Research on Terrorism

Trends, Achievements and Failures

Andrew Silke

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2003
• eBook ISBN: 9781135763367
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

This book brings together leading international experts in the world of terrorism research and counterterrorism policy-making. It has three clear areas of focus: it looks at current issues and trends in terrorism researchit explores how contemporary research on terrorism is focused and conductedit examines how this research impacts in terms of count

1

An Introduction to Terrorism Research

ANDREW SILKE

Of all men’s miseries the bitterest is this, to know so much and to have control over nothing.
Herodotus (484–432 BC)

TERRORISM IS being increasingly seen as one of the most serious, disturbing and damaging problems of life in our time. Research on terrorism is not abstract science; it involves real people with real lives which are ruined, changed and controlled by the processes under study. Organized and planned campaigns of violence do not happen within a vacuum and they are not driven by trivial or fleeting motivations which reside in, and are shared only by, the perpetrators. Terrorism is not the result of psychopathy or mental illness. After 30 years of research all that psychologists can safely say of terrorists is that their outstanding characteristic is their normality. Terrorism is not the work of madmen or devils, and to try and fight it on those terms is to fight it with a very mistaken concept of who your enemies are and why others may support and sympathise with them.

Research on terrorism has had a deeply troubled past. Frequently neglected and often overlooked, the science of terror has been conducted in the cracks and crevices which lie between the large academic disciplines. There has been a chronic shortage of experienced researchers – a huge proportion of the literature is the work of fleeting visitors: individuals who are often poorly aware of what has already been done and naïve in their methods and conclusions. Thus, while the volume of what has been written is both massive and growing, the quality of the content leaves much to be desired. So much is dross, repetitive and ill-informed. As Brian Jenkins commented sombrely after 9/11, ‘we are deluged with material but still know too little’.¹

And yet, there can be few topics in the social sciences which cry out louder for better understanding. The very word, ‘terrorism’, is charged with emotion and horror. Not surprisingly, here is a subject which provokes extreme perceptions in almost all who consider and think about it; perceptions which spill easily into beliefs about the actors behind the violence. Misconceptions and prejudices born in the wake of the amorality of terrorist acts – the suffering of victims and the wanton destruction of property – if pervasive enough go on to influence the policies used to combat terrorism and can have a powerful influence (and often a poor one) on official attitudes on how to deal with the terrorists. Providing policy-makers and the wider world with the findings of balanced and reliable research has long been recognised as essential to producing effective strategies and policies to counter and prevent terrorism.

At a time when there is an increasing sense of paranoia regarding terrorism, there is a strong need for balanced, expert and informed research into this subject. Good research can provide powerful tools for insight and guidance on what has become one of the most challenging problems of the modern age, yet good research has often been desperately lacking. This book aims to address the need to provide an up-to-date assessment of the state and nature of research on terrorism. In doing so, the chapters assembled here examine the key issues surrounding the conduct and application of terrorism research. The focus of this volume is ultimately to present a clear and succinct view of the key issues and problems facing terrorism research, and to look at recent trends in the research, at its strengths and weaknesses and at the impact it is having (or is failing to have) in a world after 9/11.

A FOCUS FOR STUDY

Most books on terrorism, and certainly almost all with an academic or research focus, start with a discussion on how terrorism is defined. Or, to be more accurate, they discuss the peculiar and long-running failure to reach an agreed definition. This common opening, seen again in this volume, is not a reflection that the various authors lack the necessary originality or imagination for novel segues into their respective tomes. On the contrary, the constant retreat to such discussion is a reflection of the seriousness of the problem it represents.

The problem is a simple one: there is no widely agreed definition of terrorism. The solution, however, is elusive. Certainly many candidates for a universal definition have been proposed. Schmid and Jongman recorded 109 different definitions in their famous review in the mid-1980s, but an energetic compiler today would have little trouble gathering at least twice that number.² The various definitions range from the absurdly over-specified to the unacceptably over-general. James Poland observed that the debate over an acceptable definition is ‘the most confounding problem in the study of terrorism’,³ and so relentless is the bickering that Shafritz, Gibbons and Scott concluded in the early 1990s that ‘it is unlikely that any definition will ever be generally agreed upon’.⁴

Most of the veteran researchers and commentators seem to have agreed with the Shafritz assessment. While the debate remained as unresolved as ever, the topic to an extent was bypassed; and in the specialist journals, articles on ‘the definition question’ became rarer and rarer as everyone turned their energies to less contentious issues. The relative calm of recent years on this front then raised the point: ‘Why is the question of defining terrorism important?’ After all, most people have a general understanding of what terrorism is. Certainly within Western countries there exists a shared and common perception as to the types of activity which are regarded as terrorism and the types of groups which are described as terrorist organizations. Like pornography, the sense often is that while I might not be able to define it for you, I still know it when I see it. Why then should there be much concern about reaching formal definitions? Does this really make any difference to the way research in this area is carried out or how the lessons and insights from such study might be applied?

For some, the definition debate is a hugely wasteful quagmire, undeserving of the energy it has swallowed over the years. Many experienced commentators hold such opinions. Weary of the heated and largely fruitless debates of the 1970s and 1980s, they view the necessity of a shared definition with a jaundiced eye, and consider the research effort expended on such efforts would be better applied to other more amenable issues.

Yet, regardless of the uncomfortable failure to reach some level of success in defining terrorism, research cannot ignore the definition question indefinitely. This is not chasing definitions simply for the sake of definitions. Adams Roberts, the Oxford professor, made this point well when he reflected:

I do not share the academic addiction to definitions. This is partly because there are many words that we know and use without benefit of definition. ‘Left’ and ‘right’ are good examples, at least in their physical meaning. I sympathise with the dictionary editor who defines ‘left’ as ‘the opposite of right’ and then obliges by defining ‘right’ as ‘the opposite of left’. A more basic reason for aversion to definitions is that in the subject I teach, international relations, you have to accept that infinite varieties of meaning attach to the same term in different countries, cultures and epochs. It is only worth entering into definitions if something hangs on them. In this case, something does.⁵

And Roberts is right, something does hang on how terrorism is defined. An agreed definition allows the research world to develop shared methods, approaches, benchmarks and appropriate topics for study.⁶ Without a definition, the focus of the field is scattered and fragmented, and an unrealistic range of activities, phenomena and actors have been labelled as terrorist. Ariel Merari, an experienced Israeli researcher, argued that:

Repeated occurances of the same phenomenon are the basis of scientific research. In the case of terrorism, however, there is hardly a pattern which allows generalizations. Clearly, the heterogeneity of the terroristic phenomena makes descriptive, explanatory and predictive generalizations, which are the ultimate products of scientific research, inherently questionable.

Confusion in research circles mirrors problems in the international response to terrorism. With strong differences in interpretation, governments respond to terrorism in very different ways and sometimes are prepared to tolerate and even support it. The result is that there are sporadic successes against terrorism in some times and places and profound failures elsewhere. A terrorist organization can be crushed in one country only to enjoy respite and a haven to reorganise and regroup in an adjoining state because of conflicting definitions.
‘One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter’, runs the cliché; but the phrase became a cliché because it so aptly described so many groups and so many conflicts.

Even nations which are strong allies in most other respects can show a sometimes surprising disjointedness in how they view terrorism. The government of the UK for example, has a very explicit definition of terrorism which has been set out in its Terrorism Act 2000. Terrorism is defined there as:

The use of serious violence against persons or property, or the threat to use such violence, to intimidate or coerce a government, the public, or any section of the public for political, religious or ideological ends.

This definition is very similar to those used by the UK’s close ally, the USA. This is not surprising as the UK definition was itself heavily influenced by the definition used by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) which defines terrorism as:

The unlawful use of force or violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government or civilian population in furtherance of political or social objectives.

Such similarities in tone and phrases, can be seen to represent a growing international agreement on what constitutes terrorism, an argument reinforced by the fact that both the USA and the UK have proscribed a broadly very similar range of organizations using their respective counter-terrorism legislation. However, broad agreement between close allies should not lull one into the belief that there is widespread international consensus on what actions constitute terrorism, and which groups can be fairly described as terrorist organizations. Further, the manner in which even close allies interpret their legislation can be quite different.

For example, since 1997, the US Department of State has been publishing Designations of Foreign Terrorist Organisations. Once listed, a group is proscribed as a terrorist organization and it becomes illegal for individuals subject to US jurisdiction to provide funds or other support to them. The UK has followed this approach and introduced its own list of proscribed terrorist organizations in 2001. However, despite the similarities in how both countries define terrorism, the lists they produced were quite different. In fact, most of the organizations proscribed by the US were not proscribed by the UK.

There was some agreement. Thirteen organizations appeared on both lists, including groups such as al-Qa’eda, Hamas, the Abu Nidal Organisation, the Kurdish Worker’s Party (PKK), the Basque Homeland and Liberty group (ETA) and Hizballah. However, the US list included 15 organizations which did not appear on the UK list; and the UK in turn proscribed eight organizations which had not been censured by the USA. Thus, even close allies with apparently similar interpretations of what constitutes terrorism, can display a surprisingly wide degree of variance when it comes to the specific organizations they officially class as ‘terrorist’. The result is that there are many alleged terrorist organizations which can openly operate, recruit and raise funds in one of the two allied countries, but who would be arrested and imprisoned if they tried to do the same in the other.

If such discrepancies can emerge between close allies, how much more room for disagreement is there between more diverse regimes? The answer, not surprisingly, is quite a lot. Indeed, exactly this point was made very clear at a conference of the 57-member Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), held in April 2002. The delegates to the conference were unable to agree on a definition of terrorism, though they were able to voice consensus on what they thought it was not: namely that they rejected any attempt to link the Palestinian struggle with terrorism.

Some nations (for example, Malaysia) had originally attempted to define terrorism so as to include all attacks directed against civilians – including attacks which were carried out by Palestinian suicide bombers. Such an approach might not have been especially problematic at a conference of North American or Western European nations. The USA for example, has for a number of years included both Hamas and Islamic Jihad (two of the groups currently carrying out suicide attacks) on its list of proscribed terrorist organizations. Clearly agreeing with the American assessment, in March 2001, the UK government included both of these organizations in its first list of proscribed foreign terrorist groups (though as we have already seen there was inconsistency between the USA and the UK on a range of other groups). At the OIC however, Palestinian and other Middle East delegates strongly rejected such an assessment, arguing that the suicide bombers emerging from organizations such as Hamas were driven by frustration stemming from Israeli actions in the Occupied Territories.

In the end, no consensus on the definition of terrorism was possible, and the declaration which was finally presented to the delegates avoided defining terrorism entirely. Rather it stated instead that the 57 Islamic countries represented rejected:

any attempts to link terrorism to the struggle of the Palestinian people … We reject any attempt to associate Islamic states or Palestinian and Lebanese resistance with terrorism.

The draft went on to stress that what needed to be addressed were the causes of terrorist conflict, including ‘foreign occupation, injustice and exclusion’. The outcome of the conference clearly emphasized that even post-11 September, very divergent views on what constitutes terrorism do exist and these can be expected to have a profound impact on international efforts to combat terrorism.

What hope is there then of a widely agreed definition emerging? The prospects are not promising. Conor Gearty describes well some of the problems in reaching a common definition:

These works [of political science] set out definitions which are based on a belief that terrorism is in essence no more than a particular and discernible method of subversion: in other words, that it is a tactical use of violence against an established order, regardless of its moral worth. If it were possible to follow this line consistently, the subject would be relatively straightforwa...

Table of contents

• COVER PAGE
• COPYRIGHT PAGE
• TITLE PAGE
• LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
• LIST OF TABLES
• ABOUT THE EDITOR
• ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS
• FOREWORD
• 1. AN INTRODUCTION TO TERRORISM RESEARCH
• 2. THE CASE FOR FIRSTHAND RESEARCH
• 3. THE DEVIL YOU KNOW: CONTINUING PROBLEMS WITH RESEARCH ON TERRORISM
• 4. WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION TERRORISM RESEARCH: PAST AND FUTURE
• 5. EVERYTHING THAT DESCENDS MUST CONVERGE: TERRORISM, GLOBALISM AND DEMOCRACY
• 6. TERRORISM AND KNOWLEDGE GROWTH: A DATABASES AND INTERNET ANALYSIS
• 7. WHAT DO WE KNOW ABOUT THE SUBSTITUTION EFFECT IN TRANSNATIONAL TERRORISM?
• 8. CONFLICT THEORY AND THE TRAJECTORY OF TERRORIST CAMPAIGNS IN WESTERN EUROPE
• 9. BREAKING THE CYCLE: EMPIRICAL RESEARCH AND POSTGRADUATE STUDIES ON TERRORISM
• 10. THE ROAD LESS TRAVELLED: RECENT TRENDS IN TERRORISM RESEARCH
• 11. REDEFINING THE ISSUES: THE FUTURE OF TERRORISM RESEARCH AND THE SEARCH FOR EMPATHY