Political Violence and the Illicit Economies of West Africa

This comparative analysis draws on field research in several West African countries to illustrate the dynamic relationships between political violence and organized crime in this sub-region. These relationships are often transactional, and almost always on a temporary basis. While some alliances of convenience may be forged, in other cases an adversarial relationship exists between organized crime and terrorist networks. In some cases, key actors within West African governments have benefited from these relationships. We then examine recent policies and strategies pursued by the U.S. and the international community that, in the name of combating terrorism, seek to constrain the illicit economies of the region, but in doing so may do more harm than good. The article concludes with some policy recommendations based on this analysis.     

More Bang for the Buck: Media Coverage of Suicide Attacks

ABSTRACT

This paper provides empirical evidence that suicide attacks systematically draw more media attention than non-suicide terrorist attacks. Analyzing 60,341 terrorist attack days in 189 countries from 1970 to 2012, I introduce a methodology to proxy for the media coverage each one of these attack days receives in the New York Times. Suicide attacks are associated with significantly more coverage. In the most complete regression, one suicide attack produces an additional 0.6 articles—a magnitude equivalent to the effect of 95 terrorism casualties. This link remains robust to including a comprehensive list of potentially confounding factors, fixed effects, and country-specific time trends. The effect is reproduced for alternative print and television outlets (BBC, Reuters, CNN, NBC, CBS), but remains weak for Google Trends (worldwide and in the U.S.), a more direct proxy for people’s interests, and is non-existent for C-SPAN, a television station dedicated to broadcasting political discussions directly. Thus, the media appears to cover suicide missions in an extraordinary fashion, which may in turn explain their prominence among terrorist organizations.     

Why They Join: Pathways into Indonesian Jihadist Organizations

ABSTRACT

Why do Indonesian Muslims join Islamist extremist groups? This article explores four pathways to entry into Indonesian militant groups: study sessions, local conflict, kinship, and schools. It argues that within all four of these pathways, social bonds and relationships are the common thread in encouraging entry as well as in fostering commitment. Specifically, these relationships contribute to the formation and eventual consolidation of one’s identity as a member of the jihadi group through regular participation in activities, attending meetings, narrowing the circle of friends to those within the group, and participating in increasingly risky and possibly violent activities together. Drawing on original fieldwork including 49 interviews with current and former members of Jemaah Islamiyah, Mujahidin KOMPAK, Darul Islam, Mujahidin Tanah Runtuh, Indonesia’s pro-ISIS network, and other jihadist groups as well as 57 depositions and court documents, this article explores the development and evolution of these pathways and how relational ties play a role in each.     

The International Dimensions of Ethnic Conflict

Abstract

In recent years, the Abu Nidal Organization (ANO) has been politically marginalized. The current Gulf crisis may serve to reinvigorate the ANO as a significant actor in the Middle East. As an organization with its raison d'être rooted in violence, there is a paucity of literature concerning the ANO. It is, therefore, a useful exercise to collect and collate available information to construct a study of this organization.     

Contributors

Abstract

Socioeconomic data supplied by the FBI on the backgrounds of 280 known right‐ and left‐wing terrorists active in the United States during the late 1960s and early 1970s was tabulated. Isolating for right‐left affiliation, membership status, and gender, seven variables were examined and used to confirm prevailing assumptions regarding the socioeconomic status of right‐ versus left‐wing terrorists active during this period. Findings support clear socioeconomic differences between right‐wing and left‐wing terrorists and emphasize the dominant position of women within left‐wing organizations. Surprising evidence revealed that considerable class differences exist within right‐wing groups between rank‐and‐file members and the leadership core.     

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.     

Rewriting the “dirty war”: State terrorism reinterpreted by the press in Argentina during the transition to democracy

Abstract

The Argentine press reinterpreted the period of dictatorial military rule (1976–1983) in terms of an interest in the continuity of democratic protections. La Voz del Interior, the newspaper of record in the provincial capital and second largest city of Cordoba, sought to censure, subordinate, and yet reintegrate the military within a democratic institutional ideology. This study uses discourse analysis to characterize 10 elements of a model of coverage of state‐sponsored terrorism: (1) perpetrators, (2) victims, (3) target population, (4) violence and violation, (5) motives or intentions of the perpetrators, (6) fear or terror among the populace, (7) outcomes or changes in the target population, (8) news sources, (9) remedies and projects, (10) and probable responses or appropriated uses by readers or the press. In 1985–1986, when the elected government sought to judge and castigate senior junta commanders, La Voz supported establishment continuity by legitimating societal actors, including the military, even though its members were perceived as having violated basic societal values.     

Terrorism and security in the Caribbean: The 1976 Cubana disaster off Barbados

Abstract

This study is an attempt to examine the Cubana airline crash in the light of political terrorism in the Caribbean. With respect to the selected case, the research endeavor will analyze the activities of the terrorists. In so doing, the writer will determine the category within which the Cubana airline disaster falls within Mickolus’ typology.¹ In addition, the motivation of the terrorists as well as limited aspects of some of the legal issues that arose with regard to the Cubana crash are discussed. Finally, there is some attempt to determine the effects of the Cubana disaster on the Caribbean and on Barbados in particular.     

Recreational Participation Among Ethnic Minorities and Immigrants in Canada and the Netherlands

Abstract

In this paper, we compare the community engagement of minorities as measured by group recreational activity in Canada and the Netherlands—two countries with high immigration intake and high levels of ethnocultural diversity. Using logistic regression, we ask questions concerning the determinants of recreational participation, focussing on the degree to which differences are a product of minority status or of more general socioeconomic status. We also compare rates of participation in the two countries to see if there is an underlying difference, which can be explained by socioeconomic and demographic status. We find that sociodemographic characteristics are generally much stronger predictors of participation than characteristics associated with minority status, regardless of country.     

Daisaku Ikeda’s philosophy of peace,education proposals,and Soka education: convergences and divergences in peace education

In this article, the authors introduce and explicate Daisaku Ikeda’s contributions to peace education. Ikeda is a Buddhist leader, peacebuilder, school founder, and prolific author whose six decades of contributions to peace education have had a global impact in practice but have remained unexamined in the extant, particularly Anglophone, literature. Using excerpts and bilingual discourse analysis of the Ikeda corpus, the authors focus on five aspects to trace the past, present, and future of Ikeda’s contributions to peace education: first, they trace the biographical roots of Ikeda’s contributions to his early educational experiences and encounter with Josei Toda (1900–1958). Second, they outline the Nichiren Buddhist philosophy informing Ikeda’s approach to peace education. Third, they explicate in the context of peace and peace education Ikeda’s concept of value-creating, or Soka education (soka kyoiku) relative to value-creating pedagogy (soka kyoikugaku) theorized by Tsunesaburo Makiguchi (1871–1944). In light of this relation, they also trace the origin of the Soka Gakkai International, of which Ikeda is founding president. Fifth, they clarify Ikeda’s educational proposals made explicitly under the label of ‘peace education,’ namely, cultural exchange, a United Nations for Education, and education for disarmament and human rights (including anti-bullying, sustainability, and global citizenship). The authors conclude that Ikeda’s perspectives, proposals, and practices of Soka education and ‘peace education’ can be viewed as a tripartite ontological model of a process of becoming, moving from inner transformation by means of dialogue to global citizenship.