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Sara Ospina
Ms. Caruso
April 12, y

Stopping Terrorism Globally

Terrorism, which has been around for as long as people can remember, has been on the
rise for the past ten years. Terrorists usually use murdering, kidnapping, hi-jacking and bombings
to achieve their political purpose. For instance, according to Wikipedia.com, in 1985 there were
816 deaths, in 2003, more than 1,000 people died by terrorist acts around the world. In recent
years, terrorism seems to be at a new height and attacks are much more violent than in the past.
Unfortunately, in spite of many anti-terror campaigns, projects and organizations are being
created for prevention (to prevent) terrorism, the number of terrorists only is increasing. These
days terrorism is all over the world.
Terrorists use violence against civilians or against civilian targets, in order to attain
political aims. As it is mentioned in Cfrterrorism.org, The US Department defines terrorism as
"premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by
subnational groups or clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience." Paul Pillar
(Council on Foreign Relations), a former deputy chief of the CIA's Counterterrorist Center,
interprets the definition of terrorism as being, planned in advance, rather than an impulsive
act of rage and not criminal, like the violence that groups such as the mafia use to get money and
not carried out by the army of a country., The purposes of terrorists are different but majority of
their victims are peaceful people.
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There are many different types of terrorism, for many different purposes. The primary
purpose of terrorism is to force a change in their government structure or position. If terrorists
are not satisfied with there government's political positions, they may try to take control over
their country. For example, the Andijan Events, which happened in 2005. Many innocent people
were killed during the terrorists attempt to take control over the government of Andijan. As the
President of Uzbekistan, Islam Karimov implied, the executors of that terror act were the
members of, so-called, Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan. Their primary goal was to set
Caliphate in Uzbekistan, which would have made Uzbekistan an Islamic Republic and led to put
dot in Uzbekistan's development, especially in economy growth. Also, there are some other
reasons for terrorist acts such as: hate towards a race, nationality, or religion. The following
example contains all reasons listed above. Another international terror group Al-Qaeda, number
one terror group with a multimillionaire leader Osama Ben Laden, carried out a terror attack in
2001, in USA. Terrorists hijacked four commercial airplanes and crashed two of them into World
Trade Centre, in Manhattan. The other one crashed to US Pentagon, and fourth crashed in rural
place in Pennsylvania. It took about 2,986 lives of innocent people, including 19 hijackers, and
more than 40,000 people were injured.
In both examples mentioned above, there are exact motivating factors. In both cases the
motivating factors are ideology and religion. But there are also many other factors which make
people become terrorists and take guns in their hands or blow themselves killing as much people
as possible. These motivating factors of the terrorism are: ideology, poverty, overpopulation, bad
economic condition and lack of education. For instance, if we take IMU (Islamic Movement of
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Uzbekistan) which has more than 500 members and many of them are uneducated, came from
poor families. Moreover, many of them really do not know for what they are struggling. But in
the other hand, the majority of executors of 9/11 were from Saudi Arabia. They were from
middle class and educated. They gave their lives for the ideology which they followed. From this
passage we can conclude that nowadays religion and ideology are the primary instruments of
terrorists to involve more people in their activity to achieve their political aim.
With terrorism being so secretive, it has been a grave problem to deal with. Many
countries are currently trying to stop these cowardly acts, but are not very successfully.
Particularly, many countries are increased their internal security level. Michael Moore in his
documentary film ,Fahrenheit 9/11,, says that to increase security level after the 9/11, USA
issued ,USA Patriot Act, which allows the government access all medical and financial records
and it also allows FBI to record and check any telephone and computer conversations even if you
have not committed a crime. The other law is about the hijacked airplanes. If any plane is not
responding it is considered to be hijacked and should be immediately destroyed in the air.
Eventhough, many people are against these laws, government believes that these laws issued in
duly time to prevent terrorism.
In conclusion, I want to say that we can not stop terrorism until every country and every
person realizes themselves that terrorism can not be ended with violence. Violence in response to
violence can only lead to further violence. So we should discover more creative programs about
reducing the poverty, let everybody study, regarding their religion, sex, race and nationality. If
we invest money into these things than investing to wars, we have already reduced terrorism.
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Other crucial thing is freedom. Nowadays, many terrorists claim that they are freedom fighters of
their country. From this we can conclude that we, ourselves, are making terrorists by occupying
their native country. If we do not want any terrorism, let them enjoy their freedom. But these
days it is sad to realize that some bigger countries, with its (their) powerful economy want to
take control over smaller countries, which is again leading people of these countries to take a gun
and defense their countries values.

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Citation

Fahrenheit 9/11. By Michael. Moore. Dir. Michael. Moore. Studio Canal, 2004.

"Terrorism." National Institute of Justice. Web. 7 Apr. 2016.

Sigler, John. "Palestine: Legitimate Armed Resistance vs. Terrorism." The Electronic Intifada.
2004. Web. 7 Apr. 2016.

"Terrorism." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation. Web. 7 Apr. 2016.