considerable damage. Due to the extremely dry and windy periods, many blamed the weather conditions for the damage, but it soon became clear that in several cases, the cause was arson. Although arson as a method of extremism has been continuously practiced in many incidents worldwide, it is still beyond the scope of research on terrorism. This essay aims to prove that we have to raise awareness of the issue, highlighting both relevant incidents and the extremist group’s propaganda incentive towards the enhanced use of arson. We raise the question whether on the basis of the incidents in Israel, arson could become a frequently used method of European terrorist units or individuals. And if yes, how the national counter-terrorist and law-enforcement agencies may adapt to the challenge of hardly controllable arson in order to minimize the chance of similarly executed attacks in the future.     

国际恐怖主义问题与反恐怖斗争合作

进入新世纪,恐怖主义乌云仍浓重地笼罩着全球。中亚、南亚、非洲不断发生的大规模人质绑架事件,世界各地频繁的爆炸、暗杀,给国际社会、无辜民众带来极大的危害。恐怖主义这个毒瘤仍在蔓延、膨胀,对世界和平与发展构成重大威胁。 面对日益猖獗的恐怖活动,国际社会一直在努力寻找打击恐怖主义的有效途径,特别     

Surveying American State Police Agencies About Terrorism Threats,Terrorism Sources,and Terrorism Definitions

This study presents American state police agencies' perceptions about three significant terrorism and public safety issues. First, we asked about the threat posed by specified extremist groups nationally and to their state. We asked about the number of such groups and their supporters, and the number of activities each group participates in during a typical year in their state. We also asked about the number of criminal incidents each group commits and the number of their supporters arrested in a typical year. Second, we asked the agencies to rate the usefulness of fifteen specified terrorism sources. Third, we queried the agencies about their views of eight terrorism definitions. These data were collected by surveying the fifty state police agencies in the United States. We discovered widespread concern about the criminal activities of various extremist groups, with a particular concern about the threat of Islamic jihadists. Interestingly, although the top rated threat was Islamic jihadists, the respondents indicated that other types of groups were much more criminally active. Further, respondents indicated that various open and non-open sources were valuable terrorism sources. Finally, most respondents reacted more favorably to official terrorism definitions—especially the FBI's—as opposed to academic definitions. We conclude with a discussion of the policy implications of our findings and we outline directions for future research.     

Terrorism and trust

Trust enables us to simplify and understand complicated realities and orientate ourselves in them, which we do through symbolic systems, including myth and religion. Terrorism results when those systems generate extreme distrust, especially between ethnic or religious groups. Within nation-states pre-conditions of trust include normative coherence, stability, openness and accountability. In international relations these pre-conditions are more difficult to establish. But it is still possible. The process usually includes reaction to a crisis, the creation of good personal relationships between leaders, mutual concessions, well-documented agreements with provision for verification, and opportunities for populations to get to know each other.     

恐怖资金来源问题研究

资金是恐怖组织赖以生存的血液,也是恐怖活动得以开展的重要前提条件。恐怖组织主要以盗用慈善资金、通过犯罪活动筹资以及通过合法经营、移民汇款和外国援助等方式获取恐怖资金。为切断恐怖资金来源,世界主要国家已经在此问题上展开了多边合作、双边合作,并积极推进国内反恐资金立法。恐怖资金来源问题给国际社会和世界各国带来了诸多新问题,无论是现存的国内和国际金融体制、法律体制,还是移民机制、教育体制和外交政策都因此受到严峻挑战。国际社会与恐怖资金的斗争将是长期和艰巨的。     

Terrorism and Profiling

A key problem for counterterrorism is how large numbers of individuals can be screened most efficiently to discover terrorists. This question arises at security checkpoints of all kinds, from roadblocks to airline security counters. Some argue that certain categories of individuals, for instance, young Muslim men in the airline context, should be screened more heavily than others. Others deride this as racial profiling, and argue that any such scheme would be easily evaded. I examine a model of searching for terrorists among a population divided into categories that vary in their potential reliability or ease of recruitment as agents of terrorist attacks. The equilibria in the model feature profiling, in that different categories are searched with different intensities. Practical difficulties in implementing a rational profiling scheme are discussed.     

Islam,institutions and insurgency: territorial and network jihad

Contemporary research and policies often reduce Islamic insurgency to a simpli?ed notion of jihad, and, simultaneously, the religious doctrine of jihad to pure militancy. Such an approach fails to consider the complexities that de?ne and di?erentiate Islamic insurgents, and hinders further understanding of when, how and if they implement jihad. This paper attempts to address these shortcomings by considering how the ideological histories in?uencing territorially-based movements yield either an adherence to a modern jihad doctrine or a secular nationalist doctrine. Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Palestinian Territories provide the case studies wherein this distinction is manifest in their respective popular bases, institutions and military relations. Responding to assumptions of an emergent ‘third form’ of jihad—the network—this study applies the inverse model of the territorial doctrines to the Arab-Afghans and al-Qaeda (the network headed by Osama bin Laden) in order to elucidate its potential explanatory limitations, as well asto o?er some insights.     

Thoughts on Terrorism

The earthshaking terrorist attacks on the United States on September 11,2001 have once again brought terrorism into focus of the international relations. More and more evidences show that threats of terrorism to the world peace and development as well as the international communlty are on theincrease. Worse stin, it has become more possible that the ter     

对恐怖主义问题的几点思考

"9·11"事件发生后,国际社会更为担心的是恐怖分子是否获得了诸如核生化等大规模杀伤性武器.已有种种迹象显示,可造成更为恐怖的生化袭击有可能发生,值得高度警惕与戒备.在反恐怖斗争领域里,民族、宗教问题一直是困扰人们正确认识形势的两大因素,如何从根本上把民族、宗教问题与恐怖活动区分开来,应当对此有所反思.随着国际反恐怖斗争的不断深入,在联合国框架下建立全球性国际反恐怖合作机制已是势在必行.     

The Cost of Terrorism: The Relationship Between International Terrorism and Democratic Governance

After Al Qaeda's destruction of the World Trade Center on 11 September 2001, many democracies reacted to the event, and to international terrorism in general, by passing laws restricting civil liberties and political rights, raising questions about the balance between security and liberty. Such laws have produced alarms among civil libertarians, worldwide. Are the alarms justified? In this article we analyze the relationship between the yearly number of international terrorist attacks in 24 countries from 1968–2003 and (a) measures of civil liberties and political rights as provided by Freedom House, and (b) levels of democracy as measured in the Polity IV scales. We take the number of international terrorist events, by country, from data provided by the Memorial Institute of the Prevention of Terrorism (MIPT) http://www.tkb.org/Home.jsp. Our analysis indicates that there is, generally, no relationship between the number of international terrorist events and the levels of civil rights, political rights, or democracy as measured by the Freedom House and Polity IV indicators. When there is a statistically significant relationship, it is negative, opposite to what is predicted by the tradeoff hypothesis.     

The Challenges of Strategic Terrorism

ABSTRACT

The Al Qaeda type of terrorist is quite different from that of those of the IRA or Hezbollah. The former is seeking a clash of civilizations or at least a clash between the Islamic world and the West or at least between Islam and the US. The latter used and use terrorism to pursue a specific objective and a limited one at that in scope and geography. Terrorism is not a one dimensional phenomenon.     

The Challenges of Conceptualizing Terrorism

This analysis begins by exploring various reasons that the concept of terrorism has evaded a widely agreed upon definition for so long despite the efforts of so many writers. Emphasis is placed on the difficulties associated with all “essentially contested concepts.” In addition, the investigation calls attention to such problems as conceptual “stretching” and “traveling.” In an effort to solve the difficulties, the inquiry attempts to determine a consensus definition of terrorism by turning to an empirical analysis of how the term has been employed by academics over the years. Specifically, the well-known definition developed by Alex Schmid, based upon responses to a questionnaire he circulated in 1985, is compared with the way the concept has been employed by contributors to the major journals in the field: Terrorism, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, and Terrorism and Political Violence. The 22 “definitional elements” of which Schmid's definition is composed are compared to the frequency with which they appear in the professional journals. If these elements appear frequently in both the Schmid definition and those employed by the journal contributors, they are then used to form a consensus definition of the concept. The most striking feature of this academic consensus over the meaning of terrorism is the virtual absence of references to the psychological element, heretofore widely thought to be at the heart of the concept.     

当前国际恐怖与反恐斗争的特点与趋势

当前国际恐怖势力仍呈蔓延之势,国际恐怖活动与伊拉克、阿富汗等地区热点相互作用,使国际反恐斗争形势更加严峻。美国、欧盟、俄罗斯等不断调整各自的反恐战略与措施,国际反恐合作继续加强,并取得了一定进展,但国际反恐合作分歧犹存,反恐斗争将长期化、复杂化。     

积重难返的巴基斯坦恐怖主义

由于历史宿怨、地理环境、宗教信仰和国家政策等多方面原因,南亚地区一直是恐怖主义滋生和发展的沃土,这在巴基斯坦表现得尤为明显。“9·11”事件后,巴基斯坦成了打击恐怖主义的前沿阵地。在美国和国际社会的压力下,巴政府对恐怖主义组织采取了一系列打击行动,但效果并不明显,而且还遭到了恐怖主义的严重报复式袭击。恐怖主义在巴基斯坦早已根深蒂固,呈积重难返之势。