Today’s Terrorism – Introduction and Analysis: The Have Nots Versus the Haves

The multiple definitions of terrorism as a phenomenon, or terrorists as actors involved in the way this phenomenon is perceived and reacted to by populations of many countries around the Globe, do not appear to be conducive to our understanding of what is happening, who is responsible for it, and how to counter and prevent or, in general, respond to what many perceive as an existential threat to the world we know. Over the past couple of decades, but more intensively since the events of September 11, 2001, scholars, politicians, military leaders, and practically every informed or interested party came out with some sort of “final” and “comprehensive” definition as to what constitutes an act of terror or what kind of activities one needs to be engaged in to be labeled as a terrorist or a freedom fighter for that matter. This abundance of verbiage is not very helpful in our individual or collective understanding of terrorism or terrorists and one may claim that it is counterproductive to us ever coming even close to the understanding what and who we are dealing with.