Answer to Question #201540 in English for Wandile Prince Zul

Question

Considering the events of 9/11, the abduction of the Chibok girls in 2014, Westgate shopping mall attack in Nairobi in 2013 in two pages discuss how terrorism differs from other forms of violence in society.

For example, how is terrorism different from warfare? Different from criminal violence? Different from politics?

Answer 1

Terrorism refers to the unlawful use of force, violence, and intimidation to cause harm, kill mainly the civilians. It is for various reasons such as political wars, revenge against previous actions, and control of the power of an area. There are different types of terrorism classified by analysts: New Terrorism, state terrorism, dissident terrorism, religious terrorism, ideological terrorism, and international terrorism. Sub-classifications of accepted typologies include nationalist terrorism, ethnonational terrorism, and racial terrorism. Terrorist acts can cause ripple effects through the economy that have negative impacts. The most obvious is the direct economic destruction of property and lives. In addition, terrorism indirectly affects the economy by creating market uncertainty, xenophobia, loss of tourism, and increased insurance claims. Examples of terrorism acts in Africa include the events of 9/11, the abduction of the Chibok girls in 2014, and the Westgate shopping mall attack in Nairobi in 2013(Cainkar & Selod, 2018).

Acts of terrorism are intentional efforts to kill or seriously harm innocent people to affect other members of a group with which the immediate victims are identified. Usually, the aim is to terrorize and intimidate the other members as a means of achieving some political or broadly ideological goal. However, the objective might be different: it might, for example, On the night of 14–15 April 2014, 276 predominantly Christian female students aged from 16 to 18 kidnapped by the Islamic terrorist group Boko Haram from the Government Girls Secondary School at the town of Chibok in Borno State, Nigeria. Boko Haram's primary objective is the establishment of an Islamic State under Shariah law in Nigeria. Its secondary objective is the broader imposition of Islamic rule beyond Nigeria. They aim to terrorize civilians to send the signal to the government to inform them about their demands through abduction and killing civilians (Cainkar & Selod, 2018).

Terrorism is generally for specific targeted geographical areas; for example, Al Shabab targets Somaliland, Kenya, and Uganda specifically, while war can be for an unlimited geographical location, such as World wars I and II. Therefore, mainly, terrorism targets a specific jurisdiction. Secondly, the amount of damage caused by war cannot be estimated because it's always catastrophic. In contrast, the damage caused by terrorism attacks is valued since they usually target specific places such as malls, schools, and churches, among other populated areas. Thus, the damage is less catastrophic than the one done by wars, such as the bomb in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan during the second world war II (Asongu et al., 2018).   

Thirdly, terrorisms are intentional, and usually, hostilities are created within the target areas, while wars involve threats and hostilities between states and intensive use of warfare movements. It is hard to insure conflicts in insurance because the damage can be predetermined neither before nor after, and insurance companies shy away from such covers. Further, the calculation of premium is complicated. In terrorism, government, private companies, and individuals can take an insurance policy to safeguard if it happens (Asongu et al., 2018).

 

References

Cainkar, L., & Selod, S. (2018). Review of race scholarship and the war on terror. Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, 4(2), 165-177.

Asongu, S. A., Tchamyou, V. S., Asongu, N., & Tchamyou, N. P. (2018). Fighting terrorism in Africa: Benchmarking policy harmonization. Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, 492, 1931-1957.