Terrorism
The word terrorism emerged from the French Revolution of the late 1790s to describe the actions of the Jacobin Club during the Reign of Terror. Jacobin leader Maximilien Robespierre declared that terror was nothing other than justice, prompt and severe. In 1795, Edmund Burke denounced the Jacobins for letting thousands of hell-hounds called terrorists loose on the people of France. The terms gained renewed currency in the 1970s through groups like the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Irish Republican Army. No universal legal definition exists today despite over one hundred different definitions proposed by scholars and governments. Law professor Richard Baxter stated regret that a legal concept of terrorism was ever inflicted upon us because it serves no operative purpose. The United States Code defines terrorism as acts intended to intimidate civilians or influence government policy through coercion. International bodies have failed to conclude a Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism due to political disagreements.
Modern terrorist techniques first appeared with the Irish Republican Brotherhood founded in 1858 as a revolutionary nationalist group. This organization initiated the Fenian dynamite campaign in 1881 using timed explosives to sow fear within metropolitan Britain. Another early group Narodnaya Volya formed in Russia in 1878 developed ideas such as targeted killing of leaders of oppression. They were the first anarchist group to make widespread use of dynamite enabling them to strike directly and with discrimination. France entered the Ère des attentats between 1892 and 1894 following Ravachol's bombings which shifted focus from person-based attacks to location-based ones. Émile Henry explicitly claimed he wanted to strike at random during the Café Terminus bombing marking the birth of mass indiscriminate terrorism. In 1920 Leon Trotsky wrote Terrorism and Communism to justify the Red Terror and defend the moral superiority of revolutionary violence. The assassination of Empress Elisabeth of Austria in 1898 resulted in the International Conference of Rome for Social Defense Against Anarchists establishing the first international conference against terrorism.
A report by Paul Gill found that forty-three percent of lone wolf terrorists were motivated by religious beliefs while thirty-two percent had pre-existing mental health disorders. At least thirty-seven percent lived alone at the time of their event planning or execution and forty percent were unemployed at arrest. Psychologist Ariel Merari concluded since 1983 that suicide terrorists were unlikely to be psychologically abnormal compared to economic theories of criminal behavior. Scott Atran found that suicide terrorists exhibit none of the socially dysfunctional attributes such as being fatherless friendless or jobless situations. They do not kill themselves simply out of hopelessness or a sense of having nothing to lose. Michael Mousseau shows possible relationships between the type of economy within a country and ideology associated with terrorism. Many terrorists have a history of domestic violence before joining groups. Abrahm suggests terrorist organizations do not select terrorism for its political effectiveness but rather because individual terrorists tend to be motivated more by social solidarity than political platforms.
The Global Terrorism Database recorded more than sixty-one thousand incidents of non-state terrorism resulting in at least one hundred forty thousand deaths between 2000 and 2014. Religious extremism has overtaken national separatism as the main driver of terrorist attacks around the world since September 11. Before 2000 nationalist separatist groups like the IRA and Chechen rebels were behind most attacks while religious extremism has grown significantly since then. The prevalence of Islamist groups in Iraq Afghanistan Pakistan Nigeria and Syria drives these trends. In 2013 eighty percent of all deaths from terrorism occurred in those five countries alone. Four Islamic extremist groups including ISIS Boko Haram the Taliban and al-Qaeda were responsible for seventy-four percent of all deaths from Islamic terrorism according to the Global Terrorism Index 2016. Approximately thirty-five thousand Pakistanis died from terrorist attacks between 2001 and 2011 making it a great problem for that nation.
Professor Michael Stohl cites examples of state terrorism including the German bombing of London and the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor during World War II. He argues that the use of terror tactics is common in international relations and states remain more likely employers of terrorism within the system than insurgents. Charles Stewart Parnell described William Ewart Gladstone's Irish Coercion Act as terrorism in his no-Rent manifesto in 1881 during the Irish Land War. State terrorism involves using state resources employed by foreign policies such as military force to directly perform acts of terrorism. Former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan stated it was time to set aside debates on so-called state terrorism because any deliberate attack on innocent civilians fits into the definition regardless of one's cause. Western democracies have supported state terrorism and mass killings with examples being the Indonesian mass killings of 1965, 66 and Operation Condor. The concept describes political repressions by governments against their own civilian populations with the purpose of inciting fear through executions or extrajudicial elimination campaigns.
Walter Laqueur wrote that terrorism was always to a large extent about public relations and propaganda with Propaganda by Deed serving as the slogan in the nineteenth century. Shamil Basayev used media tactics during the Budyonnovsk hospital hostage crisis and again in the Moscow theater hostage crisis. The El Al Flight 426 hijacking is considered a turning point for modern terrorism studies when the Popular Front for Liberation of Palestine realized they could combine targeting national symbols and civilians to generate mass media spectacle. Zehdi Labib Terzi made a public statement in 1976 saying the first several hijackings aroused world consciousness more effectively than twenty years of pleading at the United Nations. Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher famously called publicity the oxygen of terrorism connecting it closely to media exposure. Mass media exposure may be a primary goal of those carrying out terrorism to expose issues otherwise ignored by journalists. The Internet has created new ways for groups to spread messages creating cycles of measures and countermeasures between supporters and opponents of terrorist movements.
Researchers Jones and Libicki found six hundred forty-eight terrorist groups active between 1968 and 2006 with four hundred thirty percent converting to nonviolent political actions like the Irish Republican Army. Only seven percent were defeated by military force while forty percent ended through routine policing and ten percent succeeded in their aims. Audrey Cronin lists six primary ways that terrorist groups end including capture or killing of leaders entry into legitimate political processes achievement of group aims implosion loss of public support defeat through brute force and transition into other forms of violence. Sarah Sewall states U.S. forces must make securing civilians rather than destroying enemies their top priority because civilian deaths create extended families of enemies. Sometimes doing nothing is the best reaction according to the U.S. Army Counterinsurgency Field Manual introduction. Some security organizations designate violent non-state actors as threats requiring targeted laws criminal procedures deportations and enhanced police powers. Preemptive or reactive military action combined with increased intelligence surveillance activities form part of broader responses to terrorism globally.
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Common questions
When did the word terrorism emerge from the French Revolution?
The word terrorism emerged from the French Revolution of the late 1790s to describe the actions of the Jacobin Club during the Reign of Terror. Jacobin leader Maximilien Robespierre declared that terror was nothing other than justice, prompt and severe.
What is the United States Code definition of terrorism?
The United States Code defines terrorism as acts intended to intimidate civilians or influence government policy through coercion. No universal legal definition exists today despite over one hundred different definitions proposed by scholars and governments.
Which organization initiated the Fenian dynamite campaign in 1881?
The Irish Republican Brotherhood founded in 1858 initiated the Fenian dynamite campaign in 1881 using timed explosives to sow fear within metropolitan Britain. This organization developed ideas such as targeted killing of leaders of oppression alongside early anarchist groups like Narodnaya Volya formed in Russia in 1878.
How many deaths resulted from non-state terrorism between 2000 and 2014 according to the Global Terrorism Database?
The Global Terrorism Database recorded more than sixty-one thousand incidents of non-state terrorism resulting in at least one hundred forty thousand deaths between 2000 and 2014. Religious extremism has overtaken national separatism as the main driver of terrorist attacks around the world since September 11.
Who stated that publicity is the oxygen of terrorism?
Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher famously called publicity the oxygen of terrorism connecting it closely to media exposure. Walter Laqueur wrote that terrorism was always to a large extent about public relations and propaganda with Propaganda by Deed serving as the slogan in the nineteenth century.