Establishing Counter-Terrorism Strategies Employed Globally and Impacts

Establishing Counter-Terrorism Strategies Employed Globally and Impacts

Introduction

Terrorism activities are issues with deep roots that have resisted various counter-effort and strategies put up by different nations. Nevertheless, terrorism groups comprise of different people from different regions, which makes it easier to gather comprehensive information of countries. On that note, technology has further made it easier for the group to organize their terror activities and make it hard for countries to track them (Barber, 2015). Bearing in mind that, among the groups, there are experts in various fields such as information technology who can misdirect whoever tries to trace them (Speckhard & Shajkovci, 2018). Additionally, the world has become small due to developed infrastructures and business connections; hence, people can access different countries easily, which has also given the terror groups an advantage to survey and organized attacks (Barber, 2015).

Consequently, many people from different parts of the world have lost their lives and their loved ones. The activity has installed fear within regions, which has affected the socialization among people, whereby it even takes time before welcoming and accepting new investors within such a region. Some marks of terrorist activities take time to fade-out, which continues affecting even the new generations. Concurrently, terrorism activities have destroyed properties, investments, and infrastructures worth billions of money, leaving nations with a hard time recovering, and unfortunately, the majority fail to recover. For example, countries like Somalia are still trying to recover despite various nations’ support to fight against terror group Aleverthe Shaabab which is an ally of Al Qaeda. Terrorism activities have a high negative impact on the economy of a nation since many present investors pull down their investments, and the potential investors hold back or invest in safer countries, thus denying the country an opportunity to raise revenue. Additionally, various governments issue travel alerts to their citizens, which comes with a negative impact, such as reduced tourism business. On contrary, terror group take advantage of the poor economy of nation to attract and recruit vulnerable youths promising them goodies which is not clear whether they normally get, yet they join is not easy to exit, otherwise they kills whoever shows that motive of leaving the group to avoid leaking their secrets.

Even though in most cases terror attacks characterizes revenge mission such as August 1998, American embassy bombing in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, which was an Al Qaeda revenge against American even though other nationals were affected (Bushnell, 2018), in some situations it’s hard to establish the real cause like the Westgate mall attack in Kenyan which left hundreds of people dead and others badly injured. Subsequently, it is hard to fight against terror groups due to the support they get from people with the government, such groups have good connection and informers who leaks government plans on them (Neo, Khader, Ang, Ong & Tan, 2017). Additionally, some politicians use them indirectly for political interest in exchange of financial support or important information (Bushnell, 2018). For example, at one point the United States (US) supported jihadist group when it had an interest in Afghanistan. According to AA terrorism activities started about 2000 years back, they adjust and move with time changing tactics now and then which calls for global attention. Although, terrorism activities are dominant in their origin nations such as Afghanistan, they have extended hands to recruit and attacked their neighboring countries through their allies. Notably, some mechanism nations use to counter terror attacks such as aggressive attack on their leaders may not work in several circumstances since this groups have grown and the comprise of major experts who are always ready to take over in case one of their leaders is eliminated. Additionally, leaders have politicized this issue of terrorism, which drags back the continued effort to fight against it, creating a room for the militia groups to reorganize whenever they are attacked. This research seeks to find out the factors that motivate people to give support of join al Qaeda and how governments can use those factors to strategies on counter-terrorism.

Literature Review

Terrorism activities has become part of life, teenagers see this groups as source of employment which such groups take advantage of to recruit as many people as possible especially from developing countries where the level of economy is low and hard for youth to find better jobs. There are several militia groups around the world, but this study will focus highly on al Qaeda which has terrorized several countries with major attacks. According to Byman (2015), Osama Bin Laden founded the group early 1980’s to resist the movement of Soviet Union invasion in Afghanistan.  Many people who repelled the Soviet actions lost their lives, other flew to exile as well as massive destruction of properties (Law, 2015). As claimed by Byman (2015), over 75,000 repel fighter lost their lives and uncountable injured while on the other hand, Soviet Union lost about 15,000 fighter and about 50,000 were injured. Thousands Afghanistan civilians fled to Pakistan to sort refuge, which later became a base for organizing fight against soviets and anti-Islamic communities. On that account, various nations such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Syria offered financial and mechanical support to fight communist. Thereafter the Soviet Union surrenders, however, Osama Bin Laden with his financial stability and his group took advantage of the situation and started recruiting and training fighter. Notably, the formation of al Qaeda was to exploit the wealth of Bin Laden by other group member for their own interest, although, it did not go their ways as it resulted to be a movement. As claimed by Byman (2015), the movement primary mandate was to advance its terrorism activities through training, logistic and financial support to jihadists as well as fight for their rights. The win over Soviets strengthened and shaped the formation/ strategies of al Qaeda which propelled to go global.

Terrorist groups in this case al Qaeda have great networks all over the world which makes it hard for the nations to counter the attacks (Zeiger, 2016). Besides, they invest overwhelmingly in those attacks such the London bomb attack that valued roughly $ 15,000, hence, the idea of weakening financial sources of the group does not always work since the group has strong channels of financial support (Bapat, 2018). For example, the Sudan government official deemed to have supported the militia attack of World Trade Center in New York City in the year 1993 (Byman, 2015). Sudan government offered refuge, logistic and financial support to different militia groups, which lead the United State to record it as one of the supporter of such groups. Notably, American suffered more attacks from the al Qaeda group, which the group through their leader Bin Laden claimed to be as a result of intervention and American military support to countries such as Saudi Arabia and Somalia that angered the militia group. According to Gomes & Mikhael (2018), terror groups succeeds by install fear within the society and also facilitating the countries to respond as per their expectation. Additionally, they use media as a strategies to measure the preparedness of countries by issuing threats and propagandas to confuse nations (Speckhard & Shajkovci, 2018). Karlsrud (2017) claim that al Qaeda is worldwide and support different militia groups to recruit more people convert them into Muslims and take advantage of their little knowledge in Quran to use them in fight against anti-Muslim claiming they are guided by the Muslim beliefs. In fact, women are not spared as they are engaged into forced marriages, rape and slivery. Nations across the boards have joined hands to counter-terrorism activities through destroying condition that favour terrorism, prevention and confronting such activities. Additionally, the privacy of people should be observed so that victims or defectors can voluntarily give information concerning such groups (Zeiger, 2016). However, it is not clear the role media play in promoting terrorism activity, thus, researcher need to find out the impact of media in terror activities and how to use it to combat such activities.

Methodology

The researcher applied qualitative research method since it was the most appropriate in this case to identify motivation factors that lead people to join or support terrorist groups such as al Qaeda. For clear understanding of people’s lifestyle the research used non-numeric data. Precisely, 300 participants both men and women across all ages were recruited form various regions. The research incorporated an in-depth interviews to find out how sociocultural factors such education play part in terrorist recruitments and radicalization. Therefore, the research prepared and issued the questionnaires in three categorized.1, structured in-depth survey which comprised of flexible massive questionnaires modelled according to participant’s feedback. 2, semi-structured interviews featuring a wide range of topics that allowed the participants to come up with different ideas. 3, unstructured in-depth interviews that allowed the respondents to talk their minds, whereby the researcher to enough time to interact with participants to learn more of their daily life style. Furthermore, ethical observation was also part of the research as the researcher tried to ensure the research will have impact on the region. Lastly, the study kept the feedbacks of the respondents confidential in question the matter in question is very sensitive which can harm the respondent in case of leakage. Consequently, the analytical framework was to find out how education, injustice, economic and political factors relate to terrorism. The study used statistical package for social sciences (SPSS) to analyze the data and the result were as discussed below.

Findings

The response was overwhelming since only 40 out of the 300 participants dropped their participation.

Education: The study revealed that most of youth join the terror groups due to lack of knowledge (education), which militia groups take advantage of to recruit young people promising them they will get education once they join the organization. Further, some people are radicalized because they have little knowledge of such groups and the evil activities associated with them. For example, radicalized individual are convinced terror activities are guided by the Quran.

Economy: Large number reported to have joined the terror group due to ash economy in their regions. Some are educated but cannot secure jobs hence end up join the groups as a source of employment in conjunction with the promised form leaders of such groups. However, it is not clear whether they really benefit financially from such groups.

Injustice Cases: This is another factor that attracts people to join and support militia organization such as al Qaeda, the study revealed that some people join this group to take revenge especially, the adult population. They find such groups as the only option to fight for their justice such as Muslim individuals who find it easier to join or support such groups.

Political factor: Majority of the respondents revealed political factor to play crucial role in supporting the al Qaeda groups and its allies. As scholars claim at one point the American government collaborated with al Qaeda to in the case of Afghanistan and Russian-Vietnam (Bushnell, 2018). Several political leaders finance militia groups for political milange or other personal interest.

In general the nations across the board should join hand to address these issues, which makes it hard to counter-terrorist. Some people are in such group by mistake yet find it hard to exit, other may exit but get traumatized.  The research find out that schools and rehabilitation centres can help in the fight at hand.

Conclusion/ Recommendation

Terrorism is a global issue of concerned. Terror activities has claimed millions of lives and left some victims with life marks or disabilities. Additionally, many countries have lost billions worth of properties as a result of terrorism. Furthermore, nations especially developing countries and countries of militia groups’ origin such as Pakistan find it hard to develop to date due to continued attacks. Precisely, terrorism causes adverse impact on socioeconomic and religious cultures all over the world since they is no exemption nation that is save from terror attacks.  Subsequently, even as nations formulate strategies to counter-terrorism, on the other hand, the terror group took advantage of technology and infrastructure to recruit and connect worldwide. The research identifies some factors that promote terrorism such as poor education, poor economy, injustices revenge missions and political factors which should be addressed globally and the necessary action taken. Besides, political factors is a sensitive issue since majority of policy maker are politicians yet among them are supporters of such groups, hence it calls for specialized strategies to address. Nevertheless, media play crucial role in keeping nation updated about terror issues, however, in-depth research should be done to establish whether its promotes terror activities and if so how can be combated. On that note, researcher also should research on how media can be used to combat terrorism.

Reference

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