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Table of Contents

All RAND publications are available to Congressional offices and U.S. government agencies at no charge.To order RAND Publications e-mail your request to: wea@rand.org.

1. Trends in Terrorism Networks and Netwars: The Future of Terror, Crime, and Militancy (2001) John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt

Old Madness, New Methods: Revival of Religious Terrorism Begs for Broader U.S. Policy (Winter1998-99)

Bruce Hoffman

Countering the New Terrorism, Chapter Two: Terrorism Trends and Prospects (1999) Bruce Hoffman

The New Face of Insurgency (2001) Daniel L. Byman, Peter Chalk, Bruce Hoffman, William Rosenau and David Brannan

2. Biological Terrorism Anthrax Attacks, Biological Terrorism and Preventive Responses (Nov. 6, 2001) John Parachini

Deny Victory to Anthrax Terrorists (Oct. 17, 2001) John Parachini

Terrorism, Infrastructure Protection and the U.S. Food and Agricultural Sector (Oct. 10, 2001) Peter Chalk

3. Technology and Terrorism Biometrics: Facing Up to Terrorism (2001) John D. Woodward, Jr.

Challenges and Choices for Crime-Fighting Technology: Federal Support of State and Local Law Enforcement (2001) William Schwabe, Lois M. Davis and Brian A. Jackson

4. Homeland Security Advance Executive Summary--Third Report to the President and the Congress of the Advisory Panel to Assess Domestic Response Capabilities for Terrorism Involving Weapons of Mass Destruction ("Gilmore Commission") (The final report of the Gilmore Commission will be released in late December and will be available through RAND) (Oct. 13, 2001) Michael Wermuth, Project Director

After 9/11: Stress and Coping Across America (2001) Mark A. Schuster, M.D., P.h.D., et al.

FAA: A Failure on Aviation Security (Oct. 8, 2001)*

USAF Gen. (ret.) John Michael Loh and Gerald Kauvar

Safeguarding the Skies (Sept. 30, 2001) Brian Michael Jenkins

Preparing the U.S. Army for Homeland Security: Concepts, Issues, and Options (2001) Eric V. Larson and John E. Peters

5. Foreign Policy Confronting Iraq: U.S. Policy and the Use of Force Since the Gulf War (2000) Daniel Byman and Matthew Waxman

Afghanistan: The Consolidation of a Rogue State (Winter 2000) Zalmay Khalilzad and Daniel Byman

* Available only through the web or printed versions.

Networks and NetwarsThe Future of Terror, Crime, and Militancy

John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt

For a copy visit www.rand.org/publications/MR/MR1382 or call 703.413.1100 extension 5431.

Afterword (September 2001): The Sharpening Fight for the Future1

Theory has struck home with a vengeance. The United States must nowcope with an archetypal terrorist netwar of the worst kind. The sametechnology that aids social activists and those desiring the good of all is alsoavailable to those with the darkest intentions, bent on destruction anddriven by a rage reminiscent of the Middle Ages. Soon after we put thefinishing touches on this book, terrorists attacked New York andWashington. In doing so, they confirmed the warnings (in retrospect, toobriefly stated) in Chapter Two that information-age terrorist organizationslike al-Qaeda might pursue a war paradigm, developing capabilities to strikemultiple targets from multiple directions, in swarming campaigns thatextend beyond an incident or two.2 And, as Chapter Two said wasincreasingly likely, these terrorists used Internet email and web sites fortheir communications, sometimes relying on encryption and steganographyfor security. The picture emerging of these terrorists’ network(s), althoughstill obscure, also substantiates the analysis in Chapter Three, which discusses how criminal and othernetworks have cores and peripheries, with members playing varied, specialized roles. Chapter Three al-so explains how to attack such networks and their financial and other operations. Moreover, al-Qaedaand its affiliates resemble the SPIN-type organization and dynamics illuminated in Chapter Nine.Finally, in Los Angeles, the terrorist events had the effect of mobilizing the innovative Terrorist EarlyWarning Group discussed in Chapter Four.3 This book is suddenly much more pertinent than we hadexpected.4

If Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda network is the principal adversary—as seems likely, although otherpossibilities, including sponsorship by a rogue state like Iraq, cannot be discarded yet—then it mayprove useful to view the network from the perspective of the five levels of theory and practice weelucidate in Chapter Ten (organizational, narrative, doctrinal, technological, and social).5 First, at the

______________1This is an expanded version of the “Coda” that ends the paper by Ronfeldt and Arquilla (2001) posted online at First Monday(http://firstmonday.org).

2The idea of terrorists developing a war paradigm is outlined more fully in Lesser et al. (1999) and in Arquilla, Ronfeldt, andZanini (2000).

3We are grateful to Paul de Armond, author of Chapter Seven, for a September 12, 2001, email that spelled out the ways inwhich these terrorist attacks took advantage of netwar and swarming paradigms and noted that the U.S. response should includea skillful information strategy.

4Meanwhile, the literature on other aspects continues to expand. Additions we like include Kalathil and Boas (2001), Kapstein(2001), Metzl (2001), and Tarrow (2001)—all of which bear, in one respect or another, on the prospects for improvingcooperation between governments and nongovernmental organizations. Also see “Special Issue on Mapping Globalization,”American Behavioral Scientist, Vol. 44, No. 10, June 2001, edited by Eszter Hargittai and Miguel Angel Centeno and supported bythe International Networks Archive (based at www.princeton.edu/~ina).

5Joel Garreau, “Disconnect the Dots,” Washington Post, September 17, 2001, offers additional discussion, based on interviewswith social network analysts, about how to attack a terrorist network.

http://www.rand.org/publications/MR/MR1382

II Networks and Netwars: The Future of Terror, Crime, and Militancy

organizational level, we see a major confrontation between hierarchical/state and networked/nonstateactors. For the United States and its friends and allies, one challenge will be to learn to network betterwith each other. Some of this is already going on, in terms of intelligence sharing, but much more mustbe done to build a globally operational counter-terror network. A particular challenge for thecumbersome American bureaucracy will be to encourage deep, all-channel networking among themilitary, law enforcement, and intelligence elements whose collaboration is crucial for achievingsuccess. U.S. agencies have been headed in this direction for years—in the areas of counternarcotics aswell as counterterrorism—but interagency rivalries and distrust have too often slowed progress.

Regarding al-Qaeda, the organizational challenge seems to lie in determining whether this network is asingle hub designed around bin Laden. If this is the case, then his death or capture would signal its de-feat. However, the more a terrorist network takes the form of a multihub “spider’s web” design, withmultiple centers and peripheries, the more redundant and resilient it will be—and the harder to defeat.6In a somewhat analogous vein, it is worthwhile to note that since Napster’s activities were curtailed bylegal action in the United States, more free music is being downloaded and shared by loose peer-to-peer networks. Also, note that, despite the dismantling of the powerful Medellín and Cali cartels duringthe 1990s, drug smuggling by a plethora of small organizations continues to flourish in Colombia. Therisk is that small, more nimble networks may spring up as successors to a defeated large network.

Second, at the narrative level, there is the broad contention of Western liberal ideas about the spreadof free markets, free peoples, and open societies versus Muslim convictions about the exploitative, in-vasive, demeaning nature of Western incursions into the Islamic world. To use Samuel Huntington’sphrase, this conflict involves a “clash of civilizations.” Also, at the narrative level it might be deemed a“time war” (term from Rifkin, 1987), in that this terrorist mindset is, in a sense, so tribal, medieval,absolutist, and messianic that it represents an effort to challenge the 21st century with 16th century(and earlier) ideals—as well as to ruin Americans’ hopes about their future. Indeed, it may be advisablefor U.S. strategy to approach this conflict more as a time war than as a clash of civilizations. Bin Ladenis an Arab Muslim, but that is not the only context in which to view him. He resembles, in manyrespects, some of the more fanatical figures out of Norman Cohn’s The Pursuit of the Millennium(1961)7 and Eric Hoffer’s The True Believer (1951).8 Bin Laden is not clinically “insane,” but he and hisappeal are culturally and temporally perverse.9

______________6 A study with inputs from various researchers, “Special Report: Al-Qaeda,” Jane’s Intelligence Review, August 2001, pp. 42–51,provides an extensive analysis of al-Qaeda’s organizational structure, history, and activities. The analysis views al-Qaeda as akind of “conglomerate,” with both formal vertical and informal horizontal elements, making it a partial hybrid of hierarchical andnetwork forms of organization.

7Consider this statement from Cohn (1961, pp. 314–315) about messianic religious fanaticism, known as chiliasm, that coursedthrough Europe in the Middle Ages:

In the Middle Ages, the people for whom revolutionary Chiliasm had most appeal were neither peasants firmlyintegrated in the village and manor nor artisans firmly integrated in their guilds. The lot of such people might at timesbe one of poverty and oppression, and at other times be one of relative prosperity and independence; they might revoltor they might accept the situation; but they were not, on the whole, prone to follow some inspired propheta in a hecticpursuit of the Millennium . . . Revolutionary Chiliasm drew its strength from the surplus population living on the marginof society—peasants without land or with too little land even for subsistence; journeymen and unskilled workers livingunder the continuous threat of unemployment; beggars and vagabonds . . . These people lacked the material andemotional support afforded by traditional social groups; their kinship-groups had disintegrated and they were noteffectively organized in village communities or in guilds; for them there existed no regular, institutionalized methods ofvoicing their grievances or pressing their claims. Instead, they waited for a propheta to bind them together in a groupof their own—which would then emerge as a movement of a peculiar kind, driven on by a wild enthusiasm born ofdesperation.

8Consider this statement by Hoffer (1951) (from a Harper Perennial edition of Hoffer’s book issued in 1989, pp. 11–12) about“true believers” who enter into radical mass movements:

For men to plunge headlong into an undertaking of vast change, they must be intensely discontented yet not destitute,and they must have the feeling that by the possession of some potent doctrine, infallible leader or some new technique

III Networks and Netwars: The Future of Terror, Crime, and Militancy

To this basic imagery, the United States has made a point of adding that these terrorist attacks were“acts of war” against not only America but also against “the civilized world,” and American publicopinion has been quickly galvanized by the revival of the Pearl Harbor metaphor. Indeed, thedisproportionate nature of the terrorists’ use of force—including the mass murder of civilians—can onlyreinforce feelings of righteous indignation. Against this, the perpetrators are likely to exalt their own“holy war” imagery, which they will have trouble exploiting beyond the Islamic world—and they cannotdo even that well as long as they remain concealed behind a veil of anonymity. But while the UnitedStates may have the edge in the “battle of the story” in much of the world, it will have to think deeplyabout how to keep that edge if U.S. forces are sent into action in any Middle Eastern countries. Thedevelopment of the new field of “information strategy” is needed more than ever (see Arquilla andRonfeldt, 1999, including the notion of creating “special media forces”).

Third, in terms of doctrine, the al-Qaeda network seems to have a grasp of the nonlinear nature of thebattlespace, and of the value of attack from multiple directions by dispersed small units. If this is in-deed a war being waged by al-Qaeda, its first campaign was no doubt the bombing of the KhobarTowers in Saudi Arabia in 1996, followed by a sharp shift to Africa with the embassy bombings of 1998.In between, and since, there have been a number of other skirmishes in far-flung locales, with somesmaller attacks succeeding, and others apparently having been prevented by good intelligence. Thus,bin Laden and his cohorts appear to have developed a swarm-like doctrine that features a campaign ofepisodic, pulsing attacks by various nodes of his network—at locations sprawled across global time andspace where he has advantages for seizing the initiative, stealthily.10

Against this doctrine, the United States has seemingly little to pose, as yet. Some defensive efforts toincrease “force protection” have been pursued, and missile strikes in Afghanistan and the Sudan in1998 suggest that the offensive part of U.S. doctrine is based on aging notions of strategicbombardment. Needless to say, if our ideas about netwar, swarming, and the future of conflict are onthe mark, the former is not likely to be a winning approach; a whole new doctrine based on small-unitswarming concepts should be developed. It is possible that the notion of “counterleadership targeting”will continue to be featured—this was tried against Moammar Qaddafi in 1986, Saddam Hussein in1991, Mohamed Aidid in 1993, and against bin Laden himself in 1998. Every effort to date has failed,11but that may not keep the United States from trying yet again, as this seems a part of its doctrinalparadigm. Besides, if bin Laden is the only hub of the al-Qaeda network—possible, though unlikely—hisdeath, capture, or extradition might turn the tide in this conflict.

Fourth, at the technological level, the United States possesses a vast array of very advanced systems,while al-Qaeda has relatively few— and has great and increasing reluctance to use advancedtelecommunications because of the risks of detection and tracking. But this category cannot beanalyzed quite so simply. The United States, for example, has extensive “national technical means” forgathering intelligence and targeting information—but perhaps only a small portion of these means haveutility against dispersed, networked terrorists. Orbital assets—now the linchpins of American

_____________________________________________________________they have access to a source of irresistible power. They must have an extravagant conception of the prospects andpotentialities of the future. Finally, they must be ignorant of the difficulties involved in their vast undertaking. . . .

On the one hand, a mass movement . . . appeals not to those intent on bolstering and advancing a cherished self, butto those who crave to be rid of an unwanted self. A mass movement attracts and holds a following not because it cansatisfy the desire for self-advancement, but because it can satisfy the passion for self-renunciation.

9A further comparison, drawn from Greek myth and tragedy, is that bin Laden aims to be the Nemesis of American hubris. Thisgoddess of divine retribution is sent by Zeus to destroy mortals afflicted with this capital sin of pride, the pretension to begodlike. However, bin Laden may yet reveal that he has a “hubris-nemesis complex.” For background, see Ronfeldt (1994).

10For recent additions to the theoretical literature, see Johnson (2001) on “swarm logic,” and Bonabeau and Meyer (2001) on“swarm intelligence.” Swarming may benefit from advances in “peer-to-peer computing.” On this, see Oram (2001).

11The Russians succeeded in killing Dzhokhar Dudayev during the first (1994–1996) Chechen War—apparently triangulating onhim while he used a cell phone—but the networked Chechens did quite well in that war, even without their “leader.”

IV Networks and Netwars: The Future of Terror, Crime, and Militancy

intelligence— may prove of little use against bin Laden. At the same time, al-Qaeda has access tocommercial off-the-shelf technologies that may prove a boon to their operations.

Fifth, at the social level, this network features tight religious and kinship bonds among the terrorists,who share a tribal, clannish view of “us” versus “them.” Al-Qaeda’s edge in this dimension ties into itsnarrative level, with Islam being the pivot between the story of “holy war” against “infidels” and thenetwork’s ability to recruit and deploy hate-filled, death-bound strike forces who evince a singleness ofmind and purpose. Against this, the United States faces a profound defensive challenge at the sociallevel: How will the American people, despite the arousal of nationalism, react to the potential need tobecome a less open society in order to become more secure? If the Pearl Harbor metaphor—key to theAmerican narrative dimension—holds up, and if U.S. operations result in successful earlycounterstrikes, then there may be unusual public solidarity to sustain the “war against terrorism” at thesocial level. But something of a social divide may emerge between the United States and Europe overwhether the response to the attack on America should be guided by a “war” or a “law enforcement”paradigm.

In summary, a netwar perspective on the various dimensions of the struggle with al-Qaeda—again, ifthis is indeed the key adversary, or one of the them—renders some interesting insights into both thecontext and conduct of this first major conflict of the new millennium. At present, bin Laden and al-Qaeda seem to hold advantages at the social and doctrinal levels, and apparently in the organizationaldomain as well. The United States and its allies probably hold only marginal advantages at thenarrative and technological levels. In terms of strategy, there appears to be less room for al-Qaeda toimprove. However, its sound doctrinal and solid social underpinnings might be further enhanced—and avulnerability removed—if it moved further away from being a hub network revolving around bin Laden.Indeed, this may be an optimal strategy for al-Qaeda, since it is delimited from waging an open “battleof the story” at the narrative level, its one other apparent strategic option.

For the United States and its allies, there is much room for improvement—most of all at theorganizational and doctrinal levels. Simply put, the West must start to build its own networks and mustlearn to swarm the enemy, in order to keep it on the run or pinned down until it can be destroyed. TheUnited States and its allies must also seize the initiative—including by applying pressure on any statesthat harbor or sponsor terrorists. To be sure, the edge at the narrative level in the world at large mustbe maintained, but this should be achievable with an economy of effort. The crucial work needs to bedone in developing an innovative concept of operations and building the right kinds of networks to carryoff a swarming campaign against networked terrorists. Because, at its heart, netwar is far more aboutorganization and doctrine than it is about technology. The outcomes of current and future netwars arebound to confirm this.

V Networks and Netwars: The Future of Terror, Crime, and Militancy

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Arquilla, John, and David Ronfeldt, The Emergence of Noopolitik: Toward an American InformationStrategy, Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND, MR-1033-OSD, 1999.

Arquilla, John, David Ronfeldt, and Michele Zanini, “Information-Age Terrorism,” Current History, Vol.99, No. 636, April 2000, pp. 179– 185.

Bonabeau, Eric, and Christopher Meyer, “Swarm Intelligence,” Harvard Business Review, May 2001, pp.107–114.

Cohn, Norman, The Pursuit of the Millennium: Revolutionary Messianism in Medieval and ReformationEurope and Its Bearing on Modern Totalitarian Movements, New York: Harper Torch Books, 1961.

Hoffer, Eric, The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements, New York: Harper & Row,1951.

Johnson, Steven, Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software, New York:Scribner, 2001.

Kalathil, Shanthi, and Taylor C. Boas, “The Internet and State Control in Authoritarian Regimes: China,Cuba, and the Counterrevolution,” First Monday, August 2001, Vol. 6, No. 8, http://firstmon-day.org/issues/issue6_8/kalathil/.

Kapstein, Ethan B., “The Corporate Ethics Crusade,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 80, No. 5, September/October2001, pp. 105–119.

Lesser, Ian O., Bruce Hoffman, John Arquilla, David Ronfeldt, Michele Zanini, and Brian Jenkins,Countering the New Terrorism, Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND, MR-989-AF, 1999.

Metzl, Jamie F., “Network Diplomacy,” Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, Winter/Spring 2001,p. 796.

Oram, Andy, ed., Peer-to-Peer: Harnessing the Power of Disruptive Technologies, O’Reilly & Associates,2001.

Rifkin, Jeremy, Time Wars: The Primary Conflict in Human History, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1987.

Ronfeldt, David, The Hubris-Nemesis Complex: A Concept for Leadership Analysis, Santa Monica, Calif.:RAND, MR-461, 1994.

Ronfeldt, David, and John Arquilla, “Networks, Netwars, and the Fight for the Future,” First Monday,October 2001, Vol. 6, No. 10, http:// firstmonday.org/issue6_10/index.html.

Tarrow, Sidney, “Transnational Politics: Contention and Institutions in International Politics,” AnnualReview of Political Science, Vol. 4, 2001, pp. 1–20.

R A N D R E V I E W / W I N T E R 1 9 9 8 – 9 912

One of the world’s leading experts on terrorism, Bruce

Hoffman has rejoined RAND as director of the Wash-

ington, D.C., office after four years at the University of

St. Andrews in Scotland, where he served as chairman of

the Department of International Relations and director

of the Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political

Violence. His latest book, Inside Terrorism, was pub-

lished by Columbia University Press in 1998.

“I acted alone and on orders from God,”said Yigal Amir, the young Jewish extremist who assas-

sinated Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in

November 1995. “I have no regrets.” Amir’s words could

have been uttered just as easily today by Islamic Hamas

suicide bombers of buses and

public gathering places in Israel;

by Muslim Algerian terrorists who

have targeted France with a cam-

paign of indiscriminate bombings;

by Japanese followers of Shoko

Asahara, whose Aum Shinrikyo

sect perpetrated the March 1995

nerve gas attack on a Tokyo

subway in hopes of hastening a

new millennium; by members of

the American Christian Patriot

movement, who bombed the

Alfred P. Murrah Federal Office

Building in Oklahoma City a

month later; or by Arab Afghans linked to Osama bin

Laden, the alleged Saudi mastermind behind the

August 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and

Tanzania.

Indeed, the religious imperative for terrorism is

the most important defining characteristic of terrorist

activity today. The revolution that transformed Iran

into an Islamic republic in 1979 played a crucial role in

the modern advent of religious terrorism, but it has not

been confined to Iran, to the Middle East, or to Islam.

Since the 1980s, this resurgence has involved elements

of all the world’s major religions as well as some

smaller sects or cults.

The characteristics, justifications, and mind-sets

of religious and quasi-religious terrorists suggest that

they will be much more likely than their secular coun-

terparts to use weapons of mass destruction—that is,

nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons. Four inci-

dents in particular—the Tokyo nerve gas attack, the

Oklahoma City bombing, the 1993 bombing of New

York City’s World Trade Center, and the 1998 attack on

U.S. embassies in Africa—indicate that terrorism may

be entering a period of increased violence and blood-

shed. The connecting thread linking these four other-

wise unrelated incidents is religion.

The emergence of religion as a driving force

behind the increasing lethality of international terror-

ism shatters some of our most basic assumptions

about terrorists. In the past, most analysts tended to

discount the possibility of mass killing involving chem-

ical, biological, radiological, or nuclear terrorism. Few

terrorists, it was argued, knew anything about the tech-

nical intricacies of either developing or dispersing such

weapons. Political, moral, and practical considerations

also were perceived as important restraints. Terrorists,

OLD MADNESS NEW METHODS

Revival of Religious Terrorism Begs for Broader U.S. Policy

By Bruce Hoffman

The emergence of

religion as a driving

force behind the

increasing lethality

of international

terrorism shatters

some of our most

basic assumptions

about terrorists.

R A N D R E V I E W / W I N T E R 1 9 9 8 – 9 9 13

we assured ourselves, wanted more people watching

than dead. We believed that terrorists had little interest

in, and still less to gain from, killing wantonly and

indiscriminately.

The compelling new motives of the religious

terrorist, however, coupled with increased access to

critical information and to key components of

weapons of mass destruction, render conventional

wisdom dangerously anachronistic. And while it is true

that the increasingly virulent threats posed by reli-

gious terrorists require increasingly superior military

responses and deterrent measures, the ultimate solu-

tions lie far beyond military strategy alone. Driven by

value systems and worldviews that are radically differ-

ent from those of secular terrorists and that are largely

impervious to military counterattacks, religious terror-

ism demands vastly revised national and international

diplomatic and cultural strategies that aim to strike at

its root causes.

Resurgence of Religious TerrorismThe connection between religion and terrorism is not

new. In fact, some of the English words we use to

describe terrorists and their acts today are derived

from the names of Jewish, Muslim, and Hindu religious

groups active centuries ago. The etymology of “zealot,”

for example, can be traced back to a millenarian Jewish

sect that fought against the Roman occupation of what

is now Israel between 66 and 73 A.D. The Zealots waged

a ruthless campaign of both individual assassination

and wholesale slaughter. Similarly, the word “assassin”

is derived from a radical offshoot of the Muslim Shi’a

who, between 1090 and 1272 A.D., fought the Christian

crusaders attempting to conquer present-day Syria

and Iran. The assassin, literally “hashish-eater,” would

ritualistically imbibe hashish before committing

murder, an act regarded as a sacramental or divine

duty designed to hasten the new millennium. Finally,

the appellation “thug” comes from an Indian religious

association of professional robbers and murderers

who, from the seventh century until their suppression

in the mid-19th century, ritually strangled wayward

travelers as sacrificial offerings to Kali, the Hindu god-

dess of terror and destruction. Until the 19th century,

religion provided the only justification for terrorism.

Only in the past century has religious terrorism

tended to be overshadowed by ethnonationalist/

separatist and ideologically motivated terrorism.

These categories include the anticolonial, nationalist

Mourners gatherto honor formerIsraeli PrimeMinister YitzhakRabin on the day after hisassassination bya Jewish religiousextremist onNovember 5, 1995.

Recovery workerspitch Americanflags to conse-crate the floors ofOklahoma City’sAlfred P. MurrahFederal OfficeBuilding, bombedon April 19, 1995,by individualsassociated withthe AmericanChristian Patriotmovement.

CORBIS/ELDAD RAFAELI

PICTUREQUEST PHOTO

R A N D R E V I E W / W I N T E R 1 9 9 8 – 9 914

movements of Jewish terrorist organizations in pre-

independence Israel; the Muslim-dominated National

Liberation Front in Algeria; the overwhelmingly

Catholic Irish Republican Army; their Protestant

counterparts, such as the Ulster Freedom Fighters,

Ulster Volunteer Force, and Red Hand Commandos;

and the predominantly Muslim Palestine Liberation

Organization. Although these groups evidence a strong

religious component, it is the political, not the reli-

gious, aspect of their motivation that is dominant. The

preeminence of their ethnonationalist or irredentist

goals is incontestable.

In fact, none of the identifiable international ter-

rorist groups active in 1968 could be classified as

religious—that is, having aims and motivations of a

predominantly religious nature. Perhaps this is only to

be expected at the height of the cold war, when the

majority of terrorist groups were left-wing, revolution-

ary Marxist-Leninist ideological organizations and the

remainder were ethnonationalist/separatist groups

typical of the postcolonial liberation movements of the

late 1960s and early 1970s. Not until 1980—as a result

of the repercussions of the 1979 revolution in Iran—

do the first “modern” religious terrorist groups appear.

For these groups, the religious motive is paramount.

By 1992, the number of religious terrorist groups

had increased exponentially (from 2 to 11) and ex-

panded to embrace major world religions other than

Islam as well as obscure sects and cults. During the

1990s, the proportion of religious terrorist groups

among all active international terrorist organizations

grew appreciably. In 1994, 16—nearly a third—of the

49 identifiable organizations could be classified as reli-

gious; in 1995, their number grew yet again, to 26—

nearly half—of the 56 organizations identified. In 1996,

the most recent year for which complete statistics are

available, only 13 of 46 identifiable groups had a dom-

inant religious component (see figure). Nevertheless,

religion remained a major force behind terrorism’s

rising lethality. Groups driven in part or in whole by a

salient religious or theological motive committed 10 of

the 13 most lethal terrorist acts of 1996.

It is perhaps not surprising that religion should

become a far more popular motivation for terrorism in

the post–cold war era as old ideologies lie discredited

by the collapse of the Soviet Union and communist

ideology, while the promise of munificent benefits

from the liberal-democratic, capitalist state—appar-

ently triumphant at what author Francis Fukuyama has

termed the “end of history”—fails to materialize in

many countries throughout the world.

Finally, it must be contemplated that we may be on

the cusp of a new and potentially more dangerous era

of terrorism as the year 2000—the literal millennium—

approaches. One cannot predict the effect that this

pivotal symbolic watershed might have on religion-

inspired terrorist groups who feel impelled either to

hasten the redemption associated with the millennium

through acts of violence—as the Aum sect in Japan has

already attempted to do—or, in the event that the year

2000 passes and redemption does not occur, to attempt

to implement Armageddon by the apocalyptic use of

weapons of mass destruction. The pattern of religion-

inspired terrorism over the past few years alone

suggests that the potential for still more and even

greater acts of violence cannot be prudently discounted.

Intensity of Religious TerrorismTerrorism motivated in whole or in part by religious

imperatives often leads to more intense acts of vio-

lence producing considerably more fatalities than the

relatively discriminating acts of violence perpetrated

by secular terrorist organizations. Although religious

terrorists committed only 25 percent of the recorded

international terrorist incidents in 1995, their acts were

responsible for 58 percent of the terrorist-related fatal-

ities recorded that year. The attacks that caused the

greatest numbers of deaths in 1995—those that killed

Year

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

1968

11

1980

2

64

1992

48

11

1994

49

16

1995

56

26

1996

46

13

Num

ber

of g

roup

s

All international terrorist groupsReligious terrorist groups

SOURCE: The RAND-St. Andrews Chronology of International Terrorism is a computerized database of international terrorist incidents that have occurred worldwide from 1968 to the present. The chronology has been continuously maintained since 1972, first by RAND and since 1994 by the Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence at the University of St. Andrews, Scotland.

RELIGIOUS INTERNATIONAL TERRORIST GROUPS ON THE RISE

R A N D R E V I E W / W I N T E R 1 9 9 8 – 9 9 15

eight or more people—were all perpetrated by reli-

gious terrorists. The reasons why religious terrorism

results in so many more deaths than secular terrorism

may be found in the radically different value systems,

mechanisms of legitimization and justification, con-

cepts of morality, and worldviews embraced by the

religious terrorist.

For the religious terrorist, violence is first and fore-

most a sacramental act or divine duty executed in

response to some theological demand or imperative.

Terrorism thus assumes a transcendental dimension,

and its perpetrators are consequently undeterred by

political, moral, or practical constraints. Whereas secu-

lar terrorists, even if they have the capacity to do so,

rarely attempt indiscriminate killing on a massive

scale—because such tactics are inconsistent with their

political aims and therefore are regarded as counter-

productive, if not immoral—religious terrorists often

seek to eliminate broadly defined categories of ene-

mies and accordingly regard such large-scale violence

not only as morally justified but as a necessary expedi-

ent to attain their goals. Religion—conveyed by sacred

text and imparted via clerical authorities claiming to

speak for the divine—therefore serves as a legitimizing

force. This explains why clerical sanction is so impor-

tant to religious terrorists and why religious figures are

often required to “bless” terrorist operations before

they are executed.

Religious and secular terrorists also differ in their

constituencies. Whereas secular terrorists attempt to

appeal to actual and potential sympathizers, religious

terrorists seek to appeal to no other constituency than

themselves. Thus, the restraints imposed on secular

terrorist violence—by the desire to appeal to a tacitly

supportive or uncommitted constituency—are not

relevant to the religious terrorist. This absence of

a broader constituency leads to the sanctioning of

almost limitless violence against a virtually open-

ended category of targets: anyone who is not a member

of the terrorists’ religion or religious sect.

Religious and secular terrorists also have starkly

different perceptions of themselves and their violent

acts. Whereas secular terrorists regard violence as a way

to instigate the correction of a flaw in a system that is

basically good, religious terrorists see themselves not

as components of a system worth preserving at all but

as “outsiders” seeking fundamental changes in the

existing order. This sense of alienation further enables

the religious terrorist to contemplate far more destruc-

tive and deadly types of terrorist operations than secu-

lar terrorists—and reinforces the tendency to embrace a

far more open-ended category of “enemies” for attack.

Even more disturbing is that, in some instances,

the aims of contemporary religious terrorist groups go

far beyond the establishment of a theocracy amenable

to their specific deity (e.g., the creation of an Iranian-

style Islamic republic in Algeria, Egypt, or Saudi

Arabia). These aims can embrace, on the one hand,

mystical, transcendental, and divinely inspired imper-

atives or, on the other hand, a vehemently anti-

government form of populism that reflects far-fetched

conspiracy notions based on a volatile mixture of

seditious, racial, and religious dicta. In this respect,

the emergence of obscure, idiosyncratic millenarian

movements—such as the Japanese Aum Shinrikyo sect

and the American Christian white supremacist mili-

tias—alongside zealously nationalist Islamic groups

represents a far more amorphous threat than secular

terrorist groups. The members of the Aum sect in

Japan; the fanatical Jewish groups in Israel, such as

Eyal, of which Yigal Amir was a

member; the Christian Patriot

movement in America; and some

of the radical Islamic organizations

in Algeria, Lebanon, and Israel do

not conform to our traditional

models of the secular terrorist

organization. Traditional groups

had a defined set of political, social, or economic

objectives, and however disagreeable or distasteful

their aims and motivations may have been, their ideol-

ogy and intentions were at least comprehensible.

Countering Religious TerrorismIn terms of the countermeasures that the government,

military, police, and security services can employ

against these new types of adversaries, the first and

most immediate challenge is simply identifying them.

These ethereal, amorphous entities will often lack the

“footprint” or modus operandi of an actual, existing

terrorist organization, making it more difficult for

intelligence, law enforcement, and other security spe-

cialists to get a firm idea of their intentions and

capabilities, much less their capacity for violence,

before they strike. A second challenge is unraveling the

reasons why many “fringe” movements or hitherto

peaceful religious cults suddenly embark on lethal

campaigns of indiscriminate terrorism.

A bridge needs to

be found between

mainstream society

and the extremists.

R A N D R E V I E W / W I N T E R 1 9 9 8 – 9 916

These primarily investigative, intelligence, and

academic research issues need to be addressed before

effective countervailing and

deterrent measures can be con-

sidered. Traditional approaches

and policies may not be rele-

vant, much less effective, in

the face of religious terrorism.

Strategies that have been used

successfully in the past—such

as political concessions, finan-

cial rewards, amnesties, and

other personal inducements—

would be not only irrelevant but

impractical, given the religious

terrorists’ fundamentally alienated worldviews and

often extreme, resolutely uncompromising demands.

Above all, the profound sense of alienation and

isolation of these cults and religious movements needs

to be vigorously counteracted. A bridge needs to be

found between mainstream society and the extremists

so that they do not feel threatened and forced to with-

draw into heavily armed, seething compounds or to

engage in preemptive acts of violence directed against

what they regard as a menacing, predatory society.

Demonstrable progress arguably has been made

along these lines in the United States. The nonviolent

resolution of the 81-day standoff between the

Freemen, a Montana militia organization, and the

FBI in April 1996 stands in marked contrast to the

debacle three years before in Waco, Texas, where 74

persons were killed, including 21 children. By skillfully

employing the tactics of negotiation and the non-

confrontational approaches developed during previ-

ous encounters with antigovernment and white

supremacist groups, the authorities defused a poten-

tially explosive situation, obtained the surrender of 16

heavily armed Freemen who had barricaded them-

selves at the isolated ranch they had dubbed “Justus

Township,” and avoided the bloodshed that had

accompanied previous incidents.

But while patient negotiation and minimum force

have an important role to play in specific instances,

particularly sieges, there is a more widespread problem

of intense, often paranoiac, antigovernment senti-

ments in many pockets of the American hinterland.

Here, the challenge is surely one of developing pre-

emptive educational programs to mitigate grassroots

alienation and polarization and to stop the spread of

seditious and intolerant beliefs before they take hold

and become exploited by demagogues and hate-

mongers. Across the United States, progress can also be

seen in this respect. A number of community groups

and political action committees are attempting to

counter the spread of ignorance, hate, and simplistic

conspiracy theories that are used to explain complex

economic phenomena and thus acquire new recruits

to the antifederalist movement. Through a series of

“town hall” meetings featuring plain-speaking, com-

monsense presentations that communicate important

lessons in a vernacular as accessible and relevant to

the local populace as that peddled by the conspiracy

theorists, people gain a more critical perspective from

which they can challenge the assertions of the sophists

and refute the homespun ideologies that lie at the core

of their odious belief systems.

The immense challenge of countering religious

terrorism at home is dwarfed, however, by that of

ameliorating anti-U.S. sentiment abroad. In no region

is this problem more acute than in the Middle East. The

bombings of the American embassies in Kenya and

Tanzania last summer once again brought into sharp

focus the intense enmity felt by some Muslims toward

the United States. The rise of Osama bin Laden and his

worldwide Islamic revolutionary movement, al-Qaeda

(“The Base”), is a case in point. The movement flows

from a regionwide perception that America cares only

about Israel and access to oil—and not about national

rights to self-determination and truly democratic

domestic institutions. In this respect, the use of

U.S. military force—even in self-defense or to prevent

terrorist attacks—is seen by many as symptomatic of a

heavy-handed foreign policy.

Clearly, every country must retain the right to

retaliate or use military force to defend itself. But the

issue here is whether more subtlety—or a mix of policy

options—might be more appropriate. For example,

only 12 of the 267 persons killed in the Nairobi and

Dar-es-Salaam bombings were Americans. The vast

majority of the casualties were Kenyan and Tanzanian

embassy employees and ordinary passersby. Among

the victims, too, were many Muslims. Indeed, in the

wake of the tragedy, there were many reports of mod-

erate Arab opinion leaders throughout the Middle East

having been appalled by the death and injury brought

so callously to their brethren by terrorists acting in

the name of Islam. Yet, in a stroke, the United States

vitiated this sentiment with cruise missile attacks. This

In many pockets

of the American

hinterland, the

challenge is to

develop educational

programs to

mitigate grassroots

alienation.

R A N D R E V I E W / W I N T E R 1 9 9 8 – 9 9 17

Religion has been the major driving force behind international terrorism during the 1990s. As described below, the most serious terrorist acts

of the decade—in terms of the number of people killed or the political implications—all have had a significant religious dimension.

■ 1992 onward: Bloodletting by Islamic extremists in Algeria has claimed an estimated 75,000 lives.

■ February 1993: Thirteen car and truck bombings shake Bombay, India, killing 400 and injuring more than 1,000, in revenge for the

destruction of an Islamic shrine.

■ February 1993: Islamic radicals bomb New York City’s World Trade Center, attempting to topple one of the twin towers onto the other,

reportedly while releasing a deadly cloud of poisonous gas.

■ December 1994: Air France passenger jet is hijacked by terrorists belonging to the Algerian Armed Islamic Group (GIA), who plotted

unsuccessfully to blow up themselves, the aircraft, and the 283 passengers on board precisely when the plane was over Paris, which would

have caused the flaming wreckage to plunge into the crowded city below.

■ March 1995: Apocalyptic Japanese religious cult releases sarin nerve gas in Tokyo subway system, killing a dozen people and wounding

3,796 others, with reports that the group also planned to carry out identical attacks in the United States.

■ April 1995: Members of the American Christian Patriot movement, seeking to foment a nationwide revolution, bomb the Alfred P. Murrah

Federal Office Building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people.

■ July–October 1995: GIA unleashes a wave of bombings in Paris Metro trains, outdoor markets, cafes, schools, and popular tourist spots,

killing 8 and wounding more than 180.

■ November 1995: Jewish religious extremist assassinates Israeli premier Yitzhak Rabin, viewing it as the first step in a mass murder

campaign designed to disrupt the peace process.

■ February–March 1996: String of attacks by Hamas suicide bombers kills 60 people and turns the tide of Israel’s national elections.

■ April 1996: Machine-gun and hand-grenade attack by Egyptian Islamic militants on a group of Western tourists kills 18 outside their

Cairo hotel.

■ June 1996: Religious militants opposed to the reigning al-Saud regime in Saudi Arabia perpetrate truck bombing of U.S. Air Force

barracks in Dhahran, killing 19 people.

■ November 1997: Terrorists belonging to the Gamat al-Islamiya (Islamic Group) massacre 58 foreign tourists and 4 Egyptians at the Temple

of Queen Hatshepsut in Luxor, Egypt.

■ August 1998: Attackers believed to have been financed by Saudi Arabian dissident Osama bin Laden bomb U.S. embassies in Kenya

and Tanzania, killing 257 people, including 12 Americans, and injuring more than 5,000 in Kenya, and killing 10 people and injuring dozens

in Tanzania. Bin Laden had issued a fatwa, or Islamic religious edict, as part of his worldwide campaign against the United States. An

estimated 5,000 adherents throughout the Muslim world allegedly are prepared to follow his summons to battle.

AN ANCIENT SCOURGE FOR THE NEW MILLENNIUM

is not to say that the attacks were unjustified or unnec-

essary—only that an important, and often exceedingly

rare, opportunity may have been lost to influence

opinion in the region against terrorism and against the

terrorists claiming to act in the name of Islam.

The resurgence of this ancient breed of adversary,

the religious terrorist, means that nothing less than a

sea change is required in our thinking about terrorism

and the policies needed to counter it. Perhaps the most

sobering realization in confronting religious terrorism

is that the threat—and the problems that fuel it—can

never be eradicated completely. The complexity, diver-

sity, and often idiosyncratic characteristics of religious

terrorism imply that there is no “magic bullet”—no

single, superior solution—that can be applied to all

cases. Yet this fact only reinforces the need for multiple

creative solutions, if not to resolve, then at least to

ameliorate both the underlying causes of religious ter-

rorism and its violent manifestations. Only by expanding

our range of possible responses will we be able to target

our resources prudently and productively in ways that

will have the greatest positive effect.

I

Countering the New TerrorismChapter Two: Terrorism Trends and Prospects

Bruce Hoffman

For a copy visit www.rand.org/publications/MR/MR989 or call 703.413.1100 extension 5431.

The bombings of the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania inAugust 1998 demonstrate that terrorism is—and will remain—a centralthreat to international security as we approach the 21st century.Earlier events such as the June 1996 massive explosion outside a U.S.Air Force housing complex in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, that killed 19persons and wounded nearly 500 others, and the bombing the previ-ous November of a joint Saudi-American military training center inRiyadh that killed four persons and wounded nearly 40, had alreadyheightened concerns about terrorist targeting of U.S. military as wellas diplomatic personnel and assets abroad.

This chapter examines facets of terrorism and likely prospects. Wefocus first on trends in international terrorism and, in particular, on thereasons behind terrorism’s increasing lethality. We then consider theimplications of these trends, with special reference to force protectionand base security issues. Finally, we offer some concluding thoughtsand an assessment of terrorism trends and patterns of activity.

Trends In Terrorism

Although the total volume of terrorist incidents worldwide has declined in the 1990s, thepercentage of terrorist incidents resulting in fatalities has nonetheless grown. This sectionexamines the reasons behind this trend and its implications for patterns of terrorist activity.

Terrorism’s Changing Characteristics

In the past, terrorism was practiced by a collection of individuals belonging to an identifiableorganization that had a clear command and control apparatus and a defined set of political, social,or economic objectives. Radical leftist (i.e., Marxist-Leninist/Maoist/Stalinist movements)organizations such as the Japanese Red Army, the Red Army Faction in Germany, and the RedBrigades in Italy, as well as ethno-nationalist terrorist movements such as the Abu NidalOrganization, the Irish Republican Army (IRA), and the Basque separatist group, ETA, reflectedthis stereotype of the traditional terrorist group. They generally issued communiqués takingcredit for—and explaining in great detail—their actions. However disagreeable or distasteful theiraims and motivations may have been, their ideology and intentions were at leastcomprehensible—albeit politically radical and personally fanatical.

Significantly, however, these more familiar terrorist groups engaged in highly selective andmostly discriminate acts of violence. They targeted for bombing various symbolic targetsrepresenting the source of their animus (i.e., embassies, banks, national airline carriers, etc.) orkidnapped and assassinated specific persons whom they blamed for economic exploitation orpolitical repression in order to attract attention to themselves and their causes. Even when thesegroups operated at the express behest of, or were directly controlled by, a foreign government,the connection was always palpable, if not necessarily proven beyond the shadow of legal doubt.For example, following the 1986 retaliatory U.S. air strike on Libya, Colonel Qaddaficommissioned the Japanese Red Army to carry out revenge attacks against American targets. Inhopes of obscuring this connection, the Japanese group claimed its Libyan-sponsored operationsin the name of a fictitious organization, that of the “Anti-Imperialist International Brigades.”1

______________1See Bruce Hoffman, Inside Terrorism, Columbia University Press, New York, 1998, pp. 188–189.

http://www.rand.org/publications/MR/MR989

II Countering the New Terrorism

Similarly, Iranian-backed terrorist operations carried out by Hizbullah in Lebanon during the1980s were perpetrated under the guise of the so-called “Islamic Jihad.”2

Today, the more traditional and familiar types of ethnic/nationalist and separatist as well asideological group have been joined by a variety of organizations with less-comprehensiblenationalist or ideological motivations. These new terrorist organizations embrace far moreamorphous religious and millenarian3 aims and wrap themselves in less-cohesive organizationalentities, with a more-diffuse structure and membership.4 The bombings in Kenya and Tanzaniaevidence this pattern. Unlike the specific, intelligible demands of past familiar, predominantlysecular, terrorist groups who generally claimed credit for and explained their violent acts,5 nocredible claim for the embassy attacks has yet been issued. Indeed, the only specific informationthat has come to light has been a vague message taking responsibility for the bombings indefense of the Muslim holy places in Mecca and Medina and promising to “pursue U.S. forces andstrike at U.S. interests everywhere.”6

Further, the embassy attacks themselves do not appear to have been undertaken by a specificexisting or identifiable terrorist organization but instead are believed to have been financed by amillionaire Saudi Arabian dissident, Osama bin Laden, as part of his worldwide campaign againstthe United States. In February 1998, for example, bin Laden supplemented his publicly declaredwar on the United States (because of its support for Israel and the presence of American militaryforces in Saudi Arabia) with a fatwa, or Islamic religious edict. With the issuance of this edict, binLaden thereby endowed his calls for violence with an incontrovertible theological as well aspolitical justification. To this end, he is believed to be able to call on the services of an estimated4000–5000 well-trained fighters scattered throughout the Muslim world.7 By comparison, manyof the traditional, secular terrorist groups of the past were generally much smaller. According tothe U.S. Department of Defense, for example, neither the Japanese Red Army nor the Red ArmyFaction ever numbered more than 20 to 30 hard-core members. The Red Brigades were hardlylarger, with a total of fewer than 50 to 75 dedicated terrorists. Even the IRA and ETA could onlycall on the violent services of perhaps some 200–400 activists whereas the feared Abu NidalOrganization was limited to some 500 men-at-arms at any given time.8

The appearance of these different types of adversaries—in some instances with new motivationsand different capabilities—accounts largely for terrorism’s increased lethality in recent years.There are a number of implications for terrorism that perhaps portends for increased violence andbloodshed.

Terrorism’s Increasing Lethality

______________2See Magnus Ranstorp, Hizb’allah in Lebanon: The Politics of the Western Hostage Crisis, Macmillan, Houndmills, Basingstoke, and London, 1977, pp.62–63, and U.S. Department of Defense, Terrorist Group Profiles, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 1988, p. 15.3An example is the Aum Shinrikyo, the Japanese group responsible for the 1995 sarin nerve-gas attack on the Tokyo subway system.4See, for example, the analysis in Neil King, Jr., “Moving Target: Fighting Terrorism Is Far More Perilous Than It Used to Be,” Wall Street JournalEurope, August 25, 1998. See also the discussion below on the emergence of amateur terrorists as evidenced in the 1993 bombing of New York City’sWorld Trade Center.5Indeed, some groups—such as the Provisional Irish Republican Army—not only claimed responsibility for attacks but issued warnings in advance. Thecommuniqués of various European left-wing terrorist groups have often been sufficiently voluminous to warrant their publication in collected volumes.See, for example, Yonah Alexander and Dennis Pluchinsky, Europe’s Red Terrorists: The Fighting Communist Organizations, Frank Cass, London,1992, passim; and Red Army Faction, Texte der RAF (RAF Texts), Verlag Bo Cavefors, Malmo, Sweden, 1977, passim.6Quoted in Tim Weiner, “Bombings in East Africa: The Investigation; Reward Is Offered and Clues Studied in African Blasts,” New York Times, August11, 1998.7Marie Colvin, Stephen Grey, Matthew Campbell, and Tony Allen-Mills, “Clinton gambles all on revenge,” Sunday Times, London, August 23, 1998.8U.S. Department of Defense, Terrorist Group Profiles, 1998, pp. 5, 35, 61, 64, 56, and 118.

III Countering the New Terrorism

Although the total volume of terrorist incidents worldwide has declined in the 1990s (see Figure1), the percentage of terrorist incidents with fatalities has increased. According to the RAND-

SOURCE: The RAND-St. Andrews Chronology of International Terrorism

Figure 1—Number of Worldwide Terrorist Incidents, 1991–1996

St. Andrews Chronology of International Terrorism,9 a record 484 international terrorist incidentswere recorded in 1991, the year of the Gulf War, followed by 343 incidents in 1992, 360 in 1993,353 in 1994, falling to 278 incidents in 1995 and to only 250 in 1996 (the last calendar year forwhich complete statistics are available).10 Indeed, the 1996 total was the lowest annual tally in23 years. This overall paucity of activity, however, was not reflected by a concomitant decline inthe number of fatalities. On the contrary, 1996 was one of the bloodiest years on record. A totalof 510 persons were killed: 223 more than in 1995 and 91 more than in 1994. In fact, the 1996death toll ranks as the fourth highest recorded in the chronology since we began monitoringinternational terrorism in 1968. Significantly, the U.S. Department of State in its ownauthoritative compendium and analysis, Patterns of Global Terrorism 1996, cites a similar in-crease in international terrorism’s lethality.11 Hence, even though the State Department and theRAND-St. Andrews Chronology have different criteria for defining incidents (which, accordingly,produces different numerical tabulations),12 we arrive at the same funda-mental conclusion: evenwhile terrorists were less active in 1996, they were significantly more lethal.

This development was mostly the result of a handful of so-called terrorist “spectaculars”—that is,the dramatic, attention-riveting, high-lethality acts that so effectively capture the attention of themedia and public alike. Hence, although the number of international terrorist incidents that killed

______________9The RAND-St. Andrews Chronology of International Terrorism is a computerized database of international terrorist incidents that have occurredworldwide from 1968 to the present. The chronology has been continuously maintained since 1972 (when it was created by Brian Jenkins), first by RANDand since 1994 by the Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence at St. Andrews University, Scotland. The incidents in the chronology areconcerned with international terrorism, defined here as incidents in which terrorists go abroad to strike their targets, select victims or targets that haveconnections with a foreign state (e.g., diplomats, foreign businessmen, offices of foreign corporations), or create international incidents by attacking airlinepassengers, personnel, or equipment. It excludes violence carried out by terrorists within their own country against their own nationals, and terrorismperpetrated by governments against their own citizens. In this respect, it is emphasized that the data collected in the chronology comprise only a fractionof the total volume of terrorist violence, which in turn comprises a fraction of the violence of ongoing armed conflicts. Accordingly, the data contained inthe chronology are not necessarily a definitive listing of every international and domestic terrorist incident that has occurred everywhere since 1968. Itsvalue, accordingly, is as a means of identifying terrorist trends and projecting likely future terrorist patterns.10For the purposes of the RAND-St. Andrews Chronology of Terrorism, terrorism is defined by the nature of the act, not by the identity of theperpetrators or the nature of the cause. Terrorism is thus taken to mean violence, or the threat of violence, calculated to create an atmosphere of fear andalarm in the pursuit of political aims.11Indeed, the second sentence of the first paragraph of the State Department report notes that “the total number of casualties [in 1996] was one of thehighest ever recorded. . . .” Office of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism, Patterns of Global Terrorism, 1996, U.S. Department of State, Publication10433, Washington, DC, April 1997, p. 1.12The principal numerical differences between the RAND-St. Andrews Chronology’s figures and the State Department’s are in total number ofinternational incidents (the State Department’s figure is 296), number of fatalities (the State Department cites 311), and number of incidents with fatalities(the State Department notes 45 compared with the 60 that we identify).

IV Countering the New Terrorism

eight or more people increased only slightly in 1996 (from eight in 1995 to 13), the effect wasnonetheless profound in that it was this relatively small number of incidents that accounted forthe year’s dramatically high body count.

International terrorism’s overall trend toward increasing lethality is also reflected in thepercentage of international terrorist incidents that result in one or more fatalities. For example,only 14 percent of all incidents in 1991 killed anyone, rising to 17.5 percent in 1992, 24 percentin 1993, and 27 percent in 1994 before reaching a record high of 29 percent in 1995. During1996, admittedly, this percentage declined, as only 24 percent of incidents resulted in deaths.But at the same time, it should be recalled that even this smaller percentage is higher than the17 percent average recorded during the 1970s and the 19 percent average during the 1980s.

A number of reasons account for terrorism’s increased lethality. First, there appears to be apattern that suggests that at least some terrorists have come to believe that attention is nolonger as readily obtained as it once was. To their minds, both the public and media havebecome increasingly inured or desensitized to the continuing spiral of terrorist violence.Accordingly, these terrorists feel themselves pushed to undertake ever more dramatic ordestructively lethal deeds today in order to achieve the same effect that a less ambitious orbloody action may have had in the past. For example, when Timothy McVeigh, the convictedbomber of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, was asked by his attorneywhether he could not have achieved the same effect of drawing attention to his grievancesagainst the U.S. government without killing anyone, he reportedly replied: “That would not havegotten the point across. We needed a body count to make our point.”13 In this respect, althoughthe April 1995 bombing of the Murrah Building was doubtless planned well in advance, McVeighmay nonetheless have felt driven to surpass in terms of death and destruction the previousmonth’s dramatic and more exotic nerve-gas attack on the Tokyo underground (perpetrated bythe Japanese religious sect, the Aum Shinrikyo) to guarantee that his attack would be assured therequisite media coverage and public attention. This equation of publicity and carnage withattention and success thus has the effect of locking some terrorists onto an unrelenting upwardspiral of violence to retain the media and public’s interest.14 Similarly, Ramzi Ahmad Yousef, theconvicted mastermind of the 1993 New York City World Trade Center bombing, reportedlyplanned to follow that incident with the simultaneous in-flight bombings of 11 U.S. passengerairliners.15

Second, terrorists have profited from past experience and have become more adept at killing.Not only are their weapons becoming smaller, more sophisticated, and deadlier,16 but terroristshave greater access to these weapons through their alliances with various rogue states. Duringthe 1980s, for example, Czechoslovakia reportedly sold 1000 tons of Semtex to Libya and anadditional 40,000 tons to Syria, North Korea, Iran, and Iraq. All these countries, it should benoted, have long been cited by the U.S. Department of State as sponsors of internationalterrorism.17

Indeed, a third reason for terrorism’s increased lethality, and one closely tied to the above point,is the active role played by states in supporting and sponsoring terrorism.18 In its 1997 review of

______________13Quoted in James Brooke, “Newspaper Says McVeigh Described Role in Bombing,” New York Times, March 1, 1997.14See, for example, David Hearst, “Publicity key element of strategy,” The Guardian (London), July 31, 1990; and David Pallister, “Provos seek to ‘playhavoc with British nerves and lifestyle’,” The Guardian (London), July 31, 1990.15James Bone and Alan Road, “Terror By Degree,” The Times Magazine (London), October 18, 1997.16For example, the bomb used to destroy Pan Am 103 in 1988 is believed to have been a dual-timer/barometric pressure detonation device, constructedfrom less than 300 grams of Semtex plastic explosive, no bigger than the small radio it was concealed in. See “Explosive Detection Systems Boosted,Blasted at Hearing,” Counter-Terrorism and Security Intelligence, February 12, 1990.17On a state visit to Britain in 1990, Czech president Vaclav Havel observed that, “If you consider that 200 grams is enough to blow up an aircraft . . .this means world terrorism has enough Semtex to last 150 years.” Quoted in Glenn Frankel, “Sale of Explosive to Libya Detailed,” Washington Post,March 23, 1990.18See Cindy C. Combs, Terrorism in the Twenty-First Century, Prentice Hall, Saddle River, New Jersey, 1997, pp. 86–88; Bruce Hoffman, RecentTrends and Future Prospects of Iranian Sponsored International Terrorism, RAND, R-3783-USDP, March 1990, passim; and Walter Laqueur,“Postmodern Terrorism,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 75, No. 5, September–October 1996, pp. 26–27.

V Countering the New Terrorism

global terrorism patterns, the U.S. State Department designated seven countries as terrorismsponsors: Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Sudan, and Syria. With the exception of theSudan, which was added in 1993, each of these countries has remained on the list of terrorismpatron-states for more than a decade.19 The assistance that these governments has providedhas often enhanced the striking power and capabilities of ordinary terrorist organizations,transforming some groups into entities more akin to elite commando units than the stereotypicalMolotov-cocktail wielding or crude pipe-bomb manufacturing anarchist or radical leftist.20

State sponsorship has in fact a “force multiplying” effect on ordinary terrorist groups. It placesgreater resources in the hands of terrorists, thereby enhancing planning, intelligence, logisticalcapabilities, training, finances, and sophistication. Moreover, since state-sponsored terrorists donot depend on the local population for support, they need not be concerned about alienatingpopular opinion or provoking a public backlash.

The attraction for various renegade regimes to use terrorists as “surrogate warriors” has arguablyincreased since the 1991 Gulf War. The lesson of Iraq’s overt invasion of Kuwait, where a UN-backed multinational coalition was almost immediately arrayed against Saddam, suggests thatfuture aggressors may prefer to accomplish their objectives clandestinely with a handful ofterrorist surrogates. Not only could such small bands facilitate the destabilization of neighboringor rival states, but if done covertly (and successfully), the state sponsor might escapeidentification, retaliation, and sanctions. Accordingly, terrorists may in the future come to beregarded by the globe’s rogue states as an ultimate fifth column—a clandestine, cost-effectiveforce used to wage war covertly against more powerful rivals or to subvert neighboring countriesor hostile regimes.21 Terrorism therefore could be employed as an adjunct to conventionalwarfare, and as a form of asymmetric strategy vis-à-vis the United States.

Fourth, the overall increase during the past 15 years of terrorism motivated by a religiousimperative encapsulates the confluence of new adversaries, motivations, and tactics affectingterrorist patterns today (see Figure 2). While the connection between religion and terrorism isnot new,22 in recent decades this variant has largely been overshadowed by ethnic- andnationalist-separatist or ideologically motivated terrorism. Indeed, none of the 11 identifiableterrorist groups23 active in 1968 (the year credited with marking the advent of modern,international terrorism) could be classified as religious.24 Not until 1980 in fact—as a result ofrepercussions from the revolution in Iran the year before—do the first “modern” religious terroristgroups appear,25 although they amount to only two of the 64 groups active that year. Twelveyears later, however, the number of religious terrorist groups has increased nearly six-fold,representing a quarter (11 of 48) of the terrorist organizations that carried out attacks in 1992.By 1994, a third (16) of the 49 identifiable terrorist groups could be classified as religious in

______________19Office of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism, Patterns of Global Terrorism, 1996, p. 29.20It is unlikely that an ordinary (e.g., nonstate-supported terrorist group) could have mounted the 1983 bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks at BeirutInternational Airport. In addition to the complex logistical and intelligence support that was provided to the terrorists, the weapon they used was not of thesort found in the typical terrorist group’s arsenal. The truck bomb that destroyed the barracks and killed 241 Marines consisted of some 12,000 pounds ofhigh explosives, whose destructive power was enhanced by canisters of flammable gases attached to the explosive device by its designers. The explosionwas described at the time by FBI investigators as the “largest non-nuclear blast ever detonated on the face of the earth.” Quoted in Eric Hammel, TheRoot: The Marines in Beirut, August 1982–February 1984, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, San Diego, California, 1985, p. 303.21Accusations of Iran’s fomenting subversion in Bahrain and its alleged role in the bombing of the Khobar Towers military housing complex in Dhahran,Saudi Arabia, in July 1996 and of a joint Saudi-American military training facility in Riyadh in November 1995 may already be indicative of this trend.22As David C. Rapoport points out in his seminal study of what he terms “holy terror,” until the 19th century, “religion provided the only acceptablejustifications for terror” (see David C. Rapoport, “Fear and Trembling: Terrorism in Three Religious Traditions,” American Political Science Review,Vol. 78, No. 3, September 1984, p. 659).23Numbers of active, identifiable terrorist groups from 1968 to the present are derived from the RAND-St. Andrews Chronology of InternationalTerrorism.24Admittedly, many contemporary terrorist groups—such as the overwhelmingly Catholic Provisional Irish Republic Army; their Protestant counterpartsarrayed in various Loyalist paramilitary groups like the Ulster Freedom Fighters, the Ulster Volunteer Force, and the Red Hand Commandos; and thepredominantly Muslim Palestine Liberation Organization—have a strong religious component by virtue of their membership. However, it is the politicaland not the religious aspect that is the dominant characteristic of these groups, as evidenced by the preeminence of their nationalist and/or irredentist aims.25These are the Iranian-backed Shi’a groups al-Dawa and the Committee for Safeguarding the Islamic Revolution.

VI Countering the New Terrorism

character and/or motivation, and in 1995 they accounted for nearly half (26 or 46 percent) of the

SOURCE: The RAND-St. Andrews Chronology of International Terrorism

Figure 2—Religious Versus Other Terrorist Groups

56 known terrorist groups active that year. In 1996, however, only 13 (28 percent) of the 46identifiable terrorist groups had a dominant religious component. Nevertheless, despite thisdecline in the 1996 figure, religion remained a significant force behind terrorism’s rising lethality.Groups motivated in part or in whole by a salient religious or theological motivation committedten of the 13 terrorist spectaculars recorded in 1996.26

The implications of terrorism motivated by a religious imperative for higher levels of lethality isevidenced by the violent record of various Shi’a Islamic groups during the 1980s. For example,although these organizations committed only 8 percent of all recorded international terroristincidents between 1982 and 1989, they were nonetheless responsible for nearly 30 percent of thedeaths during that time period.27 Indeed, some of the most significant terrorist acts of recentyears have had some religious element present. These include

• the 1993 bombing of New York City’s World Trade Center by Islamic radicals whodeliberately attempted to topple one of the twin towers onto the other;

• the series of 13 near-simultaneous car and truck bombings that shook Bombay, India, inFebruary 1993, killing 400 persons and injuring more than 1000 others, in reprisal for thedestruction of an Islamic shrine in that country;

• the December 1994 hijacking of an Air France passenger jet by Islamic terrorists belongingto the Algerian Armed Islamic Group (GIA) and the attendant foiled plot to blow upthemselves, the aircraft, and the 283 passengers on board precisely when the plane wasover Paris, thus causing the flaming wreckage to plunge into the crowded city below;28

• the March 1995 sarin nerve-gas attack on the Tokyo subway system, perpetrated by anapocalyptic Japanese religious cult (Aum Shinrikyo) that killed a dozen persons and

______________26The Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, was responsible for three incidents (which killed a total of 56 persons); the Jammu and KashmirLiberation Front for two (killing 37); a shadowy Saudi Arabian dissident group for two (causing 30 fatalities); the Egyptian al-Gama’a al-Islamiya for one(18 persons died); unspecified Kashmiri rebels for another incident (where eight persons died); and the Turkish Islamic Jihad for the remaining one (inwhich 17 persons perished).27Between 1982 and 1989, Shi’a terrorist groups committed 247 terrorist incidents but were responsible for 1057 deaths.28The hijackers’ plans were foiled after the French authorities learned of their intentions and ordered commandos to storm the aircraft after it had landedfor refueling in Marseilles.

VII Countering the New Terrorism

wounded 3796 others29; reportedly the group also planned to carry out identical attacks inthe United States;30

• the bombing of an Oklahoma City federal office building in April 1995, where 168 personsperished, by two Christian Patriots seeking to foment a nationwide race revolution;31

• the wave of bombings unleashed in France by the Algerian GIA between July and October1995, of metro trains, outdoor markets, cafes, schools, and popular tourist spots, thatkilled eight persons and wounded more than 180 others;

• the assassination in November 1995 of Israeli Prime Minister Itzhak Rabin by a religiousJewish extremist and its attendant significance as the purported first step in a campaign ofmass murder designed to disrupt the peace process;

• the Hamas suicide bombers who turned the tide of Israel’s national elections with a stringof bloody attacks that killed 60 persons between February and March 1996;

• the Egyptian Islamic militants who carried out a brutal machine-gun and hand-grenadeattack on a group of Western tourists outside their Cairo hotel in April 1996 that killed 18;

• the June 1996 truck bombing of a U.S. Air Force barracks in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, where19 persons perished, by religious militants opposed to the reigning al-Saud regime;

• the unrelenting bloodletting by Islamic extremists in Algeria itself that has claimed thelives of more than an estimated 75,000 persons there since 1992;

• the massacre in November 1997 of 58 foreign tourists and four Egyptians by terroristsbelonging to the Gamat al-Islamiya (Islamic Group) at the Temple of Queen Hatsheput inLuxor, Egypt; and

• the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in August 1998 that killed 257and injured some 5000 others.

As the above incidents suggest, terrorism motivated in whole or in part by religious imperativeshas often led to more intense acts (or attempts) of violence that have produced considerablyhigher levels of fatalities—at least compared with the relatively more discriminate and less lethalincidents of violence perpetrated by secular terrorist organizations. In brief, religious terrorism32tends to be more lethal than secular terrorism because of the radically different value systems,mechanisms of legitimization and justification, concepts of morality, and Manichean world viewsthat directly affect the “holy terrorists’” motivation. For the religious terrorist, violence is asacramental act or divine duty, executed in direct response to some theological demand orimperative and justified by scripture. Religion therefore functions as a legitimizing force,specifically sanctioning wide-scale violence against an almost open-ended category of opponents(i.e., all peoples who are not members of the religious terrorists’ religion or cult). This explains

______________29Murray Sayle, “Martyrdom Complex,” The New Yorker, May 13, 1996.30Nicholas D. Kristof, “Japanese Cult Planned U.S. Attack,” International Herald Tribune (Paris), 24 March 1997; and Robert Whymant, “Cult plannedgas raids on America,” The Times (London), March 29, 1997.31It is mistaken to view either the American militia movement or other contemporary white supremacist organizations (from which McVeigh and hisaccomplice Terry L. Nichols came) as simply militant anti-federalist or extremist tax-resistance movements. The aims and motivations of these groups infact span a broad spectrum of anti-federalist and seditious beliefs coupled with religious hatred and racial intolerance, masked by a transparent veneer ofreligious precepts. They are bound together by the ethos of the broader Christian Patriot movement that actively incorporates Christian scripture insupport of their violent activities and use biblical liturgy to justify their paranoid call-to-arms. For a more detailed analysis, see Hoffman, InsideTerrorism, pp. 105–120. Further, it should be noted that McVeigh openly admitted to interviewers his belief in Christian Patriotism and involvement inPatriot activities, thus tacitly admitting his adherence to the theological belief system briefly described above. See Tim Kelsey, “The Oklahoma suspectawaits day of reckoning,” The Sunday Times (London), April 21, 1996.32For a more complete and detailed discussion of this category of terrorist organization, see Bruce Hoffman, “Holy Terror: The Implications ofTerrorism Motivated By a Religious Imperative,” Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, Vol. 18, No. 4, Winter 1995, which was also published by RANDunder the same title, P-7834, July 1993.

VIII Countering the New Terrorism

why clerical sanction is so important for religious terrorists33 and why religious figures are oftenrequired to “bless” (e.g., approve) terrorist operations before they are executed.

Fifth, the proliferation of amateurs taking part in terrorist acts has also contributed to terrorism’sincreasing lethality. In the past, terrorism was not just a matter of having the will and motivationto act, but of having the capability to do so—the requisite training, access to weaponry, andoperational knowledge. These were not readily available capabilities and were generally acquiredthrough training undertaken in camps run either by other terrorist organizations and/or in concertwith the terrorists’ state sponsors.34

Today, however, the means and methods of terrorism can be easily obtained at bookstores, frommail-order publishers, on CD-ROM, or over the Internet. Terrorism has become accessible toanyone with a grievance, an agenda, a purpose, or any idiosyncratic combination of the above.Relying on commercially obtainable bomb-making manuals and operational guidebooks, theamateur terrorist can be just as deadly and destructive35—and even more difficult to track andanticipate—than his professional counterpart.36

Amateur terrorists are dangerous in other ways as well. The absence of a central commandauthority may result in fewer constraints on the terrorists’ operations and targets and—especiallywhen combined with a religious fervor—fewer inhibitions about indiscriminate casualties. Israeliauthorities, for example, have noted this pattern among terrorists belonging to the radicalPalestinian Islamic Hamas organization in contrast to their predecessors in the more secular,professional, and centrally controlled mainstream Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) terroristgroups. As one senior Israeli security official noted of a particularly vicious band of Hamas terror-ists: they “were a surprisingly unprofessional bunch . . . they had no preliminary training andacted without specific instructions.”37

In the United States, to cite another example of the lethal power of amateur terrorists, it issuspected that the 1993 World Trade Center bombers’ intent was in fact to bring down one of thetwin towers.38 By contrast, there is no evidence that the persons we once considered to be theworld’s arch-terrorists—Carlos, Abu Nidal, and Abu Abbas—ever contemplated, much lessattempted, destruction of a high-rise office building packed with people.

Indeed, much as the “inept” World Trade Center bombers were derided for their inability to avoidarrest, their modus operandi arguably points to a pattern of future terrorist activities elsewhere.For example, as previously noted, terrorist groups were once recognizable as distinctorganizational entities. The four convicted World Trade Center bombers shattered thisstereotype. Instead they were like-minded individuals who shared a common religion,worshipped at the same religious institution, had the same friends and frustrations, and were

______________33Examples are the aforementioned fatwa (Islamic religious edict) issued by bin Laden and the one issued by Iranian Shi’a clerics in 1989 calling for thenovelist Salman Rushdie’s death; the “blessing” given to the bombing of New York City’s World Trade Center by the Egyptian Sunni cleric Sheikh OmarAbdel Rahman; the dispensation given by extremist rabbis to right-wing Jewish violence against Arabs in Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza; the approvalgiven by Islamic clerics in Lebanon for Hizbullah operations and by their counterparts in the Gaza Strip for Hamas attacks; and the pivotal role over hisfollowers played by Shoko Ashara, the religious leader of Japan’s Aum Shinrikyo sect.34Examples include the estimated dozen or so terrorist training camps long operated under Syria’s aegis in Lebanon’s Bekka Valley; the various trainingbases that have been identified over the years in the Yemen, Tunisia, the Sudan, Iran, Afghanistan, and elsewhere; and, of course, the facilities maintainedduring the Cold War by the Eastern Bloc.35Examples of “amateurs” include the followers of Shoko Ashara who perpetrated the Tokyo nerve-gas attacks; the two men who were convicted ofmixing fertilizer and diesel-fuel together to bomb the federal building in Oklahoma City; the Algerian youths deliberately recruited into the terroristcampaign that was waged in Paris between July and October 1995 which had been initiated by their more professional counterparts in the Armed IslamicGroup (see the discussion immediately below); and Israeli Prime Minister Rabin’s assassin.36Indeed, the situation that unfolded in France during this time period provides perhaps the most compelling evidence of the increasing salience ofamateurs recruited or suborned by professional terrorists for operational purposes. French authorities believe that, while professional terrorists belongingto the Algerian GIA may have perpetrated the initial wave of bombings, like-minded amateurs—drawn from within France’s large and increasingly restiveAlgerian expatriate community—were responsible for at least some of the subsequent attacks.37Quoted in Joel Greenberg, “Israel Arrests 4 In Police Death,” New York Times, 7 June 1993; and Eric Silver, “The Shin Bet’s ‘Winning’ Battle,” TheJewish Journal (Los Angeles), June 11–17, 1993.38Matthew L. Wald, “Figuring What It Would Take to Take Down a Tower,” New York Times, March 21, 1993.

IX Countering the New Terrorism

linked by family ties as well, who simply gravitated toward one another for a specific, perhapseven one-time, operation.39

Moreover, since this more amorphous and perhaps even transitory type of group will lack thefootprints or modus operandi of an actual, existing terrorist organization, it is likely to prove moredifficult for law enforcement to build a useful picture of the dimensions of their inten