Terrorist Group Typologies

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Terrorist groups are broadly categorised under one of the following five typologies:

1. Nationalist-separatist.
2. Religious fundamentalist
3. New religious
4. Social revolutionary or idealist
5. Right-wing terrorists

Terrorist groups can be categorized by their political background or ideology. People act differently when they are in a group than when they are alone, so the group behavior is unique. That behavior is also repetitive - people from the same background tend to do the same thing in the same situation.

The Organizational Approach

Crenshaw, take an organization approach to terrorism and see terrorism as a rational strategic course of action decided on by a group. She contends that "Acts of terrorism are committed by groups who reach collective decisions based on commonly held beliefs, although the level of individual commitment to the group and its beliefs varies."

The organizational approach would seem to be more relevant to guerrilla organizations that are organized along traditional Marxist-Leninist lines, with a general secretariat headed by a secretary general, than to all terrorist groups. The FARC, for example, is a guerrilla organization, albeit one that is not averse to using terrorism as a tactic. The six members of the FARC's General Secretariat participate in its decision-making under the overall leadership of Secretary General Manuel Marulanda Vélez. The hard-line military leaders, however, often exert disproportionate influence over decision-making.

Bona fide terrorist groups, like cults, are often totally dominated by a single individual leader, be it Abu Nidal, Ahmed Jibril, Osama bin Laden, or Shoko Asahara. It seems quite improbable that the terrorist groups of such dominating leaders make their decisions collectively. By most accounts, the established terrorist leaders give instructions to their lieutenants to hijack a jetliner, assassinate a particular person, bomb a U.S. Embassy, and so forth, while leaving operational details to their lieutenants to work out. The top leader may listen to his lieutenants' advice, but the top leader makes the final decision and gives the orders.

Psychological Approach

In contrast with political scientists and sociologists, who are interested in the political and social contexts of terrorist groups, the relatively few psychologists who study terrorism are primarily interested in the micro-level of the individual terrorist or terrorist group. The psychological approach is concerned with the study of terrorists per se, their recruitment and induction into terrorist groups, their personalities, beliefs, attitudes, motivations, and careers as terrorists.

The Process of Joining a Terrorist Group

Individuals who become terrorists often are unemployed, socially alienated individuals who have dropped out of society. Those with little education, such as youths in Algerian ghettos or the Gaza Strip, may try to join a terrorist group out of boredom and a desire to have an action-packed adventure in pursuit of a cause they regard as just. Some individuals may be motivated mainly by a desire to use their special skills, such as bomb-making. The more educated youths may be motivated more by genuine political or religious convictions. The person who becomes a terrorist in Western countries is generally both intellectual and idealistic. Usually, these disenchanted youths, both educated or uneducated, engage in occasional protest and dissidence.
Potential terrorist group members often start out as sympathizers of the group. Recruits often come from support organizations, such as prisoner support groups or student activist groups. From sympathizer, one moves to passive supporter. Often, violent encounters with police or other security forces motivate an already socially alienated individual to join a terrorist group. Although the circumstances vary, the end result of this gradual process is that the individual, often with the help of a family member or friend with terrorist contacts, turns to terrorism. Membership in a terrorist group, however, is highly selective. Over a period as long as a year or more, a recruit generally moves in a slow, gradual fashion toward full membership in a terrorist group.

An individual who drops out of society can just as well become a monk or a hermit instead of a terrorist. For an individual to choose to become a terrorist, he or she would have to be motivated to do so. Having the proper motivation, however, is still not enough. The would-be terrorist would need to have the opportunity to join a terrorist group. And like most job seekers, he or she would have to be acceptable to the terrorist group, which is a highly exclusive group. Thus, recruits would not only need to have a personality that would allow them to fit into the group, but ideally a certain skill needed by the group, such as weapons or communications skills.

The psychology of joining a terrorist group differs depending on the typology of the group. Someone joining an anarchistic or a Marxist-Leninist terrorist group would not likely be able to count on any social support, only social opprobrium, whereas someone joining an ethnic separatist group like ETA or the IRA would enjoy considerable social support and even respect within ethnic enclaves.

Psychologist Eric D. Shaw (1986:365) provides a strong case for what he calls "The Personal Pathway Model," by which terrorists enter their new profession. The components of this pathway include early socialization processes; narcissistic injuries;
escalatory events, particularly confrontation with police; and personal connections to terrorist group members, as follows:

The personal pathway model suggests that terrorists came from a selected, at risk population, who have suffered from early damage to their self-esteem. Their subsequent political activities may be consistent with the liberal social philosophies of their
families, but go beyond their perception of the contradiction in their family's beliefs and lack of social action. Family political philosophies may also serve to sensitize these persons to the economic and political tensions inherent throughout modern society.

As a group, they appear to have been unsuccessful in obtaining a desired traditional place in society, which has contributed to their frustration. The underlying need to belong to a terrorist group is symptomatic of an incomplete or fragmented psychosocial identity. (In Kohut's terms--a defective or fragmented "group self"). Interestingly, the acts of security forces or police are cited as provoking more violent political activity by these individuals and it is often a personal connection to other terrorists which leads to membership in a violent group (shared external targets?).

Increasingly, terrorist organizations in the developing world are recruiting younger members. The only role models for these young people to identify with are often terrorists and guerrillas. Abu Nidal, for example, was able to recruit alienated, poor, and
uneducated youths thrilled to be able to identify themselves with a group led by a well-known but mysterious figure.

During the 1980s and early 1990s, thousands of Muslim volunteers (14,000, according to Jane's Intelligence Review)--angry, young, and zealous and from many countries, including the United States--flocked to training camps in Afghanistan or the Pakistan-Afghan border region to learn the art of combat. They ranged in age from 17 to 35. Some had university educations, but most were uneducated, unemployed youths without any prospects.

Deborah M. Galvin (1983) notes that a common route of entry into terrorism for female terrorists is through political involvement and belief in a political cause. The Intifada, for example, radicalized many young Palestinians, who later joined terrorist organizations. At least half of the Intifada protesters were young girls. Some women are recruited into terrorist organizations by boyfriends. A significant feature that Galvin feels may characterize the involvement of the female terrorist is the "male or female lover/female accomplice ... scenario." The lover, a member of the terrorist group, recruits the female into the group. One ETA female member, "Begona," told Eileen MacDonald (1992) that was how she joined at age 25: "I got involved [in ETA] because a man I knew was a member."

A woman who is recruited into a terrorist organization on the basis of her qualifications and motivation is likely to be treated more professionally by her comrades than one who is perceived as lacking in this regard. Two of the PFLP hijackers of Sabena Flight 517 from Brussels to Tel Aviv on May 8, 1972, Therese Halsa, 19, and Rima Tannous, 21, had completely different characters. Therese, the daughter of a middle-class Arab family, was a nursing student when she was recruited into Fatah by a fellow student and was well regarded in the organization. Rima, an orphan of average intelligence, became the mistress of a doctor who introduced her to drugs and recruited her into Fatah. She became totally dependent on some Fatah members, who subjected her to physical and psychological abuse.

Various terrorist groups recruit both female and male members from organizations that are lawful. For example, ETA personnel may be members of Egizan ("Act Woman!"), a feminist movement affiliated with ETA's political wing; the Henri Batasuna (Popular Unity) party; or an amnesty group seeking release for ETA members. While working with the amnesty group, a number of women reportedly tended to become frustrated over mistreatment of prisoners and concluded that the only solution was to strike back, which they did by joining the ETA. "Women seemed to become far more emotionally involved than men with the suffering of prisoners," an ETA member, "Txikia," who joined at age 20, told MacDonald, "and when they made the transition from supporter to guerrilla, appeared to carry their deeper sense of commitment with them into battle."

The Terrorist as Mentally Ill

A common stereotype is that someone who commits such abhorrent acts as planting a bomb on an airliner, detonating a vehicle bomb on a city street, or tossing a grenade into a crowded sidewalk café is abnormal. The psychopathological orientation has dominated the psychological approach to the terrorist's personality. As noted by Taylor, two basic psychological approaches to understanding terrorists have been commonly used: the terrorist is viewed either as mentally ill or as a fanatic. For Walter Laqueur (1977:125), "Terrorists are fanatics and fanaticism frequently makes for cruelty and sadism."

This study is not concerned with the lone terrorist, such as the Unabomber in the United States, who did not belong to any terrorist group. Criminologist Franco Ferracuti has noted that there is "no such thing as an isolated terrorist--that's a mental case." Mentally unbalanced individuals have been especially attracted to airplane hijacking. David G. Hubbard (1971) conducted a psychiatric study of airplane hijackers in 1971 and concluded that skyjacking is used by psychiatrically ill patients as an expression of illness. His study revealed that skyjackers shared several common traits: a violent father, often an alcoholic; a deeply religious mother, often a religious zealot; a sexually shy, timid, and passive personality; younger sisters toward whom the skyjackers acted protectively; and poor achievement, financial failure, and limited earning potential.

Those traits, however, are shared by many people who do not hijack airplanes. Thus, profiles of mentally unstable hijackers would seem to be of little, if any, use in detecting a potential hijacker in advance. A useful profile would probably have to identify physical or behavioral traits that might alert authorities to a potential terrorist before a suspect is allowed to board an aircraft, that is, if hijackers have identifiable personality qualities. In the meantime, weapons detection, passenger identification, and onboard security guards may be the only preventive measures. Even then, an individual wanting to hijack an airplane can often find a way.

Japan's Haneda Airport screening procedures failed to detect a large knife that a 28-year-old man carried aboard an All Nippon Airways jumbo jet on July 23, 1999, and used to stab the pilot (who died) and take the plane's controls until overpowered by others. Although police have suggested that the man may have psychiatric problems, the fact that he attempted to divert the plane to the U.S. Yokota Air Base north of Tokyo, at a time when the airbase was a subject of controversy because the newly elected governor of Tokyo had demanded its closure, suggests that he may have had a political or religious motive.

There have been cases of certifiably mentally ill terrorists. Klaus Jünschke, a mental patient, was one of the most ardent members of the Socialist Patients' Collective (SPK), a German terrorist group working with the Baader-Meinhof Gang. In some instances, political terrorists have clearly exhibited psychopathy. For example, in April 1986 Nezar Hindawi, a freelance Syrian-funded Jordanian terrorist and would-be agent of Syrian intelligence, sent his pregnant Irish girlfriend on an El Al flight to Israel, promising to meet her there to be married. Unknown to her, however, Hindawi had hidden a bomb (provided by the Abu Nidal Organization (ANO)) in a false bottom to her hand luggage. His attempt to bomb the airliner in midair by duping his pregnant girlfriend was thwarted when the bomb was discovered by Heathrow security personnel. Taylor regards Hindawi's behavior in this incident as psychopathic because of Hindawi's willingness to sacrifice his fiancé and unborn child.

Jerrold Post (1990), a leading advocate of the terrorists-as-mentally ill approach, has his own psychological hypothesis of terrorism. Although he does not take issue with the proposition that terrorists reason logically, Post argues that terrorists' reasoning process is characterized by what he terms "terrorist psycho-logic." In his analysis, terrorists do not willingly resort to terrorism as an intentional choice. Rather, he argues that "political terrorists are driven to commit acts of violence as a consequence of psychological forces, and that their special psycho-logic is constructed to rationalize acts they are psychologically compelled to commit"(1990:25). Post's hypothesis that terrorists are motivated by psychological forces is not convincing and seems to ignore the numerous factors that motivate terrorists, including their ideological convictions.

Post (1997) believes that the most potent form of terrorism stems from those individuals who are bred to hate, from generation to generation, as in Northern Ireland and the Basque country. For these terrorists, in his view, rehabilitation is nearly impossible because ethnic animosity or hatred is "in their blood" and passed from father to son. Post also draws an interesting distinction between "anarchic-ideologues"such as the Italian Red Brigades (Brigate Rosse) and the German RAF (aka the Baader-Meinhof Gang), and the "nationalist-separatist" groups such as the ETA, or the IRA, stating that:

There would seem to be a profound difference between terrorists bent on destroying their own society, the "world of their fathers," and those whose terrorist activities carry on the mission of their fathers. To put it in other words, for some, becoming terrorists is an act of retaliation for real and imagined hurts against the society of their parents; for others, it is an act of retaliation against society for the hurt done to their parents.... This would suggest more conflict, more psychopathology, among those committed to anarchy and destruction of society.... (1984:243)

Indeed, author Julian Becker (1984) describes the German terrorists of the Baader-Meinhof Gang as "children without fathers." They were sons and daughters of fathers who had either been killed by Nazis or survived Nazism. Their children despised and rebelled against them because of the shame of Nazism and a defeated Germany. One former RAF female member told MacDonald: "We hated our parents because they were former Nazis, who had never come clean about their past." Similarly, Gunther Wagenlehner (1978:201) concludes that the motives of RAF terrorists were unpolitical and belonged "more to the area of psychopathological disturbances." Wagenlehner found that German terrorists blamed the government for failing to solve their personal problems. Not only was becoming a terrorist "an individual form of liberation" for radical young people with personal problems, but "These students became terrorists because they suffered from acute fear and from aggression and the masochistic desire to be pursued." In short, according to Wagenlehner, the West German anarchists stand out as a major exception to the generally nonpathological characteristics of most terrorists. Psychologist Konrad Kellen (1990:43) arrives at a similar conclusion, noting that most of the West German terrorists "suffer from a deep psychological trauma" that "makes them see the world, including their own actions and the expected effects of those actions, in a grossly unrealistic light" and that motivates them to kill people. Sociologist J. Bowyer Bell (1985) also has noted that European anarchists, unlike other terrorists, belong more to the "province of psychologists than political analysts...."

Post's distinction between anarchic-ideologues and ethnic separatists appears to be supported by Rona M. Fields's (1978) psychometric assessment of children in Northern Ireland. Fields found that exposure to terrorism as a child can lead to a proclivity for terrorism as an adult. Thus, a child growing up in violence-plagued West Belfast is more likely to develop into a terrorist as an adult than is a child growing up in peaceful Oslo, Norway, for example. Maxwell Taylor, noting correctly that there are numerous other factors in the development of a terrorist, faults Fields's conclusions for, among other things, a lack of validation with adults. Maxwell Taylor overlooks, however, that Field's study was conducted over an eight-year period. Taylor's point is that Field's conclusions do not take into account that relatively very few children exposed to violence, even in Northern Ireland, grow up to become terrorists.

A number of other psychologists would take issue with another of Post's contentions--that the West German anarchists were more pathological than Irish terrorists. For example, psychiatrist W. Rasch (1979), who interviewed a number of West German terrorists, determined that "no conclusive evidence has been found for the assumption that a significant number of them are disturbed or abnormal." For Rasch the argument that terrorism is pathological behavior only serves to minimize the political or
social issues that motivated the terrorists into action. And psychologist Ken Heskin (1984), who has studied the psychology of terrorism in Northern Ireland, notes that "In fact, there is no psychological evidence that terrorists are diagnosably psychopathic
or otherwise clinically disturbed."

Although there may have been instances in which a mentally ill individual led a terrorist group, this has generally not been the case in international terrorism. Some specialists point out, in fact, that there is little reliable evidence to support the notion that terrorists in general are psychologically disturbed individuals. The careful, detailed planning and well-timed execution that have characterized many terrorist operations are hardly typical of mentally disturbed individuals.

There is considerable evidence, on the contrary, that international terrorists are generally quite sane. Crenshaw (1981) has concluded from her studies that "the outstanding common characteristic of terrorists is their normality." This view is shared by a
number of psychologists. For example, C.R. McCauley and M.E. Segal (1987) conclude in a review of the social psychology of terrorist groups that "the best documented generalization is negative; terrorists do not show any striking psychopathology."
Heskin (1984) did not find members of the IRA to be emotionally disturbed. It seems clear that terrorists are extremely alienated from society, but alienation does not necessarily mean being mentally ill.

Maxwell Taylor (1984) found that the notion of mental illness has little utility with respect to most terrorist actions. Placing the terrorist within the ranks of the mentally ill, he points out, makes assumptions about terrorist motivations and places terrorist behavior outside the realms of both the normal rules of behavior and the normal process of law. He points out several differences that separate the psychopath from the political terrorist, although the two may not be mutually exclusive, as in the case of Hindawi. One difference is the psychopath's inability to profit from experience. Another important difference is that, in contrast to the terrorist, the purposefulness, if any, of a psychopath's actions is personal. In addition, psychopaths are too unreliable and incapable of being controlled to be of use to terrorist groups. Taylor notes that terrorist groups need discreet activists who do not draw attention to themselves and who can merge back into the crowd after executing an operation. For these reasons, he believes that "it may be inappropriate to think of the terrorist as mentally ill in conventional terms" (1994:92). Taylor and Ethel Quayle (1994:197) conclude that "the active terrorist is not discernibly different in psychological terms from the non-terrorist." In other words, terrorists are recruited from a population that describes most of us. Taylor and Quayle also assert that "in psychological terms, there are no special qualities that characterize the terrorist." Just as there is no necessary reason why people sharing the same career in normal life necessarily have psychological characteristics in common, the fact that terrorists have the same career does not necessarily mean that they have anything in common psychologically.

The selectivity with which terrorist groups recruit new members helps to explain why so few pathologically ill individuals are found within their ranks. Candidates who appear to be potentially dangerous to the terrorist group's survival are screened out. Candidates with unpredictable or uncontrolled behavior lack the personal attributes that the terrorist recruiter is looking for.

Many observers have noted that the personality of the terrorist has a depressive aspect to it, as reflected in the terrorist's death-seeking or death-confronting behavior. The terrorist has often been described by psychologists as incapable of enjoying anything (anhedonic) or forming meaningful interpersonal relationships on a reciprocal level. According to psychologist Risto Fried, the terrorist's interpersonal world is characterized by three categories of people: the terrorist's idealized heroes; the terrorist's enemies; and people one encounters in everyday life, whom the terrorist regards as shadow figures of no consequence. However, Fried (1982:123) notes that some psychologists with extensive experience with some of the most dangerous terrorists "emphasize that the terrorist may be perfectly normal from a clinical point of view, that he may have a psychopathology of a different order, or that his personality may be only a minor factor in his becoming a terrorist if he was recruited into a terrorist group rather than having volunteered for one."

The Terrorist as Suicidal Fanatic

The other of the two approaches that have predominated, the terrorist as fanatic, emphasizes the terrorist's rational qualities and views the terrorist as a cool, logical planning individual whose rewards are ideological and political, rather than financial. This approach takes into account that terrorists are often well educated and capable of sophisticated, albeit highly biased, rhetoric and political analysis.

Notwithstanding the religious origins of the word, the term "fanaticism" in modern usage, has broadened out of the religious context to refer to more generally held extreme beliefs. The terrorist is often labeled as a fanatic, especially in actions that lead to self-destruction. Although fanaticism is not unique to terrorism, it is, like "terrorism," a pejorative term. In psychological terms, the concept of fanaticism carries some implications of mental illness, but, Taylor (1988:97) points out, it "is not a diagnostic category in mental illness." Thus, he believes that "Commonly held assumptions about the relationship between fanaticism and mental illness...seem to be inappropriate." The fanatic often seems to view the world from a particular perspective lying at the extreme of a continuum.

Two related processes, Taylor points out, are prejudice and authoritarianism, with which fanaticism has a number of cognitive processes in common, such as an unwillingness to compromise, a disdain for other alternative views, the tendency to see things in black-and-white, a rigidity of belief, and a perception of the world that reflects a closed mind. Understanding the nature of fanaticism, he explains, requires recognizing the role of the cultural (religious and social) context. Fanaticism, in Taylor's view, may indeed "...be part of the cluster of attributes of the terrorist." However, Taylor emphasizes that the particular cultural context in which the terrorist is operating needs to be taken into account in understanding whether the term might be appropriate.

Suicide Terrorists

Deliberate self-destruction, when the terrorist's death is necessary in order to detonate a bomb or avoid capture, is not a common feature of terrorism in most countries, although it happens occasionally with Islamic fundamentalist terrorists in the Middle East and Tamil terrorists in Sri Lanka and southern India. It is also a feature of North Korean terrorism. The two North Korean agents who blew up Korean Air Flight 858 on November 28, 1987, popped cyanide capsules when confronted by police investigators. Only one of the terrorists succeeded in killing himself, however.

Prior to mid-1985, there were 11 suicide attacks against international targets in the Middle East using vehicle bombs. Three well-known cases were the bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut on April 18, 1983, which killed 63 people, and the separate bombings of the U.S. Marine barracks and the French military headquarters in Lebanon on October 23, 1983, which killed 241 U.S. Marines and 58 French paratroopers, respectively. The first instance, however, was the bombing of Israel's military headquarters in Tyre, in which 141 people were killed. Inspired by these suicide attacks in Lebanon and his closer ties with Iran and Hizballah, Abu Nidal launched "suicide squads" in his attacks against the Rome and Vienna airports in late December 1985, in which an escape route was not planned.

The world leaders in terrorist suicide attacks are not the Islamic fundamentalists, but the Tamils of Sri Lanka. The LTTE's track record for suicide attacks is unrivaled. Its suicide commandos have blown up the prime ministers of two countries (India and Sri Lanka), celebrities, at least one naval battleship, and have regularly used suicide to avoid capture as well as simply a means of protest. LTTE terrorists do not dare not to carry out their irrevocable orders to use their cyanide capsules if captured. No fewer than 35 LTTE operatives committed suicide to simply avoid being questioned by investigators in the wake of the Gandhi assassination. Attempting to be circumspect, investigators disguised themselves as doctors in order to question LTTE patients undergoing medical treatment, but, Vijay Karan (1997:46) writes about the LTTE patients, "Their reflexes indoctrinated to react even to the slightest suspicion, all of them instantly popped cyanide capsules." Two were saved only because the investigators forcibly removed the capsules from their mouths, but one investigator suffered a severe bite wound on his hand and had to be hospitalized for some time.

To Western observers, the acts of suicide terrorism by adherents of Islam and Hinduism may be attributable to fanaticism or mental illness or both. From the perspective of the Islamic movement, however, such acts of self-destruction have a cultural and religious context, the historical origins of which can be seen in the behavior of religious sects associated with the Shi'ite movement, notably the Assassins. Similarly, the suicide campaign of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) in the 1993-94 period involved young Palestinian terrorists, who, acting on individual initiative, attacked Israelis in crowded places, using home-made improvised weapons such as knives and axes. Such attacks were suicidal because escape was not part of the attacker's plan. These attacks were, at least in part, motivated by revenge.

According to scholars of Muslim culture, so-called suicide bombings, however, are seen by Islamists and Tamils alike as instances of martyrdom, and should be understood as such. The Arabic term used is istishad, a religious term meaning to give one's life in the name of Allah, as opposed to intihar, which refers to suicide resulting from personal distress. The latter form of suicide is not condoned in Islamic teachings.

There is a clear correlation between suicide attacks and concurrent events and developments in the Middle Eastern area. For example, suicide attacks increased in frequency after the October 1990 clashes between Israeli security forces and Muslim
worshipers on Temple Mount, in the Old City of Jerusalem, in which 18 Muslims were killed. The suicide attacks carried out by Hamas in Afula and Hadera in April 1994 coincided with the talks that preceded the signing by Israel and the PLO of the Cairo agreement. They were also claimed to revenge the massacre of 39 and the wounding of 200 Muslim worshipers in a Hebron mosque by an Israeli settler on February 25, 1994. Attacks perpetrated in Ramat-Gan and in Jerusalem in July and August 1995, respectively, coincided with the discussions concerning the conduct of elections in the Territories, which were concluded in the Oslo II agreement. The primary reason for Hamas's suicide attacks was that they exacted a heavy price in Israeli casualties. Most of the suicide attackers came from the Gaza Strip. Most were bachelors aged 18 to 25, with high school education, and some with university education. Hamas or Islamic Jihad operatives sent the attackers on their missions believing they would enter eternal Paradise.