Overseas Terrorism in Canada

This is a commonly held sentiment and a mistake. On the surface, Canada appears to be a peaceful country — provided that one never reads the smaller stories buried in our newspapers or examines the sanguinary aspects of our history. For a country that was conceived, gestated, born and matured because of conflict and warfare, comparatively little political violence occurs here.

Our constitutional document, the British North American Act, pledges itself to the pursuit of "peace, order, and good government." While no Canadian is ever really prepared to accept our various levels of governments as being good, compared to those of many other peoples, they are. We have built a decent society.

Canada has a long cosmopolitan history and in many ways is still a frontier society. Both of these are traits that encourage immigration and we welcome newcomers — provided that they are prepared to live peaceful, quiet, and mannerly Canadian lives. But things have changed over the last 25 years while we were not paying attention.

As we opened our gates wider than ever, tolerance became a public virtue rather than a commonly-held private one, which means that it became rude to publicly express any concerns about some of the people flowing into Canada, and somehow impure to listen to such complaints. All seemed well in the peaceable kingdom, and that was all most of us wanted to know.

We conditioned ourselves too well: Canadian Sikhs started to fall prey to violent terrorists who wanted to change their practices and draw off their prosperity to fuel a war in the Punjab, and most of us barely blinked. Even the 1985 Air India bombing was seen by most Canadians as really having nothing to do with us. A year later, Sri Lankan Tamils started to arrive in numbers, and hardly anyone recognized that this was an entire community under the control of the supporters of a homeland terrorist campaign.

In 1994, Ahmed Ressam was just another refugee claimant with just another fraudulent entry document who came to Canada and dropped out of sight — like thousands of others. Again, it was nothing to be alarmed about. The extraordinary had become ordinary, and it was rude to draw conclusions. Who knew that he would next come to our attention as an al Qaeda terrorist?

That peaceful, civil, and cosmopolitan society we want has not vanished, nor is it really endangered — provided that we become intolerant about one particular point. We must become absolutely intolerant of those who come here to perpetuate other people’s wars and prey on our citizens who share their background. Our future depends on it.

Chapter One

On the Nature and Characteristics of Terrorism

The Canadian Contribution

Somewhere, perhaps today, in Sri Lanka, a 33-year-old woman is preparing her vest pack of high-grade military plastic explosives interlaced with nails for fragmentation effects. She is not married, and she has no children. Instead, she dedicated her life to a cause and its leader. If it suits the leader to break the ceasefire and send her running into a crowded schoolhouse and detonate her bomb, she will do it without hesitation. Such an act will complete her life and prove her love for the leader.

Deep in Southern Colombia, a guerrilla is watching the approach of a National Police patrol through the night vision scope on his sniper rifle. Their sergeant is unaware of the "death dot" laser that is playing over his genitals, heart, and head -- only the guerrilla can see the infrared laser pointer that shows where his bullet will go when he finally decides to pull the trigger. The head would be quick and clean, but a shot in the genitals would mean a painful death or a maimed life of humiliating pity. Either way, the National Police will think twice about patrolling this village again.

A teenager’s attention span can be quite short, but not today. He is paying close heed to the older man who tells him how close to get to the café before detonating his explosive and ball-bearing impregnated vest. The bomb vest is heavy, uncomfortable, and chafes, but to the boy it is an instrument of glorious achievement. Until he decided on martyrdom, a life of emptiness and frustration loomed before him. Now he can fulfill his duty and become a hero to his peers in his West Bank town. The man has also promised that a martyr’s family will be taken care of, and the family home will remain secure.

The money has arrived today and so have new papers proving that a new job awaits him after his flight across the Atlantic. The Takfiri always know how to move money, find travel documents and live in the heart of the Enemy’s world. The training is finished and he has proven his worthiness by completing it after keeping his faith intact in a world of temptation. Now it is time to live quietly and unobtrusively -- perhaps for years -- until another Takfir brings him the chemicals and the target for the hydrogen cyanide gas bomb he will make with them.

To most Canadians, the stories encapsulated above are exotic, remote, and somebody else’s problem. Unfortunately, this is untrue as all of these stories could easily have Canadian connections. Diverting money from government grants to an immigration agency in Toronto may have paid for the suicide bomber’s plastic explosives. Proceeds from the sales of cocaine in Edmonton might have been used to purchase the high-tech sniper rifle in Florida. The aspiring martyr in the West Bank could have been indoctrinated in a school paid for by a Muslim Charity operating in Montreal. The Islamic Fundamentalist with plans for a poison gas attack is perhaps coming to live in Halifax.

If there is one lesson to learn from the attacks of September 11^th, 2001, it is that instability on the other side of the world can be a problem for stable sovereign nations. This also means that our security and stability are dependent upon the security and stability of other countries and regions; it is in our best interests to look after their interests.

Canada is connected with the rest of the world; it is our market, our supplier, and our vacation site. We have citizens who have come from virtually every nation on the planet. As a result, this means that problems elsewhere in the world are our problems too. They are not something we can ignore. Additionally, as a trading nation with a cosmopolitan population, we have a responsibility to other nations. We owe them security and protection from internal problems, and this is a responsibility that sovereign nations owe each other.

Notwithstanding the desires and fond beliefs of some of our citizenry, the rest of the World does not necessarily love us, for Canada is a Western nation and a part of what some might consider as the "Anglo Saxon Mafia". While many Canadians may feel that our purported reputation as Peacekeepers (a fantasy that does not withstand objective scrutiny) or as a multicultural country may exempt us from hatred by others, we remain a democratic society with the same background and vitality as other Western nations. This vitality has attracted spiteful and envious hatred.

Also, as may be apparent in an examination of the nature and motivation of terrorism, being a tolerant and cosmopolitan society does not mitigate against risk. In fact, it is more likely to increase it. While Canada is capable of generating some terrorism of its own, the most severe danger has been imported as potential terrorists and terrorist supporters creep in almost unnoticed with the tide of newcomers arriving here every year.

Since the end of the Cold War, the most dangerous conflicts around the world have been internal ones. The state vs. state violence that most Canadians think of as ‘war’ has become rare, and is replaced almost entirely with conflicts where one of more of the participants are non-state actors such as guerrillas, tribal militias, armed political factions, vigilantes, mobs, organized criminal societies, and terrorists.

These forces, trivial and remote though they may seem, are at once both a problem in themselves, and a symptom of other problems. Nor are they necessarily small and weak. If left to their own devices they can generate civil conflicts that can kill hundreds of thousands of people, destabilize whole regions, and bankrupt nations. With the intimidation of officials and police and money from enormously lucrative illegal enterprises such as narcotics or diamond smuggling, insurgent forces can corrupt institutions, buy weapons and equipment, and sustain themselves for decades -- often long after the conditions that created them have gone.

More to the point for Canada, these non-state actors have moved into our country to take advantages of opportunities we present to them. The members of some groups come here when the price on their heads is too high at home. Others come to generate new followers among their countrymen and co-religionists from home, or to define and enforce a new system of beliefs among them. Canada can be a market for the black or gray market activities that feed their movements; to collect money openly and legally, or to quietly live until the time is right to resume the struggle.

The Failure of Definition

Terrorism is just one form of violent human behavior. It has escaped easy definition by the UN, as well as by governments. While most North Americans can recognize the hijacking of an aircraft by armed militants or the bombing of an office by some shadowy group, as terrorism, nothing is ever quite what it seems, and the problem of identifying terrorism remains.

The distinguished American analyst Walter Laqueur, in the first paragraph of The New Terrorism, begins by mentioning that terrorism is violence, but not all violence is terrorism. He goes on to say that terrorism is difficult to define precisely, but should not be mixed up with activities undertaken in the course of civil war, banditry, or guerrilla warfare. Unfortunately, people who hope to provoke a civil war often undertake terrorism; and there are those who plan to subsidize their terrorism through the use of banditry. Moreover, many guerrilla movements evolved from an earlier terrorist campaign and still employ its tactics.

Bruce Hoffman, a former director of research on terrorism at RAND, and one of the formidable scholars and intellects at the University of Saint Andrew’s Centre of Terrorism and Political Violence, has also grown reluctant to define terrorism. However, he does settle on the admittedly imprecise description of terrorism as "violence — or equally important, the threat of violence — used and directed in pursuit of, or in service of, a political aim." However, almost all violence committed by groups of people (and, arguable, even by some individuals) is political in nature, except for straightforward criminal activity in pursuit of profit, and even this distinction is often inaccurate.

Dozens of other commentators have likewise failed to adequately describe terrorism.

"Terrorism is premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against non-combatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine state agents, usually to influence an audience."

[Terrorism is] "A term used to describe the method or theory behind the method whereby an organized group or party seeks to achieve its avowed aims chiefly through the systemic use of violence. Terroristic acts are directed against persons who as individual agents or representatives of authority interfere with the consummation of the objectives of such a group."

"The phenomenon of terrorism can be defined as a strategy whereby violence is used to produce certain effects in a group of people so as to attain some political ends."

There have been other definitions of terrorism — many of which contribute to the problem. During the French Revolution, Robespierre opined that terrorism was an "emanation of virtue." Marxist theorists have been able to rationalize terrorism as an expression of class warfare — and threw a spanner in the works by differentiating between wholesome heroic freedom fighters (e.g. those who used terrorism for ‘progressive’ reasons) and those base reactionary villains who used terrorism for ‘non-progressive’ reasons. There is also the eternal confusion generated by those who would distinguish terrorists from killers whose causes they support by defining their favorite insurgents as freedom fighters, who are somehow exempt from the censure that their actions deserve.

This distinction has also been blurred by the activities of Second World War Resistance fighters, many of whom engaged in acts that could easily be described as terrorism nowadays — although only a deep-dyed apologist with an unbalanced sense of judgment might describe the Israeli Army in the West Bank or the British Army in Ulster as behaving like the Nazis. If they were, the Palestinians would have been shattered long ago, as would the IRA.

Perhaps the real difference between freedom fighters and terrorists is that the first really have no other choice, whereas the latter deliberately chose to ignore more peaceful options.

The main consensus is that terrorism is a form of political violence — an observation that is far too general to be useful.

What distinguishes the terrorist from the soldier are such elements as accountability, conduct, and lawful authority. The soldier is ultimately accountable to his superiors, to the military laws, codes and courts of his organization, and to the country that he serves. The terrorist can sometimes be accountable to his superiors, who might have created a code of sorts, but neither the terrorist nor his leaders answer to any recognizable government — although some governments (usually described as ‘Rogue Nations’ by US authorities) may use terrorists as their proxy agents on occasion.

Again, these characteristics seldom delineate the terrorist from the guerrilla or the revolutionary. Nor, at times, do they distinguish this trio from the organized criminal when the latter strives to seek political influence through the use of violence (instead of his usual tactic of corruption).

Military writers tend to define revolutionary or terrorist violence on another scale. The American military theorist Colonel T.N. Dupuy is one of the leading scholars who has attempted to treat violence as a science that can be modeled, and much of his work has been very influential. To Dupuy, terrorism is one of several forms of internal violence conducted at a scale and intensity short of overt warfare — this being the stage where battles are openly waged between large identifiable armed bodies whose intention is to achieve decision through combat.

Classifying terrorism and related forms of conflict (insurgency, revolutionary war, tribal uprisings, etc.) as internal warfare that is limited in scale is a way of neatly pigeonholing the entire concept. It also means that counter-terrorism or counter-insurgency is an internal problem, which is not always true. For example, since the 1970s, the Provisional Wing of the IRA pursued British targets in Belgium, Germany, and Gibraltar. It provided bomb-making expertise to the Basque ETA in return for a supply of handguns, and sent its members for training in Yemen, Libya and Lebanon. The militant Sikhs’ war against India to control the Punjab resulted in acts of terrorism staged in Britain and Canada, including the 1985 Air India bombing that killed 329 people. Indeed, all of the major terrorist groups in the world today operate on an international scale, and thus cannot be seen as someone else’s internal problem.

Also, Dupuy’s distinctions about scales of violence are misleading. India and Pakistan have been formally at war on four occasions; they periodically exchange shots over the frontier and sometimes sponsor terrorism and unrest inside each other’s countries. However, the most intensive Muslim-Hindu violence occurred during the Partition Riots of 1946-47, when approximately 800,000 people were killed. The combined death toll from all subsequent conventional conflicts between the two has not matched this figure. The savage massacres in Rwanda in 1994 over a four-month period resulted in an estimated 500,000 to 800,000 deaths. Violence on this scale exceeds most conventional wars between nation states, and the pace of killing in these two episodes rivals that of the First World War.

Also, few wars are as deadly as internal terrorism where a government uses terror as a tool to control its own population. It is worth remembering that the word ‘terrorist’ began as a descriptor for the agents of the French Revolutionary Government, and not those who fought against it. However, terror by governments against their own citizens— ‘democide’ according to R.J. Rummel, one of the world’s leading scholars of mass murder — is outside the purview of this study.

Assuming that terrorism and insurgency are limited in scale and area is a mistake too — but one important point remains. Conventional warfare usually reflects specific discernible goals: Air Force bombing campaigns are undertaken to physically destroy industrial and economic capacity; naval fleets seek to control ocean space and deny passage; conventional armies engage in battle to take and hold ground while inflicting physical damage on each other. By way of comparison, terrorists and insurgents normally pursue political goals by directing violence at symbolic targets and often their violence is undertaken for its own sake. An army would fight to achieve definable results using tactical instruments to achieve operational plans designed in support of strategic objectives, while a terrorist might bomb a target to prove something that he might not even be able to consciously rationalize.

In the early 19^th Century, Hegel mentioned in his Philosophy of History that the driving force in history, and all other human affairs was man’s need for respect and his struggle for status among his peers. In essence, all human beings have some desire for recognition and a yearning for influence. The differences among us mean that this hunger or need varies from individual to individual, according to gender, background, upbringing, opportunity, and so on.

Sociologists and criminologists recognize this need. The American sociologist Abraham H. Maslow outlined a hierarchy of needs in his famous theory of self-actualization. People first operate to achieve basic physiological needs: air, food, water, and protection from immediate hazards. Then they need safety and a secure environment. Third are the needs in the sphere of love, companionship and sex. The fourth tier involves the need for self-esteem and respect. Fifth comes the need for self-actualization and self-identity — to become all that you are capable of being, or to be who you think you should be.

While the literature on sociology and criminology is rich in theory and study, the British journalist Colin M. Wilson did an end run around much of it in a survey of crime. A simple but accurate assessment of criminal motivation is that it represents a childish shortcut for gratification of a simple need. He is partly right; a man who might otherwise be harmless will — if drowning — submerge another to stand on him and gain another lungful of air before death. A hungry person might throw a rock through the window of a bakery. Even taking aspects of domination and humiliation into account, rape is still a shortcut for sexual gratification.

Terrorists and insurgents — especially in today’s world — are often motivated by Maslow’s fourth and fifth tier needs (but street gangs and criminal societies are also capable of recruiting people who are in need of peer respect too.) As needs are fulfilled, the commitment to the organization is likely to strengthen bonds and reinforce belief, often to a point of no return where no other existence seems possible.

Between Wilson and Maslow, a disturbing thought emerges. Most crime in human history has been to achieve the primary tiers of the hierarchy — almost all of the crime detectable in historical accounts of, for example, Shakespeare’s or Johnson’s London or Pre-Revolutionary France reflects issues of survival, shelter and sometimes the need for companionship and sex. The modern serial killer or sexual predator can only really be found in history among those whose survival was almost assured due to their high status in society (men like the Emperor Caligula, or Pope Alexander VI and his son Cesare Borgia). However, in modern society, survival becomes less of a problem for all of its members and makes it more likely that criminal behavior in response to fourth and fifth tier needs will become more common. In short, prosperity may bring more terrorism, not less.

In the end, terrorism remains almost impossible to accurately define. But its essential characteristics can be described.

The Characteristics of Terrorism

Terror can be and often is used in war, as a means of governance; and as the chosen conflict method of small groups — who are described as terrorists. These styles of conflict also show how terrorism is inherently indiscriminate in its effects, and how potential victims have no way of ensuring their safety, even when they completely submit to all that is demanded of them.

A film of Hitler’s 1940 victory in France was shown to audiences in Europe’s remaining neutral countries to spread fear and defeatism across the continent. Stalin’s terror through the NKVD (later the KGB) and the Purges atomized Soviet society, destroying even the very thought of opposition. Contemporary terrorists often appear as shadowy figures of hidden purpose and terrible power. This is not new. An ancient Chinese adage advises: "Kill one, frighten ten thousand." According to turn-of-the-century anarchists, terrorism is "Propaganda by deed", while for American analyst Brian Jenkins, "Terrorism is theater."

Almost invariably, terrorist action involves violence or the threat of violence that lies outside the accepted norms of behavior. Deliberately killing civilians in war is forbidden by Canon Law, the Geneva Conventions, and the rest of the body of work that comprise the laws of war for Western Civilization even if, as Hitler so frequently demonstrated, these laws are often more honored in the breach than the observance.

Stalin, Pol Pot, and Saddam Hussein ruled without legal restraint of any kind; and modern terrorist groups wage a form of war that is equally lawless. Note too that the victims of terror sometimes adopt similar methods in response. Before the end of World War II, Allied air forces targeted civilians. Nations threatened by Communist insurgency have sometimes resorted to terroristic suppression. Moreover, it is not unknown for excessive counter-terrorist methods to eventually seduce police and military into resembling the enemy that they are fighting. As Friedrich Nietzsche observed: "He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze overlong into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." Terrorists know this is true, and often work to achieve this transition in the society they attack.

These then are the essential characteristics of terrorism:

•It can be used in war, in governance, and as a free-standing form of conflict.

•It generally seeks an audience far wider than its actual circle of victims, and the constant message is "Be afraid!"

•It sanctions violence that knows no laws or limits save those set by the perpetrators, and it invites a copy-cat response.

•Terrorist violence is inherently indiscriminate in its effects.

In addition to these four essentials that are common to all terror, the small group conflict method (terrorism proper) has some more characteristics of its own:

•Because they operate outside the law, terrorist groups are covert. Members conceal their allegiance or, if they are known to the authorities, they evade arrest.

•It uses violence against individuals, small groups, communities and states to advance a quasi-political agenda such as religious extremism, nationalism, minority grievances, single-issues (such as animal rights), or a radical ideology.

•By their small size and covert nature, terror groups present few visible assets other than their own members’ lives. In contrast, a targeted society offers endless assets as potential targets for the terrorists. This asymmetry makes it very difficult for governments which are constrained by the rule of law to establish a strategy of deterrence against terrorism, and it tends to push the authorities onto the defensive. For terrorists, success sometimes invites vulnerability, for as they grow in power, they tend to accumulate resources and sites that finally do offer targets for response.

•Authorities within nations that subject themselves to the rule of law are politically and legally accountable. Terrorists are not. The latter make their own justifications, reject the law and conventional morality. Nevertheless, to satisfy their supporters, they might set their own flexible codes of "legitimate targets."

•To enable a covert group to propagate its political message, terrorists often establish front organizations that operate within the law. Some terrorists may belong to overt fronts, as well as the covert "military" wing. Such a partnership is characterized by the relationship between the Provisional Wing of the IRA and Sinn Fein.

•In the course of spreading fear beyond the actual victims, terrorists often select symbolic targets like cultural sites or high ranking individuals (such as Lord Louis Mountbatten, murdered along with several family members in 1979 by the IRA), or a representative asset such as the Federal Building in Oklahoma City. Indeed, a target’s symbolic worth to the terrorist may be far greater than its real political or material value.

•Terrorists typically use the media to portray themselves as "Robin Hood" heroes or their modern day incarnations such as Pretty Boy Floyd or John Dillinger, to magnify the impact of their operations, to demonstrate their invincibility, and to spread a "climate of collapse" in society. Consequently, operations are often planned for their news value. This is not a cynical exercise, as terrorists usually see themselves as heroic figures armed with a vision and courage which is lacking among the poor plodding masses. Many of them are acting out a heroic fantasy.

These characteristics provide only a general guide. Confusion over what is and what is not terrorism continues. Insurgent groups often have formed standing bodies of guerrillas, and thus can sometimes have their rights defined under the 1949 Geneva Conventions, and other portions of contemporary Western Military Law. However, if such a group still practices small group terrorism, it is — for the purposes of this study — still considered to be a terrorist group. The US State Department, in its annual report "Patterns of Global Terrorism" includes several groups that maintain guerrilla forces but also practice terrorism.

On Motivation

Terrorists and insurgents — especially in today’s world — are usually motivated by Maslow’s fourth and fifth tier needs. The literature on criminology, sociology and motivation in terrorism is impressive, vast, and contradictory; and there is no standard "type" of terrorist. Many commentators have noticed that a majority of terrorists (of those that have been studied) have symptoms of inadequacy, which leads them to be attracted to causes that can meet their needs or let them fulfill dreams of leadership and heroism.

There have been commonly held public assumptions and assertions about terrorism, and who is attracted to it, but few of these stand up to scrutiny. For a start, few terrorists are psychopathic or mentally ill. Terrorist groups and organized criminal societies alike both need their members to be able to rely on each other in order to function. A psychopath is unlikely to accept orders, live under discipline, or refrain from acting independently according to the impulse of the moment. Also, as a number of writers have indicated, ordinary men and women are perfectly capable of conditioning themselves to kill and we still don’t really understand why; it may be that Barbara Ehnrenreich’s musings in Blood Rites are more accurate than most.

It should be noted that while ordinary terrorists seldom exhibit psychopathic traits, the founders and leaders of some terrorist groups certainly have been known to behave this way. Velupillai Prabhakaran (of the LTTE) has been known to arrange the destruction of his senior commanders for suspected treason, and has been described by some outside observers as a megalomaniac. Abdullah Ocalan of the PKK has been described as secretive, enigmatic (a term also assigned to the LTTE leader), uncomfortable around others, and is likewise known to kill followers who question his will.

While terrorists do seem to be action-oriented there are people in other trades who could share these characteristics — fire fighters, police officers and soldiers for example. But why do some people gravitate toward being coyotes and others toward being sheep dogs? Maslow’s points on motivation apply equally to both, especially in a world where most of us are sheep. However, the main difference must lie with a predilection towards an ideology of some kind.

The self-taught philosopher and longshoreman Eric Hoffer, whose 1951 classic The True Believer has been republished yet again, goes on at length about the motivations of those attracted to strong ideologies: "They see their lives and the present as spoiled beyond remedy and they are ready to wreck and waste both; hence their recklessness and will to chaos and anarchy. They also crave to dissolve their spoiled, meaningless selves in some soul-stirring spectacular communal undertaking…" This could describe the rank and file (as well as the leadership) of many terrorist groups. It is hard to imagine any Police Force or Fire Department seeking to hire such people, although a few armies have done so over the centuries.

It might be an over-simplification, but the sheep dogs (firefighters, police, soldiers and such) might be individuals who seek authority and validation, but they also have an ethic of service, and an impulse to protect. This is something that seldom can be said about coyotes or terrorists.

The attraction towards a strong ideology also lies with internal characteristics. The world of terrorism is rife with "histories of childhood deprivation and narcissistic wounds … with a deficient sense of self-esteem, and inadequately integrated personalities … loners, alienated individuals who did not fit … extreme extroverts — the self centered individual with little regard for the feelings of others … neurotic hostility … projecting the person’s own hostility onto the social environment."

The one sure lesson to draw from this is that the cause a terrorist espouses has little to do with the need to commit violence, but the cause they adopt will certainly shape the violence that they undertake. A terrorist is someone already predisposed to violence and the cause is secondary to its use as a justification. For example, among those who have attacked Israelis with terrorism, a full spectrum of ideologies from nationalist, Marxist, leftist, radical right and religious sources have been pressed into service to shape and justify their attacks.

Admittedly, some terrorists do have causes that might justify violence, although they usually first eliminated or suppressed all those who recommended a non-violent approach to the cause. Others have had to create a cause or adapt an existing ideology to excuse their intended behavior. It is not so much that the ends justify the means for a terrorist, it is rather that the means are attractive enough to require the invention of an end.

Hoffer discusses the mutability of belief in his book on ideologues and pointed out — for example — that in the early 1930s, German Nazis and Communists regarded each other as an excellent source of recruits. The ability of Al-Qaeda to recruit Hoffer’s "misfits" in Western Society should not go unmentioned either, as they have recruited criminals and aimless youths from non-Muslim backgrounds in Britain, France and the United States, as can be evinced from John Walker Lindh (aka Abdul Hamid), the Courtailler brothers, Jose Padilla (aka Abdullah al-Muhajir) and Richard Reid.

In the aftermath of the World Trade Centre bombing, Western attitudes and responses to it have largely gelled into the traditional camps that endlessly debated strategy and approaches to previous ideological enemies in the 1930s and the Cold War. Those who could be characterized as liberals, with their fundamental belief that perfection of human nature is possible, looked for external causes for Islamic fundamentalist terrorism — blaming poverty and implying, somehow, that cultural misunderstandings are also at fault. The conservative camp relies on experience, history, and a pessimistic view of human behavior: When it comes to dealing with external threats, they are right to point out that poverty has little to do with generating terrorism. Hungry people might steal, but they don’t hijack airliners to use in suicide attacks.

The conservative view on the motives behind Islamic fundamentalism has been championed by Daniel Pipes when he pointed out that most of those who lead fundamentalist groups are well-to-do, often well educated, and likely to be quite familiar with the West. In fact, prosperity, education and Western acculturation appear to make it more likely that an ordinary Muslim might support the fundamentalist cause, thus underscoring the value of self-actualization and issues of self-identity as the prime attraction for ideologies that employ terrorism.

One of the main sub-texts in Benjamin Barber’s Jihad vs. McWorld concerns the violence that often erupts when people feel that their identity is threatened, or lacks the recognition they feel it deserves. What makes matters worse, of course, is that those who favor a militant defence of romanticized concepts of their identity (Jihad) must resort to using the instruments and products of the global economy (McWorld) to carry out their struggle. What Barber might not have considered is how this contradiction can result in a cycle of accelerating frustration for those who are predisposed to violence and crave leadership. This contradiction also means that such people must develop a separate internal reality to justify their actions. Once that reality is created, it can be — as Eric Hoffer and Arthur Koestler indicate — impossible to dispense with.

It is worth mentioning that the literature created by and for the supporters of terrorist groups is almost invariably filled with heroic and utopian images — often of a totally impossible quality. The xeroxed ‘zines and newsletters supporting the Animal Liberation Front and radical environmentalists dwell on a wonderful future when, divorced from technology, we live at one in the woods with Brother Wolf and Sister Deer. Al Qaeda videos cassettes project images of stalwart hardened fighters unshakeable in resolve and unbeatable in battle — reflecting both the Muslim World’s thirst for heroes and the usual fantasy framework that terrorists construct for themselves. Other groups have similar dreams, and against these lovely fantasies, any amount of mundane reality can be easily dispensed with.

The flip side of these images lies with the resentments that lie in the heart of documents like the "Convent of Hamas, Islamic Resistance Movement", the 1998 al Qaeda "World Islamic Front Statement", the IRA’s 1919 "Declaration of Independence", the 1995 ETA Manifesto to the Basque Country, or George Rockwell’s 1965 American Nazi Manifesto. Even more perfect is the classic 1970 FLQ Manifesto — a long diatribe against the owners of companies and political figures who smoke cigars and take vacations in Florida. The FLQ Manifesto was purportedly on behalf of the "guys" who worked in the factories that made this lifestyle possible. In all of these documents, it is possible to feel the rage of the terrorist because the world is not as he feels that it should be, and his own yearning to be a heroic leader.

Because the terrorist’s motivation is fundamentally internal, he may continue his "struggle" long after the external conditions that generated the cause have changed. This explains the persistence of groups like the Armed Revolutionary Forces of Colombia (FARC), the Basque ETA, or the Provisional Wing of the IRA — all grimly hanging on decades after they were formed.

Maslow’s fifth tier of self-actualization needs suggests that many terrorists cannot abandon whatever struggle they have created and sustained because their sense of identity is wrapped around their new ‘revolutionary’ self-image. For a terrorist, his war gives him influence, respect and fear; he sees himself as the agent of history or the visionary builder of a New Jerusalem. Being a janitor or filing clerk just doesn’t carry the same prestige.

The terrorist’s cause, grievances or ideology are usually exaggerated or distorted — often to a totally unrealistic extent — to allow violence and confirm the terrorist’s heroic view of himself. Lenin once observed that the revolutionary was in pursuit of a "higher truth", and as a result of his pursuit of this truth — lesser "truths" could be abandoned. Ever since this observation, insurgents and terrorists have lied to their followers, to the outside world, and to themselves. The net effect is that their view of their motivating cause and our view of it are often impossibly separate.

Those who have ever tried to counter illogic with logic can understand the futility of trying to debate causes and justification with a terrorist or one of his supporters. If illogic has been allowed to stand long enough to create true believers -- absolute partisans of a particular cause who have allowed the tenets of their belief to substitute for argument, self-doubt, or a conscience -- then logic will not long penetrate their inner "magical aura" defences. Any unwelcome point that penetrates into these mental defences is re-shaped so that it can be dismissed, perhaps by being "dialectally incorrect," or rendered inaccurate through the marvelous reality that only an embrace of conspiracy theory can make believable.

This habit of belief (which covers for mendacity and self-deception) also extends to the political fronts and fundraising arms of terrorist groups. Because they have no interest in our "truth", there is no reason for a member or core supporter of a terrorist organization to be honest on the witness stand, in front of a media microphone, in an interview with an immigration officer, or when making a welfare application. Nor is there any reason why their word should be accepted at face value under any other circumstances.

It is also common for terrorist or insurgent groups to seek to dominate the community they claim to represent — in order to ensure an unchallenged supremacy of their leadership and message. Typically, the first victims of any terrorist group are moderate leaders from the same background who oppose them and their message; and then any other people who don’t want to be dominated by extremists. This point must be remembered when a terrorist argues about the "justice" of his cause — he may have started fighting for it by murdering or intimidating those who preferred to pursue the same ends through more peaceful means. In a world that has witnessed Mahatma Gandhi, Lech Walensa, Martin Luther King, the repentant Nelson Mandella and Aung San Suu Kyi, the claim of both heroism and legitimacy by any terrorist should be automatically suspect.

This last collection of true heroes raises another point. Terrorism against a democratic nation cannot ever be justified or excused. Gandhi and King reflect the fundamental point that moral suasion and legitimate protest are enough in themselves to win success — provided that the cause is worthy. Even non-democratic Western nations can be moved without recourse to violence: Mandella (who renounced the violence of his own youth) and Walensa won their political struggles in spite of the violence and intimidation arrayed against them in Apartheid South Africa and Communist Poland.

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John Thompson is President of the Mackenzie Institute which studies political instability and terrorism. He can be reached at: mackenzieinstitute@bellnet.ca

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