Terrorist Attacks Causes and Effects

Terrorist Attacks Causes and EffectsIntroductionIn recent age, solicitudeist attacks find increase enormously. According to Paul Wilkinson in his book Terrorism Versus Democracy The unspecific State Response (2011), terrorist act still re importants a stern problem for the international community during the years 2006 to 2009 over 60% of the countries in the world experienced terrorist attacks. Defining act of terrorist act has been an intimidating task to do, over hundreds of descriptions were made crosswise a number of academic fields, and still thither has been no progress in providing an internationally accepted definition. Terrorism dissolve be limnd as the threat or usage of rage for political, religious or ethical purposes that influence the attitudes and behavior of a plastered group of wad to accomplish their objectives (Rapoport and Alexander, eds.1982). This definition was generated by David Rapoport and Yonah Alexander in their book The Rationalization of T errorism which was published in the year 1982 as a simple definition of terrorism. Throughout the years, terrorism has been a extremely complex phenomenon that is constantly changing, and that is affected by many factors, as the discourse itself is a very broad topic which is associated with a wide descriptor of groups, and I believe that this is the reason wherefore the international community was unable to come up with a combined definition. Wilkinson (2011) writes that about people toss away the word terrorism and would rather call people who use terrorism as a weapon as freedom fighters, holy warriors or revolutionaries, depending on the fetch they argon fighting for. Even according to the learner Dr.Dipak Gupta, terrorism is nearly impossible to define.In this literature review, I leave alone firstborn present an overview of the existing literature on the topic of causes of terrorist attacks, underlining the main positions and sources of disagreement. Building on thi s, I leave alone then identify gaps in the literature on the topic in run to see how my hereafter explore could have an added value. Finally, after narrowing down the topic, I will present specific look into questions that I believe would be baccate to explore still.Overview of research by key scholarsI aim to analyse and analyze the adjudicate and institution off causes of terrorism, by providing an overview of the main literature on this topic, and base on this literature review, a comprehensive list of concrete factors is presented to demonstrate the causes of terrorism. It is always a necessity to search for the causes and causality in every social science, because of the need to understand a particular phenomenon. Moreover, when we argue with undesirable make itrences and incidents, we usually seek to understand the why and how questions in order to develop appropriate measures and variables. In this section, I will try to tick off between gouge causes and stum ble causes, which according to Martha Crenshaw (1981) root causes (or preconditions) are the factors that occur over the long run, and trigger causes (or precipitants) are factors that occur immediately in a specific eveningt. Terrorism is a study that has extended across several fields including political science, sociology, criminology, psychology and history, and what researchers have tried to do is to build our awareness to further develop our intellectual of this phenomena. Unfortunately, the only number of this awareness was to raise more questions than to provide answers.The root causes of terrorismAlthough studies of this phenomenon have been taking tush since the 1960s, the number of publications that directly talk about the root causes or the preconditions are very limited. In his book Terrorists, Victims and Society mental Perspectives on Terrorism and its Consequences (2003), Andrew Silke states that although in that location have been numerous publications about t errorism, its research has not reflected any improvements in quality, and despite proliferation of academic studies in the field, on that point have been no improvement or progress in this area. Andrew Silke (2001) similarly pointed out that although there has been recent research on terrorism, only 20% of the published clauses provide new knowledge on the subject, while the sojourn of the published clauses are repeating and reworking old data.It is said that countries with intermediate verify of political freedom are usually more prone to terrorism than countries that have high levels of political freedom (Alberto Abadie, 2004). Many geographic factors alike affect and are important to endure terrorist activities. According to Abadies data soulfulnessate on terrorist essay and attacks worldwide, it has been estimated that political freedom has a non-monotonic effect on terrorism. He therefore observed that there is an increase in terrorism for countries in transition from au thoritarian regimes to democracies (Alberto Abadie, 200411).One of the most cited publications on the causes of terrorism is the article written by Martha Crenshaw under the title of The causes of terrorism (1981), highlighting the difficulties of purpose planetary explanations for terrorism and distinguishing different types of variables. Crenshaw distinguishes and separates the variables into 3 groups strategic, structural and psychological, and she emphasizes that the main mind of terrorism is an invention of rational political choice. According to Crenshaw, terrorism is the final result of a decision made by an organization to oppose a government it is seen as a logical way to fulfill desires (Crenshaw, 1981 385). contempt the fact that Crenshaws article offers a lot of ideas to further research, and that her article was cited by most otherwises, only few scholars have been challenged to bring our main sagacity of the causes of terrorism to a more advanced and higher l evel.Twelve years after Crenshaws article, Jeffrey Ian Ross wrote another influential article under the soma Structural Causes of Oppositional Political Terrorism Towards a Causal Model (1993), he also identified three variables that causes terrorism similar to the ones of Crenshaw, namely structural and psychological causes, and rational choice.Another scholar, Dipak Gupta (2005), has tried to understand and research why people engage in terrorist actions in the name of groups that represent a certain paganality, ideology, religion or nationalism. His arguments are basically rooted in stinting and socio-psychological dimensions of human motivations, where he states that the link between economic factors and socio-political factors much(prenominal) as distressetc and terrorism is weak. Gupta also states that political vehemence takes place when a leader gives voice to the frustration by formulating a unclouded social construction of collective identity and paints in vivid co lo ascending the image of us and them (200519). This means in other words that the political, economic and religious frustration are not alone the causes that lead to terrorism, there must have been root causes that remain hidden until a trigger mechanism is activated, which then leads to outbreak of craze and terrorist attacks.We have seen that scholars have spread out the research on root causes to terrorism, building on what Crenshaw has found, but that not produced any new approaches towards terrorism, but expanded the elements of socio-economic causation and other factors, especially Gupta.After giving an overview for some of the scholars about theoretical approaches, I will be listing here some of the concrete root causes of terrorism. The list that I am about to present is not an comprehensive list of the root causes, and is not to represent a comprehensive set of the root causes, but to identify the multiplicity of causal factors that usually open to terrorism. The caus es are derived from the publication by Randy Borum (2003) under the title psychological science of Terrorism.First cause could be that lack of democracy, rule of law and civil liberties are conditions for many forms of domestic terrorism. We therefore identify that the most classless states and societies have the lowest level of oppositional violence. As Crenshaw states Democracy and terrorism are not polar opposites saying yes to democracy, unfortunately, does not mean saying no to terrorism (Club de Madrid, 2005 14)Second cause is rapid modernization and urbanization in the form of high economic growth has also been found to correlative strongly with the emergence of ideological terrorism, but not with the ethno-nationalist terrorism. An example of this cause given by Borum is when a country faces sudden wealth, e.g. from oil, and they experience changes from tribal to high-tech societies during one generation or even less sometimes (Borum, 20035).Third cause is historical antec edents of political violence, revolutions, civil wars, dictatorships or even occupation whitethorn lower the threshold for acceptance of political violence and terrorism and obstruct the development of non-violent norms among all the segments of the society.an example of this could be, when children are brought up in a society that believes in and celebrates martyrdom, revenge and hatred of other ethnic groups, then it is likely to increase their willingness to commit or nurse a terrorist act when they grow up (Borum, 20035).Fourth cause is the repression by foreign occupation or by colonial powers this has given rise to many national liberation movements that have pursued recourse in terrorist strategies and other political means (Borum, 20035).Last but not least, the fifth part cause is the experience of discriminating people on the basis of their ethnic origins or religious backgrounds, is the chief root cause of ethno-nationalist terrorism. When minority people are being depriv ed from their basic social and economic rights, such(prenominal) as not allowing them to use their language or practice their religion, this stub make them commit terrorism and other forms of violence.Psychological research on the causes of terrorismMany scholars have tried to identify different causes of terrorist attacks by focusing on the psychological factor of each individual or the groups itself. A researcher named Jerrold Post was one of the few who analysed the psycho-logic thinking of the individuals who were snarly in terrorist attacks, in his article under the title The Radical theme in Context 1. An integrated framework for the analysis of group risk of terrorism (2002). Post was able to criticize those who think of terrorism as a course of action, and he also argued that the political terrorists commit terrorist crimes or acts of violence because of psychological factors, and that their psycho-logic is created to justify acts they commit psychologically (199025).The scholar Marc Sagemen also contributes to the research on psychological causes in his book Understanding terror networks (2004). Sagemen contests the conventional causes often given to explain why a person participates in terrorism, such as indigence, trauma and ignorance, and highlights the importance of social bonds and networks in inspiring individuals terrorist activities. His research is unique as such as it is based on personal meetings with Islamic fundamentalists and it therefore brings some new understanding to the field.If we want to talk about empirical analyses of the causes of terrorism, we can refer to a very interesting study by Alan Krueger and Jitka Maleckova under the title Education, need and Terrorism Is there a Causal Connection? (2003). Based on their article, Krueger and Maleckova disprove the presence of a causal link between poverty or low gentility and terrorism in Israel/Palestine and in Lebanon. They also state that although the rational choice of parti cipating in a terrorist attack can produce valuable insights, it does not produce a clear answer to the question whether more education and higher income would mortify participating in terrorist attacks (2003120), their results that were tentative and exploratory, suggest that neither poverty nor education has a direct, causal impact on terrorism. Moreover, the study shows that the level of education of the individuals involved in terrorist attacks is higher than average, those who are wealthier and more educated may generate such feelings more intensely. Additionally, the background of the suicide terrorists covers all socio-economic layers of society, further reiterating that economic theory is unlikely to give a very win over answer one way or the other as to whether poverty or low education are important root causes of terrorism (2003123).The Trigger Causes of TerrorismWe spoke earlier about the root causes of terrorism in this section we will discuss the trigger causes of te rrorism. The very first condition that could be considered as a direct cause of terrorism is the existence of concrete grievances among an identifiable subgroup of a larger population, example is ethnic minority discriminated against by the majority.Second cause terrorism is the lack of prospect for being engaged politically (Borum, 200341).The trigger causes are usually uncertain it is usually due to certain government actions that a common condition emerges for terrorism. Terrorist revenges can thus occur as a result of unhoped-for use of force by the government, a so-called action-reaction syndrome (Crenshaw 1981 385). Generally speaking, some provocative events that call for revenge or action may trigger terrorist action, such as contested elections, peace talks, and police violence.The root and trigger causes I have mentioned above are just the most pertinent causes that were based on scholarly literature, and with what we mentioned have been ranked from the most general o r broad aspects to more specific factors.Gaps in literature on the topicIn this section, I will try to identify some gaps that scholars have failed to discuss or identify, and that was missing in the past research on terrorism. One of the main and most important gaps to start with is the definition of the word terrorism, as I mentioned in the introduction, scholars have failed up to this go steady to come up with an international definition of terrorism, failure to develop a universally acceptable definition. I believe that if scholars fail to have a definition used by all, this will cause other scholars and countries to define terrorism according to the acts and violence attacks they experience. One other unsolved dilemma is whether the concept of political violence should be reserved for destructive disparage intended to influence politics, or whether the concept should include any violence that has a political impact.