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Foreign Policy
Summer 1999
Europe’s Most Wanted
Armed Islamic Group (GIA):
The GIA seeks to replace the secular Algerian government with an Islamic regime. It turned to violence after Algiers annulled the victory of the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) in Algerian legislative elections in December 1991. In October 1997, the FIS reached a ceasefire agreement with the government, but the GIA has continued to attack intellectuals, journalists, foreign residents, and villagers. Its terrorist activities spread to Europe in the mid-1990s, with the GIA hijacking of an Air France flight in December 1994 and its suspected involvement in a wave of bombings in France in 1995. The GIA receives funding from Algerian expatriates, including many in Western Europe, and reportedly also receives support from Sudan and Iran.
Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA, or Basque Homeland and Freedom):
The ETA was established in 1959 to create an independent homeland in Spain’s Basque region. Since then, the Basque separatists have been held responsible for attacks that have taken more than 800 lives. On September 16, 1998, the ETA unilaterally signed a ceasefire with the Spanish government—a ceasefire they warned would not be “definitive” until their region’s self-determination was recognized. The ETA is based in the Basque autonomous region of northern Spain and southwestern France and has trained in Lebanon, Libya, and Nicaragua.
Irish Loyalist and Republican Groups:
Over a year has passed since the historic Good Friday Agreement (GFA), but radical Catholic and Protestant splinter groups continue to wage a campaign of terror. Although the Irish Republican Army (IRA) has laid down its guns in accordance with the GFA, the Continuity ira and the New or Real iIRA carry on the armed resistance, bolstered by recent defections from their now less-militant IRA brethren. Protestant extremists such as the Ulster Volunteer Force and the Red Hand Commandos have displayed tentative support for the peace process. But another loyalist paramilitary group named the Red Hand Defenders allegedly orchestrated the March 15, 1999, murder of a Catholic civil rights attorney. Between January 1 and March 17, republican and loyalist paramilitaries were involved in 26 shootings, 62 beatings, and 112 instances of intimidation, according to the human rights group Families Against Intimidation and Terror.
Revolutionary Organization 17 November:
Born in 1975, this extremist left-wing organization owes its name to a November 1973 student uprising against the military government of Greece. It is committed to removing U.S. bases from Europe, ousting Turkish military forces from Cyprus, and cutting Greece’s ties with nato and the European Union (EU). In addition to assassinating U.S. officials and Greek public figures and launching several bombing attacks in the 1980s, it has broadened its targets in the 1990s to include EU facilities and foreign companies investing in Greece.
Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK):
The PKK was established in 1974 as a Marxist-Leninist separatist organization aiming to set up an independent state. Its 14-year-long insurgency in southeastern Turkey has led to 30,000 deaths on both sides. Although its primary victims are Turkish security forces, the PKK has also attacked Turkish diplomatic and commercial facilities in dozens of Western European cities this decade. In February, angry Kurdish sympathizers took to the streets across Western Europe to protest the arrest of PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan by the Turkish government. Ocalan’s abduction has led to renewed threats of violence against foreign tourists in Turkey. The Kurdish guerrillas number from approximately 10,000 to 15,000 strong and have thousands of sympathizers in Turkey and across Europe.
—FP