History of Terrorism  

               The threat of terrorism has changed our lives in many ways. One can no longer drive close to the White House on Pennsylvania Avenue due to the need for a wider perimeter to help prevent a terrorist from driving a vehicle loaded with explosives close to the President’s home. Most public buildings now have concrete barriers strategically placed to prevent the same occurrence. We endure long lines at airports hoping security checks will prevent bombs or other weapons  from being placed on the aircraft surreptitiously and subsequently used to hijack the aircraft. Security guards are in evidence wherever we live. Yet, terrorist activity continues. Could it be we are targets for terrorist attacks within the United States of America?

               Consider for a few moments the following.

               C             A quarter telephone call detailing a bomb threat can hold hundreds hostage.

               C             A well-dressed person can fire a weapon from a briefcase against innocent people to gain media attention.  

               C             A letter bomb more powerful than book bombs of a few hears ago.

               C             A small, portable radio containing enough sophisticated explosives to bring down a Boeing 747 as occurred over Lockerbie, Scotland.

               C             Coffee cups made of symtex, a very stable plastic explosive. Anyone could be carrying a lethal weapon. Hundreds could be shipped to one address and detonated.

               C             US citizens are the number one targets of world wide terrorists.

               C             Within the United States there are dozens of groups with hostile intent against US citizens who do not agree with their agendas.

               The threat of terrorist activity has been with the world for hundreds of years. It is a more recent phenomena for the United States. The history of terrorism can be examined from many different perspectives. For our purposes, we will examine it according to political violence by origin and target. Keep the three different forms of political violence in mind as you read this short history. These three forms are:

               C             Assassination. This term derives from a Muslim sect which appeared in Persia and Syria in the 11th century. They were involved in a power struggle. The word, assassin, is based upon the Syrian word, hashishi, for which the drug hashish is named, a drug to which many of the Assassins may have been addicted. Assassination was the usual form of political violence before World War II. The political assassin often does not need the media to explain what the act means; in fact publicity may not be the principal objective. The goal is simply to eliminate a political actor.

               C             Random Attacks on Civilians. This form of terrorism emerged after the war. It was directed against a particular type of civilian: those who are members of the enemy class or nationality. Terrorism of this sort, as practiced by, for example, the FLN in Algeria in the 1950s and 1960s, is also independent of the media. The object is to demoralize the enemy during a war and the audience is the victims themselves and their compatriots.

               C             Random Attacks on Anyone. This is referred to as “media terrorism,” for it can exist only if there is an interpreter to give meaning. The Palestine Liberation Organization used this form to publicize political grievances against the Israelis. The intended audience was not the victims, but the whole world. Similar acts continue internationally today. Sometimes, there is no grievance stated.

               Some historians categorize terrorism by its audience such as regional, national, or international. Regardless of the audience the acts are the same. For example, international terrorism has been recurrent during periods of political and social upheaval. In the 19th century, anarchists in rural parts of Italy and Spain used terrorism, as did their counterparts in France. The Russian revolutionary movement before World War I had a strong terrorist element. In the 20th century, such groups as the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization, the Croatian Ustashi, and the Irish Republican Army often carried their terrorist activities beyond the boundaries of individual countries. They were sometimes supported by established governments, such as those of Bulgaria and of Italy under the fascist leader Benito Mussolini.

               The wave of international terrorism that developed after the mid-1960s differed from earlier ones in its broader ramifications and greater impact. Several elements combined to make international terrorism easier and more effective: technological advances, resulting in both greater destructiveness and smaller weapons; the means available to terrorists for quick movement and rapid communication; and the extensive worldwide connections of the chosen victims.

               The origins of the terrorist wave that began in the 1960s can be traced to the unresolved Middle East conflict between the Arab nations and Israel. Such Jewish radicals as the Stern Gang and the Irgun Zvai Leumi resorted to terrorism in their struggle for an independent Israel in the late 1940s. Their Arab adversaries in the 1960s and beyond chose to use terrorism more systematically. The expulsion of Palestinian guerrillas from Jordan in September 1970 was commemorated by the creation of an extremist terrorist arm called “Black September.” The Palestine Liberation Organization (q.v.) has conducted commando and terrorist operations both within Israel and in other countries.

               The spread of terrorism beyond the Middle East in the 1960s was most conspicuous in West Germany and Italy. Inspired by vague Communist ideologies and typically supported by sympathizers in the affluent middle classes, the terrorists aimed to bring about the collapse of the state by provoking its violent, self destructive reaction.

               In West Germany, the so called Red Army Faction, better known as the Baader Meinhoff Gang, robbed numerous banks and raided U.S. military installations. Its most spectacular exploits were the 1977 kidnapping and murder of a prominent industrialist, Hans Martin Schleyer (1915-77), and the subsequent hijacking by Arab sympathizers of a Lufthansa airliner to Mogadisho, Somalia. The gang frequently cooperated with Palestinian terrorists, notably in the murder of Israeli  athletes at the Olympic Games in Munich in 1972. By the late 1970s, most activists of the Red Army Faction were either imprisoned or dead.

               The strength of the Italian terrorists, the most prominent of whom were the Red Brigades  may stem from the country's anarchist tradition and its political instability. Their activities culminated in the 1978 kidnapping and murder of former Prime Minister Aldo Moro. Left wing terrorism subsequently declined, thanks to police measures, although it by no means disappeared. Right wing terrorism, however, seemed to increase in Italy, as highlighted by the bombing in 1980 of the Bologna railroad station. The historic Uffizi Gallery in Florence was among the targets of a series of terrorist bombings in 1993 alleged to be the work of the Mafia.

               Terrorist movements in Latin America had their origins in long standing local traditions of political violence. The main, new development was the rise in so called urban guerrilla movements, as terrorist activities shifted from the countryside into the sprawling cities. In the 1990s some members of the cocaine cartel in Colombia used terrorist tactics to coerce the government to curtail enforcement of the anti-drug trafficking laws.

               We turn our attention now to a more detailed examination of some of the groups just mentioned. The first is the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), the  political body representing Palestinian Arabs in their attempt to reclaim their homeland from the state of Israel.

               The PLO was founded at a congress in the Jordanian sector of Jerusalem in May 1964. Formed as an umbrella organization by refugee groups and fedayeen (commando) forces, such as Al Fatah, Al Saiqa, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, it was also joined by professional, labor, and student associations, as well as some individual members; the fedayeen, however, have always dominated it. Dedicated to mobilizing the Palestinian people "to recover their usurped homes," the organization, according to its charter, seeks the replacement of Israel with a secular Palestinian state and has sponsored numerous commando and terrorist acts both inside that country and internationally. It has, however, denied responsibility for such dramatic terrorist raids by Arab fedayeen as the murderous assault in 1972 on Israeli athletes at the Olympic Games in Munich.

               The functions of the PLO are carried out by three main organs: the Executive Committee, a decision-making body in which the major fedayeen groups are represented; the Central Committee, an advisory body; and the Palestine National Council, which is seen as an assembly of the Palestinian people.

               Since 1968 the PLO has been headed by Yasir Arafat, leader of Al Fatah. At an Arab summit meeting in Rabat, Morocco, in 1974, the organization was recognized as the "sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people," and Arafat subsequently addressed the UN, where the organization has an observer status.

               In 1970 the PLO fought a short, bloody war with the army of Jordan, where most of the fedayeen were then stationed. Expelled, they settled in Lebanon, where they gradually became a state within the state, contributing to that country's disintegration after 1975. Israel's invasion of Lebanon in 1982 greatly weakened the PLO presence there, intensified the organization's factional splits, and forced the dispersion of some 12,000 PLO members to Syria and other Arab countries. PLO members loyal to Arafat made their headquarters in Tunis; an Israeli bombing raid in October 1985 severely damaged the main buildings. In July 1988, King Hussein of Jordan ceded to the PLO all territorial claims to the Israeli held West Bank. In November 1988, at a meeting of the Palestine National Council in Algiers, Arafat declared the establishment of an independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital. The council also voted to accept UN resolutions 242 (1967) and 338 (1973), recognizing the sovereignty of all states in the Middle East, and to use the resolutions, and acknowledgment of the Palestinian right to self determination, as the basis for an international peace conference. The U.S. agreed in December 1988 to initiate direct "diplomatic dialogue" with the PLO. Relations with the U.S. and the pro Western Arab states deteriorated in 1991, as Arafat publicly supported Iraq during the Persian Gulf War (q.v.). In July  the Lebanese army, with Syrian backing, forced the PLO to abandon its strongholds in southern Lebanon. In January 1993 Israel repealed its ban on PLO contact by Israelis. On Sept. 26, 1993, Chairman Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin signed a historic peace agreement calling for mutual recognition between Israel and the PLO. During 1994 Israel turned over responsibility for administering the Gaza Strip and Jericho to the newly founded Palestine National Authority, headed by Arafat.

               The next organization is The Red Brigades, an Italian terrorist organization of the extreme left, active in the 1970s and '80s. It first attracted attention in the early 1970s, a time of great political turbulence, with bombings in major Italian cities, such as Rome, Milan, and Genoa, but it also engaged in selective shootings, especially of law enforcement officers, and kidnapping. Well organized, the group staged several bold raids, executed with precision. Thus, its leader, Renato Curcio (1940_?), who was captured in September 1974, was freed in a commando raid on his prison in February 1975; he was rearrested later. The most notorious of the Red Brigades' acts was the kidnapping and murder of the former Italian prime minister Aldo Moro in 1978. In late 1981 members of the group kidnapped a U.S. general (BG Dozier) stationed in Verona, but he was freed by the Italian police in January 1982. Numerous arrests of the brigades' members followed, severely draining the organization's strength.

               The foregoing raise questions as to the definition of a terrorist act. One can think of assassinations, random acts of violence against a particular group of civilians, and random acts of violence against specific groups both in war and peace. Which is which?

               Terrorism is the sustained, clandestine use of violence, murder, kidnapping  bombings to achieve a political purpose. Definitions in the U.S. Intelligence and Surveillance Act of 1979 and the United Kingdom Prevention of Terrorism Act of 1976 stress the use of violence to coerce or intimidate the civilian population in order to affect government policy.

               Despite loose and often unjustified attachment of the terrorist label to revolutionaries and armed insurgents in civil conflicts, not all orchestrated domestic political violence is terrorism. International law separates irregular warfare waged by insurgency movements against military targets from deliberate killing of civilians, indiscriminate bombings of nonmilitary targets, and violence or threats of violence against the population at large. The 1977 Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions of 1949 has solidified the distinction by granting prisoner of war status to captured guerrilla fighters provided they have not committed crimes against civilians.

               As a practical matter, the destruction by Arab agents of Pan Am Flight 103 over Scotland in 1988, the garage bombing of the World Trade Center in New York City by an Arab group in 1993, the car bombing outside the Uffizi Palace presumably by the Mafia in 1993, and a subway gas attack in Tokyo and truck bombing of a federal office building in Oklahoma City in 1995 were clearly terrorist acts. So have been the car bombings by the drug cartels in Colombia and the slaughter of Andean villagers by the Shining Path in Peru. Most historians would not, however, pin the terrorist label on the Polish and French resistance fighters of World War II. Terrorism was one of the weapons used by the National Liberation Front (FLN) in Algeria and by the Viet Minh and Viet Cong in Indochina, even though it was only one aspect of a "war of national liberation."

               Whether political assassination is a terrorist act depends on its association with a broader program of political violence. Thus the assassinations of Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy, while undoubtedly politically motivated and even in at least one case part of a conspiracy, cannot properly be called terrorism. On the other hand, the assassinations of Tsar Alexander II of Russia and of Indira Gandhi, prime minister of India, were part of concerted programs of political violence and hence fit the terrorism definition.

               Governments engage in terrorism and from a statistical standpoint have been the major  perpetrators of politically motivated murder, imprisonment, and mass intimidation in the 20th century. The outstanding examples have been Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia. The murderous tactics of state security services and military "death squads" in El Salvador and Guatemala would run the totalitarian giants a close second. The sinister practice of mass "disappearances" adopted by the Argentine junta from 1976 to 1982 against the youth of that country established a new low in government terrorism.

               One characteristic of revolutionary terrorism has been its quest for spectacular effects in order to attract media coverage and dramatize a political cause. Despite the horror occasioned by the hostage taking and murder of 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics, followed by a wave of aircraft and airport bombings, these atrocities by Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) terrorists elevated the Palestinian cause to a high level of world consciousness. The same has been true of Irish Republican Army (IRA) bombings in Britain.

               The principal obstacles to dealing with modern terrorism arise from its international dimension. Virtually all Palestinian and Islamic fundamentalist terrorism has been funded and based outside the target area, notably in Libya, Syria, and Iran. Basque terrorist attacks in Spain and many IRA attacks in Northern Ireland have been mounted from across an international frontier. The 1985 hijacking of the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro took place in international waters off Egypt, and victims, terrorists, crew, and vessel registration were of different nationalities. Aircraft hijacking and sabotage almost always transcends national boundaries.

               This international dimension creates formidable jurisdictional hurdles to effective counter terrorist action. Domestic terrorism is the province of local law enforcement authorities, and the problems of dealing with it are not much different from a legal standpoint than dealing with organized crime. But, where the site of the terrorist crime is overseas, or the suspects have fled to another country, traditional concepts of sovereignty severely limit the reach of national criminal law and jurisdiction. In practice, extradition proceedings run up against the long standing political offense exemption and the fact that, except in the Anglo American world, evidence derived from plea bargaining of others is viewed as too tainted to support a fugitive's extradition. Radically different rules of trial procedure, admissibility of evidence, and defendants' rights often makes convictions for crimes committed overseas difficult to sustain in U.S. appellate courts.

               The rise of political terrorism in the 1960s has resulted in a concerted international effort to transcend these obstacles. The Tokyo, Hague, and Montreal Conventions of 1963, 1970, and 1971, respectively, and the United Nations Conventions of 1973 and 1979 have made aircraft sabotage and hijacking, hostage taking, and attacks on diplomats international crimes that, like piracy, are punishable by any state. These agreements, together with the 1977 European Convention on Suppression of Terrorism, primarily aim at laying a juridical foundation for the rules "prosecute or extradite." But, while they have undoubtedly energized transnational pursuit of  suspects, some governments have viewed military reprisal as the only effective response to flagrant or repeated attacks: two examples are the 1986 U.S. bombing raid on Libya and Israeli commando raids on PLO bases in Lebanon and Tunis.

               For democratic states difficulties in securing evidence, proving conspiracy, protecting intelligence sources and surveillance techniques, have shifted the emphasis of counter terrorism methods from deterrence to prevention. Today the prevailing method of frustrating terrorist plans is through detailed intelligence from deep cover agents and penetration of terrorist networks and support systems.

               In conclusion, recent years have witnessed acts of violence against the United States in the United States. In the 1970s and '80s pro independence Puerto Ricans occasionally engaged in terrorism to press their case against the U.S. government. But the greatest threat came from the Middle East, where many groups considered the U.S. to be their enemy. Several instances of hijacking (q.v.) by Arab groups brought tighter security to travel terminals around the world. But in 1988 a bomb destroyed Pan American Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing all 259 people on board and 11 on the ground. In 1991 the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency charged Libyan agents with the crime. One of the most spectacular terrorist episodes in U.S. history was the bombing of the World Trade Center in New York City in 1993; six people died in the blast, which caused an estimated $600 million in property and other economic damage. On April 19, 1995, at 9:05 a.m., in Oklahoma City, OK, one car bomb destroyed the Alfred Murrah Federal Building. This senseless act killing and injuring hundreds was the work of one associated with militant groups in the United States.