Any prediction about when the present wave of terrorism will end is necessarily speculative. This for the simple reason that a variety of factors are involved; for instance: the strength or weakness of Western and other governments, or the appearance or absence of a charismatic leader who could lead the present wave in various directions. It could well happen that the present wave spearheaded by IS and allied groups will recognize, after a number of years and after additional setbacks, that their policy of establishing a caliphate was mistaken. The historical caliphate has not been accepted by a majority of Muslims for a long time (after it came to an end and the Ottoman Empire no longer existed). New states developed, and with these states came vested interests. To overcome these interests today will be difficult, if not impossible. Iraq and Syria could possibly unite at a future date, but it is unlikely that other Islamic states from Indonesia to Nigeria will ever constitute a true Ummah even in a spiritual sense.
Some observers predict that IS and similar such groups are now on the retreat and will try to find a new base in the countryside, having failed in the cities. In other words, they will attempt to transform themselves into a guerrilla movement. But this seems doubtful for a number of reasons. IS was and is essentially an urban organization. What was possible in China at the time of Mao cannot be repeated in the Middle East or Africa.
The history of terrorist movements shows that in our time almost all fail. Walther Rathenau, the Jewish foreign minister of Germany, was killed in 1922, but German foreign policy remained the same. Matthias Erzberger, a politician belonging to the center party in Germany who had voiced pacifist opinions, was killed by far-right extremists without any political effect. Engelbert Dollfuss, the Austrian chancellor, was killed in 1934, but Austria continued to exist, at least for a few years. King Alexander I of Yugoslavia and the French foreign minister Louis Barthou were killed in Marseille in 1934, but it had no political effect whatsoever. Several American presidents were killed, but it had no impact on American policy. Even in the Arab world, political murder had no effect—for instance, the killing of Hassan al-Banna or the murder of King Abdullah in Jerusalem. One could think of an assassination that was tried but did not succeed: the murder of Adolf Hitler before 1939. But for Hitler, there would not have been, in all probability, the Second World War. No other Nazi leader—including, for instance, Hermann Göring or Rudolf Hess—had the same ambitions as Hitler, the same relentless madness, the same courage, the same popular appeal to go to war. True, they wanted Germany to expand, but not at the price of a world war. The Second World War, needless to say, caused enormous devastation and many millions of victims. The Second World War was also the cause of many disasters in the years after, as it caused the decline of Europe. It is possible that Europe today would not be in the sorry state it is but for the Second World War. There were several attempts to kill Mussolini that failed, but it is unlikely that Italian Fascism would have collapsed as a result. Gandhi was killed, but it had no effect on Indian policy.
True, there was another exception. The First World War was triggered by an assassination, but the rivalries and tensions between the major European powers were such that the war was already highly likely. The list could be prolonged. While the killing of a dictator in a fascist state can indeed make a great difference, this seems not to be the case in a democracy or even an authoritarian regime. There has been one major European country in which a leading politician was not killed—namely, Great Britain. A British prime minister was assassinated in 1812, but the motive was personal, not political.
If we go back in history, it emerges that separatist terrorist movements tend to last longer than terrorist groups motivated by ideology. A good example is the Irish IRA, which can be traced back under different names to the late eighteenth century—more than two hundred years. But it’s also true that the Irish national movement for many years engaged in political activity rather than violent struggle. All this does not of course mean that political violence has been and will be of no importance. But there are many kinds of such violence: war, civil war, guerilla warfare, and so on. And compared with them, terrorism is certainly of much lesser importance. IS seems to have realized that killing the leader of a democratic country would not make any difference, and for this reason, its attacks have always been directed mainly against civilians uninvolved in politics. The mission of IS is not, however, concerned with territory but with people. IS wants all mankind to embrace the only true religion; others will be eliminated or, in the best case, relegated to second- or third-class citizens having to pay a special tax for their unbelief. The history of terrorist groups shows that those with realistic, limited aims had a chance of some success. Those who intended to change the world profoundly did, as a rule, fail.
Issues concerning the end of terrorist groups have been occasionally studied, but these studies almost always concern earlier terrorist movements. The issue of IS is different, inasmuch as it is part of the Islamist wave that started some thirty years ago. How long did similar such waves in the past last? Some, like the various Mahdism phenomena, were a short duration and ended with the death of the leader. Others, like Salafism, lasted a very long time and, in fact, are in various ways still active today. The Muslim Brotherhood was founded in the 1920s, but even though underground, it is still active today. However, the Muslim Brotherhood, like other offshoots of Salafism or Islamism, turned to political activity, and the same may happen to present-day Islamist groups. In all likelihood, there will always be an ultraradical group believing that violence alone will bring them closer to their goal. As stated earlier, much depends on the attitudes of Western governments, the Russian government, and the Chinese and other Asian governments.
One of the reasons to not to be too sanguine about the future of IS is the fact that extreme Islamist groups have always had a tendency to split. We know from documents obtained that there were considerable differences of opinion even within the top leadership of al-Qaeda. Osama bin Laden was quite critical of some of the views and the strategies of his former deputy, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi; he thought that the measures taken against Muslim dissidents were too harsh, and some of his religious views were not in line with traditional Islamic orthodoxy. Some of the leaders of other Islamic groups, including those who appointed themselves caliphs, were far from generating acceptance; they had no standing as ideological guides outside the small groups they were heading. An Islamic leader recognized by most or all people belonging to that camp has not yet arisen, and even if he should arise, it is more than likely that he will not be recognized by all.
One possibility, indeed likelihood, which is frequently ignored, is the reemergence of Islamism in Russia. Until about 2015, it seemed that Moscow had the situation under control, and the majority of the local Muslim establishments seemed to have been perfectly content under Russian rule. But this is no longer the case. This refers in particular to Dagestan—a small republic in the northern Caucasus with about three million. Dagestan was never quite “pacified” from a Russian point of view, but during the last year, fighting in this region has become far more intense. Traditionally, the contest was among Sufism and groups close to al-Qaeda, but of late, IS seems to have grown in influence (establishing a Caucasus Emirate, or Wilayat Qawqaz), and there is a more or less “open struggle” between the Islamic State and al-Qaeda. The number of victims in this struggle may amount to several thousand (exact figures not being available). If the fighting were to remain limited to Dagestan, these developments may not fester into major importance. But it could very well be that the progress of IS could spill into neighboring regions in which Muslim communities constitute a significant segment of the population. According to reports from Tajikistan in Central Asia, there have been numerous arrests in 2015 and 2016 of Muslim preachers accused of extremist sermons and propaganda.
Little mention has been made so far about jihadist operations in Russia. Is this likely to change in the future? IS cannot afford to neglect the substantial Muslim community in Russia (quite apart from the Caucasian situation and the Central Asian republics). The situation is further complicated as the result of growing Chinese influence and power in this part of the world. The attitude of the Russian government toward IS has been difficult to understand. When al-Zawahiri visited Dagestan in 1996, he was first arrested and later released. He may have assured the Kremlin that his organization (al-Qaeda) would never attack any Russian targets, only American ones. But the Russians rightly, at least from their point of view, may not have given such a statement their full trust. While this assurance may have been well intended, it is not at all clear whether the leadership of al-Qaeda (or IS, at that) is in full control of the actions of their various organizations in various parts of the world. This goes, above all, for those Islamist fighting groups inside Russia and the Caucasus. The Russian foreign minister has called IS a terrorist organization and announced proudly that only the Russian intervention in Syria had saved the country from falling into the hands of the terrorists. But Russian military intervention, especially by the Russian Air Force, has far more often been directed against the enemies of IS than against the IS organization itself (Russian policy makers seem to believe that there are basic differences between IS and al-Qaeda). Whether such a policy can be sustained indefinitely and whether it will eventually serve Russian interests best is not at all certain. But at the present time, Putin and his advisors seem to be convinced that, by and large, IS and the other jihadist organizations are determined to inflict damage above all on America and at best try to refrain from attacking Russian targets. But it is not at all clear how long this will last.
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Let us return to our starting point—the issue of IS ideology, its intensity and rootedness. Which are the motives of the IS campaign of recent years and also of like-minded terrorist groups? It has been pointed out earlier on that our knowledge in this respect is by no means absolutely clear. The assumption that the main motive is religious extremism is of course correct, but it is also an oversimplification. Islamism does play a central role, but it is by no means the only factor involved. Nationalist and separatist interests do play an important role into interests of clans and various national groups, as well as the interests of individuals and social strata. It has also been stressed that while IS and similar such groups obey the main commandments of Islam, they have their own ways of interpreting them and, if need be, find interpretations of their own. The history of these groups in recent decades shows that nationalist motives were quite often involved and that the beginnings of terrorist campaigns were in the secular camp.
The same is true with regard to other Islamist militant or terrorist groups in recent decades. An obvious example is the Chechen movement, which had its roots in secular circles and only later on became an extremist religious group. To what extent the present rulers of Chechnya are indeed fanatical Islamists is a moot point. Another example is presented by the political developments in Pakistan. Originally, the idea of a division of India and the establishment of a separate Muslim state occurred in secular circles headed by Ali Jinnah. Only following the coup carried out by the Pakistani army in 1977 did Islamism become the official state ideology.
The jihadist terrorist groups are, at present, retreating. But in all likelihood they will be able to cause a considerable amount of mischief and political turbulence given the weakness of the Middle Eastern and African governments for years to come. At present, the United States and Europe are considered the main enemies. But America is far away from the Middle East, while Russia and China are immediate neighbors. Given these geographic circumstances, the end of the present terrorist wave may not be that near even if the identities of the main enemies change.
LESSONS FROM THE CURRENT WAVE OF TERRORISM
Whenever the current wave of terrorism ends, no matter how distant that day might seem, there will be a remarkable corpus of literature for terrorists in the future to study. If this book cannot predict the end of the current wave, it should at least give some thought to what it implies for future terrorist organizations. To begin, Islamic State’s terror is largely remarkable for how derivative it is compared to other terrorist organizations. Its violence, its tactics, its operations, and its strategy all originate from some other source that is not internal to the group, and hardly reflect a breakthrough in originality. Even its interpretation of Islamic eschatology is not unique and comes from well-trodden sources exploited by other jihadist groups or from radical extremists dating back centuries. Yet despite sharing its traits with innumerable entities throughout history, both religious and secular, something about the group has made it the new standard-bearer and symbol of the potency nonviolent actors have when it comes to committing atrocities. Whereas for the first decade of the twenty-first century, the referential act was al-Qaeda’s attack against the United States on September 11, 2001, now the most symbolic images are of beheadings and wholesale massacres committed in a systemic fashion by individuals wearing black masks. This is not to underplay the attacks on 9/11, as they remain the deadliest single act of terrorism ever, and their role in shaping history will be discussed and dissected for generations to come. Viscerally, though, there is something quite horrifying about the notion of an organization adopting cognitive and institutional procedures and processes for the annihilation of entire groups of people individually instead of relying on uncontrolled explosions, while at the same time using these same organizational methods to govern and conquer territory. If Islamic State’s violence is not unique in approach, it certainly seems to have increased the gradient of palatable violence by nonstate actors and what seems possible.
The latter point is the most crucial. For many years, al-Qaeda spoke of creating a caliphate and re-creating the system of government that existed during the Prophet’s time. This was outlined in Saif al-Adel’s so-called Seven Phases of the Base.1 IS subverted AQ’s plan and simply did what seemed unthinkable or at least what seemed to be the eternal hope and promise of all jihadist organizations. Even as IS collapses, its borders recede, and its grip on territory diminishes, true believers now have a model that they can hope to achieve and acquire, because it has been done. Not only did IS conquer and vanquish, it reformulated laws according to sharia, experimented in monetary policy by creating and introducing its own currency, learned taxation policy and means of acquiring these funds, debated the question of health care policy in modern times, conceived and implemented a system of courts that people respected, and imposed something akin to the rule of law over a territory the size of the United Kingdom. These achievements, although easy to list on paper, require an advanced bureaucracy that can acquire information, disseminate it among senior- and mid-level managers, maintain sufficient legitimacy to deter cheating or defection, and have an enforcement mechanism to turn ideas into laws and policies. Not only that, but with innovations in information technology, there is likely paperwork to document all this so that it can be exported and adapted into future scenarios.
There is context to IS and its success, and it is worth discussing before continuing. As explored in the historical portions of this book, the group’s success owes to failures in governance. In Libya, Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan, it took advantage of poorly governed areas and exported its government-in-a-box model to these places, ingraining itself rapidly and quickly into local populations. If Assad had not been so brutal, or if al-Maliki had been more conciliatory toward Sunnis, IS would probably still be analyzed within the constellation of the various jihadist organizations with ties to al-Qaeda. However, poor governance has been an issue for millennia across the world, and yet within the context of the nation-state, rarely has there been a nonstate actor that has so vividly left its mark on the question of sovereignty. Despite the fact that the Islamic State is a learning organization that appropriated what worked from the Irgun, the IRA, the Red Army Faction, the Tupamaros, and others, only it has been able to subvert the question of statehood and sovereignty and reformat it for its own purpose. In this regard, then, it offers lessons—which, if adapted to peculiar contexts and circumstances, can be applied anywhere where governance is a problem.
What are its truths? Broadly speaking, it is that terrorism can work, but usually not in isolation. It has the most success when conducted as part of protracted campaigns to influence hearts and minds and conquer territory, while consolidating these advances with a bureaucracy. This echoes the above discussion about whether terrorism works and the difficulty of disentangling it from other political violence occurring. This seems self-evident, but only until recently has a group successfully implemented this strategy. The Taliban ruled an Islamic emirate but lacked an appealing message that would attract the same wave of recruits as the Islamic State. It also lacked a sophisticated state apparatus beyond courts to improve the quality of life for its citizens, meaning it was not a long-term model, for it could not deliver to its citizens. The direct predecessor of IS, al-Qaeda in Iraq, also governed but did so too violently, and it ended up isolating its base. In contrast, Islamic State always maintained agency when it progressed, both provoking and proactively building a program that appealed to the people it governed and also individuals across the globe that bought into its message. There are hard limits to this lesson, though. This state-building project could only occur when there was no viable state to stymie its efforts, and it started to recede the moment concerted air strikes and massing of forces began uprooting IS from its strongholds.
Al-Qaeda has internalized these lessons and is engaged in ambitious state-building projects across the world from South Asia to North Africa. In the places this gradualist approach is working, the conspicuous common element is the absence of government. Eventually, AQ will be positioned to absorb IS and to expand its own caliphate project. There are already signs of tactical cooperation between IS and AQ in parts of Libya, the Levant, and others, and over time, this process will gain steam. Assuming it does not provoke a response by the West, these failed states where AQ asserts itself will become the base of operations for future plots, much like Afghanistan and Sudan in the 1990s.
The world of 2018 looks markedly different from the world of August 2001, and in large measure, this is because of the success of terrorist groups in staging massive plots. If IS and al-Qaeda have developed strategies that work, does this mean terrorism is destined to prevail? The reality is that the current wave of terrorism should be understood within the context of its structure and its time. While IS might represent an existentialist threat to Iraq, it only plays that role because of mishaps from Iraq’s central government. For the West, the threat is far less because, as has been explained elsewhere, terrorism is unlikely to ever destroy a society—unless a group acquires weapons of mass destruction. To emphasize this point, IS, for all its industrial might, lacks the capacity of a modern state to mobilize people and resources for an all-out onslaught akin to the Mongol hordes. At most, it can inspire fear globally, but it cannot defeat modern militaries. Terrorism has prevailed in the past, but not because terrorists vanquished their foes with car bombs or with assassinations. They succeeded when governments overreacted or when there was not a government to react, making a terrorist group the entity best positioned to govern and impose laws. This seems contradictory, but those earth-shattering moments always ceded agency to other actors and could have been prevented. The case of the Irgun in Palestine and the FLN were discussed briefly in a previous chapter. It is worth focusing on two more examples.
Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s assassination is often touted as the quintessential terrorist plot that changed history. Indeed, his death provoked the mobilization of forces across Europe and led to the First World War, but the reasons for that conflict were more complex and strategic than terrorism alone. It was European overreaction within the tinderbox of an arms race and hegemonic competition that set off the war. Ferdinand’s death was but a pretext for the various parties to take up arms. Perhaps, in a modern context, with more regularized diplomatic interactions and confidence-building measures, war could have been stopped. That was impossible, though, as this was the age before the League of Nations, and efforts to build norms against aggression had not been codified forcefully into international law. Contrast this era to the Cold War, where nuclear annihilation was a globally persistent threat, forcing the rival powers to engage in confidence-building measures to reduce tension. While strategic mishaps occurred, the constant communication between the United States and the Soviet Union helped create a sense of stability lacking otherwise.
A more contemporary example is 9/11. American life changed dramatically following these attacks. Al-Qaeda killed thousands, caused untold amounts of material damage to the U.S. economy, and forced the United States to change its laws to better fight terrorism. It also led the United States to enter Afghanistan and for it to usher in the global war on terror. To what extent was AQ directly responsible for this, though, aside from the death and destruction? Part of AQ’s goal was to incite an American invasion and to enmesh the United States in a protracted guerrilla war that would bankrupt its economy, forcing it to withdraw its support for the apostate governments in the Middle East, specifically Saudi Arabia. Only then would AQ be able to declare a caliphate. While history might seem to validate this strategy, it is worth analyzing how the invasion occurred.
In 2001, the United States did not become enmeshed in a large-scale war in Afghanistan due to strategic decisions taken by the Bush administration. Instead of toppling the Taliban government and routing AQ in 2001 with conventional forces, the United States relied on a small contingency of special operations forces (SOF) working in tandem with the Afghan Northern Alliance, the main opposition to the Taliban, and supported by airpower. This light-footprint approach was maintained after the invasion because the threat environment was limited. Furthermore, because NATO activated Article 5 as a show of solidarity with the United States, once the main fighting concluded, the invasion of Afghanistan quickly transitioned into a state-building project under the purview of the United Nations. In other words, this was not the protracted insurgency-cum–guerrilla war that AQ predicted. It did transform into one down the road, but only once the international governance project failed to deliver on its promises, creating the political space for the Taliban to reemerge.
The war AQ wanted did occur in Iraq for reasons unrelated to 9/11, even though the Bush administration often used it as a justification. Indeed, news reports from the era suggest that the Bush administration had been planning to invade Iraq long before the attacks in New York and Washington. Even if one assumes that 9/11 was the direct cause for the invasion, given how tenuous the links were between Saddam Hussein and AQ, this war should be seen purely as an overreaction from a government failing to analyze the situation strategically. Nonetheless, this war created the conditions for IS to emerge. This is to say that this war, regardless of the motivations behind it, was one of choice and not of necessity, and the evils that followed it come in large measures from decisions taken by the U.S. government, not strictly from AQ’s brilliance. At any point before March 2003, the United States and its coalition partners could have decided not to invade Iraq, and history likely would have been different.
Going back even further, what enabled 9/11 in the first place was the fact that the global community ignored Afghanistan. By 1996, when the Taliban was ascendant, the UN was raising alarms to the human rights abuses being committed, and American intelligence was well aware of al-Qaeda’s ambitions and that it was hiding in the country. It was also well known that AQ had built training camps in Afghanistan for future terrorists, many of whom were participating in the conflicts in Chechnya and in the former Yugoslavia. Whereas the activities after 9/11 were an overreaction and later an issue of governance, the conditions beforehand were that of inaction and also failure of governance.
Viewing terrorist groups in this fashion changes how they are perceived from that of a potent fighting force to that of a parasite or disease, which is avoidable if addressed with the proper treatment in a proactive manner. The goal is not to be reactive and to fall into political imbroglios that cause more trouble than necessary. In this sense, it is reminiscent of David Kilcullen’s argument for how insurgents emerge during conflicts. In his book The Accidental Guerrilla, Kilcullen explains that normally, insurgent groups first enter contested regions to establish support bases through propaganda and the assumption of shadow-government functions, such as the provision of security or justice. Generally, these groups fail to integrate completely into local society, as their ideology is typically alien to local customs and traditions. The degree of institutionalization depends on the compatibility with societal norms, meaning rejection might occur if their doctrine is too extreme. After gaining local sympathy, the organization spreads to other contested regions using the same approach. As these regions lack a strong government presence, the government typically remains aloof to these developments until the insurgent group’s network base becomes too entrenched to uproot. When governments finally do intervene, Kilcullen notes, they often resort to heavy-handed tactics that indiscriminately target the whole of society, leading to a rejection of governmental presence vis-à-vis the insurgency, increasing its support and its ranks. As this is an epidemiological model, Kilcullen argues that the insurgency will continue to spread to all areas that a government attempts to inoculate it with the wrong remedy.
This model can be applied to the contemporary state of terrorism as well. It is not so much that terrorism can always be stopped, but with proactive policies rooted in empirically based analysis, the threat can be contained, and its overall damage can be limited. As a parasite, terrorism thrives when political and social milieus create palatable and hospitable environments; it depends on weak states and governments, because chaos begets chaos. Reacting chaotically only feeds the problem more.
SO WHAT ABOUT THIS CURRENT WAVE OF TERRORISM?
The common theme is that terrorism works either when international norms fail to rein in an overreaction by a major power like the United States, or when governance does not exist in a particular country or territory. So what are the implications of this?
First is the importance of maintaining the terrorism threat in perspective. Governments across the world should do their utmost to protect their citizens from terrorism, but within the framework of the rule of law. The imprimatur of legitimacy begins with a government’s ability to provide security to its population. The other part of the covenant between the individual and the state, though, is the protection of those values that define a society by upholding the rule of law. There is a tendency by states to overreact and begin loosening protection for civil rights and civil liberties when the question centers on security from terrorism. The United States experienced this with legislation passed in the wake of 9/11 that curtailed certain freedoms in the name of fighting terrorism. Actions such as these, where a government purposefully violates the values that define it to fight terrorism, perversely accomplish the goals of groups like AQ or IS and delegitimize the state. Furthermore, while AQ or IS can kill people, they are not invaders with nuclear weapons. Maintaining this perspective and building in this determination not to overreact goes a long way toward containing the damage terrorists can accomplish.
This is more true in the international arena. Not every incident demands an immediate and forceful response that reshapes a political order. History has demonstrated how a particular war of choices sparked by terrorism can easily metastasize into something bigger and worse. The stakes are especially high in Iraq and Syria due to the involvement of Russia and Iran. Miscalculation by any major power trying to fight IS or Jabhat al-Nusra might provoke a global catastrophe greater than anything occurring right now just by the misuse of violence. Similarly, in the future, upholding the international norm of nonaggression will go a long way in preventing wars like the American invasion of Iraq or the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, both of which spawned the most dangerous terrorist groups currently in existence.
In terms of the significance of IS and AQ, if this new state-building approach to spreading terrorism is an evolution of the present wave, it is such only because the international community has not done enough to impose governance in war-torn regions. Rather than generating worry, this should create cautious optimism about the threat posed by IS and AQ. These organizations both arose in the context of failed states and depend on this form of political oxygen for their survival and success. When having to fight a modern military, they fail. They win, though, if they are able to provide a political alternative in places ruled by capricious dictators or lacking the rule of law.
In other words, terrorism is not an exogenous feature of the modern nation-state but rather a symptom of bad governance. Indeed, the entire point of terrorism is to challenge the foundations and legitimacy of governments. When terrorists attack to generate fear, they do so hoping that it reverberates throughout society and that society will overreact. When there is no government to speak of, much like a disease, terrorists spread and take advantage of the safe havens to plot ways to expand their activities. IS succeeded because al-Maliki did not know how to govern and because Assad is a nasty and brutish man. Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula is deadly because the ongoing civil war means that there is no such thing as governance in Yemen’s southern half. And al-Qaeda gained legitimacy when the United States invaded Iraq, as this action seemed to validate its propaganda of a war between the West and Islam.
This changes both how terrorism ought to be understood and the appropriate responses. Certainly, military might is important for removing threats without endangering a country’s own population, but this can go only so far. Indeed, this issue is not even one of reducing poverty but, quite genuinely, how the global community regulates itself and its member states. As noted previously, the link between poverty and terrorism is weak, but the link between failed states and terrorism is quite high. As long as it is seen as a viable alternative to perceived injustices, then it will be a tactic that intelligent and willing individuals will use to advance their goals. Addressing these concerns in war-torn regions will reduce the likelihood that plots will be committed against stable countries.
Admittedly, bad governance is not the only vector for terrorism. As noted in an earlier section of this book, many contemporary terrorists do become radicals in stable Western countries and are from well-off families. These individuals probably adopt these ideas through the exposure to Salafist communities, which preach a rigid and exclusionary interpretation of Islam, or by reading online propaganda. If these individuals decide to commit violence, though, and are not given proper training, they will not be as effective. Granted, opportunistic individuals will follow the examples of the London Bridge or Nice attackers and use rudimentary weapons to kill people, but the scale of damage is much less than coordinated plots using explosives, guns, and urban guerrilla tactics. For all the instruction provided by Inspire, Dabiq, Rumiyah, or any other terrorist magazine, the deadliest attacks occur if individuals receive training and guidance—hence the importance of the training camps run by IS and AQ in Afghanistan, Yemen, Syria, Iraq, and other places that turn raw recruits in professional terrorists. This is corroborated by data. While there has been an increase in the last decade of terrorist plots in Europe, this began only after the onset of the conflict in Syria in 2011. Similarly, the last major spasm of attacks in Europe began in 2004, following the onset of the conflicts in Iraq. The reason, of course, is that many young individuals traveled to these war zones, received training and instruction from hardened fighters, and returned to their home countries to attack.
To summarize, although this current wave of terrorism might seem terrifying, it is a problem that can be managed. Admittedly, this is easier said than done. State-building is expensive, requires a long-term commitment by the international community, and demands buy-in from locals. If the international community acts proactively rather than reactively, however, it is a problem that can be stopped before it begins. Ultimately, though, the best defense against terrorism is the rule of law domestically and internationally, and that should be the priority. IS was successful in Iraq because there was neither.
It has been this book’s thesis that terrorism is not an existentialist threat because of the inferior military capability terrorists normally possess short of their acquiring weapons of mass destruction. In the face of things, even monumental attacks like 9/11 are never going to destroy the United States or its constitutional order. There is an important caveat to all this. A state’s response to terrorism, on the other hand, can pose an existentialist threat to itself. The United States is not the only country guilty of formulating improper responses to the problem of terrorism. During the Troubles, the British government developed a punitive and draconian anti-terrorism program that allowed British security forces to engage in torture against perceived IRA sympathizers, actions that only begat more terrorism. This was dramatized in the movie In the Name of the Father, which told the story of Gerry Conlon, one of the innocent Irishmen accused of bombing two Guildford pubs. Gerry Conlon, in his biography, explained that in their anger to mete out state punishment in a very Foucauldian manner, the British police tortured him and extracted a false confession out of him and imprisoned him for fifteen years. Conlon, not part of the IRA, became a martyr and a symbol of British oppression in Northern Ireland. In the course of prosecuting a counterterrorism campaign, the United Kingdom surrendered any claims to moral legitimacy and became equal to the IRA, who was violating the rule of law. This occurred in the very country that gave birth to such important liberal thinkers as John Locke, Edmund Burke, John Stuart Mill, and countless others.
When innocent people die in the name of some abstract political cause, it is normal to seek out vengeance, especially when there are methods for registering political opposition and dissent. However, as history has demonstrated repeatedly, most times this is ineffective or self-defeating. The case of France in Algeria is the stuff of legends, but a similar story can be told in cases not discussed in this book: the Peruvian military against the Shining Path, the British against the Mau Mau in Kenya, and even Spain in fighting ETA. Well-ordered democratic societies should avoid this punitive antediluvian temptation both because it generates blowback and because it is anathema to their existential values. Terrorism will likely never end, but its worst effects can absolutely be mitigated.