Charity as Resistance: Connections between Charity,Contentious Politics,and Terror

This article explores two ways of conceptualizing ties between charity, contentious politics, political violence, and terrorism. The first half of the article discusses how social and political exclusion serve as motivations for within-group philanthropy, political activism, and political violence. Using this conceptualization, charity and terrorism can be seen as two activities among a range of possible actions that address grievance and exclusion. The second half of the article discusses how terrorist organizations and political insurgents use charity as a tool to move community members along a “continuum of community support” toward greater acceptance of and participation in violent activities.     

Endgame? Sports Events as Symbolic Targets in Lone Wolf Terrorism

This article explores how terrorists acting alone or in small groups have used sports events as symbolic targets in their performance of terrorism. Drawing on a comparative analysis of the attacks on the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games and the 2013 Boston Marathon, it is argued that terrorist target selection of major sports events should be understood in relation to the grievances and desires of the perpetrators. The article finds that rather than being the primary target of their attacks, sports events are among a broader range of densely crowded spaces that terrorist actors may seek to target as part of their violent struggle against their adversaries. The findings are contextualized in relation to broader patterns and trends in lone wolf terrorism, including the significance of a copycat phenomenon and inspiration effect.     

Terrorism and overkill

The purpose of this paper is to review the international terrorist activities of the last half century of this millennium and to make a case for needed changes in U.S. efforts to curb the growth of terrorism. Unless we can muster a unified front against global terrorism and organized crime, we are in danger of carrying these burdens with us into the new millennium. Whereas most discussions are focused on how to respond during or after a terrorist event, this paper explores measures for averting international terrorism disasters before they occur. With the growing availability of weapons of mass destruction and computer technology to terrorist and organized crime groups, there is a growing potential for disasters of proportions never before experienced. Consequently the risks are becoming too great to continue with a reactive approach to terrorism. The paper begins with a discussion of how the basis for international terrorism has changed since its modern form began in the 1960s. It then extrapolates the evolutionary trends of terrorism to make projections for what we can expect in the future. Finally, it presents a number of practical ideas for preventing terrorist actions before they occur, beginning with an argument for redefining terrorism in terms that enable us to organize more effectively against it.     

Nationalists without a nation: South Moluccan terrorism in the Netherlands

Abstract

This article focuses on the phenomenon of South Moluccan terrorism in the Netherlands. Beginning with a historical examination of the colonial relationship between the Netherlands and Indonesia, attention is then given to the circumstances in which some 21,000 South Moluccans came to the Netherlands in the early 1950s, and the social, economic, and political conditions of the South Moluccan community in Holland since then. Then follows a detailed examination of the main incidents of South Moluccan terrorism in the Netherlands which climaxed in a series of violent incidents against Dutch and Indonesian targets in the mid‐1970s. Special attention is placed on the ways in which successive Dutch governments have responded to the various outbreaks of terrorism, as well as to the effects of this terrorism on public opinion. The article then shows what effects South Moluccan terrorism has had on the policies of Dutch and Indonesian governments; on national and international public opinion; on the South Moluccans in the Moluccas; and on the international terrorist community. The paper concludes that the focus of South Moluccan terrorism in the Netherlands is likely to shift from attempts to secure an independent homeland for their people to closer contacts with other terrorist groups espousing anti‐colonial, anti‐imperialist, and nationalist ideals.     

A Community-Level Comparison of Terrorism Movements in the United States

The aim of this article is to identify characteristics of communities where persons indicted under terrorism charges lived, planned, and prepared prior to carrying out a terrorist act. Guided by a model of community deterioration and using data from the Terrorism and Extremist Violence in the United States database, findings indicate: (1) half of all census tracts where terrorists planned and prepared for attacks were located in the western United States; nearly one fourth were in the Northeast; (2) nationally, terrorist pre-incident activity is more likely to occur in census tracts with lower percentages of high school graduates for Al Qaeda and associated movements (AQAM) terrorism but not for far-right terrorism, higher percentages of households living below the poverty level, more urban places, and more unemployed; and (3) communities with terrorist pre-incident activity are different types of places compared to those where there was no pre-incident activity, generally between different regions of the country, and specifically in terms of differences across far-right and AQAM terrorist movements.     

Terrorism,Signaling, and Suicide Attack

This article examines the strategic utility of suicide terrorism. Suicide terrorism, we suggest, can be thought of as a form of strategic "signaling." We define terrorism as a signaling game in which terrorist attacks are used to communicate a group's character and objectives to a set of target audiences. This is followed by an examination of the utility of suicide attacks as a signaling tactic. The relative effectiveness of suicide operations is evaluated in relation to other tactical options that are traditionally available to terrorist organizations. We go on to examine the institutional and social context of suicide terrorism, concluding with an examination of the evolutionary use of suicide attacks by Palestinian terrorist organizations and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.‐     

The Dark Matter of Terrorism

The consequences of states’ reactions to terrorist attacks can far outweigh the effects of the attacks themselves. Yet risk analysis, widely accepted as the proper analytical basis for assessing terrorist threats, largely ignores the consequences from potential reactions to attacks. It also generally fails to consider how the anticipation of these reactions may influence terrorists’ attack preferences. Policymakers should therefore be wary of the limitations of risk analysis as currently practiced. Further, states should strive to avoid reactions to attacks that unwittingly further their adversaries’ agendas, a goal that may be aided by strengthening public resilience to terrorism.     

Terrorist Decision Making and the Deterrence Problem

An ongoing debate among policymakers and terrorism scholars concerns the effectiveness of deterrence as a counterterrorism tool. Absent from the debate is a discussion of the complex nature of terrorist decision making. Decisions are made at varying levels in a terrorist organization, often by actors having different motives, resulting in behavior that is not always fully rational. This article identifies several circumstances when terrorist behavior is not the product of an entirely unitary, rational decision-making process, and therefore highlights when deterrence policies will be least effective. It concludes with some policy implications for understanding when deterrence policies are most likely to succeed and how to address terrorism in other situations.     

The predictability of international terrorism: A time‐series analysis

Abstract

The study examines the predictability of international terrorism in terms of the existence of trends, seasonality, and periodicity of terrorist events. The data base used was the RAND Corporation's Chronology of International Terrorism. It contains the attributes of every case of international terrorism from 1968 to 1986 (n = 5,589). The authors applied Box‐Jenkins models for a time‐series analysis of the occurrence of terrorist events as well as their victimization rates. The analysis revealed that occurrence of terrorist events is far from being random: There is a clear trend and an almost constant periodicity of one month that can be best described by a first‐order moving average model. The fit of this model was tested both by statistical diagnostics and the accuracy of predictions based on this model compared to actual occurrence. However, the series of victimization rates did not reveal any predictability aside from the overall trend of an increasing level of victimization. The findings of the study are discussed by two approaches: the contagiousness of terrorism and the concept of media‐oriented terrorism. These two concepts, separately or combined, may explain some of the patterns revealed in the occurrence of terrorist events. However, they both highlight the part played by the mass media, either as a target for publicity‐seeking terrorists or as an influential factor in the process of contagion.     

V for Vendetta: Government Mass Killing and Domestic Terrorism

Scholarship explores the impact of human rights abuse and state repression on terrorism. Heretofore, scholarship has ignored the impact of government-sponsored killings on domestic terrorism. This article proposes that mass killings create a focal point for terrorist mobilization. The vendetta agenda fuels violence by animating retributory violence. Additionally, mass atrocities create a permissive environment for violent nonstate activity. A spiral of violence ensues whereby groups resort to terrorism. Utilizing data from the Global Terrorism Database, 1971–2011, the study shows that mass killings significantly increase domestic terrorism. It contributes to emerging scholarship examining how state policies influence terrorist activity.     

Failure and Disengagement in the Red Army Faction

This article examines the factors that have contributed to the end of the Red Army Faction (RAF), and places particular emphasis on the causes and characteristics of individual disengagement of RAF members from the armed struggle. It discusses the evolution, ideology, and decline of each of the three generations of the RAF. The article's contribution is twofold. First, by assessing both contextual- and individual-level factors that led to the group's demise, the article bridges two approaches to analyzing the demise of terrorist organizations—the literature on how terrorism ends and why individuals disengage from terrorism. Second, the article helps build a growing empirical body of work on the demise of terrorist groups that can be used to confirm, challenge, or refine existing hypotheses on how terrorism ends, while formulating new ones. The article concludes that different factors contributed to the decline of each subsequent generation of the RAF. Successful German police efforts played a critical role in thwarting the RAF's first generation. Lack of public support and recruits, due in large part to an escalation of terrorist violence, hastened the decline of the second generation of the group. The third generation suffered from serious interorganizational strife, exacerbated by a government initiative that offered to release those RAF members from prison who renounced terrorism.     

Political Communication and Agroterrorism

This article reports results of a survey on consumer perceptions about agroterrorism conducted in October and November of 2004. As part of a more general survey the authors asked respondents who the most likely perpetrator of an agroterrorist attack would be. Of American consumers, 47.52% believed that the most likely attack would come from a state-sponsored terrorist organization or government, 23.47% from a non-state–sponsored terrorist organization, and only 14.46% for domestic terrorism. The article argues that at the time of the survey these perceptions of risk were at odds, in terms of history and the conventional wisdom, which would place higher likelihoods first on domestic terrorism, then foreign non-state–sponsored terrorism, and then foreign state–sponsored terrorism. These results are explored in detail using a combination of cross tabulation and PROBIT analysis and find that a key variable (among others) in risk perception is political affiliation. The article then discusses the role of political communication via the Iraq War and Al Qaeda to explain the results.     

From Words to Action: Exploring the Relationship between a Group's Value References and Its Likelihood of Engaging in Terrorism

This study explored the dynamics of terrorism through a content analysis of terrorist and nonterrorist groups' documents. Thirteen terrorist groups were matched with nonterrorist controls, and their documents were coded for the values they attributed to their opponents and their own group. Relative to controls, terrorist groups attributed higher dominance values to their opponents and higher dominance, morality, and culture values to themselves in the full sample and in a predictive sample of documents issued before terrorism. These findings indicate that the values groups express in their documents--and particularly the values they attribute to themselves--may predict whether they will engage in terrorism.‐     

Book Reviews

This article argues that a major factor in terrorist acts is an appeal to the actor's own community at an emotional and symbolic level, through acts of sacrifice, particularly self-sacrifice. Although other aims also exist, a prime concern is to recall the actor's home audience to the struggle, because the actor regards himself as acting on their behalf. This utilizes the imagery and symbolism of traditional religion, implying a strong communal and non-material impetus to terrorist acts, rather than rational material calculation, that modern Western man finds difficult to comprehend. It also recalls much classical social theory, which emphasized the central role of religion in community. Self-sacrifice tells an emotional story to the actor's community that is comprehensible to them and will have an emotional appeal to maintaining the community. For the Northern Ireland hunger strikes (possibly analogous to suicide bombers) this is reflected in their appeal solely to a Catholic/nationalist community that equates strongly with ideas of a pre-modern society under threat from a modernizing society. All the hunger strikers were very normal for their community, but left non-Catholics completely unmoved. Consequently there is a need to understand the communal dynamics behind terrorism if one is to effectively counter the threat and that different societies may have different values regarding the individual, community, and life itself. Individual motivations do not provide an adequate explanation for much terrorism and it is a failure to grasp this that severely hinders much counterterrorism.     

Terror and Its Limits: The Historical Understanding of Terrorist Movements,States and Tribes in an Age of Cultural Anxiety

This article argues that much of the historical analysis of terror and terrorism in history has been weak in understanding the limits on terrorist activity and how terrorist campaigns eventually end. Reviewing three recent studies that examine various aspects of terrorism and the language of terror, the article seeks to show that states often play a major role in the way terrorist movements develop and eventually end up either defeated or moving into mainstream political engagement. The article points to a number of examples to illuminate this including the Carbonara in nineteenth century Italy, the Paris Commune and the ending segregation in the U.S. South in the 1960s.     

Subversion and Countersubversion in the Campaign against Terrorism in Europe

This article examines how Europe fits into the broader international campaign against terrorism. It argues that Europe is both a source and a target of terrorist activity, and faces threats including Al Qaeda–inspired terrorism, extremist political parties, insurgent sympathizer networks, subversive movements, and the overlap between crime and terrorism. The article argues that the primary threat is terrorist-linked subversion, which seeks to manipulate and exploit the sociological and ethnographic features of immigrant communities. Islamic theology is a strictly secondary factor, and a focus on Islam as such is likely to be an analytical dead-end. The article examines countersubversion as a conceptual framework for counterterrorism in Europe. The article concludes that an approach based on trusted networks and close collaboration with communities is most likely to succeed.     

The Boko Haram Uprising: how should Nigeria respond?

Since the execution of Osama bin Laden and a few other al-Qaeda kingpins, the incidence of international terrorism seems to be on the decline and the ‘war on terror’ has been applauded as a huge success, with some even arguing that terrorism will fizzle out sooner rather than later. But recent experiences in Nigeria and some other African states reveal that, while global terrorism may be on the decline, the proliferation and radicalisation of local terrorist groups with possible links to al-Qaeda seem to be on the rise. The quest for effective counter-terrorism therefore continues. This article interrogates how Nigeria should respond to the Boko Haram terrorist uprising. Methodologically it relies on both primary and secondary sources of data. It provides an overview of the evolution and dynamics of the uprising in Nigeria, and explores the motivations, strategic operations and responses of Boko Haram. The article shows that the uprising, which engenders general insecurity, is a consequence of governance failure and institutional fragility. Thus, it concludes that, to effectively address the uprising, Nigeria should adopt a human security approach rather than the current emphasis on a repressive state security approach.     

Terrorism,Civil Liberties,and Political Rights: A Cross-National Analysis

This article examines the effect terrorism has on civil liberties and political rights across a wide range of democracies and regions. This study includes an analysis of the influence domestic and international terrorist attacks have on civil liberties and political rights in 48 democratic states from 1971–2007. The results from a time series cross-national analysis reveal that terrorism weakens civil liberties and political rights. However, certain types of democracies are more affected by terrorism than others. These findings have important implications for democracy and counterterrorism strategies in democratic states.     

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.