NCJ Number
141771
Date Published
1993
Length
28 pages
Annotation
This discussion of the role of insurgent terrorism places it in a broader context that focuses on the goals and strategies of insurgent terrorists.
Abstract
Four general terrorist strategies have been recently popular: the conspiratorial, protracted popular war, military focus, and urban warfare. The conspiratorial approach emphasizes an elite small-scale organization and low-level violence; protracted popular warfare focuses on political primacy, mass organization, and gradually escalating violence; the military focus approach concentrates on either guerrilla or conventional warfare; the urban warfare approach involves small-scale organization and low to moderate terrorist or guerrilla attacks in urban centers, with some proponents envisaging an eventual transition to warfare in the rural areas. In both theory and practice, terrorism stems from weakness. It has been used because the insurgents have failed in their efforts to generate serious guerrilla or conventional campaigns. The only strategy that sanctions terrorism is the urban warfare strategy. This does not mean that insurgent terrorism should be dismissed because it stems from weakness, since it inflicts costs and pain on many innocent citizens. Governments, therefore, deploy considerable resources to prevent or limit terrorist actions. Still, the strategic threat posed by terrorism is marginal to negligible. 32 notes