Isabelle Duyvesteyn in her article titled “How New Is the New Terrorism?” quite elaborately breaks down terrorism in the post-modern world and how the mindsets of people had been shaped around it. She analyzes the different aspects of terrorism and tackles the subject with not only her own views, but also historical and factual evidence to back up her arguments regarding terrorism in the new world or the “new” aspects of terrorism. She is of the view that the contrary to a popular belief, terrorism is not a “new” entity in the post-modern world.
Similarly, she states that to understand “new terrorism” one needs to understand the onset of the wave of terrorism, which was the beginning of a new, violent era for the history of the world. She says that after the September 11 attacks, the world seems to be divided into two parts. One that innocently lived in the time before the attacks and one that was exposed to the wounds of the attacks and has been trying to recover since then. She says that the world believes that Al-Qaeda and their activities have started up a “new” wave of terrorism in the world and that they expect to have credit for bringing “new” violence in the world. However, she says that according to historical evidence, there is much that contradicts this belief of the masses. She also says that it seems like this labeling of terrorism I more of a “social phenomenon” rather than a semantic one.
She writes that semantically speaking, there are different definitions of the term. Some of them are pejorative while some are plainly contentious. She writes that historical evidence lacks as far as the study of the word and the phenomenon itself was concerned. According to her, these factors have affected the views of the world and their understanding of the phenomenon has become quite twisted. By what little evidence is there in political science and philosophical law, she, in the article, aims to challenge the persisting views on the novelty of terrorism.
Regarding the study of this terrorism, she writes that the term is explored only superficially yet; and much generalized rather than having any strong substance. According to Alex Schmid, says that there has not been much research on the subject in terms of social and political science that makes it quite difficult to understand the term as well as the phenomenon.
Regarding social science, she believes that terrorism is the product of movements and ideologies such as nihilism and by figures such as Marx and Lenin. She says that over time nationalist, ethnic and religious motivations have also been deemed by political science as the driving forces behind terrorism. She says that compared to social science, political science that much more reasonable explanation for the phenomenon of terrorism. If one wants to understand the labeling of terrorism as “new” this can aid one better.
She then goes on and argues that it was an Al-Qaeda attacks on the World Trade Twin Towers on September 11 brought the world into a new era of terrorism. However, this term was also used in the 1990’s which makes terrorism not-a-new-entity for the post-modern world. She says that there are certain factors that make terrorism a relatively “new” for the masses all over the world. According to her, religion, fanaticism towards a united cause, ability to operate without borders and the use of modern weaponry is what has led this wave of terrorism “new” as they were not seen in the world ever before. Most importantly, unlike events in history, these perpetrators do not have select victims, they believe in the elimination of any weak link that is a danger of standing in the way of their cause.
However, she goes on to write that the September 11 perpetrators were also similar goals. They are driven towards a religious cause and based upon the origin of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan; they seem to have a tad bit of nationalistic motivation behind their actions as well. Their networks are very complexly intertwined and in a hierarchical order. These similarities prove that terrorism has, in fact, existed in the world before the September 11 attacks and is not necessarily brought upon by the Al Qaeda.
The most important thing which she highlights in her article is that Al Qaeda uses the sympathy card in order to gain support from individuals. Combs and Hall (2003) also agree with the author in this point of view. They say that Al Qaeda propagates the message of freeing Palestine from Israeli occupation that could simply be a ploy to gain support from people rather than a genuine organizational aim.
The historical examples mentioned by the author are supportive of her argument, with the help of which, the author aims to spark thought in the readers. She says that financial backing, territorial and self decided moral aims and organizational networks have existed in the past for terrorist outfits and exist even now. Then how can anyone claim that the Al Qaeda is responsible for bringing a new wave of terrorism and how can we label terrorism as a new phenomenon?
Finally, speaking about the effects of terrorism, the writer elaborates that the after effects caused by this wave of terrorism are not in any way new either. It is true that the rates in fatality and weapons of destruction have been modernized. But it is not due to the novelty in terrorism or the ways of the world. It is so, because the world has modernized and the advancement in technology has modernized warfare. She suggests that if technology had advanced in the post-modern world, warfare would have been similar to what ensues in today’s world and would have the cause the same serious fatalities and causalities. It is the advancement in technology that has caused a wave of terror to be widespread. With the lack in media and proper mediums of communication in the past, terror was contained. Garvey and Mullins (2009) state that in today’s world where the methods of communication are much more advanced, terror is widespread, but then again, according to the standards set in the past, terrorism was widespread even for that era.
References
Combs, C. and Hall, P. (2003). Terrorism in the twenty-first century. Prentice Hall Upper Saddle River, NJ.
Crenshaw, M. (2009). The Debate over “New” vs. “Old” Terrorism. Values and Violence, [online] pp.117-136. Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-8660-1_8 [Accessed 5 Jul. 2014].
Duyvesteyn, I. (2004). How new is the new terrorism?. Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, 27(5), pp.439--454.
Garvey, J. and Mullins, M. (2009). An Examination of “New” and “Old” Terrorism Using High-Frequency Data. Economics of Security Working Paper Series, (18).
Tucker, D. (2001). What is new about the new terrorism and how dangerous is it?. Terrorism and Political Violence, 13(3), pp.1--14.
