Entries Tagged 'terrorism' ↓

Hesbah pundit `Abd al-Rahman al-Faqir has been writing a series of essays he collectively calls “Real War vs. Symbolic War.” The point of the essays is to explain the difference between terrorist attacks (symbolic war) and other types of military violence (real war).

One of his essays, “Cold Terrorism,” examines the decision-making of groups choosing between killing for the sake of eliminating enemies without drawing attention to themselves (cold terrorism) vs. killing to provoke a response against themselves (hot terrorism). The following quotes are from a recent English translation:

* Can we afford not to take the responsibility of the operation?

* Does the safety of the performers take precedence over the attack or otherwise?

* The ease of performing the operation and the available means

* Are we ready to tackle the retaliation of the enemy or not?

If the aim is to get rid of the enemy without looking on to any other goal then it is preferred to use cold terror.

As for if the aim is to terrorize the enemy only, then it is preferred to use hot terror, even though the security situation and the safety of the performers currently calls for the cold terror as it gives the performers the chance to retreat and escape.

Faqir concludes with some aphorisms on where hot and cold terrorism fit into real and symbolic war:

In the actual war, cold terror is used, as it helps us in avoiding the retaliation of the enemy and enables the performers to withdraw safely.

In the symbolic war, hot terror is used because it causes more stir and more terror and is more effective in the media.

In the actual war, the reason behind attacking the enemy is getting rid of it.

In the symbolic war, the reason behind attacking the enemy is to terrorize it.

Document (English): 9-3-08-ekhlaas-real-war-vs-symbolic-war cold vs hot terrorism

Ekhlaas member `Abd al-Wahhab alleges that the programmers of Grand Theft Auto 4 have been inspired by al-Qaeda. To prove his point, he posts a series of links to clips from the game in which al-Qaeda’s terrorist tactics are employed.  `Abd al-Wahhab then asks: “Is the West preparing its next generation in the mode of  Muslim fighting?”

The post is in Arabic, but the links are easy to make out: 6-3-2008-ekhlaas-grand-theft-auto-tactics

That’s how the New York Times sets up the Sageman/Hoffman argument today: Two powerful academics are feuding over whether al-Qaeda is a leaderless movement (Sageman) or a hierarchical terrorist organization (Hoffman). There are billions in federal dollars hanging in the balance. And best yet, the two guys can’t stand each other.

There’s a lot more agreement between Sageman and Hoffman than the Times piece portrays. Both men accept that there are grassroots Jihadi groups popping up without any operational connection to AQ and both men believe that AQ Central (Bin Laden, Zawahiri, et al) is alive and well in the FATA region of Pakistan. The main difference is over how strong AQ Central is and what relationship it has to those who fight in its name. In his latest book, Sageman says AQ Central is not that strong outside of Pakistan/Afghanistan and that it doesn’t have any operational links with groups or individuals outside the region. Hoffman disagrees, arguing that AQ Central does have these links and that it is planning and financing global operations again. My money is on Hoffman’s thesis; Abu Ubayda’s shenanigans should be proof enough.

The problem with Sageman’s thesis is that it is four years too late. It works very well in 2004 when AQ Central was on the run and grassroots groups were popping up. But it is incomplete today when we have both grassroots activism and a powerful AQ Central. What makes things difficult now is that the grassroots groups are reaching out to the mother ship.

As for Sageman’s why-me? posture in the Times article, puh-lease. In his books, Sageman dismisses entire fields of study with a flick of the pen, excoriating colleagues for their lack of scientific rigor. His fulminations would be tolerable if his own scientific practice were rigorous, but it’s not–his datasets are not easy to obtain, his coding of the data is idiosyncratic, and some of his strongest conclusions rest on weak evidence. This is what Hoffman is reacting to in his review of Sageman’s latest book and it is long overdue.

Sageman has a lot of very useful ideas, but they are hard to talk about when he is standing in the way:

Maybe he’s mad that I’m the go-to guy now.

Blech.

Daniel Benjamin has an excellent piece in Slate on the difficulty of measuring terrorist threats. The common way to measure it is body count: if the number of people killed annually by a terrorist group goes down, then the threat from that group is reduced. This measurement also allows people to say things like, “Only 100 people died in the United States this year from terrorism, whereas 3,000 died from gang-related deaths. So gang-related deaths are more of a problem and we should shift resources accordingly.”

As Benjamin points out, the problem with the body count metric is that it does not capture the real danger of terrorism: severe economic dislocation and government overreaction. Of course, both are predicated on people and officials reacting in ways that are way out of proportion to the actual physical threat, but that is precisely the response that terrorism is designed to provoke.  Books, like the useful Infernal Machine, document these overreactions and lament that people don’t respond more sanely.  But this lament betrays a reliance on the body count metric, which is misleading.