Sri Lankan Terrorism: Assessing and Responding to the Threat of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE)

Types of Minority Discrimination and Terrorism

“…Case studies of individual terrorist movements and campaigns frequently depict discrimination against minority groups to be an important motivating factor for terrorist activity (see, for example, Bradley, 2006; Buendia, 2005; Van de Voorde, 2005; Whittaker, 2001; Ergil, 2000; Laqueur, 1999; O’Hearn, 1987). These findings are compatible with the results of cross-national empirical studies on the precipitants of civil war onset, rebellions, and other episodes of mass political violence that yield, albeit inconsistent, evidence that minority discrimination and the targeting of minority populations for repression by states fuel small-scale intra-state armed conflict (Regan and Norton, 2005; Bonneuil and Auriat, 2000; Moore, 1998; Lichbach, 1987).…”

Law enforcement as politics by other means: lessons from countering revolutionary terrorism

“…While many of these arguments concern the military or security forces in general, the risk of overreaction applies to the police as well (Alonso & Reinares, 2005;Art & Richardson, 2007, pp. 570-572;Chalk, 1998;Van de Voorde, 2005). We now turn to another, often overlooked effect: the political marginalisation of terrorist groups as a result of law enforcement.…”

Why Freedom Defeats Terrorism

“…14 The embittered-minorities framework has been used by scholars to explain some of the world's bloodiest religion-linked insurgencies, from the Sri Lankan civil war to India's Sikh resistance movement to Northern Ireland's "Troubles." 15 This lens has also been used to explain contemporary Islamist terrorism, especially in the West. 16 Second, freedom's dearth can also generate conflict through an overlooked and perhaps more important dynamic: Restrictions on the freedom of minorities can encourage terrorism against these oppressed groups by empowering and radicalizing majorities.…”