THE NEW TERRORISM: CHANGING FACE OF WAR AND CONFLICT

After the cold war, the world's security perspective underwent a major change from the seeming stability of the bi-polar power balance to a situation in which sub-national groups and organizations particularly terrorist groups became able to acquire weapons of mass destruction (WMDs). Since the mid 1990s terrorism has transformed into an inherently new structure with new characteristics and now presents markedly different challenges than traditional state-to-state security threats. The concept of "new terrorism" is being used to justify a "new" counter-terrorism war initiated by the United States in 2001. The aim of this paper is to develop an understanding of the changing nature of war, new terrorism and the US-post 9/11 counterterrorism strategy.