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    How 9/11 and the War on Terror Shaped the World

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    On September 11, 2001, 19 militants associated with the Islamist terrorist group al-Qaeda hijacked four planes and launched suicide attacks on iconic symbols of America, first striking the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York and then the Pentagon. It would be the deadliest act of terrorism on American soil, claiming nearly 3,000 lives.

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    The attacks not only shocked the world, but the images of planes crashing into the World Trade Center came to define a generation. In a speech on October 11, 2001, then-President George W. Bush spoke of “an attack on the heart and soul of the civilized world” and declared “war against all those who seek to export terror, and a war against those governments that support or shelter them.” This was the start of the global war on terror.

    The Story of the 9/11 Attacks and Retaliation

    Osama bin Laden, the Saudi leader of al-Qaeda, inspired the 9/11 attacks. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, a Pakistani Islamist terrorist and the nephew of the truck driver convicted for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, masterminded the operation. The 9/11 Commission Report described al-Qaeda as “sophisticated, patient, disciplined and lethal.” It held that the enemy rallied “broad support in the Arab and Muslim world.” The report concluded that al-Qaeda’s hostility to the US and its values was limitless.

    The report went on to say that the enemy aimed “to rid the world of religious and political pluralism, the plebiscite, and equal rights for women,” and observed that it made no distinction between military and civilian targets. The goal going forward was “to attack terrorists and prevent their ranks from swelling while at the same time protecting [the US] against future attacks.”

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    To prosecute the war on terror, the US built a worldwide coalition: 136 countries offered military assistance, and 46 multilateral organizations declared support. Washington began by launching a financial war on terror, freezing assets and disrupting fundraising pipelines. In the first 100 days, the Bush administration set aside $20 billion for homeland security.

    On October 7, 2001, the US inaugurated the war on terror with Operation Enduring Freedom. An international coalition that included Australia, Canada, Denmark, Germany, Japan, the UK and other countries, with the help of the Northern Alliance comprising various mujahedeen militias, overthrew the Taliban, which was sheltering al-Qaeda fighters, and took over Afghanistan.

    The war on terror that began in Afghanistan soon took on a global focus. In 2003, the Bush administration invaded Iraq despite the lack of a UN mandate. Washington made the argument that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was developing weapons of mass destruction, represented a threat to world peace, and harbored and succored al-Qaeda and other Islamic jihadists. None of this proved to be true. Hussein’s regime fell as speedily as Mullah Omar’s Taliban.

    Victory, however, was short-lived. Soon, insurgency returned. In Afghanistan, suicide attacks quintupled from 27 in 2005 to 139 in 2006. Globally, the war on terror saw a “stunning” rise in jihadist activity, with just over 32,000 fighters split among 13 Islamist groups in 2001 burgeoning to 100,000 across 44 outfits in 2015. Terrorist attacks went up from an estimated 1,880 in 2001 to 14,806 in 2015, claiming 38,422 lives that year alone — a 397% increase on 2001.

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    Boosted by the US invasion of Iraq, al-Qaeda spawned affiliates across Asia, Africa and the Middle East, a decentralized structure that remained intact even after the US assassination of Osama bin Laden in 2011 dealt al-Qaeda a severe blow. One of its Iraqi offshoots morphed into what became the Islamic State (IS) group following the withdrawal of most US from Iraq under President Barack Obama in 2011.

    After declaring a caliphate in 2014, IS launched a global terrorist campaign that, within a year, conducted and inspired over 140 attacks in 29 countries beyond Syria and Iraq, according to one estimate. Islamic State acolytes went on to claim nearly 30,000 lives across the Middle East, Europe, the United States, Asia and Africa, controlling vast amounts of territory in Iraq and Syria, before suffering defeat by internationally-backed local forces in 2019.

    In Afghanistan, despite the war’s estimated trillion-dollar price tag, on August 15 the Taliban have taken control of the capital Kabul amid a chaotic US withdrawal, raising fears of al-Qaeda’s comeback. Last year, the Global Terrorism Index concluded that deaths from terrorism were still double the number recorded in 2001, with Afghanistan claiming a disproportionately large share of over 40% in 2019.

    Why Do 9/11 and the War on Terror Matter?

    While the failures and successes of the war on terror will remain subject to heated debate for years to come, what remains uncontested is the fact that the 9/11 attacks and the ensuing war on terror have forged the world we live in today.

    First, they have caused tremendous loss of blood and treasure. Brown University’s Costs of War project places an $8-trillion price tag on the US war on terror. It estimates that about 900,000 people “were killed as a direct result of war, whether by bombs, bullets or fire,” a number that does not include indirect deaths “caused by way of disease, displacement and loss of access to food or clean drinking water.”

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    Second, numerous countries, including liberal democracies such as the US and the UK, have eroded their own civil liberties and democratic institutions with the avowed goal of improving security. Boarding airplanes or entering public buildings now invariably involves elaborate security checks. Mass surveillance has become par for the course. The US continues to keep alleged terror suspects in indefinite detention without trial in Guantanamo Bay.

    Third, many analysts argue that the attacks and the response have coarsened the US. After World War II, Americans drew a line in the sand against torture. They put Germans and Japanese on trial for war crimes that included waterboarding. In the post-9/11 world, torture became part of the American toolkit. Airstrikes and drone strikes have caused high collateral casualties, killing a disputed number of innocents and losing the battle for the hearts and minds of local populations.

    These strikes raise significant issues of legality and the changing nature of warfare. There is a question as to the standing of “counterterrorism” operations in international and national law. However, such issues have garnered relatively little public attention. 

    Fourth, the 9/11 attacks and the ensuing war on terror have coincided with the spectacular rise of China. On December 11, 2001, the Middle Kingdom joined the World Trade Organization, which enabled the Chinese economy to grow at a speed and scale unprecedented in history. Analysts believe that distraction with the war on terror hindered the US response to the revolution occurring in global international relations and power dynamics. 

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    Under Barack Obama, the US initiated an explicit pivot to Asia policy that sought to shift focus from the war on terror and manage the rise of China. Under Donald Trump, Washington unleashed a trade war on Beijing and concluded a peace deal with the Taliban. Joe Biden has believed that, since the early days of the war on terror, US priorities have been too skewed toward terrorism and that Afghanistan is a secondary strategic issue, leading to a decision to withdraw troops to mark the 20th anniversary of 9/11.

    Biden has argued that the US has degraded al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and eliminated bin Laden. Despite worrying echoes of George W. Bush declaring the “mission accomplished” in Iraq in 2003, from now on, Biden wants the US to remain “narrowly focused on counterterrorism — not counterinsurgency or nation building.”

    While the terrorist threat still consumes US resources, Washington is now shifting its strategic attention and resources to China, Russia and Iran. The Biden administration has deemed these three authoritarian powers to be the biggest challenge for the postwar liberal and democratic order. The 20-year war on terror seems to be over — at least for now.

    The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      Right Think: Jane Austen Against Terrorism

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      A creative British judge has demonstrated how judgments in criminal cases need not be about meting out humiliating, painful punishment to the guilty. In the case of 21-year-old Ben John, accused of acts identifying him as a “terror risk,” the punishment prescribed by Judge Timothy Spencer QC consists essentially of reading works by Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, William Shakespeare, Anthony Trollope and Thomas Hardy. John will return to court three times a year “to be tested on his reading.”

      Ben John’s crime consisted of downloading exactly 67,788 documents that appeal to right-wing terrorists. Call it downloading with intent to read. According to the BBC, “He was arrested in January 2020 and later charged with offenses under the Terrorism Act, including possessing documents on combat, homemade weapons and explosives.” To be clear, he didn’t actually possess weapons and explosives, merely documents about them. According to John’s attorney, even the prosecution didn’t believe he was planning a terrorist attack. 

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      Understanding the diminished nature of the threat, alongside the fact that he technically did violate a modern law that some complain encourages abuse by law enforcement, the judge gave this account of John’s taste in downloading: “It is repellent, this content, to any right-thinking person. This material is largely relating to Nazi, fascist and Adolf Hitler-inspired ideology.”

      Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

      Right-thinking person:

      Someone who understands the importance of limiting their thinking not only to approved topics but also to approved takes on those topics while accepting to make a concerted effort not to let their thinking wander into unsavory areas

      Contextual Note

      Britain is a nation and a culture that lives and breathes through its awareness of its centuries-old traditions. The idea of “right-thinking” cannot be defined by any law, but instead of being discarded, as it would be in the US, thanks to the British perception of the weight of its inherited culture, the concept can be credibly invoked in a courtroom and even figure in a verdict. Judge Spencer apparently believes the key to becoming a right-thinking citizen is to practice being a right-reading citizen. A clear-headed judge in the US applying the same logic would impose reading the law, not works of fiction.

      Judge Spencer understands that knowing the law isn’t enough. Thinking like a good Englishman requires familiarity with great English writers of the past. And it must be the past. In his list there is no Martin Amis, Ali Smith, Ian MacEwan or even 20th modernists such as Virginia Woolf, Joyce Cary or D.H. Lawrence. Right-thinking English society reached its pinnacle more than a century ago.

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      It stopped evolving at the beginning of the 20th century, by which time all British citizens were expected to understand at least that part of a dying empire’s heritage. This judgment reveals that the nostalgia for a society of the queen’s right-thinking subjects remains a powerful cultural force in British society.

      John’s lawyer described his client’s character as “a young man who struggled with emotions; however, he is plainly an intelligent young man and now has a greater insight.” Perhaps the judge expects that John’s reading of great works from the past will inspire him to become a writer himself, making him not only right-thinking but even an active contributor to the perpetuation of the literary tradition that defines the nation’s greatness. John may even be inspired to take up writing his own dramatic story. Instead of engaging in the crime of downloading with intent, he may start uploading with creative ambition. 

      This legal episode may leave the reader of the article with the impression that the judge regrets not having pursued a vocation in academia and is using the opportunity to hone his skills as a literature teacher. On that score, Judge Spencer may risk falling into the trap of the great British tradition of imitating a cast of despotic, if not sadistic headmasters and superintendents, on the model of Dickens’ Thomas Gradgrind in “Hard Times.”

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      There is a hint of Dickensian severity in Spencer’s formulation of the young man’s sentence: “On 4 January you will tell me what you have read and I will test you on it. I will test you and if I think you are [lying to] me you will suffer.” But unlike Gradgrind — who condemned “fancy” (“You are never to fancy”) and promoted “fact, fact, fact” — by imposing fiction, Spencer may even be encouraging the development of John’s fancy, so long as it stays close to what right-thinking people fancy.

      John’s barrister, Harry Bentley, reassured the judge: “He is by no means a lost cause and is capable of living a normal, pro-social life.” The term “pro-social” should be taken as a synonym of “right-thinking,” which means not “Nazi, fascist and Adolf Hitler-inspired.”

      Historical Note

      The judge mentioned some specific titles of works that John will be expected to read, all of them works that belong to the prestigious history of English literature. Judge Spencer gave this specific instruction: “Start with Pride and Prejudice and Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities. Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. Think about Hardy. Think about Trollope.” Apart from Shakespeare, these are all 19th-century writers. In their works, they describe the material, social and economic conflicts that concerned people living in a world that has little in common with today’s reality.

      These novels reflect in different ways the impact of the momentous change as a formerly rural society was overturned by industrialization. Is it reasonable to think a young extremist of the 21st century will be able to learn from such examples?

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      We are left wondering at what the chosen titles mean for the judge himself and what impact he expects them to have on the man accused of terrorist tendencies. Will the preoccupations of a destitute gentry in the early 19th century in “Pride and Prejudice” provoke some epiphany for the young man? Will the absurdly melodramatic pseudo-political events Dickens situates during the French Revolution in “The Tale of Two Cities” clarify his ideas about radical politics?

      Does the judge expect that the subtle confusion about a twin playing at reversing her gender role in Shakespeare’s sublime comedy will effectively educate John on the subtleties of sexual identity and help him to nuance his opinions on homosexuality?

      Depending on how he conducts the discussion sessions around the convicted man’s readings, the magistrate may be creating a precedent that is worth imitating in other cases of individuals with terrorist inclinations. Calling great writers of the past as witnesses of what right-thinking people believe will at least rob such individuals of the time they would dedicate to reading downloaded extremist literature. It’s a question not of fighting fire with fire, but with comforting warmth. 

      There is a problem, however. Understanding what Shakespeare, Austen, Dickens and others had to say requires delving into the history of their times and the modes of thought that accompanied those times. We might even wonder how right-thinking these authors were. Shakespeare in particular left hints that he wasn’t very fond of the oppressive order he was living under. His form of protest was not to download instructions provided by Guy Fawkes (who did attempt to blow up Parliament), but the texts of his tragedies that indirectly express his doubts about the existing political order.

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      For Shakespeare, something was rotten in England as well as Denmark, and the time was clearly out of joint. He carefully avoided appearing too subversive from fear of the temporal power that would inevitably accuse him under the Elizabethan version of the Terror Act.

      Judge Spencer has nevertheless defined a noble course of action in this particular case. Let us hope that he is up to the task as a teacher. If he does succeed, we should recommend his example for handling future cases of intelligent individuals so disturbed by the reigning hypocrisy that they become ready to embrace ideas pointing in the direction of terrorism. Given the constant degradation of our political culture and of the trust people are willing to put in our political leaders and the justice system itself, such examples in the near future are likely to be legion. 

      *[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on Fair Observer.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      The Strategy of Tension: Bringing Down German Democracy

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      Despite its government’s best efforts, Germany is suffering through a wave of right-wing violence. Triggered in part by Chancellor Angela Merkel’s 2015 decision to admit thousands of refugees from the Syrian Civil War, networks of clandestine neo-Nazi groups whose ambitions encompass the overthrow of the Federal Republic have appeared. Particularly troubling was the discovery that elements within a special commando unit of the country’s armed forces, the Bundeswehr, have been stockpiling weapons with the aim to ignite a civil war and bring about the collapse of German democracy.

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      Fortunately, the authorities were able to uncover this scheme and purge the Bundeswehr of these anti-democratic elements. In April this year, 12 men accused of planning a series of attacks on asylum seekers, Muslims, Jews and politicians went on trial in Stuttgart.

      False Flag Tactics

      Part of this plan was a false flag operation. A former Bundeswehr officer, identified only as “Franco A.” in the court proceedings, went on trial in Frankfurt in May for planning attacks on German politicians and various prominent individuals. Beginning in 2015, Franco A. sought to create a new identity for himself as a Syrian asylum-seeker. He succeeded in persuading the authorities of his false Muslim identity, at least for a while.

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      Among other individuals, Franco A. singled out Claudia Roth, a vice president of the German parliament; Heiko Maas, the foreign minister; and Anetta Kahane, a Jewish woman, frequently identified as an outspoken defender of asylum seekers, as likely targets. Fortunately, the authorities were able to uncover the scheme and arrest its principal perpetrator before it could be put into operation.

      By impersonating a Muslim and carrying out attacks on prominent and individuals largely sympathetic to the cause of integration, Franco A. hoped to exacerbate the backlash against the Muslim community already underway throughout the country. In this way, he hoped to spark a conflict that would shake the foundations of German democracy.

      The false flag tactic has a familiar ring to it. It was employed, for example, in the bombing campaign launched by right-wing provocateurs in the lead-up to the 1967 military coup d’état in Greece. But the one place where the tactic was employed most extensively was Italy. The “strategy of tension” was employed by Italian neo-fascists and elements within the state security agencies during the country’s Years of Lead — Anni di piombo — roughly 1968 to 1982.

      Strategy of Tension

      Northern Italy and Rome during the late 1960s were alive with revolutionary agitation and protest. Wildcat strikes broke out in the plants and factories of Milan, Turin and other cities during the “hot autumn” of 1968. University students throughout much of the country staged mass protests against the Vietnam War, in solidarity with their counterparts in Paris and Berkeley, and the outdated character of Italy’s system of higher education.

      In this atmosphere, extra-parliamentary leftist groups formed. With such names as Worker Vanguard, Worker Power and the Continuous Struggle, these militant bands called for violent revolution against the corrupt Italian state and the Christian Democratic Party that dominated it. What would become the country’s most notorious terrorist group, the Red Brigades, emerged from this milieu.

      At this point, we should call attention to the Italian Communist Party (PCI), the biggest Marxist bloc in the Western world. By 1968-69, roughly one-third of Italian voters cast their ballots for the PCI, whose leaders, among other things, dominated the country’s largest trade union federation. Many journalists expected the PCI would shortly surpass the Christian Democrats as the number one party in Italy.

      PCI’s leaders Enrico Berlinguer and Luigi Longo were at pains to point out that Italian communism was different — that it accepted the democratic rules of the game and aimed to enter a coalition government with the Christian Democrats to provide the country with a stable, democratic regime. Still, in the eyes of many Italians, the PCI was a communist party after all.

      Counterrevolutionary Logic

      Enter the strategy of tension. The counterrevolutionary logic of this strategy was to launch a series of indiscriminate bombings in public places disguised in such a way that the Italian public would blame the far left for these atrocities and for the breakdown of public order in general. In this way, Italians seeking a restoration of law and order would support, or at least remain indifferent to a seizure of power by the country’s military and security services.

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      Accordingly, during the summer and fall of 1969, there were a series of bombings in Rome — one in front of an elementary school — and in the north of the country. The police reported these acts were the responsibility of anarchists. A number of individuals with backgrounds in neo-fascism (members of the New Order or the National Vanguard) changed their identities and resurfaced as “revolutionaries.”

      Giorgio Almirante, the leader of the Italian Social Movement, a neo-fascist party in parliament, appealed to a “silent majority” of Italians demanding a restoration of law and order, borrowing language from the Nixon administration in Washington. Then, on December 12, there was the bombing of the National Agricultural Bank at Piazza Fontana in Milan that killed 17 customers. The police quickly blamed revolutionary anarchists for the massacre and within days arrested two individuals with the appropriate backgrounds. One of them allegedly committed suicide by jumping out of the fourth floor of the police headquarters. Few believed the official account.

      The story unraveled quickly, thanks to investigations carried out by suspicious journalists. It’s a complex tale. But it should suffice to report that it involved a collaboration between Italy’s state security agencies, the state police and key figures in the neo-fascist movement. Arrests followed, but the subsequent court proceedings dragged on for more than a decade.

      The chances seem remote that the democratic order in Germany will be challenged as seriously as it was in Italy, now more than 50 years ago. Still, some of the same ingredients for false flag operations appear to have been present in the case of Franco A.

      *[Fair Observer is a media partner of the Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      Why Designating the Azov Movement as an FTO Is Ineffective

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      In early April, a member of the US Congress, Elissa Slotkin, sent a letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken asking that 13 radical-right extremist groups and movements be officially designated as foreign terrorist organizations (FTOs) in the United States. This designation would, in theory, ban any American from providing “material support or resources” to any of these designated organizations, ban foreign members of these groups from entering the US, and freeze funds held in American banks belonging to these groups.

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      Some of the groups on the congressperson’s list are familiar names to any observer of transnational radical-right extremism over the last several years: the Nordic Resistance Movement, Blood and Honour, National Action and what Slotkin, a former CIA employee focused on extremism in the Middle East and North Africa, describes collectively as the “Azov Battalion” in Ukraine. Not surprisingly, as someone who has written extensively about the threat of the radical right in Ukraine, the mention of Azov caught my attention. But it wasn’t for the right reasons, and it shows that, when the radical right is concerned, group designations and proscriptions aren’t always the best policy tool.

      What’s in a Name?

      For one, I’ve seen this play out before. In 2019, another member of US Congress, Max Rose, authored a similar letter demanding that the Azov Battalion be designated as an FTO. Rose’s letter was, ultimately, a complete failure. As I wrote from Ukraine in November 2019, it contained inaccurate information, including the unproven claim that the Christchurch terrorist admitted to training with Azov, and ended up being a propaganda boon to the radical right.

      Slotkin’s letter, fortunately, doesn’t make those kinds of sweeping, evidence-free claims. But it’s not without its major flaws. For one, the letter incorrectly refers to the Azov Battalion. The military unit once known as the Azov Battalion, formed in 2014 to combat Russian-backed insurgents in a still-hot war in eastern Ukraine, has been under the auspices of Ukraine’s National Guard and properly known as the Azov Regiment for years. While referring to it as the “Azov Battalion” could be excusable as something a commentator without experience in Ukraine might mention in passing, it’s not so excusable in an official letter demanding that said organization be designated as a terror group. In particular, how can a group be designated if it can’t even be named and identified correctly?

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      The accurate descriptor would, of course, be the “Azov Movement.” I’ve described the Azov Movement, which grew out of the original battalion and regiment, as a heterogenous radical-right social movement. At its core, the movement encompasses the regiment itself, the National Corps political party, the Centuria (formerly the National Militia) paramilitary organization as well as a number of affiliated subgroups and initiatives including a book club, youth camps, a “leadership school” and a (temporarily closed) three-story social center just off Kyiv’s central Independence Square.

      It also encompasses organizations and networks that are clearly led by and are made up of members of the movement who appear to function with some degree of independence, often without any stated relationship to the movement and who are more open or extreme in their rhetoric. There are also smaller radical-right organizations that are nominally independent but still appear to have at least some relationship with the movement and who circle around its orbit.

      Superficial Terms

      Slotkin’s letter, on the other hand, describes Azov in superficial terms. The movement is referred to solely as “a well-known militia organization in Ukraine [that] uses the internet to recruit new members and then radicalizes them to use violence to pursue its white identity political agenda,” with one sole reference to a relatively recent January 2021 article. Sure, there’s not enough space in a letter like this to discuss the Azov Movement in considerable detail. But there’s no shortage of material in English on the movement’s activities over the past several years (certainly not just from this author), and, what’s more, it is easily accessible and digestible to anyone who chooses to take a few minutes to read beyond a simple Google search.

      Having even a cursory understanding of what the Azov Movement actually is and how it functions would reveal just how difficult it would be in practice to designate it as an FTO, and, in fact, how difficult it is to proscribe these kinds of movements in practice. Even as the UK has moved to ban the violent neo-Nazi Atomwaffen Division, reports from Germany suggest that sympathizers are using still-existing networks to rebuild an offshoot of the group there.

      The question then turns to who would be designated as an FTO. Would it be the regiment alone, which is itself a member of Ukraine’s National Guard and thus a member of the country’s armed forces? As counter-extremism expert Kacper Rekawek pointed out last week in a blog post for the Counter Extremism Project, the US would surely never designate an official unit of an American ally’s military, whether one likes it or not.

      Moreover, and to move further into the morass, would the broader movement be proscribed as an FTO, and if so, whom would that include? One could see it encompassing the National Corps and Centuria, but does that include every single affiliated organization, from sports clubs to youth camps? What would be the legal criteria for determining whether an entity is or isn’t part of the movement? And, moreover, which individuals can even be described as being part of the movement? Trying to parse these questions would be a veritable nightmare.

      A Better Way

      Even worse, I can easily imagine how affiliated organizations within the movement would worm their way out of being part of the designation, which exposes a serious flaw with going after the radical right through the means of executive group proscription. Daryl Johnson, an American domestic terrorism expert and former senior analyst with the US Department of Homeland Security, told a journalist in Canada, my home country, that its government’s efforts to ban groups like the Proud Boys were “more of a symbolic gesture,” and that radical-right organizations facing these kinds of bans could simply just change their names and regroup under a new banner.

      Given that, in the Ukrainian context, radical-right organizations and affiliates have a history of changing their names and branding while maintaining the core leadership, one should expect this to continue if an attempt to proscribe the entire movement were to actually happen. If US and Ukraine’s other Western allies are seriously concerned about the Azov Movement — as they should be — there are far more effective means at their disposal than the clumsy if attention-grabbing mechanism of a foreign terrorist organization designation.

      They should consider, for one, designating specific individuals, with specific and justified reasons, instead of broader groups and movements. Visa and travel bans for specific prominent individuals, which would also encourage European allies to extend visa-free Schengen Area restrictions to those same individuals, would also be useful. There is also the option of placing pressure, both public and private, on Ukraine’s government and elements in the Ukrainian state to properly acknowledge and tackle the issue of the violent radical right in their country — pressure that could even include making some international funding and financial support contingent on tackling the problem.

      These would be much more effective starting points for the US or any other Western country worried about the activities of Ukraine’s Azov Movement than any attempted FTO designation.

      *[Fair Observer is a media partner of the Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      The Bologna Attack of 1980: Italy’s Unhealed Wound

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      The clock struck 10:25 am on August 2, 1980, when a bomb exploded at Bologna’s Central Train Station. The attack plunged the city, known at the time for its left-wing politics and home to one of the oldest universities on the continent, into chaos. One of the deadliest terrorist attacks in Europe, the explosion had a devastating effect, killing 85 people and injuring over 200. After years of investigations, trials and false leads, Francesca Mambro and Giuseppe Fioravanti, members of the right-wing terrorist organization Armed Revolutionary Nuclei (NAR), were sentenced to life imprisonment in November 1995. Both, however, have always maintained their innocence.

      Many others were also put on trial, some of whom eventually received prison sentences for supporting the terrorists or for obstruction of justice. Among them were Licio Gelli, head of the infamous Propaganda Due lodge, and Pietro Musumeci, an officer in the Italian military secret service.

      Not All Terrorists Want to Claim Responsibility for Attacks

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      Despite these convictions, the Strage di Bologna, or the Bologna massacre, as the attack is now known, continues to be a source of heated debate in Italy, and serious doubts remain as to whether the masterminds behind the attack have really been caught. Every now and then, for example, the Italian judiciary issues new sentences in connection with the attack. Moreover, as recently as January this year, nearly 40 years after the incident, Gilberto Cavalli was found guilty of aiding and abetting Mambro and Fioravanti.

      The ongoing sentencing seems to confirm the widespread belief that we still do not know the whole story and that Italy has struggled to come to terms with this horrible act of terrorism. This state of seeming paralysis is symbolized by the fact that the main station’s clock has not been replaced and, as a reminder for future generations, still shows the exact time of the attack.

      A New Lead? The Palestinian Theory

      Former politicians, judges and magistrates, as well as investigative journalists and academics, have often added to the confusion and uncertainty surrounding the attack. Manifold theories about the true masterminds exist, alternately accusing left-wing terrorists, the Mafia or Gladio of having orchestrated the attack. In 2008, Francesco Cossiga, member of the former Christian Democratic Party (DC) who served as minister of interior between 1976-78 and held the title of prime minister between 1979-80 and president of Italy from 1985 to 1992, cast doubt on the culpability of the neo-fascists.

      In an interview with an Israeli newspaper, he argued that the Bologna attack was an act of retaliation by Palestinian terrorists because the government in Rome had violated the so-called Lodo Moro — a decades-old secret agreement between Rome and the Palestinian Liberation Organizations (PLO), in which the Palestinians offered to spare Italy from PLO orchestrated terrorist attacks in return for Rome’s diplomatic support and for allowing the PLO to roam freely in Italy. In July 2016, Rosario Priore, who has investigated right-wing terrorism in Italy for years, propagated Cossiga’s thesis in his book, “I segreti di Bologna: La verità sull’atto terroristico più grave della storia italiana” (“The Secrets of Bologna: The Truth About the Most Serious Attack in Italy’s History”).

      According to Priore, everything started in November 1979 when the Carabinieri arrested three left-wing extremists — Daniele Pifano, Giuseppe Nieri and Giorgio Baumgartner — and a Palestinian man, Abu Anzeh Saleh, for arms smuggling. When the Italian government declined to release Saleh, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) under George Habash contacted Libyan leaders Muammar Gaddafi, who in turn asked the Venezuelan militant Ilich Ramirez Sanchez — better known as Carlos the Jackal — to retaliate against the Italians. The German Thomas Kram, a member of Carlos’ group, was duly dispatched to Bologna to carry out the bombing. However, Kram and Carlos denied any involvement, arguing that Kram was under constant surveillance by the Italian police as soon as he entered Italy and therefore could not have carried out the attack undetected.

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      Nevertheless, the question remains: Were the Palestinians really responsible, in one form or another, for the terrorist attack in Bologna? As time goes by and more and more archives declassify their documents and make them available for researchers, we may be able to get closer to the truth. In the meantime, however, as historians, we can try to sort myth from reality by contextualizing the events and critically examining the arguments presented. This approach reveals that the Palestinian theory is not as cut and dried as Priore and others claim.

      We do not currently have any evidence that the PFLP and its main leaders, Habash and Bassam Abu Sharif, or any other Palestinian group actually demanded the release of Saleh. Furthermore, bombings were not typically the first weapon of choice for Palestinian terrorists, who preferred kidnappings and taking hostages at the time. In addition, the Palestinians usually claimed responsibility for terrorist attacks they committed. Even Carlos, who worked for the PFLP until 1975, usually claimed responsibility for his actions.

      Moreover, neither the Palestinians nor the Italian government would have gained anything from a stand-off caused by the arrest of one person and the confiscation of weapons. Given the vulnerability of the Italian economy and its dependence on Arab oil, Rome continued to negotiate with rather than confront the PLO. In June 1980, for example, the European Council under Italian leadership issued a statement in favor of the PLO. In addition, in 1980, the various factions within the PLO — including Habash’s PFLP — supported Yasser Arafat’s more cautious and diplomatic approach toward the European countries.

      Why would the PFLP, whose leadership had been weakened when Habash suffered a stroke in 1980, go through all this trouble when there was really nothing to gain? Only when Arafat’s leadership role was challenged in 1982 did Palestinian attacks in Europe resume, with the Achille Lauro affair of 1985 serving as a prime example.

      Going back to Francesco Cossiga’s testimony, it seems that he used the 2008 interview primarily to present himself in a favorable light for the newspaper’s Israeli readership by rejecting any involvement in the pact between Rome and the PLO. He claimed that the secret service did not tell him any details about the agreement between Rome and the Palestinians, which, considering his positions at the highest level of government, is hardly convincing. In addition, by blaming foreign terrorists for the deadliest attack in Italy’s history, he avoided taking responsibility for neglecting and underestimating homegrown terrorism.

      Moreover, we should not forget the tensions between the leadership of what was formerly known as the Christian Democratic Party and the Italian judiciary. Cossiga’s interview shows his distrust toward the judiciary and might have also been an attempt to undermine their authority, by implying that they were unable to find and prosecute the real perpetrators of the attack despite all these years that have passed since.

      A Familiar Pattern: Right-Wing Terrorism

      Considering these points, it seems unlikely that the Bologna attack was an act of retaliation against Italy orchestrated by the PFLP. The extent of Gaddafi’s involvement might tell a different story, but only further investigation and declassification of documents will clarify that case. As it stands, all the concrete evidence and indications we do have point to Italy’s extreme radical right.

      The Bologna attack mirrored how right-wing terrorists have previously operated in Italy, particularly during the strategy of tension period between 1969 and 1974. Though skeptics may claim that the attack was designed to mimic the tactics of the extreme radical right and thus shift blame, it was not just the attack itself — the indiscriminate bombing without anyone claiming responsibility — but also the target that reminded many contemporaries of the chaos right-wing terrorists inflicted on Italy a decade earlier: placing bombs in or close to trains in the summertime, thus causing maximum civilian casualties.

      On August 4, 1974, for instance, right-wing terrorists of the group Black Order carried out an attack on the Italicus express, killing 12 people and injuring 48. The Italian singer and songwriter Claudio Lolli commemorated the attack in his famous song “Agosto”— August — which experienced a revival after the Bologna attack.

      One important aspect of the strategy of tension, however, was missing in 1980, thus implying that it was not just a copycat attack. In contrast to the early 1970s, the attempts to blame the Italian left for the attack were marginal and had not been picked up by Italy’s major newspapers. It shows that the perpetrators were able to adapt to a new socio-political situation. Blaming the Italian left, which had established itself as an integral part of the Italian political landscape in 1980, for the Bologna attack would have been a lost cause.

      That does not mean, however, that the right-wing terrorists did not attempt to influence Italian politics. Bombings, bloodshed and chaos on the streets usually favor conservative groups who claim to be the protectors of law and order. Why right-wing terrorists thought 1980 would be a good year to launch another campaign to push Italy further to the right can only be fully understood when we contextualize Bologna within Italian and European history of the time.

      Given the rising tensions between the West and the Eastern Bloc since 1979, anti-communism became a powerful recruitment tool for the radical right in Europe and again offered an opportunity to form alliances with the conservative milieu, including elements of the state secret services. Thus, it comes as no surprise that everywhere in Europe, extreme parts of the radical right started a new campaign of terror to influence the politics of their respective countries and push them further to the right. The campaign started in February 1980 and lasted, with pauses, at least until 1984-85, when the regime in Moscow began to noticeably decline.

      France and Spain experienced a series of right-wing attacks, and after Bologna, a bomb exploded at the Oktoberfest in Munich on September 26, 1980, killing 13 people. Given the latter’s proximity to the Bologna attack, rumors quickly circulated that some kind of connection must have existed between the Italian terrorists and the German perpetrator, Gundolf Köhler. In 2014, the German federal prosecutor general decided to reopen the case due to inconsistencies and omissions in the original investigations. Until July 2020, when the case was closed again, over 300,000 pages of evidence were examined and over 1,000 witnesses interviewed. In the end, however, the prosecutor could not find additional co-conspirators or backers as possible evidence was carelessly — some would argue deliberately — destroyed early on.

      He did, however, establish that Köhler indeed committed a right-wing terrorist attack to shape West Germany’s politics and was more than just a disgruntled youth. Köhler wanted to influence the political landscape in his country in favor of conservative change — after all, parliamentary elections in West Germany occurred only a couple of days after the bombing, and Franz-Josef Strauß, the candidate of the conservative CDU, was known for his anti-communist stance.

      Fluid Politics

      In Italy, the political situation in 1980 was also fluid, even though no general election was on the horizon. Francesco Cossiga formed a fragile coalition government in April 1980 between his Christian Democratic Party, the Republican Party and the Socialist Party under Bettino Craxi. In the regional election in June 1980, the Christian Democrats gained new seats, and right-wing terrorists might have thought that by destabilizing public order this trend could be pushed even further, maybe resulting in an end to the Socialist’s government involvement.

      Also, the city of Bologna as a target can be taken as a clear sign that it was the extreme radical-right milieu that sought to benefit from public turmoil: Bologna was a, if not the symbol in Italy for a successful, leftist local government: Since 1970, Renato Zangheri, a member of the communist party, has served as the mayor of the city.

      Last but not least, we should also consider the Italian extreme right-wing terrorist scene at the time. Internal rivalry between different factions within a terrorist milieu is often an important factor to explain a process of radicalization. While the strategy of tension of the early 1970s was dominated by a form of reactionary right-wing terrorism, the second half of the decade saw the emergence of a heterogenous right-wing “armed spontaneity” that showed similarities to the American idea of leaderless resistance of the 1970s and 1980s.

      Embed from Getty Images

      During the second half of the 1970s, former heroes of the strategy of tension like Stefano Delle Chiaie were sidelined. When the security apparatus was able to arrest exponents of the armed spontaneity faction, and when the Cold War tensions once again increased, the old guard of Italian right-wing terrorism might have seen an opportunity to regain control over the country’s radical-right extremist milieu.

      One last question remains, however: Why do the arrested right-wing terrorists deny all the charges? Should we believe them? Despite the fact that nearly everyone who was accused of having committed the terrorist bombing in Bologna has denied their involvement, the right-wing terrorists have another motif: Spreading terror and fear is a core aspect of every terrorist group. So, when they deny their involvement in the attack, which remained shrouded in mystery for decades, they increase a sense of unease, fear and terror — a feeling that something similar can happen anywhere and at any time because the true puppet masters are still out there, giving even those who have been accused of or arrested for a crime the opportunity to advance the group’s agenda.

      On this 40th anniversary of the Bologna attack, the citizens of Bologna will observe a minute of silence as they have done every year since 1980, commemorating the 85 victims whose names are enshrined on a plaque with the title “Victims of Fascist Terrorism.” Like each year before, the anniversary will be accompanied by newspaper articles and commentaries, continuing the controversial debates surrounding the attack. These discussions, however, should not distract from the fact that currently the judicial and the historical evidence point only to one group of perpetrators: right-wing terrorists.

      However, as long as theories and rumors circulate and documents remain classified, the victims and their families still await closure. Even if the terrorists might have not succeeded in their ultimate goal, the fear and terror they unleashed on August 2, 1980, still haunts Italy’s public memory — and Bologna’s main station, with its stricken clock — to this day.

      *[The Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right is a partner institution of Fair Observer.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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