When Terrorism Goes to Sea: Terrorist Organizations and the Move to Maritime Targets

Terrorist groups are often relatively conservative in their choice of strategy, tactics, and targets, and it is worth asking what characteristics are associated with unconventional behavior. In this article we explore the question of why terrorist organizations move to one type of unconventional attack that has been a focus of concern of policymakers in recent years, namely attacks on maritime targets. Through an investigation of the organizational capacity and ideology of terrorist groups that committed maritime attacks between 1998 and 2005, we argue that this kind of violent behavior is driven by capability. Certain organizational characteristics of terrorist groups—territorial control, involvement in the drug trade, organizational size, and connections with other groups—provide groups with the capabilities that make maritime attacks both realistic and desirable. Terrorist groups' ideology—what they believe, and what their goals are—does not have the same impact, with the possible exception of groups affiliated with al-Qaeda. Our findings have implications for future research.     

Six rather unexplored assumptions about al-Qaeda

For all of the prodigious output on the subject of al-Qaeda from scholars and policy-makers alike recently, a number of consequential assumptions about the group remain startlingly unexplored. This paper examines six such assumptions, revealing each one's foundational role in assertions and debates about al-Qaeda (and, in most cases, about terrorism more broadly) despite the relatively unexplored status of each. These six assumptions relate to: (1) the link between the causes or roots of al-Qaeda's violence and deep-rooted anti-Americanism; (2) the relationship between fighting ‘Al-Qaeda in Iraq’ and fighting al-Qaeda globally; (3) the effect of eliminating individual terrorists; (4) the strategic versus social sources of terrorists' motivation; (5) the demonstrative effects of increased homeland security; and (6) the role of the internet in actual terrorist activity.     

Diplomacy of Estrangement: The Dealings of the United States with Pakistan before 9/11

Diplomatic correspondence between Washington and the American Embassy in Islamabad published by the National Security Archive shows that during the last 35 years of the twentieth century American diplomacy toward Pakistan faced a mutually de-escalating relationship. Pakistan wanted American economic and military assistance as well as support in its conflicts with India. The United States was ready to aid Pakistan, but only so far as Islamabad respected American demands. These focused on containing Soviet influence in the region and, more recently, fighting al-Qaeda and the Taliban. The United States also asked Pakistan to refrain from manufacturing nuclear weapons. To enforce this policy, successive American administrations showered Pakistan with sanctions. These sanctions were lifted again and again, because they undercut American diplomatic influence with the Pakistani government. Washington did not intend to support Pakistan in its conflicts with India. Pakistan let down the United States by not using its leverage over the Taliban to capture Osama Bin Laden. Mistrust resulting from this roller coaster relationship should have warned American diplomats not to take Pakistan's support in the war in Afghanistan against al-Qaeda and the Taliban for granted.     

War on terror. Islam and the imperative of democracy

The war on terror, which began with the horrific terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre (WTC) and the Pentagon in the United States (US) on 11 September 2001, has now entered its second year. Much has been happening since. The Taliban regime in Afghanistan, a regime believed to have harboured Al-Qaeda, is now gone. The terrorist organisation Al-Qaeda led by Osama bin Laden is believed to have been disrupted and weakened. The despotic regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq, believed by the US as a regime that supported terrorism and posed a threat to international security, has been toppled, and the country is now under American occupation. Despite such significant developments, however, a clear fact remains: terrorism has not been defeated, and in fact, is increasingly more dangerous and more active in perpetrating horrendous terrorist acts against humanity. As long as the world remains threatened by terrorism and terrorists, it seems that the war on terror will still go on indefinitely.¶This paper provides a reflection on the world since the war against terror initiated by the US, the predicaments of Southeast Asian Muslims in such a war on terror, and the imperative of democracy as an important element in a long-term strategy to counter terrorism.     

Preventive War and Permissive Normative Order

Following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, U.S. president George W. Bush articulated a new national security strategy based on striking terrorist organizations and the states that harbor them before they could endanger the United States. Though expressed in the language of preemption, the Bush strategy embodied a far more problematic doctrine of preventive warfare. Whereas the grounds for preemption lie in evidence of a credible, imminent threat, the basis for prevention rests on the suspicion of an incipient, contingent threat. We argue that an American national security strategy that embraces preventive war will set an inauspicious precedent, undermining normative restraints on when and how states may use military force.     

Effective but inefficient: understanding the costs of counterterrorism

This article analyses state counterterrorism (CT) policy on two dimensions: its effectiveness and its efficiency. It points out that CT is likely to be effective but inefficient. The material weakness of terrorist groups in relation to their state opponents, and different organisational dilemmas, increases the probability of an effective CT policy. However, states frequently overreact to terrorist attacks, which are valued in normative instead of strategic terms. Hence, they spend more resources on CT than justified by the threat posed by the terrorist groups. The article concludes that CT should be framed as an allocation of scarce resources that could be used in other important contexts.     

Al-Qaeda’s Propaganda Decoded: A Psycholinguistic System for Detecting Variations in Terrorism Ideology

We describe a novel hybrid method of content analysis that combines the speed of computerized text analysis with the contextual sensitivity of human raters, and apply it to speeches that were given by major leaders of Al-Qaeda (AQ)—both in its “core” Afghanistan/Pakistan region and its affiliate group in Iraq. The proposed “Ideology Extraction using Linguistic Extremization” (IELEX) categorization method has acceptable levels of inter-rater and test-retest reliabilities. The method uncovered subtle (and potentially non-conscious) differences in the emphases that Usama Bin Laden and Ayman Al-Zawahiri put on the various components of their ideological justification for terrorism. We show how these differences were independently recognized as the crux of the rift in AQ, based on documents that were confiscated in Abbottabad following Usama Bin Laden’s assassination. Additionally, several of the ideological discrepancies that we detected between AQ “core” and its Iraqi affiliate correspond to schisms that presumably led to the splintering of AQ Iraq and the rise of ISIS. We discuss IELEX’s capability to quantify a variety of grievance-based terrorist ideologies, along with its use towards more focused and efficient counter-terrorism and counter-messaging policies.     

The Evolution of Jihadist Terrorism in Morocco

Over the last few years, Moroccans have been disproportionately involved in jihadist terrorism. Morocco has been increasingly identified as one of the largest producers of terrorists and insurgents in Afghanistan, Iraq, and throughout Europe. This article examines the factors behind the emergence of jihadist terrorism in Morocco, and how this terrorist threat has gone beyond this country's borders. Three factors have contributed to this development: the influence of global jihad on potential Moroccan jihadists; the growing Islamization of the country; and deteriorating socioeconomic conditions. In analyzing these variables, special attention will be paid to the Casablanca terrorist attacks on May 16, 2003, marking the debut of suicide terrorism in Morocco. The article will also examine the principal counterterrorist initiatives Morocco has implemented in response to this threat.     

A Review of: “Audrey Kurth Cronin and James M. Ludes, (eds.). Attacking Terrorism: Elements of a Grand Strategy.”

Because of its dynamic nature, those confronting the al-Qaeda threat must follow its evolution very closely. As demonstrated here, this task is particularly challenging when counterterrorism is carried out under the aegis of international organizations. This article explores the threat identification function of the al-Qaeda Sanctions Committee (also known as the 1267 Committee) charged with supervising the UN sanctions regime against al-Qaeda and its associates. Examination of the role of threat identification in the committee's work, and of the content of the threat analysis presented in the periodic reports of its subsidiary monitoring team, suggests the marginality of strategic threat assessment and underscores the constraints created by bureaucratic and political factors. The article also demonstrates the failure of the Committee and the monitoring team to thoroughly engage in central questions regarding al-Qaeda's nature, objectives, and organizational strategy.     

Do Drone Strikes Degrade Al Qaeda? Evidence From Propaganda Output

The United States has used unmanned, aerial vehicles—drones—to launch attacks on militants associated with Al Qaeda and other violent groups based in Pakistan. The goal is to degrade the target's capacity to undertake political and violent action. We assess the effectiveness of drone strikes in achieving this goal, measuring degradation as the capacity of Al Qaeda to generate and disseminate propaganda. Propaganda is a key output of many terrorist organizations and a long-standing priority for Al Qaeda. Unlike other potential measures of terrorist group activity and capacity, propaganda output can be observed and measured. If drone strikes have degraded Al Qaeda, their occurrence should be correlated with a reduction in the organization's propaganda output. The analysis presented here finds little evidence that this is the case. Drone strikes have not impaired Al Qaeda's ability to generate propaganda.     

Deadlier in the U.S.? On Lone Wolves,Terrorist Groups,and Attack Lethality

Scholars, politicians, and pundits increasingly suggest lone wolf terrorists are substantial threats, but we know little about how dangerous these actors are—especially relative to other terrorist actors. How deadly are lone actor terrorists? A growing body of empirical research focuses on terrorist organizations, but similar work on lone actors is sparse. Furthermore, attempts to explicitly compare these or other types of terrorist actors are almost non-existent. This article considers theoretical arguments for why lone wolves ought to be especially lethal. However, it presents an argument for why terrorist groups should generally be more lethal. This argument is conditional upon the environment in which actors operate. Lone wolves should only be more deadly in states with especially strong counterterrorism capacity. The article uses data on terrorist attacks in fifteen developed countries, 1970–2010, to compare the lethality of terrorist acts. Around the world, attacks by organizations tend to be far more lethal than attacks by other actors. In the United States, however, lone wolves are generally the more lethal terrorist actors. This is argued to be because the robust counterterrorism capacity makes organized terrorism more difficult to accomplish.     

Extremist Groups in Egypt

On 11 September, terrorism became a much greater reality for Americans and much of the rest of the world. Indeed, that date marks the beginning of a new era for the global community, an era that may be called the Violent New World Order, or the Age of Fear. Since the events of 11 September, the United States has been working to build a coalition against terrorism consisting of countries throughout the world. More recently, the United States launched attacks on positions inside Afghanistan in order to wipe out Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda organization and assisted the Northern Alliance in the overthrow of the Taliban government that had protected al-Qaeda. Given the military prowess of the United States and its allies, these acts have largely achieved their short-term goals. Over the long term, however, the United States, its allies, those countries that have been breeding grounds for terrorist organizations and those whose citizens sympathize with terrorist organizations need to look deeper at the causes of terrorism. On the surface, the religious zeal associated with the most prolific terrorist organizations appears to be something with which the United States and its allies cannot negotiate. The frustrations that drive people to acts of terror, however, are often rooted in adverse socio-economic conditions as well as cultural and political tensions that need to be addressed by underdeveloped nations and the larger international community. Since the deserts of Egypt gave birth to the rise of the first Islamic militant organizations, the Egyptian experience provides a perspective.     

The Strength of Weak Terrorist Ties

The current age of technology, mass communication, and globalization makes networks analysis an especially useful tool for understanding cell-based terrorism. Some concepts from traditional networks analysis may be especially relevant. The Strength of Weak Ties hypothesis (SWT) is particularly promising and will be used here to demonstrate the usability of traditional networks analysis for studying modern terrorism. The findings suggest that the strength of weak terrorist ties may improve Al Qaeda's operational capabilities despite the group's decentralization following the U.S.-led military campaign in Afghanistan beginning in 2001.     

Obama and Afghanistan: a constructivist approach to shifting policy narrative and practices

Abstract

This article adopts a constructivist approach to explain how and why the Obama administration shifted its policy narrative and practices towards Afghanistan from 2011 onwards. It recognizes that the ‘Global War on Terror’ narrative helped pave the way for a set of institutionalized militarized practices and collectively held beliefs that have structured the post-9/11 world. At the same time, the article argues that the Obama administration’s ‘selling’ of its Afghan policy provided the space for an evolving approach. This policy narrative involved the ‘existential threat’ of transnational militant actors operating out of an Afghanistan–Pakistan ungoverned space being downgraded to a ‘containable’ one. Three key factors prompted this change: the administration’s discursive decoupling of the Taliban and al-Qaeda; the changing perception that the threat posed by ‘al-Qaeda and its affiliates’ was a decentralized one; and the United States’ changed conception of Afghanistan as a ‘safe haven’ for transnational terrorists.     

India's response to terrorism after 13 December 2001

The nature of the December 13, 2001 terrorist attack on the Indian Parliament brought about an Indian reaction significantly different from the restraint exercised in the past, influenced by the ongoing global “war on terror”. India's response to terrorism became dynamic and multi-faceted, with alternating emphasis on a variety of measures, including diplomatic, military, political, administrative, and legal. Considerable emphasis was also placed on international cooperation, especially with the U.S. With continuing tensions in Indo-Pakistani relations, and the regrouping of the Taliban in Afghanistan, the risk of a high-value Al Qaeda-linked attack in New Delhi remains high. This could well escalate into another military confrontation between India and Pakistan, with inherent uncertainties.     

Does US presidential rhetoric affect asymmetric political violence?

Although political violence has proven to be difficult for governments to manage, predict or control, previous research on the impact of relevant federal government actions and US presidential rhetoric on terrorist attacks and hate crimes demonstrates that what the US government does matters in ways that are both expected and unexpected. In the US, government counterterrorism strategies changed rapidly in response to the September 11th, 2001 attacks on the US. The Bush administration formed a new executive department, centralised intelligence agencies, invested in tangible counterterrorism measures, implemented two invasions and occupations, and spoke publicly about terrorism on a near-daily basis. Yet much has changed since that research, as the US has since elected a president whose presidential campaign relied upon espousing antagonism towards Muslims, immigrants and other minority groups. Further, President Trump’s administration has repeatedly demonstrated its commitment to isolate and suppress Muslims as a strategy to combat Islamist extremism in contrast to previous administrations’ more cooperative approaches. This article considers what existing research tells us about whether and how the different actions of the Trump administration may fuel both Jihadi and far-right extremism.     

Bargaining,Fear, and Denial: Explaining Violence Against Civilians in Iraq 2004–2007

From mid-2004 to mid-2007, the Iraq war was distinguished from other comparable insurgencies by its high rates of civilian victimization. This has been attributed to a number of different factors, including the role of Islamic fundamentalist groups such as al-Qaeda in Iraq as well as the regional ambitions of Iran and Syria. Using an unpublished dataset of violence in Iraq from 2003–2008 from the Iraq Body Count (IBC), this paper argues that the violence against civilians is best understood as a combination of three interacting logics—bargaining, fear, and denial—that are predominantly local in character. First, armed Iraqi actors bargained through violence both across and within sectarian communities, and were driven by mechanisms of outbidding and outflanking to escalate their attacks on civilians. Second, the pervasive fear about the future of the Iraqi state encouraged the “localization” of violence in Iraq, particularly in the emergence of a security dilemma and the proliferation of criminal and tribal actors. Finally, Islamist groups such as al-Qaeda in Iraq played the spoiler in Iraq, using mass-casualty attacks to generate fear among the population and deny U.S. efforts to build a functioning state. Only by addressing each of these three logics as part of its counter-insurgency strategy can the U.S. put an end to violence against civilians and develop the Iraqi state into a credible competitor for the loyalties of the population.     

Security Versus Liberty in the Context of Counterterrorism: An Experimental Approach

A critical question in counterterrorism studies concerns the extent to which governments adequately balance the continual provision of individual rights and freedoms with the appropriate level of national security when faced with a terrorist attack. We experimentally assess this tradeoff utilizing a 2 × 2 × 2 between-groups factorial design, manipulating (a) the extent of terror-related threats, (b) the level of invasiveness of subsequent counterterrorism policies, as well as (c) the terror context: transnational and domestic. The results provide evidence that the public is more willing to accept greater reductions in civil liberties under a greater threat of terrorism only when the perceived effectiveness of those policies to prevent future acts of terrorism is high. Furthermore, we find these results to be specific to the context of a transnational terror threat. This suggests that the public will be unwilling to accept reductions in civil liberties when the source of the attack is domestic, regardless of the level of threat or how effective subsequent policies may be in preventing future attacks.     

How did Europe's Global Jihadis Obtain Training for their Militant Causes?

This article examines, compares, and contrasts the ways in which “global jihadis” have trained for terrorism in Western Europe. Before the invasion of Afghanistan, the terrorists received training in Al Qaeda paramilitary camps. After invasion, they had to find alternative training methods and arenas. It is widely assumed that the Internet has taken over the role of the Afghan camps. The current survey suggests that the Internet's role as a “virtual training camp” might be overstated. Although the Net has become an important tool for terrorists on many levels, they maintain an urge to obtain real-life, military-style training in jihadi combat zones. Despite difficulties and risks, many of today's terrorists attend terrorist training facilities in Pakistan or other places. The main characteristic of training practices after the invasion of Afghanistan seems to be that, from an organizational perspective, the push for training and preparation comes from “below” rather than from “above.”     

Alessandro Orsini. Anatomy of the Red Brigades: The Religious Mind-Set of Modern Terrorists

ABSTRACT

Those who study terrorism are familiar with the claim that suicide attacks are the most lethal form of terrorism today. Suicide attacks kill more people on average than non-suicide attacks, thereby justifying why terrorist organizations use this costly method of attack and explaining in part why suicide tactics have proliferated. However, extant empirical support for this claim is largely insufficient, focusing only on macro-level analysis of lethality data. Using data from the Global Terrorism Database, this study examines variation in lethality among suicide and non-suicide attacks based on geographic location, attack type, and target/victim type. It also introduces a new metric—the lethality ratio—to measure costs and benefits of attacks in terms of lives lost. It finds that, although suicide tactics are generally more lethal than non-suicide tactics, they also come at greater costs to the organization. This analysis also finds behavior that is inconsistent with the premise that terrorist groups are focused on maximizing lethality while reducing costs in all cases; that despite certain advantages, suicide attacks may remain a suboptimal tactic from the perspective of the terrorist group; and that additional criteria may help explain why suicide tactics are used.