The misleading problem of failed states: a ‘socio-geography’ of terrorism in the post-9/11 era

Abstract

Contrary to a commonly held view, significant numbers of international terrorists do not come from failed states. Nor do failed states house many organisations that support terrorism. All states consistently fail some portions of their population. In fact, were we to generalise, it should only be along the following lines: from disenfranchised populations can come foot soldiers, from alienated populations can come terrorists. And these exist in pockets everywhere, including our own backyard. To the degree that these produce security problems, these problems are best handled by means other than direct military force.

Notes

1 National Strategy for Combating Terrorism, September 2006, p 16.

2 Condoleezza Rice, ‘The promise of democratic peace: why promoting freedom is the only realistic path to security’, Washington Post, 11 December 2005, B7.

3 Douglas Farah, ‘Salafists, China and West Africa's growing anarchy’, International Assessment and Strategy Center, at http://strategycenter.net/research/pubID.55, accessed 20 January 2006; Yochi J Dreazen & Philip Shishkin, ‘Mideast peril—growing concern: terrorist havens in “failed states”; instability in Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon raise risk that US seeks to address; a province's “execution unit”’, Wall Street Journal, 13 September 2006, A1; Rade Maroevic & Daniel Williams, ‘Terrorist cells find foothold in Balkans’, Washington Post, 1 December 2005, p 16; Ralph Peters, ‘Terror's new homeland’, New York Post, 31 May 2006; and Robert I Rotberg (ed), Battling Terrorism in the Horn of Africa, Washington, DC: World Peace Foundation and Brookings Institution Press, 2005, pp 1 – 22.

4 Dexter Filkins, ‘Foreign fighters captured in Iraq come from 27, mostly Arab, lands’, New York Times, 21 October 2005, A8; Marc Sageman, Understanding Terror Networks, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004; Terrorism to 2015, Monterey, CA: Naval Postgraduate School, 2004; The 9 – 11 Commission Report, New York: WW Norton, nd, p 232; and ‘List of individuals detained by the Department of Defense at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba from January 2002 through May 15, 2006’, at www.defenselinki.mil/pubs/FOI/detainees/detaineesfoiarelease15may2006.pdf, accessed 17 May 2006.

5 James Brandon, ‘To fight al Qaeda, US troops in Africa build schools instead’, Christian Science Monitor, 9 January 2006, p 1; Rotberg, Battling Terrorism in the Horn of Africa, pp 2, 45; and Stewart Patrick, ‘Weak states and global threats: fact or fiction?’, Washington Quarterly, 29, 2006, pp 27 – 53.

6 For an example of this, see The 9 – 11 Commission Report, pp 250 – 252.

7 Terrorism to 2015; and Douglas Farah, ‘The little explored offshore empire of the International Muslim Brotherhood’, International Assessment and Strategy Center, 18 April 2006, at www.strategycenter.nat, accessed 5 June 2006.

8 A point also made by Daniel Byman & Kenneth Pollack, ‘By any other name: the specter of civil war looms over Iraq’, Washington Post National Weekly Edition, p 21.

9 See, for instance, Robert Connor, ‘Defeating the modern asymmetric threat’, Masters thesis, Naval Postgraduate School, 2002.

10 For changes over time, see Walter Laqueur, The Age of Terrorism, Little, Brown, 1987; and Walter Laqueur, The New Terrorism, New York: Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 2001.

11 See Paul Richards, Fighting for the Rain Forest: War, Youth & Resources in Sierra Leone, Oxford: James Currey, 1996.

12 This was made especially clear to Simons in Freetown, Sierra Leone (September 2005), when a number of Sierra Leonean adults, watching scenes from a Spiderman movie, found the sheer size of New York City more mind boggling and less credible than a human with spiderlike powers.

13 This is not as far-fetched as it might sound. Not only were there fewer media outlets in 1972, but owners still tended to belong to the same establishment as those making US foreign policy.

14 The documentary film, One Day in September, graphically illustrates just how crude both terrorist and counter-terrorist techniques were 30-plus years ago compared with operations today—and vividly demonstrates the extent to which both have evolved significantly over time.

15 See, for instance, Tom Barnett, The Pentagon's New Map: War and Peace in the Twenty-first Century, New York: Putnam Adult, 2004; and Tony Zinni, The Battle for Peace: A Frontline Vision of America's Power and Purpose, Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, 2006.

16 This and other comments draw on the authors' experiences and observations in Africa and elsewhere over the past 20-plus years.

17 See, for instance, William Powers, Blue Clay People: Seasons on Africa's Fragile Edge, London: Bloomsbury, 2005.

18 Romeo Dallaire, Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda, Random House Canada, 2003, p 450; and Stephen Ellis, The Mask of Anarchy: The Destruction of Liberia and the Religious Dimension of an African Civil War, New York: New York University Press, 1999, pp 152, 165. See also Adam Roberts, The Wonga Coup: Guns, Thugs and a Ruthless Determination to Create Mayhem in an Oil-Rich Corner of Africa, New York: PublicAffairs, 2006.

19 On tanzanite, see Glenn Simpson & Robert Block, ‘Diary offers more on tanzanite, Al Qaeda link’, Wall Street Journal, 24 January 2002, B1.

20 For instance, consider the following headline and subheadline: ‘The court v the street: Felipe Calderon moves a step closer to the presidency but his opponent threatens to make Mexico ungovernable’, The Economist, 2 September 2006, p 35.

21 See, in particular, Joel Dyer, Harvest of Rage: Why Oklahoma City is only the Beginning, Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1997.

22 Terry McDermott, Perfect Soldiers, New York: HarperCollins, 2005.

23 For more, see Steve Marks, Tom Meer & Matthew Nilsen, ‘Manhunting: a methodology for finding persons of national interest’, Masters thesis, Naval Postgraduate School, 2005.

24 A point made early on by Ahmed Rashid, Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000; and more recently by Steve Coll, Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the cia, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001, London: Penguin, 2004.

25 Owen Bennett Jones, Pakistan: Eye of the Storm, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002, p 91.

26 For more, see Anna Simons, ‘Culture and deception’, mimeo, August 2003.

27 A point reiterated recently in ‘Heading for the beach: the state of Islam on Kenya's Swahili coast’, The Economist, 30 September 2006, p 58.