Transnational Terrorism

Steven M. Chermak, Joshua D. Freilich, Joshua D. Freilich

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781351877817
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Law
• Subtopic: Criminal Law
• Index: Law

The dramatic terrorist attacks of 9/11 highlighted significant gaps in research on the topic as governments, community groups, social service agencies and law enforcement agencies were forced to respond without any evidence-based guidance on best practices for tactics, strategies, and policy development. The essays selected for this volume demonstrate that transnational terrorism is now a thriving area of study and display the breadth and depth of scholarship that has recently been published. The research draws attention to global patterns of transnational terrorism; highlights various structural and cultural explanations; provides an overview of some of the ways that terrorism impacts society; and discusses strategies used to effectively respond to transnational terrorism. This volume, which is of interest to academics, policymakers and practitioners, provides a repository of some of the best contemporary research in this field.

Part I

Patterns of Transnational Terrorism

[1]

The Four Waves of Modern Terrorism

David C. Rapoport

September 11, 2001, is the most destructive day in the long, bloody history of terrorism. The casualties, economic damage, and outrage were unprecedented. It could turn out to be the most important day too, because 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.”¹

However unprecedented September 11 was, President Bush’s declaration was not altogether unique. Exactly 100 years ago, when an anarchist assassinated 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 examining features of the history of rebel (nonstate) terror. That history shows how deeply implanted terrorism is in our culture, provides parallels worth pondering, and offers a perspective for understanding the uniqueness of September 11 and its aftermath.³ To this end, in this chapter I examine the course of modern terror from its initial appearance 125 years ago; I emphasize continuities and change, particularly with respect to international ingredients.⁴

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 completed. 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 example, 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 twentieth 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 persistence of the wave experience indicates that terror is deeply rooted in modern culture.

The wave concept—an unfamiliar notion—is worth more attention. Academics 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 unduly 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 international character; similar activities occur in several countries, driven by a common predominant energy that shapes the participating groups’ characteristics and mutual relationships. As their names—“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 explains why the wave produced the first terrorist successes. In other waves, that ambivalence is absent or very weak, and no nationalist struggle has succeeded.

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 retained 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 generations are critical factors in explaining the disappearance.

Occasionally an organization survives its original wave. The Irish Republican 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 1967. 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 inspiring 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 revolutionary 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 generation 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 critical 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 sympathies 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 then became significant in the politics of both their “new” and “old” countries. Subsequent innovations continued to shrink time and space.

A second factor contributing to the emergence of the first wave was doctrine 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 perpetuated 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 justifications 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 of Nechaev’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 efficient by learning from the experiences of friends and enemies alike.¹⁵ The major difference 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 participate 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 properties 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 over...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Series Preface
• Introduction
• PART I PATTERNS OF TRANSNATIONAL TERRORISM
• PART II CAUSES OF TRANSNATIONAL TERRORISM
• PART III IMPACTS OF TRANSNATIONAL TERRORISM
• PART IV RESPONDING TO TRANSNATIONAL TERRORISM
• Name Index