Deadliness, organisational change and suicide attacks: understanding the assumptions inherent in the use of the term ‘new terrorism’

Abstract

This study examines the use of the term ‘new terrorism’ in a sample of the literature on terrorism, to identify whether the term represents a stable concept within the field, is of analytic value to terrorism research or is a phrase that merely identifies an unquantified concept. A content analysis of articles published in the journal Studies in Conflict and Terrorism from 1992 to 2011 was used as a literature sample to identify the most frequently cited features of new terrorism. The results of the analysis demonstrate that there was little consistent use of the phrase ‘new terrorism’ and the most common feature linked to it was only present in 25% of the articles. Three of the prominent features discovered in the content analysis are examined in greater detail: increased deadliness, new organisational structures (in particular, the leaderless phenomenon) and suicide terrorism. A common claim in the literature – of a decrease in the frequency of the attacks but an increase in the lethality per attack – seems to have been a short-term trend between 1992 and 2005. Since this time, the trend has reversed. Historical analysis was used to assess the notion of change in the organisational structure. This analysis allowed the authors to identify precursors of the ‘new’ organisational structures. Early groups such as the Anarchists were found to use a similar concept of decentralised command with varying degrees of success. Similarly, historical precursors of suicide terrorism were found, even though the recent exponential growth in the use of suicide terrorism by modern terrorist organisations could be considered as quantitatively ‘new’. This study concludes that the new terrorism represents a loose association of tactics, provides limited value to terrorist research, and represents not a category identifiable by novel features, but rather a loose referral to the perceived importance and threat of terrorism.

Keywords:

• new terrorism
• organisational innovation
• deadliness
• suicide terrorism
• religious terrorism

New terrorism is a concept that has recently been used by many and questioned by few.

(Duyvesteyn 2004, p. 439)

Introduction

From an academic perspective, terrorism studies is a research area that is exceptionally complex. Given the strong emotional response terrorism can elicit from both contributors to and observers of the field (Weinberg et al. 2012), its national and international significance (Schmid 2012), its potential link to policy, its contemporaneous relevance and contested meanings (Gibbs 2012), terrorism studies encompass a vast divergence of positions and ideas. Furthermore, the existence of terrorism in times of war and in times of peace (Schmid and Jongman 1988), its focus on solution-based research and not merely the creation of knowledge (Bouhana and Wikstrom 2011) and the transient nature of its academic contributors (Silke 2004) make an already contested field infinitely more challenging. The study of terrorism is further complicated by the fact that its comprehensive analysis must span a number of academic disciplines, many of which have traditionally existed in analytic isolation. Regardless of the difficulties this entails, in particular the actual potential for interdisciplinary research, the true limitations emerge from the chronological and analytical immaturity of the field (Schmid and Jongman 1988, Silke 2002, 2007, Horgan 2005, Ranstorp 2007, Bouhana and Wikstrom 2011, Schmid 2011).

However, regardless of the difficulties inherent in studying terrorism, the consequences of failing to understand and thus counter terrorism, ensures a pressing need to create knowledge of and around the phenomenon (Silke 2001, Spalek and Lambert 2008). This burden can significantly threaten the diligence and rigour needed in research and this is evidenced in the literature by the often generalised and simplified findings published on terrorism and its perpetrators, and the many assumptions that exist in the field (Crenshaw 2003, Jackson 2009), most likely due to the conceptual drought surrounding the phenomenon (Schmid and Jongman 1988, Ranstorp 2009). To create further complexity, terrorism study is often concerned with why, rather than how, reflecting a desire to understand the morality, motivations and root causes that give rise to terrorism, rather than the processes and complex circumstances that surround the actions of terrorist perpetrators (Crelinsten 1987).

As English mentions (2009), the issues surrounding the study of terrorism relate on the one hand to knowing about terrorism in a practical way and theorising about terrorism in academic discussion on the other. Many of the issues that have emerged with the arrival of a (somewhat) coherent body of work referred to as terrorism studies are a result of the latter; notions of new terrorism versus old terrorism and debates around critical terrorism studies versus traditional terrorism studies etc. Knowing about terrorism and understanding terrorism is often times inhibited by the categories that we seek to impose on [terrorist] behaviours that cannot be understood using mono-dimensional explanations. If terrorism were simply the sum of the individual behaviours that result in violence for political purpose, then knowing terrorism would not be an issue; however, terrorism is much more than that (Wilkinson 2012). Terrorism is a social and political phenomenon, an academic subject, a tragic personal experience, a pejorative label and a significant issue for the media. Expecting to capture this complexity in dichotomous categories is unrealistic, theoretically improbable and as with all issues in terrorism research, often reflective of a political position that tarnishes the research from the beginning.

The need for the complexity of thinking about terrorism is evident, particularly since the attacks of 9/11 in the United States, and the adoption by many policy-makers, commentators, ‘experts’ and academics of the label new terrorism (Crenshaw 2003). After 9/11 this ‘new terrorism’ was divorced from that which went before and some believed that as a category it would render previous analysis of terrorism obsolete (Burnett and Whyte 2005). Since the attacks in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania, the perceived increase in the personal, social and particularly the political consequences of terrorism have led to an overinflated sense of risk, a reliance on worst-case scenario approaches, an overestimation of the global impact of attacks (except as a self-fulfilling prophecy) and a general sensationalisation and exceptionalism around the notion ‘new terrorism’ (Kegley 2008).

The emergence of new terrorism as a descriptive term in the academic literature, one that originally materialised in the 1990s (some say even as early as the 1980s – see Guelke 1998, Hoffman 1999, Laqueur 1999, Duyvesteyn 2004), but truly came to prominence after the attacks of 9/11, served to lay the groundwork for a tabula rasa approach to terrorism and counterterrorism (CT) (Burnett and Whyte 2005, Spencer 2006). This ahistorical approach to the field (Crenshaw 2003, Duyvesteyn 2004) served to sever the possibilities for analysis from the many rich academic heritages, preventing the longitudinal comparison of events that were, if not contextually similar, certainly behaviourally and conceptually comparable. But regardless of the problems encountered by the dismissal of the relevance of what went before, a much more consequential issue exists for adherents to the new terrorism hypothesis; the absolute ambiguity and short-sightedness that accompanies the use of the term (Jackson et al. 2009).

These issues complicate our ability to think analytically about terrorism and contribute to the many problems, often quoted (Silke 2007), that plague the analysis of terrorism in the academic arena. Adding complexity in an exponential fashion, the events of 9/11 signalled a transition in the treatment of terrorism as an academic subject and, for many, a turning point in the terrorist phenomenon (Kegley 2008): most significantly the aforementioned belief in the emergence of a qualitatively ‘new’ type of terrorism, something categorically different than what went before, in need of a new method of response. Although a belief in the existence of a new terrorism did not emerge solely because of the events of 9/11, this and subsequent linked events signalled a widespread acceptance of the term (at least for a while) in the literature (Crenshaw 2003, Duyvesteyn 2004, Wilkinson 2006). The reflection of this idea in the literature on terrorism has fuelled the acceptance of many ungrounded assumptions concerning the fundamental reorganisation of the phenomenon of terrorism (Jackson 2009). Whether in fact there has been a change, or as is the case for many researchers, policy-makers and practitioners, a shift in our perception of the importance and threat of terrorism, is an issue that needs to be revisited in order to create a solid basis for thinking about terrorism, a grounded framework for academic analysis and to avoid the essentialism that results in an ahistorical, sensationalist and moralist approach to terrorism studies.

The use of the term ‘new terrorism’

As is the case with all emerging fields in the social sciences, definitions are routinely contested, particularly where topics of study clearly cross disciplinary boundaries; ‘terrorism’ and ‘new terrorism’ are no exceptions. Furthermore, the complexity of the social, political, media, policy and criminal justice implications of terrorism further add to this definitional quandary. Given the human cost of terrorism, and thus the moral implications that arise when considering the issue, often the mere use of the term implicates the user in the epistemological framework of the labeller (Horgan 2005). Even more problematic is the position of a selection of scholars and practitioners who support the ‘know it when I see it’ perspective on terrorism (Mockaitis 2006). Perhaps for those who see terrorism and engage with it on the ground, this ‘functional’ approach may seem the only option to separate their reality from the lofty debates emerging from international organisations and academia, but the ability to analyse a social phenomenon, separate from a reaction to its enactment, is paramount if we are to create a theoretically sound and ethically valid body of knowledge around terrorism. Analyses on this scale need to be based on a solid empirical framework, not the commentary and thought piece of those who contribute in an emotive, reactive and at times inaccurate fashion to the discourse on terrorism.

The use of the term ‘new terrorism’ in the literature on terrorism is noticeable, particularly after the events of 9/11 (Tucker 2001, Wilkinson 2006, English 2009, Jackson et al. 2011). This usage is often related to the success and scale of individual attacks and the subsequent global reaction to these events. However, as stated by English (2009, p. 14), it is worth noting the ‘existence over time of so many supposedly new terrorisms’. Consequently, not all academics accept the label ‘new’ in relation to terrorism. Duyvesteyn (2004) points out that the widespread use of the term ‘new terrorism’ emerged with the ‘tidal wave of literature’ that appeared post-9/11, produced in an effort to understand and explain these coordinated events. Much of this literature focused on these events in isolation, without reference to context, history or the existing body of academic work that dealt with terrorism, and this problematically served to merely limit our understanding of terrorist phenomena and rehash old debates (e.g. debates about terrorist psychopathology – see Horgan 2005) in an effort to gain a speedy yet superficial understanding of one of the most mediated events in recent history (Spence et al. 2006).

This article does not attempt to resolve or even address the issues around a definition of terrorism; many scholars have attempted this, some more successfully than others (see Schmid and Jongman 2005). Suffice to say, given the debate over the meaning of the word terrorism (see Weinberg et al. 2004, Wilkinson 2006, Jackson et al. 2011), it is perhaps unsurprising that there is no agreement on a definition of nor no consistency in the application of the term ‘new terrorism’; but, as a comparative term, it seems simpler to use, given the need to demonstrate difference rather than construct a category from scratch. This article seeks to investigate the use of the term ‘new terrorism’ in the academic literature, understand the concepts associated with this term, and compare the record of actual events with the perceptions around the phenomenon of so-called new terrorism.

What do we mean by ‘new terrorism’?

In the literature that subscribes to the notion of a new terrorism, the phenomenon is distinguished from the older or traditional terrorism, primarily by claims of a change in organisational structure (Wilkinson 2006), a new, more destructive attitude towards violence (Tucker 2001) and an espoused religious motivation (Laqueur 1999). Kegley (2008) identifies a list of features representative of the ‘new age of terrorism’. These include a global reach, an assumption about the desire of the perpetrators to cause the maximum possible bloodshed, a change in modus operandi (e.g. simultaneous attacks), a move away from a reliance on a state sponsor, employment of technologically advanced weaponry and support systems, an assumption about the psychological state of the perpetrators and a willingness to engage in suicide attacks (ibid.). In a similar vein, Laqueur (1999) predicted that as terrorist motivation moved in an apocalyptic direction (this is related to religious motivation), there would be an increased use of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) with a loosening of the (perceived) restraints that existed to prevent mass casualties in the Cold War period. Although Kegley's (2008) list is less emotive than Laqueur's (1999), the list represents generalised features across a range of groups rather than a set of ‘new’ features common across groups or categories of groups (e.g. nationalist/separatist). Rapoport's (2008) wave model of terrorist motivation, where he identifies the current terrorism (or fourth wave of terrorism) to be predominantly associated with a religious motive and in particular, Al Qaeda, ties in with the various analyses that propose the notion of new terrorism. Rapoport (2002) refers to the use of different methods than that which went before (save for the first wave), in particular, suicide terrorism, but also a simplified interpretation of the motives for this new wave (religious rather than religio-political and void of a local element).

Before continuing, it is worth noting that terrorism studies, while increasingly used as a descriptor of a coherent body of work, cannot, if one moves beyond the main journal contributions to the field, reasonably be described as such field of study. It is inherently multidisciplinary and as such, it is difficult to summarise and generalise about the area. However, within what is increasingly referred to as traditional terrorism studies (Jackson et al. 2011), there has been, if not widespread, at least an extensive adoption of some or all the ideas associated with the term ‘new terrorism’. However, there is also a significant and increasing contribution to the field of terrorism studies by authors who do not see the term ‘new terrorism’ as a useful descriptor of post 9/11 terrorism and who are highly critical of the assumptions underpinning the use of both the terms terrorism and new terrorism (Jackson et al. 2011). These authors have made a significant contribution to the field of terrorism studies, particularly with regard to spurring debate around the perceptions of terrorism, its portrayal in academia and the need for an in-depth critique of the boundaries of terrorism studies.

This article does not seek to summarise the field of terrorism studies, but to highlight the use of the term ‘new terrorism’ and its associated assumptions. It also seeks to address the issue (regardless of the existence or otherwise of such a phenomenon) of consistency of use of the term and relate this use to actual terrorist events, thus hoping to identify the concepts most often associated with the use of the term ‘new terrorism’ and how these concepts relate to the actual occurrences of the violence they refer to.

Methodology

This study uses a small sample of the literature on terrorism from the journal Studies in Conflict in Terrorism (SCT) to examine the use of the term ‘new terrorism’ since the early 1990s, the concepts associated with this use, and relate this use to records of actual terrorist events (as interpreted by the Global Terrorism Database or GTD). There are, naturally, a number of methodological weaknesses to this strategy, including the limitations of the database definitional parameters, the exclusion of a number of other journals that deal with terrorism, a narrow focus on the main concepts of new terrorism as used by the authors of the articles in question, the exclusion of some exceptionally critical work on the notion of new terrorism that appears in formats other than academic journals, the relatively short period of time under review in the analysis, the problems associated with the use of database statistics, and the inclusion of a broad spectrum of terrorist events without acknowledgement of the context (within an ongoing conflict or as isolated acts).

Although these weaknesses must be acknowledged, this study serves not to demonstrate conclusively whether there is or is not a new terrorism, nor qualify the use of the term, but merely to demonstrate how in the case of this journal (SCT) the use of the term and the main concepts associated with its use are related to actual recorded terrorist events in a small sample of the literature. This study seeks to demonstrate that, in fact, the main concepts that are regularly associated with new terrorism as a defining category are inconsistently applied and often unrelated to quantitative measures of terrorism events.

Results

Starting with Rapaport's (2008) wave model, we can see that this author identifies four major waves of terrorism: the Anarchists (1870–1910s), Nationalists (1920–1960s), New Left/Marxists (1960–1980s) and Religious (1970s onwards). The fourth wave of religious terrorism emerged from the Islamic revolution in Iran in 1979 and the invasion of Afghanistan by the Soviet Union. This model has been verified previously by Rasler and Thompson (2009) using data from the ITERATE database. The authors demonstrated that religiously motivated terrorism (including bombings, assassination and hostage-takings) since 1968 has increased in relation to other forms of terrorism (see Figure 1): Anarchist activities have remained low since a peak in the 1970s; Leftist/Marxist and Nationalist activities have declined in the 1990s and religious terrorism has increased sharply from the late 1990s. ¹ So, fundamentally, from this analysis, it is obvious that there has been an identifiable increase in the incidence of religiously motivated terrorism, ² establishing that at least in the terms defined by the authors (Rasler and Thompson 2009), the current dominant wave of terrorism can be considered to be primarily religiously motivated. This finding supports one of the main assumptions of new terrorism that it is primarily religiously motivated.

Figure 1. Terrorist incidents by sub-category (Rasler and Thompson 2009). Data post-1968.

To get a wider sense of the origins of concepts linked to new terrorism as associated in the literature, a content analysis of a sample of the terrorism literature was undertaken. An analysis of the co-location of the terms ‘new’ and ‘terrorism’ in journal articles by date, topic and terrorist organisation gives an interesting overview of the features and development of the term new terrorism, as represented in the literature. An online searchable multidisciplinary terrorism journal (SCT) was used for this analysis. SCT was chosen as it provided the longest full-article electronic access to articles of the main terrorist journals (1992–2011). ³ This 19-year period places the use of ‘new’ and ‘terrorism’ in an academic historical context, relative to the systematic study of terrorism. Naturally, the limitations to this method are the relatively small sample size, given the body of terrorism studies literature, and the focus on one specific publication. However, as an investigative piece of work into the use of the term ‘new terrorism’, this study will serve as a pilot to other authors seeking empirical evidence for the use of concepts in this field.

The word ‘new’ was searched for in the full text of the articles. ⁴ The simple nature of the search was used to find all elements of terrorism that people have considered ‘new’ – a much wider view than the use of the term ‘new terrorism’. A total of 615 articles were returned from the initial search. These results were filtered by identifying the context of the use ⁵ of the word ‘new’ to remove non-relevant articles (e.g. about conflict in general or new CT policies). After filtering, 129 articles remained.

Figure 2 shows the use of the word ‘new’ in relation to terrorism in the journal SCT over time. It appears that the term was used sporadically in the mid- to late 1990s. It was more frequently used post-2001, with a peak in the late 2000s. This fits with Duyvesteyn's (2004) observations that there was an exponential growth in the use of the term after the 9/11 events – possibly as a way of dealing with the shock of the attacks, the perception of the attacks on US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, and a misuse of the term related to this, or the large influx of academics and commentators who wished to contribute to the discussion on terrorism without the sufficient contextual background (Silke 2002). There seems to be a decline in use from 2008. However, there are still a large number of articles analysing the aspects of new terrorism in 2011, given that only one month of the journal had been published at the time of the study. The peak in 2007 and 2008 could be related to the events of July 7 in London in 2005, the emergence of a new journal in the field, Critical Studies on Terrorism and thus a renewed debate around the issue (see also Jackson 2005, Mockaitis 2006), but also a questioning of the rational of the Iraq war (given the troop surge) and a general weariness around the construction of Al Qaeda and the Afghan conflict.

Figure 2. The use of ‘new terrorism’ over time in articles from the journal SCT.

Interestingly, the association of new terrorism in the literature is not only related to Al Qaeda, as we see in Figure 3; a large number of the articles relate to terrorist groups in general (29.5%). These articles cover general trends in terrorist attacks rather than looking at specific groups. The next largest category relates to Al Qaeda (28.7%); Al Qaeda represents the archetypal ‘new terrorist’ group for many authors, but this is also indicative of the focus of terrorism research on Al Qaeda post-9/11.

Figure 3. The use of the term ‘new terrorism’ relating to different terrorist groups (most frequent references only).

More than 70 different groups were mentioned across the 129 articles, from the Russian Anarchists and Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA) to Al Qaeda and Al Qaeda-inspired groups. The term ‘new’ was seen to relate to a wide range of terrorist organisations. Twenty-two concepts relating to new terrorism were identified across these articles (see Table 1). The concept most linked to new terrorism is an increase in violence or an increased number of casualties. A large percentage of articles also identified flatter hierarchical structures or networks of individuals and small cells. This reflects the description of new terrorism as portrayed by authors such as Kegley (2008), Laqueur (1999) and Wilkinson (2006). However, it is worth noting that no one concept was present in more than 25% of articles. Therefore, the term ‘new terrorism’ is used to mean many different things to many different authors.

Table 1. Concepts linked to ‘new terrorism’

Concept	Articles (%)
Increased violence/more deadly	24.03
New organisational structures	23.26
Religious motivation	22.48
WMD/CBRN	20.93
New technologies	20.16
Transnational terrorism/diaspora	20.16
Internet and cyber terrorism	17.05
Suicide bombings	16.28
Media manipulation/Internet media	6.98
Terror and crime	6.98
Women and children in suicide attacks	6.20
Less clear/unreasonable political aims/attacks not claimed	5.43
Less state sponsorship/non-state actors	5.43
Other: pyro-/agro-terrorism ^9	4.65
Lone wolf/self-starters	4.65
Decreasing number of attacks	3.10
Millennial	3.10
Home-grown terrorists	2.33
New tactics: hunger strikes/beheadings/vehicle-borne IED	2.33
Right wing	1.55
Single issue	0.78
Maritime	0.78

A principal component analysis with varimax rotation was conducted on a matrix representing the presence and absence of the concepts in each article to identify associated concepts. ⁶ Eleven factors were identified and a summary of the concepts with the highest loadings to each factor are given in Table 2. The 11 factors in total explained 66.0% of the variance in the data.

Table 2. Principal component analysis of the presence of concepts linked to ‘new terrorism’ across the articles from the journal SCT

Factor name	Main concepts	Loadings	Percentage of variance explained
Female/child suicide bombers	Suicide bombing	−0.834	7.45
	Female and children	−0.805
Dangerousness	Increased violence	0.580	6.98
	Fewer attacks	0.616
	Less clear political goals/unreasonable demands/attacks not claimed	0.761
Media and the Internet	Internet and cyber terrorism	0.697	6.47
	Manipulation of the media/Internet media	0.765
Transnational terrorism	Transnational terrorism/diaspora	0.717	5.80
	Maritime	0.734
Non-state	Less state sponsorship	0.437	6.07
New organisations	New organisational structures	−0.665	6.00
	WMD	0.474
	Lone wolf	−0.698
New tactics	New technology	0.642	6.06
	WMD	0.451
	New tactics	0.471
Religiously inspired violence	Increased violence	0.434	6.33
	Religiously inspired groups	0.411
Less state sponsorship	Less state sponsorship/non-state actors	−0.539	5.31
Home-grown terrorism	Home-grown terrorism	−0.883	4.92
Single-issue terrorism	Single-issue groups	−0.952	4.64

The factors contain sensibly linked phenomena (e.g. media and the Internet) lending face validation to the constructs.

A number of significant findings can be drawn from this analysis.

•	The rise of female and child suicide bombings considered to be a new and significant variation of the existing suicide bombing phenomenon
•	There is a perceived increase in the deadliness and indiscriminate selection of primary victims 7
•	A belief in a decrease in the number of attacks occurring
•	The increase in violence is linked to a rise in religiously motivated terrorist groups.

This finding lends weight to the idea that ‘new terrorism’ and Rapoport's (2002) fourth wave of religious terrorism are at least partly describing the same phenomenon – although it is worth noting that only 22.48% of articles considered religious motivations to be a feature of new terrorism.

Increased deadliness

In this section, the data from the GTD (START 2010a) will be used to explore the claims identified from the analysis above that the number of terrorist attacks has decreased, but the number of dead and injured per attack has increased. There are a number of important caveats to place on any analysis using databases of terrorist incidents. Firstly, the data recorded are from publicly available sources such as news archives, other data sets, books and journals. This data collection philosophy, although sensible, introduces a number of biases – most notably that data represents only those attacks which are recorded, successful and importantly, categorised as terrorism, which is defined as

The threatened or actual use of illegal force and violence by a non-state actor to attain a political, economic, religious, or social goal through fear, coercion, or intimidation.

(GTD 2011)

Furthermore, the reliability of figures depends on the quality of the reports and the ability to triangulate sources. In the following analysis, no attempt has been made to filter these organisations further than that conducted by the GTD. A fuller analysis looking at these metrics for different sub-categories of terrorist motivations (e.g. religious or nationalist/separatist) could be conducted to identify trends by group type.

Three metrics were extracted from the database: the number of incidents, the average number of people injured per attack, and the average number of people killed per attack. As the GTD contains missing data (where the number of injuries or deaths was not known), the data were filtered out to ensure only the incidents with recorded values were included in the analysis.

The number of incidents peaked in 1992, before dropping to a plateau between 1998 and 2005 (see Figure 4). A quarter of the articles in the SCT content analysis reported a drop in the number of attacks with a corresponding increase in the deadliness of attack; much of this research relates to this period (Sheehan 2009). However, the number of attacks has increased and by 2008 had reached levels close to the peak in 1992. These data seem to disprove the ongoing applicability of the assertion that the number of attacks is reducing.

Figure 4. Number of attacks per year across all groups recorded on the GTD.

The average number of injuries per attack has, on the whole, increased over time (see Figure 5) – although it dropped between 2004 and 2008. If the attacks that did not result in injuries are taken out of the analysis, the increase in injuries per attack is less pronounced. The number of deaths per attack has remained reasonably constant between 1997 and 2008. This data would seem to disprove a general rise in average number of deaths per attack, although the number of injured per attack has risen over time. It is difficult to conclusively prove an increased deadliness, as databases do not and cannot collect data on the number of intended deaths and it is even more difficult to accurately record injuries. The reasons for any increases, whether considered to be because terrorists are less constrained by state sponsors (Richmond 2003), the effects of force (e.g. the Global War on Terror (WOT)) on oppositional violence (Sheehan 2009), an increase in religious or millennial motivations (Tan 2003) or other reasons, are also difficult to relate the findings on deadliness.

Figure 5. Number of deaths and injuries per attack across all groups recorded on the GTD.

New organisational forms

Organisations constantly undergo change to optimise their fit to the operational environment (Senior 2000). Change in terrorist organisations is no different (English 2009). Tushman et al. (1988) identify two different types of organisational change: convergent change and frame-breaking change. Convergent change involves small changes or fine-tuning to maintain the fit between an organisation's strategy, structure and processes and the external operating environment. Convergent change occurs most often in environments that can be forecasted using extrapolation or where opportunities for success are partially predictable (Ansoff and McDonnell 1990). Frame-breaking change occurs during periods of ‘unpredictable surprises’ (ibid.) in the operating environment.

Jackson et al. (2005) expands this model to consider the mechanisms of organisational learning, but this simple model is adequate for this discussion of the evolution and revolution of organisations in the terrorist domain. It could be said that terrorist strategy often involves strategic planning with the past response and possible future responses of the authorities calculated into any decision to act. Thus, the presumption exists that the CT authorities mount predictable responses to terrorist activities (e.g. reactionary policies in the aviation security domain such as the restrictions on liquids), and this offers terrorist organisations a relatively predictable operating environment.

Therefore, in response to the probable actions of the authorities, we might expect to see convergent changes in terrorist behaviour rather than frame-breaking change, which would indicate change to the fundamental nature and operation of the group. The label ‘new’ would seem to imply frame-breaking change across a large terrorist group or a substantial shift across a larger number of groups. Many authors, including Sageman (2008), claim that Al Qaeda and affiliated groups are representative of a frame-breaking change in terrorist organisation, specifically, a new organisational form – the networked organisation and the leaderless group. ⁸ This notion is also reflected in the use of new terrorism in the literature in this study, given that 23.26% of articles analysed linked new organisational structures to the notion of new terrorism.

Sageman (2008, p. 126) traces the trajectory of Al Qaeda from a cell-structured network organisation before the bombing of the USS Cole in 2000, to a more diffuse organisation. He offers that the Western response to these events and subsequently 9/11, ‘created a hostile environment’ for the central command of Al Qaeda. As communications became more difficult, the ability to conduct traditional command and control warfare broke down; communications degraded to sporadic communication, often using asynchronous methods such as video and audio recordings. This decentralisation has led Sageman to refer to Al Qaeda as a network, but also a leaderless organisation (ibid.).

However, it may be worth considering the necessary distinction between leadership and management. Leadership is about setting the strategic vision of an organisation and motivating and inspiring members and associates (Kotterman 2006). In contrast, management is about achieving that strategic vision through day-to-day activities (ibid.). Therefore, it may be more accurate to conceive of Al Qaeda as a networked, self-managing organisation with a strategic leader rather than a leaderless organisation – which would tie in the concepts associated with the use of the new terrorism in the literature (new organisational structure 23.26% and lone wolf/self starter 4.65%).

However, as an example of frame-breaking change this is somewhat problematic as it is neither innovative nor new. The Anarchists had, at their ideological centre, the notion of a leaderless organisation. The Anarchist ideology was built around criticism of the role of authority in society and argued that social rebellion was the way to achieve societal change (Aydinli 2008). A fundamental problem for the Anarchists, as a social movement was that their rejection of authority placed a limitation on the amount of organisation that Anarchist groups could tolerate. Aydinli (2008) summarises this in a simple question: ‘How do you create an effective global organisation without tolerating any kind of central command … ?’ In reality, not all Anarchist groups took such a hard line on this element of their ideology. One of the more successful and sustainable of the Anarchist organisations (the Anarcho-Syndicalists) brought together the ‘general ideological goals’ of the Anarchists, although working with the structure of the Trade Unions to improve worker rights and living conditions (ibid.).

Al Qaeda does not have the same ideological restrictions on centralised command that the Anarchists had. Rather than promoting a high level of individualism among its followers, Al Qaeda's interpretation of scripture creates a unifying ideology which simplifies the issues that may emerge in a networked organisational structure (Aydinli 2008). This enables the central command of Al Qaeda to control the ideological direction of the movement, although allowing the loosely affiliated groups a great deal of autonomy in day-to-day running, planning and execution of attacks. In that way, Al Qaeda does represent something new (a finely poised balance between a central hierarchy and a decentralised network), even if it builds on previous organisational models visible in the Anarchist movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

In briefly considering the US reaction that became known as the WOT, although fairly predictable as a response to such a major attack on American soil (in an interview in May 2001, Osama bin Laden claims to have been courting such a reaction in order to fuel a global jihad – see Stohl 2003), does seem to have provided a frame-breaking period of change for Al Qaeda resulting in a more diffuse organisation with relatively little central management. This change seems to be accurately reflected in the concepts associated with the use of the term ‘new terrorism’ in the literature analysed in this study.

New tactics: suicide bombings

Terrorist related suicide bombings gained public notoriety in the early 1980s with the bombing of the Iraqi Embassy in Beirut (Scott 2003, GTD 2010), and the 1983 attack on the US Marine compound outside Beirut Airport (Hoffman and McCormick 2004). These suicide attacks combined traditional explosive devices with a smart targeting device (the human) in a cost-effective manner with no need to plan an escape route and thus no chance of interrogation (Hoffman 2003). Figure 6 shows how the number of suicide attacks rose exponentially between the early 1990s and the mid- to late 2000s (START 2010b). Around 90% of suicide attacks have occurred between 2000 and 2008 (START 2011). This sharp rise in suicide attacks would suggest that the extent to which suicide terrorism is increasingly used is a quantitative change in terrorist behaviour. However, and importantly in this case, the use of suicide terrorism as displayed in Figure 6 does not control for contextual factors such as the dynamics of the conflict (ongoing, isolated attacks and so on).

Figure 6. The number of suicide bombing attacks from 1970 to 2008 (START 2011).

Furthermore, the form of suicide attacks is changing rapidly, making it more difficult to detect, from bombs carried in satchels or vehicles in the 1980s, to carefully concealed belts or vests in the 1990s (Hoffman 2003). The suicide jacket/belt was first pioneered by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) (Bhattacharji 2009), as was the use of explosives-laden boats in 1990 (SATP 2001). It is important to note here that the use of suicide bombing is not exclusive to religiously motivated groups (or to the fourth wave), as the LTTE is a nationalist/separatist secular movement.

Further innovation in the use of suicide terrorism is seen where CT measures have limited the options for attack by suspicious individuals based around a particular profile (Ewing 2008). Where men have become more suspicious, there has been a rise in female suicide bombers and even the use of children (Ashar 2002, Hoffman 2003). Suicide terrorism, therefore, is a gradually evolving phenomenon, a response-driven action influenced by, among other things: societal reactions, religious interpretations and counterterrorism measures. Thus, innovation in this field can be seen as a quantitative rather than a qualitative change in tactics.

A historical view of the links between terrorism and suicide and the notion of sacrifice is problematic. Historical examples of violent sacrifice, such as the attacks carried out by the Assassins (1090–1275), and the Fenians in the nineteenth century (Burleigh 2009) provide precedents for this type of violence. Other examples of suicide in the furtherance of political objectives can be found in the activities of the Hunger strikers in Northern Ireland in the early 1980s and Buddist (King 2000) and Tibetan self-immolation during the Vietnam war and in recent years. However, there is a subtle difference between a mission that would result in the death of the assailant (a risk common to any non-suicide mission), suicide for political motives/concession and the modern suicide attack where the assailant becomes an integral part of the weapon. However, the group dynamics, individual processes and importantly the communicative intent of such acts have a lot in common and are worthy of further investigation.

A more directly applicable precedent for suicide bombing where the individual becomes the weapon, exists in the asymmetric warfare between the Japanese and Americans during the Second World War: the Kamikaze (Chen 2011). The Kamikaze used a combination of explosive or incendiary device with a human to guide the bomb to its target. During the battle of Okinawa in 1945, around 2000 Kamikaze killed more than 5000 American sailors (Scott 2003) and arguably, the attacks were intended to inspire terror in the US Navy and wider audiences. The Kamikaze also had a religious (Shinto) and cultural dimension, including elements of Emperor Worship. It was an honour to die in order to protect the Emperor and Japan, although some interviews with Kamikaze students suggest that this doctrine was not completely embraced (Ohnuki-Tierney 2006).

Suicide bombing has historical precedents, both in the concept of the attacker intentionally not surviving beyond the end of the attack and the communicative intent, but also in the inclusion of the human element integrated into the weapon design. However, although an increase in suicide attacks has been demonstrated, this is not a qualitative change in terrorist behaviour. Worth considering, nonetheless, are the social, religious, cultural and idiosyncratic contextual conflict conditions that encourage or prohibit the participation in and support of suicide attacks (see Pape 2005).

Discussion and conclusions

This article has sought to understand the use of the term ‘new terrorism’ in a small sample of the literature on terrorism in the period 1992–2011. This process involved considering the concepts that were routinely associated with the term ‘new terrorism’ in this literature sample. A content analysis identified 129 articles from the journal SCT that considered the issue of new terrorism. Within these articles, 22 concepts emerged that were associated with new terrorism. Through a comparison with event data as recorded by the GTD, these concepts were tested against actual trends in terrorism over the analysis period. The results demonstrate that there is little consensus among authors in the literature sample as to what new terrorism represents.

Three features (concepts) of new terrorism that emerged in the analysis were explored in greater detail: increased deadliness, new organisational structures and suicide bombing. There was evidence of a trend towards increased deadliness of terrorist attacks; however, there was also evidence of a (temporally limited between 1992 and 2005) decreasing frequency of attack, which has since dramatically reversed.

An organisational psychology framework was used to discuss the leaderless networked structure of Al Qaeda. This was a key concept related to the notion of new terrorism. Historical examples identified groups such as the Anarchists that had developed similar flatter organisational structures. The ideology of the Anarchists had prevented them from successfully exploiting those structural forms, whereas Al Qaeda's religious doctrine means that a diffuse network with a highly devolved command structure can be tied together with an overarching ideology governed by a visionary leader(s).

This analysis has demonstrated a rise in the number of suicide attacks based on the data analysed. This trend could arguably validate the existence of a new terrorism. However, there are historical precedents in the Kamikaze which make it difficult to see how a solely quantitative change in the use of suicide terrorism could be considered to be ‘new’. On the contrary, the rise in the use of female and child suicide bombers may be a new element of the terrorist phenomenon, but this innovation is a response to CT operations and so represents a convergent change by the perpetrators.

If we are to expect anything from terrorist organisations, it must be change. Counterterrorist strategies will close down avenues of exploitation for attack, but new avenues will always emerge in response. This has been the case in all terrorist campaigns since the emergence of modern terrorism. Therefore, the term ‘new terrorism’ offers little value in terrorism research, as new trends or tactics are always emerging. Rather than demonstrating that we are witnessing a fundamental change in the nature of terrorism, this study has identified that there are trends that can be identified to have emerged over the past 15 years, but these are not explanatory in their own right. The diffuse nature of the term and the fact that it is used in relation to more than 70 terrorist groups would suggest that more value would come from analysing these trends rather than claiming them as a single phenomenon.

This study has also highlighted some interesting areas for further research, such as the need for an analysis of our public and private reaction to terrorism, the use of the fallout from terrorist attacks by public representatives, the social and cultural conditions that may allow or encourage innovation in terrorism and the need for an investigation into the assumptions that underlie our perceptions around motives for terrorism. A more holistic approach to understanding terrorism since 9/11, including an analysis of the complex context through a multilevel analysis of detailed contributing factors, may do more to further our understanding of the phenomenon than attempting to qualify the actions of the violent minority within a semantic framework.

A final issue worth considering is that the theoretical development of terrorism studies has not mirrored the exponential growth of contributions from varied disciplines and researchers on issues related to the topic, and so as a stand-alone area, terrorism studies has failed as a truly interdisciplinary project. Ignoring the complexities of the phenomena studied in favour of generalisability makes it exceptionally difficult to know about terrorism, as efforts to isolate the occurrence from that which went before serves not to create a new category for analysis but increases specificity, decreases the possibilities for theoretical explanation and further complicates issues around definition, concepts and indicators (Schneider and Crul 2010).

The notion of new terrorism is problematic, not least because it does not reflect a coherent category for analysis. Even more problemat, is that its underlying assumptions are not based on sound historical foundations. In fact, assumptions associated with the use of the term ‘new terrorism’, as demonstrated here, are at times not based on sound empirical analysis of terrorist events even from the recent past. These issues are representative of the weaknesses in the field of terrorism studies that emerged in part due to a preoccupation with current affairs and a historical short-sightedness, a preoccupation with prediction and the constant effort to map trends and waves in the short term (Ranstorp 2009). This short analysis demonstrates the ability of a simple investigation to challenge some of the unquestioned assumptions that underpin the use of the term ‘new terrorism’, but also to highlight its varied and inconsistent use in the literature.

Notes

1. The waves of terrorism as defined by Rapoport (2008) are analysed in Figure 1 from the 1970s only, not in relation to the entire time frame as addressed by the author.

2. According to Rasler and Thompson (2009, p. 33): ‘Religious groups espouse a specific sector fundamentalist interpretation of non-secular beliefs that has implications for political order.’

3. In comparison, one of the other leading journals, Terrorism and Political Violence, was only available between 1997 and 2011.

4. Some earlier articles were not searchable using the ‘find’ facility. In these cases, the articles were analysed for use of the word ‘new’. This represents a limit on the quality of the data in the early 1990s.

5. The immediate context relates to the paragraph in which it was used.

6. The OpenStat statistical package was used to conduct the principal component analysis.

7. Primary victims are the immediate victims of the terrorist attack as opposed to the wider population who are terrorised by the attack.

8. The idea of leaderless resistance comes from the American militia movement which used the concept from the 1980s onwards as a result of Federal counter-measures (Chalk 2001).

9. Pyro-terrorism relates to the use of arson for terrorist aims (Baird 2006). Agro-terrorism relates to the use of biological or chemical attacks on the food-production industry (e.g. to kill livestock or poison wheat) (Foxell 2001).