Chapter One: The Strategies of Terrorism

Abstract

Like all other terrorist movements, al-Qaeda will end. While it has traits that exploit and reflect the current international context, it is not utterly without precedent: some aspects of al-Qaeda are unusual, but many are not. Terrorist groups end according to recognisable patterns that have persisted for centuries, and they reflect, among other factors, the counter-terrorist policies taken against them. It makes sense to formulate those policies with a specific image of an end in mind. Understanding how terrorism ends is the best way to avoid being manipulated by the tactic. There is vast historical experience with the decline and ending of terrorist campaigns, yet few policymakers are familiar with it. This paper first explains five typical strategies of terrorism and why Western thinkers fail to grasp them. It then describes historical patterns in ending terrorism to suggest how insights from that history can lay a foundation for more effective counter-strategies. Finally, it extracts policy prescriptions specifically relevant to ending the campaign of al-Qaeda and its associates, moving towards a post al-Qaeda world.

Notes

1. ‘Terrorist group’ means a non-state group that uses the tactic of terrorism – or the threat or use of violence against noncombatants or civilians – to accomplish its political aims. Some states also use state organs for the purpose of inspiring terror, whether against their own citizens or internationally. Indeed, over the course of the centuries, in wars, conflicts and brutal domestic crackdowns, states have been responsible for far more violence against civilians, including crimes against humanity, violations of the laws of war and genocide. But state violence is not the main focus of this paper.

2. There may be parallels between the decisions made by terrorist leaders and those made by state governments. Overwhelming evidence indicates that, while it is an illegitimate tactic, terrorism is carried out by rational human beings who calculate the costs and benefits of attacks. See, for example, Martha Crenshaw, ‘The Logic of Terrorism: Terrorist Behavior as a Product of Strategic Choice’, in Walter Reich (ed.), Origins of Terrorism: Psychologies, Ideologies, Theologies, States of Mind (Washington DC: The Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 1998), pp. 7–24.

3. I explain the historical dimension of terrorism's evolution in more depth in ‘Behind the Curve: Globalization and International Terrorism’, International Security, vol. 27, no. 3, Winter 2002–2003, pp. 30–58.

4. Thomas Schelling's concept of ‘coercion’ is the use or threat of force. As further developed in the writings of Alexander George, coercion involves positive incentives, such as diplomacy, as well as negative actions that hurt the target government. Lawrence Freedman also argues that strategic coercion may involve deterrence. Because non-state actors do not have the full range of positive and negative incentives available to states, compellence – a subset of coercion which means the use of threats to influence another actor to stop an unwanted behaviour or to start doing something a group wants it to do – more precisely describes what terrorism tries to accomplish. Thomas Schelling, Arms and Influence (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1966); Alexander L. George and William E. Simons (eds), The Limits of Coercive Diplomacy, revised edition (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1994); and Lawrence Freedman, Strategic Coercion: Concepts and Cases (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), fn. 1, p. 326.

5. See, for example, Juliet Lodge, Terrorism: A Challenge to the State (London: St Martin's Press, 1981).

6. This kind of thinking also removes the imperative to grapple with the divergent strategic thinking and worldview of the attacker. A Western economic model of two ‘rational’ actors is enough.

7. For figures, see Audrey Kurth Cronin, ‘Rethinking Sovereignty: American Strategy in the Age of Terrorism’, Survival, vol. 44, no. 2, Summer 2002, pp. 119–39.

8. An argument about the effectiveness of terrorism as a strategy of attrition, particularly forcing states to withdraw from territory, is provided by Andrew H. Kydd and Barbara F. Walter, ‘The Strategies of Terrorism’, International Security, vol. 31, no. 1, Summer 2006, pp. 49–80. In addition to the strategies mentioned here, Kydd and Walter include spoiling and outbidding. But spoiling applies only to specific situations such as negotiations, and outbidding refers only to competition between rival terrorist groups. Both are tactics (or process goals); neither directly addresses a campaign's overall purpose (or outcome goals). See the argument in my forthcoming How Terrorism Ends, Chapter 3.

9. See for example Daniel G. Arce and Todd Sandler, ‘Terrorist Signalling and the Value of Intelligence’, British Journal of Political Science, vol. 37, no. 4, October 2007, pp. 573–86.

10. But states are just as likely to respond by redoubling their efforts, as the Russians did in Chechnya and the Indians did in Kashmir.

11. If the main target of attacks were the US military in Iraq, this argument would be more convincing. The overwhelming tendency to kill Iraqi security forces and Iraqi civilians does not support it, and most of the suicide attackers are not Iraqi. See Mohammed M. Hafez, Suicide Bombers in Iraq: The Strategy and Ideology of Martyrdom (Washington DC: US Institute of Peace Press, 2007), especially pp. 214–15.

12. By incorporating both combatants and non-combatants into what he calls ‘suicide terrorism’, Pape departs from the widespread practice that designates terrorism as an illegitimate tactic primarily because it targets noncombatants. Many operations target military forces and are therefore guerrilla or insurgent operations. It is no wonder that Pape concludes that their purpose is to force a military operation to end. The commonality in the attacks he studies is the suicide of the operative, not the use of terrorism. Robert A. Pape, Dying To Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism (New York: Random House, 2005).

13. Ibid., p. 30.

14. This argument builds on the excellent overview of terrorism's strategies provided by Martha Crenshaw, ‘Terrorism and Global Security’, in Chester A. Crocker, Fen Osler Hampson and Pamela Aall (eds), Leashing the Dogs of War: Conflict Management in a Divided World (Washington DC: US Institute of Peace Press, 2007), pp. 73–5.

15. Walter Laqueur calls Heinzen's Der Mord (‘Murder’) ‘the most important ideological statement of early terrorism’. The quote is from Heinzen's Der Mord as reproduced in Walter Laqueur (ed.), Voices of Terror (New York: Reed Press, 2004), p. 50.

16. Serge Stepniak-Kravchinski, Underground Russia (London, 1883), reprinted in Voices of Terror, p. 93.

17. Joseph Conrad, The Secret Agent (London: Penguin Classics, 2007), p. 268.

18. On Princip's naiveté, see Adam Roberts, ‘The “War on Terror” in Historical Perspective’, Survival, vol. 47, no. 2, Summer 2005, p. 107.

19. The Black-and-Tans who fought the Irish revolutionaries in the early twentieth century are another example. Their methods were effective, but brutal. See David Fromkin, ‘The Strategy of Terrorism’, Foreign Affairs, vol. 53, no. 4, July 1975, pp. 686–7. One of the best known twentieth-century theorists of efforts to provoke the state into repression is Carlos Marighella, whose Minimanual of the Urban Guerrilla (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1971) is well known, particularly among Latin American revolutionaries.

20. Included here might be the fascist Romanian Iron Guard and Weimar Germany's Organisation Counsel. Two apparent associates of the Organisation Counsel carried out the 1921 assassination of Minister of Finance Matthias Erzberger and the 1922 assassination of Foreign Minister Walther Rathenau.

21. Crenshaw, ‘Terrorism and Global Security’, pp. 73–4.

22. Rami Khouri, ‘Algeria's Terrifying But Unsurprising Agony’, Middle East Review of International Affairs, no. 5, March 1998; and Kydd and Walter, ‘The Strategies of Terrorism’, p. 67.

23. Combat-18's document read: ‘If this is done regularly, effectively, and brutally, the aliens will respond by attacking the whites at random, forcing them off the fence and into self-defence’. Stuart Millar, ‘We're At War and If That Means More Bombs, So Be It…’, Guardian Unlimited, 27 April 1999, http://www.guardian.co.uk/bombs/Story/O,,204779,00.html. See also Paul Harris, ‘Far Right Plot To Provoke Race Riots’, Observer, 2 June 2001, http://www.guardian.co.uk.

24. Originally part of the Uruguayan National Liberation Movement, the group named itself Tupamaros in honour of José Condorcanqui, who led a failed revolt against Spanish rule in 1780 and was executed in 1782. The Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement in Peru and the Tupamaro Revolutionary Movement in Venezuela also hark back to Condorcanqui. Background on Uruguay's political development is drawn from Jeffrey Cason, ‘Electoral Reform and Stability in Uruguay’, Journal of Democracy, vol. 11, no. 2, April 2000, pp. 86–7.

25. Fernando Lopez-Alves, ‘Political Crises, Strategic Choices and Terrorism: The Rise and Fall of the Uruguayan Tupamaros’, Terrorism and Political Violence, vol. 1, no. 2, April 1989, p. 225.

26. Ironically, the Tupamaros greeted this development with pleasure, seeing military activity as evidence of the collapse of corrupt institutions and proof of their effectiveness in provoking a response. The Tupamaros switched from urban terrorism to a rural-based guerrilla strategy; this probably facilitated the military victory, as the military were trained to engage in counter-insurgency and the Tupamaros did not have extensive rural support.

27. Lopez-Alves, ‘Political Crises, Strategic Choices and Terrorism’, p. 225. Another source for casualty figures is the MIPT Terrorism Knowledge Base, http://www.tkb.org. Strategies of polarisation can develop into the kind of intimidation strategies that are common in domestic terrorism when a group becomes strong enough to act as a military organisation and hold territory at least temporarily within a state. Insurgencies often use intimidation to prevent a population from supporting the government.

28. Mobilisation is not the same as an ‘advertising strategy’, which implies drumming up superficial, short-term attention to a cause. Mobilisation is a much more sophisticated, long-term goal of terrorist groups behaving as social movements.

29. K.G. Coffman and A.M. Odlyzko, ‘The Size and Growth Rate of the Internet’, First Monday, AT & T Labs Research, 2 October 1998, http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue3_10/coffman/; and World Internet Usage Statistics at http://internetworldstats.com/stats3.htm.

30. A.T. Kearney, ‘Measuring Globalization: Economic Reversals, Forward Momentum’, Foreign Policy, no. 141, March- April 2004, pp. 54–69.

31. See, for example, Sidney Tarrow, Power in Movement: Social Movements and Contentious Politics, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998); and Doug McAdam, Sidney Tarrow and Charles Tilly, The Dynamics of Contention (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).

32. For more on this, see Audrey Kurth Cronin, ‘Cyber-mobilization: The New Levée en Masse’, Parameters, vol. 36, no. 2, Summer 2006, pp. 77–87.

33. This is one reason why such responses typically occur in the immediate aftermath of attacks, ‘while the situation is hot’, in former National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft's words. See Michelle L. Malvesti, ‘Explaining the United States’ Decision to Strike Back at Terrorists’, Terrorism and Political Violence, vol. 13, no. 2, Summer 2001, p. 95.

34. One US poll found 71% in favour of military retaliation days after 11 September. See ‘Poll: Shock Gives Way to Anger’, CBS News, 13 September 2001, http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2001/09/13/archive/main311139.shtml. On 17 September, Gallup quoted a figure closer to 90%. See ‘Support for Military Action Against Terrorist Attackers’, CNN.com/Community, 17 September 2001, http://archives.cnn.com/2001/COMMUNITY/09/17/newport/index.html. A similar poll in the UK weeks later found that 70% supported military retaliation. See ‘The Observer Poll Results’, Observer, 7 October 2001, http://politics.guardian.co.uk/conservatives2001/story/0,,564832,00.html. The figures in France and Italy were 68% and 88% respectively. See ‘EU Leaders To Hold Emergency Summit on Security’, Daily Telegraph, 18 September 2001, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2001/09/18/wdip18.xml.

35. Fear is the desired reaction on the part of the targeted population, but inspiration is the reaction intended from potential constituents.