Behind every terrorist organisation there’s some kind of political or religious aim to their actions. This story tries to explain the reasons why terrorist actions fail to achieve their goals when civilian deaths are involved
Wired:Because terrorism often results in the horrific deaths of innocents, we mistakenly infer that the horrific deaths of innocents is the primary motivation of the terrorist, and not the means to a different end.
In a paper by Max Abrams in International Security. “Why Terrorism Does Not Work” (.PDF) analyzes the political motivations of 28 terrorist groups. He lists 42 policy objectives of those groups, and found that they only achieved them 7 percent of the time.
According to the data, terrorism is more likely to work if:
1) The terrorists attack military targets more often than civilian ones.
2) If they have minimalist goals like evicting a foreign power from their country or winning control of a piece of territory, rather than maximalist objectives like establishing a new political system in the country or annihilating another nation. But even so, terrorism is a pretty ineffective means of influencing policy.
The most insightful part is when Abrams uses correspondent inference theory to explain why terrorist groups that primarily attack civilians do not achieve their policy goals, even if they are minimalist. Abrams writes:
Countries believe that their civilian populations are attacked not because the terrorist group is protesting unfavorable external conditions such as territorial occupation or poverty. Rather, target countries infer the short-term consequences of terrorism, they view the negative consequences of terrorist attacks on their societies and political systems as evidence that the terrorists want them destroyed. Target countries are understandably skeptical that making concessions will placate terrorist groups believed to be motivated by these maximalist objectives.
The west is evil and evil is encroaching on islam, therefor they must stop the evil. Modernization be damned. Islamic logic.
#34. Yes, that is exactly the thing. And, to counter this argument we cannot point to a single example of a country where the import of western values have not undone the traditional society. Turkey is not only secular, but oppressively so. The introduction of ‘democracy’ into Iraq only fed the chaos.
Lets take Japan – 150 years ago, Japan began aggressively westernizing. Conservatives tried to keep the brakes on until after WW2. Incredible prosperity ensued, but a traditionalist would say that the Japanese went from a samurai / Shinto ethos to a bunch of guys buying schoolgirls’ panties out of vending machines.
But that is the brilliance of westernization – it breaks the shackles of the existing structure. That both terrifies and exhilarates people.
#32, #33. The theoretical structures of Jihad are in Islam itself – which divides the world into Islam and dar al Islam and dar al harb, calling upon relentless war against the unbelievers. But that stuff had been abandoned in mainstream Islamic thought early in the modern era – 17th, 18th Century.
Islamists dredged it up later, but I would say it is much less relevant to most Muslims’ thinking than the Book of Revelations is to American Christians.
The Islamists overlay it on their fear of modernization and their humiliation over the failure of Arab Muslims to create a successful political entity. Thus they can claim continuity back to the early days of Islam, unlike Arab nationalists in the 50s – 70s who were self-consciously creating something new.