Putting Terrorism in Context
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Putting Terrorism in Context

Gary LaFree, Laura Dugan, Erin Miller

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Putting Terrorism in Context

Gary LaFree, Laura Dugan, Erin Miller

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About This Book

This book offers a guide to interpreting available statistical data on terrorism attacks around the world.

The Global Terrorism Database (GTD) now includes more than 113, 000 terrorist attacks, starting in 1970. By analyzing these data, researchers demonstrate how a very small number of terrorist attacks have had an outsized effect on attitudes and policies toward terrorism. These attacks, referred to as 'black swan' events, are difficult to predict but have an enormous impact on human affairs for years to come. The book discusses terrorist attacks, such as 9/11, possibly the most high profile 'black swan' event in living memory, by putting them into context with thousands of less publicized attacks that have plagued the world since 1970.

Historically, the study of terrorism has suffered from a general lack of empirical data and statistical analysis. This is largely due to the difficulty of obtaining valid data on a topic that poses significant collection challenges. However, this book makes use of the fact that the GTD is currently the most extensive unclassified database on terrorism ever collected. While there have been summaries of the research literature on terrorism and important analyses of international terrorism event data, this is the first book that provides a comprehensive empirical overview of the nature and evolution of both modern international and domestic terrorism.

This book will be of interest to students of terrorism and political violence, criminology, international security, and political science in general.

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Publisher
Routledge
Year
2014
ISBN
9781134712489

1 The enduring impact of 9/11

If names be not correct, language is not in accordance with the truth of things. If language be not in accordance with the truth of things, affairs cannot be carried on to success.
Confucius, Analects, c. 500 BC1
In the early morning hours of September 11, 2001, 19 men armed with knives and box cutters boarded four transcontinental flights originating in major cities on the eastern seaboard of the United States. Within minutes they had successfully seized control of all four aircraft and turned them into deadly weapons, each loaded with thousands of gallons of highly explosive jet fuel. In a surprisingly short amount of time, a small group of dedicated zealots had defeated all of the protective layers of the American civil aviation security system. The coordinated attacks of 9/11 claimed nearly 3,000 lives, including the passengers on the planes, people on the ground, and the 19 hijackers – more than the number who perished during the attack on Pearl Harbor during World War II.2 This was not only the greatest loss of life from a coordinated terrorist attack in the United States, it was also the deadliest terrorist attack worldwide in more than four decades of modern history.
It is hard to overestimate the impact that the 9/11 attack has had on the United States in particular and on the world in general. It led directly to the creation of the Department of Homeland Security and the largest reorganization of the US government since World War II. Within weeks of the attack, Congress passed the USA PATRIOT Act, which greatly expanded the power of federal authorities to obtain evidence in terrorism cases, and share information from intelligence and criminal investigations, and has prompted an ongoing debate about the limits of privacy. Also within a week of the attack, Congress passed the Authorization for the Use of Military Force, giving the President the authority to use the military to bring those responsible for 9/11 to justice. The focus of the Federal Bureau of Investigation shifted away from the enforcement of drug laws and white-collar crimes toward countering terrorism. And 9/11 has had a lasting impact on a wide spectrum of national policies, including immigration, border security, emergency preparedness, law enforcement, and even education.
Not surprisingly, estimating the economic impact of 9/11 is complex, but there is universal agreement that it was profound. The effect on US businesses has been estimated at between $100 and $200 billion (Richardson et al. 2007; Rose et al. 2009). Perhaps hardest hit were the firms in the World Trade Center towers, especially those specializing in finance, insurance, and investments. There was also a direct and lasting impact on the airline industry and on hotels, restaurants, entertainment, and tourism. And this of course does not include downstream indirect costs of two major wars and massive changes in intelligence and defense.
The political fallout of 9/11 is even harder to assess. In direct response to the 9/11 attacks, the Bush administration launched a limited military operation in Afghanistan and a much more extensive campaign in Iraq. The Obama administration changed the military focus away from Iraq and more toward Afghanistan but nonetheless continued investing huge human and material resources in both countries. As this book was being prepared, the US and coalition occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan was drawing to a close. But the impact of the invasions on global politics will reverberate for years to come.
Given the importance of 9/11 in the history of the United States and beyond, it is unsurprising that much of our thinking about terrorism, right down to basic assumptions about who commits terrorism, what terrorism is, where it occurs, how often it happens, why it happens, and what governments can do about it have been shaped for the past decade in large part by the enormous shadow cast by 9/11. However, 9/11 draws its power precisely from the fact that it was an extraordinarily rare event. While it is obviously critical to understand as much as we can about a momentous incident such as 9/11, it is perhaps even more important to put this attack in perspective by considering the more typical characteristics of terrorist attacks.
The purpose of this book is to provide context for the 9/11 attacks by examining the thousands of other terrorist attacks that have plagued the world since 1970. The main information we rely on for this account is the Global Terrorism Database (GTD), an unclassified source for data on terrorist attacks maintained by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START), headquartered at the University of Maryland. At the moment, the GTD is the longest, most comprehensive unclassified source of data on terrorist attacks ever assembled, including more than 113,000 attacks around the globe from 1970 to 2012.3 These attacks are limited to non-state actors – individuals or groups – that use violence or the threat of violence to advance their political agenda. We will not be examining violence that is directly carried out by governments – a worthy topic that deserves its own specialized treatment. Following this introduction, we use the GTD to consider the general characteristics of terrorism, the nature of terrorist attacks, the tactics used by terrorist groups, how governments have responded to terrorism, and the effectiveness of these responses.
To some extent our analysis will challenge conventional wisdom, revealing that terrorist attacks are overwhelmingly launched against local targets, are highly concentrated in a few locations, rely largely on readily available, unsophisticated weaponry, are often perpetrated by individuals or groups whose identity cannot be positively confirmed, and frequently involve few or no fatalities. Further, the typical terrorist group disappears in less than a year, and evidence suggests that groups sometimes but not always mimic tactical advances made by other groups. Our analysis suggests that governments should consider a wide range of strategies when responding to terrorist threats and attacks, and not get locked into a single approach.

Tuesday morning, September 11, 2001

September 11, 2001, dawned as a beautiful, nearly cloudless, autumn day in the eastern United States. Millions of men and women readied themselves for work. Thousands made their way to the Twin Towers, the signature structures of the World Trade Center complex in New York City. Two hundred miles away in Arlington, Virginia, many others began arriving at the Pentagon. Across the Potomac River, the United States Congress was back in session that day. At the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, visitors began to line up for a White House tour. In Sarasota, Florida, President George W. Bush was starting his day by jogging.
The US government’s 9/11 Commission Report, completed in 2004, paints a portrait of the attacks as they unfolded in painstaking detail. Early that morning in Boston, Egyptian-born Mohamed Atta and four accomplices boarded American Airlines Flight 11 bound for Los Angeles. The flight departed at 7:59 a.m. A few minutes later the first of four coordinated 9/11 hijackings began. Atta’s accomplices stabbed two unarmed flight attendants, and shortly after, Atta moved into the cockpit of the aircraft. The hijackers sprayed Mace or some other irritant into the first class cabin and forced passengers and attendants to the rear of the plane. The hijackers claimed that they had a bomb and threatened to detonate it if the passengers did not follow their orders. Flight attendant Betty Ong was able to contact an American Airlines office and report that “The cockpit is not answering, somebody’s stabbed in business class … I think we’re getting hijacked” (The 9/11 Commission Report 2004:5). Shortly afterward, flight attendant Madeline Sweeney managed to contact the American Flight Services Office in Boston and reported, “We are in a rapid descent … we are all over the place” (p. 6). At 8:46 a.m., American Flight 11 crashed directly into the North Tower of the World Trade Center in New York City. All on board and hundreds of people in the tower died instantly.
At nearly the same time as these events were unfolding, Marwan al Shehhi, along with four other accomplices, checked into United Airlines Flight 175, also departing from Boston and bound for Los Angeles. United 175 departed at 8:14 a.m., and the hijackers attacked about 30 minutes after the plane departed. As in the American Airlines hijacking, the assailants used knives, Mace or a product like Mace, and the threat of a bomb. They stabbed members of the flight crew and murdered both pilots. At 8:51 a.m. the flight deviated from its assigned altitude. At 9:00 a.m., in Easton, Connecticut, a man named Lee Hanson received a phone call from his son Peter, a passenger on United 175: “It’s getting bad, Dad – a stewardess was stabbed … I think we are going down – I think they intend to go to Chicago or someplace and fly into a building – Don’t worry, Dad. If it happens, it’ll be very fast …” Three minutes later, United 175 struck the South Tower of the World Trade Center. Again, all on board and hundreds of people in the tower died instantly. Thousands more were killed when each tower eventually collapsed.
A few hundred miles southwest of Boston, at Dulles International Airport in the Virginia suburbs of Washington, DC, another team of five men checked in on American Airlines Flight 77, bound for Los Angeles. The flight departed at 8:10 a.m. About 40 minutes later, the hijackers brandished knives and box cutters, and moved all of the passengers to the rear of the aircraft. At 8:54 a.m., the plane deviated from its assigned flight plan. At 9:29 the autopilot on American 77 was disengaged. Shortly after, the hijacker piloting the plane advanced the throttles to maximum power and dove toward the Pentagon. At 9:37 a.m. American Flight 77 slammed into the Pentagon traveling at more than 500 miles per hour. All on board, as well as many civilian and military personnel in the Pentagon, were instantly killed.
Just before 9 a.m. a final team of hijackers departed from Newark, New Jersey, for San Francisco on United Airlines Flight 93. The hijackers attacked about 45 minutes later. The other three aircraft had been hijacked by teams of five men. In the United 93 hijacking there were only four hijackers.4 Shortly after the hijacking began, a woman, most likely a flight attendant, struggled with one of the hijackers and was either subdued or killed. Passengers and flight crew began making a series of calls from air phones and cellular phones once the attack unfolded. As in the other hijackings, the assailants wielded knives, moved the passengers into the back of the plane, and claimed that they had a bomb. Several of the passengers who were able to make phone calls learned of the crashes that had already taken place at the World Trade Center. From these calls, we know that the passengers and surviving crew members planned a revolt against the hijackers, and at least one call indicated that the passengers took a vote before deciding to rush the terrorists. At 9:57 a.m., the passenger assault began. One of the passengers ended her telephone message: “Everyone’s running up to first class. I’ve got to go. Bye.” The passengers continued their assault and at 10:02, perhaps realizing that the passengers were about to overcome them, the hijackers headed the plane steeply downward. With the sounds of the passenger counterattack in the background, United 93 plowed into an empty field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, traveling at a speed of 580 miles per hour. The hijackers had most likely planned to attack either the Capitol or the White House, but were thwarted by a group of unarmed passengers.

The enduring impact of 9/11

Few would disagree with the conclusion that the coordinated attacks of September 11, 2001, have had a major impact on the United States in particular and on the world in general. In an influential book, essayist Nassim Nicholas Taleb (2007:xvii) defines 9/11 as a “black swan” event – one that falls outside the realm of regular expectations, has a high impact, and defies prediction. The term is based on the observation that before they visited Western Australia, Europeans had assumed that all swans were white and a black swan in everyday language came to refer to a phenomenon that was presumed not to exist. The discovery of black swans by European explorers in the late 1600s smashed a fact that was previously thought to be unassailable. The importance of the metaphor for Taleb is to show how fragile human knowledge can be. Indeed, Taleb argues that a small number of black swan events explain many of the most important developments in human history, including scientific discoveries, major financial outcomes, and even the success of ideas and religions. In addition to 9/11, Taleb regards the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the start of World War I, the rise of the Internet, and the development of the personal computer as black swan events. Taleb argues that because these events are so rare, they are difficult or impossible to predict with standard scientific methods. Nonetheless, says Taleb, human nature resists uncertainty, and human beings try very hard to make black swan events seem explainable and predictable after they occur.
A key characteristic of these black swan events is their enduring impact on human history. An immediate effect of the 9/11 attacks on US history was a major reorganization of government, represented most dramatically by the establishment of the Department of Homeland Security. The creation of a Cabinet-level department dedicated to overseeing homeland security has been the largest reorganization of the US federal government since World War II. In January 2003, Tom Ridge, former Governor of Pennsylvania, became the first Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), an amalgamation of more than 20 agencies and 180,000 employees from disparate corners of government. Agencies folded into the new department included the Customs Service, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the Coast Guard, the Secret Service, and the Border Patrol.
However, substantial as it was, the creation of the new Department of Homeland Security was only a part of the administrative reorganization sparked by 9/11 in the United States. In fact, many of the national security policies enacted by the United States in the wake of 9/11 were a direct reaction to the coordinated attacks. For example, just a few weeks after September 11, Congress passed the PATRIOT Act, and ever since its passage it has generated controversy, hailed by some as an indispensable tool in the war on terror, and by others as a frontal assault on civil liberties. What is not disputed is the conclusion that the PATRIOT Act substantially expanded the power of the police to obtain evidence in terrorism cases, and of intelligence and criminal justice investigators to share information collected. Another immediate impact of 9/11 was a major shift in the focus of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) from its traditional emphasis on drug laws and traditional crimes toward counterterrorism. After the passage of the PATRIOT Act, the FBI made major efforts to integrate its criminal investigations with foreign and domestic intelligence operations. The FBI also lessened its criteria for opening investigations, which allowed it to gather information on communities even in the absence of indicators of criminal activity.5
Other federal programs experienced similar reorganizations. Perhaps most dramatically, Congress passed legislation shortly after the attacks of September 11 that created the Transportation Security Administration, which for the first time federalized passenger and baggage screening at the nation’s airports. Anyone who boards aircraft these days is depressingly familiar with the enhanced security measures that now require passengers to arrive at airports hours before flying, to remove liquids from their carry-on luggage, to submit their shoes, jackets, and laptop computers for inspection, and to be compelled to walk through full body scanners or endure potentially invasive pat-downs. The same legislation also required that passenger airplanes flying in the United States have reinforced cockpit doors to prevent intruders from gaining access to flight decks.
The creation of DHS in 2003 brought together s...

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