Terrorism (4 Different Topics, 3

Terrorism (4 Different Topics, 3 Pages Each)

Describe the major trends in terrorism in recent years.

Fundamentalism in general has been on the rise in recent years, for example, between the mid-1960s and the mid-1990s, the number of fundamentalist movements of all religious affiliations tripled worldwide. At the same time, as observed by Bruce Hoffman, there has been a virtual explosion of identifiable religious terrorist groups from zero in 1968 to today's level, where almost 25% of all terrorist groups active throughout the world are predominantly motivated by religious concerns.

Although the ethno-nationalist/separatist and ideological fundamentalists continue to reflect the most basic understanding of the term in the United States, in recent years "terrorism" has been used to denote broader, less distinct phenomena. "In the early 1980s, for example, terrorism came to be regarded as a calculated means to destabilize the West as part of a vast global conspiracy." While the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 stand out as the most prominent example of terrorism in recent years, these attacks merely represent a continuation of a major trend that began in the last two decades of the 20th century. However, the resulting wars against terrorism, drug trafficking, and money laundering have opened the world's money conduits to increased scrutiny; these initiatives have also opened up the operations of nongovernmental organizations that operate primarily as charitable and social-service agencies, but are linked to terrorism as well.

The recent trends in terrorism show that the reach of such organizations are now global in two ways:

1) Individuals are able to travel widely ("The same easing of border controls -- especially notable in Europe -- that has been a convenience to businessmen and tourists has also made it easier for terrorists to reach tempting targets and willing collaborators"); and 2) Terrorists have extended their reach worldwide by establishing globe-circling infrastructures (for example, Lebanese Hizballah, whose presence now reaches six continents, has led the way).

Despite these trends, other terrorist organizations are also at work with their own diverse agendas such as the Palestinian group Hamas or the Sri Lankan Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, which maintain cells far from the countries where their goals and grievances are actually focused. These terrorist infrastructures have extended the geographic options for attacks such as with Hizballah's bombings of Israeli-associated targets in Buenos Aires in the early 1990s; however, they more frequently advance recruitment, fund-raising, movement of materiel, and other support functions. The overseas cells grow up most frequently near sympathetic expatriate communities (such as the Shia Lebanese in the border region of Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay (the focus of Hizballah's activity in South America); in addition, they also settle elsewhere in the Western world simply to take advantage of superior civil liberties, social services, transportation, and better communications.

It is these innovations in communications and information technology in particular that seem to have facilitated the spread of terrorist operations around the world just as they have normal commerce. In fact, satellite phones are now standard equipment for most leaders of terrorist organizations, who can remain otherwise inaccessible in a place such as Afghanistan while influencing events thousands of miles away. Terrorists also employ the Internet for long-distance operational direction, with some larger groups using it for propaganda and proselytization as well.

The use of the Internet by terrorist organizations has resulted in two primary concerns:

1) the Internet could provide information on biological, chemical, or other unconventional agents that could be put to terrorist use; and 2) Terrorists could use it to disable electronic infrastructures.

According to Pillar, both of these are legitimate concerns, although probably neither threat is as great as is commonly feared. "Terrorists no doubt have found useful information on weapons on the Internet, but little they could not have picked up elsewhere. And the few international cyber- terrorism attacks so far have been crude and of little consequence." Terrorists are just people too, and most of them, including the various leaders, continue to use information technology for mostly routine everyday tasks of organizing and communicating, rather than collaborating on their methods of attack. However, this is not to say that they cannot or will not use such telecommunications to coordinate global attacks, or use the Internet's vulnerabilities to damage Western business interests through computer viruses or otherwise. Likewise, threats of so-called dirty bombs that use radioactive materials but are not fissionable have sprung up in recent years, particularly in the wake of the collapse of the former Soviet Union and the almost nonexistent security that is provided such radioactive materials there today. Terrorists organizations have used these techniques and others that may not yet be identified (or at least divulged to the American public) in recent years to further their goals, much to the consternation of the powers who be who remain uncertain how to meet these threats.

2. Assess the issue surrounding the use of psychological vs. strategic or rational choice to analyzing terrorist movements.

The results of the recent presidential election clearly demonstrate that a strategic or rational choice may not be possible in the scary atmosphere that exists in America today. From a Western perspective, it may be impossible to accurately discern what motivates a 16-year-old suicide bomber to destroy him- (or her-) self, but the fact remains that terrorists are cutting peoples heads off and are threatening to do it even more in the future and beheadings scare the bejabbers out of Americans.

Contributing to the nervous setting is a Homeland Security Agency that has assumed an incredible amount of power, and that employs a color code scheme that no one except the terrorists themselves seems to understand. Further, prime time news reports continue to fill American living rooms with pictures of soldiers fighting for their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan against an invisible enemy that can fade into the civilian populace at will. Is there a strategic or rational choice to be had in this environment?

One distinct feature of an increasingly globalized society is that disaster can occur at the global level, so the world is now in this process where either the West grasps the moral and political implications of this increasingly shared fate with other people or "very bad things will happen." According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, terrorism is "the unlawful use of force or violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives."

From this perspective, then, strictly defined, terrorism can be waged by a government on its own people, or from organizations outside the country. According to Annamarie Oliverio, during the period from the late 1960s to 1997, almost 4,000 acts of terrorism were cited as occurring in the United States alone. Although these rates declined somewhat as the 20th century drew to a close, there was also an increase in formal social control in the form of luggage searches, radar detection, baggage checks, immigration laws, surveillance experts, and "central intelligence" agencies. "Some writers concluded that the implementation of such repressive measures was effective at countering terrorism."

This point is also made by Peter Chalk, who points out that when dealing with terrorism as a threat to liberal democracy, it is a common assumption that it is the terrorists, who by definition have refused the roles of the liberal democratic "game," who represent the greatest threat to the underlying principles and freedoms that are enshrined in this form of political life. "However, in instances where the state fails to ensure that its response to terrorism is limited, well-defined and controlled, it is likely that institutionalised counter-terrorist policies will pose an even greater threat to the political and civil traditions that are central to the liberal democratic way of life."

Terrorism is the way that non-combatants wage war. There are a number of differences between terrorism and traditional wars, including the concept that traditional wars are sometimes "legal" and terrorism is illegal, and that the perpetrators and the intended victims of terrorism are frequently civilians, while in traditional war the intended victims are soldiers. "Why do people engage in terrorism? Terrorists are not stupid. They are purposeful. The violence of terrorism, like the violence of punishment, is expressive." In the vernacular of criminal law, terrorists may pontentially resort to citing retributive or instrumentalist motives for the innocent suffering they inflict. According to Kenneth Roth, "Retributive" terrorists believe that the victims (or their country) deserve punishment, for their own sake. More typically, though, the objective of terrorism is instrumentalist."

Terrorists want to force Western compliance with their will by inflicting fear; likewise, the American government appears to want to support its agenda by keeping the American public as frightened as possible a la Michael Moore. While the conspiracists may be off the mark in this regard, the fact remains that the U.S. government's primary and overriding goal since September 11, 2001, has been to defeat terrorism on a wide range of fronts. As inexorable (and enormously expensive) as this campaign has been to date, it remains to be seen whether it is merely a fight against a particularly ruthless set of criminals or an effort to defeat the motivations of terrorism as they present themselves today.

Rational choices are limited in this setting, and may merely consist of making the best of the worst available alternatives. The American public is becoming increasingly frustrated with national policymakers who seem to be firing global broadsides but are not able to hit anything. In fact, Butler even questions whether the war on terrorism is a struggle against Osama bin Laden, his Al Qaeda network, and a few similarly minded groups, or, "is it also an effort to undermine the paradigm that anything goes in the name of a cause and the idea that even the slaughter of civilians is an acceptable political act?

3. Predict the most important trends in terrorism.

Clearly, things are going to get worse before they get better. Today militant Islam is gaining power and influence around the world. The relentless increase in the destructive capacity of small groups and individuals has been fueled in large party by three fundamental technological advances:

1) more powerful weapons;

2) dramatic progress in communications and information processing; and 3) more abundant opportunities to divert nonweapon technologies to destructive ends.

As noted above, terrorists may be dangerous, but they are not stupid, and terrorists organizations around the world have readily embraced these technologies to advance their cause in any way possible. Furthermore, according to Cetron and Davies, by the year 2020, most of the world's 25 most-important Muslim lands could have extremist religious governments; Europe and the U.S. will face more homegrown terrorism, since Islam is the fastest-growing faith in both areas.

The responses adopted by the United States in the years to come will likely continue to trample on civil rights, as hallmarked by the passage of the so-called Patriot Act. This will likely continue until enough Americans have their rights infringed in one fashion or another to cause a grassroots movement to swing the pendulum back the other way. "In the West, the magnitude of the September 11 attacks has led many to accept a scaling back of certain rights in the name of enhancing security. If everyone faced heightened scrutiny, the odds are that an appropriate balance would be stuck between freedom and safety." However, since the anti-terrorism efforts to date have largely been focused on a minority (young men from the Middle East and North Africa), civil rights would appear to be in far greater jeopardy. According to Stuntz, the terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon drastically increased the demands on law enforcement. "Those increased demands have already led to some increases in law enforcers' legal authority, and that trend will -- and probably should -- continue, at least for a while."

For the purposes assessing the impact of this on trends on the future war on terrorism, it helps to separate the legal changes (both the ones that have already taken place as well as those that are likely to take place in the near future) into two categories:

1) special powers that are limited to the fight against terrorism; and 2) changes in the authority of police across the board.

The first category is the result of federal legislation and therefore affects only a small percentage of the more than 800,000 law enforcement officers in the United States today; the second is, or potentially will be, the result of judicial decisions, since it is judges who determine the breadth of Fourth and Fifth Amendment law, and it is those bodies of law that serve to constrain the vast majority of those 800,000-plus officers. "The first category has gotten the most ink thus far, but the second category is more important. The sheer size of America's local law enforcement machinery means that the rules that bind it have much more to do with the amount of freedom most Americans possess than the rules that limit the power of FBI agents."

The majority of members of the American public have been able to discern that the balance is not between their own security and freedom but between their own security and other peoples' freedom. "Governments have been quick to take advantage of the resultant greater public willingness to countenance rights restrictions." According to William J. Stuntz, "Crime waves always carry with them calls for more law enforcement authority. What happened on September 11, 2001 was, among other things, a crime wave -- because of that one day, the number of homicides in America in 2001 will be twenty percent higher than the year before." It is little wonder, then, that even before the fires in the rubble that was the World Trade Center were extinguished, some politicians in the United States were calling for more extensive powers for law enforcement and greater restrictions on American citizens, all in the name of the critical war on terrorism.

While the wave of patriotic support for government since the September 11 terrorist attacks has made Americans more willing to accept greater transparency, that is, less privacy, in their personal lives, clearly this will not continue beyond a certain point. With the issue of terrorism moving to the top of the public agenda because of the tragedy of September 11, it is likely that social issues will remain in a low-visibility arena for the near future; however, based on the demonstrated propensity of the current president to maintain close relations with big business, his second term will, in all likelihood, be one in which the second Bush administration continues to do all it deems feasible to satisfy the needs of its business friends which may well mean a continuation of the prosecution of the war on terrorism in a military fashion, using fewer troops than is absolutely necessary to ensure the continued need for highly paid civilian employees of Halliburton and its subsidiaries.

In the final analysis, just as today, it is unlikely that the United States and its erstwhile allies will be able to mount a convincing military response to the dangers posed by international terrorist organizations in the future. Further exacerbating the problem for the West is that none of the old stuff has worked, and offers of Western solutions to uniquely Muslim problems have resulted in almost universal failure; not only have these solutions failed miserably, they have invariably resulted in even more backlash from many Arab quarters that had previously been either amiable or at least benign in their perception of the United States and its interests abroad.

4. Discuss the major organizational patterns of current terrorist groups and how these organizations may or may not change in the future.

Citing an interview with Walter Laqueur, who holds the Kissinger Chair for Security Studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, DC., Joshua Sinai of the Washington Times reports that in Laqueur's view, the most problematic areas in understanding and responding to terrorism have been identifying just who is involved. Laqueur has challenged the notion that in order to understand terrorism one must "investigate its roots rather than deal with its outward manifestations." The concept behind this assertion has been that by eliminating the potential sources of terrorism such as poverty, social stagnation or foreign occupation, it could reasonably be assumed that terrorism would be eliminated; to the contrary, though, Laqueur believes that "terrorism, like revolutions, occurs not when the situation is disastrously bad but when various political, economic, and social trends coincide." In his view, an even more serious issue for the future direction of terrorist response is that in the search for "root causes," attention to terrorist leadership and their aggression and fanaticism becomes lost. "People who practice terrorism are extremists, not moderates, and [in the case of ethno-religious conflicts] the demands of extremists can hardly ever be satisfied without impairing the rights of other ethnic groups, especially if two groups happen to claim the same region or country." These geopolitical ethnic considerations are certainly not new, just as the violence that has almost always been associated with them is not new; however, it would seem that there have been more geopolitical shifts in the past 100 years than in all of history combined, resulting in an enormous amount of social stress and upheaval based on centuries-old feuds and grudges. In this atmosphere, terrorist organizations are ripe for recruiting marginalized and disenfranchised young people who see no other way to vent their rage and achieve their goals; but these organizations are nebulous and will likely remain so in the foreseeable future. In response, many observers today are longing for the "good old days" of the Cold War when America's enemies were well-known and had clear-cut representatives with whom to negotiate. This is simply not the case with international terrorist organizations, many of which are well-funded and highly organized, but geographically dispersed and trained to remain undetected until needed. These "sleeper cells" may or may not represent the level of threat that the U.S. government would have its citizenry believe, but the fact remains that such sleeper cells executed the terrorist attacks of September 11. As Elnur (2003) points out, "Since the end of the Cold War, Muslim fundamentalism seems to have replaced Soviet communism as the West's bugbear of choice. Both in academia and in popular circles, the core values of traditionalist Islam are portrayed as inherently hostile to those of modern pluralistic society."