The world has witnessed at least 10 terror attacks over the past three months, killing many innocent people and causing a huge loss of property. The new wave of terror attacks once again demonstrates that international terrorism, dubbed the "political pestilence" of the 21st century, poses a serious threat to world peace and human civilization.

An explosion rocked the five-star JW Marriot Hotel on Tuesday in Indonesia's capital of Jakarta, killing at least 14 people and injuring 150 others.

The blast is the latest in the new wave of terror attacks and follows a suicide bombing at a military hospital on August 1 in the southern Russian city of Mozdok, North Ossetia, a neighboring republic of restive Chechnya.

A few weeks earlier, on July 4, unidentified gunmen detonated bombs at a mosque in the western Pakistani city of Quetta, killing more than 50 people. And on May 16, suicide bombings in Casablanca, Morocco, claimed 44 lives, only four days after explosions in Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia, killed 35 people and wounded nearly 200.

Although terrorist organizations, including Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida terror network, have been significantly weakened since the September 11 terror attacks in the United States in 2001, they remain capable of launching terror attacks, experts say.

In a report released in late June, the Counter-Terrorism Committee of the United Nation's (UN) Security Council said the al-Qaida network still has the ability to regroup, plan and perpetuate deadly attacks against civilians.

The US Department of Homeland Security also warned in July of new al-Qaida attacks, possibly involving September 11-style hijackings.

At the same time, more and more civilian facilities have been targeted by terrorists and, as globalization continues, terrorism is internationalizing and extending into cross-border conspiracies, experts said.

International terrorism, which has escalated since the 1990s, results partly from ethnic and religious conflicts. Poverty and the glaring gap between the rich and poor have also created breeding grounds for terrorism. The intervention by certain Western countries, under the guise of protecting human rights, in the internal affairs of other countries has also contributed to terrorism. Their intervention usually meets with violent resistance from extremists.

It is noteworthy that terror attacks are on the rise after the US-led war against Iraq. Bob Graham, a senior Democrat in the US Senate Intelligence Committee, criticized the George W. Bush administration of "losing focus" when it turned its attention to the Iraq War.

"We allowed al-Qaida to regroup and regenerate," Graham said on July 13. "They've conducted a series of very sophisticated operations, thus far none of them in the United States, but seven Americans were killed in Saudi Arabia."

After the September 11 terror attacks, both the UN and regional organizations have given priority to combating terrorism, which cannot be fought by any one country alone.

Five members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) began on Wednesday a joint anti-terrorism drill, the first of its kind within the framework of the SCO, in Kazakhstan's border city of Ucharal.

More than 1,000 soldiers from China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia and Tajikistan took part in the mock exercise, codenamed "Coalition 2003."

Other regional organizations, such as the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), the European Union (EU) and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), have also stepped up their efforts to fight terrorism by creating anti-terror cooperation mechanism.

Analysts say the anti-terror war should focus on eradicating the root causes of terrorism, especially changing the irrational and unfair international political and economic order.

Meanwhile, sovereignty and territorial integrity should be respected and international laws observed when waging the war on terrorism, they stress.

(China Daily August 11, 2003)