Counterterrorism Blog

Some quotes and comments buried in recent press articles, including an article this week by Jessica Stern, should give pause to the theories fashionable in some circles that terrorism is prompted primarily by “root causes.”

Usually cited are poverty and despair and/or U.S foreign policy (especially support for Israel) and or support for Arab governments such as Egypt and Saudi that are often called repressive regimes. Another alleged cause is the U.S. invasion of Iraq that overthrew an oppressive regime, headed by Saddam Hussein. And of course there is the narrative promoted by some radical Muslims that the west is out to destroy Islam (never mind the U.S. and NATO support for the Muslims in the Bosnia conflict or the emergency aid that the U.S. has rushed to Pakistan, Bangladesh, and other Muslim countries in the wake of major natural disasters). Hundreds of thousands of words have been written on these theories.

The vexing question of “what makes terrorists tick” is an important one, especially as governments are paying more attention to the need to counter radicalization. Some countries such as Saudi Arabia and Indonesia have programs, with limited success, to try to deradicalize captured terrorist suspects. They and western governments, especially Britain, the Netherlands and more recently the United States have been trying to develop and strengthen programs to counter terrorism radicalization, including public diplomacy efforts.

This is important and necessary. It is essential that we try to counter the ideology, spread so easily on the internet that justifies mass murders for the sake of some “sacred cause” or restoring an idealized 15th century world of purity and/or the Muslim Caliph that stretched from the Middle East into Spain.

Ideology, however, is not the only factor in why some people, especially young men, embrace violence and terrorism and done suicide belts.

Although some writers have discussed the psychological aspects of terrorists, this aspect is often overlooked in the pontification about policies and “root causes.”

I am by no means an expert on the motivation of terrorism but I want to call attention to several recent articles that deserve a closer look.

They include the article by Ms. Stern, a respected counterterrorism expert, in Sunday’s Washington Post Outlook section describing her experiences in researching terrorism and her theories on the role of trauma in the outlook of some terrorists. An earlier June 15 Reuters article reported that Somali Islamists killed two persons and arresting dozens of others for the transgression of watching the World Cup soccer matches on television.

A June 11 New York Times in-depth article described the motives of two young New Jersey men who were arrested June 5 as they were about to fly to Egypt and then to Somalia to link up with a terrorist group and kill Americans.

And a June 22 New York Times front page article describing the path to radicalizcation taken by Faiesal Shahzad, who pleaded guilty to trying to set off a car bomb in Times Square.

In her Washington Post Outlook section article, Ms. Stern, a former NSC staff member, raises the question of whether sexual issues were a factor with some terrorists. The article, excerpted from her book Denial: A Memoir of Terror, published today, describes how her own personal experience with being raped as a teenager affected her interest in terrorism and the “secret motivations of violent men.”

Ms. Stern is the author of the highly acclaimed 2003 book Terror in the Name of God: Why Religious Militants Kill. In her Washington Post article, she said that during her travels in the Middle East and Asia for research on her books,she realized the “possible importance of the frequency of rape of students at the radical madrassas I studied in Pakistan.”

She added “I have felt that there was an element of sexual humiliation at work, but it was rarely more than an intuition on my part. Could sexual traumas contribute to contemporary terrorism?”

Ms. Stern does not suggest it is the only or the major cause, and no doubt there are a wide variety of factors. Others have suggested it too. I still recall separate office “water cooler” conversations in the State Department before 9/11with two former Ambassadors with long experience in the Middle East. During a discussion of the motivations of terrorists, both of the Middle East hands speculated that one factor may be a feeling of guilt for being attracted to the “loose morals” of the “decedent west,” prompting the young men to over-react by becoming extreme fundamentalists who feel that western targets should be attacked.

Both of the ambassadors, who had counterterrorism experience, suggested that the psychological factors are often overlooked. Subsequently, after 9/11 occurred we learned that at least one of the Saudi hijackers had consorted with prostitutes. Similarly, some others who became involved in terrorism seemed to have sexual and perhaps family issues. Army Doctor and Major Nidal Malik Hassan, who killed 13 follow soldiers at Fort Hood last year, had frequented a local strip joint at least 3 times and reportedly paid $50 for lap dances.

A strict sense of Puritanism may have been a factor in a recent terrorist attack in Somalia. Reuters reported from Mogadishu June 15 that the attack on those watching the World Cub was conducted by Hizbul Islam group, which, along with the radical al Shabaab group, “enforce their own strict interpretation of Islam, routinely banning sport, music and dancing.” The attack took places on homes in the Afgoi district, about 19 miles south of Mogadishu, according to persons quoted by Reuters.

Usually, soccer violence is associated with the fans themselves, with fans sometimes bashing and fighting supporters of rival teams. For an Islamic group shooting and arresting people for watching a game on television is a manifestation of terrorism that has little to do with poverty or foreign policy issues.

In the case of the two New Jersey men accused of trying to become terrorists, Mohamed Alessa, 20, and Carlos Almonte 24, said they intended to join an Islamic terrorist group, Al-Shahab in Somalia in order to kill American troops. The two “home grown” alleged terrorists were charged with conspiring to kill, maim, and kidnap people outside the U.S.

In the in-depth New York Times article, Alessa was described as being a behavior problem who first saw a psychiatrist when he was six years old, and as a young man apparently wanted to achieve glory by killing people. “I swear to god….my soul cannot rest until I shed blood. I want to be the world’s known terrorist.” Alessa said in tape recorded remarks.

Almonte dropped out of high school a month before graduation after being arrested for carrying a knife on the school grounds. He was arrested later for other offenses, including punching out another youth. About that time, in 2004, he reportedly began turning to Islam although he was a naturalized citizen from the Dominican Republic and raised Catholic. Alessa’s parents are of Palestinian/Jordanian origin.

A fuller set of quotes complied from the court affidavit originally filled filed June 4, in the federal Court for the District of New Jersey and compiled by the CI Centre
certainly conveys the impression that Alessa, at least, was motivated by his desire to make a name for himself by killing people to become “the world’s best known terrorist,” rather than ideology per se.

In another recorded exchange, Almonte reportedly said in referring to American troops overseas:.
“I just want the troops to come back home safely and cozily.” Alessa added: “In body bags, in caskets.” Almonte then said: “In caskets.” To which Alessa concluded: “Sliced up in 1,000 pieces cozy in the grave in hell.”

The emotional aspects of terrorism were raised briefly during a question and answer session at yesterday’s Washington Institute for Near East Policy discussion of its new study on “fighting the Ideological Battle against terrorism. Matt Levitt, a terrorism expert at the Institute and one of the co-authors of the study, said that that Alessa and Almonte apparently knew nothing about Islam or ideology.

Juan Zarate, another co-author and a former deputy National Security Advisor for counterterrorism, said one motivating factor is the call to Islamic identity and that emotions were one of the many paths to radicalism. Zarate, now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), noted that Marc Sageman, a former CIA officer, had written about “Jihad Cool.” Sageman, who teaches at the University of Pennslvania and other institutions, has also written about the role that group dynamics and influences of friends, relatives and local religious leaders can play a role in radicalization of youth.

Zarate suggested that one way of trying to counter this is by working at the local community level to reach out to vulnerable youth, similar to the way the British Home Office is trying to counter radicalism in minority communities in some of Britain’s large cities.

The New York Times article on Faisal Shahzad suggests that a sense of solidarity to the wider Muslim community which he believed to be under siege may have been the primary motivation for the Pakistan immigrant who had been living in Connecticut. On Monday he pleaded guilty to trying to set off a car bomb in New York's Time Square.

The article says that American officials familiar with his case and other "home grown" recent terrorists believe that they are "driven less by religious rhetoric than by personal bonds and there sense of obligation to the ummah, or global Muslim community."
Shahzad reportedly was originally set off by the 2007 raid on the Red Mosque
in Islamabad by Pakistani commandos in which 100 persons died. The article said that the militant web sites Shahzad frequented portrayed the siege of armed militants in the Mosque as a brazen attack on Islam by a corrupt government intent on pleasing the United States.

These descriptions of course not not fully explain why one person might be outraged by certain events but not try to retaliate by committing murders and why another goes over the age and engages in terrorism.

Books and articles on the psychological aspects of terrorism are too numerous to list and go back to at least the early 1980’s, with a Google search showing a 1981 article by Prof. Martha Crenshaw, now at Stanford University, one of the early academic terrorist experts, who I first met in the 1980’s at the State Department. There is even a four volume work The Psychology of Terrorism , published in 2002.

An interesting new book, that I am still reading, is Driven to Death, Pyschological and Social Aspects of Suicide Terrorism by Prof. Ariel Merari, of Tel Aviv University, who has testified as an expert witness for the Justice Department. The book, which draws heavily on interviews with Palestinians who were arrested before they could conduct their suicide missions, notes the first major mass casualty suicide attack in Lebanon dates back to 1981. A car bomb was set off at the Iraq embassy, during the Iraq-Iran war, killing 61 persons and wounding about 100 others.

Another reference resource can be found at
http://terrorism.about.com/od/causes/a/Psychology.htm

The psychological dimension of course is not the only element in terrorism. But it should not be ignored by those who so sweepingly claim that there are “root causes” that can be addressed by governments and that poverty or foreign policy is the cause, implying that if only we fixed those problems the scourge of terrorism would go away. Hardly, not when some people, such as the New Jersey young men or Middle East “martyrs,” think terrorism is their ticket to 15 minutes of fame and maybe even 76 virgins.