EFFECT OF VITAMINS C AND E INTAKE ON BLOOD ... - EuroJournals

European Journal of Social Sciences - Volume 2, Number 1 (2006)
form of military intervention (Berkowitz, 2002, pp. 289-300. Although these pillars usually refer to
international terrorism, they nevertheless provide a guideline for combating domestic terrorism too.
For, if we accept that international terrorism can be best combated if intelligence, law and intervention
are used wisely, domestic terrorism can also be combated if the same course of action is followed. This
of course implies that in the process of countering domestic terrorist organisations, these pillars have to
be altered in such a way that they will take into consideration the special parameters of the country and
the terrorist group.
3. Domestic responses to terrorism
Domestic terrorist activity has characterised, amongst other places, Western Europe for at least the last
three decades of the twentieth century. As Pluchinsky puts it, Western European countries “have been
threatened by a strain or species of terrorist group known as ‘fighting-communist organizations’
(FCO). Found predominantly in Western Europe, an FCO is generally a small, lethal, urban terrorist
group which is guided by Marxist-Leninist ideology” (Alexander & Pluchinsky, 1992, p. 16). In a
number of cases concerning countering certain such terrorist communist organisations, such as the Red
Brigates or the Baaden-Meinhof Group, the matter was left with the domestic police forces of each
country and the political will of the government. Usually, the countering of any such terrorist group
was the result of a well-coordinated political will and high-quality police effort, especially in the area
of intelligence gathering and intelligence evaluation.
One observation that can be made regarding those European counter-terrorism attempts is that
international co-operation was minimal and in no case a necessary condition for successful counterterrorism.
In trying to explain why that was indeed the case in European counter-terrorism attempts for
the last three decades, the answer is probably lying on the collation of two factors: one the one hand,
the special characteristic of the FCO in the face of targeting domestic targets called for a domestic
reply. On the other hand, the Cold-War period and the suspicions that were inevitably raised among
different counter-terrorism branches and agencies not only on a national but also on an international
scale, made the exchange of information and intelligence difficult and the actual intra-state cooperation
on a more practical level, impossible. In addition to those factors, one cannot neglect the fact
that European states, by being sovereign, wished for a domestic reply to terrorist activity within their
borders in the whole process, from intelligence gathering to the trial and the actual imprisonment of
terrorists.
This peculiarity of European counter-terrorism approach was seen as a natural response,
directly related to the nature of European terrorism. The reason for that is the fact that European as
opposed to International terrorism from 1970 onwards, was different in methods and in motives. For
example, by placing ideology in the core of their mindset, and by trying to overthrow the democratic
governments of their countries of origin in favour of a ‘socialist’ or a ‘communist’ revolutionary
government, FCO’s actions-in reality-called for a response from the democratic government. On the
other hand, the fact that the majority of the FCO’s attacks were designed to inflict fear and danger to
certain people or symbols of the particular ‘capitalist’ society in which they operated as opposed to
indiscriminate attacks that could endanger the general populace did not provide any real basis for a coordinated
international co-operation in countering them.
4. Academic approaches
In European academic terms, the notion of a domestic response to European terrorism called primarily
for the ‘protection and maintenance of liberal democracy and the rule of law’ (Wilkinson, 1986, p.125).
In that way, even intelligence gathering and intelligence or counter-terrorism agencies have to be seen
operating within the law, without abusing their powers. Another important element of the European
tradition in countering domestic terrorism is the role of Police forces in the process (Ibid. p. 139
onwards). The reason for favouring the Police over the Army as the most appropriate body for
intelligence gathering and counter-terrorism co-ordination has its root in the liberal European tradition
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