Military Psychology

Gerhard Ohrband – ULIM University, Moldova

11th lecture

Terrorism

Course structure

1. Introduction: Historical Overview, main applications2. Environmental Stressors3. Leadership4. Team Effectiveness5. Individual and Group Behaviour6. Clinical Psychology7. Selection and Classification8. Training 9. Human Factor Engineering10. Psychotherapy and Counseling11. Terrorism12. Trauma Therapy13. Psychological Warfare14. Ethical Issues for a Psychologist in the Armed Forces15. Review: Preparation for the exams

The killing of Americans and their civilian and military allies is a religious duty for each and every Muslim ...We - with God's help - call on every Muslim who believes in God and wishes to be rewarded to comply with God's order to kill Americans and plunder their money whenever and wherever they find it.

[The September 11th attack] gave a harsh lesson to these arrogant peoples, for whom freedom is but for the white race ... God willing, America's end is near.

- Osama Bin Laden, in a February, 1998, appeal to Muslims, and a videotaped statement in the fall of 2001

Content

Who becomes a terrorist and why? Victims of terrorism: post-traumatic stress

disorder (PTSD) Trauma therapy In detail: Expressive writing (J. Pennebaker)

Why study terrorism from a psychological perspective? Terrorism is a behavioral phenomenon

fostered by human agency Someone decides to carry out a terrorist act,

and is motivated enough to perpetrate the carnage, often to the point of taking her or his own life in the process.

Questions

How do people bring themselves to perpetrate the horrific things that terrorists do?

Why do they hate us so much? Are they mentally disturbed? Do they have a death wish? Were they driven to their heinous acts by sheer

desperation? Is there anything we have done to incur their wrath?

What is terrorism?

The illegal use or threatened use of force or violence; an intentto coerce societies or governments by inducing fear in their populations; typically with ideological and political motives and justifications; an ‘‘extrasocietal’’ element, either ‘‘outside’’ society in the case of domestic terrorism or ‘‘foreign’’ in the case of international terrorism.

The purpose of terrorism is not the single act of wanton destruction, it is the reaction it seeks to provoke: economic collapse, the backlash, the hatred, the division, the elimination of tolerance, until societies cease to reconcile their differences and become defined by them.

Two major psychological approachesTerrorism as a syndrome: Conception of terrorism as an

entity, or a monolith, with a set of identifiable characteristics

Implication: “terrorists” will be demarcated from non-terrorists by a specific, somewhat pathological pattern of personality traits, and motivation

“terrorist group” with distinct organizational structure and evolutionary trajectory

Originates from discernible ‘root causes’ (e.g., poverty or political oppression) which removal will make it go away

Terrorism as a tool Terrorism as a means to an

end, a tactic of dealing with (real or imagined) conflict that any party could use

Terrorism as a syndrome – the terrorist personality Early psychological investigations, inquired whether

terrorists are drawn to extreme violence by some kind of psychological disturbance.

It turned out, however, as a category, they are no psychopaths, and they show no systematic signs of mental pathology.

Yes, there were indications that Western European terrorists tended to come from broken homes (Post, 1990), or that the Basque ETA terrorists tended to come from mixed Basque and Spanish heritage.

Discussion: Is coming from a broken home, or a mixed family background a necessary or a sufficient condition for a career in terrorism?

The terrorist personality

Answer: Under the same circumstances, one could became a garden-variety criminal, a suffering artist, even a selfless humanitarian.

It also became apparent that there is nothing particularly psychologically special about terrorists’ personalities.

Painstaking empirical research conducted on the German Red Army Faction (the Bader Meinhoff Gang), on the Italian Red Army Brigades, the Basque ETA and the various Palestinian organizations, for example came out empty and didn’t uncover anything particularly striking about the psychological make up of members of terrorist organizations (McCauley, in press).

Root causes of terrorism?

Perhaps then, the root causes of terrorism provide the unifying “glue”, explaining terrorism anywhere?

Research seems to have “struck out” in this domain as well. First, the empirical data yielded no evidence for a relation between poverty and terrorism, both at the level of the individual perpetrator and at the level of the terrorists’ country of origin (Krueger and Maleckova, 2003, Atran, 2003).

At the individual level, not all terrorists or extremists are disadvantaged. In fact, the leading ones often are quite well off (e.g., Osama Bin, the 9/11 terrorists, the Baader Meinhoff gang, the Weather Underground).

Root causes of terrorism?

Several empirical studies have failed to find any direct connection between either education, or poverty on the one hand and the propensity to engage in terrorism on the other (Russell and Miller, 1983; Hudson, 1999, Krueger and Maleckova, 2003; Berrebi, 2003; Atran, 2003).

On the aggregate level, ”in the late 1990s and 2000, when terrorism reached new heights against Israeli citizens, the typical Palestinian was reporting a rosier economic forecast and unemployment was declining. Using a time-series analysis, Berrebi (2003) found little correlation between economic conditions in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and the number of terrorist incidents” (Krueger and Laikin, ibid).

Poverty and terrorism

Secondly, the link between poverty and terrorism is conceptually obscure. Presumably, is underlying logic is that poverty fosters suffering and frustration, in turn fomenting aggression against others, that is, terrorism. But in scientific psychology the simple frustration-aggression hypothesis has long been discredited (Berkowitz, 1993). Frustration could lead to withdrawal, depression, escape, or aggression directed against self instead of against others.

Furthermore, Maslow’s (1970) motivational theory suggests that a lack of basic means of subsistence (food and shelter) is likely to inspire a direct quest for those, rather high level ideological pursuits that terrorists typically claim as their objectives. Thus, both conceptual considerations and empirical evidence suggest that poverty is neither a sufficient nor a necessary cause of terrorism. There are relatively poor nations that have not spawned terrorism, (e.g., East European nations under the Soviet rule) and relatively privileged nations (such as Saudi Arabia, for example) that have.

Political repression

If not poverty, or poor education, what might be, the, the root cause of terrorism? Some data in the Krueger and Laitin (in press) samples hint at the possibility that many of today’s terrorists originate in countries that suffer from political repression.

But from the psychological standpoint there are reasons to doubt a general causal link between repression and terrorism as well. Recall that Western democracies such as Germany, Italy, Spain, France, Canada, or the US have all seen instances of indigenous terrorism, whereas Stalin’s Soviet Union, for example (a repressive regime by all criteria), or Hitler’s Nazi Germany saw none.

Political oppression

Nor does psychological theory support a causal connection between repression and terrorism. Political oppression could be frustrating, to be sure, but again there doesn’t seem to exist a direct link between frustration and aggression against others (Berkowitz, 2003).

Other responses such as escape from the oppressor’s hold have been common. Thus, rather than engaging in terrorism tens of thousands of Germans attempted to escape the oppression of the former GDR by fleeing over the Berlin Wall. Furthermore, numerous participants in terrorism across the globe seem no more politically oppressed than they are poor. Their privileged socio economic status has allowed them considerable freedom of expression (e.g., the pursuit of a professional career) and of movement across the globe.

Group dynamics

Group dynamics. Analyses of terrorism’s organizational structure and group dynamics fare better than notions of the terrorist personality or of root causes of terrorism. McCauley’s (in press) pyramid model highlights the broad base of support that terrorist activity often requires. The foundation of the pyramid consists of sympathizers’ with the terrorist cause that may not themselves be prepared to launch terrorist activities. This is the “sentiment pool” on which support terrorists may count in times of need. “In Northern Ireland, for instance, the base of the pyramid is all who agree with “Brits Out”. In the Islamic world, the base of the pyramid is all those who agree that the U.S. has been hurting and humiliating Muslims for fifty years. The pyramid is essential to the terrorists for cover and for recruits..” (ibid., p. 21).

Group dynamics

In this vein too, Gurr (1998, p. 94) writes that the “..erosion of political support is not an immediate cause of decline in terrorist campaigns but an underlying one..” , For instance the decline in the 1970s of the Front de Liberation du Quebec (FLQ) may be attributed to the decline of political support for its activities by the separatist Parti Quebecois. Similarly, the decline in the U.S. of the Weather Underground, and the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA) has been attributed to a withdrawal of public support from the deadly violence it perpetrated.

Terrorism as a tool

The “tool” view of terrorism requires the coming to terms with the fact that in recent history numerous organized states actually practiced “terrorism”. Rummel (1996) estimates that during the 20th century, 169, 000,000 people were killed by the activities of governments including 130,000,000 million killed by people’s own governments. The remaining 39, 000,000 are the estimate of civilians killed by enemy forces during war. In the preponderance of cases, “killing by government” was carried out in order to break the people’s morale, and hence to advance the state’s objectives. This, of course, is quintessentially “terroristic”. According to Rummel (1996), merely 518,000 civilians were killed in the 20th century by non state groups, of which proper “terrorists” (e.g. as opposed to guerilla fighters), are only a part. This amounts to less than half the percentage point of civilians whose demise was brought about by state power. As McCauley (in press, p. 2) observed: “Terrorism is principally a state strategy because the state usually has the predominant power of violence. States use terror to extract men and resources from territory controlled by the state and to gain new territory..”.

The moral dimension

A major implication of the “tool” view of terrorism has been seen to derive from its moral unacceptability, warranting a total “war on terrorism”. As Telhami (2004, pp. 16-17) put it : “The argument against terrorism is essentially moral: To dissuade others from using such tactics, one has to speak with moral authority..: The ends no matter how worthy cannot justify the means. . the deliberate attack on civilian targets is unacceptable under any circumstances. Carr (2003), similarly brands terrorism as “murderous”, “brutal” and “savage”, on an equal plane with such morally reprehensible activities as genocide, piracy, and slavery. arguing that there are “no circumstances under which [it is] excusable” (p. 24). He ultimately argued for deploying massive force against terrorism, amply justified by its essential immorality and evil nature.

Moral dilemmas

But the “end doesn’t justify the means” phrase, though intuitively appealing turns out to be more complex than initially meets the eye. For, strictly speaking, it is precisely the end that justifies a means, what else? Just think about it: Why else would one get into a car and drive (the means) if not to get somewhere (the end) ? Why else would one maintain a diet (the means) if not for one’s health (the end), and so on. At least in its literal sense then, the “end doesn’t justify the means” phrase seems inaccurate.

Internet resources

http://whyfiles.org/140terror_psych/ http://www.loc.gov/rr/frd/pdf-files/Soc_Psych_of_Terrorism.pdf http://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/208552.pdf http://www.ssrc.org/sept11/essays/mccauley.htm http://c21.maxwell.af.mil/cts-psy.htm http://gseweb.harvard.edu/~t656_web/peace/

Articles_Spring_2004/Weisbach_Jessica_terrorist_mind.htm www.causes-of-terrorism.net/ http://www.tir.org/metapsy/terrorism.htmTraumatic Incidents Reduction Association