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These were some great discussions this first week. Let me start off sharing some information with you all on the topic of terrorism and terrorists. A basic definition of terrorism is the use of violence (or threat of) in order to achieve a political goal. If there is no political objective, then it is some other kind of violence or just crazed mass murder. For mentally unstable people killing innocent people ‘en masse’ think of Virginia Tech college shooting in 2007, by or the Sandy Hook Elementary school shooting in Connecticut in 2012, or the Colorado theater shooting (also 2012) as well as the recent Las Vegas shooting – none of these events were terrorism. For more on that see this Miere (2017) article Why Isn’t Las Vegas Shooting Being Called ‘Terrorism’.
The objective of terrorist acts is generally to ‘terrorize’ a population and force a government or other organization to surrender or adopt a policy the terrorist group advocates. In other words, terrorism at its core is just a tactic, and it is specifically a tactic of the weak (this also explains why terrorism is used by groups that are not terrorists [only] such as cartels in Mexico and insurgents everywhere). I don’t know of any examples of a powerful country or a dominant non-state group that employs terrorism against their opponents to reach a political objective (I’m not talking about nations who employ force and fear against their own citizens — that is another issue).
Does this mean only ‘weak’ or impoverished people join terrorist groups? Far from it…take a look at the 9/11 hijackers who were middle class and many college educated. An important point about terrorists is that hardly any of them are from the bottom end the spectrum of our society (see next paragraph on poverty not being the issue). In fact, this article talks about the lack of a profile for Americans attempting to join ISIS stating “overall, the group is broad, covering people who were raised Muslim and those who converted, married and single people, male and female, rich and poor, U.S.-born citizens and recent immigrants” (Hong, 2015, para 2).
I often notice students starting out this course thinking terrorists are “bred” having early exposure to extremists or ultra-religious views, but this is not accurate since many terrorists are new converts to radical beliefs who then become terrorists. Others think terrorism is spawned from poverty, but this is as incorrect as socio-economic status is not a key aspect of those who join (again, the 9/11 hijackers and many other studies prove terrorists to generally be middle class with some college education). You can read more on the economic issues if you want in Poverty Isn’t the Root Cause of Jihadi Terrorism or Professor John Horgan in Terrorist Psychology: Separating Facts from Fictions.
On the topic of individual motivations for terrorists, there is a good section in a book on the al Qaeda network (actually written by our former Dean here in the School of Security and Global Studies) which breaks these individual factors into four categories: personal, social, economic and political.
“Under each of these categories our real world indicators are listed. At this level, out most basic reasons for why people are primed to join the al Qaeda network are provided.
-Personal motivations: absent fathers, the alleviation of boredom, camaraderie, the desire to fit in, disputes with parents, desire for fame/ status/recognition. family influence, lack of purpose, marital problems, parental divorce. peer pressure, poor academic performance, poor job performance. desire for adventure, a traumatic event, vengeance.
-Social motivations: alcohol abuse, cultural alienation, drug abuse or addiction. societal alienation, wanting a cause.
-Economic motivations: criminal activity, financial problems, lack of motivation to seek employment or work, underemployment, unemployment.
-Political motivations: acts by an imperial country, cultural imperialism, an imperial country’s support for a defined enemy, objectionable government policies, oppression of the identity group” (Mastors & Deffenbaugh, 2007, p. 71).
It would be a good idea to keep the above information handy since you may find it useful on your midterm paper. If you take a look at the Chattanooga TN terrorist, Muhammad Youssef Abdlazeez, who opened fire on two military installations in July 2015 killing 5, I think you can actually find aspects of all four categories that motivated him. The above authors went on to discuss religious justification for al Qaeda in their book, which I will mention in my wrap up next week.
As I said, next week will be discussing religion and terrorism, but to kick that conversation off, I had a student who was raised Muslim in a previous section of this class and he offered some very interesting input to that topic, so I pasted it in here.
“I was raised a Muslim, but I have come to not believe or have faith in any organized religions. I see your point in referencing Koran. Many terrorists (I mean the lower ranking members) have no real clue what Koran really says. And I agree it’s open for interpretation. But most of them – and I reference the ones whose native language is not Arabic – are vulnerable to influence by the so called religious leaders of such terrorist groups because they literally believe in what they are told. Arabic context of the Koran could be interpreted in many ways to fit a particular event or ideology depending on what the leader or cleric intends to have the followers do. They usually attract the ones who are socially, economically, politically, or otherwise ignored or under-served.”
His point is very valid and important to note, that religion is often used and cited by many terrorists as their cause, but it is really being completely twisted just to suit the manipulative purposes of these terrorist recruiters and leaders. An April 2016 analysis of captured documents from ISIS in-fact found that 70% of those who went to Syria and Iraq to fight for the group only had the most basic understanding of their own religion (which is why they are susceptible to extremists ‘cherry picking’ verses from the Koran that suit their violent agenda). Again, we will get into this more next week. I will also be including information on this topic in my follow ups and wrap ups from an expert on this topic who will explain this religious component in more depth (from someone who is Islamic, was radicalized, and then learned how extremists twisted his religion to their purposes and he then become a counter-radical).
As I mentioned in my follow up question to you all this week, many of the readings in this course are based on classic terrorism theories (both before and post 9/11) and discuss both individual motivations and terrorist organizational dynamics, and that these readings do not reflect is the very recent development of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (al Sham) or ISIS and how this group and the motivations of the individuals within it may differ — from al Qaeda (AQ) for example. There are some really good articles out explaining ISIS and I will share them with you as we go through the course (such as the Congressional testimony by Dan Byman below on how AQ and ISIS differ). However, I highly recommend that if you are really want to know how ISIS thinks, then a must read is the article by Graeme Wood in The Atlantic titled What ISIS Really Wants. If you want a shorter more popular news type article then you can take a look at this brief post by terrorism expert/author Peter Bergen titled Why does ISIS keep making enemies?
The good news is that Americans joining ISIS seems to be going down, as former FBI Director James Comey said in May 2016 that fewer Americans are traveling to fight with ISIS and the power of the extremist group’s attraction has significantly diminished “The FBI encountered ‘6, 8, 10’ Americans a month in 2014 and the first half of 2015 who traveled to the Middle East or tried to go there to join the Islamic State, but that number has averaged about one a month since last summer in a sustaining downward trend” (Tucker, 2016, paras 1-2). I think this will continue to decrease as ISIS get squeezed out of the battlefields in Syria and Iraq. However, that likely increases our chances for more homegrown terrorists. On that note I designed and started teaching a new course here at AMU titled HLSS323 Homegrown Violent Extremists which is a very different course that this one with more advanced lessons/videos and case studies.
Related to all this, I describe the different phases of the terrorist threat to the U.S. in this article I wrote in InHomelandSecurity.com for AMU titled The Ever Evolving Terrorism Threat to the US (25 April 2016), so please feel free to comment on the blog at this link. I will also talk a lot in about AQ and ISIS in week 6, as well as bring up this article then. I will have much more to share with you on ISIS in my follow up questions and wrap ups in the coming weeks.
Finally, there are many times in this class when I will ask you to look at supplemental readings (particularly in my follow up questions), and many of them may be controversial or even contradict parts of the lesson. This is intentional and I have a number of reasons for doing this. One of those reasons is for you to evaluate multiple perspectives and let you conduct your own analysis and synthesis to arrive at your own conclusions. As stated above there is no single profile of a terrorist and there are also no textbook answers in this course. Many of you will liked some of the articles and some of you will not, and that is perfectly fine – it is what I expected and hoped for. You have academic freedom in this class and I only ask that you keep your opinions confined to the topic of the week, that we stay out of politics in here, and you make sure your statements are not personally offensive to anyone. Your main forum post need to synthesize the lesson and readings, but feel free to express yourself in your replies to me and your classmates.
Also, I don’t expect you all to read each additional resource I provide a link to in my wrap up, but I do want to do my best to let those of you who want to dig deeper do so. Plus, this is my way of keeping you all current with the latest articles and studies that have come out. I recognize that you probably don’t have the time to read everything I provide, but I do have many students who save these wrap ups and the links for future reference (copying these wrap up an the links into word documents).
I enjoyed our discussions this week and I am looking forward to many more on this topic.
Thanks, Dr G.
Bergen, P. (18 Feb 2015). Why does ISIS keep making enemies? CNN. Retrieved from http://www.cnn.com/2015/02/16/opinion/bergen-isis-enemies/
Byman, D. L. (2015, April 29). Comparing Al Qaeda and ISIS: Different goals, different targets. Testimony before the Subcommittee on Counterterrorism and Intelligence of the House Committee on Homeland Security [Brookings].Retrieved from http://www.brookings.edu/research/testimony/2015/04/29-terrorism-in-africa-byman
Hong, N. (2015, March 5). U.S. Authorities Struggle to Find a Pattern Among Aspiring Islamic State Members. The Wall Street Journal.Retrieved from http://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-authorities-struggle-to-find-a-pattern-among-aspiring-isis-members-1425586022 If that link does not work for you, it is available from the library: Is the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) available in the library? http://apus.libanswers.com/faq/2168
Mastors, E., & Deffenbaugh, A. (2007). The lesser jihad: Recruits and the Al-Qaida network. Lanham, Md: Rowman & Littlefield.
Tucker, E. (2016, May 11). FBI head: Islamic State brand losing power in US. The Associated Press. Retrieved from Retrieved from http://bigstory.ap.org/article/dc0e2173ebff411abef0ca53c226bf05/fbi-head-islamic-state-brand-losing-attraction-us