| The purpose of this study is to focus attention on the types of
individuals and groups that are prone to terrorism (see Glossary) in an effort to help
improve U.S. counterterrorist methods and policies. The emergence of amorphous and
largely unknown terrorist individuals and groups operating independently (freelancers) and
the new recruitment patterns of some groups, such as recruiting suicide commandos, female
and child terrorists, and scientists capable of developing weapons of mass destruction,
provide a measure of urgency to increasing our understanding of the psychological and
sociological dynamics of terrorist groups and individuals. The approach used in this study
is twofold. First, the study examines the relevant literature and assesses the current
knowledge of the subject. Second, the study seeks to develop psychological and
sociological profiles of foreign terrorist individuals and selected groups to use as case
studies in assessing trends, motivations, likely behavior, and actions that might deter
such behavior, as well as reveal vulnerabilities that would aid in combating terrorist
groups and individuals.
Because this survey is concerned not only with assessing the extensive literature on
sociopsychological aspects of terrorism but also providing case studies of about a dozen
terrorist groups, it is limited by time constraints and data availability in the amount of
attention that it can give to the individual groups, let alone individual leaders or other
members. Thus, analysis of the groups and leaders will necessarily be incomplete. A longer
study, for example, would allow for the collection and study of the literature produced by
each group in the form of autobiographies of former members, group communiqués and
manifestos, news media interviews, and other resources. Much information about the
terrorist mindset (see Glossary) and decision-making process can be gleaned from such
sources. Moreover, there is a language barrier to an examination of the untranslated
literature of most of the groups included as case studies herein.
Terrorism databases that profile groups and leaders quickly become outdated, and this
report is no exception to that rule. In order to remain current, a terrorism database
ideally should be updated periodically. New groups or terrorist leaders may suddenly
emerge, and if an established group perpetrates a major terrorist incident, new
information on the group is likely to be reported in news media. Even if a group appears
to be quiescent, new information may become available about the group from scholarly
publications.
There are many variations in the transliteration for both Arabic and Persian. The
academic versions tend to be more complex than the popular forms used in the news media
and by the Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS). Thus, the latter usages are used
in this study. For example, although Ussamah bin Ladin is the proper transliteration, the
more commonly used Osama bin Laden is used in this study.
see the TABLE OF CONTENTS
TABLES 126
Table 1. Educational Level and Occupational Background of Right-Wing Terrorists in West
Germany, 1980 126
Table 2. Ideological Profile of Italian Female Terrorists, January 1970-June 1984 127
Table 3. Prior Occupational Profile of Italian Female Terrorists, January 1970-June
1984 128
Table 4. Geographical Profile of Italian Female Terrorists, January 1970-June 1984 129
Table 5. Age and Relationships Profile of Italian Female Terrorists, January 1970-June
1984 131
Table 6. Patterns of Weapons Use by the Revolutionary Organization 17 November, 1975-97
133
GLOSSARY 135
BIBLIOGRAPHY 138
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: MINDSETS OF MASS DESTRUCTION
New Types of Post-Cold War Terrorists
In the 1970s and 1980s, it was commonly assumed that terrorist use of weapons of mass
destruction (WMD) would be counterproductive because such an act would be widely
condemned. "Terrorists want a lot of people watching, not a lot of people dead,"
Brian Jenkins (1975:15) opined. Jenkins's premise was based on the assumption that
terrorist behavior is normative, and that if they exceeded certain constraints and
employed WMD they would completely alienate themselves from the public and possibly
provoke swift and harsh retaliation. This assumption does seem to apply to certain secular
terrorist groups. If a separatist organization such as the Provisional Irish Republic Army
(PIRA) or the Basque Fatherland and Liberty (Euzkadi Ta Askatasuna--ETA), for example,
were to use WMD, these groups would likely isolate their constituency and undermine
sources of funding and political support. When the assumptions about terrorist groups not
using WMD were made in the 1970s and 1980s, most of the terrorist groups making headlines
were groups with political or nationalist-separatist agenda. Those groups, with some
exceptions, such as the Japanese Red Army (JRA--Rengo Sekigun), had reason not to sabotage
their ethnic bases of popular support or other domestic or foreign sympathizers of their
cause by using WMD.
Trends in terrorism over the past three decades, however, have contradicted the
conventional thinking that terrorists are averse to using WMD. It has become increasingly
evident that the assumption does not apply to religious terrorist groups or millenarian
cults (see Glossary). Indeed, since at least the early 1970s analysts, including (somewhat
contradictorily) Jenkins, have predicted that the first groups to employ a weapon of mass
destruction would be religious sects with a millenarian, messianic, or apocalyptic
mindset.
When the conventional terrorist groups and individuals of the early 1970s are compared
with terrorists of the early 1990s, a trend can be seen: the emergence of religious
fundamentalist and new religious groups espousing the rhetoric of mass-destruction
terrorism. In the 1990s, groups motivated by religious imperatives, such as Aum Shinrikyo,
Hizballah, and al-Qaida, have grown and proliferated. These groups have a different
attitude toward violence--one that is extranormative and seeks to maximize violence
against the perceived enemy, essentially anyone who is not a fundamentalist Muslim or an
Aum Shinrikyo member. Their outlook is one that divides the world simplistically into
"them" and "us." With its sarin attack on the Tokyo subway system on
March 20, 1995, the doomsday cult Aum Shinrikyo turned the prediction of terrorists using
WMD into reality.
Beginning in the early 1990s, Aum Shinrikyo engaged in a systematic program to develop
and use WMD. It used chemical or biological WMD in about a dozen largely unreported
instances in the first half of the 1990s, although they proved to be no more
effective--actually less effective--than conventional weapons because of the terrorists'
ineptitude. Nevertheless, it was Aum Shinrikyo's sarin attack on the Tokyo subway on March
20, 1995, that showed the world how dangerous the mindset of a religious terrorist group
could be. The attack provided convincing evidence that Aum Shinrikyo probably would not
hesitate to use WMD in a U.S. city, if it had an opportunity to do so. These religiously
motivated groups would have no reason to take "credit" for such an act of mass
destruction, just as Aum Shinrikyo did not take credit for its attack on the Tokyo subway,
and just as Osama bin Laden did not take credit for various acts of high-casualty
terrorism against U.S. targets in the 1990s. Taking credit means asking for retaliation.
Instead, it is enough for these groups to simply take private satisfaction in knowing that
they have dealt a harsh blow to what they perceive to be the "Great Satan."
Groups unlikely to be deterred by fear of public disapproval, such as Aum Shinrikyo, are
the ones who seek chaos as an end in itself.
The contrast between key members of religious extremist groups such as Hizballah,
al-Qaida, and Aum Shinrikyo and conventional terrorists reveals some general trends
relating to the personal attributes of terrorists likely to use WMD in coming years.
According to psychologist Jerrold M. Post (1997), the most dangerous terrorist is likely
to be the religious terrorist. Post has explained that, unlike the average political or
social terrorist, who has a defined mission that is somewhat measurable in terms of media
attention or government reaction, the religious terrorist can justify the most heinous
acts "in the name of Allah," for example. One could add, "in the name of
Aum Shinrikyo's Shoko Asahara."
Psychologist B.J. Berkowitz (1972) describes six psychological types who would be most
likely to threaten or try to use WMD: paranoids, paranoid schizophrenics, borderline
mental defectives, schizophrenic types, passive-aggressive personality (see Glossary)
types, and sociopath (see Glossary) personalities. He considers sociopaths the most likely
actually to use WMD. Nuclear terrorism expert Jessica Stern (1999: 77) disagrees. She
believes that "Schizophrenics and sociopaths, for example, may want to commit acts of
mass destruction, but they are less likely than others to succeed." She points out
that large-scale dissemination of chemical, biological, or radiological agents requires a
group effort, but that "Schizophrenics, in particular, often have difficulty
functioning in groups...."
Stern's understanding of the WMD terrorist appears to be much more relevant than
Berkowitz's earlier stereotype of the insane terrorist. It is clear from the appended case
study of Shoko Asahara that he is a paranoid. Whether he is schizophrenic or sociopathic
is best left to psychologists to determine. The appended case study of Ahmed Ramzi Yousef,
mastermind of the World Trade Center (WTC) bombing on February 26, 1993, reported here
does not suggest that he is schizophrenic or sociopathic. On the contrary, he appears to
be a well-educated, highly intelligent Islamic terrorist. In 1972 Berkowitz could not have
been expected to foresee that religiously motivated terrorists would be prone to using WMD
as a way of emulating God or for millenarian reasons. This examination of about a dozen
groups that have engaged in significant acts of terrorism suggests that the groups most
likely to use WMD are indeed religious groups, whether they be wealthy cults like Aum
Shinrikyo or well-funded Islamic terrorist groups like al-Qaida or Hizballah.
The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991
fundamentally changed the operating structures of European terrorist groups. Whereas
groups like the Red Army Faction (Rote Armee Faktion--RAF; see Glossary) were able to use
East Germany as a refuge and a source of logistical and financial resources during the
Cold War decades, terrorist groups in the post Cold War period no longer enjoy the support
of communist countries. Moreover, state sponsors of international terrorism (see Glossary)
toned down their support of terrorist groups. In this new environment where terrorist
groups can no longer depend on state support or any significant popular support, they have
been restructuring in order to learn how to operate independently.
New breeds of increasingly dangerous religious terrorists emerged in the
1990s. The most dangerous type is the Islamic fundamentalist. A case in point is Ramzi
Yousef, who brought together a loosely organized, ad hoc group, the so-called Liberation
Army, apparently for the sole purpose of carrying out the WTC operation on February 26,
1993. Moreover, by acting independently the small self-contained cell led by Yousef
prevented authorities from linking it to an established terrorist organization, such as
its suspected coordinating group,Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida, or a possible state sponsor.
The World Trade Center
( www.GreatBuildings.com/buildings/World_Trade_Center.html
)
Aum Shinrikyo is representative of the other type of religious terrorist group, in this
case a cult. Shoko Asahara adopted a different approach to terrorism by modeling his
organization on the structure of the Japanese government rather than an ad hoc terrorist
group. Accordingly, Aum Shinrikyo "ministers" undertook a program to develop WMD
by bringing together a core group of bright scientists skilled in the modern technologies
of the computer, telecommunications equipment, information databases, and financial
networks. They proved themselves capable of developing rudimentary WMD in a relatively
short time and demonstrated a willingness to use them in the most lethal ways possible.
Aum Shinrikyo's sarin gas attack in the Tokyo subway system in 1995 marked the official
debut of terrorism involving WMD. Had a more lethal batch of sarin been used, or had the
dissemination procedure been improved slightly, the attack might have killed thousands of
people, instead of only a few. Both of these incidents--the WTC bombing and the Tokyo
subway sarin attack--had similar casualty totals but could have had massive casualties.
Ramzi Yousef's plot to blow up the WTC might have killed an estimated 50,000 people had
his team not made a minor error in the placement of the bomb. In any case, these two acts
in Manhattan and Tokyo seem an ominous foretaste of the WMD terrorism to come in the first
decade of the new millennium.
Increasingly, terrorist groups are recruiting members with expertise in fields such as
communications, computer programming, engineering, finance, and the sciences. Ramzi Yousef
graduated from Britain's Swansea University with a degree in engineering. Aum Shinrikyo's
Shoko Asahara recruited a scientific team with all the expertise needed to develop WMD.
Osama bin Laden also recruits highly skilled professionals in the fields of engineering,
medicine, chemistry, physics, computer programming, communications, and so forth. Whereas
the skills of the elite terrorist commandos of the 1960s and 1970s were often limited to
what they learned in training camp, the terrorists of the 1990s who have carried out major
operations have included biologists, chemists, computer specialists, engineers, and
physicists.
New Forms of Terrorist-Threat Scenarios
The number of international terrorist incidents has declined in the 1990s, but the
potential threat posed by terrorists has increased. The increased threat level, in the
form of terrorist actions aimed at achieving a larger scale of destruction than the
conventional attacks of the previous three decades of terrorism, was dramatically
demonstrated with the bombing of the WTC. The WTC bombing illustrated how terrorists with
technological sophistication are increasingly being recruited to carry out lethal
terrorist bombing attacks. The WTC bombing may also have been a harbinger of more
destructive attacks of international terrorism in the United States.
Although there are not too many examples, if any, of guerrilla (see Glossary) groups
dispatching commandos to carry out a terrorist operation in the United States, the
mindsets of four groups discussed herein--two guerrilla/terrorist groups, a terrorist
group, and a terrorist cult--are such that these groups pose particularly dangerous actual
or potential terrorist threats to U.S. security interests. The two guerrilla/terrorist
groups are the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Ealam (LTTE) and Hizballah, the terrorist group
is al-Qaida, and the terrorist cult is Aum Shinrikyo.
The LTTE is not known to have engaged in anti-U.S. terrorism to date, but its suicide
commandos have already assassinated a prime minister of India, a president of Sri Lanka,
and a former prime minister of Sri Lanka. In August 1999, the LTTE reportedly deployed a
10-member suicide squad in Colombo to assassinate Prime Minister Chandrika Kumaratunga and
others. It cannot be safely assumed, however, that the LTTE will restrict its terrorism to
the South Asian subcontinent. Prabhakaran has repeatedly warned the Western nations
providing military support to Sri Lanka that they are exposing their citizens to possible
attacks. The LTTE, which has an extensive international network, should not be
underestimated in the terrorist threat that it could potentially pose to the United
States, should it perceive this country as actively aiding the Sri Lankan government's
counterinsurgency campaign. Prabhakaran is a megalomaniac whose record of ordering the
assassinations of heads of state or former presidents, his meticulous planning of such
actions, his compulsion to have the acts photographed and chronicled by LTTE members, and
the limitless supply of female suicide commandos at his disposal add a dangerous new
dimension to potential assassination threats. His highly trained and disciplined Black
Tiger commandos are far more deadly than Aum Shinrikyo's inept cultists. There is little
protection against the LTTE's trademark weapon: a belt-bomb suicide commando.
Hizballah is likewise quite dangerous. Except for its ongoing terrorist war against
Israel, however, it appears to be reactive, often carrying out terrorist attacks for what
it perceives to be Western military, cultural, or political threats to the establishment
of an Iranian-style Islamic republic in Lebanon.
The threat to U.S. interests posed by Islamic fundamentalist terrorists in particular
was underscored by al-Qaida's bombings of the U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in
August 1998. With those two devastating bombings, Osama bin Laden resurfaced as a potent
terrorist threat to U.S. interests worldwide. Bin Laden is the prototype of a new breed of
terrorist--the private entrepreneur who puts modern enterprise at the service of a global
terrorist network.
With its sarin attack against the Tokyo subway system in March 1995, Aum Shinrikyo has
already used WMD, and very likely has not abandoned its quest to use such weapons to
greater effect. The activities of Aum's large membership in Russia should be of particular
concern because Aum Shinrikyo has used its Russian organization to try to obtain WMD, or
at least WMD technologies.
The leaders of any of these groups--Prabhakaran, bin Laden, and Asahara--could become
paranoid, desperate, or simply vengeful enough to order their suicide devotees to employ
the belt-bomb technique against the leader of the Western World. Iranian intelligence
leaders could order Hizballah to attack the U.S. leadership in retaliation for some future
U.S. or Israeli action, although Iran may now be distancing itself from Hizballah. Whether
or not a U.S. president would be a logical target of Asahara, Prabhakaran, or bin Laden is
not a particularly useful guideline to assess the probability of such an attack. Indian
Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi was not a logical target for the LTTE, and his assassination
had very negative consequences for the LTTE. In Prabhakaran's "psycho-logic," to
use Post's term, he may conclude that his cause needs greater international attention, and
targeting a country's top leaders is his way of getting attention. Nor does bin Laden need
a logical reason, for he believes that he has a mandate from Allah to punish the
"Great Satan." Instead of thinking logically, Asahara thinks in terms of a
megalomaniac with an apocalyptic outlook. Aum Shinrikyo is a group whose delusional leader
is genuinely paranoid about the United States and is known to have plotted to assassinate
Japan's emperor. Shoko Asahara's cult is already on record for having made an
assassination threat against President Clinton.
If Iran's mullahs or Iraq's Saddam Hussein decide to use terrorists to attack the
continental United States, they would likely turn to bin Laden's al-Qaida. Al-Qaida is
among the Islamic groups recruiting increasingly skilled professionals, such as computer
and communications technicians, engineers, pharmacists, and physicists, as well as
Ukrainian chemists and biologists, Iraqi chemical weapons experts, and others capable of
helping to develop WMD. Al-Qaida poses the most serious terrorist threat to U.S. security
interests, for al-Qaida's well-trained terrorists are actively engaged in a terrorist
jihad against U.S. interests worldwide.
These four groups in particular are each capable of perpetrating a horrific act of
terrorism in the United States, particularly on the occasion of the new millennium. Aum
Shinrikyo has already threatened to use WMD in downtown Manhattan or in Washington, D.C.,
where it could attack the Congress, the Pentagon's Concourse, the White House, or
President Clinton. The cult has threatened New York City with WMD, threatened to
assassinate President Clinton, unsuccessfully attacked a U.S. naval base in Japan with
biological weapons, and plotted in 1994 to attack the White House and the Pentagon with
sarin and VX. If the LTTE's serial assassin of heads of state were to become angered by
President Clinton, Prabhakaran could react by dispatching a Tamil "belt-bomb
girl" to detonate a powerful semtex bomb after approaching the President in a crowd
with a garland of flowers or after jumping next to his car.
Al-Qaida's expected retaliation for the U.S. cruise missile attack against al-Qaida's
training facilities in Afghanistan on August 20, 1998, could take several forms of
terrorist attack in the nation's capital. Al-Qaida could detonate a Chechen-type
building-buster bomb at a federal building. Suicide bomber(s) belonging to al-Qaida's
Martyrdom Battalion could crash-land an aircraft packed with high explosives (C-4 and
semtex) into the Pentagon, the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), or
the White House. Ramzi Yousef had planned to do this against the CIA headquarters. In
addition, both al-Qaida and Yousef were linked to a plot to assassinate President Clinton
during his visit to the Philippines in early 1995. Following the August 1998 cruise
missile attack, at least one Islamic religious leader called for Clinton's assassination,
and another stated that "the time is not far off" for when the White House will
be destroyed by a nuclear bomb. A horrendous scenario consonant with al-Qaida's mindset
would be its use of a nuclear suitcase bomb against any number of targets in the nation's
capital. Bin Laden allegedly has already purchased a number of nuclear suitcase bombs from
the Chechen Mafia. Al-Qaida's retaliation, however, is more likely to take the lower-risk
form of bombing one or more U.S. airliners with time-bombs. Yousef was planning
simultaneous bombings of 11 U.S. airliners prior to his capture. Whatever form an attack
may take, bin Laden will most likely retaliate in a spectacular way for the cruise missile
attack against his Afghan camp in August 1998.
While nothing is easier than to denounce the evildoer,
nothing is more difficult than to understand him.
- Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky
INTRODUCTION
Why do some individuals decide to break with society and embark on a career in
terrorism? Do terrorists share common traits or characteristics? Is there a terrorist
personality or profile? Can a terrorist profile be developed that could reliably help
security personnel to identify potential terrorists, whether they be would-be airplane
hijackers, assassins, or suicide bombers? Do some terrorists have a psychotic (see
Glossary) personality? Psychological factors relating to terrorism are of particular
interest to psychologists, political scientists, and government officials, who would like
to be able to predict and prevent the emergence of terrorist groups or to thwart the
realization of terrorist actions. This study focuses on individual psychological and
sociological characteristics of terrorists of different generations as well as their
groups in an effort to determine how the terrorist profile may have changed in recent
decades, or whether they share any common sociological attributes.
The assumption underlying much of the terrorist-profile research in recent decades has
been that most terrorists have some common characteristics that can be determined through
psychometric analysis of large quantities of biographical data on terrorists. One of the
earliest attempts to single out a terrorist personality was done by Charles A. Russell and
Bowman H. Miller (1977) (see Attributes of Terrorists).
Ideally, a researcher attempting to profile terrorists in the 1990s would have access
to extensive biographical data on several hundred terrorists arrested in various parts of
the world and to data on terrorists operating in a specific country. If such data were at
hand, the researcher could prepare a psychometric study analyzing attributes of the
terrorist: educational, occupational, and socioeconomic background; general traits;
ideology; marital status; method and place of recruitment; physical appearance; and sex.
Researchers have used this approach to study West German and Italian terrorist groups (see
Females). Such detailed information would provide more accurate sociological profiles of
terrorist groups. Although there appears to be no single terrorist personality, members of
a terrorist group(s) may share numerous common sociological traits.
Practically speaking, however, biographical databases on large numbers of terrorists
are not readily available. Indeed, such data would be quite difficult to obtain unless one
had special access to police files on terrorists around the world. Furthermore, developing
an open-source biographical database on enough terrorists to have some scientific validity
would require a substantial investment of time. The small number of profiles contained in
this study is hardly sufficient to qualify as scientifically representative of terrorists
in general, or even of a particular category of terrorists, such as religious
fundamentalists or ethnic separatists. Published terrorism databases, such as Edward F.
Mickolus's series of chronologies of incidents of international terrorism and the Rand-St.
Andrews University Chronology of International Terrorism, are highly informative and
contain some useful biographical information on terrorists involved in major incidents,
but are largely incident-oriented.
This study is not about terrorism per se. Rather, it is concerned with the perpetrators
of terrorism. Prepared from a social sciences perspective, it attempts to synthesize the
results of psychological and sociological findings of studies on terrorists published in
recent decades and provide a general assessment of what is presently known about the
terrorist mind and mindset.
Because of time constraints and a lack of terrorism-related biographical databases, the
methodology, but not the scope, of this research has necessarily been modified. In the
absence of a database of terrorist biographies, this study is based on the broader
database of knowledge contained in academic studies on the psychology and sociology of
terrorism published over the past three decades. Using this extensive database of
open-source literature available in the Library of Congress and other information drawn
from Websites, such as the Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS), this paper
assesses the level of current knowledge of the subject and presents case studies that
include sociopsychological profiles of about a dozen selected terrorist groups and more
than two dozen terrorist leaders or other individuals implicated in acts of terrorism.
Three profiles of noteworthy terrorists of the early 1970s who belonged to other groups
are included in order to provide a better basis of contrast with terrorists of the late
1990s. This paper does not presume to have any scientific validity in terms of general
sampling representation of terrorists, but it does provide a preliminary theoretical,
analytical, and biographical framework for further research on the general subject or on
particular groups or individuals.
By examining the relatively overlooked behaviorist literature on sociopsychological
aspects of terrorism, this study attempts to gain psychological and sociological insights
into international terrorist groups and individuals. Of particular interest is whether
members of at least a dozen terrorist organizations in diverse regions of the world have
any psychological or sociological characteristics in common that might be useful in
profiling terrorists, if profiling is at all feasible, and in understanding somewhat
better the motivations of individuals who become terrorists.
Because this study includes profiles of diverse groups from Western Europe, Asia, the
Middle East, and Latin America, care has been taken when making cross-national,
cross-cultural, and cross-ideological comparisons. This paper examines such topics as the
age, economic and social background, education and occupation, gender, geographical
origin, marital status, motivation, recruitment, and religion or ideology of the members
of these designated groups as well as others on which relevant data are available.
It is hoped that an examination of the extensive body of behaviorist literature on
political and religious terrorism authored by psychologists and sociologists as well as
political scientists and other social scientists will provide some answers to questions
such as: Who are terrorists? How do individuals become terrorists? Do political or
religious terrorists have anything in common in their sociopsychological development? How
are they recruited? Is there a terrorist mindset, or are terrorist groups too diverse to
have a single mindset or common psychological traits? Are there instead different
terrorist mindsets?
TERMS OF ANALYSIS
Defining Terrorism and Terrorists
Unable to achieve their unrealistic goals by conventional means, international
terrorists attempt to send an ideological or religious message by terrorizing the general
public. Through the choice of their targets, which are often symbolic or representative of
the targeted nation, terrorists attempt to create a high-profile impact on the public of
their targeted enemy or enemies with their act of violence, despite the limited material
resources that are usually at their disposal. In doing so, they hope to demonstrate
various points, such as that the targeted government(s) cannot protect its (their) own
citizens, or that by assassinating a specific victim they can teach the general public a
lesson about espousing viewpoints or policies antithetical to their own. For example, by
assassinating Egyptian President Anwar Sadat on October 6, 1981, a year after his historic
trip to Jerusalem, the al-Jihad terrorists hoped to convey to the world, and especially to
Muslims, the error that he represented.
This tactic is not new. Beginning in 48 A.D., a Jewish sect called the Zealots carried
out terrorist campaigns to force insurrection against the Romans in Judea. These campaigns
included the use of assassins (sicarii, or dagger-men), who would infiltrate
Roman-controlled cities and stab Jewish collaborators or Roman legionnaires with a sica
(dagger), kidnap members of the Staff of the Temple Guard to hold for ransom, or use
poison on a large scale. The Zealots' justification for their killing of other Jews was
that these killings demonstrated the consequences of the immorality of collaborating with
the Roman invaders, and that the Romans could not protect their Jewish collaborators.
Definitions of terrorism vary widely and are usually inadequate. Even terrorism
researchers often neglect to define the term other than by citing the basic U.S.
Department of State (1998) definition of terrorism as "premeditated, politically
motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or
clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience." Although an act of
violence that is generally regarded in the United States as an act of terrorism may not be
viewed so in another country, the type of violence that distinguishes terrorism from other
types of violence, such as ordinary crime or a wartime military action, can still be
defined in terms that might qualify as reasonably objective.
This social sciences researcher defines a terrorist action as the calculated use of
unexpected, shocking, and unlawful violence against noncombatants (including, in addition
to civilians, off-duty military and security personnel in peaceful situations) and other
symbolic targets perpetrated by a clandestine member(s) of a subnational group or a
clandestine agent(s) for the psychological purpose of publicizing a political or religious
cause and/or intimidating or coercing a government(s) or civilian population into
accepting demands on behalf of the cause.
In this study, the nouns "terrorist" or "terrorists" do not
necessarily refer to everyone within a terrorist organization. Large organizations, such
as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the Irish Republic Army (IRA), or
the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), have many members--for example, accountants, cooks,
fund-raisers, logistics specialists, medical doctors, or recruiters--who may play only a
passive support role. We are not particularly concerned here with the passive support
membership of terrorist organizations.
Rather, we are primarily concerned in this study with the leader(s) of terrorist groups
and the activists or operators who personally carry out a group's terrorism strategy. The
top leaders are of particular interest because there may be significant differences
between them and terrorist activists or operatives. In contrast to the top leader(s), the
individuals who carry out orders to perpetrate an act of political violence (which they
would not necessarily regard as a terrorist act) have generally been recruited into the
organization. Thus, their motives for joining may be different. New recruits are often
isolated and alienated young people who want to join not only because they identify with
the cause and idolize the group's leader, but also because they want to belong to a group
for a sense of self-importance and companionship.
The top leaders of several of the groups profiled in this report can be subdivided into
contractors or freelancers. The distinction actually highlights an important difference
between the old generation of terrorist leaders and the new breed of international
terrorists. Contractors are those terrorist leaders whose services are hired by rogue
states, or a particular government entity of a rogue regime, such as an intelligence
agency. Notable examples of terrorist contractors include Abu Nidal, George Habash of the
Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), and Abu Abbas of the Palestine
Liberation Front (PLF). Freelancers are terrorist leaders who are completely independent
of a state, but who may collude with a rogue regime on a short-term basis. Prominent
examples of freelancers include Sheikh Omar Abdul Rahman, Ahmed Ramzi Yousef, and Osama
bin Laden. Contractors like Abu Nidal, George Habash, and Abu Abbas are representative of
the old style of high-risk international terrorism. In the 1990s, rogue states, more
mindful of the consequences of Western diplomatic, economic, military, and political
retaliation were less inclined to risk contracting terrorist organizations. Instead,
freelancers operating independently of any state carried out many of the most significant
acts of terrorism in the decade.
This study discusses groups that have been officially designated as terrorist groups by
the U.S. Department of State. A few of the groups on the official list, however, are
guerrilla organizations. These include the FARC, the LTTE, and the PKK. To be sure, the
FARC, the LTTE, and the PKK engage in terrorism as well as guerrilla warfare, but
categorizing them as terrorist groups and formulating policies to combat them on that
basis would be simplistic and a prescription for failure. The FARC, for example, has the
official status in Colombia of a political insurgent movement, as a result of a May 1999
accord between the FARC and the Colombian government. To dismiss a guerrilla group,
especially one like the FARC which has been fighting for four decades, as only a terrorist
group is to misunderstand its political and sociological context.
It is also important to keep in mind that perceptions of what constitutes terrorism
will differ from country to country, as well as among various sectors of a country's
population. For example, the Nicaraguan elite regarded the Sandinista National Liberation
Front (FSLN) as a terrorist group, while much of the rest of the country regarded the FSLN
as freedom fighters. A foreign extremist group labeled as terrorist by the Department of
State may be regarded in heroic terms by some sectors of the population in another
country. Likewise, an action that would be regarded as indisputably terrorist in the
United States might not be regarded as a terrorist act in another country's law courts.
For example, India's Supreme Court ruled in May 1999 that the assassination of Prime
Minister Rajiv Gandhi by a LTTE "belt-bomb girl" was not an act of terrorism
because there was no evidence that the four co-conspirators (who received the death
penalty) had any desire to strike terror in the country. In addition, the Department of
State's labeling of a guerrilla group as a terrorist group may be viewed by the particular
group as a hostile act. For example, the LTTE has disputed, unsuccessfully, its
designation on October 8, 1997, by the Department of State as a terrorist organization. By
labeling the LTTE a terrorist group, the United States compromises its potential role as
neutral mediator in Sri Lanka's civil war and waves a red flag at one of the world's
deadliest groups, whose leader appears to be a psychopathic (see Glossary) serial killer
of heads of state. To be sure, some terrorists are so committed to their cause that they
freely acknowledge being terrorists. On hearing that he had been sentenced to 240 years in
prison, Ramzi Yousef, mastermind of the WTC bombing, defiantly proclaimed, "I am a
terrorist, and I am proud of it."
Terrorist Group Typologies
This study categorizes foreign terrorist groups under one of the following four
designated, somewhat arbitrary typologies: nationalist-separatist, religious
fundamentalist, new religious, and social revolutionary. This group classification is
based on the assumption that terrorist groups can be categorized by their political
background or ideology. The social revolutionary category has also been labeled
"idealist." Idealistic terrorists fight for a radical cause, a religious belief,
or a political ideology, including anarchism. Although some groups do not fit neatly into
any one category, the general typologies are important because all terrorist campaigns are
different, and the mindsets of groups within the same general category tend to have more
in common than those in different categories. For example, the Irish Republic Army (IRA),
Basque Fatherland and Freedom (Euzkadi Ta Askatasuna--ETA), the Palestinian terrorist
groups, and the LTTE all have strong nationalistic motivations, whereas the Islamic
fundamentalist and the Aum Shinrikyo groups are motivated by religious beliefs. To be at
all effective, counterterrorist policies necessarily would vary depending on the typology
of the group.
A fifth typology, for right-wing terrorists, is not listed because right-wing
terrorists were not specifically designated as being a subject of this study. In any case,
there does not appear to be any significant right-wing group on the U.S. Department of
State's list of foreign terrorist organizations. Right-wing terrorists are discussed only
briefly in this paper (see Attributes of Terrorists). This is not to minimize the threat
of right-wing extremists in the United States, who clearly pose a significant terrorist
threat to U.S. security, as demonstrated by the Oklahoma City bombing on April 19, 1995.
APPROACHES TO TERRORISM ANALYSIS
The Multicausal Approach
Terrorism usually results from multiple causal factors--not only psychological but also
economic, political, religious, and sociological factors, among others. There is even an
hypothesis that it is caused by physiological factors, as discussed below. Because
terrorism is a multicausal phenomenon, it would be simplistic and erroneous to explain an
act of terrorism by a single cause, such as the psychological need of the terrorist to
perpetrate an act of violence.
For Paul Wilkinson (1977), the causes of revolution and political violence in general
are also the causes of terrorism. These include ethnic conflicts, religious and
ideological conflicts, poverty, modernization stresses, political inequities, lack of
peaceful communications channels, traditions of violence, the existence of a revolutionary
group, governmental weakness and ineptness, erosions of confidence in a regime, and deep
divisions within governing elites and leadership groups.
The Political Approach
The alternative to the hypothesis that a terrorist is born with certain personality
traits that destine him or her to become a terrorist is that the root causes of terrorism
can be found in influences emanating from environmental factors. Environments conducive to
the rise of terrorism include international and national environments, as well as
subnational ones such as universities, where many terrorists first become familiar with
Marxist-Leninist ideology or other revolutionary ideas and get involved with radical
groups. Russell and Miller identify universities as the major recruiting ground for
terrorists.
Having identified one or more of these or other environments, analysts may distinguish
between precipitants that started the outbreak of violence, on the one hand, and
preconditions that allowed the precipitants to instigate the action, on the other hand.
Political scientists Chalmers Johnson (1978) and Martha Crenshaw (1981) have further
subdivided preconditions into permissive factors, which engender a terrorist strategy and
make it attractive to political dissidents, and direct situational factors, which motivate
terrorists. Permissive causes include urbanization, the transportation system (for
example, by allowing a terrorist to quickly escape to another country by taking a flight),
communications media, weapons availability, and the absence of security measures. An
example of a situational factor for Palestinians would be the loss of their homeland of
Palestine.
Various examples of international and national or subnational theories of terrorism can
be cited. An example of an international environment hypothesis is the view proposed by
Brian M. Jenkins (1979) that the failure of rural guerrilla movements in Latin America
pushed the rebels into the cities. (This hypothesis, however, overlooks the national
causes of Latin American terrorism and fails to explain why rural guerrilla movements
continue to thrive in Colombia.) Jenkins also notes that the defeat of Arab armies in the
1967 Six-Day War caused the Palestinians to abandon hope for a conventional military
solution to their problem and to turn to terrorist attacks.
The Organizational Approach
Some analysts, such as Crenshaw (1990: 250), take an organization approach to terrorism
and see terrorism as a rational strategic course of action decided on by a group. In her
view, terrorism is not committed by an individual. Rather, she contends that "Acts of
terrorism are committed by groups who reach collective decisions based on commonly held
beliefs, although the level of individual commitment to the group and its beliefs
varies."
Crenshaw has not actually substantiated her contention with case studies that show how
decisions are supposedly reached collectively in terrorist groups. That kind of inside
information, to be sure, would be quite difficult to obtain without a former
decision-maker within a terrorist group providing it in the form of a published
autobiography or an interview, or even as a paid police informer. Crenshaw may be partly
right, but her organizational approach would seem to be more relevant to guerrilla
organizations that are organized along traditional Marxist-Leninist lines, with a general
secretariat headed by a secretary general, than to terrorist groups per se. The FARC, for
example, is a guerrilla organization, albeit one that is not averse to using terrorism as
a tactic. The six members of the FARC's General Secretariat participate in its
decision-making under the overall leadership of Secretary General Manuel Marulanda Vélez.
The hard-line military leaders, however, often exert disproportionate influence over
decision-making.
Bona fide terrorist groups, like cults, are often totally dominated by a single
individual leader, be it Abu Nidal, Ahmed Jibril, Osama bin Laden, or Shoko Asahara. It
seems quite improbable that the terrorist groups of such dominating leaders make their
decisions collectively. By most accounts, the established terrorist leaders give
instructions to their lieutenants to hijack a jetliner, assassinate a particular person,
bomb a U.S. Embassy, and so forth, while leaving operational details to their lieutenants
to work out. The top leader may listen to his lieutenants' advice, but the top leader
makes the final decision and gives the orders.
The Physiological Approach
The physiological approach to terrorism suggests that the role of the media in
promoting the spread of terrorism cannot be ignored in any discussion of the causes of
terrorism. Thanks to media coverage, the methods, demands, and goals of terrorists are
quickly made known to potential terrorists, who may be inspired to imitate them upon
becoming stimulated by media accounts of terrorist acts.
The diffusion of terrorism from one place to another received scholarly attention in
the early 1980s. David G. Hubbard (1983) takes a physiological approach to analyzing the
causes of terrorism. He discusses three substances produced in the body under stress:
norepinephrine, a compound produced by the adrenal gland and sympathetic nerve endings and
associated with the "fight or flight" (see Glossary) physiological response of
individuals in stressful situations; acetylcholine, which is produced by the
parasympathetic nerve endings and acts to dampen the accelerated norepinephrine response;
and endorphins, which develop in the brain as a response to stress and
"narcotize" the brain, being 100 times more powerful than morphine. Because
these substances occur in the terrorist, Hubbard concludes that much terrorist violence is
rooted not in the psychology but in the physiology of the terrorist, partly the result of
"stereotyped, agitated tissue response" to stress. Hubbard's conclusion suggests
a possible explanation for the spread of terrorism, the so-called contagion effect.
Kent Layne Oots and Thomas C. Wiegele (1985) have also proposed a model of terrorist
contagion based on physiology. Their model demonstrates that the psychological state of
the potential terrorist has important implications for the stability of society. In their
analysis, because potential terrorists become aroused in a violence-accepting way by media
presentations of terrorism, "Terrorists must, by the nature of their actions, have an
attitude which allows violence." One of these attitudes, they suspect, may be
Machiavellianism because terrorists are disposed to manipulating their victims as well as
the press, the public, and the authorities. They note that the potential terrorist
"need only see that terrorism has worked for others in order to become aggressively
aroused."
According to Oots and Wiegele, an individual moves from being a potential terrorist to
being an actual terrorist through a process that is psychological, physiological, and
political. "If the neurophysiological model of aggression is realistic," Oots
and Wiegele assert, "there is no basis for the argument that terrorism could be
eliminated if its sociopolitical causes were eliminated." They characterize the
potential terrorist as "a frustrated individual who has become aroused and has
repeatedly experienced the fight or flight syndrome. Moreover, after these repeated
arousals, the potential terrorist seeks relief through an aggressive act and also seeks,
in part, to remove the initial cause of his frustration by achieving the political goal
which he has hitherto been denied."
D. Guttman (1979) also sees terrorist actions as being aimed more at the audience than
at the immediate victims. It is, after all, the audience that may have to meet the
terrorist's demands. Moreover, in Guttman's analysis, the terrorist requires a liberal
rather than a right-wing audience for success. Liberals make the terrorist respectable by
accepting the ideology that the terrorist alleges informs his or her acts. The terrorist
also requires liberal control of the media for the transmission of his or her ideology.
The Psychological Approach
In contrast with political scientists and sociologists, who are interested in the
political and social contexts of terrorist groups, the relatively few psychologists who
study terrorism are primarily interested in the micro-level of the individual terrorist or
terrorist group. The psychological approach is concerned with the study of terrorists per
se, their recruitment and induction into terrorist groups, their personalities, beliefs,
attitudes, motivations, and careers as terrorists.
GENERAL HYPOTHESES OF TERRORISM
If one accepts the proposition that political terrorists are made, not born, then the
question is what makes a terrorist. Although the scholarly literature on the psychology of
terrorism is lacking in full-scale, quantitative studies from which to ascertain trends
and develop general theories of terrorism, it does appear to focus on several theories.
One, the Olson hypothesis, suggests that participants in revolutionary violence predicate
their behavior on a rational cost-benefit calculus and the conclusion that violence is the
best available course of action given the social conditions. The notion that a group
rationally chooses a terrorism strategy is questionable, however. Indeed, a group's
decision to resort to terrorism is often divisive, sometimes resulting in factionalization
of the group.
Frustration-Aggression Hypothesis
The frustration-aggression hypothesis (see Glossary) of violence is prominent in the
literature. This hypothesis is based mostly on the relative-deprivation hypothesis (see
Glossary), as proposed by Ted Robert Gurr (1970), an expert on violent behaviors and
movements, and reformulated by J.C. Davies (1973) to include a gap between rising
expectations and need satisfaction. Another proponent of this hypothesis, Joseph Margolin
(1977: 273-4), argues that "much terrorist behavior is a response to the frustration
of various political, economic, and personal needs or objectives." Other scholars,
however have dismissed the frustration-aggression hypothesis as simplistic, based as it is
on the erroneous assumption that aggression is always a consequence of frustration.
According to Franco Ferracuti (1982), a University of Rome professor, a better approach
than these and other hypotheses, including the Marxist theory, would be a subcultural
theory, which takes into account that terrorists live in their own subculture, with their
own value systems. Similarly, political scientist Paul Wilkinson (1974: 127) faults the
frustration-aggression hypothesis for having "very little to say about the social
psychology of prejudice and hatred..." and fanaticisms that "play a major role
in encouraging extreme violence." He believes that "Political terrorism cannot
be understood outside the context of the development of terroristic, or potentially
terroristic, ideologies, beliefs and life-styles (133)."
Negative Identity Hypothesis
Using Erikson's theory of identity formation, particularly his concept of negative
identity, the late political psychologist Jeanne N. Knutson (1981) suggests that the
political terrorist consciously assumes a negative identity. One of her examples is a
Croatian terrorist who, as a member of an oppressed ethnic minority, was disappointed by
the failure of his aspiration to attain a university education, and as a result assumed a
negative identity by becoming a terrorist. Negative identity involves a vindictive
rejection of the role regarded as desirable and proper by an individual's family and
community. In Knutson's view, terrorists engage in terrorism as a result of feelings of
rage and helplessness over the lack of alternatives. Her political science-oriented
viewpoint seems to coincide with the frustration-aggression hypothesis.
Narcissistic Rage Hypothesis
The advocates of the narcissism-aggression hypothesis include psychologists Jerrold M.
Post, John W. Crayton, and Richard M. Pearlstein. Taking the-terrorists-as-mentally-ill
approach, this hypothesis concerns the early development of the terrorist. Basically, if
primary narcissism in the form of the "grandiose self" is not neutralized by
reality testing, the grandiose self produces individuals who are sociopathic, arrogant,
and lacking in regard for others. Similarly, if the psychological form of the
"idealized parental ego" is not neutralized by reality testing, it can produce a
condition of helpless defeatism, and narcissistic defeat can lead to reactions of rage and
a wish to destroy the source of narcissistic injury. "As a specific manifestation of
narcissistic rage, terrorism occurs in the context of narcissistic injury," writes
Crayton (1983:37-8). For Crayton, terrorism is an attempt to acquire or maintain power or
control by intimidation. He suggests that the "meaningful high ideals" of the
political terrorist group "protect the group members from experiencing shame."
In Post's view, a particularly striking personality trait of people who are drawn to
terrorism "is the reliance placed on the psychological mechanisms of
"externalization" and 'splitting'." These are psychological mechanisms, he
explains, that are found in "individuals with narcissistic and borderline personality
disturbances." "Splitting," he explains, is a mechanism characteristic of
people whose personality development is shaped by a particular type of psychological
damage (narcissistic injury) during childhood. Those individuals with a damaged
self-concept have failed to integrate the good and bad parts of the self, which are
instead split into the "me" and the "not me." These individuals, who
have included Hitler, need an outside enemy to blame for their own inadequacies and
weaknesses. The data examined by Post, including a 1982 West German study, indicate that
many terrorists have not been successful in their personal, educational, and vocational
lives. Thus, they are drawn to terrorist groups, which have an us-versus-them outlook.
This hypothesis, however, appears to be contradicted by the increasing number of
terrorists who are well-educated professionals, such as chemists, engineers, and
physicists.
The psychology of the self is clearly very important in understanding and dealing with
terrorist behavior, as in incidents of hostage-barricade terrorism (see Glossary). Crayton
points out that humiliating the terrorists in such situations by withholding food, for
example, would be counterproductive because "the very basis for their activity stems
from their sense of low self-esteem and humiliation."
Using a Freudian analysis of the self and the narcissistic personality, Pearlstein
(1991) eruditely applies the psychological concept of narcissism to terrorists. He
observes that the political terrorist circumvents the psychopolitical liabilities of
accepting himself or herself as a terrorist with a negative identity through a process of
rhetorical self-justification that is reinforced by the group's group-think. His
hypothesis, however, seems too speculative a construct to be used to analyze terrorist
motivation independently of numerous other factors. For example, politically motivated
hijackers have rarely acted for self-centered reasons, but rather in the name of the
political goals of their groups. It also seems questionable that terrorist
suicide-bombers, who deliberately sacrificed themselves in the act, had a narcissistic
personality.
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE TERRORIST
Terrorist Motivation
In addition to drawing on political science and sociology, this study draws on the
discipline of psychology, in an attempt to explain terrorist motivation and to answer
questions such as who become terrorists and what kind of individuals join terrorist groups
and commit public acts of shocking violence. Although there have been numerous attempts to
explain terrorism from a psychiatric or psychological perspective, Wilkinson notes that
the psychology and beliefs of terrorists have been inadequately explored. Most
psychological analyses of terrorists and terrorism, according to psychologist Maxwell
Taylor (1988), have attempted to address what motivates terrorists or to describe personal
characteristics of terrorists, on the assumption that terrorists can be identified by
these attributes. However, although an understanding of the terrorist mindset would be the
key to understanding how and why an individual becomes a terrorist, numerous psychologists
have been unable to adequately define it. Indeed, there appears to be a general agreement
among psychologists who have studied the subject that there is no one terrorist mindset.
This view, however, itself needs to be clarified.
The topic of the terrorist mindset was discussed at a Rand conference on terrorism
coordinated by Brian M. Jenkins in September 1980. The observations made about terrorist
mindsets at that conference considered individuals, groups, and individuals as part of a
group. The discussion revealed how little was known about the nature of terrorist
mindsets, their causes and consequences, and their significance for recruitment, ideology,
leader-follower relations, organization, decision making about targets and tactics,
escalation of violence, and attempts made by disillusioned terrorists to exit from the
terrorist group. Although the current study has examined these aspects of the terrorist
mindset, it has done so within the framework of a more general tasking requirement.
Additional research and analysis would be needed to focus more closely on the concept of
the terrorist mindset and to develop it into a more useful method for profiling terrorist
groups and leaders on a more systematic and accurate basis.
Within this field of psychology, the personality dynamics of individual terrorists,
including the causes and motivations behind the decision to join a terrorist group and to
commit violent acts, have also received attention. Other small-group dynamics that have
been of particular interest to researchers include the terrorists' decision-making
patterns, problems of leadership and authority, target selection, and group mindset as a
pressure tool on the individual.
Attempts to explain terrorism in purely psychological terms ignore the very real
economic, political, and social factors that have always motivated radical activists, as
well as the possibility that biological or physiological variables may play a role in
bringing an individual to the point of perpetrating terrorism. Although this study
provides some interdisciplinary context to the study of terrorists and terrorism, it is
concerned primarily with the sociopsychological approach. Knutson (1984), Executive
Director of the International Society of Political Psychology until her death in 1982,
carried out an extensive international research project on the psychology of political
terrorism. The basic premise of terrorists whom she evaluated in depth was "that
their violent acts stem from feelings of rage and hopelessness engendered by the belief
that society permits no other access to information-dissemination and policy-formation
processes."
The social psychology of political terrorism has received extensive analysis in studies
of terrorism, but the individual psychology of political and religious terrorism has been
largely ignored. Relatively little is known about the terrorist as an individual, and the
psychology of terrorists remains poorly understood, despite the fact that there have been
a number of individual biographical accounts, as well as sweeping sociopolitical or
psychiatric generalizations.
A lack of data and an apparent ambivalence among many academic researchers about the
academic value of terrorism research have contributed to the relatively little systematic
social and psychological research on terrorism. This is unfortunate because psychology,
concerned as it is with behavior and the factors that influence and control behavior, can
provide practical as opposed to conceptual knowledge of terrorists and terrorism.
A principal reason for the lack of psychometric studies of terrorism is that
researchers have little, if any, direct access to terrorists, even imprisoned ones.
Occasionally, a researcher has gained special access to a terrorist group, but usually at
the cost of compromising the credibility of her/her research. Even if a researcher obtains
permission to interview an incarcerated terrorist, such an interview would be of limited
value and reliability for the purpose of making generalizations. Most terrorists,
including imprisoned ones, would be loath to reveal their group's operational secrets to
their interrogators, let alone to journalists or academic researchers, whom the terrorists
are likely to view as representatives of the "system" or perhaps even as
intelligence agents in disguise. Even if terrorists agree to be interviewed in such
circumstances, they may be less than candid in answering questions. For example, most
imprisoned Red Army Faction members reportedly declined to be interviewed by West German
social scientists. Few researchers or former terrorists write exposés of terrorist
groups. Those who do could face retaliation. For example, the LTTE shot to death an
anti-LTTE activist, Sabaratnam Sabalingam, in Paris on May 1, 1994, to prevent him from
publishing an anti-LTTE book. The LTTE also murdered Dr. Rajani Thiranagama, a Tamil, and
one of the four Sri Lankan authors of The Broken Palmyrah, which sought to examine the
"martyr" cult.
The Process of Joining a Terrorist Group
Individuals who become terrorists often are unemployed, socially alienated individuals
who have dropped out of society. Those with little education, such as youths in Algerian
ghettos or the Gaza Strip, may try to join a terrorist group out of boredom and a desire
to have an action-packed adventure in pursuit of a cause they regard as just. Some
individuals may be motivated mainly by a desire to use their special skills, such as
bomb-making. The more educated youths may be motivated more by genuine political or
religious convictions. The person who becomes a terrorist in Western countries is
generally both intellectual and idealistic. Usually, these disenchanted youths, both
educated or uneducated, engage in occasional protest and dissidence. Potential terrorist
group members often start out as sympathizers of the group. Recruits often come from
support organizations, such as prisoner support groups or student activist groups. From
sympathizer, one moves to passive supporter. Often, violent encounters with police or
other security forces motivate an already socially alienated individual to join a
terrorist group. Although the circumstances vary, the end result of this gradual process
is that the individual, often with the help of a family member or friend with terrorist
contacts, turns to terrorism. Membership in a terrorist group, however, is highly
selective. Over a period as long as a year or more, a recruit generally moves in a slow,
gradual fashion toward full membership in a terrorist group.
An individual who drops out of society can just as well become a monk or a hermit
instead of a terrorist. For an individual to choose to become a terrorist, he or she would
have to be motivated to do so. Having the proper motivation, however, is still not enough.
The would-be terrorist would need to have the opportunity to join a terrorist group. And
like most job seekers, he or she would have to be acceptable to the terrorist group, which
is a highly exclusive group. Thus, recruits would not only need to have a personality that
would allow them to fit into the group, but ideally a certain skill needed by the group,
such as weapons or communications skills.
The psychology of joining a terrorist group differs depending on the typology of the
group. Someone joining an anarchistic or a Marxist-Leninist terrorist group would not
likely be able to count on any social support, only social opprobrium, whereas someone
joining an ethnic separatist group like ETA or the IRA would enjoy considerable social
support and even respect within ethnic enclaves.
Psychologist Eric D. Shaw (1986:365) provides a strong case for what he calls "The
Personal Pathway Model," by which terrorists enter their new profession. The
components of this pathway include early socialization processes; narcissistic injuries;
escalatory events, particularly confrontation with police; and personal connections to
terrorist group members, as follows:
The personal pathway model suggests that terrorists came from a selected, at risk
population, who have suffered from early damage to their self-esteem. Their subsequent
political activities may be consistent with the liberal social philosophies of their
families, but go beyond their perception of the contradiction in their family's beliefs
and lack of social action. Family political philosophies may also serve to sensitize these
persons to the economic and political tensions inherent throughout modern society. As a
group, they appear to have been unsuccessful in obtaining a desired traditional place in
society, which has contributed to their frustration. The underlying need to belong to a
terrorist group is symptomatic of an incomplete or fragmented psychosocial identity. (In
Kohut's terms--a defective or fragmented "group self"). Interestingly, the acts
of security forces or police are cited as provoking more violent political activity by
these individuals and it is often a personal connection to other terrorists which leads to
membership in a violent group (shared external targets?).
Increasingly, terrorist organizations in the developing world are recruiting younger
members. The only role models for these young people to identify with are often terrorists
and guerrillas. Abu Nidal, for example, was able to recruit alienated, poor, and
uneducated youths thrilled to be able to identify themselves with a group led by a
well-known but mysterious figure.
During the 1980s and early 1990s, thousands of foreign Muslim volunteers (14,000,
according to Jane's Intelligence Review)--angry, young, and zealous and from many
countries, including the United States--flocked to training camps in Afghanistan or the
Pakistan-Afghan border region to learn the art of combat. They ranged in age from 17 to
35. Some had university educations, but most were uneducated, unemployed youths without
any prospects.
Deborah M. Galvin (1983) notes that a common route of entry into terrorism for female
terrorists is through political involvement and belief in a political cause. The Intifada
(see Glossary), for example, radicalized many young Palestinians, who later joined
terrorist organizations. At least half of the Intifada protesters were young girls. Some
women are recruited into terrorist organizations by boyfriends. A significant feature that
Galvin feels may characterize the involvement of the female terrorist is the "male or
female lover/female accomplice ... scenario." The lover, a member of the terrorist
group, recruits the female into the group. One ETA female member, "Begona," told
Eileen MacDonald (1992) that was how she joined at age 25: "I got involved [in ETA]
because a man I knew was a member."
A woman who is recruited into a terrorist organization on the basis of her
qualifications and motivation is likely to be treated more professionally by her comrades
than one who is perceived as lacking in this regard. Two of the PFLP hijackers of Sabena
Flight 517 from Brussels to Tel Aviv on May 8, 1972, Therese Halsa, 19, and Rima Tannous,
21, had completely different characters. Therese, the daughter of a middle-class Arab
family, was a nursing student when she was recruited into Fatah by a fellow student and
was well regarded in the organization. Rima, an orphan of average intelligence, became the
mistress of a doctor who introduced her to drugs and recruited her into Fatah. She became
totally dependent on some Fatah members, who subjected her to physical and psychological
abuse.
Various terrorist groups recruit both female and male members from organizations that
are lawful. For example, ETA personnel may be members of Egizan ("Act Woman!"),
a feminist movement affiliated with ETA's political wing; the Henri Batasuna (Popular
Unity) party; or an amnesty group seeking release for ETA members. While working with the
amnesty group, a number of women reportedly tended to become frustrated over mistreatment
of prisoners and concluded that the only solution was to strike back, which they did by
joining the ETA. "Women seemed to become far more emotionally involved than men with
the suffering of prisoners," an ETA member, "Txikia," who joined at age 20,
told MacDonald, "and when they made the transition from supporter to guerrilla,
appeared to carry their deeper sense of commitment with them into battle."
The Terrorist as Mentally Ill
A common stereotype is that someone who commits such abhorrent acts as planting a bomb
on an airliner, detonating a vehicle bomb on a city street, or tossing a grenade into a
crowded sidewalk café is abnormal. The psychopathological (see Glossary) orientation has
dominated the psychological approach to the terrorist's personality. As noted by Taylor,
two basic psychological approaches to understanding terrorists have been commonly used:
the terrorist is viewed either as mentally ill or as a fanatic. For Walter Laqueur
(1977:125), "Terrorists are fanatics and fanaticism frequently makes for cruelty and
sadism."
This study is not concerned with the lone terrorist, such as the Unabomber in the
United States, who did not belong to any terrorist group. Criminologist Franco Ferracuti
has noted that there is "no such thing as an isolated terrorist--that's a mental
case." Mentally unbalanced individuals have been especially attracted to airplane
hijacking. David G. Hubbard (1971) conducted a psychiatric study of airplane hijackers in
1971 and concluded that skyjacking is used by psychiatrically ill patients as an
expression of illness. His study revealed that skyjackers shared several common traits: a
violent father, often an alcoholic; a deeply religious mother, often a religious zealot; a
sexually shy, timid, and passive personality; younger sisters toward whom the skyjackers
acted protectively; and poor achievement, financial failure, and limited earning
potential.
Those traits, however, are shared by many people who do not hijack airplanes. Thus,
profiles of mentally unstable hijackers would seem to be of little, if any, use in
detecting a potential hijacker in advance. A useful profile would probably have to
identify physical or behavioral traits that might alert authorities to a potential
terrorist before a suspect is allowed to board an aircraft, that is, if hijackers have
identifiable personality qualities. In the meantime, weapons detection, passenger
identification, and onboard security guards may be the only preventive measures. Even
then, an individual wanting to hijack an airplane can often find a way. Japan's Haneda
Airport screening procedures failed to detect a large knife that a 28-year-old man carried
aboard an All Nippon Airways jumbo jet on July 23, 1999, and used to stab the pilot (who
died) and take the plane's controls until overpowered by others. Although police have
suggested that the man may have psychiatric problems, the fact that he attempted to divert
the plane to the U.S. Yokota Air Base north of Tokyo, at a time when the airbase was a
subject of controversy because the newly elected governor of Tokyo had demanded its
closure, suggests that he may have had a political or religious motive.
There have been cases of certifiably mentally ill terrorists. Klaus Jünschke, a mental
patient, was one of the most ardent members of the Socialist Patients' Collective (SPK), a
German terrorist group working with the Baader-Meinhof Gang (see Glossary). In some
instances, political terrorists have clearly exhibited psychopathy (see Glossary). For
example, in April 1986 Nezar Hindawi, a freelance Syrian-funded Jordanian terrorist and
would-be agent of Syrian intelligence, sent his pregnant Irish girlfriend on an El Al
flight to Israel, promising to meet her there to be married. Unknown to her, however,
Hindawi had hidden a bomb (provided by the Abu Nidal Organization (ANO)) in a false bottom
to her hand luggage. His attempt to bomb the airliner in midair by duping his pregnant
girlfriend was thwarted when the bomb was discovered by Heathrow security personnel.
Taylor regards Hindawi's behavior in this incident as psychopathic because of Hindawi's
willingness to sacrifice his fiancé and unborn child.
Jerrold Post (1990), a leading advocate of the terrorists-as-mentally ill approach, has
his own psychological hypothesis of terrorism. Although he does not take issue with the
proposition that terrorists reason logically, Post argues that terrorists' reasoning
process is characterized by what he terms "terrorist psycho-logic." In his
analysis, terrorists do not willingly resort to terrorism as an intentional choice.
Rather, he argues that "political terrorists are driven to commit acts of violence as
a consequence of psychological forces, and that their special psycho-logic is constructed
to rationalize acts they are psychologically compelled to commit"(1990:25). Post's
hypothesis that terrorists are motivated by psychological forces is not convincing and
seems to ignore the numerous factors that motivate terrorists, including their ideological
convictions.
Post (1997) believes that the most potent form of terrorism stems from those
individuals who are bred to hate, from generation to generation, as in Northern Ireland
and the Basque country. For these terrorists, in his view, rehabilitation in nearly
impossible because ethnic animosity or hatred is "in their blood" and passed
from father to son. Post also draws an interesting distinction between
"anarchic-ideologues"such as the Italian Red Brigades (Brigate Rosse) and the
German RAF (aka the Baader-Meinhof Gang), and the "nationalist-separatist"
groups such as the ETA, or the IRA, stating that:
There would seem to be a profound difference between terrorists bent on destroying
their own society, the "world of their fathers," and those whose terrorist
activities carry on the mission of their fathers. To put it in other words, for some,
becoming terrorists is an act of retaliation for real and imagined hurts against the
society of their parents; for others, it is an act of retaliation against society for the
hurt done to their parents.... This would suggest more conflict, more psychopathology,
among those committed to anarchy and destruction of society.... (1984:243)
Indeed, author Julian Becker (1984) describes the German terrorists of the
Baader-Meinhof Gang as "children without fathers." They were sons and daughters
of fathers who had either been killed by Nazis or survived Nazism. Their children despised
and rebelled against them because of the shame of Nazism and a defeated Germany. One
former RAF female member told MacDonald: "We hated our parents because they were
former Nazis, who had never come clean about their past." Similarly, Gunther
Wagenlehner (1978:201) concludes that the motives of RAF terrorists were unpolitical and
belonged "more to the area of psychopathological disturbances." Wagenlehner
found that German terrorists blamed the government for failing to solve their personal
problems. Not only was becoming a terrorist "an individual form of liberation"
for radical young people with personal problems, but "These students became
terrorists because they suffered from acute fear and from aggression and the masochistic
desire to be pursued." In short, according to Wagenlehner, the West German anarchists
stand out as a major exception to the generally nonpathological characteristics of most
terrorists. Psychologist Konrad Kellen (1990:43) arrives at a similar conclusion, noting
that most of the West German terrorists "suffer from a deep psychological
trauma" that "makes them see the world, including their own actions and the
expected effects of those actions, in a grossly unrealistic light" and that motivates
them to kill people. Sociologist J. Bowyer Bell (1985) also has noted that European
anarchists, unlike other terrorists, belong more to the "province of psychologists
than political analysts...."
Post's distinction between anarchic-ideologues and ethnic separatists appears to be
supported by Rona M. Fields's (1978) psychometric assessment of children in Northern
Ireland. Fields found that exposure to terrorism as a child can lead to a proclivity for
terrorism as an adult. Thus, a child growing up in violence-plagued West Belfast is more
likely to develop into a terrorist as an adult than is a child growing up in peaceful
Oslo, Norway, for example. Maxwell Taylor, noting correctly that there are numerous other
factors in the development of a terrorist, faults Fields's conclusions for, among other
things, a lack of validation with adults. Maxwell Taylor overlooks, however, that Field's
study was conducted over an eight-year period. Taylor's point is that Field's conclusions
do not take into account that relatively very few children exposed to violence, even in
Northern Ireland, grow up to become terrorists.
A number of other psychologists would take issue with another of Post's
contentions--that the West German anarchists were more pathological than Irish terrorists.
For example, psychiatrist W. Rasch (1979), who interviewed a number of West German
terrorists, determined that "no conclusive evidence has been found for the assumption
that a significant number of them are disturbed or abnormal." For Rasch the argument
that terrorism is pathological behavior only serves to minimize the political or social
issues that motivated the terrorists into action. And psychologist Ken Heskin (1984), who
has studied the psychology of terrorism in Northern Ireland, notes that "In fact,
there is no psychological evidence that terrorists are diagnosably psychopathic or
otherwise clinically disturbed."
Although there may have been instances in which a mentally ill individual led a
terrorist group, this has generally not been the case in international terrorism. Some
specialists point out, in fact, that there is little reliable evidence to support the
notion that terrorists in general are psychologically disturbed individuals. The careful,
detailed planning and well-timed execution that have characterized many terrorist
operations are hardly typical of mentally disturbed individuals.
There is considerable evidence, on the contrary, that international terrorists are
generally quite sane. Crenshaw (1981) has concluded from her studies that "the
outstanding common characteristic of terrorists is their normality." This view is
shared by a number of psychologists. For example, C.R. McCauley and M.E. Segal (1987)
conclude in a review of the social psychology of terrorist groups that "the best
documented generalization is negative; terrorists do not show any striking
psychopathology." Heskin (1984) did not find members of the IRA to be emotionally
disturbed. It seems clear that terrorists are extremely alienated from society, but
alienation does not necessarily mean being mentally ill.
Maxwell Taylor (1984) found that the notion of mental illness has little utility with
respect to most terrorist actions. Placing the terrorist within the ranks of the mentally
ill, he points out, makes assumptions about terrorist motivations and places terrorist
behavior outside the realms of both the normal rules of behavior and the normal process of
law. He points out several differences that separate the psychopath from the political
terrorist, although the two may not be mutually exclusive, as in the case of Hindawi. One
difference is the psychopath's inability to profit from experience. Another important
difference is that, in contrast to the terrorist, the purposefulness, if any, of a
psychopath's actions is personal. In addition, psychopaths are too unreliable and
incapable of being controlled to be of use to terrorist groups. Taylor notes that
terrorist groups need discreet activists who do not draw attention to themselves and who
can merge back into the crowd after executing an operation. For these reasons, he believes
that "it may be inappropriate to think of the terrorist as mentally ill in
conventional terms" (1994:92). Taylor and Ethel Quayle (1994:197) conclude that
"the active terrorist is not discernibly different in psychological terms from the
non-terrorist." In other words, terrorists are recruited from a population that
describes most of us. Taylor and Quayle also assert that "in psychological terms,
there are no special qualities that characterize the terrorist." Just as there is no
necessary reason why people sharing the same career in normal life necessarily have
psychological characteristics in common, the fact that terrorists have the same career
does not necessarily mean that they have anything in common psychologically.
The selectivity with which terrorist groups recruit new members helps to explain why so
few pathologically ill individuals are found within their ranks. Candidates who appear to
be potentially dangerous to the terrorist group's survival are screened out. Candidates
with unpredictable or uncontrolled behavior lack the personal attributes that the
terrorist recruiter is looking for.
Many observers have noted that the personality of the terrorist has a depressive aspect
to it, as reflected in the terrorist's death-seeking or death-confronting behavior. The
terrorist has often been described by psychologists as incapable of enjoying anything
(anhedonic) or forming meaningful interpersonal relationships on a reciprocal level.
According to psychologist Risto Fried, the terrorist's interpersonal world is
characterized by three categories of people: the terrorist's idealized heroes; the
terrorist's enemies; and people one encounters in everyday life, whom the terrorist
regards as shadow figures of no consequence. However, Fried (1982:123) notes that some
psychologists with extensive experience with some of the most dangerous terrorists
"emphasize that the terrorist may be perfectly normal from a clinical point of view,
that he may have a psychopathology of a different order, or that his personality may be
only a minor factor in his becoming a terrorist if he was recruited into a terrorist group
rather than having volunteered for one."
The Terrorist as Suicidal Fanatic
Fanatics
The other of the two approaches that have predominated, the terrorist as fanatic,
emphasizes the terrorist's rational qualities and views the terrorist as a cool,
logical planning individual whose rewards are ideological and political, rather than
financial. This approach takes into account that terrorists are often well educated and
capable of sophisticated, albeit highly biased, rhetoric and political analysis.
Notwithstanding the religious origins of the word, the term "fanaticism" in
modern usage, has broadened out of the religious context to refer to more generally held
extreme beliefs. The terrorist is often labeled as a fanatic, especially in actions that
lead to self-destruction. Although fanaticism is not unique to terrorism, it is, like
"terrorism," a pejorative term. In psychological terms, the concept of
fanaticism carries some implications of mental illness, but, Taylor (1988:97) points out,
it "is not a diagnostic category in mental illness." Thus, he believes that
"Commonly held assumptions about the relationship between fanaticism and mental
illness...seem to be inappropriate." The fanatic often seems to view the world from a
particular perspective lying at the extreme of a continuum.
Two related processes, Taylor points out, are prejudice and authoritarianism, with
which fanaticism has a number of cognitive processes in common, such as an unwillingness
to compromise, a disdain for other alternative views, the tendency to see things in
black-and-white, a rigidity of belief, and a perception of the world that reflects a
closed mind. Understanding the nature of fanaticism, he explains, requires recognizing the
role of the cultural (religious and social) context. Fanaticism, in Taylor's view, may
indeed "...be part of the cluster of attributes of the terrorist." However,
Taylor emphasizes that the particular cultural context in which the terrorist is operating
needs to be taken into account in understanding whether the term might be appropriate.
Suicide Terrorists
Deliberate self-destruction, when the terrorist's death is necessary in order to
detonate a bomb or avoid capture, is not a common feature of terrorism in most countries,
although it happens occasionally with Islamic fundamentalist terrorists in the Middle East
and Tamil terrorists in Sri Lanka and southern India. It is also a feature of North Korean
terrorism. The two North Korean agents who blew up Korean Air Flight 858 on November 28,
1987, popped cyanide capsules when confronted by police investigators. Only one of the
terrorists succeeded in killing himself, however.
Prior to mid-1985, there were 11 suicide attacks against international targets in the
Middle East using vehicle bombs. Three well-known cases were the bombing of the U.S.
Embassy in Beirut on April 18, 1983, which killed 63 people, and the separate bombings of
the U.S. Marine barracks and the French military headquarters in Lebanon on October 23,
1983, which killed 241 U.S. Marines and 58 French paratroopers, respectively. The first
instance, however, was the bombing of Israel's military headquarters in Tyre, in which 141
people were killed. Inspired by these suicide attacks in Lebanon and his closer ties with
Iran and Hizballah, Abu Nidal launched "suicide squads" in his attacks against
the Rome and Vienna airports in late December 1985, in which an escape route was not
planned.
The world leaders in terrorist suicide attacks are not the Islamic fundamentalists, but
the Tamils of Sri Lanka. The LTTE's track record for suicide attacks is unrivaled. Its
suicide commandos have blown up the prime ministers of two countries (India and Sri
Lanka), celebrities, at least one naval battleship, and have regularly used suicide to
avoid capture as well as simply a means of protest. LTTE terrorists do not dare not to
carry out their irrevocable orders to use their cyanide capsules if captured. No fewer
than 35 LTTE operatives committed suicide to simply avoid being questioned by
investigators in the wake of the Gandhi assassination. Attempting to be circumspect,
investigators disguised themselves as doctors in order to question LTTE patients
undergoing medical treatment, but, Vijay Karan (1997:46) writes about the LTTE patients,
"Their reflexes indoctrinated to react even to the slightest suspicion, all of them
instantly popped cyanide capsules." Two were saved only because the investigators
forcibly removed the capsules from their mouths, but one investigator suffered a severe
bite wound on his hand and had to be hospitalized for some time.
To Western observers, the acts of suicide terrorism by adherents of Islam and Hinduism
may be attributable to fanaticism or mental illness or both. From the perspective of the
Islamic movement, however, such acts of self-destruction have a cultural and religious
context, the historical origins of which can be seen in the behavior of religious sects
associated with the Shi'ite movement, notably the Assassins (see Glossary). Similarly, the
suicide campaign of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) in the 1993-94 period involved
young Palestinian terrorists, who, acting on individual initiative, attacked Israelis in
crowded places, using home-made improvised weapons such as knives and axes. Such attacks
were suicidal because escape was not part of the attacker's plan. These attacks were, at
least in part, motivated by revenge.
According to scholars of Muslim culture, so-called suicide bombings, however, are seen
by Islamists and Tamils alike as instances of martyrdom, and should be understood as such.
The Arabic term used is istishad, a religious term meaning to give one's life in the name
of Allah, as opposed to intihar, which refers to suicide resulting from personal distress.
The latter form of suicide is not condoned in Islamic teachings.
There is a clear correlation between suicide attacks and concurrent events and
developments in the Middle Eastern area. For example, suicide attacks increased in
frequency after the October 1990 clashes between Israeli security forces and Muslim
worshipers on Temple Mount, in the Old City of Jerusalem, in which 18 Muslims were killed.
The suicide attacks carried out by Hamas in Afula and Hadera in April 1994 coincided with
the talks that preceded the signing by Israel and the PLO of the Cairo agreement. They
were also claimed to revenge the massacre of 39 and the wounding of 200 Muslim worshipers
in a Hebron mosque by an Israeli settler on February 25, 1994. Attacks perpetrated in
Ramat-Gan and in Jerusalem in July and August 1995, respectively, coincided with the
discussions concerning the conduct of elections in the Territories, which were concluded
in the Oslo II agreement. The primary reason for Hamas's suicide attacks was that they
exacted a heavy price in Israeli casualties. Most of the suicide attackers came from the
Gaza Strip. Most were bachelors aged 18 to 25, with high school education, and some with
university education. Hamas or Islamic Jihad operatives sent the attackers on their
missions believing they would enter eternal Paradise.
Terrorist Group Dynamics
Unable to study terrorist group dynamics first-hand, social scientists have applied
their understanding of small-group behavior to terrorist groups. Some features of
terrorist groups, such as pressures toward conformity and consensus, are characteristic of
all small groups. For whatever reason individuals assume the role of terrorists, their
transformation into terrorists with a political or religious agenda takes places within
the structure of the terrorist group. This group provides a sense of belonging, a feeling
of self-importance, and a new belief system that defines the terrorist act as morally
acceptable and the group's goals as of paramount importance. As Shaw (1988:366) explains:
Apparently membership in a terrorist group often provides a solution to the pressing
personal needs of which the inability to achieve a desired niche in traditional society is
the coup de grace. The terrorist identity offers the individual a role in society, albeit
a negative one, which is commensurate with his or her prior expectations and sufficient to
compensate for past losses. Group membership provides a sense of potency, an intense and
close interpersonal environment, social status, potential access to wealth and a share in
what may be a grandiose but noble social design. The powerful psychological forces of
conversion in the group are sufficient to offset traditional social sanctions against
violence....To the terrorists their acts may have the moral status of religious warfare or
political liberation.
Terrorist groups are similar to religious sects or cults. They require total commitment
by members; they often prohibit relations with outsiders, although this may not be the
case with ethnic or separatist terrorist groups whose members are well integrated into the
community; they regulate and sometimes ban sexual relations; they impose conformity; they
seek cohesiveness through interdependence and mutual trust; and they attempt to brainwash
individual members with their particular ideology. According to Harry C. Holloway, M.D.,
and Ann E. Norwood, M.D. (1997:417), the joining process for taking on the beliefs, codes,
and cult of the terrorist group "involves an interaction between the psychological
structure of the terrorist's personality and the ideological factors, group process,
structural organization of the terrorist group and cell, and the sociocultural milieu of
the group."
Citing Knutson, Ehud Sprinzak (1990:79), an American-educated Israeli political
scientist, notes: "It appears that, as radicalization deepens, the collective group
identity takes over much of the individual identity of the members; and, at the terrorist
stage, the group identity reaches its peak." This group identity becomes of paramount
importance. As Post (1990:38) explains: "Terrorists whose only sense of significance
comes from being terrorists cannot be forced to give up terrorism, for to do so would be
to lose their very reason for being." The terrorist group displays the
characteristics of Groupthink (see Glossary), as described by I. Janis (1972). Among the
characteristics that Janis ascribes to groups demonstrating Groupthink are illusions of
invulnerability leading to excessive optimism and excessive risk taking, presumptions of
the group's morality, one-dimensional perceptions of the enemy as evil, and intolerance of
challenges by a group member to shared key beliefs.
Some important principles of group dynamics among legally operating groups can also be
usefully applied to the analysis of terrorist group dynamics. One generally accepted
principle, as demonstrated by W. Bion (1961), is that individual judgment and behavior are
strongly influenced by the powerful forces of group dynamics. Every group, according to
Bion, has two opposing forces--a rare tendency to act in a fully cooperative,
goal-directed, conflict-free manner to accomplish its stated purposes, and a stronger
tendency to sabotage the stated goals. The latter tendency results in a group that defines
itself in relation to the outside world and acts as if the only way it can survive is by
fighting against or fleeing from the perceived enemy; a group that looks for direction to
an omnipotent leader, to whom they subordinate their own independent judgment and act as
if they do not have minds of their own; and a group that acts as if the group will bring
forth a messiah who will rescue them and create a better world. Post believes that the
terrorist group is the apotheosis of the sabotage tendency, regularly exhibiting all three
of these symptoms.
Both structure and social origin need to be examined in any assessment of terrorist
group dynamics. In Post's (1987) view, structural analysis in particular requires
identification of the locus of power. In the autonomous terrorist action cell, the cell
leader is within the cell, a situation that tends to promote tension. In contrast, the
action cells of a terrorist group with a well-differentiated structure are organized
within columns, thereby allowing policy decisions to be developed outside the cells.
Post found that group psychology provides more insights into the ways of terrorists
than individual psychology does. After concluding, unconvincingly, that there is no
terrorist mindset, he turned his attention to studying the family backgrounds of
terrorists. He found that the group dynamics of nationalist-separatist groups and
anarchic-ideological groups differ significantly. Members of nationalist-separatist groups
are often known in their communities and maintain relationships with friends and family
outside the terrorist group, moving into and out of the community with relative ease. In
contrast, members of anarchic-ideological groups have irrevocably severed ties with family
and community and lack their support. As a result, the terrorist group is the only source
of information and security, a situation that produces pressure to conform and to commit
acts of terrorism.
Pressures to Conform
Peer pressure, group solidarity, and the psychology of group dynamics help to pressure
an individual member to remain in the terrorist group. According to Post (1986),
terrorists tend to submerge their own identities into the group, resulting in a kind of
"group mind" and group moral code that requires unquestioned obedience to the
group. As Crenshaw (1985) has observed, "The group, as selector and interpreter of
ideology, is central." Group cohesion increases or decreases depending on the degree
of outside danger facing the group.
The need to belong to a group motivates most terrorists who are followers to join a
terrorist group. Behavior among terrorists is similar, in Post's analysis, because of this
need by alienated individuals to belong. For the new recruit, the terrorist group becomes
a substitute family, and the group's leaders become substitute parents. An implied
corollary of Post's observation that a key motivation for membership in a terrorist group
is the sense of belonging and the fraternity of like-minded individuals is the assumption
that there must be considerable apprehension among members that the group could be
disbanded. As the group comes under attack from security forces, the tendency would be for
the group to become more cohesive.
A member with wavering commitment who attempts to question group decisions or ideology
or to quit under outside pressure against the group would likely face very serious
sanctions. Terrorist groups are known to retaliate violently against members who seek to
drop out. In 1972, when half of the 30-member Rengo Sekigun (Red Army) terrorist group,
which became known as the JRA, objected to the group's strategy, the dissenters, who
included a pregnant woman who was thought to be "too bourgeois," were tied to
stakes in the northern mountains of Japan, whipped with wires, and left to die of
exposure. By most accounts, the decision to join a terrorist group or, for that matter, a
terrorist cult like Aum Shinrikyo, is often an irrevocable one.
Pressures to Commit Acts of Violence
Post (1990:35) argues that "individuals become terrorists in order to join
terrorist groups and commit acts of terrorism." Joining a terrorist group gives them
a sense of "revolutionary heroism" and self-importance that they previously
lacked as individuals. Consequently, a leader who is action-oriented is likely to have a
stronger position within the group than one who advocates prudence and moderation. Thomas
Strentz (1981:89) has pointed out that terrorist groups that operate against democracies
often have a field commander who he calls an "opportunist," that is, an
activist, usually a male, whose criminal activity predates his political involvement.
Strentz applies the psychological classification of the antisocial personality, also known
as a sociopath or psychopath, to the life-style of this type of action-oriented
individual. His examples of this personality type include Andreas Baader and Hans Joachim
Klein of the Baader-Meinhof Gang and Akira Nihei of the JRA. Although the opportunist is
not mentally ill, Strentz explains, he "is oblivious to the needs of others and
unencumbered by the capacity to feel guilt or empathy." By most accounts, Baader was
unpleasant, constantly abusive toward other members of the group, ill-read, and an
action-oriented individual with a criminal past. Often recruited by the group's leader,
the opportunist may eventually seek to take over the group, giving rise to increasing
tensions between him and the leader. Often the leader will manipulate the opportunist by
allowing him the fantasy of leading the group.
On the basis of his observation of underground resistance groups during World War II,
J.K. Zawodny (1978) concluded that the primary determinant of underground group decision
making is not the external reality but the psychological climate within the group. For
action-oriented terrorists, inaction is extremely stressful. For action-oriented members,
if the group is not taking action then there is no justification for the group. Action
relieves stress by reaffirming to these members that they have a purpose. Thus, in
Zawodny's analysis, a terrorist group needs to commit acts of terrorism in order to
justify its existence.
Other terrorists may feel that their personal honor depends on the degree of violence
that they carry out against the enemy. In 1970 Black September's Salah Khalef ("Abu
Iyad") was captured by the Jordanians and then released after he appealed to his
comrades to stop fighting and to lay down their arms. Dobson (1975:52) reports that,
according to the Jordanians, Abu Iyad "was subjected to such ridicule by the
guerrillas who had fought on that he reacted by turning from moderation to the utmost
violence."
Pearlstein points out that other examples of the political terrorist's
self-justification of his or her terrorist actions include the terrorist's taking credit
for a given terrorist act and forewarning of terrorist acts to come. By taking credit for
an act of terrorism, the terrorist or terrorist group not only advertises the group's
cause but also communicates a rhetorical self-justification of the terrorist act and the
cause for which it was perpetrated. By threatening future terrorism, the terrorist or
terrorist group in effect absolves itself of responsibility for any casualties that may
result.
Terrorist Rationalization of Violence
Living underground, terrorists gradually become divorced from reality, engaging in what
Ferracuti (1982) has described as a "fantasy war." The stresses that accompany
their underground, covert lives as terrorists may also have adverse social and
psychological consequences for them. Thus, as Taylor (1988:93) points out, although
"mental illness may not be a particularly helpful way of conceptualizing terrorism,
the acts of terrorism and membership in a terrorist organization may well have
implications for the terrorist's mental health."
Albert Bandura (1990) has described four techniques of moral disengagement that a
terrorist group can use to insulate itself from the human consequences of its actions.
First, by using moral justification terrorists may imagine themselves as the saviors of a
constituency threatened by a great evil. For example, Donatella della Porta (1992:286),
who interviewed members of left-wing militant groups in Italy and Germany, observed that
the militants "began to perceive themselves as members of a heroic community of
generous people fighting a war against 'evil.'"
Second, through the technique of displacement of responsibility onto the leader or
other members of the group, terrorists portray themselves as functionaries who are merely
following their leader's orders. Conversely, the terrorist may blame other members of the
group. Groups that are organized into cells and columns may be more capable of carrying
out ruthless operations because of the potential for displacement of responsibility. Della
Porta's interviews with left-wing militants suggest that the more compartmentalized a
group is the more it begins to lose touch with reality, including the actual impact of its
own actions. Other manifestations of this displacement technique include accusations made
by Asahara, the leader of Aum Shinrikyo, that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) used
chemical agents against him and the Japanese population.
A third technique is to minimize or ignore the actual suffering of the victims. As
Bonnie Cordes (1987) points out, terrorists are able to insulate themselves from moral
anxieties provoked by the results of their hit-and-run attacks, such as the use of time
bombs, by usually not having to witness first-hand the carnage resulting from them, and by
concerning themselves with the reactions of the authorities rather than with civilian
casualties. Nevertheless, she notes that "Debates over the justification of violence,
the types of targets, and the issue of indiscriminate versus discriminate killing are
endemic to a terrorist group." Often, these internal debates result in schisms.
The fourth technique of moral disengagement described by Bandura is to dehumanize
victims or, in the case of Islamist groups, to refer to them as "the infidel."
Italian and German militants justified violence by depersonalizing their victims as
"tools of the system," "pigs," or "watch dogs." Psychologist
Frederick Hacker (1996:162) points out that terrorists transform their victims into mere
objects, for "terroristic thinking and practices reduce individuals to the status of
puppets." Cordes, too, notes the role reversal played by terrorists in characterizing
the enemy as the conspirator and oppressor and accusing it of state terrorism, while
referring to themselves as "freedom fighters" or "revolutionaries." As
Cordes explains, "Renaming themselves, their actions, their victims and their enemies
accords the terrorist respectability."
By using semantics to rationalize their terrorist violence, however, terrorists may
create their own self-destructive psychological tensions. As David C. Rapoport (1971:42)
explains:
All terrorists must deny the relevance of guilt and innocence, but in doing so they
create an unbearable tension in their own souls, for they are in effect saying that a
person is not a person. It is no accident that left-wing terrorists constantly speak of a
"pig-society," by convincing themselves that they are confronting animals they
hope to stay the remorse which the slaughter of the innocent necessarily generates.
Expanding on this rationalization of guilt, D. Guttman (1979:525) argues that "The
terrorist asserts that he loves only the socially redeeming qualities of his murderous
act, not the act itself." By this logic, the conscience of the terrorist is turned
against those who oppose his violent ways, not against himself. Thus, in Guttman's
analysis, the terrorist has projected his guilt outward. In order to absolve his own
guilt, the terrorist must claim that under the circumstances he has no choice but to do
what he must do. Although other options actually are open to the terrorist, Guttman
believes that the liberal audience legitimizes the terrorist by accepting this
rationalization of murder.
Some terrorists, however, have been trained or brainwashed enough not to feel any
remorse, until confronted with the consequences of their actions. When journalist Eileen
MacDonald asked a female ETA commando, "Amaia," how she felt when she heard that
her bombs had been successful, she replied, after first denying being responsible for
killing anyone: "Satisfaction. The bastards, they deserved it. Yes, I planted bombs
that killed people." However, MacDonald felt that Amaia, who had joined the military
wing at age 18, had never before questioned the consequences of her actions, and
MacDonald's intuition was confirmed as Amaia's mood shifted from bravado to despondency,
as she buried her head in her arms, and then groaned: "Oh, God, this is getting
hard," and lamented that she had not prepared herself for the interview.
When Kim Hyun Hee (1993:104), the bomber of Korean Air Flight 858, activated the bomb,
she had no moral qualms. "At that moment," she writes, "I felt no guilt or
remorse at what I was doing; I thought only of completing the mission and not letting my
country down." It was not until her 1988 trial, which resulted in a death
sentence--she was pardoned a year later because she had been brainwashed--that she felt
any remorse. "But being made to confront the victims' grieving families here in this
courtroom," she writes, "I finally began to feel, deep down, the sheer horror of
the atrocity I'd committed." One related characteristic of Kim, as told by one of her
South Korean minders to McDonald, is that she had not shown any emotion whatsoever to
anyone in the two years she (the minder) had known her.
The Terrorist's Ideological or Religious Perception
Terrorists do not perceive the world as members of governments or civil society do.
Their belief systems help to determine their strategies and how they react to government
policies. As Martha Crenshaw (1988:12) has observed, "The actions of terrorist
organizations are based on a subjective interpretation of the world rather than objective
reality."The variables from which their belief systems are formed include their
political and social environments, cultural traditions, and the internal dynamics of their
clandestine groups. Their convictions may seem irrational or delusional to society in
general, but the terrorists may nevertheless act rationally in their commitment to acting
on their convictions.
According to cognitive theory, an individual's mental activities (perception, memory,
and reasoning) are important determinants of behavior. Cognition is an important concept
in psychology, for it is the general process by which individuals come to know about and
make sense of the world. Terrorists view the world within the narrow lens of their own
ideology, whether it be Marxism-Leninism, anarchism, nationalism, Islamic fundamentalism
(see Glossary), or some other ideology. Most researchers agree that terrorists generally
do not regard themselves as terrorists but rather as soldiers, liberators, martyrs, and
legitimate fighters for noble social causes. Those terrorists who recognize that their
actions are terroristic are so committed to their cause that they do not really care how
they are viewed in the outside world. Others may be just as committed, but loathe to be
identified as terrorists as opposed to freedom fighters or national liberators.
Kristen Renwick Monroe and Lina Haddad Kreidie (1997) have found perspective--the idea
that we all have a view of the world, a view of ourselves, a view of others, and a view of
ourselves in relation to others--to be a very useful tool in understanding fundamentalism,
for example. Their underlying hypothesis is that the perspectives of fundamentalists
resemble one another and that they differ in significant and consistent ways from the
perspectives of nonfundamentalists. Monroe and Kreidie conclude that "fundamentalists
see themselves not as individuals but rather as symbols of Islam." They argue that it
is a mistake for Western policymakers to treat Islamic fundamentalists as rational actors
and dismiss them as irrational when they do not act as predicted by traditional
cost/benefit models. "Islamic fundamentalism should not be dealt with simply as
another set of political values that can be compromised or negotiated, or even as a system
of beliefs or ideology--such as socialism or communism--in which traditional liberal
democratic modes of political discourse and interaction are recognized." They point
out that "Islamic fundamentalism taps into a quite different political consciousness,
one in which religious identity sets and determines the range of options open to the
fundamentalist. It extends to all areas of life and respects no separation between the
private and the political."
Existing works that attempt to explain religious fundamentalism often rely on
modernization theory and point to a crisis of identity, explaining religious
fundamentalism as an antidote to the dislocations resulting from rapid change, or
modernization. Islamic fundamentalism in particular is often explained as a defense
against threats posed by modernization to a religious group's traditional identity.
Rejecting the idea of fundamentalism as pathology, rational choice theorists point to
unequal socioeconomic development as the basic reason for the discontent and alienation
these individuals experience. Caught between an Islamic culture that provides moral values
and spiritual satisfaction and a modernizing Western culture that provides access to
material improvement, many Muslims find an answer to resulting anxiety, alienation, and
disorientation through an absolute dedication to an Islamic way of life. Accordingly, the
Islamic fundamentalist is commonly depicted as an acutely alienated individual, with
dogmatic and rigid beliefs and an inferiority complex, and as idealistic and devoted to an
austere lifestyle filled with struggle and sacrifice.
In the 1990s, however, empirical studies of Islamic groups have questioned this view.
V. J. Hoffman-Ladd, for example, suggests that fundamentalists are not necessarily
ignorant and downtrodden, according to the stereotype, but frequently students and
university graduates in the physical sciences, although often students with rural or
traditionally religious backgrounds. In his view, fundamentalism is more of a revolt of
young people caught between a traditional past and a secular Western education. R. Euben
and Bernard Lewis argue separately that there is a cognitive collision between Western and
fundamentalist worldviews. Focusing on Sunni fundamentalists, Euben argues that their
goals are perceived not as self-interests but rather as moral imperatives, and that their
worldviews differ in critical ways from Western worldviews.
By having moral imperatives as their goals, the fundamentalist groups perceive the
world through the distorting lens of their religious beliefs. Although the perceptions of
the secular Arab terrorist groups are not so clouded by religious beliefs, these groups
have their own ideological imperatives that distort their ability to see the world with a
reasonable amount of objectivity. As a result, their perception of the world is as
distorted as that of the fundamentalists. Consequently, the secular groups are just as
likely to misjudge political, economic, and social realities as are the fundamentalist
groups. For example, Harold M. Cubert argues that the Popular Front for the Liberation of
Palestine (PFLP), guided by Marxist economic ideology, has misjudged the reasons for
popular hostility in the Middle East against the West, "for such hostility, where it
exists, is generally in response to the threat which Western culture is said to pose to
Islamic values in the region rather than the alleged economic exploitation of the region's
inhabitants." This trend has made the PFLP's appeals for class warfare irrelevant,
whereas calls by Islamist groups for preserving the region's cultural and religious
identity have been well received, at least among the nonsecular sectors of the population.
TERRORIST PROFILING
Hazards of Terrorist Profiling
The isolation of attributes or traits shared by terrorists is a formidable task because
there are probably as many variations among terrorists as there may be similarities.
Efforts by scholars to create a profile of a "typical" terrorist have had mixed
success, if any, and the assumption that there is such a profile has not been proven. Post
(1985:103) note that "behavioral scientists attempting to understand the psychology
of individuals drawn to this violent political behavior have not succeeded in identifying
a unique "terrorist mindset." People who have joined terrorist groups have come
from a wide range of cultures, nationalities, and ideological causes, all strata of
society, and diverse professions. Their personalities and characteristics are as diverse
as those of people in the general population. There seems to be general agreement among
psychologists that there is no particular psychological attribute that can be used to
describe the terrorist or any "personality" that is distinctive of terrorists.
Some terrorism experts are skeptical about terrorist profiling. For example, Laqueur
(1997:129) holds that the search for a "terrorist personality" is a fruitless
one. Paul Wilkinson (1997:193) maintains that "We already know enough about terrorist
behavior to discount the crude hypothesis of a 'terrorist personality' or 'phenotype.'
The U.S. Secret Service once watched for people who fit the popular profile of
dangerousness--the lunatic, the loner, the threatener, the hater. That profile, however,
was shattered by the assassins themselves. In interviews with assassins in prisons,
hospitals, and homes, the Secret Service learned an important lesson--to discard
stereotypes. Killers are not necessarily mentally ill, socially isolated, or even male.
Now the Secret Service looks for patterns of motive and behavior in potential presidential
assassins. The same research methodology applies to potential terrorists. Assassins, like
terrorists in general, use common techniques. For example, the terrorist would not
necessarily threaten to assassinate a politician in advance, for to do so would make it
more difficult to carry out the deed. In its detailed study of 83 people who tried to kill
a public official or a celebrity in the United States in the past 50 years, the Secret
Service found that not one assassin had made a threat. Imprisoned assassins told the
Secret Service that a threat would keep them from succeeding, so why would they threaten?
This was the second important lesson learned from the study.
The diversity of terrorist groups, each with members of widely divergent national and
sociocultural backgrounds, contexts, and goals, underscores the hazards of making
generalizations and developing a profile of members of individual groups or of terrorists
in general. Post cautions that efforts to provide an overall "terrorist profile"
are misleading: "There are nearly as many variants of personality who become involved
in terrorist pursuits as there are variants of personality."
Many theories are based on the assumption that the terrorist has an
"abnormal" personality with clearly identifiable character traits that can be
explained adequately with insights from psychology and psychiatry. Based on his work with
various West German terrorists, one German psychologist, L. Sullwold (1981), divided
terrorist leaders into two broad classes of personality traits: the extrovert and the
hostile neurotic, or one having the syndrome of neurotic hostility. Extroverts are
unstable, uninhibited, inconsiderate, self-interested, and unemotional--thrill seekers
with little regard for the consequences of their actions. Hostile neurotics share many
features of the paranoid personality--they are intolerant of criticism, suspicious,
aggressive, and defensive, as well as extremely sensitive to external hostility. Sullwold
also distinguishes between leaders and followers, in that leaders are more likely to be
people who combine a lack of scruples with extreme self-assurance; they often lead by
frightening or pressuring their followers.
Some researchers have created psychological profiles of terrorists by using data
provided by former terrorists who became informants, changed their political allegiance,
or were captured. Franco Ferracuti conducted one such study of the Red Brigade terrorists
in Italy. He analyzed the career and personalities of arrested terrorists by collecting
information on demographic variables and by applying psychological tests to construct a
typology of terrorists. Like Post, Ferracuti also found, for the most part, the absence of
psychopathology (see Glossary), and he observed similar personality characteristics, that
is, a basic division between extroverts and hostile neurotics. By reading and studying
terrorist literature, such as group communiqués, news media interviews, and memoirs of
former members, it would also be possible to ascertain certain vulnerabilities within the
group by pinpointing its sensitivities, internal disagreements, and moral weaknesses. This
kind of information would assist in developing a psychological profile of the group.
Post points out that the social dynamics of the "anarchic-ideologues," such
as the RAF, differ strikingly from the "nationalist-separatists," such as ETA or
the Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia (ASALA). From studies of
terrorists, Post (1990) has observed indications that terrorists, such as those of the
ETA, who pursue a conservative goal, such as freedom for the Basque people, have been
reared in more traditional, intact, conservative families, whereas anarchistic and
left-wing terrorists (such as members of the Meinhof Gang/RAF) come from less
conventional, nonintact families. In developing this dichotomy between separatists and
anarchists, Post draws on Robert Clark's studies of the social backgrounds of the
separatist terrorists of the ETA. Clark also found that ETA terrorists are not alienated
and psychologically distressed. Rather, they are psychologically healthy people who are
strongly supported by their families and ethnic community.
Post bases his observations of anarchists on a broad-cased investigation of the social
background and psychology of 250 terrorists (227 left-wing and 23 right-wing) conducted by
a consortium of West German social scientists under the sponsorship of the Ministry of
Interior and published in four volumes in 1981-84. According to these West German analyses
of RAF and June Second Movement terrorists, some 25 percent of the leftist terrorists had
lost one or both parents by the age of fourteen and 79 percent reported severe conflict
with other people, especially with parents (33 percent). The German authors conclude in
general that the 250 terrorist lives demonstrated a pattern of failure both educationally
and vocationally. Post concludes that "nationalist-separatist" terrorists such
as the ETA are loyal to parents who are disloyal to their regime, whereas
"anarchic-ideologues" are disloyal to their parents' generation, which is
identified with the establishment.
Sociological Characteristics of Terrorists in the Cold War Period
A Basic Profile
Profiles of terrorists have included a profile constructed by Charles A. Russell and
Bowman H. Miller (1977), which has been widely mentioned in terrorism-related studies,
despite its limitations, and another study that involved systematically analyzing
biographical and social data on about 250 German terrorists, both left-wing and
right-right. Russell and Bowman attempt to draw a sociological portrait or profile of the
modern urban terrorist based on a compilation and analysis of more than 350 individual
terrorist cadres and leaders from Argentinian, Brazilian, German, Iranian, Irish, Italian,
Japanese, Palestinian, Spanish, Turkish, and Uruguayan terrorist groups active during the
1966-76 period, the first decade of the contemporary terrorist era. Russell and Bowman
(1977:31) conclude:
In summation, one can draw a general composite picture into which fit the great
majority of those terrorists from the eighteen urban guerrilla groups examined here. To
this point, they have been largely single males aged 22 to 24...who have some university
education, if not a college degree. The female terrorists, except for the West German
groups and an occasional leading figure in the JRA and PFLP, are preoccupied with support
rather than operational roles....Whether having turned to terrorism as a university
student or only later, most were provided an anarchist or Marxist world view, as well as
recruited into terrorist operations while in the university.
Russell and Miller's profile tends to substantiate some widely reported sociological
characteristics of terrorists in the 1970s, such as the youth of most terrorists. Of
particular interest is their finding that urban terrorists have largely urban origins and
that many terrorist cadres have predominantly middle-class or even upper-class backgrounds
and are well educated, with many having university degrees. However, like most such
profiles that are based largely on secondary sources, such as newspaper articles and
academic studies, the Russell and Miller profile cannot be regarded as definitive.
Furthermore, their methodological approach lacks validity. It is fallacious to assume that
one can compare characteristics of members of numerous terrorist groups in various regions
of the world and then make generalizations about these traits. For example, the authors'
conclusion that terrorists are largely single young males from urban, middle-class or
upper-middle-class backgrounds with some university education would not accurately
describe many members of terrorist groups operating in the 1990s. The rank and file of
Latin American groups such as the FARC and Shining Path, Middle Eastern groups such as the
Armed Islamic Group (Group Islamique Armé--GIA), Hamas, and Hizballah, Asian groups such
as the LTTE, and Irish groups such as the IRA are poorly educated. Although the Russell
and Miller profile is dated, it can still be used as a basic guide for making some
generalizations about typical personal attributes of terrorists, in combination with other
information.
Edgar O'Ballance (1979) suggests the following essential characteristics of the
"successful" terrorist: dedication, including absolute obedience to the leader
of the movement; personal bravery; a lack of feelings of pity or remorse even though
victims are likely to include innocent men, women, and children; a fairly high standard of
intelligence, for a terrorist must collect and analyze information, devise and implement
complex plans, and evade police and security forces; a fairly high degree of
sophistication, in order to be able to blend into the first-class section on airliners,
stay at first-class hotels, and mix inconspicuously with the international executive set;
and be a reasonably good educational background and possession of a fair share of general
knowledge (a university degree is almost mandatory), including being able to speak English
as well as one other major language.
Increasingly, terrorist groups are recruiting members who possess a high degree of
intellectualism and idealism, are highly educated, and are well trained in a legitimate
profession. However, this may not necessarily be the case with the younger, lower ranks of
large guerrilla/terrorist organizations in less-developed countries, such as the FARC, the
PKK, the LTTE, and Arab groups, as well as with some of the leaders of these groups.
Age
Russell and Miller found that the average age of an active terrorist member (as opposed
to a leader) was between 22 and 25, except for Palestinian, German, and Japanese
terrorists, who were between 20 and 25 years old. Another source explains that the first
generation of RAF terrorists went underground at approximately 22 to 23 years of age, and
that the average age shifted to 28 to 30 years for second-generation terrorists (June
Second Movement). In summarizing the literature about international terrorists in the
1980s, Taylor (1988) characterizes their demography as being in their early twenties and
unmarried, but he notes that there is considerable variability from group to group. Age
trends for members of many terrorist groups were dropping in the 1980s, with various
groups, such as the LTTE, having many members in the 16- to 17 year-old age level and even
members who were preteens. Laqueur notes that Arab and Iranian groups tend to use boys
aged 14 to 15 for dangerous missions, in part because they are less likely to question
instructions and in part because they are less likely to attract attention.
In many countries wracked by ethnic, political, or religious violence in the developing
world, such as Algeria, Colombia, and Sri Lanka, new members of terrorist organizations
are recruited at younger and younger ages. Adolescents and preteens in these countries are
often receptive to terrorist recruitment because they have witnessed killings first-hand
and thus see violence as the only way to deal with grievances and problems.
In general, terrorist leaders tend to be much older. Brazil's Carlos Marighella,
considered to be the leading theoretician of urban terrorism, was 58 at the time of his
violent death on November 6, 1969. Mario Santucho, leader of Argentina's People's
Revolutionary Army (ERP), was 40 at the time of his violent death in July 1976. Raúl
Sendic, leader of the Uruguayan Tupamaros, was 42 when his group began operating in the
late 1960s. Renato Curcio, leader of the Italian Red Brigades, was 35 at the time of his
arrest in early 1976. Leaders of the Baader-Meinhof Gang were in their 30s or 40s.
Palestinian terrorist leaders are often in their 40s or 50s.
Educational, Occupational, and Socioeconomic Background
Terrorists in general have more than average education, and very few Western terrorists
are uneducated or illiterate. Russell and Miller found that about two-thirds of terrorist
group members had some form of university training. The occupations of terrorist recruits
have varied widely, and there does not appear to be any occupation in particular that
produces terrorists, other than the ranks of the unemployed and students. Between 50 and
70 percent of the younger members of Latin American urban terrorist groups were students.
The Free University of Berlin was a particularly fertile recruiting ground for Germany's
June Second Movement and Baader-Meinhof Gang.
Highly educated recruits were normally given leadership positions, whether at the cell
level or national level. The occupations of terrorist leaders have likewise varied. Older
members and leaders frequently were professionals such as doctors, bankers, lawyers,
engineers, journalists, university professors, and mid-level government executives.
Marighella was a politician and former congressman. The PFLP's George Habash was a medical
doctor. The PLO's Yasir Arafat was a graduate engineer. Mario Santucho was an economist.
Raúl Sendic and the Baader-Meinhof's Horst Mahler were lawyers. Urika Meinhof was a
journalist. The RAF and Red Brigades were composed almost exclusively of disenchanted
intellectuals.
It may be somewhat misleading to regard terrorists in general as former professionals.
Many terrorists who have been able to remain anonymous probably continue to practice their
legitimate professions and moonlight as terrorists only when they receive instructions to
carry out a mission. This may be more true about separatist organizations, such as the ETA
and IRA, whose members are integrated into their communities, than about members of
anarchist groups, such as the former Baader-Meinhof Gang, who are more likely to be on
wanted posters, on the run, and too stressed to be able to function in a normal day-time
job. In response to police infiltration, the ETA, for example, instituted a system of
"sleeping commandos." These passive ETA members, both men and women, lead
seemingly normal lives, with regular jobs, but after work they are trained for specific
ETA missions. Usually unaware of each others' real identities, they receive coded
instructions from an anonymous source. After carrying out their assigned actions, they
resume their normal lives. Whereas terrorism for anarchistic groups such as the RAF and
Red Brigades was a full-time profession, young ETA members serve an average of only three
years before they are rotated back into the mainstream of society.
Russell and Miller found that more than two-thirds of the terrorists surveyed came from
middle-class or even upper-class backgrounds. With the main exception of large
guerrilla/terrorist organizations such as the FARC, the PKK, the LTTE, and the Palestinian
or Islamic fundamentalist terrorist organizations, terrorists come from middle-class
families. European and Japanese terrorists are more likely the products of affluence and
higher education than of poverty. For example, the RAF and Red Brigades were composed
almost exclusively of middle-class dropouts, and most JRA members were from middle-class
families and were university dropouts. Well-off young people, particularly in the United
States, West Europe, and Japan, have been attracted to political radicalism out of a
profound sense of guilt over the plight of the world's largely poor population. The
backgrounds of the Baader-Meinhof Gang's members illustrate this in particular: Suzanne
Albrecht, daughter of a wealthy maritime lawyer; Baader, the son of an historian; Meinhof,
the daughter of an art historian; Horst Mahler, the son of a dentist; Holger Meins, the
son of a business executive. According to Russell and Miller, about 80 percent of the
Baader-Meinhof Gang had university experience.
Major exceptions to the middle- and upper-class origins of terrorist groups in general
include three large organizations examined in this study--the FARC, the LTTE, and the
PKK--as well as the paramilitary groups in Northern Ireland. Both the memberships of the
Protestant groups, such as the Ulster Volunteer Force, and the Catholic groups, such as
the Official IRA, the Provisional IRA, and the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA), are
almost all drawn from the working class. These paramilitary groups are also different in
that their members normally do not have any university education. Although Latin America
has been an exception, terrorists in much of the developing world tend to be drawn from
the lower sections of society. The rank and file of Arab terrorist organizations include
substantial numbers of poor people, many of them homeless refugees. Arab terrorist leaders
are almost all from the middle and upper classes.
General Traits
Terrorists are generally people who feel alienated from society and have a grievance or
regard themselves as victims of an injustice. Many are dropouts. They are devoted to their
political or religious cause and do not regard their violent actions as criminal. They are
loyal to each other but will deal with a disloyal member more harshly than with the enemy.
They are people with cunning, skill, and initiative, as well as ruthlessness. In order to
be initiated into the group, the new recruit may be expected to perform an armed robbery
or murder. They show no fear, pity, or remorse. The sophistication of the terrorist will
vary depending on the significance and context of the terrorist action. The Colombian
hostage-takers who infiltrated an embassy party and the Palace of Justice, for example,
were far more sophisticated than would be, for example, Punjab terrorists who gun down bus
passengers. Terrorists have the ability to use a variety of weapons, vehicles, and
communications equipment and are familiar with their physical environment, whether it be a
747 jumbo jet or a national courthouse. A terrorist will rarely operate by himself/herself
or in large groups, unless the operation requires taking over a large building, for
example.
Members of Right-wing terrorist groups in France and Germany, as elsewhere, generally
tend to be young, relatively uneducated members of the lower classes (see Table 1,
Appendix). Ferracuti and F. Bruno (1981:209) list nine psychological traits common to
right-wing terrorists: ambivalence toward authority; poor and defective insight; adherence
to conventional behavioral patterns; emotional detachment from the consequences of their
actions; disturbances in sexual identity with role uncertainties; superstition, magic, and
stereotyped thinking; etero- and auto-destructiveness; low-level educational reference
patterns; and perception of weapons as fetishes and adherence to violent subcultural
norms. These traits make up what Ferracuti and Bruno call an "authoritarian-extremist
personality." They conclude that right-wing terrorism may be more dangerous than
left-wing terrorism because "in right-wing terrorism, the individuals are frequently
psychopathological and the ideology is empty: ideology is outside reality, and the
terrorists are both more normal and more fanatical."
Marital Status
In the past, most terrorists have been unmarried. Russell and Miller found that,
according to arrest statistics, more than 75 to 80 percent of terrorists in the various
regions in the late 1970s were single. Encumbering family responsibilities are generally
precluded by requirements for mobility, flexibility, initiative, security, and total
dedication to a revolutionary cause. Roughly 20 percent of foreign terrorist group
memberships apparently consisted of married couples, if Russell and Miller's figure on
single terrorists was accurate.
Physical Appearance
Terrorists are healthy and strong but generally undistinguished in appearance and
manner. The physical fitness of some may be enhanced by having had extensive commando
training. They tend to be of medium height and build to blend easily into crowds. They
tend not to have abnormal physiognomy and peculiar features, genetic or acquired, that
would facilitate their identification. Their dress and hair styles are inconspicuous. In
addition to their normal appearance, they talk and behave like normal people. They may
even be well dressed if, for example, they need to be in the first-class section of an
airliner targeted for hijacking. They may resort to disguise or plastic surgery depending
on whether they are on police wanted posters.
If a terrorist's face is not known, it is doubtful that a suspected terrorist can be
singled out of a crowd only on the basis of physical features. Unlike the yakuza
(mobsters) in Japan, terrorists generally do not have distinguishing physical features
such as colorful tatoos. For example, author Christopher Dobson (1975) describes the Black
September's Salah Khalef ("Abu Iyad") as "of medium height and sturdy
build, undistinguished in a crowd." When Dobson, hoping for an interview, was
introduced to him in Cairo in the early 1970s Abu Iyad made "so little an
impression" during the brief encounter that Dobson did not realize until later that
he had already met Israel's most-wanted terrorist. Another example is Imad Mughniyah, head
of Hizballah's special operations, who is described by Hala Jaber (1997:120), as
"someone you would pass in the street without even noticing or giving a second
glance."
Origin: Rural or Urban
Guerrilla/terrorist organizations have tended to recruit members from the areas where
they are expected to operate because knowing the area of operation is a basic principle of
urban terrorism and guerrilla warfare. According to Russell and Miller, about 90 percent
of the Argentine ERP and Montoneros came from the Greater Buenos Aires area. Most of
Marighella's followers came from Recife, Rio de Janeiro, Santos, and São Paulo. More than
70 percent of the Tupamaros were natives of Montevideo. Most German and Italian terrorists
were from urban areas: the Germans from Hamburg and West Berlin; the Italians from Genoa,
Milan, and Rome.
Forces of National Liberation (FALN) did in El Salvador.
Gender
Males
Most terrorists are male. Well over 80 percent of terrorist operations in the 1966-76
period were directed, led, and executed by males. The number of arrested female terrorists
in Latin America suggested that female membership was less than 16 percent. The role of
women in Latin American groups such as the Tupamaros was limited to intelligence
collection, serving as couriers or nurses, maintaining safehouses, and so forth.
Females
Various terrorism specialists have noted that the number of women involved in terrorism
has greatly exceeded the number of women involved in crime. However, no statistics have
been offered to substantiate this assertion. Considering that the number of terrorist
actions perpetrated worldwide in any given year is probably minuscule in comparison with
the common crimes committed in the same period, it is not clear if the assertion is
correct. Nevertheless, it indeed seems as if more women are involved in terrorism than
actually are, perhaps because they tend to get more attention than women involved in
common crime.
Although Russell and Miller's profile is more of a sociological than a psychological
profile, some of their conclusions raise psychological issues, such as why women played a
more prominent role in left-wing terrorism in the 1966-76 period than in violent crime in
general. Russell and Miller's data suggest that the terrorists examined were largely
males, but the authors also note the secondary support role played by women in most
terrorist organizations, particularly the Uruguayan Tupamaros and several European groups.
For example, they point out that women constituted one-third of the personnel of the RAF
and June Second Movement, and that nearly 60 percent of the RAF and June Second Movement
who were at large in August 1976 were women.
Russell and Miller's contention that "urban terrorism remains a predominantly male
phenomenon," with women functioning mainly in a secondary support role, may
underestimate the active, operational role played by women in Latin American and West
European terrorist organizations in the 1970s and 1980s. Insurgent groups in Latin America
in the 1970s and 1980s reportedly included large percentages of female combatants: 30
percent of the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) combatants in Nicaragua by the
late 1970s; one-third of the combined forces of the Farabundo Martí National Liberation
Front (FMLN) in El Salvador; and one-half of the Shining Path terrorists in Peru. However,
because these percentages may have been inflated by the insurgent groups to impress
foreign feminist sympathizers, no firm conclusions can be drawn in the absence of reliable
statistical data.
Nevertheless, women have played prominent roles in numerous urban terrorist operations
in Latin America. For example, the second in command of the Sandinista takeover of
Nicaragua's National Palace in Managua, Nicaragua, in late August 1979 was Dora María
Téllez Argüello. Several female terrorists participated in the takeover of the Dominican
Embassy in Bogotá, Colombia, by the 19th of April Movement (M-19) in 1980, and
one of them played a major role in the hostage negotiations. The late Mélida Anaya Montes
("Ana María") served as second in command of the People's Liberation Forces
(Fuerzas Populares de Liberación--FPL) prior to her murder at age 54 by FPL rivals in
1983. Half of the 35 M-19 terrorists who raided Colombia's Palace of Justice on November
6, 1985, were women, and they were among the fiercest fighters.
Leftist terrorist groups or operations in general have frequently been led by women.
Many women joined German terrorist groups. Germany's Red Zora, a terrorist group active
between the late 1970s and 1987, recruited only women and perpetrated many terrorist
actions. In 1985 the RAF's 22 core activists included 13 women. In 1991 women formed about
50 percent of the RAF membership and about 80 percent of the group's supporters, according
to MacDonald. Of the eight individuals on Germany's "Wanted Terrorists" list in
1991, five were women. Of the 22 terrorists being hunted by German police that year, 13
were women. Infamous German female terrorist leaders have included Susanne Albrecht,
Gudrun Ensselin\Esslin, and Ulrike Meinhof of the Baader-Meinhof Gang. There are various
theories as to why German women have been so drawn to violent groups. One is that they are
more emancipated and liberated than women in other European countries. Another, as
suggested to Eileen MacDonald by Astrid Proll, an early member of the Baader-Meinhof Gang,
is that the anger of German women is part of a national guilt complex, the feeling that if
their mothers had had a voice in Hitler's time many of Hitler's atrocities would not have
happened.
Other noted foreign female terrorists have included Fusako Shigenobu of the JRA
(Shigenobu, 53, was reported in April 1997 to be with 14 other JRA members--two other
women and 12 men--training FARC guerrillas in terror tactics in the Urabá Region of
Colombia); Norma Ester Arostito, who cofounded the Argentine Montoneros and served as its
chief ideologist until her violent death in 1976; Margherita Cagol and Susana Ronconi of
the Red Brigades; Ellen Mary Margaret McKearney of the IRA; Norma Ester Arostito of the
Montoneros; and Geneveve Forest Tarat of the ETA, who played a key role in the spectacular
ETA-V bomb assassination of Premier Admiral Carrero Blanco on December 20, 1973, as well
as in the bombing of the Café Rolando in Madrid in which 11 people were killed and more
than 70 wounded on September 13, 1974. ETA members told journalist Eileen MacDonald that
ETA has always had female commandos and operators. Women make up about 10 percent of
imprisoned ETA members, so that may be roughly the percentage of women in ETA ranks.
Infamous female commandos have included Leila Khaled, a beautiful PFLP commando who
hijacked a TWA passenger plane on August 29, 1969, and then blew it up after evacuating
the passengers, without causing any casualties (see Leila Khaled, Appendix). One of the
first female terrorists of modern international terrorism, she probably inspired hundreds
of other angry young women around the world who admired the thrilling pictures of her in
newspapers and magazines worldwide showing her cradling a weapon, with her head demurely
covered. Another PFLP female hijacker, reportedly a Christian Iraqi, was sipping champagne
in the cocktail bar of a Japan Air Lines Jumbo jet on July 20, 1973, when the grenade that
she was carrying strapped to her waist exploded, killing her.
Women have also played a significant role in Italian terrorist groups. Leonard Weinberg
and William Lee Eubank (1987: 248-53) have been able to quantify that role by developing a
data file containing information on about 2,512 individuals who were arrested or wanted by
police for terrorism from January 1970 through June 1984. Of those people, 451, or 18
percent, were female. Of those females, fewer than 10 percent were affiliated with
neofascist groups (see Table 2, Appendix). The rest belonged to leftist terrorist groups,
particularly the Red Brigades (Brigate Rosse--BR), which had 215 female members. Weinberg
and Eubank found that the Italian women surveyed were represented at all levels of
terrorist groups: 33 (7 percent) played leadership roles and 298 (66 percent) were active
"regulars" who took part in terrorist actions. (see Table 3, Appendix). Weinberg
and Eubank found that before the women became involved in terrorism they tended to move
from small and medium-sized communities to big cities (see Table 4, Appendix). The largest
group of the women (35 percent) had been students before becoming terrorists, 20 percent
had been teachers, and 23 percent had held white-collar jobs as clerks, secretaries,
technicians, and nurses (see Table 5, Appendix). Only a few of the women belonged to
political parties or trade union organizations, whereas 80 (17 percent) belonged to
leftist extraparliamentary movements. Also noteworthy is the fact that 121 (27 percent)
were related by family to other terrorists. These researchers concluded that for many
women joining a terrorist group resulted from a small group or family decision.
Characteristics of Female Terrorists
Practicality, Coolness
German intelligence officials told Eileen MacDonald that "absolute
practicality...was particularly noticeable with women revolutionaries." By this
apparently was meant coolness under pressure. However, Germany's female terrorists, such
as those in the Baader-Meinhof Gang, have been described by a former member as "all
pretty male-dominated; I mean they had male characteristics." These included
interests in technical things, such as repairing cars, driving, accounting, and
organizing. For example, the RAF's Astrid Proll was a first-rate mechanic, Gudrun Ensslin
was in charge of the RAF's finances, and Ulrike Meinhof sought out apartments for the
group.
According to Christian Lochte, the Hamburg director of the Office for the Protection of
the Constitution, the most important qualities that a female member could bring to
terrorist groups, which are fairly unstable, were practicality and pragmatism: "In
wartime women are much more capable of keeping things together," Lochte told
MacDonald. "This is very important for a group of terrorists, for their dynamics.
Especially a group like the RAF, where there are a lot of quarrels about strategy, about
daily life. Women come to the forefront in such a group, because they are practical."
Galvin points out the tactical value of women in a terrorist group. An attack by a
female terrorist is normally less expected than one by a man. "A woman, trading on
the impression of being a mother, nonviolent, fragile, even victim like, can more easily
pass scrutiny by security forces...." There are numerous examples illustrating the
tactical surprise factor that can be achieved by female terrorists. A LTTE female suicide
commando was able to get close enough to Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi on May 21,
1991, to garland him with flowers and then set off her body bomb, killing him, herself,
and 17 others. Nobody suspected the attractive Miss Kim of carrying a bomb aboard a Korean
Air Flight 858. And Leila Khaled, dressed in elegant clothes and strapped with grenades,
was able to pass through various El Al security checks without arousing suspicion. Female
terrorists have also been used to draw male targets into a situation in which they could
be kidnapped or assassinated.
Dedication, Inner Strength, Ruthlessness
Lochte also considered female terrorists to be stronger, more dedicated, faster, and
more ruthless than male terrorists, as well as more capable of withstanding suffering
because "They have better nerves than men, and they can be both passive and active at
the same time." The head of the German counterterrorist squad told MacDonald that the
difference between the RAF men and women who had been caught after the fall of the Berlin
Wall was that the women had been far more reticent about giving information than the men,
and when the women did talk it was for reasons of guilt as opposed to getting a reduced
prison sentence, as in the case of their male comrades.
According to MacDonald, since the late 1960s, when women began replacing imprisoned or
interned male IRA members as active participants, IRA women have played an increasingly
important role in "frontline" actions against British troops and Protestant
paramilitary units, as well as in terrorist actions against the British public. As a
result, in the late 1960s the IRA merged its separate women's sections within the movement
into one IRA. MacDonald cites several notorious IRA women terrorists. They include Marion
Price, 19, and her sister (dubbed "the Sisters of Death"), who were part of the
IRA's 1973 bombing campaign in London. In the early 1970s, Dr. Rose Dugdale, daughter of a
wealthy English family, hijacked a helicopter and used it to try to bomb a police
barracks. In 1983 Anna Moore was sentenced to life imprisonment for her role in bombing a
Northern Ireland pub in which 17 were killed. Ella O'Dwyer and Martina Anderson, 23, a
former local beauty queen, received life sentences in 1986 for their part in the plot to
bomb London and 16 seaside resorts. Another such terrorist was Mairead Farrell, who was
shot dead by the SAS in Gibraltar in 1988. A year before her death, Farrell, who was known
for her strong feminist views, said in an interview that she was attracted to the IRA
because she was treated the same as "the lads." As of 1992, Evelyn Glenholmes
was a fugitive for her role in a series of London bombings.
MacDonald interviewed a few of these and a number of other female IRA terrorists, whom
she described as all ordinary, some more friendly than others. Most were unmarried
teenagers or in their early twenties when they became involved in IRA terrorism. None had
been recruited by a boyfriend. When asked why they joined, all responded with "How
could we not?" replies. They all shared a hatred for the British troops (particularly
their foul language and manners) and a total conviction that violence was justified. One
female IRA volunteer told MacDonald that "Everyone is treated the same. During
training, men and women are equally taught the use of explosives and weapons."
Single-Mindedness
Female terrorists can be far more dangerous than male terrorists because of their
ability to focus single-mindedly on the cause and the goal. Lochte noted that the case of
Susanne Albrecht demonstrated this total dedication to a cause, to the exclusion of all
else, even family ties and upbringing. The RAF's Suzanne Albrecht, daughter of a wealthy
maritime lawyer, set up a close family friend, Jurgen Ponto, one of West Germany's richest
and most powerful men and chairman of the Dresden Bank, for assassination in his home,
even though she later admitted to having experienced nothing but kindness and generosity
from him. Lochte told MacDonald that if Albrecht had been a man, she would have tried to
convince her RAF comrade to pick another target to kidnap. "Her attitude was,"
Lochte explained, "to achieve the goal, to go straight ahead without any
interruptions, any faltering. This attitude is not possible with men." (Albrecht,
however, reportedly was submitted to intense pressure by her comrades to exploit her
relationship with the banker, and the plan was only to kidnap him rather than kill him.)
After many years of observing German terrorists, Lochte concluded, in his comments to
MacDonald, that women would not hesitate to shoot at once if they were cornered. "For
anyone who loves his life," he told MacDonald, "it is a good idea to shoot the
women terrorists first." In his view, woman terrorists feel they need to show that
they can be even more ruthless than men.
Germany's neo-Nazi groups also have included female members, who have played major
roles, according to MacDonald. For example, Sibylle Vorderbrügge, 26, joined a notorious
neo-Nazi group in 1980 after becoming infatuated with its leader. She then became a
bomb-throwing terrorist expressly to please him. According to MacDonald, she was a good
example to Christian Lochte of how women become very dedicated to a cause, even more than
men. "One day she had never heard of the neo-Nazis, the next she was a
terrorist." Lochte commented, "One day she had no interest in the subject; the
next she was 100 percent terrorist; she became a fighter overnight."
Female Motivation for Terrorism
What motivates women to become terrorists? Galvin suggests that women, being more
idealistic than men, may be more impelled to perpetrate terrorist activities in response
to failure to achieve change or the experience of death or injury to a loved one. Galvin
also argues that the female terrorist enters into terrorism with different motivations and
expectations than the male terrorist. In contrast to men, who Galvin characterizes as
being enticed into terrorism by the promise of "power and glory," females embark
on terrorism "attracted by promises of a better life for their children and the
desire to meet people's needs that are not being met by an intractable
establishment." Considering that females are less likely than males to have early
experience with guns, terrorist membership is therefore a more active process for women
than for men because women have more to learn. In the view of Susana Ronconi, one of
Italy's most notorious and violent terrorists in the 1970s, the ability to commit violence
did not have anything to do with gender. Rather, one's personality, background, and
experience were far more important.
Companionship is another motivating factor in a woman's joining a terrorist group.
MacDonald points out that both Susanna Ronconi and Ulrike Meinhof "craved love,
comradeship, and emotional support" from their comrades.
Feminism has also been a motivating ideology for many female terrorists. Many of them
have come from societies in which women are repressed, such as Middle Eastern countries
and North Korea, or Catholic countries, such as in Latin America, Spain, Ireland, and
Italy. Even Germany was repressive for women when the Baader-Meinhof Gang emerged.
CONCLUSION
Terrorist Profiling
In profiling the terrorist, some generalizations can be made on the basis on this
examination of the literature on the psychology and sociology of terrorism published over
the past three decades. One finding is that, unfortunately for profiling purposes, there
does not appear to be a single terrorist personality . This seems to be the consensus
among terrorism psychologists as well as political scientists and sociologists. The
personalities of terrorists may be as diverse as the personalities of people in any lawful
profession. There do not appear to be any visibly detectable personality traits that would
allow authorities to identify a terrorist.
Another finding is that the terrorist is not diagnosably psychopathic or mentally sick.
Contrary to the stereotype that the terrorist is a psychopath or otherwise mentally
disturbed, the terrorist is actually quite sane, although deluded by an ideological or
religious way of viewing the world. The only notable exceptions encountered in this study
were the German anarchist terrorists, such as the Baader-Meinhof Gang and their affiliated
groups. The German terrorists seem to be a special case, however, because of their
inability to come to terms psychologically and emotionally with the shame of having
parents who were either passive or active supporters of Hitler.
The highly selective terrorist recruitment process explains why most terrorist groups
have only a few pathological members. Candidates who exhibit signs of psychopathy or other
mental illness are deselected in the interest of group survival. Terrorist groups need
members whose behavior appears to be normal and who would not arouse suspicion. A member
who exhibits traits of psychopathy or any noticeable degree of mental illness would only
be a liability for the group, whatever his or her skills. That individual could not be
depended on to carry out the assigned mission. On the contrary, such an individual would
be more likely to sabotage the group by, for example, botching an operation or revealing
group secrets if captured. Nor would a psychotic member be likely to enhance group
solidarity. A former PKK spokesman has even stated publicly that the PKK's policy was to
exclude psychopaths.
This is not to deny, however, that certain psychological types of people may be
attracted to terrorism. In his examination of autobiographies, court records, and rare
interviews, Jerrold M. Post (1990:27) found that "people with particular personality
traits and tendencies are drawn disproportionately to terrorist careers." Authors
such as Walter Laqueur, Post notes, "have characterized terrorists as
action-oriented, aggressive people who are stimulus-hungry and seek excitement." Even
if Post and some other psychologists are correct that individuals with narcissistic
personalities and low self-esteem are attracted to terrorism, the early psychological
development of individuals in their pre-terrorist lives does not necessarily mean that
terrorists are mentally disturbed and can be identified by any particular traits
associated with their early psychological backgrounds. Many people in other high-risk
professions, including law enforcement, could also be described as "action-oriented,
aggressive people who are stimulus-hungry and seek excitement." Post's views
notwithstanding, there is actually substantial evidence that terrorists are quite sane.
Although terrorist groups are highly selective in whom they recruit, it is not
inconceivable that a psychopathic individual can be a top leader or the top
leader of the terrorist group. In fact, the actions and behavior of the ANO's Abu Nidal,
the PKK's Abdullah Ocalan, the LTTE's Velupillai Prabhakaran, the FARC's Jorge Briceño
Suárez, and Aum Shinrikyo's Shoko Asahara might lead some to believe that they all share
psychopathic or sociopathic symptoms. Nevertheless, the question of whether any or all of
these guerrilla/terrorist leaders are psychopathic or sociopathic is best left for a
qualified psychologist to determine. If the founder of a terrorist group or cult is a
psychopath, there is little that the membership could do to remove him, without suffering
retaliation. Thus, that leader may never have to be subjected to the group's standards of
membership or leadership.
In addition to having normal personalities and not being diagnosably mentally
disturbed, a terrorist's other characteristics make him or her practically
indistinguishable from normal people, at least in terms of outward appearance. Terrorist
groups recruit members who have a normal or average physical appearance. As a result, the
terrorist's physical appearance is unlikely to betray his or her identity as a terrorist,
except in cases where the terrorist is well known, or security personnel already have a
physical description or photo. A terrorist's physical features and dress naturally will
vary depending on race, culture, and nationality. Both sexes are involved in a variety of
roles, but men predominate in leadership roles. Terrorists tend to be in their twenties
and to be healthy and strong; there are relatively few older terrorists, in part because
terrorism is a physically demanding occupation. Training alone requires considerable
physical fitness. Terrorist leaders are older, ranging from being in their thirties to
their sixties.
The younger terrorist who hijacks a jetliner, infiltrates a government building, lobs a
grenade into a sidewalk café, attempts to assassinate a head of state, or detonates a
body-bomb on a bus will likely be appropriately dressed and acting normal before
initiating the attack. The terrorist needs to be inconspicuous in order to approach the
target and then to escape after carrying out the attack, if escape is part of the plan.
The suicide terrorist also needs to approach a target inconspicuously. This need to appear
like a normal citizen would also apply to the FARC, the LTTE, the PKK, and other guerrilla
organizations, whenever they use commandos to carry out urban terrorist operations. It
should be noted that regular FARC, LTTE, and PKK members wear uniforms and operate in
rural areas. These three groups do, however, also engage in occasional acts of urban
terrorism, the LTTE more than the FARC and PKK. On those occasions, the LTTE and PKK
terrorists wear civilian clothes. FARC guerrillas are more likely to wear uniforms when
carrying out their acts of terrorism, such as kidnappings and murders, in small towns.
Terrorist and guerrilla groups do not seem to be identified by any particular social
background or educational level. They range from the highly educated and literate
intellectuals of the 17 November Revolutionary Organization (17N) to the scientifically
savvy "ministers" of the Aum Shinrikyo terrorist cult, to the peasant boys and
girls forcibly inducted into the FARC, the LTTE, and the PKK guerrilla organizations.
Most terrorist leaders have tended to be well educated. Examples include Illich
Ramírez Sánchez ("The Jackal") and the Shining Path's Abimael Guzmán Reynoso,
both of whom are currently in prison. Indeed, terrorists are increasingly well educated
and capable of sophisticated, albeit highly biased, political analysis. In contrast to Abu
Nidal, for example, who is a relatively uneducated leader of the old generation and one
who appears to be motivated more by vengefulness and greed than any ideology, the new
generation of Islamic terrorists, be they key operatives such as the imprisoned Ramzi
Yousef, or leaders such as Osama bin Laden, are well educated and motivated by their
religious ideologies. The religiously motivated terrorists are more dangerous than the
politically motivated terrorists because they are the ones most likely to develop and use
weapons of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in pursuit of their messianic or apocalyptic
visions. The level of intelligence of a terrorist group's leaders may determine the
longevity of the group. The fact that the 17 November group has operated successfully for
a quarter century must be indicative of the intelligence of its leaders.
In short, a terrorist will look, dress, and behave like a normal person, such as a
university student, until he or she executes the assigned mission. Therefore, considering
that this physical and behavioral description of the terrorist could describe almost any
normal young person, terrorist profiling based on personality, physical, or sociological
traits would not appear to be particularly useful.
If terrorists cannot be detected by personality or physical traits, are there other
early warning indicators that could alert security personnel? The most important indicator
would be having intelligence information on the individual, such as a "watch
list," a description, and a photo, or at least a threat made by a terrorist group.
Even a watch-list is not fool-proof, however, as demonstrated by the case of Sheikh Omar
Abdel Rahman, who, despite having peculiar features and despite being on a terrorist
watch-list, passed through U.S. Customs unhindered.
Unanticipated stress and nervousness may be a hazard of the profession, and a
terrorist's nervousness could alert security personnel in instances where, for example, a
hijacker is boarding an aircraft, or hostage-takers posing as visitors are infiltrating a
government building. The terrorist undoubtedly has higher levels of stress than most
people in lawful professions. However, most terrorists are trained to cope with
nervousness. Female terrorists are known to be particularly cool under pressure. Leila
Khaled and Kim Hyun Hee mention in their autobiographies how they kept their nervousness
under control by reminding themselves of, and being totally convinced of, the importance
of their missions.
Indeed, because of their coolness under pressure, their obsessive dedication to the
cause of their group, and their need to prove themselves to their male comrades, women
make formidable terrorists and have proven to be more dangerous than male terrorists.
Hizballah, the LTTE, and PKK are among the groups that have used attractive young women as
suicide body-bombers to great effect. Suicide body-bombers are trained to be totally at
ease and confident when approaching their target, although not all suicide terrorists are
able to act normally in approaching their target.
International terrorists generally appear to be predominately either leftist or
Islamic. A profiling system could possibly narrow the statistical probability that an
unknown individual boarding an airliner might be a terrorist if it could be accurately
determined that most terrorists are of a certain race, culture, religion, or nationality.
In the absence of statistical data, however, it cannot be determined here whether members
of any particular race, religion, or nationality are responsible for most acts of
international terrorism. Until those figures become available, smaller-scale terrorist
group profiles might be more useful. For example, a case could be made that U.S. Customs
personnel should give extra scrutiny to the passports of young foreigners claiming to be
"students" and meeting the following general description: physically fit males
in their early twenties of Egyptian, Jordanian, Yemeni, Iraqi, Algerian, Syrian, or
Sudanese nationality, or Arabs bearing valid British passports, in that order. These
characteristics generally describe the core membership of Osama bin Laden's Arab
"Afghans" (see Glossary), also known as the Armed Islamic Movement (AIM), who
are being trained to attack the United States with WMD.
Terrorist Group Mindset Profiling
This review of the academic literature on terrorism suggests that the psychological
approach by itself is insufficient in understanding what motivates terrorists, and that an
interdisciplinary approach is needed to more adequately understand terrorist motivation.
Terrorists are motivated not only by psychological factors but also very real political,
social, religious, and economic factors, among others. These factors vary widely.
Accordingly, the motivations, goals, and ideologies of ethnic separatist, anarchist,
social revolutionary, religious fundamentalist, and new religious terrorist groups differ
significantly. Therefore, each terrorist group must be examined within its own cultural,
economic, political, and social context in order to better understand the motivations of
its individual members and leaders and their particular ideologies.
Although it may not be possible to isolate a so-called terrorist personality, each
terrorist group has its own distinctive mindset. The mindset of a terrorist group reflects
the personality and ideology of its top leader and other circumstantial traits, such as
typology (religious, social revolutionary, separatist, anarchist, and so forth), a
particular ideology or religion, culture, and nationality, as well as group dynamics.
Jerrold Post dismisses the concept of a terrorist mindset on the basis that behavioral
scientists have not succeeded in identifying it. Post confuses the issue, however, by
treating the term "mindset" as a synonym for personality. The two terms are not
synonymous. One's personality is a distinctive pattern of thought, emotion, and behavior
that define one's way of interacting with the physical and social environment, whereas a
mindset is a fixed mental attitude or a fixed state of mind.
In trying to better define mindset, the term becomes more meaningful when considered
within the context of a group. The new terrorist recruit already has a personality when he
or she joins the group, but the new member acquires the group's mindset only after being
fully indoctrinated and familiarized with its ideology, point of view, leadership
attitudes, ways of operating, and so forth. Each group will have its own distinctive
mindset, which will be a reflection of the top leader's personality and ideology, as well
as group type. For example, the basic mindset of a religious terrorist group, such as
Hamas and Hizballah, is Islamic fundamentalism. The basic mindset of an Irish terrorist is
anti-British sectarianism and separatism. The basic mindset of an ETA member is
anti-Spanish separatism. The basic mindset of a 17 November member is antiestablishment,
anti-US, anti-NATO, and anti-German nationalism and Marxism-Leninism. And the basic
mindset of an Aum Shinrikyo member is worship of Shoko Asahara, paranoia against the
Japanese and U.S. governments, and millenarian, messianic apocalypticism.
Terrorist group mindsets determine how the group and its individual members view the
world and how they lash out against it. Knowing the mindset of a group enables a terrorism
analyst to better determine the likely targets of the group and its likely behavior under
varying circumstances. It is surprising, therefore, that the concept of the terrorist
mindset has not received more attention by terrorism specialists. It may not always be
possible to profile the individual leaders of a terrorist group, as in the case of the 17
November Revolutionary Organization, but the group's mindset can be profiled if adequate
information is available on the group and there is an established record of activities and
pronouncements. Even though two groups may both have an Islamic fundamentalist mindset,
their individual mindsets will vary because of their different circumstances.
One cannot assume to have a basic understanding of the mindset of a terrorist group
without having closely studied the group and its leader(s). Because terrorist groups are
clandestine and shadowy, they are more difficult to analyze than guerrilla groups, which
operate more openly, like paramilitary organizations. A terrorist group is usually much
smaller than a guerrilla organization, but the former may pose a more lethal potential
threat to U.S. security interests than the latter by pursuing an active policy of
terrorist attacks against U.S. interests. A guerrilla group such as the FARC may kidnap or
kill an occasional U.S. citizen or citizens as a result of unauthorized actions by a
hard-line front commander, but a terrorist group such as the 17 November Revolutionary
Organization does so as a matter of policy.
Although Aum Shinrikyo, a dangerous cult, is on U.S. lists of terrorist groups and is
widely feared in Japan, it still operates openly and legally, even though a number of its
members have been arrested, some have received prison sentences, and others, including
Shoko Asahara, have been undergoing trial. It can probably be safely assumed that Aum
Shinrikyo will resume its terrorist activities, if not in Japan then elsewhere. Indeed, it
appears to be reorganizing, and whatever new form in which this hydra-headed monster
emerges is not likely to be any more pleasant than its former incarnation. The question
is: what is Aum Shinrikyo planning to help bring about the apocalypse that it has been
predicting for the new millennium?
Knowing the mindset of a terrorist group would better enable the terrorism analyst to
understand that organization's behavior patterns and the active or potential threat that
it poses. Knowing the mindsets, including methods of operation, of terrorist groups would
also aid in identifying what group likely perpetrated an unclaimed terrorist action and in
predicting the likely actions of a particular group under various circumstances. Indeed,
mindset profiling of a terrorist group is an essential mode of analysis for assessing the
threat posed by the group. A terrorist group's mindset can be determined to a significant
extent through a database analysis of selective features of the group and patterns in its
record of terrorist attacks. A computer program could be designed to replicate the mindset
of each terrorist group for this purpose.
Promoting Terrorist Group Schisms
All terrorist and guerrillas groups may be susceptible to psychological warfare aimed
at dividing their political and military leaders and factions. Guerrilla organizations,
however, should not be dealt with like terrorist groups. Although the FARC, the LTTE, and
the PKK engage in terrorism, they are primarily guerrilla organizations, and therefore
their insurgencies and accompanying terrorism are likely to continue as long as there are
no political solutions. In addition to addressing the root causes of a country's terrorist
and insurgency problems, effective counterterrorist and counterinsurgency strategies
should seek not only to divide a terrorist or guerrilla group's political and military
factions but also to reduce the group's rural bases of support through rural development
programs and establishment of civil patrols in each village or town.
Another effective counterterrorist strategy would be the identification and capture of
a top hard-line terrorist or guerrilla leader, especially one who exhibits psychopathic
characteristics. Removing the top hard-liners of a terrorist group would allow the group
to reassess the policies pursued by its captured leader and possibly move in a less
violent direction, especially if a more politically astute leader assumes control. This is
what appears to be happening in the case of the PKK, which has opted for making peace
since the capture of its ruthless, hard-line leader, Abdullah Ocalan. A government could
simultaneously help members of urban terrorist groups to defect from their groups, for
example through an amnesty program, as was done so effectively in Italy. A psychologically
sophisticated policy of promoting divisions between political and military leaders as well
as defections within guerrilla and terrorist groups is likely to be more effective than a
simple military strategy based on the assumption that all members and leaders of the group
are hard-liners. A military response to terrorism unaccompanied by political
countermeasures is likely to promote cohesion within the group. The U.S. Government's
focus on bin Laden as the nation's number one terrorist enemy has clearly raised his
profile in the Islamic world and swelled the membership ranks of al-Qaida. Although not
yet martyred, bin Laden has become the Ernesto "Che" Guevara of Islamic
fundamentalism. As Post (1990:39) has explained:
When the autonomous cell comes under external threat, the external danger has the
consequence of reducing internal divisiveness and uniting the group against the outside
enemy....Violent societal counteractions can transform a tiny band of insignificant
persons into a major opponent of society, making their "fantasy war," to use
Ferracuti's apt term, a reality."
How Guerrilla and Terrorist Groups End
A counterterrorist policy should be tailor-made for a particular group, taking into
account its historical, cultural, political, and social context, as well as the context of
what is known about the psychology of the group or its leaders. The motivations of a
terrorist group--both of its members and of its leaders--cannot be adequately understood
outside its cultural, economic, political, and social context. Because terrorism is
politically or religiously motivated, a counterterrorist policy, to be effective, should
be designed to take into account political or religious factors. For example, terrorists
were active in Chile during the military regime (1973-90), but counterterrorist operations
by democratic governments in the 1990s have reduced them to insignificance. The transition
from military rule to democratic government in Chile proved to be the most effective
counterterrorist strategy.
In contrast to relatively insignificant political terrorist groups in a number of
countries, Islamic terrorist groups, aided by significant worldwide support among Muslim
fundamentalists, remain the most serious terrorist threat to U.S. security interests. A
U.S. counterterrorist policy, therefore, should avoid making leaders like Osama bin Laden
heroes or martyrs for Muslims. To that end, the eye-for-an-eye Israeli policy of striking
back for each act of terrorism may be highly counterproductive when applied by the world's
only superpower against Islamic terrorism, as in the form of cruise-missile attacks
against, or bombings of, suspected terrorist sites. Such actions, although politically
popular at home, are seen by millions of Muslims as attacks against the Islamic religion
and by people in many countries as superpower bullying and a violation of a country's
sovereignty. U.S. counterterrorist military attacks against elusive terrorists may serve
only to radicalize large sectors of the Muslim population and damage the U.S. image
worldwide.
Rather than retaliate against terrorists with bombs or cruise missiles, legal,
political, diplomatic, financial, and psychological warfare measures may be more
effective. Applying pressure to state sponsors may be especially effective. Cuba and Libya
are two examples of terrorist state sponsors that apparently concluded that sponsoring
terrorists was not in their national interests. Iran and Syria may still need to be
convinced.
Jeanne Knutson was critical of the reactive and ad hoc nature of U.S. counterterrorism
policy, which at that time, in the early 1980s, was considered an entirely police and
security task, as opposed to "...a politically rational, comprehensive
strategy to deal with politically motivated violence." She found this policy
flawed because it dealt with symptoms instead of root causes and instead of eradicating
the causes had increased the source of political violence. She charged that this policy
routinely radicalized, splintered, and drove underground targeted U.S. groups, thereby
only confirming the "we-they" split worldview of these groups. Unfortunately,
too many governments still pursue purely military strategies to defeat political and
religious extremist groups.
Abroad, Knutson argued, the United States joined military and political alliances to
support the eradication of internal dissident groups without any clear political rationale
for such a stance. She emphasized that "terrorists are individuals who commit crimes
for political reasons," and for this reason "the political system has
better means to control and eliminate their activities and even to attack their root
causes than do the police and security forces working alone." Thus, she considered it
politically and socially unwise to give various national security agencies, including the
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the political role of choosing targets of political
violence. She advocated "a necessary stance of neutrality toward national dissident
causes--whether the causes involve the territory of historical friend or foe." She
cited the neutral U.S. stance toward the Irish Republican Army (IRA) as a case study of
how to avoid anti-U.S. terrorism. Her views still seem quite relevant.
Goals of a long-range counterterrorism policy should also include deterring alienated
youth from joining a terrorist group in the first place. This may seem an impractical
goal, for how does one recognize a potential terrorist, let alone deter him or her from
joining a terrorist group? Actually, this is not so impractical in the cases of guerrilla
organizations like the FARC, the LTTE, and the PKK, which conscript all the young people
in their rural areas of operation who can be rounded up. A counter strategy could be
approached within the framework of advertising and civic-action campaigns. A U.S.
government-sponsored mass media propaganda campaign undertaken in the Colombian
countryside, the Kurdish enclaves, and the Vanni region of Sri Lanka and tailor-made to
fit the local culture and society probably could help to discredit hard-liners in the
guerrilla/terrorist groups sufficiently to have a serious negative impact on their
recruitment efforts. Not only should all young people in the region be educated on the
realities of guerrilla life, but a counterterrorist policy should be in place to inhibit
them from joining in the first place. If they are inducted, they should be helped or
encouraged to leave the group.
The effectiveness of such a campaign would depend in part on how sensitive the campaign
is culturally, socially, politically, and economically. It could not succeed, however,
without being supplemented by civic-action and rural security programs, especially a
program to establish armed self-defense civil patrols among the peasantry. The Peruvian
government was able to defeat terrorists operating in the countryside only by creating
armed self-defense civil patrols that became its eyes and ears. These patrols not only
provided crucial intelligence on the movements of the Shining Path and Tupac Amaru
terrorists, but also enabled the rural population to take a stand against them.
There is little evidence that direct government intervention is the major factor in the
decline of terrorist groups. Clearly, it was an important factor in certain cases, such as
the RAF and with various urban Marxist-Leninist group in Latin America where massive
governmental repression was applied (but at unacceptably high cost in human rights
abuses). Social and psychological factors may be more important. If, for security reasons,
a terrorist group becomes too isolated from the population, as in the case of the RAF and
the Uruguayan Tupamaros, the group is prone to losing touch with any base of support that
it may have had. Without a measure of popular support, a terrorist group cannot survive.
Moreover, if it fails to recruit new members to renew itself by supporting or replacing an
aging membership or members who have been killed or captured, it is likely to
disintegrate. The terrorist groups that have been active for many years have a significant
base of popular support. Taylor and Qualye point out that despite its atrocious terrorist
violence, the Provisional IRA in 1994 continued to enjoy the electoral support of between
50,000 and 70,000 people in Northern Ireland. The FARC, the LTTE, and the PKK continue to
have strong popular support within their own traditional bases of support.
In the cases of West German and Italian terrorism, counterterrorist operations
undoubtedly had a significant impact on terrorist groups. Allowing terrorists an exit can
weaken the group. For example, amnesty programs, such as those offered by the Italian
government, can help influence terrorists to defect. Reducing support for the group on the
local and national levels may also contribute to reducing the group's recruitment pool.
Maxwell Taylor and Ethel Quayle have pointed out that penal policies in both countries,
such as allowing convicted terrorists reduced sentences and other concessions, even
including daytime furloughs from prison to hold a normal job, had a significant impact in
affecting the long-term reduction in terrorist violence. Referring to Italy's 1982
Penitence Law, Taylor and Quayle explain that "This law effectively depenalized
serious terrorist crime through offering incentives to terrorists to accept their defeat,
admit their guilt and inform on others so that the dangers of terrorist violence could be
diminished." Similarly, Article 57 of the German Penal Code offers the possibility of
reduction of sentence or suspension or deferment of sentence when convicted terrorists
renounce terrorism. Former terrorists do not have to renounce their ideological
convictions, only their violent methods. To be sure, these legal provisions have not
appealed to hard-core terrorists, as evidenced by the apparent reactivation of the Italian
Red Brigades in 1999. Nevertheless, for countries with long-running insurgencies, such as
Colombia, Sri Lanka, and Turkey, amnesty programs for guerrillas are very important tools
for resolving their internal wars.
With regard to guerrilla/terrorist organizations, a major question is how to encourage
the political wing to constrain the military wing, or how to discredit or neutralize the
military branch. The PKK should serve as an ongoing case study in this regard. Turkey, by
its policy of demonizing the PKK and repressing the Kurdish population in its efforts to
combat it instead of seeking a political solution, only raised the PKK's status in the
eyes of the public and lost the hearts and minds of its Kurdish population. Nevertheless,
by capturing Ocalan and by refraining thus far from making him a martyr by hanging him,
the Turkish government has inadvertently allowed the PKK to move in a more political
direction as advocated by its political leaders, who now have a greater voice in
decision-making. Thus, the PKK has retreated from Turkey and indicated an interest in
pursuing a political as opposed to a military strategy. This is how a guerrilla/terrorist
organization should end, by becoming a political party, just as the M-19 did in Colombia
and the Armed
APPENDIX
SOCIOPSYCHOLOGICAL PROFILES: CASE STUDIES
Exemplars of International Terrorism in the Early 1970s
Renato Curcio
Significance: Imprisoned leader of the Italian Red Brigades.
Background: The background of Renato Curcio, the imprisoned former
main leader of the first-generation Red Brigades (Brigata Rosse), provides some insight
into how a university student became Italy's most wanted terrorist. The product of an
extramarital affair between Renato Zampa (brother of film director Luigi Zampa) and
Yolanda Curcio, Renato Curcio was born near Rome on September 23, 1941. His early years
were a difficult time for him and his mother, a housemaid, whose itinerant positions with
families required long separations. In April 1945, Curcio's beloved uncle, Armando, a Fiat
auto worker, was murdered in a Fascist ambush. A poor student, Curcio failed several
subjects in his first year of high school and had to repeat the year. He then resumed
vocational training classes until moving to Milan to live with his mother. He enrolled in
the Ferrini Institute in Albenga, where he became a model student. On completing his
degree in 1962, he won a scholarship to study at the new and innovative Institute of
Sociology at the University of Trento, where he became absorbed in existential philosophy.
During the mid-1960s, he gravitated toward radical politics and Marxism as a byproduct of
his interest in existentialism and the self. By the late 1960s, he had become a committed
revolutionary and Marxist theoretician. According to Alessandro Silj, three political
events transformed him from a radical to an activist and ultimately a political terrorist:
two bloody demonstrations at Trento and a massacre by police of farm laborers in 1968.
During the 1967-69 period, Curcio was also involved in two Marxist university groups: the
Movement for a Negative University and the publication Lavoro Politico (Political
Work). Embittered by his expulsion from the radical Red Line faction of Lavoro
Politico in August 1969, Curcio decided to drop out of Trento and forego his degree,
even though he already had passed his final examinations. Prior to transferring his bases
of activities to Milan, Curcio married, in a Catholic ceremony, Margherita (Mara) Cagol, a
Trentine sociology major, fellow radical, and daughter of a prosperous Trento merchant. In
Milan Curcio became a full-fledged terrorist. The Red Brigades was formed in the second
half of 1970 as a result of the merger of Curcio's Proletarian Left and a radical student
and worker group. After getting arrested in February 1971 for occupying a vacant house,
the Curcios and the most militant members of the Proletarian Left went completely
underground and organized the Red Brigades and spent the next three years, from 1972 to
1975, engaging in a series of bombings and kidnappings of prominent figures. Curcio was
captured but freed by Margherita in a raid on the prison five months later. Three weeks
after the dramatic prison escape, Margherita was killed in a shootout with the
Carabinieri. Curcio was again captured in January 1976, tried, and convicted, and he is
still serving a 31-year prison sentence for terrorist activities.
An insight into Curcio's (1973:72) motivation for becoming a terrorist can be found in
a letter to his mother written during his initial prison confinement:
Yolanda dearest, mother mine, years have passed since the day on which I set out to
encounter life and left you alone to deal with life. I have worked, I have studied, I have
fought....Distant memories stirred. Uncle Armando who carried me astride his shoulders.
His limpid and ever smiling eyes that peered far into the distance towards a society of
free and equal men. And I loved him like a father. And I picked up the rifle that only
death, arriving through the murderous hand of the Nazi-fascists, had wrested from him....
My enemies are the enemies of humanity and of intelligence, those who have built and build
their accursed fortunes on the material and intellectual misery of the people. Theirs is
the hand that has banged shut the door of my cell. And I cannot be but proud. But I am not
merely an "idealist" and it is not enough for me to have, as is said, "a
good conscience." For this reason I will continue to fight for communism even from
the depths of a prison.
Leila Khaled
Position: First Secretary of the PFLP's Palestinian Popular
Women's Committees (PPWC).
Background: Khaled was born on April 13, 1948, in Haifa, Palestine.
She left Haifa at age four when her family fled the Israeli occupation and lived in
impoverished exile in a United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) refugee camp in
Sour, Lebanon. By age eight, she had become politically aware of the Palestinian plight.
Inspired by a Palestinian revolutionary of the 1930s, Izz Edeen Kassam, she decided to
become a revolutionary "in order to liberate my people and myself." The years
1956-59 were her period of political apprenticeship as an activist of the Arab Nationalist
Movement (ANM). By the summer of 1962, she was struggling to cope with national, social,
class, and sexual oppression but, thanks to her brother's financial support, finally
succeeded in attending the American University of Beirut (AUB) in 1962-63, where she
scored the second highest average on the AUB entrance exam.
While an AUB student, Khaled received what she refers to as her "real
education" in the lecture hall of the Arab Cultural Club (ACC) and in the ranks of
the ANM and the General Union of Palestinian Students (GUPS). Her "intellectual
companion"at AUB was her American roommate, with whom she would have heated political
arguments. In the spring of 1963, Khaled was admitted into the ANM's first paramilitary
contingent of university students and was active in ANM underground activities. For lack
of funding, she was unable to continue her education after passing her freshman year in
the spring of 1963.
In September 1963, Khaled departed for Kuwait, where she obtained a teaching position.
After a run-in with the school's principal, who called her to task for her political
activities on behalf of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), she returned to
Lebanon in late June 1964. She returned to the school in Kuwait that fall but was demoted
to elementary teaching. The U.S. invasions of the Dominican Republic and Vietnam in 1965
solidified her hatred of the U.S. Government. The death of Ernesto "Che" Guevara
on October 9, 1967, convinced her to join the revolution.
When Fatah renewed its military operations on August 18, 1967, Khaled attempted to work
through Fatah's fund-raising activities in Kuwait to liberate Palestine. She pleaded with
Yasir Arafat's brother, Fathi Arafat, to be allowed to join Al-Assifah, Fatah's military
wing. She found an alternative to Fatah, however, when the Popular Front for the
Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) hijacked an El-Al airplane in July 1968, an action that
inspired her to seek contacts with the PFLP in Kuwait. She succeeded when PFLP
representative Abu Nidal, whom she described as "a tall, handsome young man" who
was "reserved and courteous," met her in a Kuwaiti bookstore. After performing
fund-raising for the PFLP, she was allowed to join its Special Operations Squad and
underwent intensive training. In her first mission, she hijacked a TWA plane on a flight
from Rome to Athens on August 29, 1969, and diverted it to Damascus, where all 113
passengers were released unharmed. Although her identity was revealed to the world by the
Syrians, she continued her terrorist career by training to commandeer an El-Al plane. When
Jordan's King Hussein launched a military offensive against the Palestinian resistance in
Amman in February 1970, Khaled fought in the streets alongside PFLP comrades. That March,
in preparation for another hijacking, she left Amman and underwent at least three secret
plastic surgery operations over five months by a well-known but very reluctant plastic
surgeon in Beirut.
While Khaled was discussing strategy with Dr. Wadi Haddad in his Beirut apartment on
July 11, 1970, the apartment was hit by two rockets in the first Israeli attack inside
Lebanon, injuring the man's wife and child. On September 6, 1970, Khaled and an accomplice
attempted to hijack an El-Al flight from Amsterdam with 12 armed security guards aboard
but were overpowered. He was shot to death, but she survived and was detained in London by
British police. After 28 days in detention, she was released in a swap for hostages from
hijacked planes and escorted on a flight to Cairo and then, on October 12, to Damascus.
Following her release, Khaled went to Beirut and joined a combat unit. In between
fighting, she would tour refugee camps and recruit women. She married an Iraqi PFLP
member, Bassim, on November 26, 1970, but the marriage was short-lived. She returned to
the same Beirut plastic surgeon and had her former face mostly restored. She barely
escaped a bed-bomb apparently planted by the Mossad, but her sister was shot dead on
Christmas Day 1976. After fading from public view, she surfaced again in 1980, leading a
PLO delegation to the United Nations Decade for Women conference in Copenhagen. She
attended university in Russia for two years in the early 1980s, but the PFLP ordered her
to return to combat in Lebanon before she had completed her studies.
Khaled married a PFLP physician in 1982. She was elected first secretary of the
Palestinian Popular Women's Committees (PPWC) in 1986. At the beginning of the 1990s, when
she was interviewed by Eileen MacDonald, she was living in the Yarmuk refugee camp in
Damascus, still serving as PPWC first secretary and "immediately recognizable as the
young Leila."
Since then, Khaled has been living in Amman, Jordan, where she works as a teacher,
although still a PFLP member. She was allowed by Israel briefly to enter Palestinian-ruled
areas in the West Bank, or at least the Gaza Strip, in February 1996, to vote on amending
the Palestinian charter to remove its call for Israel's destruction. She was on a list of
154 members of the Palestine National Council (PNC), an exile-based parliament, who Israel
approved for entrance into the Gaza Strip. Khaled said she had renounced terrorism.
However, she declined an invitation to attend a meeting in Gaza with President Clinton in
December 1998 at which members of the PNC renounced portions of the PLO charter calling
for the destruction of Israel. "We are not going to change our identity or our
history," she explained to news media.
Kozo Okamoto
Significance: The sole surviving Rengo Sekigun (Japanese Red Army)
terrorist of the PFLP's Lod (Tel Aviv) Airport massacre of May 30, 1972, who remains
active.
Background: Kozo Okamoto was born in southwestern Japan in 1948. He
was the youngest of six children, the son of a retired elementary school principal married
to a social worker. The family was reportedly very close when the children were young. His
mother died of cancer in 1966, and his father remarried. He is not known to have had a
disturbed or unusual childhood. On the contrary, he apparently had a normal and happy
childhood. He achieved moderate success at reputable high schools in Kagoshima. However,
he failed to qualify for admission at Kyoto University and had to settle for the Faculty
of Agriculture at Japan's Kagoshima University, where his grades were mediocre. While a
university student, he was not known to be politically active in extremist groups or
demonstrations, although he belonged to a student movement and a peace group and became
actively concerned with environmental issues. However, Okamoto's older brother, Takeshi, a
former student at Kyoto University, introduced him to representatives of the newly formed
JRA in Tokyo in early 1970. Soon thereafter, Takeshi participated in the hijacking of a
Japan Air Lines jet to Korea. Takeshi's involvement in that action compelled his father to
resign his job. Although Kozo had promised his father that he would not follow in his
brother's footsteps, Kozo became increasingly involved in carrying out minor tasks for the
JRA. Kozo Okamoto was attracted to the JRA more for its action-oriented program than for
ideological reasons. |
|
 (AP Photo courtesy of www.washingtonpost.com)
Kozo Okamoto (presumably on right) with three other captured
PFLP comrades, 1997.
In late February 1972, Okamoto traveled to Beirut, where the JRA said he could meet his
brother, and then underwent seven weeks of terrorist training by PFLP personnel in
Baalbek. After he and his comrades traveled through Europe posing as tourists, they
boarded a flight to Lod Airport on May 30, 1972. Unable to commit suicide as planned
following the Lod Airport massacre, Okamoto was captured and made a full confession only
after being promised that he would be allowed to kill himself. During his trial, he freely
admitted his act and demonstrated no remorse; he viewed himself as a soldier rather than a
terrorist, and to him Lod Airport was a military base in a war zone. Psychiatrists who
examined Okamoto certified that he was absolutely sane and rational. To be sure, Okamoto's
courtroom speech, including his justification for slaughtering innocent people and his
stated hope that he and his two dead comrades would become, in death, "three stars of
Orion," was rather bizarre.
By 1975, while in solitary confinement, Okamoto began identifying himself to visitors
as a Christian. When his sanity began to deteriorate in 1985, he was moved to a communal
cell. That May, he was released as a result of an exchange of Palestinian prisoners for
three Israeli soldiers, under a swap conducted by the Popular Front for the Liberation of
Palestine--General Command (PFLP-GC) . He arrived to a hero's welcome in Libya on May 20,
and was met by JRA leader Fusako Shigenobu. He apparently has continued to operate with
the PFLP-GC. On February 15, 1997, he and five JRA comrades were arrested in Lebanon and
accused of working with the PFLP-GC and training PFLP-GC cadres in the Bekaa Valley
outside Baalbek. According to another report, they were arrested in a Beirut apartment.
That August, he and four of his comrades were sentenced to three years in jail (minus time
already served and deportation to an undisclosed location) for entering the country with
forged passports.
Exemplars of International Terrorism in the Early 1990s
Mahmud Abouhalima
Significance: World Trade Center bomber.
Background: Mahmud Abouhalima was born in
a ramshackle industrial suburb 15 miles south of Alexandria in 1959, the first of four
sons of a poor but stern millman, a powerful weight lifter. Mahmud was known as an
ordinary, well-rounded, cheerful youth who found comfort in religion. He prayed hard and
shunned alcohol. He studied education at Alexandria University and played soccer in his
spare time. He developed a deep and growing hatred for Egypt because of his belief that
the country offered little hope for his generation's future. As a teenager, he began to
hang around with members of an outlawed Islamic Group (al-Jama al-Islamiyya), headed by
Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman. In 1981 Abouhalima quit school and left Egypt. He reportedly
fought against the Soviets in Afghanistan. In September 1991, now an Afghan veteran, he
was granted a tourist visa to visit Germany. In Munich he sought political asylum,
claiming that he faced persecution in Egypt because of his membership in the Muslim
Brotherhood (Al Ikhwan al Muslimun). He subsequently made his way to the United States and
worked as a taxi driver in Brooklyn, New York. He also allegedly ran a phony
coupon-redemption scam. This operation and a similar one run by Zein Isa, a member of the
ANO in St. Louis, supposedly funneled about $200 million of the annual $400 million in
fraudulent coupon losses allegedly suffered by the industry back to the Middle East to
fund terrorist activities, although the figure seems a bit high. On February 26, 1993, the
day of the WTC bombing, he was seen by several witnesses with Mohammed A. Salameh at the
Jersey City storage facility. Tall and red-haired, Abouhalima ("Mahmud the
Red"), 33, was captured in his native Egypt not long after the bombing. He was
"hands-on ringleader" and the motorist who drove a getaway car. He is alleged to
have planned the WTC bombing and trained his co-conspirators in bomb-testing. He was
sentenced to 240 years in federal prison.
Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman
Significance: World Trade Center bombing co-conspirator.
Background:Omar Abdel Rahman was born in 1938, blinded by diabetes as
an infant. He became a religious scholar in Islamic law at Cairo's al-Azhar University. By
the 1960s, he had become increasingly critical of Egypt's government and its institutions,
including al-Azhar University, which he blamed for failing to uphold true Islamic law. One
of the defendants accused of assassinating Egyptian President Anwar Sadat on October 6,
1981, Dr. Abdel Rahman was considered an accessory because of his authorization of the
assassination through the issuance of a fatwa or Islamic judicial decree, to the
assassins. However, he was acquitted because of the ambiguity of his role. In the 1980s,
made unwelcome by the Egyptian government, he traveled to Afghanistan, Britain, Pakistan,
Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Switzerland, and the United States, exhorting young Muslims to join
the mujahideen to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan. Sheikh Abdel Rahman's activities also
included leading a puritanical Islamic fundamentalist movement (Al Jamaa al Islamiyya)
aimed at overthrowing the regime of President Hosni Mubarak. The movement's methods
included terrorist attacks against foreign tourists visiting archaeological sites in
Egypt. The sheik has described American and other Western tourists in Egypt as part of a
"plague" on his country.
Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman 
(Photo courtesy of Middle East Intelligence Bulletin,
Vol. 3, No. 6, June 2001)
In 1990, after a brief visit back to Egypt, Abdel Rahman fled to Sudan. Later that
year, the blind cleric, despite being on the U.S. official list of terrorists, succeeded
in entering the United States with a tourist visa obtained at the U.S. Embassy in Sudan.
He became the prayer leader of the small El Salem Mosque in Jersey City, New Jersey, where
many of the WTC bombing conspirators attended services. He preached violence against the
United States and pro-Western governments in the Middle East. Abdel Rahman maintained
direct ties with mujahideen fighters and directly aided terrorist groups in Egypt, to whom
he would send messages on audiotape. He served as spiritual mentor of El Sayyid A. Nosair,
who assassinated Jewish Defense League founder Rabbi Meir Kahane on November 5, 1990.
(Nosair, whose conviction was upheld by a Federal appeals court panel on August 16, 1999,
knew many members of the WTC bombing group and was visited by some of them in jail.)
Following the WTC bombing on February 26, 1993, Abdel Rahman was implicated in that
conspiracy as well as in a plot to bomb other public places in New York, including the
Holland and Lincoln tunnels and the United Nations building. He was also implicated in a
plot to assassinate U.S. Senator Alfonse d'Amato (R., N.Y.) and United Nations Secretary
General Boutros-Ghali. Abdel Rahman and seven others were arrested in connection with this
plot in June 1993. In a 1994 retrial of 1981 riot cases in Egypt, Abdel Rahman was
convicted in absentia and sentenced to seven years in prison.
On October 1, 1995, Sheikh Abdel Rahman and nine other Islamic fundamentalists were
convicted in a federal court in New York of conspiracy to destroy U.S. public buildings
and structures. Abdel Rahman was convicted of directing the conspiracy and, under a joint
arrangement with Egypt, of attempting to assassinate Mubarak. His conviction and those of
his co-conspirators were upheld on August 16, 1999. Despite his imprisonment, at least two
Egyptian terrorist groups--Islamic Group (Gamaa Islamiya) and al-Jihad (see
al-Jihad)--continue to regard him as their spiritual leader. The Gamaa terrorists who
massacred 58 tourists near Luxor, Egypt, in November 1997 claimed the attack was a failed
hostage takeover intended to force the United States into releasing Abdel Rahman. He is
currently serving a life sentence at a federal prison in New York.
Mohammed A. Salameh
Significance: A World Trade Center bomber.
Background: Mohammed A. Salameh was born near Nablus, an Arab town on
the West Bank, on September 1, 1967. In his final years in high school, Salameh, according to his brother, "became religious, started
to pray and read the Koran with other friends in high school. He stopped most of his past
activities and hobbies....He was not a fundamentalist. He was interested in Islamic
teachings." According to another source, Salameh comes from a long line of guerrilla
fighters on his mother's side. His maternal grandfather fought in the 1936 Arab revolt
against British rule in Palestine, and even as an old man joined the PLO and was jailed by
the Israelis. A maternal uncle was arrested in 1968 for "terrorism" and served
18 years in an Israeli prison before he was released and deported, making his way to
Baghdad, where he became number two in the "Western Sector," a PLO terrorist
unit under Iraqi influence. Mohammed Salameh earned a degree from the Islamic studies
faculty of the University of Jordan. His family went into debt to buy him an airline
ticket to the United States, where he wanted to obtain an MBA. Salameh entered the United
States on February 17, 1988, on a six-month tourist visa, and apparently lived in Jersey
City illegally for the next five years. He apparently belonged to the Masjid al-Salam
Mosque in Jersey City, whose preachers included fundamentalist Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman.
Slight and bearded, naive and manipulable, Salameh was arrested in the process of
returning to collect the deposit on the van that he had rented to carry the Trade Center
bombing materials. On March 4, 1993, Salameh, 26, was charged by the FBI with "aiding
and abetting" the WTC bombing on February 26, 1993. He is also believed to be part of
the group that stored the explosive material in a Jersey City storage locker.
Ahmed Ramzi Yousef
Significance: Mastermind of the World Trade Center bombing.
Background: Yousef, whose real name is Abd-al-Basit Balushi, was born
either on May 20, 1967, or April 27, 1968, in Kuwait, where he grew up and completed high
school. His Pakistani father is believed to have been an engineer with Kuwaiti Airlines
for many years. Yousef is Palestinian on his mother's side; his grandmother is
Palestinian. He considers himself Palestinian.
In 1989 Yousef graduated from Britain's Swansea University with a degree in
engineering. Yousef is believed to have trained and fought in the Afghan War. He and bin
Laden reportedly were linked at least as long ago as 1989. In that year, Yousef went to
the Philippines and introduced himself as an emissary of Osama bin Laden, sent to support
that country's radical Islamic movement, specifically the fundamentalist Abu Sayyaf group.
When Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's army invaded Kuwait in August 1990, Yousef was known
as a collaborator. After disappearing in Kuwait in 1991, he is next known to have
reappeared in the Philippines in December 1991, accompanied by a Libyan missionary named
Mohammed abu Bakr, the leader of the Mullah Forces in Libya. Yousef stayed for three
months providing training to Abu Sayyaf guerrillas in the southern Philippines.
When he arrived from Pakistan at John F. Kennedy Airport on September 1, 1992, without
a visa, Yousef, who was carrying an Iraqi passport, applied for political asylum. Often
described as slender, Yousef is six feet tall, weighs 180 pounds, and is considered white,
with an olive complexion. He was sometimes clean shaven, but wears a beard in his FBI
wanted poster. Despite his itinerant life as an international terrorist, Yousef is married
and has two daughters. A Palestinian friend and fellow terrorist, Ahmad Ajaj, who was
traveling with Yousef on September 1, 1992, although apparently at a safe distance, was
detained by passport control officers at John F. Kennedy Airport for carrying a false
Swedish passport. Ajaj was carrying papers containing formulas for bomb-making material,
which prosecutors said were to be used to destroy bridges and tunnels in New York.
Ahmed Ramzi Yousef 
(Photo courtesy of www.terrorismfiles.org/individuals/ramzi_yousef.html/
)
Yousef was allowed to stay in the United States while his political asylum case was
considered. U.S. immigration officials apparently accepted his false claim that he was a
victim of the Gulf War who had been beaten by Iraqi soldiers because the Iraqis suspected
that he had worked for Kuwaiti resistance. Yousef moved into an apartment in Jersey City
with roommate Mohammad Salameh (q.v.). After participating in the Trade Center
bombing on February 26, 1993, Yousef, then 25 or 26 years old, returned to Manila, the
Philippines, that same day. In Manila, he plotted "Project Bojinka," a plan to
plant bombs aboard U.S. passenger airliners in 1995, using a virtually undetectable bomb
that he had created. He was skilled in the art of converting Casio digital watches into
timing switches that use light bulb filaments to ignite cotton soaked in nitroglycerine
explosive. He carried out a practice run on a Philippine Airlines Flight 434 bound for
Tokyo on December 9, 1994. A wearer of contact lenses, Yousef concealed the nitroglycerin
compound in a bottle normally used to hold saline solution. His bomb killed a Japanese
tourist seated near the explosive, which he left taped under a seat, and wounded 10
others. In March 1993, prosecutors in Manhattan indicted Yousef for his role in the WTC
bombing. On January 6, 1995, Manila police raided Yousef's room overlooking Pope John Paul
II's motorcade route into the city. Yousef had fled the room after accidentally starting a
fire while mixing chemicals. Police found explosives, a map of the Pope's route, clerical
robes, and a computer disk describing the plot against the Pope, as well as planned
attacks against U.S. airlines. Yousef's fingerprints were on the material, but he had
vanished, along with his girlfriend, Carol Santiago. Also found in his room was a letter
threatening Filipino interests if a comrade held in custody were not released. It claimed
the "ability to make and use chemicals and poisonous gas... for use against vital
institutions and residential populations and the sources of drinking water." Yousef's
foiled plot involved blowing up eleven U.S. commercial aircraft in midair. The bombs were
to be made of a stable, liquid form of nitroglycerin designed to pass through airport
metal detectors.
For most of the three years before his capture in early 1995, Yousef reportedly resided
at the bin Laden-financed Bayt Ashuhada (House of Martyrs) guest house in Peshawar,
Pakistan. On February 8, 1995, local authorities arrested Yousef in Islamabad in the Su
Casa guest house, also owned by a member of the bin Laden family. Yousef had in his
possession the outline of an even greater international terrorist campaign that he was
planning, as well as bomb-making products, including two toy cars packed with explosives
and flight schedules for United and Delta Airlines. His plans included using a suicide
pilot (Said Akhman) to crash a light aircraft filled with powerful explosives into the CIA
headquarters in Langley, Virginia, as well as blowing up 11 U.S. airliners simultaneously
as they approached U.S. airports. He was then turned over to the FBI and deported to the
United States. On June 21, 1995, Yousef told federal agents that he had planned and
executed the WTC bombing.
On September 6, 1996, Yousef was convicted in a New York Federal District Court for
trying to bomb U.S. airliners in Asia in 1995. On January 8, 1998, he was sentenced to 240
years in prison. He has remained incarcerated in the new "supermax" prison in
Florence, Colorado. His cellmates in adjoining cells in the "Bomber Wing"
include Timothy McVeigh, the right-wing terrorist who blew up a federal building in
Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995, and Ted Kaczynski, the sociopathic loner known as the
Unabomber. The polyglot Yousef has discussed languages with Kaczynski, who speaks Spanish,
French, and German, and taught him some Turkish.
Ethnic Separatist Groups
Irish Terrorists
According to a middle-level IRA officer interviewed by Newsweek in 1988, the
IRA has plenty of recruits. Each potential enlistee is kept under scrutiny for as long as
a year before being allowed to sign up. The Provos are paranoid about informers, so hard
drinkers and loudmouths are automatically disqualified from consideration. H.A. Lyons, a
Belfast psychiatrist who frequently works with prisoners, told Newsweek that the
IRA's political murderers are "fairly normal individuals," compared with
nonpolitical killers. "They regard themselves as freedom fighters,"adding that
they feel no remorse for their actions, at least against security forces. As the IRA
officer explained to Newsweek:
The killing of innocent civilians is a thing that sickens all volunteers, and it must
and will stop. But I can live with the killing [of security forces]. There is an occupying
army which has taken over our country. I see no difference between the IRA and World War
II resistance movements.
Rona M. Fields noted in 1976 that Belfast "terrorists" are most often
adolescent youths from working-class families. By the 1990s, however, that appeared to
have changed. According to the profile of Irish terrorists, loyalist and republican,
developed by Maxwell Taylor and Ethel Quayle (1994), "The person involved in violent
action is likely to be up to 30 years old, or perhaps a little older and usually
male." Republican and loyalist leaders tend to be somewhat older. The terrorist is
invariably from a working class background, not because of some Marxist doctrine but
because the loyalist and republican areas of Northern Ireland are primarily working class.
Quite likely, he is unemployed. "He is either living in the area in which he was
born, or has recently left it for operational reasons." His education is probably
limited, because he probably left school at age 15 or 16 without formal qualifications.
However, according to Taylor and Quayle, recruits in the early 1990s were becoming better
educated. Before becoming involved in a violent action, the recruit probably belonged to a
junior wing of the group for at least a year. Although not a technically proficient
specialist, he is likely to have received weapons or explosives training. The profile
notes that the recruits are often well dressed, or at least appropriately dressed, and
easily blend into the community. "Northern Ireland terrorists are frequently
articulate and give the impression of being worldly," it states. At the psychological
level, Taylor found "a lack of signs of psychopathology, at least in any overt
clinical sense" among the members. Irish terrorists can easily justify their violent
actions "in terms of their own perception of the world," and do not even object
to being called terrorists, although they refer to each other as volunteers or members.
The Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA) is generally a homegrown, grassroots
organization. In the late 1980s, some members of the PIRA were as young as 12 years of
age, but most of those taking part in PIRA operations were in the twenties. Front-line
bombers and shooters were younger, better educated, and better trained than the early
members were. The PIRA recruits members from the streets.
Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) and Abdullah Ocalan
Group/Leader Profile:
The Kurdistan Workers' Party (Parte Krikaranc Kordesian/Partia Karkaris Kurdistan-PKK)
originated in 1972 with a small group of Marxist-oriented university activists in Ankara
known as "Apocus." The principal founder of the student-based Apocular group,
Abdullah Ocalan ("Apo"--Uncle) was a former student (expelled) in political
science at Ankara University, who was prominent in the underground Turkish Communist
Party. Ocalan (pronounced Oh-ja-lan or URGE'ah-lohn) was born in 1948 in the village of
Omerli in the southeastern Turkish province of Urfa, the son of an impoverished Kurdish
farmer and a Turkish mother. In 1974 Apocus formed a university association whose initial
focus was on gaining official recognition for Kurdish language and cultural rights. Over
the next four years, Ocalan organized the association into the PKK while studying
revolutionary theories. In 1978 he formally established the PKK, a clandestine
Marxist-Leninist Kurdish political party. During his trial in June 1999, Ocalan blamed
harsh Turkish laws for spawning the PKK in 1978, and then for its taking up arms in 1984.
"These kinds of laws give birth to rebellion and anarchy," he said. The language
ban--now eased--"provokes this revolt."
Abdullah Ocalan 
(Photo courtesy of CNN.com, Time.com)
Several of the founders of the PKK were ethnic Turks. One of the eleven founders of the
PKK was Kesire Yildirim, the only female member. She later married Ocalan, but they became
estranged when she began questioning his policies and tactics. (She left him in 1988 to
join a PKK breakaway faction in Europe.) Unlike other Kurdish groups in the Middle East,
the PKK advocated the establishment of a totally independent Kurdish Marxist republic,
Kurdistan, to be located in southeastern Turkey.
In about 1978, influenced by Mao Zedong's revolutionary theory, Ocalan decided to leave
the cities and establish the PKK in rural areas. He fled Turkey before the 1980 military
coup and lived in exile, mostly in Damascus and in the Lebanese plains under Syrian
control, where he set up his PKK headquarters and training camps. In 1983 he recruited and
trained at least 100 field commandos in the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon, where the PKK
maintains its Masoum Korkmaz guerrilla training base and headquarters. The PKK's army, the
People's Liberation Army of Kurdistan (ARGK), began operating in August 1984. The PKK
created the National Liberation Front of Kurdistan (ERNK) in 1985 to bolster its
recruitment, intelligence, and propaganda activities.
The PKK's early radical agenda, including its antireligious rhetoric and violence,
alienated the PKK from much of the Kurdish peasantry. Citing various sources, Kurdish
specialist Martin van Bruinessen reports that although the PKK had won little popular
sympathy by the early 1990s with its brutally violent actions, "It gradually came to
enjoy the grudging admiration of many Kurds, both for the prowess and recklessness of its
guerrilla fighters and for the courage with which its arrested partisans stood up in court
and in prison.... By the end of 1990, it enjoyed unprecedented popularity in eastern
Turkey, although few seemed to actively support it." Ocalan is reportedly regarded by
many Kurds as a heroic freedom fighter. However, the "silent majority" of Kurds
living in Turkey reportedly oppose the PKK and revile Ocalan.
The charismatic Ocalan was unquestioningly accepted by devoted PKK members, and the PKK
reportedly lacked dissenting factions, at least until the early 1990s. The PKK's Leninist
structure constrained any internal debate. However, in March 1991 Ocalan admitted at a
press conference that he was facing a challenge from a faction within the PKK that wanted
him to work for autonomy within Turkey instead of a separate Kurdish state and recognition
of the PKK as a political force. When Ocalan, who is said to speak very little Kurdish,
agreed to this position and announced a cease-fire in March 1993, the decision was not
unanimous, and there was dissension within the PKK leadership over it.
The PKK's recruitment efforts mainly have targeted the poorer classes of peasants and
workers, the latter group living in the standard apartment ghettos on the fringes of
Turkey's industrial cities. According to a Turkish survey in the southeast cited by Barkey
and Fuller, of the 35 percent of those surveyed who responded to a question on how well
they knew members of the PKK, 42 percent claimed to have a family member in the PKK. The
Turkish government has maintained that the PKK recruits its guerrillas forcibly and then
subjects them to "brainwashing" sessions at training camps in Lebanon. According
to the official Ankara Journalist Association, "members of the organization are sent
into armed clashes under the influence of drugs. [PKK leaders] keep them under the
influence of drugs so as to prevent them from seeing the reality." Scholars also
report that the PKK has forced young men to join. In November 1994, the PKK's former
American spokesperson, Kani Xulum, told James Ciment that the PKK recruits only those who
understand "our strategies and aims" and "we're careful to keep
psychopaths" out of the organization. The PKK has laws regarding military
conscription. At its 1995 congress, the PKK decided not to recruit youth younger than 16
to fight and to make military service for women voluntary. By the mid-1990s, PKK
volunteers increasingly came from emigre families in Germany and the rest of Europe and
even Armenia and Australia.
Since it began operating, the PKK's ranks have included a sprinkling of female members.
However, according to O'Ballance, "Its claim that they lived and fought equally
side by side with their male colleagues can be discounted, although there were some
exceptions. Women were employed mainly on propaganda, intelligence, liaison and
educational tasks. The PKK claimed that women accounted for up to 30 percent of its
strength." In April 1992, the ARGK claimed that it had a commando force of some 400
armed women guerrillas in the mountains of northern Iraq. James Ciment reported in 1996
that approximately 10 percent of PKK guerrillas are women. Thomas Goltz, a journalist
specializing in Turkey, reports that beginning in the mid-1990s, "Many female
recruits were specially trained as suicide bombers for use in crowded urban environments
like Istanbul's bazaar and even on the beaches favored by European tourists along the
Turkish Riviera." For example, a 19-year-old suicide female commando wounded eight
policemen in a suicide attack in Istanbul in early July 1999.
The well-funded PKK's recruitment efforts have probably been aided significantly by its
mass media outlets, particularly Med-TV, a PKK-dominated Kurdish-language TV station that
operates by satellite transmission out of Britain. Ocalan himself often participated, by
telephone, in the Med-TV talk shows, using the broadcasts to Turkey and elsewhere to
convey messages and make announcements. Med-TV commands a wide viewership among the Kurds
in southeast Turkey.
Barkey and Fuller describe the PKK as "primarily a nationalist organization,"
but one still with ties to the Left, although it claimed to have abandoned
Marxism-Leninism by the mid-1990s. They report that, according to some Kurdish observers,
"Ocalan has begun to show considerably more maturity, realism, and balance since
1993," moving away from ideology toward greater pragmatism. Barley and Graham confirm
that the PKK "has been undergoing a significant shift in its political
orientation" since the mid-1990s, including moving away from its anti-Islamism and
"toward greater reality in its assessment of the current political environment"
and the need to reach a political settlement with Turkey.
The PKK leadership's seemingly psychotic vengeful streak became an issue in the
assassination of Olaf Palme, the prime minister of Sweden, who was shot and killed while
walking in a Stockholm street on February 28, 1986. PKK members immediately became the
prime suspects because of the group's extremist reputation. According to John Bulloch and
Harvey Morris, "The motive was thought to be no more than a Swedish police
determination that the PKK was a terrorist organization, and that as a result a visa had
been refused for Ocalan to visit the country, which has a large and growing Kurdish
minority." On September 2, 1987, PKK militant Hasan Hayri Guler became the prime
suspect. According to Hurriyet, a Turkish newspaper, Hasan Hayri Guler reportedly
was sent to Stockholm with orders to assassinate Palme in retaliation for the death of a
PKK militant in Uppsala, Sweden. (The PKK denied the accusation and hinted that Turkish
security forces may have been behind Palme's murder.)
In late 1998, Syria, under intense pressure from Turkey, closed the PKK camps and
expelled Ocalan, who began an odyssey through various nations in search of political
asylum. In February 1999, he was captured in Kenya and flown to Turkey.
Ocalan had the reputation of being a dogmatic, strict, and hard disciplinarian, even
tyrannical. Scholars Henri J. Barkey and Graham E. Fuller, citing a Turkish book, describe
him as:
secretive, withdrawn, suspicious, and lacking in self-confidence. He does not like
group discussion; his close associates reportedly seem uncomfortable around him. He does
not treat others as equals and he often demeans his subordinates in front of others,
demands self-confessions from his lieutenants, and keeps his distance from nearly
everyone.
The ruthlessness with which Kurdish collaborators and PKK defectors were treated by the
PKK reflected Ocalan's brutish attitude. Some PKK defectors have also alleged intimidation
of guerrillas within PKK camps and units in the field. "If anyone crosses [Ocalan],
either with eyes or attitude, he is accused of creating conflict," one defector was
quoted by a Danish weekly. "The sinner is then declared a contra-guerrilla, and his
punishment is death." According to the Turkish Daily News, Ocalan underlined
his personal hunger for absolute power at the helm of the PKK in a party publication in
1991 as follows:
I establish a thousand relationships every day and destroy a thousand political,
organizational, emotional and ideological relationships. No one is indispensable for me.
Especially if there is anyone who eyes the chairmanship of the PKK. I will not hesitate to
eradicate them. I will not hesitate in doing away with people.
Ocalan has also been described as "a smiling, fast-talking and quick-thinking
man," but one who "still follows an old Stalinist style of thinking, applying
Marxist principles to all problems...." He is reportedly given to exaggeration of his
importance and convinced that he and his party alone have the truth. Turkish journalists
who have interviewed Ocalan have come away with the impression of a
"megalomaniac" and "sick" man who has no respect for or understanding
of the "superior values of European civilization." A December 1998 issue of the Turkish
Daily News quoted Ocalan as saying in one of his many speeches:
Everyone should take note of the way I live, what I do and what I don't do. The way I
eat, the way I think, my orders and even my inactivity should be carefully studied. There
will be lessons to be learned from several generations because Apo is a great teacher.
Ocalan's capture and summary trial initially appeared to have radicalized the PKK. The
return of two senior PKK members to the main theater of operations following Ocalan's
capture seemed to indicate that a new more hard-line approach was emerging within the PKK
leadership. Ali Haidar and Kani Yilmaz, former PKK European representatives, were summoned
back to the PKK's main headquarters, now located in the Qandil Mountain Range straddling
Iraq and Iran. Jane's Defence Weekly reports that their return suggested that the
PKK's military wing exercises new authority over the PKK's political or diplomatic
representatives, whose approach was seen as failing in the wake of Ocalan's capture. (In
addition to Haidar and Yilmaz, the PKK's ruling six-member Presidential Council includes
four other senior and long-serving PKK commanders: Cemil Bayik ("Cuma"), Duran
Kalkan ("Abbas"), Murat Karayillan ("Cemal"), and Osman Ocalan
("Ferhat")). However, on August 5, 1999, the PKK's Presidential Council declared
that the PKK would obey Ocalan's call to abandon its armed struggle and pull out of
Turkey. Whether all the PKK groups would do the same or whether the PKK's gesture merely
amounted to a tactical retreat remained to be seen. In any case, the rebels began
withdrawing from Turkey in late August 1999.
The PKK remains divided between political and military wings. The political wing favors
a peaceful political struggle by campaigning for international pressure on Ankara. It is
supported by hundreds of thousands of Kurds living in Europe. The military wing consists
of about 4,500 guerrillas operating from the mountains of Turkey, northern Iraq, and Iran.
It favors continuing the war and stepping up attacks if Ocalan is executed. Karayillan, a
leading military hard-liner, is reportedly the most powerful member of the Council and
slated to take over if Ocalan is executed.
Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE)
Group Profile
Background
The LTTE is widely regarded as the world's deadliest and fiercest guerrilla/terrorist
group and the most ferocious guerrilla organization in South Asia. It is the only
terrorist group to have assassinated three heads of government--Indian Prime Minister
Rajiv Gandhi in 1991, Sri Lankan President Ranasinghe Premadasa in 1993, and former Prime
Minister Dissanayake in 1994. It has also assassinated several prominent political and
military figures. The LTTE's ill-conceived Gandhi assassination, however, resulted in the
LTTE's loss of a substantial logistical infrastructure, and also the loss of popular
support for the LTTE among mainstream Indian Tamils. In 1999 the LTTE made two threats on
the life of Sonia Gandhi, who has nevertheless continued to campaign for a seat in
parliament.
Also known as the Tamil Tigers, the LTTE is a by-product of Sri Lanka's ethnic conflict
between the majority Sinhalese people and the minority ethnic Tamils, whose percentage of
the island's population has been reported with figures ranging from 7 per cent to 17
percent. As a result of government actions that violated the rights of the Tamils in Sri
Lanka in the 1948-77 period, a large pool of educated and unemployed young people on the
island rose up against the government in 1972, under the leadership of the reputed
military genius, Velupillai Prabhakaran. The Tigers and other Tamil militant groups
realized the importance of creating an exclusively Tamil northern province for reasons of
security, and began their campaign for the independence of Tamil Eelam, in the northern
part of the island.
Founders of the military youth movement, Tamil New Tigers, formed the Liberation Tigers
of Tamil Eelam on May 5, 1976. In one of its first major terrorist acts, it destroyed an
Air Ceylon passenger jet with a time bomb in September 1978. The LTTE is only one of five
groups, albeit the supreme one, that have achieved dominance over more than 35 Tamil
guerrilla groups. Nationalism has remained the driving force behind the Tiger Movement.
The Tamil guerrilla movement is mainly composed of groups known as the Tigers, a term
applied to the movement's numerous factions. According to Robert C. Oberst,
The groups, commonly called 'Tigers,' are shadowy collections of youths which emerged
in the early 1980s as full-fledged politico-military organizations. Prior to that time
they were loosely organized, and centered around dominant personalities.
The bloody ethnic riots of July 1983 polarized the Sinhalese and Tamil communities and
became a watershed in the history of Sri Lanka. The riots started by the Sinhalese were a
reaction to the death of 13 soldiers in a Tiger ambush. The end result was that around
500,000 Tamils left for India and the West, seeking asylum. They became the economic
backbone of the terrorist campaign, and in the years that followed, the Tigers established
offices and cells throughout the world, building a network unsurpassed by any other
terrorist group. By 1987 the LTTE had emerged as the strongest militant group in Sri
Lanka. More than two generations of Tamil youth have now been indoctrinated with
separatism.
Membership Profile
The LTTE is an exclusively ethnic organization consisting almost entirely of Tamil
Hindu youth. Although a majority of members of the Tamil guerrilla groups are Hindu, a
significant number of Tamil Christians reportedly are in the movement. The early
supporters of the Tamil independence movement were in their thirties. Since then, the age
level has declined sharply. In the 1970s, quotas on university admissions for Tamils
prompted younger Tamils to join the insurgency. By 1980 a majority of LTTE combatants were
reportedly between 18 and 25 years of age, with only a few in their thirties. In 1990
approximately 75 percent of the second-generation LTTE membership were below 30 years of
age, with about 50 percent between the ages of 15 and 21 and about 25 percent between the
ages of 25 and 29. Highly motivated and disciplined, most LTTE fighters are subteenagers,
according to an Indian authority.
LTTE child soldiers 
(Photo courtesy of Asiaweek, July 26, 1996)
The majority of the rank and file membership belong to the lower middle class. Almost
all LTTE cadres have been recruited from the lower-caste strata of Jaffna society. The
Tamil Tigers draw their recruits from the Tamils who live in the northern province and
some from the eastern province. The cadres drawn from other areas of the northern and
eastern provinces are only lower-rung "troops" who do not hold any place of
importance or rank. In 1993 the LTTE reportedly had about 10,000 men in its fighting
cadres, all Tamils and Hindus.
Deputy Defense Minister General Anuruddha Ratwatte reported in March 1999 that LTTE
recruitment had been limited since early 1998 and reduced in strength to a fighting cadre
of fewer than 3,000, down from 4,000 to 5,000 members. As a result of its depleted
manpower strength, the LTTE has become largely dependent on its Baby Brigade, which is
comprised of boys and girls of ages ranging from 10 to 16 years. In May 1999, in an
apparently desperate plan to establish a Universal People's Militia, the LTTE began to
implement compulsory military training of all people over the age of 15 in areas under
LTTE control in the Vanni.
Among the world's child combatants, children feature most prominently in the LTTE,
whose fiercest fighting force, the Leopard Brigade (Sirasu puli), is made up of children.
In 1983 the LTTE established a training base in the state of Pondicherry in India for
recruits under 16, but only one group of children was trained. By early 1984, the nucleus
of the LTTE Baby Brigade (Bakuts) was formed. The LTTE trained its first group of women in
1985. In October 1987, the LTTE stepped up its recruitment of women and children and began
integrating its child warriors into other units. LTTE leader Prabhakaran reportedly had
ordered the mass conscription of children in the remaining areas under LTTE control,
especially in the northeastern Mullaittivu District. From late 1995 to mid-1996, the LTTE
recruited and trained at least 2,000 Tamils largely drawn from the 600,000 Tamils
displaced in the wake of the operations to capture the peninsula. About 1,000 of these
were between 12 and 16 years old. In 1998 Sri Lanka's Directorate of Military Intelligence
estimated that 60 percent of LTTE fighters were below 18 and that a third of all LTTE
recruits were women. According to an estimate based on LTTE fighters who have been killed
in combat, 40 percent of LTTE's force are both males and females between nine and 18 years
of age. Since April 1995, about 60 percent of LTTE personnel killed in combat have been
children, mostly girls and boys aged 10 to 16. Children serve everywhere except in
leadership positions.
LTTE child combats 
(Photo courtesy of Asiaweek, July 26, 1996)
The entire LTTE hardcore and leaders are from Velvettihura or from the
"fisher" caste, which has achieved some social standing because of the AK-47s
carried by many of its militant members. According to Oberst, many tend to be
university-educated, English-speaking professionals with close cultural and personal ties
to the West. However, several of the important Tiger groups are led by Tamils who are
relatively uneducated and nonprofessional, from a middle-status caste.
LTTE Suicide Commandos
The LTTE has a female military force and uses some females for combat. Indeed, female
LTTE terrorists play a key role in the force. An unknown number of LTTE's female commandos
are members of the LTTE's elite commando unit known as the Black Tigers. Members of this
unit are designated as "suicide commandos" and carry around their necks a glass
vial containing potassium cyanide. Suicide is common in Hindu society, and the Tigers are
fanatical Hindus. The cyanide capsule, which LTTE members view as the ultimate symbol of
bravery and commitment to a cause, is issued at the final initiation ceremony. A LTTE
commando who wears the capsule must use it without fail in the event of an unsuccessful
mission, or face some more painful form of death at the hands of the LTTE. One of the
first reported instances when LTTE members had to carry out their suicide vow was in
October 1987, when the LTTE ordered a group of captured leaders being taken to Colombo to
commit suicide.
LTTE child soldier with a cyanide capsule in his hand 
(Photo courtesy of Asiaweek, July 26, 1996)
The Black Tigers include both male and female members. The LTTE "belt-bomb
girl" who assassinated Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi on May 21, 1991, after
garlanding him with flowers, was an 18-year-old Sri Lankan Tamil Hindu, who had semtex
sachets taped to her body. The blast also killed 17 others, including a LTTE photographer
recording the action. Over the subsequent two months of investigations, as many as 25 LTTE
members committed suicide to avoid capture.
Although the Gandhi assassination had huge negative repercussions for the LTTE, suicide
attacks have remained the LTTE's trademark. On January 31, 1996, a LTTE suicide bomber ran
his truck carrying 440 pounds of explosives into the front of the Central Bank of Sri
Lanka, killing at least 91 people and wounding 1,400, as well as damaging a dozen office
buildings in Sri Lanka's busy financial district. On March 16, 1999, a LTTE
"belt-bomb girl" blew herself to bits when she jumped in front of the car of the
senior counter-terrorism police officer in an attack just outside Colombo. The car,
swerved, however, and escaped the full force of the blast. An accomplice of the woman then
killed himself by swallowing cyanide. More recently, on July 29, 1999, a LTTE
"belt-bomb girl" assassinated Neelan Tiruchelvam, a Harvard-educated, leading
Sri Lankan moderate politician and peacemaker, in Colombo by blowing herself or himself up
by detonating a body bomb next to the victim's car window.
Leader Profile
Velupillai Prabhakaran
Position: Top leader of the LTTE.
Background: Velupillai Prabhakaran was born on November 27, 1954. He
is a native of Velvettihurai, a coastal village near Jaffna, where he hails from the
"warrior-fisherman" caste. He is the son of a pious and gentle Hindu government
official, an agricultural officer, who was famed for being so incorruptible that he would
refuse cups of tea from his subordinates. During his childhood, Prabhakaran spent his days
killing birds and squirrels with a slingshot. An average student, he preferred historical
novels on the glories of ancient Tamil conquerors to his textbooks. As a youth, he became
swept up in the growing militancy in the northern peninsula of Jaffna, which is
predominately Tamil. After dropping out of school at age 16, he began to associate with
Tamil "activist gangs." On one occasion as a gang member, he participated in a
political kidnapping. In 1972 he helped form a militant group called the New Tamil Tigers,
becoming its co-leader at 21. He imposed a strict code of conduct over his 15 gang
members: no smoking, no drinking, and no sex. Only through supreme sacrifice, insisted
Prabhakaran, could the Tamils achieve their goal of Eelam, or a separate homeland. In his
first terrorist action, which earned him nationwide notoriety, Prabhakaran assassinated
Jaffna's newly elected mayor, a Tamil politician who was a member of a large Sinhalese
political party, on July 27, 1973 [some sources say 1975]. Prabhakaran won considerable
power and prestige as a result of the deed, which he announced by putting up posters
throughout Jaffna to claim responsibility. He became a wanted man and a disgrace to his
pacifist father. In the Sri Lankan underworld, in order to lead a gang one must establish
a reputation for sudden and decisive violence and have a prior criminal record. Qualifying
on both counts, Prabhakaran then was able to consolidate control over his gang, which he
renamed Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam on May 5, 1976.
Velupillai Prabhakaran 
(Photo courtesy of Rediff on the Net, April 3,1999)
In Tamil Nadu, Prabhakaran's exploits in the early 1980s turned him into a folk hero.
His fierce eyes glared from calendars. Gradually and ruthlessly, he gained control of the
Tamil uprising. Prabhakaran married a fiery beauty named Mathivathani Erambu in 1983.
Since then, Tigers have been allowed to wed after five years of combat. Prabhakaran's
wife, son, and daughter (a third child may also have been born) are reportedly hiding in
Australia.
The LTTE's charismatic "supremo," Prabhakaran has earned a reputation as a
military genius. A portly man with a moustache and glittering eyes, he has also been
described as "Asia's new Pol Pot," a "ruthless killer," a
"megalomaniac," and an "introvert," who is rarely seen in public
except before battles or to host farewell banquets for Tigers setting off on suicide
missions. He spends time planning murders of civilians, including politicians, and
perceived Tamil rivals. Prabhakaran is an enigma even to his most loyal commanders. Asked
who his heroes are, Prabhakaran once named actor Clint Eastwood. He has murdered many of
his trusted commanders for suspected treason. Nevertheless, he inspires fanatical devotion
among his fighters.
Prabhakaran and his chief intelligence officer and military leader, Pottu Amman, are
the main LTTE leaders accused in Rajiv Gandhi's assassination. On January 27, 1998, the
Colombo High Court issued warrants for the arrest of Prabhakaran, Amman, and eight others
accused of killing 78 persons and destroying the Central Bank Building by the bomb
explosion in 1996 and perpetrating other criminal acts between July 1, 1995, and January
31, 1996. Prabhakaran has repeatedly warned the Western nations providing military support
to Sri Lanka that they are exposing their citizens to possible attacks.
Social Revolutionary Groups
Abu Nidal Organization (ANO)
(aka Fatah--The Revolutionary Council, Black June Organization, Arab Revolutionary
Brigades, Revolutionary Organization of Socialist Muslims)
Group Profile
Since 1974 the Abu Nidal Organization (ANO) is said to have killed more than 300 people
and wounded more than 650 in 20 countries. In recent years, however, as Abu Nidal has
become little more than a symbolic head of the ANO, the ANO appears to have passed into
near irrelevance as a terrorist organization.
By mid-1984 the ANO had about 500 members. A highly secretive, mercenary, and vengeful
group, ANO has carried out actions under various aliases on several continents on behalf
of Middle East intelligence organizations, such as those of Iraq, Syria, Iran, and Libya,
as well as other terrorist groups, such as the Shi'ites in southern Lebanon. For many of
its attacks, the ANO has used its trademark Polish W.Z.63 submachine gun. Relying
primarily on highly motivated young Palestinian students, Abu Nidal has run a highly
disciplined and professional organization, but one held together by terror; many members
have been accused of treason, deviation, or desertion and eliminated.
For Abu Nidal, the enemy camp comprises everyone who opposes the forceful liberation of
Palestine. Together with Zionism and imperialism, a special place in this pantheon is
occupied by those in the Arab world supporting the political process, whether Arab regimes
or Arafat's PLO. Abu Nidal's Fath (Revolutionary Council) sees itself as the true heir of
the authentic Fath, which must be saved from the "founding fathers" (Arafat and
his cohorts) who betrayed its heritage. Abu Nidal's Fath represents a model of secular
Palestinian fundamentalism, whose sacred goal is the liberation of Palestine.
In 1976-78 Abu Nidal began to establish a corps of dormant agents by forcing young
Palestinian students on scholarships in Europe to become his agents. After a short
training period in Libya, Iraq, or Syria, they were sent abroad to remain as dormant
agents for activation when needed. Despite the ruthlessness of ANO terrorism, ANO members
may have a very conservative appearance. Robert Hitchens, a British journalist and
reportedly one of the few foreigners to have met Abu Nidal, was highly impressed by the
cleanliness of Abu Nidal's headquarters in Baghdad, and by the "immaculate dress of
his men," who were "all clean-shaven and properly dressed," as well as very
polite.
Recruiting is highly selective. In the early 1980s, members typically came from
families or hometowns of earlier members in Lebanon, but by the mid-1980s the ANO began to
increase recruitment by drawing from refugee camps. Graduates of the first training
program would be driven to southern Lebanon, where they would undergo several weeks of
military training. A few weeks later, they would be driven to Damascus airport, issued new
code names, and flown to Tripoli, where they would be transferred to ANO training camps.
In the mid-1980s, Abu Nidal continued to recruit from Arab students studying in Europe.
Madrid has served as an important source for recruiting these students.
In the 1987-92 period, most of Abu Nidal's trainees at his camp located 170 kilometers
south of Tripoli continued to be alienated Palestinian youths recruited from Palestinian
refugee camps and towns in Lebanon. They were flown to Libya on Libyan military transports
from the Damascus airport in groups of about 100. Abu Nidal's recruitment efforts were
directed at very young students, whom he would promise to help with education, career
prospects, and families. In addition to paying them a good salary, he lauded the students
for fulfilling their duty not just to Palestine but to the whole Arab nation by joining
his organization, which he claimed was inspired by the noblest Arab virtues.
The selection process became very serious once the new recruits arrived at ANO training
camps in Libya. New recruits were made to sign warrants agreeing to be executed if any
intelligence connection in their backgrounds were later to be discovered. They were also
required to write a highly detailed autobiography for their personal file, to be used for
future verification of the information provided. While still on probation, each new
recruit would be assigned to a two-man cell with his recruiter and required to stand guard
at the Abu Nidal offices, distribute the Abu Nidal magazine, or participate in marches and
demonstrations. Some were ordered to do some intelligence tasks, such as surveillance or
reporting on neighborhood activities of rival organizations. New recruits were also
required to give up alcohol, cigarettes, drugs, and women. They were ordered never to ask
the real name of any Abu Nidal member or to reveal their own, and to use only codenames.
Throughout their training, recruits were drilled in and lectured on the ANO's ten
fundamental principles: commitment, discipline, democratic centralism, obedience to the
chain of command, initiative and action, criticism and self-criticism, security and
confidentiality, planning and implementation, assessment of experience gained, and thrift.
Infractions of the rules brought harsh discipline. Recruits suspected of being
infiltrators were tortured and executed.
According to the Guardian, by the late 1990s the ANO was no longer considered
an active threat, having broken apart in recent years in a series of feuds as Abu Nidal
became a recluse in his Libyan haven. According to the New York Times, Abu Nidal
still had 200 to 300 followers in his organization in 1998, and they have been active in
recent years, especially against Arab targets. As of early 1999, however, there were
reports that the ANO was being torn apart further by internal feuds, defections, and lack
of financing. Half of Abu Nidal's followers in Lebanon and Libya reportedly had defected
to Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement and moved to the Gaza Strip.
Leader Profile
Abu Nidal
Position: Leader of the ANO.
Background: Abu Nidal was born Sabri al-Banna in May 1937 in Jaffa,
Palestine, the son of a wealthy orange grower, Khalil al-Banna, and of his eighth wife.
His father was reputed to be one of the wealthiest men in Palestine, primarily from
dealing in property. Abu Nidal's family also had homes in Egypt, France, and Turkey. His
father died in 1945, when Sabri was attending a French mission school in Jaffa. His more
devout older brothers then enrolled him in a private Muslim school in Jerusalem for the
next two years, until the once wealthy family was forced into abject poverty. The Israeli
government confiscated all of the al-Banna land in 1948, including more than 6,000 acres
of orchards. After living in a refugee camp in Gaza for nine months, the family moved to
Nablus on the West Bank, when Sabri al-Banna was 12 years old. An average student, he
graduated from high school in Nablus in 1955.
Sabri al-Banna ("Abu Nidal") 
(Photo courtesy of The Washington Post, 1999)
That year Sabri joined the authoritarian Arab nationalist and violence-prone Ba'ath
Party. He also enrolled in the engineering department of Cairo University, but two years
later returned to Nablus without having graduated. In 1958 he got a demeaning job as a
common laborer with the Arabian-American Oil Company (Aramco) in Saudi Arabia. In 1960 he
also set up an electronic contracting shop in Riyadh. His character traits at that time
included being an introvert and stubborn. In 1962, while back in Nablus, he married and
then returned with his wife to Saudi Arabia. Political discussions with other Palestinian
exiles in Saudi Arabia inspired him to become more active in the illegal Ba'ath Party and
then to join Fatah. In 1967 he was fired from his Aramco job because of his political
activities, imprisoned, and tortured by the Saudis, who then deported him to Nablus. As a
result of the Six-Day War and the entrance of Israeli forces into Nablus, he formed his
own group called the Palestine Secret Organization, which became more militant in 1968 and
began to stir up trouble. He moved his family to Amman, where he joined Fatah, Yasser
Arafat's group and the largest of the Palestinian commando organizations.
In 1969 Abu Nidal became the Palestinian Liberation Organization's (PLO) representative
in Khartoum, and while there he apparently first came in contact with Iraqi intelligence
officers. In August 1970, he moved to Baghdad, where he occupied the same post, and became
an agent of the Iraqi intelligence service. After the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, he left Fatah
to start his own organization. With Iraqi weapons, training, and intelligence support, his
first major act of terrorism was to seize the Saudi Arabian Embassy in Paris on September
5, 1973. Later Iraqi officials reportedly admitted that they had commissioned Abu Nidal to
carry out the operation.
During 1973-74, the relationship between Abu Nidal and Arafat worsened. Abu Nidal
himself has suggested that he left Fatah because of the PLO's willingness to accept a
compromise West Bank state instead of the total liberation of Palestine. By mid-1974 Abu
Nidal was replaced because of his increasing friendliness with his Iraqi host. In October
1974, Iraq sponsored the Rejection Front. Abu Nidal did not join, however, because of his
recent expulsion from the PLO, and he was organizing his own group, the Fatah
Revolutionary Council, with the help of the Iraqi leadership. In 1978 Abu Nidal began to
retaliate for his ouster from the PLO by assassinating the leading PLO representatives in
London, Kuwait, and Paris. He subsequently assassinated the leading PLO representative in
Brussels in 1981 and the representatives in Bucharest, Romania, in 1984. Other attempts
failed. In 1983 Abu Nidal's hitmen in Lisbon also assassinated one of Arafat's most dovish
advisers.
In addition to his terrorist campaign against the PLO, Abu Nidal carried out attacks
against Syria. He organized a terrorist group called Black June (named after the month the
Syrian troops invaded Lebanon) that bombed Syrian embassies and airline offices in Europe,
took hostages at a hotel in Damascus, and attempted to assassinate the Syrian foreign
minister. In November 1983, Saddam expelled Abu Nidal from Iraq because of pressure
applied by the United States, Jordan, and the United Arab Emirates--all allies of Iraq in
the ongoing war against Iran.
Abu Nidal moved his headquarters to Syria. From late 1983 to 1986, Hafiz al-Assad's
government employed ANO to carry out two main objectives: to intimidate Arafat and King
Hussein, who were considering taking part in peace plans that excluded Syria, and to
attempt to assassinate Jordanian representatives (mainly diplomats). Between 1983 and
1985, the ANO attacked Jordanians in Ankara, Athens, Bucharest, Madrid, New Delhi, and
Rome, as well as bombed offices in these capitals. The Gulf states, mainly Saudi Arabia,
Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates were also attacked because they were late in paying
him protection money. Other ANO attacks included the machine-gun massacres of El Al
passengers at the Vienna and Rome airports on December 27, 1985.
Abu Nidal's relationship with Syria weakened, however, because Assad treated him as a
contract hitman rather than a Palestinian leader and because Britain, the Soviet Union,
and the United States applied intense pressures on Assad's regime to end terrorism. After
Syrian intelligence caught one of Abu Nidal's lieutenants at the Damascus airport carrying
sensitive documents and found weapons that he had stored in Syria without their knowledge,
Syria expelled Abu Nidal in 1987. After the expulsion, he moved to Libya.
Abu Nidal appeared to be more secure in Libya. He followed the same pattern that he had
established in Iraq and Syria. He organized attacks on the enemies of his friends (Libya's
enemies included the United States, Egypt, and the PLO), bombed the U.S. Embassy in Cairo,
hijacked planes, and gunned down 21 Jews at an Istanbul synagogue. In Libya, however,
internal feuds ripped ANO apart. In 1989-90 hundreds died in battles between Abu Nidal and
dissidents supported by the PLO, who sought to take control of his operations in Libya and
Lebanon.
A curious feature of Abu Nidal's terrorism is that more than 50 percent of it has been
directed against Arab and Palestinian rivals. The ANO's vicious war against the PLO has
led to Arab claims that it was secretly manipulated by Israel's Mossad secret service.
According to this seemingly far-fetched hypothesis, the Mossad penetrated Abu Nidal's
organization and has manipulated Abu Nidal to carry out atrocities that would discredit
the Palestinian cause. The hypothesis is based on four main points: Abu Nidal killings
have damaged the Palestinian cause to Israel's advantage, the suspicious behavior of some
of Abu Nidal's officials, the lack of attacks on Israel, lack of involvement in the
Intifada, and Israel's failure to retaliate against Abu Nidal's groups. Another
distinctive feature of Abu Nidal's terrorism is that the ANO has generally not concerned
itself with captured ANO members, preferring to abandon them to their fate rather than to
attempt to bargain for their release. These traits would seem to suggest that the ANO has
been more a product of its leader's paranoid psychopathology than his ideology. Abu
Nidal's paranoia has also been evident in interviews that he has supposedly given, in
which he has indicated his belief that the Vatican was responsible for his fallout with
Iraq and is actively hunting down his organization. Wary of being traced or blown up by a
remote-controlled device, he allegedly never speaks on a telephone or two-way radio, or
drinks anything served to him by others.
In recent years, the aging and ailing Abu Nidal has slipped into relative obscurity. On
July 5, 1998, two days after 10 ANO members demanded his resignation as ANO chief, the
Egyptians arrested Abu Nidal, who was carrying a Tunisian passport under a false name.
Egyptian security officers eventually ordered the 10 dissident members of his group out of
Egypt. Abu Nidal was rumored to be undergoing treatment in the Palestinian Red Crescent
Society Hospital in the Cairo suburb of Heliopolis. In mid-December 1998, he went from
Egypt to Iraq after fleeing a hospital bed in Cairo, where he had quietly been undergoing
treatment for leukemia.
Abu Nidal's physical description seems to vary depending on the source. In 1992 Patrick
Seale described Abu Nidal as "a pale-skinned, balding, pot-bellied man, with a long
thin nose above a gray mustache." One trainee added that Abu Nidal was not very tall
and had blue-green eyes and a plump face.
Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC)
Group Profile
Ahmad Jibril, a Palestinian who had served as a captain in the Syrian army before
joining
first the Fatah and later the PFLP, became disillusioned with the PFLP's emphasis on
ideology over action and for being too willing to compromise with Israel. Consequently, in
August 1968 Jibril formed the PFLP-GC as a breakaway faction of the PFLP. The PFLP-GC is a
secular, nationalist organization that seeks to replace Israel with a "secular
democratic" state. Like the PFLP, the PFLP-GC has refused to accept Israel's
continued existence, but the PFLP-GC has been more strident and uncompromising in its
opposition to a negotiated solution to the Palestinian conflict than the PFLP and, unlike
the PFLP, has made threats to assassinate Yasir Arafat. Terrorist actions linked to the
PFLP-GC have included the hang-glider infiltration of an operative over the Lebanese
border in November 1987, the hijacking of four jet airliners on September 6, 1970, and the
bombing of a Pan Am Boeing 747 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988, causing 270 deaths.
Libyan agents were later charged for the Pan Am bombing, but Jibril and his PFLP-GC have
continued to be suspected of some involvement, such as planning the operation and then
giving it to the Libyans. In recent years, the PFLP-GC, weakened by reduced support from
Syria and Jibril's health problems, has not been associated with any major international
terrorist action. Its activities have focused on guerrilla attacks against Israeli forces
in southern Lebanon.
In 1991 the PFLP-GC had about 500 members and was attempting to recruit new members. It
is known that the PFLP looks for support from the working classes and middle classes, but
little has been reported about the PFLP-GC's membership composition. The PFLP-GC's
presence in the West Bank and Gaza is negligible, however.
The PFLP has a strict membership process that is the only acceptable form of
recruitment. Although it is unclear whether the PFLP-GC uses this or a similar process,
the PFLP's recruiting program is nonetheless described here briefly. A PFLP cell,
numbering from three to ten members, recruits new members and appoints one member of a
comparably sized PFLP circle to guide PFLP trainees through their pre-membership period.
Cells indoctrinate new recruits through the study of PFLP literature and Marxist-Leninist
theory. Prior to any training and during the training period, each recruit is closely
monitored and evaluated for personality, ability, and depth of commitment to the
Palestinian cause. To qualify for membership, the applicant must be Palestinian or Arab,
at least 16 years old, from a "revolutionary class," accept the PFLP's political
program and internal rules, already be a participant in one of the PFLP's noncombatant
organizations, and be prepared to participate in combat. To reach "trainee"
status, the new recruit must submit an application and be recommended by at least two PFLP
members, who are held personally responsible for having recommended the candidate.
Trainees undergo training for a period of six months to a year. On completing training,
the trainee must be formally approved for full membership.
The PFLP-GC political leadership is organized into a General Secretariat, a Political
Bureau, and a Central Committee. The PFLP-GC is currently led by its secretary general,
Ahmad Jibril. Other top leaders include the assistant secretary general, Talal Naji; and
the Political Bureau secretary, Fadl Shururu.
In August 1996, Syrian President Hafiz al-Asad reportedly asked PFLP-GC chief Ahmad
Jibril to leave Syria and go to Iran. However, Jibril apparently was not out of Syria for
long. On May 14, 1999, a delegation representing the leadership of the PFLP-GC, led by
PFLP-GC Secretary General Ahmad Jibril and comprising PFLP-GC Assistant Secretary General
Talal Naji, PFLP-GC Political Bureau Secretary Fadl Shururu, and Central Committee Member
Abu Nidal 'Ajjuri, met in Damascus with Iranian President Muhammad Khatami and his
delegation, who paid a state visit to the Syrian Arab Republic. Several senior PFLP-GC
members quit the group in August 1999 because of Jibril's hard-line against peace
negotiations.
The PFLP-GC is not known to have been particularly active in recent years, at least in
terms of carrying out major acts of terrorism. However, if one of its state sponsors, such
as Iran, Libya, and Syria, decides to retaliate against another nation for a perceived
offense, the PFLP-GC could be employed for that purpose. The group retains dormant cells
in Europe and has close ties to the JRA and Irish terrorists.
Leader Profile
Ahmad Jibril
Position: Secretary General of the PFLP-GC.
Background: Ahmad Jibril was born in the town of Yazur, on land
occupied in 1938. Following the Arab-Israeli War in 1948, his family moved to Syria. Late
in the second half of the 1950s, he, like other Palestinians, joined the Syrian Army. He
attended military college and eventually became a demolitions expert and a captain. While
remaining an active officer in the Syrian Army, Jibril tried to form his own militant
organization, the Palestine Liberation Front (PLF), with a few young Palestinians on the
eve of the June 1967 war. Since that time, Jibril has been characterized by two basic
constants: not offending or distancing himself from Syria and maintaining a deep-seated
hostility toward Fatah and Yasir Arafat. After a brief membership in George Habbash's
PFLP, in October 1968 Jibril formed the PFLP-GC, which became known for its military
explosives technology.
Ahmad Jibril 
(Photo courtesy of The Washington Post, 1999)
After a long period of suffering and poverty, Jibril had the good fortune in the
mid-1970s of becoming acquainted with Libya's Colonel Muammar al-Qadhafi in the wake of
the downing of a Libyan civilian plane by Israeli fighters over the Sinai. Jibril offered
to retaliate, and Qadhafi reportedly gave him millions of dollars to buy gliders and
launch kamikaze attacks on an Israeli city. After sending the pilots to certain communist
countries for training in suicide missions, Jibril met with Qadhafi and returned the
money, saying that twice that amount was needed. Impressed by Jibril's honesty, Qadhafi
immediately gave him twice the amount.
Despite his huge quantities of weapons and money, Jibril still suffered from low
popularity among Palestinians and a lack of presence in the occupied West Bank and Gaza
Strip. Reasons cited for his low popularity included his having grown up in Syrian Army
barracks, the nature of his alliance with Syria, and the Fatah movement's isolation of him
from the Palestinian scene. Jibril suffered a major setback in 1977, when the PFLP-GC
split. In 1982 Jibril fled Beirut in 1982 and began a closer association with Libyan
agencies, taking charge of liquidating a large number of Libyan opposition figures and
leaders overseas. In early 1983, Jibril suddenly began identifying with Iran, which
welcomed him. Eventually, he moved his headquarters and operations center to Tehran. The
PFLP-GC began engaging in intelligence operations for Iran among Palestinians in various
countries.
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC)
Group Profile
The membership of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Fuerzas Armadas
Revolucionarias de Colombia--FARC) has always come primarily from the countryside.
Sociologist James Peter says that 80 percent of the FARC's members are peasants, which
explains its vitality and development over time. Most FARC members reportedly are poorly
educated, young people from rural areas and who are more attracted to the FARC for its
relatively good salary and revolutionary adventurism than for ideology. Many are
teenagers, both male and female. Many poor farmers and teenagers join the FARC out of
boredom or simply because it pays them about $350 a month, which is $100 more than a
Colombian Army conscript. Others may be more idealistic. For example, Ramón, a
17-year-old guerrilla, told a Washington Post reporter in February 1999 that
"I do not know the word 'Marxism,' but I joined the FARC for the cause of the
country...for the cause of the poor." The FARC has relied on forced conscription in
areas where it has had difficulties recruiting or in instances in which landowners are
unable to meet FARC demands for "war taxes." In early June 1999, the FARC's
Eduardo Devía ("Raul Reyes") pledged to a United Nations representative not to
recruit or kidnap more minors.
Although the FARC has traditionally been a primarily peasant-based movement, its
membership may have broadened during the 1990s as a result of the steadily expanding area
under FARC control. Timothy P. Wickham-Crowley points out that "The most striking
single feature of the Colombian guerrilla experience, especially but not only for the
FARC, is how thoroughly the entire guerrilla experience has been rooted in local
experiences in the countryside." Wickham-Crowley qualifies that traditional
characteristic, however, by noting that, according to FARC leader Manuel Marulanda,
"there had been an appreciable broadening of the guerrillas' ranks, now including a
larger number of urbanites: workers, intellectuals, students, professionals, doctors,
lawyers, professors, and priests." If true, this would be surprising considering that
the FARC's increasingly terrorist actions, such as mass kidnappings, have had the effect
of shifting public opinion in Colombia from apathy toward the isolated rural guerrilla
groups to increasing concern and a hardening of attitudes toward the guerrillas.
According to some analysts, the insurgent organization has approximately 20,000
fighters organized in at least 80 fronts throughout the country, which are especially
concentrated in specific areas where the FARC has managed to establish a support base
within the peasant population. However, that figure is at the higher end of estimates. In
1999 the FARC reportedly had approximately 15,000 heavily armed combatants. The National
Army's intelligence directorate puts the figure even lower, saying that the insurgent
group has close to 11,000 men--seven blocs that comprise a total of 61 fronts, four
columns, and an unknown number of mobile companies.
The FARC was not known to have any women combatants in its ranks in the 1960s, but by
the 1980s women were reportedly fighting side by side with FARC men without any special
privileges. By 1999 a growing number of FARC troops were women.
In contrast to most other Latin American guerrilla/terrorist groups, FARC leaders
generally are poorly educated peasants. The formal education of current FARC leader Manuel
Marulanda consists of only four years of grammar school. His predecessor, Jocobo Arenas,
had only two years of school. Wickham-Crowley has documented the peasant origins of FARC
leaders and the organization in general, both of which were a product of the La Violencia
period in 1948, when the government attempted to retake the "independent
republics" formed by peasants.
Marulanda's power is limited by the Central General Staff, the FARC's main
decision-making body, formed by seven members, including Marulanda. The other six are
Jorge Briceño Suárez ("Mono Jojoy"), Guillermo León Saenz Vargas
("Alfonso Cano"), Luis Eduardo Devía ("Raúl Reyes"), Rodrigo
Londoño Echeverry ("Timochenko" or "Timoleón"), Luciano Marín
Arango ("Iván Márquez"), and Efraín Guzmán Jiménez. Raúl Reyes, Joaquín
Gómez and Fabian Ramírez, who have led lengthy military and political careers within the
insurgent ranks, have been present during the peace talks with the government in 1999.
Raúl Reyes is in charge of finances and international policy; Fabian Ramírez is a
commander with the Southern Bloc, one of the organization's largest operations units; and
Joaquín Gómez is a member of the Southern Bloc's General Staff.
At the beginning of the 1980s, the FARC leadership decided to send about 20 of its best
youth to receive training in the military academies of the now former Soviet Union. The
FARC's new second-generation of guerrilla leaders--those young FARC members who completed
political-military training abroad and are beginning to assume important military
responsibilities--have been educated more for waging war than making peace. Since the
mid-1990s, these second-generation FARC military leaders have been gradually assuming
greater military responsibilities and taking over from the FARC's first-generation
leaders.
The division between so-called moderates and hard-liners within the FARC leadership
constitutes a significant vulnerability, if it can be exploited. Whereas Marulanda
represents the supposedly moderate faction of the FARC and favors a political solution,
Jorge Briceño ("Mono Jojoy") represents the FARC hard-liners who favor a
military solution. Marulanda must know that he will not live long enough to see the FARC
take power. Thus, he may prefer to be remembered in history as the FARC leader who made
peace possible. However, should Marulanda disappear then Mono Jojoy and his fellow
hard-liners will likely dominate the FARC. Mono Jojoy, who does not favor the peace
process, reportedly has been the primary cause of a rupture between the FARC's political
and military branches.
Leader Profiles
Pedro Antonio Marín/Manuel Marulanda Vélez
Position: FARC founder and commander in chief.
Background: Since its inception in May 1966, the FARC has operated
under the leadership of Pedro Antonio Marín (aka "Manuel Marulanda Vélez" or
"Tirofijo"--Sure Shot). Marín was born into a peasant family in Génova,
Quindío Department, a coffee-growing region of west-central Colombia. He says he was born
in May 1930, but his father claimed the date was May 12, 1928. He was the oldest of five
children, all brothers. His formal education consisted of only four years of elementary
school, after which he went to work as a woodcutter, butcher, baker, and candy salesman.
His family supported the Liberal Party. When a civil war erupted in 1948 following the
assassination of a Liberal president, Marín and a few cousins took to the mountains. On
becoming a guerrilla, Marín adopted the pseudonym of Manuel Marulanda Vélez in tribute
to a trade unionist who died while opposing the dispatch of Colombian troops to the Korean
War.
Pedro Antonio Marín 
(Photo courtesy of www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Lobby/6433/04.html)
A professional survivor, an experienced tactician, and a determined commander,
Marulanda Vélez has been officially pronounced dead several times in army communiqués,
but he has always reappeared in guerrilla actions. Although only five feet tall, he is a
charismatic guerrilla chieftain who has long been personally involved in combat and has
inspired unlimited confidence among his followers. He ascended to the top leadership
position after the death of Jocobo Arenas from a heart attack in 1990. He is reported to
be a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Colombia (Partido Comunista
de Colombia--PCC), which has historically been associated with the FARC. According to
author Alfredo Rangel Suárez, Marulanda "is not a theoretician by any means, but he
is very astute and has a great capacity for command and organization." Rangel Suárez
believes that Marulanda is a hardcore Marxist-Leninist. However, Marulanda's peasant
origins and his innate sense of military strategy have earned him nationwide recognition
as a leader among politicians, leftists, and other guerrilla groups.
Marulanda is not known to have ever married, although he reportedly has numerous
children by liaisons with various women. According to journalist María Jimena Duzán,
Marulanda lives simply, like a peasant, and without any luxuries, such as cognac. However,
he smokes cigarettes.
Jorge Briceño Suárez ("Mono Jojoy")
Position: Second in command of the FARC; commander, Eastern Bloc of
the FARC; member, FARC General Secretariat since April 1993.
Background: Jorge Briceño Suárez was born in the Duda region of
Colombia, in the jurisdiction of Uribe, Meta Department, in 1949. His father was the
legendary guerrilla Juan de la Cruz Varela, and his mother was a peasant woman, Romelia
Suárez. He grew up and learned to read and write within the FARC. For years, he was at
the side of Manuel Marulanda Vélez ("Tirofijo"--Sureshot), who is considered
his tutor and teacher. Mono Jojoy is a jovial-looking, heavy-set man who wears a handlebar
moustache and who normally wears a simple green camouflage uniform and a black beret. He
is another of the new second-generation FARC military chiefs who was born in the FARC.
Both he and "Eliécer"created the FARC's highly effective school for
"special attack tactics," which trains units to strike the enemy without
suffering major casualties. Mono Jojoy is credited with introducing the Vietnam War-style
specialized commandos that consist of grouping the best men of each front in order to
assign them specific high-risk missions. He is one of the most respected guerrilla leaders
within FARC ranks. He became second in command when Marulanda succeeded Jocobo Arenas in
1990.
Unlike the other commanders who came to the FARC after university-level studies, Mono
Jojoy learned everything about guerrilla warfare in the field. He easily moves among the
Departments of Boyacá, Cundinamarca, and Meta. He is said to know the Sumapaz region
"like the palm of his hand." He is known as a courageous guerrilla, who is
obsessed with attacking the Public Force, has little emotion, and is laconic. His great
military experience helps to compensate for his low intellectual level. He is said to be
unscrupulous and to advocate any form of warfare in pursuit of power, including dialoging
with the government as a ruse. Under his command, the Eastern Bloc has earned record
amounts of cocaine-trafficking profits. He is opposed to extradition of Colombians,
including his brother, Germán Briceño Suárez ("Grannobles"), a FARC
hard-liner who was charged on July 21, 1999, in the slayings of three U.S. Indian rights
activists, who were executed in early 1999. He is contemptuous of the prospect of U.S.
military intervention, noting that U.S. soldiers would not last three days in the jungle.
However, he would welcome U.S. economic assistance to rural development projects, such as
bridge-building.
Germán Briceño Suárez ("Grannobles")
Position: Commander, 10th, 28th, 38th, 45th, and 56th fronts.
Background: Germán Briceño, younger brother of Jorge Briceño
Suárez, was born in the Duda region of Colombia, in the jurisdiction of Uribe, Meta
Department, in 1953. His father was the legendary guerrilla Juan de la Cruz Varela, and
his mother was a peasant woman, Romelia Suárez. At the recommendation of his brother,
Germán Briceño became an official member of the FARC in 1980. Even from that early date,
Germán Briceño showed himself to be more of a fighter and bolder than his older brother,
despite the latter's own reputation for boldness. Germán Briceño was promoted rapidly to
commander of the FARC's 30th Front in Cauca Department. After founding a combat
training school in that department's Buenos Aires municipality, he began to be known for
his meanness. He was reportedly suspended temporarily from the FARC for his excesses
against the peasants and his subordinates, but later readmitted as a commander, thanks to
his brother. However, he was transferred to Vichada Department, where he engaged in
weapons trafficking and extortion of taxes from coca growers and drug traffickers.
In 1994, after being promoted to his brother's Western Bloc staff, Germán Briceño
took over command of the 10th Front, which operates in Arauca Department and
along the Venezuelan border. Since then he has also assumed command of the 28th,
38th, 45th, and 56th fronts, operating in the
economically and militarily important departments of Arauca, Boyaca, and Casanare. In 1994
he reportedly participated, along with his brother, in the kidnappings and murders of
American missionaries Stephen Welsh and Timothy van Dick; the kidnapping of Raymond
Rising, an official from the Summer Linguistics Institute; and the kidnappings of
industrialist Enrique Mazuera Durán and his son, Mauricio, both of whom have U.S.
citizenship. Germán Briceño is also accused of kidnapping British citizen Nigel Breeze,
and he is under investigation for the murder of two Colombian Marine Infantry deputy
officers and for the kidnappings of Carlos Bastardo, a lieutenant from the Venezuelan
navy, as well as about a dozen cattlemen from Venezuela's Apure State. His kidnap victims
in Arauca have included the son of Congressman Adalberto Jaimes; and Rubén Dario López,
owner of the Arauca convention center, along with his wife. He has also ordered the
murders of young women who were the girlfriends of police or military officers.
On February 23, 1999, Germán Briceño also kidnapped, without FARC authorization,
three U.S. indigenous activists in Arauca and murdered them a week later in Venezuelan
territory. The incident resulted in the breaking off of contact between the FARC and the
U.S. Department of State. After a so-called FARC internal investigation, he was
exonerated, again thanks to his brother, and a guerrilla named Gildardo served as the fall
guy. Germán Briceño recovered part of his warrior's reputation by leading an offensive
against the army in March and April 1999 that resulted in the deaths of 60 of the army's
soldiers. On July 30, 1999, however, Germán Briceño once again carried out an
unauthorized action by hijacking a Venezuela Avior commercial flight with 18 people on
board (they were released on August 8).
"Eliécer"
Position: A leading FARC military tactician.
Background: "Eliécer" was born in the FARC in 1957, the son
of one of the FARC's founders. He walked though the Colombian jungles at the side of his
father. Tall, white, and muscular, he is a member of the so-called second-generation of
the FARC. One the FARC's most highly trained guerrillas, he received military training in
the Soviet Union. The late FARC ideologist Jocobo Arenas singled out Eliécer for this
honor. An outstanding student, Eliécer was awarded various Soviet decorations. He then
went to East Germany, where he not only received military training but also learned German
and completed various political science courses. Following his stay in East Germany, he
received guerrilla combat experience in Central America. Commander "Eliécer"
became the FARC's military chief of Antioquia Department at the end of 1995. A modern
version of Manuel Marulanda, Eliécer is regarded as cold, calculating, a very good
conversationalist, cultured, and intuitive. By 1997 he was regarded as one of the FARC's
most important tacticians. He and "Mono Jojoy"created the FARC's highly
effective school for "special attack tactics," which trains units to strike the
enemy without suffering major casualties. In Antioquia Eliécer was assigned to work
alongside Efraín Guzmán ("El Cucho"), a member of the FARC Staff and a FARC
founder who was 60 years old in 1996.
Revolutionary Organization 17 November (17N)
Group Profile
Since the group's initial appearance with the assassination of U.S. official Richard
Welch in an Athens suburb with a Colt .45-caliber magnum automatic pistol on December 23,
1975, no known member of the shadowy Revolutionary Organization 17 November (Epanastatiki
Organosi 17 Noemvri--17N) has been apprehended. Thus, the membership and internal dynamics
of this small, mysterious, and well-disciplined group remain largely unknown.
It has been claimed in some news media that the identity of no member of 17N is known
to Greek, American, or European police and intelligence agencies. However, the group's
ability to strike with impunity at its chosen targets for almost a quarter century without
the apprehension of a single member has reportedly made Western intelligence agencies
suspect it of being the instrument of a radicalized Greek intelligence service, the GYP,
according to the Observer [London]. According to one of the Observer's
sources, Kurdish bomber Seydo Hazar, 17N leaders work hand-in-glove with elements of the
Greek intelligence service. According to the Observer, 17N has sheltered the PKK
by providing housing and training facilities for its guerrillas. Police were kept away
from PKK training camps by 17N leaders who checked the identity of car license plates with
Greek officials. Funds were obtained and distributed to the PKK by a retired naval
commander who lives on a Greek military base and is a well-known sympathizer of 17N.
What little is known about 17N derives basically from its target selection and its
rambling written communiqués that quote Balzac or historical texts, which a member may
research in a public library. Named for the 1973 student uprising in Greece protesting the
military regime, the group is generally believed to be an ultranationalist,
Marxist-Leninist organization that is anti-U.S., anti-Turkey, anti-rich Greeks,
anti-German, anti-European Union (EU), and anti-NATO, in that order. It has also been very
critical of Greek government policies, such as those regarding Cyprus, relations with
Turkey, the presence of U.S. bases in Greece, and Greek membership in NATO and the
European Union (EU). In its self-proclaimed role as "vanguard of the working
class," 17N has also been critical of Greek government policies regarding a variety
of domestic issues. One of the group's goals is to raise the "consciousness of the
masses" by focusing on issues of immediate concern to the population. To these ends,
the group has alternated its attacks between so-called "watchdogs of the capitalist
system" (i.e., U.S. diplomatic and military personnel and "secret
services") and "servants of the state" (such as government officials,
security forces, or industrialists). It has been responsible for numerous attacks against
U.S. interests, including the assassination of four U.S. officials, the wounding of 28
other Americans, and a rocket attack on the U.S. Embassy compound in Athens in February
1996. The group justified its assassination of Welch by blaming the CIA for
"contributing to events in Cyprus" and for being "responsible for and
supporting the military junta."
Unlike most European Marxist-Leninist terrorist groups that are in their third or
fourth generation of membership, the 17N group has been able to retain its original
hard-core members. In 1992, according to 17N expert Andrew Corsun, the group's hard-core
members were most likely professionals such as lawyers, journalists, and teachers in their
late thirties and early forties. If that is the case, most of the group's core membership,
which he estimated to be no more than twenty, would today be mostly in their forties.
Moreover, the 17N communiques, with a five-pointed star and the name "17N,"
typically come from the same typewriter that issued the movement's first proclamation in
1975, shortly before Welch's execution. According to the prosecutor who examined the files
on 17N accumulated by late Attorney General Dhimitrios Tsevas, the group comprises a small
circle of members who are highly educated, have access and informers in the government,
and are divided into three echelons: General Staff, operators, and auxiliaries. The core
members are said to speak in the cultivated Greek of the educated.
There appears to be general agreement among security authorities that the group has
between 10 and 25 members, and that its very small size allows it to maintain its secrecy
and security. The origin of the group is still somewhat vague, but it is believed that its
founders were part of a resistance group that was formed during the 1967-75 military
dictatorship in Greece. It is also believed that Greek Socialist Premier Andreas
Papendreou may have played some hand in its beginnings. After democracy returned to Greece
in 1975, it is believed that many of the original members went their own way. N17 is
considered unique in that it appears not to lead any political movement.
One of the group's operating traits is the fact that more than 10 of its attacks in
Athens, ranging from its assassination of U.S. Navy Captain George Tsantes on November 15,
1983, to its attack on the German ambassador's residence in early 1999, took place in the
so-called Khalandhri Triangle, a triangle comprising apartment blocks under construction
in the suburb of Khalandhri and situated between Kifisias, Ethinikis Antistaseos, and
Rizariou. The terrorists are believed by authorities to know practically every square foot
of this area. Knowing the urban terrain intimately is a basic tenet of urban terrorism, as
specified by Carlos Marighella, author of The Minimanual of the Urban Guerrilla.
The continuing hard-core membership is suggested by the fact that the group murdered
Cosfi Peraticos, scion of a Greek shipping family, in June 1997 with the same Colt .45
that it used to assassinate Richard Welch in 1975. The group has actually used the Colt
.45 in more attacks than those in 1975 and 1997 (see Table 6, Appendix). Since the Welch
assassination, its signature Colt .45 has been used to kill or wound at least six more of
its 20 victims, who include three other American officials and one employee, two Turkish
diplomats, and 13 Greeks. The rest have been killed by another Colt .45, bombs, and
anti-tank missiles. The group's repeated use of its Colt .45 and typewriter suggests a
trait more typical of a psychopathic serial killer. In the political context of this
group, however, it appears to be symbolically important to the group to repeatedly use the
same Colt .45 and the same typewriter.
Authorities can tell that the people who make bombs for the 17N organization were
apparently trained in the Middle East during the early 1970s. For example, in the bombing
of a bank branch in Athens on June 24, 1998, by the May 98 Group, the bomb, comprised of a
timing mechanism made with two clocks and a large amount of dynamite, was typical of
devices used by 17N, according to senior police officials.
Religious Fundamentalist Groups
Al-Qaida
Group Profile
In February 1998, bin Laden announced the formation of an umbrella organization called
the Islamic World Front for the Struggle against the Jews and the Crusaders (Al-Jabhah
al-Islamiyyah al-`Alamiyyah li-Qital al-Yahud wal-Salibiyyin). Among the announced members
of this terrorist organization are the Egyptian Al-Jama'a al-Islamiyyah, the Egyptian
Al-Jihad, the Egyptian Armed Group, the Pakistan Scholars Society, the Partisan Movement
for Kashmir, the Jihad Movement in Bangladesh, and bin Laden's Afghan military wing of the
Advice and Reform Commission (Bodansky: 316). Unlike most terrorist groups, Al-Qaida is
more of a home base and financier for a global network of participating Islamic groups.
According to Bodansky (308-9), bin Laden and his close advisers live in a three-chamber
cave in eastern Afghanistan, in the mountains near Jalalabad. One room is used as bin
Laden's control and communications center and is equipped with a state-of-the-art
satellite communications system, which includes, in addition to a satellite telephone, a
desktop computer, at least a couple laptops, and fax machines. Another room is used for
storage of weapons such as AK-47s, mortars, and machine guns. A third room houses a large
library of Islamic literature and three cots. His immediate staff occupy cave bunkers in
nearby mountains.
Bin Laden is ingratiating himself with his hosts, the Taliban, by undertaking a massive
reconstruction of Qandahar. In the section reserved for the Taliban elite, bin Laden has
built a home of his own, what Bodansky (312) describes as "a massive stone building
with a tower surrounded by a tall wall on a side street just across from the Taliban's
"foreign ministry" building." Bin Laden's project includes the construction
of defensive military camps around the city. In addition, in the mountains east of
Qandahar, bin Laden is building bunkers well concealed and fortified in mountain ravines.
After the U.S. cruise missile attack against his encampment on August 20, 1998, bin
Laden began building a new headquarters and communications center in a natural cave system
in the Pamir Mountains in Kunduz Province, very close to the border with Tajikistan.
According to Bodansky (312-13), the new site will be completed by the first half of 2000.
Bodanksy (326) reports that, since the fall of 1997, bin Laden has been developing
chemical weapons at facilities adjacent to the Islamic Center in Soba, one of his farms
located southwest of Khartoum, Sudan. Meanwhile, since the summer of 1998 bin Laden has
also been preparing terrorist operations using biological, chemical, and possibly
radiological weapons at a secret compound near Qandahar.
By 1998 a new generation of muhajideen was being trained at bin Laden's camps in
eastern Afghanistan and Pakistan. Bin Laden's Afghan forces consist of more than 10,000
trained fighters, including almost 3,000 Arab Afghans, or Armed Islamic Movement (AIM),
which is also known as the International Legion of Islam. According to Bodansky (318-19),
Egyptian intelligence reported that these Arab Afghans total 2,830, including 177
Algerians, 594 Egyptians, 410 Jordanians, 53 Moroccans, 32 Palestinians, 162 Syrians, 111
Sudanese, 63 Tunisians, 291 Yemenis, 255 Iraqis, and others from the Gulf states. The
remaining 7,000 or so fighters are Bangladeshis, Chechens, Pakistanis, Tajiks, Uzbeks, and
other nationalities. Bodansky (318) reports that the 5,000 trainees at one training center
in Afghanistan are between 16 and 25 years of age and from all over the world. The
Martyrdom Battalions are composed of human bombs being trained to carry out spectacular
terrorist operations.
Leader Profiles:
Osama bin Laden ("Usama bin Muhammad bin Laden, Shaykh
Usama bin Laden, the Prince, the Emir, Abu Abdallah, Mujahid Shaykh, Hajj, the
Director")
Position: Head of Al-Qaida.
Background: Usamah bin Mohammad bin Laden, now known in the Western
world as Osama bin Laden, was born on July 30, 1957, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, the
seventeenth son of Mohammad bin Laden. The late Mohammad bin Laden rose from peasant
origins in Yemen to become a small-time builder and contractor in Saudi Arabia and
eventually the wealthiest construction contractor in Saudi Arabia.. He had more than 50
children from several wives. Osama bin Laden's mother was reportedly a Palestinian.
Depending on the source of information, she was the least or most favored of his father's
ten wives, and Osama was his father's favorite son. He was raised in the Hijaz in western
Saudi Arabia, and ultimately al Medina Al Munawwara. The family patriarch died in the late
1960s, according to one account, but was still active in 1973, according to another
account. In any case, he left his 65 children a financial empire that today is worth an
estimated $10 billion. The Saudi bin Laden Group is now run by Osama's family, which has
publicly said it does not condone his violent activities.
After being educated in schools in Jiddah, the main port city on the Red Sea coast, bin
Laden studied management and economics in King Abdul Aziz University, also in Jiddah, from
1974 to 1978. As a student, he often went to Beirut to frequent nightclubs, casinos, and
bars. However, when his family's construction firm was rebuilding holy mosques in the
sacred cities of Mecca and Medina in 1973, bin Laden developed a religious passion for
Islam and a strong belief in Islamic law. In the early 1970s, he began to preach the
necessity of armed struggle and worldwide monotheism, and he also began to associate with
Islamic fundamentalist groups.
Osama bin Laden 
(AP Photo; www.cnn.com)
Bin Laden's religious passion ignited in December 1979, when the Soviet Union invaded
Muslim Afghanistan. Bin Laden's worldview of seeing the world in simplistic terms as a
struggle between righteous Islam and a doomed West prompted him to join the mujahideen in
Pakistan, just a few days after the invasion. In the early 1980s, he returned home to
fund, recruit, transport, and train a volunteer force of Arab nationals, called the
Islamic Salvation Front (ISF), to fight alongside the existing Afghan mujahideen. He
co-founded the Mujahideen Services Bureau (Maktab al-Khidamar) and transformed it into an
international network that recruited Islamic fundamentalists with special knowledge,
including engineers, medical doctors, terrorists, and drug smugglers. In addition, bin
Laden volunteered the services of the family construction firm to blast new roads through
the mountains. As commander of a contingent of Arab troops, he experienced combat against
the Soviets first-hand, including the siege of Jalalabad in 1986--one of the fiercest
battles of the war, and he earned a reputation as a fearless fighter. Following that
battle, bin Laden and other Islamic leaders concluded that they were victims of a U.S.
conspiracy to defeat the jihad in Afghanistan and elsewhere.
By the time the Soviet Union had pulled out of Afghanistan in February 1989, bin Laden
was leading a fighting force known as "Afghan Arabs," which numbered between
10,000 and 20,000. That year, after the Soviets were forced out of Afghanistan, bin Laden
disbanded the ISF and returned to the family construction business in Saudi Arabia.
However, now he was a celebrity, whose fiery speeches sold a quarter million cassettes.
The Saudi government rewarded his hero status with numerous government construction
contracts. Following Iraq's invasion of Kuwait on August 2, 1990, bin Laden urged the
Saudi government not to compromise its Islamic legitimacy by inviting infidel Americans
into Saudi Arabia to defend the country, but he was ignored..
Although bin Laden, unlike most other Islamic leaders, remained loyal to the regime
while condemning the U.S. military and economic presence as well as the Iraqi invasion,
Saudi officials increasingly began to threaten him to halt his criticism. Consequently,
bin Laden and his family and a large band of followers moved to Sudan in 1991. While
living modestly in Sudan, bin Laden established a construction company employing many of
his former Afghan fighters. In addition to building roads and infrastructure for the
Sudanese government, he ran a farm producing sunflower seeds and a tannery exporting goat
hides to Italy. Sudan served as a base for his terrorist operations. In 1992 his attention
appears to have been directed against Egypt, but he also claimed responsibility that year
for attempting to bomb U.S. soldiers in Yemen, and again for attacks in Somalia in 1993.
He also financed and help set up at least three terrorist training camps in cooperation
with the Sudanese regime, and his construction company worked directly with Sudanese
military officials to transport and supply terrorists training in such camps. During the
1992-96 period, he built and equipped 23 training camps for mujahideen. While in Sudan, he
also established a supposedly detection-proof financial system to support Islamic
terrorist activities worldwide.
In the winter of 1993, bin Laden traveled to the Philippines to support the terrorist
network that would launch major operations in that country and the United States. In
1993-94, having become convinced that the House of al-Saud was no longer legitimate, bin
Laden began actively supporting Islamic extremists in Saudi Arabia. His calls for
insurrection prompted Saudi authorities to revoke his Saudi citizenship on April 7, 1994,
for "irresponsible behavior," and he was officially expelled from the country.
He subsequently established a new residence and base of operations in the London suburb of
Wembley, but was forced to return to Sudan after a few months to avoid being extradited to
Saudi Arabia. In early 1995, he began stepping up activities against Egypt and Saudi
Arabia.
In mid-May 1996, pressure was applied by the Saudi government on Sudan to exert some
form of control over bin Laden. That summer, he uprooted his family again, returning to
Afghanistan on board his unmarked, private C-130 military transport plane. Bin Laden
established a mountain fortress near the city of Kandahar southwest of Jalalabad, under
the protection of the Afghan government. From this location, he continues to fund his
training camps and military activities. In particular, bin Laden continues to fund the
Kunar camp, which trains terrorists for Al-Jihad and Al-Jama' ah al-Islamiyyah. After
attending a terrorism summit in Khartoum, bin Laden stopped in Tehran in early October
1996 and met with terrorist leaders, including Abu Nidal, to discuss stepping up terrorist
activities in the Middle East.
A mysterious figure whose exact involvement with terrorists and terrorist incidents
remains elusive, bin Laden has been linked to a number of Islamic extremist groups and
individuals with vehement anti-American and anti-Israel ideologies. His name has been connected to many of the world's most deadly
terrorist operations, and he is named by the U.S. Department of State as having financial
and operational connections with terrorism. Some aspects of bin
Laden's known activities have been established during interviews, mainly with Middle
Eastern reporters and on three occasions of the release of fatwas (religious rulings) in
April 1996, February 1997, and February 1998. Each threatened a jihad against U.S. forces
in Saudi Arabia and the Holy Lands, and each called for Muslims to concentrate on
"destroying, fighting and killing the enemy."Abdul-Bari Atwan, editor of al-Quds
al-Arabi [London], who interviewed bin Laden at his Afghan headquarters in the
Khorassan mountains, reports that:
The mujahideen around the man belong to most Arab states, and are of different ages,
but most of them are young. They hold high scientific degrees: doctors, engineers,
teachers. They left their families and jobs and joined the Afghan Jihad. There is an open
front, and there are always volunteers seeking martyrdom. The Arab mujahideen respect
their leader, although he does not show any firmness or leading gestures. They all told me
that they are ready to die in his defense and that they would take revenge against any
quarter that harms him.
A tall (6'4" to 6'6"), thin man weighing about 160 pounds and wearing a full
beard, bin Laden walks with a cane. He wears long, flowing Arab robes fringed with gold,
and wraps his head in a traditional red-and-white checkered headdress. He is said to be
soft-spoken, extremely courteous, and even humble. He is described in some sources as
ordinary and shy. He speaks only Arabic. Because he has dared to stand up to two
superpowers, bin Laden has become an almost mythic figure in the Islamic world. Thanks to
the ineffectual U.S. cruise missile attack against his camps in Afghanistan following the
bombings in Kenya and Tanzania in August 1998, thousands of Arabs and Muslims, seeing him
as a hero under attack by the Great Satan, have volunteered their service.
In 1998 bin Laden married his oldest daughter to Mullah Muhammad Omar, the Taliban's
leader. He himself married a fourth wife, reportedly a young Pushtun related to key Afghan
leaders. Thus, Bodansky points out, now that he is related to the Pushtun elite by blood,
the ferocious Pushtuns will defend and fight for him and never allow him to be
surrendered to outsiders. Bin Laden's son Muhammad, who was born in 1985, rarely leaves
his father's side. Muhammad has already received extensive military and terrorist training
and carries his own AK-47. He serves as his father's vigilant personal bodyguard.
Ayman al-Zawahiri
Position: Bin Laden's second in command and the undisputed senior
military commander.
Background: Al-Zawahiri, who claims to be the supreme leader of the
Egyptian Jihad, is responsible for converting bin Laden to Islamic fundamentalism.
Subhi Muhammad Abu-Sunnah ("Abu-Hafs al-Masri")
Position: Military Commander of al-Qaida.
Background: A prominent Egyptian fundamentalist leader. He has close
ties to bin Laden and has accompanied him on his travels to Arab and foreign countries. He
also helped to establish the al-Qaida organization in Afghanistan in early 1991. He moved
his activities with bin Laden to Sudan and then backed to Afghanistan.
Hizballah (Party of God)
Alias: Islamic Jihad
Group Profile
Hizballah, an extremist political-religious movement based in Lebanon, was created and
sponsored by a contingent of 2,000 Iranian Revolutionary Guards (IRGs) dispatched to
Lebanon by Iran in July 1982, initially as a form of resistance to the Israeli presence in
southern Lebanon. Hizballah's followers are Shia Muslims, who are strongly anti-Western
and anti-Israeli and totally dedicated to the creation of an Iranian-style Islamic
Republic in Lebanon and the removal of non-Islamic influences in the area. Hizballah's
following mushroomed in 1982 as both the Iranians and their local allies in Lebanon
indoctrinated young and poor Shia peasants and young people in West Beirut's poor Shia
suburbs through films, ideological seminars, and radio broadcasts. The Islamic
fundamentalist groups in Lebanon have been most successful in recruiting their followers
among the slum dwellers of south Beirut. By late 1984, Hizballah is thought to have
absorbed all the known major extremist groups in Lebanon.
Hizballah's worldview, published in a 1985 manifesto, states that all Western influence
is
detrimental to following the true path of Islam. In its eyes, the West and particularly
the United States, is the foremost corrupting influence on the Islamic world today: thus,
the United States is known as "the Great Satan." In the same way, the state of
Israel is regarded as the product of Western imperialism and Western arrogance. Hizballah
believes that the West installed Israel in the region in order to continue dominating it
and exploiting its resources. Thus, Israel represents
the source of all evil and violence in the region and is seen as an outpost of the
United States in the heart of the Islamic Middle East. In Hizballah's eyes, Israel must,
therefore, be eradicated.
Hizballah sees itself as the savior of oppressed and dispossessed Muslims.
Hizballah's central goals help to explain the nature and scope of its use of terrorism.
These include the establishment of an exclusively Shia, Iran-style Islamic state in
Lebanon; the complete destruction of the state of Israel and the establishment of Islamic
rule over Jerusalem and Palestine; and an implacable opposition to the Middle East peace
process, which it has tried to sabotage through terrorism.
The typical Hizballah member in 1990 was a young man in his late teens or early
twenties, from a lower middle-class family. In Hizballah's first years, many members were
part-time soldiers. By 1990, however, most of the militia and terrorist group members were
believed to be full-time "regulars." In the early 1980s, Hizballah used suicide
commandos as young as 17, including a beautiful Sunni girl, who killed herself and two
Israeli soldiers. In the last decade or so, however, Hizballah has been using only more
mature men for special missions and attacks, while continuing to induct youths as young as
17 into its guerrilla ranks. Hizballah's military branch includes not only members
recruited from the unemployed, but also doctors, engineers, and other professionals. In
1993 Iranian sources estimated the number of Hizballah's fighters at 5,000 strong, plus
600 citizens from Arab and Islamic countries; the number of the party's political cadres
and workers was estimated at 3,000 strong. Within this larger guerrilla organization,
Hizballah has small terrorist cells organized on an informal basis. They may consist of
the personal following of a particular leader or the relatives of a single extended
family.
Hizballah is divided between moderates and radicals. Shaykh Muhammud Husayn Fadlallah,
Hizballah's spiritual leader, is considered a moderate leader. The radical camp in 1997
was led by Ibrahim Amin and Hasan Nasrallah. The latter is now Hizballah's secretary
general.
Leader Profile
Imad Fa'iz Mughniyah
Position: Head of Hizballah's Special Operations Command.
Background: Imad Mughniyah was born in about 1961 in southern Lebanon.
He has been wanted by the FBI since the mid-1980s. He is a charismatic and extremely
violent individual. His physical description, according to Hala Jaber (1997:120), is
"short and chubby with a babyish face." Mughniyah served in the PLO's Force 17
as a highly trained security man specializing in explosives. In 1982, after his village in
southern Lebanon was occupied by Israeli troops, he and his family took refuge in the
southern suburbs of Beirut, where he was soon injured by artillery fire. Disillusioned by
the PLO, he joined the IRGs. His first important task apparently was to mastermind the
bombing of the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires in 1982, in which 22 people were killed. On
September 2, 1999, Argentina's Supreme Court issued an arrest warrant for Mughniyah for
ordering that bombing. His next important tasks, on behalf of Syria and Iran, were the
truck bombings that killed 63 people at the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, in April
1983, and another 241 U.S. Marines and sailors at their barracks near Beirut airport the
following October; the hijacking of an American airliner in 1985, in which one American
was killed; and the 1995 hijacking of TWA flight 847 from Athens to Rome. He also
kidnapped most of the Americans who were held hostage in Lebanon, including William
Buckley, who was murdered, as well as the British envoy, Terry Waite. In December 1994,
his brother was killed by a car bomb placed outside his shop in Beirut.
In mid-February 1997, the pro-Israeli South Lebanese Army radio station reported that
Iran's intelligence service dispatched Mughniyah to Lebanon to directly supervise the
reorganization of Hizballah's security apparatus concerned with Palestinian affairs in
Lebanon and to work as a security liaison between Hizballah and Iranian intelligence.
Mughniyah also reportedly controls Hizballah's security apparatus, the Special Operations
Command, which handles intelligence and conducts overseas terrorist acts. Operating out of
Iran, Lebanon, and Syria, Mughniyah is known to frequently travel on Middle East Airlines
(MEA), whose ground crews include Hizballah members. Although he uses Hizballah as a
cover, he reports to the Iranians.
Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas)
Group Profile
In December 1987, when the Palestinian uprising (Intifada) erupted, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin
and other followers of the Muslim Brotherhood Society (Jama'at al-Ikhwan al-Muslimin--MB),
who had been running welfare, social, and educational services through their mosques,
immediately established the Islamic Resistance Movement (Harakat al Muqawana al
Islamiyyah--Hamas). Hamas's militant wing Al Qassam ('Izz al-Din al-Qassam) played a major
role in the Intifada. Responsible for attacks on Israeli soldiers, Hamas gained a
reputation for ruthlessness and unpredictability.
During the Intifada, two main organizational trends toward decentralization of Hamas
developed: Hamas's political leadership moved to the neighboring Arab states, mainly
Jordan; and grass-roots leaders, representing young, militant activists, attained
increased authority and increased freedom of action within their areas of operation.
Hamas's leadership remains divided between those operating inside the Occupied Territories
and those operating outside, mainly from Damascus. Mahmoud el-Zahar, Hamas's political
leader in Gaza, operated openly until his arrest in early 1996 by Palestinian security
forces.
Impatient with the PLO's prolonged efforts to free the Occupied Territories by
diplomatic means, in November 1992 Hamas formed an alliance with Iran for support in the
continuation of the Intifada. That December, 415 Palestinians suspected of having links
with Hamas were expelled from Israel into Lebanon, where they were refused refugee status
by Lebanon and neighboring Arab states. They remained for six months in a desert camp
until international condemnation of the deportations forced Israel to agree to their
return. In September 1993, Hamas opposed the peace accord between Israel and the Palestine
Liberation Organization (PLO) and maintained a campaign of violence within Israel aimed at
disrupting the Middle East peace process. Its militant wing, Al-Qassam, claimed
responsibility for two bomb attacks within Israel in April 1994 and for a further bus
bombing in Tel Aviv in October 1994. All were carried out by suicide bombers.
The most persistent image of Hamas in the Western media is that of a terrorist group
comprised of suicide bombers in the occupied territories and a radical terrorist faction
in Damascus. However, Hamas is also a large socioreligious movement involved in communal
work within the Palestinian refugee camps and responsible for many civic-action projects.
It runs a whole range of cultural, educational, political, and social activities based on
mosques and local community groups. In 1996 most of Hamas's estimated $70 million annual
budget was going to support a network of hundreds of mosques, schools, orphanages,
clinics, and hospitals in almost every village, town, and refugee camp on the West Bank
and Gaza Strip. Consequently, Hamas has massive grass-roots support.
In 1993 Hamas's support reportedly varied from more than 40 percent among the Gaza
population as a whole to well over 60 percent in certain Gaza refugee camps, and its
support in the West Bank varied from 25 percent to as much as 40 percent. Hamas was
reported in early 1996 to enjoy solid support among 15 percent to 20 percent of the 2
million Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. According to Professor Ehud Sprinzak of
Hebrew University, Hamas is so popular among 20 to 30 percent of Palestinians not because
it has killed and wounded hundreds of Israelis but because it has provided such important
community services for the Palestinian population. Moreover, Hamas activists live among
the poor and have a reputation for honesty, in contrast with many Palestine Liberation
Organization (PLO) activists. Hamas supporters reportedly cross both tribal patterns and
family patterns among Palestinians. The same family often has brothers in both the PLO and
Hamas.
Hamas's social services also provide both a cover and a recruiting ground for young
Hamas terrorists. Hamas members have been recruited from among believers at Hamas-run
mosques, which are also used for holding meetings, organizing demonstrations, distributing
leaflets, and launching terrorist attacks. Hamas's ability to recruit leading West Bank
religious activists into its leadership ranks has broadened its influence.
The Suicide Bombing Strategy
Sprinzak points out that Hamas's opposition to the peace process has never led it to
pursue a strategy of suicide bombing. Rather, the group has resorted to this tactic as a
way of exacting tactical revenge for humiliating Israeli actions. For example, in a CBS
"60 Minutes" interview in 1997, Hassan Salameh, arch terrorist of Hamas,
confirmed that the assassination of Yehiya Ayash ("The Engineer") by Israelis
had prompted his followers to organize three suicide bombings that stunned Israel in 1996.
Salameh thus contradicted what former Labor Party prime minister Shimon Peres and other
Israeli leaders had contended, that the bombings resulted from a strategic decision by
Hamas to bring down the Israeli government. According to Sprinzak, the wave of Hamas
suicide bombings in late 1997, the third in the series, started in response to a series of
Israeli insults of Palestinians that have taken place since the beginning of 1997, such as
unilateral continuation of settlements. Similarly, Sprinzak notes, Hamas did not initially
pursue a policy of bombing city buses. Hamas resorted to this tactic only after February
1994, when Baruch Goldstein, an Israeli physician and army reserve captain, massacred 29
Palestinians praying in a Hebron shrine. The professor's policy prescriptions for reducing
Hamas's incentives to commit terrorist atrocities against Israel are to recognize that
Hamas is a Palestinian fact of life and to desist from aggressive policies such as
unilateral continuation of settlements and assassination of Hamas leaders.
Hamas thrives on the misery and frustration of Palestinians. Its charter, Jerrold Post
notes, is pervaded with paranoid rhetoric. The harsh Israeli blockade of Palestinian areas
has only strengthened Hamas.
Selection of Suicide Bombers
Hamas's suicide bombers belong to its military wing, Al-Qassam. The Al-Qassam brigades
are composed of small, tightly knit cells of fanatics generally in their mid- to late
twenties. In Hamas, selection of a suicide bomber begins with members of Hamas's military
cells or with members of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, who circulate among organizations,
schools, and mosques of the refugee camps in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The
recruiter will broach the subject of dying for Allah with a group of students and watch
the students' reactions. Students who seem particularly interested in the discussion are
immediately singled out for possible "special merit."
In almost every case, these potential bombers--who range in age from 12 to 17
years--have a relative or close friend who was killed, wounded, or jailed during the
Israeli occupation. Bombers are also likely to have some longstanding personal
frustration, such as the shame they suffered at the hands of friends who chastised them
for not throwing stones at the Israeli troops during the Intifada. Theirs is a strong
hatred of the enemy that can only be satisfied through a religious act that gives them the
courage to take revenge. The suicide bombers are of an age to be regarded by the community
as old enough to be responsible for their actions but too young to have wives and
children. Hamas claims that its suicide bombers repeatedly volunteer to be allowed to be
martyrs. These young persons, conditioned by years of prayer in Hamas mosques, believe
that as martyrs they will go to heaven.
These aspiring suicide bombers attend classes in which trained Islamic instructors
focus on the verses of the Koran and the Hadith, the sayings of the Prophet that form the
basis of Islamic law and that idealize and stress the glory of dying for Allah. Students
are promised an afterlife replete with gold palaces, sumptuous feasts, and obliging women.
Aside from religion, the indoctrination includes marathon sessions of anti-Israeli
propaganda. Students entering the program quickly learn that "the Jews have no right
to exist on land that belongs to the Muslims." Students are assigned various tasks to
test their commitment. Delivering weapons for use in clandestine activities is a popular
way to judge the student's ability to follow orders and keep a secret. Some students are
even buried together in mock graves inside a Palestinian cemetery to see if the idea of
death spooks them. Students who survive this test are placed in graves by themselves and
asked to recite passages from the Koran. It is at this stage that the recruits, organized
in small groups of three to five, start resembling members of a cult, mentally isolated
from their families and friends.
The support granted by Hamas to the families of suicide bombers and others killed in
clashes with Israel are considered vital to Hamas's military operations because they play
an important role in recruiting. Graduates of Hamas's suicide schools know that their
supreme sacrifice will see their families protected for life. For someone used to a life
of poverty, this is a prized reward. Hamas awards monthly stipends in the range of $1,000
to the families of the bombers. Scholarships for siblings and foodstuffs are also made
available. Hamas pays for the resettlement of all suicide bomber families who lose their
homes as a result of Israeli retribution.
Before embarking on his or her final mission directly from a mosque, the young suicide
bomber spends many days chanting the relevant scriptures aloud at the mosque. The mantras
inculcate a strong belief in the bomber that Allah and Heaven await. For example, a
favorite verse reads: "Think not of those who are slain in Allah's way as dead. No,
they live on and find their sustenance in the presence of their Lord." This belief is
strong enough to allow the bomber to mingle casually among his intended victims without
showing any nervousness.
To ensure the utmost secrecy, a bomber learns how to handle explosives only right
before the mission. This practice also minimizes the time in which the bomber could have
second thoughts about his martyrdom that could arise from using explosives over time. In
the past, it was common for the bomber to leave a written will or make a videotape. This
custom is no longer practiced because the General Security Service, the secret service,
known by its initials in Hebrew as Shin Bet, has arrested other suicide bombers on the
basis of information left on these records. In November 1994, the names of 66 Al-Qassam
Brigade Martyrs, along with their area of residence, date of martyrdom, and means of
martyrdom, were published for the first time. In the late 1990s, the name or the picture
of the bomber is sometimes not even released after the suicide attack. Hamas has even
stopped publicly celebrating successful suicide attacks. Nevertheless, pictures of past
suicide bombers hang on the walls of barber shops inside the refugee camps, and small
children collect and trade pictures of suicide bombers. There is even a teenage rock group
known as the "Martyrs" that sings the praises of the latest bombers entering
heaven.
In late 1997, Iran reportedly escalated its campaign to sabotage the Middle East peace
process by training Palestinian suicide bombers. The two suicide bombers who carried out
an attack that killed 22 Israelis on January 22, 1998, reportedly had recently returned
from training in Iran. After their deaths, the Iranian government reportedly made payments
to the families of both men. On September 5, 1999, four Hamas terrorists, all Israeli
Arabs who had been recruited and trained in the West Bank, attempted to carry out a
mission to bomb two Jerusalem-bound buses. However, both bombs apparently had been set to
explode much earlier than planned, and both exploded almost simultaneously in the
terrorists' cars, one in Tiberias and another in Haifa, as they were en route to their
targets.
Leader Profiles
Sheikh Ahmed Yassin
Significance: Hamas founder and spiritual leader.
Background: Ahmed Yassin was born near Ashqelan in the south of
Palestine in 1937. After the
1948 Israeli occupation, he lived as a refugee in the Shati camp in Gaza. He became
handicapped and confined to a wheelchair in 1952 as a result of an accident. He is also
blind and nearly deaf. He received a secondary school education in Gaza and worked as a
teacher and preacher there from 1958 until 1978. His association with the Islamic
fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood organization began in the 1950s. He founded the Islamic
Center in Gaza in 1973. In 1979, influenced by the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran, he
established Gaza's Islamic Society (Mujamma') and was its director until 1984. Although he
was allowed to use the Israeli media to criticize Yasir Arafat and the PLO, Yassin was
jailed for 10 months in 1984 for security reasons. He was a well-respected Muslim
Brotherhood leader in Gaza running welfare and educational services in 1987 when the
Palestinian uprising, Intifada, against Israeli occupation began. He shortly thereafter
formed Hamas. He was arrested in May 1989 and sentenced in Israel to life imprisonment for
ordering the killing of Palestinians who had allegedly collaborated with the Israeli Army.
He was freed in early October 1997 in exchange for the release of two Israeli agents
arrested in Jordan after a failed assassination attempt there against a Hamas leader.
Yassin then returned to his home in Gaza. He spent much of the first half of 1998 on a
fund-raising tour of Sudan, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, United Arab Republics,
Iran, and Syria, during which he also received medical treatment in Egypt. Two countries,
Saudi Arabia and Iran, reportedly pledged between $50 million and $300 million for Hamas's
military operations against Israel. After his tour, and in frail health, Yassin returned
to Gaza.
Sheik Ahmed Yassin 
(Photo courtesy of The News-Times, January 28, 1998)
Mohammed Mousa ("Abu Marzook")
Significance: Member, Hamas Political Bureau.
Background: Mohammed Mousa was born in 1951 in Rafah, the Gaza Strip.
He completed his basic education in the Gaza Strip, studied engineering at Ein Shams
University in Cairo, and graduated in 1977. He worked as manager of a factory in the
United Arab Emirates (UAE) until 1981. He then moved to the United States to pursue his
doctorate and lived with his family in Falls Church, Virginia, and Brooklyn, New York, for
almost 14 years prior to his arrest in 1995. In the early 1980s, he became increasingly
involved with militant Muslims in the United States and elsewhere. He co-founded an
umbrella organization called the Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP) and became head
of its governing council. The IAP, now headquartered in Richardson, Texas, established
offices in Arizona, California, and Indiana. Beginning in 1987, Mousa allegedly was
responsible for launching Hamas terrorist attacks against Israel. In 1989 he became the
founding president of the United Association of Studies and Research (UASR), allegedly a
covert branch of Hamas responsible for disseminating propaganda and engaging in strategic
and political planning, located in Springfield, Virginia. In 1991 he earned a Ph.D. degree
in Industrial Engineering. That year he was elected as Chairman of the Hamas Political
Bureau, as a result of the arrest of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin in 1989. Known as an ambitious
and charismatic figure, Mousa reorganized Hamas by centralizing political, military, and
financial control under his leadership and developing foreign funding. Traveling freely
between the United States and Europe, Iran, Jordan, Sudan, and Syria, he allegedly helped
to establish a large, clandestine financial network as well as death squads that allegedly
were responsible for the murder or wounding of many Israelis and suspected Palestinian
collaborators. He led the resumption of suicide bombings in protest of the 1993 Oslo
accords. In early 1995, under U.S. pressure, Jordanian authorities expelled him from
Amman, where he had set up a major Hamas support office. After leaving Amman, he traveled
between Damascus and Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, among other places.
On July 28, 1995, Mousa arrived at John F. Kennedy Airport in New York on a flight from
London and was detained by Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) agents for being
on a "watch list" of suspected terrorists. Three days later, Israel formally
requested Mousa's extradition to face criminal charges of terrorism and conspiracy to
commit murder. FBI agents arrested Mousa on August 8, 1995, pending an extradition
hearing, and he was jailed at the Federal Metropolitan Correction Center in Manhattan.
Mousa dropped his objection to extradition 18 months later, saying he would rather
"suffer martyrdom in Israel than fight extradition through an unjust U.S. court
system." Mahmoud Zahar, a top Hamas official in Gaza, then threatened the United
States if Mousa were extradited. Wishing to avoid terrorist retaliation, Israel withdrew
its extradition request on April 3, 1997. Mousa was thereupon deported to Jordan on May 6,
1997. In August 1999, Jordanian authorities closed the Hamas office in Amman and, on
September 22, arrested Mousa and two of his fellow Hamas members. Mousa, who was
reportedly holding Yemeni citizenship and both Egyptian and Palestinian travel documents,
was again deported.
Emad al-Alami
Significance: A Hamas leader.
Background: Al-Alami was born in the Gaza Strip in 1956. An engineer,
he became overall leader of Hamas after the arrest of Mohammed Mousa in 1995. However, in
early 1996 he reportedly had less control over all elements of Hamas than Mousa had had.
He was based mainly in Damascus, from where he made trips to Teheran.
Mohammed Dief
Position: Al-Qassam leader.
Background: Mohammed Dief is believed to have assumed command of the
military brigades of Hamas (Al-Qassam) following the death of Yahya Ayyash ("The
Engineer"), who was killed on January 5, 1996. Dief reportedly leads from a small
house on the Gaza Strip, although he is known to travel frequently to both Lebanon and
Syria. He is currently among the most wanted by Israeli authorities.
Al-Jihad Group
(a.k.a.: al-Jihad, Islamic Jihad, New Jihad Group, Vanguards of the Conquest, Tala'i'
al-Fath)
Group Profile
The al-Jihad Organization of Egypt, also known as the Islamic Group, is a militant
offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood movement, an anti-Western Islamic organization that has
targeted Egyptian government officials for assassination since its founding in 1928. In
1981 Sheikh 'Umar Abd al-Rahman (also known as Omar Abdel Rahman), al-Jihad's blind
theologian at the University of Asyut, issued a fatwa, or religious edict, sanctioning the
assassination of President Anwar al-Sadat.
In 1981 more than half of al-Jihad's membership were students or teachers from
vocational centers and at least eight universities. However, some of the 302 al-Jihad
members arrested in December 1982 for coup-plotting in the wake of Sadat's assassination
included members of the Air Force military intelligence, Army central headquarters, the
Central Security Services, and even the Presidential Guard. Others included employees at
strategic jobs in broadcasting, the telephone exchange, and municipal services.
Since 1998 there has been a change in the declared policy of the Al-Jihad group. In
addition to its bitter ideological conflict with the "heretical" Egyptian
government, the organization began calling for attacks against American and Israeli
targets. Nassar Asad al-Tamini of the Islamic Jihad, noting the apparent ease with which
biological weapons can be acquired, has suggested using them against Israel. In the eyes
of the al-Jihad group, the United States and Israel are the vanguard of a worldwide
campaign to destroy Islam and its believers, with the help of the current Egyptian
government. This changed attitude was the result of, among other things, the Egyptian
al-Jihad's joining the coalition of Islamic fundamentalist terrorist organizations led by
the Afghans. The collaboration between the Egyptian organizations and Al-Qaida played a
key role in the formation of Osama bin Laden's "Islamic Front for Jihad against the
Jews and the Crusaders." Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Jihad's leader, who was sentenced in
absentia to death or to life imprisonment on April 18, 1999, is a close associate of Osama
bin Laden and one of the founders of the "Islamic Front for Jihad against the
Crusaders and the Jews."
The movement basically seeks to challenge the West on an Islamic basis and establish an
Islamic caliphate. However, the goals of the various al-Jihad groups differ in regard to
the Palestinian issue. Islamic Jihad wants to liberate Palestine. Others give priority to
establishing an Islamic state as a prerequisite for the liberation of Palestine. Islamic
Jihad is very hostile toward Arab and Islamic regimes, particularly Jordan, which it
considers puppets of the imperialist West. In the spring of 1999, the Islamic Group's
leadership and governing council announced that it was giving up armed struggle. Whether
that statement was a ruse remains to be seen.
The social background of the al-Jihad remains unclear because the group has never
operated fully in public. By the mid-1990s, intellectuals occupied important positions in
the leadership of the al-Jihad movements in both Jordan and the Occupied Territories,
where it is a powerful force in the unions of engineers, doctors, and students. Their
power among workers continues to be weak.
New Religious Groups
Aum Shinrikyo
Group/Leader Profile
The investigation into the sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway on March 20, 1995,
opened a window on Shoko Asahara's cult, Aum Shinrikyo. In 1995 Aum Shinrikyo claimed to
have 10,000 supporters in Japan and 30,000 in Russia. Whereas doomsday cults previously
had carried out mass suicides, Aum Shinrikyo set itself apart from them by inflicting mass
murder on the general public.
What seems most remarkable about this apocalyptic cult is that its leading members
include Japan's best and brightest: scientists, computer experts, lawyers and other highly
trained professionals. But according to cult expert Margaret Singer of the University of
California at Berkeley, these demographics are not unusual. "Cults actively weed out
the stupid and the psychiatric cases and look for people who are lonely, sad, between jobs
or jilted," she says. Many observers also suggest that inventive minds turn to Aum
Shinrikyo as an extreme reaction against the corporate-centered Japanese society, in which
devotion to one's job is valued over individual expression and spiritual growth.
Japan's school system of rote memorization, in which individualism and critical
thinking and analysis are systematically suppressed, combined with crowded cities and
transportation networks, have greatly contributed to the proliferation of cults in Japan,
and to the growth of Aum Shinrikyo in particular. Aum Shinrikyo is one of at least 180,000
minor religions active in Japan. There is general agreement that the discipline and
competitiveness required of Japan's education system made Aum Shinrikyo seem very
attractive to bright university graduates. It provided an alternative life-style in which
recruits could rebel against their families, friends, and "the system."
Numerous Aum Shinrikyo members were arrested on various charges after the sarin attack
on the Tokyo subway system in 1995. According to Manabu Watanabe, none of them claimed
innocence; rather, many of them confessed their crimes and showed deep remorse.
"These people were proven to be sincere and honest victims of Asahara, the
mastermind," Watanabe comments. Aum Shinrikyo became active again in 1997, when the
Japanese government decided not to ban it. In 1998 Aum Shinrikyo had about 2,000 members,
including 200 of the 380 members who had been arrested.
The story of Aum Shinrikyo is the story of Shoko Asahara, its charismatic and
increasingly psychopathic leader. Asahara, whose real name is Chizuo Matsumoto, was born
in 1955, the fourth son of a poor weaver of tatami mats, in the small rural
village of Yatsushiro on Japan's main southern island of Kyushu. Afflicted with infantile
glaucoma, he was blind in one eye and had diminished vision in the other. At age six, he
was sent to join his blind older brother at a government-funded boarding school for the
blind. Because he had limited vision in one eye, however, he soon developed influence over
the blind students, who would pay him for services such as being a guide. Already at that
early age, he exhibited a strong tendency to dominate people. His activities as a
violence-prone, judo-proficient con artist and avaricious bully had earned him the fear of
his classmates, as well as $3,000, by the time he graduated from high school in 1975.
After graduation, Asahara established a lucrative acupuncture clinic in Kumamoto.
However, his involvement in a fight in which several people were injured forced him to
leave the island for Tokyo in 1977. His stated ambitions at the time included serving as
supreme leader of a robot kingdom and even becoming prime minister of Japan. In Tokyo he
again found work as an acupuncturist and also attended a prep school to prepare for the
highly competitive Japanese college entrance examinations, which he nevertheless failed.
He also began taking an interest in religion, taught himself Chinese, and studied the
revolutionary philosophy of Mao Zedong. In the summer of 1977, Asahara met Tomoko Ishii, a
young college student; they married in January 1978, and the first of their six children
was born in 1979. In 1978 Asahara opened a Chinese herbal medicine and acupuncture clinic
southeast of Tokyo and reportedly earned several hundred thousand dollars from the
business. In 1981 he joined a new religion called Agon Shu, known for its annual Fire
Ceremony and fusing of elements of Early Buddhism, Tantric Buddhism, and Hindu and Taoist
yoga. In 1982 he was arrested and convicted for peddling fake Chinese cures and his
business collapsed as a result. Bankrupted, Asahara reportedly earned nearly $200,000 from
a hotel scam that year.
In 1984 Asahara quit Agon Shu and, with the help of a few followers who also left Agon
Shu, created a yoga training center called Aum, Inc. By the mid-1980s, the center had more
than 3,000 followers, and in 1985 Asahara began promoting himself as a holy man. After a
spiritual voyage through the Himalayas, he promoted himself as having mystical powers and
spiritual bliss.
Beginning in 1986, Aum Shinrikyo began a dual system of membership: ordained and lay.
Ordained members had to donate all their belongings, including inheritances, to Aum. Many
resisted, and a total of 56 ordained members have been reported as missing or dead,
including 21 who died in the Aum Shinrikyo clinic.
In early 1987, Asahara managed to meet the Dalai Lama. Asahara's megalomania then
blossomed. In July 1987, he renamed his yoga schools, which were nonreligious, Aum Supreme
Truth (Aum Shinri Kyo) and began developing a personality cult. The next year, Asahara
expanded his vision to include the salvation not only of Japan but the world. By the end
of 1987, Aum Shinrikyo had 1,500 members concentrated in several of Japan's major cities.
Shoko Asahara 
(Photo courtesy of Reuters/Ho/Archive)
In 1988 Aum Shinrikyo began recruiting new members, assigning only attractive and
appealing members as recruiters. It found a fertile recruitment ground in Japan's young,
college-educated professionals in their twenties and early thirties from college campuses,
dead-end jobs, and fast-track careers. Systematically targeting top universities, Aum
Shinrikyo leaders recruited brilliant but alienated young scientists from biology,
chemistry, engineering, medical, and physics departments. Many, for example, the computer
programmers, were "techno-freaks" who spent much of their time absorbed in
comics and their computers. Aum Shinrikyo also enlisted medical doctors to dope patients
and perform human experiments. The first young Japanese to be free of financial pressures,
the Aum Shinrikyo recruits were wondering if there was more to life than job security and
social conformity. However, as Aum Shinrikyo members they had no need to think for
themselves. According to David Kaplan and Andrew Marshall, "The high-tech children of
postindustrial Japan were fascinated by Aum's dramatic claims to supernatural power, its
warnings of an apocalyptic future, its esoteric spiritualism."
Aum's hierarchy had been influenced by Japanese animated movies, cyberpunk fiction and
science fiction, virtual reality machines, and computer games. For example, Aum Shinrikyo
used Isaac Asimov's classic sci-fi epic in the Foundation Series as a high-tech blueprint
for the millennium and beyond. Indeed, Asahara modeled himself on Hari Seldon, the key
character in the Foundation Series. The fictional Seldon is a brilliant mathematician who
discovers "psychohistory," the science of true prediction, and attempts to save
humanity from apocalypse by forming a secret religious society, the Foundation, that can
rebuild civilization in a millennium. To do this, Seldon recruits the best minds of his
time, and, once a hierarchy of scientist-priests is established, they set about preserving
the knowledge of the universe. Like Asimov's scientists in the Foundation Series, Asahara
preached that the only way to survive was to create a secret order of beings armed with
superior intellect, state-of-the-art technology, and knowledge of the future.
To retain its membership, Aum Shinrikyo used mind-control techniques that are typical
of cults worldwide, including brutal forms of physical and psychological punishment for
various minor transgressions. New members had to terminate all contacts with the outside
world and donate all of their property to Aum. This policy outraged the parents of Aum
Shinrikyo members. In addition, in 1989 Aum Shinrikyo began to use murder as a sanction on
members wishing to leave the sect.
In July 1989, Aum Shinrikyo became more public when Asahara announced that Aum
Shinrikyo would field a slate of 25 candidates, including Asahara, in the next election of
the lower house of the Japanese parliament. To that end, Aum Shinrikyo formed a political
party, Shinrito (Turth Party). All of the Aum Shinrikyo candidates were young
professionals between the ages of 25 and 38. In addition, Aum Shinrikyo finally succeeded
in getting official recognition as an official religion on August 15, 1989, on a one-year
probationary basis.
In the political arena, however, Aum Shinrikyo was a total failure. Its bizarre
campaign antics, such as having its followers dance about in front of subway stations
wearing huge papier-mâché heads of Asahara, dismayed the public, which gave Aum
Shinrikyo a resounding defeat in the 1990 parliamentary elections (a mere 1,783 votes).
This humiliation, it is believed, fueled Asahara's paranoia, and he accused the Japanese
government of rigging the voting.
Following this public humiliation, Asahara's darker side began to emerge. He began
asking his advisers how they might set off vehicle bombs in front of their opponents'
offices, and in March 1990, he ordered his chief chemist, Seiichi Endo, to develop a
botulin agent.
Beginning that April, when Aum Shinrikyo sent three trucks into the streets of Tokyo to
spray poisonous mists, Asahara began to preach a doomsday scenario to his followers and
the necessity for Aum Shinrikyo members to militarize and dedicate themselves to
protecting Aum Shinrikyo against the coming Armageddon. That April, an Aum Shinrikyo team
sprayed botulin poison on the U.S. naval base at Yokosuka outside Tokyo, where the U.S. 7th
Fleet docked, but the botulin turned out to be a defective batch.
To prevent its dwindling membership from falling off further, Aum Shinrikyo began to
forcefully prevent members from leaving, and to recruit abroad. The group's efforts in the
United States were not successful; in the early 1990s, Aum Shinrikyo had only a few dozen
followers in the New York City area..
By late 1992, Asahara was preaching that Armageddon would occur by the year 2000, and
that more than 90 percent of Japan's urban populations would be wiped out by nuclear,
biological, and chemical weapons of mass destruction. Apparently, Asahara's plan was to
develop the weapons of mass destruction needed for making this Armageddon a reality. In
1992 Aum Shinrikyo began purchasing businesses on a worldwide scale. It set up dummy
companies, primarily in Russia and the United States, where its investments served as
covers to purchase technology, weapons, and chemicals for its weapons program. During
1992-94, Aum Shinrikyo recruited a number of Russian experts in weapons of mass
destruction. Aum's Russian followers included employees in Russia's premier nuclear
research facility, the I.V. Kurchatov Institute of Atomic Energy, and the Mendeleyev
Chemical Institute. Aum's chemical weapons efforts were more successful than its nuclear
efforts. After the Gulf War, Aum's scientists began work on sarin and other related nerve
agents.
Aum Shinrikyo found that it could recruit at least one member from almost any Japanese
or Russian agency or corporation and turn that recruit into its own agent. For example, in
late 1994 Aum Shinrikyo needed access to sensitive military secrets held by the Mitsubishi
Heavy Industries (MHI) compound in Hiroshima, so Aum Shinrikyo member Hideo Nakamoto, an
MHI senior researcher, obtained MHI uniforms, and Yoshihiro Inoue recruited and converted
three paratroopers from the 1st Airborne Brigade, an elite Japanese paratrooper
unit. Nakamoto then escorted Inoue and the three paratroopers, wearing MHI uniforms, into
the high-security facility, where they downloaded megabytes of restricted files on
advanced weapons technology from MHI's mainframe. Other sites raided by the squad included
the laser-research lab of NEC, Japan's top computer manufacturer, and the U.S. naval base
at Yokosuka . Aum's membership lists included more than 20 serving and former members of
the Self-Defense Forces.
Aum's sarin attacks were carried out by highly educated terrorists. Aum's minister of
science and technology, Hideo Murai, an astrophysicist, led the cult's first sarin attack
in the mountain town Matsumoto on June 27, 1994, by releasing sarin gas near the apartment
building in which the judge who had ruled against the cult lived. The attack killed seven
people and poisoned more than 150 others. Robert S. Robbins and Jerrold M. Post note that:
"In 1994 Asahara made the delusional claim that U.S. jets were delivering gas attacks
on his followers, a projection of his own paranoid psychology. Asahara became increasingly
preoccupied not with surviving the coming war but with starting it." That year,
Asahara reorganized Aum, using Japan's government as a model (see Table 7).
Table 7. Aum Shinrikyo's Political
Leadership, 1995 |
| Leadership Entity |
Leader |
| Founder |
Shoko Asahara |
| Household Agency |
Tomomasa Nakagawa |
| Secretariat |
Reika Matsumoto |
| Ministry of Commerce |
Yofune Shirakawa |
| Ministry of Construction |
Kiyohide Hayakawa |
| Ministry of Defense |
Tetsuya Kibe |
| Ministry of Education |
Shigeru Sugiura |
| Ministry of Finance |
Hisako Ishii |
| Ministry of Foreign Affairs |
Fumihiro Joyu |
| Ministry of Healing |
Ikuo Hayashi |
| Ministry of Health and Welfare |
Seiichi Endo |
| Ministry of Home Affairs |
Tomomitsu Niimi |
| Ministry of Intelligence |
Yoshihiro Inoue |
| Ministry of Justice |
Yoshinobu Aoyama |
| Ministry of Labor |
Mayumi Yamamoto |
| Ministry of Post and Telecommunications |
Tomoko Matsumoto |
| Ministry of Science and Technology |
Hideo Murai |
| Ministry of Vehicles |
Naruhito Noda |
| Eastern Followers Agency |
Eriko Iida |
| New Followers Agency |
Sanae Ouchi |
| Western Followers Agency |
Kazuko Miyakozawa |
Source: Based on information from D.W. Brackett, Holy
Terror: Armageddon
in Tokyo. New York: Weatherhill, 1996, 104.
The five Aum Shinrikyo terrorists who carried out the sarin gas attack on the Tokyo
subway on March 20, 1995, included Ikuo Hayashi, 48, head of Aum's Ministry of Healing
(aka Medical Treatment Ministry). The other four were all vice ministers of Aum's Ministry
of Science and Technology and included: Masato Yokoyama, 31, an applied-physics graduate;
Kenichi Hirose, 30, who graduated at the top of his class in applied physics at the
prestigious Waseda University; Yasuo Hayashi, 37, an electronics engineer; and Toru
Toyoda, a physicist.
Although no motive has been established for Asahara's alleged role in the nerve-gas
attacks, some observers suggest that the Tokyo subway attack might have been revenge: all
the subway cars struck by the sarin converged at a station beneath a cluster of government
offices. Adding credence to this view, Ikuo Hayashi, a doctor who admitted planting gas on
one of the Tokyo trains, was quoted in newspapers as saying the goal was to wipe out the
Kasumigaseki section of Tokyo, where many government offices are located. "The attack
was launched so that the guru's prophecy could come true," Hayashi reportedly told
interrogators.
Shoko Egawa, an Aum Shinrikyo critic who has authored at least two books on the cult,
observed that Aum Shinrikyo members made no attempt at reviewing the propriety of their
own actions during the trial. When their own violations were being questioned, they
shifted to generalities, and spoke as if they were objective third parties. Their routine
tactics, she notes, included shifting stories into religious doctrine and training, making
an issue out of a minor error on the part of the other party, evading the main issue, and
feigning ignorance when confronted with critical facts.
Authorities arrested a total of 428 Aum Shinrikyo members, and thousands of others
quit. The government also stripped Aum Shinrikyo of its tax-exempt status and declared it
bankrupt in 1996. Nevertheless, Aum Shinrikyo retained its legal status as a sect and
eventually began to regroup. In 1998 its computer equipment front company had sales of $57
million, and its membership had risen to about 2,000. In December 1998, Japan's Public
Security Investigation Agency warned in its annual security review that the cult was
working to boost its membership and coffers. "Aum is attempting to re-enlist former
members and step up recruiting of new members nationwide. It is also initiating
advertising campaigns and acquiring necessary capital," the report said.
Key Leader Profiles
Yoshinobu Aoyama
Position: Aum's minister of justice.
Background: Yoshinobu Aoyama was born in 1960. The son of a wealthy
Osaka family, he graduated from Kyoto University Law School, where he was the youngest
person in his class to pass the national bar exam. He joined Aum Shinrikyo in 1988 and
within two years was its chief counsel. He was arrested in 1990 for violation of the
National Land Law, and after being released on bail, he involved himself in an effort to
prove his innocence. As Aum's attorney, he led its successful defense strategy of
expensive countersuits and legal intimidation of Aum Shinrikyo critics. According to
Kaplan and Marshall, "He had longish hair, a robotlike delivery, and darting, nervous
eyes that made it easy to underestimate him." He was arrested on May 3, 1995.
According to Shoko Egawa, Aoyama's foremost traits during his trial included shifting
responsibility and changing the story; speaking emotionally and becoming overly verbose
when advocating Aum Shinrikyo positions, but speaking in a completely unemotional voice
and making a purely perfunctory apology when addressing a case of obvious violation of the
law; engaging in a lengthy dissertation on religious terms; deploying extended empty
explanations and religious theory until the listener succumbed to a loss of patience and
forgot the main theme of the discussion; deliberately shifting away from the main
discussion and responding in a meandering manner to upset the questioner; resorting to
counter-questioning and deceiving the other party by refusing to answer and pretending to
explain a premise; and showing a complete absence of any remorse for having served the Aum
Shinrikyo cult.
Seiichi Endo
Position: Minister of Health and Welfare.
Background: Seiichi Endo, born in 1960, was Aum's health and welfare
minister. As a graduate student in biology at Kyoto University, he did experiments in
genetic engineering at the medical school's Viral Research Center. Provided with a small
but well-equipped biolab by Aum, he conducted research in biological warfare agents, such
as botulism and the Ebola virus. In March 1990, three weeks after voters rejected 25 Aum
Shinrikyo members running for legislative office, Endo and three others went on a trip to
collect starter botulinum germs on the northern island of Hokkaido, where Endo had studied
as a young man. In late 1993, Asahara also assigned Endo the task of making sarin nerve
gas. In a 1994 speech made in Moscow, he discussed the use of Ebola as a potential
biological warfare agent. Endo produced the impure sarin that was used for the Tokyo
subway attack on March 20, 1995. He was arrested on April 26, 1995, and publicly admitted
his role in the sarin attacks in the town of Matsumoto on June 27, 1994, and Tokyo on
March 20, 1995.
Kiyohide Hayakawa
Position: Asahara's second in command and minister of construction.
Background: A key senior Aum Shinrikyo member, Kiyohide Hayakawa was
born in 1949 in Osaka. He was active in leftist causes in the 1960s and during college. He
received a master's degree in environmental planning from Osaka University in 1975. He
worked in various architecture firms until 1986, when he joined the Aum's precursor group
and soon distinguished himself as director of the Aum's Osaka division. Beginning in 1990,
he masterminded Aum's attempt to arm itself and promoted its expansion into Russia. After
becoming second in command, he spent a lot of time in Russia developing contacts there for
the sect's militarization program. During 1992-95, he visited Russia 21 times, spending
more than six months there. His visits to Russia became monthly between November 1993 and
April 1994. His captured notebooks contain numerous references to nuclear and
seismological weapons. Hayakawa participated in the murder of an Aum Shinrikyo member and
the family of Attorney Tsutsumi Sakamoto, 33, a tenacious Aum Shinrikyo critic, in 1995.
He was arrested on April 19, 1995.
Dr. Ikuo Hayashi
Position: Aum's minister of healing.
Background: Ikuo Hayashi, born in 1947, was the son of a Ministry of
Health official. He graduated from Keio University's elite medical school, and studied at
Mount Sinai Hospital in the United States before joining the Japanese medical system.
Handsome and youthful looking, he was a respected doctor and head of cardiopulmonary
medicine at a government hospital just outside Tokyo. His behavior changed after an
automobile accident in April 1988, when he fell asleep while driving a station wagon and
injured a mother and her young daughter. Despondent, he, along with his wife, an
anesthesiologist, joined Aum, whereupon he began treating his patients bizarrely, using
Aum Shinrikyo techniques. Forced to resign from his hospital position, Dr. Hayashi was put
in charge of Aum's new clinic in Tokyo, where patients tended to live only long enough to
be brainwashed and to sign over their property to Aum, according to Kaplan and Marshall.
Hayashi was also appointed Aum's minister of healing. Kaplan and Marshall report that
"he coldly presided over the wholesale doping, torture, and death of many
followers." His activities included using electric shocks to erase memories of 130
suspicious followers. He participated in the sarin attack on the Tokyo subway March 20,
1995.
Arrested on April 8, 1995, Hayashi was sentenced to life in prison on May 26, 1998, for
spraying sarin in the Tokyo subway. In trial witness testimony on November 27, 1998, he
said that he felt a dilemma over the crimes that he committed because they clashed with
his social values, but he used Aum Shinrikyo doctrines to convince himself. Hayashi
claimed he followed Asahara's order to commit murders not only out of fear that if he had
disobeyed he would have been killed, but also out of a belief that Asahara had some
religious power, that he had the God-like ability to see through a person's past, present,
and future. Ikuo allegedly abandoned his faith in Asahara.
Yoshihiro Inoue
Position: Aum's minister of intelligence.
Background: Yoshihiro Inoue was born in 1970, the son of a salaried
minor official. Kaplan and Marshall describe him as "a quiet boy of middling
intelligence who devoured books on Nostradamus and the supernatural." While a high
school student in Kyoto, he attended his first Aum Shinrikyo seminar. He became Aum's
minister of intelligence and one of its "most ruthless killers," according to
Kaplan and Marshall. Unlike other Aum Shinrikyo leaders, Inoue lacked a university degree,
having dropped out of college after several months to dedicate his life to Aum, which he
had joined as a high school junior. He was so dedicated to Asahara that he declared that
he would kill his parents if Asahara ordered it. Inoue was also so articulate, persuasive,
and dedicated that, despite his unfriendly face--lifeless black eyes, frowning mouth, and
pouting, effeminate lips--he was able to recruit 300 monks and 1,000 new believers,
including his own mother and many Tokyo University students. His captured diaries contain
his random thoughts and plans concerning future Aum Shinrikyo operations, including a plan
to conduct indiscriminate nerve gas attacks in major U.S. cities, including New York City.
In the spring of 1994, Inoue attended a three-day training program run by the former
KGB's Alpha Group outside Moscow, where he learned some useful tips on skills such as
kidnapping, murder, and so forth. That summer he became Aum's minister of intelligence, a
position that he used as a license to abduct runaway followers, kidnap potential cash
donors to the cult, torture Aum Shinrikyo members who had violated some regulation, and
steal high-technology secrets. That year, Inoue and Tomomitsu Niimi were ordered to plan a
sarin and VX gas attack on the White House and the Pentagon. Beginning on December 28,
1994, Inoue led the first of numerous penetrations of the high-security compound of
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) in Hiroshima to pilfer weapons secrets. He was arrested
on May 15, 1995, when police stopped his car at a roadblock outside of Tokyo. During his
trial, he allegedly abandoned his faith in Asahara.
Hisako Ishii
Position: Aum's minister of finance.
Background: Hisako Ishii was born in 1960. She joined Aum's yoga
classes in 1984, when she was an "office lady" at a major Japanese insurance
company. One of Asahara's most devoted disciples, she became Aum's minister of finance and
was behind the group's business success. She was also his inseparable mistress, until she
gave birth to twins.
At her trial, Ishii spoke of her childhood fear of death, the fact that adults failed
to initially reply to her questions concerning death, the fact that she trusted Asahara
with pure feelings, and her determination to mature as a person within the Aum Shinrikyo
framework. She then proceeded to speak of changes which took place after her arrest:
When I experienced a total collapse of the past more than 10 years during which I had
matured within the cult as a religious person, I felt I had died. When all that I had
believed I had accomplished within myself was destroyed, and I came to the awareness that
all was just a fantasy of Asahara imbued in me, that he is not a true religious being,
that he is not a guru, and that the Aum Shinrikyo doctrine was wrong, I experienced a form
of death separate from the death of a physical being.
Ishii proceeded to read books banned by the Aum, such as religious books, books on
mind-control, and psychology. She testified that as a result she had been resurrected
through the process of learning the nature of genuine religion. Despite being impressed by
the eloquence of her written statement, Shoko Egawa was dismayed by Ishii's total omission
of anything about her
feelings for the victims who literally met death as the result of the many crimes
committed by the Aum. Although charged with relatively minor offenses, such as concealment
of criminals and destruction of evidence, Ishii asserted that she was innocent of each of
the charges. She depicted herself merely as an innocent victim taken advantage of by
Asahara and stressed her determination to resurrect herself despite all the suffering. She
not only refused to testify about her inside knowledge of cult affairs, she cut off any
questions of that nature. In May 1998, Ishii announced her resignation from the Aum.
Fumihiro Joyu
Position: Aum's minister of foreign affairs.
Background: Fumihiro Joyu joined Aum Shinrikyo in 1989 at age 26. He
had an advanced degree in telecommunications from Waseda University, where he studied
artificial intelligence. He quit his promising new career at Japan's Space Development
Agency after only two weeks because it was incompatible with his interests in yoga. He
became the sect's spokesman and minister of foreign affairs. As Aum's Moscow chief, Joyu
ran the cult's large Moscow center at Alexseyevskaya Square. "Joyu didn't try to hide
his contempt for his poor Russian flock," Kaplan and Marshall write. They describe
him as "a mini-guru, a cruel and arrogant man who later proved to be Aum's most
accomplished liar." They add: "...fluent in English, Joyu was looked upon by
most Japanese as a dangerously glib and slippery operator with the ability to lie in two
languages." However, with his charismatic, boyish good looks he developed admirers
among teenage girls from his appearances on television talk shows. He was arrested on
October 7, 1995, on perjury charges. He was scheduled to be released from prison at the
end of 1999. He has remained devout to Asahara, and was planning to rejoin the Aum
Shinrikyo cult.
Takeshi Matsumoto
Position: An Aum Shinrikyo driver.
Background: Born in 1966, Takeshi Matsumoto joined Aum Shinrikyo after
telling his parents that he had seen hell. Personable but pathetic, he had dreams of
becoming a Grand Prix auto racer. He drove the rental car used to kidnap Kiyoshi Kariya,
68, a notary public whose sister was a runaway Aum Shinrikyo member. Aum Shinrikyo members
tortured and murdered Kariya after he refused to reveal his sister's whereabouts. National
Police identified Matsumoto from fingerprints on the car rental receipt and put him on
their "most-wanted" list. His fingerprints were the legal pretext long sought by
the National Police to raid Aum Shinrikyo compounds and offices. While on the run,
Matsumoto had Dr. Hayashi surgically remove all of his fingerprints and do some abortive
facial plastic surgery as well. However, he was arrested in October 1995 and identified by
his palm prints. He pleaded guilty to the abduction and confinement of Kariya.
Hideo Murai
Position: Aum's minister of science and technology, minister of
distribution supervision, and "engineer of the apocalypse."
Background: Hideo Murai was born in 1954. After graduating from the
Physics Department at Osaka University, he entered graduate school, where he studied X-ray
emissions of celestial bodies, excelled at computer programming, and earned an advance
degree in astrophysics. In 1987 he joined Kobe Steel and worked in research and
development. After reading one of Asahara's books, he lost interest in his career. After a
trip to Nepal, he quit Kobe Steel in 1989 and, along with his wife, enlisted in a
six-month training course at an Aum Shinrikyo commune, where his life style turned ascetic
and focused on Asahara's teachings. He quickly rose through the ranks because of his
brilliant scientific background, self-confidence, boldness, and devotion to Asahara. He
created such devices as the Perfect Salvation Initiation headgear (an electrode-laden
shock cap), which netted Aum Shinrikyo about $20 million, and the Astral Teleporter and
attempted unsuccessfully to develop a botulinus toxin as well as nuclear, laser, and
microwave weapons technology. In early 1993, Asahara ordered him to oversee Aum's
militarization program. "Widely recognized and feared within Aum, Murai,"
according to Brackett, "had a reputation as a determined and aggressive leader who
liked to stir up trouble for other people." He was directly involved in the murder of
the Sakamotos and at least one Aum Shinrikyo member. He led the team that attacked judges'
apartments in Matsumoto with sarin gas in June 27, 1994, in which seven people were killed
and 144 injured. Murai also masterminded the sarin attack on the Tokyo subway on March 20,
1995. David Kaplan and Andrew Marshall describe "the cult's deceptively unassuming
science chief" as follows: "At first glance, Murai looked more like a provincial
schoolteacher than a mad scientist. He had elfin features etched on a perfectly round
face, with a fragile build that suggested he could do harm to no one. But a closer look
revealed eyes that turned from benign to beady in a blink. His hair was short but
disheveled, and he often looked lost in some unreachable thought." Just before he was
to be brought in by police for questioning, Murai was stabbed with a butcher's knife by a
Korean gangster on April 23, 1995, on prime-time TV in front of Aum's Tokyo headquarters,
and he died six hours later.
Kiyohide Nakada
Position: Vice Minister, Ministry of Home Affairs.
Background: Nakada was born in 1948. He is described as having a
shiny, shaven head, clipped mustache, and piercing eyes. His distinguishing feature, which
is characteristic of a Japanese yakuza, or mobster, is a brilliant tattoo
stretching from his neck to his calf. For years, he headed a gang affiliated with the
Yamaguchi crime syndicate in the city of Nagoya. When he was serving three years in prison
on a firearms charge, his wife joined Aum. Although Nakada disapproved of her joining Aum,
he himself turned to Aum Shinrikyo when a doctor gave him three months to live because of
a failing liver. After a miraculous recovery, he joined Aum, dissolved his gang, and
donated his assets to Aum. Nakada became one of Asahara's two former yakuza
conduits to the underworld. When Aum Shinrikyo began its militarization program in 1994,
he became particularly important in obtaining weapons. He eventually became Tomomitsu
Niimi's deputy in Aum's Ministry of Home Affairs, charged with enforcing security within
the organization. As head of the Action Squad, he was responsible for abducting and
killing defecting sect members and opponents of Aum. He was arrested in April 1995.
Tomomasa Nakagawa
Position: Head of Aum's Household Agency.
Background: Dr. Tomomasa Nakagawa, 29, an Aum Shinrikyo physician, is
alleged to have murdered Satoko Sakamoto, 29, and her infant son with injections of
potassium chloride, in 1995. Nakagawa joined Aum Shinrikyo while a medical student at
Kyoto Prefectural College of Medicine in February 1988. After passing the national medical
exam in April 1988 and practicing medicine for a year, he moved into an Aum Shinrikyo
commune in August 1989. As head of the Aum's Household Agency, one of his primary duties
was to act as personal doctor to Asahara and his family. He was also actively involved in
Aum's sarin production.
Tomomitsu Niimi
Position: Aum's minister of home affairs.
Background: Tomomitsu Niimi was born in 1964. As a university student,
he read law, as well as the works of Nostradamus and esoteric Buddhist texts. After
graduation, he worked at a food company but quit six months later to join Aum. Kaplan and
Marshall describe him as "a slender figure with a long neck, shaven head, and a
reptilian smirk that seemed permanently etched upon his face."
As Aum's ferocious minister of home affairs, Niimi presided over Aum's mini-police
state. His 10-member hit squad, the New Followers Agency, engaged in spying on, abducting,
confining, torturing, and murdering runaway members. He is described by Kaplan and
Marshall as Aum's "chief hit man" and a sadistic and ruthless head of security.
He allegedly participated in various murders and abductions, including the murder of Shuji
Taguchi in 1989, the slaying of the Sakamoto family, and the strangling of a pharmacist in
January 1994. In February 1994, he was accidentally exposed to some sarin and lapsed into
convulsions, but Dr. Nakagawa was able to save him. In the spring of 1994, he attended a
three-day training course conducted by veterans of the former KGB's Alpha Group near
Moscow. That year, Niimi and Yoshihiro Inoue were ordered to plan a sarin and VX gas
attack on the White House and the Pentagon. On September 20, 1994, Niimi and his hit squad
attacked Shoko Egawa, author of two books on Aum, with phosgene gas, but she survived. In
January 1995, Niimi sprayed Hiroyuki Nakaoka, head of a cult victims' support group, with
VX, but he survived after several weeks in a coma. Niimi also participated in the Tokyo
subway attack on March 20, 1995. He was arrested on April 12, 1995. He has remained devout
to Asahara.
Toshihiro Ouchi
Position: An Aum Shinrikyo operative.
Background: Ouchi joined the Aum Shinrikyo cult in 1985. Physically
large and a long-time Aum Shinrikyo member, Ouchi functioned primarily as a leader of cult
followers. Many of the followers and ordained priests of the cult with whom he had been
personally associated became involved in crimes, and many remain active cult followers.
Ouchi was indicted for involvement in two incidents. One case took place in February 1989,
and involved the murder of cult follower Shuji Taguchi, who was making an attempt to leave
the cult; the second case involved the destruction of a corpse of a cult follower who had
passed away during religious training in June 1993. Ouchi's reluctant behavior gave
Asahara doubts about his commitment; hence, he condemned Ouchi as a "cancerous growth
on the Aum," assigning him to the Russian chapter in September 1993. Nevertheless,
Ouchi continued to serve as an executive cult follower. He recruited new followers in
Russia and provided guidance to them. During the investigation of the Sakamoto case that
began in March 1995, Ouchi was alarmed when he learned that the Aum Shinrikyo was
involved. The knowledge undermined his religious beliefs. He reportedly was shocked when
he later received a letter from a former cult follower, who was an intimate friend, that
discussed the misguided doctrine of Aum. His faith in Aum Shinrikyo shaken, he gradually
began to alter his views about people outside the cult. In early April 1995, Russian
police arrested Ouchi, who had been serving as Fumihiro Joyu's deputy in Moscow. Kaplan
and Marshall report that Ouchi, "a grinning naïf," was described by one
academic as "knowing as much about Russia as the farthest star." During his
initial trial in Japan, Ouchi expressed repentance and apologized "as a former
official of the Aum."
Masami Tsuchiya
Position: Head of Aum's chemical-warfare team.
Background: Masami Tsuchiya was born in 1965. Prior to joining Aum,
Tsuchiya was enrolled in a five-year doctoral degree program in organic physics and
chemistry at Tsukuba University, one of the top universities in Japan, where his graduate
work focused on the application of light to change the structure of molecules. Although
described by a professor as "brilliant," Tsuchiya lived in a barren room, was
introverted, had no social life, and expressed a desire to become a priest.
Tsuchiya abandoned a career in organic chemistry to join Aum. After suggesting that Aum
Shinrikyo produce a Nazi nerve gas called sarin, he was given his own lab (named Satian 7)
with 100 workers and a vast chemical plant to develop chemical weapons. As Aum's chief
chemist and head of its chemical-warfare team, he played a central role in Aum's
manufacture of sarin. Kaplan and Marshall describe Tsuchiya as looking the part of the mad
scientist: "His goatee and crew-cut hair framed a broad face with eyebrows that
arched high above piercing eyes." Fascinated by Russia's chemical weapons stockpiles,
Tsuchiya spent at least three weeks in Russia in 1993, where he is suspected of meeting
with experts in biochemical weapons. When he returned to his Mount Fuji lab in the fall of
1993, he began experimenting with sarin, using a Russian formula. He was prepared to build
a vast stockpile of nerve agents, such as sarin, blister gas, and others. Although poorly
trained workers, leaks of toxic fumes, and repeated setbacks plagued the program, Tsuchiya
succeeded in stockpiling 44 pounds of sarin at Satian 7 by mid-June 1994. However, Kaplan
and Marshall point out that he was not the only Aum Shinrikyo chemist to make the nerve
gas. Tsuchiya also produced other chemical-warfare agents such as VX. He had Tomomitsu
Niimi, using a VX syringe, test the VX on several unsuspecting individuals. Police
arrested Tsuchiya on April 26, 1995. He has remained devout to Asahara.
TABLES
Table 1. Educational Level and Occupational
Background of Right-Wing Terrorists in West Germany, 1980
(In percentages of right-wing terrorists) |
| Education: |
|
| Volkschule (elementary) |
49 |
| Technical |
22 |
| Grammar (high school) |
17 |
| University |
10 |
| Other |
2 |
| TOTAL |
100 |
| |
|
| Occupation: |
|
| Self-employed |
8 |
| White collar |
9 |
| Skilled worker or artisan |
41 |
| Unskilled worker |
34 |
| Other (unemployed) |
8 |
| TOTAL |
100 |
Source: Based on information from Eva Kolinsky,
"Terrorism in West Germany. Pages 75-76 in Juliet Lodge, ed., The Threat of
Terrorism. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1988.
Table 2. Ideological Profile of Italian Female
Terrorists, January 1970-June 1984 |
| Membership in Extraparliamentary Political Organizations Prior to
Becoming a Terrorist |
Number of Terrorists |
Percentage of Total Terrorists |
| Left |
73 |
91.0 |
| Right |
7 |
9.0 |
| TOTAL |
80 |
100.0 |
| Terrorist Group Affiliation |
Number of Terrorists |
Percentage of Total Terrorists |
| Early Left1 |
40 |
9.0 |
| Early Right2 |
10 |
2.2 |
| Late Left3 |
366 |
82.2 |
| Late Right4 |
29 |
6.5 |
| TOTAL |
445 |
100.0 |
1. Partisan Action Groups, Nuclei of Armed Proletarians.
Red Brigades, 22 October.
- Compass, Mussolini Action Squads, National Front, National Vanguard, New
Order, People's Struggle, Revolutionary Action Movement.
- Front Line, Red Brigades, Revolutionary Action, Union of Communist
Combatants, Worker Autonomy, et alia.
- Let Us Build Action, Nuclei of Armed Revolutionaries, Third Position.
Source: Based on information from Leonard Weinberg and
William Lee Eubank, "Italian Women Terrorists," Terrorism: An International
Journal, 9, No. 3, 1987, 250, 252.
Table 3. Prior Occupational Profile of Italian
Female Terrorists, January 1970- June 1984 |
| Occupation Prior to Becoming a Terrorist |
Number of Terrorists |
Percentage of Total Terrorists |
| Clerk, secretary, nurse, technician |
57 |
23.0 |
| Criminal, subproletarian |
5 |
2.0 |
| Free professional (architect, lawyer, physician)
|
8 |
3.0 |
| Housewife |
11 |
5.0 |
| Industrialist |
5 |
2.0 |
| Police, military |
1 |
0.0 |
| Small business proprietor, salesperson |
3 |
1.0 |
| Student |
86 |
35.0 |
| Teacher |
50 |
20.0 |
| Worker |
18 |
7.0 |
| TOTAL |
244 |
100.0 |
Source: Based on information from Leonard Weinberg and
William Lee Eubank, "Italian Women Terrorists," Terrorism: An International
Journal, 9, No. 3, 1987, 250-52.
Table 4. Geographical Profile of Italian Female
Terrorists, January 1970-June 1984 |
| Place of Birth (Region) |
Number of Terrorists |
Percentage of Total Terrorists |
| North |
96 |
45.0 |
| Center |
31 |
15.0 |
| Rome |
30 |
14.0 |
| South |
43 |
20.0 |
| Foreign-born |
12 |
6.0 |
| TOTAL |
212 |
100.0 |
| |
| Place of Birth (Size of Community) |
Number of Terrorists |
Percentage of Total Terrorists |
| Small community (under 100,000) |
77 |
9.0 |
| Medium-sized city (from 100,000 to 1
million) |
71 |
29.0 |
| Big City (more than 1 million) |
81 |
34.0 |
| Foreign-born |
12 |
5.0 |
| TOTAL |
241 |
100.0 |
| |
| Place of Residence (Region) |
Number of Terrorists |
Percentage of Total Terrorists |
| North |
246 |
56.0 |
| Center |
54 |
12.0 |
| Rome |
90 |
21.0 |
| South |
49 |
11.0 |
| TOTAL |
241 |
100.0 |
| |
| Place of Residence (Size of Community) |
Number of Terrorists |
Percentage of Total Terrorists |
| Small community (less than |
37 |
8.0 |
| Medium-sized community (100,000 to 1
million) |
106 |
24.0 |
| Big City (more than 1 million) |
297 |
67.0 |
| TOTAL |
440 |
100.0 |
Source: Based on information from Leonard Weinberg and
William Lee Eubank, "Italian Women Terrorists," Terrorism: An International
Journal, 9, No. 3, 1987, 250-51.
Table 5. Age and Relationships
Profile of Italian Female Terrorists, January 1970-June 1984 |
| Time of Arrest |
Number of Terrorists |
Percentage of Total Terrorists |
| Before 1977 |
46 |
10.0 |
| After 1977 |
405 |
90.0 |
| TOTAL |
451 |
100.0 |
|
| Age at Time of Arrest |
Number of Terrorists |
Percentage of Total Terrorists |
| 15 to 19 |
28 |
7.0 |
| 20 to 24 |
170 |
42.0 |
| 25 to 29 |
106 |
26.0 |
| 30 to 34 |
63 |
16.0 |
| 35 to 39 |
21 |
5.0 |
| 40 to 44 |
9 |
2.0 |
| 45 and over |
5 |
1.0 |
| TOTAL |
402 |
100 |
|
| Role in Organization |
Number of Terrorists |
Percentage of Total Terrorists |
| Supporter |
120 |
27.0 |
| Regular |
298 |
66.0 |
| Leader |
33 |
7.0 |
| TOTAL |
451 |
100.0 |
|
|
|
| Related to Other Terrorists |
Number of Terrorists |
Percentage of Total Terrorists |
| Yes |
121 |
27.0 |
| No |
330 |
73.0 |
| TOTAL |
451 |
100.0 |
|
| Nature of Relationship to Other Terrorists |
Number of Terrorists |
Percentage of Total Terrorists |
| Marital |
81 |
67.0 |
| Sibling |
34 |
28.0 |
| Parental |
1 |
1.0 |
| Other |
5 |
4.0 |
| TOTAL |
121 |
100.0 |
Source: Based on information from Leonard Weinberg and
William Lee Eubank, "Italian Women Terrorists," Terrorism: An International
Journal, 9, No. 3, 1987, 250-52.
Table 6. Patterns of Weapons Use by the
Revolutionary Organization 17 November, 1975-97 |
| Action |
Date |
Weapon(s) Used |
| A masked gunman assassinated U.S. Embassy official Richard Welch in front of his home
in an Athens suburb. |
December 23, 1975 |
Colt .45 |
| Gunmen in a passing car shot and fatally wounded Petros Babalis, a former police
officer, near his house in central Athens. |
January 31, 1979 |
Colt .45 |
| Gunmen riding on a motorcycle killed Pantalis Petrou, deputy chief of the antiriot
police MAT (Units for the Restoration of Order), and seriously wounded his chauffeur in
Pangrati, a suburb of Athens. |
January 16, 1980 |
Colt .45 |
| Two men on a motor scooter assassinated U.S. Navy Captain George Tsantes and fatally
wounded his driver with the same Colt .45. |
November 15, 1983 |
Colt .45 |
| Two masked gunmen on a motorcycle shot and wounded U.S. Army Master Sergeant Robert
Judd, who took evasive action, as he was driving to the Hellenikon base near Athens
airport. |
April 3, 1984 |
Colt .45 |
| Two men on a motorcycle shot and wounded U.S. Master Sgt. Richard H. Judd, Jr., as he
was driving in Athens. |
April 3, 1984 |
Colt .45 |
| Two men in a car intercepted conservative newspaper publisher Nikos Momferatos's
Mercedes and shot to death him and seriously wounded his driver in Kolonaki in the most
central part of Athens. |
February 21, 1985 |
Colt .45 and .22-caliber pistol |
| A gunman riding on the back seat of a motor scooter opened fire on businessman
Alexandros Athanasiadis when he stopped for a traffic light on Kifissia Avenue on his way
to work, fatally wounding him. |
March 1, 1988 |
Colt .45 |
| Three gunmen ambushed New Democracy (ND) Party deputy Pavlos Bakoyannis, son-in-law of
ND Chairman Konstandinos Mitsotakis, as he was waiting for the elevator to his office in
Athens. One of the terrorists opened fire on the target from behind, hitting him five
times, and then all three casually walked to their getaway car. |
September 26, 1989 |
Colt .45 |
| Three gunmen assassinated the Turkish Deputy Chief of Mission in Athens with seven
bullets fired from at least one .45-caliber automatic, as he drove to work. |
August(?) 1994 |
Colt .45 |
| Murdered Cosfi Peraticos, scion of a Greek shipping family. |
June 1997 |
Colt .45 |
Source: Compiled by the author from multiple sources.
GLOSSARY
Afghans--Term applied to veterans of the Afghan War. A number of the would-be
mujahideen (q.v.), or Islamic resistance fighters, who flocked to Afghanistan in
the 1980s and early 1990s later applied the skills and contacts acquired during the Afghan
War and its aftermath to engage in terrorist activities elsewhere. The Afghans also
transmitted the knowledge they acquired to a new generation of Muslim militants in
countries as different as Algeria, Bosnia-Herzegovina, France, and the Philippines. This
new breed of Afghan terrorists, who operate independently of state sponsors, draws on
global funding, is savvy about modern weapons and explosives, and is able to take
advantage of the most up-to-date means of communication and transportation. Whereas Muslim
terrorists were cloistered by nationality prior to the Afghan War, after the war they
began working together--Pakistanis, Egyptians, Algerians, and so forth. Al-Qaida's Afghan
component is also known as the Armed Islamist Movement (AIM).
Assassins--From the eleventh through the thirteenth century, a sect of Shiite Muslims
called the Assassins used assassination as a tool for purifying the Muslim religion. The
Assassins' victims, who were generally officials, were killed in public to communicate the
error of the targeted official. By carrying out the assassination in public, the Assassin
would allow himself to be apprehended and killed in order to demonstrate the purity of his
motives and to enter Heaven.
Baader-Meinhof Gang--Journalistic name for the Red Army Faction (Rote Armee
Fraktion--RAF) (q.v.). Although the RAF had been reduced to fewer than 20 members
by the early 1990s, it may still exist in an inactive status. If so, it would be in at
least its second generation of leadership. The group's support network, reportedly
involving hundreds of Germans, many of whom are well-educated professionals, helps to
account for its possible survival.
fundamentalism--This term is used to refer to people who dedicate their lives to
pursuing the fundamentals of their religion.
cult--A journalistic term for an unorthodox system of religious beliefs and ritual that
scholars of religion refrain from using.
fight or flight--A theory developed by W.B. Cannon in 1929. When an individual is under
stress, the heart rate increases, the lungs operate more efficiently, adrenalin and sugar
are released into the bloodstream, and the muscles become infused with blood.
Frustration-Aggression Hypothesis--An hypothesis that every frustration leads to some
form of aggression and every aggressive act results from some prior frustration. As
defined by Ted Robert Gurr: "The necessary precondition for violent civil conflict is
relative deprivation, defined as actors' perception of discrepancy between their value
expectations and their environment's apparent value capabilities. This deprivation may be
individual or collective."
Groupthink--As originally defined by I.L. Janis, "a mode of thinking that people
engage in when the members' strivings for unanimity override the motivation to
realistically appraise alternative courses of action."
guerrilla--A revolutionary who engages in insurgency as opposed to terrorism, although
guerrillas also use terrorist methods. Usually operating relatively openly in
less-developed countries, guerrillas attempt to hold territory and generally attack the
state's infrastructure, whereas terrorists usually operate in urban areas and attack more
symbolic targets. Guerrillas usually coerce or abduct civilians to join them, whereas
terrorists are highly selective in whom they recruit.
international terrorism--Although the Central Intelligence Agency distinguishes between
international and transnational terrorism (international being terrorism carried out by
individuals or groups controlled by a sovereign state and transnational terrorism being
terrorism carried out by autonomous nonstate actors), the distinction is not used in this
paper. This is because the distinction is unnecessarily confusing, not self-evident, and
lacking in usefulness, whereas the term "state-sponsored terrorism" is
self-evident and unambiguous. Moreover, one would have to be extremely well informed to
know which terrorist acts are state-sponsored. Thus, the term international terrorism is
used here to refer to any act of terrorism affecting the national interests of more than
one country. The WTC bombing, for example, was an act of international terrorism because
its perpetrators included foreign nationals.
Intifada--The uprising by Palestinians begun in October 1987 against Israeli military
occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Also the name of the involved Liberation
Army of Palestine, a loosely organized group of adult and teenage Palestinians active in
1987-93 in attacks on armed Israeli troops. Their campaign for self-determination included
stone-throwing and petrol bombing. Some 1,300 Palestinians and 80 Israelis were killed in
the uprising up to the end of 1991.
jihad--An Arabic verbal noun derived from jahada ("to struggle").
Although "holy war" is not a literal translation, it summarizes the essential
idea of jihad. In the course of the revival of Islamic fundamentalism (q.v.), the
doctrine of jihad has been invoked to justify resistance, including terrorist actions, to
combat "un-Islamic" regimes, or perceived external enemies of Islam, such as
Israel and the United States.
June Second Movement--An anarchistic leftist group formed in West Berlin in 1971 that
sought to resist the liberal democratic establishment in West Berlin through bombings,
bank robberies, kidnappings, and murders. The group was named after the anniversary of
Benno Ohnejorg's death, who was killed in a demonstration against the visiting Shah of
Iran in Berlin on June 2,1967. The group was closely associated with the Red Army Faction
(q.v.) and after the majority of its members had been arrested by the end of the
1970s, the remainder joined the RAF.
mindset--A noun defined by American Heritage Dictionary as: "1. A fixed
mental attitude or disposition that predetermines a person's response to and
interpretation of situations; 2. an inclination or a habit." Merriam Webster's
Collegiate Dictionary (10th ed.) defines it as 1. A mental attitude or inclination;
2. a fixed state of mind. The term dates from 1926 but apparently is not included in
dictionaries of psychology.
mujahideen--A general designation for Muslim fighters engaged in jihad, as well as the
name of various Muslim political and paramilitary groups, such as the Afghan (q.v.)
Mujahideen.
personality--The distinctive and characteristic patterns of thought, emotion, and
behavior that define an individual's personal style of interacting with the physical and
social environment.
psychopath--A mentally ill or unstable person, especially one having a psychopathic
personality (q.v.), according to Webster's.
psychopathy--A mental disorder, especially an extreme mental disorder marked usually by
egocentric and antisocial activity, according to Webster's.
psychopathology--The study of psychological and behavioral dysfunction occurring in
mental disorder or in social disorganization, according to Webster's.
psychotic--Of, relating to, or affected with psychosis, which is a fundamental mental
derangement (as schizophrenia) characterized by defective or lost contact with reality,
according to Webster's.
Red Army Faction--The RAF, formerly known as the Baader-Meinhof Gang, was a group of
German anarchistic leftist terrorists active from May 11, 1972, to the early 1990s. (q.v.,
Baader-Meinhof Gang)
sociopath--Basically synonymous with psychopath (q.v.). Sociopathic symptoms
in the adult sociopath include an inability to tolerate delay or frustration, a lack of
guilt feelings, a relative lack of anxiety, a lack of compassion for others, a
hypersensitivity to personal ills, and a lack of responsibility. Many authors prefer the
term sociopath because this type of person had defective socialization and a
deficient childhood.
sociopathic--Of, relating to, or characterized by asocial or antisocial behavior or a
psychopathic (q.v.) personality, according to Webster's.
terrorism--the calculated use of unexpected, shocking, and unlawful violence against
noncombatants (including, in addition to civilians, off-duty military and security
personnel in peaceful situations) and other symbolic targets perpetrated by a clandestine
member(s) of a subnational group or a clandestine agent for the psychological purpose of
publicizing a political or religious cause and/or intimidating or coercing a government(s)
or civilian population into accepting demands on behalf of the cause.
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