Targets and Tactics: Testing for a Duality within Al Qaeda’s Network

One prevailing view treats Al Qaeda as a monolithic entity with a global network of affiliates. Yet, certain affiliates appear more committed to local political and territorial goals – parochial, not global, terrorists. We construct a classification scheme to differentiate affiliates conceptually and empirically, and then track their types over time. We sort Al Qaeda’s network of affiliates using a principal components analysis of terrorist attacks from 1988 to 2012. We show that this aids in identifying latent affiliate types, and interpreting shifts in behavior. We find that despite Al Qaeda’s anti-western rhetoric, there exists a global-parochial divide in which most affiliates are parochial – with anti-Western groups pursuing local political goals even when Western targets remain. By providing an empirical strategy to identify which affiliates are more or less aligned with global terrorism, this research holds implications for the literatures on terrorism and civil war, terrorism and democracy, and the effects of counterterrorism.     

Does Democracy Decrease Fear of Terrorism?

ABSTRACT

Fear is an integral part of terrorism. Fighting fear can thus be a crucial part of counterterrorist policies. In the case of terrorism, citizens look to the state for protection. Yet, most studies of terrorist fear emphasize individual-level factors. We lack studies that link fear to features of the state, especially whether democratic states are capable of reducing fear among its citizens. Our study aims to fill part of this research gap by asking whether democratic government reduces or increases fear of terrorism. We find that there is substantial cross-country variance in citizens’ fear of terrorism. The results suggest that fear is more widespread among citizens in non-democratic countries compared to citizens in democratic countries. Actual exposure to terrorist attacks has no impact on citizens’ fear of terrorism when we account for whether the country is a democracy or not. Hence, democratic government displays resilience towards fear mongering.     

Totalitarian tendencies in drone strikes by states

Lethal drones or unmanned combat aerial vehicles have been used to kill thousands of persons suspected of complicity in terrorism. Despite concerns aired by legal scholars that drone strikes outside areas of active hostilities violate international law, the US government contends that targeted killing is distinct from assassination, and has persisted in the practice to the point where it has become normalised as a standard operating procedure and taken up by other nations as well. Drone strikes have been championed by Western politicians as a “light footprint” approach to war, but the institutional apparatus of remote-control killing rests on totalitarian, not democratic principles. Secretive targeting criteria and procedures are withheld from citizens under a pretext of national security, resulting in a conflation of executive with judicial authority and an inversion of the burden of proof, undermining the very framework of universal human rights said to be championed by modern Western states. Moreover, lethal drones hovering above in the sky threaten all persons on the ground with the arbitrary termination of their lives and as such represent a form of terrorism no less than the suicide bombings of jihadist groups such as Al Qaeda and ISIS.     

Taking a New Perspective: Mapping the Al Qaeda Network Through the Eyes of the UN Security Council

Network analysis has attracted significant attention when researching the phenomenon of transnational terrorism, particularly Al Qaeda. While many scholars have made valuable contributions to mapping Al Qaeda, several problems remain due to a lack of data and the omission of data provided by international organizations such as the UN. Thus, this article applies a social network analysis and subsequent mappings of the data gleaned from the Security Council's consolidated sanctions list, and asks what they can demonstrate about the structure and organizational characteristics of Al Qaeda. The study maps the Al Qaeda network on a large scale using a newly compiled data set. The analysis reveals that the Al Qaeda network consists of several hundred individual and group nodes connecting almost all over the globe. Several major nodes are crucial for the network structure, while simultaneously many other nodes only weakly and foremost regionally connect to the network. The article concludes that the findings tie in well to the latest research pointing to local and simultaneously global elements of Al Qaeda, and that the new data is a valuable source for further analyses, potentially in combination with other data.     

Al Qaeda Targeting Israel: Between Rhetoric and Reality

Al Qaeda leaders have often stated their desire to attack the state of Israel. But, while the intent and imperative of killing Israelis and Jews features prominently in al Qaeda rhetoric, it has rarely translated into operational attacks on the state of Israel, its citizens abroad, or Jews more generally.     

Comparing Extremist Perpetrators of Suicide and Non-Suicide Attacks in the United States

ABSTRACT

This study explores differences in perpetrators of suicide attacks and non-suicide attacks in the United States. The study uses data on far-right and Al Qaeda and affiliated/inspired terrorists between 1990 and 2013 from the United States Extremist Crime Database. Our analysis estimates logistic regression models to test whether suicide attackers were more likely to have exhibited specific risk factors for suicidality, while examining other prominent claims regarding patterns of suicide terrorism. Suicide attackers were no more likely than non-suicide attackers to have previously attempted suicide or to have been diagnosed as mentally ill. Suicide attackers were more likely, though, to have a history of substance abuse, to be loners, have served in the military, participated in paramilitary training, and be more ideologically committed to the cause. We found that Al Qaeda affiliated/inspired attackers were more likely than far-right attackers to have engaged in a suicide mission. With the current focus on Americans traveling to Syria and Iraq to receive training and fight for jihadist movements (e.g., the Islamic State), our findings appear relevant. Observers have expressed concern that these fighters may return and then commit attacks in their homeland. Law enforcement could make use of this study’s findings.     

The Al Qaeda Brand: The Strategic Use of the “Terrorist” Label

Al Qaeda leaders have consistently praised the Chechen insurgents as an exemplary front of global jihad. Ayman al-Zawahiri recently applauded the steadfastness of the Chechen rebels and indicated that their resolve for jihad is worthy of emulation. Ever since the world found out about a war going on in the Muslim republic in the North Caucasus, Al Qaeda leadership has attempted to represent the Chechen struggle as one of its own battlefields. In turn, the Russian government has tried to justify its policies in the North Caucasus through demonstrating to the world that the Kremlin is fighting nothing less than Osama bin Laden’s agents in Chechnya. The North Caucasus insurgents in turn have embraced some of Al Qaeda’s narratives. While such narratives have proliferated, the factual evidence to show the direct links between the North Caucasus insurgents and Al Qaeda is still lacking. The article examines how terrorist groups such as Al Qaeda use framing for strategic ends. The evidence discussed here suggests that Al Qaeda, the North Caucasus insurgents, and the Russian government have adopted similar narratives. However, the lack of evidence to back up such narratives indicates the differences in reasons driving the convergence of the narratives.     

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.     

Jihadism as a Subcultural Response to Social Strain: Extending Marc Sageman's “Bunch of Guys” Thesis

My aim in this article is to extend Marc Sageman's seminal research on Al Qaeda by re-articulating it through the prism of Albert Cohen's theory of delinquent subcultures, an approach which came to prominence in Criminology in the 1960s, but has since then been largely eclipsed by other approaches in that field. Drawing on Sageman's findings and observations, I suggest that Al Qaeda-affiliated or -inspired groups in the West can be best understood as a collective response or “solution” to the strains encountered by the members of these groups, and that these strains are imposed on them by the circumstances in which they find themselves. My broader aim is to show that although Criminology, with a few exceptions, ignores the subject of terrorism, terrorism studies can appreciably benefit from an engagement with Criminology as a source of theoretical inspiration.     

阿富汗大变局:地缘政治和安全格局的演变

当前,阿富汗正在经历重大变局.阿富汗塔利班(阿塔)成功卷土重来,并且完成临时政府组建.尽管仍有多重挑战,但阿塔执政已不存在根本性威胁.这引发阿富汗地缘政治格局和地区安全形势的深度调整.在地缘政治格局方面,整体呈现"美国西方影响力下降,地区国家影响力上升"这一"东升西降"趋势.美国正在从"局内人"变为"局外人",但仍将发...     

Public opinion and terrorism: does the national economic,societal and political context Really Matter?

ABSTRACT

For national publics, terrorism is today one of the key policy challenges facing European governments. Yet little is known about whether and how the objective national economic, societal and political context influences public opinion about terrorism. The present article addresses this gap in the current research. Using Eurobarometer data, it is demonstrated that excluding a nation’s level of terrorism, no other objective national economic, societal or political indicator sways public attitudes towards terrorism. Objective national economic, societal and political factors are also found not to impact on the relationship between citizens’ economic conditions and public attitudes towards the same. Our results finally demonstrate that people’s perceived economic, cultural and physical (safety) insecurities tend to be a stronger predictor of these attitudes than the objective national context or (social) class differences. The article then discusses the implications of these ?ndings.     

Leaderless Resistance and the Loneliness of Lone Wolves: Exploring the Rhetorical Dynamics of Lone Actor Violence

“Leaderless resistance” and “lone wolf terrorism” are concepts that have steadily gained importance in the study of oppositional subcultures and terrorist groups, being used to describe the operational realities of a variety of terrorisms, from groups like Al Qaeda to Anders Breivik. In this article, I seek to describe leaderless resistance as a rhetorical construct, a meaning-conferring “ideology of effervescence” that lifts the spirits of both movement progenitors who advocate the strategy as well as incipient lone wolves who consider responding to their exhortations. Through an examination of the case of Wiebo Ludwig and the EnCana pipeline bombings of 2008–2009, I show how these rhetorics emerge in the interactions between activists and their political enemies. With this conception, we can (a) understand more fully the discursive/rhetorical dynamics involved in asymmetrical struggle, (b) problematize the acceptance of the organizational reality of leaderless resistance in the terrorism literature, and (c) question the assertion of some terrorism scholarship that refers to leaderless resistance and other ideologies of effervescence as hallmarks of the “new terrorism.”     

What Makes Terrorism Salient? Terrorist Strategies,Political Competition,and Public Opinion

This article analyzes the determinants of terrorism saliency in public opinion. It is usually assumed that after a terrorist attack, terrorism becomes automatically salient. However, this assumption is only true in those countries where terrorist attacks are exceptional events. In democracies that have suffered domestic terrorism for decades, the evolution of terrorism saliency does not only depend on the frequency or intensity of terrorist attacks. In this article it is claimed that the tactics carried out by terrorist groups (the type of victim, especially) and the dynamics of political competition (especially the ideology of the incumbent) are also factors that explain the evolution of terrorism saliency. The article also analyzes how these two factors interact with citizens’ predispositions to explain variation in their reactions to terrorist threat. The empirical test relies on a novel database from monthly public opinion surveys in Spain from 1993 to 2012.     

The Cost of Terrorism: The Relationship Between International Terrorism and Democratic Governance

After Al Qaeda's destruction of the World Trade Center on 11 September 2001, many democracies reacted to the event, and to international terrorism in general, by passing laws restricting civil liberties and political rights, raising questions about the balance between security and liberty. Such laws have produced alarms among civil libertarians, worldwide. Are the alarms justified? In this article we analyze the relationship between the yearly number of international terrorist attacks in 24 countries from 1968–2003 and (a) measures of civil liberties and political rights as provided by Freedom House, and (b) levels of democracy as measured in the Polity IV scales. We take the number of international terrorist events, by country, from data provided by the Memorial Institute of the Prevention of Terrorism (MIPT) http://www.tkb.org/Home.jsp. Our analysis indicates that there is, generally, no relationship between the number of international terrorist events and the levels of civil rights, political rights, or democracy as measured by the Freedom House and Polity IV indicators. When there is a statistically significant relationship, it is negative, opposite to what is predicted by the tradeoff hypothesis.     

The Challenges of Strategic Terrorism

ABSTRACT

The Al Qaeda type of terrorist is quite different from that of those of the IRA or Hezbollah. The former is seeking a clash of civilizations or at least a clash between the Islamic world and the West or at least between Islam and the US. The latter used and use terrorism to pursue a specific objective and a limited one at that in scope and geography. Terrorism is not a one dimensional phenomenon.     

Terrorist learning in context – the case of Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb

ABSTRACT

It is astonishing how many researchers adopt a counterterrorism agenda and suggest researching terrorist learning in order to shape security countermeasures. Posing different questions would lead to different answers. One such question would be, “What makes terrorist learning different?” Terrorist groups operate clandestinely, which means the environment in which they learn is different. This paper investigates the context in which Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) has learned. Thus, a qualitative case study analysis of the influence of meso- and macro-level factors on AQIM’s tactical and strategic patterns between 1999 and 2013 will shed light on terrorist learning. Meso-level influences are conceptualised as cooperation and ultimate merging with Al Qaeda, and macro-level influences as government action. The result is puzzling: AQIM has learned tactically from Al Qaeda and strategically from counterterrorism. This is puzzling because scholars commonly question whether it is possible to learn under pressure. Nevertheless, AQIM’s learning has been more profound when faced with pressure than when cooperating voluntarily. The sustainable answer to the question of the political implication thereof is not how to boost counterterrorism measures but how to redefine them. If what is different about terrorist learning is above all the context, we need to question the context.     

Laying a Foundation for the Criminological Examination of Right-Wing,Left-Wing,and Al Qaeda-Inspired Extremism in the United States

Despite several overlaps between crime and terrorism, criminological examinations of terrorism to date have been limited. To fill this gap in the research, we examine several individual and contextual socio-demographic characteristics of a diverse sample of extremists operating in the United States who have committed violent crimes. In addition, we provide a comparative analysis to explain and understand differences between extremists who have committed violent crimes while active in either far-Right, far-Left (including environmental and animal rights extremists), or Al Qaeda and affiliated movements. To assess the impact of external factors on the nature of domestic extremist violence, we also comparatively examine these three types of domestic extremists before and after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. We find several similarities across domestic extremists but many important suspect- and county-level differences as well. We end the paper with suggestions for future research that could extend the criminological study of terrorism.     

Topics in terrorism research: reviewing trends and gaps, 2007-2016

ABSTRACT

The topical focus of research on terrorism has frequently been critiqued for being too narrow, too event-driven and too strongly tied to governments’ counterterrorism policies. This article uses keyword analysis to assess the degree to which these issues remain present in the literature on terrorism as represented by the 3.442 articles published between 2007 and 2016 in nine of the field’s leading academic journals. Several fluctuations notwithstanding, research on terrorism has retained a strong focus on al-Qaeda, jihadist terrorism more generally, and the geographic areas most strongly associated with this type of terrorist violence. Results also indicate that the field remains event-driven and consistently underemphasizes state terrorism as well as non-jihadist terrorism, such as that perpetrated by right-wing extremists.     

Terrorism,Human Rights and Law Enforcement in Spain

ABSTRACT

Terrorism systematically violates human rights and disrupts basic political processes common to liberal democracies. Combating terrorism is thus necessary in order to protect these fundamental rights and maintain the well functioning of tolerant polities. However, state initiatives put in place to cope with terrorism may also damage human rights, even when these measures are formulated by elected accountable authorities and implemented in the context of open societies. Spain has precisely been among those European countries most affected by the wave of terrorism initiated more than three decades ago across western industrial societies, and thus where violations of fundamental rights as well as obstacles to the exercise of civil liberties as a consequence of such violence became particularly severe. Also, a case where effective rule of law was temporarily damaged in the fight against the ethnonationalist terrorism perpetrated by ETA (an acronym for Euskadi ta Askatasuna, meaning Basque Homeland and Freedom) but successfully restored by efforts from both state institutions, as a result of an effective division of power, and civil society. It is therefore an experience providing substantive knowledge and valuable insights on how to counter terrorism in accordance with the principles and procedures of democracy. Accordingly, this paper aims at a better understanding on the interrelated issues of terrorism, human rights and law enforcement in a context of political change.     

Ideologies of Jihad in Europe

The article explores ideological fault lines among Sunni Muslim militants (jihadists) in Europe since the mid-1990s. It argues there have been disputes among the militants about whether to prioritize local struggles or Al Qaeda's global war, and about the legitimacy of launching terrorist attacks in European states offering political asylum to Muslims. It concludes that Europe's militants have become more ideologically unified in conjunction with the invasions of Afghanistan, Iraq, and the Mohammed drawings, seeing European countries as legitimate and prioritized targets, and identifying with Al Qaeda.