“Small groups of terrorists can do tremendous damage.... That is really the essence of terrorism—to intimidate and influence a far wider audience.” —Philip Wilcox, former coordinator of counterterrorism for the U.S. State...

The definition of terrorism lies in the gray area that exists between crime and war, although experts disagree as to its approximate location. Some professionals who have spent their careers closely following the various competing theories have resigned...

“A [new] intelligence structure is urgently needed if we are going to avoid another tragedy like September 11.” Bill Gertz, author of Breakdown: How America’s Intelligence Failures Led to September 11 On September 11, 2001, American...

Perhaps the most controversial issue surrounding terrorism is how governments should respond to it. This controversy stems from the dual nature of terrorism—it has both criminal and military aspects. In countering terrorism, governments must deal...

The ways in which terrorist groups operate have changed significantly in the late 1980s and 1990s, creating new challenges for security agencies in the twenty-first century. Governments must protect their interests against the threat of terrorist...

Measures to deprive terrorists of their funding must be part of any effort to counter the threat of terrorism. This endeavor is complicated by financial systems, law, and the covert means often used by terrorist groups to gather and distribute money....

The "standard" anti-terror response, honed during the era of aircraft hijacking, and hostage taking, was to calm the situation and negotiate for hostage releases or to use commando forces to raid terrorists holed up in aircraft, buildings, or...

Terrorism was first used to define a systematic policy of violence during the French Revolution and has since undergone important transformations that have been topics of both scientific investigation and efforts at technological control. What is now...

Terrorism Terrorism, whether practiced by states, substate groups, or individuals, is found throughout human history. Most historical accounts, however, focus on what they take to be forms of terrorism that are practiced by substate groups and...

When the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was proposed in 2002, President George W. Bush (b. 1946) noted that "in the war against terrorism, America's vast science and technology base provides us with a key advantage."...

Terrorism Introduction Terrorism as a form of war has gained popularity among rebels, anarchists, and radical religious groups in the past fifty years. Though hardly a new form of warfare, it has taken on a high profile in recent years. Perhaps most...

Terrorism became an issue of worldwide concern in the last third of the twentieth century. Terrorist tactics were not new; they had been used for centuries before being defined as terrorism. The word "terror" entered the political lexicon...

Terrorism, as defined by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), is "the unlawful use of force or violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of...

the systematic use of violence to create a general climate of fear in a population and thereby to bring about a particular political objective. Terrorism has been practiced by political organizations with both rightist and leftist objectives, by...

Most terrorists are men, points out Morgan in The Demon Lover: On the Sexuality of Terrorism (1989). Even though the stock image of a terrorist is a man in a ski mask, considerations of terrorists as men are often ignored, and discussions of terrorism...

Narcoterrorism is shorthand for the close ties that exist between illegal narcotics and terrorists. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) uses the term to refer to situations in which terrorist groups or their members have some part in...

The term narcoterrorism has entered the popular lexicon as a shorthand to refer to the complex relationship between the illicit drug trade and terrorism. The term, however, has often been used interchangeably to refer to two distinct aspects of this...

Terrorism, the unpredictable and apparently random use of violence against civilians and governments to create fear and to disrupt society, has been used for centuries as a means to achieve political goals. The September 11, 2001, attack on the World...

Following the end of the Cold War, the threat of ‘international terrorism’ was widely seen as the greatest affecting Western society. This sentiment increased following the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon in September 2001....

Terrorism may be defined as the employment of methods of coercive intimidation against non-combatants to further the views of an individual or group. The issue of combating terrorism has been given a particularly high priority in Western Europe since...

Systematic use of violence to create a general climate of fear in a population and thereby to bring about a particular political objective. It has been used throughout history by political organizations of both the left and the right, by nationalist...

The use of threat of violence to achieve certain organizational...

"International Terrorist Incidents, 2001" by the US Department of State Terrorism, in the modern sense,[1] is violence, the threat of violence, or other harmful acts committed for political or ideological goals.[2] Most definitions of terrorism include...