On November 26th, 2008 a largely unknown terrorist group forced their way into the international consciousness after an armed group of 10 terrorist’s implemented a well-planned, coordinated, and complex assault on the civilian populace of Mumbai. Utilizing Ak-47’s, hand grenades, and communication equipment, the terrorist attackers killed 104 people and injured another 308. For three days the Mumbai government struggled to effectively eliminate the perpetrators of the terrorist attack, which finally ended in a gun battle between the last living attacker and an Indian Commando unit. Only one attacker was captured by police, but the size of the attack and all of the terrorist participant’s commitment to terrorizing the Mumbai population even when surrounded and outnumbered highlights the development of Lashkar-E-Taiba (LeT), an organization which has arguably become one of the most powerful global terrorist networks. Over the past 20 years, a combination of religious ideological dogma within the Lashkar-E-Taiba, and a perceived utility within the Pakistani’s Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), set the conditions which allowed the transnational growth and expansion of Lashkar-E-Taiba. Since its inception, the LeT has become the largest and organized group within Kashmir (Desouza and Tobin 2007, 599). The group’s broad ideological jihadi goals and their global influence make Lashkar-E-Taiba a current threat to the United States, but also the most likely group to conduct a successful large scale significant attack against the United States or Western interests.
In order to understand the basic origins of the ideological framework of Lashkar-E-Taiba, it is important to understand the history and religious development ...
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Likewise, Goodwin illustrates how the use of categorical terrorism can be seem being used by Al-Qaida during the attacks of 9/11. Nonetheless, it is evident that Al-Qaida is unusual in terms of using terrorism to influence the rise of unity rather than trying to overthrow a standing state. For the purpose of instigating a pan-Islamic revolutionary movement, Al-Qaida tries to unite all Islamic people under one state to develop umma, or Muslim community. The logic of Al-Qaida remained that if their “revolutionaries” could illicit a reaction from the powerful US state, resulting in oppression of the middle-eastern region, that Al-Qaida could, as a result, unite all Muslims to counter this suggested oppression. Although the end goal of Al-Qaida clear failed, it does suggest the organization’s attempt at implementing categorical terrorism.
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The topic of my paper is types of terrorism. There are several types of terrorism for which to choose for my paper, state, dissident, religious, left-wing v. right-wing, and international. In this paper I have chosen state terrorism, religious terrorism, and international terrorism as the types of terrorism that I am going to discuss. I will discuss what they are in my own words and give examples of two different groups for each type that represent that type of terrorism. Then I will compare and contrast the three types of terrorism that I chose.
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“Terrorism involves the use of violence by an organization other than a national government to cause intimidation or fear among a target audience;” at least, this is how Pape (2003) defines terrorism in his article “The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism” (343). The goal of this article by Pape is to discuss suicide terrorism and how it “follows a strategic logic, one specifically designed to coerce modern liberal democracies to make significant territorial concessions” (343). Similar to Pape, Bloom (2004) and Horowitz (2010) also delve into the exponential increase of suicide terrorism and why it occurs. Although Pape, Bloom, and Horowitz concur that suicide terrorism is increasing, they disagree why it is so prominent. While the arguments presented from each of these researchers is powerful and certainly plausible, suicide terrorism is in fact not irrational, but strategic and is most often caused by state occupation and, when organized, aimed specifically at democracies.
The threat of global terrorism continues to rise with the total number of deaths reaching 32,685 in 2015, which is an 80 percent increase from 2014 (Global Index). With this said, terrorism remains a growing, and violent phenomenon that has dominated global debates. However, ‘terrorism’ remains a highly contested term; there is no global agreement on exactly what constitutes a terror act. An even more contested concept is whether to broaden the scope of terrorism to include non-state and state actors.
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