More recently, the terrorist acts in Paris triggered a re-assessment of security and intelligence practices and lifted international alerts and cooperation to new levels.
From the 1980s onwards, they have usually been portrayed as crazed terrorists - evolving more recently into crazed terrorist Islamic fundamentalists.
More recently, Hezbollah has focused its terrorist activities on Israel, and, before the war in Iraq, is not believed to have launched a major terrorist attack against American interests since the bombing of the Khobar Towers barracks in Saudi Arabia in 1996 killed 19 American military personnel.
This includes the 20% or so who still back the Brotherhood, despite a fierce state campaign of vilification, accompanied by mass arrests and, more recently, mass trials of Brotherhood "terrorists".
From their outpost overlooking enemy positions, a rag-tag band of commandos watch their prey; brutally striking a counter-insurgency against separatists they view as terrorists, and more recently, observing the movement of artillery positions, as mechanized divisions skillfully attempt to catch out their opponents in a deadly game of cat and mouse.
Since then, Hezbollah and the Iranian leadership have been widely understood to act in tandem, particularly on large operations like terrorist bombings and, more recently, in Syria, where they are fighting to save the besieged regime of Bashar al-Assad.
Until now, the bailout efforts have largely been reactive, with Washington throwing lifelines over the last decade to businesses in the airline and insurance industries in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and, more recently, those on Wall Street.
More recently, a man with a previous terrorist conviction last month carried out a gruesome knife murder of a police commander and his partner at their home outside Paris in the presence of their three-year-old son.
More recently Beijing has pointed to international terrorist organisations, including al-Qaeda, as possible culprits: but again no concrete evidence has been produced.
Early this year, the frequently sensationalist Paraguayan press reported that Al Qaeda and other Islamic terrorist groups had set up training camps; and, more recently, they have also talked of a secret terrorist summit meeting here.
