CONFLICT WITH TERRORIST FORCES AFTER SUPPORTING THEM
Why a terrorist organisation ends up going against the state that supports it?
There is an old saying in Spain, which translates to “breed crows and they will
eventually take your eyes out”, which refers to how sometimes some people might
forget what helped them became what they are and in some occasions they end up
turning against their benefactors. This metaphor can sometimes be applied to terrorist
organisations.
Supporting terrorist Organisations is a very risky endeavour for a number of
reasons. One is that the state who supports them might find itself as a culprit from the
actions that the organisation in question has performed, even if the state was not
involved in its planning, and second allowing a group formed by ideological fanatics to
become strong an powerful could eventually lead to become a problem by itself, a
problem that the state itself will have to face them by themselves.
However, this keeps happening. There have been many cases, specially after the
Second Word War in which for a number of reasons a state as resorted to supporting
ideologically radical organisations for political purposes, and in many cases this has
ended up backfiring and resulting in the organisation that the state had originally
supporting turning against it and now having to fight it.
Introduction
Theory & Literature Review
The first topic to talk about would be to see why some countries decide to start
supporting terrorist organisations.
Cases
Ulster
The case of the Ulster Unionist groups, and the British government is a good
example of the benefits but also of the dangers of arming radical groups, specially when
it comes to deal with anti-terrorism activities. During the period of the Troubles, that is
that period of communal violence in Northern Ireland that lasted from the mid-60s until
the mid 90s, that faced the catholic Nationalists on the one hand and the Protestant
Unionists on the other.
The conflict had began because after the Partition of Ireland in the 1920s the
United Kingdom had kept the Northern Counties due to the majority of Protestant
Unionists that lived in that region. However, this partition had also put many Catholic
Nationalists inside this new Province. This new territory, called Ulster, had its own
Parliament and First Minister, but it was completely controlled by the Protestants, who
enacted harsh policies of discrimination and segregation against the Catholics. For
example through gerrymandering and restricted voting they manage to rule in areas
where they even where the minority. This resulted in the creation of a series of
Republican paramilitary organisations who fought for a union with Ireland and a series
of groups that rose to fight against them.
The biggest group in this conflict was the Irish Republican Army (IRA) or more
precisely the Provisional IRA, which was a more radical nationalist splinter from the
original IRA that by the 1970s had become the biggest and most popular paramilitary
groups among the nationalists. When the British army intervened during the conflict,
hoping to end the violence, it found in the IRA the biggest opposition as well as the
biggest challenge.
During this conflict there had been a lot of accusations of collusion between the
British military forces and the Royal Ulster Constabulary with Unionist Paramilitary
Organisations, such as the Ulster Defence Association and the Ulster Volunteer Force.
These groups had been formed to fight the IRA and during the intervention of the
British Army in Northern Ireland they received support, both in weapons and
intelligence by the army and the Constabulary. Investigations after the Troubles showed
how there had been collusion with these groups. The idea of this was to maintain the
pressure over the IRA and other Republican forces. They did this by engaging in very
similar actions as the IRA, which included the targeting of civilians as well as the
bombing of catholic areas. However, none of this seem to stop the British army and the
Constabulary to collaborate with them. By the beginning of the 1980s these groups had
achieved a great level of relevance over their communities, they were not able to defeat
the IRA however, but instead their actions against civilians helped the Republicans with
their recruitment and justified their uncompromising actions.
This however wouldn’t be the biggest problem in the British effort. By 1985 the
government of Margaret Thatcher signed a deal with the Irish Government by which
they would be consulted on issues of the conflict, amidst ending it quicker. This
however lead to a huge backlash with the Protestant Unionists, for them, the Republic
of Ireland had no right to
Taliban
Tamil Tigers
Common features
Radicalism
External Factors
Internal Factors
Conclusion
