390 Comm Huffman review
Chapter 5- Suicide Terrorism
-the dominant force behind suicide terrorism is RELIGION -by comparison, at the dawn of the modern era of religious terrorism some twenty years ago, this was a phenomenon confined exclusively to two countries-Lebanon and Kuwait -it was also initially embraced by only a couple of terrorist groups: al Dawa, an Iraqi Shia group, and the Lebanese Shia organization, Hezbollah -suicide tactics are devastatingly effective, lethally efficient, have a greater likelihood of success, and are relatively inexpensive, and generally easier to execute than other attack modes -for radical Islamic terrorist groups in particular, religious and theological justification plays an additionally critical role: it ensures a flow of recruits to these organizations that is needed to sustain suicide operations -suicide terrorism differs from all other terrorist operations because the perpetrator's own death is an essential requirement for the attack's success -suicide terrorism is guaranteed to provide media coverage, powerful psychological weapon -terrorist's purpose: to intimidate government and citizens alike and create a climate of profound fear and insecurity that the terrorists seek to manipulate and exploit to their advantage -the resort to suicide terrorism by the Tamils and the Palestinians has often been portrayed in terrorist propaganda and world press accounts alike as two sides of the same coin: intense outbursts of violence born of frustration, desperation, and humiliation, caused by the intransigence and brutality of the Sri Lankan and Israeli governments -better established Tamil separatist groups as to intimidate its principle set of opponents: the government of Sri Lanka and the country's predominantly Buddhist ethnic Sinhalese majority -during this time their tactic of choice was assassination -a new group was the Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF); emerged as the leading political force within the Tamil community, call for the establishment of an independent, ethnically separate Tamil state in the northern and adjacent northeastern and eastern regions of Sri Lankan, helped distinguish it from its more conciliatory parent organization--the Tamil United Front -TULF was preparing for WAR
-TNT--the Tamil New Tigers, founded by Chetti Thanabalsingham, established for the purpose of silencing pro-governments Tamils, eliminating Tamil police informants and their Sinhalese police handlers, and staging armed demonstrations against the Sinhalese government -Prabhakaran was in charged of TNT and renamed it the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Ealam and started to reshape the image -every member of Prabhakaran's LTTE was required to wear a glass capsule containing potassium cyanide around his or her neck; if they were about to be arrested they were ordered to bite into the capsule for a quick and easy death -Two themes were incorporated into Tiger lore 1. Was the belief that extreme sacrifices would have to be made to secure an independent future for the Tamil nation; this principle today is reflected in the word thatkodai- to give yourself 2.determination and invincibility -LTTE's suicide attacks have been carried out to support two distinctly different campaigns: a rural and an urban campaign -the purpose of adopting this tactic [suicide terrorism] was twofold: first, to distinguish the group from its many better-established political challengers within the Tamil resistance and attract a solid base of popular support, and second to achieve a perceptual force multiplier that would allow the LTTE to level the playing field with the Sri Lankan government -on December 14, the Muslim Brotherhood distributed a leaflet calling for sustained resistance-- credited for the birth of Hamas -3 consequences of deporting people to Lebanon 1. Deposited in the middle of rough country in south Lebanon in the middle of winter, the deportees quickly became a cause, attracting international media attention and support 2. During the nearly 10 months they were in Lebanon the Hamas exiles were able to establish the organization's first ties to Hezbollah 3. With almost the entire established Hamas political leadership in exile the movement did not collapse, as Israel hope it would. Instead the leadership vacuum was filled by the exiles' more violent-minded, younger followers -Middle East Spiderweb theory- it is the conclusion drawn by Hezbollah about Israel's withdrawal from south Lebanon and is today embraced by the Palestinians as well -motivations that justify such attacks-seeking for martyrdom, hurting the enemy, encouraging Muslims, weakening the spirit of the enemy -Two basic operational requirements that an organization must be able to satisfy to get into the game: a willingness to kill and a willingness to die
-Four major explanations account for this dramatic upsurge of suicide attacks: 1. The terrorist belief that the sustained and unrelenting use of suicide attacks will achieve results that cannot be matched by using other tactics 2. The inverted sense of normality that the Palestinian terrorist organizations have created within the Palestinian community and the resulting approval that has been bestowed in suicide operations 3.the use of religion and theological justification-communicated and encouraged by Muslim clerical authorities-both to sustain support of these tactics among Palestinians and other Muslims and to ensure a continued flow of new recruits for suicide operations into the ranks of the terrorist organizations 4. Entrenched rivalries between the Palestinian terrorist organizations that have resulted in a deadly competition to determine which group is able to mobilize and deploy the largest number of suicide terrorists in an effort to win the support of the Palestinian populations and undermine its rivals THE REASONS HOFFMAN THINKS SUICIDE TERROR IS ON THE RISE!
Chapter 6-The Old Media, Terrorism and Public Opinion
-all terrorist groups have one trait in common: they do not commit actions randomly or senselessly -By the 1870s the newspaper business had been completely transformed by the advent of electric power coupled with the development of curved stereotype printing plates, together resulting in the automatic rotary cylinder press- and the capability to print on both sides of a continuous roll of paper -the second great revolution in mass communication that directly affected terrorism occurred in 1968; which was also the birth of international terrorism, but also the launching by the US of the first TV satellite
-Three critical pieces of TV equipment that made it possible to report in real time-the minicam, the equally portable battery-powered video recorder, and the time-base corrector (which converts video footage into transmittable that output in turn can be broadcast over the airwaves) -the ability to transmit a breaking story live spawned intense competition among rival networks to scoop one another -this could be accomplished basically in one of two ways: by being the first on the scene or by being the first to report some undisclosed information -the terrorists; and the networks' interests are identical: having created the story both are resolved to ensure its longevity -another consideration influencing TV news coverage that has emerged in recent years was its cost -there are two areas in particular where a clear casual relationship between terrorism and the attention it receives from the media has a negative effect on public and governmental behavior.
The first is the public's perception of personal risk from terrorism, and the consequent effect on willingness to travel; the second is the time pressure imposed by the media under which governments confronted with terrorist-created crises labor
Chapter 7-The new media, terrorism, and the shaping of global opinion
-through propaganda, terrorists seek to communicate a particular message to a particular target audience -the message can be didactic-designed to inform, educate, solicit support, and ultimately rally the masses behind the insurgents or terrorists -it can be a vehicle for recruitment-meant to win new converts to the cause or replenish the ranks of depleted fighters; it can also be deliberately coercive-conceived to promote or ensure compliance through threat or blandishment -its intents can transcend mere tactical coercion and seek to intimidate strategically-that is to undermined popular confidence in government and leadership and thereby attempt to paralyzed opponents with fear by trumpeting the terrorists' ability to strike at will and the inability of the government and security forces to provide effective defense or protection. -it can serve an entirely internal function-what has been termed auto propaganda when it is directed toward members of the terrorist group in order to strengthen morale, dampen dissent, or justify and legitimate or explain particularly controversial decisions or operations -then, in the 1990s the advent of three new technological developments afforded terrorists the opportunity to break the stranglehold over mass communication hitherto enjoyed by commercial and state owned media these were: -the internet -affordable, if not extremely cheap, video production and duplication processes -private terrorist owned TV stations -The advantages of the Internet: -ubiquity and timeliness -can circumvent government censorship -messages can be sending anonymously -especially cost-effective means -Perception management in other words they can use it to portray themselves and their actions in precisely the light and context they wish-unencumbered by the filter, screening and spin of established media -the internet also facilitates their engagement in what has been referred to as information laundering taking an interesting or provocative video clip and/or sound bite, and featuring it and
focusing on it and creating an Internet buzz about it in the hope that it will move into the mainstream press -The Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN)-was the first group to successfully harness the power of the internet; it is not a terrorist organization but it is a insurgent movement -rather than calling only on the support, solidarity, and armed assistance of revolutionaries and guerrillas elsewhere, they appealed directly to Mexican civil society and specially to peace activists, human rights groups, international humanitarian relief organizations, and other nongovernmental organizations to join the Zapatistas' struggle by lobbying the Mexican government to implement the socioeconomic and political changes that the group demanded and to travel to Chiapas to observe and monitor the conflict -it is clear that around this time other groups began rapidly to awake to the power of electronic external communication and the distinct advantages that they offered over other, older propaganda vehicles -the Internet has long facilitated three critical functions for al Qaeda 1. Propaganda for recruitment and fund-raising and to shape public opinion in the Muslim world 2. Terrorist training and instruction 3. Operational planning for attacks through both email communication and the access it provides to an array of useful open source information -the site, which was published in the Arabic language only emphasized three core message that remain the basic staple of al Qaeda and other Jihadist web sites today: 1. The web is implacably hostile to Islam 2. The only way to address this threat and the only language that the west understands is violence 3. That jihad, therefore is the only option -Perhaps the most startling advance in the terrorist communication- has been the emergence of the terrorists' own TV station -terrorist groups have been able to assume complete control over the content, context, footage, and voice overs depicting their organization and its activities -in the final analysis, a terrorist movement's longevity ultimately depends upon its ability to recruit new members as well as appeal to an expanding pool of both supporters and passive sympathizers
Gunaratna-Chapter 7-Suicide Terrorism
-suicide attacks needs a caveat attacked to it, this term is also used to describe high-risk, suicidal attacks in which the probability of being killed is very high but does not fulfill the defining determinant of dying-to-kill- in which the perpetrator kills him/her in the process of and in order to kill others -the key determinant for suicide terrorism is the concept of dying-to-kill -characteristics of suicide terrorism -suicide terrorism is an organizational phenomenon -suicide terrorism institutionalized -suicide terrorism is an asymmetrical warfare strategy -terrorist groups use suicide terrorism when they are strong and weak -suicide terrorism as a tactic/tactical weapon -suicide terrorism politicized -suicide terrorism is internationalized -female suicide terrorists -religion and suicide terrorism -ideology and suicide terrorism -no positivistic characteristics -leadership influence -Suicide Terrorism Classifications -classified into two types: battlefield and off the battlefield -in battlefield operations-suicide bombers are integrated into the attacking groups or may be tasked with particular targets to be attacked; commando type operations; LTTE Black Tigers -Off-the-battlefield operations have involved single suicide bombers -Modus Operandi -many methods used by suicide terrorist -Six: human-borne, vehicle-borne, motorcycle, naval, scuba diver, and aerial -broadly categorized as Personal, Vehicular, Marine, Aerial