Suppressing terrorists

[ewx]

The question came up recently of how many examples there are of terrorist campaigns being actually defeated (as opposed to the terrorists winning, or some kind of compromise being reached, or things just carrying on indefinitely).

Everyone has their own definitions, of course. Personally I'd exclude random loonies (e.g. Unabomber) - the interesting question is of a nontrivial organization, perhaps with support from the surrounding community. (There's obvious a grey area the other side of which is full-scale civil wars, and it's hard to draw the line in there.)

Sendero Luminoso were the main example I could think of: Maoist guerillas defeated by the Peruvian state.

I'm not sure if the Werewolves were defeated as such or just gave up.

The Angry Brigade might be an example, though are clearly well in the direction of the lunatic fringe. No, I'd never heard of them before either...

Comments

[sparrowsion]

There were quite a few left-wing revolutionary groups in Western Europe got killed off as communism fell in the east. Of the more (in)famous, the Baader-Meinhof Gang in its various incarnations was the most resilant, but ultimately gave up the fight, and the Red Brigade while never exactly defeated got pretty much run into the ground by a variety of factors.

[hoiho.livejournal.com]

Likeise the Rad Army Faction. And then there were also the Weathermen / Weather Underground / Symbionese Liberation Army in the USA.

[sparrowsion]

Er, RAF == Baader-Meinhof. (At least, according to the linked Wikipedia article. My own memory extends to little beyond the names.)

[hoiho.livejournal.com]

Hmm, I seem to recall that the RAF was another offshoot of Baader-Meinhof. I didn't read the link, as I've found that Wikipedia is never exactly right when I know anything detailed about the subject, so I've rather lost confidence in its reliability.

[burkesworks.livejournal.com]

The Angry Brigade might be an example, though are clearly well in the direction of the lunatic fringe..

Not so much "lunatic fringe" as "pretty inept". Kind of like "Dave Spart Buys A Chemistry Set". They didn't really achieve much, IIRC, apart from blowing Robert Carr's toilet door off. I actually knew Anna Mendelson when she lived in Sheffield, you know...

Whoever wrote the Wikipedia stub has failed to do his or her homework by the way; the Angry Brigade were not communist at all (libertarian or otherwise), and Stuart Christie had nothing to do with them. There's more about them in I Couldn't Paint Golden Angels by the much-missed Albert Meltzer (AK Press, Edinburgh, 1994).

[arnhem.livejournal.com]

The Jebel Akhdar war, and to some extent the Dhofar rebellion.