Terror Attacks
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Contents
Introduction
The Origins of Terrorism
PART ONE: EARLY TERRORISM
Jing Ke, the Master Assassin
The Assassination of Pompey
The Assassination of Julius Caesar
The Zealots
Ali ibn Abi Talib
The Assassin Movement
PART TWO: 1600–1899
The Gunpowder Plot
The Boston Tea Party
John Brown’s Fight Against Slavery
Pogroms in Odessa
Assassination of Tsar Alexander II
Haymarket Square Riot
PART THREE: 1900–1969
The Los Angeles Times bombing
Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand
Wall Street Bombing
The Hebron Massacre
Bombing of King David Hotel
The Qibya Massacre
Bombing of 16th Street Baptist Church
The Black Panthers
El Salvador Death Squads
PART FOUR: 1970–1989
Avivim School Bus Massacre
Black September
Lod Airport Massacre
Bloody Friday
Munich Massacre
Diplomatic Assassinations in Khartoum
Dublin–Monaghan Bombs
Guildford & Woolwich Pub Bombings
The Laju Incident
IRA Coach Bomb
Cambodia Genocide
The OPEC Hostages
Assassination of Aldo Moro
Airey Neave Bombing
Iranian Embassy Siege
The Bologna Massacre
Hyde Park and Regent’s Park Bombing
Rangoon Bombing
The Sabra and Shatila Massacre
Gulf Air Flight 771
Harrods Bomb Blast
The Brighton Bomb
TWA Flight 847
Air India Flight 182
Egypt Air Flight 648
Enniskillen Massacre
Pan Am Flight 103
Atack on the Royal Marine School of Music
PART FIVE: 1990–2006
The Murder of Ian Gow
World Trade Center Bombing
Warrington Bomb Attacks
Alas Chiricanas Flight 00901
Genocide in Rwanda
Kizlyar Hospital Siege
Docklands Devastation
Acteal Massacre
September 11
Moscow Theatre Hostage Crisis
The Bali Bombing
Gulf War Number Three
Chechnya Black Widows
Beslan School Hostage Crisis
Madrid Bombings
The July 2005 London Bombings
Bombs Rock Egypt
Mumbai Massacre
Israel–Lebanon Terror
Britain on ‘Red Alert’
Rebel Attack on Turkey
Introduction
Since September 11, 2001, the threat of terror attacks has become one of the most disturbing aspects of life in the 21st century. For those of us living in the more prosperous parts of the world, modern technology has, in many ways, made life easier and safer than ever before, whether in housing, transport, health care, communications, or through a huge variety of other services. Yet, increasingly, there is a sense that this ultra-modern, high-tech world is under threat: whether from environmental sources, such as climate change, or from human communities excluded from this rapid development, who now seek to destroy these benefits by whatever means they can. And, despite the rhetoric from Western governments about the benefits of our way of life, in terms of freedom, democracy and economic growth, many people feel a distinct sense of unease about the future. There is a sense that we do not really understand what is going on, either because we have not been told the truth, or because the issues are really too complex for any ordinary person to follow. But are they, in reality? Or do we just prefer to oversimplify, to make life easier for ourselves?
THE ‘WAR ON TERROR’
In the aftermath of 9/11, President Bush delivered an address that proved to be a turning point in the history of Western democracy. He spoke of America launching a ‘war on terror’ and described an ‘axis of evil’ that the USA would seek to destroy. His use of these abstract nouns, ‘terror’ and ‘evil’, was highly significant. Firstly, by talking about ‘terror’ in the abstract instead of indicating the actual culprits behind the 9/11 attacks (a small group of militant extremists with limited global support) he gave himself carte blanche to wage war on any group that the USA might consider to be an enemy. In practise, this meant invading Afghanistan, and later Iraq – not as enemy nations who had committed aggressive acts against the USA, but as part of the new ‘war on terror’. Secondly, by using the word ‘evil’, he gave the impression that there was no political issue at stake here: this was, in essence, a simple fight between the forces of good (America) and the forces of evil (al-Qaeda/The Taliban/Saddam Hussein/any anti-American or anticapitalist activist group).
While many may have agreed with Bush that both the precepts of Islamic fundamentalism and the regime of Saddam Hussein contravened some of our most basic assumptions in the West about respect for human rights, collapsing the differences between these two distinct approaches in the Arab world, and ignoring the political context of the conflict, gave his words a simplistic, ideological slant that many found both dishonest and dangerous. And, while in domestic terms Bush’s strategy seems to have worked, at least in terms of getting him re-elected, globally his approach has done untold damage. For, by using these abstract terms, ‘terror’ and ‘evil’, Bush gave the impression that al-Qaeda was an enormously powerful Islamic organisation with millions of adherents across the world: a situation that, ironically, his ‘war on terror’ has helped to bring into being as more and more Muslims, in countries such as Pakistan, become alienated from the West and follow the path of Islamic fundamentalism. Thus, whether by mistake or design, Bush’s ‘war on terror’ response to the 9/11 attacks has had the effect of plunging the Western and Arab worlds into a deepening global conflict whose battles are now being played out in terrorist attacks on the streets of our cities, instead of by soldiers fighting on the field of war.
POLITICAL CONFLICTS
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bsp; As an example of this, let us look at the 2006 conflict in Lebanon. The ruling party in the southern area of the country is Hezbollah, listed as a terrorist organization by many countries in the West. Despite its brutality, Hezbollah has won the loyalty of the poverty-stricken people of the region by offering them resources such as housing, health care and social services. At the same time, Hezbollah have been accused of kidnapping Israeli soldiers and firing missiles at Israeli targets across the border, causing the Israeli Defence Force to launch a series of attacks on the civilian population in Lebanon.
So who are the terrorists here? Is this a war, or a series of terrorist attacks? And in a situation where it is ordinary men, women, and children living in towns and cities who are first in the firing line, does it matter what you call it?
Contrary to what Bush would have us believe, this is not a simple situation in which the good fight the evil of ‘terror’: there is a long, extremely complex political background to this conflict that cannot be ignored if it is to be understood, let alone any solutions offered. And as with most conflicts, there appears to be only one simple aspect to the continuing unrest in the Middle East: that it is always the innocent who suffer, whoever the aggressors may be.
RESISTANCE OR TERROR?
Not surprisingly, Bush’s stance has provoked a great deal of opposition, not just in Arab countries, but among millions of ordinary citizens in the West who find his policies arrogant, aggressive and narrow-minded. According to this oppositional point of view, the USA has oppressed the peoples of many countries around the world, either by direct military intervention or through economic and cultural imperialism. It has even, in some cases, involved itself in, or turned a blind eye to ‘state terrorism’, that is, terrorist attacks covertly sponsored by national governments. The formation of militant activist groups committing acts of terrorism in return is the desperate response of leaders among these oppressed peoples, who have no other way to bring the world’s attention to their cause.
In many ways, the idea that terror attacks are committed on behalf of minority groups who do not have access to political power, and as such have some moral purpose, is a persuasive one. Certainly, there are situations in which resistance to an oppressor seems to be the only course of action, and there are many instances in history of courageous leaders taking a stand to defend their people, whether it be the French Resistance fighters in World War II or Nelson Mandela and the ANC in South Africa under apartheid.
Yet, when we look closely at contemporary terror attacks, we find that they do not always fit this pattern: often, terrorists have no mandate from the peoples they profess to fight for; they may even kill members of their own community or religious group; and, interestingly, they may even be well-off, wealthy individuals who have little in common with the oppressed peoples they apparently represent.
THE BILLIONAIRE TERRORIST
There can be no more obvious example of this than the leader of al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, who, as the son of a billionaire businessman, seems on the face of it to have a background that has more in common with President Bush than with the poverty-stricken inmate of a Palestinian refugee camp. Yet bin Laden, a wealthy, well-educated individual brought up in the lap of luxury, sees himself as the saviour of the economically and culturally dispossessed around the world. In the same way, many other terrorist leaders, such as Carlos the Jackal and members of the Baader-Meinhof group, came from well-heeled backgrounds, and their crimes seemed as much rebellions against their privileged backgrounds as they were political statements.
THE SECOND-GENERATION SEPARATIST
Not all terrorist leaders, of course, were born with a silver spoon in their mouths. However, it is remarkable how many of them come from sections of their communities that are by no means the poorest or most oppressed. For example, it emerged that the perpetrators of the July 7, 2005, attacks in London were mostly from fairly well-integrated Asian families, and their parents, as first-generation immigrants, would have had far more problems to contend with in settling in to a new country than did their children, born and educated in Britain. Similarly, the suicide bombers in the 9/11 attacks in the USA were, on the whole, fairly well-educated young men with reasonably good prospects in terms of career, family and so on, rather than desperate Palestinan refugees sacrificing their lives in the hopes of a better future for their people.
Why should this be? Surely, those who have no hope for the future unless the status quo is changed are more likely to commit terror attacks than those who have many future opportunities in life? Yet that does not seem to be the case. Perhaps it is only the more settled, educated members of a minority group that become politicized, militant leaders who go on to commit terror attacks; or perhaps the experience of being expected to straddle two different value systems is a profoundly disturbing one for the second-generation immigrant. Whatever the truth, it is clear that the pathology of terrorism is one that we are only just beginning to trace, let alone understand. This is an area that must be looked at in terms of a whole series of issues, such as second-generation immigrant culture in different nations, the problems of separatism, of state funding for the religious schooling of minority groups, of generational conflict, of migration patterns and so on. Once again, there is no simple picture here, and no easy answers.
ACTIVIST OR THUG?
Allied to this question of the terrorist’s cultural and economic background is that of motivation. To what extent is the terrorist a sober political realist with a clear aim in mind – however brutal the means to his or her end? And to what extent a mentally unstable individual with a pathological desire simply to kill, maim and harm, with no real grasp of politics at all?
Once again, the lines here are often blurred. For example, the IRA’s long campaign of terror attacks, undertaken to secure a united Ireland independent of British rule, was clearly a strongly political campaign with specific military targets to begin with, which was to some degree effective in that it had local support in the country, and gains were made for the cause; yet, by the last stages of the campaign, it had become clear that the ‘Provos’, as they became known, were acting in a senselessly brutal, often mercenary manner, alienating any public support that they might once have had. In the same way, the terrorist Abu Nidal appears to have started out with a clear aim to improve the lot of the Palestinian people; however, he eventually became a brutal mercenary with a warped, sadistic personality, which caused him to be hated and feared among his own followers, as well as among his enemies. The same could perhaps be said of Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev, who may have been fighting to liberate his people from Russian rule, but whose own reputation for psychopathic brutality has become legendary in his country.
Ultimately, it seems that the psychology of such individuals, who live for the most part outside civilized society, remains largely unknown: the terrorist’s journey from committed political activist to savage, deranged killer is yet another aspect of the phenomenon of terrorism that to date, has been under-researched.
THE WAY FORWARD
Given the fact that the issue of terrorism is not a simple one, as politicians both on the right and on the left would have us believe, what should our response to it be?
Most of us would agree that terror attacks are wrong: that killing people, especially defenceless citizens with no political connections, cannot be a way forward, whatever the injustices suffered by a group, people or nation. To this degree, terrorism is inexcusable: it is a breakdown of civilized human communication, in which the innocent are always targeted. It cannot, and must not, be tolerated: but, just as with any kind of conflict, if we are to stop it, we must make an effort to understand the root causes of it. If we do not, we risk an escalation of the violence, as we have already seen happen post 9/11.
SUICIDE BOMBERS
It seems that terrorism is the way war is often fought in the new millennium – with no formal agreements, no rules and no safeguards for the civilian population. The enormously compl
ex global transport systems that we now have in place to carry literally millions of people around the planet ironically offer the ‘freelance’ terrorist many more opportunities for sabotage than at any other time in human history – especially if that terrorist is prepared to commit suicide in pursuit of his or her goal. We have only to remember the devastation wrought on the Twin Towers by two suicide bombers armed only with box-cutters to realize how much damage single individuals, with little in the way of arms or weapons, can do.
Of course, security can be tightened up, but the scale of the problem is enormous. Take the recent Mumbai train bombings of July 11, 2006, for example. In a situation where literally millions of people are travelling around a city daily, and a small group of terrorists are travelling with them, preparing to kill themselves along with their victims, it is difficult to see how security systems could ever effectively monitor and prevent such attacks.
STEPPING UP SECURITY
So what is the answer? Firstly, it is clear that increased security measures, important though they are, cannot be expected to solve the problem. Indeed, attempts to step up security have often ended in disaster, such as happened in the aftermath of the July 7 bombings in London, when an innocent victim, Charles de Menenez, was taken for a terrorist and shot to death on the London underground by police, in full view of the public. Such acts can only increase the terror and anxiety felt by the ordinary people as they go about their business in our ever-expanding cities all around the world.
Secondly, the overblown, abstract rhetoric of the Bush administration has done nothing but cloud the issue; indeed, many feel that in exaggerating the scale of the problem for his own political purposes, Bush has created a profound rift between the Western and Islamic worlds, and one that has resulted in increased terror attacks. Similarly, the response of the political left has, in many cases, been over-simplistic: terror attacks around the world do not occur solely as a result of America’s oppressive military, cultural and economic imperialism, although that is evidently a factor, but are a much more complex response to the modern world, in which individual psychopathology seems to play a large part.