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Current Perspectives Readings from lnfoTrac® College Edition

Terrorism and

Homeland Security

DIPAK K. GUPTA San Diego State University

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Current Perspectives: Readings from lnfoTrac• College Edition: Terrorism and Homeland Security

Dipak K. Gupta

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Contents

Preface v1

1. In His Own Words: Excerpts from Osama bin Laden's Messages 1

--7 2. The Four Waves of Modern Terrorism 9 DAVID C. RAPOPORT

-7 3. "Misunderestimating" Terrorism 38 ALAN B. KRUEGER and DAVID D. LAITIN

4. The Other Evil 45 STROBE TALBOTT

5. License to Kill 47 BERNARD LEWIS

6. Rational Fanatics 53 EHUD SPRINZAK

--=> 7. The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism 63 ROBERT A. PAPE

~

8. Beyond the Abu Sayyaf 105 STEVEN ROGERS

9. The Protean Enemy 111 JESSICA STERN

10. The Future of Political Islam GRAHAM E. FULLER

11. America's Imperial Strategy G. JOHN IKENBERRY

12. History and the Hyperpower ELIOT A. COHEN

13. A Duty to Prevent 155

121

131

144

LEE FEINSTEIN and ANN-MARIE SLAUGHTER

14. The Hard Questions 166 DAVID CARR

15. Terrorism and Humanity 171 DIPAK K. GUPTA

lnfoMarks: Make Your Mark 174 Contributor Biographies 177

v

8 IN HIS OWN WORDS: EXCERPTS FROM OSAMA BIN LADEN'S MESSAGES

And the convergence of interests is not detrimental. The Muslims' fighting against the Byzantine converged with the interests of the Persians.

And this was not detrimental to the companions of the prophet. Before concluding, we reiterate the importance of high morale and caution

against false rumours, defeatism, uncertainty, and discouragement. The prophet said: "Bring good omens and do not discourage people." He also said: "The voice of Abu-Talhah [one of the prophet's compan-

ions] in the army is better than 100 men." During the Al-Yarmuk Battle, a man told Khalid bin-al-Walid [an Islamic

commander]: "The Byzantine soldiers are too many and the Muslims are few." So, Khalid told him: "Shame on you. Armies do not triumph with large

numbers but are defeated if the spirit of defeatism prevails." Keep this saying before your eyes: "It is not fitting for a Prophet that he

should have prisoners of war until he hath thoroughly subdued the land." "Therefore, when ye meet the unbelievers (in fight), smite at their necks." Your wish to the crusaders should be as came in this verse of poetry: "The

only language between you and us is the sword that will strike your necks." In the end, I advise myself and you to fear God covertly and openly and to

be patient in the jihad. Victory will be achieved with patience. I also advise myself and you to say

more prayers. 0 ye who believe! When ye meet a force, be firm, and call Allah in re-

membrance much (and often); That ye may prosper. God, who sent the book unto the prophet, who drives the clouds, and

who defeated the enemy parties, defeat them and make us victorious over them.

Our Lord! Give us good in this world and good in the Hereafter and save us from the torment of the Fire! [Koranic verse].

May God's peace and blessings be upon Prophet Muhammad and his household.

2

The Four Waves of

Modern Terrorism

David C. Rapoport

S eptember 11, 2001, is the most destructive day in the long, bloody his- tory of terrorism. The casualties, economic damage, and outrage were unprecedented. It could turn out to be the most important day too, be-

cause it led President Bush to declare a "war (that) would not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped, and defeated."'

However unprecedented September 11 was, President Bush's declaration was not altogether unique. Exactly 100 years ago, when an anarchist assassi- nated President William McKinley in September 1901, his successor Theodore Roosevelt called for a crusade to exterminate terrorism everywhere. 2

No one knows if the current campaign will be more successful than its predecessors, but we can more fully appreciate the difficulties ahead by exam- ining features of the history of rebel (nonstate) terror. That history shows how deeply implanted terrorism is in our culture, provides parallels worth ponder- ing, and offers a perspective for understanding the uniqueness of September 11 and its aftermath. 3 To this end, in this chapter 1 examine the course of modern terror from its initial appearance 125 years ago; I emphasize continu- ities and change, particularly with respect to international ingredients. 4

David Rapoport, "The Four Waves of Rebel Terror and September 11," from Attacking Terrorism, Audrey Cronin and James Ludes, eds., Georgetown University Press, 2004. Reprinted by permission of the author.

9

10 DAVID C. RAPOPORT

THE WAVE PHENOMENA

Modern terror began in Russia in the 1880s and within a decade appeared in Western Europe, the Balkans, and Asia. A generation later the wave was com- pleted. Anarchists initiated the wave, and their primary strategy-assassination campaigns against prominent officials-was adopted by virtually all the other groups of the time, even those with nationalist aims in the Balkans and India.

Significant examples of secular rebel terror existed earlier, but they were specific to a particular time and country. The Ku Klux Klan (KKK), for ex- ample, made a striking contribution to the decision of the federal government to end Reconstruction, but the KKK had no contemporary parallels or emulators. 5

The "Anarchist wave" was the first global or truly international terrorist experience in history; 6 three similar, consecutive, and overlapping expressions followed. The "anticolonial wave" began in the 1920s and lasted about forty years. Then came the "New Left wave," which diminished greatly as the twen- tieth century closed, leaving only a few groups still active today in Nepal, Spain, the United Kingdom, Peru, and Colombia. In 1979 a "religious wave" emerged; if the pattern of its three predecessors is relevant it could disappear by 2025, at which time a new wave might emerge. 7 The uniqueness and per- sistence of the wave experience indicates that terror is deeply rooted in mod- ern culture.

The wave concept-an unfamiliar notion-is worth more attention. Aca- demics focus on organizations, and there are good reasons for this orientation. Organizations launch terror campaigns, and governments are always primarily concerned to disable those organizations. 8 Students of terrorism also focus un- duly on contemporary events, which makes us less sensitive to waves because the life cycle of a wave lasts at least a generation. 9

What is a wave? It is a cycle of activity in a given time period-a cycle characterized by expansion and contraction phases. A crucial feature is its in- ternational character; similar activities occur in several countries, driven by a common predominant energy that shapes the participating groups' character- istics and mutual relationships. As their name-"Anarchist," "anticolonial," "New Left," and "Religious"-suggest, a different energy drives each.

Each wave's name reflects its dominant but not its only feature. Nationalist organizations in various numbers appear in all waves, for example, and each wave shaped its national elements differently. The Anarchists gave them tactics and often training. Third-wave nationalist groups displayed profoundly left- wing aspirations, and nationalism serves or reacts to religious purposes in the fourth wave. All groups in the second wave had nationalist aspirations, but the wave is termed anticolonial because the resisting states were powers that had become ambivalent about retaining their colonial status. That ambivalence ex- plains why the wave produced the first terrorist successes. In other waves, that ambivalence is absent or very weak, and no nationalist struggle has succeeded.

THE FOUR WAVES OF MODERN TERRORISM 11

A wave is composed of organizations, but waves and organizations have very different life rhythms. Normally, organizations disappear before the initial wave associated with them does. New Left organizations were particularly striking in this respect-typically lasting two years. Nonetheless, the wave re- tained sufficient energy to create a generation of successor or new groups. When a wave's energy cannot inspire new organizations, the wave disappears. Resistance, political concessions, and changes in the perceptions of genera- tions are critical factors in explaining the disappearance.

Occasionally an organization survives its original wave. The Irish Republi- can Army (IRA), for example, is the oldest modern terrorist organization- emerging first in 1916, though not as a terror organization. 10 It then fought five campaigns in two successive waves (the fourth struggle, in the 1950s, used guerrilla tactics). 11 At least two offshoots-the Real IRA and Continuity IRA-are still active. The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), founded in 1964, became active in 196 7. When the Viet Cong faded into history, the international connections and activity of the PLO made it the preeminent body of the New Left wave, although the PLO pursued largely nationalist ends. More recently, elements of the PLO (e.g., Fatah) have become active in the fourth wave, even though the organization initially was wholly secular. When an organization transcends a wave, it reflects the new wave's influence-- a change that may pose special problems for the group and its constituencies, as we shall see.

The first three waves lasted about a generation each-a suggestive time frame closest in duration to that of a human life cycle, in which dreams inspir- ing parents lose their attractiveness for children. 12 Although the resistance of those attacked is crucial in explaining why terror organizations rarely succeed, the time span of the wave also suggests that the wave has its own momentum. Over time there are fewer organizations because the enterprise's problematic nature becomes more visible. The pattern is familiar to students of revolution- ary states such as France, the Soviet Union, and Iran. The inheritors of the revolution do not value it in the same way its creators did. In the anticolonial wave, the process also seems relevant to the colonial powers. A new genera- tion found it much easier to discard the colonial idea. The wave pattern calls one's attention to crucial political themes in the general culture--themes that distinguish the ethos of one generation from another.

There are many reasons the first wave occurred when it did, but two criti- cal factors are conspicuous and facilitated successive waves. The first was the transformation in communication and transportation patterns. The telegraph, daily mass newspapers, and railroads flourished during the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Events in one country were known elsewhere in a day or so. Prominent Russian anarchists traveled extensively, helping to inspire sym- pathies and groups elsewhere; sometimes, as the journeys of Peter Prodhoun indicate, they had more influence abroad than at home. Mass transportation made large-scale emigrations possible and created diaspora communities, which

12 DAVID C. RAPOPORT

then became significant in the politics ofboth their "new" and "old" coun- tries. Subsequent innovations continued to shrink time and space.

A second factor contributing to the emergence of the first wave was doc- trine or culture. Russian writers created a strategy for terror, which became an inheritance for successors to use, improve, and transmit. Sergei Nechaev was the leading figure in this effort; Nicholas Mozorov, Peter Kropotkin, Serge Stepniak, and others also made contributions. 13 Their efforts perpetu- ated the wave. The KKK had no emulators partly because it made no effort to explain its tactics. The Russian achievement becomes even more striking when we compare it to the practices of the ancient religious terrorists who always stayed within their own religious tradition-the source of their justifi- cations and binding precedents. Each religious tradition produced its own kind of terrorist, and sometimes the tactics within a tradition were so uniform that they appear to be a form of religious ritual. 14

A comparison ofNechaev's Revolutionary Catechism with Osama bin Laden's training manual, Military Studies in the Jihad Against the Tyrants, shows that they share one very significant feature: a paramount desire to become more tiffident by learning from the experiences of friends and enemies alike. 15 The major dif- ference in this respect is the role of women. Nechaev considers them "priceless assets," and indeed they were crucial leaders and participants in the first wave. Bin Laden dedicates his book to protecting the Muslim woman, but he ignores what experience can tell us about female terrorists. 16 Women do not partici- pate in his forces and are virtually excluded in the fourth wave, except in Sri Lanka.

Each wave produces major technical works that reflect the special proper- ties of that wave and contribute to a common modern effort to formulate a "science" of terror. Between Nechaev and bin Laden there were Georges Grivas, Guerrilla War, and Carlos Marighella, Mini-Manual of the Urban Guerrilla, in the second and third waves, respectively.

"Revolution" is the overriding aim in every wave, but revolution is un- derstood in different ways. 17 Revolutionaries create a new source of political legitimacy, and more often than not that meant national self-determination. The anticolonial wave was dominated by this quest. The principle that a people should govern itself was bequeathed by the American and French revolutions. (The French Revolution also introduced the term terror to our vocabulary.) 18 Because the definition of "the people" has never been (and perhaps never can be) clear and fixed, however, it is a source of recurring conflict even when the sanctity of the principle is accepted everywhere. Revolution also can mean a radical reconstruction of authority to eliminate all forms of equality-a cardinal theme in the first wave and a significant one in the third wave. Fourth-wave groups use a variety of sacred texts or revelations for legitimacy.

This chapter treats the great events precipitating each wave and the aims and tactics of participating groups. The focus, however, is the international scene. I examine the interactions of the five principal actors: terrorist

THE FOUR WAVES OF MODERN TERRORISM 13

organizations; diaspora populations; states; sympathetic foreign publics; and, beginning with the second wave, supranational organizations. 19

FIRST WAVE: CREATION OF A DOCTRINE

The creators of modern terrorism inherited a world in which traditional revo- lutionaries, who depended on pamphlets and leaflets to generate an uprising, suddenly seemed obsolete. The masses, Nechaev said, regarded them as "idle word-spillers." 20 A new form of communication (Peter Kropotkin named it "Propaganda by the Deed") was needed-one that would be heard and would command respect because the rebel took action that involved serious personal risks that signified deep commitment.

The anarchist analysis of modern society contained four major points. It noted that society had huge reservoirs of latent ambivalence and hostility and that the conventions society devised to muffle and diffuse antagonisms gener- ated guilt and provided channels for settling grievances and securing personal amenities. By demonstrating that these conventions were simple historical creations, however, acts once declared immoral would be hailed by later gen- erations as noble efforts to liberate humanity. In this view, terror was thought to be the quickest and most effective means to destroy conventions. By this reasoning, the perpetrators freed themselves from the paralyzing grip of guilt to become different kinds of people. They forced those who defended the government to respond in ways that undermined the rules the latter claimed to respect. 21 Dramatic action repeated again and again invariably would polarize the society, and the revolution inevitably would follow-or so the anarchists reasoned.

An incident that inspired the turbulent decades to follow illustrates the process. On January 24, 1878, Vera Zasulich wounded a Russian police com- mander who abused political prisoners. Throwing her weapon to the floor, she proclaimed that she was a "terrorist, not a killer." 22 The ensuing trial quickly became that of the police chief. When the court freed her, crowds greeted the verdict with thunderous applause. 23

A successful campaign entailed learning how to fight and how to die, and the most admirable death occurred as a result of a court trial in which one ac- cepted responsibility and used the occasion to indict the regime. Stepniak, a major figure in the history of Russian terrorism, described the Russian terror- ist as "noble, terrible, irresistibly fascinating, uniting the two sublimities of human grandeur, the martyr and the hero." 24 Dynamite-a recent invention- was the weapon of choice because the assailant usually was killed too, so it was not a weapon a criminal would use. 25

Terror was violence beyond the moral conventions used to regulate vio- lence: the rules of war and punishment. The former distinguishes combatants from noncombatants, and the latter separates the guilty from the innocent. Invariably, most onlookers would label acts of terror atrocities or outrages.

14 DAVID C. RAPOPORT

The rebels described themselves as terrorists, not guerrillas, tracing their lin- eage to the French Revolution. They sought political targets or those that could affect public attitudes. 26 Terrorism was a strategy, not an end. The tactics used depended upon the group's political objective and on the specific context faced. Judging a context constantly in flux was both an art and a science.

The creators of this strategy took confidence from contemporary events. In the Russian case, as well as in all subsequent ones, major unexpected politi- cal events dramatized new government vulnerabilities. Hope was excited, and hope is always an indispensable lubricant of rebel activity. 27 The turn of events that suggested Russian vulnerability was the dazzling effort of the young Czar Alexander II to transform the system virtually overnight. In one stroke of the pen (1861) he freed the serfs (one-third of the population) and promised them funds to buy their land. Three years later he established limited local self- government, "westernized" the judicial system, abolished capital punishment, and relaxed censorship powers and control over education. Hopes were aroused but could not be fulfilled quickly enough, as indicated by the fact that the funds available for the serfs to buy land were insufficient. In the wake of inevitable disappointments, systematic assassination strikes against prominent officials began-culminating in the death of Alexander himself.

Russian rebels encouraged and trained other groups, even those with dif- ferent political aims. Their efforts bore fruit quickly. Armenian and Polish nationalist groups committed to assassination emerged in Russia and used bank robbery to finance their activities. Then the Balkans exploded, as many groups found the boundaries of states recently torn out of the Ottoman Empire unsatisfactory. 28 In the West, where Russian anarchists fled and found refuge in Russian diaspora colonies and among other elements hostile to the czarist regime, a campaign of anarchist terror developed that influenced ac- tivities in India too. 29 The diaspora produced some surprising results for groups still struggling in Russia. The Terrorist Brigade in 1905 had its head- quarters in Switzerland, launched strikes from Finland (an autonomous part of the Russian empire), got arms from an Armenian terrorist group Russians helped train, and were offered funds by the Japanese to be laundered through American millionaires. 30

The high point of the first wave of international terrorist activity occurred in the 1890s, sometimes called the "Golden Age of Assassination"-when mon- archs, prime ministers, and presidents were struck down, one after another, usually by assassins who moved easily across international borders. 31 The most immediately affected governments clamored for international police coopera- tion and for better border control, a situation President Theodore Roosevelt thought ideal for launching the first international effort to eliminate terrorism:

Anarchy is a crime against the whole human race, and all mankind should band together against the Anarchist. His crimes should be made a crime against the law of nations ... declared by treaties among all civilized powers. 32

THE FOUR WAVES OF MODERN TERRORISM 15

The consensus lasted only three years, however. The United States refused to send a delegation to a St. Petersburg conference to consider a German/ Russian-sponsored protocol to meet these objectives. It feared that extensive involvement in European politics might be required, and it had no federal police force. Italy refused too, for a very different and revealing concern: If anarchists were returned to their original countries, Italy's domestic troubles might be worse than its international ones.

The first great effort to deal with international terrorism failed because the interests of states pulled them in different directions, and the divisions devel- oped new expressions as the century developed. Bulgaria gave Macedonian nationalists sanctuaries and bases to aid operations in the Ottoman Empire. The suspicion that Serbia helped Archduke Franz Ferdinand's assassin precipi- tated World War I. An unintended consequence of the four terrible years that followed was a dampened enthusiasm for the strategy of assassination.

SECOND WAVE: MOSTLY SUCCESSFUL,

AND A NEW LANGUAGE

A wave by definition is an international event; oddly, however, the first one was sparked by a domestic political situation. A monumental international event, the Versailles Peace Treaty that concluded World War I, precipitated the second wave. The victors applied the principle of national self-determination to break up the empires of the defeated states (mostly in Europe). The non- European portions of those defeated empires, which were deemed not yet ready for independence, became League of Nations "mandates" administered directly by individual victorious powers until the territories were ready for independence.

Whether the victors fully understood the implications of their decisions or not, they undermined the legitimacy of their own empires. The IRA achieved limited success in the 1920s,33 and terrorist groups developed in all empires except the Soviet Union (which did not recognize itself as a colonial power) after World War II. Terrorist activity was crucial in establishing the new states of Ireland, Israel, Cyprus, and Algeria, among others. As empires dissolved, the wave receded.

Most terrorist successes occurred twenty-five years after Versailles, and the time lag requires explanation. World War II reinforced and enlarged the im- plications ofVersailles. Once more the victors compelled the defeated to aban- don empires; this time the colonial territories were overseas (Manchuria, Korea, Ethiopia, Libya, and so forth) and were not made mandates. The vic- tors began liquidating their own empires as well, and in doing so they gener- ally were not responding to terrorist activity, as in India, Pakistan, Burma, Ceylon, Tunisia, Egypt, Morocco, the Philippines, Ghana, and Nigeria- which indicated how firmly committed the Western world had become to the

16 DAVID C. RAPOPORT

principle of self-determination. The United States had become the major Western power, and it pressed hardest for eliminating empires. As the cold war developed, the process was accelerated because the Soviets were always poised to help would-be rebels. 34

The terror campaigns of the second wave were fought in territories where special political problems made withdrawal a less attractive option. Jews and Arabs in Palestine, for example, had dramatically conflicting versions of what the termination of British rule was supposed to mean. The considerable European population in Algeria did not want Paris to abandon its authority, and in Northern Ireland the majority wanted to remain British. In Cyprus, the Turkish community did not want to be put under Greek rule-the aim of Ethniki Organosis Kyprion Agoniston (EOKA)-and Britain wanted to retain Cyprus as a base for Middle East operations.

The problem of conflicting aspirations was reflected in the way the strug- gles were or were not settled. The terrorists did get the imperial powers to withdraw, but that was not the only purpose of the struggle. Menachem Begin's Irgun fought to gain the entire Palestine mandate but settled for partition. 35

IRA elements have never accepted the fact that Britain will not leave North- ern Ireland without the consent of the territory's population. EOKA fought to unify Cyprus with Greece (enosis) but accepted an independent state that EOKA tried to subvert for the sake of an ever-elusive enosis. Algeria seems to be the chief exception because the Europeans all fled. The initial manifesto of the Front de Liberation Nationale, Algeria (FLN) proclaimed, however, that it wanted to retain that population and establish a democratic state; neither objective was achieved. 36

Second-wave organizations understood that they needed a new language to describe themselves because the term terrorist had accumulated so many negative connotations that those who identified themselves as terrorists incurred enormous political liabilities. The Israeli group Lehi was the last self-identified terrorist group. Begin, leader of the Irgun (Lehi's Zionist rival)-which concentrated on purpose rather than mean-described his people as "freedom fighters" struggling against "government terror." 37 This self-description was so appealing that all subsequent terrorist groups fol- lowed suit; because the anticolonial struggle seemed more legitimate than the purposes served in the first wave, the "new" language became attractive to potential political supporters as well. Governments also appreciated the political value of "appropriate" language and began to describe all violent rebels as terrorists. The media, hoping to avoid being seen as blatantly parti- san, corrupted language further. Major American newspapers, for example, often described the same individuals alternatively as terrorists, guerrillas, and soldiers in the same account. 38

Terrorist tactics also changed in the second wave. Because diaspora sources contributed more money, bank robberies were less common. The first wave demonstrated that assassinating prominent political figures could be very coun- terproductive, and few assassinations occurred in the second wave. The

THE FOUR WAVES OF MODERN TERRORISM 17

Balkans was an exception-an odd place especially when one considers where World War I started. 39 Elsewhere only Lehi (the British renamed it the Stern Gang) remained committed to a strategy of assassination. Lehi was much less effective than its two competitors, however, which may have been an impor- tant lesson for subsequent anticolonial movements. Martyrdom, often linked to assassination, seemed less significant as well.

The new strategy was more complicated than the old because there were more kinds of targets chosen, and it was important to strike them in proper sequence. Second-wave strategy sought to eliminate the police-a govern- ment's eyes and ears-first, through systematic assassinations of officers and/ or their families. The military units replacing them, second-wave proponents reasoned, would prove too clumsy to cope without producing counter- atrocities that would increase social support for the cause. If the process of atrocities and counter-atrocities were well planned, it could favor those per- ceived to be weak and without alternatives. 40

Major energies went into guerrilla-like (hit-and-run) actions against troops-attacks that still went beyond the rules of war because weapons were concealed and the assailants had no identifying insignia. 41 Some groups, such as the lrgun, made efforts to give warnings in order to limit civilian casualties. In some cases, such as Algeria, terror was one aspect of a more comprehensive rebellion that included extensive guerrilla forces.

Compared to terrorists in the first wave, those in the second wave used the four international ingredients in different and much more productive ways. Leaders of different national groups still acknowledged the common bonds and heritage of an international revolutionary tradition, but the heroes in- voked in the literature of specific groups were overwhelmingly national he- roes. 42 The underlying assumption seemed to be that if one strengthened ties with foreign terrorists, other international assets would become less useful.

Diaspora groups regularly displayed abilities not seen earlier. Nineteenth- century Irish rebels received money, weapons, and volunteers from the Irish- American community, but in the 1920s the exertions of the latter went further and induced the U.S. government to exert significant political influence on Britain to accept an Irish state. 43 Jewish diaspora communities, especially in the United States, exerted similar leverage as the horror of the Holocaust was finally revealed.

Foreign states with kindred populations also were active. Arab states gave the Algerian FLN crucial political support, and those adjacent to Algeria of- fered sanctuaries from which the group could stage attacks. Greece sponsored the Cypriot uprising against the British and against Cyprus when it became a state. Frightened Turkish Cypriots, in turn, looked to Turkey for aid. Turkish troops then invaded the island ( 197 4) and are still there.

Outside influences obviously change when the purpose of the terrorist ac- tivity and the local context are perceived differently. The different Irish expe- riences illustrate the point well. The early effort in the 1920s was seen simply as an anticolonial movement, and the Irish-American community had its

18 DAVID C. RAPOPORT

greatest or most productive impact. 44 The diaspora was less interested in the IRA's brief campaigns to bring Northern Ireland into the Republic during World War II or, later, during the cold war. Conflicting concerns weakened overseas enthusiasms and influences.

As the second wave progressed, a new, fifth ingredient-supranational organization-came into play. When Alexander I of Serbia was assassinated in Marseilles (1934), the League ofNations tried to contain international terror by drafting two conventions, including one for an international court (1937). Neither came into effect. Two League members (Hungary and Italy) appar- ently encouraged the assassination and blocked the anti terror efforts. 45 After World War II, the United Nations inherited the League's ultimate authority over the colonial mandates-territories that were now scenes of extensive ter- rorist activity. When Britain decided to withdraw from Palestine, the UN was crucial in legitimizing the partition; subsequently all anticolonial terrorists sought to interest the UN in their struggles. The new states admitted to the UN were nearly always former colonial territories, and they gave the anti- colonial sentiment in that body more structure, focus, and opportunities. More and more participants in UN debates regularly used Begin's language to describe anticolonial terrorists as "freedom fighters." 46

THIRD WAVE: EXCESSIVE

INTERNATIONALISM?

The major political event stimulating the third, or "New Left," wave was the agonizing Vietnam War. The effectiveness of the Viet Cong's "primitive weapons" against the American goliath's modern technology rekindled radical hopes that the contemporary system was vulnerable. Groups developed in the Third World and in the Western heartland itself, where the war stimulated enormous ambivalence among the youth about the value of the existing sys- tem. Many Western groups-such as American Weather Underground, the West German Red Army Faction (RAF), the Italian Red Brigades, the Japan- ese Red Army, and the French Action Directe--saw themselves as vanguards for the Third World masses. The Soviet world encouraged the outbreaks and offered moral support, training, and weapons.

As in the first wave, radicalism and nationalism often were combined, as evidenced by the struggles of the Basques, Armenians, Corsicans, Kurds, and Irish. 47 Every first-wave nationalist movement had failed, but the linkage was renewed because ethnic concerns always have larger constituencies than radi- cal aspirations have. Although self-determination ultimately obscured the rad- ical programs and nationalist groups were much more durable than other groups in the third wave, none succeeded, and their survivors will fail too. The countries concerned-Spain, France, the United Kingdom, and Turkey-simply do not consider themselves to be colonial powers, and the ambivalence necessary for nationalist success is absent.

THE FOUR WAVES OF MODERN TERRORISM 19

When the Vietnam War ended in 1975, the PLO replaced the Viet Cong as the heroic model. The PLO originated after the extraordinary collapse of three Arab armies in the six days of the 1967 Middle East war; its existence and persistence gave credibility to supporters who argued that only terror could remove Israel. Its centrality for other groups was strengthened because it got strong support from Arab states and the Soviet Union and made training facilities in Lebanon available to the other groups.

The first and third waves had some striking resemblances. Women in the second wave had been restricted to the role of messengers and scouts; now they became leaders and fighters once more. 48 "Theatrical targets," compara- ble to those of the first wave, replaced the second wave's military targets. International hijacking is one example. Terrorists understood that some for- eign landing fields were accessible. Seven hundred hijackings occurred during the first three decades of the third wave. 49

Planes were hijacked to secure hostages. There were other ways to gener- ate hostage crises, however, and the hostage crisis became a third-wave char- acteristic. The most memorable episode was the 1979 kidnapping of former Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro by the Red Brigades. When the govern- ment refused to negotiate, Moro was brutally murdered and his body dumped in the streets. The Sandinistas took Nicaragua's Congress hostage in 1978-an act so audacious that it sparked the popular insurrection that brought the Somoza regime down a year later. In Colombia the M-19 tried to duplicate the feat by seizing the Supreme Court on April 19, 1985, but the government refused to yield and in the struggle nearly 100 people were killed; the terror- ists killed eleven justices.

Kidnappings occurred in seventy-three countries-especially in Italy, Spain, and Latin America. From 1968 to 1982 there were 409 international kidnapping incidents yielding 951 hostages. 50 Initially hostages gave their cap- tors political leverage, but soon another concern became more dominant. Companies insured their executives, and kidnapping became lucrative. When money was the principal issue, kidnappers found that hostage negotiations were easier to consummate on their terms. Informed observers estimate the practice "earned" $350 million. 51

The abandoned practice of assassinating prominent figures was revived. The IRA and its various splinter organizations, for example, assassinated the British ambassador to Ireland (1976) and Lord Mountbatten (1979) and at- tempted to kill prime ministers Thatcher (1984) and Major (1991). 52 The Palestinian Black September assassinated the Jordanian prime minister (1971) and attempted to assassinate Jordan's King Hussein (1974). Black September killed the American ambassador when it took the Saudi embassy in Khartoum (1973). Euskadi ta Askatasuna (Basque Nation and Liberty; ETA) killed the Spanish prime minister in the same year.

First- and third-wave assassinations had a different logic, however. A first- wave victim was assassinated because he or she held a public office. New Left- wave assassinations more often were "punishments." Jordan's prime minister and king had forced the PLO out of their country in a savage battle. Similarly,

20 DAVID C. RAPOPORT

the attempt against British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher occurred be- cause she was "responsible" for the death of the nine IRA hunger strikers who refused to be treated as ordinary criminals. 53 Aldo Moro was assassinated because the Italian government refused to enter hostage negotiations. The German Red Army Faction provided a second typical pattern: 15 percent of its strikes involved assassination. Although the RAF did not seek the most prominent public figures, it did kill the head of the Berlin Supreme Court and a well-known industrialist. 54

For good reason, the abandoned term "international terrorism" was revived. Again the revolutionary ethos created significant bonds between sep- arate national groups-bonds that intensified when first Cuban and then PLO training facilities were made available. The targets chosen reflected inter- national dimensions as well. Some groups conducted more assaults abroad than on their home territories; the PLO, for example, was more active in Europe than on the West Bank, and sometimes more active in Europe than many European groups themselves were. Different national groups cooperated in attacks such as the Munich Olympics massacre (1972) and the kidnapping of OPEC ministers (1975), among others.

On their own soil, groups often chose targets with international signifi- cance. Strikes on foreign embassies began when the PLO attacked the Saudi embassy in Khartoum (1973). The Peruvian group Tupac Amaru-partly to gain political advantage over its rival Sendero Luminoso (The Shining Path)- held seventy-two hostages in the Japanese Embassy for more than four months (1996-97) until a rescue operation killed every terrorist in the complex.

One people became a favorite target of most groups. One-third of the international attacks in the third wave involved American targets-a pattern reflecting the United States' new importance. American targets were visible in Latin America, Europe, and the Middle East, where the United States sup- ported most governments under terrorist siege. 55

Despite its preeminent status as a target, cold war concerns sometimes led the United States to ignore its stated distaste for terror. In Nicaragua, Angola, and elsewhere the United States supported terrorist activity-an indication of how difficult it was to forgo a purpose deemed worthwhile even when de- plorable tactics had to be used.

Third-wave organizations discovered that they paid a large price for not being able to negotiate between the conflicting demands imposed by various international elements. 56 The commitment to a revolutionary ethos alienated domestic and foreign liberal elements, particularly during the cold war. The IRA forfeited significant Irish American diaspora support during the third wave. Its initial goal during the third wave was a united socialist Ireland, and its willingness to accept support from Libya and the PLO created problems. Most of all, however, the cold war had to end before the Irish diaspora and an American government showed sustained interest in the Irish issue again and assisted moves to resolve the conflict.

Involvement with foreign groups made some terrorist organizations ne- glect domestic constituencies. A leader of the 2nd ofJune, a German anarchist

THE FOUR WAVES OF MODERN TERRORISM 21

body, suggested that its obsession with the Palestinian cause induced it to at- tack a Jewish synagogue on the anniversary of Kristall Nacht-a date often considered the beginning of the Holocaust. Such "stupidity," he said, alien- ated potential German constituencies. 57 When the power of the cooperating terrorist entities was very unequal, the weaker found that its interest did not count. Thus, the German Revolutionary Cells, hijacking partners of the Pop- ular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), could not get help from their partners to release German prisoners. "(D)ependent on the will of Wadi Haddad and his group," whose agenda was very different from theirs after all, the Revolutionary Cells terminated the relationship and soon collapsed.58

The PLO, always a loose confederation, often found international ties ex- pensive because they complicated serious existing divisions within the organi- zation. In the 1970s Abu lyad, PLO founding member and intelligence chief, wrote that the Palestinian cause was so important in Syrian and Iraqi domestic politics that those states felt it necessary to capture organizations within the PLO to serve their own ends. That made it even more difficult to settle for a limited goal, as the Irgun and EOKA had done earlier.

Entanglements with Arab states created problems for both parties. Raids from Egyptian-occupied Gaza helped precipitate a disastrous war with Israel (1956), and the jidayeen were prohibited from launching raids from that terri- tory ever again. A Palestinian raid from Syria brought Syria into the Six-Day War, and ever afterward Syria kept a tight control on those operating from its territories. When a PLO faction hijacked British and American planes to Jordan (1970) in the first effort to target non-Israelis, the Jordanian army devas- tated the PLO, which then lost its home. Finally, an attempted assassination of an Israeli diplomat in Britain sparked the 1982 invasion of Lebanon and forced the PLO to leave a home that had given it so much significance among foreign terrorist groups. (Ironically, the assassination attempt was organized by Abu Nidal's renegade faction associated with Iraq-a group that had made two pre- vious attempts to assassinate the PLO's leader Yasser Arafat.) Subsequently, Tunisia-the PLO's new host-prohibited the PLO from training foreign groups, and to a large extent the PLO's career as an effective terrorist organiza- tion seemed to be over. Paradoxically, the Oslo Accords demonstrated that the PLO could achieve more of its objectives when it was less dangerous. 59

To maintain control over their own destiny, states again began to "spon- sor" groups (a practice abandoned in the second wave), and once more the sponsors found the practice costly. In the 1980s Britain severed diplomatic re- lations with Libya and Syria for sponsoring terrorism on British soil, and France broke with Iran when it refused to let the French interrogate its em- bassy staff about assassinations of Iranian emigres. Iraq's surprising restraint during the 1991 Gulf War highlighted the weakness of state-sponsored terror. Iraq did threaten to use terror-a threat that induced Western authorities to predict that terrorists would flood Europe. 60 If terror had materialized, how- ever, it would have made bringing Saddam Hussein to trial for crimes a war aim, and the desire to avoid that result is the most plausible explanation for the Iraqi dictator's uncharacteristic restraint.

22 DAVID C. RAPOPORT

The third wave began to ebb in the 1980s. Revolutionary terrorists were defeated in one country after another. Israel's invasion of Lebanon (1982) eliminated PLO facilities to train terrorist groups, and international counter- terrorist cooperation became increasingly effective.

As in the first wave, states cooperated openly and formally in counter- terror efforts. The United States, with British aid, bombed Libya (1986) because of its role as a state sponsor, and the European Community imposed an arms embargo. The international cooperation of national police forces sought at St. Petersburg (1904) became more significant as Trevi-established in the mid-1970s-was joined in this mission by Europol in 1994. Differences between states remained, however; even close allies could not always cooper- ate. France refused to extradite PLO, Red Brigade, and ETA suspects to West Germany, Italy, and Spain, respectively. Italy spurned American requests to extradite a Palestinian suspect in the seizure of the Achille Lauro cruise ship (1984), and Italy refused to extradite a Kurd (1988) because Italian law forbids capital punishment whereas Turkish law does not. The United States has re- fused to extradite some IRA suspects. Events of this sort will not stop until that improbable day when the laws and interests of separate states are identical.

The UN's role changed dramatically in the third wave. Now "new states"-former colonial territories-found that terrorism threatened their in- terests, and they particularly shunned nationalist movements. Major UN con- ventions from 1970 through 1999 made hijacking, hostage taking, attacks on senior government officials, "terrorist bombing" of a foreign state's facilities, and financing of international activities crimes. A change oflanguage is some indication of the changed attitude. "Freedom fighter" was no longer a popu- lar term in UN debates, and the term terrorism actually was used for the title of a document: "International Convention for the Suppression of Terrorist Bombing" (1997). 61 Evidence that Libya's agents were involved in the Pan Am Lockerbie crash produced a unanimous Security Council decision obliging Libya to extradite the suspects (1988), and a decade later when collective sanc- tions had their full effects Libya complied; this episode will continue to shape UN responses to Libya's terrorist activities.

Yet very serious ambiguities and conflicts within the UN remained, re- flecting the ever-present fact that terror serves different ends-and some of those ends are prized. Ironically, the most important ambiguity concerned the third wave's major organization: the PLO. It received official UN status and was recognized by more than 100 states as a state that is entitled to receive a share of the Palestine Mandate.

FOURTH WAVE: HOW UNIQUE AND HOW LONG?

As its predecessor began to ebb, the "religious wave" gathered force. Reli- gious elements have always been important in modern terror because religious and ethnic identities often overlap. The Armenian, Macedonian, Irish,

THE FOUR WAVES OF MODERN TERRORISM 23

Cypriot, French Canadian, Israeli, and Palestinian struggles illustrate the point. 62 In these cases, however, the aim was to create secular states.

Today religion has a vastly different significance, supplying justifications and organizing principles for a state. The religious wave has produced an oc- casional secular group-a reaction to excessive religious zeal. Buddhists in Sri Lanka tried to transform the country, and a terrorist response among the largely Hindu Tamils aims at creating a separate secular state.

Islam is at the heart of the wave. Islamic groups have conducted the most significant, deadly, and profoundly international attacks. Equally significant, the political events providing the hope for the fourth wave originated in Islam, and the successes achieved apparently influenced religious terror groups elsewhere. 63

Although there is no direct evidence for the latter connection, the chronology is suggestive. Mter Islam erupted, Sikhs sought a religious state in the Punjab. Jewish terrorists attempted to blow up Islam's most sacred shrine in Jerusalem and waged an assassination campaign against Palestinian mayors. One Jew murdered twenty-nine Muslim worshippers in Abraham's tomb (Hebron, 1994), and another assassinated Israeli Prime Minister Rabin (1995). Aum Shinrikyo-a group that combined Buddhist, Hindu, and Christian themes-released nerve gas on the Tokyo subway (1995), killing 12 people and injuring 3,000 and creating worldwide anxiety that various groups would soon use weapons of mass destruction.

Christian terrorism, based on racist interpretations of the Bible, emerged in the amorphous American "Christian Identity" movement. In true medieval millenarian fashion, armed rural communes composed of families withdrew from the state to wait for the Second Coming and the great racial war. Al- though some observers have associated Christian Identity with the Oklahoma City bombing (1995), the Christian level of violence has been minimal- so far.

Three events in the Islamic world provided the hope or dramatic political turning point that was vital to launch the fourth wave. In 1979 the Iranian Revolution occurred, a new Islamic century began, and the Soviets made an unprovoked invasion of Mghanistan.

Iranian street demonstrations disintegrated the Shah's secular state. The event also was clear evidence to believers that religion now had more political appeal than did the prevailing third-wave ethos because Iranian Marxists could only muster meager support against the Shah. "There are no frontiers in Islam;' Ayatollah Khomeini proclaimed, and "his" revolution altered relation- ships among all Muslims as well as between Islam and the rest of the world. Most immediately, the Iranians inspired and assisted Shiite terror movements outside of Iran, particularly in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Lebanon. In Lebanon, Shiites-influenced by the self-martyrdom tactic of the medieval Assassins-introduced suicide bombing, with surprising results, ousting American and other foreign troops that had entered the country on a peace mission after the 1982 Israeli invasion.

24 DAVID C. RAPOPORT

The monumental Iranian revolution was unexpected, but some Muslims had always believed that the year would be very significant because it marked the beginning of a new Islamic century. One venerable Islamic tradition holds that a redeemer will come with the start of a new century-an expecta- tion that regularly sparkled uprisings at the turn of earlier Muslim centuries. 64

Muslims stormed the Grand Mosque in Mecca in the first minutes of the new century in 1979, and 10,000 casualties resulted. Whatever the specific local causes, it is striking that so many examples of Sunni terrorism appeared at the same time in Egypt, Syria, Tunisia, Morocco, Algeria, the Philippines, and Indonesia.

The Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979. Resistance strengthened by volunteers from all over the Sunni world and subsidized by U.S. aid forced the Soviets out by 1989-a crucial step in the stunning and unimaginable disintegration of the Soviet Union itself. Religion had eliminated a secular superpower, an astonishing event with important consequences for terrorist activity65 in that the third wave received a decisive blow. Lands with large Muslim populations that formerly were part of the Soviet Union-such as Chechnya, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan,Tajiikistan, and Azerbijan-became im- portant new fields for Islamic rebels. Islamic forces ignited Bosnia. Kashmir again became a critical issue, and the death toll since 1990 has been more than 50,000. 66 Trained and confident Afghan veterans were major participants in the new and ongoing conflicts.

"Suicide bombing," reminiscent of anarchist bomb-throwing efforts, was the most deadly tactical innovation. Despite the conventional wisdom that only a vision of rewards in paradise could inspire such acts, the secular Tamil Tigers were so impressed by the achievement in Lebanon that they used the tactic in Sri Lanka to give their movement new life. From 1983 to 2000 they used suicide bombers more than all Islamic groups combined, and Tamil sui- cide bombers often were women-a very unusual event in the fourth wave. 67

Partly to enhance their political leverage at home, Palestinian religious groups began to use suicide bombers, compelling secular PLO elements to emulate them.

The fourth wave has displayed other distinctive international features. The number of terrorist groups declined dramatically. About 200 were active in the 1980s, but in the next decade the number fell to 40. 68 The trend appears to be related to the size of the primary audiences (nation versus religion). A major religious community such as Islam is much larger than any national group. Different cultural traditions also may be relevant. The huge number of secular terrorist groups came largely from Christian countries, And the Chris- tian tradition has always generated many more religious divisions that the Islamic tradition has. 69 Islamic groups are more durable than their third-wave predecessors; the major groups in Lebanon, Egypt, and Algeria have persisted for two decades and are still functioning. 70 These groups are large organiza- tions, and bin Laden's al-Qaeda was the largest, containing perhaps 5,000 members with cells operating in seventy-two countries. 71 Larger terrorist

THE FOUR WAVES OF MODERN TERRORISM 25

groups earlier usually had nationalist aims-with a few hundred active mem- bers and a few thousand available for recruitment. The PLO was a special case at least in Lebanon, where it had about 25,000 members and was trying to transform itself into a regular army. Likewise, most al-Qaeda recruits served with the Taliban in the Mghan civil war.

The American role too changed. Iran called the United States the "Great Satan." Al-Qaeda regarded America as its chief antagonist immediately after the Soviet Union was defeated-a fact not widely appreciated until Septem- ber 11.72 From the beginning, Islamic religious groups sought to destroy their American targets, usually military or civilian installations, an unknown pattern in the third wave. The aim was U.S. military withdrawal from the Middle East. U.S. troops were driven out of Lebanon and forced to abandon a humanitar- ian mission in Somalia. Attacks on military posts in Yemen and Saudi Arabia occurred. The destroyer USS Cole experienced the first terrorist strike against a military vessel ever (2000). All of the attacks on the U.S. military in the Arabian Peninsula and Africa drew military responses; moreover, Americans did not withdraw after those incidents. The strikes against American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania (1998) inflicted heavy casualties, and futile cruise missile attacks were made against al-Qaeda targets-the first time missiles were used against a group rather than a state. As Peter Bergen has noted, "The at- tacks, however, had a major unintended consequence: They turned bin Laden from a marginal figure in the Muslim world to a global celebrity."73 Strikes on American soil began in 1993 with a partially successful effort on the World Trade Center. A mission to strike on the millennia} celebration night seven years later was aborted. 74 Then there was September 11.

Al-Qaeda was responsible for attacks in the Arabian Peninsula, Africa, and the American homeland. Its initial object was to force U.S. evacuation of mil- itary bases in Saudi Arabia, the land containing Islam's two holiest sites. The Prophet Muhammed had said that only one religion should be in the land, and Saudi Arabia became a land where Christians and Jews could reside only for temporary periods. 75 Al-Qaeda's aim resonates in the Sunni world and is reflected in its unique recruiting pattern. Most volunteers come from Arab states-especially Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Algeria-and the Mghan training camps received Sunnis from at least sixty Muslim and non-Muslim countries. Every previous terrorist organization, including Islamic groups, drew its recruits from a single national base. The contrast between PLO and al-Qaeda training facilities reflects this fact; the former trained units from other organi- zations and the latter received individuals only.

Beyond the evacuation of bases in Islam's Holy Land, al-Qaeda later devel- oped another objective-a single Islamic state under the Sharia. Bin Laden gave vigorous support to Islamic groups that were active in various states of the Sunni world~tates that many Muslims understand to be residues of col- lapsed colonial influence. Just as the United States refused to leave Saudi Arabia, it helped to frustrate this second effort by aiding the attacked states. The United States avoided direct intervention that could inflame the Islamic

26 DAVID C. RAPOPORT

world, however. The support given to states attacked had some success, and perhaps September 11 should be understood as a desperate attempt to rejuve- nate a failing cause by triggering indiscriminate reactions. 76

The response to September 11 was as unprecedented as the attack itself. Under UN auspices, more than 100 states (including Iran) joined the attack on Afghanistan in various ways. Yet no one involved expected the interven- tion to be so quick and decisive. Afghanistan had always been difficult for in- vaders. Moreover, terrorist history demonstrates that even when antiterrorist forces were very familiar with territories containing terrorists (this time they were not), entrenched terrorists still had considerable staying power.

There are many reasons why al-Qaeda collapsed so quickly in Afghanistan. It violated a cardinal rule for terrorist organizations, which is to stay under- ground always. Al-Qaeda remained visible to operate its extensive training operations, 77 and as the Israelis demonstrated in ousting the PLO from Lebanon, visible groups are vulnerable. Moreover, al-Qaeda and the PLO were foreign elements in lands uncomfortable with their presence. Finally, al-Qaeda did not plan for an invasion possibility. The reason is not clear, but there is evidence that its contempt for previous American reactions convinced it that the United States would avoid difficult targets and not go to Afghanistan. 78

The PLO regrouped in Tunisia, on condition that it would abandon its extensive training mission. Could al-Qaeda accept such limits, and if it did, would any state risk playing Tunisia's role? Pakistan's revolving-door policy suggests a much more likely reaction. Once al-Qaeda's principal supporter, Pakistan switched under U.S. pressure to give the coalition indispensable aid.

As of this writing, the world does not know what happened to al-Qaeda's leadership, but even if the portion left can be reassembled, how can the orga- nization function without a protected sanctuary? AI Zawahiri, bin Laden's likely successor, warned his comrades before the Afghan training grounds were lost that "the victory ... against the international alliance will not be accom- plished without acquiring a ... base in the heart of the Islamic world."79 Peter Bergen's admirable study of al-Qaeda makes the same point. 80

The disruption of al-Qaeda in Afghanistan has altered the organization's previous routine. Typically, al-Qaeda sleeper cells remained inactive until the moment to strike materialized, often designated by the organization's senior leadership. It was an unusual pattern in terrorist history. Normally cells are ac- tive and, therefore, need more autonomy so that police penetration in one cell does not go beyond that unit. Cells of this sort have more freedom to strike. They generally will do so more quickly and frequendy, but the numbers and resources available to a cell constandy in motion limit them to softer or less protected targets. If direction from the top can no longer be a feature of al-Qaeda, the striking patterns will necessarily become more "normal." 81

Since the Afghan rout, strikes have been against "softer," largely unprotected civilian targets. As the destruction of tourist sites-such as the ancient syna- gogue in Tunisia and the nightclubs in Bali, Indonesia-suggests, however, the organization displays its trademark by maximizing casualties.

THE FOUR WAVES OF MODERN TERRORISM 27

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS AND QUESTIONS

Unlike crime or poverty, international terrorism is a recent phenomenon. Its continuing presence for 125 years means, however, that it is rooted in impor- tant features of our world. Technology and doctrine have played vital roles. The latter reflects a modern inclination to rationalize activity or make it effi- cient, which Max Weber declared a distinctive feature of modern life. A third briefly noted factor is the spread of democratic ideas, which shapes terrorist activity in different ways-as suggested by the fact that nationalism or sepa- ratism is the most frequendy espoused cause. 82

The failure of a democratic reform program inspired the first wave, and the main theme of the second was national self-determination. A dominant, however confused, third-wave theme was that existing systems were not truly democratic. The spirit of the fourth wave appears explicidy antidemocratic because the democratic idea is inconceivable without a significant measure of secularism.

For many reasons, terrorist organizations often have short lives; sometimes their future is determined by devastating tactical mistakes. A decision to be- come visible is rare in the history of terror, and the quick success of the coali- tion's Afghan military campaign demonstrates why. If al-Qaeda successfully reconstructs itself, it may discover that it must become an "ordinary" terrorist group living underground among a friendly local population. That also sug- gests but, alas, does not demonstrate that its strikes will become more "ordinary" too.

No matter what happens to al-Qaeda, this wave will continue, but for how long is uncertain. The life cycle of its predecessors may mislead us. Each was inspired by a secular cause, and a striking characteristic of religious communi- ties is how durable some are. Thus, the fourth wave may last longer than its pre- decessors, but the course of the Iranian revolution suggests something else. If history repeats itself, the fourth wave will be over in two decades. That history also demonstrates, however, that the world of politics always produces large issues to stimulate terrorists who regularly invent new ways to deal with them. What makes the pattern so interesting and frightening is that the issues emerge unexpectedly-or, at least, no one has been able to anticipate their tragic course.

The coalition assembled after September 11 was extraordinary for several reasons. September 11 was not only an American catastrophe: The World Trade Center housed numerous large foreign groups, and there were many foreign casualties. The UN involvement climaxed a transformation; it is hard to see it as the same organization that regularly referred to terrorists as freedom fighters forty years ago.

The only other coalition against terrorism was initiated a century ago. It aimed to make waves impossible by disrupting vital communication and migration conditions. Much less was expected from its participants, but it still fell apart in three years (1904). Will the current coalition last longer? September 11 will not be forgotten easily, 83 and the effort is focused now on an organization-a much easier focus to sustain.

28 DAVID C. RAPOPORT

When the present campaign against al-Qaeda and the small groups in Asia loosely associated with it concludes, what happens next? No organization has been identified as the next target, and until that happens one suspects that the perennial inclination for different states to distinguish groups according to the ends sought rather than the means used may reappear. Kashmir and Palestine are the two most important active scenes for terrorist activity. In Kashmir, Islamic insurgents are seriously dividing two important members of the coali- tion. India considers them terrorists, but Pakistan does not. War between those states, both possessing nuclear weapons, will push the coalition's war against terror aside. Successful outside mediation may produce a similar result because that would require some acceptance of the insurgents' legitimacy. The Israeli- Palestinian conflict has a similar meaning; so many important states under- stand the issue of terror there differently.

Islam fuels terrorist activity in Kashmir, but the issue-as in Palestine, where religious elements are less significant-is a local one. To what extent are other organizations in the fourth wave local too? How deeply can the coalition afford to get involved in situations where it will be serving the inter- ests oflocal governments? Our experience supporting governments dealing with "local" terrorists has not always served our interests well, especially in the Islamic world.

The efforts of Aum Shinrikyo to use weapons of mass destruction has made American officials feel that the most important lesson of this wave is that those weapons will be used by terrorists against us. 84 September 11 intensified this anxiety even though suicide bombers armed with box cutters produced that catastrophe, and the history of terrorism demonstrates that cheap, easy to pro- duce, portable, and simple to use weapons have always been the most attractive.

The fourth wave's cheap and distinctive weapon is suicide bombing. The victory in Lebanon was impressive, and suicide bombers have been enor- mously destructive in Sri Lanka and Israel. Driving foreign troops out of a country is one thing, however; compelling a people to give up a portion of its own country (Sri Lanka) or leave its own land (Israel) is another. In the latter case, the bombers' supporters seem to be suffering a lot more than their enemies are.

How does September 11 affect our understanding of foreign threats? This is a serious question that needs more discussion than it has received. Nechaev emphasized that the fear and rage rebel terror produced undermined a soci- ety's traditional moral conventions and ways of thinking. He was thinking of the domestic context, and indeed the history of modern terrors shows that domestic responses frequently are indiscriminate and self-destructive. 85 Can the same pattern be observed on the international scene?

The 2003 invasion oflraq suggests that Nechaev's observation is apt for the international scene as well. The justifications for the war were that Iraq might give terrorists weapons of mass destruction or use them itself against the West-considerations that are applicable to a variety of states, as the "axis of evil" language suggests. After September 11 the United States scrapped the

THE FOUR WAVES OF MODERN TERRORISM 29

deterrence doctrine, which we developed to help us cope with states possess- ing weapons of mass destruction and served us well for more than fifty years. Preemption seemed to fit the new age better. Deterrence worked because states knew that they were visible and could be destroyed if they used the dreaded weapons. Underground terrorist groups do not have this vulnerabil- ity, which is why preemption has been an important part of police countert- errorist strategy since the first wave. Deterrence is linked to actions, whereas preemption is more suitable when intentions have to be assessed-a task al- ways shrouded in grave ambiguities. Is there any reason to think the crucial distinction between states and terrorist groups has disappeared, however, and that we should put decisions of war and peace largely in the hands of very im- perfect intelligence agencies?

The significance of the Iraqi war for the war against terrorism remains un- clear. The coalition's cohesion has been weakened, and the flagging fortunes of Islamic groups could be revived. Both possibilities are more likely if pre- emption is employed against another state or if the victory in Iraq ultimately is understood as an occupation.

NOTES

An earlier version of this essay was published in Current History (December 2001):419-25. Another version was delivered at the annual John Barlow Lecture, University of Indiana, Indianapolis. I am indebted to Jim Ludes, Lindsay Clutterbuck, Laura Donohue, Clark McCauley, Barbara Rapoport, and Sara Grdan for useful comments, even those I did not take. The problems in the essay are my responsibility.

1. On September 20, 2001, the president told Congress that "any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded as a hostile regime. [T]he war would not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped, and defeated."

2. See Richard B. Jensen, "The United States, International Policing, and the War against Anarchist Terrorism," Terrorism and Political Violence (here- after TPV) 13, no. 1 (spring 2001):5-46.

3. No good history of terrorism exists. Schmid and Jongman's monumental study of the terrorism literature does not even list a history of the subject. See Political Terrorism: A New Guide to Actors, Authors, Concepts, Theories, DataBases, and Literature, rev. ed. (New Brunswick, NJ.: Transaction Books, 1988).

4. I lack space to discuss the domestic sphere, which offers important paral- lels as well. The unusual character of terrorist activity made an enormous impact on national life in many countries beginning in the latter part of the nineteenth century. Every state affected in the first wave radically

30 DAVID C. RAPOPORT

transformed its police organizations as tools to penetrate underground groups. The Russian Okhrana, the British Special Branch, and the FBI are conspicuous examples. The new organizational form remains a perma- nent, perhaps indispensable, feature of modern life. Terrorist tactics, inter alia, aim at producing rage and frustration, often driving governments to respond in unanticipated, extraordinary, illegal, socially destructive, and shameful ways. Because a significant Jewish element, for example, was present in the several Russian terrorist movements, the Okhrana organized pogroms to intimidate Russian Jews, compelling many to flee to the West and to the Holy Land. Okhrana fabricated The Protocols cif Zion, a book that helped stimulate a virulent anti-Semitism that went well beyond Russia. The influence of that fabrication continued for decades and still influences Christian and Islamic terrorist movements today.

Democratic states "overreacted" too. President Theodore Roosevelt proposed sending all anarchists back to Europe. Congress did not act, but more than a decade later President Wilson's Attorney General Palmer implemented a similar proposal and rounded up all anarchists to ship them back "home," regardless of whether they had committed crimes. That event produced the 1920 Wall Street bombing, which in turn became the justification for an immigration quota law that for decades made it much more difficult for persons from southern and eastern European states (the original home of most anarchists) to immigrate-a law Adolph Hitler praised highly. It is still too early to know what the domestic consequences of September 11 will be. The very first reactions suggested that we had learned from past mistakes. The federal government made special efforts to show that we were not at war with Islam, and it curbed the first expressions of vigilante passions. The significance of subsequent measures seems more problematic, however. Our first experience with terror led us to create important new policing arrangements. Now Congress has established a Department of Homeland Security with 170,000 employees-clearly the largest change in security policy in our history. No one knows what that seismic change means. One casualty could be the Posse Comitatus law, which prohibits the military forces from administering civil affairs-a law that ironically was passed because we were unhappy with military responses to KKK terrorist activity after the Civil War! A policy of secret detentions, a common reaction to seri- ous terrorist activities in many countries, has been implemented. Exten- sive revisions of immigration regulations are being instituted. Prisoners taken in Mghanistan are not being prosecuted under the criminal law, reversing a long-standing policy in virtually all states including our own. Previous experiences suggest that it will take time for the changes to have their effect because so much depends on the scope, frequency, and dura- tion of future terrorist activity.

5. David M. Chalmers, Hooded Americanism: The History if the Ku Klux Klan, 3d ed. (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1987), 19.

THE FOUR WAVES OF MODERN TERRORISM 31

6. The activities of the Thugs and Assassins had international dimensions but were confined to specific regions; more important, there were no compa- rable groups operating at the same time in this region or elsewhere. See David C. Rapoport, "Fear and Trembling: Terror in Three Religious Traditions," American Political Science Review 78, no. 3 (1984):658-77.

7. The lineage of rebel terror is very ancient, going back at least to the first century. Hinduism, Judaism, and Islam produced the Thugs, Zealots, and Assassins, respectively; these names still are used to designate terrorists. Religion determined every purpose and each tactic of this ancient form. See Rapoport, "Fear and Trembling."

8. By far most published academic articles on terrorism deal with counter- terrorism and with organizations. Judging by my experience as an editor of TPV, the proportions increase further in this direction if we also con- sider articles that are rejected.

9. See note 1.

10. The rebels fought in uniform and against soldiers. George Bernard Shaw said, "My own view is that the men who were shot in cold blood ... after their capture were prisoners of war." Prime Minister Asquith said that by Britain's own standards, the rebels were honorable, that "they conducted themselves with great humanity ... fought very bravely and did not resort to outrage." The Manchester Guardian declared that the exe- cutions were "atrocities." See my introduction to part III ofDavid C. Rapoport and Yonah Alexander, eels., The Morality cif Terrorism: Religious Origins and Ethnic Implications, 2d ed. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1989), 219-27.

11. Guerrillas carry weapons openly and wear an identifying emblem- circumstances that oblige a state to treat them as soldiers.

12. Anyone who has tried to explain the intensity of the 1960s experience to contemporary students knows how difficult it is to transmit a generation's expenence.

13. Nechaev's "Revolutionary Catechism" is reprinted in David C. Rapoport, Assassination and Terrorism (Toronto: CBC, 1971). See Michael Bakunin and Peter Kropotkin, Revolutionary Pamphlets (New York: Benjamin Bloom, 1927); Nicholas Mozorov, Terroristic Struggle (London, 1880); Serge Stepniak, Underground Russia: Revolutionary Profiles and Sketches from Life (New York, 1892).

14. See Rapoport, "Fear and Trembling."

15. It took time for this attitude to develop in Islam. If one compares bin Laden's work with Faraj's Neglected Duty--a work primarily written at the beginning of the fourth wave to justify the assassination of Egyptian Presi- dent Sadat (1981)-the two authors seem to be in different worlds. Faraj cites no experience outside the Islamic tradition, and his most recent historical reference is to Napoleon's invasion of Europe. See David C.

32 DAVID C. RAPOPORT

Rapoport, "Sacred Terror: A Case from Contemporary Islam," in Origins of Terrorism, ed. Walter Reich (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 103-30. I am grateful to Jerry Post for sharing his copy of the bin Laden treatise. An edited version appears on the Department ofJustice website www. usdoj .gov I ag/ trainingrnanual.htm.

16. Bin Laden's dedication reads as follows:

Pledge, 0 Sister

To the sister believer whose clothes the criminals have stripped off:

To the sister believer whose hair the oppressors have shaved.

To the sister believer whose body has been abused by the human dogs.

Covenant, 0 Sister ... to make their women widows and their children orphans ....

17. I ignore right-wing groups because more often than not they are associ- ated with government reactions. I also ignore "single issue" groups such as the contemporary antiabortion and Green movements.

18. The term terror originally referred to actions of the Revolutionary govern- ment that went beyond the rules regulating punishment in order to "educate" a people to govern itself.

19. Vera Figner, the architect ofNarodnaya Volya's foreign policy, identifies the first four ingredients. The fifth was created later. For a more extensive discussion of Figner, see David C. Rapoport, "The International World as Some Terrorists Have Seen It: A Look at a Century of Memoirs," in Inside Terrorist Organizations, 2d ed. (London: Frank Cass, 2001), 125.ff.

20. Nechaev, "Revolutionary Catechism."

21. An equivalent for this argument in religious millennia! thought is that the world must become impossibly bad before it could become unimaginably good.

22. Adam B. Ulam, In the Name of the People (New York: Viking Press, 1977), 269 (emphasis added).

23. Newspaper reports in Germany the next day interpreted the demonstra- tions to mean that a revolution was coming. See New York Times, 4 April 1878.

24. Stepniak, Underground Russia, 39-40.

25. The bomb was most significant in Russia. Women were crucial in Russian groups but sometimes were precluded from throwing the bomb, presumably because bombers rarely escaped. Other terrorists used the bomb extensively but chose other weapons as well.

26. A guerrilla force has political objectives, as any army does, but it aims to weaken or destroy the enemy's military forces first. The terrorist, on the

THE FOUR WAVES OF MODERN TERRORISM

other hand, strikes directly at the political sentiments that sustain the

enemy.

33

27. Thomas Hobbes may have been the ftrst to emphasize hope as a necessary ingredient of revolutionary efforts. The first chapter of Menachem Begin's account of his experience in the Irgun contains the most moving descrip- tion of the necessity of hope in terrorist literature. Menachem Begin, The Revolt: Story of the Irgun (Jerusalem: Steinmatzky's Agency, 1997).

28. There were many organizations: the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization, Young Bosnia, and the Serbian Black Hand.

29. See Peter Heehs, Nationalism, Terrorism, and Communalism: Essays in Modern Indian History (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998), chap. 2.

30. The Japanese offer to finance Russian terrorists during the Russo- Japanese War (1905) encouraged Indian terrorists to believe that the Japanese would help them too. Heehs, Nationalism, Terrorism, and Commu- nalism, 4. The Russians turned the Japanese offer down, fearing that knowledge of the transaction during a time of war would destroy their

political credibility. 31. Italians were particularly active as international assassins, crossing borders

to kill French President Carnot (1894), Spanish Premier Casnovas (1896), and Austrian Empress Elizabeth (1898). In 1900 an agent of an anarchist group in Patterson, New Jersey, returned to Italy to assassinate King

Umberto. 32. Jensen, "The United States, International Policing, and the War against

Anarchist Terrorism," 19.

33. The IRA's success in 1921 occurred when the British recognized the Irish state. Northern Ireland remained British, however, and the civil war be- tween Irish factions over the peace settlement ended in defeat for those who wanted to continue until Northern Ireland joined the Irish state.

34. For an interesting and useful account of the decolonialization process, see Robert Hager, Jr., and David A. Lake, "Balancing Empires: Competitive Decolonization in International Politics," Security Studies 9, no. 3 (spring 2000): 108-48. Hager and Lake emphasize that the literature on decolo- nization "has ignored how events and politics within the core (metropoli- tan area) shaped the process" (145).

35. Begin said that his decision was determined by the fact that if he pursued it, a civil war among Jews would occur, indicating that most Jews favored partition. Begin, The Revolt, chapters 9 and 10.

36. Alistair Horne, A Savage H?ar of Peace (London: Macmillan, 1977), 94-96. 37. Begirt, The Revolt. 38. For a more detailed discussion of the definition problem, see David C.

Rapoport, "Politics of Atrocity;' in Terrorism: Interdisdplinary Perspectives,

34 DAVID C. RAPOPORT

ed. Yonah Alexander and Seymour Finger (New York: John Jay Press, 1987), 46.

39. Alexander I ofYugoslavia (1934) was the most prominent victim, and historians believe that Hungary and Italy were involved in providing help for Balkan terrorists. Begin points out in The Revolt that it was too costly to assassinate prominent figures.

40. The strategy is superbly described in the film "Battle of Algiers," based on the memoirs ofYaacev Saadi, who organized the battle. Attacks occur against the police, whose responses are limited by rules governing criminal procedure. In desperation, the police set a bomb off in the Casbah, inad- vertently exploding an ammunition dump and killing Algerian women and children. A mob emerges screaming for revenge, and at this point the FLN has the moral warrant to attack civilians. There is another underly- ing element that often gives rebel terrorism in a democratic world special weight. The atrocities of the strong always seem worse than those of the weak because people believe that the latter have no alternatives.

41. See note 11.

42. See Rapoport, "The International World as Some Terrorists Have Seen It."

43. Irish Americans have always given Irish rebels extensive support. In fact, the Fenian movement was born in the American Civil War. Members attempted to invade Canada from the United States and then went to Ireland to spark rebellion there.

44. World War I, of course, increased the influence of the United States, and Wilson justified the war with the self-determination principle.

45. Martin David Dubin, "Great Britain and the Anti-Terrorist Conventions of1937," TPV5, no. 1 (spring 1993):1.

46. See John Dugard, "International Terrorism and the Just War," in Rapoport and Alexander, Morality <if Terrorism, 77-78.

47. Basque Nation and Liberty (ETA), the Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia (ASALA), the Corsican National Liberation Front (FNLC), and the IRA.

48. The periods of the first and third waves were times when the rights of women were asserted more strenuously in the general society.

49. Sean Anderson and Stephen Sloan, Historical Dictionary <if Terrorism (Metuchen, N.J.: Transaction Press, 1995), 136.

50. Although bank robbing was not as significant as in the first wave, some striking examples materialized. In January 1976 the PLO, together with its bitter enemies the Christian Phalange, hired safe breakers to help loot the vaults of the major banks in Beirut. Estimates of the amount stolen range between $50 and a $100 million. "Whatever the truth the robbery

THE FOUR WAVES OF MODERN TERRORISM 35

was large enough to earn a place in the Guinness Book <if Records as the biggest bank robbery of all time"; James Adams, The Financing <if Terror (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1986), 192.

51. Adams, Financing <if Terror, 94. 52. The attack on Major actually was an attack on the cabinet, so it is not

clear whether the prime minister was the principal target (Lindsay Clutterbuck, personal communication to author).

53. The status of political prisoner was revoked in March 1976. William Whitelaw, who granted it in the first place, ranked it as one of his "most regrettable decisions."

54. Anderson and Sloan, Historical Dictionary of Terrorism, 303.

55. Sometimes there was American support for terrorist activity (e.g., the Contras in Nicaragua).

56. When a disappointed office-seeker assassinated President Garfield, Figner's sympathy letter to the American people said that there was no place for terror in democratic states. The statement alienated elements of her radi- cal constituency in other countries.

57. Michael Baumann, Terror or Love (New York: Grove Press, 1977), 61.

58 ._Interview with Hans J. Klein in Jean M. Bourguereau, German Guerrilla: Terror, Rebel Reaction and Resistance (Sanday, U.K.: Cienfuegos Press, 1981), 31.

59. Abu Nidal himself was on a PLO list of persons to be assassinated.

60. W Andrew Terrill, "Saddam's Failed Counterstrike: Terrorism and the GulfWar;' Studies in Conflict and Terrorism 16 (1993):219-32.

61. In addition to four UN conventions there are eight other major multilat- eral terrorism conventions, starting with The Tokyo Convention of 1963, dealing with the aircraft safety. See http:/ /usinfo.state.gov/topical/poll terror/ conven.htm and http:/ /untreaty.un.org/English/Terrorism.asp.

62. Khachig Tololyan, "Cultural Narrative and the Motivation of the Terror- ist," in Rapoport, Inside Terrorist Organizations, 217-33.

63. See David C. Rapoport, "Comparing Militant Fundamentalist Move- ments and Groups," in Fundamentalisms and the State, ed. Martin Marty and Scott Appleby (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), 429-61.

64. To those in the West the most familiar was the nineteenth-century upris- ing in the Sudan, which resulted in the murder oflegendary British General "Chinese" Gordon.

65. This was not the first time secular forces would help launch the careers of those who would become religious terrorists. Israel helped Hamas to get started, thinking it would compete to weaken the PLO. To check left- wing opposition, President Sadat released religious elements from prison that later assassinated him.

36 DAVID C. RAPOPORT

66. Peter Bergen, Holy Vlilr Inc.: Inside the Secret World <if Osama Bin Ladin (New York: Free Press, 2001), 208.

67. In the period specified, Tamil suicide bombers struck 171 times; the com- bined total for all thirteen Islamic groups using the tactic was 117. Ehud Sprinzak cites the figures compiled by Yoram Schweitzer in "Rational Fanatics," Foreign Policy (October 2001):69. The most spectacular Tamil act was the assassination of Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. (Religion did not motivate the notorious Kamikaze attacks during World War II either.) The example of the Tamils has other unusual characteristics. Efforts to make Sri Lanka a Buddhist state stimulated the revolt. Although Tamils largely come from India, there are several religious traditions represented in the population, and religion does not defme the terrorists' prupose.

68. See Ami Pedahzur, William Eubank, and Leonard Weinberg, "The War on Terrorism and the Decline of Terrorist Group Formation," TPV 14, no. 3. (fall2002):141-47.

69. The relationship between different religious terror groups is unusual. Groups from different mainstream traditions (Christianity, Islam, etc.) do not cooperate. Even traditional cleavages within a religion-as in Shiite and Sunni Islam, for example--sometimes are intensified. Shiite terror groups generally take their lead from Iran regarding aid to Sunnis. Iran has helped the Palestinians and is hostile to al-Qaeda and the Saudi religious state.

70. I have no statistical evidence on this point.

71. Rohan Gunaratna, Inside Al Qaeda: Global Network <?[Terror (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), 97.

72. The stated object of al-Qaeda is to recreate a single Muslim state, and one could argue that if the United States had withdrawn military units from the Muslim world, the attacks would have ceased. What if the issue really was the impact of American secular culture on the world?

73. Bergen, Holy Vlilr Inc., 225.

74. Those attacks, as well as the expected attacks that did not materialize, are discussed in a special volume of TPV 14, no. 1 (spring 2002) edited by Jeffrey Kaplan, titled Millennia[ Violence. The issue also was published as a book: Millennia/ Violence: Past, Present, and Future (London: Frank Cass, 2002).

75. Bernard Lewis, "License to Kill," Foreign /ljfairs (November/December 1998).

76. For a very interesting discussion of the circumstances that provoke American military responses to terrorist attacks, see Michelle Mavesti, "Explaining the United States' Decision to Strike Back at Terrorists,'' TPV 13, no. 2 (summer 2001):85-106.

77. If the organization understood its vulnerability, it might have thought that an attack on the sovereignty of the state protecting it was unlikely. One

THE FOUR WAVES OF MODERN TERRORISM 37

reason the Taliban government refused a repeated UN demand to expel al-Qaeda was because without al-Qaeda support it could not survive local domestic opposition. Because most al-Qaeda recruits served in the Taliban forces in the ongoing civil war, the Taliban must have felt that it had no choice. Clearly, however, there must have been a failure to plan for an invasion possibility; the failure to resist is astonishing otherwise.

78. Gunaratna, Inside Al Qaeda.

79. Quoted by Nimrod Raphaeli, "Ayman Muhammad Rabi Al-Zawahri: The Making of an Arch-Terrorist," TPV 14, no. 4 (winter 2002):1-22.

80. Bergen, Holy Uilr Inc., 234.

81. The Spaniards conquered the Aztecs and Incas easily, but the United States had more difficulty with the less powerful but highly decentralized native Americans. Steven Simon and Daniel Benjamin make a different argument, contending that bin Laden's group is uniquely decentralized and therefore less likely to be disturbed by destroying the center. See "America and the New Terrorism,'' Surviva/42, no. 2 (2000):156-57.

82. We lack a systematic comparison of the aims sought by organizations in the history of modern terror.

83. September 11 has had an impact on at least one terrorist group: The Tamils found diaspora financial support suddenly disappearing for suicide bombing-an opportunity the Norwegians seized to bring them to the bargaining table again.

84. See David C. Rapoport, "Terrorism and Weapons of the Apocalypse,'' National Security Studies Quarterly 5, no. 3 (summer 1999): 49-69, reprinted in Henry Sokolski and James Ludes, Twenty-First Century ~apons Proliferation (London: Frank Cass, 2001), 14-33.

85. See note 3.