Al Qaeda and the ‘New Terrorism’
The 1990s saw the emergence and rise of what has come to be known as the ‘New
Terrorism’ (Laqueur, 1999). It is distinguished in its motivation, goals and methods from
what, of necessity, is now called the ‘Old Terrorism’. Terrorists of the old school were,
indeed still are, motivated by political ideology. They had specific, geopolitically limited
objectives, and, in theory, one could negotiate with them. In some respects at least,
old-style terrorists, such as the members of the IRA (Irish Republican Army) and ETA
(Euskadi Ta Askatasuna, or Freedom for the Basque Homeland), inhabited the same
strategic cultural universe as did the forces of law and order, the counter-terrorists. They
comprised an irregular and, of course, a materially and culturally asymmetrical enemy,
but their strategic behaviour was both familiar and easy to understand. To counter them
effectively was, naturally, rather more difficult. The prototype of the Old Terrorism
in recent times was the Palestine Liberation Organization, led by Yasser Arafat, in the
late 1960s and the 1970s. It became the model for many imitators and rivals. Unlike
practitioners of the New Terrorism, the PLO and most of the other anti-Israeli terrorist
groups were essentially secular, political and focused on a single dominant issue. In
principle, the PLO and the others (e.g., Hamas, now in power in Gaza; and Hezbullah,
supported by Iran and based in Lebanon) pursued a political agenda that could be
discussed, if not satisfied, diplomatically.
The New Terrorism of today has features in stark contrast to its immediate predecessor.
So-called new, post-modern or apocalyptic terrorists (Peters, 2002: 22–65) have a
religious motive, at least religious inspiration and sanction, albeit one with a political
subtext, and are not focused narrowly on a particular issue or two in a limited geopolitical
context. Moreover, they are not careful of human lives; indeed, quite the contrary. As a
matter of political expediency, governments talk about waging a ‘war on terror’. What
they mean is a war on violent Islamic extremists. The root problem is with Islam and the
Islamic world, the Dar ul Islam (the House of Islam). The global struggle, the irregular
warfare now under way between al Qaeda and its many official and other enemies, is a
war about the future of the Islamic religion and, in particular, about the modernization
of the Dar ul Islam. Al Qaeda has recruited from the ranks of those many Islamic young
people who have sought security of identity and a sense of worth and purpose in the
embrace of religion.
As the tip of the spear of the New Terrorism, al Qaeda, generically, is a historically
familiar phenomenon. It is a backward-looking movement. It rests its authority and its
promise upon the purported blessings that must flow from the strictest adherence to a
particular, extreme interpretation of Islam’s holiest texts. In historical context it can be
understood as a product of victory over the atheistic Soviets in 1980s Afghanistan. In
addition, as just indicated, it is a response to the crisis of identity and self-regard that
besets much of the Islamic realm.
Al Qaeda has declared war on the West, but its true enemies lie in the Dar ul Islam
itself. The United States and other Western countries have been targeted only because
they support what al Qaeda regards as apostate regimes in the land of Islam. Al Qaeda
has no serious quarrel with the West. It is the West’s behaviour in, and towards, nominally
Islamic countries that is the source of the antagonism. The movement’s goals are quite
rational. The problem is that those goals happen to be wildly unreasonable in the view of
Irregular warfare 259