The history of terrorism goes back a very long time, but the very fact that there is such a history, has frequently been ignored or even altogether suppressed. This has to do mainly with the fact that terrorism did not appear at all times with equal intensity, there were periods relatively free of it. As a result, when it reappeared after a period of relative calm there was the tendency to regard it as a new phenomenon, without precedent. Perhaps there was also an inclination to regard its history (if it had one) as of relatively little importance compared with the story of its current sociological background. The psychological study of terrorism was never much in fashion, certainly not in twentieth century, when it was frowned upon, partly because of political correctness (the idea that some groups of people could be more aggressive than others was thought to be not just misguided but abhorrent). But this left a number of crucial questions open: why among people sharing the same convictions did some turn to terrorism whereas others did not? There were also, admittedly, certain objective obstacles that made such psychological studies on a broad basis very difficult indeed.
The present work appeared first in 1977 and, together with its companion volume, Guerrilla (now Guerrilla Warfare), it was translated into seven languages and became a standard text. I tried to show that the study of the history of terrorism was not an idle pursuit but helped to shed some light on certain problems such as the conditions under which terrorism tended to occur and the circumstances in which it prospered or failed. The study of the history of terrorism is not a magic wand, a key to all the mysteries of contemporary terrorism, but, in the absence of other satisfactory explanations, it did provide some useful insights.
The book was also among the first to show that there has been a tradition of terrorist doctrine, at the latest since the early nineteenth century. Students of terrorism were familiar with Bakunin and Nechaev, but the writings of Karl Heinzen and Johann Most (both German by origin, both immigrants to the Untied States) had been forgotten, even though their teachings anticipated, in many ways, the fashionable terrorist thinkers of the 1960s such as Frantz Fanon, Marighela, or Regis Debray.
The history of terrorism does not offer clear-cut lessons simply because conditions varied so much from age to age and from country to country. But certain patterns clearly emerged, among them the fact that terrorism, throughout history, has seldom been politically effective, that it frequently brought about the opposite of what it wanted to achieve (that is to say, greater repression rather than liberation), that Marxism had been more right than wrong in its assumption that mass action was more likely to succeed than the exploits of a few, however desperate or courageous.
Such findings were not universally welcomed at the time and some of the objections deserve to be recalled even a quarter of a century later. Some were opposed to the very idea of studying the history of terrorism (from below), for was it not true that many more people had been killed, more cruelty committed, and more damage caused by terrorist actions committed by governments in peace and particularly in time of war? This attempt to obliterate the dividing lines between various kinds of violence, or at least to belittle their importance, caused nothing but confusion and mischief. That dictatorial governments had caused the death of more people than terrorists was undisputed simply because government possessed infinitely more means of coercion and destruction. But what is to be gained by more or less equating (to give but one example) the Nazi extermination of the Jews with the activities of the Russian terrorists of the nineteenth century? Such obfuscation was not limited to concerned political scientists; it was perhaps even more widespread among the media and the present book, hard as it tried, was not very successful in its battle against the indiscriminate use of labels, deliberate or out of ignorance. It has beenthe fashion among the media for a long time to regard the terms guer rilla and terrorist as synonyms, or to use the term “urban guerrilla” as an equivalent for terrorism. The media tried to show that they were fair to all parties concerned and since, according to the common wis dom of the time, one man’s terrorist was another person’s freedom fighter, terms had to be chosen that were not offensive to any side; “terrorist” was a loaded term and had negative implications, whereas the image of a “guerrilla” was more positive and was therefore given preference. As I tried to show in this book, there were crucial differ ences between the two even though some extreme movements have used both guerrilla and terrorist tactics. These differences were more clearly recognized by the terrorists themselves than by the media and some of the political scientists. Guevara and Debray were scathing in their condemnation of “urban” terrorism which, they argued was the grave of the revolutionary movement.
What I wrote about these profound differences was certainly true at the time; it is less true today with the important changes that have taken place in the character of terrorism during the last decade about which more will be said presently.
The misunderstandings about the nature of terrorism in the 1970s were founded, in part, on political reasons. At the time, terrorism was predominantly left wing in inspiration and it did not come as a surprise that commentators belonging to the same political persuasion would produce theoretical explanations which were, at the very least, not un-sympathetic as far as terrorists were concerned. It was argued in these circles that terrorism always occurred where there was oppression, social or national, that the terrorists had genuine, legitimate grievances—hence the conclusion that once the grievances were eradicated, terrorism would also disappear. Terrorism, in brief, was seen as a revolu tionary phenomenon; it was carried out by poor and desperate human beings and had, therefore, to be confronted with sympathetic under standing.
It goes without saying that there have been terrorist movements in history pursuing liberation from tyrannical regimes, but seen in historical perspective these groups have been less prominent in the recent past than in earlier periods. Terrorism, more frequently than not, appeared not under the most oppressive regimes but, on the contrary, under conditions of relative freedom. History shows, furthermore, thatterrorism was by no means the exclusive domain of the revolutionary left and that it had been exercised at least as often by the extreme right, fascist, or proto-fascist movements. In fact, the predominantly left-wing terrorism of the 1970s was replaced by a terrorism that had nothing whatsoever in common with the traditional ideals of the left and this put the theorists of the time in an embarrassing situation. They could hardly argue any longer that one person’s terrorist was another’s freedom fighter and that the demands of the neo-fascists were legiti mate (“remove the third world immigrants and you will remove terrorism”).
It took a decade or even longer to be generally accepted that slogans and revolutionary phraseology could not be taken at face value, not in Europe and America and even less so in the third world. As late as 1998, a German author published a psychological study of terrorism that was entirely based on interviews with left-wing terrorists, even though such people were exceedingly rare at the time. But such ignoring of obvious realities was no longer as typical as it had been twenty years earlier. By and large, silence fell in the field of terrorism theory building where once there had been great activity, enthusiasm, promise, and expectations. It was gradually accepted that it had been profoundly mistaken to base far-reaching generalizations on fleeting phe nomenon such as the Baader Meinhof group, the Italian Red Brigades, and their comrades in arms in some other countries. The mistakes went beyond the issue of political identification; there had been a failure to understand that, in view of the great differences between conditions and traditions from country to country, theory construction about cau sation and etiology was a futile enterprise. It had no practical impact on policy, it was ignored in the academic world and as a result it faded away.
Looking back from the vantage point of the year 2000 on the terrorist experience of several decades, it became obvious that the terrorist groups that endured were nationalist and religious fanatical in character and that the use of categories like “left wing” or right wing” or “revolutionary” to explain them did nothing to help an understanding of their motives. Quite often this was the terrorism of ethnic minorities, but almost equally often it was terrorism of one minority against another (as in the former Yugoslavia), or of the majority against a minority living in its midst (as, for instance, in Egypt). This raised many important questions concerning the sources of fanaticism, ethnic and religious,(and the mixture of the two), why, for instance, had terrorism been far more rampant in a country like Sri Lanka than in other Southeast Asian countries confronted by ethnic problems that were quite similar? Was suicide terrorism mainly a religious phenomenon or were its sources more complex? Religion-inspired terrorism appeared on the fringes of all major (and some minor) religions including Christianity, Judaism, and even Buddhism, but it was more frequent among Islamic groups (from the Philippines to Central Asia and West Africa) than among other religions; was this mere accident or could a pattern be detected? What was the role (and the future) of state-sponsored terrorism which assumed a more important role in the 1980s and 90s than ever before?
Writing about terrorism for more than twenty years, it was difficult to escape the conclusion that, by and large, terrorism was futile, that the noise it created was in inverse ratio to the political effect it had, even though it was, of course, understood, that terrorism was always, to a large extent, about public relations and propaganda (“Propaganda by Deed” had been the slogan in the nineteenth century). But it was also clear, even twenty years ago, that the time might come (indeed was likely to come) when technological progress would put unprec edented destructive power into the hands of a small group of people. This idea had occurred to writers of science fiction much earlier on, and, as so often, the fantasies of SF eventually came true, even though it took perhaps a little longer than originally anticipated.
This refers to the weapons of mass destruction, nuclear, biological, chemical, but also to the vulnerability of contemporary society to cyberterrorism. And it concerns not just the number of victims and the amount of damage likely to be caused but also the psychological effects such as panic that might ensue once the new weapons, or even only their threat, come into play.
This coincides with a world-wide upsurge in fanaticism. Fanaticism, to be sure, is not exactly a new phenomenon; moderate people in history have seldom, if ever, opted for terrorism. The upsurge that occurred towards the end of the twentieth century had a variety of reasons, but it was, above all, connected to the impact of radical religion (often sectarian in character) and a growth in the intensity of nationalism in various parts of the world. If the revolver and the invention of dynamite had been, as the nineteenth-century terrorists had seen it, the great equalizers, enabling them to challenge the powers that be, the new weapons of the late twentieth century offered the prospect to small groups of people (or even individuals) of avenging themselves and causing havoc among their enemies.
But would not the very destructiveness of these weapons inhibit terrorists from using them, for there was always the likelihood that they would not just kill their enemies but also their friends, and probably more of the latter than the former? But such an idea was based on the assumption that terrorism had a rational kernel, that it pursued certain distinct political aims. This had been true in the past and why should it not be true in future? But such assumptions ignored the fact that the smaller the group of terrorists the less rational it was likely to be, and that destruction, per se, could well be the target of individuals convinced that not only the society surrounding them was sinful but that the world at large was not worth surviving and that a few chosen individuals had the holy duty to speed up its destruction.
At the present time, we witness merely the dawn of this new era. Apart from a few amateurish attempts, we have not yet seen determined attempts to engage in terrorism using weapons of mass destruction.
It might take longer than some have feared for this new trend to unfold, and it is more than likely that, out of ten such attempts that will be made, nine will miserably fail. But given the magnitude of the dangers, even the prospect that only one out of many such attacks will succeed is a daunting one and should be taken very seriously indeed.
All this does not mean that in the years and decades to come all terrorism will go nuclear or biological, the great majority probably will not. Nationalist/separatist terrorism is likely to continue and so will the paranoid terrorism of the extreme right. The terrorism of the far left may get a new lease on life by adopting relatively new causes such as the fight against globalism or for animal liberation.
The terms we have been using to describe these phenomena have become more outdated and indeed misleading every year. “Right wing,” in traditional parlance, signifies the preservation of the existing order and the traditional values of society, whereas the new breed in America and elsewhere has striven, on the contrary, to destroy them. “Left wing” has been attached to the party of revolution but also to the ideas of the Enlightenment. But it would be exceedingly difficult to point to any specific right- or left-wing elements in the thinking of the Tamil Ti gers, one of the most successful violent movements using both guer rilla and terrorist tactics, and the same is true for virtually all others. The characteristic features of these groups are their fanaticism, often the mystical element in their thinking, their ideological orientation outside the religious or nationalist kernel is not of decisive importance.
What has been said about “left” and “right” is also true to a large extent to the term “terrorism.” Even though terrorism has been notoriously difficult to define, it was until fairly recently a distinct phenomenon. This is less and less the case as time passes and the borderline between all kinds acts of violence becomes far less clear than it used to be. These days the journals on terrorist studies are likely to cover top ics such as the smuggling of nuclear materials, of narco terrorism, of cyber-attacks, of millenarian inspiration, and, last but not least, individual motivation rather than ideological purpose. All of this is very unsatisfactory for orderly people eager to have clear definitions and demarcations as in some of the natural sciences, but it merely reflects the growing disorder in a disorderly world. The term terrorism has come to encompass such wide varieties of violent activities that it should be replaced by another term. If this has not happened yet, the only reason is that no one so far has provided a better term, or terms, to replace it.
Washington June 2001.