Terrorism Essay, Research Paper

a great deal of variation?

The main cause of terrorism is reform, weather it be political, governmental, or religious. The most common cause of terrorism is religious reform because it usually last much longer than the other two types. The fighting in Ireland and Middle East has been going on for a very long time and they have many people and countries to back them finanicaly.

The area of conflict which has generated the most significant and ruthless spillover of terrorist violence since 1968 is, of course, the Middle East. This may seem surprising in view of the astonishing breakthrough in negotiations between Israel and the PLO, the agreement on the Declaration of Principles in September 1993, the agreement between Israel and Jordan, and the continuing efforts by Israel and Syria, encouraged by the USA, to resolve the prolonged dispute over the Golan Heights. Nonetheless, if one defines the Middle East as including Algeria and Turkey, both of which have spawned conflicts involving considerable terrorist violence, including some international spillover, this region remains the most dangerous source of

terrorist challenges to the wider international community, accounting for over 21% of all international terrorist incidents worldwide in 1992, and over 23% in 1993.

There are four basic motivations for terrorism in the Middle East.

1. Bitter opposition by Rejections of Palestinian groups to the agreement between Mr. Arafat and the Israeli government. These groups see Arafat as a traitor who has betrayed the cause of Palestinian self-determination.

2. In almost every Moslem country there are groups of extreme Islamic fundamentalists, inspired and actively encouraged by the Islamic revolutionary regime in Iran, ready to wage Jihad against pro-western Arab regimes, with the aim of setting up Islamic republics in their place.

3. However, the Islamic fundamentalist challenge is not directed solely at incumbent regimes in the Moslem world. Frequently they widen their range of targets to include westerners within their country. For example, the GIA in Algeria has deliberately targeted French citizens in Algeria since September 1993, because they allege that France is providing covert support

and assistance to the Algerian military regime, and is historically responsible for the situation in Algeria. But, as the GIA’s hijack of the Air France Airbus A300 on Christmas Eve 1994 demonstrates, the Islamic terrorist groups are also prepared to take their terrorist war to France

itself. There is little doubt that the terrorists fully intended to crash the Airbus over Paris. France is, of course, not the only foreign target of such groups. All these groups are bitterly anti-American and hostile to all the Western countries.

There is a further highly dangerous aspect to the threat of Islamic fundamentalist terrorism against Western targets. The findings of the FBI and the judiciary in America indicate that the group responsible for blowing up the World Trade Center building in February 1993 was operating as a type of independent or freelance group of Islamic fundamentalists

4. The Middle East is also the major region of state sponsors and supporters of terrorism: Iran, Iraq, Syria, Sudan and Libya.

Not all of these causes are important in every society but one is similar that being the hatred of Western culture and power. Many of the Middle Eastern countries have that in common. The U.S. has seen many attacks just for the mere fact that it is a super power nation but it is not the only Western country to see terrorism just for the fact of how there government and country is ran. So there is a lot of variation in types and causes of terrorism in different parts of the world.