The Future of Terrorism: ISIS, Al-Qaeda, and the Alt-Right

266 Pages·2018·1.72 MB·English

by  Walter Laqueur

Begin Reading
Table of Contents
About the Authors
Copyright Page

Thank you for buying this St. Martin’s Press ebook.

To receive special offers, bonus content, and info on new releases and other
great reads, sign up for our newsletters.
Or visit us online at
us.macmillan.com/newslettersignup

For email updates on Walter Laqueur, click here.
For email updates on Christopher Wall, click here.
The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you for your personal use
only. You may not make this e-book publicly available in any way. Copyright
infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you
are reading infringes on the author’s copyright, please notify the publisher
at: us.macmillanusa.com/piracy.
INTRODUCTION: TERRORISM AND ITS
FUTURE
After the death of Osama bin Laden in May 2011, President Obama declared that
al-Qaeda no longer posed a threat to the United States and that the danger of
terrorism was receding. Yet within three years, his words became hollow with
the rise of Islamic State (IS; known as ISIS but referred to throughout this book
as IS) and continued plotting by al-Qaeda. Since that fateful day in May, both IS
and AQ have expanded their reach across North Africa, the Middle East, and
South Asia, inspired thousands to travel to join their fight, and executed violent
atrocities like the November 2015 Paris attacks, the March 2016 Brussels
Airport bombing, and the August 2017 vehicle attacks in Barcelona. The public
wants to know, of course, why this is happening and when it is likely to end.
There has been a deluge of literature published in the past decade that has tried
to answer these two questions, but much of it is incomplete in its analysis, fails
to explore the structure of terrorism, or approaches the topic with specifics that
are too technical for a general audience.
The fact is that terrorism is a phenomenon rife with inconsistencies,
conspiracies, mixed ideologies, and the ability to generate immense fear, which
is exploited by both politicians and terrorists alike. This has made giving an
objective accounting of the subject nigh impossible largely because in the public
sphere, there is no common ground in terms of a definition, modality, or
strategic purpose. All that people understand is that seemingly chaotic events
conspire to bring about tragedies and death, and that victims and perpetrators
launch accusations and counteraccusations about responsibility and guilt. Little
effort is made to help the public understand what distinguishes terrorism from
other forms of political violence waged by nonstate actors, such as guerrilla
warfare or insurgency, especially when terrorists often obfuscate the distinctions
in their propaganda and their justifications for violence. Adding to this confusion
is the way terrorism portrays itself. Until recently, few terrorist groups ever
identified as such, and even fewer would argue that their violence was not
justified either from a humanitarian perspective or from a strictly moral view. In
addition, for most of the time it has been in use as a tactic, terrorism has seen
groups emerge from all over the ideological spectrum: the violent left-wing
intellectuals of Europe, the brutal fascists in Germany and Italy prior to World
War II, and various groups from all the world’s major religions. Not
surprisingly, given its persistence and variability in structure and ideology, the
use of the word terrorism often degenerates into an ad hominem used by
political rivals to sully their opponents and their policies.
Today, terrorism has the ability, more than ever, to upend the global political
order. IS’s advance across northern Iraq not only left thousands dead through
horrific acts of violence but also sought to challenge the very concept of the
nation-state by erasing the borders between Iraq and Syria and establishing a
pan-Islamic political entity that claimed sovereignty over the world’s entire
Muslim population. In the West, brazen plots by IS and al-Qaeda helped usher in
populists in both Europe and North America with decidedly Islamophobic
messages. In the United States and the United Kingdom, politicians offered
extreme and radical solutions to the problem of terrorism that threatened to
upend their liberal-democratic political charters. In both instances, these
individuals were elected. Claiming terrorism is a violent act inextricably linked
to a particular religion or part of the world is not enough. One needs to learn its
historical background to understand what terrorism actually is and how to define
it. Only then can we contextualize modern terrorism, because we will have a
paradigm for evaluating brazen new acts committed by any future terrorist
entity. Aside from history, there is a critical need for explorations and
explanations of the actors as well as the jargon associated with the modern
terrorist threat. This includes terms like lone-wolf terrorism, the idea of the
caliphate, propaganda of the deed, the various branches of both IS and al-Qaeda,
and even the terrorist groups unassociated with these movements. Finally, it is
imperative to understand the rationale and reasoning for terrorism. The scary
truth, despite what the media suggests, is that terrorism is not the product of
psychosis or irrationality; if anything, it is an extremely logical and reasonable
form of political violence that produces results. Yet despite this and the way
terrorists portray themselves to the world, in the final analysis, they are nonstate
actors that commit violence against nonmilitary targets outside of war zones to
fuel an emotional response that will affect the politics of a group, society, nation,
or even continent. This, by every extant legal convention, is both illegal and
without justification.
As one of the authors of this present effort, I, Walter Laqueur, first wrote of
terrorism more than forty years ago, when the field was quite inchoate and few
had bothered to give a systematic accounting of the phenomenon. In my book
Terrorism, I noted that terrorism was one of the most widely discussed issues of
the time but also one of the least understood. In the years that have passed,
interest has not waned but rather has grown exponentially as other great dangers
seem to have receded. More than a quarter century after the Cold War’s
conclusion, with new risks of conflict between world powers and permanent
ecological disaster on the horizon, is the enormous amount of publicity for
terrorism justified, or is its importance and prevalence exaggerated? We shall
return to this question later.
Recent manifestations of terrorism have been described in countless books,
monographs, articles, plays, novels, and movies, with varying degrees of
sophistication. Terror has fascinated metaphysicians and popular novelists alike.
The causes of terrorism, its financial sources, the distinction between terrorism
and guerrilla warfare—these and many other issues have been debated and
commented upon in many quarters and in various languages. It is perhaps
noteworthy that there is little about this subject written in Arabic (other than
publications created by IS and other such organizations) or in Russian, even
though it can be taken for granted that the phenomenon has not escaped the
attention of the Russian policy makers and secret services. But what could be the
reason for the neglect of terrorism in Arab literature?
What has been very seldom discussed with the general public is the efficacy
of terrorism in changing the very structure of government. An example would be
9/11. Historians, political scientists, and others have written at length in their
technical journals about how it shaped the political character of the United
States, its allies, and other countries—giving voice to hawkish leaders and
restrictive legislation—but rarely is the public fully briefed on domestic or
international structural changes. The attacks on New York and Washington had
an enormous impact on public opinion and on policy makers, especially in the
United States, but also in other countries. The attacks led to the establishment of
the Department of Homeland Security, and according to The Washington Post,
the employment of “about 200,000 contractors and about 188,000 federal
employees,” not including “uniformed members of the Coast Guard.”1 This is a
larger staff than most other U.S. government agencies. Following the attacks,
NATO activated Article V of its charter in a show of solidarity with the United
States, enmeshing member states into the prolonged conflict that is Afghanistan.
But in what way have the events of 9/11 changed the international balance of
power? This is hard to measure. Since that morning, the United States has
prioritized conflicts in the Middle East and has diverted resources it would have
used to counter or, at the very least, accommodate the rise of China in the
western Pacific. This focus on the Middle East has meant that would-be terrorist
leaders have been in the United States’ crosshairs, undoubtedly hastening their
deaths. Indeed, given how skilled the United States has become at killing
terrorists, there was a joke for a while that the surest way to die was to become
al-Qaeda’s third in command, given how frequently American drone strikes
targeted them. Not surprisingly, this gave space for China to assert itself and
work toward asserting hegemony in the Pacific, knowing that the United States
was too immersed in conflicts of choice to bother responding. It is doubtful that
this was al-Qaeda’s objective. China both opposes the group’s long-term
ambitions of a caliphate that rules the world and represses its Uighur population,
a minority Muslim sect in the western part of the country.
To what extent have those attacks and their aftermath promoted the aims of
those who initiated and carried them out? It precipitated the wars in Iraq and the
subsequent rise of IS, but it is debatable to what extent the war was the result of
al-Qaeda’s brilliance or miscalculations on the part of the governments of the
United States and Iraq. For all the influence of these terror groups, they cannot
outmaneuver an organized and well-formed government capable of enacting
reform to deprive terrorist groups of further victories and, with them, new
recruits. This seems to be the reason why, in the seventeen years since 9/11, no
operation of similar magnitude has been carried out, despite the worldwide
networks of al-Qaeda and IS. This is not to predict that similar attacks will not
happen in the future but only to say that it seems unlikely.
Indeed, the most recent indications are that IS’s push to establish a new
caliphate has been a failure. By trying to “liberate” territory, IS exposed itself to
counterattacks by superior forces and was driven from many of the regions it had
previously captured. This happened despite the fact that those in the fight to
counter IS never used their full strength en masse when seeking to uproot it. The
battle for Aleppo started in July 2012 and ended in December 2016. If there had
been a truly determined effort to dislodge the conquerors, it could have ended in
a matter of months, if not weeks. Aleppo was fought by the corrupt and
weakened Assad regime, facing serious defections and other international
constraints, and it still managed to withstand the pressure. If anything, Assad
held back because an overwhelming attack killing even more civilians would
truly bring the wrath of the international community, which, unlike IS, is capable
of removing him from power. If Assad can hold off a protracted terrorist
insurgency waged by multiple actors and claim victory, can al-Qaeda and IS
really pose a threat to strong and stable Western governments?
Regardless, the world’s leading terrorist organizations are bound to continue.
The parts of the world hardly touched by the impact of terrorism in the last
fifteen years will likely become targets in the near future. Militants are
mobilizing in Southeast Asia. Attacks there were common shortly after 9/11, but
slowed down following a concerted counterterrorism policy by the various
countries in the region. This appears to be a temporary lull, as militants in the
Philippines are emerging once more, undoubtedly inspired by successes
experienced by terrorist groups in other parts of the world. Above all else,
though, the United States and Europe are experiencing greater threats by
terrorists than before. In these latter two theaters, the fighters are often returning
from the battlefields of the Middle East, but local supporters who have been
radicalized in recent years will soon join the action as well. The sheer
multiplicity of threats has left security services in Europe overwhelmed and the
United States seeking new measures to monitor the challenge posed by latent
militants.
The issue of winning over new supporters through radicalization is an
interesting and important one, and it has not yet been studied sufficiently. In the
public discourse, the tendency has been to impute a more deterministic role to
religion or to poverty, without taking into account the full universe of terrorist
operations throughout time. Moreover, it highlights two relatively new features
of terrorist operations: the lone-wolf phenomenon and internet indoctrination.
The First Amendment of the United States Constitution protects freedom of
speech, but should those protections be extended to include advocacy for and the
dissemination of terrorist propaganda? These freedoms are not as protected in
Europe and other parts of the world, making the United States a curious case
study. There is a similar problem with the mobilization of recruits for any
terrorist operation. While Europe has taken steps to criminalize this behavior, in
the United States, the right to assembly gives a degree of protection, as long as
the goal is not the commission of a crime. What differentiates between student
groups exercising their freedom of speech and individuals organizing to further