I like Jessica Stern. I have watched some lectures she has given on YouTube and found them interesting, and she has clearly spent a lot of time studying terrorism, but I was pretty disappointed with this book. The book is divided up into two sections. The first section is supposed to provide an analysis of some of the psychological motivations that lead to terrorist behavior and the second section is supposed to provide a typology of terrorist organizations and explain how they function. The primary source that Stern relies on are her own interviews with leaders of terrorist organizations, individuals who have committed terrorist acts, or members of organizations that promote and advocate violence.
I had a number of complaints with the book. First, the book is largely narrative. Stern spends a great deal of time narrating how her interviews were arranged, who set them up, her preparations for the interviews including what she wore and what gifts she brought along, where she stayed, what food she was served, the physical appearance of her interlocutors, their general demeanor, and the sights, sounds and smells of her surroundings. This was not what I was primarily interested in when I picked up this book. I was hoping for a book more heavily weighted toward theory rather than narrative.
Second, the excerpts of interviews that Stern provides are often quite short and superficial. In terms of informational content they did not seem to me to go beyond what you would get from reading the newspaper or watching cable news. According to the introduction, Stern was very interested in how religion, which is supposed to inspire people to do good (and often does), could also inspire people to do evil. We learn that members of terrorist groups do not believe they are committing evil. They generally have a narrative that justifies their behavior as defensive (defending unborn babies, defending Muslims against Israel, Christians, India or the West, etc.). But this is common knowledge. I don’t think it required a book or lengthy interviews to achieve this insight.
Third, the introduction to the section on terrorist organizations made me hopeful that the second half of the book would be more theoretical. Stern divides terrorist organizations into virtual networks, lone wolfs, command organizations and hybrids. She says that groups face trade-offs: virtual networks are harder to shut down because the cells are not as connected but they generally lack the capability to carry out really high impact attacks. I was disappointed to find that the second half of the book was basically the same as the first. Each chapter was simply a narrative, including some excerpts from interviews, but virtually nothing was said about the organizational features of the groups whose leaders she was interviewing, how they function or what trade-offs they face (with the exception of the final chapter on Al-Qaeda).
The book did provide some historical information that was interesting. I learned some things about Indonesian politics and I learned about the symbiotic relationship between the Pakistani intelligence services, the madrassahs and the jihadi organizations in Pakistan. However, when I purchased this book I had a number of questions I was interested in. What are the primary psychological motivations for terrorist behavior? What are the historical, social, economic, ideological and psychological causes for terrorist behavior? Which causes are most important in explaining terrorist behavior? Are “irrational” psychological motivations the most important variable in explaining terrorist behavior or are ideological factors (content of religious beliefs) more important or should we view terrorists as rational actors who adopt terrorism as a rational strategy in pursuit of specific ends?
The answers that this book provided did not seem to me to go beyond the level of folk psychology. On the basis of this book alone I would have to conclude that the field of terrorism studies has a long way to go before it reaches a genuine scientific understanding of what motivates terrorist behavior. Admittedly, it is not going to be an easy science to develop. It is difficult to get reliable data since we have to rely on the testimony of terrorists who are willing to talk to researchers, but who often lie during interviews and may not fully understand their own motives, and there are a lot of variables (psychological, social, political, economic, historical and ideological) to tease apart. Plus, the sciences that a field like this relies on for its background theories (psychology, sociology, economics, religious studies) are themselves still in their infancy and struggling to develop core theories that are scientifically reputable.
Perhaps at the moment providing a narrative understanding of terrorist behavior is the best we can do. This book was published in 2003, and I imagine our understanding of terrorism has developed since then, but based solely on this book I would have to conclude that terrorism studies as a discipline has not progressed much beyond arm-chair folk explanations. I was hoping for a bit more. I am going to be reading some more books on terrorism in the near future and if I come across any that I think do a better job answering some of the questions I had, and that motivated me to pick up this book in the first place, I will provide links to them here.
Recommended alternatives:
Added 2/10/17: I just finished reading
Understanding Terror Networks
by Marc Sageman. It provides a network analysis of the global Salafi jihad, including a brief history of the movement and an analysis of its structure. It has a lot of good information about the global Salafi jihad and Sageman also comes to some interesting conclusions. For example, Sageman concludes that social bonds are more important than ideology in explaining an individual's decision to join the global Salafi jihad (and he points out that lone individuals almost never join on their own, people usually join as part of a clique). It was not the most exciting reading, and it did not fulfill all of my expectations, but I would definitely recommend it.
Added 8/13/2017: An excellent book on suicide terrorism in particular is Robert Pape's book
Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism
. Pape compiled a database of every known suicide terrorist attack and had a team of researchers gather, analyze and breakdown the data. His primary thesis is that the vast majority of suicide terrorist attacks - which are the most deadly form of terrorist attack - are carried out, not by lone wolfs, but in organized campaigns that are based on nationalist goals of self-determination. Foreign military occupation, not religious ideology, turns out to be the biggest risk factor for suicide terrorism. Pape backs up his arguments with a wealth of data and illuminating charts. Highly, highly recommended.
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RR Waller
A look into the minds and hearts of relisigious terrorists
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David Umaru
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