ABSTRACT

This chapter attempts to elaborate on one of David Rapoport’s most influential ideas, namely that not all terrorism is the same. Terrorist campaigns come in waves, which come and go (Rapoport, 2004). I would like to focus on one issue in this theory, namely the natural history of a terrorist wave. Why does it acquire prominence at a certain place and time, and why does it fade over time? I would like to generate a hypothesis by generalizing from my analysis on the global terrorist social movement that threatens the West in the name of Islam at the beginning of the twenty-first century (Sageman, 2004, 2008). In August 1988, in Peshawar, Pakistan, about a dozen Muslim foreigners, who had come to support their Afghan brothers in their fight against the Soviet invaders, decided to form an organization to continue the fight worldwide after the proceeding Soviet withdrawal. These “Afghan Arabs” named their new organization al-Qaeda, “the base,” and took as their leader a young Saudi financier, Usamah bin Ladin. The founding members of this group were part of the elite of the Muslim world. They included bin Ladin, a member of one of the most prominent Saudi families, Ayman al Zawahiri, a member of one of the most prestigious Egyptian families, and various engineers and physicians. They were from upper-middle-class families who were well established in their respective countries and had a stake in the maintenance and stability of the respective political orders. Their average age at the time was over 30. They were genuinely religious, but did not have a formal education in religion. Most had a solid graduate education and a significant proportion had a doctorate. Most were married and had children. They had come to support the Afghan jihad out of a sense of personal duty to the Muslim community, as they defined it, or a sense of adventure. Although they were a heterogeneous group, coming from all over the Muslim world, they forged strong bonds in their support of the anti-Soviet jihad and became radicalized in the process. Most, except perhaps for the Egyptians, did not originally dream of becoming terrorists, but their mutual interactions and their growing sense of self-importance made them thirsty to continue the fight in which they had found themselves. Because of their longer experience with rejectionist politics in their own country, the Egyptians originally provided the intellectual leadership of this group. Their vision was still evolving, but they knew they wanted to stay together and continue their self-appointed task to build a

better world, modeled on their interpretation of the working of the community of righteous people that had first accepted the Prophet as the messenger of God. Indeed, some had no choice but to stay behind in Peshawar because they could not return to their country of origin, as they would be arrested due to their political activities. The surviving companions at arms of Usamah bin Ladin are still the leaders of this terrorist group. There is no indication that they trust later generations to join them in leadership positions of this terrorist social movement. There are still at most about two dozen left at large, but their numbers are dwindling and they are hiding in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan. In the last decade of the twentieth century, the original core of al-Qaeda was joined by a new ripple in the religious terrorist wave of self-recruits. These new members were mostly Middle Eastern expatriates who had come to the West for their education. They had become homesick abroad and congregated with other expatriate Muslims and started talking politics, something that they could not do freely at home. Their mutual interactions escalated their grievances against their own governments, and they blamed the West for propping up these repressive regimes. Most members of this new ripple had come from solid, ambitious, middle-class families, who could afford to send their sons to the West. They were not particularly religious as children, but they were still well educated (most in graduate school). Most were married and a large minority had children. Since many expatriate Muslims hung out at local mosques, this group also drifted there, more for companionship than religiosity. Their feeling of exclusion from their host society activated a common identity, which, due to the fact that their original meeting places were mosques, activated their Muslim collective identity. Their political discussions became couched in a religious frame, which encouraged their subsequent turn to religion. Their interaction became an echo chamber that encouraged the mutual escalation of their grievances against their own governments and the West in general. With time, this mutual process activated a collective identity based on what they had in common, namely being Muslim rather than identifying with their country of origin. They developed strong bonds to the extent that they were ready to sacrifice themselves for their friends and an overarching cause. The al-Qaeda ideology of defending the collective Muslim nation fascinated them after their disillusionment with the failures of previous ideologies from their places of origin, including Nasser’s pan-Arabism, Algerian socialism, as well as Syrian and Iraqi Baathist secularism. Their allegation that the idea that “Islam is the answer” had defeated the Soviet Union in Afghanistan gave credibility to the power of their utopian dream and provided a sense of pride and meaning to their lives. It motivated them to join this utopian movement and fueled their desire to sacrifice themselves to the cause. Worldwide atrocities committed against Muslims in Bosnia, Chechnya, Kashmir, the Philippines, and Palestine became their cause célèbre and cemented their desire to join what they perceived to be a global jihad. They were seeking to join the global resistance movement and went to Afghanistan looking for training to become global

Muslim fighters. At the time, they were generally in their mid-twenties and had no previous criminal background. A few of this group were incorporated into alQaeda, now a more formal organization that housed them in Afghanistan and provided them with a salary. Some even married the sisters of fellow members. There are at most about a hundred of these second-ripple members left, again in the FATA. They are the cadres, middle managers, and trainers of their successors. Their numbers are dwindling as well. The members of the third ripple in this terrorist wave are completely different from their predecessors. They consist mostly of terrorist wannabes, who, angered by the allied invasion of Iraq, aspire to join the social movement but cannot link up to al-Qaeda Central, which had to go into hiding following the allied invasion of Afghanistan post-9/11. These newcomers are generally from modest backgrounds, the second or third generation of unskilled Muslim immigrants to the West. Their upbringing was very secular and, unlike their predecessors, they did not become very religious. They are poorly educated and are definitely not intellectuals or religious scholars. Nor are they the type that might be swayed by religious arguments. Indeed, a significant portion had no religious beliefs at all. The members of this third ripple who go to Iraq do not go there to have theological debates; they go there to blow themselves up. They dream of becoming heroes, replacing their dim life prospects with a sense of greater meaning of being part of a global vanguard. They want to follow in the footsteps of the Afghan Arabs, who, they believe, defeated a superpower in the 1980s. Suicide terrorists have become the rock stars of militant Islam, generating a culture of “jihadi cool,” which inspires these terrorist wannabes. They try to join the global terrorist social movement in their late teens or early twenties. Some try to physically join the movement by traveling to places where they think al-Qaeda still resides (Pakistan or Iraq), but most decide to join it by performing a terrorist act in order to be recognized by the leaders of the movement and accepted as one of their own. Because of their youth, most are not married and do not have children. They dropped out of school and formed youth gangs, with their accompanying criminality. After a short career of petty criminality, they turned to religion to escape their situations and to give their lives greater meaning. To bored, idle youth, the appeal of joining an exciting clandestine martial movement is a great temptation. They form fluid informal networks that are self-financed and selftrained. A very small number of them succeed in connecting with al-Qaeda Central or fellow travelers, such as the progeny of Lashkar-e Taiba or Jaish-e Muhammad, terrorist groups allied with al-Qaeda, either through family connections (mostly British Pakistani Muslims) or through chance (mostly Northern European Muslims). Others seek out the glory of fighting in Iraq and connect with fluid networks of smugglers linked to al-Qaeda in Iraq. Unlike the first two ripples, this third ripple is composed of the equivalent of young street gang members: They exhibit a high level of criminality before they join the jihad. Being less invested in the ambient society than their middle-class predecessors and already rejecting the values of society because of their precarious social conditions, members of the third ripple may be far more violent

against their own society than were their predecessors, giving rise to the “homegrown” threat to society, which has surfaced in the West since the 2003 invasion of Iraq. This threat is analogous to the increase in violence of Leftist terrorist movements in the West in the 1970s when the successors of the original (David Rapoport’s “Third Wave”) Red Army Faction and Red Brigades in Germany and Italy respectively seemed more violent than the original leaders of the movement. An increase in violence may well signal the death throes of a terrorist wave. The foregoing suggests that this religious terrorist Fourth Wave has evolved in response to its post-9/11 habitat. The ongoing process of radicalization now takes place in a very hostile physical, but tolerant virtual, environment and results in a scattered, decentralized social structure – a “leaderless jihad.” Its social structure lacks formal command and control, but the internet gives it a semblance of unity and guidance. It also suggests that the types of people joining a terrorist wave evolve over time, from students at university where these ideas originate, to small gangs in the streets of immigrant neighborhoods, where these ideas diffused following 9/11 and the war in Iraq. However, it is important to point out that the al-Qaeda social movement is composed mostly of people who had started out as strangers, who then became friends and joined the terrorist social movement collectively. This contrasts with terrorist organizations composed of members of an extended family, akin to family business in criminality, like the Sicilian mafia or the Campania Comorra. I suspect that exceptionally long-lasting terrorist organizations like the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and the Basque ETA have this strong kinship component, as opposed to most terrorist organizations that have a predominantly friendship component, often forged at university. The internal dynamics of waves based on kinship may be different from those based on friendship (see Michael Barkun, Chapter 6). Let us return to the natural histories of terrorist waves. Why would they fade over time? One obvious hypothesis springs from Rapoport’s (2004) observation that the average duration of a wave is that of a generation, namely about forty years. A generational explanation for this gradual ebbing of a wave might run as follows. For those attracted to a cause, there is a process of self-selection and commitment to the cause by the original generation. Through bonding with likeminded people who become friends and mutually reinforce their commitment, this index generation goes on to perpetrate horrors that are sanctioned and rewarded in their own increasingly isolated community. However, their children may not share their parents’ commitment, even if they do live in a semi-isolated physical community. Each new generation likes to distinguish itself in contrast to its predecessors, in order to establish its own identity and generate what is cool for its members. This is why so many cults built on a specific ideology do not make the transition to the next generation. Terrorist social movements based on material or geographical grievances, such as independence or autonomy, fare better than those whose success depends on the appeal of a given abstract ideology. Fashions change, and what is considered important for the index generation is no longer cool for its progeny, who may actively reject what their parents

believe. However, those movements based on geo-political grievances, such as the IRA and ETA, may become family callings, especially if the larger local community respects and tacitly supports their activities, and the new generation finds that their pedigree is a source of pride. A second possible explanation for the degradation of a terrorist wave centers on the inevitable process of disillusionment, which sets in when the idealism that promoted the original impulse to join a terrorist social movement confronts the reality of increasingly corrupt leaders and the atrocities of successful terrorist operations. People react strangely to increased power. Idealistic leaders are transformed by their subordinates’ adulation and become corrupt, or leaders fight among themselves for the direction of the movement. Sometimes, they have sincere disagreements about strategy, but often there is a personality clash masquerading as a theoretical dispute. This friction among the leadership may alienate followers. Finally, the reality of terrorism – the killing of innocent civilians – sometimes repels followers who discern the true nature of terrorism in these horrific acts. It is not just about themselves trying to impress their peers and the public at large. There are some real victims as a consequence of terrorist attacks, and many followers leave at this point. The dark side of communism was finally revealed and this killed its appeal to Western youths. Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago documented at length the brutality of the Soviet regime and its repressive basis. Likewise, the Chinese campaign to discredit the Cultural Revolution in the late 1970s revealed that a whole generation of scholars was killed or humiliated in “re-education schools” due to the bankruptcy of Mao’s ideas of progress. The disillusionment that followed these revelations punctured the idealism of existing militants and discouraged new wannabes from joining these social movements. From a more personal perspective, disillusionment with the clandestine life of a terrorist in any of the three ripples often catches up with the romantic expectation of people’s fantasies of what it should be. The daily grind of hiding and deceiving former friends and relatives, the loss of one’s freedom to be spontaneous, the paranoia that accompanies any new acquaintance – all these issues take a toll. The reality of the life of a terrorist never lives up to the fantasy. Many terrorists abandon their self-imposed calling in the face of these mundane difficulties. Of course, their disillusionment is accelerated when the public at large no longer looks up to and respects terrorists. They disappear into society and keep quiet about their past history. However, the analysis of the al-Qaeda social movement suggests a third hypothesis, namely the degradation of the ideas that appeal to new members. The founding fathers of al-Qaeda were elite opinion makers who had influence over a large audience. Bin Ladin and his companions at arms were popularized in the press throughout the Middle East, first as the brave mujahidin who defended the Muslim ummah against Soviet invasion and then as the winners of the Soviet-Afghan war. They became a source of inspiration for the next generation of wannabes who were searching for a cause. Al-Qaeda’s appeal was especially strong among the expatriate Muslim students studying in the West, the

members of the second ripple. The composition of the third ripple, consisting of the intellectual laggards of diaspora Muslim communities, seems to indicate that the ideas generated by the first-ripple opinion leaders – who have long moved on to fresh new ideas – have trickled down the social ladder to the street gangs that form the third ripple. These underprivileged followers try to emulate their heroic predecessors, who no longer find these ideas “cool” enough because they are now shared by a large following. The originators always want to be ahead of the pack, and the fact that the pack is now attracted to their ideas means that they have to move on. Like changes in fashion, the degradation of the terrorist social movement as ideas about the cause diffuse down the social ladder may be an important pathway to the gradual disappearance of the appeal of a given ideology. Since terrorism based on abstract ideas relies on fantasies about becoming a hero to one’s chosen community of peers, it might be subject to the dynamics of fashion. As the crowd joins in the fashion, the innovating, influential opinion makers, who rely on their status of being avant-garde, must look for ever new ideas and abandon the old ones as passé. Cell phones were the exclusive property of rich elites about fifteen years ago. Now, any teenager can own one, and the elites have moved on to better means of communication. Sideburns were once the characteristic of left-wing college students at exclusive elite schools. Within a decade, they became the characteristic of Southern, poorly educated, unskilled laborers (trying to emulate Elvis) while the college students moved on to new and different styles. The same process of the social degradation of ideas may be taking place in political involvement. This argument of social degradation implies that a specific terrorist appeal to potential audiences may change overnight, as the ideas sustaining a specific wave of terrorism may no longer be considered “cool” to a new generation. Ironically, if the state indiscriminately represses terrorism, as opposed to focusing narrowly on the actual perpetrators, it may inadvertently prolong the appeal of their ideals to those who are always contrarians to the state for various reasons. The most effective strategy for overcoming any wave of terrorism may be to allow it to fade away via its own dynamics of internal decay and not to do anything that might inadvertently delay this demise.