The Study of Terrorism and Counterterrorism

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THE STUDY OF
TERRORISM AND COUNTERTERRORISM
Andrew Silke
Introduction1
Terrorism and counterterrorism have always been challenging subjects to study. Emotive,
controversial and sometimes even dangerous, throughout the 20th century the study of both
has lurked on the fringes of scientific research. There were few scholars willing to commit
their careers to the area, funding was extremely limited, and inside and outside academia
there were plenty who questioned whether terrorism and counterterrorism were even
appropriate subjects for scientific study, and questioned too the motives of any researcher
willing to explore such controversial issues.
It was only after the 9/11 attacks in 2001 that terrorism moved from the fringes of scientific
interest, to a subject of major attention. Controversy remained but the funders of research
were now taking it seriously as a subject of interest. Prior to 9/11, research on terrorism had
usually been conducted on shoe-string budgets. Ultimately, a lack of funding and a shortage
of researchers stifled the ambition of research plans. Expensive and time-consuming
methodologies and analysis could only rarely be contemplated. Instead, making do with what
was available, researchers favoured methods and approaches which could be accomplished
with the meagre resources at hand. The result was that although quite a lot was still written,
much of it was of limited quality, often adding little or no new data to the field. Adding to the
mire, much of the research was often conducted by authors with only a limited understanding
1 Published as: Silke, A. (2018). ‘The study of terrorism and counterterrorism.’ In A. Silke
(ed.) The Routledge Handbook of Terrorism and Counterterrorism, pp.1-10. Oxon:
Routledge.
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of the existing literature on terrorism, with a result that a lot of dead-end research was
unnecessarily repeated and some of the rest was incredibly poorly linked with the rest of the
field.
Much of this changed in the aftermath of 9/11. There was a massive surge in research interest
on terrorism and counterterrorism and as figure 1.1 below highlights the dramatic and instant
change. The figure shows all the scholarly works recorded by Google Scholar which had at
least one of the following terms in the title: terrorism, terrorist, political violence,
radicalisation, radicalization, or insurgency. This though should not be seen as a complete
tally of the relevant research. A book or an article which focused on a particular terrorist
group or conflict but which did not use any of the search terms in its title would be missed.
Nevertheless, the graph demonstrates that almost overnight, terrorism went from an exotic
curiosity to a subject of apparently strategic international importance. Research budgets were
massively increased and substantial funding was made available for a wide range of studies.
Major new research centres and institutes were established at many universities, while the
handful of existing centres were able to grow significantly in size and scope.
Figure 1.1: Scholarly publications on terrorism and counterterrorism, 1980-2016
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Terrorism and counterterrorism entered university course curriculums across the globe and
became widely taught. Today it is rare to find any medium sized university in the west which
does not offer at least one module on terrorism in its syllabus. Before 9/11 it was a rarity.
Figure 1.1 also illustrates that the surge in interest has largely been sustained in the years
following 2001. New research continues to be published at a formidable rate. Almost 35,000
scholarly works have been published since 9/11 with ‘terrorist’ or ‘terrorism’ in the title. That
number jumps to 635,000 if you also include those works which mention terrorist or
terrorism somewhere in the text. It averages at over 100 scholarly works published each and
every day since 9/11: books, journal articles, theses. Keeping track of such a blizzard of
research and analysis is a massive challenge in itself. And yet, despite this incredible flood of
output, a recurring fear among researchers is that the study of terrorism and counterterrorism
is actually failing.
Challenges in Understanding Terrorism and Counterterrorism
A variety of factors drive this fear of failure, but the reason most often cited is that the
research methods used to study terrorism and counterterrorism are too weak. A vocal recent
critic is Marc Sagemen (2014) who argued that research on terrorism has stagnated. In a stark
overall analysis, he concluded that:
Overall, the post-9/11 money surge into terrorism studies and the rush of newcomers
into the field had a deleterious effect on research. The field was dominated by laymen,
who controlled funding, prioritizing it according to their own questions, and self-
proclaimed media experts who conduct their own ‘‘research.’’ These ‘‘experts’’ still
fill the airwaves and freely give their opinions to journalists, thereby framing terrorist
events for the public. However, they are not truly scholars, are not versed in the
scientific method, and often pursue a political agenda. … The voice of true scholars is
drowned … it is hard to escape the judgment that academic terrorism research has
stagnated for the past dozen years because of a lack of both primary sources and
vigorous efforts to police the quality of research, thus preventing the establishment of
standards of academic excellence and flooding the field with charlatans, spouting
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some of the vilest prejudices under the cloak of national security. (Sageman, 2014,
p.8)
This was not the first time that experienced researchers had hit out at the poor quality of large
amounts of terrorism research. In an early famous review of research, Schmid and Jongman
(1988) found that most researchers were not producing substantively new data or knowledge.
Instead, they were primarily reworking old material which already existed. In the 1980s only
46% of the researchers said that they had ever managed to generate data of their own on the
subject of terrorism. For the majority of researchers, all of their writings and analyses were
based entirely on data produced by others.
Figure 1.2 comes from a review at the end of the 1990s which showed that researchers
remained very heavily dependent on easily accessible sources of data. Only about 20% of
articles provided substantially new knowledge which was previously unavailable to the field.
The field thus was very top heavy with what are referred to as pre-experimental research
designs. Unfortunately, these are ‘the weakest designs since the sources of internal and
external validity are not controlled for. The risk of error in drawing causal inferences from
pre-experimental designs is extremely high and they are primarily useful as a basis ... for
exploratory research’ (Frankfort-Nachmias and Nachmias, 1996, p.147).
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Figure 1.2:
Methods in Terrorism Research (Silke, 2001)
There was some improvement after 9/11, but a 2009 review still found that only 35 percent of
articles in the core terrorism studies were providing new data (Silke, 2009). Most of the rest
were again essentially rehashing knowledge that was already there. This leads us back to
Sageman’s stagnation argument, which recognised that while a great deal was being written
on terrorism and counterterrorism, the heavy reliance on weaker methodologies and limited
data analysis, meant that the field was failing to make meaningful progress.
There was a polemic edge to the stagnation argument and many serious and experienced
terrorism researchers countered that Sageman had overstated the case (e.g. Taylor, 2014;
McCauley and Moskalenko, 2014). Yes, there were a lot of mediocre studies but there were
also definite signs of progress. Indeed, some have argued instead that the study of terrorism
and counterterrorism is actually in a golden age: a period of unparalleled research activity
where a wide range of progress is taking place, even if somewhat slower and more hesitantly
in some areas than others (e.g. Schmid, 2011; Silke and Schimdt-Petersen, 2017).
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To a degree patchy progress is a reflection of the multi-disciplinary nature of terrorism
studies. It has been long been recognised within the field that terrorism studies is a strongly
inter-disciplinary subject area (Silke, 2004), and while it has often traditionally been
dominated by the political sciences, there have been very significant contributions from other
areas, including psychology, criminology, economics, anthropology, history, religious studies,
etc. (e.g. Schmid, 2011; Horgan, 2017; LaFree and Freilich, 2016). The interdisciplinary
nature of the field is generally widely viewed in positive terms, helping to ensure an
extensive range of perspectives and methodologies can be brought to bear. One challenge,
however, is the risk of disciplinary silos developing, with researchers from one discipline
being poorly aware of potentially useful and relevant findings from others.
Richard English (2016, pp.148-149) highlighted that breaking down such silos was one of the
major challenges now facing the future of terrorism research:
Sometimes, what we know about terrorism and how to respond to it can only be seen
most clearly if we read along continua and across disciplines and beyond a narrowly-
defined field of work. There has recently been something of an eirenic turn in the
wider scholarly literature relevant to terrorism and counter-terrorism; but this is only
properly visible if one reads well beyond the terrorism studies literature itself, and if
one digs deeply into diverse disciplines … in order to see this scholarly insight
properly, we have to read across methodological boundaries and, equally importantly,
to address the problem that some people still too narrowly define the boundaries
around the study of terrorism (and discuss terrorism research as if it occurs
overwhelmingly in a very small set of journals and titles). Much of the best work on
terrorist violence and terrorist actors is not published in terrorism studies journals, or
in books with ‘terrorism’ in the title. Instead, it addresses the contextually, historically,
culturally located emergence and dynamics of political violence which many would
consider to be terrorism. To ignore this wider literature limits the profundity and
accuracy of the conclusions that can be reached.
Adding yet another hurdle for research to grabble with is the troublesome issue of how
terrorism is defined. To put it bluntly, there has never been a widely agreed definition of
terrorism, and some writers have concluded that ‘it is unlikely that any definition will ever be
generally agreed upon’ (Shafritz, Gibbons and Scott, 1991). The failure to find a widely
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acceptable definition of terrorism is tied to the political use of the word. Fundamentally,
‘terrorism’ is a pejorative term with a range of negative meanings. These concerns tie into the
long-standing truism that ‘one man’s terrorist, is another man’s freedom fighter.’ Individuals
such as Nelson Mandela, for example, were labelled as terrorists for many years and yet
Mandela went on to become an internationally respected statesman.
Terrorists rarely describe themselves as “terrorists”. While on trial in 1878 for shooting a
Russian police general, Vera Zasulich proudly proclaimed in court “I am a terrorist, not a
murderer” (Bergman, 1983), but subsequent inheritors of her legacy have shied away from
the label. Instead later generations of ‘terrorists’ portrayed themselves as soldiers, freedom
fighters, volunteers, partisans, the resistance (at least in their own minds if nowhere else).
Normally they were equally bitter about any effort to describe them as criminals.
The dividing lines between terrorism, guerrilla warfare and insurgency, for example, have
never been clear-cut. For some, inevitably, the terms are completely interchangeable. For
others there are important and powerful differences. The common thread running across all
three is the use of violence for political purposes, but little else is agreed about, and many
governments tend to be quick to apply the label ‘terrorist’ to an opponent if they can possibly
get away with it.
Uncertainty over what terrorism is not only has political implications, but also has real
consequences for research. For example, if you are interested in understanding the root
causes of terrorism, one study might have a very narrow focus only exploring instances of
terrorism perpetrated by lone-actors; another might focus instead on conflicts which could be
regarded as insurgencies or civil wars; while a third study might try to look at the state use of
terrorism. All three studies might in theory be looking at “the causes of terrorism” but what
each means by “terrorism” is very different. Inevitably, the studies come to different
conclusions. Similar problems apply in terms of research on counterterrorism: exactly what
type of terrorism is being countered? This is not always clearly spelt out with the inevitably
result that there is often confusion and mixed findings around the impact of counterterrorism
too.
Persistent concerns about the impact of how terrorism was defined within research partly
contributed to the development of the sub-field of Critical Terrorism Studies (CTS) in the
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2000s. Formally established in 2007, CTS argued that a variety of issues had not been
adequately addressed by mainstream terrorism research. A particular concern was that
research tended to see terrorism as something only non-state actors did. As Jackson (2009,
p.70) noted:
An important consequence of these conceptual practices are that terrorism comes to
be understood and studied solely as a form of violence carried out by non-state
groups, and terrorism by states remains unstudied and mostly invisible … When state
terrorism is discussed, it is usually limited to descriptions of ‘state-sponsored
terrorism’ by so-called ‘rogue states’. Further, the subsequent silence on the direct use
of terrorism by state actors within the Terrorism Studies literature underpins a mostly
unspoken belief that Western liberal democratic states in particular never engage in
terrorism as a matter of policy, but only occasionally in error or misjudgement.
A linked concern for CTS was how:
much of the literature defines the “terrorist as the main or exclusive security problem‟
and inquiry is largely restricted to the assembling of information and data that would
solve or eradicate the “problem as the state defines it. This focus ignores both ‟
terrorism being a social phenomenon which is typically the outcome of a long
dynamic process, and the potential contribution of the state itself to the creation of the
conditions in which terrorist action by non-state actors occurs. (Jackson, Gunning and
Smyth, 2007).
Controversy around the appropriate role of research with regard to terrorism is not new.
Terrorism is an emotive subject and many researchers have traditionally not been overly
concerned with remaining objective and neutral in how they view the subject and its
perpetrators. Indeed, it has been noted that many researchers seem confused by their roles. As
Schmid and Jongman (1988, p.179) pointed out, the researcher’s ‘role is not to “fight” the
terrorist fire; rather than a “firefighter,” [the researcher] should be a “student of combustion”.’
But such objectivity is often relatively rare in the field (not especially surprising when most
of the research is paid for by one side in the terrorism equation). Most researchers do seem to
believe they are fulfilling - or are meant to fulfil - a firefighting role. The result is that
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research is often largely driven by policy concerns and the area has often fallen into a trap
where it is largely limited to government agendas.
Outline of this Volume
Given the focus of much of the chapter so far, one would be forgiven for assuming that
research on terrorism and counterterrorism must inevitably then be in a shocking state, ruined
by weak research methods, conceptual confusion and political bias. And yet, that would be
far too pessimistic. While there are problems, overall, terrorism research is still remarkably
vibrant and prolific, and amid the herd of mediocre studies in many areas there are still real
gems which offer findings of genuine progress and insight. Overall, it is likely that future
scholars will look back at this period as an important and transformational phase in our
understanding of terrorism and counterterrorism. The study of terrorism itself has been
catapulted from academic obscurity to a mainstream multi-disciplinary subject, now widely
taught at most universities. The field produces an unprecedented level of research and
writing. Never before in history have the issues of what causes terrorism and how should it be
combatted attracted such wide international attention and controversy.
Bearing in mind this rich and varied context, the need for an accessible and comprehensive
overview on these controversial issues remains profound. This then was the motivation
behind the current volume: to provide a wide-ranging overview of the current state of
academic analysis and debate on terrorism and counterterrorism, as well as a detailed survey
of key historical and contemporary terrorist groups and major counterterrorism campaigns.
The volume intentionally adopted a wide focus, highlighting both key trends as well as
cutting-edge topics and emerging critical issues. A wide net was cast internationally, to
deliberately bring a rich range of conflicts and case studies from across the globe. Ultimately,
this handbook is intended to provide a comprehensive, state-of-the-art overview of our
current knowledge, as well as hopefully providing a benchmark for future work.
Terrorism
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The first part of the book opens with a chapter from Anthony Richards who tackles the ever
present issue of defining terrorism. We have already touched on the significant impact this
has for research, and Richards highlights both the major problems in reaching a widely
agreed definition but also some of the best avenues forward. Gary LaFree follows with a
closely linked chapter examining the conceptualisation of terrorism and in particular what
this means in terms of measurement – a cornerstone of research. As one of the key figures
behind the Global Terrorism Database, LaFree is extraordinarily well placed to highlight the
implications even small changes in definition and measurement have on our assessment of
trends and the impact of counterterrorism policies.
Having set the conceptual framework for the first part of the volume, Leonard Weinberg then
takes us on a swift tour of the history of terrorism. Too often, the history of terrorism is
assumed to have begun on September 11, 2001. Weinberg comprehensively destroys that
myth and in what is rightly the longest chapter in the volume, he outlines the rich and
complex evolution of terrorism over the last 100 years.
One of the fundamental questions facing terrorism studies is what causes terrorism? One of
the key writers on this subject Tore Bjørgo, together with myself, try to pull together the
evidence around what factors drive terrorist conflicts. The findings challenge many widely
held assumptions and also drive home that we need to be sophisticated in terms of how we
think about causes and the different levels at which they work.
At this point, the volume moves into discussion and analysis of different types of terrorism. I
open with a chapter on state terrorism. Too often there is an assumption that terrorism only
applies to non-state actors, but as the Critical Terrorism Studies school would argue, states
can and have engaged in terrorism. How we examine state terrorism again raises important
questions about how we define and conceptualise terrorism in general.
The most successful terrorist groups over the last 100 years tended to all come from the
nationalist and separatist camp. James Forest provides an overview of the characteristics of
this type of terrorism and discusses some of the more well-known examples such as the IRA
in Northern Ireland and ETA in Spain. Leena Malkki follows with an analysis of left-wing
terrorism: a significant force in Europe in the 1970s and 1980s, but even stronger in other
parts of the world such as Latin America. George Michael then assesses their counter-parts on
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the right-wing, drawing attention to (among other things) how the right wing concept of
‘leaderless resistance’ fed steadily into the rise of lone actor terrorism. This theme is
developed further in the following chapter by Noémie Bouhana and her co-authors who
review what we know about lone-actors today. Historically the far right may have set the
scene on lone wolf terrorism, and while they remain present, it is increasingly Islamist-
inspired lone-actors who are of growing concern.
In different ways, radicalisation and recruitment are the major themes of the next three
chapters. Zoey Reeve opens with an overview on what we know about terrorist psychology
and the radicalisation process. Had this book been written 20 years ago we would not have
mentioned the term “Radicalisation”, though we would certainly have talked about
individuals being recruited or joining terrorist groups. The growth of the concept of
radicalisation as the framework for how we understand how people become involved in
terrorism is one of the major developments in terrorism studies in recent years. Deborah
Browne follows with an assessment on how children and teenagers in particular are drawn
into terrorism, extremism and political violence. Finally, Katherine Brown and Elizabeth
Pearson explore the increasingly important role played by social media and the online
environment, both in terms of facilitating and hindering radicalisation.
Next, Joshua Kilberg focuses on terrorist group structures, a subject with important
implications in both assessing the nature of the threat posed by terrorism but also in assessing
the likely effectiveness of various counterterrorism measures. Sarah Marsden is also
concerned with effectiveness, but this time in terms of assessing what impact does terrorism
have? Intense debate has raged on this question in recent years and Marsden assesses the
different ways in which terrorism ‘works’. Linked to this, in the subsequent chapter Thomas
Baumert and Mikel Buesa explore the economic impact of terrorism. Their conclusion is that
terrorism can be a remarkably effective low cost form of conflict. For modest outlays,
terrorist violence can inflict disproportionately high costs on opponents. Building further on
this theme, James Windle outlines how terrorists raise the money needed to fund their
campaigns and how this can link into organised crime and even in some cases to the watering
down of political ideals when some movements become increasingly motivated by profit.
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David Malet’s chapter on foreign fighters represents yet another topic that if this book had
been written 20 years ago would probably have been overlooked. Today, however, foreign
fighters are a major international issue and the focus of enormous attention.
The remaining chapters in this section look at particularly prominent terrorist tactics. Assaf
Moghadam starts off with an overview of suicide terrorism, an exotic curiosity in the 20th
century, but a mainstream terrorist tactic in the 21st. Moghadam assesses how and why that
transformation occurred. In contrast, hostage-taking has been a mainstream terrorist tactic for
much longer. Margaret Wilson provides a review of the history of hostage taking, outlining
the dynamics and objectives typically seen when terrorists use this tactic. Gary Ackerman
then provides a clear-headed assessment of Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear
(CBRN) Terrorism. In an age of mass casualty terrorism, the use of CBRN weapons by
terrorists poses sobering questions which can be easily inflamed and inflated in public
imaginations. Ackerman, however, provides a sensible and informed assessment of the threat
and challenges here. Another area often subject to hype and hysteria is the threat of cyber
terrorism. Again, Marc Rogers provides some sensible analysis in a chapter that links well
with Brown and Pearson’s earlier analysis on the role of social media.
The final section of Part 1, focuses on case studies of particularly significant groups: Al
Qaeda, Boko Haram, Hamas, Hizbullah, Islamic State, Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam,
Provisional Irish Republican Army, and, Red Army Faction. Most terrorist groups are
eventually defeated and indeed most are usually defeated relatively quickly. One survey
found that 90 percent of terrorist groups were defeated within one year of their first attack
(Rapaport, 1992). Of those few who managed to survive the first year, nearly half were
finished off within the next ten years. Thus, on that measure, the eight groups explored here
are not typical terrorist groups: all have endured for a considerable amount of time, some for
more than decades. Their longevity however allows for a deeper analysis of the driving forces
behind each movement and also an assessment of the changing dynamics and fortunes of
their respective campaigns of violence. In each of the eight cases, the authors try to cover
relatively similar issues: the origins and history of the group; ideology and strategy; key
figures and critical events. They also aim to give an overall assessment of the major trends
and issues in the conflict.
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Counterterrorism
In the second part of the collection, the focus shifts to counterterrorism. The policies,
strategies and tactics that states use to combat terrorism and deal with its consequences are
referred to as counterterrorism. Counterterrorism can take many different forms and it is not
specific to any one agency or department. It can be carried out by government departments,
the military, law enforcement agencies, intelligence agencies, emergency responders and
many other groups and bodies. Ronald Crelinsten opens this section with an important
chapter to remind us that just as we have to think about how we define and conceptualise
terrorism we need to do exactly the same when approaching counterterrorism.
Subsequent chapters explore some of the main approaches to counterterrorism. Historically,
two main frameworks have dominated thinking on counterterrorism: the criminal justice
model and the military model. Lindsay Clutterbuck opens with the criminal justice
framework and a particular focus on the role of policing in counterterrorism. Clutterbuck
draws particularly on the UK experience and how policing evolved to tackle terrorism over
many decades. Michael Boyle follows with the military framework. This draws heavily on
recent experiences from the “war on terror”, and not for the last time, for example, particular
attention is focused on the use of drone warfare in counterterrorism. Next, Julian Richards
explores the crucial and often hidden role of intelligence in counterterrorism, before finally
Clive Walker gives an overview on how legislation has been used to attempt to deal with
terrorism (again, with a particular focus on the UK).
Having examined some of the major approaches and frameworks, the next series of chapters
explore more focused issues. Isabelle Duyvesteyn and Bart Schuurman concentrate on the
key issue of popular support. There is often a general acceptance that terrorism conflicts are
at their core, a battle for hearts and minds. What this means in practice, however, is often
poorly thought through and sometimes only haphazardly linked to a wider counterterrorism
strategy. Efforts to tackle the financing of terrorism can, in some regards be more
straightforward, though as Marc Parker points out in the next chapter, efforts to do so can
often be incredibly slow and only tackled after the failures of other approaches. Joshua
Freilich and his co-authors then explore the issue of how to deter and prevent terrorist attacks
from taking place. Their review shows that a variety of measures can be taken, but that the
consequences are not always positive.
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The role of prison and detention in counterterrorism has often been overlooked. It is perhaps
a strange oversight given that such a large proportion of terrorists will at some point
eventually spend time behind bars. Jacqueline Bates-Gaston examines some of the issues this
raises. Drawing on the rich experience in Northern Ireland she outlines some of the risks,
challenges and opportunities prison presents. Kurt Braddock follows directly on from this by
exploring terrorist disengagement and de-radicalisation. Most terrorists eventually leave
violence behind. Our understanding of why they move on has often been very poor. In this
chapter, Braddock outlines what we know about how terrorists disengage and what this then
means for those who are interested in encouraging militants and their supporters away from
campaigns of violence.
Rory Finegan takes us back to the subject of targeted killings and explores whether their use
is an effective or counter-productive strategy in counterterrorism. The chapter explores not
only the current era of drone strikes but also historical cases from Northern Ireland, Spain and
elsewhere.
Finally, and appropriately, Lyndsey Harris and Rachel Monaghan explore issues around ethics
and human rights in counterterrorism. Too often these have been overlooked in analysis and
discussions, and far too often they have been sources of profound concern in how states’ have
waged campaigns of counterterrorism.
The final section of Part 2 provides case studies on the counterterrorism experiences of
particularly significant countries. Thirteen detailed case studies are explored: Argentina;
Canada; China; France; Great Britain; India; Iraq; Israel; Italy; Spain; Russia; the United
States of America pre 9/11; and the United States of America since 9/11. The challenges
faced across these different regions are not the same and how each has responded to terrorism
has varied enormously. Part of the purpose of this range of chapters is to illustrate this variety
and to drive home that there are multiple ways in which states can respond to the terrorism
puzzle. Some of the case studies take a narrow focus, for example, the Argentinian case
explores the disastrous impact of the “dirty war” in the late 1970s and early 1980s and how it
weakened rather than strengthened the state that resorted to it. The Italian case study focuses
particularly on the collapse of the left-wing terrorist groups in the 1980s, and how that was
achieved primarily through criminal justice avenues. Most of the other chapters provide
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overviews of the history of terrorism and counter-terrorism in the particular country,
examining and assessing some of the political, military, legal and other policies that the
governments have used in dealing with the terrorism. Valuable and important efforts are made
to assess the effectiveness of different policies, what ultimately enjoyed some success, and
what were the political and social costs of the failures.
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