Terrorism

Text 1

Definitions of Terrorism

Terrorism by nature is difficult to define. Acts of terrorism conjure emotional responses in the victims (those hurt by the violence and those affected by the fear) as well as in the practitioners. Even the U.S. government cannot agree on one single definition. The old adage, " One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter" is still alive and well. Listed below are several definitions of terrorism. For the purposes of the Terrorism Research Center, we have adopted the definition used by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Terrorism is the use or threatened use of force designed to bring about political change.

Brian Jenkins

Terrorism constitutes the illegitimate use of force to achieve a political objective when innocent people are targeted.

Walter Laqueur

Terrorism is the premeditated, deliberate, systematic murder, mayhem, and threatening of the innocent to create fear and intimidation in order to gain a political or tactical advantage, usually to influence an audience.

James M. Poland

Terrorism is the unlawful use or threat of violence against persons or property to further political or social objectives. It is usually intended to intimidate or coerce a government, individuals or groups, or to modify their behavior or politics.

Vice-President's Task Force, 1986

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.

FBI Definition

Text 2

Terrorism: An Introduction

Was September 11 the deadliest terrorist attack in history?

Yes. Before September 11, the deadliest attacks were the bombings of airplanes, such as Pan Am flight 103, destroyed over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988 by terrorists linked to Libya, or the 1985 bombing of an Air India jet. Each of these attacks killed more than 300 people. The August 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania—before September 11, the largest attacks on major buildings—killed 224 people; these attacks have been linked to al-Qaeda.

By way of comparison, Timothy McVeigh killed 168 people by bombing a federal office building in Oklahoma City in 1995. The failed February 1993 attempt by Islamist terrorists to destroy the World Trade Center killed six people and injured about 1, 000 others. And the 1983 Islamist suicide bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, Lebanon, killed 242 Americans.

Was September 11 part of an increasingly deadly trend in the evolution of terrorism? Yes. During the 1990s, there were fewer terrorist attacks, but they tended to kill more people. Experts attribute this trend—fewer attacks, more fatalities—to a rise in religiously motivated terrorism, which lacks some of the restraints of earlier versions of terrorism. They add that heightened vigilance and security has often made the hijackings and kidnappings popularized in the 1960s and 1970s more difficult, driving some groups toward simpler but sometimes deadlier bombing operations.

Did anything hold back terrorists from mass killing in the past?

Yes. Some terrorist groups before the 1990s often were limited by fears that too much violence could backfire. In other words, experts say, terrorist groups wanted to find the proverbial sweet spot: they sought to use enough shocking violence to bring attention to a cause they felt had been neglected, but they did not want to use so much violence that their audiences abroad would become permanently alienated. Nor did nationalist terrorist groups—such as the Palestine Liberation Organization or the Irish Republican Army (IRA) – want to go so far that they dried up support among their own people.

These considerations often affected choices of targets as well as the level of violence. Between 1969 and 1993, for instance, less than a fifth of the IRA's victims were Protestant civilians, reflecting a deliberate choice to avoid alienating potential Irish supporters. As the terrorism expert Brian Jenkins has put it, terrorists used to want a lot of people watching, not a lot of people dead.

Have terrorists ever used weapons of mass destruction?

Yes. In 1995, members of Aum Shinrikyo, a Japanese cult, released sarin nerve gas into the Tokyo subway, killing 12 and wounding over 3, 500—the first recorded use of chemical weapons by terrorists. The first deadly use of biological weapons by terrorists was the late-2001 U.S. mailings of anthrax-laced letters by persons still unknown.

Are religiously motivated terrorists like al-Qaeda less restrained than other terrorists? Yes, generally speaking. Not only are these terrorists" goals often vaguer than those of nationalist terrorists— who want, for example, an independent state, a much more concrete goal than Osama bin Laden's sweeping talk of jihad—but their methods are more lethal. That's because, experts say, the religious terrorist often sees violence as an end in itself, as a divinely inspired way of serving a higher cause. As RAND's Hoffman notes, even such earlier archterrorists as Carlos the Jackal and Abu Nidal never " contemplated, much less attempted, the complete destruction of a high-rise office building packed with people." But for al-Qaeda, the Iranian-backed Hezbollah, the Japanese cult Aum Shinrikyo, the Palestinian group Hamas, and other religious terrorist organizations, mass killings are considered not only acceptable but " holy."

Text 3