The Evolution of Terror

In the wake of the recent commemoration of the anniversary of 9/11, people of all races, ages, and religions reflected upon the impact that such a terrifying and interminable couple of hours on that fateful September morning had not on only on their lives but on the lives of the people around the world. Citizens of over 90 different countries perished in the attacks on the World Trade Center[1], and in one voice of global solidarity and unity, protests against the violence and memorials for those who had died took place from Madrid to Tehran to Islamabad and elsewhere across the Arab and non-Arab world alike. The global solidarity resulted from the backlash against the blatant violence and extremism of the attacks. With these assaults on the global financial and military centers (and the failed assault on the world’s political foci), an evolution in international terrorism and the changes that have taken place within these cultures of violence and radicalism can be observed from comparison with another fateful terrorist attack that took place this very month 31 years ago.

The Black September movement surely changed the course of history in the Middle East, and the ways in which political and social legitimacy was sought for many transnational movements and national liberation fronts. “Within the space of two hours on September 6, PFLP gangs hijacked a TWA jet, a Swissair jet, and made an unsuccessful attempt to seize control of an El Al airplane. About two hours later, another PFLP group hijacked a Pan Am jet and forced the crew to fly to Beirut airport, where the airplane landed almost out of fuel”.[2] In total, 5 airplanes carrying mostly westerners were hijacked and flown to a remote airstrip in the middle of the Jordanian desert. By no means was this the advent of international terrorism; this was the 12^th such hijacking since 1968 alone; however, “unlike previous ones,…this hijacking was a bold political statement. The terrorists who seized the El Al flight had done so with the express purpose of trading passengers they held hostage for Palestinian terrorists imprisoned in Israel.”[3] And they wanted the whole world to see it. They expressly demanded that reporters and photographers be there on sight to capture their moment.

What followed that afternoon was a combination of fearful intimidation and peaceful coexistence as reporters, the flight crew, the victims, and armed hijackers strolled around the Jordanian desert until the crisis had been resolved. It is interesting to note how in 1970, the terrorists sought to use airplanes as a tool to achieve a political end of a group who had felt themselves marginalize in the appendix of history, for many westerners knew very little or nothing of the plight of the Palestinians; whereas at the turn of the 21^st century, terrorists began to weaponize airplanes and use them not as strategic tools but as missiles to bring the greatest power on earth to its knees, if only for a single day. The Palestinians, “through the combination of dramatic political statement, ‘symbolic’ targeting, and crisis induced de-facto recognition,”[4] realized that they were able to create a major media event—especially one when innocent civilians were involved. And they would use this tactic two years later to address their grievances again, except this time the whole world would be watching.

Because of the rampant success of the September 7^th hijackings, the PLO recognized the value in creating terror and how to capture the world’s attention. They sought to do just that when on September 5^th, 1972, 11 Israeli athletes attending the Olympics in Munich were taken hostage and ultimately executed. While the whole world was watching their televisions expecting to see honest competition and nationalism at its fullest, instead every global media outlet was concentrating on the events unfolding between two ethnic nationalities that fought in a very small corner of the globe but had globalized their conflict so that the whole world would notice. It may not be coincidental then that 18 months after Munich, Yasser Arafat, the leader of the PLO, was invited to address the UN General Assembly, Palestine was given official observer status in the UN, and by the end of the 1970s, the PLO, a non-state actor, had more formal diplomatic relations with other counties (eighty-six) than did the established nation-state of Israel (seventy-two).[5]

So how has terrorism evolved? Well for one, it has transformed from being purely political means to an end to becoming an ideological phenomenon. The internationalization of terrorism started in the 1970s, and since then, hundreds of individual groups and actors have sought to redress their grievances, seek justice, wreck havoc, and most fundamentally cause terror. The weaponization of transportation has been a recent development that terrorists have sought to use in order to generate more terror. Such a psychological and sociological shift in the minds of the people who are committing these acts is apparent in their abject social responsibility. The terrorist attacks of the past decade from Madrid, to London, to New York all have resonated deeply and affected the civil societies of the respective countries and will fundamentally alter the way nation-states view the international community at large and the way in which they conduct anti-terror operations to make this world a safer place.

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[1] Walker, Carolee. “Five Year Rememberance Honors Victims from 90 Countries.” America.gov. 15 Sept 2010.

[2] Armed Conflict Events Database. “Black September in Jordan 1970-1971.” 15 Sept 2010

[3] Hoffman, Bruce. Inside Terrorism Columbia. New York. 2006

[4] McGuinn, Bradford. International Terrorism. University of Miami. 13 Sept 2010

[5] Hoffman, Bruce. Inside Terrorism. Pg. 70. Columbia. New York. 2006