Terrorist Campaigns Research Articles

The Effects of Electoral Violence on Women’s Legislative Representation

Despite the global expansion in women’s access to political leadership in recent decades, female parliamentarians remain a distinct minority in most national legislatures. Previous studies have linked variations in women’s descriptive representation to international and domestic security threats, such as interstate war and transnational terrorist campaigns. However, existing research has thus far overlooked how the turbulence, unrest, and violence often associated with the election process itself may produce gendered electoral outcomes. I argue that violent contention in the period immediately preceding elections introduces gendered distortions to the political recruitment process that determines the gender composition of legislatures. The cumulative effect of these distortions is a reduction in the proportion of legislative seats subsequently held by women. To evaluate my hypothesis, I analyze data from 620 nominally competitive legislative elections in 128 countries between 1990 and 2012. Consistent with expectations, the results suggest that higher levels of election-related violence are associated with lower rates of women's descriptive representation.

Myanmar in 2023

In 2023, revolutionary forces made significant gains in an escalating war against an increasingly embattled military dictatorship. Since General Min Aung Hlaing ousted the democratically elected government in a military coup on February 1, 2021, his junta has failed to subdue the countrywide Spring Revolution resisting the military takeover. This is despite the generals’ terror campaign of atrocious violence against the population. In 2021, many outside observers gave the Spring Revolution and the thousands of young people who have taken up arms against the military regime little fighting chance. But these forces have rapidly evolved, and powerful ethnic resistance armies have joined the war against the junta. This article explains how revolutionary war has scaled up, despite a lack of international support and the diversity of revolutionary forces. It also evaluates wider implications for the society, economy, and international relations of a country on the brink of collapse.

Examining the counterinsurgency-counterterrorism tradeoff: the effects of targeted strikes on militant attacks

ABSTRACT Do targeted strikes against militant groups affect insurgent operations differently from terrorist operations? One of the reasons it is challenging for states to counter militant groups who simultaneously wage an insurgency and a terrorist campaign is that there are offsetting effects between counterinsurgency and counterterrorism. As both an insurgent group and a terrorist group, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) poses particular challenges to states. Since 2014, the United States and coalition allies have conducted thousands of targeted strikes against ISIL in Iraq and Syria as part of Operation Inherent Resolve (OIR). In this article, we examine the effects of targeted strikes against ISIL. Using a novel dataset of time-series observations from Iraq and Syria between 2015 and 2018, we examine the relationship between targeted strikes conducted under OIR and the number of insurgent and terrorist attacks conducted by ISIL. Our findings give empirical support to the theoretical argument that the same military strategy can have different effects on insurgency and terrorism.

Boko Haram’s Terrorist Campaign in Nigeria

Boko Haram has fast become one of the world’s most notorious terrorist groups. The longevity of Boko Haram, coupled with its dynamic nature, necessitates that scholars keep abreast with a vast and intersectional array of developments. As a result, much ink has been spilt providing analysis and insight into the group’s motives, activities, internal politics, tactics, and future trajectories. Boko Haram’s ever-green endurance both in Nigeria and the wider West African region paves the way for a scholarly momentum which Oriola, Onuoha and Oyewole’s edited collection aligns with. The book has 12 chapters which are split across five thematic areas, namely: gender, the media, displacement, non-state actors, human rights, and non-state actors. It is beyond the scope of this review to place each chapter under the microscope. Instead, the reviewer will highlight some of the most important contributions the book makes to the academic discourse on Boko Haram. Chapter three (by Oyewole and Onuoha) provides the reader with a comprehensive account of the Dapachi Kidnapping of 2018; this contribution is significant as much scholarship as focused on the Chibok Kidnappings of 2014. Oyewole and Onuoha unpack why the Dapachi Kidnappings took place, placing an emphasis on the need for Boko Haram to portray itself as a resilient origination so as to appear appealing to prospective members, to raise funds (by means of hostage negotiations), and rewarding hardworking foot solders with ‘wives’ and sex slaves. Furthermore, context is given to Dapachi’s geographical and political vulnerability vis-à-vis Boko Haram’s terrorist campaign.

Bad Men, Good Men, and Loving Women: Gender Constructions in British State Messaging on Counterterrorism, Countering Violent Extremism and Preventing Violent Extremism

ABSTRACT The United Kingdom presents itself as a leader in counterterrorism (CT), countering violent extremism (CVE) and preventing violent extremism (PVE). The Action Counters Terrorism Campaign is a public-facing campaign of the U.K. government aimed at raising the public’s awareness of how it can support its CT/CVE/PVE efforts. A narrative analysis of the campaign’s YouTube channel (2017–2020) reveals a clear dominant narrative that “ordinary people” can assist in CT/CVE/PVE by being alert and following basic rules (such as Run, Hide, Tell). However, a gendered narrative analysis reveals far more surprising results: The terrorist threat is understood as exclusively male and only men are viewed as at risk of radicalization. Women are predominantly portrayed in relation to men in their lives. Through their love and care, women can support efforts to save men by noticing when “something is wrong.” This article reveals how the gendered constructions of the British awareness campaign are so engrained in a powerful metanarrative of gender and political violence that they ignore even widespread public security debates, such as those surrounding British girls and women joining ISIS. It concludes that a narrative analysis must include a gendered analysis to understand the political and security implications of CT/CVE/PVE narratives.

Dying with the enemy: Interrogating the roles of religion in social support for suicide terrorism

Suicide terrorism seemingly employed to settled conflicts between the Shiite and the Sunnis, mixed with the Salafis ideology of violence is also seen used for demand for State of Islam, national liberation, and propagation against democracies, mis-governance, and secularism amongst others. Terror cells groups could be seen aggravating suicide terrorism by substituting suicide for martyrdom. It was against this background that this study engage religious belief hypothesis to interrogate the roles of religion in garnering social support for suicide terrorism. The study decomposes roles of religion in suicide terrorism into crises between the Shiites and the Sunnis, substitution of suicide with martyrdom. The study employed desktop research design with reliance historical and secondary data from extant literature. The study concludes that the manipulation of the religious injunctions, extremist interpretation of religious teachings, as well as advancement of religion facade for economic gains stronger motivation for people who support suicide terrorism. Finding from the study showed that there would be no successful suicide terror campaign without the support of the society where the suicide terrorists reside and whose interest they claim to be defending. The study recommends that distorted ideology driven by religion can only be countered by respected Islamic clerics and leaders, especially from the Arab world with covert Western support to circumvent the perverted narrative of martyrdom as sacrifice for the good of the land, people or God, and rather brand it as common suicide and an honourless venture.

Contemporary Modes of Yemeni American Agency Between Urgency and Emergence

Abstract This essay examines the formation of contemporary Yemeni American agency at the interplay of economics, politics, and arts. The context of my analysis draws from the unfolding events and policies following the tragic attacks of 9/11 (2001) in the United States and the revolutionary fervor of the Arab Spring in Yemen (2011). The various economic, political, and cultural forms of agency explored in this work constitute responses to US policing of Yemeni American individuals and communities in both the United States and Yemen as part of the so-called war on terror campaign. Moving away from the “sojourner-settler” paradigm, which has limited understanding of Yemeni American experiences in the United States since the 1970s, I theorize Yemeni American agency as multi-dimensional and multi-sited and emphasize its dynamic and collaborative, albeit often contradictory, character. In doing so, I demonstrate how Yemeni Americans have not been passive victims of the post–9/11 backlash against Arabs and Muslims and the post–Arab Spring collapse of Yemen, but instead been active participants in building coalitions, joining alliances, and resisting forms of discrimination, harassment, and violence.

Local Wisdom Recognition in Inter-Ethnic Religious Conflict Resolution in Indonesia from Islah Perspective

Indonesia is a culturally diverse country that consists of at least 1.340 tribes and ethnicities, which can potentially lead to the emergence of conflicts. This study aimed to identify the causes of conflict in society, patterns of local wisdom in conflict resolution, and patterns of conflict resolution in Surabaya and Bali from the perspective of islah. Data were collected through observation, interviews, and document studies. Data analysis was carried out in several stages, including data reduction, data display, and verification. The result of this research showed that economic disparities, a lack of understanding of religion, and unfair treatment were the root of inter-ethnic conflict in the two regions. Local wisdom was used by communities to resolve conflicts in their area, including using a religious approach of praying together, listening to preaching or lecture about moderate Islam, consulting traditional, religious, and government leaders, and applying a state approach of administrative data collection or KIPEM administration. In addition, the local community also used interfaith dialogue with former terrorists, Jancuk Terrorist campaign by Bonek, and Tat Twam Asi to resolve conflict. Those conflict resolutions exemplified the procedures and methods of islah in Islamic law which aimed at resolving inter-ethnic disputes that arose in these two regions.

The War after the War: A New History of Reconstruction by John Patrick Daly

Reviewed by: The War after the War: A New History of Reconstruction by John Patrick Daly Lorien Foote The War after the War: A New History of Reconstruction. By John Patrick Daly. (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2022. Pp. 200. Illustrations, notes, index.) The War after the War is a concise, bold synthesis of the recent scholarship on Reconstruction. "Reconstruction was a war," John Patrick Daly asserts (4). When Union and Confederate armies demobilized in 1865, there was no clear peace settlement. Ex-Confederate extremists thus initiated what Daly terms "the Southern Civil War of 1865–1877" (2), a campaign of violence to control local and state governments and defeat a biracial southern coalition composed of White Unionists and Black freedpeople. Daly identifies three phases to the Southern Civil War. The first was the terror phase. Ex-Confederates remained in power throughout the South from 1865 to 1867, and they massacred thousands of African Americans and their White allies. In the second phase (1868–1872), after the United States government divided the South into military districts and organized new southern state governments that enfranchised Black voters, ex-Confederate extremists used guerrilla tactics that attempted to overthrow these biracial governments. Events in Texas take center stage in this portion of Daly's narrative, with excellent coverage of Governor Edmund Davis's use of martial law and biracial state forces to battle the insurgents. In the third phase (1872–77), ex-Confederate extremists created paramilitary armies that fought and won open battles against state forces, exemplified by the Battle of Liberty Place on the streets of New Orleans in 1874. Confederates lost their bid for independence and national power in the American Civil War, but ex-Confederate extremists won the Southern Civil War and reclaimed local political, social, and economic power. Daly argues that the types of violence and number of deaths that occurred in these three phases meet the criteria that some political scientists have established for a conflict to be defined as a civil war. His conclusion juxtaposes the Southern Civil War with the Irish Civil War of 1922–23 to bolster his categorization of violence in the American South as civil war. The identification and description of the three phases of violence in the South from 1865 to 1877 is very useful. But Daly does not define "war" in the opening of the book, and this absence is not just a matter of semantics. As a political scientist quoted in the conclusion points out, war involves organized violence, and Daly writes in the final few pages of the book that civil war is "two armed and organized factions (148)." Daly's discussion of the terror that ex-Confederates inflicted from 1865 to 1867 is a litany of massacres, assassinations, and torture; there is rarely mention of Black people and White Unionists fighting back. In the streets of Memphis and New Orleans in 1866, the vast majority of Black people were not armed. Is it war if one side is not organized for the purpose and is not fighting back? It is convincing that a Southern civil war evolved, but if there was a [End Page 587] shift from a one-sided terror campaign to civil war after Black men gained political power in 1868, that timing needs further exploration. John Patrick Daly does not mince words in this short and easily read book. He boldly calls on all Americans to discard false narratives of Reconstruction that remain dominant in popular understanding and to memorialize the true heroes of the period, the Black and White southerners who gave their lives fighting the losing battle to establish a biracial democracy in the South. After reading this book, it will be hard for anyone to maintain the traditional textbook view of Reconstruction. Lorien Foote Texas A&M University Copyright © 2022 The Texas State Historical Association

State Legitimacy, Governance, and TTP's Enduring Terrorism

There is a divided opinion in the existing scholarship about the role of poor governance including socio-economic marginalization and political grievances and their causal link with the occurrence of terrorism. Some scholars argue that socioeconomic deprivation such as poverty and political exclusion are not related to terrorism, while others argue that they provide an enabling environment where terrorist organizations or terrorism thrives. This article argues that peoples' perceptions of socioeconomic grievances and political exclusion or marginalization play a significant role in allowing a terrorist organization to thrive and excel. The TTP has accelerated its terrorist campaign by taking advantage of the weak governance structure in the ex-FATA region and the government's inability to alleviate the suffering of the people due to poor socioeconomic conditions. The TTP highlighted the grievances of the people to enlist their support in fomenting terrorism in Pakistan.

Militant Animal Rights Activity: Terrorism, Extremism or Something Else?

Since the early 1970s, the United Kingdom (U.K.) has experienced political violence undertaken by militant animal rights actors. This violence has included the use of car bombs and incendiary devices, which are more akin to the tactics of a terrorist campaign. Similar acts in the United States have been described as “eco-terrorism” yet this label has not gained traction in the U.K. This article is concerned with the labeling of militant animal rights actions in the U.K. and explores the labels that have been applied by the print media, notably The Guardian to the actions of those animal rights actors who have utilized or espoused illegal and violent tactics in the pursuit of their cause. Moreover, the article takes a more in-depth look at the labeling of the group Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC) in its campaign against Huntingdon Life Sciences and its business partners. How actions are labeled can have repercussions in shaping the public debate and policy implications.

A History of Hate in Ohio: Then and Now by Michael E. Brooks and Bob Fitrakis

Reviewed by: A History of Hate in Ohio: Then and Now by Michael E. Brooks and Bob Fitrakis Britt Halvorson Michael E. Brooks and Bob Fitrakis, A History of Hate in Ohio: Then and Now. Columbus: Trillium/The Ohio State University Press, 2021. 243 pp. $24.95 (paper). A central problem in critical whiteness studies has been what historian Kathleen Belew has identified as a perceived bifurcation between violent White nationalist groups and mainstream American life. A History of Hate in Ohio joins a variety of other recent works in challenging that division. Although it focuses mainly on White power groups, the book examines White supremacy broadly and gives attention to its many forms, from segregated [End Page 199] public schools to settler violence toward Native Americans. Collectively, these different manifestations paint a portrait of racism across different periods of Ohio history in legislative and everyday forms as well as among White mobs and White hate groups. While readers should be warned that the content is disturbing, the book's unflinching, detailed account of White racial violence in Ohio can serve as a valuable reference for not only experts but also anti-racist organizations and perhaps even movements toward reparations. One of the book's contentions is that, due to Ohio's well-documented abolitionist history, the state's longstanding White racial violence has been hidden behind a "mythology of Ohio as a racial utopia somehow free from the racism of the South" (65). The authors point repeatedly to Ohioans' ties with White hate groups and discriminatory legislation elsewhere in the U.S., questioning the state's exceptionalism in this regard. For instance, the author of the book's first half, historian Michael E. Brooks, describes how nineteenth-century Black Laws in Ohio restricted the movement of free Black individuals and were based directly on similar laws in Virginia and Kentucky that supported plantation owners' interests. The state required that, beginning in 1804, Black individuals carry a certificate of freedom. Employers could not hire people without this certificate and were subject to fines if they did so. Through a sleight of hand, the Ohio legislature even passed laws beginning in 1829 that ensured that public taxes went to the education of White but not Black children, because persons of color were not levied property taxes in support of schools. Combined with an 1861–1887 ban on interracial marriage, these laws created a far-reaching system of racial inequality, even though racial discrimination was officially banned in public spaces by a little-enforced 1884 civil rights act. Through its historical reach, the book also assembles a view of both White mob violence in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as well as its relationship to the later terror campaigns of the Black Legion, Ku Klux Klan, Aryan Nation, and other neo-Nazi groups. In one case, a White mob formed in 1862 when Black dock workers in Toledo began receiving the same wages as White laborers. In another, a White crowd of fifteen hundred gathered in Akron in 1900 when a Black man, Louis Peck, was accused and convicted of assaulting a White girl, even though Peck was later pardoned by the governor in 1916. Such mob violence eventually morphed, following the cultural rise of sympathetic portraits of White nationalism in Birth of a Nation and elsewhere, into public Klan rallies in the 1920s. These were major [End Page 200] spectacles, with one at the Wood County Fairgrounds numbering fifteen thousand people. Over the next century, White power organizations went through numerous re-groupings in Ohio, as leaders were sometimes tried for crimes or had ideological disagreements. Against this backdrop of the continued reorganization of White hate groups, the book shows that civil rights had to be legally and socially fought for by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and Black activists at each step, from Black customers being refused service at a Yellow Springs barber shop to Black patrons being denied entry to Cincinnati's Coney Island theme park (which did not admit Black patrons until 1955). By offering a meticulous analysis of Ohio's White hate groups through the present, the book also gives scholars and activists...

Russia's Hybrid Warfare in Ukraine Threatens Both Healthcare & Health Protections Provided by International Law.

Hybrid Warfare is on display because of the unjustified Russian invasion of Ukraine. This is characterized by numerous crimes against civilians as seen vividly during the occupation of the town of Bucha where rape, torture, murder, and looting seem to reflect Russian military policy, leadership, and command guidance. Of particular concern is the threat to hospitals and health care as well as vital life support. Numerous hospitals have been damaged and destroyed. Hospitals are not tactical military targets and targeting health care facilities and personnel ignores traditional jus in bello and ignores numerous conventions established to stabilize the global order. The Russian-proclaimed "special operation" in Ukraine has been characterized by barbarian warfare in which the Russian military uses weapons against the civilian population and civilian infrastructure. The aggressors have embarked on a purposeful terror campaign through infrastructure attacks, which are of little military value except to demoralize the nation's people. This is evident with Russian missile and drone attacks on electric, water, and health care in Ukraine. Warfare now and in the future may be increasingly aimed at demoralizing civilian populations and reducing the will of the people and their government to resist. The Ukrainian invasion clearly shows that this use of hybrid warfare should be met with a strong reaction of the international community at the earliest possible stage, especially the supposedly peace-loving neutral countries, or else the future is expanded unlawful and barbaric military conflict.

Why do some terrorist campaigns escalate to civil wars but others do not?

ABSTRACT The recent literature on antecedents of civil wars focuses primarily on the escalation of non-violent movements to civil wars. Still, it remains silent on why some terrorist campaigns manage to turn their violent campaign into a sustained insurgency. By filling this lacuna, we provide empirically supported explanations for this puzzle. Specifically, we explore the effects of three factors on a terror group’s chance to escalate the civil war, which are 1) how the state responds to the group’s terror campaign, 2) how the group responds to the state’s counterterrorism strategies, 3) and the state’s relations with other states. By testing our theory with recently released data on terrorist groups, we find that a terror group’s campaign is more likely to escalate to a civil war when 1) the state uses more repression against the terror group and 2) the group diversifies its attack portfolio. In addition, we also find that a terror group is less likely to escalate its campaign to a civil war if the state engages in an interstate rivalry, and the state responds to the group with higher spending on public goods, specifically social welfare goods. The results provide implications for future studies on terrorism and civil war.

The Clash of Civilizations and War Against Terrorism: A Synoptic Study (2001-2008)

On the advent of new millennium, the attack on WTC on 9/11 set a new paradigm of terrorism in world scenario. The defensive “anti-terrorist” policy of the United States gave way to offensive “counter terrorism” which posed a real threat to the Islamic world and Muslim civilization. WAT couldn’t restore peace; instead, it resulted in turmoil, chaos, commotion, culminating in suicide attacks and bomb explosions at public places. This research highlights the threat which Islamic theology and civilization faces from Western counter-terrorism policies. It also analyzes the factors that foment fanaticism i.e., policies of Western think-tanks, theological contests among the Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) and Islam-phobia. This study further emphasizes the economical component hidden behind Western counter terrorism campaign, that entered in radical Islamic belt holding cosmopolitan, pluralistic, multiethnic and multicultural slogan.

Bloody years of the Jewish Insurgency in British Mandatory Palestine 1939-1948: From the White Paper to the State of Israel

This review article focuses on Jewish insurgency under the British mandate for Palestine from 1939 to 1948. The Jewish guerrilla campaign represents a successful case study in the field of the research on small wars and insurgency, proxy wars. The authors analyze the early phase of the British Mandate in 1918-1939, referred to as the prelude to the subsequent Jewish uprising; a period when Jewish paramilitary groups including the Haganah, Irgun, and Lehi emerged and developed, emphasizing their ideological underpinnings, operational and tactical strategies of warfare, and the material capacities that these organizations possessed. The authors primarily emphasize the period from the initiation of the White Paper in 1939 until the establishment of the State of Israel in May 1948. British restrictions on Jewish immigration and the beginning of the Second World War stimulated the Jewish forces to a massive terrorist campaign against the British resulting in an unprecedented Zionist victory.

Violence and Impunity: Democratic Backsliding in the Philippines and the 2022 Elections

As president from 2016 to 2022, Rodrigo Duterte captured the judiciary, dominated the legislature, attacked the media, and presided over a campaign of mass killing, leaving an estimated 30,000 alleged drug criminals dead. Despite wielding vast amounts of power, Duterte stepped down after the national elections on May 9, 2022 in a largely peaceful transfer of power to Ferdinand Marcos Jr., son and namesake of the former dictator deposed in 1986. Why did Duterte amass power without causing full democratic collapse into authoritarian rule? The Philippines experienced backsliding to competitive authoritarianism: while elections remain free and somewhat fair, other features of democracy like civil liberties and political freedoms have eroded badly because of mass violence. The Philippine case demonstrates the autocratizing e ect of an emerging form of political violence: a focused campaign of state terror that produces fear and electoral success. I present evidence from two cases—the national "war on drugs" and its local antecedent in Davao City—to explain how violence escalates, provokes accountability, evades culpability, and contributes to democratic backsliding without immediate collapse to authoritarianism. With the election of Marcos Jr., the impunity of the former incumbent is likely to become institutionalized, and democratic backsliding is unlikely to be reversed.

Analyzing Past Genocides to Determine Effectiveness of International Intervention in the Uyghur Genocide

Located in northwestern China, The Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) is Chinese territory populated predominantly of Sufi Muslim, Turkic-speaking ethnic groups. The largest ethnic group, amounting to approximately 12 million inhabitants, is the Uyghurs. Inhabited mainly by Uyghurs, Xinjiang is also inhabited by ethnic Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, and Uzbeks. Nonetheless, Uyghurs only make up 0.12% of the entire Chinese population. The high concentration of ethnic populations in Xinjiang has been a concern for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) which is largely monocultural to the mainly Han Chinese and Mandarin-speaking demographic. The CCP launched its “Strike Hard Against Violent Terrorism Campaign” in order to combat the growing issues of separatism and terrorism which has yielded the detainment of nearly 1.8 million ethnic inhabitants of Xinjiang. This paper will compare the Uyghur Genocide to 4 of the past notable genocides in the 20th Century and determine what level of international involvement would be most effective. This paper asserts that the Armenian Genocide displays the best guide in terms of international involvement, but highlights the circumstantial nature of addressing genocide, in that, due to the large scope of genocide not all genocide can be addressed the same exact way.

Terrorist campaigns and the growth of the Muslim population: a reply to Clara Egger and Raul Magni-Berton

AbstractI am delighted to see that my study on the effect of terrorist campaigns on the growth of Muslim populations has intrigued Egger and Magni-Berton. After discussing potential theoretical and methodological shortcomings in my study, Egger and Magni-Berton conclude that there is no empirical support for the positive relationship between terror attacks and Muslim populations. Their approach of separating terrorism into Islamist and non-Islamist terrorism is an effort to advance the contemporary research on the nexus between terrorism and Islam. In this re-examination, I show that Egger and Magni-Berton's conclusion is based on two limitations: theoretically unfounded and empirically inadequate. After remedying these limitations step by step, I reconfirm that a series of terrorist activities collectively serve as an explanation for the growth of the worldwide Muslim population. Future research can offer additional evidence to understand whether there is a significant and positive relationship between Islamist terrorism and the growth of Muslim populations.

O Brasil contra a democracia: A ditadura, o golpe no Chile e a Guerra Fria na América do Sul

O Brasil contra a democracia: A ditadura, o golpe no Chile e a Guerra Fria na América do Sul