What Terrorists Want: Understanding the Terrorist Threat [Paperback]

Louise Richardson, Executive Dean of Harvard University's Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, has been teaching courses on terrorism since the mid-1990s. In this comprehensive introduction, she firstly explains the nature of the terrorist threat and examines its context, causes and motivations. She then looks at how we can use this knowledge to counteract the threat. As she argues, to understand terrorism is not to sympathise with it; indeed we must understand it to forge effective counter-terrorism policies.

Terrorists, including suicide terrorists, seek revenge, renown and reaction. They are not insane, deranged or irrational. The decision to become a terrorist depends on a combination of factors, including personal disaffection, an enabling group, a supportive community and a legitimising ideology.

Terrorists do not need a state sponsor. Since a state sponsor does not cause terrorism, attacking a state does not end terrorism. So the attack on Afghanistan destroyed the Taliban state, but not Al Qa'ida. Similarly, the attack on Iraq is not destroying terrorism, nor would attacking Iran destroy it either.

The US state's declaration of a global war on terrorism after 9/11 was a mistake and is bound to fail. It has made the situation worse, generating more terrorists.

As Richardson shows, we cannot defeat terrorism just by trying to smash every terrorist movement. We should instead focus on the attainable goal of containing their recruitment and constraining the resort to terrorist tactics. Also, it is better tactics to underplay the threat rather than exaggerate it. So when Al Qa'ida lies that it has WMD to make itself seem more important, Blair and Bush were wrong to back their lie.

Terrorists cannot destroy democracy; only we can do that, by self-defeating actions like ending habeas corpus by interning suspects for ever longer periods. Introducing internment was the biggest miscalculation of the Northern Ireland conflict, prolonging it for decades.

Richardson notes that Marx, Engels and Lenin opposed terrorism. After the Clerkenwell bombing killed six people in 1867, Marx wrote, "One cannot expect London workers to allow themselves to be blown up in honour of Fenian emissaries." For decades, the British and US states have been building up fundamentalists to defeat secular nationalism. We should build up Marxism to help to contain terrorism.

Without passion, Louise Richardson presents a factual and in-depth study of what makes terrorists and terrorism exist. Unlike a great many pundits who think they know what terrorism is, this author speaks with authority.

First of all, she contends that you cannot have a war on terror. To her, it is a war on a tactic, a fear that is a war on an emotion. She insists that you cannot wage a war on either. As long as anyone can commit a terrorist act, it debunks any contention that such a war is being won.

The author declares that terrorists seek three essential elements to their acts: revenge, renown, and reaction. In the destruction of the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and Flight 93 in Shanksville, PA, they achieved all three. Richardson explains that all terrorists and their organizations seek revenge for a humiliation or defeats real, imagined, and unknown to us. By declaring a "War on Terrorism and al-Qaeda we provided them with renown. By pursuing a war in Afghanistan and Iraq and by giving them Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo we gave them a reaction beyond their wildest dreams. "by using the extreme language of conviction that bin Laden uses, by declaring war, even a crusade, against him in response to his war against us, we are mirroring his actions. We are playing into his hands...elevating his stature...permitting him to set the terms of our interactions."

For terrorism to succeed, terrorists require personal dissatisfaction, an enabling society and legitimizing ideology. Their personal dissatisfaction comes from our support of Israel beating them time and again with US built weapons, killing of their civilians, and occupation of their lands. According to Richardson, being the only superpower and having the most influence in the world, also incurs their enmity. The author claims that terrorism are always acts of weaker or inferior forces upon a larger, stronger one. An enabling society is one that provides sanctuary to them, and sees them as heroes. In fact, they cannot succeed without this key ingredient. Their belief that they are doing the right thing or God's will is the ideology.

The author does provide a blueprint for defeating or disabling terrorism in a way we have overlooked so far. Talks with terrorists directly or through intermediaries provides us with something we have lacked so far--information about the opposition. We must deny terrorists the support of an enabling society by gaining that society's trust and belief in our cause. She claims that in a democracy it is especially important to maintain our own liberties. Declaring American citizens as enemy combatants, spying by Americans on Americans, creating a Patriot Act, calling unsupportive Americans traitors, plays right into the terrorists' hands, and gives them a victory. She makes it clear that such restrictions do not provide addtional security, and that such temporary security measures tend to become permanent.

Richardson never comes across as a terrorist sympathizer or a neo con zealot. Her arguments are based on in-depth research, interviews and a voluminous collection of data. She has evaluated our actions against her extensive knowledge of the topic. Our actions provided sufficient reason for critiquing our response to terrorism. The reader can only come to the conclusion that the Bush administration has tried to douse the fire of terrorism with kerosene.

After reading this it may make you wish that someone had consulted her on 9/12 or earlier. She would have provided in-depth answers that would have been more profound than, "They hate us because they hate our freedoms." There's one more thing Richardson makes clear: we must learn that democracy cannot be imposed from without, and elections do not constitute democracy--a lesson this past administration has obviously failed to learn.

As the author says, seeking to understand terrorists does not mean that we agree with them or support them in any way. But understanding their motives - and different terrorists are motivated in different ways - helps us defeat them. Military power can never destroy terrorism unless it is permitted to destroy democracy at the same time. The author's case studies from recent experience as well as from history show that terrorism is nothing new, and show that it can be overcome, usually by covert operations, by splitting factions and by weakening support within the community the terrorists claim to represent. A war on "terror" is not the solution because "terror" cannot be defined. Such a war can therefore never be won. And if politicians claim that it is a war, how can they reject the safeguards of the Geneva conventions and at the same time insist that they represent freedom. democracy and justice?

Essential reading for all policy-makers.