Terrorism
The End of ETA :Euskadi Ta Askatasuna
ON OCTOBER 20TH ETA (Euskadi Ta Askatasuna—”Basque Homeland and Freedom”), the armed Basque separatist group, announced a “definitive cessation” to its decades-long terrorist campaign for an independent Basque homeland. The group has killed 829 people since it was formed in the late 1950s during the Franco dictatorship.
Since 1968, ETA has been blamed for killing 829 individuals, injuring thousands and undertaking dozens of kidnappings. The group is proscribed as a terrorist organization by the Spanish and French authorities, as well as the European Union as a whole and the United States. This convention is followed by a plurality of domestic and international media, which also refer to the group as “terrorists”.More than 700 members of the organization are incarcerated in prisons in Spain, France, and other countries
But in recent years, severely weakened by a series of successful joint Spanish-French police operations, it has been a shadow of its former self. In 1980, its most murderous year, it was responsible for 92 deaths. Since it broke its last ceasefire, in 2007, it has killed ten; paltry, by the group’s bloody standards. ETA’s recent declaration was in part the result of pressure from its 700 prisoners, who knew the game was up.
The historical timeline provided by Economist below tells the story of ETA’s campaign.
US War On Terror : Behind The Intelligence Gathering Machine
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The killing of Osama bin Laden at the hands of American forces immediately became the story of the year, in a year that has been jam-packed with incredible news breaks.
After the initial moment of surprise, bewilderment, and joy at the news, most of us were desperately curious to know how, exactly, it all had happened. How had they possibly located him? and how was the modus operandi of the intelligence apparatus And, perhaps most urgently, how did the actual operation go down?
The nexus of information gathering, spying, analysis and field work that our government employs in the service of counterterrorism is far more extensive and complex than most of us could possibly imagine, or will probably ever know.
This infographic from Criminal Justice Degree diagrams all the major players for us, from the top of the chain-of-command to the brave souls risking their lives in the field. Though President Obama and the Navy SEAL team that executed the operation soaked up a majority of the glory on May 2 and afterwards, there are legions of behind-the-scenes actors that have been every bit as crucial in the ongoing battle against terrorism. Check it out below.
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Global Terrorism Deaths: Country Comparison
THE attacks of September 11th 2001 killed 2,996 people. Despite the subsequent declaration of a war on terror, over the past ten years thousands more have been killed by terrorists of all hues. The chart below tracks the number of terrorist-related fatalities worldwide. The data is from the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, which defines terrorism as “the use of illegal force and violence by a non-state actor to attain a political, economic, religious, or social goal”.
IT WAS commonplace, in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, to declare that the world had changed forever. And so, in many ways, it had. Catching a flight will never be the same, nor getting a visa to visit America. For the citizens of Iraq and Afghanistan, almost nothing remains as it was.
Yet ten years on, it is striking how far down the ranks of public concerns terrorism has fallen. For most in America, and throughout the rich world, economic security has become a far more pressing concern than the physical kind. In part, that is testimony to the lengths Western governments have gone to over the past decade to keep their citizens safe. Mainly, however, it is due to the financial crisis, which several years ago superseded Islamic militancy as the most urgent item on the government’s agenda.
source : Economist
COMPARISON CHARTS 