Terrorism trends in the Americas

CHAPTER V. The effects of terrorism on homicide 110

Table V-3 Top 5 country-year observations of terrorism in Europe (terrorism mortality rate)

Country Year Number of attacks Victims killed Terrorism mortality rate

Croatia 1991 26 237 4.98

Ukraine 2014 891 972 2.16

Norway 2011 3 77 1.55

Bosnia and Herzegovina 1992 22 55 1.28

Macedonia (FYR) 2001 67 24 1.19

Among the five highest terrorism mortality rates measured during the observation period in Europe, only Norway 2015 did not relate to a conflict setting. The spike was caused, in fact, by the attacks committed by Anders Breivik on Utøya island and in Oslo (Leonard et al. 2014).

These attacks made for a terrorism mortality rate of 1.55. The homicide rate in Norway during the same year was 2.2, compared to 0.67 in 2010 and 0.5 in 2012. This gives a striking example of how influential a single terror attack can be in boosting the homicide rate of a country.

V.1. Global and regional trends in terrorism (1970-2014) 111

homogeneous than in Europe. The number of attacks started comparatively low at the beginning of the observation period. The end of the 1970s then marked the beginning of a period of heightened terrorist violence in the Americas. This period was especially intense during the first half of the 1980s and lasted roughly until the mid-1990s. Since then, levels of terrorism in the Americas have returned to comparatively low levels, with the exception of a spike in the number of deaths and the deaths per attack ratio in 2001 due to the September 11^th attacks.

Figure V-11 Clustered counts of terror attacks, terror-related deaths, and the deaths per attack ratio in the Americas (1970-2014)

Elaboration by the author; Data source: UMD-START/GTD

As previously discussed, the heightened terrorist violence throughout the 1980s was primarily concentrated in Central America. This especially regards three countries, El Salvador, Guatemala and Nicaragua.

In El Salvador, a coup d’état led to an accession to power of a military junta in 1979. This sparked the Salvadoran civil war which lasted until 1991 (Wood 2003). As apparent in Figure V-12, both the onset and ending of the civil war concur with the period of heightened terrorist violence. Over the course of the war, death squads and security services terrorized the civilian population and made use of forced disappearances. The majority of attacks listed in the GTD (3330 out of 5320), however, were committed by the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), a left-wing guerilla group that targeted mainly Salvadoran military and police

CHAPTER V. The effects of terrorism on homicide 112

(Behlendorf, LaFree, and Legault 2012). Leaving 300 dead, the highest death count in a single incident was counted when the FMLN attacked a military post in the town of Suchitoto in 1980.

In Guatemala, a civil war between the government and left-wing guerrilla groups had been going on since 1960. Like in El Salvador, deaths squads terrorized the civilian population and made use of enforced disappearances (Afflitto 2000).²⁰ This, in turn, led to increased recourse to terror tactics on the side of the insurgents, with Guatemala City as the main theatre (Wilkinson 2004). Counting 100 deaths, however, the deadliest attack listed in the GTD occurred in a settlement called Ixtal when the Guerrilla Army of the Poor attacked an army garrison in 1981. As indicated in Figure V-12, 1981 marked the year with the second highest terrorism mortality rate measured for Guatemala throughout the observation period.

Figure V-12 Terrorism mortality rate (per 100,000 inh.) in selected American countries (1970-2014)

Elaboration by the author; Data source: UMD-START/GTD

In Nicaragua, the long-lasting dictatorship of the Somoza family had been overthrown by the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) in 1979. With heavy backing of the U.S.

20 Enforced disappearances have meanwhile evolved to be defined as a crimes against humanity (Article 7, 1. [i], Rome Statute) and are as such relevant in the criminological discussion on state crimes (Barak 1991, 10;

Dieterich 1986).

V.1. Global and regional trends in terrorism (1970-2014) 113

government, several right-wing militant groups, collectively referred to as the “Contras”, formed and started to fight the Sandinista government (Solaun 2005, 79).²¹ Hence, unlike in the case of El Salvador and Guatemala, the majority of the 1,970 terror attacks listed in the GTD for Nicaragua were committed by right-wing guerilla groups, especially the Nicaraguan Democratic Force (FDN). The majority of the terror attacks that occurred before the ousting of the last Somoza president, however, were committed by the FSLN (Goodwin 2006, 2032).

With 270, the largest number of deaths recorded in a single incident occurred when the FDN attacked a military unit in El Cumbo in 1984. That is the very year that Nicaragua reached the highest mortality rate, not only in the Americas, as previously discussed, but for any country in any year during the period of observation. This is confirmed in Table V-5 which shows the Top 5 observations on terrorism in the Americas aggregated at level of country-year, sorted by the terrorism mortality rate. It also becomes apparent that unlike in the case of rather isolated attacks, the effect of the attack in El Cumbo on the terrorism mortality rate of the same year was rather limited. It accounted for less than 10 percent of all the victims killed during terror attacks in Nicaragua in 1984.

Table V-5 Top 5 country-year observations of terrorism in the Americas (terrorism mortality rate)

Country Year Number of attacks Victims killed Terrorism mortality rate

Nicaragua 1984 302 3,617 99.94

Nicaragua 1983 299 3,277 92.89

El Salvador 1980 710 2,368 51.73

Nicaragua 1985 258 1,575 42.46

El Salvador 1983 371 1,662 34.70

The sequence changed when sorting the observations on terror attacks in the Americas by absolute counts of deaths rather than by the terrorism mortality rate (see Table V-6). Both entries for Nicaragua remained at the top of the list. The entry for El Salvador, however which previously occupied the third place, dropped to the fifth place, while the entries for Nicaragua and El Salvador in 1985 and 1983 respectively dropped out of the list. Their listings were assumed by the U.S. (2001) and Peru (1984).

21 Rothe (2009) drew on the U.S. intervention in Nicaragua during the Reagan administration in order to analyze the etiological factors behind state crime.

CHAPTER V. The effects of terrorism on homicide 114

Table V-6 Top 5 country-year observations of terrorism in the Americas (number of victims killed)

Country Year Number of attacks Victims killed Terrorism mortality rate

Nicaragua 1984 302 3,617 99.94

Nicaragua 1983 299 3,277 92.89

U.S. 2001 41 2,984 1.04

Peru 1984 592 2,444 12.80

El Salvador 1980 710 2,368 51.73

The impact of the September 11^th attacks has been discussed elsewhere. Just to highlight the scaling effects, it shall be remembered that when comparing the counts of deaths caused by terror attacks and also the terrorism mortality rates among selected OECD countries (Figure V-5 and Figure V-7), the impact of the September 11^th attacks stretched the display range. This scaled down the trend line for all other countries so that many of the dynamics in the development of the terrorism counts and rates remained invisible. When comparing the U.S.

rates with the rates of other selected American countries, however, the effect of the September 11^th attacks was hardly visible (Figure V-12).