To defeat and unmask terrorism

BY ELIZABETH MATA

Last summer thousands of British holiday-goers on the island of Majorca, Spain, were sent into a wave of panic and fear after a bomb went off under a police car, killing two officers and injuring several others. Later, a second bomb was found and defused. This bomb and one that exploded the day before in Burgos were attributed to the Spanish separatist group called ETA (Euskadi Ta Askatasuna), which in the Basque language means "Basque Homeland and Freedom." ETA is a leftist group that uses terrorism in the hope of becoming an independent Basque state in the mountainous area along the border of Spain and France.

Spain isn't the only place experiencing terrorist activity. Iraq, where conflicts between Arab and Kurdish leaders and Sunni Arabs continue, is another, and in August there were also attacks in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and southern Russia.

A definition of terrorism that I find useful in my prayer on this subject is "the calculated use of unlawful violence or threat of unlawful violence to inculcate fear, intended to coerce or to intimidate governments or societies in the pursuit of goals that are generally political, religious, or ideological." In this systematic use of terrorism, innocent people become the indirect targets of terrorists, and millions of dollars are being spent in an effort to defeat it.

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