Editor in Chief: Moh. Reza Huwaida Friday, March 29th, 2024

Global Terrorism on the Rise

Is it the menace of deep rooted poverty, population explosion, hunger and illiteracy less than a hazard to the people of Afghanistan that the dilemma of terrorism, equally defecting the people of Afghanistan? This worst state depicts this piece of land, either choice or by design is pushed to the receiving end of evil plots –given the spread of terrorism turning into the most frightening of all. It’s factually undeniable that Terrorism has engulfed fewer criminals than multiplying innocent citizens.

At present terrorism have become a headache for federation and a nightmare for public and is one of the gravest problem the world faces. Though, it is a global issue but Afghanistan has to bear the brunt of it. Afghanistan and international communities’ war waged against insurgents sparked the fire of terrorism. We are facing war like situation against the terrorists. Terrorist acts like suicide bombings have become a norm of the day. On account of these attacks Afghanistan is suffering from ineffaceable loss ranging from civilian to economic. People have become numerical figures, blown up in numbers every now and then. Terrorists have not spared any place. Bazaars, mosques, educational institutes, offices, hotels, roadside no place are safe anymore.

The former report of US State Department is a self-evident account to escalating terrorist attacks and resulting casualties. The report unearths consequential statistics of terrorist attacks in the former year and the relative growth in these attacks in most of terrorist prone countries. The report counts 13,463 attacks in 95 countries in 2014 —up by a third from the year before — with Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan bearing the brunt of extremist violence. In total 32,727 people were killed compared to 17,800 in 2013, according to the figures prepared by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism. A further 34,700 people were injured. This report is an eye opener for policy makers, turning the world into a more insecure place to live than it was a decade earlier. 

One attributes this daunting situation to several factors which include social injustice, economic disparity, political instability, religious intolerance, external hands or international conspiracies and religio-political gains. A handful of people who have their vicious interests to fulfill have not only taken countless innocent lives on stake but also distorted the real image of Islam before the world through their heinous acts.

Terrorism is a problem which the world has been continuously facing for more than two-three decades but now has emerged as a global problem against which an internationally united battle has to be fought incessantly. Terrorism is an illegal and unlawful in nature with a purpose of creating fear and panic in the minds and psyche of people at large, to make the masses feel impotent and helpless, to discourage rational thinking and to lead to a reactionary tendency in the people. The very finding superimposes with the ground realities in some Muslim countries that faces the brunt of terrorist attacks –given the fact the so called Islamic Jihadists destined to let Islamic reign in the some if not whole of the world. In that pursuit they did not even spare their Muslim fellows.

The terrorist group of international fame Islamic State has surpassed Al-Qaida executing mass massacres and ruthless butcheries of people around the world. In addition it has also succeeded drawing great number of adherents from across the world –western countries in particular. The report finds Islamic fighters fuelled a huge spike in terror attacks last year with the global death toll soaring 81 percent in more than 1,100 assaults a month. The largest number of attacks was carried out by Islamic State militants, who unleashed 1,083 assaults last year as part of a deadly march across Iraq and Syria. In Iraq there were a total of 3,360 attacks in which almost 10,000 people died –almost a third of all those killed around the world in terror attacks. “The ongoing civil war in Syria was a significant factor in driving worldwide terrorism events in 2014,” the report said. The terrorist attack even affected Africa wherein Nigeria the militants of Boko Haram who has earlier declared affiliation with “IS” has killed 7,512 people in 662 attacks.

It is witnessed the terrorists resort to various ways to accomplish their goals like planting crude home-made bombs, hand-grenades or other explosives in a shopping centre or a crowded place like a bus stand or even a bus, train or airplane, kidnapping, assassination or hijacking. It may be because they want a regime to react or they intend to mobilize a mass support through fear, to eliminate opponents or enemies or to magnify their cause. Kidnappings also jumped by a third, with more than 9,400 people taken hostage, three times as many as in 2013. Ransoms have been used by both IS and al Qaeda as an effective way to raise money.

World leaders and Afghanistan elders should believe that global fairness, peace and human dignity is in the best interest of the global community and terrorism is the greatest menace to human race, thus must be curbed iron handed. The world must do more to restrain extremism and terrorism to alter the very environment from which these terrorist movements emerge. It is the time the world to ponder on transitory policies constituted, that furnishes the breeding ground of terrorism with terrorists, than curtailing, must be revised.