State sponsors of Terrorism Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

State sponsors of Terrorism - Essay Example Terrorists become more active and powerful because of state support to them. The motivation and support they get from state sponsorship results in increasing the threat of deadly terrorist attacks on civilians, military forces, and infrastructure. State-sponsored terrorism does not have any particular form. At one end, a state can make use of its intelligence agencies to carry out terrorist attacks on some other country either because of grudges between the two states or because of the intent to destabilize the victim state. On the other end, a state can become a safe corner or safe home for the terrorists from where they can hide after carrying out terrorist attacks on the neighboring countries. Some states even fund the terrorist groups operating in other countries to keep them carry out their criminal activities. Their intent is to weaken the political and military base of the victim state. Some states use their own forces against a particular group of people to suppress their voice and rights. This is also a type of state sponsored terrorism. For example, use of force against Kurds by former Iraqi President Saddam Husain can be termed as state sponsored terrorism (Grothaus, n.d.). Let us take some examples of active and passive state sponsored terrorism in order to clarify the evident and hidden roles of states in promoting terrorism. The first example of active state sponsored terrorism is that of Syria’s development and control of a terrorist group named Al-Saiqa. This terrorist group was based in Palestine and Syria directly and openly controlled this group to tackle the influence of Yasir Arafat who was the most prominent leader of Palestine. Another active state sponsored terrorist example is of Pakistan’s support to the militant groups operating Kashmir against Indian forces. Pakistan provides funds and training to these groups using which they carry out attacks on Indian forces. Their main