Terrorism, the systematic use of terror or unpredictable violence against
governments, publics, or individuals to attain a political objective.
Terrorism has been used by political organizations with both rightist and
leftist objectives, by nationalistic and ethnic groups, by revolutionaries,
and by the armies and secret police of governments themselves.
Terrorism, is the use or threat of violence to create fear and alarm.
Terrorists murder and kidnap people, set off bombs, hijack airplanes, set
fires, and commit other serious crimes. But the goals of terrorists differ
from those of ordinary criminals. Most criminals want money or some
other form of personal gain. But most terrorists commit crimes to support
political causes.
The word terrorism first appeared during the French Revolution
(1789-1799). Some of the revolutionaries who seized power in France
adopted a policy of violence against their enemies. The period of their rule
became known as the Reign of Terror.
Terrorist acts are committed for various reasons. Some terrorist
groups support a particular political philosophy. Other terrorist
organizations represent ethnic groups seeking liberation from governments
in power. Dictators use violence to frighten or eliminate their opponents.
Most terrorist groups have a small number of members. They believe the
threat or use of violence to create fear is the best way to gain publicity and
support for their causes.
Terrorists use computers, cellular phones, and encryption software to
evade detection, and they have sophisticated means for forging passports
and documents.
Even more dangerous is the spectre that terrorists will turn to
materials of mass destruction chemical, biological, or nuclear to multiply
casualties far beyond traditional levels. The sarin gas attack in the Tokyo subway in 1995 by Aum Shinrikyo, the apocalyptic Japanese sect, showed
that the threat of chemical terrorism is now a reality.
Terrorism also has a high economic cost. The US government alone
spends about $5,000 million a year to guard against terrorism, at home
and abroad, and these costs will doubtless rise. Terrorism can also cripple
entire economics. For example, in Egypt, by targeting a few tourists,
terrorists almost shut down the vitally important tourist industry for many
months.
Exploitation of religion for political purposes, and violence, is an age
old phenomenon. It is important to remember that all religions have
produced deviant and dangerous fringe groups, and Islam, like Christianity
and Judaism, preaches peace and non-violence. Terrorists who claim to
speak for Islam are abusing their faith, and they are increasingly
condemned throughout the Islamic world.
Terrorist operations have also changed somewhat. Airlinehijackings
have become rare, since hijacked planes cannot stay in the air forever a
few countries today are willing to let them land, thereby incurring the
stigma of openly supporting terrorism. Terrorists, too, saw diminishing
returns on hijackings. The trend now seems to be away from attacking
specific targets like the other side’s officials and toward more
indiscriminate killing. Furthermore, the dividing line between urban
terrorism and other tactics has become less distinct, while the line between
politically motivated terrorism and the operation of national and
international crime syndicates is often impossible for outsiders to discern
in the former Soviet Union, Latin America, and other parts of the world.
But there is one fundamental difference between international crime and
terrorism; mafias have no interest in overthrowing the government and
decisively weakening society; in fact, they have a vested interest in a
prosperous economy.
Finally, terrorism today is far more devastating than in the past
because of the mass media. No story plays better, or longer, than a
terrorist attack. Today’s media, especially television, multiply the fear
effect of terrorism by vividly conveying its horror. And this greatly
increases our collective sense of vulnerability. The terrorists, of course,
know this. And they seek to exploit media coverage to put us and our
governments on the psychological defensive. In the past, terrorists have been ruthless opportunists, using a
but relatively narrow, range of weapons to further clear, political ends,
The next 15 years may well be the age of super terrorism, when they gain
access to weapons of mass destruction and show a new willingness to use
them. Tomorrow’s most dangerous terrorists will be motivated not by
I will not be political control, but the utter destruction of their chosen
political ideology, but by fierce ethnic and religious hatreds. Their goal
enemies. Nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons are ideal for their
purpose.
They will increasingly be joined by another variety of terrorist
criminals with the goals of maximising profit, minimising risk, and
protecting their enterprises by intimidating or cooping government
officials. We have already seen their brand of terrorism in Colombia and
Italy, but “criminal terrorism” has not yet been fully accepted as a
legitimate target for the antiterrorist community. We use counterterrorist
forces against “narcoterrorists”, for example, but still believe we are
diverting specialized resources to aid the “war on drugs”. Before the
1990s are over, we will be forced to recognize that it is the method, not
the motive that makes a terrorist.
Along side all of these developments, the traditional brand of
terrorism seeking political power through the violent intimidation of non
combatants will continue to grow at the global rate of about 15% per year.
Instability bred by the proliferation of the more violent religious and ethnic
terrorist groups, coupled with an almost exponential growth in “mini
states” in the former Soviet Union and eastern Europe, could produce a
two to three fold increase in international terrorist incidents by the turn of
the century.
Technology in particular has made terrorism more attractive to
dissident groups and rogue states. In the high-tech global village that the
world is fast becoming, modern telecommunications provide near real time
coverage of terrorist attacks, whether in Beirut, Buennos Aires, Khartoum
or New York. As terrorism expert Brian Jenkins has noted, terrorism is
theatre and terrorists can now lay to a global audience. As we move into
the twenty first century, new and even move powerful communications
links will give terrorism still greater power and appeal. SUPERTERRORISM
The most ominous trend in terrorism is also a matter of technology.
With the end of the Cold War, weapons of mass destruction have slipped
from their traditional controls. If nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons
are not yet available to terrorist organizations and the states that support
them, they soon will be. The proliferation of mass destruction technologies
and of groups that actively seek to inflict mass casualties has forever
changed there face of terrorism. This confluence of means and will is a
benchmark development that has qualitatively changed the nature of the
terrorist challenge. According to members of both the Futurist and
Terrorist Advisory Boards, assembled by Forecasting International, an
improvised nuclear, biological, or chemical attack on the United States is
increasingly probable perhaps within the next five years.
Though North Korea’s weapons program represents a pressing
concern, the former Soviet Union and its one time satellite states present
the greater risk. In North Korea, such weapons remain under there firm
control of a strong central government, whose willingness to distribute
them is a troubling possibility, but is not yet clear. In many former
communist states, control over many of these weapons has been so badly
weakened that it may not matter what their central government intends.
Throughout the former East Block, Scientists, technicians, and
military personnel have families to feed, but suddenly lack jobs to pay
their way. Many have first hand knowledge of biological, chemical, and
nuclear weapons. Therefore, many states and terrorist groups are hungry
. for their expertise and able to pay handsomely for it.
The weapons themselves may also be an immediate danger. While
strategic nuclear weapons remain too well guarded to be stolen or sold,
tactical weapons lie scattered across what is left of the Soviet Union.
Controls over these weapons are reportedly lax, and there is little hope
that they will remain where soviet troops left them. A single artillery
round could provide enough material for a crude but effective nuclear
device, particularly if it were designed for contamination rather than for
use as a conventional nuclear weapon.
Chemical and biological weapons are even easier to acquire.
Neurotoxins are closely related to many pesticides. Anyone capable of
making common agricultural chemicals can make these poisons. As early
as 1972, American authorities broke an ultraright wing terrorist organization and discovered a weapons cache that included 80 pounds of
botulin toxin, a deadly food poison. Today, genetic engineering is
sophisticated enough to produce even more virulent, custom tailored
pathogens. With such technology within the reach of many would be
terrorists, this is one form of proliferation that no one can even hope to
prevent.
Easy access to biological, chemical, and nuclear technologies will
bring many new players to the game of mass destruction. They may not
even be limited to states and traditional terrorist groups. Organized crime,
fanatical single issue groups, and even individuals will all be able to
acquire weapons once limited to regional and world powers.
Using chemical or nuclear type weapons effectively would be easy,
too. For example, if the World Trade Centre bombers had packed their
van with cobalt 60 or iodine 131 (both commonly available in medical and
industrial laboratories), they might well have rendered New York’s
financial district uninhabitable for generations. Pulmonary an therax kills
99% of the victims it infects, and only a few grams would be needed to
kill virtually everyone in a major government office complex. If released
in a subway tunnel, there convection currents created by the passing trains
would carry the spores throughout the system, to be inhaled by thousands
of commuters. Clinging to people’s clothing, the anthrax spores would
also be spread through offices, public buildings, and suburban homes.
Thousands would die. It would be days before we even knew we had been
attacked, and it would be virtually impossible to assign blame.
Those weapons will be used, and not only because once possessed
they represent an overwhelming temptation, but because in the United
States particularly the public pays attention only to the spectacular. A year
after the World Trade Centre bombing, the blast was little more than a
dim memory, to be revived only briefly when the perpetrators were
brought to trial. Future terrorists will find that they need ever more
spectacular horrors to overcome people’s capacity to absorb and forget
what previously would have seemed intolerable.
In the past, other concerns would have restrained terrorists from using
weapons of mass destruction. Politically motivated terrorists require
popular support to function. That support is seldom as committed of
ruthless as the violent core of a terrorist movement, and the true
extremists must temper their actions so as to avoid alienating the sympathies of those they hope to recruit, as well as those who provide
money and logistical support. But for many of those now embarking on
terrorist careers, those restraints do not apply.
ETHENORELIGIOUS TERRORISM
Since the end of the Cold War, many forces have combined to unleash
terrorist causes that either are new or had been buried under the crushing
weight of the Soviet security apparatus. Where most old line terrorist
organizations served political causes, in the early twenty first century they
will be joined by a growing number of terrorist groups that are motivated
by religious fervour or ethnic hatred. This is a dangerous development.
With many traditional terrorist groups, we could assume that their targets
and tactics would be constrained by the need to retain political sympathies.
We appear to be entering an era in which few, if any, restraints will
remain.
Religious and ethnically motivated terrorists are more willing than
most to pursue their aims by whatever means necessary. Unlike politically
motivated terrorists, religious fanatics do not shrink from mass murder,
because they are struggling against what they perceive as “the forces of
darkness” or are striving to preserve such quasi mystical concepts as “the
purity of the race”. Mass casualties are not to be shunned, because they
demonstrate the cataclysmic nature of divine retribution. If innocents
suffer, God will sort them out.
Ethnically motivated terrorists are driven by forces almost as powerful
a visceral, tribal fealty with a mystical and almost religious overlay. These
terrorists are defending their family and community, the memory of their
ancestors, their cultural heritage, and the identity of their people, many of
whom have suffered and died simply because they were Armenians,
Bosnians, Basques, Irish, Quiche, Ibo, or Kurds. They believe that their
enemies seek the subjugation or annihilation of their people. It is the
ethnoterrorist’s sacred duty to prevent this evil, not only for the sake of
the living and future generations, but out of reverence for the dead.
Recent reports of a sophisticated counterfeiting operation in Lebanon’s
Bekka Valley underscores how counterfeiting may be used as a more
unconventional weapon. Using state of the art equipment, American $100
bills are being churned out by terrorists. They are of such high quality that
even experienced bank officials were fooled. If terrorists were to flood a
country with high quality counterfeit currency, economic confidence and faith in the government could take a nose-dive, particularly if such an
operation were combined with other forms of economic warfare and more
conventional forms of terrorism.
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Other operations could target a nation’s infrastructure. Our increasing
dependence on the information superhighway could provide terrorists
new spectrum of targets. Several nations are believed to be developing
computer viruses to disrupt military command and control systems, as well
as other vital computer dependent components of a nations infrastructure.
A massive disruption of East Coast telephone service in 1992, coupled
with the airlines dependence on it, forced flights scheduled to land in New
York and other eastern cities to divert and major airports to close down.
The failure was attributed to the systems dependence on telephone
networks, which were handling an unusually high volume of holiday
traffic. We must expect that rogue states and terrorist groups are exploring
techniques to induce such failures by attacking the critical nodes of
interdependent communications systems.
International banking systems would also be particularly lucrative
gets for both terrorists and criminal elements. Doubtless, such groups
are exploring ways to penetrate and late account information, as well as to
manipula.e electronic fund transfers. Stock exchanges would similarly be
at risk.
In the future, we may expect some industries and governments to
engage in systematic campaigns to destroy their economic competitors, as
well as to advance their political position. Spreading false rumours and
engaging in forms of psychological warfare will become increasingly
common, as will more direct measures that could include product
contamination, intimidation, and terrorist operations. State sponsored
operations, such as the bombing of Greenpeace’s ship, Rainbow Warrior.
by a French sabotage team, are less likely in the future. Governments
inclined toward such activities are more likely to develop “arrangements
with organized crime, which will carry out operations for money of
favours.
We can expect increased criminal terrorism and criminal alliances.
Improbable opportunistic alliances of criminal gangs have achieved a
global reach. Highly sophisticated Nigerian drug barons are linked to
Jamaican posses that, in turn, use California based gangs such as the
Bloods and the Crips for distribution and enforcement purposes. The Italian and Russian mafias, as well as organized crime in the United
States, are developing operational linkages and will probably diversify into
new enterprises ranging from trafficking in weapons of mass destruction to
manipulation of stock market and international banking systems. Criminal
enterprises along the lines of the Bank of Commerce and Credit
International (BCCI) will become increasingly common. The BCCI
operation not only engaged in massive money laundering and defrauding
of its share holders, but also served as a financial conduit to some of the
world’s most dangerous terrorist groups.
We can also expect a growing nexus between criminal multinationals
and established political parties, perhaps along similar lines as the
relationship that has existed in Italy for the past 40 years and that recently
brought down the ruling Christian Democratic Party and some of Italy’s
most prominent political figures. A similar system of opportunistic
alliances is emerging in the republics of the former Soviet Union, where
local and ethnic magnifies have gotten a lock on the emerging private
sector by allying with elements in the security service and party apparatus.
Single issue groups will also evolve in the years to come. For
example, the militant wing of the antiabortion movement is likely to split.
The larger and less dangerous faction will confine its activities to largely
high profile, but essentially legal, forms of protest. The other, driven by
religious imperative, will turn to violence as traditional means of protest
prove ineffective. Two assumptions guide this belief. One is that Roe v.
Wade will not be overturned. The other is that the current administration
in Washington will investigate and prosecute crimes of the violent finger
far more aggressively than its recent predecessors. In this, it will win
support from the public, which appears increasingly alienated by the
strong arm tactics of militant antiabortion groups. These factors will drive
antiabortion extremists under ground, where isolation will further distort
their view of reality. Frustration and rejection will almost surely spur
them to new violence.
Environmental extremists an radical animal rights advocates are less
likely to escalate their violence than the radical antiabortionists. Rather,
they will develop more sophisticated ways to harass and sabotage their
ideological enemies. Their goal will be highest possible psychological
impact not destruction for its own sake. increasingly be targeted or their perceived failure to stem their slide into
In the Third World, particularly Africa, the Western democracies
chaos. The West will also be held responsible for many natural and
political calamities. Already, the United States has been accused of
creating the AIDS virus as a weapon to decimate blacks, a canard that has
found acceptance abroad and even within the African American
community.
In general, state sponsored terrorist incidents should continue their
recent decline, largely because Western democracies are better able to
identity the sponsors and to retaliate. But there is a downside. Those
operations that are carried out will represent the core interests of the
sponsoring state and thus army may be pursued with more resources and
greater zeal. As a consequence, they are more likely to be terrorist
“spectaculars” on the scale of bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 or the
“Munich massacre” of Israeli Olympic athletes.
To conceal their sources of support, terrorist operations will use
increasingly sophisticated trade craft. Rogue states will also look to their
nationals living in the immigrant ghettos of the United States and Western
Europe to establish support networks and on occasion, serve as cannon
fodder. Because many are illegal immigrants, they leave no paper trail.
This places security services at an additional disadvantages.
In some cases, it may remain uncertain whether a catastrophe was a
terrorist operation or merely an unfortunate accident. This was the likely
intent of the Libyans who bombed Pan Am Flight 103. Investigators
believe the explosion was timed to occur over the ocean, where the
recovery of wreckage for forensic analysis would have been difficult or
impossible. In that case, the crash might well have been written off as a
tragic accident.
One form of state sponsored terrorism that will certainly continue is
the assassination and intimidation of political dissidents living in exile
abroad. Such operations will continue to increase because no world power
has taken serious action to punish the offending states. Instead, host
countries almost invariably have allowed murderous regimes to operate on
their soil, as long as their on citizens are not targeted. A long as most
governments seek to placate and accommodate the terrorists, it will remain
open season on political refugees. DEFENDING AGAINST TERRORISM
Governments generally respond to increased terrorism by beefing up
the security of government installations, key components of the nations
infrastructure, and other lucrative targets. This presses the terrorists to
seek softer targets that effectively coerce the government to meet their
demands. Operations that generate large civilian casualties fit these
parameters and are any where large numbers of people gather. Choice
targets include sports arenas, shopping malls, houses of worship and
movie theatres. Targets such as the World Trade Centre not only provide
the requisite casualties but, because of their symbolic nature, provide more
bang for the buck. In order to maximize their odds for success, terrorist
groups will likely consider mounting multiple, simultaneous operations
with the aim of overtaxing a governments ability to respond, as well as
demonstrating their professionalism and reach.
Despite all this, terrorism will remain a back burner issue for Western
leaders as long as the violence strikes in distant lands and has little impact
on their fortunes or those of their constituents. Until a country’s citizens
believe that terrorism poses a significant threat, traditional economic and
political concerns will remain paramount. The industrialized nations will
be too busy jockeying for
access to markets and resources to be
concerned with the less immediate problems.
In a world dominated by economic and political interests, most of the
industrialized West will deal with terrorism one incident at a time,
playing it by ear. Many developed states will seek accommodation with
terrorists and their sponsors, as long as they can find a “fig leaf” to
minimize potential embarrassment. France and Germany have done
business this way for many years. Both to secure immunity and for
commercial advantage, Paris and Bonn have tacit agreements with some of
the world’s most lethal terrorist groups and their stage supporters. France
has reportedly formalized some of these arrangements in writing.
Terrorists in the early years of the twenty first century will reflect the
causes that excite passion and move people to violence. During this period
of tumult and transition, terrorism and other forms of low intensity
conflict will increase until a new stasis or “world order” is established.
Religious and ethnically motivated terrorists, who exhibit few constraints
now, will have within their grasp the potential to create the Armageddon
they seek. It is this confluence of will and means that has forever changed the
ace of terrorism. As a consequence, we will face future dangers that
would have seemed wildly improbable only a few years ago, and we must
prepare to defend ourselves against them.