Counter Terror Gazette

Welcome to the first issue of Counter Terror Gazette

17 Aug 2010

Welcome to the first issue of Counter Terror Gazette. 

CTG aims to bring you an informative, topical overview and analysis of terrorism and counterterrorism phenomena from around the world today.  Defining ‘terrorism’ can never be achieved without courting controversy.  The age old adage of one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter may well be an overused cliché, but it doesn’t make it any less true. The United Nations General Assembly in 1994 adopted the following definition: “Criminal acts intended or calculated to provoke a state of terror in the general public, a group of persons or particular persons for political purposes are in any circumstance unjustifiable, whatever the considerations of a political, philosophical, ideological, racial, ethnic, religious or any other nature that may be invoked to justify them.” 

Since 9/11, the world’s focus – as a result of the attacks and of the US-led ‘War on Terror’ – has been on al-Qaeda in particular, and Islamist extremist groups in general.  While attacks linked to these groups have certainly been numerous and significant and pose a serious threat to us all, there are other causes and organisations that continue to unleash their reign of terror onto their targets.  One such group is profiled in this issue; Colombia’s left-wing revolutionary FARC.   The controversial issue of young people involved in militancy is often underreported and aside from images of boy soldiers toting Kalashnikovs in Africa, the scale of the problem is not widely taken on board.  The majority of child militants were or are part of non-Islamist extremist groups and surely they pose as much of a threat to future global security than the radicalised al-Qaeda suicide bomber; if large numbers of a generation grow up knowing nothing but violent conflict and accept it as the norm, what hope is there for stable, peace abiding societies from which they spawn, in the future?   

Like Islamist extremism, while attacks and militant groups – both secular and Islamist – in the Middle East are numerous, this region should not be the sole focus of a publication on terrorism and counterterrorism, although it will of course often feature.  Although the Arab-Israeli conflict appears to currently have no end in sight, from a purely counterterrorism perspective, we look at the effects the West Bank Separation Barrier has had on improving Israel’s security, ten years on from the outbreak of the Second Intifada…MORE ONLINE