International Terrorism and terrorist organizations Essay

International Terrorism and terrorist organizations - Essay Example These acts driven by the ideas of a group causes terror in the lives of a larger set of people and is commonly termed as terrorism. This essay would concentrate on various perceptions regarding terrorism that covers international terrorism, the structure and organization of terrorist groups, their views in the support of their actions, historical events that possibly led to revolutions which in turn gave rise to terrorism. A list of possible actions that can be taken to combat against terrorism is presented at the end. Defining the term terrorism would be a relatively tougher task. Not because of the political and emotional charges that the word carries but because of the flexibility in which the word could be (Hans, 1988). This had been defined by many organizations and institutions and individuals. The US army's study in 1988 counted that about 109 definitions of terrorism existed (Schmidt, 1988). In these definitions almost 22 different elemental definitions were found. A study in 1999 by terrorism expert Mr. Walter Lacquer also concluded that more than a hundred definitions of this word existed and focused on a point that the only general characteristic common to all the definitions about terrorism was that terrorism is closely associated to violence or threat of violence (Hans, 1988). Terrorism is different from criminal activities done for various purposes and it is important that this difference be brought out while defining terrorism. Many regions, countries have taken this issue into cons ideration while defining the word terrorism. Now let us brood over some important definitions of terrorism. The word terrorism happens to have its first appearance in "The Times" on 30th January 1795 (Hans, 1988). It was put in an excerpt to signify the changes taking place during rising of revolutionary government in France. One of the early definitions of terrorism was given by Maximilian Robespierre in 1794 which says that terror is nothing other than justice, prompt, severe, inflexible and it is not a unique principle (Schmidt, 1988). He regarded this as the consequence of democracy. The word terrorism got its place in English dictionary in the year 1798 and had a meaning "Systematic use of terror as policy". However it is interesting to see that the usage of the word terrorism and its meaning are quite controversial (Hans, 1988). The definitions used at found in the recent days are biased in a sense that they do not clearly specify the dividing line between groups who use the v iolence to achieve political goals that include government and other terrorist groups. Terrorism is labeled with tags that denote lack of legitimacy and morality. Let us first look at how the United Nations defines the word terrorism. United Nations does not accept any predefined definition of this word however, the UN academic consensus definition by Alex Schmidt is widely used by socialists and it is as follows "Terrorism is an anxiety-inspiring method of repeated violent action, employed by (semi-) clandestine individual, group or state actors, for idiosyncratic, criminal or political reasons, whereby - in contrast to assassination - the direct targets of violence are not the main targets."(Schmidt, 1988) Its short definition is the peacetime equivalent of war crime. However on 17th March 2005 the UN described that