Countering Global Terrorism and Insurgency

What do we think when we hear the word terrorism? What images are conjured in our minds? Do we see planes crashing into skyscrapers, bombs exploding in marketplaces, masked men armed with guns and bombs? The images that the term terrorism creates vary from person to person. As a concept, terrorism is one of the hardest phenomena to define. There are hundreds of ways to define terrorism and hundreds of more ways to outline its characteristics. The problem with this is that without a solid understanding and definition of the concept, it can never really be understood in its entirety. The aim of this chapter is to try to develop a context for understanding terrorism as clearly as possible. It will begin by trying to define terrorism in the modern context by providing an overview of some of the most commonly used definitions used today, and also by trying to develop a working definition to be used as a basis of understanding for the remainder of this book. From that, this chapter will then move on to look at the various different forms of terrorism that affect our world today. The focus of this section, however, will be on four distinct types of terrorism: ethno-nationalist or ethno-separatist terrorism, right-wing terrorism, state-sponsored terrorism, and religiously motivated terrorism, in particular Islamic fundamentalist terrorism.

Until recently, failed states were not generally viewed as central to the international security agenda. In the post 9/11 world, however, international security experts are coming to the consensus that threats to international security may arise from areas within states or at boundaries between states that, for various reasons, are not controlled by state authority.¹ These states provide favourable demographic and social conditions, which are key factors in their conduciveness to terrorism or to the development of an insurgency. According to this view, the front lines of the war on terrorism and the increasingly difficult fight against insurgency lie within these failed states. The main argument as to the relevance and relationship between failed states, insurgency, and terrorism revolves around the fact that failed states are easier for terrorist organisations to penetrate and operate from and that they are easier for insurgencies to develop and thrive within. This logic emerges from the fact that failed states lack the ability to project power internally and have incompetent and corrupt law enforcement capacities. It has been long understood that they provide opportunities for terrorist groups to organise, train, generate revenue, and set up logistics and communications centres. In this regard, terrorist groups can essentially develop their own capabilities with little governmental interference.

Afghanistan is one of the world’s most war-torn and impoverished nations and has been beset by invasion, violence, and internal upheaval since its creation, having never been a homogeneous ethnic nation, instead existing as a collection of disparate groups divided along ethnic, linguistic, religious, and racial lines and forced together by the vagaries of geopolitics. A landlocked and mountainous country, it has suffered from chronic instability and conflict throughout its history, so much so that its current economy and infrastructure are in ruins.¹ By September 11, 2001, Afghanistan was arguably one of the world’s worst humanitarian emergencies and was also facing a significant crisis of governance. Afghanistan was ranked at the lowest end of the scale in global measures of human welfare and illicit activities, such as the Human Development Index (HDI) and the Failed States Index. Today, Afghanistan’s population is characterised by deep and multifaceted cleavages, being divided along ethnic, linguistic, sectarian, tribal, and racial lines which make unity an extremely unlikely process. As well as that, the religious framework within Afghanistan is based on a syncretic blend of various interpretations of Islamic doctrine combined with local customs, which mean that there is no one unifying religious element that ties all citizens together.

Defining violence in Afghanistan as being terrorism-related is quite a recent phenomenon, and really only emerged during the period of the end of the Taliban rule. Prior to these events, violence in Afghanistan was usually described as taking the form of rebellions, revolts, militia movements, or acts of tribal warfare or insurgency. The year 1979 marked the beginning of a key turning point in relation to terrorism in Afghanistan. The 1979 Soviet invasion triggered the rise and expansion of post-jihad militant and religious extremist groups. However, it must be noted that at that time these groups were not described as being terrorist in nature, and were instead referred to as being freedom fighters. Freedom fighters are seen as being part of a resistance movement, usually against an oppressive government or outside force, compared to a terrorist who uses violence to promote fear (see Table 2.1). This difference of definition may have emerged from the type of tactics used by the mujahideen at that time. The mujahideen tended to use guerrilla warfare tactics in their campaigns against the Soviets and the targets of this warfare were usually military in nature and not civilian or non-combatant. This would have prevented them being classified as a terrorist group according to the most well-known definitions of terrorism. A shift occurred, however, in the period immediately following the withdrawal of Soviet troops, whereby the mujahideen were now left to fend for themselves.

Pakistan is a nation of contradictions: it is one of the front-line allies in the global war on terrorism, yet it is home to some of the most active and dangerous terrorist organisations in the world today. It contains all of the elements necessary for state failure and terrorism to occur: religious fundamentalism, terrorism, weapons of mass destruction, a history of military dictatorship, and a crumbling society and political infrastructure.¹ It is a complicated country, one of religious and political diversity, fractured by class and ethnicity. In its short history it has had three constitutions (1956, 1962, and 1973); it has never had a successive elected government; and it has witnessed the resignation of four presidents.² Having also faced the struggle of uniting a population divided by language, culture, and ethnicity, it sadly has the distinction of being both the first state to be created and, in 1971, the first state to break up in the post-Second World War period.³

Pakistan has become one of the world’s centres of radical Islamic ideology and its terrorist adherents, with some of the main elements of al-Qaeda and militant Islamic organisations using it as a base. In 2009 alone, for example, there were a total of 2,586 terrorist, insurgent, and sectarian related terrorist attacks; the highest percentage of attacks being reported from the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (1,137), followed by Baluchistan with 792 attacks, FATA with 559, Punjab with 46, Sindh with 30, and 12 in Islamabad.¹ This rise in the level of attacks occurred despite a persistent counterterrorism campaign by the Pakistani military, and once again the border regions are the most active when it comes to terrorist attacks. Many of these attacks have been directly attributed to the ease of access that terrorist groups have from Afghanistan into Pakistan and vice versa, with, from January 4 to January 10, 2010 alone, a total of 22 terrorist attacks being carried out in the border regions.² Support for Islamic militancy in Pakistan did not emerge from a religious base, as is the case in Afghanistan or Iraq, but emerged from the guidelines that were adopted from the policies enforced by the West against the Soviet Union during the invasion of Afghanistan (1979–1988). The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was one of the main catalysts for the strengthening of the relationship between the military in Pakistan and its Mullahs — a relationship which resulted in Pakistan moving closer towards Islamic fundamentalism.

Since its creation in 1920 through to the 2003 invasion by the US, the history of Iraq has been a complex and violent one. Chronic political instability and major internal divisions, being ethnic, sectarian, economic, and inter-tribal in nature, emerged very early in development of the Iraqi state. The abuse of power by Iraq’s leaders was also evident in the early stages of the state’s development, which meant that the country was essentially founded on corruption, dishonesty, and the abuse of power. However, it was to be the era of republican rule in Iraq that would produce the system of politics that became hostage to the will of the leaders, creating ‘a strictly hierarchical power pyramid’ system that would remain in place until the collapse of the Saddam Hussein regime in 2003.¹ The historical background section will be broken into three specific sections or eras: the pre-Saddam Hussein Era, the Saddam Hussein era, and the US-invasion and post-Saddam era.

The origins of state failure and terrorism in Iraq are extremely diverse and there are numerous cross-cutting elements that tend to mirror themselves in a number of the sub-categories listed below. This is especially the case with regard to the indicators of regime type, declining state authority, and institutional lack of capacity, as well as corruption and a lack of rule of law. There is a significant link between the elements contained in the social/cultural factors section of demographic imbalances and cultural cleavages and the underlying culture of violence. The aim here is to analyse each of the elements and try to distinguish which are the most detrimental to the stability of Iraq and which are key in the proliferation of terrorism within the country.

Prior to the 2000s, the world’s failed states were seen primarily through the lens of humanitarian issues, and the concept that these states could be the leading players in the era of ‘new’ modern terrorism was unimaginable. This perception changed with the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and since then the role played by failed states in relation to international terrorism, such as the case of Afghanistan, has been given much more attention. However, the majority of failed states have not experienced significant levels of terrorism, nor have they become major source of international terrorism. Although the phenomena of state failure and terrorism have been extensively studied, especially over the past decade, the underlying connections between the two phenomena have remained relatively underexplored. Throughout the chapters of this book there have emerged three key questions, which relate to the possible connections between failed states and terrorism that this book aims to answer: