Anger Is A Common Root Cause Of All Terrorism
Anger is a common root cause of all terrorism---ideological, ethnic, separatist, sectarian or religious. Terrorist organisations exploit the anger to motivate the members of the community from which they have arisen to support them in their acts of terrorism. Such support can be in the form of volunteers for committing acts of terrorism, contribution of funds, logistic support etc. Extreme anger in individuals can motivate them to resort to terrorism as individuals without their belonging to any organisation. Anger containment and ultimate reduction has, therefore, to be an important component of counter-terrorism.
2.Terrorists use the soft power of the media----old and new--- to keep the anger sustained and make it increase in order to maintain a high level of motivation. The role of soft power in counter-terrorism is to neutralise the motivation through anger containment and reduction. Use of disinformation is counter-produtive in counter-terrorism. For effective use of soft power in counter-terrorism, the causes of anger have to be identified and those, which are capable of being removed, have to be removed. Counter-terrorism itself often adds to the prevailing anger through disproportionate use of force, serious violation of human rights etc. These are tactical causes of anger and can be easily removed through corrections in the counter-terrorism techniques.
3. It is more difficult---often impossible--- to remove strategic causes of anger. As examples of such strategic causes, one could mention Al Qaeda's anger over historic wrongs allegedly committed to the Muslims. The objective of the soft power has to be to explain to the community supporting terrorism the untenability of such causes and wean the community away from terrorism---whether by organisations or by individuals. A mix of removal of tactical causes of anger through appropriate correctives in counter-terrorism operations and explanation of the untenability of the strategic causes is required if the...
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