How Terrorists Learn: Organizational Learning and Beyond 1032421568, 9781032421568

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Political Violence

HOW TERRORISTS LEARN ORGANIZATIONAL LEARNING AND BEYOND Edited by Carolin Görzig, Michael Fürstenberg, Florian Köhler, and Imad Alsoos

How Terrorists Learn

This volume helps us understand the transformations of terrorist organizations and the conflicts they are involved in, by broadening the perspective on what is considered terrorist learning. Using a variety of methodological approaches and empirical data, the volume offers a look at the clandestine inner lives of groups from different continents and ideological backgrounds in order to explore from whom they learn and how, and what the outcomes are. Their internal and external interactions are examined within their socio-political contexts to illuminate how they adapt to challenges or fail to do so. Unpacking the question of ‘how do terrorists learn’ helps us to grasp not only changes in violent means of action but also of operational and strategic approaches and, ultimately, even transformations of the ends pursued. The chapters demonstrate that terrorist learning is not principally different from that of other human organizations. The contributors draw on conceptual frameworks of organizational learning but also broaden the scope beyond the organizational framework to acknowledge the variety of forms of informal and decentralized learning characteristic of much contemporary terrorism. This book will be of much interest to students of terrorism studies, violent extremism, organizational studies, and international relations. Carolin Görzig is a research group leader at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle, Germany. Michael Fürstenberg is a senior research fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle, Germany. Florian Köhler is a senior research fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle, Germany. Imad Alsoos is a senior research fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle, Germany.

Political Violence Series Editor: John G. Horgan Georgia State University, USA

Founding Editor: David Rapoport

This book series contains sober, thoughtful, and authoritative academic accounts of terrorism and political violence. Its aim is to produce a useful taxonomy of terror and violence through comparative and historical analysis in both national and international spheres. Each book discusses the origins, organizational dynamics, and outcomes of particular forms and expressions of political violence. The Evolution of Counter-Terrorism Since 9/11 Understanding the Paradigm Shift in Liberal Democracies Thomas Renard Salafi-Jihadism and Digital Media The Nordic and International Context Edited by: Magnus Ranstorp, Linda Ahlerup, and Filip Ahlin Terrorist Recruitment, Propaganda and Branding Selling Terror Online Anna Kruglova Foreign Fighters and Radical Influencers Radical Milieus in the Postwar Balkans Asya Metodieva Islamic State in Australia Rodger Shanahan How Terrorists Learn Organizational Learning and Beyond Edited by: Carolin Görzig, Michael Fürstenberg, Florian Köhler, and Imad Alsoos For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge. com/Political-Violence/book-series/SE0196

How Terrorists Learn Organizational Learning and Beyond

Edited by Carolin Görzig, Michael Fürstenberg, Florian Köhler, and Imad Alsoos

First published 2024 by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2024 selection and editorial matter, Carolin Görzig, Michael Fürstenberg, Florian Köhler, Imad Alsoos; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Carolin Görzig, Michael Fürstenberg, Florian Köhler, Imad Alsoos to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 978-1-032-42156-8 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-42157-5 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-36143-5 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003361435 Typeset in Sabon by MPS Limited, Dehradun

Contents

List of Contributors Acknowledgments 1 Introduction: Tackling the Complexity of Terrorist Learning

vii ix

1

MICHAEL FÜRSTENBERG, CAROLIN GÖRZIG, IMAD ALSOOS, AND FLORIAN KÖHLER

PART 1

Learning of Organizations 2 Double-Loop Learning in Terrorist Organizations: Facilitators and Impediments

17

19

FLORIAN KÖHLER, IMAD ALSOOS, MICHAEL FÜRSTENBERG, AND CAROLIN GÖRZIG

3 Downgrading or Upsizing Strategies: How Rebels Learn about the Right Repertoire of Violence

44

LUIS DE LA CALLE

4 Social-Media Jihad as a Learned Strategy: How Daesh Learned but Failed to Exploit Western Vulnerabilities

64

JOHN NICOLAS HELFERICH

5 Learning Patterns and Failures: An Analysis of ISIS Operations between 2013 and 2019 NORI KATAGIRI

84

vi

Contents

PART 2

Learning beyond Organizations 6 Adaptation of Propaganda and Communication: The Online Magazines of al-Qaeda and the Islamic State Compared

101

103

BOYAN HADZHIEV

7 Terrorist Tactical Diffusion among Lone Actors: Explaining the Spread of Vehicle Ramming Attacks

123

ARI WEIL

8 Learning through the Migration of Knowledge: Exploring the Transition of Operatives between Violence Organizations

144

SHEELAGH BRADY

9 Decentralized Collective Learning: Militant Accelerationism as a Community of Practice

160

MICHAEL FÜRSTENBERG

10 Conclusion: What Have We Learned about Terrorist Learning?

182

IMAD ALSOOS, FLORIAN KÖHLER, CAROLIN GÖRZIG, AND MICHAEL FÜRSTENBERG

Index

198

Contributors

Imad Alsoos, Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Germany. Imad Alsoos is a research fellow in the research group “How Terrorists learn”. He works on Islamic groups and organization theory. Sheelagh Brady, Dublin City University (DCU), Ireland. Sheelagh Brady is a senior security information analyst with the United Nations Department of Safety and Security (UNDSS) Nigeria and a PhD student at Dublin City University working on recruitment to violence organizations and counterterrorism strategies. Luis De la Calle, Centro de Investigacion y Docencia Economicas (CIDE), Mexico. Luis De la Calle is an associate professor in Political Science at CIDE. He works on state capacity and terrorism and is the author of Nationalist Violence in Postwar Europe (Cambridge University Press 2015). Michael Fürstenberg, Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Germany. Michael Fürstenberg is a senior research fellow in the research group “How Terrorists learn”. He works on the dynamics of civil wars, strategic learning of terrorist groups, and right-wing terrorism. Carolin Görzig, Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Germany. Carolin Görzig is the leader of the research group “How Terrorists learn” and is the author of Talking to Terrorists (Routledge 2010) and co-author of Radicalization of Muslims in Europe (Routledge 2015). Boyan Hadzhiev, University of National and World Economy, Bulgaria. Boyan Hadzhiev works on hybrid warfare and international security and is the author of Enablers of hybrid warfare: The Bulgarian case (Journal of International Studies, vol 13, 1, 2020). John Nicolas Helferich, University of Oxford, Great Britain. John Helferich is a doctoral researcher in International Relations at the Department of Politics & International Relations of the University of Oxford. He works on security and defense cooperation in the Euro-Atlantic area, foreignpolicy analysis, and International Relations Theory. He is the author of

viii

Contributors

Arms Export Controls Under Siege of Globalisation: Defeated Nation States or Voluntary Surrender? (Tectum Wissenschaftsverlag 2020). Nori Katagiri, Saint Louis University, United States. Nori Katagiri is an associate professor of Political Science and Coordinator of International Studies at Saint Louis University. He works on irregular warfare and cybersecurity and is the author of Adapting to Win: How Insurgents Fight and Defeat Foreign States in War (University of Pennsylvania Press 2014). Florian Köhler, Max Planck Institute of Social Anthropology, Germany. Florian Köhler is an anthropologist, but he has also worked as a practitioner in peace-building and conflict-resolution in Niger, Benin, Burkina Faso, and Haiti. He is the author of Space, Place and Identity: Wodaabe of Niger in the 21st Century (Berghahn 2020). Currently, he is a senior research fellow in the research group “How Terrorists Learn”. His research interests include social movements and political violence, terrorism, and pastoralism in West Africa. Ari Weil, University of Chicago, United States. Ari Weil is a PhD student in political science at the University of Chicago. He has published articles in Orbis and Perspectives on Terrorism. He works on political violence and rhetoric, as well as rebel organizations and tactics.

Acknowledgments

We are especially thankful for the generous support of the Max Planck Society without which the organization of the preparatory author workshop and the compilation of this edited volume would not have been possible. The Max Planck Society has funded the research group “How Terrorists Learn” since its inception in 2015. In the same vein, we would like to acknowledge specifically the support of the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle, Germany – the actual and intellectual home of our research group.

1

Introduction Tackling the Complexity of Terrorist Learning Michael Fürstenberg, Carolin Görzig, Imad Alsoos, and Florian Köhler

So-called terrorist groups are often treated as a sort of black box – visible only in the destruction wrought by them, while the organizational practices that shape their actions often remain underexamined and seemingly incomprehensible. This particularly includes the ways in which they digest, understand, and make use of experiences and information, or, in other words, how they learn. Much like with the term ‘terrorism’, there is no single clear definition of ‘learning’, but very broadly it can be understood as the acquisition and processing of knowledge to improve behavior in the future. Rather than being a one-way street, this involves complex processes of interpretation in interaction with the environment. Moreover, this is not a purely individual endeavor: not only do individuals learn within social contexts, but also collective actors develop procedures that result in learning outcomes that are greater than the sum of the individual contributions’ parts. As learning is commonly seen as positive, in the case of terrorists it is often either argued in a normative sense that they do not learn at all, or that their learning is purely destructive – accordingly, terrorist learning is rarely regarded as a remarkable phenomenon in its own right but often reduced to threats it may produce. Of course, discourses on terrorism are characterized by a general tendency of exceptionalization. As Herschinger argues, “the desire to define terrorism is not only the desire to give a precise content to terrorism and, thereby, create the identity of an Other. It is also the desire to create a collective identity, a ‘Self’” (2013, 184). As part of the formation of collective identities, such constructions of the “Other” and the “Self” serve the drawing of clear boundaries between ‘us’ and ‘them’. Public debates therefore often convey an understanding of a categorical difference between terrorists and others, setting the actors thus labeled apart from the rest of ‘civilised’ society (Sluka 2008, 174). Even in academic literature, terrorist actors are often treated as a special category, frequently on dubious definitional grounds (Phillips 2015). Both from a normative and analytical perspective, there is a prevalent implication that groups deemed terrorists not only engage in especially reprehensible violence but also that their internal workings are, at DOI: 10.4324/9781003361435-1

2 Michael Fürstenberg et al. the same time, somehow fundamentally different from other types of organizations as well as essentially similar to each other. Opening the black box(es) and looking at learning processes taking place inside may, however, cast doubt on this assumption. For example, the Egyptian Gamaa Islamiya – an Islamist group that became infamous for the Luxor Massacre in 1997 – exemplifies the sometimes even profound transformations that can take place within terrorist organizations. In a long process of reflection about the use of violence, its leaders eventually renounced the armed struggle. Remarkably, they made their deliberations and learning experience transparent in 20 published books (Görzig 2019, 8–10). In one of them, they lament that, unfortunately, humans do not have two lives, one to gather experience and a second to learn from this experience. Both tasks, they conclude, have to be achieved within one lifetime (Al-Azim, Najih and Al-Sharif 2002, 117). This statement, commenting on the limited time for learning before lessons have to be applied, sounds only too familiar and reveals that terrorists are just as capable of deep considerations about their own learning as other, more legitimate actors are. Furthermore, the leaders wrote a book about al-Qaeda, projecting their own learning insights on the more radical organization. In this book they postulate that al-Qaeda is thinking in black-and-white patterns, lacking a sense for reality as if life were a “chemical laboratory” (Zuhdi et al. 2002, 200–201). In contrast, the leaders of the Gamaa Islamiya discover many shades of grey and learn to balance their priorities. The learning of the Gamaa Islamiya, which ultimately led to its transformation into a political party, is indeed a far cry from what al-Qaeda has learned. While the latter certainly demonstrated a penchant for innovative tactics (Moghadam 2013) and even reformed its strategies to a certain extent (Fürstenberg and Görzig 2020), it never questioned its violent approach or its core mission. Discovering such nuances leads to broadening the question of whether terrorist learning differs from that of others to more complex questions about variations in learning between and within terrorist groups and wider networks, and different kinds and mechanisms of learning. By arguing for a de-exceptionalization of terrorists and acknowledging their comparability to other types of violent as well as non-violent organizations, we do not deny the existence of any characteristics that make terrorist groups particular – we merely argue that these particularities do not make them fundamentally different. Thus, regarding the question of learning, too, terrorist groups are in general comparable to other organizations, although, in some regards, their learning looks more specific. For example, one central aspect that is often defined as a prerequisite for successful organizational learning is openness and flexibility (Brown 2006, 260). Terrorist groups, however, are often governed by uncompromising and rigid, radical ideologies. Moreover, their situation is usually not conducive to openness: As Crenshaw writes, the “commitment to violence as a primary method of action condemns terrorist organizations to […] operate clandestinely. Terrorist organizations

Introduction

3

are predominantly underground conspiracies, and their activities are governed by the strictest rules of secrecy” (2011, 69). This suggests limits to learning, as operating under conditions of secrecy and existential danger limits free exchange with the outside and promotes sticking to tried-and-tested opinions and solutions. Opposing views are frequently not heard or even strictly and violently suppressed. The situation of secrecy can also imply that actors have to master several, often contradictory, identity roles, potentially causing inner conflicts and dilemmas (Görzig and Al-Hashimi 2014). For example, many members of extremist organizations live entirely ordinary lives most of the time and are mobilized only for specific operations. The creation of filter bubbles in isolation seems to make it difficult to generate new insights and tends to encourage the development of “groupthink” (McCormick 2003, 488–489). Moreover, the need to maintain secrecy and avoid security forces’ detection puts restraints on the ability of terrorist structures to organize and communicate, making it harder to exchange information (Shapiro 2013). And yet, some terrorist organizations managed to survive for decades despite all obstacles, clearly indicating an ability to learn and adapt. In order to understand the factors that influence these multifaceted processes and the different ways organizations deal with the issues described above, it is necessary to take a look at the inner life of terrorist organizations. Important group-internal factors include the way it is structured – as a hierarchical organization, a network of groups, or even completely decentralized – the relation between the core group and its follower base, the role of personality traits of the leadership, potential leadership challenges, or ideology. However, analyses that focus only on the internal level run the risk of examining the organization in isolation from its environment. The learning of terrorist groups does not take place in a vacuum but in dynamic and often hostile situations. Development and learning processes are thus fundamentally influenced by complex interactions between internal organizational dynamics and external circumstances and relationships, both adversarial and cooperative. Therefore, the learning of terrorist groups has to be contextualized by examining both endogenous motivations and capabilities and exogenous conditions and influences for change (Brown 2006, 256–258). In this book we seek to account for empirical complexity and to look in detail at the actual subjects and mechanisms of learning, focussing on the core issue of ‘how terrorists learn’. Looking at learning processes in this way means going beyond focusing on tactical changes and innovations or the use and spread of particular skills and technologies. It means taking into consideration the whole spectrum of processes of learning, the strategic evolution of violent organizations including internal debates, and the construction of knowledge in interaction and exchange with an environment of partners, supporters, competitors, and enemies. Thus, we aspire to a comprehensive approach to the phenomenon. The contributions in this volume draw on empirical research on terrorist actors from several continents and a variety of ideological backgrounds, analyzing different aspects of the learning process, from the transfer of knowledge via recruitment

4 Michael Fürstenberg et al. of members with experience in military or criminal organizations to the adaptation of overall strategies to the changing realities of the environment. They go beyond a singular focus on organizations and take into account the wider networks of groups and decentralized collectives. The authors look at the phenomenon from different angles and from different disciplinary backgrounds, revealing the surprising variety of ways in which terrorist groups and movements seek to gain and spread knowledge, adapt, and improve. We believe that there are important lessons to be drawn from the contributions of this book. They concern for example a renewed argument for the applicability of the analytical toolkit of organizational learning to investigate learning processes in violent organizations, while at the same time recognizing the need to broaden the focus on wider collective dimensions. Also, looking at the cognitive dimensions of learning and tracing internal processes of interpretation and debates helps gaining a more differentiated picture of a terrorist organization. Investigating the learning of terrorist groups in such a holistic manner opens up possibilities for alternative modes of understanding, and eventually responding to, terrorism. It allows for re-politicizing conflicts and broadening the perspective beyond a narrow focus on kinetic counterterrorism. For example, depriving militant organizations of certain sets of skills could be as important as feeding them desirable information and positive incentives. The potential of terrorist groups to question their strategic and violent approaches also puts into question the main argument driving the no-concessions doctrine, according to which no concessions to, and no negotiations and no deals with terrorists are possible. Before we describe the individual contributions in detail, we provide a brief overview over the ways the phenomenon has been treated in the literature so far, and we introduce our own notions of the crucial components of terrorist learning processes. Studying Terrorist Learning: From Exclusive ‘Whether’ to Inclusive ‘How’ Asking how terrorists learn is suggestive of an approach to tackle complexity, an undertaking that only relatively recently has attracted more scholarly attention. An obvious reason why many researchers have shied away from systematically pursuing these questions is that learning, especially of collectives, is a notoriously complex concept. Thus, several scholars have contested that organizational learning beyond individual learning is possible at all (Gino and Staats 2015). Likewise, studies on the learning of terrorists have in general been more focused on psychological and sociological processes of (de-) radicalization of individuals rather than on groups (Della Porta and LaFree 2012; Horgan 2008; McCauley and Moskalenko 2008; Wilner and Dubouloz 2011). Where groups are concerned, they are often treated rather as the context and facilitator for the acquirement of skills and experience by individual terrorists (Kenney 2010). For example, Stenersen

Introduction

5

(2013) studies “e-learning courses” offered by al-Qaeda to spread the knowledge of bomb-making, while Lee and Knott (2022) analyze ideological learning in an online neo-Nazi forum. Considering terrorist groups themselves, for long the prevailing position in the literature was that terrorist organizations are generally conservative and averse to experimentation and change (Hoffman 1993; Jenkins 1986). In 1990, John Bowyer Bell argued that “very few revolutionary organizations invest much time in strategic planning or organizational analysis […] Any day-long analytical conference focuses deeper and longer on rebel strategy and tactics than do the rebels over a year” (211). Ten years later, Ariel Merari concluded that terrorism had not changed much over the last century (1999, 54). Although since 9/11 the topic has gained increasing attention, the processes of learning and change in terrorist groups have remained an understudied element in the terrorism literature and there is still a lack of a clear and consistent understanding of ‘learning’ and use of terminology (Ranstorp and Normark 2015, 3). While the broader literature on learning has been characterized by Bennett and Howlett as “overtheorized and underapplied” (1992, 288), in studies of terrorist learning, in contrast, the theoretical and conceptual foundations often fall short of linking back to the extensive literature on learning developed in fields like organization theory in sociology, economics, and management (Hafez and Rasmussen 2010, 29; Kettle and Mumford 2017, 524). Learning is often used as a shorthand for the overarching mechanism of how the internal change of practices, skills, or beliefs, in general, comes about. As Kenney criticizes, however, it is not enough to look only at changes in outcome and just assume that learning has taken place (2007, 13). Learning is also often understood in a limited way, focusing on the “transfer of knowledge” as the central element (Forest 2006, 25; Singh 2017). Kettle and Mumford recently provided a useful basic characterization of learning as the “acquisition of knowledge to inform terrorist-related activities in the future” (2017, 530); they recognize learning as both a process and an outcome, with the latter sometimes tangible and sometimes only tacit and cognitive. Crucially, in contrast to the understanding of Jackson et al. (2005a, 9), learning is not necessarily positive and problem-oriented or defined by quantifiable improvement – groups can also learn ‘the wrong things’, stagnate, or arriving at no new outcomes despite having gone through extensive learning processes. Empirically, learning processes are difficult to grasp and researchers have especially struggled with delineating learning from linked concepts such as adaptation and innovation (Singh 2017, 626). In fact, much of early literature has been focused on whether terrorist movements are innovative or noninnovative, with Dolnik in his first broad-based study on the topic concluding that “terrorists are conservative by nature” (2007, 56). However, there is an increasing recognition that groups can actually exhibit a high amount of “malevolent creativity” (Cropley, Kaufman and Cropley 2008; Gill et al. 2013). Ranstorp and Normark argue that terrorist groups have the

6 Michael Fürstenberg et al. “propensity for remarkable innovation” (2015, 1). Moreover, such innovations can be consciously spread, as Horowitz (2010) demonstrates in his tracing of the diffusion of suicide bombings. Similarly, Crenshaw questions whether terrorist innovations are indeed rare, and instead suggests that this misperception is due to several problematic assumptions such as that incremental adaptations of earlier methods do not qualify as innovations, that innovations by terrorists are necessarily escalatory, and that innovations are necessarily accompanied by their diffusion across other organizations (qtd in Rasmussen and Hafez 2010, 9). Being able to innovate, however, implies the capacity to learn, as both concepts are entangled in complex reciprocal interactions (Chiva, Ghauri and Alegre 2014, 689–690). Organizational learning, by now an established field of study (Brown and Kenney 2006; Easterby-Smith, Crossan and Nicolini 2000), has developed an extensive conceptual toolbox, which is mainly applied in the context of business administration (Argyris and Schön 1978; 1996; Bapuji and Crossan 2004; Takeyh and Gvosdev 2002). A small but growing body of literature in terrorism studies has taken up this perspective, with authors drawing an analogy between business organizations and terrorist groups (Takeyh and Gvosdev 2002, 97–108) and applying the vocabulary and concepts from business and education literature to the study of the evolution of terrorism. In pioneering studies in this regard, researchers at the RAND Corporation advanced the understanding of terrorist learning by developing and systematically applying an organizational learning model to several case studies of terrorist organizations (Jackson et al. 2005a; 2005b). This lens of organizational learning allows for a focus on a collective process, where knowledge becomes organizational and does not depend on particular individuals to be utilized and implemented. As Forest describes, “attributes of a ‘learning organization’ include the ability to identify knowledge useful to its long-term success and incorporate that knowledge into the operations and future plans of the organization” (2006, 18). Jackson et al. (2005a, xi) identify the component processes of organizational learning as acquisition, interpretation, storage, and distribution of knowledge, whereas Kenney, in one of the few studies explicitly focused on the ‘how’ of learning, adds the phase of “applying knowledge and experience” after its “acquiring and analysing” (2007, 13). Trujillo and Jackson (2006) further specify the determinants of organizational learning as including structure, culture, knowledge resources, and the environment. What fundamentally differentiates terrorist organizations from the business world, however, is their explicit pursuit of radical political change in a context of clandestinity, illegality, and violence. As Horowitz writes, terrorist organizations “are different […] because they exist in a constant state of war” (2010, 36). Based on his research on Columbian drug cartels, Kenney develops the concept of “competitive adaptation”, in which criminal organizations and law enforcement agencies are constantly adapting in dynamic interactions to each other’s learning (2007, 6–7). He extends this idea to al-Qaeda and American

Introduction

7

counterterrorism (Kenney 2007, 135-201), as well as with co-authors to a militant (yet not terrorist) network of British Islamists (Kenney 2020; Kenney et al. 2018). In general, much of the literature on terrorist innovations and learning is characterized by a more or less explicit kinetic counterterrorism bias, aiming to provide knowledge making it easier to identify weak-spots and disrupt terrorist plots. Thus, a large part of this literature is heavily focused on the means of violence and technological innovations (Dolnik 2007; Kenney 2010; Ranstorp and Normark 2015). Terrorist learning is therefore often reduced narrowly to tactical advances and improved attack operations, rather than also taking into account more sweeping transformations of strategy (Crenshaw 2010, 35–36). For example, despite its innovative conceptual framework, the study by Jackson et al. (2005a) concentrates largely on how learning capabilities influence the capacities of groups for violence, and less on operational proceedings, fundamental strategic deliberations, or the dynamic processes of interpretation of meanings within organizations. Such “bomb and bullet” innovations (Singh 2017, 627) have been found to be mostly incremental and reactive in nature (Gill et al. 2013, 129), while the potential for more sweeping and proactive changes has been rarely addressed from a learning perspective (for an exception analyzing the transformation of al-Qaeda to a more flexible network, see Jones 2006). This, however, only tells a part of the story of learning. The other part involves how terrorist groups reflect on and learn regarding all their activities, and sometimes renegotiate the very foundations of their strategic and ideological approaches. Put differently, learning is not only related to the concrete means of violence but concerns also non-violent innovations, operational structures, strategic deliberations, and the whole spectrum of cognitive processes. Singh has described this “as the ability of terrorist groups to change their structures, operations, and/or goals over time” (2017, 626–627). We argue that it is crucial to study the learning processes of terrorist organizations in a comprehensive way. Thus, by asking ‘how terrorists learn’ this book aims to address a broad spectrum of cognitive and behavioral aspects of transformation processes. To this end, the contributions cover internal and external aspects of the entire learning process, from the acquisition of information to its interpretation and conversion to (collective) knowledge to the actual implementation of changes in a variety of areas. Drawing on the literature (Jackson et al. 2005a; Kettle and Mumford 2017), we consider terrorist learning as consisting of three interrelated dimensions, covering (1) the sources (from what or whom do they learn?), (2) mechanisms (in what ways do they learn?), and (3) outcomes of learning (what do they learn?). Concerning the first of these contextual dimensions, organizations can capitalize on their own experiences, be they successes or failures (micro level), as well as those of other non-state actors (meso level). Additionally, information can be gleaned from the historical and geopolitical environment and in particular through adverse, or sometimes friendly, relationships with states (macro level). Importantly, information on all levels is

8 Michael Fürstenberg et al. not just passively ‘flowing in’ but is actively sought out by organizations. The second dimension is interacting with the first in so far as potential knowledge resources are already shaped by internal dynamics and established routines of learning, for example when groups ignore available data for ideological reasons. Information is converted into knowledge in processes of interpretation, in which input is assessed against standards based on competition and emulation. For example, organizations have to rigorously analyze their own mistakes as well as those of others, and they aim to emulate past successes, both their own and those of ‘role models’ – in other words: change what does not work and keep or adopt what does. Like in all collective endeavors, such processes are not easy and often entangled with power struggles and conflicting perceptions and interests both within the leadership as well as the follower base, and between these two (Argyris and Schön 1978, 24). Once identified, lessons have to be distributed among members and supporters and stored in organizational memory, which, given the requirement for secrecy, is not an easy task (Shapiro 2013). Whether learning in the sense of the construction of knowledge has a discernible impact finally depends on the third dimension, the actual implementation of lessons, both inside the group and in relation to the environment, resulting in tangible learning outcomes. In this sense, it is important to distinguish between learning that has taken place in the organization (for example among a certain group of members) from learning of the organization (which implies that lessons are actually applied and become tangible for the collective as a whole). On the tactical level, improvements are about the concrete means of the struggle, be it techniques of bomb construction or plans for armed assault or propaganda operations. The strategic level, in contrast, is concerned with the ends of the fight, like shifts in doctrine or the overall objectives of the campaign, potentially including the complete abandonment of terrorism or violence in general – what Crenshaw has called “shifts that change the fundamental pattern of terrorist challenges to political authority” (2010, 36). The operational level bridges these aspects and is concerned, among others, with the organizational structure or propaganda activities of the group, which have to be adapted according to the tactical and strategic focus. This dimension of learning outcomes then relates back to the first dimension in a feedback loop, as changed cognitions and behaviors in connection with the reactions of the environment lead to new information on what we call the micro level (see Figure 1.1). This model serves as a heuristic framework for this book, within which a variety of different theories and conceptual approaches will be used to study the empirical reality of different aspects of learning. The contributors address the guiding question in different ways, but they all deal with the complexities of the internal and external context of terrorist learning. Through qualitative and quantitative research, the contributors manage to break up the black box and gain insights into a range of learning processes of various militant groups and movements. In all cases we are dealing with organized collectives

Introduction (1) Sources

(2) Mechanisms

macro

(3) Outcomes

strategic

interpretation information

meso

acquisition

micro

lessons

9

distribution

implementation

operational

storage tactical

Feedback

Figure 1.1 Conceptual framework of the learning process. Source: Author’s Creation.

that are influenced by the external environment; they all have their internal structures and mechanisms of decision-making which can be more or less hierarchical; we observe membership dynamics between leaders and followers and we see the importance of communication among them; we are dealing with features of organizational strength, like upward mobility or the importance of education and training, and mechanisms of learning like emulation, competition, and innovation – in short: we are witnessing elements that are common to most organizations, yet are employed in the special context of political violence. Organization of the Book This volume is organized into two broad thematic sections. While employing an organizational learning perspective on the phenomenon is itself a relatively recent phenomenon, capturing the dynamics of the creation of collective knowledge often necessitates a view beyond the boundaries of single organizations, boundaries which are themselves often blurring or even dissolving into more amorphous networks. Thus, while the contributions in the first part of the main body of this volume focus on the organizational level, the second part contains chapters that widen the perspective on learning processes beyond single organizations or that transcend a strict organizational framework altogether. The first four chapters look at particular learning processes of a single group or several groups in a comparative way. Köhler et al. explicitly deal with the question of deep learning and are thus mainly concerned with the level of strategic change: learning that is concerned with the ends of the

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struggle. Based on processes of self-reflective inquiry, these learning processes mainly take place on the micro level, yet the chapter shows how such micro-level processes do not occur in isolation but are in a complex way influenced by processes on the macro- and meso-level. Crucially, starting an inquiry into established routines is only the first necessary step for institutional reform – deliberations may be cut short and learning outcomes never be implemented. Applying the concept of ‘double-loop learning’ of learning theorists Argyris and Schön (1978) to four cases of terrorist organizations which at a time debated or made actual changes to their original approach (ETA, Boko Haram, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, and Gamaa Islamiya), reveals that a combination of internal and external factors influence the likelihood of an aborted or successful learning process. Luis de La Calle likewise compares the strategic learning of different insurgent groups, focusing on adapting military approaches. Drawing on the notion that different basic methods – guerrilla warfare or urban terrorism – are suitable for different circumstances mainly determined by the strength of the state rebels are facing, he develops a typology of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ strategies. Based on feedback to their initial actions, insurgents have to learn to successfully adapt to the power of their adversary by drawing on universal principles of asymmetric conflict. In this process, all input levels are involved, as groups have to quickly reflect on their own mistakes on the micro level but can also draw on experiences of allied organizations on the meso level and role models from history on the macro level. The author draws on several case studies to demonstrate successful as well as failed strategic adaptation, revealing that learning is most difficult when there is mixed information concerning the strength of the state. The following two contributions apply this question of whether organizations are able to correctly process, adapt, and apply lessons both from their experiences and of other violent struggles to the most dangerous recent terrorist organization, the Islamic State (ISIS). John Nicolas Helferich traces the origins and progression of ISIS’ high-tech media jihad, which is best understood as an innovative strategy based on acquired skills. It is argued that while its propaganda campaign was integral in mastering the early stages of guerrilla warfare, failure to adapt this strategy over time was decisive for the group’s demise. The author outlines the learning process that enabled ISIS to stage its cause in such a professional manner and examines the main narratives associated with the various propaganda genres. In the early phase of the conflict, ISIS’ ability to quickly learn how to use new media effectively and its resulting actions on the international stage generated an important source of power and increased the group’s liberty of action on the battlefield. However, failure to adapt the propaganda effort and ideology over time ultimately contributed to an intensified counterinsurgency effort and its ultimate defeat. Offering a complementary perspective, Nori Katagiri likewise deals with how the lack of learning the right lessons led to the failure and demise of the Islamic State. He argues that the

Introduction

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group showed an impressive ability to learn tactically and mount a military challenge on the battlefield but failed to consolidate its successes by combining micro-level experiences with macro-level knowledge. The chapter contends that the group’s defeat in Syria has much to do with neglecting to apply an appropriate sequence of phases of conflict, which could have been learned from historical examples. This can at least in part be explained by ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s insularity – that is, his lack of direct contact with and input from other organizations and the outside world. According to the author, this, along with the strict religious basis of the leadership’s interpretation of reality, led to a lack of learning from history and other experiences, which in turn had an impact on alliance management, internal cohesion, military power, and information strategy, finally leading to the demise of the Islamic State’ territorial project. The second section of chapters examines learning transcending organizational boundaries and looks at how knowledge is distributed within or even beyond decentralized movements. First, Boyan Hadzhiev explores how al-Qaeda and the Islamic State have used the internet to communicate directly to different audiences, bypassing the need for amplification through mass-media needed in the past. Specifically, the chapter concentrates on the distribution of information and lessons to supporters through online magazines; with the lines between internal and external communication blurred in the strategy of a decentralized jihad, these magazines are an important way of transmitting ideological indoctrination as well as concrete skills, forming a part of micro- and meso-level learning in the ‘Jihadisphere’ or even beyond, as everyone can access this information. Ideological ideas as well as tangible tactical and operational knowledge are supposed to be emulated by the readers. The chapter looks at the major communication goals that are pursued in the magazines Inspire and Dabiq, revealing interesting differences in the approaches of the two organizations. Concentrating on the global diffusion of a specific terrorist tactic used by so-called lone actors, namely vehicle ramming attacks, Ari Weil argues in his chapter that propaganda is only effective when it combines with demonstration effects through media coverage of actual attacks to trigger widespread implementation. Drawing on quantitative data as well as case studies on vehicle attacks in Western Europe and North America, Weil contrasts between violence from jihadist actors, who pioneered the tactic, and from far-right terrorists. While the former were directly and over for years targeted by organizational propaganda to use cars as weapons, but hesitated to adopt it until the first attacks were widely covered in the media, the emulation of this tactic by the latter evolved more organically and was possibly motivated by a perceived desire for revenge due to similar attacks by Islamists. The chapter demonstrates that learning and the implementation of lessons transmitted from outside is neither an automatic process nor contained within ideological boundaries. Sheelagh Brady examines a particular aspect of the distribution of knowledge, namely through the transitioning of personnel between different types of

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armed groups. Brady argues that terrorism should not be examined in isolation from other forms of organized group violence, as her empirical evidence shows that recruits in terrorist groups sometimes have been members in illicit (like criminal gangs) or even licit (like the military) organizations before, carrying their knowledge and skills with them. Thus, investments into learning made by, e.g., the military, can eventually end up benefiting an extremist organization. This represents a form of involuntary dissemination of information from the meso- or macro-level, as terrorist groups not only gain capable personnel but can also emulate and spread the skills within their ranks, transforming meso-level input into micro-level experience, as well as potentially getting valuable intelligence about their adversaries. Brady collects a dataset of individuals having transitioned between different types of organizations and traces the learning trajectories of exemplary cases. In the last contribution of the section, Michael Fürstenberg looks at the collective learning of the far-right accelerationist movement, which in contrast to earlier right-wing extremists is increasingly embedded in global networks and acting within a strategic framework aimed at revolution, targeting the liberal order as such. While racist, antisemitic, or misogynistic terrorist attacks are mostly carried out by individuals acting on their own, the common term ‘lone wolf’ for these kinds of terrorists is in that sense a misnomer, as they can be seen as embedded in digital ‘wolf packs’. Although this movement is highly decentralized and heterogeneous, the author argues that there are interactive processes that connect and shape the online milieu of extremists into more than the sum of its parts, forming a structure that facilitates a certain degree of cohesion, strategic agency, and learning. The chapter uses a model of collective learning outside formal structures to analyze how the revolutionary accelerationist right forms a community of practice engaged in generating collective identities and knowledge. Finally, at the Conclusion of the book, the volume editors summarize and review the key themes and elements identified throughout the volume. We relate them to our original framework of the learning process and discuss some overarching lessons we have learned from those peeks inside the black boxes, reflecting upon what this means for our perspective as researchers as well as for policy-makers dealing with often long-running terrorist challenges. References Al-Azim, H.A-R., Najih, I., and Al-Sharif, A.M. (2002), Shedding Light on Errors Committed in Jihad [Taslit al-adwa ‘alama waga’ fi’ al-jihad min akhta’]. Corrective Concepts Series (Cairo: Maktaba al-Turath al-Islami). Argyris, C. and Schön, D. (1978), Organizational Learning: A Theory of Action Perspective (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley). Argyris, C. and Schön, D. (1996), Organizational Learning II: Theory, Methods, and Practice (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley). Bapuji, H. and Crossan, M. (2004), ‘From Questions to Answers: Reviewing Organizational Learning Research’, Management Learning 35:4, 397–417.

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Bell, J.B. (1990), ‘Revolutionary Dynamics: The Inherent Inefficiency of the Underground’, Terrorism and Political Violence 2:2, 193–211. Bennett, C.J. and Howlett, M. (1992), ‘The Lessons of Learning: Reconciling Theories of Policy Learning and Policy Change’, Policy Sciences 25:3, 275–294. Brown, M.L. (2006), ‘What Have We Learned About Organizational Learning?’, in: M.L. Brown, M. Kenney, and M. Zarkin (eds.), Organizational learning in the global context (Aldershot: Ashgate), 255–261. Brown, M.L. and Kenney, M. (2006), ‘Organizational Learning: Theoretical and Methodological Considerations, in: M.L. Brown, M. Kenney, and M. Zarkin (eds.), Organizational learning in the global context (Aldershot: Ashgate), 1–17. Chiva, R., Ghauri, P., and Alegre, J. (2014), ‘Organizational Learning, Innovation and Internationalization: A Complex System Model’, British Journal of Management 25:4, 687–705. Crenshaw, M. (2011), Explaining Terrorism: Causes, Processes and Consequences (Abingdon: Routledge). Crenshaw, M. (2010), ‘Innovation: Decision Points in the Trajectory of Terrorism’, in: M.J. Rasmussen and M.M. Hafez (eds.), Terrorist innovations in weapons of mass effect: Preconditions, causes, and predictive indicators (Washington, DC: Advanced Systems and Concepts Office), 35–50. Cropley, D., Kaufman, J., and Cropley, A. (2008), ‘Malevolent Creativity: A Functional Model of Creativity’, Creativity Research Journal 20:2, 105–115. Della Porta, D. and LaFree, G. (2012) ‘Processes of Radicalization and DeRadicalization: Editor’s Introduction’, International Journal of Conflict and Violence 6:1, 4–10. Dolnik, A. (2007), Understanding Terrorist Innovation: Technology, Tactics and Global Trends (New York, NY: Routledge). Easterby
Smith, M., Crossan, M., and Nicolini, D. (2000), ‘Organizational Learning: Debates Past, Present and Future’, Journal of Management Studies 37:6, 783–796. Forest, J.J.F. (2006), ‘Introduction’, in: J.J.F. Forest (ed.), Teaching terror: Strategic and tactical learning in the terrorist world (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield), 1–30. Fürstenberg, M. and Görzig, C. (2020), ‘Learning in a Double Loop: The Strategic Transformation of Al-Qaeda’, Perspectives on Terrorism 14:1, 26–38. Gill, P., Horgan, J., Hunter, S.T., and Cushenbery, L.D. (2013), ‘Malevolent Creativity in Terrorist Organizations’, The Journal of Creative Behavior 47:2, 125–151. Gino, F. and Staats, B. (2015), ‘Why Organizations Don’t Learn: Our Traditional Obsessions—Success, Taking Action, Fitting In, and Relying on Experts—Undermine Continuous Improvement’, Harvard Business Review 93:11, 110–118. Görzig, C. (2019), ‘Deradicalization through Double-Loop Learning? How the Egyptian Gamaa Islamiya Renounced Violence’, Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 45:8, 704–726. Görzig, C. and Al-Hashimi, K. (2014), Radicalization in Western Europe: Integration, Public Discourse and Loss of Identity among Muslim Communities (New York, NY: Routledge). Hafez, M.M. and Rasmussen, M.J. (2010), ‘Innovation in WMD terrorism: A Guide for Workshop Participants’, in: M.J. Rasmussen and M.M. Hafez (eds.), Terrorist innovations in weapons of mass effect: Preconditions, causes, and predictive indicators (Washington, DC: Advanced Systems and Concepts Office), 27–34.

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Herschinger, E. (2013), ‘A Battlefield of Meanings: The Struggle for Identity in the UN Debates on a Definition of International Terrorism’, Terrorism and Political Violence 25:2, 183–201. Hoffman, B. (1993), ‘Terrorist Targeting: Tactics, Trends, and Potentialities’, Terrorism and Political Violence 5:2, 12–29. Horgan, J. (2008), ‘From Profiles to Pathways and Roots to Routes: Perspectives from Psychology on Radicalization into Terrorism’, The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 618:1, 80–94. Horowitz, M. (2010), ‘Nonstate Actors and the Diffusion of Innovations: The Case of Suicide Terrorism’, International Organization 64:1, 33–64. Jackson, B.A., Baker, J.C., Cragin, K., Parachini, J., Trujillo, H.R., and Chalk, P. (2005a), Aptitude for Destruction, Volume 1: Organizational Learning in Terrorist Groups and Its Implications for Combating Terrorism (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation). Jackson, B.A., Baker, J.C., Cragin, K., Parachini, J., Trujillo, H.R., and Chalk, P. (2005b), Aptitude for Destruction, Volume 2: Case Studies of Organizational Learning in Five Terrorist Groups (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation). Jenkins, B.M. (1986), ‘Defense against Terrorism’, Political Science Quarterly 101:5, 773–786. Jones, C. (2006), ‘Al-Qaeda’s Innovative Improvisers: Learning in a Diffuse Transnational Network’, Cambridge Review of International Affairs 19:4, 555–569. Kenney, M. (2007), From Pablo to Osama: Trafficking and Terrorist Networks, Government Bureaucracies, and Competitive Adaptation (University Park, PA: Penn State University Press). Kenney, M. (2010), ‘Beyond the Internet: Mētis, Techne, and the Limitations of Online Artifacts for Islamist Terrorists’, Terrorism and Political Violence 22:2, 177–197. Kenney, M. (2020), ‘A Community of True Believers: Learning as Process among ‘The Emigrants’’, Terrorism and Political Violence 32:1, 57–76. Kenney, M., Horgan, J., Horne, C., Vining, P., Carley, K.M., Bloom, M., and Braddock, K. (2018), ‘Competitive Adaptation in Militant Networks: Preliminary Findings From an Islamist Case Study’, in: A. Stedmon and G. Lawson (eds.), Hostile intent and counter-terrorism: Human factors theory and application (Surrey/Burlington: Ashgate), 177–193. Kettle, L. and Mumford, A. (2017), ‘Terrorist Learning: A New Analytical Framework’, Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 40:7, 523–538. Lee, B. and Knott, K. (2022), ‘Fascist Aspirants: Fascist Forge and Ideological Learning in the Extreme-Right Online Milieu’, Behavioral Sciences of Terrorism and Political Aggression 14:3, 216–240. McCauley, C. and Moskalenko, S. (2008), ‘Mechanisms of Political Radicalization: Pathways Toward Terrorism’, Terrorism and Political Violence 20:3, 415–433. McCormick, G.H. (2003), ‘Terrorist Decision Making’, Annual Review of Political Science 6, 473–507. Merari, A. (1999), ‘Terrorism as a Strategy of Struggle: Past and Future’, Terrorism and Political Violence 11:4, 52–65. Moghadam, A. (2013), ‘How Al Qaeda Innovates’, Security Studies 22:3, 466–497. Phillips, B.J. (2015), ‘What Is a Terrorist Group? Conceptual Issues and Empirical Implications’, Terrorism and Political Violence 27:2, 225–242. Ranstorp, M. and Normark, M. (2015), Normark: Al-Qaeda and Beyond (New York, NY: Routledge).

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Rasmussen, M.J. and Hafez, M.M. (2010), ‘Theoretical Approaches to Terrorist Innovation’, in: M.J. Rasmussen and M.M. Hafez (eds.), Terrorist innovations in weapons of mass effect: Preconditions, causes, and predictive indicators (Washington, DC: Advanced Systems and Concepts Office), 9–11. Shapiro, J. (2013), The Terrorist’s Dilemma: Managing Violent Covert Organisations (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). Singh, R. (2017), ‘A Preliminary Typology Mapping Pathways of Learning and Innovation by Modern Jihadist Groups’, Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 40:7, 624–644. Sluka, J. (2008), ‘Terrorism and Taboo: An Anthropological Perspective on Political Violence against Civilians’, Critical Studies on Terrorism 1:2, 167–183. Stenersen, A. (2013), ‘Bomb-Making for Beginners: Inside an al-Qaida e-Learning Course’, Perspectives on Terrorism 7:1, 25–37. Takeyh, R. and Gvosdev, N. (2002), ‘Do Terrorist Networks Need a Home?’, The Washington Quarterly 25:3, 97–108. Trujillo, H.R. and Jackson, B.A. (2006), ‘Organizational Learning and Terrorist Groups’, in: J.J.F. Forest (ed.), Teaching terror: Strategic and tactical learning in the terrorist world (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield), 52–68. Wilner, A.S. and Dubouloz, C.-J. (2011), ‘Transformative Radicalization: Applying Learning Theory to Islamist Radicalization’, Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 34:5, 418–438. Zuhdi, K.M., ‘Ali al-Sharif, A.M., ‘Abd al-‘Azim, H.A., Muhammad, A.A., ‘Abd Allah, N.-I., Hafiz, U.I., al-Dawalibi, F.M., and al-Din Dirbalah, M.I. (2002), AlQaida’s Strategy and Bombings: Errors and Dangers [Istratijiyat wa Tafjirat alQa‘ida: al-Akhta’ wa al-Akhtar], Corrective Concepts Series. (Cairo: Maktaba alTurath al-Islami).

Part 1

Learning of Organizations

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Double-Loop Learning in Terrorist Organizations Facilitators and Impediments Florian Köhler, Imad Alsoos, Michael Fürstenberg, and Carolin Görzig

People should understand us and not take up weapons and fight against us. […] It is because of […] [the excessive targeting of civilians] that the unbelievers are pursuing us. We have deviated from Allah’s path. […] We are seeing that if these issues are not resolved, there is no way we will become victorious. […] Brothers, if we are not animals, we need to sit and think (Abu Fatima, member of Boko Haram/ISWAP1).

In the introduction to this volume, we have argued that terrorist organizations, just as any other social groups, can learn, innovate, and be responsive to their environment. This chapter further examines the learning processes of terrorist groups in order to understand how and why some organizations are capable of reacting to challenges with sometimes far-reaching transformations, while others rather seem to have difficulty with such endeavors. Our opening quotation, from a proponent of a reform-oriented faction of the West-African extremist group Boko Haram, exemplifies how terrorists are capable of reflecting undesired outcomes of their actions, and in consequence, questioning their strategic approach. Such critical self-reflection is a necessary condition for, and can be the first step to learning that goes beyond mere adaptations and tactical improvements, rather challenging basic assumptions of an organization’s approach and thus potentially leading to profound reform and change. This form of learning, which shall concern us here, has variously been called “deep” or “complex” learning (Levy 1994), “higher” learning (Fiol and Lyles 1985), or in the terminology of Argyris and Schön’s (1978; 1996) classic approach of organizational learning, which we will take up here, “double-loop” learning. Argyris and Schön’s organizational learning approach seems especially well suited for our purposes, not only because of their explicit focus on complex learning but also because of their learning model, which puts a great emphasis on processes of self-recognition: the authors conceptualize organizational learning as “the detection and correction of error” (1978, 2) in organizational practice, with “error” being defined as a perceived mismatch between intended and actual outcomes of organizational actions DOI: 10.4324/9781003361435-3

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(1978, 18). The detection of such errors occurs through a process of “inquiry” (1978, 19), i.e., a process of critical self-reflection with the aim of identifying the causes of, and possible remedies for, the detected error. In fact, the opening quotation contains these essential elements in a nutshell: the speaker perceives a mismatch between the intended and actual outcomes of Boko Haram’s violent jihad (people should understand us, not fight against us); he identifies a controversial practice (the indiscriminate violence against civilians) that is perceived as erroneous (we have deviated from Allah’s path) and ultimately as strategically problematic and counterproductive to the movement’s aims (if the issues are not resolved, we will not be victorious). At the same time, the quote is a call for starting a process of critical reflection (we need to sit and think), with the aim of correcting the perceived error. However, despite these far-reaching reflections and insights, their results have been little substantial: the reflections and calls for reform within Boko Haram for long failed to materialize in changed organizational practice. What is in fact not addressed in the quote, and what is central for the question of actual organizational transformation, is the question of implementation of the learning results. A close look particularly also on the issue of implementation and its obstacles can be a key to the question of why the organizational outcomes of very similar reflection processes can sometimes be starkly different across organizations – or inversely, why the outcomes of processes with very different starting points can be astonishingly similar. In this chapter, we analyze and compare the learning processes of four violent groups that have all at some point of their historic cycle questioned fundamental organizational norms and ideological premises in ways that challenged formerly held assumptions: apart from Boko Haram (BH), we look at Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) in Syria, Euskadi Ta Asktasuna (ETA) in the Basque Country, and the Egyptian Gamaa Islamiya (GI). The processes in the four organizations differ considerably with regard to their outcome, ranging from blocked or aborted transformation processes to primarily pragmatic adaptation to a complete abandonment of violence, and with consequences ranging from organizational continuity to fragmentation and factionalism to entire dissolution. We argue that Argyris and Schön’s approach and its concepts can contribute to making sense of such different trajectories by offering tools for systematically analyzing learning processes, as well as the different factors that can facilitate or complicate them. For one thing, the authors put an important focus on the interplay between the role of individual learning in organizations and the implementation of identified corrections in organizational rules and practice. Secondly, they conceptualize organizational learning as determined by intra-group dynamics as well as external constraints and opportunities. Following Argyris and Schön’s distinction between the organization’s ‘internal and external environments’ that both continually change and that the organization constantly interacts with (1978, 42), we distinguish between external, or environmental, factors and others that are internal to the organization,

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which both have a significant impact on terrorist organizations’ learning processes, either positively in the sense of facilitating, or negatively, by obstructing or altogether blocking them.2 In the case of our four organizations, the relevant factors of the external environment that we will consider in our analysis, are popular support or the lack thereof, state pressure and persecution, the influence of other organizations (both enemies and partners), as well as macro-political developments. On the internal side, relevant factors are ideology, power hierarchies and decision-making structures, the legitimacy and authority of the leadership, and more generally relations between leaders and the membership base. To allow for a balanced assessment of the role of internal and external factors in the learning process, we have chosen cases from different socio-political contexts and different ideological backgrounds. Although Argyris and Schön’s approach has been developed for analyzing and facilitating learning processes in business organizations, we assume that like these, terrorist organizations, too, are a form of human social organizations (despite their use of inhumane and anti-social means) and as such not fundamentally different from the former. That said, we wish to underline that while we use Argyris and Schön’s conceptual tools of analysis, it can of course not be our aim here to apply their coaching tools of organizational development in practice as they do. While supporting learning processes in violent organizations could theoretically be desirable – i.e., if they went in the direction of questioning the use of violence and the ‘coaching’ could thus help facilitating processes of moderation – security issues and legal problems clearly make such an option empirically impracticable. With regard to methodology, therefore, our approach is limited by what makes our context – despite the general comparability – radically different from that of business companies: terrorist groups are for the most part illegal and clandestine, and they generally exist in tension with the state and society, and they communicate by the use of violence. For these reasons, doing research directly within terrorist organizations would not be feasible. Instead, we use a triangulation of empirical data from fieldwork and the analysis of different kinds of primary source material, such as leaked internal communications, published interviews with spokespersons, and official publications, statements, and messages by the groups. The availability of such data is very uneven for different organizations. The GI case is exceptionally well documented with several books in which the leaders explained the reasons for their abandonment of violence. Overall, however, sources that explicitly reflect cognitive processes, such as our opening quote, are not always available, and the limitations of gaining direct insight into the actual learning processes behind transformation processes in terrorist organizations therefore clearly have to be acknowledged. It should also be pointed out that most of the sources are not ‘neutral’ and a certain bias has to be kept in mind when using them. In the following, we will first give an outline of Argyris and Schön’s Organizational Learning approach, as well as a short overview of our empirical cases with their respective transformation processes. Based on this, we

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will then proceed to analyze the cases, following an analytical framework that breaks down the learning process into two phases roughly corresponding to Argyris And Schön’s two constituent parts of learning: the detection and the correction of errors. The first phase is that of internal inquiry. It is triggered by the detection of what is interpreted as a problem or error in organizational practice. This phase is fairly complex and comprises both a process of selfreflection and a process of determining adequate corrections. The second phase is that of the implementation of lessons and the identified corrections in organizational practice and action strategy. For each of the two phases we discuss the role of the above-mentioned internal and external factors that have an impact on the process and on this basis compare our cases with regard to the profoundness of learning and its outcomes. Analysing Terrorist Learning with the Organizational Learning Model of Argyris and Schön In Argyris and Schön’s model, organizations are not static entities, but rather, “organizing” is understood as an active and fundamentally cognitive process: “Individual members are continually engaged in attempting to know the organization, and to know themselves in the context of the organization” (19783, 16–17). Organizational learning begins not with the acquisition of new skills or knowledge, but with the insight that new skills or knowledge are needed to ensure the organization’s success and sustainability. The authors thus define organizational learning as a response to continuous changes in the organization’s internal and external environment (29). It takes the form of detection and correction of errors in organizational practice (2) – error being defined as a perceived mismatch between intended and actual outcomes of organizational action and practice. The detection of an error thus opens the first phase of the learning process, which is characterized by a process of what the authors call “critical inquiry” – a process of self-reflection with the aim of identifying the causes and possible remedies for the detected error. Argyris and Schön distinguish between single-loop and double-loop learning. Single-loop learning is aimed at an improvement of operational techniques and their effectiveness; however, the underlying values, strategies, and goals remain unquestioned (21). Double-loop learning, by contrast, “connects the detection of error not only to strategies and assumptions for effective performance but to the very norms which define effective performance” (22) and thus leads to a modification of the governing variables underlying objectives. In order to learn - in order to double-loop learn, organizational members must become aware that they cannot correct an error by doing better than they already know how to do. Instead, they must shift the focus from learning concerned with improvement in the performance of operational tasks to exploring and restructuring the values and criteria through which the organization defines what it means by improved performance.

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The question of single-loop or double-loop learning is not an absolute one, but a matter of degree. Rather than binary opposites, the two forms of learning should be regarded as the two poles of a continuum (26), and the position of any particular case of learning on this continuum is defined by the depth of learning as well as by the question whether the strategies and norms that are questioned are central or rather peripheral to the organization’s structure (25–26). Organizational learning is understood as “a process mediated by the collaborative inquiry of individual members” (20). Thus, a crucial point in the study of organizational learning is the junction between the individual as an agent of learning and the organizational level. In order to become organizational, the learning of individuals or small groups of organization members has to feed back into the rules and routines of organizational practice and thus lead to actual processes of transformation and change (20, 29). This means that the cognitive process, from the detection of errors to the formulation of corrective measures based on critical inquiry, and the implementation of the identified corrective measures are both part of a single, larger process, and the question of successful organizational learning equally depends on both. Argyris and Schön disentangle a number of constituent elements of the learning process, which can roughly be related to one of two broad phases: that of inquiry and that of implementation. Given our particular interest in the question of what influences the success or failure of learning processes, we argue that this distinction of two phases helps to locate the possible sources of failure, as well as potential sources of organizational learning capacity that Argyris and Schön associate with the different constituent elements of organizational learning (20). Just as organizations are involved in “continual transaction with their internal and external environments” (42), both phases of their learning process are crucially determined by a mix of internal and external factors. We argue that a thorough analysis of these factors – some of them of rather general relevance, others more specific to terrorist organizations – can help understand the different trajectories that learning processes in terrorist organizations can take. With regard to the internal level, Argyris and Schön point to a number of factors that are highly relevant to our analysis. To begin with, there are questions of cohesion or internal rivalry, power hierarchies, and the structures of decision-making. As complex and sometimes heterogeneous structures, organizations are characterized by “an interplay of contending interests and associated powers” (336). The question of organizational learning is therefore crucially determined by relations of hierarchy and power, and learning processes are in practice often inhibited by power-play (25). It thus makes a potentially significant difference whether a process of organizational learning is initiated top-down or bottom-up. Especially for members at lower levels of the organizational hierarchy, it is often difficult to address organizational errors. In many organizations, the management tends to develop “defensive routines”, which have the effect that errors are covered up rather than constructively

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addressed. They can become “undiscussable” and thus lead to blindness for errors and ultimately to limited learning (Argyris and Schön 1996, 99–101). As a result, as Argyris and Schön point out, most organizations have difficulty with, and even inhibit, double-loop learning (1978, 3–4). Continued singleloop learning in the face of problems that would require double-loop solutions, however, can have a self-reinforcing negative effect: it can lead to long-term ineffectiveness and a reduced capacity for double-loop learning because conditions for error are reinforced rather than constructively addressed and resolved (1996, 90–91). Another aspect of the internal environment that plays a crucial role in many terrorist organizations, is ideology. Argyris and Schön point out that organizations differ greatly with regard to their “behavioral worlds”, in the light of which they can be described as “more or less ‘open,’ ‘experimental,’ ‘confronting,’ ‘demanding,’ or ‘defensive’”, and that these may be “more or less conducive to the kinds of collaborative inquiry required for organizational learning” (28). In this sense, the rigidity or flexibility of ideology can be expected to be significant in determining an organization’s “behavioural worlds”, and, in extension, its learning processes. With regard to factors of the external environment, some can also be derived from Argyris and Schön. For example, just like business companies are forced to constantly adapt to a rapidly changing environment (9), terrorist groups too are under constant external pressure. In other regards, however, the environment of terrorist organizations is rather specific and we had to formulate influencing factors that do not play a role in Argyris and Schön’s context of business companies, yet are highly relevant to our analysis. Thus, in the case of terrorist organizations, environmental pressure takes a specific form and includes different actors than for business companies. Operating in a context of violent confrontation with the state, terrorists generally face persecution and the pressure of violent counter-terrorism measures that also have an impact on their learning. Beyond the state, however, this learning environment is also influenced by other external factors, namely the backing or rejection of support communities and the wider population, macro-political developments, and interactions with other, similar organizations – be they rivals or partners. Case Descriptions Before we dive into the analysis of the specific dynamics and influencing factors relevant for the different paths of the four organizations under study, in the following we give brief overviews of the transformations they went through. Boko Haram

Emerging in north-eastern Nigeria in the early 2000s, the radical Islamist movement BH rejected the secular state and called for the uncompromising

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implementation of Shari’a law. After the death of its founder Mohammed Yusuf in relation with a crack-down in 2009, his followers reorganized under hard-line leader Abubakar Shekau and soon turned into a major threat in the wider Lake Chad region (Higazi 2013; Loimeier 2012; Pérouse de Montclos 2014). Although BH was highly efficient in challenging the state and soon controlled wide swathes of land, the group’s often seemingly indeterminate and arbitrary violence against Muslim civilians had the effect that the movement lost much of the popular support it had enjoyed in its formative period (Pérouse de Montclos 2018, 173). The excessive violence against Muslim civilians was argued by Shekau to be ideologically justified by his extreme interpretation of the concept of takfir (excommunication). Shekau insisted to treat as apostates – and thus as legitimate targets – not only the representatives of the secular state and their collaborators but in essence all those among the rural population who refused to follow him (Kassim 2018a, 18). The problematic aspects of this practice were soon also raised by internal critics, leading to a first split in 2011 (Kassim and Nwankpa 2018, 257–260; Zenn 2013). But the debate continued even thereafter, crucially pushed by a circle of reformists who thus questioned the group’s ideological norms, based on theological and strategic considerations. When their call for reform failed to materialize in concrete change, because Shekau fiercely repressed all internal critique and thus blocked the implementation of learning results, the controversy led to inter-factional fighting and ultimately to another split in 2016 (Al-Tamimi 2018; Kassim 2018b; Zenn and Pieri 2017). The revisionists’ position was strengthened by BH’s pledge of allegiance to ISIS, whose decision-makers backed Shekau’s critics. The split eventually enabled the latter to implement the results of their inquiry in their faction’s more population-oriented new strategic approach, yet at the expense of the movement’s unity. Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham

HTS started out under the name of Jabhat al-Nusra (JN), as a small expeditionary force sent to Syria in 2011 by the then-still al-Qaeda-aligned Islamic State of Iraq (ISI). The group has since then undergone a series of transformations, increasingly distancing itself from its jihadist roots and charting its own course, breaking first with the Islamic State of Iraq and later al-Qaeda. From the beginning, JN exemplified the lessons of the learning trajectory of al-Qaeda, which had adopted a more gradual and less extreme approach since the death of Osama Bin Laden (Fürstenberg and Görzig 2020). When Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi attempted in 2013 to subsume JN under his newly declared Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), JN’s leader Abu Muhammad al-Jolani refused and made a public appeal to al-Qaeda, which ultimately led to the split in the global jihadi movement. As the civil war escalated, JN gained a military reputation as an indispensable ally to more moderate opposition groups, yet found itself

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“struggling to achieve broad spectrum political and social buy-in from opposition communities” (Lister 2017). Bolstered by a still strong military position and committed to its allegiance to al-Qaeda, the JN leadership at that time refused to fundamentally question their ideological position or strategic approach, trying to accommodate the expectations of potential local allies by making only small-scale adaptations. However, as pressure mounted in 2016 with a worsening military situation for the Syrian opposition after the intervention of Russian airpower, HTS prioritized strategic pragmatism and increasingly questioned ideological and methodological norms. Global jihad was finally rejected in favor of local governance in Idlib, the last opposition stronghold in Syria. Over time, the organization deliberately tried to cultivate an image as a rational and reliable political actor, even inviting Western media outlets to tour their territory (PBS 2021). Overall, the development of HTS implies a considerable learning process in the direction of a more pragmatic and conventional strategy, encompassing political, military, and ideological aspects. ETA

ETA was founded in 1959 as a militant national-leftist movement for Basque independence.4 As the Franco regime aimed to violently impose linguistic and cultural homogeneity in all of Spain, which many Basques perceived as harsh repression, ETA’s armed struggle enjoyed wide popular support (Casanova 2007; Egaña 2017). Perceived as the legitimate “defender of the Basque people”, the group became the unquestioned vanguard of the Abertzale independence movement (Ion, personal interview, 2019).5 After Franco’s death in 1975 and the subsequent democratic transition, ETA was at first open to new political opportunities, and a significant step toward politicization was made with the formation of the EIA (Party for the Basque Revolution) in 1976 (Letamendi
a 1995, 188). As an effect, the balance shifted from the military to the political forces of the movement; decisions about the use of violence became subject to dialogue and a voting system inside the EIA (Audie, personal interview, 2019). Henceforth, self-determination was to be achieved through participation in the democratic political process (Letamendi
a 1995, 188). However, as Spain’s democratic constitution refuted any form of the referendum over the self-determination of any region, many militants – known as the ‘milis’ in the Spanish context – were left unconvinced. When the Spanish intelligence assassinated ETA’s moderate leader and politician José Miguel Beñarán Ordeñana in 1978, the milis again gained the upper hand and restructured the organization again in their favor. Convinced that ETA as an organization could only persist as the vanguard of the Abertzale movement, they were unwilling to cede the decision-making authority about the use of violence and, in 1982, dissolved the EIA. The process toward politicization declined and moderate voices were increasingly marginalized by militants (Audie, personal interview, 2019).

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Both within the Basque society and the Abertzale movement, however, ETA’s persistent violence was increasingly rejected, especially after the attack on the Hipercor shopping-center in Barcelona in 1987 that claimed the lives of 21 civilians. Increasingly under pressure, ETA reacted with a campaign of intimidation and repressive violence against political opponents (Zabaleta, personal interview, 2019). While this served the group for a while, however, in the long run, it proved counterproductive to the intended goals. It increased dissidence and factionalism and led to ETA’s complete isolation (Murua 2017, 94; Tellidis 2011, 189; Zulaika and Murua 2017, 343). When the necessity of reform in the face of the dwindling support for the violent campaign was finally recognized, it was too late for this insight to have a positive impact on the group’s sustainability: in 2011, ETA announced the definitive end of its armed activities, and in 2018 the organization officially disbanded (Zulaika and Murua 2017). Gamaa Islamiya

The Egyptian GI is an example of an organization in which a particularly profound and far-reaching questioning of violence eventually led to the unconditioned abandonment of the armed struggle. Emerging in the second half of the 1970s, GI was one of the country’s most prolific Islamist organizations. Violent confrontation with the state began in 1990, but the vicious cycle of violence was interrupted in 1997, when imprisoned GI leaders, under the impression of waning popular support, concluded that their armed jihad was not conducive to the group’s desired goals and declared a unilateral ceasefire. Due to internal disagreements and problems of communication, some radicals carried on with their violence, leading to the Luxor massacre in November 1997, in which more than 60 civilians, among them many foreign tourists, were killed. The historical GI leadership strongly condemned the massacre, which was to be the group’s last violent act. In early 1999, group leaders in Egypt and abroad declared their support for the ceasefire initiative (Ashour 2007, 613), resulting in a durable and unconditional cessation of violence. GI persisted as an active political movement afterward, and the establishment of a political party and participation in the first elections after the revolution of 2011 can be regarded as a positive example of politicization. In a comparative view, the four cases present a diverse set of different transformations under different circumstances: In terms of Argyris and Schön’s continuum of profoundness of learning, we can say that the inquiries in BH and HTS concerned more peripheral norms: both never questioned their military struggle as such, but merely specific details of their ideological premises and strategic approach. GI and ETA, by contrast, revised very basic assumptions and central norms: GI questioned and finally altogether rejected its violent jihad, and ETA similarly struggled over the question of whether or not to abandon violence.

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With regard to outcomes, however, the assessment of the cases looks quite different: while HTS learned strategically in the sense that changes were successfully implemented, BH’s attempts at transformation were blocked on the way. This was also the case with ETA for long, before it finally resolved the situation by disbanding rather than transforming, thus leading to a result that was, although radical in its complete abandonment of the armed struggle, not positive in the sense of organizational continuity. In this sense, only GI combined a fundamental overhaul of basic norms and values with a cycle of successful organizational transformation and politicization. The trajectories of the four groups also point to the importance of analyzing the cases in a broad diachronic perspective as longer processes. The question of single-loop or double-loop learning, of blocked or successful learning can look very different for distinct periods or points of time. Facilitators and Impediments for Organizational Learning in Terrorist Groups What unites the four cases is that the propositions for reform all at some point met with resistance and obstacles and were difficult to implement. In some cases, these difficulties were ultimately overcome while in others they persisted for a long period and could only be resolved with far-reaching consequences for organizational continuity or unity. With regard to the possible discrepancies between initiatives for transformation and actual outcomes of learning processes, it seems crucial not only to look at the factors that can trigger learning processes but also at those which can influence these processes along the way. In this section, we will take a closer look at these factors, first for the inquiry and then for the implementation phase. Inquiry

As outlined above, Argyris and Schön understand organizational learning as a response to changes in the organization’s internal and external environment. This means that the inquiry that opens the learning process can be triggered by internal and external factors. If we look at our four cases, it is interesting to note that in all of them, the question of external support was a crucial issue in their reflections. In the case of HTS, the issue was about attracting potential allies; in those of the GI, ETA, and BH, they were about the eroding support of the wider society. Terrorist organizations do not exist in isolation. Their actions are generally aimed at an impact on the state and society. Many groups perceive of themselves as acting on behalf of the larger population, or they are even explicitly the armed wings of wider social movements. Popular support can therefore be crucial to them, and they are often responsive to popular feedback as an indicator of the validity of their cause. Negative performance

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feedback can lead to the perception of a discrepancy between intended outcomes and actual outcomes, i.e., to the perception of an error. However, a perceived error has to be identified and recognized as such and it has to be concluded that it requires corrections. As errors, and especially the reasons for errors, are not objectively measurable, but a matter of interpretation, the strategic adaptations to react to them can vary considerably. Thus, in our cases, the organizations reacted very differently to the decline of support by their constituencies. When faced with this problem, ETA in the 1980s and Shekau’s BH after 2009 did not question their use of violence but instead reacted with an escalation of violence and fierce intimidation to coerce the obedience and collaboration of moderate sympathizers and the population at large. With Argyris and Schön, this can be understood as examples of single-loop learning, characterized as learning to do better what the organizations were doing already, i.e., the employment of violence and intimidation to enforce cooperation or to silence dissidents and opponents. At short term, this can be strategically advantageous; at longer term, however, such single-loop learning can reinforce the conditions for error (Argyris and Schön 1996, 90–91). Although BH successfully challenged the Nigerian state and was able to control vast areas in the country’s north, Shekau’s uncompromising stance against both opposing village populations and internal critics ultimately led to internal rebellion and fission (Al-Tamimi 2018, 104). In the case of ETA, the violent repression and intimidation of moderates and critics finally also led to dissidence and to the isolation of the militant vanguards even within their own social movement. By contrast, the GI came up with starkly different interpretations and drew different conclusions when faced with similar mismatches after a series of deadly attacks against touristic targets in Egypt. With tourism being a source of income for many Egyptians, the GI soon found itself isolated and alienated from society. Instead of deploying a strategy of intimidation to coerce obedience, however, their consequence of profoundly questioning and finally abandoning their violent approach was diametrically different and can be understood as an example of double-loop learning. This raises the question what differentiates this case from the two others? What made the fundamental transformation possible in the GI case, but not in others? In this regard, it might be helpful to look at another contextual factor, which is external pressure. Typically, the pressure of terrorist violence is answered with counter pressure by the state, in the form of military counterterrorism operations and the uncompromising imprisonment of members and supporters. Research from different disciplines has posited that conditions of pressure have a reducing effect on learning. They are more usually correlated with a change of routine behavior than with truly gaining insight (Dekker and Hansén 2004, 9–16). Lessons are not internalized and are little sustainable, or successful learning is altogether impossible. One might therefore assume that the situation of persecution in the underground, where constant threats create difficult conditions and stress, is inconducive to the

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reflection processes that are necessary for profound learning, even more so, as the situation makes it potentially difficult to break out of the close confines of group-thinking and open up to new points of view. However, our cases suggest that this is not necessarily the case: Intense debates took place within BH in a situation of armed struggle and constant persecution in rural hideouts, and the learning of HTS also took place under conditions of high military pressure, both from the Syrian regime and Turkey. Here, in fact, it was precisely the rising military pressure that triggered the learning process as it made a more decided transformation necessary and pushed decisionmakers from half-hearted single-loop adaptations toward a more doubleloop response. In the GI case, the leaders did not develop their inquiry in a battlefield situation or under persecution, but in prison. While imprisonment has similarly been associated with pressure and with limited learning, it can also have the effect of physically removing the learners from the immediate situation of their struggle and from their radical base. Thus, their imprisonment brought the GI leaders into contact with other political prisoners, which helped opening their eyes to different worldviews (Ashour 200, 598). As they explicitly acknowledge, taking an outside perspective and a certain distance was an important precondition for critically reflecting on their own experience: The best thing is to take time to think when you are somewhat remote from the struggle, and you are able to look over the whole map from a distance, and consider it. Those who work for Islam have been prevented from doing so over recent years under the pressures of the terrible persecution they have faced, and their activity has become simply action and reaction. (‘Abd al-Azim, Ibrahim and Mohammad al-Sharif 2002, 112) Interestingly, the later HTS leader al-Jolani similarly used the outsiderperspective during his time in an American prison in Iraq to reflect on the failing violent strategy of al-Qaeda in Iraq and produced an analysis that formed the blueprint for his later more successful approach in bringing the jihad to Syria (PBS 2021). Here, the prison cannot be understood as a mere context of repression but also as an insulated place for reflection. In the GI case, this was possible because the state’s strategy was not one-sidedly of repressive nature, but also included a number of more conciliatory measures. One of these came in the form of selective concessions, such a prisoner release (Ashour 2007, 617); another was to send Islamic scholars to the prisons as intermediaries, with the aim of engaging the GI leaders in a moderating dialogue (Blaydes and Rubin 2008, 469). These active efforts were combined with very influential non-actions (Blaydes and Rubin 2008, 469–470). Thus, for example, the state allowed the GI to keep its leadership structure and internal unity intact. The state also

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allowed prison tours, which the GI leaders used for discussing their insights with their followers and convincing them of their revisions. In hindsight, the GI leaders referred to state repression as a source of their revisions, given that they were forced to re-evaluate the costs and benefits of their violent strategy (Ashour 2007, 621). It can be argued that the combination of these measures greatly facilitated the GI’s inquiry toward double-loop learning. By contrast, the Spanish state’s rejection to negotiate a political settlement based on self-determination for the Basque people was among the factors that impacted negatively on a possible evolution of ETA away from violence and toward politicization. Unlike the GI prisoners in Egypt, ETA prisoners were kept separated in scattered prisons, often spatially far removed from their hometowns, which made even family visits difficult (Gaitza, personal interview 2019). While this issue was for long a central point in peace negotiations, the state showed widely uncompromising, which tendentially strengthened hardline positions within the organization that argued that Basques were still oppressed and that the armed struggle had to be continued. While imprisonment and military pressure are forms of direct interaction between the state and violent groups, the state’s impact on learning processes can also be more indirect, namely in the sense of general political developments that change the status quo which had motivated the terrorists’ campaign in the first place. In the ETA case, for example, Franco’s death and the Spanish democratization process led to a de facto reduction of the grievances that before had assured ETA’s popular legitimacy, and in the late 1970s temporarily favored a development toward politicization. The ETA case can also serve to show that the impact of the political environment is not limited to the level of the state, but can also concern the macro-political level of regional or global entanglements. Thus, when Spain joined the European Economic Community in 1986, this reinforced security cooperation between Spain and France (Mark, personal interview, 2019). As France had served ETA militants as safe haven for training and shelter before, the reduced tactical potential of the border context created significant constraints on ETA’s military abilities. Increasingly under pressure as a result, ETA showed less capability of double-loop learning and favored an uncompromising strategy of intimidation and violence instead of reacting to political opportunities. The case implies that changes in the political environment can be fundamental both in terms of creating the necessity to learn and adapt, and insofar as they can impact on an organization’s capacity to do so. When comparing the learning processes in our four cases, it is striking that in terms of actual transformation processes, the more successful organizations were the Islamist groups, while the secular-leftist ETA was arguably the least successful. This is remarkable insofar as according to conventional wisdom, religious ideologies are generally regarded as particularly rigid, and religiously framed Islamist terror as particularly uncompromising. Contrary to this perception, however, a look at our cases rather suggests that the role of ideology in learning processes is at least ambivalent. On the one hand,

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uncompromising ideologies can constitute an impediment for learning: if certain action patterns are regarded not merely as ideologically justified, but as necessary and without alternative, this is prone to interfere with rational considerations and obstructs the perception of such action patterns as erroneous, even if they might be recognized as strategically problematic. Shekau’s uncompromising insistence on his doctrinal position is a case in point. On the other hand, if certain patterns of organizational practice are considered as deviations from ideologically justified positions, this can also trigger an inquiry and thus be a starting point for learning that puts into question previously held assumptions. Inversely, since ideological positions are often the subject of controversial debate, revisions deemed necessary for strategic reasons may be framed as ideologically necessary readjustments. For the internal critics in BH, the call for revisions was motivated by practices that were not only considered as strategically, but also as religiously problematic and which they interpreted as a “deviation from Allah’s path” – in particular, the excessive use of excommunication (takfir), which the revisionists refuted (Al-Tamimi 2018, 38; Kassim and Nwankpa 2018, 464). Thus, they questioned a central assumption based on which Shekau justified the use of violence against local populations. The GI leaders’ inquiry was even more far-reaching in its degree of openness to challenging their own assumptions: the notion that the Egyptian rulers were “apostates” was decided to be unjustified and the armed jihad on this basis was abandoned altogether (Lav 2010, 125–128). The revisionists in BH, for their part, never questioned the necessity of their armed jihad, but merely very limited details of the basic assumptions that their use of violence was based on, such as the question of who exactly qualifies as a legitimate target. In short, while GI was astonishingly open to very profound reinterpretations of ideological foundations, BH only scratched at the surface. The incompatibility between strategic and ideological requirements can be perceived by organization members as a dilemma. Argyris and Schön refer to such situations of conflicting requirements as “double binds” (1978, 118). For instance, the GI leaders recognized that their “armed jihad” had led to counterproductive consequences; instead of serving their ultimate goal of “guiding people to righteousness”, it had increased oppression and injustice, and damaged the reputation of Muslims (‘Abd al-Azim, Ibrahim and Mohammad al-Sharif 2002, 3, 16). The requirements of guiding humankind and jihad were thus conflicting with each other: while violence was recognized to be counterproductive, agreeing to refrain from violence seemed at first equally unsatisfactory, because jihad was regarded as a duty – a classic dilemma. The leaders resolved this double bind by prioritizing certain options over others (Zuhdi et al. 2002, 147).6 They argued that according to Sharia law, it is preferable to achieve the better of two goods and prevent the worse of two evils (‘Abd al-Azim, Ibrahim and Mohammad al-Sharif 2002, 53). Faced with a lose-lose situation, avoiding the greater loss was thus argued to be justified. Admitting that in the course of their struggle, armed

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jihad had become an end in itself instead of being a means to a higher end, the GI leaders argued for prioritizing ends over means: while an end cannot be forbidden, a means may be prohibited. In the HTS case, the continued incompatibility between al-Qaeda’s revised, more local approach and a still espoused global agenda created double binds for local commanders, who were confronted with mistrust from mainstream and moderate jihadi armed groups as well as the population. When the then JN rebranded as Jabhat Fateh al-Sham and declared to have severed ties with al-Qaeda, this was at first meant as no more than an ostensible breaking of ties, with connections being maintained secretly. Nevertheless, al-Qaeda did not agree with the rebranding, calling it an “act of disobedience” and demanding its reversal (Al-Tamimi 2017). This presented al-Jolani with a conundrum – giving in to the demands would have demonstrated to the other factions that JN was indeed not an independent actor focusing on Syria, while rejecting them risked internal strife. This controversy points to an incomplete organizational inquiry: existing double binds were only ostensibly solved and central elements remained undiscussable, so the parties emerged with different impressions of what the change was about. But the recognition that the mismatch of expectations and outcomes could not be corrected by simply continuing the existing strategy with largely cosmetic changes eventually paved the way for more profound reflections. Al-Jolani finally realized that to adapt to the increasingly difficult conflict environment, he had to undertake a deeper inquiry and prioritize between conflicting norms. As he explained in a later interview: “[W]hen we saw that the interest of the revolution and the interest of the people of Syria was to break up from Al Qaeda organization, we initiated this ourselves” (PBS 2021). In this move toward pragmatism, he prioritized a realist political strategy for Idlib above ideological purity and unity of global jihadism and thus finally succeeded in resolving the double-binds. In the two cases of successful transformation, those of GI and HTS, the revisions were driven by a sense for realism and pragmatism. In their books, the GI leaders frame the abandonment of jihad as the necessary result of a realistic assessment of their situation. They favored realism over an uncompromising ideology, and religious norms are questioned and adapted to the requirements of rational considerations. HTS, driven by the will to govern Idlib, pragmatically adapted ideological positions to strategic necessities in a situation of military struggle. This included for example military cooperation with the ‘apostate’ regime of Turkey. In a pragmatic recognition of power realities on the ground, HTS media official Muhammad Nazzal argued: “No one says that the Turks’ entrance to these points is some desirable interest; rather, it’s the lesser of two evils” (Heller 2017). With this, HTS, similar to GI, subscribed to a logic of ends justifying the means, potentially open to further compromises. ETA in the 1980s and 1990s, by contrast, showed incapable of such pragmatic realism. While their violence deprived them more and more from popular sympathies, they believed that if the group was no longer the military vanguard of the independence movement, it would have no future as an

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organization. Therefore, they prioritized a single-loop answer that was, however, inapt for resolving the double-bind. Argyris and Schön note that continued single-loop learning decreases the likelihood of double-loop learning. However, the examples show that some organizations nevertheless succeed in breaking the vicious cycle of selfreinforcing error by problematizing unresolved double binds and addressing them in deep inquiry. It even seems that the very fact of the continuation of the error caused by single-loop learning can lead to the recognition that double-loop learning is necessary. Thus, in the BH case, it is precisely the strategically harmful long-term effects of the initial single-loop learning under Shekau – waning support and increasingly difficult-to-bear military counterpressure – that triggered reflections of a more double-loop nature among internal critics of the former strategy (Al-Tamimi 2018, 41; Kassim and Nwankpa 2018, 464). In HTS, before the group embarked on its transformation process, internal debates between jihadi “hardliners” and locally-oriented “pragmatists” had already taken place once, with prominent figures of the latter however side-lined or expelled (Lund 2015). Because of its still strong military position before the intervention by Russia in late 2015, the JN leadership at that time was not yet ready to question its ideological position or strategic approach. The recognition that small-scale adjustments were not sufficient to resolve the problem of winning local allies came late, but eventually also opened the way to a more profound reform. The final episode of the ETA case is less convincing in terms of successful transformation and the decision to eventually abandon violence in 2011 is certainly at the limit of what can reasonably be considered as the result of double-loop learning. However, the decision to disband can ultimately also be interpreted as a rational prioritization of ends over means. The means (violence) were, albeit grudgingly and after long and controversial internal debates, abandoned for the sake of the ends: the moderate political forces within the Abertzale movement finally convinced ETA that continued violence would ultimately be counterproductive to the goal of Basque independence (Murua 2017). The final decision to disband was taken by vote among militants and the great majority was favorable of the dissolution (ETA 2018; Fumagalli 2018), which reflects how the attitude toward violence within the organization had changed over time. As the pressure of the wider movement seems to have been decisive here, this can be regarded as another example of external factors influencing learning processes. Other internal factors can obstruct the inquiry and inhibit the successful move from single- to double-loop learning. Argyris and Schön have pointed out that double-loop learning is in general rather difficult for organizations and demands a particular learning environment. It works better in organizations that have an open culture of self-critique. In most organizations, however, such critique is rather inhibited by defensive routines that cover up errors to protect the management from embarrassment, yet constitute a

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hindrance for constructive learning. Errors become undiscussable and cause people to respond to errors in ways that amplify the conditions for errors. Interestingly, the GI leaders in their reflections come very close to these observations of Argyris and Schön, and draw similar conclusions with regard to the negative effect that such routines can have on learning. They note that humans are often “enchanted by their own actions [… and] consider that they have reached perfection in their works, and shortcomings or defects should not be sought within them.” (Sharif and Hafez 2002, 5). Their analysis comes close to giving a definition of defensive routines when they state that an ignorant person “hates to be described as ignorant or to appear as such, especially amongst his followers, if he is a leader. Therefore, he flees from any investigation of his soul, and any attempts to evaluate him.” (Sharif and Hafez 2002, 7). In the BH case, in the course of the inquiry, Shekau himself and his rejection of knowledge and learning are increasingly identified by the critics as the major problem. Very similar to the reflections of the GI leaders, the revisionists in BH identify an “aversion to knowledge” and a “tyranny in opinion” (Al-Tamimi 2018, 55, 57) on the part of Shekau, and they reproach him of actively and strategically inhibiting learning in order to secure his leadership. He systematically suppressed the most important organizational institution for voicing critique, the shura council, taking internal decisions in an increasingly autocratic way (Al-Tamimi 2018, 41). The critics’ reflections can be understood as a diagnostic inquiry into the obstacles to learning. Argyris and Schön describe how such learning about the conditions for learning, which the authors refer to as “deutero learning” (1978, 27) can be a step toward overcoming the limitations and moving toward double-loop learning (158–160). While it may thus be said that defensive routines can block inquiry, this aspect in fact already plays into the implementation phase of organizational learning. Critical reflections by individual members may not altogether be aborted by defensive routines, but they potentially have a significant impact on the question of whether or not the results of these reflections eventually materialize on the level of organizational practice – in other words, whether or not learning effectively becomes organizational. This leads us to taking a closer look at the different influencing factors that are relevant in the implementation phase. Implementation

Processes of inquiry that lead to concrete results on the level of individual learners are a necessary but not a sufficient condition for successful organizational learning: decisive is also the question of their effective implementation in the rules and routines of organizational practice. But here as well a number of factors can impact either as facilitators or as impediments. If leaders develop defensive routines against criticism, in the case of violent organizations, such defenses are prone to be enforced violently, too.

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The cases of BH and ETA are telling examples. Personalistic and military rule in these two organizations led to internal controversies being played out in violent ways. ETA in the 1980s and 1990s deployed violence to silence internal critics of its strategy of lucha armada (armed struggle) and its deployment of intimidation against the advocates of a moderating course. The result was internal dissidence and factionalism. A similar approach of intimidation and coercion was also applied against reform-oriented critics in BH. When the revisionists voiced their concerns, they met with systematic and fierce repression by Shekau. Here as well, as a consequence there were numerous defections, even of high-ranking commanders (Al-Tamimi 2018). Attempts at critical inquiry were thus systematically suppressed, errors made undiscussable, and the options for double-loop learning thus severely diminished. The process in BH exemplifies the limitations that members from the lower or middle ranks of an organization can face with regard to convincing the top leadership of their propositions for change. Furthermore, the cases of BH and ETA highlight the role of organizational complexity and the question of internal cohesion or lack thereof. The positions and interests of different members or different parts of an organization can diverge significantly with regard to economic considerations, political or ideological positions, or the wish to develop the organization in a particular direction. Aspirations for positions of influence and power can play a role, or inversely, the wish to defend and secure such positions. As a result, the conclusions drawn by members engaged in inquiry are often not unanimously shared throughout organizations, which can lead to internal controversy about whether corrective measures to be taken or not. All four cases show to varying degrees the complexities of such internal strife and lack of cohesion. In the BH and ETA cases, it is visible in the struggle between moderates and hardliners; in the HTS case, in the disagreement between Al-Jolani and al-Qaeda loyalists; in the GI case, in the first difficult implementation of the ceasefire initiative. In such cases of internal controversy about the conclusions to be drawn from inquiry, the question of implementation can become a matter of power relations. Thus, it can make a significant difference whether the initiative for inquiry has taken its departure point at the level of the leadership, among middle-rank members, or at the level of the membership base. In principle, it is possible for both leaders and followers to initiate inquiry. Revisions can be induced either in top-down, or in bottom-up processes. The comparison of the HTS and BH cases shows the significance of this important difference perhaps in the clearest way. In HTS, the changes were initiated by the leadership. While al-Jolani also faced some opposition, his charismatic authority was strong enough to allow for their successful implementation and to avoid the disintegration of the organization. He was largely able to keep al-Qaeda loyalists under control, sometimes openly fighting them and arresting leaders as well as internal critics or defected former members. Only small numbers are left to join other groups or form

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small splinter organizations. The process in BH shows the opposite scenario and exemplifies the limitations that members from the lower or middle ranks of a terrorist organization can face with regard to convincing the top leadership of their propositions for change. Here, the reformers’ propositions were not supported by Shekau, but rather systematically and brutally suppressed (Al-Tamimi 2018, 38ff.; Kassim and Nwankpa 2018, 452ff.). The internal structure of BH being characterized by Shekau’s extremely restrictive leadership, a successful implementation of learning results was not possible as long as he was in power. Only when, after BH’s pledge of allegiance to ISIS, Shekau was replaced by the ISIS leadership with Abu Musab al-Barnawi, one of the main proponents of reform, did the implementation begin to take form. However, this also led to the split, as Shekau accepted neither his deposition nor the reformers’ new course. The ETA case similarly points to a crucial role of strong and charismatic leader personalities for the implementation of lessons. The assassination of the moderate Ordeñana by the Spanish state brought militant hardliners to power, which changed the evolution of the organization from a political course back to more uncompromising militancy. However, whether a learning process is initiated by leaders or by ordinary members: for a successful implementation of their propositions for change both also depend on the other. Double-loop learning can be either facilitated or hindered by both leaders and followers. Intuitively, one would assume that it is easier for leaders to implement changes if they are convinced of their necessity, than for members and followers if they propose such change to an unconvinced leadership – simply because of their decision-making power. However, organizational hierarchies alone, although they are definitely significant, are not sufficient to explain the success or failure of attempts at organizational revisions. Critical numbers of members and followers can also refuse to implement processes of change initiated by their leaders and actively turn against them when they regard them as contrary to the ideals or interests of their organization. Thus, in the BH case, the more moderate faction leaders, when, after separating with Shekau, they wanted to go even further with their course of moderation and make far-reaching concessions, were later deposed, and some of them killed, by their own, more radical followers (Sahara Reporters 2018). In the GI case, it needed several failed attempts before the imprisoned leaders were eventually able to convince their followers outside of the cessation of violence. The first attempts failed either because of disagreement between leaders or because of the resistance of the members, with some of them leaving GI to join al-Qaeda instead. Thus, leaders also have to take followers into account when engaging in organizational inquiry. If the views about the necessity of learning in an organization or the positions regarding the solutions proposed are too contrarious to be reconcilable, this can result in conflicts being fought out in violent ways (HTS, BH), to internal fragmentation and dissidence, or even to the end of the organization (ETA). However, a split can also resolve a blocked learning process and offer a

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second chance for implementation, as the BH case suggests. In such a situation, generally preceded by a phase of internal differentiation and factionalism, a lack of formal decision-making power of a group of reformers can be made up for by numerical strength. If strong enough, the faction can split off and form its own splinter-organization, in which lessons are implemented. The communications from the two BH factions reflect the two camps’ efforts to convince as many members and followers as possible of their position (Al-Tamimi 2018; Kassim and Nwankpa 2018). In such power struggles, external alliances can also be a tool for shifting the balance and can open up new options for reviving seemingly blocked learning processes. Hence the importance also to look at the role of other violent organizations. In the BH case, it was ultimately the pledge of allegiance to ISIS which gave the reformers a second wind after the situation was blocked by Shekau for a long time (Al-Tamimi 2018, 41). It seems paradoxical that it was the ISIS leadership, known for its hard-line stance, who sided with the reformers and deposed Shekau, who was apparently regarded as too erratic. Thus, they paved the way for the intended reforms to be implemented in the ISIS-backed faction of BH, while Shekau was himself the one who performed the split and continued with his action strategy in his residual faction (Abubakar 2016; Gartenstein-Ross and Zenn 2016). In the HTS case, the role of another terrorist organization involved – in this case alQaeda – was quite contrarious. It did not support but rather reject the intended changes. The effect, however, was also positive with regard to the transformation process. The rejection made al-Jolani push the inquiry even further than initially intended and go more decidedly toward a double-loop solution and a split. At the same time, it opened up the possibility of an increasing de facto cooperation with Turkey, which was a decisive factor in being able to resist military pressure by the Syrian Army and Russia. The two cases point to the significance of the question of whether a terrorist organization acts on its own behalf or whether it is part of a larger network. Both BH and HTS had to position themselves in relation to the larger, fragmented jihadi landscape they were a part of. In the case of BH, the joining of the Islamic State offered the reformers a way to overcome the obstacles caused by Shekau’s autocratic leadership; in the case of HTS, it was the severance of ties with al-Qaeda which allowed the rebranded HTS more flexibility in adapting to the local conditions in Idlib, which for most commanders was the priority. Beyond material alliances, other organizations can also serve as indirect inspirations of learning: HTS hailed the Taliban, which captured Afghanistan with a mixture of a ruthless military campaign and astute political maneuvering both in negotiations with the United States and in placating local leaders and populations, as a role model for their own more pragmatic approach. On the contrary, GI developed their revisions explicitly in contrast to the radical alQaeda, which for them exemplified the downsides of the violent strategy. All the cases highlight the role of group-internal dynamics in relation to the socio-political context in processes of profound learning.

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Conclusion This chapter set out to demonstrate the usefulness of organizational learning theory for grasping the complexities of terrorist learning. We used the conceptual toolkit of Argyris and Schön’s classic approach to analyze strategic transformation processes in Boko Haram, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, ETA, and the Gamaa Islamiya. All four cases involve processes in which more or less basic organizational norms and assumptions were questioned. The cases differ, however, with regard to the depth of the inquiry, and with regard to the extent of actual change as a result of the respective learning processes – in other words: the cases feature different degrees of double-loop learning. In our analysis, we aimed to make sense of this variation, and to this end looked at how learning trajectories are influenced by internal and external factors, organizational complexities as well as the specific environment of terrorism. The effects that these influencing factors have on the different cases are divergent and sometimes contradictory and it is difficult to generalize lessons. We clearly do not claim that Argyris and Schön’s conceptual approach can exhaustively explain or even predict the trajectories of learning processes in terrorist organizations. Nevertheless, we believe that the framework can help to systematically think about, and thus contribute to a better understanding of, such learning processes. Argyris and Schön’s dictum that learning in organizations does not necessarily lead to organizational learning proved helpful for disentangling learning processes in terrorist organizations. Organizational processes of inquiry, even if they comprise the identification of errors and the formulation of corrective measures, do not necessarily materialize in palpable transformations, because the organization itself with its structural set-up of hierarchies and command structures can be the limit to the implementation of lessons. The learning of progressive members can be blocked by conservative leaders, or, vice versa, the learning of leaders can be so far-reaching that they lose their followers. The analysis of our cases suggests that while ideological rigidity can constitute an obstacle to learning, even seemingly rigid, religiously framed ideologies can go along with a sense for realism and pragmatism. There can be surprisingly much room for variation and for pragmatic re-interpretations of basic norms and assumptions. Organizations’ openness to new interpretations empirically seems to depend less on prescribed patterns than on individual learner personalities, especially in leadership position. Lack of internal cohesion and conflicting views about the necessity or the direction of change can lead to learning processes being blocked, and as a consequence, to dissidence and factionalism. But the cases also suggest that such dissidence and factionalism can pave the way for new learning. In other words, the cycle of organizational learning is a potentially open-ended process and depends on the dynamics of each organization in its sociopolitical context. As the cases especially of BH and ETA clearly suggest, for a

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balanced assessment of learning processes, the case histories have to be regarded in a longer perspective, as conditions can change and blocked processes can suddenly be unblocked, or vice versa. Another constraint that can be turned into a window of opportunity is external pressure. The cases suggest that learning under pressure seems more feasible for terrorist organizations than one might intuitively assume. If pressure is combined with positive incentives from the side of the state, as in the GI case, this can be even more fruitful – an aspect that holds important policy implications. The cases also show that learning can be so far-reaching that it leads to the end of an organization. If the purpose of the organization was to pursue certain aims violently and the violent approach itself is put into question as a result of the inquiry, a group can either dissolve (ETA) or redefine itself in a process of politicization and transform into a non-violent movement (GI). Even a complete dissolution as in the ETA case is not necessarily to be regarded as a failure in terms of learning: if other organizations that pursue the same ends with nonviolent means exist within the environment of a wider social movement, the dissolution can even be a strategic choice, in order not to obstruct the cause of such other organizations. On the one hand, this means that success and failure of an organization have to be distinguished from success or failure of learning processes. On the other hand, the question of successful learning itself is fraught with interpretive ambiguities and often a matter of perspective: a transformation that is regarded as desirable by some organization members (or outside observers) might be an unacceptable transgression for others. The decision to disband can also appear as a logical and necessary step if we think back to the first factor that we discussed and that was at the outset of the inquiry process paraphrased in our opening quotation from the BH revisionists: the question of waning popular support. If a terrorist organization seriously claims to represent the interests of a critical mass of the population, then a decline in support means a decline in legitimacy and it is only consistent if the organization takes this as a moral compass. The declaration of disbandment of ETA, although it came very late, can be understood in this sense, where it is stated that “ETA was born from the people and now it dissolves back into the people” (ETA 2018). The population’s increasing alienation was ultimately decisive for the recognition that it was time to finally terminate an armed struggle that was leading nowhere and increasingly met with popular rejection. While such recognition can be painfully difficult after long years of militant campaign, it goes without saying that for many victims of ETA violence, the declaration sounded cynically heroical and not like recognition at all. Such more than understandable resentment notwithstanding, we believe that an analysis of the conditions for complex learning in terrorist groups can contribute not only to a better understanding of the pitfalls involved in such processes but ultimately also help to positively influence such processes by creating conditions supportive of critical self-questioning of terrorist groups.

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Notes 1 Kassim and Nwankpa 2018, 464. 2 Brown and Kenney have expressed a similar binary set of factors with the distinction of endogenous conditions and exogenous influences that facilitate or deter organizational learning ( Brown and Kenney 2006, 7–16). 3 All subsequent references in this section using simple page-numbers are to this volume. 4 Regarding ETA, see also De La Calle, in this volume. 5 The names of interview partners from the Basque country (ex-militants and former prisoners from ETA, left-wing local activists and academic experts) have been replaced by pseudonyms. Field work was conducted in the Basque Country/Spain between August and September 2019. 6 Here, the GI leaders refer to the jurisprudence expounded by Sheikh Al Islam Ibn Taymiyyah, a medieval Sunni Muslim theologian.

References ‘Abd al-Azim, H., Ibrahim, N., and Mohammad al-Sharif, A. (2002), Taslit al-adwa ‘alama waga’ fi’ al-jihad min akhta’ [Shedding light on errors committed in jihad] Corrective Concepts Series (Cairo: Maktaba al-Turath al-Islami). Abubakar, A. (2016), ‘Boko Haram: Abubakar Shekau releases audio message, says “still in charge”’, Vanguard, August 4, 2016, https://www.vanguardngr.com/2016/ 08/boko-haram-abubakar-shekau-releases-audio-message-says-still-in-charge/ Al-Tamimi, A.J. (2017), ‘The Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham-al-Qaeda Dispute: Primary Texts (I)’, Jihad Intel, December 6, 2017, https://jihadintel.meforum.org/210/thehayat-tahrir-al-sham-al-qaeda-dispute-primary Al-Tamimi, A.J. (2018), Cutting out the tumour from the Khawarij of Shekau by the allegiance pledge of the people of nobility by the two brothers, the sons of Sheikh Abu Yusuf al-Barnawi, may God protect them, (translation and commentary of a book by ISWAP, August 5, 2018), http://www.aymennjawad.org/21467/the-islamic-statewest-africa-province-vs-abu Argyris, C. and Schön, D.A. (1978), Organizational Learning: A Theory of Action Perspective (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley). Argyris, C. and Schön, D.A. (1996), Organizational Learning II: Theory, Methods, and Practice (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley). Ashour, O. (2007), ‘Lions Tamed? An Inquiry into the Causes of De-Radicalization of Armed Islamist Movements: The Case of the Egyptian Islamic Group’, Middle East Journal 61:4, 596–625. Blaydes, L. and Rubin, L. (2008), ‘Ideological Reorientation and Counterterrorism: Confronting Militant Islam in Egypt’, Terrorism and Political Violence 20:4, 461–479. Brown, M.L. and Kenney, M. (2006), ‘Organizational learning: Theoretical and methodological considerations’, in: M.L. Brown, M. Kenney, and M. Zarkin (eds.), Organizational learning in the global context (Aldershot: Ashgate), 1–17. Casanova, I. (2007), ETA 1958–2008: Medio Siglo de Historia (Nafarroa: Editorial Txalaparta s.l.). Dekker, S. and Hansén, D. (2004), ‘Learning under Pressure: The Effects of Politicization on Organizational Learning in Public Bureaucracies’, Journal of Public Administration. Research and Theory 14:2, 211–230.

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Egaña, I. (2017), Breve Historia de ETA (Nafarroa: Editorial Txalaparta s.l.). ETA – Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (2018), Final Statement from ETA to the Basque Country, May 3, 2018, https://www.hdcentre.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/ ETA-declaration-English.pdf Fiol, C.M. and Lyles, M.A. (1985), ‘Organizational Learning’, The Academy of Management Review 10:4, 803–813. Fumagalli, A. (2018), ‘ETA gibt Auflösung in Genf bekannt‘. Neue Zürcher Zeitung May 3, 2018, https://www.nzz.ch/schweiz/eta-gibt-aufloesung-in-genf-bekannt-ld. 1382719 Fürstenberg, M. and Görzig, C. (2020), ‘Learning in a Double Loop: The Strategic Transformation of Al-Qaeda’, Perspectives on Terrorism 14:1, 26–38. Gartenstein-Ross, D. and Zenn, J. (2016), ‘Boko Haram’s Doomed Marriage to the Islamic State’, War on the Rocks, August 26, 2016, https://warontherocks.com/ 2016/08/boko-harams-doomed-marriage-to-the-islamic-state/ Heller, S. (2017), ‘Tahrir al-Sham official on Turkey’s intervention to implement Astana: “That’s not the reality.”’ (translation and discussion of a Telegram Post by Muhammad Nazzal), October 13, 2017, https://abujamajem.wordpress.com/2017/ 10/15/tahrir-al-sham-official-on-turkeys-intervention-to-implement-astana-thatsnot-the-reality/ Higazi, A. (2013), ‘Les origines et la transformation de l’insurrection de Boko Haram dans le Nord du Nigeria’, Politique Africaine 130:2, 137–164. Kassim, A. (2018a), ‘Boko Haram’s internal civil war: Stealth Takfir and Jihad as recipes for schism’, in: J. Zenn (ed.), Boko Haram beyond the headlines: Analyses of Africa’s enduring insurgency (West Point, NY: Combatting Terrorism Center), 3–32, http://www.jstor.org/stable/resrep21483.5 Kassim, A. (2018b), ‘How Boko Haram’s Infighting, Not Government Policy, Degraded It’, Daily Trust, March 3, 2018, https://www.dailytrust.com.ng/howboko-harams-infighting-not-government-policy-degraded-it.html Kassim, A. and Nwankpa, M. (eds.) (2018), The Boko Haram Reader: From Nigerian Preachers to the Islamic State (London: Hurst). Lav, D.J. (2010), ‘Jihadists and jurisprudents: The “revisions” literature of Sayyid Imam and Al-Gama’a Al-Islamiyya’, in: J.M. Skelly (ed.), Political Islam from Muhammad to Ahmadinejad: Defenders, detractors and definitions (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO), 105–146. Letamendi
a, F. (1995), ‘Basque nationalism and the struggle for self-determination in the Basque Country’, in: B. Berberoglu (ed.), The national question: Nationalism, ethnic conflict, and self-determination in the twentieth century (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press). Levy, J.S. (1994), ‘Learning and Foreign Policy: Sweeping a Conceptual Minefield’, International Organization 48:2, 279–312. Lister, C. (2017), ‘Al-Qaeda’s Turning Against its Syrian Affiliate’, The Middle East Institute, May 18, 2017, https://www.mei.edu/publications/al-qaedas-turningagainst-its-syrian-affiliate Loimeier, R. (2012), ‘Boko Haram: The Development of a Militant Religious Movement in Nigeria’, Africa Spectrum 47:2–3, 137–155. Lund, A. (2015), ‘Details regarding internal disputes in the Nusra Front have recently leaked out raising questions about the future of the group’, Carnegie Middle East Center, August 07, 2015, https://carnegie-mec.org/diwan/60967

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Murua, I. (2017), ‘No More Bullets for ETA: The Loss of Internal Support as a Key Factor in the End of the Basque Group’s Campaign’, Critical Studies on Terrorism 10:1, 93–114. PBS - Public Broadcasting Service (2021), ‘The Jihadist. Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, Military Leader, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (interview conducted in Idlib, Syria, on February 1 and February 14, 2021, by M. Smith)’, PBS Frontline, https://www. pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/interview/abu-mohammad-al-jolani/ Pérouse de Montclos, M.-A. (2014), ‘Boko Haram and politics: From insurgency to terrorism’, in: M.-A. Pérouse de Montclos (ed.), Boko Haram: Islamism, politics, security and the state in Nigeria. Waposo Series 2 (Leiden: African Studies Centre), 135–157. Pérouse de Montclos, M.-A. (2018), ‘Boko Haram, youth mobilization and jihadism’, in: A.R. Mustapha and D. Ehrhardt (eds.), Creed and grievance: Muslim-Christian relations and conflict resolution in Northern Nigeria (Woodbridge: James Currey), 165–183. Sahara Reporters (2018), ‘Boko Haram Leader Mamman Nur “Killed By His Closest Lieutenants” For Releasing Dapchi Girls’, Sahara Reporters, September 14, 2018, http://saharareporters.com/2018/09/14/boko-haram-leader-mamman-nur-killedhis-closest-lieutenants-releasing-dapchi-girls Sharif, M.A. and Hafez, U.I. (2002), Al Nash wal Tabyin fi Tashih Mafahim al Muhtasibin [Advice and clarifications to correct the understanding of Muhtasibs (Those who enjoin good and forbid evil)], Corrective Concepts Series (Cairo: Maktaba al-Turath al-Islami). Tellidis, I. (2011), ‘Orthodox, Criticals and the Missing Context: Basque Civil Society’s Reaction(s) to Terrorism’, Critical Studies on Terrorism 4:2, 181–197. Zenn, J. (2013), ‘Ansaru: A Profile of Nigeria’s Newest Jihadist Movement’, Terrorism Monitor 11:1, https://www.ecoi.net/en/document/1150043 Zenn, J. and Pieri, Z.P. (2017), ‘How Much Takfir Is too Much Takfir? The Evolution of Boko Haram’s Factionalization’, Journal for Deradicalization 11, 281–308. Zuhdi, K.M., ‘Ali al-Sharif, A.M., ‘Abd al-‘Azim, H.A., Muhammad, A.A., ‘Abd Allah, N.-I., Hafiz, U.I., al-Dawalibi, F.M., and al-Din Dirbalah, M.I. (2002), Istratijiyat wa Tafjirat al-Qa’ida: al-Akhta’ wa al-Akhtar [Al-Qaida’s strategy and bombings: Errors and dangers], Corrective Concepts Series (Cairo: Maktaba alTurath al-Islami). Zulaika, J. and Murua, I. (2017), ‘How Terrorism Ends – and Does Not End: The Basque Case’, Critical Studies on Terrorism 10:2, 338–356.

3

Downgrading or Upsizing Strategies How Rebels Learn about the Right Repertoire of Violence Luis De la Calle

After first-hand experiencing the severe insurgent defeats in Algeria and Egypt during the 1990s, al-Suri, one of the most outstanding minds inside the Jihadi revolutionary milieu, theorized that the best strategy to wear down Jihadistinimical regimes would be one that combines terror attacks against the West with ground insurgencies willing to topple weak governments in countries with Muslim majorities (Lia 2009). By merging doomed-to-failed local insurgencies into a larger movement, al-Suri was suggesting that a multipolar armed strategy could bring enough clout to force the great powers to give in and retreat from the Islamic territories. Most analysts have focused, when dealing with al-Suri thinking, on its global reach and how this contributed to modeling the rise of ISIS, a group that excelled at applying al-Suri teachings. But less attention has been dedicated to al-Suri intrinsic understanding of the choice of armed strategy: jihadist rebels must pack their repertoire of violence depending on the structural conditions they are facing. Thus, when dealing with economically advanced, strong countries, it is better to resort to terrorist tactics; but when siding against weaker governments, the best option may be to seize territory and wear down the state. In other words, terrorism was not sponsored on its own merits, but as the best conditional strategy to hit places where a ground strategy was neither feasible (usually, urban areas in Muslim countries) nor necessary (Western countries and their interests abroad). This is obviously, not all about al-Suri. Many other rebel leaders and thinkers intuitively understood before him that the choice of armed strategies is inherently dependent on the conditions their soon-to-be rebel groups will have to face. Lenin advocated armed, working-class insurrection in the urban centers, the so-called insurrectionist way. Facing a weak state, and in the middle of a revolutionary process, a grassroots-endorsed coup was the best route to follow. Many rebel leaders have thereafter relied on Lenin’s lesson that weapons-backed insurrection is the right path to regime change. Not very surprisingly, these leaders operated in countries with large urban centers surrounded by an impoverished and dependable countryside. In a remarkable contrast, Mao envisioned a different path toward regime change in China. This country had in 1930 US$589 per capita income, around a third of that of Russia in 1910, which in itself was around half of DOI: 10.4324/9781003361435-4

Downgrading or Upsizing Strategies 45 that of France in the same year (data from Bolt, Timmer, and van Zanden 2014). This speaks about a largely poor society, with low urban density. In this context, Mao thought the only way for the Communist Party to resist first Japanese occupation and later Kuomitang aggression was to retreat to the countryside and build a strong, armed grassroots organization that matched its rival’s military capabilities before moving to the offensive by encircling the largest cities. For rural, backward economies, the best strategy was therefore one of seizing territory, establishing alternative institutions – courts, taxation, and security to a minimum – and slowly moving toward the City Capital, where the elite would finally fall, strangled from its lack of supplies from the countryside. With some variations (most relevantly, Che Guevara’s voluntaristic foquismo), the dilemma between Leninism and Maoism, between insurrection and slow growth, captured the attention of rebel practitioners until the late 1960s. Depending on local conditions, rebel leaders opted for one or the other strategy – such as the Maoist-led Communist Party of the Philippines, operating in a very rural, and agrarian country, or the Leninist-led FSLN of Nicaragua. And when they chose the wrong path, they were easily defeated. For instance, insurrection was quickly crushed in Peru (the Cusco rebellion) and Mexico (the Ciudad Madera uprising) in the 1950s, whereas Maoist apprentices (the Union of Iranian Communists) were effortlessly corralled and destroyed in Iran, after the victory of the Khomeini revolution. But there is nothing intrinsic about ideology here. For instance, the Taliban have always followed a Maoist strategic calculation, whereas insurrectionary movements have recently thrived in countries such as Libya (with Jihadist goals) and Eastern Ukraine (with secessionist aims), where rapid uprisings helped rebels to grab power without much prior grassroots armed indoctrination. As aforementioned, this insurrection vs slow growth dilemma changed in the 1960s, for two reasons. First, some youngsters within developed countries infuriated with the condescending answers offered by their governments in the aftermath of the 1968 wave of protests, opted for armed struggle as the way to find alternative, socialist-based solutions in-between capitalist democracy and Soviet communism. Although most idolized Che’s fighting spirit and Mao’s astonishing victory, they quickly came to realize that an armed strategy based on territorial control was a nonstarter, as developed states by that time (early 1970s) conveyed a full-fledge command of their territories – and rural dwellers held conservative views quite inimical to the revolutionary mindset. If controlling territory in the countryside was not an option, the fight should inevitably focus on the urban landscape. The only armed available solution was to resort to terrorist tactics such as throwing bombs against acceptable targets, kidnapping rivals for ransom, hijacking planes (to extract concessions such as exchange of passengers for prisoners), and assassinating enemies – basically, the repertoire of violence that had been associated with the anarchists of the last quarter of the 19th century and the first one of the 20th century.

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This was a curious turn of history indeed. The anarchists had been repudiated by Marxists and secessionists alike for promoting an armed strategy that the latter foresaw as largely detached from popular support. Territorial control was the quintessential realization of popular legitimacy, as the “liberation” of territory, through weapons or working-class organization, involved the participation of large numbers of people. The experience of the Paris Commune in 1871 combined both armed uprising (the insurrectionist way) with a strong network of civic associations that allowed revolutionaries to rule for a little while one of the largest cities in the world (Gould 1995). Against this background, the terrorist-driven ‘propaganda of the deed’ was considered both strategically inadequate and morally wrong. High-profile bombs against Opera Houses in Paris and Barcelona as well as the assassinations of Prime Ministers of Spain, the USA, and France, among others, epitomized this approach. Curiously enough, although anarchists characterized themselves for not adapting their armed strategies to the country where they operated, this was wrong: Anarchists unsuccessfully tried the insurrectional way in Russia before the turn to the ‘propaganda of the deed’, and updated their strategy again once the Spanish civil war gave them an overture to control territory and become actual rulers. In the midst of an open confrontation between two armies (Republicans and Proto-fascists), the Anarchists carved their way to experiment with territorial control and revolution. Their outright failure buried anarchism for good. The second reason to understand the takeoff of terrorism is that the extraordinarily unheard-of expansion of state capabilities and economic growth after World War II made it more difficult for rebels to control territory in developing countries, as I will discuss later in this chapter. One paradigmatic case is the Tupamaros. This group started to operate in Uruguay in the mid1960s, largely influenced by the successful (and recent by then) Cuban revolution. Although the Tupamaros leaders revered the audacity of Fidel Castro and Che Guevara, they made no mistake with regards to the potential traveling of the Cuban strategic lessons to their own soil. In a country with more than 80% of the population living in cities, an almost purely flat territory with a class of small landowners not very interested in revolutionary practices, the main theater of operations should lie in the main cities. Against Fidel Castro’s dictum that “the city is the grave of the guerrilla”, Abraham Guillén (1973: 217) foresaw that the theater of operations in flat, urbanized countries such as Uruguay and Argentina would be “the forests of cement” of the big cities. Guillén, a communist combatant who fled Spain after the ultimate fall of the Second Republic and found a haven in Uruguay, is usually considered the modern mastermind of the use of urban guerrilla as an armed strategy. By recognizing that state capabilities plus demographic trends rendered rural efforts useless, Guillén advocated the deployment of urban commandos that operated in the underground, without openly facing the enemy. This idea turned prescient, as many groups that later emerged in developing (and well-developed) countries

Downgrading or Upsizing Strategies 47 had to adjust to an urban, terrorist-like strategy in order to survive and wear down their enemies. For instance, Tupamaros’ so-called Documento No. 1 reads: In Uruguay there are neither geographically inexpugnable areas nor lasting guerrilla-friendly regions. [In contrast] There is a city of 300 km2 concentrating more than 70 of the country wealth, its main transportation routes, and more than half of its population (…) Armed struggle in Uruguay will therefore be urban, with the fight in the countryside meeting auxiliary roles (…) Ours will be a prolonged war. It will be so because there are no conditions for an insurrection, because the State has not been deteriorated with any sound defeat, and because the masses are not militarily ready for taking up power. (Tupamaros 1967) Later authors, such as Carlos Marighella (1969), also theorized that in highly urbanized countries such as Brazil, urban violence should activate the revolt and mobilize support for the cause – although still granting a potentially relevant role for rural struggle. In both ways, either as a post1968 realization that Third-world armed strategies could not travel to affluent countries affected by youth revolts, or as an understanding by would-be rebels within developing countries that rural strategies would be self-defeating and much costlier than urban ones, terrorism became the law of the land for insurgents willing to challenge their domestic power holders. In this chapter, I propose a journey across several conflicts to prove my main argument, that the selection of a terrorist strategy (an urban guerrilla strategy if you will) is largely dependent on the local conditions that wouldbe rebels face – rather than being a consequence of specific ideologies or psychological mindsets. In being so, structure trumps agency. In the next section, I review the literature showing that terrorist conflicts – those where rebels do not control territory – are more common in developing and developed countries than in poor countries, which usually offer the best ground conditions for guerrilla fighting. I create a two-by-two typology with state capacity and repertoire of violence and suggest that most rebel groups rightly pick their strategies when thinking about armed choice. That said, there are always leaders whose imperfect knowledge about the strength of their rivals – or perhaps a strong reliance on ideology – prompted them to follow the wrong course. I spend the rest of the chapter first discussing cases along the diagonal, and second off the diagonal. The main take-home point here is that even for those groups who started from a structurally odd strategic choice, there was redemption as long as they updated their strategies – either upsizing them when the state was weaker than expected or downgrading them when territorial control proved to be out of the choice-set.

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A Typology of Strategic Armed Choice Broadly speaking, there are two ways for rebels to bring down an inimical regime.1 The first one is what is popularly known as the “war of the flea” (Taber 2002), in which rebels patiently build networks of support that wear down the regime to the point of forcing it to concede or give up. In contrast, the insurrectionalist way puts all its eggs in the basket of a popular uprising, or at least the combination of uprisings backed up with military pressure. Rebels following the insurrectionalist way are not mainly concerned about establishing exemplary alternative institutions or recruiting a huge army of convinced soldiers, although they could practice both. Instead, they focus on producing conditions that will favor popular mobilizations triggering the collapse of the regime. Thus, armed insurrections give primacy to events such as general strikes, sectarian attacks, and armed boycotts that help raise the so-called contradictions of the system and therefore energize the mobilizational efforts of the rebels. One could claim that insurrectional rebels put speed before depth. In a nutshell, armed rebels may try to take power either by provoking a oneshot insurrection that turns the regime’s survival unfeasible, or by building a strong insurgency, made up of soldiers but also party commissaries, capable of wearing down the state. Now, these different programmatic pathways into rebellion must deal with specific constraints that force would-be rebels to choose between alternative armed strategies. Their major constraint, I claim in this chapter, is the strength of the state they are fighting. Poor countries offer the best conditions for insurgent leaders to trigger ground operations attempted to seize and hold territory. In the opposite side of the spectrum, rebels facing too strong states are forced to rely on clandestine violence, as it is completely ruled out by the sheer thought of controlling rural territory. In between, we find some more uncertain scenarios, with states that may get easily rid of open challenges but deadlock in the presence of mixed strategies. As levels of uncertainty are higher in this context, it is nothing but normal that we observe more instances of wrong strategic thinking there. It could be the case that one state is relatively strong in its core metropolitan areas and yet, quite weak in its inner marginalized, mountainous (or forested) range – in this case, rebels could expect to use the countryside to launch a powerful rebellion combined with a bridgehead in the cities; it could also be the case that the state is overwhelmingly weak, but it got the attention of some great power whose military backing forces rebels to spend resources in the cities to bring pressure to the foreign sponsors. There may be more alternative considerations. The critical point here is that rebels facing this type of state with intermediate capabilities experience a larger amount of uncertainty, which could produce more erroneous strategic decisions and necessitate later adjustments.2 Table 3.1 collects the most typical armed strategy depending on how rebel leaders think about the support for their goals and how strong the state they face is. In general, we should expect rebels to rely on guerrilla warfare when

Downgrading or Upsizing Strategies 49 Table 3.1 A typology of armed strategies, conditional on state capacity and support State capacity

Initial support for rebels’ goals

Small Large

Low

Middle

High

Ground, rural guerrilla Rural guerrilla with urban operations

Rural centered, mixed strategy Urban centered, mixed strategy

Terrorism (War of attrition) Terrorism (Uprising)

they face very weak governments and on terrorism when they face very strong regimes. In between, as aforementioned, rebels’ ideological orientation may have a larger saying, as Maoists will focus their operations on rural areas when they count on little support, whereas Leninists will prefer a more urban penetration if they can draw on larger networks of previous mobilization. Mistakes can be found all over the cells, as discussed below. But the most egregious ones take place with intermediate levels of state capacity because they have a larger impact on the odds of rebel success. Before moving into the cases of the diagonal – those where rebels pursue strategies that are structurally doomed to fail – I offer a cursory look at the empirical record. Is it true that violent conflicts whose main rebels operate clandestinely are more common in affluent countries? Two papers empirically substantiating this claim were published in 2012. Enders and Hoover (2012) found in an American Economic Review article that, contrary to the assumption that terrorism thrives more in poor countries, the relationship between domestic terrorism and income was non-linear: with a panel of country-year observations, their results showed that terrorist attacks are more usual in countries with intermediate levels of per capita income. In parallel, De la Calle and Sánchez-Cuenca (2012) found similar results with a different research design, but they went further to explain why these findings made theoretical sense. As discussed above, non-territorial conflicts – those usually identified as mainly terrorist in kind – are expected to be more common in developing countries than guerrilla conflicts because state strength prevents rebels from liberating territory and launching an all-out ground insurgency. For these authors, poor countries have the best conditions to host guerrilla wars; in the opposite side, the most affluent countries are usually conflict-proof. It is in between that we observe rebels that are forced to resort to clandestine armed strategies. The authors operationalize this theoretical implication with a squared term for the GDP per capita at the country-year level. The findings can be found in Table 3.2. The squared effect goes in the expected way (first positive but turning negative after the cut-point) and it is significant even after controlling for the traditional determinants of conflict – population size, rough terrain, and state duration.

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Table 3.2 Determinants of territorial and non-territorial conflicts in the world ( De la Calle and Sánchez-Cuenca 2012: 590) Base category = absense of conflict Model I Territorial GDP pc GDP pc2 Regime Inequality Population Terrain State age Peace years Constant 2 Pseudo R

— 0.15 — 0.03 — 0.25

Model 2

Nonterritorial

(0.23) (0.03) (0.35)

a

0.38 (0.20) (0.01) (0.54)

— 0.04** — 0.83

0.37*** (0.10) 0.28** (0.11) — 0.15 (0.13) — 0.38*** (0.10) — 5.25*** (0.95)

2

p N

0.49** (0.17) 0.29 (0.18) 0.57* (0.24) — 0.37** (0.13) — 11.00*** (1.53) .19 178.5 .000 2,970

Territorial

Nonterritorial

0.20 (0.29) (0.04) — 0.12 (0.38) 0.08* (0.03) 0.53*** (0.11) 0.33** (0.12) — 0.19 (0.16) — 0.34** (0.10) — 10.86*** (2.23) — 0.07

0.40* (0.18) (0.01) — 0.76 (0.50) 0.06a (0.03) 0.56*** (0.16) 0.25 (0.21) 0.50* (0.25) — 0.36** (0.13) — 13.93*** (2.30) .21 168.3 .000 2,588 — 0.03**

Note: GDP = gross domestic product. Country clustered standard errors in parentheses. Spline coefficients not shown. a p < .1. *p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.

In what follows, I focus first, on some narratives where rebels chose armed strategies that were consistent with the structural conditions that they were facing; secondly, on some cases where rebels tried to carry out strategies that became counterproductive, forcing these groups to backpedal to a lowerlevel repertoire of violence; and finally, on some cases where rebels luckily experienced the collapse of its rival state, which allowed them to upsize their repertoire of violence. Accurate Readings of the Conditions Rebel leaders are rarely irrational actors: even if their ultimate goals could make little sense for most human beings, they nonetheless try to proceed with the best rational tools at their disposal to fulfill them. This general statement obviously deserves qualification, as imperfect information may convey false beliefs to the rebels with regard to the strength of their enemies and the actual structural conditions of the terrain they face. In this section, I focus on two groups whose leadership always bore in mind a clear armed strategy and never shifted course: the Red Brigades in Italy and the FARC in Colombia. Red Brigades

The rise and fall of the Red Brigades (Brigate Rosse) in the Italy of the mid1970s is well known and has been told elsewhere (Meade 1990). Here I want

Downgrading or Upsizing Strategies 51 to focus on how the early-rising leaders of the revolutionary group thought about the best-armed strategy for accomplishing their political goals: revolution and regime change toward the left – although not necessarily to a communist option. The worldwide revolt publicly known as May 1968 took the form in West Europe of young dissatisfaction with some of the outcomes of the postwar consensus based on public welfare provision plus market economies within a democratic scheme with little opportunities for newcomers. When the large-scale student-led mobilization started to fade, some of the most radicalized milieu openly discussed about the armed struggle being the only way to spark a socialist revolution (Sánchez-Cuenca 2019). Although this spark did not turn into fire everywhere, in Italy it did, as the Red Brigades defined themselves as the armed avant garde of the working-class uprising. Given that they had to operate in Italy in the 1970s, with a GDP per capita well established in the first quartile of the world income distribution, there was little that these militants could have tried to do in the countryside – and this is reflected in the fact that no RB’s leaders even considered the possibility of turning rural areas of Italy to their side by seizing territory. For Renato Curzio and Alberto Franceschini, early leaders of the RB, the struggle had to be urban, inside the industrial cities of the North in which class mobilization had been stronger – even if all revered the third-world successes of Mao and Che Guevara, they implicitly acknowledged that a rural strategy made no sense in a wealthy European country. For instance, in its very careful and detailed 1969 BR’s strategic manual, the organization acknowledged that “in effect, the hypothesis of a generalized insurrection against the regime is absolutely deceptive” (Ruggiero 2007). They therefore always tried to abide by this principle, although without much success. FARC

The recently disbanded Armed Revolutionary Forces of Colombia (FARC) has been one of the most long-living guerrilla groups in the world. The FARC was born from the ashes of the deadly civil war between Liberals and Conservatives (so-called La Violencia) that broke out with the assassination of Liberal leader Jorge Gaitán and finished with the infamous National Pact that allowed the two parties to share fixed periods in government. As the story goes, some two hundred armed peasants with their families took refuge in Marquetalia in 1964, a roughed mountainous, densely forested district, where they established a liberated area that defended against military encroachment triggered by the new National Pact government (Uribe-Calderón 2007). The account of their journey into Marquetalia has traditionally been packaged in Maoist-fashion as the revolutionary long march toward liberated territory from which the FARC raised against the corrupt, USA-sold oligopolistic state (Olave 2013). In the beginning, the first years of the armed organization were spent trying to enforce a land-reform message with Marxist tones. Organizational life was more about survival than growth.

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As Spencer (2011) documents, the FARC’s Seventh Conference held in 1982 was its first attempt to put out a grand strategy to take power. What the organization came up with was basically a Maoist-like design in which the group pointed out all its efforts to building recruiting strength to increase its numbers and presence in the Colombian’s countryside. The idea was to move to the offensive once enough organizational muscle had been erected. This grand strategy remained in place for much of the conflict, even if the guerrilla never recognized itself as Maoist. Actually, against the dogmatic rejection of Maoist-led Shining Path to consider any negotiation with the Peruvian government, the FARC always kept back channels and repeatedly accepted to open negotiations as long as this allowed the group to gain more territory and broaden its popular appeal. It is in the early 2000s when overly strengthened by its territorial gains of the 1990s and the catastrophic government’s mismanagement of the peace process, that the FARC considered bringing the fight to the cities. This was epitomized by a failed attempt against the life of the then leading presidential candidate Álvaro Uribe, and by the bomb attack against the upper-class club El Nogal in Bogotá, which took the lives of 36 civilians. Unfortunately for the FARC, the new president Uribe adopted an all-out military counterinsurgent policy against the rebels, focusing on reclaiming territory and investing on breaking the links between civilians and the rebel columns. Greased with a larger military budget fed by USA aid and special taxes (Rodríguez-Franco 2016), the policy was very successful and forced the FARC to move back to their strongholds in the least penetrable areas of the country. It was after the natural death in 2008 of FARC’s longtime leader, Manuel Marulanda (aka Tirofijo), and the spectacular operation against Raúl Reyes, who was killed in Ecuadorian territory, that the new leadership accepted to be back on the defensive side of the war. Alfonso Cano, the new mastermind of the group, promoted a return to guerrilla warfare to halt state penetration in FARC territory. In parallel, its focus on cities was again downgraded, as the task for urban militants would be to build a political front that cover up FARC’s actions. In brief, given the conditions under which they had to operate, FARC leaders thought for decades that their best wager to take power was to control territory and increase organizational strength. As they opted for a land-based Maoist strategy consistent with attracting support before moving into the cities, it was not until late in the conflict that urban attacks started to be carried out, and always as secondary to the ‘real’ fight in the countryside. In this sense, it seems that FARC leaders read Colombian conditions rightly. From Guerrilla to Terror The two cases I just revised were instances in which the rebels naturally understood the conditions they were dealing with and chose their strategies properly. But this is not always the case, as I discuss in this section. Sometimes, rebel leaders try to import strategies that succeeded elsewhere to

Downgrading or Upsizing Strategies 53 settings where conditions may be radically different. This shortsightedness quickly ends in failure and forces the group to pursue alternative, more evidence-based pathways to armed success. The recollection of one-shot strategic failures would be very long. Just to mention a couple: Montoneros’ attempt to occupy territory in rural Argentina after the military coup in 1975, being the country highly urbanized and without an alienated rural landless class to recruit from; or the efforts by the PLO to get a foothold in Lebanon and Jordan, two countries that ultimately vowed to wipe out PLO’s territorial control in refugee camps, forcing the organization to switch to a fully terrorist strategy. I focus on ETA because this group remains in the imaginary of terrorist organizations, one of their more renowned members. ETA

The Basque separatist group operated in Spain from the late 1960s to the 2000s (see De la Calle 2015, Chapter 4 for a detailed account of this organization). There are several groups that switched from guerrilla to terror in the aftermath of a territorial loss – just recall the recent examples of ISIS and Tuareg separatists which moved back to terrorism after losing terrain. Actually, it would be conceptual overstretching to claim that ETA at some point had a guerrilla nature. And still, ETA illustrates very vividly how leaders sometimes envision strategies that are far detached from the places they want to roll for their cause, and even more, how quickly they update and downgrade their strategic warfare. As it is well known, ETA was created in the late 1950s, as a number of young nationalist dissidents were unhappy with the inaction of the dominant, but outlawed Nationalist Party, whose policy of appeasement with the Francoist dictatorship was openly disliked. The justification for the use of violence against the dictatorship came from a Basque philologist, Federico Krutwig. He was the first to openly advocate for armed struggle to achieve independence for the Basque people. In his book Vasconia, published in 1963 with a pen name, Krutwig theorized that the best strategy was urban warfare: Given that the Basque Country is mainly industrial, especially in the Basque area where one finds the best conditions for the beginning of the conflict, we must start with an urban campaign, even if this is usually quite secondary in revolutionary wars. (Sarrailh de Ihartza 1963, 401) For Krutwig, the urban guerrilla was a precondition of the rural guerrilla, without which a revolution would never be realized. Actually, in a very prescient way, he claimed that “both mountain and urban guerrillas will never be able to defeat militarily the enemy, but the sheer fact that the occupation forces do not beat the guerrillas will be victory on itself”

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(Sarrailh de Ihartza 1963, 403). Krutwig sponsored an action-repressionaction strategy whose ultimate goal was the insurrection of the Basque people – although he did not specify how this uprising was supposed to take place. Terrorist tactics for him were rightly sanctioned as long as they targeted legitimate security forces and state personnel. After endless debates about the correct ideological orientation that the organization should adopt – more class-oriented (bringing in working-class migrants but leaving aside the native upper class) or more language-oriented (the opposite) – it would take around a decade for the group to systematically develop the armed struggle. It put its so-called military front in the hands of Xavier Zumalde, a local cadre with little appetite for ideology but much for action against the dictatorship. Feeling almost total liberty to implement whatever organizational design he liked, Zumalde agreed with Krutwig that insurrection was the ultimate goal but rejected his urban-first approach. For Zumalde, influenced apparently by Che Guevara and (less so) by Carlos Marighela, the armed militants had to be strong enough as to survive in harsh rural conditions. Zumalde forced recruits to spend long hours walking around mountainous areas in the interior of the Basque Country just for the pleasure of training on guerrilla mobile warfare. These long survival drills took some laughable turns such as when a small group of militants decided to occupy for three hours a very small hamlet near industrial Durango, but Zumalde’s attempts to connect with the local dwellers miserably failed because the latter fled from the militants who walked around in military fatigue and with blackpainted faces (Zumalde 2004). The Basque Country of the 1970s was a highly developed, densely populated region where an open attempt by guerrillas to occupy territory would have been wiped out by the dictatorship diligently. The territorial presence of the security forces and Francoist institutions was so evident that one of Zumalde’s main concerns was always to target local collaborators of the security forces in midsize industrial towns. This confusion between rural drilling and urban tactics was always a testament to Zumalde’s incapacity to realize that a ground strategy was out of fashion for the structural conditions ETA was facing. By 1975, ETA had split into two fractions, ETA politico-militar (pm) and ETA militar (m). The main schism was theoretical but with some strategic issues attached. For ETApm, the end of the Francoist dictatorship would steer Spain toward an electoral authoritarian solution. In this scenario, ETA should have two branches, a political one oriented to mobilizing popular support for independence, and a military one, willing to carry out attacks but subordinated to the political leadership. Pertur3, the main mastermind of this approach, wrote in 1976: The armed activity of the revolutionary group acts as a radical trigger in this process; repressive attacks by the State trying to abort and punish the armed focus have a revolutionary impact on the masses that tend to react in a totally opposite way to that expected by the system: they are sensitized. (…)

Downgrading or Upsizing Strategies 55 Armed activity has thus contributed effectively to highlighting and sharpening the contradictions of the system and its oppressive nature, complementing the vindictive and conscientious agitation efforts of revolutionaries at the mass level. (quoted in Amigo 1978: 190) Thus, for ETApm, the grand strategy was insurrection as it involved the subordination of military units to the demands and preferences of the political leadership of the time. Notice that here there is no longer an illusion about guerrilla making. Pertur suggests an armed structure based on territorial columns, pretty much like the one that the PIRA was by then leaving behind in Northern Ireland, plus specialized units in charge of specific tasks (information, logistics), but always dependent on the central leadership held by the “politicians”. ETAm, in contrast, accepted that the country would leave dictatorship behind for good. In this new scenario, it was absolutely essential for ETA survival to make sure that all organizations within its broad movement kept organizational autonomy, at least on paper. The new grand strategy would be one of attrition, consistent in giving slow steps toward independence by governing local councils, proselytizing, and bringing more military pressure onto the state to a point where this should prefer negotiating a way out instead of keeping losses. ETAm managed to hold the strings of all organizations gravitating around the defense of violence as a means to get independence and this strategic design made ETAm more powerful and resilient than ETApm, which was disbanded in 1983. Argala4 was the main thinker behind this strategy. For him, the movement would be more successful if its political branch operates within the institutions and takes advantage of their loopholes, whereas the military branch, without renouncing to keep the leadership, remained clandestine and broadened its target list to put more harm on the state. For instance, it is only after this split that ETAm starts to kill military officers. After a decade in which violence had played a defensive, almost symbolic role, ETAm would start to move to the offensive by broadening the target field and increasing the number of attacks (Casanova and Asensio 1999). The 1980s experienced a decade of war of attrition between ETAm, a fully clandestine group, and the state (De la Calle and Sánchez-Cuenca 2004, 2006). But even if with ebbs and flows in violence, ETA would never change its strategic design until it decided to unilaterally give up weapons in the early 2010s. From Terror to Guerrilla Some rebel groups start with a very low-key profile but upgrade their armed strategy once they realize that the state is weaker than expected. The sudden increase of ISIS is obviously an example that quickly comes to mind. But there are other historical cases, such as the FMLN’s jump from underground

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violence in the Salvadorian cities to territorial control and the build-up of parallel institutions in the countryside after the victory of the Sandinista rebellion in neighboring Nicaragua in 1980, which clearly altered the balance of capabilities between the state and the rebel groups. The point here is that rebels using terrorism have little trouble escalating the conflict if the conditions allow them to muster a ground strategy. Although ISIS is no doubt the best case to illustrate this strategic upgrading, I instead focus on Hezbollah, as its story is perhaps less well-known nowadays. Hezbollah

Unlike most armed groups, which are either fully underground or have territorial control almost since the beginning, the Lebanese Hezbollah (“Party of God”) gained territorial control quite late in the Lebanese civil war. Hezbollah evolved from a small underground group that emerged in the aftermath of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon to a much wider organization, capable of establishing a large network of charity and welfare services and competing successfully for office.5 Sponsored and financed by Iran, Hezbollah was born in 1982. Its main aim was the expulsion of Western troops from Lebanon and the transformation of the regime into an Islamic one. Hezbollah started as an underground group. As the deputy general secretary of Hezbollah, Naaim Qassem, said in an interview, “Up until 1985, Hezbollah was not yet a single entity that could stand up and speak for itself (…) The nature of our formation required clandestine behavior” (quoted in Jaber 1997, 62). Precisely to avoid any loss of popularity during this initial phase, most of their attacks against civilians and against international troops were either unclaimed or falsely claimed (under names such as Islamic Resistance, Islamic Jihad, and others). Hezbollah was created with a clear Maoist grand strategy in mind. Far from focusing on an insurrectionalist approach to gain urban control and trigger a Khomeini-like uprising against Christian militias and foreign intervention, Hezbollah focused on building grassroots in the rural Shia enclaves of the country to gain legitimacy before competing against the more secular-minded Amal group in the suburbs of Beirut for Shia support. As territorial control was initially elusive, most of Hezbollah’s violence had a terrorist nature. By 1987, the clashes between Hezbollah and Syrians in West Beirut made the growth of popular support for Hezbollah clear. One year later, an internecine fight between the then-dominant Shia militia, Amal, and Hezbollah broke out, with the hegemony of representation of the Shia community at stake. In 1990, Hezbollah emerged as the victorious party and, indeed, after the end of the civil war, it was the only militia in Lebanon that kept fighting against the Israeli presence in the security zone in the South. As of 1991, Hezbollah was a full guerrilla group engaged in hit-and-run attacks against the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF). For almost ten years, Hezbollah was involved in a

Downgrading or Upsizing Strategies 57 war of attrition against Israel that was possible because the group held de facto territorial control in the South. If the strategic shift in Hezbollah I uncover is correct, its increasing armed capacity should have gone hand in hand with a different repertoire of violence. We should observe a large reliance on guerrilla attacks after controlling territory, compared to terrorist tactics. We should detect a change in trend, particularly after 1991, once the civil war had ended, Amal was defeated by Hezbollah, and the war of attrition against Israel was launched. I analyze here all the attacks carried out by Hezbollah that are included in the Global Domestic Terrorism database (GTD1, see Lafree and Dugan 2007) for the period 1982–1997. For the sake of completeness, I have included all those that were claimed under false names (Islamic Jihad and Islamic Resistance). In total, there are 300 attacks (31% under false names). Of these, 44% are lethal attacks, with a total of 1001 people killed. Of course, this is a low estimation of all Hezbollah violent activity. I have classified attacks into two periods, those that happened before 1991, and those that happened since 1991. Figure 3.1 compares the share of the four tactics used by Hezbollah during the two time periods. These tactics are bombings (terrorism), facility attacks (guerrilla warfare), assassinations, and kidnappings. The differences are statistically significant for the four tactics. In the case of facility attacks, there is a spectacular jump from 15% to 62%.

Figure 3.1 Temporal distribution of Hezbollah attacks. Source: De La Calle and Sánchez-Cuenca 2015, 809.

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From 1991 onward, the greater military capabilities of the organization were translated into a boom in facility attacks. Territorial control and bettertrained recruits made this leap forward possible, whereby Hezbollah acted more like a traditional guerrilla. There is lower temporal variation in bombings: after 1990, there is a reduction of 13 percentage points, down from 45% to 32%. The literature on the conflict has highlighted that bombings were essential in the South Lebanon campaign: Hezbollah frequently used roadside bombs aimed at Israeli patrols. The sharp increase in facility attacks was due to the fall in assassinations and kidnappings, which were widely employed in the initial period but vanished thereafter. In general, Figure 3.1 conveys the shift from terrorist to guerrilla tactics. As Hezbollah became stronger, its violence resembled more that of a traditional guerrilla. In sum, the case of Hezbollah is particularly interesting, since the organization was involved in quite different conflicts. It behaved like a pure terrorist group in the campaign of international attacks. After 1991, it upgraded its repertoire of violence to a traditional guerrilla group in the Southern campaign against the IDF (and further, in its participation in the Syrian civil war to sustain the government side). Finally, in Beirut, it adopted the form of urban guerrillas, specializing in kidnappings and assassinations. The different territorial constraints to a large extent explain the variation we find in the armed strategy Hezbollah employed before and after becoming one of the main armed (and political) contenders in Lebanese politics. Mixed Cases In this final section, I look at mixed cases, the insurgencies that thrive in states with quite uneven capabilities - usually being strong in the metropolitan areas, but weak elsewhere. These are states that concede rebels to carry out a combination of armed strategies, typically with a fight around territorial control in the countryside, and a clandestine battle for support in the urban areas. Non-controversial examples of this mixed strategy are the Shining Path during the Peruvian civil war (1980–1995) and more recently, the ISIS caliphate in Syria and Iraq (2013–2019). In both instances, states within the “developing” range experienced huge insurgencies driven by state capability gaps in territorial reach. Mexico

In this section, I want to discuss the rise of rebel groups in Mexico during the Cold War era, more specifically during the late 1960s and the 1970s (Glockner 2018). Mexico undoubtedly fits well the definition of an “uneven capabilities” state, more so forty years ago. The academic consensus poses that Mexico was rebel-free during the Cold War period because Mexico decided to play internationally the non-aligned card, with a sort of socialist-leaning institutional

Downgrading or Upsizing Strategies 59 rhetoric but pragmatically backed with a good relationship with its Northern neighbor. Although rebellions spread all over Latin America, Mexico seemed to be a peaceful oasis in a trouble-prone desert. Mexico is well known for its 20th-century revolution, which ended with three decades of authoritarian rule led by Porfirio Díaz in the country. The process started as timidly progressive and fairly pro-democratic during its first three years, but a brutal civil war broke out after Porfirista military leaders gave a coup against elected president Francisco Madero and assassinated him. Several armed parties emerged, the most famous ones headed by Pancho Villa in the Northern part of the country and Emiliano Zapata in the South. Five more years of all-against-all war ended with an authoritarian regime with liberal overtones. The initial pacification in the early 1920s was aborted with the Cristero war, where local elites disaffected with the anticatholic policies of the new regime vied for war against it. Cristero defeat helped cement the institutional scaffolding of the regime, which became stronger after the nationalization measures passed by Lázaro Cárdenas in the late 1930s, his massive land reform, and the institutionalization of a hegemonic party system, with the PRI uncontestedly holding the strings of power. Although the country moved swiftly after Cárdenas left office toward a more capitalist stance, the reputation of being a revolutionary stalwart remained. For many, that was enough to inoculate the country against the sirens of the Cuban revolution. And yet, Mexico hosted urban groups with a terrorist leaning as well as rural insurgencies with a ground strategy in mind. Considering the long tradition of rebelling in independent Mexico, it should come as little surprise that there were many youngsters willing to take arms again to promote their ideologies. What is perhaps more puzzling is why these dispersed groups did not merge and launch a more powerful all-out rebellion. The short answer is that the two groups laid out different grand strategies that blocked any chance of making inroads together. Thus, the urban groups that coalesced in 1973 around the September 23 Communist League adopted an insurrection approach, pretty much like its Western European relatives (Morales Hernández 2006). The main goal was to trigger an urban uprising that would force the government to give in and change course toward a more socialist pathway. On the contrary, the armed insurgencies operating in Guerrero, one of the poorest regions in Mexico, bore a Maoist approach to power-taking. Guerrilla leaders envisioned organization building and gaining popular legitimacy as major stepping stones in the fight for socialism. The struggle in the cities was obviously important, but for these leaders, the working class was not the only relevant revolutionary subject. Curiously enough, although urban and rural rebel leaders spent time together several times and worked hard to generate a workable umbrella, their grand strategies kept them apart. Urban leaders assumed that the cities should be the main theater of rebellion, whereas the rural leaders thought otherwise: in the road to success, the rebellion had to consolidate first its strongholds in the countryside. This distrust cost it dearly for the rebel groups, which were

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annihilated one by one by the military forces during the so-called Dirty War (Ulloa Bornemann 2007). As in most mixed cases, this different understanding of the conditions the rebels were facing was prompted by different opposition experiences with the rival regime. Lucio Cabañas was a teacher in rural Guerrero. After a decade of experiencing first-hand the arbitrariness of local authorities and caciques in the region and suffering the perennial neglect of the so-called revolutionary regime, Cabañas decided to set up a revolutionary party in charge of changing course and alleviating poverty and inequality through a socialist agenda. Cabañas, as a faithful communist militant, was initially against armed struggle, but several massacres against unarmed peasants changed his mind. That was 1967. The organization, tellingly named the Poor’s Party, spent its first years of existence in mobilizing local intelligentsia – mainly teachers from rural public branches – laborers and some peasants. The Party was soon ready for action: its 1968 Manifesto called for the use of armed struggle to take power and foster revolution. Although it was rapidly apparent for the Party’s leaders that liberating territory was not going to be an easy feat, they nonetheless were able to survive in the mountainous areas of the state of Guerrero, where they set close links with local dwellers largely alienated from state institutions. Cabañas’ gang remained on the run for five years, during which they were able to kill around 50 military men and kidnapped around ten business leaders and most famously, Rubén Figueroa, the then-incoming PRI candidate to the governorship of Guerrero. These numbers pale when compared to more aggressive guerrillas, but it is worth recalling that the Poor’s Party and its fellow organizations (such as the Asociación Cívica Nacional Revolucionaria led by Genaro Vázquez) were never able to seize and hold territory. This strategic Maoism without Maoists never took root and was destroyed through harsh repression – it is calculated that around 500 people went missing during the rural counterinsurgent campaign. Whereas the rural guerrillas drew on a legacy of past labor-led mobilization to legitimize their armed option, the urban militants reflected on two more recent events: the failed assault in 1965 on the military barracks in Ciudad Madera, a backwater town in Northern Mexico; and the army-led massacre of university students in Tlatelolco (Mexico City) in the eve of the Olympic Games that were scheduled to be held in Mexico in October 1968. The first event made radicalized students learn that open encounters against military officers were doomed to fail; The second event told students the lesson that regime change from within was no longer an option. A wealth of small rebel groups emerged with a shared focus on fighting against the authoritarian regime through clandestine units in the main cities of the country (Mexico City, Monterrey, Guadalajara). Influenced by Che and others, these groups tried to make rural overtures, but to no avail. Not even the large confluence of many of these original groups into the September 23 Communist League secured for the

Downgrading or Upsizing Strategies 61 new organization a bridgehead in the countryside. The merciless and quick dismembering of the League speaks about the tough counterterrorist policies implemented by the Mexican state (which was clever enough as to ease repression and favor cooptation when the League was in free-fall), but also about bad tactical decisions and a certain incapacity to keep a steady flow of fresh recruits. Why urban and rural combatants coalesced together around a Maoist strategy in Peru (Shining Path), or around a Leninist approach in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), whereas they were unable to deliver in Mexico is a major question I am not answering here. The fact is that leaders preferred matching their repertoire to the local conditions they faced, instead of thinking in more general terms. Perhaps a stronger guerrilla may have forced urban leaders to subdue their capabilities to the Maoist-like strategy (such as in Peru). Or less popular rural leaders may have accepted to subordinate their ground strategy to the rhythm of urban fighting (such as in Iraq). Anyway, strategic failure was inevitable, given the low odds of winning, to begin with, and the strong legitimacy of the regime they were fighting. Conclusion In this chapter, I have claimed that rebels choose armed strategies that tend to match the structural conditions of the states they are fighting against. And when rebels take off the fighting with unmatched strategies, due to ideological constraints or an erroneous interpretation of the structural conditions, they quickly adapt by downgrading or upsizing their repertoire of violence. In the few instances where they were slow to strategic updating, rebels were wiped off shortly (for instance, Red Flag, a would-be guerrilla group in Venezuela, or the Mexican groups I discussed in the previous section). We still need to better figure out two things. On the one hand, what are the critical structural conditions whose change encourages rebels to update their strategic profile? Is it a sudden change in military capabilities (a retreat from a foreign sponsor) that triggers strategic change or a longer slowmoving process by which contenders drain out their rivals’ resources? On the other hand, what is the role of ideology in strategic decision-making? It would seem that ideology is very relevant to the type of grand strategy rebel groups select (Maoist vs. Leninist approaches), but not that much with regard to the specific repertoire of violence (terrorism vs. guerrilla). But if grand strategies are endogenous to initial support for rebels’ goals, do rebels select ideologies based on their chances of victory? We still need to deepen our understanding of how rebels choose between different strategies, although there would seem to be also some correlation between structural factors such as a high degree of resource concentration in the main metropolitan area and rebels’ preference for Leninist approaches. A systematic analysis of this is still missing.

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Notes 1 2 3 4 5

See also Katagiri, in this volume. See also Köhler et al., in this volume. A nom de guerre, real name Eduardo Moreno Bergaretxe. The nom de guerre of José Miguel Beñaran Ordeñana. This section draws on De la Calle and Sánchez-Cuenca 2015.

References Amigo, Á. (1978), Pertur: ETA 71–76 (Hordago: San Sebastián). Bolt, J., Timmer, M., and van Zanden, J.L. (2014), ‘GDP per capita since 1820’, in: J.L. van Zanden, J. Baten, M. Mira d’Ercole, A. Rijpma, C. Smith, and M. Timmer (eds.), How was life? Global well-being since 1820 (Paris: OECD Publishing). Casanova, I. and Asensio, P. (1999), Argala (Txalaparta: Tafalla). De la Calle, L. and Sánchez-Cuenca, I. (2004), ‘La selección de víctimas en ETA’, Revista Española de Ciencia Política 10, 53–79. De la Calle, L. and Sánchez-Cuenca, I. (2006), The Production of Terrorist Violence: Analyzing Target Selection within the IRA and ETA – Working Paper 2006/230 (Madrid: Instituto Juan March). De la Calle, L. and Sánchez-Cuenca, I. (2012), ‘Rebels Without a Territory. An Analysis of Non-Territorial Conflicts in the World, 1970–1997’, Journal of Conflict Resolution, 56:4, 580–603. De la Calle, L. and Sánchez-Cuenca, I. (2015), ‘How Armed Groups Fight: Territorial Control and Violent Tactics’, Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, 38:10, 795–813. De la Calle, L. (2015), Nationalist Violence in Postwar Europe (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press). Enders, W. and Hoover, G. (2012), ‘The Nonlinear Relationship between Terrorism and Poverty’, American Economic Review, 102:3, 267–272. Glockner, F. (2018), Los años heridos. Historia de la guerrilla en México, 1968-1985 (Planeta: Ciudad de México). Gould, R. (1995), Insurgent Identities: Class, Community and Protest in Paris from 1848 to the Commune (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press). Guillén, A. (1973), Philosophy of the Urban Guerrilla: The Revolutionary Writings of Abraham Guillén. Translated and edited by Hodges, Donald C. (New York: William Morrow & Company). Jaber, H. (1997), Hezbollah. Born with a Vengeance (New York, NY: Columbia University Press). LaFree, G. and Dugan, L. (2007), ‘Introducing the Global Terrorism Database’, Terrorism and Political Violence 19:2, 181–204. Lia, B. (2009), Architect of Global Jihad: The Life of Al-Qaeda Strategist Abu Mus’ab al-Suri (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Marighella, C. (1969), Minimanual do Guerrilheiro Urbano, www.marxists.org/ portuges/marighella/1969/manual/index.htm Meade, R. (1990), Red Brigades: The Story of Italian Terrorism (New York, NY: San Martin’s Press). Morales Hernández, J.J. (2006), Memorias de un guerrillero (Guadalajara: Self-Published). Olave, G. (2013), ‘El eterno retorno de Marquetalia: Sobre el mito fundacional de las Farc-EP.’, Folios 37, 149–166.

Downgrading or Upsizing Strategies 63 Rodríguez-Franco, D. (2016), ‘Internal Wars, Taxation, and State Building’, American Sociological Review 81:1, 190–213. Ruggiero, L. (2007), Dossier brigate rosse, 1969–1975: La lotta armata nei documenti e nei comunicati delle prime BR (Milan: Kaos). Sánchez-Cuenca, I. (2019), The Historical Roots of Political Violence. Revolutionary Terrorism in Affluent Countries (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press). Sarrailh de Ihartza, F. (1963), Vasconia (Astero: Iruña). Spencer, D. (2011), ‘The Evolution and Implementation of FARC Strategy: Insights from Its Internal Documents’, Security and Defence Studies Review 12:1&2, 73–98. Taber, R. (2002), War of the Flea: The Classic Study of Guerrilla Warfare (Lincoln, NE: Potomac Books). Tupamaros (1967), Documento No. 1, https://cedema.org/digital_items/109 Ulloa Bornemann, A. (2007), Surviving Mexico’s Dirty War. A Political Prisoner’s Memoir. Edited and translated by Arthur Schmidt and Aurora Camacho de Schmidt (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press). Uribe-Caldero
n, M. (2007), Salvo el poder, todo es ilusio
n. Mitos de origen de los Tigres Tamiles de Sri Lanka (LTTE), las Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (Farc) y el Provisional Irish Republican Army de Irlanda del Norte (IRA) (Bogota
: Editorial Pontifica Universidad Javeriana). Zumalde, X. (2004), Mi lucha clandestina en ETA (Status Ediciones: Arrigorriaga).

4

Social-Media Jihad as a Learned Strategy How Daesh Learned but Failed to Exploit Western Vulnerabilities John Nicolas Helferich

At the height of its expansion in 2015, Daesh – also known as the Islamic State (ISIS) – controlled about a third of Syria and 40% of Iraq – a territory that was, by some accounts, bigger than the United Kingdom. By December 2017, the group had lost 95% of its territory, including its two largest bases, Mosul, its nominal capital, and the northern Syrian city of Raqqa. From the perspective of terrorist learning this raises two important questions: What learning processes enabled this terrorist group to expand to such an extent defeating state armies in two countries? And what processes intervened in this development bringing about Daesh’s almost complete demise two years later?1 This chapter posits that besides structural factors, such as the political fragility of the region, one must turn to Daesh’s high-tech social media jihad to understand both, the group’s rapid expansion and its downfall (Rose 2014). In recent years, a growing body of literature has focused on examining Daesh’s propaganda. While some studies provide in-depth accounts of particular propaganda genres, others take a more comprehensive approach to the group’s institutional infrastructure (Bloom 2017; Mahood and Rane 2017). An increasing number of scholars have also embraced a comparative perspective contrasting the group with other terrorist organizations, most notably al-Qaeda, from which Daesh split in February 2014 (El Damanhoury 2020; Winter 2015b). What unites these studies, however, is an attempt to categorize and thereby make sense of the group’s propaganda effort by identifying parameters that make Daesh stand out as a terrorist organization. In one of the most comprehensive studies to date Baele et al argue that “IS propaganda is unprecedented because it constitutes […] the first sustained and largely successful attempt from a terror group to build a ‘full-spectrum propaganda’” (Baele, Boyd and Coan 2019, 2). The authors argue that Daesh designed the (dis)information effort in such a way that it fulfilled the entire potential propaganda can fulfill.2 Daesh’s propaganda was thus unprecedented in its comprehensiveness – the range of outputs it employed; cohesiveness – the way it articulated different formats in a coherent whole, multidimensionality – the audiences it targets and the variety of objectives it fulfills. As with many DOI: 10.4324/9781003361435-5

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studies on this topic, however, the volume is predominantly empirically focused, at the expense of deeper conceptual insights into how and why a particular terrorist group succeeds or fails in expanding. This seems to be partly due to the methodological challenge of researching modern terrorist organizations, where necessary primary data is rather limited. Nevertheless, in the case of Daesh, the vast amount of material produced by numerous media outlets represents a significant body of evidence that allows researchers to infer learning processes to a certain degree. This chapter looks at Daesh’s social media propaganda through the conceptual lens of learning in order to gain insights into the politico-military rationales of modern terrorist organizations. Since it is not possible to examine all aspects of Daesh propaganda, the focus is only on the learned propaganda strategies utilized on social media. The chapter proceeds by first discussing how the organization of Daesh’s media apparatus and the group’s relationship with al-Qaeda have been important facilitators of learning. Subsequently, the main strategic objectives of the propaganda effort are analyzed, with particular reference to the underlying learning processes that contributed to the group’s success and failure. Daesh’s Social Media Infrastructure Daesh’s propaganda machinery can be divided into four tiers, which differ in terms of their closeness to the group’s command (see Figure 4.1). The central hub of media productions constitutes the al-Hayat media center. It is most notably known for producing the digital multi-language magazines called Dabiq, which in 2016 were consolidated into one magazine called Rumiyah.3 The Al-Furqan Establishment for Media Production is another key producer of social media content, which gained notoriety for its execution videos. During the height of the expansion phase, both institutions strongly influenced Daesh’s profile in the West. In addition to the resource-intensive productions from the al-Hayat and Al-Furqan, social media content was generated using material from other propaganda organs, most notably the A’maq News Agency, the al-I’tisām Media Foundation and the al-Himma Library publishing house (Homeland Security 2016). The second tier is made up of numerous provincial media offices in the region producing officially branded content that is usually coordinated with the central command. A notable example includes a video called “Paris has collapsed” by the Aleppo office where two Daesh fighters praise the November 13 Paris attacks and call on French Muslims to carry out similar attacks. This as well as other similar videos were released on jihadi forums such as Shumoukh Al-Islam, then spreading to mainstream social media channels, such as YouTube (Milton 2018, 8). The third tier represents media offices in other regions, often run by Daesh splinter groups. The number of these outlets increased significantly in 2015 when Daesh internationalized drawing terrorist groups, especially in Africa

Iraq

1 1 1 6 1

Individual Ji-Hobbyists

Algeria Libya Caucasus Saudi

1 3 1 1

7

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2

al-Ḥayāt Media Centre Product Type: Online Magazines and Videos featuring foreign fighters Example: Dabiq and Rumiyah Languages: Arabic, and multiple European and Asian languages

Disperse supporter base around the world

West Africa Tunisia Egypt Yemen Khorasan

Syria

Product type: Graphics promoting Daesh Success & foreign fighter videos Example: Message to the Mujahidin Languages: Arabic, English and French

Product type: Audio/Video statements Example: “A message to America” Languages: Arabic and English

Regional Media

al-I’tisām Foundation

al-Furqān Foundation

Central Organs

Product Type: News reports both text and video Example: Martyrs of the Caliphate Languages: Mostly Arabic and English

A’māq News Agency

Figure 4.1 Daesh’s media infrastructure during the 2014–2015 expansion phase (based on Homeland Security 2016; Winter 2015a).

Tier 4

Tier 3

Tier 2

Tier 1

Daesh Propaganda Command and Leadership

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into its orbit. However, the amount of content produced outside Syria and Iraq has been significantly lower in comparison (Winter 2019, 10). Finally, there are a large number of followers and sympathizers who are not directly linked to an institution, but who pass on the group’s message and help shape it in the process. Such individuals are often referred to as “JiHobbyists” and in the case of Daesh they made up an important share of internet activity (Conway et al. 2019). At the height of its campaign in late 2014, Daesh distributed the vast majority of its official content on Twitter. However, as the algorithms of mainstream platforms became increasingly sophisticated, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube became dangerous terrain for the group’s leadership and followers. In response to increasing hostility, the group changed its dissemination strategy. On Twitter, it moved away from relying on official accounts toward the use of ad-hoc hashtags, which usually referred to particular events in a region, such as sieges or revolts (often introduced by URGENT or BREAKING). The advantage of using daily changing hashtags is that they are more difficult to censor, however, the downside is that consumers have higher transaction costs which hinder dissemination. In light of increasing censorship on Western social media platforms, Daesh moved its propaganda efforts to the Russian messaging service Telegram, which remains the centerpiece of the group’s propaganda at the time of writing. As Daesh continued to lose territory, its media infrastructure was also affected. On the one hand, this was because Daesh’s adversaries reconquered key cities where media offices were located, on the other hand, the “Global Coalition against Daesh” deliberately targeted media centers and senior operatives. The effect was that the quantity of outputs dropped dramatically after 2017. Comparing the monthly media output of Daesh in August 2015 with that in May 2019, Winter (2019) found a decrease in the content of 86% – from 30 different items per day at its height to only 4 items per day in 2019 (2019, 8). In February 2022, communications output seemed to have reached another low point with sources reporting less than 30 official items per month (ExTrac 2022). However, at the height of its expansion, Daesh had managed to create a propaganda apparatus that was not only capable of producing content on an industrial scale but also took a more holistic and coordinated approach than any other terrorist organization in history. To trace the key learning processes that enabled Daesh to wage its high-tech media jihad, a brief comparison with Daesh’s ‘mother group’ is instructive. Daesh – Al-Qaeda’s Web 2.0 Upgrade Compared to Daesh, al-Qaeda’s communication long remained stuck in the 20th century in terms of technological capacity and mindset. Consequently, social media has played a much less significant role in the group’s insurgency effort. Several studies have shown, for example, that al-Qaeda lags behind Daesh on all parameters such as the volume of content and its adaptation to

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different platforms (Ingram 2017). Moreover, al-Qaeda’s messages are usually less multilingual and more complex than those of Daesh, which reduces their ability to be spread and replicated online (Houck, Repke and Conway 2017). The differences between the two groups can largely be explained by their histories coupled with a certain degree of technological determinism. Being founded in 1988, many of al-Qaeda’s institutional practices developed during a time before the Web 2.0. For example, throughout most of the reigns of Osama Bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, it was technologically impossible to enter into dialogue via instant messaging services, which provide higher potential for persuasion than analog forms of communication. Until the early 2000s, terrorist groups were in fact dependent on mainstream media, which required them to cooperate with foreign journalists to deliver messages abroad (Stern and Berger 2015, 127). Only the rise of online media and user-generated content really made it possible to monopolize communicative spaces by creating internet bubbles that can easily sustain an entire ideological space over time. The longer history of al-Qaeda has contributed to the development of path dependencies, which can constrain learning. From the start, al-Qaeda was intrinsically an elite movement with a top-down approach to communication. As it was forced to remain in the shadow, al-Qaeda preferred moderated online forums where access and participation were monitored in order to reduce operational risks. Somewhat ironically, it was the censorship of these forums and jihadis’ desire for free speech that contributed to a move toward social media communication (Stern and Berger 2015, 129). When dissenters changed platforms to voice critique more openly on Twitter, this triggered counterreactions by defenders of the group. From around 2011 jihadism moved to Western social media, marking the beginning of Daesh’s social media endeavor. Over time Daesh began to transform jihadism from a predominantly secretive top-down model into a populist bottom-up model (Taylor 2015). In its effort to popularise its version of jihad, Daesh emphasized that anyone could support its cause by translating and spreading messages from the PC in their bedroom. As a result, it became easier than ever for sympathizers around the world to gain notoriety in the online community simply by retweeting military victories or following group leaders. Enabling individuals to inject themselves into the movement with low barriers to entry is arguably a key factor in the group’s success. Importantly, Daesh deliberately created potentials to ‘prosume’ its ideological content in a way that fostered innovation. A pertinent example of this approach is the “Selected 10” segment, which appeared in Dabiq and Rumiyah and featured ten selected videos from provincial media offices. The format simultaneously promoted uniformity and innovation, as editors in the provinces had to adhere to the distinctive IS brand style in order for their videos to be promoted, while at the same time being incentivized to innovate in order to stand out from competitors (Ingram 2020, 43).

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Operational risks associated with such an open approach were mitigated through instructions on how to use online platforms securely, e.g., by disabling GPS tracking and using VPNs (Goldsmith 2016). In those rare cases where discourse breached the parameters set by the leadership, official warnings were issued. By the time al-Qaeda entered social media, Daesh had already instrumentalized the new propaganda opportunities on an organizational level. Already in 2014, the group employed highly sophisticated spamming strategies that far exceeded the technological know-how of al-Qaeda. Most notably, throughout its boom period, Daesh used social media bots and even a specially developed Twitter app to engage in intense trolling, for example, during the 2014 World Cup, when the official Twitter hashtag was tagged with jihadist propaganda. From a learning perspective, two observations emerge. First, Daesh’s shorter history and its relationship with its parent group constitutes a structural condition that fostered innovation. The literature on organizational learning suggests that deeper forms of learning are usually difficult in older, consolidated organizations because of power struggles that hinder self-critique and reflection. Although Daesh’s internal communications require further research, there is evidence that the group’s institutional structure was more fluid than that of al-Qaeda in this crucial period.4 At the same time, Daesh was able to compensate for the lack of resources that younger groups typically face by having a parent organization. Before Daesh split from al-Qaeda in 2014, it was able to benefit from the latter’s resources while retaining some freedom to experiment during its expansion into Syria. It appears that the combination of resource availability and organizational flexibility are key factors that provided the structural conditions to innovate and thereby successfully challenge the parent organization. Second, Daesh’s initial entry into social media was not driven by a systematic process of organizational learning. Instead of a coordinated act of innovation, this is better explained by herd behavior and technological opportunity. Herd behavior can broadly be defined as “the alignment of thoughts or behaviours of individuals in a group (herd) through local interactions rather than centralised coordination” (Raafat, Chater and Frith 2009, 420). Daesh’s early use of social media can be traced to individuals who used new technologies in order to distance themselves from their group’s ideological center, leading to a broader migration of terrorist groups into the virtual world. Learning a New Form of Social Media Jihad Over time, Daesh’s use of social media became increasingly professional and strategic. In 2016 the group’s al-Himma Library published a document on Telegram titled “Media Operative, You Are Also a Mujahid” (Ingram, Whiteside and Winter 2020, 215–225). It is a revision of a similar booklet

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published a year earlier and serves to emphasize the importance of propaganda. The authors list six reasons for this publication such as “to alert all media operatives to the need to win media victories as well as military victories […] as ‘half of the battle is the media’” (Al-Himma Library 2020, 216). Further evidence from official ISIS documents points to a rationalized learning process on the group level (micro). In its doctrines, the group reveals that it learned from captured fighters’ experiences in American prisons, where a particularly strong interest in media operatives was noted. How many times we have heard from our media operative brothers – the ones who were imprisoned in American prisons […] how the Crusaders interrogated them with special and extensive attention for days on end, giving them special and cautious treatment because they recognised their great role in the battle” (Al-Himma Library 2020, 220–221). The statement provides evidence that the heightened interest in propagandists signaled to terrorist groups that Western policymakers regard media warfare as a major threat.5 Daesh was not only able to identify this vulnerability but also to develop effective organizational practices to attack it. Interviewed by the Washington Post, a Moroccan cameraman who worked for Daesh revealed that he received an entire month of media training before receiving equipment and being assigned to a regional media unit (Miller and Mekhennet 2015). In each of these regional offices, senior media officials presided over hundreds of cameramen, producers, and editors who formed a privileged professional class. The degree of institutionalization is further illustrated in one of Daesh’s own documentaries called “The Knights of the Ministries” from 2017. It shows work meetings in the Nineveh media office, which remind of routine editorial meetings in professional news agencies (Winter 2017, 13). These insights into the group’s practices and hierarchies do not only show an unprecedented extent of professionalism but also how central media operatives were in the strategic process (Milton 2018, 9). Through the recruitment of European social media professionals, the group further expanded its organizational knowledge of Western audiences. The content was produced in such a way that it was newsworthy and easily transferable to television. This was done dramaturgically by using native speakers as the main protagonists in videos, which made translations in English outlets obsolete. Several scholars have argued that the utilization of propaganda footage in news reports played into Daesh’s hands by communicating “a much-exaggerated sense of the group’s omnipotence and ubiquity to both supporters and adversaries” (Ingram, Whiteside and Winter 2020, 230).6 Social media thus served as a powerful springboard for access to more traditional channels with a different reach, where Jihadi John – the cruel executioner with a thick London accent – became the Western face of Daesh. Finally, Daesh also broke new ground with regard to sharing expertise with other groups abroad i.e., learning on the meso level. Research has shown, for example, that groups that pledge allegiance to Daesh often experience a professionalization of their propaganda immediately afterward. Furthermore,

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it was found that media offices of affiliates in Africa and Southeast Asia were able to draw on resources and later acted according to the same doctrines. This underlines the fact that Daesh has internalized the importance of learning on the meso level to the extent that it has institutionalized knowledge-sharing within and across the group (Ingram, Whiteside and Winter 2020).7 At the root of this is an organizational learning process, which is expressed in its doctrines and driven by the realization that “verbal weapons can actually be more potent than atomic bombs” (Al-Himma Library 2020, 216). The Caliphate’s Imageries Beyond the group’s ability to harness the power of new information technology, it also demonstrated an unprecedented awareness of the cognitive needs and psychological vulnerabilities of its opponents. As a global guerrilla of the 21st century, Daesh is thus characterized by its ability to simultaneously use and attack globalization (Gompert 2007, 11). Insurgency warfare is strictly psychological as French military strategist André Beaufre notes, in his discussion of indirect strategy. In asymmetric conflicts where the military capabilities of belligerent powers are strongly unequal, the materially weaker side must challenge whatever drives and sustains the enemy (ideology or religion) with viable alternatives (Beaufre 1965; Shurkin 2020). In line with that Daesh followed an approach that focussed on “the importance of inflicting psychological defeats upon the enemy before material defeats” (Al-Himma Library 2020, 216). Original sources indicate that Daesh has identified the external dimension of propaganda as key in the fight against the far enemy. The very first point of the propaganda doctrine states, “we have compiled this publication […] to shed light on the importance of the media jihad in the ongoing war between the forces of disbelief and the armies of faith, something especially critical given the rise and acceleration of the propaganda war that the Crusaders – led by America and its allies – are waging against the Islamic State today” (Al-Himma Library 2020, 216). The particular imageries and narratives which underlie this strategy were then primarily developed through trial and error. Already before Daesh opened its first official Twitter account in October 2013, it had continuously aimed to refine its brand. Similar to marketing companies, the group published content and relied on feedback from recipients to revise its messages and iconography (Winter 2019). Compared to analog media, the Web 2.0 is particularly well suited for this type of learning because feedback is immediate, and the costs of dissemination are low. Social media was thus a key factor in Daesh’s somewhat experimental brand development. Once a decision was made by the executive, it would be communicated to official bodies, as in 2014 when Daesh’s leadership decided to revise its iconography and launched videos that all followed the same introduction. Over time, the group developed two main narratives, which revolve around what can be called the ‘utopian caliphate’ and the ‘violent rule of sharia law’.

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They were created and nurtured through content ranging from photo collections and shorter videos of combat or executions to longer documentaries, which were distributed mainly online. Although scholars have identified additional categories of content, these are best understood as sub-narratives undergirding the group’s core identity. A brief analysis of these narratives shows that the development of the group’s politico-military goals was strongly influenced by introspection and organizational learning about the enemy. Caliphate Utopia

The utopian caliphate narrative was a core element that shaped Daesh’s relation with its Western opponents as well as the group’s perception within the region. Arguably the main strategic function of utopia was to maintain the ‘economy of force’ by attracting new recruits, increasing financial support, and boosting morale. Remarkably though, much of Daesh’s content was not actively persuasive but focused on ordinary aspects of life, which is often overlooked in the scholarly discourse. Images of service provision in hospitals, farming as well as scenes from the market featured strongly and in the region, this form of propaganda was often more prominent than violent scenes (Winter 2017). The aim was not only to cultivate the idea that Daesh is a veritable state, but also to suggest that joining the group leads to a better life than what most people were experiencing. To raise credibility, many of the scenes were presented in a seemingly objective ‘fly on the wall’ manner simply ‘documenting’ everyday life in the Caliphate. An important sub-narrative of the utopian caliphate was ‘belonging and community’, especially designed to appeal to foreign audiences. It was spread via photo collections as well as videos on social media and centered around depictions of foreign fighters experiencing a never felt sense of community. Prominent were also images of relaxed afternoon tea gatherings or family scenes after men returned home from a day in combat. In a traditional sense of propaganda, such scenes normalize war and disguise the horrors of battle. More importantly, though, these imageries play on the ontological security needs of marginalized people in the 21st century, particularly within the Western audience. Against the backdrop of rising social isolation in mega societies, it offers individuals an alternative sense of self that promises to be more powerful and meaningful. Joining the caliphate thus offered a shortcut in the modern quest for significance as Daesh’s jihad embodied a convenient rationalization of basic desires. Although the notion of utopia in terrorist propaganda is not new, Daesh emphasized the idea like no previous group. Al-Qaeda for instance presented utopia in an eschatological sense, based on the idea that one’s role as an underdog would be overcome and paradise on earth be achieved with victory over the Americans in the future (Fink and Sugg 2015). In contrast, Daesh emphasized that the perfect Muslim world had already been realized here and now (Laghmari 2020). With the final battle imminent, everyone had to

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decide whether to join the cause or alternatively face divine annihilation. In that sense, the group’s utopian narrative displayed a higher sense of urgency and promised immediate rewards. The learning process behind the utopian narrative is informed by Daesh’s past experiences on the battlefield, which have helped shape a more coherent campaign strategy. First, the utopian caliphate only came to full fruition after Baghdadi declared himself “Caliph Ibrahim” and announced “the Islamic State” directly after the successful siege of Mosul in his first public appearance. Rather than being a coincidence, the timing of these announcements reflects the group’s phased campaign strategy, which it outlined on several occasions – the first time in a feature article called “From Hiraj to Khaliafah” (2014) in the first issue of Dabiq (Ingram 2020, 23). The siege of Mosul marked the second step of Daesh’s campaign which is characterized by “forces leaving their desert stronghold in Iraq and making their way into the cities” as “the Islamic State understood that having just a single power base in any given region would work against them by giving their enemies a point of focus for their strikes”.8 Indeed, Daesh’s approach of a stepwise politico-military campaign is not unique but reflected in generations of modern insurgency thought. However, the group’s ability to recognize opportune moments for narratological modification reflects a rational learning process stimulated by past experiences. In 2008 a lessons-learned document appeared in which Daesh identifies the factors that led to its first demise in 2007. In his analysis, Fishman (2009) documents a number of policy recommendations, including concerns that propaganda had created “unrealistic expectations” for foreign fighters which have had a negative impact on the ground (Fishman 2009, 6). Moreover, the document highlights on several occasions the importance of understanding one’s audience. “Before anything, we need to collect information about the percentage of workers, religions, sects, ethnicities, political affiliations, the income per capita, […] and the security problems” (Fishman 2009, 17). Original sources thus suggest that Daesh has learned that its rhetoric must match its actions and that propaganda must be targeted, taking into account “the uses and gratifications” of different audiences (Whiting and Williams 2013). As the utopian narrative was strategically timed it did not open a significant ‘say-do’ gap. Moreover, research has shown that it was mostly present during periods of boom whereas in times of bust the themes of “struggle and sacrifice” took precedence (Ingram 2020, 32). As an imagery, utopia has been instrumental in helping Daesh attract an unprecedented number of foreign jihadists as well as sponsors, which helped the group to maintain its economy of force. It is one of several examples which illustrates how Daesh learned to create feedback loops between kinetic effects in the material sphere and mental effects in the virtual sphere, which appears to be a key factor of modern insurgency warfare (Kerttunen 2011, 107).9

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The Violent Rule of Sharia Law

While the use of extreme violence also supported the notion of supremacy, its main strategic effect was different. Brutality mostly served to shape the group’s relationship with its materially stronger opponents in Europe and the United States. Both violence and utopia, however, reinforce each other, and thus link the actions on the actual battlefield and those on the worldwide plane. For a more comprehensive understanding, it is useful to first look at the role of brutality in the armed struggle inside the theatre of war. As a baseline, resorting to extreme violence can yield several strategic advantages, which is usually however linked to detrimental side effects. On the one hand, the portrayal of enemy killings in horrendous ways asserts the group’s supremacy, shows defiance to its supporters, and intimidates opponents. On the other hand, extreme brutality can repel parts of the group or those it represents causing internal division and undermining morale (Venkatesh et al. 2020). In the case of Daesh, it is remarkable how the group managed to exploit the advantages of a violent regime while mitigating its negative effects. To legitimize brutality, the group relied on two sub-narratives, which Winter identifies as “victimhood” and “mercy” (Winter 2015a, 22). The former centers around the idea that violence is the only purposive solution against long-endured oppression. To spread this idea, Daesh weaponized graphic depictions of vulnerable members of society, for example, by showing children and the elderly allegedly killed by coalition airstrikes. These strong emotional cues were often intelligently wrapped into historical narratives about colonization, which provided predominantly cognitive stimuli, such as the video called “The End of Sykes-Picot” published by the Al Hayat Media centre.10 Victimhood was thus linked to the ancient Islamic doctrine of Qisas – ‘an eye for an eye’ – to create the impression that Daesh is the only just and therefore legitimate liberator. In order to sustain this narrative, social media was crucial, as every act of violence that went above the radar needed to be placed in this dialectic of good and evil. Moreover, social media enabled the group to claim terrorist attacks not simply in unimaginative speeches or letters, as al-Qaeda has often done, but to integrate them symbolically into the group’s brand. Victimhood was supported by another ancient meme, namely that of mercy, which has transcended time and space and can be found in all world religions in some shape or form. In the case of Daesh, mercy was tied to the notion of blasphemy to convey the message that Daesh welcomes anyone who wants to join the right path with open arms, regardless of their background. Those who refuse to heed the call, however, were portrayed as apostates who pose a threat that must be eradicated. The practice of labeling others as disbeliever goes back to the ideology of takfir, which is common among Islamist groups (Kadivar 2020, 4). Usually, however, jihadi groups

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have differentiated between Muslims and other religious groups. Al-Qaeda, for instance, sees Americans and the Shia population as disbelievers, yet attacks on Shia people or their mosques were seen as too extreme. In contrast, the majority of Daesh victims have been Muslims and Daesh often deliberately targeted religious institutions in its attacks. The underlying radicalization process driving this development is not unique to Daesh though. Berger shows with the example of Christianity that it has been common for groups to take on more extreme ideologies in order to gain legitimacy (Berger 2018). It is a learning process that starts especially after painful defeats and deep emotional crises (analogies with Nazi Germany’s ‘Stab-in the back myth’ come to mind). However, there are usually also pragmatic reasons for ideological innovation, as in the case of Daesh, where regional polarisation enabled the group to consolidate its base while waging an all-out war against rivals. Atrocities committed under the guise of victimhood and mercy were often framed to follow a divine methodology called Manhaj, which served to make them more digestible. Officially, the ‘prophetic methodology’ embodied everything that the term caliphate comprises and served to “bridge the intellectual gap between the mujahideen and ordinary Muslims” (Ingram, Whiteside and Winter 2020, 217). On a meta-level though it was a rhetorical move to make brutality more palatable and suppress dissenting opinions. Simply put, the message was that Daesh’s prophetic methodology must be pursued with purity, for all other options are impure and therefore ultimately ineffective (Ingram 2020, 26). An important side effect is that Manhaj condensed Daesh’s ideology into one imitable cultural unit (meme). Its simplicity, coherence, and applicability to a variety of historical and cultural contexts enabled it to be emulated by other groups, which appears to be a key factor that allowed Daesh to spread its ideology to far-away regions where groups faced similar competition (Helferich 2021). Adopting Daesh’s prophetic methodology would permit the leadership of such groups to legitimately dehumanize their competitors and justify any action which enhanced their power. Media Jihad as Strategic Success In Syria and Iraq, the propagandistic animation of extreme violence served as a power multiplier through domination and oppression. On the international stage, Daesh’s brutality became its trademark as well as a “foreign policy tool” of threat and deterrence. Clausewitz noted that when the destruction of the enemy is unlikely due to unequal material forces, one can engage in other strategies for example by trying to “paralyse” the enemy (Clausewitz 1989, 2). In order to achieve such a paralysis effect one can use “from the subtlest to the most brutal procedures” (Beaufre 1965, 111). To expand its liberty of action on the battlefield, Daesh opted for the latter and unleashed a level of violence that was “beyond anything we have ever seen before” (Friis 2015). Rather than “irrational barbarism”, however, this was a deliberate

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choice and by the group referred to as “infuriating the enemy” (Ingram, Whiteside and Winter 2020, 230). Accordingly, violence against Westerners was understood as a ‘double-blessing’, as “everything that angers the unbeliever or hypocrite pleases the honest believer” (ibid.). The extent to which Daesh was able to undermine democratic systems becomes evident in the discourse on social media censorship. Loyal to the claim that ‘one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter’, Twitter took almost one year to ban official Daesh accounts. On the one hand, the platform is known for its free speech advocacy, however, on the other hand, Daesh deliberately exploited this predisposition, for example, by dressing American victims in orange clothing during execution videos evoking ideas of the prison in Abu Ghraib, which stands for hypocrisy and atrocity associated with the War on Terror. What initially resulted from this strategy was a paralysis effect as intervention fatigue coupled with the messy strategic situation in the region would make it impossible to eliminate Daesh without paying the high political costs of a ground invasion. President Obama had based his presidential campaign exactly on the opposite idea namely getting the troops out of the Middle East. The spectre of recurring beheading videos of captured US soldiers on the internet constituted, therefore, a real political risk. As a result, western governments and the public initially struggled to act as Daesh tied them down in ropes of propaganda. In the meantime, Daesh was able to consolidate its ideology and expand its propaganda machinery. In late 2013, Baraa Kadek, a Syrian journalist was recruited who set up the news agency Amaq. At the same time, Junaid Hussain, an extremely tech-savvy 21-year-old hacker from Birmingham, was recruited and soon became the head of the “Islamic State Hacking Division” strongly focused on recruitment and propaganda (Nafees 2018). Three months before the United States seriously began airstrikes, in June 2014, the group established the Al Hayat Media Centre significantly professionalizing the production of international content.11 Beyond its virtual impact, Daesh’s social media maneuver had real-world effects on the group’s military power and expansion. As Western governments’ legitimacy became increasingly undermined, Daesh was perceived to be standing up against the hegemon generating a boost in morale and credibility. Against this background, it is not surprising that by late 2013 Daesh outnumbered all other groups in terms of foreign recruitment, and by 2014 the numbers had reached an all-time high point with estimates of up to 11 000 foreign fighters joining Daesh (IISS 2020; Neumann 2015; Perliger and Milton 2016, 36). As envisioned by the metaphor of the ‘doubleblessing’, Daesh’s social media effort multiplied its force while nullifying that of the opponent. Underlying this development is a learning process that led to a deep understanding of Western societies and public spheres, which enabled Daesh to capitalize on the animation of extreme violence while at the same time offsetting its costs during the boom phase.

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Incomplete Learning It would be far-fetched to claim that Daesh’s downfall was solely due to its propaganda campaign. However, it can be shown that social media and the widespread visibility of Daesh’s propaganda have acted as “visual facts” in transforming Western responses to the Islamic State (Friis 2015, 731). Specifically, it can be argued that social media propaganda was mobilized as evidence to support claims about the identity of Daesh and the extreme imminence of the threat, which in turn legitimized intensified military action. As President Obama had no desire whatsoever to continue American military involvement in the region, he first tried to play down the threat emanating from Daesh. Accordingly, the US president called Daesh a “JV basketball” team in his reaction to the group’s siege of Fallujah in January 2014. Moreover, Obama stressed the importance of distinguishing between “the capacity and reach of a Bin Laden […] actively planning major terrorist plots against the homeland versus jihadists who are engaged in various local power struggles and disputes, often sectarian”.12 In June and July 2014, Daesh captured Mosul, began persecuting the Yazidis and carried out its deadliest terrorist attack to date at Camp Speicher, killing more than 1,500 Iraqi air force cadets. Despite these events, Obama continued to describe Daesh as predominantly a threat to the region and a sectarian/humanitarian problem.13 Only two months later, however, in a response to the video of James Foley’s execution, Daesh was suddenly described as “cancer” that had “no place in the 21st century” and “if left unchecked, these terrorists could pose a growing threat beyond that region, including to the US”.14 During the weeks following the beheadings of James Foley and Steven Sotloff, which were discussed all over Western social media and on television, the issue was reframed as a “national security” challenge. Daesh thus came to be seen as an “imminent threat”, which needed to be “degraded and destroyed” rather than contained (Friis 2015, 734). In doing so Obama ‘securitised’ the issue, pushing the struggle against the terrorist organization out of the normal political discourse (Balzacq 2010). Daesh was now ‘beyond politics’ and tied directly to the ethos of the transatlantic community. At that point, however, the group had not committed any terrorist attacks on US soil but engaged in two small-scale attacks in Belgium and Australia. Despite its far inferior material capabilities, Daesh had succeeded in captivating the American people thus bringing a distant battlefield to the home front. Its mise-en-scene of military victories and ‘guillotine spectacles’ had shaped the way the conflict was understood and dealt with namely as a threat to US identity and democracy. For Daesh, however, it was counterproductive to push psychological domination to such an extreme point that the issue became securitized as the net-costs of violent propaganda would soon exceed the gains. Although the coalition took several years to succeed, the airstrikes proved decisive in the

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group’s demise (Wasser et al. 2021). Daesh’s response with more escalation, such as the Paris attacks may have further increased attention for the group, but overall, this was not advantageous from a politico-military perspective. Similarly, the group’s later calls for lone wolves to carry out attacks with knives and cars in the West were also aimed at creating visceral, graphic experiences of terror intended to spread online, however, at the time, such further escalation of violence brought the group only limited kinetic gains on the ground. Instead, knock-on effects prevailed, as the coalition was encouraged to intensify its efforts, which strongly undermined earlier impressions of Daesh’s supremacy. From the perspective of terrorist learning, Daesh’s failure to update its endgame can be conceptualized as an example of incomplete learning. As such, the group continued an initially learned strategy that had proven to be effective, but it failed to reflect on how this strategy and along with that its propaganda goals should have shifted over time. In mid-2014, it had already expanded its virtual caliphate to an extent that its narratives were spreading among its network and beyond without requiring strong further impulses. Perhaps pushed by hubris after the rapid regional as well as international expansion, Daesh’s leadership failed to realize that ‘infuriating the enemy’ would be unsuccessful if pushed to an extent that it triggered a prolonged direct material confrontation. Arguably, a reduction of violence and intensified concentration on the caliphate utopia-narrative coupled with efforts to consolidate control over the won territories could potentially have altered the course of the conflict. However, this would have required ideological modifications given that the brutal expansion of the caliphate had been so central to Daesh’s identity. Nonetheless, for a group that had acquired such a tight grip over its followers and unprecedented expertise in storytelling, even a 180-degree shift in ideology may have been possible. An interesting observation in this regard is that Daesh once had been able to at least temporarily take a more pragmatic stance for its struggle against regional rivals. In 2014, it was reportedly cooperating with more than 80 Sunni tribes in a ‘shaky coalition’, where many did not share the group’s ideology. Yet, as Daesh was taking the credit during this phase and no one else stepped up, the alliance prevailed until Daesh was powerful enough to turn against its former allies (Stern and Berger 2015, 45). For its dealings with the far enemy, however, it was not prepared to relax its doctrines and pursue any form of temporary détente. This inability to adapt appears to be an important factor in Daesh’s ultimate downfall. Conclusion Daesh proved to be unique in its ability to manipulate the interpretive schemes within which opponents and sympathizers perceived its violent struggle. By deliberately working to reify political identities into fixed forms (the utopian caliphate vs the decadent oppressors) it effectively used online

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media to construct power relations that supported its political cause. The group’s succinct ideology and its propagandistic animation did not only allow it to outcompete regional rivals but also contributed to its material dominance. In the early phase of the conflict, Daesh’s ability to quickly learn how to use new media effectively and its resulting actions on the international stage generated an important source of power and increased the group’s freedom of action on the battlefield. However, failure to adapt the propaganda effort over time ultimately contributed to an intensified counterinsurgency effort. While parts of Daesh’s politico-military strategy were informed by previous experiences of jihadist groups, most notably al-Qaeda, its approach to social media relied on a number of new practices, which can largely be traced to learning processes. As such, the analysis shows that Daesh did not just take advantage of new technological opportunities, but actively reflected on its own experiences to optimize its capacity to access the hearts and minds of people. The group has also internalized the importance of learning on the go, which is reflected in its experimental brand development on social media and its communication with affiliate groups. Finally, Daesh’s ideas about terrorism as a method transcend traditional insurgency and “reveal the capacity of the jihad to learn and thus to change and perpetuate” (Gompert 2007, 11). Daesh rewrote the script of religiously motivated terrorism, by devoting an unprecedented amount of resources to the propaganda effort and professionally aligning it with the military struggle inside the theatre of war. For future counterinsurgency measures, it is important to note that other groups may reflect on Daesh’s failure to adapt their behavior on the international stage. The Taliban in Afghanistan already seem to have taken a step further in this regard. With the Doha Agreement, the Taliban demonstrated ideological flexibility and seized a favorable opportunity to move from confrontation to diplomacy in order to consolidate their power. The extent to which this is a learned strategy influenced by the experiences of Daesh, and what factors contribute to a terrorist group changing its propaganda approach toward the hegemon, may provide an interesting avenue for further research. Notes 1 See also Katagiri, in this volume. 2 In that sense the group deliberately refused to renounce using any particular format, targeting any specific audience or pursuing a certain level of objectives but instead engaged in uncompromising full spectrum propaganda. 3 See also Hadzhiev, in this volume. 4 Indicators of this are the rapid expansion of Daesh’s institutional infrastructure, as well as examples of new recruits who rapidly assumed leadership positions within the group. 5 This also suggests that two decades of ‘War on Terror’ has not only raised counter-insurgents awareness of the strengths and weaknesses of terror organisations but also vice versa. It arguably is a key factor that can explain why Daesh engaged in such a resource intensive social media effort.

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6 When Daesh posted that it hacked itself into the Pentagon getting access to data on employees, it created an international news event. Rather than highlighting the fact that institutions such as the pentagon are regularly subject to hacks, the focus was on the personal security of the workers. Implicitly there was the perception that Daesh could even threaten high level civil servants, which the state failed to protect. 7 See for instance, Crisis Group (2017), ‘How the Islamic State Rose, Fell and Could Rise Again in the Maghreb’, Crisis Group Report no 178, July 24, 2017, https:// www.crisisgroup.org/middle-east-north-africa/north-africa/178-how-islamic-staterose-fell-and-could-rise-again-maghreb. 8 Islamic State Report 2014, 1–5 cited in Ingram 2020. 9 Exploiting a sense of urgency not only reflects today’s marketing practices, where consumers are enticed to buy products without much thought, but also plays on the pervasive modern “fear of missing out”. 10 The video was shot at the border between Syria and Iraq where a Daesh fighter presents al-Baghdadi as the “breaker of barriers” set by Western imperialists and Arab leaders. It was released on 29th June shortly before the declaration of the caliphate. 11 It was in also in May 2014 that Daesh’s Al-Furqan Foundation released the most successful propaganda documentary on YouTube and other social media called the “The Clanging of Swords” part IV, showing the execution of unarmed Iraqi soldiers. 12 Barack Obama, “Press Briefing by Principal Deputy Press Secretary Eric Schultz and Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes, 8/22/2014”; The “JV team” stems from a transcript of an interview conducted by David Remnick, it was published in the New Yorker on 27 January 2014. 13 Barack Obama, “Remarks by the President on the Situation in Iraq”. https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2014/06/19/remarkspresident-situation-iraq 14 Barack Obama, “Remarks on the death of James W. Foley in Syria from Edgartown, Massachusetts”. https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/DCPD-201400618

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Laghmari, M. (2020), ‘Situating Islamic State’s Message: A Social and Theological Genealogy’, in: S.J. Baele, K.A. Boyd, and T.G. Coan (eds.), ISIS propaganda: A full-spectrum extremist message (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 50–83. Mahood, S. and Rane, H. (2017), ‘Islamist Narratives in ISIS Recruitment Propaganda’, The Journal of International Communication 23:1, 15–35. Miller, G. and Mekhennet, S. (2015), ‘Inside the Surreal World of the Islamic State’s Propaganda Machine’. Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/ national-security/inside-the-islamic-states-propaganda-machine/2015/11/20/ 051e997a-8ce6–11e5-acff-673ae92ddd2b_story.html. Milton, D. (2018), Pulling Back the Curtain: An Inside Look at the Islamic State’s Media Organization (West Point: Combating Terrorism Center), https://ctc.westpoint.edu/ pulling-back-the-curtain-an-inside-look-at-the-islamic-states-media-organization/. Nafees, H. (2018), ‘The British Hacker Who Became the Islamic State’s Chief Terror Cybercoach: A Profile of Junaid Hussain’, CTC Sentinel 11:4, 30–37. Neumann, P. (2015), ‘Foreign Fighter Total in Syria/Iraq Now Exceeds 20,000; Surpasses Afghanistan Conflict in the 1980s’, The International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation (ICSR) Insights, https://icsr.info/2015/01/26/foreignfighter-total-syriairaq-now-exceeds-20000-surpasses-afghanistan-conflict-1980s/. Perliger, A. and Milton, D. (2016), From Cradle to Grave: The Lifecycle of Foreign Fighters in Iraq and Syria (West Point, NY: Combating Terrorism Center), https:// ctc.westpoint.edu/from-cradle-to-grave-the-lifecycle-of-foreign-fighters-in-iraqand-syria/. Raafat, R.M., Chater, N., and Frith, C. (2009), ‘Herding in Humans’, Trends in Cognitive Sciences 13:10, 420–428. Rose, S. (2014), ‘The ISIS Propaganda War: A Hi-Tech Media Jihad’, The Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/07/isis-media-machine-propagandawar (April 13, 2022). Shurkin, M. (2020), ‘Grand Strategy Is Total: French Gen. André Beaufre on War in the Nuclear Age’. War on the Rocks, http://warontherocks.com/2020/10/grand-strategyis-total-french-gen-andre-beaufre-on-war-in-the-nuclear-age/ (April 13, 2022). Stern, J. and Berger, J.M. (2015), ISIS: The State of Terror (London: William Collins). Taylor, D. (2015), ‘Schools Monitoring Pupils’ Web Use with “Anti-Radicalisation Software”, The Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jun/10/ schools-trial-anti-radicalisation-software-pupils-internet. Venkatesh, V., Podoshen, J.S., Wallin, J., Rabah, J., and Glass, D. (2020), ‘Promoting Extreme Violence: Visual and Narrative Analysis of Select Ultraviolent Terror Propaganda Videos Produced by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in 2015 and 2016’, Terrorism and Political Violence 32:8, 1753–1775. Wasser, B., Pettyjohn, S.L., Martini, J., Evans, A.T., Mueller, K., Edenfield, N., Tarini, G., Haberman, R., and Zeman, J. (2021), The Air War against the Islamic State: The Role of Airpower in Operation Inherent Resolve (Santa Monica, CA: RAND). Whiting, A. and Williams, D. (2013), ‘Why People Use Social Media: A Uses and Gratifications Approach’, Qualitative Market Research: An International Journal 16:4, 362–369. Winter, C. (2015a), Documenting the Virtual “Caliphate” (London: Quilliam Foundation). Winter, C. (2015b), The Virtual Caliphate: Understanding Islamic State’s Propaganda Strategy (London: Quilliam Foundation).

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Winter, C. (2017), Totalitarian Insurgency: Evaluating the Islamic State’s In-Theater Propaganda Operations. CIWAG Case Studies 15 (Newport, RI: U.S. Naval War College), https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/ciwag-case-studies/15. Winter, C. (2019), Daesh Propaganda, before and after Its Collapse. Countering Violent Extremism (Riga: NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence), https://stratcomcoe.org/publications/daesh-propaganda-before-and-after-itscollapse/76.

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Learning Patterns and Failures An Analysis of ISIS Operations between 2013 and 2019 Nori Katagiri

One of the most intriguing aspects of the war involving the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) is how much learning – and the failure to learn – has shaped the group’s performance. One of many ways to analyze how terrorists learn1 – the subject of this collective volume – is how insurgents fight and defeat foreign states in war. Inherent in the underdogs’ war against powerful rivals is the role of learning in war as a critical factor. Underdogs often face the need to protract the war long enough to learn from current events and experiences of opponents, self-reflection, and history to maximize the chance of achieving their aim. In other words, wartime strategic assessment is a crucial component of underdog adjustment for victory (Katagiri 2015a). Yet terrorists learn in different ways; some aspirants may have studied history before the war and prepared to fight protracted conflict; others may learn via opponents’ actions and self-reflection only after the war started, which is harder because violence takes away focus and resources. The ISIS war has sparked scholarly research on many topics related to this organization in terms of its historical origin, religious background, ideology, finance, and the use of social media (Byman 2015; Gerges 2016; Johnston et al. 2016; Maher 2014; McCants 2015a; Shatz and Johnson 2015; Stern and Berger 2016; Wright et al. 2016). However, scholars have paid much less attention to the question of how the group learned and failed to learn. In this chapter, I build on earlier work (Katagiri 2015b) to show that while ISIS quite successfully learned on the level of tactical short-term operations, with regard to long-term strategies it was characterized by a sometimes astonishing lack of learning, or failure to execute what it learned. This tacticalstrategic dialectic is critical for understanding the origins and consequences of the group’s adaptation as much as its discontinuity. The otherwise short timeframe between 2013 and 2019 is in fact long enough to assess ISIS’ learning patterns and close enough to the present to allow for an analysis of the group as independent from its predecessors, especially the Islamic State in Iraq (ISI). The group that became ISIS emerged from Abu Masab al-Zarqawi’s Jammat al-Tawhid Wa-l-Jihad in 1999, later known as Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) from 2004 to 2006, from which ISIS departed in 2013 to adopt its current name. During this time, it cut ties with DOI: 10.4324/9781003361435-6

Learning Patterns and Failures 85 al-Qaeda (Miller 2016; Turner 2015), began the multi-front war against the Syrian and Iraqi governments, other insurgent groups like Jabhat al-Nusra (the later Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham), as well as the international US-led Combined Joint Task Force – Operation Inherent Resolve (CJTF-OIR) coalition (Fishman 2016; Lister 2016). This chapter investigates three questions: (1) How ‘open’ was ISIS toward opportunities to learn from historical experiences? (2) What efforts did the group make to interact with foreign counterparts in order to raise the chance of victory? And (3) What sequence of actions did it adopt in building a knowledge-based on what it learned from history, self-reflection, and outsiders’ experiences? My main argument is that ISIS was quite ‘closed’ to opportunities of learning from outside sources even if strategic materials have been published elsewhere and made available for consumption. ISIS used a limited number of means to interact with others to learn, and little evidence points to a particular openness of ISIS to learning. This lack of openness comes in part from then-ISIS leader Abu Baker al-Baghdadi’s personal exposure, or lack thereof, to learning opportunities. No record shows that he had ever traveled extensively outside the immediate tribal village dynamics of Iraqi territory before he began the ongoing war. While intelligence reports say that he had been educated in religious studies, there is no evidence that he extensively studied terrorism, asymmetric war, and even politics. The personal backgrounds of ISIS leaders played a role in determining the subsequent courses of action by the group and its internal as much as external strategies. In the following paragraphs, I will briefly outline sequencing theory and its relevance to the question of terrorist and especially ISIS’ learning, and I will then explore ISIS’s learning patterns in the areas of (1) the personality of al-Baghdadi, (2) alliance management, (3) internal cohesion, (4) military power, and (5) information strategy. Sequencing Theory and ISIS’ Learning In my previous work on wartime learning, I developed and employed the concept of “sequencing theory” to show that insurgents and terrorists learn from outside experience to put their operations into successful sequences of actions (Katagiri 2015a). This approach posits “that an insurgency’s evolution or failure to evolve has a strong impact on its ability to achieve its goals”; however, it “rests not with the tautological argument that insurgent’s victory occurs when they evolve, but with whether the evolution they engineer goes through a successful sequence” (Katagiri 2015a, 13). I explored more than 150 cases of ‘extra-systemic wars’, or wars between states and non-state insurgent organizations, fought between 1816 and the early 2000s. In doing so, I conducted fieldwork and collected data in Malaysia, Vietnam, Portugal, and France to investigate some of the most important wars of asymmetric nature. My empirical findings demonstrate that the rate for insurgency victory increases starting at the end of the Second

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World War. In wars fought between 1816 and 1945, insurgent groups achieved their goal by defeating superior state forces in only 20 out of 130 cases, at the rate of 15%. Since 1945, this trend has changed dramatically as we have seen more insurgent groups able to overcome military inferiority to defeat external powers through the use of guerrilla warfare and terrorist strategy. Winning 11 out of 18 wars held through 2010, the insurgents’ victory rate jumped from 15% to 61%. Obviously, the overall number of extra-systemic wars fought between the two different periods of time was different: 130 wars before the year 1945 and 11 wars after. But considering sequencing theory, the rate of insurgency victory is what we must look at. There are three main phases comprising the concept: guerilla war, conventional war, and state building, which, however, can be employed (or omitted) in practice by insurgents in different ways (Katagiri 2015a, 40–62). My analysis reveals that insurgencies evolving through all three phases in a strategically coherent manner, while making use of their interconnections, have the highest rates of success by far, even if the precise order and execution of phases can be variable depending on circumstances (Katagiri 2015a, 61). In other words, there is not one fixed ‘track to victory’, but there are key elements that have to be addressed in proper order. This concern mainly building support in the population, gaining resources, and creating and maintaining stable institutions. One of the main substantive findings drawn from the data and relevant directly to this chapter was that successful terrorist groups learned much from interactions with Maoist-influence groups in Indochina and Malaya and spread into independence movements in Africa in the 1960s. Group leaders often traveled overseas to meet face-to-face with guerrilla leaders, compared strategies, exchanged documents, and returned home to study them closely. For instance, Nelson Mandela secretively traveled to Algerian training camps in Morocco in 1961 before he founded his military wing, Spear of the Nation, in South Africa. The African National Congress regularly taught its members from underdog war literature, including Mao and Guevara (Mandela 1994). Other examples include leaders of self-determination movements in Malaya, Vietnam, and Guinea-Bissau who were treated essentially as terrorists but interacted with leaders of other wars to learn strategic planning based on past scholarship, including that of Maoist guerrilla strategy, and carry out lessons learned from the past experiences. My research on ISIS however indicates that it did not utilize this strategy and was not open to many opportunities to learn from historical experiences. This lack of openness limited ISIS’s own learning opportunities. The recent decline of ISIS has much to do with its failure not only to learn but also to execute what it learned. I applied sequencing theory to ISIS first in 2015 during its development (Katagiri 2015b), arguing at that time that without learning much from opponents and history, ISIS would face tremendous difficulty in adapting to external security challenges fighting superior militaries in the West and to evolving into a mature conventional

Learning Patterns and Failures 87 army and statehood. In the following, I trace in more detail why this indeed was the case. There are three ways by which terrorists learn: wartime self-reflection, learning from history, and learning from opponents. First, I consider selfreflection, or micro-level learning, to be a process of learning from oneself necessary for wartime adjustment to ensure success (Gartner 1999). From this perspective, there is little evidence that ISIS is a self-reflective group, from foot soldiers all the way to the top leadership level. Yet ISIS has adjusted in wartime in its organization and stability. ISIS actions have gone fairly closely with a pattern of other Sunni insurgent groups that demonstrated their ability for tactical innovation, developing small-group maneuvers into larger attacks and shifting targets from people to critical infrastructures (Hashim 2006, 47–48; Mansour 2009, 82). Analysis of the early 2010s counterinsurgency poses a generally positive picture of these violent groups; insurgents routinely made organizational changes in order to better use experienced agents and enhance operational and logistical efficiency; adapted to external changes to use smaller units to increase lethality, logistics, and communications; and enjoyed popularity (Serena 2014; Thurber 2014). Second, there are many opportunities for learning from history before groups decide to wage war, but in most cases, leaders fail to feel the real urge to do so until the war begins. The personality and leadership style of key individuals who would run violent organizations has had much to do to shape the openness of the groups to outside opportunities. Personality and leadership style is in fact one of the areas where we can see major differences between Baghdadi and revolutionary leaders elsewhere. Baghdadi’s known insularity may have played a role in making ISIS a decentralized organization resistant to opportunities of learning from external environments, a recipe prone to failure as a whole. The close observer of the group, Assaf Moghadam, shows that many terrorist groups are decentralized and display both top-down and downtop processes of innovation (Moghadam 2013). These characteristics might have helped ISIS make several successes in keeping the organization intact. As Fawaz Gergez points out, there were additional strengths in ISIS’s learning. It took advantage of rivalry among Islamist groups to split al-Nusra and alQaeda from smaller groups and the Salafi-Jihadist splits; a classic “divide and conquer” strategy. ISIS applied the same strategy to split al-Qaeda between the fanatical side under Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and the moderate side led by Osama bin Laden, al-Baghdadi’s former patron and nominal superior (Weiss and Hassan 2015, xiv-xv). ISIS expanded at the expense of groups like Jabhat al-Nusra. Noteworthy was the breaking down of the borders between Iraq and Syria to expand the battlefields, recruit, obtain access to oilfields, and intimidate people more effectively (Gerges 2016, 170–259). Finally, learning from enemies in wartime is what many terrorist organizations do. Moghadam argues that “contemporary terrorist cooperation combines established forms of organizational cooperation with novel forms of networked cooperation”; both “forms of cooperation can feature relationships

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of varying qualitative strengths” between terrorist entrepreneurs, terrorist organizations, and informal networks (Moghadam 2017, 4). Yet, learning from enemies is constrained by variations and differences among groups; the difficulty to learn from enemy performance well once war begins as the war takes away resources for logistics and operations. Thus, the ISIS war offers useful lessons about how terrorist groups learn and fail to learn. It reinforces the fact that some terrorist leaders are selective in the sources of learning, ranging from strategic materials to influential classic texts, but others use dubious strategic plans to end up making false predictions. Variation exists in part because in wartime, commanders’ access to strategic, operational, and tactical documents is poor, and communication with local unit leaders is hard. While there is some semblance of ISIS’s actions associated with the ideas of Mao Tse-tung, I will show below how it failed to execute them. More precisely, Mao stated a three-stage strategy moving from strategic defensive to strategic offensive, in which the underdogs must (1) grow from being guerrillas into an organized force to defeat stronger enemies, (2) expand base areas through guerrilla attacks before building institutions, and (3) organize a regular force as a means of outperforming adversaries in asymmetric environments (Mao 2005). Publication of his ideas from the 1930s onward shaped the strategic minds of terrorist leaders for generations.2 Al Qaeda and other groups have drawn inspiration from the works of Mao and those who essentially copied and then adapted him to their battle conditions, such as Indochina’s Vo Nguyen Giap and Cuba’s Che Guevara (Ryan 2013, 52, 86–92, 136–137). The use of Maoist three-stage guerrilla strategy is present in many scripts of extremist groups in the Middle East, including AbuMus’ab al-Suri in The Call to Global Islamic Resistance and works of AbuUbayd al-Qurashi, an al-Qaeda operative who drew heavily on a variety of Western scholarship, ranging from Clausewitz’ On War to Robert Taber’s War of the Flea to William Lind’s Fourth Generation Warfare (Ryan 2013). Like Giap and Guevara, ISIS leaders sought to carry out what turned out to look like Mao’s strategy but failed to turn learning into real action. ISIS’s lack of executing Maoist three stages is a case in point. While ISIS sought to fight guerrilla war, it did not follow what Mao had said about the ‘right’ way to fight guerrilla war. Instead, it seems to have copied ideas from al-Qaeda; the language ISIS used in a May 2019 message, for example, is similar to the one used in manuals published years ago by al-Qaeda in Saudi Arabia via its al-Battar electronic magazine, which provided military instructions to supporters and cells around the world (Masri and Abdelaty 2019). In addition, this reinforces the second notion of wartime learning, which is that it is difficult to learn once war begins. With high pressure, peer tension, and constant fear under duress, learning needs calm judgment, stability, repetition, and practice. Ultimately, ISIS failure to learn and execute what it sometimes learned from history and wartime operations was conspicuous in three dimensions: military (organize armed forces), political (establish a centralized state), and social (win popular support locally). In the following sections, I explore the sequencing of

Learning Patterns and Failures 89 ISIS’s learning behavior in terms of (1) al-Baghdadi’s personality and leadership, (2) alliance management, (3) internal cohesion and popular support, (4) military power, and (5) information strategy. Exploration of these categories will allow us to better understand the extent to which ISIS failed to learn and execute what it learned in key dimensions of the conflict. I exclude analysis on economic dimensions of the war, such as the use of natural resources and defense budget, in order to focus on aspects that have a more immediate impact on the war effort. Baghdadi’s Personality and Leadership There are a limited number of academic studies in a remarkably small literature on Baghdadi’s leadership style and personality. Extant studies show that he gained the nickname “the believer” when he was younger because he spent so much time at local mosques learning the Koran. Even then he showed signs of an extremist attitude as he displayed little tolerance toward people who failed to follow Islamic law (BBC 2019; McCants 2015b). Baghdadi kept his family members from public view as he rose in status and avoided socialization in general. But it was also reported that he lived with his lower middle-class family in the poor Tobchi neighborhood of Baghdad. In 2003, after the US-led coalition of the willing invaded Iraq and disbanded Saddam Hussein’s troops by force, Baghdadi helped found an insurgent organization named Jaysh Ahl al-Sunna wa-l-Jamaah (Army of the People of the Sunna and Communal Solidarity) to fight foreign troops. Following his arrest and detention at Camp Bucca, he radicalized, making experiences and establishing contacts that became an important basis for his later career as leader of ISIS: “Baghdadi ingratiated himself with both the Sunni inmates and the Americans, looking for opportunities to negotiate with the camp authorities and mediate between rival groups of prisoners” – as a former fellow inmate recalls, “he was using a policy of conquer and divide to get what he wanted, which was status. And it worked” (McCants 2015b). One of the major characteristics of Baghdadi’s background is the lack of information about the extent of his relationship with the outside world. There is no record that shows that he had ever traveled much outside the immediate tribal village dynamics of Iraqi society before he led ISIS to fight the war. His background, if at all, was solidly local in the unique Iraqi lifestyle. While he did achieve a high level of education, receiving a doctorate in Islamic Studies from the Islamic University of Iraq, there is little evidence that he had been trained to appreciate the width of academic discourse and to critically analyze competing interpretations of social events. Academic training, of course, does not mean to shape people’s personalities and leadership styles, especially if the latter has already been formed elsewhere. There is little available information on how Baghdadi did in school. Yet it is possible for us to estimate that this educated leader was inward-oriented toward opportunities to grow in general.

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Insularity, in fact, defined a major part of Baghdadi’s leadership style and the way his group dealt with potential foreign partners and fought the war. This is in stark contrast to the personality of many other leaders of past revolutionary groups, including that of Ho Chi Minh and Vo Nguyen Giap, who had traveled quite extensively, particularly in Europe, to learn from colonial masters about how to formulate military strategy and organize, before they launched wars of independence back in Vietnam. These leaders, as history tells us, led the Vietminh’s successful war effort from 1946 and 1954 against colonial France, before the country went on to fight the ultimately victorious war against the United States soon after. If the Vietnamese nationalist leaders displayed much of wartime learning as a critical factor for their success, then we can draw some lessons from their experiences. Ho Chi Minh is especially instructive for our purpose. Before moving back to Vietnam, Ho had spent years growing up as a young communist to learn from many revolutionary movements. He looked especially toward the experience of Mao Tse-tung in China to observe how to wage a revolutionary war against the more powerful imperial Japanese forces in the 1930s and 1940s. Indeed, the historian William Duiker writes that the Vietminh’s revolutionary inspiration came from China and the group quite visibly sought to replicate the way Mao fought guerrilla war (Duiker 2007, 153). The receptivity toward foreign experiences came with Ho’s translation of Chinese publications on guerrilla warfare as well as his own assessments of outside experiences, including Experience of Chinese Guerrillas, Experience of French Guerrillas, and Experience of Russian Guerrillas. He later distributed these works among his troops to spread the learning effect throughout the organization. Further, Ho and Giap worked with another leader, Truong Chinh, who concurred sufficiently with Mao’s writings on guerrilla war to write The Resistance Will Win. In sum, for these open-minded leaders, learning came quite easily. However, they took the effort even to a higher level by updating their preparation for guerrilla war to Vietnam’s unique characteristics to eventually lead a phased war successfully against the French in their quest for independence (Katagiri 2015a, 37, 153). The Vietminh’s success stands in stark contrast with ISIS, in which Baghdadi’s insular personality defined the nature of their attitudes to opportunities to learn from external experiences. Ultimately, Baghdadi’s inward-oriented personality and leadership style had an impact on the development of ISIS in many regards: it was a critical element of Baghdadi’s tendency to use new strategic and operational resources in a limited manner, and it influenced the way ISIS managed its relations with foreign partners, kept internal cohesion, amassed military power, and crafted information strategy. Alliance Management While ISIS used many ‘foreign fighters’ and received external funds and donations, it displayed a tendency to defy the norm that survival as an

Learning Patterns and Failures 91 underdog requires external help, especially sponsorship from nearby states and powerful international actors (Byman 2005; Hoffman 2017). Instead of counting on state sponsorship, ISIS used the internal instability of neighboring states to conduct operations and expand its territory. ISIS did not get support from nations that theoretically shared what could pass as anti-US sentiment, such as Russia and Iran, nor from groups like WikiLeaks and Anonymous that opposed the perceived social injustice of major Western nations. As for Russia and Iran, ISIS failed to benefit from their anti-Western sentiment because it was seen as a threat to the regime in Syria, where the two countries protected President Bashar al-Assad from internal challenges and had no interest in helping ISIS undermine his grip on power. The two countries shored up Assad to use him as leverage against the West. As for ISIS’s lack of appeal to cyber groups like WikiLeaks and Anonymous, they were primarily driven by the mission to protect dissent and social justice in a peaceful manner, which did not align with what ISIS stood for – the establishment of a caliphate through violent means, spreading terror and fear. As such, ISIS’s “alliance” was informal, unstable, and small. It worked with a small number of non-state groups who nevertheless operated geographically too far to lend real military support. By 2016, ISIS branches had spread over to Afghanistan, Algeria, the Caucasus, Libya, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen among other places where local partners helped it enhance propaganda, collect funds, and exchange technical assistance and foreign fighters. The cooperation allowed ISIS to oversee a growing network of associates, spread its jihadist ideology, and maintain a semblance of momentum, which helped it attract more recruits (Moghadam 2017, 10). The security scholar Daniel Byman notes that newly associated groups provided ISIS both “strategic reach”, by enabling it to establish bases from which to attack nearby countries, and “fallback options, creating potential refuges for its leaders” if the group suffers military losses in its core region (Byman 2016a, 81). ISIS’s affiliates in eastern Afghanistan and Pakistan were minor groups. Far from its main battleground in the Levant, ISIS procured logistics and operated in a limited manner from safe houses of local terrorist groups, Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LEJ), both of which were part of Pakistan’s effort to harness Sunni militancy and use it to advance its domestic and regional agenda. ISIS, TTP, and LEJ united against Shias and Sunni moderates in Pakistan. The TTP was a sister group of the Afghan Taliban, long patronized by Pakistan as a tool of affecting Afghanistan’s internal affairs, a goal that it shared with al-Qaeda (which itself went to oppose ISIS), but the TTP did not cooperate with ISIS (The Economist 2016, 34). Elsewhere, ISIS accepted pledges of allegiance from groups like Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis, a violent group in Sinai that used the ISIS link to get resources. It also accepted Boko Haram’s allegiance in 2015 but the allegiance business was never a sole commitment as elsewhere. Just like ISIS accepted allegiance from other groups like al Shabab in Somalia, Boko Haram sent greetings to

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yet others, including those that ISIS turned hostile to, such as al-Qaeda, al Nusra, al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, and al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (al-Ansari 2018, 282). However, the interlocking alliance system across small groups of ideological extremists never established a solid support basis for one single group, even for ISIS. Further, ISIS delegated some operational authority to field commanders in the Philippines, Indonesia, Somalia, and Nigeria and encouraged affiliates and lone-wolf agents to carry out attacks on their own before it would claim responsibility. The geographic spread of violence carried by its affiliates allowed ISIS for some time to engineer a series of so-called individual jihad operations with violent sympathizers living across the East and West. But this project, too, was logistically constrained and did little to help ISIS operations in main fronts in Syria and Iraq. To reiterate, geographic distance posed a principal challenge. That is, the further the geographic distance, the higher the risk became that the affiliates would carry out unintended actions. Even though ISIS maintained logistical and digital connections with foreign affiliates, it found it difficult to keep divergent priorities from undermining joint operations. Distance ultimately helped increase the chances of misunderstanding and miscommunication and encourage some affiliates to falsely claim credit for attacks and act outside ISIS’s plans. Such behavior forced ISIS to spend extra resources to monitor the affiliates and prevent them from shaping ISIS’s preferences and demanding more resources. The ubiquitous principal-agent tension never stopped as an organizational concern for the group’s cohesion and integrity (Byman 2014, 443–444). Internal Cohesion and Popular Support Internal cohesion is commonly seen as one of the most important factors for terrorist organizations’ success. In ISIS’s case, it can be seen in its effort to build a state, as it called itself as such, and provide order, services, and administration for people who constitute the ‘state’. We would see the learning effect of ISIS’s internal cohesion when we observe evidence of group consolidation through state-building and accommodation of foreign recruits learned from external examples. In fact, ISIS state-building efforts progressed with the acquisition of wilayat (administrative districts). By 2015, ISIS had gained nineteen wilayat in Syria and Iraq and fifteen in places like Libya, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and Algeria (Lister 2016, 387). The development came with a relative dearth of known revolt and fairly effective recruitment of generally loyal foreign fighters (Byman 2019). ISIS accepted fighters from rival groups if they would repent and those without military experience, although it vetted them strictly to sustain loyalists (Byman 2016b, 151–152; Khatib 2015, 23). Recruits had their personal information logged and passports copied before receiving weapons (Byman 2015, 174), and underwent three-month religious courses as well as military training, where only half survived because in training as they used live ammunition before their loyalty was tested by going

Learning Patterns and Failures 93 to front lines. ISIS filled the suicide-bomber corps with foreigners (more fanatical believers of ISIS’s ideology than locals) and intelligence and security personnel with locals (Johnston et al. 2016). With over 80 nationalities, the recruitment of fighters allowed ISIS to expand its base across ethnic and tribal divisions (Ahmad 2016). Many ISIS members were former Iraqi officials who fought Western forces earlier. ISIS recruited them by presenting itself as the extension of Osama bin Laden and disapproving of Ayman al-Zawahiri to establish a sense of superiority over al-Qaeda. A small number of Western jihadists operated in Europe following radicalization through foreign fighting or contact with veterans (Hegghammer 2013; Perliger and Milton 2016). All this came along with a degree of mistreatment and eventual failure to capitalize on foreign recruits. For instance, ISIS saw Russian-speaking Chechen fighters pursuing non-ISIS agenda of steering ISIS into attacking Russians in Chechnya as ISIS expanded overseas operations. When assigned to lower ranking than Iraqi and Syrian locals, the Chechens overruled their leaders through intimidation and caused trouble with Syrians who saw them unwilling to understand cultural nuances and implement sharia in ways that overstepped boundaries set by ISIS leadership (Lister 2016, 3). There were some cases of non-Iraqi emirs entering mosques to give sermons without religious credentials and using their positions to take over people’s houses and treat them poorly. Such events caused ISIS to either remove foreign nationalities or make them foot soldiers. This failure to accommodate foreign recruits and build the state internally was a stark example of the failure to learn from foreign examples in which independence-minded leaders did much to learn through conflict. This failure led to internal controversy over the question of the best strategic approach. ISIS members disagreed over whether to target the Near Enemy (secular apostate regimes in Muslim-majority nations) or the Far Enemy. The Near Enemy had been the dominant school of al-Qaeda’s thought until it changed to a Far Enemy strategy and attacked the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998 (Springer, Regens and Edger 2009, 59–60). Near Enemy proponents feared that overseas expansion would overstretch ISIS defense and make it less able to control global operations (ibid., 67). Nevertheless, ISIS chose to attack the Far Enemy to get more publicity, increase recruits, and shock victims temporarily, as seen in attacks in Paris in 2015 and Brussels in 2016. Yet attacking the Far Enemy was costly to ISIS and caused victim outrage and did not offer a long-term strategy. Eventually, the effect was not only that ISIS’ internal unity suffered from quarrels over strategic issues; the group also increased the number of its international enemies, whose primary concern was to crush a terrorist organization that targeted civilians in their own countries. Finally, ISIS also had a mixed record with mobilizing popular support, or ‘winning the hearts and minds of people’ – another example of learning that ISIS leaders could have achieved but ultimately failed to do so. Winning popular support has long been known as an important factor to complement

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military operations through cooperation with locals and to enhance manpower, funds, and intelligence. As such, ISIS ran utilities, repaired roads, subsidized food, policed communities, provided administrative services, and paid civil servants who supplied those services for it. ISIS also limited military operations to religiously conducive areas. Most of its nearly 20,000 military operations between 2011 and 2014 occurred in Sunni-dominated areas in Iraq, while Shia-dominated areas saw less violence (Price et al. 2014). So, ISIS clearly learned the value of these actions from history. Yet, the “learning” was incomplete if not misleading, because it came with the mistreatment of civilians (Maher 2014, 209–211). The carnage ISIS wrought about across the region through the course of war had the effect of destroying any semblance of trust it had built. Killing of civilians, torture, and enslavement of women were always unpopular and resulted in backlash from Sunni Iraqis (Byman 2015). Between April 2013 and the end of 2015 when NATO drone strikes were heavy, ISIS attacked citizens and property more often than military and police targets and kidnapped over 6100 civilians.3 Consequently, able civilians fled at a greater extent than before, as seen in the 2015 mass exodus to Europe, before being rejected by European customs and forced to go home only to develop even more grudges toward ISIS. ISIS never solved the dilemma between what may be seen as the necessary use of violence and the need to target discriminately. Military Power Military power is a key indicator of learning by war-fighting organizations; after all, centuries of military history present ample opportunities for terrorist groups to learn from the past and put its lessons into practice. As I mentioned above, however, it may become difficult for terrorist leaders to learn from history once war begins. On the one hand, there are simply too many ‘lessons’ to be learned from history, on the other, commanders are generally busy with the daily routine of operations and cannot spend enormous amounts of time to choose what lessons to learn. Throughout much of its conflict against foreign forces, ISIS used a combination of conventional and guerrilla operations to sustain military strategy to achieve its political ends. The hybrid model fits the complex terrain of central and eastern Syria and northern Iraq – a mix of desert, small villages, towns, and mountains. ISIS members hit enemy forces, ran away quickly, and used basic technologies like improvised explosive devices as well as drones. However, battles inside big cities subjected ISIS to heavy enemy fire. As a result, ISIS set up command centers in less-known mosques in the east of Aleppo and nearby deserts. Moreover, long roads linking the cities through desert made the use of advanced technology difficult by exposing ISIS movements to enemy fire and stretched operational coverage. Thus, ISIS limited military operations to religiously conducive areas, as noted above. Most of its nearly 20,000 military operations between 2011 and 2014

Learning Patterns and Failures 95 occurred in Sunni-dominated areas in Iraq, supposed to be the bastion for its organization and its ‘state’, while Shia-dominated areas saw less violence (Price et al. 2014). At the same time, ISIS’s military operations had initially showed innovation and successful expansion, but this same success showed a lack of enough training and learning. Operations often entailed a “modern system” of force employment, in which it used tactics like cover, concealment, dispersion of forces, and combined arms – use of captured tanks and foot soldiers led by suicide bombers – to increase operational efficiency (Biddle 2006). For defensive measures, it used deep positions in urban areas whenever possible to temporarily retreat, rest, and regroup, and counterattacks in the desert. The use of this modern system arguably enabled the 2014 blitzkrieg that ISIS carried out – an operational culmination of six factors that the security scholar Kenneth Pollack raises: poor adversaries (including Syrian forces and Jabhat Fatah al-Sham), ISIS’s strong resolve, use of elites to run ISIS, hierarchical organization, presence of foreign fighters, and use of diverse military cultures (Pollack 2019, 494–507). However, there is little evidence that demonstrates that ISIS ever mastered more sophisticated components of the modern system, such as offensive operations like breakthrough and exploitation, designed to induce enemies’ systemic collapse while fighting through a fraction of territory, because ISIS forces were neither resourced nor trained enough for such missions. ISIS never had a chance to conduct defense-in-depth operations because much of the territory it controlled – chunks of long roads surrounded by enemycontrolled areas – was curved out in such an elongated fashion that there was little space to strategically retreat. ISIS rarely had enough troops to overwhelm opponents in urban battles and reinforce the frontline, leaving its counter-attacks often uncoordinated whenever done. So, ISIS fought years of hybrid battles in what was essentially a defensive war, as it declared its intent to do so in the Dabiq magazine in 2014. The defensive war strategy was sound in concept, but it ultimately proved to be a bad strategy to adopt because it kept ISIS vulnerable to air strikes and resistance not only from the Western coalition but also from other rivals it confronted, such as Hazm Movement, Syria Revolutionaries Front, Jaysh al-Fateh coalition in northern Syria, and al-Jabha al-Shamiya coalition in northern Aleppo. Information Strategy It remains true that in the 2010s, ISIS was one of the most capable insurgent groups that Western states have fought. This is particularly the case with regard to the group’s ‘social media jihad’. “ISIS is winning the cyber war”, journalists declared in 2017 (Byers and Mooney 2017). The group’s use of cyber tools for information and communication was so effective that the New York Times wrote that “ISIS Is Winning the Social Media War”, based on an internal memo of the State Department (Mazzetti and Gordon 2015).

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Many scholars have said that cyber capabilities are not only a forcemultiplier but a ‘force-equalizer’ – a weapon of the weak to be used for strategic judo. Naturally, a few scholars ended up expecting ISIS to win the information war, if not the war itself. Security analysts maintain that ISIS successfully learned in wartime to become effective in some aspects, such as the use of disinformation campaigns and recruitment. ISIS used social networking services and other basic online networking devices quite effectively to recruit members, allow limited communications between combatants, and elicit support and donations from sympathizers. The journalist Abdel Bari Atwan shows that ISIS commanded the use of social media platforms, underground cyber markets, and even commercial computer games as a means of drumming up support bases (Atwan 2019). Many followers would retweet ISIS messages, use apps to let ISIS control their Twitter accounts, and spread pro-ISIS content (Byman 2015, 177). ISIS carefully avoided broadcasting military operations and their locations, leaked false information about planned operations so as to deceive enemies, and circulated its commanders’ pictures with fake names. In 2016, it was reported that over half of the 9000 visual media that ISIS released focused on themes outside battlefields, such as religious practices and life in the caliphate, and only a small portion of its releases showed killings (Milton 2016, iv). ISIS agents avoided e-mail, WhatsApp, and mobile phones to prevent tracing by foreign intelligence. Instead, they used emissaries and prearranged communication via video games or chat function inside the games, which allowed them to hide and blend in with people playing the games and used cryptic phrases to pass messages. They used multiple devices to avoid detection of uploaded encrypted e-mails, such as multiple virtual private networks (VPNs) to divert IP addresses, CCleaner to erase online history, and TrueCrypt to upload encrypted messages into a dead inbox on a Turkish server (Speckhard and Yayla 2016). ISIS hacked and released sensitive information about US military personnel in 2015, which demonstrated that ISIS was able to steal critical intelligence and use it to disrupt foreign government operations. The use of information warfare helped ISIS in several ways to achieve a number of tactical successes. Yet the whole cyber campaign that ISIS waged never translated into what matters more in the strategic success of weakening enemy networks and scoring major cyber attacks on its NATO adversaries or attaining political ends. The primary reason is that its information security was more of a failure. ISIS essentially failed to nurture and deploy what could have been a potent cyber force against its opponents because of unsophisticated information security and management. Its opponents constantly intercepted a stream of inside information on recruits, operational plans, and financial activities (Fung et al. 2014; Singer and Friedman 2014, 104–106, 154–155). A good example of this is a series of US operations in 2016. It involved Cyber Command’s Joint Task Force ARES in Operation Glowing Symphony, which was designed to get inside the ISIS network and

Learning Patterns and Failures 97 disrupt its media operation. Cyber Command reported that ISIS’s system administrators were not as careful as they should have been. They used the same accounts repeatedly over an extended period of time to manage the whole online network, upload media content, make financial transactions, and share files carelessly. At one point in 2016, ARES sent a phishing email to the administrators who clicked on them. ARES entered the network, opened backdoors, dropped malware on servers, stole passwords and encryption keys, and deleted files (Temple-Raston 2019). It is possible that ISIS’s failure in cyber operations contributed to the severe undermining of the group in late 2019 when Baghdadi was assassinated. ISIS’s use of necessary security protocols for the sake of system defense was overall insufficient. Given the inherent military disadvantage to external opponents, ISIS ended up struggling to operate effectively without compromising critical information about its activities. The trade-off between digital operations and information security increased the chance that outsiders would know what ISIS was up to strategically. Research in international security shows that the horizontal spread of basic information technology during conflict often helps pacify areas affected by insurgencies and as such, undermines their aim. For example, increased use of mobile communications reduced the extent of violence in Iraq in the 2000s because noncombatants saw a reduction in the transaction costs of cooperating with authorities and tipped coalition members off on violent groups (Shapiro and Weidmann 2015). Conclusion In this chapter, I examined ISIS’s learning processes between 2013 and 2019. More precisely, I investigated how ISIS as a terrorist organization failed to learn and, when it learned, how it failed to effectively execute this learning. The chapter drew on ample cases of insurgent groups to explore and examine if ISIS learned from insurgencies in different countries. I traced how open ISIS was toward learning from historical experiences, how successful it was in interacting with foreign counterparts, and what sequence of actions it adopted in building a knowledge based on what it learned from history. In conclusion, it can be said that ISIS was rather closed to opportunities of learning from other groups even if strategic materials have been published elsewhere and made available for consumption. ISIS was also politically disorganized and technologically behind some of its rivals. While the terrorist organization was initially a reasonably resilient military force and showed relative success in the employment of cyber tools for social media, later dynamics showed that ISIS in its political and military interactions with its rivals did poorly, although not fatally so because it was essentially aided by lesser performances by some of its rival groups. Examining ISIS’ learning in different areas and in different countries proves to be a useful exercise for policymakers to understand the events that

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helped ISIS increase the odds of survival through 2019. ISIS’s experience reinforces the notion that it remains hard for terrorist organizations to learn in wartime, conduct self-reflection, and execute policy based upon the study of opponents and history. A greater degree of exposure to materials and experiences outside the immediate area of conflict would help these leaders prepare better for war against more powerful rivals. Notes 1 I define terrorists broadly as those non-state actors who use the threat of violence as a means to coerce their targets to change policy. 2 See also De La Calle, in this volume. 3 This is consistent with Max Abrahms and Philip Potter’s (2015) finding that when leadership is degraded by drone strikes, terrorist groups are prone to targeting civilians.

References Abrahms, M. and Potter, P. (2015), ‘Explaining Terrorism: Leadership Deficits and Militant Group Tactics’, International Organization 69:2, 311–342. Ahmad, A. (2016), ‘Going Global: Islamist Competition in Contemporary Civil Wars’, Security Studies 25:2, 353–384. Al-Ansari, A.U. (2018), ‘Sermon for ‘Id al-Adha 1434/2013’, in: A. Kassim and M. Nwankpa (eds.), The Boko Haram reader: From Nigerian preachers to the Islamic state (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Atwan, A.B. (2019), Islamic State: The Digital Caliphate (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press). BBC (2019), ‘Who Was Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi?’, BBC News, October 28, 2019, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-50200392 Biddle, S. (2006), Military Power: Explaining Victory and Defeat in Modern Battle (Princeton: Princeton University Press). Byers, A. and Mooney, T. (2017), ‘ISIS is winning the cyber war. Here’s how to stop it.’ The Hill, March 21, 2017, https://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/defense/325082isis-is-winning-the-cyber-war-heres-how-to-stop-it/ Byman, D. (2005), Deadly Connections: States That Sponsor Terrorism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Byman, D. (2014), ‘Buddies or Burdens? Understanding the Al Qaeda Relationship with Its Affiliate Organizations’, Security Studies 23:3, 431–470. Byman, D. (2015), Al Qaeda, the Islamic State, and the Global Jihadist Movement: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Byman, D. (2016a), ‘ISIS Goes Global: Fight the Islamic State by Targeting Its Affiliates’, Foreign Affairs March/April 2016, 76–85. Byman, D.(2016b). ‘Understanding the Islamic State—A Review Essay’ [Review of The Rise of the Islamic State: ISIS and the New Sunni Revolution; The ISIS Apocalypse: The History, Strategy, and Doomsday Vision of the Islamic State; ISIS: The State of Terror; Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS; ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror, by P. Cockburn, W. McCants, J. Stern, J. M. Berger, J. Warrick, M. Weiss, & H. Hassan]. International Security 40:4, 127–165. Byman, D. (2019), Road Warriors: Foreign Fighters in the Armies of Jihad (Oxford: Oxford University Press).

Learning Patterns and Failures 99 Duiker, W. (2007), ‘Ho Chi Minh and the strategy of people’s war’, in: M.A. Lawrence and F. Logevall (eds.), The first Vietnam war: Colonial conflict and Cold War crisis (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press). Fishman, B. (2016), The Master Plan: ISIS, Al Qaeda, and the Jihadi Strategy for Final Victory (New Haven: Yale University Press). Fung, D., Ryan, P., Shapiro, J., and Wallace, J. (2014), Managing a Transnational Insurgency: The Islamic State of Iraq’s “Paper Trail,” 2005–2010 (West Point, NY: Combating Terrorism Center). Gartner, S. (1999), Strategic Assessment in War (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press). Gerges, F. (2016), ISIS: A History (Princeton: Princeton University Press). Hashim, A. (2006), Insurgency and Counterinsurgency in Iraq (Ithaca: Cornell University Press). Hegghammer, T. (2013), ‘Should I Stay or Should I Go? Explaining Variation in Western Jihadists’ Choice between Domestic and Foreign Fighting’, American Political Science Review 107:1, 1–15. Hoffman, B. 2017. Inside Terrorism (New York, Chichester, West Sussex: Columbia University Press). Johnston, P.B., Shapiro, J.N., Shatz, H.J., Bahney, B., Jung, D.F., Ryan, P., and Wallace, J. (2016), Foundations of the Islamic State: Management, Money, and Terror in Iraq 2005-2010(Santa Monica, CA: RAND). Katagiri, N. (2015a), Adapting to Win: How Insurgents Fight and Defeat Foreign States in War (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press). Katagiri, N. (2015b), ‘ISIL, Insurgent Strategies for Statehood, and the Challenge for Security Studies’, Small Wars and Insurgencies 26:3, 542–556. Khatib, L. (2015), ‘The Islamic State’s Strategy: Lasting and Expanding’, Carnegie Middle East Center Brief, June 2015, https://carnegieendowment.org/files/islamic_ state_strategy.pdf Lister, C. (2016), The Syrian Jihad: Al-Qaeda, the Islamic State, and the Evolution of an Insurgency (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Maher, S. (2014), Salafi-Jihadism: The History of an Idea (London: Hurst). Mandela, N. (1994), Long Walk to Freedom: The Autobiography of Nelson Mandela (Randburg, South Africa: Macdonald Purnell). Mansour, P. (2009), Baghdad at Sunrise: A Brigade Commander’s War in Iraq (New Haven: Yale University Press). Mao, T.-T. (2005), On Guerrilla Warfare (Mineola, NY: Dover Publication). Masri, L. and Abdelaty, A. (2019), ‘ISIS sent out an alarmingly detailed manual telling its followers around the world how to wage guerrilla warfare’, Reuters, May 24, 2019, https://www.businessinsider.com/instructions-from-headquarters-islamicstates-new-guerrilla-manual-2019-5 Mazzetti, M. and Gordon, M.R. (2015), ‘ISIS Is Winning the Social Media War, U.S. Concludes’ The New York Times, June 12, 2015, https://www.nytimes.com/2015/ 06/13/world/middleeast/isis-is-winning-message-war-us-concludes.html McCants, W. (2015a), The ISIS Apocalypse: The History, Strategy, and Doomsday Vision of the Islamic State. (New York: St. Martin’s Press). McCants, W. (2015b), ‘The Believer: How an Introvert with a Passion for Religion and Soccer Became Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, Leader of the Islamic State’ The Brookings Essay, September 1, 2015), http://csweb.brookings.edu/content/research/essays/ 2015/thebeliever.html

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Miller, E. (2016), ‘Patterns of Islamic State-Related Terrorism, 2002–2015’, START Background Report, August 2016, https://www.start.umd.edu/publication/patternsislamic-state-related-terrorism-2002–2015 Milton, D. (2016), Communication Breakdown: Unraveling the Islamic State’s Media Efforts (West Point, NY: Combating Terrorism Center). Moghadam, A. (2013), ‘How Al Qaeda Innovates’, Security Studies 22:3, 466–497. Moghadam, A. (2017), Nexus of Global Jihad: Understanding Cooperation among Terrorist Actors (New York: Columbia University Press). Perliger, A. and Milton, D. (2016), From Cradle to Grave: The Lifecycle of Foreign Fighters in Iraq and Syria (West Point: Combating Terrorism Center), https://ctc. usma.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Cradle-to-Grave2.pdf Pollack, K. (2019), Armies of Sand: The Past, Present, and Future of Arab Military Effectiveness (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Price, B., Milton, D., al-‘Ubaydi, M., and Lahoud, N. (2014), The Group That Calls Itself a State: Understanding the Evolution and Challenges of the Islamic State (West Point: Combating Terrorism Center), https://www.ctc.usma.edu/the-groupthat-calls-itself-a-state-understanding-the-evolution-and-challenges-of-the-islamicstate/Ryan, M. (2013), Decoding Al-Qaeda’s Strategy: The Deep Battle against America (New York: Columbia University Press). Serena, C. (2014), It Takes More Than a Network: The Iraqi Insurgency and Organizational Adaptation (Stanford: Stanford University Press). Shapiro, J. and Weidmann, N. (2015), ‘Is the Phone Mightier Than the Sword? Cellphones and Insurgent Violence in Iraq’, International Organization 69:2, 247–274. Shatz, H. and Johnson, E.-E. (2015), The Islamic State We Knew: Insights Before the Resurgence and Their Implications (Santa Monica, CA: RAND). Singer, P.W. and Friedman, A. (2014), Cybersecurity and Cyber War: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Speckhard, A. and Yayla, A. (2016), ‘The ISIS Emni: The Inner Workings and Origins of ISIS’s Intelligence Apparatus’, Perspectives on Terrorism 11:1, 2–16. Springer, D., Regens, J., and Edger, D. (2009), Islamic Radicalism and Global Jihad (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press). Stern, J. and Berger, J.M. (2016), ISIS: The State of Terror (New York: Ecco). Temple-Raston, D. (2019), ‘How the U.S. Hacked ISIS’, National Public Radio, September 29, 2019, https://www.npr.org/2019/09/26/763545811/how-the-u-shacked-isis The Economist (2016), ‘Lethal Partners: Islamic State in Pakistan’, The Economist, November 19, 2016, https://www.economist.com/asia/2016/11/17/lethal-partnersThurber, C. (2014), ‘Militias as Sociopolitical Movements: Lessons from Iraq’s Armed Shia Groups’, Small Wars and Insurgencies 25:5–6, 900–923. Turner, J. (2015), ‘Strategic differences: Al Qaeda’s Split with the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham’, Small Wars & Insurgencies 26:2, 208–225. Weiss, M. and Hassan, H. (2015), ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror (New York: Regan Arts). Wright, R. et al. (2016), The Jihadi Threat: ISIS, Al-Qaeda, and Beyond (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace).

Part 2

Learning beyond Organizations

6

Adaptation of Propaganda and Communication The Online Magazines of al-Qaeda and the Islamic State Compared Boyan Hadzhiev

The rapid development of internet-based information and communication technologies in recent years has not failed to have an impact on terrorist organizations, some of which have acquired impressive skills for using the opportunities of online tools for their means. The adoption of new technologies and their successful use for information and communication strategies have become a crucial part of the competition of ideas and narratives – the so-called battle for the hearts and minds. The new technologies have several advantages: the decentralized structure of the internet supports and facilitates the spread of propaganda and thus allows clandestine organizations to promote their narratives and transmit information to their supporters without complying with the current balance of power on the physical battlefield. Information materials that can be produced and disseminated with few resources can have a wide influence, thus leading to maximum efficiency. Most importantly, perhaps, with the internet, terrorists no longer depend on the mass media for the amplification and interpretations of their acts, as was the case in the past, but rather, they are themselves able to create, edit, shape, and distribute their own information contents and are thus widely in control of the interpretations and narratives they aim to convey to their target audiences. This chapter investigates the use of online media using the example of the two leading Islamist terrorist groups – al-Qaeda (AQ) and the Islamic State (ISIS). Both organizations are characterized by their strong presence in the virtual space, and their remarkable capability of using the new media has significantly helped them to achieve their goals of intimidation, radicalization, and training, as well as gaining widespread support. More specifically, both organizations used online magazines as a principal means of information and communication with their follower base: Inspire (AQ), published from 2010 to 2017, and Dabiq (ISIS), running from 2014 to 2016. While these magazines are just a part of a much larger jihadi media universe (Matusitz 2021),1 they are emblematic of the two organizations and have both had a remarkable impact. In particular, this chapter seeks to track the role that Inspire and Dabiq played in the communication of the organizations both with the outside world in DOI: 10.4324/9781003361435-8

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general and, even more importantly, with their audience of potential supporters. The analysis identifies and compares the main communication goals pursued through Inspire and Dabiq and examines the role that these played in the distribution of information content directly to different audiences – in the form of online propaganda to spread their ideological messages, intimidate opponents, and attract new followers, but also through the dissemination of knowledge and lessons to train supporters and motivate potential activists to commit attacks in the groups’ name. It demonstrates the organizations’ ability to successfully adapt to a changing information environment and, more generally, to the context in which they are operating. Moreover, it sheds light on an underexposed topic of terrorist learning, namely how and with which focus core organizations disseminate lessons to supporters and potential future attackers beyond their internal structures. The magazines Inspire and Dabiq have been chosen for this research for several reasons. Published in English, they were the most influential online journals of terrorist organizations globally and had a remarkable impact. Both magazines were easily accessible on the internet and they were tools for wider communication strategies, demonstrating how terrorist groups impose their propaganda on the virtual space. While the two magazines essentially served the same information and communication purposes, the analysis also reveals interesting differences in the approaches of the two organizations. The following sections will first give some theoretical background on the significance of communication in terrorism and the role of new media in general and for terrorist communication goals in particular. Then, the background of the respective magazines will be briefly touched upon before the specifics of the content analysis of the material are described. The analysis is based on a category and coding system capturing the main communication goals drawn from the literature. These categories are then applied to the articles of the magazine (over 400 in total), capturing whether a goal is present or not. In this way, Inspire and Dabiq will be examined in terms of their media content and communication goals, identifying their main themes and tracking changes over time that hint at adaptations. After the individual considerations, a comparative section will analyze potential differences in the media approaches of AQ and ISIS and look to outline new trends and problems. Understanding Terrorism in Terms of Communication and the Role of New Media A key objective of any terrorist attack is to spread the terrorist messages to more people than those directly affected by the physical act. In other words, terrorism can be described as a violent method of communication (Schmid and de Graaf 1982, 14). Alex P. Schmid formulates a communication theory of terrorism based on what the terrorists themselves want to present about terrorism as propaganda and popularizing their deeds and motives. He outlines that violence and propaganda have a lot in common. While violence

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is aimed at changing behavior through coercion, propaganda aims to achieve the same through persuasion. Terrorism can be understood as a combination of the two (Schmid 2010). The communication aspect is a fundamental component in almost every definition of terrorism. Terrorism is a “politically motivated tactic involving the threat or use of force or violence in which the pursuit of publicity plays a significant role” (Weinberg, Pedahzur, and Hirsch-Hoefler 2004, 786). By creating and participating in a well-directed campaign, terrorists can successfully ‘conquer’ people’s minds by creating an atmosphere of fear, thus manipulating the target audiences on an emotional level. In terms of a communication perspective, Boaz Ganor contends that a terror attack usually has a fairly limited physical effect and that its effectiveness lies rather in its ability to get the terrorists’ message across (2004, 34; Rothenberger 2015, 487). The famous phrase of Brian Jenkins from the 1970s, “terrorism is theater” (1974, 1), aptly captures this close link between terrorist acts and public attention. Most terrorists carefully prepare their violent “choreography” to attract media attention (Hoffman 2006, 174), to intimidate the enemy audience, and to gain their followers’ support. Terrorism, through the use of violence against a limited number of victims, aims to intimidate, coerce, and persuade others beyond those (Schmid 2005, 138). Given the limited communication resources available to terrorists only a generation ago, it is not surprising that terrorists often focused on exploiting traditional mass media (Bockstette 2008, 12; Hoffman 2006, 200). In the modern information age, however, attracting attention is an increasingly achievable goal – for terrorist organizations just as for anyone else. The technological revolution in the late 20th century has fundamentally changed the information environment. A wide range of new technologies in connection with the rapid spread of the internet has created conditions in which basically everyone can potentially be simultaneously a producer and distributor of information content, and this also considerably changed the face of terrorism. Terrorist organizations no longer rely upon the conventional line from the terrorist act via the amplification by conventional media to public attention; rather, influencing public opinion and imposing propaganda through direct channels and in a self-controlled way has in many cases become a leading component of these groups’ overall media strategy. As Liane Rothenberger contends regarding terrorist “strategic communication”, “instruments of persuasion and co-operation are getting more and more important” (2015, 483). AQ and ISIS are the most prominent examples for this, and it is an ironical side-note that some of the fiercest opponents of globalization have come to be among the most globalized and networked groups on the planet, and the most skilled in using the instruments provided by globalization. One of the key problems that terrorists traditionally faced is that different audiences – enemy states, the general population, and established or potential supporters – have different expectations, and one act of terrorism is unlikely to

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produce the desired message for all of them. With the advent of the Internet and its key functionalities, modern terrorist organizations cannot only deliver their messages directly to the public without being edited, censored, or altered; they can also shape their narratives and mold their image for specific target groups. Propaganda can thus be directed toward a committed audience to strengthen resolve or toward an uncommitted audience to win sympathy and support. It can variously be focused on the terrorists’ actual or would-be constituents, the public at large, the enemy government and its bureaucracy and security forces, or even inwardly on the underground fighters themselves as a means to promote and enhance internal cohesion and morale (Hoffman 2006, 199). Therefore, terrorist organizations’ communication model is today increasingly audience-oriented and determined by continuous narratives presenting ideas, causes, and socio-political contexts in which these organizations operate. Sharing information about their deeds, goals, visions, and techniques gives them the opportunity to reach their audiences without the need for mainstream media or direct clandestine channels. Sympathizers and potential sympathizers who want to learn more about the organization and its worldview have the opportunity to do so. They can access specific information without difficulty, which significantly facilitates radicalization and recruitment. In other words, in the modern information context, terrorist communications – both external and internal – are much more flexible and effective than in earlier media environments. The Goals of Terrorist Communication There are different typologies of the objectives of terrorist communication (Bockstette 2008; Rothenberger 2015). Brigitte Nacos (2007, 20–24), in her influential book Mass-mediated Terrorism, distinguishes four important goals that terrorists seek to accomplish by manipulating mass-media: (1) Getting attention/awareness, (2) having their motives recognized, (3) getting respect and sympathy with their supposed constituency, and (4) gaining legitimacy. With regard to the first communication goal, (1) attracting attention and intimidating target populations and governments, the strategy of engaging the public through the spectacle of violence is effective, as global media networks readily reflect political violence. However, the terrorist’s messages reach the information environment only in a filtered way, because the media have learned to frame them. Today, with the possibilities of the internet, terrorist organizations can complement or even substitute mass-media and circumvent the latter’s counterstrategies against being manipulated. Thus, they can film their operations on the battlefield or record the speeches of their leaders and publish such information directly and without restrictions, which puts traditional media in a dilemma and confronts them with a review of their practices, procedures, and standards. Since the informational content is freely available online, the media cannot ignore this information. Therefore, traditional news

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organizations are increasingly in a position to follow the flow of news rather than to lead it. Beyond just spreading general fear and chaos, the attention gained through terrorist communication serves the purpose of (2) explaining and spreading the grievances and message of the organization. Terrorists in general do not want to be seen as ‘madmen’ but as rational actors, and they want their political motives to be recognized and discussed. Often, their acts of violence already communicate some form of symbolic meaning, for example by choosing specific dates or targets that are apt to convey a message. Here again, the new media allow terrorist groups to communicate their messages and narratives much clearer and control them more effectively. For example, ISIS presents itself as a major defender of the oppressed Sunni in the Middle East and the only force that can resist the ‘enemies of Islam’. While traditional media would contextualize and relativize these motives, in self-controlled online media they can be promoted in an unfiltered way. One of the most important goals for any terrorist organization is (3) attracting the sympathy of their supposed constituency and radicalizing potential supporters. Without the ability to raise support, it would be doomed to disappear. Their online presence allows terrorist organizations to communicate their messages directly to their audiences and provide a wealth of information about their mission, and background (Seib and Janbek 2011, 58). The unfiltered and targeted presentation of messages increases the visibility and influence among communities that share the causes and motives of the struggle. Propaganda can be finetuned, like preparing slick videos or even computer games for younger generations and longer and more complicated lectures for others. One aspect that has been revolutionized with online media is the ability to disseminate information and instructions about successful tactics within a decentralized network, or even to a wider audience of sympathizers who are not part of the structures of the organization itself at all. The AQ strategy of a “leaderless jihad” (Sageman 2008) was based on the idea that disconnected but motivated individuals who were not able to attend physical training camps or make connections in Western societies would be able to access information and instructions easily on the internet, learning the ‘how-to’ of jihad at home. Finally (4), terrorists want to appear on primetime TV to obtain not only large-scale publicity but also the aura of legitimacy that such media attention conveys (Wilkinson 1997, 52). By making regular appearances in the media and being treated as a force to be reckoned with, terrorist organizations strive to gain a status as quasi-legitimate actors on the world stage. Today, with the use of the internet, terrorist organizations can have their own online presence, which allows them to present themselves like legitimate political organizations and tailoring an image of being such. Nevertheless, this is perhaps the only communication goal that does not derive direct benefits from the use of new media. Through the new media a particular person,

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group, or organization could acquire popularity, but not legitimacy, as this depends on the reception of an observer (COT 2008, 21–22). In other words, legitimacy ultimately has to be given from the outside – even though presenting a compelling narrative may enhance that chance. The Role of Inspire and Dabiq Magazines The virtual space is thus becoming increasingly important for the sustainability of terrorist organizations, which in turn have more and more transformed into communication entities producing and disseminating exceptional videos, photos and online propaganda. This use of online communication instruments should be seen as one integrated approach aimed at achieving propaganda and communication goals. For example, social media offer opportunities for interacting with supporters and recruits; sharing of terrifying footage makes it possible to intimidate the enemy; video-sharing can reflect a variety of goals – seeking ransom, propaganda of the deeds by the leaders of the organization, covering successful military battles, and more (West 2016). Magazines, on the other hand, have a specific role (Matusitz, Madrazo, and Udani 2019). They allow for more in-depth analysis of the political and military situation, and they allow to unite several propaganda goals in one information source. The wide range of topics covered in a single issue is a hallmark of terrorist online magazines. The magazines focus on the idea of unity, the quest for truth, the holy war, or the Islamic umma, as well as on instructional material and examples of jihadist role models. The magazines are able to present the essence of the struggle and a coherent story, combining material on both its ends and means (Conway, Parker, and Looney 2017; Novenario 2016). Inspire magazine, first published by Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) in January 2010, was the brainchild of two Americans, Anwar alAwlaki and Samir Khan. The publishers identified themselves as al-Malahem Media Foundation. The magazine was notable for its engaging format, an unconventional combination of propaganda and technical elements, and its focus on inspiring followers to engage in “individual jihad” against the West (Reed and Ingram 2017, 6). Its how-to guide section ‘Open Source Jihad’ took up a trend of terrorist instructional material that can be traced back at least to the late 19th Century and bomb-making manuals produced by anarchist groups in the 20th Century (Reed and Ingram 2017, 3). From the start, the magazine distinguished itself from other materials until then available on the market, which was often rather limited and showed little variation (Dziewanowski 2019, 342). Inspire offered guides for firearm use or bomb making as well as tactical advice for terrorist attacks, while at the same time giving space to famous voices from within the global jihadi movement. In July 2014, ISIS’ al-Hayat (‘Life’) Media Centre published the first issue of Dabiq. The name was taken from a small town in northern Syria identified in

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some Hadith texts as the eventual site of an apocalyptic battle between victorious Islamic armies and the forces of ‘Rome’, thus aligning ISIS’ military strategy with an eschatological interpretation of end-time prophecy (Droogan and Peattie 2017). Published in several languages, Dabiq magazine became the symbol of ISIS’ online propaganda. The main message presented in the magazine is a call for Sunni Muslims to join and defend the ‘revived’ caliphate. As an organization, ISIS sought greater political and religious legitimacy by presenting itself as a major defender of Islam and the Arab-Sunni community as a whole. In sum, ISIS presented itself as the sole protector of the Arab caliphate, which must fight with infidels and win a just war. Inspire and Dabiq are demonstrations of the successful creation and dissemination of online propaganda. Both terrorist organizations, at a relatively low cost, directly and without censorship, were able to achieve their main communication goals and to position themselves on the media agenda. These magazines allowed sympathizers to follow the story, ideas, causes, and goals of both organizations at different time periods. An important aspect is that, despite their common enemies and origin, ISIS and AQ have been in a clash of dominance for the leadership of the Global jihad, a fact that makes it particularly interesting to compare their media outputs and flagship magazines. Methods and Data In the following, I will use content analysis to trace the main goals of terrorist organizations in their use of media outlets. The categories used in this empirical study are based on the four main communication goals described by Nacos (2007, 20–24), as mentioned above: attracting attention; promoting motives, gaining sympathy, and acquiring quasilegitimacy. However, as those categories were developed mainly with traditional mass-media in mind, for the analysis a modified system with five categories will be used: the first two communication goals of (1) attracting attention and intimidating the enemy as well as (2) explaining and diffusing the terrorist’s motives can be pursued more efficiently bypassing the filter of mass-media but are otherwise functionally the same. With regard to the third goal, getting respect and sympathy, as the internet allows for a direct channel to potential supporter audiences, this seems too broad a category and does not capture all aspects of communication that new media allow for. It has therefore been differentiated into two categories: (3) Radicalization and recruitment is focused on inspiring people to join the organization or the fight in general, while (4) dissemination of information is aimed at providing sympathizers with more general background and arguments about jihad. Nacos’ fourth goal of gaining quasi-legitimate status, as explained above, depends on the reception and interpretation of a third party and cannot be captured from the sender material alone (or only indirectly, from the first two goals). Instead, the additional goal of (5) training/instructing has been added,

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as this was largely limited to clandestine ways before the internet and is not a goal that can be directly achieved through mass-media (even if indirectly through demonstration effects). Table 6.1 presents the definitions and coding rules to identify these goals in the material. In the content analysis, the individual article in the available issues of Inspire and Dabiq from 2010 to 2017 (16 and 15 issues with 218 and 204 articles in total respectively) is the unit of analysis, with an article marked if a specific category is present or not. The communication goals are tracked in every single article, as one article may seek to achieve several goals at the same time. Consequentially, because the pursuit of more than one goal is usually present in any given article, the number of goals is greater than the number of articles (in theory, the maximum number of codings is therefore the number of articles in an issue times five). As the texts and issues differ considerably in their length, the analysis will use relative shares rather than raw numbers.2

Table 6.1 Operationalization of communication goals Main goal

Articles related to

Attracting attention and intimidation

Demonstration of power and potential; the inability of the government to protect the population; reflecting successful operations (attacks, battles, etc.); punishment of “enemies” and infidels (executions, captives, etc.); control of territories; social control; destruction of enemy sites; acquisition of loot. Promotion of motives; clarification of the cause and reasons for the struggle; demonstrating the fairness of the cause. Highlighting injustices (colonial past, historical humiliation, etc.); God’s providence as a motive for the struggle and the “righteousness of the cause.” Stories about the martyrdom and heroism of the group’s fighters; calls to join the organization; presentation of the group as the main defender of Islam; statements of allegiance; undermining the authority of “competing” organizations and movements (including moderate Islam). Presentation of stories/narratives/interviews with prominent members of the group; interpretations of religious texts, presentation of data on major issues (economic, social, geostrategic), etc. Presentation of combat tactics; instructions for using weapons; instructions for making bombs; dissemination of “best practices”.

Diffusion and recognition of motives

Radicalization and recruiting

Dissemination of information

Training and instructions

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Inspire and Dabiq Magazines as a Part of Two Different Online Strategies The main part of the two magazines consists of various articles, interviews, propaganda materials as well as photos and graphics. The magazines’ articles reflect various issues and allow the achievement of a wide range of propaganda goals. Part of the articles are in-depth analyses of the political, military, and economic situation, reflecting the views of the authors and key leaders of the relevant organization. The journals also contain addresses from the organizations’ leaders, and separate articles are dedicated to the martyrdom of killed members or to the promotion of successful military battles. The magazines focus on the ideas of unity, the quest for truth, the holy war, and the Muslim community. They describe in an emotional way the organizations’ struggle to re-establish the ‘golden era’ of Islam. A key objective is to radicalize more people and to increase the support for the organization. Additionally, recruitment and instructions are important goals. The following sections provide summaries of terrorist communication goals attempted through articles in Inspire and Dabiq. The main data presented in Figures 6.1 and 6.2 are the date of the issue, the category, and its relative share among all goals in each issue.3 Tables 6.2 and 6.3 show the number of pages and the number of articles to see more clearly the relative share of the presence of certain goals. Thus, the data allows us to identify which goals were deemed of what importance in a specific issue and to compare these foci with other issues over time (reflecting the terrorist groups’ priorities and adaptations) and between the two magazines in general. This comparison will be made in the third section of the empirical part. Inspire and al-Qaeda

Initially, attracting attention had the largest share in Inspire magazine, but over time the dominance of this communication goal gradually declined. The upward trend in the first issues is due to the fact that the magazine was new and its main purpose was to attract attention and to demonstrate the strength and capabilities of the organization. Unlike the following issues, the first two numbers contained many more articles aimed at terrorizing the enemy’s society and instilling fear. It is important to note that attracting attention is also a leading objective in the “special” issues (3, 7, 11). These editions are dedicated to successful terrorist attacks and the publication of information about them served as an additional accelerator for the spread of fear and uncertainty among the enemies. In subsequent issues, the goal of attracting attention and intimidation becomes a secondary concern, and the messages are increasingly inward-oriented, targeted at the communities close to the organization.

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Boyan Hadzhiev 100% 90% 80%

12

PERCENTAGE OF ALL GOALS IN ISSUE

18

25 15

11

20 32

14

4 4

12

17

40

43

17

20

36

14 13

10 0%

38 37

30

7

16

15

17

19

35

19

23

11

10

25 21

22 8

4

Aracng aenon/Inmidaon Radicalisaon/Recruitment Training/Instrucons

39

26 18

42 13

21 27

36

25

13

30

26 27

19 43

36

12

24

18

34

19

10%

14

28

17

20%

12

32 40

37

40% 30%

16

25

17

60%

10

21

16

70%

50%

5

11

7

13

Diffusion of moves Disseminaon of informaon

Figure 6.1 Inspire Magazine – Share of goals per issue. Source: Author’s Creation.

Table 6.2 Inspire Magazine – Overview of issues Issue

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

Total number of goals sought

41

37

12

40

38

28

10

25

33

36

23

27

47

30

28

16

Total number of articles

18

15

5

18

16

16

5

10

17

16

11

15

17

15

15

9

Pages in issue

67

74

23

67

70

61

30

62

62

32

40

71

112

87

90

48

Another important goal is the diffusion of motives. Contents related to this communication goal mark a stable presence in the contents of the magazine. The peak of this trend is marked by contributions that reflect the processes associated with the Arab Spring. Inspire magazine presents AQ as a major driver behind the riots aimed at seeking change in the Arab world. In general, the diffusion of motives consistently remains a central issue. From the data presented in Figure 6.1, it can be concluded that the most important communication goal pursued by the authors of Inspire magazine most of the time was radicalization and recruitment. Contents related to this goal are constant and have the highest relative share in different issues, with the exception of the “special issue” no. 3, although there is a certain decline in the later numbers. A growing objective of Inspire magazine is to disseminate information both regarding role models and data and concrete training materials and instructions. The section called “Open Source Jihad” is specifically dedicated to the latter goal. The ability to disseminate instructions and provide explanations for combat tactics is of particular importance to the magazine’s authors. These instructions have been put into practice in some of the attacks carried out in

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the United States and Europe, for example in Boston and Nice (Conway, Parker, and Looney 2017, 191).4 The ability to disseminate instructions and provide detailed explanations for weapons, tactics, and ways to carry out attacks is of particular importance to the authors of Inspire magazine. In almost every issue of the magazine there are tuitions or instructions for guidance on how to fight, and what tools and weapons to use. Diverging cases are issue 7 and issue 11, as well as issue 5, which is dedicated to the Arab Spring and political processes. On the other hand, issue 3 is dedicated to a successful attack on a cargo plane and presents facts from the attack and instructions for future reiterations. The objective is to spread ‘good practice’ and share lessons in order to inspire readers to carry out similar attacks again. The authors quite explicitly express this intention in formulations such as the following in Issue 3: “Now that you have seen how it works, what it does to global security, and how much fear it strikes in the enemies of Allah, we reveal the technical side of the bomb including our scientific findings“ (Fall 2010, 10). Another example can be found in issue 11 of Inspire (Spring 2013, 11–12), where the authors elaborate on how effective “lone jihad strikes” can be, using the Boston attacks as a case study. They talk about how attacks are “inspired by Inspire”. Again, they share “good practices” such as how and where to place a bomb: the “finish line where large crowds cheer from, reporters and media cameras gather to capture the final steps” is regarded as “an excellent choice”. They continue with the analysis of the second bomb positioning: “50–100 yards away and 13 seconds later from the first one. It was also in the opposite direction of the racers, the direction leading crowd is expected to run in reaction to the first explosion.” These ‘leading and tricks’ are just a small example of how the magazine shares information in order to teach its followers the details of terrorist tactics. The readers of Inspire can find detailed information such as instructions and practical advice on how to carry out a terrorist attack in an easy and affordable way. Learning and training depends on the availability of materials and ideas to be published in the journal. In general, almost every issue has space for the inclusion of such instructions. In summary, the instructions presented in the journal are accessible and easy to apply and provide the necessary potential for learning and development. It should be noted that when special issues are published (issue 3 of November 2010: attack on a cargo plane; issue 7 of September 2011: commemoration of the anniversary of September 11, 2001; issue 11 of spring 2013: reflecting the Boston attacks of 2013), they are, among other things, aimed to demonstrate successful practices of learning new tactics and inspiring similar terrorist attacks in the future. These issues are dedicated to successful, low-cost attacks, which should serve as an additional catalyst for intimidation of enemy society. Generally, the main audiences targeted by Inspire magazine’s messages are: the constituency supporting the terrorist organization, potential sympathetic communities of domestic and foreign publics, the adversaries of the terrorist organization (usually US and European governments), the members of AQ, the media outlets, and the society of the adversaries (especially the Western public).

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How-to guides on bomb-making with materials at hand, tactics for using cars as weapons against crowds of people, etc. are an integral part of Inspire magazine’s content. Interestingly, most attacks in the West following this ‘low cost’ principle were conducted by ISIS rather than AQ supporters, which shows that the materials uploaded to Inspire can be used for training purposes by radicalized individuals across ideological affiliations, whether AQ, ISIS, or any other organization, and not even necessarily jihadist.5 What can be retained, however, is that the lessons and advice on how to stage terrorist attacks have been implemented, which can be regarded as proof of Inspire magazine’s contents being instrumental for teaching and learning purposes. The tactic of using cars to attack, or run over, civilians is perhaps the best example of this. It was published and popularized by the magazine and later used by numerous terrorists to promote their specific political agendas. In this sense, widely accessible online materials, and especially Inspire magazine with its “Open Source Jihad” section, are a kind of repository of knowledge and experience that can be used not only by a particular organization but ultimately by any individual or group of people who have motivation for this. This allows an organization – in this case AQ – to influence strategic and operational aspects of terrorism beyond its immediate membership. Dabiq and the Islamic State

Haroro J. Ingram (2014) analyzes three traits of ISIS’s information warfare: (1) the use of a multidimensional, multi-platform approach that simultaneously targets friends and foes to enhance the reach, relevance, and resonance of its messaging; (2) the synchronization of narrative and action to maximize 100% 90%

15

21 31

26

19 27

27

PERCENTAGE OF ALL GOALS IN ISSUE

70%

19 33

28

19

19

18

16

33

32

34

7

11

41

39

31

24

18 18

12

40%

26

11

24

12

19

18

24

18

16

20% 10%

18

26 23

21

50%

30%

25

30

21 42

16

36

80%

60%

23

25

35 21

39

43

38

36

24

28

28

32

28

27

0%

Aracng aenon/Inmidaon Radicalisaon/Recruitment Training/Instrucons

Diffusion of moves Disseminaon of informaon

Figure 6.2 Dabiq Magazine – Share of goals per issue. Source: Author’s Creation.

32

Adaptation of Propaganda and Communication

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Table 6.3 Dabiq Magazine – overview of issues Issue

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

Total number of goals sought

19

29

34

33

21

26

36

25

40

31

32

33

27

28

38

Total number of articles

10

15

12

12

10

12

15

13

15

15

16

18

13

12

16

Pages in issue

50

44

42

56

40

63

83

68

79

79

66

66

56

68

82

operational and strategic effects in the field; and (3) the centrality of the ISIS brand to its entire campaign, shaping the perception of contested populations. Consequently, the group considers information operations as the central strategic mechanism through which politico-military activities should be framed. With the use of simple messages, catchy phrases, and striking imagery, all augmented by actions in the field, the fundamental purpose of ISIS is to shape the perceptions and polarize the support of its audiences. Speed and diversity messaging are also an essential means through which ISIS maintains its presence in the theatre of information warfare and they play a crucial role in maximizing the relevance of ISIS’ propaganda campaign. In this context, the most important aim pursued by Dabiq magazine is attracting attention and intimidation. This is mainly due to the desire to demonstrate power, boast successful military operations and the seizure of territories, and to present opponents (especially local communities) as helpless and unable to oppose the organization. The intimidation of the West is pursued by constant threats of terrorist acts and the glorifying documentation of already successfully accomplished ones, such as beheadings or assassinations in Europe. The magazine has a section with quotes from Western experts and politicians who talk about ISIS, aiming to show the confusion and fear that has gripped the West. An example of this are the following words of British war photographer and correspondent John Cantlie: “What started as an explosive movement in Iraq has now suddenly turned into a global phenomenon that the West and the democratic world as a whole is ill-equipped to deal with” (Dabiq 9, May 2015, 74). Quotes such as this are intended to show that even the West cannot deny the strength and influence of the organization. The promotion of motives and the dissemination of information are two goals that have a relatively smaller share, but nevertheless a constant presence. In general, Dabiq seeks to justify the cause and principles of ISIS and explain its main goals and mission. Much of the analysis is related to the “literacy” of the reader about the more important economic, geopolitical, and social problems associated with Muslims and the Middle East. The magazine attempts to ‘expose’ Western colonizers; to hold the responsibility of ‘puppet’ governments; and to reject any possibility of moderation in the Muslim communities. Radicalization and recruitment are also leading goals for Dabiq magazine. Depicting the group as the main defender of Islam and presenting the heroism

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of its fighters is a particular call for increased support for the organization. Quotes of popular jihadists are very common for the magazine, and they are aimed at recruiting new people and radicalization. For example, a rousing 2004 quote from the founder of ISIS’ predecessor organization al-Qaeda in Iraq Musab al-Zarqawi leads the contents page of most issues: “The spark has been lit here in Iraq, and its heat will continue to intensify – by Allah’s permission – until it burns the crusader armies in Dābiq.” Dabiq‘s authors have a clear understanding that recruiting new people is critical for maintaining their organization and dealing with its many enemies. Therefore, they have consistently sought radicalization as an important goal of the journal. The magazine is targeted at several main audiences: on the one hand, these are the communities that support the caliphate, potential sympathizers (local and foreign/diaspora audiences), and members of ISIS and related organizations. On the other hand, the media, as well as the societies and the government of opposing states, like the United States and Western European countries, but also Iran, the Shiite community, and the Kurds. The publication of an English version of the magazine allows for a wide range of audiences to be reached by the organization’s messages and threats. Generally, Dabiq authors subordinate content to doctrine and propaganda, more precisely clarifying the path to the establishment of the Caliphate. The content and communication strategy presented in Dabiq follows the logic of a “spiritual insurgency” of a violent new religious movement (Bunker 2016, 26). The magazine presents messages related to “a new era” of “might and dignity for the Muslims” (Dabiq 2, July 2014, 8). In particular, ISIS believes that it has exceptional access to religious and sacred knowledge. Anything that represents the world outside the Islamic State is depicted as wrong and corrupt. The world is seen as a dualistic split between the spiritual and the mundane, between good and evil, the overriding goal being to eliminate evil in the name of salvation and liberate the world with violence as the only possible means. In this conception, violence is committed in the name of God and thus justified as being necessary and obligatory. The mythical and idealized past is the basis for restructuring the new public order – the establishment of the Caliphate uniting all true believers, with the ultimate goal of imposing God’s law that guides everything. The members of the movement thus present themselves as warriors of God who fight in the name of Islam. Dabiq highlights what is seen as advantages of ISIS over other Islamist groups, related to military successes, administrative control over
territory, social order, institution building (including the security forces), provision of public services, etc. At the peak of ISIS’s power, its propaganda focused as much on selling the idea of the caliphate as on battlefield developments (Munoz 2018). The magazine provided a wealth of reports about guerrilla operations with the aim of giving the impression that ISIS was inflicting terrible losses on its enemies. Later, however, the territorial losses and military defeats forced ISIS to adjust its propaganda strategy to the new conditions. ISIS thus changed the tenor of its messages, which were now focusing on the necessity to transition into a long

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guerrilla war of attrition. The organization was ready to sacrifice territory for the sake of winning time. The messages of the organization reflect a process of adaption to realities on the battlefield: while before, the key message had been that the victory was near, in the latest issues of the magazine the organization was calling for patience as a main precondition to prevail in the war. Before 2016, the strategy presented by the organization was the establishment of a strong Caliphate able to prevail in a direct clash with the enemy. Dabiq focused on the attacks against local forces, especially in Iraq and Syria, but also elsewhere. The goal again was to show willingness, self-denial, and superiority. Many of the messages circulated by the Dabiq magazine were related to the demonstration of the inability of local authorities to cope with the pressure exerted by ISIS. There was an attempt by the organization to instill a sense of helplessness on the opponents and to boost the support for the success of ISIS. One of the main ideas which has been a permanent backdrop of ISIS’s strategy is the self-presentation as an alternative and as the primary vanguard of Sunnis. ISIS has often expressed concerns and addressed specific grievances or outbursts of discontent related to the Sunnis. The organization has stressed “uniting the Sunni world” as its most important long-term goal (Dabiq 11, September 2015, 57), implying that the Sunnis were under attack from enemies trying to annihilate them. The main intended effect of this presentation has been to convey the idea of ISIS being the only group able to defend Sunnis against oppression, and the only way to survive being to unite under the banner of the Islamic State. This call to join the organization and to fight for its cause has been permanent in ISIS’ communication strategy. A striking aspect revealed in the analysis of Dabiq is the lack of articles directly related to the goal of practical instructions and training. This likely reflects the more local focus of ISIS on a territorial Caliphate in Syria and Iraq, where recruiting fighters to this war theatre was more important, and training would be received there. Even for attacks in the West, ISIS at first preferred effective centrally-directed operations. Even as the group’s power declined and it relied more and more on self-radicalized lone actors for attacks in the West, the focus in Dabiq did not change. The terrorist group apparently relied on other means to convey such information, maybe also profiting from the fact that such instructions were already made available by its competitor, AQ. Comparison between the Two Magazines Table 6.4 compares the average shares of the five communication goals in Inspire and Dabiq, allowing for a direct comparison on which the two organizations concentrated the most. Attracting attention and spreading fear among the enemy audience is the largest category in Dabiq magazine. ISIS mainly seeks to showcase its capabilities and commitment to influence the audience and to demonstrate strength. AQ, on the other hand, through its magazine Inspire, is primarily seeking radicalization and recruitment, the main purposes being to convince new followers to join their cause as well as

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Table 6.4 Average shares of goals in Inspire and Dabiq Attracting attention and intimidation Inspire 15% Dabiq 33%

Diffusion and recognition of motives

Radicalization/ Recruiting

Dissemination of information

Trainings/ instructions

18% 17%

33% 28%

20% 22%

14% 0%

to provide instruction materials on conducting terrorist attacks. It is important to note that offering instruction and training in this way is widely absent in Dabiq as a goal. Starting in May 2015, the relative share of radicalization and recruitment has increased in Dabiq magazine due to the need for fresh forces. Messages such as “the Islamic State is remaining” (Dabiq 12, November 2015, 18) are common and their main purpose is to convince followers that joining ISIS means joining a sustainable organization that will overcome all challenges. This is argued through a number of reports about successful operations in Iraq and Syria, and also abroad. However, this also had the effect of putting the organization in competition with other terrorist networks, notably AQ, for recruiting new people, and online propaganda has become a key element in this. Therefore, some of the messages included in Dabiq are aimed at ridiculing and discrediting competing jihadist organizations, again, especially AQ. For example, ISIS accused AQ of allying with Western powers and betraying the Islamic ummah: “The crusader Americans can be assured, al-Qā’idah’s main war now is against the Islamic State.” (Dabiq 11, September 2015, 56). Such messages are carefully and consistently backed up by texts and photos. Another part of these messages shows the successful government of the territories controlled by ISIS, and the order and prosperity imposed there. The main purpose of this is to motivate Muslims to join the new caliphate and commit themselves to it. In other words, one of the main propaganda goals of the organization is to impose a self-image as Allah’s deputy and unifier of true believers. In the very first issue, the authors of the magazine clearly stated this: “The Islamic State – on account of what Allah has blessed it with of victory, consolidation and establishing the religion – is regarded as an unquestionable imamah” (Dabiq 1, July 2014, 26). Two years later, before the Caliphate began to lose ground but when its enemies were already massing, the authors defiantly referred to the organization as “the only true bastion of Sharī’ah rule on earth” (Dabiq 14, April 2016, 13). Additionally, both organizations, AQ and ISIS, seek to alienate young Muslims from other communities in order to attract them by creating a sense of mission. This rivalry for attracting new recruits is one of the main lines of contention between the two organizations and hence between their propaganda strategies.

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The analysis of the journals shows that the first major difference between the two organizations is their respective vision for the future. For AQ, the most important thing is the destabilization of the Western world, achieved through acts of terrorism, exporting the conflict, and attacking the remote enemy. The establishment of the Caliphate comes only after that as a remote goal. Thus, Inspire lays greater emphasis on distributing information among the movement that is useful and inspiring for jihadists abroad. ISIS, by contrast, regards the proclamation of the Caliphate and the Islamic nation, destined to come into direct clash with the infidels, as the primary task. In Dabiq magazine, ISIS builds its image of a religiously aggressive movement that seeks complete social transformation and destruction of its enemies in a concrete place and time. Hence, its messages are more about spreading the glory of the existing Caliphate and encouraging readers to join it. The second major difference is the means used. The messages in Inspire focus on inspiring lone attackers through ideological indoctrination and providing practical instructions through the Open Source Jihad section. The magazine proposes ways to make weapons at home, use vehicles, and other accessible approaches to inflict damage on the enemy. For ISIS, the lead is the demonstration of force in direct confrontation with the enemy, not so much the imposition of fear through terrorist attacks by lone wolves (although this tactic was also later used by ISIS). The third difference is in the scope of the enemy. ISIS focuses on instilling fear by demoralizing its opponents, who are not only the West but also the more moderate representatives of the Muslim ummah. Unlike AQ, which focuses primarily on the far enemy (Western Europe and the United States), for ISIS, dealing with the near enemy is paramount to building a strong Caliphate. Therefore, instilling fear and attention-grabbing among close communities are major goals for Dabiq magazine. It predominantly presents propaganda portraying the Syrian and Iraqi armies as incapable of opposing ISIS. Local populations are given the feeling of being helpless in a situation of existential threat, and joining the organization is presented as the only alternative to death. Conclusion The clash of ideas in the information space and the battle for the ‘hearts and minds’ has become an increasingly important factor in the development of terrorism. Therefore, the analysis of the communication tools used by organizations such as AQ and ISIS is an important tool for understanding their nature and their goals. In the face of physical defeats and military losses, the utilization of the opportunities offered by the internet for propaganda and psychological warfare remain central pillars in the strategies of both ISIS and AQ, and both terrorist organizations today depend heavily on the Internet as an important part of the organizations’ strategies. This reinforces the importance and the role attached to the careful selection of images presented for symbolic or ideological impact.

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As the example of online magazines has demonstrated, ISIS and AQ have shown remarkable capacities of appropriating new information and communication technologies. They were able to flexibly learn and adapt, in order to make use of the rapid developments in this field for their particular goals. By adapting to the new technologies, both organizations have been able to achieve significant results at a low cost. Both organizations have created, shared, and used a variety of information to achieve their main propaganda goals – spreading fear, radicalizing potential followers, promoting their motives, and more. In their online magazines, this is more than evident: with relatively few resources, the organizations were able to create information materials and disseminate their propaganda messages directly and with a wide reach to diverse target audiences. Despite all similarities, there are also some important differences between the two magazines in terms of content and goals. AQ is predominantly focused on the communities close to the organization with the far enemy as the major adversary. The content of Inspire is primarily inward-directed, mainly addressing sympathizers and followers. In other words, the main audience targeted by Inspire is the communities that are already close to the organization. The main goal pursued by the magazine is radicalization and providing knowledge to sympathizers and potential attackers abroad. Dabiq, by contrast, seeks first and foremost to draw attention to and demonstrate the power of the territorial Caliphate. Another key goal is the intimidation of the enemy. Radicalization and recruitment are important goals, in order to strengthen the Caliphate in its war. The principal adversary is the near enemy, embodied by moderate Muslims and the general regional populations, who reject the organization. Especially the example of Inspire’s Open Source Jihad section shows in an exemplary way how, with the help of online media, terrorist organizations are today able to more easily bridge the gap between the organizational level and the wider movement of supporters and sympathizers. The wide reach and direct, unfiltered communication that the new online media allow for are efficiently used not only for propaganda purposes but also for directly involving potential activists of the wider movement on the operational level of violent activities. In terms of learning, this is a particularly interesting achievement in two regards: first, it is a demonstration of how the organization uses the new tools as media of learning, in the sense of training and dissemination of tactical knowledge, and second, it can be said that the organization has learned to ‘outsource’ violent activity, in the sense that formal members of the organization are no longer the sole perpetrators of terrorist acts. The example shows how terrorist organizations are today able to make themselves independent of classical media and convey the messages and images that they desire to spread, in a very targeted and self-controlled way. The new online tools of communication and information allow them to get maximum attention, in principle even without the need for carrying out major terrorist attacks themselves as an attention-grabbing tool.

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Due to the overall change of the situation, neither Inspire nor Dabiq has published a new issue since 2017. Although Dabiq was temporarily replaced with a follow-up magazine called Rumiya, there was no continuity and after a few issues, it also stopped being published. While online magazines of the likes of Inspire and Dabiq continue to play a certain role in the global jihadi movement (ADL 2022), there is currently an adaptation to a new information strategy both with new messages and with new forms of electronic media. Thus, for example, much of the communication has been moved to social messenger tools. These developments further stress what this chapter has set out to demonstrate: the flexibility and adaptability of terrorist organizations in dealing with, and taking advantage of, a rapidly changing communication environment. Information, and the dissemination of messages and symbols, are extremely important in contemporary conflicts, and AQ and ISIS officials are fully aware of this. Creating images and meanings, and distributing them directly to target audiences, contributes to the shaping of the informationconflict environment. All the more is it important, from a counterterrorism perspective, to analyze and understand terrorists’ communication strategies. Notes 1 2 3 4

See also Helferich, in this volume. Data is available upon request. Percentages are rounded and may therefore not add up to exactly 100. Zekulin (2021) argues, however, that while some of the suggested strategies did appear following their publication, often this occurred only after a considerable time lag, suggesting that instructions had only a weak real-time influence. See also the contribution by Weil in this volume. 5 See also Weil, in this volume.

References Anti-Defamation League (2022), ‘Islamists Launch Three New Magazines, Hoping One Will “Inspire”’, ADL Center on Extremism Blog, September 8, 2022, https:// www.adl.org/resources/blog/islamists-launch-three-new-magazines-hoping-onewill-inspire Bockstette, C. (2008), Jihadist Terrorist Use of Strategic Communication Management Techniques (Garmisch-Partenkirchen: George C. Marshall Center). Bunker, R.J. (2016), Old and New Insurgency Forms (Carlisle, PA: US Army War College Press). Conway, M., Parker, J. and Looney, S. (2017), ‘Online Jihadi Instructional Content: The Role of Magazines’, in: M. Conway, S. Macdonald, L. Jarvis, O. Lehane, L. Nouri (eds.), Terrorists’ Use of the Internet: Assessment and Response (Amsterdam, Berlin, Washington: IOS Press), 182–193. COT Institute for Safety, Security and Crisis Management (2008), Terrorism and the media. Transnational Terrorism, Security and the Rule of Law Project, https:// dokumen.tips/documents/media-and-terrorism.html Droogan, J. and Peattie, S. (2017), ‘Mapping the Thematic Landscape of Dabiq Magazine’, Australian Journal of International Affairs 71:6, 591–620.

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Dziewanowski, J. (2019), ‘AQAP Inspire Magazine as a Tool Motivating to Terrorist Activities’, Internal Security Review 11:20, 339–352. Ganor, B. (2004), ‘Terrorism as a Strategy of Psychological Warfare’, Journal of Aggression, Maltreatment & Trauma 9:1-2, 33–43. Hoffman, B. (2006), Inside Terrorism (New York: Columbia University Press). Ingram, H.J. (2014), ‘Three Traits of the Islamic State’s Information Warfare’, The RUSI Journal 159:6, 4–11. Jenkins, B.M. (1974), International Terrorism: A New Kind of Warfare, Report P5216 (Santa Monica, CA: RAND), https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/ papers/2008/P5261.pdf Matusitz, J. (2021), Communication in Global Jihad (New York, NY: Routledge). Munoz, M. (2018), ‘Selling the Long War: Islamic State Propaganda after the Caliphate’, CTC Sentinel 11:10, 31–36. Matusitz, J., Madrazo, A., and Udani, C. (2019), Online Jihadist Magazines to Promote the Caliphate: Communicative Perspectives (New York, NY: Peter Lang). Nacos, B. (2007), Mass-Mediated Terrorism: The Central Role of the Media in Terrorism and Counterterrorism (London: Rowman & Littlefield). Novenario, C.M. (2016), ‘Differentiating Al Qaeda and the Islamic State Through Strategies Publicized in Jihadist Magazines’, Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 39:11, 953–967. Reed, A. and Ingram, H.J. (2017), ‘Exploring the Role of Instructional Material in AQAP’s Inspire and ISIS’ Rumiyah’, Europol Public Information, The Hague, https://www.europol.europa.eu/cms/sites/default/files/documents/reeda_ingramh_ instructionalmaterial.pdf Rothenberger, L. (2015), ‘Terrorism as Strategic Communication’, in: D. Holtzhausen and A. Zerfass (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Strategic Communication (New York/London: Routledge), 481–496. Sageman, M. (2008), Leaderless Jihad (Philadelphia, PA: Pennsylvania University Press). Schmid, A. (2005), ‘Terrorism and Psychological Warfare’, Democracy and Security 1:2, 137–146. Schmid, Alex P. (2010), ‘Frameworks for Conceptualising Terrorism’, Terrorism and Political Violence 16:2, 197–221. Schmid, A. and de Graaf, J. (1982), Violence as Communication: Insurgent Terrorism and the Western News Media (London: Sage). Seib, P. and Janbek, D. (2011), Global Terrorism and New Media: The post-Al Qaeda Generation (New York/London: Routledge). Weinberg, L., Pedahzur, A. and Hirsch-Hoefler, S. (2004), ‘The Challenges of Conceptualizing Terrorism’, Terrorism and Political Violence 16:4, 777–794. West, L.J. (2016), ‘#jihad: Understanding Social Media as a Weapon’, Security Challenges 12: 2, 9–26. Wilkinson, P. (1997), ‘The Media and Terrorism: A Reassessment’, Terrorism and Political Violence 9:2, 51–64. Zekulin, M. (2021), ‘From Inspire to Rumiyah: Does Instructional Content in Online Jihadist Magazines Lead to Attacks?’, Behavioral Sciences of Terrorism and Political Aggression, 13:2, 115–141.

7

Terrorist Tactical Diffusion among Lone Actors Explaining the Spread of Vehicle Ramming Attacks Ari Weil

On July 14, 2016, Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel drove a truck through a promenade in Nice, killing 86 and injuring 458. Over the course of the following year, this method of attack, vehicle ramming, would be taken up by other jihadists in London and Barcelona and the far-right in Western Europe and Charlottesville. It was a tactic that had previously gained widespread use among Palestinian nationalists in Israel in 2015–2016. Why did all these diverse actors choose to take up the same tactic? While their motivating ideologies were varied, the perpetrators had one thing in common: they were lone actors who were not members of any terrorist group. This chapter seeks to understand why terrorist tactics rapidly diffuse to lone actors. Terrorist networks have become generally more decentralized over the last two decades, and lone-actor attacks have risen in prominence (Hamm and Spaaij 2017), yet the field of terrorism studies still lacks an understanding of how tactics might spread to them. Lone actors are individuals who commit terrorist acts but are not formal members of a group and do not receive direct orders from a terrorist organization. I present a theory of intrafield diffusion to explain how tactics are learned and spread among members of one ideological movement (Phillips 2015). Drawing on observational learning theory and the concept of a radical milieu, I show how first movers of a tactic create the potential for a copy-cat effect, and then follow-on propaganda encourages that tactic and leads lone actors to adopt it. Propaganda nudges actors toward specific tactics through two mechanisms: (1) encouragement to conduct a specific type of attack and (2) education about the tactic. However, sequencing is critical: propaganda must be released during an ongoing wave of attacks. When militant groups release propaganda after initial adopters of the tactic have introduced the tactic, this amplifies the tactic, fuels the diffusion process, and increases tactical adoption. However, when propaganda is released in the absence of ongoing attacks, it will not lead to adoption because there is no imitation process for the propaganda to amplify. To understand lone actor learning, I turn to the case of vehicle ramming attacks (VRA). A VRA occurs when an automobile is used as the primary DOI: 10.4324/9781003361435-9

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weapon in the attack, typically to hit pedestrians. This tactic has been used almost exclusively by lone actors;1 of the 181 VRAs from 1999 to 2020, 153 attacks (85%) were carried out by lone actors (see Figure 7.4). This uptake by lone actors makes VRAs an appropriate object of study to understand how lone actors learn. I test this theory by analyzing three clusters of VRAs: (1) jihadists in the West, (2) far-right in North America, and (3) far-right in Western Europe. Within each cluster, I test my independent variables of propaganda and media coverage by comparing the timing of each as the tactic diffuses. I supplement this with case studies of three attacks to elucidate the mechanisms. I find support for the theory: tactics diffuse widely within ideological movements after both first movers introduce the tactic and propaganda comes afterward. However, propaganda produced without ongoing attacks does not correlate with increased diffusion. This study of diffusion provides a theoretical contribution at a key moment in terrorism studies. While terrorist networks have become generally more decentralized over the last two decades, and lone-actor attacks have risen in prominence, the theory on tactical diffusion remains focused on organizations. In focusing on lone actors, I add an additional object of study to the terrorist organizations discussed in this edited volume, while demonstrating that there are still similar mechanisms of learning. While the term ‘lone wolf’ is often used in other studies, I problematize this idea of isolation, showing that lone actors are embedded in radical milieus and have several external sources of learning (Schuurman et al. 2019). These environmental mechanisms—demonstration, encouragement, and education—contribute to lone-actor learning and the decision to adopt a new tactic. This chapter proceeds in five sections. First, I review the literature on terrorist diffusion, which is largely based on organization-centric explanations. Second, I present a theory of intrafield tactical diffusion. Third, I explain the data and methods used. Fourth, I examine two case studies to explicate the causal pathways of lone-actor tactical diffusion. I conclude by examining differences among the cases and how lone actor learning compares to organizational learning. Existing Theories of Tactical Diffusion This study addresses diffusion: the spread and adoption of a new technology, technique, or practice (Rogers 2003, 11–13). I ask why tactics might diffuse to lone actors, and adopt Bakker and van Zuijdewijn’s definition of lone actor terrorism (2015, 9):2 The threat or use of violence by a single perpetrator (or small cell), not acting out of purely personal-material reasons, with the aim of influencing a wider audience, and who acts without any direct support in the

Terrorist Tactical Diffusion among Lone Actors 125 planning, preparation and execution of the attack, and whose decision to act is not directed by any group or other individuals (although possibly inspired by others). The diffusion of tactics to lone actors presents a theoretical puzzle. Terrorist tactics have traditionally spread among militant groups, and existing theories are mainly based on organizational factors. The dominant explanations are drawn from the case of suicide bombing being adopted by various organizations. The first explanation is direct diffusion or group sharing, where terrorist groups share knowledge, capabilities, and resources with other groups. For example, Hezbollah trained PLO members and other Palestinian militants in the 1990s (Cragin et al. 2007; Horowitz and Potter 2014; Trujillo and Jackson 2006). While lone actors do share information online, there is little evidence of in-person training at the level of militant groups. The second explanation is organizational capacity, where a group needs certain traits to adopt a new tactic (Horowitz 2010). Yet lone actors mostly use simple tactics that do not require a lot of capacity, such as shootings, stabbings, and VRAs, so a capacity explanation alone cannot account for lone actor diffusion. A third camp explains tactical diffusion as a function of campaign success. In this model, groups learn what works to coerce opponents and imitate those tactics (Pape 2005; Sedgwick 2007). Pape argues suicide bombing spread because of “terrorist groups learning from each other’s coercive successes” (Pape 2005, 73). However, lone actors are largely not acting in highly coordinated campaigns and rarely achieve demonstrable policy change that would lead to a demonstration effect at the strategic level. One final camp in the literature explains diffusion as a function of imitation. This theory of mediated contagion is based on observational learning theory, whereby organizations or individuals learn new tactics by copying the behavior of others (Schmid and de Graaf 1982, 122). This explanation was derived from the waves of embassy hostage takings and airplane hijackings in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s. Studies found that militant groups saw media coverage of other groups employing these tactics and added them to their own repertoires (Jenkins 1981; Holden 1986; Nacos 2009; Weimann and Winn 1993). Interestingly, the findings match the criminological literature on the contagious spread of suicide and crime due to media coverage.3 The imitative explanation most easily travels because lone actors could plausibly be copying each other, even without direct contact. In the VRA case specifically, Miller and Hayward (2018) argue that the diffusion of this tactic was a function of imitation. However, I argue that imitation alone cannot explain why tactics diffuse to lone actors. VRAs had occurred successfully before 2014; for example, in July 2008 a lone actor used a

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bulldozer to kill 4 and injure 45 in Jerusalem (McCarthy 2008), yet a wave of VRAs did not occur in Israel until 2014. Thus, an additional explanatory variable is necessary. In sum, VRAs have largely been used by lone actors and thus present a new case that is not easily answered by the existing organization-centric theories. The increasing prevalence of lone-actor attacks presents an opportunity to develop new explanations for why tactics spread. While lone actors are not formal members of organizations and do not benefit from direct logistical support, they are still part of a broader radical milieu, from whom they can gain inspiration and cues for action (Malthaner and Waldmann 2014). This suggests that there may be a different mediating variable operating for lone actors: militant propaganda. Theory and Argument What Makes Lone Actors Different: Assumptions of the Theory

The extant imitation theory shows terrorist groups view each other in the mainstream media. In contrast, lone actors exist in dual media environments: the traditional media environment and the militant alternative media (Nacos 2016) (or propaganda) environment. The latter is a radical milieu (Malthaner and Waldmann 2014) of others who support similar goals and adhere to the same extreme ideology. Members of the radical milieu create and share alternative media (Nacos 2016, 49–67) such as magazines and memes. Research has shown that “ties to online and offline radical milieus are critical to lone actors’ adoption and maintenance of both the motive and capability to commit acts of terrorism” (Schuurman et al. 2019, 771). The first assumption the theory makes is that lone actors are receptive to signals from like-minded authorities, such as militant groups or others in their radical milieu. They adhere to an extreme ideology and look to established groups or other like-minded lone actors to learn more, develop these ideas, and get inspiration to act. Lone actors are not simply passive observers in this sphere—they also create and share material.4 Secondly, the theory assumes there is an existing pool of would-be lone actors. This is a theory of mobilization (taking violent extremist action), not radicalization (adopting extreme ideas).5 The theory is ambivalent about the impact of propaganda and media on radicalization. I assume there is a pool of radicalized would-be lone actors who are deciding which tactic to use. This builds on the copycat crime literature, which finds that media coverage of a crime influences those who were already inclined to crime and provides them with a model for a type of crime, rather than being a direct cause of overall increased crime (Surette 2013; Newman et al. 2005, 72–73). Thus, the theory presented below assumes that (1) there is an existing pool of would-be lone actors, (2) that they exist in both mainstream and radical

Terrorist Tactical Diffusion among Lone Actors 127 media environments, and (3) that they are receptive to motivation from likeminded authorities. Intrafield Tactical Diffusion

I present a theory of imitation and tactical adoption that is mediated by militant propaganda. For widespread diffusion to occur within an ideological community, I argue that propaganda about and media coverage of the tactic must both be present. Building on the criminological literature, I assume there are would-be lone actors who see many ongoing attacks occurring in the media and must choose which kind to imitate. Media coverage of a tactic gives the would-be lone actor specific mode. In addition to the inspiration provided by the demonstration effect in mainstream media coverage, propaganda motivates further adoption through the two mechanisms discussed below: encouragement and education. Following the imitation literature, I theorize that media alone can be sufficient for a low level of diffusion through copycatting. Propaganda is then necessary for large levels of diffusion, as it provides inspiration from a likeminded authority for other would-be lone actors to follow on and join in. However, propaganda is not enough on its own to lead to diffusion. Propaganda amplifies the imitation process already occurring through mainstream media coverage by nudging would-be lone actors toward a tactic. This is particularly true for a new tactic—an innovation. Lone actors must see a tactic proven in the real world before they are willing to join in themselves. Figure 7.1 shows this diffusion process.

Antecedent Condition

Independent Variables

First Movers

Media coverage

Mechanisms

Demonstration

Encouragement Propaganda about the tactic Education

Figure 7.1 The diffusion process. Source: Author’s Creation.

Outcome

Intrafield diffusion

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Mechanisms: Demonstration, Encouragement, and Education

There are three mechanisms that facilitate tactical diffusion, one from media coverage and two from propaganda. First mainstream media coverage of an attack gives a demonstration effect. This allows lone actors to see the tactic in use and be inspired to copy if it was particularly tactically successful (Holden 1986). Next, propaganda has two possible mechanisms: encouragement and education. Media from a militant organization can provide encouragement by celebrating those who used the method or by calling for renewed use of that method specifically (Veilleux-Lepage 2017). In this manner, propaganda can highlight the first movers and encourage others to adopt the tactic. For example, AQAP’s Inspire issue 5, released after the Westminster Bridge VRA, described the attacker as “one of the heroes of the lone jihad” and exhorted his achievement of “the true meaning of success in military operation”. Militant media also provides information on how to conduct an attack. Existing literature shows there are limits to what lone actors can learn on the internet without real-world training, but with simple tactics like VRAs educational material can assist the attacker in the planning process (Kenney 2010; Stenersen 2008). With a VRA, perpetrators do not need more than a driver’s license, knowledge of how to drive, and a rented or owned vehicle. Yet militant media can still provide information on operational planning, including what car to drive, where to target, and how to avoid detection in the planning process. For example, the ISIS magazine Rumiyah ran an article on VRAs that included section headings such as “The Ideal Vehicle”, “Vehicles to Avoid”, “Applicable Targets”, and “Preparation and Planning” (Holton 2016). These three mechanisms connect my independent variables of media coverage and propaganda to the outcome of widespread tactical use in a theory of intrafield diffusion. The mechanisms explain how tactics diffuse, while the timing laid out in the theory above identifies when diffusion will occur. If an initial use of the tactic is followed by propaganda, we would expect to see widespread follow-on diffusion. However, if propaganda precedes first movers, then we would not expect to see high levels of diffusion. In the case of VRAs, scholars have argued that contagion and emulation play a large role, especially compared to propaganda (Jenkins and Butterworth 2019; Miller and Hayward 2018, 4; Stoil 2018). In particular, they point out that the 2010 AQAP article on VRAs did not result in an uptake of the tactic (Miller and Hayward 2018, 9). While I agree that emulation is a key component, I argue here that by paying attention to the sequencing of propaganda and attacks, we can understand how the radical milieu amplifies the actions of first movers. Data and Methods To understand overall trends in the diffusion of VRAs, I draw on the Global Terrorism Database (GTD) (LaFree and Dugan 2007).6 Following Miller and Hayward (2018), I only include cases from 1999 onward, where there are

Terrorist Tactical Diffusion among Lone Actors 129 sources and clear event descriptions in the GTD that allowed for verification and further coding of each event by the author. I check each incident for fit under three inclusion criteria for a VRA. An attack counts as a VRA if: a) the vehicle is the primary weapon in the attack, in that the vehicle is used specifically to injure or kill, not to facilitate another form of attack (such as first driving through a barricade and then detonating a car bomb); b) the perpetrator has a political motive; c) the perpetrator is trying to have a psychological effect outside of just the direct victims of the attack (target-victim differentiation). Of the 248 post-1998 cases in the GTD, 67 cases did not meet these criteria and were removed from the sample. I then collect and examine propaganda distributed by the various movements about conducting VRAs. Data on the assailants themselves and the attack narratives are drawn from two sources: court records and open media sources. This information is used to code if the assailant was a lone actor, what ideology they associated with, and what their propaganda exposure was. Since there is limited data on perpetrator motivations and propaganda in the Palestinian nationalist wave, I focus only on the jihadist and far-right waves in this study. Specifically, I focus on waves of VRA usage (1) by jihadists in the West, (2) by the far-right in North America, and (3) by the farright in Western Europe. Examining these clusters in depth allows for an examination of the learning processes for each lone actor. With 181 attacks in the dataset, this project would be well-suited for medium-n coding, in particular coding each attack for if the actor learned about the tactic from mainstream media or propaganda. However, data availability prevents this approach. Not every assailant leaks their planning process, and if this information is available, it is usually in closedsource data such as police files. To get around this, I test my independent variables of propaganda and media coverage by comparing the timing of each as the tactic diffuses within each wave. This helps to identify the sequencing element of the theory (Grzymala-Busse 2011). If my theory is correct, we would expect to see VRAs occurring in large numbers only when propaganda is released after an initial increase in usage of the tactic. If propaganda was released on its own, we would expect low levels of diffusion. I then use case studies of attacks with good data availability to tease out when the mechanisms are operative. This method focuses on how actors learned about their tactics. I employ process tracing to identify at what point in their attack planning trajectory each mechanism was operative (Collier 2011). If a similar attack occurred recently, and/or the attacker mentions inspiration from another attack, that would show the demonstration effect mechanism. If an attacker consumed propaganda that called for more attacks, this would align with the encouragement mechanism. Lastly, if an attacker read propaganda to learn about how to conduct an attack, or their attack aligned closely with instructions from propaganda, this would support the education mechanism.

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The Global Diffusion of VRAs Before examining the waves in-depth, I provide overall descriptive statistics on the use of VRAs. Between 1999 and 2020, 181 VRAs occurred. However, they did not see widespread use until 2014 (Figure 7.2). Yearly VRAs, 1999-2020 50 40 30 20 10 0

Figure 7.2 Vehicle ramming attacks per year. Source: Author’s Creation.

Figure 7.3 shows that the overall increase in VRAs (line plot) is due to its usage by lone actors. The case of VRAs is ideal for testing the lone actor distinction because, unlike other lone assailant cases of stabbings and bombings in recent years, very few VRA cases involved attackers who received direct commands or funding from a terrorist organization (the ‘remote-controlled’ or ‘virtually planned’ model).7 I coded each of the 181 Yearly VRAs, Lone Actor or Group, 1999-2020 45 40 35 30 25 20 15 10 5 0

Lone Actor

Group

Enabled

Unknown

Figure 7.3 Yearly vehicle ramming attacks by actor type. Source: Author’s Creation.

Yearly Aacks

Terrorist Tactical Diffusion among Lone Actors 131 VRAs by Actor Type, Sum of Aacks in 1999-2020 2%

5%

8% Lone Actor Group Enabled Unknown 85%

Figure 7.4 Total vehicle ramming attacks by actor type. Source: Author’s Creation.

VRAs by actor type: (1) lone actor if no operational support was given by a group for the attack, (2) enabled if someone who was not a member of the group received assistance, and (3) group if a group member or members carried out the attack.8 Figure 7.4 shows the distribution of this coding: of the 181 attacks in total, 153 (84%) were carried out by lone actors. Thus, VRAs carried out by lone actors can be examined to determine how tactics spread among this attacker type. Case One: Jihadist VRAs in Western Europe, North America, and Australia Between 2010 and 2020, lone actors associated with the Salafi jihadist ideology carried out 21 VRAs in the West, with the vast majority coming after 2015. Yet AQAP released the first piece of VRA propaganda in 2010. What explains why diffusion occurred in 2016–2017 but not earlier? To understand the diffusion of VRAs among jihadist lone actors, I compare the timing of these attacks to VRA propaganda released by AQAP and IS in the magazines Inspire, Inspire Guide, and Rumiyah.9 This scope was selected because these are official releases that are written in English and target the West. Additionally, these articles are focused on specific tactics. Inspire includes a section called “Open Source Jihad” and Rumiyah has a section titled “Just Terror Tactics”, which both include tutorials and advice for various modes of attack (Reed and Ingram 2017). I periodize two sections of time: a period of low diffusion (2010–2014) and a period of high diffusion (2015–2020). Figure 7.5 shows incidents of jihadist lone-actor VRAs overlaid with VRA propaganda releases. In the first period, propaganda was released on its own and there was low diffusion. In the second period, propaganda was released after an initial spike in usage of the tactic and there was high diffusion (18 attacks). I argue that propaganda fueled the imitation process and led to higher levels of tactical diffusion. Table 7.1 lays out the VRA-specific propaganda releases.

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5

1

Propaganda Release

VRAs per Quarter

4 3 2 1 0

0 Q1 Q3 Q1 Q3 Q1 Q3 Q1 Q3 Q1 Q3 Q1 Q3 Q1 Q3 Q1 Q3 Q1 Q3 Q1 Q3 Q1 Q3 2010

2011

2012

2013

2014

2015

Propaganda

2016

2017

2018

2019

2020

VRA

Figure 7.5 Jihadist vehicle ramming attacks and propaganda. Source: Author’s Creation.

Table 7.1 VRA propaganda in AQAP and ISIS English magazines Date

Magazine

October 2010 March 2013 July 17, 2016 November 11, 2016 March 23, 2017 May 4, 2017

Inspire no. 2 Lone Mujahid Pocketbook Inspire Guide no. 2 Rumiyah no. 3 Inspire Guide no. 5 Rumiyah no. 9

2010–2014: Propaganda/No Media – Low Diffusion

In October 2010, AQAP released the second issue of Inspire, which included a featured ‘Open Source Jihad’ article titled “The Ultimate Mowing Machine”. This article instructed followers to weld blades onto the front bumper of pickup trucks and drive through pedestrian-only areas to create mass casualties. This article was later repackaged and released in March 2013 in a compendium of OSJ articles titled Lone Mujahid Pocketbook (Zelin 2013). Yet even though two pieces of VRA propaganda were released, only three attacks occurred between 2010 and 2014. The two assailants behind the May 2013 attack are reported to have consumed propaganda: while it is unclear if the two assailants read the October 2010 Inspire VRA article, they

Terrorist Tactical Diffusion among Lone Actors 133 had listened to AQAP ideologue Anwar al-Awlaki’s lectures (Dodd and Howden 2013). More VRA propaganda was not released and jihadist VRAs did not occur again in increased numbers until mid-2016. Without ongoing attacks to facilitate imitation at the time of propaganda release, the articles failed to incite further violence. 2015–2020: Propaganda/Media—High Diffusion

In contrast, 2015–2020 was a period of high VRA diffusion in the West. Among jihadists specifically, the tactic was employed 18 times. Of those attacks, 17 were by lone actors (the 2016 attack on a Berlin Christmas market is reported to be potentially remotely directed by ISIS (NPR 2016). Propaganda was again present, with three VRA articles released between AQAP and ISIS. Moreover, 9 of those 17 attackers are reported to have viewed some form of jihadist propaganda. The propaganda release pattern differed in the second period. Whereas AQAP had released VRA propaganda before any attacks occurred, in 2015–2020 propaganda releases followed prominent VRAs. During and after the initial increase in VRAs in Q3 and Q4 2016, three articles were released: Inspire Guide #2 was released shortly after the July 2016 attack in Nice, Rumiyah #3 in November 2016, and Inspire Guide #5 in March 2017. These articles celebrated the attacks and educated potential imitators. For example, AQAP’s fifth issue of Inspire Guide was released one day after the March 2017 VRA in London, and it analyzed the timing, location, and effects of the operation, and implored others to conduct similar attacks. The increase in propaganda output preceded the highest usage of VRAs, with two attacks in Q2 2017 and five attacks in Q3 2017. Propaganda combined with ongoing attacks led to high levels of diffusion. To investigate the mechanisms, I now turn to a single VRA case to evaluate the role that propaganda played in the plot. On October 31, 2017, Sayfullo Saipov drove a rented pickup truck through pedestrians and cyclists along a bike path in New York. During his trial, Saipov told prosecutors that he was inspired to carry out his attack by IS videos he watched on his phone—around 90 videos were found on Saipov’s device (Solon 2017). Saipov stated that he had decided to conduct a lone wolf attack one year beforehand, but he didn’t choose the mode of attack until two months before the attack.10 The timing of his decision coincides with a major jihadist VRA in Western Europe: the August 17 attack in Barcelona on Las Ramblas, one of the deadliest attacks that killed 14 and injured 101 individuals. This may have served as a demonstration effect for him. Once he decided on his mode of attack, Saipov followed ISIS instructions “almost exactly to a T” (Long and Peltz 2017). Saipov began searching online for truck rentals in New York and deliberately chose Halloween because he believed there would be more civilians on the street for the

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holiday; Saipov rented a truck nine days earlier to “practice making turns” and check his attack route.11 Saipov specifically rented a larger vehicle, chose a day when many pedestrians would be outside, and drove the truck along a pedestrian-only zone. Saipov also brought a paintball gun and knives as secondary weapons. All of these steps align with the advice given by ISIS in the JTT article in the November 2016 issue of Rumiyah. This similarity to ISIS instructions suggests the mechanism of education, and the timing of his tactical decision (deciding on a VRA ten months after choosing to conduct some kind of attack) demonstrates the encouragement mechanism. Case Two: Far-Right VRAs in the United States I now trace how vehicle ramming diffused among right-wing lone actors in the United States leading up to the August 2017 Charlottesville attack, focusing on this event to examine the impact of mechanisms in the case. On August 12, 2017, James Alex Fields Jr. intentionally drove his car through a crowd of protestors in Charlottesville, Virginia, killing one and injuring 35 others (Spencer and Pérez-Peña 2017). Fields was attending the two-day ‘Unite the Right’ white power rally where white supremacists violently clashed with counter-protesters. How did he learn about this tactic and how had it spread throughout the far-right in the United States? Like the jihadist attackers, Fields operated in both a mainstream and a militant media environment, both of which contained information about VRAs. In the United States, the tactic arose among the far-right in response to street-blocking protests by the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, and reappeared as other social movements, such as the Dakota Access Pipeline protests, also adopted street-blocking (Grabar 2017). These incidents are not included in my overall sample because they are not captured by the GTD, likely because they did not result in fatalities. However, they do stand to show that the Charlottesville attack did not happen in a vacuum; rather, there was an ongoing wave of far-right VRAs in North America at the time. These attacks led to a series of “Run Them Over” memes being shared online, which encouraged driving into protesters (Veilleux-Lepage 2018).12 In contrast to ISIS and AQAP, this propaganda did not educate but focused on joking about and normalizing the tactic. A popular version was a cartoon of stick figures being run over with the subtitle “All Lives Splatter. Nobody Cares About Your Protest” (Veilleux-Lepage 2018). These memes were shared widely in both the far-right and mainstream conservative circles. Fox News republished a Daily Caller video of ramming incidents in January 2017 (Kludt 2017). Fox writer Mike Raust wrote: “Study the technique; it may prove useful in the next four years” (Kelly 2017). Additionally, even law enforcement officers shared these memes on several occasions (Grabar 2017). This alternative media environment and the ongoing attacks was further bolstered when lawmakers in six states proposed bills that protect motorists who were hitting protestors, none of which passed (see Table 7.2).

Terrorist Tactical Diffusion among Lone Actors 135 Table 7.2 Proposed legislation protecting drivers hitting protestors ( Andon 2017) Month Introduced

State

Bill

January 2017 February 2017 February 2017 March 2017 March 2017 July 2017

North Dakota Florida Tennessee North Carolina Rhode Island Texas

House Bill 1203 Senate Bill 1096 SB 944 and HB 668 House Bill 330 House Bill 5690 House Bill 250

The VRA in August 2017 came out of this dual media environment – coverage of other VRAs and pro-VRA propaganda being circulated in rightwing circles. On the Discord server used to plan the Unite the Right rally (Schiano 2017), the proposed bills gained attention: “I know NC law is on the books that driving over protesters blocking roadways isn’t an offense” (Joseph 2017). The North Carolina bill passed the State House but not the Senate, and thus did not become law (Andon 2017). This demonstrates that the failed bills had an inspirational impact even if they didn’t provide actual legal immunity. That same individual then posted a meme of a combine harvester as a “multi-lane protestor digestor” (Schiano 2017). The presence of propaganda is clear in the Charlottesville attack. On May 12, 2017, James Alex Fields shared a VRA meme in a private Instagram message to a user named “Jamicus”.13 The meme was an image of a car driving through pedestrians and cyclists with the following text overlaid: “Protest, But I’m Late for Work!!”. He added a message that said “When I see protesters blocking”, implying that he would take the same action (see Figure 7.6). Then, on May 16, 2017, Fields posted the same meme as a public post to his Instagram account, with the text on top of the image now reading: “You Have The Right To Protest, But I’m Late For Work”.14 This suggests the encouragement mechanism at work because Fields was engaging with propaganda that joked about the tactic, thus making it easier to commit. While this analysis focuses on the lead-up to the 2017 Charlottesville attack, a very similar pattern emerged in 2020 during the protests against police violence in the United States (Weil 2020). Again, memes circulated that normalized the tactic through jokes and dehumanized the targets by portraying protestors as an inconvenience. Again, these memes spread through both far-right and mainstream conservative circles on social media, including shares by elected officials and law enforcement officers. These encouraging memes in turn make it easier for lone actors to see protestors as targets and choose to drive into a crowd. An alternative explanation is that the far-right in the United States learned from copying the other ideologies (jihadists or Palestinian nationalists) who

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Figure 7.6 Instagram post by James Alex Fields with VRA meme. Source: United States v. Fields (3:18
cr
00011), Exhibit Exhibits second set Redacted Gov’t Exhibits — Document #59, Attachment #2 (Western District of Virginia, July 2, 2019), p. 42, https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/7299259/59/2/united
states
v
fields/.

were using the tactic at the same time. This cannot be summarily ruled out; however, there is no evidence of US drivers reading the jihadist instructional articles. Additionally, the right-wing VRAs and propaganda in the United States focused specifically on driving into protesters, whereas jihadist media did not. So, this appears to be learning from within, where propaganda and emulation of other right-wing drivers led to several VRAs, and ultimately Fields’ attack. Case Three: Far-Right Attacks in Western Europe I now turn to an examination of far-right attacks in Western Europe. I use this final case to probe the limits of my within-ideology theory, as this smaller cluster of attacks suggests an interesting mechanism for future study: revenge as the driver for emulating different ideological movements. While the far-right attacks in the United States were centered around driving through protests, the far-right attacks in Western Europe follow a different pattern. Many of the farright VRAs in Europe came after jihadist attacks or the attacker cited jihadist attacks as their motivation. In this sense, it could be that the far-right lone actors learned from and emulated their jihadist rivals.

Terrorist Tactical Diffusion among Lone Actors 137 Eight far-right VRAs occurred in Western Europe from 2010 to 2020, and four of them followed jihadist attacks. Two far-right attacks followed the June 3 ISIS-inspired VRA on London Bridge. On June 19, a man drove at Muslims outside a mosque in Northern London, and on June 23, a man shouted “white power”, gave a Nazi salute, and then drove a van into a Muslim-owned restaurant in northwest London (BBC 2017a). In France, a driver tried to ram a mosque in Créteil on June 29, following a jihadist VRA 10 days earlier in Paris (BBC 2017b). Lastly, a man deliberately drove into a hijab-wearing woman in Leicester on September 20, citing revenge for a jihadist bombing five days prior (BBC 2017c). Additionally, all six attacks in 2017 were discriminately targeted rather than indiscriminately trying to cause mass casualties. This is particularly stark when contrasted with the jihadist VRAs from 2010 to 2020, of which only 40% were discriminately targeted. While the jihadist attacks, such as Nice, largely tried to hit a densely populated area and cause mass casualties, the far-right attacks specifically targeted certain groups, such as Muslims outside a mosque, a woman walking on the sidewalk and wearing a hijab, or a crowd of refugees. With these overall trends established, I turn now to one attack in detail to examine the attacker’s sources of learning. On June 19, 2017, Darren Osborne drove a van into a group of Muslim worshippers who had just left the Finsbury Park Mosque and Muslim Welfare House in the Finsbury Park area of north London (BBC 207d). According to neighbors, Osborne’s “attitude had changed in recent weeks” following the IS-inspired London Bridge attack on June 3, 2017 (Evans, Furness, and Ward 2017). Osborne began to espouse serious anti-Muslim sentiments after the attack. According to evidence at his trial, Osborne searched repeatedly for information from extremist movements Britain First and the English Defense League (Tidy 2018). In those weeks, Osborne also searched and read online articles about the VRA in May 2013 that led to the death of Lee Rigby. The night before his own attack, Osborne was thrown out of a pub in Cardiff for yelling “[o]ur brothers and sisters are dying and someone needs to do something about it” (Evans, Furness, and Ward 2017). Osborne then rented a van in Cardiff and drove to London (Dodd 2018). He was too late for his initial target, the Al Quds Day march, and searched for an alternative target (Evans, Furness, and Ward 2017). Osborne then ended up finding a mosque in north London, and when prayers ended at midnight and worshippers left, Osborne drove into them, killing one and injuring twelve (Dodd 2018). After the attack, Osborne shouted “I want to kill Muslims,” “I did my bit” and “this is for London Bridge” (Evans, Furness, and Ward 2017). Additionally, a note was found in Osborne’s rented van that he had written the night before that read: “Why are their terrorists on our streets today? We’ve had three recent terror attacks” (Dodd 2018). The three attacks Osborne was referring two were the two VRAs in London and the bombing in Manchester, all between March and June of 2017.

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Osborne’s mode of attack emulated an opposing extremist movement. He carried it out 16 days after a jihadist VRA, shouted “this is for London Bridge”, and searched online for information about the May 2013 jihadist VRA. While he was reading right-wing propaganda from the EDL and Britain First, neither group advocated for VRAs in the wake of the London Bridge attack. Additionally, there is no evidence he viewed the US far-right memes about VRAs. His source of tactical learning may then likely have been a rival movement. This final case serves as an exploratory analysis that suggests revenge and emulation as an additional pathway of tactical learning across differing ideologies. However, more work is required to fully theorize this phenomenon. For instance, it is not clear why these far-right attacks followed VRAs in the UK and France in 2017, but not in Germany or Spain, which also had high-profile jihadist attacks. What this case does suggest is that learning is also possible across ideologies, although possibly less frequently than learning within ideologies. Conclusion In this chapter, I provided a theory of how terrorist tactics spread among lone actors. The tactical choice is a process of imitation bolstered by propaganda spread throughout the radical milieu. Propaganda generates two mechanisms: (1) education which helps build the skills for the attack and (2) encouragement, which nudges lone actors toward a specific tactic. High levels of diffusion are only reached when both propaganda and emulation occur together—would-be lone actors see other attacks happening in the world through media coverage and are then further encouraged by propaganda shared by like-minded individuals. This was demonstrated in the jihadist wave when initial propaganda did not spur many attacks, but the combination of attacks in 2016 and followon propaganda by ISIS and AQAP led to a peak of attacks in mid-2017. In the United States among the far-right, the tactic emerged as a counter to street-blocking protests, and propaganda that normalized the tactic combined with examples allowed for further emulation. Lastly, in Western Europe a cluster of far-right attacks followed a different pattern, with many coming after jihadist attacks in a tit-for-tat manner, suggesting learning across ideologies occurs as well. However, there are important distinctions among the waves. In the jihadist milieu, educational material was much more prominent. Jihadist media suggested vehicle types and target locations and provided instructions for mass casualty attacks. In contrast, right-wing propaganda did not discuss tactical specifics but focused instead on encouragement by joking about the tactic, acting to normalize the act of driving into protest crowds, and dehumanizing potential targets.15 This difference is reflected in the VRAs themselves. Jihadists tended to rent large vehicles and target large public spaces to cause mass casualties, whereas it was more common among

Terrorist Tactical Diffusion among Lone Actors 139 far-right attackers to use their own personal vehicles and drive through protest crowds. This resulted in higher casualties for the jihadist attacks. While both media coverage and propaganda together are necessary for high levels of diffusion, the propaganda mechanism (education or encouragement) may differ, with impacts on how the attack is carried out. Additionally, there is a distinction in directionality. In the jihadist milieu, VRA material was spread from the top-down and produced by major terrorist organizations. Yet among the right wing, it was not established groups that were creating and sharing VRA memes, but rather individual members of the milieu. What does this tell us about lone actor learning? Some organizationcentric theories such as adoption-capacity, direct diffusion, or strategic success do not explain the diffusion of VRAs. Lone actors lack the institutional memory of organizations and the more complex group decisionmaking processes seen in the other chapters. However, lone actor learning is not entirely different from that of organization. The lone actors in this chapter clearly learned from several environmental factors and emulated actions they saw in the outside world. Lone actors are not “lone wolves”, rather they exist in a mainstream media environment and a militant media environment, allowing them to see other attacks and be encouraged and educated to commit their own. Lastly, the theory presented here points to the importance of the radical milieu as a learning source for lone actors. Further research may build on this by exploring the directionality of propaganda effects. In the jihadist case, bottom-up innovation (Moghadam 2013) led to top-down diffusion, with IS and AQAP piggybacking on early adopters and encouraging follow-on attacks. Yet among the far-right, it was not central organizations spreading VRA memes but ordinary individuals on Facebook and Twitter. A future study could examine how lone actors interpret signals from different senders. Notes 1 For example, a study of 62 VRAs in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories found that none were carried out by organizations ( Perry, Hasisi, and Perry 2018). 2 I use lone actor rather than lone wolf because the latter implies no connection to a broader radical milieu (see Schuurman et al. 2019). 3 For suicide contagion, see Ma-Kellams, Baek, and Or (2018); for copycat crimes see Auxemery (2015) and Rogers (2003, 334–335). 4 For information on the development of online fan sites in support of terrorist organizations see Conway (2012). 5 For a discussion of the distinction see Stern (2016). 6 Accessible under https://www.start.umd.edu/gtd/. 7 For remotely directed attacks see Cragin and Weil (2018) and MeleagrouHitchens and Hughes (2017). 8 For more on this three-part typology see Cragin and Weil (2018). 9 See also Hadzhiev, in this volume.

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10 United States v. Saipov (1:17-cr-00722), Complaint — Document #1 (Southern District of New York, November 1, 2017), p. 8, https://www.courtlistener.com/ docket/6279593/1/united-states-v-saipov/ 11 United States v. Saipov, Complaint - Document #1, p. 8. 12 For examples of these memes, see Liam Hogan’s Tumblr blog, which collected tweets and other memes about running over BLM protestors: https://runthemover. tumblr.com/?og=1. 13 United States v. Fields (3:18-cr-00011), Exhibit Exhibits second set Redacted Gov’t Exhibits—Document #59, Attachment #2 (Western District of Virginia, July 2, 2019), p. 42, https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/7299259/59/2/unitedstates-v-fields/ 14 United States v. Fields (3:18-cr-00011), Document #59, Attachment #2, p. 43. 15 For more on dehumanization, see Bandura 1990.

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Terrorist Tactical Diffusion among Lone Actors 141 Dodd, V. and Howden, D. ‘Woolwich (2013), ‘Woolwich Murder: What Drove Two Men to Kill a Soldier in the Street?,’ The Guardian, December 19, 2013, https:// www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/dec/19/woolwich-murder-soldier-streetadebolajo-radicalised-kenya Evans, M., Furness, H. and Ward, V. (2017), ‘Finsbury Park Suspect ‘turned against Muslims’ after London Bridge Attack’, The Telegraph, June 19, 2017, https://www. telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/06/19/finsbury-park-suspect-had-abused-muslimneighbour/ Grabar, H. (2017), ‘“Run Them Down”: Driving Into Protestors Was a Right-Wing Fantasy Long Before Charlottesville’, Slate Magazine, August 14, 2017, https:// slate.com/business/2017/08/driving-into-crowds-of-protesters-was-a-right-wingfantasy-long-before-charlottesville.htm Grzymala-Busse, A. (2011), ‘Time Will Tell? Temporality and the Analysis of Causal Mechanisms and Processes,’ Comparative Political Studies 44:9, 1267–1297. Hamm, M.S. and Spaaij, R. (2017), The Age of Lone Wolf Terrorism (New York, NY: Columbia University Press). Holden, R.T. (1986), ‘The Contagiousness of Aircraft Hijacking’, American Journal of Sociology 91:4, 874–904. Holton, C. (2016), ‘New Islamic State Rumiyah Magazine Details Tactics for Jihadis in the US’, Terror Trends Bulletin, November 12, 2016, https://terrortrendsbulletin. com/2016/11/12/new-islamic-state-rumiyah-magazine-details-tactics-for-jihadis-inthe-us/ Horowitz, M.C. (2010), The Diffusion of Military Power: Causes and Consequences for International Politics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). Horowitz, M.C. and Potter, P.B.K. (2014), ‘Allying to Kill: Terrorist Intergroup Cooperation and the Consequences for Lethality’, Journal of Conflict Resolution 58:2, 199–225. Jenkins, B.M. (1981), Embassies Under Siege: A Review of 48 Embassy Takeovers, 1971–1980 (Santa Monica, CA: RAND). Jenkins, B.M. and Butterworth, B.R. (2019), ‘Smashing Into Crowds’–An Analysis of Vehicle Ramming Attacks (San Jose, CA: Mineta Transpiration Institute), https:// transweb.sjsu.edu/research/SP1119-Vehicle-Ramming-Update Joseph, G. (2017), ‘White Supremacists Joked About Using Cars to Run Over Opponents’, ProPublica, August 28, 2017, https://www.propublica.org/article/whitesupremacists-joked-about-using-cars-to-run-over-opponents-before-charlottesville Kelly, K. (2017), ‘Car-Ramming: The Signature Move of the American Fascist’, Al Jazeera, September 15, 2017, https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/carramming-signature-move-american-fascist-170912102232241.html Kenney, M. (2010), ‘Beyond the Internet: Mētis, Techne, and the Limitations of Online Artifacts for Islamist Terrorists’, Terrorism and Political Violence 22:2, 177–197. Kludt, T. (2017), ‘Fox News, Daily Caller Delete Posts Encouraging People to Drive through Protests’, CNN Business, August 15, 2017, https://money.cnn.com/2017/ 08/15/media/daily-caller-fox-news-video-car-crashing-liberal-protesters/index.html LaFree, G. and Dugan, L. (2007), ‘Introducing the Global Terrorism Database’, Terrorism and Political Violence 19:2, 181–204. Long, C. and Peltz, J. (2017), ‘Truck Attack Suspect Is Charged with Terrorism Offenses’, Military Times, November 2, 2017, https://www.militarytimes.com/ news/2017/11/01/truck-attack-suspect-is-charged-with-terrorism-offenses/

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Ma-Kellams, C., Baek, J.H., and Or, F. (2018), ‘Suicide Contagion in Response to Widely Publicized Celebrity Deaths: The Roles of Depressed Affect, DeathThought Accessibility, and Attitudes’, Psychology of Popular Media Culture 7:2, 164–170. Malthaner, S. and Waldmann, P. (2014), ‘The Radical Milieu: Conceptualizing the Supportive Social Environment of Terrorist Groups’, Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 37:12, 979–998. McCarthy, R. (2008), ‘Three killed in Jerusalem bulldozer attack’. The Guardian, July 2, 2008, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/jul/02/israelandthepalestinians2 Meleagrou-Hitchens, A. and Hughes, S. (2017), ‘The Threat to the United States from the Islamic State’s Virtual Entrepreneurs’, CTC Sentinel 10:3, 1–8. Miller, V. and Hayward, K.J. (2018), ‘I Did My Bit’: Terrorism, Tarde and the Vehicle Ramming Attack as an Imitative Event’, The British Journal of Criminology 59:1, 1–23. Moghadam, A. (2013), ‘How Al Qaeda Innovates’, Security Studies 22:3, 466–497. Nacos, B.L. (2009), ‘Revisiting the Contagion Hypothesis: Terrorism, News Coverage, and Copycat Attacks’, Perspectives on Terrorism 3:3, 3–13. Nacos, B.L. (2016), Mass-Mediated Terrorism: Mainstream and Digital Media in Terrorism and Counterterrorism, Third edition (London: Rowman & Littlefield). Newman, K.S., Fox, C., Roth, W., Mehta, J., and Harding, D. (2005), Rampage: The Social Roots of School Shootings (New York, NY: Basic Books). NPR (2016), ‘ISIS Likely Directed Anis Amri To Attack Berlin Christmas Market’, NPR, December 26, 2016, https://www.npr.org/2016/12/23/506759059/isislikely-directed-anis-amri-to-attack-berlin-christmas-market Pape, R.A. (2005), Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism (New York, NY: Random House). Perry, S., Hasisi, B., and Perry, G. (2018), ‘Who Is the Lone Terrorist? A Study of Vehicle-Borne Attackers in Israel and the West Bank’, Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 41:11, 899–913. Phillips, B.J. (2015), ‘Enemies with Benefits? Violent Rivalry and Terrorist Group Longevity’, Journal of Peace Research 521, 62–75. Reed, A. and Ingram, H.J. (2017), ‘Exploring the Role of Instructional Material in AQAP’s Inspire and ISIS’ Rumiyah’, Europol Public Information, The Hague, https://www.europol.europa.eu/cms/sites/default/files/documents/reeda_ingramh_ instructionalmaterial.pdf Rogers, E.M. (2003), Diffusion of Innovations, Fifth Edition (New York, NY: Free Press). Schiano, C. (2017), ‘DATA RELEASE: Discord Chats Planned Armed Neo-Nazi Militia Operations In Charlottesville’, Unicorn Riot, August 18, 2017, https:// unicornriot.ninja/2017/data-release-discord-chats-planned-armed-neo-nazi-militiaoperations-charlottesville Schmid, A.P. and de Graaf, J. (1982), Violence as Communication: Insurgent Terrorism and the Western News Media (London: Sage). Schuurman, B., Lindekilde, L., Malthaner, S., O’Connor, F., Gill, P., and Bouhana, N. (2019), ‘End of the Lone Wolf: The Typology That Should Not Have Been’, Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 42:8, 771–778. Sedgwick, M. (2007), ‘Inspiration and the Origins of Global Waves of Terrorism’, Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 30: 2, 97–112.

Terrorist Tactical Diffusion among Lone Actors 143 Solon, O. (2017), ‘Sayfullo Saipov Had 90 Isis Videos on His Phone. Has the Fight against Online Extremism Failed?’, The Guardian, November 4, 2017, https://www. theguardian.com/us-news/2017/nov/04/sayfullo-saipov-isis-online-propagandanew-york-terrorism Spencer, H. and Pérez-Peña, R. (2017), ‘Murder Charge Increases in Charlottesville Protest Death’, The New York Times, December 14, 2017, https://www.nytimes. com/2017/12/14/us/charlottesville-fields-white-supremists.html Stenersen, A. (2008), ‘The Internet: A Virtual Training Camp?’, Terrorism and Political Violence 20:2, 215–233. Stern, J. (2016), ‘Radicalization to Extremism and Mobilization to Violence: What Have We Learned and What Can We Do about It?’, The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 668:1, 102–117. Stoil, J. (2018), ‘Vehicle Ramming, from the Middle East to Charlottesville: How Do Tactics Spread?’, Modern War Institute, March 8, 2018, https://mwi.usma.edu/ vehicle-ramming-middle-east-charlottesville-tactics-spread/ Surette, R. (2013), ‘Cause or Catalyst: The Interaction of Real World and Media Crime Models’, American Journal of Criminal Justice 38:3, 392–409. Tidy, J. (2018),’Finsbury Park Terror Attack: ‘Brainwashed’ Killer Had Online Links to Far Right’, Sky News, February 1, 2018, https://news.sky.com/story/finsburypark-terror-attack-brainwashed-killer-had-online-links-to-far-right-11232079 Trujillo, H.R. and Jackson, B.A. (2006), ‘Organizational Learning and Terrorist Groups’ in: J.F.F. Forest (ed.), Teaching Terror: Strategic and Tactical Learning in the Terrorist World (New York: Rowman and Littlefield), 52–68. Veilleux-Lepage, Y. (2017), ‘How and Why Vehicle Ramming Became the Attack of Choice for Terrorists’, The Conversation, March 29, 2017, http://theconversation. com/how-and-why-vehicle-ramming-became-the-attack-of-choice-for-terrorists75236 Veilleux-Lepage, Y. (2018), ‘The Extreme Right’s Legitimisation of Vehicle Ramming’, Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right, August 26, 2018, https:// www.radicalrightanalysis.com/2018/08/26/the-extreme-rights-legitimisation-ofvehicle-ramming Weil, A. (2020), ‘Opinion - Protesters Hit by Cars Recently Highlight a Dangerous Far-Right Trend in America’ NBC News Think, July 12, 2020, https://www. nbcnews.com/think/opinion/seattle-protester-hit-car-latest-casualty-dangerous-farright-trend-ncna1233525 Weimann, G. and Winn, C. (1993), The Theater of Terror: Mass Media and International Terrorism (New York, NY: Addison-Wesley Longman Ltd). Zelin, A. (2013), ‘Al-Mahalim Media Presents a New Booklet from al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula: “The Lone Mujahid Pocketbook”’, Jihadology, March 2, 2013, https://jihadology.net/2013/03/02/al-mala%E1%B8%A5im-media-presents-anew-booklet-from-al-qaidah-in-the-arabian-peninsula-the-lone-mujahidpocketbook

8

Learning through the Migration of Knowledge Exploring the Transition of Operatives between Violence Organizations Sheelagh Brady

Despite a significant increase in terrorism studies post 9/11, there are several areas of research that to date have been given little attention. Most notably, there is a lack of comparative analysis of terrorist groups with other violence organizations (VOs) and a lack of specific research into terrorist learning,1 despite notable exceptions such as the work of Kenney (2007), Jackson et al. (2005), Forest (2006) and Kettle and Mumford (2017). This chapter contributes to filling gaps in both these areas. It is argued that the similarities between, and inter-relatedness of, different types of VOs are such that comparative analysis of the individuals who join such groups is not only justified but can be expected to generate valuable new insights into terrorist learning that may not be apparent by solely looking at specific terrorist groups or the individuals who join them. The chapter examines the transition of personnel across different types of (legal and illegal) VOs and, by exploring how this transitioning facilitates the migration of skills and knowledge across VOs, assesses the implications this has for terrorist learning. The chapter takes a unique approach to do this, looking at four types of VOs – terrorist groups, gangs, private military contractors (PMC)/mercenaries, and the military. In the literature, these groups, and the people who join them, are for the most part viewed in isolation and discussed as unique entities, even though they are often more inter-related than common knowledge might generally assume. For example, gang members in America are present in US military deployments abroad; military members often join PMC/mercenary groups after they are discharged; former military has also been known to be hired gunmen for gangs; gang members have been known to join terrorist groups; terrorists have been known to get involved in gangs and, more recently, several cases have emerged of former members of the military joining terrorist groups. In this regard, looking across groups, and at the individuals who join them, provides insights that might not be identifiable if only one group was examined. While it is acknowledged that comparison makes less sense on the level of group motivations, I argue that regarding individual members and their learning, a comparative analysis is both relevant and required, given the degree of fluctuation of individuals between such groups. Based on an DOI: 10.4324/9781003361435-10

Learning through the Migration of Knowledge 145 exploratory empirical analysis of a dataset of 24 individuals who have transitioned between two or more of these groups during their lifetime, this chapter challenges the assertion that VOs are not suitable for comparative analysis.2 While the level of analysis is thus the individual, the chapter investigates the implications that the fluctuation of personnel across VOs has for the question of learning on the group level: the transition of personnel across VOs also allows for the migration of skills and knowledge between different VOs. Learning can take place in one organization that can in some cases invest considerable resources and end up benefiting another. VOs can, in this way, acquire capacities and skills at the expense of other (illegal and legal) VOs. In the case of military personnel joining terrorist organizations, this even happens at the expense of the state – a particularly interesting special case of terrorist learning on the macro level. The chapter draws out six case studies from the dataset to illustrate the nature and mechanisms of skills and knowledge acquisition and transfer across VOs. It first looks at examples of learning between VOs, which share similarities with terrorist groups, before looking at three specific examples of terrorist learning. The main rationale for this approach is to illustrate the similarities in learning across VOs and the skills and knowledge transfer between them, before demonstrating how, in the context of terrorism, skills learned in the military are actively used and circulated. Examination of Literature on VOs and Terrorist Learning There are few studies that apply a comparative view on VOs. A noticeable exception is that of Haggerty and Bucerius, who assert that “questions about the comparability between soldiers and terrorists have entered into discussions of the radicalization processes, a literature which tends to treat the assorted steps towards radicalization as characteristic only of the movement towards extremist violence by terrorists” (2018, 2). Similarly, I posit that the people who use violence associated with terrorism are, in most regards, not distinctly unique to such groups in a way that warrants a specific form of analysis. In the same vein, Taylor and Quayle (1994) assert that terrorists are ordinary people, indistinguishable from other ‘ordinary’ people. My data on the fluctuation of members between VOs supports this perspective and thus contributes to de-exceptionalizing terrorists. Moreover, I contend that viewing terrorists through this lens helps generate new and valuable insights into terrorist learning. Despite a recent increase of research on terrorism, there is still a dearth of comparative analysis of VOs more broadly (Ferguson and McAuley 2020). A major critique of the comparative research that is available, particularly on criminals versus terrorists, has been framed about their incompatibility. Many researchers have treated criminals and terrorists as fundamentally different both to ‘normal people’ and to each other, with much of the related literature stating that the fundamental distinction between crime and terrorism lies in

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their motivations – the “profit-versus-ideology dichotomy” (Ballina 2011, 124). This explanation has gained traction despite several groups bucking this trend, for example, unionist and republican groups in Northern Ireland. This perspective tends to underrate the significance of shared or similar interests between both groups, such as the use of similar tactics and their desire to acquire resources and power to achieve their objectives (Forest 2012). A lack of interdisciplinary approaches to terrorism studies, which has plagued much of the literature until late, may have further contributed to this lack of comparative analysis. That said, there is a shift in Forest’s direction, with increasing literature exploring the ‘crime-terror nexus’, which is a welcome development. Notable contributions with regard to a comparative and interdisciplinary approach are Koehler (2019a), who explored violent extremist intergroup migration across hostile ideologies, and authors from the field of Critical Terrorism Studies who have called for and applied expertise from other fields into the conversation with terrorism studies. Given that this chapter is looking at learning, which I suggest is similar to Forest’s (2012) assertions about tactics and acquisition of resources and power, the comparative approach taken is both justified and applicable in the context of this study. Secondly, it is worth noting that the criticism against comparative analysis is at odds with much of the literature when one looks across different groups that use violence. It regularly denotes similar drivers to violence – even though the aim or target of violence may be different – referencing factors such as friends and family involvement in the same activity, a sense of belonging, the desire for thrill, such as fun or danger, social recognition, and redemptive factors. Ozeren et al. (2014) found that terrorist groups provide a sense of belonging, which Pedersen (2014) found echoed in gang research, as did Elder et al. (2010) in the context of the military. This same ‘seeking’ behavior that influences some individuals to join their first VO, may also help explain, at least in part, why some individuals move from one group to another. It is also worth considering, however, that in the context of the military, a transition to a second group may indicate problems with “unbelonging” (Stevenson 2020). Duel et al. (2019) highlighted this, suggesting that the reason many ex-military personnel move to criminality is that despite available support, some experience difficulties during their transition out of the military. Furthermore, comparing members of VOs provides insights into other areas. For example, I argue, it may allow one to determine why individuals decide on a particular group. Their choice could be primarily based on what was available to them at the time, hence being more about opportunity than an innate, ideological desire. Gill and Horgan (2013) noted in the context of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA) “a desire to become a PIRA member … is of little use if the would-be member does not possess the structural opportunities to join” (ibid., 441). Therefore, in the context of joining it raises the question, should we be looking more to criminological theories that look at opportunity and environment, such as Rational Choice,

Learning through the Migration of Knowledge 147 Routine Activities and their variants, or Social Movement Theory to explain the decision to join terrorist groups, rather than focussing too narrowly on theories of radicalization? In the context of terrorism, Taylor and Horgan (2007) suggest the possible merits of such approaches for a better understanding of the environmental and contextual structuring of terrorist behavior, something more evident in critical terrorism studies. I further posit the merits with respect to terrorist learning, given that a significant aspect of learning is opportunity. Similar to Clarke and Newman (2006) who contend that terrorism is the result of an interaction between motivation and opportunity, I assert that terrorist learning occurs through the same interaction. Moreover, applying such theories to terrorist learning ensures consideration of the conditions in which it happens, whilst also considering factors such as costs versus benefits, and actors as rational. For example, rational choice theory posits that humans make decisions based on costs and benefits. In this context, terrorism is often viewed as a logical political choice among alternative actions (Crenshaw 1990). Learning may also be the result of logic and opportunity. For example, in the context of this data, the learning occurred between 2000 and 2012. A period, at least in the United States which saw a rise in rightwing extremism, in Europe a perceived immigration crisis, and the rise of Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, all potentially influencing decisions to join specific groups. The transfer of people between these groups during this time may indicate the motivation for learning, coupled with opportunity. In short, these events may provide unique opportunities for such learning to happen, similar to how the intersection of offenders and the physical environment produces criminal opportunities (Clarke 1980). Moreover, and similar to Warr’s (2001) notion of “active opportunity”, some individuals may actively seek out occasions for active cross-learning. Thus, terrorist learning is likely to be an outcome of both a desire and an opportunity to learn, in that way, both motivation and opportunity. Terrorists have been found to learn from multiple sources “from history, their own experiences; the experiences of other hubs, cells, or networks within their organizations; from other terrorist organizations, experts; states; the private sector; media; and counterterrorist actors” (Kettle and Mumford 2017, 523). Kenney examined al-Qaeda and how they disperse knowledge, finding examples of them using “informal apprenticeships, on-the-job training, communities of practice, and combat” (2007, 145). Others have further enhanced this knowledge, by examining agents of learning, suggesting four different types – the individual (Kitfield 2001), group (Hamm 2007), generations (Turner 2001), and organizations (Jackson et al. 2005). The work of Gill et al. (2013) demonstrates a somewhat different approach, examining the tactical innovation within terrorist groups. This is slightly similar to works by Dolnik (2007), which reflect increasing research on terrorist learning in respect of technological innovation. These examples illustrate the differing approaches taken to understanding how terrorists

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learn, whilst also recognizing the current gap within our knowledge of the process behind which they do so. This chapter aims to contribute in this regard by building on such works, by examining six cases drawn from the dataset, to look at terrorist learning through the acquisition and transfer of skills and knowledge across groups. The Data behind the Cases In this chapter, VO is defined as ‘an organized group of individuals who partake in violent behavior with the intention to hurt, damage, or kill someone or something, to protect and defend and/or to provide trade in professional services linked to conflict or warfare’. The choice of organizations to operationalize VOs is twofold. Firstly, it provides groups that hold illegal (terrorists and gangs), legal (military), and quasi-legal (PMC/mercenaries) status and secondly, it reduces the potential for labeling bias within the sample, by using a range of groups; many of which are categorized based on political agendas rather than objective fact, e.g., mercenaries vs. terrorist groups. Joining is understood as ‘a process that connects or links an individual to a group’. This simplistic definition is reflective of the lack of evidence of how full membership to some of these VOs is marked. The unit of analysis is individual members of such groups. To mitigate the impact of definitional issues, conviction data and/or personal reports (selfselection) from the individual to the media were used to determine what group the individuals were part of. Being engaged, therefore, with a VO was based on reports of membership with such a group in the media and/or on conviction and prosecution reports for being a member of such a group. All terrorist groups included were proscribed organizations. The individuals were identified from open-source online sites, such as media reports, court reports, blogs, and social media sites. Initial search terms included ‘soldier joins terrorist group’, ‘gang member joins military’, ‘mercenary prosecuted was a former soldier’. Once a potential individual was identified, further searches were made against their name to assess whether the information was valid and whether inclusion was warranted. Individuals were included in the database if: (1) an individual was convicted of membership of a criminal, terrorist, or mercenary group, having previously served in the military; (2) an individual was convicted of being a member of a criminal or terrorist group, having previously been convicted of being a member of a VO of a different type; and (3) an individual was a convicted member of a PMC/mercenary or acknowledged membership of a PMC/mercenary and had previously or subsequently been convicted of being a member of a criminal or terrorist group. Information gathered in the online searches was used to complete the database. Based on these primary and secondary documents, a database of 24 individuals was collected. The majority, 75% (n = 18), were members of the military first and the remaining 25% (n = 6) joined criminal gangs first. Table 8.1 shows the types of groups that the individuals in the sample

Learning through the Migration of Knowledge 149 Table 8.1 Group transitions From

Military

To

Mercenary Terrorist Group Criminal Groups

Criminal Gang 8 7 3

Terrorist Group Mercenary

5 1

transitioned from and to. For every entry, the database captures 12 data points: name, nationality, gender, age, date of birth, the first group to join, the year this occurred, the age at which they joined, the second group joined, the year this occurred, the age at which they joined, their place of birth, reports of motivation for joining for either or both groups. The data was coded and then quantitatively and qualitatively analyzed. This subsection briefly presents the data from a descriptive perspective. Of the 24 individuals within the sample, 92% (n = 22) were male, 8% (n = 2) were female,3 which is generally consistent with other research on similar groups (Gill and Horgan 2013; Ministry of Defence 2018; Reynolds and Shendruk 2018). The age of joining the first group ranged from 13 to 374, the youngest and the oldest related to people who joined criminal groups first. Those that first joined the military ranged from 18 to 24, which corresponds to the findings of Silke (2008), in relation to perpetrators of violent crime (more likely males, between 15 and 25). The age of joining a second group ranged from 18 to 50. This wide divergence might indicate that the recruitment age is not static, except for the military, where the recruitment age is restricted. Of the 245, at least 33% (n = 8) had their ethnic origins outside the continent of their residence at their time of joining the second group, be that by birth or parentage. Of these, four were members of both the military and mercenaries during their lifetime, three were members of criminal and extremist groups, and one was a member of both the military and an extremist group. This differs from those with no dual nationality or ethnic diversity, more of whom went on to join extremist groups. Given the exploratory nature of this study, only limited insights can be drawn from this. However, it might be worth exploring further, especially about whether engagement in the military may provide increased feelings of inclusion in society for those with dual nationality or ethnicity. In summary, this exploratory analysis shows that the findings from the dataset are, for the most part, in line with findings from research relating to the four VOs examined. It also indicates a degree of similarity across those who join different VOs. Moreover, it demonstrates the movement of individuals between such groups and highlights several opportunities for the cross-transfer of skills and knowledge; which provides potential insights for how terrorists learn. Despite the value of this dataset, limitations are present. Many of these are systematic biases, which are largely unavoidable. Firstly, it is not a complete dataset of all individuals who have engaged with two or more of

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these groups globally. This study relies on documented cases; however, it is acknowledged that there are likely to be many unrecorded ones. Secondly, only reports available in English were used. While this has resulted in a geographical bias, it does not mean that only individuals from Englishspeaking countries were included: many media reports in English referred to cases from other countries. Thirdly, it is a lot easier to find accounts of individuals who move from a legal group, such as the military to an illegal group, as this appears to warrant media attention6. Examples of individuals moving from an illegal group to a legal one are harder to find. There is a lot of media attention at a general level available about such transitions, but it appears to attract less coverage at the individual level, rendering it challenging to access these cases. This is a significant weakness, because the inclusion of such a sample may provide more significant insights into positive disengagement examples from criminal groups, and also of incidents where legal VOs profited from the learning of members from illegal VOs. Finally, the observations were not random due to the nature of the data sources used. For example, to ensure some geographical diversity within the sample, not all examples available from the UK and the United States were finally included. There is no way to estimate the effects these limitations have on the observations made. However, the findings, while not generalizable, support the analysis, thus providing interesting insights about the movement of people between VOs and what this might mean for understanding how terrorists learn. Examples for Learning through Individual’s Transition Understanding how terrorists learn is not a simple process, due to the range of experiences and learning opportunities they, like all, are exposed to. Given that this is an exploratory study, I examined the dataset in the context of Kettle and Mumford’s (2017) sources of learning and Singh’s (2017) insights into the transfer of skills or knowledge across groups. This research treats skills and knowledge acquisition as a blurred notion, rather than two mutually different processes. The cases used across distinct VOs illustrate different learning experiences, however, they demonstrate the opportunity for learning and the transfer of knowledge to terrorist groups. The following six case studies show examples of such learning through the transfer of skills and knowledge between VOs and culminate in three specific cases showing concrete examples of how terrorists learn, often, as will be demonstrated, by profiting from the investment of the state, by the multiplication of knowledge through the transfer to others, and through the exploitation of opportunity. These cases explain how the acquisition of skills and knowledge can be used to learn at the individual level but also how others can achieve learning through the provision of that knowledge to others, knowledge transfer. Thus, providing for group learning.

Learning through the Migration of Knowledge 151 Case 1

An American male, a former member of the US Special Forces was later convicted for orchestrating a murder and for conspiracy to commit murder. Media reports claim that while in the army, this male was a sniper instructor. He later applied these skills to his murder-for-hire services. It was suggested that he worked alongside other ex-soldiers in this regard. The judge reportedly noted that the application of such skills, by this male, was a business, plain and simple (Neumeister 2019). This example illustrates how firearm skills learned and honed within the military were used by the accused for financial gain, but also capitalized on by drug dealers to enforce their threats. This case demonstrates both a transfer of knowledge and skills across groups (military and organized crime). An interesting aspect of this case, worth noting in the context of learning, relates to a mitigating factor suggested in the trial. The lawyer stated that this male suffered the effects of post-traumatic stress disorder from his time in the military. This may indicate that exposure to such stressors might influence the nature and type of learning acquired through military experience, thus suggesting that all learning may not be influenced by positive experiences alone (Kettle and Mumford 2017). Skills associated with violence and firearms are not the only skills that commonly transfer between VOs. The next case relates to an individual moving from the military to a mercenary group, transferring firearm skills together with medical skills and knowledge. Case 2

A male, former British soldier, after leaving the military, traveled to Syria to provide support to the Kurds. While a soldier with the military, he also trained as a military medic (Vardy 2018). The male had previously served on a tour to Afghanistan (Halliday 2016). After leaving the military, he went to Syria where he is said to have fought alongside the People’s Protection Units of Syrian Kurdistan (YPG). The ex-soldier does not deny going to Syria, he is reported to have said “I went to Syria to fight against terrorism and to protect the civilians caught up in the fighting who have had to endure the most horrendous experiences and living conditions imaginable” (Halliday 2016). Images purporting to be of him, show him with the group holding a weapon (AFP 2018). It was later claimed that he did not fight but a weapon was necessary because it was a war zone. However, in early reports of interviews with the ex-soldier after returning to the UK, there is an implication that he had fought with the YPG. After his arrest in Turkey in 2017, he denied such claims, instead declaring he was a medic. This case illustrates someone with weapons, conflict, and medical skills, transferring their skillset between two groups. This demonstrates, once again, that the movement of people between VOs, provides an opportunity to move skills and knowledge between groups.

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Case 3

A Canadian male and former member of the military, having previously served in Afghanistan, on leaving the military decided to travel to Iraq to fight ISIS, allegedly to fight alongside the Kurds. He is reported as saying “I wanted to test my individual soldier skills but I wouldn’t have gone and fought in the Ukraine. I felt like the Kurds were doing a good job defending humanity as a whole, not just the Kurds” (Freeze 2016). In the context of his input to the Kurds, he is reported to have stated “Every soldier skill that I learned definitely helped in the fight there” (Freeze 2016). Accounts detailing this man’s story, accompany claims that the movement of former military personnel was to offer support and advice to the Kurds, in this way, allowing them to learn from those with military experiences. This implies a known benefit by mercenaries of transferring knowledge and skills from former military to their group. This suggests that VOs themselves understand and actively seek out trained individuals to improve the skills of their organization. This assertion is supported by other cases within the dataset. It is also worth noting from this case, particularly, that former military, also seem to view their prior experience as an asset to such groups, evident in their justifications for joining. These three examples illustrate how the acquisition of skills and knowledge transfers between VOs. The last two examples are slightly more pertinent in the context of terrorist learning, however, given that both relate to the YPG. This group exemplifies the definitional problems associated with defining terrorist groups. The YPG is considered to be a key component of the U.S.-led coalition, while in contrast is viewed by the Turkish government, as inextricably linked to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which is listed as a terrorist organization in Turkey. It is also a prescribed organization in Canada. These examples illustrate that the skills and knowledge acquired from military experience are a direct form of learning, which both influences and equips former soldiers in their ability to transfer skills to another VO. An additional but contrasting example which presents the possibility that joining a terrorist group may be influenced by a desire or search for knowledge, and in that way provides a learning opportunity, is presented in case four. While this case relates to undercover officers (not ISIS per se), their actions are likely to have mimicked known approaches used by ISIS, to ensure authenticity in the operation. Case 4

An American male, a former member of the US military, pleaded guilty to four counts of attempting to provide material support to ISIS. It is alleged that he provided a large volume of digital documents that had sensitive information regarding the US military to undercover officers purporting to be ISIS members (Dept. of Justice 2018). The material is said to have contained personal information about US service members. He is also alleged to

Learning through the Migration of Knowledge 153 have provided equipment and training to these individuals. The training was provided in the form of a two-hour, step-by-step military combative training session. He is also said to have provided the undercover officers with a commercially purchased small drone, a military chest rig, and other militarystyle clothing and gear. Although this male was not charged with membership of ISIS, it was reported in his trial that he had “made numerous statements in support of ISIS and expressed a desire to join ISIS” and “swore an oath of loyalty, known as “bayat,” to the group (Dept. of Justice 2018). This example shows how the transfer of knowledge may take place across VOs, but also between personnel of two groups, for example, through the training session provided by the former soldier. Had this content reached ISIS, it is likely that the combat training would have been used as a learning resource for its members, while the information about the military would have been used to gain strategic advantage. It is also worth noting that the male, reportedly, learned of and from the actions of ISIS by watching videos released and circulated by them, illustrating that learning is not always linear. Case 5

An Irish female member of the military, who is alleged to have joined ISIS, said she turned to Islam looking for answers. After ten years with the Irish Defence Forces, and having converted to Islam, she left the military and traveled to Syria to join ISIS, to live in a land governed by Sharia, an Islamic State. She is currently back in Ireland, having been repatriated, and subsequently convicted of membership of the Islamic State. Her specific role in Syria has yet to be determined. The female first went to Syria in 2013, later returning in 2015, having spent time in Tunisia and Ireland. In interviews provided to the media, she refutes allegations that she took up arms for ISIS. While she denies any wrongdoing, photos printed in the media claim to show her pose with a weapon in Tunisia. Furthermore, there are allegations that she trained children within ISIS to use weapons (Costello 2019). If these claims about training children are correct, this would represent an explicit example of a former member of a foreign military as a source of training. Thus, illustrating skills and knowledge transfer on the organizational level, based on the transfer of personnel among VOs, but also of their skills to others within the group. The last two examples illustrate, how knowledge relevant and acquired in one VO can be transferred to another through training, to improve the skills and intelligence of the second organization. That said, it is worth noting at least in the context of terrorist groups that the notion that terrorists learn from other terrorist groups is nothing new. Mumford (2015) noted how the New IRA studied the Taliban’s use of explosively formed projectiles (EFPs) and learned from them. Despite clear differences between the two, the activities of one provided a learning opportunity for the other. Similarly, the IRA before

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them was well known for delivering training to terrorist groups worldwide (ETA in Spain and FARC in Columbia). What is new, however, is demonstrating a similar transfer of knowledge and skills developed and cultivated in one VO (the military) to another (terrorist), thereby profiting from state investment, both by outcome (Cases 4 and 5) and design (Case 6). The previous examples discussed highlight a pertinent question, especially in the context of the next case. Do the experience and skills acquired during military training and, in many cases, combat, influence them to join a second group, or do they enter the military to acquire such skills so they can overcome barriers that may have stopped them from joining alternative VOs previously? For example, many mercenaries favor members with former military experience. Might the skills learned in the military, therefore, make an individual more attractive to the group than they may have been before their military experience? An example of this is presented in case six, where an individual claims he specifically joined the military to acquire the skills and knowledge to benefit his group, National Action.7 In that way, case six marks a transition from the previous examples, which predominantly showed how skills and knowledge learned and acquired in one group were transferred to another (and in the latter two cases, between people, through specific training), without evidence of aforethought when joining the first VO. In contrast, case six demonstrates where a male joined the military specifically to acquire skills that would benefit a terrorist group, one to which he already belonged. This example illustrates that learning can also be achieved both through the search for knowledge (and network) and through the acquisition and diffusion of knowledge. Case 6

A British male, described as an “outstanding” soldier, was convicted of membership of the far-right group, National Action (Quinn 2020). He had experience both in the army (UK), including a tour in Afghanistan, and the navy (Finland). While in the military, he is reported to have sent an e-mail to a friend, in which he wrote: “I’m only in to learn useful combat skills” and “If we get enough of us into the Army, we’ll be in the right place when things start to collapse” (Golden 2018). He further suggested that National Action members should focus on gaining “military and key civil positions”. He is alleged to have encouraged other members of National Action to join up, whilst also accused of actively recruiting from those serving with him in the military to National Action. This case illustrates an example of joining a VO (the army in this case) as an opportunity for skills acquisition. The male recognized this opportunity for himself, for National Action, and the cause, not only from the perspective of acquiring skills and new members but also for positioning National Action members within the military for future opportunities. This supports Koehler’s (2019b) assertions that right-wing extremists have attempted to

Learning through the Migration of Knowledge 155 infiltrate the military to access tactical training and weapons, and to recruit highly skilled new members. This suggests that membership of the military is viewed as both an opportunity for learning and for action. That said, in the context of this case, learning is not purely derived from formal military training. This male would appear to have further enhanced his skills through the legal possession of a licensed shotgun, thereby illustrating the possibility of self-learning (Golden 2018). It is worth highlighting that half of those within the dataset that were members of the military and terrorist groups, were members of both VOs at the same time, something given little attention in research. This is noteworthy in the context of terrorist learning in that some VOs actively encourage members to join the military to access the skills they need for the group, while also recruiting from such groups because of the potential for knowledge acquisition. It also indicates the potential for active cross-learning across VOs. These examples provide many insights that help us better understand how terrorists learn, which occurs through a mixture of skills and knowledge acquisition, and diffusion. Such learning is also influenced by the opportunity to acquire, apply, and transfer skills and knowledge between people and organizations. Opportunity plays a role, opportunity for skills acquisition and knowledge transfer, both as a net benefit and a strategic approach. This dataset provides insights into how terrorists may learn through the acquisition of skills and knowledge, via their own experiences or that of other VOs and their members. Many of the individuals in the dataset acquired skills and knowledge through membership of their first group, and on transfer to another group used these skills for that group’s benefit. However, cases four and five demonstrated the transfer of such knowledge and skills to others, via training, indicating a multiplier effect. Such findings provide insights about different levels of learning, from the micro to the meso and macro levels. While this piece primarily provides its most significant insights at the meso level, i.e., learning from members of other VOs, it also indicates some level of learning at the macro level. This is evident in the cases of ex-military (and current) joining armed groups. An interesting aspect of this worth noting is that the source and mechanisms of learning through the military provides the opportunities to acquire expertise at the expense of state investment. If one looks at the example of the right-wing group, both encouraging others to join and recruiting within, these groups are strategically targeting and tapping into such learning and investment. These insights into the learning opportunities, although limited, serve to illustrate that the acquisition of knowledge can both be an influencing factor, for example, experiences and exposure in an organization as mentioned above, and also that the acquisition of knowledge can be part of a strategic decision to build skills sets and a trained membership, which although small is a significant contribution to our understanding of how terrorist learn.

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Conclusion The chapter provides insights into the movement of people between VOs and what this might mean for understanding how terrorists learn. It shows that there are important similarities in joining the VOs under review, that support the argument for de-exceptionalizing terrorists. Thus, this chapter makes a case for comparative research on terrorist and other forms of organized violence, to gain better insights into the question, what draws people to engage in violent organizations in general, and terrorist organizations more particularly. It is within this comparative approach, that this chapter provides its insights into better understanding of how terrorists learn. The chapter demonstrates how the fluctuation of personnel across different types of (legal and illegal) VO allows for the migration of skills and knowledge, through the diffusion/exchange of personnel and knowledge. Two prominent examples of different ways of learning are exemplified through the transition of individuals between VOs and are worth highlighting. The first is learning as a beneficial consequence for the second VO as a result of the transitioning of skilled members from the first to the second. In contrast, the next demonstrates transitioning that is directly motivated by the acquisition of skills and knowledge, where learning takes place in one VO with the intended aim of using the knowledge to the benefit of the other VO. The latter, clearly demonstrates active cross-learning between VOs, where one VO enthusiastically encourages members to join (for example, the military) to access the skills they need for their own group, while also recruiting from such groups because of the potential for knowledge acquisition. Most notable in this regard, is that some groups already understand this strategic opportunity, for example, some right-wing terror groups, and mercenary groups, thus profiting from state investment in learning by recruiting statetrained personnel, therefore ultimately (in the case of the military) doing this at the expense of the state. Consequently, investments into learning made by, e.g., the military, can eventually end up benefiting an extremist organization. Notes 1 Terrorist learning is understood as “the acquisition of knowledge to inform terrorist-related activities in the future” ( Kettle and Mumford 2017, 530). 2 In doing so, it challenges the criticisms often made in the study of terrorism of selection bias, absence of comparative studies and theory testing ( Decker and Pyrooz 2011). Understanding such biases is important in the context of how terrorists learn, given the systemic nature of such criticisms within related research. 3 Of the two females in the sample, both had been members of the military before joining their second group. One went on to join a mercenary group, and the other joined a terrorism group. Both females reportedly used violence, but one denies this accusation. 4 This was not available in all cases. 5 21% (n = 5) of the dataset were from the United Kingdom (UK), one of whom had dual nationality. 17% (n = 4) were from the United States of America (USA). 8% (n = 2) were from the Republic of Ireland, and 4% (n = 1) from Northern Ireland. 8% (n = 2) were from Canada, one had dual nationality. There was one Russian, who also had

Learning through the Migration of Knowledge 157 dual nationality. The rest were from Switzerland, Kosovo, Cuba, Norway, Austria, and Denmark. 6 It is challenging to get information on specific individuals who have joined the military after previously being a member of a gang, despite recognition by the FBI in 2011 that gang members had enlisted in every branch of the armed forces ( Smith 2011). 7 Nation Action was prescribed in the UK, under the Terrorism Act 2000, in December 2016.

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Freeze, C. (2016), ‘What makes a Canadian join forces fighting in a war zone?’, The Globe and Mail, https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/canadiandillon-hilliers-memoir-chronicles-his-fight-against-islamic-state/article32312661/ Gill, P. and Horgan, J. (2013), ‘Who were the Volunteers? The Shifting Sociological and Operational Profile of 1240 Provisional Irish Republican Army Members’, Terrorism and Political Violence 25:3, 435–456. Gill, P., Horgan, J., Hunter, S.T., and Cushenbery, L.D. (2013), ‘Malevolent Creativity in Terrorist Organizations’, The Journal of Creative Behavior 47:2, 125–151. Golden, V. (2018), ‘Far-Right Criminals’, https://far-rightcriminals.com/tag/andersbreivik Haggerty, K.D. and Bucerius, S.M. (2018), ‘Radicalization as Martialization: Towards a Better Appreciation for the Progression to Violence’, Terrorism and Political Violence 32:4, 768–788. Halliday, J. (2016), ‘Ex-soldier who fought Isis criticises ‘harrowing’ police investigation’, The Guardian. September 11, 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/uknews/2016/sep/11/ex-soldier-isis-police-investigation-joe-robinson-syria Hamm, M. (2007), Terrorism as Crime: From Oklahoma City to Al-Qaeda and Beyond (New York, NY: New York University Press). Jackson, B., Baker, J., Cragin, K., Parachini, J., Trujilo, H., and Chalk, P. (2005), Aptitude for Destruction, Volume 1: Organizational Learning in Terrorist Groups and its Implications for Combating Terrorism (Santa Monica, CA: RAND). Kenney, M. (2007), From Pablo to Osama: Trafficking and terrorist networks, government bureaucracies, and competitive adaptation (University Park, PA: Penn State University Press). Kettle, L. and Mumford, A. (2017), ‘Terrorist Learning: A New Analytical Framework’, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism 40:7, 523–538. Kitfield, J. (2001), ‘Osama’s Learning Curve’, National Journal 33:45, 3506–3511. Koehler, D. (2019a), ‘Switching Sides: Exploring Violent Extremist Intergroup Migration Across Hostile Ideologies’, Political Psychology 41:3, 499–515. Koehler, D. (2019b), A Threat from Within? Exploring the Link between the Extreme Right and the Military, ICCT Policy Brief September 2019, https://icct. nl/publication/a-threat-from-within-exploring-the-link-between-the-extremeright-and-the-military/ Ministry of Defence (2018), UK Armed Forces, Biannual Diversity Statistics, October 1, 2018, https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/ attachment_data/file/763676/1_October_2018_Biannual_Diversity_Statistics.pdf Mumford, A. (2015), ‘How Terrorist Groups ‘Learn’: Innovation and Adaptation in Political Violence’, British Academy Review 26, 22–25. Neumeister, L. (2019), ‘This former US soldier turned mercenary was sentenced to life in prison’, Army Times, March 8, 2019, https://www.armytimes.com/news/ your
army/2019/03/08/this
former
us
soldier
turned
mercenary
was
sentenced
to
life
in
prison/ Ozeren, S., Sever, M., Yilmaz, K., and Sozer, A. (2014), ‘Whom do they recruit? Profiling and Recruitment in the PKK/KCK’, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism 37:4, 322–347. Pedersen, M.L. (2014), ‘Gang Joining in Denmark: Prevalence and Correlates of Street Gang Membership’, Journal of Scandinavian Studies in Criminology and Crime Prevention 15:1, 55–72.

Learning through the Migration of Knowledge 159 Quinn, B. (2020), ‘People like you’ still uttered: BAME armed forces personnel on racism in services’. The Guardian, January 7, 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/ uk-news/2020/jan/07/people-like-you-still-uttered-bame-armed-forces-personnelon-racism-in-services Reynolds and Shendruk (2018), ‘Demographics of the U.S. Military, Council on Foreign Relations, April 24, 2018, https://www.cfr.org/article/demographics-usmilitary Silke, A. (2008), ‘Holy Warriors: Exploring the Psychological Processes of Jihadi Radicalization’, European Journal of Criminology 5:1, 99–123. Smith, C.F. (2011), ‘A Comprehensive Literature Review of Military-Trained Gang Members’, Journal of Gang Research 19:1, 9–20. Stevenson, B. (2020). ‘Psychotherapy for Veterans Navigating the Military
to
Civilian Transition: A Case Study’, Journal of Clinical Psychology 76:5, 896–904. Taylor, M. and Quayle, E. (1994), Terrorist Lives (London: Brassey’s). Taylor, M. and Horgan, J. (2007), ‘A Conceptual Framework for Addressing Psychological Process in the Development of the Terrorist’, Terrorism and Political Violence 18:4, 585–601. Turner, M.E. (eds.) (2001), Groups at Work: Advances in Theory and Research (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum). Vardy, E. (2018), ‘Joe Robinson: Turkish court convicts former UK soldier’, BBC News, September 15, 2018, https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-leeds-45534483 Warr, M. (2001), ‘Crime and opportunity: A theoretical essay’, in: R.F. Meier, L.W. Kennedy, and V.F. Sacco (eds.), The process and structure of crime: Criminal events and crime analysis, Vol. 9 (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers), 65–94.

9

Decentralized Collective Learning Militant Accelerationism as a Community of Practice Michael Fürstenberg

This book deals primarily with the learning of terrorist groups; however, a significant part of terrorism is committed by individuals who are not part of formal organizations. The difference between individual actors and larger groups is often not that clear cut, though: after the routing of al-Qaeda from Afghanistan in 2001, Abu Musab al-Suri developed an integrated strategic framework connecting the organizational core of al-Qaeda with individuals and small groups in Western countries acting largely on their own (Ryan 2017, 244–246). Likewise, the later Islamic State relied on radicalized individuals and small cells to execute terrorist acts in the West. This decentralization of terrorism is even more pronounced in the terrorist far-right – in contrast to the jihadist movement, in which a central level of authority exists and exhibits at least some degree of control, this is not true for right-wing terrorism. In fact, basically, all recent major terrorist attacks by right-wing extremists have been committed by individual actors or small cells. This does not mean that these were truly isolated, however. While attacks from Oslo to Christchurch and Buffalo were committed by extremists previously unknown to police and without connections to organized right-wing groups, these perpetrators were nevertheless embedded in online communities that facilitate at least a certain degree of cohesion even without formal organizations. This subset of the wider far-right movement is united by a common ideological core centered around the notion of an imminent ’white genocide’ brought about by immigration and the degradation of traditional male values orchestrated by Jews, on the one hand, and a commitment to revolutionary violence to destroy the Democratic system and bring about an apocalyptic ‘race war’, on the other. Terrorism is employed in this context as a means to destabilize societies, accelerating the demise that the proponents of this millenarian worldview see as inevitable anyway. Given this goal, this movement is generally subsumed – by both analysts and its proponents themselves – under the term “militant accelerationism” (Kriner 2022). This chapter addresses the question of whether under these circumstances something like collective learning beyond the radicalization of individuals is still possible. It posits that interactive processes that predominantly take place online connect and shape the milieu of extremists into more than the sum of its DOI: 10.4324/9781003361435-11

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parts, and it examines how this transnational and decentralized right-wing terrorist movement is able to develop collective knowledge, identity, and strategy. Unfortunately, the literature on terrorist learning is ill-equipped to deal with this topic, as for the most part, it conceptualizes learning either as part of individual radicalization or as organizational learning of formalized terrorist groups. There is a lack of approaches that address collective, yet not organizational, learning on the level of informal networks and movements. To remedy this, I draw on a prominent approach from the literature on learning in more conventional contexts, namely the “community of practice”– a concept developed mainly by Etienne Wenger (Lave and Wenger 1991; Wenger 1998; Wenger and Wenger 2015). Communities of practice (CoP) are informal groups of people who share a concern for something they do and learn how to do it better by interacting on a regular basis. Learning in this sense stems from being engaged with others in a particular practice. I argue in this chapter that the decentralized networks of accelerationist extremists can be fruitfully described as a community engaged in a common practice of producing hate and violence. This community provides the infrastructure and mechanisms that allow the movement to learn and transform as a whole. It connects the disparate experiences of individuals and transforms them to the collective level, where they serve as micro-level feedback into decentralized and selfregulated processes of interpretation and dissemination, resulting in collective learning outcomes. Accordingly, based on an overview of CoP as a concept of collective learning, I will apply its central elements – the infrastructure of mutual engagement of the community’s members, the construction of a joint enterprise, and the development of a shared repertoire – to the accelerationist movement connected to right-wing terrorist violence. I draw on empirical evidence collected from the literature as well as primary data, including documents from both terrorists themselves (like manifestos, announcements of attacks, videos, etc.) and the wider community (publications, websites), along with observations from its online communications in publicly accessible forums. To set the stage for the analysis, I begin with a brief outline of the characteristics of militant accelerationism. Militant Accelerationism The last decade has seen the “emergence of a new leaderless, transnational and apocalyptic violent extreme right-wing movement” (Musharbash 2021: 39). This strand is, despite many ideological similarities to older extremists, a distinctly novel expression of far-right terrorism and decidedly a product of the digital age. Its worldview is rooted in classical reactionary and fascist ideology, but adapted to contemporary circumstances and online subcultures, resulting in a combination of racism, antisemitism, and anti-feminism that is centered around the notion of a ‘white genocide’: in a kind of reversal of white male

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supremacy, adherents see themselves as having become the persecuted group, threatened by the forces of liberal modernity and globalism, which are deliberately promoting the ‘Great Replacement’, a term made popular by French novelist Renaud Camus (Davey and Ebner 2019). According to this view, Jews control the governments of Western states with the support of liberal, ‘culturalMarxist’, and feminist ‘traitors’ in order to organize mass-immigration from the Global South. Because those immigrants are thought to have higher birth rates than whites – a result of the feminist distortion of the ‘natural order’ – over time whites risk to be replaced as the dominant race and supposedly be relegated to a state of serfdom. Thus, the extremists see themselves in a defensive, existential struggle against modern liberal society, what they call ‘the System’. The state is considered hopelessly compromised and unsalvageable, resulting in the need for a true revolution rather than just some form of reactionary restoration (Beauchamp 2019). This revolution is imagined as an apocalyptic ‘race war’, which in the extremist’s mind is “inevitable” (Slavros 2015b, 77). Visions about what the actual post-revolutionary world will look like are vague, however, apart from the idea that the supposed ‘natural order’ will be restored with “the arrival of the new Golden Age” (Slavros 2015d, 79). Having abandoned purely nationalist objectives in favor of ‘pan-white’ ideology, the movement is inherently transnational (Musharbash 2021). In contrast to more traditional right-wing structures, which use digital technology as tools but organizationally prefer offline contact, it is based predominantly in cyberspace. This does not mean that personal contacts do not exist. However, the internet is not only seen as an instrument but is a constitutive element of the movement itself. Thus, the movement is steeped in digital subcultures, using distinctly online forms of expression like memes and relying on English loaded with inside jargon (Loadenthal, Hausserman, and Thierry 2022). Finally, while the concept of “lone wolves”1 is not new (Hartleb 2020, 41–47), the way this movement combines it with the connective quality of an anonymous online environment and the accelerationist impetus to hasten societal collapse, results in a specific strategic outlook (Musharbash 2021: 40–41). The function of attacks largely conforms to the basic principles of revolutionary terrorism, namely sowing chaos and confusion in the population and inspiring further and escalating attacks that are supposed to eventually trigger the race war. However, in a major deviation from more traditional right-wing terror, which in the interest of deniability and operational security mostly relied on letting the acts speak for themselves (Koehler 2017, 65–66), attacks are accompanied by a wealth of material produced by perpetrators as well as supporters that serves as a “powerful act of propaganda designed to deliver an explanatory narrative, an ideological justification, a tactical lesson, and a call to arms for others to follow” (Macklin 2019: 2). Operationally, therefore, attacks are maximized for publicity, usually taking the form of mass-shootings by single actors that are announced in advance or even include live coverage disseminated via the internet (see Table 9.1).

Year

2015 2016 2018 2019 2019 2019 2019 2019 2022 2022

Attacker

Dylann Roof David Sonboly Robert Bowers Brenton Tarrant John Earnest Patrick Crusius Philipp Manshaus Stephan Balliet Payton Gendron Juraj Krajcik

Charleston, SC, United Sates Munich, Germany Pittsburgh, PA, United Sates Christchurch, New Zealand Poway, CA, United Sates El Paso, TX, United Sates Bærum, Norway Halle, Germany Buffalo, NY, United Sates. Bratislava, Slovakia

City Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church. OEZ Shopping Mall Tree-of-Life Synagogue Al Noor Mosque; Linwood Islamic Centre Chabad of Poway Synagogue Walmart Store Al-Noor Islamic Centre Halle Synagogue; Kiez-Döner Kebab Shop Tops Friendly Markets Supermarket LGBT bar

Target

Table 9.1 Right-wing accelerationist lone actor terrorist attacks in the last decade

9 9 + attacker 11 51 1 23 1 (attacker’s stepsister) 2 10 2 + attacker

Deaths

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Structurally, there are two ideal-typical strands with distinct cultural roots: firstly, there is a hard core of accelerationists subscribing to explicit neo-Nazi and fascist beliefs and culture, manifesting in networks as well as clandestine cells and organizations like the now defunct Atomwaffen Division (Musharbash 2021; Newhouse 2021, 17–22). Members of these groups have been responsible for several murders and terrorist plots but have not committed large-scale attacks. The second strand is much looser and resides in the diverse yet interconnected online spaces of largely unregulated and anonymous web forums, imageboards,2 and messenger channels (Davey and Ebner 2019, 24; Thorleifsson 2022). Although these platforms are overall much less stringently ideological than the neo-Nazi forums, some of their users are no less radical and committed. Virtually all lone actors listed in Table 9.1 had some connections to the right-wing extremist online milieu, which served as inspiration as well as being the main arena in which the attacks were received and processed. I argue that despite being expressed mainly in lone actor attacks, the accelerationist movement can be interpreted as a collective and that employing the lens of terrorist learning can offer insights into this phenomenon. Collective Learning and Communities of Practice “Collective learning” can be defined as a “dynamic and cumulative process that results in the production of knowledge [which] is institutionalized in the form of structures, rules, routines, norms, discourse, and strategies that guide further action [and] emerge because of interactive mechanisms” (Garavan and Carbery 2012, 646). It can be understood as an umbrella concept that “emerged at a theoretical level out of recognition that the sum of individual learning does not equate with the collective level of analyses” (Garavan and McCarthy 2008, 451). De Laat and Simons draw a clear conceptual distinction between social learning in interactions (with and from others) and collective learning proper “where the members consciously strive for common (learning and/or working) outcomes” (2002, 15). In other words, for learning to be collective, both the learning processes and learning outcomes have to be on the collective level (Heikkila and Gerlak 2013, 486). The knowledge produced has an inherently shared quality and, while it is reflected in individual members of the collective (and social learning is, therefore, part of collective learning), it cannot be broken down into single parts. One of the most prominent perspectives on collective learning is the concept of “community of practice” (Lave and Wenger 1991; Paivia Duarte 2013; Wenger 1998). Wenger understands learning as “social participation”, in which individuals are engaged in a “process of being active participants in the practices of social communities and constructing identities in relation to these communities” (1998, 4). CoP are defined by three connected components: a shared domain of interest; a community of people interacting based on their common domain of interest; and a common practice as members of

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the community seek to advance this interest (Wenger-Trayner and WengerTrayner 2015, 2). Such assemblages often comprise “a core group and many peripheral members” without strict boundaries (Wenger-Trayner and Wenger-Trayner 2015, 3). The core element of this approach is the notion of learning as practice. Practice is different from mere behavior or action: “It is doing in a historical and social context that gives structure and meaning to what we do” (Wenger 1998, 47). Communities are held together by their common practice which gives them coherence and through which they negotiate collective meaning – without practice, the community doesn’t exist and vice versa. A CoP’s practice is constituted of three elements: mutual engagement, joint enterprise, and shared repertoire (Wenger 1998, 72–85). Mutual engagement denotes relations and repeated interactions within the community, which generate a mutual sense of trust and accountability; joint enterprise directs these interactions and the activities of the group; finally, shared repertoires are the communal meaning resources that emerge from these interactions, including common discourses, ways of thinking and acting, narratives, symbols and concepts, artifacts, tools, etc., representing the shared body of knowledge and sense of identity a group develops (Murillo 2008, 2). The generation of knowledge and identity through practice is a constant self-reinforcing process. “Learning is the engine of practice and practice is the history of that learning” (Wenger 1998, 96). The information does not passively flow in but “always refers to an existing background of prior communication, (…) expectations, and norms, which are the basis for all further activities” (Kimmerle et al. 2015, 127). Therefore, a crucial aspect of CoPs is the construction of a shared worldview, rooted in the community’s joint enterprise, that becomes the basis for its practice and its evolution. Identity guides what members pay attention to, what they ignore, and how they are connected to the community through a sense of belonging. Wenger describes identity and practice as “mirror images of each other” (1998, 149). Thus, practice, learning, and identity together form the trinity of collective learning: practice builds a collective identity, which in turn forms the basis for the community that is engaging in practice; identity guides the direction of learning and is at the same time a reflection of earlier learning processes; finally, learning drives practice, which embodies, with its shared repertoires, the history of learning. Wenger and most of the scholars who adopt his approach are concerned with collective learning primarily in terms of vocational education and learning at and for the workplace. Like other learning theories, the idea of CoP has been used also in an applied sense, with businesses deliberately designing learning communities based on this model.3 The framework is nevertheless useful for thinking about forms of nonorganizational, informal collectives of learning in general. One extension of the approach concerns the medium of learning. The internet has been seen from the very beginning as an ideal vehicle for the advancement and

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spreading of knowledge. As technology has evolved, the understanding of the internet also changed: it has transformed from being mainly a new delivery system for content into an infrastructure for asynchronous cooperation and an environment of social learning (Sunal and Wright 2012). The CoP concept has been in this sense extended early on to “virtual communities of practice” (Kimble and Hildreth 2009). While there has been debate about whether such communities can function without some grounding in the ‘analog world’, Murillo has demonstrated that CoPs can emerge on the internet and that they “are not inherently limited to face-to-face interaction” (Murillo 2008, 1). The communities he identified were among users of the Usenet platform, which can be seen as a predecessor of modern web forums and imageboards. The concept has also been applied to the study of extremism, albeit rarely (Horgan et al. 2017, 656). Kenney first uses it in his study on drug smuggling networks and al-Qaeda training camps (2007). In later work, he analyzes the radical British activist group al-Muhajiroun as a CoP, whose members “socialize newcomers to the ideas and customs of their shared pursuit” (Kenney 2020, 57–58). Hundeide (2003) and Horgan et al. (2017) employ the concept to describe processes of socialization of new recruits into various militant communities. Finally, Lee and Knott (2022) apply the CoP lens to the neo-Nazi forum Fascist Forge to analyze ideological learning in online extremist settings. However, these accounts mostly deal with collective contexts of learning of individuals rather than learning of the collective level itself. In the following empirical section, I will apply the concept to militant accelerationism – taken to mean actual terrorists as well as the larger ecosystem promoting them – in order to assess how far it can be seen as a learning collective, generating transformations not only on the individual but also communal level. The Accelerationist Movement as a Community of Practice The fundamental condition for any collective learning is that members have a certain self-awareness as parts of a larger whole rather than merely individuals frequenting and interacting in the same spaces. Research has demonstrated that such a sense of community can indeed be identified in the case of right-wing extremist digital spheres, with virtual communities not merely being an extension of ‘real-world’ connections or static repositories but “real social spaces” (Bowman-Grieve 2009, 990). Most such research has focused on user communities of specific sites and forums. The online scene of the revolutionary extremist right does not, however, form one cohesive unit; rather, it can be conceptualized as a “series of distinct yet overlapping ‘sub-subcultures’” (Baele, Brace, and Coan 2021, 66). Due to the largely anonymous structure of large online interactions, both the overall accelerationist movement and its virtual subcultures are fuzzy sets rather than clearly delineated entities. However, following Wenger, a learning

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community gets its cohesion not from clear organizational boundaries but from the engagement of members in a shared practice. In the case of militant accelerationism, this practice can be seen as the promotion of violence in the interest of bringing about a race war. Actual terrorist attacks are designed to further this objective; they are not the objective itself. Hence, they only acquire meaning in the sense of “doing [i.e., acting] in a historical and social context” (Wenger 1998, 47). The foundation for the dynamic negotiations of this meaning is mutual engagement, which is the first dimension linking practice and the community. The Digital Infrastructures of Mutual Engagement

The digital infrastructure for this engagement comprises a range of tools and platforms of virtual communication. These vary in their dedication to accelerationism: in addition to web forums explicitly focused on it or fascist topics in general, extreme right-wing discourse is also institutionalized in unor weakly regulated larger platforms, as well as repurposing niche or even decidedly mainstream channels (Conway, Scrivens, and Macnair 2019). Consistent with De Laat and Simons’ description of learning communities as “emergent (…) in the process of activity” (2002, 18), the accelerationist movement is a genuine product of the internet rather than just a continuation of earlier right-wing extremism. The focal point of its origin lies in the web forum Iron March which existed from 2011 to 2017 and “served as the incubator in which the strong group identity (…) developed” (Upchurch 2021, 28). After its demise, a short-lived successor emerged before most of the member base migrated to the encrypted messenger service Telegram, where they established an interconnected set of different channels collectively dubbed “Terrorgram” (Bedingfield 2020).4 A second major site of the scene is the ecosystem of imageboards, the largest of which by far is 4chan (Conway, Scrivens, and Macnair 2019; Thorleifsson 2022). 4chan developed a reputation for being very laissez-faire, especially on its /pol/ board dedicated to ‘politically incorrect’ discussions. This quickly became a hub for uncensored right-wing extremism and inspired the creation of technologically similar imageboards with even less moderation, like 8chan (now 8kun), 16chan, or Neinchan. In a comparative study, Baele, Brace, and Coan (2021) have identified a spectrum, with 4chan hosting a variety of types of discussion, including mainstream political debates (although usually with a far-right bent), and the smaller derivatives, some of which are only accessible on the dark web, being more extreme and sectarian, serving as a bridge between the larger ‘chan-verse’ and explicit accelerationist channels. Much of the user base of Iron March had frequented chan boards prior to the creation of the forum, and many continued to do so (Upchurch 2021, 29–30). While there is no way to definitively link specific chan users with Iron March identities and vice versa, references by users make it clear that there are overlaps in membership. For example, even years after

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Iron March was taken offline, one 4chan user lamented its loss and the general crackdown on extremist online spaces: “I miss IronMarch. I miss the sense of camaraderie and purpose the writings gave us. (…) With the fall of infinite chan [sic – actually infinity chan, another name for 8chan], are there other fascist stronghold [sic] still left in the clear net?” (https://archive.4plebs.org/pol/thread/227765101, No. 227765101).5 In addition to dedicated discussion boards, the movement also uses the whole spectrum of services available on the Web 2.0. The accelerationist base is largely made up of (male) digital natives, who organically frequent several corners of the internet and in this sense do not categorically distinguish between their extremist and regular use of it; there is thus a focus, for example, on services associated with video games. For example, Steam is a distribution service for video games that also provides a hub to discuss and play games together. Far-right topics and discussion groups are common. While one purpose of these groups is to spread the extremist message, a study suggests that gaming seems to be “largely used as a means of community building rather than as a deliberate strategy for radicalization or recruitment” (Vaux, Gallagher, and Davey 2021, 8). Members of the accelerationist movement engage in a shared hobby of playing video games, thereby deepening their connections and strengthening the foundations for mutual engagement in their revolutionary practice. Steam has been implicated even in a concrete act of terrorism: David Sonboly, who killed nine immigrants in Munich in 2016, was an avid user of the platform, where he was a member of far-right discussion groups (Hartleb 2020, 99–101). Given the nebulous and decentralized nature of the collective, such seemingly innocuous spaces can therefore be important nodes in the wider online arena in which extremists form a web of indirect relations despite often not participating in the same concrete spaces. Other examples of the indirect mutual engagement of the extremist milieu can be found in the manifestos that almost all of the recent accelerationist terrorists produced and that are spread online (Ware 2020, 3–4).6 These often contain clear references to their common online subculture as well as to terrorist predecessors. Brenton Tarrant mentioned Dylann Roof and specifically cited Breivik as an inspiration for his terrorist attack in Christchurch, while at the same time peppering his document with in-jokes addressed to the chancommunity (Tarrant 2019). Likewise, John Earnest, who just a few months later attacked a synagogue in California, referenced as inspirations “Robert Bowers, Brenton Tarrant, (…) Moon Man, and Pink Guy”, mixing (likely somewhat tongue-in-cheek) his terrorist role models with figures of popular memes on imageboards (Earnest 2019, 5). Patrick Crusius, who later the same year killed 22 people in El-Paso, was equally straightforward: “In general, I support the Christchurch shooter and his manifesto”; and while his writing was much more sober and without overt in-jokes, he revealed his cultural roots by

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justifying his choice of soft targets with the advice that attacks do not need to “fulfil your super soldier COD fantasy”, referencing the popular shooter game Call of Duty (Crusius 2019, 1, 5). References to both gaming and chan-culture are also prevalent in the writings of Stephan Balliet, the Halle synagogue attacker (Balliet 2019a; 2019b). Payton Gendron, who murdered African Americans in a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, explicitly stated that he had “learned the truth” [about ‘white genocide’] from “browsing 4chan” and unequivocally declared that he “would follow Tarrant’s lead” and the attacks of so many others like him [mentioning most of the terrorists listed in table 9. by name] (Gendron 2022, 13). Finally, the Bratislava terrorist Juraj Krajcik likewise wrote that he “was never the same” after discovering 8chan (Krajcik 2022, 11); moreover, he became the first lone actor terrorist who overtly referenced the accelerationist Terrorgram collective (Krajcik 2022, 62–63). The Joint Enterprise of Terror

While the online sphere thus provides the infrastructure for direct and indirect engagement in a community, what gives this community meaning is the pursuit of a joint enterprise. This enterprise is not just a stated goal or purpose – it is an ongoing negotiation process that creates relations of mutual accountability that define the circumstances under which the community pursues its practice (Wenger 1998, 79–82). In the case of the accelerationists, this can be thought of as norms and templates of interpretation that delineate what it means to ‘prevent white genocide’ and ‘accelerate the race war’. It is based on a combination of racist, antisemitic, misogynist, and anti-liberal principles coupled with the belief that the ‘white race’ is under imminent threat. An analysis of the most common words and bigrams on several chan-boards shows that the users are obsessed with racial categories, with “white” and variations of “white people” the most frequent and slur references to Blacks and Jews almost always in the top 10 (Baele, Brace, and Coan 2021: 69–72).7 Antisemitism “is the ‘master frame’ at /pol/ and by far the most prevalent form of online racism”, consistent with the persistent narrative of a Jewish conspiracy where Western countries are controlled by so-called Zionist Occupied Governments (ZOG) engaged in the ‘Great Replacement’ (Thorleifsson 2022, 291). Users who accept this worldview designate themselves as ‘redpilled’ – a term for having discovered the ‘truth’.8 The marking of enemy groups in the digital world is directly reflected in the targets of actual terrorist attacks: Breivik attacked what he saw as ‘liberal traitors’; Roof and Gendron murdered African-Americans; Bowers, Earnest, and Balliet targeted synagogues; Tarrant and Manshaus mosques; Sonboly and Crusius people they perceived to be immigrants and Krajcik a LGBT-bar. What sets the revolutionary militant community apart from the larger farright ideology is less the diagnosis of the supposed problem but the approach to a solution. The creed of the accelerationist movement is that “there is no political solution” (Kriner, Conroy, and Ashwal 2021). The violent alternative defining the joint extremist practice emerged in conjunction with the

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community itself, which deliberately distanced itself not only from more ‘moderate’ far-right radicals but also from established extremist organizations and discourse. The Iron March forum in particular was created to provide an alternative for “21st century Fascists”, the self-proclaimed audience of the forum (Upchurch 2021, 30–31). The common undertaking was specifically constructed from the point of view of younger, internet-socialized men, who became interested in neo-Nazism and fascism but found traditional extremist groups and their methods unappealing. Consequently, most members of the community have no prior institutional connections to established far-right extremist groups. This does not imply, however, a break with historical traditions or the development of a new ideology – on the contrary, classics and historical roots of fascism are explicitly embraced. Rather, the movement strives to develop a ‘pure’ and uncompromising form of fascist struggle. In a compilation of philosophically themed posts from the first few years of the forum’s existence, Iron March’s founders refer to a process of ideological reflection and learning:9 “It took our community 4 years (…) to formulate a more clear and comprehensive understanding of the Fascist worldview (…), addressing misconceptions and errors we have overcome. Some of these errors were simply born from limited knowledge and understanding of fascism, which new insights have swept away. Others are the result of weakness – a lack of moral courage which characterizes ‘moderate’ movements and thinkers.” (Iron March 2015, 5–8) Embracing extreme violence is a lesson of this process; as a leading ideologue explicitly states with a reference to Breivik’s attack: “we don’t think murder is wrong on principle and we do not believe that every human life is sacred” (Slavros 2015a, 86). The specific accelerationist approach is also something that developed over time. It crystalized with the re-discovery of Siege, a hitherto mostly obscure book by James Mason (2015), collecting neo-Nazi newsletters written in the first half of the 1980s. Made available in digital form in 2003, it was re-published by Iron March in 2015 and quickly gained a reputation as a kind of “neo-Nazi bible” (Johnson and Feldman 2021, 4). In the foreword, the editor succinctly summarizes the apocalyptic worldview: “As Mason explains, society has deteriorated to the point where it is crass idiocy to imagine that anything can be salvaged or gradually reformed by following traditional avenues of electioneering or encoded law. Likewise, SIEGE also expounds on how it is nowadays absurd to contemplate full engagement against ZOG by means of noble violence, as there is no longer the existing time, numbers, or expertise. (…). At this juncture social malaise cannot be halted, only accelerated onward to the abyss”. (Schuster 2015, 12–13)

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He closes the introduction with an explicit call for violence, referencing the terrorist bombing on a government building in Oklahoma City that killed 168 people in 1995: “SIEGE is to be used as a cookbook and guide. It is sincerely hoped this edition will prevail [sic] the vigilant(e) intelligence to heed a clarion call, wage battles of attrition, and act in a manner commensurate to Timothy McVeigh”. (Schuster 2015, 28) Despite the fact that most of the content of the newsletters refers to 1980s America, the book’s uncompromising stance and call for revolution struck a chord with the community. From hard-core extremist forums the idea of accelerationism was then exported to the chan-verse, where the slogan “read SIEGE!” became a rallying cry for accepting the necessity of terrorism (e.g., https://archive.4plebs.org/pol/thread/214571057, No214571057); in an adaption of the redpilling metaphor, this process is referred to as “siegepilling” (Loadenthal, Hausserman, and Thierry 2022, 94). The book provided the community with a coherent ideological and strategic framework, serving as a cornerstone for the definition of the collective struggle and as a baseline for consciously learning how to practice it. The community actively engages with the concepts, discussing the application and implications of the approach and interpreting the ideology both on a philosophical basis and in relation to current politics. For example, as Johnson and Feldman (2021, 11–13) report, users focused more on feminism as an enemy. Another common theme is a certain ‘told you so!’ – attitude regarding the hopes that more mainstream farright activists had built on the Trump presidency, combined with calls for learning the lessons of his failure and embracing the accelerationist worldview.10 Ultimately, what evolved as the joint enterprise of the community is expressed in gruesome terms, with one author pushing the ‘pilling’ metaphor for the process of finding and accepting truth to the extreme by declaring the “the genocide pill” as “the final pill” (Alpha 2021, 16). The Shared Repertoire of Hate

The third dimension of this communitarian practice is the shared repertoire, which is made up of the combined resources available for negotiating – meaning and defining the discourse and practices of the community, including norms, techniques, jargon, tools, symbols, aesthetics, mental categories, concepts, ways of expression, etc. In the case of the militant accelerationist movement, the shared repertoire can be described as a fusion of more mainstream aspects of internet culture (e.g., the use of memes, video game aesthetics, a fondness for Japanese anime art, shitposting and trolling11), the methods and language of the alt-right (Greene 2019), and classic fascist and neo-Nazi imagery. Very broadly, it contains written text,

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graphics, and symbols, as well as actual activism and violence, along with the spoken and unspoken rules of how to understand and use them. Cultural expressions are imbued with meaning through a constantly evolving interactive process. While some are relatively unambiguous, like established symbols of fascism, much of the repertoire only makes sense with existing knowledge and/or in light of specific contexts. As we have already seen, accelerationists do not shy away from consuming and producing large amounts of text (Lee and Knott 2022, 231). Several websites and messenger channels act as ‘fascist libraries’ with a large variety of ideological and instructional electronic texts, ranging from original and modern fascist classics to esoteric texts and tactical manuals up to compilations produced by the accelerationist community itself (e.g., Iron March 2015; Terrorgram 2021a, 2021b). Ideological messages are also transported via fiction – the best-known example is probably the 1978 book The Turner Diaries by William Pierce, but contemporary community members also indulge in crafting supposedly ‘educational’ stories (Slavros and Chapel 2015; Charlie 2021, 28–29; Delta 2021: 105–115). Members then reflect upon and apply this material to current circumstances. A considerable part of the activity of learning and building the extremist repertoire thus takes very conventional forms of studying and writing. The second, no less important, type of extremist written discourse takes the form of forum posts and conversations in the right-wing online spheres of the chan-verse and related spaces (Conway, Scrivens, and Macnair 2019). It relies heavily on jargon and insider knowledge, using specific slurs or codes like ‘1488’ which expresses adherence to white supremacy.12 This language not only has to be learned but also constantly updated as new terms and metaphors are developed, often far less unambiguous than the example above. The heavy reliance on vernacular and symbols is both a deliberate tactic and seen as consistent with the fascist tradition: “The tendency of fascists is to go back to the older ways, to express meaning through symbols. We adopt ancient symbols from the glorious past of our respective civilizations and develop our own according to our modern needs and our current perspective. (…) The same thing is progressively happening in fascist culture across the world, where one can mention ‘#ropeculture’ and we will all chuckle knowingly, and where a party can call itself ‘golden dawn’ and we all know it refers to the end of the iron age. This coded language will become more complex and impenetrable as time goes on, to the point where non-fascists will become utterly unable to understand our communications”. (Zeiger 2015a, 204–206)13 Concerning the use of slang, in addition to opaque references to rightwing imagery and openly antisemitic, racist, misogynistic, homophobic, and anti-liberal slurs, the community also operates with the larger vocabulary of

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the online subculture, making it often difficult to ascertain whether a certain post is for example explicitly racist. The discourse on far-right boards is deliberately shrouded in layers of meaning and irony and is heavily contextdependent, determining in- and outsiders (Greene 2019). The use of visual material is another crucial part of the shared repertoire (Crawford, Keen, and Suarez-Tangil 2021). In a decentralized and selforganized process of generating and screening material, the movement produces propaganda and branding essentially in a crowdsourced fashion. An essential element of the developed stylization is, for example, a face mask depicting the lower half of a human skull. This type of mask has become probably the most explicit symbol of allegiance to accelerationism, both online and offline (Upchurch 2021, 27; SPLC 2017). Like their written slang, the visual language used by the extremist community also draws heavily on mainstream meme imagery, which they adapt to their purposes. A wellknown example of such appropriation is the character of Pepe the Frog, a decidedly apolitical cartoon figure which was adopted by the far-right as an ironic symbol for white nationalism and evolved into a symbol that can be very explicit as well as serve as a kind of open signifier (Miller-Idriss 2019, 126–128). Pepe is sometimes depicted in Nazi uniforms, but at other times the images themselves convey nothing sinister and acquire their meaning only in juxtaposition with a certain violent context (Crawford, Keen, and Suarez-Tangil 2021, 986–987). This malleability is characteristic of the visual repertoire of the community, making it easy to be picked up, modified, and adapted for different contexts, and conforms with Wenger’s notion that the repertoire of practice “remains inherently ambiguous” (1998, 83). The shared repertoire of the community consists therefore not only of knowledge about the memetic resources but also about how to creatively and appropriately employ them. Finally, the importance of the shared repertoire of practice is also expressed in the violence and terrorism committed in its name. Many recent perpetrators drew heavily on internet subculture in general and the repertoire developed by the community in particular. Several attackers explicitly expressed their allegiance and cultural background in the posts and documents they distributed on internet platforms prior to their attacks (Hartleb 2020; Ware 2020). Brenton Tarrant is perhaps the most significant case – his manifesto, which referenced the ‘Great Replacement’ narrative in its title, is full of both tongue-in-cheek and overt allusions to accelerationist imagery and chan insider jokes (Tarrant 2019). His announcement of the attack on 8chan also framed his actions in the language of chan-culture by referring to it as an attempt to “stop shitposting and (…) make a real life effort post” (https://archive.is/1oDKC).14 Likewise, the Tarrant-inspired Philip Manshaus described his intentions as to “bump the race war thread irl [in real life]” (cit. Macklin 2019, 5).15 Consequently, a user on 4chan proclaimed him to be “one of us” (http://archive.4plebs.org/pol/thread/227876737, No. 227877114).

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The repertoire can also be seen in the form of the attacks themselves. They are almost exclusively carried out as direct shooting assaults against soft targets. This is despite the fact that focusing “on real blows to [the Systems’s] infrastructure” (3S 2021, 48) and using more elaborate tactics is widely discussed within the community (Loadenthal, Hausserman, and Thierry 2022, 105). The reliance on shooting rampages may be partly due to narcissist tendencies and operational incompetence, but it also points to links between their tactical approaches and the internalized repertoire of their online community. The assaults are strongly influenced by the “cultural script of school shootings” (Sandberg et al. 2014: 277). School shootings are, tragically, not only a common occurrence that thus provide a readily available model for how to conduct armed attacks; they also feature prominently in discussions of the online community, where they are ironically celebrated. Many school shooters have become twisted role models for young men feeling alienated from modern society, whose motives for violence often mix personal and extremist dimensions. For example, David Sonboly expressed a desire for revenge because of bullying and professed admiration for an earlier German school shooter as well as right-wing beliefs; in far-right groups on the gaming platform Steam he was in contact with a same-aged American, who later carried out a school shooting in New Mexico (Hartleb 2020, 100–102). This points to a second important dimension of how the repertoire developed in the online environment influences actual violence and its reception, namely the socalled gamification of terror (Evans 2019). This is apparent for example in the ranking of perpetrators according to their ‘highscore’, i.e., the number of people they murdered and injured in their attacks, in accelerationist propaganda and incitement (Loadenthal, Hausserman, and Thierry 2022, 100). Stephan Balliet included a game-like listing of cynical “achievements” in one of the documents he uploaded prior to his attack on the Halle synagogue (2019b, 11). The usage of visual aesthetics and language of video games can be seen both in the presentation and reception of attacks: Tarrant as well as Balliet and Gendron connected cameras to their gear, attempting to replicate the look of first-person shooter games and create an immersive experience for viewers familiar with these kinds of visuals. Other members of the community consequently seized on this format in their creative exploitation of the attack – for example, the first reply to Tarrant’s announcement of his attack on 8chan used the popular “Press F to Pay Respects”-meme originating from the Call of Duty-videogames (https://archive.is/1oDKC, No. 12916719). The Accelerationist Collective Structure

Unlike classic understandings of ‘community’, the nature of the accelerationist movement is fuzzy and decentralized, with no clear boundaries or organizational structure. This is due not least to the largely anonymous participation and the thick layers of irony that permeate most of the discourse. Nevertheless, by negotiating their joint enterprise and building a continually evolving shared

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repertoire through constant mutual engagement in overlapping spheres of ‘edgy’ internet subcultures, far-right spaces, and terrorist propaganda, accelerationists construct a truly collective community of practice. What holds it together is the awareness of its members of being engaged in a common practice for a common purpose – in this sense, it is close to what Anderson has called an “imagined community” (2016). At the core of the community’s infrastructure lies what Upchurch calls the “skull mask network” (2021, 27), the hard-core accelerationist groups, forums, and channels that emerged out of Iron March. Here, the extremist agenda of the movement is developed and collective memory is stored in the forms of edited compendiums and guidebook-like publications. Crucially, these are still collective efforts of especially committed militants and do not imply a hierarchical leadership or command function. Other focal points are the supposedly lone-actor perpetrators of terrorist acts. Those largely emerged from the chan-verse, which is also the main site where their materials are distributed, and their acts processed to add to the shared repertoire. This sphere can be interpreted as a layered periphery, from small extremist places like Neinchan to 8chan/kun and larger and more general arenas like 4chan. In this diffuse milieu of online spaces, members of the core mingle with devoted adherents and more loosely aligned individuals, as well as the broader chan ‘public’ which they seek to convince of their message. Peripheral members may drift in and out of the community, not fully subscribe to the doctrine, or even participate in the discourse ‘ironically’. Nevertheless, by engaging – even if only temporarily – in the production and dissemination of memes and the negotiation of the meaning of accelerationist ideology and violence, they are still part of the community’s practice. Despite this largely anonymous and open arrangement, through its practices, the community has developed a distinct collective identity and a sense of solidarity and belonging. The accelerationists use extensive ingroup/out-group language in their communications; they not only clearly mark their enemies, but also strongly distance themselves from the more mainstream far-right. Brenton Tarrant’s last post on 8chan exemplifies the intense loyalty and sense of community that this decentralized collective has achieved: “It’s been a long ride and despite all your rampant faggotry, fecklessness and degeneracy, you are all top blokes and the best bunch of cobbers a man could ask for” (https://archive.is/1oDKC).16 One important reason for this keen sense of identity is the strong branding that has evolved around the community, including common symbols, slang, and insider knowledge. Rather paradoxically, the chan-verse garners strength and a sense of belonging in spite of its simple, anonymous, and impersonal nature – in a way, with each new post presenting a clean slate, it’s a perfect meritocracy. The publications of Iron March and the later Terrorgram-channels, on the other hand, present slick accounts of both the ideological foundations and the activities encouraged within the movement and are true expressions of collective learning (Iron March 2015; Terrorgram 2021a, 2021b).

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Conclusion The application of concepts of collective learning to a study of the accelerationist movement demonstrated that the latter can meaningfully be understood as a kind of CoP that is consciously engaged in a collective enterprise and the creation of a shared repertoire based on a digital infrastructure underlying a continuous mutual interaction on various platforms. It consists of a hard core of activists expressively committed to fascist and Nazi ideals and a looser, but ideologically largely congruent network of members in the chan-verse of unregulated internet forums. The two spheres reinforce one another, constructing through their common practice a body of knowledge that includes a distinct identity (one that is different from other manifestations of the far right) as well as sets of online and offline norms, aesthetics, and behaviors. This knowledge is expressed and kept in collective memory both in tangible artifacts of communication, such as published materials, and in fluid forms like a shared verbal and visual language. It is developed by adopting implicit cultural influences, like a fascination with school shootings or video games, translating them to fit the purposes of the community, and processing them through a collective negotiation of meanings into explicit elements of the shared repertoire. This repertoire is built up over time by the activities and mutual engagement of members of the community itself and interacts with the negotiations of the joint enterprise. While the latter sets the parameters on how to think and act, the repertoire represents the way in which these thoughts and acts can be expressed. Those expressions can be instruments of propaganda, but also actual acts of terrorism – both are, crucially, components of the larger accelerationist practice. Collective learning is inherent to this process – as Wenger writes, “what they learn is [emphasis in original] their practice. Learning is not (…) a special category of activity” (1998, 96). Like with many subcultures, a large part of the appeal of this particularly extreme identity is the opportunity to feel like part of an elite, a select group. This elite status is not only derived from the hyper-masculine and martial selfpresentation but also from the complementary self-perception as truth-seekers. As one of the authors of the Iron March compilation “Next Leap” writes: “If you’re on Iron March, presumably you’re some sort of elite, in the sense that even if you’re a loser with no friends, you should be a loser with an IQ over 120 who knows about a lot of stuff and who wants to improve himself and his nation”. (Zeiger 2015b, 135–136) Like with other violent movements, a sense of sharing some higher insight (making violence justified in the eyes of those who wage it) and a desire to evolve and learn is heavily inscribed in the accelerationist community of practice.

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Notes 1 See also Weil, in this volume. 2 Imageboards are a type of internet forum that originated in Japan, where they revolved primarily around the posting of images. They are structured into thematically specific discussion boards. On American imageboards, there is a stronger emphasis on textual discussions based on a radical interpretation of free speech and anonymity, which opened the door for extremists ( Colley and Moore 2022, 8–9). 3 For the application of learning theories see also Köhler et al., in this volume. 4 At the end of 2021, Telegram banned most of the accelerationist channels. 5 I cite posts on online forums with the URL of the relevant thread and the number of the specific post. I refrain from repeating the number in cases where the quote is from the first post in a thread. 6 Like other primary material, I cite the terrorist’s manifestos in the conventional name-year format: they are listed seperatly in the reference section, without specific sources in order to not promote dissemination. 7 Immigrants are also a category heavily discussed negatively; however, a large variety of terms are used, with the result that single ones do not make the list of most common words. 8 The metaphor is a reference to the movie The Matrix, in which the protagonist is offered a blue pill for blissful ignorance or a red pill to discover the inconvenient true nature of the world – consequently, from the perspective of right-wing extremists, taking the red pill indicates that one has left the mainstream narrative. The allegory has been generalized beyond the specific reference, so that a person can be ‘pilled’ regarding various topics. 9 In a way, this can be considered a deep form of learning about the community’s basic assumptions and values; see also Köhler et al., in this volume. 10 A Telegram entry published in a collection reads, for example: “The system is illegitimate. There is no political solution. We accepted these truths long ago, but basic bitch normalfags [slur for ‘ordinary people’] are confronting them for the first time. We saw what was coming and prepared for it, while the lemmings chose the path of denial and wilful ignorance” ( RWBC 2021, 63). 11 ‘Shitposting’ refers to posting things with a lack of substance, often to derail discussions, while ‘trolling’ is saying something intentionally ignorant or offensive just to get a response. While both techniques are commonly used by radicals to make a mockery of serious discussions, they are commonplace in all types of social media. 12 The number 14 refers to the ‘14 words’ of American right-wing extremist David Lane (“We must secure the existence of our people and a future for White children”) and the Nazi greeting “Heil Hitler”, where 8 represents the H as the eighth letter of the alphabet (for this and additional symbolism used by accelerationists, see SPLC 2017). 13 #Ropeculture is in reference to the ‘Day of the Rope’, the day of revolution and mass murder in the Turner Diaries novel, while ‘golden dawn’ (a Greek right-wing party) and ‘iron age’ refer to a cyclical view of history in which the current ‘iron’ age will lead to collapse and be replaced with a new ‘golden’ age. 14 In internet lingo, in contrast to shitposting (see Fn 13), an ‘effort post’ refers to a longer posting that is well thought-out and meant to have an impact. 15 ‘Bumping a thread’ refers to the practice of commenting on a dormant topic in order to bring it back to the attention of other users and revive discussions. 16 While slurs like “faggotry” are clearly meant tongue-in-cheek, “cobbers” is Australian/New Zealand slang for ‘buddies’ or ‘mates’.

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Greene, V.S. (2019), ‘“Deplorable” Satire: Alt-Right Memes, White Genocide Tweets, and Redpilling Normies’, Studies in American Humor 5:1, 31–69. Hartleb, F. (2020), Lone Wolves. The New Terrorism of Right-Wing Single Actors. (Cham: Springer). Heikkila, T. and Gerlak, A.K. (2013), ‘Building a Conceptual Approach to Collective Learning: Lessons for Public Policy Scholars’, Policy Studies Journal 41:3, 484–512. Horgan, J., Taylor, M., Bloom, M., and Winter, C. (2017), ‘From Cubs to Lions: A Six Stage Model of Child Socialization into the Islamic State’, Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, 40:7, 645–664. Hundeide, K. (2003), ‘Becoming a Committed Insider’, Culture and Psychology 9:2, 107–127. Iron March (ed.) (2015), Next Leap: An Iron March Anthology (Self-published). Johnson, B. and Feldman, M. (2021), Siege Culture after Siege: Anatomy of a Neo
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doctrine/ICCT Research Paper Kenney, M. (2007), From Pablo to Osama: Trafficking and Terrorist Networks, Government Bureaucracies, and Competitive Adaptation (University Park, PA: Penn State Press). Kenney, M. (2020), ‘A Community of True Believers: Learning as Process among ‘The Emigrants”, Terrorism and Political Violence 32:1, 57–76. Kimble, C. and Hildreth, P. (2009), ‘Virtual Communities of Practice’, in M. Khosrow-Pour (ed.), Encyclopedia of Information Science and Technology, Second Edition (Hershey, PA: IGI Global), 3981–3985. Kimmerle, J., Moskaliuk, J., Oeberst, A., and Cress, U. (2015), ‘Learning and Collective Knowledge Construction with Social Media: A Process-Oriented Perspective’, Educational Psychologist 50:2, 120–137. Koehler, D. (2017), Right-Wing Terrorism in the 21st Century (London, New York: Routledge). Kriner, M. (2022), ‘An Introduction to Militant Accelerationism’, The Accelerationism Research Consortium, May 9, 2022, https://www.accresearch.org/shortanalysis/anintroduction-to-militant-accelerationism Kriner, M., Conroy, M., and Ashwal, Y. (2021), ‘Understanding Accelerationist Narratives: ‘There is no political solution”, Global Network of Extremism & Technology Insights, September 2, 2021, https://gnet-research.org/2021/09/02/ understanding-accelerationist-narratives-there-is-no-political-solution Lave, J. and Wenger, E. (1991), Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Lee, B. and Knott, K. (2022), ‘Fascist Aspirants: Fascist Forge and Ideological Learning in the Extreme-Right Online Milieu’, Behavioral Sciences of Terrorism and Political Aggression 14:3, 216–240. Loadenthal, M., Hausserman, S., and Thierry, M. (2022), ‘Accelerating Hate: Atomwaffen Division, Contemporary Digital Fascism, and Insurrectionary Accelerationism’, in: J. Bacigalupo, J.K. Borgeson, and R.M. Valeri (eds.), Cyberhate: The Far Right in the Digital Age (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books), 87–118. Macklin, G. (2019). ‘The El Paso Terrorist Attack’, CTC Sentinel 12:11, 1–9. Mason, J. (2015), Siege. Second Edition (Iron March: Self-published). Miller-Idriss, C. (2019), ‘What Makes a Symbol Far Right? Co-opted and Missed Meanings in Far-Right Iconography’, in: M. Fielitz and N. Thurston (eds.), PostDigital Cultures of the Far Right (Bielefeld: Transcript), 123–135.

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Murillo, E. (2008), ‘Searching Usenet for Virtual Communities of Practice: Using Mixed Methods to Identify the Constructs of Wenger’s Theory’, Information Research 13:4, https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ837276.pdf Musharbash, Y. (2021), ‘The Globalization of Far-Right Extremism: An Investigative Report’, CTC Sentinel 14:6, 39–47. Newhouse, A. (2021), ‘The Threat is the Network: The Multi-Node Structure of Neo-Fascist Accelerationism’, CTC Sentinel 14:5, 17–25. Paiva Duarte, F. (2013), ‘Communities of Practice’, in: S.O. Idowu, N. Capaldi, L. Zu, and A. Das Gupta (eds.), Encyclopedia of Corporate Social Responsibility (Berlin: Springer), 399–403. Ravndal, J.A. and Bjørgo, T. (2018), ‘Investigating Terrorism from the Extreme Right: A Review of Past and Present Research’, Perspectives on Terrorism 12:6, 5–22. Ryan, M. (2017), Decoding Al-Qaeda’s Strategy: The Deep Battle against America (New York, NY: Columbia University Press). RWBC (2021), ‘Sainthood Criteria’, in: Terrorgram (eds.), Do it for the ‘Gram: The Collected Writings of Terrorgram (Self-published), 46. Sandberg, S., Oksanen, A., Berntzen, L.E., and Kiilakoski, T. (2014), ‘Stories in Action: The Cultural Influences of School Shootings on the Terrorist Attacks in Norway’, Critical Studies on Terrorism 7:2, 277–296. Schuster, R. (2015), ‘Introduction’, in: J. Mason (ed.), Siege. Second Edition (Iron March: Self-published), 11–18. Slavros, A. (2015a), ‘Methods, Goals, Moralizing’, in: Iron March (eds.). Next Leap: An Iron March Anthology (Self-published), 82–88. Slavros, A. (2015b), ‘Inevitability of the Race War’, in: Iron March (eds.), Next Leap: An Iron March Anthology (Self-published), 77–79. Slavros, A., and Chapel, C. (2015), A Squire’s Trial (Iron March: Self-published). Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) (2017), ‘Donning the Mask: Presenting ‘The Face of 21st Century Fascism”, Hatewatch, June 20, 2017, https://www.splcenter. org/hatewatch/2017/06/20/donning-mask-presenting-face-21st-century-fascism Sunal, C. and Wright, V. (2012), ‘Online Learning’, in: N.M. Seel (ed.), Encyclopedia of the Sciences of Learning (Boston, MA: Springer), 2499–2502. Terrorgram (eds.) (2021a), Militant Accelerationism: A Collective Handbook (Selfpublished). Terrorgram (eds.) (2021b), Do it for the ‘gram: the collected writings of Terrorgram (Self-published). Thorleifsson, C. (2022), ‘From Cyberfascism to Terrorism: On 4chan/pol/ Culture and the Transnational Production of Memetic Violence’, Nations and Nationalism 28:1, 286–301. Upchurch, H.E. (2021), ‘The Iron March Forum and the Evolution of the “Skull Mask” Neo-Fascist Network’, CTC Sentinel 14:10, 27–37. Vaux, P., Gallagher, A., and Davey, J. (2021), ‘The Extreme Right on Steam’, Institute for Strategic Dialogue, August 12, 2021, https://www.isdglobal.org/isdpublications/gaming-and-extremism-the-extreme-right-on-steam Ware, J. (2020), ‘Testament to Murder: The Violent Far-Right’s Increasing Use of Terrorist Manifestos’, ICCT Policy Brief, March 17, 2020, https://icct.nl/publication/ testament-to-murder-the-violent-far-rights-increasing-use-of-terrorist-manifestos Wenger, E. (1998), Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press).

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Wenger-Trayner, E. and Wenger-Trayner, B.(2015), Introduction to Communities of Practice: A Brief Overview of the Concept and its Uses, https://wenger-trayner. com/introduction-to-communities-of-practice Zeiger (2015a), ‘Symbolism and Fascism’, in: Iron March (eds.). Next Leap: An Iron March Anthology (Self-published), 204–209. Zeiger (2015b), ‘Idealism vs. Materialism’, in: Iron March (eds.). Next Leap: An Iron March Anthology (Self-published), 132–136. Terrorist Manifestos Balliet, S. (2019a), Read this first. Published on Meguca.org. Balliet, S. (2019b), Pre-action report. Published on Meguca.org. Crusius, P. (2019), The inconvenient truth. Published on 8chan. Earnest, J. (2019), An open letter. Published on 8chan. Gendron, P. (2022), Yeah. Published on Discord. Krajcik, J. (2022), A Call to Arms, Published on Twitter. Tarrant, B. (2019), The Great Replacement. Published on 8chan.

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Conclusion What Have We Learned about Terrorist Learning? Imad Alsoos, Florian Köhler, Carolin Görzig, and Michael Fürstenberg

At the beginning of this volume, we established a conceptual framework of the central and interlinked elements of the learning process of terrorists, structured along three dimensions covering the sources, mechanisms, and outcomes of learning. We did not intend this model as a strict guideline to be uniformly ‘applied’ to a variety of case studies, but rather as a frame of reference allowing the authors to focus on their specific topics and use their own approaches while at the same time providing a way to reintegrate the diverse and complex findings, like pieces of a puzzle, into a larger picture. The contributions of this volume do not all include every element of the framework (although some of them do, while others concentrate on specific aspects) but together well cover every dimension. Concerning the sources of learning, the raw information from which knowledge is built, the experiences that members of groups made over the course of their struggle forms the most important basis for later behavior. For example, Katagiri shows in his chapter that ISIS quickly adapted to the realities of the Syrian and Iraqi battlefields, becoming competent soldiers and users of captured equipment, even if their sophistication was limited. Ultimately, only one’s own practice can reveal whether approaches work or not, from the direct feedback of social media users to jihadist propaganda that Helferich depicts to the deep reflections on fundamental aspects of the conduct of resistance as described in Köhler et al.’s chapter. One interesting aspect here is the crucial role individuals may play in transporting and expressing experiences – the chapters by Weil and Fürstenberg show how decentralized collectives can aggregate and develop standards from the actions of lone actor terrorists. Individuals can, however, also function as transmitters between different organizations, leading to meso-level learning. While this is often deliberate, the chapter by Brady demonstrates that this can also happen involuntarily, when members switch to different kinds of organizations and take their skills and knowledge of their former host with them. This form of knowledge transfer can also lead to learning from the state on the macro level, in cases where former military or security forces personnel joins militant groups. An interesting conceptual question is raised in the chapters of Hadzhiev and DOI: 10.4324/9781003361435-12

Conclusion 183 Weil as well as Fürstenberg that all deal with the spreading of knowledge within movements that transcend or even lack single organizations – is, for example, information exchanged between different affiliates of al-Qaeda learning on the micro or meso level? The often open nature of such information produced by organizations or even individuals, like the magazines of al-Qaeda and ISIS illustrated in the chapter of Hadzhiev, reveals another unexpected point about meso learning, as information intended for a certain audience can also be obtained by others and even inspire ideological enemies, like when far-right terrorists adopted the vehicle ramming attacks that jihadists had pioneered. Concerning the macro level of sources, while some terrorist organizations are recipients of information and training from states that directly sponsor them (Byman 2005), the case of the Syrian former al-Qaeda affiliate HTS, described in the chapter of Köhler et al., shows that sometimes for groups in order to be able to deal with states at all, they need to undergo a learning process, as HTS had to shed its most radical Islamist beliefs to form relations with Turkey. Beyond states, several chapters demonstrate the prominent role that open repositories of knowledge and learning from history play: from the adoption of the hitherto obscure set of decades-old newsletters collected in the re-issued book Siege by the accelerationist far-right community that Fürstenberg traces to the classic lessons about insurgency warfare by the likes of Mao, Che Guevara, or Marighella as mentioned by Katagiri, on which also modern militant groups can base their uprisings. These examples have one thing in common: they demonstrate that the question of whether available resources of knowledge are acquired or not depends to a large degree on organizations’ characteristics and on their decisions – information is sought out or in contrast actively ignored, based on ideological convictions or other cognitive prejudices. So, while De la Calle describes how insights from the history of insurgencies can inform the decision-making of rebels willing to apply the lessons of Mao and others, Katagiri shows how the closed mindset and lack of exposure to external inputs of the ISIS leadership led them to ignore such lessons. In contrast, as the leaders of the Egyptian Gamaa Islamiya studied in the chapter by Köhler et al. developed a more open attitude while in prison, they took into account a wider set of religious sources helping them to reconsider their approach. This active acquisition of information takes place also on a less abstract and more practical level – as the chapters by Brady and Helferich show, militant organizations are actively recruiting individuals with desirable skills, be it experiences with weapons and tactics of former soldiers or media expertise for the creation of propaganda. As these examples from the contributions of this volume show, the acquisition of information is already inextricably linked to processes of interpretation which ultimately aggregate and convert the information gathered on all three levels into knowledge that informs the future cognitive state and actions of the collective. Sometimes, ideological rigidity sets strong boundaries to such

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processes, setting organizations on a fixed path and precluding the consideration of sources that fall outside of what is deemed acceptable. Thus, ISIS ultimately failed with their approach despite many initial successes, as both Katagiri and Helferich show, while the more flexible HTS survived. Openness to considering a broad spectrum of resources, however, is only a first step, and similar input can be interpreted in a variety of ways, based on pre-existing worldviews, environmental conditions, and capabilities and internal structures of organizations and collectives. Köhler et al. use the theoretical concept of single- versus double-loop learning to compare different levels of transformation resulting from processes of inquiry and re-interpretation based on experiences with prior approaches and changes in the political and military environment. Sometimes, such discussions can lead to profound reforms, as in the case of the Gamaa Islamiya, while in others, established interpretations are doubled down upon, like with ETA in Spain, which insisted on terrorist violence and became increasingly isolated from Basque society and, eventually, obsolete. Thus, correct readings of available information and appropriate decisions, including the willingness to modify according to circumstances, are crucial for militant groups to ensure survival and a chance for success. Among the most important conditions facing insurgent groups is the strength of the state they are fighting and an accurate interpretation of this strength in relation with an honest assessment of their own capabilities is crucial, as De La Calle demonstrates. He shows how armed organizations have to choose their strategies, depending on whether they face a weak state and a rural environment, making Maoist guerrilla fighting viable, or a strong state with a high degree of urbanization, relegating groups to terrorism. While some groups, like the Italian Red Brigades or the Colombian FARC, correctly judged this at the outset, other groups had to adapt when conditions changed, like Hezbollah or ETA. Processes of interpretation are not confined to the leadership, though, but happen on all levels of organizations. Learning processes can follow a topdown trajectory, as in the cases above, or have a bottom-up dynamic, being initiated by a group of followers rather than leaders of the group. In the case of Boko Haram described in the chapter by Köhler et al., mid-level commanders questioned the extremely violent conduct of the organization, which alienated the local population, and challenged the existing interpretation of the struggle by leader Shekau. Calls for reform were rejected, however, and the views of the leadership prevailed, demonstrating that deliberative processes of interpretation of knowledge are very much influenced by relations of power. The contribution by Fürstenberg shows the interesting case of a decentralized collective in which deliberately there exists no clear distinction between leadership and followers, and the modes and meaning of the struggle are negotiated in a self-organized way. Regardless of how lessons come about, they have to be distributed throughout the group or movement, which in our framework we call dissemination. This is a crucial mechanism, because only in this way does

Conclusion 185 knowledge become truly organizational. On the simplest level, this diffusion can be achieved through personal channels of communication, where informed members educate and train their comrades. For example, the former soldiers joining terrorist groups, studied by Brady, can spread their skills throughout the organization by directly teaching their new fellow militants, and organizations may deliberately target their recruitment efforts accordingly. Especially for essential skills that are not necessarily common in terrorist organizations – such as the media skills ISIS needed, as described in Helferich’s chapter – external expertise is vital because it can then be used for teaching a set of multiplicators who ensure a wide dissemination, ultimately independent of external resources. In addition to such personal transmissions of knowledge, written documents are as crucial and common as resources of knowledge in terrorist collectives as they are in any other type of organization. They range from manuals on weapons and tactics, to ideological material, to documents outlining basic policies or even explicitly addressing processes of reflection and interpretation.1 Sometimes, such documents straddle the boundaries between internal communications and external propaganda, as in the magazines of alQaeda and ISIS that Hadzhiev analyzes. On the one hand, they are aimed at outside audiences especially in the West, as they are in English, on the other hand, they are used – interestingly much more by al-Qaeda than by ISIS – to spread knowledge beyond tight groups, throughout the decentralized movement of jihadists, for example about ideological justifications and the methods for individual attacks. Which channels are used for communication and how they are used is, of course, itself a result of learning and of the interpretation of feedback and external ideas, and it can therefore change according to circumstances. The correlations between the contents of ISIS magazine Dabiq and developments on the battlefield demonstrate this quite well. Beyond transferring skills and instructions to the terrorists’ rank and file, internal communication is especially crucial after more sweeping transformations, which might be rejected by lower-level members when it is disseminated without persuasive justification. Even in quite successful peace processes, like in Northern Ireland, the emergence of small splinter groups continuing the fight is common. The chapters present successful examples for the internal communication of major strategic changes, like the Gamaa Islamiya and ETA, the leaders of which managed to carry their membership with them when they decided to give up violence. But we have also seen unsuccessful, or only partially successful cases, like that of Boko Haram fragmenting over disagreements between different factions. Precisely because of the necessity of explaining farreaching transformations in a particularly persuasive and elaborate manner, such material can sometimes offer rare insights into the processes of reflection and interpretation, and thus allow us to trace deep learning processes. Good examples are the extensive literature that the leaders of the Gamaa Islamiya produced, as well as the published statements reflecting the debate between the different factions of Boko Haram, both described in the chapter by Köhler et al.

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Finally, the element of storage of knowledge is very much linked to the phase of dissemination, as knowledge almost automatically becomes embedded in the organization or even on movement level if it is widely spread, both in tacit form as common “mental maps” (Argyris and Schön 1978), or in the form of explicit documents, preserving lessons independently from individual members. As the chapters of Hadzhiev and Fürstenberg exemplify, the advent of the internet has been a game changer in this regard, as it is now much easier to distribute and access information than it used to be. Thus, the collection of far-right newsletters Siege, which describes tactics and strategies for decentralized terrorist tactics and strategies of accelerationism, only reached a few people when it first appeared in the 1980s. Today, however, through the conscious efforts of right-wing extremists to upgrade and spread it in a veritable online marketing campaign, it has become a practically ubiquitous textbook, an accelerationist ‘bible’, so to speak. Such online forms of the storage of knowledge are extremely resilient against state repression, as demonstrated by the videos of attacks by far-right lone terrorists, which are still widely available despite the best efforts of tech companies and governments. A side effect of such dissemination and storage of knowledge embodied in written documents or audio-visual material is that it can potentially become a new source of learning for other groups on the meso or macro level. For example, as Weil shows, far-right terrorists adopted the tactic of vehicle ramming attacks from jihadists. The books of the Gamaa Islamiya, for their part, became a resource in the debates within Islamist circles about the role of violence. And over time, of course, the experiences of all militant insurgencies and terrorist campaigns become part of history from which later groups can learn. Finally, whether learning processes have any real impact depends on whether they are actually implemented or not, bringing us to the final dimension of our framework: the outcomes. We have already seen that some learning processes have no discernible result because they are blocked inside the organization; lessons may also fizzle out as they fail to be properly disseminated and stored. If knowledge is indeed transformed into some recognizable cognitive or material form, we distinguished three different arenas, namely tactical, operational, and strategic learning outcomes. Although we put a certain emphasis on the ability for cognitive, deep, and far-reaching transformations in this volume, the contributions cover learning on all these levels. The tactical level is about the most concrete knowledge, applying lessons regarding the actual execution of attacks. Consequently, it relies least on the organizational structure and can be implemented by individuals having received information through active dissemination or through their own research using available material. Thus, the contributions by Fürstenberg and Weil show how lone actors, drawing on knowledge developed by their own or even enemy communities, apply innovative tactics like live-streamed mass-shootings or vehicle ramming attacks. As the activities of groups become more complex and sophisticated – up to the level of veritable

Conclusion 187 assault and full-scale military operations – so does the complexity and interrelatedness of learning outcomes. The militants of ISIS, HTS, Hezbollah, FARC, and others (portrayed by Katagiri, Köhler et al., and De la Calle) combined knowledge gained through internal education and training, sometimes provided by veterans recruited for this purpose (Brady), with dayto-day experience of active combat to become effective and dangerous forces. Whether in the underground or openly fighting a war, such violent activities cannot be sustained without an operational structure, or the knowledge necessary to run a terrorist organization. The second outcomelevel of operations is therefore crucial to maintain militant struggles. As examples, the chapters of Hadzhiev and Helferich cover how jihadist organizations run effective propaganda campaigns. The chapter by Köhler et al., in turn, addresses, more or less deep transformations to organizations’ conduct on the strategic level. As the authors show, several factors influence the degree of double-loop learning that terrorist groups like ETA, Boko Haram, HTS, and Gamaa Islamiya have achieved, ranging from far-ranging inflexibility after the establishment of a certain strategy, to the obstruction of initiated discussions, moderate changes in order to adapt to military realities, up to profound overhauls of the entire strategy of violence. As an aside, the chapter shows that one outcome of terrorist learning is knowledge and reflection about learning itself, and the organizational conditions for it. While limiting his analysis on specific violent strategies, the different case studies by De La Calle likewise show more or less successful transformations or a lack thereof. Focusing on a specific aspect of a larger strategy, the contribution by Helferich illuminates how ISIS developed its social media campaign into a crucial and integrated part of its overall strategy, but failed to sustain this innovative spirit and effectively adapt its propaganda to changed circumstances. An interesting aspect is thus that effective learning and implementation of lessons does not mean that these learning successes will automatically be continued in the future or that effective change on one level necessarily means the same on others. Thus, to once more use ISIS as an example, the chapter by Katagiri shows that while the group was able to efficiently learn on the tactical level, it failed to generate and adopt effective strategic outcomes. While this overview has presented the elements covered in the chapters in a kind of piecemeal approach, many contributions make clearer connections between the dimensions. The chapter by De la Calle can serve as an example: the author describes how militant groups have to acquire and combine several sources of information. Lessons from history and theories on insurgent warfare, knowledge about environmental conditions, and specifically the capabilities and characteristics of the state they fight against and operate in (all macro-level learning) have to be related to their own initial and continued experiences (micro-level), in order to make informed and accurate interpretations regarding the best strategies to implement at a given point in the struggle. Of course, the selection and adaptation of an appropriate

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strategic approach is just one important factor and not a guarantee for success: both the Red Brigades and ETA failed, despite accurately judging that in developed Western societies a Maoist strategy was not going to work. In the remaining parts of this Conclusion chapter, we focus more on interrelations between different aspects of learning and highlight overarching themes and factors, or lessons, of learning, which are relevant for an academic understanding as well as for policy-making. Lessons about Learning The chapters in this volume have opened the black box of the complex interactions constituting and shaping the acquisition, processing, distribution, and (potential) implementation of knowledge in terrorist groups. They show a wide variety of areas of learning, from combat skills and attack tactics to the effective employment of new media for propaganda, and to deep reflections on military and political strategies. Despite this wide range of themes, a few features and lessons can be identified that are worth reflecting upon in-depth not only from an academic perspective but also from the point of view of policy-makers dealing with often long-running terrorist challenges. The first concerns the conditions, both internal and external, that influence whether learning processes take place and if yes, in which direction. While these conditions are in many ways specific to cases and settings, some elements can claim more universal importance. In order to learn, there has to be both a willingness to do so and opportunities to facilitate the handling of knowledge. Secondly, some terrorist actors are far less rigid and stuck in their ways than conventional perspectives often assume. Terrorist learning should, moreover, not a priori be understood as negative in the sense of only enhancing the ability to inflict destruction. Learning is first of all neutral and can not only result in more effective violence but also lead to processes of moderation and de-radicalization, even to the point where terrorism as a means is itself ‘unlearned’. Finally, while an organizational perspective on learning demonstrably opens up fruitful avenues of research, a too strict focus on organizations misses not only important interactions among and variations within groups but also restricts the view on learning processes taking place in decentralized movements and collectives. One of the basic premises of this book was that terrorist organizations are not fundamentally different from other types of organizations, and therefore their learning – and, in extension, our perspective on it – should not be, either. The same basic conditions that facilitate or hinder learning in business companies, for example, can be expected to be relevant here as well, even if terrorist groups usually have to cope with a far more hostile environment. Organizational procedures, internal power dynamics, internal and external relations between individuals and groups, as well as history and global events, are all relevant to any type of organization, whether political or purely business oriented.

Conclusion 189 On the other hand, there are also conditions that are more specific to terrorist organizations. Perhaps the most fundamental aspect that separates them from business companies is the fact that they are prosecuted and fought by the state (and often other non-state groups) and hence, usually operate at least partly clandestinely underground, or they are even engaged in open battles. Operating under such conditions of permanent threat and isolation can generally be expected to create closed mindsets and the phenomenon of group-thinking, whereas it is generally agreed in the literature that effective learning requires a certain degree of openness, both to internal discussions and external input and exchange (Brown 2006). Moreover, terrorist groups have to constantly maintain a delicate balance between setting up effective management structures and upholding secrecy, making it harder than in traditional organizations to conduct and communicate learning processes (Shapiro 2013). While some of the cases described in this volume indeed fall short of these requirements, others exhibit a sometimes surprising level of openness and organizational prowess. Here, a general distinction should be made between openness to innovation and external input on a purely technical-operational level, which is arguably less challenging and has been demonstrated even by otherwise seemingly backward groups like in the steep learning curve of ISIS regarding their media operations, and openness to the adaptation of ideological positions and strategic approaches. The question of such openness to internal debate that can challenge the course of an organization is not only a matter of degree, but often also a matter of controversy – and often, given the violence-dominated environment of terrorism, open conflict. Terrorist organizations are not monolithic structures, but are internally heterogenous, with different key actors, and sometimes different internal groups or factions that can vary significantly with regard to their ideological rigidity or openness to transformation. What can be retained is that a certain openness to external input in at least some part of an organization is a necessary prerequisite to learning, along with the existence of internal structures allowing for effective and accepted decision-making and the dissemination and storage of knowledge. Leader personalities unquestionably play a key role in this regard, as the cases of ISIS and al-Baghdadi or the different leaders of ETA exemplify. Other contributions make it quite clear, however, that the closed mindset or openness of the leadership alone is not a sufficient criterion for the question of learning. Rather, complex group-internal dynamics between leaders and other members, or followers, can determine the course of learning processes in terrorist groups. On a technical level, while the internet has made it easier than ever to spread and discuss information and create durable repositories of knowledge, leaderships have less control over decentralized and loosely associated militants to actually follow their instructions. Thus, the suggested tactic of vehicle attacks did not gain momentum despite its promotion in the Inspire magazine for some years.

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In the case of Boko Haram it was a group forming around some middle-rank leaders that was supportive of change and criticized the top leadership. The ensuing internal controversy resulted in infighting and ultimately a split, but also, in the splintering faction, to a considerable change of approach. In a way, the splits between al-Qaeda and ISIS, and later ISIS and HTS, were also the result of internal debates in which lower levels on the ground refused to follow the distant leadership of al-Zawahiri. Some learning structures, like the decentralized online networks of the far-right, do not even have clear hierarchical structures, which facilitate the free exchange of ideas but can also hamper the decisive implementation of coherent strategies. Next to internal structural factors and dynamics, the impact of the external environment is equally significant. Global events, the state, allies, and enemies all influence learning and its outcomes. Thus, general global developments frame the options of terrorist groups worldwide: the end of the Cold War had an impact on a variety of organizations of all ideological colors, just as the outbreak of the Arab Spring affected al-Qaeda. One factor of the external environment that has undoubtedly constituted an important opportunity for terrorist learning over the past decades is the development and rapid spread of new information technologies, which have revolutionized the access to and global reach of communication. We have seen how groups like al-Qaeda and ISIS or decentralized networks of farright accelerationists have exhibited remarkable openness to such external influences. They have appropriated new communicative tools and learned to use their potential for internal and external communication. Such appropriations are interesting as they concern learning processes on different levels: while, on the micro-level of internal communication, the new media offer possibilities for facilitating operational coordination, but also for training (i.e.,: learning), on the meso/macro level of external communication they allow for better control of the group’s representation to the outside. Where terrorist organizations relied on official media in the past, today they operate their own media outlets, which at the same time offer new options for mobilization and recruitment as it facilitates a direct link between organizations proper and wider movements of sympathizers and supporters. The wide reach and direct ways of communication that the new online media allow for are used not only for propaganda purposes but also for directly involving potential activists from the wider movement on the operational level of violent attacks. Terrorist organizations’ learning is thus in a complex way shaped by challenges of their environment, and by aspects of the organizational make-up. The environmental and internal conditions can present themselves as opportunities or as obstacles to which terrorist organizations have to respond. External conditions can be conducive to learning if they leave room for experimentation. On the other hand, external pressure can also push, or even force, terrorist organizations to adapt and transform. Operating in a hostile environment characterized by their belligerent relationship with the state,

Conclusion 191 clandestine terrorist groups have severely limited abilities of controlling their environment – a situation in which the capacity to adapt to changes becomes a matter of survival. Examples such as that of HTS suggest that, faced with the alternative to either learning or perishing, a certain level of pragmatism is not uncommon if required by changing environmental conditions. While the immediate environmental conditions thus seem to play a vital role with regard to the question of openness to external input and flexibility, their influence is not necessarily one-directional: while the situation of ‘battlefield conditions’ with constant persecution and even combat can be absorbing and constitute an impediment to reflection, constant pressure can also have the inverse effect and make stress levels rise to a turning point where self-questioning begins, as exemplified by the Boko Haram case, where fighters expressed their doubts in the face of local populations increasingly rejecting their cause. One specific spatial environment relevant for the topic of terrorist learning is the prison. Examples such as that of the late ISIS leader al-Baghdadi, who rose to the leadership of the group based on his contacts and experiences in Camp Bucca/Iraq, have contributed to a widespread notion of prisons as hotbeds of radicalization. Contrary to this common assessment, however, cases like the Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA) or the Gamaa Islamiya show that the situation of imprisonment can also lead terrorists to self-education and critical reflection. In the latter’s far-reaching example of the deradicalization of an entire group, leaders eventually understood how counterproductive their fight had been – and not least also for themselves. Deradicalization as an outcome of learning processes is possible, and again, the question of openness and closedness – or isolation – seems to be crucial. Of course, the prison can be considered as a closed environment par excellence, and imprisonment is definitely a means of pressure. Nevertheless, the conditions in prison vary greatly and with them, the consequences for learning do so, too. In the Gamaa Islamiya case, the Egyptian state encouraged debates among the imprisoned leaders and facilitated their interaction with leaders outside or in other prisons. These possibilities for dialogue supported a deradicalization process and finally led to the complete renouncement of the group’s violent approach. While this was an example of a group that opened up under moderate prison conditions, in the case of ETA, the Spanish state’s harsh and uncompromising stance with regard to dealing with prisoners was a major grievance and made peace negotiations difficult for a long time. Thus, with regard to the role of prison as an environment for learning, we have to distinguish between cases where it is primarily seen as a symbol of repression or a place to deploy revenge and torture – as in the case of Guantanamo – and other cases, where it is also a site conducive to learning. While more empirical evidence would be necessary to draw generalizable lessons from the insights of the examples above, we can tentatively say that isolation and the denial of dialogue rather lead to a self-confirmation of radical ideas, and in turn to

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further radicalization, while exchange with the outside and the confrontation with other worldviews can allow outside influences to have an impact on internal developments. The example of the Gamaa Islamiya underlines that terrorist learning is not necessarily only concentrated on developing more destructive capabilities; it can also lead to re-evaluations of the terrorist approach, resulting in strategic transformations such as moderation, or even the entire renunciation of violence. With regard to possible implications for counter-terrorism strategies, this insight logically leads to the question of whether and how the learning processes of terrorist groups can be influenced in such a way that they move in the direction of de-radicalization and re-politicization. The fact that terrorists have to react to external changes implies that policymakers’ interventions on the environment of terrorist groups can also have an impact on these groups themselves. If the conditions of learning have a decisive impact on the outcome of learning processes, the crucial point is how these conditions can be influenced by policymakers in order to channel learning into directions that are desirable from the point of view of society. Not only – to stick with the above-discussed examples – is a good knowledge of the detrimental effects of clandestinity and isolation a necessary basis for well-adapted counter-terrorism policies; a better understanding of conditions conducive to the opposite, i.e., moderation and opening-up to different positions, could also open windows for new policy approaches aimed at taking a positive impact on the direction into which terrorist groups develop – for example by offering organizations – or more open factions within them – ways out of violence and toward reintegration into the political discourse, an option that is still underexplored but seems at least interesting to give more consideration in the light of some of our findings. Here again, it is perhaps the prison context in which such efforts of taking influence seem the most promising. Arguably, when terrorists are imprisoned, decision-makers have in principle easy access and hence potentially maximum impact. But our examples indicate that self-reflective learning in prison is supported less by the repressive aspect of imprisonment than by the relative liberties and concessions that some prison contexts also offer. Although it can be argued in the case of positive examples of learning in jail that moderation or deradicalization was possible precisely because of the fact of imprisonment (and thus under conditions of repression), one-sidedly favoring repressive measures risks missing constructive avenues of learning that might be more sustainable. To be sure, even under conditions favorable for processes of critical selfquestioning, the way toward deradicalization of entire groups remains stony, not least due to the complex factors influencing such processes. Thus, for example, imprisoned members or leaders of terrorist groups not only have to accept for themselves, and make use of, the opportunities for learning and exchange they are offered; once convinced of their corrections, they also have to convince influential key actors outside, in order for their insights to have

Conclusion 193 an impact on the organizational level. This complexity might explain why the number of examples of entire groups transforming as a consequence of learning processes induced in- and outside of prison contexts is not abundant and this does not necessarily lead to lasting peace (see Van Engeland and Rudolph 2016). But at least gradual movements toward de-escalation and moderation can be found in more than some isolated and exceptional cases. Deradicalization strategies are well established and have been applied in the contexts of Islamist, ethno-separatist, and left-wing terrorism. Thus, members of the Italian Red Brigades have developed new insights after several decades of imprisonment, and currently, victims and perpetrators are being confronted to each other in the framework of a reconciliation process (Bull 2018). The PIRA in Northern Ireland de-radicalized in prison also due to contacts to other groups. Members of the ANC visited prisons in Northern Ireland to convince PIRA members that political ends can also be achieved by peaceful means (Görzig 2021). Examples for successful deradicalization processes in prison contexts do exist and there is evidence that repression, in combination with concessions, can make radicalized individuals reconsider their positions and trigger similar processes in the groups they belong to. In fact, the two – repression and concessions – have to go hand in hand in order to induce de-radicalization. Without repression, terrorist groups might not take the way out, and without the offer of a way out, repression will not likely yield positive results. With regard to possible entry points for inducing or supporting processes of change, the insight that organizations are not homogenous seems highly relevant. Consequently, a differentiated look at an organization’s internal structures and hierarchies is pertinent. Sometimes it might be more promising to target leaders, for example, when they show openness for deep transformation. In other cases, other parts of an organization might be more open for change. In general, all levels of an organization, from the top leadership to the middle-rank and simple followers, should be taken into consideration by policymakers, because they can all have an impact on the strategic direction of a terrorist group. Finally, terrorist organizations are often embedded in a movement of supporters and sympathizers, which constitute the link between the organization proper and the wider environment. As terrorist organizations depend on such supporting movements for their legitimization, they can also be an important key to taking an indirect impact on the groups themselves. A nuanced understanding of terrorist organizations as internally differentiated and complex, characterized by multiple and sometimes contradictory voices, calls for an equally differentiated choice of analytical approaches. While, on the one hand, the contributions of this volume have underlined the usefulness of an organizational approach for understanding the learning processes of terrorist groups, narrowing down the perspective to the organization alone can lead to an incomplete picture. Thus, the role of learning across and beyond organizations has become apparent in a number of chapters.

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Knowledge transfer between organizations, of course, is nothing new as such (Horowitz 2010), but the chapter dealing with the inter-organizational effects of fluctuation and transitioning of personnel has shown that here as well it is worth paying attention to less obvious details. An interesting variation of the phenomenon that we have seen is unintended learning between organizations or movements across ideological boundaries, as when right-wing terrorists replicated jihadi tactics. Going yet a step further, we believe that it is necessary to draw attention to a number of cases where the boundaries of organizations are blurred, which indicates the necessity, both from an analytical and from a policy perspective, to focus not only on established and obvious organizations, but widen the scope to include both processes below the organizational level, and others that reach beyond the framework of the organization proper. The most obvious reason why it is important to expand the analysis beyond the organizational framework is that not all forms of terrorism are carried out by formal organizations. In fact, the avoidance of formal structures can be an adaptative strategy in face of persecution and illegality, as formal organizations are more difficult to maintain in clandestinity than loosely organized, networked structures where organizational boundaries are blurred. Under conditions of increased pressure and with the possibilities of new media, we are witnessing the emergence of more and more decentralized networks, the alQaeda network perhaps being one of the first and most prominent cases in point (Sageman 2008). Interestingly, this trend shows parallels to similar developments in the field of business companies or ‘global governance’ structures. Network structures often connect more formal organizations with their wider ideological movements, but in the case of the right-wing accelerationists, we see how such networks emerging in cyberspace can even take the extreme form of truly leaderless online collectives. As this case underlines, the dangerous potential of online media is not only their usage by isolated extremists, but rather the latter’s embeddedness in larger virtual communities that might not all be ready to use violence but contribute, by a normalized practice of hate speech, to a broader acceptance of extremist discourse. As such brutalization of online communication and the normalization of degrading and hate-filled postings in social media is a more general problem in many countries, where it is not merely an expression of, but further contributes to a worrying polarization of society, these insights are of a broad relevance for radicalization prevention beyond the field of terrorism. Understanding how learning looks in such leaderless communities necessitates other approaches and analytical tools than the analysis of formal organizations. For example, the concept of communities of practice, as applied to accelerationist right-wing extremists, proves helpful for systematically looking at learning in such contexts. We find similar mechanisms at work, although less explicitly conceptualized, also in other chapters. Thus, the example from the Boko Haram case shows that informal learning networks within organizations, yet outside their official structures, can also be a way to overcome structural impediments for organizational learning (e.g., internal power relations) that

Conclusion 195 can ultimately make learning difficult or impossible. Such learning communities can form as bottom-up responses to top-down structures of knowledge management – ultimately with consequences on the organizational level that can lead from positive developments to fragmentation. Similar processes played a role in the split between al-Qaeda and ISIS and later al-Qaeda Central and HTS. Overall, we believe that the inspiration of employing such concepts can also be for future research to see which other conceptual approaches from the wider literature on learning could also be fruitfully applied to the study of terrorist learning. For policymakers, acknowledging a perspective beyond the organizational level opens a wide repertoire of intervention opportunities. Countermeasures have to account for the variety of more or less formal ways of organizing, communicating, and learning that terrorist activity takes today. A differentiated and holistic approach to terrorism prevention and de-radicalization has the potential to figure as the most effective and most sustainable counterterrorism tool. Outlook In this book, we aspired to look at the learning processes and mechanisms of militant groups in a more comprehensive way and less biased by a conventional counterterrorism perspective. We believe that our grasp of the phenomenon can only be widened, and misconceptions be corrected (and the black box of terrorism thus be opened further) through an attempt of genuinely understanding processes of terrorists’ learning and transformations with an open mind, acknowledging the potential for constructive change. Getting profound insights into terrorism – learning about terrorist learning – remains a challenging task. And as researchers, we try to do exactly that – gather findings about the inner life of terrorist organizations. The practical difficulties and ethical dilemmas involved in terrorism research are manifold. In general, scholars are confronted with problems of access – due to the very nature of terrorism as an illegal and secretive undertaking, available information about it is incomplete and potentially biased. Both qualitative and quantitative research often rely on news reports, which are more likely to cover spectacular and well-known cases while missing lesserknown conflicts and regions and can be manipulated or have their own agendas. Primary documents and artifacts of internal communications of terrorist groups offer a window into their reasonings and developments but represent usually not a representative extract. Moreover, such documents were often originally obtained by intelligence agencies that carefully guard or, if published, curate them – even if the rise of the internet has made it easier to gain access to such material. Finally, while field research in the sense of immediate participant observation is nearly impossible with terrorist groups, even less ambitious fieldwork encounters problems, often due to a comprehensible reluctance from the part of interviewees to talk openly about

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sensitive matters, for fear of raising suspicions. The threat of violence, from both terrorists and counter-terrorism forces, can usher in a culture of silence which can go as far as people believing that simply talking about the conflict can provoke it. Hence, much of such research is characterized by a certain time lag, as participants are more able and willing to speak with hindsight. At the same time, many research participants have a desire to talk and being listened to. The latter often comes along with hopes and expectations a researcher can hardly fulfill. Feelings of guilt or of being overburdened with responsibility, but also ignorance or simply naivety can have the effect that researchers let themselves and their research be instrumentalized for propaganda purposes. Rationalizations of research participants can sound very convincing if grievances are plausible, and it is crucial not to lose the critical distance and adopt apologetic discourses or idealized views. Even without intents to deceive, personal memories may also simply become unreliable with time. Primary documents as well may be manipulative or problematic just by their very nature, like in the case of hate speech that is important to quote in order to understand how extremist communication works, but at the same time is then also unwillingly spread by the researcher and may be considered offensive by affected people. Even if the best efforts are made to minimize such biases and alleviate ethical concerns, scholars doing research on political violence walk a fine line between necessary empathy and a dangerous sympathy, or identification, with their research subjects (Schlee 2019, 4–6). And for the critical reader of terrorism literature, this also implies that all presented findings have to be taken with a grain of salt. However, while research about sensitive conflict settings comes along with multiple challenges, it can also present opportunities. For example, researchers are confronted with the need to reflect on their role and responsibility – going through a learning process themselves. The imperative not to overidentify with the research subject also pushes researchers to reflect and question their own normative agenda. Despite all the pitfalls and the practical and ethical difficulties of researching terrorism, there are possible approaches to the issue if we follow the principle of ‘empathy without sympathy’ (ibid., 5). And while, in this setting, it is out of reach to follow learning processes in ‘real time’, as some research in business organizations does, the authors in this volume managed to shed light on a variety of aspects and levels of terrorist learning and thus contributed to a deeper understanding of the subject matter, demonstrating at the same time that researching terrorism is as rewarding as it is challenging. That said, we shall once more underline that our call for understanding terrorism better must not be misunderstood as an end in itself. Rather, we are convinced that only by truly understanding the internal logics and mechanisms of terrorism can it fruitfully be prevented. Understanding while not forgiving violence can widen the repertoire of possible reactions to and prevention of terrorism, including conciliatory measures that aim at the nonviolent transformation of terrorist groups.

Conclusion 197 Note 1 As several of the chapters in the book show, such documents are not only a crucial resource for terrorist organizations, but also for the researchers analyzing them.

References Argyris, C. and Schön, D. (1978), Organizational Learning: A Theory of Action Perspective (Reading, MA: Addison
Wesley). Brown, M.L. (2006), ‘What have we learned about organizational learning?’, in: M.L. Brown, M. Kenney and M. Zarkin (eds.), Organizational Learning in the Global Context (Aldershot: Ashgate), 255–261. Bull, A.C. (2018), ‘Reconciliation through Agonistic Engagement? Victims and Former Perpetrators in Dialogue in Italy Several Decades after Terrorism’, in: P. Terhoeven (ed.), Victimhood and Acknowledgement: The Other Side of Terrorism. European History Yearbook 19 (Berlin: De Gruyter Oldenbourg), 59–76. Byman, D. (2005), Deadly Connections: States that Sponsor Terrorism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Engeland, van A. and Rudolph, R.M. (2016), From Terrorism to Politics (London; New York: Routledge). Görzig, C. (2021), ‘Ripe through recognition? The case of the Provisional Irish Republican Army’, in: A. Geis, M. Clément, and H. Pfeifer (eds.), Armed Non-state Actors and the Politics of Recognition (Manchester: Manchester University Press), 171–190. Horowitz, M. (2010). ‘Nonstate Actors and the Diffusion of Innovations: The Case of Suicide Terrorism’, International Organization 64:1, 33–64. Sageman, M. (2008), Leaderless Jihad: Terror Networks in the Twenty-first Century (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press). Schlee, G. (2019), ‘Studying Evil: Ethnographic Methods and Problems of Identification’, Keynote Lecture held at the Workshop ‘Is Terrorist Learning Different?’ at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology Halle, November 22, 2019, https://www.eth.mpg.de/cms/en/media/keynote-schlee/studying-evil. Shapiro, J.N. (2013), The Terrorist’s Dilemma: Managing Violent Covert Organizations (Princeton: Princeton University Press).

Index

Abertzale independence movement 26–27, 34 Abrahms, M. 98n3 Abu Ghraib 76 Accelerationism 171, 186; see also militant accelerationism Accelerationist movement 166, 176; collective structure 174–175; digital infrastructures of mutual engagement 167–169; joint enterprise of terror 169–171; shared repertoire of hate 171–174 Active opportunity 147 Afghanistan 38, 79, 91, 151, 160 Africa 65, 71, 86 African National Congress 86 Algeria 44, 86, 91 Alliance management 90–92 A’maq News Agency 65, 76 American counterterrorism 6–7 anarchists 46 Anderson, B. 175 Apostates 25, 32, 74 AQ see al-Qaeda AQI see Al Qaeda in Iraq Argala 55 Argentina 46, 53 Argyris, C. 10, 19–24, 27, 28, 29, 32, 34, 35, 39 Argyris and Schön’s organizational learning approach 2, 4, 9,19, 20, 21, 22–24, 28, 69, 71, 124, 161, 194; implementation (of lessons) 20, 22, 23, 28, 35–38; inquiry 10, 20, 22–25, 28–40 Armed insurrections 48 Armed rebels 48 Armed Revolutionary Forces of Colombia see FARC

Armed strategy 44, 45, 46, 48, 50, 58, 61 Armed struggle 36, 40, 47, 51, 54, 60, 74 Atomwaffen Division 164 Attracting attention 105, 106, 110, 112, 115, 117 Atwan, A.B. 96 Australia 77, 177n16; jihadist VRAs in 131–134 Auxemery, Y. 139n3 al-Awlaki, A. 108, 133 Baek, J.H 139n3 Baele, S.J 64, 167 al-Baghdadi, A.B. 11, 25, 73, 80n10, 85, 87, 97, 189–191; personality and leadership 89–90 Bakker, E. 124 Balliet, S. 163, 169, 174a Bandura, A. 140n15 Barcelona 27, 46, 123, 133 Basque Country 20, 41n5, 54 Basque independence 26, 34 Basque separatist group 53 Beaufre, A. 71 Bell, J.B. 5 Bennett, C.J. 5 Berger, J.M. 75 BH see Boko Haram Bin Laden 25, 68, 77, 87, 93 Black box of terrorism 2, 8, 12, 188, 195 Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement 134 BLM movement see Black Lives Matter movement Boko Haram (BH) 10, 19, 20, 24–25, 29, 39, 91, 184–185, 187, 190–191, 194; and Islamic State 25, 37, 38

Index Bomb-making 5, 108, 114 Bowers, R. 163, 168, 169 Brace, L. 167 Brown, M.L. 41n2 Bucerius, S.M. 145 Byman, D. 91 Cabañas, L. 60 Caliphate 66, 91, 96, 116, 117–120; caliphate’s imageries 71; establishment of 118; ISIS caliphate 58; “revived” 109; territorial 117, 120; utopian 71, 72–73, 78; virtual 78 “Caliph Ibrahim” 73; see also alBaghdadi, A.B. The Call to Global Islamic Resistance (Abu-Mus’ab al-Suri) 88 Camus, R. 162 Cano, A. 52 Cárdenas, L. 59 Castro, F. 46 Caucasus 91 CCleaner 96 “Chan-verse” 167–169; see also imageboards Charlottesville attack 134–135 Che Guevara 45, 46, 51, 54, 86, 88, 183 Choreography 105 Ciudad Madera 45, 60 CJTF-OIR coalition see Combined Joint Task Force – Operation Inherent Resolve coalition Clarke, R.V. 147 Clausewitz, C. von 75, 88 Coan, T.G. 167 Cold War 58, 190 Collective identity 1, 165, 175 Collective learning 4, 12, 160–161; of accelerationist movement 166–175; collective structure 174–175; and communities of practice 164–166 Combined Joint Task Force – Operation Inherent Resolve (CJTF-OIR) coalition 85 Communication 9, 38, 67, 96; external 11, 185; goals 106–108, 110, 112, 117; information and 103–104; internal 11, 21, 69, 185, 195; mobile 97; online 108, 161, 194; prearranged 96; of alQaeda 67; social media 68;

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strategic 105; understanding terrorism in terms of 104–106; unfiltered 120; virtual 167, 194 Communities of practice (CoP) 161, 176, 194; accelerationist movement as 166–175; collective learning and 164–166; virtual 166 Competitive adaptation 6 Complexity of terrorist learning 1–9, 187, 193 Complex learning 19, 40 Conceptual framework of learning process 1, 7–9; elements of in contributions 182–188 Conway, M. 139n4 Counterterrorism 4, 7, 24, 61, 121, 195; American 6–7; implications for 192; kinetic 4, 7; military 29 Cragin. R.K. 139n7, 139n8 Crenshaw, M. 2, 6, 8 Crime-terror nexus 146 Cristero war 59 Critical inquiry see inquiry Critical Terrorism Studies 146 Crusius, P. 163, 168, 169 Cuba 46, 59, 88 Curzio, R. 51 Cyber Command 95–97 Dabiq magazine 65, 95, 108–109, 114–117; and Islamic State 114–117 Daesh see Islamic State Decentralized collective learning see collective learning De-exceptionalization of terrorists 2, 145, 156 De Laat, M. 164, 167 De la Calle, L. 49 Deradicalization 4, 188, 191–193, 195 De Roy van Zuijdewijn, J. 124 Diffusion 123, 127, 139, 154; follow-on 128; of motives 110, 112; of propaganda 133, 185; of suicide bombings 6; of tactics 125, 127, 128, 131 Digital infrastructures of mutual engagement 167–169 Dimensions of terrorist learning 7; see also terrorist learning Discourses on terrorism 1 Dissemination of knowledge 12, 67, 104, 109–110, 115, 120, 175,

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184–186; see also distribution of knowledge Distribution of knowledge 6, 9, 104, 188; see also dissemination of knowledge Dolnik, A. 5, 147 Double-blessing 76 Double-loop learning 10, 19, 22, 23, 37, 39, 184, 187; Boko Haram (BH) 24–25; Euskadi Ta Asktasuna (ETA) 26–27; Gamaa Islamiya (GI) 27–28; Hay’at Tahrir alSham (HTS) 25–26; implementation of 35–38; inquiry 28–35; see also Argyris and Schön’s organizational learning approach Duel, J. 146 Dugan, L. 57 Duiker, W. 90 Díaz, P. 59

Far-right VRAs in Western Europe 136–138 Far-right VRAs in United States 134–136 Fascism 161, 164, 170, 172 Fascist libraries 172 Feldman, M. 171 Fields, J.A. 134–136 Fishman, B. 73 Followers see leader-follower dynamics Force-equalizer 96 Forest, J.J.F. 6, 144, 146 Fourth Generation Warfare (William Lind) 88 France 31, 45, 46, 90, 137, 138 Franceschini, A. 51 Franco, F. 20, 31 Francoist dictatorship 53, 54 FSLN see Sandinista National Liberation Front Al-Furqan Establishment for Media Production 65

Earnest, J. 163, 168, 169 Egypt 27, 29, 31, 44, 66 EIA see Party for the Basque Revolution Elder Jr., G.H. 146 E-learning courses 5 Enders, W. 49 Environmental influences on learning 9, 20–21, 24, 31, 39, 124, 139, 184, 190–191 Environmental pressure 24 Errors 19–20, 23–24, 29, 34–36, 39 ETA (Euskadi Ta Asktasuna) 20, 26–27, 29, 31, 33, 34, 36, 40, 53–55, 154, 184, 188, 191 ETA militar 55 ETA politico-militar 54, 55 European Economic Community 31 Euskadi Ta Asktasuna see ETA Excommunication 25, 32; see also takfir External alliances 38 Extra-systemic wars 85, 86 Extreme violence 74, 75, 76, 170

Gaitán, J. 51 Gamaa Islamiya (GI) 2, 10, 20, 27–33, 35–39, 183–187, 191–192; and al-Qaeda 2, 38 Ganor, B. 105 Gendron, P. 163, 169, 174 GI see Gamaa Islamiya Giap, V.N. 88, 90 Gill, P. 146, 147 Global Domestic Terrorism database (GTD1) 57 Globalism 162 Global jihad 109 Global Terrorism Database (GTD) 128–129 Great Replacement 162, 169, 173 Groupthink 3, 189 GTD see Global Terrorism Database GTD1 see Global Domestic Terrorism database Guillén, A. 46 Guinea-Bissau 86

Facebook 67, 139 FARC (Armed Revolutionary Forces of Colombia) 50, 51–52, 154, 184, 187 Far enemy 71, 78, 93, 119, 120 Far-right terrorism 134–139, 160, 186; see also militant accelerationism

Haggerty, K.D. 145 Hardliners 34, 36, 37 al-Hayat media center 65, 74, 76 Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) 20, 25–26, 30, 33, 39, 85, 183, 190, 191, 195; and al-Qaeda 33, 36, 38 Hayward, K.J. 125, 128 Herd behavior 69

Index Herschinger, E. 1 Hezbollah 56–58, 125, 184, 187 al-Himma Library 65, 69 Ho Chi Minh 90 Hoover, G. 49 Horgan, J. 146, 147, 166 Horowitz, M. 6 Howlett, M. 5 HTS see Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham Hughes, S. 139n7 Hundeide, K. 166 Hussain, J. 76 Hussein, S. 89 IDF see Israeli Defense Forces Imageboards 166, 167, 177n2 Imagined community 175 Imitation theory 126 Implementation of lessons 8, 9, 11, 20, 22, 23, 25, 39, 187, 188; see also Argyris and Schön’s organizational learning approach Incomplete learning 77–78, 97 Individual learning 4, 20, 23, 164, 166 Individual’s transition, examples for learning through 150–155 Indochina 86, 88 Indonesia 92 Information strategy 11, 95–96, 121 “Infuriating the enemy” 76, 78 Ingram, H.J. 114 Innovations by terrorists 6, 7, 69, 87, 95, 127, 147 Inquiry 10, 20, 22–25, 28–40, 184; see also Argyris and Schön’s organizational learning approach Inspire Guide 131 Inspire magazine 108–109, 131; and alQaeda 112–114 Institutionalization, degree of 70 Insurgency warfare 71, 73, 183 Insurgent groups 10, 85, 86, 87, 95, 97, 184 Insurrectionalist way 48, 56 Insurrectionary movements 45 Internal cohesion 11, 36, 39, 85, 89, 90, 92, 106 Internet 11, 68, 76, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 109, 162, 165–166, 167, 168, 173, 195 Intrafield diffusion 123, 124, 127–128 Iran 45, 56, 91, 116

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Iraq 30, 58, 61, 64, 73, 75, 80n10, 85, 89, 92, 94, 95, 97, 116, 152, 191 Iron March 167–168, 170, 175 ISI see Islamic State in Iraq ISIS see Islamic State Islamic State (ISIS) 10, 11, 25, 38, 44, 55, 84, 85–89, 91, 103, 119–120, 182, 184, 190, 195; alBaghdadi’s personality and leadership of 89–90; al-Qaeda’s Web 2.0 upgrade 67–69; alliance management 90–92; Boko Haram and 25, 37, 38; information strategy 95–96; internal cohesion 92; learning behavior 89; learning patterns and failures 84; military power 94–95; media infrastructure during 2014–2015 66; popular support 93; sequencing theory and ISIS’ learning 85–89; social media infrastructure 65–67; social media maneuver 76 Islamic State Hacking Division 76 Islamic State in Iraq (ISI) 25, 84 Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) see Islamic State Islamic State of Iraq and Syria 84, 86, 87 see Islamic State Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) 56, 58 al-I’tisām Media Foundation 65 Jabhat al-Nusra (JN) 25–26, 33–34, 85, 87, 92 Jabhat Fateh al-Sham 33 Jackson, B.A. 5, 6, 7, 144 Jammat al-Tawhid Wa-l-Jihad 84 Jaysh Ahl al-Sunna wa-l-Jamaah 89 Jenkins, B.M. 105 Jihad 20, 26, 30; abandonment of 33; armed 27, 32–33; Global jihad 109; individual 108; leaderless 107; lone jihad strikes 113; Open Source Jihad 108, 112, 114, 119, 120, 131, 132; social-media 64, 95 Jihadism 33, 68 Jihadisphere 11 Jihadist rebels 44 Jihadist VRAs 131; propaganda/ media—high diffusion (2015–2020) 133–134;

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Index

propaganda/no media – low diffusion (2010–2014) 132–133 Ji-Hobbyists 67 JN see Jabhat al-Nusra John, J. 70 Johnson, B. 171 Joint enterprise of terror 169–171 al-Jolani, A.M. 25, 30, 33, 36, 38 Jones, C. 7 Kadek, B. 76 Kenney, M. 5, 6, 41n2, 144, 166 Kenya 93 Kettle, L. 5, 144, 150 The Knights of the Ministries 70 Knott, K. 5, 166 knowledge transfer 5, 144, 194; individual’s transition, examples for learning through 150–155; violence organizations (Vos) 145–148 Koehler, D. 146, 154 Krajcik, J. 163, 169 Krutwig, F. 53–54 LaFree, G. 57 Lahouaiej-Bouhlel, M. 123 Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LEJ) 91 La Violencia 51 Leader-follower dynamics 8, 9, 21,36–37, 39, 184, 185, 189–190, 192–193 Leaderless jihad see jihad Learning outcomes 1, 7, 8, 10, 22, 28, 161, 164, 186–187, 190 Lee, B. 5, 166 LEJ see Lashkar-e-Jhangvi Leninism 45 Liberal modernity 162 Libya 45, 91, 92 Limited learning 3, 24, 30, 36–37, 39 Lind, W. 88 Lone actors 117, 123–139, 164, 169, 175, 182, 188 “Lone jihad strikes” 113 Lone Mujahid Pocketbook 132 “Lone wolves” 78, 119, 139, 162 Lucha armada 36; see also ETA Luxor Massacre 2, 27 Macro-level 7, 9, 10, 11, 12, 21, 24, 31, 145, 155, 182, 183, 186, 187, 190

Madero, F. 59 Ma-Kellams, C. 139n3 Malaya 86 Malevolent creativity 5 Mandela, N. 86 Manhaj 75 Manshaus, P. 163, 173 Mao, T.-T. 44–45, 51, 88, 90 Maoism 45, 60 Maoist 49; -led Communist Party of the Philippines 45; -led Shining Path 52; strategy 45 Marighella, C. 47, 54, 183 Marquetalia 51 Mason, J. 170 Mass-mediated Terrorism (Brigitte Nacos) 106 The Matrix (movie) 177n8 Media jihad see social-media jihad Meleagrou-Hitchens, A. 139n7 Memes 75, 126, 134–136, 139, 140n12, 162, 168, 171, 173, 175 Merari, A. 5 Meso-level 7, 9, 10, 11, 12, 70, 71, 155, 182, 183, 186, 190 Mexico 45, 58–61 Micro-level 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 70, 87, 155, 161, 183, 187, 190 Middle East 76, 88, 107, 115 Militant accelerationism 160, 161–164; see also accelerationism Militant media 128, 134, 139 Military power 11, 78, 90, 94–95 Miller, V. 125, 128 Miscommunication 92 Moghadam, A. 87 al-Muhajiroun 166 Mumford, A. 5, 144, 150, 153 Murillo, E. 166 Mutual engagement 161, 165; digital infrastructures of 167–169 Nacos, B. 106, 109 Nationalist Party 53 National Pact government 51 Near Enemy 93, 119, 120 Negative performance feedback 28–29 Neo-Nazi forum 5, 164, 166 Neo-Nazism 170–171 Newman, G. 147 New media 2, 79, 103, 104, 107–108, 188, 190, 194 New Mexico 174

Index Nicaragua 45, 56 Nigeria 24, 29, 91, 92 Non-territorial conflicts 49–50 Normark, M. 5 North America 11, 124, 129; jihadist VRAs in 131–134 Northern Ireland 55, 146, 185, 193 al-Nusra see Jabhat al-Nusra Obama, B. 76, 77 Observational learning theory 123, 125 One-shot strategic failures 53 Online communication 108, 161, 194 Online magazines of al-Qaeda and Islamic State see Dabiq; Inspire On War (Clausewitz) 88 Open Source Jihad 108, 112, 114, 119, 120, 131, 132 Operational level of learning 8, 9, 22, 186, 189; see also terrorist learning Operation Glowing Symphony 96 Or, F. 139n3 Ordeñana, J.M.B. 26, 37 Organizational learning 2, 4, 9, 28, 69, 71, 124, 161, 194; Argyris and Schön’s approach 19, 20, 21, 22–24; component processes of 6 Outcomes see learning outcomes Ozeren, S. 146 Palestinian Liberation Organization see PLO Palestinian nationalists 123, 125, 129, 135 Pakistan 91 Pape, R.A. 125 Paris 46, 65, 78, 93, 137 Paris Commune in 1871 46 Party for the Basque Revolution (EIA) 26 Pedersen, M.L. 146 Pentagon 80n6 People’s Protection Units of Syrian Kurdistan (YPG) 151 Pertur 54–55 Philippines 45, 92 Pierce, W. 172 PIRA see Provisional Irish Republican Army PLO (Palestinian Liberation Organization) 53, 125 Politico-military campaign 73 Pollack, K. 95

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Poor’s Party 60 Popular support 25–28, 56, 92–94 Potter, P. 98n3 Pragmatism 26, 33, 34, 39, 191 Primetime TV 107 Prison learning 30–31, 70, 183, 191, 192 Profit-versus-ideology dichotomy 146 Propaganda 8, 76, 104–105, 106, 107, 109, 118, 120, 123, 127, 128, 132–134, 138–139; accelerationist 162, 174, 185, 187; of Daesh 64–65, 67, 77, 91, 116; jihadist 69; of the deed 46, 108; online 104, 108–109, 188; research instrumentalized for 196; VRA propaganda 131–133, 135–136 Prophetic methodology 75 Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA) 55, 146, 191, 193 al-Qaeda (AQ) 2, 5, 6, 7, 11, 25, 30, 33, 36, 65, 72, 75, 87, 88, 103, 118, 119–120, 147, 160, 183, 185, 190, 195; Gamaa Islamiya and 2, 38; Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham and 33, 36, 38; Inspire magazine and 112–114; social media 67–69 al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) 30, 84, 116 Quayle, E. 145 al-Qurashi, A.U. 88 Race war 160, 162, 167 Radicalization and recruitment 109, 110, 112, 115–118, 120, 168 Radicalization 75, 93, 126, 145, 147, 160–161, 168, 191, 192, 194; see also deradicalization RAND Corporation 6 Ranstorp, M. 5 Raust, M. 134 Red Brigades 50–51, 184, 188, 193 Reyes, R. 52 Rogers, E.M. 139n3 Roof, D. 163, 168 #Ropeculture 177n13 Rothenberger, L. 105 Rumiyah 65, 121, 128, 131, 134 Russia 26, 34, 38, 44, 46, 91 Saipov, S. 133–134 Sánchez-Cuenca, I. 49 Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) 45

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Index

Saudi Arabia 88, 91, 92 Schmid, A. P. 104 School shootings 174, 175 Schön, D.A. 10, 19–24, 27, 28, 29, 32, 34, 35, 39 Self-determination 26, 31, 86 Self-recognition 19 Self-reflection 19, 87 Self-reinforcing negative effect 24 September 23 Communist League 59, 60 Sequencing 85–89, 123, 128–129 al-Shabab 91 Shared repertoire of hate 171–174 Sharia law 25, 32, 93, 153 Shekau, A. 25, 29, 32, 34, 37, 38, 184 Shia 56, 75, 91, 94 Shitposting 171, 177n11 Shura council 35 Siege (James Mason) 170–171, 183 “Siegepilling” 171 Silke, A. 149 Simons, R.-J. 164, 167 Sinai 91 Singh, R. 7 Single-loop learning 22, 23, 24, 28, 29, 34 Skull mask network 175 Social media 65, 67, 69, 70, 71, 72, 74, 76, 77, 79, 108, 148, 177n11, 182, 187, 194 social-media jihad 64, 95 Social participation, learning as 164 Somalia 91, 92 Sonboly, D. 163, 168, 169, 174 Southeast Asia 71 Spain 26, 31, 46, 48, 53, 54, 138, 154, 184 Spencer, D. 52 Steam 168, 174 Stenersen, A. 4 Stern, J. 139n5 Strategic level of learning 3, 7, 8, 9, 10, 28, 186, 187, 192; see also terrorist learning Strategic success 75–76, 96 Sub-subcultures 166 Suicide bombing 6, 93, 95, 125, 139n3 Sunni 89, 91, 95, 107, 109, 117; insurgent groups 87; Iraqi 94 al-Suri, A.M. 44, 88, 160 Syria 11, 20, 25, 26, 30, 33, 64, 66, 67, 69, 75, 80n10, 87, 91, 92, 94, 95, 108, 151, 153

Tactical diffusion 125, 127, 128, 131; theories of 124–126 Tactical level of learning 3, 7, 8, 9, 84, 87, 120,138, 186, 187; see also terrorist learning Tactical success 96, 128 Takfir, concept of 25, 32, 74 Taliban 38, 45, 79, 91, 153 Tangible learning outcomes 8 Tanzania 93 Tarrant, B. 163, 168, 169, 173, 174, 175 Taylor, M. 145, 147 technological revolution 105 Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) 91 Telegram 67, 69, 167, 177n4 Territorial control 45, 46, 47, 53, 56–57, 58 Terrorgram 167, 169, 175 Terrorist learning 7, 64, 78, 104, 144, 156n1, 161; complexity of 1–9; interrelated dimensions of 7; lessons about 188–195; literature on VOs and 145–148; operational level of 8, 9, 22, 186, 189; in prison 30–31, 70, 183, 191, 192; strategic level of 3, 7, 8, 9, 10, 28, 186, 187, 192; tactical level of 3, 7, 8, 9, 84, 87, 120,138, 186, 187 Third-world armed strategies 47 Training and instructions 110, 117 TrueCrypt 96 Trujillo, H.R. 6 TTP see Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan Tupamaros 46, 47 The Turner Diaries (William Pierce) 172 Twitter 67, 68, 69, 71, 76, 96, 139 UK see United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland Ukraine 45, 152 Underdogs 84, 88 United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (UK) 4, 137–138, 150, 151, 156n5 United States of America (USA) 38, 46, 74, 76, 90, 134–136, 147, 150, 163; VRAs in 134–136 Upchurch, H.E. 175 Uribe, Á. 52 Uruguay 46 USA see United States of America Utopian caliphate see caliphate

Index Vasconia (Federico Krutwig) 53 Vehicle ramming attacks (VRAs) 123; far-right VRAs in Western Europe 136–138; far-right VRAs in United States 134–136; global diffusion of 130–131; intrafield tactical diffusion 127–128; jihadist VRAs 131–134; lone actors 126–127; tactical diffusion, theories of 124–126 Victimhood 74–75 Video-sharing 108 Vietnam 85, 86, 90 Villa, P. 59 Violence organizations (VOs) 145–148; defined 148 Violent rule of sharia law 71, 74–75 Virtual private networks (VPNs) 96 Visual material 173 VOs see violence organizations VPNs see virtual private networks VRAs see vehicle ramming attacks War of the Flea (Robert Taber) 48, 88 War on Terror 76, 79n5

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Warr, M. 147 Web 2.0 67–69, 71, 168 Weil, A. 139nn7–8 Wenger, E. 161, 164, 165, 166, 173, 176 Western Europe 116, 119; far-right attacks VRAs in (case) 136–138; jihadist VRAs in 131–134 White genocide 160, 161 Winter, C. 67, 74 Would-be rebels 47, 48 Yemen 91, 92 YouTube 65, 67, 80n11 YPG see People’s Protection Units of Syrian Kurdistan Zapata, E. 59 al-Zarqawi, A.M. 84, 87, 116 al-Zawahiri, A. 68, 93, 190 Zekulin, M. 121n4 Zionist Occupied Governments (ZOG) 169 ZOG see Zionist Occupied Governments Zumalde, X. 54