Reducing Ideological Support for Terrorism

[Richard]

An interesting read and something to be considered.

Richard

Reducing Ideological Support for Terrorism
Paula shemella, Strategic Insights, Spring 2009

Introduction

Citizens everywhere expect their leaders to protect them. Indeed, that is the first responsibility of governments and their security infrastructures. But the problem of terrorism has provided a new context for national security decision-making, a process that now involves the entire spectrum of government institutions. Terrorist actions are political events masquerading as military attacks, and thus require governments to blend “soft power” tools with the “hard power” responses that cannot be avoided. [1] The so-called “war” on terrorism is not a war at all; it is a political contest that can only be won at the political level. Terrorists have turned Clausewitz on his head; they wage war by other means.

Terrorism is not about action but rather about reaction. Terrorists understand how easily governments can militarize their responses. Political leaders, whether guided by protective instinct or dictatorial opportunism, overreact on cue. Dissuading potential terrorists from resorting to violence in the first place is a strategy that is more challenging to execute and more difficult to evaluate than using brute force. Indeed, governments are confronted with Kafka’s choices: calling the doctor to explain and perhaps cure the disease of terrorism, or calling the locksmith to separate terrorists from the rest of society.[2] Our leaders have to make both calls.

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The Pivotal Role of Civil Society

But governments cannot do the whole job. At some point, the society itself must take charge of countering ideological support for terrorism. Unless a society-at-large can develop consensus for a “zero-tolerance” approach to terrorism, its government can only achieve marginal results. But it is government’s responsibility to create the environment in which society can, in essence, cure itself. Top-down measures have to meet bottom-up measures somewhere in the middle. This is a symbiotic relationship that depends on the existence of a healthy and active civil society.

It is civil society, the space between government institutions and individual citizens, that catalyzes the chain reaction needed for zero-tolerance. Civil society contains the opinion leaders who have the ability to influence mass audiences in all sectors of a population. What is needed here is a “social epidemic,” relying on citizen-messengers to spread positive ideas to friends and neighbors until everyone agrees not to support terrorism.[24] Every organization relies on super-connected individuals to make things happen; societies and the governments that protect them must take the same approach, using the power of what scientists call “scale-free networks” to spread the word.[25] Terrorism itself is now generated and sustained through networks, and so must countering terrorism. It takes networks to defeat networks.[26]

Who are these citizen-messengers? One is Amr Khaled, an Egyptian talk-show host and Internet master, who has gained tremendous popularity in the Arab world. His philosophical model, “Lifemakers”, encourages Muslims to transform their lives through Islam. Khaled has famously asked the question, “Who asked Osama bin Laden to talk for us? Nobody.”[27] He is part of the growing “Islamic Renewal Movement,” a loose coalition of four broad groups: Civic Islam, Islam and Democracy, Reforms within Islam, and Culturally Modern Islam. These strains are tied together by their commitment to modernize Islamic institutions, traditions, and practices.[28]

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A clear example of civil society against terrorism can be seen in the actions since 2006 in Al Anbar Province in Iraq, where tribal forces have aligned to reject foreign terrorists. Citizen militias, properly regulated by the government, have been instrumental in defeating terrorists from Peru to Turkey. At the other end of the spectrum, groupings of motivated individuals counter terrorist ideology simply by demonstrating that society is normal. Upon winning the Asia Cup (by defeating Saudi Arabia) with Kurdish, Sunni, and Shia players, the team was profiled as a model of ethnic unity. Civil Society can indeed be the terrorist’s most formidable enemy.[30] The power of civil society can be magnified by targeting the youth bulge, particularly in Muslim populations, using the ubiquitous information technology available to them.[31]

With the right catalyst, whole societies can suddenly become powerful enough to destroy terrorism. Such was the case in Italy after the Red Brigades terrorist group kidnapped and murdered former Prime Minister Aldo Moro. In Jordan, after the brutal attacks on three hotels in Amman in November, 2005, support for Abu Musab al Zarqawi evaporated in an avalanche of public outrage. The British, conditioned by a tradition of citizen-policing, consider themselves soldiers in the war against terrorism rather than victims, the eyes and ears of a vigilant government. That attitude is the sharpest tool in the toolkit every government has for fighting terrorism. All governments must learn how to use that tool and keep it sharp.

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http://www.ccc.nps.navy.mil/si/2009/...mellaApr09.asp