Terrorism Organization
Characteristics of Terrorist Attacks: Planning and Organization
Introduction to Terrorism Organization
All terrorists share one characteristic: They never commit actions randomly or senselessly. Every terrorist wants an attack to generate maximum publicity because media attention helps achieve the intimidation needed for terrorism’s success. Accordingly, terrorist acts are carefully planned. Testimony by a terrorist convicted in the 1998 bombing of the U.S. embassy in Kenya revealed that al-Qaeda spent nearly five years planning the attack.
Several essential elements go into planning a major terrorist attack. Planning begins with gathering detailed reconnaissance and intelligence about a target: its defenses, vulnerabilities, and patterns of daily activity. Meanwhile, logistics specialists ensure that all the supporting tasks are accomplished. These tasks include assembling the weapons and other supplies and communications equipment needed for the operation, arranging for safe houses and transportation for the terrorist attack team, and mapping escape routes. A bombmaker or other weapons expert often joins the final planning phases. Finally, after all the preparations have been completed, the operation is handed off to the team that carries out the attack. For security reasons separate teams that do not know one another execute each step, from planning to logistics, attack, and escape.
All terrorist groups share another basic characteristic: secrecy about their operations. Terrorism operates underground, concealed from the eyes of the authorities and from potential informants among the populace. To maintain secrecy, terrorist groups are often organized into cells, with each cell separate from other cells in the organization but working in harmony with them. A terrorist cell can be as small as two or three people, with only one person knowing someone in another cell. Should the authorities apprehend a member of one cell, they can obtain information only about the activities of that cell-or at most about an adjacent cell-and not about the entire organization. For this reason terrorists prefer this organizational structure of interconnected cells. The structure narrows, in pyramid fashion, as it rises toward the group’s senior command structure and leadership at the top, to whom very few have access. ” (1)
Resources
Notes and References
- Information about Terrorism Organization in the Encarta Online Encyclopedia
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