Countering Global Terrorism and Insurgency

Calculating the Risk of State Failure in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq

N. Underhill

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781137383716
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology of Religion
• Index: Social Sciences

Explores current debates around religious extremism as a means to understand and re-think the connections between terrorism, insurgency and state failure. Using case studies of Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq, she develops a better understanding of the underlying causes and conditions necessary for terrorism and insurgency to occur.

1

Understanding Terrorism, Insurgency, and State Failure

What do we think when we hear the word terrorism? What images are conjured in our minds? Do we see planes crashing into skyscrapers, bombs exploding in marketplaces, masked men armed with guns and bombs? The images that the term terrorism creates vary from person to person. As a concept, terrorism is one of the hardest phenomena to define. There are hundreds of ways to define terrorism and hundreds of more ways to outline its characteristics. The problem with this is that without a solid understanding and definition of the concept, it can never really be understood in its entirety. The aim of this chapter is to try to develop a context for understanding terrorism as clearly as possible. It will begin by trying to define terrorism in the modern context by providing an overview of some of the most commonly used definitions used today, and also by trying to develop a working definition to be used as a basis of understanding for the remainder of this book. From that, this chapter will then move on to look at the various different forms of terrorism that affect our world today. The focus of this section, however, will be on four distinct types of terrorism: ethno-nationalist or ethno-separatist terrorism, right-wing terrorism, state-sponsored terrorism, and religiously motivated terrorism, in particular Islamic fundamentalist terrorism. Again, this is a monolithic task in and of itself, but it is a necessary step that needs to be taken if a complete understanding of terrorism is to be gained. It must be noted at this early stage, however, that it is not the intention of this book to try to fully define or explain terrorism or indeed state failure. It instead seeks to provide the reader with a base from which they are able to interpret the information, from which they are able to develop their own understandings and ideas.

The problems of defining terrorism

In order to understand fully what terrorism is, a core definition or understanding is essential. However, there is still no single globally accepted definition of terrorism, which makes fully understanding the concept extremely complex. Over the last two decades there have been approximately 109 active definitions of terrorism used around the world, which adds to the complexity of fully understanding what terrorism is or what terrorism looks like.¹ Table 1.1 contains just a few of the many listed definitions of terrorism that are in use today. In order to highlight the massive differences of understanding, the table is divided into two groups of definitions: those used by organisations and those used by individual states or countries.

Table 1.1 Definitions of terrorism

Organisation
US FBI/Code of Federal Regulations 28CFR Section0.85	The unlawful use of force and violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives.^2
United Nations Draft Convention	Violence against persons or property with the aim of intimidating a population, to force or prevent action by a government or institutional organisation.^3
US State Department	Terrorism is the premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against non-combatant targets by sub-national groups or clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience.^4
US Code Title 22 Section 2656f(d)	The term terrorism means premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against non-combatant targets by sub-national groups or clandestine agents.^5
European Union	Intimidation used to force or prevent government action, to destabilise a state.^6
Organisation of the Islamic Conference	Violence or threat thereof against persons, property, environment, resources, stability of state.^7
United Nations Security Council Resolution 1566	Violence; provoke terror; intimidation in order to force or prevent action by a government or international organisation.^8
OECD	A terrorist act is an act including, but not limited to, the use of force or violence, causing serious harm to human life with the intent to influence or destabilise any government or public entity and to provoke fear and insecurity in support of a political, religious, ethnic, ideological or similar goal.^9
State/country
India	An act of terrorism is comparable to a peacetime war crime. An act of violence carried out by a group against innocents
US	Terrorism involves acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the US or of any State and that appear to be intended: 1. To intimidate or coerce a civilian population 2. To influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion 3. To affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping.^10
Australia	Violence or threat of violence against persons/property; Intimidation with the purpose of advancing a political, religious, or ideological cause. To coerce or influence a government.^11

It can be seen from these definitions that there are a number of core concepts or trends that are contained in each definition, but in general none of the definitions agrees 100% with any of the others. These discrepancies add to the confusion about how to define terrorism. and make it difficult to provide a detailed outline of the core characteristics of terrorism. Also, and making things even more confusing, there exists a massive literature base which aims to try to create working definitions and understandings of terrorism. Throughout this literature there is an ongoing debate as to what the definition of terrorism should be and what features this definition should contain. Bruce Hoffman, in his work Inside Terrorism, defines terrorism as being:

The deliberate creation and exploitation of fear through violence or the threat of violence in the pursuit of political change … Terrorism is specifically designed to have far-reaching psychological effects beyond the immediate victim(s) or object of the terrorist attack. It is meant to instil fear within, and thereby intimidate, a wider ‘target audience’ that might include a rival ethnic or religious group, an entire country, a national government or political party, or public opinion in general. Terrorism is designed to create power where there is none or to consolidate power where there is very little¹²

This definition encompasses many of the elements that are seen as being necessary for an act of violence to become an act of terrorism, i.e. the use of violence, targeting civilians, political motivations, influence and the promotion of fear. These are some of the most common features contained in the literature with regard to the characteristics of terrorism, as well as to the understanding of the concept of terrorism in general. There are, however, various differing viewpoints and opinions on how terrorism should be defined and what features an act of terrorism should encompass. It has been argued, for instance, that terrorism must contain

the following characteristics in order for it to be defined as being a specific act of terrorism: the use of violence; large-scale destruction; threat of same; creation of a climate of terror; and finally the use of intimidation, in order to publicise a cause.¹³ In essence, if these characteristics are not present, then the act remains an act of violence, not an act of terrorism. Alternatively, Alex P. Schmid et al. define terrorism as the use of arbitrary violence which causes anxiety; the exploitation of emotions; and an act which can be described as being the peacetime equivalent to war.¹⁴ Yet, terrorism has also been defined as being a collective action and political act taken in the name of a group based on ethnicity, religion, nationalism, or ideological orientation with the aim to gain political needs through the use of violence and intimidation.¹⁵

Many definitions, however, tend to focus specifically on the method of violence used as a tool for creating a working definition, seeing terrorism as being a set of methods or strategies of combat that involve the premeditated use of violence against non-combatants in order to achieve the psychological effect of fear, rather than through the more traditional understandings of the concept.¹⁶ Others try to define terrorism as something that can be seen as being a strategy of violence that is designed to promote a desired outcome by instilling fear in the general public that is being targeted.¹⁷ One of the major difficulties, however, that emerge when trying to define terrorism is the fact that terrorism is itself is not just an act of violence or a set of identifiable ideologies of a particular movement; it is a set of strategies of combat. As well as that, acts of terrorism are undertaken by a whole host of groups and organisations, each with differing origins, bases, and belief systems, as well as including a number of tactics of ‘terror’ – for example bombings, hijackings, and kidnappings. Therefore, it can be argued that the label ‘terrorism’ is used to describe a wider range of phenomena, not a single act.

If a definition of terrorism is to be created, it needs to avoid being excessively influenced by any one type of terrorism, but the vast variety of forms of terrorism that exist also makes it extremely difficult to create a definition that is all-encompassing.¹⁸ Terrorism involves the use of violence which is, in the majority of cases, targeted at what are commonly termed ‘non-combatants’ or ‘innocents’, with the purpose of achieving a psychological effect of fear and destruction – or so the belief goes. However, this ‘targeting of civilians’ characteristic has come into question in recent years. There exists much debate about whether or not the targeting of civilians needs to be included in the definition of terrorism. The targeting of civilians, being a central feature of terrorism it is argued, can make the understanding of the concept even more difficult. For instance, it can be debated whether or not examples such as the attacks on the marine barracks in Lebanon in 1983, which resulted in the deaths of hundreds of marines, and the attack on the USS Cole, which killed 17 sailors in Yemen in October 2000, were actually acts of terrorism. According to that rationale, these should technically not be classed as being acts of terrorism if one accepts that terrorism cannot involve targeting armed forces; yet they are routinely offered as examples of terrorism.¹⁹ Along these lines, it has also been argued that if terrorism is to be defined as attacks against only non-combatant targets, then any attacks that are carried out by groups against ‘armed’ military targets should not be included.²⁰ In addition, definitions of terrorism can also vary as to whether terrorism includes attacks that are carried out only against ‘non-combatant’ targets or whether it can be classed as a tactic of warfare which is used by sub-national groups against all citizens of a state, whether civilian or military, including attacks against an ‘armed’ military.²¹ Many experts in the field of terrorism studies consider the term an ‘essentially contested concept, debatable at its core, indistinct around its edges, and simultaneously descriptive and pejorative’.²² Also, at the analytical level, there remains no consensual definition of terrorism, with the National Research Council (NRC) noting that there are no ‘precise general definitions of terrorism but rather a multiplicity of overlapping efforts, some more satisfactory than others, but none that are analytically sufficient’.²³ Having taken all of the above arguments and details into account, however, for the purpose of this book terrorism is to be defined as the use, or threat of use, of violence that is designed to instil fear or terror in order to achieve political objectives, the type of violence used being that which is usually beyond the bounds of the normally accepted use of violence (for example the use of hijackings and bombings in contrast to the activities of regular armed forces). It is often, though not always, targeted at civilians and non-combatants, and is designed more to influence the political calculations of the government or society concerned, rather than as a purely military tactic to defeat opponents.

What are the most common types of terrorism?

There are so many forms of terrorism in existence today that it has become somewhat of a problem when trying to understand terrorism in its entirety. In today’s world, the label ‘terrorism’ is being attached to almost every act of violence or crime and includes: narco-terrorism, eco-terrorism, cyber-terrorism, pathological terrorism, issue-oriented terrorism, quasi-terrorism, and (probably most strangely) artistic terrorism. Of the existing types of terrorism in t...