Thread: The history of Terrorism

What is Terrorism? and how long has it been around? who uses it?

Terrorism is defined as The unlawful use or threatened use of force or violence by a person or an organized group against people or property with the intention of intimidating or coercing societies or governments, often for ideological or political reasons.

http://education.yahoo.com/reference...ntry/terrorism

Terrorism has been around for a very long time, The Greeks and Roman wrote about it, the Spanish Inquistion used it and the French revolution was based on it!

Even the United States was created with means of terrorism as our forefathers rebelled against the British!

During George Washington's presidency, terrorism was committed by the Barbary Pirates. We have seen bombings on Wall Street in the 1920's, The American information office in Eqypt was bombed by Israeli agents in an attempt to frame Arabs in 1954, Congess has been targeted, Embassies in Africa, the U.S.S. Cole, the 1st bombing of the World Trade Center, and Oklahoma City in the 1990's. World-wide there are even more examples of terrorism such as the Munich Olympic Massacre, PanAm Flight 103 in Lockerbie, Scotland, and various suicide bombings in Chechyna, Israel, and Iraq. Every country has had to deal with terrorism in one form or another. There has always been and there will always be a terrorist or group to blame, some homegrown and other's international.

The ancient Greek historian Xenophon (c. 431–c. 350 BC) wrote of the effectiveness of psychological warfare against enemy populations.

Roman emperors such as Tiberius (reigned AD 14–37) and Caligula (reigned AD 37–41) used banishment, expropriation of property, and execution as means to discourage opposition to their rule. Religion also played a major role in terrorism, examples were the Sicari and the Zealots, Jewish groups active during the Roman occupation of the first century Middle East. The favored weapon of the Sicari was the sica (the short dagger which gave them their name, which literally means ‘dagger men’), which they used these to murder those they deemed apostate and thus selected for execution. The Zealots, who generally targeted Romans and Greeks, give us the modern term Zealot, one translation of which is “a fanatical partisan.”[iv] Such killings usually took place in daylight and in front of witnesses, with the perpetrators using such acts to send a message to the Roman authorities and those Jews who collaborated with them – a tactic that would also be used by subsequent generations of what would become known as terrorists.

http://www.cdi.org/friendlyversion/p...ocumentID=1502

The Spanish Inquisition used arbitrary arrest, torture, and execution to punish what it viewed as religious heresy. The use of terror was openly advocated by Robespierre as a means of encouraging revolutionary virtue during the French Revolution, leading to the period of his political dominance called the Reign of Terror (1793–94).

After the American Civil War (1861–65) defiant Southerners formed a terrorist organization called the Ku Klux Klan to intimidate supporters of Reconstruction.

In the latter half of the 19th century, terrorism was adopted by adherents of anarchism in Western Europe, Russia, and the United States. They believed that the best way to effect revolutionary political and social change was to assassinate persons in positions of power.

From 1865 to 1905 a number of kings, presidents, prime ministers, and other government officials were killed by anarchists' guns or bombs.

http://www.terrorismfiles.org/encycl...terrorism.html

The English word ‘terrorism’ comes from the regime de la terreur that prevailed in France from 1793-1794. Originally an instrument of the state, the regime was designed to consolidate the power of the newly-installed revolutionary government, protecting it from elements considered ‘subversive.’ Always value-laden, terrorism was, initially, a positive term. The French revolutionary leader, Maximilien Robespierre, viewed it as vital if the new French Republic was to survive its infancy, proclaiming in 1794 that: “Terror is nothing other than justice, prompt, severe, inflexible; it is therefore an emanation of virtue; it is not so much a special principle as it is a consequence of the general principle of democracy applied to our country's most urgent needs.”

Terrorism and the State

Long before the outbreak of Word War I in Europe in 1914, what would later be termed state-sponsored terrorism had already started to manifest itself. For instance, many officials in the Serbian government and military were involved (albeit unofficially) in supporting, training and arming the various Balkan groups which were active prior to the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand on June 28, 1914 in Sarajevo – an act carried out by an activist from one such group, the ‘Young Bosnians’ and credited with setting in progress the chain of events which led to the war itself.[xii] Similarly, the IMRO (Macedonian Revolutionary Organization) survived largely “because it became for all intents and purposes a tool of the Bulgarian government, and was used mainly against Yugoslavia and well as against domestic enemies.” As such examples illustrate, state-sponsored terrorism is not a new phenomenon.

The 1930s saw a fresh wave of political assassinations deserving of the word terrorism. This led to proposals at the League of Nations for conventions to prevent and punish terrorism as well as the establishment of an international criminal court (neither of which came to aught as they were overshadowed by the events which eventually led to World War II).[xiii] Despite this, during the interwar years, terrorism increasingly referred to the oppressive measures imposed by various totalitarian regimes, most notably those in Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and Stalinist Russia. More recently, other governments, such as those military dictatorships which ruled some South American countries in recent years, or the current regime in Zimbabwe, have also been open to charges of using such methods as a tool of state. Such considerations notwithstanding, some commentators, such as Bruce Hoffman, argue that “such usages are generally termed ‘terror’ in order to distinguish that phenomenon from ‘terrorism,’ which is understood to be violence committed by non-state entities.”[xiv] However not everyone agrees that terrorism should be considered a non-governmental undertaking.


For instance, Jessica Stern insists that in deliberately bombarding civilians as a means of attacking enemy morale, states have indeed resorted to terrorism. Per Stern, such instances include not only the Allied strategic bombing campaigns of World War II, but the American dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki that ended the Pacific phase of that conflict.[xv] This issue remains a contentious one, with individuals such as the World War II British Air Chief, ‘Bomber’ Harris alternatively defended and reviled for their belief in the utility and morality of strategic bombing.

http://www.cdi.org/friendlyversion/p...ocumentID=1502

Still another example of state sponsored terrorism is the little known Lavon Affair in which American and British offices were bombed in Cairo in by Israeli intelligence in order to frame arabs to build support for their growing nation...

Operation Suzannah

In the early 1950s the United States began pressuring the British to withdraw from the Suez Canal, abandoning two operative treaties, the Convention of Constantinople and the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty of 1936 that made the canal a neutral zone under British control. Israel was strongly opposed to the British withdrawal, as it feared that it would remove a moderating effect on Nasser's military ambitions, especially toward Israel, but diplomatic methods failed to sway the British. In the summer of 1954 Colonel Benyamin Gibli, the chief of Israel's military intelligence (Aman), initiated Operation Suzannah in order to reverse that decision. The goal of the Operation was to carry out bombings and other acts of sabotage in Egypt with the aim of creating an atmosphere in which the British and American opponents of British withdrawal from Egypt would be able to gain the upper hand and block the withdrawal.1

The top-secret cell, Unit 131, which was to carry out the operation had existed since 1948 and under Aman since 1950. At the time of Operation Suzannah, Unit 131 was the subject of a bitter dispute between Aman and Mossad over who should control it.

Unit 131 operatives had been recruited several years before, when the Israeli intelligence officer Avram Dar arrived in Cairo under a British cover. He had recruited several Egyptian Jews who had previously been active in illegal emigration activities and trained them for covert operations.

Aman decided to activate the network in the spring of 1954. On July 2, a post office in Alexandria was firebombed, and on July 14, the U.S. Information Agency libraries in Alexandria and Cairo, and a British-owned theater were bombed. The bombs themselves were homemade, consisting of bags containing acid placed over nitroglycerine. The bombs were inserted into books, and placed on the shelves of the libraries just before closing time. Several hours later, as the acid ate through the bags, the bombs would explode. They did little damage to the targets and caused no injuries or deaths. Egyptian authorities arrested one suspect, Robert Dassa, when his bomb accidentally ignited prematurely in his pocket. Having searched his apartment, they found incriminating evidence and names of accomplices to the operation. Several suspects were arrested, including Egyptian Jews and undercover Israelis.

The trial against those arrested lasted until January 27, 1955, when two of the accused (Moshe Marzouk and Shmuel Azar) were condemned to execution by hanging, two were acquitted, and the rest received lengthy prison terms. Two suspects had committed suicide in prison, and another (Israeli agent Avraham Seidenberg (Avri Elad) alias Paul Frank) had managed to escape.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavon_Affair

Since we face terrorism as one of the major threats today, i thought a little research and history on terrorism might be interesting. I listed the major types we usually encounter. I thought this might give us a jumping off point for more discussion of this threat that will be with us until the end of time...perhaps some understanding of the subject is in order.