Terrorist learning in context – the case of Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb

ABSTRACT

It is astonishing how many researchers adopt a counterterrorism agenda and suggest researching terrorist learning in order to shape security countermeasures. Posing different questions would lead to different answers. One such question would be, “What makes terrorist learning different?” Terrorist groups operate clandestinely, which means the environment in which they learn is different. This paper investigates the context in which Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) has learned. Thus, a qualitative case study analysis of the influence of meso- and macro-level factors on AQIM’s tactical and strategic patterns between 1999 and 2013 will shed light on terrorist learning. Meso-level influences are conceptualised as cooperation and ultimate merging with Al Qaeda, and macro-level influences as government action. The result is puzzling: AQIM has learned tactically from Al Qaeda and strategically from counterterrorism. This is puzzling because scholars commonly question whether it is possible to learn under pressure. Nevertheless, AQIM’s learning has been more profound when faced with pressure than when cooperating voluntarily. The sustainable answer to the question of the political implication thereof is not how to boost counterterrorism measures but how to redefine them. If what is different about terrorist learning is above all the context, we need to question the context.

KEYWORDS:

• Tactical and strategic learning
• macro- and meso-level influences
• Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM)

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. Andrew Silke (2009) states that “[s]uicide terrorism is not a new phenomenon, but prior to 9/11 it was certainly relatively ignored by terrorism researchers…[however]…in the first three years after 9/11, nearly twelve per cent of all articles looked at suicide tactics”.

2. Zawahiri, who was previously the right hand of Osama Bin Laden, became number one in Al Qaeda after Bin Laden’s death.

3. Illustration by Michael Fuerstenberg, Number of suicide attacks conducted by AQIM per year, according to the Global Terrorism Database (START 2018), retrieved from https://www.start.umd.edu/gtd. The GTD defines a terrorist attack 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.

4. See for example Philipps (2015).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Max-Planck-Gesellschaft.

Notes on contributors

Carolin Goerzig

Carolin Goerzig is currently Independent Max Planck Research Group Leader at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle/ Germany, where she leads the research group 'How ‘Terrorists’ Learn'. Before she joined the MPI for Social Anthropology, she was an assistant professor at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, USA. Her dissertation from the University of Munich was published by Routledge in 2010 and titled “Talking to Terrorists: Concessions and the Renunciation of Violence”.