TERRORISM, A NEW GLOBAL MENACE
Terrorism today is the
most widely used word, in fact it has become a fundamental relative term, as they
say ‘one man’s terrorist may be another man’s freedom fighter’, and it is on record
that the most celebrated Africa leader on earth Dr. Nelson Mandela was once
tagged a terrorist!
Who then is a
terrorist? And what constituted terrorist activities? the term” terrorism’’
comes from French terrorisme, from Latin: ‘terror’, “great fear”, “dread”
related to the Latin verb terrere, “to frighten” in fact the world terrorism
was first recorded in English language dictionary in 1798 as meaning
“systematic use of terror as a policy” terrorism is therefore not peculiar to a
particular tribe, race, or religion, it is a tactics employed by a wide range
of people in the history of the world, it exist among Jews, Christian, and
Muslim, terrorism abound among Communist, Conservative and Nationalist, it is a
strategy use by resistance movement as well as single issue activist.
Terrorism has grown
from a group of assassin, to a technologically driven terror network across the
world, it must be noted here that terrorism has been practiced by a broad array
of political organizations for furthering their objectives. It has been
practiced by right-wing and left-wing
political parties, nationalistic groups, religious groups, revolutionaries, and
ruling governments. An abiding characteristic is the indiscriminate use of
violence against non-combatants for the purpose of gaining publicity for a group, cause, or
individual and the assertion that Muslim is synonymous to terrorism is not only
sentimentally hypocritical but also intellectually myopic!
In recent time,
concentration is more on terrorism based on religion and majority turned blind
eye to state sponsored terrorism, the Boko haram issue was a study in how
authority terror can turn a knife and dagger terrorist to suicide bombers,
today all of us are potential target just because our leaders gave license of
terror to Nigeria police in 2009, all of us are now potential target of
sinister terrorist attack aim against the state.
Therefore, to curb this
monster not only in Nigeria but across
the world, we must realised the futility of curbing terrorism with terrorism,
we must engage in genuine non-violence approach to terrorism, provide quality
education that mould the mind on negotiation rather than violence, increase
intelligence and surveillance in most vulnerable area, and in case of cross
border terrorism, Secession of a territory to form a new sovereign state or
become part of a different state must be done in such a way that will
discourage dominance of territory or resources by ethnic groups, in which the economically
disadvantage part may turn to terror state.
Finally, the weaker of
men have shown in recent memory that the stronger of men are vulnerable when
terrorism is introduce, therefore now is the time to help build a new peaceful order,
we must not only celebrate the strong of men, but we must respect and
appreciate the weaker of men, otherwise the stronger of men will not sleep when
oppression has kept the weaker of men awake!
Adekunle Saka W
Secretary CDRP, Nigeria
26/9/2011
NB: Being an article
for publication in Federation of Ibadan student union UNAD CHAPTER 2011
magazine.
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