Cyber warfare tactics of Al-Qaeda, Boko Haram, and Tamil Tigers

Cyber Security and Terrorism: Al-Qaeda, Boko Haram, and Tamil Tigers

The Internet has become the latest frontier of crime and war. Governments and terror organizations are all beneficiaries of cyber-based warfare. This means that it is important to have an elaborate cyber security program that will safeguard the people from harm. The Internet is a platform and an avenue through which both security and crime can be enhanced and propagated respectively. The world's leading terrorist networks have resorted to the use of cyberspace as a platform on which to perpetrate their security agendas. In this paper, three terrorist groups are going to be discussed with the view of discussing their cyber-based wars. This will also touch on the issues of government response to quell the terrorist activities on the Internet platform.

The Al-Qaida

This is ranked as the world's leading terrorist organizations. It originated from Afghanistan as a religious group that was founded by Osama Bin Laden. The principles behind the formation of this organization were to fight the leadership of the United States of America as well as its interests in the global arena. This shows their ground of participation in the war. For their war have some meaning, they tagged in the agenda of religion in it. The terror network is founded on the principles of Islam, and anyone who is not a Muslim is an enemy of this terror group. This has seen them fight the Christian states with a serious verbosity while rallying the Muslim world to back their cause. They have made the Muslims in the world to believe that the Christians are their enemies (Saikia, 2010). Eventually, they end up winning sympathy backing from the large populations of Muslims in the world.

Cyberspace has been one of the key avenues through which the terror network has been launching attacks. This has seen it grow to become a serious group in terms of executing the terror agenda. The Internet is a platform through which they express their terror agenda and bring the focus of their antics to the people. They use the Internet to spread fearful messages through scary photos to the people. This makes them feared and will have succeeded in their agenda of bringing people under control. They also use the Internet platform to hack information systems of other countries and launch informed offensives from it. The Internet gives them access to what they would otherwise not access in the physical world.

Boko Haram

This is an emerging terrorist network in Africa, home-based in Nigeria. Their activities have however spread to other parts of the continent, largely in central Africa. Just like Al-Qaida, the foundation of this terror group is on a religious basis. These fighters use Islam as their basis for launching attacks on the residents of the countries they operate in, who are mainly Christians. They spread falsified information about Islam making its followers fall for the bait. Currently, many voluntary fighters have joined the fight on the side of the Boko Haram fighters courtesy of their religious indoctrinations.

As part of their strategy to influence the public to fall for their game plan, they are using the Internet platform to perpetuate the agenda of hate and fear. These two objectives are the propelling forces that enable them to move their agenda forward. Through this, they can make people live in fear and consequently subscribe to their ideology. In their plan, they wish to eradicate Western civilization from Nigeria and other countries that they have laid claim (Zenn, 2012). It is through this that they have witnessed a growing development of faults in the governments they fight as the leaders act in a way not to expose their people to direct attacks from these fighters.

The latest affronts involve sending video messages using the social media platforms to scare the people and make them submit to their dominance. This has seen them grow to be the most feared terror group in the continent. Al-Qaida, the biggest terror network in the world, has since sought their partnership to perpetrate their agenda in the continent. This partnership has since seen them launch successful attacks on the continent.

They also use the social media platform to send scary images of executions that they carry on their victims. This is done to achieve the objective of fear and bring them to the limelight. They get sufficient publicity through these videos and this; they have managed to appear big. In the terrorists' agenda, the aim is to portray their most ugly side so that the people can subscribe to their ideologies. This also helps them earn respect from other terrorist networks for notoriety, control, and dominance of the areas around them.

The Tamil Tigers

This is a home-based non-religious group in Sri Lanka. The Tamil people in Eastern Sri Lanka with a secessionist agenda formed the group. They wanted to have control over their affairs in the country. They had a feeling that the government of the day was not representing their interest well. The organization was purely military with well-trained fighters from the community of the Tamils (Rajanayagam, 2013). This made them the most feared rebel group in Asia, known for many assassinations in Sri Lanka and India. Some of the leaders in India staged a war against the Tamils a joint inter-governmental force. However, these efforts did not bring success on the side of the Tamils because the government forces overpowered them. To make their statement stronger and endure the fight for a longer time, they opted to guerilla tactics. This gave them a longer lifeline than they would have survived had they gone full force.