myths on terrorism

Five Myths About
Terrorists
By now, more than eight years
after the Sept. 11 attacks, we
should be better at plucking a
terrorist out of an airport
security line. After all, we have
some idea of what he ’ll be like:
young, socially alienated and
deeply religious. And he ’ll come
from a country like Afghanistan,
Algeria, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon,
Libya, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi
Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria or
Yemen. (Under new rules
announced last weekend, people
bearing passports from these
countries will undergo special
scrutiny at airports.)
Or will he? What if he comes
from Northern Virginia, like the
five young men who were
arrested in Pakistan on Dec. 8
and who have been accused of
planning “terrorist activities,”
according to Pakistani
newspaper reports? The bottom
line is that we can no longer
assume that terrorists will come
from any particular country or
fit any particular profile. The
more we learn about what
makes people vulnerable to
recruitment by terrorist
organizations, the less any of the
old generalizations hold up.
Most terrorists are spoiled rich
kids
Many prominent jihadists are
indeed well-off and well-
educated. Umar Farouk
Abdulmutallab, the suspect in the
failed Christmas Day airline
bombing, comes from one of the
wealthiest families in Nigeria.
After the 2001 attacks, much
was made of the engineering
backgrounds of some of the
hijackers, and Osama bin Laden
famously hails from a wealthy
family with close ties to the
Saudi royals.
But terrorists come from all
socioeconomic backgrounds. For
poor people in countries where
economic prospects are bleak,
jihad can be one of the few jobs
available. Of the 25,000
insurgents and terrorism
suspects detained by US forces
in Iraq as of 2007, nearly all
were previously underemployed,
according to Maj. Gen. Douglas
Stone, the commander of
detainee operations at the time.
Al Qaeda recruits come from the
Middle East
Al Qaeda’s core organization,
which was responsible for the
Sept. 11 attacks, is now based in
Pakistan, but terrorist
organizations claiming to be its
affiliates include Northern
Africa ’s Al Qaeda in the Islamic
Maghreb, Jemaah Islamiyah in
Indonesia and al-Shabab, which
is fighting in southern Somalia
and has been recruiting
Westerners.
The organization also has a more
amorphous following of
independent cells and individuals
around the world. It is almost
impossible to target or quantify
this following because it isn ’t
centralized in any one location.
Such self-made terrorists can be
found anywhere, even in Fort
Hood, Texas.
More broadly, there is no
particular political system that
reliably promotes or deters
terrorism. And democracy is not
the cure-all it is often assumed to
be. There are many more
terrorist incidents in democratic
India, for example, than in non-
democratic China or Saudi Arabia.
(This may be because
authoritarian regimes are good
at controlling terrorism within
their borders.) Failed and failing
states, such as Yemen and
Somalia, also make particularly
fertile ground for terrorism.
Al Qaeda is made up of Islamic
zealots
To the contrary, rank-and-file
terrorists who claim to be
motivated by religious ideology
often turn out to be ignorant
about Islam. The Saudi Interior
Ministry has questioned
thousands of terrorists in
custody about why they turned
to violence, and found that the
majority did not have much
formal religious instruction and
had only a limited understanding
of Islam. According to Saudi
officials, one-quarter of the
participants in a rehabilitation
program for former jihadis had
criminal histories, often for drug-
related offenses, whereas only 5
percent had been prayer leaders
or had other formal religious
roles.
In the Netherlands and
elsewhere in Europe, second-
and third-generation Muslim
youths are rebelling against
what they see as the culturally
contaminated Islam their parents
practice and that is promoted in
their local mosques, favoring
instead the allegedly purer Islam
that they discover online or via
imams from the Middle East. But
the form of Islam they turn to is
often highly unorthodox. For
example, the Hofstad group in
the Netherlands — a network of
radicalized young Muslims —
practiced a sort of do-it-yourself
Islam cobbled together from
Web sites and the teachings of a
self-taught Syrian imam who is
also a former drug dealer.
Rather than Islam leading young
recruits toward Al Qaeda, it may
be an ignorance of Islam that
renders youths vulnerable to Al
Qaeda ’s violent ideology.
Terrorists are driven by strong
beliefs
Terrorist movements often arise
in reaction to a perceived
injustice, whether real or
imagined. Yet ideology is not the
only, or even the most
important, factor in an
individual’s decision to join. In
my research and interviews with
terrorists, many speak, in
particular, about being
motivated by a feeling of
humiliation. A Kashmiri militant
founded his group because, he
said, “Muslims have been
overpowered by the West. Our
ego hurts … we are not able to
live up to our own standards for
ourselves. ”
The reasons that some people
become terrorists are as varied
as the reasons that others
choose conventional
professions: market conditions,
social networks, contact with
recruiters, education and
individual preferences.
Most terrorist groups disappear
quickly; those that survive tend
to have the sort of flexible
ideology that can attract a
diverse array of recruits and
funders. Al Qaeda is among the
most disciplined groups, but its
goals and its list of enemies are
constantly shifting. Documents
analyzed by scholars at the
Combating Terrorism Center at
the US Military Academy reveal
an astonishing lack of clarity
about the group ’s purpose, even
among leaders of the
organization. Abu ’l-Walid, a
leading strategic thinker for Al
Qaeda, has complained about
constantly shifting strategic
goals, lamenting that “waging
jihad like a rhinoceros is stupid
and futile. ”
Terrorist recruits are alienated
loners
According to The Washington
Post, Abdulmutallab, the alleged
Christmas airplane attacker,
wrote in an online Islamic forum:
“ I have no one … to consult, no
one to support me and I feel
depressed and lonely. I do not
know what to do. And then I
think this loneliness leads me to
other problems. ”
But for most terrorist recruits,
the problem isn ’t so much a lack
of friends as having the wrong
friends. This dynamic isn ’t so
different from the way gang
recruiting works in the United
States: Terrorists often join an
armed struggle because they
have a buddy who has done so.
In a survey of 516 Guantanamo
detainees, researchers at the
Combating Terrorism Center
found that knowing another
member of Al Qaeda was a better
predictor of who became a
terrorist than was belief in the
idea of jihad.
Ultimately, some individuals may
join terrorist groups out of a
misplaced desire to transform
society. But over time, the social
and psychological rewards of
belonging can eclipse such
motivations. Terrorists want to
better their own circumstances
at least as much as they want to
change the world.
by Jessica Stern, a lecturer at
Harvard Law Schoo l, serves on
the Hoover Institution Task Force
on National Security and Law.
The Washington Post