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Terrorism Studies: The DismalScience?
Carlyle A. Thayer
In the aermath of the terrorist aDacks on the United States on Sep‑tember 11, 2001, there has been an outpouring of academic pub‑lications on the phenomenon of political violence. According toAndrew Silke, “the five years since 9/11 have probably seen more books published on terrorism than appeared in the previous 50years. Currently, one new book on terrorism is being published ev‑ery six hours.”
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Aer the terrorist bombings in Bali in October 2002,there was a similar surge in publications on terrorism in SoutheastAsia. A veritable coDage industry of terrorism experts emerged tooffer commentary and analysis on Islamic terrorism and its globalreach.
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But a close scrutiny of these analyses and published writ‑ings reveals two disturbing insights. First, most authors were notexperts on the countries they were commenting on, although a fewcould lay claim to being regional security specialists. Second, aclose examination of their sources revealed a scant reference to anyprior disciplinary body of knowledge related to political violenceand terrorism. Most of the academic literature produced by terror‑ism experts writing about Southeast Asia, for example, was highlyempirical and narrowly focused.
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The state of the scholarship prompted the author to explore“terrorism studies” as a field of inquiry to see what it couldoffer methodologically and theoretically to our understanding ofpolitical violence in contemporary Southeast Asia.
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This chapteroffers a preliminary report on the endeavor. It seeks to provide
 
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Carlyle A. Thayer
an assessment of the contemporary state of terrorism studies andits methodologies by addressing four basic questions: What isterrorism? Who are the terrorists? What are the causes of terrorism?What do terrorists seek to achieve?
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The chapter also provides anoverview of the state of terrorism studies based on a synthesisof several major literature reviews published at intervals overthe last two decades. The starting point for this synthesis is AlexSchmid and Albert Jongman’s classic survey of six thousand workspublished between 1968 and 1988.
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The survey has been updated by incorporating literature reviews published a decade later byWalter Reich as well as more contemporary surveys published byAndrew Silke and Rhyll Valis, Yubin Yang and Hussein Abbass.
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 The chapter concludes with a brief discussion of the utility of historyto contemporary terrorism studies and offers a modest proposal forfuture research.
What is terrorism?
The word
terrorism
is a relatively recent term.
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It entered the Englishlanguage as a result of the French Revolution of 1789. It referredspecifically to actions of the CommiDee of Public Safety, as the revo‑lutionary government was known. According to Bruce Hoffman,
régime de la terreur
(1793‑94) had a positive connotation comparedwith its contemporary usage.
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It was a method to educate the Frenchpeople on how to govern themselves. Terrorism was deliberatelyand systematically organized by the state in order to create a beDersociety. Terrorism was also viewed in positive terms by nineteenthcentury Russian anarchists. In one celebrated example, on 24 Janu‑ary 1878 Vera Zasulick unsuccessfully tried to assassinate a Rus‑sian police commander who abused political prisoners. She shotand only wounded her target. Zasulick threw down her weaponand proclaimed, “I am a terrorist, not a killer.”
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And, in a foretasteof later terrorist tactics, Zasulick used the court proceedings to putthe Russian political system on trial.According to Hoffman, terrorism took on a negative conno‑tation in the 1930s and 1940s with the rise of Nazi Germany andStalinist Russia. Hoffman argues that “terrorism” was now used
 
Terrorism Studies: The ismal Science? 19“to describe the practices of mass repression employed by totalitar‑ian states and their dictatorial leaders against their own citizens.”
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 uring the era of decolonization, which began aer the FirstWorld War, several groups fighting for self‑determination actual‑ly described themselves as terrorist organizations.
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But this soonchanged. As decolonization quickened aer the Second World War,colonial governments used the term terrorism to describe groupsfighting for national liberation. Anti‑colonial movements, on theother hand, preferred to label themselves freedom fighters. In otherwords, during the anti‑colonial era terrorism regained its revolu‑tionary connotation.
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In the modern period some writers have made a distinction be‑tween terrorists and guerrilla forces.
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They argue that guerrillasopenly carry their weapons and generally wear an identifying em‑ blem or uniform that obliges a state to treat them as soldiers or atthe very least
levée en masse
. Guerrilla movements aim to weaken ordestroy their enemy’s military forces as their main objective. In themodern era, terrorists, by contrast, observe none of these conven‑tions and strike directly at civilian population in order to underminetheir support for the state’s armed forces. In these circumstances,some would argue, terrorists are in fact unlawful combatants andas such are not protected by the laws of war.If the above paragraph appears contentious it is necessary toplace its arguments in historical context. Ever since the League ofNations was established in 1920 the international community has been unable to reach agreement on the definition of terrorism. Notethe following assessment offered by the Commonwealth of Austra‑lia in a 2004 white paper on terrorism:There is no internationally accepted definition of terrorism.Not even the United Nations has been able to achieve con‑sensus on this contentious issue. The old adage that ‘oneman’s freedom fighter is another man’s terrorist’ goes tothe root of the ongoing debate. Individual states, therefore,have been compelled to develop their own definitions forthe purposes of enacting legislation to counter the threat.
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 Aer September 11, the United Nations Security Council ad‑opted Resolution 1267 that made provision for the UN Monitoring
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