The Roots of Terrorism

Louise Richardson, Louise Richardson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781135448479
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The Roots of Terrorism is the first volume in the new Democracy and Terrorism series, a three volume project intended to explore one of the most pressing issues of our time: how to reconcile the need to fight terrorism with our desire to protect and enhance democratic values.

1

The Roots of Terrorism: An Overview

Louise Richardson

In June 2005 White House advisor Karl Rove criticized what he described as the effort of liberals after the attacks of September 11, 2001, to understand the terrorists.¹ In so saying, Rove was reflecting a common predilection to equate understanding terrorism with sympathy for terrorists. Like the sixty-five academics who deliberated together on the underlying causes of terrorism for several months and who convened in Madrid on the first anniversary of the Atocha train bombings, I reject this view. We believe that only by understanding the forces leading to the emergence of terrorism—the root causes, in other words—can we hope to devise a successful long-term counterterrorist strategy.

As the contributions to this volume demonstrate, the search for the underlying causes of terrorism is a complicated endeavor. The difficulty of the task must serve as an inducement to sustained and rigorous research on the subject—not as invitation to throw in the towel and deal simply with the symptoms that present themselves. Policy makers, faced with pressures for immediate action to deal with a formidable threat, can be forgiven for seeking a rapid reaction plan. The role of academics, on the other hand, is to ensure that the plans they reach for are based on a deep-seated understanding of the nature of the threat they face.

The search for the cause of terrorism, like the search for a cure for cancer, is not going to yield a single definitive solution. But as with any disease, an effective cure will be dependent on the accurate diagnosis of the multiplicity of risk factors as well as their interactions with one another. The cure is likely to be almost as complicated as the disease, entailing a combination of alleviating the risk factors, blocking the interactions between them, and building the body’s resilience to exposure. Above all, it will focus first and foremost on preventing the spread of the disease.

The working definition of terrorism employed by this group—in the absence of an agreed international definition—is contained in the U.S. Code: “Premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against non-combatant targets by sub-national groups or clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience.”² Terrorism, in fact, is a complex and multivariate phenomenon. It appears in many different forms in many parts of the world in pursuit of many different objectives. It occurs in democracies, autocracies, and transitional states and in developed, underdeveloped, and developing economies. It is practiced by adherents of many religions and by adherents of none. What all terrorist groups have in common is that they are weaker than their enemies and that they are prepared deliberately to murder noncombatants in furtherance of their objectives. The adoption of terrorism as a tactic to effect political change is, therefore, a deliberate choice.

Terrorist groups differ from one another in important ways. They differ in the nature of their ideology and in the specificity of their political objectives. They differ in their relationship to religion and to the communities from which they derive support. They also differ in the trajectory of their violence. Historically, for example, most terrorist groups were domestic, and others started locally and went global; recently, however, global conflicts seem to inspire local groups to terrorism.

One of the most obvious difficulties in identifying a cause or causes of terrorism is that terrorism is a microphenomenon. Metaex-planations cannot be used successfully to explain microphenomena. Take the case of social revolutionary movements in Europe in the 1970s for example. Their behavior was attributed to the alienation of the young whose postwar idealism was thwarted by capitalist materialism. But if this alienation was the cause, then why were there not many more terrorists? Alienation was widespread, but terrorism, fortunately, had relatively few adherents. Alienation alone, therefore, cannot stand as the cause of their terrorism.

Nationalist terrorism, on the other hand, has been more broadly based. Ethnonationalist groups have resorted to terrorism all over the world from Northern Ireland, Spain, and Corsica to Turkey, Chechnya, Sri Lanka, India, and the Middle East. But if nationalism were the cause of their terrorism, then why have other ethnic and nationalist groups—who do not occupy a territory consistent with their sense of identity—not also resorted to terrorism? Nationalism can provide a sense of grievance and a unifying and legitimizing aspiration, but it cannot alone explain why a group seeks to realize their nationalist goal through terrorist violence as opposed to other forms of political action.

The contributors to this volume reflect a range of academic disciplines from psychologist to sociologist, from economist to political scientist and historian. None claim for their fields a monopoly on insight into the root causes of terrorism. On the contrary, each concedes the need for several approaches to the problem. Different fields, however, tend to focus on particular levels of analysis. These have been broadly divided into individual, political, economic, and cultural factors. I first review the arguments made by the contributors and then extrapolate the policy prescriptions from their analysis before spelling out a research agenda that would advance our understanding of the crucial question of the roots of terrorism.

Underlying Causes of Terrorism

At the level of the individual, psychologists have long argued that there is no particular terrorist personality and that the notion of terrorists as crazed fanatics is not consistent with the plentiful empirical evidence available. Jerrold Post points out that terrorists are psychologically normal in the sense of not being clinically psychotic; they are neither depressed nor severely emotionally disturbed. Instead, he advocates an analysis of the crucial concept of collective identity where group, organizational, and social psychology provide more analytical power than individual psychology. He argues that the sociocultural context determines the balance between collective and individual identity and in particular the manner in which terrorist recruits subordinate their individual identity to that of the collective. He points to the importance of distinguishing leaders from followers and of understanding the crucial role of the leader in providing a sense-making message to the followers. Post also stresses the importance of group dynamics and the manner in which groups may make riskier decisions than individuals. He points out that if the path to leadership in an organization is through violence, then the group will be pushed inexorably toward greater and greater levels of violence irrespective of what individuals may think.

Nasra Hassan also focuses on individuals and in particular on individual suicide jihadis. She interviewed the families and friends of 250 suicide bombers from a variety of conflicts and compares the appeal and the implementation of the tactic among the different religious and secular groups who employ it. Like other contributors to this volume she challenges the view that madrassa and mosque schools are the chief generator of suicide jihadis, suggesting instead the broader environment and the volunteers selected for the special training camps. Though she cites certain essential elements like loyalty to a charismatic figure and preexisting grievances against an out-group, by examining the many differences among the various suicide terrorist campaigns, the mixture of religious and political motive and rhetoric, and the style of training and method of deployment Hassan implicitly challenges the notion that there is any one simple cause of even this particular terrorist tactic or even a shared profile of the suicide jihadist.

Where psychologists and writers seek explanation at the individual and group level, political scientists bring the tools of their trade to bear in attempting to establish lines first of correlation and then causation between the outbreak of terrorism and the nature of the political environment in which the violence takes place. Recognizing the myriad different types of terrorism, Ignacio Sánchez-Cuenca focuses his analysis on revolutionary movements. These were the movements that bedeviled several wealthy western democracies in the mid-1970s and early 1980s. They include the Red Brigades and Prima Linea in Italy, the Red Army Faction in Germany, First of October Antifascist Resistance Group (GRAPO) in Spain, the Revolutionary Organization 17 November in Greece, FP 25 Abril in Portugal, and Action Directe in France. In a multivariate analysis with twenty-one countries, Sánchez-Cuenca finds that by far the most powerful predictor of the lethality of violence is past political instability. He uses what he terms a political selection model to demonstrate why revolutionary violent groups emerged in many developed countries in the ’70s and ’80s but only evolved into terrorist groups in a handful of cases. He found that terrorist groups emerged in states that had experienced past political instability and had powerful social movements in the ’60s, had engaged in counterproductive repression, and had also seen an emergence of fascist terrorism. While Sánchez-Cuenca believes this model could probably also explain the emergence of ethnonationalist terrorism in Spain and Northern Ireland, he has no illusions that it could be employed convincingly in cases of international terrorism in which the unit of observation is not a clearly defined state. His analysis speaks to the wisdom of disaggregating the very broad concept of terrorism and focusing instead on particular types of terrorist groups.

Leonard Weinberg also chooses to narrow his analysis. He examines the political sources of terrorism in democracies. In thinking about the domestic political causes he retains political scientist Martha Crenshaw’s distinction between permissive and instigating factors.³ The weakness of analyzing along the lines of permissive causes is demonstrated implicitly by Sánchez-Cuenca: The same permissive factors can exist in several states but only produce terrorism in some. Another weakness correctly identified by Weinberg is that, thanks to new forms of technology, behavior can be quickly diffused and terrorist campaigns can spread from one country to another in spite of differences in the political conditions of those countries.

Weinberg subjects to empirical testing several arguments found in the literature on the relationship between terrorism and democracy. He finds that outbreaks of terrorism are not the exclusive preserve of transitional democracies. He points out that in fact, although terrorism can be present at the creation of democracy, the failure of democracies to respond forcibly also has brought about their demise, as in Uruguay, Argentina, and Turkey. He also demonstrates that longevity in no way insulates democracies from outbreaks of domestic terrorism.

After exploring the explanatory power of temporal permissive explanations Weinberg turns to structural ones. He refers to data analysis—again limited to western democracies—indicating that the greater the degree of ethnic diversity and the greater the degree of political fragmentation in the polity, the higher the incidence of terrorism. Conversely, the more evenly distributed the income and the better the record in protecting civil rights, the lower the incidence of terrorism. He recognizes the problems of causality here, of course, as states that have had fewer threats from terrorists may have better protections for civil liberties as a consequence, not a cause. He concludes that instigating factors like radicalization and their interaction with the behavior of the state are more likely to be helpful in understanding outbreaks of terrorism.

The relative recency of transnational terrorism means that data collection is at a much more rudimentary stage. Nevertheless, Weinberg believes that broad-based explanations such as the structure of the international system or globalization are not consistent with the evidence. The unipolar system as an explanatory variable is undermined by the presence of terrorism under multipolar as well as unipolar international distributions of power. He also uses empirical analysis to challenge the explanatory power of globalization, arguing that an examination of terrorist incidents suggests that more incidents take place among those at the bottom of the globalization scale, secondly among those at the top and the least between those at opposite ends. That is, most terrorist attacks are committed by citiens of countries a the bottom of the globalization index against citizens of countries also at the bottom of the index. When citizens of highly globalized countries are victims their attackers tend to come from other highly globalized societies. Attacks by citizens of countries at the bottom of the index against citizens of countries at the top are less common. These findings, however, again speak to the need to disaggregate among different types of groups because the incidence of Islamist terrorism suggests a different result, as seen in the contribution of Atanas Gotchev.

Gotchev, an economist, explores the downside effects of globalization as a cause of terrorism. He shows how the inequitable distribution of the positive effectives of globalization across countries provides both incentives and opportunities to organize, finance, and carry out terrorist acts. He does not argue that globalization causes terrorism but rather that it too can creative a permissive environment for its occurrence. He points out that globalization has increased inequalities and social polarization both within and between states and that this in turn leads to demands for political change. Moreover, the spread of western culture and the need to adapt to take advantage of the benefits of globalization provoke political and cultural resistance and an emphasis on differences. Gotchev argues that globalization also fosters the development of new minorities by facilitating the movement of labor. These in turn may provide both logistical and financial support as well as human capital for the terrorist groups. He goes on to argue that globalization diminishes the power of the nation state by constraining the state’s ability to control its economy and by enabling a proliferation of nongovernmental organizations. Finally, he argues that globalization provides both new methods and new easily accessible targets for terrorists.

Gotchev does not argue, contra Weinberg, that globalization causes terrorism but rather that it facilitates its emergence. Globalization then falls into Crenshaw’s category of a permissive cause of terrorism. Gabi Sheffer takes this argument a step further by examining this other that is produced by globalization. He explores the diaspora and offers a classification of the various components of the other. He explores the many behavioral and organizational differences among different elements of the diaspora and assesses the degree of intensity of their violence both in their adoptive and originating countries. The link between diasporas and terrorism is not hard to find. He argues that twenty-seven of the fifty most active contemporary terrorist organizations are either part of a diaspora or are supported by one—though he would not, of course, challenge the view that most members of diaspora communities utterly reject the use of terrorism to redress their grievances.

Sociologist Ted Gurr also explores some of the many complex linkages between economic factors and terrorism. Arguing that terrorism is a choice made by groups waging conflict rather than an automatic response to deprivation, he points out that the perpetrators of the September 11, 2001, atrocity in the United States were middle class and well educated. They were also products of societies undergoing profound socioeconomic changes in which opportunities for political expression were sharply curtailed. In addition, they were all recruited by Islamists committed to jihad against the West.

Gurr contends that objective poverty is not a direct cause of terrorism, though it can contribute indirectly to the outbreak of terrorism in many ways. He argues quite convincingly that inequalities, or relative deprivation, are more important than poverty as a source of terrorism. This also helps to account for the common observation that leaders of terrorist movements, like leaders of organizations, generally tend to be more highly educated and of a higher socioeconomic status than their followers and those in their communities. Ethnonationalist terrorism in particular can be linked to discrimination on the basis of ethnic identity, though not all instances of ethnic discrimination lead to terrorism. Rapid socioeconomic change also serves as a risk factor for terrorism. This is because of the instability it generates and the associated dislocations produced.

His argument then is that, rather than poverty, structured inequalities within countries facilitate the emergence of terrorism and that rapid socioeconomic change feeds this process. When these factors interact with the restrictions on political rights, disadvantaged groups are what Gurr calls “ripe for recruitment.” As Weinberg and Michael Stohl also notice, semirepressive state reactions often contribute to the evolution from political mobilization to terrorism because of their inconsistent mix of repression and reform. Finally, like Sheffer, Gurr explores the relationship between terrorism and conventional crime as the need to finance the former often draws the terrorist toward the latter.

Turning away from an examination of economic and political to explore cultural and religious causes, our authors focus on Islam and jihad. John Esposito provides a historical analysis of the emergence of what he calls political Islam, more often referred to as Islamism or Islamic fundamentalism, and in so doing makes the crucial distinction between mainstream and extremist movements. He concludes that terrorists like Osama bin Laden are driven not by religion but by political and economic grievances; however, they draw on a tradition of religious extremism to legitimize their actions. They ignore classical Islam’s criteria for a just war, recognizing no limits but their own. They also reject classical Islam’s regulations regarding a valid jihad with its insistence on the protection of noncombatants and the proportionate use of violence. Esposito argues that the primary causes—which are socioeconomic and political to varying degrees in different contexts—are obscured by the religious language and extremism used by extremists.

Olivier Roy explores the explanatory issue of deculturation as a cause of Islamic terrorism. An empirical examination of the perpetrators of Islamic violence in Western Europe, he argues, suggests they are part of a broad supranational network operating in the West that is disconnected from any discrete territorial base. Contrary to popular opinion Roy points out that their backgrounds have little to do with traditional religious education or even particular conflicts in the Middle East: They became born-again Muslims in the West—not in radical mosques but rather in th...