La historia del EPR

Al sur de México, en la Oaxaca de los años sesenta, a un pequeño grupo de jóvenes que por lamañana trabajaban como burócratas en la Secretaría de la Reforma Agraria y por la tarde formaban parte de la Liga Leninista Espartaco (LLE),
los sueños revolucionarios de la década se les metieron en la cabeza. Buscaron campesinos para asesorarlos en la lucha por la tierra, reclutaron estudiantes para tareas de agitación y empezaron la organización de obreros y colonos inspirados en los aires de la doctrina de liberación nacional, que por entonces recorrían América Latina. El triunfo de la revolución cubana en 1959 y la guerra estadunidense inicia

Europe is now a petri dish for hybrid war. Events of the past decade, not to mention the last few years, have reaffirmed the value of a concept that sought to explain a range of diverse, coercive instruments across the operational spectrum of war. Hybrid warfare is a term that sought to capture the blurring and blending of previously separate categories of conflict.

It uses a blend of military, economic, diplomatic, criminal, and informational means to achieve desired political goals. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey, has referred to these hybrid threats as an “inflection point” in modern war. Indeed, in the disordered post-Cold War world, hybrid warfare remains an excellent framework for understanding the changing character of war.

So why, at a recent off-the-record Washington gathering of Baltic and Central Europeans concerned about Russia (it was not hard to fill the room) did a high-ranking Estonian with substantial experience working on Russian issues express his frustration with the concept? Indeed, why do many Estonians, as well as their Baltic neighbors and even some Poles, Swedes and Finns, dislike the phrase?

These concerns are worth considering, particularly since Estonia and its neighbors are the prime targets of this form of warfare. There are two apparent reasons for their concern. First, many in the Baltic region view the concept as merely another mechanism by which the West can avoid decisive action against Russia, particularly because NATO has not developed, really, an operational concept to address hybrid threats.

The concept, according to this Estonian official, allows NATO to avoid action because a range of activities – from the aggressive use of disinformation by Moscow, to economic pressure, to bribery and threats, to use of “locals” to stir up protests – become conveniently categorized as being under the threshold of war. Indeed as one expert, James Sherr, has observed, in the hands of Russia hybrid warfare could “cripple a state before that state even realizes the conflict had begun,” and yet it manages to “slip under NATO’s threshold of perception and reaction.” Sherr is right.

Today, NATO members are the objects of this form of force – not perpetrators of it. NATO, established as a defensive alliance against a clear cut territorial threat, is not structured to operate in a “perpetual competition” mindset that today’s confrontation in Europe requires. In the past, NATO’s readiness centered on the readiness of its conventional forces: It made clear that military forays into allied territory would be met with military opposition.

But in the post-Cold War period, the United States and other allies are much less comfortable responding to actions that are in the gray areas of political subversion – areas at which Russia excels. In effect, NATO’s focus on Article V– the provision that dates from the birth of the alliance in 1949 and states that an attack against one is an attack against all – may today be its fatal flaw.

The provision requires that members “agree [emphasis mine] that if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defense…will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force.”

Hybrid threats provide the “perfect” conundrum: the injection of so much uncertainty that NATO collapses under its own principle of allied consensus. At what point does the alliance decide if the Lithuanian President, Dalia Grybauskaite, is correct when she remarked that Lithuania was “already under attack,” with the first stage of confrontation taking place – informational war, propaganda and cyberattack? Watching tanks roll through the Fulda Gap in the Cold War, or now across the Bug River, or into Narva would provide much clearer evidence of war, but Russia is unlikely to make it easy for NATO to reach consensus. Moscow appears to be deliberately staying under the Article V threshold, while still pursuing its aggressive aims and seeking to destabilize NATO members. For decades, NATO leaders argued about coordinating against “out of area threats” and whether attacks in places such as the Middle East and Africa merited a NATO response. It is ironic that conflict in the very heart of Europe could lead to the same divisions.

The hybrid warfare concept gives many in the West the luxury of picking and choosing from a range of actions – a media campaign here, a cyber-intrusion there (and even the occasional political assassination) – and interpreting them as one-off isolated events. There is no need to connect the dots. Indeed, it is often easier to look at the unfinished page, suggestive of possibilities that become clear only with a deliberate completion of the picture. Inadvertently, the flexibility of the instruments inherent in hybrid warfare tempts policy makers to detach the specific tactics from the overarching political goals that drive a war. A war fought with hybrid means becomes thus an incomprehensible sequence of improvisations, disparate actions along various geographic fronts – “humanitarian convoys” followed by conventional war with artillery and tanks in Eastern Ukraine, “peacekeeping operations” in Transnistria, cyber-attacks in Estonia, vast disinformation campaigns on mass media, seemingly random forays of heavy bombers in the North Sea, submarine games in the Baltic Sea, and so on – that appear vaguely connected. But they are a part of a whole.

Hybrid tactics are not a random sequence of improvisations but reflect an order behind the spectrum of tools used. That makes it incumbent upon political leaders and strategic thinkers (not always one and the same) to fit such activities squarely within the political objectives discussed by Carl von Clausewitz, who explained that war was an extension of politics by other means. In thinking through the ongoing competition with Russia, we must keep in mind that “hybrid” refers to the means, not to the principles, goals, or nature of war. There is nothing inherent about the concept that prevents this. Indeed, the Russians have it down. We do not.


Nadia Schadlow is a senior program officer at the Smith Richardson Foundation who occasionally writes on defense and foreign policy related issues.




Tomado de  http://warontherocks.com/2015/04/the-problem-with-hybrid-warfare/

by Doyle Quiggle

  In this article, I apply Jonathan Matusitz’s insights from Symbolism in Terrorism to identify and isolate the plotline of the ISIS beheading narrative.[i]  If we want to undermine and neutralize ISIS internet recruitment propaganda (the E-jihad), then we need to understand how and why their symbols appeal to their target audience. Narratives kick symbols into motion.  ISIS are excellent narrators. We must find ways to counter-narrate and neutralize their group-forming narratives.

 

 

Qu’ran 47:4: “When you encounter the unbelievers on the battlefield, strike off their heads until you have crushed them completely; then bind the prisoners tightly.”

Because ISIS communicators legitimize beheading by reference to Islamic history and Islamic theology, local Islamic authorities who do not share ISIS’s interpretation of Sura 47:4 will need to take careful heed of how ISIS have made beheading into a powerful symbol and narrative of their jihad. [ii]

Beheading an enemy, an Islamic terrorist symbolically links his (increasingly her) Jihad today to the sword-driven rise of Medieval Islamic Empire and to the late Medieval and Early Renaissance blood-soaked contest between Christendom and Islam for control of Europe.

A symbolic connection is made objectively visible in the beheading by the use of the most important Islamic Salafic weapon—the sword. Therefore, to understand the full symbolic energies of Islamic beheadings today, we must also understand the past symbolism of swords and blood in Islam. Here, I will introduce only the symbolic structure of the ISIS beheading narrative.[iii]
Timothy Furnish, a leading scholar of Islamic beheadings, notes:

“Islam is the only major world religion today that is cited both by state and non-state actors to legitimise beheadings…In contradiction to the assertions of apologists, both Muslim and non-Muslim, these beheadings are not simply a brutal method of drawing attention to the Islamist political agenda and weakening an opponent’s will to fight. Zarqawi and other Islamists who practise decapitation believe that God has ordained them to obliterate their enemies in this manner.” [iv]

The ISIS beheading narrative derives its moral, legal, and theological authority directly from Islam. [v]   But it swipes some of its aesthetic appeal from non-Islamic sources, such as comic books, film, and video games. These non-Islamic sources have long circulated images of beheading in popular culture and have kept decapitation actively present in the visual fields and cultural imaginations of potential ISIS recruits, especially of gamers. 

Biologically, neurologically, and anthropologically understood, narrative performs the primary social function of creating cohesion and cooperation among in-group members. Creating cohesion and cooperation and activating the altruistic pre-adaptations of group members is why we evolved narrative as a primary social tool of our species. 

Out of the feeling of cohesion created by shared narrative there emerges powerful, neurologically compulsive feelings of reciprocal altruism, commitment to the group—trust. Neurologically, we encode narrative-induced cohesion-trust as courage. And courage is as indispensable a virtue to small hunting parties on the ancient Savannah as it is to SF operators storming a qalat compound in Afghanistan or to ISIS fighters in Iraq.[vi]

The ISIS beheading narrative performs all primary, primal social tasks for group members, beginning as communal blood ritual and ending as a personal trophy that increases a member’s sense of pride in his group membership.     

The Beheading Plotline

In her book on beheadings in literature, LOSING OUR HEADS: BEHEADINGS IN LITERATURE AND CULTURE, Regina Jones (2005) identifies these four categories of beheading: Judicial; Sacrificial; Presentational; Trophy.

Judicial: Citing a Wahhabist interpretation of Islamic justice, SAUDI ARABIA beheads criminals it has found guilty of murder, drug trafficking, rape, burglary, witchcraft, and apostasy. The state of Saudi Arabia thereby symbolically and jurisprudentially legitimises ISIS beheadings. And we may wonder if the international community indirectly legitimises beheadings because it recognizes the legitimacy of Saudi Arabian state-conducted decapitation—JUDICIAL beheading.

Sacrificial: Borrowing legitimacy from Saudi Arabia, ISIS beheadings participate in all four beheading categories. However, ISIS beheadings begin as a form of RITUALISTIC murder. All ritual is a kind narrative that derives its meaning largely from sequence, doing things in the correct order at the correct moment, just as narrative creates meaning by having characters do things (events) through time.

ISIS beheadings begin as COMMUNAL BLOOD RITUALS. As with any ritual, the beheading ritual is performed to create cohesion and loyalty among ISIS members. The fear and outrage that beheading creates among non-ISIS onlookers often obscures the “group-building” aspect of the beheading narrative. Creating terror, however, is not the main goal of beheadings at this stage in the narrative plot. The social goal is to create group cohesion.[vii]

Beheading as communal blood ritual is also used as a rites of passage to initiate newcomers, to mark their identities as “timeless” Jihadis, to link them to an eternal, timeless, “sacred” space. Beheading as communal blood ritual cleanses European-born ISIS of “Westoxification.” That term (in Persian, Gharbzadegi) was first used by the Ayatollah Khomeni during the Islamic Revolution in Iran (1979) to mean “the state of being inebriated with Western culture and ideas.”[viii]

 ISIS beheadings represent a symbolic severing with Western ideals, beliefs, culture—the main source of the spiritual toxins that infect Islam, according to all-known varieties of modern Salafism. Beheading an infidel, the ISIS executioner symbolically cuts off his own “Western” head. He sacrifices an Infidel’s head to re-gain his Islamic identity.

Communal blood ritual inculpates ISIS members in the same crimes as their fellow Jihadis, a technique of coerced loyalty typically practiced by criminal gangs. Beheading represents a point of no “legal” return. Moreover, beheading as communal blood ritual transforms a ritual participant’s neuro-network/brain chemistry.  Beheading may embody a point of no psychological return as well.

My hypothesis:  As a communal blood ritual, beheading is a potently addictive psychotropic agent that radically and permanently alters the neurology of ritual participants. Corollary: The limbic system of ritual practitioners is permanently altered by the communal blood ritual of beheading.  We must account for this neurological transformation when assessing any ISIS defector’s claims about rejecting violence as a form of religious practice. [ix]

(When displayed on YOUTUBE, a beheading video can also act as a remote communal blood ritual.)

We need more information about who gets to perform beheadings within ISIS. Are beheadings “permitted” only to privileged members? Are ALL initiates required to attend beheadings?  Are women allowed to participate directly in this ritual?

Presentational: The beheading plotline enters the mediation stage when the beheading becomes PRESENTATIONAL, a sign of victory in the Jihad. Presenting the decapitation is an assertion of success on the battlefield, even as the presentation is also meant to create terror in infidels. According to the logic of magical thinking, the blood spilled during the beheading and presented to a remote audience has the power to cleanse all of Islam, starting with the Infidel-contaminated territory (i.e. Libya) onto which the beheading blood is directly spilled.

In this magical sense, the blood sacrifice presented and projected to a global Caliphate cleanses the mythic map of the greater Islamic Caliphate, which the ISIS Jihad purports to be re-conquering. When GPSed on today’s map, recent ISIS beheadings become a key part of ISIS mythic cartography, which corresponds to the imperial landmass of the Islamic Empire of Harun Al Rashid (ca. 800). Blood cleansing of the Salaf’s imagined Caliphate sets up the presentational use of the beheadings as a tool of recruitment, and the presentation of beheadings becomes a weapon in the Electronic Jihad (E-Jihad).

There’s a distinct aesthetic quality to ISIS beheading presentations. ISIS communicators clearly design beheading videos to maximize aesthetic pleasure for an ISIS audience, for example, making the executioners of the Coptic victims appear seven feet tall, as if they’re larger than life, like comic book and video game heroes.  In mediation, such as Youtube, ISIS beheadings provide remote ISIS members, ISIS sympathizers, or the ISIS-curious a source of voyeuristic pleasure.

As noted above, the beheading narrative borrows its aesthetic appeal from non-Islamic sources that have primed today’s youth to critically “appreciate” beheading, especially blood on swords. The blood-dripping beheading sword resonates not only with slasher films but also with popular “sword & blade” films like Lord of the Rings and with even more popular video games like SKYRIM and the METAL GEAR SERIES (i.e. REVENGANCE) that feature decapitation as a regular part of gameplay. Video games do not create terrorists.

My point is that decapitation had been implanted as a common feature of the cultural imaginary of game players and film goers long before ISIS began producing its version of Islamic snuff film. ISIS communicators exploit the decapitation pre-implantation of popular culture.

In its presentational mode, the beheading narrative announces victory on the battlefield, projects the blood cleansing of the ISIS mythic map (the global caliphate), and, with the aim of recruitment, exploits a pre-existing popular blood aesthetic in which the contemplation of beheading is source of pleasurable entertainment. ISIS recruits have likely been primed to become decapitators both by Islamic and by non-Islamic imagery of beheading.[x]  

Trophy: The beheading plotline is consummated when the severed heads are made into personal possessions by ISIS members, to increase their status and prestige among fellow Jihadists.  The heads become TROPHIES. They perform all of the typical cultural functions of other kinds of trophies. They mark the completion of a rites of passage.

Does the accumulation of heads, Colonel Kurtz style, increase status and prestige among ISIS members?

In sum, the ISIS beheading narrative begins at a primal, neuro-biological level, as a blood ritual meant to link ISIS members horizontally to each other, backward to an Islamic past of sword-driven imperial conquest, and vertically up into a timeless space of eternal Jihad. At the ritual stage, the narrative performs the primal evolutionary function of all narrative/ritual—to create group cohesion and loyalty. Specific to ISIS beheadings is how the “West-toxified” self of the ISIS member is sacrificed in order to gain or re-gain a purified Islamic identity. In cutting off the head of an infidel, the ISIS member heals himself of Occidentosis.

The communal blood ritual is then presented, via mediation, to a remote global audience, to signal victory in the Jihad and to project to the blood cleansing of the terra sancta of the caliphate. As a form of presentation, the beheading becomes an object of aesthetic contemplation (a source of pleasure) and a recruitment lure that exploits non-Islamic imagery of beheadings.

Finally, the severed heads become trophies used to increase prestige and status among ISIS members.
We need further investigation into the neuro-psychology of communal blood ritual.[xi] We also need to know the neurological implications of viewing blood rituals in mediation: To what bio-psychological extent does one participate in this ritual (experience the same neuro-peptide buzz) remotely, through the internet? We also need to contrast the beheading narrative/ritual to other, more pragmatic forms of ISIS violence.


End Notes
[i]    Jonathan Matusitz, Symbolism in Terrorism: Motivation, Communication, and Behaviour, (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015)
[ii]  For recondite but instructive discussions of Islamic law, see Bernard Weiss, The Spirit of Islamic Law (London, 1998);  Hashim Kamali, Principles of Islamic Jurisprudence (Cambridge, 1991); Ann Lambton “Changing Concepts of Justice and Injustice from the 5th Century to the 8th Century in Persia: The Saljuq Empire and the Ilkhanate” in Studia Islamica (volume 68, 1988) pp. 27-60; Wael Hallaq A History of Islamic Legal Theories (Cambridge, 1997); Franz Rosenthal, “Political Justice and the Just Ruler” in Israel Oriental Studies (volume 10, 1982) pp. 92-101. I owe these references to Gudrun Krämer, “Wettstreit der Werte: Anmerkungen zum zeitgenössischen islamischen Diskurs” in Die kulturellen Werte Europas edited by Hans Joas and Klaus Wiegandt (Bonn: Bundes zentrale für politische Bildung, 2005) pp. 469 – 493.
[iii]    For an overview of Islamic history, see Efraim Karsh’s Islamic Empire: A History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007).
[iv]    Timothy Furnish, “Beheading in the Name of Islam” in The Middle East Quarterly, (12 (2), 51-57, 2005)
[v]    See Michael Bonner’s Jihad in Islamic History: Doctrines and Practices. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008).
[vi]    For a comprehensive discussion of the evolutionary development of narrative as a social tool, see Brian Boyd’s On the Origin of Stories: Evolution, Cognition, and Fiction (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009).
[vii]    Dawn Perlmutter,  “Mujahideen Blood Rituals: The Religious and Forensic Symbolism of Al Qeada Beheading” in Anthropoetics (11-2, 10-21, 2005) and Investigating Religious Terrorism and Ritualistic Crimes (Boca Raton: CRC Press, 2003) and “Mujahideen Desecration: Beheadings, Mutilation & Muslim Iconoclasm” in Anthropoetics (12, 2, 1-8, 2006).
[viii]   Jonathan Matusitz, Symbolism in Terrorism: Motivation, Communication, and Behaviour, (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015)
[ix]   See Eugene G. d’Aquili, Charles D. Laughlin, Jr., John McManus, et al, The Spectrum of Ritual: A Biogenetic Structural Analysis (New York: Columbia University Press, 1979). Victor Turner, "Body, Brain, and Culture," in The Anthropology of Performance (New York: PAJ Publications, 1987). Ronald Grimes, Beginnings in Ritual Studies, Revised Edition (University of South Carolina Press, 1995). D’ Aquili and Andrew B. Newberg, The Mystical Mind: Probing the Biology of Religious Experience (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1999). Nathan Mitchell, "What Biogeneticists Are Saying About Ritual: A Report,"Liturgy Digest, 1:1 (Spring 1993). Pascal Boyer Religion Explained: The Human Instincts that Fashion Gods, Spirits, and Ancestors (Wiedenfeld and Nicolson: London, 2001).
[x]    Combating Terrorism Center The Islamic Imagery Project: Visual Motifs in Jihadi Internet Propaganda, 2014.
[xi]    For accounts of the evolutionary development of ritual, see Pascal Boyer’s Religion Explained: The Human Instincts that Fashion Gods, Spirits, and Ancestors 2001 (New York: Basic Books) and Robin Dunbar’s The Human Story, 2004 (London: Faber & Faber).  For an early but still-useful look at the neurological basis of ritual, see Eugene D’Aquili’s The Spectrum of Ritual: A Biogenetic Analysis, 1979 (Columbia: Columbia University Press) and The Mystical Mind, 1999 (Fortress Press).

by John P. Sullivan and Adam Elkus

In 2009, we laid out a conceptual model of terrorist “urban siege” based on the Mumbai attacks.  [i] As noted by several observers, the recent terrorist attack in Paris on the Charlie Hebdo offices may have succeeded due to the unfortunate fact that security officials expected other attack modes (such as airline bombs), not a run and gun in the heart of an urban center. [ii]

While it would be tempting to posit Paris as another bloody data point explained by our conceptual schema, Paris is in fact cause for broadening and expanding it. Unfortunately, the world faces urban security threats that span a spectrum of organization and lethality.  Future threats may look like Mumbai (as has been seen in the Mumbai-like operation against the Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi) or they may resemble Paris. [iii] And there is a large spectrum of threats that occupy the threat envelope in between.

Here we review the timeline of the attacks, analyze continuities and complications with urban siege schemas and relevant incidents, review relevant analysis that could inform a more robust analysis of urban siege, and close with a set of our own questions for researchers and practitioners about what assumptions we need to make in planning for, training to stop, and red-teaming urban siege scenarios.

Urban Siege in Paris

In France, the new year opened with a horrific urban siege. This latest installment of urban guerilla action involved armed assault and massacre, execution of police, a massive manhunt and two hostage-barricade situations. Three days of terror saw the deployment of 88,000 personnel from the French Interior Ministry – ranging from community police to specialized gendarmerie, augmented by a large military contingent. [iv]

On Wednesday 7 January, a car pulled up in front of the offices of Charlie Hebdo, a satirist magazine in Paris’ 11th Arrondissement.  Two men – the Kouachi brothers, Cherif and Said – got out of the car; they were dressed in black and carried automatic weapons.  After making inquiries the made way to the office and opened fire, killing one.  When they arrived at the office they again opened fire killing the editor and 9 others including a police officer guarding the editor, as well as a police officer Ahmed Merabat, the first responding officer to the scene. [v]

After the attack the self-styled Mujahideen fled the scene. The next day (8 January) they robbed a gas station near Villers-Cotterets. The same day a female police officer, Clarissa Jean-Phillpe was killed in Montrouge, a Paris suburb by Amedy Coulibaly (who has been linked to the Kouachi brothers.  On 9 January, the Kouachi brothers robbed a car in northeast Paris.  A few minutes later the Kouachi brothers took a hostage and the suspects were chased by helicopters in a massive manhunt.  Area schools and businesses were put under lockdown and large numbers of officers from the National Police and Gendarmerie (including GIGN and RAID respectively) were deployed with support from the Army.  [vi] The suspects settled in for a hostage-barricade situation (the second siege) at a printers suite in Dammartin-en-Goele. The suspects boasted they would become martyrs.

A third incident at the Hyper Cacher, a kosher grocery, was conducted by Amedy Couliby to support the Kouachi brothers.  [vii] This siege, which resulted in the death of Couliby and four hostages, was terminated by a police counter assault.  The counter assaults were coordinated, simultaneous actions with the taketown of the Kouachi brothers to limit risk to the hostages at the grocery since Couliby said he would execute them if police assaulted the Kouachis’ location. 

The aftermath of the assaults includes questions about intelligence failure, fear of follow-on attacks conducted by activated sleeper cells, threats to police, and the threat of attacks in The United Kingdom and United States.[viii] Finally, the conflict has both physical and virtual dimensions as seen by a wave of attacks against French websites. Hackers, responding to the French public’s defiance in the face of terror, hit 19,000 French websites with denial-of-service attacks. [ix] A group of pro-Syrian regime hackers briefly commandeered the French newspaper Le Monde’s Twitter account, tweeting a message mocking the post-attack hashtag #JeSuisCharlie. [x]

Analyzing the Paris Urban Siege: Continuity and Complication  

On one end of a spectrum of urban assault lethality and sophistication is the Mumbai attacks. The attackers belonged to a cohesive and organized terrorist organization and received guidance, direction, and real-time information support from an offsite handler. On the lowest end is a garden variety “active shooter” more akin to the Columbine school shooters – no training, no guidance, no resources, no contacts but nonetheless possessing an willingness to kill and die. The organized terrorist group type of attacker is obviously capable of waging urban siege. Operating in small squads, they can challenge police command and control and on-site response through dispersion, firepower, and entrenchment.

As David Kilcullen observed in an application of our work to the Westgate mall attack, the Mumbai attack also was terror by “remote control” – the attackers utilized Skype, cellphones, and satellite phones to connect to an offsite operations team in Pakistan monitoring social media and news reporting concerning the ongoing attack. The Nairobi attack exhibited similar characteristics.[xi]  Six suspects affiliated with al-Shabaab executed a hostage-barricade assault against the mall complex. [xii] Multiple squads executed a coordinated attack and successfully entrenched within the mall complex for four days. 72 people died before Kenyan security forces could retake the mall.

As with Mumbai, the Kenya attackers prepared for an entrenchment scenario, fused various weapons and teams, and thwarted a disorganized and bureaucratically disjointed security force response long enough to exact a gruesome toll. The attack, though novel in its ferocity, sophistication, and toll, was preceded by a drumbeat of urban terrorist attacks in which al-Shabaab demonstrated urban assault capabilities.  The catastrophic impact of poor command and control cannot be overstated. An extensive Guardian report suggested that disputes over police and military command and control delayed response. Not only were attackers able to entrench and kill more victims, but a friendly fire incident also occurred and militants were able to foil a first joint police-army counterattack with sniper fire. [xiii]

Nor has Kenya been the sole instance of a suicide commando assault since Mumbai. In December of last year, the Pakistani Taliban launched a gruesome attack on a school for children of Pakistan army officers. [xiv] In a repeat of previous urban siege patterns, attackers provisioned for a long attack quickly pushed into the school. However, unlike in Beslan there would be no entrenchment and hostage situation. Pakistani forces responded within 15 minutes and killed all of the attackers.

However, the security forces were too late to save the 132 children and 10 school staff slaughtered by the terrorists during the initial attack. Pakistani Taliban, Afghan Taliban, and al-Qaeda urban operations continue within urban centers in South Asia, a site C. Christine Fair has noted is one large “urban battlefield.” [xv]

While we do not suggest that older hostage and armed attack scenarios were simple, the operational challenges associated with these types of attacks dwarf the typical single-site, hostage-barricade assumptions seen in terrorist operations such as the 1970s Munich Olympics incident or the spate of aircraft hijackings seen during the wave of terror that preceded the current wave of radical Islamist terror. As J. Paul D. Taillon noted in his study of hijacking and hostages, successful counterterrorist operations involved forward base access, cooperation, and specialized units capable of dislodging attackers. [xvi]  In contrast, modern urban sieges will require first responders to meet attackers head-on, regardless of sophistication and armament.  Such direct police action is necessary to stop the ‘kinetic momentum’ and minimize casualties. [xvii]

For example, in June 2014 a team of heavily armed Pakistani Taliban militants assaulted the Jinnah International Airport in Karachi. [xviii] Attackers disguised themselves as airport personnel and were successfully held off by security personnel and finished off by military reinforcements. They were provisioned for a long siege, but failed to survive long enough to inflict major damage. [xix]  Whatever damage (material, human, and symbolic) they inflicted, it could have been far worse had airport security officers not immediately responded to the incident.

For police, responding to simple, single site attacks requires a high degree of tactical proficiency.  Larger, more complex, area-wide simultaneous assaults require a high degree of coordination and the employment of operational art.  Urban operational art for the police demands integration of patrol, special operations (tactical response including SWAT, bomb squad, riot/crowd control, media/public information, detectives and investigation, and intelligence, as well as synchronization with the fire service, emergency medical services (EMS), emergency management, civil authorities, and potentially the military.  Such coordination may be needed at multiple locations in a single jurisdiction or among authorities spread across multiple jurisdictions.

Our ability to comment on the Paris attacks is limited and based on details currently known in the open source. However, we can observe several important similarities and distinctions to the urban siege model we have outlined in prior work.

Some aspects of the Paris attacks had at least superficially to other observed urban terrorist attacks. While the main actual attack itself was relatively brief, the attackers themselves hid out in the Paris metropolitan area, lengthening the period of terror and fear. The incident reached a bloody climax when the assailants – seeking martyrdom and desiring a fight to the death – holed up in a small warehouse with a hostage and subsequently died at the hands of French law tactical responders. [xx]  Both gunmen received tactical training related to basic weapons usage, and one gunman may have visited Yemen to receive further instruction and financing. [xxi]

The distribution of the siege is also relevant. The Charlie Hebdo incident must be understood as an integrated whole, with the opening assault against the newspaper offices just one (high-profile) component.  For three days, attackers went on a killing spree, distributing their attacks in time and space around Paris and its environs.  During this time, the French security authorities were forced to deploy an enormous force to find, fix in place, and neutralize the suspects before they could accumulate a larger kill count. The attacks were synchronized to achieve maximum impact, and police faced enormous difficulties handling both situations simultaneously.

The Hyper Cacher hostage taker, for example, demanded that authorities cease their pursuit of the Kouachi brothers. While the police raid that broke the siege at the Hyper Cacher may seem improvised and amateurish to some observers, it was also conducted under extremely unfavorable conditions. [xxii] Both police raids had to be synchronized for hostages to survive.  Moreover, coordinating a massive interagency response is complex and should be considered an operational success for the French security authorities given that difficulties in interagency coordination are an impediment to many operational responses and notably operational response to the Nairobi mall attack in 2013. [xxiii]

While these elements may be familiar to those that respond to, cooand, or analyze urban siege, other elements of the attack were more novel. Analyzing the Paris attacks, Clint Watts argued that the future of jihad was “inspired, networked, and directed:”

The jihadi movement may have finally become what its original luminaries always wanted it to be – and in Paris of all places. The amorphous connections between the Charlie Hebdo attackers, the Kouachi brothers – who attributed their actions to “al Qaeda in Yemen” – and kosher market attacker Amedy Coulibali – who pledged allegiance to the Islamic State in a recently released online video– may reflect exactly what some early jihadi strategists intended: broad based jihad via a loose social movement.  …. Years ago, Bruce Hoffman rightly proposed a spectrum approach to understanding al Qaeda comprising of a core, affiliates, and locals. His framework was appropriate but now needs some updates with the rise of the Islamic State. With two competing poles and a spectrum of adherents littered throughout at least five continents, jihadi plots and their perpetrators might best be examined through the blending of three overlapping categories: ‘directed’, ‘networked’ and ‘inspired’. These three labels should not be seen as discrete categories but instead as phases across a spectrum – some plots and their perpetrators will bleed over these boundaries.[xxiv]

Counterterrorism analysts have often argued over whether the future of jihad lies with centralized, hierarchal (if not completely top-down) groups capable of organized and lethal attacks or small groupings of alienated, mostly self-directed local attackers. [xxv] Watts suggests that this dichotomous understanding is ultimately misleading – it may be possible for an attack to feature such strange incongruities as terrorists belonging to two rival organizations (the Islamic State in Iraq and al-Qaeda) cooperating together.

Indeed, Islamic State supporter Coulibaly (with logistical support from other men that French authorities have detained) operated alongside al-Qaeda-identifying gunmen. [xxvi] All three were part of a known network of French domestic extremists that orbited around a charismatic yet amateur and unofficial religious figure. [xxvii] We leave discussion of what this means for the global terrorist threat landscape to counterterrorism specialists who will be informed by additional data. However, these debates, typologies, and considerations have practical meaning for operational authorities tasked with preparing for and countering urban attacks.

The three-day Paris siege complicates the assumptions of the conceptual schemas we and others have laid out regarding urban siege and urban terrorism. [xxviii]Attackers did not belong to a single group – they were part of a common network that somehow received inspiration and possible direction from two ideologically opposed terrorist organizations. Investigators are still hunting for possible leads, but it is safe to say that the attacks were a “tangled” mess that involve uncertain connections between the attackers, local terrorist connections in Europe and external organizations in the Middle East. [xxix]

The threat of simultaneous attacks, follow-on attacks, and the tangled web of influence this situation involves complicates operational response. Police must assume from now on that attackers might derive logistical support, inspiration, funding, and/or direction from a diverse combination of local, regional, and extra-regional sources. Moreover, they cannot also assume that one large attack by an attacker group is all they must contend with – synchronized attacks may occur designed to augment the execution and impact of one attack mission. Campaigns containing multiple simultaneous (or near-simultaneous) and/or sequential attacks (including attacks or engagements during exfiltration and escape) must be accounted for and demand the development and employment of operational art for urban battle. [xxx]

While much of the urban sieges since Mumbai demonstrate continuity, complications and change suggest the need for new thinking, including full-spectrum policing, operational art, including operations-intelligence integration to support command.

Diagnosing Urban Siege: Towards A Spectrum of Armed Assault 

Deriving problem classes of urban siege requires a look at both the organizational dimension of the attack and the actual means of operational preparation, planning, and execution.

As per Watts’ typology of terrorist organization and influence, we believe that the organizational dimension of the attack matters a great deal in creating reasonable assumptions for training, response planning, and wargames/red-teaming efforts.  We summarize his typology below. While we make no claims that Watts’ typology is the only or necessarily the most accurate template for analyzing jihadist organization, we believe it at least illustrates many of the analytical challenges involved.
First, there are obviously the most traditional kind of attack organization. “Directed” attacks, Watts notes, assume a large degree of central organization by an external group and high lethality and capability. These attacks have become seemingly less likely as improved Western law enforcement, intelligence, and military efforts have made it difficult for attacks to be organized from the top-down. However, as Gartenstein-Ross and Leah Farall have noted, one should not count these attacks out. [xxxi] Moreover, hierarchal organization does not necessarily assume a rigid, military-style command and control structure, and Gartenstein-Ross has noted that our understanding of the global jihad remains too fragmented and incomplete to make sweeping judgements about the likelihood of directed attacks.

“Networked” attacks will assume fighters with some degree of training (perhaps derived from overseas conflicts) and some degree of connection to overseas terrorist organizations or communities of terrorist practice. But, in contrast to elaborately planned directed attacks, Watts notes, networked attackers will constitute a “swarm” that brings together operatives, resources, and perpetrators as needed. Key variables in networked attacks include the local strength of foreign fighter networks, availability of weaponry, and the Western security environment that jihadists must contend with. Watts has suggested elsewhere that the chain of foreign fighters and radicals that being funneled to and from Western states to foreign battlefields may be modeled with the collective intelligence optimization technique known as ant colony optimization. [xxxii]


Finally, “inspired” attacks feature “bungled plots and random violence” by “jihadi wannabees.” While directed attacks and networked attacks demand a complex interagency operational response, “inspired” attacks may not typically not fit the urban siege conceptual schema. Competent law enforcement should be able to handle it, as “inspired” but often incompetent jihadists are frequently just as much of a danger to themselves as they are to their targets. However, one cannot rule out that directed or network attacks may spawn copycat inspired attacks, complicating security response, intelligence, and investigation before, during, or after an urban siege scenario. It is possible that future “inspired” cells may develop sophisticated capacity on their own or through interaction with other cells over time (although it is expected that this is difficult to achieve).

Next, we summarize Gartenstein-Ross and Daniel Trombly’s October 2012 report on the use of small arms by terrorists. [xxxiii] Gartenstein-Ross and Trombly note that the use of small arms figures highly in terrorist strategic thought and must be analyzed as a function of a larger jihadist war of attrition. Al-Qaeda documents outline a strategy for a war of attrition rooted in a combination of complex, multi-member operations and smaller attacks. Complex and large-scale missions force the target to expend significant resources to prevent future attacks of that type, while smaller operations create a constant threat stream and foster an atmosphere of fear and paranoia while driving up costs gradually. [xxxiv] A vehicle for this is the use of firearms and armed assault:

For both large-scale and small-scale attacks, firearms figure prominently in al Qaeda’s strategy. A considerable corpus of written works underlies the significant role given to small arms. For years, al Qaeda and other jihadi organizations have published documents on the value of these weapons. In Abd al Aziz al Muqrin’s A Practical Course for Guerrilla War, a book based on writings that first appeared in al Qaeda’s online journal Mu’askar al Battar, multiple chapters describe tactical and operational planning for urban warfare. Techniques covered include assassination, hostage taking, attacking motorcades, assaulting and clearing fixed targets, and setting up ambush positions. Additional volumes cover the acquisition and maintenance of small arms.[xxxv]

Having outlined the strategic aim behind al-Qaeda contemplation of armed assault, Gartenstein-Ross and Trombly create a typology of urban assault types. Assasination attacks involve terrorist targeting of a high-profile individual. Single-shooter attacks aim for a symbolic target or location of importance to the enemy. Two-shooter teams allow terrorists to conduct more sophisticated attacks over extended periods of time. Mass attacks and frontal assaults denote terrorist operations against fixed targets. Finally, complex urban warfare attacks include multi-man teams and hybrids of the aforementioned attacks. Terrorists may also mix hostage taking, robberies, and defensive siege combat with any one of these attack types. [xxxvi]

Both the Watts and Gartenstein-Ross and Trombly typologies address essential aspects of an urban siege scenario. The organizational capacity and style in one of the categories Watts outlines may dictate the nature of the small arms attack drawn from Gartenstein-Ross and Trombly’s study. Moreover, as we have previously suggested, an attack of one Watts type may lead to follow-on and/or concurrent attacks featuring another Watts organizational attack type and multiple possible Gartenstein-Ross and Trombly small arms attack types.

Murky and ill-structured incidents like the Paris incident suggest the need for greater integration between the levels of analysis in both surveys. Both cover core elements of the problem – operational direction and mechanism of attack respectively – but understanding organizational capacity and the causation of attacks may help explain the overlaps between attack execution types that Gartenstein-Ross and Trombly note at the conclusion of their report. “With firearms attackers have great flexibility,” Gartenstein-Ross and Trombly rightly note. Once an attack has begun, they can select new targets and counter law enforcement.” [xxxvii]

This, when coupled with the potential for a more unpredictable attacker set composition, suggests that conceptual integration is of more than just academic or high-level policy relevance. It matters very much for operational preparation for countering armed assaults. In order to train, prepare, red-team, plan, and allocate resources properly before the attack, police and other security agencies need to have scripts, scenarios, and models of how an attack is organized, rehearsed, and executed.

Questions about Future Urban Siege 

While we do not propose our own typology, the Paris attack and newer research and analysis by Watts, Garteinstein-Ross and Trombly, and others suggest some pressing questions for both researchers and operational responders to consider when pondering urban siege post-Hebdo. In pondering these questions, we hope that researchers and operational responders can grope towards some conceptual synthesis between the levels of analysis that Watts and Gartenstein-Ross and Trombly cover in their analyses. We list them below:

1. What kind of organizational assumptions should we utilize when building urban terrorism scenarios? 

Both the Mumbai and Paris urban sieges had similar results – prolonged mayhem by multiple groups of attackers. However, in one operation (Mumbai) the terrorists belonged to one group distributed into multiple teams. During the Paris attack the terrorists belonged to a loose common network but only loosely coordinated their synchronized operations. This created two different kinds of command problems for the first responders. Of course, the police may not and likely won’t know which type of adversary they are facing during the initial course of an actual attack sequence and must rely upon real-time intelligence and operational reports to develop situational assessments.

During the Mumbai operation first responders struggled to handle the command and control problem of countering a distributed operation. But in the Paris attack state capacity was high and this was not as grave of a challenge. Rather, the primary challenge was locating the perpetrators, connecting disparate incidents, and later during the hostage situations dealing with the new problem of an attacker that synchronized an attack to coincide with a main operation. This demanded synchronized police response, which was achieved.

The command implications most relevant for an urban siege problem will depend greatly on what kind of organizational assumptions we make about the connection between attacks in the urban terror scenario. But this question also pertains very much to the prevention of attacks before they happen.
A Mumbai-like scenario requires extensive preparation, planning, a forward base, and attack vector that might expose planners and operatives to vulnerability. The terrorist “kill chain” in this case may be amenable to detection and penetration. In contrast, a Paris-like scenario does not have to be analyzed by the familiar recourse to “intelligence failure” explanations – it is perfectly possible that an attack like Paris might occur absent the systemic intelligence-sharing and indications and warnings flaws observed after Mumbai. [xxxviii] Here the terrorist “kill chain” may be more obscure and difficult to penetrate.

2. How should we weight maximum casualties and maximum disruption in the assumptions we make about terrorist mission planning?

One issue that Gartenstein-Ross and Trombly implicitly raise is the dichotomy between disruption and casualties as objectives in an urban siege scenario. Certainly, killing a lot of people can induce disruption and disrupting a key site or system can lead to a substantial amount of casualties. But they ought not to be regarded as interchangeable. One can induce a substantial amount of disruption and fear without Mumbai or Peshawar kill counts – the toll of the Paris attack sequence was small compared to those incidents yet it also induced a massive mobilization of French security forces and led to fear, suspicion, and a backlash that may complicate future counter-terrorism efforts. [xxxix]

This raises some core questions about urban siege scenarios from the point of view of the attacker. Is there a tradeoff between casualties and disruption? How many casualties are necessary for disruption? Is one kind of objective easier to achieve than the other in an urban siege? Do attacker objectives change dynamically during the middle of an incident in response to new information? It should be noted that attackers themselves also may not see a distinction between casualties and disruption or heavily consider it in their planning. Enough casualties automatically suggest disruption, and disruption may be a primary objective with casualty count as a side effect.

All of these questions bear heavily on organizational assumptions and choice of attack tactics and weapons. As Gartenstein-Ross and Trombly note, firearms allow tremendous flexibility both prior to and during the prosecution of an urban siege. Police will be better able to model, red-team, and train for urban siege scenarios if they have a greater idea of how terrorists themselves view success and failure conditions for urban sieges.

3. How should we think about social media information and operational security during urban sieges? 

We devote the most space to this issue due to the fact that operational security (OPSEC) in response has become more acute due to changes in the social media landscape since we last wrote on urban siege.

The issue of social media and OPSEC is by no means new. The Mumbai attacks were one of Twitter’s first real-time crises, with both locals and foreigners giving contradictory and confused play-by-play as the event unfolded. However, the increasing saturation of social media platforms and the ubiquity of Twitter and other social media platforms are increasingly bringing uncertainties about social media and OPSEC to the fore.

In this attack sequence, social media played a significant role for police, the media, the community, and terrorist organizations alike.  Jihadists and their supporters used social media to praise the attacks, and the #JeSuisCharlie meme went viral extremely quickly. [xl] Additionally, Twitter became a tool for tracking terrorists and developing situational awareness (for all actors), and social media became a key operational security concern as the tactics, techniques, and procedures of security forces are now broadcast in real time by both new and conventional media and terrorist can track that presence as seen in the warning for police to keep a low profile on social media minimize the potential for terrorist ambush. [xli]

Both everyday citizens and major news media organizations maintain social media presences. Social media increasingly drives news during crises, and fusing social media information has grown easier over time due to the increasing maturation of third party client applications.  It has become easier for perpetrators of incidents to monitor feeds, as long as they have manpower to spare or are suitably entrenched in a manner that allows them to monitor feeds unimpeded.

While it is important to remember that attackers (if they successfully infiltrate) begin with the advantage of surprise and responders face an uphill challenge in sorting through contradictory information, so do attackers as well.  More research and assessment needs to be done about cognitive and organizational limitations on how attackers receive, process, and utilize social media information during crisis scenarios.

The human factors and emergency response literature is replete with analysis about how the incident commander’s situational awareness challenges, but we know comparatively little about that of the attacker group. [xlii] It is plausible that information fusion and processing difficulties may be negated by external support and planning (like the Mumbai attack’s handlers), but it also may just add yet another information channel to process as an extra burden. It is only by modeling the information processing challenges attackers face (and how technology may help or worsen them) that law enforcement organizations can gain an realistic idea of OPSEC considerations in future crisis scenarios and justify them to external audiences.

Conclusion: Are We Charlie? 

The first question routinely asked after every major terrorist attack is “can it happen here?” Until more information is available about the Charlie Hebdo attacks, it is hard if not impossible to even offer informed speculation about the answer. Our own work is based on news reports and others’ analyses and we will eagerly monitor how well they hold up as more detailed information continues to emerge about the attacks.

Our purpose in writing this piece, however, is not to argue about the potentials for urban siege. We know that armed assault and urban siege is likely to remain a dangerous threat in both the developed West and the developing world. [xliii] However, noting that the possibility for urban siege exists is no longer sufficient or useful. What increasingly matters is how the attack will occur, and we hope that our analysis and questions will spur others to move forward in intensely studying and wargaming the variations and permutations of urban siege.

We titled our first piece on urban siege: “Postcard from Mumbai: Modern Urban Siege.” It is our sincere hope that, whatever the tangled aftermath of Paris, we do not see too many more lethal “postcards” of urban siege from any more cities. [xliv]



End Notes
[i]  John P. Sullivan and Adam Elkus, “Postcard from Mumbai: Modern Urban Siege,” Small Wars Journal, 16 February 2009, and “Preventing Another Mumbai: Building a Police Operational Art,” 15 June 2009.
[ii] Shane Harris, “US Spies Expected Airline Bombs – And Got The Paris Attacks Instead,” The Daily Beast, 17 January 2015, http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/01/17/u-s-spies-expected-airline-bombs-and-got-the-paris-attacks-instead.html
[iii] David Kilcullen, “Westgate Mall Attacks: Urban Areas Are The Battleground Of the 21st Century,” The Guardian, 27 September 2013.
[iv]BBC, “Charlie Hebdo Attack: Three Days of Terror,” 14 January 2015. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-30708237 and Pierre Bienaime, “France Has Mobilized 88,000 Personnel After the Paris Shootings,” Business Insider, 8 Jan 2015. http://www.businessinsider.com/france-has-mobilized-88000-personnel-afte...
[v] Emma Graham-Harrison, “Paris Policeman’s Brother: Islam Is A Religion of Love. My Brother Was Killed by Terrorists, By False Muslims,” The Guardian, 10 January 2015. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jan/10/charlie-hebdo-policeman-mur...
[vi]CBS News, “The Special Forces Behind France’s Rescue Operations,” 9 January 2015. http://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-special-forces-behind-frances-rescue-ope...
[vii] Griff Whitte, “In A Kosher Grocery Store In Paris, Terror Takes A Deadly Toll,” The Washington Post, 9 January 2015. http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/paris-kosher-market-seized-in...
[viii] Ray Sanchez, Laura Smith-Spark, and Hakim Almasmari, “Source: Terror Cells Activated in France,” CNN, 11 January 2015, http://edition.cnn.com/2015/01/10/europe/charlie-hebdo-paris-shooting/, and Shashank Joshi, “Charlie Hebdo attack: A French Intelligence Failure?” BBC, 10 January 2015. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-30760656
[ix] Christian de Looper, “Post-Charlie Hebdo Attack, “Islamist Cyberattacks’ Cripple French Media: About 19,000 Websites KO’d,” Tech Times, 19 January 2015. http://www.techtimes.com/articles/27228/20150119/post-charlie-hebdo-atta...
[x]AFP, “Hackers Took Control of a French Newspaper’s Twitter Account and Tweeted ‘I’m Not Charlie’”, 20 Jan 2015. http://www.businessinsider.com/afp-syrian-group-hacks-french-newspapers-...
[xi] Kilcullen, ibid.
[xii] For an overview of that operation, see John P. Sullivan and Adam Elkus, “The New Playbook? Urban Siege in Nairobi,” Small Wars Journal, 24 November 2013. http://www.isn.ethz.ch/Digital-Library/Publications/Detail/?lng=en&id=17...
[xiii] Howden, ibd.
[xiv] Sophia Saifi and Greg Botelho, “In Pakistan, Terrorists Kill 145, Mostly Children,” CNN, 17 December 2014. http://www.cnn.com/2014/12/16/world/asia/pakistan-peshawar-school-attack/
[xv] C. Christine Fair, Urban Battle Fields of South Asia: Lessons Learned From Sri Lanka, India, and Pakistan, Santa Monica: RAND Corporation, 2004.
[xvi] J. Paul D. Taillon, Hijacking and Hostages: Government Response to Terror, Westport: Praeger, 2002.
[xvii] John P. Sullivan and Adam Elkus, “Preventing Another Mumbai: Building a Police Operational Art,” CTC Sentinel, West Point: Countering Terrorism Center, 15 June 2009, https://www.ctc.usma.edu/posts/preventing-another-mumbai-building-a-poli...
[xviii]BBC, “Gunmen kill 13 at Karachi’s Jinnah International Airport,” 8 June 2014. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-27757264
[xix] Taimur Khan, “Karachi Attack Shows Pakistani Taliban Fighting to Re-Assert Itself,” The National, June 2014.  http://www.thenational.ae/world/pakistan/karachi-attack-shows-pakistani-...
[xx]“Cornered French Suspects Vow to Die as Martyrs,” USA Today, 9 Jan 2015.  http://www.wusa9.com/story/news/nation/2015/01/09/report-hostages-taken-...
[xxi] Scott Bronstein, “Cherif and Said Kouachi: Their Path to Terror,” CNN, 14 Jan 2015. http://www.cnn.com/2015/01/13/world/kouachi-brothers-radicalization/Erich Schmitt, Mark Mazzetti, and Rukmini Callimachi, “Disputed Claims Over Qaeda Role in Paris Attacks,” The New York Times, 14 Jan 2015. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/15/world/europe/al-qaeda-in-the-arabian-p...
[xxii] Some have snarkily compared the operation to the infamous “Leeroy Jenkins” raid in the computer game World of Warcraft, mixing the audio dialogue from the failed multiplayer mission with the video of the Hyper Cacher police assault. See, for example, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKw65EN_JtE
[xxiii] Daniel Howden, “Terror in Westgate Mall: The Full Story Of The Attacks That Devastated Kenya,” The Guardian, 4 October 2013.  http://www.theguardian.com/world/interactive/2013/oct/04/westgate-mall-a...
[xxiv] Clint Watts, “Inspired, Networked, and Directed: The Muddled Jihad of ISIS and Al-Qaeda Post-Hebo,” War on the Rocks, 12 January, 2015. http://warontherocks.com/2015/01/inspired-networked-directed-the-muddled...
[xxv] For an overview of the debate, see Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, “Is Al Qaeda A Global Terror Threat Or A Local Military Menace?”, The Globe and Mail, 28 May 2014, http://www.defenddemocracy.org/media-hit/gartenstein-ross-daveed-debate-is-al-qaeda-a-global-terror-threat-or-a-local-military-menace/.
[xxvi] Maia de la Baume and Dan Bilefksy, “France Vows Forceful Measures Against Terrorism,” The New York Times, 21 Jan 2015. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/22/world/europe/amedy-coulibaly-paris-gun...
[xxvii] Griff Witte and Anthony Faiola, “Suspect In Paris Attack Had ‘Long-Term Obsession’ Carrying Out Terrorist Attack,” The Washington Post, 8 January 2015. http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/suspect-in-paris-attack-had-l...
[xxviii] See David Kilcullen, Out of the Mountains: The Coming Age of the Urban Guerrilla, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013, Anthony James Joes, Urban Guerrilla Warfare, Lexington: The University Of Kentucky, 2007, and John Robb, Brave New War: The Next Stage of Terrorism and the End of Globalization, Hoboken: Wiley, 2007 for a sampling of academic and practitioner writings on urban guerrilla operations.
[xxix] Mariano Castillo, “Following The Tangled And Treacherous Trail After France Terror Attack,” CNN, 15 January 2014. http://www.cnn.com/2015/01/13/europe/france-charlie-hebdo-attack-trail/
[xxx] The Boston Marathon Bombing Attack (2013) was followed by the shooting of an MIT police officer, carjacking, a manhunt, and firefight.  See  J.M. Hirsh, “Boston Bombing Overview: The Unfolding Of A 5-Day Manhunt For Suspects,” Huffington Post, 21 April 2013, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/21/boston-bombing-timeline_n_31270...
[xxxi] Gartenstein-Ross and Farall’s analysis is reviewed in Adam Elkus, “Leader of the Pack,” War on the Rocks, 31 October 2013. http://warontherocks.com/2013/10/leader-of-the-pack/
[xxxii] Watts, “Foreign Fighters and Ants: How They Form Their Colonies,” Geopoliticus: The FPRI Blog, June 2013, http://www.fpri.org/geopoliticus/2013/07/foreign-fighters-and-ants-how-t...
[xxxiii] Daveed Gartenstein-Ross and Daniel Trombly, The Tactical and Strategic Use of Small Arms by Terrorists, Washington, DC: The Foundation for Defense of Democracies, 2012.
[xxxiv] Gartenstein-Ross and Trombly, 6.
[xxxv] Garteinstein-Ross and Trombly, 7.
[xxxvi] Gartenstein-Ross and Trombly, 7-8.
[xxxvii] Gartenstein-Ross and Trombly, 21.
[xxxviii] Sebastian Rotella, James Glaz, and David E. Sanger, “In 2008 Mumbai Attacks, Piles Of Spy Data, But An Uncompleted Puzzle,” ProPublica, 21 December 2014. http://www.propublica.org/article/mumbai-attack-data-an-uncompleted-puzzle
[xxxix] Steven Metz, “The Paris Attacks and the Logic of Insurgency,” World Politics Review, 16 January 2015, http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/articles/14873/the-paris-attacks-and-...
[xl] Ben Hubbard, “Islamic Extremists Take To Social Media To Praise Charlie Hebdo Attacks,” The New York Times, 10 January 2015. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/11/world/europe/islamic-extremists-take-t...
[xli] Noah Ryman, “How Twitter Tracked the French Terror Suspects,” Time, 8 Jan 2015. http://time.com/3659307/twitter-tracked-terror-suspects/ and Sanchez et al., ibid.
[xlii] See, for example, Alexander Kott(ed), Battle of Cognition: The Future Information-Rich Warfare and the Mind of the Commander, Westport: Praeger, 2007, and Christine Owen (ed), Human Factors Challenges in Emergency Management: Enhancing Individual and Team Performance in Fire and Emergency Services, Farnham: Ashgate, 2014.
[xliii] David Kilcullen “New terror paradigm after Charlie Hebdo raids,” The Australian, 17 January 2015, http://www.theaustralian.com.au/in-depth/terror/new-terror-paradigm-afte...
[xliv] Postscript: As we completed this piece another urban siege attack transpired in Tripoli. Libya. This attack  on 27 January 2015 involved a combined assault (car bomb and gun attack) against the Corinthia Hotel killing at least three and injuring a half dozen more. See UN News, “Terrorist attack on hotel in Libyan capital,” Scoop, 30 January 2015, http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/WO1501/S00251/terrorist-attack-on-hotel-i...




Tomado de  http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/urban-siege-in-paris-a-spectrum-of-armed-assault

Liga: http://www.centrodemedioslibres.org/2015/05/03/audios-del-homenaje-a-los-companeros-galeano-y-villoro-en-oventic/

Himno Nacional:

Audio Player

00:00

00:00

Pablo González Casanova en voz del Comandante David

Audio Player

00:00

00:00

Adolfo Gilly

Audio Player

00:00

00:00

Fernanda Navarro

Audio Player

00:00

00:00

Juan Villoro

Audio Player

00:00

00:00

Subcomandante Galeano sobre don Luis Villoro

Audio Player

29:43

47:41

Subcomandante Galeano sobre maestro zapatista Galeano

Audio Player

00:00

00:00

Compañera escucha Selena

Audio Player

00:00

00:00

Compañero Manolo

Audio Player

00:00

00:00

Compañera Lizbeth, hija del compa Galeano

Audio Player

00:00

00:00

Compañero Mariano, hijo del compa Galeano

Audio Player

00:00

00:00

Subcomandante Insurgente Moisés

Audio Player

00:00

00:00

Himno Zapatista

Audio Player

00:00

00:00

 

 

:El Ejército Popular Revolucionario (EPR) convocó a la población a abstenerse de votar en las elecciones del 7 de junio en las que se renovarán nueve gubernaturas y los poderes locales en 17 entidades.

A través de un comunicado fechado hoy y difundido en redes sociales, la dirigencia del grupo guerrillero manifestó que participar con el voto en estos comicios significa legitimar y fortalecer un sistema corrupto y antipopular, responsable de la pobreza y la injusticia.

“La experiencia histórica nos enseña que votar legitima al régimen actual, el cual es responsable de las condiciones materiales de existencia de miseria y pobreza en las que vive el pueblo; votar en las actuales condiciones es legitimar que exista más desempleo y aceptar que existan salarios precarios”, aseguró el EPR.

La agrupación guerrillera que cumple 51 años de lucha insurgente desde que se formaron las organizaciones que le dieron base como el Partido Revolucionario Obrero Clandestino Unión del Pueblo (PROCUP) y el Partido de los Pobres (PDLP), pidió reflexionar sobre la participación en estas elecciones a través del voto.

Además, solicitó que no se estigmatice ni se rechace a quienes están promoviendo el abstencionismo o el rechazo al voto para las elecciones intermedias del próximo 7 de junio, en las que también se renovará la Cámara de Diputados.

“Son muchos los vientos que soplan de inconformidad contra el régimen y el gobierno antipopular, uno de ellos se expresa en los diferentes llamados contra el actual proceso electoral, poniendo en el centro de la discusión el ¿votar o no votar?

“Ante el actual régimen y la situación concreta que vivimos los mexicanos es necesario reflexionar sobre la esencia del votar o no votar en el marco de una democracia burguesa, que no es otra cosa que la dictadura de la burguesía”, señaló el EPR.

Según esta agrupación que tiene presencia en los estados de Guerrero, Oaxaca y Chiapas, la experiencia histórica ha enseñado que votar legitima al régimen actual que sigue los pasos del “terrorismo de Estado”, el cual está detrás de la desaparición de sus compañeros y de los estudiantes de Ayotzinapa.

“El pueblo explotado cada seis años comprueba que votar legitima y respalda la anulación de derechos constitucionales y humanos inalienables como el derecho al trabajo, a la educación y a la vida. Sabe que votar es legitimar el terrorismo de Estado contra el pueblo, aceptar y aplaudir los asesinatos, la desaparición forzada, las ejecuciones extrajudiciales, la tortura, la represión, el hostigamiento y el hambre sobre el pueblo como política terrorista”.

Por eso, sostuvo que no se debe rechazar a quienes promueven no asistir a las urnas el domingo 7 de junio.

“Hay quienes estigmatizan y descalifican a quienes promueven tanto la anulación del voto como el abstencionismo político, los satanizan y enjuician por promover esas formas de condena popular al régimen oprobioso, sin embargo, no se comprende que no votar es defender y hacer valer la voluntad popular, porque una parte del pueblo ha decidido condenar al régimen por medio de esta forma de lucha, sobre todo a través del abstencionismo político consciente”.

El EPR reiteró la propuesta de que la sociedad se organice e impulse el abstencionismo político consciente que sobrepase la actual coyuntura electoral y forjar una conciencia política revolucionaria.

Y concluyó: “porque votar en las actuales condiciones es fortalecer y legitimar a la democracia burguesa y condenar al pueblo a mayores condiciones de pobreza y miseria”.

COMUNICADO COMPLETO

AL PUEBLO DE MÉXICO

A LOS PUEBLOS DEL MUNDO

A LOS MEDIOS DE COMUNICACIÓN NACIONALES E INTERNACIONALES

A LOS ORGANISMOS NO GUBERNAMENTALES DEFENSORES DE DERECHOS HUMANOS

A LAS ORGANIZACIONES POLÍTICAS, POPULARES Y REVOLUCIONARIAS

A TODAS LAS VÍCTIMAS DEL TERRORISMO DE ESTADO

¡HERMANOS, HERMANAS, CAMARADAS!

Al igual que el panismo, el PRI prometió que este sexenio a México le iría bien, sin embargo, la misma realidad ha desnudado el carácter antipopular del gobierno priista, quedando las promesas de campaña en puro acto de demagogia electoral. Lejos de crear fuentes de trabajo se condena a cientos de miles de trabajadores a la desocupación, en México el desempleo es generalizado y profundizado como efecto de las reformas burguesas de carácter neoliberal impuestas por la actual junta administrativa.

Mismas políticas que han aumentado sin parangón la pobreza y la miseria como reflejo de la pauperización de la sociedad, en la clase obrera como en la campesina la precariedad de la vida material e intelectual es una de las características de esta pauperización producto del grado de explotación a la que se somete a las masas trabajadoras en donde la junta administrativa genera esas condiciones de explotación y opresión, al mismo tiempo que protege con el Estado de derecho oligárquico los intereses del capital monopolista transnacional y sus personeros locales, es decir, la oligarquía mexicana.

El desarrollo que ha adquirido el capitalismo y las formas de explotación en este siglo comprueban una vez más que el proletariado es una de las clases fundamentales del capitalismo independientemente de que la explotación asalariada se transfigure en una o mil formas, la relación entre el capital y el trabajo es la misma, cambia la forma de explotar pero no la esencia, en consecuencia el proletariado como clase sigue siendo el sujeto histórico. 

El proletariado como clase tiene frente a el no sólo la dominación y opresión directa del Estado burgués, además está sobre él la ideología y pensamiento reaccionario que se presenta con ropaje revolucionario, pero en los hechos intenta alejarlo de su tarea histórica, pretendiendo sujetar su acción a teorías "novedosas" que lo desmovilizan, le quitan el filo revolucionario de su acción, impide que adquiera la conciencia de sí y para sí y ahogan su acción en las formas burguesas de hacer política para condenarlo a que siga siendo dócil esclavo del capital. 

Las actuales condiciones de la lucha de clases en el país demanda que su organización y lucha estén fuera de los marcos de la corporativización del capital y del Estado, del reformismo y el oportunismo que lo ahogan en las grietas del enemigo. La organización independiente es el punto de partida para desplegar su acción política transformadora sobre el régimen y el capital. La lucha de la clase obrera debe ir de la mano con las luchas campesinas y de los diferentes sectores populares, todas acrisoladas en una sola contra el gobierno antipopular.

Son muchos los vientos que soplan de inconformidad contra el régimen y el gobierno antipopular, uno de ellos se expresa en el los diferentes llamados contra el actual proceso electoral, poniendo en el centro de la discusión el ¿votar o no votar?

Ante el actual régimen y la situación concreta que vivimos los mexicanos es necesario reflexionar sobre la esencia del votar o no votar en el marco de una democracia burguesa, que no es otra cosa que la dictadura de la burguesía.

La experiencia histórica nos enseña que votar legitima al régimen actual, el cual es responsable de las condiciones materiales de existencia de miseria y pobreza en las que vive el pueblo; votar en actuales condiciones es legitimar que exista más desempleo y aceptar que existan salarios precarios.

El pueblo explotado cada seis años comprueba que votar legitima y respalda la anulación de derechos constitucionales y humanos inalienables como el derecho al trabajo, a la educación y a la vida. Sabe que votar es legitimar el terrorismo de Estado contra el pueblo, aceptar y aplaudir los asesinatos, la desaparición forzada, las ejecuciones extrajudiciales, la tortura, la represión, el hostigamiento y el hambre sobre el pueblo como política terrorista.

Hay quienes estigmatizan y descalifican a quienes promueven tanto la anulación del voto como el abstencionismo político, los satanizan y enjuician por promover esas formas de condena popular al régimen oprobioso, sin embargo, no se comprende que no votar es defender y hacer valer la voluntad popular, porque una parte del pueblo ha decidido condenar al régimen por medio de esta forma de lucha, sobre todo a través del abstencionismo político consciente. 

Impulsar el abstencionismo político consciente es la tarea política que sobre pase la actual coyuntura electoral y forjar una conciencia política revolucionaria, ¿por qué? Porque votar en las actuales condiciones es fortalecer y legitimar a la democracia burguesa y condenar al pueblo a mayores condiciones de pobreza y miseria.

Cada día que pasa sin recibir justicia las víctimas de los múltiples crímenes de Estado cometidos en 26-27 de septiembre del 2014 en Iguala, Gro., se comprueba que estos crímenes de lesa humanidad son el reflejo crudo de lo que es el Estado policiaco militar y el terrorismo de Estado.

Desde el gobierno represivo y antipopular se sigue con la criminalización del descontento popular y la solidaridad con los normalistas de Ayotzinapa, es la prueba que el Estado no tiene voluntad ni disposición por presentar a los detenidos-desaparecidos, porque él es el responsable, es una prueba de su participación en los crímenes de lesa humanidad, que hoy desde las instituciones gubernamentales se pretende negar su condición de crimen de Estado. 

El Estado quiere diluir su responsabilidad en las detenciones desapariciones impulsando una ley donde se castigue a individuos, pero desligados del Estado. Se exime al verdadero responsable y se ejerce como un instrumento más para descargar la responsabilidad en figuras míticas y magnificadas como la delincuencia organizada, más que un instrumento de justicia constituye una medida más de contrainsurgencia, porque ahora dicen que las desapariciones las cometen particulares. 

A nuestros compañeros Gabriel Alberto Cruz Sánchez y Edmundo Reyes Amaya los detuvo-desapreció el aparato represivo del Estado mexicano, fueron torturados y siguen en condición de desaparición forzada durante estos ocho años. Su detención desaparición forzada, así como la de cientos de miles más que existen en el país demuestra fehacientemente que la detención-desaparición forzada por motivos políticos y sociales es política del Estado mexicano.

¡Hermanos, hermanas, camaradas! Nuestro partido lleva 51 años de lucha armada revolucionaria en México, prueba indiscutible de la necesidad de la revolución y de la vía fundamental de ella. Son más de 50 años de experiencia en la lucha por la emancipación total de nuestro pueblo, éste sabe los frutos concretos que ha proporcionado la lucha armada revolucionaria. 

Las tareas son muchas y tal vez los años que tendrán que pasar para ver liberado a nuestro pueblo de la explotación y opresión sean también muchos, por consecuencia, muchas son las batallas que habrán de librarse. Un saludo revolucionario a todos los que militan, combaten y colaboran en nuestras filas; un reconocimiento al militante que desarrolla su acción constructora en las masas, en las trincheras de nuestro ejército y las estructuras del PDPR. La consigna es ¡A SEGUIR DESARROLLANDO LAS TAREAS ESTRATÉGICAS Y TÁCTICAS DE LA PRESENTE ETAPA!

¡VIVOS SE LOS LLEVARON, VIVOS LOS QUEREMOS!

¡A SEGUIR EXIGIENDO LA PRESENTACIÓN CON VIDA DE TODOS LOS DETENIDOS-DESAPARECIDOS DE AYER Y HOY!

¡A ORGANIZAR LA LUCHA CONTRA EL TERRORISMO DE ESTADO!

¡POR LA REVOLUCIÓN SOCIALISTA!

¡VENCER O MORIR!

¡POR NUESTROS CAMARADAS PROLETARIOS!

¡RESUELTOS A VENCER!

¡CON LA GUERRA POPULAR!

¡EL EPR TRIUNFARÁ!

COMITÉ CENTRAL

DEL 

PARTIDO DEMOCRÁTICO POPULAR REVOLUCIONARIO

PDPR

COMANDANCIA GENERAL

DEL 

EJÉRCITO POPULAR REVOLUCIONARIO

CG-EPR

Año 51.

República mexicana, a 5 de mayo de 2015.

 Guerrilleros del segundo mayor grupo rebelde de Colombia exhibieron como un trofeo de guerra la pierna de un militar mutilado por una mina en un pueblo del noroeste del país, un acto que muestra la degradación del viejo conflicto armado que agobia a la nación sudamericana, denunció el jueves la Defensoría del Pueblo.

El acto fue condenado por el Gobierno y el Ministro de Defensa, Juan Carlos Pinzón, responsabilizó del mismo a rebeldes del Ejército de Liberación Nacional (ELN), a los que llamó "ratas humanas".

La Defensoría del Pueblo, una entidad pública encargada de la promoción y la defensa de los derechos humanos, dijo que los responsables de la acción violenta desconocieron y violaron gravemente los principios humanitarios en medio del conflicto.

"La Entidad recibió información según la cual, no conformes con las graves heridas que significaron la amputación de las extremidades inferiores a un suboficial del ejército, exhibieron una de sus piernas como trofeo en un colegio contiguo al lugar de los hechos", dijo un comunicado de ese organismo humanitario.

El militar trabajaba en la construcción de un parque infantil en el municipio de Convención, en el departamento de Norte de Santander, fronterizo con Venezuela, cuando la explosión de una mina le amputó el miércoles sus dos piernas, una de las cuales fue colgada un día después en una malla que encierra un colegio del pueblo.

"Colombia entera repudia y condena atrocidad de ELN. Nos llena de vergüenza y dolor!", dijo el presidente Juan Manuel Santos en su cuenta de Twitter.

El ELN es el segundo grupo guerrillero de Colombia, cuenta con unos 2.000 combatientes y actualmente mantiene contactos con el Gobierno en procura de iniciar una negociación de paz para poner fin al conflicto de más de medio siglo que ha dejado más de 220.000 muertos y millones de desplazados.

Nicolás Rodríguez Bautista, alias "Gabino", el máximo comandante de ese grupo insurgente, dijo hace dos semanas a Reuters que están cerca de iniciar negociaciones de paz con el Gobierno, pero indicó que no están dispuestos a terminar tras las rejas para redimir décadas de violento conflicto armado.

El ELN, que nació en 1964 inspirado por la revolución cubana y tuvo en sus filas a sacerdotes católicos radicales que se sumaron a la lucha por imponer un sistema socialista, se enfrenta actualmente con las Fuerzas Armadas en las selvas colombianas y lanza ataques contra la infraestructura productiva.  

"Los del ELN son unas ratas humanas para andar disfrutando ese hecho tan absurdo. Esa gente lo único que le puede pasar es encontrar la tumba o una cárcel", dijo a la prensa el ministro de Defensa.

No se produjo ninguna reacción inmediata del ELN a las acusaciones del Gobierno y de la Defensoría del Pueblo.

Tomado de  http://lta.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idLTAKBN0NT0WR20150508?pageNumber=2&virtualBrandChannel=0

It said the number of foreign fighters worldwide had soared by 71% between the middle of 2014 and March 2015.

Syria and Iraq were by far the biggest destinations and had become a "finishing school for extremists".

It also said if IS were defeated in Syria and Iraq, the foreign fighters could be scattered across the world.

Social media

The UN Security Council had asked experts six months ago to investigate the threat from foreign fighters joining Islamic State and other militant groups.

In the report filed to the council late last month, the experts say the flow of foreign fighters has risen from a few thousand a decade ago and is now "higher than it has ever been historically".

They say: "For the thousands of [foreign fighters] who travelled to the Syrian Arab Republic and Iraq... they live and work in a veritable 'international finishing school' for extremists, as was the case in Afghanistan during the 1990s."

Syria and Iraq were said to house 22,000 foreign fighters, with 6,500 in Afghanistan and hundreds in Yemen, Libya, Pakistan and Somalia.

Foreign fighter case studies

Texan Michael Wolfe, 23, planned to fly to Turkey via Iceland and then get into Syria to commit "violent jihad". But he unknowingly relied on an undercover FBI agent for travel advice, was arrested and admitted attempting to provide material support to terrorists.

Embarking on a path to jihad

Melbourne schoolboy Jake Bilardi travelled to fight with IS and reportedly died in a suicide attack in Iraq this year. The 18-year-old Muslim convert left Australia last year and flew via Turkey to Iraq.

Who are Australia's radicalised Muslims?

Briton David Souaan was jailed in December 2014 for preparing terrorist acts. Arrested at Heathrow last May after a tip-off from fellow students. Had previously been in Syria and had pictures of himself posing with guns.

Tracking UK's jihadists

A high number of foreign fighters had come from Tunisia, Morocco, France and Russia but there has also been an increase from the Maldives, Finland and Trinidad and Tobago.

The report called for greater intelligence sharing between nations to help identify foreign fighters.

It highlighted the effect of social media networks which had linked "diverse foreign fighters from different communities across the globe".

The chances of foreign travellers becoming caught up in terrorist incidents was "growing, particularly with attacks targeting hotels, public spaces and venues".

The Security Council adopted a resolution in September demanding all states make it a serious criminal offence for their citizens to travel abroad to fight with militants, or to recruit and fund others to do so.

Skopje, 11 may.- El tribunal de Skopje imputó hoy cargos de terrorismo y ordenó prisión preventiva para los 30 detenidos del grupo armado de origen albanés desmantelado este domingo en Macedonia.

La corte informó de que 18 de los detenidos son ciudadanos de Kosovo (antigua provincia serbia cuya mayoría albanesa proclamó la independencia en 2008), 11 de Macedonia y uno de Albania.

La Policía macedonia aseguró haber desmantelado este domingo un grupo armado de alrededor de 40 miembros que se había atrincherado el día anterior en la ciudad norteña de Kumanovo, a unos 40 kilómetros al noreste de la capital, Skopje.

Durante los enfrentamientos, murieron 8 policías y 37 resultaron heridos, mientras fueron abatidos 14 presuntos terroristas y 30 se entregaron a las autoridades, sin que se registraran víctimas civiles.

Los miembros de este grupo pertenecían a la guerrilla albanokosovar del UCK (Ejército de Liberación de Kosovo), que se creía ya desmantelada, y que a finales de abril tomó el control durante varias horas de un puesto fronterizo en la frontera entre Macedonia y Kosovo, sin que se produjesen víctimas.

El presidente de Macedonia, Gjorge Ivanov, mantuvo hoy una reunión con representantes de Estados Unidos, la Unión Europea, la OTAN y la OSCE a los que les trasladó que la comunidad internacional "debe encontrar urgentemente la manera de desbloquear las integraciones euroatlánticas de Macedonia", es decir, su pertenencia a la OTAN y a la UE.

BOGOTÁ, 12 mayo- Los comandantes de las dos principales guerrillas de Colombia discutieron en Cuba los avances en las negociaciones de paz, en un intento por convencer al ELN de iniciar conversaciones como las que mantienen las FARC con el Gobierno para poner fin a un viejo conflicto, dijo el equipo negociador gubernamental. 

El encuentro entre el líder de las FARC, Rodrigo Londoño, alias "Timochenko" y del ELN Nicolás Rodríguez, alias "Gabino", se produjo en La Habana a finales de abril, con el apoyo de Cuba, Noruega y Venezuela, países garantes de la negociación. 

"Con el propósito de lograr el fin del conflicto de manera integral, el Jefe de Estado tiene la convicción de que la incorporación del ELN al proceso corresponde al mejor interés de la sociedad colombiana", dijo el martes el jefe del equipo de negociadores del Gobierno, Humberto de la Calle.

"La explicación detallada al ELN de los avances en La Habana corresponde al mejor propósito de lograr la terminación total de la confrontación armada", agregó De la Calle, quien detalló que la reunión de los jefes guerrilleros se cumplió bajo unas condiciones limitadas en tiempo y en contenido.

El Gobierno mantiene desde hace 30 meses una negociación de paz en Cuba con las Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC), logrando acuerdos para dar acceso a la tierra a los campesinos pobres, facilitar la conversión de la guerrilla en un movimiento político, combatir el narcotráfico y sobre desminado.

El diálogo de paz con las FARC ha logrado más avances que todos los esfuerzos anteriores para poner fin al conflicto interno de más de medio siglo, que ha dejado unos 220.000 muertos y millones de desplazados, aún a pesar de que sucede en medio de la confrontación armada.

Con el Ejército de Liberación Nacional (ELN), la segunda mayor guerrilla de Colombia, el Gobierno de Santos mantiene desde hace 16 meses diálogos secretos y exploratorios con los que se busca iniciar una negociación formal de paz.

El máximo líder del ELN dijo en abril a Reuters que ese grupo está cerca de iniciar una negociación con el Gobierno, pero advirtió que no están dispuestos a terminar tras las rejas para redimir décadas de violento conflicto armado.

Después del encuentro entre los comandantes rebeldes, que se mantenido en secreto, las FARC pidieron a comienzos de mayo el inicio formal de las negociaciones de paz entre el ELN y el Gobierno, asegurando que el conflicto político, social y armado del país es uno solo. 

Tomado de http://lta.reuters.com/article/topNews/idLTAKBN0NX1L620150512

La mañana del 14 de mayo del año en curso, hemos preparado un extintor relleno de dinamita, pólvora negra y, polvo de fosforo con detonador de mecha lenta cacera. Lo hemos abandonado a las afueras de la Facultad de Estudios Superiores campus Cuautitlán (FES-C), facultad perteneciente a la UNAM, cerca de uno de sus accesos.

Por Vilma Chiriboga

Victoriano Lorenzo fue un líder indígena y guerrillero panameño. Nació en el área rural de Penonomé, provincia de Coclé. La fecha de nacimiento de Victoriano Lorenzo no aparece registrada con exactitud. Fue ejecutado en la Ciudad de Panamá el 15 de mayo de 1903, en la Plaza de Armas, hoy Plaza de Francia.

Lo que motivó a Victoriano Lorenzo a participar en la Guerra de los Mil Días fueron las injusticias e iniquidades cometidas por las autoridades locales contra la población indígena —la formada por ‘cholos'—, a los que el cacicazgo colonial, apoyado por el conservadurismo del poder central colombiano, dispensaba el mismo trato que a las bestias de carga. Por esta razón él tomó parte activa en la Guerra de los Mil Días, un conflicto armado entre liberales y conservadores. Al frente de los llamados ‘montañeros' o ‘guerrilleros de las montañas', Victoriano Lorenzo acudió a la contienda atraído por las promesas de tierra y libertad. La influencia que ejercía entre los cholos desde sus primeras reivindicaciones de justicia e igualdad lo convirtieron —para los grupos de poder— en uno de los cabecillas más peligrosos.

Las circunstancias que condujeron el hilo histórico de los hechos que culminaron con el fusilamiento del jefe guerrillero guardan relación con factores internos y externos. Entre ellos podemos anotar los siguientes: 1- El interés estadounidense por la ruta interoceánica panameña, al precipitar la terminación forzada de la guerra a favor del régimen conservador colombiano en el Istmo, 2-Los intereses económicos en juego, tanto para la compañía francesa del canal como para el Gobierno colombiano, 3- El orgullo herido del ejército conservador en mano de la guerrilla liderada por Victoriano Lorenzo. Esta coincidencia de intereses fueron los que definieron el curso final del destino del guerrillero coclesano.

El día de su fusilamiento los periódicos de la época, entre ellos la Estrella de Panamá, se limitaron a publicar un comunicado con respecto al juicio que se le seguía a Victoriano Lorenzo, sin entrar a debatir sobre el tema.

El comunicado del 15 de mayo de 1903 decía ‘En la comandancia militar de esta plaza se reunió ayer á las 2 de la tarde un Consejo de Guerra Verbal, presidido por el general Esteban Huertas, para juzgar por varios delitos al indígena Victoriano Lorenzo. Hasta anoche al cerrar nuestras tareas no era conocido el veredicto del Consejo'. El día 16 de mayo el periódico en mención publicó ‘El Consejo de Guerra Verbal reunido á las 2 de la tarde del 14 de mayo en la Comandancia Militar de esta plaza para juzgar a Victoriano Lorenzo... profirió su veredicto á las 9 de la mañana de ayer 15. El fallo del Consejo fue unánime por la condena del reo á muerte cumpliéndose la sentencia ayer mismo, á las 5 de la tarde, en la Plaza de Armas. Victoriano Lorenzo fue fusilado, previo los auxilios todos de la religión católica administrado por Fray Bernardo de la Concepción García lo que el reo recibió con gran fervor'.

Un año después de su desaparición física la mayoría de los periódicos invisibilizaron el hecho. Unos pocos medios periodísticos se refirieron a las actividades realizadas. Uno de ellos fue El Cronista, cuyo director era A. C de la Torre, en la que da a conocer la ‘peregrinación que se llevó a cabo... a la tumba del general Victoriano Lorenzo (la cual) estaba cubierta de hermosas coronas y mirto en donde hizo uso de la palabra... el orador coronel don Rodolfo Aguilera y el coronel don Edmundo Botello. (Además) el lunes en la mañana hubo misa solemne en la Iglesia de Santa Ana por el descanso del alma del que fue Victoriano Lorenzo'.

Finalmente, anotamos que Victoriano Lorenzo es ejemplo de un líder que se mantuvo fiel a sus principios, que no traicionó al grupo al que pertenecía por unas cuantas monedas como sucede en la actualidad con muchos pseudolíderes.

Tomado de http://laestrella.com.pa/opinion/columnistas/victoriano-lorenzo-lider-indigena-guerrillero-panameno/23865839