Organization's Terrorist Actions example essay topic

Discussing terrorism and motivations leading to terrorism brings up thoughts of random acts of violence. These acts are mostly considered to be methods of insane men. Most of these modern terrorists follow their own political agenda with each group trying to achieve a particular goal. There are three types of terrorists in today's society: the single individual, a certain group, and government funded organization. These terrorists all resemble criminals with one major difference; they are dedicated to a higher cause and are not taking extreme measures for personal gain (Deleon). An individual terrorist is more likely to be predisposed to acts of violence without any apparent political assignment.

An example of an individual terrorist is Lee Harvey Oswald or Timothy McVeigh. These are the people that are only trying to make a statement for their personal higher cause. More often than not, you will find that the terrorist acting alone is a mentally unstable person that is seeking approval for his idea (s). The next category of terrorist is a group acting together in order to achieve their political or ideological agenda.

These groups of people are often found living in oppressed conditions and are seeking extreme measures to bring about change. Such groups have been found in Georgia and Bosnia fighting over ethnic cleansing of a particular area after the Soviet Union disbanded (Wilkinson). Once a group looks at its neighbors and decides to improve its self-defense in order to preserve a way of life, the neighboring group feels the possible threat and builds up a self-defense of their own. This could very probably bring on the destruction of what they were trying to preserve, their way of life. A war between two or more groups within a countries own boundary is most often the bloodiest scene for terrorist actions. Opposing forces are normally within a city or statewide area of each other, and acts such as threats, bombings, kidnappings, executions, and assassinations can be hard to control by either side.

These types of small groups are usually poorly funded and more often than not are prone to the use of guerilla tactics. Where an ethnic group believes it may be in danger of being suppressed or driven out of its base area, there is a chance that an outsider may intervene in order to sponsor the group, giving them even more power to be heard. This leads us to our third possible group. The biggest and most active terrorist organizations are those that are government funded. These organizations act as both an overt and covert way of spreading he sponsor countries ideologies. The U.S. Secretary of State has designated seven governments as state sponsors of terrorism: Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Sudan, and Syria (State Department).

One of the main reasons that a government would sponsor an organization's terrorist actions is to achieve their political or ideological agenda without an obvious involvement. This way a country can watch a group's actions, controlling it so to speak, without worrying about losing a war or a police action. The said country will also avoid direct confrontation with another country unless support of the terrorist group is recognized. An example of this is the Hizballah, which are actually a Lebanese faction that are funded by the Islamic Republic of Iran (Reich).

Hizballah in return receives money from Iran totaling from 60 to 80 million dollars per year (Rajeswari). Although terrorism is thought to be actions taken by an insane mind, most of the actions taken by the funded organizations are politically motivated. There is no one cause of terrorism, and can there be no one solution to rid the world of such methods. President Clinton put the United States's tand against terrorism into action when sanctions were imposed by an executive order against nations that sponsored organizations using terrorism as a way to accomplish goals.

Bibliography

Deleon, Carrie. "Experts Debate Terrorist Mind". Collegian 20 Nov. 1996.
Rajeswari, P.R.U.S. Policy on Terrorism. 22 Mar. 1999.
web. Reich, Walter. Origins of Terrorism. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990.
Wilkinson, Paul. "Terrorism: Motivations and Causes". CSIS Jan. 1995.
State Department. Over of State-Sponsored Terrorism. 22 Mar. 1999.