Terrorism, Social Movements, and International Security: How Al Qaeda Affects Southeast Asia

Abstract

This paper argues that international security studies can most profitably engage the issue of international terrorism by considering terrorist groups as transnational social movement organizations. It takes as its case Al Qaeda's role in Southeast Asia, focusing especially on the efforts of Al Qaeda leaders to align the demands and grievances of local Islamist movements and to spread a set of tactics and methods of political violence. In so doing, the paper builds on the often-neglected literature on the politics of terrorism while tying the argument to prevailing debates over social movements. The paper thus aims at clarifying the ways in which Southeast Asian organizations have adopted Al Qaeda's tactics and language but appear to be addressing primarily local or provincial concerns. This perspective also draws terrorism into current discussions of international security while maintaining a detailed focus on the interactions of individual agents and larger violent movements.

Decision processes of a suicide bomber—the economics and psychology of attacking and defecting

“…The Assassins seized several scattered and impregnable mountain fortresses as retreat centres for their movement (Rapoport 1984). Comtemporary examples include Al Qaeda who encourages the training of its supporters in hidden military camps that 'generate both the common collective identity and the shared tactics and repertoires that have informed the transnational cells' (Leheny 2005). Hegghammer (2006) stresses the crucial role of training camps in 'violence acculturization, indoctrination, training and relations-building.'…”

The transnationalization of the Taliban

“…The way in which the global Islamist struggle has allied itself with the Taliban, a group rooted in its own local political settings, is not unique. The Al-Qaeda network has to a large extent based itself on alliances with such local groups, contributing to their local battles while at the same time seeking to influence them ideologically and recruiting activists for its own global war (see Hoffman, 2004; Leheny, 2005). The irony in the Afghan case is that, while Afghanistan played such a vital role in the build-up of Al-Qaeda – first as sanctuary for the network, later as one of the main battlegrounds in a confrontation with the West – the ability to integrate Afghans into the main network has been limited.…”

Terrorism in Southeast Asia: expert analysis, myopia and fantasy

“…Politics-driven accounts do not deny that contacts between groups such as ASG or MILF and al-Qaeda may have occurred but, they argue, to focus on these connections is to misrepresent the nature of these groups in terms of their mission, grievances and strategies. 6 Rather than being usefully viewed as part of a global terrorist network, these groups are shown to be locally-oriented, politically-inspired (or, in the case of ASG, apparently financially motivated) and engaged in practical struggles and, in some cases, sustained political negotiations (Gershman 2002;Farish 2003;Putzel 2003;Wright-Neville 2004;Leheny 2005). Hence personal connections to al-Qaeda may exist, but they do not capture the nature of these groups.…”