The Evolution of Terrorism - Essay Example

The Evolution of Terrorism Name University The Evolution of Terrorism What is terrorism? Perhaps someone asks you to define, there exists a common notion that every Muslim is a terrorist, though in most cases so far documented, most of the terrorist have been established to profess the Islamic faith leading to a common believe that every terrorist is a Muslim. Terrorism can actually be difficult to differentiate from the normal crimes or acts of the bandits. Therefore terrorism can actually be defined as an act of crime that is committed as a holy duty by someone whose religion permits (Alexander & Kraft, 2008).Terrorism can also be defined as the reaction of a person, group of person towards oppression where all other methods of seeking justice have failed. The Palestinian people deem the republic of Israel as the oppressors and therefore acts of terrorism should be carried out on its people, property and any other people who associate themselves with the republic of Israel. Terrorists usually form small groups or simply cells which operate in very secretive manner. They have coercive military power and it has proven difficult to defend ourselves from them since they employ guerilla warfare tactics which they always change depending on the situation (Owen & Maurer, 2014). They are universally classified as not a conventional army with well known key installations but rather they operate under the darkness to ensure their secrets are never known or their members who are together unified by the common goal of committing crimes. In the modern world setting, terrorism has become a means of achieving certain goals throughout the world in countries such as Somalia to Yemen, Iraq, and Afghanistan where different terrorist groups are activve (Sulmasy, 2009). Terrorism has definitely emerged as a modern threat especially in the African continent especially in Somalia and Nigeria where Boko Haram and Al shabab are trying to seek and establish their harsh Islamic laws. During the 20th century, terrorism has really evolved and taken a new arena, dimensions of the nationalism and the revolutionary ideologies were the predecessors of the terrorism ideologies. Then advent of the treaty of Versailles which broke up the Austro-Hungarian Empire led to creation new nations to the world. This act led to encouragement of minorities in the society to campaign for their own recognition and self rule. However some of the involved parties were denied autonomy and led to great bitterness afterwards and consequently wars that led to great destruction of property and massive loss of life as witnessed during the war in Yugoslavia (Fluri, Gustenau& Pantev, 2005). In the Arab world, the Arab nationalists and been promised independence but felt betrayed when the British and the French people were conferred with authority over their land. The British took over the Palestinian land to settle the Jews. This clearly agitated the Palestinians and Arab world to frankly speak. The Arabs formed a coalition of forces and jointly fought the Israelis’. Since the end of the World War II, terrorism has accelerated and expanded its prior role of anti-colonial insurgences’ into a major contemporary conflict as witnessed in Nigeria and Somalia as well as Kenya. Terrorism has proven as significant tool of diplomacy that has caught many national governments worldwide unaware (Storm, Cruickshank & Lister, 2014). They are forced to negotiate with terrorists to achieve certain favors. By doing so, the terrorist find that their acts of terrorism are shortcuts to victory and in the end, various groups emulate what other groups did and achieved their goals in very short time with minimal resources. Since the late 1970s, terrorism entered a new phase which has finally evolved to result into disastrous phase where many young men are voluntary siding with these groups and end their lives as martyrs. As they end lives as martyrs, they usually have committed heinous crimes that are totally unacceptable to the modern setting of the society. There is a trend and it’s an over growing about the so called religious fanatics or the religious extremists who have been established to reject the authority of secular governments in their nations and generally view legal systems of their particular governments that are not based on certain religious beliefs as illegitimate and should hence be brought down through all possible means (Riedel, 2008). They actually view modernization efforts of the society as corrupting influences on traditional culture and do not want their particular citizens to enjoy the modern forms of technology. We have heard and established how various terrorist groups across the world have banned people from using the modern technology in their territories under their rule. The Taliban terrorist group which is active in Afghanistan banned the Afghans from watching the television and girls from attending the school (Sjoberg & Gentry, 2011). The al shabaab from Somalia in Africa banned the citizens from listening to love songs and from using the online content. They even banned the youths from watching the football and ordered all male persons of the society to grow beards. We can clearly understand that they are actually against the modernizations efforts and the modern tends of technology which ever sober society must access especially at this modern age in history. These kinds of groups under consideration believe that their acts extreme violence are justifiable and morally upright and should be emulated by others to achieve their goals of interest (Riedel, 2008). Al Qaeda, a modern day terrorist group has been credited with furthering religious extremism to many other groups across the world and especially in the Arab world in general (Gray, 2003).The founder and financier of this global terrorist network was the late Osama Bin laden. He was a Saudi national and from a very influential and rich families. Several unverified sources estimated that Osama has inherited close $250 million from his father who died from a helicopter crash back in the year 1957(Gray, 2003). The terrorist leader was a civil engineer by profession and was radicalized at the university when the Soviet Union invaded the Afghanistan. He went there in Afghanistan and joined fellow mujahedeen and fought the forces from the Soviet Union who in turn retreated from the country and give birth to the Taliban terrorist organization under the leadership of Mullah Omar. We can see how a unified goal of liberating the Afghanistan from foreign oppressors unified men across the Arab world to team up and rather die as martyrs rather than live as kings (Gunaratna, 2002). Their goal was to defeat the Russians and they achieved it, but his stay on the afghan land led to growth of outfits that would later transform things and use terrorism as a weapon to achieve their desired goals. Later Osama relocated to Sudan but was expelled and he later went back to Afghanistan to form what is now globally called the al Qaeda terrorist network. Al Qaeda simply means “the base”. He sent up training camps where volunteers from the host nation were trained to fight and how to use weapons. They achieved great victory since their trained camps were flocked by many ready to die willing men from many nations across the world such as regions of Africa, Asia to even from some European countries as well as from the American continent (Naylor, 2009). In those training camps, they received tough training and some underwent bomb making training session. It is the students of the late Osama bin Laden who spread his gospel of violence against Christians and the Jews. His followers set up latter al Qaeda cells into countries they came from and recruited new members into those secretive cells. Every member was tasked with an obligation or task to perform and to always ensure secrecy was achieved. They even used certain mosques as grounds of followers recruitment and means to raise money for their activities. They even carried out legitimate businesses to raise money for terrorist organization. An example of a student of bin laden was the Mohammed Fazul, who is credited as the mastermind of the 1998 Nairobi and Dar es Salaam bombings on the American embassy and the 2002 kikambala bombings still in Kenya (Williams, 2005). He also suspected to be one of the two men who tried to shoot down an Israeli jet liner with shoulder held missile launcher will failed to be successful. Fazul was a bright man, a computer geek and was a student from the king Jeddah University. He was al Qaeda’s king pin in the African continent and oversaw the organizations’ activities there. This man carried out legitimate trade in Liberia where he bought and sold diamonds to raise money for the terror organization. He oversaw the formation of the al shabaab and it is suspected that he trained the militants there. We can clearly note that terrorism is changing its qualities; men from rich families, who are well-educated, are the people nowadays becoming terrorists as was the case of Fazul rather than in the recent past where the poor and the dissatisfied people were the persons getting involved in the terrorist groups. It’s actually true now that terrorism is evolving or shaping itself into a more complex situation. The terrorists have several weapons at their disposal. In the early years of terrorism, very few weapons were available for use in the battle grounds. The weapons at their disposal are of very low fire power and therefore the terrorists could achieve very low achievements. Rifles were the major weapons at their disposal. The technology by use by the terrorists was somewhat considerable low since very few members of the terror organizations could make bombs but however the trend changed some years in the 1900s. Very well educated young men from the universities joined the terror organizations and used their technology to their best (Peters, 2009). They manufactured bombs that were improvised in their design and structure (IEDs) and entailed the use of remotes detonators, they used mobile phone signals to detonate bombs and therefore the governments found it a challenge to handle their new tricks. Terrorists from the Middle East countries such as Yemen, Iraq, and Afghanistan emulated these new methods of achieving maximum causalities in their attacks. Therefore we can clearly that terrorism evolves depending on time and the situations the terrorist are faced with. They keep on looking for loopholes in the security system of governments worldwide so that they can achieve their agendas such as those of Boko Haram who are seeking to establish an Islamic caliphate in northern Nigeria. The regard the secular governments as illegitimate and evil and should therefore be removed from the leadership through any possible means (Williams, 2005).They try to use religion as a cover up to achieve their pre-determined agendas which have no place in the society especially in the modern world setting. The means through which the terrorist use to execute their heinous attacks as caught many persons and governments unaware. The means of delivery of the attacks as kept on changing from time to time. In the early years, the terrorists would execute an attack mainly through an ambush of the target and therefore run away and hide after the attack is accomplished. However this trend has changed with time, men and women were later willing to die as suicide bombers with the hope of goodies at heaven as reward by Allah. This really made the terrorists to instill high levels of fears in the populations deemed as the targets. This thought of suicide bombers to attack a target has spread worldwide and terrorists found it as be the best way to attack due to its irresistible nature to the target. Terrorist based in Somalia started to use this means of delivery of attacks on the Somalia soil and as resorted in many casualties and almost impossible to prevent the attacker or arrest him or her. The al Qaeda terror organization utilized a loop hole in the security system of the United States of America to launch the 9/11 attacks (Chaliand et al, 2007). They hijacked planes and used those planes as missiles to hit the targets which were buildings and the consequential results were disastrous and led to the declaration of war on terror. We can conclude that terrorism is evolving every day of the year. Terrorists located somewhere on the earth are trying to emulate what other groups are doing to achieve their agendas, some are pledging alliance to others to achieve military and financial assistance. Their fore-fathers of terrorism who are the al Qaeda and Taliban are busy at their drawing tables trying to seek newer and less cost effective methods to use in their attacks. Therefore even the current methods being used by terror gangs may become obsolete when better methods of attacks are realized. It is the duty of governments to enhance their security systems and always be ahead of terrorists. References Alexander, Y., & Kraft, M. (2008). Evolution of U.S. counterterrorism policy. Westport, Conn: Praeger Security International. Fluri, P., Gustenau, G. E., & Pantev, P. (2005). The evolution of civil-military relations in South East Europe: Continuing democratic reform and adapting to the needs of fighting terrorism. Heidelberg: Physica-Verlag, a Springer Co. Owen, M., & Maurer, K. (2014). No hero: The evolution of a Navy SEAL. Sulmasy, G. M. (2009). The national security court system: A natural evolution of justice in an age of terror. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 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