CRMJ WEEK 3 DISCUSSION

Chapter 5

Terror From Below

Terrorism by Dissidents

A Dissident Terrorism Paradigm

· Revolutionary Dissident Terrorism

· A clear world vision.

· Goal: Destroy an existing order to build a well-designed new society.

· Case: Marxist revolutionary movements in Latin America.

· Nihilist Dissident Terrorism

· “Revolution for the sake of revolution.”

· Goal: Destroy an existing order with no clear alternative for the aftermath.

· Victory is destruction of the old society.

· Cases: Abu Nidal. Al Qa’ida network.

· Nationalist Dissident Terrorism

· Championing the national aspirations of groups of people.

· Goal: Mobilize a particular demographic group against another group or a government.

· Distinguished by their cultural, religious, ethnic, or racial heritage.

· Cases: Kurds in Turkey and Iraq. Catholics in Northern Ireland.

· The U.S. Perspective on Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs)

· Department of State’s annual report on FTOs.

· Criteria

· Foreign organization

· Engages in terrorist activity

· Activity threatens security of the United States

Antistate Dissident Terrorism

· Antistate Terrorist Environments

· Defined by idiosyncrasies of each country and movement.

· Histories that are unique to each society/

· Antistate Dissident Terrorism

· The Terrorists’ Faith in Victory

· Defeat is unthinkable. Victory is inevitable.

· Utopian visions justify their means and guarantee the triumph of their idealized ends.

Communal Terrorism

· Communal terrorism is essentially “group-against-group” terrorism

· It occurs in varying degrees of intensity and in many different contexts

· Ethnonationalist Communal Terrorism

· Terrorism directed against ethnic populations.

· Scale of violence varies considerably from region to region.

· Case: Corsica and Nigeria

· Religious Communal Terrorism

· Sectarian violence often combining religious and ethnic cultural identity.

· Case: Azerbaijan, Yugoslavia, Israel, Northern Ireland, Sudan, Lebanon

· Ideological Communal Terrorism

· A pattern of post-World War II civil wars.

· Cases: Greece, Angola, and Indonesia.

Dissidents and the New Terrorism

· The New Dissident Terrorist Morality

· Fewer moral scruples than previous generations.

· Broader definitions of “enemy” groups.

· Unrestricted use of modern weapons technologies.

· Terrorist Cells and Lone Wolves

· Cells: Indistinct command and organizational configurations.

· Lone Wolves: Single individuals.

· The Lone-Wolf Model: Occurs with regularity.

· Cases: Fort Hood.