Terrorism: Its Types And Objectives

Terrorism, as well as its consequences, is one of the major and most dangerous challenges the world faces today. This phenomenon concerns both developed and developing countries, it threatens the national security of most countries and entails enormous political, economic and moral losses. The rendition of terrorism has significantly changed over the last century. Terrorism is often referred as the global problem of modernity, and predictions of various analysts1 and experts regarding further development of that issue are rather inauspicious.

The international community is concerned with the growth of terrorist activity, numerousness of terrorist victims and an immense material damage caused by the acts of terrorism. Nowadays, these activities are occurring on the much larger scale, because international terrorist centers and organizations are much better organized, nurtured and supplied.

Please read this article so you could understand the phenomenon of modern terrorism and its objectives are to explore the provenience and types of terrorism, to identify its typology and impact on the society.

The concept of terrorism and its types

The term “terrorism” derives from the Latin word “terror” – fear, horror. The terrorism, as the method of political leverage, has been used in the course of French Revolution as the radical revolutionaries inflicted repressions against its political opponents. Thus, terrorism can be characterized as the way of resolving problematic political issues by violence.

The violent methods in politics have been carried out by state authorities against the political opposition as well as by various underground groups in its battle against ruling classes and state institutions. The “terror” refers to the implementation of repressions by the state authorities against citizens and political opposition in order to assert its dominance. Terrorism is also seen as the activity inherent to the oppositional political groups as they threaten to use violence in order to obtain political concessions from the government.

The purpose of terrorist acts is to force the change of policy by exerting the deterrent impact on the authorities, population, representatives of foreign states and international organizations. Acts of terrorism can be carried out by individual terrorists, groups, and organizations supported by certain states.

Terrorism is carried out as an underground war; it is violent, purposeful, controlled and ideology-driven. The aim of these acts is to intimidate certain category of people or to promulgate their ideas. There are three basic views on the nature of terrorism.

According to the first one, it is considered as the low-intensity military conflict. The second perspective classifies terrorism as the form of criminal activity and the third one considers it as the political struggle based on the socio-political protest due to a long delay in resolving political problems.

In fact, terrorism emerges from the significant public controversies of political, social, territorial, national and ideological nature. Terrorist acts can be further classified by the following criteria: on a territorial basis – international, domestic; on a criminal motivation – political, national, religious. Political terrorism has the two-way course: a struggle of various groups against the existing system and the state terrorism, perpetrated by security agencies that use methods, similar to terrorist acts, in order to get rid of their opponents. Domestic terrorism is the method of peoples’ struggle for establishing their own state when nations without their own state demand independence and take up arms. Religious terrorism is the most dangerous form of terrorism as it is based on religious fanaticism.

Forms of terrorism

The origins of modern terrorism can be traced back to the left-wing organization “People’s Will”. The left-wing terrorism has initially prevailed although the right one, i.e. KKK, also existed. The state terrorism was predominant in the first part of the XX century. After the World War II the left-wing terrorism took up the leading role again in the developed countries: Red Army Faction in West Germany, the Red Brigades in Italy, Action Directe group in France; as well as in the developing countries, especially in Latin America: Tupamaros, Sendero Luminoso etc., characterized by the urban guerrilla methods.

The left-wing terrorism gradually winds down. Western European radicals have embarked on the path of provocative terrorism aimed at provoking authorities to use repressions, which in turn should have caused a wave of massive protests or even revolution. Their task was not to intimidate the ruling elite but to force it to retaliatory violence.

Instead of assassinations of public figures, these terrorists planned and realized actions the purpose of which was to wreak havoc and terror among the population, to trigger such chaos that the government would be able to cope with it only with draconian measures. This purpose required massive murders. Having failed to reach their goal, the ultra-left extremists are trying to join the anti-globalization movement. Instead of ideological and political terrorism, another type of terrorism enters the stage – ethnical and religious terrorism, represented by the Irish IRA, as well as Basque ETA and especially by the numerous organizations in the Muslim world, i.e. Algeria, Lebanon, Palestine, Iran, and Afghanistan.

The striking example of this is the ethnonational conflict in Northern Ireland known as “The Troubles”, characterized by the brutal and ruthless killings of paramilitaries of Catholic Irish Republican Army and the troops of Protestant loyalists. They share the same language and culture, but hostilities there persists for centuries. Nevertheless, it is civilians who suffer the most from this conflict and the losses among both warring factions are significantly lower than among civilians, whom terrorists supposedly protect.

This once again confirms the main feature of modern terrorism – an indifference to the fate of non-combatants, innocent people. Another form of terrorism that is gaining momentum in the recent period is the economic terrorism which is frequently merged directly with the underworld mafia that runs drug and slave trade. The seemingly unstoppable process of globalization has led to the governments unofficially passing the ruling authority to the transnational corporations that might engage in legal economical terrorism towards the developing countries or disagreeable governments. Recently, the hacker terrorism gets widespread, aimed at breaking banking systems, governmental and security services databases.

Typology of terrorism

Experts, who study the phenomenon of terrorism, allocate six main types of modern terrorism – nationalist terrorism, religious terrorism, state-supported terrorism, left-wing extremist’s terrorism, right-wing extremist’s terrorism and terrorism by anarchists.

Nationalist terrorism – aimed at the formation of a separate state for some ethnic group. These terrorists call they act liberation and claim that they are not terrorists but freedom fighters.

Religious terrorists – claim that their violent deeds are approved by God and the objects of their attacks are blurred geographically and socially. They want to achieve immediate and dramatic changes, often on a global level. Religious terrorists usually belong to some cult as well as to the major religious confessions. This type of terrorism is developing much more dynamically than the rest.

State-supported terrorism – these terrorist groups are deliberately used by the governments as a cheap method of warfare. These ones are the most dangerous primarily because their resources are much more powerful.

Left-wing extremists – these radicals want to destroy capitalism and replace it with communism or socialism. In their view, civilians are considered as victims of capitalist exploitation so they rarely resort to acts of terrorism against ordinary citizens.

Right-wing extremists – usually the most unorganized groups, often associated with Western European neo-Nazis. Their task is to ruin democratic governments and to replace it with their fascist states.

Anarchists terrorism – they were a global phenomenon from the 1870s to the 1920s. One of the U.S. presidents William Makinli had been killed by an anarchist. Some experts suggest that modern anti-globalists may spawn a new wave of anarchist terrorism.

Society and terrorism

Founder of the theory of terrorism, German philosopher Karl Heinzen back in 1848 argued that the prohibition of murder does not apply in the course of political struggle as the physical disposition of hundreds of thousands of people may be justified in the best interests of mankind. This concept was further developed in the theories of Bakunin and Kropotkin, who advanced the doctrine of propaganda by action, which means that terrorist acts are able to provoke civilians to apply pressure on the government.

The real threat is that the various political doctrines which preach or condone the use of violence and terror in order to achieve political, social and other purposes will be taken up and actively pursued by some extremist political groups. The degree of threat increases furthermore because of modern terrorist, unlike their predecessors, possesses latest technologies in the area of armaments, explosives and poisonous substances, advanced logistical capabilities and communication that makes terrorism not only national but also a global problem. Terrorist acts lead to negative social and psychological consequences. They have a powerful moral psychological impact on the population; generate fear, sense of uncertainty and insecurity among people. These experiences give rise to disbelief in the ability of the government and its law enforcement to protect people.

In our time, terrorism has become one of the most painful problems on both local and global scale. Terrorism influences the world economy and there is a serious issue regarding confronting this phenomenon. In the modern world of high technology and overall integration, the fight against the terrorism cannot be laid upon a single country, it is necessary to form a coalition that would strike these organizations in their hearts, destroy not only the military units of these criminals but to overlap their financial supply. The important part of these measures is the informational war, a victory in which would mean the success of the whole operation and the defeat would negate gains in other areas. It is a long and hard struggle for the good of humanity.