Terrorist Organisation Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Terrorist Organisation - Essay Example They usually term their terrorist movement as a national liberation movement and spare no effort to attract the attention of the world leaders to their cause. A great deal of success has been obtained by the subscribers to this form of terrorism. It can be asserted that the greatest number of benefits have been attained by its adherents. Such terrorists are very careful in regulating the amount of violence and destruction caused by their attacks, whose purpose is to obtain benefits without antagonizing or losing the goodwill of its supporters in the international community. Most of the terrorist groups that indulge in this form of terrorism are voluble in claiming that they should be designated as freedom fighters and not terrorists3. The most dangerous advocates of terrorism are religious terrorists. This is due to the fact that they resort to murderous attacks on innocent people in order to spread fear. The objective of these terrorists is to promote their own brand of religion and they sincerely believe that what they do has divine sanction. Their attacks are aimed at all those who do not subscribe to their beliefs. Due to this fact every person who does not follow their religious commands is at great danger from these fanatics4. Some of the religious terrorist groups are the Al Qaeda of Osama bin Laden, the Hamas which consists of Palestinian Sunni Muslims, the Shiite Muslim group of the Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Rabbi Meir Kahane organizations, the Baruch Goldstein of Israel and the Japanese Aum Shinrikyo5. At times a country's government will offer covert help to terrorists, this constitutes state sponsored terrorism. This constitutes a very effective foreign policy tool that is "a cost-effective way of waging war covertly, through the use of surrogate warriors or 'guns for hire'."6 Such terrorists are very effective, in comparison to other terrorists. This is due to the fact that such terrorists have vastly superior weapons, supplies, logistic support and access to up to date intelligence reports. The aim of the so called left-wing terrorists is to replace capitalism with communism. In comparison to the religious and state sponsored terrorists, their attacks on the general civilian population are very limited. This is due to the fact that these terrorists sincerely believe that the common man is the victim of the capitalists. Not surprisingly, these terrorists restrict their activities to kidnappings and destruction of monuments. Some of these left - wing groups are the German Baader - Meinhof, the Japanese Red Army, the USA's Weathermen of the 1970's, the 17 November group of Greece and the Italian Red Brigade7. A vast change has taken place in the field of terrorism. The previous instances of terrorism were mainly of the state sponsored type. Of late, as has been succinctly pointed out by Simon and Benjamin, religious terrorism has captured center stage. This variety of terrorism is independent of any country and is thereby not restricted by any country as to the amount and nature of violence that it can wreak on the general populace. In order to cause the maximum possible harm, these terrorists continually seek to procure weapons of mass destruction. The damage