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Superterrorism: A Global Threat
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21919 |
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CURRENT ISSUES
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| Issue
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6 / 1993 |
1,834 Words |
| Author
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Yonah Alexander
Yonah Alexander is director of the Inter-University Center for
Terrorism Studies, coordinated by the Potomac Institute for
Policy Studies in Arlington, Virginia. He has published over
ninety books in international affairs and terrorism, including
Combating Terrorism: Strategies of Ten Countries (University
of Michigan Press, 2002). |
Over 500 attacks were directed against U.S. targets abroad during 1990-92. Motivated by a multitude of ideologies and causes, terrorist groups have mounted numerous operations in the post-Cold War era. The reason for American victimization around the world is rather simple: A considerable number of foreign terrorist groups and governments still oppose U.S. values, polices, and actions.
In Latin America: The Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA), a leftist group aiming to rid Peru of "imperialist influence and establish a Marxist regime," fired shots and an antitank weapon at the U.S: Embassy in Lima; two U.S. servicemen were murdered by members of Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN), a pro-Cuban left-wing umbrella organization in El Salvador; and an unidentified gunman killed a U.S. soldier in Panama.
In the Middle East: Unknown assailants fired on a bus transporting U.S. Air Force personnel in Saudi Arabia, wounding two U.S. airmen and a Saudi guard; Dev Sol, a Turkish Marxist group seeking to unify the proletariat to a stage of national revolution, killed a U.S. civilian contractor at Incirlik Air Base in Adana; and small explosions occurred at the American Express office in Cairo, apparently perpetrated by the Islamic Jihad, a fundamentalist radical group that aspires to overthrow the secular government in Egypt.
In Europe: The Red Army Faction (RAF), a group committed to an "armed struggle" in Germany, fired at the U.S. Embassy in Bonn; a U.S. Air Force sergeant was killed by a remote control bomb detonated by the revolutionary organization 17 November, a radical leftist movement in Greece committed to the overthrow of the regime; and in Madrid, a Ford dealership was set on fire by unknown assailants. Graffiti painted on the front of the dealership read "Yankee Assassins."
Elsewhere: The Red Army Liberation Movement in Zimbabwe, a heretofore unknown group, bombed the lobby of the Sheraton Hotel in Harare; unknown attackers threw firebombs at a U.S. military housing compound in Seoul, Korea; a bomb carried by Iraqi agents detonated prematurely near the U.S. Information Agency in Manila; and Chukaku-ha, the largest radical group in Japan, attacked a U.S. Navy housing compound in Yokohama with projectiles.
These incidents, selected at random, illustrate the nature of terrorist attacks against U.S. targets abroad. During the same period, the number of terrorist incidents on U.S. soil involving Americans totaled 14
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