What is Terrorism? What Causes Others to be Influenced by Terrorists?

In virtually every society and historical era there have been extremists who have used the tactics of terror to advance their causes. From White Supremacists, the Black Panthers and anti-government militia movements in America, to the anarchists in Europe and America in the early 20 th century, to the IRA in Ireland and the Red Army in Japan in the aftermath of World War II, extremists have arisen using bombs and various means of terror to attack others in a way calculated to bring attention to their cause and inflict damage—directly or indirectly—on the perceived enemies of that cause.

There have been excellent works, including Marc Sageman’s Understanding Terror Networks, Lawrence Wright’s The Looming Tower, and Michael Lind and Peter Bergen’s “A Matter of Pride” (Democracy: A Journal of Ideas, Winter 2007), which have shown that the core members of these extremist groups are often young men, in many cases professional and well-to-do, who join because of alienation, humiliation and disaffection and through the pull of social and recruiting networks. These groups often come to embrace strong “-isms”—religions or ideologies, including communism, fascism or the dicta of a charismatic leader—that bring a sense of purpose and a foundation for their causes. But disaffection and alienation, not religion or ideology, are the common threads that bind these groups.

Of the thousands of such groups that exist or have existed, the validity of their causes is often questionable or worse. One element remains consistent throughout time and geography, however. These extremists believe themselves denied the resources or opportunity to advance their cause through conventional means. They believe acts of terrorism will gain them access and relief.

The historian Jay Winik, in a book about the American Civil War written before the 9/11 attacks and the current Iraq war, describes well what terrorists are and why terrorists succeed. In reading this passage, where Winik uses the term “guerilla” — the term coined to describe the terrorists fighting Napoleon — substitute the term “terrorist”:

“[G]uerrilla warfare is and always has been the very essence of how the weak make war against the strong. Insurrectionist, subversive, chaotic, its methods are often chosen instinctively, but throughout time, they have worked with astonishing regularity….By luring their adversaries into endless, futile pursuit, guerrillas erode not just the enemy’s strength, but, far more importantly, the enemy’s morale as well.” (Jay Winik, April 1865, HarperCollins, 2001, pp 147-8)

The fact that a weak group resorts to terrorist tactics to fight the strong does not excuse the horror and repugnance of their acts, but it is a pattern that is well-established.

In a comprehensive study of thousands of terrorist activities from the past half century, William Eubank and Leonard Weinberg conclude that such actions occur most often in stable democracies and suggest that is because of the openness and freedom within these societies. (They cite such examples as the Red Army Faction in Germany and the Ku Klux Klan in the United States.) But the extremists committing these terrorist acts rarely gain truly broad acceptance within a stable democracy because there are other available options to express discontent, notably the ballot.

The terms terrorists, extremists, insurgents, guerrillas, jihadists and fundamentalists have been used freely and in many cases interchangeably in discussions of al Qaeda, Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine and the Mideast. This has added much confusion and imprecision to the discussions. For our purposes, and in this thesis, our working definition will be this: Terrorism is a method for a weaker group, most often an extremist group, to fight an establishment or those in power. Terrorism can include any number of violent tactics—including targeted “guerrilla” attacks on small and unsuspecting parts of that in-power group’s military, and/or the intentional targeting of civilians for political purposes. The extremist group often uses an “-ism” as a cause or source of ideological strength against the perceived oppressors or occupiers—thus the terms jihadism and fundamentalism to describe these movements in the Middle East. If the extremist cause resonates, it will spread to a broader population. If large enough, it will trigger a civil war.

Our concern—one of the keys to this essay—are those situations where the issues advanced by the extremists come to be shared by a truly broad constituency within a country or affected group. That occurs when the issue in conflict resonates and there exist no bona fide channels for that broad population to find redress.

Across time and geography, extremism most often takes root and gains support only in situations where occupation and/or oppression exist. In these circumstances, those holding power fail to adequately provide the affected population with any voice in government, property rights, opportunity for economic advancement, and personal freedom and safety. This is often accompanied by wholesale government corruption and harsh suppression of dissenting voices. The deprived feel powerless and humiliated. It is no coincidence that government's failure to provide these basic needs—especially property rights and a true voice in governance—almost always creates or exacerbates extreme poverty. The truly poor are often receptive listeners to the message of extremists and become ready recruits for their cause.

Oppression, as we define it here, has taken the form of a strong, repressive central government such as existed in Saudi Arabia, Peru, and Egypt, or the decentralized chaos of warlords, as has been the case in Afghanistan—because in both examples the basic obligations of government described above are not met. Hear the voice of Carlos Marighella, writing in Brazil in 1969 in his Minimanual of the Urban Guerrilla:

“The urban guerrilla is an implacable enemy of the regime, and systematically inflicts damage on the authorities and on the people who dominate the country and exercise power. The primary task of the urban guerrilla is to distract, to wear down, to demoralize the military regime and its repressive forces, and also to attack and destroy the wealth and property of the foreign managers and the Brazilian upper class.”

We will also include in our definition the oppression of a cultural, ethnic or religious group such as the Basques in Spain and the Serbian and Albanian situation in Kosovo. In some cases, these extremists are established or supported by an external state or entity. However, even in these cases, extremism will not take root unless the message resonates with the general populace.

Examples of occupation, under whatever guise, include the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan which led ultimately to a generation of terrorists including the Taliban and Al Qaeda; the French occupation of Algeria which spawned the FLN, and the British occupation of Ireland which ultimately produced the IRA.

Importantly, whether a given population is justified in its perception of occupation or oppression is not within the scope of this paper to debate, and not all occupation or oppression leads directly to extremism. However, one thing is certain: for extremists to be harbored by the broad population, the perception of occupation or oppression has to be widely shared.

The Middle East is a breeding ground for terrorism because dictatorships and economic inequality abound. As Lawrence Wright wrote, referring to Al Qaeda and those recruited to the Afghan resistance to the Soviets:

“It was death, not victory in Afghanistan that summoned many young Arabs to Peshawar. … The lure of an illustrious and meaningful death was especially powerful in cases where the pleasures and rewards of life were crushed by government oppression and economic deprivation. From Iraq to Morocco, Arab governments had stifled freedom and signally failed to create wealth at the very time when democracy and personal income were sharply climbing in virtually all other parts of the globe. Saudi Arabia, the richest of the lot, was such a notoriously unproductive country that the extraordinary abundance of petroleum had failed to generate any other significant source of income; indeed, if one subtracted the oil revenue of the Gulf countries, 260 million Arabs exported less than 5 million Finns. Radicalism usually prospers in the gap between rising expectations and declining opportunities. This is especially true where the population is young, idle, and bored; where the art is impoverished; where entertainment--movies, theater, music--is policed or absent altogether; and where young men are set apart from the consoling and socializing presence of women. Adult illiteracy remains the norm in many Arab countries. Unemployment was among the highest in the developing world. Anger, resentment and humiliation spurred young Arabs to search for dramatic remedies.” (Lawrence Wright, The Looming Tower, Knopf, 2006, pp. 106-107)

Muslim extremists are not qualitatively different than extremists of other countries, religions or eras. What is different is quantitative —the fact that there are over 1.3 billion Muslims. If a tiny fraction—0.01 percent — of a population of that size is extremist, it is a more material issue than if 0.01 percent of the 1.5 million Northern Irelanders were extremist in the 1970s, or 0.01 percent of the 20 million Peruvians were extremist in the 1980s, or 0.01 percent of the 120 million Russians were extremist in the years of incubation leading up to the Bolshevik revolution. The sheer size of the pool of the disaffected merits the attention we put forward in this essay.

In the Muslim world, poverty makes the population receptive to an extremist message. But the problem goes beyond subsistence. Paul Pillar, former deputy chief of the CIA’s counterterrorism center, wrote:

“The challenge is not simply one of poverty … Rather, it is one of closed, state-dominated economies and undemocratic, unresponsive political systems, which deny citizens the opportunity to realize their full potential and to effect peaceful political change when they are dissatisfied with their lack of opportunities. … And once people become alienated, it becomes harder to develop the entrepreneurial spirit needed for economic growth and the civic culture needed to make democracy work.” (Paul Pillar, Terrorism and U.S. Foreign Policy, 2001, Brookings, p. xlvi.)

This is not a problem confined to one geographic region. Terrorism and its root causes are becoming part of a global reality. Writing in 1996, Robert Kaplan noted the connection between poverty and modern war:

“Scholars have been writing more and more about the corrosive effects of overpopulation and environmental degradation in the third world, while journalists cover an increasing array of ethnic conflicts that don't configure within state borders. Of the eighty wars since 1945 …forty-six were civil wars or guerrilla [read terrorist] insurgencies. Former UN secretary-general [Javier] Perez de Cuellar called this the 'new anarchy.’ In 1993, forty-two countries were immersed in major conflicts and thirty-seven others experienced lesser forms of political violence: Sixty-five of these seventy-nine countries were in the developing [read poverty-stricken] world.” (Robert D. Kaplan, The Ends of the Earth, Vintage, 1996, p. 8)

Extremists broaden their support by doing two things: protesting an unpopular occupier or government and offering services that government does not supply. We should not have been surprised that Hizbollah provided charitable services such as hospitals, schools, security and financial support to the dispossessed in its region of Lebanon. Nor should we have been surprised to learn that the Taliban opened schools in Afghanistan. Their respective governments simply weren’t fulfilling their basic obligations to the citizenry.

Examples abound: In Egypt oppression led to the Muslim Brotherhood; in Afghanistan the Taliban; in remote areas of India, the Naxalites, and the oppression of the Tsars in Russia led to revolution and Bolshevism.

Those holding power frequently play into the hands of the extremists, who may start with tactics that are mild. B ut government reprisals raise the level of deadliness until both sides are committed to an escalating cycle of violence and become hardened purveyors of extreme tactics. Extremists feed on these reprisals and in many cases welcome them, for they win new adherents to the cause. Popular support is essential if terrorism is to be sustained for long periods. Ultimately the conflict expands into what can rightly be called a civil war.

As the cycle of violence rises, the population's resentment of its government grows. That resentment can spill over to include the government's allies—e.g. Al Qaeda’s jihad against the United States for its perceived disproportionate support of Israel. Some government reprisals rise to extraordinary levels—witness Putin and Kadryov in Chechnya. Although governmental authorities there appear to have beaten back terrorism, they have only driven it underground for an extended period where it will mutate into a more virulent form.

As mentioned, the oppressive conditions that lead to extremism and enhance its appeal among the dispossessed are frequently accompanied by “-isms” or ideologies that provide a rallying message, a promise of solutions. This can be a religion, a philosophy or the dogma of a charismatic leader that gives meaning to the extremism and potentially provides the broad population a psychological safe harbor against oppression.

In a number of Muslim countries, this has manifested itself in an extremist, or “fundamentalist,” form of the Islamic religion. The extremists’ message is this: secularism and modernity have disrupted lives and produced dictatorships, poverty and discrimination. The only way to restore purpose, dignity and social order is to turn away from this corrupted form of Islam, casting out the secular and falsely religious establishment. The oppressors are evil, it is claimed. They and their allies, including the West, must be overcome.

For Islamic fundamentalists, the primary enemy here is not the United States and the West, but rather the Muslim establishment, which has failed to prevent the corruption of a belief and to protect Muslim society from the unholy influence of the secular world, a world that has only brought poverty and misery to many. According to Reza Aslan:

“Fundamentalism, in all religious traditions, is impervious to suppression. The more one tries to squelch it, the stronger it becomes. Counter it with cruelty, it gains adherents. Kill its leaders, and they become martyrs. Respond with despotism, and it becomes the sole voice of opposition. Try to control it, and it will turn against you. Try to appease it, and it will take control.” (Reza Aslan, No god but God, Random House, 2005, p. 247)

Those few Islamic extremist groups who attack us commit acts of terrorism not because we are free. We are, in fact, a secondary target chosen because we support governments and policies that are sources of their oppression, and because attacking us brings greater attention to their cause. Al Qaeda’s current rallying cry is the perceived injustice in Palestine and the presence of a non-Muslim military (ours) on sacred Muslim soil in Saudi Arabia. Previously, it was the anger over the secular Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, which gave birth to the movement. Hizbollah was formed because Israel was occupying Lebanon. Hamas wants to reclaim lost territory in Palestine. The driving force behind them all is not simply ideology, but rather, achieving specific events and outcomes. Resolve the problem and the motivation fades.

Many extremist groups spawn “splinter” groups, which are usually smaller than the original. The IRA in Ireland formed multiple splinter groups, including the “Real IRA” and “INLA” to name just two. Al Qaeda can be viewed as a type of splinter group most directly stemming from the Muslim Brotherhood. These offshoots evolve for one of several reasons: the core group begins to negotiate, and the splinter group feels that is an intolerable compromise; the splinter group believes an increased level of terrorism is needed to further its agenda; or another nation or outside influence sponsors or incites the splinter group to more aggressive behavior.

These splinter groups have ambitions that are more extreme and less closely aligned to the true grievances of the broad population. For example, some current Islamic splinter groups believe that all non-Islamic governments must be overthrown and brought into the Muslim fold—a view hardly shared by the bulk of the citizenry of Islamic nations.

Because they are generally smaller and less established, they must go to greater lengths to gain notoriety. Prior to 9/11, Osama Bin Laden was finding it hard to gain the notoriety he was seeking, and Al Qaeda was simply one group vying for ascendancy within the Muslim world:

“...Bin Laden found himself, by the mid-1990’s, bottled up in the Afghan badlands, having been stripped of his Saudi nationality and booted out of ostensibly “Islamist”-ruled Sudan. Among his camp mates, the ragtag leftovers of the Muslim foreign legion of Afghanistan, the fire of armed jihad still burned. But their passion lacked a satisfactory immediate outlet. Radical insurgencies had been defeated, or severely constrained, across a number of local fronts, from Egypt to Algeria to the Southern Philippines. Most ordinary Muslims in these countries…had not merely failed to join in the fight but questioned its very premises.

“With these so-called 'near enemies' in Asia and the Middle East proving inconveniently resilient, the idea emerged of transferring jihadist zeal instead to the 'far enemy.' Hitting the United States would in itself score points, considering that America was seen as a pillar of support for compromised Muslim regimes, such as Egypt’s and Saudi Arabia’s, that bin Laden had as his target. The boldness of attacking the strongest world power would propel Islam (or rather, the jihadists’ version thereof) onto the geopolitical stage as a force demanding equal stature. This would not only inspire reluctant jihadists to join in the fight. It would also help cement the broader, and growing, Muslim sense that their faith was somehow under threat, and needed vigorous defense.

“This strategy is not original.” (Max Rodenbeck, “The Truth About Jihad,” The New York Review of Books, August 11, 2005, p. 52)

In cases where the extremist cause takes root among a larger populace as a result of occupation or oppression, and when that occupation or oppression continues for extended periods, then the terrorism becomes more virulent. Additional splinter groups are likely to form, the probability of a diaspora of experienced terrorists from that country to other countries increases, and an ultimate resolution becomes more difficult. Over the long haul, most extremist initiatives have resulted in “solutions” worse than the original problem. As horrible as the Tsarist reign became, for example, the Bolshevism that replaced it under Lenin and eventually Stalin was worse.