Girls as “Weapons of Terror” in Northern Uganda and Sierra Leonean Rebel Fighting Forces

Girls—both willingly and unwillingly—participate in terrorist acts within the context of contemporary wars. These acts range from targeting civilians for torture and killing to destroying community infrastructures so that people's physical and psychological health and survival are affected. Girls witness or participate in acts such as mutilation, human sacrifice, forced cannibalism, drug use, and physical and psychological deprivation. This article focuses upon girls in two fighting forces: the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) in Northern Uganda and the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) in Sierra Leone and their roles as combatants whose primary strategy is perpetrating terrorist acts against civilians. In analyses of gender and terrorism, girls are typically subsumed under the larger category of female, which marginalizes their experiences and fails to recognize that they possess agency and power.     

European terrorism: A German perspective

Abstract

Concentrating on terrorism in West Germany, Italy, and the Basque provinces of Spain, the author presents a detailed picture of the motivations, the strategies, and the ‘'achievements” of a number of the best known groups which for alleged political purposes take the law into their own hands. The Red Armee Faction, perhaps the best known West German terrorist group, and the 2nd of June Movement as well as such organizations as the Revolutionary Cells and the Guerilla Diffusa are described and their aims and activities are scrutinized. German right‐wing terrorism is also shown to wield great power, its contacts with terrorists in Lebanon and Algeria rivaling those of leftist organizations. Italian terrorism is also fully covered in this paper, with the activities of the Red Brigades, the best‐known of the leftist organizations, and its international connections, as well as other groups and the individuals involved being dealt with in some detail. The events in Spain, past and present, due especially to Basque terrorism, are considered, and the Soviet influence, represented by terrorist organizations in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Cuba, is discussed as is also the outlook for the future.     

Rewarding Fire with Fire: Effects of Retaliation on Terrorist Group Dynamics

Abstract

Comparative studies of the psychology of terrorism indicate that there is no one terrorist mindset, A theme in common among the disparate groups is the strong need of marginal alienated individuals to join a group of like‐minded individuals with a similar world view that “it's us against them, and they are the cause of our problems.” This strong need to belong gives particular force to the power of group dynamics. While the ideology is the glue that holds the group together and serves as the rationale for its actions, terrorists do not commit acts of terrorism for ideological reasons. The amelioration of the societal injustice which they indicate incites and justifies their terrorism does not reduce the lure of terrorism, because of the powerful hold of the group on its members.

Paradoxically, a policy of reactive retaliation with the goal of deterring terrorist acts may have the opposite effect and reinforce the mind set of the terrorist. For the group under threat, the external danger has the consequence of reducing external divisiveness and uniting the group against the outside enemy. The survival of the group is paramount because of the sense of group identity it provides.

Identifying the locus of control is of crucial significance in estimating the effects of counter‐terrorist policies upon a terrorist group. For the autonomous terrorist cell, active retaliation may reinforce the cohesion of the group; for the corporate terrorist organization, issues of organizational survival may become paramount. Neither the terrorist group nor the terrorist organization can be forced to give up terrorism, for to do so would be to lose their reason for being. For state‐supported and directed terrorist groups on the other hand, the terrorist group in effect serves as a paramilitary group under central government control. In this situation, group and organizational considerations are less relevant, for the object of the counter‐terrorist policy is the government of the sponsoring state. Since the survival of the state and national interests are the primary values, retaliatiatory policies, can, in the short run, have a deterring effect. In the long run, the most effective anti‐terrorist policy is one which renders the terrorist career less attractive to potential members, facilitates terrorists leaving the group, and reduces external support.     

The water and the fish: Public opinion and the provisional IRA in Northern Ireland

Abstract

The methods and goals of the Provisional IRA make it difficult to categorize it simply as a “terrorist” group. Its longevity and its affinity to Irish political culture suggest that it will not be defeated by force but by being rendered irrelevant. This is likely to come about as a result of the state demonstrating its own legitimacy among those sections of the Catholic community which have been understandably reluctant to give the state their full allegiance in the past. Survey evidence supports the contention that the Provisional IRA's goals and grievances are shared by many who would spurn their tactics.     

The terrorists' dilemmas: Some implicit rules of the game 1

Abstract

Knowledge of certain dilemmas faced by terrorists may serve to narrow the options available to the opposing parties and aid in varying government response to terrorist acts. Such dilemmas are the identification with violence, the problem of attacking or seeking a negotiated incident, choice of level of terror, maintenance of one's objectivity within a group characterized by conformity, and retaining one's identity as a historic victim.     

Ethno‐political activity and the psychology of terrorism

Abstract

Studies of terrorist psychology have typically focused either on single individuals or group dynamics within the organizations that these individuals have joined. Less attention has been paid to the background conditions which give rise to these individuals and organizations, even for environments in which generalization appears to be feasible. This paper focuses on one such environment. Its principal goal is to highlight the theoretical connections between a society's ethnic cleavages; the development of ethno‐political activity, especially organized violence and terrorism; and the implications of this activity for the functioning of institutions in “democratic” and “non‐democratic” societies. A related objective is the identification of policy responses to latent or manifest ethno‐political activity and an assessment of their potential efficacy. These points are illustrated by examining a small ethnic group, the South Moluccans in Holland, which would appear to have had little motivation to engage in violence or terrorism, but some of whose members nevertheless did.     

FBI analysis of terrorist incidents in the United States — 1982

Abstract

When analyzing terrorism in Germany, attention normally focuses on the Rote Armee Fraktion, better known as Baader‐Meinhof gang. Already in the early years of the RAF there existed different groups, such as the Movement 2nd June, which often rivaled and strongly critized the elitist avant‐gardism of Andreas Baader, Ulrike Meinhof, and Gudrun Ensslin. Today only a small fragment of the some 350 terrorist acts and 500 acts of sabotage (1985 statistics) can be attributed to the RAF. Germany's other terrorists, the Revolutionary Cells and autonomous/anti‐imperialist groups have long ago outdone the RAF and become a much graver threat to the internal security of the Federal Republic. Though similarities in rhetoric and operational approach exist between the RAF and these groups, the existing underlying differences are strong and until recently have prevented cooperation. The hunger strike campaign of the winter 1984/1985 appears to present a change in policies on behalf of the Cells.     

A Survey of Terrorism of the Left in Italy: 1970–78

Abstract

The terrorists who have ravaged Italy over the past several years are not totally faceless. The names and backgrounds of many are well known, as are their habitual modes of operations and the ideologies by which they are moved. After a brief catalog of the terrorists’ actions, the article outlines the physiognomy of Italy's major terrorist groups. A substantial part of this consists of a list of each group's victims, since any assessment of the terrorist groups’ effects must begin with an awareness of which sectors of Italian society have been struck. The backgrounds of the terrorists, the political language they speak, and the list of their victims point unambiguously to the conclusion that terrorism in Italy is overwhelmingly a phenomenon of the Left and that it conceives of itself as a means of bringing about a Communist regime. The terrorists regard themselves as the competitors and reformers of the Italian Communist party. But at the same time they have made good their claim as the mortal enemies of the enemies of the Communist party. The question regarding the Italian terrorists’ international connections cannot be answered definitively. Such evidence as exists, however, suggests that today's self‐declared Communist terrorists may be acting in ways similar to their predecessors of the 1940s and early 1950s, who found safe haven in the Communist regimes of Eastern Europe.     

In search of an anti‐terrorism policy: Lessons from the reagan era

Abstract

During the 1980s, terrorist activities became a real threat to Americans at home and abroad. The Reagan administration's policy response to this threat was encumbered by several factors, both of commission and omission. Dominant anti‐communist ideological perceptions in the administration at times blurred the disparate causes of international terrorism and the varied motives of terrorist groups. The administration was unable to back up its words with consistent, resolute policy action. And U.S. intelligence operations were not able to detect or prevent several terrorist strikes against U.S. facilities, especially in the Middle East.

The U.S. air raid on Libya served notice that the United States would strike militarily at state sponsors of terrorism. It also called into the question the Reagan administration's willingness to adhere strictly to international law in its efforts to prosecute certain governments who aid and abet terrorist groups. There is no policy panacea for terrorism; terrorism can only be countered by a resolute policy which combines protection, prevention, and prosecution, including military retaliation if it is necessary and can be carried out proportionate to the aggrieved terrorist offense. The lessons gleaned from the Reagan administration's anti‐terrorist experience are both constructive and instructive. However, only if more deliberate efforts are made to integrate these lessons into policy considerations will they become utilitarian assets to counter terrorist activities, at home and abroad.     

Notes on a psychodynamic theory of terrorist behavior

Abstract

Because of the diversity of terrorist groups and causes, there is no one terrorist “mindset.” Within this diversity it is useful to distinguish two major categories: the “anarchic‐ideologues,” such as the Red Army Faction, committed to destroying the world of their fathers; and the “nationalist‐secessionists,” such as ETA of the Basques, who carry on the mission of their fathers.

There is a tendency for marginal, isolated, and inadequate individuals from troubled family backgrounds to be attracted to the path of terrorism, so that for many, belonging to the terrorist group is the first time they truly belonged, and the group comes to represent family. This creates powerful pressures to conform within the group, for to disagree is to be seen as disloyal, and to risk losing the group. Organized against society, the group is seen as all good, and the outside society as all bad, this being the rationale for committing violent anti‐society acts.     

Know thy enemy: Hizbullah, ‘terrorism’ and the politics of perception

The labelling career of the Lebanese armed group and political party Hizbullah is an interesting case with which to investigate the epistemological consequences of the politics of naming. Having found itself since its inception in the mid-1980s on the receiving end of mainly US and Israeli policy makers' and analysts' scorn for being an archetypical terrorist organisation, Hizbullah has been surprisingly successful in achieving its stated aims and in enduring the verbal and military onslaught against it. Although it is not the intention here to reduce explanations for Hizbullah's durability to discursive politics, this article suggests that both the labelling of Hizbullah as terrorist and, conversely, its identification as a ‘lebanonised’ political force that is about to make its conversion into an unarmed political party are misleading and incapable of grasping this organisation's complexities. In fact, both ‘terrorist’ and ‘lebanonised’ labels produce a quality of knowledge inferior to that produced by Hizbullah's own conceptualisation of its enemies. But most importantly, the debate on Hizbullah's alleged terrorist nature has obscured several of its traits that many should register before passing judgement on it. Our analysis shows that the variety of institutions Hizbullah has been carefully elaborating and readapting over the past two decades in Lebanon operate today as a holistic and integrated network which produce sets of values and meanings embedded in an interrelated religious and political framework—that of the wilayat al-faqih. These meanings are disseminated on a daily basis among Shi'a constituencies through the party's institutionalised networks and serve to mobilise them into ‘the society of the Resistance’ (mujtamaa’ al-muqawama), which is the foundation of the hala al-islamiyya (Islamic sphere) in Lebanon. Accordingly, any prospect of Hizbullah's transformation away from armed ‘resistance’ should be firmly placed in an analysis of its hegemony among the Shi'a of Lebanon and of the tools it uses to acquire and sustain this status.     

The Dutch Response to Moluccan Terrorism, 1970–1978

The Netherlands experienced a spate of terrorist attacks by Moluccan nationalists in the 1970s. Lessons learned during this time should be re-examined as elements of the Dutch response are very relevant to current counterterrorism efforts. The so-called “Dutch Approach” is notable for its pragmatic and flexible nature and provided policymakers sufficient room for maneuver in responding to individual terrorist acts within the context of the greater conflict. Further deserving of renewed appreciation are the Dutch government's efforts to address and bridge the chasms within Dutch society by working hand-in-hand with Moluccan community leaders.     

The threat of international terrorism in the united states: The police response

Abstract

As the 1990–1991 Gulf crisis unfolded, leaders of the UN coalition against Iraq became increasingly concerned about the possibility of terrorism accompanying the initiation of hostilities with Baghdad. Such concerns were reinforced by Iraqi warnings and by Baghdad's long association with international terrorist movements. Ultimately, however, the Iraqis proved unable to make effective use of terrorism to support their war effort. This failure resulted for a variety of reasons including effective counterterrorism measures by the allies. Additionally, a number of other nations with terrorist linkages pressured their terrorist clients to refrain from helping Saddam Hussein. They did this for reasons of their own that nevertheless supported allied strategy. Finally, the Iraqis’ lack of any precrisis preparation for terrorist action meant that they were simply unable to mount more than a few ineffective operations.     

Automatic Gait Recognition and its Potential Role in Counterterrorism

ABSTRACT

Closed-circuit television footage can be used to assemble an often-complex picture of an incident and aid in the identification of suspects after a crime or terrorist attack has occurred. For example, such footage allowed the police to not only identify the 7/7 London bombers but also to piece together the details of the bombers' movements prior to the attack. In the case of the London bombers little attempt was made to disguise their identities but where such identities are concealed it is possible to identify suspects based on other unique biometric characteristics such as the style of walk, referred to as gait. Gait feature–based individual identification has received increased attention from biometrics researchers. In this article, we propose a novel gait biometric methodology that could contribute to the counterterrorism effort and the identification of individuals involved in crime.     

Political violence in Ecuador and the AVC

Abstract

Since its return in 1979 Ecuador's civilian constitutional government has been marred by continuous political violence. The newest and most dangerous challenge to regime stability has surfaced over the past few years in the domestic terrorist organization, the ¡Alfaro Vive, Carajo! (AVC). Beginning as a small, student‐led subversive group in 1983, the AVC now appears in coordination with the neighboring Colombian M‐19 and Peruvian Sendero Luminoso guerrillas and in cooperation with regional narcotraficantes. Determined government efforts, supported by the United States, have failed decisively to uproot and destroy the AVC.     

Resurgent religious terrorism: A study of some of the Lebanese Shi'a contemporary terrorism

Abstract

This study introduces the concept of geocultural immobility. A minority's geocultural immobility is identified as an imposed low geographic mobility within a nation with low cultural pluralism. It establishes the Lebanese Shi'a geocultural immobility, to which it attributes their religious resurgence. This Lebanese Shi'a religious resurgence is proven in this research to produce the zealots needed by religious terrorist organizations. This study also introduces and defines religious terrorism as violent acts performed by elements of religious organizations or sects, growing out of a commitment to communicate a divine message. It makes distinctions among religious terrorism, secular terrorism, and fighters for religious freedom, which are based on the actors' motives, affinities, and consciousness of the maliciousness of their acts. The primary and secondary data and the quasiexperiment in this research support its special hypotheses. They indicate a statistical correlation between eight Lebanese Shi ‘a cultural and religious attributes.     

Social Media and (Counter) Terrorist Finance: A Fund-Raising and Disruption Tool

Abstract

The proliferation of social media has created a terrorist finance vulnerability due to the ease with which propaganda can be spread, promoting fund-raising for a certain cause. Social media companies recognize the importance of preventing violent extremist and terrorist content, but less attention is paid to their fund-raising role. As well as presenting a threat, the movement of terrorist fund-raising activities online creates a disruption opportunity. This article argues that social media companies need to display greater awareness of their vulnerability to supporting terrorist financing and greater collaboration with law enforcement and financial institutions to strengthen the integrity of the system against abuse.     

The Stasi–Meinhof Complex?

The extent of the East German Ministry for State Security's involvement with militant left-wing terrorist organizations that operated in West Germany remains one of the most contentious issues with respect to the legacy of left-wing terrorism in Germany. Fueled by new archival evidence and much speculation, the topic has been the subject of many unfounded and sensationalist assertions. This article seeks to provide a chronological reassessment based on the current state of knowledge, and thus seeks to make a contribution to a growing literature on state involvement with terrorist groups. While the East German spy agency at times colluded with terrorist groups, the degree of support fluctuated considerably and there is no evidence that a state actor “created” the armed groups or “directed” their activities.     

The Radical Group in Context: 2. Identification of Critical Elements in the Analysis of Risk for Terrorism by Radical Group Type

In this second of two linked articles describing an integrated framework for the analysis of risk for terrorism of a radical group, a subset of observable indicators for each of the 32 variables within the integrated framework is presented. On the basis of an expert knowledge acquisition process, five types of terrorist groups-- nationalist-separatist, religious fundamentalist, new religions (other religious extremists, including millenarian cults), social revolutionary, and right wing--are compared in order to identify which indicators are of greatest importance for each terrorist group type. Historical, cultural, and contextual features can be assessed effectively through the use of open sources and experts. Group characteristics, processes, and structures were consistently rated as highly important across all five group types. Ratings for new religions differed most consistently from those of other group types.     

Slavery food,soul food,salvation food: veganism and identity in the African Hebrew Israelite Community

ABSTRACT

This paper reviews the transformation of meaning of food items central to African American fare from symbols of slavery to means of salvation as the African Hebrew Israelite Community (AHIC) live out their Biblically inspired lifestyle and perfect the vegan diet at its core. Although originating in Chicago in the late 1960s, for over 40 years the institutional and residential base of this transnational millenarian community has been in the Israeli desert town of Dimona. Based on long-term ethnographic acquaintance with their foodways in Israel and in the US, our analysis follows the AHIC’s eclectic incorporation of circulating religious, political, and scientific theories into their Bible-based cosmological-nutritional tenets of regenerative health and spiritual salvation. We argue that their ‘Edenic Diet’ reacts to the traumatic history of African Americans as slaves and as a discriminated against minority in the US, by serving as a means in their struggle for place and acceptance in modern Israel and an active component in their social and spiritual plans for the future.