Fear,Anxiety and the State of Terror

The 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon marked the advent of an unprecedented preoccupation with terrorism. Although Australia's actual terrorist risk profile remains marginal in comparison with other mortality risks, in times of crisis, the reasoned negotiation of risk is marginalised. Drawing on the findings of qualitative research, this article offers an analysis of how Australians are responding to the threat of terrorism embodied in a developing discourse of the war on terror and how they construct their perceptions of terrorist risk. The findings implicate community fear as a factor that should be considered in the development of counter terrorism strategies that emphasize community engagement as a mechanism for challenging radicalisation in democratic states.     

Analytic Models and Policy Prescription: Understanding Recent Innovation in U.S. Counterterrorism

The threat of terrorism, particularly terrorism involving a weapon of mass destruction (WMD), has received enormous attention in the last decade. Since the mid1990s, the federal government has embarked on a concerted national effort to prepare the country for acts of WMD terrorism. A key component of the counterterrorism agenda is the domestic preparedness program, a series of initiatives aimed at reducing America's vulnerability to a WMD terrorist attack. However, there is a heated debate over whether or not the United States needs a domestic preparedness program at all. This article argues that much of the debate originates in disparate approaches to analyzing terrorism. Terrorism studies specialists use an internal model that analyzes the root causes, motives, and historical patterns of terrorism and concludes that the threat of WMD terrorism against the United States is not sufficient to warrant the domestic preparedness budget. Policy makers and national security experts, however, rely on an external risk assessment model that considers terrorism within the context of the many risks to American security. This assessment model evaluates WMD terrorism on the basis of risk and consequences, and reaches a logical conclusion that the potential for mass destruction not only merits, but also requires a level of domestic preparedness.     

Terrorism and the Kenyan Public

Since 11 September 2001, terrorism has been a global security threat. One of the partners in the war on terrorism is Kenya. Considering Kenya"s recent experience with terrorist acts, their effects on its public psyche, and Kenya"s reactions to them in domestic and foreign policies, this study presents perceptions on terrorism from an exploratory survey in Kenya. Respondents feel most threatened not by terrorism but by AIDS and local criminals. Among terrorist acts, the most threatening include suicide terrorism, a plane crash, and stabbing attacks. Media reports on terrorism not only intensify feelings of anxiety and helplessness but also strengthen feelings for both peaceful and revengeful reactions. In order to prevent terrorist attacks, routine security checks, recognizing a Palestinian right to statehood, and intelligence collaboration with the CIA and Mosad are considered the most effective measures. Kenya"s commitment to the war on terrorism may be less a response to Kenyans" perceptions of terrorist threats than a policy to support the United States against terrorists in exchange for U.S. support against AIDS and for political stability, democracy, pluralism, and economic development.     

FBI analysis of terrorist incidents in the United States — 1982

Abstract

When analyzing terrorism in Germany, attention normally focuses on the Rote Armee Fraktion, better known as Baader‐Meinhof gang. Already in the early years of the RAF there existed different groups, such as the Movement 2nd June, which often rivaled and strongly critized the elitist avant‐gardism of Andreas Baader, Ulrike Meinhof, and Gudrun Ensslin. Today only a small fragment of the some 350 terrorist acts and 500 acts of sabotage (1985 statistics) can be attributed to the RAF. Germany's other terrorists, the Revolutionary Cells and autonomous/anti‐imperialist groups have long ago outdone the RAF and become a much graver threat to the internal security of the Federal Republic. Though similarities in rhetoric and operational approach exist between the RAF and these groups, the existing underlying differences are strong and until recently have prevented cooperation. The hunger strike campaign of the winter 1984/1985 appears to present a change in policies on behalf of the Cells.     

America's “Maginot Line” Defense Against Terror

Though anti‐American terrorism springs these days as much from Yemen and the “virtual ummah” as from Afghanistan, President Obama has nontheless further committed US troops to stabilizing a country well‐known as the graveyard of empires. What can the only Muslim country that belongs to NATO offer by way of advice? How best can the US keep its focus on the terrorist threat despite its diversion in Afghanistan? Turkey's former envoy to Afghanistan and two of Europe's leading experts on Islamist terrorism offer their views.     

Headquarters of Terrorists Is “Virtual Ummah”

Though anti‐American terrorism springs these days as much from Yemen and the “virtual ummah” as from Afghanistan, President Obama has nontheless further committed US troops to stabilizing a country well‐known as the graveyard of empires. What can the only Muslim country that belongs to NATO offer by way of advice? How best can the US keep its focus on the terrorist threat despite its diversion in Afghanistan? Turkey's former envoy to Afghanistan and two of Europe's leading experts on Islamist terrorism offer their views.     

How Turkey's Soft Power Can Aid NATO in Afghanistan

Though anti‐American terrorism springs these days as much from Yemen and the “virtual ummah” as from Afghanistan, President Obama has nontheless further committed US troops to stabilizing a country well‐known as the graveyard of empires. What can the only Muslim country that belongs to NATO offer by way of advice? How best can the US keep its focus on the terrorist threat despite its diversion in Afghanistan? Turkey's former envoy to Afghanistan and two of Europe's leading experts on Islamist terrorism offer their views.     

Girls as “Weapons of Terror” in Northern Uganda and Sierra Leonean Rebel Fighting Forces

Girls—both willingly and unwillingly—participate in terrorist acts within the context of contemporary wars. These acts range from targeting civilians for torture and killing to destroying community infrastructures so that people's physical and psychological health and survival are affected. Girls witness or participate in acts such as mutilation, human sacrifice, forced cannibalism, drug use, and physical and psychological deprivation. This article focuses upon girls in two fighting forces: the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) in Northern Uganda and the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) in Sierra Leone and their roles as combatants whose primary strategy is perpetrating terrorist acts against civilians. In analyses of gender and terrorism, girls are typically subsumed under the larger category of female, which marginalizes their experiences and fails to recognize that they possess agency and power.     

A Palestinian Woman's Place in Terrorism: Organized Perpetrators or Individual Actors?

This article analyzes a novel comprehensive database of attacks by Palestinian women between 1965 and 1995. During this period, women's participation in terrorism evolved and their participation can be divided into two distinct eras, before and after 1986. The article argues that the entrance of religious terrorist organizations into politics and the First Intifada changed Palestinian terrorism. While more attacks by women occurred after 1986, they were mostly low intensity attacks, aimed at military targets, with low success rates. Despite women's participation, the patriarchal structure of society is also reflected in Palestinian terrorist organizations. However, as women's roles in society expanded, so too did their roles within terrorist organizations.     

Rewarding Fire with Fire: Effects of Retaliation on Terrorist Group Dynamics

Abstract

Comparative studies of the psychology of terrorism indicate that there is no one terrorist mindset, A theme in common among the disparate groups is the strong need of marginal alienated individuals to join a group of like‐minded individuals with a similar world view that “it's us against them, and they are the cause of our problems.” This strong need to belong gives particular force to the power of group dynamics. While the ideology is the glue that holds the group together and serves as the rationale for its actions, terrorists do not commit acts of terrorism for ideological reasons. The amelioration of the societal injustice which they indicate incites and justifies their terrorism does not reduce the lure of terrorism, because of the powerful hold of the group on its members.

Paradoxically, a policy of reactive retaliation with the goal of deterring terrorist acts may have the opposite effect and reinforce the mind set of the terrorist. For the group under threat, the external danger has the consequence of reducing external divisiveness and uniting the group against the outside enemy. The survival of the group is paramount because of the sense of group identity it provides.

Identifying the locus of control is of crucial significance in estimating the effects of counter‐terrorist policies upon a terrorist group. For the autonomous terrorist cell, active retaliation may reinforce the cohesion of the group; for the corporate terrorist organization, issues of organizational survival may become paramount. Neither the terrorist group nor the terrorist organization can be forced to give up terrorism, for to do so would be to lose their reason for being. For state‐supported and directed terrorist groups on the other hand, the terrorist group in effect serves as a paramilitary group under central government control. In this situation, group and organizational considerations are less relevant, for the object of the counter‐terrorist policy is the government of the sponsoring state. Since the survival of the state and national interests are the primary values, retaliatiatory policies, can, in the short run, have a deterring effect. In the long run, the most effective anti‐terrorist policy is one which renders the terrorist career less attractive to potential members, facilitates terrorists leaving the group, and reduces external support.     

In search of an anti‐terrorism policy: Lessons from the reagan era

Abstract

During the 1980s, terrorist activities became a real threat to Americans at home and abroad. The Reagan administration's policy response to this threat was encumbered by several factors, both of commission and omission. Dominant anti‐communist ideological perceptions in the administration at times blurred the disparate causes of international terrorism and the varied motives of terrorist groups. The administration was unable to back up its words with consistent, resolute policy action. And U.S. intelligence operations were not able to detect or prevent several terrorist strikes against U.S. facilities, especially in the Middle East.

The U.S. air raid on Libya served notice that the United States would strike militarily at state sponsors of terrorism. It also called into the question the Reagan administration's willingness to adhere strictly to international law in its efforts to prosecute certain governments who aid and abet terrorist groups. There is no policy panacea for terrorism; terrorism can only be countered by a resolute policy which combines protection, prevention, and prosecution, including military retaliation if it is necessary and can be carried out proportionate to the aggrieved terrorist offense. The lessons gleaned from the Reagan administration's anti‐terrorist experience are both constructive and instructive. However, only if more deliberate efforts are made to integrate these lessons into policy considerations will they become utilitarian assets to counter terrorist activities, at home and abroad.     

Something Must be Done-Military Intervention

In the late twentieth century, the United States' federal government responded to the threat of terrorism by passing a wide range of counterterrorist laws. The vigor that accompanied these initiatives echoed at a state level where, virtually unnoticed, states passed similar legislation. This article examines state measures in three areas: the funding of foreign terrorist organizations, the use or threatened use of weapons of mass destruction, and definitions of terrorist activity. While these statutes, as a legal matter, may not violate any specific federal provisions or constitutional prohibitions, they raise important questions about federal supremacy in foreign affairs and the constitutional protections afforded citizens. More significantly, as a policy concern, these provisions threaten America's ability to speak in one voice, introducing divisions into the domestic realm and diminishing the ability of the federal government to negotiate with foreign states and organizations. They also mask an appropriate role for the states in fighting terrorism. Both the policy implications and legal considerations suggest that such measures may ultimately undermine America's ability to counter the terrorist threat.     

Resurgent religious terrorism: A study of some of the Lebanese Shi'a contemporary terrorism

Abstract

This study introduces the concept of geocultural immobility. A minority's geocultural immobility is identified as an imposed low geographic mobility within a nation with low cultural pluralism. It establishes the Lebanese Shi'a geocultural immobility, to which it attributes their religious resurgence. This Lebanese Shi'a religious resurgence is proven in this research to produce the zealots needed by religious terrorist organizations. This study also introduces and defines religious terrorism as violent acts performed by elements of religious organizations or sects, growing out of a commitment to communicate a divine message. It makes distinctions among religious terrorism, secular terrorism, and fighters for religious freedom, which are based on the actors' motives, affinities, and consciousness of the maliciousness of their acts. The primary and secondary data and the quasiexperiment in this research support its special hypotheses. They indicate a statistical correlation between eight Lebanese Shi ‘a cultural and religious attributes.     

The analytical foundations of extortionate terrorism

Extortionate terrorism is the threatened use of terrorist acts to gain concessions from the victim. In this article, game theory is used to seek answers to the following questions: (a) When will people resort to extortionate terrorism? (b) When will extortionate terrorism succeed and when will it fail? (c) What constitutes an “optimal” threat, i.e., what bribes, extortion, ransom, or payoff should be asked in exchange for which hostages or property? (d) When should unsuccessful threats be carried out and when should they be abandoned? (e) How should a victim choose among potential responses to specific terrorist threats and to the general problem of terrorism? Two different game theoretic models of terrorism are examined— one using ordinal preferences, the other von Neumann‐Mor‐genstern utilities. Terrorism is considered not simply as isolated incidents; institutions are potential victims of repeated terrorism. The terrorist and the victim, in formulating a response to each incident, are guided not only by present gains and losses, but by the effect their response has on others’ perception of their credibility and resolve—two long‐run variables.     

In the Name of the Father? Christian Militantism in Tripura,Northern Uganda,and Ambon

Although armed groups and political violence referring to Islam have attracted increasing attention since the start of the global war against terror, one particular religion can hardly be described as the main source of inspiration of what is commonly referred to as “terrorist acts of violence.” Faith-based violence occurs in different parts of the world and its perpetrators adhere to all major world faiths including Christianity. As such, this article treats three cases of non-state armed actors that explain their actions as being motivated by Christian beliefs and aimed at the creation of a new local society that is guided by religion: the National Liberation Front of Tripura, the Lord's Resistance Army, and the Ambonese Christian militias. It analyzes the way by which they instrumentalized religion against respective backgrounds of conflict rooted in social change, the erosion of traditional identities, imbalances of power, and widening communautarian faultlines.     

Explaining the Chinese framing of the “terrorist” violence in Xinjiang: insights from securitization theory

This paper critically examines the Chinese framing of the “terrorist” violence in Xinjiang. Drawing on the Copenhagen school of securitization theory, it examines how the historical perception of the region as a primary source of security threats to inner China has led today’s China to continue with representing the Han Chinese–Uyghur discord as an existential threat. In framing the ethnic conflict as a security issue, China has capitalized on the global “war on terror” of the early 2000s to transform the unrest into acts of Islamist terrorism to legitimize its counter-insurgency policies in Xinjiang. However, both the 2009 Urumqi riots and the 2014 Kunming attack lead us to conclude that the securitization strategy fails to quell the unrest. Not only have the Strike-Hard campaigns served to radicalize Uyghur nationalists, but also Han Chinese are not convinced that the Chinese government can contain the “terrorist” threat. Yet securitization blinds the leadership to the dysfunctional ethnic policy.     

Public Perceptions of Traumatic Events and Policy Preferences during the George W. Bush Administration: A Portrait of America in Turbulent Times

The American policy landscape during the George W. Bush administration was shaped by a series of traumatic events that confronted the nation and people of the United States. These included the terrorist attacks of 9/11 in 2001, the anthrax attacks in the fall of 2001, military actions in Afghanistan and Iraq, Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the threat of a flu pandemic in 2005 and 2006, the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports, and the financial collapse of 2008. The results of the 2008 presidential election appear to be a rejection of the Bush administration's major policy responses to these events, but the variation in type and level of public support among different groups suggests a much more varied and dynamic portrait of America in turbulent times. Using a multiyear panel survey, an interdisciplinary team of political scientists and psychologists analyzed the behavior and political responses to the events by the American public. The findings suggest that even seven years after the events of 11 September 2001, people with higher levels of post-traumatic stress symptomatology related to 9/11 have significantly different interpretations of the threat of terrorism and the appropriate policy responses to it than do others. Perceptions of threat, the political salience of terrorism and other traumatic events, the level of support for political leaders and assessments of the government's actions vary over time and across different groups within society based on the psychological, political and social, and personal characteristics of the respondent. These results help to open the black box of aggregate public opinion by providing a detailed portrait of how psychological, social, political, and personal factors affected perceptions and political behavior during the George W. Bush administration.     

Reluctant terrorists? Transcaucasian social-cemocracy, 1901 – 1909

This article discusses the development of Transcaucasian social-democratic terrorism from 1901 to 1909. For two reasons the ‘psychohistorical’ model emphasising the subjective and irrational aspects of terrorism has only limited value for the Transcaucasian case. First, the significance of the contextual factor is powerfully underscored by the phenomenon of workers' ‘economic terrorism’. It was not uncommon even, for workers to blackmail reluctant party organisations into supporting the killing of their enemies. Secondly, the social democrats were not driven by irrational urges but followed a rationally motivated and selective terrorist strategy. They attempted to limit or prevent workers' terrorism from below, the ‘anarchist’ potential of which they considered a threat to the organised mass struggle. They set their hopes on a division of labour, with a militant but mostly peaceful workers' movement and terrorism as the prerogative of the party.     

Torn Between God,Family, and Money: The Changing Profile of Lebanon's Religious Terrorists

Based upon this researcher's prior work and the conceptual denouement from geocultural immobility to religious terrorism, the author speculates that the reverse may be achieved and a zealot's motivation for religious terrorism might be purged once his or her basic Moslovian needs are fulfilled. Thus, this article attempts to empirically assess in some elements of Hizbullah, the effect of newly found wealth, money, and family exigencies on the Lebanese Shi'a's religious zealotry, his or her perceived religious commitments, and their acts of terrorism. This research concluded that Hizbullah in Lebanon, an organization originally established as a religious network with narrowly defined politico-socioeconomic goals, has eroded. Many of its individual cells now serve primarily their own self-interest instead of their perception of God's will. These cells are defying Hizbullah's main leadership wishes and committing criminal actions designed to serve cell or family interests. Its sophisticated network is already being used to transport and harbor criminals across the Mid-East and Europe. This research stress that the well-established Hizbullah cell organizations that protect each and every element and coordinate with other terrorist organizations are ripe to be exploited for international criminal activities. More importantly, this research attempts to explain and delineate the process by which nations may manage, control, reform, or even eliminate such international affliction.     

Australia and the Threat of Terrorism in the Decade after 9/11

In February 2010, the Australian government released its second Counter-Terrorism White Paper, claiming that terrorism continues to pose a serious security challenge to Australia. The article critically re-examines the terrorist threat to Australia and explores the threat posed by the traditional Al-Qaeda leadership, by regional organisations like Jemaah Islamiyah and by so-called ‘home-grown’ terrorists. Arguing that it is imperative to differentiate clearly between the threat to Australia and Australian interests abroad, the article identifies the sources of threat in the Australian context. It concludes that neither Al-Qaeda nor Jemaah Islamiyah nor home-grown terrorism poses any significant objective threat to Australia. At the same time it is acknowledged that the subjective perception of the terrorist necessitates the government to develop an effective counter-terrorism strategy. However, given that the terrorism threat is objectively low, policy measures addressing the threat ought to be carefully designed to meet the requirements of proportionality and (potential) effectiveness.