CIAO DATE: 10/03

Terrorism: Threat and Responses

Introduction

Along with the highly developed forms of organized crime, can terrorism be ranked in the category of the tough challenges which the world has to face? This question is worth asking, as too often the perception of that threat is a faint one. As far as I am concerned, I would say that more than a challenge, the terrorist threat is one of the major stakes in terms of security which our democracies have to cope with. Indeed, terrorism should not, from my point of view, be mistaken with organized crime. Nobody disagrees with the seriousness of international drug trafficking, or the development of mafia-like organizations, but the terrorist threat pertains to another category. It is of a different nature, of an exclusively political essence in the Greek sense of the term as it affects the very structure of the «City». Organized crime, under whichever form it appears, pursues mercantile objectives. It aims at illegally developing its profits. The destabilization of state-level institutions which can derive from it is the mere consequence of its enterprises, not the goal pursued.

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