6: THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE TERRORIST

Terrorist Motivation

In addition to drawing on political science and sociology, this study draws on the discipline of psychology, in an attempt to explain terrorist motivation and to answer questions such as who become terrorists and what kind of individuals join terrorist groups and commit public acts of shocking violence. Although there have been numerous attempts to explain terrorism from a psychiatric or psychological perspective, Wilkinson notes that the psychology and beliefs of terrorists have been inadequately explored. Most psychological analyses of terrorists and terrorism, according to psychologist Maxwell Taylor (1988), have attempted to address what motivates terrorists or to describe personal characteristics of terrorists, on the assumption that terrorists can be identified by these attributes. However, although an understanding of the terrorist mindset would be the key to understanding how and why an individual becomes a terrorist, numerous psychologists have been unable to adequately define it. Indeed, there appears to be a general agreement among psychologists who have studied the subject that there is no one terrorist mindset. This view, however, itself needs to be clarified.

The topic of the terrorist mindset was discussed at a Rand conference on terrorism coordinated by Brian M. Jenkins in September 1980. The observations made about terrorist mindsets at that conference considered individuals, groups, and individuals as part of a group. The discussion revealed how little was known about the nature of terrorist mindsets, their causes and consequences, and their significance for recruitment, ideology, leader-follower relations, organization, decision making about targets and tactics, escalation of violence, and attempts made by disillusioned terrorists to exit from the terrorist group. Although the current study has examined these aspects of the terrorist mindset, it has done so within the framework of a more general tasking requirement. Additional research and analysis would be needed to focus more closely on the concept of the terrorist mindset and to develop it into a more useful method for profiling terrorist groups and leaders on a more systematic and accurate basis.

Within this field of psychology, the personality dynamics of individual terrorists, including the causes and motivations behind the decision to join a terrorist group and to commit violent acts, have also received attention. Other small-group dynamics that have been of particular interest to researchers include the terrorists' decision-making patterns, problems of leadership and authority, target selection, and group mindset as a pressure tool on the individual.

Attempts to explain terrorism in purely psychological terms ignore the very real economic, political, and social factors that have always motivated radical activists, as well as the possibility that biological or physiological variables may play a role in bringing an individual to the point of perpetrating terrorism. Although this study provides some interdisciplinary context to the study of terrorists and terrorism, it is concerned primarily with the sociopsychological approach. Knutson (1984), Executive Director of the International Society of Political Psychology until her death in 1982, carried out an extensive international research project on the psychology of political terrorism. The basic premise of terrorists whom she evaluated in depth was "that their violent acts stem from feelings of rage and hopelessness engendered by the belief that society permits no other access to information-dissemination and policy-formation processes."

The social psychology of political terrorism has received extensive analysis in studies of terrorism, but the individual psychology of political and religious terrorism has been largely ignored. Relatively little is known about the terrorist as an individual, and the psychology of terrorists remains poorly understood, despite the fact that there have been a number of individual biographical accounts, as well as sweeping sociopolitical or psychiatric generalizations.

A lack of data and an apparent ambivalence among many academic researchers about the academic value of terrorism research have contributed to the relatively little systematic social and psychological research on terrorism. This is unfortunate because psychology, concerned as it is with behavior and the factors that influence and control behavior, can provide practical as opposed to conceptual knowledge of terrorists and terrorism.

A principal reason for the lack of psychometric studies of terrorism is that researchers have little, if any, direct access to terrorists, even imprisoned ones. Occasionally, a researcher has gained special access to a terrorist group, but usually at the cost of compromising the credibility of her/her research. Even if a researcher obtains permission to interview an incarcerated terrorist, such an interview would be of limited value and reliability for the purpose of making generalizations. Most terrorists, including imprisoned ones, would be loath to reveal their group's operational secrets to their interrogators, let alone to journalists or academic researchers, whom the terrorists are likely to view as representatives of the "system" or perhaps even as intelligence agents in disguise. Even if terrorists agree to be interviewed in such circumstances, they may be less than candid in answering questions. For example, most imprisoned Red Army Faction members reportedly declined to be interviewed by West German social scientists. Few researchers or former terrorists write exposés of terrorist groups. Those who do could face retaliation. For example, the LTTE shot to death an anti-LTTE activist, Sabaratnam Sabalingam, in Paris on May 1, 1994, to prevent him from publishing an anti-LTTE book. The LTTE also murdered Dr. Rajani Thiranagama, a Tamil, and one of the four Sri Lankan authors of The Broken Palmyrah, which sought to examine the "martyr" cult.

The Process of Joining a Terrorist Group

Individuals who become terrorists often are unemployed, socially alienated individuals who have dropped out of society. Those with little education, such as youths in Algerian ghettos or the Gaza Strip, may try to join a terrorist group out of boredom and a desire to have an action-packed adventure in pursuit of a cause they regard as just. Some individuals may be motivated mainly by a desire to use their special skills, such as bomb-making. The more educated youths may be motivated more by genuine political or religious convictions. The person who becomes a terrorist in Western countries is generally both intellectual and idealistic. Usually, these disenchanted youths, both educated or uneducated, engage in occasional protest and dissidence. Potential terrorist group members often start out as sympathizers of the group. Recruits often come from support organizations, such as prisoner support groups or student activist groups. From sympathizer, one moves to passive supporter. Often, violent encounters with police or other security forces motivate an already socially alienated individual to join a terrorist group. Although the circumstances vary, the end result of this gradual process is that the individual, often with the help of a family member or friend with terrorist contacts, turns to terrorism. Membership in a terrorist group, however, is highly selective. Over a period as long as a year or more, a recruit generally moves in a slow, gradual fashion toward full membership in a terrorist group.

An individual who drops out of society can just as well become a monk or a hermit instead of a terrorist. For an individual to choose to become a terrorist, he or she would have to be motivated to do so. Having the proper motivation, however, is still not enough. The would-be terrorist would need to have the opportunity to join a terrorist group. And like most job seekers, he or she would have to be acceptable to the terrorist group, which is a highly exclusive group. Thus, recruits would not only need to have a personality that would allow them to fit into the group, but ideally a certain skill needed by the group, such as weapons or communications skills.

The psychology of joining a terrorist group differs depending on the typology of the group. Someone joining an anarchistic or a Marxist-Leninist terrorist group would not likely be able to count on any social support, only social opprobrium, whereas someone joining an ethnic separatist group like ETA or the IRA would enjoy considerable social support and even respect within ethnic enclaves.

Psychologist Eric D. Shaw (1986:365) provides a strong case for what he calls "The Personal Pathway Model," by which terrorists enter their new profession. The components of this pathway include early socialization processes; narcissistic injuries; escalatory events, particularly confrontation with police; and personal connections to terrorist group members, as follows:

The personal pathway model suggests that terrorists came from a selected, at risk population, who have suffered from early damage to their self-esteem. Their subsequent political activities may be consistent with the liberal social philosophies of their families, but go beyond their perception of the contradiction in their family's beliefs and lack of social action. Family political philosophies may also serve to sensitize these persons to the economic and political tensions inherent throughout modern society. As a group, they appear to have been unsuccessful in obtaining a desired traditional place in society, which has contributed to their frustration. The underlying need to belong to a terrorist group is symptomatic of an incomplete or fragmented psychosocial identity. (In Kohut's terms--a defective or fragmented "group self"). Interestingly, the acts of security forces or police are cited as provoking more violent political activity by these individuals and it is often a personal connection to other terrorists which leads to membership in a violent group (shared external targets?).

Increasingly, terrorist organizations in the developing world are recruiting younger members. The only role models for these young people to identify with are often terrorists and guerrillas. Abu Nidal, for example, was able to recruit alienated, poor, and uneducated youths thrilled to be able to identify themselves with a group led by a well-known but mysterious figure.

During the 1980s and early 1990s, thousands of foreign Muslim volunteers (14,000, according to Jane's Intelligence Review)--angry, young, and zealous and from many countries, including the United States--flocked to training camps in Afghanistan or the Pakistan-Afghan border region to learn the art of combat. They ranged in age from 17 to 35. Some had university educations, but most were uneducated, unemployed youths without any prospects.

Deborah M. Galvin (1983) notes that a common route of entry into terrorism for female terrorists is through political involvement and belief in a political cause. The Intifada (see Glossary), for example, radicalized many young Palestinians, who later joined terrorist organizations. At least half of the Intifada protesters were young girls. Some women are recruited into terrorist organizations by boyfriends. A significant feature that Galvin feels may characterize the involvement of the female terrorist is the "male or female lover/female accomplice ... scenario." The lover, a member of the terrorist group, recruits the female into the group. One ETA female member, "Begona," told Eileen MacDonald (1992) that was how she joined at age 25: "I got involved [in ETA] because a man I knew was a member."

A woman who is recruited into a terrorist organization on the basis of her qualifications and motivation is likely to be treated more professionally by her comrades than one who is perceived as lacking in this regard. Two of the PFLP hijackers of Sabena Flight 517 from Brussels to Tel Aviv on May 8, 1972, Therese Halsa, 19, and Rima Tannous, 21, had completely different characters. Therese, the daughter of a middle-class Arab family, was a nursing student when she was recruited into Fatah by a fellow student and was well regarded in the organization. Rima, an orphan of average intelligence, became the mistress of a doctor who introduced her to drugs and recruited her into Fatah. She became totally dependent on some Fatah members, who subjected her to physical and psychological abuse.

Various terrorist groups recruit both female and male members from organizations that are lawful. For example, ETA personnel may be members of Egizan ("Act Woman!"), a feminist movement affiliated with ETA's political wing; the Henri Batasuna (Popular Unity) party; or an amnesty group seeking release for ETA members. While working with the amnesty group, a number of women reportedly tended to become frustrated over mistreatment of prisoners and concluded that the only solution was to strike back, which they did by joining the ETA. "Women seemed to become far more emotionally involved than men with the suffering of prisoners," an ETA member, "Txikia," who joined at age 20, told MacDonald, "and when they made the transition from supporter to guerrilla, appeared to carry their deeper sense of commitment with them into battle."

The Terrorist as Mentally Ill

A common stereotype is that someone who commits such abhorrent acts as planting a bomb on an airliner, detonating a vehicle bomb on a city street, or tossing a grenade into a crowded sidewalk café is abnormal. The psychopathological (see Glossary) orientation has dominated the psychological approach to the terrorist's personality. As noted by Taylor, two basic psychological approaches to understanding terrorists have been commonly used: the terrorist is viewed either as mentally ill or as a fanatic. For Walter Laqueur (1977:125), "Terrorists are fanatics and fanaticism frequently makes for cruelty and sadism."

This study is not concerned with the lone terrorist, such as the Unabomber in the United States, who did not belong to any terrorist group. Criminologist Franco Ferracuti has noted that there is "no such thing as an isolated terrorist--that's a mental case." Mentally unbalanced individuals have been especially attracted to airplane hijacking. David G. Hubbard (1971) conducted a psychiatric study of airplane hijackers in 1971 and concluded that skyjacking is used by psychiatrically ill patients as an expression of illness. His study revealed that skyjackers shared several common traits: a violent father, often an alcoholic; a deeply religious mother, often a religious zealot; a sexually shy, timid, and passive personality; younger sisters toward whom the skyjackers acted protectively; and poor achievement, financial failure, and limited earning potential.

Those traits, however, are shared by many people who do not hijack airplanes. Thus, profiles of mentally unstable hijackers would seem to be of little, if any, use in detecting a potential hijacker in advance. A useful profile would probably have to identify physical or behavioral traits that might alert authorities to a potential terrorist before a suspect is allowed to board an aircraft, that is, if hijackers have identifiable personality qualities. In the meantime, weapons detection, passenger identification, and onboard security guards may be the only preventive measures. Even then, an individual wanting to hijack an airplane can often find a way. Japan's Haneda Airport screening procedures failed to detect a large knife that a 28-year-old man carried aboard an All Nippon Airways jumbo jet on July 23, 1999, and used to stab the pilot (who died) and take the plane's controls until overpowered by others. Although police have suggested that the man may have psychiatric problems, the fact that he attempted to divert the plane to the U.S. Yokota Air Base north of Tokyo, at a time when the airbase was a subject of controversy because the newly elected governor of Tokyo had demanded its closure, suggests that he may have had a political or religious motive.

There have been cases of certifiably mentally ill terrorists. Klaus Jünschke, a mental patient, was one of the most ardent members of the Socialist Patients' Collective (SPK), a German terrorist group working with the Baader-Meinhof Gang (see Glossary). In some instances, political terrorists have clearly exhibited psychopathy (see Glossary). For example, in April 1986 Nezar Hindawi, a freelance Syrian-funded Jordanian terrorist and would-be agent of Syrian intelligence, sent his pregnant Irish girlfriend on an El Al flight to Israel, promising to meet her there to be married. Unknown to her, however, Hindawi had hidden a bomb (provided by the Abu Nidal Organization (ANO)) in a false bottom to her hand luggage. His attempt to bomb the airliner in midair by duping his pregnant girlfriend was thwarted when the bomb was discovered by Heathrow security personnel. Taylor regards Hindawi's behavior in this incident as psychopathic because of Hindawi's willingness to sacrifice his fiancé and unborn child.

Jerrold Post (1990), a leading advocate of the terrorists-as-mentally ill approach, has his own psychological hypothesis of terrorism. Although he does not take issue with the proposition that terrorists reason logically, Post argues that terrorists' reasoning process is characterized by what he terms "terrorist psycho-logic." In his analysis, terrorists do not willingly resort to terrorism as an intentional choice. Rather, he argues that "political terrorists are driven to commit acts of violence as a consequence of psychological forces, and that their special psycho-logic is constructed to rationalize acts they are psychologically compelled to commit"(1990:25). Post's hypothesis that terrorists are motivated by psychological forces is not convincing and seems to ignore the numerous factors that motivate terrorists, including their ideological convictions.

Post (1997) believes that the most potent form of terrorism stems from those individuals who are bred to hate, from generation to generation, as in Northern Ireland and the Basque country. For these terrorists, in his view, rehabilitation in nearly impossible because ethnic animosity or hatred is "in their blood" and passed from father to son. Post also draws an interesting distinction between "anarchic-ideologues"such as the Italian Red Brigades (Brigate Rosse) and the German RAF (aka the Baader-Meinhof Gang), and the "nationalist-separatist" groups such as the ETA, or the IRA, stating that:

There would seem to be a profound difference between terrorists bent on destroying their own society, the "world of their fathers," and those whose terrorist activities carry on the mission of their fathers. To put it in other words, for some, becoming terrorists is an act of retaliation for real and imagined hurts against the society of their parents; for others, it is an act of retaliation against society for the hurt done to their parents.... This would suggest more conflict, more psychopathology, among those committed to anarchy and destruction of society.... (1984:243)

Indeed, author Julian Becker (1984) describes the German terrorists of the Baader-Meinhof Gang as "children without fathers." They were sons and daughters of fathers who had either been killed by Nazis or survived Nazism. Their children despised and rebelled against them because of the shame of Nazism and a defeated Germany. One former RAF female member told MacDonald: "We hated our parents because they were former Nazis, who had never come clean about their past." Similarly, Gunther Wagenlehner (1978:201) concludes that the motives of RAF terrorists were unpolitical and belonged "more to the area of psychopathological disturbances." Wagenlehner found that German terrorists blamed the government for failing to solve their personal problems. Not only was becoming a terrorist "an individual form of liberation" for radical young people with personal problems, but "These students became terrorists because they suffered from acute fear and from aggression and the masochistic desire to be pursued." In short, according to Wagenlehner, the West German anarchists stand out as a major exception to the generally nonpathological characteristics of most terrorists. Psychologist Konrad Kellen (1990:43) arrives at a similar conclusion, noting that most of the West German terrorists "suffer from a deep psychological trauma" that "makes them see the world, including their own actions and the expected effects of those actions, in a grossly unrealistic light" and that motivates them to kill people. Sociologist J. Bowyer Bell (1985) also has noted that European anarchists, unlike other terrorists, belong more to the "province of psychologists than political analysts...."

Post's distinction between anarchic-ideologues and ethnic separatists appears to be supported by Rona M. Fields's (1978) psychometric assessment of children in Northern Ireland. Fields found that exposure to terrorism as a child can lead to a proclivity for terrorism as an adult. Thus, a child growing up in violence-plagued West Belfast is more likely to develop into a terrorist as an adult than is a child growing up in peaceful Oslo, Norway, for example. Maxwell Taylor, noting correctly that there are numerous other factors in the development of a terrorist, faults Fields's conclusions for, among other things, a lack of validation with adults. Maxwell Taylor overlooks, however, that Field's study was conducted over an eight-year period. Taylor's point is that Field's conclusions do not take into account that relatively very few children exposed to violence, even in Northern Ireland, grow up to become terrorists.

A number of other psychologists would take issue with another of Post's contentions--that the West German anarchists were more pathological than Irish terrorists. For example, psychiatrist W. Rasch (1979), who interviewed a number of West German terrorists, determined that "no conclusive evidence has been found for the assumption that a significant number of them are disturbed or abnormal." For Rasch the argument that terrorism is pathological behavior only serves to minimize the political or social issues that motivated the terrorists into action. And psychologist Ken Heskin (1984), who has studied the psychology of terrorism in Northern Ireland, notes that "In fact, there is no psychological evidence that terrorists are diagnosably psychopathic or otherwise clinically disturbed."

Although there may have been instances in which a mentally ill individual led a terrorist group, this has generally not been the case in international terrorism. Some specialists point out, in fact, that there is little reliable evidence to support the notion that terrorists in general are psychologically disturbed individuals. The careful, detailed planning and well-timed execution that have characterized many terrorist operations are hardly typical of mentally disturbed individuals.

There is considerable evidence, on the contrary, that international terrorists are generally quite sane. Crenshaw (1981) has concluded from her studies that "the outstanding common characteristic of terrorists is their normality." This view is shared by a number of psychologists. For example, C.R. McCauley and M.E. Segal (1987) conclude in a review of the social psychology of terrorist groups that "the best documented generalization is negative; terrorists do not show any striking psychopathology." Heskin (1984) did not find members of the IRA to be emotionally disturbed. It seems clear that terrorists are extremely alienated from society, but alienation does not necessarily mean being mentally ill.

Maxwell Taylor (1984) found that the notion of mental illness has little utility with respect to most terrorist actions. Placing the terrorist within the ranks of the mentally ill, he points out, makes assumptions about terrorist motivations and places terrorist behavior outside the realms of both the normal rules of behavior and the normal process of law. He points out several differences that separate the psychopath from the political terrorist, although the two may not be mutually exclusive, as in the case of Hindawi. One difference is the psychopath's inability to profit from experience. Another important difference is that, in contrast to the terrorist, the purposefulness, if any, of a psychopath's actions is personal. In addition, psychopaths are too unreliable and incapable of being controlled to be of use to terrorist groups. Taylor notes that terrorist groups need discreet activists who do not draw attention to themselves and who can merge back into the crowd after executing an operation. For these reasons, he believes that "it may be inappropriate to think of the terrorist as mentally ill in conventional terms" (1994:92). Taylor and Ethel Quayle (1994:197) conclude that "the active terrorist is not discernibly different in psychological terms from the non-terrorist." In other words, terrorists are recruited from a population that describes most of us. Taylor and Quayle also assert that "in psychological terms, there are no special qualities that characterize the terrorist." Just as there is no necessary reason why people sharing the same career in normal life necessarily have psychological characteristics in common, the fact that terrorists have the same career does not necessarily mean that they have anything in common psychologically.

The selectivity with which terrorist groups recruit new members helps to explain why so few pathologically ill individuals are found within their ranks. Candidates who appear to be potentially dangerous to the terrorist group's survival are screened out. Candidates with unpredictable or uncontrolled behavior lack the personal attributes that the terrorist recruiter is looking for.

Many observers have noted that the personality of the terrorist has a depressive aspect to it, as reflected in the terrorist's death-seeking or death-confronting behavior. The terrorist has often been described by psychologists as incapable of enjoying anything (anhedonic) or forming meaningful interpersonal relationships on a reciprocal level. According to psychologist Risto Fried, the terrorist's interpersonal world is characterized by three categories of people: the terrorist's idealized heroes; the terrorist's enemies; and people one encounters in everyday life, whom the terrorist regards as shadow figures of no consequence. However, Fried (1982:123) notes that some psychologists with extensive experience with some of the most dangerous terrorists "emphasize that the terrorist may be perfectly normal from a clinical point of view, that he may have a psychopathology of a different order, or that his personality may be only a minor factor in his becoming a terrorist if he was recruited into a terrorist group rather than having volunteered for one."

The Terrorist as Suicidal Fanatic

Fanatics

The other of the two approaches that have predominated, the terrorist as fanatic,

emphasizes the terrorist's rational qualities and views the terrorist as a cool, logical planning individual whose rewards are ideological and political, rather than financial. This approach takes into account that terrorists are often well educated and capable of sophisticated, albeit highly biased, rhetoric and political analysis.

Notwithstanding the religious origins of the word, the term "fanaticism" in modern usage, has broadened out of the religious context to refer to more generally held extreme beliefs. The terrorist is often labeled as a fanatic, especially in actions that lead to self-destruction. Although fanaticism is not unique to terrorism, it is, like "terrorism," a pejorative term. In psychological terms, the concept of fanaticism carries some implications of mental illness, but, Taylor (1988:97) points out, it "is not a diagnostic category in mental illness." Thus, he believes that "Commonly held assumptions about the relationship between fanaticism and mental illness...seem to be inappropriate." The fanatic often seems to view the world from a particular perspective lying at the extreme of a continuum.

Two related processes, Taylor points out, are prejudice and authoritarianism, with which fanaticism has a number of cognitive processes in common, such as an unwillingness to compromise, a disdain for other alternative views, the tendency to see things in black-and-white, a rigidity of belief, and a perception of the world that reflects a closed mind. Understanding the nature of fanaticism, he explains, requires recognizing the role of the cultural (religious and social) context. Fanaticism, in Taylor's view, may indeed "...be part of the cluster of attributes of the terrorist." However, Taylor emphasizes that the particular cultural context in which the terrorist is operating needs to be taken into account in understanding whether the term might be appropriate.

Suicide Terrorists

Deliberate self-destruction, when the terrorist's death is necessary in order to detonate a bomb or avoid capture, is not a common feature of terrorism in most countries, although it happens occasionally with Islamic fundamentalist terrorists in the Middle East and Tamil terrorists in Sri Lanka and southern India. It is also a feature of North Korean terrorism. The two North Korean agents who blew up Korean Air Flight 858 on November 28, 1987, popped cyanide capsules when confronted by police investigators. Only one of the terrorists succeeded in killing himself, however.

Prior to mid-1985, there were 11 suicide attacks against international targets in the Middle East using vehicle bombs. Three well-known cases were the bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut on April 18, 1983, which killed 63 people, and the separate bombings of the U.S. Marine barracks and the French military headquarters in Lebanon on October 23, 1983, which killed 241 U.S. Marines and 58 French paratroopers, respectively. The first instance, however, was the bombing of Israel's military headquarters in Tyre, in which 141 people were killed. Inspired by these suicide attacks in Lebanon and his closer ties with Iran and Hizballah, Abu Nidal launched "suicide squads" in his attacks against the Rome and Vienna airports in late December 1985, in which an escape route was not planned.

The world leaders in terrorist suicide attacks are not the Islamic fundamentalists, but the Tamils of Sri Lanka. The LTTE's track record for suicide attacks is unrivaled. Its suicide commandos have blown up the prime ministers of two countries (India and Sri Lanka), celebrities, at least one naval battleship, and have regularly used suicide to avoid capture as well as simply a means of protest. LTTE terrorists do not dare not to carry out their irrevocable orders to use their cyanide capsules if captured. No fewer than 35 LTTE operatives committed suicide to simply avoid being questioned by investigators in the wake of the Gandhi assassination. Attempting to be circumspect, investigators disguised themselves as doctors in order to question LTTE patients undergoing medical treatment, but, Vijay Karan (1997:46) writes about the LTTE patients, "Their reflexes indoctrinated to react even to the slightest suspicion, all of them instantly popped cyanide capsules." Two were saved only because the investigators forcibly removed the capsules from their mouths, but one investigator suffered a severe bite wound on his hand and had to be hospitalized for some time.

To Western observers, the acts of suicide terrorism by adherents of Islam and Hinduism may be attributable to fanaticism or mental illness or both. From the perspective of the Islamic movement, however, such acts of self-destruction have a cultural and religious context, the historical origins of which can be seen in the behavior of religious sects associated with the Shi'ite movement, notably the Assassins (see Glossary). Similarly, the suicide campaign of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) in the 1993-94 period involved young Palestinian terrorists, who, acting on individual initiative, attacked Israelis in crowded places, using home-made improvised weapons such as knives and axes. Such attacks were suicidal because escape was not part of the attacker's plan. These attacks were, at least in part, motivated by revenge.

According to scholars of Muslim culture, so-called suicide bombings, however, are seen by Islamists and Tamils alike as instances of martyrdom, and should be understood as such. The Arabic term used is istishad, a religious term meaning to give one's life in the name of Allah, as opposed to intihar, which refers to suicide resulting from personal distress. The latter form of suicide is not condoned in Islamic teachings.

There is a clear correlation between suicide attacks and concurrent events and developments in the Middle Eastern area. For example, suicide attacks increased in frequency after the October 1990 clashes between Israeli security forces and Muslim worshipers on Temple Mount, in the Old City of Jerusalem, in which 18 Muslims were killed. The suicide attacks carried out by Hamas in Afula and Hadera in April 1994 coincided with the talks that preceded the signing by Israel and the PLO of the Cairo agreement. They were also claimed to revenge the massacre of 39 and the wounding of 200 Muslim worshipers in a Hebron mosque by an Israeli settler on February 25, 1994. Attacks perpetrated in Ramat-Gan and in Jerusalem in July and August 1995, respectively, coincided with the discussions concerning the conduct of elections in the Territories, which were concluded in the Oslo II agreement. The primary reason for Hamas's suicide attacks was that they exacted a heavy price in Israeli casualties. Most of the suicide attackers came from the Gaza Strip. Most were bachelors aged 18 to 25, with high school education, and some with university education. Hamas or Islamic Jihad operatives sent the attackers on their missions believing they would enter eternal Paradise.

Terrorist Group Dynamics

Unable to study terrorist group dynamics first-hand, social scientists have applied their understanding of small-group behavior to terrorist groups. Some features of terrorist groups, such as pressures toward conformity and consensus, are characteristic of all small groups. For whatever reason individuals assume the role of terrorists, their transformation into terrorists with a political or religious agenda takes places within the structure of the terrorist group. This group provides a sense of belonging, a feeling of self-importance, and a new belief system that defines the terrorist act as morally acceptable and the group's goals as of paramount importance. As Shaw (1988:366) explains:

Apparently membership in a terrorist group often provides a solution to the pressing personal needs of which the inability to achieve a desired niche in traditional society is the coup de grace. The terrorist identity offers the individual a role in society, albeit a negative one, which is commensurate with his or her prior expectations and sufficient to compensate for past losses. Group membership provides a sense of potency, an intense and close interpersonal environment, social status, potential access to wealth and a share in what may be a grandiose but noble social design. The powerful psychological forces of conversion in the group are sufficient to offset traditional social sanctions against violence....To the terrorists their acts may have the moral status of religious warfare or political liberation.

Terrorist groups are similar to religious sects or cults. They require total commitment by members; they often prohibit relations with outsiders, although this may not be the case with ethnic or separatist terrorist groups whose members are well integrated into the community; they regulate and sometimes ban sexual relations; they impose conformity; they seek cohesiveness through interdependence and mutual trust; and they attempt to brainwash individual members with their particular ideology. According to Harry C. Holloway, M.D., and Ann E. Norwood, M.D. (1997:417), the joining process for taking on the beliefs, codes, and cult of the terrorist group "involves an interaction between the psychological structure of the terrorist's personality and the ideological factors, group process, structural organization of the terrorist group and cell, and the sociocultural milieu of the group."

Citing Knutson, Ehud Sprinzak (1990:79), an American-educated Israeli political scientist, notes: "It appears that, as radicalization deepens, the collective group identity takes over much of the individual identity of the members; and, at the terrorist stage, the group identity reaches its peak." This group identity becomes of paramount importance. As Post (1990:38) explains: "Terrorists whose only sense of significance comes from being terrorists cannot be forced to give up terrorism, for to do so would be to lose their very reason for being." The terrorist group displays the characteristics of Groupthink (see Glossary), as described by I. Janis (1972). Among the characteristics that Janis ascribes to groups demonstrating Groupthink are illusions of invulnerability leading to excessive optimism and excessive risk taking, presumptions of the group's morality, one-dimensional perceptions of the enemy as evil, and intolerance of challenges by a group member to shared key beliefs.

Some important principles of group dynamics among legally operating groups can also be usefully applied to the analysis of terrorist group dynamics. One generally accepted principle, as demonstrated by W. Bion (1961), is that individual judgment and behavior are strongly influenced by the powerful forces of group dynamics. Every group, according to Bion, has two opposing forces--a rare tendency to act in a fully cooperative, goal-directed, conflict-free manner to accomplish its stated purposes, and a stronger tendency to sabotage the stated goals. The latter tendency results in a group that defines itself in relation to the outside world and acts as if the only way it can survive is by fighting against or fleeing from the perceived enemy; a group that looks for direction to an omnipotent leader, to whom they subordinate their own independent judgment and act as if they do not have minds of their own; and a group that acts as if the group will bring forth a messiah who will rescue them and create a better world. Post believes that the terrorist group is the apotheosis of the sabotage tendency, regularly exhibiting all three of these symptoms.

Both structure and social origin need to be examined in any assessment of terrorist group dynamics. In Post's (1987) view, structural analysis in particular requires identification of the locus of power. In the autonomous terrorist action cell, the cell leader is within the cell, a situation that tends to promote tension. In contrast, the action cells of a terrorist group with a well-differentiated structure are organized within columns, thereby allowing policy decisions to be developed outside the cells.

Post found that group psychology provides more insights into the ways of terrorists than individual psychology does. After concluding, unconvincingly, that there is no terrorist mindset, he turned his attention to studying the family backgrounds of terrorists. He found that the group dynamics of nationalist-separatist groups and anarchic-ideological groups differ significantly. Members of nationalist-separatist groups are often known in their communities and maintain relationships with friends and family outside the terrorist group, moving into and out of the community with relative ease. In contrast, members of anarchic-ideological groups have irrevocably severed ties with family and community and lack their support. As a result, the terrorist group is the only source of information and security, a situation that produces pressure to conform and to commit acts of terrorism.

Pressures to Conform

Peer pressure, group solidarity, and the psychology of group dynamics help to pressure an individual member to remain in the terrorist group. According to Post (1986), terrorists tend to submerge their own identities into the group, resulting in a kind of "group mind" and group moral code that requires unquestioned obedience to the group. As Crenshaw (1985) has observed, "The group, as selector and interpreter of ideology, is central." Group cohesion increases or decreases depending on the degree of outside danger facing the group.

The need to belong to a group motivates most terrorists who are followers to join a terrorist group. Behavior among terrorists is similar, in Post's analysis, because of this need by alienated individuals to belong. For the new recruit, the terrorist group becomes a substitute family, and the group's leaders become substitute parents. An implied corollary of Post's observation that a key motivation for membership in a terrorist group is the sense of belonging and the fraternity of like-minded individuals is the assumption that there must be considerable apprehension among members that the group could be disbanded. As the group comes under attack from security forces, the tendency would be for the group to become more cohesive.

A member with wavering commitment who attempts to question group decisions or ideology or to quit under outside pressure against the group would likely face very serious sanctions. Terrorist groups are known to retaliate violently against members who seek to drop out. In 1972, when half of the 30-member Rengo Sekigun (Red Army) terrorist group, which became known as the JRA, objected to the group's strategy, the dissenters, who included a pregnant woman who was thought to be "too bourgeois," were tied to stakes in the northern mountains of Japan, whipped with wires, and left to die of exposure. By most accounts, the decision to join a terrorist group or, for that matter, a terrorist cult like Aum Shinrikyo, is often an irrevocable one.

Pressures to Commit Acts of Violence

Post (1990:35) argues that "individuals become terrorists in order to join terrorist groups and commit acts of terrorism." Joining a terrorist group gives them a sense of "revolutionary heroism" and self-importance that they previously lacked as individuals. Consequently, a leader who is action-oriented is likely to have a stronger position within the group than one who advocates prudence and moderation. Thomas Strentz (1981:89) has pointed out that terrorist groups that operate against democracies often have a field commander who he calls an "opportunist," that is, an activist, usually a male, whose criminal activity predates his political involvement. Strentz applies the psychological classification of the antisocial personality, also known as a sociopath or psychopath, to the life-style of this type of action-oriented individual. His examples of this personality type include Andreas Baader and Hans Joachim Klein of the Baader-Meinhof Gang and Akira Nihei of the JRA. Although the opportunist is not mentally ill, Strentz explains, he "is oblivious to the needs of others and unencumbered by the capacity to feel guilt or empathy." By most accounts, Baader was unpleasant, constantly abusive toward other members of the group, ill-read, and an action-oriented individual with a criminal past. Often recruited by the group's leader, the opportunist may eventually seek to take over the group, giving rise to increasing tensions between him and the leader. Often the leader will manipulate the opportunist by allowing him the fantasy of leading the group.

On the basis of his observation of underground resistance groups during World War II, J.K. Zawodny (1978) concluded that the primary determinant of underground group decision making is not the external reality but the psychological climate within the group. For action-oriented terrorists, inaction is extremely stressful. For action-oriented members, if the group is not taking action then there is no justification for the group. Action relieves stress by reaffirming to these members that they have a purpose. Thus, in Zawodny's analysis, a terrorist group needs to commit acts of terrorism in order to justify its existence.

Other terrorists may feel that their personal honor depends on the degree of violence that they carry out against the enemy. In 1970 Black September's Salah Khalef ("Abu Iyad") was captured by the Jordanians and then released after he appealed to his comrades to stop fighting and to lay down their arms. Dobson (1975:52) reports that, according to the Jordanians, Abu Iyad "was subjected to such ridicule by the guerrillas who had fought on that he reacted by turning from moderation to the utmost violence."

Pearlstein points out that other examples of the political terrorist's self-justification of his or her terrorist actions include the terrorist's taking credit for a given terrorist act and forewarning of terrorist acts to come. By taking credit for an act of terrorism, the terrorist or terrorist group not only advertises the group's cause but also communicates a rhetorical self-justification of the terrorist act and the cause for which it was perpetrated. By threatening future terrorism, the terrorist or terrorist group in effect absolves itself of responsibility for any casualties that may result.

Terrorist Rationalization of Violence

Living underground, terrorists gradually become divorced from reality, engaging in what Ferracuti (1982) has described as a "fantasy war." The stresses that accompany their underground, covert lives as terrorists may also have adverse social and psychological consequences for them. Thus, as Taylor (1988:93) points out, although "mental illness may not be a particularly helpful way of conceptualizing terrorism, the acts of terrorism and membership in a terrorist organization may well have implications for the terrorist's mental health."

Albert Bandura (1990) has described four techniques of moral disengagement that a terrorist group can use to insulate itself from the human consequences of its actions. First, by using moral justification terrorists may imagine themselves as the saviors of a constituency threatened by a great evil. For example, Donatella della Porta (1992:286), who interviewed members of left-wing militant groups in Italy and Germany, observed that the militants "began to perceive themselves as members of a heroic community of generous people fighting a war against 'evil.'"

Second, through the technique of displacement of responsibility onto the leader or other members of the group, terrorists portray themselves as functionaries who are merely following their leader's orders. Conversely, the terrorist may blame other members of the group. Groups that are organized into cells and columns may be more capable of carrying out ruthless operations because of the potential for displacement of responsibility. Della Porta's interviews with left-wing militants suggest that the more compartmentalized a group is the more it begins to lose touch with reality, including the actual impact of its own actions. Other manifestations of this displacement technique include accusations made by Asahara, the leader of Aum Shinrikyo, that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) used chemical agents against him and the Japanese population.

A third technique is to minimize or ignore the actual suffering of the victims. As Bonnie Cordes (1987) points out, terrorists are able to insulate themselves from moral anxieties provoked by the results of their hit-and-run attacks, such as the use of time bombs, by usually not having to witness first-hand the carnage resulting from them, and by concerning themselves with the reactions of the authorities rather than with civilian casualties. Nevertheless, she notes that "Debates over the justification of violence, the types of targets, and the issue of indiscriminate versus discriminate killing are endemic to a terrorist group." Often, these internal debates result in schisms.

The fourth technique of moral disengagement described by Bandura is to dehumanize victims or, in the case of Islamist groups, to refer to them as "the infidel." Italian and German militants justified violence by depersonalizing their victims as "tools of the system," "pigs," or "watch dogs." Psychologist Frederick Hacker (1996:162) points out that terrorists transform their victims into mere objects, for "terroristic thinking and practices reduce individuals to the status of puppets." Cordes, too, notes the role reversal played by terrorists in characterizing the enemy as the conspirator and oppressor and accusing it of state terrorism, while referring to themselves as "freedom fighters" or "revolutionaries." As Cordes explains, "Renaming themselves, their actions, their victims and their enemies accords the terrorist respectability."

By using semantics to rationalize their terrorist violence, however, terrorists may create their own self-destructive psychological tensions. As David C. Rapoport (1971:42) explains:

All terrorists must deny the relevance of guilt and innocence, but in doing so they create an unbearable tension in their own souls, for they are in effect saying that a person is not a person. It is no accident that left-wing terrorists constantly speak of a "pig-society," by convincing themselves that they are confronting animals they hope to stay the remorse which the slaughter of the innocent necessarily generates.

Expanding on this rationalization of guilt, D. Guttman (1979:525) argues that "The terrorist asserts that he loves only the socially redeeming qualities of his murderous act, not the act itself." By this logic, the conscience of the terrorist is turned against those who oppose his violent ways, not against himself. Thus, in Guttman's analysis, the terrorist has projected his guilt outward. In order to absolve his own guilt, the terrorist must claim that under the circumstances he has no choice but to do what he must do. Although other options actually are open to the terrorist, Guttman believes that the liberal audience legitimizes the terrorist by accepting this rationalization of murder.

Some terrorists, however, have been trained or brainwashed enough not to feel any remorse, until confronted with the consequences of their actions. When journalist Eileen MacDonald asked a female ETA commando, "Amaia," how she felt when she heard that her bombs had been successful, she replied, after first denying being responsible for killing anyone: "Satisfaction. The bastards, they deserved it. Yes, I planted bombs that killed people." However, MacDonald felt that Amaia, who had joined the military wing at age 18, had never before questioned the consequences of her actions, and MacDonald's intuition was confirmed as Amaia's mood shifted from bravado to despondency, as she buried her head in her arms, and then groaned: "Oh, God, this is getting hard," and lamented that she had not prepared herself for the interview.

When Kim Hyun Hee (1993:104), the bomber of Korean Air Flight 858, activated the bomb, she had no moral qualms. "At that moment," she writes, "I felt no guilt or remorse at what I was doing; I thought only of completing the mission and not letting my country down." It was not until her 1988 trial, which resulted in a death sentence--she was pardoned a year later because she had been brainwashed--that she felt any remorse. "But being made to confront the victims' grieving families here in this courtroom," she writes, "I finally began to feel, deep down, the sheer horror of the atrocity I'd committed." One related characteristic of Kim, as told by one of her South Korean minders to McDonald, is that she had not shown any emotion whatsoever to anyone in the two years she (the minder) had known her.

The Terrorist's Ideological or Religious Perception

Terrorists do not perceive the world as members of governments or civil society do. Their belief systems help to determine their strategies and how they react to government policies. As Martha Crenshaw (1988:12) has observed, "The actions of terrorist organizations are based on a subjective interpretation of the world rather than objective reality."The variables from which their belief systems are formed include their political and social environments, cultural traditions, and the internal dynamics of their clandestine groups. Their convictions may seem irrational or delusional to society in general, but the terrorists may nevertheless act rationally in their commitment to acting on their convictions.

According to cognitive theory, an individual's mental activities (perception, memory, and reasoning) are important determinants of behavior. Cognition is an important concept in psychology, for it is the general process by which individuals come to know about and make sense of the world. Terrorists view the world within the narrow lens of their own ideology, whether it be Marxism-Leninism, anarchism, nationalism, Islamic fundamentalism (see Glossary), or some other ideology. Most researchers agree that terrorists generally do not regard themselves as terrorists but rather as soldiers, liberators, martyrs, and legitimate fighters for noble social causes. Those terrorists who recognize that their actions are terroristic are so committed to their cause that they do not really care how they are viewed in the outside world. Others may be just as committed, but loathe to be identified as terrorists as opposed to freedom fighters or national liberators.

Kristen Renwick Monroe and Lina Haddad Kreidie (1997) have found perspective--the idea that we all have a view of the world, a view of ourselves, a view of others, and a view of ourselves in relation to others--to be a very useful tool in understanding fundamentalism, for example. Their underlying hypothesis is that the perspectives of fundamentalists resemble one another and that they differ in significant and consistent ways from the perspectives of nonfundamentalists. Monroe and Kreidie conclude that "fundamentalists see themselves not as individuals but rather as symbols of Islam." They argue that it is a mistake for Western policymakers to treat Islamic fundamentalists as rational actors and dismiss them as irrational when they do not act as predicted by traditional cost/benefit models. "Islamic fundamentalism should not be dealt with simply as another set of political values that can be compromised or negotiated, or even as a system of beliefs or ideology--such as socialism or communism--in which traditional liberal democratic modes of political discourse and interaction are recognized." They point out that "Islamic fundamentalism taps into a quite different political consciousness, one in which religious identity sets and determines the range of options open to the fundamentalist. It extends to all areas of life and respects no separation between the private and the political."

Existing works that attempt to explain religious fundamentalism often rely on modernization theory and point to a crisis of identity, explaining religious fundamentalism as an antidote to the dislocations resulting from rapid change, or modernization. Islamic fundamentalism in particular is often explained as a defense against threats posed by modernization to a religious group's traditional identity. Rejecting the idea of fundamentalism as pathology, rational choice theorists point to unequal socioeconomic development as the basic reason for the discontent and alienation these individuals experience. Caught between an Islamic culture that provides moral values and spiritual satisfaction and a modernizing Western culture that provides access to material improvement, many Muslims find an answer to resulting anxiety, alienation, and disorientation through an absolute dedication to an Islamic way of life. Accordingly, the Islamic fundamentalist is commonly depicted as an acutely alienated individual, with dogmatic and rigid beliefs and an inferiority complex, and as idealistic and devoted to an austere lifestyle filled with struggle and sacrifice.

In the 1990s, however, empirical studies of Islamic groups have questioned this view. V. J. Hoffman-Ladd, for example, suggests that fundamentalists are not necessarily ignorant and downtrodden, according to the stereotype, but frequently students and university graduates in the physical sciences, although often students with rural or traditionally religious backgrounds. In his view, fundamentalism is more of a revolt of young people caught between a traditional past and a secular Western education. R. Euben and Bernard Lewis argue separately that there is a cognitive collision between Western and fundamentalist worldviews. Focusing on Sunni fundamentalists, Euben argues that their goals are perceived not as self-interests but rather as moral imperatives, and that their worldviews differ in critical ways from Western worldviews.

By having moral imperatives as their goals, the fundamentalist groups perceive the world through the distorting lens of their religious beliefs. Although the perceptions of the secular Arab terrorist groups are not so clouded by religious beliefs, these groups have their own ideological imperatives that distort their ability to see the world with a reasonable amount of objectivity. As a result, their perception of the world is as distorted as that of the fundamentalists. Consequently, the secular groups are just as likely to misjudge political, economic, and social realities as are the fundamentalist groups. For example, Harold M. Cubert argues that the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), guided by Marxist economic ideology, has misjudged the reasons for popular hostility in the Middle East against the West, "for such hostility, where it exists, is generally in response to the threat which Western culture is said to pose to Islamic values in the region rather than the alleged economic exploitation of the region's inhabitants." This trend has made the PFLP's appeals for class warfare irrelevant, whereas calls by Islamist groups for preserving the region's cultural and religious identity have been well received, at least among the nonsecular sectors of the population.