The Modern Context of Terrorism

In the modern world, communication has taken a global turn with the advent of international modes of communication spanning the Internet, Mobile and Satellite Telephony and technological tools to preserve anonymity (originally for privacy reasons.) This very communication that has given an upswing to Global trade and Business organisation, has given new life to the backbone of "Terrorist" operatives.

There is no doubt that terrorist operatives in the modern age, operate under the following premises:

• They are a minority.
• They have been unjustly made victim to some sort of oppression (political, economical, religious, ethnic or humanitarian).
• They are INCAPABLE of addressing their minority status and their oppression within any legal or just means.
• Their voices for appeal are being suppressed or ignored by the majority of the "new globally united" and "free" world.

In order to make their voices heard, they resort to violence against civilians (under an absolutely broken and negative impression that victimising others would make them listen to their cause.) "Terrorist" attacks in the modern attacks as defined earlier in this section are against civilians and use violence under unexpected circumstances. A secondary motive for terrorist attacks that appeals to their twisted psyche is "revenge." This is hardly acceptable when their violence is unleashed against civilians who had absolutely no involvement in whatever victimised them or their ancestors.

There is an interesting Indian film in Malayalam named "Truth", about an investigation on the assassination of a Chief Minister of a state. At the end of the movie it turns out that the murder of the Chief Minister was "Collateral Damage" and the target was a High Ranking Police Officer in charge of his security. A great number of civilians (in this fictional piece) also are injured and killed. This is an illustration of the fact that the ratio of collateral damage to enemy target damage is largely imbalanced in a terrorist attack. This can go to the extent that there are no intended enemy targets neutralised and the only casualties are civilian.

I must make a point here, that this is in exact opposition to modern military training approach of "surgical" military teams trained to handle situations by neutralising only enemy targets and harming no one else. There are many new books on the new Urban warfare techniques, and realtime-action-strategy games like Counter-Strike and Rainbow Six which show the complexity and allow gamers to experiment with tactical operations. Tom Clancy, in his series of books on anti-terrorism addresses the creation of a global antiterrorist unit capable of surgically fighting terrorist attacks and insurgence.

Today, "modern 'international' terrorists" are powered by global communication networks that allow for seamless transfer of funds, intelligence information and organisational commands. They target people of certain "developed" nations which they believe are the cause for their (negative?) state of affairs. Research over the years has proved that many operatives are psychologically "programmed" using suggestive techniques, coercion, hypnotism and procedures that might resemble re-education (a brainwashing tool used by communist regimes). Once altered in this manner, many of the operatives are no longer susceptible to logical, humanitarian or moral thinking. In many cases this renders hardcore operatives useless under interrogation even if they were detected and captured.

"Terrorists" of the 21st Century have taken undue advantage of the global open policy of the world and managed to lodge themselves in nations waiting for a strike. Due to the sophisticated psychological convincing they have undergone, they are no longer capable of making a decision considering a moral or rational perspective.

The worst part is they have shielded themselves under the name of "Islam" and call themselves 'warriors of the holy war' or Jihad. The true meaning of the word 'Jihad' is to "exert utmost effort or to struggle". However, perverted by the terrorists themselves, it has brought disgrace to their own religion in meaning "terrorist warfare" and a further corruption of the one who "exterts utmost effort" mujahid to mean militant fighter. This owes to the possible fact that Islam, which quite similar to Christianity was once a unified religion but later underwent divisions. Hence Islam is open to varied interprentation and the "militant" interpretation is accomodated by a sizeable number.