Why did the IRA, the FLN, Irgun, and Lehi achieve some degree of success while the LTTE, the Red Army Faction, and the Weather Underground failed? To develop this argument, you will need to review the specific material for all of the groups included above. Also, you will need to review the material from early in the semester on terrorism as a general phenomenon so that you can make a meaningful comparison. In particular, evaluate the above groups in terms of primary motivations—which groups had clear and achievable political goals and managed not to be sidetracked by secondary motivations? Also, think of terrorism as political violence, as violence that is used to represent and promote the agendas of a particular community. Which of these groups managed to make a strong claim toward representing their communities and why?
Final Topic B
After the September 11 attacks, it was very common for analysts, politicians, and other public figures to speak of a “new terrorism,” as represented by Al Qaeda’s global jihadism. Al Qaeda’s terrorism was truly international rather than having a specific local focus such as nationalist terrorism. At the same time there were significant similarities between al Qaeda and local jihadi groups like Hamas and Hizballah. All three groups have religion as a primary motivation and all three have made extensive use of suicide bombing as a brutal and intimidating weapon. More recently al Qaeda’s Iraqi chapter evolved into ISIS and diverged from al Qaeda, and seemed to have qualities of all the aforementioned groups: it had international ambitions—establishing a caliphate—like al Qaeda, but has also set about conquering, holding, and administering territory, like Hamas and Hizballah. Your task for this topic is to compare these organizations to answer the following: Was ISIS as it emerged and evolved from 2003-2014 more like al Qaeda, or was it more like local jihadi organizations like Hizballah and Hamas? To compare the groups, you need to consider the overall ideologies/goals of the groups, their relationships with the groups of people that they claim to represent, and their capabilities, military, political, social, and so on. For this section, be sure to cover the relevant lecture/PowerPoint material on all four groups. In terms of reading, you must use Warrick, Black Flags for AQ in Iraq/ISIS, and the reserve for Al Qaeda by Lawrence Wright, Krista Wiegand’s article and Byman’s chapter on Hizballah, and Robin Wright and Jessica Stern’s coverage of Hamas. (Note—Stern’s coverage of al Qaeda in Terror in the Name of God is very dated and inaccurate; please don’t use it for the paper!) However you approach this topic, on the whole you will probably find some similarities and differences among the groups, and your argument should reflect this; at the same time I will expect you to weigh the similarities and differences in order to answer the basic question decisively.
