Urban Terrorists in Continental Europe after 1970: Implications for Deterrence and Defeat of Violent Nonstate Actors

Abstract

This article considers the experience of continental European governments after 1970 in dealing with indigenous groups that sought the violent overthrow of parliamentary democracy and market economics. Drawing on detailed case histories of the so-called “urban terrorists” in France, Germany, Italy, and Spain—along with lessons from Greece and the Netherlands—the article examines efforts to achieve deterrence by denial of nonstate actors. Even under the constraints of law in highly evolved criminal-justice systems, the affected governments often were successful in employing both conciliatory and coercive measures to deny the urban terrorists popular sympathy, ability to remain at large, communications while in custody, financial resources, crossborder support, and recruitment of new members. These measures, along with changes in the political and social environment, combined to neutralize the threat from urban terrorism in most of the countries studied.

Notes

1. Alex P. Schmid, “Terrorism and Democracy,” in Alex P. Schmid and Ronald D. Crelinsten, Western Responses to Terrorism (London: Frank Cass, 1993), p. 15.

2. Definition from David S. Yost, “Debating Security Strategies,” NATO Review (Winter 2003).

3. Right-wing terror groups in Europe will not be considered in any detail, since their size, degree of organization, and potential threat never approached the level of the UT groups during the period under study. In general, violence on the part of right-wing groups in Europe since the 1970s has remained sporadic, uncoordinated, and randomly targeted.

4. Barton L. Ingraham, Political Crime in Europe: A Comparative Study of France, Germany and England (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979), p. 219.

5. Philip G. Cerny, “France: Non-Terrorism and the Politics of Repressive Tolerance,” in Juliet Lodge, Terrorism: A Challenge to the State (Oxford: Martin Robertson, 1981), p. 95.

6. Ingraham. pp. 235–237.

7. Michael Y. Dartnell, Action Directe: Ultra-left Terrorism in France, 1979–1987 (London: Frank Cass, 1995), pp. 75–78.

8. Michael M. Harrison, “France and International Terrorism: Problem and Response,” in David Charters (ed.), The Deadly Sin of Terrorism: Its Effect on Democracy and Civil Liberty in Six Countries (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1994), pp. 105, 106.

9. Ulrike Meinhof in the journal Konrekt, as quoted in Geoffrey Pridham, “Terrorism and the State in West Germany During the 1970s: A Threat to Stability or a Case of Political Over-reaction?” in Juliet Lodge, Terrorism: A Challenge to the State (Oxford: Martin Robertson, 1981), p. 17.

10. Dennis A. Pluchinsky, “An Organizational and Operational Analysis of Germany's Red Army Faction Terrorist Group,” in Yonah Alexander and Dennis A. Pluchinsky (eds.), European Terrorism Today & Tomorrow (Washington, DC: Brassey's (US), 1992), p. 46.

11. Jeremy Varon, Bringing the War Home: The Weather Underground, the Red Army Faction, and Revolutionary Violence in the Sixties and Seventies (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), pp. 265–267.

12. Stephen M. Sobieck, “Democratic Responses to International Terrorism in Germany,” in David Charters (ed.), The Deadly Sin of Terrorism: Its Effect on Democracy and Civil Liberty in Six Countries (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1994), p. 55.

13. ibid., p. 46.

14. Walter Althammer and Bert Rombach, Gegen den Terror: Texte, Dokumente (Munich: Hanns-Seidel-Stiftung, 1977), Chronology, pp. 92–100.

15. From an interview in Der Spiegel, quoted in Pluchinsky, “An Organizational and Operational Analysis,” p. 47.

16. Quoted in Varon, p. 279.

17. Sobieck, pp. 54, 55.

18. The historical record on the final attacks attributed to RAF still may not be complete. In 2007, a major media outlet presented evidence raising the possibility that East Germany's state security services could have carried out the murder of the Deutsche Bank chairman in 1989 using methods that mimicked RAF. See David Crawford, “The Murder of a CEO,” The Wall Street Journal, September 15, 2007, p. A1.

19. A meticulous account of the “third generation” is: Alexander Straβner, Die dritte Generation der “Roten Armee Fraktion:” Entstehung, Struktur, Funktionslogik und Zerfall einer Terroristischen Organisation (Wiesbaden: VS Verlag füer Sozialwissenschaften, 2003).

20. From the RAF's April 28, 1998, statement of dissolution, quoted in ibid., p. 259.

21. Quoted in Vittorfranco S. Pisano, The Dynamics of Subversion and Violence in Contemporary Italy (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 1987), p. 39.

22. “Vogliamo tutto e subito” in Italian, as quoted in John Caserta,The Red Brigades: Italy's Agony (New York: Manor, 1978) p. 37.

23. Indeed the most violent terrorist attack in Italy during the late 1960s was the work of neofascists rather than leftist radicals. On December 12, 1969, a bomb destroyed a bank in Piazza Fontana near Milan's Duomo. Sixteen people were killed and more than 90 wounded in the Piazza Fontana attack, which was eventually linked to the leaders of the extreme right-wing Ordine Nuovo (New Order). See Richard Drake, The Revolutionary Mystique and Terrorism in Contemporary Italy (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989), pp. 2, 3.

24. Quoted in ibid., p. 17.

25. Vittorfranco S. Pisano, “A Survey of Terrorism of the Left in Italy: 1970–78,” Terrorism, Vol. 2 (1979): 186.

26. Caserta, op cit., offers the most detailed account of the Moro kidnapping and its aftermath.

27. Pisano, The Dynamics of Subversion, pp. 144–149.

28. Looking at terrorist crimes as a whole, 1978 was the peak of activity with almost 2,500 incidents in Italy, but murders and violent assaults did not peak until 1980. See Table 3.1 in ibid., p. 37.

29. Drake, pp. 78–81.

30. Michael von Tangen Page, Prisons, Peace and Terrorism: Penal Policy in the Reduction of Political Violence in Northern Ireland, Italy and the Spanish Basque Country, 1968-97 (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1998), p. 95.

31. ibid., p. 96.

32. The most complete account of the Dozier kidnapping is Richard Oliver Collin and Gordon L. Freedman, Winter of Fire: The Abduction of General Dozier and the Downfall of the Red Brigades (New York: Penguin, 1990).

33. Page, p. 111.

34. Quoted in Drake, p. 147.

35. See Alex P. Schmid, “Countering Terrorism in the Netherlands,” in Alex P. Schmid and Ronald D. Crelinsten, Western Responses to Terrorism (London: Frank Cass, 1993), pp. 79–109.

36. George Kassimeris, Europe's Last Red Terrorists: The Revolutionary Organization 17 November (New York: New York University Press, 2001), p. 192.

37. Andrew Corsun, “Group Profile: The Revolutionary Organization 17 November in Greece (1975–91),” in Yonah Alexander and Dennis A. Pluchinsky (eds.), European Terrorism Today & Tomorrow (Washington, DC: Brassey's(US), 1992), pp. 94, 95.

38. Kassimeris, p. 203.

39. Page, pp. 120, 121.

40. Robert P. Clark, Negotiating with ETA: Obstacles to Peace in the Basque Country, 1975–1988 (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 1990) pp. 38–43.

41. Page, pp. 122–124.

42. Christopher Hewitt, “Terrorism and Public Opinion: A Five-Country Comparison,” Terrorism and Political Violence Vol. 2 (1990): 145—170.

43. The most detailed accounts in English are provided by Clark, op cit., and Page, op cit.

44. Clark, pp. 59–62.

45. ibid., p. 63.

46. Page, p. 139.

47. Clark, p. 162.

48. Page, p. 141.

49. Compiled in A.J. Jongman, “Trends in International and Domestic Terrorism in Western Europe, 1968–1988,” in Alex P. Schmid and Ronald D. Crelinsten, Western Responses to Terrorism (London: Frank Cass, 1993), pp. 61, 62.

50. ibid., pp. 59, 60.

51. ibid., p. 66.

52. ibid., pp. 68, 69, 84.

53. ibid., p. 64, and Kassimeris, pp. 240–242.

54. See Dartnell, p. 21; his shorthand for describing the UTs' goal: “paralyze public life and discredit the establishment.”

55. Hewitt, p. 146.

56. Carlos Marighella, as quoted in Bard E. O'Neill, Insurgency & Terrorism: From Revolution to Apocalypse (2nd Edition, Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2005), pp. 61, 62.

57. Ingraham, p. 268.

58. See for example Bommi Baumann, Wie Alles Anfing (How it all Began): The Personal Account of a West German Urban Guerrilla (Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2000) on his own background and that of his J2 compatriots.

59. Raimondo Catanzaro, The Red Brigades and Left-wing Terrorism in Italy (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1991), p. 183.

60. ibid., p. 176.

61. ibid., as well as Baumann, and Antony Shugaar (trans.), Memoirs of an Italian Terrorist: Giorgio (New York: Carroll & Graf, 2003).

62. Passages extracted from BR documents and cited in Pisano, The Dynamics of Subversion and Violence, pp. 39–40.

63. Drake, p. 97.

64. ibid., p. 148.

65. Drake, p. 29.

66. Page, p. 95.

67. Pluchinsky, “An Organizational and Operational Analysis,” pp. 52, 53.

68. Baumann, p. 92.

69. Shugaar, p. 60.

70. ibid., p. 117.

71. Pluchinsky, “An Organizational and Operational Analysis,” p. 79.

72. Baumann, pp. 83, 84.

73. Drake, p, 109.

74. Hewitt, Christopher, “Terrorism and Public Opinion: A Five-Country Comparison,” Terrorism and Political Violence, Vol. 2 (1990), p. 145.

75. ibid., p. 167.

76. Baumann, op cit. pp. 7, 8.

77. Drake, p. 67.

78. For example Pridham, pp. 12, 13.

79. Page, p. 134.

80. Fully 45 percent of imprisoned BR members in Italy ultimately took advantage of the pentiti laws in some form; Marco Rimanelli, “Foreign Comrades in Arms: Italian Terrorism and International Ties (1968–91),” in Yonah Alexander and Dennis A. Pluchinsky (eds.), European Terrorism Today & Tomorrow (Washington, DC: Brassey's (US), 1992), p. 137.

81. Page, pp. 104, 105.

82. Germany's liberal-minded Chancellor in the early 1970s, Willy Brandt, summarized the rationale behind Germany's legal crackdown in this rhetorical admonition to terrorist sympathizers: “You are, it seems to me, even more responsible for the atrocities than the fanatics who pull the trigger of their automatic weapons… You furnish the stage set on which murderers appear as heroes… you provide the sustenance, equipment, and shelter without which the terrorists would have to abandon their absurd and bloody dreams of a civil war.” Quoted in Varon, p. 258.

83. Page, p. 101.

84. Charters, pp. 120, 121.

85. Catanzaro, p. 192.

86. ibid., p. 197.

87. Baumann, p. 108.

88. Shugaar, pp. 60, 163.

89. Page, p. 96.