Reducing Ideological Support for Terrorism

Strategic Insights, Volume VIII, Issue 2 (April 2009)

by Paul Shemella

Introduction

Citizens everywhere expect their leaders to protect them. Indeed, that is the first responsibility of governments and their security infrastructures. But the problem of terrorism has provided a new context for national security decision-making, a process that now involves the entire spectrum of government institutions. Terrorist actions are political events masquerading as military attacks, and thus require governments to blend “soft power” tools with the “hard power” responses that cannot be avoided. [1] The so-called “war” on terrorism is not a war at all; it is a political contest that can only be won at the political level. Terrorists have turned Clausewitz on his head; they wage war by other means.

Terrorism is not about action but rather about reaction. Terrorists understand how easily governments can militarize their responses. Political leaders, whether guided by protective instinct or dictatorial opportunism, overreact on cue. Dissuading potential terrorists from resorting to violence in the first place is a strategy that is more challenging to execute and more difficult to evaluate than using brute force. Indeed, governments are confronted with Kafka’s choices: calling the doctor to explain and perhaps cure the disease of terrorism, or calling the locksmith to separate terrorists from the rest of society.[2] Our leaders have to make both calls.

The Doctor Is In

Any attempt to understand the problem of terrorism begins with identifying root causes. Simply stated, root causes are conditions within our societies that provide fertile ground for terrorism to germinate. These conditions operate across whole societies, influencing individuals in different ways. They do not inevitably lead to terrorism, but they are certainly the first step down that path. Each government faces its own unique set of historical, social, geographic, and political conditions. Poverty, ignorance, and injustice often top the list of root causes, but bad governance could be a more important factor (this suggests that better governance can go a long way toward defeating terrorism). In some cases, a government’s foreign policy could be considered a root cause. A lack of social cohesion certainly belongs on this list. There are many possibilities from which to choose.

The second, essential step to terrorism is motivation. Acts of terrorism are carried out by individuals and small groups, motivated by specific factors superimposed on root causes. These factors include Louise Richardson’s trinity of rage, recognition, and revenge.[3] But sources of motivation alone cannot propel ordinary citizens to undertake extreme measures against innocent fellow citizens; they must be induced by charismatic leaders and encouraged by similarly motivated peers. Terrorism is a social activity driven by group dynamics as well as root causes and motivation. Individuals do things in groups they would never do on their own.[4]

What motivates individuals, acting in small groups, to adopt a strategy of terrorism?[5] Frustration and fear top this list. Unhappy people anywhere, given the right circumstances, can be dangerous to the rest of society. Here it is useful to revisit Maslow’s hierarchy, with physiological requirements at the bottom and self-actualization at the top. In the middle come love and esteem, for the self and for others. It is after their most basic needs are met that human beings tend to raise their expectations, a condition leading to disappointment and perhaps a resort to extreme behavior.[6] Governments cannot monitor individuals according to their places on this hierarchy, but they can create the conditions that allow their citizens to move in the direction of self-actualization. The potential for this mobility is what governments must explain and nurture within their societies.

We can go back further than Maslow, all the way to Plato, who divided the soul into three parts—reason, desire, and something the Greeks called thymos. The word thymos is actually crucial to describing why terrorists behave the way they do. It translates literally as “spiritedness” and describes an innate sense of justice. Thymos captures the feeling that drives human beings to act without reason. Implicit in Plato’s division of the soul is that each human being has a unique distribution of the three parts. Ironically, soldiers share a healthy dose of thymos with their terrorist enemies. Both act in unreasonable ways to achieve a feeling of prestige. It may be that the thymotic impulse is more responsible for terrorism than anything else in the human psyche, linked as it is to recognition, power, and glory.[7]

But groups of human beings do not simply hold themselves together. Individuals are held together by kinship and common purpose. Setting aside kinship, more common in organized crime than in terrorism, shared goals are the glue that binds terrorists to one another. Such goals are expressed through beliefs, strongly held, that present the group with an inspiring narrative and serve to legitimate acts of violence. This is extremist ideology: the DNA of terrorism, passed from generation to generation.

The Role of Ideology

Ideology is a rigid set of beliefs—a system of beliefs—that compels people to behave in particular ways. Ideology, especially the extremist version, does not allow for compromise; it is a Manichean system of reasoning that does not serve as a basis for day-to-day political activity.[8] It is in fact the antithesis of politics, a system that thrives on debate and compromise. It is also distinguishable from philosophy and religion, which guide how individuals choose to live. Ideology is about how a few individuals think society should be governed. Ideologically driven behavior goes beyond merely acting on principle; the transition from principle to ideology takes place when someone decides that all others are just plain wrong.

Ideology is an attempt to make the world simple (an increasingly attractive proposition to many in the mainstream). It offers members of the group a set of basic rules, easy to follow and easy to teach others. Groups driven by ideology normally have strong leadership, but they do not need it. Adherents pursue actions that fall within the parameters of their ideology, self-organizing in innovative ways that are very difficult to predict—and even more difficult to counter.[9] This is the same phenomenon that produces flocking behavior in birds and fish. These populations have no leader; only a simple set of local rules, hardwired into each individual’s genes, ensuring the survival of the species.

The role of ideology extends beyond that of binding individuals together and legitimizing their activities. Ideologies are also used to mobilize outsiders. In network fashion, terrorist organizations target the disaffected members of a population by attempting to convince them that there is an alternative way of thinking that will make their lives more meaningful (and simpler). If the population has a large number of disaffected individuals susceptible to the ideology, enough of them can be recruited.[10] Once recruited, they soon take part in successful terrorist actions, operations that validate and strengthen the ideology they share.[11]

There are three basic types of ideology that motivate terrorists. The first is political philosophy. During the 1970s and 1980s, Marxism was a key ideology for many European terrorist groups. Maoism continues to motivate Asian and South American groups. Environmentalism as an ideology has given impetus to the new phenomenon of “Eco-Terrorism.” Some would include Nihilism, the current manifestation of which we see in the youth gangs of Central America, and perhaps the flare-up of “Anti-Globalization” as an ill-defined cause of the late 1990s.[12] Significantly, the ideologies that originate in political theory are often superseded by political practice, leaving governments an opening for dialogue.

The second type of motivating ideology is Ethnic Nationalism. The desire of small groups to earn recognition from the larger society often involves issues of territory, and separatism continues to drive political dissent in most of the world. What transforms separatist feelings into terrorism is the ideology associated with ethnicity. This has manifested itself most famously in Northern Ireland and the Basque region of Spain, but Nationalism has already done its greatest damage, provoking and justifying the conventional wars of the 20th century. Ethnic Nationalism is motivating hard-line politicians and their citizens today in places like Iraq and Pakistan, but its ultimate expression is being witnessed in Sri Lanka.[13]

Religion that has taken the evolutionary leap to ideology can be a platform for the worst kind of atrocities. Recent examples of this phenomenon include the Oklahoma City bombing in the name of Christian Identity, the expanding influence of Shia extremism, and the worldwide terrorist activities of Al Qaeda in the name of Islam. Religious extremists have, through history, abused the power of the faith by transforming it into an ideology to guide destructive behavior. [14] Attaching religious fervor to nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons reveals some truly frightening scenarios.

A discussion of ideology would not be complete without mentioning the concept of “fantasy ideology,” best described by Lee Harris.[15] Harris has linked the historical experiences of the pre-Civil War American South, Mussolini’s fascist regime, Hitler’s Nazism, and Al Qaeda’s quest for a pan-Islamic “caliphate” together into a useful construct. What unites these cases is the dream-like quality of their guiding ideologies. Fantasy Ideology is the self-delusion of strong leaders, transferred to a wide audience. It is the capturing of mass imagination to support a vision that is either unattainable through mere political activity, or unachievable through war.[16] Like other forms of ideology, it is firmly rooted in the past. How do you counter a fantasy?

Linked to the concept of Fantasy Ideology is the enduring appeal of cults around the world. There appears to be something in the human psyche that makes many of us vulnerable to destructive messages issued by charismatic leaders. On a micro scale (though certainly not for the families involved) is the “Jonestown” example of mass suicide. On a macro scale, the frightening experience of the Japanese with Aum Shinrikyo gives us a possible prototype for the future of terrorism. Cults appear where hopelessness and lack of meaning prevail, prompting some individuals to separate themselves from their families and other social groupings. They sacrifice their egos to the collective, vesting all power over their lives in one leader. The root causes of cult formation, then, are very similar to the root causes of terrorism itself. Within such a context, the appearance of highly motivated individuals armed with a lust for power and lethal charisma can trigger terrorism.[17]

The Case of Violent Salafism

Since the World Trade Center attacks, officials and scholars have searched for the right term to describe the terrorists who launched them. Merely calling them “terrorists” is correct but inadequate. In order to counter the ideology that fueled the attacks, there must be a way to distinguish the members of this particular grouping from other terrorists with different ideologies.[18] Terrorism is terrorism, regardless of who does it or why, but all terrorists are not created equal.

The term “Islamic Terrorists” is an insult to almost all Muslims. “Islamist Terrorists” does not work either, offending many peaceful Muslims who call themselves Islamists (including the Prime Minister of Turkey). The term “Jihadists” offends Muslims by associating terrorism with one of the most important elements of Islamic faith, while rewarding terrorists.[19] “Islamo-fascists” does not work for obvious reasons, and those U.S. officials who began using the term in 2006 withdrew it quickly. The term “Salafist” describes a portion of the Islamic community that wishes for a return to the Islamic world of Mohammed and his immediate descendants. There are pious Salafists who do not advocate violence, but there are a significant number who do. The term “Violent Salafist” would appear to describe Osama bin Laden and his followers.[20]

The main goals of Violent Salafism include replacing secular governments in Muslim lands with “legitimate” governments ruled by Shariah. The aggregation of such governments would lead to a new “Caliphate,” spanning North Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia, South Asia, and Southeast Asia. Also among Violent Salafist goals are to demonstrate the military power of motivated holy warriors, and to counter the morally corrosive effect of Western secularism (and, indeed, all secularism). These are not political goals; they are ideological. This is a strategy of terrorism, not as a means to an end but as an end in itself. Terrorist acts are used to reinforce the inevitability of the dream and strengthen the power of those leading the way. It is the fantasy ideology of “Violent Salafism” that drives the most dangerous form of terrorism today. There is no better example of the synergy between ideology and terrorism.

Governments Can Help

The advent of global terrorism has forced governments, acting together, to send targeted messages to people all over the world. Those messages can only be effective where policies, strategies, and public attitudes align. With regard to Violent Salafism, there are four multinational audiences to whom messages must be sent. To the opponents of Secular Islam, the messages should say, “The removal of religion from politics does not dilute religious belief.” To the sympathizers of Islamic reform, “We understand and support you.” To the supporters of Salafism, “You are entitled to your beliefs, but do not use violence to achieve your goals.” To the terrorist core of violent Salafists, “Governments, acting together, will stop you from using terrorism against our citizens.”[21]

Governing is a system of incentives and disincentives to encourage or compel citizens to behave in certain ways. The messages governments send to all citizens should encourage individuals to maintain allegiance to the government (while making themselves worthy of that allegiance) and to foster the development of a healthy civil society through voluntary non-governmental associations. The messages for committed and potential terrorists should be even clearer. Terrorists must know that government (and the civil society it represents) will increase the expected costs of terrorist activity while decreasing the expected benefits.

Governments can learn from business as they design foreign and domestic policies aimed at gaining the respect and allegiance they need to govern effectively. If the government can be imagined as a doctor trying to immunize society against the virus of terrorism, it can also be imagined as a provider of services whose customers are individual citizens. Viewed from that perspective, governments need to “brand” themselves like any commercial enterprise that wishes to stay in business.[22]

Citizens of countries from Iraq to India may wonder whether terrorism is the price of democracy. Certainly open societies are more vulnerable to terrorism than dictatorial ones, especially in the short term. In the long term, however, open societies allow citizens to express their political dissent in a wide range of non-violent ways, thus dampening the potential for political and ideological violence. Every society has a unique tolerance for violence, a different threshold, beyond which citizens feel their government can no longer protect them.[23] Each government must force whatever level of violence exists below that threshold while striving to eradicate the root causes and motivations for terrorism itself.

The Pivotal Role of Civil Society

But governments cannot do the whole job. At some point, the society itself must take charge of countering ideological support for terrorism. Unless a society-at-large can develop consensus for a “zero-tolerance” approach to terrorism, its government can only achieve marginal results. But it is government’s responsibility to create the environment in which society can, in essence, cure itself. Top-down measures have to meet bottom-up measures somewhere in the middle. This is a symbiotic relationship that depends on the existence of a healthy and active civil society.

It is civil society, the space between government institutions and individual citizens, that catalyzes the chain reaction needed for zero-tolerance. Civil society contains the opinion leaders who have the ability to influence mass audiences in all sectors of a population. What is needed here is a “social epidemic,” relying on citizen-messengers to spread positive ideas to friends and neighbors until everyone agrees not to support terrorism.[24] Every organization relies on super-connected individuals to make things happen; societies and the governments that protect them must take the same approach, using the power of what scientists call “scale-free networks” to spread the word.[25] Terrorism itself is now generated and sustained through networks, and so must countering terrorism. It takes networks to defeat networks.[26]

Who are these citizen-messengers? One is Amr Khaled, an Egyptian talk-show host and Internet master, who has gained tremendous popularity in the Arab world. His philosophical model, “Lifemakers”, encourages Muslims to transform their lives through Islam. Khaled has famously asked the question, “Who asked Osama bin Laden to talk for us? Nobody.”[27] He is part of the growing “Islamic Renewal Movement,” a loose coalition of four broad groups: Civic Islam, Islam and Democracy, Reforms within Islam, and Culturally Modern Islam. These strains are tied together by their commitment to modernize Islamic institutions, traditions, and practices.[28]

Another citizen-messenger is Morris Dees, Director of the Southern Poverty Law Center and a fierce opponent of the American Militia Movement. Dees and his organization maintain a database on militia activities; pursue legal actions against militia groups and individuals; and communicate with the rest of American society through a variety of media, including books. The Southern Poverty Law Center is not a partner of the U.S. Government, but it has been an important ally.[29]

A clear example of civil society against terrorism can be seen in the actions since 2006 in Al Anbar Province in Iraq, where tribal forces have aligned to reject foreign terrorists. Citizen militias, properly regulated by the government, have been instrumental in defeating terrorists from Peru to Turkey. At the other end of the spectrum, groupings of motivated individuals counter terrorist ideology simply by demonstrating that society is normal. Upon winning the Asia Cup (by defeating Saudi Arabia) with Kurdish, Sunni, and Shia players, the team was profiled as a model of ethnic unity. Civil Society can indeed be the terrorist’s most formidable enemy.[30] The power of civil society can be magnified by targeting the youth bulge, particularly in Muslim populations, using the ubiquitous information technology available to them.[31]

With the right catalyst, whole societies can suddenly become powerful enough to destroy terrorism. Such was the case in Italy after the Red Brigades terrorist group kidnapped and murdered former Prime Minister Aldo Moro. In Jordan, after the brutal attacks on three hotels in Amman in November, 2005, support for Abu Musab al Zarqawi evaporated in an avalanche of public outrage. The British, conditioned by a tradition of citizen-policing, consider themselves soldiers in the war against terrorism rather than victims, the eyes and ears of a vigilant government. That attitude is the sharpest tool in the toolkit every government has for fighting terrorism. All governments must learn how to use that tool and keep it sharp.

Building an Alliance Against Radical Ideologies

Anyone attempting to counter ideological support for terrorism must realize that such efforts can only succeed from within the ideological community itself. Governments, Non-Governmental Organizations, and individuals from the outside can influence the debate, but they cannot finish it. A citizen-messenger like Amr Khaled can have more effect than the entire U.S. Government—but he cannot be seen within his community as a partner of the United States. From our perspective, the effort to oppose ideologies operating abroad should be called “reducing ideological support for terrorism.”[32] That will entail a careful blend of policies and practices designed to enable and empower those within the target community to get their messages out. Once out, those messages will transmit themselves in a variety of ways along complex social pathways. We wish to have others say what we would say if we had the credibility. We then must report, analyze, and strengthen the positive trends we see. It is not a surprise that we have countered the ideology that drives our own militia movement more successfully than any other. Only the Italian people—with the moral support of allies—could have countered the Red Brigades.

In a domestic context, the image of an onion, with a hard core of committed terrorists at its center, clarifies the problem and suggests a solution. Overlapping the core are layers of active supporters, passive supporters, those who don’t care either way, and those who oppose the committed terrorists and their supporters. In this image, the government surrounds the onion looking for ways to counter the terrorism produced in the core. Many governments, particularly those with the resources, are tempted to use a hammer to smash the onion. Other governments have developed a combination of strategies to deal with each of the layers, gently or harshly peeling the inner layers away from the core while mobilizing the outer layers against the center. The most effective strategies mobilize the moral resources of civil society. Isolating the core allows governments to apply coercive force selectively—even surgically—without damaging the society itself. Such an approach, over time, can reduce terrorism and the ideology that underlies it.

The international context is more challenging. Domestic efforts to isolate the hard core often result in a terrorist diaspora along networked pathways around the globe. The clarifying image here might be a “network of networks.” In this world, relationships are more important than capabilities. Individual governments, networked within, must reach out bilaterally and regionally to assist other governments isolate hard-core terrorists, while winning the loyalty of their own societies. Governments that develop foreign policies that strengthen this network of networks will find themselves with improved security at home. We have come to point where terrorism anywhere is terrorism everywhere. We should seek to move terrorism to the very fringes of human behavior. Once common, piracy, slavery, and genocide have been systematically diminished through collective efforts over time.[33] Most importantly, such efforts destroyed the ideologies that legitimized these behaviors. Governments must go after ideologically-motivated terrorists with the same kind of collective approach.

 References

1. The term “soft power” has been popularized by Dr. Joseph Nye in the American context, but it is used here to describe tools of persuasion and attraction that all governments have at their disposal with which to address the problem of terrorism. See Nye, Bound to Lead: The Changing Nature of American Power (New York: Basic Books, 1990) and Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics (New York: Public Affairs Books, 2004).

2. In his novel The Metamorphosis, Franz Kafka tells the story of a boy who suddenly becomes a bug. The boy’s parents have diametrically opposite responses to the new reality. The mother calls on the doctor to explain what has happened, the father the locksmith to safeguard his family.

3. Louise Richardson, What Terrorists Want (New York: Random House), 71-103.

4. For a very good explanation of terrorism as a social activity, see Abrahms, Max; “What Terrorists Really Want,” International Security 32, No. 4, 78-105.

5. Terrorism is understood here as a strategy involving the systematic use of violence against civilians in order to make a political or ideological point.

6. The concept of a revolution of rising expectations is taken from The Papers of Adlai Stevenson, Volume 5 (Boston: Little Brown, 1974), 411. Anyone wishing to place the mutual alienation of America and much of the world into some historical context would do well to read this section.

7. Two good sources for explaining the modern manifestation of Thymos are Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (New York: The Free Press, 1992) and Thomas G. Dineen III, “The Future of Thymos,” The Intellectual Conservative, April, 2007.

8. This observation suggests two models for terrorism, one for political ends and another for ideological ends. Governments unable to distinguish between the two often apply the wrong remedies, exacerbating the problem.

9. The best example of this is the concept of “leaderless resistance” articulated by Louis Beam, a key American Militia Movement figure. Beam’s ideology is well-documented in Morris Dees’s book, Gathering Storm (New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 1996).

10. The virus analogy would be difficult to avoid. Governments must see themselves as doctors, trying to immunize their citizen-patients.

11. It may be that young people join extremist groups for primarily social reasons, but ideology—carefully reinforced by group leaders—keeps them there.

12. The “Maras” of Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador are bound together by violence that goes beyond traditional organized crime. Nihilism best describes the ideology behind their actions, but the Maras remind us that ideology can sometimes explain behavior instead of justifying it.

13. As the government of Sri Lanka continues to regain territory, the Tamil Tigers can be expected to increase their attacks on civilians. This conflict is also a good example of how violent extremists tend to adopt alternating strategies of insurgency and terrorism, depending on whether they are succeeding or failing. Paradoxically, an increase in terrorist activity can actually be a sign of government progress.

14. In the case of Islam, extremist hijackers have more running room due to the relatively loose structure of the religion worldwide. There is a paradox here: the very nature of Islam as a simple and tolerant religion has made it more vulnerable to abuse than more dogmatic, tightly controlled religions.

15. Lee Harris followed up on his seminal Policy Review, No. 114 (August-September 2002) article, "Al Qaeda's Fantasy Ideology: War without Clausewitz," with a book titled, Civilization and Its Enemies (New York: Free Press, 2004).

16. Many would argue that Zionism is a Fantasy Ideology. Others would include Democracy (at least in its current evangelical form).

17. There is a chicken and egg argument here. Are cults formed around charismatic leaders, or do groups of believers bestow cult status upon their icons? This appears to work both ways, depending on the circumstances, with one end synergizing the other.

18. The U.S. Government has started calling Muslim terrorists “violent extremists.” Ironically, the term “Muslim Terrorists” would be a generic description with minimal offense.

19. Terrorists call themselves Jihadists for precisely the same reason; they want to wrap themselves in the legitimacy given to those who practice Jihad within the tenants of Islam. By calling them “Jihadists” we are playing into this strategy.

20. Osama Bin Laden’s deputy, Ayman al Zawahiri, brought the thinking of Sayyid Qutb together with Bin Laden’s Wahabbism to form a particularly lethal combination of ideology and violence. The similarities between Qutb and Karl Marx have been described by Theodore Dalrymple (May, 2007), connecting the two most dangerous ideological strains of the last 100 years. Qutb’s seminal work, Milestones, calls for violent action to create the classless society of Islam’s early history.

21. These phrases were taken from a presentation on the subject, given regularly by Dr. Thomas R. Mockaitis of DePaul University at The Center for Civil-Military Relations (CCMR) in Monterey, California.

22. A very interesting view of government branding comes from a speech given by Kevin Roberts, the CEO Worldwide of Saatchi and Saatchi, Ideas Company, to a U.S. Intelligence Agency audience in New York City, on March 9, 2005. The speech is titled, “Loyalty Beyond Reason.”

23. A challenge for governments is to convince their citizens that the risk from Terrorism is actually quite small. For an expansion of this theme see John Mueller, “A False Sense of Insecurity?” Regulation 27, no 3 (Fall, 2004).

24. The utility of social epidemics is explained very well in Malcolm Gladwell’s bestseller, The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference (Boston: Little, Brown, and Company; 2002).

25. For a detailed description of scale-free networks and social connections see Albert-Laszlo Barabasi, Linked (New York: Penguin Group, 2003.)

26. For the best insight on the power of networks, both for and against Terrorism, see John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt, Networks and Netwars (Santa Monica: RAND, 2001.)

27. Time magazine profiled Amr Khaled as one of its “100 Most Influential People” in its May 14, 2007 edition. Other Muslim citizens in the Midde East region have followed suit in what amounts to a growing movement, enabled by the Internet.

28. Abdeslam M. Maghraoui, American Foreign Policy and Islamic Renewal, United States Institute of Peace Special Report, July, 2006.

29. Dees, Op Cit.

30. The rise of Al Jazeera and other Arab media have provided outlets and networks for individuals to express themselves in ways that were—until recently—inconceivable. Instead of trying to counter these media, Western powers should be listening to the conversations and debates they have spawned. What we learn should inform our collective combating terrorism strategies.

31. Jared Cohen gives a very convincing argument for targeting youth with technology in the proceedings of the symposium, “Combating the Unrestricted Warfare Threat,” Johns Hopkins University, 10-11 March, 2008, 279-286.

32. The U.S. Government now calls this effort “Countering Violent Extremist Ideologies.” Beyond the question of what a “violent extremist” is, this implies that we can simply substitute our own ideology for theirs. Such a course of action would be counter-productive, provoking resentment and strengthening the very ideology we wish to counter.

33. The current resurgence of piracy, particularly in East African waters, is a case-in-point. Just as the great maritime nations did in the early 19th Century, they are again collaborating to defend shipping and human life. The notable addition to this historical coalition is the Chinese navy.