TERRORISM TODAY Terrorism Today, which was fi rst published a year before 9/11, draws directly upon the ideas and words of the gunmen themselves, and lays out with clarity, directness, and detail the ends, ways, and means of the most important terrorist groups. In addition, it makes the case for a better, stronger response to the current global terrorist threat. This second, revised and updated, edition has been prepared with close attention to what the author terms the new “militant Muslim international”. There is also broad coverage of many of the major and minor groups in the communist, anarchist, neo- fascist, and national-separatist milieus, as well as “pro-state” groups. This revised edition contains new material on terrorist fi nances, technologies and tactics, counterterrorism, and, uniquely, how terror groups end. Taking a global perspective, the book deals not just with the US-led War on Terrorism, but with the interests and actions of several dozen countries and international organizations, to give a complete overview of the terrorist threat. The expanded and updated glossary of terrorist groups completes the new edition, and will be a great aid to students of the subject. This book will be essential reading for students of terrorism studies, security studies, and politics and international relations, and for students at professional military colleges. Christopher C. Harmon held the Kim T. Adamson Chair of Insurgency & Terrorism at Marine Corps University from 2005 to 2007, and has taught terrorism courses at fi ve accredited graduate schools. He is the author of two previous books Statecraft and Power (1994) and Terrorism Today (Cass 2000, fi rst edition). SERIES: POLITICAL VIOLENCE Series editors: Paul Wilkinson and David Rapoport This book series contains sober, thoughtful and authoritative academic accounts of terrorism and political violence. Its aim is to produce a useful taxonomy of terror and violence through comparative and historical analysis in both national and international spheres. Each book discusses origins, organisational dynamics and outcomes of particular forms and expressions of political violence. AVIATION TERRORISM AND SECURITY Paul Wilkinson and Brian M. Jenkins (eds) COUNTER-TERRORIST LAW AND EMERGENCY POWERS IN THE UNITED KINGDOM, 1922–2000 Laura K. Donohue THE DEMOCRATIC EXPERIENCE AND POLITICAL VIOLENCE David C. Rapoport and Leonard Weinberg (eds) INSIDE TERRORIST ORGANIZATIONS David C. Rapoport (ed.) THE FUTURE OF TERRORISM Max Taylor and John Horgan (eds) THE IRA, 1968–2000: AN ANALYSIS OF A SECRET ARMY J. Bowyer Bell MILLENNIAL VIOLENCE: PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE Jeffrey Kaplan (ed.) RIGHT-WING EXTREMISM IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY Peter H. Merkl and Leonard Weinberg (eds) TERRORISM TODAY Christopher C. Harmon THE PSYCHOLOGY OF TERRORISM John Horgan RESEARCH ON TERRORISM: TRENDS, ACHIEVEMENTS AND FAILURES Andrew Silke (ed.) A WAR OF WORDS: POLITICAL VIOLENCE AND PUBLIC DEBATE IN ISRAEL Gerald Cromer ROOT CAUSES OF SUICIDE TERRORISM: GLOBALIZATION OF MARTYRDOM Ami Pedahzur (ed.) TERRORISM VERSUS DEMOCRACY: THE LIBERAL STATE RESPONSE, 2ND EDITION Paul Wilkinson COUNTERING TERRORISM AND WMD: CREATING A GLOBAL COUNTER-TERRORISM NETWORK Peter Katona, Michael Intriligator and John Sullivan (eds) MAPPING TERRORISM RESEARCH: STATE OF THE ART, GAPS AND FUTURE DIRECTION Magnus Ranstorp (ed.) THE IDEOLOGICAL WAR ON TERROR: WORLD-WIDE STRATEGIES FOR COUNTER-TERRORISM Anne Aldis and Graeme P. Herd (eds) THE IRA AND ARMED STRUGGLE Rogelio Alonso HOMELAND SECURITY IN THE UK: FUTURE PREPAREDNESS FOR TERRORIST ATTACK SINCE 9/11 Paul Wilkinson (ed.) TERRORISM TODAY, 2ND EDITION Christopher C. Harmon TERRORISM TODAY Second Edition Christopher C. Harmon First edition published in 2000 by Frank Cass Publishers, London Second edition published in 2008 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016 This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2007. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2000, 2008 Christopher C. Harmon All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN 0-203-93358-3 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 10: 0–415–77300–8 (hbk) ISBN 10: 0–415–77301–6 (pbk) ISBN 10: 0–203–93358–3 (ebk) ISBN13: 978–0–415–77300–3 (hbk) ISBN13: 978–0–415–77301–0 (pbk) ISBN13: 978–0–203–93358–9 (ebk) For Laura and for Kim T. Adamson, USMC CONTENTS Acknowledgements x Foreword xi Introduction to the second edition 1 1 Politics and policies 7 2 Strategies of terrorist groups 39 3 Operations: funding terror 73 4 Technologies and tactics 95 5 Counterterrorism 127 6 How terror groups end 172 Glossary of terrorist groups 191 Select bibliography 208 Index 218 ix ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS All of the content of this second edition, like the fi rst, is based on open-source information and represents my own analysis and views. Nothing in these pages can be taken to represent the position of the US government, the Department of Defense, the Marine Corps, or the Marine Corps University. It is of course a considerable honor for any civilian academic to be affi liated with the Corps. My position as inaugural holder of the university’s Kim T. Adamson Chair of Insurgency and Terrorism was one of private, not government, employment, and was managed through the Marine Corps University Foundation that assists the Marines’ schools. I am thus indebted to both MCU President Donald Gardner and foundation CEO Thomas Draude, both of whom are true gentlemen. The university is accredited by both the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, on the one hand, and the Joint Staff of the Department of Defense on the other. The author is appreciative to The National Interest for use of some lines about French intelligence and counterterrorism—by Alexis Debat, who wrote “Terrorism and the Fifth Republic” for the Winter 2005/06 issue. Frank Cass, which published the fi rst edition, is now owned by Taylor and Francis; through them I am allowed to reproduce parts of a Red Army Faction document reprinted in the fi ne Dennis Pluchinsky/Yonah Alexander volume, Europe’s Red Terrorists: The Fighting Communist Organizations. I am indebted to these friends for their kindness, and their critical eyes, regarding draft chapters: Paul Guppy, Tom Hastings, Leonard Hill, Jim Phillips, Nick Pratt, Dave Rababye. x FOREWORD It gives me great pleasure to respond to Christopher C. Harmon’s second, revised, and updated edition of his valuable contribution to the Political Violence series. His book is a model guide to the great variety of non-state organizations that currently employ terror as a political weapon or that have done so in the recent past and the regimes that have sponsored or supported some of these groups. The book does not purport to be a comprehensive guide to the use of terror by states as a weapon of internal repression: That is a subject for another volume, or several volumes, for regime or state terror remains an ever-present and massively lethal part of the global trends in violence. Christopher Harmon is meticulous in his descriptions of the origins, aims, ideologies or belief-systems, leadership, modus operandi, and track records of a huge range of groups. One of his great strengths is his close attention to the history of the non-state groups and the policies of the states that have been attempting to combat and suppress them. He has carefully revised and updated his accounts of the Al Qaeda–linked groups and affi liates and has wisely avoided the mistake of those commentators who have been predicting Al Qaeda’s imminent demise ever since the toppling of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan in the fall of 2001. At the same time, he manages to avoid the kind of helpless fatalism of the doom-sayers. He does not offer any trite or simple solutions to the problems that the Al Qaeda network poses for the international community. It would be well worth publishing this volume in our series for the above reasons alone. However, there is another practical reason that leads me to strongly welcome this book and to commend it to a wider readership both within and beyond academia. In all the understandable fl ood of interest in the Al Qaeda network, there is a serious danger of loss of perspective. It is crucially important to bear in mind that there are dozens of other active and emerging terrorist groups with entirely different origins, aims, beliefs, leaders, and tactics, which also constitute a signifi cant threat to human rights, security, and economic well-being in their various “enemy” target countries and regions. Governments, police forces, and other agencies concerned with protecting the public in the countries affected need a balanced, comprehensive, and perceptive guide to terrorisms of all kinds. Chris Harmon’s book provides an invaluable and well-researched guidebook to this wider world of contemporary terrorism. Paul Wilkinson University of St Andrews xi INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION Prepare what force you can and cavalry to terrorize the enemies of God and your enemies. Armed with this Koranic verse, Karim Bourti of the Salafi st Group for Preaching and Combat explained his pride in considering himself “a Muslim terrorist.” And he says that he “loves” a model terrorist: “All those who are sincere with Allah support Osama Bin Laden.