War On Terrorism Research Paper

WAR ON TERRORISM

Terrorism is harassment, destruction, suicide attack and killing of innocent people because of no reasons. Charles Townshend (2002) defined terrorism as “the calculated use or threat of violence to inculcate fear, intended to coerce or intimidate governments or societies”. Michael (2007) defined terrorism as “public harassment, wave of agitation, protest against the government, damage to public and private property in order to draw the attention of the authorities” It is multifaceted which means it has local, national and international dimensions and involves various factors including the most important ‘Non-State Actors (NSA’s). Terrorism disturbs the people, damage infrastructure, cause a decline in economy, bring political

The war on terrorism was a multifaceted campaign of almost boundless scope. Its military dimension involved major wars in countries, Afghanistan and Iraq, secret operations in Yemen and others places, large-scale military-assistance programs for supportive regimes, and major increases in military expenses. Its intelligence dimension comprised of institutional restructuring and significant increases in the funding of America’s intelligence-gathering capabilities, a global program of catching terrorist suspects and detaining them at Guantánamo Bay jail, extended cooperation with foreign intelligence agencies, and the chasing and interception of terrorist funding. Its diplomatic aspect included continuing efforts to make and maintain a global corporation of partner states and organizations and an extensive public diplomacy campaign to counter anti-Americanism in the Middle East. The domestic dimension of the U.S. war on terrorism involved new antiterrorism legislation, such as the USA PATRIOT Act ; new security institutions, such as the Department of Homeland Security; the preventive detainment of thousands of suspects; investigation and intelligence-gathering programs by the National Security Agency (NSA), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and local authorities; the strengthening of

The lives that were lost by the attacks were estimated from 2992 to 3,117 including victims from about eighty (80) countries. The nineteen men who were said to be accountable for the 9/11 attacks were Arabs, who had link with Al-Qaeda network, headed by Osama bin Laden, who was a militant operating from Afghanistan since 1996 and had started a Holy War against the US policies in the Muslim world.

In the wake of 9/11 incident, Pakistan gets the position of a front line state, because immediately after the attacks on WTC, the US government advanced towards Pakistan and presented blunt choices. It had to take side with Washington in its war against terrorism alleged terrorist bin Laden and his Al-Qaeda network based in Afghanistan with the support of Taliban regime or the second option was to remain with its pro Taliban Afghan policy and live with worldwide criticism and loneliness from rest of the world. Washington gave Pakistan twenty four hours to select, whether it would be on America’s side or not and according to a news report the next day on September 13, President General Pervaiz Musharraf gave green signal to the state department that Pakistan would prolong its “unstinted cooperation” to the international alliance against