There is neither an academic nor an international legal consensus regarding the proper definition of the word terrorism. Some scholars believe the actions of governments can be labelled "terrorism". Using the term 'terrorism' to mean violent action used with the predominant intention of causing terror, Paul James and Jonathan Friedman distinguish between state terrorism against non-combatants and state terrorism against combatants, including "shock and awe" tactics:
"Shock and Awe" as a subcategory of "rapid dominance" is
the name given to massive intervention designed to strike terror into
the minds of the enemy. It is a form of state-terrorism. The concept was
however developed long before the Second Gulf War by Harlan Ullman as chair of a forum of retired military personnel.
However, others, including governments, international organisations, private institutions and scholars, believe the term terrorism is applicable only to the actions of violent non-state actors. This approach is termed as an actor-centric
definition which emphasizes the characteristics of the groups or
individuals who use terrorism; whilst act-centric definitions emphasize
the unique aspects of terrorism from other acts of violence.
Historically, the term terrorism was used to refer to actions taken by
governments against their own citizens whereas now it is more often
perceived as targeting of non-combatants as part of a strategy directed against governments.
Historian Henry Commager
wrote that "Even when definitions of terrorism allow for 'state
terrorism', state actions in this area tend to be seen through the prism
of war or national self-defense, not terror." While states may accuse other states of state-sponsored terrorism
when they support insurgencies, individuals who accuse their
governments of terrorism are seen as radicals, because actions by
legitimate governments are not generally seen as illegitimate. Academic
writing tends to follow the definitions accepted by states. Most states use the term terrorism for non-state actors only.
The Encyclopædia Britannica Online
defines terrorism generally as "the systematic use of violence to
create a general climate of fear in a population and thereby to bring
about a particular political objective", and states that "terrorism is
not legally defined in all jurisdictions." The encyclopedia adds that
"[e]stablishment terrorism, often called state or state-sponsored
terrorism, is employed by governments—or more often by factions within
governments—against that government's citizens, against factions within
the government, or against foreign governments or groups."
While the most common modern usage of the word terrorism refers to political violence by insurgents or conspirators,
several scholars make a broader interpretation of the nature of
terrorism that encompasses the concepts of state terrorism and
state-sponsored terrorism. Michael Stohl
argues, "The use of terror tactics is common in international relations
and the state has been and remains a more likely employer of terrorism
within the international system than insurgents.
Stohl clarifies, however, that "[n]ot all acts of state violence are
terrorism. It is important to understand that in terrorism the violence
threatened or perpetrated, has purposes broader than simple physical
harm to a victim. The audience of the act or threat of violence is more
important than the immediate victim."
Scholar Gus Martin
describes state terrorism as terrorism "committed by governments and
quasi-governmental agencies and personnel against perceived threats",
which can be directed against both domestic and foreign targets. Noam Chomsky defines state terrorism as "terrorism practised by states (or governments) and their agents and allies".
Simon Taylor provides a definition of state terrorism as "state
agents using threats or acts of violence against civilians, marked by a
callous indifference to human life, to instill fear in a community
beyond the initial victim for the purpose of preventing a change or
challenge to the status quo." These acts of violence can include both the types of state violence that some argue ought to be considered terrorism, such as: genocide, mass murders, ethnic cleansing, disappearances, detention without trial, and torture; and more widely accepted methods of terror including bombings and targeted killings.
Stohl and George A. Lopez
have designated three categories of state terrorism, based on the
openness or secrecy with which the acts are performed, and whether
states directly perform the acts, support them, or acquiesce to them.
History
The Drownings at Nantes were a series of mass executions by drowning during the Reign of Terror in France
Aristotle wrote critically of terror employed by tyrants against their subjects. The earliest use of the word terrorism identified by the Oxford English Dictionary is a 1795 reference to tyrannical state behavior, the "reign of terrorism" in France. In that same year, Edmund Burke decried the "thousands of those hell-hounds called terrorists" who he believed threatened Europe. During the Reign of Terror, the Jacobin government and other factions of the French Revolution
used the apparatus of the state to kill and intimidate political
opponents, and the Oxford English Dictionary includes as one definition
of terrorism "Government by intimidation carried out by the party in
power in France between 1789–1794".
The original general meaning of terrorism was of terrorism by the
state, as reflected in the 1798 supplement of the Dictionnaire of the Académie française, which described terrorism as systeme, regime de la terreur. Myra Williamson wrote:
The meaning of "terrorism" has undergone a
transformation. During the Reign of Terror, a regime or system of
terrorism was used as an instrument of governance, wielded by a recently
established revolutionary state against the enemies of the people. Now the term "terrorism" is commonly used to describe terrorist acts committed by non-state or sub-national entities against a state. (italics in original)
Later examples of state terrorism include the police state measures employed by the Soviet Union beginning in the 1930s, and by Germany's Nazi regime in the 1930s and 1940s.
According to Igor Primoratz, "Both [the Nazis and the Soviets] sought
to impose total political control on society. Such a radical aim could
be pursued only by a similarly radical method: by terrorism directed by
an extremely powerful political police at an atomized and defenseless
population. Its success was due largely to its arbitrary character—to
the unpredictability of its choice of victims. In both countries, the
regime first suppressed all opposition; when it no longer had any
opposition to speak of, political police took to persecuting 'potential'
and 'objective opponents'. In the Soviet Union, it was eventually
unleashed on victims chosen at random."
The terror of tsarism was directed against the proletariat. Our Extraordinary Commissions shoot landlords, capitalists, and generals who are striving to restore the capitalist order. Do you grasp this... distinction? Yes? For us communists it is quite sufficient.
Military actions primarily directed against non-combatant targets
have also been referred to as state terrorism. For example, the bombing of Guernica has been called an act of terrorism. Other examples of state terrorism may include the World War II bombings of Pearl Harbor, London, Dresden, Chongqing, and Hiroshima.
An act of sabotage, sometimes regarded as an act of terrorism, was the peacetime sinking of the Rainbow Warrior, a ship owned by Greenpeace, which occurred while in port at Auckland, New Zealand on July 10, 1985. The bomb detonation killed Fernando Pereira, a Dutch photographer. The organisation who committed the attack, the Directorate-General for External Security (DSGE), is a branch of France's intelligence services. The agents responsible pleaded guilty to manslaughter
as part of a plea deal and were sentenced to ten years in prison, but
were secretly released early to France under an agreement between the
two countries' governments.
In November 2013, a BBC Panorama documentary was aired about the
MRF. It drew on information from seven former members, as well as a
number of other sources. Soldier H said: "We operated initially with
them thinking that we were the UVF." Soldier F added: "We wanted to cause confusion." In June 1972, he was succeeded as commander by Captain James 'Hamish' McGregor.
In June 2014, in the wake of the Panorama programme, the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) opened an investigation into the matter.
In an earlier review of the programme, the position of the PSNI was
that none of the statements by soldiers in the programme could be taken
as an admission of criminality.
The Uyghur American Association has claimed that Beijing's approach to terrorism in Xinjiang constitutes state terrorism. In 2006, a Spanish court opened an investigation into claims that the Chinese state was committing acts of state terrorism in Tibet. However, the investigation was dropped in 2014.
France
The sinking of the Rainbow Warrior took place in Auckland Harbour on July 10, 1985. It was an attack carried out by French DGSE agents Captain Dominique Prieur and Commander Alain Mafart aimed at sinking the flagship craft of the Greenpeace Organisation in order to stop it from interfering in French nuclear testing in the South Pacific. The attack resulted in the death of Greenpeace photographer Fernando Pereira and led to a huge uproar over the first ever attack on New Zealand's sovereignty as a modern nation. France initially denied any involvement in the attack, and it even joined in condemning the attack as a terrorist act. In July 1986, a United Nations-sponsored
mediation effort between New Zealand and France resulted in the
transfer of the two prisoners to the French Polynesian island of Hao, so they could serve three years there, as well as an apology and an NZ$13 million payment from France to New Zealand.
Protest in support of Palestine in Helsinki, Finland, 28 October 2023
In November 2023, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan accused Israel of being "a terrorist state" committing war crimes and violating international law in the Gaza Strip. He said Israeli settlers in the occupied Palestinian territories should be recognized as "terrorists".
In the 1980s, Libya under Muammar Gaddafi was accused of state terrorism following attacks abroad such as the Lockerbie bombing. Between 9 July and 15 August 1984 seventeen merchant vessels were damaged in the Gulf of Suez and Bab al-Mandeb straits by underwater explosions. Terrorist group Al Jihad (thought to be a pro-IranianShiite group connected to the Palestine Liberation Organisation) issued a claim of responsibility for the mining, but circumstantial evidence indicated that Libya was responsible.
Following the February 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine
and the initial investigations into war crimes committed by Russian
soldiers, there were calls for Russia to be designated a terrorist
state. On May 10, 2022, Lithuania's parliament designated Russia a terrorist state and its actions in Ukraine a genocide. The US Senate unanimously passed a resolution to this effect on July 27, 2022, and the US House of Representatives is to consider such legislation. On August 11, Latvia's parliament designated Russia a state sponsor of terrorism. Ukraine's Verkhovna Rada on 20 August 2022 also designated Russia as a terrorist state. On October 17, the European Parliament approved a request to debate and vote on a resolution recognizing Russia as a terrorist state, which it did on November 23.
As of October 2023, the following states and organizations have designated Russia as terrorist or a sponsor of terrorism:
Between 1979 and 1990, the Apartheid government in South Africa operated a branch of the South African Police known as Vlakplaas who routinely used methods of terrorism to support the state in maintaining Apartheid. These methods included the bombing of civilian buildings (COSATU House and Khotso House), and the targeted-killing and assassinations of anti-Apartheid activists.
In the Truth and Reconciliation Commission
hearings, the former Major-General and Commander of Vlakplaas, Sarel
“Sakkie” du Plessis Crafford gave the following three reasons for the
Apartheid state’s policy of extra-judicial
killings:
(1) “It scared off other supporters and potential supporters; it made
people reluctant to offer open support; it created distrust and
demoralization amongst cadres.
(2) It gave white voters confidence that the security forces were in
control and winning the fight against Communism and terrorism.
(3) The information gleaned during the interrogation needed to be
protected against disclosure.”
The most notorious of the Vlakplaas operatives were Eugene de Kock and the askariJoe Mamasela, who were linked to several high-profile extra-judicial killings, including that of Griffiths Mxenge. Following South Africa's transition to democracy, de Kock was later tried and convicted on eighty-nine charges and sentenced to 212 years in prison.
During World War II, the United Kingdom created the Special Operations Executive (SOE) which, in the words of Prime Minister Winston Churchill, was to "set Europe ablaze"
with sabotage and subversion in countries occupied by the Axis powers, especially Nazi Germany. The British military historian John Keegan later wrote, "We must recognise that our response to the scourge of terrorism
is compromised by what we did through SOE. The justification ... That
we had no other means of striking back at the enemy ... is exactly the
argument used by the Red Brigades, the Baader-Meinhoff gang, the PFLP, the IRA and every other half-articulate terrorist organisation on Earth. Futile to argue that we were a democracy and Hitler a tyrant. Means besmirch ends. SOE besmirched Britain."
British Foreign Office documents declassified in 2021 revealed that during the Indonesian mass killings of 1965–66, British propagandists secretly incited anti-communists including army generals to eliminate the PKI, and used black propaganda, due to Indonesian PresidentSukarno's hostility to the formation of former British colonies into the Malayan federation from 1963. British Prime Minister Harold Wilson's
government had instructed propaganda specialists from the Foreign
Office to send hundreds of inflammatory pamphlets to leading
anti-communists in Indonesia, inciting them to kill the foreign
minister, Subandrio, and claiming that ethnic Chinese Indonesians deserved the violence meted out to them.
Britain has been accused of involvement in state terrorism during the Troubles, an ethno-nationalist conflict in Northern Ireland from the 1960s to the 1990s by covertly assisting loyalist paramilitaries.
Argentines commemorate the victims of the U.S.-backed military junta on 24 March 2019
Ruth J Blakeley, Professor of Politics and International Relations at the University of Sheffield, accuses the United States
of sponsoring and deploying state terrorism, which she defines as "the
illegal targeting of individuals that the state has a duty to protect in
order to instill fear in a target audience beyond the direct victim",
on an "enormous scale" during the Cold War. The United States government justified this policy by saying it needed to contain the spread of Communism,
but Blakeley says the United States government also used it as a means
to buttress and promote the interests of U.S. elites and multinational
corporations. The U.S. supported governments who employed death squads throughout Latin America and counterinsurgency training of right-wing military forces included advocating the interrogation and torture of suspected insurgents. J. Patrice McSherry, a professor of political science at Long Island University, says "hundreds of thousands of Latin Americans
were tortured, abducted or killed by right-wing military regimes as
part of the U.S.-led anti-communist crusade," which included U.S.
support for Operation Condor and the Guatemalan military during the Guatemalan Civil War. More people were repressed and killed throughout Latin America in the last three decades of the Cold War than in the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc, according to historian John Henry Coatsworth.
Declassified documents from the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta in 2017 confirm that U.S. officials directly facilitated and encouraged the mass murder of hundreds of thousands of suspected Communists in Indonesia during the mid-1960s. Bradley Simpson, Director of the Indonesia/East Timor Documentation Project at the National Security Archive,
says "Washington did everything in its power to encourage and
facilitate the army-led massacre of alleged PKI members, and U.S.
officials worried only that the killing of the party's unarmed
supporters might not go far enough, permitting Sukarno to return to
power and frustrate the [Johnson] Administration's emerging plans for a
post-Sukarno Indonesia." According to Simpson, the terror in Indonesia was an "essential building block of the quasi neo-liberal policies the West would attempt to impose on Indonesia in the years to come".
Historian John Roosa, who commented on documents which were released by
the U.S. embassy in Jakarta in 2017, said they confirmed that "the U.S.
was part and parcel of the operation, strategizing with the Indonesian
army and encouraging them to go after the PKI."
Geoffrey B. Robinson, a historian at UCLA, argues that without the
support of the U.S. and other powerful Western states, the Indonesian
Army's program of mass killings would not have happened.
The National Assembly of Venezuela designated the colectivos as terrorist groups
due to their "violence, paramilitary actions, intimidation, murders and
other crimes," declaring their acts as state-sponsored terrorism.
Criticism of the concept
The
chairman of the United Nations Counter-Terrorism Committee has said the
twelve previous international conventions on terrorism had never
referred to state terrorism, which was not an international legal
concept, and when states abuse their powers they should be judged
against international conventions which deal with war crimes, international human rights law, and international humanitarian law, rather than international anti-terrorism statutes. In a similar vein, Kofi Annan, at the time the United Nations Secretary-General, said it is "time to set aside debates on so-called 'state terrorism'. The use of force by states is already regulated under international law". Annan added, "...regardless
of the differences between governments on the question of the
definition of terrorism, what is clear and what we can all agree on is
any deliberate attack on innocent civilians [or non-combatants],
regardless of one's cause, is unacceptable and fits into the definition
of terrorism."
Dr. Bruce Hoffman has argued that failing to differentiate between state and non-state violence
ignores the fact that there is a "fundamental qualitative difference
between the two types of violence." Hoffman argues that even in war,
there are rules and accepted norms of behaviour that prohibit certain
types of weapons and tactics and outlaw attacks on specific categories
of targets. For instance, rules which are codified in the Geneva and Hague Conventions on warfare prohibit taking civilians as hostages, outlaw reprisals against either civilians or POWs, recognise neutral territory,
etc. Hoffman says "even the most cursory review of terrorist tactics
and targets over the past quarter century reveals that terrorists have
violated all these rules." Hoffman also says that when states transgress
these rules of war "the term "war crime" is used to describe such acts."
Walter Laqueur
has said those who argue that state terrorism should be included in
studies of terrorism ignore the fact that "The very existence of a state is based on its monopoly of power.
If it were different, states would not have the right, nor would they
be in a position, to maintain that minimum of order on which all
civilized life rests." Calling the concept a "red herring"
he stated: "This argument has been used by the terrorists themselves,
arguing that there is no difference between their activities and those
by governments and states. It has also been employed by some
sympathizers, and it rests on the deliberate obfuscation between all
kinds of violence..."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State-sponsored_terrorism State-sponsored terrorism is terrorist violence carried out with the active support of national governments provided to violent non-state actors.
States can sponsor terrorist groups in several ways, including but not
limited to funding terrorist organizations, providing training,
supplying weapons, providing other logistical and intelligence
assistance, and hosting groups within their borders. Because of the
pejorative nature of the word, the identification of particular examples
are often subject to political dispute and different definitions of terrorism.
A wide variety of states in both developed and developing
areas of the world have engaged in sponsoring terrorism. During the
1970s and 1980s, state sponsorship of terrorism was a frequent feature
of international conflict. From that time to the 2010s there was a
steady pattern of decline in the prevalence and magnitude of state
support. Nevertheless, because of the increasing consequent level of
violence that it could potentially facilitate, it remains an issue of
highly salient international concern.
Definition
There are at least 250 definitions of "terrorism" available in academic
literature and government and intergovernmental sources, several of
which include mention of state sponsorship. In a review of primary documents on international law governing armed conflict, Reisman and Antoniou identify that:
Terrorism
has come to mean the intentional use of violence against civilian and
military targets generally outside of an acknowledged war zone by
private groups or groups that appear to be private but have some measure
of covert state sponsorship.
the
active involvement of a foreign government in training, arming, and
providing other logistical and intelligence assistance as well as
sanctuary to an otherwise autonomous terrorist group for the purpose of
carrying out violent acts on behalf of that government against its
enemies.
The U.S. Government, which has repeatedly engaged in sponsorship of terrorism as a feature of its foreign policy, provides its own definition in the U.S. State Department's list of state sponsors of terrorism. Authorities and scholars of terrorism and conflict, such as Alex P. Schmid (former Officer-in-Charge of Terrorism Prevention at the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime), Daniel Byman,
Richard Chasdi, and Frank Shanty, have pointed to problems in the U.S.'
definition, including that it is politicized, analytically unclear, and inherently self-serving.
Background
The
use of terrorist organizations as proxies in armed conflicts between
state actors became more attractive in the mid-20th century as a result
of post World War II developments like the increasing costs of traditional warfare and the risk of nuclear war. Speaking about the effect of nuclear capability on traditional military conflict KGB
agent Alexander Sakharovsky said that "In today's world, when nuclear
arms have made military force obsolete, terrorism should become our main
weapon." Though state-sponsored terrorism persists in the post-9/11
era, some scholars have argued that it has become less significant in
the age of global jihadism. On the other hand, Daniel Byman believes its importance has increased. Organizations like Hamas, Hezbollah and Palestinian Islamic Jihad
are heavily dependent on state support. According to the US
Counter-Terrorism Coordinator's Office this support can include "funds,
weapons, materials and the secure areas" that organizations use for
"planning and conducting operations".
The Max Planck Encyclopedia of Public International Law
notes that international legal institutions currently lack a mechanism
to prosecute terrorist leaders who "instruct, support or succour"
terrorism. At the conclusion of the Lockerbie trial,
some commentators continued to harbor doubts about the legitimacy of
the only conviction secured during the trial, and thus also about Libya's involvement. The domestic trial proved to be insufficient to identify those who had given the instructions.
The United States and Pakistan have accused Afghanistan'sKhAD agency of being responsible for numerous terrorist attacks on Pakistani soil in the 1980s and early 1990s.
According to a report by the US Defense Department, approximately
90% of the estimated 777 acts of international terrorism committed
worldwide in 1987 took place in Pakistan. By 1988, KhAD and KGB agents were able to penetrate deep inside Pakistan and carry out attacks on mujahideen sanctuaries and guerrilla bases. There was strong circumstantial evidence implicating Moscow-Kabul in the August 1988 assassination of Zia ul-Haq, as the Soviets perceived that Zia wanted to adversely affect the Geneva process. WAD/KhAD has also been suspected behind the assassination of Palestinian jihadist Abdullah Yusuf Azzam alongside his son in 1989.
Afghanistan's KHAD was one of four secret service agencies
accused of perpetrating terrorist bombings in multiple Pakistani cities
including Islamabad, Lahore, Karachi, and Rawalpindi during the early 1980s resulting in hundreds of civilian casualties. By the late 1980s, the US State Department blamed WAD for the perpetration of terrorist bombings in Pakistani cities.Between the late 1970s and the early 1990s, Afghanistan security agencies supported the terrorist organization called al-Zulfiqar, the group that hijacked a Pakistan International Airlines plane from Karachi to Kabul in 1981. Notable attacks include the Karachi Car bombing and an attempted car bombing on the US Consulate in Peshawar which ended up killing over 30 people in 1987. KhAD has also been accused of being behind the Hathora Murders which terrorized Karachi for 2 years in the mid 1980s.
India has accused China of supporting the Naxalites in the Naxalite–Maoist insurgency. In 2011, Indian police accused the Chinese government of providing sanctuary to the movement's leaders, and accused Pakistani ISI of providing financial support. India has also reported of China supporting rebel groups in its Northeast states of Manipur, Nagaland and Mizoram.
The Chinese government has blocked UN Security CouncilSanctions Committee listing of Masood Azhar, the founder and leader of the Pakistan based terrorist organization Jaish-e-Mohammed as a terrorist, thwarting international efforts to disrupt the activities of his group.
Starting 2009, there have been 4 attempts to put Masood Azhar
in the UN Security Council's counter-terrorism sanctions list. All the
attempts were vetoed by China, citing 'lack of evidence'. China moved to
protect Azhar again in October 2016 when it blocked India's appeal to
the United Nations to label him as a terrorist.
China also blocked a US move to get Azhar banned by the UN in February 2017. The most recent attempt was on 13 March 2019. However, China pulled the blockade in May 2019, finally resulting listing of Masood Azhar as a global terrorist.
In mid-2020, Myanmar accused China of arming the Arakan Army,
which was legally considered a terrorist organisation by the Myanmar
government from 2019 to 2021. China has allegedly given the Arakan Army
assault rifles, machine guns and FN-6 Chinese Manpads capable of shooting down helicopters, drones and combat aircraft.
India
India's Research and Analysis Wing trained and armed the Sri Lankan Tamil group LTTE which want an independent country for Tamils of Sri lanka, due to the continuous discrimination and violent persecution against Sri Lankan Tamils by the Sinhalese dominated Sri Lankan Government
during the 1970s, but it later withdrew its support in the late 1980s
when the terrorist activities of LTTE became serious and it formed
alliances with separatist groups in the southern Indian state of Tamil
Nadu.
From August 1983 to May 1987, India, through its intelligence agency
Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW), provided arms, training and
monetary support to six Sri Lankan Tamil insurgent groups including the
LTTE. During that period, 32 terror training camps were set up in India
to train these 495 LTTE insurgents, including 90 women who were trained in 10 batches. The first batch of Tigers were trained in Establishment 22 based in Chakrata, Uttarakhand. The second batch, including LTTE intelligence chief Pottu Amman, trained in Himachal Pradesh. Prabakaran visited the first and the second batch of Tamil Tigers to see them training. Eight other batches of LTTE were trained in Tamil Nadu. Thenmozhi Rajaratnamalias Dhanu, who carried out the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi and Sivarasan—the key conspirator were among the militants trained by R&AW, in Nainital, India. In April 1984, the LTTE formally joined a common militant front, the Eelam National Liberation Front (ENLF), a union between LTTE, the Tamil Eelam Liberation Organization (TELO), the Eelam Revolutionary Organisation of Students (EROS), the People's Liberation Organisation of Tamil Eelam (PLOTE) and the Eelam People's Revolutionary Liberation Front (EPRLF). On 4 June 1987,
when the Tamil Tiger-held Jaffna Peninsula was under siege by the Sri
Lankan army, India provided airdrop of relief supplies to LTTE.
India has been accused by Pakistan of supporting terrorism and carrying out "economic sabotage".
In 2017, Kulbhushan Jadhav, an Indian naval officer arrested in March 2016 in Balochistan and charged with espionage and sabotage was sentenced to death. He was accused of operating a covert terror network within Balochistan. Jadhav had confessed that he was tasked by India’s intelligence agency, the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), “to plan and organise espionage and sabotage activities” in Balochistan and Karachi.
Pakistan has also accused Indian consulates in Kandahar and
Jalalabad, Afghanistan, of providing arms, training and financial aid to
the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) in an attempt to destabilize Pakistan. Brahamdagh Bugti stated in a 2008 interview that he would accept help from India. Pakistan has repeatedly accused India of supporting Baloch rebels, and David Wright-Neville writes that outside Pakistan, some Western observers also believe that India secretly funds the BLA. In August 2013, US Special Representative James Dobbins said Pakistan's fears over India's role in Afghanistan were “not groundless". A leaked diplomatic cable
sent on December 31, 2009, from the U.S. consulate in Karachi said it
was "plausible" that Indian intelligence was helping the Baluch
insurgents. An earlier 2008 cable, discussing the Mumbai attacks
reported fears by British officials that "intense domestic pressure
would force Delhi to respond, at the minimum, by ramping up covert
support to nationalist insurgents fighting the Pakistani army in
Baluchistan." Another cable dating back to 2009 showed that UAE officials believed India was secretly supporting Tehrik-e-Taliban insurgents and separatists in northwest Pakistan.
Former United States President George W. Bush accused the Iranian government of being the "world's primary state sponsor of terror."
Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps was instrumental in founding, training, and supplying Hezbollah, a group designated a "Foreign Terrorist Organization" by the United States Department of State, and likewise labeled a terrorist organization by Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Gulf Cooperation Council. This view is not universal, however; for example, the European Union
differentiates between the political, social, and military wings of
Hezbollah, designating only its military wing as a terrorist
organization, while various other countries maintain relations with Hezbollah.
The State of Israel has been accused of being a state-sponsor of terrorism, and also committing acts of state terrorism.
Several sovereign countries have at some point officially alleged
that Israel is a proponent of state-sponsored terrorism, including Iran, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey, and Yemen.
Kuwait is listed as sources of militant money in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Kuwait is described as a "source of funds and a key transit point" for al-Qaeda and other militant groups.
Lebanon
Lebanon was accused by United States and Israel for supporting Hezbollah.
In 2006, Libya was removed from the United States list of terrorist supporting nations after it had ended all of its support for armed groups and the development of weapons of mass destruction.
Malaysia
Citing Operation Merdeka, an alleged Philippine plot to incite unrest in Sabah and reclaimed the disputed territory, Malaysia funded and trained secessionists groups such as the Moro National Liberation Front in retaliation.
The Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) has stated that it was training more than 3,000 militants from various nationalities. According to some reports published by the Council of Foreign Relations, the Pakistan military and the ISI have provided covert support to terrorist groups active in Kashmir, including the al-Qaeda affiliate Jaish-e-Mohammed". Pakistan has denied any involvement in terrorist activities in Kashmir, arguing that it only provides political and moral support to the secessionist groups who wish to escape Indian rule. Many Kashmiri militant groups also maintain their headquarters in Pakistan-administered Kashmir, which is cited as further proof by the Indian government. Many of the terrorist organisations are banned by the UN, but continue to operate under different names.
The United Nations
organization has publicly increased pressure on Pakistan on its
inability to control its Afghanistan border and not restricting the
activities of Taliban leaders who have been designated by the UN as terrorists. Many consider that Pakistan has been playing both sides in the US "War on Terror".
Ahmed Rashid, a noted Pakistani journalist, has accused Pakistan's ISI of providing help to the Taliban. Author Ted Galen Carpenter
echoed that statement, stating that Pakistan "... assisted rebel forces
in Kashmir even though those groups have committed terrorist acts
against civilians" Author Gordon Thomas
stated that whilst aiding in the capture of al-Qaeda members, Pakistan
"still sponsored terrorist groups in the disputed state of Kashmir,
funding, training and arming them in their war on attrition against
India." Journalist Stephen Schwartz
notes that several militant and criminal groups are "backed by senior
officers in the Pakistani army, the country's ISI intelligence
establishment and other armed bodies of the state." According to one author, Daniel Byman, "Pakistan is probably today's most active sponsor of terrorism."
The Inter-Services Intelligence has often been accused of playing a role in major terrorist attacks across the world including the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States, terrorism in Kashmir, Mumbai Train Bombings, Indian Parliament Attack, Varanasi bombings, Hyderabad bombings and Mumbai terror attacks. The ISI is also accused of supporting Taliban forces and recruiting and training mujahideen to fight in Afghanistan and Kashmir. Based on communication intercepts US intelligence agencies concluded Pakistan's ISI was behind the attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul on July 7, 2008, a charge that the governments of India and Afghanistan had laid previously. Afghan President Hamid Karzai,
who has constantly reiterated allegations that militants operating
training camps in Pakistan have used it as a launch platform to attack
targets in Afghanistan, urged western military allies to target
extremist hideouts in neighbouring Pakistan. When the United States, during the Clinton administration, targeted al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan with cruise missiles, Slate reported that two officers of the ISI were killed.
Pakistan is accused of sheltering and training the Taliban as strategic asset
in operations "which include soliciting funding for the Taliban,
bankrolling Taliban operations, providing diplomatic support as the
Taliban's virtual emissaries abroad, arranging training for Taliban
fighters, recruiting skilled and unskilled manpower to serve in Taliban
armies, planning and directing offensives, providing and facilitating
shipments of ammunition and fuel, and on several occasions apparently
directly providing combat support," as reported by Human Rights Watch.
Pakistan was also responsible for the evacuation of about 5,000
of the top leadership of the Taliban and Al-Qaeda who were encircled by
NATO forces in the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan. This event, known as
the Kunduz airlift, which is also popularly called the "Airlift of Evil", involved several Pakistani Air Force transport planes flying multiple sorties over a number of days.
On May 1, 2011 Osama bin Laden was killed in Pakistan, he was living in a safe house less than a mile away from, what is called the West Point of Pakistan, the Pakistan Military Academy.
This has given rise to numerous allegations of an extensive support
system for Osama Bin Laden was in place by the Government and Military
of Pakistan.
Former President of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai accused Pakistan for supporting ISIS during interview with ANI that Afghanistan has evidence of Pakistan's support to ISIS.He added that there is no to the above statement.
Pervez Musharraf, former Pakistan President, had admitted in 2016 that Pakistan supported and trained terrorist groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba in 1990s to carry out militancy in Kashmir and Pakistan was in favour of religious militancy in 1979. He said that Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi and Hafiz Saeed
were seen as heroes in Pakistan during the 1990s. He added that later
on this religious militancy turned into terrorism and they started
killing their own people. He also stated that Pakistan trained the Taliban to fight against Russia, saying that the Taliban, Osama bin Laden, Jalaluddin Haqqani and Ayman al-Zawahiri were heroes for Pakistan however later they became villains.
Philippines
Operation Merdeka
was a destabilization plot planned with the objective of establishing
Philippine control over Sabah. The operation failed to carry out, which
resulted in the Jabidah massacre.
In December 2012 the New York Times published an editorial accusing the Qatari regime of funding the Al-Nusra Front, a U.S. government designated terrorist organization. The Financial Times noted Emir Hamad's visit to Gaza and meeting with Hamas, another internationally designated terrorist organization. Spanish football club FC Barcelona were coming under increasing pressure to tear up their £125m shirt sponsorship contract with the Qatar Foundation after claims the so-called charitable trust finances Hamas. The fresh controversy follows claims made by the Spanish newspaper El Mundo that the Qatar Foundation had given money to cleric Yusuf al Qaradawi who is alleged to be an advocate of terrorism, wife beating and antisemitism.
In January 2013 French politicians again accused the Qatari Government of giving material support to Islamist groups in Mali and the French newspaper Le Canard enchaîné quoted an unnamed source in French military intelligence saying that "The MNLA [secular Tuareg separatists], al Qaeda-linked Ansar Dine and Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa have all received cash from Doha."
In March 2014, the then Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has accused the Qatari government of sponsoring Sunni insurgents fighting against Iraqi soldiers in western Anbar province.
In October 2014, it was revealed that a former Qatari Interior
Ministry official, Salim Hasan Khalifa Rashid al-Kuwari, had been named
by the U.S. Department of the Treasury
as an al Qaeda financier, with allegations that he gave hundreds of
thousands of dollars to the terrorist group. Kuwari worked for the civil
defense department of the Interior Ministry in 2009, two years before
he was designated for his support of al Qaeda.
A number of wealthy Qataris are accused of sponsoring the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.
In response to public criticism over Qatari connections to ISIL, the
government has pushed back and denied supporting the group.
The Soviet (and later Russian) secret services worked to establish a network of terrorist front organizations and had been described as the primary promoters of terrorism worldwide. According to defector Ion Mihai Pacepa, General Aleksandr Sakharovsky from the First Chief Directorate of the KGB once said: "In today’s world, when nuclear arms have made military force obsolete, terrorism should become our main weapon." Pacepa further claims Sakharovsky stated that "Airplane hijacking is my own invention" and that George Habash, who worked under the KGB's guidance,
explained: "Killing one Jew far away from the field of battle is more
effective than killing a hundred Jews on the field of battle, because it
attracts more attention."
Pacepa described an alleged operation "SIG" ("Zionist Governments") that was devised in 1972, to turn the whole Islamic world against Israel and the United States. KGB chairman Yury Andropov
allegedly explained to Pacepa that "a billion adversaries could inflict
far greater damage on America than could a few millions. We needed to
instill a Nazi-style hatred for the Jews throughout the Islamic world, and to turn this weapon of the emotions into a terrorist bloodbath against Israel and its main supporter, the United States."
The leader of the PLO, Yasser Arafat, established close collaboration with the Romanian Securitate service and the Soviet KGB in the beginning of the 1970s. The secret training of PLO guerrillas was provided by the KGB. However, the main KGB activities and arms shipments were channeled through Wadie Haddad of the DFLP organization, who usually stayed in a KGB dacha BARVIKHA-1 during his visits to Russia. Led by Carlos the Jackal, a group of PFLP fighters accomplished a spectacular raid on OPEC headquarters in Vienna in 1975. Advance notice of this operation "was almost certainly" given to the KGB.
A number of notable operations have been conducted by the KGB to
support international terrorists with weapons on the orders from the Soviet Communist Party, including:
Transfer of machine-guns, automatic rifles, Walther pistols, and cartridges to the Official Irish Republican Army by the Soviet intelligence vessel Reduktor (operation SPLASH) in 1972 to fulfill a personal request of arms from Michael O'Riordan.
Transfer of anti-tank grenade RPG-7 launchers, radio-controlled SNOP mines, pistols with silencers, machine guns, and other weaponry to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine through Wadi Haddad who was recruited as a KGB agent in 1970 (operation VOSTOK, "East").
Support of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, in order to destabilize Turkey, a key NATO member during the Cold War.
Large-scale terrorist operations have been prepared by the KGB and GRU against the United States, Canada and Europe, according to the Mitrokhin Archive, GRU defectors Victor Suvorov and Stanislav Lunev, and former SVR officer Kouzminov. Among the planned operations were the following:
Large arms caches were allegedly hidden in many countries for the planned terrorism acts. They were booby-trapped with "Lightning" explosive devices. One of such cache, which was identified by Mitrokhin, exploded when Swiss authorities tried to remove it from woods near Bern. Several others caches (probably not equipped with the "Lightnings") were removed successfully.
Preparations for nuclear sabotage. Some of the allegedly hidden caches could contain portable tactical nuclear weapons known as RA-115 "suitcase bombs" prepared to assassinate US leaders in the event of war, according to GRU defector Stanislav Lunev. Lunev states that he had personally looked for hiding places for weapons caches in the Shenandoah Valley area
and that "it is surprisingly easy to smuggle nuclear weapons into the
US" either across the Mexican border or using a small transport missile
that can slip undetected when launched from a Russian airplane.
Extensive sabotage plans in London, Washington, Paris, Bonn, Rome,
and other Western capitals have been revealed by KGB defector Oleg Lyalin in 1971, including plan to flood the London underground and deliver poison capsules to Whitehall. This disclosure triggered mass expulsion of Russian spies from London.
An "immensely detailed" plan to destroy "oil refineries and oil and gas pipelines across Canada from British Columbia to Montreal" (operation "Cedar") has been prepared, which took twelve years to complete.
A detailed plan to destroy the port of New York (target GRANIT); most vulnerable points of the port were marked at maps.
Russia
Alexander J. Motyl, professor of political science at Rutgers University argues that Russia's direct and indirect involvement in the violence in eastern Ukraine qualifies as a state-sponsored terrorism, and that those involved qualify as "terrorist groups." Russia's behaviour towards its neighbours was alleged by Dalia Grybauskaitė, the President of Lithuania to be evidence of state terrorism. Grybauskaitė stated that "Russia demonstrates the qualities of a terrorist state."
During the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Ukrainian Defence Minister Oleksii Reznikov defined Russian forces
as "not military – they are terrorists, representatives of the
terrorist state and this mark will be with them for a long time."
US Senators Richard Blumenthal and Lindsey Graham announced the introduction of a resolution calling on US president Joe Biden to designate Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism by the United States for its war on Ukraine and conduct elsewhere under Vladimir Putin. In the introduction, Senator Graham said, "Putin is a terrorist, and one of the most disruptive forces on the planet is Putin's Russia."
During the Russian invasion of Ukraine,
the following countries and international organisations have recognised
Russia as a "terrorist state" or a "state sponsor of terrorism":
In 2023 Poland security services detained a network of agents
recruited by GRU initially for surveillance of military transports, and
later tasked with arson, assassinations, terrorist attacks and
derailing of weapons transports headed to Ukraine.
While Saudi Arabia is often a secondary source of funds and support
for terror movements who can find more motivated and ideologically
invested benefactors, Saudi Arabia arguably remains the most prolific
sponsor of international Islamist terrorism, allegedly supporting groups as disparate as the Afghanistan Taliban, Al Qaeda, Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and the Al-Nusra Front.
Saudi Arabia is said to be the world's largest source of funds and promoter of Salafist jihadism, which forms the ideological basis of terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda, Taliban, Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant and others. In a December 2009 diplomatic cable to U.S. State Department staff (made public in the diplomatic cable leaks the following year), U.S. Secretary of StateHillary Clinton urged U.S. diplomats to increase efforts to block money from Gulf Arab states
from going to terrorists in Pakistan and Afghanistan, writing that
"Donors in Saudi Arabia constitute the most significant source of
funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide" and that "More needs to be
done since Saudi Arabia remains a critical financial support base for al-Qaeda, the Taliban, LeT and other terrorist groups." An August 2009 State Department cable also said that the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba, which carried out the 2008 Mumbai attacks, used a Saudi-based front company to fund its activities in 2005.
The violence in Afghanistan and Pakistan is partly bankrolled by wealthy, conservative donors across the Arabian Sea whose governments do little to stop them. Three other Arab countries which are listed as sources of militant money are Qatar, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates, all neighbors of Saudi Arabia.
Fifteen of the 19 hijackers of the four airliners who were responsible for 9/11 originated from Saudi Arabia, two from the United Arab Emirates, one from Egypt, and one from Lebanon. Osama bin Laden was born and educated in Saudi Arabia.
Starting in the mid-1970s the Islamic resurgence was funded by an abundance of money from Saudi Arabian oil exports. The tens of billions of dollars in "petro-Islam" largess obtained from the recently heightened price of oil funded an estimated "90% of the expenses of the entire faith."
Throughout the Sunni Muslim world, religious institutions for people both young and old, from children's madrassas to high-level scholarships received Saudi funding,
"books, scholarships, fellowships, and mosques" (for example, "more than 1500 mosques were built and paid for with money obtained from public Saudi funds over the last 50 years"),
along with training in the Kingdom for the preachers and teachers who
went on to teach and work at these universities, schools, mosques, etc.
The funding was also used to reward journalists and academics who
followed the Saudis' strict interpretation of Islam; and satellite
campuses were built around Egypt for Al Azhar, the world's oldest and most influential Islamic university.
The interpretation of Islam promoted by this funding was the strict, conservative Saudi-based Wahhabism or Salafism.
In its harshest form it preached that Muslims should not only "always
oppose" infidels "in every way", but "hate them for their religion ...
for Allah's sake", that democracy "is responsible for all the horrible wars of the 20th century", that Shia and other non-Wahhabi Muslims were "infidels", etc. According to former Prime Minister of SingaporeLee Kuan Yew,
while this effort has by no means converted all, or even most, Muslims
to the Wahhabist interpretation of Islam, it has done much to overwhelm
more moderate local interpretations of Islam in Southeast Asia, and to pitch the Saudi-interpretation of Islam as the "gold standard" of religion in minds of Muslims across the globe.
While the Saudi government denies claims that it exports
religious or cultural extremism, it is argued that by its nature,
Wahhabism encourages intolerance and promotes terrorism. Former CIA director James Woolsey described it as "the soil in which Al-Qaeda and its sister terrorist organizations are flourishing." In 2015, Sigmar Gabriel, Vice-Chancellor of Germany,
accused Saudi Arabia of supporting intolerance and extremism, saying:
"Wahhabi mosques are financed all over the world by Saudi Arabia. In Germany, many dangerous Islamists come from these communities."
In May 2016, The New York Times editorialised that the kingdom allied
to the U.S. had "spent untold millions promoting Wahhabism, the radical
form of Sunni Islam that inspired the 9/11 hijackers and that now inflames the Islamic State". Iranian Hamidreza Taraghi, a hard-line analyst with ties to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei,
said, “ISIS ideologically, financially and logistically is fully
supported and sponsored by Saudi Arabia...They are one and the same”.
One of the leaked Podesta emails from August 2014, addressed to John Podesta, identifies Saudi Arabia and Qatar as providing clandestine financial and logistic aid to ISIL and other "radical Sunni groups." The email outlines a plan of action against ISIL, and urges putting pressure on Saudi Arabia and Qatar to end their alleged support for the group. Whether the email was originally written by Hillary Clinton, her advisor Sidney Blumenthal, or another person is unclear.
Following the 2017 Tehran attacks, Iranian authorities such as members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the Iranian Minister of Foreign AffairsJavad Zarif, have accused Saudi Arabia of being behind the attacks.
In a Twitter post, Zarif wrote, "Terror-sponsoring despots threaten to
bring the fight to our homeland. Proxies attack what their masters
despise most: the seat of democracy". His statements referred to the
Saudi deputy crown prince Mohammad bin Salman's
threats against the country about a month earlier, in which bin Salman
revealed their policy to drag the regional conflict into Iranian
borders. Adel al-Jubeir,
Saudi Arabia's foreign minister, denied his country's involvement in
the attacks and said Riyadh had no knowledge of who was responsible for
them. He condemned terrorist attacks and killing of the innocent "anywhere it occurs".
In 2017 Bob Corker, then-chairman of the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations,
stated that the Saudi support for terrorism "dwarfs what Qatar is
doing"; the statement was made after Saudi Arabia cut ties with Qatar,
citing alleged support of terrorism by the latter.
According to Newsweek, the United Kingdom
government may decide to keep secret the results of an official inquiry
into the supporters of the Islamist militant groups in the country. The
findings are believed to have references to Saudi Arabia.
Following various accusations relating to sponsoring terrorism, Saudi Arabia became eager to join the Financial Action Task Force on Money Laundering
(FATF). However, a review conducted by the FATF on Saudi’s anti-money
laundering and counter-terrorist financing system, pointed that the
kingdom has not been able to tackle the risk of terrorism financing by third-party and facilitators, as well as individuals financing international terrorist organizations.
In 2019, Saudi Arabia has been granted a full membership of the
Financial Action Task Force (FATF) becoming the first Arab country
awarded this full membership. This was following the group’s Annual
General Meeting in Orlando. The group is responsible for designing and
issuing standards and policies that face money laundering and terrorist
financing.
Attorneys who defended Saudi Arabia in the 9/11 lawsuits, are reported to be representing crown prince Mohammed bin Salman
in the alleged targeting and assassination of an ex-intelligence
official from Saudi Arabia. The cases filed in August accused the prince
of committing human rights violations, murder, and torture.
Sudan
Sudan
was considered a state sponsor of terrorism by the US government from
1993 to 2020, and was targeted by United Nations sanctions in 1996 for
its role in sheltering suspects of an attempted assassination of Hosni Mubarak,
president of Egypt. Sudan has been suspected of harboring members of
the terrorist organizations Al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, Hamas, the Palestinian
Islamic Jihad, the Abu Nidal Organization, Jamaat al-Islamiyya, and the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, as well as supporting insurgencies in Uganda, Tunisia, Kenya, Ethiopia, and Eritrea. Voice of America News reported that Sudan is suspected by US officials of allowing the Lord's Resistance Army to operate within its borders.
In December 1994, Eritrea broke diplomatic relations with Sudan after a long period of increasing tension between the two countries due to a series of cross-border incidents involving the Eritrean Islamic Jihad (EIJ). Although the attacks did not pose a threat to the stability of the Government of Eritrea (the infiltrators have generally been killed or captured by government forces), the Eritreans believe the National Islamic Front (NIF) in Khartoum
supported, trained, and armed the insurgents. After many months of
negotiations with the Sudanese to try to end the incursions, the
Government of Eritrea concluded that the NIF did not intend to change
its policy and broke relations. Subsequently, the Government of Eritrea
hosted a conference of Sudanese opposition leaders in June 1995 in an
effort to help the opposition unite and to provide a credible
alternative to the present government in Khartoum. Eritrea resumed
diplomatic relations with Sudan on December 10, 2005. Since then, Sudan has accused Eritrea, along with Chad, of supporting rebels. The undemarcated border with Sudan previously posed a problem for Eritrean external relations.
Sudan was accused of allowing members of Hamas to travel to and live in the country, as well as raise funds,
though the presence of terrorists in Sudan has largely been a secondary
concern in terms of Sudanese sponsorship of terror to the facilitation
of material supplies to terrorist groups and the use of Sudan by Palestine-based terrorist organizations has declined in recent years. The Allied Democratic Forces,
designated as a terrorist organization by Uganda, is said to be
supported by Sudan and suspected of affiliation with widely designated
terrorist group Al-Shabaab
Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda are said to have been formerly based in Sudan during the early 1990s. The US and Israel have conducted operations against Sudanese targets affiliated with terrorist groups as recently as 2012.
Following the fall of Omar Al Bashir as the president of Sudan and the visit of the newly appointed Sudanese Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok
to Washington, the United States agreed to exchange ambassadors and
said it would consider dropping Sudan from its list of countries of
state sponsored terrorism.
On December 14, 2020, the United States officially removed Sudan from the list after it agreed to establish relations with Israel and pay $335m to US victims of terror attacks.
After the fall of Soviet Union, the Syrian government lost its primary military supplier and geo-political ally; and became a pariah state, isolated in the international arena for its destabilizing policies and severe domestic repression. The 30-year rule of Hafez al-Assad
was widely viewed as a force of destabilization in the region due to
Syrian military's occupation of Lebanon and Assad government's policies
of facilitating Iran-aligned terrorist groups. The European Community met on 10 November 1986 to discuss the Hindawi affair, an attempt to bomb an El Al flight out of London,
and the subsequent arrest and trial in the UK of Nizar Hindawi, who
allegedly received Syrian government support after the bombing, and
possibly beforehand.
The European response was to impose sanctions against Syria and state
that these measures were intended "to send Syria the clearest possible
message that what has happened is absolutely unacceptable."
After his succession in 2000, Bashar maintained core aspects of his father's foreign policy. On 14 February 2005, Rafic Hariri, the former prime minister of Lebanon, was assassinated in a massive truck-bomb explosion in Beirut, killing 22 people and injuring 220 more. Syrian government was widely blamed for perpetrating the terrorist attack. Bashar al-Assad
is widely regarded to have ordered the launch of the terrorist
operation that targeted Rafic Hariri. International investigations
revealed direct participation of members in the highest echelons of the
Syrian government. A UN investigation commission's report, published on 20 October 2005, revealed that high-ranking members of Syrian intelligence and the ruling Assad family had directly supervised the killing.
After the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, Bashar supported the Iraqi insurgency against the United States and the Iraqi interim government. Syrian government allowed numerous fighters to pass through Syrian borders to fight the American occupation forces. Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, Secretary-General of the Iraqi Ba'ath party, had close relations with Ba'athist Syria. After the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, al-Douri reportedly fled to Damascus, from where he co-ordinated with several anti-American militant groups during the Iraqi insurgency. Throughout the years of the anti-American insurgency in Iraq, thousands of al-Qaeda fighters entered Iraq through Syria. According to several sources, Assef Shawkat,
then-chief of Syrian military intelligence and Bashar al-Assad's
nephew, was reportedly a key Syrian facilitator of the logistic networks
of Al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI). Leaked cables of U.S. State Department contained remarks by American general David Petraeus which stated that "Bashar al-Asad was well aware that his brother-in-law 'Asif Shawqat, Director of Syrian Military Intelligence, had detailed knowledge of the activities of AQI facilitator Abu Ghadiya, who was using Syrian territory to bring foreign fighters and suicide bombers into Iraq".
In 2016, the US district court of Columbia
declared that the financial and logistical support of the Syrian
government was crucial for establishing a well-structured pathway for
the fighters of Al-Qaeda in Iraq in carrying out anti-American combat
operations throughout the Iraqi insurgency. The court further stated that Syria "became a crucial base for AQI", by hosting several associates of Abu Mus'ab al-Zarqawi
and leading commanders of the insurgency, and stated that Syria's
policies "led to the deaths of hundreds of Americans in Iraq". The
district court also found evidence of Syrian military intelligence assisting Al-Qaeda in Iraq and giving "crucial material support" to AQI militants who carried out the 2005 Amman bombings.
Francis Ricciardone, United States Ambassador to Turkey from 2011 to 2014, claims that Turkey had directly supported and worked with al-Nusra Front and Ahrar al-Sham in the Syrian conflict for a period of time. Syria, the United Arab Emirates, Russia, Iran and Egypt have designated Ahrar al-Sham a terrorist organization but the U.S. has not. The United Nations Security Council and many countries including the US class al-Nusra as a terrorist organisation; it was the official Syrian branch of al-Qaeda until July 2016, when it ostensibly split.
Al-Monitor
claimed in 2013 that Turkey was reconsidering its support for Nusra,
and Turkey's designation of the Nusra Front as a terrorist group since
June 2014 was seen as an indication of it giving up on the group.
Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia supported the Army of Conquest, a coalition of Salafist and Islamist Syrian rebel groups formed in March 2015 that included the al-Nusra Front and Ahrar al-Sham, but that also included non-al-Qaeda-linked Islamist factions, such as the Sham Legion, that have received covert arms support from the United States. According to The Independent,
some Turkish officials admitted giving logistical and intelligence
support to the command center of the coalition, but denied giving direct
help to al-Nusra, while acknowledging that the group would be
beneficiaries. It also reported that some rebels and officials claim
that material support in the form of money and weapons was given to the
coalition by Saudis with Turkey facilitating its passage.
The 2014 National Intelligence Organisation scandal
caused a major controversy in Turkey. The critiques of the government
claimed that the Turkish government has been providing arms to ISIL,while the Turkish government has maintained that the trucks were bound for the Bayırbucak Turkmens, who are opposed to the Syrian government. According to later academic study the arms were bound for the Free Syrian Army and rebel Syrian Turkmen.
In 2014, Sky News reported that the Turkish government had stamped passports of foreigners seeking to cross the border and join ISIL.
However, it was also reported by Sky News that ISIL members use fake
passports in order to get to Syria and Turkish officials can not easily
identify the authenticity of these documents.
YPG commander Meysa Abdo in an op-ed written for NY Times
on October 28 claimed there is evidence that Turkish forces have
allowed the Islamic State’s men and equipment to move back and forth
across the border. On November 29, Nawaf Khalil, a spokesman for Syria’s Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD), reportedly said that ISIL started to attack them from all four sides for the first time. Turkey's hesitation to help YPG and PYD in the fight against ISIL was reportedly caused by their affiliation with the PKK,
which is designated as a terrorist organization by the UN, EU and many
countries including US, but Turkey later gave support to the Kurdish Peshmerga from northern Iraq instead of the YPG, allowing 155 peshmerga to pass through Turkey with their arms who, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan told, would initially be about 2000 but PYD was reluctant to accept.[265][266] Ahmet Gerdi, a Peshmerga general, told the Turkish press that they appreciate Turkey's help in their fight against ISIL.
Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev and President Vladimir Putin accused Turkish officials of helping the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant in the aftermath of shootdown of a Russian Sukhoi Su-24 on 25 November. These accusations were rejected by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
In October 2015, the office of the Turkish Prime Minister had stated
that while smuggling of oil between Turkey and Syria had taken place,
the nation had been successful in effectively stopping it. In December 2015, the Russian ministry of defence
claimed it had evidence regarding the Turkish president and his
relatives being involved in oil trade with Islamic State. It also
published pictures purporting to show trucks carrying oil travelling
from oil installations under ISIL control into Turkey. Mark Toner, the deputy spokesperson for the United States Department of State,
rejected these claims stating there was no proof to back up the claims
of Turkish government being involved in oil trade with ISIL who was
selling oil in Turkey through middlemen. Russia also accused Turkey of
allowing weapons trade with ISIL. White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest meanwhile stated they had intelligence that most of the terror group's oil was being sold to the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad.
Several analysts meanwhile, have also claimed Russia's
accusations of Turkey's cooperation as baseless, while also stating that
a small amount of oil might end up in Turkey with cooperation from some
middlemen and corrupt officials but much of it is actually sold in
Syria. American officials meanwhile stated that the smuggling of oil by ISIL into Turkey was low. Adam Szubin, the acting Under Secretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence,
also stated that most of the oil was being sold in areas under Syrian
government's control, with only some going towards Turkey. Israel's Minister of Defence Moshe Ya'alon also accused Turkey of purchasing oil from the terror group in January 2016. In December, WikiLeaks released 57,000 emails of Turkish Minister of Energy and Natural Resources Berat Albayrak stolen by RedHack, a hacktivist group. 32 of them included him directing business affairs of Powertrans, which has been accused by Turkish media of transporting ISIL oil in past and whom Albayrak had denied having links with. The Independent however had stated in past that the reports of Powertrans smuggling ISIL oil had no concrete proof.
Some Arab and Syrian media agencies claimed that the village of Az-Zanbaqi (الزنبقي) in Jisr al-Shughur's countryside has become a base for a massive amount of UyghurTurkistan Islamic Party
militants and their families in Syria, estimated at around 3,500. They
further accused the Turkish intelligence of being involved in
transporting these Uyghurs via Turkey to Syria, with the aim of using
them first in Syria to help Jabhat Al-Nusra and gain combat experience fighting against the Syrian Army before sending them back to Xinjiang to fight against China if they manage to survive.
In 2016, Jordan's king accused Turkey of helping Islamist militias in Libya and Somalia.
In 2019, the Libyan National Army accused the Turkish authorities of supporting terrorist groups in Libya
for many years. They added that the Turkish support has evolved from
just logistic support to a direct interference using military aircraft
to transport mercenaries, as well as ships carrying weapons, armored
vehicles and ammunition to support terrorism in Libya.
United Arab Emirates
No official connection to state sponsored terrorism was found between the United Arab Emirates government to terrorists, however the UAE has been listed as a place used by investors to raise funds to support militants in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Taliban and their militant partners the Haqqani network has been reported to raise funds through UAE-based businesses.
The United States Library of Congress
Research Division in its 2007 report reported the UAE to be a major
transit point for terrorists, stating that more than half of the 9/11
hijackers directly flew out of Dubai International Airport to the United States. The report also indicated that UAE based banks were utilized by the hijackers.
The United Arab Emirates has been fighting alongside General Khalifa Haftar’s army in the Libya war. As mentioned in a December, 2019 International Peace Institute report, the army led by Haftar comprises militias.
Meanwhile, according to another report, UAE has been accused by the
United Nations of breaching its 1970 arms embargo imposed on Libya, in a
376-page report. Weapons obtained by the Haftar army, were Pantsir S-1 surface-to-air missile system, which is “a configuration only the United Arab Emirates uses”.
In the airstrikes led by the United Arab Emirates, more than 100
civilians have been reportedly killed and injured, while 100,000 have
been reported to be displaced.
On 30 April 2020, Financial Action Task Force said that the UAE’s actions to combat terrorist financing and money laundering were not enough. The watchdog acclaimed that it will now put region’s financial centre Dubai
under a year-long observation and monitor 10 of 11 missing pointers
required to improve laundering along with the financing of terrorism and
weapons of mass destruction.
OFAC
sanctioned 16 entities and individuals, in businesses spreading across
the Horn of Africa, the UAE and Cyprus. This business network was
alleged of raising and laundering millions of dollars for Al-Shabaab.
The US Treasury Department stated that al-Shabaab’s key financial
facilitator is Dubai-based Haleel Commodities L.L.C., along with its
subsidiaries and branches in Somalia, Kenya, Uganda, and Cyprus. The
influential businesspersons serving al-Shabaab’s financial facilitators
included, UAE-based Qemat Al Najah General Trading and Mohamed Artan
Robel; Kenya-based Faysal Yusuf Dini and Mohamed Jumale Ali Awale;
Finland-based Somali citizen Hassan Abdirahman Mahamed; and
Somalia-based Abdikarin Farah Mohamed and Farhan Hussein Hayder.
The United Kingdom supported Ulster loyalistparamilitaries during The Troubles in Northern Ireland. During the 1970s, a group of loyalists known as the "Glenanne gang" carried out numerous shootings and bombings against Irish Catholics and Irish nationalists in an area of Northern Ireland known as the "murder triangle". It also carried out some cross-border attacks in the Republic of Ireland. The group included members of the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) paramilitary group as well as Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR) soldiers and Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) police officers. It was allegedly commanded by the Intelligence Corps and RUC Special Branch. Evidence suggests that the group was responsible for the deaths of about 120 civilians. The Cassel Report
investigated 76 killings attributed to the group and found evidence
that UDR soldiers and RUC policemen were involved in 74 of those. One former member, RUC officer John Weir, claimed his superiors knew of the group's activities but allowed it to continue. Attacks attributed to the group include the Dublin and Monaghan bombings (which killed 34 civilians), the Miami Showband killings and the Reavey and O'Dowd killings.
The UK has also been accused of providing intelligence material,
training, firearms, explosives and lists of people that members of the
security forces wanted to have killed to Loyalist paramilitaries.
The Stevens Inquiries concluded that the Force Research Unit (FRU), a covert unit of the Intelligence Corps, helped loyalists to kill people, including civilians.
FRU commanders say their plan was to make loyalist groups "more
professional" by helping them target IRA activists and prevent them
killing civilians.
The Stevens Inquiries found evidence only two lives were saved and that
FRU was involved with at least 30 loyalist killings and many other
attacks – many of the victims uninvolved civilians. One of the most prominent killings was that of the Republican solicitor Pat Finucane. A FRU double-agent also helped ship weapons to loyalists from South Africa. Stevens would later claim that members of the security forces attempted to obstruct his team's investigation.
Starting in 1959, under the Eisenhower administration, the US government had the Central Intelligence Agency recruit operatives in Cuba to carry out terrorism and sabotage, kill civilians, and cause economic damage.
Following the failed invasion at the Bay of Pigs, the US massively
escalated its sponsorship of terrorism against Cuba. In late 1961, using
the military
and the Central Intelligence Agency, the US government engaged in an
extensive campaign of state-sponsored terrorism against civilian and
military targets in Cuba. The terrorist attacks killed significant
numbers of civilians. The US armed, trained, funded and directed the
terrorists, most of whom were Cuban expatriates. Terrorist attacks were
planned at the direction and with the participation of US government
employees and launched from US territory. The terrorist attacks directed by the CIA continued through at least 1965, and the CIA was ordered to intensify the campaign in 1969. Andrew Bacevich, Professor of International Relations and History at Boston University, wrote of the campaign:
In
its determination to destroy the Cuban Revolution, the Kennedy
administration heedlessly embarked upon what was, in effect, a program
of state-sponsored terrorism... the actions of the United States toward
Cuba during the early 1960s bear comparison with Iranian and Syrian
support for proxies engaging in terrorist activities against Israel
The United States had trained militant Cuban exiles Luis Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch as part of this state-sponsored terrorism campaign. They are widely understood to be responsible for the Cubana 455 bombing, the deadliest instance of airline terrorism in the western hemisphere prior to the attacks of September 2001 in New York and Washington. The US Justice Department
recorded Bosch as having participated in at least thirty terrorist
attacks, and sought to deport him when he entered the US illegally.
Bosch was released by the US Government without charges at the
instruction of George H. W. Bush, and Bosch was granted residency in the country.
Starting in 1979, the US worked alongside the UK and Saudi Arabia to fund and arm the Mujahedeen under Operation Cyclone as part of the Reagan Doctrine, which arguably contributed to the creation of the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. However, scholars such as Jason Burke, Steve Coll, Peter Bergen, Christopher Andrew, and Vasily Mitrokhin have argued that Osama bin Laden was "outside of CIA
eyesight" and that support from reliable sources are lacking for "the
claim that the CIA funded bin Laden or any of the other Arab volunteers
who came to support the mujahideen." However, Le Figaro said that Osama bin Laden flew to Dubai for 10 days for treatment at an American hospital two months before September 11, and was visited there by a local CIA agent, which were denied by the hospital and the CIA.
The US has been accused of arming and training a political and fighting force of some Kurds in Syria, the People's Protection Units (YPG), which is a sister organization of Turkey's Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). The PKK is listed in the US Department of State's Foreign Terrorist Organizations list, and described as "a US-designated terrorist organization" in the CIA's World Factbook, but the YPG is not.
In 2019, the National Assembly of Venezuela designated the colectivos (irregular, leftist Venezuelan community organizations that support Nicolás Maduro, the Bolivarian government and the Great Patriotic Pole)
as terrorist groups due to their "violence, paramilitary actions,
intimidation, murders and other crimes", declaring their acts as
state-sponsored terrorism.
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Czechia (16 November 2022)
Estonia (18 October 2022)
European Parliament (23 November 2022)
Latvia (11 August 2022)
Lithuania (10 May 2022)
NATO Parliamentary Assembly (21 November 2022)
Netherlands (24 November 2022)
OSCE Parliamentary Assembly (4 July 2023)
Poland (14 December 2022)
Slovakia (16 February 2023)
Ukraine (14 April 2022)
United States Senate (27 July 2022).jpg)
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