Historical Dictionary of Terrorism Third Edition

210 • GEOGRAPHIC INFORMATION SYSTEMSstate terror. If the object of the genocide is to physically annihilatea group altogether, then it would be considered a form of democide,that is, if the group being annihilated is the direct and only ultimatetarget of the action, which is undertaken as an end in itself ratherthan just to send a message to other potentially targeted groups. If theobject of the genocide campaign is merely to remove or exile a groupinconvenient to the nationalist or territorial aspirations of the regime,or to send a message to other groups, then such genocide would be aform of terrorism or state terror. The Nazi campaign against the Jews,which was intended to exterminate all Jews worldwide in the eventof a German victory in World War II and which was undertaken withgreat secrecy, is an example of pure genocide as an end in itself. TheNazi liquidation of the Czech village of Lidice in retaliation for theassistance that the villagers gave to the assassins of the Nazi governorof occupied Bohemia was meant to warn all potential anti-Nazipartisans against collaborating with the Allies and so is an instanceof terrorist genocide.Ethnic cleansing, a term that became current in the Croatian andBosnian wars for independence from Yugoslavia in the early 1990s,refers to a limited form of genocide aimed at driving out members ofa rival ethnic group so that one’s own ethnic group can lay exclusiveclaim to that territory. When carried out by paramilitary groups orcivilians, ethnic cleansing is a form of terrorism and when carriedout by regular army units, as in the attempted Yugoslavian “OperationHorseshoe” in Kosovo in late 1998 and early 1999, it could beconsidered a form of state terror.GEOGRAPHIC INFORMATION SYSTEMS (GIS). Counterterrorismoperations are increasingly using geographic informationsystems, global positioning systems, and remote sensing in orderto identify terrorist training camps, munitions depots, and hideouts.Geographic information systems are computer programs designed toacquire, store, and analyze data of various sorts that are geographicallyreferenced to the earth. Such data could include the topographyand geology of a given terrain, its man-made structures, and even culturaland demographic information about the inhabitants of a givenarea. In addition, GIS can also incorporate temporal information,such as intercepted communications and changing compositionalinformation (e.g., presence of tents or vehicles) based on remote