The End of Terrorism?

Leonard Weinberg

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781136651908
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book considers not the beginning or origins of terrorism but how groups that use terrorism end. Terrorism as a tactic is unlikely to disappear, however virtually all the groups that employed terrorist violence during the 1960s and 1970s have passed from the scene in one way or another. Likewise most of the individuals who embarked on 'careers' in terrorism over these same years now engage in other pursuits.

The author argues that al-Qaeda and the various violent Islamist groups it has inspired are, like their predecessors, bound to bring their operations to an end. Rather than discussing the defection or de-radicalization of individuals the book aims to analyze how terrorist groups are defeated, or defeat themselves. It examines the historical record, drawing on a large collection of empirical data to analyze in detail the various ends of these violent organizations.

This book provides a unique empirically informed perspective on the end of terrorism that is a valuable addition to the currently available literature and will be of interest to scholars of terrorism, security studies and international politics.

1 Introduction

This is a book about how terrorism ends.¹ The subject may seem surprising because these days it is easy to get the impression that terrorism is virtually endless. Almost a decade after the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon a National Intelligence Estimate reported that al-Qaeda had regrouped and was stronger than ever. In the United States, The National Counter Terrorism Center reported that the number of terrorist incidents had increased on a worldwide basis. Observers inform us that al-Qaeda agents are constantly searching for or attempting to construct weapons of mass destruction: biological and nuclear devices are now major worries.

Furthermore, there seems little reason to rely on fear-inducing estimates of what the future may bring. Early in 2010, suicide bombers were exploding themselves with some frequency in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. Groups linked to al-Qaeda are now active in Yemen and Somalia, states with very limited capacities to stop their operations. The Western nations are by no means exempt from these developments. According to a recent estimate, at least thirty terrorist plots against the United States have been foiled since 9/11.² So-called “lone wolves” prowl the streets or seek to board the airliners of the Western democracies in search of attractive targets.

Advocates of jihad against the United States and the West more generally define the situation as a protracted struggle, a series of stages leading to the triumph of the “House of Islam” eventually on a worldwide basis.³ The United States will be expelled from the Middle East and Israel will be destroyed (some mention the year 2023 for this event). For the more imaginative among them, the jihad will culminate with the reestablishment of the Caliphate in the Middle East and the breakdown of the whole European-imposed system of independent states.

If there is a consensus on the matter it is that the current surge in terrorist violence will persist well into the twenty-first century, and perhaps beyond. Is there any reason to believe this assessment is wrong? I do not possess a crystal ball, but what I do possess is some understanding of the historical record. What does this record tell us?

The historian of terrorism David Rapoport thinks that modern terrorism may be divided into four relatively distinct waves.⁴ The first wave dates from the last third of the nineteenth century and consisted largely of Russian revolutionaries and European anarchists. The latter were advocates of “propaganda by deed” and believed that by assassinating monarchs, presidents, and other eminent figures the “masses” or workers could be transformed into revolutionaries. The ensuing violence would bring down the prevailing order and usher in a new era of peace and harmony.

Rapoport dates the second wave to the post-World War I era and the pursuit of national independence for those parts of the globe ruled by the various European imperial powers. This wave crested in the two decades following World War II with the achievement of independence by such new nations as India, Pakistan, Algeria, Indonesia, Nigeria, Kenya, Vietnam, Cyprus, and Israel. Rapoport associates the third wave with the 1960s, the anti-Vietnam War protests, university student activism, the Sino-Soviet split and, more generally, to the cause of political revolution. In several Latin American countries, e.g., Uruguay, Argentina, and Brazil, a variety of “urban guerrilla” groups were formed in order to topple military or military-bureaucratic regimes with the goal in mind of redressing the continent’s vast inequalities between the wealthy and poor. In Western Europe “new left” bands embarked on what in retrospect appears as a quixotic crusade to make revolutions within the region’s prosperous democracies. (To be fair the German groups at least claimed to be acting on behalf of the oppressed of the Third World, the Palestinians in particular.)

The fourth wave was set in motion by religious concerns. In the Muslim world, the Iranian Revolution of 1979 and the Soviet Union’s decision, made later during the same year, to invade Afghanistan to prop up a pro-communist regime in Kabul spawned a wave of Islamist terrorism that continues, largely unabated, to this day.

Each of the previous three waves lasted for approximately a generation or roughly thirty years before receding. Virtually all of the groups that were responsible for the terrorism during these periods have passed from the scene. How did this happen? If the previous waves dissipated after a few decades, why not the present fourth wave? And to pose another question: How did terrorism end in the past?

In considering these questions we should clarify our terms and make some basic distinctions. In thinking about how or if terrorism ends we should distinguish between 1) terrorism as a tactic; 2) the individuals who use this tactic—terrorists in other words; and 3) terrorist groups— collections of people who engage in terrorism.

In thinking about its tactical meaning the British political scientist Paul Wilkinson distinguishes terrorism from other modes of violence and conflict based on the following attributes:

• It is premeditated and designed to create a climate of fear.

• It is directed at a wider target than the immediate victims.

• It inherently involves attacks on random or symbolic targets, including civilians.

• It is considered by the society in which it occurs as “extra-normal,” that is, in the literal sense that it violates the norms regulating disputes, protests and dissent.

• It is used primarily, though not exclusively, to influence the political behavior of governments, communities or specific social groups.⁵

Given this meaning, it is easy to understand why terrorism has become such an attractive tactic for extremist political groups and organizations around the world. Terrorist attacks, including suicide bombings, are relatively inexpensive and usually not all that difficult to accomplish, relative to the amount of time, effort, and energy governments, especially democratic ones, must devote in order to prevent or respond to these attacks. Thanks to the mass media’s needs and the Internet’s various possibilities via the social media in particular, relatively weak groups with meager resources can appear to audiences of potential followers or adversaries to be far more powerful than they are in reality.⁶ Previously obscure causes and equally obscure groups can be brought to the world’s attention, frequently favorable attention, through a handful of spectacular and inexpensive terrorist attacks. As a tactic then, I find it hard to imagine a complete end to terrorist violence in the foreseeable future. The costs are low and the potential benefits evidently too high for terrorism to simply go away.

This conclusion does not mean however that terrorism need be employed by the same cast of characters to achieve the same sets of objectives on an indefinite basis. In fact the tactic may remain about the same—terrorists have relied overwhelmingly on the bomb and the gun since the last third of the nineteenth century (even suicide attacks are not without precedents) —but those individuals and groups using the tactic along with the goals they pursue change significantly over time (see p. 2).

For instance, individuals who have embarked on careers as terrorists need not spend the rest of their lives committing or directing acts of violence. “Once a terrorist always a terrorist,” is rarely true. Successful suicide bombers are, of course, another matter, but there are an abundance of individuals who participated in terrorist activities in their youth who then pursued other careers or did other things later in their lives. Here are a few prominent examples. In Northern Ireland Gerry Adams, one time a leader of the paramilitary IRA, now leads a peaceful political party, the Sinn Fein. In Italy during the country’s “years of lead” (the 1970s) Antonio Negri was a key figure in Worker Autonomy, a group given over to “diffuse terrorism.” Currently, after serving a prison sentence, he has resumed his career as a political philosopher at the University of Padua. In the United States, Bernadine Dohrn, once placed on the FBI’s Most Wanted list for her activities in the Weathermen, presently teaches law at Northwestern University. Her husband, Bill Ayres, is a professor of social work at the University of Illinois’ Chicago campus. Their earlier careers were called to the public’s attention during the 2008 presidential election campaign. In Israel, Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir led the terrorist groups Irgun and Lehi (Fighters for the Freedom of Israel) respectively during the 1940s. Both later became their country’s prime minister. Begin later shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Yassir Arafat, president of the Palestinian Authority, but earlier leader of Fatah during its terrorist phase (see Chapter 5). What is true for these well-known figures is equally true for many more individuals who over the years have abandoned terrorism for a wide range of nonviolent pursuits.

The political psychologist John Horgan calls attention to pathways out of terrorism.⁷ If becoming a terrorist involves a process of “radicalization” leading to affiliation or identification with a group engaging in terrorism, so too individuals may undergo a process of deradicalization leading them away from terrorism. Growing disillusionment with the group and its goals based on the experience of prolonged group membership may lead individuals to seek “exit” or at least some nonviolent role in the same organization. Departure from terrorism is often facilitated by contacts and support from family, friends, and various interpersonal contacts (boyfriends, girlfriends) that remain outside the terrorist group’s orbit or control. In recent years governments in Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Yemen, and Colombia (among others) have developed programs aimed at providing members of terrorist groups ranging in outlook from al-Qaeda to the people’s Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) with paths away from lives of violence to a return to normal lives and peaceful careers. Saudi Arabia in particular has pursued a program of rehabilitation aimed at turning former terrorists into peaceful subjects. Also, as Horgan points out, individuals may abandon terrorism without necessarily becoming deradicalized. Individuals may retain their radical views but become “disengaged.” They may desist from engaging in terrorist violence while still in pursuit of these extreme views. Adams, Begin, Shamir, and Arafat, for example, may very well have retained their commitments to a United Ireland, a Greater Israel or, in Arafat’s case, the destruction of the same, while abandoning the gun and the bomb for the ballot box and international diplomacy—for tactical reasons. The same logic applies to what are often labeled “terrorist groups.” As we will see later in our discussion, groups that have inflicted terrorist violence may retain their identities and most of their political goals while seeking to attain them by other than terrorist means or in addition to terrorist means.

The ends of terrorist groups

Terrorist groups and terrorist campaigns, like the individuals who participate in them, need not go on forever. During the 1960s and 1970s, during terrorism’s third wave in other words, Latin America and Western Europe abounded with revolutionary “urban guerrilla” or terrorist organizations. Germany had the Red Army Faction and June 2nd Movement, Italy the Red Brigades and Front Line, France Direct Action, Belgium the Communist Combatant Cells, Greece the Revolutionary November 17 group, to mention the most prominent. None of these groups exist any longer. The cause of Marxist revolution lost its propulsive power as the cold war drew to a close, the countries of Eastern Europe broke free of communist rule, and the authorities improved their ability to cope with the challenges posed by these Marxist-inspired groups. Further, if we consider the fact that modern terrorism dates from the last third of the nineteenth century, we cannot help but observe that none of the Russian revolutionary, anarchist, and nationalist groups that staged terrorist attacks at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries, usually against visible symbols of state authority, are with us any more. Where did they go? What happened to them?

At this point we think it helpful to specify what we mean by “terrorist group.” As with individual terrorists, so too with the groups to which these individuals belong there need not be anything permanent about the use of terrorism as a tactic. I regard a terrorist group as one that uses terrorist violence either exclusively or in conjunction with other tactics as a means of achieving its political goals. But groups that challenge governments or other sources of authority in society may exist before and after the adoption of terrorism as a tactic. The separatist organization Basque Homeland and Liberty (ETA) existed for more almost a decade (it was founded in 1959) before it launched its first terrorist attacks (in 1968) on the Spanish government. In fact, as Martha Crenshaw notes, terrorism is rarely the first tactic an oppositional group uses in challenging those in authority.⁸ During the 1970s, for example, various revolutionary terrorist groups—e.g., the Red Army Faction or the Weathermen—in Europe and America grew out of the anti-Vietnam War peace movement whose initial tactics involved mass protest and acts of largely peaceful civil disobedience.

In a similar way oppositional groups may persist after they have given up terrorism for other means of political expression. For instance, in the United States the racial supremacist Ku Klux Klan staged terrorist attacks for decades in an effort to prevent African-Americans from achieving equality of rights and liberties with white Southerners. The KKK’s terrorism failed to prevent the latter, but the organization (really organizations) has persisted into the twenty-first century and retained its commitment to the cause of racial supremacy (“White Power”) as well. Klan terrorism has largely been replaced by protest rallies, Internet websites, public access television appearances, and other ways of gaining publicity. The KKK is hardly an isolated case. The case of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and the IRA in Northern Ireland might also be offered as evidence.

How then do radical oppositional groups, whether or not they endure, end their involvement with terrorism? The most obvious answer is defeat.⁹

By their nature terrorist groups are usually weak relative to the governments they challenge. In many cases states are willing to tolerate or even turn a blind eye to terrorist groups to the extent they only represent a minor annoyance, comparable to a small criminal gang. Once the terrorism becomes something more, a potentially serious threat to the state and public order more generally, governments will usually reorder their priorities and do what they can to eliminate the group(s) inflicting the violence. For example, in Italy the government came to perceive the Red Brigades (BR) as a serious threat in 1978 after one of its “columns” kidnapped and later assassinated former prime minister Aldo Moro. After the Moro case, the Italian government, otherwise not noted for its efficiency, created a special police unit aimed at defeating the BR. Parliament enacted new “emergency laws” and other measures. And within a few years the BR’s career was brought to a conclusion.¹⁰ In Latin America during the 1970s terrorist groups in Uruguay (the Tupamaros) and Argentina (i.e., the Montoneros, People’s Revolutionary Armed Forces) crossed a threshold when they, for example, began killing policemen and military officers—often along with members of their families. These acts mounted to a point where they provoked the military in both countries into overthrowing inept civilian governments. Once in power the new military regimes proceeded to eliminate these “urban guerrilla” bands within a short time and without much difficulty. These results were achieved at the price of suspensions of civil liberties often accompanied by the use of torture and other unsavory tactics.

To be more specific, how then is defeat achieved? As the above examples suggest government repression is a common outcome. Members and often sympathizers as well are captured or killed until the group is no longer able to function. Brazil, challenged by multiple “urban guerrilla” organizations in the late 1960s and early 1970s, along with the two other Latin American countries mentioned above, had little difficulty in achieving repression once the proverbial “kid gloves” were removed and the national police and military forces were given or gave themselves free rein. In these cases the cure was worse than the disease, at least from the democratic perspective.

A more limited technique for defeating a terrorist group involves the decapitation of its leadership. By killing or capturing its leaders the affected government may render a terrorist group, particularly one organized along authoritarian lines, directionless; its members confused about how or...