When members of Al-Qaeda flew commercial jetliners into New York’s World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, the idea of who was a terrorist crystallised for the world. But, 23 years on, the reality is there is no one “kind” of terrorist. As security forces around the world grapple with myriad threats from all manner of groups, an essential agreement on who the opponent is becomes crucial.

An effective definition of terrorism is necessary to provide the operational rules of engagement to national security agencies and, at an international level, to facilitate combined efforts based on the shared perspective of peace and war, of friends and enemies, of the threat scenarios.

Good, evil and the terrorist

A person is a terrorist because of what they do, not because of what they believe, and for their actions, they are prosecuted.

Discussing terrorism on the theoretical level of  “good and evil” is counterproductive and pointless. Even if we all agree that terrorism is the expression of evil, it is not possible to reach an agreement on who the terrorists are.

This is because the category of evil, in today’s fragmented world, is understandable only at a local level, difficult to share outside one’s cultural boundaries. Evil as a concept depends on cultural perspectives and therefore it cannot lead to a definition of terrorism based on an objective assessment of damages and threats.

Furthermore, in a world of conflict, the same effect can be generated by terrorists, insurgents, freedom fighters, and other groups using violence and doing the same thing, for different reasons, with a different label.  

The whole question about the “good or evil” of an action depends on the reasons that motivate that action, so again it is a vague criterion. The acceptance or rejection of actions cannot depend on the value of “good or evil”, nor on the reasons that generate them.

So this is one more reason to change how we measure terrorism, forgetting “good and evil”, instead focusing on the results of terrorism, banning its effects we cannot accept. Those effects, unlike the ideas that constitute motivations, can be counted and measured.  When “an act of terrorism is such because of the effects that the act generates, and not because of the causes that drove it”, then the way is open for all to agree to a common counter strategy to terrorism.

Defining terrorism

Ten years after 9-11, Alex P. Schmid, Distinguished Fellow at the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism (ICCT) and Director of the Terrorism Research Initiative (TRI), collected the opinions of dozens of experts to arrive at a scientific definition of terrorism for the 21st century.

The result has been a long list of characteristics, among which the objective of “terrorising” is emphasised, identifying communication as a specific element of terrorism, and the use of violence, indiscriminately directed towards “civilian” targets.

This plethora of definitions makes it difficult to come up with a common operational perspective for countering terrorism threats.  

Unfortunately, too many definitions of terrorism, refer to the experience around this phenomenon gained in a world that no longer exists.

Italy is a fine example of this.

A history of violence

Italy is notorious for the violence it experienced during the last 30 years of the 20th century from groups on the far left, such as the Brigate Rosse (Red Brigades) to those on the far right (Nuclei Armati Rivoluzionari) along with the mafia and other organised crime.

Italy experienced violent political terrorism that wanted to change the state to affirm another idea of the state.

Counterterrorism laws that still address the phenomenon were created based on that experience.

However, today’s terrorism no longer has anything to do with the terrorism of that time. So old regulatory tools are still used to regulate a phenomenon that has changed.

This means that for an effective, updated response to terrorism, we have to go back to identifying the phenomenon as it appears today, asking the basic question: “What is terrorism?”.

In recent years, terrorism has proven to be flexible, adaptable and opportunistic. It is very skilled in exploiting an enemy’s vulnerabilities and from this ability it gains strength.

Europol, in the TE-SAT Terrorism Situation and Trend Report 2023, lists current terrorism types and dangerous groups, and warns that “the lines between different types of terrorism, including right-wing, left-wing, anarchist, jihadist, and other ideologies, are likely to become more blurred in the future”.

Europol unlights that points of convergence have already been observed among terrorist and violent extremists across the whole ideological spectrum.

Salad Bar terrorism

Ideologically today one can talk about Salad Bar terrorism (or Mixed Ideology terrorism), where the ideological dimension is present, but it is articulated according to a personal taste, to justify the choice of violent affirmation of one’s ideas.

Yet, the actual reasons for terrorism can be found in terrorism itself as a choice and action. They lie in the conviction terrorists have that only violence can change a situation already irrecoverable, urgent, and dramatic. The personalised ideology terrorists create for themselves is the justification for the terrorist action and not the real motivation.

In this framework, recruitment and propaganda are strategic pieces of the ideological puzzle: ideas are to be reassembled according to a flexible and adaptable image that constitutes the scenario in which the terrorist’s violence will be expressed.  

This fragmentation is the main feature of terrorism affecting young people’s identities (since young people are the main victims of terrorist propaganda and recruitment).  A fragmentation where geographical, political and cultural borders are no longer useful, reorganised by the global network of communication technologies.  

More than ideology

The first challenge that comes out is the need to reconsider the meaning of nation and state.

The paths that can lead to terrorism are many and this is why the definition of terrorism based on reasons and motivations does not work: the unpredictable Salad Bar Ideology offers many ways to become a terrorist.  

Ideologies no longer provide sufficient analytical categories to identify and, subsequently, prevent threats effectively. The reasons that drive radicalization today are multiple and come from various inputs.  

A good example of the failure to adequately address terrorism today is the numerous tools developed by law enforcement to identify potential terrorists are the so-called Terrorist Risk Assessment Instruments.  

All these have, so far, led to poor results, because they are based on the wrong assumptions of continuity, linearity, and ideal coherence, while today’s Salad Bar Terrorism offers a circular route, rapid and unpredictable, always original for everyone.  

For example, the Australian Institute of Criminology recently released a report on the use of four risk assessment tools designed to gauge the threat posed by radicalised offenders and, in some cases, justify them being held behind bars or closely supervised after their sentences have been served.  

The AIC report found there was a “relative lack of research into the efficacy of these tools”, something it found was a “barrier to their use and undermines confidence in expert assessments that rely on these tools”.

There are often no credible signs to identify the “typical terrorist” until it is too late.

Today, a more effective method for identifying a potential terrorist risk could be adopting a so-called “Digital Humint” approach, which analyses both the “real” and “virtual” dimensions together, exploring not only the network of offline relationships and habits but also the social media ecosystem and chat rooms.

A new approach

A new approach, abandoning the ideological dimension as a founding dimension of terrorism is pivotal and it means “an act of terrorism is such for the effects that this act generates, not for the causes that drove it”.  

This approach is not just backed up by the previous empirical results and failures of counterterrorism efforts. It also has a theoretical foundation from the field of crisis management, where a crisis is defined as an event whose effects are not controlled by a system.  

It also has a practical basis, in seeking an agreement on “what terrorism is” by referring to the effects, to the damage caused, for which an objective assessment can be agreed.  This is in total alignment with the needs of the criminal justice system and legal framework.

In the EU, terrorism is defined by its aims to: “a) seriously intimidating a population; b) unduly compelling a government or an international organisation to perform or abstain from performing any act; c) seriously destabilising or destroying the fundamental political, constitutional, economic or social structures of a country or an international organisation”, without any reference to a typology of ideological motivations.

Terrorism is no longer what it used to be, but those who fight terrorism have not realised this. Bold decisions have to be made to abandon obsolete approaches and tools that cannot deliver any more results.  

What worked 50 years ago to fight terrorism in the 70s and 80s is irrelevant today, because contemporary terrorism bears little resemblance to its previous expressions. After all, human society has changed. 

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Retired US General David Petraeus, who commanded America’s wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan, condemned Hamas’ attack on Israel, calling it ”far worse than 9/11.” ”This is the equivalent of the US having experienced over 40,000 losses, rather than the 3,000 terrible losses that we sustained in the attacks of 9/11,” Mr Petraeus told CBS News.

Mr Petraeus, who also once served as director of the CIA, warned Israel to think carefully about its upcoming actions as it plans to invade Gaza. 

”This is going to be a very, very tough fight. I almost can’t imagine a more challenging contextual set of circumstances here than what they face. There are tunnels; there will be rooms that will have improvised explosive devices. You have to clear every building, every floor, every room, every basement, every tunnel. Civilian losses are inevitable, and tough Israeli losses lie ahead as well,” he added. 

He further expressed shock at how both Israeli and American intelligence were not aware of what was being planned. 

”This is a very substantial operation, and the planning of it alone would have been very considerable; then, the training and equipping and positioning of forces, then the actual conduct of it. That all of that could take place and not spark much increased military readiness is really quite stunning,” he said. 

When asked what the outcome of the war would be, Mr. Petraeus said, ”If the mission to the Israeli military is to destroy Hamas, if you have to destroy every headquarters, if you have to capture or kill the bulk of the leaders, if you have to do the same with the bulk of these terrorist fighters, the question is then, what do you do with Gaza once you retake it. You can’t walk away from Gaza.”

Previously, the Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations also called it an “unprecedented” escalation and compared it with the 9/11 terror attack. The diplomat explained that because Israel’s population is smaller than the United States, the amount of casualties is proportional to the lives lost on 9/11.

”This is our 9/11. We are committed to changing the equation, to shatter the old paradigm. These animals will pay a heavy price and they will learn that these atrocities cannot be committed again against our civilians,” he added. 

Notably, the 9/11 attacks in 2001 on one of the then-iconic sites in New York, the World Trade Center,  were the deadliest attacks on US soil since the Pearl Harbour bombing. On September 11, 2001, planes crashed into New York City’s World Trade Center, the Pentagon in Washington, DC, and a field in Pennsylvania. The terror attacks claimed the lives of nearly 3,000 people and injured countless others. 

A 33-year-old man was arrested in New York City on Monday after he jumped into a reflecting pool at the 9/11 Memorial, the New York Post reported. The incident happened around 1:30 p.m. when a Port Authority cop spotted the man leaping into one of the two-tiered reflecting pools at the memorial.

In a video of the incident that has gone viral, the man was seen lying in the 18-inch deep water in the pool’s central basin after walking slowly towards it. He then slowly moved closer to the center and slid head-first into the pool. The man injured his leg and back in the incident and was taken to the hospital for non-life-threatening injuries.

Here’s the video:

An Inadequate Jumped into the 9/11 Memorial Pool in #NewYork

A not entirely balanced 33-year-old #Manhattan resident decided to cool off and swim in the pool, which was built on the site of the #WorldTradeCenter towers destroyed in 2001.

Follow Me For More Update pic.twitter.com/P8JdpTuPCC

— __kaput__ (@__kaput__) October 11, 2023

The water was turned off immediately after the incident, and chains were erected around the pool to deter anyone else from jumping in.

“We saw the firefighters and emergency personnel come down the escalator as we were into the memorial. They said everything’s fine, but they were coming in and going to a, like, back room, and we figured that down there was where they could access,” tourist Lisa Bellow told CBS News. 

The man identified as Jeffrey Hernandez was arrested and charged with criminal mischief and trespassing after the terrifying jump, a New York Police Department (NYPD) spokesperson confirmed on Tuesday.

A spokesperson for the Port Authority described him as an “apparently emotionally disturbed person,” as per NBC News. He will also be getting a mental evaluation and criminal charges might include trespassing. The motivation behind the man’s actions is still unknown at this time.

Notably, the pool is one of two at the memorial, both in the footprints of the Twin Towers that fell during the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. According to the 9/11 Memorial & Museum website, each pool descends 30 feet into a basin and drops 20 more feet into a “central void.” 

The Memorial was completed and opened on September 11, 2011, ten years after the attacks that destroyed the original towers. 

Monday marks the 22nd anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks that shook the United States. The terror attack in 2001 on one of the then-iconic sites in New York, the World Trade Center, also had a huge impact globally. The September 11 attacks were the deadliest attacks on US soil since the Pearl Harbour bombing in 1941 that launched the US into World War II.

On September 11, 2001, planes crashed into New York City’s World Trade Center, the Pentagon in Washington, DC, and a field in Pennsylvania. The terror attacks claimed the lives of nearly 3,000 people and injured countless others. 

Here’s what happened:

• On the morning of September 11, 2001, 19 al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked four US passenger airplanes.
• After taking control of the aircrafts, terrorists crashed two of them into the upper floors of the Twin Towers (the North and South Towers) of the World Trade Center complex in Manhattan between 8 and 9 a.m. Within two hours, both the 110-storey towers collapsed.
• The debris of the Twin Towers led to the collapse of all other buildings in the World Trade Center complex, including the 47-story 7 World Trade Center tower.
• The third plane crashed into the headquarters of the US Department of Defense – Pentagon in Virginia.
• The fourth plane crashed into a field in Pennsylvania after passengers tried to fight back against the hijackers.
• The attacks killed 2,977 people from 93 nations: 2,753 people were killed in New York; 184 people were killed at the Pentagon; and 40 people were killed on Flight 93. 

The destruction of the World Trade Center affected the economy of Manhattan and had a significant effect on global markets. While the cleanup of the World Trade Center site was completed in May 2002, the Pentagon building was repaired within a year. The construction of One World Trade Center began at the World Trade Center site in 2006 and it opened to the public in 2014. Several memorials have been built in memory of the victims of the September 11 attacks.

New York:

Twenty-two years after the September 11 terrorist attacks on the United States, the remains of two people who died in the collapse of the World Trade Center have been identified through DNA analysis, the authorities said ahead of the latest commemoration of the 2001 disaster.

The identities of the two, a man and a woman, are being withheld at the request of their families. 

They bring to 1,649 the number of victims whose remains have been identified, of the total 2,753 who died when an Al-Qaeda commando crashed two hijacked civilian airliners into New York’s twin towers, the city’s mayor and Office of the Chief Medical Examiner (OCME) said.

“We hope these new identifications can bring some measure of comfort to the families of these victims, and the ongoing efforts by the Office of Chief Medical Examiner attest to the city’s unwavering commitment to reunite all the World Trade Center victims with their loved ones,” Mayor Eric Adams said, according to a statement released late Friday.

But with 1,104 victims still unidentified, progress has been agonizingly slow. The previous two identifications were made in 2021.

When the trade center’s south tower, and then its north, collapsed in a deafening roar, raining down a deluge of fire, choking gray dust and twisted steel on the Manhattan streets below, the violence was so extreme that no identifiable trace has been found of hundreds of the missing. 

The two latest identifications were made possible through the use of “next-generation sequencing technology – more sensitive and rapid than conventional DNA techniques,” the statement said. Remains of the man and woman had been found years ago.

The 2001 attacks are commemorated every September 11 in New York, as they will be again on Monday.

Nineteen terrorists, most of them Saudis, had hijacked four planes. In addition to the two that destroyed the World Trade Center, a third plane slammed into the Pentagon near Washington inflicting heavy damage, and a fourth crashed in a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, after passengers and crew fought with the attackers.

Together, the day’s terror attacks claimed 2,977 lives. 

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)