Discussion 1
Defining Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism
A. The Changing Meaning of Terrorism
What is terrorism? Few words have so insidiously worked their way into our
everyday vocabulary. Like “social media”— another grossly overused term that has
similarly become an indispensable part of the argot of the early twenty- first century—
most people have a vague idea or impression of what terrorism is, but lack a more
precise, concrete, and truly explanatory definition of the word. This imprecision has been
abetted partly by the modern media, whose efforts to communicate an often complex and
convoluted message in the briefest amount of airtime or print or online space post is blew
have led to the promiscuous labeling of a range of violent acts as “terrorism.” Upon
picking up a newspaper, accessing a website, or turning on the radio or television— even
within the same broadcast or on the same page— one can find such disparate acts as the
bombing of a building, the assassination of a head of state, the massacre of civilians by a
military unit, the poisoning of produce on supermarket shelves, or the hacking of a
Hollywood studio’s e- mail server and public exposure of its employees’ personal data,
all described as incidents of terrorism. Indeed, virtually any especially abhorrent act of
violence perceived as directed against society— whether it involves the activities of
antigovernment dissidents or governments themselves, organized- crime syndicates,
common criminals, rioting mobs, people engaged in militant protest, individual
psychotics, or lone extortionists—is often labeled “terrorism.”
Terrorism, in the most widely accepted con temporary usage of the term, is
fundamentally and inherently political. It is also ineluctably about power: the pursuit of
power, the acquisition of power, and the use of power to achieve political change.
Terrorism is thus violence—or, equally important, the threat of violence— used and
directed in pursuit of, or in service of, a political aim. With this vital point clearly
illuminated, one can appreciate the significance of the additional definition of “terrorist”
provided by the OED: “Anyone who attempts to further his views by a system of
coercive intimidation.” This point is especially noteworthy since it underscores clearly
the other fundamental characteristic of terrorism: that it is a planned, calculated, and
indeed systematic act.
The word “terrorism” was first popularized during the French Revolution. In
contrast to its con temporary usage, at that time terrorism had a decidedly positive
connotation. The system, or régime de la terrier, of 1793–1794— from which the English
word came— was adopted as a means to establish order during the transient anarchical
period of turmoil and upheaval that followed the uprisings of 1789, and indeed many
other subsequent revolutions. Hence, unlike the term “terrorism” as it is commonly
understood today, meaning a revolutionary or antigovernment activity undertaken by no
state or subnational entities, the régime de la terrier was an instrument of governance
wielded by the recently established revolutionary state. It was designed to consolidate the
new government’s power by intimidating counterrevolutionaries, subversives, and all
other dissidents whom the new regime regarded as “enemies of the people.” The
Committee of General Security and the Revolutionary Tribunal (“ People’s Court” in the
modern vernacular) were thus accorded wide powers of arrest and judgment, publicly
putting to death by guillotine those convicted of treasonous (i.e., reactionary) crimes. In
this manner, a power full lesson was conveyed to any and all who might oppose the
revolution or grow nostalgic for the ancient régime.
Ironically, perhaps, terrorism in its original context was also closely associated
with the ideals of virtue and democracy. The revolutionary leader Maximillian Robes
Pierre firmly believed that virtue was the mainspring of a popular government at peace,
but that during the time of revolution virtue must be allied with terror for democracy to
triumph. He appealed famously to “virtue, without which terror is evil; terror, without
which virtue is helpless” and proclaimed: “Terror is nothing but justice, prompt, severe
and inflexible; it is therefore an emanation of virtue.”
Despite this divergence from its subsequent meaning, the French Revolution’s
“terrorism” still shared at least two key characteristics with its modern- day variant. First,
the régime de la terrier was neither random nor indiscriminate, as terrorism is often
portrayed today, but was organized, deliberate, and systematic. Second, its goal and its
very justification— like that of con temporary terrorism— was the creation of a “new and
better society” in place of a fundamentally corrupt and undemocratic pop lite call system.
Indeed, Robes Pierre’s vague and utopian exegeses of the revolution’s central goals are
remarkably similar in tone and content to the equally turgid, millenarian manifestos
issued by many revolutionary— primarily left- wing, Marxist- oriented— terrorist
organizations during the latter de cades of the twentieth century.
Like many other revolutions, the French Revolution eventually began to consume
itself. On 8 Thermion, year two of the new calendar adopted by the revolutionaries
(JulyB26, 1794), Robes Pierre announced to the National Convention that he had in his
possession a new list of traitors. Fearing that their own names might be on that list,
extremists joined forces with moderates to repudiate both Robes Pierre and his régime de
la terrier. Robes Pierre and his closest followers themselves met the same fate that had
befallen some forty thousand others: execution by guillotine. The Terror was at an end;
thereafter, “terrorism” became a term associated with the abuse of office and power—
with overt “criminal” implications.
One of the French Revolution’s more enduring repercussions was the impetus it
gave to antimonarchical sentiment elsewhere in Europe. Popular subservience to rulers
who derived their authority from God through divine right of rule rather than from their
subjects was increasingly questioned by a politically awakened Continent. The advent of
nationalism, and with it notions of statehood and citizenship based on the common
identity of a people rather than the lineage of a royal family, were resulting in the
unification and creation of new nation- states such as Germany and Italy. Meanwhile, the
massive socioeconomic changes engendered by the Industrial Revolution were creating
new Universalist ideologies (such as communism/ Marxism), born of the alienation and
exploitative conditions of nineteenth century capitalism. From this milieu a new era of
terrorism emerged, in which the concept had gained many of the familiar revolutionary,
antistatic connotations that it holds today. Its chief progenitor was arguably the Italian
republican extremist Carlo Pisa cane, who had forsaken his birthright as duke of San
Giovanni only to perish in 1857 during an ill- fated revolt against Bourbon rule.
A passionate advocate of federalism and mutualism, Pisa cane is remembered less
on this account than for the theory of “propaganda by deed,” which he is credited with
defining—an idea that has exerted a compelling influence on rebels and terrorists alike
ever since. “The propaganda of the idea is a chimera,” Pisa cane wrote. “Ideas result from
deeds, not the latter from the former, and the people will not be free when they are
educated, but educated when they are free.” Violence, he argued, was necessary not only
to draw attention to or generate publicity for a cause, but also to inform, educate, and
ultimately, rally the masses behind the revolution. The didactic purpose of violence, Pisa
cane argued, could never be effectively replaced by pamphlets, wall posters, or
assemblies.
Perhaps the first organization to put into practice Pisa cane’s dictum was the
Narodnaya Volya, or People’s Will (sometimes translated as “ People’s Freedom”), a
small group of Russian constitutionalists that had been founded in 1878 to challenge
czarist rule. For the Narodnaya Volya, the apathy and alienation of the Russian masses
afforded few alternatives besides resorting to daring and dramatic acts of violence
designed to attract attention to the group and its cause. However, unlike the many con
temporary terrorist organizations that have cited the principle of “propaganda by deed” to
justify the wanton targeting of civilians to assure them publicity through the shock and
horror produced by wholesale bloodshed, the Narodnaya Volya displayed an almost
quixotic attitude toward the violence it wrought. To this group, “propaganda by deed”
meant the selective targeting of specific individuals whom the group considered the
embodiment of the autocratic, oppressive state. Hence, the victims— the czar, leading
members of the royal family, senior government officials— were deliberately chosen for
their “symbolic” value as the dynastic heads and subservient agents of a corrupt and
tyrannical regime. An intrinsic element in the group’s collective beliefs was that “not one
drop of superfluous blood” should be shed in pursuit of aims, however noble or utilitarian
they might be. Even having selected their targets with great care and the utmost
deliberation, group members still harbored profound regrets about taking the life of a
fellow human being. Their unswerving adherence to this principle is perhaps best
illustrated by the failed attempt on the life of Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich made by
a successor organization to the Narodnaya Volya in 1905. As the royal carriage came into
view, the terrorist tasked with the assassination saw that the grand duke was unexpectedly
accompanied by his children and therefore aborted his mission rather than risk harming
the intended victim’s family. The grand duke was killed in a subsequent attack. By
comparison, the midair explosion caused by a terrorist bomb on Pan Am Flight 103 over
Lockerbie, Scotland, in DecemberB 1988 indiscriminately claimed the lives of all 259
people on board— innocent men, women, and children alike— plus 11 inhabitants of the
village where the plane crashed.
Ironically, the Narodnaya Volya’s most dramatic accomplishment also led
directly to its demise. On MarchB1, 1881, the group assassinated Czar Alexander II. The
failure of eight previous plots had led the conspirators to take extraordinary measures to
ensure the success of this attempt. Four volunteers were given four bombs each and
deployed along the alternative routes followed by the czar’s cortege. As two of the
bomber- assassins stood in wait on the same street, the sleighs carrying the czar and his
Cossack escort approached the first terrorist, who hurled his bomb at the passing sleigh,
missing it by inches. The whole entourage came to a halt as soldiers seized the hapless
culprit and the czar descended from his sleigh to check on a bystander wounded by the
explosion. “Thank God, I am safe,” the czar reportedly declared— just as the second
bomber emerged from the crowd and— presaging today’s suicide terrorists, whose own
deaths are intrinsic to the success of their attacks— detonated his weapon, killing both
himself and his target.
The full weight of the czarist state now fell on the heads of the Narodnaya Volya.
Acting on information provided by the arrested member, the secret police swept down on
the group’s safe houses and hideouts, rounding up most of the plotters, who were quickly
tried, convicted, and hanged. Further information from this group led to subsequent
arrests, so that within a year of the assassination, only one member of the original
executive committee was still at large. She, too, was finally apprehended in 1883, at
which point the first generation of Narodnaya Volya terrorists ceased to exist, although
various successor organizations subsequently emerged to carry on the strugAt the time,
the repercussions of the czar’s assassination could not have been known or appreciated
by either the condemned or their comrades languishing in prison or exiled to Siberia. But
in addition to precipitating the beginning of the end of czarist rule, the group also deeply
influenced individual revolutionaries and subversive organizations elsewhere. To the
nascent anarchist movement, the “propaganda by deed” strategy championed by the
Narodnaya Volya provided a model to be emulated. Within four months of the czar’s
murder, a group of radicals in London convened an “anarchist conference,” which
publicly applauded the assassination and extolled tyrannicide as a means to achieve
revolutionary change. In hopes of encouraging and coordinating worldwide anarchist
activities, the conferees decided to establish the Anarchist International (or Black
International).
Although this idea, like most of their ambitious plans, came to naught, the
publicity generated by even a putative Anarchist International was sufficient to create a
myth of global revolutionary pretensions and thereby stimulate fears and suspicions
disproportionate to its actual impact or political achievements. Disparate and
uncoordinated though the anarchists’ violence was, the movement’s emphasis on
individual action or operations carried out by small cells of like- minded radicals made
detection and prevention by the police particularly difficult, thus further heightening
public fears— a precursor of the “lone wolf” phenomenon and leaderless resistance and
leaderless jihad strategies pursued by many terrorist movements today. For example,
following the assassination of U.S. president William McKinley in 1901 by Leon
Czolgosz, who, while not a regular member of any anarchist organization, was
nonetheless influenced by the philosophy, Congress swiftly enacted legislation barring
known anarchists or anyone “who disbelieves in or is opposed to all organized
government” from entering the United States. And, over a century before Edward
Snowden’s revelations of the U.S. National Security Agency’s (NSA) mass surveillance
and data mining of international telephone calls, text messages, and e- mails, the
legendary Pinkerton National Detective Agency advocated that anarchists, suspected
anarchists, and other known “Reds” “should all be marked and kept under constant
surveillance and on the slightest excuse be made harmless.”
However, while anarchists were responsible for an impressive string of
assassinations of heads of state and a number of particularly notorious bombings from
about 1878 until the second de cade of the twentieth century, in the final analysis, other
than stimulating often exaggerated fears, anarchism made little tangible impact on either
the domestic or the international politics of the countries affected. It does, however, offer
an interesting historical parallel to the information revolution that today has made the
means and methods of bomb making and other types of terrorist activity more readily
available electronically, especially through digital copies of terrorist online magazines
such as al- Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula’s (AQAP) Inspire publication and Dabiq,
produced by the terrorist movement known variously as the Islamic State (IS), the Islamic
State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), or simply
by its Arabic acronym, Daesh. Indeed, more than a century ago, one of anarchism’s
flourishing cottage industries was the widespread printing and distribution of similar sorts
of “how-to” or “do- it- yourself” hard- copy manuals and pamphlets on violence and
mayhem.
Meanwhile, another series of developments was unfolding on the other side of
Europe that would exert a similarly profound influence on future terrorist strategy and
tactics. In this instance, the motivation was neither antimonarchical nor anarchist, but
nationalist and separatist. Although Britain’s rule of Ireland already had a centuries- long
history of restiveness and rebellion, in the mid- nineteenth century the locus of
revolutionary activities had expanded from Ireland to include the United States as well.
Among the mass of Irish emigrants who had fled the failure of successive potato crops
and the resultant famine was a group of radical nationalists who in 1858 founded a secret
society called the Fenian Brotherhood. The Fenians— and their Ireland- based offshoot,
the Irish Revolutionary Brotherhood (IRB)— were at once as daring and determined as
they were impatient and incompetent. Their motto “revolution sooner or never”
accurately describes a string of half- baked plots that purported to kidnap the Prince of
Wales, invade Canada, and orchestrate a popular uprising in Ireland. So successful were
British efforts to penetrate the organization, and so abject were the Fenians’ failed grand
schemes, that the movement fell into desuetude within a de cade of its founding. But the
Fenians’ unswerving commitment to both Irish republicanism and the use of violence to
attain it created a legacy that subsequently inspired successive generations of Irish
revolutionaries.
Thus, by 1873 a new organization, calling itself the Clan na Gael (United
Irishmen), had taken up the Fenians’ mantle. Its driving force was a firebrand named
Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa. Sentenced to life imprisonment for sedition in 1865,
O’Donovan Rossa was released only six years later after a commission of inquiry
substantiated his claims of mistreatment. The abuse inflicted on imprisoned terrorists
such as O’Donovan Rossa in the nineteenth century actually bears a disquieting
resemblance to the treatment meted out to detainees during the United States’ own war on
terrorism following the SeptemberB11, 2001, attacks. As punishment, O’Donovan Rossa
was stripped naked and kept in a dark cell where he subsisted on a meager ration of bread
and water. Exiled to the United States, O’Donovan Rossa quickly resumed his subversive
activities. He was assisted in these endeavors by Patrick Ford, the editor of the Irish
World, a newspaper that became the main platform for Clan na Gael propaganda and
incitement. Together, they developed a new strategy for the republican movement. “We
are not now advising a general insurrection,” Ford explained in a December 4, 1875,
column. “On the contrary, we should oppose a general insurrection in Ireland as untimely
and ill advised. But we believe in action nonetheless. The Irish cause requires
Skirmishers. It requires a little band of heroes who will initiate and keep up without
intermission a guerrilla warfare.”
O’Donovan Rossa and Ford displayed an uncommon understanding of the
terrorist dynamic that went beyond even this early recognition of the media’s power to
communicate and amplify a violent message. Remarkably, both men grasped that just as
money lubricates commerce, a solid financial base is required to sustain an effective
terrorism campaign. It was thus not long before advertisements began to appear in the
Irish World soliciting contributions on behalf of a “skirmisher fund.” By MarchB1877,
23,350 had been collected— a sum equivalent to over half a million dollars in 2016.
O’Donovan Rossa appears to have also fully appreciated terrorism’s asymmetric virtues
with regard to the disproportionate economic losses and damage that could be inflicted on
the enemy state and the flood of contributions that a series of successful attacks might
engender. “ England,” he explained in the Irish World, “ will not know how or where she
is to be struck. A successful strike that will do her half a million dollars’ worth of damage
will bring us enough funds to carry on the work.”
In 1883, the Clan na Gael and a rebranded IRB, now known as the Irish
Republican Brotherhood, formed a tactical alliance and together embarked on a bombing
campaign directed against the London Underground and mainline railway stations in both
the United Kingdom’s capital and other cities. Although the bombers’ intention was not
to wantonly or deliberately kill or harm innocent persons, but instead to throttle Britain’s
economy and dramatically call attention to themselves and their cause, their choice of
both weapon (homemade bombs consisting of gunpowder detonated by primitive time-
delay fuses) and target (locations in congested urban areas and public transportation)
ensured that the effects of their operations could be neither constrained nor controlled.
And while it is true that these bombings claimed the lives of fewer than a dozen
passersby or rail passengers, given that some of the explosive devices contained more
than twenty pounds of commercial dynamite, this was more likely the result of luck and
happenstance than any effort on the part of the bombers to limit by timing or placement
the effect of their attacks.
The “dynamite campaign,” as this spasm of Victorian- era urban terrorism came
to be known, lasted until 1887. It spread beyond London to Liverpool and Glasgow
before collapsing under the weight of intensified police surveillance, heightened border
and port control, the effective use of in formants, and unpre ce dented national and even
international cooperation and liaison among hitherto entirely parochial law enforcement
agencies. Indeed, the advances in police investigative, intelligence, and preemptive
operations necessitated by the bombings led that same year to the formal establishment of
Scotland Yard’s famed Special Branch— the first such police unit dedicated specifically
to political crime and counterterrorism. More significant for our purposes, however, is the
impact that nineteenth- century Irish political violence had on terrorism’s evolution and
development. In retrospect, we can see that it was at this time that patterns and mode
operandi first appeared that would become standard terrorist operating procedures de
cades later. The Irish groups, for example, were among the first to recognize the
importance of establishing a foreign base beyond the reach of their enemy to better
sustain and promote a protracted terrorist campaign.
They were also ahead of their time in understanding the value of such a sanctuary
not only for planning and logistical purposes but also for the effective dissemination of
propaganda and the critical solicitation of operational funds. Their use of time- delayed
explosive devices so that the perpetrator could easily effect escape, and thereby ensure
the terrorist campaign’s sustainment, was another impor tant innovation that became a
standard feature of twentieth- century terrorism. Finally, terrorist targeting of mass
transport— and especially subway systems— along with an almost callous, if not even
casual, disregard of innocent life have now become commonplace. The JulyB2005 suicide
attacks on London’s transit system, which killed 52 people and wounded nearly 800
others, and the ten near- simultaneous bombings of commuter trains arriving at Madrid’s
Atocha rail station in MarchB2004, which killed 191 people and wounded hundreds more,
are especially apposite, and tragic, examples.
The events immediately preceding World War I in Bosnia are of course more
familiar because of their subsequent cataclysmic impact on world affairs. There, similar
groups of disaffected nationalists— intellectuals, university students, and even
schoolchildren, collectively known as Mlada Bosna, or Young Bosnia— arose against
continued Hapsburg suzerainty. While it is perhaps easy to dismiss the movement, as
some historians have, as comprising “frustrated, poor, dreary and maladjusted”
adolescents— much as many con temporary observers similarly denigrate modern- day
terrorists as mindless, obsessive, and maladjusted—it was a member of Young Bosnia,
Gavrilo Princip, who is widely credited with having set in motion the chain of events that
began on JuneB28, 1914, when he assassinated the Hapsburg archduke Franz Ferdinand in
Sarajevo, which culminated in World WarBI. Whatever its superficially juvenile
characteristics, the group was nonetheless passionately dedicated to the attainment of a
federal South Slav politicalentity— uniting Slovenes, Croats, and Serbs— and resolutely
committed to assassination as the vehicle with which to achieve that aim. In this respect,
Young Bosnia perhaps had more in common with the radical republicanism of Giuseppe
Mazzini, one of the most ardent exponents of Italian unification in the nineteenth century,
than with groups such as the Narodnaya Volya— despite a shared conviction in the
efficacy of tyrannicide. An even more significant difference, however, was the degree of
involvement in, and external support provided to, Young Bosnia activities by
variousshadowy Serbian nationalist groups. Principal among these was the pan- Serbian
secret society, the Srpska Narodna Obrana (Serbian National Defense).
The Srpska Narodna Obrana had been established in 1908, originally to promote
Serbian cultural and national activities. It subsequently assumed a more subversive
orientation as the movement became increasingly involved with anti- Austrian activities
— including terrorism— mostly in neighboring Bosnia and Herzegovina. Although the
Srpska Narodna Obrana’s exclusionist pan- Serbian aims clashed with Young Bosnia’s
less parochial South Slav ideals, its leadership was quite happy to manipulate and exploit
the Bosnians’ emotive nationalism and youthful zeal for its own purposes. To this end,
the Srpska Narodna Obrana actively recruited, trained, and armed young Bosnians and
Herzegovinians from movements, such as Young Bosnia, who were then deployed in
variousseditious activities against the Hapsburgs. As early as four years before the
archduke’s assassination, a Herzegovinian youth, trained by a Serbian army officer with
close ties to the Srpska Narodna Obrana, had attempted to kill the governor of Bosnia.
But while the Srpska Narodna Obrana included among its members senior Serbian
government officials, it was not an explicitly government- controlled or directly state-
supported entity. What ever hazy government links it maintained were further and
deliberately obscured when a radical faction left the Srpska Narodna Obrana in 1911 and
established the Ujedinjenje ili Smrt (the Union of Death, or Death or Unification)— more
popularly known as the Crna Ruka, the Black Hand.
Although there were obviously close links between the Serbian military, the Black
Hand, and Young Bosnia, it would be a mistake to regard the relationship as one of direct
control, much less outright manipulation. Clearly, the Serbian government was well
aware of the Black Hand’s objectives and the violent means the group employed in
pursuit of them; indeed, the Serbian crown prince, Alexander, was one of the group’s
benefactors. But this does not mean that the Serbian government was necessarily as
committed to war with Austria as the Black Hand’s leaders were, or that it was prepared
to countenance the group’s more extreme plans for fomenting cross- border, anti-
Hapsburg terrorism. There is some evidence to suggest that the Black Hand may have
been trying to force Austria’s hand against Serbia and thereby plunge both countries into
war by actively abetting the Young Bosnia plot to assassinate the archduke. Indeed,
according to one revisionist account of the events leading up to the murder, even though
the pistol used by Princip had been supplied by the Black Hand from a Serbian military
armory in Kragujevac, and even though Princip had been trained by the Black Hand in
Serbia before being smuggled back across the border for the assassination, at the eleventh
hour Dmitrievich had apparently bowed to intense government pressure and tried to stop
the assassination. According to this version, Princip and his fellow conspirators would
hear nothing of it and stubbornly went ahead with their plans. Contrary to popular
assumption, therefore, the archduke’s assassination may not have been specifically
ordered or even directly sanctioned by the Serbian government. However, the obscure
links between high government officials and their seniormilitary commanders and
ostensibly in de pen dent, transnational terrorist movements, and the tangled web of
intrigue, plots, clandestine arms provision and training, intelligence agents, and cross-
border sanctuary that these relationships inevitably involved provide a pertinent historical
parallel to the con temporary phenomenon known as “state- sponsored” terrorism— that
is, the active and often clandestine support, encouragement, and assistance provided by a
foreign government to a terrorist group. This nexus was made clearly evident in the
Austrian ultimatum delivered to Serbia following the assassination in which the words
“terrorism” and “terrorist” appear multiple times.
By the 1930s, the meaning of “terrorism” had changed again. It was now used less
to refer to revolutionary movements and violence directed against governments and their
leaders and more to describe the practices of mass repression that totalitarian states and
their dictatorial leaders employed against their own citizens. Thus, the term regained its
former connotations of governmental abuse of power, and it was applied specifically to
the authoritarian regimes that had come to power in Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, and
Stalinist Russia. In Germany and Italy, respectively, the accession to office of Hitler and
Mussolini had depended in large mea sure on the “street”— the mobilization and
deployment of gangs of brown- or black- shirted thugs to harass and intimidate
politicalopponents and root out other scapegoats for public vilification and further
victimization.
The most sinister dimension of this form of “terror” was that it became an
intrinsic component of Fascist and Nazi governance, executed at the behest of, and in
complete subservience to, the ruling politicalparty of the land— which had arrogated to
itself complete, total control of the country and its people. A system of government-
sanctioned fear and coercion was thus created whereby politicalbrawls, street fights, and
widespread persecution of Jews, communists, and other declared “enemies of the state”
became the means through which complete and submissive compliance was ensured. The
totality of party control over, and perversion of, government was perhaps most clearly
evinced by a speech given by Hermann Göring, the newly appointed PRussian minister of
the interior, in 1933. “Fellow Germans,” he declared, “my measures will not be crippled
by any judicial thinking. My measures will not be crippled by any bureaucracy. Here I
don’t have to worry about Justice; my mission is only to destroy and exterminate, nothing
more. This struggle will be a struggle against chaos, and such a struggle I shall not
conduct with the power of the police. A bourgeois State might have done that. Certainly,
I shall use the power of the State and the police to the utmost, my dear Communists, so
don’t draw any false conclusions; but the struggle to the death, in which my fist will
grasp your necks, I shall lead with those there— the Brown Shirts.”
The “ Great Terror” that Stalin was shortly to unleash in Russia both resembled
and differed from that of the Nazis. On the one hand, drawing inspiration from Hitler’s
ruthless elimination of his own politicalopponents, the Russian dictator similarly
transformed the politicalparty he led into a servile instrument responsive directly to his
personal will, and the state’s police and security apparatus into slavish organs of
coercion, enforcement, and repression. But conditions in the Soviet Union of the 1930s
bore little resemblance to the turbulent political, social, and economic upheaval afflicting
Germany and Italy during that de cade and the previous one. On the other hand, therefore,
unlike either the Nazis or the Fascists, who had emerged from the politicalfree- for- alls
in their own countries to seize power and then had to struggle to consolidate their rule
and retain their unchallenged authority, by the mid-1930s the Russian Communist Party
had been firmly entrenched in power for more than a de cade. Stalin’s purges, in contrast
to those of the French Revolution, and even to Russia’s own recent experience, when
Russia had at last reached a comparatively calm and even moderately prosperous
condition.” Thus, the politicalpurges ordered by Stalin became, in the words of one of
his biographers, a “conspiracy to seize total power by terrorist action,” resulting in the
death, exile, imprisonment, or forcible impressment of millions.
Following World War II, in another swing of the pendulum of meaning,
“terrorism” regained the revolutionary connotations with which it is most commonly
associated today. At that time, the term was used primarily in reference to the violent
revolts then being prosecuted by the variousindigenous nationalist/anticolonialist groups
that emerged in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East during the late 1940s and 1950s to
oppose continued European rule. Countries as diverse as Israel, Kenya, Cyprus, and
Algeria, for example, owe their in dependence at least in part to nationalist
politicalmovements that employed terrorism against colonial powers. It was also during
this period that the appellation “freedom fighters” came into fashion as a result of the
politicallegitimacy that the international community— — whose sympathy and support
were actively courted by many of these movements— — accorded to struggles for
national liberation and selfdetermination. Sympathy and support for the rebels extended
to segments of the colonial state’s own population as well, creating a need for less
judgmental and more politically neutral language than “terrorist” and “terrorism” to
describe these revolutionaries and the violence they committed in what were considered
justified “wars of liberation.” Many newly in de pendent Third World countries and
Communist- bloc states in par tic u lar also adopted this vernacular, arguing that anyone
or any movement that fought against “colonial” oppression, Western domination, or both
should not be described as “terrorists” but were properly deemed to be “freedom
fighters.” This position was perhaps most famously explained by Palestine Liberation
Organization (PLO) chairman Yasir Arafat when he addressed the United Nations
General Assembly in NovemberB1974. “The difference between the revolutionary and the
terrorist,” Arafat stated, “lies in the reason for which each fights. For whoever stands by a
just cause and fights for the freedom and liberation of his land from the invaders, the
settlers and the colonialists, cannot possibly be called terrorist.”
Although the revolutionary cum ethnonationalist/separatist and ideological
exemplars continue to shape our most basic understanding of the term, it was not long
before “terrorism” was being used to denote broader, less distinct phenomena. In the
early 1980s, for example, terrorism came to be regarded as a calculated means to
destabilize the West as part of a vast global conspiracy. Books such as The Terror
Network by Claire Sterling propagated the notion to a receptive American presidential
administration and similarly susceptible governments elsewhere that the seemingly
isolated terrorist incidents perpetrated by disparate groups scattered across the globe were
in fact linked elements of a massive clandestine plot, orchestrated by the Kremlin and
implemented by its Warsaw Pact client states, to destroy the Free World. By the middle
of the de cade, however, a series of suicide bombings directed mostly against American
diplomatic and military targets in the Middle East was focusing attention on the rising
threat of statesponsored terrorism. Consequently, this phenomenon— whereby
variousrenegade foreign governments such as the regimes in Iran, Iraq, Libya, and Syria
became actively involved in sponsoring or commissioning terrorist acts— replaced
communist conspiracy theories as the main context within which terrorism was viewed.
Terrorism thus became associated with a type of covert or surrogate warfare whereby
weaker states could confront larger, more powerful rivals without the risk of retribution.
In the early 1990s, the meaning and usage of the term “terrorism” were further
blurred by the emergence of two new buzzwords: “narco- terrorism” and the so- called
gray area phenomenon. The former term revived the Moscow- orchestrated terrorism
conspiracy theories of previous years while introducing the critical new dimension of
narcotics trafficking. Thus, “narcoterrorism” was defined by one of the concept’s
foremost propagators as the “use of drug trafficking to advance the objectives of certain
governments and terrorist organizations”— identified as the “Marxist- Leninist regimes”
of the Soviet Union, Cuba, Bulgaria, and Nicaragua, among others. The emphasis on
“narco- terrorism” as the latest manifestation of the communist plot to undermine
Western society, however, had the unfortunate effect of diverting official attention away
from a bona fide emerging trend. To a greater extent than ever in the past, entirely
criminal (that is, violent, economically motivated) organizations were now forging
strategic alliances with terrorist and guerrilla organizations or were themselves
employing violence for specifically politicalends. The growing power of the Colombian
cocaine cartels, their close ties with left- wing terrorist groups in Colombia and Peru, and
their repeated attempts to subvert Colombia’s electoral pro cess and undermine
successive governments constitute perhaps the best- known example of this continuing
trend.
Those who drew attention to this “gray area phenomenon” were concerned less
with grand conspiracies than with highlighting the increasingly fluid and variable nature
of subnational conflict in the post– Cold War era. Accordingly, in the 1990s, “terrorism”
began to be subsumed by some analysts within the “gray area phenomenon.” Thus, the
latter term came to be used to denote “threats to the stability of nation states by non- state
actors and non- governmental processes and organizations”; to describe violence
affecting “immense regions or urban areas where control has shifted from legitimate
governments to new half- political, half- criminal powers”; or simply to group together in
one category the range of conflicts across the world that no longer conformed to
traditionally accepted notions of war as fighting between the armed forces of two or more
established states, but instead involved irregular forces as one or more of the combatants.
Terrorism had shifted its meaning again from an individual phenomenon of subnational
violence to one of several elements, or part of a wider pattern, of nonstate conflict.
The terrorist attacks on SeptemberB11, 2001, inevitably, redefined “terrorism” yet
again. On that day, nineteen terrorists belonging to a group calling itself al- Qaeda (or al-
Qa’ida) hijacked four passenger aircraft soon after they took off from airports in Boston,
Newark (New Jersey), and Washington, D.C. Two of the planes were then deliberately
flown into the Twin Towers of New York City’s World Trade Center. Both structures
collapsed shortly afterward. A third aircraft similarly smashed into the Pentagon, where
the U.S. Department of Defense is located, severely damaging the southwest portion of
that building. Meanwhile, passengers on board the fourth aircraft learned of the other
attacks and struggled to subdue the hijackers. In the ensuing melee, the plane spun out of
control and crashed into a field in rural Pennsylvania. A total of nearly three thousand
people were killed in the attacks. To put that death toll in perspective, in the entirety of
the twentieth century only thirty- four terrorist incidents had killed more than one
hundred people. And until 9/11, no terrorist operation had ever killed more than five
hundred people. Among the dead were citizens of some eighty different countries,
although the largest number of fatalities by far were U.S. citizens. Indeed, more than
twice as many Americans perished on 9/11 than had been killed by terrorists since 1968
— the year acknowledged as marking the advent of modern, international terrorism.
The implications of this policy were clearly demonstrated by the relationship that
the president and his advisers believed existed between alQaeda and Saddam Hussein.
Although White House suspicions that Iraq was somehow behind 9/11 never completely
faded, they were eventually eclipsed by growing concerns about terrorists acquiring
WMD from Iraqi stockpiles. Indeed, it was precisely this fear that President Bush cited to
justify the MarchB2003 invasion. The Bush administration’s conflation of terrorism and
WMD was specifically cited by Richard Dearlove, then head of MI6, Britain’s Secret
Intelligence Service, in his report to Prime Minister Tony Blair of high- level U.S.– U.K.
consultations held in Washington, D.C., seven months before the invasion. “Military
action was now seen as inevitable,” notes of Dearlove’s meeting with the prime minister
stated. “Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the
conjunction of terrorism and WMD.”
B. The Reasons Why Terrorism is Difficult to be Defined
Not surprisingly, as the meaning and usage of the word have changed over time to
accommodate the politicalvernacular and discourse of each successive era, terrorism has
proved increasingly elusive in the face of attempts to construct one consistent definition.
At one time, the terrorists themselves were far more cooperative in this endeavor than
they are today. The early practitioners didn’t mince their words or hide behind the
semantic camouflage of more anodyne labels such as “freedom fighter” or “urban
guerrilla.” The nineteenth- century anarchists, for example, unabashedly proclaimed
themselves to be terrorists and frankly proclaimed their tactics to be terrorism. The
members of Narodnaya Volya similarly displayed no qualms in using these same words
to describe themselves and their deeds. Such frankness did not last, however. Although
the Jewish terrorist group of the 1940s known as Lehi (the Hebrew acronym for Lohamei
Herut Yisrael, the Freedom Fighters for Israel), but more popularly called the Stern Gang
after its founder and first leader, Abraham Stern, would admit to its effective use of
terrorist tactics, its members never considered themselves to be terrorists. It is significant,
however, that although Lehi may have been far more candid than its latter- day counter
parts, it nevertheless chose as the name of the organization not Terrorist Fighters for
Israel but the far less pejorative Freedom Fighters for Israel. Similarly, although more
than twenty years later the Brazilian revolutionary Carlos Marighela displayed little
compunction about openly advocating the use of “terrorist” tactics, he still insisted on
depicting himself and his disciples as “urban guerrillas” rather than “urban terrorists.”
Indeed, it is clear from Marighela’s writings that he was well aware of the word’s
undesirable connotations and strove to displace them with positive resonances. “The
words ‘aggressor’ and ‘terrorist,’ ” Marighela wrote in his famous Handbook of Urban
Guerrilla War (also known as the “Mini- Manual”), “no longer mean what they did.
Instead of arousing fear or censure, they are a call to action. To be called an aggressor or
a terrorist in Brazil is now an honour to any citizen, for it means that he is fighting, with a
gun in his hand, against the monstrosity of the present dictatorship and the suffering it
causes.”
What all these examples suggest is that terrorists clearly do not see or regard
themselves as others do. “Above all I am a family man,” the archterrorist Carlos “the
Jackal” described himself to a French newspaper following his capture in 1994.
Similarly, when the infamous KSM— Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, mastermind of the
9/11 attacks whom bin Laden called simply “al Mukhtar” (Arabic for “the chosen one”)
— was apprehended in MarchB2003, a photo graph of him with his arms around his two
young sons was found next to the bed in which he had been sleeping. Cast perpetually on
the defensive and forced to take up arms to protect themselves and their real or imagined
constituents, terrorists perceive themselves as reluctant warriors, driven by desperation—
and lacking any viable alternative—to violence against a repressive state, a predatory
rival ethnic or nationalist group, or an unresponsive international order.
A communist or a revolutionary, for example, would likely readily accept and
admit that he is in fact a communist or a revolutionary. Indeed, many would doubtless
take par tic u lar pride in claiming either of those appellations for themselves. Similarly,
even a person engaged in illegal, wholly disreputable, or entirely selfish violent activities,
such as robbing banks or carrying out contract killings, would probably admit to being a
bank robber or a murderer for hire. The terrorist, by contrast, will never acknowledge that
he is a terrorist, and moreover will go to great lengths to evade and obscure any such
inference or connection. Terry Anderson, the American journalist who was held hostage
for almost seven years by the Lebanese terrorist organization Hezbollah, relates a telling
conversation he had with one of his guards. The guard had objected to a newspaper
article that referred to Hezbollah as terrorists. “We are not terrorists,” he indignantly
stated, “we are fighters.” Anderson replied, “Hajj, you are a terrorist, look it up in the
dictionary. You are a terrorist, you may not like the word and if you do not like the word,
do not do it.”
The terrorist will always argue that it is society or the government or the
socioeconomic “system” and its laws that are the real “terrorists,” and moreover that if it
were not for this oppression, he would not have felt the need to defend either himself or
the population he claims to represent. Another revealing example of this pro cess of
obfuscation- projection may be found in the book Invisible Armies, written by Sheikh
Muhammad Hussein Fadlallah, the spiritual leader of the Lebanese terrorist group
responsible for Anderson’s kidnapping. “We don’t see ourselves as terrorists,” Fadlallah
explains, “ because we don’t believe in terrorism. We don’t see resisting the occupier as a
terrorist action. We see ourselves as mujihadeen [holy warriors] who fight a Holy War
for the people.” Indeed, Hez bollah’s efforts to distance itself entirely from any terrorist
associations and appellations have only intensified in the years since it first entered
mainstream Lebanese politics. Given its domination of Lebanese politics and the
significant role that Hez bollah has played in that country’s governance for more than a
de cade, including exercising effective veto power in the post-2008 national unity
government, the group’s spokespersons have consistently argued that it is a bona fide
politicalparty, cum “resistance movement.”
On one point, at least, everyone agrees: “Terrorism” is a pejorative term. It is a
word with intrinsically negative connotations that is generally applied to one’s enemies
and opponents, or to those with whom one disagrees and would otherwise prefer to
ignore. “What is called terrorism,” Brian Jenkins has written, “thus seems to depend on
one’s point of view. Use of the term implies a moral judgement; and if one party can
successfully attach the label terrorist to its opponent, then it has indirectly persuaded
others to adopt its moral viewpoint.” Hence, the decision to call someone or label some
organization “terrorist” becomes almost unavoidably subjective, depending largely on
whether one sympathizes with or opposes the person/group/cause concerned. If one
identifies with the victim of the violence, for example, then the act is terrorism. If,
however, one identifies with the perpetrator, the violent act is regarded in a more
sympathetic, if not positive (or, at the worst, ambivalent) light, and it is not terrorism.
Reporting on terrorism by the news media, which have been drawn into the
semantic debates that divided the UN in the 1970s and continue to influence all discourse
on terrorism, has further contributed to the obfuscation of the terrorist/“freedom fighter”
debate, enshrining imprecision and implication as the lingua franca of politicalviolence in
the name of objectivity and neutrality. In striving to avoid appearing either partisan or
judgmental, the venerable BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) effectively bans the
use of the word “terrorist” by its editors and reporters— a term it describes as “a barrier
rather than an aid to understanding.” In the wake of the JanuaryB2015 attack on the
offices of the French satirical weekly newsmagazine Charlie Hebdo by two gunmen
professing allegiance to an alQaeda affiliate, in which a dozen persons lost their lives, the
head of the BBC’s Arabic language broadcasting justified this rationale, explaining: “We
know what politicalviolence is, we know what murder, bombings and shootings are and
we describe them. That’s much more revealing than a word like terrorist which people
will see as value- laden.”
TheBU.S. media has embraced a similar rationale. It has resorted to describing
terrorists— often in the same report— variously as “guerrillas,” “gunmen,” “raiders,”
“commandos,” and even “soldiers.” A random sample of American newspaper reports of
Palestinian terrorist activities between June and DecemberB1973, found in the terrorism
archives and database formerly maintained by the RAND Corporation, provides striking
illustrations of this practice. Out of eight headlines of articles reporting the same incident,
six used the word “guerrillas” and only two used “terrorists” to describe the perpetrators.
An interesting pattern was also observed: those accounts that immediately followed a
particularly horrific or tragic incident— that is, involving the death and injury of innocent
people (in this instance, a 1973 attack on a Pan Am airliner at the Rome airport, in which
thirty- two passengers were killed)— tended to describe the perpetrators as “terrorists”
and their act as “terrorism” (albeit in the headline in one case only, before reverting to the
more neutral terminology of “commando,” “militants,” and “guerrilla attack” in the text)
more frequently than did reports of less serious or nonlethal incidents. One New York
Times editorial, however, was far less restrained than the stories describing the actual
incident, describing it as “bloody” and “mindless” and using the words “terrorists” and
“terrorism” interchangeably with “guerrillas” and “extremists.” Only six months
previously, however, the same newspaper had run a story about another terrorist attack
that completely eschewed the terms “terrorism” and “terrorist,” preferring “guerrillas”
and “re sis tance” (as in “re sis tance movement”).
The New York Times’s reporting and rhetorical choices were not much different.
Admittedly, its first article detailing the incident used the word “terrorist” twice, in both
instances in dependently of quotes or statements made by Russian officials. But more
inoffensive terms such as “guerrillas” (seventeen references), “fighters” (nine),
“insurgents” (six), “rebels” (six), and “hostage takers” (two) predominated in both this
story and the report of the siege’s grisly denouement. The word “terrorist” again
appeared twice in the second piece, but only when quoting Russian president Vladimir
Putin and his spokesman. Indeed, the “unrelenting use of such euphemistic language” in
the Washington Post’s reporting of the Beslan incident prompted one reader to ask in a
letter to the editor, “Why can’t your editors just identify these people for what they
are . . . terrorists?” The New York Times’s first public editor, Daniel Okrent, devoted a
column to the subject after readers similarly complained about the paper’s reluctance to
use the words “terrorist,” “terrorism,” and “terror.” His explanation was that the Times in
fact has no policy governing the use of such words— except to eschew them as much
possible.
The cumulative effect of this proclivity toward equivocation is that today there is
no one widely accepted or agreed-upon definition for terrorism. The most pernicious
effect of this “failure to craft an agreed upon definition of terrorism,” Anthony Richards
argues in his book devoted to this subject, is the creation of a conceptual “vacuum for
actors, whether they be state or non-state, to define terrorism in ways that serve their own
perceived political and strategic interests.” For instance, different departments or
agencies of even the same government will themselves often have very different
definitions for it. According to one authoritative survey, the U.S. government alone
utilizes more than twenty definitions of this phenomenon, differentiating between its
international and domestic characteristics, and whether it is a federal or other form of
crime. To complicate this matter further, the U.S. State Department changed its own
definition of terrorism at least seven times between 1982 and 2004.138 It currently uses
the definition of terrorism contained in Title 22 of the United States Code,
SectionB2656f(d): “premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against
noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents.”
And the U.S. Department of Defense defines it as, “The unlawful use of violence
or threat of violence, often motivated by religious, political, or other ideological beliefs,
to instill fear and coerce governments or societies in pursuit of goals that are usually
political.” Not surprisingly, each of the above definitions reflects the priorities and par tic
u lar interests of the specific agency involved. The State Department’s emphasis is on the
premeditated and planned or calculated nature of terrorism in contrast to more
spontaneous acts of politicalviolence. Its definition is also the only one of the four to
emphasize both the ineluctably politicalnature of terrorism and the perpetrators’
fundamental “subnational” characteristic. The State Department’s approach is also
noteworthy in that it expands the definition of a terrorist act beyond the usual, exclusive
focus on civilians to include “noncombatant targets.” This broad category encompasses
not only assassinations of military attachés and military forces deployed on peacekeeping
missions, but also attacks on cafes, discotheques, and other facilities frequented by off-
duty ser vice personnel, as well as on military installations and armed personnel— “
whether or not armed or on duty” provided that they “are not deployed in a war zone or a
war- like setting.” Under this rubric, incidents such as the 1983 suicide truck bombing of
the U.S. Marine barracks at Beirut International Airport; the similar attack thirteen years
later against a U.S. Air Force housing complex in Khobar, Saudi Arabia; and the
OctoberB2000 seaborne suicide assault on a U.S. Navy destroyer, the USS Cole while it
was at anchor in Aden, Yemen, are defined as terrorist acts. The State Department
definition is deficient, however, in failing to consider the psychological dimension of
terrorism. Terrorism is as much about the threat of violence as the violent act itself and,
accordingly, is deliberately conceived to have far- reaching psychological repercussions
beyond the actual target of the act among a wider, watching, “target” audience.
“Terrorism,” as Jenkins succinctly observed two de cades ago, “is theatre.”
Although the FBI definition recognizes social objectives alongside political ones
as fundamental terrorist aims, it offers no clear elucidation of the differences between
them to explain this distinction. The DHS definition clearly reflects its mission,
concentrating on attacks to critical infrastructure and key national resources that could
have grave societal consequences. The Department of Defense definition of terrorism is
arguably the most complete of the four. It highlights the terrorist threat as much as the
actual act of violence and focuses on terrorism’s targeting of whole societies as well as
governments. Curiously, unlike the State Department definition, it does not include the
deliberate targeting of individuals for assassination and makes no attempt to distinguish
between attacks on combatant and noncombatant military personnel. The Defense
Department definition, significantly, also cites the religious and ideological aims of
terrorism alongside its fundamental politicalobjectives— but omits the social dimension
found in the FBI’s definition.
Indeed, Walter Laqueur had previously despaired of defining terrorism in both
editions of his monumental work on the subject, maintaining that it is neither possible to
do so nor worthwhile to make the attempt. “Ten years of debates on typologies and
definitions,” he responded to a survey on definitions conducted by Schmid in the early
1980s, “have not enhanced our knowledge of the subject to a significant degree.”
Laqueur’s contention is supported by the 22 different word categories occurring in the
109 different definitions that Schmid identified in his first survey of the subject (see
tableB1.1). At the end of this exhaustive exercise, Schmid wondered “ whether the above
list contains all the elements necessary for a good definition. The answer,” he suggests,
“is probably ‘no.’ ” If it is impossible to define terrorism, as Laqueur argues, and fruitless
to attempt to cobble together a truly comprehensive definition, as Schmid admits, are we
to conclude that terrorism is impervious to precise, much less an accurate, definition? Not
entirely. If we cannot define terrorism, then we can at least usefully distinguish it from
other types of violence and identify the characteristics that make it the distinct
phenomenon of politicalviolence that it is.
C. Distinctions as a Path to Definition
Guerrilla warfare and insurgency are good places to start, not least since both
terms are often used in lieu of terrorism and indeed are often the preferred nomenclature
since they are regarded as less pejorative and less judgmental. In actual practice,
guerrillas and insurgents often employ the same tactics (assassination, kidnapping, hit-
and- run attack, bombings of public gathering places, hostage taking, etc.) for the same
purposes (to intimidate or coerce, thereby affecting behavior through the arousal of fear)
as terrorists. In addition, terrorists as well as guerrillas and insurgents wear neither
uniform nor identifying insignia and thus are often indistinguishable from
noncombatants. However, despite the inclination to lump terrorists, guerrillas, and
insurgents into the same catchall category of “irregulars,” there are nonetheless
fundamental differences among the three.
“Insurgents” share these same characteristics; however, their strategy and
operations transcend hit- and- run attacks to embrace what in the past has variously been
called “revolutionary guerrilla warfare,” “modern revolutionary warfare,” or “ people’s
war” but is today commonly termed “insurgency.” Thus, in addition to the irregular
military tactics that characterize guerrilla operations, insurgencies typically involve
coordinated informational (e.g., propaganda) and psychological warfare efforts designed
to mobilize popular support in a struggle against an established national government,
imperialist power, or foreign occupying force. Terrorists, however, do not function in the
open as armed units, generally do not attempt to seize or hold territory, deliberately avoid
engaging enemy military forces in combat, are constrained both numerically and
logistically from undertaking concerted mass politicalmobilization efforts, and exercise
no direct control or governance over a populace at either the local or the national level.
A final impor tant, although increasingly controversial, distinction is that
terrorism is most commonly understood to be violence perpetrated by subnational or
nonstate actors and not by states. This statement is not meant to ignore or deny that states
through their military forces and intelligence services have never committed acts of
violence that deliberately and wantonly targeted civilians. Nor is it meant to absolve
states from the fear and panic that their violence has at times deliberately sown, or the
farreaching psychological damage and repercussions that such violence has indubitably
caused. Rather, this specifically contextual differentiation between nonstate and state
violence accepts the long- standing, normative meaning of “terrorism”: it is a necessary
step to bring analytical precision to a term that, as this chapter argued earlier, more than
ever seems to be so promiscuously and expansively applied. Embracing such a distinction
is not, as critical terrorism studies scholars maintain, in servile obeisance to the
perpetuation of Western hegemony, rigid adherence to an outmoded statist outlook, or a
ploy to “legitimize US ‘counterterrorism’ policy.”
In the past, terrorism was arguably far easier to define than it is today. To qualify
as terrorism, violence had to be perpetrated by an individual acting at the behest of or on
behalf of some existent organizational entity or movement with at least some
conspiratorial structure and identifiable chain of command. This criterion, however, is no
longer sufficient. In recent years, a variety of both foreign and domestic terrorist
movements have increasingly adopted a strategy of “leaderless networks” or encouraged
“lone wolves” to engage in individual acts of violence against common enemies to thwart
law enforcement and intelligence agency efforts to penetrate these organizations and
preempt or prevent attack.
In point of fact, it was not until the rise of ISIS, following its split from al- Qaeda,
that al- Zawahiri’s original summons acquired the impact, impetus, and momentum that
he had hoped. The statement issued in SeptemberB2014 by ISIS’s chief spokesperson,
Abu Muhammad al- Adnani, subsequently proved much more effective in inciting
random acts of violence worldwide than al- Qaeda’s previous entreaties to achieve the
same end. In language strikingly reminiscent of al- Zawahiri’s over a de cade before, al-
Adnani assured ISIS’s actual and would-be sympathizers and supporters that they did not
have to travel to the battlefields of either Syria or Iraq to contribute to ISIS’s struggle, but
could do so at home in their own communities. “Do not let his battle pass you by
wherever you may be,” he declared.
You must strike the soldiers, patrons, and troops of the [unbelievers]. Strike their
police, security, and intelligence members, as well as their treacherous agents. Destroy
their beds. Embitter their lives for them and busy them with themselves. If you can kill a
disbelieving American or European— especially the spiteful and filthy French—or an
Australian, or a Canadian, or any other disbeliever from the disbelievers waging war,
including the citizens of the countries that entered into a coalition against the Islamic
State, then rely upon Allah, and kill him in any manner or way however it may be. Do not
ask for anyone’s advice and do not seek anyone’s verdict.
Within days of al- Adnani’s message, ISIS claimed responsibility for an attack in
Melbourne, Australia, where a man stabbed two police officers after being summoned for
questioning in connection with his public display of an ISIS flag. Then, just weeks later,
two separate ISIS- inspired lone wolf attacks took place in Canada in OctoberB2014. The
individuals implicated in both incidents were found to have had direct contact with the
group and had sought to leave Canada to become foreign fighters with ISIS in Syria or
Iraq before deciding instead to carry out entirely domestic terrorist attacks. And that same
month, ISIS took credit for the series of attacks by a hatchetwielding perpetrator in
Queens, New York City, in OctoberB2014, who was subsequently found to have large
amounts of jihadi material in his home.
As part of this “leaderless” strategy, autonomous local terrorist cells plan and
execute attacks in dependently of one another or of any central command authority, but
through their individual terrorist efforts seek the eventual attainment of a terrorist
organization or movement’s wider goals. Although these ad hoc terrorist cells and lone
individuals may be less sophisticated and therefore less capable than their more
professional, trained counter parts who are members of actual established terrorist
groups, these “amateur” terrorists can be just as bloody- minded. The brutal murder of an
off- duty British soldier outside his London barracks in 2013 is an especially heinous
example of this new type of threat. The soldier was run over by two men in a car who
then alighted and proceeded to stab and hack him to death. One of the assailants had
previously been arrested in Kenya while trying to join a terrorist group affiliated with al-
Qaeda.
A 2004 FBI strategic planning document presciently described lone wolves as the
“most significant domestic terrorism threat” that the United States faces. “They typically
draw ideological inspiration from formal terrorist organizations,” the 2004–2009 plan
stated, “but operate on the fringes of those movements. The insightful evaluation
accurately foretold the tragic events that unfolded at a county government facility in San
Bernardino, California, almost a decade subsequent. Despite the improvised nature of
their operations and their typically limited access to resources, extremist factions can
execute high-profile and profoundly devastating assaults. Their modus operandi often
involves covert planning, rendering their activities challenging to preempt or detect. In
the case of the San Bernardino attack, the perpetrators—a married couple—professed
allegiance to ISIS, despite lacking any direct or discernible connections to the
organization. This aspect added a layer of complexity to the investigation, raising
questions about the radicalization process and the mechanisms through which individuals
become affiliated with extremist ideologies.
The attack itself left a profound impact on the community, resulting in the loss of
fourteen innocent lives and leaving more than twenty others grievously wounded. Beyond
the immediate human toll, such events reverberate throughout society, triggering
discussions about national security measures, the effectiveness of counterterrorism
strategies, and the broader implications for civil liberties. Moreover, the aftermath of the
San Bernardino attack underscored the challenges inherent in identifying and addressing
the root causes of violent extremism. It prompted soul-searching within law enforcement
agencies, policymakers, and communities at large, as they sought to understand how
individuals could become radicalized and what measures could be implemented to
prevent future tragedies.
The incident also highlighted the need for enhanced collaboration and
information-sharing among various stakeholders, including government agencies,
community organizations, and mental health professionals. Building resilient
communities capable of detecting and intervening in early signs of radicalization became
a focal point in the ongoing effort to combat terrorism and promote social cohesion. In
essence, the attack in San Bernardino serves as a poignant reminder of the ever-evolving
threat landscape and the imperative to remain vigilant in safeguarding against extremist
ideologies.
Indeed, the imperative to address the underlying grievances fueling radicalization
while simultaneously bolstering societal resilience to mitigate the risk of future attacks
cannot be overstated. The complex interplay of socio-economic disparities, political
grievances, religious extremism, and identity crises often creates fertile ground for
radicalization. By comprehensively addressing these root causes, societies can effectively
dismantle the underlying drivers that propel individuals towards extremist ideologies.
This multifaceted approach involves not only enhancing access to education,
economic opportunities, and social services but also fostering inclusive governance
structures that empower marginalized communities and amplify their voices. By
promoting a sense of belonging and agency, societies can undercut the appeal of
extremist narratives that exploit feelings of alienation and disenfranchisement.
Furthermore, strengthening societal resilience requires proactive measures to
build community cohesion and foster interfaith dialogue. By fostering mutual
understanding and tolerance, societies can inoculate themselves against the divisive
rhetoric propagated by extremist groups, thereby fortifying their collective resilience to
radicalization and violent extremism.
At the same time, efforts to counter radicalization must be complemented by
robust security measures aimed at disrupting terrorist networks, dismantling recruitment
pipelines, and thwarting potential attacks. This entails close cooperation between law
enforcement agencies, intelligence services, and international partners to identify and
neutralize threats before they materialize.
Moreover, prevention efforts should extend beyond traditional law enforcement
approaches to encompass early intervention and rehabilitation programs designed to
support individuals at risk of radicalization. By providing targeted support and guidance,
communities can offer pathways away from extremism and towards constructive
engagement with society.
Ultimately, addressing the underlying grievances fueling radicalization requires a
holistic and multi-dimensional approach that encompasses social, economic, political,
and security dimensions. By addressing root causes, strengthening societal resilience, and
fostering inclusive communities, societies can effectively mitigate the risk of future
attacks while upholding fundamental principles of human rights, democracy, and
pluralism.
