Ethnic groups,political exclusion and domestic terrorism

This study examines whether the exclusion of ethnic groups from political power is an important contributing factor to domestic terrorism. To empirically test this question, we employ a negative binomial regression estimation on 130 countries during the period from 1981 to 2005. We find that countries in which certain ethnic populations are excluded from political power are significantly more likely to experience domestic terrorist attacks and to suffer from terrorist casualties; furthermore, ethnic group political exclusion is a more consistent and substantive predictor of domestic terrorist activity than general political repression or economic discrimination.     

A1 Qaeda and the radical Islamic challenge to western strategy

The September 11 global crisis prompted by the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon raises major questions concerning the nature and trajectory of terrorism in the post-Cold War global order. Hitherto, terrorism has been largely debated by analysts at the level of nation states. Terrorist and insurgent movements have also been largely anchored in nationalist and ethnic power bases even when they have sought to mobilise a transnational ideological appeal on religious or class grounds. There have been a few exceptions to this pattern such as the alliance between the German Baader-Meinhof group and the Japanese Red Army Faction, but even such international alliances as this did not, until at least the 1980s, presage anything like a global terrorist network necessitating a global strategic response. This study examines terrorism and global strategic responses.     

恐怖活动对新疆边境地区的影响及对策

长期以来,新疆恐怖活动组织与＂三股势力＂相勾结,制造了多起恐怖活动事件,给新疆边境地区的安全与稳定带来了严重威胁。为此,针对新疆边境地区的特殊性以及恐怖活动的态势,分析了恐怖活动对新疆边境地区的影响,从提升反恐的主动发现能力、加强情报预警工作、加强防范措施的严密性等方面提出了遏制新疆恐怖活动的对策。     

An Opportunity Structure for Terrorism: Moderate Leadership Departures in Nationalist Movements

Why does terrorist violence escalate from some ethnic groups but not others? According to theoretical insights, many groups endure conditions that should spur on terrorist campaigns, but in reality only some carry them out. In contrast to studies emphasising motivations, this article constructs a framework centred on opportunity structures that contributes to our understanding of the rise of terrorism waged along ethnic lines. It argues that beyond grievances or other motivations, terrorist campaigns develop from communities when moderate political leaders depart from their positions in nationalist movements, causing terrorists to fill the subsequent power vacuum, while little terrorism occurs when leaders do not relinquish the nationalist agenda. This argument is evaluated with evidence from the Tamil and Muslim cases in the context of the Sri Lankan Civil War. Tamil United Liberation Front leaders left the Tamil nationalist movement in the early 1980s, enabling the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam’s rise to dominate the nationalist agenda for three decades, while the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress did not relinquish the Muslim cause, which in part precluded the normalisation of violence in the community.     

Spatial Distribution of Minority Communities and Terrorism: Domestic Concentration versus Transnational Dispersion

Qualitative studies of terrorist movements frequently highlight the importance of diaspora communities as important factors in producing and sustaining terrorist activity in countries. The underlying theoretical argument is that bifurcation of tight-knit minority communities between countries nurtures separatist or irredentist sentiments among affected community members, thus prompting terrorist activity, while minority community members in other countries might mobilize financial and political resources to support terrorist activity among their compatriots. In this study, we empirically test whether transnational dispersion, versus domestic concentration, of minority communities in countries produces higher incidents of terrorism. Conducting a series of negative binomial estimations on a reshaped database of around 170 countries from 1981 to 2006, derived from the Minorities at Risk database and the Global Terrorism Database, we determine that both transnational dispersion of kin minority communities and domestic concentration of minorities within countries increase terrorism and that transnational dispersion is a particularly robust predictor of terrorist attacks.     

Weakest‐link attacker‐defender games with multiple attack technologies

In this article, we examine a model of terrorism that focuses on the tradeoffs facing a terrorist organization that has two qualitatively different attack modes at its disposal. The terrorist organization's objective is to successfully attack at least one target. Success for the target government is defined as defending all targets from any and all attacks. In this context, we examine how terrorist entities strategically utilize an efficient but discrete attack technology — e.g., suicide attacks — when a more conventional mode of attack is available, and the optimal anti‐terrorism measures.© 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2012     

Causal Linkages Between Domestic Terrorism and Economic Growth

We use the Hsiao–Granger method to test for terrorism–growth causality for seven Western European countries. In bivariate settings, the impact of economic performance on domestic terrorism is very strong. In trivariate settings, the impact of performance on terrorism diminishes. In general, we find that economic performance leads terrorist violence in robust ways only for three out of seven countries. Terrorism is almost never found to causally influence growth in bivariate and trivariate specifications. Our findings indicate that the role of economic performance in determining terrorist violence appears to have been important for some countries, whereas all attacked economies have been successful in adjusting to the threat of terrorism.     

TERRORISM AND DETERRENCE POLICY WITH TRANSNATIONAL SUPPORT 1

This study provides an explanation of terrorism by examining interactions between the terrorist group with a minority as a potential pool of recruits and the government supported by a majority. A hawkish deterrence policy makes it more risky for terrorists to launch attacks, but heightens the anti‐government feeling of the terrorist group. In addition, the payoff for the government depends not only on the payoff loss associated with the level of terrorism, but also on the political payoff from the action itself of adopting a hawk policy due to its politicians’ vested interests. We first show that whether the deterrence policy should be ‘hawk to ‘dove is closely dependent on the relationships among the risk associated with terrorism, the anti‐government feeling of the terrorist group, and the political payoff for the government. This study then introduces transnational support enhancing the capability of a terrorist group to intensify its activity and shows that the emergence of transnational support may cause the government to reform its deterrence policy from ‘dove’ toward ‘hawk,’ with terrorism intensified in the society.     

An Integro-Differential Approach To Terrorism Dynamics

This article introduces integro-differential equations as a new technique to study terrorism dynamics. An integro-differential equation is a mathematical expression that contains derivatives of the required function and its integral transforms. The technique is applied to two different dynamic models in terrorism: terrorism and tourism, and terrorist innovations. In the first model the number of tourists that appears in an integral term and also in a derivative term is impacted by the number of terrorists. In the second model the integro-differential equation for terrorist innovations relates them to terrorist attacks. The article shows how to solve, analyze, interpret, and deal with integro-differential equations. Integro-differential equations shed light on aspects of the models ignored when other techniques are used. This is particularly important for the evaluation of current counterterrorist policies, as well as to the formulation of new ones.     

生化恐怖袭击及其应对策略

本文指出了生化恐怖活动发展的历史趋势、分析了大规模生化恐怖活动兴起的原因 ,并分析了恐怖分子获得生化武器的可能性 ,对于可能发生的大规模生化恐怖活动提出了的应对策略     

CHILDREN IN THE SPOTLIGHT

September 11 2001 has put the spotlight on terrorism, and it has been at the apex of the international security agenda ever since. Politicians, lawmakers, scholars and others have been debating the meaning and definition of terrorism for many years. Numerous myths and misconceptions persist on this highly debated issue. With the aid of historical case studies, this article aims to demonstrate how broad a concept terrorism has become. It focuses on its subjective and value-laden interpretation and hence the difficulty of arriving at a universally acceptable definition. The author introduces the concept of ‘colonial terror’, which depicts a distinct form of state terrorism perpetrated during the colonial and post-colonial periods. Like many before her, the author concludes that the definition and meaning of terrorism lie in the eye of the beholder.

There are two ways to approach the study of terrorism. One may adopt a literal approach, taking the topic seriously, or a propagandistic approach, construing the concept of terrorism as a weapon to be exploited in the service of some system of power. In each case it is clear how to proceed. Pursuing the literal approach, we begin by determining what constitutes terrorism. We then seek instances of the phenomenon—concentrating on major examples, if we are serious—and try to determine causes and remedies. The propagandistic approach dictates a different course. We begin with the thesis that terrorism is the responsibility of some officially designated enemy. We then designate terrorist acts as ‘terrorist’ just in the cases where they can be attributed (whether plausibly or not) to the required source; otherwise they are to be ignored, suppressed or termed ‘retaliation’ or ‘self-defence’. (Noam Chomsky)     

Remittances and terrorism: A global analysis

This paper is the first global investigation of the relationship between remittances and terrorism. To discern this relationship, we draw terrorism event data from the Global Terrorism Database and International Terrorism: Attributes of Terrorism Events. When a host of standard terrorism controls is employed, lagged remittances as a share of gross domestic product have a positive and significant impact on both domestic and transnational terrorist attacks. For the venue country’s viewpoint, lagged remittances have a greater marginal impact on domestic than on transnational terrorism. However, when we investigate remittances to the home country of the perpetrator, lagged remittances have the greatest marginal impact on transnational terrorism. Throughout our investigation, standard terrorism controls perform according to our priors and those of the literature, lending credence to the isolation of the impact of remittances. We also account for endogeneity concerns.     

Social capital and terrorism

Many studies of terrorism explain the use of violence against civilians with political or economic forces, often relegating social variables to the margins. Social factors, specifically societal-level social capital, play a far more important role in explaining patterns of terrorist activity than previously recognized. Social capital can exert pressures that act as both restraint and catalyst for terrorism, making explicit exposition of these differential effects critical. Analysis shows that higher stocks of social capital positively correlate with the number of terrorist groups, but the average attack activity of those groups increase as measures of social capital decline. The complex relationship makes it difficult to draw simple policy implications, but it does offer insight into the role that social dynamics play in terrorist activity.     

TERRORISM AND TOURISM: THE CASE OF TURKEY

Using a time series method called ‘transfer function’, this paper examines the effect of terrorism on tourism in Turkey. The results indicate that there exists a negative but small impact of terrorism, which is observed within approximately one year. However, terrorist attacks in Turkey have accounted for a reduction of six million foreign tourists over the last nine years. Moreover, the economic cost of terrorism in the tourism industry was more than $700 million in 2006. However, terrorist attacks in continental Europe and America, and an active war involving a neighboring country, had no effects on tourism in Turkey.     

Boko Haram terrorism in Nigeria

Since the July 2009 Boko Haram terrorist outburst in Nigeria, there have been increasing questions on the phenomenon in the country. There has not been any substantial analysis on the emergence of the Boko Haram group and its terrorist activities in Nigeria as the out-rage continues. This study is advanced to explain the phenomenon of Boko Haram terrorism in Nigeria. It employs the levels of analysis framework popular in the field of international relations to explain the terrorism at three major levels: individual, state and international. The study relies on dependable news reports, which include interviews with key actors relevant to the subject matter, and finds that Boko Haram terrorism has its roots in the ideology and motivations of its founder and members, the failures and deficiencies of the Nigerian state, and the modern trend of religious terrorism in the international system.     

SUICIDE TERRORISM AND THE BACKLASH EFFECT

This paper presents a game‐theoretic model of suicide terrorism containing three agents: the terrorist leader; a targeted government; and potential terrorist supporters. Supporters join the terrorist group if they gain more from their participation than from their economic opportunities. Preemptive measures by the government can result in a backlash that encourages recruitment through new grievances. Suicide attacks can also lead to recruitment. Increases in preemption costs and/or economic opportunities can reduce the overall level of terrorism, while increasing the proportion of suicide to normal attacks. An increase in the effect of preemption on recruitment, or the propaganda effect of suicide bombings has the opposite effect of increasing normal and suicide attacks, but decreasing the proportion of suicide to normal attacks in the terrorist organization’s strategy profile.     

Defence industries adjusting to change 1

This paper analyses the impact of terrorist activity on international tourist flows. To this end, we have estimated a cross‐sectional gravity equation for tourism from the G‐7 countries to a sample of 134 destinations over the period 2001–2003. Within this framework, we evaluate the deviation from ‘normal’ tourist flows due to terrorist activity, which is considered as negative advertising for the affected country. The analysis suggests that both domestic victims and international attacks are relevant factors when foreign tourists make their choice. This result is robust under alternative specifications. Moreover, the impact of terrorism is more severe in developing countries.     

FIGHTING TERRORISM: ARE MILITARY MEASURES EFFECTIVE? EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE FROM TURKEY

The present article aims at investigating the causal relationship between defense spending and terrorism in Turkey using the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) bounds testing procedure and Granger‐causality analysis. The findings reveal that there exists a unidirectional causality running form terrorist attacks to defense spending as expected, but not vice versa. In the light of this finding it can be inferred that military anti‐terrorism measures alone are not sufficient to prevent terrorism.     

Deterring the Undeterrable: Coercion,Denial, and Delegitimization in Counterterrorism

This article argues that deterrence theory can be applied to counterterrorism. Doing so requires broadening the traditional concept of deterrence by punishment, expanding deterrence by denial to include defense, mitigation, and strategic hindrance, and developing deterrence by delegitimization to influence the political, ideological, and religious rationales informing terrorist behavior. In practice, deterring terrorism requires tailoring threats against state and individual facilitators, diffusing the intended consequences of terrorism, and manipulating terrorist self–restraints. When these and other deterrent leverages are applied simultaneously against various actors and processes involved in terrorism, coercion can be achieved.