Working out the mind of terror

PASSING THROUGH/ Prof Michael Clarke

What makes a man decide, on waking up one morning, that today is the day he's going to blow himself up? What makes a suicide bomber? A jehadi terrorist? Institutions fund, create, and motivate such individuals, to be sure. But Islamic terrorist groups are driven, in addition, by a narrative of humiliation of a Muslim, especially one who lives in the Western world.

A terrorist has a version of history that strings together familiar events, but in a cause-effect relationship that bears no resemblance to history as we understand it, or so Michael Clarke, professor of defence studies, King's College, London, believes.

In India to deliver a lecture on "Getting to grips with global terrorism" sponsored by King's College at the United Services Institution (USI), Clarke says as attacks on the Islamic world increase, they will enrich and embroider the anti-Jewish/Christian/Western discourse that is the staple fare of jehadi terrorism.

He believes civil society must universally find international terrorism intolerable because symbols of the state are only 10 per cent of the target. Ninety per cent of the targets for violent action are businesses, and places frequented by the public.

How then do you counter terrorism and the suicide bomber? Clarke says in Britain, which has known IRA terrorism for years but is coming to terms with jehadi terrorism only now, the accent is on dialogue.

Because terrorist violence cannot be pre-empted owing to limits to policing, society has to be protected, and prevented from terrorist violence and groups have to be penetrated to do this. He also feels that the words that the state uses to describe a community, terrorism and threat to religion are "very important".

Clarke has done impressive research on the most prominent organisation that runs jehadi terrorism: the Al Qaida. The Al Qaida has a business model that has franchising as its driving force "" Al Qaida itself might be small but it spawns a glamour that motivates other organisations to act in its name.

Clarke sees the Al Qaida as a pyramid "" the core or the top (the shoora or council) comprises just about 30 people. Below this are 200 or so messengers who are able to liase with each other all over the world. Then, there is the network "" 10-15,000 people who are operative and the 40,000 or so who are inoperative till their services are called upon.

While the attack on the Twin Towers in New York will forever be etched on the public mind as the symbol of jehadi terror, for these groups, the moment of triumph was the attack on US military ship, the USS Cole, off the Yemen coast in 2000. This demonstrated real, raw power, and reversed the humiliation of the Islamic world at the hands of the West.

Clarke says Britain sees the problem in terms of policing. Yet matters get out of hand "" like the accidental shooting of a Brazilian national on July 7 last year who had nothing to do with Al Qaida (policemen emptied 11 bullets into his head. Only seven actually hit him). All these are symptoms of a police force that could come under severe stress and care has to be taken that this doesn't happen often.