Historical Dictionary of Terrorism Third Edition

552 • PREVENTION OF TERRORISM ACTSrelationship indicating that wars, insurgencies, and terrorist attacks areall converging to a universal pattern of several smaller attacks of lessermortality as opposed to fewer larger conflicts of high mortality.The implications for both international security and counterterrorismpolicy include the following: Despite the different ideological,ethnonationalist, or sectarian motivations of the variousinsurgencies and terrorist movements throughout the world, allof these different groups are converging toward a common modeof operations. The new form of warfare involves smaller nonstategroups executing multiple attacks and amplifying their effectivenessthrough the force multiplier effects of netwar, the contagion effectof mass media, Internet coverage, and emergent intelligence. Thisresult seems confirmed by Robert Pape’s research, which found thatsuicide terrorism is not a monopoly of Islamic fundamentalistsbut is being adopted by dissimilar groups throughout the world. Alsothe evident convergence over time between the power functions forwars, insurgencies, and terrorism would indicate that while therewill be fewer major high-intensity conflicts, there will be growingnumbers of low-intensity conflicts. The convergence of the twopower functions, one for terrorism within developed nations and theother for terrorism in developing nations, would seem to indicatethat the lethality of conflicts will lessen over time in the developingnations but may increase over time in developed nations. This wouldseem to explain the increase in mass-casualty attacks observed in thedeveloped nations, such as the World Trade Center and Pentagonattacks of September 11, 2001, the Madrid railway bombings of2004, and the London Underground bombings of 2005. Counterterrorismefforts should then be directed more to identifying smallterrorist groups and preempting their actions as well as finding waysto disrupt or offset the netwar coordination of smaller groups.PREVENTION OF TERRORISM ACTS. Originally passed by theBritish parliament after the Irish Republican Army (IRA) expandedits bombing campaign from Northern Ireland to England in 1974,later expanded in 1984 and in 1989, and supplemented by the NorthernIreland Emergency Provisions Act of 1996, together these actscriminalized the withholding of information about terrorism frompolice or military authorities unless the person having such informationcould claim duress or other “reasonable excuse.” British authoritiesused these acts to force family members and acquaintances of