The threat of terrorism has faded from the minds of Americans as the unemployment soars and our IRAs shrink. Even though I specialize on counterterrorism, this is a welcome corrective: terrorism remains an important issue, but it should not always be the top priority for policymakers.

Yet as the Obama administration and American allies overseas focus on how to get the world’s economic wheels spinning again, they should recognize that the financial crisis is likely to have a dramatic impact on terrorism. Most obviously, though perhaps most difficult to specify, the economic crisis and the attendant misery will make many people around the world more willing to believe that the current system is corrupt and more open to radical ideologies—first steps toward embracing violent extremism.

More concretely, however, are the problems the crisis poses for effective counterterrorism. Strong governments usually have few terrorism problems, even if (like, say, North Korea today), they are brutally repressive and bring economic woe, not prosperity, to their citizens. However, weak governments, even if benign, are prone to domestic strife—and the financial crisis will further weaken many regimes. So looking around the world, it is not surprising that countries like Afghanistan, Lebanon, and Yemen suffer terrorism and civil strife and that less-governed regions of a country (e.g. tribal parts of Pakistan) are more prone to violence.

The financial crisis will lead new countries to join this unhappy club. In some countries, security services may not be paid, increasing their incentives for corruption and reducing their loyalty to the regime. In other instances, the government may curb the security services as part of regime change or to win over potential political opponents—and in so doing, weaken the services’ ability to stop terrorism.

Economic collapse may also lead to outright regime change as citizens demand new leadership in response to current regimes’ economic failures. As most governments around the world cooperate with the United States on counterterrorism, the prospect of a new regime taking power is of concern. In many countries (e.g. Iceland and Latvia), the impact will be negligible, but it is plausible that new leaders may replace current partners.

To offset pressure for regime change, some governments may reach out to different factions and power brokers in their own country. For the most part, this is positive as it widens the circle of democratic inclusion. However, not all these actors are positive from a counterterrorism point of view. Egypt, for example, has tried to coopt (largely successfully) the Muslim Brotherhood, and in so doing greatly weakened more radical groups like the Islamic Group and Egyptian Islamic Jihad. This cooptation, while effective in the short-term, empowers a group that, while avoiding a direct endorsement of violence, shares some of the teachings of the salafi jihadists and legitimates some of their actions. In other cases, such cooptation or autonomy may allow sympathetic local regimes to abet terrorists. Outside of terrorism, this cooptation has contributed to the rise of a more Islamicized Egypt, with upsetting consequences for non-Muslims in the country and women’s rights, among other issues.

The United States must also worry that the crisis will decrease local regimes’ willingness to cooperate openly with the United States. Despite the bump in favorable views of the United States with a new administration, the United States remains deeply unpopular in the Muslim world. As governments scamper for legitimacy to offset their losses for economic reasons, they may try to reduce, or play down, cooperation with the United States. High-profile counterterrorism measures that are unpopular with allies’ citizens (e.g. Predator strikes in Pakistan) may be particularly difficult to sustain.

So even as Obama administration officials press allies to step up their support, they must recognize how new economic pressures will complicate our efforts.

From David L. Phillips

U.S. officials must be steely-eyed in confronting terrorist threats. However, we simply cannot kill all our adversaries. An effective counterterrorism strategy must go beyond confrontation and coercion. It must also be based on a deeper understanding of the disenfranchisement that gives rise to despair and the conditions that delude individuals into believing that sensational violence serves their cause.

My book is a post-mortem of George W. Bush’s counterterrorism policy. It is also intended as a guide for the Obama administration. Part of it consists of case studies of groups that are at various stages of abandoning violence and seeking their goals through political means: the Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt, Hamas, Hezbollah, the Kurdistan Worker’s Party, Free Aceh Movement, and the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front. Some of these groups are making progress; others are back-tracking; while some groups are dividing into various factions. These case studies are considered within the context of world affairs since Bush declared his “Global War on Terror,” of which the book is deeply critical.

The United States missed a golden opportunity after 9/11. The headline of Le Monde read: “Nous sommes tous Americains.” But instead of building on international sympathy, Bush squandered the world’s goodwill through a series of foreign policy blunders.

The UN Security Council supported U.S. military action to topple the Taliban. It also welcomed our pledge to democratize and rebuild Afghanistan. Unfortunately, the Bush administration’s failure to expend the required resources stirred doubt about the sincerity of its commitment.

The debacle in Iraq fueled further speculation. Using democracy to justify the U.S. occupation convinced detractors that democracy promotion was a Trojan horse for toppling governments averse to U.S. interests. Conspiracy-prone Iraqis were astonished by the post-war reconstruction fiasco. They wondered how the United States could vanquish Saddam’s Republican Guard, but fail to keep the electricity and water flowing.

Nothing eroded America’s credibility more than neglecting the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Waiting until the final year of his administration to announce a major push for peace in the Middle East compounded concerns arising from the Bush administration’s support for corrupt, tyrannical, and (in the eyes of devout Muslims) impious regimes in the Muslim world.

I wrote From Bullets to Ballots in order to encourage the Obama administration to develop a deeper appreciation and different balance between confrontation, coercion, and co-optation of extremists.

The book is far from soft on terrorists. To be sure, every U.S. president has had the option—indeed the responsibility—to preempt an attack against the United States. I make the case, however, that Bush discredited this approach by conflating preemption and prevention. Preemption is justifiable when attack is imminent, whereas preventive war involves military action when there is no urgent threat.

The book insists that the United States can never condone torture, rendition, extra-judicial execution, or political assassinations. However, it acknowledges that targeted killings of armed combatants may be necessary under dire circumstances to prevent the killing of civilians.

When it comes to coercion, I advocate smart sanctions, which are more effective by targeting individuals with travel bans, freezing their overseas assets, and curtailing commercial operations in countries that sponsor terror. Financial intelligence can be used to choke off financial flows, and partnerships with local law enforcement can help disrupt hawala banking used by terror groups to move money. It is possible to interdict financing at its source by screening alms to radical clerics who misuse contributions as payments to “martyrs” or to support militant operations.

While observing the principle of free speech, the United States cannot stand idly by while the Internet is used to incite hatred, raise funds, recruit killers, and facilitate the command and control of terror operations. Unleashing viruses and computer worms can help address security risks. So can bombarding servers, redirecting traffic, and using a password assault to disrupt communications and penetrate websites used for nefarious purposes.

These confrontational and coercive measures are necessary options, but in the book I maintain that democracy and development assistance are also vital to the realization of US national security and global interests. All options explored in the book are explained in the context of case studies and the discussion of actual country conditions.

Democracy assistance has enjoyed bipartisan support for decades. To be effective, however, the United States should avoid arrogance and tread softly. In the book, I insist that leaving a heavy footprint alienates allies, risks undermining local initiative, and fomenting further violence.

Moreover, I underscore that democracy assistance is not about empowering leaders of whom the United States approves. One of Bush’s failings was to equate democracy with elections. Democratization is a process, not an event—one that must go beyond elections by including assistance to promote the rule of law, minority rights, and security sector reform, and enhance independent media and civil society thereby ensuring transparent and accountable governance.

Development assistance must also take into account national security considerations. The book points out that strengthening the formal education sector and increasing educational access for young girls undermines radical madrassas. I also advocate greater access to information and science education to help cultivate analytic thinking as a bulwark against extremism.

The most vulnerable persons must not be allowed to slip through the cracks and become victims of manipulation. To this end, hardship and resulting radicalization can be mitigated via a social safety net focusing on health services, as well as steps to develop community and national health systems. Additionally, viewing humanitarian assistance through a conflict-prevention lens both addresses basic needs and enhances stability, which is necessary to break the cycle of violence and counter extremism. Aid, trade, and debt forgiveness stimulate economic development and the emergence of a moderate middle class, thus helping to eradicate poverty, which is a potential breeding ground for extremism.

Eliminating the conditions that cause instability and give rise to extremism requires both U.S. leadership and international cooperation. Terrorism will continue to be the defining issue of our times. From Bullets to Ballots is grounded in the conviction that America will not be safe unless it finds the right balance between security, development and democratization. Moreover, foreign aid must be based on more than altruism. In light of today’s financial crisis, expenditures on democracy and development assistance are even more valuable when they also enhance U.S. national security.

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From Ami Pedahzur

One of the first steps taken by President Barack Obama after his inauguration was to start the process of shutting down the detention camp at Guantánamo Bay. Supporters of the step praised the president for adhering to moral principles and international law while skeptics have argued that this would undermine the effectiveness of the war on terror. Only time will tell whether this step was successful or not, but in the meantime it should turn our attention to the reasons for creating this detention camp in the first place.

The detention center at Guantánamo Bay has raised questions of why leaders tend to choose offensive measures to combat terrorism and why these measures aren’t more successful. In my book, I address this question through the analysis of the Israeli counterterrorism endeavor over the last sixty years—an endeavor dominated by what I call the “war model.” Since the raids on Palestinian population centers in the early 1950s by the Unit 101—Israel’s first commando unit—this model had yielded very limited results. Emotion, pressures from the security establishment and domestic political considerations have shaped Israeli counterterrorism policy more than any overarching strategy to cope with the threat of terrorism.

My conclusions have implications for policymaking beyond the Israeli case. Most policymakers might be surprised to learn that the demise of terrorist groups and the end of terrorist campaigns in the past have had little to do with offensive counterterrorist measures applied against them. The only approach that has dramatically reduced the number of terrorist attacks and their lethality is the “defensive” one. Sending military forces after the terrorists is much less effective than enhancing security in public areas and relying on domestic intelligence organizations and police forces. And most democracies, despite their declared policies, end up negotiating with terrorists on a frequent basis and cut deals with them.

Terrorism is one tactic which sub-state actors of various types apply for attaining their goals. This tactic is mostly chosen in asymmetrical conflicts, when such groups suffer from inherent military inferiority. Terrorism is employed as a symbolic act of violence aimed at non-combatants with the intent of creating an atmosphere of fear and anger amongst the citizens of the target state. Media coverage of these events only enhances this sense of fear and panic.

However, it is not only civilians who are subjected to the fear inflicted by terrorism. Policymakers suffer from the same effect. A terrorist attack, especially on a large scale or of a highly symbolic magnitude, is likely to frustrate, upset, and lead to emotional turmoil. Thus, leaders are influenced by their own emotions well before they reach a decision-making point. In most cases, elected policymakers in democracies are eager to prove to their terrorized constituents that they are strong, and would like nothing more than to boost public morale as well as their own approval ratings. Consequently, and without knowing it, they limit their cognitive scope of possible decisions to a small number of offensive responses. Unfortunately, this is exactly the outcome that terrorists are interested in.

This process is reinforced by the fact that the angry leaders naturally seek the advice of the security establishment. Most military and intelligence officers are trained to see any challenge from a narrow offensive perspective, and do not have a full grasp of the political and social causes and implications of terrorism and counterterrorism. Thus, they are likely to provide policymakers with a relatively limited set of aggressive options for response.

In past wars, the enemy was identifiable, the rules of engagement were clear, and victory was easy to measure. The struggle against terrorism presents intelligence and military officers with unprecedented challenges. The heads of the security establishment are first faced with the challenge of identifying an elusive enemy. In many cases, the same sub-state actors that perpetrate terrorism, such as Hezbollah, Hamas, the IRA, and ETA, are also involved in local politics and even social activities. They rarely wear uniforms and they operate from civilian population centers. Thus, the reliance on signal and visual intelligence, which is highly effective in the struggle against ordered armies, becomes secondary to human intelligence. In other words, technology is at best only a supplement in solving the intelligence puzzle.

After identifying the terrorists, comes the challenge of understanding their motivations and goals. What state actors, especially in the West, perceive as rational does not necessarily reflect the preferences of sub-state actors in other cultures. Therefore, it is very hard to make assumptions regarding the true motivations of the terrorists, identify their vulnerabilities and predict their future steps. This requires intelligence analysts who speak the relevant languages, have a deep understanding of other cultures and are capable of transforming their knowledge into policy alternatives.

But even a clear intelligence picture and a good policy are not enough. Modern militaries are not structured or trained to respond to 21st-century terrorism. They are trained to fight wars with other armies. Even elite counterterrorism units and SWAT teams are more suitable for coping with past scenarios such as hostage-taking crises than with suicide bombers. Thus, the expectations that the armed forces can carry out successful counterterrorism operations are not entirely realistic.

The reliance on the armed forces also takes a high toll in other national security areas. The resources which are needed for countering terrorism are diverted from other military units and projects, which often are more vital from strategic and national security points of view.

In the Israeli case, the best example is the misuse of Sayeret Matkal, a highly trained intelligence recon unit, the main goal of which is to supply detailed intelligence for operations like the one against the Syrian nuclear facility in 2007. This unit also has been deployed for rescue, kidnapping and assassination missions since the late 1960s. After a series of failures, especially in rescue missions, Israel formed an elite police counterterrorism unit (Yamam), with the sole purpose of carrying out counterterrorism related operations. Yet, Sayeret Matkal’s commanders know that successful counterterrorism operations, unlike clandestine recon operations, are much more visible and likely to sustain the unit’s reputation and flow of resources. So they use their political ties in policymaking circles to keep on being assigned such operations. This leaves the Yamam counterterrorism experts, who have far less political clout, frustrated and marginalized.

As I indicated earlier, terrorism is merely one tactic that is employed by groups which simultaneously use other strategies, most commonly guerrilla warfare. The LTTE (”Tamil Tigers”) in Sri Lanka, the PLO in the 1970s and Hezbollah today are the best examples of highly versatile groups in terms of strategies, tactics and weapons. It is very hard to declare a war on a tactic, and thus the majority of wars against terrorism turn quickly into extended counterinsurgency operations.

While the state enjoys superiority in technology and firepower, the insurgents usually fight within a well-known territory and easily assimilate among non-combatants. This leads the states to use air strikes and artillery attacks and thus to cause collateral damage amongst civilians. This vicious cycle eventually enhances popular support for the insurgents, as was reflected in Israel’s 2006 war in Lebanon and 2009 war in Gaza. In most cases, after a long war of attrition, the state, which launched the attack and refused to negotiate with the terrorists, will cut a deal with them either through direct or indirect negotiations. In terms of winning or losing, such a scenario actually strengthens those who initiated the campaign of terror in the first place.

Clearly, these failures raise the question of whether the resources now being spent on counterterrorism operations shouldn’t be allocated to other national security needs, while thinking “outside the box” on creative ways to cope with terrorism.

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This past Friday, The Washington Institute for Near East Policy released its report, “Rewriting the Narrative: An Integrated Strategy for Counterradicalization” (download here). The report offers important policy recommendations for continuing the fight against radical extremism, making a clarion call for a conceptual leap away from a primary focus on violent counterterrorism to a broader concern with confronting extremist ideology.

The importance of the report lies not only in the breadth of views represented in the bipartisan list of endorsers but also in its key recommendations, the first one in particular:

Expand focus from violent to non-violent extremism. The Obama Administration needs to view the spread of an ideology of radical extremism with urgency and seriousness comparable to its view of the spread of violent groups animated by that ideology. Obviously, the first priority for the government is to prevent and deter radical extremist groups from using violence to achieve their goals. But in addition the government needs to elevate in bureaucratic priority and public consciousness the need to prevent and deter the spread of radical extremist ideology. At the same time, the United States will need to make very clear that it does not consider Islam itself a danger, but only the distorted version of Islam perpetrated by radical extremists.

This is no small recommendation, and it will likely make many in the Washington policy community nervous. The report essentially says that an end state in which people remain extremist in mentality but are simply non-violent doesn’t go far enough. As conveyer belt groups like Hizb al-Tahrir and others demonstrate, the path to violent extremism often lies in the radicalizer’s ideology and his ability to connect perceived global grievances to local ones. Violence then is a switch that can be turned off and on if the person is not fully deradicalized.

Deradicalization also presents its problems, however. The Saudi deradicalization program, as the report points out, offers jobs, wives and homes as enticements for the violent jihadist to stop killing. Efforts are also made to teach a purer Islam but the program “works” because it relies heavily on coercive policies towards families of the radicalized, essentially making them their brothers’ keepers. When it fails—and recidivism rates are reported at 10 percent—the radicalized person reverts back to violent action.

Clearly, providing alternatives before it gets to this stage is critical, and the report offers a number of practical means for doing so. Among these is another key task force recommendation for the Obama Administration:

Rejuvenate efforts to promote prosperity, reform, and democracy in Arab countries. As a strategic response to extremism, the United States and its allies must offer a viable and attractive political alternative to the dark vision offered by radical extremist groups. Prosperous democratic societies which respect the rights of their citizens are more resilient and less susceptible to political instability and radicalization. If grievances can be peacefully expressed and mediated through democratic institutions, citizens are less apt to turn to more extreme options. Efforts to promote prosperity, democracy, and respect for human rights should, therefore, remain key aspects of this administration’s foreign policy agenda, even if the rhetoric describing it changes. The key is to do it better.

That a bipartisan group would endorse such a recommendation in the post-Bush era reveals a lot about the consensus that exists in Washington over the long-term strategic importance of systemic political and economic change in the region. In the long run, as Keynes reminds, we’re all dead, but avoiding revolution in the region and a further radicalization of European and Middle Eastern populations is clearly in America’s national security interest.

The leitmotif of the report’s analysis and recommendations is that countering extremist ideology must rely chiefly on helping mainstream Muslims provide hopeful and practical alternatives to jihadist ideology. The United States can’t do it on its own. Whether in Europe, the Middle East or Southwest Asia, mainstream Muslims within their communities are the ones on the front lines, and if we can’t find ways to support them, we are left with military force which cannot create a sustainable solution as we have learned in Iraq and are struggling with in Afghanistan.

“Rewriting the Narrative” is endorsed by a distinguished group of policy practitioners: members of Congress Jane Harman (D-CA); Sue Myrick (R-NC), and Adam Smith (D-WA); former 9/11 commissioner Timothy J. Roemer; former U.S. ambassador to Morocco Marc Ginsberg; former deputy assistant to the president for homeland security Frank J. Cilluffo; the presidents of the National Democratic Institute and the International Republican Institute Kenneth Wollack and Lorne W. Craner, respectively; prominent scholars Bruce Hoffman and Mohammed M. Hafez; former Kennedy School dean and Clinton administration official Joseph S. Nye, Jr.; former Bush administration officials Randa Fahmy Hudome and M. C. Andrews; president of the Henry L. Stimson Center Ellen Laipson; Freedom House executive director Jennifer Windsor; Hudson Institute vice president S. Enders Wimbush; president of the Progressive Policy Institute Will Marshall; Johns Hopkins SAIS adjunct professor Joshua Muravchik; and Washington Institute executive director Robert Satloff.

Full disclosure: I was co-convener (with Matthew Levitt and Michael Jacobson) of the task force and I co-wrote the report. Which perhaps explains in part my enthusiasm for it…

Even under geographic siege and financial sanction, Hamas was still able to smuggle some 80 tons of explosives, roadside bombs and longer-range rockets into Gaza over the course of the past ceasefire. Were it not for that success, Hamas would not have been able to continue firing rockets at southern Israeli communities, let alone effectively control Gaza. Denied access to regular trade routes and international banking, Hamas developed alternative mechanisms such as an extensive network of smuggling tunnels, taxes and custom fees, and increases reliance on charitable front organizations.

But Hamas is not the only terrorist group proactively looking for ways to evade international sanction. Today, the Treasury Department designated the Waad Project (logo pictured) as a terrorist entity, describing it as a Hezbollah-run construction firm. According to information released by the Treasury Department, the Waad Project built underground weapons storage facilities and other military infrastructure for Hezbollah in Lebanon. Its website directed viewers to telephone numbers for those wishing to donate aid to Hezbollah, Jihad al-Bina, and the Martyrs Association, the latter two both previously designated as terrorist entities for providing material support to Hezbollah. The Waad Project has tried to hide its affiliation with Hezbollah, employing deceptive means to seek funding projects from international development organizations, according to Treasury.

This should not surprise. As my colleague Michael Jacobson and I wrote in our recent study “The Money Trail,” terrorist front groups often respond to the exposure of their activities by attempting to distance themselves from the alleged illegal activity and engage in otherwise legitimate endeavors to paint themselves in a more benign light. Against international efforts to combat terrorism, in which much of the information used to designate individuals and organizations as terrorist entities remains classified, such legitimization campaigns take on even greater importance and utility.

Hezbollah, for example, employed deceptive means to seek funding for projects from international development organizations for its construction arm, Jihad al-Bina. According to the Treasury Department, “In cases when intended solicitation targets were thought to object to the group’s relationship with Hezbollah and the Iranian government, the organization employed deceptive practices, applying in the name of proxies not publicly linked to Hezbollah.” Similarly, in September 2006 the Treasury Department designated two Hezbollah-controlled financial institutions as terrorist entities, Bayt al-Mal and the Yousser Company for Finance and Investment. Bayt al-Mal served as a bank, creditor, and investment arm for Hezbollah, according to Treasury, and used the Yousser Company to secure loans and finance business deals for the group’s companies. And in November 2006, the Italian press reported that a ship said to be carrying refrigerators to Lebanon was impounded in Cyprus after it was found to contain eighteen trucks with mobile anti-aircraft radars and other vehicle-mounted monitoring equipment.

Given that its proxies Hezbollah and Hamas engage in deceptive financial practices to fund their illicit activities, it should not surprise that Iran itself engages in similar deception to conceal the nature of its sponsorship of terrorist groups. Iran has used Bank Saderat as a preferred means of transferring funds to terrorist organizations such as Hezbollah, Hamas, PIJ, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine–General Command. The Treasury Department revealed one case in which Iran sent $50 million to a Hezbollah-controlled organization between 2001 and 2006.

In terms of the current fighting in Gaza, dealing with Iran’s parallel support of Hamas—be it through smuggling tunnels, “charitable” front organizations, or otherwise—will have to be a central focus of any international ceasefire plan.

What’s the meaning of the offer last week by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other Guantánamo detainees to plead guilty to the charge that they coordinated the attacks of 9/11 that murdered nearly 3,000 Americans?

That meaning is revealed by the fact that they withdrew their offer as soon as they learned that procedural problems—and probably the timetable of the presidential transition—could interfere with their immediate executions.

The plea offer—and its withdrawal—should help us understand what drives Mohammed and his colleagues. And it should help the Obama administration understand what to do about the Guantánamo detainees.

What drives Mohammed and his co-defendants, now that they’re in captivity, is what drove Al Qaeda when it flew planes into the World Trade Center: the effort to achieve a spectacular show of martyrdom. But who is their primary audience now that they’re in Guantánamo?

Clearly, that audience is not made up of Westerners. To be sure, were these detainees to make impassioned speeches before their executions proclaiming their joy in dying in response to the victimization of Muslims, a few in the West might admire their dedication to their cause. For most in America and Europe, though, that dedication would be outweighed by the mass murders for which they claimed responsibility.

More likely, the detainees’ offer to plead guilty was aimed at a Muslim audience. It was aimed, first of all, at an audience of hard-core Al Qaeda members, for whom the achievement of a death-wish would be seen as a commitment to martyrdom that they should emulate. And it was aimed at the rest of the Muslim world in the hope that it would highlight the Al Qaeda’s grievances and enlist recruits to the Islamist jihad against the Western oppressors.

In pursuing this strategy, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his co-defendants were trying to use Guantánamo, as the World Trade Center was used, as a symbol of the hated America—an America that could be damaged by turning American power against itself. In the case of the World Trade Center, American power consisted of prominent buildings that symbolized the financial might of a corrupt America, which were destroyed spectacularly by flying Western-made planes into them. In the case of Guantánamo, American power consists of detention facilities that symbolize the legal system of a corrupt America, which would be destroyed by forcing that system to turn its inmates into martyrs.

And in pursuing this strategy, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was following Al Qaeda’s playbook to the letter. He was using whatever stage is available to publicize his cause, to demonstrate his commitment, and to provide a big show. His hope was that the show would be spread virally on television, in newspapers and on the Internet to an audience of believers and potential believers in the Muslim world, bucking up the convictions of the believers and recruiting, to the believing camp, many more.

So what is to be done?

Clearly, what’s needed in response to terrorists is the legal pursuit of legal means in the service of legal ends. The plans of the incoming Obama administration, which seem to include the transfer of inmates to U.S. prisons, may eliminate the Guantánamo stigma from America’s legal response to the terrorism aimed at it.

But what’s needed no less is a careful consideration of the consequences, for Al Qaeda and its sympathizers, of executions that would be interpreted as glorious outcomes of glorious martyrdom operations. The Bush administration has sought the death penalty for convicted mass-murdering terrorists. It would be the better part of wisdom for an Obama administration to favor, instead, life in prison.

From Assaf Moghadam

The Globalization of Martyrdom is the product of a more than decade-long, intensive interest I have taken in studying suicide terrorism.

In this book, I argue that two distinct patterns of suicide terrorism have evolved. The vast majority of studies on suicide terrorism to date have focused on the traditional pattern of “localized” suicide attacks carried out by such groups as Hezbollah, the LTTE (”Tamil Tigers”), Hamas, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Fatah, and the PKK—the groups responsible for the bulk of suicide attacks during the 1980s and 1990s. Although these groups continue to be fervent enemies of Israel, Sri Lanka, and Turkey, and most continue to plot violent attacks against their foes, most suicide attacks today are perpetrated by other groups, targeting different countries. Especially since 9/11, suicide missions by Al Qaeda, its affiliates, and other Salafi-Jihadist groups have risen exponentially, far outnumbering the attacks conducted by the previously dominant groups. They also target far more countries than have other groups before, and their attacks are more deadly. For these reasons, suicide attacks by Al Qaeda and its associated movements are the new epicenter of this deadly phenomenon and form a new pattern of “globalized” suicide attacks.

I argue that existing explanations of suicide attacks, most notably the notions that suicide terrorism are the result of foreign occupation or organizational outbidding, fail to account for the global proliferation of this tactic. I believe that the reason for the spread of suicide attacks instead lies in the evolution of Al Qaeda into a global terrorist actor and in the growing appeal of its guiding ideology, the Salafi Jihad. The Globalization of Martyrdom describes in detail how both Al Qaeda and Salafi-Jihadist ideology place utmost importance on the two core elements of the globalization of suicide attacks: the element of suicide operations, and the globalization of terrorist activity.

As I write in the opening passages of the book, my interest in this particularly sinister tactic began in the mid-1990s, when I witnessed the devastating consequences of one of the first early campaigns of suicide terrorism as a college student in Jerusalem. My early fascination with this tactic led me to write my masters’ thesis on Palestinian suicide terrorism, and later a doctoral dissertation examining the global proliferation of this modus operandi. Based on my dissertation, The Globalization of Martyrdom provides a history of suicide missions and their precursors from the biblical Samson to the murder of Benazhir Bhutto; a description of the importance of suicide attacks for Al Qaeda and other Salafi-Jihadist groups; and detailed case studies of suicide attacks in modern theaters ranging from Afghanistan, Algeria, Chechnya, and Iraq to Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, the United Kingdom, and half a dozen other countries. My findings are based in part on an analysis of a dataset of nearly 1,300 suicide attacks between 1981 and April 2007. (I recently updated that data set to 1,857 suicide attacks which I analyze in an article forthcoming in International Security.)

The Globalization of Martyrdom highlights the importance of ideology—an issue neglected in nearly all existing studies of suicide attacks. Examining the wills, farewell videos, and other reports about suicide attackers, I found that many of the suicide bombers echo Salafi-Jihadist doctrines. They adopt the general worldview offered by this ideology; the same diagnosis about the reasons for Islam’s relative decline; the belief that Islam is attacked by an evil coalition; and the argument that their personal participation in martyrdom operations is the ultimate proof of their religious devotion. They have internalized Al Qaeda’s and its Salafi-Jihadist allies’ broad conception of the enemy as being composed not only of Westerners in general, Christians, and Jews, but also of those Muslims whose beliefs and practices do not meet the standards set by Salafi-Jihadists. They also buy into the Salafi-Jihadist belief that martyrdom is the ultimate form of waging jihad.

In my conclusion, I suggest that while a strategy to counter suicide terrorism clearly consists of several important components, challenging Salafi-Jihadist ideology is among the more important and overlooked elements. It is incumbent particularly upon Muslims to challenge a threat that places them at even higher risk than it places Western countries, since it is an indisputable fact that Salafi-Jihadist terrorism kills Muslims in far greater numbers than it kills Westerners. The Salafi Jihad suffers from a fundamental contradiction: on the one hand, it claims to act for the benefit of Islam; but on the other hand, Muslims suffer the consequences of Salafi-Jihadist ideology and terrorism more than any other group. Muslims should expose this fundamental hypocrisy as often and as forcefully as possible.

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U.S. and international efforts to combat terrorist financing are a little understood—and often under-appreciated—aspect of the global counterterrorism campaign. With this in mind, soon after rejoining The Washington Institute after serving in the Treasury Department’s Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, Michael Jacobson and I decided that it would be worthwhile to conduct a comprehensive study of this issue. At the Treasury Department Mike had served as senior advisor to the Assistant Secretary for intelligence and analysis; I was Deputy Assistant Secretary for intelligence and analysis.

On our return to academia, we spent well over a year researching and then writing this study. It is based on open source information, including media reports, reports by U.S. and foreign governments and international organizations, congressional testimony, and perhaps most important, our field research and interviews. During the course of our research, we interviewed some seventy-five people, ranging from U.S. and foreign government officials to officials in key international organizations such as the United Nations, International Monetary Fund, and the Financial Action Task Force, as well as academics and financial experts in the private sector. While many of the interviews took place in Washington and New York, we also spent considerable time abroad, including multiple trips to Europe and the Middle East. During one extended research trip to the Persian Gulf, we met with government officials, bankers, and industry and academic experts.

The study not only explains the threat of terrorist financing and the efforts of governments and international organizations to address it, but also assesses the effectiveness of these efforts. We offer, in addition, our thoughts as to what steps the United States could take to improve international efforts in this area. With the Obama administration clearly committed to an “all elements of national power” strategy to deal with threats to U.S. national security, effective non-kinetic tools such as this one are likely to receive more, not less, attention. We hope that this study helps inform the public debate on this important topic, which has not always received the attention it deserves. Better understanding both the threat and our response is critical to determining what role combating terrorist financing should play in our overall counterterrorism efforts and what changes should be made to our current approach to make it still more effective.

Among the issues addressed in this study are:

• Are efforts to combat terror financing an efficient or effective use of our limited resources?
• How significant a role should efforts to combat terror finance play as part of the global counterterrorism campaign?
• How have terrorist shifted their terrorist financing techniques in response to international efforts to combat it and how rapidly is the threat of terror financing evolving?
• What steps have U.S. and international partners taken to combat terrorist financing and what challenges remain?
• How effective have U.S. and international efforts to combat terror financing been? Are there specific signs of success in an area in which progress is often difficult to measure?
• What is the status of terror financing for different groups—like Al Qaeda, Hezbollah and Hamas—that operate in different environments?

Finally, we offer the incoming administration a set or practical recommendations to bolster the international regime in this critically important area.

Overall, the United States and its international partners have enjoyed considerable success in the CFT arena. In December 2005, the 9/11 Commission’s Public Discourse Project (PDP) issued its final report grading U.S. government compliance with the 9/11 Commission’s recommendations. The project gave the government an “A–”—the report’s highest mark—for its “vigorous efforts to combat terrorist financing.” A variety of anecdotes support the PDP’s assessment, suggesting that the CFT efforts are making a difference, not only in constricting the environment for terrorist financing, but also by serving as a valuable intelligence tool for the government. In other words, freezing terrorist funds has proven to be an effective means of disrupting terrorist activity, while following the money has enabled investigators to uncover previously unknown links between terrorist operatives and even thwart attacks.

Combating terrorist financing, we conclude, must remain an important component of every country’s counterterrorism strategy, and maintaining international focus and cooperation on this issue is essential. While the challenges are great, the potential benefits are significant. Similarly, failure to build a truly international regime to counter terrorist financing guarantees that the successes seen in this arena to date will be short-lived. And there should be no doubt that if terrorist groups are able to raise, move, store, and gain access to funds with relative ease, the threat they pose to the United States and its allies will increase dramatically.

The full study is available here as a free download (pdf).

Terrorism watchers repeatedly warned that Al Qaeda might strike in the days leading up to election day yet, thankfully, we have reached November 4 without incident. Al Qaeda’s logic for striking seems straightforward. An attack would dominate media coverage at a time when world (not just U.S.) attention is focused on the U.S. election. In a tight race, a terrorist attack might even tip the balance, enabling Osama bin Laden to claim that American politics dances to his tune. Experts point to Spain’s elections in March 2003, when a terrorist attack (and the Aznar government’s bungled handling of it) led to a surprise socialist victory, which in turn led to a government that withdrew troops from Iraq, as Al Qaeda had sought. Democratic electoral strategists in particular feared that an Al Qaeda attack might play to Senator McCain’s perceived strength among voters in national security affairs and that Bin Laden would want to bolster McCain in the belief that he was more likely to entangle the United States militarily in the Muslim world.

Yet with the clarity of hindsight, we know that Al Qaeda did not strike. (Though, before we relax too much, several experts warned that the transition after an election is also a time of higher risk.) This is not because bin Laden lacks interest in an attack. As he knows, attacks on U.S. soil would be popular among his key constituents and would help him recruit and raise money. In addition, he genuinely believes that the United States is evil and deserves punishment.

I don’t know why Al Qaeda did not strike, but there are several plausible explanations:

• Bin Laden has other fish to fry. Although Americans understandably focus on the threat Al Qaeda poses to the United States, from Bin Laden’s point of view we are only one concern of many—even if we still are a favorite target of his rhetoric. Al Qaeda’s primary day-to-day focus now is on events in Pakistan, where the organization is based, and Afghanistan, where it is helping support the massive insurgency that is battling the U.S.-backed Karzai government. As if this were not enough, Al Qaeda has ambitions in Iraq, the Maghreb, and Central Asia as well as against Israel. These theaters are important to Al Qaeda leaders, and many in the organization would prioritize them over attacks in the United States. Even if the United States remains the primary focus of the leaders of the Al Qaeda core, expanding operations in several of these theaters gives Al Qaeda opportunities to strike at America outside the U.S. homeland. Iraq and Afghanistan allows it to showcase one of its preferred methods: support for insurgents.
• Al Qaeda’s operational capacity is limited. Al Qaeda has reestablished a base in tribal parts of Pakistan, and its operational capacity is growing when compared to the organization’s dark days in 2002. Yet while Pakistan is an excellent haven, in many respects it is a tougher one than the Taliban’s Afghanistan. From Pakistan Al Qaeda can still plot attacks, and its propaganda is prodigious. However, its leaders must also spend much of their time battling or bribing government forces, hiding from U.S. Predator strikes, or otherwise focusing on their daily survival.
• U.S. government efforts at home are paying off. The Department of Homeland Security is much-maligned, but at least it is trying to stop jihadists from entering the country. And trying counts. The FBI has made numerous arrests on terrorism charges (often, we find out later, on quite thin grounds), suggesting that it is aggressive in going after any potential jihadist threat at home.
• Aggressive intelligence efforts abroad keep us safer at home. More important than strictly domestic efforts, U.S. intelligence is working with its counterparts around the world to disrupt the organization, making it harder for Al Qaeda to do sustained operations. Remember, the 9/11 attack involved not only the United States and Afghanistan, but also Germany, Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, and other countries. Such a global plot would be far more difficult to orchestrate today. Senior leaders would be more likely to be killed, and junior operatives would be more likely to be arrested.
• Al Qaeda wants to outdo 9/11. Bin Laden does not think small, and he consistently seeks terrorism “spectaculars” against the United States (for example, the plot to bomb transatlantic flights from the United Kingdom, which was foiled in the summer of 2006). A spectacular attack might inflict mass casualties like 9/11, or it might involve a lower casualty but novel method, such as chemical weapons. This ambition may dissuade Bin Laden from a low-level strike before the election, as he wants to save his powder for a time when he can inflict the maximum damage.
• There is no “Al Qaeda of the United States.” Even if the United States were not more aggressive at home and abroad, Al Qaeda’s ability to operate in the United States is limited. In contrast to Britain, Egypt, France, Saudi Arabia, Spain and many other countries, the United States does not have a significant domestic jihadist network within its borders. Government prosecution efforts reveal that many arrested plotters were incompetent dreamers who had little or no ties to the Al Qaeda core, in contrast to their counterparts in Europe and the Arab world. Infiltrators Bin Laden sends to the United States would find it hard to gain local assistance as they prepare for an attack. The few radicalized American Muslims might still attack in Al Qaeda’s name, but the likelihood is far lower than in many other countries, and the skill level of the attackers would probably be limited, making a 9/11-scale operation particularly unlikely, which (as noted above) is probably one of Bin Laden’s goals for operations in the United States.

Taken together (and these must be, as several of these explanations overlap), these are plausible reasons for why Al Qaeda did not strike the United States despite the publicity that would surround an attack near the election.

Making it safely past election day suggests two somewhat contradictory lessons. First, Al Qaeda does not always, or even often, strike according to our calendar. There are regular predictions about attacks during elections, New Year’s Day, the Super Bowl, and other events that concentrate the media. I suspect that, someday, one of these predictions will eventually turn out to be right. That means we should prepare for strikes, but at the same time there is no need to panic before each celebration. Second, several of the above explanations depend on aggressive U.S. efforts at home and abroad and at least one (operational capacity) is turning in Al Qaeda’s favor with the development of a haven in Pakistan. So success depends in part on remaining aggressive, not just congratulating ourselves on making it past another milestone.

Comments are limited to MESH members and invitees.

Lindsey O’Rourke’s recent op-ed in the New York Times, “Behind the Woman Behind the Bomb,” is an interesting attempt to describe some of the issues surrounding the use of female suicide bombers in Iraq and elsewhere. As she points out, many of the groups that have utilized suicide terrorism have employed female suicide bombers. As such, her attempt to study the issue seriously is welcome and could significantly contribute to scholarship in this area.

Unfortunately, her piece contains a few misconceptions about suicide terrorism and the existing literature that deserve clarification. As someone also interested in questions surrounding suicide terrorism, I offer these comments in the spirit of helping build our knowledge in that area.

First, she states that “we are told” female suicide bombers are driven by “despair, mental illness, religiously mandated subordination to men, frustration with sexual inequality and a host of other factors related specifically to their gender.” At least in the literature on suicide terrorism, this does not seem to be the case. Robert Pape’s work on suicide terrorism, which she approvingly cites, does not come from this perspective. Neither does work by Mia Bloom, Bruce Hoffman, Assaf Moghadam, Ami Pedahzur, Marc Sageman, and others. So, while I agree with her argument that “feminine” motivations do not seem to be driving female suicide bombers and female suicide bombers have similar motivations to men, most other scholars of suicide terrorism agree as well.

Second, it is unclear whether her goal is to de-emphasize the “female” element of female suicide bombers or to argue they do deserve independent consideration. As many argue, she states that “there is simply no one demographic profile for female attackers,” something true for male attackers as well. If there is no demographic profile and the motivations of female suicide bombers are similar to male suicide bombers, why do they deserve study as a separate category? Her answer is that female suicide bombers are used more frequently for a specific type of missions—assassinations—because they have an easier time getting close to hard targets due to cultural and societal norms about treating and handling women. This is a very interesting and an important finding, if true, for it points out a shortcoming in security screening procedures around the globe. However, that means we should not necessarily study female suicide bombers as an independent category, but as part of the larger category of suicide bombings designed to assassinate leaders.

Third, her focus on occupation as the cause of suicide terrorism is misplaced. Whether the feeling of occupation is accurate or not in the eyes of the West, perceptions of occupation likely play a powerful role in influencing the propensity for groups to engage in violent resistance. However, occupation is less likely to impact the choice of a particular tactic within the decision to engage in violent resistance. While Pape has shown that many of the groups that adopt suicide terrorism perceive themselves as occupied, many other groups that perceive themselves as occupied have not chosen to adopt suicide terrorism.

In fact, it makes more sense to think about suicide terrorism as a special case of a military innovation, one strongly influenced by diffusion dynamics. The extensive direct and indirect linkages between groups that have adopted suicide terrorism suggest that the probability of suicide terrorism is not an entirely independent choice, but one influenced by the knowledge and skills that groups gain from direct and vicarious learning. Moreover, we have to study both those groups and people that adopt suicide tactics and those that do not in order to gain the full picture. As Scott Ashworth et al. recently pointed out in the American Political Science Review, studying just the universe of suicide terror groups or female suicide attackers selects on the dependent variable, making it hard to draw causal inferences from whatever correlations might exist. Things that are similar within the universe of suicide terror groups or the universe of female attackers might also be true of non-adopters as well, meaning those similarities do not actually predict behavior.

A more fruitful way to study the issue is to compare the groups that have adopted suicide terrorism and group members that have become suicide bombers with those that have not. Comparing adopters like Hamas, Al Qaeda, and the Tamil Tigers with non-adopters like the Provisional IRA and ETA, the Basque terrorist group, reveals the critical importance of organizational dynamics in driving adoption or non-adoption. Since, as O’Rourke points out, demographic profiling of potential suicide attackers does not seem promising, it makes more sense to evaluate group characteristics and focus on what makes adoption more or less likely.

Regardless of potential issues with her academic analysis, however, her policy prescription to improve screening of women at “key security checkpoints” is sensible. While I disagree that “occupation” is a primary cause of suicide attacks—as described above, it influences the probability that a group will adopt terrorism, not the choice of suicide tactics—hopefully ideas like the “Daughters of Iraq” can be more than a stopgap in the effort to decrease the number of suicide attacks against American and Iraqi forces, as well as ordinary Iraqis. I applaud O’Rourke’s attention to this important topic, and hope to see more analysis of this kind in the future.

Comments are limited to MESH members and invitees.