TERRORISM

The unlawful use of force or violence against persons or property in order to coerce or intimidate a government or the civilian population in furtherance of political or social objectives.

Since the september 11th attacks on the United States in 2001, which resulted in the destruction of the World Trade Center in New York City and severe damage to the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., the United States has changed its priorities to focus upon eradicating terrorism in the world. Terrorism involves the systematic use of terror or violence to achieve political goals. The targets of terrorism include government officials, identified individuals or groups, and innocent bystanders. In most cases terrorists seek to overthrow or destabilize an existing political regime, but totalitarian and dictatorial governments also use terror to maintain their power.

The Oklahoma City Bombing

In June 1997 the murder and conspiracy trial of Timothy J. McVeigh ended in the death sentence. The 29-year-old former Army sergeant was convicted of bombing the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995. The blast, which claimed 168 lives, was the worst terrorist act ever committed on U.S. soil. McVeigh pleaded not guilty, but the elaborate case mounted by federal prosecutors led to a swift jury verdict of guilty on all 11 counts.

After a nationwide manhunt, investigators from the federal bureau of investigation (FBI) had linked McVeigh to the blast using remnants of a Ryder rental truck believed to have carried the bomb. At trial, prosecutors established further ties: telephone records and testimony by the owner of the rental office suggested McVeigh had rented the truck under an alias in Junction City, Kansas, two days before the bombing. Residue from explosives had also been found on McVeigh's clothing.

Prosecutors portrayed McVeigh as an anti-government extremist. The defendant's sister, Jennifer McVeigh, told the court that he was angry over the government's destruction of the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, in April 1993, and that he had hinted at taking action. Personal correspondence was introduced as evidence in an effort to round out the portrait of McVeigh as a follower of far-right politics, who was disillusioned and willing to commit acts of terror. Key testimony came from Michael J. Fortier, an Army friend and co-conspirator who had surveyed the Federal Building with McVeigh, and his wife, Lori Fortier. The Fortiers said that McVeigh wanted the bombing to start a civil war.

Led by Oklahoma attorney Stephen Jones, the defense team was critical of every phase of the prosecution. Defense attorneys attacked the methodology of the FBI in preparing physical evidence as well as the government's witnesses. In particular, they charged that the Fortiers were liars who hoped to escape prison time and to profit financially from their testimony. Maintaining that McVeigh was railroaded, the defense pointed to the existence of a human leg found in the ruins of the building to suggest that the actual Oklahoma City bomber had died in the explosion.

After the jurors returned a guilty verdict on June 2, the trial moved into an unusual penalty phase. The defense, seeking leniency, made a lengthy presentation about the Waco siege, at which McVeigh had been present, in what seemed to observers an odd effort to explain his motives in Oklahoma City. It also called to the stand William McVeigh, who made an emotionally charged appeal for his son's life. But the statements of survivors who had lost family and friends in the Oklahoma massacre apparently swayed the jurors, who decided on execution.

further readings

Gottman, Andrew J. 1999. "Fair Notice, Even for Terrorists: Timothy McVeigh and a New Standard for the Ex Post Facto Clause." Washington and Lee Law Review 56 (spring).

Hoffman, David. 1998. The Oklahoma City Bombing and the Politics of Terror.Venice, Calif.: Feral House.

"Responding to Terrorism: Crime, Punishment, and War." 2002. Harvard Law Review 115 (February).

Rodgers, Jim, and Tim Kullman. 2002. Facing Terror: The Government's Response to Contemporary Extremists in America.Lanham, Md.: Univ. Press of America.

cross-references

Venue "Venue and the Oklahoma City Bombing Case" (Sidebar).

Domestic Terrorism

The attacks of September 11, 2001, constituted the most severe terrorist attacks ever committed

on U.S. soil. However, these were certainly not the first acts of terrorism carried out against the United States by foreign terrorists, nor were they the first attacks carried out against the World Trade Center. In February 1993, a bombing of the World Trade Center killed six people and injured more than a thousand others. The bomb left a crater 200 by 1,000 feet wide and five stories deep. The federal bureau of investigation (FBI) and the Joint Terrorist Task Force identified and helped bring to trial 22 Islamic fundamentalist conspirators. The trial revealed extensive plans for terrorist acts in the United States, including attacks on government facilities.

During the 1990s, the United States also became more concerned about domestic terrorist activities carried out by U.S. citizens without any foreign involvement. Beginning in 1978, an individual who came to be known as the Unabomber targeted university scientists, airline employees, and other persons he associated with a dehumanized, technology driven society. The suspect killed three people and injured 23 others with package bombs. At the Unabomber's insistence, major newspapers published his 35,000-word manifesto describing his anti-technology philosophy. In April 1996, a suspect, Theodore Kaczynski, was arrested for crimes associated with the Unabomber. After a rather bizarre trial, in 1998, Kaczynski pled guilty in exchange for a sentence of life without the possibility of parole.

However, it was the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, on April 19, 1995, that galvanized concerns about domestic terrorism. The bombing killed 168 people and injured more than 500 others. The FBI arrested Timothy J. McVeigh and Terry Nichols, who were charged with murder and conspiracy. McVeigh and Nichols were connected to the right-wing militia movement, which opposes the powers held by the federal government and believes in the right of its members to bear arms.

In June 1997, McVeigh was found guilty of murder and conspiracy, and sentenced to death. He attempted to appeal his conviction for three years, but gave up in late 2000. On June 11, 2001, McVeigh was executed by lethal injection. Nichols faced similar charges in his 1997 trial. He was acquitted on charges of first- and second-degree murder, but was found guilty of conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction and involuntary manslaughter. A federal judge sentenced Nichols to life in prison without the possibility of parole. However, at the state level, Nichols faced 161 counts of first-degree murder, which could result in the death penalty. The Oklahoma state trial was scheduled to begin in March 2004.

A year after the Oklahoma City bombing, a bomb erupted at Atlanta's Centennial Olympic Park during the celebration of the Olympic Games in July 1996. The bomb killed one woman and injured 111 others in what President bill clinton called an "evil act of terror." The initial investigation focused on Richard Jewell, a security guard at the park. At first Jewell was considered to be a hero when he alerted authorities to a knapsack containing a pipe bomb. Shortly thereafter, however, he was considered a prime suspect. After a later investigation cleared Jewell of wrongdoing, he sued a number of media outlets for defamation.

During the next seven years, the Atlanta bombings remained largely unresolved. On May 31, 2003, authorities arrested Eric Rudolph, who is considered the primary suspect. Authorities also suspect Rudolph of bombing abortion clinics in Atlanta and Birmingham, Alabama, as well as the bombing of a gay and lesbian nightclub in Atlanta.

Congress has responded to the threat of domestic terrorism with the enactment of several laws. In 1996, Congress passed the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, Pub. L. No. 104-132, 110 Stat. 1214. The law allocated $1 billion to fund federal programs to combat terrorism. The act also established a federal death penalty for terrorist murders and strengthened penalties for crimes committed against federal employees while performing their official duties. In addition, the act increased the penalties for conspiracies involving explosives and for the possession of nuclear materials, criminalized the use of chemical weapons, and required plastic explosives to contain "tagging" elements in the explosive materials for detection and identification purposes.

Following the attacks of September 11, Congress, at the urging of President george w. bush, moved swiftly to enact the Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act (usa patriot) Act of 2001, Pub. L. No. 107-56, 115 Stat. 272. The act seeks to enhance domestic security against terrorism by setting up a Counterterrorism Fund in the U.S. Treasury, and appropriating money for combating terrorism to the FBI's Technical Support Center. It also increases the president's authority to seize the property of foreign persons, organizations, or countries that the president determines have planned, authorized, aided, or engaged in hostilities or attacks against the United States. Other provisions of the act focus on enhancing surveillance procedures used by federal law enforcement personnel, and attempts to control money laundering, which is believed to be a major source of income for terrorist organizations.

One year later, Congress enacted the Homeland Security Act of 2002, Pub. L. No. 107-296, 116 Stat. 2135. The act formally endorsed the establishment of the homeland security department, which had been created through executive order by President Bush in 2001. The Homeland Security Act reorganized several federal agencies to fall under the authority of the Homeland Security Department in an effort to coordinate the government's efforts. The American public has become familiar with the new department because of the color-coded Homeland Security Advisory System, which indicates the likely threat of terrorist attacks against the United States. The two lowest levels are low (coded in green) and guarded (coded in blue). The other three levels include elevated (yellow), high (orange), and severe (red). Throughout much of 2003, the level was set at elevated or high due to a number of threats identified by department officials.

International Terrorism

The September 11 attacks have been viewed as a continuation of a series of deadly terrorist activities that had taken place overseas. In the late twentieth century, terrorism became a tool of political groups in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. The growth of international terrorism led to kidnappings, hijacking of airplanes, bombing of airplanes and buildings, and armed attacks on government and public facilities. In the 1980s, several countries, including Libya, Iran, and Iraq, were identified as supporting international terrorism by providing training, weapons, and safe havens.

Interests of the United States overseas were major targets of terrorism. In November 1979, a group of Islamic students overran the U.S. embassy in Iran and took many hostages. Although some of the hostages were later freed, the Iranians detained 52 American hostages for a period of 444 days until they were released in January 1981, just after the swearing-in of Presidentronald reagan. In 1983, a 12,000-pound truck bomb exploded in a U.S. compound in Beirut, Lebanon, killing 241 American soldiers.

By the 1990s, the terrorist organization al Qaeda (Arabic for "the Base"), led by Saudi dissident Osama Bin Laden, developed as the primary culprit in terrorist attacks on U.S. interests at home and abroad. Al Qaeda is believed to be responsible for the 1993 attacks on the World Trade Center and, later, the September 11 attacks. On August 7, 1998, truck bombs exploded nearly simultaneously at the U.S. embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya. The blasts killed 224 people, including 12 Americans, and injured another 4,600. Four members of al Qaeda were later convicted for their part in the bombings. In October 2000, an al Qaeda operative conducted a suicide attack on the U.S.S. Cole, resulting in the deaths of 17 sailors and injuries to over 30 others.

The activities of Bin Laden and al Qaeda were well known prior to the September 11 attacks. Bin Laden had issued a religious edict, known as a fatwah, calling for attacks on U.S. troops and civilians.

Although many members of al Qaeda are Middle-Eastern, U.S. officials, in 2001, captured John Philip Walker Lindh, a U.S. citizen who had trained with terrorist organizations in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Lindh fought for the Taliban government of Afghanistan even after the September 11 attacks. Lindh, who became known as the "American Taliban," was indicted on ten counts, including conspiracy to murder U.S. nationals. He reached a plea bargain with federal prosecutors and pleaded guilty to supplying services to the Taliban. In October 2000, he was sentenced to 20 years in prison.

The United States has responded to international terrorist organizations and the nations that support them through a variety of military actions. In March 1986, President Reagan ordered the military to conduct a strike on Libya, which was believed to have been responsible for the bombing of a nightclub in Germany as well as other terrorist acts. After the embassy bombings in Tanzania and Kenya in 1998, President Clinton ordered strikes on al Qaeda military camps in Afghanistan. However, these attacks appeared to have little effect upon the terrorist activities of the organizations that perpetrated the violent acts.

Following the September 11 attacks, the United States changed its strategy regarding terrorists significantly. President Bush announced that the United States would consider nations that harbor terrorists as equally responsible for terrorist activities. In the latter part of 2001, the United States led an international coalition that removed the Taliban regime from power in Afghanistan. In March 2003, the United States led another coalition in an attack on Iraq, which the Bush administrated asserted had supported terrorist organizations such as al Qaeda. Within weeks, Iraq's leader, Saddam Hussein, was removed from power.

The attacks on Iraq did not receive support from a number of nations, including traditional U.S. allies Germany and France. Moreover, the removal of the regimes in Afghanistan and Iraq did not appear to end the threat of terrorism in the Middle East or elsewhere. In May 2003, shortly after the United States declared that the active phases of its armed military operations in Iraq had concluded, terrorists bombed residential compounds in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, killing at least 34 people, including nine Americans. Four days after the Saudi Arabia attacks, bombs erupted in Casablanca, Morocco, killing 43 people. Authorities suspect that al Qaeda operatives were responsible.

further readings

Abrams, Norman. 2003. Anti-terrorism and Criminal Enforcement. St. Paul, Minn.: West.

Alexander, Yonah, and Edgar H. Brenner, eds. 2001. Terrorism and the Law. Ardsley, N.Y.: Transnational Publishers.

"Backgrounder: Terrorism." 2003. Federal Emergency Management Agency. Available online at <www.fema.gov/hazards/terrorism/terror.shtm> (accessed November 21, 2003).

"Domestic Terrorism."1997. Close Up Foundation. Available online at <www.closeup.org/terror.htm> (accessed November 21, 2003).

Noone, Michael F., and Yonah Alexander. 1997. Cases and Materials on Terrorism: Three Nations' Response. Boston: Kluwer Law International.

Piszkiewicz, Dennis. 2003. Terrorism's War with America: A History. Westport, Conn.: Praeger.

Shanty, Frank, and Raymond Picquet, eds. 2003. Encyclopedia of World Terrorism. Armonk, N.Y.: Sharpe Reference.

cross-references

War on Terrorism.

Terrorism

Terrorism, as defined by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), is "the unlawful use of force or violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives."

The destruction inherent in any act of mass terrorism inevitably causes secondary environmental pollution effects, many of them serious. Acts of terrorism can also be directed against the environment itself, or specific natural resources such as freshwater, oil, or agricultural products.

Terrorist Attack on the World Trade Center

The secondary environmental effects of terrorism can often be as significant as its primary effects. The attack on the World Trade Center (WTC) in New York City on September 11, 2001, had negative health consequences beyond the staggering loss of life. The collapse of the structures and subsequent fires spewed an enormous cloud of dust and toxins into the air over the city. Pulverized concrete, building materials, heavy metals, and human remains were inhaled by residents and rescue workers in lower Manhattan until a heavy rain three days later washed away most of the dust.

The immediate environmental fallout from the WTC collapse contained asbestos and fibrous glass from the building structure; mercury, dioxins, furans, and other cancer-causing toxins from the burning of fluorescent light bulbs and computer screens; heavy metals such as cadmium and lead and volatile organic compounds like benzene. Federal, state, and local agencies went right to work monitoring air quality and cleaning up dust and debris from the WTC collapse, but these actions themselves have serious environmental consequences. One in four cleanup workers at Ground Zero reportedly
suffer from asthma and respiratory illness brought about by dust inhaled at the site. Some airborne pollutants and dust were resuspended as a result of ongoing cleanup efforts.

The secondary pollution concerns include possible contamination of waterways around lower Manhattan as well as the challenge of where to dispose of the catastrophe's 1.2 million tons of waste. Fresh Kills landfill on Staten Island has been accepting WTC debris, some containing asbestos and other toxic materials, despite being slated to close December 31, 2001. Since Fresh Kills was not designed to accept hazardous waste, there is concern about whether or not contaminants could leach from the landfill into surrounding groundwater.

With the passage of time, and through the cleansing effect of rainfall and the specialized cleanup efforts of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), air quality in lower Manhattan has now returned roughly to pre-9/11 levels. However, despite reassurances from the EPA and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), residents of lower Manhattan worry about the long-term health effects of dust and particulates deposited on rooftops and windowsills, and in the ventilation systems of nearby buildings. Only now are the long-term effects of exposure to Ground Zero being studied.

Renewed Efforts to Protect Environmental Infrastructure

After the attacks of September 11, 2001, federal and state authorities began to wonder what else might offer a tempting target for terror attacks. New York City and other large cities immediately took steps to protect their water systems by guarding the infrastructure and testing the water for known contaminants. In 2002 President George W. Bush's administration passed the Public Health and Bioterrorism Preparedness and Response Act, which required, among other actions, that all water utilities across the country conduct security assessments to gauge possible vulnerability and take steps to protect their water.

Bioterrorism

The environment can also be a conduit for terrorism. Biological elements such as disease-causing bacteria and viruses can become potent weapons when taken out of their natural environment. Shortly after the attack on the WTC, several pieces of mail in and around Florida, Washington, D.C., and New York City tested positive for the biocontaminant anthrax. Anthrax is a bacterium that, in its most potent inhaled form, has a fatality rate of over 90 percent. Over ten thousand people may have been exposed, and five people died of inhalational anthrax before the contaminated mail was quarantined. The FBI and the Postal Service have offered a $2.5 million reward for information leading to those responsible, and medical researchers have been working on a cure. Authorities have not yet determined if the anthrax-contaminated mail is connected to al-Qaeda and the events of September 11, but the combined effect of these two attacks occurring in close proximity served to heighten the perception that America is under siege.

Nuclear Terrorism

Biocontamination is not the only threat to safety in the United States. One of the most frightening terror scenarios that government officials must consider is the possibility of a nuclear device, or "dirty bomb," being detonated in a U.S. city. Quite separate from the direct human health consequences, the environmental effects of even a low-yield (five kiloton) nuclear weapon are severe: The shock wave will disperse radioactive fallout over a wide area, poisoning wildlife and groundwater. The heat (thermal radiation) will destroy plants and trees. And although the global nuclear winter theory (cooling of the earth's surface due to airborne fallout, thus blocking sunlight) has largely been discredited, this phenomenon can have devastating effects on local agriculture and ecosystems.

Relationship between Resource Competition and Terrorism

The United States is often a target of asymmetrical warfare , such as terrorism, because of its military superiority and worldwide economic interests. Many scholars studying peace have reasoned that, in order to defeat terrorism, we must remedy the conditions that give rise to it.

One of the most pressing American national security interests is ensuring continued global access to natural commodities such as oil, minerals, and timber. However, the United States already consumes approximately 30 percent of all raw materials consumed by humans in a given year and is perceived as a nation that seeks more than its fair share of the world's resources. One concern is that as the world population grows and resources are stretched to cover its needs, supplies will fall and prices will rise, making necessary commodities available only to wealthy countries or the upper class within a country. This means that the rich would get richer and the poor poorer, and such inequity of supply and distribution might give rise to unilateral actions on the part of those who feel they are on the losing end of this globalization gap.

To reduce this potential for conflict, developed societies are being encouraged to recognize that global resource consumption and international security are connected, and that obtaining resources cooperatively rather than competitively will enhance long-term security. International agencies can help to ensure the equitable distribution of critical resources both between and within countries. In addition, nations can contribute their relative expertise to finding new sources of natural resources, to developing substitutes for commodities such as oil and natural gas, and to enhancing conservation and efficiency technology to certify that existing resources are used to their maximum benefit. If poorer citizens can be assured they have access to the resources needed to live, they are less likely to adopt combative ideologies that lead to terrorism.

see also Ecoterrorism; War.

Bibliography

gugliotta, guy, and matsumoto, gary. (2002). "fbi's theory on anthrax is doubted." washington post, october 28, 2002, a1.

hawley, t.m. (1992). against the fires of hell: the environmental disaster of the gulf war. new york: harcourt brace jovanovich.

klare, michael t. (2001). resource wars: the new landscape of global conflict. new york: henry holt.

makhijani, arjun; hu, howard; and yih, katherine, eds. (2000). nuclear wastelands: a global guide to nuclear weapons production and its health and environmental effects. special commission of international physicians for the prevention of nuclear war and the institute for energy and environmental research. cambridge, ma: mit press.

nordgren, megan d.; goldstein, eric a.; and izeman, mark a. (2002). the environmental impacts of the world trade center attacks: a preliminary assessment. new york: natural resources defense council.

internet resources

federation of american scientists. (2002). "special weapons primer: biological warfare agents." available from http://www.fas.org/nuke.

new york state department of environmental protection. (2001). "statement on water supply security." available from http://www.nyc.gov/html.

u.s. environmental protection agency web site. further information on the environmental and human health effects of 9/11 available from http://www.epa.gov/wtc.

Elizabeth L. Chalecki

ENVIRONMENTAL CONSEQUENCES OF THE GULF WAR

Although there is some debate among scholars about the difference between war and terrorism, the retreating Iraqi army committed two particularly wanton acts of environmental destruction during the 1991 Persian Gulf War. First, they released six million barrels of oil from the Kuwaiti Sea Island offshore loading terminal, and scuttled five fully loaded oil tankers at the Mina Ahmadi terminal. They also set fire to 732 oil wells across Kuwait. These burned for months before they were extinguished. The combined oil pollution output from these acts totaled 1.5 billion barrels, or 6,000 times the amount spilled from the Exxon Valdez.

The environmental effects of these acts were clearly immense. A plume of soot and oil droplets spread over 1.3 million square miles, contaminating the air with pollutants such as nitrous oxides, sulfur dioxide, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, and vast amounts of CO2. The oil lakes on land have contaminated the fragile desert ecosystem, virtually guaranteeing that it will not regenerate for decades. The oil in the Gulf itself destroyed mangrove thickets, fish, shrimp, marine mammals, and sea birds. Ten years after the war, this region is still environmentally degraded.

Terrorism

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The study of terrorism is complicated by the fact that terrorism is a political rather than an analytical concept. The concept is closely related to major power conflicts, such as the cold war, nationalist conflicts, and—most recently—religious-political polarization; and its political use and academic definitions have changed accordingly. As a result, scholars of terrorism have not only looked at terrorism as a particular kind of political violence, such as assassinations, hijackings, or—most recently—suicide bombings, but have also been sensitive to the discursive use and impact of the term terrorism. What both lines of study have in common, however, is the notion that terror-ism—both as a practice and a discourse—is meant to terrify. Both the perpetrators of terrorist violence and those who have the power to name a particular kind of violence as terrorism do so to create fear. The study of terrorism has therefore not only focused on those branded as terrorists but also on those who do the naming, such as the media, policymakers, and academics, as well as on how the term terrorism is itself a highly contested label.

Precisely because terrorism is a political term, there is little consensus on how to define the phenomenon. According to an often-used definition, terrorism resembles guerrilla warfare to some extent while being distinctively different from it in others. Both are unconventional forms of warfare in which the state is attacked by groups of combatants lacking a fully armed military apparatus in order to bring about political change. However, whereas guerrilla fighters primarily target military objects, terrorists also attack “soft” civilian targets in order to paralyze society. According to this definition, the Oklahoma City bombing by Timothy McVeigh in 1995 is terrorist, whereas the suicide attack by Shi’a combatants on American and French U.N. troops in Beirut, Lebanon, in 1983, killing 241 marines, is an act of guerrilla warfare. Similarly, the Viet Cong fighting the U.S. army in Vietnam or the Algerian Front de Libération Nationale fighting the French colonial army in the 1950s were guerrilla fighters, whereas the Irish IRA, the Basque ETA, or the West German Red Army Faction also attacked civilians and are therefore defined as terrorist.

Scholars who have focused on the perpetrators of “terrorist” violence have used various perspectives. Richard Rubenstein (1987), among others, analyzes terrorism as a political strategy with a particular genealogy rooted in the French Revolution’s regime de la terreur and nineteenth-century anarchism. Maximilien Robespierre and Louis Antoine Saint-Just as well as Sergej Nechaev and Michael Bakunin thus appear as the ideologues of terrorism. The thinking of the latter as to how to fight the all-powerful modern state, including the notion of the revolutionary vanguard, the provocation of the state, and the revolutionary moment, has subsequently influenced nationalist militants and left-wing revolutionaries of the twentieth century.

Another line of study has considered terrorism in relation to utopian belief systems and political eschatology. Rather than a strategy, terrorism is seen as a testimony, an act of faith, and the outcome of radical collective fantasies about ideological, ethnic, or religious purity. These studies focus on processes of radical “othering” and satanization, the political use of traditions of martyrdom and sacrifice, and the “mytho-logics” of political violence. Specific attention is given to the symbolism of the time and space of terrorism, such as the symbolism of particular days, buildings, or public spaces.

Partly in response to this, others have argued that while terrorism is usually informed by strong convictions, it should also be understood in terms of ulterior motives such as status, glamour, friendship, and money. Martha Crenshaw (1988) argues that terrorist groups can be analyzed as communities accommodating a variety of individual needs, such as the needs for recognition, excitement, and material benefits. The militant group is as much driven by the need to maintain itself as by its ideological objectives. These observations are used to argue that those militant groups whose existence is threatened by internal friction or outside aggression are usually the most violent. Others examine individual motives for joining a militant organization. Joseba Zulaika (1988) in a study on the ETA describes militant groups as the continuation of friendship in already existing peer groups. In a similar vein, recent terrorism has been explained as an attempt by religiously inspired militants to overcome existential anxieties caused by alienation, humiliation, and marginalization.

A growing body of work concerned with aspects of terrorism is the study of state terror. Michael Taussig (1984) has used the term cultures of terror to denote societies that are under constant threat of state violence and intimidation. This line of work focuses on the systematic use of torture and death squads, rumors, secret intelligence, and other forms of intimidation by state institutions, as well as on individual and collective coping strategies used by the victims of state terror. State terrorism can also include the deployment of terrorist actions by one state against another state, as shown, for example, by Libya’s involvement in the explosion of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988. In terms of numbers of victims, state terror is a much more serious problem than the terrorism of revolutionary or religiously inspired militants.

The study of terrorism-related discourse focuses on the use of the terrorism concept in the media, by policy makers, and by “terrorists” themselves. Studies on the “symbiotic relationship” between terrorists, the media, and state propaganda portray terrorist violence as “spectacle,” as “theater” and “performative,” or as “ritual.” Without denying the reality of death and destruction, these studies focus on how the media frames terrorism in terms of Good and Evil, leaving little room for anything other than one-dimensional conceptions of terrorism and counterterrorism. The way terrorism was reported on during the cold war, for example, created a fear of totalitarianism and of incomprehensible technology. More recently, and especially since the attacks of September 11, 2001, terrorism discourse resonates with the fear of religious fanaticism. Most of these studies also trace the complex relations between the media and state policy. Governments often brand their enemies as “terrorist” in order to legitimize an excessive use of force and the violation of human rights. At the same time, the perpetrators of “terrorist” violence themselves evoke collective fears and fantasies associated with terrorism in an effort to become “larger than life.”

Following the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the study of terrorism has changed significantly, not only in quantitative terms, but also substantively. Book titles like Terror in the Mind of God (Juergensmeyer 2000) and Terror in the Name of God (Stern 2003) indicate an increased interest in the relationship between terrorism and religion. Studies of religious militancy largely fall into one of three categories. A culturalist approach tries to explain recent Islamist militancy in terms of long-standing traditions of violence and intolerance in Islam. A more empirical approach examines religious extremism per se, comparing Islamist militants with, for instance, American antiabortionists and Zionist extremists. Rather than being rooted in age-old and supposedly unchanging traditions, recent religious militancy is said to draw inspiration from renewed and redefined notions of purity and holy war, fostered by anxieties and inequalities caused by globalization and political or social marginalization. A historical approach examines religious radicalism as political ideology and religious militant groups as political organizations. Such studies analyze the rise of Islamic radicalism, the history of Al-Qaeda, or the life of bin Laden against the backdrop of geopolitical developments in the Middle East and Asia since the 1980s. Gilles Kepel (2002), for instance, explains the “9–11” attacks by Al-Qaeda as a sign of disillusion and an attempt to reverse a process of decline after various failed attempts to retain political power for the Islamist ideology.

Post-“9–11” studies of terrorism not only center on religion, but also focus on the sites, the organization, and the methods of modern terrorism. Today’s terrorism is often transnational in scope, objective, and organization, and transcends the boundaries of the nation-state. Stephen Graham (2004) studies modern terrorism explicitly as an urban phenomenon, exploring the ways in which terrorism and counterterrorism are shaped by, and transform, the public life of global cities. As for the study of terrorist organizations, the emphasis has shifted from cell-structured and network organizations to the “rhi-zomatic” character of transnational terrorism. Some of the best-known terrorist phenomena like Al-Qaeda are franchises, allowing loosely connected “freelancers” to operate in their name, as much as they are organizations or networks. Finally, Walter Laqueur (1999), among others, in a book predating “9–11,” explores the ways in which terrorist methods may evolve from the traditional methods of assassinations and hijacking to new forms of chemical, biological, nuclear, and cyber terrorism.

SEE ALSO Fundamentalism, Islamic; Guerrilla Warfare; Revolution; Terrorists; Violence; Violence, Frantz Fanon on; War

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Crenshaw, Martha. 1988. Theories of Terrorism: Instrumental and Organizational Approaches. In Inside Terrorist Organizations, ed. David C. Rapoport, 13–31. London: Frank Cass.

Feldman, Allen. 2002. Ground Zero Point One: On the Cinematics of History. Social Analysis 46 (1): 110–117.

Graham, Stephen. 2004. Cities, War, and Terrorism: Towards an Urban Geopolitics. Malden, MA: Blackwell.

Juergensmeyer, Mark. 2000. Terror in the Mind of God: The Global Rise of Religious Violence. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Kepel, Gilles. 2002. Jihad: The Trail of Political Islam. London: Tauris.

Laqueur, Walter. 1999. The New Terrorism: Fanaticism and the Arms of Mass Destruction. New York: Oxford University Press.

Rubenstein, Richard E. 1987. Alchemists of Revolution: Terrorism in the Modern World. London: Tauris.

Stern, Jessica. 2003. Terror in the Name of God: Why Religious Militants Kill. New York: HarperCollins.

Taussig, Michael. 1984. Culture of Terror, Space of Death: Roger Casement’s Putumayo Report and the Explanation of Torture. Comparative Studies in Society and History 26 (3): 467–497.

Zulaika, Joseba. 1988. Basque Violence: Metaphor and Sacrament. Reno: University of Nevada Press.

Oskar Verkaaik

TERRORISM

TERRORISM is a political tactic that uses threat or violence, usually against civilians, to frighten a target group into conceding to certain political demands.

The term "terrorism" was first used to describe the state terrorism practiced by the French revolutionaries of 1789–1795. Through kangaroo courts, executions by guillotine, and violent repression of political opponents, the revolutionaries tried to frighten the population into submission. Two great terrorist states of the twentieth century, Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia, also practiced the threat and use of violence to keep their own citizens in line.

In the nineteenth century, terrorist tactics were adopted by individuals and groups that used assassinations, bombings, and kidnappings to undermine popular support for what the terrorists saw as unjust policies or tyrannical governments. Terrorist acts were first committed on a wide scale in the United States during the latter part of the nineteenth century. On 4 May 1886, an anarchist bomb killed eight policemen during a demonstration in Chicago's Haymarket Square, and on 16 September 1920, an anarchist bomb hidden in a wagon on Wall Street killed thirty people and seriously injured more than two hundred.

Although anarchist violence received the most newspaper coverage during this period, the white supremacist Ku Klux Klan (KKK) was the most important terrorist group in the United States from 1850 to the 1960s. The KKK used marches, beatings, and lynchings to intimidate

African Americans who wished to vote or otherwise participate in the political process.

Beginning in the late 1960s, extreme-left groups like the Weathermen engaged in kidnapping and bombings to protest the Vietnam War, while groups like the Symbionese Liberation Army engaged in armed actions against civilians or the police, hoping thereby to provoke a "people's revolution." These groups disappeared in the 1970s and 1980s only to be replaced by extreme-right terrorist organizations.

On 19 April 1995 a truck bomb exploded outside the Alfred P. Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City, destroying the building and killing 168 people. An act of domestic terrorism, the Oklahoma City Bombing was the worst terrorist attack in U.S. history at the time. Testifying before the U.S. Senate in 1998, FBI Director Louis J. Freeh stated that, "The current domestic terrorist threat primarily comes from right-wing extremist groups, including radical paramilitary [militia] groups, Puerto Rican terrorist groups, and special interest groups."

The period after 1960 saw the rise of international terrorist attacks on Americans in the Middle East and in Latin America. The most dramatic instance of terrorism during this period was the 4 November 1979 attack by

Iranian students on the United States Embassy in Teheran, when sixty-six diplomats were held hostage until their release on 20 January 1981. According to the U.S. State Department, seventy-seven U.S. citizens were killed and 651 injured in international terrorist attacks between 1995 and 2000.

By the mid-1970s, international terrorists began to carry out operations on American soil. On 24 January 1975, the Puerto Rican Armed National Liberation Front killed four people when bombs exploded at the Fraunces Tavern in New York City. Eleven months later, on 29 December 1975, a bomb exploded in the TWA terminal at La Guardia Airport, killing eleven. No group ever claimed responsibility. The next major incident occurred on 26 February 1993, when a truck bomb exploded in the basement of New York's World Trade Center, killing six and wounding thousands. At his 1997trial, bombing mastermind Ramzi Yousef stated, "I support terrorism so long as it was against the United States government and against Israel."

On 11 September 2001, in the most murderous terrorist attack American history had yet witnessed, almost three thousand people were killed. Nineteen Middle Eastern terrorists hijacked four airplanes; one crashed into the Pentagon, two destroyed the twin towers of New York City's World Trade Center, and one, possibly headed for the White House, crashed in a wooded area of Pennsylvania. Although the hijackers left no message, they were clearly motivated by hatred of the United States and by a desire to force a change in American policy in the Middle East.

The enormity of the attack pushed terrorism to the top of the American political agenda, with President George W. Bush declaring "war on terror" in his 20 September 2001 address to a joint session of Congress. President Bush predicted that this new war could last for years or even decades. The World Trade Center attack also led to a major change in the way the United States deals with terrorism. Before 11 September 2001, the United States followed a police-justice model whereby police and intelligence agencies identified and apprehended terrorists and then turned them over to the justice system. After those attacks, however, the Bush Administration adopted a preemptive-war model, whereby the United States intends to strike at individual terrorists or terrorist groups anywhere in the world and has threatened to use all means necessary, from special forces to massive military force, to attack what it identifies as "terrorist states" that support international terrorism.

The adoption of this model led President Bush in his 29 January 2002 State of the Union address to talk about Iran, Iraq, and North Korea together as an "axis of evil" and to threaten military action against Iraq. This statement led to much uneasiness among allies of the United States, who feared that the administration's war on terrorism signaled a move toward unilateralism in U.S. foreign policy and the destabilization of international relations.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Harmon, Christopher. Terrorism Today. Portland, Ore.: Frank Cass, 2000.

Laqueur, Walter. The New Terrorism: Fanaticism and the Arms of Mass Destruction. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.

Wilkinson, Paul, Terrorism and the Liberal State. New York: New York University Press, 1986.

Harvey G.Simmons

See also9/11 Attack andvol. 9:George W. Bush, Address to a Joint Session of Congress and the American People (As Delivered Before Congress), 20 September 2001 .

Terrorism

Terrorism refers to the illegitimate use of violence or intimidation to advance a group's interests. Examples include detonating explosives in public places, taking hostages, or assassinating politicians. Central to the concept of terrorism is that its objective is primarily ideological. Terrorists typically do not employ violence to gain wealth but rather to bring attention to political causes.

Because the term terrorism hinges on a distinction between legitimate and illegitimate use of violence, controversy often accompanies its use. For example, governments routinely use force to advance their interests, but do not characterize their actions as instances of terrorism. The bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Building in Oklahoma City is readily identified as a terrorist act because it was undertaken by a very small group of individuals and not an entire government. Yet much more violent attacks directed against large cities during World War II are not characterized as acts of terrorism. Within a single conflict use of the term "terrorist" in news reports can reveal the political sympathies of the broadcaster or the government that released information about the attack. For example, in the American press violent events undertaken by Palestinians are far more likely to be characterized as acts of terrorism than equally or more violent actions taken by the Israeli military. This political component became very clear in the United States during the Reagan administration, which aided the Contra rebels who were waging a campaign of violence against the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. Officials in the American government characterized the Contras as "freedom fighters" while supporters of the Sandinistas portrayed them as terrorists.

The use of violence by small groups to advance their interests is not a twenty-first-century development. The term terrorism first appeared during the French Revolution and the Jacobin Reign of Terror. Similarly, many other words associated with terrorism (i.e., thug, assassin, and zealot ) derive from groups alleged to have used violence and death to advance their political objectives.

Historically terrorism is thought to have passed through several distinct stages, from its origin among religious groups fighting to defend or advance their organization's beliefs, to secular groups, whose objectives were clearly political. Traced by some historians to the French Revolution, this process of the secularization of terrorism continued throughout the twentieth century. Modern technology's ability to expand the audience for violent actions is thought by some analysts to have fueled terrorism's appeal, making nations with a free press particularly susceptible to the quest for media coverage. Twentieth- and twenty-first-century accounts of terrorism argue that it may have moved into a new period, as new technology allows small groups of individuals the ability to wield tremendous destructive power, and permits even faster coverage of that destruction to a wide audience, as evidenced by the terrorist attacks in the United States on September 11, 2001. Experts warn that such attacks are not limited to religiously motivated groups but can also include assaults stemming from personal grudges or psychopathological conditions.

In contrast to individual acts of violence, the use of terrorism by small political organizations is thought to serve several functions: (1) It makes the group committing the terrorist act appear large and powerful, thus intimidating outsiders and boosting morale of the terrorist group's members; (2) it reveals the vulnerability of the target, whose apparent strength is thereby placed in doubt and whose authority may become undermined; (3) it can eliminate opposition; (4) it may start a chain reaction of assaults undertaken by sympathetic political groups; and (5) it cements the terrorists to the organization because individuals who commit acts of terror cannot leave the organization very easily.

The impact of media coverage of terrorist acts is mixed. On the one hand, most Americans greatly overestimate the threat of terrorism, probably due to media coverage of the subject. In fact, the chances of being killed in an automobile accident are more than one hundred times higher than the chance of being killed by a terrorist action while overseas. On the other hand, sustained terrorist attacks can produce a backlash against the perpetrator's cause, as occurred in 1999 when bombings of Moscow apartment buildings increased the hostility of Russian citizens toward Chechens, who were thought to be responsible for the blasts.

Attempts to combat terrorism include use of metal detectors and dogs at locales thought to be likely targets for attack. While these methods are effective at reducing the frequency of terrorist acts, it appears impossible to protect targets completely against determined terrorists. Ironically, methods to offset terrorism exaggerate the public's perception of threat and thus advance one of terrorism's main objectives.

See also: Death Squads; Terrorist Attacks on America

Bibliography

Crenshaw, Martha. "The Logic of Terrorism." In Walter Reich ed., Origins of Terrorism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990.

Fleming, Dan B., and Arnold Schuetz. "Terrorism, Assassination, and Political Torture." In Daniel Leviton ed., Horrendous Death, Health, and Well-Being. New York: Hemisphere Publishing, 1991.

Laqueur, Walter. The New Terrorism: Fanaticism and the Arms of Mass Destruction. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.

Laqueur, Walter. Terrorism. Boston: Little, Brown, 1977.

Shurkin, Joel. "Modern Terrorists Are 'Anemic.'" Stanford Observer, 6 February 1988, 1ff.

Stern, Jessica. The Ultimate Terrorists. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999.

Stohl, Michael. The Politics of Terrorism. New York: Marcel Dekker, 1983.

JONATHAN F. LEWIS

TERRORISM

Clandestine Warfare

Terrorism, which became a major international issue in the 1970s, refers to acts or threats of violence intended to intimidate political opponents or to publicize grievances. Modern terrorists use murder, bombing, airplane hijacking, kidnapping of hostages, and assassination to force the media, public opinion, and governments to address their demands. Groups most often accused of clandestine warfare or terrorism in the 1970s included the Irish Republican Army's Provisional Wing (IRA Provos), the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), the Red Brigades in Italy, and the Baader-Meinhof gang in Germany.

Black September

The most notorious terrorist action of the decade was when Black September, a PLO terrorist group, killed Israeli Olympic athletes in Munich in September 1972. Despite this widely condemned act, by 1974 the United Nations and several Arab states recognized the PLO as the government of the Palestinian people.

Amin

In 1977 Ugandan dictator Idi Amin held hostage two hundred Americans living in his country, leading President Carter to plan a military invasion. Amin was persuaded to release the hostages. Terrorism came to the United States two weeks later. A small group of Hanafi Muslims held 130 people at gunpoint in three Washington, D.C., buildings. Federal officials ended the siege peacefully in three days.

Skyjacking

Commercial flights were often subject to skyjackings by terrorists, and metal detectors and other security measures became common in American airports after a group of Black Panthers seized a plane in Florida in July 1972 and took it to Algeria with $1 million in ransom. The kidnapping of Patty Hearst in California in 1974 by the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA), an American terrorist gang, proved that this revolutionary and/or criminal tactic was not only a problem abroad.

Student Violence

As early as 1969 President Nixon had focused attention on domestic disorder, urban riots and campus unrest, directing Attorney General John Mitchell and Federal Bureau of Investigation Director J. Edgar Hoover to wage counterintelligence campaigns against radicals and domestic terrorists such as the Weathermen and the Black Panther Party. Although student radicalism was overestimated as a public-safety threat, the expanding war in Vietnam; the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert Kennedy; and the televised violence between Chicago police and three thousand demonstrators at the 1968 Chicago Democratic National Convention created public fear. Conservative Americans and the emerging neoconservative lobby demanded law-and-order measures to curb the militant student protesters who could infect young Americans with terrorism like that seen in Japan, Italy, France, Germany, Mexico, and South Korea.

The Chicago Seven

The 1969 federal trial of the Chicago Seven for conspiracy to incite a riot proved Nixon's determination to suppress the radical leaders of the antiwar movement. President Nixon said, "It is not too strong a statement to declare that this is the way civilizations begin to die." The absurd nature of the trial aroused much sympathy for the defendants, especially when two Black Panther leaders, Fred Hampton and Mark Clark, were killed by the Chicago police while sleeping. On 20 February 1970 Tom Hayden, one of the defendants in the Chicago trial, was sentenced to five years in prison for his role in the demonstrations, precipitating campus marches and riots across the country, but ultimately the Chicago Seven were effectively acquitted of all charges.

Kent State

Nixon's invasion of Cambodia in May 1970 led to more demonstrations at one-third of the nation's colleges, from Yale to Stanford. The overreaction of state and federal government to college students' protests became clear on 4 May 1970, when the Ohio National Guard killed four peaceful Kent State University students at a campus protest rally, and a similar incident occurred eleven days later in Mississippi at Jackson State University. These tragedies coincided with the collapse of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and the formation of a splinter group of terrorist guerrillas, the Weathermen. Taking their name from a line in a Bob Dylan song, the Weathermen used the paramilitary tactics of Che Guevara to effect more than 250 bombings and to resist what they saw as government oppression.

Wiretaps

By 1970 many New Left groups were infiltrated by the FBI and other law enforcement agencies, who collected information, planted rumors, stole mail, and even incited illegal actions for which the militants could be arrested. When The New York Times reported the Cambodian bombing, Nixon and his national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, ordered the FBI to wiretap the telephones of White House staff members and journalists suspected of leaking information to aid the militant protesters.

Iranian Hostages

More-serious terrorist activities faced the United States in 1979 when the shah of Iran's government was overthrown by Iranian revolutionaries led by the Ayatollah Ruholla Khomeini. President Carter was faced with the kidnapping and torture of fifty-two American citizens in Tehran for more than a year. Carter refused Khomeini's demands that the United States return the shah for trial and that the United States apologize for aiding the shah's regime. This terrorist crisis contributed to Carter's defeat in the 1980 election by Ronald Reagan and was only resolved when Carter left office.

terrorism the threat or use of violence, often against the civilian population, to achieve political or social ends, to intimidate opponents, or to publicize grievances. The term dates from the Reign of Terror (1793–94) in the French Revolution but has taken on additional meaning in the 20th cent. Terrorism involves activities such as assassinations, bombings, random killings, and hijackings. Used for political, not military, purposes, and most typically by groups too weak to mount open assaults, it is a modern tool of the alienated, and its psychological impact on the public has increased because of extensive coverage by the media. Political terrorism also may be part of a government campaign to eliminate the opposition, as under Hitler , Mussolini , Stalin , and others, or may be part of a revolutionary effort to overthrow a regime. Terrorist attacks also are now a common tactic in guerrilla warfare . Governments find attacks by terrorist groups difficult to prevent; international agreements to tighten borders or return terrorists for trial may offer some deterrence.

Terrorism reaches back to ancient Greece and has occurred throughout history. Terrorism by radicals (of both the left and right) and by nationalists became widespread after World War II. Since the late 20th cent. acts of terrorism have been associated with the Italian Red Brigades, the Irish Republican Army , the Palestine Liberation Organization , Peru's Shining Path , Sri Lanka's Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, the Weathermen and some members of U.S. "militia" organizations, among many groups. Religiously inspired terrrorism has also occurred, such as that of extremist Christian opponents of abortion in the United States; of extremist Muslims associated with Hamas , Osama bin Laden 's Al Qaeda, and other organizations; of extremist Sikhs in India; and of Japan's Aum Shinrikyo, who released nerve gas in Tokyo's subway system (1995).

In 1999 the UN Security Council unanimously called for better international cooperation in fighting terrorism and asked governments not to aid terrorists. The Sept. 11, 2001, attacks by Al Qaeda on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon —the most devastating terrorist attacks in history—prompted calls by U.S. political leaders for a world "war on terrorism." Although the U.S. effort to destroy Al Qaeda and overthrow the Afghani government that hosted it was initially successful, terrorism is not a movement but a tactic used by a wide variety of groups, some of which are regarded (and supported) as "freedom fighters" in various countries or by various peoples. So-called state-sponsored terrorism, in which governments provide support or protection to terrorist groups that carry out proxy attacks against other countries, also complicates international efforts to end terror attacks, but financial sanctions have been placed by many countries on organizations that directly or indirectly support terrorists. The 2001 bioterror attacks in which anthrax spores were mailed to various U.S. media and government offices may not be linked to the events of September 11, but they raised specter of biological and chemical terrorism and revealed the difficulty of dealing with such attacks.

Bibliography: See B. Hoffman, Inside Terrorism (1998); M. Carr, The Infernal Machine: A History of Terrorism (2007); S. Nathanson, Terrorism and the Ethics of War (2010).

TERRORISM

A half-century of Russian history was bloodstained by revolutionary terrorism. Its first outburst was the abortive April 1866 assassination attempt against Tsar Alexander II by Dmitry Karakozov. From then on, extremists of different ideological persuasions, with varying degrees of success, resorted to acts of terror as part of their struggle against the contemporary sociopolitical order.

Terrorist activity had a particularly strong impact on the country's life during two distinct periods. The first was the so-called heroic period, between 1878 and 1881, when the Party of the People's Will (Narodnaya Volya )—the first modern terrorist organization in the world—dominated the radical camp. Its campaign against the autocracy culminated in the assassination of Alexander II on March 1, 1881. Alexander III's government succeeded in disintegrating the People's Will; yet, after a twenty-year period of relative and deceptive calm, a new wave of terrorism erupted during the reign of Russia's last tsar, Nicholas II (1894–1917). Its perpetrators were members of various newly formed left-wing organizations, who implicated themselves in terrorist acts even when their parties in theory rejected terrorism as a suitable tactic. As radical activity reached its peak during the 1905–1907 crisis, terrorism became an all-pervasive phenomenon, affecting not only the elite civil and military circles but every layer of society. During the first decade of the twentieth century, the terrorists were responsible for approximately 17,000 casualties throughout the empire. Their attacks were indiscriminate, directed at a broad category of alleged "watchdogs of the old regime" and "oppressors of the poor."

Although terrorism subsided by late 1907, largely as a result of severe repressive measures employed by Prime Minister Pyotr Stolypin, until the collapse of the imperial order in 1917 it remained a threatening weapon in the hands of extremists seeking the demise of the tsarist regime.

See also: nicholas ii; people's will the; red terror; zhelyabov, andrei ivanovich

bibliography

Footman, David. (1968). Red Prelude: A Biography of Zhelyabov. London: Barrie & Rockliff.

Geifman, Anna. (1993). Thou Shalt Kill: Revolutionary Terrorism in Russia, 1894–1917. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Anna Geifman

terrorism. The literature on terrorism is dogged by the apparently insoluble problem of definition. Some commentators evade definitional problems by assuming an ideological consensus among their readers, others simply define terrorism as anti‐state activity. Other approaches attempt to include state activities in the definition, by defining terrorism as involving the attempt to coerce target populations through the use of actions designed to induce extreme fear. Such general definitions, while focusing upon acts carried out against unarmed and innocent civilians, tend to blur the distinction between war and terror, since modern warfare involves the mobilization and the targeting of the civilian population.

The use of the term in the context of Irish history reflects these ambiguities. During the Anglo‐Irish War the intimidation and murder of civilians was practised by both the IRA and the crown forces. As in all modern wars, the majority of those killed in the Northern Ireland conflict since 1969 have been uninvolved civilians, and loyalist paramilitary groups have followed a consistent policy of killing uninvolved Catholics.

The current official definition of terrorism in Northern Ireland comes from the Diplock Report of 1972. Diplock defines violence as the ‘use or threat of violence to achieve political ends’, a definition which, on the surface, could include certain state activities. Diplock, however, restricts his definition to ‘those crimes which are committed at the present time by members of terrorist organisations’. This somewhat tautological approach characterizes conventional attempts to separate the usage of the term from any consideration of historical, social, or economic circumstances and fails to deal with the phenomenon as something created by human collectivities in the context of human history.

J. P. Smyth

terrorism The use of violent and intimidating acts, especially for political ends. Terrorism has been used most commonly by revolutionary groups, whose objective is the overthrow of a particular state authority, and by nationalist groups seeking national self-determination.

Techniques of terrorism involve bombing and shooting attacks against property and individuals, the assassination of significant persons associated with the established government or security forces, hostage-taking, and hi-jacking of aircraft, trains, ships, and buses. The major objectives of terrorism are: to keep a particular cause in the forefront of public consciousness; to pressure the political authorities to concede the terrorists' demands by inducing a state of public fear; and to induce a government to betray its own commitment to freedom and democracy by imposing illiberal security measures in order to contain such violence.

International collaboration against terrorism has not proved easy since it involves the close cooperation of legal and police authorities from many different states, which may have different international interests. The European Convention on the Suppression of Terrorism (1977), the ‘Trevi system’ of cooperation among EC members (1976), which has now spread to Council of Europe states, the Tokyo summit declaration on terrorism in 1986, and the participation of the former Soviet Union in anti-terrorist collaboration have all helped to establish a climate of international cooperation.

636. Terrorism

1. Al Fata Palestine Liberation movement’s terrorist organization. [Arab. Hist.: Wigoder, 186]
2. Baader-Meinhof gang German terrorists. [Ger. Hist.: Facts (1978), 114–115]
3. Black Panthers militant black revolutionists and civil-rightists. [Am. Hist.: Flexner, 46]
4. Gestapo Nazi secret police; executors of “Final Solution.” [Ger. Hist.: Wigoder, 211]
5. IRA the Irish Republican Army; long history of terror and violence. [Irish Hist.: NCE, 1365–1366]
6. Ku Klux Klan post-Civil War white supremacist organization used terrorist tactics against blacks. [Am. Hist.: NCE, 1505]
7. Nazis (National Socialism) spread fear and terror throughout Hitler’s Germany. [Ger. Hist.: NCE, 1894]
8. Red Brigade Italian terrorist group; assassinated Aldo Moro (1978). [Ital. Hist.: Facts (1978), 133]
9. Reign of Terror (1793–1794) revolutionary government made terror its means of suppression, by edict (September 5, 1793). [Fr. Hist.: EB, IX: 904]
10. Symbionese Liberation Army small terrorist group that kid-napped Patty Hearst (1974–1975). [Am. Hist.: Facts (1974), 105]
11. Weathermen American terrorist group against the “Establishment.” [Am. Hist.: Facts (1972), 384]

terrorism In the early 21st cent. there were indications that terrorism, which had previously taken the form of isolated assassinations or bombings, was becoming endemic and had acquired a formidable international dimension. On 11 September 2001 two hi-jacked aircraft destroyed the World Trade Centre in New York, with the loss of nearly 3000 lives. The immediate result was an economic crisis, particularly in air travel, heightened security precautions, a search for Osama bin Laden who had encouraged the strike, and an American-led attack upon the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, to root out members of al-Qa'eda. This was followed in 2003 by a three-week campaign in Iraq which overthrew Saddam Hussain. Disagreements on policy produced severe strains within the United Nations and NATO.

ter·ror·ist / ˈterərist/ • n. a person who uses terrorism in the pursuit of political aims. DERIVATIVES: ter·ror·is·tic / ˌterəˈristik/ adj. ter·ror·is·ti·cal·ly adv. ORIGIN: late 18th cent.: from French terroriste, from Latin terror (see terror). The word was originally applied to supporters of the Jacobins in the French Revolution, who advocated repression and violence in pursuit of the principles of democracy and equality.

terrorism Use of violence, sometimes indiscriminately, against persons and property for the nominal purpose of making a political statement. Intending to inspire terror, terrorists act principally in the name of empowering political minorities, and to publicize perceived political grievances.

terrorism the calculated use of violence or threat of violence to inculcate fear. Terrorism is intended to coerce or intimidate governments or societies in the pursuit of goals that are generally political, religious, or ideological.

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