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Throughout the Cold War, state-sponsored terrorism was a Marxist-Leninist/Maoist phenomenon that spanned the globe. In Europe, the Soviets and their allies trained and equipped left-wing terrorist groups such as the Red Brigades in Italy, the Irish Republican Army, and the Red Army Faction in Germany to carry out bombings, kidnappings and targeted assassinations to undermine their opponents in the West.
Such groups were dealt a serious blow in 1991, when the Soviet Union collapsed. In the following years, logistical support, funding and advice from the Soviets, as well as the Marxist ideology that inspired leftist militants, withered away. The radical impulse in Europe that began with student protests in the late 1960s eventually moved toward other issues, such as environmentalism and anti-globalization, thus creating a complex mix of overlapping ideologies.
Further hindered by other developments such as German reunification, the Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland and the United States' post-9/11 war against militant Islam, European extremists are seeking other causes, of which there is no shortage. The most pressing catalysts for terrorism include Europe's ongoing economic problems, lenient immigration laws and changing demographics, including a growing population of disaffected young Muslims vulnerable to radicalization.
In the early 1900s, the most violent extremists in Europe were anarchists who advocated the overthrow of established governments and the creation of social systems based on voluntary cooperation. The political transformations following World War I, including the rise of communism in Russia and fascist dictatorships in Germany and Italy, introduced new militant dynamics to Europe, as did the violence and devastation of World War II.
In the 1950s, the most violent extremists in Europe belonged to a handful of left-wing groups at least nominally committed to overthrowing democratic governments and replacing them with Marxist regimes. Even before the fall of the Soviet Union, some of these groups dissipated for lack of a reliable state sponsor or because they were defeated by increasingly effective intelligence, military and law enforcement operations.
Soviet-Era Extremist and Terrorist Groups
Irish Republican Army
One of the most active terrorist groups during the Soviet era was the Irish Republican Army, or IRA, which was created in the 1920s as a nationalist paramilitary organization based in Northern Ireland. The organization began a campaign of shootings, bombings and rocket and mortar attacks against mainly British assets with the aim of achieving full independence for the Irish Free State (now the Irish Republic) and uniting it with Northern Ireland to create a complete island nation independent of British rule.
Throughout its existence, the Irish Republican Army had internal frictions that caused the group to fragment. The first split occurred in 1969, mainly because of a disagreement over ideology and the implementation of force. The result was the creation of the Official Irish Republican Army and the Provisional Irish Republican Army. The former represented the group's Marxist-oriented faction, which, having no military capacity, opposed an armed campaign against the British.
The Provisional IRA -- the more militant faction -- was intent on escalating the armed campaign against the British and Northern Irish. The problem was that it was poorly armed, and it seemed to have adopted the Marxist ideology mainly as a way to ensure a steady flow of modern Soviet-bloc weapons from countries such as Libya, the Soviet Union and Yemen and militant groups such as the Palestinian Liberation Organization.
Members of the IRA and its factions have had close ties with militant groups throughout Europe, Latin America and the Middle East, including Basque separatists, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (known commonly as the FARC) and the Palestinian Liberation Organization. In addition to sharing bombmaking and urban warfare techniques, these groups also provided weapons and funding to IRA militants.
After the Provisional IRA's cease-fire in 1994, the group fractured again, this time into the Continuity Irish Republican Army and the Real Irish Republican Army, with a combined membership estimated to be in the hundreds. Several IRA factions, including the Continuity IRA and the Real IRA, have been designated as terrorist organizations by the United States and the United Kingdom, while the Provisional IRA has been deemed a terrorist organization by only the United Kingdom.
Today, both the Continuity IRA and the Real IRA occasionally target government security installations in Ireland, mainly with small improvised explosive devices and occasional vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices. However, factions now rarely use the kind of large vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices that the Provisional IRA used to such devastating effect from 1969 to 2001.
The Good Friday Agreement in 1998 formalized, among other things, a system of government in Northern Ireland and the relationships between the United Kingdom, Ireland and Northern Ireland. Coupled with the concerted crackdown on militant and terrorist groups around the world following the 9/11 attacks, the agreement effectively took the steam out of the IRA militancy, leading to a reduction in membership and tactical tradecraft, both of which remain limited.
Red Brigades
Formed in the 1970s and based in Italy, the Red Brigades was a militant organization based on Marxist-Leninist ideology that sought to destabilize Italy through armed struggle and remove the country from NATO. Emerging from the rank and file of the 1960s worker and student protest movements at a time when Italy was becoming more urbanized, the group sought support from local trade unions in their fight against the political elite.
At its pinnacle, the Red Brigades group was responsible for a considerable amount of violence, including assassinations and robberies. It primarily received its funding, small arms and explosives from the Czechoslovakian secret police and the Palestinian Liberation Organization, and its members were trained in Prague, North Africa and Syria.
Initially, the Red Brigades organization was active throughout Italy, though its activities were concentrated around Reggio Emilia and in large factory districts in northern Milan and Turin. In the late 1970s, the group expanded into Rome, Genoa and Venice while increasing its membership and operations. During this time, the Red Brigades carried out its most notable kidnapping -- that of the Christian Democracy party leader, Prime Minister Aldo Moro, who was later killed by his captors.
In 1981, the Red Brigades split into two factions, the largest calling itself the Communist Combatant Party and the minority faction adopting the nom de guerre Union of Combatant Communists. The tempo of the factions' operations continued throughout the decade. In the early 1990s, after the fall of the Soviet Union and the reduction of support for left-wing causes, Italian police intensified security operations against the group.
A large corruption scandal had brought down Italy's postwar political system, and with its collapse emerged centrist political outsider and media magnate Silvio Berlusconi. This, along with political changes taking place elsewhere in Europe, eliminated whatever ideological or social support remained for the Red Brigades.
The intensifying security crackdown against the group eventually led to the detention of thousands of members and key leaders. In October 2007, a former Red Brigades commander, paroled from prison on good behavior, was arrested with an accomplice after robbing a bank. Remnants of the Red Brigades may still be present in Italy, but any activities they carry out will likely be of a criminal nature and not part of a meaningful militant campaign.
Red Army Faction
The Red Army Faction, which the media referred to as the Baader-Meinhof Gang, was created in the early 1970s in West Germany and became the country's most prominent left-wing militant group. It was made up mostly of middle-class youth bent on waging an anti-imperialist urban guerilla war using tactics learned in Middle Eastern training camps from groups such as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Palestine Liberation Organization.
It also received financial and logistical support from East Germany. The group's goal was to complement the abundance of revolutionary and radical groups then emerging across Western Europe and destabilize its home country's government, as well as undermine any relationships West Germany and other parts of Europe had with the United States.
To that end, the Red Army Faction conducted bank robberies, kidnappings and assassinations, including the attack in 1985 targeting the vehicle of NATO commander and U.S. Army Gen. Alexander Haig with a landmine as it traveled over a bridge in Belgium, wounding three of his bodyguards but leaving Haig uninjured.
The Red Army Faction also carried out attacks against U.S. military facilities in Germany, German police stations and buildings belonging to the Axel Springer media empire. The group is thought to have killed more than 30 people during its heyday, garnering some degree of support at the time from the West German people.
In 1972, the founders of the Red Army Faction -- Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin, Horst Mahler and Ulrike Meinhof -- were all arrested and eventually died in police custody. Nevertheless, die-hard members of the group continued their urban guerrilla warfare, conducting sporadic bombings and shootings in West Germany and East Germany. What ultimately led to the group's demise was the reunification of Germany in 1990. In 1998, remnants of the Red Army Faction sent a letter to Reuters declaring the group's dissolution, and nothing has been heard from them since.
Revolutionary Organization 17 November
Revolutionary Organization 17 November, or 17N, was a Marxist urban guerilla group that emerged in Greece in the late 1970s after the 1973 student uprising against the Greek military junta. Operating mainly in Athens, the group practiced an extreme leftist, anti-establishment and anti-Western ideology that opposed the Greek government, Greek ties to the United States and the European Union, and any Turkish presence in Cyprus. The group also sought the removal of U.S. military bases from Greece.
Soon after its creation, 17N put itself on the global terrorist map with the assassination of CIA station chief Richard Welch in Athens and by carrying out attacks that resulted in the deaths of five U.S. Embassy employees and former Greek police intelligence chief Evangelos Mallios. In the 1980s, the group began bombing European banks, facilities of foreign multinational corporations and Greek police stations, and it later expanded its target set to include EU facilities.
In 2002, a 17N member's botched bombing attempt targeting a ferry company resulted in the bomber's arrest and yielded evidence that led to the apprehension, with the help of the FBI and Scotland Yard, of more than a dozen members of the group, including several key leaders. As a result of the arrests, the Greek government declared victory over the organization, and attacks by 17N ceased.
Anti-Establishment and Grassroots Threats
Today there are few anti-establishment extremist and terrorist groups as brazen and violent as those active throughout Europe during the Soviet era. Most of Europe's popular discontent with ruling elites is expressed through support for alternative political parties, which are trying to change the system from within. A larger threat is the proliferation of militant anti-establishment groups, radicalized lone wolves and grassroots jihadists as the economic crisis persists throughout Europe, providing fertile ground for sentiment favoring such organizations to grow.
In many cases, anti-establishment parties in Europe have nationalistic or Euroskeptical tendencies, such as the National Front in France and the Five Star Movement in Italy, both legitimate political parties with no predilection toward violence. At the same time, Golden Dawn in Greece and Hungary's Jobbik, also known as The Movement for a Better Hungary, are more extreme and relatively violent neo-Nazi parties.
While most European anti-establishment groups express their dissatisfaction through protests and rallies, usually in response to ailing economies and austerity measures, some have taken to the streets to express their displeasure about immigration laws and policies and, in the process, have assaulted immigrants and vandalized their businesses.
Also emerging are grassroots organizations like Italy's Pitchfork Movement. This movement includes people from various backgrounds -- students, unionists and businessmen involved in the agriculture and transportation sectors -- seeking to defend specific interests or achieve certain goals, such as relaxed austerity measures, lower taxes or job growth. Because of the diversity of these relatively peaceful grassroots movements and the potential for extremists to exploit them by blending into the crowd, authorities are finding it difficult to manage the unrest and distinguish peaceful protestors from violent extremists.
Because of the long historical ties between Europe and its former colonies in the Muslim world, Europe's liberal immigration and asylum laws, and its disaffected Muslim population, the greatest terrorist threat today is likely posed by grassroots jihadists and lone wolves (individuals, Islamist or otherwise, with little operational guidance from other extremists). Both have made headlines in the past year.
In March, Belgian authorities thwarted a plot involving a French citizen of Algerian descent named Hakim Benladghem, who was planning to carry out an attack that same month somewhere in Europe. The next month, a British soldier was hacked to death on a street in Woolwich, near London, by two young radicalized Muslim converts, both from Nigerian immigrant families.
There is also rising concern that the Syrian civil war, which has drawn hundreds of young European Muslim men to the fight, could create a seasoned corps of jihadist fighters who will return to Europe when the fighting ends. And there is always the threat of a right-wing backlash from lone wolves.
In July 2011, far-right ideologue Anders Breivik, who was thought to be mentally unbalanced (though the court ruled otherwise), bombed a government building in Oslo, Norway, killing eight people, and then murdered 69 others in a mass shooting at a youth camp on an island off the coast.
Still, it is important to note that the Marxist-Leninist/Maoist extremist groups in Europe from the 1970s through the 1990s, well-funded and with a relatively unified ideological focus, were vastly different from European extremist groups today, which often function for no one unified cause and whose only common denominator appears to be anti-establishment sentiment.
Once flush with funds, weapons and recruits, anti-state militants in Europe are now lacking all three. Also missing is tradecraft, which can be more important than money and weapons. Today's European radicals do not receive the militant training that their Cold War predecessors did.
This means that intact groups that could feasibly become operational entities must raise money through criminal activities or appeal to foreign governments and groups for training and support. In the post-9/11 environment, willing benefactors are few and far between. Thus, the operational capabilities of European extremists, whether devoted to environmental causes or the creation of an Islamic caliphate, will be limited for the foreseeable future.
Courtesy : Stratfor (www.stratfor.com)