CONFLICT BAROMETER 2008

6 Conflict Barometer 2008
army takeover in Turkey, which had experienced three
successful military coups between 1960 and 1980. At
the time, tensions had been rising in the country, with
the Constitutional Court considering a case against AKP
over alleged anti-secular activities. On July 14, 86 people,
including leading figures from the army, business,
and the secular press, were indicted for - among other
things - allegedly forming an armed terror group and attempting
to overthrow the government by force.
number of coups
30
25
20
15
10
5
0
1945
Coups d’État and Attempted Coups d’État 1945 to
2008
Coups d’État
1950
1955
1960
1965
1970
1975
1980
Terrorism
Terrorism remained an important measure of conflict
conduct in 2008. The vast majority of this year’s terrorist
attacks could be attributed to distinct conflicts according
to the HIIK methodology. Here, different patterns
of terrorism could be distinguished: On the one
hand, terrorist means were used by local actors to pursue
secular aims, such as self-determination or national
power. In 2008, this was the case e.g. in Spain with
ETA trying to force the Spanish government to grant the
Basque provinces independence [→ Spain (ETA/Basque
provinces)], in Northern Ireland [→ United Kingdom
(IRA et. al/Northern Ireland)], or on the French island
of Corsica, where separatists bombed public buildings
as well as holiday homes of non-Corsicans [→ France
(FLNC/Corsica)]. In these conflicts, both the scope of
the means employed as well as the resulting damage
were relatively small. Terrorist attacks by secular local
groups caused large damage in other parts of the world,
e.g. in Mexico [→ Mexico (drug cartels)] and Sri Lanka
[→ Sri Lanka (LTTE)].
On the other hand, the transnational terrorist network
al-Quaeda and its affiliated groups, motivated by fundamentalist
religious faith, committed numerous attacks of
varying scale which caused scores of casualties and severe
damage. One of the most serious single assaults
was the coordinated attack on various hotels, a railway
station, and other public places in the Indian city of Mumbai,
claiming almost 200 lives. The attackers seemed
to have come from Pakistan, where al-Queda-related Islamist
insurgents waged a full-scale war against the government,
often employing terrorist tactics such as suicide
attacks. Pakistan was a major refuge of Taliban
1985
1990
1995
2000
2005
.
from Afghanistan and their supporters as well as Islamist
insurgents from Uzbekistan. Pakistan’s northwestern
tribal regions were home to indigenous pro-Taliban militants,
some of whom now oppose the growing Taliban
influence. Pakistani counterinsurgency operations [→
Pakistan (Islamists); Pakistan (North and South Waziristan)]
continued on a highly violent level. The fighting
caused more than 300,000 people to flee. US forces
repeatedly entered Pakistani territory in order to target
Taliban positions [→ Afghanistan (Taliban)]. During one
of these operations, a violent incident between US and
Pakistani troops occurred [→ Pakistan - USA].
In Afghanistan, terrorist attacks by Taliban forces on
government and international troops as well as civilians
rose. Iraq remained the country where the population
had to suffer the highest number of terrorist attacks in
the Middle East and Maghreb, conducted by several insurgent
groups including al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI). Besides
Afghanistan and Iraq, al-Qaeda was also active in Algeria,
under the name of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb
(AQIM). While AQIM and AQI were partly contained and
lost strength in Iraq and Algeria, AQIM spread to other
Maghreb countries such as Mauritania. Also, militant
groups affiliated to al-Qaeda conducted terrorist assaults
in other countries, e.g. Fatah al-Islam in Lebanon and
Syria, and the Islamic Jihad and the Yemeni Soldiers
Brigade in Yemen.
Islamist terrorism was, however, not confined to Asia and
the Middle East but continued to be a key feature of the
secession conflicts in Russia’s troubled North Caucasus
republics [→ Russia (Islamist rebels/Chechnya) et
al.], where rebels increasingly resorted to terrorist warfare
aiming for the establishment of an independent Caucasian
Emirate based on Islamic law. Among these conflicts,
the Ingush one was the most violent this year.
In contrast, and unlike the previous years, western Europe
did not see any Islamist terrorist attacks in 2008.
Nevertheless, tensions remained high. In February, the
German Ministry of the Interior and the Federal Criminal
Police Office (BKA) announced that they suspected al-
Qaeda of planning to commit further terrorist attacks in
Germany. German federal police seized two suspected
terrorists from a Dutch passenger aircraft at Cologne airport
on September 29. Both suspects were later released
due to lack of evidence. On December 9, a
Lebanese man was sentenced to life in prison over failed
plans to bomb passenger trains in Germany in July 2006.
In Great Britain, five men were arrested under the Terrorism
Act in a series of dawn raids across the Birmingham
area. In November, a British secret intelligence report
stated that the UK would remain ”a high-priority target”
for al-Qaeda for the foreseeable future. In Denmark,
two men were sentenced to twelve and seven years in
prison, respectively, for preparing a terrorist attack. In
Spain, eleven Muslim men were accused of conspiring to
blow up part of Barcelona’s transport network. A further
eight people were held in Spain on suspicion of helping
Islamic militants.
The only terrorist attacks in 2008 that could not be attributed
to a conflict according to the HIIK methodology
were several bombimgs in the Somali autonomous