Psychology of Terrorism: Intimidation by Destroying One’s Own Life in the Donetsk Basin

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-76
Author(s):  
Sergij Boltivets ◽  
Olga Okhremenko

The article presents the psychological genesis of terrorism in eastern Ukraine, referred to as the Donetsk Basin, during the Soviet era, which resulted from prioritising coal over the lives of Ukrainians affected by famine, executions, evictions and repression imposed by Russians. The replacement of the ethnic composition of the population by people from Russia led to the formation of a group of colonisers of Ukraine. This required creating an atmosphere of constant tension, fear and criminalised violence. As a consequence, the Donetsk Basin has become a favourable environment for Russians and their supporters, who were potentially prone to terrorist acts, and the most dangerous category of such persons — suicide bombers. The paper describes the emergence of a wave theory concerning terrorism in Europe, radical movements in Ireland, Macedonia, Serbia, Italy and Spain, as well as the current state of terrorism in Italy, Germany, Japan and many other countries. It covers the first terrorist act of Russia’s hybrid war against Ukraine near the village of Kamyanka, in the Donetsk region, where a checkpoint of the Armed Forces of Ukraine was attacked by a suicide bomber using a minibus loaded with explosives. It was also a place where other similar terrorist acts took place and the manifesto of Australian terrorist Brenton Tarrant was distributed in the centre of Ukraine by a terrorist group from the Russian Federation in order to involve prone persons in subversive activities on racial and religious grounds. The study was created using a nonparametric typology, based on the analysis of at least two parameters: the nuclei of vulnerabilities (targets of influence) and the features of intrapsychic formations arising under their influence. This allowed identifying five psychotypes of potential suicide bombers: of a person who has lost emotional connection with the outside world; of a fanatic of faith, associated with the activation of ‘mortido’ — the desire for death; of a fanatic of an idea, which considers the cessation of life as a spiritual transformation, and martyrdom as an integral element of the spiritual path; of a potential suicide bomber associated with extreme manifestations of protest behaviour; persons with psychopathic changes in personality structure. The paper establishes the prevalence of these psychotypes and comparative possibilities of influencing each of them.

Author(s):  
Mia Dayanti Fajar ◽  
Elisabeth Dewi

ISIS and Al-Qaeda are now recruiting women to join terrorism groups. These two large terrorist groups even show the real use of women as suicide bombers in terrorist acts. This is certainly controversial since women have a close relationship with peace. It indicates a shift in traditional feminist thinking saying that women are identical with peace. The involvement of women in terrorism can also be traced in Indonesia. In December 2016, Indonesia was shocked by the arrest of a prospective suicide bomber with her husband. The phenomenon occurred along with female Chechen suicide bombers, Black Widows, who blew themselves up to avenge their husbands’ death. This paper aims to explain the involvement of women in the world of terrorism and any reason taken by women to commit suicide bombings. The result of this research revealed that women were involved in terrorism because of patriarchal culture and personal factors that was based on religion by doctrinization in Indonesia.


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oleksandr Fedenko ◽  
◽  
Vasyl’ Panasyuk
Keyword(s):  

2019 ◽  
pp. 129-140
Author(s):  
Sophia Moskalenko ◽  
Clark McCauley

This chapter evaluates the moral threat of suicide terrorism. Political and psychological resilience to the threat of suicide bombing requires understanding the difference between suicide bombers and true martyrs. A martyr’s political power comes from the indisputable evidence—the martyr’s own suffering at the hands of the powerful—that the powerful are corrupt and unjust. This evidence is tainted if the would-be martyr indulges in provocation, aggression, or retaliation. The authors offer three directions that can help boost Western political resilience in facing suicide bombers, emphasizing the importance of clearly understanding the definitions of martyr, victim, suicide bomber, and terrorist and how perceptions can be changed in the immediate aftermath of an attack or an uprising.


2010 ◽  
Vol 38 (3) ◽  
pp. 379-393
Author(s):  
Neil K. Aggarwal

AbstractThis paper complicates the notion of the suicide bomber as represented in mental health literature. Most authors apply Western psychiatric concepts to understand suicide bombers without accounting for value differences around life and death or terrorism and martyrdom. Accordingly, these researchers replicate arguments to explain individual behaviour from a particular epistemological perspective. In contrast, critical approaches to this literature can expose the worldviews of the analysers and the analysed to devise sounder interpretations. This paper scrutinises mental health discourse on suicide bombing to ask: (1) What do we learn about the authors of suicide bombers in these articles? (2) How do their analyses demonstrate the relationship between knowledge and power? These conclusions can enable researchers to reduce biases and devise behavioural models that more accurately reflect the realities of their subjects.


2008 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-51 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rohan Ruwanpura, MD, DLM, DFM(RCPA), DMJ ◽  
Kiribathgalage Sunil Kumara, MBBS, MD, DLM ◽  
Hemamal Jayawardane, MBBS, DLM, MD, LLB ◽  
Lalantha B.L. De Alwis, MBBS, DLM, MD

Injuries due to explosive devices are often seen in Sri Lanka. The involvement of suicide bombers is the peculiar feature of these bomb explosions. Analysis of injuries observed in the suicide bombers showed distinctive injury patterns consisting of detachment of the head and limbs, severe disruption of the trunk, burns at the transected tissue margins, presence of cyanide capsule in the neck, and absence of the shrapnel injuries. These findings are helpful in recognition of the perpetrator for the subsequent legal proceedings and also important in organization of preventive measures.In this context, suicide bomber could be defined as an individual carrying high explosive device, attached to his/her body and must be recognized as a separate medicolegal entity.


Author(s):  
Pavlo Prokhovnyk

The article analyzes the history of the development of military-technical cooperation between Ukraine and NATO as one of the defining areas of international military partnership. Taking into account specific historical circumstances and external aggression by the Russian Federation, the importance of Ukraine’s military-technical cooperation with partner countries for the implementation of political goals and objectives of the state for the development of defense industry and national security is emphasized. Ukraine faced new types of threats in all spheres of the state’s life, in the military in particular, which required active assistance from partner countries. The realities of the hybrid war, which has targeted our country, require new approaches to ensuring the state sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine, including by strengthening military partnerships with the European Union and the United States. In modern geopolitical, socio-economic, international legal, military-political conditions, the nature, forms and directions of Ukraine’s military partnership need to be rethought and clarified. Today, Ukraine’s military cooperation with NATO is of a strategic nature, the tasks of which can be grouped into four key areas: maintaining military-political dialogue; assistance in reforming and developing the Armed Forces of Ukraine; ensuring contribution to international security and peacekeeping; defense and technical cooperation. As a result of this study, NATO membership will open new opportunities for Ukraine’s competitive defense industries and lay the foundation for military-technical cooperation at the international level. In this context, the myth that Ukraine’s accession to NATO will involve the collapse of Ukraine’s defense industry through the introduction of new NATO military standards, requirements for rearmament for our army is completely eliminated.


2021 ◽  
Vol 58 (2) ◽  
pp. 1749-1755
Author(s):  
Asst. Prof. Raad Kareem Abd-Aun Asst. Lec. Ameer Abd Hadi

During the peak of the sectarian war in Iraq after the US invasion in 2003, there seemed to be an absolute absence of the mind and a great deal of hatred and tension among the people of Baghdad that turned into maddening acts of terrorism, like car bombings and suicide bombers, killing thousands of innocent people. Frankenstein in Baghdad came to be the mouthpiece of that very critical phase in the modern history of Iraq. The abundant acts of killing and bloodshed during 2005 turned into an ugly form of a monster called " Whatsitsname" formed from the fragmented parts of those killed by terrorist acts. The creature bears a clear resemblance to Marry Shelley's monster in her novel Frankenstein. The monster is a loose perpetrator that kills whoever it meets. This study attempts to analyze the writer's poetics of adaptation in the novel and his debt to other literary works.


2019 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 48-73
Author(s):  
Lesia Dorosh ◽  
Olha Ivasechko ◽  
Jaryna Turchyn

The essence and main characteristics of the hybrid war are reviewed as a means of destroying the enemy country from inside due to the effective combination of conventional armed forces, subversion, propaganda, and dissemination of misinformation. The hybrid tactics used by the Russian Federation in Ukraine and Georgia are investigated. A comparativeanalysisof the military component in the confrontation between Russia, Ukraine and Georgia is conducted, the peculiarities of informational and psychological confrontation and factors that led to the significant achievements of the Russian side in the hybrid warfare are revealed, economic aspect of the hybrid confrontation are clarified (especially regarding the factors of financial, energy and raw material dependence) and, finally, the key conditions for the widespread use of hybrid methods of confrontation during modern armed conflicts are identified. Thedifference is proved between conflicts in Georgia and Ukraine, mainly in the use of military means. It is established that the conditions for the conflict in Crimea were unique, or at least extremely rare, and they can hardly be reproduced in any other place. It is noted that in the future, hybrid war will become rather a situational phenomenon, because the implementation of aggressive actions against another state without the necessary conditions for it will lead either to a quick defeat of the aggressor state, or will force such a state to move toconventional warfare, which requires significant financial costs and inevitably will cause decline in the prestige of such a state within the international community.


Author(s):  
M. Vehesh ◽  
R. Kopolovets

Summary. The article examines the main reasons and preconditions for the occupation of certain regions in eastern Ukraine. The influence and role of Russia in this military conflict are analyzed, and for the first time an empirical (applied) analysis of the democratization index in the temporarily occupied territories is carried out. Russia’s aggressive policy in eastern Ukraine is part of a “hybrid” war against Ukraine that began in early 2014 with the occupation of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea. With the support of Russia, the so-called “Donetsk and Luhansk” people’s republics were created in eastern Ukraine. In essence, these are occupation military administrations that number more than 30,000 people, including regular troops and instructors of the armed forces of the Russian Federation. These are well-armed military formations, the number and combat capabilities of which are not inferior to the armies of individual European countries. In the temporarily occupied territories there is a total political and ideological “Russification”, the purpose of which is the alienation and further isolation of these territories from official Kyiv. It should be noted that the hostilities, which have been going on for the sixth year, pose serious economic, political, legal, and geopolitical problems on Ukraine’s path to consolidating the democratic regime and integrating with the European community. The change of political regime in 2013 in Ukraine opened up prospects for the consolidation of national identity and the restoration of the course of Euro-Atlantic integration, which was usually not accepted by official Moscow and personally by President Putin. It should be clearly understood that the war in Donbass, provoked by Russia, is the result of a systematic and long-term policy of Russia towards Ukraine as a country with a favorable geopolitical location and a kind of bridge between Europe and Russia. The article pays special attention to the theoretical and applied analysis of democratic development in Donbass. It should be noted that from 2020 “Freedom House” will start monitoring the territory and accordingly provide quantitative data on the democratization index with the appropriate analytical base and forecasts.


2006 ◽  
Vol 88 (864) ◽  
pp. 853-880 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel O'Donnell

AbstractDuring the second half of the twentieth century the international community, facing the terrorist phenomenon, reacted with the adoption of a series of treaties concerning specific types of terrorist acts, and the obligations of states with regard to them. Alternatively terrorism-oriented legislation, which initially covered only acts affecting civilians, has gradually expanded to cover some acts of terrorism against military personnel and installations. This contribution attempts to assess the repercussions of this evolution on the status and the protection of armed forces engaged in the so-called “war on terrorism” by examining the existing dynamic between these regulations and international humanitarian law.


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