11.5.2: Terrorism

 11.5: War and Terrorism: Implementing Political Objectives 

 

11.5.2: Terrorism 

Mustafa Jabbar, in Najaf, Iraq, is proud of his first born, a baby boy. Yet he said, “I will put mines in the baby and blow him up.” (Sengupta 2004) Can feelings really run so deep that a father would sacrifice his only son? Some groups nourish hatred, endlessly chronicling the injustices and atrocities of their archenemy. Stirred in a cauldron of bitter hatred, antagonism can span generations, its embers sometimes burning for centuries. The combination of perceived injustice and righteous hatred fuels the desire to strike out, but what can a group do if it is weaker than its enemy? Unable to meet its more powerful opponent on the battlefield, one option is terrorism, violence intended to create fear to bring about political objectives. And, yes, if the hatred is strong enough, this can mean blowing up your only child. Boy soldiers in Uganda. Credit: Mike Goldwater/Alamy Stock Photo Suicide terrorism, a weapon sometimes chosen by the weaker group, captures headlines around the world. Among the groups that have used this weapon are the Palestinians against the Israelis and the Iraqis against U.S. troops. The suicide terrorism that has had the most profound effects on our lives is the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, under the direction of Osama bin Laden. What kind of sick people become suicide terrorists? This is the topic of the following Down-to-Earth Sociology. Down-to-Earth Sociology Who Are the Suicide Terrorists? Testing Your Stereotypes We carry a lot of untested ideas around in our heads, and we use those ideas to make sense out of our experiences. When something happens, we place the event into a mental file of “similar events,” which gives us a way of interpreting it. This is a normal process. We all do it all the time. Without stereotypes—ideas of what people, things, and events are like—we could not get through everyday life. As we traverse society, our files of “similar people” and “similar events” are usually adequate. That is, the explanations we get from our interpretations usually satisfy our “need to understand.” Sometimes, however, our mental files for classifying people and events leave us perplexed, not knowing what to make of things. 

For most of us, suicide terrorism is like this. We don’t know any terrorists or suicide bombers, so it is hard to imagine someone becoming one. Let’s see if we can flesh out our mental files a bit. Sociologist Marc Sageman (2008, 2019) wondered about terrorists, too. Finding that his mental files were inadequate to understand them, he decided that research might provide the answer. Sageman had an unusual advantage for gaining access to data—he had been in the CIA. Through his contacts, he studied four hundred al-Qaeda terrorists who had targeted the United States. He was able to examine thousands of pages of their trial records. So let’s use Sageman’s research to test some common ideas. I think you’ll find that the data blow away stereotypes of terrorists. • Here’s a common stereotype. Terrorists come from backgrounds of poverty. Cunning leaders take advantage of their frustration and direct it toward striking out at an enemy. Not true. Three-quarters of the terrorists came from the middle and upper classes. • How about the deranged loner, then? We carry around images like this concerning serial and mass murderers. It is a sort of catch-all stereotype that we have. These people can’t get along with anyone; they stew in their loneliness and misery, and all this bubbles up in misapplied violence. You know, the workplace killer sort of image, loners "going postal.” Not true, either. Sageman found that 90 percent of the terrorists came from caring, intact families. On top of this, 73 percent were married, and most of them had children. This woman, Ahlam Tamimi, is unlikely to match your stereotype of a suicide terrorist. She is serving 16 life sentences in an Israeli prison for her involvement in a terrorist attack in Jerusalem. Credit: TAMIMI/SIPA/SIPA/Newscom • Let’s try another one. Terrorists are uneducated, ignorant people, so those cunning leaders can manipulate them easily. We have to drop this one, too. Sageman found that 63 percent of the terrorists had gone to college. Three-quarters worked in professional and semiprofessional occupations. Some were scientists, engineers, and architects. What? Most terrorists are intelligent, educated, family-oriented, professional people? How can this be? Sageman found that suicide terrorists had gone through a process of radicalization. Here is their trajectory: Moral outrage. They became angry, even enraged, about something they felt was terribly wrong. Ideology. They interpreted their moral outrage within a radical, militant understanding of Islamic teachings. Shared outrage and ideology. 

They found like-minded people, sometimes on the Internet, especially in chat rooms. 

Group support for radical action. They decided that thinking and talking were not enough. The moral wrong needed direct action. The choice was an act of terrorism. To understand terrorists, then, it is not the individual that we need to look at. We need to focus on group dynamics, how the group influences the individual, and how the individual influences the group (as we studied in Chapter 5). In one sense, however, the image of the loner does come close. Seventy percent of these terrorists committed themselves to extreme acts while they were living away from the country where they grew up. They became homesick, sought out people like themselves, and ended up at radical mosques where they learned a militant script. Constantly, then, sociologists seek to understand the relationship between the individual and the group. 

This fascinating endeavor sometimes blows away stereotypes.

 For Your Consideration 

→ How do you think we can help eliminate the process of radicalization that turns people into terrorists? 

→ Sageman concludes that this process of radicalization has sprouted networks of homegrown, leaderless terrorists who don’t need al-Qaeda to direct them. He also concludes that this process will eventually wear itself out. Do you agree? Why or why not?