What trends are significant in terrorism over the past 5 years?

Executive Summary

Critics of the current approach to terrorism warnings say that the alerts issued so far have created anxiety but have given the public little useful information on what to do in the event of an attack. Supporters counter that terrorism warnings have helped by keeping people vigilant and prepared. On Sept. 11, members of the Al Qaeda terrorist network hijacked four commercial airliners. In response, in March 2002 the DHS unveiled a new system meant to better specify terrorism warnings. An inevitable effect of terrorism warnings is that they generate fear in the public. Critics say that frequent alerts can have a financial cost as well. The terrorist attacks against embassies and the nation's military response has brought renewed attention to the problem of international terrorism and the limited ability to thwart insurgent groups that perpetrate violence against the countries. The threat of terrorism has replaced the threat of international warfare that shaped U.S. national defense policy during the Cold War. The FBI identifies three categories of international terrorists that pose a threat to U.S. citizens and interests: state sponsors of international terrorism, formalized terrorist groups and "loosely affiliated international radical extremists.

What trends are significant in terrorism over the past 5 years?

Introduction

The horrific events of September 11 2001 are widely seen as an epochal fault line, heralding a new 'age of terrorism'. In their scale of death and destruction, the Al Qaeda attacks against the United States that day were unprecedented in the modern history of terrorist violence. The September 11 fatalities were originally estimated at about 6,000, though subsequently revised downwards to about 3,000.

It is worth noting that nearly 6,000 people are killed in the average week in armed conflict around the world. Still, the September 11 attacks were as audacious as they were deadly. They were carried out by an independent, loosely structured terrorist network, Al Qaeda, which without the active participation of any state, planned and executed two simultaneous, catastrophic strikes against the world's dominant military power.

These were the first foreign or overseas attacks ever successfully carried out against the US mainland. They were deadlier than the Japanese assault on Pearl Harbor. But above all they were audacious in their symbolism. Al Qaeda's 19 suicide hijackers struck the Pentagon itself, the symbol and seat of US military power, wreaking substantial damage to its massive structure. And they destroyed the World Trade Center's Twin Towers, icons of both the Manhattan skyline and US leadership in the global economy. The televised collapse of the Twin Towers shocked millions of people not simply in New York and the United States but throughout the world. Those devastating images will not easily be erased from the world's collective memory.

Discussion

This study analyses the trends and perspectives on terrorism. It attempts to answer the following questions: What is terrorism? How has terrorism evolved over the years in the type, frequency and lethality of attacks? How has terrorism been conceived by various actors and ...