The Who’s Who of Terror

Abstract

Terrorist organisations emerge for a variety of reasons; they flourish like laboratory cultures of radical chic and international publicity, but each needs its own special cause to initiate its life-cycle. For some, like the Palestinians and the South Moluccans, it is nationalistic — they use terror as one of their weapons in trying to establish national right to an area of territory. For others, like the Baader — Meinhof gang and the Japanese Red Army, the cause is world revolution. Some, like the Spanish and Italian groups, have internal political reasons for turning to terror and there are others still, such as the Moslem insurgents in the Philippines and the Warriors of Christ the King in Spain, who owe their existence to religion as much as to politics.