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Home My WebLink About07.04.2024 Board Correspondence - FW_ Water & TerrorismFrom:Clerk of the Board To:Jessee, Meegan Cc:Hancock, LeAnne Subject:Board Correspondence - FW: Water & Terrorism Date:Wednesday, July 10, 2024 8:42:46 AM Attachments:AGlobalAnalysisofWaterRelatedTerrorism19702016.pdf Please see Board Correspondence - LeAnne Hancock Management Analyst I Butte County Administration T. 530.552.3314 From: lance dreiss <lancedreiss@att.net> Sent: Thursday, July 4, 2024 4:59 PM To: Senator.Dahle@senate.ca.gov; Assemblymember.Gallagher@assembly.ca.gov; District Attorney <District_Attorney@buttecounty.net>; davidhollister@countyofplumas.com; pcbs@countyofplumas.com; Durfee, Peter <PDurfee@buttecounty.net>; sheriff@pcso.net; Kimmelshue, Tod <TKimmelshue@buttecounty.net>; Pickett, Andy <APickett@buttecounty.net>; Connelly, Bill <BConnelly@buttecounty.net>; Ring, Brian <bring@buttecounty.net>; JULIE THREET <preyinghawkreport@gmail.com>; Waugh, Melanie <mwaugh@buttecounty.net>; Ritter, Tami <TRitter@buttecounty.net>; Teeter, Doug <DTeeter@buttecounty.net>; Clerk of the Board <clerkoftheboard@buttecounty.net>; Congressman Doug LaMalfa <CA01DL.Outreach@mail.house.gov>; Stephens, Brad J. <BStephens@buttecounty.net> Subject: Water & Terrorism .ATTENTION: This message originated from outside Butte County. Please exercise judgment before opening attachments, clicking on links, or replying.. Public Record https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Jennifer-Veilleux- 3/publication/333366432_A_Global_Analysis_of_Water-Related_Terrorism_1970- 2016/links/61786ec13c987366c3ee8deb/A-Global-Analysis-of-Water-Related-Terrorism-1970- 2016.pdf? origin=publication_detail&_tp=eyJjb250ZXh0Ijp7ImZpcnN0UGFnZSI6InB1YmxpY2F0aW9uIiwicGFnZSI 6InB1YmxpY2F0aW9uRG93bmxvYWQiLCJwcmV2aW91c1BhZ2UiOiJwdWJsaWNhdGlvbiJ9fQ__;!!KN MwiTCp4spf!DO2n1C0U5cNLQGMhs5f1SK- RHRwZ5cN9qGKhe9vkcKbMbR9M3gfkLPZ6N33bUtHA9yKU9BzxFnArRHhksBx7YDORPuTPHg$ diana dreiss See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/333366432 A Global Analysis of Water-Related Terrorism, 1970–2016 ArticleddinddTerrorism and Political Violence · May 2019 DOI: 10.1080/09546553.2019.1599863 CITATIONS 10 READS 526 2 authors: Jennifer C. Veilleux Wageningen University & Research PUBLICATIONSddd342 CITATIONSddd SEE PROFILE 64 PUBLICATIONSddd1,444 CITATIONSddd SEE PROFILE All content following this page was uploaded by Jennifer C. Veilleux on 26 October 2021. The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file. -.$/+ 0!%%!%!0! !0 %$ !% &!10$! 2&!+30( !" #$ %&'%& (( ) *( ()&+, -./- 0 )12 3 45, # ) $67% 8 % !! "# $#% & !'()*'& !%+#,,'-./0123*224//20*4 9% !" #$ "! % &! ' %( ) * )+$!,!! A Global Analysis of Water-Related Terrorism, 1970–2016 Jennifer Veilleux and Shlomi Dinar Steven J. Green School of International and Public Aﬀairs, Florida International University, Miami, Florida, USA ABSTRACT Terrorist organizations destabilize governments through violent and coercive acts that include the use of water resources as a target. Scholars in security studies recognize water as a strategic resource but have yet to systematically quantify and describe how water is used in the case of terrorism. This paper explores this gap at the nexus of the larger ﬁelds of terrorism and environmental security by oﬀering meth- ods to codify types of water-related terrorism events. Using the University of Maryland’s Global Terrorism Database, which includes information on terrorist events around the world, and employing aggre- gate data analysis, we highlight trends over time and space. We found that water-related terrorism is a method of terrorism widespread across most of the world and that water infrastructure is the main target of choice by most terrorist organizations. We identiﬁed 675 incidents of water-related terrorism that occurred in seventy-one countries. We identiﬁed terrorist organizations with the highest numbers of incidents and transboundary water basins most at risk for water-related terrorism incidents. This collective analysis identiﬁes and codiﬁes the number and type of water-related terrorism incidents that occurred from 1970 to 2016; describes spatial and temporal trends of those incidents; and provides information for decision-makers regarding water-related ter- rorism targets and associated risk. KEYWORDS Terrorism; water; international security; national security; terrorist organization; water resources; target; infrastructure; water security Introduction Terrorist organizations destabilize governments through violent and coercive acts that include the use of water resources as a target, a weapon, a leveraging tool, and a nation- building strategy as well as water resources as a motivation for violent response. The ﬁeld of security studies, and speciﬁcally environment and security, considers freshwater as a strategic resource.1 Scholars considering the nexus between water and security largely focus on dynamics of conﬂict, cooperation, and negotiation between states as well as how water availability, combined with other factors, may explain intra-state conﬂict. The extant literature also considers water as a target (counter-value targets) by states, especially in times of conﬂict. Our study builds upon these approaches to systematically analyze how terrorist organizations impact water resources, either directly or indirectly, to challenge standing governments and achieve various objectives. Water is a critical resource targeted by terrorists to threaten communities and weaken states, as indicated in media headlines in the following examples. In 2014, after losing CONTACT Jennifer Veilleux jveilleu@ﬁu.edu Steven J. Green School of International and Public Aﬀairs, Florida International University, 11200 SW 8th St, Miami, FL, 33199, USA Color versions of one or more of the ﬁgures in the article can be found online at www.tandfonline.com/ftpv. TERRORISM AND POLITICAL VIOLENCE https://doi.org/10.1080/09546553.2019.1599863 © 2019 Taylor & Francis a number of cities in Somalia to AMISOM and Somali troops, Al-Shabaab cut oﬀliberated cities from their water sources. Residents from cut-oﬀcities were forced to walk to nearby towns to fetch water, many of which Al-Shabaab controlled.2 In 2013 and 2014, respec- tively, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) took control of Tabqa and Mosul dams. While the dams were ultimately retaken by Iraqi and coalition forces, their control by ISIL spurred fears the dams would fail and disrupt water ﬂows and hydropower generation.3 More recently, on July 30, 2017, the Taliban blew up a dam constructed in Kandahar province in a campaign of violence in the southern provinces of Afghanistan. The Shorabak dam was key in irrigating agricultural lands and its destruction sparked panic among residents.4 Terrorist attacks on dams and reservoirs could also pose a serious threat to highly developed rivers and waterways where computer systems control the ﬂow of water.5 In 2000, an Australian man hacked into the Maroochy Shire, Queensland waste management system causing millions of liters of raw sewage to spill into local parks, rivers, and canals.6 Al Qaeda reportedly sought information on remotely controlling water storage and distribution systems as well as pipelines in the California Bay Area and nationwide in the United States.7 Individuals associated with water resources and water resources management have also been the target of terrorists. Mohammad Ismail Khan, a former mujahedin leader and a Minister of Water and Energy in Afghanistan, is probably the most prominent ﬁgure targeted on several occasions in 2009, 2010, and 2014. The Taliban claimed responsibility in one of the attacks and was suspected of perpetrating the other two attacks.8 Terrorist organizations may also harm or target water resources indirectly. In Colombia, FARC was particularly notorious for bombing oil pipelines, causing oil spills into nearby waterways.9 Very recently, the ELN, also in Colombia, has perpetrated a terrorist attack of a similar tactic. On September 4 and then again on November 18–20, 2018, the group bombed the Cano Limon Pipeline causing contamination in several waterways, including the Catatumbo River.10 While it is clear there are a variety of water-related targets (people, infrastructure, water used as a weapon) and motivations (direct and indirect) for attacking water resources, our study ﬁnds that overwhelmingly, terrorists most often target water infrastructure. According to the 2012 Global Water Security report,“terrorists or extremists almost certainly will target vulnerable water infrastructure to achieve their objectives.”In fact, the report goes on to state that dams are used as “convenient and high-publicity targets by terrorists.”Other water infrastructure, such as municipal and irrigation water processing, holds potential as a target. In all, the report concludes that as “water shortages become more acute …water in shared basins will be used to further terrorist objectives.”11 Similar observations made by the 2015 Worldwide Threat Assessment of the US Intelligence Community, claim that “terrorist organizations might …seek to control or degrade water infrastructure to gain revenue or inﬂuence populations.”12 Additional studies complement the above claims, and suggest that predicted climate change events may contribute to an environment that allows terrorist groups to ﬂourish.13 To systematically explore water-related terrorism across space and time, we employ the Global Terrorism Database (GTD) which includes more than 170,000 terrorism incidents from 1970–2016.14 Our analysis of the GTD allows us to both explore a little understood area of terrorism studies and at the same time contribute to the security literature pertaining to water and the environment. We combine these ideas of what constitutes 2 J. VEILLEUX AND S. DINAR water-related terrorism along with aggregate data analysis to quantify and qualify fre- quency of incidents over time; organizations that perpetrated attacks; countries, water- sheds, and regions where attacks are perpetrated; and the type of water-related incidents that occurred based on a typology we developed. The analysis contributes to current mapping and visualization applications that point to regional hotspots or so-called transboundary freshwater “basins at risk.”15 In addition, while this study focuses on freshwater resources and terrorism, it complements an existing academic literature inves- tigating broader links among terrorism, natural resources, and the environment.16 Our results oﬀer several interesting ﬁndings that include 675 incidents of water-related terrorism cases in seventy-one countries, involving 124 terrorist organizations, and over 3,000 people killed and/or wounded. This cumulative analysis points to potential risk from non-state actors to compound existing threats to water resources from climate change, water-resources development, and economic policy-driven factors, particularly in coun- tries that experience conﬂict and share watersheds across political boundaries. The paper begins with a review of the existing literature, moves into our developed and employed methods to codify and analyze water-related terrorism incidents, presents our results and discussion about trends in countries and terrorist organizations, applies ﬁndings to ﬁve major transboundary freshwater basins, and ﬁnally concludes our ﬁndings along with policy implications. Background Contemporary research describing linkages between freshwater and international security began in the 1980s with writings appearing in both the popular and policy press as well as academic outlets.17 Case study research dominated this specialized ﬁeld of study in its earlier years exploring freshwater issues of access, quality, and quantity among states, yet a surge of more quantitative, systematic, and large-n studies proliferated since the early 2000s given the availability of large datasets.18 These quantitative studies strive to under- stand global patterns of conﬂict, cooperation, and negotiation. Theoretical and critical studies also contributed to the growth of the ﬁeld considering concepts such as power, scarcity, and trade and their impact on inter-state water dynamics.19 Concurrently, research focusing on intra-state conﬂict as a consequence of water availability and related environmental issues also appeared in the literature.20 Researchers also investigated deliberate targeting of water resources by states to inﬂict harm on other states or individuals, as well as the vulnerability of freshwater ecosystems to warfare-related impacts.21 During times of active conﬂict, in particular, governments targeted water and water-related infrastructure as countervalue targets to gain advantage over opponents or used water as a weapon. In World War II, for example, the British Royal Airforce targeted dams and water supplies along the Eder, Mohne, and Sorpe rivers in Germany as part of “Operation Chastise.”22 The bombings caused major ﬂooding of the Ruhr and Eder valleys in Germany.23 It is important to note that in 1977, Article 56 of Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions outlawed the targeting of infrastructure such as dams and dykes so long as attacking such infrastructure would release “dangerous forces.” States committed to the Convention were prohibited from targeting such infrastructure if the force of the attack would wreak undue destruction.24 TERRORISM AND POLITICAL VIOLENCE 3 Despite an established research agenda pertaining to the linkages between conﬂict and cooperation over freshwater and security as well as studies exploring water as a countervalue target or weapon used by states, little systematic investigation has been conducted on the use of freshwater resources by terrorist organizations and other non- state actors. The peer reviewed literature, however, considers other important linkages between terrorism, natural resources, and the environment. Scholars explore the linkages between terrorism ﬁnancing and wildlife traﬃcking, the availability of natural resources and terrorism incidents, as well as the relationship between the global demand for resources and motivation for terrorism.25 Other scholars consider whether natural dis- asters and other extreme weather events may incite terrorism.26 A great deal of research explores eco-terrorism, deﬁned as the use of violence by non-state actors to promote environmental causes and to slow or halt the exploitation of natural resources while bringing public attention to environmental issues.27 Elizabeth Chalecki’s and Peter Gleick’s research on environmental terrorism is perhaps the exception to the above mentioned paucity in the literature.28 Diﬀerentiating between eco-terrorism and environmental terrorism, Chalecki suggests that environmental terror- ism speciﬁcally targets natural resources. According to Chalecki, environmental terrorism is suggested as more eﬀective than either a standard conventional weapon attack or weapons of mass destruction attack (the two most common attacks undertaken by terrorists to have been studied and contemplated by policy-makers) on civilian targets. Since the objective of terrorism is “to have a psychological eﬀect on the target population,” environmental terrorism eﬀectively combines two components for measuring the risk of terrorism: severity of the attack, and the probability of a particular scenario actually occurring.29 So-called “resource-as-tool”terrorism and “resources-as-target”terrorism constitute the two main types of environmental terrorism.30 Building on Chalecki’s earlier work, Peter Gleick’s research is particularly focused on the nexus between terrorism and freshwater. Gleick highlights two major types of water and water system vulnerabilities: infrastructure attacks and biological/chemical attacks. The ﬁrst pertains to physical attacks on dams, pipelines, pumping plants, and treatment systems. Contemporary terrorist strategies may also include the use of cyberattacks to disable valves, pumps, gates, and chemical processing equipment. The second, biological and chemical attacks, pertains to contaminants introduced into a water supply. While Gleick concludes that it is not possible to estimate the true risk of water-related terrorism, the over ﬁfty examples he identiﬁes from 1748 to 2006 of actual and planned attacks on water systems suggests that the risk is real. Since terrorist organizations do not observe the Geneva Convention, they could potentially pursue counter-value targets such as water infrastructure as well as leverage the use of such targets as part of an overall objective and strategy.31 The vast majority of writings on the topic of water and terrorism focus on the physical vulnerabilities of water supply and water quality infrastructure to possible terrorist attacks as well as the readiness of a given government to prevent, withstand, and respond to the attack. The September 11, 2001 attacks sparked a surge of interest in the subject, especially regarding broader critical infrastructure vulnerabilities.32 While the literature suggests that such attacks are not easy to perpetrate (particularly those involving contamination), analysts underscore the risks of water terrorism along all parts of the water system— physical supply, treatment, distribution, sanitary, and waste removal.33 Authors also explore the readiness of public health professionals and physicians to react to a water 4 J. VEILLEUX AND S. DINAR contamination attack in the United States, arguing that they are not adequately trained to respond appropriately to a terrorist assault on water.34 Given an increased reliance by the water infrastructure sector on advanced computerized technology (supervisory control and data acquisition systems), research has also focused on the vulnerabilities of water and wastewater systems to cyberattacks and so-called advanced persistent threats.35 Another relevant set of literature focuses on the likely vulnerability of states to terror- ism due to climate change.36 Since water resources and services are at risk under changed climate conditions, authors suggest that terrorist organizations are likely to exploit these opportunities.37 CNA, a nonproﬁt research and analysis organization, echoes a similar concern focusing on the gap between developed and developing countries.38 Their report suggests that “while the developed world will be far better equipped to deal with the eﬀects of climate change, some of the poorest regions may be aﬀected most …the gap [between developed and under-developed countries] can potentially provide an avenue for extremist ideologies and create the conditions for terrorism.” Focusing on the rise and growth of non-state actors such as Boko Haram, Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and ISIL,39 Nett and Ruttinger add further support to the “threat multiplier” nature of climate change as it relates to providing conducive conditions for terrorism. In addition, the authors suggest that climate change conditions make the local populations increasingly vulnerable to recruitment given grievances toward the state. Finally, the authors conclude that non-state actors use resources, such as water, as a “weapon of war”or deliberately inhibit access to natural resources further compounding and exacer- bating resource scarcities.40 More recently, CNA adds that terrorist organizations not only strive to control water access as a tactic to subjugate populations and compete with governments, but may also seek to control water infrastructure to foster their state- building goals as well as to demonstrate power, relevance, and presence.41 Control of water resources can also be used to gain support or sympathy from local populations.42 In all, Kim and Swain suggest a framework linking water security and terrorism emphasizing water as a target of terrorism, water as an encouraging factor of terrorism, and water as an instrument of terrorism.43 Methods This study investigates water use and targeting by terrorist organizations. In order to understand, identify, and analyze water-related terrorism, we ﬁrst needed to deﬁne the term. While our literature review suggests that this has been attempted by other scholars, our contribution is to create categories for the purposes of quantifying types of water- related terrorism, systematically identify terrorist organizations that use water-related terrorism tactics, and demonstrate the spatial distribution of such activities by country, region, and basins over time.44 We use an existing database, the GTD, to conduct our study, as this is one of the most comprehensive and authoritative terrorism databases.45 Using the GTD, we assessed incidents in order to identify water-related terrorism events. Using search terms related to water, we employed a collection of key words for searching the database for water- related terrorism. In particular, we ﬁltered the database with a series of search terms: water, dam, river, well, reservoir, irrigation, lake, levee, and drowning. The GTD contains a category for water supply, but the above search terms expand beyond that category. We TERRORISM AND POLITICAL VIOLENCE 5 believe that these words capture any activity related to water resources in general and the words were compiled through an iterative process. Using the GTD method of assessment for the number of people killed, people wounded, and intensity (combination of number of incidents, killed [NKILL], and wounded [NWOUND] attributed to a speciﬁc country or terrorist organization), we tallied these numbers for the overall database subset of water- related incidents overall and by region, transboundary freshwater basin, country, and terrorist organization. The method we use to assess the transboundary freshwater basins comes from the basin country unit (BCU) method developed by researchers in the Transboundary Freshwater Dispute Database lab at Oregon State University and we then take the cumulative number of incidents in each BCU to represent the number of incidents in the entire transboundary freshwater basin.46 Given that we are using country-level data to count incidents in an entire transboundary freshwater basin, and these basins are naturally bounded geographic areas that cross politically bounded geographic boundaries, the incidents do not necessa- rily occur in the bounds of that particular basin. We took the overall incident trend and considered changes over time across three periods: 1970–1989 (Cold War era); 1990–2001 (post-Cold War era); 2002–2016 (post 9/ 11 era). We also isolated the incidents attributed to unknown terrorist organizations (UNKNOWN) and assessed this subset for any aberrations to our overall dataset and from the 124 identiﬁed terrorist organizations through all of the above-mentioned analyses. To assess the type of water-related terrorism, we developed our own code in a series of categories and subcategories. The categories are: water as collateral (wc), water as grie- vance (wg), water infrastructure (wi), water people (wp), water transportation (wt), and water as weapon (ww). These are explained in Table 1 below. We apply these codes to each incident and allow for up to two codes per incident to characterize the main target and/or the possible secondary target. For example, when a terrorist bombs a water pipe and also kills a person repairing said pipe we would code this as wi and wp. For this reason our total number of 752 coded incidents exceeds the 675 individual incidents. We map the number of incidents by country and transboundary freshwater basin in order to identify spatial trends and regional patterns. We chart and graph incidents by coded type of incident overall, each region by number of incidents over time, each region Table 1.Water code deﬁnitions. water as collateral (wc) when water is contaminated or compromised due to a terrorist incident, such as the explosion of an oil pipeline. water as grievance (wg) when the terrorist incident is committed due to disagreements with governments or industry over water rights or the accessibility, quality, or quantity of a water resource. water infrastructure* (wi) the physical infrastructure needed to maintain, deliver, store, and treat water resources. water people* (wp) any person that works on or with water resources. water transportation (wt) that form of transportation infrastructure built to transport over, under, or through water. water as weapon* (ww) when the terrorist incident is committed due to disagreements with governments or industry over water rights or the accessibility, quality, or quantity of a water resource. *there are subcategories that further parse out patterns of behavior that include when incident reports include more information about the target. This includes: infrastructure is government owned (wio) or military owned (wim); people who work in water in an oﬃcial capacity, such as a water minister (wpo), people who work in water through the military (wpm), and people who work as security personnel of water infrastructure (wps); water as a weapon in a direct way such as poisoning a water supply (wwd) or water as a weapon in an indirect way such as blasting a bomb at the village well (wwi) or shooting people while they retrieve water. 6 J. VEILLEUX AND S. DINAR by coded type of incident, the number of incidents by region, terrorist organization by coded type of incident, and number of incidents by country. We also generally addressed spatial trends we found in the transboundary freshwater basins. We identiﬁed four terrorist organizations to use as case studies based on the number of incidents. Within the case studies we analyze the quantitative trends of number of killed, wounded, and incidents as well as the type of incident applying our coding system. Results The following results show aspects of water-related terrorism found in the University of Maryland’s GTD. We found 675 incidents of water-related terrorism in 71 countries, involving or attributed to 124 terrorist organizations, and 3,391 people killed and/or wounded, an addition of 371 incidents beyond the previously identiﬁed 304 incidents categorized as water supply by the GTD. These incidents occur between 1970–2016. This section is broken up by diﬀerent aspects of analysis: overall database, country, regions, transboundary freshwater basin, and terrorist organization. Overall database analysis The GTD contains 170,351 terrorism incidents from around the world that range from 1970–2016 in 163 countries.47 The database uses open media source reporting, and as a result, this paper is not an exhaustive sweep of all terrorism events involving water from that time period; there may well be incidents surrounding the use of water-related terrorism that fall outside of the database and thus, our study. We analyzed the GTD for water-related terrorism by search terms, as described in the methods, as the GTD is an incident-driven database, not a thematic-driven database. General observations in Table 2 about the subset of water-related terrorism incidents include: incidents involving water-related terrorism constitute less than 1% of GTD total incidents; terrorist organizations using water-related terrorism as a tactic constitute 4% out of the total terrorist organizations identiﬁed in the GTD; people killed in the incidents are less than 1% out of total GTD recorded 383,554 people killed; people wounded in the incidents constitute less than 1% out of total GTD recorded 496,117 people wounded. Of the terrorist organizations we found in the dataset that use water-related terrorism, only 8% or 11 of the organizations use or target water in 10 or more incidents. Figure 1 breaks out the number of incidents by the three time periods that we deﬁne in the methodssection.Overall,thenumberofterrorismincidentsincreasedfromtheColdWarperiod through the post-9/11 period. The Cold War period saw 126 incidents, post-Cold War period saw 91 incidents, and post-9/11 period saw 458 incidents. Averaging each period to normalize the time spans, we ﬁnd that there were 7 incidents per year during the Cold War, 8 incidents Table 2.Totals of water-related terrorism subset of the GTD. Terrorists organizations (identiﬁed) involved in water terrorism 124 Incidents involving water-related terrorism 675 People dead from water-related terror incidents 1906 People wounded in water-related terror incidents 1485 Overall water-related terrorism intensity 4066 TERRORISM AND POLITICAL VIOLENCE 7 peryearduringthepost-ColdWarperiod,and33incidentsperyearduringthepost-9/11period. There can be several reasons for this increase: an actual increase of water-related terrorism, an increase in recorded events due to the proliferation of media in alternate forms in the digital age, or an overall increase in terrorism incidents. This may be a topic for future research. Within the post-9/11 period, water-related terrorism incidents are on the rise, which may conﬁrm the concerns of the United States Intelligence Community. While we did not explore speciﬁc causation for this increase, the Global Water Security Report mentioned above indicates that water-related terrorism will continue and perhaps increase due to climate change as well as water resources development and demand.48 Figure 2 shows that out of the 675 water-related terrorism incidents, we found that our coded approach included 359 or 48% water infrastructure (wi), 201 or 27% water people (wp), 84 or 11% water transportation, 53 or 7% water as weapon, 32 or 4% water as collateral, and 23 or 3% water as grievance. Of the 359 water infrastructure incidents, 108 were of stated oﬃcial water infrastructure and 19 were of stated military water infrastructure, the remaining 232 were of unspeciﬁed types of water infrastructure. Of the 201 water people, 106 were of stated oﬃcial people, 38 were of stated military people, 13 were of stated security people, while the remaining 44 were of unspeciﬁed types of people working in some capacity with or directly using water or water infrastructure. Of the 53 incidents where water was used as a weapon, 13 were direct weaponization of water and 40 were indirect. Country analysis The below global map (Figure 3) demonstrates the water-related terrorism incident distribu- tion by country. This map is broken into ﬁve color categories of decreasing incident occur- rence; countries with no incidents have no color. The darkest colored countries feature the highest number of incidents; the lightest colored countries feature the lowest number of incidents. The countries with more than 40 incidents include Pakistan (81), India (68), Colombia (61), Iraq (58), and Peru (42). These countries correspond with the identiﬁed top oﬀending terrorist organizations and/or the ﬁve basins with highest levels of incident related activity. The majority of countries include 10 or fewer incidents and 36 of the countries see 2 or fewer incidents. Each country speciﬁc number is found in Figure 4 below. Figure 1.Water-related terrorist incidents by historical period. 8 J. VEILLEUX AND S. DINAR Regional analysis Figure 5 groups countries into the GTD deﬁned regions. We found that 208 incidents—the highest number of incidents—occur in South Asia, the region that includes Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. This is followed by Middle East & North 32 23 359 201 84 53 WC WG WI WP WT WW Figure 2.Bar graph showing total coded water-related terrorist incidents. Figure 3.Map of global water-related terrorism incidents with country details. TERRORISM AND POLITICAL VIOLENCE 9 Africa with South America at 128 and 121, respectively. Sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia contain 69 and 66 incidents, respectively, and the rest of the regions contain under 30 incidents. Global spatial trends demonstrate a higher number of water-related terrorism in places where there is already a high number of terrorism incidents in general, though water- related terrorism doesn’t occur in every terrorism hotspot. We note that in the case of South Asia as well as with the Middle East & North Africa, most of the countries with high Figure 4.Number of incidents by country. 1 2 8 20 23 29 66 69 121 128 208 Figure 5.Number of incidents by region. 10 J. VEILLEUX AND S. DINAR incidents of water-related terrorism are also engaged in domestic and international conﬂict. North America has a relatively high number of water grievance incidents and this may be due to the high number of environmental social movement groups that the government classiﬁes as terrorists.49 Africa has a relatively low number of water-related terrorism incidents although some of the most deadly water-related terrorism incidents occur on the continent. Figure 6 demonstrates the breakout of incident types by geographic region (excluding East Asia and Australasia & Oceania). Overall, as Figure 6 indicates, we found that in most of the regions the majority of incidents are directed at water infrastructure and water people, with the exception of Eastern Europe with the majority of incidents targeting water transportation and North America with the majority of incidents involving water as grievance. We found that South Asia records the majority of infrastructure and people Figure 6.Regional breakout by type of terrorism. TERRORISM AND POLITICAL VIOLENCE 11 targets with 100 and 96 incidents, respectively. Middle East & North Africa records more than one-half of incidents (76) as water infrastructure targets and one-third of incidents (47) as water-related people targets. South America reports almost one-half of incidents (61) as water infrastructure targets. Sub Saharan Africa reports just over one-half of incidents (39) as water infrastructure targets. Almost two-thirds of the incidents (19) in Central America & Caribbean are water infrastructure-related and close to one-third of the incidents (8) are water as collateral-related targets. Eastern Europe reports over two-thirds of incidents (15) involving water transportation, and one quarter of the incidents (6) are water infrastructure targets. North America reports nearly the same number of water-related incidents (12) pertaining to water as grievance as water infrastructure targets (11). Western Europe reports more than three-fourths of incidents (7) as water infrastructure targets. Figure 7 shows terrorism incidents by region over time. As shown in Figure 1 and Figure 7, while the number of incidents overall increases from the Cold War period through the post-9/11 period, when we examine these incidents by region, we are con- fronted with a more complicated pattern. While there is a decrease in incidents during the post-Cold War period that is numerically attributed to an overall decline of incidents in the Americas, during the same comparison the overall Asian, European, and African regions incidents increase. The overall increase of water-related terrorism incidents from the Cold War period to the post-9/11 period includes South Asia from 8 to 189; Middle East & North Africa from 6 to 107; Sub-Saharan Africa from 12 to 43; Southeast Asia from 4 to 51; Eastern Europe from 0 to 15. The overall decrease of water-related terrorism incidents from the Cold War period to the post-9/11 period include South America from 51 to 47; Central America from 26 to 0; North America from 14 to 3; Western Europe from 3 to 2; Australia & Oceania from 1 to 0. East Asia experienced no change in incident numbers, 1 to 1. Transboundary freshwater basin analysis Although we are working with national level data and the GTD does not consistently provide latitude and longitude coordinates to clearly identify the exact location of Figure 7.Break-out of Figure 1 by region. 12 J. VEILLEUX AND S. DINAR incidents, water-related terrorism can also be geographically expressed within transbound- ary freshwater basins. Certainly, water-related terrorism oﬀers additional stress to govern- ance and management of already complicated basins facing stress from population pressure, climate change, and engineered development related to economic and social demand. In other words, water-related terrorism has direct and indirect impacts beyond nation-state boundaries to include the international watershed. Of the world’s 309 shared transboundary freshwater basins,Figure 8 reveals incidents in 246 of those basins; the ﬁve basins with the highest numbers include the Amazon, Helmand, Indus, Rann of Kutch, and the Tigris-Euphrates. The Amazon, while sparsely populated, with some twenty million people within 7,500,000 km2, is host to an economic development boom centered on dam building and extraction.50 The Helmand basin is shared by Afghanistan and Iran, has no standing treaty, and following decades of conﬂict and drought is now host to a number of water development projects in Afghanistan.51 The Indus shared by Afghanistan, China, India, and Pakistan is found in one of the most densely populated parts of the world estimated to cover 1,120,000 km2 and includes about three hundred million people.52 The Rann of Kutch is a region of active dispute between India and Pakistan and has unique hydrology inﬂuenced by low annual rainfall and saltwater intrusion.53 The Tigris-Euphrates wit- nessed the impacts of long-term drought and experienced ongoing international conﬂict from 2003 to the present.54 Figure 8.Water-related terrorism country incidents by transboundary freshwater basins. TERRORISM AND POLITICAL VIOLENCE 13 Throughout the ﬁve basins with the highest incident rates, a total of 393 water-related terrorism incidents were recorded in seventeen countries, involving ﬁfty-one terrorist organizations between 1970 and 2016. This accounts for 58% of the water-related terror incidents, 24% of the countries, and 41% of the terrorist organizations. The countries that share the Indus witnessed the largest number of incidents at 186, followed by the Rann of Kutch at 149, Helmand at 122, Amazon at 107, and the Tigris-Euphrates at 89.55 Across these incidents, a total of 786 people were killed. The countries that share the Tigris- Euphrates basin account for the largest number of reported people killed at 394, about half of the total, followed by the countries in the Indus with 309 people killed, Helmand with 265 people killed, Rann of Kutch with 214 people killed, and the Amazon with 83 people killed. A total of 1,195 people were wounded in water-related terrorism events. The countries in the Indus basin witnesses the largest number of people wounded at 864 people wounded, followed by the Helmand at 801 people wounded, Tigris-Euphrates at 295 people wounded, Rann of Kutch at 286 people wounded, and the Amazon at 35 people wounded. The total intensity level across the 5 basins totals 2,373. The Indus witnesses the largest intensity value of 1,369, Helmand 1,188, Amazon 871, Tigris- Euphrates 766, and the Rann of Kutch 649. Terrorist organization analysis We found that 124 terrorist organizations use water-related terrorism as a tactic.Figure 9 presents terrorist organizations with two or more water-related incidents. As expressed in Table 3, we found four particular organizations, two utopian communist (FARC and Shining Path),56 and two Islamic idealist jihadist groups (ISIL and Taliban) associated with the highest number of incidents. 42 30 21 21 17 15 12 12 11 11 10 7 6 5 5 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 3 3 3 3 3 3 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 Revolutio n a r y ArmedForcesofColombia(FARC) ShiningPath(SL) Islamic St ateof Iraq a ndtheLevant(ISIL ) Taliban Commu nist Pa r tyofIndia-Maoist(CPI-Maoist) KurdistanWorkers'Party(PKK) FarabundoMarti N a t ionalLiberationFront ( FML N ) Maoists Nati o n a l UnionfortheTot a l Independence ofAngola(UNITA) Al-Shabaab New People'sArmy ( N P A) National L i berat i o n A r m yofColombia(ELN) Teh rik-i-TalibanPakistan(TTP) BokoHaram BalochRepublican Army (B R A ) LiberationTigersofT amilEelam (LTTE) AlgerianIslamicExtrem i s ts MoroIslamicLiberationFront(MILF) Earth LiberationFront(ELF) FuerzasArmadasdeLiberacionNacional(FALN) Kuki N ationalFront (K NF) Tup a c AmaruRevolu tionary M ovement(MRTA) Puerto R i c a nNationalists Al-Qaidainthe A rabianPeninsula(AQAP) Gunmen DonetskPeople'sRepublic AbuSayyafGroup(ASG) People'sRevolutionaryArmy(ERP) Ijaw extremists Lashka r-e-Jhan gvi NicaraguanDem ocraticForce(FDN) MoroNationa lLiberationFront(MNLF) BalochLiberationArmy(BLA) Al-Qaida i n Iraq Houthi extremi sts(AnsarAllah) LuhanskPeople's R epublic AfricanNationalCongress( Sou t hAfrica) DemocraticRevolutionaryAlliance (ARDE) GurkhaNationalLiberation Front(GNLF) Janjaweed LesothoLiberat ionArmy(LLA) ManuelRodriguez Pa t rioticFront(FPMR) Muslim extremists Palestinians Sep a ratists UnitedLiberation Front ofAssam(ULFA) Distribution of Terrorist Organization with Two or More Water-related Terrorism Incidents Figure 9.Terrorist organizations’water-related terrorism incidents. 14 J. VEILLEUX AND S. DINAR As shown in Figure 2 above, terrorist organizations target water infrastructure most often followed by people associated with water infrastructure or water resources. In both cases oﬃcial water infrastructure, one-third, and oﬃcial water people, one-half, are highly targeted. It is not clear given the information whether oﬃcials targeted who have associa- tion to water governance are targets due to their position regarding water or their position regarding the government. When oﬃcial water infrastructure is targeted, it is not clear whether this is because it is the only water infrastructure available or if it is favored as a target. Infrastructure is also in many cases owned and managed by a government or a foreign company; in both cases terrorists can send their message by targeting water resources, which requires immediate attention. Within the GTD there is a case of some incidents attributed to an UNKNOWN terrorist organization. We have retained this UNKNOWN status, and conducted a separate analysis of this list to determine whether it was a random representation of the entire dataset or if there was a visible pattern of one country not reporting the responsible terrorist organization (Figure 10). With the UNKNOWN grouping for the water-related terrorism, we found that it cuts across most countries in the sub-database (53 of 71). We found that similar percentages of coded incidents occur in the overall database as in the UNKNOWN subcategory: 48% water infrastructure, 32% water people, 9% water transportation, 8% water as weapon, 2% water collateral, 1% water grievance. From the distribution of water-related terrorism incidents, we determined that the overall Table 3.Top 5 Number of incidents by terrorist organization. Unknown 290 Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) 42 Shining Path 30 Taliban 21 Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) 21 TOTAL 404 6 3 152 103 30 26 WC WG WI WP WT WW Figure 10.Bar graph of total coded water-related terrorist incidents attributed to UNKNOWNS. TERRORISM AND POLITICAL VIOLENCE 15 UNKNOWN grouping does not demonstrate any signiﬁcant deviation from the trends found in the overall database. In Table 3 FARC, Shining Path, Taliban, and ISIL scored highest in number of incidents and we took these four terrorist organizations as our case studies.Tables 4–6 highlight results by number of people killed, number of people wounded, and the sum of these numbers as the intensity. ISIL is the only organization that appears in all tables and holds the highest number for intensity. The Taliban appears in three of the tables:Tables 3,5,6. FARC and Shining Path appear in Table 3, but for these organizations water-related terrorism incidents do not carry high numbers of killed and wounded people. The Christian Extremists and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi appear in Tables 4 and 6 due to single incidents with a high kill. Out of the 114 incidents these groups are responsible for, FARC makes up 37%, Shining Path 26%, and ISIL and Taliban, respectively, make up 18%. The number of individuals killed by a water-related terrorism activity as perpetrated by the FARC, Shining Path, Taliban, and ISIL, total 336. ISIL is responsible for 69% of deaths, Taliban is responsible for 12% of deaths, Shining Path for 11% of deaths, and FARC for 8% of deaths. The number of individuals wounded by water-related terrorism as perpetrated by the FARC, Shining Path, Taliban, and ISIL total 302. The Taliban is responsible for 62% of those wounded, ISIL is responsible for 29% of those wounded, FARC for 8% of those wounded, and Shining Path for 1% of those wounded. The intensity number totals 775 for the four terrorist organizations under consideration. Of this total, ISIL is responsible for 44%, the Taliban for 32%, FARC for 12%, and Shining Path for 9%.Figure 11 provides detail that helps to proﬁle the incidents associated with each organization. A synopsis of each group and their water-related terrorism eﬀorts is also included below. Table 4.Top 5 incident-related Death by terrorist organization (out of 1906). Unknown 345 Christian Extremists 300 Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) 231 Boko Haram 227 Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) 140 TOTAL 1243 Table 5.Top 5 incident-related Wounded by terrorist organization (out of 1485). Unknown 777 Taliban 188 Lashkar-e-Jhangvi 169 Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) 86 Maoists 30 TOTAL 1250 Table 6.Top 5 terrorist organization by Intensity (out of 4066). Unknown 1412 Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) 338 Christian extremists 301 Lashkar-e-Jhangvi 263 Taliban 251 TOTAL 2565 16 J. VEILLEUX AND S. DINAR The Shining Path is a communist-based terrorist organization founded in Peru in 1970 and active through the 1990s. In the GTD, terrorism incidents perpetrated by the Shining Path range from 1978 through 2016. According to Stark et al., throughout the 1980s and after the failures of agrarian reform and an economic crisis, the Shining Path focused on destroying bridges, electrical systems, and water infrastructure.57 In the late 1990s, it was rumored that the Peruvian government had either killed or incarcerated enough members to quash the movement, but in 2015 the Peruvian government announced a new threat from the Shining Path.58 In fact, according to the GTD, in 2016 the Shining Path was suspected of attacking a military ship on the Apurimac River in Junin, Peru, wounding two soldiers in the attack. In the GTD, rather than oﬀering qualitative descriptions of the incidents attributed to the Shining Path, the incident entries were limited mostly to coded information. Regardless, we found that the majority of water-related terrorism incidents were direct attacks on water infrastructure. Speciﬁcally, out of the 30 water-related terrorism inci- dents, 80% target water infrastructure and 17% target water-related transportation. This results in 97% of the incident reported targets as infrastructural or structural in moving and treating water as well as moving people and vehicles across or through water. Only 3% 38% 0% 20% 22% 18% 2% FARC CODED TOTALS wc wg wi wp wt ww 0%0% 56%26% 9% 9% ISIL CODED TOTALS wc wg wi wp wt ww 0%0% 29% 54% 0% 17% TALIBAN CODED TOTALS wc wg wi wp wt ww 0%0% 80% 3% 17%0% SHINING PATH CODED TOTALS wc wg wi wp wt ww Figure 11.Terrorist organization incident type by percentage. TERRORISM AND POLITICAL VIOLENCE 17 of incidents target people related to water. Limited descriptions of the incidents in the GTD did not allow any further coding of the speciﬁc water infrastructure or water people incidents. Despite the organization’s critical infrastructure attacks, it is important to note, however, that the Shining Path also leveraged lack of appropriate water infrastructure for marginalized communities as a recruiting tool.59 The FARC is a terrorist organization active in Colombia. It is the largest rebel group and mostly a rural organization, founded in 1964 out of a communist movement. Like the Shining Path, FARC is considered a secular left-wing group.60 FARC incidents span the GTD database from 1975–2016. They use various actions to destabilize the government and international investment in Colombia’s natural resources exploitation. Their main philosophical motivation concerns land ownership and access, yet they have degenerated into criminality and have been associated particularly with narcotraﬃcking. FARC’s numbers changed from an estimated 20,000 ﬁghters to less than 5,000 in twenty years.61 As of the writing of this paper, they are undertaking negotiations of a peace agreement with the government of Colombia.62 Speciﬁcally, FARC’s targeting of oil infrastructure has led to incidents that impact water as collateral. FARC water-related terrorism incidents occur in the GTD from 1997–2015. We found that when FARC blows up oil infrastructure nearby water supplies are often contaminated. This is the only terrorist organization that we identiﬁed that impacts water as collateral as a regular action. According to the Mapping Militant Organizations Project, FARC mounted its last terrorist attack against the Colombian government on June 22, 2015 targeting oil infrastructure and harming water resources.63 In bombing the Tansandio pipeline, FARC caused 10,000 barrels of oil to contaminate waterways. The water contamination resulted in 150,000 people losing access to water and the country’s most severe environmental disaster. Overall, out of the 42 water-related terrorism inci- dents attributed to FARC, 38% are characterized as a terrorism incident resulting in water collateral impacts followed by 22% water people targets and 20% water infrastructure- related targets. Terrorism activities characterized as water as weapon account for 17% of coded incident types. The Taliban is a Sunni Islamic fundamentalist movement active in Afghanistan and Pakistan. They were founded following the end of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in northern Pakistan,ﬂourished in the religious regional seminaries touting an extremist form of Islam, then emerged in 1994 in Afghanistan under the leadership of Mullah Mohammad Omar in the context of the Afghan Civil War as a formidable force.64 Ultimately defeating the communist regime in Afghanistan, the Taliban ruled Afghanistan from 1995 to 2001, when it was overthrown from power by coalition forces following the September 11 attacks. Since the establishment of a pro-Western and moderate Afghan regime, the Taliban has attempted to return to power by continuing to undermine the current government. The GTD incidents associated with the Taliban range from 1995 to 2016. The limited literature covering the Taliban and water-related terrorism seems to point to two trends. First, the Taliban targets water infrastructure projects as a strategy to undermine the Afghan government.65 Second, the Taliban acts as a proxy for Iran (and Pakistan) sabotaging Afghan water projects that Iran (and Pakistan) see as a direct threat to their own water needs.66 For example, the attack on the Afghan military checkpoint at the Salma Dam by the Taliban on June 24, 2017 was alleged to be supported by Iran.67 18 J. VEILLEUX AND S. DINAR Interestingly, while our ﬁndings demonstrate that water infrastructure is indeed tar- geted by the Taliban, the organization more often targets individuals involved with water projects whether they be government oﬃcials or water infrastructure employees. Ultimately, whether targeting infrastructure or people, the Taliban is attempting to disrupt the country’s development and water is one mechanism to achieve the goal. Out of the 24 coded water-related terrorism incidents for the Taliban, 54% target people and 29% target water infrastructure. Terrorism activities characterized as water as weapon account for 17% of coded incident types. Although not shown in Figure 11, of the 7 water infra- structure-related terrorism events, 42% of those incidents targeted oﬃcial water infra- structure or a military-related water infrastructure. Of the 13 terrorism activities targeting people associated with water, 84% targeted government oﬃcials associated with water or military personnel or security personnel assigned to protecting water infrastructure. ISIL is a Salaﬁ jihadist group started in 1999 by Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi as Jamat al- Tawhid wa al-Jihad. After the invasion of Iraq, the organization took part in the Iraqi insurgency, gaining a reputation for perpetrating suicide attacks against Shia mosques, civilians, Iraqi institutions, and coalition forces.68 In 2004, Zarqawi swore allegiance to Osama bin Laden and renamed the group Al Qaeda in Iraq (from 2004 to 2013 there are 636 general terrorism incidents and 2 water-related terrorism incidents in the GTD attributed to Al Qaeda in Iraq).69 In 2013, having expanded into Syria, the group became what we now know as ISIL, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.70 At the peak of its power, ISIL controlled territories in Syria and Iraq populated by about ten million people.71 ISIL terrorism incidents in the GTD begin in 2013 and go up to 2016. Today, ISIL has lost most of the territory it has controlled as well as the associated water resources and infrastructure. Of the four terrorist organizations we analyze in detail, ISIL has been most studied given its water-related terrorism. In fact, as it expanded its territorial acquisitions starting in 2013, ISIL brought under its control signiﬁcant water resources and large parts of the water infrastructure in the Tigris-Euphrates River Basin, using this water to further its military and political aims.72 According to von Lossow, ISIL repeatedly employed variants of water-related terrorism which impacted both quantity (making sure there was too little, or alternatively too much water) and quality (by making water unusable). Over the period of ISIL terror in the Levant from 2013–2016, the organization temporarily controlled a total of nine dams and threatened to take two more.73 King ﬁnds ﬁve separate ways that ISIL can or did engage in water-related terrorism. These ﬁve ways are loosely categorized as strategic weaponization, tactical weaponization, psychological terrorism, extortion and incentivization, and unintentional weaponization.74 Overall, our analysis demonstrates that the majority of water-related terrorism, or 56%, attributed to ISIL pertains to water infrastructure. A smaller percentage of incidents and attacks, or 26%, pertain to water people. Although not shown in Figure 11, of those 13 water infrastructure-related terror- ism events, 61% of those incidents targeted an oﬃcially designated water infrastructure. Of the 6 terrorism incidents targeting people, 66% are government oﬃcials. As a matter of proportion of water-related terrorism incidents per terrorist organiza- tion that we considered, the Shining Path is responsible for 4,551 terrorism incidents of which 30 are water-related terrorism; the Taliban is responsible for 6,575 terrorism incidents of which 21 are water-related terrorism; FARC is responsible for 2,481 TERRORISM AND POLITICAL VIOLENCE 19 terrorism incidents of which 42 are water-related terrorism; ISIL is responsible for 4,287 terrorism incidents, 21 of which are water-related terrorism. Conclusion Water-related terrorism is quantiﬁable, widespread, deadly, and can be codiﬁed. Using the GTD as well as aggregate data analysis methods, we systematically investigate this rela- tively under-studied topic which lies at the conﬂuence of terrorism and environmental security studies. While water-related terrorism comprises less than 1% of the incidents out of the entire GTD, we found 675 incidents in 71 countries, involving 124 terrorist organizations. We developed a method by which we identiﬁed and then coded these incidents to gain a better understanding of trends. Water-related terrorism merits deeper consideration due to the centrality of water for survival of human and natural systems, as well as national stability. Governments and water managers already face climate change and economic development challenges and water-related terrorism compounds such challenges by exploiting these weaknesses. There are diﬀerent types of water-related terrorism. The vast majority of incidents target water infrastructure. Water infrastructure is important primarily because it secures and transports water for human consumption and agricultural purposes. The next most popular water-related terrorism targets people related to water resources. Some countries experience other incident types such as water as grievance in the United States and water as collateral in Colombia. Water is not often used as a weapon directly—in cases of contamination—or indirectly—in cases of targeting people as they gather or use water—as commonly inferred in the popular press; however, attack on infrastructure could be interpreted as a weaponization of water when the end user is reliant on water treatment and water distribution to survive and/or when a dam is breached and a downstream community is ﬂooded. The region with the highest incident rate is South Asia and we attribute this mainly to ongoing conﬂict in Afghanistan that also spills over the border into Pakistan, as well as the ongoing domestic conﬂict in India over political ideologies with the Communist Party of India-Maoists, the greatest internal security challenge for India.75 The next highest incident rate is found in the Middle East & North Africa region. Again, we ﬁnd that this high number of incidents is attributed to ongoing international conﬂict of the Iraqi wars and destabilized governments in Iraq and Syria, as well as the Turkish-Kurdish conﬂict. The last region of interest for this paper is South America, which saw the most incidents occurring in the previous decades due to the internal conﬂicts of anti- government organizations in both Colombia with the FARC and Peru with the Shining Path. Application of our ﬁndings to transboundary freshwater basins, regions, and countries, as well as tactics that terrorist organizations use provides an additional aspect for analyz- ing water security for those geographies. Transboundary freshwater basins feature 80% of the countries experiencing water-related terrorism incidents. Identifying these basins can inform decision-makers and watershed managers investing in water infrastructure about risks related to this type of terrorism. Employing a method to codify water-related terrorism incidents describes the type of tactics used by diﬀerent organizations in diﬀerent regions or countries. We hope that the methods and results presented here will prove 20 J. VEILLEUX AND S. DINAR useful for scholars, practitioners, and policy-makers and provide a good basis for addi- tional systematic analysis of the data for the purposes of exploring causal relationships. Acknowledgments We would like extend our gratitude for the assistance of Dr. Maria Donoso for content and text feedback, Dr. Bojan Šavrič for cartographic assistance, Ayodele Osikoya for design and processing of our timeline ﬁgures. We would also like to acknowledge the University of Maryland’s START for making their Global Terrorism Database publicly available for use. Disclosure statement No potential conﬂict of interest was reported by the authors. Notes on contributors Jennifer Veilleux b. 1977, PhD in Geography (Oregon State University, 2014) Research Associate with the Steven J. Green School of International and Public Aﬀairs at Florida International University (2015-); current main interest: water security in transboundary river basins and indi- genous water rights. Shlomi Dinar b. 1975, PhD in International Studies (Johns Hopkins University, 2004); Associate Dean for Graduate Studies and Innovation in the Steven J. Green School of International and Public Aﬀairs and Associate Professor in the Department of Politics and International Relations at Florida International University (2004-); current main interests: climate change, environment, and security. Notes 1. Peter H. Gleick,“Water and Conﬂict: Fresh Water Resources and International Security,” International Security 18, no. 1 (1993): 79; Thomas F. Homer-Dixon,Environment, Scarcity, and Conﬂict (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999). 2. Public Radio International,“Al-Shabaab’s ‘Water Terrorism’is Yielding Results and Tragedy in Somalia’s Civil War,”April 12, 2014,https://www.pri.org/stories/2014-08-08/how-al- shabaab-using-water-tool-terrorism (accessed April 12, 2018). 3. Damian Paletta,“Islamic States Uses Syria’s Biggest Dam as Refuge and Potential Weapon,” Wall Street Journal, January 20, 2016,https://www.wsj.com/articles/islamic-state-uses-syrias- biggest-dam-as-rampart-and-potential-weapon-1453333531 (accessed May 3, 2018); Marcus D. King,“The Weaponization of Water in Syria and Iraq,”The Washington Quarterly 38, no. 4 (1993): 153. 4. Khamma Press,“Taliban Blow up a Water Dam with Explosives in Kandahar,”July 29, 2017, https://www.khaama.com/taliban-blow-up-a-water-dam-with-explosives-in-kandahar-03239/ (accessed May 20, 2018). 5. United States Environmental Protection Agency,“Homeland Security: Strategic Research Action Plan 2016–2019,”November 2015,https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/ﬁles/2015- 10/documents/strap_2016_hs_508.pdf (accessed July 1, 2018); United Kingdom Department for Environment Food and Rural Aﬀairs,“Water Sector Cyber Security Strategy 2017–2021,” United Kingdom, March 2017,https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/ system/uploads/attachment_data/ﬁle/602379/water-sector-cyber-security-strategy-170322.pdf (accessed July 1, 2018). TERRORISM AND POLITICAL VIOLENCE 21 6. Tony Smith,“Hacker Jailed for Revenge Sewer Attacks,”The Register, October 31, 2001, https://www.theregister.co.uk/2001/10/31/hacker_jailed_for_revenge_sewage/(accessed July 1, 2018). 7. Barton Gellman,“Cyber-Attacks by Al-Qaeda Feared: Terrorists at Threshold of Using Internet as Tool of Bloodshed,”The Washington Post, June 27, 2002. 8.“Afghan Minister Ismail Khan Escapes Taliban Attack,”Radio Free Europe/Radio Free Liberty, September 27, 2009; Global Terrorism Database, Incident Summary 201002260008, February 26, 2010;“Inﬂuential Afghan Politician Ismail Khan Escapes Suicide Attack,” Radio Free Europe/Radio Free Liberty, January 24, 2014. 9. Lorenzo Morales,“Peace and Environmental Protection in Colombia: Proposals for Sustainable Rural Development,”Inter-American Dialogue, January 2017,https://www.thedia logue.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Envt-Colombia-Eng_Web-Res_Final-for-web.pdf (accessed November 20, 2018). 10.“ELN Rebels Bomb Colombia’s Cano Limon Pipeline,”Reuters, September 5, 2018; “Colombia’s Cano Limon Pipeline Hit by Three More Bombings,”Reuters, November 13, 2018. 11. Intelligence Community Assessment,“Global Water Security Report”(Oﬃce of the Director of National Intelligence, 2012). 12. Senate Armed Services Committee,“Worldwide Threat Assessment of the US Intelligence Community”(Statement for the Record, 2015). 13. Paul Smith,“Climate Change, Weak States and the War on Terrorism in South and Southeast Asia,”Contemporary Southeast Asia: A Journal of International and Strategic Aﬀairs, 29, no. 2 (2007): 264; CNA,“The Role of Water Stress in Instability and Conﬂict,”2017,https://www. cna.org/CNA_ﬁles/pdf/CRM-2017-U-016532-Final.pdf (accessed October 3, 2017); Katharina Nett and Lukas Ruttinger,“Insurgency, Terrorism, and Organized Crime in a Warming Climate: Analyzing the Links between Climate Change and Non-State Armed Groups,” Climate Diplomacy Initiative (German Federal Foreign Oﬃce and Adelphi, 2016). 14. By the time this article was in press, the end date of the GTD was 2017. 15. Aaron T. Wolf, Shira Yoﬀe,and Mark Giordano,“International Water: Identifying Basins at Risk,”Water Policy 5, no. 1 (2003): 29; Lucia De Stefano, James Duncan, Shlomi Dinar, Kristin Stahl, Kenneth M. Strzepek, and Aaron T. Wolf,“Climate Change and the Institutional Resilience of International River Basins,”Journal of Peace Research 49, no. 1 (2012): 193; Katie Peek,“Where Will the World’s Water Conﬂict Erupt?”Popular Science, June 13, 2014, https://www.popsci.com/article/science/where-will-worlds-water-conﬂicts-erupt-infographic (accessed March 20, 2018). 16. Elizabeth L. Chalecki,“A New Vigilance: Identifying and Reducing the Risks of Environmental Terrorism,”Global Environmental Politics 2, no. 1 (2002): 46; Axel Dreher and Merle Kreibaum,“Weapons of Choice: The Eﬀect of Natural Resources on Terror and Insurgencies,”Journal of Peace Research 53, no. 4 (2016): 539. 17. John K. Cooley,“The War Over Water,”Foreign Policy, 54 (1984): 3; Joyce R. Starr,“Water Wars,”Foreign Policy, 82 (1991): 17; Frederick Frey,“The Political Context of Conﬂict and Cooperation over International River Basins,”Water International 18, no. 1 (1993): 54. 18. Aaron Wolf,Hydropolitics along the Jordan River: Scarce Water and Its Impact on the Arab Israeli Conﬂict (Tokyo, Japan: United Nations University Press, 1995); Miriam R. Lowi,Water and Power: The Politics of a Scarce Resource in the Jordan River Basin (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press); Arun P. Elhance,Hydropolitics in the Third World: Conﬂict and Cooperation in International River Basins (Washington, DC: US Institute of Peace Press, 1999); Nils Petter Gleditsch, Katherine Furlong, Halvard Hegre, Bethany Lacina, and Taylor Owen,“Conﬂicts Over Shared Rivers: Resource Scarcity or Fuzzy Boundaries?”Political Geography 25, no. 4 (2006): 361; Marit Brochmann and Paul R. Hensel,“Peaceful Management of International River Claims,”International Negotiation 14, no. 2 (2009): 393; Jaroslav Tir and John T. Ackerman,“Politics of Formalized River Cooperation,”Journal of Peace Research 46, no. 5 (2009): 623; Shlomi Dinar, Ariel Dinar, and Pradeep Kurukulasuriya, “Scarcity and Cooperation along International Rivers: An Empirical Assessment of Bilateral 22 J. VEILLEUX AND S. DINAR Treaties,”International Studies Quarterly 55, no. 3 (2011): 809; Sara Mitchell and Neda A. Zawahri,“The Eﬀectiveness of Treaty Design in Addressing Water Disputes,”Journal of Peace Research 52, no. 2 (2015): 187. 19. Mark Zeitoun and Jeroen Warner,“Hydro-hegemony–A Framework for Analysis of Trans- boundary Water Conﬂicts,”Water Policy 8, no. 5 (2006): 435; Shlomi Dinar,“Scarcity and Cooperation along International Rivers,”Global Environmental Politics 9, no. 1 (2009): 109; Tony Allan,Virtual Water: Tackling the Threat to Our Planet’s Most Precious Resource (London, UK: IB Tauris, 2011). 20. Hauge Wenche and Tanja Ellingsen,“Beyond Environmental Scarcity: Causal Pathways to Conﬂict,”Journal of Peace Research 35, no. 3 (1998): 299; Raleigh Clionadh and Henrik Urdal, “Climate Change, Environmental Degradation and Armed Conﬂict,”Political Geography 26, no. 6 (2007): 674; Hendrix S. Cullen and Idean Salehyan,“Climate Change, Rainfall, and Social Conﬂict in Africa,”Journal of Peace Research 49, no. 1 (2012): 35. 21. Robert Francis,“The Impacts of Modern Warfare on Freshwater Ecosystems,”Environmental Management 48 (2011): 985; Gleick 1993 (see note 1). 22. David Kreamer,“The Past, Present, and Future of Water Conﬂict and International Security,” Journal of Contemporary Water Research and Education 149 (2012): 88. 23. John Sweetman,Operation Chastise: the Dams Raid: Epic or Myth (London, UK: Jane’s Publishing Company, 1982). 24. Bernard K. Schafer,“The Relationship between the International Laws of Armed Conﬂict and Environmental Protection: The Need to Reevaluate what Types of Conduct are Permissible During Hostilities,”California Western International Journal of Law 19 (1988): 287. 25. Tom Maguire and Cathy Haenlein,“An Illusion of Complicity: Terrorism and the Illegal Ivory Trade in East Africa”(Occasional Paper, Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies, 2015),https://rusi.org/sites/default/ﬁles/201509_an_illusion_of_complicity_0. pdf (accessed November 21, 2018); Dreher and Kreibaum,“Weapons of Choice”(see note 15); Paul Ehrlich and Jianguo Liu,“Some Roots of Terrorism,”Population and Environment 24, no. 2 (2002): 183. 26. Claude Berrebi and Jordan Ostwald,“Earthquakes, Hurricanes, and Terrorism: Do Natural Disasters Incite Terror?”Public Choice 149, no. 3–4 (2011): 383. 27. Don Liddick,Eco-Terrorism: Radical Environmental and Animal Liberation Movements (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2006); Sean P. Eagan,“From Spikes to Bombs: The Rise of Eco- Terrorism,”Studies in Conﬂict & Terrorism 19, no. 1 (1996): 1. 28. Chalecki,“A New Vigilance”(see note 15); Peter H. Gleick,“Water and Terrorism,”Water Policy 8, no. 6 (2006): 481. 29. Chalecki,“A New Vigilance”(see note 15). 30. Ibid. 31. Intelligence Community Assessment,“Global Water Security Report”(see note 11); Chalecki, “A New Vigilance”(see note 15). 32. House Testimony,“Testimony by Ronald L. Dick, Deputy Assistant Director, Counterterrorism Division and Director, National Infrastructure Protection Center, Federal Bureau of Investigation,”House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, Subcommittee on Water Resources and Environment,”October 10, 2001,https://archives. fbi.gov/archives/news/testimony/terrorism-are-americas-water-resources-and-environment-at -risk (accessed October 23, 2017); Steven Shermer,“The Drinking Water Security and Safety Amendments of 2002: Is America’s Drinking Water Infrastructure Safer Four Years Later?” Journal of Environmental Law 24 no. 2 (2005/2006): 355; Claudia Copeland and B. Betsy Cody, “Terrorism and Security Issues Facing the Water Infrastructure Sector,”in Focus on Terrorism, ed. Edward Linden (New York, NY: Nova Science Publishers, 2007); Gary Ackerman, Praveen Abhayaratne, Jeﬀrey Bale, Anjali Bhattacharjee, Charles Blair, Lyida Hansell, Andrew Jayne, Margaret Kosal, Sean Lucas, Kevin Moran, et al.,“Assessing Terrorist Motivations for Attacking Critical Infrastructure”(No. UCRL-TR-227068, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, CA, 2007). TERRORISM AND POLITICAL VIOLENCE 23 33. Gregory B. Baecher,“Mitigating Water Supply System Vulnerabilities,”in Protection of Civilian Infrastructure from Acts of Terrorism, edited by Konstantin V. Frolov and Gregory B. Baecher (Dordrecht: Springer: 2006), 149–157; Laurie J. Van Leuven,“Water/wastewater Infrastructure Security: Threats and Vulnerabilities,”In Handbook of Water and Wastewater Systems Protection, edited by Robert Clark, Simon Hakim, and Avi Ostfeld (New York, NY: Springer, 2011), 27–46. 34. Patricia L. Meinhardt,“Water and Bioterrorism: Preparing for the Potential Threat to US Water Supplies and Public Health,”Annual Review of Public Health 26 (2005): 213. 35. Saurabh Amin, Xavier Litrico, Shankar Sastry, and Alexandre M. Bayen,“Cyber Security of Water SCADA Systems –Part I: Analysis and Experimentation of Stealthy Deception Attacks,” IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technology 21, no. 5 (2013): 1963; Eric D. Knapp and Joel Thomas Langill,Industrial Network Security: Securing Critical Infrastructure Networks for Smart Grid, SCADA, and Other Industrial Control Systems (Waltham, MA: Syngress, 2015); Hitachi Group,“Advanced Persistent Threats and the Case for a Security Intelligence and Response Program ”(White Paper),https://www.merit.edu/wp-content/themes/x-child/ images/resource-library/06_2015_en_AS-co-brand-APT-WhitePaper_16pg_8.5x11_WEB.pdf (accessed January 5, 2018). 36. Smith,“Climate Change, Weak States and the War on Terrorism in South and Southeast Asia” (see note 13); Nett and Ruttinger,“Insurgency, Terrorism, and Organized Crime in a Warming Climate”(see note 13); CNA,“The Role of Water Stress in Instability and Conﬂict”(see note 13). 37. Smith,“Climate Change, Weak States and the War on Terrorism in South and Southeast Asia” (see note 13). 38. CNA,“National Security and the Threat of Climate Change,”2007,https://www.cna.org/cna_ ﬁles/pdf/national%20security%20and%20the%20threat%20of%20climate%20change.pdf (accessed October 3, 2017). 39. We use the name Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant or ISIL to refer to the organization also known as IS, ISIS, and Daesh because this name is used in the GTD. 40. Nett and Ruttinger,“Insurgency, Terrorism, and Organized Crime in a Warming Climate” (see note 13); see also Peter Schwartzstein “Climate Change and Water Woes Drove ISIS Recruiting in Iraq,”National Geographic, November 14, 2017.https://news.nationalgeo graphic.com/2017/11/climate-change-drought-drove-isis-terrorist-recruiting-iraq/(accessed November 29, 2018). 41. CNA,“The Role of Water Stress in Instability and Conﬂict”(see note 13). 42. James Fergusson,“Yemen is Tearing Itself Apart over Water,”Newsweek, January 20, 2015. 43. Kyungmee Kim and Ashok Swain,“Crime, Corruption, Terrorism and Beyond: A Typology of Water Crime,”in The Human Face of Water Security, eds. David Devlaeminck, Zafar Adeel, and Robert Sandford (Cham: Springer, 2017), 95–111. 44. Gleick,“Water and Terrorism”(see note 27); Kim and Swain,“Crime, Corruption, Terrorism and Beyond”(see note 42); Ackerman et al.,“Assessing Terrorist Motivations for Attacking Critical Infrastructure”(see note 31). 45. Ivan S. Sheehan,“Assessing and Comparing Data Sources for Terrorism Research,”in Evidence-Based Counterterrorism Policy, eds. Cynthia Lum and Leslie W. Kennedy (Dordecht: Springer, 2012), 13–40; JeﬀGruenewald and William Alex Pridemore,“A Comparison of Ideologically-Motivated Homicides from the New Extremist Crime Database and Homicides from the Supplementary Homicide Reports using Multiple Imputation by Chained Equations to Handle Missing Values,”Journal of Quantitative Criminology 28, no. 1 (2012): 141–62. 46. De Stefano et al.,“Climate Change and the Institutional Resilience of International River Basins”(see note 14). 47. National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START). (2017). Global Terrorism Database [2017].https://www.start.umd.edu/gtd (accessed October 3, 2017). As mentioned above, by the time this article was in press, the end date of the GTD was 2017. 24 J. VEILLEUX AND S. DINAR 48. Intelligence Community Assessment,“Global Water Security Report”(see note 11). 49. Colin Beck,“On the Radical Cusp: Ecoterrorism in the United States, 1998–2005,” Mobilization: An International Quarterly 12, no 2 (2007): 161; Rebecca K. Smith, 'Ecoterrorism'? A Critical Analysis of the Viliﬁcation of Radical Environmental Activists as Terrorists,”Environmental Law 38, no. 2 (2008): 537. 50. Jennifer C. Veilleux and Elizabeth P. Anderson,“2015 Snapshot of Water Security in the Nile, Mekong, and Amazon River Basins,”Limnology and Oceanography Bulletin 25 no. 1 (2016): 8. 51. Wadsam,“Implementation of development projects creates job opportunities in Helmand,” Afghan Business News, April 12, 2014,http://wadsam.com/afghan-business-news/implementa tion-of-development-projects-creates-job-opportunities-in-helmand-232/(accessed June 2, 2018); Sune Engel Rasmussen,“Dam Project Promises Water –but also Conﬂict –for Dusty Afghan Border Lands,”The Guardian, March 22, 2017,https://www.theguardian.com/ global-development/2017/mar/22/afghanistan-dam-project-iran-nimruz-helmand-river (accessed June 3, 2018). 52. Aquastat,“Indus Basin,”http://www.fao.org/nr/water/aquastat/basins/indus/index.stm (accessed May 25, 2018). 53.“Rann of Kutch 1965,”Globalsecurity.org,https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/war/ rann-of-kutch.htm (accessed June 3, 2018). 54. Aquastat,“Euphrates-Tigris Basin,”http://www.fao.org/nr/water/aquastat/basins/euphrates- tigris/index.stm (accessed May 25, 2018). 55. The numbers do not equal 393 because some of these basins fall within the same countries. 56. FARC is the term used in the GTD. This organization is also known as Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia, and in English: Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. Sendaro Luminoso is the name of the Shining Path in Peru. 57. Jeﬀrey Stark, Sergio Guillén, and Cynthia Brady,“Follow the Water: Emerging Issues of Climate Change and Conﬂict in Peru”(CMM Discussion Paper 5, US Agency for International Development, Lima, Peru, 2012). 58. Martin De Angelis,“Peru’s Shining Path Insurgency Reemerges as Security Threat,”Global Risk Insights, August 17, 2015,https://globalriskinsights.com/2015/08/perus-shining-path- insurgency-reemerges-as-security-threat/(accessed June 1, 2018). 59. Steve J. Stern, ed.,Shining and Other Paths: War and Society in Peru, 1980–1995 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1998). 60. James J. Brittain,Revolutionary Social Change in Colombia: The Origin and Direction of the FARC-EP (New York, NY: Pluto Press, 2010); Ackerman et al.,“Assessing Terrorist Motivations for Attacking Critical Infrastructure”(see note 31). 61. BBC,“Colombia Signs New Peace Deal with FARC,”November 24, 2016,http://www.bbc. com/news/world-latin-america-38096179 (accessed May 30, 2018). 62. Ibid. 63. Mapping Militant Organizations,Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Stanford University),http://web.stanford.edu/group/mappingmilitants/cgi-bin/groups/view/89 (accessed June 1, 2018). 64. Ahmed Rashid,Taliban (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010). 65. Nett and Ruttinger,“Insurgency, Terrorism, and Organized Crime in a Warming Climate” (see note 13). 66. Scott Peterson,“Why a Dam in Afghanistan Might Set Back Peace,”Christian Science Monitor, July 30, 2013,https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Asia-South-Central/2013/0730/Why-a-dam- in-Afghanistan-might-set-back-peace (accessed February 2, 2018); Ahmad Majidyar,“Water Crisis Fueling Tension between Iran and its Neighbors”(Washington, DC: Middle East Institute, February 28, 2018)http://www.mei.edu/content/article/io/water-crisis-fueling- tension-between-iran-and-its-neighbors (accessed March 30, 2018); Sharafuddin Stanizai, “Plot to Blow up Salma Dam Thwarted,”Pajhowk Afghan News, March 31, 2013,https:// www.pajhwok.com/en/2013/03/31/plot-blow-salma-dam-thwarted (accessed May 20, 2018). 67. Agencies,“Taliban Attack Checkpoint near India-made dam in Afghanistan, Kill 10 Policemen,”The Economic Times, June 25, 2017,https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/ TERRORISM AND POLITICAL VIOLENCE 25 news/defence/taliban-attack-checkpost-near-india-made-dam-in-afghanistan-kill-10- policemen/articleshow/59310405.cms (accessed May 20, 2018). 68. Zachary Laub,“The Islamic State,”Backgrounder (Council on Foreign Relations, New York, NY, 2016),https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/islamic-state (accessed May 5, 2018). 69. Fawaz A. Gerges,Isis: A History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2017). 70. MEMRI,“ISI Conﬁrms that Jabhat Al-Nusra Is Its Extension in Syria, Declares ‘Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham’As New Name of Merged Group,”April 8, 2013,https://web.archive.org/ web/20141006085808/http://www.memri.org/report/en/0/0/0/0/0/0/7119.htm (accessed February 15, 2018). 71. BBC,“Islamic State and the Crisis in Iraq and Syria in Maps,”January 10, 2018,http://www. bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-27838034 (accessed February 1, 2018). 72. Tobias Von Lossow,“The Rebirth of Water as a Weapon: IS in Syria and Iraq,”The International Spectator 51, no. 3 (2016): 82. 73. The nine dams ISIL took control of were Tishrin, East Hasakah, West Hasakah, South Hasakah, Mosul, Tharthar, Tabqa, Ramadi, and Falluja; two threatened dams were Samara and Haditha (see Ross Dayton and Maya Lacayo,“ISIS, Water and Natural Resources”(Master of Arts in Global Aﬀairs Capstone Paper, Prepared for United States Special Operations Command, Florida International University, 2016). 74. King,“The Weaponization of Water in Syria and Iraq”(see note 3). 75. Foreign Policy,“Indian Minister: Maoists are a Greater Threat than Islamic Terrorists,” Passport, March 12, 2010,http://foreignpolicy.com/2010/03/12/indian-minister-maoists-are -a-greater-threat-than-islamic-terrorists/(accessed April 15, 2018). 26 J. VEILLEUX AND S. DINAR View publication stats