Inside Terrorism

582 Pages·2017·7.02 MB·English

by  Bruce Hoffman

Inside Terrorism
Columbia Studies in Terrorism and Irregular Warfare
Columbia Studies in Terrorism and Irregular Warfare
Bruce Hoffman, Series Editor
This series seeks to fill a conspicuous gap in the burgeoning literature on terrorism, guerrilla
warfare, and insurgency. The series adheres to the highest standards of scholarship and
discourse and publishes books that elucidate the strategy, operations, means, motivations, and
effects posed by terrorist, guerrilla, and insurgent organizations and movements. It thereby
provides a solid and increasingly expanding foundation of knowledge on these subjects for
students, established scholars, and informed reading audiences alike.
Ami Pedahzur, The Israeli Secret Services and the Struggle Against Terrorism
Ami Pedahzur and Arie Perliger, Jewish Terrorism in Israel
Lorenzo Vidino, The New Muslim Brotherhood in the West
Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan, Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of
Nonviolent Conflict William C. Banks, editor, New Battlefields/Old Laws: Critical Debates on
Asymmetric Warfare Blake W. Mobley, Terrorism and Counterintelligence: How Terrorist
Groups Elude Detection Jennifer Morrison Taw, Mission Revolution: The U.S. Military and
Stability Operations
Guido W. Steinberg, German Jihad: On the Internationalization of Islamist Terrorism
Michael W. S. Ryan, Decoding Al-Qaeda’s Strategy: The Deep Battle Against America
David H. Ucko and Robert Egnell, Counterinsurgency in Crisis: Britain and the Challenges of
Modern Warfare Bruce Hoffman and Fernando Reinares, editors, The Evolution of the
Global Terrorist Threat: From 9/11 to Osama bin Laden’s Death Boaz Ganor, Global Alert:
The Rationality of Modern Islamist Terrorism and the Challenge to the Liberal Democratic
World M. L. R. Smith and David Martin Jones, The Political Impossibility of Modern
Counterinsurgency: Strategic Problems, Puzzles, and Paradoxes Elizabeth Grimm
Arsenault, How the Gloves Came Off: Lawyers, Policy Makers, and Norms in the Debate on
Torture Assaf Moghadam, Nexus of Global Jihad: Understanding Cooperation Among
Terrorist Actors
Inside Terrorism
THIRD EDITION
Bruce Hoffman
Columbia University Press New York
Columbia University Press Publishers Since 1893
New York Chichester, West Sussex cup.columbia.edu

Copyright © 2017 Bruce Hoffman All rights reserved
E-ISBN 978-0-231-54489-4

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Hoffman, Bruce, 1954– author.
Title: Inside terrorism / Bruce Hoffman.
Description: Third Edition. | New York : Columbia University Press, [2017] | Series: Columbia
studies in terrorism and irregular warfare | Revised edition of the author’s Inside terrorism,
2006. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017003659 | ISBN 9780231174763 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780231174770
(pbk. : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Terrorism.
Classification: LCC HV6431 .H626 2017 | DDC 363.325—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017003659

A Columbia University Press E-book.
CUP would be pleased to hear about your reading experience with this e-book at cup-
[email protected].

Cover design: Lisa Hamm
Cover images (clockwise from the upper-left corner): From the author’s collection (1–3);
Anky/Shutterstock.com (4); Shutterstock.com (5); Nate Derrick/Shutterstock.com (6);
Shutterstock.com (7)
For my children—M, N, S, and A
Contents
Preface to the Third Edition
  1.     Defining Terrorism
  2.     The End of Empire and the Origins of Contemporary Terrorism
  3.     The Internationalization of Terrorism
  4.     Religion and Terrorism
  5.     Suicide Terrorism
  6.     The Old Media, Terrorism, and Public Opinion
  7.     The New Media, Terrorism, and the Shaping of Global Opinion
  8.     The Modern Terrorist Mind-Set: Tactics, Targets, Tradecraft, and
Technologies
  9.     Terrorism Today and Tomorrow I: Force Multipliers
10.     Terrorism Today and Tomorrow II: New and Continuing Challenges
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Illustrations
Preface to the Third Edition
T
wenty years ago, I set out to write a book on terrorism that
would fill what I believed was a serious gap in the
literature. At the time, there was no single work that
addressed this increasingly vexatious issue of domestic and international
security in an authoritative, yet accessible, way. My intention had been to
produce a book that would appeal to student and scholar alike, and to
general as well as more specialized audiences. That Inside Terrorism
has remained in print ever since and indeed is still required reading in
undergraduate, graduate, executive education, and other professional
intelligence, military, and law enforcement courses taught throughout the
world, clearly attests both to the book’s continued relevance as well as to
its enduring contribution to the field.
Persons familiar with the first edition will recall its main thesis that the
nature and character of terrorism was changing. New adversaries with
different rationales and often transcendent motivations had emerged to
challenge the conventional wisdom about terrorists and terrorism. We
were therefore at the dawn of a new era of terrorist violence, I had
argued—one that would likely be even bloodier and more destructive
than before.
The attacks on September 11, 2001, clearly validated that conclusion,
and also created the need for a revised and updated edition of Inside
Terrorism, which was published five years later. Today, a variety of new
developments—the rise of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS, also
known as ISIL, or Daesh); the use of social media for terrorist recruitment
and the availability of encrypted applications for operational planning and
communications; the large number of Salafi-Jihadi foreign volunteers
fighting in Syria and Iraq, Yemen and Libya, and Mali and Afghanistan,
among other places; as well as the proliferation of increasingly violently
inclined homegrown extremists and lone wolf terrorists—have again
necessitated a new edition with all the additional information and fresh
insight and analysis that may be found throughout this thoroughly
amended and revamped volume.
This latest iteration of Inside Terrorism may be read as the third of a
succession of treatises that have charted terrorism’s evolution and
growth from its ancient origins to the end of the Cold War (the first
edition, published in 1998); from the epochal September 11 attacks
through the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq (the second edition published in
2006); and now to ISIS’s sanguinary emergence, al-Qaeda’s patient
rebuilding, and the seemingly unmitigated litany of heinous beheadings,
mass annihilations, and alarming urban assaults that have convulsed
Paris and Brussels, Baghdad and Berlin, San Bernardino and Orlando,
and Nice and Istanbul.
Yet another installment of Inside Terrorism, however, also sadly
reflects the intractability of this timeless phenomenon and, in turn, the
immense interest among students, scholars, government officials, and
the general public to better understand why this violence occurs and how
it can be stopped. These same questions have both preoccupied and
perplexed me throughout a professional career spent studying these
issues that now exceeds four decades. I would therefore be remiss not to
acknowledge the help and assistance from the many persons and
institutions that have facilitated, supported, and encouraged my
intellectual inquiries into this subject.
For the past dozen years, I have been extremely fortunate to teach at
Georgetown University’s world-renowned Security Studies Program, one
of eight master’s-level programs in that university’s School of Foreign
Service. From my time as an adjunct professor to my appointment as a
tenured full professor, and indeed for the past seven years as the
program’s director, my own knowledge and understanding of terrorists
and terrorism has been appreciably enhanced by both my colleagues and
the hundreds of students I have taught in SEST-500 Theory and Practice
of Security, SEST-546 Terrorism and Counterterrorism, and SEST-520
Insurgency and Counterinsurgency. For their tremendous friendship and
support, I would like to thank Jeffrey Anderson, Elizabeth Arsenault,
Jacques Berlinerblau, Daniel Byman, Christine Fair, the late Carol
Lancaster, Robert Lieber, David Maxwell, Tom McNaugher, Elizabeth
Stanley, and James Reardon-Anderson. It is a special pleasure as well to
acknowledge the superb research assistance in the preparation of this
book provided by Joseph Bernard, Jenny Abarbanel, Sarah Maksoud,
Natalia Peña, Siobhan Steel, and Christopher Wall.
Since 2003, I have also had the privilege of being the George H.
Gilmore Senior Fellow at the U.S. Military Academy’s Combating
Terrorism Center (CTC) in West Point, New York. The CTC’s mission is
to ensure that future U.S. Army officers are thoroughly knowledgeable
about the theory and practice of terrorism and counterterrorism, as well
as insurgency and counterinsurgency. I am continually humbled and
honored by the opportunity to teach, and indeed learn, from these
outstanding young men and women who go from class to serve on the
front lines of a war on terrorism that shows no signs of abating. I should
therefore like to thank the Gilmore family for their generous support of the
fellowship billet I proudly occupy and the succession of CTC executive
directors and social sciences department chairs with whom I have
worked: Reid Sawyer, Kip McCormick, Joe Felter, Liam Collins, and
Bryan Price, as well as Russell Howard, Michael Meese, Cindy Jebb, and
Suzanne Nielsen.
Nearly a quarter of a century ago, Professor Paul Wilkinson and I
cofounded the Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence
(CSTPV) in the School of International Relations at St. Andrews
University, Scotland. That this paragon of scholarship and teaching has
flourished to become the world’s leading academic institution for the
rigorous, objective study of terrorism is a fitting tribute to Paul and a
source of great pride and satisfaction for me. Accordingly, I value all the
more my continuing relationship with St. Andrews and the CSTPV as a
part-time, visiting professor of terrorism studies. I would therefore like to
thank Timothy Wilson, the current interim director, and Richard English,
the former director, for their continued friendship and support; Nick
Rengger and Anthony Lang, the former and current heads of the School
of International Relations; Louise Richardson, the previous principal and
vice-chancellor; and, as always, my beloved friend of many decades,
Alison Watson.