Online published on 29 January, 2013.
Terrorism may be motivated by three social factors—structural strain, a process of revitalisation of a particular culture and a perception of relative group or individual deprivation. Thus its causes are both psychological and sociological. Its evolution can be divided into three phases—guerrilla warfare, social terrorism planned and carried out within middle class urban societies and international high-tech terrorism that may gain control of the most advanced weapons of nuclear, chemical and biological warfare to fatally harm millions of people. To combat this evil which may be diagnosed as an illness, a range of sociopolitical and cultural remedies—preventive and curative—must be applied as force and repression alone will not suffice to eradicate terrorism, which rests on an emotional appeal to fanaticism and the wish for revenge.
