Despite the continued activities of some Marxist and Maoist groups in India, Nepal, the Philippines, Japan and some countries of Latin America, terrorism inspired by ideology is on the decline after the collapse of the communist state in the erstwhile USSR and other countries of East Europe.  

The major ideological terrorist groups of West Europe such as the Baader-Meinhof and the Red Army faction of the former West Germany, the Red Brigade of Italy, the Action Directe of France and the Revolutionary Communist Cells of Belgium have practically ceased to operate.  

In West Asia, the remnants of the multilateral terrorist network led by Carlos alias Michel have disappeared without a trace after the arrest in Sudan of Carlos and his detention in France and after the surrender to the German authorities of Carlos' No.2, the German Yohannes Weinrach alias Peter. Nothing is known of the Palestinian Ali (full name not known), who used to act as the No.3 of this network.  

Religion and ethnicity based terrorist groups, however, continue to be active. Their terrorism is not motivated by ideology. It is more an expression of anger over perceived injustices to minority religious and ethnic communities by the majority communities and a symbol of assertion of the feelings of separateness of the aggrieved communities.  

The expression of anger and the assertion of feelings of separateness have been motivated by various factors—the perceived neglect of the political and economic aspirations of the minorities, feelings of injustice by the majority communities and fears of danger to their culture from external influences.  

Amongst other causes, particularly in the case of trans-national Islamic terrorist groups, one could cite feelings of continued injustice towards the Palestinians, the outrage over the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s and the large-scale induction of Western troops—which are mainly projected as Christian troops—into the Gulf—particularly into Saudi Arabia where the holiest of the holy places of Islam are located--- during and after the Gulf war of 1991.  

The trans-national Islamic terrorists of today see no difference between the induction of Soviet troops into Afghanistan in the 1980s and of American troops into the Gulf in the 1990s. They view both as external interference to preserve the political and economic interests of external powers by preventing the weakening of the hold of the Soviet (in the case of Afghanistan) and Western-influenced/controlled local political and social elite.  

It is the feeling of Islam being in danger from the Soviet troops which galvanised the Mujahideen of Afghanistan and their external Islamic supporters such as the Arab mercenaries of Osama alias Osman Bin Laden. It is a similar feeling of Islam being in danger from the US troops in this region which is presently galvanising the Islamic extremist groups in various countries of the region and their external Islamic supporters such as Bin Laden.  

The apparent US hopes that its vigorous intervention in support of the Muslims in Bosnia and Kosovo would dilute the anger of the Muslims in the rest of the world—particularly in West Asia—are being belied. Islamic extremists of West Asia view the US intervention as an attempt to divert attention from what they perceive as its machinations in West Asia.  

Of all the religion-based groups, those based in Islam have thus been the most active and have shown a capability for sustained, spectacular actions not only inside the territory of the country in which they were born, but also outside. The networking and solidarity amongst the various Islamic extremist/terrorist groups continue to be strong and the various Afghan Mujahideen groups and their Arab fellow-fighters are still their major sources of inspiration and support.  

A new phenomenon of the 1980s and the 1990s was the appearance and aggravation of sectarian terrorism (the Sunni majority vs the Shia minority) in Islam in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Denominational terrorism within the same religious group (the Catholics vs the Protestants) was previously confined to Christianity in Northern Ireland. It has now afflicted Islam too—mainly in Pakistan and Afghanistan. In both these countries, it is the majority group (the Sunnis ) which took to terrorism against the minority group (the Shias), provoking the latter to retaliate in kind.  

The terrorism of the majority sect was provoked not by any political, economic, social or religious grievances, but by a determination to force the minority sect to accept the majority sect's interpretation of the religion's teachings and practices. This sectarian terrorism of the majority against the minority sect of the same religion has been even more ruthless than the terrorism of Islamic groups against Christians, Hindus and the Jewish people. While the number of successful international terrorist incidents has declined during this decade, the average number of casualties per successful incident has increased.  

While the decline in the number of incidents is due to the better training and capability of the counter-terrorism agencies and increased international co-operation against terrorism, the increase in the number of victims per incident could be attributed to the better training, expertise and weapons which had become available to terrorist groups from various States such as the US during the Afghan war, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Pakistan and Afghanistan which had not hesitated to use them to achieve their own national geo-political objectives.  

Despite international condemnation of State-sponsorship of terrorism, official agencies of Iran, Sudan, Pakistan and Afghanistan continue to assist various Muslim extremist groups—each for its own reason. While they have assisted other States in acting against ideological terrorist groups as seen from the Sudan's assistance to France in the arrest and deportation of Carlos, they have been chary of similarly acting against Islamic terrorists.  

The only exceptions to this were the assistance extended by the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) of Pakistan to the FBI of the US in the arrest and deportation of Ramzi Yousuf, wanted in the New York World Trade Centre bombing case, Mir Aimal Kansi, wanted for the assassination of two CIA officers, and some suspects in the recent bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzaniya.  

Another phenomenon of the 1990s has been the private sponsorship of terrorist groups by rich individuals (Example :Bin Laden) and private organisations in order to achieve their own agenda and the use by the State of such private organisations to help terrorist activities in other States without getting directly involved. A typical example is the Pakistani use of the Markaz Dawa Al Irshad (the Centre For Preaching) and its armed wing the Lashkar-e-Toiba (the Army of the Pure) in Kashmir and other parts of India.  

In addition to classical terrorist groups, irrational individuals or groups of individuals have shown a tendency to take to terrorism to give vent to their anger against the society or the Government. Typical examples would be the Aum Shinrikyo sect of Japan, which killed a number of innocent civilians through the use of the Sarin gas in March,1995, and the two US citizens, disgruntled against the Federal Government, who bombed the building housing the Federal offices in Oklahoma in April,1995.  

The terrorist groups of today have been able to constantly have the quality of their weapons and means of communication upgraded with the help of contributions from the prosperous members of their communities all over the world and their earnings from the narcotics trade. While counter-terrorism agencies have scored many spectacular successes in their ground action against terrorists, they have not had similar success in stopping the flow of funds to terrorists and in effectively controlling the use of narcotics to keep terrorism sustained.  

The Internet is proving to be a double-edged weapon. It has revolutionised means of communications and spread of knowledge. At the same time, the rapid spread of Internet even before the intelligence and other security agencies and their political masters have had time to understand the security implications of it and to equip themselves to deal with those implications has made the tasks of counter-terrorism agencies more difficult than in the past. 

Modern means of communications such as mobile telephones, the FAX instrument , the satellite telephone and the Internet, the mushrooming of public telephone booths and cyber cafes, the availability of mobile telephones for temporary hiring and the commercialisation of cryptography (the science of coding and decoding) have given the terrorists hitherto unimaginable scope for operational flexibility.  

A similar flexibility continues to be denied to intelligence and counter-terrorism agencies by outmoded laws regulating communications interception and the reluctance of society and the State, often under pressure from human rights groups, to update these laws to empower the agencies to deal more effectively with high-tech terrorism. The State and society unfairly expect high-tech terrorism to be tackled by low-tech counter-terrorism methods.  

The widespread dissemination by irrational elements through the Internet of details regarding the making of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) has placed at the disposal of terrorist and terrorism-prone irrational elements knowledge of such techniques.  

And the collapse of the USSR, the floating around without jobs of a large number of ex-Soviet scientists and the erosion of security measures in the WMD establishments of the former States of the USSR have given rise to fears of terrorist and irrational elements graduating one day to the use of WMD to intimidate States, Governments and societies. The use of the Sarin gas by the Aum Shinrikiyo of Japan and Bin Laden's justification, in his interview to the "Time" magazine ( January 13), of his search for WMD show that such a scenario can no longer be dismissed as far-fetched.  

How to equip the counter-terrorism agencies with the capability to deal with such an eventuality without its resulting in an excessive increase in counter-terrorism budgets and without creating an atmosphere of paranoia in civilian society is a question to which adequate attention has not been paid outside the US and Japan.  

The networking of the financial, economic, military, scientific and technological infrastructures of the world through computers has placed at the hands of computer-literate terrorists the means of causing considerable economic damage without having to penetrate the physical security infrastructure of establishments.  

This is called cyber-terrorism. The cyber-terrorists have a new class of high-tech mercenaries at their disposal. The mercenaries of the pre-cyber age came from other countries crossing international borders to wield arms on behalf of the terrorists for a monetary consideration. The hackers, the mercenaries of the cyber age, would be able to assist terrorists hiring their services for the disruption of the data, communication and public utility services networks of States without ever having to leave the territory of their country.  

International counter-terrorism co-operation has increased during this decade, but this has been mainly in the form of sharing of intelligence and aids in the investigation and prosecution of terrorist incidents. International co-operation through the pooling of operational expertise and resources for joint operations to penetrate terrorist networks is, however, lacking either due to political reasons or due to fears of one's own operational secrecy being compromised or both.  

Such co-operation is not easy to achieve. Intelligence and counter-terrorism agencies of the same State are often reluctant to co-operate with each other and to co-ordinate their operations. Any such co-operation at the international level is not for tomorrow. Till such co-operation is achieved, counter-terrorism efforts would continue to be stymied.  

B.Raman                                                           6-1-99 

(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat Govt. of India, and presently Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai)