Mains Practice Questions

Approach

• Briefly describe terrorism as cross border phenomenon.
• Bring out the need for international cooperation to curb the global terrorism.
• Give conclusion.

Introduction

Terrorism is a cross-border phenomenon and terrorist organizations are building networks across the world to raise funds, source arms and recruit people. The resurgence in terror attacks across the world in recent years point towards need for a global effort and consensus in this regard.

Body

Need for International Cooperation

• Intelligence sharing: As terrorism is taking global form, intelligence sharing among countries is critical in preventing or minimizing the terror attacks. For instance,the death toll in the Sri Lanka attacks could have been minimized, if not prevented, had authorities acted on the intelligence inputs given by India in good time. To deal with this form of terrorism it is critical to enhance security-intelligence cooperation among nations. Security agencies need to be connected so that they can share real-time actionable intelligence regarding terror suspects and plots.
• Probable International angle to attack: There are apprehensions by the Sri Lankan authorities of the likelihood that these attacks were a “response" by a terrorist outfit (ISIS) to the massacre at two mosques in New Zealand last month. The days of operating in silos are over as a terror attack in one country could have links to groups and plots in another country.
• Building global consensus: Considering global scale of terror activities including funding, training, use of social media for radicalization and recruitment there is need for global response. India’s had earlier proposed at the United Nations of a Convention on Countering International Terrorism. It aims to create a legal framework that would supplement existing conventions on tackling terrorism. It also proposes a set of measures to choke terror funding, destroy terrorist networks and the like, with the exchange of information critical to the effort.
• ‘Glocalisation’ of terrorism: Today plots could be hatched by local groups and then given support by international terror outfits. This is what appears to have happened in Sri Lanka and number of terror attacks in past two decades.
• Global reach of Social media: Social media offers opportunities to terrorists for the amplification and glorification in ways that no other media platform does, to radicalize youngsters and recruit them. Global cooperation needed to eliminate the possibility of misuse of social media.
• Funding: International terror funding is emerging as global challenge. Terror funding is fallout of increasing financial interconnectedness of world. There is need to build defenses against money laundering and the financing of terrorism through the Anti Money laundering /Combating of financing of Terrorism standards. IMF and FATF (Financial Action Task Force ) need to apply these standards stringently to choke terror funding.

Conclusion­­

Terrorism is a complex, non-static phenomenon. Its associated motivations, financing and support mechanisms, methods of attack and choice of targets are often evolving, thereby compounding the challenges of ensuring the existence of an effective strategy to counter it. In this situation global cooperation is of paramount importance.