Download HUA101: Introduction to War and Society Terrorism: Definitions and

Terrorism and Counter-terrorism
Dr. Lee Jarvis
Politics and International Relations
University of East Anglia
March 2016
Four Questions
• What is terrorism?
• What causes terrorism?
• What threat does terrorism pose?
• How should terrorism be countered?
What is Terrorism?
• Schmid (2011):
• >250 academic, governmental and inter-governmental definitions.
• Some common features, but no consensus:
•
•
•
•
Violence
Communication
Political motivation
Non-state perpetrator
• Controversial
• Different types of definition:
• Government definitions are often vague
• Academic definitions are often complex and long
Selected definitions of terrorism (from Shanahan
2010)
• Terrorism simply means deliberately and violently targeting
civilians for political purposes (Richardson 2006)
• The deliberate creation and exploitation of fear through
violence or the threat of violence in the pursuit of political
change (Hoffman 2006)
• Premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated
against noncombatant targets … by sub-national groups or
clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an
audience (US Department of State, Office of the Coordinator
for Counterterrorism 2003)
Schmid and Jongman (2011)
• Drawing on 109 different definitions:
• Terrorism is an anxiety-inspiring method of repeated violent action,
employed by (semi-) clandestine individual, group or state actors, for
idiosyncratic, criminal or political reasons, whereby – in contrast to
assassination – the direct targets of violence are not the main targets.
The immediate human targets are generally chosen randomly (targets
of opportunity) or selectively (representative or symbolic targets)
from a target population, and serve as message generators. Threatand violence-based communication processes between terrorists
(organisation), (imperilled) victims, and main targets are used to
manipulate the main target (audiences(s)), turning it into a target of
terror, a target of demands, or a target of attention, depending on
whether intimidation, coercion or propaganda is primarily sought.
Why define terrorism?
• 3 common reasons:
• Academic rigour
• Policy responses
• Political critique
• Why is defining terrorism so difficult?
• A pejorative label:
• “Terrorism is something the bad guys do” (Richardson 2006)
• Overuse and ‘stretching’:
• Cyberterrorism, narcoterrorism, agroterrorism, bioterrorism
• The meaning of terrorism changes over time:
• Origins in the French Revolution
• Diversity of terrorisms:
• “there is not one terrorism but a variety of terrorisms and what is true for
one does not necessarily apply to others” (Laqueur 2003).
Question 2
What causes
terrorism?
Waves of Terrorism
• David Rapoport (2003):
•
•
•
•
1880s: Anarchist terrorism
1920s: Anticolonial terrorism
Late 1960s: New left terrorism
1979: Religious terrorism.
• Thoughts:
• Simplification
• But, demonstrates:
• Terrorism’s long history
• Terrorism’s use for a variety of
motives
• Social contexts matter
• Ideas and technologies
Causes are complicated
• Contexts
Macro
• Poverty, religion, inequality, foreign policy
• Often described as ‘root causes’
• Individual factors
Micro
• Personalities, psychology, experiences
Yet
• There is no such thing as a ‘terrorist profile’
• Most ‘terrorists’ are relatively ‘ordinary’:
• “most terrorists appear to be normal in a
clinical sense” (Schmid 2014)
Question 3
What threat does
terrorism pose?
Measuring threat
• 2 common approaches:
• Statistical analysis
• Likelihood X Impact
• Precautionary principle
• The 1% doctrine
• Global terrorism index (2015):
• 32,685 deaths from terrorism in 2014
• 78% in 5 countries: Iraq, Nigeria, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Syria
• 2.6% of deaths from terrorism since 2000 have occurred in the West
• Global terrorism database:
• 50.4% of attacks result in 0 fatalities
• 90.1% result in 10 or fewer fatalities
Threats in context
• Other forms of violence far outweigh terrorism:
• 40,000 people die each day from hunger alone
• Gun crime, traffic accidents, etc.
• ‘Outside of 2001, fewer people died in America from international
terrorism than drowned in toilets’ (Mueller 2005)
• Why the gap?
• Fear increases with ‘exotic’ risks (Byman, 2005)
• Shark attacks, killer bees, flesh-eating diseases
• Uncertainty leads to exaggeration of fear
• Fear of violence from other people is often exaggerated
• Perceptions of control diminish fear (e.g. flying)
• Cultures of fear
• Politics, entertainment, news media
Question 4
How should terrorism
be countered?
Types of counter-terrorism
Description
Understanding
of terrorism
Examples
Use of force
Military force to
disrupt or prevent
terrorism
A form of
warfare
• Wars on terror
• Assassinations
Intelligence
and policing
Counter-terrorism via
security services
A crime
• Intelligence gathering
• Community policing
Homeland
security
Improving resilience
and protection
A manageable
security threat
• Counter-terrorism laws
• Infrastructure
protection
Outcome of
grievances and
conditions
• Negotiations
• Public diplomacy
• Development initiatives
Conciliation Non-violent efforts to
and dialogue address root causes
Counter-terrorism questions
• Evaluating effectiveness is difficult:
• Lack of counter-factuals
• Lack of academic research
• 7 out of 20,000 academic studies dealt with counterterrorism’s effectiveness (Lum et al 2006)
• Terrorist organisations (usually) have a short lifespan
• Criticisms of counter-terrorism:
• Excessive:
• Efforts to kill 41 men in drone strikes to November 2014
led to 1,147 deaths
• Civil liberty restrictions
• Counter-terrorism policy is often rushed:
• The need to be seen to be doing something
• Demonise minority groups
• ‘Suspect communities’
How terrorism ends (Cronin 2009)
Decapitation Negotiation
Success
Failure
Repression
Reorientation
Capture/killi
ng the
group’s
leader
Entry into the
legitimate
political
process
Achievement
of the group’s
aims
Implosion or
loss of the
group’s public
support
Defeat and
Transition
elimination
from
by brute force terrorism into
other forms
of violence
Aum
Shinrikyo
(Japan)
Northern
Ireland Peace
Process
ANC/Umkhon
to we Sizwe
(Spear of the
Nation)
Red Army
Faction
(Germany)
LTTE (Sri
Lanka)
GIA in Algeria
(to guerrilla
warfare).
Thanks for listening!
Dr. Lee Jarvis
Politics, Philosophy, Language and Communication Studies
University of East Anglia
Web: leejarvis.com
Email: [email protected]
Twitter: @LeeJarvisPols