TERRORISM, GLOBALIZATION AND INFORMATION

AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY

Sayeda akther|assistant professor

Department of international relations
University of Dhaka
 The coming of a new era

■ The twentieth century brought about a lot of changes, especially in the fields of
industry, information technology and communication.

■ The world became a global village and Homo Sapiens Sapiens evolved to Homo
Sapiens Communicationis, with his inseparable tool.

■ Globalization can be defined as the process of the dissemination of perceptions on

economics, society and culture to an international level, and the process of their
acknowledgment through widely accepted norms.

■ It indicates a state where the economic and political barriers between nations lose
their effects, the movement of service and persons increased, the relations between
cultures intensified, and the awareness among people increased.
Globalization

■ From the quantitative aspect: globalization means trade, capital movement

and investment, which sometimes perceived as transnationalism or
interconnectedness.

■ For the qualitative part, it includes political, economic and social processes.

■ Technological developments and the deregulations establish inter-state

networks of production, trade and finance, which eventually leads to a
‘borderless world economy’.

■ Politically, globalization seems to be the re-defining of the roles and

missions of state. In the process of globalization, the domination of nation-
states was shaken.
 Globalization and ICT

■ A significant driver of globalization is the advent of faster, cheaper

communications which is critical to growth, innovation, higher productivity and
job creation.
■ The rise of affordable global communications also had two major consequences
that fundamentally altered the practice of international relations, making it more
difficult for policymakers to keep control.
■ First, global communications upset the power balance among states, firms, and
non-governmental organizations.
■ The empowerment of new players on key issues and the restructuring of power
relationships among existing actors forced change.
■ The rise of global communications augmented the loss of control of governments
over traditional foreign and economic policy issues.
■ Second, the instant saturation of broadcast and Internet channels
with the latest news from anywhere on the planet pushed
decision makers to act more quickly in response to breaking
crises.

■ The rise of cheap global communications added new players to

the decision-making mix and often forced decisions to be taken
more rapidly.
Internet revolution

■ The Internet comprises a communication infrastructure that enables

computers to locate and talk to one another and to send and receive
information.
■ The Internet’s infrastructure consists of a global communication network of
copper telephone lines, fiber optic cables, coaxial cables, and satellite
systems.
■ The Internet Revolution began in the U.S. in the early 1990s and resulted
from the proliferation and internetworking of computers.
■ It has reshaped our world whether or not we are a willing and eager
participant and whether or not we want to acknowledge it.
■ It has brought about the Industrial Revolution and the mechanization of
information and communication.
Continued…..

■ The microprocessor and cheap memory revolutionized the communication

industry in the 1980s.

■ The Web was born in the 1990s.

■ By 2000 the price of international telephone calls cost a fraction of what they
had fifteen years earlier, torrents of data pulsed through global digital
networks, and the ways people communicated was transformed.

■ Communications and information technology is now at the core of a new

world information economy.
Continued…..

■ Trend 1: The Rise of Data

■ Trend 2: The Rise of the Internet and the Web
■ Trend 3: The Rise of Wireless Networking

■ The impact of the information revolution on international relations and

institutions:

o The information revolution increased the influence of the market and of

giant firms relative to governments.
o Global networks allowed NGOs to increase in number and influence.
o NGOs sometimes promote positive changes, but may hamper initiatives that
governments and firms launch through international institutions.
A new world order

■ Global networks and new communication technologies empowered

non-state actors and democratized access to information.
■ The information gap between states and others narrowed.
■ Decision-makers must act more quickly because every crisis is aired on
CNN and BBC as it happens.
■ A flood of information, often with vivid images is narrowing the global
news gaps.
■ Democracy slows down decisions, so governments are having more
difficult time keeping up with changing situations.
Security consequences:
intelligence gathering, activism, and Cyber war

■ The information revolution altered the nature of intelligence operations, political

opposition, and the waging of war.

■ First, access to more information does not automatically translate into better policy
decisions or greater national security.

■ Components of this change include: intelligence gathering and its impact on foreign
policy; the rise of “activism, hacktivism, and cyber terrorism;”

■ The use of networked information to initiate terrorist actions or to use in military

conflict.
 Continued…..

■ Second, governments and others now routinely try to use “soft power” to influence
the views of others through television, radio, and print media and via the Web.

■ Those who generate the information view it at “public diplomacy.”

■ Third, global data communication networks and new information technologies are
changing modern warfare.

■ The potential power of information weapons was demonstrated in the 1990 and
2003 invasions of Iraq.

■ The military was bolstered by AWACS (Airborne Warning and Control System).
Continued…..

■ It scanned the sky for enemy aircraft and missiles and sent
targeting data to allied forces from modified Boeing 707s.

■ In parallel, J-STARS (the Joint Surveillance and Target Attack

System) helped detect, disrupt, and destroy Iraqi ground forces
during Desert Storm with speed and precision.
Political consequences: from E-democracy to E-terrorism

■ The political consequences of globalization and global networks

also are both positive and negative.
■ E-government engages citizens more directly in the political
process and is technologically feasible.
■ At the same time, the process, politics and political implications
that result from the new technologies could foment civil unrest
and confusion.
■ Governments are losing their hegemony over the political process.
■ New communications and information technologies empower:

- NGOs
- Firms
- Revolutionaries
- Terrorists
- Fundamentalist religious leaders
- Extremists of all stripes
- Criminal syndicates, and
- Political subversives as well as well-meaning social movements, reformers and
activists.
■ This raises concerns that decentralized, fragmented, anarchic chaos is on the
horizon that may overwhelm the positive benefits of communications and
information technology.
Economic consequences:
growth, digital divide and criminal organizations

■ Globalization and global networks promote economic growth through

increased trade and investment.
■ Companies and countries that are early adopters of communications
and information technologies may enjoy an information edge as they
compete and grow.
■ Globalization and global communications does not, however,
guarantee that growth will be distributed equitably within or between
countries.
■ Furthermore, global flows of funds and information may undermine
national policies and facilitate crime and corruption.
Continued……

■ Illegal activities could undermine the trust in and functioning of the

world economy.
■ Organized crime: the Sicilian mafia, Cali cartel, Chinese triads, Japanese
Yakuza, Russian criminal networks, and their predecessors have operated
for centuries.
■ Globalization and global networks has prompted criminal networks to
form transnational strategic partnerships to ply their illegal, often violent
trade.
■ Since the 1980s sophisticated transnational criminal organizations using
global communications and transportation technologies expanded their
grasp and became more efficient.
■ The information revolution altered intelligence gathering and its impact
on foreign policy;
■ Allowed activists and cyber terrorists to more influence, and networked
information has transformed military conflict.
■ New communications and information technologies (E-government, E-
democracy, and E-participation) empower new global actors/ players.
■ These forces threaten stability, raising concerns that decentralized,
fragmented, anarchy could occur.
Terrorism

■ In English vocabulary, the term came from the French word:  terrorisme
■ The French word terrorisme in turn derives from the Latin verb
terrere meaning “to frighten”
■ The French, however, used it in a positive sense: to refer to the state
terrorism initiated by the French government during the Reign of Terror
(1793-94)
Terrorism

■ The concept of terrorism has existed for the entire history, gradually
increased its intensity, frequency and influence on earth.
■ Though it existed for centuries, there is still no single definition of
terrorism, that has been a threat to social, political and economic
stability, peace and prosperity.
■ Carl Von Clausewitz: “it is the exercise of politics through other
means.”
■ “Terrorism is an attempted assault by terrorists against a nation and a
system in order to receive satisfying answers to their needs”.
■ Brian Jenkins writes that the threat of violence, individual acts of
violence or a campaign of violence designed primarily to instill fear is
terrorism.
■ “It is considered not as a philosophical movement but as a confrontation
method.”

■ 'Terrorism is an anxiety-inspiring method of repeated violent action,

employed by clandestine individual groups or state actors, for idiosyncratic,
criminal or political reasons, whereby-in contrast to assassination-the direct
targets of violence are not the main targets. The immediate human targets of
violence are generally chosen randomly or selectively from a target
population, and serve as message generators. Threat and violence based
communication processes between terrorists' victims, and main targets are
used to manipulate the main target, turning it into a targeting of terror, a
target of demands, or a target of attention, depending on whether
intimidation, coercion or propaganda is primarily sought.'
■ Thus the definition of terrorist has become “a group of two or more that was
established within a certain amount of time in order to exercise terrorist
actions.”
Definition of terrorism includes the following:

1. It is a strategy, not an ideology, a doctrine or a systematic idea.

2. It makes scenarios that legitimize terrorist actions.
3. It promises triumph and a new order.
4. It is a part of the international politics and cannot survive without
external help.
5. It begets, develops and continues with propaganda. It is a propaganda
itself.
6. It is an organized movement that offers an alternative way than that of
the government.
7. It performs drugs and arms trafficking to finance itself.
8. It can be seen as probe for rights, an order offering, a desire to found a new
government; either one of these or all of them with different levels of
effectiveness.
9. It contains deliberate and intentional actions.
10. It gradually makes usage of violence an aim.
It creates despair through fear.
11. It is sometimes used by other powers.
12. It creates and uses its own language.
13. It usually has a political purpose.
14. It requires an organized effort.
Historical Process of Terrorism

■ An Islamic sect known as the “Assassins” between the years 1090 and
1272 had used similar tactics in their fight against the Crusaders.
■ Assassins respected the notion of martyrdom that is frequently seen in
some Islamic terrorist groups.
■ Until the French Revolution, religion has been used as a frame for the
exercising of terrorist actions.
■ In the 1800s, the notion was developed with the rise of anarchism,
nationalism, Marxism and secular ideas, which would inform the people
about the inequities they suffer, gain support for revolutions and
eventually take down the kingdoms.
■ After the Second World War, terrorism has returned to its revolutionary
tides.
■ During the 1940s and 1950s, it was used to define the violence by local
nationalist and anti-imperialist organizations in Asia, Africa and Middle
East against the modern European hegemony.
■ Since the 1960s, international terrorist actions are performed frequently
enough to promote terrorism in global agenda.
■ Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, terrorism gained ideological
motivation.
■ Terrorists started to use ideological principles to legitimize their
actions.
■ These groups started to pose an international form of threat after the
September 11 attacks.
The Wave Phenomenon
 David C. Rappaport's groundbreaking work on the history of terrorism: four
waves of modern terrorism
 A fifth wave was added later.

The First Wave

o The ‘Anarchist Wave’ was history’s first global terrorism experience: 1880- 1920s
o Modern terror began in Russia in the 1880s. Within a decade it appeared in
Western Europe, the Balkans, and Asia
o Perpetrators: known as revolutionaries
o Target: high officials
o Began with the assassination of Czar Alexander II in 1881
o This event led to a series of assassinations and assassination attempts of leaders
throughout the world.
The Second Wave: Anti-Colonial Wave

o Began in the 1920s after the Treaty of Versailles and lasted about forty
years
o Anti-colonial seemed more appropriate as it explained their purpose:
freedom-fighting
o The ‘new’ language became attractive to potential political supporters
o Media also adopted and popularized this concept
o Target: colonial administration
o Tactics: financial support of diaspora communities (bank robberies were
less common); few assassination (as first wavers failed); only Lehi (the
British called it the ‘Stern Gang’) remained committed to assassination
as the principal tactic;
The Third Wave: New Left Wave

■ From 1965-1990
■ The beginning of the Vietnam war; America’s defeat rekindled hope
that the world system can be challenged!
■ In the Third World and the West
■ Western groups such as the American Weather Underground, the
German Red Army Faction, the Italian Red Brigades, the Japanese Red
Army, and the French Action Directe claimed to be vanguards for the
masses in the Third World
■ The Soviet world encouraged with moral support, training, and
weapons
■ The Arab defeat in the Six Day War (1967): only terror could destroy
Israel
■ Latin America: Che and Castro
■ Tactics: use of women as leaders and fighters (being restricted to the
role of messengers and scouts in the Second Wave).
■ Taking hostages: Planes were often hijacked to secure hostages; hostages
were seized in other ways too.
■ Kidnapping: Kidnappings occurred in seventy-three countries, especially in
Italy, Spain, and Latin America
■ From 1968 to 1982 there were forty-nine international kidnapping incidents
involving nine hundred and fifty-one hostages
■ Assassination: The abandoned practice of assassinating prominent figures
was revived
■ The term ‘international terrorism’ was revived
■ International solidarity among terrorist groups
■ Different national groups worked together in attacks, such as the Munich
Olympics massacre (1972), the kidnapping of OPEC ministers (1975), the
hijackings of an Air France flight to Uganda in 1976 and a Lufthansa plane
to Somalia in 1977
■ State-sponsorship is a key characteristic
■ The US became a favorite target of most groups
■ The Third Wave began ebbing in the 1980s
■ Revolutionary terrorists were defeated in one country after another
■ The UN’s role changed dramatically
■ ‘Freedom Fighter’ was no longer a popular term in UN debates
■ The word ‘terrorism’ was even used in the title of documents, such as the
‘International Convention for the Suppression of Terrorist Bombing’
(1997)
The ‘Fourth Wave’: Religious Wave

■ From 1980s—till present

■ The early aim was to establish secular states; now religious states are
the object
■ The wave has reshaped the international system profoundly
■ The audience is no longer the “people” but the God
■ At the heart of the discussion: Islamic Terrorism; often misinterpreted
as fundamentalism
Fundamentalism

■ If the teachings of Islam are studied, it would be clear that the best
Muslims are fundamentalists. The fundamentals of Islam are based on
peace.
■ The term fundamentalism directly confronts the understanding of Islam,
as Islam is about following the fundamentals taught in the Quran and
Hadith
■ The instructions of the Quran clearly say that there should come no
medium between God and His creations
■ influential scholars continue to use the term ‘fundamentalism’ in
relation to Islam, arguing that the term can relate to two distinct
perspectives:
o Islam as a religious belief, and
o Islamic fundamentalism as a politicization of religion
Religious Terrorism

■ Major groups in Lebanon, Egypt, and Algeria have persisted for over
two decades
■ Hamas (Harakat al-Muqawamah al-Islamiyya—Islamic Resistance
Movement), Hezbollah (the Party of God), the Palestinian Islamic Jihad
and the Pakistani Jihadist Network, principally led by Lashkar e Taiba
(LeT), Jaish e Mohammed (JeM), Harkat ul Mujahideen (HuM) and Al
Shabaab, Al Qaeda and IS
■ Christian terrorism emerged based on racist interpretations of the Bible.
■ Neo-Nazis in Europe
■ Tactics: mass murder; Tokyo subway attack (March 20, 1995)
■ Lone wolf or leaderless resistance: Oklahoma City Bombing (195
killed)
Fifth Wave of Terrorism: A Theory, a Conundrum and a
Dilemma

■ The Khmer Rouge served as the early avatar of the fifth wave
■ Radicalized and break away from established terrorist wave
■ Born of hope expressed at the extremes: some emerge after all
hope has been lost, others because the dream has been realized
■ Social exclusion/ socio economic deprivation
■ Physical withdrawal into wilderness areas
■ Claim to establish some form of a new calendar ('the Year Zero')
Contemporary Challenges: New Terrorism

■ Unholy trinity of crime, terror and corruption.

■ This is the age of new terrorism, due to the impact of globalization: Radically
different.
■ Using the technological advances in communication, these groups can easily
contact and operate.
■ “the crossroads of radicalism and technology”
■ The new terrorists are supposed to be dedicated to causing the largest possible
number of casualties among their enemies.
■ Orlando shooting; Bastille Day attack at Nice
■ Walter Laqueur, “The new terrorism is different in character from the old, aiming
not at clearly defined political demands but at the destruction of society and the
elimination of large sections of the population”
■ The contemporary terrorists are also thought to be significantly more inclined
than traditional secular groups to use WMD
■ Fanaticism rather than political interests is more often the motivation now;
questionable if they are even entirely religious in nature
New World Order and Terrorism

“The guerrilla wins if he does not lose. The conventional army loses if it does not
win”. —Henry Kissinger

■ Terrorism was successful in some little and underdeveloped countries

where democracy has not yet been fully established, and this fact
encouraged other states, thus widening the area of terrorism.
■ Terrorism is a response to the whole world by unsatisfied groups who
think that developed states are selfish and avoiding to make a fair
distribution system.
■ Terrorism is a possible organized response to the observed situations of
poverty, but as it is said, it is not the only response.
■ The new world order is intertwined with terrorism and has been parallel
to the collapse of the bipolar system, resurgence of globalism and rise
of Islamic radicalism.
The IT revolution and the development of terrorism

■ IT facilitates access to sensitive information of interest to terrorist

groups
■ IT allows terrorist groups to spread their ideology and facilitates
recruitment
■ Cyberspace experts now talk of a “virtual caliphate” of some 4,000 pro-
Al-Qaeda websites, blogs, and chat rooms disseminating jihadist
messages or propaganda.
■ These are used for training; recruitment; disseminating tactics,
techniques, procedures; financing (through Internet pay sites); and
garnering support.
■ Increased access to these technologies has so far not resulted in their
widely feared use in a major cyberterrorist attack: In Dorothy
Denning’s words, terrorists “still prefer bombs to bytes.”
■ Activists and terrorist groups have increasingly turned to
“hacktivism”—attacks on internet sites, including web defacements,
hijackings of websites, web sit-ins, denial-of-service attacks, and
automated email “bombings”.
■ Attacks that may not kill anyone but do attract media attention, provide
a means of operating anonymously, and are easy to coordinate
internationally.
■ Globalization makes CBNR weapons increasingly available to terrorist
groups and Information needed to build these weapons has become
ubiquitous, especially through the internet.
■ Terrorist organizations are broadening their reach in gathering financial
resources to fund their operations.
■ Sources of financing include legal enterprises such as nonprofit
organizations and charities (whose illicit activities may be a small or
large proportion of overall finances, known or unknown to donors);
■ legitimate companies that divert profits to illegal activities (such as bin
Laden’s large network of construction companies); and
■ Illegal enterprises such as drug smuggling and production (e.g., the
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia—FARC), bank robbery,
fraud, extortion, and kidnapping (e.g., the Abu Sayyaf group,
Colombia’s National Liberation Army, and FARC).
■ The transit of bars of gold and bundles of dollars across the border
between Afghanistan and Pakistan as U.S. and allied forces were
closing in on the Taliban’s major strongholds is a perfect example.
IT can be used by governments as a counterterrorism and intelligence
instrument

o IT can help in the prevention of terrorist attacks: law enforcement and

intelligence services rely heavily on the surveillance of electronic
communications and Internet use to identify significant patterns of
behavior among suspected groups or individuals.
o IT can help security services detect an imminent terrorist attack .
o The collection and rapid analysis of intelligence through electronic
means can prove critical in detecting and attributing planned terrorist
attacks.
o The use and protection of IT are crucial in mitigating and managing the
consequences of a terrorist attack.
Dilemmas

Governments and decision-makers are confronted with the following

dilemmas:
1) How to prevent the spread of information useful to terrorists and at the
same time promote the dissemination of information needed for public
awareness and preparedness;
2) How to reconcile some control of means of communication with freedom
of speech, which can be abused to promote violence, racial hatred, or
religious intolerance;
3) How to strike the proper balance between the need to preserve privacy
and efficiency in counterterrorism; and
4) How to strike the right balance between electronic and human
intelligence as a source of information in countering terrorism.
Concluding Remarks

o Terrorism is a by-product of broader historical shifts in the international

distribution of power in all of its forms— political, economic, military,
ideological, and cultural.
o Terrorism that threatens international stability, and particularly U.S.
global leadership, is centered on power-based political causes that are
enduring: the weak against the strong, the disenfranchised against the
establishment, and the revolutionary against the status quo.
o At times of dramatic international change, human beings grasp for
alternative means to control and understand their environments.
o Current trends of widening global disparities: coupled with burgeoning
information and connectivity continues, are likely to accelerate.
o Terrorism is an unprecedented, powerful nonstate threat to the
international system that no single state, regardless of how powerful it
may be in traditional terms, can defeat alone, especially in the absence
of long-term, serious scholarship engaged in by its most creative minds.