Writing Worth Reading
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Writing Worth Reading
Let’s start with the Bruce Hoffman book.
The Hoffman is a terrific introduction to the issue of terrorism. It is a foundational book for anyone who wants to understand terrorism and the War on Terror.
How does he define terrorism?
Well, this is a problem. The UN cannot decide on a definition for terrorism and there are probably ten definitions, of which Hoffman discusses a variety. He brings together all the theories in a coherent narrative. I want to encourage people to read this book for themselves, but, for example, he describes the difference between an insurgency during a conventional war and a terror attack. He is writing on a fairly theoretical plane, but he does give examples. He looks at al Qaeda especially, and he sets the stage for thinking about terrorism with new definitions and ways of thinking about it.
He talks about the difference between religious and political terrorism and says that religious terrorism is far more dangerous and the terrorists are more likely to use extreme violence because there are not as many curbs on what they can do if God has commanded it.
Hoffman represents one side in a continuous debate about al Qaeda. He argues that al Qaeda is a coherent terrorist group, a group with politics and an ideology, willing to commit acts of terror to achieve its goals. Hoffman would say that it is al Qaeda and groups like it that present the most serious threat to the United States today.
Marc Sageman, on the other hand, says al Qaeda is a loose network, small groups of guys hanging out, not in the pursuit of an objective or a political goal but just satisfying the demands of their small social network even if that includes carrying out acts of terror.
That sounds more like it to me. What do you think?
I think this is a problem you get when you are looking at an organisation from above and below. Both are true. If you look at any phenomenon that involves leaders… Take Communism, for example. You had small groups of revolutionaries who called themselves Bolsheviks and had a coherent political philosophy for which they were willing to fight. That doesn’t explain, however, why Joe Smith in America decided to join the Communist Party. He could have had all sorts of social and economic reasons for joining which, again, do nothing to describe where the Bolsheviks come from or what they’re up to. So the two theories are not contradictory. They only seem contradictory if you say: mine is the only theory and yours is wrong.
Do people say that?
Well, I’m not going to name anyone individually, but academics can be that way sometimes.
Have we covered Sageman?
No. I would like to add that Sageman offers an explanation for individual motivations for terrorism. He looked at 400 European members of terrorist organisations and asked them the questions you’d expect – about poverty, lack of opportunities, lack of education. The responses showed that the terrorists had more education than was average, belonged to a higher socio-economic class and had more opportunities, not less. That is the revolutionary thing about Sageman’s work.
Tell me about The Looming Tower.
This is a fantastic account of the origins of al Qaeda, the individuals who laid the foundations of the organisation and why they carried out 9/11. It is the best work on the origins and development of al Qaeda in the 1990s. He uses interviews conducted in the 1990s and he also uses captured documents and materials that he integrated after 9/11. The government started releasing documents after 2002 and I’m going to use a lot of them for my next book.
Mary Habeck is Associate Professor of Strategic Studies at Johns Hopkins University and an expert in terrorism, weapons of mass destruction, strategic and security issues and American defence policy. Habeck has held appointments at the National Security Council, served as Associate Professor of History at Yale University, coordinated the Yale Russian Archive Project to facilitate access to documents in the former Soviet archives and is the recipient of the 2001-02 Morse Fellowship. She has a PhD in history from Yale. She has contributed to The Journal of Military History, The International History Review, The Journal of Modern History and others. She says the US contributed to insurgency in Iraq and Afghanistan by failing to peel off those with local grievances and treating all insurgents as al Qaeda-linked terrorists.
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