Terrorism: ‘The Face of War in 21st Century’

Terrorism as a tactic of warfare became a serious problem in the 1960s, when Latin American leftists and then Palestinian extremists seized hostages and hijacked planes to squeeze concessions from local governments. In the years since, terrorist acts have grown ever more lethal. Their goals have grown international in scope, and terrorism has become the leading threat to U.S. national security.

“This kind of terrorism is the face of war in the 21st century,” said Bruce Hoffman, terrorism specialist and director of the Rand Corp.’s Washington office.

Ironically, the success of counter-terrorism efforts, particularly by the United States, has forced extremist groups to become more ingenious. “Tragically, what happened in New York and Washington is a reflection of the progress we’ve made against terrorists,” Hoffman said. “With new protective security, we’ve forced them to act in increasingly sophisticated ways. They could no longer get a truck into the Pentagon or the World Trade Center, so they had to find another way. And they did.”

Many of the turning points in terrorism over the last four decades were marked by attacks on American facilities and personnel, causing damage that still shapes U.S. foreign policy.

The first mass hijacking occurred in 1970, when the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine seized control of two American planes and one Swiss airliner, all bound from Europe to the United States, to punish the United States for supporting Israel. The Pan Am, TWA and Swissair planes were blown up on the ground in Jordan and Egypt.

After taking over the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in 1979, Iranian revolutionaries carried out the first prolonged mass seizure of hostages--an event that still shapes relations more than two decades later. The 52 American hostages were held 444 days during a national drama that introduced the yellow ribbon as a symbol, as American as apple pie and baseball.

In 1983, terrorists bombed the U.S. Marine compound in Beirut, causing the largest loss of U.S. military personnel in a single event since the Vietnam War. The blast, which killed 241, was carried out by Muslim militias after U.S. warships intervened in Lebanon’s civil war. It still serves as a rallying point for Americans who oppose using U.S. forces as international peacekeepers.

In 1983 and 1984, Islamic extremists in Lebanon masterminded the bombing of U.S. embassies in Lebanon and Kuwait, killing dozens and prompting the United States to fortify American diplomatic missions, effectively converting them into fortresses.

But again, it wasn’t enough. In 1998, terrorists linked to Osama bin Laden bombed embassies in Kenya and Tanzania simultaneously, killing 224 and wounding thousands.

The most sensational act of airline terrorism came in 1988 with the midair bombing of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. The blast claimed 259 people aboard the Boeing 747 and 11 on the ground. It led to stepped-up security measures at U.S. airports, but they apparently were not stringent enough to prevent Tuesday’s acts.

Terrorism came to U.S. soil for the first time in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, which killed six and injured 1,000. The mastermind was Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, a Pakistani militant trained in Afghanistan. Yousef was captured in 1995 in Pakistan. When he was brought to New York for trial, he bragged to FBI agents that he could have destroyed the complex if he’d had sufficient funds and equipment.

The largest terrorism plot concerning aviation was Yousef’s scheme to blow up 11 American airliners over the Pacific in 1995. Code-named Bojinka, or “the explosion,” it was uncovered on a computer disk in Yousef’s Manila apartment.

Abroad, terrorism turned ever nastier. In 1995, terrorists used chemical weapons for the first time when Aum Shinrikyo, also known as the Aum Supreme Truth, simultaneously released the chemical nerve agent sarin on several Tokyo subway trains. Twelve people were killed and up to 6,000 injured.

Last year, a suicide attack on the guided-missile destroyer Cole killed 17 sailors and wounded 39 as the Navy vessel was docked in Yemen.

Despite the long and bloody history of terrorism against the United States, America is more vulnerable today than ever, U.S. counter-terrorism experts argue.

“As we learned today, the battlefield for America is now everywhere,” Hoffman said.

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Terrorism Timeline

Oct. 1983: A suicide car bomb attack on the headquarters of the U.S. military peacekeeping force in Lebanon kills 241 American personnel.

March 1985: U.S. journalist Terry Anderson is kidnapped in Lebanon. He is released in Dec. 1991.

April 1985: A bomb explodes near a U.S. air base in Madrid, killing 18 Spaniards; 82 are hurt, including 15 Americans.

June 1985: Four U.S. Marines and two American businessmen are among 13 people killed in a machine-gun attack on a cafe in San Salvador.

June 1985: Hijackers seize a TWA jet en route from Athens to Lebanon. A U.S. serviceman is killed.

Aug. 1985: A car bomb kills two people and injures 20 at a U.S. base in Frankfurt, Germany. A U.S. soldier is found slain a day after the blast.

Oct. 1985: Palestinians hijack the cruise liner Achille Lauro, killing Leon Klinghoffer and throwing the wheelchair-bound New Yorker overboard.

Nov. 1985: Hijackers of an Egyptian airliner kill an American passenger. Egyptian commandos storm the plane in Malta; 60 people die.

Dec. 1985: An Arab suicide squad attacks U.S. and Israeli check-in desks at the airports in Rome and Vienna simultaneously; 20 die, including four guerrillas.

April 1986: An explosion aboard a TWA plane making its descent toward Athens airport kills four passengers. Days later, a bomb blast in a West Berlin discotheque frequented by Americans kills an American and a German; 150 others are hurt, 44 of them Americans. The attacks follow U.S.-Libya hostilities off the Libyan coast in March.

Sept. 1986: University administrator Joseph Cicippio is taken hostage in Lebanon. He is released in 1991.

Jan. 1987: American professors Robert Polhill, Alann Steen and Jesse Turner are kidnapped in Lebanon. Polhill is released in 1990, Steen and Turner in 1991.

June 1987: U.S. journalist Charles Glass is kidnapped in Lebanon. The L.A. native escaped in August 1987.

June 1988: A car bomb kills the U.S. defense attache near his home in Athens.

Dec. 1988: A bomb explodes aboard a Pan Am airliner. The crash in Lockerbie, Scotland, kills 259 people aboard and 11 others on the ground.

Feb. 1989: A bus carrying U.S. military personnel near Comayagua, Honduras, is hit by a bomb blast. Five people are hurt.

Feb. 1993: Six people are killed and more than 1,000 injured when a bomb explodes at the World Trade Center in New York.

April 1995: A car bomb destroys the federal building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people. Two people are convicted.

June 1996: A fuel truck bomb kills 19 American personnel and wounds nearly 400 people at a U.S. military complex near Dhahran, Saudi Arabia.

July 1996: A bomb explodes at the Olympic Games, in Atlanta, killing one and wounding 100.

Feb. 1997: A Palestinian gunman opens fire atop the Empire State Building in New York, killing a Danish national and wounding six U.S. and foreign visitors before turning the gun on himself.

Aug. 1998: Truck bombs explode within five minutes of each other outside the U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The bombs kill 224 people, including 12 Americans.

Oct. 2000: An explosives-laden rubber raft rams a U.S. destroyer and explodes in the port of Aden, Yemen, killing 17 U.S. sailors.

Sept. 11, 2001: Three hijacked planes crash into New York’s World Trade Center and the Pentagon, causing massive devastation; another plane crashes in Pennsylvania.

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