Edit]Mid-20th century

After World War II, largely successful anti-colonial campaigns were launched against the collapsing European empires, as many World War II resistance groups became militantly anti-colonial. The Viet Minh, for example, which had fought against the Japanese, now fought the returning French colonists. In the Middle East, the Muslim Brotherhood used bombings and assassinations against British rule in Egypt.^[66] Also during the 1950s, the National Liberation Front (FLN) in French-controlled Algeria and the EOKA in British-controlled Cyprus waged guerilla and open war against colonial powers.^[111]

Aftermath of the 1964 Brinks Hotel bombing in Vietnam.

In the 1960s, inspired by Mao's Chinese revolution of 1949 and Castro's Cuban revolution of 1959, national independence movements in formerly colonized countries often fused nationalist and socialist impulses in the 1960s. This was the case with Spain's ETA, the Front de libération du Québec, and thePalestine Liberation Organization^{[clarification needed]}.^[112]

In the late 1960s and 1970s violent leftist groups were on the rise, sympathizing with Third World guerrilla movements and seeking to spark anti-capitalist revolt. Such groups included the PKK in Turkey, Armenia's ASALA,^[112] the Japanese Red Army, the German Red Army Faction, the Italian Red Brigade, and, in the U.S., the Weather Underground.^[113] Nationalist groups such as the Provisional IRA and the Tamil tigers also began operations at this time.

Throughout the Cold War, both the U.S. and the Soviet Union made extensive use of violent nationalist organizations to carry on a war by proxy. For example, Soviet and Chinese military advisers provided training and support to the Viet Cong during the Vietnam War,^[114] while the U.S. funded groups such as theContras in Nicaragua.^[115] Ironically, many violent Islamic militants of the late 20th and early 21st century had been funded in the 1980s by the US and the UK because they were fighting the USSR in Afghanistan.^[116][117]

[edit]Middle East

Founded in 1928 as a nationalist social-welfare and political movement in British-controlled Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood in the late 1940s began to attack British soldiers and police stations.^[118]Founded and led by Hassan al-Banna, it also assassinated politicians seen as collaborating with British rule,^[119] most prominently Egyptian Prime Minister Nuqrashi in 1948.^[120] British rule was overthrown in a 1952 military coup, and shortly thereafter the Muslim Brotherhood went underground in the face of a massive crackdown.^[121] Though sometimes banned or otherwise oppressed, the group continues to exist in present-day Egypt.

The Front de Liberation National (FLN) was a nationalist group founded in French-controlled Algeria in 1954.^[122] The group was a large-scale resistance movement against French occupation, with alleged terrorism only part of its operations. The FLN leadership was inspired by the Viet Minh rebels who had made French troops withdraw from Vietnam.^[123] The FLN was one of the first anti-colonial groups to use large scale compliance violence. The FLN would establish control over a rural village and coerce its peasants to execute any French loyalists among them.^[111] On the night of October 31, 1954, in a coordinated wave of seventy bombings and shootings known as the Toussaint attacks, the FLN attacked French military installations and the homes of Algerian loyalists.^[124] In the following year, the group gained significant support for an uprising against loyalists in Philipville. This uprising — and the heavy-handed response by the French — convinced many Algerians to support the FLN and the independence movement.^{[citation needed]} The FLN eventually secured Algerian independence from France in 1962, and transformed itself into Algeria's ruling party.^[125]

Plaque commemorating the eleven Israeli athletes killed during the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre.

Fatah was organized as a Palestinian nationalist group in 1954, and exists today as a political party in Palestine. In 1967 it joined the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), an umbrella organization for secular Palestinian nationalist groups formed in 1964. The PLO began its own armed operations in 1965.^[126] The PLO's membership is made up of separate and possibly contending paramilitary and political factions, the largest of which are Fatah, PFLP, and DFLP.^[127][128] Factions of the PLO have advocated or carried out acts of terrorism.^[129] Abu Iyad organized the Fatah splinter group Black September in 1970; the group is best known for seizing eleven Israeli athletes as hostages at the September 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich. All the athletes and five Black September operatives died during a gun battle with the West German police, in what was later known as the Munich massacre.^[130] The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) was founded in 1967 by George Habash,^[131] and on September 6, 1970, the group hijacked three international passenger planes, landing two of them in Jordan and blowing up the third.^[132] Fatah leader and PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat publicly renounced terrorism in December 1988 on behalf of the PLO, but Israel has stated it has proof that Arafat continued to sponsor terrorism until his death in 2004.^[133][134]

In the 1974 Ma'alot massacre 22 Israeli high school students, aged 14–16, from Safed were killed by three members of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine.^[135] Before reaching the school, the trio shot and killed two Arab women, a Jewish man, his pregnant wife, and their 4 year old son, and wounded several others.^[136]

The People's Mujahedin of Iran (PMOI) or Mujahedin-e Khalq, is a socialist islamic group that has fought Iran's government since the Khomeini revolution. The group was originally founded to oppose capitalism and what it perceived as western exploitation of Iran under the Shah.^{[citation needed]} The group would go on to play an important role in the Shah's overthrow but was unable to capitalize on this in the following power vacuum. The group is suspected of having a membership of between 10,000 and 30,000. The group renounced violence in 2001 but remains a proscribed terror organization in Iran and the U.S., The EU, however, has removed the group from its terror list. The PMOI is accused of supporting other groups such as theJundallah.^{[citation needed]}

The Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia (ASALA) was founded in 1975 in Beirut during the Lebanese Civil War by Hagop Tarakchian and Hagop Hagopian with the help of sympathetic Palestinians. At the time, Turkey was in political turmoil, and Hagopian believed that the time was right to avenge the Armenians who died during the Armenian Genocide and to force the Turkish government to cede the territory of Wilsonian Armenia to establish a nation state also incorporating the Armenian SSR. In its Esenboga airport attack, on 7 August 1982, two ASALA rebels opened fire on civilians in a waiting room at the Esenboga International Airport in Ankara. Nine people died and 82 were injured. By 1986, the ASALA had virtually ceased all attacks.^[137]

The "Partiya Karkerên Kurdistan" (Kurdistan Workers Party or PKK) was established in Turkey in 1978 as a Kurdish nationalist party. Founder Abdullah Ocalan Ocalan was inspired by the Maoisttheory of people's war, and like Algeria's FLN he advocated the use of compliance terror.^{[citation needed]} The group seeks to create an independent Kurdish state consisting of parts of south-eastern Turkey, north-eastern Iraq, north-eastern Syria and north-western Iran. In 1984, the PKK transformed itself into a paramilitary organisation and launched conventional attacks as well as bombings against Turkish governmental installations. In 1999, Turkish authorities captured Öcalan. He was tried in Turkey and sentenced to life imprisonment. The PKK has since gone through a series of name changes.^[138]

[edit]Europe

Founded in 1959 and still active, the Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (or ETA (Basque for "Basque Homeland and Freedom" pronounced [ˈeta])) is an armed Basque nationalist separatist organization.^[139]Formed in response to General Francisco Franco's suppression of the Basque language and culture, ETA evolved from an advocacy group for traditional Basque culture into an armed Marxist group demanding Basque independence.^[140] Many ETA victims are government officials, the group's first known victim a police chief killed in 1968. In 1973 ETA operatives killed Franco's apparent successor, Admiral Luis Carrero Blanco, by planting an underground bomb under his habitual parking spot outside a Madrid church.^[141] In 1995, an ETA car bomb nearly killed Jose Maria Aznar, then the leader of the conservative Popular Party, and the same year investigators disrupted a plot to assassinate King Juan Carlos.^[142] Efforts by Spanish governments to negotiate with the ETA have failed, and in 2003 the Spanish Supreme Court banned the Batasuna political party, which was determined to be the political arm of ETA.^[143]

The Provisional Irish Republican Army was an Irish nationalist movement founded in December 1969 when several militants including Seán Mac Stíofáin broke off from the Official IRA and formed a new organization.^[144] Led by Mac Stíofáin in the early 1970s and by a group around Gerry Adams since the late 1970s, the Provisional IRA sought to create an all-island Irish state. Between 1969 and 1997, during a period known as the Troubles, the group conducted an armed campaign, including bombings, gun attacks, assassinations and even a mortar attack on 10 Downing Street.^[145] On July 21, 1972, in an attack later known as Bloody Friday, the group set off twenty-two bombs, killing nine and injuring 130. On July 28, 2005, the Provisional IRA Army Council announced an end to its armed campaign.^[146][147] The IRA is believed to have been a major exporter of arms to and provided military training to groups such as the FARC in Colombia^[148] and the PLO.^[149] In the case of the latter there has been a long held solidarity movement, which is evident by the many murals around Belfast.^[150]

Date: 2015-01-02; view: 825