World's Deadliest Terrorists: Tamil Tigers, Shining Path, Aum Shinrikyo and Al Qaeda

Ethnic separatists, similar to the pre-World War I terror group Black Hand of Serbia,[1] are replacing the anarchists and left-wing terrorist groups of the later part of the twentieth century like the "red armies" of the 1970's and 1980s (Red Army Faction, aka Baader-Meinhof Gang; Japanese Red Army; Italy's Red Brigade). Ethnic and Sacred terrorism has offered a longer-lasting and more powerful base of power than ideological groups because the former draw on a larger reservoir of public support. The Palestinian groups, as well as Kurdish[2] extremists in Turkey and Iraq, Tamil Tigers of Sri Lanka,[3] Al Qaeda, Shining Path, and the Basque ETA[4] of Spain are examples of terrorist wings that work in two camps: political and military. The political wing controls social activities, education, and business, and the military wing employs violence against enemies with the ubiquitous use of assassination, bombings, and hijackings.[5]

Tamil Tigers

The Tamil Tigers, based in Sri Lanka (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) and established in 1972, have used suicide bombings more effectively than any terror group in history. In their pursuit to establish a separate Tamil state in Sri Lanka, separate from the Buddhist Sinhalese majority, suicide bombings have been used to kill a Sri Lankan president and an Indian prime minister. The Tigers have as many as 100,000 deaths to their credit.[6] "Of all the suicide-capable terrorist groups we have studied, they are the most ruthless, the most disciplined," claimed Rohan Gunaratna of the Center for the Study of Terrorist and Political Violence at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland.

The Tamil Tigers are responsible for half the suicide attacks in the world and an inspiration and model for groups like the Al Aqsa suicide bombers of the Middle East. Gunaratna noted that the attack on the destroyer USS Cole by Al Qaeda in 2000 was similar to a Tiger attack on a Sri Lankan naval ship in 1991. A leader of the aquatic suicide attacks by the Tigers boasted in a BBC interview that the USS Cole attack had been copied from the Tigers.[7]

MRTA and Sendero Luminosa

Called "perhaps the most uncompromisingly brutal" of terror groups past or present that acted between 1980 and 1992, the Sendero Luminosa (Shining Path), the Maoist Peruvian group is responsible for the deaths of 27,000 within that time frame. The group's target was Peruvian officials though many of the group's victims were the peasants they were fighting for when they were accused of collaborating with Peruvian officials. The Shining Path is one of many Latin American terror groups that have fought their perception of colonialism ever since the Spanish invaded South America and the Caribbean islands.[8]

Abimael Guzman, a Peruvian, started the Shining Path when the writings of Marx and the leadership of Castro inspired him. The MRTA (Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement) was named after the 16^th century Incan warrior Tupac Amaru who fought the invading Spaniards and was executed by them. Like the Shining Path, the MRTA fights the Peruvian government, especially the status quo that allows government corruption. Where the Shining Path was Mao-inspired, the MRTA found its motivation from Marx. Founded in 1983 by Victor Polay, Nestor Cerpa, and Miguel Rincon, the group was originally with the American Popular Revolutionary Alliance (APRA). The MRTA took on a Robin Hood persona. Money garnered from hijacking grocery trucks, extorting businesses, and protecting drug traffickers was fed back to Peruvian peasants. In 1987 they overpowered the entire police force of Juanjui, Peru (pop. 20,000). Peruvian President Garcia's retaliation resulted in the death of numerous MRTA members.

Lori Berenson, an American who attended MIT and went to South America as a journalist, became fascinated with South American culture and was accused of allying herself with a member of MRTA. Her arrest caused an international incident and she was sentenced to a twenty-year sentence for allegedly subletting an apartment to an MRTA leader. She claimed she did not know the identity of the person. She is incarcerated in a Peruvian prison and is up for parole in the year 2010.

Aum Shinrikyo and Super Terror

Nerve gases were refined in the later part of the twentieth century. The British developed a particularly deadly potion called VX that was 100 times the potency of the G-agent. The U.S. government produced large quantities in the 1960s. A 1998 U.S. intelligence report claimed that Al-Qaeda was producing chemical weapons in Khartoum, Sudan, which seemed to be confirmed by Al-Qaeda members during questioning in 2001.[9] In 1994 and 1995, the Japanese cult Aum Shinrikyo, after trying to cause mass casualties in Japan with anthrax and botulinum, used Sarin to injure thousands and kill twelve.[10]

Aum Shinrikyo (Aum Supreme Truth) was founded in 1987 by Shoko (sometimes spelled Soko) Asahara, a partially blind owner of a chain of yoga schools in Japan, who was interested in medicinal herbs and became a self-appointed prophet after a visit to the Himalayas in 1986. Asahara perceived a vision on a Japanese beach that led him to believe that Armageddon would come at the end of the twentieth century and only a god-like race from Japan led by him would survive the chaos. Shoko Asahara claimed admiration for Hitler and believed he possessed superpowers, like levitation, that he promised to teach his disciples. He changed his name from Chizuo Matsumoto to the "holy" Shoko Asahara. He continued his religious activities and named his group Aum Shinrikyo. Aum is Sanskrit for the "powers of destruction and creation in the universe," and Shinrikyo is the "teaching of the supreme truth." The goal of the group is to teach the truth about the creation and destruction of the universe. Ashara preached to his followers the coming of Armageddon precipitated by a poisonous gas cloud that would be sent from the U.S. to engulf Japan. The poisoning would spur a global conflict of nerve gas and nuclear weapons, followed by a thousand years of peace and a messiah who would create heaven on earth.

Aum Shinrikyo has been called the only "superterrorist" organization of the twentieth century, being the only group to successfully use a weapon of mass destruction in the form of Sarin. Jessica Stern wrote in her 2001 book The Ultimate Terrorists that the 1995 poison-gas attack was administered with haste and did not show the Aum Shinrikyo's real potential. Sarin gas was dispersed on five Tokyo subway trains by ten terrorists.

Aum's intentions were ambitious. The group had created a large cache of deadly weapons in hopes of using them on a large Japanese city. They had acquired an ounce of VX gas reportedly enough to kill 15,000, a large amount of the extremely deadly bacterium clostridium botulinum, [11] and supposedly enough Sarin to kill millions. They had purchased a Russian Mi-17 combat helicopter and two remote-controlled flying vehicles to be used in dispersing deadly agents. In cooperation with North Korea, the Soviet mafia, and Iran, they had allegedly tried to smuggle nuclear materials out of Russia into Japan through the Ukraine. They had traveled to Africa to acquire the Ebola virus and hoped to procure Russian nuclear warheads. By the mid 1990's they had accumulated 1.4 billion in assets. [12]

The cult purchased television time to broadcast propaganda programs to be viewed in Russia. Aum's aim was to attract Russian cash, scientists, and KGB veterans. A Russian official provided Aum a blueprint from a Russian Sarin production plant and information on how to manufacture Sarin. A Russian government investigation into the cult discovered that membership, particularly among disaffected students, reached 35,000 "with another 55,000 lay followers who attended Aum seminars on an occasional basis." This membership number dwarfed the 10,000 Japanese followers.[13] The Japanese government continues to monitor the cult, which still has hundreds if not thousands of members in the early twenty-first century.

Promises to Keep from The Base

In 1996 Osama bin Laden, well known as a significant sponsor of Islamic terrorist groups throughout the world and a kingpin in the Al Qaeda (The Base) terror group, issued a Declaration of War against the United States. He encouraged Muslims worldwide to kill U.S. soldiers. Al Qaeda strikes against American targets that occurred before the September 11, 2001 attack included the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center; 1996 bombing of U.S. barracks in Saudi Arabia; 1998 bombing of U.S. Embassies of East Africa (killing 300 and injuring 5,000); 2000 bombing of the U.S.S. Cole (17 sailors killed).

In May 1998 bin Laden brazenly outlined his objectives in a press conference by announcing a religious decree that encouraged all Muslims to kill all Americans, whether they be soldiers or civilians, and expanded his jihad to all Christians who conquered Muslim lands. He announced to the world that he had formed a new sacred terror group, in concert with previously competing Egyptian terrorist leaders, called the International Islamic Front for JihadAgainst the Jews and Crusaders. Operation Desert Storm, the United States' and its allies' operation against Sadam Hussein's unprovoked attack on Kuwait, was answered in the Arab world with the cries of "al-Slibiyyah" - "A Crusade!" The medieval crusades of the Catholic Church were being recalled and denounced.

In a declaration in February 1998 in Pakistan, bin Laden announced that many key terrorist groups had joined an alliance between Al Qaeda[14] and the International Islamic Front for Jihad Against the Jews and Crusaders, which included the Egyptian Islamic Jihad,[15] the Egyptian al-Gama'at al-Islaimiyya,[16] and the Harakat ul-Ansar.[17] At the end of the statement bin Laden clearly threatened the United States by saying Americans "were very easy targets." He also added "you will see the results of this in a very short time."[18]

End Notes:

[1]The Black Hand [Crna Ruka] was responsible for various terror acts against German and Austrian government officials. Their most notorious act was the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand in June of 1914 that helped trigger the subsequent Great War,which started in earnest in August of 1914. The Black Hand, founded in Belgrade, Serbia, in 1911 with the aim of uniting all Serbs, would drastically change European history for decades.

[2] The most prominent of the Kurdish groups is the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) devoted through a Marxist-Leninist ideology to fight Turkish and Iraqi forces.

[3] Tamil Tigers are a Sri Lankan separatist guerrilla organization founded in 1972. The Tigers seek an independent Tamil state from the hated Buddhist Sinhalese majority of the island.

[4] Basque ETA (Euzkadita Azkatasuma) is a radical Basque separatist organization that aims its violence against the Spanish government. ETA has had links to the Irish Republican Army, as well as Cuban and Libyan governments. Responsible for 807 deaths through the year of 2003 [wikipedia.org].

[5] Laqueur, Walter. "Postmodern Terrorism," Foreign Affairs, Sept/Oct.1996, pp. 24-36.

[6] Townshend, Charles. Terrorism - A Very Short Introduction, Oxford/New York, 2002, p. 75.

[7] Waldman, Amy. "Tigers model for suicide bombings," The New York Times, January 14, 2003, p. 1.

[8] Henderson, Harry. Global Terrorism, Checkmark, NY, 2001, p. 62.

[9] Benjamin, Daniel and Simon, Steve. The Age of Sacred Terror, Random House, New York, New York, 2002, pp. 353-370.

[10] Simon, Lewis M. "Weapons of Mass Destruction - An ominous new chapter opens on the twentieth century's ugliest legacy." National Geographic, November, 2002, p. 31.

[11] A bacterium that produces the toxin botulin. Five hundred grams would could theoretically kill the entire human population.

[12] Stern, Jessica. The Ultimate Terrorists, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2001. pp. 60 -65.

[13] Mangold, Tom and Goldberg, Jeff. Plague Wars - A True Story of Biological Warfare, St. Martin's Press, New York, 1999, p. 342.

[14] Hassan, Nasra. "Al-Qaeda's Understudy," The Atlantic Monthly, June 2004, p. 44.

[15] Responsible for the 1983 bombing of Beirut U.S. Embassy and the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut. Possibly a cover name for the Shi'ite organization Hezbollah (The Party of God).

[16] Egyptian based Islamic group established in the 1970s whose spiritual leader Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman was convicted on the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Responsible for assassination attempt on Egypt's Hosni Mubarak in 1995 and the 1997 attack on tourists at Luxor, Egypt (aka IG or Islamic Group).

[17] Jeffrey, Grant R. War on Terror - Unfolding Bible Prophecy, Frontier Research Publications, Toronto, Ontario, 2002, pp. 27-30. (Harakat ul-Ansar is also known as Haraka ul-Mujahedin, HUM, an Islamic militant group based in Pakistan that operates primarily in Kashmir. Its original focus was to fight Soviet occupation in Afghanistan. Fazlur Rehman Khalil, one the HUM's leaders, was a signer of bin Laden's fatwa announced in February of 1998.)

[18] Van Atta, Dale. "Carbombs and Cameras - The Need for Responsible Media Coverage of Terrorism," Harvard International Review, Fall, 1998, pp. 66-70.