Democracy, Al Qaeda, and the causes of terrorism: A strategic analysis of U.S. policy

Studies in Conflict and Terrorism

Volumn 31, Issue 1, 2008, Pages 40-59

  Freeman, Michael ^a  

^a NAVAL POSTGRADUATE SCHOOL   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 38049092894     PISSN: 1057610X     EISSN: 15210731     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/10576100701759996     Document Type: Article

References (132)

1. Defining terrorism is a difficult and contentious task, largely because of the political, legal, and ethical ramifications that accompany any definition. Governmental agencies typically define terrorism as the use of violence by non-state actors against noncombatants designed to influence an audience in order to achieve a political outcome. Other definitions focus more on the psychological effects of terrorism (fear and terror) and de-emphasize the importance of noncombatants as targets and non-state actors as perpetrators. See Audrey Kurth Cronin, "Behind the Curve: Globalization and International Terrorism," International Security 27(3) (Winter 2002/2003), p. 32.
2. For the general distinction between governmental and academic definitions, this point was made by Alan Krueger and Jitka Malečková, "Does Poverty Cause Terrorism?" The New Republic 24 June 2002, p. 27.
3. The U.S. campaign against terrorism spans diplomatic, legal, military, law enforcement, economic, and intelligence realms. Most of the efforts in these realms, though, are intended to defeat the current generation of terrorists. In the long term, the spread of democracy has been articulated as the best strategy for altering the dynamic of terrorism by changing the societies that would give rise to future terrorists.
4. Bush speech at American Enterprise Institute 26 February 2003. Available at (www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/02/print/20030226-11.html).
5. See Jennifer Windsor, "Promoting Democratization Can Combat Terrorism," The Washington Quarterly, 26(3) (Summer 2003) as an example of this argument.
6. Bernard Lewis, The Crisis of Islam: Holy War and Unholy Terror (New York: Random House, 2003), p. 169.
7. Abdulkarim Soroush points to the fallacy of "subsuming many issues under a single issue" in his interview with Amir Hossein Khodaparast, "From Islam as an Identity to Secular Politics," on 16 August 2006, available at (www.drsoroush.com). The author has attempted to avoid this fallacy by specifying the nature of the problem as much as possible, by looking at Al Qaeda and the global Salafi jihad rather than on the effects of democracy on all kinds of terrorism.
8. See MarthaCrenshaw, "The Causes of Terrorism," Comparative Politics 13(4) (July 1981), pp. 379-399;
9. Edward Newman, "Exploring the 'Root Causes' of Terrorism," Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 29(8) (2006), pp. 749-772;
10. Audrey Kurth Cronin, "Sources of Contemporary Terrorism," in Audrey Kurth Cronin and James Ludes, eds., Attacking Terrorism: Elements of a Grand Strategy (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2004), pp. 19-45;
11. Tore Bjorgo, ed., Root Causes of Terrorism: Myths, Reality and Ways Forward (London: Routledge, 2005);
12. and James Forest, ed., The Making of a Terrorist: Recruitment, Training, and Root Causes (Westport, CT: Praeger Security International, 2006) for causes of terrorism.
13. Sagemam, Understanding Terror Networks (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005).
14. Within Al Qaeda, there is the "hard-core" that lived and trained in Afghanistan and swore the bayat (oath) to bin Laden. Additionally, Al Qaeda has developed loose ties with other Salafi jihadis around the world, creating a network that includes the Algerian Salafist Group for Call and Combat (GSPC), Al Qaeda in Iraq led by al-Zarqawi, Jemaah Islamiyah in Malaysia and Indonesia, and the Abu Sayyaf Group, and later the Moro Islamic Liberation Front in the Philippines. Lastly, Al Qaeda has provided the ideological inspiration for other "free-lance" individuals and groups who share Al Qaeda's commitment to attacking the "far enemy" but do so without direct training by, or recruitment into, Al Qaeda and have been responsible for the attacks in Madrid, London, Casablanca, Egypt, and elsewhere. See Jason Burke, Al-Qaeda (London: I. B. Tauris, 2003),
15. and Anthony Romanelli, "Disaggregating al-Qaeda: A Framework for Understanding the post 9/11 al-Qaeda Threat," available at (www.cda-cdai.ca/symposia/2005/Romanelli.pdf), for this characterization of al-Qaeda.
16. See also Bruce Hoffman, "The Changing Face of Al Qaeda and the Global War on Terrorism," Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 27(6) (2004), pp. 549-560, for a description of the decentralization of Al Qaeda and the rise of "clones" or "franchises."
17. Sagemam, Understanding Terror Networks, p. 73 points out that Shi'a Muslims are not represented in Al Qaeda.
18. Sageman, Understanding Terror Networks, p. 4;
19. See Olivier Roy, The Failure of Political Islam (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994) for background on the Salafis.
20. QuintanWiktorowicz, "Anatomy of the Salafi Movement," Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 29(3) (2006), p. 208.
21. See also, Quintan Wiktorowicz, "A Genealogy of Radical Islam," Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, 28(2) (2005), pp. 75-97.
22. Fawaz Gerges, TheFar Enemy:WHy JihadWent Global (Cambridge:CAmbridge University Press, 2005), p. 2.
23. Roy, The Failure of Political Islam, pp. ix-x, argues that political Islam failed because of its ideological internal inconsistencies.
24. Gerges, The Far Enemy, p. 101 characterizes the jihadis as "ripe with internal strife and rivalry."
25. See Gilles Kepel, Jihad: The Trail of Political Islam (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2002);
26. and Gerges, The Far Enemy, p. 25.
27. Sageman, Understanding Terror Networks, pp. 18-19.
28. Robert Pape, Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism (New York: Random House, 2005), p. 110 finds that only one in five million Salafis become suicide bombers.
29. Quoted in Quintan Wiktorowicz, Radical Islam Rising: Muslim Extremism in the West (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005), p. 12.
30. Of course other factors, like strategic cost/benefit analysis and individual and social psychology, are important causal variables that explain terrorism.
31. Quintan Wiktorowicz, "Introduction: Islamic Activism and Social Movement Theory," in Quintan Wiktorowicz, ed., Islamic Activism: A Social Movement Approach (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004), pp. 6-19.
32. It is assumed that these grievances are real and not simply manipulated by the ideologies or "frames."
33. This is the language of Crenshaw, "The Causes of Terrorism."
34. Causes of terrorism can be divided into four levels: Individual, rational, systemic, and ideological. This article only analyzes the systemic (occupation, modernization, authoritarianism) and ideological (religious extremism). Democracy, though, might also impact the individual (psychologies, demographics) and rational (costs and benefits, the relative ease of conducting attacks) causes as well.
35. Robert Dahl, On Democracy (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998), p. 37, for example, defines democracy as whether "all members are equally entitled to participate in the association's decisions about its policies."
36. This conception of democracy is echoed byDavid Beetham, Democracy and Human Rights (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1999), p. 5, who argues that popular control (everyone gets to participate) and political equality (everyone participates as equals) are "the core principles of democracy."
37. Adam Przeworski, Michael Alvarez, Jose Antonio Sheibub, and Fernando Limongi, Democracy and Development: Political Institutions and Well-Being in the World, 1950-1990 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 16, 27 define democracy as a "regime in which those who govern [the executive and legislature] are selected through contested elections." Contestation, in turn, requires: Ex-ante uncertainty, ex-post reversibility, repeatability, and alternation. They also explicitly exclude such notions as social or economic equality, accountability, liberties or human rights, participation (in contrast to Dahl), or the nature of civil-military relations. Others, like Freedom House (www.freedomhouse.org), define an electoral democracy as having a multiparty political system, with universal suffrage, contested elections, and public access to political leaders. "Fully free" countries are both electoral democracies as well as liberal democracies, which are defined according to their ability to protect civil liberties.
38. See Edward Mansfield and Jack Snyder, "Democratization and the Danger of War," International Security 20(1) (Summer 1995);
39. and Alberto Abadi, "Poverty, Political Freedom, and the Roots of Terrorism," National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper 10859, available at (www.nber.org/papers/w10859).
40. Quan Li, "Does Democracy Promote orReduce Transnational Terrorist Incidents?" Journal of Conflict Resolution 49(2) (April 2005), pp. 278-280.
41. William Eubank and Leonard Weinberg, "Does Democracy Encourage Terrorism?" Terrorism and Political Violence 6(4) (Winter 1994), p. 426.
42. William Eubank and Leonard Weinberg, "Terrorism and Democracy: Perpetrators and Victims," Terrorism and Political Violence 13(1) (Spring 2001), p. 160.
43. Li, "Does Democracy Promote or Reduce Transnational Terrorist Incidents?" p. 281.
44. Ibid., p. 283.
45. Pape, Dying to Win, p. 44.
46. Li, "Does Democracy Promote or Reduce Transnational Terrorist Incidents?" p. 280.
47. See also Crenshaw, "TheCauses of Terrorism," p. 383.
48. See Fathali Moghaddam, "AStaircase to Terrorism: A Psychological Exploration." American Psychologist (February-March 2005), p. 164 for the point about procedural injustice.
49. Gregory Gause, "Can Democracy Stop Terrorism?" Foreign Affairs (September/October 2005). Available at (http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20050901faessay 84506/f-gregory-gause-iii/candemocracy-stop-terrorism.htm).
50. 1996 bin Laden fatwa.
51. 1998 bin Laden fatwa. See also M. A. Muqtedar Khan, "Radical Islam, Liberal Islam," Current History 102(668) (December 2003), p. 417
52. and Martha Crenshaw, "Why America? The Globalization of Civil War," Current History 100(650) (December 2001), p. 430.
53. Pape, Dying to Win, p. 114.
54. See Windsor, "Promoting Democratization Can Combat Terrorism," pp. 46-47 for a list of democratic mechanisms that might reduce the likelihood of political violence.
55. In 2003, the U.S. military transferred approximately 4,500 troops from Saudi Arabia to Qatar, leaving only around 500 in Saudi Arabia. See (http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/facility/saudi-arabia.htm).
56. See Gause, "Can Democracy Stop Terrorism?"
57. Soroush draws this distinction between Islam as identity and Islam that teaches truths in "From Islam as an Identity to Secular Politics."
58. See also Anna Simons, "Making Enemies: An Anthropology of Islamist Terror, Part I," The American Interest (Summer 2006), p. 12.
59. Soroush, "From Islam as an Identity to Secular Politics," p. 12. He also argues the way to diminish the threat is for "fundamentalists" to return to an understanding of Islam as a provider of truths, rather than as an identity.
60. Anna Simons, "Making Enemies: An Anthropology of Islamist Terror, Part II," The American Interest, Autumn (September/October 2006), p. 39.
61. Daniel Byman, "The Logic of Ethnic Terrorism," Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 21 (1998), p. 156.
62. Simons, "Making Enemies," p. 7.
63. Likewise, Ali Mirsepassi makes a similar point, arguing that the Iranian revolution "was fought most emphatically for modernity" in Intellectual Discourse and the Politics ofModernization: Negotiating Modernity in Iran (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), p. 10.
64. Wiktorowicz, "Introduction: Islamic Activism and Social Movement Theory," pp. 7-8.
65. Simons, "Making Enemies," pp. 7, 16.
66. Ibid., p. 16.
67. Mark Juergensmeyer, Terror in the Mind of God (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), p. 228.
68. 1996 bin Laden fatwa, p. 5.
69. Ibid., p. 9.
70. Ibid., p. 8.
71. This is a frequent theme in bin Laden's rhetoric. See Michael Slackman, "Bin Laden Says West is Waging War Against Islam," New York Times 24 April 2006.
72. Burke, Al-Qaeda, pp. 239-240.
73. See John Zimmerman, "Sayyif Qutb's Influence on the 11 September Attacks," Terrorism and Political Violence 16(2) (Summer 2004).
74. Juergensmeyer, Terror in the Mind of God, p. 227.
75. Francis Fukuyama, "Identity, Immigration, and Liberal Democracy," Journal of Democracy 17(2) (April 2006), p. 10.
76. Cheryl Benard, "Civil Democratic Islam: Partners, Resources, Strategies," RAND, 2003. Available at (www.rand.org/pubs/ monograph-reports/2005/MR1716.pdf).
77. Abdolkarim Soroush, Reason, Freedom, and Democracy in Islam (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).
78. David Smock, "Islam and Democracy," United States Institute of Peace, special report 93 September 2002), p. 3.
79. Simons, "Making Enemies," p. 17.
80. Lewis, "The Roots of Muslim Rage," p. 48.
81. See Juergensmeyer, Terror in the Mind of God;
82. and Jessica Stern, Terror in the Name of God (New York: HarperCollins, 2003).
83. Soroush, "From Islam as an Identity to Secular Politics," p. 13.
84. See "Americans Struggle with Religion's Role at Home and Abroad," available at http://pewforum.org/publications/reports/ poll2002.pdf).
85. See also Cathy Lynn Grossman, "View of God Can Predict Values, Politics," USA TODAY, 12 September 2006, available at http://www.usatoday.com/news/religion/2006-09-11-religion-surveyx.htm).
86. See Dore Gold, Hatred's Kingdom: How Saudi Arabia Supports the New Global Terrorism Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, 2003);
87. and Stephen Schwartz, The Two Faces of Islam (New York: Random House, 2002).
88. See Sageman, Understanding Terror Networks.
89. Husain Haqqani, "Islam's Medieval Outposts," Foreign Policy 133 (November/December 2002), pp. 58-64.
90. See Michael Mousseau, "Market Civilization and Its Clash with Terror," International Security 27(3) (Winter 2002/2003) for an argument about the social upheavals caused by globalization.
91. Wiktorowicz, "Introduction: Islamic Activism and Social Movement Theory," p. 6 refers to the argument of Huntington (1968).
92. Gilles Kepel, Jihad: The Trail of Political Islam.
93. Hafez, "Repression and Rebellion in the Muslim World," p. 76.
94. Abduallah Yousef Sahar Mohammad, "Roots of Terrorism in the Middle East: Internal Pressures and International Constraints," in Tore Bjorgo, ed., Root Causes of Terrorism: Myths, Reality and Ways Forward (London: Routledge, 2005), p. 105 cites numerous scholars making this point.
95. See also Morton Halperin, Joseph Siegle, and MichaelWeinstein, The Democracy Advantage: How Democracies Promote Prosperity and Peace (New York: Routledge, 2005), p. 105.
96. Some scholars disagree with the causal direction of this argument. They argue that democracy does not lead to wealth; rather, wealth is a precursor of democracy. See, for example, Robert J. Barro, "Determinants of Democracy," Journal of Political Economy 107(6) (1999), p. 2
97. and Seymour Martin Lipset, Kyoung-Ryung Seong, and John Charles Torres, "A Comparative Analysis of the Social Requisites of Democracy," Comparative Political Sociology 136 (May 1993).
98. Przeworski et al., Democracy and Development, p. 78.
99. Ibid., p. 270. Nor does economic development lead to democracy.
100. Gurr, Why Men Rebel (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1970).
101. The linkage between economic factors and left-wing terrorism is better substantiated, however.
102. Mohammad, "Roots of terrorism in the Middle East," p. 108.
103. Alan Krueger and Jitka Malečková, "Education, Poverty and Terrorism: Is There a Causal Connection?" Journal of Economic Perspectives 17(4) (Fall 2003), p. 119.
104. Daniel Pipes, "God and Mammon: Does Poverty Cause Militant Islam?" The National Interest (Winter 2001/2002), p. 16.
105. AlbertoAbadie, "Poverty, Political Freedom, and the Roots of Terrorism," National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper 10859. Available at (www.nber.org/papers/w10859).
106. Besides those cited here, see the following for similar views: Gurr, WhyMen Rebel, pp. 12, 25-26;
107. Alex Schmid, "Terrorism and Democracy," in Alex Schmid and and Ronald Crelinsten, eds., Western Responses to Terrorism (London: Frank Cass, 1993), pp. 15, 17;
108. Cronin, "Behind the Curve: Globalization and International Terrorism," p. 52;
109. Ivo H. Daalder and James M. Lindsay, "Nasty, Brutish, and Long: America's War on Terrorism," Current History 100(650) (December 2001), p. 407;
110. Daniel Benjamin and Simon Strong, The Age of Sacred Terror: Radical Islam's War Against America (New York: Random House, 2003), p. 480;
111. Mohammad, "Roots of Terrorism in the Middle East," p. 104 cites numerous people who argue this point.
112. Crenshaw, "The Causes of Terrorism," p. 383. She offers many other situational, strategic, and individual level causes of terrorism.
113. Paul Wilkinson, Terrorism Versus Democracy: The Liberal State Response (Portland, OR: Frank Cass, 2000), p. 79.
114. James Forest, "Exploring Root Causes of Terrorism," in James Forest, ed., The Making of a Terrorist: Recruitment, Training, and Root Causes (Westport, CT: Praeger Security International, 2006), vol. 3, 5.
115. Gerges, The Far Enemy, p. 273.
116. Wiktorowicz, "Introduction: Islamic Activism and Social Movement Theory," p. 8.
117. Mohammad, "Roots of Terrorism in the Middle East," p. 110. Jason Burke, Al-Qaeda, p. 151 discusses how Ayman al-Zawahiri's family over the generations had gone through anticolonialism and pan-Arabism, and after those "discourses or ideologies of dissent" had faltered, turned to radical Islam.
118. Moghaddam, "A Staircase to Terrorism," p. 164 distinguishes between the two kinds of justice.
119. Windsor, "Promoting Democratization Can Combat Terrorism," pp. 46-47.
120. Wilkinson, Terrorism Versus Democracy, p. 79.
121. See also Paul Wilkinson, Terrorism and the Liberal State (London: MacMillan Press, 1977), pp. 26, 28, and 29.
122. Alex Schmid, "Terrorism and Democracy," p. 17, posits that the strength of democracy in fighting terrorism lies in three conflict-reducing mechanisms: Elections reduce the need for political violence to bring about social change; a freemedia reduces the need to use violence to get oneself heard; and impartial courts reduce the need for minorities to use violence to protect their rights.
123. Hafez, "Repression and Rebellion in the Muslim World," p. 90.
124. David Rapoport, "The Four Waves of Modern Terrorism," in Audrey Cronin and James Ludes, eds., Attacking Terrorism: Elements of a Grand Strategy (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2004), p. 65, writes: "the fourth wave [religious terrorism] appears explicitly antidemocratic because the democratic idea is inconceivable without a significant measure of secularism."
125. Roy, The Failure of Political Islam, pp. 10-11 makes the point that political Islamists expect the state to provide justice (through sharia), rather than liberty (through democracy).
126. 1996 bin Laden fatwa, p. 5.
127. Gerges, The Far Enemy, p. 49.
128. Sageman. Understanding Terror Networks, p. 7.
129. Gause, "Can Democracy Stop Terrorism?"
130. Stern, Terror in the Name of God, p. 46.
131. Pape, Dying to Win, makes this argument and advocates a policy of offshore balancing.
132. Benjamin and Simon, The Age of Sacred Terror, p. 482 say "democracy may be the cure for only one thing - tyranny."