Exam 2 Flashcards
What is terrorism? What distinguishes it from a regular attack?
- politically motivated violence
- directed against soft targets (i.e. civilian, administrative targets)
- to communicate a message to a larger group
- an intention to terrorize a target audience
What is extremism? What is its difference from terrorism?
- extremism: intolerance toward opposing interests and divergent opinions; radical expression of one’s political values
- “more of an issue of style than content”
- extremism is a precursor to terrorism BUT no matter how offensive one’s thoughts or words are, they are not by thesmelves acts of terrorism
Sinn Fein (what is it? when was it established?)
- Irish Republican Democratic Socialist Party
- active throughout the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland
- Established 1905
ETA
- Armed Basque nationalist and separatist terrorist organization established in 1959
- Operated in Spain
- Killed 829 people (340 civilians) and declared a ceasefire in 2010
Stockholm Syndrome
- condition in which hostages develop a psychological bond with their captors during captivity
- it results from a rather specific set of circumstances, namely the power imbalances contained in hostage-taking, kidnapping, and abusive relationships
Troubles Period (when, who are the parties)
- Period of conflict in Northern Ireland that lasted about 30 years, from the late 1960s until Good Friday Agreement in 1998
- Catholics predominately consider themselves and hold nationalist (paramilitary; republican) views, they want an independent Ireland free from British Control
- Protestants largely identify as British and Unionist (paramilitary; loyalist), meaning they wish to remain linked to the United Kingdom
- 3500+ dead
Bloody Sunday
- 30 Jan. 1972
- British Paratroopers fired on demonstrators in Londonderry
- 13 demonstrators were killed
- After this incident, many Catholics became radicalized and some supported the Provisional Irish Republican Army
Failed State
The government holds tenuous authority and many areas in the country that are not serviced / controlled
- post 2011 Libya
- Yemen after 2015
- Iraq during ISIS
Genocide
intentional action to destroy a people - usually defined as an ethnic, national, racial, or religious group - in whole or in part
- Rwanda, Holocaust, American Genocide
Zapatistas
- Zapatistas National Liberation Front
- Championed the cuase of indigenous populations native to Chiapas (a state in Mexico)
- The indigenous population faced starvation, diseases and exploitation by the wealthy landowners
- 1990s, Zapatistas attacking Mexican army
- 2001, Zapatistas evolved into a political movement
Nihilism
- 19th century Russian philosophical movement
- believed “religion, nationalism and traditional values were at the root of ignorance”, they do not envision a future for the current order
- no clear alternatives as to how society should look like
Ramazan Kadryov
- leader of the Chechen Republic
- close links to Putin; widespread disappearances and torture
- operations against ISIS and other global Jihadi organizations
Red Army Faction
- AKA Baader-Meinhof
- 1960s-1970s
- Bank robberies, assassinations, bombings aiming to undermine West German Government
- After the end of the Cold War, their activities subsides and right-wing terrorism began to increase (neo-nazis)
Sectarian Violence
conflict between religious groups within a broader conflict between ethnonational groups
- Sri Lanka
- Iraq
- Yugoslavia
- Israel / Palestine
PLO
- Palestinian Liberation Organization
- 1964
- initial purpose of establishing Arab unity and Palestinian state
- Current leader: Mahmoud Abbas
Yasser Arafat
Chair of Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) from 1969-2004
- President of Palestinian National Authority from 1994-2004
Hamas
- Palestinian Sunni-Islamic and Nationalist Organization
- 1987
- Ismail Haniyeh
- it won the Palestinian Legislative election and became the de facto governing authority of the Gaza Strip following the 2007 Battle of Gaza
Kach
- Hard-line Israeli militant group that advocates for the expulsion of Arabs from the Biblical land of Israel
- 1971
- U.S. state listed it as terrorist org. in 1994
- Kach condones violence as a viable method for establishing a religiously homogeneous state
PFLP
- Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine
- Secular Palestinian Marxist-Leninist and revolutionary socialist organization founded in 1967
- has consistently been the second-largest of the groups forming the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO founded in 1964)
Jihad? Two meanings?
- literally means “struggle, effort”
- the Greater Jihad: struggle each person has within themselves
- the lesser Jihad: outward defense of Islam when it is under attack (including armed defense)
- unlike Christian crusades, which was by nature offensive
Lord’s Resistance Army
- rebel group and heterodox Christian group which operates in northern Uganda, South Sudan, the Central African Republic, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo
- leader Joseph Kony
- appears to function as a personality cult, seeing as it, in practice, “not motivated by any identifiable political agenda, and its military strategy and tactics reflect this”
- has been accused of widespread human rights violations
- murder, abduction, mutilation, and use of child soldiers
Aum Shinrikyo
- Japanese Doomsday Cult
- Shoko Asahara founded in 1984
- carried out the deadly Tokyo subway sarin attack in 1995 and was found to have been responsible for another smaller attack the previous year
- 21 deaths and thousands of hospitalizations
Army of God
- an American Christian terrorist organization that has perpetrated anti-abortion violence
- in addition to the numerous property crimes, the group had committed acts of kidnapping, attempted murder, and murder
- while sharing common ideology and tactics, the group’s, members claim that they rarely communicate with each other; this known more formally as “leaderless resistance”
The Hebron Mosque Massacre
- 1994
- NY born physician Baruch Goldstein fires on worshippers in the Ibrahim Mosque in Hebron
- killed 29 people and wounded 125 (after this terrorist attack, Hamas started first wave of suicide bombers)
Rabin Assassination
- 1995
- Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated by Jewish extremist, Yigal Amir
- his motive was that he acted “fully within the requirements of Halacha” and saw Rabin as a traitor for his role in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process
What is Al-Qaeda
- militant Sunni Islamist multi-national organization
- founded in 1988 by Osama bin Laden and several other Arab volunteers who fought against the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan in the 1980s
Ayman al-Zawahiri
- previous leader of Al Qaeda, bin Laden’s successor
Takfiri
- a Muslim who accuses another Muslim (or an adherent of another Abrahamic faith) of apostasy (basically not being Muslim enough)
Caliphate
- an area containing an Islamic steward known as a caliph; a person considered a religious successor to the Islamic prophet, Muhammad and a leader of the entire Muslim community
Ruby Ridge
- incident in which FBI agents and U.S. marshals engaged in an 11-day standoff with self-proclaimed white separatist Randy Weaver, his family, and a friend named Kevin Harris in an isolated cabin in Idaho
- Weaver’s wife and son and U.S. marshal were killed during siege
- 1992
Waco Siege
- 51 day standoff between Branch Davidians and federal agents
- ended April 19, 1993 when the religious groups compound near Waco, TX was destroyed in a fire. Nearly 80 people were killed, including 23 children
David Koresh
- leader of the Branch Davidians
- Anti-government extremist
Oklahoma City Bombing
- domestic terrorist truck bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, OK, U.S.
- April 19, 1995
- Two anti-government extremists, the bombing killed at least 168 people, injured more than 680 others, and destroyed more than 1/3 of the building