Origins and evolution of the terrorist phenomenon

A historical overview of the evolution of the terrorist phenomenon.

If we agree to place the origin of terrorism in its present form in the second half of the 19th century, we can observe how both the reasons that have served as a basis for terrorism and the methods employed have evolved in the same way as politics, the way war is waged, international relations or any other aspect of the social and human condition. And at each stage a predominant type of terrorism can be identified. 

Similarly, when it comes to the way they act, the various terrorist groups have adapted to the times. Not only conditioned by the aforementioned changes, but also by technical advances and even by the predominant moral conditioning factors in society at any given time.    

Terrorism is above all a tool or, to put it another way, a technique. This technique is as old as war itself, although it is true that it began to take its present form in the mid to late 19th century. 

As a political phenomenon, terrorism is defined by the duality between its own ideology and its implementation. And by the same token, it is a phenomenon existing only within a historical and cultural context. 

For more than three decades, the activities of terrorist movements or groups were closely linked to Marxist ideology. By contrast, terrorist groups of that ideology are a minority today. And the same applies to the history of terrorist movements since their inception: they have all been conditioned by the political and social context in which they emerged, acted and disappeared. 

Although terrorism is a phenomenon undergoing a continuous process of evolution or reinvention, the lack of continuity between each generation of terrorists often implies a gap in ideology or rationale and modus operandi with the past. 

Today, the importance of the cultural component is clearer in religiously inspired terrorist movements than in those of a purely ideological or nationalistic bent. 

A terrorist organisation is, by definition, an organisation that opposes the state apparatus. It is the nature of that opposition that marks the character of the movement. 

If the state apparatus is essentially rational, the terrorist movement appeals mainly to the emotional side. But when the state machine acts on the basis of realistic policies and taking into account the correlation of forces, terrorist movements tend to imbue their motivations with a strong moral tone, always in line with the ideology at stake, and to sell the trump card of the strong against the weak, relying on the psychological impact of this on their adversary. 

Some specialists call today's terrorism bottom-up terrorism, but the opposite, top-down terrorism, which is what we call state terrorism, has undoubtedly been the most prevalent throughout history. It had its heyday during the last century with the rise of totalitarian regimes. And in terms of victims, it is the latter that has caused the greatest number of victims.

However, the line between the two forms of terrorism is not infrequently blurred; an example of this is Lenin's behaviour before 1917 and after he came to power. It is not uncommon nowadays to see people who are now considered terrorists become heads of state at the same time, and governments that once considered them terrorists now have to deal with them diplomatically. 

Since their beginnings, terrorist movements have been subject to a permanent evolution or adaptation to the situation and the times. 

For this brief analysis of the evolution of the phenomenon, we will use the theory of "waves of terrorism". 

Revolution has been the primary objective in each of the waves; the difference lies in the different understanding of revolution. Most terrorist groups understand revolution as the secession of a territory or self-determination. This principle, that any people should be able to govern itself, was established by the French and American Revolutions. The first three waves lasted approximately 40-45 years, but the third wave was somewhat shortened. The pattern followed can be likened to the pattern of the life cycle, in which dreams or aspirations that inspire one generation lose their appeal to the next. But it is more than evident that the life cycle of the different terrorist waves does not have a direct correspondence with that of the organisations that operated in each of them. 

In general, terrorist groups have disappeared before the wave itself did; although there are cases in which certain organisations have survived the wave with which they were born and with which they were associated, sometimes adapting their procedures to the new moment they faced. A clear case in point is the IRA, which began with the anti-colonial wave in the 1920s and has been operating well into the 21st century. As a reference, the average lifespan of the terrorist groups of the New Left wave was two years.

The anarchist wave which emerged at the end of the 19th century and lasted for about forty years had its turning point in the early 1880s, when the Italian anarchist movement split into two factions (a split which affected the movement to a greater or lesser extent wherever it had taken root). One was the revolutionary and anarcho-communist branch, while the other was closer to the socialism of the time. The split became definitive in 1892. From that moment on, Italian anarchism, so influential in Spain, split into two different models based on how to carry out the action of spreading its doctrine. 

On the one hand, there were those who advocated violence and actions against specific individuals, what was called "propaganda by the deed", which were not particularly successful in achieving the impact and results they sought. 

Unlike in the rest of Europe, where the terrorist tendency of anarchism was somewhat limited and short-lived, in Spain the attacks continued well into the 19th century. Individual acts of violence continued even after the establishment of a legal and peaceful anarcho-syndicalist movement.  

The targets, as we have seen in previous sections, were high representatives of politics and the system, including attacks on the king. But the aim was not necessarily to destabilise society as was the case, for example, in Russia, where the intention was to provoke a response from the state in order to denounce the excessive measures taken. In Spain, the intention was to clearly link the attack to its perpetrator and to the doctrine in the name of which the action had been carried out, in order to force society to know the strength and intensity of the revolutionary rage and sentiments that had motivated it. 

In France, something completely different happened. Anarchism went from attacking those significant figures who symbolised the system they considered oppressive, to carrying out indiscriminate actions against what they considered the bourgeoisie. They extended the origin of all the ills of society to a part of it, and thus made it a target, carrying out various indiscriminate attacks.

The representative of this current was called Emile Henry, and to justify his actions he claimed that the bourgeoisie did not distinguish between anarchists whatever their tendency. It persecuted them en masse, making everyone responsible for the actions of a few, acting indiscriminately, and for that very reason they acted in the same way. 

We have, therefore, an ideology that endorses violence in the beginning, but on an individual basis. They are actions carried out by individual people, in the name of an ideal, but not as part of an organised and targeted campaign. The only aim is to create revolutionary awareness through the use of violence against those they consider their opponents, and as we have seen in the Spanish case, in its last stage, not even that. Only to externalise rage and indignation. 

The anti-colonial wave began in the second decade of the 20th century and by the 1960s it had almost entirely disappeared. 

The signing of the Treaty of Versailles at the end of the World War I set the spark for this second wave of terrorism. Defeated empires were dismembered by applying the right of self-determination of peoples. Where independence was not immediately feasible, it was understood that their situation was transitory and that they had a mandate whose final destination was independence. But the victorious powers could not set the process and application of this principle in motion without raising questions and concerns about the legitimacy of their own colonial empires. 

The terrorist campaigns of the anti-colonial wave were carried out in territories where different views coexisted among the local population about the form of government they aspired to. Between the groups in this wave, the desired end-state was different. The end of colonisation was the common goal, but most of the organisations born out of this new territorial conflict only achieved partially what they sought. 

The tactics employed by the groups that emerged during this second wave differed in several respects from those of the first wave. Attacks on entities representing economic power or actions such as bank robberies were much less frequent, among other reasons because the diaspora of those peoples seeking independence were the ones who carried the burden of financing the terrorist movements.

The lesson learned from the actions taken to assassinate prominent political figures was very relevant. This type of action, in most cases, was counterproductive. One organisation that broke, we can say, out of the adopted pattern and continued this old practice was the Lehi group. A revisionist Zionist group that the British called the Stern Gang. Time proved that they were far less effective than their contemporaries in the struggle for independence. The new strategy initially focused on committing systematic assassinations of members of the security forces, who were merely the eyes and ears of the colonial government. The terrorists' rationale was to force the metropolis to replace the police forces with the military, which they believed would lead to an increase in violence towards the general population by committing atrocities that would unleash a wave of support for their interests. 

These groups used guerrilla warfare tactics against the military forces, hitting and running and blending in with the civilian population to hide their weapons and identities. 

Anti-colonial organisations sought a new way to describe themselves. The term "terrorist" carried too many bad connotations from what had happened in past decades during the height of the anarchist movement. 

By the end of World War II, with the demise of the last European empires, the motives that gave rise to anti-colonial groups had diminished significantly. Some groups remained active, as was the case with the IRA, but the overall goal of overthrowing the colonial powers had been achieved. 

In the so-called third wave, the wave of the New Left, radicalism is often combined with nationalism, as in the case of Spain and the terrorist group ETA, the Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia, the Corsican National Liberation Front or the IRA. 

The Vietnam War can be seen in a way as the international event that triggered this third wave. During the 1960s, terrorist groups focused on adopting an ideology aligned with that of the Marxist revolution, seeking to overthrow the existing capitalist system. 

The effectiveness of the Viet Cong against US troops created a radical hope that the oppressive Western system was vulnerable to change. Groups like the Red Brigades in Italy or the Armed Faction of the Red Army in Germany were born out of this ideology. 

The revolutionary ethos of the New Left wave transcended national borders and created points of unity and collaboration between terrorist groups that had been born independently.

An international landscape dominated by the Cold War and the growing conflict in Palestine served to inflame the terrorist world; and an organisation such as The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) institutionalised the training of terrorists from different groups, establishing training camps in Lebanon with the support of some Arab countries and the Soviet Union. 

Some of these new groups carried out their actions only within the borders of their respective countries, pursuing targets of international relevance mainly associated with the US. Others, on the other hand, crossed those borders and operated outside them in cooperation with terrorists from other countries. Examples include the Munich bombings in 1972 during the Olympics and the kidnapping of OPEC ministers in Vienna in 1975. This pooling of resources revived the concept of "international terrorism", which was used to describe the new way of operating and distinguish groups that had been cooperating with each other since the beginning of the 20th century. 

Kidnappings, abductions and hostage-taking became the distinctive techniques of this period. As in the anarchist wave, New Left terrorists chose high-level targets. Aeroplane hijacking was frequently used to obtain large numbers of hostages for negotiation. Significantly, more than 700 hijackings took place in just three decades. 

Hijacking began as a way of gaining political and media relevance, but soon became a lucrative form of financing, especially when large companies began to insure their top executives. 

The first wave tactic of assassinating heads of state or important figures was also taken up in this period. The most relevant incident was the kidnapping and assassination of Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro in 1979 by the Red Brigades, after his government refused to negotiate the conditions imposed for his release. Other targets included the British ambassador to Ireland, Prime Minister Margareth Thatcher and King Hussein of Jordan. 

The difference with the anarchist wave lies in the motives. While in the former, the relevant figures were targeted simply because of the office they held, in the latter the motive was punishment or revenge for actions or policies carried out against the group's ideology or interests.

The pattern in the ideological evolution of these groups is somewhat reminiscent of the anarchists of the first wave, when they took on certain nationalist aspirations as their own. Despite some initial failures, this alliance or assumption of new postulates went ahead for the reason that self-determination is always a longer-term claim than revolutionary ideological radicalism. Most of these groups, however, were soon to fail in the long run. And those that went ahead did not get very far, not least because the countries concerned, Turkey, Spain and France, did not see themselves as colonial powers in these cases (nor did the international community), which did not provide the separatists with the ambivalence needed to win their struggle. 

The third wave began to wane in the late 1980s with the end of the Cold War. The effectiveness of terrorist groups declined due to their inability to negotiate the demands imposed by different international actors. Trying to operate in competition with the needs of other groups led them to neglect their domestic bases, and this, coupled with the international community's resistance to the demands of terrorist groups and the increasing reluctance to conduct negotiations of any kind with these groups, led to the progressive dissipation of the New Left movements. 

The emergence of the fourth wave, the religious wave, overlaps with the end of the third wave, which appeared in the 1970s. This wave is very different from its predecessors and is characterised - and this is where it gets its name from - because, for the first time, the inspirational and motivational element of terrorist groups is based on religious beliefs and not on achieving political objectives, although as we shall see, this fact has also evolved and has its nuances where the political and the religious intermingle. 

Rapoport's model gives the first three waves a life cycle of approximately 40 years, but this alone does not provide evidence that this will be the pattern of the religious wave. Moreover, the emergence of Al Qaeda and later the DAESH phenomenon suggests that violence motivated by religious fundamentalism is not in decline and could remain the dominant force in international terrorism for a long time to come.  

In the previous three phases, religious identity, or the lack of it, was somewhat important; ethnic or religious identity often overlapped, as in the case of Armenia, Macedonia, Cyprus, Israel, Palestine and so on. But the earlier goal was to create secular sovereign states, in principle not very different from those already present in the international concert.

Religion, however, presents an enormous differentiating element in this phase, replacing justifications for taking the path of terrorism and organising the principles of the new world it seeks to establish. The religious fact gives this wave unprecedented strength and unique properties and characteristics. 

The religious wave was a consequence of three main events in the Islamic world: the revolution of the ayatollahs in Iran, the beginning of a new century in the Islamic calendar and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. These three elements paved the way for religious fundamentalism to break through, eclipsing political and secular ideologies that had been the driving force behind the previous waves. 

The groups of this fourth wave have resorted, much more than their New Left predecessors, to massive and indiscriminate attacks on government and military installations. US-owned facilities in particular have been frequent targets. An ambush in Somalia, which led to the so-called Battle of Mogadishu, forced US forces to leave the country after they had already left Lebanon. Suicide attacks on military posts in Yemen, Saudi Arabia and even a Navy destroyer went unanswered. Similarly, US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were attacked, causing large numbers of civilian casualties. 

In 1993 the first successful attack by foreign terrorists on American soil took place, targeting the World Trade Center. After these several unsuccessful attempts, they again sought to attack in the US, until 11 September 2001, after the attack that brought down the Twin Towers, when what came to be known as "the war on terror" began. 

This fourth wave has seen the emergence of an organisation with a unique purpose and recruitment pattern in the history of terrorism: Al Qaeda, led and financed by Saudi Arabia's Osama Bin Laden. Its goal, to create a single state for all Muslims, a state that existed centuries ago and was governed by Sharia or Islamic law. 

His call resonated with Sunni communities in the Middle East, Africa and Asia. Until now, each terrorist organisation recruited its militants in its own country, but al Qaeda recruited members from all Sunni communities, including those who had settled in the West.

Violent militant Islamist groups are at the heart of the Religious wave, and have conducted the most significant and deadly international attacks since the 1990s, but they are not the only religious terrorist organizations using violence to achieve their goals. Groups like Boko Haram, al Qaeda and its affiliates, Hezbollah, and ISIS have received the most international attention since the start of the Religious wave, but other terrorist organisations have also used faith to justify their violent actions. Jewish terrorists have used targeted violence in Israel, including numerous attacks on Muslims and the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995. Other notable fourth wave groups include the Lord’s Resistance Army, a rebel group and Christian cult operating in Africa known for murdering entire villages and kidnapping children to be used as soldiers, and Aum Shinrikyo, the Buddhist/Hindu Japanese cult that injured thousands of people during a sarin gas attack in the Tokyo subway in 1995.

In terms of tactics employed, the fourth wave has moved away from the tactics most commonly used in the third wave, such as kidnapping and hostage-taking, to suicide attacks as the most common form of action. This tactical innovation is an extremely lethal technique, one that can be carried out on land, in the air, or by sea, and almost always produces mass casualties and significant structural damage to surrounding areas. Suicide bombing reasserted the “martyrdom theme” that was employed by the anarchists of the first wave. Anarchist propaganda claimed that a revolutionary’s death during an attack was noble, and selfsacrifice was the ultimate way to show total devotion to the cause.

Although the “conventional wisdom that only a vision of rewards in paradise could inspire such acts,”suicide attacks have also been used by secular groups, including the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in Sri Lanka. During a thirteen-year period, the LTTE used suicide bombers 171 times, injuring thousands of people and killing hundreds of civilians and soldiers, including the assassinations of Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in 1991 and Sri Lankan President Ranasinghe Premadasa in 1993. The LTTE are also credited with inventing the suicide belt and pioneering the use of women for suicide attacks.

The number of terrorist organizations has dramatically declined during the fourth wave. From approximately 200 groups active in the 1980s, in little more than a decade the number has been reduced to around forty, something that can be attributed to the shift in the basis of terrorism from nationalist to religious terrorism, as we have seen.

Major religious communities have a membership base much larger than any nationalist organization, giving extremist factions more options for recruiting. Secular terrorist groups largely come from Christian countries, but the Christian faith has more divisions and different branches than most religions, resulting in a somewhat weaker base that is more fractured and fractured belief system. 

With the exception of the Oklahoma City bombing, Christian violence has been minimal throughout the fourth wave. Terrorist activities inspired by all religions, except Islamist extremism, have peaked and virtually disappeared since the attacks by al Qaeda on September 11. 

Another very interesting fact is that, In the first two decades of the fourth wave, states with majority Muslim populations experienced the most terrorist attacks. In the second half of the fourth wave, non-Muslim majority countries including the United States and European nations saw an increase of plots and attacks inside their borders. 

All terrorist organisations have a history of death and destruction, but fourth-wave religious groups have been by far the most lethal. Religious extremism has inflicted more casualties than any other terrorist group motivated by any other motivation, while exhibiting a keen interest in violating all social norms, departing from them and remaining outside current social systems and the laws of secular states. Indeed, the ultimate goal of the main radical Islamist groups is to destroy and replace the state model that emerged after the Peace of Westphalia with a Caliphate free of any Western influence. 

Religiously motivated terrorists believe they are engaged in a power struggle between good and evil, which implies the need to eliminate what they see as legitimate targets as the embodiment of evil in a war without quarter and without end. This leads them to dehumanise their victims, which makes it much easier to carry out any kind of attack. 

The emotional disconnect that occurs between their actions and their victims allows violent religious extremists to have fewer qualms about their actions, as they disregard any human reaction and are convinced that they are carrying out the designs of their divinity. 

They firmly believe that religion provides them with the moral superiority necessary to exercise violence, and by equating their actions with the struggle between their god and the devil, certain political actors come to endorse this way of thinking that justifies the use of any means, no matter how violent. 

The reality today is that we are immersed in what has so far been the most violent stage in the history of terrorism. This religious wave has turned the terrorist movement into a global, or rather transnational, phenomenon that for the first time affects everyone equally, that does not hesitate to use all the means at its disposal and that will most likely break the time pattern followed by previous waves.

Taking Rapoport's theory of waves as a reference point, we can see that at each stage of the terrorist movement, the methods used by terrorists have changed, and they have used one or another according to the ideology of the groups and the purpose of their struggle; and although it may seem incongruous and even hypocritical, they have adapted them to the social and moral conditioning factors of each period. It is even the case that forms of action used in one period and set aside in the next have been taken up again almost a century later. Evidently, technological advances have also contributed to the evolution of both the tactics and techniques used, as has progressive globalisation. This fact, which is so positive for development, has a flip side: just as it facilitates relations and exchanges of trade and information or services almost without hindrance and at a speed that was unthinkable until recently, it allows the same for the commission of all kinds of illegal activities, and terrorism is no exception. 

Particularly interesting is the case of suicide attacks. During the anarchist wave, dying for the cause was a demonstration of dedication to it and a way of stirring consciences to gain followers. The aim was not simply to immolate oneself; we have to see it as the determination to carry out the attack even in the knowledge that the attacker had no chance of escape, which would make him a martyr in a sense. This way of acting disappeared in the second and third waves, not least for a pragmatic reason. Recruitment of members was much lower and losing an element in an action was not profitable for terrorist organisations.  

But in the current religious wave this technique has been revived, although not in the sense in which it was used by the anarchists; now the attacker, if he intends to die, consciously seeks to immolate himself in the conviction that in this way he will attain the glory of Paradise. The point in common with the first wave is to be found in the propagandistic or martyrdom part of the act, which serves as an example for others and helps to recruit new members. And another determining factor is the large critical mass that extremist religious movements have, which allows them not to consider these "ordinary fighters" a critical resource, so that losing them during the course of an action compensates them for the number of casualties they cause and the media impact of this type of attack.

Contrary to the media's view of terrorism, most attacks depend on the ease with which these groups can access appropriate equipment and weaponry. Obviously, explosives and firearms are the most widely used means of attack. Eighty per cent of the attacks employ one or the other. The most commonly used explosives are those most easily accessible, especially dynamite (relatively accessible through mining thefts), hand grenades (from the black market), small, light and easily transportable small arms; small, lightweight and easy to transport and conceal), mortar grenades (from any of dozens of conflict zones) and something very characteristic of the fourth wave, improvised explosive devices (IEDs), built with homemade explosives that are manufactured by the terrorists themselves (we have two very clear examples, the famous amonal, used in Spain by the terrorist group ETA, and the TATP, characteristic of attacks by Islamic radicals). 

The evolution of the tactics used has been conditioned by two main elements. One, the fundamental one, is the target of the terrorist groups - not the specific target to be hit, but the end of their struggle - and the other is the availability or accessibility of the right equipment.

When, in the anarchist period, the elimination of specific and prominent figures was sought, attacks with firearms or even knives were the norm, requiring almost direct contact with the victim and leading almost de facto to the capture or death of the attacker (seeking that martyrdom of which we have already spoken). Even the attacks with explosive devices were small explosive devices (one of the most common was the Orsini bomb). It was only when the movement changed and the whole bourgeoisie was targeted that more powerful devices were used in order to cause more victims indiscriminately. 

During the second wave, tactics evolved into something more akin to guerrilla warfare, using mainly firearms and, not infrequently, almost military-style clashes. It should not be forgotten that many of the components of the terrorist movements were ex-combatants of the First World War with military training and combat experience.

The first part of the third wave took up the tactics of the first wave to some extent, seeking more selective attacks with a high media impact. The groups tried to measure the consequences of their actions very carefully so that they would not be counterproductive; but the manipulation of terrorist groups by the powers in dispute during the Cold War, which used them as what we know today as proxies to combat their opponents by destabilising the opposing bloc or trying to overthrow or install governments of one party or another, led to increasingly violent and indiscriminate actions. At this stage, access to arms and explosives was guaranteed by the bloc that supported them, as well as the necessary financial support. During the second half of the New Left wave, and with the internationalisation of terrorism, cooperation between some movements and the emergence of the religious phenomenon as a catalyst, a qualitative leap took place, and techniques such as the car bomb, a totally indiscriminate system that sought to cause as many victims as possible, became commonplace. Violence became more extreme, especially in the nationalist and new religiously motivated groups that were beginning to emerge.  

With the emergence of the religious wave, the techniques and tactics employed underwent a new and complex evolution. Attacks increased in violence. Most of the members of these groups have previous military experience from involvement in armed conflicts in their home areas. The use of weapons of war, such as assault rifles or hand grenades, becomes commonplace, and the emergence of suicide bombers is another significant change in this phase, in terms of modes of operation. But the most significant development is the execution of complex and indiscriminate attacks against the civilian population, combining the use of explosives, usually by suicide bombers, and attacks with weapons of war. One example is the Paris attacks in November 2015. 

The use of other means, such as chemical, biological or radioactive weapons, has been sporadic and insignificant, the best-known action being the attack on the Tokyo underground in 1995. Nevertheless, it is an option that cannot be ruled out. In fact, there have been several attempts by these groups to get hold of the material needed to make such devices. The complexity of handling the necessary components and the need for highly skilled and qualified personnel have so far been the main obstacles to their use, which cannot be ruled out at any time given the idiosyncrasies of terrorism typical of this fourth wave.

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• Thorup, Mikkel: An Intellectual History of Terror: War, Violence and the State. Routledge, New York, 2010.
• Smith, Paul J.: The Terrorism Ahead: Confronting Transnational Violence in the Twenty-First Century. M.E. Sharpe, New York, 2008.
• Rapoport, David C.: "Terrorism." Encyclopedia of Violence, Peace and Conflict, 2008
• Roxana Simus: The evolution of terrorism. Police Academy Bucureşti, România, 2016.
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