For a full list of University of St Andrews Events visit events.st-andrews.ac.uk/.
For recordings of past events visit our media page.
The Diplomacy of Terror, European States and Arab-Palestinian Terrorism during the Cold War
In the late 1960s, a new political actor appeared on the European stage: armed organisations from the Middle East and the Mediterranean basin export terrorism to the Old Continent to influence the international scene.
France, West Germany, Great Britain and Italy – countries simultaneously affected by domestic terrorism – found themselves facing a new challenge. This globalised terrorist threat was, to some extent, the result of a desire to influence the foreign policy of targeted countries.
But does terrorism work? What are its implications on the international system?
The lecture, which reconstructs and analyses how Western European States responded to international terrorism and their relations in the domain of collective security from the 1960s to the late 1980s, sets itself an ambitious goal: to gain greater insight on whether exported terrorism, characterised by a transnational DNA, has played a role in influencing the world scenario as marked by the Cold War.
Starting from the first Black September hijacking of the Israeli El Al flight in 1968 to the attacks by Arab-Palestinian organisations in Germany, Italy and France and Great Britain in the 1980s, the paper analyses single countries’ international policies, intergovernmental cooperation efforts among European countries in the domain of public security, and their interplay with the Cold War scenario.
Valentine Lomellini (1981) is an Associate Professor at the Department of Political and Law Sciences, and International Studies at the University of Padua-Italy). She has been Visiting Fellow at the Georgetown University, the London School of Economics, Visiting Professor at the Humboldt Universität, at the Wien Universität, at the St. Cyr Military Institute, at the University of Budapest and Visiting Scholar at the Université La Sorbonne. Valentine is also the Scientific Director of the international academic network IPSe — International Politics & Security which brings together around 15 Universities in Europe and the USA including Stanford, Georgetown, La Sorbonne, St. Andrews, and the European University Institute.
Valentine earned a Ph.D in Political Systems and Institutional Change at the Institute of Advanced Studies IMT (2009) and she was awarded the Medal of the President of the Italian Republic and the Simon Veil Award (2009). She has published around 70 contributions in Italian, English and French in volumes and international scientific reviews such as Modern Italian History, European Contemporary History, Zeitgeschichte.
The Crocus City Hall Terrorist Attack: Regional, Political and Security Implications Roundtable
The Crocus City Hall Terrorist Attack: Regional, Political and Security Implications Roundtable
While no clear evidence has yet been presented for who did it and why, it is clear that the attack on Crocus City Hall in Moscow will have serious repercussions for Central Asian migrants in Russia and for Russia-Central Asia relations.
The suspected ISIS-K connection, which fits a pattern of recent attacks and arrests, brings attention back to the problem of armed Islamist groups and insurgencies from Central Asian and the Caucasus and Russia’s role as one of their primary targets. The arrest of four Tajik men and their arraignment that did not acknowledge visible evidence of torture triggered a wave of harassment and renewed media commentary on Central Asia and its peoples as a source of danger.
Join us for an online roundtable, in collaboration with the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism (ICCT) in the Hague, which will discuss the regional, political and security implications of the attack, to get an expert view on the questions it raises, including:
• Will the migration regime change as a result?
• Will Central Asian migrants in Europe and elsewhere face additional pressure and scrutiny?
• Could the pressure of being trapped between discrimination and mobilisation to Russia’s war in Ukraine lead even more Central Asians to attempt to claim asylum or cross illegally at the US southern border?
• How should the US respond?
• Will we see more joint efforts to deal with the ISIS-K?
• Will the terror attack be used for political purposes by Russia in its war against Ukraine, or Tajik authorities in their campaign against the Islamic Renaissance Party?
• Will the attack and recent arrests of Tajik citizens abroad increase the willingness of European states to cooperate with trans-national repressions?
Guest speakers at the event will be Kacper Rekawek, ICCT; Malika Bahovadinova, University of Amsterdam; Sirojiddin Tolibov, Eitor for the RFE/RL Tajik service; Edward Lemon, Founder of the Oxus Society; Noah Tucker, Senior Researcher with Oxus and Handa Scholarship holder at the Handa Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence (CSTPV).
Please join us at 16:00 GMT via MS Teams – email [email protected] to register for the link.
Oqlanmagan: The Unexonerated
Wednesday 10th April 4.00pm – 5.30pm, School V
This is a warm welcome to a film screening of Oqlanmagan: The Unexonerated, a joint event between CSTPV, the Centre for Art and Politics, and Centre for Screen Cultures.
The screening will take place next Wednesday 10th April from 4-5.30pm in School V at the University of St Andrews.
The film was produced by Noah Tucker, a Senior Researcher at the Oxus Society and CSTPV Doctoral Candidate. There’s more information about the film below which is a powerful account of the experiences of political and religious prisoners in Uzbekistan.
For those who can’t make it, the film is available to view online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bSqnHRRj0Y
In the 1990s, Uzbekistan’s first president Islam Karimov arrested tens of thousands of practising Muslims, imams, and citizens engaged in Islamic study groups, forcing them to sign pre-written confessions that led to decades in prison on terrorism and treason charges.
Following Karimov’s death in 2016, his successor, Shavkat Mirziyoyev, acknowledged for the first time the existence of a blacklist against former prisoners, their social contacts and extended family. Oqlanmagan — The Unexonerated, a documentary sponsored by the Oxus Society, is one of the first attempts to tell the story of more than 18,000 people formerly designated as “extremists” by the Karimov government.
This event will feature a screening of the film followed by a discussion with Noah Tucker, and Emina Umarov, a researcher whose family lived through the Karimov repression and the prison system before receiving asylum in the United States who will be joining us for the event.
The Gatecrashers: a long view of lone actor assassins and terrorists, featuring Dr Tim Wilson.
Tuesday 2nd April 2024, 4.00PM – 5.30pm, Arts Lecture Theatre, Arts Building
Over little more than a decade, the so-called ‘Lone Wolf’ attacker has emerged as a central security threat.
Such lone actors are usually seen as a recent phenomenon. By contrast, this lecture takes a 500-year view to ask: when and under what conditions does this type of attack become more likely?
The linguistic ceasefire or how to re-engage listed armed groups
Paul Wilkinson Memorial Lecture featuring Sophie Hapeslaugh
Wednesday 27th March, 5.00pm – 6.30pm, School III, St Salvator’s Quad.
Sophie will offer a systematic examination of the impact of proscription, or the listing of armed groups as terrorists, on peace negotiations. By introducing the concept of ‘linguistic ceasefire’, she adds to our understanding of the timing and sequencing of peace processes in the context of proscription. Linguistic ceasefire has three main components: first, recognise the conflict; second, discard the ‘terrorist’ label; and third, uncouple the act and the actor.
These measures remove the symbolic impact of proscription, even where de-listing is not possible ahead of negotiations. With relevance for more than half of the conflicts around the world in which an armed group is listed as a terrorist organisation, ‘linguistic ceasefire’ helps to explain why certain conflicts remain stuck in the ‘terrorist’ framing, while others emerge from it.