Organizational Motivations

This paper asks you to compare two very long running campaigns of terrorist violence: Palestinian violence against Israel and insurgent terrorism in Kashmir. In both cases the violence has persisted so long that different groups have entered the picture, each claiming to represent their communities and as a result the overall political cause seems to have been lost. The violence now seems to be self-perpetuating, or at least to serve different ends—the ends of different groups within each political community rather than of the communities as whole. With this in mind, answer the following in a well-argued essay: Are the various Palestinian groups fighting Israel for the purpose of Palestinian statehood and the jihadi groups fighting in Kashmir truly fighting for the political communities they claim to represent, or have they become sidetracked by organizational motivations? If so, what kind of agenda are these groups serving now? To what extent have they lost sight of their political goals and instead become bogged down in inter-group rivalries or criminal activities? Have other actors such as state governments hijacked or redirected the terrorists’ violence? What do these outside actors hope to achieve, and how do these goals compare with those of the people of Kashmir and Palestine? For the Palestinian dimension, see background in Law and the PowerPoint/Lecture, then draw details on various groups/factions from Harold Cubert’s chapter “The PFLP’s Role and Position within the PLO,” Ch. 5 of Byman, Robin Wright’s “The Palestinians,” and Ch. 2 of Stern. For Kashmir, see Stern (Chs. 5 and 8) and Byman (Ch. 6). If the violence of these groups has become disconnected from its political goals, how does one deal with it? What can be done to solve the problem of terrorist violence in these two areas?