People said the attacks in the US 18
\nyears ago would change the world. Almost 3,000 people, including Romanians,
\nwere killed after 19 members of the Al Qaeda network hijacked four passenger
\nplanes on the 11th of September 2001. The attacks were considered
\nthe bloodiest in history and the actions to combat terrorism are far from being
\nover. The attacks revealed vulnerabilities and changed international politics.
\nThe Romanian army general Decebal Ilina looks at the circumstances in which the
\nattacks took place in an interview to Radio Romania:<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
\n
\n
<\/p>\n
Terrorism is based on the element
\nof surprise. The first line of defence in the fight against terrorism is
\nrepresented by the intelligence services and it turned out that the
\nintelligence services, although they had the data, were unable to verify and
\ninterpret them. They also had many clues that could have led them to the idea
\nthat an attack against the United States was being planned, but out of naivet\u00e9
\nand for other reasons, they did not act when they should have. The only good
\nthing that came out of this was that an international coalition of intelligence
\nservices was created in order to combat terrorism, which means that information
\nis being exchanged and which is a very important thing because each can
\ncontribute certain elements in establishing certain details that can combat
\nterrorist actions. But looking at how the United States acted, it proved
\ntotally unprepared. From my point of view, history teaches nothing to no one,
\nbut punishes those who haven’t learnt its lessons, in this case failing to take
\ninto account the fact that so many acts of terrorism had taken place in the run
\nup to 9\/11.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
\n
\n
<\/p>\n
Defined as an unconventional combat
\ntactic, terrorism is based on causing a general state of panic and
\nintimidation, enhanced by the manipulative use of the media, in order to
\nachieve a goal that is otherwise hard to achieve through democratic and
\nconventional means. In the opinion of Decebal Ilina, for all the international
\nefforts to combat this scourge, including the creation of an anti-terror
\ninternational coalition led by the United States, mankind is still far from
\nfinding a solution to reduce the threat of terrorism:<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
\n
\n
<\/p>\n
Terrorism has been around since
\nancient times. Throughout this period, the international community has focused
\non combating the effects of these cases of terrorism and less or not at all on
\ncombating the causes. For people are not born terrorists, women don’t give
\nbirth to terrorists, but to free children, to free human beings. These people
\nbecome terrorists because of conditions, the environment in which they live. I
\nbelieve this world could be much better if we replaced these bellicose actions,
\nwar, with diplomacy. I believe president Trump is doing the right thing by
\nengaging in dialogue and considering the withdrawal of American troops from
\nmost conflicts initiated by his predecessors.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
\n
\n
<\/p>\n
Statistics showed a few years ago
\nthat the number of terrorist attacks was on the rise, with most attacks taking
\nplace in South-East Asia, the Middle East, North Africa and western Europe, in
\nFrance and Belgium. The Institute for Economics and Peace in Sydney centralised
\nthe data for 2014, for example, which show that more than 32,000 people were
\nkilled in attacks, 80% more than in the previous year. The countries most
\naffected by terrorism are Afghanistan, Iraq, Nigeria, Pakistan and Syria. More
\nthan half of the victims are blamed on the Islamic State and the Boko Haram
\nterrorist networks, the latter being an African terrorist group that operates
\nmostly in Nigeria. Al Qaeda was also still a threat to be taken seriously. The
\nnumber of the victims of terrorism diminished, however, considerably in the
\nworld in 2018. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
\n
\n
<\/p>\n
In an interview to Deutsche Welle, terrorism
\nexpert Matthew Henman explained the causes of this and why we shouldn’t be
\noverly optimistic. He said that between 2016 and 2017, the number of terrorist
\nattacks increased dramatically due to the clashes with the Islamic State over
\ncontrol of territories in Iraq and Syria, in the cities of Mosul and Raqqa as
\nwell as other regions. Matthew Henman says such fights over the control of
\nlarger urban settlements were no longer waged in 2018. He believes the drop in
\nthe number of attacks in Syria and Iraq were the most important factor
\ncontributing to the diminution of terrorist attacks in the world. This is
\nexplained first of all by the weakening of the Islamic State. It would be a
\ngrave mistake, however, Henman says, to believe that the Islamic State has been
\ndefeated. The threat still exists and the Islamic State terrorists are still
\nactive, not only in Iraq and Syria, but also Afghanistan, West Africa, Yemen,
\nSomalia and South-East Asia. Only the threat posed by the Taliban is close to
\nthat posed by the Islamic State. In 2018, the number of victims caused by these
\nextremists doubled compared with the previous year, and there were many victims
\namong the security forces in Afghanistan. Since the beginning of this year,
\nalmost 200 people were killed and some 900 wounded in terrorist attacks in
\nKabul alone. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Despite international efforts, mankind is still far from finding a solution to reduce the threat of terrorism.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":108,"featured_media":156152,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[43939],"tags":[29499],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-156151","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-future-starts-today","tag-terrorism"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n