The simple numbers show that separatist terrorism is by far the biggest driver of terrorism in Europe. Spain is at war compared to the rest of the European Union with 58.2% of all terrorism in the union being in Spain. It will be interesting to see if the Basque terrorist group ETA's self-declared cease fire will have any real impact in numbers.
Leftist terrorism is on the rise. According to the report, "Spain, Greece and Italy reported a total of 40 attacks by left-wing and anarchist groups for 2009. This constitutes an increase of 43 % compared to 2008; the number of attacks more than doubled since 2007." The economic downturn's stirring of Leftism combined with the never finished offed remnants of Cold War advanced fronts like in Greece have been the main drivers of Left terrorism.
Rightist terrorism continues at minimal levels being limited to Hungary.
Somewhat surprisingly there has been only one registered Islamic terrorist attack in 2009.
There is a big caveat to give with these numbers though. Hate crimes and other types of lesser terrorism are not counted. I am not sure how the numbers would change but Irish Republican Army drug kingpins, English Defence League street thugs, Greek Reds targeting businessmen, and Islamist urban micronations harassing homosexuals and Jews are all likely to increase the number of violent attacks.
7 comments:
After reading a few posts on geocurrents these facts are less surprising...but still a great surprise.
Ryan,
Geocurrents does do a good job. However, I still shocked at just how active separatists are in Spain and France. Those Basque and Corsicans (really?!) mean business.
Interesting, but then again terrorism has deep old, roots in Europe (the public assassination of Duke Ferdinand on a Sarajevo bridge sparked WWI, or so we were taught in school). And this list does not mention state sponsored terrorism, such as the bombing of a Greenpeace ship by French operatives. As Joseph Conrad once wrote, "The terrorist and the policeman are cut from the same cloth." Or something to that effect.
IW
"Islamist urban micronations harassing homosexuals and Jews".
As someone who lived as a Muslim in both London and Paris (and now in New York) I want to point out that a major ignored violence is violence against Muslims. As a child in London I remember having my family have beer bottles thrown at us, and in Paris I was twice attacked by Neo-Nazis, once having them pretend to throw gasoline and set me on fire.
It is also very normal in both London and Paris to have mosque windows broken by neo-nazis or have our cemeteries desecrated. One of the reason you might not hear a lot about these cases is the police don't care or bother to register them when you go to them.
After being jumped and doused with what I thought was gasoline in Montrouge in south Paris I went to a police station to file a complaint. They didn't write anything down and told me there was nothing they could do as the people had probably moved.
Here is a video that shows the face of violence and intimidation that I grew up with:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/video/2010/may/28/english-defence-league-uncovered
Hopefully London has changed but when I was a kid in the 80s Guy Fawkes Day was still a day for true English to jump Irish and Catholics...
Also I'm curious whether you'd refer to the Irish of Glasgow as a Catholicist urban micronations. Surely by standards of integration they are a micronation.
Muslim Anonymous,
I am shocked to hear your story of being a terrorism victim. I did include in the post that the numbers did not count terrorist monsters like the English Defense League.
The Irish community in Glasglow is Catholic yes but they are not Catholicists because they are not seeking to implement a Catholic moral/civil law in society. Most Muslims in Europe are in no way a threat to society. However, if you go to the "About Me" page you can read my 2007 presentation on Islamic micronations. Those are actual cut-off urban communities where mosques try to implement sharia.
I wish they had written more about single-issue terrorism (the environmental extremists) because that is an accelerating issue not only for the EU but for the US & Canada. The media typically ignores it and its only a matter of time before they get lucky and kill a fair number of people.
Kudos to them also for not lumping them together with left-wingers, since environmental extremism when taken fully has to be considered both, given its hostility to population growth caused by immigration and the views of many of its members that social programs harm the environment by keeping alive those whom nature would have killed already if not for the intervention of society/government.
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