ABSTRACT
This chapter shows that in the case of American-backed rebel groups, their "terrorist-like" violence was ignored or underplayed in both US government reports on terrorism and in press coverage of political violence, much as Iraqi and then Syrian support of terrorism was ignored. Terrorism may be understood as qualitatively different from other forms of political violence. Soviet bombing attacks on Afghan refugee camps in Pakistan by agents of the Afghanistan intelligence ministry accounted for a significant portion of the international terrorist incidents reported by the Department of State's annual Patterns of Global Terrorism. Between January 20, 1981 and March 1993, The New York Times published 662 articles and columns which made reference to the Union for the Total Independence of Angola guerrillas. In January 1993, Jonas Savimbi's guerrillas kidnapped twenty foreigners who worked in the northern oil center of Soyo, the center of several Western oil operations.
