Types Of Terrorism

Types of Terrorism Terrorism as a form of violence has a wide variety of targets and modes of activity, with this in mind, it can be said that different types of terrorism will inevitably arise. The international community has not therefore been able to have a one general consensus on the types of terrorism present all over the world. This paper generally focuses on the different types of terrorism based on the terrorist’s ideology and objectives. This paper also brings us to a broader global stage by categorizing the position of terrorist groups in relation to the world system. These typologies however, are not exclusive with each other, thus you will notice that some terrorist group encompass different types of terrorism. Also, it may be

Lia subdivided terrorism into four main types corresponding to the ideological motivation of the perpetrators. The first type is the socio- revolutionary group; the common ideological basis of this group is being against the government. Next is the separatist group, being members of this group is typical to the minorities within a nation state that desire to be autonomous. They are usually ethnic minorities seeking autonomy or independence from the state commonly due to discrimination from the majority group. Third type of terrorism is the single issue group, from the name itself, the purpose of this group is to advance a specific issue. The political end they want to achieve is only based on one issue, commonly; these issues are social in nature. The last type of terrorism based on ideology Lia presented is the religious terrorism group. This type can be motivated by religious ideologies and grievances. Religious terrorists are more likely to use ‘all in’ tactics such as suicide bombings, which is made possible by religious teachings used to justify or encourage this kind of self-

Lizardo and Bergesen consider the position of the terrorist groups in relation to the world system. This typology takes into consideration the larger international embedding of terrorist activities within the structural core, semiperiphery, and periphery division of the world system. For further understanding, it is best to define what the core, periphery and semiperiphery areas mean according to the world system theory developed by sociologist Immanuel Wallerstein. The core countries usually exploit or dominate the peripheral countries for raw materials and labor, the peripheral countries depend on core countries for capital, while semiperipheral countries share characteristics of both core and peripheral countries. Type 1 terrorism or what Lizardo and Bergesen termed as ‘terror in the core’ is perpetrated by core actors against core government organizations (Bergesen et al. 2003, 163). These core- based terrorist organizations have ideological grievances against a particular core government (Bergesen et al. 2003, 166). This means that the perpetrators of this type of terrorism stand against the present state organizations in the core which they usually see as too corrupt and does not respond to the people’s needs and grievances as citizens. Their principal goal is to gather support from the public that will result to a take-over of state power (Bergesen et al. 2003, 167). ‘Struggling