INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM

International Terrorism



International Terrorism

Introduction

The September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre in New York City and the Pentagon were the first in a series of dramatic and destructive terrorist attacks in which Islamist extremists sought to coerce Western and pro-Western governments into changing at least some of their policies. Subsequently, there were major attacks in the United Kingdom, Spain, Algeria, Egypt, and Jordan by Islamist radicals. Thousands of people perished in the September 11 attacks alone, and hundreds died after trains were bombed in London and Madrid. These attacks made terrorism a front-and-centre issue in the United States and Western Europe, but terrorism has been a major concern for many decades in many different parts of the world. Israel, Sri Lanka, India, Pakistan, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Japan, for example, have also experienced serious terrorist incidents since the mid-1990s. Indeed, terrorism in various forms has existed for centuries. Perhaps the earliest organized terrorist movement was by the Zealots in the first century. The Zealots used widespread assassinations as a tactic for frightening Jewish residents into refusing to cooperate with the Roman occupiers of the Holy Lands (Clarke, 2006).

Outline

Definition of Terrorism

It is ironic that, despite the international concern over terrorism, the states of the world have been unable to agree on a single definition of the term. The primary reason is political. Some states believe that certain forms of violence should not be categorized as terrorism, merely because it suits their foreign policy interests, or because they believe that “Western” definitions of terrorism are hypocritical. This is particularly the case with the violence perpetrated by Palestinian groups against targets in Israel. Often these attacks consist of suicide bombings on Israeli streets or the firing of small rockets into Israeli villages from the Gaza strip. Arab states believe that these actions should be considered a legitimate form of resistance against an occupying power. (Israel occupied Gaza until recently and still occupies much of the West Bank.) Often this view is associated with the perception that Israel is not a legitimate state in the first place-despite the fact that it was recognized by the United Nations 60 years ago and that some Arab states and the Palestinian Authority have acknowledged Israel's legitimacy. Terrorism was particularly widespread in 19th-century Europe. Anarchist and nationalist groups all resorted to violence against government officials and/or average citizens suspected of collaborating with the authorities. Anarchists sought to topple governments by killing key leaders-hoping that this would usher in an era of self-governance by the people themselves. Nationalists as far apart as Armenia (in the Ottoman Empire), Bosnia (in Austria-Hungary), and Ireland (in the British Empire) used violence against non-military targets, including civilian infrastructure like the London subway, to do what the Zealots had attempted to do centuries earlier: compel an imperial power to withdraw and grant their territories independence (Coaffee, 2003).

Structural Causes of Terrorism

Rather than, focus on the individual psychological calculations of the individual terrorist, some researchers have put forth causal arguments based ...