In what ways, if any, has terrorism changed over the past half century?

 

Abstract

In this essay we will explore how terrorism has changed over the past half century whilst remaining identical to what it was at the beginning of the half century. Terrorists have proven to be adept at the changes in the technological, political and social landscape that have taken place since 1945 and in particular 1995 to further their goals. The goals of terrorism have not changed over the last half century and remain political in nature.

The means of committing terrorism, the lethality of terrorist acts and communicating the message of the terrorist groups have changed dramatically in the last half century. Terrorists have gone from using bombs on trucks to truck bombs, from using bombs to destroy aircraft to using aircraft as bombs. Not only have terrorists changed their means of committing terrorism, they have changed the media with which they communicate their message. They have gone from making a morning headline in a newspaper to staging attacks in primetime TV. Since 1995 terrorists have adapted to, and benefited from the rise of the Internet and social media to recruit new members, to publicise the articulate their grievances and to engage in what is called cyberterrorism, which are attacks against the computers of governments via the Internet.

                            

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Keywords

Terrorism, Politics, Palestinian Liberation Organisation, Islamic,  Lone Wolf, Internet, Al-Qaeda, Islamic State, Branding, Evolution, Lethality, Mass Media, Internet, Cyberterrorism.

Essay

Has terrorism changed in the past half century? The answer is both yes and no. First  we need to define what is terrorism before we determine whether or not it has changed. A definition of terrorism is: terrorism involves using, or threatening to use, violence against innocent people or noncombatants in order to effect political change and achieve political goals through the establishment of an atmosphere of fear (Lentini, Bakashmar, 2007). The terrorist action has to have a political element to it in order for it to be a terrorist act, and not to be simply another act of criminal violence. In essence what separates the terrorist from a common criminal, is the terrorist is first and foremost  a political actor and his crimes are acts of politics.

I will begin my discussion as to whether terrorism has changed in the last half century with examining the goals of four terrorist organisations: the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO), Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), Al-Qaeda and Islamic State (IS). The goals of the PLO was to create a homeland for the Palestinians. JI  has the goal of establishing a Caliphate in South-East Asia (Barton, 2005)  (Royds, Lewis, Taylor, 2005). Moving in time to the 21st Century, Al-Qaeda and IS have the establishment of a pan-national Caliphate as their goals (Habeck, 2012) (Lister, 2015). The demonstrated uniformity of goals of terrorist groups across demography and time answers the question: “Have the goals of terrorism changed? “ with a No. We can see that the goals of terrorists have remained consistent across decades and across the cultural backgrounds of the terrorist groups. The goals of terrorists have always been political in nature.  The  goals of terrorism have remained constantly political for the last half century.

Terrorists need the mass media in order to articulate their goals and to help create a climate of fear in their target. Due to the dictum “ If it bleeds, It leeds ”  (Serani, 2011) mass media needs terrorists. There is an unarguable symbiosis between terrorism and the mass media which has remained stable over time and changes in the nature of mass media (Farnen, 1990) (Camphuijsen, Vissers, 2012). Terrorist groups have successfully adapted to, and exploited changes in mass media. This will be discussed later in the essay after discussion of the evolution of explosives.   

Where the answer to the question Has terrorism changed in the past half century?  becomes: Yes, is the evolution in the chemistry of the bombs used by terrorists. The use of bombs by terrorists has remained constant over the last half century, it is the chemistry of the explosives that has changed. This will be discussed in the next paragraph.

 The overall number of terrorist attacks has declined over time, at the same time the body count from  attacks has risen (Lesser, Hoffman, Arquilla, Ronfeldt, 1999, p. 7).  As the technology of explosives has evolved terrorist groups have incorporated the changes into their weapons. This is illustrated by the PLO’s use of dynamite in the destruction of its attacks (Cobban, 1984). Dynamite  requires the use of a detonator in order to be used as an explosive (ChemViews, 2012). By the 1980’s terrorists had transitioned to using Semtex, which like dynamite needs a detonator in order to be used, in the Lockerbie bombing (Encyclopaedia Brittanica, 2016). Al-Qaeda used an ANFO (ammonium nitrate-fuel oil) bomb in it’s attack on the World Trade Centre in 1983 (FBI, 1996)  (FBI, 2016) (GlobalSecurity, 2016) (Nazarian, Presser, 2015). Jemaah Islamiyah in its 2002 attacks on Bali used bombs made from TNT and TNT augmented with Flash Powder which needed PETN (Pentaerythritol tetranitrate) as a detonator (University of Cambridge, 2016) (Royds, Lewis, Taylor, 2005). By the attacks on London in 2005, the bombs were made from HMTD (Hexamethylene Triperoxide Diamine) which is unstable in any form and can be detonated with a sharp kick (Matyas, Pachman, 2013) (Woodfin, 2006).

We can see a clear evolution in the chemistry of terrorism. The bombs used by terrorists have evolved from being made from dynamite which needs to be either bought or stolen to being made from HMTD (National Counter Terrorism Centre, 2016). HMTD can be made from ingredients bought in supermarkets and camping stores (Budget Pyro, 2016). There are clear advantages to the terrorist in this evolution. Bombs  can now be made and used within hours, which makes the planning of attacks harder to detect and to prevent and lends them to be used in suicide attacks  (Ray, 2016) (National Research Council (U.S.). Committee on the Review of Existing and Potential Standoff Explosives Detection Techniques., 2004) such as those carried out in Turkey in March 2016 (Tuysuz, Karimi, Greg Botelho, 2016). The ease of construction lends itself to another recent phenomena in terrorism, the Lone Wolf terrorist which will be discussed later in this essay.

There has been a change in the means of attacking targets which has gone from bombs on planes to the planes themselves being bombs, a change exemplified by the bombing Pan Am Flight 103 and the 9/11 attacks (FBI, 2003). Bombs are one of two weapons of choice for terrorists with bombs being used in roughly half of all terrorist attacks (Coombs, 2015). The other weapon of choice is the AK-47 assault rifle (Hodges, 2008) (Burleigh, 2007) with 25% of all terrorist attacks between 1970 and 2012 using them (Lafree, Dugan, Miller, 2015, p. 120) (Database, 2016). None of this matters to the terrorist if they can’t have their message and attacks publicised and it is the use of mass media by terrorists that I will examine next.

         Molecular Structure of TNT       Molecular Structure of PETN (Semtex)                Molecular Structure of HMTD

The evolution of the material that terrorists make bombs with in the last half century is illustrated by the molecular structures of explosives used in attacks. Terrorists have evolved from using TNT to using organic peroxides such as HMTD in their bombs.

The aspect of terrorism that has changed the most is its use of mass media. The rise of the Internet has been a godsend to terrorism like no other, because it is medium which gives terrorists the ability to reach  billions of people instantly (UNODC, 2012). Terrorist groups were early adopters of the Internet (Lentini, Bakashmar, 2007) (Bartlett, 2014). Terrorists use the Internet because it is the easiest, quickest and cheapest way to publicise themselves through their own websites, to research recipes for explosives, to gather intelligence on targets and to network with other groups that share ideologies or goals using chatrooms and social media  (Kaplan, 2009)  (UNODC, 2012). The Internet is the most potent weapon terrorism has. The Internet can be used by a terrorist group to create a climate of fear and perception of effectiveness disproportionate to the groups actual capacity to stage attacks (Weiman, 2004). The Internet is used to radicalise what are called“Lone Wolf”terrorists a phenomena which is explored later in this essay (Steinbach, 2015) (RAND Corporation, 2015)  (Hamid, 2015). 

The Internet has given birth to a new form of terrorism: Cyberterrorism. Cyberterrorism has yet to result in a single confirmed casualty. There are doubts as to whether cyberterrorism even exists (Lentini, 2016.)  (Arquilla, Ronfeldt, 2016) and due to this I will not discuss it further .

IS has used the Internet to become a brand name (Hubbard, 2014). For a terrorist group association with the IS brand lends credibility that it might not otherwise warrant or acquire. Thus IS affiliated groups have arisen in Libya and Indonesia (Stanford University, 2015). One way IS strengthens its brand and the perception of its strength is by claiming all terrorist attacks committed by Muslims as it’s own whether they were committed by it or by attackers sympathetic to it (Aly, 2016).  IS strengthens its brand by using social media such as Facebook  (Andrews, 2016). IS in addition to Facebook in 2016 has a Twitter account (Alexander, 2015) and an online magazine “Dabiq”(Islamic State, 2016) (Sheffield, 2015).

Al-Qaeda planned the attacks of 9/11 with the with the knowledge that given the place, New York,  and time of day, 8:46 a.m. to 9:03 a.m., (National September 11 Memorial & Museum, 2016) the attacks would take place that they would attract saturation coverage in mass media, which by 2001 included the Internet (Louw, 2010).

The Internet has contributed to what have been called “Lone Wolf” or “Leaderless Resistance” terrorists (Steinbach, 2015) (RAND Corporation, 2015). A Lone Wolf is “a person who acts on his or her own without orders from — or even connections to — an organization (Bakker, de Graaf, 2011). Lone Wolf terrorists are a historical phenomena that predate the time period covered in this essay and date from the 1940’s (Steinbach, 2015). There has been a significant increase in Lone Wolf attacks since 2001 ( Spaaj, Hamm, 2015). Lone Wolf attacks are the final stage in how terrorism has changed in the last half century. In 2016 a Lone Wolf is more likely to be motivated by what they have seen and read on the Internet than they are by listening to traditional mass media (UNODC, 2012).

Lone Wolf terrorism is problematic because due Lone Wolves being solitary actors there often is no electronic chatter prior to an attack that will attract the attention of police (Bakker, de Graaf, 2011) ( Brynielsson, Horndahl, Johansson, Kaati, Mårtenson, Svenson, 2013). There is no stereotypical profile of what makes a Lone Wolf (Bakker, de Graaf, 2011). This leads to a randomness in attacks perpetrated by Lone Wolves. Lone Wolf terrorism by its very unpredictability can add to a climate of fear, which is why IS encourages and claims Lone Wolf attacks (Allard, 2015). Lone Wolf attacks although they can be extremely effective, are invariably one off events due to the Lone Wolf either dying in the attack or being captured and imprisoned (Byman, 2015). Having examined how terrorism has changed in the last half century we move to the conclusion.

Conclusion

In what ways, if any, has terrorism changed over the past half century? Terrorism over the last half century can be summed up in the saying: “The more things change, the more they stay the same”. Terrorism has managed to remain constant, yet undergone profound change in the last half century. Terrorists have for the last half century used bombs to attack targets, yet the chemistry of those bombs has changed, an evolution illustrated by the images of molecular structures of explosives used in the middle of this essay. At the beginning of this essay we have Yasser Arafat, Osama Bin Ladin and Al-Baghdadi. Under them is a terrorist attack associated with them: The 1974 El-Al hijacking, 9/11 and 2016 Brussells attacks. Terrorism has gone from bombs on planes to planes as bombs.

The changes in mass media and its use by terrorists is illustrated in the final images of this essay The left hand image of the end piece is the attack at the 1972 Munich Olympic Games by the PLO which was reported in traditional mass media. The middle image is of the 9/11 attacks which were covered by traditional media and the Internet. The bottom image is a screenshot of the BBC news website on the attacks in Brussells in March 2016, an event which whilst covered in all forms of mass media was most extensively covered on the Internet.

We have seen the goals of terrorism and its symbiotic relationship with mass media remain constant over the last half century. By the same means we can see how the Internet has changed terrorism. Yet for all the changes in bomb chemistry and mass media over the last half century, terrorism today is substantially no different from terrorism in 1972. Thus I conclude this essay by asking and answering the question: Has terrorism changed in the past half century? The answer is both yes and no.