muslim militants
“Our values and way of life will prevail- terrorism will not”.
Terrorism; Stop Participating In It
I personally think terrorism is the most widespread malicious after hunger, poverty, and illiteracy. I am one who believes that we are, in fact, engaged in a worldwide war against terrorism. We must have the serenity to accept the fact that war is not going to go away if we ignore it. I can’t stress enough about many dying, misplacing their beloved ones, children being orphaned and even begging to eat two times food a day. Terrorism has turned awfully prevalent in the last decade. Cross-border terrorism has emerged as a great threat to the security of nations. Terrorism originating from across the border has slowly attempted to strangle the democracy and sovereignty of countries.
By its nature, the term “terrorism” is bound up in political controversy. It is a concept with a very negative connotation. Because terrorism implies the killing and maiming of innocent people, no country wants to be accused of supporting terrorism or harboring terrorist groups. At the same time, no country wants what it considers to be a legitimate use of force to be considered terrorism. An old saying goes, “One person’s terrorist is another person’s freedom fighter.”
While there is no universal definition of terrorism, various experts point out that there are common elements to most terrorist acts. Acts of terrorism usually are committed by groups who do not possess the political power to change policies they view as intolerable. Middle Eastern terrorism intensified in the 1970s in response to defeats of Arab nations in wars with Israel over the Palestine issue. Convinced that further wars were futile, a number of countries, including Egypt, sought peace with Israel. This enraged groups within those countries dedicated to the defeat of Israel, who then turned to terrorism.
Terrorists choose targets and actions to maximize the psychological effect on a society or government. Their goal is to create a situation in which a government will change its policies to avoid further bloodshed or disruption or simply to take revenge. For these reasons, terrorists often choose methods of mass destruction, such as bombings, and target transportation or crowded places to increase anxiety and fear.
The attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in the USA on September 11, 2001, brought transnational terrorism to attention. Cross-border terror groups do not confine themselves either territorially or ideologically to a particular country or region. They are global in orientation, readily moving funds, men, and material from one place to another.
Groups like the Palestine nationalist groups and the Irish Republican Army (IRA) also crossed state borders to launch attacks, to smuggle arms and to seek refuge. The IRA got weapons from Libya and launched attacks across Britain; it also launched a one-off attack in Germany and plotted an assault on British forces in Gibraltar. Palestinian ‘terrorists’ crossed into Israeli territory, or what they considered Palestinian territory, and sought refuge in states like Egypt and Syria. They hijacked airplanes across the world, took hostage Israeli contestants at the 1972 Olympics in Munich, and infamously hijacked an Italian cruise ship in 1985. However, these groups were politically and organizationally tied to a particular territory.
