Where Your Average Islamic Terrorist Comes From
by James Dunnigan
November 13, 2004

The evidence is piling up that Islamic radicals are motivated more by sermons and television news, than anything else. As a result, there is not one al Qaeda, but hundreds of informal groups, brought together by the shared belief that Arabs in particular, and Moslems in general, have gotten a raw deal from the infidels (non-Moslems), and it’s Gods will for the faithful to hurt the infidels as much as possible. Rather simplistic, but that just makes it easier to understand. However, the leaders, and followers, in these many small terrorist groups vary enormously in their backgrounds. Most of the leaders are college graduates, compared to five percent of the adults being college grads in most Moslem nations. These many leaders tend to attract a lot of less well educated followers. In fact, these guys are often illiterate, or recruited from prisons, urban slums or isolated rural populations. European countries have noted this, and now increasingly keep Moslem convicts separated from one another, to reduce terrorist recruitment possibilities.

The terrorist leadership, with a few exceptions (like the September 11, 2001 attacks), do not actually carry out suicide attacks. That’s what the ex-cons and illiterate guys are for. Fortunately, most of the terrorist cells get caught long before they can put together a workable plan. That’s because few of the graduates of the Afghanistan al Qaeda camps are still actively involved. Many of the Afghan grads apparently grew out of their terrorism phase, or simply decided that sort of thing was not for them. The “Afghanis” are the ones who received training in OPSEC (Operational Security, how to keep terrorist activities being discovered by the police.) These are the ones who are not getting caught. The college grads without the OPSEC training are not stupid, in fact most are trained in science and engineering and have access to al Qaeda’s training documents (on CD or downloaded from the net.) But it’s one thing to read about how important it is to keep your mouth shut and avoid the police, and to have someone hammer it into you during classroom work. 

Most terrorist cells are formed from people who previously knew each other, often from among people they met at a mosque. Usually it’s a mosque with religious leaders who preach hatred of infidels and the need for good Moslems to fight back. Counter-terrorism agencies have learned to keep an eye on these mosques, and the result has been many arrests, and many more people put under surveillance. The job is made easier by the habit of the terrorist wannabes to live together and act suspiciously like terrorists or criminals. In the United States, over 10,000 American Moslems were interviewed by the FBI in 2004, and many more by state and local counter-terrorism officials. These interviews uncover who is eager to be a terrorist, and who the suspects hang out with. That there have been no terrorist attacks in the United States since 2001 is no accident. 

Even in Saudi Arabia, one of the most intensely Islamic nations in the world, terrorists can’t help spending too much time with each other, often in the same neighborhoods or even mosques. The Saudi police have killed one leader of al Qaeda, in Saudi Arabia, after another in the past year. As a consequence, the new leaders get younger, less experienced, and easier to catch. It's reached the point where Saudi public opinion is beginning to be sympathetic of the terrorists once more. This, however, will quickly change once more once another terrorist attack occurs. 

Another problem the new terrorists cells have are increased border controls brought about by fear of terrorists. Not just in the United States, but world wide. While the larger number of checks is mostly catching common criminals and illegal immigrants, it is noting the movements of suspected terrorists, and disrupting the movements of these men. 

But with all this, there is still the very real problem of terrorism being very popular among young Islamic men. In Thailand, increased violence in the Moslem south has created a growing number of terrorist incidents. Most of these are obviously improvised acts, but there is the fear that more carefully planned, and deadlier acts might be in the works. This can be seen in the Spanish train bombings earlier this year, and the September massacre in Beslan, Russia. Indeed, investigators have discovered that the Beslan operation involved as many as 65 people directly. That included 49 who were killed in or near Beslan, three who were captured and 13 who escaped. The Chechens, however, have long specialized in large, elaborate operations involving dozens of terrorists. It’s something of a tradition in the Chechen community, these large operations, with plenty of people brought up knowing how to cooperate in covert operations in areas where they speak the language and have contacts (usually other Chechens). That’s unique, in most other cultures, small groups of inexperienced men improvise, and usually get caught. 

The problem is that, some of these terror cells are going to succeed. The number of Islamic terror groups that have managed to carry out attacks has been small, considering that millions of young Moslems have eagerly sought to do something destructive. Most of the violence is concentrated in places like Israel, Chechnya, Pakistan, Kashmir and Iraq. In all those cases, there are other causes of the violence that have nothing to do with Islam. International terrorism, and terrorists, are another matter. This world wide violence has largely been a flop. But as terrorists have long pointed out, you only have to get lucky once to have an enormous impact (in the media, at least).