Global Security Concerns Questions and Answers

Answer: C

The magazine was Charlie Hebdo.

On 7 January 2015 two gunmen, brothers who claimed allegiance to al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, attacked the Paris office of the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, killing twelve people, including several of its cartoonists. The magazine had published cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. The attack prompted the 'Je suis Charlie' movement.

Le Monde is France's leading daily newspaper, not a satirical magazine, and 'Charlie Parisienne' is an invented name built to resemble the real title.

Answer: A

The country that is not a UN member is Taiwan.

Taiwan, formally the Republic of China, held China's UN seat until 1971, when General Assembly resolution 2758 transferred it to the People's Republic of China. Since then Taiwan has had no UN membership, and its applications have not been admitted.

The other three are members: Yemen (North Yemen joined in 1947 and the unified state continued its seat in 1990), East Timor (Timor-Leste) joined in 2002, and South Sudan joined in 2011 as the 193rd member state.

Answer: B

NCTC stands for the National Counter Terrorism Centre.

After the Mumbai attacks of November 2008, the Union Home Ministry proposed an NCTC modelled on the United States' National Counterterrorism Center, to pull together intelligence on terrorism and coordinate the response. It was notified in 2012 but put on hold after several states objected that it would intrude on policing, a state subject.

The other expansions are not the name of the body: it was not a training centre, a council, or a 'National Centre for Terrorism Committee'.

Answer: C

The author is Daniel L. Byman.

Byman, a professor at Georgetown University and a fellow of the Brookings Institution, wrote Al Qaeda, the Islamic State, and the Global Jihadist Movement: What Everyone Needs to Know, published by Oxford University Press in 2015. It explains the origins, ideology and rivalry of the two groups in question-and-answer form.

The others are also writers on terrorism but of other books: William McCants wrote The ISIS Apocalypse, Bruce Hoffman wrote Inside Terrorism, and Stuart Gottlieb edited Debating Terrorism and Counterterrorism.

Answer: A

CTS stands for Critical Terrorism Studies.

Critical Terrorism Studies emerged in the mid-2000s, led by scholars such as Richard Jackson, Marie Breen Smyth and Jeroen Gunning, and gained its own journal, Critical Studies on Terrorism, in 2008. Drawing on critical theory, it questions how the label 'terrorism' is constructed, criticises the state-centred bias of orthodox terrorism research, and pays attention to state terrorism.

The stem itself rules out the 'Counter Terrorism' expansions, since it describes a branch rooted in critical theory, and 'Critical Tourist terrorism studies' is a made-up phrase.

Answer: C

It was endorsed through the UN Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy.

Secretary-General Kofi Annan set up the Counter-Terrorism Implementation Task Force in 2005 to coordinate the UN system's work against terrorism. The General Assembly endorsed it when it adopted the UN Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy by consensus on 8 September 2006 (resolution 60/288), which also gave the Task Force the job of helping to implement the strategy.

The Security Council and its Counter-Terrorism Committee (set up by resolution 1373 in 2001) are not organs of the General Assembly. The UN Office of Counter-Terrorism was created only in 2017, when the Task Force was moved into it.

Answer: A

UNOCT was established on 15 June, 2017.

The UN General Assembly created the Office of Counter-Terrorism by resolution 71/291, adopted on 15 June 2017, on the proposal of Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. It brought the Counter-Terrorism Implementation Task Force and the UN Counter-Terrorism Centre under one Under-Secretary-General.

11 September 2001 is the date of the al-Qaeda attacks on the United States, which led to Security Council resolution 1373, not to this office. The other two dates are distractors without a link to UNOCT's founding.

Answer: A

The 6th Ministerial Conference was hosted in Amritsar.

The Heart of Asia-Istanbul Process, launched in 2011, brings Afghanistan's neighbours and partners together to support its security and connectivity. India hosted the sixth Ministerial Conference in Amritsar on 3-4 December 2016, where the declaration named terrorism as the main threat to Afghanistan and the region.

Kathmandu, Mumbai and Hyderabad have not hosted a Heart of Asia ministerial meeting; earlier conferences were held in Istanbul, Kabul, Almaty, Beijing and Islamabad.

Answer: A

The elite force is The Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC, Sepah-e Pasdaran) was formed in 1979 to protect the Islamic Revolution. It exists alongside the regular army, has its own ground, naval and air forces, controls the Basij militia and the external Quds Force, and holds large economic interests.

The other options are generic descriptions rather than names of an elite force: 'Paramilitary Force of Iran' simply restates the stem, and border policing in Iran is a function of the law-enforcement command, not the elite paramilitary body the question asks for.

Answer: D

The pair that is not correctly matched is Sendero Luminoso - Bolivian Revolution.

Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) is a Maoist insurgent group of Peru, founded by Abimael Guzman, which fought the Peruvian state from 1980. It has nothing to do with Bolivia.

The other pairs are correct: the LTTE fought for a separate Tamil Eelam in Sri Lanka, HAMAS seeks an independent Palestinian state, and the Irish Republican Army fought for a united Irish republic free of British rule.