Terrorism

This book is an analysis of Near Eastern terrorist groups and countries on the. U.S. "terrorism list," a list of countries that the Secretary of Commerce and Secretary of State have determined provide repeated support for international terrorism. This book adopts the same definition of terrorism as that used by the State Department in its annual reports the definition contained in Title 22 U.S.C. Section 2656f(d). According to this section, "terrorism" means "premeditated politically motivated violence perpetrated against non combatant targets by sub national groups or clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience." Five out of the seven states currently on the terrorism list are located in the Near East region Iran, Iraq Syria, Libya, and Sudan. (The other two are Cuba and North Korea, which will not be covered in this book). The composition of the list has not changed since Sudan was added in 1993. The groups analysed in this book include, but are not limited to, those designated as "Foreign Terrorist Organisations" (FTOs), pursuant to the Anti Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (P.L. 104 132). The last section of the book discusses significant themes in U.S. unilateral and multilateral efforts to combat terrorism in or from the region. The State Department's annual report on international terrorism, entitled Patterns of Global Terrorism: 2000; is a significant source for this book; other sources include press reports and conversations with U.S. counter terrorism officials, experts, investigative journalists, and foreign diplomats. Although the September 11 attacks have placed Near Eastern terrorist groups at the centre of U.S. anti terrorism policy, Near Eastern terrorist groups and their state sponsors have been a focus of U.S. counter-terrorism policies for several decades. Since the 1970s, many of the most high profile acts of terrorism against American citizens and targets have been conducted by these groups, sometimes with the encouragement or at the instigation of their state sponsors. However, no single terrorist attack either in or outside the Near East region compares in scale to the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, which killed a total of over 3,000 persons. Senior U.S. officials have attributed this attack to the Al Qaeda network, whose leaders enjoyed sanctuary in Afghanistan from 1996 until their defeat at the hands of the U.S. military and its Afghan partners in late 2001. According to Patterns of Global Terrorism: 2000 (available on the U.S. Department of State's web site at http://www.state.gov/s/et/rls/pgtipt/2000/]; hereafter cited as Patterns 2000), world-wide terrorism related casualties increased to 405 in 2000 from 233 in 1999, but the number of attacks increased only slightly, from 392 in 1999 to 423 in 2000. Of these 2000 totals, only 16 of the 423 attacks and 19 of the 405 casualties occurred in the Middle East, although Patterns 2000 covered only three months of the Palestinian uprising that began in late September 2000. Since 2001 began, there have been dozens of terrorism related Israeli casualties resulting from Palestinian suicide bomb attacks, some of them in retaliation for Israeli actions against suspected Palestinian militants. Thirty one of the attacks and 12 of the deaths during 2000 occurred in Eurasia (Central Asia, the Caucasus, and. Russia). The terrorist groups analyzed often differ in their motivations, objectives, ideologies, and levels of activity. The Islamist groups remain generally the most active, stating as their main objective the overthrow of secular, pro Western governments, the derailment of the Arab Israeli peace process, the expulsion of U.S. forces from the region, or the end of what they consider unjust occupation of Muslim lands. Some groups, such as the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), fight for cultural and political rights or the formation of separate ethnically based states. Table 1 below shows the 20 Near Eastern groups currently designated by the State Department as FTOs. The designations were mostly made when the FTO list was inaugurated in October 1997 and revised in October 1999 and October 2001, A group can be added to the list at any time; Al Qaeda (the bin Laden network) was added on August 2 1, 1998, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan was designated on September 25, 2000, and two Pakistani groups Lashkar e Tayyiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad were added to the FTO list on December 26, 2001.