Does Terrorism Really Work: an Analysis of Its Historical Context

From hijacked planes, school shooting and car bombings, it's seeming that nowadays it is impossible to read the news without hearing of a recent terror attack. Yet despite the prevalence of terrorism, it can be rather difficult to define. Terrorist activity comes from formal groups and from individuals, individuals can be directly instructed by an authority such as the mentioned formal groups, or take inspiration by the group's rhetoric and act on their own accord. Governments can be involved in terrorist activities by actively providing funding, equipment or sanctuary to terrorist organizations, governments can also indirectly be involved through having the inability to prevent these groups from using their land and recourses. While terrorism shares some similarities to crime and traditional warfare, it does not come under the category of either, to further dilute the definition of terrorism - people tend to disagree on whether an act is classified as terrorism depending on whether they support or oppose the perpetrators cause. An example of this would be a shooting of a planned parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs, USA. Where many hardcore conservatives did not believe it was an act of terrorism based on their political stance against abortion. Contrary to its many forms of interpretation, terrorism can be defined, it is the intentional use of violence by non-state actors against civilians in pursuit of ideological or political motivations. Many individuals who perform acts of perceived terrorism are driven by the belief that their government fails to meet the basic needs of ethnic or other group, they may also strongly disagree with a government or government policy. In addition, they may also follow certain religious or political teachings that view certain types of people or states as the enemy.

Terrorism has been conducted throughout history, dating back to the Roman republic against Jewish revolts, to modern-day attacks such as the September 11 attacks. The majority of recent terrorist attacks are attributed to individuals and groups acting in the name of their vision of Islam, these include Al Qaeda and it's connected organizations, the self-proclaimed Islamic state, and Boko Haram. There is discussion about whether religious, political, economic and environmental conditions in many Muslim majority countries have contributed to this wave of Islamic terrorism. With the rise of the Islamic state, rising activity from Boko Haram in Nigeria and the complex conflict in Syria, deaths attributed to terrorism has dramatically increased in the recent years starting at 2012 after years of fluctuations. In 2015, 43,550 deaths were caused by terrorist incidents, nearly 75% of these deaths were in five countries; Pakistan, Syria, Afghanistan, Nigeria and Iraq.

With terrorism being so prevalent in the recent years, it is important to look towards counter terrorism operations in order to determine what is being done to combat these statistics. Terrorism operations and the organizations that run them require a large influx of money, this funding can come from state sponsors, private donors, crime (such as opioid production in Afghanistan), and even the sale of oil and other raw materials. With this, one form of counter terrorism would to limit the funding that these groups receive, this would be done by limiting the source of the wealth. A second method of preventing terrorism would be to discourage the recruitment of new members, this in particular would target individuals who are inspired by terrorist organizations and become radicalized online via forums and large social media sites. This is a form of recruitment that is of growing concern as it so difficult to prevent, it is also hard to track traffic online due to the sheer volume of information online, making it hard for law enforcement to combat the narratives of these online terrorist groups. Other more direct forms of counter terrorism would be to arrest members plotting terrorist attacks, along with military operations. However, these forms of counter terrorism can be controversial, for example in order to track people online would involve an increased amount of surveillance for all people online and many in a population would feel uncomfortable with this, an example would be the American government signing on the 'NSA wiretap order'. Additionally, military operations conducted through drone strikes, as it is common to kill and injure people who have no involvement in terrorist activities.

Despite active efforts from many governments and private organizations, it is impossible to completely stop terrorism, there will always be certain individuals that will be willing to harm others and commit terrorist acts. The challenge for states is to minimize the threat posed by terrorism that promote the economic being and safety of their population while reducing the disruption to their lives. With the knowledge that terrorism is impossible to fully defeat, the question can be asked, does terrorism work?

One aspect that must be discussed when asking if terrorism works is the common belief that terrorism stems from groups in desperation, frustration, occupation etc. This may help kick start terrorist activities but it is not the cause, as many groups throughout history have been oppressed and faced occupation and not turned to terrorism as a response. For an example, the region of Tibet has been occupied by the Chinese Communist Party for over 40 years, where cultural genocide and oppression of religion is occurring yet there are no cases of terrorist activity against their occupiers. When a group is facing suppression, it may incline them to take up terrorism, such as many examples in the Middle East, but it is not always the case. For example, the plane high-jackers in the September 11th attacks were not dispossessed and desperate, they were wealthy and educated people who chose to use terrorism as a tactic. Even for people who chose to strap a vest to themselves and suicide bomb a population very rarely do it themselves, they are selected by their associated organizations leaders, who are elite leaders with wealth and power, and who adopt terrorism not out of desperation or a last resort, but as a first choice of tactic. There are many other examples such as this, if we look towards Palestine, terrorism from Palestine does not start due to occupation, but rather in 1929 where Palestinian terrorists killed 68 Jewish people who had lived there for thousands of years, this was not done due to oppression but done because the Jewish people were of different faith to the terrorists.

From the years of 1929 to 1947 terrorism was a rampant issue in the Middle East, and when the state of Israel was formed in 1948 and the Palestinian people were given a choice to form their own state alongside Israel but instead chose to engage in terrorism. There were bombings throughout the country, bombings of Tel Aviv by air and there was also counter terrorism. Terrorism is a tactic and was chosen because it does have a root cause, the root cause of terrorism is its success.

Whenever it works and is rewarded it continues, in 1929 it works had made Britain change its policies from the 'Balfour declaration' to the Passfield white paper which restricted immigration. When the King David Hotel was bombed in July 22nd 1946 by the Irgun, a militant right-wing Zionist group, again altered their policy following the attack. The greatest example of successful terrorism would be in 1968 following the Six Day War, where Israel controlled much of the territory in Palestine following the aftermath of the war. Immediately following this war, Palestinian terrorism began, with the hijackings of several planes, 1 plane shot down and the Munich Massacre of 1972, where a team of Israeli athletes were held hostages and eventually killed, and in response to these terrorist attacks the United Nations invited Palestinian officials and gave them special observer status. The Palestinians themselves believed that these actions were what got them international recognition, by 1980 more countries recognized Palestinian statehood than Israel. With these obvious rewards from such acts, it can be seen why terrorism still exits and why it can work.

There is a dilemma that is brought about through rewarding terrorism, using Palestine as an example, there are terrorist organizations that stem from serious global grievances. How should governments act when dealing with groups that have extreme grievances and don't turn to terrorism, with those that do? Using Tibet as an example we can see that the international stage has been divided, the Tibetan people don't use terrorism and have no voice on the international stage - they cannot get any recognition within the United Nations and other countries have just accepted their assimilation into China. With Tibet we can see that the United Nations have become part of the problem rather than the solution, compared with Palestine - an entity that often uses terrorism to voice itself, receives international recognition. In order to prevent terrorism using deterrents these outcomes must be swapped around, groups that turn to terrorism must be punished and not be given the opportunity to leap over other groups based on their violence, causes that use terrorism should not be advanced. Secondly, groups that use a more peaceful approach in order to voice their grievances should be rewarded rather than ignored, this has been done before - an example of peaceful progress would be the African American community by following the approach of Martin Luther King Jr. Another example would be India being rewarded with Independence after following the peaceful approach of Gandi. However, this approach can have mixed results.

Today, most people will agree that Palestinian people have a real cause and deserve statehood, but if you were to ask other people about the Tibetan population, or the Kurdish, the Uyghurs or the Catalonians, many would have most likely heard of them but not their grievances and some would not have heard of them at all. These groups of people have had little voice on the international stage and rarely receive any form of attention and continue to be suppressed, yet they have not turned to terrorism. This raises the question, is peaceful protest successful? Palestine has not been put into the international light because their grievances are greater than other groups but because they have turned to terrorism and as a result have had a far more reaching impact than the other aforementioned groups that have remained peaceful.

Terrorism does not always work, there are many cases globally where terrorism has not worked for the cause committing such acts. The reason why it does not work for some groups compared to others is that it does not get rewarded and does not receive any international support. Once a group uses terrorism to further their cause and does not receive any gain from such actions, it fizzles up and fades away. It is extremely difficult to stop a group's causes externally, it must be dealt with internally, the cause itself has to stop the terrorism. An example of this can be seen with the pro-life movement in America, if we look to the previously mentioned planned parenthood shooting in America, it did not further the cause. Many did not want to associate themselves with such acts of violence so these attacks had the opposite intended effect by diluting and causing splits within the movement itself. Another example would be the Basque separatist movement in Northern Spain being banned entry to Spanish parliament, after their attacks killed many people. All in support of this group was denied a seat in parliament, eventually the separatist group was dissolved in 2018 after not receiving any international attention or any form of rewards for their terrorist actions. When terrorism works compared to when it does not is a very important distinction, one that countries could learn from in order to combat terrorism.