Introduction: Terrorism is an extremely complex and diverse phenomenon given how different the causes and perspectives of right-wing, nationalist-separatist, social revolutionary and religious fundamentalist terrorists, it should come as no surprise that the psychologies of these types of terrorism differ as much as their motivations. Thus, there is not a ‘one size fits all’ explanation. The leadership, followers, the group and organizational dynamics, as well as the decision patterns differ from group to group. And while psychology plays a crucial role in understanding terrorism, to comprehend this complex phenomenon fully requires an inter-disciplinary approach, incorporating knowledge from political, historical, cultural, economic, ideological and religious scholarship.
However expertise and researchers are finding difficulties to define the term security, terrorism and its spectrum specially post cold war in the age of globalization. The nature of terrorism has been changing rapidly and steadily since the end of the Cold War. Many factors are driving this change, including the erosion of national borders, the increasing ease of travel and the revolution in technology.
Terrorism may be defined as the calculated use of unexpected, shocking, and unlawful violence against noncombatants (including security personnel in peaceful situations) and other symbolic targets perpetrated by a clandestine members of a sub-national group or a clandestine agent or religious group for the psychological purpose of publicizing a political or religious cause and/or intimidating or coercing a government(s) or civilian population into accepting demands on behalf of the cause. Unable to achieve their unrealistic goals by conventional means, terrorists attempt to send an ideological or religious message by terrorizing the general public. Through the choice of their targets, which are often symbolic or representative of the targeted people or nation, terrorists attempt to create a high-profile impact on the public of their targeted enemy or enemies with their act of violence, despite the limited material resources that are usually at their disposal. In doing so, they hope to demonstrate various points, such as that the targeted government(s) cannot protect its (their) own citizens, or that by assassinating a specific victim they can teach the general public a lesson about espousing viewpoints or policies antithetical to their own.
An Insight Look: With the change of global power from ‘state’ to ‘individual business companies’ specially after cold war, the world politics is no more dictated by any individual state so called super power. Now the international security and threats are perceived and also defined by the business giants. Instead of human rights, democracy, education and other basic human needs the religious extremism is the say of day. The truth is the international political leaders have become powerless and symbolic than ever before. The age of globalization and capitalization has flooded the world politics, ideology and rational thinking. There are no say except capitalism. All other ideology or so called ism is clinically dead. Now the unknown question is why the religion and so called produced religious extremist could become the interest of the day.
Terrorism is not a phenomenon unique to the modern era. Viewed from a historical perspective, examples of terrorist behaviour started in first century. The Jewish Zealots conducted a campaign of terror against the Romans in the first century A.D.; a Shia Muslim sect known as the Hashshashin, which gave us the English word “assassin,” systematically murdered those in positions of leadership and influence in the eleventh century. Modern terrorism as we know it began in the early 60s marking the beginning of international terrorist incidents. Since the early 1990s, secular terrorists have given way to religious nationalists attacking own and foreign citizens. Terrorism today is complex and fluid, with reduced emphasis on a formalized group structure typical of terrorist insurgents in the past. This is particularly true of Islamic extremist groups. Individual terrorists are now more security-conscious, better funded and more resourceful than in the past. Equally worrisome, they are also less predictable and less tied to one group. It is seen that they are not as hesitant as previously about forging alliances of convenience with other factions or even with rivals, in pursuit of world or regional terror.
Now the question often asked - is there a difference between the violence associated with religious identity as opposed to religious ideology? Because the religious worldview at times is a totalizing one, issues of identity and ideology are often merged, which is really dangerous for social and religious harmony. When traditional norms, social patterns and identities are threatened, people are ripe for conversion to new radical ideologies based on religion or nostalgia for a glorious, mythic past or promised future. Ideologies derived from Islamic principles are powerful because, for traditional people in Muslim societies, religion covers all aspects of life and gives meaning, counsel and justifications for action. Similarly, Jihadist doctrine helps Islamist militants connect with marginalized people throughout the Muslim world.
Acts of religious terrorism are not always, but certainly have been, rebellions against the secularization of state and society, the excesses of modernity and globalization. The critique is often in terms of the failures of modern states and societies and with that the loss of religious identity and values. A question that must be addressed is the role of religion. Religious doctrine, in our view, is a ‘tool of mobilization’ or a justification for terrorism rather than a direct cause. For example, discontent with the political and economic status quo leads to support for radical religious groups. Most wanted terrorist in the history ‘Osama Bin Laden’ and his organization Al Qaeda possibly will remain a subject matter of study for security experts for long time to come. But the damage to a religion’ Islam’ and costing of world peace and stability can never be compensated by money. The attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were two of the most significant events in history of escalating terrorist violence over the past decade. According to data published by the US State Department, there were 346 international terrorists’ attacks during the year 2001, including some 3,547 casualties; the highest annual death toll from terrorism ever recorded. Until the September 11, 2001 attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, however, the figures for 1998 remain the highest on record. In that year, 741 were killed and 5,952 injured.
Responsible Factors for rise of Terrorism in South Asia .The danger of terrorism lies in almost all states of South Asia due to ethnic discontent, religious fanaticism and intransigence groups that transcend national boundaries. The following factors further aggravate the existing environment:
Political Exploitation and Use of Religious Fanaticism: Political leaders often exploit political tensions and conflicts to get electoral mileage or to rehabilitate themselves and their parties. All over South Asia, political leaders are showing a shared proneness to keep tensions and conflicts alive if these can be used to share up political gains. Most dangerous attempt is to find out the political solutions in religion based fantasy. Political leaders of the region are failing at times to understand the fact that ‘Religiosity itself is no more a wanted cause of political radicalism’. Appeals to religion are likely to be a way of framing or representing a struggle in terms that a potential constituency will understand rather than the determinants of a strategic choice.
Social Injustice: Racial discrimination, humiliation and exploitation are identified to be other causes of terrorism in the region. The communist terrorism in India in 1954 was to end poverty and exploitation. The insurgencies in Nagaland, Mizoram, Manipur and Tripura were caused mainly by the humiliation inflicted on the tribal by exploiting traders from the plains. In Sri Lanka, successive governments have shown discrimination against the Indian Tamils. In true sense, the ethnic problem appears to have economic rather than cultural roots. As such, economic and social deprivation ultimately leads to ethnic conflict. Tamils experienced the same in Sri Lanka. Sinhalese who constitute over 70% of Sri Lankan population, obviously disliked the privileged Jaffna Tamils, and as such evoked the principal of ethnic ratio in the distribution of national resources and opportunities. This meant that Tamils were to share only 12% of national wealth according to their population ratio, a drastic cut in government opportunities, trade and economy. Similarly, Chakmas in CHT with high literacy rate of 56%, aspire too high a share despite government's policy of quota system.
Neighbor’s Interference. The region is quite susceptible to potential trans-border ethnic tension and conflicts. There always exists fear of intervention in terms of economy, culture, politics and security of one by the other. Indian perception for Pakistan hand in Punjab and Kashmir has been viewed to be a glaring example. Similarly Tamil Militants of Jaffna have turned themselves towards India to succeed in achieving their goals of "Eelam". Bangladeshi ism generated by Pakistanis since liberation about India of a big brother attitude and its interpretation by Indians politicians at times work as suspicion in the mind of Bangladeshis about improving bilateral relation in different unresolved issues.
Threat Environment in Bangladesh: The security threats prevailing in Bangladesh at present exposed all the potential elements of developing full scale terrorism by any opportunist interested group are:
a. Political Instability, indiscriminate non idealistic polarization in politics
b. Political exploitation leading to political tensions and conflicts to get electoral mileage.
c. Use of Bangladeshi land as drug, arms, ammunitions smuggling /trafficking route by international terrorists groups.
d. Open border due to territorial disadvantages in the east and south east. ( Sylhet-Chittangong Hill Tracts- Cox Bazar) . Eventually insurgents of seven sister states of India and terrorists of Myanmar are using the area as sanctuary for shelter, hiding and at times for training.
e. Attempts of politicians to find out the political solutions in religion based fantasy. Religiosity itself is no more a wanted cause of political radicalism.
f. Insurgency in Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) & Underground political activities in the South West.
h. Political Hartal/Strikes due to lack democratic cultures give scopes for epitome evil brains to be involved in antisocial activities.
i. Corruption and undue political influence on governmental machineries.
Counter measures to combat growing terrorism in Bangladesh. Countering terrorist activity very much depends on the collection, analysis and dissemination of information and intelligence and on cooperation between jurisdictions, levels of government. Counter-terrorism starts with a political structure, a responsible civil administration and a cohesive security apparatus including the paramilitary, police, intelligence, armed forces, and a judicial system geared to meet the requirements. It thus includes both preventive and remedial measures to control. Firstly identifying the issue and developing national consciousness among political leaders. The root of success of any crime prevention, counter terrorism campaign is lying in political consciousness and solutions rather than using force in indiscriminate fashion by government alone. The political approach must be adopted at early stage before it gets a shape of full scale terrorism.
Government should reform and restructure the intelligence organizations for effective and proactive intelligence. Some intelligence organization may be dedicated to deal with only serious crime and terrorism activities. They should be allowed to work for investigative works on crimes, terrorism more instead of political nursing or gaming. We do not have the luxury of using the intelligence organization for unspecified jobs as was first done by Gen Ershad modeling like developed countries. Our intelligence agents especially at root level should be trained on psychology and IT based investigation, surveillance, crime preventions and on counter terrorism. Launching anti terrorists squad at different security operators is also a requirement of the day. Most importantly specifying job definition of different discipline and effective coordination among the security operators is a must for preventive measures.
Reform of Police: The mother organization of law enforcing agencies of any country is police. There is a famous saying ‘Civilization looks through the activities of ‘Law Enforcement Agencies of a Nation’. Many say police is the explosive dealers of human behavior in the eye of law. The sustainable success and growth of any LEA (Law Enforcement Agency) depends on its human resource .Reforming organization structure, human resource development, management, training, motivation and modernization of police is the need of the time. To start the process, influencing and using the security operators by political parties must be stopped to remove the signals of dark days ahead. A statement of Machiavelli, an old day’s scholars is very important for counter terrorism campaign. Centuries ago Machiavelli warned, "When trouble is sensed well in advance it can easily be remedied; if you wait for it to show itself, any medicine will be too late because the disease will have become incurable”.
Security Awareness: Security cycle can not be completed one without the awareness of general mass .Because understanding of security is a requirement for all but the providing service is the professional’s job. Some think tankers of old days found a relevancy in compulsory military/security training for all as a solution which was proved to be wrong and non cohesive to democracy in many countries. Security awareness or assistance in gaining recognition that crime prevention is everyone's responsibility is the key to success for sustainable security. The understanding and mixing up of community policing with the security awareness in third world countries is an impracticable concept. Police or government machineries usually remain busy with preventing and combating ever growing crime and terrorist activities. So in developed countries the community awareness programme normally comes from the private sector supported by government machineries.
It should encourage the community and security professionals to be more intentional in the fight against crime and influences two related phenomena - the probability that a crime will occur and the public's perception of community safety. What is the secret to awareness program? Designs program that eliminates or reduces criminal behavior and at the same time encourages people to "keep an eye out" for each other. The programme may be developed basing on the requirement of different sectors of life :1) Community or residential awareness program for city corporation/ Pourashavas 2) Under developed community in cities 3) Villagers 4) Religious educational centers- students, teachers of Madrasha, Moktab, Imams of Mosque) 5) Educational centers(High school and College level) 6) Corporate awareness program 7) Industry(labor) awareness program 4) Hotel and motels 8) Transport owners, employees, travelers and communication centers 9) Banking sectors 10) Hospital/Clinic 11) Associations/clubs 12) Special program for justice department 13) International organizations and Embassies14) Awareness for political parties 15) Electronic and print medias
The influencing group of society like political leaders, elites, community leaders, teachers, students, spiritual leaders, journalists ,writers, educationist, economists, business figures, private security professionals, security experts etc is required to be efficient to develop rapidly changing new indigenous tactics and techniques of security awareness program applicable for a particular society .The level of awareness on security to be developed will vary with the security threat, perception and criminology of a specific location which changes with time and culture. For example a school teacher should have knowledge on basic security need of a school premises and be able to motivate his students about the bad effect of being indulged in anti social activities. In third world countries business people has to start the process by ensuring training of own executives, employees on corporate security awareness and industrial crimes. It does not mean employing some private security guards or using some devices to ensure only his business equity. To counter the trend of religious based terrorism and security threat, the religious, spiritual leaders, teachers of religious educational institutions must be brought under the awareness programme by both private and public sector. Reforming and modernizing of religious educational system is a prerequisite for the purpose. And then the media can play the most vital role in promoting security awareness. The role of media in security awareness programme should not be limited only to figure out the criminals or terrorists. Again asking the pen and cameras of media flashing back the insight of ‘black world’ found unrealistic and at times risky affair in third world countries where freedom of press itself is under threat. But the language of pen remains the most deterrent lethal weapon which can be used against criminals and terrorists.
Security Education: The first major challenge that has been discussed since the 1960s relates to the professionalizing of security services. What this exactly means is difficult to define as different culture and nations have different interpretation of what a professional security officer should comprise of. However, privatization started influencing security organizations in recent years especially in out sourcing technology and human resources. Though there was always an old practice in security doctrine that ‘strategy is the issues of policy makers and tactics is the business of armed forces generals and usually the policy makers were coming from the private sector. Now the researchers are trying to find out the answers of requirement for IT and psychology based security human resource development for both policy makers and the leaders of external and internal security organizations. Today in the age of globalization and openness the question of privatizing security education comes up as a part of socioeconomic development to aid security operators with the input of skilled human resource, technological support and most importantly to grow security awareness among the general mass. In many of the developed countries different specialized and researchable subjects like security management, intelligence, investigation, criminology, military science etc are opened as subjects of educational institutions. Edith Cown university of Australia, IPSA,ASIS,SITO, ARC, Caltrop, Cambridge university of UK, university of Phonics, Boston, Walden, Jones, Bellevue, FMU, Colorado, TIU of USA, SMA of Singapore etc have separate faculties on security education.
Now the question of determining the security subjects required to be privatized and the level of awareness to be developed will vary with the security threat and perception of specific country/location. Traditionally, we have approached the crime after-the-fact. The prevention of crime, terrorism is not only missing because of its unpredictable nature. But the attitude, motivation and management of security forces are factors preferring to ‘combat crimes rather than prevention of crime’. Unfortunately, we are yet to realize that law enforcement agencies alone cannot stop ever increasing crime and terrorism with out the participation and input from private sector.
Security Management The success of any security organization lies with management of security system/networks. History and research shows in modern days running security management cannot be left with a pyramided single head scalar chain. In USA police department is considered as home land security force and is run by state ‘s secretariat of home land security but the FBI basically an investigative organization working with intelligence, investigation, anti terrorism and other security operation is working under justice department. In UK MI5 of defence ministry, an intelligence organization also works for internal security like crime detection, anti terrorism, intelligence. For both the cases a separate strategic national level council is running the management and doing the job of coordination between different security services. And at the same time separate state or regional crisis management committees work to deal with safety or security breaches. A parliamentary committee (for both defence and home ministry) with active power may act as supreme regulatory body for the security issues in our country. Under them a national committee consisting political leaders, educationist, security experts, researchers and representative from different relevant sectors may work out the requirement of inputs for both public and private security sectors and other security issues. Again in peace time super imposing regulating think tanks like ‘Security Council’ concept is a risky affair especially in third world countries where democracy is in fragile condition.
Conclusion CPTED (Crime prevention through environmental design) concept of security fosters the use of technology to create security layers but strongly reminds you ‘Human bodies even the dogs are found best watchers or detectors if trained properly’. Robot cannot replace human brain completely in security, protection and crime prevention. Comprehensive security network, system requires ‘psychology and modern IT based’ human resource development and management both for public and private security sector. The modern basic ingredient of internal security human resource development ‘quality people with motivation’, ‘Criminology’, ‘CPTED’, ‘Intelligence’ and Investigation seem still missing in our both public and private security forces . A complete change in attitude and privatization of security specialized subjects may help to develop a preventive and effective security system and human resources. But it is the awareness of general mass that will only allow the technology and whole security network to work effectively’.
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