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.     

The Challenge of Talking about Terrorism: The EU and the Arab Debate on the Causes of Islamist Terrorism 1

The Arab “hegemonic debate” on the causes of Islamist terrorism nurtures (pan-) Arab, anti-Western sentiments and delegitimizes criticism of the political status quo. The European Union's emphasis on multilateral means of conflict resolution and trade promotion leads to official pronouncements that barely address the Arab world's domestic problems, instead referring to international tensions such as the Arab-Israeli conflict as a particular cause of Islamist terrorism and the need for cooperation with Arab governments. By failing to challenge the official narratives of authoritarian Arab regimes the EU obstructs interests in the democratization of the region and the delegitimization of Islamist violence.     

重新定义恐怖主义

长期以来,学术界存在着这样的观点,一是认为给恐怖主义下定义没有必要,理论意义和实践意义都不大;二是认为要在国际范围内给恐怖主义找到一个客观的定义几乎是不可能的。本文意在强调,建立一个客观的、能为国际社会所接受的恐怖主义定义不是没有希望的;而一个有效的、反对恐怖主义的国际联合行动迫切需要这样一个定义。本文认为,恐怖主义不仅仅是一种政治暴力行为,还是一种社会思潮和政治主张,忽略这一点将会给反恐斗争带来许多“盲点”。     

国际恐怖主义问题与反恐怖斗争合作

进入新世纪,恐怖主义乌云仍浓重地笼罩着全球。中亚、南亚、非洲不断发生的大规模人质绑架事件,世界各地频繁的爆炸、暗杀,给国际社会、无辜民众带来极大的危害。恐怖主义这个毒瘤仍在蔓延、膨胀,对世界和平与发展构成重大威胁。 面对日益猖獗的恐怖活动,国际社会一直在努力寻找打击恐怖主义的有效途径,特别     

Surveying American State Police Agencies About Terrorism Threats,Terrorism Sources,and Terrorism Definitions

This study presents American state police agencies' perceptions about three significant terrorism and public safety issues. First, we asked about the threat posed by specified extremist groups nationally and to their state. We asked about the number of such groups and their supporters, and the number of activities each group participates in during a typical year in their state. We also asked about the number of criminal incidents each group commits and the number of their supporters arrested in a typical year. Second, we asked the agencies to rate the usefulness of fifteen specified terrorism sources. Third, we queried the agencies about their views of eight terrorism definitions. These data were collected by surveying the fifty state police agencies in the United States. We discovered widespread concern about the criminal activities of various extremist groups, with a particular concern about the threat of Islamic jihadists. Interestingly, although the top rated threat was Islamic jihadists, the respondents indicated that other types of groups were much more criminally active. Further, respondents indicated that various open and non-open sources were valuable terrorism sources. Finally, most respondents reacted more favorably to official terrorism definitions—especially the FBI's—as opposed to academic definitions. We conclude with a discussion of the policy implications of our findings and we outline directions for future research.     

Terrorism and trust

Trust enables us to simplify and understand complicated realities and orientate ourselves in them, which we do through symbolic systems, including myth and religion. Terrorism results when those systems generate extreme distrust, especially between ethnic or religious groups. Within nation-states pre-conditions of trust include normative coherence, stability, openness and accountability. In international relations these pre-conditions are more difficult to establish. But it is still possible. The process usually includes reaction to a crisis, the creation of good personal relationships between leaders, mutual concessions, well-documented agreements with provision for verification, and opportunities for populations to get to know each other.     

Terrorism and Profiling

A key problem for counterterrorism is how large numbers of individuals can be screened most efficiently to discover terrorists. This question arises at security checkpoints of all kinds, from roadblocks to airline security counters. Some argue that certain categories of individuals, for instance, young Muslim men in the airline context, should be screened more heavily than others. Others deride this as racial profiling, and argue that any such scheme would be easily evaded. I examine a model of searching for terrorists among a population divided into categories that vary in their potential reliability or ease of recruitment as agents of terrorist attacks. The equilibria in the model feature profiling, in that different categories are searched with different intensities. Practical difficulties in implementing a rational profiling scheme are discussed.     

对恐怖主义问题的几点思考

"9·11"事件发生后,国际社会更为担心的是恐怖分子是否获得了诸如核生化等大规模杀伤性武器.已有种种迹象显示,可造成更为恐怖的生化袭击有可能发生,值得高度警惕与戒备.在反恐怖斗争领域里,民族、宗教问题一直是困扰人们正确认识形势的两大因素,如何从根本上把民族、宗教问题与恐怖活动区分开来,应当对此有所反思.随着国际反恐怖斗争的不断深入,在联合国框架下建立全球性国际反恐怖合作机制已是势在必行.     

Thoughts on Terrorism

The earthshaking terrorist attacks on the United States on September 11,2001 have once again brought terrorism into focus of the international relations. More and more evidences show that threats of terrorism to the world peace and development as well as the international communlty are on theincrease. Worse stin, it has become more possible that the ter     

恐怖资金来源问题研究

资金是恐怖组织赖以生存的血液,也是恐怖活动得以开展的重要前提条件。恐怖组织主要以盗用慈善资金、通过犯罪活动筹资以及通过合法经营、移民汇款和外国援助等方式获取恐怖资金。为切断恐怖资金来源,世界主要国家已经在此问题上展开了多边合作、双边合作,并积极推进国内反恐资金立法。恐怖资金来源问题给国际社会和世界各国带来了诸多新问题,无论是现存的国内和国际金融体制、法律体制,还是移民机制、教育体制和外交政策都因此受到严峻挑战。国际社会与恐怖资金的斗争将是长期和艰巨的。     

当前国际恐怖与反恐斗争的特点与趋势

当前国际恐怖势力仍呈蔓延之势,国际恐怖活动与伊拉克、阿富汗等地区热点相互作用,使国际反恐斗争形势更加严峻。美国、欧盟、俄罗斯等不断调整各自的反恐战略与措施,国际反恐合作继续加强,并取得了一定进展,但国际反恐合作分歧犹存,反恐斗争将长期化、复杂化。     

积重难返的巴基斯坦恐怖主义

由于历史宿怨、地理环境、宗教信仰和国家政策等多方面原因,南亚地区一直是恐怖主义滋生和发展的沃土,这在巴基斯坦表现得尤为明显。“9·11”事件后,巴基斯坦成了打击恐怖主义的前沿阵地。在美国和国际社会的压力下,巴政府对恐怖主义组织采取了一系列打击行动,但效果并不明显,而且还遭到了恐怖主义的严重报复式袭击。恐怖主义在巴基斯坦早已根深蒂固,呈积重难返之势。     

恐怖主义与宗教问题

自9·11事件以后，“宗教恐怖主义”；“伊斯兰恐怖主义”等似是而非的说法颇为流行。但从历史上看，恐怖主义与宗教并无任何必然联系。当代国际恐怖主义中，带有宗教色彩或打着宗教旗号的，可分为三类与民族分离主义相结合的、以宗教极端主义为主的和膜拜团体的恐怖主义。究其产生根源，则是政治和经济利益的冲突。     

Terrorism and the media

The linguistic turn in political science is an important step toward more sophisticated political knowledge. Greater awareness of political language implies attention to words such as reason. Reason is central to modern political discourse because of its historical and cultural importance and because of the contemporary dominance of the rational choice paradigm. Reason the concept therefore justifies closer scrutiny of reason the word. The meaning of reason is constructed as a variable. Standing by itself, reason seems relatively shapeless and empty; dictionary definitions are circular and tautological, although some subtle nuances derive from the network of reason's root words. Most of the variance in the meaning of reason is determined by other words that surround it, with a significant portion of reason's meaning being defined by its context. Anterior meaning shifters, nominal referents, spatiotemporal modifiers, and textual narrative all surround reason and fix it in a large lattice. The meaning of reason in use varies continuously. From this perspective, it becomes clear how reason functions as an important rhetorical trope in political discourse. Its plasticity and flexibility help reason stimulate and evoke variable mental images and responses in different settings and situations, all the more important because these go largely unnoticed. The example of reason of state shows reason's rhetorical power and privilege, its normative dimension, its persuasiveness, and its consequences. Seen in this light, a weak version of reason of state is preferable to a strong one. Pluralistic reason opens new paths for democratic thought and political action.     

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.     

Pathways into Terrorism: Understanding Entry into and Support for Terrorism in Asia

ABSTRACT

How do individuals join Islamist extremist groups? Why do individuals support such groups? What factors contribute to a decision to join? What are the pathways into Islamist extremist groups? Drawing on examples from Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia and the Philippines, the articles in this special issue address these critically important questions drawing on original fieldwork, new datasets and large scale national survey research. These articles explore the experiences and perceptions of men and women, South and Southeast Asians, living in majority Muslim and non-Muslim nations. Collectively, they illustrate the importance of social bonds&kinship ties, friendship, teacher-student ties and online relationships in creating a powerful sense of community that fosters a sense of belonging and eventual commitment. The goal of this special issue is to highlight the contributions that Asian cases can make to the often Middle Eastern and European-centric discourses on radicalization, joining and support for militancy.     

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.     

The Challenges of Conceptualizing Terrorism

This analysis begins by exploring various reasons that the concept of terrorism has evaded a widely agreed upon definition for so long despite the efforts of so many writers. Emphasis is placed on the difficulties associated with all “essentially contested concepts.” In addition, the investigation calls attention to such problems as conceptual “stretching” and “traveling.” In an effort to solve the difficulties, the inquiry attempts to determine a consensus definition of terrorism by turning to an empirical analysis of how the term has been employed by academics over the years. Specifically, the well-known definition developed by Alex Schmid, based upon responses to a questionnaire he circulated in 1985, is compared with the way the concept has been employed by contributors to the major journals in the field: Terrorism, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, and Terrorism and Political Violence. The 22 “definitional elements” of which Schmid's definition is composed are compared to the frequency with which they appear in the professional journals. If these elements appear frequently in both the Schmid definition and those employed by the journal contributors, they are then used to form a consensus definition of the concept. The most striking feature of this academic consensus over the meaning of terrorism is the virtual absence of references to the psychological element, heretofore widely thought to be at the heart of the concept.     

The Stagnation in Terrorism Research

Despite over a decade of government funding and thousands of newcomers to the field of terrorist research, we are no closer to answering the simple question of “What leads a person to turn to political violence?” The state of stagnation with respect to this issue is partly due to the government strategy of funding research without sharing the necessary primary source information with academia, which has created an unbridgeable gap between academia and the intelligence community. This has led to an explosion of speculations with little empirical grounding in academia, which has the methodological skills but lacks data for a major breakthrough. Most of the advances in the field have come from historical archival research and analysis of a few field interviews. Nor has the intelligence community been able to achieve any breakthrough because of the structure and dynamic of this community and its lack of methodological rigor. This prevents creative analysis of terrorism protected from political concerns. The solution to this stagnation is to make non-sensitive data available to academia and to structure more effective discourse between the academic and intelligence communities in order to benefit from the complementary strengths in these two communities.