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12 Terrorism
MAX TAYLOR
CHAPTER OUTLINE
12.1 INTRODUCTION
12.2 WHAT ARE TERRORISTS, AND WHAT IS TERRORISM?
12.3 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF TERRORISM
12.4 BECOMING, REMAINING, DISENGAGING
12.5 RADICALISATION 12.5.1 Factors Related to Ideology
12.5.2 Factors Related to Social Context
12.5.3 Factors Related to Leadership/Charismatic Figures
12.5.4 Factors Related to Situational and Personal Context
12.6 PROGRESSION INTO TERRORIST ACTIVITIES: AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL ACCOUNTS
12.7 DISENGAGEMENT
12.8 SUICIDE TERRORISM AND POLITICAL SUICIDE
12.9 ASSESSMENT OF DANGEROUSNESS
12.10 SUMMARY
LEARNING OUTCOMES
BY THE END OF THIS CHAPTER, YOU SHOULD BE ABLE TO:
Understand why a psychological analysis of terrorism and the terrorist is important in both criminal investigations and the legal process
Appreciate the principal research methods used to explore terrorism and the terrorist
Understand the implications of existing findings for understanding terrorism and the terrorist.
12.1 INTRODUCTION
L’homme, l’homme, l’homme armé,
L’homme armé
L’homme armé doibt on doubter, doibt on doubter…
The man, the man, the armed man,
The armed man
The armed man should be feared, should be feared…
The study of terrorism and the terrorist is essentially a multidisciplinary endeavour, drawing on insights from a range of approaches and perspectives, and in this respect, of course, it is no different from other forensic areas. We will explore this further in this chapter, and consider some of the central issues that might characterise our understanding of terrorism and the terrorist from a forensic psychological perspective. It will draw on the idea of process as an organising concept.
12.2 WHAT ARE TERRORISTS, AND WHAT IS TERRORISM?
To begin thinking about terrorism and forensic psychology, we must first of all consider what we mean by the terms we use. Both terrorism and the terrorist (the individual who commits a terrorist offence) are contentious terms, which lack a universally agreed definition. In a sense this is like crimes and criminals in that social and cultural contexts may affect what we might regard as a particular crime, and likewise how we might understand the person who commits that crime. But in some senses, the concept of terrorism is more complex than that of crime; although generally speaking we regard terrorism as a crime, its distinguishing quality is that it has a political context (as we will see) that on the whole crime does not, and furthermore it is often loosely used as a pejorative rather than descriptive label. In contrast, what the terrorist does is almost always a criminal act (as defined by being contrary to some criminal law), although we may on occasions condone that act; in so doing of course, we find ourselves in complex moral dilemmas.
Despite these uncertainties, terrorism (or something the contemporary viewer would recognise as such) has been with us for a very long time (Burk, 2005). The short quotation at the beginning of this chapter is the first three lines of a medieval French song that captures the sense of terror felt then and now when citizens are faced by armed men. The song is known to have existed in the fifteenth century, and contemporary scholarship suggests it may have a dual meaning – beware the armed men (soldiers) of the State, or those claiming to represent the State, but also beware the reciprocal of that, armed citizens (which in medieval France might have been effectively the same thing).
Armed citizens, whether in the form of conscripted local militias, or in the form of a more distributed sense of armed individuals acting collectively or individually to a purpose, captures an important sense of what we might recognise in the contemporary world as terrorism, and as Burk (2005) notes, our modern day fears associated with terrorism echo those associated with the medieval l’homme armé. The confused reciprocity between legitimate State activity (in exercising social control, for example), and illegitimate individual activity (as in armed men challenging a State, for example, which we might refer to as terrorism) implied by this song clearly hinges on what we mean by legitimate and authority, and it is this relationship that continues to complicate our understanding of terrorism.
There is no universally agreed definition of terrorism (Carlile, 2007), but a widely accepted pragmatic definition suggests the term “terrorism means premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against non-combatant targets by subnational groups, or clandestine agents” (CIA, Title 22 of the US Code, Section 2656f(d)). If you think through what this might mean, you will see some of the complexity of understanding terrorism; but one thing that is quite clear is that terrorism is firmly grounded within essentially an instrumental and political context involving violence premised on the notion of State legitimacy and challenges to it, where motivation and intention seems to be critical factors. The use of violence to intimidate people (towards which terrorist violence is often directed) in the absence of a political motive, although problematic and frequently illegal, is not in itself an example of terrorism (but might be thought of as a crime). It is political instrumentality focused against non-combatants that is the critical element in distinguishing between terrorist behaviour and terrorism and criminal violence (in contrast, for example, to organised criminal activity with which it might be thought to share some common qualities).
PHOTO 12.1 There is no universally agreed definition of terrorism, but a widely accepted pragmatic definition suggests the term “terrorism means premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against non-combatant targets by subnational groups, or clandestine agents”.
Source: © EQRoy/Shutterstock
In the UK, and in Europe more broadly, the response to terrorism tends to be framed from within a civil and criminal law context, emphasising the role of civil society elements (the police, the judiciary and parliamentary control) in responding to terrorism. In contrast the United States has tended to see the response to terrorism from a more military perspective (Oliverio, 2008). These very fundamentally different ways of approaching terrorism have profoundly shaped contemporary responses to terrorism.
12.3 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF TERRORISM
Contrary to popular media representation, forensic psychology plays a limited role in analyses of terrorism (Horgan, 2005; Silke, 2003). Indeed, unlike many other areas of forensic application, the study of terrorism generally lacks substantive evidence-based research, and in particular has attracted relatively limited psychological analysis. Although the academic study of terrorism has massively expanded since the attacks in the United States of 9/11, most of this expansion has been in social science disciplines such as political science.
Even here, however, the research base has been criticised, and whilst we may know more about the context to terrorism and terrorist behaviour, arguably little of practical significance has emerged. Sageman (2014) critically commenting on the state of terrorism research, asserted that “we are no closer to answering the simple question of ‘What leads a person to turn to political violence?’”, and this is undoubtedly the case, at least with respect to an individual.
We can identify in a general way the factors that may be associated with engagement in terrorism. However, they are complex. To summarise they may be idiosyncratic, socially and or politically determined, or religiously motivated; personally expressed reasons may be fundamental or incidental, and the mosaic of reasons will vary over time. Such an aggregation of general factors is of course unhelpful in guiding policy, and these weaknesses of research have important social consequences. Contemporary rates of recruitment into terrorism provide a striking metric suggesting that Sageman was indeed correct in his diagnosis.
Four approaches to the study of terrorism can be identified (Horgan, 2005) that might guide our understan
ding. These are shown in Box 12.1.
BOX 12.1 FACTORS NECESSARY TO THE UNDERSTANDING OF TERRORISM
The individual, and the processes that might characterise involvement for the individual in terrorism.
The relationship between the individual and his or her political and social context.
The consequences of terrorism, in terms of how the individual and society might be affected by terrorism.
The methodological framework in which to study terrorism.
It might be argued that separating the individual from his or her social context, and similarly from the consequences of action is inappropriate, and omits the significance of the totality of influences on behaviour. In the case of terrorism, and its focus on political influence, this may seem a very strong point. From this view, terrorism is an undifferentiated aggregate of what terrorists do.
On the other hand, the starting point for forensic psychology analysis is presumably problematic and inappropriate behaviour rather than an imprecise social context; and whatever long-term intentions of the perpetrator (or his organisation) might be, it is an individual who commits an act of terrorism, and as we have seen in other areas of criminality, it is by focussing on the factors that influence individual action that effective management provision can be made.
A case for this has been strongly made by Taylor (2015) from an evolutionary psychology perspective, an approach also congruent with a forensic perspective. He suggests our concern when considering terrorists is with behaviour involving fear-inducing violence (against people or property). Such behaviour is neither random nor purposeless, and is essentially instrumental (in an actual or symbolic sense) and purposive for the perpetrator, although this may not be apparent to or shared by the observer or the victim. That instrumentality and purposiveness that characterises terrorist behaviour is frequently assumed to be political in character, but what recent research has revealed is that what we might discern as “terrorist motivations” (that is to say the motivations that underpin engagement in a particular example of terrorist behaviour) don’t necessarily involve complex political ideology and don’t necessarily even involve any political purpose, but do draw from things like broad political context, personal affronts or injury, risk taking and status seeking, and a need for affiliation or affection and peer pressure (McCauley & Moskalenko, 2011a).
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