Terrorism Critique Essay

In the past years, terrorism has increased quite gradually, in both attacks and fatalities. Source 2 shows a graph comparing the number of Jihadist attacks Pre British and American invasion to post invasion stats. The pre invasion statistics shows that there were just 25 worldwide whereas post invasion there was a drastic increase in attacks to 200 per year. Source 20 shows the number of terrorist attack incidents and fatalities from the 1st of October 1998 through to the 8th of November 2006.
From 1/1/98-9/11/2001 the number of fatalities per month were 176 however there was a great different between 9/12/2001-8/11/2006 as the number rose to 444. The source came from the National Memorial Institute for the prevention of terrorism in 2006, this shows me that it is a reliable source but it only gives stats for America and no other, therefore it would not prove whether or not terrorism has increased globally.
In recent years terror is everywhere internationally and has be caused by many different problems in the world, for example media, politics, poverty, terrorism seems to be the answer for people either in deprived areas or for those angered by foreign affairs. Yet it is high debated of which cause is the main cause. People around the world have different views of what terrorism’s final definition actually is.

Source 1 shows different definitions given by some big international organisations. The United Nations defined terrorism as “any act intended to cause death or serious bodily harm to civilians with the purpose of intimidating a population or forcing a government or international organisation to do or abstain from doing any act” The European Union said “…
given their nature or context, may seriously damage a country or an international organisation where committed with the aim of: seriously intimidating a population; or unduly compelling government or international organisation to perform or abstain from performing any act; or seriously destabilizing or destroying the fundamental political, constitutional, economic or social structures of a country or an international organisation”.
Finally the US Federal Criminal Code define it as “activities that involves violent… or life-threatening acts to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion” i believe that all three thoughts of terrorism are very similar:intimidation to cilivian population or government, serious harm toward civilians. Over populated areas with low growth rates are more likely to have high unemployment and high amount of poverty.
In these areas living in poverty many of the people may feel as though, because of the very few life options and opportunities they have, they have to consider extreme action such as a uprising against the government. Many people would turn to extremist views as it may seem as though the best option to gain money to then be able to afford food for their families. The PLO, for example, recruited people from refugee camps that held millions of homeless Palestinian Arabs . Because the conditions of the camps were very poor I believe that they would have been able to easily convince the people to join.
I also believe that the people were not getting their voices heard by the government which would anger them then, as the PLO were offering higher status and importance they would furthermore by convinced. With that all being said, not all terrorists are caused because of poverty. I key example of this is Osama bin Laden; he was born into a wealthy billionaire family. Bin Laden also had a college education until 1979. He then joined the mujahedeen forces for Pakistan against the Soviets in Afghanistan. He then gained the respect and popularity of many Arabs by funnelling arms, money and fighters to the forces.
Therefore, as proven with the example of bin Laden, who was one of the most wanted terrorist, not all terrorist stem from poverty. I believe that there is a great correlation between the level of education and poverty as in the areas of people living in LEDC, are in fact more likely to have problem in their vital development stage. Terrorist look for the poor and uneducated as they are more likely to brainwash into believe in the groups ideologies also to believe that their methods of achieving their aims are acceptable.
Terrorist group would then promise that they, the recruit, would get money, power, a home and healthcare. I believe there is a massive correlation between media, whether that may be social media, newspapers or on television, and terrorism as when a terror attack does occur the group responsible for it would have some reason behind the action that they would like to publicise to best way for that to happen is cause a national crisis to draw attention to the individual/s to then message their reasoning.
There are many examples of media coverage of acts of terror and/or the terrorist group, one being, in source 23 it show a picture of two newspapers, one of the papers shown is the Daily News which has the headline of “Rot In Hell”, this headline shows that the Americans clearly feel a massive amount of hatred towards bin Laden as hell is known to be a place of suffering and dismay, usually people that has caused suffering and dismay in life, on earth, would be sent here in their afterlife.
The second paper reads “Got Him! Vengeance at Last! US Nails the Bastard! ” From this headline I can infer that the American people are relived as they have been searching for him for a number of years and that they feel that they are now justified. “Bastard” is a word which, in more modern times, is usually used as an insult, this would also the extremely high levels of hatred they have for bin Laden.
These two papers were published the day after his death, this could show to be a problem with the American press maybe getting carried away with the news, they have used language that Muslim communities and supporters of Osama bin Laden would be angered by, this could be perceived as an attempted to provoke the people. This provocative behaviour could lead to a increase of terrorist attacks, as it may cause “copycat” terrorist, terrorists that copy another’s methods of terror. “the media is drawn to cover terrorism because terrorism evokes important news values.
In doing so media outlets may also provide terrorist with an outlet to air their grievances to a larger audience” In other words, the high level of coverage could in fact cause people to feel sympathetic toward terrorist group, therefore potentially gaining more people that would agree with their aims and or to join them. Therefore, i believe that media is plays as a very important cause of terrorism and to me is the most important because all terrorist organizations want their aims to be publicized that would then lead on to them doing act of terror to get themselves into the spotlight.