STRATEGIES OF PREVENTING AND CONTROLLING GLOBAL TERRORISM

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Date of Submission Terrorism is described as the violent and inhuman acts that get perpetuated for political, ideological, and religious goals with the aim of creating fear among the neutral military personnel. According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), it entails the unlawful application of force to property or persons purposely to coerce the society or government in furtherance of social or political objectives. Terrorism is an old phenomenon that is emotive and complex given that such acts invoke tremendous feelings. Throughout human history, those opposed to the ruling governments or leadership have applied violence to express their views. This has been in existence as early as the 18th century during the French Revolution. However, it was not until the 9/11 attack that the world joined hands in the fight against global terrorisms. Some of the prevention and control measures that have been proposed include the deployment of military forces to counter terrorists, use of international peace and security conventions, and negotiations.
Periodically, the application of violence and force against terrorists is one of the strategies that have proved effective in countering global terror networks. The force-for-force strategy entails deploying military personnel to fight against terrorists. The United States applied this approach in handling the Taliban and Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. This method is aimed at destroying the terror groups’ training grounds, weapons, and other war machineries. More often, it gets executed using air strikes and ground bombing of their military and training bases. Once these facilities get destroyed, their abilities and capacities to plan and execute terror attacks get paralyzed. Therefore, they become toothless given since most of their powerful weapons of mass destructions get destroyed in the process. However, this strategy has faced criticisms from a section of human rights activists and organizations on the ground that it involves excessive use of force, hence constituting a violation of fundamental human rights.
Another strategy that has also proved effective in dealing with the rise in global terrorism is negotiation. Though many governments always show reluctance in engaging terror groups in negotiations, it is one of the most economical and least destructive approaches to preventing and controlling the spread of terrorism. For instance, the Great Britain secretly engaged the Sinn Fein and the Irish Republican Army in a negotiation process that resulted in the Good Friday Agreement, bringing to an end series of terror activities in the region. The same took placed between the apartheid leadership of South African and the National Congress of African that rebelled against the ruling government. Therefore, negotiating with terror groups would help solve social, economic, and political conflicts.
In conclusion, global terrorism is becoming a threat to social and economic developments in first and third world countries. Executed with the primary objective of causing panic among the innocent population, terrorisms scare away potential investors as well as tourists. This has been evidenced along the East African Coastal regions that have continuous been under terror attacks posed by the Al-Shabaab militia groups. Such terror attacks have negatively impacted on the region’s tourism industry with many Western countries issuing travel advisories to their citizens. To help curb such threats, a number of strategies have been recommended. In particular, applications of military forces, violence-for-violence, and negotiation have been applied in different parts of the world to help control and prevent global terrorism. Bibliography
Hoffman, Bruce. Inside Terrorism. New York: Columbia University Press, 2011.
Laqueur, Walter. The New Terrorism: Fanaticism and the Arms of Mass Destruction. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.
Pillar, Paul. Terrorism and U.S. Foreign Policy. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2013.
Rubenstein, Richard. Alchemists of Revolution: Terrorism in the Modern World. New York: Basic Books, 2011.
Wilkinson, Paul. Terrorism versus Democracy: The Liberal State Response. London: Frank Cass, 2012.