Worldwide Terrorism

Terrorism is the systematic use of terror, often violent, especially as a means of coercion. The word terrorism is politically and emotionally charged and has been practiced by a broad array of political organizations to further their objectives. When here about these terrorist attacks, I have always wondered when terrorism started, how terrorist groups are funded and what motivates a terrorist group to do these horrible acts.
September 11th, 2001, I am a sophomore in high school. The bell rings for students to go to lunch, so as I walk down the hall and turn the corner, at a distance I hear the craziest thing “Dude I heard a plane hit a building in New York!” Immediately I think nothing of it so I grab my lunch and sit in the patio. Five minutes later, my friend turns on the TV and what I brushed aside earlier was happening right before my eyes. The history of terrorism goes back as far as the beginning of the 1st century AD. A Jewish extremist group known as Sicarii Zealots was very active in the Judaea Province. According to Josephus in 6 AD, Judas of Galilee formed a small offshoot of the Zealots. But the term originally was used to describe the actions of the Jacobin Club during the Reign of Terror in the French Revolution.
The question of how terrorist organizations are funded has been a real mystery to me. A few friends and I talked about it on many separate occasions. I thought that maybe the funding came from drug lords or even kidnapping for ransoms. In certain countries, state sponsors have constituted a major form of funding. Some terrorist groups were funded by the Soviet Union. The Stern Gand acquired their funding from Italian Fascist Officers in Beirut to undermine the British Mandate for Palestine. Pakistan has created and nurtured terrorist organizations as a policy for achieving tactical objectives against its neighbors, especially India. Revolutionary Tax or “Protection Money” is another major form of funding. Revolutionary Tax is typically extorted from businesses and also plays as other means of intimidating the target population.
We also discussed what would motivate terrorist to commit such destructible events. I never thought it would be something so simple as hate. Attacks on high profile symbolic targets are used to incite counter-terrorism by the state to polarize the population. This strategy was used by Al Queda in its attacks on the U.S. Attacks on collaborators are used to intimidate people from cooperating with the state in order to undermine state control. The U.S. used this strategy in its War of Independence. Individual terrorist tend to be motivated more by a desire for social solidarity with the other members of their organization.
Most people read the paper, watch the news or go online to experience terrorism, but it is the people in the situations that can truly grasp a concept on how motivated and funded. What terrorism is, how they think will always be somewhat of a mystery to us all, but there is no harm in trying to solve this mystery. The rest of us just as easily look into the history of terrorism as a whole.