Terrorism In South Asia Research Articles

The economic impact of terrorism in South Asia

This study examines the economic impact of terrorism in South Asia. The region is currently home to 123 active terrorist/insurgent groups and is accountable for over 27 % of recorded global terrorist attacks. The annual data from the six most-terror-affected South Asian countries (Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka) during the US-led war on terror (2001 - 2022) is used. For econometric estimation, the five models: fixed-effect, generalized least squares (GLS), generalized estimating equation (GEE), quantile regression (QR), and panel-corrected standard errors (PCSE) are applied. Terror-related death (a proxy for human capital loss) and per capita income (a proxy for purchasing power) are considered to measure terrorism and its economic impact. In addition, four economic indicators (military expenditure, population, official development assistance (ODA), and USAID) and three institutional indicators (electoral democracy index, political violence index, and mobilization for autocracy index) are taken into account as control variables. The result suggests that every additional 886 terror-related human capital loss across the region significantly reduces the purchasing power of each South Asian person by at least 9.800 US dollars. Moreover, among the control variables, military expenditure, political violence, and mobilization for autocracy negatively affect per capita income, while electoral democracy, population, ODA, and USAID positively impact it. This study will also help understand the implications of the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) agenda and achieving specific targets such as SDG 8 (promoting economic growth) and SDG 16 (promoting just, peaceful, and inclusive societies) based on the most terror-affected region.

Examining the Threat of Terrorism in South Asia: A Case Study of India and Pakistan

Examining the Threat of Terrorism in South Asia: A Case Study of India and Pakistan

Intelligence failure in countering terrorism in south Asia: a comparative analysis of Holey Artisan and Easter attacks

ABSTRACT Intelligence agencies exist to ensure national security, but the path to attain that goal is filled with numerous unexpected threats and vulnerabilities. This makes intelligence failure often highly likely. This article explores and compares the 2016 Holey Artisan (Bangladesh) and the 2019 Easter (Sri Lanka) attacks from intelligence failure perspectives to understand the fault lines in counterterrorism (CT) efforts in the south Asian context. The article summarises the causes of intelligence failures into three broad yet interconnected themes: failure due to issues within the intelligence activities and agencies, failure leading from policy or direction, and failure arising from psychological forces. This article concludes that poorly coordinated counterterrorism policy, poor internal security and border management apparatus and cognitive limits of the security forces were the causes of the intelligence failure in the Holey Artisan attack. On the other hand, the intelligence failure of the Easter Sunday attacks resulted from political leadership, miscommunication and psychological limits of top intelligence officials, and the intelligence community’s failure to adapt to the emerging security threat of Islamist extremism.

The geographical disparity in the terrorism coverage on Ukrainian TV

Introduction. Specific journalist criteria in selecting and filtering terrorist information, the inconsistent media coverage of terrorism in short forms, and media framing of terrorism news can shape a distorted understanding of this phenomenon on a global scale for the audience. This can lead to many negative consequences for a society, particularly the loss of its functional and organizational capabilities to resist terrorism and adequately respond to attacks due to the lack of relevant information. Relevance of the study. As terrorism has become part of Ukrainian media agenda-setting, research on this topic is highly relevant. The findings of our previous studies have demonstrated a particular concentration of media attention on terrorist attacks in the West and an ignoring of the terrorist activities in the world in general. Therefore, we tend to analyze the geographical aspect of the terrorism coverage on Ukrainian TV and its correspondence to the actual terrorist situation worldwide. Methodology. Content analysis is the main research method. The empirical data is collected from the news programs on the five highest-rated Ukrainian TV channels («Ukraina», «ICTV», «1+1», «Inter» and «STB»). The monitoring covered 769 news programs from September 2019 to September 2020, in which 154 news stories about terrorism were found. Among the categorical units of the content analysis was the «geography» of the news story, which included the country and region identification. Having applied the comparative analysis, we could compare the obtained data with the statistics of the Global Terrorism Database, which more accurately echoed the actual terrorist situation globally. Results. The timing of all news about terrorism in South Asia (the most active region in the context of terrorism, where more than a third of all attacks occurred) was only 0.65% of the total volume of terrorism media coverage. Sub-Saharan Africa, where every fourth terrorist attack took place, was represented by only four news reports from the Inter’s correspondent. The third region with the most terrorist activity, the Middle East and North Africa, was mainly highlighted with geopolitical context, ignoring actual terrorist incidents. Ukrainian TV focused on covering national terrorist incidents the most. However, TV channels also concentrated their media attention on the Western world (Western Europe, North America, Eastern Europe), while only 5 % of all terrorist incidents worldwide happened in these regions. Simultaneously, the geographical disparity was discovered in the representation of the world’s countries. Moreover, none of the ten deadliest terrorist attacks was covered by Ukrainian TV channels. Conclusions. Ukrainian TV channels produce a geographical disparity in the media coverage of the terrorism topic, which not only does not correspond to the actual terrorist situation worldwide but also shapes a false image and distorted understanding of the phenomenon by a viewer. Ukrainian journalists can use the research findings to balance the geographical aspect of terrorism media coverage.

Nuclear terrorism in South Asia

Nuclear terrorism in South Asia

Determinants of Terrorism in South Asia

Terrorist activities in the post-Paris Peace Treaties have emerged as one of the most perilous agendas that are troubling the world economies and political figures in securing their nations and regions. Several socio-economic factors were evidenced to be the crucial factors in determining terrorist activities all around the world. The present article strives to identify the significance of several socio economic factors, namely, refugee population, access to good sanitation facilities, youth unemployment rate, percentage of education expenditure to GDP, percentage of military expenditure to GDP, per capita GDP and political stability in the panel of seven South Asian countries and China for the period 2002-2016. By applying both static and dynamic panel models, the article observes that all of the selected variables explain the terrorism index with expected signs. The article thus prescribes that the governments of the selected countries should concentrate on allocating their budgets on the improvements of sectors underlying the associated indicators.

Conflict and Terrorism in South Asia Since 9/11

Zubeda Jalalzai and David Jefferess, eds. Globalizing Afghanistan: Terrorism, War, and the Rhetoric of Nation Building. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011. x + 217 pp., $22.95 paperback. ISBN ...

The Extent of Terrorism in South Asia: A Study on Historical Perspective of Terrorism

Terrorism is one of the most significant contemporary governance and security challenges faced by South Asia in the recent decades. Lack of education, poverty, unemployment, religious extremism, and ethnic conflict, inter-regional conflict between states, Indo-Pak relation, and inefficient criminal justice system has made the region a safe house of terrorism. Furthermore, political relationships among states characterized by suspicion, mistrust, and, often, outright hostility, have prevented the development of strong and effective regional cooperative mechanisms in South Asia. The study here reveals the growth of terrorism in this region and the factors of terrorism that motivated the terrorist groups to spread their activities here. Secondary sources have been used mainly to make historical origin of terrorism and making assessment of terrorist parties. Through historical analysis mainly the growth of terrorism in each country of South Asia has been described and the key factors that accelerated the spread of terrorism has been stated. The list of terrorist parties of each area along with their objectives, ideology, leadership, methods of operation, funding sources has been also shown precisely. The study concludes with the national and international efforts in combating terrorism in South Asia.

Willingness and Opportunity: A Study of Domestic Terrorism in Post-Cold War South Asia

Domestic terrorism, as a form of intrastate violence, has varied widely in South Asia along with the post-Cold War period of global economic integration and political openness. How are these two phenomena—economic integration and emergence of democracies—related to domestic terrorism in South Asia? I argue that resorting to terrorism is a rational choice when individuals'/groups' cost of heterogeneity—deprivation from public goods due to geographical and ideological distance—increases; opportunity is provided by democratization and integration into the global economy. The testable hypotheses derived from the theory are empirically tested on a dataset of five South Asian countries for the time period between 1990 and 2007. The results show that both minority discrimination and presence of unconsolidated democratic institutions increase terrorism in the highly heterogeneous South Asian countries. International trade in the presence of minority discrimination increases homegrown terrorism, but foreign direct investment neither increases nor decreases such incidents.

Exploring the root causes of terrorism in South Asia: everybody should be concerned

The limited research undertaken thus far to discover the root causes of terrorism in South Asia. This study takes an initiative to explore root causes of terrorism in South Asia by using panel technique during the period of 1980–2011. The results show that GDP per capita decreases terrorism incidence, however, remaining other economic factors i.e., population, unemployment, inflation, poverty, inequality and political instability exhibits the positive association with the terrorism incidence in South Asia. Some exploratory economic factors are more elastic in nature, as income inequality exhibits the largest share i.e., 1.242 %, followed by population growth rate (i.e., 1.125 %) and political instability (i.e., 1.102 %) respectively. Unemployment rate are around one-to-one relationship with the terrorism incidence in this region. In addition, there is a significant relationship between poverty and terrorism incidence, as if there is 1 % increase in poverty rate, incidence of terrorism increases by 0.758 % in FMOLS and 0.654 % in case of DOLS estimators. This result confirm the conventional view i.e., poverty cause terrorism in South Asia. One of the major economic problems arises when price level associates with the terrorism incidence in this region, which further leads to peoples inside the poverty trap. Finally, trade openness does not act in accordance with significant contributor for terrorism incidence in South Asia, however, the importance of trade liberalization polices may not be neglected in relation with terrorism incidence in this region.

Apocalyptic realm: jihadists in South Asia

This hard-hitting and timely book explores the roots of militant Islam in South Asia and how it has grown to become a source of profound global alarm. By meticulously tracking the rise of the jihadist movement from its initial violence in Afghanistan in 1980 to the present day, Dilip Hiro challenges conventional narratives of the roles of Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Soviet Union, the United States, and India. He warns that the Line of Control in Kashmir, where jihadists seek to incite war between nuclear-armed Pakistan and India, is today the most dangerous border in the world. Drawing on evidence from a wide variety of sources including newly released Kremlin archives and classified U.S. Embassy documents published by WikiLeaks, the author compiles the first complete and accurate history of Islamist terrorism in South Asia. He chronicles historic links between Pakistan, Afghanistan, and India and their varying degrees of destabilization at the hands of the jihadists. He also sheds unprecedented light on the close military and intelligence links that have developed between India and Israel. Finally, he outlines the ambitions of Pakistani, Afghan, and Al Qaeda jihadists to establish an apocalyptic realm covering South, Central, and Western Asia. Compact, comprehensive, and fast paced, this book lays bare the causes of today's escalating terrorist threat, sets the historical record straight, and offers fresh strategies for defeating jihadist extremism.

Female Suicide Terrorism in South Asia: Comparing the Tamil Separatists and Kashmir Insurgents

In this article we compare two conflicts in South Asia—civil war in Sri Lanka and the insurgency in Kashmir—to investigate the enabling conditions for female suicide terrorism in the former, and the lack thereof in the latter. We conclude that female suicide terrorism is a product of several inter-related factors that feed into each other: (i) tormented society, (ii) individual grievances, and (iii) a terrorist organisation with an effective indoctrination structure. Thus, rather than focusing on the individual motivations behind the female bombers, it is important to situate them in specific socio-political contexts.

Understanding the Phenomena of Pakistani Taliban

Marking a new chapter of extremism as well as terrorism in South Asia, Pakistani Taliban movement is a product of the regional geo-political changes. Taliban’s penetration into Pakistan and its exp...

An Insight of Terrorism in South Asia and Steps Taken by International Organisation to Curb the Menace

The history of terrorism is as much European as Middle Eastern, and as much secular as religious. More than 2,000 years ago the first known acts of what we call now terrorism were perpetrated by a radical offshoot of Zealots, a Jewish sect active in Judea during the first century AD. The Zealots resisted the Roman Empire’s rule of what is today Israel through a determined campaign primarily involving assassination. Zealot fighters used the sica, a primitive dagger, to attack their enemies in broad daylight, often in crowded places or on feast days; essentially wherever there were people to witness the violence. Thus, like modern terrorist, the Zealots intended their actions to communicate a message to a wider target audience: in this instance, the Roman occupation forces and any Jews who sympathized or collaborated with the invaders. Between 1090 and 1272 an Islamic movement known as the Assassins used similar tactics in their struggle against the Christian Crusaders who had invaded what, is today part of Syria. The Assassins embraced the same notions of self-sacrifice and suicidal martyrdom evident in some Islamic terrorist groups today. Until the French Revolution (1789-1799), religion provided the main justification for the use of terrorism. This situation changed, however, as nationalism, anarchism, Marxism, and other secular political movements emerged during the 1800s to challenge the divine rule by monarchs. Modern terrorism was initially antimonarchical, embraced by rebels and constitutionalists during the last stage of French Revolution and in Russia by the People’s Will Organization. The people will was active between 1878 and 1881. Its revolutionary, antigovernment orientation became the model for future terrorist. The group selected targets that represented the state oppressive instruments of power, and it embraced “propaganda by the deed,” using the terrorist act to instruct. Tsar Alexander II was assassinated by a member of the People’s Will in March 1881. Terrorism continued for many decades to be associated primarily with the assassination of political leaders and the heads of state. This was symbolized by the killing of Austrian Archduke Ferdinand by a 19-year-old Bosnian Serb student, Gavril Principia, in Sarajevo on 28th June 1914. During the 1920s and 1930s, terrorism became associated more with repressive practices employed by dictatorial states than with the violence of non-state groups like the anarchist. The word terrorism was used to describe a wanton violence and intimidation inflicted by the Nazi, fascist, and totalitarian regimes that respectively came to power in Germany, Italy and Soviet Union. The repressive means these governments employed against their citizens involved beatings, unlawful detentions, torture, so-called death squads (often consisting of off-duty or plain-cloths security or police officers), and other forms of intimidation. Such practices by governments against their citizens even continue today.

Terrorism in South Asia: The Changing Trends

Terrorism in South Asia: The Changing Trends

Security and Terrorism in South Asia with Special Reference to Pakistan and Afghanistan

Security and Terrorism in South Asia with Special Reference to Pakistan and Afghanistan

Islamic Terrorism in South Asia and India's Strategic Response

Islamic Terrorism in South Asia and India's Strategic Response

Terrorism in South Asia: Impact on development and democracy

Terrorism in South Asia: Impact on development and democracy

Terrible Tuesday and Terrorism in South Asia

Terrible Tuesday and Terrorism in South Asia

A Distant Region Takes Center Stage: Pulling up the Roots of Terrorism in South Asia

A Distant Region Takes Center Stage: Pulling up the Roots of Terrorism in South Asia