State-sponsored terrorism
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State-sponsored terrorism (SST) is a political term used to refer to finance/bounties, equipment and intelligence material given across international boundaries to terrorist organizations and the families of deceased militants for the purpose of conducting or rewarding attacks on civilians. States that sponsor terrorism may also provide a "safe-haven" for persons accused of terrorism and refuse to extradite them. As with any form of terrorism, SST is used because it is believed to produce strategic results where the use of conventional armed forces is not practical or effective. See
As well as the terms themselves, the distinctions between state-sponsored terrorism, state terrorism, and "legitimate war" are controversial. Generally speaking, sponsored terrorism is simply a more specific form of state terrorism; the controversy largely arises in the definition of "state terrorism" as regards sponsorship, asymmetric warfare (clandestine warfare) and international character. In Western politics, however, the term state-sponsored terrorism is largely used in reference to certain politics and finance in the Arab world, i.e. politics and finance used to promote terrorism rooted in ideological Islamic nationalism amongst various radical Islamist militant groups.
The intentions of such terrorism are believed to be any or all of the following:
- Destabilisation of a target state
- Creation of international visibility for a persistent problem
- Acts of retaliation against a target state
- Attempts to promote a state's interests
Contents |
[edit] States accused of sponsoring terrorism
The following countries have been accused of harbouring terrorist organizations or have been known to support such terrorist attacks on other nations.
[edit] Current
[edit] Iran
Iran is alleged to be a major sponsor of terrorist organisations. It is alleged to have involvement in the death of 241 American and 58 French soldiers on a peace keeping mission in Beirut with two truck bombs in 1983. It runs a school for suicide bombers. It has openly funded organizations recognized as terrorist groups by the UN such as Hamas and Palestine's Islamic Jihad. Its Revolutionary Guard Corps and Ministry of Intelligence and National Security are known to still be involved in the planning and the execution of terrorist acts and continued to support a variety of groups that use terrorism to pursue their goals. The US, UK, Israel have designated Iranian Hezbollah, a proxy army under the control of Iran, as a terrorist organization. [1]
[edit] Pakistan
Pakistan has been accused by India, Afghanistan, and other nations (including the United States[3] and the United Kingdom[4]) of its involvement in the Terrorism in Kashmir, Afghanistan[5] and Uzbekistan[6]. Satellite imagery from the FBI which shows the existence of terror camps[7] and data produced by India's Research and Analysis Wing clearly suggest the existence of many terrorist camps in Pakistan with at least one militant admitting the help given by Pakistan in training them. Another terrorist outfit, the JKLF has openly admitted that more than 3,000 militants from various nationalities were still being trained.[8] Other nonpartisan resources also concur stating that Pakistan’s military and Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) both include personnel who sympathize with and help Islamic terrorists adding that "ISI has provided covert but well-documented support to terrorist groups active in Kashmir, including the al-Qaeda affiliate Jaish-e-Mohammed"[9] Pakistan has denied any involvement in the terrorist activities in Kashmir, arguing that it only provides political and moral support to the secessionist groups. Many Kashmir terrorist groups also maintain their headquarters in Pakistan Administered Kashmir, which is cited as further proof by the Indian Government. Many of the terrorist organisations are banned by the UN, but continue to operate under different names. Even the normally reticent UNO has also publicly increased pressure on Pakistan with regards to its alleged terrorist sponsoring activities[10] Until Pakistan became an unwilling ally in the War on Terrorism, the US Secretary of State included Pakistan on the 1993 list of countries which repeatedly provide support for acts of international terrorism.[3] The recent 2006 transatlantic aircraft plot is also blamed by various sections in the media as being a handiwork of elements in the Pakistani administration. (See Pakistan's role in the plot) Press editorials from around the world have consistently and strongly condemned Pakistan's "terror exports"[11] According to one author, Daniel Byman, "Pakistan is probably today's most active sponsor of terrorism."[12]
[edit] United Kingdom
The United Kingdom (UK) is accused of supporting Loyalist terrorist groups, both within the UK and also in cross-border operations into the Republic of Ireland.[13], namely the UVF and UDA. These groups support the territory of Northern Ireland remaining part of the UK. The UK is accused of providing intelligence material, training, firearms, explosives and lists of people that the government wanted to have killed.[14] The UK security services have been accused of involvement in the Dublin and Monaghan Bombings by the UVF on 17 May 1974 which killed 33 and wounded nearly 300 civillians.[15]
On the 17 April 2003, Sir John Stevens published his third inquiry into collusion between the British Army and the RUC with Loyalist paramilitaries. It stated that there had been collusion in the murder of Pat Finucane by Loyalists.[13]
A former RUC officer, John Weir, has admitted to colluding with Loyalist terrorists in the 1970's in activities that led to the death of ten Catholics and that his superiors had knowledge of 76 more killings carried out by the UVF in the same time period.[16] He also alleges that members of the SAS killed Loyalists who may have planned to expose the collusion.[16]
The UK has also been accused by Iran of supporting Arab separatist terrorism in the southern city of Ahwaz in 2006.[17]
[edit] United States of America
The United States of America has been accused of being a state sponsor of terrorism by various groups and nations, including Venezuela, Cuba, and North Korea. The United States sponsored anti-Soviet Afghan mujahideen during the 1980s, intervened in various Central American and Caribbean conflicts, and supported anti-government groups in Iraq following the 1991 Gulf War. These actions constitute terrorism in that the United States has committed and, in many cases, employed proxy groups to commit acts of violence against governments and civilians in order to further its own ideological or political initiatives. [citation needed]
The Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, formerly known as the School of the Americas, is operated by the United States Army at Fort Benning, Georgia, and provides specialized training for foreign militias, militaries, and paramilitary organizations aligned with U.S. strategic interests in regard to various overt and covert international conflicts.
In the 1980's the United States was convicted by the World Court for 'unlawful use of force', killing Nicaraguans for political purposes and supporting a proxy-terrorist force the Contras. This made it the first and only state in history to be convicted of state-sponsored international terrorism. In April 1985 CIA Director Stansfield Turner testified to the US Congress in confirmation Nicaragua was being subjected to US “state-sponsored terrorism”, during the Iran-Contra hearings. The US then vetoed UN Security Council resolutions calling it to terminate its terrorist war and that all states observe international law.
The New York Times reported that according to several former U.S. intelligence officials, Iraqi resistance groups opposed to Saddam Hussein conducted a bombing campaign under the direction of the CIA that included civilian targets, including a school bus with passengers on board and a movie theatre, in Baghdad between 1992 and 1995. [citation needed]
[edit] USSR and Russia
Felix Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky the founder of the KGB State Security Service, today known as the FSB, advocated the use of the forces of the state as an agent of terror. His use of the term terrorism to describe the activities of the Soviet Union was blatant, as he wrote "we represent organized terror."
The first official announcement, published in Izvestiya, "Appeal to the Working Class" on September 3, 1918 called for the workers to "crush the hydra of counterrevolution with massive terror". This was followed by the decree "On Red Terror", issued September 5, 1918 by the Cheka. Casualties in the fall of 1918 exceeded 10,000 and grew into the millions by the 1950s.
In 1999 a series of bombings across Russia killed over 300 people. Muslim terrorists were blamed and the Second Chechen War was launched in revenge. Former Financial Times correspondent in Moscow David Satter, Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky, film director Andrei Nekrasov and others ( most notably - Alexander Litvinenko) have claimed that the bombings were staged by the FSB. See Russian apartment bombings.
[edit] Others
[edit] Historical
These nations have, at some point in the past, been accused of sponsoring or fomenting terrorist activities in a foreign nation. While some have openly supported such terrorist networks others have been less forthcoming in their support.
[edit] Afghanistan
The support that al-Qaeda was given by the Taliban regime in Afghanistan was the main reason for the American invasion of Afghanistan.
[edit] Argentina
See also "Dirty War".
Under Jorge Rafael Videla, Argentina took the lead of Operation Condor and other anticommunist operations, supporting the "Cocaine Coup" of Luis García Meza Tejada in Bolivia or the Contras in Nicaragua.
[edit] Belgium
Discovery of a Belgium branch of Gladio & creation of a permanent Parliamentary committee After the retreat of France from NATO, the SHAPE headquarter was displaced to Mons in Belgium. In 1990, following France's denial of any "stay-behind" French army, Giulio Andreotti publicly pointed out that the last Allied Clandestine Committee (ACC) meeting, to which the French branch of Gladio was present, had been on October 23 and 24, 1990, under the presidency of Belgian General Van Calster, director of the Belgian military secret service SGR. In November, Guy Coëme, Minister of the Defense, acknowledged the existence of a Belgium "stay-behind" army, lifting concerns about a similar implication in terrorist acts as in Italy. The same year, the European Parliament sharply condemned NATO and the United States in a resolution for having manipulated European politics with the stay-behind armies [8].[citation needed]
Therefore, in Belgium, new legislation governing intelligence agencies' missions and methods was passed in 1998, following two government enquiries and the creation of a permanent parliamentary committee in 1991, which was to bring them under the authority of Belgium's federal agencies [13].[citation needed]
[edit] Chile
During "Operation Condor", intelligence services of South American dictators in the 1970s-80s, including Argentina, traded information. Phase #3 of "Operation Condor", which allowed assassination in other countries, including United States and Europe, was activated.
[edit] Iraq
The US believed that Iraq allowed several expatriate terrorist groups to maintain offices in Baghdad as late as 2002, including the Arab Liberation Front, the inactive "15 May Organization", the Palestine Liberation Front, and the Abu Nidal Organization. These terrorist groups and their existence were among the supposed reason given for the Iraq War led by the United States. Saddam Hussein is believed to have provide financial and logistical support for various Palestinian terrorist groups, including payments of approximately $25,000 (U.S.) to the families of successful suicide bombers after their deaths. Iraq has also been hosting the Iranian separatist group and terrorist organization the "Mujahidiin-e Khalq" for decades.
[edit] Italy
Operation Gladio was a clandestine "stay-behind" operation sponsored by the CIA and NATO to counter communist influence after World War II in Italy, as well as in other European countries, which has been involved in various terrorist acts. While Gladio is usually used to refer to only the Italian "stay-behind", the term has also been applied to all other "stay-behind" operations. NATO stay-behind armies existed in all countries of Western Europe during the Cold War, including Turkey. Suspected at least since the 1984 revelations of Avanguardia Nazionale member Vincenzo Vinciguerra during his trial, Gladio’s existence was acknowledged by head of Italian government Giulio Andreotti on October 24, 1990, who spoke of a "structure of information, response and safeguard", with arms caches and reserve officers. Further investigations revealed links to neofascists, the Mafia, Propaganda Due, Masonic Lodge (aka P2), and the "strategia della tensione" followed in Italy during the 1970s-80s to block the electoral success of the Italian Communist Party (PCI).
[edit] Libya
After the military overthrow of King Idris in 1969 the Libyan Arab Republic (later the Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya to the bewliderment of some supported with weapon supplies, training camps located within Libya and monetary finances an array of armed paramilitary groups both left wing and right wing. Leftist and socialist groups included the Provisional Irish Republican Army, the Basque Fatherland and Liberty, the Umkhonto We Sizwe, the Polisario Front, the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine while others were on the Far Right such as the Moro National Liberation Front, the government of Libya even had brief contacts with the Neo Nazi British National Front which attempted to enlist financial aid from Libya during the 1980s. These contacts were ended after the fascist nature of the NF was discovered during Nick Griffin's visit to Libya in 1986.
In 2006 Libya was removed from the United States list of terrorist supporting nations after it had ended all of it's support for armed groups and the development of weapons of mass destruction.
Out of the armed groups Libya used to support the Provisional IRA, Umkhonto We Sizwe of South Africa and the Palestine Liberation Organization have all ceased violent and terrorist activities.
[edit] South Africa
In the 1980s, and in the previous two decades, South Africa was accused of a series of state-sponsored terrorist incidents. According to information revealed in 1998 by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Chairman of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, South African agents were implicated in the 1961 aircrash in Zambia which killed UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld.
De-stabilization of its neighbors – particularly Angola and Mozambique – seemed to be the main plank of the apartheid regime's foreign policy. Accusations have been made that South Africa's Directorate of Military Intelligence caused the death of President Samora Machel of Mozambique in a 1986 aircrash in South Africa. During the civil wars in Angola and Mozambique the South Africans supported anti-communist insurgent groups in both countries. In Angola they aided UNITA (which ruled part of Angola like any military dictatorship) with weapons, money, military advisors and thousands of troops. They also aided RENAMO (another rebel group associated with human rights violations) with weapons and money.
An agreement signed at the UN in New York on December 22, 1988 brought South Africa's illegal occupation over many decades of Namibia to an end. When it emerged that UN Commissioner for Namibia Bernt Carlsson had been killed on Pan Am Flight 103 the day before, and that foreign minister Pik Botha and a South African delegation of 22 had been booked on that flight but canceled at short notice, the apartheid regime was accused of responsibility for this 1988 aircrash in Scotland, see Alternative theories into the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103.
[edit] United States
The Cold War was fought with overt and covert techniques.The CIA utilized anti-Castro Cubans living in Miami,Florida ,recruited them and trained them in secret bases in Florida. The Bay of Pigs was the largest covert CIA-sponsored Cuban insurgent attack on Cuba.After the failure of the Bay of Pigs operation, the CIA changed tactics from commando raids to the use of terrorist tactics such as sabotage,bombings,mine laying in Cuban harbors and other such activities.
The CIA utilized various anti-Castro terrorists such as Orlando Bosch, Luis Posada Carriles, and Virgilio Paz Romero who planted a bomb on a Cubana airline flying from Venezuela to Cuba killing all aboard. These same CIA sponsored terrorists were responsible for numerous bombings of Cuban resort hotels to scare off foreign tourists in an attempt at economic warfare against Cuba [7][8] [9] [[10][11]
The US National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski under President Carter developed the concept of the Green-belt theory which involved a plan to use Saudi Arabian money and CIA logistical support to train and arm Islamic radicals within the Soviet Union and in neighboring countries like Afghanistan and Pakistan [18][19][20]. These CIA supported Islamic Jihadists like Osama Bin Ladin and many other fought against the Soviet Union in it's Afghanistan war. According to Robert Dreyfus,the CIA also provided training and money to the Chechans during the Cold War to use them as guerrilla fighters in case of a Soviet invasion of Europe.This concept was modeled on Operation Gladio which involved training paramilitary organizations in Europe to serve as guerilla units in case of a Soviet invasion [12].Once the Soviet Union dissolved,these same Chechan terrorists were to destabalize and weaken the post-Soviet Russia [ [13][http://.www.globalissues.org/Geopolitics/Chechnya.asp [14]</ref>. Some critics have suggested that the American Committee for Peace in Chechnya (which was founded by Brzezinski)is thought to be a CIA front organization used to funnel money to the Chechans separatists/terrorists.
[edit] References
[A]/Robert Dreyfus.The Devil's Game: How the United States unleashed Fundamentalist Islam.Pluto Press.2005.
- ^ BBC News
- ^ Back to Camp-Dawn July 2005
- ^ a b International Terrorism: Threats and Responses : Hearings Before the Committee on the Judiciary By United States Congress House Committee on the Judiciary, ISBN 0160522307, 1996, pp482
- ^ Daily Times Story
- ^ Pakistan's link to Afghan terrorism
- ^ Uzbek leader blames Pakistan for terrorist outburst
- ^ FBI identifies terror camp in Pakistan through satellite pictures
- ^ 'Pak feared exposure of militant camps' - Rediff October 16, 2005
- ^ Terrorism Havens: Pakistan - Council on Foreign Relations
- ^ BBC Story
- ^ Editorial: Terror exports made in Pakistan- The Australian
- ^ Deadly Connections: States That Sponsor Terrorism By Daniel Byman, ISBN 0521839734, 2005, Cambridge University Press, pp 155
- ^ a b Text of Sir John Steven's Inquiry into collusion between the UK and Loyalist Terrorists
- ^ "Stevens Inquiry: At a Glance", BBC News Online, 2003-04-17. Retrieved on 2006-11-25. (in English)
- ^ Dublin and Monaghan Bombings-Relatives for Justice
- ^ a b Connolly, Frank. "I'm lucky to be above the ground", Village: Ireland's Current Afairs Weekly. Retrieved on 2006-11-16. (in English)
- ^ "Iran accuses UK of bombing link", BBC News, BBC News, 2006-1-25. Retrieved on 2006-11-25. (in English)
- ^ [1].923&articleId=599
- ^ [2]
- ^ [3]
[edit] See also
- State terrorism
- American terrorism
- Asymmetric warfare
- Operation Northwood
- COINTELPRO
- False flag
- September 11 attacks
- Contras
[edit] Notes
- ^ BBC News
- ^ Back to Camp-Dawn July 2005
- ^ a b International Terrorism: Threats and Responses : Hearings Before the Committee on the Judiciary By United States Congress House Committee on the Judiciary, ISBN 0160522307, 1996, pp482
- ^ Daily Times Story
- ^ Pakistan's link to Afghan terrorism
- ^ Uzbek leader blames Pakistan for terrorist outburst
- ^ FBI identifies terror camp in Pakistan through satellite pictures
- ^ 'Pak feared exposure of militant camps' - Rediff October 16, 2005
- ^ Terrorism Havens: Pakistan - Council on Foreign Relations
- ^ BBC Story
- ^ Editorial: Terror exports made in Pakistan- The Australian
- ^ Deadly Connections: States That Sponsor Terrorism By Daniel Byman, ISBN 0521839734, 2005, Cambridge University Press, pp 155
- ^ a b Text of Sir John Steven's Inquiry into collusion between the UK and Loyalist Terrorists
- ^ "Stevens Inquiry: At a Glance", BBC News Online, 2003-04-17. Retrieved on 2006-11-25. (in English)
- ^ Dublin and Monaghan Bombings-Relatives for Justice
- ^ a b Connolly, Frank. "I'm lucky to be above the ground", Village: Ireland's Current Afairs Weekly. Retrieved on 2006-11-16. (in English)
- ^ "Iran accuses UK of bombing link", BBC News, BBC News, 2006-1-25. Retrieved on 2006-11-25. (in English)
- ^ [4].923&articleId=599
- ^ [5]
- ^ [6]
[edit] References
- Overview of State-Sponsored Terrorism - Released by US Department of State
- State Sponsors of Terrorism, US Department of State, accessed 10-2006.
