Wars of Fear: Coming to Grips with Terrorism‪.‬

ADRIAN GUELKE is Professor of Politics at The Queen's University of Belfast. In August 1998, a series of events prompted a new wave of concern about terrorism. The bombing of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania killed hundreds of people; in the town of Omagh, the most deadly attack of the 30-year conflict in Northern Ireland occurred; a pipe-bomb exploded at a Cape Town Planet Hollywood, injuring scores of tourists. However, these three events had nothing in common, despite a false claim of responsibility in the Cape Town case that appeared to link the attack to the US response to the embassy bombings. In fact, the very term terrorism misleads by its implication that certain acts of violence can be treated as a single phenomenon, notwithstanding their different origins and the variety of motivations of their perpetrators.