Inside Terrorism Columbia Studies in Terrorism and Irregular Warfare Columbia Studies in Terrorism and Irregular Warfare Bruce Hoffman, Series Editor This series seeks to fill a conspicuous gap in the burgeoning literature on terrorism, guerrilla warfare, and insurgency. The series adheres to the highest standards of scholarship and discourse and publishes books that elucidate the strategy, operations, means, motivations, and effects posed by terrorist, guerrilla, and insurgent organizations and movements. It thereby provides a solid and increasingly expanding foundation of knowledge on these subjects for students, established scholars, and informed reading audiences alike. Ami Pedahzur, The Israeli Secret Services and the Struggle Against Terrorism Ami Pedahzur and Arie Perliger, Jewish Terrorism in Israel Lorenzo Vidino, The New Muslim Brotherhood in the West Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan, Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict William C. Banks, editor, New Battlefields/Old Laws: Critical Debates on Asymmetric Warfare Blake W. Mobley, Terrorism and Counterintelligence: How Terrorist Groups Elude Detection Jennifer Morrison Taw, Mission Revolution: The U.S. Military and Stability Operations Guido W. Steinberg, German Jihad: On the Internationalization of Islamist Terrorism Michael W. S. Ryan, Decoding Al-Qaeda’s Strategy: The Deep Battle Against America David H. Ucko and Robert Egnell, Counterinsurgency in Crisis: Britain and the Challenges of Modern Warfare Bruce Hoffman and Fernando Reinares, editors, The Evolution of the Global Terrorist Threat: From 9/11 to Osama bin Laden’s Death Boaz Ganor, Global Alert: The Rationality of Modern Islamist Terrorism and the Challenge to the Liberal Democratic World M. L. R. Smith and David Martin Jones, The Political Impossibility of Modern Counterinsurgency: Strategic Problems, Puzzles, and Paradoxes Elizabeth Grimm Arsenault, How the Gloves Came Off: Lawyers, Policy Makers, and Norms in the Debate on Torture Assaf Moghadam, Nexus of Global Jihad: Understanding Cooperation Among Terrorist Actors Inside Terrorism THIRD EDITION Bruce Hoffman Columbia University Press New York Columbia University Press Publishers Since 1893 New York Chichester, West Sussex cup.columbia.edu Copyright © 2017 Bruce Hoffman All rights reserved E-ISBN 978-0-231-54489-4 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Hoffman, Bruce, 1954– author. Title: Inside terrorism / Bruce Hoffman. Description: Third Edition. | New York : Columbia University Press, [2017] | Series: Columbia studies in terrorism and irregular warfare | Revised edition of the author’s Inside terrorism, 2006. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2017003659 | ISBN 9780231174763 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780231174770 (pbk. : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Terrorism. Classification: LCC HV6431 .H626 2017 | DDC 363.325—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017003659 A Columbia University Press E-book. CUP would be pleased to hear about your reading experience with this e-book at cup- [email protected]. Cover design: Lisa Hamm Cover images (clockwise from the upper-left corner): From the author’s collection (1–3); Anky/Shutterstock.com (4); Shutterstock.com (5); Nate Derrick/Shutterstock.com (6); Shutterstock.com (7) For my children—M, N, S, and A Contents Preface to the Third Edition   1.     Defining Terrorism   2.     The End of Empire and the Origins of Contemporary Terrorism   3.     The Internationalization of Terrorism   4.     Religion and Terrorism   5.     Suicide Terrorism   6.     The Old Media, Terrorism, and Public Opinion   7.     The New Media, Terrorism, and the Shaping of Global Opinion   8.     The Modern Terrorist Mind-Set: Tactics, Targets, Tradecraft, and Technologies   9.     Terrorism Today and Tomorrow I: Force Multipliers 10.     Terrorism Today and Tomorrow II: New and Continuing Challenges Notes Bibliography Index Illustrations Preface to the Third Edition T wenty years ago, I set out to write a book on terrorism that would fill what I believed was a serious gap in the literature. At the time, there was no single work that addressed this increasingly vexatious issue of domestic and international security in an authoritative, yet accessible, way. My intention had been to produce a book that would appeal to student and scholar alike, and to general as well as more specialized audiences. That Inside Terrorism has remained in print ever since and indeed is still required reading in undergraduate, graduate, executive education, and other professional intelligence, military, and law enforcement courses taught throughout the world, clearly attests both to the book’s continued relevance as well as to its enduring contribution to the field. Persons familiar with the first edition will recall its main thesis that the nature and character of terrorism was changing. New adversaries with different rationales and often transcendent motivations had emerged to challenge the conventional wisdom about terrorists and terrorism. We were therefore at the dawn of a new era of terrorist violence, I had argued—one that would likely be even bloodier and more destructive than before. The attacks on September 11, 2001, clearly validated that conclusion, and also created the need for a revised and updated edition of Inside Terrorism, which was published five years later. Today, a variety of new developments—the rise of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS, also known as ISIL, or Daesh); the use of social media for terrorist recruitment and the availability of encrypted applications for operational planning and communications; the large number of Salafi-Jihadi foreign volunteers fighting in Syria and Iraq, Yemen and Libya, and Mali and Afghanistan, among other places; as well as the proliferation of increasingly violently inclined homegrown extremists and lone wolf terrorists—have again necessitated a new edition with all the additional information and fresh insight and analysis that may be found throughout this thoroughly amended and revamped volume. This latest iteration of Inside Terrorism may be read as the third of a succession of treatises that have charted terrorism’s evolution and growth from its ancient origins to the end of the Cold War (the first edition, published in 1998); from the epochal September 11 attacks through the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq (the second edition published in 2006); and now to ISIS’s sanguinary emergence, al-Qaeda’s patient rebuilding, and the seemingly unmitigated litany of heinous beheadings, mass annihilations, and alarming urban assaults that have convulsed Paris and Brussels, Baghdad and Berlin, San Bernardino and Orlando, and Nice and Istanbul. Yet another installment of Inside Terrorism, however, also sadly reflects the intractability of this timeless phenomenon and, in turn, the immense interest among students, scholars, government officials, and the general public to better understand why this violence occurs and how it can be stopped. These same questions have both preoccupied and perplexed me throughout a professional career spent studying these issues that now exceeds four decades. I would therefore be remiss not to acknowledge the help and assistance from the many persons and institutions that have facilitated, supported, and encouraged my intellectual inquiries into this subject. For the past dozen years, I have been extremely fortunate to teach at Georgetown University’s world-renowned Security Studies Program, one of eight master’s-level programs in that university’s School of Foreign Service. From my time as an adjunct professor to my appointment as a tenured full professor, and indeed for the past seven years as the program’s director, my own knowledge and understanding of terrorists and terrorism has been appreciably enhanced by both my colleagues and the hundreds of students I have taught in SEST-500 Theory and Practice of Security, SEST-546 Terrorism and Counterterrorism, and SEST-520 Insurgency and Counterinsurgency. For their tremendous friendship and support, I would like to thank Jeffrey Anderson, Elizabeth Arsenault, Jacques Berlinerblau, Daniel Byman, Christine Fair, the late Carol Lancaster, Robert Lieber, David Maxwell, Tom McNaugher, Elizabeth Stanley, and James Reardon-Anderson. It is a special pleasure as well to acknowledge the superb research assistance in the preparation of this book provided by Joseph Bernard, Jenny Abarbanel, Sarah Maksoud, Natalia Peña, Siobhan Steel, and Christopher Wall. Since 2003, I have also had the privilege of being the George H. Gilmore Senior Fellow at the U.S. Military Academy’s Combating Terrorism Center (CTC) in West Point, New York. The CTC’s mission is to ensure that future U.S. Army officers are thoroughly knowledgeable about the theory and practice of terrorism and counterterrorism, as well as insurgency and counterinsurgency. I am continually humbled and honored by the opportunity to teach, and indeed learn, from these outstanding young men and women who go from class to serve on the front lines of a war on terrorism that shows no signs of abating. I should therefore like to thank the Gilmore family for their generous support of the fellowship billet I proudly occupy and the succession of CTC executive directors and social sciences department chairs with whom I have worked: Reid Sawyer, Kip McCormick, Joe Felter, Liam Collins, and Bryan Price, as well as Russell Howard, Michael Meese, Cindy Jebb, and Suzanne Nielsen. Nearly a quarter of a century ago, Professor Paul Wilkinson and I cofounded the Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence (CSTPV) in the School of International Relations at St. Andrews University, Scotland. That this paragon of scholarship and teaching has flourished to become the world’s leading academic institution for the rigorous, objective study of terrorism is a fitting tribute to Paul and a source of great pride and satisfaction for me. Accordingly, I value all the more my continuing relationship with St. Andrews and the CSTPV as a part-time, visiting professor of terrorism studies. I would therefore like to thank Timothy Wilson, the current interim director, and Richard English, the former director, for their continued friendship and support; Nick Rengger and Anthony Lang, the former and current heads of the School of International Relations; Louise Richardson, the previous principal and vice-chancellor; and, as always, my beloved friend of many decades, Alison Watson.