Terrorism

III

Causes of Terrorism

Terrorism has occurred throughout history for a variety of reasons. Its causes can be historical, cultural, political, social, psychological, economic, or religious—or any combination of these. Some countries have proven to be particularly susceptible to terrorism at certain times, as Italy and West Germany were during the 1970s. Terrorist violence escalated precipitously in those two countries for a decade before declining equally dramatically. Other countries, such as Canada and The Netherlands, have proven to be more resistant, and have experienced only a few isolated terrorist incidents.

In general, democratic countries have provided more fertile ground for terrorism because of the open nature of their societies. In such societies citizens have fundamental rights, civil liberties are legally protected, and government control and constant surveillance of its citizens and their activities is absent. By the same token, repressive societies, in which the government closely monitors citizens and restricts their speech and movement, have often provided more difficult environments for terrorists. But even police states have not been immune to terrorism, despite limiting civil liberties and forbidding free speech and rights of assembly. Examples include Russia under tsarist rule and the Communist-ruled Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, as well as the People's Republic of China, Myanmar, and Laos.

In broad terms the causes that have commonly compelled people to engage in terrorism are grievances borne of political oppression, cultural domination, economic exploitation, ethnic discrimination, and religious persecution. Perceived inequities in the distribution of wealth and political power have led some terrorists to attempt to overthrow democratically elected governments. To achieve a fairer society, they would replace these governments with socialist or communist regimes. Left-wing terrorist groups of the 1960s and 1970s with such aims included Germany’s Baader-Meinhof Gang, Italy’s Red Brigades, and the Weather Underground (see Weathermen) in the United States. Other terrorists have sought to fulfill some mission that they believe to be divinely inspired or millennialist (related to the end of the world). (See Millennium). The Japanese religious cult Aum Shinrikyo, responsible for a nerve gas attack on the Tokyo subway in 1995 that killed 12 people, falls into this category. Still other terrorists have embraced comparatively more defined and comprehensible goals such as the re-establishment of a national homeland (for example, Basque separatists in Spain) or the unification of a divided nation (Irish nationalists in Northern Ireland).

Finally, some terrorists are motivated by very specific issues, such as opposition to legalized abortion or nuclear energy, or the championing of environmental concerns (see Environment) and animal rights. They hope to pressure both the public and its representatives in government to enact legislation directly reflecting their particular concern. Militant animal rights activists, for example, have used violence against scientists and laboratory technicians in their campaign to halt medical experimentation involving animals. Radical environmentalists have sabotaged logging operations and the construction of power grids to protest the spoiling of natural wilderness areas. Extremists who oppose legalized abortion in the United States have attacked clinics and murdered doctors and other employees in hopes of denying women the right to abortion.

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National governments have at times aided terrorists to further their own foreign policy goals. So-called state-sponsored terrorism, however, falls into a different category altogether. State-sponsored terrorism is a form of covert (secret) warfare, a means to wage war secretly through the use of terrorist surrogates (stand-ins) as hired guns. The U.S. Department of State designates countries as state sponsors of terrorism if they actively assist or aid terrorists, and also if they harbor past terrorists or refuse to renounce terrorism as an instrument of policy.

State sponsorship has proven invaluable to some terrorist organizations—by supplying arms, money, and a safe haven, among other things. In doing so, it has transformed ordinary groups, with otherwise limited capabilities, into more powerful and menacing opponents. State sponsorship can also place at terrorists’ disposal the resources of an established country’s diplomatic, military, and intelligence services. These services improve the training of terrorists and facilitate planning and operations. Finally, governments have paid terrorists handsomely for their services. They thereby turn weak and financially impoverished groups into formidable, well-endowed terrorist organizations with an ability to attract recruits and sustain their struggle.

The U.S. Department of State has designated seven countries as state sponsors of terrorism: Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Cuba, North Korea, and Sudan. In the year 2000, it named Iran as the most active supporter of terrorism for aid to groups such as Hezbollah, Hamas, and Palestine Islamic Jihad. Although the former Taliban government in Afghanistan sponsored al-Qaeda, the radical group led by Saudi exile Osama bin Laden, the United States did not recognize the Taliban as a legitimate government and thus did not list it as a state sponsor of terrorism.

IV

The Increasing Deadliness of Terrorist Attacks

Although the total number of terrorist incidents worldwide declined during the 1990s, the number of people killed in terrorist incidents increased. Thus, while terrorists may have become less active, they also became alarmingly more lethal. One key factor behind this trend is the amount of terrorism motivated by religious views, as were the attacks on New York City’s World Trade Center and the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, on September 11, 2001 (see September 11 Attacks). Terrorism motivated by religion has frequently led to acts of violence with higher levels of fatalities than the relatively more targeted incidents of violence perpetrated by many secular (nonreligious) terrorist organizations.

Another key factor that has contributed to terrorism’s rising deadliness is the ease of access to a range of low-tech and high-tech weapons. At the low-end of the weapons spectrum, terrorists rely on guns and bombs, as they have for more than a century. At the high end of the spectrum, there is evidence that groups such as al-Qaeda seek to acquire chemical, biological, and even nuclear weapons (see Chemical and Biological Warfare; Nuclear Weapons). Other terrorist groups, such as Aum Shinrikyo, already have carried out terrorist attacks using biological and chemical weapons. It is feared that the nuclear weapons stockpiles of the former Soviet Union could produce an international black market in fissionable materials that terrorists might potentially obtain. Finally, in the middle range of the weapons spectrum the world is awash in sophisticated items available to terrorists everywhere, including plastic explosives and hand-held, precision-guided surface-to-air missiles (SAMs).

An increase of suicide attacks has also contributed to terrorism’s rising death count. Suicide attacks differ from other terrorist operations, because the perpetrator’s own death is a requirement for the attack’s success. Suicide bombers, therefore, are typically highly motivated, passionately dedicated individuals who decide voluntarily or upon persuasion to surrender their lives in fulfillment of their mission.

A wave of suicide attacks began in 1981 in Beirut, Lebanon, when a group called al-Dawa used a car bomb to blow up the Iraqi Embassy. Al-Dawa, (“the call” in Arabic, as in “the call for Holy War”) was a terrorist organization composed of Shia Muslims from Iraq who were backed by Iran. (Muslims belonging to the Shia branch of Islam form a minority in Iraq but the majority in Iran.) The Beirut attack killed 61 people and wounded more than 100 others. In 1983 a truck filled with explosives drove into the U.S. embassy in Beirut, killing 49 and wounding 120 others. It was followed later that year by a suicide bombing of U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, which killed 241 persons. A group called Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for both attacks. Another suicide bombing destroyed a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1994, killing 96 persons. More recently, al-Qaeda staged suicide attacks on the United States embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, causing nearly 300 deaths; on a U.S. Navy warship the U.S.S. Cole in 2000, causing 19 deaths; and on the World Trade Center and Pentagon in 2001, causing about 3,000 deaths. Many of the attacks carried out by Palestinian organizations, such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad, in Israel and the Occupied Territories have involved suicide bombings. Other terrorist groups also have adopted this tactic, including Tamil separatists fighting in Sri Lanka and India, and Kurdish separatists in Turkey. These separatists belong to ethnic minorities that seek to set up separate homelands.

Terrorists today claim credit less frequently for their attacks than they once did, a fact that also reflects terrorism’s increasing deadliness. Unlike today’s reticent terrorists, the more traditional terrorist groups of the 1970s and 1980s not only issued communiqués explaining why they perpetrated an attack but also boasted proudly after a particularly destructive or deadly operation. The current trend toward less communication implies that violence may be less a means to an end than an end in itself for some terrorist groups. In other words, terrorists today may use violence simply as vengeance or punishment rather than as a means to achieve political change. Therefore, their actions require no explanation or justification outside the terrorist group itself or its supporters.

V

Characteristics of Terrorist Attacks

A

Planning and Organization

All terrorists share one characteristic: They never commit actions randomly or senselessly. Every terrorist wants an attack to generate maximum publicity because media attention helps achieve the intimidation needed for terrorism’s success. Accordingly, terrorist acts are carefully planned. Testimony by a terrorist convicted in the 1998 bombing of the U.S. embassy in Kenya revealed that al-Qaeda spent nearly five years planning the attack.

Several essential elements go into planning a major terrorist attack. Planning begins with gathering detailed reconnaissance and intelligence about a target: its defenses, vulnerabilities, and patterns of daily activity. Meanwhile, logistics specialists ensure that all the supporting tasks are accomplished. These tasks include assembling the weapons and other supplies and communications equipment needed for the operation, arranging for safe houses and transportation for the terrorist attack team, and mapping escape routes. A bombmaker or other weapons expert often joins the final planning phases. Finally, after all the preparations have been completed, the operation is handed off to the team that carries out the attack. For security reasons separate teams that do not know one another execute each step, from planning to logistics, attack, and escape.

All terrorist groups share another basic characteristic: secrecy about their operations. Terrorism operates underground, concealed from the eyes of the authorities and from potential informants among the populace. To maintain secrecy, terrorist groups are often organized into cells, with each cell separate from other cells in the organization but working in harmony with them. A terrorist cell can be as small as two or three people, with only one person knowing someone in another cell. Should the authorities apprehend a member of one cell, they can obtain information only about the activities of that cell—or at most about an adjacent cell—and not about the entire organization. For this reason terrorists prefer this organizational structure of interconnected cells. The structure narrows, in pyramid fashion, as it rises toward the group’s senior command structure and leadership at the top, to whom very few have access.

B

Targets of Terrorism

Terrorism often targets innocent civilians in order to create an atmosphere of fear, intimidation, and insecurity. Some terrorists deliberately direct attacks against large numbers of ordinary citizens who simply happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

More selective terrorist attacks target diplomats and diplomatic facilities such as embassies and consulates; military personnel and military bases; business executives and corporate offices; and transportation vehicles and facilities, such as airlines and airports, trains and train stations, buses and bus terminals, and subways. Terrorist attacks on buildings or other inanimate targets often serve a symbolic purpose: They are intended more to draw attention to the terrorists and their cause than to destroy property or kill and injure persons, although death and destruction nonetheless often result.

Despite variations in the number of attacks from year to year, one feature of international terrorism has remained constant: The United States has been its most popular target. Since 1968 the United States has annually led the list of countries whose citizens and property were most frequently attacked by terrorists. Several factors can account for this phenomenon, in addition to America’s position as the sole remaining superpower and leader of the free world. These include the geographical scope and diversity of America’s overseas business interests, the number of Americans traveling or working abroad, and the many U.S. military bases around the world.

C

Weapons of Terrorism

Bombing historically has been the most common terrorist tactic. Terrorists have often relied on bombs because they provide a dramatic, yet fairly easy and often risk-free, means of drawing attention to themselves and their cause. Few skills are required to manufacture a crude bomb, surreptitiously plant it, and then be miles away when it explodes. Bombings generally do not require the same planning, organization, and knowledge required for more sophisticated operations, such as kidnapping, assassination, and assaults against well-defended targets.

Not surprisingly, the frequency of various types of terrorist attacks decreases in direct proportion to the complexity or sophistication required. Armed attacks historically rank as the second most-common terrorist tactic, followed by more complex operations such as assassination of heads of state or other well-protected people, kidnapping, hostage taking, and hijacking.

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