International Terrorism
Its the proverbial boogey man of the modern world. And the last while it’s been pretty much associated with Islamic extremists. We will cover the Islamic one here in just a bit but lets take a quick look at “modern terrorism” say since World War 2.
Trying to find a “definition” of terrorism has been really hard to peg down. The best I could find without to much garbly gook was the U.N. convention in 1994 tried their best:
“Criminal acts intended or calculated to provoke a state of terror in the general public, a group of persons or particular persons for political purposes are in any circumstance unjustifiable, whatever the considerations of a political, philosophical, ideological, racial, ethnic, religious or any other nature that may be invoked to justify them.”
heres a link to the original full document
Now don’t forget that definition as it is real important and also means that many governments today have used terrorism such as Gladio!
The IRA (Irish Republican Army), trying to keep this simple and broken down into crayon we wont get into the whole RIRA, PIRA,etc. Ireland cares maybe, but the rest of the world doesn’t. Sorry Mick’s.
Originally a group that would use bombings,killings,shootings,etc ie scarring the hell out of everyone in order to “liberate” Northern Ireland and bring Eire and North Ireland into one unified country. So using violence to achieve a political end. However nowadays they could be considered (via Sein Fein) a part of the everyday political process. Also the UDR (Ulster Defense Regiment, Black and Tans, etc could be considered terrorists in their drive to keep Northern Ireland seperate from Eire.
Black September
This is the group who kidnapped and killed Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics in order to secure the release of Palestinian prisoners being held by Israel. This one ended badly for everyone concerned. Also see the PLO (Palestinian Liberation Organization) that used terrorism to secure the Palestinian State. Later the PLO became “legit” and a governing body.
Various U.S. Domestic Terror Groups– listverse has its own take on domestic terror groups and it will be controversial for many and iinitially I wasn’t going to even mention it but really when one does take a look at the groups they mention these groups would follow the definition of terror. I would also have included the Weatherman and SLA, Charles Manson, etc.
Israel
I really didn’t want to touch this one with a fucking 10 foot pole but a spades a spade. Israel before it became a state employed much of the same kind of terrorist craft that they continually bitch about the Palestinians doing to them. Back when it was a group called Lehi and they considered themselves “freedom fighters” trying to create a state. So they employed violence (bombing, kidnapping,etc) to achieve a political end (statehood) by creating a state of terror (against the British in Palestine).
There’s been a boatload of other terror groups in tons of different countries but this is a blog and not a book.
Islamic Terrorism
well here we go, the cause of the day. A few things we need to understand first though. Is that there are a few key differences in Islamist groups.
Sunni and Shia. In some ways the differences could be described as the difference between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland. For instance Al-Qaeda is predominately of Sunni background and NOT welcome in Shia majority countries. Heres a blog which does give some backgrounder in the differences (warning that this link is pretty biased against the Shia’s)
So when we hear about countries like Iran and Syria (Shia majority) were not talking about Al-Qaeda countries. Syria however has supported Hezbollah (acting in Lebanon). Iran allegedly supports other groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah. Then again though the U.S. says Iran supported Al-Qaeda which is really unlikely as on a religeous level they hate each others guts.
Now about Al-Qaeda they were started and funded by the CIA with help from Saudi Arabia (Sunni). That‘s a fact not a conspiracy theory! Initially it was a group to help fight the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 70’s and 80’s. Another one of those ideas that seemed to be good at the time but would result in blowback later on.
So interestingly for a so called Western ally Saudi Arabia supplies most of the terrorists to groups like Al-Queda and funding through so called “charities” and madrases “schools”. Stranger still is the U.S. using Al-Queda terrorists in Syria. Some at this point might say “what the fuck?”