Despite the intensity of media coverage and public perception, terrorism is actually not more frequent today than a few decades ago. For instance, terrorist attacks were far more common during the Cold War period than during the post-9/11 era. Some experts believe terrorism peaked during the 1970s.
Despite the recent attacks, the U.K. and Western Europe experienced relatively low terrorist activity during the period 2000 to 2016 compared with the period 1970 to 1995.
In the United States, terrorism attacks were in sharp decline from 1970 to 2011, decreasing from approximately 475 incidents a year to fewer than 20.
Worldwide, terrorism is highly concentrated in a handful of countries.
While 9/11 is the deadliest terrorist attack in U.S. history, the second-worst was Timothy McVeigh’s 1995 bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building, which killed 168 people. The Anti-Defamation League reports that in the United States, “right-wing extremists collectively have been responsible for more than 70 percent of the 427 extremist-related killings over the past 10 years, far outnumbering those committed by left-wing extremists or domestic Islamist extremists.” The toll of right-wing terrorism could have been even greater if the FBI had not apprehended last month the heavily armed Coast Guard lieutenant Christopher Hasson before he was allegedly ready to strike against liberal politicians and media personalities.
Why do people join terrorist organizations?
People join extremists organizations for quite a number of reasons. Some - especially those locally recruited - mostly join for economic benefits. -In fact, the research we conducted in Somalia showed that 27% of respondents joined al Shabab for economic reasons. 15% mentioned religious reasons - and 13% were forced to join. We found that there is no easy answer to why people join terrorist organisations. It's a complex picture, we have to take into account processes linked to political and social exclusion dynamics, poor governance structures as well as religious and ethnic discrimination.
It is one thing to join such a group - but once you realized where you ended up; what are the reasons that makes you stay?
The reasons for staying are as diverse as for joining the organization. We found that the feeling of 'belonging' (21%) is really important. Some 11% felt a sense of responsibility. However, fear and economic dependence are also factors to reckon with.
Noam Chomsky: “What is Terrorism?”
A US army manual says, fair enough, that terror is the calculated use of violence or the threat of violence to attain political or religious ideological goals through intimidation,coercion, or instilling fear. That’s terrorism.
If you take a look at the definition of Low-Intensity Warfare, which is official US policy, you find that it is just another name for terrorism. That’s why all countries call whatever horrendous acts they are carrying out, counter-terrorism.
In December 1987, at the peak of the first war on terrorism, that’s when the furor over the plague was peaking, The United Nations General Assembly passed a very strong resolution against terrorism, condemning the plague in the strongest terms, calling on every state to fight against it in every possible way. It passed unanimously. One country, Honduras, abstained. Two votes against; the usual two, United States and Israel. Why should the United States and Israel vote against a major resolution condemning terrorism in the strongest terms, in fact pretty much the terms that the Reagan administration was using? Well, there is a reason. There was one paragraph in that long resolution which said that nothing in this resolution infringes on the rights of people struggling against racist and colonialist regimes or foreign military occupation to continue with their resistance with the assistance of others, other states, states outside in their just cause. Well, the United States and Israel can’t accept that. There was another one at the time. Israel was occupying Southern Lebanon and was being combated by what the US calls a terrorist force, Hizbullah, which in fact succeeded in driving Israel out of Lebanon.
The lead story in the New York Times on October 15, 2014, was politely titled “CIA Study of Covert Aid Fueled Skepticism About Helping Syrian Rebels.” The article reports on a CIA review of recent U.S. covert operations to determine their effectiveness. The White House concluded that unfortunately successes were so rare that some rethinking of the policy was in order. The article quoted President Barack Obama as saying that he had asked the CIA to conduct the review to find cases of “financing and supplying arms to an insurgency in a country that actually worked out well. And they couldn't come up with much.”
The first paragraph of the Times article cites three major examples of “covert aid”: Angola, Nicaragua and Cuba. In fact, each case was a major terrorist operation conducted by the U.S.
