2015 has not been off to a very good start. In the first two weeks of this year, thousands have fallen victim to terrorism. Boko Haram in Nigeria reportedly killed 2,000 people between January 3 and 5, a car bomb in Yemen killed 38 people, 12 people were killed in an attack on the office of French magazine Charlie Hebdo, and ISIS cadres conducted an attack on Saudi Arabia. These events come on the heels of a very bad December 2014, which saw a hostage crisis in Sydney and the massacre of 145 people in Peshawar.
To be successful, acts of terrorism rely on the internalisation of fear in a targeted population. Acts of terrorism are scripted to breed uncertainty, decrease social trust and, in the process, fracture social capital between groups in society. There are many reasons terrorists succeed in their efforts.
1. Creating fear: After a terrorist strike in, say, a shopping mall, people develop a fear of public spaces, resulting in a disruption of everyday life. The attack creates a state of exception, where even the smallest public obligation (like buying milk or, on another level, voting in an election) becomes a risky endeavour. Terrorists win when they increase the transaction costs involved in an individual living a fear-free life.
2. Drawing state's attention: When an act of terror takes place, the coercive and political apparatus of a country can focus on little else. The French police last week were completely engaged in a massive manhunt for the Charlie Hebdo attackers. The same thing happened in Boston in the aftermath of the Boston marathon bombing in 2013. By demanding the state’s complete attention and making security the primary concern of the state (above things like healthcare and development), terrorists win.
3. Need for political response: On the political front, politicians are required, after a terrorist strike, to show strength. After 9/11, the American government introduced the Patriot Act (2001) and later in 2008 expanded the scope of the operations of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to enable “warrantless” monitoring of American citizens. Terrorists win when they empower the state to act in the best interests of its citizenry and, while doing so, the state deprives its own citizens of civil liberties. This is how terrorists not only win, but also turn the legitimate state apparatus into a handmaiden of their project of fear.
4. Pre-emptive violence: Terrorism is successful because it does not follow a set pattern. A terrorist strike cannot be accurately predicted, so intelligence, police and military agencies work overtime trying to pre-empt an attack. This also means that preventive arrests take place, people are tortured for information, and many people with no real link to terrorism are wrongly detained. This has happened in most countries, which have faced active terrorism. In India, this is true in Jammu and Kashmir, Chhattisgarh, Manipur and Assam. This is also how terrorists win. They compel a policy shift in the state’s worldview. The state begins playing an odd role – it is the protector and persecutor of its own citizens.
5. Rewriting women's role: Terrorists succeed because we begin to self-censor – what people say and how they live begins to change. Terrorists, when they start out, only have political demands embedded in an ideology that rides on the barrel of a gun. Consent is manufactured by force. However, terrorism is not only violent and political, it is also social. Many ideologies that harbour insurgent or terrorist groups also want to change social relations. Sadly, the biggest victims of terrorism are usually women. A terrorist ideology has a strange gendered logic. In almost all cases, terrorist groups not only call for a radical change in the behaviour and dress codes of women, but also re-script the roles they can play in society, in most cases dragging women back to the dark ages. The Taliban did just that, as did the Khalistan movement. Terrorists win because they can change the way women live their lives.
6. Widening social divides: Finally, terrorists also win because they are able to create or exacerbate existing rifts in society. Every act of terror, when it amplifies social distrust, has succeeded because one doubting individual succumbing to paranoia and bigotry is all it takes for an “othered” person to think that there is some logic to a radical terrorist ideology.
Terrorist outfits are not markedly different from mafia organisations (except for all that stuff about ideology). In fact, like mafia organisations – where one-upmanship is often decided based on who has the most guns, money or local power – terrorist groups have a pecking order. The current competitive market in terrorism means that groups are trying to distinguish themselves from one another through more memorable violence. They need to do so because this is the only way in which they can be heard and become popular enough to attract recruits.
Acts of terrorism are not going to end anytime soon because existing political scripts about conflict resolution deal with inter-state conflict, not with homegrown terrorist groups. What we need to focus on is evolving political languages that try to identify the logics of terrorism across the world and find solutions that would lead to the disappearance of terrorist groups. The standard political response of states across the world has been to answer non-state terrorism with terrorism of its own in the form of counterinsurgency. There is good evidence that this has not worked very well.
Vasundhara Sirnate is the Chief Coordinator of Research at The Hindu Centre for Politics and Public Policy. She is also a Ph.D candidate at the Travers Department of Political Science, University of California, Berkeley.
To be successful, acts of terrorism rely on the internalisation of fear in a targeted population. Acts of terrorism are scripted to breed uncertainty, decrease social trust and, in the process, fracture social capital between groups in society. There are many reasons terrorists succeed in their efforts.
1. Creating fear: After a terrorist strike in, say, a shopping mall, people develop a fear of public spaces, resulting in a disruption of everyday life. The attack creates a state of exception, where even the smallest public obligation (like buying milk or, on another level, voting in an election) becomes a risky endeavour. Terrorists win when they increase the transaction costs involved in an individual living a fear-free life.
2. Drawing state's attention: When an act of terror takes place, the coercive and political apparatus of a country can focus on little else. The French police last week were completely engaged in a massive manhunt for the Charlie Hebdo attackers. The same thing happened in Boston in the aftermath of the Boston marathon bombing in 2013. By demanding the state’s complete attention and making security the primary concern of the state (above things like healthcare and development), terrorists win.
3. Need for political response: On the political front, politicians are required, after a terrorist strike, to show strength. After 9/11, the American government introduced the Patriot Act (2001) and later in 2008 expanded the scope of the operations of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to enable “warrantless” monitoring of American citizens. Terrorists win when they empower the state to act in the best interests of its citizenry and, while doing so, the state deprives its own citizens of civil liberties. This is how terrorists not only win, but also turn the legitimate state apparatus into a handmaiden of their project of fear.
4. Pre-emptive violence: Terrorism is successful because it does not follow a set pattern. A terrorist strike cannot be accurately predicted, so intelligence, police and military agencies work overtime trying to pre-empt an attack. This also means that preventive arrests take place, people are tortured for information, and many people with no real link to terrorism are wrongly detained. This has happened in most countries, which have faced active terrorism. In India, this is true in Jammu and Kashmir, Chhattisgarh, Manipur and Assam. This is also how terrorists win. They compel a policy shift in the state’s worldview. The state begins playing an odd role – it is the protector and persecutor of its own citizens.
5. Rewriting women's role: Terrorists succeed because we begin to self-censor – what people say and how they live begins to change. Terrorists, when they start out, only have political demands embedded in an ideology that rides on the barrel of a gun. Consent is manufactured by force. However, terrorism is not only violent and political, it is also social. Many ideologies that harbour insurgent or terrorist groups also want to change social relations. Sadly, the biggest victims of terrorism are usually women. A terrorist ideology has a strange gendered logic. In almost all cases, terrorist groups not only call for a radical change in the behaviour and dress codes of women, but also re-script the roles they can play in society, in most cases dragging women back to the dark ages. The Taliban did just that, as did the Khalistan movement. Terrorists win because they can change the way women live their lives.
6. Widening social divides: Finally, terrorists also win because they are able to create or exacerbate existing rifts in society. Every act of terror, when it amplifies social distrust, has succeeded because one doubting individual succumbing to paranoia and bigotry is all it takes for an “othered” person to think that there is some logic to a radical terrorist ideology.
Terrorist outfits are not markedly different from mafia organisations (except for all that stuff about ideology). In fact, like mafia organisations – where one-upmanship is often decided based on who has the most guns, money or local power – terrorist groups have a pecking order. The current competitive market in terrorism means that groups are trying to distinguish themselves from one another through more memorable violence. They need to do so because this is the only way in which they can be heard and become popular enough to attract recruits.
Acts of terrorism are not going to end anytime soon because existing political scripts about conflict resolution deal with inter-state conflict, not with homegrown terrorist groups. What we need to focus on is evolving political languages that try to identify the logics of terrorism across the world and find solutions that would lead to the disappearance of terrorist groups. The standard political response of states across the world has been to answer non-state terrorism with terrorism of its own in the form of counterinsurgency. There is good evidence that this has not worked very well.
Vasundhara Sirnate is the Chief Coordinator of Research at The Hindu Centre for Politics and Public Policy. She is also a Ph.D candidate at the Travers Department of Political Science, University of California, Berkeley.
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