Historical Dictionary of Terrorism Third Edition

ARMED RESISTANCE UNIT • 47the strongest Islamic fundamentalist terrorist formation in Algeria.Many militants may have abandoned the GIA for the GSPC due to thelatter’s declared policy of avoiding the targeting of civilians.ARMED PROPAGANDA. Armed propaganda, or “propaganda by thedeed,” refers to the use of violent force not so much to achieve a tacticalobjective through the direct physical effects of the action, but rather tofocus attention on the symbolic, political importance of the action or todraw attention to the executing group’s demands. In its earliest activitiesthe Basque Fatherland and Liberty (ETA) group tended to bomb orvandalize Spanish civil war memorials, actions of armed propagandathat had little effect on Spanish domination in the Basque provinces butones that strongly signaled a Basque rejection of Spanish hegemony.While campaigns of armed propaganda can be directed towardsymbolic, nonliving targets, they can also be more lethal. The KurdishWorkers’ Party (PKK) used to occupy villages in southeasternTurkey, murder scores of Turkish civilian men, women, and children,and then leave before the Turkish army could arrive on the scene.While the murder of those civilians could hardly serve any militarypurpose, such events would serve to portray the Turkish army as ineffectivein protecting Turkish nationals, who would then be terrorizedinto leaving those regions claimed by the PKK terrorists as Kurdishlands. Similarly, the 1979 seizure of the U.S. embassy in Tehran canbe considered an act of armed propaganda meant to demonstrate thepowerlessness of the United States to intervene in Iranian affairs.Armed propaganda is by no means solely a tactic of nonstateterrorist groups. Brilliantly executed counterterrorism actions orpolice raids on terrorist hideouts, orchestrated with favorable massmedia coverage, could also be undertaken to produce a psychologicalimpact on insurgent or terrorist groups far out of proportion to thephysical effects of the act itself. An action such as the capture by theU.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) of the Lebanese hijackingsuspect Fawaz Younis on the high seas is meant not only to bringone suspected terrorist to trial, but also to serve notice to other wouldbehijackers that a similar fate could await them, and so to deter themfrom future hijackings. Ordinarily, when such tactics are being usedby counterterrorism forces, they are called psychological operations.ARMED RESISTANCE UNIT. Pseudonym for the RevolutionaryArmed Task Force.