The following is a selection of background readings and current writings on the issues of terrorism, extremism, protection of civilians, and more. The list is not exhaustive, and we will be adding to it as the conference draws near. We welcome your suggestions for inclusion — send them to pcrproject@csis.org. Argo, Nichole. “Human Bombs: Rethinking Religion and Terror.” MIT Center for International Studies Audit of the Conventional Wisdom, (April 2006). Argo argues that extremist Islamism is adopted by human bombs as an ideological framework only to facilitate the redress of secular grievances. Radical religion is not the cause. Kin and friendship networks, not religious indoctrination, bring the vast majority of individuals to jihad. Although acts of terrorism are often justified in religious terms, the grievance is secular. Atran, Scott. “The Moral Logic and Growth of Suicide Terrorism.” The Washington Quarterly 29, no. 2 (Spring 2006): 127–47. Atran argues that suicide bombers act to relieve a deep sense of humiliation and the vast majority are motivated by a virulent interpretation of Salafist Islam. Consequently, appropriate counterterrorism responses seek to moderate Salafist principles, disrupt terrorist networks, and divert sympathies from “martyrs.” Atran rejects Robert Pape’s thesis claiming that his methodology, skewed by reliance on dated statistics and a lack of personal interviews, fails to explain the geometric growth of these attacks since 2001. Baran, Zeyno. “Fighting the War of Ideas,” Foreign Affairs, (November/December 2005). While radical Islamist terrorist groups such as al Qaeda grab the headlines, their nonviolent ideological cousins remain little known. But groups such as Hizb ut-Tahrir play a crucial role in indoctrinating Muslims with radical ideology. Because they occupy a gray zone of militancy, regulating them is a diffcult challenge for liberal democracies — but ignoring them is no longer an option. Benjamin, Daniel. “Notes on the Future of Terrorism,” Politique Étrangère, (December 2006). Of the countless prophecies, analyses and clichés spawned by the events of September 11, 2001, few have been spread as widely or accepted as uncritically as the expression, "Everything has changed." In fact, a great deal did not change, including many of the fundamental patterns of behavior among nations. The one thing that did change dramatically, of course, was terrorism. Bennett, Philip. “The Press: Too Far From the Story?” Washington Post, June 6, 2004, B1. Bennett explains why reporting from Iraq is different from past conflicts, where journalists were less frequently targets themselves. He writes that good reporting is as urgently needed as ever, with lives and the political futures of perhaps two countries at stake. But it has never seemed more dangerous. Kidnappings and ambushes have driven most foreign civilians out of the country, or into bunkers guarded by U.S. soldiers. For journalists, the familiar rules of engagement have been stripped away. Gone is the assumption that correspondents are more valuable as witnesses than as targets, and that they share only the risks that all civilians face in wartime. To insurgents, foreign journalists are foreigners first, just another element of an occupying force to which we don't belong. Bloom, Mia. Dying to Kill: The Allure of Suicide Terrorism. New York: Columbia University Press, 2005. Bloom writes that while suicide bombing aims at a number of constituencies, domestic opinion is the key variable determining whether organizations will pursue suicide bombing campaigns. Suicide bombing resonates with the public most when other tactics have been tried and failed, when hatred for the “enemy” is high, and when the government has alienated much of the population through heavy-handed tactics. There is the chance that public support will decline if insurgents are not discriminating in their choice of targets, but violence in and of itself is often an effective tactic for raising a group’s profile and competing with other organizations. See also: Bloom, Mia. “Palestinian Suicide Bombing: Public Support, Market Share, and Outbidding.” Political Science Quarterly 119, no. 1 (2004): 61–88. Coll, Steve. “What Bin Laden Sees in Hiroshima,” Washington Post, February 6, 2005, B01 Coll examines the threat of nuclear attack by jihadists, indifferent to traditional mechanisms of nuclear deterrence, and urges a sustained effort to address the threat. He proposes a broad-based approach, including aggressively securing nuclear materials, tailoring deterrence strategies to “gray networks,” and addressing the the sources of jihadi radicalism. See also: Coll, Steve. Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001. New York: Penguin Press, 2004. Combating Terrorism Center. “Militant Ideology Atlas,” (November 2006). Using the frequency of references in jihadi literature as a rough measure of influence, the authors identify the most influential thinkers in the jihadist universe. They conclude: Among Medieval thinkers, the ideas of Ibn Taymiyya enjoy the most attention. Palestinian cleric and Zarqawi mentor Abu Muhammed al-Maqdisi is the most quoted living scholar. Osama bin Laden appears to have only limited ideological impact while Ayman al-Zawahiri is “totally insignificant in the Jihadi intellectual universe.” Fallows, James. “Success Without Victory,” Atlantic Monthly, (January/February 2005). America won the Cold War because Americans embraced a set of strategic principles and pursued them steadily, decade after decade. Here's the outline of a "containment" strategy for the age of terror. Gause III, F. Gregory. “Can Democracy Stop Terrorism?” Foreign Affairs, (September/October 2005). The Bush administration contends that the push for democracy in the Muslim world will improve U.S. security. But this premise is faulty: there is no evidence that democracy reduces terrorism. Indeed, a democratic Middle East would probably result in Islamist governments unwilling to cooperate with Washington. Hoffman, Bruce. “The Logic of Suicide Terrorism,” Atlantic Monthly, (June 2003). Terrorist groups have a strategy — to shrink to nothing the areas in which people move freely — and suicide bombers, inexpensive and reliably lethal, are their latest weapons. Israel has learned to recognize and disrupt the steps on the path to suicide attacks. We must learn too. Hoffman, Bruce. Inside Terrorism. New York: Columbia University Press, 2006. Chapter 7 of Hoffman’s book, “The New Media, Terrorism, and the Shaping of Global Opinion,” offers a valuable survey of terrorists’ use of the internet. The sheer number of sites (as of 2004, al Qaeda had a presence on over 50 Web sites) and the range of languages (Hamas has translated Web materials into 22 languages) add to the already viral capacity of the internet to distribute terrorist information. Hoffman’s May 2006 Congressional testimony, available here, touches upon many of the same themes. Kimmage, Daniel and Kathleen Ridolfo. “The War of Images and Ideas: How Sunni Insurgents in Iraq and their Supporters Worldwide are Using the Media.” Radio Free Europe/Radio Free Liberty, June 2007. Kimmage and Ridolfo provide a detailed and graphic window into the range of information dissemination techniques utilized by the Sunni insurgency in Iraq. While decentralization reduces the media machine’s vulnerability, it also inhibits the production of a consistent, coherent political message, a problem that continues to plague the insurgency as a whole. Of particular note is the authors’ treatment of the deepening rift between al Qaeda in Mesopotamia and the Islamic Army of Iraq, as well as the increasingly virulent anti-Shiite tone of insurgent propaganda. Lilla, Mark. “The Politics of God,” New York Times Magazine, August 19, 2007. For more than two centuries, from the American and French Revolutions to the collapse of Soviet Communism, world politics revolved around eminently political problems. Today, we have progressed to the point where our problems again resemble those of the 16th century, as we find ourselves entangled in conflicts over competing revelations, dogmatic purity and divine duty. We in the West are disturbed and confused. Though we have our own fundamentalists, we find it incomprehensible that theological ideas still stir up messianic passions, leaving societies in ruin. We had assumed this was no longer possible, that human beings had learned to separate religious questions from political ones, that fanaticism was dead. We were wrong. Moss, Michael and Squad Mekhennet. “The Guidebook for Taking a Life,” New York Times, June 10, 2007. With Islamist violence brewing in various parts of the world, the set of rules that seek to guide and justify the killing that militants do is growing more complex. This jihad etiquette is not written down, and for good reason. It varies as much in interpretation and practice as extremist groups vary in their goals. But the rules have some general themes that underlie actions ranging from the recent rash of suicide bombings in Algeria and Somalia, to the surge in beheadings and bombings by separatist Muslims in Thailand. Neumann, Peter R. “Negotiating With Terrorists,” Foreign Affairs, (January/February 2007). Neumann argues that although many governments say that they will not negotiate with terrorists, in practice they often do and their rhetoric has prevented the systematic analysis of how to do so best. The goal should be to buttress moderates among the terrorists without strengthening hard-liners — by promising legitimate political involvement, but only if the terrorists eschew violence and accept democratic principles. Pape, Robert. Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism. New York: Random House, 2005. Pape surveys every recorded suicide bombing since 1983. During that timeframe, he finds that what the attackers most often have in common is the desire to attain self-determination and their attacks are directed against a democracy. Terrorists are rational actors and groups pursue suicide bombing because it has proven to be an effective tactic in achieving their goals. For a shorter but older treatment, see: Pape, Robert. “The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism.” The American Political Science Review 97, no. 3 (August 2003): 343–61. Pape, Robert A. “Blowing Up an Assumption,” New York Times, May 18, 2005. There is far less of a connection between suicide terrorism and religious fundamentalism than most people think. What nearly all suicide terrorist attacks actually have in common is a specific secular and strategic goal: to compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from territory that the terrorists consider to be their homeland. Religion is often used as a tool by terrorist organizations in recruiting and in seeking aid from abroad, but is rarely the root cause. Pew Research Center. “Where Terrorism Finds Support in the Muslim World: That May Depend on How You Define it — and Who are the targets.” May 23, 2006. Survey data from 2005 indicates that support for terrorism is generally declining in Turkey, Indonesia, Morocco, Lebanon, and Jordan, although it remains high in the latter. Demographic indicators are largely insignificant, but attitudes towards the United States, a perception that Islam is under threat, and country specific factors are all significant determiners of support for suicide terrorism and Osama bin Laden. The report also concludes that citizens of these nations do not perceive terrorism as a monolithic entity. Silverstein, Ken. “Parties of God: The Bush doctrine and the rise of Islamic democracy,” Harper’s Magazine, (March 2007). Silverstein discusses the U.S. failure to both understand and engage with politically active Islamic movements. He writes that notwithstanding President Bush’s new “forward strategy of freedom,” the United States has marshaled nothing more than a few hollow demurrals against the antidemocratic abuses by its allies, and it maintains close partnerships with all of America’s old authoritarian friends in the region. When reaching out to opposition figures, it has chosen pro-Western elites. Above all, America has refused to engage with Islamic opposition movements, even those that flatly reject violence and participate in democratic politics. In fact, by scorning politically active Islamic movements and denying their legitimacy, the United States is essentially signaling to the Middle Eastern public that electoral politics are a meaningless dead end — precisely the same message that this public hears from Al Qaeda. See also: Silverstein, Ken. “Six Questions for Gordon Adams on the Real Cost of the “War on Terror,” Washington Babylon at Harpers.org, August 3, 2006. Speckhard, Anne. “Understanding Suicide Terrorism: Countering Human Bombs and Their Senders.” In “Topics in Terrorism: Toward a Transatlantic Consensus on the Nature of the Threat.” Eds., Purcell, Jason and Joshua Weintraub. The Atlantic Council of the United States. July 2005. Speckhard elucidates the individual psychological factors that enable a person to engage in a suicide terrorist attack. The individual is primed by societal factors, including a “martyrdom culture” that accepts suicide bombing and tutelage from terrorist organizations. The act itself is facilitated by a dissociation defense, an actual psychological break that shields the bomber from the consequences of his or her act. Speckhard also claims that individuals inhabiting other milieus perceived as hostile to their culture (e.g. Muslims in Europe) can turn to suicide bombing as a way to counteract their cultural marginalization, loss of identity, secondary traumatization (observing “brothers” abused on television), and their sense of personal corruption. von Hippel, Karin. “Dealing with the Roots of Terror — A Progress Report Three Years On,” FRIDE Paper, October 2004. The threat posed by transnational terrorism can only be defeated through a coordinated response that not only focuses on the symptoms but the causes. The article examines six areas that have emerged as causal and contributing factors for international terrorism: poverty, collapsed and weak states, conflicts hijacked by religious extremists, fundamentalist charities, transnational mobilization and recruitment, and the democracy deficit. Weaver, Mary Anne. “Blowback,” Atlantic Monthly, (May 1996). A network of well-armed Islamic fundamentalist terrorists with bases throughout the world was inadvertently brought into being by U.S. efforts in the 1980s to support Islamic fundamentalist resistance against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan.