Understanding Terrorism and Political Violence

The Life Cycle of Birth, Growth, Transformation, and Demise

Dipak K. Gupta

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000190786
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Terrorism
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book provides a multidisciplinary approach to understanding human behavior and uses it to analyze the forces shaping the life cycle of violent political movements. This new edition has been revised and updated, with three new chapters added.

The second edition takes us deeper inside human motivations, which cause otherwise rational people to join dissident groups, willing to kill and be killed. In doing so, the book draws upon research on brain science, evolutionary biology, and social psychology to help explain pathological collective behavior. From the motivations of individual participants, the book turns to the evolution of terrorist groups by venturing into theories of organizational development. Together, these theories explain the life cycle – the birth, growth, transformation from an ideological group to a criminal syndicate, and demise – of a dissident organization. These hypotheses are supported with detailed case studies of three disparate terrorist movements: the nationalists of the IRA, the communist Naxalites of India, and the religious fundamentalists of al-Qaeda and ISIS.

The book's theory leads to an explanation of the current global trend of rising tribalism and authoritarianism. The author warns that this latest wave of xenophobia and authoritarianism is likely to be exacerbated by climate change and the consequent rise in sea levels, which could displace millions from the areas least able to mitigate the effects of global warming to the countries that can.

This book will be essential reading for students of terrorism studies, and of great interest to students of social psychology, political science, and sociology.

1

Introduction

Scrambling for answers

“So, what do you think of those terrorists?” the checkout lady at the neighborhood supermarket asked me in a hushed tone. She cracked a wan smile recognizing me from last night’s local telecast, discussing issues of terrorism. Looking at the long line of customers behind me, I simply stared back in hopeless resignation. Sensing my hesitancy, she quickly came to my aid, “let me tell you what I think,” pausing to emphasize her point, she added, “They are a bunch of crazies.”

In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, she wasn’t alone. Panicked and bewildered, everyone looked for answers. Searching for the motivations of a handful of men from distant lands, who would give up their lives to kill those whom they had not even met, there were two predictable lines of explanation. Many, including those at the highest rung of policymaking, would readily agree with the lady at the supermarket in questioning their sanity. John Warner, the then chairman of the Armed Services Committee labeled them “irrational.” At a joint session of the Congress, President George W. Bush proclaimed (with a loud bi-partisan applause) their evident lunacy: “They hate our freedoms: our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other.”¹ Why should we not call them insane, criminal miscreants, or religious fanatics? Aren’t they engaged in mass killing in the name of god? The problem of denying rationality to those who would take up arms as a means of political dissidence is that it opens up to only one solution: incarceration or physical obliteration.

President George W. Bush chose the obvious path. By declaring a “Global War on Terror,” he warned that in our fight against evil each country had to decide whether it wanted to be “with us” or “against us.” He promised a quick military action in Afghanistan to kill bin Laden, the mastermind of the attacks, and destroy the Taliban regime that protected him. He assured us he would root out terrorism from the face of the earth.

Two years later, after an intense bombing of Baghdad, dubbed “shock and awe,” the US-led coalition troops invaded Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Just as President Wilson plunged the nation into World War I, claiming it was to be the war that would end all the wars, Bush promised an end of terrorism by waging a full-frontal attack on al-Qaeda and its putative benefactors. The show of raw military might was designed to cower into submission those who might be tempted to test our resolve. With a near 90 percent approval rating in many polls, Americans stood firmly behind the president in his use of force as the best answer to the imminent threat emanating from unreasonable religious zealotry in Afghanistan, and then with a somewhat lower margin, in Iraq.

After the quick fall of Baghdad, on May 1, 2003, President George W. Bush, dressed in a flight suit, proudly stood on the deck of the aircraft carrier, USS Abraham Lincoln, against the backdrop of a large banner proclaiming “Mission Accomplished” and spoke to a weary nation. The dramatic moment became indelibly imprinted in our collective consciousness. In a 2017 opinion poll by the Pew Research Center revealed the astonishing fact that the US response to the 9/11 attacks remains at the top of events that “made [the Americans] most proud in their lifetime” (19 percent), far surpassing the moon landing (6 percent).²

The problem with calling the terrorists insane is that there is no evidence that they suffer from any kind of diagnosable psychosomatic disorder. A large number of noted psychologists and psychiatrists interviewed those who were associated with radical groups or jailed terrorists who carried out violent attacks against innocent civilians. They were unanimous in their findings: the vast majority of them did not suffer from mental illness.³ Astonishingly, some of them found that on average, the mental health of those who took part in terrorism was better than that in the general public.

The “loser” hypothesis

So, if it were not insanity, then what would offer explanation their self-destructive behavior? While explaining the motivations of the hijackers, some politicians and opinion makers started painting them as “losers.” They characterized the attackers as poor, without much hope for future. One could not blame them. The idea of connecting economic misery with terrorism has a deep root going back millennia.

Over 2,000 years ago, Aristotle had famously diagnosed, “Poverty is the mother of revolution and crime.” Following the same line of reasoning, the liberals conjectured that it was poverty and lack of economic opportunities that led these men to undertake such desperate acts of self-immolation. The former president of South Korea, Kim Dae-Jung in his acceptance speech of the Nobel Peace prize asserted: “At the bottom of terrorism is poverty.”⁴ Other luminaries such as Laura Tyson, an economic advisor under the Clinton administration and dean of the Haas School of Management at the University of California Berkeley called for a new Marshall Plan for the impoverished countries as a part of a long-term assault on terrorism and political violence.⁵

Yet the problem with associating poverty with terrorism is that data demonstrated a clear lack of correlation between the two. The most famous terrorist of our time, Osama bin Laden, was the scion of one of richest men in the world. The father of Farouk Abdulmutallab, the so-called “underwear bomber,” was known as the wealthiest man in Africa. In fact, none of the 9/11 attackers were poor, and nor did they come from the poorest of the nations.

Islam is the religion of intolerance

If I were to ask a group of Americans to visualize a terrorist, it would safe to assume that it would evoke the image of a fanatical Muslim young man bent on indiscriminate killing of innocent people. This misconception seeps deep into our cultural ethos and, after some time, we take these as evident facts. As a result, when President Trump, without citing a single example, repeatedly asserted that Islamic terrorists were pouring into the US across its southern border with Mexico, it resonated with a large number of his constituents.⁶ It came as no surprise when in one of his first presidential acts, on January 27, 2017, Trump issued an Executive Order temporarily banning foreign nationals of seven predominantly Muslim countries from visiting the country. He also suspended entry to the country of all Syrian refugees indefinitely and prohibited any other refugees from coming into the country for 120 days. Trump played into the hands of popular prejudice, completely ignoring the fact that since 9/11, the White Nationalist attacks have killed more people than those inspired by Jihadism in the US.⁷

If you think about it, imagining a terrorist, would you ever picture a Buddhist monk in a saffron robe carrying an assault rifle? One who, without embracing Ahimsa (non-violence) and contemplating nirvana, would engage in indiscriminate killing of unarmed civilians? Yet, if you ask a member of the minority populations in Sri Lanka, Burma, and Thailand, they might think of such a person.⁸

Hence, terrorism does not automatically imply Islam. The Sinhalese in Sri Lanka, who are primarily Buddhists, view the Hindu Tamils as terrorists. The Hindus in India, during 1980s and 1990s, viewed the Sikhs as terrorists. The Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland call each other terrorists. None of these people are Muslims. However, even within the Islamic nations, such as Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Bahrain, and Pakistan – in countries that are wracked by sectarian violence – the Shi’a and the Sunni would call each other with the same sobriquet.

In a world full of unknown and unknowable forces, humans have always sought their meaning in the works of the supernatural. When they could not control the forces of nature, they prayed to an omnipotent deity. Over time, these beliefs took the form of organized religions. Religion not only provided a deeper meaning of life to the believers, it served as the primary ingredient for people to work together for a common good, the very foundation of our civilization.

However, on the flip side, religion divided “us” from “them,” “good” from “evil,” the “pious” from the “profane.”⁹ This duality has been the most potent instrument for enemy formation from the earliest days of humanity. Therefore, one can blame religion for many of our conflicts, however, to point out Islam, in particular, does not stand to reason.¹⁰ While enmity between Christianity and Islam, the two great religions occupying contiguous geographic spaces, goes back over a millennium, in the immediate post-World War II period, when the cleavage was along the ideological divide, Islam and the Islamists were seen as the true and trusted friends of the West; the resolute defenders against the godless communists. It is the secular nationalists, such as Gamal Abdel Nasser, Hafez al Assad, and Saddam Hussain, who were our enemies. This began to change after the Iranian Revolution, which put the United States in the direct crosshair of the mullahs. In other words, the current conflict between Islam and the West has less to do with religion and more to do with politics.

The policy puzzle

It has been nearly two decades after America stormed the gates of Kabul in search of those who were behind the 9/11 attacks. Despite the early optimism for a quick and decisive victory against terrorism, the outcomes of our all-out efforts to eradicate it have produced, at best, a mixed bag. At the time of writing this book, the US is still mired in the war in Afghanistan, the longest in its history. After losing thousands of lives and wasting trillions of dollars, we are desperately seeking a graceful way out, being fully cognizant that such a rapid retreat could bring the Taliban back to power. Iraq, after being liberated from the oppressive regime of Saddam Hussein, is no model for political stability or democratic values. In fact, the destruction of Saddam’s secular regime burst open the long-simmering internecine conflict between the Sunni and the Shi’a in Iraq, which quickly turned into a full-blown civil war, spilling over many Islamic countries, notably, Syria and Yemen.

The threats of terrorism on Western soil did not disappear with the deaths of the top leaders of the most offending groups. Military capitulation of al-Qaeda central, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), and the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) did not mean an eradication of their ideology. Currently, groups – willing to wage religious wars inspired by the call to Jihad against the infidels – are flourishing in a large number of countries in Africa and Asia. This combative ideology saw the formation of many small affiliated organizations in many parts of the world. Some of these radical groups have been able to recruit young men and women not only from their own countries, but also from Europe, Australia, and North America. The new converts have carried out horrific attacks against civilians in London, Paris, Madrid, New York, Mumbai, Nairobi, etc.

The confusion about the causes of terrorism is reflected in counter-terrorism policies. During the past 20 years the various US administrations have tried every option to counter the spread of Islamic militancy. Tomahawk missiles, fired from afar, have rained down on terrorist campgrounds in Afghanistan, Syria, and in other countries. The US and its allies forced regime changes in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya. Terrorist groups have suffered decapitation through killing of their leaders. A military operation killed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in 2006. In a brazen attack on May 2, 2011, a US SEAL team killed Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan and buried his body in the ocean. An operation by the Special Forces killed Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the head of the ISIS in 2019.

We have waged proxy war in Yemen against the Houthi rebels by arming Saudi Arabia and other Sunni Gulf countries. Armed drones have patrolled vast areas of the conflict ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Endorsements
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Preface to the first edition
• Acknowledgments
• Preface to the second edition
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Into the mind of an un-rational being
• 3. Path toward pathology: an individual’s perspective
• 4. Terrorism and political violence: an organizational perspective
• 5. The dynamics of dissent
• 6. Faith, nationalism, and class warfare: birth of a movement
• 7. Growth and longevity
• 8. A marriage made in hell? Terrorism and organized crime
• 9. Demise of dissent
• 10. Lands of the fearful: tribalism and authoritarianism, the fifth wave
• 11. Terrorism’s trap
• Bibliography
• Index