The National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START), a Department of Homeland Security Center of Excellence housed at the University of Maryland, offers a course looking at the who, what and how of Terrorism Studies, by introducing students to cutting-edge research from the social and behavioral sciences and the experts investigating these topics. The course will begin with a unit looking at widely held myths about terrorism and utilizing empirical data to discuss the realities of broad trends and patterns in terrorist attacks over time. The course will then review the psychological factors at play in individual radicalization and recruitment into terrorism, followed by an analysis of terrorist group dynamics. The course will next look at terrorist group operations, including their attacks and some of the supporting behaviors that allow them to carry out attacks, including use of media, financing, recruitment, and training. The course will conclude by looking at the factors that drive terrorist group persistence or endurance versus terrorist group desistance, and will bring the varied course concepts together through a detailed look at the case of Al-Qa’ida. Throughout the course, students will have the opportunity to study and work with the University of Maryland’s Global Terrorism Database (GTD), the largest database of terrorist incidents in the world, learning its capabilities and developing basic skills in searching and displaying terrorism data.
4.E: Gary Lafree (University of Maryland), "Target Trends in the GTD"
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Del curso dictado por University of Maryland, College Park
Understanding Terrorism and the Terrorist Threat
159 calificaciones
University of Maryland, College Park
159 calificaciones
De la lección
Module 4: Terrorist Operations
Conoce a los instructores
Dr. Gary LaFreeDirector
National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism
Bill BraniffExecutive Director
National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism
Kate IzsakEducation Director
National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Reponses to Terrorism
Joyce Rasing
Hello.
In this next lecture I want to briefly discuss
the most common targets of terrorism.
As in the previous section,
what I want to do here is think about some of our stereotypes about targets.
And then compare those stereotypes to what we find when we look at
over 113,000 terrorist attacks that are recorded
in the Global Terrorism Database from 1970 to the present.
If you think about media portrayals, I think when we think of terrorism,
we often think of it as an attack on an innocent civilian.
It's almost the hallmark of terrorism to think about injuring or
killing innocent civilians.
And indeed when we look at these cases in more detail,
we find that this does happen a lot of times.
But often the targeting is also a lot more complicated that you might
think when you actually get down and look at individual cases.
If you look at the first table, I demonstrate some of this complexity by
analyzing the types of targets attacked in the events included in the GTD.
The GTD actually records up to three different targets for each attack.
And I think the overarching thing I want to get across to you is, and
this is going to be true for
I think all of the lectures that we give based on the GTD, is that when you look at
the reality of how terrorism has actually happened over the four or five decades.
The reality ends up being a lot more complex than our sort of stereotypes.
And so what I want to do in this lecture is communicate some of that complexity.
Now consistent with most common stereotypes about terrorism,
the table shows that private citizens and
their property were indeed the single largest category of targets in the GTD.
They accounted for more than 27,000 attacks in the database,
this amounts to about a quarter of the whole database.
But, at the same time, the table shows a lot of variation, and
a lot of complexity in terms of the targeting of private citizens.
For example, while not referring directly to attacks on private citizens, several of
the other target categories in the table probably involve private citizens.
So this would include attacks against businesses which could include private
citizens.
Attacks against cars,
against trains, against other types of land based transportation.
Against utilities, against schools, against educational systems.
Practically all of the categories we have in this target list
could involve some citizen attack as well.
Even in attacks that seem to be aimed mostly at the government, the military,
the police, civilians are frequently killed or injured.
This was the case, for example, in a couple of high profile cases that happened
in Bali, Indonesia, in the early 2000s.
In these cases, a group called Jemaah Islamiyah JI,
stage two attacks where the assailants took the lives of 200 people.
But some of the individuals attacked were in the military,
some of them were government officials, and some of them were private citizens.
So in other words the attack struck private citizens but
also struck a lot of other individuals as well.
In terms of transportation, tactics and targets.
The GTD includes three types that are directly related to transportation
these include land transportation, airports and aircraft and maritime.
And I think among the attacks on civilians, public transportation,
infrastructure and vehicles are among the scariest.
Partly because I think when public transportation is targeted.
It makes everybody feel vulnerable since so
many people depend on public transportation.
Also public transportation tends to,
particularly when there's bombings involved,
the transportation device itself tends to amplify the impact of the explosion.
So it tends to be deadlier in these sorts of circumstances.
Some of the most well-known terrorist attacks in modern history have
targeted transportation systems.
For example, in 1995,
Aum Shinrikyo released sarin gas in the Tokyo subway system during rush hour.
It killed 13 people but made thousands of others ill.
A less publicized but even deadlier railway attack occurred in Angola
in August 2001 on the railway route that served as a critical
connection between the capital of Luanda and the city of Dondo.
The train was filled with commuters coming home from the capital for the weekend,
when it hit and detonated an anti-truck mine and ignited the train's fuel tank.
As people fled the train, members of the National Union for
the Total Independence of Angola, UNITA, fired upon them with automatic weapons.
More than half of the train's 500 passengers were killed, and
most of the remaining passengers were injured.
And to make things worse,
the remote location of the attack made it very difficult for authorities to respond.
If you look at transportation attacks,
the one that's probably the most iconic are attacks on airplanes.
And may be the one that draws the greatest fear from the public, as well.
Several of the earliest and
most dramatic terrorist attacks on planes took place in September, 1970.
In fact, this date became known as Black September after the Popular Front for
the Liberation of Palestine, the PFLP,
staged coordinated hijackings of four flights in one day.
All four of these flights shared the same destination, New York City, and
departed from airports in western Europe.
One came from Germany, one came from Switzerland, and
two came from the Netherlands.
And this was, of course, extremely well publicized, was in
all of the international media and cause a huge amount of international concern.
While many of the most notorious hijacking events have targets airplanes,
terrorist groups have carried out maritime hijackings that have been
extremely deadly as well.
Many of the more recent maritime hijackings recorded in the GTD involve
cargo ships or oil tankers.
Targeted by organizations, diverse organizations actually,
including the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, LTTE, and
the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta.
So anyway, what we can see about these attacks on transportation is they often
are well-publicized and contain or involve quite a bit of public concern.
What about government targets?
As shown in the table, after private citizens and businesses,
the next most common target of terrorist attacks are government entities.
This makes up nearly 14% of all the attacks in the GTD.
To give you an example of a highly publicized government attack,
think back to April 1995.
When the Alfred P Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City was bombed.
At that time 550 people and their children were at the building's daycare center.
On the morning of the attack Timothy McVeigh parked a rental truck
filled with explosives near the building.
The resulting explosion killed 168 people including 19 children.
Destroyed the building, and left a 20 foot wide,
eight foot deep crater in the street.
Although the attack was clearly aimed at a government building,
it highlights what I was saying just a moment ago, a lot of the victims,
most of the victims were ordinary civilians, as well as children.
We also distinguish in the data diplomatic targets and you'll see
the GTD classifies diplomatic targets as distinct from general government targets.
Just under 3% of all attacks between 1970 and
2012 targeted diplomatic facilities and personnel and this includes for
example attacks on United Nations Agencies and staff.
To give you just one example, in August 1998, Al-Qa'ida members carried
out coordinated truck bombings at the US Embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and
in Nairobi, Kenya killing more than 200 people and injuring thousands more.
These attacks were remarkable both because Al-Qa'ida was able to detonate trucks
loaded with explosives close to these heavily guarded embassies but
also because the assailants were able to coordinate nearly simultaneous attacks in
destinations that were over 400 miles apart.
The GTD actually classifies the embassies targeted in these two attacks
as diplomatic.
But in fact, if you look at the casualties,
the overwhelming number of them were civilians.
In contrast to this large scale indiscriminate bombings,
other attacks on diplomatic facilities and personnel have been much more targeted.
For example, there were numerous attacks on the diplomats in Libia in 2012.
In June of that year an explosive device was thrown
at the consulate in Benghazi but only damaged the front gate.
This was a group calling itself the Brigades of
the Imprisoned Sheikh Omar Abdul Rahman.
Two assaults on the US consulate and the CIA annex in September killed four
Americans, including of course, Ambassador Christopher Stevens.
These attacks sparked several congressional and
administrative investigations about security of the facilities.
And the Obama administration’s handling of the attacks and
then on August 06, 2013 CNN reported that the States Department
of Justice filed criminal charges against several individuals including
the Malaysia leader Ahmad Abdul Katala for allege involve in any attacks.
Now often times when we think about terrorism,
we don't think of how it can be directed at police targets.
But as you can see in the figure, this is a relatively common outcome.
In fact, police are a presence throughout communities.
They're often not protected.
They're often not in well secured locations.
They're not often under heavy protection, and they also offer
terrorists the opportunity for both a symbolic and a tactical strike and
we find that attacks on police in the database are fairly common.
More than 13% of all attacks from 1970 to 2012 are on police.
An unusually deadly police related attack occurred on June 11th,
1990 during a period of particularly intense fighting between the LTTE and
the Sri Lankan government.
The LTTE seized approximately 20 police stations in a coordinated attack
in eastern Sri Lanka and abducted hundreds of police officers, reports on
the total number of casualties on this day vary greatly but consistently indicate
more than a hundred police officers were killed after they surrendered.
Among the most active perpetrator groups in the GTD,
several have been particularly inclined to attack police targets.
This includes the Irish Republican Army, the Taliban, the Basque Fatherland and
Freedom or the ETA The Communist Party of India Maoist,
the African National Congress, and Boko Haram.
Each of these groups are especially likely to target police or have been in the past.
Another group that we don't think of frequently when we talk about terrorism
are military targets.
As you know from most definitions of terrorism,
emphasize attacks on civilians, but it's often very difficult to separate
attacks on military targets from civilian attacks.
Take the April 1986 bombing of La Belle Discotheque in Berlin.
It's a good example of where military targets are attacked alongside civilians.
A bomb in this case exploded inside a location that was frequented
by US soldiers, killing three people but wounding more than 200.
Two of the three people killed and scores of those injured were service men,
however, the remaining casualties were civilians.
Another high profile case that involved a military target is the October 2000 attack
on the USS Cole.
Members of Al-Qa'ida pulled a rubber raft full of explosives up to the side of
the 505 foot navy guided missile destroyer as it refueled in the port of Yemen.
The explosion tore a 40 square foot hole in the side of the vessel,
killed 17 crew members and wounded 39 others.
Most commonly attacks on military targets around the world are aimed at recruiting
centers and these often involve, of course civilian casualties.
In fact highly lethal terrorist attacks on both military and police recruiting
centers have been fairly common in Afghanistan, Algeria, Iraq, and Pakistan.
Now after all of these targets that are pretty common, we have a sort of grab
bag of others that are much less common but nonetheless very important.
These include attacks against religious figures a tax against journalists,
a tax against non state militias, a tax against other terrorist organizations and
violent political parties, a tax on non governmental organizations, and
just to give you a few examples of this diversity.
A series of highly destructive attacks on religious institutions occurred
on Christmas Eve 2000 in Indonesia when nearly 40 bombs were planted at
Christian churches in 13 cities across the country.
According to the GTD, Jemma Islamia was suspected to be responsible for
these attacks Attacks against journalists or
media representatives also encompass attacks on newspaper offices,
television and radio stations, those who work in journalism, such as reporters.
In one such high-profile attack in 1974, a left-wing
group called the Symbionese Liberation Army, targeted American media magnate,
Randolph Apperson Hearst, by kidnapping his daughter, Patricia Hearst.
Historically many attacks on journalist and media targets have involved hostage
barricade incidents where perpetrators forcefully seize control of a radio
station in order to broadcast their message.
This tactic was especially common in Latin America during the 1970s and 1980s.
Are more than half of all attacks on journalists and
the media, targeted radio personnel or facilities.
And more than half of these were barricade hostage events
that rarely resulted in casualties.
Since 2000, attacks on journalists and
the media have been most common in Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan.
But with large numbers of events also occurring in Somalia and the Philippines.
Less than 2% of attacks between 1970 and
2012 involved attacks that targeted other terrorist organizations.
This most often happens when there's competition between
multiple organizations operating in the same general area of each other.
For example, there have been attacks by the Irish Republican Army that
targeted the Ulster Freedom Fighters in Northern Ireland.
There were attacks by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, LTT, against other
Tamil groups or various breakaway groups from the LTT in Sri Lanka and so on.
We also see that there are a few cases that
target non-governmental organizations, the NGOs.
The NGOs targets are extremely diverse,
they range from small non-profit agencies like African American Community Centers in
New York City to large international organizations such as the Red Cross.
But a great amount of diversity as well.
As we discussed above,
the four most common terrorist targets in the GTD are first private citizens,
second, businesses, third, government, and fourth the police.
In the last part of this lecture,
I'd like to talk very briefly about how these different targets
Look if you look at the data over the regions of the world and then also I want
to look at trends in these targets over time before concluding this section.
If we look at the regions of the world, private citizens and property are the most
frequent targets in six of the 13 regions of the world that we've identified here.
Businesses are the most common primary target.
In North America, South America, and Western Europe.
When we consider the perpetrators of attacks on businesses in these regions,
we note that in North America, businesses were frequently attacked by environmental
and animal rights groups such as the Earth Liberation Front and
the Animal Liberation Front which makes good sense because the grievances of
these organizations are often directed at the businesses.
That they perceive to be harming either he environment or animals.
Such as the lumber industry, the fast food industry or the fur industry.
Extreme environment groups such as ELF have also attacked businesses in
Western Europe.
However, local separatist groups such as the ETA,
the Corsican National Liberation Front and the IRA were responsible for most
of the attacks on businesses in Western Europe especially in the 1970s and 1980s.
The most common business target for ETA and the FLNC were bank,
while the IRA was most likely to attack shops, bars and restaurants.
The FARC, and the National Liberation Army of Colombia are among the most prominent
groups that targeted businesses in South America.
These two groups have attacked a wide variety of businesses, including banks,
construction sites, ranches, retail stores, even trucking companies.
Turning back to the figure we see that the government is the most common target
in East Asia, Central Asia and in Australasia Oceania.
All of which are regions with relatively few terrorist attacks
in general in the GTD.
Finally the police are the most commonly targeted group in Russia and
the Newly Independent States.
The terrorists that most openly target the police in this region
are Chechnyan rebel groups.
Given their grievances with the Russian government,
it's perhaps unsurprising that these groups target police and
other government officials in terms of their attack patterns.
At the same time, Chechen separatists had been involved in several major attacks
that have targeted civilians including the bloody attacks,
including very bloody attacks on theaters and schools.
Finally, how do these targets look if you look at them over time,
over the 43 years included in the data?
We give you an illustration of this for
the four most common targets in the next figure.
Interestingly, while the top four targets trend closely to one another for
much of the series.
The most common of these four attack targets changes over time.
So for most of the 1970s,
businesses were the most frequently targeted of the four categories.
Businesses also were the leading target in a few years, 85, 86, and 91,
around the time of the collapse of the Soviet Union by contrast,
government is only the most common target for
terrorists in two years of the series, in 1970 and 1988.
Police are never the most common target, although the frequency of attacks on
police have gone up dramatically in the last 12 or 13 years.
Surpassing both government and business targets.
In 72 and 73 and throughout much of the 80s, 90s and 2000s,
private citizens and property were the most common of the four types targets.
In fact, near the end of the series in 2008 and 2009, private citizens and
their property were target in nearly 50% of terrorist attacks.
On these four types of targets.
For the last few years of the series, nearly one third of the attacks on private
citizens and their property, took place in a single country, the country if Iraq.
A few conclusions about targets of terrorism.
I began this section by exploring in greater detail,
the idea that terrorists primarily attack private citizens.
We can see that there's a good deal of truth to this assertion, but
that it's complicated.
That it's often difficult to separate attacks on private citizens
from attacks on government, attacks on police, attacks on the military, or
even attacks on different types of transportation.
So in other words, it's hard to know if the terrorists were out to get civilians
or they happen to kill civilians in their effort to hit some other kind of target,
and a lot of times we just do not have enough detail and
we don't know enough about the motivations of the terrorist to actually
determine which of these is the case.
Also, many attacks impact multiple types of targets and
in these cases it's very difficult now.
If we look at the Bali bombings for example, there were lots of soldiers
killed, but there were also lots of ordinary citizens killed as well.
When we examine targets across regions, we see that private citizens and
property are the most common of the four types in 6 of the 13 world regions,
but we also see a fair amount of variability across the world.
Furthermore, this tendency to target private citizens and
property has become more prevalent since the early 1990s.
Prior to that period terrorist groups attacked other types of targets about as
often as private citizens.
In short, we find that private citizens are often the target of terrorist attacks
and during many periods, in fact, the most common targets of terrorist attacks.
Nevertheless, the GTD also reveals a good deal of variation
in a lot of complexity in targeting strategies.
In the next lecture, I want to conclude this three part series by talking about
tactics used by the terrorist organizations in the GTD since 1970.
Thank you very much.
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