This thesis considers the factors that affect the escalation of terrorist violence. Terrorists often have an emotional and psychological stake in preserving the identity, the character, and, above all, the existence of their group. This has the effect of subverting ends to means: the ideology and goals of the group become secondary in importance to the necessities of organisational survival. At the same time, terrorism is generally a highly inefficient means of achieving strategic political objectives. Confronted by the failure of their campaign and unable to move from violence, since that would endanger the group's survival, terrorists may conclude that their best option is to increase the level of violence that they employ. In the past, self-imposed restraints and the fear of a backlash have often prevented terrorists from resorting to highly lethal acts of violence. However, recently these dynamics have been combined with "non-traditional" terrorism that finds greater levels of violence not only acceptable, but necessary. Such terrorism has encompassed a range of motivations, but much of it reflects a growing dependence on religion, often combined with other factors, as legitimation. Undoubtedly, such groups aspire to higher levels of violence than has been the case with other, more traditional terrorist organisations. Consequently, they may be more willing to regard mass terrorism as justifiable. These factors are considered in the context of the increased opportunities for nuclear proliferation, arising from the collapse of the former Soviet Union, and the increased feasibility of biological or chemical terrorism. The thesis concludes by arguing that, whereas non-conventional terrorism was once a remote threat, the changing nature of terrorism, combined with its intrinsic escalatory and self-perpetuating nature, means that the threat of nuclear terrorism has never been greater than it is now.

Acts of violence involving civilian aircraft and airline facilities, as well as air travellers have been exploited by terrorist and others since 1931. This form of international terrorism is more than an attack on the rights of the innocent and rule of law. It constitutes a great threat to global peace. Although such attacks represent a small percentage of total terrorist incidents, it is clear that acts of violence directed at civil aviation are not limited by geographical or political boundaries. As escalating threats to civil aviation have caused great concern to the international community without regional exception, governments have introduced security measures against such attacks. The deterrent or diversionary effect of tight security programmes have been reflected in a perceptible shift of terrorist attention to easy targets and other forms of attack. However, governments and the civil aviation industry have failed to keep ahead of changing threats. They upgraded their security capabilities to tackle only the known methods of terrorist attacks. This short-sighted approach is the most serious concern for the safety of civil aviation. It cannot be emphasised too strongly that both the nature and the level of the security threat change frequently and must be monitored constantly in order to foresee possible danger and to consider how to cope with such threats. The international community must not allow the perpetrators of aviation terrorism to get so far ahead of the world's aviation security system. To achieve this aim, aviation authorities must develop long term plans to tackle terrorist activities against civil aviation. This will be a monumental task. However, where there is a will, there is a way.

Terrorism research often tends to anachronistically impose current conceptions of terrorism onto historical events, comparing and equating modern terrorism to selected historical incidents, thus decontextualizing them and ignoring that these historical acts had different aims, used different tactics, and were interpreted in different ways at the times in which they took place. This thesis proposes a new framework which not only reconceptualises terrorism, but also provides a sound means by which the evolution and spread of techniques associated with terrorism can be surveyed. To this end, this thesis argues that terrorism should be viewed as an umbrella term for a wide range of techniques viewed (by the societies in which they are enacted) as illegitimate means of collective actions aimed at making political claims and seeking to influences political processes and outcomes. The proposed framework – based on an evolutionary approach – advances three arguments: (1) techniques of political violence have variation in fixed traits and behavioural patterns; (2) these traits and patterns can be transferred either through reproduction or emulation; and (3) the relative rate of transmission is partially determined by a trait's usefulness in adapting to the technique's ever-changing environment. This evolutionary approach allows us to conceptualise different techniques of political violence as variants among many, all of which have undergone a range of mutations, thereby allowing us to trace each technique's development by looking at its predecessors. This framework is in turn applied to a survey of the evolution of aeroplane hijacking – with a specific focus on the various adaptations the technique has undergone since its inception, the means by which such variations spread, and the factors leading to its adoption or rejection by different claim makers operating in different environment and seeking to advance diverse claims – and concluding that modern examples of hijacking are nothing more than one mutation along a long evolutionary path which began in the jungles of Peru nearly 85 years ago.

This thesis looks at the Indonesian government’s strategy for managing the threat of terrorism between 2001 and 2006. Various socio-political factors such as the importance of Islam in Indonesian society and politics, ongoing democratization and important civil-military reform all contribute to an environment where counterterrorism efforts are both necessary and politically risky. In order to better address the many complexities of the Indonesian case study, this thesis uses a modified securitization theory framework which gives increased weight to the political and social context in which securitization decisions are made. The modified framework disaggregates the decision of an agent to rhetorically securitize an issue from the decisions behind subsequent policy actions, and considers separately the motivations behind each. When applied to the Indonesian case study this modified framework reveals that between 2002 and 2006, President Megawati Soekarnoputri and President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono managed terrorism by employing a combination of securitizing and criminalizing strategies. It additionally reveals that for each president the non-discursive policy action was not solely result of the success or failure of discursive securitization, but was also dependent on the specific political environment each faced. / Arts, Faculty of / Political Science, Department of / Graduate

Magister Legum - LLM

LL.B. / No one definition of terrorism has gained universal acceptance. The lack of agreement on a definition of terrorism has been a major obstacle to meaningful international countermeasures to combat terrorism. There are 12 International Conventions related to terrorism and an explicit definition is still missing. Many states have tried to define terrorism and none of these definitions has been implemented, either by the United Nations or these states. There are many International Conventions, Protocols and Treaties related to state responsibilities to combating terrorism. Many states are not yet part to these legal instruments or not yet implementing them. Following the attack in the United States of America, the United Nations Security Council had passed three Resolutions to combat terrorism. None of these resolutions were implemented successfully. Article 51 of the United Nations Charter gives a state a right to repel on attack that is ongoing or imminent as a temporary measure. This Article has been used by states to eliminate terrorism. International Convention for the Suppression of Terrorist Bombing, enable the State Parties to extradite and exercise jurisdiction over terrorist and to cooperate in the investigation, prosecution, and extradition of persons who engage in terrorist activities by establishing a regime of universal jurisdiction to punish the crime of terrorist bombings. The states must develop and adopt bilateral and multilateral agreements to increase cooperation between them.

The growing numbers of terror attacks in Europe in recent times has made the concept of radicalization a sensitive phenomenon, most especially, Islamic radicalization. The activities of Islamic extremists and terrorists have been identified with a good number of European citizens, who have joined the Islamic State (IS) and engaged in acts of terror against their own citizens and governments. Radicalisation has been used as a weapon by the Islamic State to recruit some European citizens as its members in order to perpetuate its objectives in Europe. The objective of this project is to examine how the Islamic State has been able to radicalize some European citizens as its members and build its network across the continent. It seeks to critically analyse the influence of the Islamic State ideology on European citizens, which has consequently led and could further lead to the participation of some European citizens in terrorist engagements. This work seeks to respond to the puzzle: how is it possible for the Islamic State to secure the interest of some Europeans into terrorism, considering the distance between Europe and the Middle East and the high standard of living as well as education that is available in Europe? In this mini-dissertation, the relevance of the study is pointed out in today Europe as far as peace and security development of the continent is concerned. This research makes use of secondary sources of data collection to investigate the study and its theoretical analyses is drawn from social network and contagion theories in order to shed more light on the discourse of the radicalisation of European citizens as Islamic State members. Specifically, this mini-dissertation discusses a brief origin and objectives of the Islamic State, the ideological perspectives of the group, reasons behind the radicalization of Europeans citizens as well as channels of radicalizing European citizens. / Mini Dissertation (MA)--University of Pretoria, 2017. / Modern European Languages / MA / Unrestricted

Syftet med denna studie är att undersöka och jämföra hur attentaten på Drottninggatan 2017 och i Trollhättan 2015 inramades och hur respektive gärningsman framställdes vid nyhetsrapportering. Närmare bestämt, med hjälp av en diskursanalys som metod analyserades Aftonbladets och Expressens nyhetsrapporteringar av respektive attentat. Vidare tillämpades framing som ett ytterligare metodologiskt tillvägagångssätt, eller mer specifikt, en episodisk och tematisk inramning för att kunna identifiera fokuset på artikeln och på vilket sätt Aftonbladet och Expressen inramar respektive attentat.  Trots att båda eventuellt kan klassas som terrorism visar studiens resultat på en inramning av dådet på Drottninggatan som en tydlig terrorattack med gärningsmannens etnicitet och tro som grundfaktor, och en inramning av dådet i Trollhättan som ett hatbrott, med gärningsmannens rasistiska motiv som grundfaktor. Med hjälp av studiens teoretiska ramverk identifierades även en del diskurser som framställer den ena gärningsmannen som utomstående med negativt laddade stereotypiserade och orientaliska egenskaper och den andra som en del av majoritetssamhället.

To understand the conditions and experiences that might make an individual more vulnerable to terrorist radicalization, this study examines a sample group of Muslim's in Great Britain to determine if responses to survey questions on a range of issues and perceptions can provide indications of an individual's vulnerability to terrorist radicalization. Key to this process was the development of a vulnerability to radicalization score that allowed for an analysis of the relationship between this score and different independent variables. The dataset for this study was obtained using the Pew Research Center's Spring 2006 Global Attitudes Project 15 Nation Survey. This survey contains a significant oversampling of Muslim respondents allowing for the statistical analysis of potential vulnerability. It is important to understand that this analysis does not provide any indication of radicalization, but a vulnerability based upon accepted theories discussed in terrorism literature. The testing of commonly held theories regarding terrorist radicalization produced a very different picture from what has been viewed in the past. New findings include a previously unrecognized quantity of women who are potentially vulnerable to radicalization. Additionally, income and education do not seem to play the pivotal role that is usually expected, and analysis indicates there is a link between the perceptions of actions by the United States government in the war to combat terrorism and the respondents' vulnerability to radicalization. Recommendations are for the refinement and expansion of this study to include the remaining Western European democracies that were sampled and the United States in order to perform a comparative analysis proving a broader understanding regarding the vulnerability of Muslims to terrorist radicalization in Western Democracies.

Terrorism in the twenty-first century has had one of greatest effects on the status quo of international relations, peace and war. It has become the 'specter' of our era and in many instances, it has been referred to as the predominant threat of modern civilization. Furthermore, it has the potential to drastically change the world we live in. For these reasons it has rightfully earned our attention and focus. Many efforts to understand terrorism have fallen short of recognizing the underlying causes. In many cases, acts of terror have either been of purely political motivation or have had socioeconomic conditions cited as the primary factor contributing to its occurrence. Some research has delved into the topic of the psychological makeup of terrorists while other attempts have looked at Islam itself ' dealing primarily with the textual references to war. Over the past decade terrorism research has progressed a significant deal due to the security importance of the issue and consequently the sheer number of academics and politicians who have developed an interest in it. There still appears to be, however, significant gaps in the research, particularly from the Western academic and political fronts where it is greatly needed. When it comes to particular interpretations of certain Islamic topics as well as the political grievances of the Muslim world, the West has largely failed in its analysis and understanding of the far-reaching effects these both have on terrorism and its propagation. This research will set out to begin filling these gaps by focusing on two primary topics: a) the theological basis being cited as an Islamic position and used to justify today's acts of terrorism; and b) the commonly cited political grievances that the advocates of terrorism have built their arguments upon. It is the hypothesis of this research that these two critically important issues are amongst the major contributing factors to acts terrorism. Unfortunately they have largely been ignored and in some cases exacerbated by our very own attempts to thwart terrorism. Thus it has become even more significant and important that we reassess our strategies in order to slow and eventually reverse this continuously growing threat of our era. This research will attempt to explain what I hypothesize are the most prevalent factors that have contributed to the development of terrorism in modern times. I contend that there are both influential religious and political dimensions to current acts of terrorism that are too often overlooked because of a lack of interest in Islamic theology as well as the fear of appearing to be a terrorist sympathizer or anti-patriotic. There is undeniably a religious dimension to terrorism which is amongst the most influential factors in answering why it is happening. It is a particular ideology that has been the glue which is used to fit together arguments and provide justifications to such acts of terror. At the same time, to pass the burden off so simply without listening to and understanding the political grievances of the advocates of terrorism would make the goal of eradicating terrorism quite unrealistic. While this research will cover these important points, it should not be mistaken as providing legitimacy or justification to any religious or secular group attempting to rationalize terrorism as an ideology nor the individual acts themselves.