Hello,
Could you please read my essay and give me some feedback?
The prompt is:
From the National Counterterrorism Center, the following data was collected on terrorist incidents that lists attacks/injuries.
Country No. of Terrorist Incidents
Finland 0
Norway 0
Spain 192/2077
Italy 14/30
France 115/27
Germany 2/02
United Kingdom 117/912
United States 14/01
India 1728/6566
Indonesia 78/761
Sri Lanka 280/944
Russia 416/3294
Saudi Arabia 24/269
Sudan 38/435
Pakistan 589/2180
Iraq 4405/30234
Americans are constantly being told of the dangers posed by terrorists to the United States. What does the above data say about who the terrorists are targeting? Explain why this would be the case.
Thank you in advance
Frederic
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First and foremost, it is judicious to remind the reader that France has bred numerous anti-authority revolutionaries during its long history, the most famous being the Revolutionaries. This point is of particular importance because it might account for the persistence of the expression of various communist, anarchist, or nationalist ideologies among French terrorists. Furthermore, French has also been attacked by Algerian Islamic terrorists in the 1980s and 1990s because of the close relationships linking the French and Algerian governments owing to the French colonial expansionism in Africa. Therefore, no one would be surprised to notice that is currently ridden with Corsican, Basque, and Breton nationalists in addition to anarchists (like the Front National Anti-Radar) or North African Jihadists (such as the ones belonging to the GIA or the 9/11 group). After a review of the data and the methodology employed by the National Counterterrorism Centre to collect and process them, it appears that these data (which are taken out of context) cannot accurately reflect, in any way why some people are more at risk than others. Indeed, the victims' qualitative or qualitative nature is not clearly detailed.
Being a French citizen interested in current affairs, I will highlight the fact that the data need to be studied in context by analysts well versed in the anthropology of France to comprehend the victimology of terrorist acts in France. Moreover, having demonstrated that these raw data are also flawed, I will make obvious that serious doubt can be raised when using the database designed by the National Counterterrorism Centre.
On the one hand, these figures do not confirm that the actual victims are the ones being initially targeted by the terrorists. In other words, are they collateral damages? In addition, are the authorities sure that mortally or critically injured terrorists are not counted as victims? Second, were all physically injured people who necessitated immediate medical care counted? Indeed, local authorities might want to minimize the death toll in order to lower the impact on the media. Third, did all victims report their physical injuries to the authorities? Actually, some injured people among the victims might be the terrorists themselves such as the French revolutionary postal worker who exploded while preparing an IED. Since they might not necessarily want to be caught by the police, they also might abscond from the crime scene. Finally, people who are not gravely injured might prefer not to report their condition to the authorities because they might be illegals or they might consider that the emergency services should concentrate their efforts on more seriously injured people. Fourth, are psychologically damaged people immediately counted as victims? Similarly, people whose mental health impairments only surface a few hours or days after the terrorist attack do not automatically report their condition to the authorities. Moreover, the National Counterterrorism Centre does not clearly identify its sources. Indeed, the National Counterterrorism Centre does not explicitly precise if it collects its information from local media, local authorities, US intelligence agencies, or a mix of all those sources. Consequently, the figures collected by the National Counterterrorism Centre are really doubtful. They are all the more questionable that this government agency's political independence is not controlled by independent non-governmental organizations.
On the other hand, these figures do not indicate if the victims are government officials or simple bystanders. Indeed, the long-prepared murder of one single prominent government official may prove to be more significant for the advancement of the terrorists' cause than the heavy death toll of a bomb attack. For instance, Corsican nationalists favour attacks aimed at symbolic human targets like the French prefect Erignac who was assassinated or the bombing of French Gendarmeries in Corsica rather than mass murders. Moreover, symbolic targets are not solely composed of human beings. Thus, nationalist groups opposing the French government have a preference for terrorist attacks against government institutions (to stress their abomination of the French government's actions such as the Basque ETA). However, the attribution of the label "terrorism" to attacks targeting public or private properties is not so conspicuously easy. Indeed, when Corsican nationalists set fire on a house in Corsica belonging to a French mainlander, one could estimate that such an act underscores their abhorrence of the so-called French government interference on the supposedly "independent Corsican nation" or this act emphasizes the so-called resistance against the alleged French cultural or political invasion. However, to the extent that the perpetrators are seldom identified by the police and that they rarely confess the actual nature of their intents if they are taken in for questioning, it is difficult to determine if this conflagration is a case of arson, vandalism, insurance fraud, criminal retaliation, or terrorism. Subsequently, the abovementioned figures cannot be helpful to clarify the victimology by any means since the National Counterterrorism Centre is unable to confirm the terrorist intent of many acts in the database. For instance, a simple act of vandalism, which has neither been proved to be politically motivated according to the National Counterterrorism Centre itself nor generated any victim (both according to the National Counterterrorism Centre), has been counted as a terrorist act nonetheless. This case has been identified with the identifier "ICN: 200697294 DETAILS".
In addition, the National Counterterrorism Centre database is nowhere near reliability. For instance, it affirms that Jouy-en-Josas is located in the French region of Alsace whereas this city is located in the suburbs of Paris (which is in the French region of Ile-de-France). The French region of Alsace is about 500 km (about 320 miles) away from the French region of Ile-de-France. This case can be found under the identifier "ICN: 200711509 DETAILS". One could contend that this is a negligible detail, but given the use that is made of this database by the American counterterrorist community, it is far from being a minor point.
Subsequently, the database designed by the National Counterterrorism Centre in its attempt to totalize terrorist acts on a worldwide basis is, at the least, very poorly reliable and, at the most, a serious overestimation of the prevalence of terrorism. I would even dare to say that the obscurity surrounding the methodology that is utilized is reminiscent of the flavour of the propaganda employed by communist regimes during the Cold War. Therefore, such errors could incite cynics to deem that the National Counterterrorism Centre shows serious lacunae associated with the management of its database, if not an attempt at massaging the statistics.
