The dynamics of nationalist terrorism: ETA and the IRA

Terrorism and Political Violence

Volumn 19, Issue 3, 2007, Pages 289-306

  Sánchez Cuenca, Ignacio ^a,b  

^a Juan March Institute   (Spain)

^b UNIVERSIDAD COMPLUTENSE DE MADRID   (Spain)

Author keywords

Nationalism; Target selection; Terrorism; War of attrition

Indexed keywords

EID: 34547209126     PISSN: 09546553     EISSN: 15561836     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/09546550701246981     Document Type: Article

References (69)

1. The most systematic comparison is that of Peter Waldmann, Radicalismo Étnico (Madrid: Akal, 1997).
2. Cynthia L. Irvin, in her book Militant Nationalism: Between Movement and Party in Ireland and the Basque Country (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), has studied the political branches of both terrorist organizations.
3. Finally, Rogelio Alonso, "Pathways Out of Terrorism in Northern Ireland and the Basque Country: The Misrepresentation of the Irish Model," Terrorism and Political Violence 16 (2004): 695-713, has analyzed the influence of Republican nationalism on Basque radical nationalism.
4. This does not mean that the kind of violence in guerrilla and in terrorism is the same. For instance, terrorist organizations, being weaker than guerrillas, tend to avoid open combat with the State.
5. Gordon H. McCormick and Guillermo Owen, "Revolutionary Origins and Conditional Mobilization," European Journal of Political Economy 12 (1996): 377-402.
6. Fernando Reinares, "National Separatism and Terrorism in Comparative Perspective," in Tore Bjørgo, ed., Root Causes of Terrorism (London: Routledge, 2005), 119-130.
7. Bruce Hoffman, Inside Terrorism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), Ch. 2.
8. Key studies on ETA include Robert P. Clark, The Basque Insurgents: ETA, 1952-1980 (Madison, WI: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1980);
9. Florencio Domínguez, ETA: Estrategia Organizativa y Actuaciones: 1978-1992 (Bilbao: Universidad del País Vasco, 1998)
10. and De la Negociación a la Tregua. ¿El Final de ETA? (Madrid: Taurus, 1998);
11. David Laitin, "National revivals and violence," Archives Européennes de Sociologie 36 (1995):
12. 3-43; Francisco Letamendía, Historia del Nacionalismo Vasco y de ETA (San Sebastián: R & B Editores, 1994);
13. Fernando, Reinares, Patriotas de la muerte: Quiénes han militado en ETA y par qué (Madrid: Taurus, 2001);
14. Ignacio Sánchez-Cuenca, ETA contra el Estado: Las estrategias del terrorismo (Barcelona: Tusquets, 2001);
15. Goldie Shabad and Francisco José Liera, "Political Violence in a Democratic State: Basque Terrorism in Spain," in Martha Crenshaw, ed., Terrorism in Context (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995), 410-469.
16. Among the abundant literature on the IRA and the troubles, I include here some of the most useful references: Tim Pat Coogan, The IRA (London: HarperCollins, 2000);
17. Richard English, Armed Struggle: A History of the IRA (London: Macmillan, 2003);
18. David McKittrick and David McVea, Making Sense of the Troubles (London: Penguin, 2001);
19. Ed Moloney, A Secret History of the IRA (New York: Norton, 2002);
20. Brendan O'Brien, The Long War. The IRA and Sinn Féin (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1999);
21. M. R. L. Smith, Fighting for Ireland? The Military Strategy of the Irish Republican Movement (London: Routledge, 1995);
22. Peter Taylor, Provos: The IRA & Sinn Fein (London: Bloomsbury, 1997);
23. and Jonathan Tonge, Northern Ireland (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2006).
24. This figure is somewhat lower than others that are mentioned in the literature. For the sake of comparison with ETA, I have excluded from the counting all cases of PIRA activists that were killed by their own explosives. Strictly speaking, they are not victims of terrorist activity.
25. On sectarianism, see Robert W. White, "The Irish Republican Army: An Assessment of Sectarianism," Terrorism and Political Violence 9, no. 1 (1997): 20-55;
26. Steve Bruce, "Victim Selection in Ethnic Conflict: Motives and Attitudes in Irish Republicanism," Terrorism and Political Violence 9 (1997): 56-71.
27. Note that I am not suggesting that discrimination was the cause of violence: rather, discrimination can help to understand levels of violence.
28. On target selection in ETA and the IRA, see José Maria Calleja and Ignacio Sánchez-Cuenca, La derrota de ETA: De la primera a la última víctima (Madrid: Adhara, 2006);
29. Luis De la Calle e Ignacio Sánchez-Cuenca, "La selección de víctimas en ETA," Revista Española de Ciencia Política 10 (2004): 53-79;
30. Luis de la Calle e Ignacio Sánchez-Cuenca, "The Production of Terrorist Violencea: Analyzing Target Selection Within the IRA and ETA," Estudios/ Working Papers (2006), Instituto Juan March (Madrid);
31. Marie-Therese Fey, Mike Morrissey, and Marie Smyth, Northern Ireland's Troubles: The Human Costs (London: Pluto, 1999);
32. Michael McKeown, Two Seven Six Three (Lucan: Murlough Press, 1989);
33. David McKittrick, Seamus Kelters, Brian Feeney, and Chris Thornton, Lost Lives: The Stories of the Men, Women and Children Who Died as a Result of the Northern Ireland Troubles (Edinburgh: Mainstream, 2001);
34. and Author, 2004.
35. Avi Kober, "Attrition in Modern and Post-Modern War," in Bradford A. Lee and Karl F. Walling, eds., Strategic Logic and Political Rationality (London: Frank Cass, 2003), 74-98.
36. Alberto Abadie and J. Gardeazabal, "The Economic Costs of Conflict: A Case Study of the Basque Country," American Economic Review 93 (2003): 113-131.
37. ETA, Documentos Y (San Sebastián: Lur, 1981), Vol. 17, 353.
38. Quoted in Francisco Letamendia, Historia del Nacionalismo Vasco y de ETA (San Sebastian: R & B Editores, 1994), Vol. II, 114.
39. Quoted in Patxo Unzueta, Los Nietos de la Ira. Nationalismo y Violencia en et País Vasco (Madrid: El País-Aguilar, 1988), 251.
40. The IRA had aspired to trigger a revolution by guerrilla warfare in the 1950s. See Smith, Fighting for Ireland? (see note 7 above), 67.
41. Coogan, The IRA (see note 7 above), 375.
42. Quoted in Taylor, Provos (see note 7 above), 104.
43. Quoted in Henry Patterson, The Politics of Illusion: A Political History of the IRA (London: Serif, 1997), 217.
44. The Green Book is secret, but Coogan, The IRA (see note 7 above), Ch. 33-34 provides an exhaustive description with long quotations.
45. See for instance White (see note 9 above), 40 and 45. Although Smith, Fighting for Ireland? (see note 7 above), 156-157, provides a very subtle strategic analysis of the IRA, he is somewhat ambiguous about the significance of the shift to the "long war" strategy.
46. Smith, Fighting for Ireland? (see note 7 above), Ch. 6;
47. Taylor, Provos (see note 7 above), Ch. 15;
48. John Horgan and Max Taylor, "The Provisional Irish Republican Army: Command and Functional Structure," Terrorism and Political Violence 9, no. 1 (1997): 1-32.
49. Quoted in Maria McGuire, To Take Arms: A Year in the Provisional IRA (London: MacMillan, 1973), 74-75.
50. Smith, Fighting for Ireland? (see note 7 above), 135;
51. Moloney, A Secret History (see note 7 above), 150.
52. Charles Drake, "The Provisional IRA: Reorganisation and the Long War," in Alan O'Day, ed., Terrorism's Laboratory: The Case of Northern Ireland (Aldershot: Dartmouth, 1995), 87-114.
53. Gordon H. McCormick, "Terrorist Decision Making," Annual Review of Political Science 6 (2003): 473-507.
54. For a detailed account of the nationalist front strategy, see Sánchez-Cuenca, ETA contra el Estado (see note 6 above), Ch. 6,
55. and Moloney, A Secret History (see note 7 above) on the IRA.
56. The TUAS document is reproduced in Michael Cox, Adrian Guelke, and Fiona Stephen, eds., A Farewell to Arms? From "Long War" to Long Peace in Northern Ireland (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000), Appendix 6.
57. Eamon Collins, Killing Rage (London: Granta, 1997), 8.
58. Christopher Hewitt, "Terrorism and Public Opinion: A Five Country Comparison," Terrorism and Political Violence 2 (1990): 145-170, analyzes fragmentary evidence on five countries (Uruguay, Spain, Italy, Germany, and Northern Ireland) and does not find evidence of a trade-off between type of violence and public support. However, he seems to conflate sometimes levels of violence (number of fatalities) and type of violence (targeting civilians in indiscriminate attacks).
59. Sean MacStiofain, Revolutionary in Ireland (Edinburgh: Gordon Cremonesi, 1975), 214.
60. Roger D. Petersen, Resistance and Rebellion: Lessons from Eastern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).
61. Stathis Kalyvas and Ignacio Sánchez-Cuenca, "Killing Without Dying: The Absence of Suicide Missions," in Diego Gambetta, ed̈ Making Sense of Suicide Missions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 209-232.
62. Juan Linz et al., Conflicto en Euskadi (Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1985).
63. Bernadette C. Hayes and Ian McAllister, "Sowing Dragon's Teeth: Public Support for Political Violence and Paramilitarism in Northern Ireland," Political Studies 49 (2001): 901-922.
64. On ETA, see below. On the IRA, Hayes and McAllister (see note 36 above) tables 7-8 report that in 1973, 25 percent of Catholics and 16 percent of Protestants thought violence was legitimate; in 1998, 28 percent of Catholics still had sympathy with the reasons for violence of Republican paramilitaries.
65. Based on the Euskobarometro (at www.ehu.es/cpvweb), I have calculated the mean as follows: full support, value 1; critical support, value 0.66; indirect support (those who agree with the ends but not the means and those who think that the armed struggle was justified in the past but not in the present), value 0.33; full rejection, value 0. Other minor answers and no answers have been eliminated. The rate of no answer is over 40 percent in 1981 and 1982 and then drops quickly.
66. Adrian Guelke and Jim Smyth, "The Ballot Bomb: Terrorism and the Electoral Process in Northern Ireland," Terrorism and Political Violence 4, no. 2 (1992): 103-124.
67. The same trend is observed for other type of elections: see Ian McAllister, '"The Armalite and the ballot box': Sinn Fein's electoral strategy in Northern Ireland," Electoral Studies 23 (2004): 123-142.
68. See the data provided by the Israel Defence Forces at www.idf.il.
69. Alan B. Krueger and Jitka Maleková., "Education, Poverty and Terrorism: Is There a Causal Connection," Journal of Economic Perspectives 17 (2003): 119-144.