The Interplay Between Terrorism Nonstate

International Studies Review (2005) 7, 133–170
THE FORUM
Nonstate Actors, Terrorism, and

Weapons of Mass Destruction
EDITED BY
ANDREW BLUM
Center for International Development and
Conflict Management,
University of Maryland
VICTOR ASAL
Rockefeller College of Public Affairs and Policy,
State University of New York at Albany
AND
JONATHAN WILKENFELD
Center for International Development and Conflict Management,
Editors’ Introduction
While the term ‘‘weapons of mass destruction’’ (WMD) is a relatively new one, the effort to stop
the spread of arms and weapons systems that can inflict mass harm is by no means new. Indeed,
efforts to stop the production and possible use of these most fatal weapons have been successful
by many accounts. From agreements following World War I to ban mustard gas to the es-
tablishment of the International Atomic Energy Agency to the nearly universal acceptance
of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty to the inauguration of the Chemical Weapons Con-
vention in 1997, the international community has made great strides in limiting states’ ability
to pursue, and interest in pursuing, WMD. Libya’s recent decision to dismantle and allow
international inspections of its own WMD program serves as evidence of the effectiveness of
today’s nonproliferation regime.
The agreements and institutions at the core of this nonproliferation regime, however, are
designed to affect the decisions and policies of only one type of actor in the international
community, that is, states. As such, current arrangements do not do enough to halt the spread of
WMD to nonstate actors in the international system. And, yet, it is widely believed that WMD
proliferation among nonstate actorsFsuch as terrorist groups, ethnic secessionist groups, and
religious sectsFwill be the critical nonproliferation challenge of the next twenty years.
With this challenge in mind, the Center for International Development and Conflict Man-
agement of the University of Maryland convened a conference on nonstate actors, terrorism, and
weapons of mass destruction on October 15, 2004. The conference was made possible by a grant
from the International Peace and Security Program of the Carnegie Corporation of New York.1
The goal of the conference was to gather a small group of leading social science experts on
nonstate actors, terrorism, and weapons of mass destruction in a setting conducive to the
1
The conference organizers would like to thank Amy Benavides, Bidisha Biswas, Derrick Franke, and especially
Jane Schmitt for their help in organizing and working at the conference.
r 2005 International Studies Review.

Published by Blackwell Publishing, 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA, and 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK.
134 Nonstate Actors, Terrorism, and Weapons of Mass Destruction
generation of new ideas and approaches. We consciously mixed substantive and method-
ological expertiseFcomparative case studies, including ethnographic approaches; aggre-
gate subnational and international approaches; experimental techniques, including
simulations; formal and agent-based modelingFin an effort to promote creative new
thinking.
The organizers of the conference asked each participant to prepare a brief discussion paper
or think piece. The purpose of these papers was to serve as a catalyst for discussion, not to
present completed research. The participants were provided with four thematic questions to
address in their conference papers: (1) How do the underlying characteristics of various types
of nonstate actors, together with the motivations of their leadership, combine with contextual
factors to increase or decrease the likelihood that WMD may be sought? (2) Under what
circumstances, for what purposes, and against which targets are such groups likely to use
WMD? (3) What policies and strategies are most likely to deter WMD proliferation? (4) To
confront these questions, what types of data are necessary, and to what degree is such data
available?
After the conference, participants were asked to distill the major points of their discussion
papers, which form the heart of this Forum. In the rest of this introduction, we will summarize
the conclusions that emerged from the day of discussion as well as advance the major ar-
guments in the contributions that follow and indicate who makes which arguments. Both the
conference discussions and the Forum contributions can be usefully divided into three inter-
related themes: (1) the concept of WMD, (2) group-level analysis, and (3) the environments in
which groups operate. The full papers prepared for the conference can be viewed at http://
www.cidcm.umd.edu/announcement.asp? id=37.
The Concept of WMD. As is not unusual at such conferences, initial discussion focused on
fundamental concepts. Immediately, the term Weapons of Mass Destruction came in for crit-
icism. The gist of the criticism was that the term is misleading in two ways: (1) chemical,
biological, radiological, and nuclear (CBRN) weapons, to which the term WMD often refers,
are not necessarily massively destructive, and (2) non-CBRN weapons can be massively
destructive. Moreover, it was argued that the term ‘‘destruction’’ was too narrow to capture the
range of impacts on society that terrorist events can generate. John Steinbruner raised the
potential of terrorist events inducing a societal autoimmune effect, in which the damage that
society does to itself may be larger than the terrorist act itself (see his contribution in the
Forum). For instance, a threat to attack shopping malls during December could create an
enormous impact on the economics of the holiday shopping season.
In response to these critiques, others at the conference (Gary Ackerman and Ted Gurr)
suggested the concept of Mass Impact Terrorism defined as:
a terrorist act that has a significant and direct impact on the normal functioning of the lives
of a dramatically large number of people. . . . a mass impact attack results in a substantial
diminution in the physical, social, and/or psychological well-being of a large enough group
of people such that this feature of the act is regarded by most observers as a core characteristic
of the attack. (Ackerman, 2004:2)
Perhaps the most significant breakthrough at the conference was identifying the linked concepts
of Mass Impact Terrorism and societal autoimmune effect. There was widespread assent that
this pair of concepts could serve as a useful core around which to organize future research
efforts.
Group-Level Analysis. One of the stated goals of the conference was to examine how to
develop better profiles of groups likely to acquire, or to wish to acquire, WMD. Ackerman (see
his Forum contribution) called for the creation of standardized methodologies for assessing
threats to use in identifying terrorist groups likely to employ WMD. Developing such profiles
requires a better understanding of what attributes of terrorist groups engender both a desire
and a capacity to acquire WMD. Moreover, establishing such a profile-based, threat-assess-
ment system requires the prior creation of a catalogue of terrorist and potential terrorist groups.
Currently, datasets on WMD terrorist incidentsFwhich include the WMD Terrorism
THE FORUM 135
Database (http://cns.mils.edu/dbinfo/about.htm#wmdt), the MIPT Terrorism Knowledge Base

(http://www.tkb.org/Home.jsp), the International Terrorism: Attributes of Terrorist Events or
ITERATE data (http://www.apsanet.org/-conflict/newsletter/feb2002/iterate.html), and the
Global Terrorism DatabaseFare more comprehensive than datasets on potential WMD ter-
rorist groups. It was noted at the conference that, whereas the Minorities at Risk (MAR)
dataset has played an important role in tracking potential eruptions of ethnic conflict, there is
no analogous, publicly available dataset for potential terrorist groups. The standardized
methodologies used by MAR to track ethnic minorities could serve as a model for the type of
threat assessment that Ackerman describes.
Several of the Forum contributions (Ted Gurr, Michael Stohl, Jerrold Post, and Joshua Sinai)
confront the interrelated issues of motive and capabilities as a step toward creating a profile for
terrorist groups likely to seek WMD. Each presents a theoretical framework in an attempt to lay
out ways of constructing a WMD profile. Moreover, two of these same contributors (Gurr and
Post) touch on a third important aspect of a WMD profile, the organizational structure of the
group. The question of organizational structure arose at the conference as well. For instance, it
was noted that secretive, cult-like groups are more likely to be able to keep WMD activity
concealed, whereas transnational groups are more likely to be able to obtain WMD resources but
are less likely to be able to conceal WMD activity. In general, however, neither the conference
discussions (nor the Forum contributions) devoted the sustained attention to this issue that it
deservesFtestimony to the size and complexity of the overall topic.
What all of the frameworks described in the various contributions have in common is an
emphasis, although not necessarily an exclusive one, on the demand side of WMD acquisition.
This emphasis, in turn, dictates a shift in focus from the weapons system as the unit of analysis
to the terrorist or potential terrorist group as the unit of analysis.
Such frameworks will eventually need to be assessed empirically, although this is difficult to
do as there has been no true WMD terrorist attack. The contribution to the Forum of Victor
Asal and Andrew Blum as well as that of Gary LaFree, Laura Dugan, and Derrick Franke
use mass casualty terror (MCT) as a proxy for WMD terror, in part to create strategies for
large-N analysis. Both pieces serve to establish sets of parameters regarding the historical
record of MCT for which future research must account. One finding, for instance, is that both
religious and ethnic motivations can lead to MCT. Thus, future profiles and threat assessment
strategies for MCT, and by proxy WMD terror, must be able to account for the fact that the
Tamil Tigers and al-Qaeda both engage in highly lethal attacks.
Near the end of the conference, participants arrived at the framework presented in Figure 1,
which all believe could serve as a useful guide to future group-level research on terrorism and
WMD. The first two steps have already been discussed above. The next steps in the proc-
essFdetermining whether a group’s grievances can be addressed, determining if a group is
deterrable, and determining if a group can be physically blocked from acquiring or using
WMDFprovide a pragmatic frame of reference by which to analyze a group’s motives,
organizational structure, and capacities.
Environments in Which Groups Operate. Several of the contributors to the Forum
(Bartosz Stanislawski, Gabriel Sheffer, Mark Lichbach, and Todd Sandler and Walter End-
ers) focus not on the characteristics of the terrorist groups themselves, but instead on the
environments in which they operate. Key elements of relevance in these environments include:
the lack of state authority in certain regions; the relationship between terrorist groups and other
types of groups, particularly criminal enterprises and diasporas; and the nature of the policy
response to terrorist groups.
The complexity of producing WMD creates the need for groups to develop a sustained weapons
program outside the reach of state and international authorities. In considering where such
environments are located, discussion focused on ‘‘black spots’’ or criminal enclaves where states
exercise minimal control; these black spots operate much like the ‘‘black holes’’ in astronomy (see the
contribution of Stanislawski). Not only can weapons programs be sustained in such places, but
these areas often already contain people with the skills and access to the materials that weapons
programs require. Although the concept is similar to that of failed states, it is important in that it
draws attention to the fact that lawless regions can be quite small and can exist as part of border
Identify Group
Identify
Motive/Grievance
Can motive/grievance
be addressed?
NO YES
Can group be
deterred?
NO YES
Can group be
physically blocked
from acquiring
WMD?
NO YES
FIG. 1. Process for Analyzing and Addressing Threats from a Group-Level Perspective
regions, such as the Tri-border Area in South America. It also draws attention to the importance of
existing criminal networks that may or may not exist in a failed state.
The importance of these criminal networks illustrates the relevance of terrorist groups’
relationships with other types of groups more generally. Indeed, the interaction of extremist
groups can greatly increase the capacity of any one group to obtain the materials and tech-
nological expertise necessary to produce WMD. Consider also the impact that diasporas can
have on the actions of terrorist groups. Even though diaspora groups may contribute to
violence and terrorism in their homelands, the fact that the goals of diasporas are usually
highly political and their actions are highly tactical make it unlikely that they would support the
use of WMD as part of a terrorist strategy (see Sheffer’s contribution to this Forum).
If we assume a terrorist group is not operating in a black spot (in other words, that there is a
political authority), the question of the impact of policies and institutions on potential WMD
seekers remains. Several of the contributors (Gurr, Lichbach, and Sandler and Enders)
analyze elements of the interaction between terrorist groups and the basket of policies and
political institutions that have been developed to confront them. An argument is made that the
terrorist groups most likely to use WMD are those with the most serious grievances. Although it
is these serious grievances that are the most difficult to address, even partially addressing them
may move groups away from a desire to seek WMD. Alongside ongoing efforts to disrupt the
THE FORUM 137
actions of terrorist groups, a key research challenge is to better understand what strategies are
effective at preventing radicalization and extremism in the first place.
In addition to looking at specific policies, these contributors also ask fundamental questions
regarding which policies ( for example, appeasement versus repression) and which political
institutions should be effective in undermining terrorism. Consider the fact that two different
rational choice modelsFthe bargaining theory of war and the rebel’s dilemma theory of
dissentF‘‘offer startlingly different understandings’’ of the impact of certain types of policies
and institutions. Whereas the bargaining theory would counsel a state to increase transparency
and trust, the rebel’s dilemma model would urge creating policies that check the ability of
terrorist groups to increase their power through the mobilization of new resources (see the
contribution of Lichbach). Viewing the interaction between terrorist groups and political
authorities as a strategic interaction, it is possible to examine the impact various policy shifts
have had, if any, on terrorist behavior. When one does such an analysis, an intriguing finding
results: the pressure put on al-Qaeda since September 11 has caused them to eschew ‘‘difficult
and costly attacks [particularly hostage-taking] for simple bombing with high body counts’’ (see
the contribution of Sandler and Enders). This conclusion is interesting in the WMD context
because such terrorism is inherently difficult and costly. How optimistically we view this
conclusion relates back to the conceptual issues discussed above; specifically, is WMD terrorism
the problem or is mass casualty/mass impact terrorism the problem?
More generally, it is this dynamic, interactive relationship that terrorist groups have with
their environment that led Ackerman in his contribution to call for the development of new
analytic techniques capable of addressing ‘‘second order questions.’’ Second-order, or nonlin-
ear, analysis is necessary to understand whether the future transition to WMD by terrorist
groups will be slow and incremental or a more sudden, tipping-point-like phenomenon.
In Sum. Reviews of the literature on WMD terrorism suggest that there is a need to rethink
what we know and to revisit the ways in which we are interpreting what we know. The
conference on which this Forum is based was an attempt to do just that. Nonetheless, it is true
that we, as editors, left the conference more impressed by how much there is left to do than by
how much has been accomplished. Thus, the contributions that follow should not be viewed as
providing some sort of comprehensive understanding of the relationship between nonstate
actors, terrorism, and WMD. Instead, we see each as a spotlight, illuminating one part of a
complex landscape. This result is not ideal but, as was articulately stated by one of the
conference participants, we may not have the liberty of slowly and methodically building a body
of knowledge. Although such a body of knowledge must always remain a long-term goal, it is
also necessary to create practical knowledge in the short term that can help prevent the
proliferation of WMD to terrorist groups.
The contributions to the Forum appear in the following order by theme: the concept
of WMDFSteinbruner, Ackerman; group-level analysisFGurr, Stohl, Post, Sinai Asal and
Blum, LaFree, Dugan, and Franke; and the environments in which groups operateFStanis-
lawski, Sheffer, Lichbach, Sandler and Enders.
Terrorism:
Practical Distinctions and
Research Priorities
JOHN STEINBRUNER
Center for International and Security Studies, University of Maryland
Terrorism is obviously a term that is widely used and poorly defined. As best
I can judge, the existing literature does not provide either a generally agreed
upon definition of the term or a categorization of the meaningfully different

circumstances to which the term has been applied. There are nonetheless some
commonsense distinctions that can be used in considering an appropriate research
agenda on the topic.
Relevant Distinctions
Assuming that the fundamental concern of terrorists has to do with deliberately
initiated violence judged to have broader social consequence than ordinary crime,
one can argue for organizing analysis according to the following distinctions among
the imputed purposes for the activity:
(A) Violence perpetrated for its own sake. Actions falling into this category
are basically the work of serial killers. It may be questionable whether there
are any exclusive manifestations of this phenomenon distinguishable from
ordinary crime, but such behavior is probably a significant feature of most
sustained terrorist episodes. The assessment of this type of violence, it would
seem, might best be done by specialists on psychopathology, social pathology,
and criminal justice.
(B) Violence done for specific, readily imputable bargaining reasons. Most ep-
isodes of terrorism encountered to date fall into this category; the more
consequential of them are embedded in the general problem of civil conflict.
Valid assessment of this type of terrorism presumably should be considered
part of the appraisal of civil conflict with all its many subspecialties.
(C) Violence done for strategic reasons. Conceptually drawing a distinction be-
tween this and the previous category may be difficult, but there clearly is a
widespread, and at least plausibly valid, impression that the events of Sep-
tember 11 and al-Qaeda activities in general reflect an underlying purpose
that could not be resolved by any imaginable political bargain. The apparent
intention of strategic terrorism is to provoke self-destructive reactions in a
society that are too strong to be directly defeated. This type of violence
depends essentially on inducing a decisive societal autoimmune effect.
(D) Violence done to achieve catastrophic social destruction. As far as imputed
intention is concerned, this category would be a combination of the first and
the third, but its distinguishing feature is the use of means that can achieve
massive social destruction directly without depending on autoimmune effects
that in principle could be controlled by the target societies. To date there are
no instances on record of this kind of violence, or even any serious attempts if
long-standing nuclear deterrence practices are exempted from inclusion. It is
nonetheless a legitimate concern given that, in principle, a clandestine or-
ganization capable only of small-scale operations might achieve massive social
destruction by using nuclear explosives or a virulent biological pathogen.
One can also argue for a complementary set of organizing distinctions having to
do with the protective reactions of terrorist victims:
(1) Actions designed to prevent the formation of terrorist operations. Presum-
ably this set of actions includes analysis of the individual motives and social
incentives that generate terrorists as well as assessment of the measures re-
quired to mitigate such determining conditions.
(2) Actions designed to limit or to eradicate those terrorist organizations that
do form. To the extent that these actions extend beyond standard criminal
justice, they have mainly to do with the exchange of information. Terrorist
operations can be eliminated if they can be identified. The core problem
obviously is distinguishing them from legitimate activity and exercising pru-
dent judgment in doing so. Inducing attack on innocent victims in attempting
THE FORUM 139
to eradicate terrorists is one of the principal methods of achieving a societal

autoimmune effect.
(3) Actions designed to prevent destructive access to critical social assets, par-
ticularly those whose destruction might have some substantial cascade effect.
The basic problem in this regard is the exercise of prudent judgment. In-
ducing excessive efforts to protect critical assets is another major method of
promoting an autoimmune effect in society.
(4) Actions specifically designed to contain the autoimmune effect. This cat-
egory is the most poorly conceptualized and least developed of all the rel-
evant categories. To the extent that it goes beyond the exercise of good
judgment with regard to the previous two categories, it presumably has to do
with calibrating public fears and managing attitudes about riskFvery difficult
matters indeed.
(5) Actions designed to prevent terrorist access to mass destruction technology.
In this case, there is a strong presumption that extremely high standards of
protection can and must be achieved; the corresponding dangers of pro-
moting a societal autoimmune effect are a less prominent consideration. In
principle, nuclear explosives can be more effectively sequestered than they
currently are. Biotechnology is much more demanding. Chemical agents and
other technologies that are commonly given the mass destruction label do not
belong in this category.
Priority Research Topics

The intersection of these distinctions (types of deliberately initiated violence and
kinds of protective reactions of terrorist victims) can be used to argue for certain
research priorities. My own judgments in this regard are as follows. First, in terms
of magnitude of risk, the threat of deliberate mass destruction (the intersection of D
and 5 from above) is clearly the matter of greatest concern. The actual probability is
difficult to judge, but it is prudent to assume that the danger is serious enough to
justify the overriding priority that would be required to develop dramatically
higher standards of managerial control over the two technologies of greatest de-
structive potentialFnuclear explosives and virulent biological pathogens. The
practical implications are very different for these two applications, but they share
some common features, most notably, the application of advanced monitoring
techniques on a global scale. High standards of protection are technically feasible in
each instance, but their development and application would require a conceptual
and institutional revolution in existing international security arrangements. Al-
though the basic idea is specific and compelling, the extended implications are very
broad and very poorly understood at the moment.
Second, in terms of potential probability, the most urgent concern in the after-
math of the September 11 events has to do with recognizing and controlling the
societal autoimmune effect. The US political system has demonstrated itself to be
quite susceptible to provocation and so far has essentially refused to acknowledge
this problem. This refusal, of course, provides substantial incentive to those who
want to exploit such a vulnerability. In this case, it is less evident what a responsive
and effective research agenda would be, but the development of such an agenda is
clearly an urgent matter. The topic, representing the intersection C and 4 in the
array of motives and actions listed above, might usefully be termed immunization.
Third, most of the terrorist incidents that have occurred to date have been
generated by active civil conflictsFthat is, by forms of warfare largely contained
within a single, at least nominally, sovereign jurisdiction (the intersection of B and 2
in the categorization scheme). There is a strong presumption that any successful
policy for dealing with terrorism of this type would have to be embedded in policies
for mitigating the underlying conflict. At the moment, the most demanding variant
of this problem has to do with achieving viable social reconstruction in the after-
math of a conflict whose major combat phase has been terminated by international
intervention.
Civil conflicts have, in fact, provided the principal combat experience for the
major military establishments in the world for several decades. In the aftermath of
the Cold War, the topic has emerged as a preoccupation of security policy as well.
Extensive efforts have been made to develop analytic assessments of the problems
involved in civil conflicts, and major instances of intervention have produced
formative practical experience. Despite such extensive attention, however, virtually
no one considers the problem to be adequately understood or operationally mas-
tered. Very few would care to argue that either analytic comprehension or practical
mastery are likely to emerge from a simple continuation of past efforts. It is evident
that some productive innovation is needed; but far from evident, of course, is what
innovation would be productive.
My own suggestion in this regard has to do with perspective. Extensive engage-
ment in Afghanistan and Iraq, in particular, is generating some localized innovation
among those who are involved in military, reconstruction, and humanitarian relief
operations. Moreover, preliminary work applying adaptive agent models to civil
conflict situations suggests that localized interactions may be substantively more
significant and analytically more comprehensible than yet realized. There is con-
siderable promise in treating terrorism embedded in civil conflict as an emergent
phenomenon more susceptible to adroit localized response than has yet been
appreciated.
WMD Terrorism Research:

Whereto from Here?
GARY ACKERMAN
Center for Nonproliferation Studies,
Monterey Institute of International Studies
Despite significant contributions in the past decade to our understanding of various

aspects of WMD terrorism, the topic seems to have reached something of an ‘‘in-
terpretive impasse.’’ A recent survey of more than 120 books, journal articles,
monographs, and government reports dealing with WMD terrorism indicated that
the scholarly and policy-related literature has increasingly begun to recycle the
same interpretations and staid shibboleths. This is not meant to denigrate several
excellent works that have emerged, merely to point out that truly novel insights
into WMD terrorism are becoming few and far between.
To some extent this is understandable, given the paucity of serious chemical,
biological, radiological, or nuclear (CBRN) incidents and the absence of any true
WMD attacks by terrorists upon which to base studies and against which to validate
assertions. The answers to some of the questions surrounding WMD terrorism
must, therefore, necessarily remain within the realm of the speculative as long as we
do not experience any major attacksFand hopefully this will continue to be the
case. There are, however, several aspects that seem to have been overlooked
or given scant attention in the research program thus far. With the hope of
broadening the research agenda for WMD terrorism, I offer the following three
examples.
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(1) Operationalizing WMD Terrorism Research by Informing

Threat Assessments
The current security situation, including recent indications of terrorist interest in
using WMD, makes it untenable for scholars to act leisurely in applying their in-
sights to practical purposes. Basic research needs to be operationalized as soon as
possible in a form that analysts, investigators, and policymakers can deploy ‘‘in the
field.’’ A task that scholars should set for themselves in this regard is to actively work
to incorporate the knowledge and insights we have gained over decades of study
regarding motivational and other aspects of WMD terrorism into threat assessment
methodologies that can be used by analysts with less experience and smaller
knowledge bases than most scholars possess.
One means of informing threat assessments is to develop standardized method-
ologies for conducting in-depth, qualitative studies of particular extremist groups
so that threat assessments encompass such factors as a group’s history, ideology, life-
cycle status, organizational structure, organizational dynamics, resources, opera-
tional capabilities, environmental factors, cognitive and affect-based distortions to
perception and information processing, and operational objectives, to mention only
some. In addition, scholars should not shy away from undertaking close qualitative
studies themselves, given that intelligence and law enforcement analysts rarely
possess the time or resources necessary to conduct comprehensive profiles of this
sort. Such efforts, even those based solely on information found in unclassified
sources, can yield considerable indicators of a group’s or individual’s future po-
tential for various types of violence, including the use of WMD.
To provide but one example, a serious investigation of Aum ShinrikyoFwhich
several Japanese newspapers did, in fact, carry outFshould have been more than
sufficient to alert domestic and international authorities to the dangers posed by the
organization. If those warnings had been heeded and promptly acted upon, the
1995 sarin gas attack in the Tokyo subway could undoubtedly have been prevented.
As Ehwd Sprinzak (2000:5–6) has argued,
the vast majority of terrorist organizations can be identified well in advance . . .

and the number of potential [WMD] suspects is significantly less than doomsayers
seem to believe. Ample early warning signs should make effective interdiction of
potential superterrorists much easier than today’s prevailing rhetoric suggests.
Another way in which scholars can leverage their collective knowledge in the
above mentioned pursuit is to combine empirical research (both of the large-N and
case study varieties) on terrorist motivations and capabilities with the existing body
of literature relating to terrorist decision making in order to produce usable and
useful analytical tools. It needs to be emphasized that, despite the intent to provide
analysts with analytical aids, there is no way to predict the timing, nature, or lo-
cation of future WMD attacks with any degree of scientific certainty. In many ways
the threat of WMD terrorism resembles a chaotic system, in the strict sense of the
term, wherein tiny perturbations in any of a myriad of factors can result in sig-
nificantly disparate outcomes. Moreover, the traditional analytical methods of the
past have also served us rather poorly in predicting terrorist behaviorFthe failures
in foreseeing such events as the 1995 Tokyo subway sarin release or the September
11 attacks were not solely the result of faulty intelligence. They were in many ways
the consequence of a lack of imagination and innovation in thinking about such
threats.
What is required is a synthesisFa marriage of the quantitative and the qual-
itative, the model and the empirical ‘‘actual.’’ Combining real-world data with a new
set of analytical toolsFbe they computational, statistical, or merely heuris-
ticFcould enable those involved in counterterrorism to reach a level of under-
standing that is both specific to the dangers of the terrorist group under
consideration and sufficiently comparative to discern valuable trends and indicators

that would otherwise go unnoticed.
(2) The Need for Second-Order Analysis and Beyond

The consensus among scholars as well as in existing empirical evidence seems to
suggest that, at present, WMD will not be the first choice of, nor is it within the
capabilities of, most terrorists. Yet terrorism is an inherently dynamic phenomenon,
and, if recent trends have taught us anything, it is that terrorists are nimble actors
who can be innovative when necessary. This is especially true when considering
such a diffuse, network-centric, and eminently adaptive set of groups and individ-
uals as today’s amorphous terrorist groups. At the same time, technological devel-
opment is also inherently dynamic with one of the negative externalities of this
dynamism being the opportunities it can provide for malefactors. Examples of such
technologies include cheap, accessible sprayers for chemical weapons; nanotech,
proteinacious microspheres; aerosol vaccine delivery; bioinformatics; single nuc-
leotide polymorphisms (SNPs); and Bose-Einstein condensates.
A remarkable feature of the broader discussion regarding the likelihood of WMD
terrorism is that hardly any commentators who believe terrorists currently lack the
capacity mention anything about future developments. Even if one accepts that
terrorists will eventually succeed in using WMD to cause mass casualties, how
quickly this can happen is a very important question. Five years? Ten? Fifty? The
speed with which a shift to possible WMD use might take place in the context of
emerging technologies is a very important, yet underresearched, question. Also,
many people assume that any transition to WMD use will be incremental and
perceptible, with WMD incidents gradually increasing in frequency and severity.
Will this necessarily be the case, or can technological or motivational developments
cause a sudden shift toward WMD use? What we need to do is to consider ‘‘second-
order questions’’ regarding when a potential transition to WMD use might occur
and by what mechanisms it might take place.
Consideration of second-order questions may entail new analytical techniques
and require a more diverse set of skills than scholars are accustomed to applying to
the problem of WMD terrorism. One potentially fruitful source of insights in this
regard is found in the business development literature that focuses on the impact of
technological change on patterns of behavior. Various models of technological
change, often based on a modified rational choice approach, may shed some light
on the rate of WMD adoption by terrorists. As an example, consider a concept such
as disruptive versus sustaining technologies (developed by Clayton Christensen at
the Harvard Business School; see Bower and Christensen 1995). If WMD in the
context of terrorism is likely to act as a disruptive technology (which prima facie
indications suggest), then changes in terrorist behavior can be both swift and com-
prehensive instead of gradual and infrequent; in other words, the transition to the
terrorist use of WMD as the strategic weapon of choice would be both sudden and
permanent.
(3) Where Extremes Touch2

Another area that has thus far remained largely unexplored in the context of WMD
terrorism involves the potential for and consequences of collaboration between
terrorist groups. It is generally assumed that different types of violent extremists
and terrorists operate within discrete ideological and cultural milieus that are rel-
atively insular, if not entirely distinct from one another. This simplistic assumption
2
The following section is based on work prepared by Jeffrey Bale and the author (see Bale and Ackerman 2004).
Thanks are due Bale for providing many of the observations noted below.
THE FORUM 143
ignores a far more complex and fluid reality, however, given that elements from
different extremist milieus have frequently interacted and lent one another assist-
ance in the past. And, indeed, there are indications that new patterns of ideological
cross-fertilization and collaboration are presently emerging among terrorist
groups.
It is important to recognize that one of the oldest alliance patterns adopted by
states within the international systemFthat based on the notion that ‘‘the enemy
of my enemy is my friend’’Falso influences the behavior of nonstate actors.
Another potential motivation for adopting this collaborative approach would be to
circumvent security measures taken against their own groups by engaging proxies
to carry out attacks on their behalf. It is not necessary in this regard that the bulk of
or ‘‘mainstream’’ factions within each milieu find common ground. All that is nec-
essary is for a small subset, perhaps even fringe elements, within each milieu to find
ways to justify collaboration with one another, even though the majority of the
respective ideologies’ adherents continue to regard each other with antipathy.
Any type of operational cooperation between separate terrorist organizations is a
potentially worrisome development, but it is even more ominous in an era in which
terrorist attacks are becoming ever deadlier. Given the growing interest expressed
by terrorists in using CBRN weapons, the establishment of symbiotic relationships
with their counterparts from other ideological milieus and the possible combining
of their efforts could result in groups that otherwise would lack the requisite ca-
pability to move beyond the WMD threshold.
Which Minorities Might Use

Weapons of Mass Destruction?
TED ROBERT GURR

Department of Government and Politics, University of Maryland
I am not aware of WMD use by any of the 300 politically significant minorities that
have been tracked since the 1980s by the Minorities at Risk (MAR) project (data are
available at http://www.cidcm.umd.edu/inscr/mar). Asal and Blum (2004) identify
thirty-four Mass Casualty Terror (MCT) events during the last thirty years; eight of
them perpetrated by ethnonationalist Chechens and Tamils. None of these MCT
attacks used nuclear, biological, or chemical agentsFbut we can speculate that, if
WMD had been available to these groups, they probably would have used them. So
it is reasonable to assess the risks that some kinds of minorities might seek and use
such weapons in the future.
My point of departure is a four-variable framework I have used to assess the
likelihood that politically mobilized communal groups will engage in disruptive
political action (Gurr 2000: ch. 3). The framework is adapted here to suggest the
circumstances in which such groups are at risk of using WMD. Four general var-
iables shape the potential for group political action: (1) the salience of ethnocultural
identity for members and leaders of the group, (2) the extent to which the group has
collective incentives for political action, (3) the extent of the group’s capacities for
collective action, and (4) the availability of opportunities in the group’s political en-
vironment that increase its chances of attaining group objectives through political
action. The specifics of the four variables shape leaders’ choices concerning strat-
egies and tactics for political action and also determine the extent of the active
support that they are likely to receive from members of the identity group they
claim to represent. These group traits increase the likelihood that some of the
leaders and members may seek and accept the use of WMD.
Salience of Identity
The salience of the group’s identity comes into play in one essential way: some of
the group holds an exclusionary, Manichean worldview by which their opponents
are irremediably evil and can as well as should be opposed by all means available to
the group. Such worldviews are held by some ethnonationalists, for example, sup-
porters of the Spanish Basque ETA, Chechen rebels, and the Sri Lankan Tamil
Tigers; some Islamists such as the Sunni militants in Pakistan (whose beliefs justify
deadly attacks on Shi’i and Christians); and among India’s most extreme Hindu
nationalists. One can question how widely such worldviews are held by leaders or
their followers. Whether deeply and widely held or not, the promotion of such
exclusionary views by opinion leaders in a group is a necessary precondition for
strategic choices to seek and use WMD.
Collective Incentives
The choice of any political strategyFlethal or nonlethalFdepends on the shared
perception that the group has valid claims that are being ignored or denied by
others. Incentives may arise from resentment about losses suffered in the past, fear
of future losses, or hopes for relative gains. These are not merely ‘‘collective in-
terests,’’ as Charles Tilly would describe them, but those that have an intrinsic
affective component. Members of disadvantaged minorities seek redress not only
with self-interest in mind, but with passion, self-righteousness, and in solidarity with
their kindred. The greater their collective sense of loss, and the greater their
hoped-for gains, the stronger their motivations to support political action.
What incentives might justify a willingness to use WMD? Such a willingness follows
from the Manichean ideologies mentioned above. Key is the belief that justice (or
revenge) can only be attained by destroying or grievously harming one’s opponents.
Governments motivated by such beliefs are at risk of committing genocide and ethnic
cleansing; leaders of ideologically driven ethnocultural and religious identity groups
are disposed to use deadly terror against any targets associated with their enemies. In
sum, the most deadly combination is an exclusionary ideology harnessed to a deep
sense of grievance or injustice that needs to be remedied by attacks aimed at de-
stroying the ‘‘other.’’ The two traits, of course, tend to reinforce one another.
Capacities for Collective Action

Sustained political action requires some degree of cohesion and mobilization
among members of a communal group. But WMD are not likely to be deployed by
mass movements, rather they are more likely to be the choice of nuclei of activists
nested within larger political movements. Solidarity and absolute commitment to
‘‘the cause’’ are essential for planning and executing highly risky and deadly at-
tacks. Small and secret groups help reduce the risks of infiltration and detection.
Two key points need to be made here. First, people with the skills to create
clandestine organizations can function in almost any political environment. There-
fore, any movement based on any kind of identity group could in principle provide
the context for a terrorist cell using WMD. But such groups are most likely to be
found in weak and autocratic states as well as in societies with (sub)cultures with
precedents and justifications for violent conflict. Second, for such cells to persist
they need a support base of peopleFa larger identity groupFwhose members
accept their goals even if they reject terror strategies. So they need to play careful
THE FORUM 145
political and security games to ensure that they contain potential opposition from,
or defection by, their supporters.
Opportunities for Acquiring and Using WMD

Two kinds of opportunities are preconditions for any future use of WMD by com-
munal groups: (1) acquisition of usable weapons, and (2) availability of targets. Lack
of access to such weapons, and lack of technical skills to employ them, very likely
explain why no communally based militants have employed them to date. Potential
targets are too numerous to be secured against engineers of death who are de-
termined to use WMD.
So we end up focusing on the supply side of opportunities: the diligence and luck
of security agencies in keeping nuclear and deadly biological and chemical tech-
nologies out of the hands of militants who have the motivation and skills to use
them. The ‘‘skills’’ factor is an unknown. Many would-be terrorists have died when
mishandling explosive devices before reaching their targets. It is impossible to say
how often potential users of WMD have been thwarted, not by failure to obtain
radioactive or biological agents but by their own technical ineptitude. Nonetheless,
the first line of defense must be to keep WMD materials and technology out of the
hands of communal and other militants. Hardening security at potential targets is a
costly and ineffective alternative precisely because there are so many of them.
In Sum
This sketch has implications for domestic and international strategies for minimizing
the risks that communal militants will employ WMD. First, there are numerous and
demonstrably effective strategies for responding to communally based demands,
even those that have escalated into open rebellion. The strategies include symbolic
and substantive concessions and reforms that help address grievances, institutional
changes that improve opportunities for political participation by minority group
members and leaders, and negotiated power-sharing and autonomy agreements
(see Gurr 2000: chs. 5 and 6). Although these responses seldom satisfy all group
members, they do undercut the appeals and support base of militants. Those who
reject accommodation and continue to fight are more easily isolated and dealt with
as a security problem until they, too, either give up or accept a political buyout.
Second, scholars, analysts, and security personnel need to track closely the emer-
gence of communal ideologues preaching hatred and calling for destruction of group
enemies. One private organization, MEMRI (http://www.memri.org/), provides cur-
rent reports on militant Islamist writings and also on moderate Islamist rejoinders to
jihadists. Comparable doctrines can emerge in other contextsFextreme Hindu na-
tionalism was cited aboveFand should be monitored in a similar way.
Third, these ideologies need to be interpreted in their political context. Do the
ideologues have a resonant mass of potential supporters and recruits? And, if so,
what information strategies and policies can be devised to challenge them and
provide alternative courses of action?
Fourth, militant communal organizations need the full and close attention of
security agencies. This should include local and international policies that block
such organizations from acquiring WMD materials and technology; intelligence-
gathering on their plans and capabilities; and preventive actions that thwart or
decapitate their leadership. Such tactics have normative and political risks. Some
will offend civil libertarians and advocates of human rights. They may also help
motivate new generations of militants to seek revenge. There are two strategies for
reducingFnot eliminatingFthese risks. One is to focus security efforts narrowly
on the most dangerous of ideologically driven militant organizations and to lay out,
after the fact if necessary, the evidence justifying preventive action. The other,
referred to above, is to implement policies that open up alternative strategies and

opportunities for communal group members who might otherwise rally to the
militants’ support. It is particularly important to employ both these strategies si-
multaneously.
Is the Past Prologue?

Terrorists and WMD
MICHAEL STOHL
Department of Communication, University of California, Santa Barbara
In the years immediately before and certainly after September 11, many scholarly
and policy analyses have focused on the causes and consequences of the ‘‘new
terrorism.’’ These analyses have suggested that the new terrorism is caused by the
emergence of ‘‘religious’’ and ‘‘millearian’’ terrorists in contrast to the ‘‘political’’
terrorists who dominated the ‘‘old terrorism’’ (see, for example, Lesser et al. 1999;
Morgan 2004) and that the consequence is greater lethality. Many have argued that
these new terrorists, unlike the old, are increasingly ‘‘stateless,’’ thus removing
restraints imposed by their territorially defined supporters. Much of the debate
centers on conflicting evaluations of the continuing relevance of Brian Jenkins’s
(1975:15) observation that ‘‘terrorists want a lot of people watching, not a lot of
people dead.’’ Compounding the problem, some suggest that there has been a
desensitization of the audience such that greater lethality is required to obtain not
only coverage, but the fear, and thus impact, that these new terrorists are seeking
(see, for example, Center for Counterproliferation Research 2002:6).3
There is no doubt that many of these new groups do not talk of their use of
terrorism in the same ways that the ‘‘old’’ terrorists did. Some explicitly call for not
only the defeat of the enemy, but their annihilation. And beyond the events of
September 11, there have been a number of additional mass casualty events. How-
ever, despite the escalation of the rhetoric (and the increasing silence on particular
events), thus far the trend line does not indicate a consistent escalation in death and
devastation around the world.
An expected utility approach provides useful insights into the process of under-
standing why oppositional organizations might choose terrorism as a tactic or
strategy and which groups are more likely to seek mass casualties as opposed to
using their violence with relatively more economy. Raymond Duvall and Michael
Stohl (1983) have argued that an expected utility model is useful for understanding
a government’s choice of terrorism as a tactic or strategy in domestic affairs, and
Stohl (1986) has advanced its usefulness in examining state behaviors in the in-
ternational realm as well. Such an approach calculates the benefit thought possible
from the desired outcome, the believed probability with which the action will bring
about the desired state of affairs, and the probable cost of engaging in the action.
Two kinds of costsFresponse costs and production costsFcan be distinguished.
Response costs are those that are imposed by the target group or sympathetic or
offended bystanders. The bystanders can include domestic and foreign audiences,
and the target audience can be wider than the attacking party may have intended
when choosing the victims and the actions. Production costs are the costs of taking
3
Chris Dishman (2001:305) cites the gap between the conclusions of the Gilmore commission, which notes that
fewer than 100 of the more than 9,000 terrorist events transpiring between 1968 and 1999 showed any indication of
terrorists seeking to use chemical and biological weapons (CBW) and those of the National Commission on Ter-
rorism, which projected a growing trend in lethality and interest in using CBW.
THE FORUM 147
the action regardless of the reactions of others. In addition to economic and

organizational costsFpaying the participants, acquiring weapons, and the like
Fthere is the psychological cost of behaving in a manner that most individuals
would, under normal conditions, characterize as unacceptable.
Gurr (1986:62–67) identifies three sets of conditions that affect the decision-
making calculus of the potential terrorist actor within this expected utility approach
(see also his contribution to this Forum). Situational conditions include the political
traits of the challengers (the status and strategies of the opposition) and the ter-
rorists’ own political resources for countering these challenges (organizational
strength, support, and public acquiescence). Structural conditions are those that
define organizational relations with one’s opponents and supporters and determine
or constrain response options. Dispositional variables are conditions that can be
expected to influence how organizations regard the acceptability of strategies of
violence and terrorism. Norms supporting the use of violence are shaped by direct
or mediated experience with violent means of power and are potentially inhibited
by values held by supporters of the cause.
Stohl and Stohl (2005) extend the ideas found in Gurr and identify ‘‘Eight R’s’’
for understanding global organizing. They can be applied to terrorist behaviors
and organizing to identify the key characteristics that should be considered in
understanding not only the choices of action that terrorists may take, but also what
their potential capabilities and impacts might be. The eight R’s include: (1) Rela-
tionshipsFWhat is the organization’s network? (2) RulesFHow do systemic
structures affect the organization, its network, and its opportunities? (3) Resourc-
esFWhat are the organization’s resources, and who are its potential opponents?
(4) RecordFWhat is the history of the organization and the history of the region in
which it operates? How do these affect the organization’s choices? (5) Re-
gionFWhere is the organization’s zone of operations, and who are its referents?
(6) ReadingsFHow does the organization perceive and interpret its and its oppo-
nents’ ‘‘reality,’’ ‘‘symbols,’’ and ‘‘routines’’? (7) RationalesFWhat provides meaning
and understanding for the organization? (8) ResponsibilityFHow does the organ-
ization justify its actions to itself and to potential supporters and others?
Let us stipulate for the moment that there are terrorists and terrorist organi-
zations that would like to acquire and potentially employ WMDs, and that they
could. We also need to determine if these groups have the organizational capacity to
create and deploy the weapons, to gain access to them (through theft, purchase, or
the largess of a state or other group), and to attack installations and cause damage
from the attack itself (for example, destruction of a nuclear power plant). In short,
do they have the resource capabilities to clear the technical barriers? What types of
groups in which contexts are these likely to be?
As indicated earlier, religious-based terrorist organizations are often cited as the
archetypal ‘‘new’’ terrorists. But analysis of simply ‘‘religious’’ terrorists leads to
mixed results. On the one hand, we have good reason to suspect that certain
characteristics of religious-based groups suggest a propensity for mass casualties.
Michael Barkun (2001) argues that ‘‘there do, however, appear to be some features
associated with the potential for violence. One is the existence of a belief that the
faithful are trapped and must act now or be destroyed. Individuals in such a sit-
uation may feel that they have nothing to lose by resorting to violence. They may
feel physically trapped, as in a barricade situation, but they may also feel trapped by
time if they feel history is literally coming to an end’’ (see also Stern 2004). On the
other hand, Ranstorp (1996:59), surveying the actual behavior of such groups,
observes that ‘‘in comparison to their secular counterparts, the religious terrorists
have not been particularly inventive when it comes to using new types of weaponry
in their arsenals, instead relying on the traditional bombs and bullets.’’
Since September 11, obviously concerns with al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden
have replaced concerns with Aum Shinrikyo in Japan and Christian Identity groups
within the United States regarding which terrorist organizations are likely to use
WMD. But al-Qaeda itself demonstrates why we have many more questions than
answers with respect to terrorists and WMDs. In lieu of a conclusion, I pose a set of
questions, drawn from the eight R’s above, which suggest that the R’s related to
capability, motivation, and resources, along with the expected utility of potential
strategies, are central to our evaluation of the WMD threat posed by terrorists old
and new.
(1) In the short and long term, does al-Qaeda seek the destruction of the West?
Or does it seek the destruction of the Israeli state and US (and Western)
support for Israel and the apostate regimes of the Muslim world (Rationales)?
(2) Is al-Qaeda interested only in destruction and violence or is it (or any of its
parts) interested in any political bargaining (Record, Readings, Rationales)?
(3) Which of the organizational members of the ‘‘al-Qaeda’’ network support its
global as opposed to their own local aims (Relationships, Responsibility)?
(4) What are the potential tensions and schisms in the global network (Record,
Responsibility)?
(5) Do local aims and local political struggles inhibit interest in acquisition and
use of WMD as opposed to other violent alternatives, and what impact does
this have on the organizational abilities of al-Qaeda and its ability to escape
detection and infiltration if it seeks WMD (Regions, Resources)?
(6) How do the actions of its opponents and the international ‘‘community’’ affect
policy choices (Rules, Region, Responsibility)?
The Psychology of WMD Terrorism
JERROLD M. POST
Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University
The concern for superterrorism using CBRN weapons has generally focused on
what terrorists can do and what our societal vulnerabilities are, with scant attention
to terrorist motivations, their incentives, and constraints. In considering which in
the spectrum of terrorist groups might be inclined to carry out acts of chemical,
biological, radiological, or nuclear (CBRN) terrorism, it is important to differentiate
the spectrum of such acts as well. Consider the following categorization: (a) large-
scale casualties with conventional weapons; (b) CBRN hoaxes; (c) a conventional
attack on a nuclear facility; (d) a limited-scale chemical or biological attack or ra-
diological dispersal; (e) a large-scale chemical or biological attack or radiological
dispersal; and (f ) CBRN strikes (superterrorism) in which thousands of casualties
may result.
The crucial psychological barrier is not the choice of weapon but rather the
willingness to cause mass casualtiesFa threshold that has already been crossed by
some groups. These groups are not attempting to influence the West but to take
revenge against the West.
Besides the motivation or the willingness to inflict mass casualties by any means,
terrorists must possess the technical and financial capabilities to obtain the materials
and skills to weaponize such materials and carry out an attack. Chemical and bi-
ological weapons may pose a risk to the terrorists themselves and caution might
deter them from using such weapons. The technical hurdles and lack of ‘‘know-
how’’ can prevent even a willing terrorist from staging a mass casualty terrorist act.
Given the skills and hazards in working with radiological and nuclear materials
THE FORUM 149
in particular, some groups might question the necessity to move into this techno-
logically difficult and dangerous area when they could inflict mass casualties and
mass terror by using conventional weapons, as was vividly demonstrated in the
attacks of September 11. Sham attacks or hoaxes lack the psychological constraints
of radiological and nuclear attacks but, at the same time, such threats can cause
devastating psychological effects, even if there is no release of ionizing radiation or
large-scale firestorms or explosive yields.
In evaluating the risk that terrorist groups will use CBRN weapons, it is helpful
to consider the distinction between random and discriminate violent acts. Writing
in the Report of the Task Force on Disorders and Terrorism more than twenty years ago,
R. W. Mengel (1977) distinguished four different means by which terrorists attempt
to achieve their goals. He observed that there is a distinct difference between dis-
criminate and random target selection. Whereas discriminate target selection can be
used in support of bargaining or to make a political statement, random targeting is
associated with the motivation to cause social paralysisFor inflict mass casualties. In
evaluating the risk that terrorist groups may use chemical or biological weapons, it
is useful to employ this distinction in differentiating among terrorist groups. For
each of the terrorist group types to be described here, there are constraints against
the use of CBRN weapons and mass casualty terrorism.
Social-Revolutionary Terrorists. Insofar as these groups are seeking to influence
their societies, they are significantly constrained from indiscriminate acts that cause
significant casualties among their own countrymen or cause negative reactions in
domestic and international audiences. But discriminate acts against government or
symbolic capitalist targets can be rationalized by these groups.
Nationalist-Separatist Terrorists. These groups are significantly constrained
from performing acts that indiscriminately involve mass casualties and will nega-
tively affect the group’s reputation with their constituents and their international
audience. But discriminate acts against their adversary, in areas where their con-
stituents are not present, can be rationalized. Just as the rash of suicide bombings in
Tel Aviv and other predominantly Jewish cities in Israel was implemented by ab-
solutist Palestinian groups, some of which were radical Islamists, the prospect of
tactical chemical or biological weapons in such areas is also quite conceivable. More-
over, such discriminate attacks could be implemented in revenge against US targets.
But secular Palestinian terrorists launching a chemical or biological weapons attack
in Jerusalem that might affect their own constituents is considered highly unlikely.
Radical Religious Fundamentalist Terrorists. These organizations are hierar-
chical in structure. The radical cleric provides interpretation of the religious text
justifying violence, which is uncritically accepted by his ‘‘true believer’’ followers;
there is no ambivalence concerning use of violence that is religiously commanded.
These groups are particularly dangerous because they are not constrained by
Western reaction; indeed, they are driven to expel secular modernizing influences
and achieve revenge against the West, focused especially upon the United States.
They have shown a willingness to perpetrate acts of mass casualty terrorism, as
exemplified by the bombings of Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, the 1993 attack on
the World Trade Center in the United States, the 1998 US embassy bombings in
Kenya and Tanzania, the 2000 attack on the USS Cole, and the 2001 attacks on the
World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Osama bin Laden, responsible for these
events, has actively discussed the use of weapons of mass destruction in public
interviews. Thus, in contrast to the social revolutionaries and the nationalist-sep-
aratist groups, the constraints against CBRN mass terrorism are not present. This
type of terrorist group is considered especially dangerous.
‘‘New Religions’’ Terrorism. The millenarian cult Aum Shinrikyo attempted to
use aerosolized biological agents against nine targets, two with anthrax and seven
with botulinum toxin. Although all these biological weapons attacks failed because
they made mistakes in production or dissemination of the biological agents, they
were more ‘‘successful’’ in their use of chemical weapons. Their chemical attack
killed twelve and injured more than 1,000 in April 1995 when they used sarin gas
on the Tokyo subway; their earlier sarin attack in Matsumoto killed seven and
injured another 500 persons. This group was also experimenting with Q Fever, was
shopping for Ebola virus in East Africa, and had bought nuclear weapons com-
ponents from individuals in the former Soviet Union. They also owned a uranium
mine in Australia and obviously had future nuclear weapons aspirations. Soko
Asahara, the guru of Aum Shinrikyo, hoped to precipitate the final struggle from
which he and his followers would be resurrected.
Right-Wing Terrorism. Because right-wing terrorists generally dehumanize their
enemies, attacks on target groups, such as black people, or, in Europe, enclaves of
foreign workers, are justified by their ideology. Because of their delegitimization
and dehumanization of the government, government facilities are targeted by such
groups, including attacks on the seat of the federal government as represented in
The Turner Diaries. Many of the case studies of chemical-biological terrorism devel-
oped by the Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute for
International Studies (see, for example, Tucker 2000) were acts committed by in-
dividuals with a right-wing ideology who did not belong to a formal group or
organization per se. Individuals in this category are a significant threat for low-level
chemical and biological attacks, but because of resource limitations, probably do not
represent a threat for using mass casualty chemical or biological terrorism. The role
of the Internet in propagating the ideology of right-wing extremist hatred is
of concern because an isolated individual consumed by hatred can find common
cause in right-wing web sites, feel he or she is not alone, and be moved along the
pathway from thought to actionFresponding to the extremist ideology of the vir-
tual community.
Single-Issue Terrorists. To date, the singe-issue terrorists such as anti-abortion
terrorists, eco-terrorists, and animal rights radicals have not used mass casualty
weapons to make their points, probably because these are indiscriminate weapons
that target too wide a spectrum of victims, not just those to whom they object most
strenuously. It is possible that such terrorists would not want to inflict extreme
levels of damage because it would adversely affect public acceptance of their agen-
das. Moreover, some might be deterred by the amount of government pursuit that
such actions could catalyze.
Various Groups, Various Motivations. This differentiated motivational spectrum
is represented in Table 1. It should be emphasized that a checkmark does not
indicate that these groups are strongly motivated to carry out CBRN terrorism
attacks, but that they are less constrained from doing so. A few points should be
TABLE 1. Differentiating Motivations and Constraints for WMD Terrorism by Group Type
Large-scale CBRN Limited Large-scale Superterrorism/

Group Type Conventional Hoax Scale CBR CBR Catastrophic CBRN
pn p pn
Social-Revolutionary X X
pn p pn
Nationalist-Separatist X X
p p pn pn pn
Religious-Fundamentalist
p p p p p
New Religious Extremists
(closed cults)
p p p
Right-Wing X X
p
Single-Issue Extremists X X X X
pn
Designates reduced constraints against discriminate WMD terrorism.
X Designates major constraints against WMD terrorism.
p
Designates reduced constraints against WMD terrorism.
CBR Chemical, Biological, and Radiological.
CBRN Chemical, Biological, Radiological, or Nuclear.
THE FORUM 151
kept in mind. The horrors of September 11 demonstrate that conventional attacks

may be sufficient to cause mass destruction. In addition, incarcerated radical Is-
lamist terrorists interviewed under the auspices of the Smith Richardson Founda-
tion, although open to considering weapons of mass destruction, for the most part
said: ‘‘Just give me a good Kalishnikov,’’ and several indicated that the Koran
prohibited the use of poisons (see Post, Sprinzak, and Denny 2003).
Forecasting Terrorists’ Likelihood to Embark on

‘‘Conventional’’ to CBRN Warfare
JOSHUA SINAI
Department of Homeland Security
Terrorists primarily seek to cause physical and economic damage to their more
powerful adversaries in order to extract political or other demands. However,
terrorism is also a form of psychological warfare in which a localized incident is
intended to spread fear and anxiety throughout the wider society. These factors
contribute to the decision making by terrorists regarding the calibration of the
weapons and devices they will use in their warfare. The strategic calculations that
terrorist groups employ in choosing a relatively low impact form of ‘‘conventional’’
warfare versus the greater lethality represented by the use of chemical, biological,
radiological, and nuclear (CBRN) weapons and devices are the crucial unknowns
in counterterrorism analysis. The methodological framework presented here is
intended to provide a means to ascertain some of the factors in a group’s decision
making that are likely to propel it to embark on a spectrum of warfare ranging from
conventional low impact (CLI) to conventional high impact (CHI) to CBRN to
advance their strategic objectives.
An important underlying characteristic in determining a terrorist group’s war-
fare proclivity is whether its operations exhibit classical, modern, or postmodern
terrorism.4 In classical terrorism, a group’s warfare is direct and focuses on specific
targets with the intention of inflicting few casualties and relatively little damage on
rather nonsignificant facilities. Destruction is low impact and involves the use of
conventional weapons. The warfare is aimed at facilitating the achievement of the
group’s primarily political objectives. Modern terrorism uses a more indirect
approach in which targeting is more indiscriminate and casualties and physical
destructiveness are far greater than heretofore, reaching hundreds of fatalities. Yet,
even here, conventional weapons are used to inflict mass casualties. In postmodern
terrorism, however, terrorist groups aim to transform the reality of the conflict
with their adversary by the very act of terrorism, such as using weapons of
mass destruction, represented by CBRN, to physically destroy as much of their
adversary as possible and, thus, remove the source of the conflict itself. As a re-
sult, determining whether a groupFthrough its ideology, strategy, and modus
operandiFfits into the categories of classical, modern, or postmodern terrorism
can assist in ascertaining its likely warfare proclivity, whether conventional low
impact, conventional high impact, or CBRN (or a mix of the three).
Certain distinct accelerators and triggers provide the contextual factors or
‘‘circumstances’’ to propel a group to use CBRN. Within the context of CBRN,
4
This categorization was developed by Boaz Ganor, Executive Director of the International Policy Institute for
Counterterrorism (ICT), Herzlia, Israel.
accelerators serve as the technical enablers that provide a group with the opportunity
to acquire CBRN weapons and devices. Examples of accelerators would include
success in recruiting specialists with CBRN-related skills and acquiring CBRN
agents, weapons, devices in foreign black or grey markets. Specific types of triggers,
such as precipitous events, hasten the decision by a group to embark on CBRN
warfare. Examples of triggers might include: a heightened sense of imminent
threat; proclamation by a group advocating a millenarian, apocalyptic, or messianic
ideology that the millennia or messiah have arrived; excessive government
retaliation or crackdown causing a group to become desperate to maintain its
independence with the resort to CBRN warfare the only remaining alternative in its
view.
The confluence of certain ideological or religious motivations as well as strategic
objectives often generate the ‘‘purposes’’ driving a group to resort to CBRN war-
fare as opposed to ‘‘conventional’’ warfare, particularly when the use of ‘‘uncon-
ventional’’ weapons might produce a massive retaliation by the targeted adversary
that would eliminate the perpetrator and its allies and damage its constituents’
cause and well-being. The following purposes are likely to drive a group to embark
on CBRN warfare: a willingness to take high risks in its warfare; an interest in
completely destroying a particular political system and inflicting catastrophic
casualties; and an amorphous constituency that is willing to support CBRN warfare.
In assessing a group’s likely proclivity to embark on CBRN warfare, certain
internal and external hurdles need to be overcome not only to develop an operational
CBRN terrorist capability but a willingness to use it. As an example of internal
hurdles, groups might believe that it would be disadvantageous to use CBRN
warfare because (1) they might lack control over the effects of these agents after
their release; (2) in the case of biological, chemical, and radiological weapons the
time delayed effects are not instantaneous or simultaneous, thus preventing
immediate media coverage; and (3) they or their supporting constituency might
feel a moral revulsion about using such weapons, which could lead to their demise
(what happened to Aum Shinrikyo after the 1995 sarin gas attack in Tokyo). Among
the external factors preventing a group from embarking on CBRN warfare,
consider the following: (1) counterterrorism and intelligence agencies may succeed
in influencing some of their operatives to defect, leading to exposure of a group’s
CBRN program; (2) a group’s attempts to recruit foreign technical and warfare
specialists may fail or may be reported to intelligence and law enforcement
authorities; (3) as a result of the clandestine nature of their operations and constant
surveillance of their activities by government agents, a group may delay or give up
on CBRN warfare; (4) difficulties in acquiring CBRN devices from foreign
suppliers; (5) the refusal by a potential state sponsor to cooperate with their
operation; (6) monitoring of a group’s activities leading to its penetration or
deterrence by foreign counterterrorist and intelligence agencies; or, as occurred to
Aum Shinrikyo, (7) bad relations with local residents who inform on the group’s
activities to the authorities.
As this discussion suggests, to forecast a terrorist group’s likely resort to CBRN
warfare, it is necessary to acquire certain qualitative and quantitative data about
several components of terrorist behavior and activities. One final piece of
qualitative data that is essential to acquire concerns a group’s modus operandiFits
particular way or manner of operating, generally the unvarying, routine, or
habitual procedures the group uses to achieve particular objectives. In the case of
terrorism, groups are inclined to use a blend of old and new tactics to achieve their
objectives. One could even argue that for terrorists the conventional definition of
modus operandi does not apply because they attempt to learn lessons from
theirFand others’Fprevious terrorist campaigns in order not to repeat them.
Thus, the past may not always be the best predictor for future terrorist actions. As a
result, one must always anticipate new and innovative tactics and weaponry by a
THE FORUM 153
terrorist adversary to avoid getting blindsided. Nevertheless, counterterrorism

planners still need to examine a group’s tactics in previous attacks to learn its
modus operandi, while at the same time anticipating any new procedures it may
decide to use. As in the past, assassinations, hijackings, and bombings will probably
remain staples in the arsenal of terrorist tactics and procedures, although
knowledge of, and access to, the technologies of WMD are enabling terrorist
groups to continually revise and update their methods of operation to a greater
extent than ever before.
Holy Terror and Mass Killings?

Reexamining the Motivations and Methods
of Mass Casualty Terrorists
VICTOR ASAL
Rockefeller College of Public Affairs and Policy,
State University of New York at Albany
AND
ANDREW BLUM
Center for International Development and Conflict Management,
The starting point of this contribution to the Forum is the oft-cited distinction
between ‘‘old terrorism’’ and ‘‘new terrorism’’ alluded to in earlier contributions.
Practitioners of the old or traditional terrorismFETA in the Basque region of
Spain and the IRA in Northern Ireland are often given as examplesFare involved
in a localized conflict, normally with a state, over fundamental political questions. It
is argued that groups such as this calibrate the level of violence carefully so as not to
alienate their supporters or remove the possibility that they will eventually be
offered a place at the negotiating table. Practitioners of the ‘‘new terrorism,’’ in
contrast, are said to be fighting a global, or even cosmic, battle against forces of evil,
normally defined in religious or apocalyptic terms. The religious or pseudo-
religious motivations of these groups mean they are less constrained by political
concerns, including the need to maintain a constituency. They are therefore more
willing to inflict large numbers of casualties. Al-Qaeda and the attacks of September
11 epitomize the new terrorism.
What emerges from the literature that relies on this dichotomy is a tightly linked
causal story, namely that there has been an emergence of transnational, religiously
motivated terrorist groups with expansive, almost apocalyptic, goals that are willing
to engage in massively destructive attacks. Because of the nature of their
motivations, goals, and organizational structure, it is possible that such groups
will seek to acquire and use WMD. In order to critique this causal story, we have
compiled data on thirty-four mass casualty terror (MCT) events from 1970 to
2003.5 MCT events are defined as events in which 100 or more people have been
killed on one day by the same nonstate actor attacking a primarily civilian target.
A key component of the causal story is the religious motivation of the new
terrorists. We thus coded the MCT events for motivation, using the following
5
The data we use is primarily taken from the online source ‘‘Incidents of Mass Casualty Terrorism,’’ created by
Robert Johnston and available at http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/terrorism/wrjp394.html. The compiled data used
in this particular analysis is available from the authors upon request.
TABLE 1. Motivation for MCT Attacks, 1970–July 22, 2004
Motivation Frequency Percentage Fatalities Percentage
Leftist 1 2.94 100 1.12

Rightist 1 2.94 169 1.91
Religious 8 23.53 4,941 55.77
Ethnonationalism 11 32.35 1,677 18.93
Ethnonationalist/Religious 5 14.71 835 9.42
State Agent 3 8.82 556 6.28
Narco-terror or other Criminal Intent 3 8.82 369 4.17
Unclear 2 5.88 212 2.39
categories: rightist, leftist, religious, ethnonationalist, religious/ethnonationalist,

state agent, and narco-terrorism/other criminal intent. The data in Table 1 show
that a plurality of MCT attacks have been motivated by ethnonationalism and only
eight of thirty-four attacks have a solely religious motivation. Twice as many attacks,
sixteen, have been carried out by groups with an ethnonationalist or ethnonation-
alist/religious motivation as opposed to leftist, rightist, religious, or criminal
motivations.
If we look at fatalities, the link between religion and MCT looks more
compelling. However, an important caveat must be noted. The high percentage
of fatalities due to religiously motivated MCT is driven almost entirely by the events
of September 11. Moreover, September 11 is, at least for now, an outlier event in
terms of the number of fatalities, producing six times more than the second most
deadly attack.
Regarding trends, the data show that religiously motivated attacks have been
more common since 1994. Since 1994, there have been six MCT attacks that were
religiously motivated. In contrast, religion was generally lacking as a motivation for
MCT during the 1980s and early 1990s. Since 1994, there have been six attacks
with nonreligious motivations and four attacks in Iraq motivated by a mix of
nationalism and religion. We can obtain similar results by looking at the past five
years, in which we find four religiously motivated attacks, three attacks motivated
by ethnonationalism, and the four attacks in Iraq.
We conclude that the motivations for MCT are more complex than the
traditional/new terrorism dichotomy would lead one to believe. Clearly, both
religious motivations and ethnonationalist motivations are capable of spurring
groups to mass casualty attacks. The causal story described that links religious
motivations to MCT and therefore to WMD may be able to account for a certain
type of attack, but, according to our data, it cannot account for the majority of MCT
events. It is apparent that we must move beyond this dichotomy in order to gain a
more complete understanding of why terrorist organizations engage in MCT. As a
first step toward this more complete understanding, the extended paper on which
this discussion piece is based reviews the same MCT data to further explore the
nature of the MCT historical record. Specifically, it assesses the methods used in the
MCT, the number of groups involved, and the geography of MCT attacks.
The primary purpose of bringing these questions to the data is to provide a set of
parameters regarding the historical record for which future research must account.
Our own conclusions that follow, which are based on the data, are preliminary and
are meant to be issues for future research.
(1) The methods used in MCT attacks are almost invariably low-tech or involve
weaponizing existing societal resources (for example, airplanes). This finding
suggests that many MCT groups have yet to devote substantial resources to
THE FORUM 155
acquiring their weapons systems. It also casts doubt on the argument that
certain terrorist groups are concerned with the symbolic importance of the
weapons they use. To date at least, groups engaging in MCT attacks have
achieved this symbolic impact through their choice of targets, not their choice
of weapons.
(2) A very small number of groups engage in MCT attacks regularly; only three
groups have initiated more than one MCT attack. This finding indicates that
group-level factors can only partially explain when groups will use MCT. At
best, these factors can explain what groups are willing to engage in MCT.
Given the fact that even these groups use the strategy very rarely, it is
necessary to also examine the contextual factors that give rise to particular
MCT attacks. A similarly small number of countries have been the target of
MCT attacks. Including Iraq, only five countries have suffered MCT attacks
(Iraq, India, Russia, Sri Lanka, and the United States). In four of these
countries, there are serious conflicts with a high number of civilian casualties.
The fifth, the United States, is a superpower, which is consistent with the
argument that terrorism is the weapon of the weak against the strong.
(3) The data show that a clear plurality of MCT events has been perpetrated by
terrorists from the Islamic world targeting the non-Islamic world. Even
though these attacks have run the gamut of religious and ethnonationalist
motivations, this plurality nonetheless raises interesting questions about the
rationales for justifying mass terror that groups may be finding in Islam and
the Islamic world’s interaction with the non-Islamic world. (For further
discussion of rationales and the related concept of ‘‘readings’’ of the
opposition, see Stohl’s contribution earlier in this Forum.)
These tentative conclusions suggest two more general insights that can be
derived from our analysis. First, the willingness of traditional terrorist groups to
engage in MCT indicates that they may be more likely to acquire and use WMD
than has been assumed by the majority of analysts. Second, the analysis of MCT
illustrates the destructive potential of conventional means of attack. It is crucial,
therefore, to understand the motivations that lead to MCT in general as opposed to
WMD terrorism specifically.
The Interplay between Terrorism, Nonstate Actors,

and Weapons of Mass Destruction:
An Exploration of the Pinkerton Database
GARY LAFREE, LAURA DUGAN, and DERRICK FRANKE

Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice, University of Maryland
During 2003–2004 a research group led by Gary LaFree and Laura Dugan at
the University of Maryland coded and computerized a database originally collected
by the Pinkerton Corporation’s Global Intelligence Services (PGIS) comprising
more than 69,000 terrorist events recorded for the entire world from 1970 to 1997.
For nearly thirty years, PGIS trained researchers to record all terrorism incidents
they could identify from wire services, US and foreign government reporting
sources, foreign and domestic newspapers, information provided by PGIS offices
around the world, and data furnished by PGIS clients. The data retrieval protocol
remained substantially consistent during the entire twenty-eight years of data
collection.
Long Range Missile

Chemical
Sophisticated Explosive
n=27 (66%)
Nuclear
n=11 (27%)
n=2 (5%)
n=1 (2%)
FIG. 1. Weapons of Mass Destruction (PGIS Database 1970–1997)
The PGIS database is more than seven times larger than any other existing open
source terrorism incident database. There are three main reasons for this. First,
unlike most other databases on terrorism, the PGIS data include religious, eco-
nomic, and social acts of terrorism as well as political acts. Second, because the
Pinkerton data were collected by a private business rather than a government
entity, the data collectors were under no pressure to exclude some terrorist acts
because of political considerations. Third, and most important, unlike any other
open source database, the PGIS data include both instances of domestic and in-
ternational terrorism.
This contribution to the Forum briefly summarizes a preliminary examination of
the data from the perspective of issues pertinent to nonstate actors, terrorism, and
WMD. In this exercise, we use the PGIS data to explore several issues related to
past terrorist events and the ability and willingness of nonstate actors to use WMD.
Weapons of Mass Destruction
In light of evolving definitions of WMD, we examine not only nuclear, biological,
and chemical weapons but also sophisticated explosives and long-range missiles
that are intended to kill a large number of people and to create mass disruption.
Whether these weapons truly represent WMD is a point of contention. However,
because conference participants agreed to abandon our seemingly irreconcilable
definitional argument concerning WMD and focus instead on a broader concept of
mass impact terrorism (MIT), we believe that our inclusive definition of WMD
more accurately reflects this notion of mass impact terrorism.
Figure 1 shows that despite our inclusive definition, incidents involving these
weapons remain a rare occurrence. In fact, only forty-one of the 69,000 cases in our
database used such weapons.6 Most involved long-range missiles capable of car-
rying warheads; chemical attacks typically included the use of mercury, acid, na-
palm, cyanide (found in water supplies), and chemical bombs, often intended to
disrupt the targeted nation’s economy.
Means of Acquiring and Using WMD

We employ two methods for discovering which terrorist groups are more likely to
obtain and use WMD. First, it follows logically that groups that have used these
weapons in the past both (a) have the ability to acquire them and (b) will be more
likely to use them in the future. Second, we believe that groups that have attacked
6
Among the forty-one incidents involving WMD, eight were unsuccessful, indicating thwarted attempts where
the actors, weapons, or plot were discovered before the event could take place. Fatalities are not necessary for an
event to be labeled successful.
THE FORUM 157
targets in countries away from their base of operations are also more likely to use
WMD. The database identified seventeen groups that have used WMD in the past;
among these, eleven, including three Palestinian groups, the Irish Republican Ar-
my (IRA), Dev Sol, Hizballah, and Sendero Luminoso, have struck in at least six
countries other than their own.
Desire to Use WMD

Not all terrorist groups with the capability to inflict mass destruction have the desire
to do so.7 For this reason, we also identify the groups that (a) have killed a large
number of people in previous attacks8 and (b) tend to achieve maximum lethality
per incident. On the first front, only nine of the seventeen groups that have used
WMD have also killed at least fifty people in one or more of their attacks. According
to the database, the Peruvian group, Sendero Luminoso, has exceeded this thresh-
old twenty-one times, more than tripling the mass killing incidence of any other
WMD group. Further, eighty-two groups that have not used WMD have committed
attacks killing at least fifty-four people; however, only seven have done so five or
more times.9 The Nicaraguan Democratic Force and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil
top this list, having done so on twenty-seven and twenty-six occasions, respectively.
Compared to the groups that have used WMD, the non-WMD groups display
higher frequencies and incidences of mass killing attacks.
We also examined the database for groups that tended to kill a high average
number of people per incident. Among the groups that have used WMD, the most
lethal appear to be the Tamil Tigers and UNITA, averaging approximately eight
deaths per incident. Sendero Luminoso, which committed the most total incidents
(3,374) and inflicted the largest number of fatalities (over 11,000) from 1970–1997,
averaged just over three deaths per incident. Among non-WMD groups, four av-
eraged over thirteen fatalities per attack, including the Nicaraguan Democratic
Force, Mozambican National Resistance, Democratic Revolutionary Alliance, and
the Hutus (whose average of 42.8 mostly reflects an outlying incident that killed
over 1,000). Further analyses will control for number of incidents as well as outliers.
Nonetheless, there appears to be wide variation in the mean number killed among
both WMD groups (from 0 to 8) and non-WMD groups (from 0 to 43).
In Sum
The purpose of this analysis was to provide an exploratory look at a recently
computerized database, examining the interplay between nonstate actors, terror-
ism, and WMD. In this brief overview, we have concentrated on the following risk
factors: (1) previous use of WMD, (2) a history of willingness to launch attacks
outside of the country of origin, (3) willingness to kill large numbers of people, and
(4) attempts to achieve maximum lethality. Along the way, we have identified certain
groups that fit these criteria and thus may be candidates for mass impact terrorism
in the future. In short, although making no statistically formulated arguments, the
data discussed here nonetheless serve as a point of departure for a better under-
standing of a host of issues of concern in both the academic and policy fields.
7
For example, the IRA often warns their intended target before each attack to allow time for civilians to evacuate
the area.
8
We use the 99th percentile of all incidents involving at least one death as the criterion for having killed ‘‘many
people’’ in the past. For groups that have used WMD, the qualification is fifty deaths; for all other groups, it is fifty-
four.
9
In fact, 77 percent of non-WMD groups have committed mass fatality attacks only once. Also, thirty-nine
terrorist attacks (16 percent) in this category were committed by groups not identified in our database.
Avenue for Future Research

An interesting observation deserving of further examination regards groups that
inflict mass casualties only a few times or, more interestingly, only once. For ex-
ample, of the nine groups that have both used WMD and killed at least fifty persons
in an incident, only four have inflicted mass casualties more than once. Similarly, of
the eighty-two non-WMD groups that have killed at least fifty-four, fewer than half
(n ¼ 40) have done so more than ten times. In fact, 23 percent (n ¼ 19) of these
groups committed an incident of mass killing only once. With the ability to inflict
this level of impact, it becomes important to discover the reasons why some groups
suddenly desist.
Transnational Organized Crime, Terrorism, and WMD
BARTOSZ H. STANISLAWSKI
Moynihan Institute of Global Affairs,
Maxwell School, Syracuse University
Traditional approaches treat terrorism separately from organized crime for at least
two reasons. First, considering terrorism as a form of crime is controversial, and
opinions are divided both theoretically and in the policymaking world. Second,
terrorists and criminals are driven by different motivations: political, ideological,
religious, and ethnic ‘‘causes’’ versus money, respectively. Based on this difference,
many find it fairly easy to distinguish between these two phenomena.
Not all so-called terrorists, however, operate on the basis of political, ideological,
religious, or ethnic goals. Not anymore, anyway. The Revolutionary Armed Forces
of Colombia (FARC), for example, used to be a politically motivated guerrilla or-
ganization. Presently it profits from drug trafficking; the organization benefits
monetarily from this enterprise and is unlikely to give such activity up easily. Its
members have always acted criminally in order to support themselves financially;
ransom-motivated hostage-taking was and still is a significant part of the FARC
funding. But they seem to have crossed a line. The political rebels have become
pirates, while still pretending to be rebels to recruit new members, maintain a
‘‘legitimate’’ public image, justify, many would argue, some of their own acts to
themselves.
Terrorist organizations often maintain groups composed of organized criminals that
help the ‘‘political’’ wings function. Hizballah, Hamas, and al-Qaeda all operate so-
phisticated fund-raising networks in the Middle East, Asia, Europe, North America,
and South America. These fund-raising operations are often based on voluntary
contributions for the ‘‘cause,’’ but they also frequently involve extortion, blackmail,
and other criminal activities. Hizballah, for instance, has for a long time maintained
a significant presence within the Arab community in the tri-border area in South
America. In this place, where the borders of Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay
come together, judicial, law-enforcement, and military authorities have been unable,
and at times corruptly unwilling, to control the traffic in illicit products crossing
the three borders. Although the situation in this region has been shifting over the
years as a result of outside pressures, mainly from the United States, the focus on this
criminal enclave or ‘‘black spot’’ (Stanislawski 2004) is still not strong enough to curtail
the area’s attractiveness to ‘‘global bads.’’ Criminals trade there with terrorists who are
able to receive whatever they might need: materials, weapons, and information.
This tri-border area is not an exception; there are many such criminal enclaves
(Sullivan and Bunker 2003) or ‘‘black spots’’ across the globe, hiding illicit activities.
THE FORUM 159
Among them is the area around Peshawar, a city in northern Pakistan, near the
border with Afghanistan. The Federally Administered Tribal Areas located near this
city are another case of a state within a state. The Pakistani government exercises
minimal, if any, control over these areas for historical, cultural, and geographical
reasons. It is believed that Taliban and al-Qaeda remnants have found refuge in
this area.
In addition to the links between terrorist and criminal organizations, major threats
are posed by the links that criminals have developed with politicians, police, and the
military. Such links exist in many, if not most, less-developed and transitional so-
cieties, slowing down the states’ development and endangering their democratic
progress. This nexus between criminals and power brokers ‘‘exists in many Soviet
successor states, Nigeria, Southern China, Japan, Colombia, Mexico, and Italy’’
(Shelley 1999:13). In such relationships, it is possible for corrupt high-ranking mil-
itary officers to provide weapons or the elements to produce chemical, biological,
radiological, or nuclear weapons to transnational criminal organizations that, in turn,
resell them to terrorist groups. The current relationship between Russia’s transna-
tional criminal enterprises and its underpaid military personnel is particularly prob-
lematic. Consider, for example, the discovery of a partially constructed Russian
submarine by the Colombian police in 2000 in a warehouse in Bogotá (BBC News
2000). The submarine was intended as a means of transporting up to ten metric tons
of illicit drugs at a time (US House of Representatives 2000). Although no links with
terrorist organizations have been proven, this incident demonstrates the possibility
for a terrorist organization to acquire such a weapons platform to use in an attack.
Other reports signaling criminal penetration of the Russian armed forces include the
attempted theft of 4.5 kilograms of highly enriched uranium from the naval shipyard
in Murmansk, Russia, and General Alexander Lebed’s letter to the US Congress in
1997 warning about missing Russian suitcase-size nuclear bombs.
Russia is a logical source of weapons and weapons materials for terrorists. Its
border control remains unsatisfactory, and corruption levels are high. These con-
ditions make it possible for transnational terrorist and rebel groups in South Asia,
particularly those like al-Qaeda that are intent on achieving high levels of destruc-
tion and martyrdom, to consider seeking such weapons. However, a cost–benefit
analysis might lead terrorist organizations to decide that there is greater payoff in
talking about having this capability or acting as if one did rather than going about
actually acquiring it. What seems more likely, or even very likely, is the creation of a
‘‘dirty bomb,’’ putting components that are more accessible and less expensive in
combination with an improvised explosive device and, thus, increasing both the
terror effect and the ‘‘theater’’ surrounding an incident. Here is where the criminal
enclaves or black spots mentioned earlier become particularly useful; they provide
relatively protected places where such devices can be developed and where people
with the skills needed already reside.
It is important to recall that as both transnational criminal and terrorist organ-
izations have evolved into networks, they have become more subtle in their use of
violence. There is evidence that engaging in psychological disruption, information
operations, and perception management have grown in importance (Arquilla and
Ronfeldt 1996, 1997). Networks provide flexibility, adaptability, deniability, mul-
tidimensionality, and the capacity to do things at a distance, often through surro-
gates. Although governments still typically perceive that the world is organized
around international borders, transnational criminal and terrorist entities are rare-
ly limited by such jurisdictional boundaries and use them to avoid the legal reach of
a particular country. Indeed, ‘‘squeezing the balloon’’ in hopes of eliminating these
organizations in one place often makes them pop up in another. Consider the US
government forcing Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda out of Sudan only to see them
relocate to Afghanistan. This phenomenon raises a key question: Does it take
a network to ‘‘fight’’ a network? Because governments tend to be organized
hierarchically and into bureaucracies with different functions and foci, cooperation
among agencies is made more difficult and sharing of information becomes harder.
With regard to the development of policy to deal with nonstate actors, terrorism,
and WMD, there is also an issue concerning how the problem is framed. The di-
lemma is exemplified in the differences regarding the war on terrorism between the
2004 US presidential candidates. Is the war on terrorism, as George Bush believes, a
war ‘‘between those states that would promote terrorism and those that would
exterminate it’’ (Bai 2004:45)? According to this perspective, it is primarily a military
problem and a problem between states. Those states that harbor terrorist groups
and organizations within their borders need to be forced to exercise control over
them. Or, is the war on terrorism, as John Kerry proposed, not really a war at all,
given that the enemy is not another state and, in many instances, is intent on
disrupting the functioning of states? In this view, the emphasis is placed more on law
enforcement than on the military and on international cooperation in attempts to
disrupt the flow of illicit drugs, weapons, money, and people. Have we ‘‘overrated
the military threat posed by al-Qaeda, paradoxically elevating what was essentially a
criminal enterprise . . . into the ideological successor to Hitler and Stalin’’ (Bai
2004:52)? Depending on the frame one chooses, tactics and strategies will differ.
Diasporas, Terrorism, and WMD
GABRIEL SHEFFER
Department of Political Science, Hebrew University
As part of their growing involvement in transstate and intrastate politics, in general,

and in the inseparably connected spheres of cultural, economic, and social conflicts, in
particular, ethnonational diasporas are deeply involved in trans-state conflicts, insur-
gencies, and terrorism. In fact, twenty-five ethnonational groups that are involved in
conflict or rebellion in either their homelands or countries of residence and that, in
addition to nonviolent tactics, use violence and terrorism are linked to ethnonational
and religious diasporas. Furthermore, out of the fifty most active terrorist organiza-
tions and groups, twenty-seven constitute either segments of ethnonational or religious
diasporas or are supported by such diasporas. Thus, for example, insurgents in Egypt,
India (in the Punjab and Kashmir), Indonesia (Aceh), Azerbaijan, Sri Lanka, Ireland,
Kosovo, Lebanon, Palestine, Israel, Pakistan, Algeria, Turkish Kurdistan, Iraqi Kurdis-
tan, Iran, Greece, the Philippines, Russia, and Ireland have received various kinds of
support from their respective migrant and diasporic communities.
Among the organizations using terrorism that have links to diasporic entities are
the Palestinian Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Fatah-Tanzim; the Lebanese Hizballah; the
Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ) and Islamic Group (IG); the Irish IRA; the Algerian
Armed Islamic Group (GIA); the Indian Barbar Khalsa International (BKI); the Sri
Lankan Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE); the Turkish Kurdistan Workers
Party (PKK); and al-Qaeda. The motivations and incentives for insurgent and ter-
rorist actions by diasporic individuals and entities are connected to their desire to
overcome the inherent disadvantages involved in being ‘‘others’’ in their host coun-
tries as well as difficulties in their homelands. Thus, they strive to gain political and
economic rights and autonomy in their hostlands in order to actively cope with the
repressive measures taken against them by hostile organizations, societies, and gov-
ernments, and to achieve independence or autonomy in their homelands.
‘‘New politics’’ on the local, state, regional, and global levels provides opportu-
nities for the use of violent strategies and tactics by such individuals and groups.
THE FORUM 161
(In this context, new politics means the weakening of nation-states; the legitimi-
zation of pluralism, which, in turn, enhances the assertiveness of individual di-
asporans and diasporic entities; liberalization; increasing demands for political and
social rights; and global attitudinal contagion.) However, this does not mean that all
diasporans are active or potential combatants or that new politics is a fundamentally
dangerous phenomenon. Like other groups, diasporans and diasporic entities do
not use violent tactics to physically defeat their opponents in the conflicts that they
are engaged in; they know they simply cannot achieve such a goal. They use vi-
olence mainly to draw attention to these conflicts, in general, and to their plight,
positions, and demands, in particular. At most, their goal is to influence the po-
sitions of both their opponents and supporters.
In contradiction to a widespread view, in most cases, these groups autonomously
and secretly make their own decisions and act accordingly in their host countries,
homelands, third- and fourth-party states, and in regional and international systems.
Their ability to determine their tactics and to obtain support on their own further
complicates the capability of outsiders to predict, trace, and monitor the planned
clandestine activities of these groups whose structures, organizations, and patterns of
political, social, and economic behavior are quite complex and unclear as it is.
The substantial volume of such actual and potential activities has a significant
impact on policymaking in their homelands and hostlands. Notable examples of
such impact are the policies of the United States and Russia vis-à-vis groups of
‘‘others’’ that they regard as actual or potential menaces. On certain occasions,
homelands are implicated, and host countries are induced to act against homelands
and other relevant states that have been involved in motivating their diasporas to
act or in hosting and supporting such groups.
Both stateless and state-linked diasporas engage in a myriad of tactical pursuits that
may affect the security of all those they regard as opponents and of all those whom
they perceive to be supporters. However, in particular, stateless diasporic entities that
support irredentist, secessionist, and national liberation movements are agreeable to
the use of terrorism. They use their highly developed transstate networks to transfer
or extend a variety of resources including fighters, weapons, intelligence, and money
to their fighting brethren. These networks make launching attacks in both their host
countries and other states an easier task. Significantly, some terrorist activities are
carried out not by permanent diasporans but, rather, by ‘‘tourists’’ of the same ethno-
national entities or by various types of nonresident migrants. This pattern has caused
the toughening of criteria for granting visas as well as other security measures on the
borders of many countries, especially in the United States. Hence, a distinction must
be made between innocent tourists, refugees, asylum seekers, and members of uni-
versal religions, on the one hand, and ethnonational diasporans who belong to, or
support, terrorist networks, on the other hand.
Furthermore, in an attempt to assess the use of violence and terrorism by ‘‘others,’’
it seems that, generally, refugees and asylum seekers, especially those from countries
viewed as breeding grounds for terrorists, are the least inclined to use such tactics. In
fact, they are subject to real risk from over-caution on the part of host governments.
As the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has declared in one of his
reportsF‘‘refugees are victims of terror and terrorism; not its perpetrators’’ (UN-
HCR, 2001, the UN 56th General Assembly, Third Committee, November 19). Yet, it
is also a fact that in certain cases in the first influx of refugees have come a mix of
harmless refugees with both armed and unarmed troopers. In various instances, these
fighters were engaged in terrorist activities and in other kinds of insurgencies against
homelands and host countries. Still, refugees and asylum seekers are more likely to be
escaping terrorism than perpetrating it. Thus, emergency legislation initiated by the
United States, the European Union, and other democracies may lead to the exclusion
of such people from the asylum-seeking and refugee process on the generally slim
grounds of having certain religious, ethnic, national origin, or political affiliations.
Unfortunately, on some occasions, such policies are adopted without a close exam-
ination of the evidence related to particular individuals and groups. Consequently,
refugees and asylum seekers find themselves detained or deported or their refugee
status revoked for no reason than their ‘‘otherness.’’
Established or incipient stateless diasporas and, interconnectedly, illegal migrants
and tourists who are members of such stateless diasporas or of religious funda-
mentalist organizations constitute the main groups that are more inclined to use
violence as a means to promote their ideas and interests. As long as the basic
situation involving their ethnonational entities is not resolved, these groups are
tempted to continue using violent tactics and terrorism. Though it is perhaps un-
wise to make any clear-cut predictions, it seems that even though such diasporas
may continue to use terror as a tactic to achieve their goals, such groups will not use
WMD. The main reasons for their reluctance in obtaining and using WMD are
their tenuous positions in their hostlands, the difficulties in obtaining the materials
to produce such weapons, the lack of knowledgeable and experienced persons who
can produce and use these weapons, and the growing surveillance of extremist core
members carried out by many hostlands. However, such stateless diasporas might
be tempted to use WMD if and when they realize that the hopes they have that their
brethren in the homeland will be able to establish a sovereign state are not going to
be fulfilled. It is very difficult to envision any other plausible scenario.
As for the general question whether these are, essentially, noncombative entities,
freedom fighters, or groups that support or participate in transstate terrorism, a
few additional factors should be mentioned here. First, it is difficult to regard most
of the existing diasporas as tightly knit homogenous entities that collectively pursue
a single strategy, especially terrorism. Second, one cannot generalize that entire
diasporic groups or entities partake in these activities or support them. In fact, in
most cases, such as the Irish, Turkish, or Kurdish diasporas, only a small number of
individuals and small groups of core members support such activities. Third, in
most cases, terrorism and violence do not constitute a permanent strategy; these
are, essentially, tactics intended to achieve social and political goals, and when these
are achieved, the tactics change. Fourth, in most cases the use of terror as a tactic is
confined to relatively short periods of crisis in their homelands or host countries.
Hence, the use of terror and violence does not transform certain or, in particular,
entire communities and groups into warrior communities.
Finally, it should be remembered that many of these groups are, first and fore-
most, engaged in activities whose purpose is to enhance the cultural, civic, and
economic well-being of their own communities, their host countries, and their
homelands. Therefore, everybody should be careful not to stigmatize entire
groups, thereby creating a permanently hostile environment that can make the lives
of diasporans and diasporas even harder than they usually are and push these
people to use even more dangerous tactics and means, such as WMD.
Information, Trust, and Power:

The Impact of Conflict Histories, Policy Regimes, and
Political Institutions on Terrorism
MARK IRVING LICHBACH
Department of Government and Politics, University of Maryland
When does a country’s history of conflict encourage terrorism, and when is its
legacy a deterrent? When does a government’s policy of appeasing terrorism
THE FORUM 163
decrease terrorism, and when is a policy of repression effective? What sorts of

political institutions turn terrorism into legitimate dissent? These questions have
troubled the contentious politics literature from Gurr (1970) to Lichbach (1995) to
McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly (2001). The issues are fundamental. Contentious pol-
itics sometimes breeds terrorism, and sometimes forestalls it. Appeasement, as does
repression, sometimes works, and sometimes fails. Some states seem constitution-
ally vulnerable to terrorism, and others configuratively immune. Even though
conflict histories, policy regimes, and political institutions thus figure prominently
in narrative accounts and statistical analyses of terrorism, nearly three decades of
scholarly and policy reflection have not located the underlying mechanisms behind
the crucial conflict history–terrorism, policy regime–terrorism, and political insti-
tutions–terrorism relationships.
Two rational choice modelsFthe bargaining theory of war and the rebel’s
dilemma theory of dissentFoffer startlingly divergent understandings of the
mechanisms involved.10 To appreciate the differences and their significance, con-
sider the two questions pondered by protagonists in an enduring conflict vulner-
able to terrorism:
Why can’t we all get along? is the foundational question of an idealistic form of
rational choice theoryFthe bargaining theory of warFthat explores cooperation
among protagonists. Whether peaceful bargains can be struck depends on the
ability of participants to extract relevant information. Unobservable private in-
formation promotes conflict, and revealable public information promotes coop-
eration. Histories, policies, and institutions that increase transparency and
minimize secrets allow actors to coordinate expectations, thereby reducing the
false expectationsFthe under- and overestimated power resourcesFthat are
responsible for war. Whether bargains can be struck also depends on protago-
nists’ trusting one another. Participants must be able to make credible commit-
ments to enforceable bargains that bring peace.
Why not increase my power? is the second question protagonists can ask. It is the
foundation of a realistic form of rational choice theoryFthe rebel’s dilemma
theory of dissentFcentered around the unending conflict between regimes and
dissidents.11 Whether a state’s opponents pursue violent means like terrorism
depends on whether histories, policies, and institutions encourage the mobiliza-
tion of new resources that can shift the relative power of the protagonists. If
regimes and dissidents believe that they can increase their power in the future,
then today’s information and credible commitments mean little.
The two theories reveal a great deal about the conflict history–terrorism, policy
regime–terrorism, and political institutions–terrorism relationships. The bargain-
ing theory of war suggests that conflict histories affect the future of terrorism by
changing information and altering the parties’ abilities to forge credible commit-
ments. The rebel’s dilemma theory of dissent indicates that conflict histories in-
fluence terrorism by changing the relative power of conflict protagonists. The
fundamental differences over when conflict histories turn into terrorism are there-
fore about whether such histories facilitate bargaining or inspire power plays. Does
a history of conflict increase information, induce credible commitments, or accel-
erate power shifts?
Similarly, the bargaining theory of war suggests that policies of appeasement and
repression affect the chances of terrorism by changing information and altering
the parties’ abilities to forge credible commitments. The rebel’s dilemma theory
of dissent proposes that appeasement and repression influence terrorism by
10
Formalizations of these models are available elsewhere (Fearon 1995; Lichbach 1996; also see Lichbach,
Davenport, and Armstrong 2004).
11
Since elites in charge of regimes and oppositions are subject to opportunism, that is, principal–agent problems,
they are prone to ask this question in particularly narrow terms.
stimulating change in the power differentials among the protagonists. The funda-
mental differences over whether or not appeasement or repression works are,
therefore, about whether a policy facilitates bargaining games or power games. Do
appeasement and repression increase or decrease information (that is, public
bargaining), increase or decrease trust (that is, credible commitments), or increase
or decrease relative power (that is, resources) and thus increase or decrease
terrorism?
Finally, the bargaining theory of war suggests that democratic and stable states
provide the information and induce the trust that turns terrorism into legitimate
dissent, whereas the rebel’s dilemma theory of dissent proposes that autocratic
and uninstitutionalized states create the political instability that leads actors to
attempt to shift power in their favor, producing state violence and oppositional
terrorism.
Our arguments about state responses to terrorism are particularly important and
bear brief elaboration here. Regimes can adopt two basic strategies toward terror-
ism. The first is repression: attack, with violent and nonviolent means, the terrorists
and their supporters. The second is appeasement: make policy changes to accom-
modate underlying grievances, demands, or claims. With respect to al-Qaeda, for
example, repression involves war and policing, whereas appeasement involves
quitting Iraq, removing troops from Saudi Arabia, and shifting positions in the
Israeli–Palestinian conflict.
The bargaining theory of war and the rebel’s dilemma theory of mobilization
offer different perspectives on the etiology of government response strategies
toward terrorism. Bargaining theory indicates that states use repression and
appeasement to increase information and make credible commitments. The rebel’s
dilemma theory implies that government policies aim to shift power. Repression
and appeasement succeed when states guess right about how public information,
credible commitments, and power shifts affect terrorism. Their policies fail
when unintended consequences overwhelm intended ones. The two theories, thus,
tell us a lot about how a war on terrorism will be fought, and how it should be
waged.
To give a flavor of the argument, we present here six hypotheses. We begin with
the bargaining theory of war and briefly discuss how the issues of information and
trust help explain the etiology as well as the successes and failures of repression and
appeasement. Turning to the rebel’s dilemma theory of dissent, we then briefly
explore how power shifts explain choices and outcomes.
Hypothesis 1: States repress to increase information. States aim to spread infor-

mation about their strengths and terrorists’ weaknesses. A repressive policy regime
can increase such information. When a state increases its efforts to detect, capture,
convict, and punish (imprison, injure, kill) terrorists, the costs of engaging in ter-
rorism become manifest; threats that are convincing also reveal costs.
Hypothesis 2: States appease to increase information. States also use appeasement

to spread information about their strengths and terrorists’ weaknesses. An accom-
modative policy regime can also increase such information. When you have noth-
ing, you have nothing to lose; if a state demonstrates that the root causes of
terrorism are being addressed, terrorists will stop being terrorists.
Hypothesis 3: States repress to make credible commitments. States also repress

terrorism by making credible commitments that solidify their position. For exam-
ple, if a regime makes an irrevocable commitment to repress terrorism, terrorists
and their supporters will permanently shift tactics to more legal and conventional
forms of participation, influence, and negotiation.
THE FORUM 165
Hypothesis 4: States appease to make credible commitments. States hoping to

employ credible commitments to end terrorism may be more likely to appease than
to repress. For instance, if a regime makes an irrevocable commitment to appease
terrorists, the terrorists and their supporters will permanently shift tactics to more
legal and conventional forms of participation, influence, and negotiation.
Hypothesis 5: States repress to shift power. Turning to the rebel’s dilemma theory
of dissent, we find a very different perspective on the etiology and consequences of
regime response policies toward terrorism: states repress to shift power in their
favor. When they believe that repression influences key actors and thereby in-
creases the likelihood of power shifts, states will find a repressive policy regime
quite attractive. For example, because repression puts terrorists on the defensive,
they will shift resources from attacking the state to protecting themselves.
Hypothesis 6: States appease to shift power. Finally, the rebel’s dilemma theory of
dissent indicates that states also appease to shift power. An accommodative policy
regime increases the likelihood of such power shifts in several ways. For example,
appeasement is a divide-and-conquer strategy that promotes splits among the ter-
rorists and their supporters, encouraging reformists to defect from the radicals.
These hypotheses develop further the two competing theories of government

responses to terrorism. Each has implications for the choice of strategy that a gov-
ernment selects and the success or failure of the resulting policies. The distinction
between the theories is significant. Even if we assume that regimes and oppositions
are rational rather than cultural beings, are they idealistic or realistic? Although
neglected nowadays in the conflict literature, the latter question appears to be just
as important as the former. In the popular press and policy debates, the idealistic
questionF‘‘why can’t we all get along?’’Fand the realistic questionF‘‘why not
increase my power?’’Fare usually the two starting points for discussion. By elab-
orating their implications, we help structure the debate.
September 11 and Its Aftermath
TODD SANDLER
School of International Relations,
University of Southern California
AND
WALTER ENDERS
Culberhouse College of Commerce and Business Administration,
University of Alabama
The four hijackings on 11 September 2001 (hereafter, 9/11) represented a water-

shed transnational terrorist event for many reasons. First, the consequences of the
event in terms of casualties far surpassed any previous terrorist attack. Nearly 3,000
people died on 9/11, whereas fewer than 500 died in the deadliest terrorist event
prior to it. Second, the financial losses and repercussions of 9/11 were far greater
than any previous terrorist incident or insured natural disaster (Kunreuther and
Michel-Kerjan 2004). For 9/11, these direct and indirect costs are estimated to have
been between $80 and $90 billion. Third, the hijackings on 9/11 made the global
community more aware of the potential threat posed by modern-day transnational
terrorism, for which high casualty counts are an objective. Fourth, 9/11 locked rich
countries into a large and growing outlay on defensive measures that could increase
further. US spending on the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is $40
billion for fiscal year 2005, of which 61 percent goes to homeland security (DHS
2004; Enders and Sandler forthcoming). The US budget for DHS is growing at 10
percent per year and does not include spending on intelligence or proactive op-
erations (for example, the war in Afghanistan). Fifth, 9/11 demonstrated to the
global community that catastrophic damage could stem from conventional mean-
sFthat is, the crash of a fuel-laden commercial aircraft. The bomb attacks on the
commuter trains in Madrid further underscored that horrific consequences can
follow from conventional bombs planted where casualty counts will be high. Sixth, 9/
11 set the bar for future terrorist attacks as terrorists escalate carnage to capture and
maintain media and public attention. To outdo the newsworthiness and shock value
of 9/11, terrorists must resort to an even larger conventional attack or weapons of
mass destruction (WMDs), most likely chemical or radiological in nature. Many of
the contributions to this Forum, however, have doubted that terrorists will resort to
WMDs owing to a lack of capability or constituent-support concerns.
Unquestionably, 9/11 changed public perceptions and governmental responses to
terrorism; the US-led ‘‘war on terror,’’ with its subsequent invasion of Afghanistan
and Iraq, is clear testimony that things are now different. A more difficult question
to answer is whether the pattern of transnational terrorism, which consists of ter-
rorist attacks that impact two or more countries, has changed in light of 9/11 and
target nations’ actions to reduce the threat of terrorism. Such responses are either
defensive or proactive in nature (Arce and Sandler 2005). Defensive counterter-
rorism measures involve actions to protect potential targets, including hardening
targets, erecting technological barriers, securing borders, and increasing surveil-
lance. These policies try to deter an attack by either making success less likely or
increasing the anticipated costs to would-be terrorists. In contrast, proactive re-
sponses are offensive and may involve destroying terrorist training camps, pun-
ishing terrorist sponsors, infiltrating a terrorist group, or reducing terrorist
financial resources. The war on terror killed or captured a significant portion of the
al-Qaeda leadership, which should have compromised the network’s ability to di-
rect logistically complex terrorist incidents, such as hostage-taking missions. In
addition, actions by the world community to freeze al-Qaeda financial assets were
intended to reduce the terrorist network’s ability to mount their campaign of terror.
In what follows, we report on two projects in which we examined the pattern of
transnational terrorism before and after 9/11 (Enders and Sandler 2004, 2005). We
were also interested in isolating the influence of the rise of fundamentalist terrorism
at the end of 1979 (Hoffman 1998; Enders and Sandler 2000) as well as the impact
of the end of the Cold War at the start of the 1990s, because this latter event marked
the end of the support of terrorism by many state-sponsors. Indeed, many left-wing
European groups stopped operations around that time.
Methodology
To explore these effects, we used data on transnational terrorist incidents drawn
from the International Terrorism: Attributes of Terrorist Events (ITERATE)
database, compiled by Edward Mickolus and colleagues (2004). ITERATE records
the incident date, type of event, casualties (that is, deaths or injuries), host country,
the terrorist group, and other variables. Enders and Sandler (2005) extracted eight
primary time series to test for structural changes before and after 9/11. In par-
ticular, their quarterly time series from 1970 to 2003 included all transnational
terrorist incidents, bombings, hostage missions (such as kidnappings, skyjackings,
and barricade and hostage-taking events), assassinations, incidents with deaths,
incidents with casualties (that is, one or more deaths or injuries), bombings with
THE FORUM 167
deaths, and bombings with casualties. Other time series were constructed by taking
proportionsFfor example, hostage missions as a proportion of all incidents. In
another study of post-9/11 terrorism, Enders and Sandler (2004) extracted four
quarterly time series (for 1968–2003): all transnational terrorist incidents, casualty
incidents, incidents with a US target (that is, US person or property), and casualty
incidents with a US target.
Each of these studies employed time series methods to ascertain what, if
anything, changed in light of 9/11. Enders and Sandler (2005) approached the
problem in two alternative ways. First, they specifically chose 9/11 as a structural
break or intervention point and applied an autoregression estimation to determine
whether the time series displayed significant changes in their pattern following
9/11. Second, they employed the Bai-Perron (1998, 2003) method in which the data
identify the significant structural breaks, if any. If, therefore, things were different
in the pattern of transnational terrorist attacks after 9/11, then the Bai-Perron
method will locate 9/11 as a structural break for some of the extracted time series.
Enders and Sandler (2004) also relied on autoregression intervention analysis to
identify crucial structural breaks at and before 9/11. Unlike their other study, this
research tried to ascertain whether post-9/11 defensive measures by rich countries
altered the pattern of transnational terrorism. Have these measures shifted ter-
rorist attacks from rich to poor countries as terrorists sought softer targets? This
study also investigated if there have been geographical shifts in transnational ter-
rorist attacks. Such transfers of attacks may mean that US citizens are safer at home
because of enhanced security but more vulnerable abroad.
Results
Perhaps surprising, little has changed in the time series of overall terrorist incidents
and most of its component series when 9/11 is prejudged as a break date. We,
however, found that logistically complex hostage-taking events fell as a proportion
of all events, whereas simple, but deadly, bombings increased as a proportion of
fatal incidents after 9/11. Thus, the stressed al-Qaeda network and other terrorist
groups responded to the greater risk that they faced by the war on terror by
eschewing difficult and costly attacks for simple bombings with high body counts.
When the Bai-Perron method was applied, Enders and Sandler (2005) uncovered
findings consistent with those that prejudged 9/11 as a structural break. In par-
ticular, the overall time series for transnational terrorism displayed a lone structural
breakFbut not at 9/11. This break occurred during the post-Cold War era in 1994
as transnational terrorist events fell precipitously in number with the demise of
many leftist terrorists and reduced state-sponsorship. As before, the proportion of
hostage-taking incidents dropped around 9/11, at the time when the proportion
of deadly bombings increased. Structural breaks took place for a number of time
series (that is, incidents with deaths, proportion of assassinations, proportion of
deadly incidents due to bombings, and the proportion of deadly incidents) in the
mid-1970s as transnational terrorism started to heat up. In effect, the study dem-
onstrated that the pattern of transnational terrorism did not change greatly after
9/11. Much more noteworthy changes to this pattern occurred in the mid-1970s
and the early 1990s.
Enders and Sandler (2004) found no convincing evidence that there had been a
substitution of overall terrorist events from rich to poor countries in response to
9/11-motivated increases in homeland security upgrades in high-income countries.
This unexpected finding is due to the very high level of transnational terrorism in
poor countries and the low level of such attacks in rich countries at the time of 9/11.
Thus, the substitution had occurred well before 9/11 and, in particular, began with
the rise of fundamentalist terrorism in late 1979. By 9/11, there was little further
substitution that was possible for the overall time series. We, however, uncovered
some evidence of substitution in the anticipated direction (that is, from high-income
to low-income countries) for the subset of attacks that included deadly incidents
involving US targets. Moreover, when countries are classified into six regional
groups (Western Hemisphere, Europe, the Middle East, Asia, Africa, and Eurasia),
there was clear evidence of transfers based on geography following 9/11. In par-
ticular, there has been a shift in transnational terrorist events away from the West-
ern Hemisphere and Africa to the Middle East and Asia since 9/11. This shift is
especially pronounced for terrorist incidents with a US target, meaning that US
citizens may be less safe abroad. This research established that the geographical
transfer has been to those regions with the largest Islamic populations. In such
regions, fundamentalist terrorists can blend in and establish excellent logistical
support.
Concluding Remarks
Although 9/11 has changed public perceptions of the consequences of transnational
terrorism, it has not had a strong influence on the pattern of transnational terrorism.
There have been two notable changes in patterns: (1) deadly bombings are more
prevalent, whereas hostage missions are less prevalent; and (2) there is a geo-
graphical transfer of attacks to the Middle East and Asia. There is nothing in the
data that hints at terrorists resorting to WMD. In fact, our two studies showed that
the overall patterns for most key time series are no different than those prior to 9/
11. Big structural changes to transnational terrorism came well before 9/11 with the
rise of fundamentalist terrorism and the end of the Cold War. Transnational ter-
rorism is more deadly per incident with the rise of religious-based terrorism (End-
ers and Sandler 2000), but this is a far cry from foreshadowing the eventual use of
WMD.
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Trafficking, and Terrorism. Hearing before the Subcommittee on Crime of the Committee of the
Judiciary, December 13.

The Interplay Between Terrorism Nonstate

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International Studies Review (2005) 7, 133–170

Nonstate Actors, Terrorism, and

r 2005 International Studies Review.

Database (http://cns.mils.edu/dbinfo/about.htm#wmdt), the MIPT Terrorism Knowledge Base

upon definition of the term or a categorization of the meaningfully different

to eradicate terrorists is one of the principal methods of achieving a societal

Priority Research Topics

WMD Terrorism Research:

Despite significant contributions in the past decade to our understanding of various

(1) Operationalizing WMD Terrorism Research by Informing

the vast majority of terrorist organizations can be identified well in advance . . .

consideration and sufficiently comparative to discern valuable trends and indicators

(2) The Need for Second-Order Analysis and Beyond

(3) Where Extremes Touch2

Which Minorities Might Use

TED ROBERT GURR

Capacities for Collective Action

Opportunities for Acquiring and Using WMD

referred to above, is to implement policies that open up alternative strategies and

Is the Past Prologue?

the action regardless of the reactions of others. In addition to economic and

The Psychology of WMD Terrorism

Large-scale CBRN Limited Large-scale Superterrorism/

kept in mind. The horrors of September 11 demonstrate that conventional attacks

Forecasting Terrorists’ Likelihood to Embark on

terrorist adversary to avoid getting blindsided. Nevertheless, counterterrorism

Holy Terror and Mass Killings?

TABLE 1. Motivation for MCT Attacks, 1970–July 22, 2004

Motivation Frequency Percentage Fatalities Percentage

Leftist 1 2.94 100 1.12

categories: rightist, leftist, religious, ethnonationalist, religious/ethnonationalist,

The Interplay between Terrorism, Nonstate Actors,

GARY LAFREE, LAURA DUGAN, and DERRICK FRANKE

Long Range Missile

FIG. 1. Weapons of Mass Destruction (PGIS Database 1970–1997)

Means of Acquiring and Using WMD

Desire to Use WMD

Avenue for Future Research

Transnational Organized Crime, Terrorism, and WMD

Diasporas, Terrorism, and WMD

As part of their growing involvement in transstate and intrastate politics, in general,

Information, Trust, and Power:

decrease terrorism, and when is a policy of repression effective? What sorts of

Hypothesis 1: States repress to increase information. States aim to spread infor-

Hypothesis 2: States appease to increase information. States also use appeasement

Hypothesis 3: States repress to make credible commitments. States also repress

Hypothesis 4: States appease to make credible commitments. States hoping to

These hypotheses develop further the two competing theories of government

September 11 and Its Aftermath

The four hijackings on 11 September 2001 (hereafter, 9/11) represented a water-

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