Shattering the Islamic Terrorist Stereotype Posted by: McQ
on Monday, February 21, 2005
Conventional wisdom has a certain notion about those who comprise the bulk of Islamic terrorism:
Most people think that terrorism comes from poverty, broken families, ignorance, immaturity, lack of family or occupational responsibilities, weak minds susceptible to brainwashing - the sociopath, the criminals, the religious fanatic, or, in this country, some believe they’re just plain evil.
But Marc Sageman, a former CIA case officer in Afghanistan and no a member of the Foreign Policy Research Institute has done some research which points to the fact that the CW may be wrong on this particular subject. Gathering all the available personal information on 400 known terrorists operating against the US (and not their own governments), he made some surprising discoveries:
The vast majority—90 percent—came from caring, intact families. Sixty-three percent had gone to college, as compared with the 5-6 percent that’s usual for the third world. These are the best and brightest of their societies in many ways.
Al Qaeda’s members are not the Palestinian fourteen-year- olds we see on the news, but join the jihad at the average age of 26. Three-quarters were professionals or semi- professionals. They are engineers, architects, and civil engineers, mostly scientists. Very few humanities are represented, and quite surprisingly very few had any background in religion. The natural sciences predominate. Bin Laden himself is a civil engineer, Zawahiri is a physician, Mohammed Atta was, of course, an architect; and a few members are military, such as Mohammed Ibrahim Makawi, who is supposedly the head of the military committee.
Far from having no family or job responsibilities, 73 percent were married and the vast majority had children. Those who were not married were usually too young to be married. Only 13 percent were madrassa-trained and most of them come from what I call the Southeast Asian sample, the Jemaah Islamiyya (JI). They had gone to schools headed by Sungkar and Bashir. Sungkar was the head of JI; he died in 1999. His successor, Bashir, is the cleric who is being tried for the Jakarta Marriott bombing of August 2003; he is also suspected of planning the October 2002 Bali bombing.
To recap:
90% came from caring, intact families.
63% had gone to college.
75% were professionals or semi-professionals.
13% were madrassa-trained (and most of that 13% from one school)
Sageman is a psychiatrist and studied the 400 looking for "any characteristic common to these men." But he only found a hint of disorder in 4 of the 400.
His conclusion:
So they are as healthy as the general population. I didn’t find many personality disorders, which makes sense in that people who are antisocial usually don’t cooperate well enough with others to join groups. This is a well-organized type of terrorism: these men are not like Unabomber Ted Kaczynski, loners off planning in the woods. Loners are weeded out early on. Of the nineteen 9-11 terrorists, none had a criminal record. You could almost say that those least likely to cause harm individually are most likely to do so collectively.
As for religion, he found most weren't "fanatic" when they joined the "jihad":
At the time they joined jihad, the terrorists were not very religious. They only became religious once they joined the jihad. Seventy percent of my sample joined the jihad while they were living in another country from where they grew up. So someone from country A is living in country B and going after country C—the United States. This is very different from the usual terrorist of the past, someone from country A, living in country A, going after country A’s government. I want to remind that I’m addressing my sample of those who attacked the U.S., not Palestinians, Chechens, Kashmiris, etc.
Again, note his caveat. These are terrorists dedicated to taking the "jihand" to the US and not their own country or another country. 70% were recruited in a country other than that of his birth.
The top recruiting areas were Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Morocco and France. Yes, that's right. France was the 4th best recruiting area. Sageman found the 80% of those 400 terrorists were "in some way, totally excluded from the society they lived in." It seems that made them ripe for recruitment. That and the following connection:
Sixty-eight percent either had preexisting friendships with people already in the jihad or were part of a group of friends who collectively joined the jihad together: this is typical of the Hamburg group that did 9- 11, the Montreal group that included Ahmed Ressam, the millennial bomber. Another 20 percent had close family bonds to the jihad. The Khadr family from Toronto is typical: the father, Ahmed Saeed Khadr, who had a computer engineering degree from Ottawa and was killed in Pakistan in October 2003, got his five sons involved: all of them trained in al Qaeda camps and one has been held for killing a U.S. medic. Their mother is involved in financing the group.
You remember the Khadr's from Canada, who have a son in Gitmo and are whining about his incarceration after he "allegedly" killed a US medic with a hand-grenade in Afghanistan.
Sageman then recaps and comes to an interesting conclusion:
So between the two, you have 88 percent with friendship/family bonds to the jihad; the rest are usually disciples of Bashir and Sungkar. But that’s not the whole story. They also seem to have clustered around ten mosques worldwide that generated about 50 percent of my sample. If you add the two institutions in Indonesia, twelve institutions generated 60 percent of my sample. So, you’re talking about a very select, small group of people. This is not as widespread as people think.
88% of the 400 have "friendship/family bonds" with the jihad.
12% are disciples of Bashi and Sungkar.
10 mosques and 2 schools produced 60% of the sample.
As Sageman says, its not as big a group as some would like to believe. There are a set of circumstances and a process which have a large role in developing these sorts of terrorists. It appears to be more evident in some countries (like those listed) than in others like the US as you'll see below.
He summarizes it like this:
**So what’s in common? There’s really no profile, just similar trajectories to joining the jihad and that most of these men were upwardly and geographically mobile. Because they were the best and brightest, they were sent abroad to study. They came from moderately religious, caring, middle-class families. They’re skilled in computer technology. They spoke three, four, five, six languages. Most Americans don’t know Arabic; these men know two or three Western languages: German, French, English.
When they became homesick, they did what anyone would and tried to congregate with people like themselves, whom they would find at mosques. So they drifted towards the mosque, not because they were religious, but because they were seeking friends. They moved in together in apartments, in order to share the rent and also to eat together - they were mostly halal, those who observed the Muslim dietary laws, similar in some respects to the kosher laws of Judaism. Some argue that such laws help to bind a group together since observing them is something very difficult and more easily done in a group. A micro-culture develops that strengthens and absorbs the participants as a unit. This is a halal theory of terrorism, if you like.
These cliques, often in the vicinity of mosques that had a militant script advocating violence to overthrow the corrupt regimes, transformed alienated young Muslims into terrorists. It’s all really group dynamics. You cannot understand the 9/11 type of terrorism from individual characteristics. The suicide bombers in Spain are another perfect example. Seven terrorists sharing an apartment and one saying “Tonight we’re all going to go, guys.” You can’t betray your friends, and so you go along. Individually, they probably would not have done it.
Fascinating stuff. And it makes sense if you think about it. As he explains, these particular circumstances and process being absent in the US may be the reason you haven't seen another attack in the US:
Indeed, there are not that many terrorists in America. There have never been any sleeper cells. All the terrorists are fairly obvious. The FBI cases we see in the press tend to unravel. The Detroit group has been exonerated, and the prosecutor is now being prosecuted for malfeasance on the planted evidence. He allegedly knew exculpatory facts that he did not present to the defense. The only sleeper America has ever had in a century was Soviet Col. Rudolf Abel, who was arrested in the late 1950s and exchanged for Gary Powers, the U2 pilot. Eastern European countries did send sleepers to this country, men fully trained who “go to sleep”—lead normal lives—and then are activated to become fully operational. But they all became Americans.
In order to really sustain your motivation to do terrorism, you need the reinforcement of group dynamics. You need reinforcement from your family, your friends. This social movement was dependent on volunteers, and there are huge gaps worldwide on those volunteers. One of the gaps is the United States. This is one of two reasons we have not had a major terrorist operation in the United States since 9/11. The other is that we are far more vigilant. We have actually made coming to the U.S. far more difficult for potential terrorists since 2001.
Read the entire article, its worth it. And recognize that only a very small minority of what we face in Iraq comes from this group. The rest are Ba'athists and Sunnis resisting the implementation of a government which will forever keep them out of dominant power.
One note about your final comments: I believe the Baathists are fighting so tenaciously not so much because they face being out of power, but because once civil society is restored they will have to face prosecution for their crimes under Saddam. They are literally fighting for their lives.
This analysis suggest that there may be non-linear effects from driving Muslim extremism underground. Since they seem to need the ability to recruit from those who are a part of mainstream society (rather than from those already disaffected), making it marginally more difficult to find out about the movement may have a big effect in keeping young men out of it.
Did we just wake up? File this one under duh. This is old news.
Posted on Thu, Jul. 01, 2004 Terrorists don't often fit stereotype, expert says By Robert S. Boyd Knight Ridder Newspapers
WASHINGTON - Most Americans have a false idea of the shadowy, worldwide terrorist network led by al-Qaida, according to a former CIA operative who collected the life histories of almost 400 members of the deadly movement.
The stereotype that these terrorists are poor, desperate, single young men from Third World countries, vulnerable to brainwashing, is wrong, Dr. Marc Sageman told an international terrorism conference in Washington this week.
Most Arab terrorists he studied were well-educated, married men from middle- or upper-class families, in their mid-20s and psychologically stable, said Sageman, a psychiatrist at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. Many of them knew several languages and traveled widely.
But when they settled in foreign countries, they became lonely, homesick and embittered, he said. They felt humiliated by the weakness and backwardness of their homelands. They formed tight cliques with fellow Arabs and drifted into mosques more for companionship than for religion. Radical preachers convinced them it was their duty to drive Americans from Muslim holy lands, killing as many as possible.
1) To me, this is bad news, albeit old news. A strong middle class is the bedrock of a liberal (sorry about that word) democracy. Children of the middle class who are educated in western schools usually bring back western (sorry about that word too) values when they return to the old country. The study seems to suggest that this is no longer true, at least when it comes to muslims. That seems like bad news.
2) Yes, only a small number from this group form the resistance in Iraq. Duh once again. The only persons who believe otherwise are the freepers who are convinced that the whole effort is being run by Zarqawi.
Since the begninning, critics of the Iraq misadventure have always feared the rise of sectarian violence in the post-war struggle for power.
And the problems is much more complicated than simply Sunni v. Everyone Else. There is an excellent article re: the Kurds in today's NYT times magazine. It addresses, for instance, the ongoing and increasingly serious conflict between Kurds and Turkmen in the north.
Even more troubling are the many articles that suggest the Shiites may simply ignore the constitution making procedures outlined in the Transitional Administrative Law (TAL). Since religious Shiites have a majority in the newly elected parliament, and since the TAL itself seems to have no provision prohibiting the amendment of constitution making procedures (which currently give veto power over any proposed constitution to 3 provinces), there is a good chance that what emerges may be a legal framework without any real protection for minority rights, including those of the Kurds. In other words, the Shiites may not need to form a coaltiion with the Kurds to create a "constitution" or to govern under it.
It is about power. And nothing more. Always has been.
BTW, how does the author know there are no sleeper cells? By definition, they are unknowable. Of course, he mistakes the absence of any attacks over the last 3 years on US soil as proof. One could have easily said the same thing on September 10, 2001.
Kos-Kid mkulstra wrote: "Since the begninning, critics of the Iraq misadventure have always feared the rise of sectarian violence in the post-war struggle for power....And the problems is much more complicated than simply Sunni v. Everyone Else."
I think the point is that those in the resistance that are by any definition sectarian are the jihadi and foreign elements. The much greater numbers of Sunni that are fighting are mostly Baathist, and I don't think of them as sectarian. Furthermore, I think there's widespread agreement that the Baathists are hated and are representative of the vast majority of Sunni.
Bottom line, this is not "sectarian violence" by any stretch.
"Even more troubling are the many articles that suggest the Shiites may simply ignore the constitution making procedures outlined in the Transitional Administrative Law (TAL)."
"The many articles that suggest..." Hmmm, such as in the NYT, WaPo, LAT, The Nation? Hmmm, then this has to be true then! Gimme a break. If you look at what the plurality parties profess, it's clear we don't have to worry too much about either sharia or an Iranian-puppet emerging.
Considering that his post is full blatantly wrong conclusions such as:
Children of the middle class who are educated in western schools usually bring back western (sorry about that word too) values when they return to the old country. The study seems to suggest that this is no longer true, at least when it comes to muslims.
and
how does the author know there are no sleeper cells? By definition, they are unknowable. Of course, he mistakes the absence of any attacks over the last 3 years on US soil as proof.
I'm going to have to conclude that MK actually wrote his own this time.
The taliban is giving up their rebellion in Afghanistan.
One of the Taliban's most senior and charismatic commanders has become a key negotiator as more and more members of the Islamic militia in Afghanistan give up the fight against the Americans.
Iraqi insurgent leaders not aligned with al Qaeda ally Abu Mousab al-Zarqawi told the magazine several nationalist groups composed of what the Pentagon calls "former regime elements" have become open to negotiating.
The insurgents said their aim was to establish a political identity that can represent disenfranchised Sunnis.
Sunnis decide to participate in the new iraqi govt.
"We made a big mistake when we didn't vote," said Sheik Hathal Younis Yahiya, 49, a representative from northern Nineveh. "Our votes were very important."
Hey, I know he's often an easy target, but MK made some good points this time. I thought the "sleeper cells" point was valid, and the "minority rights" issue is a legitimate concern. (though, I'm heartened by the overtures the Shiites are making to the Sunnis)
It is not surprising that terrorists and guerillas are from the middle class. This was a phenomena that was visible even during the Cold War.
Look at the make-up of Baader-Meinhof, Actione Directe, the Red Brigades. Or Shining Path (led by a professor).
The masterminds and planners for terrorist groups are usually the middle class, combining education, world-view, and spare resources. The foot soldiers may be peasants, but the desperately poor are very busy simply scrabbling out survival.
Yeah, well, we can all drop with arrogance and condescension now and then. I know I try to do so, when I think I'm making a particularly good point. :)
As far as MK goes, I try to look past that, to see the point he's making. When he makes what I consider a good point in response to one of my posts/comments, I give it the attention it deserves. When he doesn't, I give it the attention it deserves. Now and then, after a particularly blinding non-sequitur, I'll give him what for.
All things considered, though, I'd rather have more liberals reading the blog--and commenting--than less.
yes, true. What I wrote in the last post was pretty much a finger poke in the eye type of thing. A couple of posts of his/hers really pissed me off. Particularly the ones pretending that we are all hatefilled bigots. We all have our "Well dem's fighting words" trigger point. My temper sometimes gets me into trouble. ;)
I agree that more disparate points of view are good and important.
mk is lucky that this blog exists because the reverse is not supported on any leftie blog I know.
I have to admit, it's rare that I post a comment at a popular liberal blog without being called a "moronic brownshirt fuck" (or words to that effect) within minutes. It's a...disincentive to comment twice.
It is not surprising that terrorists and guerillas are from the middle class. This was a phenomena that was visible even during the Cold War.
Look at the make-up of Baader-Meinhof, Actione Directe, the Red Brigades. Or Shining Path (led by a professor)
That was my immediate reaction as well. To your list we can add individuals like Ho Chi Minh and Pol Pot.
I thought the "sleeper cells" point was valid
The author's argument about sleeper cells was based on his theory that the lack of a wider support network makes the development of sleeper cells in the United States impossible. I find this claim to be silly, but he at no point offers the lack of a domestic attack as proof of his theory.
I have to admit, it's rare that I post a comment at a popular liberal blog without being called a "moronic brownshirt fuck" (or words to that effect) within minutes. It's a...disincentive to comment twice.
It could be worse. The thought police at DemocraticUnderground.com seem to purge all dissenting comments from their site completely.
Of course, he mistakes the absence of any attacks over the last 3 years on US soil as proof. One could have easily said the same thing on September 10, 2001.
I thought the "sleeper cells" point was valid
I, too, initially found the claim dismissing sleeper cells doubtful. But internal surveillance is different now than it was before 9/11, so I don't think MK's comparison is valid. Remember the thousands of Arabs our government rounded up and questioned afterward? Don't you think we have people quietly profiled and watched? Clearly we have massive holes in our homeland security programs, but sleeper cells aren't necessarily one of them. I would suspect illegal border crossings by terrorists would be a more realistic threat.
