Introduction
Terrorism has been a bone of contention in the past decade or more. Terrorist acts have become commonplace in Europe since the attack of September 11. However, the EU reports are suggesting otherwise as the statistics confuse the issue. Since the attack on World Trade Center, there has been a continuous flow of statements from public authorities, experts, and ministers suggesting that in Europe, a terrorist act are merely an aberration. This comes even as other terrorist acts are not connected to Islamic ideology. Over the past century, there have been a lot of attacks that have claimed hundreds of lives when added up and it can be traced back to 1867 during the Irish Republican Brotherhood in the UK.
History classifies the terrorism in the form of the perpetrators which include Left Wing, Right Wing, Islamist, and Nationalists or separatist. In the last decade, Islamist terrorism dominates the statistics and accounts for one of the worst attacks. In 11th March 2004, Europe woke up to the worst terrorist attack since 9/11 with the bombing of Madrid train. The act claimed 192 lives and caused injuries to 2,050 people, and Al-Qaeda was connected ( Nesser, 2015) . That was so far the worst terrorist attack and was followed by the November 2015 Paris attacks which claimed 137 lives and injured 368 people. In the last two years alone, Europe has witnessed nine acts of terrorism with the latest being on August 17-18, 2017 where 24 people were killed and 152 injured in Barcelona in Spain.
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The driving force behind this act is still prospective as there are no direct links to some of the thought factors. First, religion, mainly Islam, is widely linked to terrorism all over the world in the 21st century. However, not all the people who are carrying out those acts are Muslims. From the many terrorist actions reported in Europe for the last decade, the main contention is the Jihad. The primary reason why young men and women join the jihadist movement is the connection it has to the story around the revenge of a small brotherhood on behalf of the Muslim ummah ( Nesser, 2015) . The ummah is world worldwide and is such an abstract as there is no identification with a national cause like, say, Palestine, Iraqi or Syrian nations. It is such that in Iraq for example, the perpetrators are not in support of the local Arab population which they should. This makes them need imported sex slaves or wives. The Salafists do not use Palestine as the mobilization point as the Muslims who support the country are the cultural ones. Thus, the revolt is only painted with the brush of Islam because the perpetrators are of Muslim background and for them to get global recognition through jihad ( Alexander & Myers, 2015) .
The EU has considered several strategies of counterterrorism after the series of attacks in the last decade. However, these policies tend not to reduce the terrorism whatsoever. To begin with, the union decided to build a European arrest warrant which would see the facilitation of surrender procedures between the member states ( Coolsaet, 2010) . The other policy was the adoption of a framework that would be used to define the standard concept of terrorist offenses. This would lead to the cooperation between the police and the intra-EU judicial system. There was also the formation of Eurojust, a body comprising of coordinated magistrates who would enhance the effectiveness of the competitiveness of the legal systems of the member states in dealing with the issues of terrorism. Some of the strategies were successful in line with the four pillars of the EU counterterrorism agenda namely ‘Prevent,’ ‘Protect,’ ‘Pursue’ and ‘Respond.’ The progress points have been seen in ‘Protect,’ and ‘Pursue’ but failed in the remaining two. EU is a major player in the protection of citizens and infrastructure from ensuing attacks, and the member states are steadfast in pursuing the cause of terrorist groups in the region. One of the failed policies is the one that Belgium tried to create a Counter Terrorism Task Force within the Europol that would access information from both the police and intelligence ( Westendorp, 2016) . One of the policy recommendations is for Europe to reconcile and lower the friction between the religious and ethnic groups. This is because most of the attacks in the 21st century are religion based and therefore should be put as the first solution source.
In conclusion, terrorism is not new to the continent as it can be traced back to the 19th Century. However, there have been continued attacks, especially in the last decade due to the radicalization of youths by the jihadist fundamentalism. In response, European Union has created policies and strategies which are mostly reactive. The main problem is the loss of sense of urgency after the strategies seem to collide. However, other solutions can be carried out to deal with the religious and ethnic tensions in Europe.
References
Alexander, Y., & Myers, K. (Eds.). (2015). Terrorism in Europe (RLE: Terrorism & Insurgency) (Vol. 1): Routledge.
Coolsaet, R. (2010). EU counterterrorism strategy: value added or chimera? International affairs , 86 (4), 857-873.
Nesser, P. (2015). Islamist terrorism in Europe: A history : Oxford University Press.
Wittendorp , S. (2016). The EU’s ‘Security Union’: A Bridge Too Far? International Center for Counter Terrorism.
