Conducted by Rebecca Yergin

Bruce Hoffman is a professor in the Security Studies Program at Georgetown University’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service where he is an expert in terrorism and counterterrorism. He previously held the Corporate Chair in Counterterrorism and Counterinsurgency at the RAND Corporation, served as Director of RAND’s Washington, D.C. Office and advised authorities in Iraq, as well as the members of the Baker-Hamilton
Commission. In 2006, he revised and expanded his celebrated book, Inside Terrorism, originally published in 1998, which provides a historical perspective on the evolution of terrorism and terrorist motivations. 

You begin Inside Terrorism by asking, “What is terrorism?” How would you define it?

The most common accepted meaning of terrorism is that it is violence or a threat of violence undertaken in the pursuit of political change by a sub-state or nonstate actor. I think one of the problems in defining terrorism is that it is a very malleable concept because it has changed and evolved over time historically, and that has often affected the meaning. I think the important thing is to look at the act or the nature of the act, not the identity of the perpetrator because the identity of the perpetrator raises all sorts of subjective questions about whether you sympathize or identify with the perpetrator and his or her cause.

The problem is that you have to look at the act, not at the identity of the perpetrator because when you start to look at the identity of the perpetrator, you start to weigh whether they are legitimate, whether they are justified in using violence, but in point of fact is the act itself—bombing, shooting, kidnapping, hostage-taking—that should be the sole determinant of whether something is a terrorist act or not. These are all crimes and all violent acts. When they are done by a non-state actor in pursuit of political change, they are most commonly called terrorism.

I don’t think that a definition of “terrorism” exclusively has to involve attacks on civilians. But, I do think that one of the main characteristics of modern terrorism has been that it does often deliberately target civilians.

What did “terrorism” mean in its origins, and how has the meaning of “terrorism” changed over time? To what do you attribute the changes?

The word itself, which emerged during the French Revolution, was ironically more closely associated with democracy and the birth of democracy as part of efforts to deal with reactionary or recidivist elements. Its meaning has changed over time to where today terrorism is ineluctably seen as something that is inimical to democracy. “Terrorism,” I think, has also assumed a distinctly pejorative meaning. It’s one of the few words in the English language that evokes very visceral and emotional responses—rarely positive ones. You see this by the fact that, unlike previous eras in history, when terrorists—even if they didn’t openly admit they were terrorists—would nonetheless describe the violence they engaged in as terroristic or as terrorist. Now, you never find any members of any terrorist group admitting that they are terrorists or that the violence they use is terroristic because they fear that whatever legitimacy or justice their cause may have would be instantly denuded. Accordingly, sophistic or euphemistic alternatives are today employed by terrorists to describe themselves as “resistance fighters” and their violence as forms of “resistance.” Personally, I think it is lamentable that both the media and much scholarly discourse have abetted this process of semantic obfuscation.

We often use “terrorist” as a negative label, something we attach to our enemies or something we attach to people we don’t like. Often times it is justified, but sometimes it isn’t. But, more so, I think, mainstream media reflexively now shies away from using the terms “terrorism” or “terrorist” at all because these words have become so pejorative and negatively value-laden. For acts that are demonstrably terrorism, the media will do rhetorical or intellectual gymnastics to avoid using that term. In my book, I point to the Beslan siege of 2004—to me, terrorists seizing a school with children and holding them as hostages in inhumane conditions—well, if that’s not terrorism, what is? They used innocent people as a bargaining tool and a lever against the government and attacked innocents in pursuit of political change. In the end, if you look at all the mainstream American and British newspapers—not just print, also television and radio—it was “Chechen guerillas, Chechen rebels, Chechen underground.” It’s as if they went through these rhetorical circumlocutions to do anything possible to avoid using that terms “terrorism” or “terrorist.” In fact, the only time either was used was when President Putin or one of his spokespersons was quoted, and then it was put in sort of double scare quotes in order to emphasize that this was a statement from a Russian leader or official spokesperson. I think that is very worrisome that we now habitually hesitate to call “terrorism” what it is.

Look at what exists in Iraq. It always amazes me that the term “insurgent” is used because classical insurgency is something very different from what we see in Iraq. We have shied away from using “terrorism” when that is exactly what the violence in Iraq has been. It has been the assassination of leading moderate political figures like Ayatollahs Khoie and Hakim and senior United Nations officials like Sergio Vieira de Mello; it has obviously been “terrorism” when massive car bombs have targeted Iraqi civilians. “Terrorism” is what I would call bombs that are enhanced with chlorine gas and other unconventional weapons also directed against civilian targets. It is “terrorism” when Iraqi and foreign civilians are kidnapped and in some cases brutally executed by beheading. If these things are not terrorism, then I’m not sure what is. But, you can see the impact of the aversion to this particular word by its conspicuous absence for all discourse. And, also, I think it is not just aversion, but it’s also become a form of politicization that has now led people to avoid using it. In other words, when the word “terrorism” is used, it’s immediately assumed that someone is making a judgment.

How would individuals and organizations committing acts that we would label as “terrorism” describe what they do?

The sort of buzz word that is favored now is “resistance,” which is also a horrible bastardization and twisting of that word. I was just watching a documentary last night about the two young women who died in a suicide attack in Israel in 2002. One was the suicide bomber, a Palestinian, and one was the victim. The father of the suicide bomber said that in the Palestinian context, violence can never be terrorism—it’s resistance. However one may agree or disagree or sympathize or not sympathize with the plight of the Palestinians—that to me is not the issue. The issue is that I don’t think there is any justification anywhere at any time for the innocent loss of life or the infliction of wanton bloodshed on innocent civilians—whether they are Israeli, Palestinian, American, Iraqi, Afghan, or otherwise. When violence like that is inflicted in combat, imperfect though the system is, it is still termed a war crime. We understand that inflicting deliberate violence on civilians in warfare is wrong, so why do we give terrorists a bye or a pass and allow them to call it “resistance”?

You explain that the religious imperative for terrorism is the most important defining characteristic of terrorist activity today. To what would you attribute the emergence of these religiously motivated organizations? How has the religious aspect of their motivation—as opposed to more political aspects—changed the nature of their organizations’ structures and the threats they pose?

Significantly, I think that the birth of terrorism 2,000 years ago had a central religious motive. One could argue that with the French Revolution, and then with the events in the 19th century, that terrorism changed from being predominantly motivated, at least in some realm, by religion. But then there was nationalism, the concept of the secular state and the liberal republic emerged, where the ruler was not ruling because of God’s will, or in other words, by divine right. Obviously terrorism in that period had more secular overtones, especially since this was a time when countries were being forged out of various nationalities; for example, this was the time of German and Italian unification. Conceptions of nationalism began to take hold in a much more prominent fashion, and you have terrorists attempting to use terrorism for its didactic potential: to highlight the existence of a revolutionary movement and seek to rally sympathy and support. By the end of the nineteenth century, you have the first stirrings of terrorism motivated by nationalism, especially in the Balkans with the International Macedonian Revolutionary Organization.

You also have the People’s Will and other movements in Russia that were attempting to overthrow the Tsar. And you saw the anarchists and their nihilist agenda at the time, which was in response to modernity and to industrialization. Again, terrorism in this period became enormously secular, and it remained as such until the late twentieth century when nationalist, separatist, or irredentist ideological motivations predominated.

Around the 1980s, however, you see a revival in religious terrorism, largely in response to the revolution that overthrew the Shah of Iran and brought the Ayatollah Khomeini and a theocracy to power in Iran and then Iran’s efforts to export the Revolution, especially in the years following to Lebanon with the Hezbollah. This was also the period that was really the twilight of the Cold War. In some respects it was, firstly, the discrediting of communism as an organizing principle or a global ideology in the 1980s that was then followed by a crisis of capitalism and the free market and liberalism in many newly democratized countries where the types of freedoms they had long hungered for were realized but did not provide either answers or a demonstrably viable alternative, and you saw this religious resurgence. What I bring out in the book, and what I always thought was fascinating, is that although we have almost an axiomatic response to religion and terrorism, we immediately think radical Islam, but we see the same phenomenon in the same period unfolding with radical Sikh separatist movement and the Messianic Jewish terrorists amongst the settlers in the West Bank. Also, in the United States, Timothy McVeigh, himself, was not a religious terrorist, and his motivations were not theological—he was not justifying his violence based on scripture nor was he following the edicts of some clerical authority. At the same time, it is incontrovertible that he trafficked and traveled in those same circles as white supremacists, survivalists millenialists, and others who gathered in compounds to await the apocalypse—and, at least ,drank in and imbibed an ideology that saw violence as not only necessary for political change, but as divinely decreed or ordained. Certainly other white supremacists in the United States have justified their violence using scripture.

As I argued in a paper I first wrote in 1987, the nature of terrorism was changing, that the ethical and moral foundations—in other words, the legitimization and justification of terrorism—was already changing in the 1980s, and that religious terrorism, embryonic though it was, was far more lethal because it embraced a much more open-ended category of enemies. The pathways of an individual becoming a terrorist were much more truncated because of the fact that God’s telling them to do something; it is not a long path of having to convince oneself to take up violence when it is often communicated that when you are not engaging in these acts of violence, you are disobeying God. Then, in 1993, I took that argument further and said that the first terrorist incident that would involve an unconventional weapon—whether it was biological or a chemical weapon or a radiological or nuclear one—would more likely involve a religious millennial cult that we weren’t paying attention to than some of the more stereotypical, secular terrorists of that time. Then, two years later, with the attack on the Tokyo subway, that was proven accurate. It wasn’t a great feat of prediction or prognostication
or genius on my part. It was just looking at trends and seeing more and more terrorists who were using religious justification—often in millennialist or apocalyptic terms—that had lead me to that conclusion. Then, the first edition of my book came out when various Palestinian groups motivated more prominently by religion than in the past, were embarking on a suicide terrorism—admittedly a much more modest campaign than that which we have seen in the 21st century. But, nonetheless, I think it was all coming together that this wasn’t, firstly, just an Islamic phenomenon, but it was one that was affecting religious movements around the world, and also one that had just as powerful an impact on mainstream religion as on cults and other religious movements on the periphery.

You have just explained that the rise of religiously motivated terrorism is not just an Islamic phenomenon—that it is affecting the world and impacting mainstream religions, cults, and other movements on the periphery. What common strands unite the strategies and tactics of religiously motivated terrorism, and how do they differ?

Not all terrorism today is religious, but for the United States right now, the most consequential forms are. When one looks at suicide terrorism, 90 percent of the groups using suicide terrorism justify their violence on religious basis—in many cases Islamic. But it’s not something that is just restricted to Islam. Baruch Goldstein’s attack on the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron in 1994, one could say, was a form of suicide terrorism.
His death was not essential for the commission of the act, as in what we regard as suicide terrorists who strap bombs on themselves. But, clearly, when he opened fire with an M16 and, hurling hand grenades in a Mosque packed with worshippers, he would have known that it was very unlikely that he was going to emerge alive. Timothy McVeigh, for example, initially planned the Oklahoma City bombing as a suicide attack. He only dissuaded himself in doing so when on his reconnaissance at the Murrah building, he discovered that, firstly, there was no security, and, secondly, he could park a van in this indented loading zone that was only 11 feet from the building, and he calculated that would be enough to take down to building, so in the end he did not have to resort to suicide terrorism. Certainly the Tamil Tigers have used suicide tactics and are a secular group, so it is not just a phenomena restricted to any one region of the world or any one religion.

What religious terrorism has in common—and this is what separates it from secular terrorism—is that the violence is justified and legitimized through scripture, through some holy text, it is communicated by some clerical authority, who is claiming to interpret that text or indeed in some cases to speak to God. The violence is a requirement; it is incumbent upon a true believer, in the sense that not undertaking the violence, one is disobeying his god or his belief system. There is usually an element of self-sacrifice involved in terrorism in general, but the concept of martyrdom, which is I think inextricably one that has strong religious overtones historically is also the other important motivation.

I think that what is also unique about religious terrorism is perhaps, even more than other forms of terrorism, is that there is a very Manichean mindset. Good and bad, black and white—there are no gradations, no grey area. Either you are a part of the religious movement or, you’re not, you’re a sub-human: a “kuffar” or a “mud person” or a “dog” or a “dirty Arab”—whatever coarse language is used—it’s the deliberate dehumanizing of one’s enemy.

You attribute the increase in suicide attacks to the increasing trend of religiously motivated terrorism, and you also explain that individuals interviewed on the subject who had a “typical suicidal personality” were not the uneducated and poor individuals that much of the world perceives them to be—rather they were often middle class people with paying jobs. What constitutes this “typical suicidal personality,” and how does it correlate with the rising religious component of terrorist activity?

I think one of the problems is that there is not a typical personality of the suicide terrorist, much less the ordinary terrorists. The patterns we have seen defy simplification—suicide bombers have been young and old, male and female, married and single, deeply religious and recent converts, people from some of the best universities in the world and the sons of millionaires as well as people drawn from the maw poverty who spend most of their life marred in crime. There almost is no profile. Based on what I know of suicide terrorism—what is the motivation? I think it is obviously this profoundly held, deep-seated grievance. I think it is the terrorists’ belief that they are doing something fundamentally altruistic; they are surrendering their most precious possession, their lives for their cause. It is rarely, as is often depicted in the media, desperate, frustrated individuals with no other recourse and no place else to turn: that because of this intense anger, they are driven to suicide terrorism. I think it is a much more rational and calculated choice, and it is one that often is encouraged and manipulated by terrorist organizations that see suicide terrorism as an instrument of warfare. These organizations dress this strategic decision with a variety of personal incentives and theological justifications in order to attract recruits who are willing to blow themselves up.

Why do you think there is this perception that terrorists are desperate, uneducated people?

Well, that’s the way we look at terrorists. We don’t want to think that they can at all be like us. We want to think that they are monsters, in essence, and that is there is something fundamentally psychologically unstable about them, that there is some flaw in their existence that is so extreme that it has driven them to commit these acts of violence. I think it defies our imaginations to think that, in many cases, these are very well-educated, very rational, highly articulate individuals that have made a conscious and deliberate choice to, in their eyes, martyr themselves.

What impacts have Al-Qaeda’s actions in Sept. 11—and Sept. 11, itself—had on Al-Qaeda and on other terrorist groups?

Certainly, 9/11 remains one of the most stunning acts of deception ever perpetrated in any act of violence against any country because it was a very simple deception on which the whole operation was predicated—that, in the four aircrafts full of passengers, the crews would assume this was an ordinary terrorist hijacking. Past experience had revealed that standard operating procedure said that the best way to survive is to cooperate
with the hijackers and not try to resist, and on three of the four planes the passengers did. You had a more or less docile population. On the fourth plane, when the passengers heard this was not an ordinary hijacking but, rather, that their planes would be turned into human cruise missiles, they, of course, rebelled and foiled the terrorist plot.

So, 9/11—with the abilities of three out of the four attacks to strike at the continental United States as no terrorist organization and no adversary has since Washington was burned during the War of 1812—had an enormous and unfortunately very negative effect on world-wide events. If it was not proof that the terrorism worked—and it didn’t work because the United States didn’t collapse and didn’t capitulate to the terrorist demands, so even if it showed terrorism did not work on a strategically tactical level— it showed how terrorism, as an asymmetric form of warfare can inflict nearly unbearable pain and suffering on an exponentially more powerful enemy.

Unfortunately, I think 9/11 has inspired and motivated terrorists elsewhere. And I think that is certainly bin Laden’s message, that terrorism is a form of catharsis where you, too, can strike out against far more powerful enemies, even if you cannot defeat them; you can still gain the satisfaction of inflicting this pain and suffering on them and still causing them to change their behavior, which is one of the key intentions of the terrorist act. That is what terrorism is also designed to do—to cause profound changes in the targeted society and thereby undermine public will and confidence in the ability of their political leaders and government to protect them.

The United States did not capitulate or crumble. It did not fall prey to the terrorists’ intimidation. But, at the same time, Al-Qaeda sees their struggle fundamentally seen as a war of attrition, where over time they will slowly undermine us—enervate out military, distract us with attacks, undermine public support for authority, and cause the public to question their leaders. Al-Qaeda can take satisfaction in at least having achieved this singularly important transformation of America’s sense of security and safety and well-being. I think this is what motivates and emboldens terrorists to carry on with their struggles: the belief, that these tactical victories—inflated out of all proportions—will inevitably led to the strategic collapse of their enemy.

So, in that sense, I think both Al-Qaeda’s clever use of deception in dealing a stunning blow to the United States and the impact that they have been able to have on the United States and around the world in terms of perceptions safety and security lead to an illusion of power on the part of the terrorists that I think is divorced from reality. But, it is an illusion they cling to and believe with a fervor that impels them to continue with their struggles and engage in violence in the belief that eventually they will be triumphant.

What resources allow Al-Qaeda to continue its struggle and engage in violence?

One of the greatest resources terrorists have today, unfortunately, is anti-Americanism—the distrust of America. It is going to be imperative to counter that, and to reverse such misplaced views.

I think, though, the fact that they don’t have to win in battle to defeat us—that they just have to raise the levels of pain and suffering—is also something that they have discovered in Iraq. Regardless of how Iraq ends up, it will be a lesson that terrorists around the world will adopt. If you look at Iraq, a bunch of guys with weapons no more sophisticated than cordless phones and garage door openers have been able to challenge—maybe not defeat, but challenge—not just the military of the world’s remaining super power, but the most technologically advanced military in the history of mankind. I think that is a very important message of inspiration and power that is going to resonate beyond Iraq. This means the problems we face today are not just going to go away when Iraq is resolved.

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