Prior to the adoption of the Charter of the United Nations, customary international law permitted, under certain circumstances, the use of force in anticipation of an armed attack. However, the Charter is ambiguous on this issue, and thus, it currently is a topic of intense debate whether this customary right still exists. On the one hand, a strict reading of Article 51 suggests that the requisite threshold for the use of force is an actual armed attack, and that this requirement is absolute. By this interpretation, states no longer have the right to anticipatory self-defense. However, this thesis argues that a closer reading of Article 51, vis-aÌ -vis both the broader purposes of the U.N. Charter and customary international law, suggests that the right to anticipatory self-defense still exists where there is a discernable imminent attack. Therefore, the central issue is the reasonability of a claim that a threat is imminent and that the use of force is necessary to thwart that danger. This thesis examines the municipal law doctrines of reasonable apprehension of physical harm in matters of self-defense (and the defense of others), and of sufficient probable cause in matters of police action, and suggests that they can be useful in devising an analytical framework to inform the central issue. / US Air Force (USAF) author.

The Iranian region of Balochistan is located in southeastern Iran and the majority of its population are Balochs who have a distinct ethnoreligious and cultural identity. The Balochs are Sunni Muslims and have been systematically marginalized in a predominantly Shia country since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. In 2003, organized violence commenced in the region as the Iranian central government retaliated against Baloch paramilitary forces with even more violence. As a result, a cycle of direct and structural violence continues to affect the region to this very day. This thesis is a qualitative study that explores scholars and other experts’ perceptions and images of some of the causes behind the eruption and escalation of both physical and structural violence in Balochistan. It also examines how these experts perceive the construction of “the other” by the Iranian government who is contributing to this unending cycle of destructive conflict. / October 2015

The dissertation is a comparative study of the government counter terrorism policies of the liberal democratic nations of Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom. It includes reference to the threat of terrorism as a modem phenomenon beginning in the period of the 1960s decade. While discussion centres on policies of response, attention is also given to policy measures which have developed as an outcome of those policies. The dissertation is comprised of five chapters. Chapter one is devoted to terrorism as a threat to national and international security and stability. The context describes problems associated with definition of terrorism, motivational aspects, the aims and strategies of terrorists, group infrastructure, and factors and implications of current and future importance. Chapter two is concerned with an examination of general policies of response adopted by the three subject nations. Discussion relates to characteristics of policy, the philosophy of the use of force, policy development, fundamental policies, and the translation of those policies into direct (active) and indirect (passive) measures. Chapter three provides a description of the decision-making and crisis-management machinery peculiar to Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom in regard to counter terrorism activity. Chapter four reviews a range of resources and capabilities available to those nations for response to the threat of terrorism. Specifically included are factors of policy, experience, infrastructure, law enforcement agencies, the armed forces, legislation, and the role of the media. Chapter five summarizes general comments on strengths and weaknesses of the policies and policy measures presented in the preceding chapters. Many of the salient points are contained in the observations put forward in chapter five, but some judgements must necessarily be left to a reading of individual chapters. In conjunction, chapter two includes a brief commentary on the Cycle of Activity involving the threat of terrorism and the mechanics of governmental reaction to that threat. Acting upon the Cycle is a spectrum of other factors,' termed the Envelope of Influences, which has. a significant effect upon all the components. The Envelope is a combination of such influences as environment, history, culture, precedent, ideas, pressure groups, et al, which must be taken into consideration when assessing policy and policy measures. Judgements of policy and policy measures (taking into account the Envelope) were based upon four principal aspects of governmental performance; 1. Perceptiveness; 2. Capacity to Adapt to New Challenges; 3- Practicality; and, 4* Adherence to Legal, Democratic, and Moral Principles. The context of chapter five, as well as that of chapters two, three, and four, reflects that approach.

No description available.

Denna uppsats har till en början behandlat en svensk grundlagsskyddad fri- och rättighet, närmare bestämt föreningsfriheten. Det är en rättighet som har en stark förankring, i såväl internationell som nationell rätt. Exempelvis regleras den i Europakonventionen om skydd för de mänskliga rättigheterna och de grundläggande friheterna och i den svenska regeringsformen (1974:152). En del av syftet har varit att undersöka hur vidsträckt denna rättighet är i bland annat ovanstående lagstiftning. Vidare har lagförslaget om ett införande av deltagande och samröre med terrororganisation utretts likväl som hur länder som Norge och Danmark har hanterat problematiken i nationell lagstiftning. Till hjälp har en rättsdogmatisk metod använts genom studerande av lagtext, förarbeten, utländsk praxis, direktiv och doktrin. Ett resultat som uppsatsen har utmynnat i är att föreningsfriheten är omfattande, med få inskränkningsmöjligheter. De begränsningar som finns upptagna syftar på sammanslutningar vilkas verksamhet är av militär eller liknande natur eller är rasdiskriminerande. Vad gällande deltagande- och samrörebegreppet är det i svensk lagstiftning inte ännu inskrivet. Förslaget är att den som deltar i verksamheten i en terroristgrupp på ett sätt som är ägnat att understödja, stärka eller befrämja terroristorganisationen också ska straffbeläggas. Likaså gäller de dem som för organisationen tar befattning med exempelvis vapen, ammunition eller liknande utrustning, uthyrning av lokal eller mark för verksamhetenen eller bistående med pengar eller på annat sätt. Detta behov har lagförts i Danmark och Norge där personer också dömts för brotten.

No description available.

This study examines the protective principle of extraterritorial criminal jurisdiction in international law and its use for combatting the threat of international terrorism. The study is, generally speaking, one of two parts. The first part explores the rationale of protective jurisdiction and the interests that it serves, and assesses the importance of the rationale of this jurisdiction for combatting transnational crimes, including the problem of international terrorism. It also sheds important light on the modern historical development of protective jurisdiction and the various public and private efforts made to codify this ground of jurisdiction during the first half of the twentieth century. The second part of the study provides original, empirical research into contemporary State practice, in an effort to examine whether, and, if so, to what extent, States have used protective jurisdiction for combatting the threat of international terrorism. It also enumerates, based on this practice, as well as the use of a range of other primary sources, including relevant treaty and U.N. Security Council practice, a list of vital interests that have been included under the ambit of protective jurisdiction lex lata and around which a basic level of agreement appears to have clustered. The study proposes that it may be possible to define protective jurisdiction in contemporary customary international law based on a ‘shared vital State interests' approach. That is, the protection of certain vital interests is in conformity with the practice of the international community of States. The study concludes that, in the light of the findings of State practice inter alia and the recent decision of the International Law Commission to include the topic of extraterritorial jurisdiction in its long-term programme of work, the codification of protective jurisdiction is necessary and desirable more than ever before. The most important advantages of the adoption of such an instrument are that it could be used as a persuasive source to guide States and courts in the adoption and interpretation of domestic laws; provide for the more effective protection of shared vital State interests by the international community; and complement the existing legal framework and ‘fill in' gaps left by ad hoc sectoral treaties for combatting the increasingly complex, diffuse and evolving threat of international terrorism.

The September 11 attacks employed violence as a means of picture-making on a horrifically unprecedented scale. Furthermore, ‘9/11' crystallised the intersection of trauma discourse and visual culture at both popular and academic levels. Questions surrounding the role of visual images and processes of mediation within trauma theory are thus important in understanding an event which was fundamentally mediated and intensely visual. The concept of ‘virtual trauma' raises the possibility that mediation can become the site or source of trauma, as well as a mode of its transmission or representation. This thesis explores the ways in which the confusion of presence and absence named by the figure of virtuality operates in the register of visuality and visibility, both literal and figurative, in specific representations of 9/11 by Don DeLillo, Frédéric Beigbeder, Paul Greengrass and Luc Tuymans. These are read as responses to the problem of how to represent an event which was already its own representation. It therefore seeks to situate 9/11 within a history of technics as the enframing of a particular relationship between subject and object through representation, as proposed by Heidegger and developed by others including Derrida and Samuel Weber. Through detailed analyses of these works and their popular and academic reception, I highlight the ways in which they both employ and problematise structures of visibility, presence and mediation. Such representations offer an account of the tension between securing and ‘unsecuring' of the subject or beholder which is, in Weber's reading of Heidegger, the result of representational thinking. The thesis thus moves discussion of the impact of 9/11 into the wider context of debates over visuality and subjectification in contemporary media cultures.

This thesis constitutes a critical intervention in contemporary research on terrorism. It seeks to address the problems resulting from a reductive understanding of terrorism and from a predominant concern with terrorism after 9/11. For this purpose, this thesis charts and critically engages certain watershed moments in the history of terrorism since its emergence in the French Revolution. The aim is to show that terrorism is not a historically constant and readily identifiable form of violence but a variable element in a wider context of power relations. The discourses of terrorism examined in this thesis show that conceptions of terrorism are tied to and function within a wider context of changing political interests and an evolving modern economy of power. I show that there are reasons for the different meanings and roles of terrorism across time and between societies, and that these reasons shed light on larger social, political, cultural or economic developments. It is in this context that particular discourses of terrorism help to legitimate political and legal regimes and allow for the selective exclusion of individuals, groups and ideologies from the political realm. I argue that a historically grounded and theoretically thorough analysis of terrorism can provide important insights into how the state has been able to sustain itself by incorporating and mobilizing different types of power. By way of a genealogical study of terrorism, my project attempts to map these forms of power as well as their dependence on various frameworks that are used to legitimize violence, to dismantle legal norms, and to expand power in the name of freedom and democracy. This thesis thus not only responds to the epistemological, methodological and temporal limitations of contemporary terrorism scholarship but is also of practical political relevance.

Following 16 years of war in Afghanistan the number of U.S. military, Coalition forces and Afghan civilian fatalities has exceeded the number of Americans lost on 9/11 and has cost the United States nearly $841 billion dollars. The results are that Afghanistan remains in turmoil and that terrorist attacks, the reason for the invasion, continues. The question is should United States assess a different approach that would result in less blood and treasure being spent to address the need to mitigate terrorist threats. Guided by the analysis of conventional- centric and asymmetric-centric approaches to a counterterrorism strategy, this qualitative study focused on evaluating the effects of U.S. national strategy for the Afghanistan war between 2001 and 2016. A narrative inquiry was employed that used extensive in-depth interviews with five implementers and five recipients of the American strategy based in Afghanistan. The participants were recruited from the U.S. Special Forces community that implemented American strategy in Afghanistan, and from Afghans that experienced the American strategy firsthand. Data were analyzed by employing an inductive coding method. The literature review revealed an intention to use large military forces to conduct a conventional-centric counterterrorism strategy, but the narrative inquiry revealed a negative effect of the conventional-centric counterterrorism strategy. Though more research in this area is needed the implications from the findings for positive social change that an asymmetric-centric strategy could offer as a possible effective solution for countering terrorism. These recommendations may help national strategy developers develop a structure to develop future counterterrorism strategies.