International Perspectives on Terrorist Victimisation

An Interdisciplinary Approach

J. Argomaniz, O. Lynch, J. Argomaniz, O. Lynch

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781349467259, 9781137347107
• eBook ISBN: 9781137347114
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: International Relations
• Index: Psychology

Considering an under-researched dimension of political violence, this interdisciplinary collection provides an extensive examination of terrorist victimisation. It explores how individual and public experiences of victimisation are constructed and how they are shaped by existing dynamics of violence.

1

Introduction

Javier Argomaniz and Orla Lynch

Research that looks at the experience of victims of terrorism is underdeveloped, fragmented and often isolated from broader studies of the phenomenon of political violence. In the criminological and victimological disciplines, but more so in the sub-field of Terrorism Studies, victim-focused study is sparse. In the academic literature, the topic is often seen as peripheral to the study of the individuals who carry out the violence. Predominantly, victims are portrayed as the unfortunate subjects of random attacks, effectively representatives of a broader category of individuals for whom the violent communiqué is intended (Schmid, 2012).

However, the reality of being a victim of political violence is much more complex: the perpetrator and the victim can be one and the same individual, incidences of repeat victimisation are highly likely to occur, the experience of secondary victimisation is commonplace and issues of justice, reconciliation, truth, memory and identity infinitely complicate the experience. Reducing the notion of victimhood to the random selection of a community representative is insufficient. Victims are an inherent and fundamental part of a very complex, public, political and emotive act. However, the success of the act often depends on the impact of the violence on the victims and their families, and, as such, victims’ experiences are vital to understanding the broader impact of terrorism and political violence. Furthermore, the study of victims’ lives and their responses to the inflicted violence is essential to understanding the ideology and the potential end point of conflicts, particularly conflicts in divided societies, where the identity of the victims becomes more salient. Thus, knowing about political violence means knowing about victims: victims of terrorism, victims of counter-terrorism, perpetratorvictims, service delivery to victims, victim–perpetrator interactions and the political actions of victims post-attack.

Importantly, in considering the experiences of victims of terrorism it is vital to recognise the extent to which terrorism can create victims. Many distinctions in categories have been made, such as direct and indirect victims, and depending on the definition one choses, there is a phenomenal difference in the size of the victim population. For example, some contributors believe that in Northern Ireland everyone could be considered a victim of political violence. This is not an unreasonable statement given that, during the Troubles, it is estimated that 80% of the population knew someone killed or injured.

It is difficult to find a clear end point at which one stops being affected by terrorism. The impact of a terrorist attack is not limited to the person who suffers it first-hand. Instead, it operates in concentric circles, the ripples extending to the person’s relatives – including second generations – acquaintances and the members of the broader community group. There are of course political implications for the creation of victims, given the very active public profile of some individual victims and their support organisations. Thus, examining the experiences of those who are primary targets of the violence and how their social networks are impacted allows us to better understand how terrorism and political violence functions as a political and communicative tool.

Furthermore, victimhood is not necessarily a passive outcome but can also be a catalyst for further violence through retaliation, self-harm (Eddleston, Sherif and Hawton, 1998), domestic violence and suicide (Loloe and Ganesan, 2002). In many instances members of violent political organisations recall their choice to join a paramilitary organisation as a result of actual personal experiences of victimisation (direct or indirect) and perceived feelings of victimhood (either individual or as a group) (Horgan, 2005; Reinares, 2011). Also, in many conflicts (i.e. Northern Ireland) a victim–perpetrator complex exists whereby individuals recount their engagement in violence as a form of retaliation, and, in these contexts, it is difficult to extricate these two categories in practice. These dynamics partially explain the length and gravity of the violence and are particularly important in the study of ethnic conflicts and/or divided societies, as discussed in some of this book’s chapters.

In thinking about victims of terrorism and political violence, it is important that the nature of the perpetrator does not dominate the classification of the individual victim experience. Terrorism is not the exclusive tool of sub-state militias; states have been responsible for more acts of political violence than will likely be ever possible by sub-state organisations (Wilkinson, 2011). In this volume, the notion of victimhood is an all-encompassing one whereby victimhood is a dominant feature of all conflicts, and while understanding that experience cannot be separated from the political realities of the context, victimhood can equally not be defined by contextualised political realities.

And while so-called political realities seem to dominate discussions around victims, in reality social issues, particularly the social cost of victimisation, should be brought to the fore. Analyses of the consequences of terrorism should start by looking at those who suffered the violence in the first place, and more importantly, this view should take a lifecycle approach, considering the impact on the development of the individual victim but also notions of intergenerational transmission of trauma, poverty, substance abuse, domestic violence and broken families. This is particularly important in those societies affected by long and protracted campaigns of violence. In such societies the numbers of affected can be very high in relative and absolute terms. For instance, in the last 40 years more than 1,200 people have lost their lives in Spain (with a population of nearly 50 million) due to political violence,¹ whereas in Northern Ireland approximately 3,700 people died (with a population of over 1.5 million) and 40,000 were injured (Byrne, Conway and Ostermeyer, 2005; McKittrick et al. 2007). In other regions, protracted conflicts have led to an exceptionally high loss of life; during the conflict in Sri Lanka estimates of fatalities range from 100,000 to 220,000 casualties (from a population of over 20 million) (DeVotta, 2011).

In areas with significant loss of life, seeking to address the primary needs of these persons has become, at least in theory, a public health priority for governments, but most certainly for the community NGO sector. Hence, evidence-based research that offers a better understanding of the individual and societal experiences of those impacted by political violence is a fundamental prerequisite for the effectiveness of public assistance schemes (Lynch and Argomaniz, 2014). More specifically, research that examines the effects of terrorism on the broader population can provide important insights that may improve long-term survival, increase preparedness for subsequent incidents, identify the physical and emotional needs of a population, inform the mental health management of terrorism victims and increase our understanding of the human experience (Fleischman and Wood, 2002).

Victims of terrorism issues

Given the relative neglect suffered by victims of terrorism academically and in terms of statutory provisions and social recognition, it is one of the aims of this book to highlight the necessity to consider the issues associated with this group. It is also important to remark how this is essential to understanding the complexity of the phenomenon. Researching victimhood is a challenging area of investigation as it crosses disciplinary boundaries and rallies some very strong opinions and emotions. As a starting point, as with many social science phenomena, there is the issue of definition: different perceptions exist regarding who is and is not a ‘victim of terrorism’. In part this is because ‘terrorism’ is, of course, a politically charged term but, as it will be addressed in this volume, there is also the presence of related notions of morality, innocence, political affiliation and a hierarchy of victimhood.

The existence of a hierarchy of victimhood has been addressed by scholars who, among other arguments, have made reference to the impossibility in many cases to have mutually exclusive categories of ‘perpetrator’ and ‘victim’ (McEvoy and McConnachie, 2012; Borer, 2013). These authors have challenged the notion of innocence in complex social conflicts. In contexts of widespread and systematic cross-communal violence, lines become blurred and clear divisions between perpetrators and victims are difficult to elucidate in practice (Smyth, 1998). As part of this debate, other categories of victims have come to the fore, for example victims of counter-terrorism. In this case, individuals have claimed that through discrimination, arbitrary arrest, police measures and harassment they too, by virtue of their vague association with those responsible for the terrorist attacks, are victims of (counter-) terrorism (Hillyard, 1993; Hickman, Silvestre and Nicols, 2011).

Therefore, in the background of a divided society, definitions of victimhood may become contested, politicised and evolve based on the political landscape (Dillenburger, Fargas and Akhonzada, 2005). As an illustration, in Northern Ireland separate communities define victims differently. Loyalist representatives see their community as victim of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and related republican attacks and tend to follow more closely the notion of a hierarchy: victims are those who suffered violence at the hands of terrorist groups. Republican political actors feel victimised by the actions of the British security forces and loyalist sectarianism and describe victims as those who have suffered harm as a result of the Troubles irrespective of whether they were combatants or not (Smyth, 1998). Even in socio-political contexts that are not marked by cross-communal violence, and where violence is fundamentally one-sided, such as in the Basque Country, political actors may seek to contest consensual definitions of victimhood. Thus, victims associations have had to resist the attempts by the political milieu surrounding ETA (Euskadi Ta Askatasuna) to widen the established definition of victimhood to include ETA members who died while carrying out or planning their attacks (FVT, 2010). Further complications emerge where complex issues of human rights abuses are involved, for example the use of child soldiers, notions of collective punishment and issues around so-called civilian collateral damage.

Generally, and as McDowell (2007) describes, definitions of victimhood tend to be shaped by socio-political, legal and cultural factors, with the latter category ‘usually contingent on personal and environmental perceptions’. Flesher and Barberet (2011) show, for instance, how different political cultural narratives meant that the understanding of victimhood was much more broad and elastic in the United States after 9/11 than in Spain following the 11-M attacks.

All these definitional challenges mean that scholars have tried to sidestep this issue by employing alternative labels such as ‘members of conflict communities’ (Muldoon, Schmid and Downes, 2009). Others, including many practitioners, prefer the term ‘survivor’ due to the passive helplessness and vulnerability that the term ‘victim’ implies. The notion of survivor, on the other hand, empowers and reinforces the agency of the individual and stresses out the capacity of the person to overcome the challenges brought about by victimisation. In this volume, in recognition of the inherent ethical and normative complexities associated with this question, the individual authors were themselves free to choose their own particular descriptive terminology.

Another issue related to the issue of definition is the extent to which the impact of a terrorist attack can be limited to an individual and their immediate circle; the ensuing question is how far the notion of victimhood can be extended to other tangentially related individuals. Here we believe there is much value in the approach followed by Letschert and Staiger, who have delivered a tripartite typology of victimhood based on a previous list constructed by Schmid and legal definitions from international instruments. In their classification, primary victims of terrorism are ‘those who suffered harm, including physical or mental injury, emotional suffering or economic loss directly caused by the terrorist act’ (2010: 20). Secondary victims are dependants or relatives of the deceased and first responders. Finally, tertiary (also described as vicarious) victims are those who have a well-founded reason to fear that they might be a victim in the future, became traumatised by the violence or had to fundamentally change their previous lifestyle. However, this framework does not go untested and has been challenged, particularly by work conducted post-9/11 in the United States. In one study by Otto, Henin, Hirschfield-Becker, Pollack, Biederman and Rosenabum (2007), the authors investigated mediated experiences of the 9/11 terrorist attacks and concluded that there was a significant impact on individuals (i.e. PTSD symptoms) who had not directly witnessed the violence and were not intimately related to any of the locations or victims. While issues of impact, mental health and resilience are important to consider in analysing the potential influence of mass causality attacks, what this debate highlights is the variability in research findings, the many influences that need to be considered in thinking about victims and the complexity and longevity of societal reactions.

Other challenges in the study of victims of terrorism are not necessarily ontological but have a more methodological character. Thus, there are serious ethical considerations that scholars must engage with when conducting fieldwork in this area. Victims are inherently – by virtue of their experience – categorised in research terms as a vulnerable population. They have experienced feelings of uncertainty, vulnerability, intimidation and helplessness associated with terrorist violence. Therefore, special measures must be enacted by the research team in order to avoid the reoccurrence of stress-related symptoms in the participants precipitated by recalling events in the research setting (Collogan, Tuma and Fleischman, 2004). Measures such as: stringent external ethical project approval, specialist training for the researchers, support measures post-interview for the individual victims, liaison with victim support groups to establish best practice, openness and honesty in the research schedule and sufficient feedback on the project to the participants in advance of publication. This possibility of afflicting emotional distress makes following established protocols a much more crucial requirement vis-à-vis many other terrorism-related subjects.

All these are essential considerations when studying the needs of the victims. Primary and/or secondary victimisation is a highly traumatising experience and often a transformative life event. Victims may require medical attention, first aid and/or immediate surgery. The medical sequelae are often very serious and chronic, resulting in life-altering experiences and the need for continuing medical intervention. The attack may also produce severe and on-going psychological effects for the survivor but also the relatives of the injured and the deceased (Echeburúa, 2004). Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), acute stress reactions, complex grief and feelings of depression, hopelessness, anxiety and alienation are common. These psychiatric symptoms and others require long-term psychological attention.

Furthermore, the incident may result in severe financial pressure, especially if the deceased is the family’s key earner. Loss of earnings due to death but also failure to reach potential earnings due to illness and injury impact entire families over their lifecycle. Hence, to achieve full restitution, the return of the victim to the conditions previous to the attack, especially with regard to employability, would require financial compensation and public support. This is an ideal, the need for which is recognised in some locations (i.e. Spain); however, the reality is that the individual victims and their families can never return to the life they had before; they exist in a new environment created by the attack and the consequences cannot be altered for those individuals. Given this, issues of statutory support are sensitive and often inflammatory topics for many victims of terrorism.

As discussed more substantially in some of the chapters, national authorities have had to grapple with these questions for some time. Decades of violence have led to the emergence in some states of comprehensive regimes of support for victims (Abretcht and Kilchling, 2007). So an important research question with serious policy implications is the extent to which these systems address the self-reported needs of the victims.

Undoubtedly, this represents a complex matter. The needs of the victims of terrorism are multidimensional, but often what has been caused by violence can never be put right regardless of public and private support initiatives. Individual victims and their families’ needs have a personal nature and a public character. In the case of the latter, for victims of political violence, visibility and public recognition can be crucial (Arteta, 2007), and, although they are enacted at the public level, these aspects have a strong connection with the victims’ personal sphere. Clearly, visible public support is fundamental to prevent processes of re-victimisation, where the person feels misunderstood and alienated from the rest of the community (Sutil and Lázaro, 2007). Th...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Tables and Figures
• Preface
• Notes on Contributors
• 1. Introduction
• Part I. Victims’ Experiences
• Part II. Support for Victims
• Part III. Victims of Counter-terrorism
• Index