Terrorism: Historical Perspective and Current Realities: Some Data (I)

Some Data from the report “40 years of data on international and domestic terrorism”, Heritage Foundation:

• The psychological impact of the 11/S bombings was huge and might have foreshadowed a new generation of terrorism. Similar bombings in Madrid and London in the coming years seemed to be a confirmation.
• The fact is that the report from the Heritage Foundation from 2011 registered as many as 39 plots foiled since the fateful bombings: “Simply put, the intelligence and law enforcement communities are better able to track down leads in local communities than they were on September 10, 2001”.

Targets and Casualties:

• Bombings which take place in the first world lay larger than those in other countries. This should not convey the false impression that all bombings happen in developed countries: for example, as the chart in slide 3 clearly shows, only 7.8% of all bombings happened in the United States.
• As for what concerns the number of casualties, the picture remains nuanced, as can be seen in slide 4: the average of casualties per terror attack for countries other than the US was 1.79; in the case of the US this jumped to 2.01. However, this was mostly due to 11/S; if this single event is removed the figure just drops to 0.69.

Historical Trends:

• Although the huge impact of 11/S might convey the impression that terrorism against the US was at its historic peak, the truth is that the historic trend throws different results, as we can see in chart from slide
• True, this strictly quantitative analysis does not necessarily correspond to the number of casualties, as can be seen for 2001, the bloodiest year (73% of all international casualties).
• This, however, corresponds to a regional break-down that probably belies the perception of the latest years´ prominence of Islamist terrorism: in the historical series shown below (slide 5), the region that concentrates most attacks is by far Latin America and the Caribbean (36%), followed by Europe (23%); the Middle East and the Gulf represent only 20% (see chart in slide 6).

Terrorism: Historical Perspective and Current Realities: Some Data (II)

To obtain a larger picture of the phenomenon, it is necessary to see which are the trends of terrorism at the global level and the regional break-down:

• The figure in slide 8 shows some disquieting data, as most terrorist attacks in the historical series from 2000 to 2014 were successful.
• Data which you can see in figure 14 (slide 9) qualify this latest information: around half of all terrorist attacks did not cause any victim.

When it comes to the trend in the latest years, figure 14 clearly showed the dramatic increase in terrorist attacks of late:

• Figure 10 (slide 10) shows that trend breaking down between number of attacks and casualties, confirming that terrorism has exploded in the latest years:
• The number of attacks has exploded to around 4000 per year in 2014, with a particular increase from 2012.
• The picture from the side of casualties is even gloomier: if these had peaked at around 5000 per year in 2001 and 2007, it exploded from 2011, jumping to nearly 16000 in 2014!

We also may find very interesting data concerning the regional break-down, which show that despite the threat perception of terrorism in the first world, the truth is that developed countries represent a tiny proportion of casualties:

• As figure 13 in slide 11 shows, it was the Middle-East which topped the rank, with as many as 13,426 deaths in 2014. For the same year, Sub-Saharan Africa had suffered 10,915 casualties at the hand of terrorism. South Asia followed with 6.713, then Asia-Pacific with 743 and Russia and the CIS with 724. At the bottom we may find South America with 106 and then Europe and North America with 31 and 22 respectively.
• As we can see in slide 13, the top terrorist groups, which mainly impact on non-developed regions,   are:
• Boko Haram (Nigeria), ISIL (Daesh) (Syria, Irak and Europe), the Taliban (Afghanistan), al-Shabaab (Somalia/ Kenya) and Fulani militants (Nigeria).
• With the latest attacks in Europe, especially France (Charlie Hebdo, Bataclan, Nice), the figure must necessarily have shot up. However, Europe still remains at the bottom compared to the bloodshed provoked in the Middle-East and Africa.

Finally, slides 14 and 15 show the regional break-down of militants´ origin which moved to the civil war in Syria and Irak: the largest numbers come from MENA countries.

Terrorism: Historical Perspective and Current Realities: The Forgotten Precedent of Anarchist Terrorism (I)

As Richard Bach Jensen labels it, this can be known as the “classic” era of terrorism. It represents an  interesting parallel with nowadays wave of terrorism:

• We can date the start of anarchist terrorism, or at least its mutation into an international phenomenon in the decade of 1880s. The era of “propaganda by the deed” spanned from 1880 to 1914.
• At least 160 people died and 500 were injured as a result of this wave of anarchist terrorism. These figures do not include those who were killed by anarchist terrorism in Russia, which the author prefers to leave separately due to its particular features: at least 2000 out of 4000 killed by political reasons from 1906 to 1907 were killed by anarchists; in general, most of those killed or injured from 1901 to 1916 were as a consequence of anarchist terrorism!).
• Leaving Russia aside, despite the relatively low quantitative impact of anarchist terrorism, especially compared with terrorism nowadays, the truth is that the qualitative dimension derived from its targets magnified its scope: to date, no other phenomenon has been so adept at killing rulers! This conveyed a sense of huge vulnerability to the citizens, contributing to bestow it of a double dimension: anarchism existed both as a reality and as an illusion.

The number of ruling heads that fell as a consequence of anarchist terrorism conveyed the impression thus that anarchism was a much more powerful phenomenon than it was in reality. Press soon contributed as a conveyor belt to bestow anarchism of an halo of power incommensurable to its real power: if anarchism was mostly the result of individual actions, soon the idea was conveyed that it responded to obscure conspiracies which threatened the “Western civilization”. The myth of anarchist terrorism was born.

Terrorism: Historical Perspective and Current Realities: The Forgotten Precedent of Anarchist Terrorism (II)

Facing the threat of anarchism, many states started introducing legislation against criminal use of explosives.

However, the main obstacle on which the US and European nations stumbled was the lack of international police cooperation:

·Thefirst steptowardscooperationoccurredinthemid-1890sthroughbilateralagreements byFrance, Italy, Austria-Hungary and the federal states ofGermany.

·Cooperation was made difficultbecause:

oThe long-standing commitment to asylum by countries such as Switzerland and the United Kingdom who demurred on demands for extradition by other countries. The fact that British policingandintelligenceledthemtoavertmostofanarchistbombingsreduceditsincentivesfor cooperation. The relative popularity of its political leaders also played a strong role in fostering stability.

oTheSpanishpolicyofemptyingitsprisonsofscoresofanarchistsandexpellingthembeyondits borders, simply exporting the problem to other countries only made cooperation the more difficult.

It was only in 1898 that the first Anti-Anarchist Conference was celebrated in Rome:

·ThetriggerforthissecretconferencewastheassassinationofEmpressElizabethofAustria,whichshocked manyinEuropeatthetimeforhergoodreputationasaparticularlyhorrendouscrime.

·Theresultsoftheconferencewerelimited,withsomecontemporaryprotagonistsgoingasfarastodismiss the conference as “not worth the paper it was written on”. While being true that many legislative and administrative measures agreed were not applied, it did influence in the application of the “Belgian clause”:assassinsofheadsofstatewouldbeexemptedfromanyprotectioninextraditiontreaties.

·The conference also led to the use of new techniques for tracking terrorists, as the portrait parlé or anthropometricportrait(retratorobotinSpanish)whichrepresentedamorescientificmethodtoidentify suspects. Finger printing, which had been developed by the British in India in the 1890s would take a decade to becomeuniversal.

·Policecooperationwouldincreaseasaresultofthisconference,leadingtoanti-anarchistaccordssuchas the St. Petersburg Protocolof1904.

Terrorism: historical perspective and current realities: The forgotten precedent of Anarchist terrorism (III)

The assassination of King Umberto of Italy (July 1900) and US President McKinley (September 1901) represented a further trigger for changes in the fight against anarchism:

·Policereformswereenactedinseveralcountries,creatingdivisionsespeciallydevotedtothephenomenon of anarchist terrorism. Italy in particular, created a police system which was second in size only to the Russianpolice.

·A second innovation was the fact that police detectives were dispatched to other regions or countries in ordertoincreasecooperationandpreventpotentialacts.

·After the ground had been established by the secret conference of Rome, this new events led to the aforementioned St. PetersburgProtocol.

However, many obstacles persisted after the signature of the St. Petersburg protocol, while the closer we came to WWI, cooperation decreased in the face of nationalist tensions:

·It is noteworthy that both Italy and the United States, among those most aggrieved countries refused to sign theprotocol:

oTheUS,simplybecauseofitslargedecentralization,didnothaveapolicesystemfittointensively cooperate with othercountries.

oIn the case of Italy, which “exported” many anarchists, it simply feared that extradition of anarchists would lead to their returning to Italy and thus “re-importing” theproblem.

·Finally, rivalry stemming from WWI simply undermined the modicum of multilateral and bilateral cooperation that had been reached todate.

Ifwearetoconsiderthedegreeofeffectivenessofpolicemeasuresthatwereappliedduringtheintervalbetween 1898 and 1914, there were other factors apart from repressive measures that have to be accounted for as determiningfactors:

·Bach Jansen´s general assessment is that repression had a rather limited impact, quite ofteneven backfiring with acts ofvengeance.

·Rather,astheexampleofItalyseemstoconfirm,itwastherelaxationoflabourlegislationregardingtrade unionsandtherighttostrikethatplayedaroleinreducingterroristactionsbyanarchists.

·AnotherinterestinglessonfromItalyisthepolicyofinfluencingthepresstorestrictcoverageofanarchist acts, in the belief that the hype provoked only served to further nurture terroristacts.

Terrorism: historical perspective and current realities: The forgotten precedent of Anarchist terrorism (IV)

Anarchist terrorism after 1914 has been less studied, probably because the focus came to be put on communist threat after the 1917 Revolution in Russia:

·Anarchist terrorism persisted, especially in Spain, which saw in the years 1919-1921 a virtual civil war, knownaspistolerismoinBarcelonabetweenanarchistsandgovernmentandemployerrelatedgunmen. Thedeathtollfrom bothsidesispresumedtohavebeenofmorethan700people.

·Next to Spain, it was in the United States where the worst wave of anarchist terrorism took place, followed byItaly.

·ThiswasingreatpartfuelledbyeconomicdislocationafterWWI.Withprogressiveprosperityduringthe 20s and the eventual establishment of authoritarian regimes, as in Italy and Spain, anarchism progressively peteredout.

Anarchist terrorism and nowadays Islamist terrorism: parallels or differences?

·Some highlight that both pre-WWI and nowadays post-Cold War era were characterized by high degrees ofeconomicglobalizationandimmigration,favouringbothmobilityandsocialdisruption.

·BachJensenholdstheopinionthatsocio-economicfactorsweremoreimportantforanarchiststhanisthe case for Islamists, for whom cultural factors seem to hold the upper hand. We might argue from our part that differences may not be that striking: The ideology of Islamism took hold in many Muslim countries because of indignation against unsatisfactory welfare policies (Egypt, Morocco), whereas the fracture in manyEuropeancountrieswiththeirsecondgenerationcitizensmightbeoftenrelatedtosocialdeprivation.

·Both anarchists and nowadays Islamist terrorists attacked symbolic targets (heads of state & World Trade Centre)andquiteofteninresponsetorealorperceivedactionsdeservingrevenge.

·Arguably, the most interesting parallel is that of response from the part of governments and the public reaction to bothphenomena.

Terrorism: historical perspective and current realities: Where does terrorism come from?

(I)(PPT2)

In the article by Eric Neumayer and Thomas Plümper, two hypotheses are tested:

·Clash of civilisations by SamuelHuntington.

·Strategiclogicofterrorismbythetwoauthors.

As Neumayer and Plümper explain, Samuel Huntington´s thesis is that due to the end of the Cold War, civilisation/religioncleavagesthatpredatedtheEast-Westideologicalconfrontationwouldcometotheforeground and determine post-cold war security dynamics through a “clash of civilisations”. The weakening of the state by theincreaseoftechnologiesandeconomicmodernizationwouldreinforcethisnewpattern.

·EvenifthetermclashisnotdevelopedbyHuntingtonsoastotesthishypotheses,NeumayerandPlümper pointtothefactthatterrorismisoneoftheelementsthatHuntingtonexplicitlymentions.

·The seven (or eight) civilisations identified by Huntington are: Western, Sinic, Japanese, Islamic, Hindu, Slavic-Orthodox,LatinAmerican(andAfrican?).

·His general hypotheses would be that terrorism would happen mainly between different civilizations. However,hisparticularhypotheseswouldfocusondetermineddyadsasmorepronetoconflict:

oThe   “Rest”   versus   the   West:   terrorism   as   a   weapon   of   the   “weak” would   be    used disproportionately against Westerncountries.

oThe Islamic world would be particularly active in committing terrorist acts against other civilisations.

oAs a corollary from the two previous propositions, the most vicious dyad would be that between WestandIslamiccivilisation:itisherewherewewouldfindmoreintensepatternsofterrorism.

Neumayer and Plümper´s Strategic Theory applied to Terrorism proposes a different set of hypotheses as for how terrorism would proceed when it comes to choose its targets.

Terrorism: historical perspective and current realities: Where does terrorism come from? (II)

The authors´ strategic theory posits that victims of terrorism would come from the same country as terrorists (90

% of terrorism is in fact domestic).

Hence the puzzle: why is there a proportion of attacks that target foreign objectives? Why are some foreign objectives targeted more often than others?

·One answer would be Huntington´shypothesis.

·Theotheranswerwillbeprovidedbytheauthors,aswrittenbelow:

The authors´ hypothesis is that foreign countries will be targeted if their government supports the government of the terrorists´ home country. Results show that:

·The Islam vs. rest variable is insignificant both in the Cold War and the post-Cold War period as for what concerns terroristattacks.

·The Islam vs. west variable, on the contrary, is statistically significant. It also shows that there is a break between Cold war and post-Cold war, with more terrorist attacks happening in the latter period. Results showthatWesternersarethemaintargetofinternationalterrorismingeneralandofIslamicterrorists in particular, coinciding with Huntington´stheses.

·Finally, the rest vs. west variable is statistically positive during both the Cold war and post-Cold war periods. However, the variable seems to be stronger in the former than in the latter period, which belies Huntington´stheses.

·Asexpectedbytheauthors,themoredependentacountryisofforeignaidandarmsimports(ormilitary alliance), the more likely the supporting country is to be targeted by terrorist groups originating in the supported country. This happens with the case of the Middle-East, so a priori both Huntington´s and the authors´ hypotheses could serve asanexplanation:

oNeumayerandPlümperrefinetheirstatisticalanalysissinglingouttheAfghanistanandIrakwars, which are then operationalized separately. Here, post-Cold war break does not seem significant. On the contrary, it is Irak and Afghanistan wars which seem to makethedifference.

In general, thus, the authors seem to make the case that Huntington´s theses represent a poor predictor of terrorism in the future.

Terrorism: historical perspective and current realities: What is terrorism? (III)

Located within critical strands of IR, metaphor analysis has proved a useful tool to analyse how the way terrorism is portrayed impacts on the policy responses taken:

“metaphor have the ability to transform the meaning of an established concept and they also play an essential

role in comprehending aspects of the world that are new or that we do not understand”

Terrorism is not understood as a physical fact (which undeniably is) but as a social construction, constituted through discourse and therefore a matter of interpretation.

Metaphor´s definition: “a figure of speech in which a word or phrase is applied to an object or action to which it is not literally applicable”

According to Aristotle: “metaphors are a transference, naming one thing in terms of another”

We may understand metaphors in two different ways:

1.Rhetorical understanding: in its merely rhetorical dimension, there is no attempt to use it beyond the esthetical dimension. Metaphors in this case are convenient labels that serve the purpose of making speechsoundbetter.AsAlexanderSpencerhimselfhighlights,theyarejustadecorationforthediscourse which does not change themeaning.

2.Cognitiveunderstanding:cognitivelinguisticsgoesbeyondthestrictlyrhetoricalunderstandingandposits that in fact, metaphors may have a much bigger effect: metaphorisation is the transference of one concept onto another. Thus, metaphorisation can become an instrument for understanding certain domains by way of “understand(ing) one domain of experience in terms of another by projecting knowledgeaboutthefirst(familiar)domainontothesecond(oreabstract)domain”.

If we are to remain within the cognitive approach, we may distinguish two kind of metaphors: metaphoric expression and conceptual metaphor:

1.Conceptual metaphor: if we should take an example to show the mechanism of this kind of metaphors, we could choose “terrorism is war”. In this example, two conceptual domains are abstractly connected: from the one side we have a source domain, the one which is familiar to us, namely    “war” and atarget

domain,“terrorism”,whichisto uslessfamiliarandforwhich,therefore,weneedexplanatorytools. We candefineitas“asetofsystematiccorrespondencesbetweenthesourceandthetargetinthesensethat theconstituentconceptualelementsofBcorrespondtoconstituentelementsof A”.

2. Metaphorical expressions: these “are directly visible and represent the specific statements found in the textfromwhichtheconceptualmetaphordraws”.Inourcase,theexpressioninquestionwouldbethatof “terrorismiswar”,fromwhichwederivetheconceptualmetaphorabove.However,itmustbehighlighted thattheconceptualtransferenceisnotasabsoluteasastrictreadingofthemetaphoricexpressionwould let us think. Transference is only partial through the process of selectivedistinctions.

Terrorism: historical perspective and current realities: What is terrorism? (IV)

Agent- and structure-focused metaphor analysis:

·In the first metaphor analysis, the focus will be on the agent that emits the metaphor. In this kind of analyses, the goal is to find out which is the hidden agenda of that agent, as well as its ideology, thought orintentions.

·In the second structure-focused metaphor analysis, the goal of the researcher is to discover not so much the intentions of the agents but the margin left to agents within a structure determined by a certain discourse.Itisthoughtthattheuseofcertainmetaphorsforaparticularphenomenonwilldeterminehow wedealwiththatphenomenon,makingcertainpolicyoptionspredeterminedbytheuseoflanguagewhile others, on the contrary, would beprecluded.

The study by Alexander Spencer identified four common metaphors that were widely used in media discourse in the British Tabloid:

·Terrorism iswar.

·Terrorism iscrime.

·Terrorism is uncivilisedevil

·Terrorism is disease.