
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, June 27, 1993                   TAG: 9306270070
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

NEW TERRORISTS HAVE DIFFERENT MOTIVES, STYLES

The chilling discovery of a cell of Islamic extremists preparing multiple attacks and assassinations in New York City indicates several shifts in tactics, targets and even the kinds of terrorists that mark grave new dangers for both the United States and the world's "New Order," according to U.S. officials and terrorism experts.

Contrary to earlier expectations, those responsible for the World Trade Center bombing in February were not unique. In stark contrast to the terrorist stereotype in the 1970s and 1980s, the newest threat emanates from unsophisticated but dedicated amateurs using conventional and easily accessible weapons.

And despite the FBI's success in penetrating this group, the amateurs are usually more difficult to find and stop, experts say.

"The seemingly amateurish World Trade Center bombers may be the model of a new kind of terrorist group: a more or less ad hoc amalgamation of like-minded individuals . . . who merely gravitate toward one another for a specific, perhaps even one-time, operation," Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert at the Rand Corp. in Santa Monica, Calif., said in a speech to Pentagon specialists just days before the New York arrests.

"The worrisome aspect is that it's harder to get a firm idea of the dimensions of their intentions and capabilities," he added in an interview. "It's more difficult to build up a modus operandi for them."

The new breed of extremists vary from previous groups in the Middle East, Latin America and Europe that had well-defined organizations and command structures and were constantly engaged in plotting conspiracies. Members usually lived underground and terrorism was a full-time occupation.

They also are driven by different motives. After two decades in which extremists were propelled largely by secular causes and sought tangible territorial or political goals, the terrorists likely to dominate in the 1990s are now more often inspired by religious, ethnic and national passions. Their goals are more emotional and their targets often soft or cultural symbols.

As a result, the cause-and-effect relationship is likely to be much fuzzier, for example, than the 1983 Marine bombing in Beirut by Shiite Muslim extremists that killed 241 U.S. troops. It was tied largely to the intervention by U.S. warships in the Lebanese civil war, specifically firing on Muslim militias.

When modern terrorism emerged in the late 1960s, none of the 13 groups was identifiable as religious. But 25 years later, at least 20 percent of the roughly 50 active terrorist groups world-wide have either a dominant religious component or motivation, according to the Rand Corp. Chronology of International Terrorism.

Religious-inspired terrorism particularly can be far more devastating than traditional forms of extremism.

"The religious terrorist sees himself as an outsider from the society that he both abhors and rejects, and this sense of alienation enables him to contemplate - and undertake - far more destructive and bloodier types of terrorist operations than his secular counterpart," Hoffman explained.

by CNB