Individual Terrorists Research Articles

The Socialization Of Terrorism In Canada

The academic and institutional battlefield is littered with the best intentions of those attempting to bring a universally recognized definition to the term ‘terrorism’. The concept of ‘where you sit is where you stand’ certainly applies to such endeavors. In addition to considering how best to integrate such fundamental questions as who, what, where, why and how in a definition of the term, attempts have been confounded and complicated by where definitional efforts have been centered within a particular community. Do you adopt a social science or quasi-scientific approach? From a jurisprudence and law enforcement perspective? Terrorist financing? Intent and motivation? Psychological drivers and personal profiles of individual terrorists? Organizational structures? Cultural and anthropological approaches? Rationality and mental health? Historical considerations? Critical study interpretations? All this has made for terrorism being a contested concept over the decades. As observed by Schmid and Jongman, and as we shall explore, “The nature of terrorism is not inherent in the violent act itself. One and the same act can be terrorist or not, depending on the intention and circumstances.” But how terrorism is defined by whatever community is not a trivial issue. Definitions carry political and policy consequences that govern the counterterrorism space and how threats and risks are articulated going forward. How the threat environment endures is often just as much an outcome of how a state elects to respond to the threat, as it is the agenda of terrorist entities. And terrorism charges cannot be prosecuted if there is not at least some notion of how motivations, intentions and acts are defined in statutes. Received: 01-05-2024 Revised: 01-14-2024

An integrated deep-learning and multi-level framework for understanding the behavior of terrorist groups

Human security is threatened by terrorism in the 21st century. A rapidly growing field of study aims to understand terrorist attack patterns for counter-terrorism policies. Existing research aimed at predicting terrorism from a single perspective, typically employing only background contextual information or past attacks of terrorist groups, has reached its limits. Here, we propose an integrated deep-learning framework that incorporates the background context of past attacked locations, social networks, and past actions of individual terrorist groups to discover the behavior patterns of terrorist groups. The results show that our framework outperforms the conventional base model at different spatio-temporal resolutions. Further, our model can project future targets of active terrorist groups to identify high-risk areas and offer other attack-related information in sequence for a specific terrorist group. Our findings highlight that the combination of a deep-learning approach and multi-scalar data can provide groundbreaking insights into terrorism and other organized violent crimes.

THEORETICAL BASIS OF COMBATING TERRORIST ACTS IN THE URBAN ENVIRONMENT

Тhe article defines the concept of terrorism, outlines the directions that contribute to the implementation of a terrorist act. It is highlighted that the anti-terrorist security of Ukraine is being formed as a state system of combating terrorism. The content of protection and countermeasures against terrorism is determined in the conditions of the formation of a tendency to increase the levels of public danger. The need for urban planning and architectural and planning measures to counter terrorist acts in the urban environment is noted. The general theoretical principles of the formation of protection against terrorist attacks in the urban environment by urban planning and architectural and planning means are considered. Changes in the content, forms and methods of modern terrorism are identified: new styles of terrorism around the world – attacks on important educational, commercial or government buildings with large crowds of people, threats to disrupt everyday urban life, the growth of the number of terrorist groups and actions of individual terrorists, committing terrorist attacks in cities, the spread of terrorism in urban open spaces. The construction of physical protection of elements of the urban environment is considered, guided by the principles of adequacy to accepted models of threats through organizational and administrative measures, technical methods of implementing protection of elements of the urban environment, threats and models of violators; zonal construction through the organization and creation of free zones, restricted access zones and protected zones; ensuring the necessary level of effectiveness of the physical protection system for all methods of committing terrorist acts; adaptability to the technological features of the functions of elements of the urban environment.

ТЕРРОРИЗМ В СОВРЕМЕННОМ ОБЩЕСТВЕ: ФАКТОРЫ РАСПРОСТРАНЕНИЯ

Objective of the study. The study of the problems of modern terrorism and the factors of its spread. The methodological basis of the research. The article applies the methodological principles of system and historicism, methodological approaches of structural and functional analysis, behaviorism, interactionism, subjective-personal and information-communicative approaches form a methodological construct that allows to study the types and factors of terrorism. Research results. The fight against terrorism and extremism has led to the accumulation of abundant empirical material. However, its theoretical understanding is still incomplete, which makes it difficult to purposefully prevent extremist manifestations, terrorist acts and the detection of hidden cells of terrorist organizations. Given the formation of a socio-philosophical concept of the study of terrorism, its modern types, forms and methods of organizing terror and individual terrorist acts, the effectiveness of the activities of the special services would be more successful.   Prospects of the study. Modern terrorism appears to be a complex, conflicting and multidimensional phenomenon of a socio-political nature, requiring serious systematic and complex work of scientific personnel. And the fight against social and political problems is the only way to really avoid terrorist threats.

THE EUROPEAN UNION AND TERRORIST THREATS: THE NEXT STEP (PART I)

In recent years we have been observing a new approach of the European Union to security threats, including the terrorist ones. In this case, it consists primarily in rejecting the division into physical and cyber threats, recognizing the role of private entities in preventive actions and noticing the problem of radicalization. The issue of data protection is also important, for example in the context of individual freedom. Finally, it is no longer possible to remain indifferent to the relations between terrorists and organized crime groups, or threats inspired by third countries. The conflict in Ukraine shows that the destruction of critical infrastructure is much more dangerous for the lives of entire societies than bombings or attacks by individual terrorists. These and other issues are reflected in the EU legislation. However, the topic is so extensive that it requires elaboration in several parts.

Decentralised Terrorism, Religion, and Social Identity

This paper offers a theory of decentralised, non-state-sponsored terrorism that is characteristic of contemporary reality, and that explains the rise of homegrown terrorism. We argue that the sense of social identity based on religion or shared history is a prime motivator of non-strategic terrorist activities, and we investigate its consequences and implications for defence against terrorism. Terrorist responses to perceived affronts to identity increase with altruism towards in-groups and with endogenous intensity of hate towards out-groups. We show that, while out-group spite is the more essential feature of identity pertinent to decentralised terrorism, the intensity of terrorist actions is magnified by in-group altruism because it plays an important role in overcoming the potential free-riding of terrorists. This makes individual terrorist activities possible without coordination. We use our formulation to provide an alternative explanation for why counterterrorism measures intended to deter and manage terrorism often fail, and frequently can have a backlash effect of actually increasing it. Our results point to the need for Western democracies to reformulate their foreign policies to take account of the role these policies play in instigating and managing contemporary terrorism.

О вооруженных мятежах одиночек, или особенности индивидуальной террористической деятельности

This article analyzes some forms of individual terrorist activity caused by personal and micro - group conflicts in modern society. The definition of a lone terrorist is given and the inadmissibility of downplaying the danger of their actions is justified due to the special difficulty of timely detection and prevention, special integration into the world terrorist movement, the growth of opportunities for independent preparation and implementation of these crimes, including using global information networks. It is noted that these manifestations are not characterized by the simultaneous presence of all those signs of a terrorist attack that have been fixed in the Russian criminal law, the scenario of attacks, fragmented and closed contacts of future terrorists, their better awareness, integration into local communities, the use of available weapons and other means of committing crimes, the prevalence of mental pathologies among delinquents.

Who is to blame for the terrorist attack? Comparison of content analysis and survey data as sources of responsibility ascriptions

There is a growing body of research that uses different content analysis techniques to study risk and related issues. In this article, we focused on the question of how analysis of textual data relates to individual judgments, specifically responsibility ascriptions after the case of a terrorist attack. Our methodological goal was to assess the agreement between the results obtained via unobtrusive methods and evaluations extracted from survey data. Our substantive goal was to examine the specificity of responsibility attributions in the situation of a terrorist attack based on manual content analyses of blog posts. We addressed these questions in three empirical studies. The first focused on the 2011 Domodedovo Airport bombing. A content analysis of a random sample of 1050 posts showed that individual terrorists are rarely blamed in contrast to other actors. This unexpected finding inspired the subsequent studies. In the second study, a content analysis of essays written by students about terrorist attacks in Volgograd in 2013 (n = 26) was used in conjunction with an online survey of these students. The result was that almost all the actors had high blame ratings, even actors not mentioned in the essays. A third study examined the 2015 Charlie Hebdo shooting. Apart from essays and an online survey of students (n = 80), we also conducted a manual content analysis of blog posts (n = 300). We found weak, but important evidence for concurrence of content analysis and survey data: students who mentioned French authorities in essays indeed blamed this actor higher in the survey. In conclusion, content analysis proved to be a suitable tool for inferring responsibility ascriptions from textual data, but reconstructed evaluations from texts do not always correspond to the opinion poll data.

Half-a-Century of Terrorist Attacks: Weapons Selection, Casualty Outcomes, and Implications for Counter-Terrorism Medicine.

High profile terrorist attacks in major capital cities have seemingly become a regular occurrence and the resultant mass-casualty events continue to challenge health care systems. Counter-Terrorism Medicine (CTM) addresses unique terrorism-related issues relating to the mitigation, preparedness, and response measures to asymmetric, multi-modality terrorist attacks. This study is an epidemiological examination of all terrorism-related events sustained from 1970-2019, analyzing historical weapon types used and the resulting fatal injuries (FI) and non-fatal injuries (NFI) sustained. The Global Terrorism Database (GTD) was searched for all attacks from 1970-2019. Attacks met inclusion criteria if they fulfilled the three terrorism-related criteria, as set by the GTD codebook. Ambiguous events were excluded. State-sponsored terrorist events do not meet the codebook's definition, and as such, are excluded from the study. Available counts of FI and NFI in each incident were then sorted and aggregated by weapon type to enable mean and standard deviation calculations. In total, 168,003 events were recorded from the years 1970-2019. Explosives, bombs, and/or dynamite (E/B/D) were the most commonly used weapon type and accounted for 48.78% of all terrorism events, followed by the use of firearms in 26.77% of events. A total of 339,435 FI and 496,225 NFI resulted from all terrorism events that occurred during the study period. Combined, E/B/D and firearms accounted for 75.55% of all events, 67.1% of all FI, and 79.3% of all NFI. Each individual terrorism event inflicted a mean FI rate of 2.14 FI per event (SD = 10.2) and a mean NFI rate of 3.22 NFI per event (SD = 45.19). Although terrorism is complex and does not solely rely on death tolls as a measure of success, this analysis shows a historic mean FI rate of 2.14 and NFI rate of 3.22 per event over the past 50 years. Proven weapons such as E/B/D and firearms combine to account for over 75% of weapon types used in all events. Use of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) such as chemical, biological, radiation, and nuclear (CBRN) weapons has been rare (0.2%), yet has extreme high potential to inflict mass casualties with mean NFI rates of 49.62 and 28.75 for chemical and biological weapons, respectively.

A psychological typology of terror organizations

Understanding the motivations, intentions, and capabilities of terror organizations is highly important to understanding and assessing the risk they present, and to implement effective counter-terror measures. Currently, research of terror organizations consists of designated areas such as economy, security, cyber, and media. Despite ample research on the psychology of the individual terrorist, research regarding the terror organization as a group entity is scarce. The present paper thus presents an exploratory typology, based on both individual and group psychology, which is designed to provide a psychological assessment of terror organizations. Applying a deductive thematic analysis approach, the profiles of three terror organizations: Hezbollah, Hamas, and IS, were analyzed using a five-dimension typology. The data relating to the three organizations was based on two main sources. First, academic journals and official releases by Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), and second, official publications in Arabic by the organizations themselves. Results show different profiles for the three organizations in terms of their psychological maturity. We propose that different approaches to countering terrorism may be considered based on each organization's unique profile.

ПОЛІТИЧНИЙ ТЕРОРИЗМ: ФОРМИ ПРОЯВУ

One individual's terrorist policy can turn into terrorism for the whole world. Terrorism has become one of the global problems of today. It affects all spheres of existence of modern society, especially the security, stability and functioning of political institutions of the state, the stability of a multilevel system of socio-political and international relations. The study of political terrorism is extremely important for modern Ukraine, where the problems of violence, along with economic, social, spiritual, ideological and others, do not allow the country to develop in the direction of increasing social security, constantly turning it to daily survival and confrontation, reducing the security of our country. Therefore, it is necessary to constantly clarify the trends in the development of the modern social process, to predict the dangers and threats of armed political confrontation, and to use extremist violence – terrorism. This, in turn, is almost impossible without constant clarification of the methodological foundations of the theory of political terrorism. Solving this problem requires deep theoretical knowledge, insight into the essence and content of terrorism. At the same time, the role of political science analysis is growing. The destruction of a stable political environment must be seen as a strategic goal of political terrorism. Based on the unbalanced structure of society, it seeks to force society to function, to develop in the direction set by terrorist forces. Political terrorism has become a destructive force that generates social, political instability internationally. Europe's entry into a complex, contradictory socio-political process associated with a radical change in the vectors of political development in the XXI century, directly reflected on the level, dynamics, direction of political terrorism, as well as – on various forms of its implementation. The political life of Europe has absorbed a whole spectrum of political terror.

Modern terrorism: motives of individual terrorists or the strategies of terrorist groups?

ABSTRACT In most cases, terrorism must be considered as an outcome of both individual motives and strategic considerations on an organisational or group level. Whether the (strategic) intentions of a group or individual motives constitute the main driver varies with the different sources of motivation behind terrorism. The robustness and consistency of proclaimed political agendas of terror groups differ significantly and, therefore, also their ‘strategic’ use of terrorism. Overall, one can argue that today groups represent the main drivers behind global terrorism as they account for the vast majority of attacks and casualties. However, one can also identify a growing blurring of boundaries between the actions of terror organisations and independently acting terrorists facilitated through modern communication technology.

HUMAN RIGHTS, COUNTER-TERRORISM AND THE MORALITY OF EXTRA-JUDICIAL KILLING: THE PHILOSOPHY AND NATIONAL INTEREST PERSPECTIVE

Within the second half of the twentieth century, the spate of terrorist attacks all over the world adopted such stride that warranted reaction of international community in form of several treaties and Conventions on counter-terrorism. Under these treaties, States have rights and duties to take counter-terrorism measures to prevent and deter terrorist attacks and to prosecute those responsible for carrying out such heinous acts. The significance of this paper is stressed by the additional duty to comply with State obligation under international law, particularly, international human rights, refugee and humanitarian laws. The purpose of this paper amongst others, is to draw attention to the awkward development arising from the fact that, in pursuit of these measures, various member states have adopted all kinds of counter-terrorism measures, ranging from targeted killing, extra-judicial killing and running of torture camps and chambers, especially in the aftermath of the 9/11 attack on the United States of America; which sad event orchestrated permissive regime of rechristening every conceivable opposition as terrorism that must be addressed, by all forms of high-handedness. This dimension of counter-terrorism measures raise several human right questions, bordering on human right and humanitarian law on the one hand, and the question of morality of extra-judicial killing on the other. By doctrinal or theoretical approach, the paper observed and found that there is a gap in the International Law on counter terrorism, on the approach an aggrieved State may adopt where a terrorist is either evasive of the cause of justice or where the State hosting him is either unable or unwilling to bring him to justice. The paper lamented over too much emphasis on the human right of individual terrorist at the expense of peace and stability of the State. The paper thus recommended that counter-terrorism laws be amended to reflect this obvious gap and counseled that national policies on counter-terrorism should put security of other Nations into consideration for a more balanced administration of international justice.

Terrorism Financing: Al-Qaeda and ISIS

Terrorism financing is providing and distributing funds for terrorist operations. Although the cost of an individual terrorist attack may be small, terrorist organizations rely on a steady flow of funds to support their operational costs. These funds can be raised through various sources. Funds can be raised through legitimate sources, such as donations and charitable organizations. Funds can also be raised through criminal activities, such as drug trafficking, smuggling, kidnapping, and extortion. This paper will demonstrate that terrorist organizations, specifically Al-Qaeda and ISIS, are able to adapt and continuously finance themselves regardless of the United States counter-terrorism efforts. First, this paper will first collect information on how Al-Qaeda and ISIS funds themselves. Second, collect information on how the United States combatted funding for Al-Qaeda and ISIS. Third, conduct an analysis and discussion of how Al-Qaeda and ISIS kept adapting to the United States combatting efforts.

Związki terroryzmu dżihadystycznego z handlem narkotykami. Casus Hiszpanii

Militant Islam is presumed to be an increasingly potent force in Europe. The radical ideology, which stands behind it, has been creating many challenges to the international security. Jihadi terrorism is one of the most dangerous phenomena that has threatened different Western societies and its impact on the European security is severe. To understand the challenges for the international and regional security it is necessary to analyze the financing of terrorism: legal and illegal activities that provide financial support for extremist organizations or individual terrorists. The article explores the link between jihadi terrorism and organised crime, especially when it comes to drug trafficking in Europe (Spain) and in Maghreb. It focuses on the character of the symbiotic relationship between organized and common crime groups and the jihadi network. The paper examines the security threats and some important issues of counter-terrorism strategy.

Dynamic Patterns of Terrorist Networks: Efficiency and Security in the Evolution of Eleven Islamic Extremist Attack Networks

The current research examines how the efficiency/security tradeoff shapes the evolution of dynamic terrorist networks by focusing on the structural properties of these collectives. Some scholars argue that terrorist groups develop as chain-like, decentralized structures, while others maintain that terrorist networks form patterns of redundant ties and organize around a few highly connected individuals, or central hubs. We investigate these structural properties and consider whether patterns vary at different phases of a terrorist network’s formation. Using a variety of descriptive network measures and Separable Temporal Exponential Random Graph Models, we consider patterns of tie formation across eleven multi-wave terrorism networks from the John Jay & ARTIS Transnational Terrorism database. This dataset includes networks from prominent attacks and bombings that occurred in the last 3 decades (e.g., the 2002 Bali Bombings), where nodes represent individual terrorists and ties represent social relationships. We find that terrorist groups navigate the efficiency/security tradeoff by developing increasingly well-connected networks as they prepare for a violent incident. Our results also show that highly central nodes acquire even more ties in the years directly preceding an attack, signifying that the evolution of terrorist networks tends to be structured around a few key actors. Our findings have the potential to inform counterterrorism efforts by suggesting which actors in the network make the most influential targets for law enforcement. We discuss how these strategies should vary as extremist networks evolve over time.

Analysis of the “lone wolf” phenomenon in the context of the Leaderless Resistance Strategy

The article presents an analysis of the phenomenon of a terrorist – a lone wolf in the context of the leaderless resistance strategy. The aim of the article is to show that individual terrorism is a basic element of the leaderless resistance strategy. The research problem is the impact of the leaderless resistance strategy on the actions of individual terrorists who organize and carry out a terrorist attack without the support of a terrorist organization. According to the leaderless resistance strategy, an individual is sufficient to organize and implement a terrorist attack. The Leaderless Resistance Strategy assumes maximum decentralization. The key is the existence of individuals who, sharing a particular worldview, are capable of independent organization and launching an attack. When attempting an attack, a lone wolf is appropriately motivated ideologically, but does not maintain contact with the hierarchy of the organization, and thus enhances the effect of intimidation of the society. Individual terrorism, based on the leaderless resistance strategy, is becoming the most popular form of terrorism. An element of the Leaderless Resistance Strategy are operations carried out by lone wolves, small groups or cells regardless of the support of official organizational structures.

Analysis of the Terrorist Organization Alliance Network Based on Complex Network Theory

Preventing terrorist attacks is crucial to the development and safety of a country. Therefore, studying the law and the occurrence of terrorist attacks enable the countries to develop steadily. Specially, we have noticed that over time, terrorism has gradually shown the characteristics that are manifested as vast and hidden geographical distribution and can be modeled as networks. Based on such characteristics, the traditional method of analyzing individual terrorist organizations no longer serves the needs of anti-terrorism security research under the new situation. Since the terrorist organizations can be modeled as networks, terrorists use their associated networks, which is aimed to achieve the greater and more rapid criminal activity. In view of the above characteristics of the terrorist organization in the new era, in this paper, we introduce the social network theory to analyze the regular patterns of the terrorist attacks. First, we analyze the terrorist attacks in the data set. If two or more terrorist organizations participate in the certain terrorist attack at the same time, they will establish a side-by-side relationship and increase the weight of one side. In this way, the terrorist organization network is constructed and the statistical analysis can be carried out. Then, we divide the organization of the terrorist organization network by means of community division method and the terrorist organization is classified in detail. Here, the classification of terrorist organizations into 13 categories laid the foundation for subsequent analysis. The experimental results verify the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed analysis.

Through the lens of terror: re-imaging terrorist violence in Boukhrief’s Made in France

ABSTRACTNicolas Boukhrief’s film Made in France (2015) charts an unsettling path into the world of terror, with the radical intent to shake public perceptions and disrupt state discourses by redirecting the gaze inward to investigate the very disturbing, and much repressed, phenomenon of home-grown terror. The film marks a major departure in Western films about terrorism, in that it frames the story through the perspective of the terrorist, and maps a different cartographic imagination, directing attention away from conceptions of terrorism as dispersed, networked or de-territorialised to establish a geography in which terror is located in the inner domain and manifests itself as a state of rupture or ‘anomie’. Made in France avoids the trap of perpetual binaries (‘us’ versus ‘them’ rhetoric) to deliver a trenchant message about the growing threat couched in the social fabric, and in our contemporary times. By shifting the gaze from the more generalised subject of ‘terrorism’ to focus on individual terrorists as well as processes of radicalisation and group dynamics, the film aims to unpack the concept of terrorist and undo the spectacle of terrorism in order to articulate a more complex and reflective narrative that emphasises causality, history and temporality.

Fundamental patterns and predictions of event size distributions in modern wars and terrorist campaigns.

It is still unknown whether there is some deep structure to modern wars and terrorist campaigns that could, for example, enable reliable prediction of future patterns of violent events. Recent war research focuses on size distributions of violent events, with size defined by the number of people killed in each event. Event size distributions within previously available datasets, for both armed conflicts and for global terrorism as a whole, exhibit extraordinary regularities that transcend specifics of time and place. These distributions have been well modelled by a narrow range of power laws that are, in turn, supported by some theories of violent group dynamics. We show that the predicted event-size patterns emerge broadly in a mass of new event data covering all conflicts in the world from 1989 to 2016. Moreover, there are similar regularities in the events generated by individual terrorist organizations, 1998—2016. The existence of such robust empirical patterns hints at the predictability of size distributions of violent events in future wars. We pursue this prospect using split-sample techniques that help us to make useful out-of-sample predictions. Power-law-based prediction systems outperform lognormal-based systems. We conclude that there is indeed evidence from the existing data that fundamental patterns do exist, and that these can allow prediction of size distribution of events in modern wars and terrorist campaigns.