The new breed of terrorism is as thoroughly modern as the most flexible andadaptive multinational company, writes Peadar Kirby.
Before the attacks in the US on September 11th, 2001 or the recent Madrid train bombs, experts were analysing the emergence of what they call a "new terrorism", entirely different from that of the Cold War era. Any effective response requires that its novelty be properly understood.
It is disturbing therefore to read the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Cowen, dismissing such terrorists as "these lunatics" or to read Dr Jonathan Eyal of the Royal United Services Institute in this newspaper last Saturday denying any distinction between Islamic and European terrorist groups. Both of these responses fail to understand that a globalised world is producing a new and qualitatively different form of terrorism.
For example, Prof Gus Martin of California State University, who has written extensively on new terrorism describes how al-Qaeda operatives have "repeatedly demonstrated meticulous planning, impressive patience, and dramatic effectiveness".
Furthermore, he quotes another expert who claims that such terrorists "would feel no compunction over killing hundreds of thousands if they had the means to do so".
No matter what one's views of such groups as Eta, the IRA, the ANC, the Salvadorean FMLN, the Filipino NPA, and many others labelled "terrorist" in the past, these never showed the inclination nor the ability to carry out the sorts of mass killing of innocent civilians that are becoming the hallmark of al-Qaeda attacks. Furthermore, all of these groups were linked to national causes.
Indeed, the term "terrorist" can deflect attention from the fact that such groups usually used violence to achieve political or ideological objectives, though many of them inflicted casualties on innocent civilians in doing so, and therefore at times sowed terror among the general population. Furthermore, during the Cold War era, groups using violence for political ends often got backing from governments on one or other side of the geopolitical divide.
The US aided such terrorist groups as the Contras in Nicaragua, or the Mujahideen fighting the Soviet forces in Afghanistan, while in Angola the Soviet Union and Cuba aided the MPLA against UNITA which was supported by the US and South Africa.
The new terrorism is, however, far more globalised, organised into cells throughout western Europe, Africa, the Gulf and parts of Asia. Attacks on the US were planned in Hamburg, while London has been described as the "world centre of terror". Disaffected Muslims have travelled from western Europe and north Africa for training in Afghanistan and other places, learning commands in English as part of their training so that they would be understood by victims.
The new terrorism lacks entirely the hierarchical structure of political groups during the Cold War era. Some experts use terms like "chain networks" or "hub-and-spoke networks" to capture the decentralised and far-flung nature of it while the role of leadership within the network is described as a "franchise", giving legitimacy and connections to otherwise isolated groups.
In these ways therefore, al-Qaeda is as thoroughly modern as the most flexible and adaptive multinational company, and it uses the potential of new communications technologies in very similar ways. It is as much a feature of globalisation as they are.
This is what makes it so much more difficult for intelligence services to monitor.
Globalisation provides more than the organisational forms of this new terrorism. Many commentators point out that the deep social polarisation and inequalities fostered by globalisation worldwide provide the breeding ground for terrorism's recruits. This is as true of young Muslims in western European countries as it is of the large youth population throughout north Africa and the Middle East.
Yet, if the objectives of violent groups in the Cold War era were primarily political, the new terrorism is much more religious in motivation. Those involved see themselves as being engaged in a struggle against good and evil with themselves as the righteous ones and their enemies as the infidel.
This world view is much more apocalyptic. As a result, the objectives of such terrorists are not primarily political, in the sense of overthrowing governments or changing their policies.
Rather, their actions are designed to inflict significant casualties and to terrorise or disrupt whole societies as part of what they see as a war on the West, and particularly on the United States. Despite the almost exclusive focus on Islamic groups at the moment, it is important to remember that there have been non-Islamic manifestations of this new terrorism. In Japan, the Aum Shinrikyo cult gassed the Tokyo underground in 1995 with the nerve gas sarin, while in the US the Michigan Militia, linked to fundamentalist Christian groups, planted a bomb in Oklahoma in 1995, killing 168 people. Furthermore, the "clash of civilisations" that seems to motivate Islamic attacks was first proposed by the eminent US political scientist, Samuel Huntington, in 1993.
What is perhaps most frightening about this new terrorism is its resourcefulness in seeking to cause high numbers of civilian casualties.
The use of civilian planes as weapons to attack the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon, of mobile phones to trigger bombs in Madrid, and of anti-aircraft missiles against an Israeli airliner in Kenya in late 2002, show those responsible to be highly adaptable and technically proficient.
Muslim groups have also been linked by police in France and Britain to attempts to manufacture the deadly poison ricin, while al-Qaeda operatives are said to be attempting to acquire biological, chemical and radiological agents. The apparently limitless range of weapons and targets, adds to their unpredictability and the difficulties in preventing such attacks.
While some of the groups active during the Cold War have not disappeared, they have been eclipsed by this more unpredictable and more lethal form of terrorism. For the conditions of globalisation foster this new terrorism just as much as they foster flows of trade, finance and information.
Dr Peadar Kirby is co-director of the Centre for International Studies, Dublin City University. He is currently writing a book on globalisation and vulnerability.