Prior to the 1993 bombing of the Vista Hotel near the World Trade Centre complex in New York, the US had always downplayed the probability of international terror attacks on American soil (Kushner 3). This despicable attack took six lives, and more than a thousand people were injured. Before the attack, Many American authors had argued that the territory of the United States would remain relatively safe from terror attacks and they failed miserably in predicting the attack. The attack has led to an analysis of the chronological order of events that brought international acts of terror to the mainland US. This essay analyzes the political and social events that lead to the bombing including the evolution of roles played by terror groups and states in the promotion of international terrorism.
The Soviet Union was the first state to sponsor terrorism. In the 60s and 70s, many terror groups based in the Middle East sent their members to the Soviet Union for training in what was termed as low-intensity warfare which meant terrorism (Kushner 4). The Soviets hoped to engage in national liberation wars across the world indirectly by availing training for fighters and supplying weapons. By supporting the Middle East based terror groups in terrorizing Israel, the Soviet Union hoped to improve its image in the Arab World while eroding the image of the United States. The largest of these organizations was the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). Most Palestine terror organization had their members enrolled in the Patrice Lumumba University where the curriculum involved Marxism, handling Kalashnikov rifles and the art of making bombs. Specialized training, by the KGB, was available for the gifted students (Kushner 5). After the training, the graduate returned home to take leadership positions in their organizations, and most of them established their terrorism schools with the knowledge brought home from the Soviet Union.
The Soviet Union believed that terrorism was an indirect form of aggression which when used appropriately could be vital in political subversion (Kushner 5). It believed that systematic terror activities could undermine a society with the aim of causing chaos and anarchy as well as loss of faith in the government. The Soviets wanted to utilize terrorism to destabilize the West. The support offered by the Soviets Union had strings attached, and this caused resentment among the sponsored terror groups. It is this resentment that put the Soviets on the receiving end of terror attacks. The 1970 hijacking of a Soviet plane and the 1985 murder of a Soviet diplomat in Lebanon led to the Soviet Union's condemnation of terrorism, but it had already created monsters which could exist on their own. By 1990, the Soviet Union had already created a counter-terrorism plan.
The Persian Gulf War led to an increase in international terrorism incidents (Kushner 6). However, the US state department recorded a decrease in the increase in terror incidents attributed to a tactical mistake by Yassir Arafat of aligning with the Iraqis during the war. In the 1980s, Arafat, the leader of the PLO realized that he could not depend on donations from Libya and the Soviet Union to fund the operations of his terror organization. To maintain stability, he created alternative sources of finance which were believed to be protection fees from oil-rich Arab nations. It is approximated that Saudi Arabia and Kuwait contributed more than $130 million annually to the PLO. The tactical mistake of aligning with Iraq led to the shutdown of this cash flow and this lead to the largest financial crisis in the PLO since it was formed.
The crisis became more difficult to cope with when the oil cash flow was transferred to the PLO rival, another terror group called Hamas. Hamas was a militant group with a huge support among Palestinians in West Bank and Gaza (Kushner, 8) with leadership divided between people living in Palestine and other people living outside Palestine primarily in Damascus, Syria. The grouped aimed to fight the secularization of Islam and had its own schools, hospitals, and mosques which were weaponized to target Israel. It aimed to destroy the peace process led by the PLO, and it believed that the PLO was corrupted by the West.
Despite the growth of rival terror groups, internationally, PLO was viewed as the voice of the Palestine people with Yassir Arafat as its spokesperson. To protect his power at the helm of the PLO, Arafat surrounded himself with leaders of the military wing of the PLO. The assassination of his top military commanders in early 1990s led to the questioning of his leadership ability and it led to the defection of PLO members to rival groups such as the Hamas. In 1992, after some meditation, while recuperating from an accident, Arafat decided to seek peace with Israel. After the 1993 signing of a peace accord with Israel in the presence of the US, the opponents of Arafat vowed to use any means possible including violence to oppose the peace initiative with Israel (Kushner 10). There were fears that the opponents would target not only Israel but also the US.
As PLO was battling with Egypt, new militant organizations were being created with the aim of targeting the US. After the Iran revolution of 1979, the new leader Ayatollah Rohullah Khomeini started financing militants who were targeting the United States. More than ten years later, Sheikh Hassan Abdallah al-Turabi, after masterminding a coup in Sudan invited Muslim leaders in Khartoum with the aim of reconciling the bitter enmity between the Shia and the Sunni Muslims. The meeting was attended by several leaders of terror organizations and a war against the West was declared. In 1993, Sudan joined Iran on the US state department's list of state sponsors of terrorism. Sudan alongside Iran had developed several terrorist training camps in the Sudan's countryside and it also provided a safe haven for terrorists from the Middle East (Kushner 12).
However, the idea of terrorist training camps was not initiated in Sudan. It began more than ten years back when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. After the invasion, thousands of Islamic warriors from as far as Sudan, Algeria and even the US congregated in Peshawar, Pakistan to answer a call from Muslim clerics for jihad. The militants were trained and financed by the United States in an effort to punish the Soviet Union as the Cold War progressed (Kushner 13). The survivors of the war converted Afghanistan into the new haven for militants. Some of the veterans of the war returned to their home countries all over the Muslim countries where they set up training camps for militants. The men found guilty of bombing the Vista Hotel had been trained in the militants' camps in Afghanistan.
There is a new breed of terrorists which consist of terrorists from countries which have minority Muslim populations. These terrorists are carrying out acts of terror with an organized leadership. For example, Johannes Weinrich, a German citizen was extradited from Yemen to Germany to face charges over a terror attack on a French cultural center in Berlin (Kushner 14). The militants attend training camps in either Afghanistan or Sudan, and then they return home to plot terror attacks. The militants attending camps in Afghanistan were trained by people with better field experience who had the ability to use both American and Russian made weapons such as surface-to-air missile launchers.
The new students, unlike the Soviet-trained militants, are from poor backgrounds and believe Islam is their only way out of poverty. Their militancy is reinforced by Muslim clerics who use the Koran and hadiths to glorify death in the name of Allah. With this reinforcement, they become impeccable enemies in battle. These militants are less sophisticated and are willing to carry out attacks using readily available weapons such as handguns or knives (Kushner 15). They are also less organized thus it is difficult for law enforcement agencies to track, infiltrate and monitor them. In most cases, they avoid detection until they have committed an act of terror after which it becomes easy to apprehend them.
It is important for the government of the US to put enough contingencies to prevent terrorists from launching terror attacks from inside the US. As the training and the support infrastructure of the terrorists, so should the defense contingencies. With reported meetings of Islamic radicals in the United States, if unchecked they will create a force that will bring destruction upon the face of the United States. The number of state-sponsored terrorists in decreasing and they are being replaced by freelancers who have varying motivations. Proper monitoring will be required to prevent these freelancers from causing havoc in the US.
Work Cited
Kushner, Harvey W. Encyclopedia of terrorism. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage Publications, 2003. Print.
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