Report on the Relationship Between Terrorist Threats and Governance Conditions in the European Union - Asif Efrat Menachem Friedman Sivan ...
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Report on the Relationship Between Terrorist Threats and Governance Conditions in the European Union Asif Efrat Menachem Friedman Sivan Hirsch-Hoefler Amichai Magen
DISCLAIMER This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research & Innovation programme under Grant Agreement no. 770142. The information in this deliverable reflects only the authors’ views and the European Union is not liable for any use that may be made of the information contained therein. DISSIMINATION LEVEL Public www.reconnect-europe.eu Page 2 of 64
Project: RECONNECT - Reconciling Europe with its Citizens through Democracy and Rule of Law
GA: 770142
Horizon 2020: H2020-SC6-CULT-COOP-2017-two-stage
Funding Scheme: Collaboration Project
Report on the Relationship
Between Terrorist Threats and
Governance Conditions in the
European Union
Work Package 11 - Deliverable 3
Due date: 30.06.2021
Submission date: 29.06.2021
Lead beneficiary: IDC, Herzliya
Authors: Asif Efrat, Sivan Hirsch-Hoefler, Menachem Friedman, Amichai
Magen
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Content 1. Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 5 2. Terrorism and Political Regimes: The State of Knowledge ............................................................... 7 3. Empirical Realities and Trends ....................................................................................................... 10 4. A Test Case for Democracy: Populism, Far-right Extremism, and Terrorism in Europe ................. 22 5. A Test Case for the Rule of Law: Putting ISIS Foreign Fighters on Trial .......................................... 35 6. Guidelines for Policy ...................................................................................................................... 41 7. Conclusion ..................................................................................................................................... 48 References ............................................................................................................................................. 50 Appendix ................................................................................................................................................ 62 www.reconnect-europe.eu Page 4 of 64
1. Introduction
This Report provides a comprehensive empirical survey, theoretically-informed analysis, and
policy-oriented insights regarding the relationship between terrorist threats and governance
conditions, with special applicability to the European Union (EU). Specifically, the report
provides the following:
(1) A succinct literature review, surveying the origins, evolution, and latest state of
knowledge regarding the relationship between governance conditions and terrorism. In
line with RECONNECT's overarching goal of understanding the relationship between
democratic and rule of law conditions, on the one hand, and a variety of challenges
facing the EU, on the other hand, the report opens by outlining what we know about
the relationship between political regimes – on both the democratic and autocratic
sides of the regime-spectrum – and vulnerability to terrorist threats, in terms of number
of attacks and casualties. This review of the state of the art provides both a necessary
reference point for the subsequent empirical analysis of the report, for testing our
findings against existing expectations, and for generating policy-oriented insights.
(2) A state of the art empirical survey of post-9/11 global terrorist attacks and casualty
rates. This global survey presents the latest available data and provides the basis for an
informed, comparative analysis of trends and dynamics in the EU.
(3) A state of the art empirical survey of EU terrorist attacks, casualty rates and distribution
among Member States (MS) and the United Kingdom (UK) from 2000 onwards. In
addition, it presents the data in relation to the distribution of attacks/casualties among
MS, the methods of attack, and motivating ideologies for attacks. This finer-grained
empirical survey lays solid empirical grounding for theory-informed analysis and policy-
oriented insights, in three main ways. First, it allows EU-focused analysts and policy
makers to position EU terrorism threats in comparative perspective to global ones. This
is important because it provides perspective on the scale and trajectory of terrorist
threats over the past two decades, but also since terrorism is just one security threat
among a range of contending threats and policy priorities. Empirically-based
perspective is therefore crucial for perspective and sound policy. Second, it presents
the latest available empirical picture of terrorist threats in the EU and UK from 2000
onwards (i.e. for a two-year period prior to the starting point of the global survey). We
deliberately opt to extend the data to just prior to 9/11 (which is rightly seen as a
moment of "epochal change" in global patterns of terrorism) in order to better capture
the "wave" nature of terrorism in Europe and the transition that occurs in Europe
around the turn of the millennium – from nationalist/secessionist terrorism, to
terrorism motivated by radical ideologies, both Islamist and extreme-right. Third and
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last, the finer-grained empirical data presentation allows us to identify a number of key
patterns in EU terrorism threats, such as the great variation among MS to terrorist
attacks and casualties (i.e. that a handful of MS suffer the vast majority of attacks and
fatalities, while others experience very low or no attacks/casualties) or the fact that
terrorism in Europe tends to manifest itself in a small number of methods of attack
(notably bombings, incendiary attacks, and shootings).
(4) To supplement the broad empirical analysis presented in (2) and (3), flesh-out the
democracy and rule of law challenges confronting the EU in facing terrorist threats, and
lay the ground for forward-looking policy-oriented insights, the report presents two
qualitative sections, titled "A Test Case for Democracy: Populism, Far-right Extremism,
and Terrorism in Europe" and "A Test Case for the Rule of Law: Putting ISIS Foreign
Fighters on Trial", in sections four and five respectively. In doing so, the report tackles
core challenges for the EU and MS not envisaged when RECONNECT was conceived,
namely the links between populism and terrorism, the returning foreign-fighter and
families phenomena, and the recent rise of non-Islamist terrorist risks in Europe.
(5) Building upon the preceding empirical analysis and two qualitative studies, the report
then dedicates a section to laying out a set of forward-looking, policy-oriented
guidelines for managing the democratic governance-terrorism threats nexus. We do not
pretend to offer a detailed counter-terrorism strategy for the EU. Rather, our guidelines
for policy are meant to facilitate the work of other working packages focused on
generating EU policy adaptation for improved democratic and rule of law-based order;
one that is able to effectively manage future EU challenges, including terrorism threats.
Finally, the report draws together the main lessons of the report in a brief conclusion.
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2. Terrorism and Political Regimes: The State of Knowledge Terrorism is the deliberate use or threat of violence against civilians by a non-state entity (individual or group) in pursuit of a political goal. Like war between states, civil wars, or insurgencies, terrorism is a species of political violence, distinguished from ordinary criminality on account of its goal of advancing some political end beyond harm to the immediate targets themselves (Hoffman 2006, chapter 2).1 Research into the relationship between terrorism and political regime types traces back to the early 1980s (Crenshaw 1981), yet despite decades of accumulated insights, explanatory theories and empirical support for those theories have oscillated greatly and, if anything, become more contested in recent years (Jones and Lupu 2018). Much of this is due to the fragmented nature of the existing literature, as well as to conceptual and methodological weaknesses, notably among early studies. Spikes of intense interest in the relationship have punctuated longer periods of neglect, while scholars preoccupied with terrorism and those concerned with regime types have traditionally worked in separate disciplinary realms (Chenoweth 2013; Magen 2018). Terrorism analysts, for example, have often used inconsistent definitions and measures of regime types, and have tended to treat "democracy" and "autocracy" as dichotomous variables (Schmid 1992; Eubank and Weinberg 1994; Eyerman 1998; Li 2005; Chenoweth 2010). Most existing studies, moreover, possess an outmoded quality. They often address intervals drawn from the three and a half decades between 1968 and 2004, with temporal clustering that bespeak interest in secular, left-wing, and nationalist strains of terrorism—phenomena that have since largely dissipated, making no significant impact on contemporary global terrorism patterns (Schmid 1992; Eubank and Weinberg 1994; Eyerman 1998; Krain 1998; Li 2005; Hoffman 2006). The most recent influential studies take into account a broader spectrum of regime types and are more up to date, but still rely on data that extends only to 2010-2012 at the latest. They thereby lack analyses of the combined impact of the "Arab Spring" and its aftermath, wave of terrorist incidents in Europe and North America after 2012, and the global democratic recession (Chenoweth 2013; Gaibulloev, Piazza and Sandler 2017; Jones and Lupu 2018). Given these limitations in prior research, it is unsurprising that for decades the impact of democracy on terrorism produced two broadly 1 For the purpose of this report we use the Global Terrorism Database (GTD) definition of terrorism, which is: “The threatened or actual use of illegal force and violence by a non-state actor to attain a political, economic, religious, or social goal through fear, coercion, or intimidation.”(See: https://www.start.umd.edu/gtd/#:~:text=The%20GTD%20defines%20terrorism%20as,%2C%20coercion%2C%20 or%20intimidation.%E2%80%9D). For a detailed discussion of the definition of terrorism and of political violence more broadly see: Bruce Hoffman, Inside Terrorism (NY: Columbia University Press, 2006) chapter 2. www.reconnect-europe.eu Page 7 of 64
opposing views, while inquiry into the relationship between autocracy and terrorism emerged much later (Aksoy, Carter and Wright 2012; Wilson and Piazza 2013; Conrad, Conrad and Young 2014). Until quite recently, the dominant view argued that democracies were more prone to terrorist attacks than non-democracies, and that "the more democratic a country is, the more terrorism it should experience" (Chenoweth 2013, 357). Adherents of this school of thought offered three explanatory theories for the perceived vulnerability of democracies. First, Crenshaw's path breaking 1981 study of the causes of terrorism contended that in democracies "terrorists view the context as permissive," (Crenshaw 1981, 383) inaugurating a line of argument which Schmid and Everyman respectively developed into a game-theoretic "strategic influence" explanation (Schmid 1992; Eyerman 1998). According to this view, liberal-democratic freedoms of association and movement, coupled with due-process guarantees and legal constraints on security forces encourage terrorism by reducing the costs of collective action and participation in political violence. At the same time, the greater media freedoms of open societies magnify the publicity of terrorist attacks, accentuating their strategic impact (Eubank and Weinberg 1994; Hoffman 2006; Gadarian 2010). A second explanation focused on the superior mobilization opportunities available to terrorists in democracies and the heightened responsiveness of elected officials to public pressures. With this line of argument, terrorist attacks are more likely in democracies since violent challengers are better able to organize, plan, fundraise, and communicate more easily (San-Akca 2014). At the same time, casualty- averse officials are more likely to acquiesce to public pressure in order to avoid additional violence (Wilkinson 1986; Doyle 1997; Pape 2003). Lastly, another branch of the literature claims that electoral competition and institutional design play key roles in explaining democracies' greater vulnerability to terrorism. Between 2004 and 2014, four studies found that political systems with higher levels of political competition suffered more terrorist incidents (Bloom 2004; Sanchez-Cuenca and Aguilar 2009; Chenoweth 2010; San-Akca 2014). An opposing viewpoint emerged in the mid-1990s, when Ross and Eyerman argued that the political openness and inclusivity of democracies helps assuage societal or ethnic grievances and undermine the legitimacy of the use of violent means for political ends (Ross 1993; Eyerman 1998; Abrahms 2007; Choi 2010). This "political access" view predicts that liberal democratic states suffer fewer terrorist attacks by limiting the utility of such behavior and ameliorating grievances at home before they spill over to attacks abroad (Gaibulloev, Piazza and Sandler 2017). A number of studies also speculated that the observed proclivity of terrorists to target democracies derives from an illusion caused by the tendency of authoritarian regimes to systematically underreport terrorist incidents (Sandler 1995; Drakos and Gofas 2006; Abrahms 2007; Choi 2010; Hendrix and Young 2014; Salehyan 2015). In recent years, scholarship in this field has overcome the prevailing confusion, yet important gaps in knowledge persist. When terrorism scholars caught up with developments in www.reconnect-europe.eu Page 8 of 64
comparative politics, they achieved a critical breakthrough by abandoning a dichotomous view
of democracy and dictatorship and beginning to address intermediate (or hybrid) regime types
on both the autocratic and democratic sides of the regime spectrum. In 2006, a pioneer in this
regard, Alberto Abadie, argued that political freedom maintains a curvilinear dynamic with
terrorism and more specifically an inverted U-shaped relationship in which "countries with
intermediate levels of political freedom [are] more prone to terrorism than countries with high
levels of political freedom or countries with highly authoritarian regimes." (Abadie 2006, 51)
Following Abadie, the latest research into the relationship between regime types and terrorism
has largely converged on an inverted U-shape relationship, in which scholars identify
intermediate-level regimes (or "anocracies") as the most vulnerable to terrorist attacks (Wade
and Reiter 2007; Chenoweth 2013; Gaibulloev, Piazza and Sandler 2017; Jones and Lupu 2018;
Magen 2018).
Number of terrorist attacks
High
Low
Closed Authoritarian Multiparty Autocracies/Minimalist Democracies Polyarchies/Liberal Democracies
Illustration 1: The inverted U-shape or "More Violence in the Middle" relationship between
regime type and terrorist attacks
Broadly speaking, our data confirms this "More Violence in the Middle" hypothesis in relation
to terrorism, with some important caveats (see section 3 below). Importantly, the inverted U-
shape relationship between regime types and terrorism is highly consistent with other forms
of political violence, notably civil wars (Hegre, Ellingsen, Gates, and Gleditsch 2001; Jones and
Lupu 2018). In the next section we lay out the empirical record and draw out the main analytical
lessons from the data.
www.reconnect-europe.eu Page 9 of 643. Empirical Realities and Trends In this section we present the latest available data on terrorism trends using the Global Terrorism Database (GTD) as our measure of terrorist activity. By using GTD data, rather than alternative measures of terrorism, we are able to ensure consistency in measurement of terrorism incidents, fatalities, methods, and motivating ideologies, globally and in the EU.2 We present the data in two sequential sub-sections. The first captures global terrorism realities in the post-9/11 era (i.e. 2002-2019) disaggregated by regime type. Presenting the global data in this manner permits us to demonstrate the general veracity of the "More Violence in the Middle" pattern of the relationship, identify deviations from this overall dynamic, and provide the global context against which EU patterns of terrorism can be compared. The second sub- section then presents the empirical picture of terrorist activity in the EU and UK since 2000. In this context, we opted to include the 2000-2001 period in order to capture the terrorism "wave" patterns and transition from pre-9/11 nationalist/separatist motivated terrorism, to a post-9/11 era of terrorism in Europe, which is dominated by religious-extremism and alt-right motivated terrorism. We end the section by identifying a number of salient trends that emerge from the data. Global Empirical Realities The launch of the GTD in late 2001 permitted analysts to attain, for the first time, a reasonably reliable global assessment of terrorist incidents and casualties. The GTD now provides a systematic, open-source database that records terrorist incidents and casualties globally through 2019. When collated, the aggregate global pattern of terrorist attacks is captured in the graph below: 2 An alternative source of data on terrorist activity in the EU is the Europol’s annual EU Terrorism Situation and Trend Report (TE-SAT) which provides an overview of the terrorism phenomenon in the EU in a given year. For our purposes, the TE-SAT database suffers from two major limitations. First, it was launched only in 2007. Second, the TE-SAT database covers EU Member States only and so, unlike the GTD, does not allow us to compare terrorism- related data in the EU with the rest of the world. www.reconnect-europe.eu Page 10 of 64
Globally, we can identify three main phases within this seventeen-year period: (1) a substantial but relatively gradual increase between 2002 and 2010; (2) a dramatic increase in the number of attacks between 2011 and 2014 (corresponding to the immediate aftermath of the "Arab Spring" and the height of Daesh (ISIS) and al-Qaeda (AQ) activity in the Middle East, North Africa, and Afghanistan, and (3) a substantial decline from the high-water mark of 2014 in 2015- 2019, but with the number of attacks remaining relatively very high (on par with 2012 figures). The pattern concerning terrorist casualties over the same period is as follows: www.reconnect-europe.eu Page 11 of 64
We observe that the pattern of terrorism casualties broadly follows that of terrorist incidents, - ranging from a low of approximately 12,000 fatalities per year in 2003, to nearly 80,000 in 2015 – with the periods 2005-2007 and 2018-2019 displaying proportionally increased lethality in relation to the number of attacks perpetrated. This dramatic aggregate increase in terrorism is at odds with the decades-long decline in global rates of wars between states (i.e. interstate wars) but consistent with the resurgence of other forms of political violence over the past decade, especially civil wars and internationalized civil wars. Globally, in 2019 the number of state-based armed conflicts3 reached its highest number since 1946 (with 54 active state-based conflicts), and the number of internationalized civil wars (i.e. intrastate conflicts with troop involvement from external states) also reached its highest recorded number since 1946 (Petterson and Oberg 2020). Global rates of terrorism incidents and fatalities rose quite dramatically since 2001, yet the aggregate increase tells us very little about the distribution of terrorist attacks and casualties across different political regime types. Nor does it reveal the rates of increase in terrorist incidents and fatalities in different regime type. To address the question what is the relationship between regime types and terrorism and are some political regimes – on both the democratic and autocratic sides of the regime spectrum – more vulnerable to this species of political violence requires examining the numbers in relation to defined regime type categories. Building on Jørgen Møller and Svend-Erik Skaaning’s typology of political regimes (Møller and Skaaning 2013) we disaggregate regime types into six theoretically grounded categories, and apply the GTD data to each category for the years from 2002 through 2019 (the latest available data). The data is weighed to take account of the different number of states across regime categories, hence the number of attacks and casualties is presented as an on average per each category. Movement of states across categories (as the result of improvements or decline in democratic scores) are also accounted for. Møller and Skaaning sort democracies into four subcategories based on a taxonomic hierarchy where the more demanding definitions subsume the less demanding ones. In ascending order, the categories are: Minimalist democracy, which includes regimes that fulfil the thinnest Schumpeterian definition of competitive elections; Electoral democracy, which further requires the maximization of the elections criterion (that is, inclusive, high-integrity elections) but nothing else; Polyarchy, in the classic sense meant by Robert A. Dahl, which extends beyond elections to cover civil liberties, particularly the freedoms of speech and association; and Liberal Democracy, the most demanding category, which 3 A state-based armed conflict is a contested incompatibility that concerns government and/or territory where the use of armed force between two parties, of which at least one is the government of a state, results in at least 25 battle-related deaths in one calendar year. Of these the vast majority of conflicts are civil wars where the state government confronts one or more non-state actor. See Petterson and Oberg (2020). www.reconnect-europe.eu Page 12 of 64
denotes substantive democracy complete with inclusive elections, civil liberties, and the rule of law understood as equality of all persons before and under the law. On the non-democratic side of the regime type spectrum, autocratic regimes are divided into closed autocracies and multiparty autocracies. The latter are distinguished from the former by virtue of holding elections that involve more than one party, though these votes are not competitive enough for the regime to qualify even as minimally democratic. The following two graphs present the global GTD data when disaggregated into the six regime type categories. The first displays the number of attacks, whereas the second displays the number of casualties. www.reconnect-europe.eu Page 13 of 64
A number of key patterns can be gleamed from the above graphs: First, the relative, growing advantage of liberal democracies and polyarchies in minimizing terrorist attacks and casualties marks what is perhaps the most striking, consequential and counterintuitive, shift in global patterns of terrorism. Liberal democracies and polyarchies are now substantially safer than all other regime types, effectively inverting the old convention that democracies are most vulnerable to terrorism. The new "democracy advantage" is in fact a triple advantage (Magen 2018). Against a backdrop of a sharp global increase in terrorist attacks and casualties, liberal democracies and polyarchies suffer the lowest number of attacks in absolute terms, the lowest rate of increase in terrorism incidents, and substantially fewer casualties compared with all other regime types. Second – and crucially for EU Member States – the "democracy advantage" is reserved to reasonably high-quality democracies alone (i.e. consolidated liberal democracies and polyarchies). Merely passing the minimalist/electoral democracy threshold does not endow a country with the same advantage. Electoral and minimalist democracies continue to suffer terrorism at higher rates in comparison to both reasonably high-quality democracies (liberal democracies and polyarchies) and closed autocracies. As can be seen from the graph below – which zooms in to focus on the spectrum of regimes on the democratic side of the spectrum – the loss of the "democracy advantage" among electoral and minimalist democracies is especially pronounced in terms of casualty rates. Third – and another major cautionary tale for EU Member States emanating from the global data – is an observation pertaining to the fate of multiparty autocracies. These have evidently www.reconnect-europe.eu Page 14 of 64
become the primary target of terrorism, most acutely over the past decade. Contrasting the individual years of 2002 and 2019, multiparty autocracies experienced an 868 percent increase in terrorism. Similarly, multiparty autocracies now suffer starkly high relative terrorism casualty rates. Looking at the mid-range regime types on both sides of the spectrum – i.e. electoral/minimalist democracies and multiparty autocracies – draws a key lesson of special relevance to EU Member States. Processes of democratic backsliding or outright "autocratization" bring countries into the "danger zone" of substantially increased probability of relatively high numbers of terrorist attacks and casualties. For the sake of completeness – and in order to dispel the temptation to "flee into closed authoritarianism" as a means of improving safety from terrorist attacks and casualties – it is also important to highlight the pattern in relation to the last regime type category, namely closed authoritarian regimes. Countering conventional wisdom, closed autocracies have steadily declined in their previously perceived relative immunity to terrorism. For 2014-2015 and 2018-2019, closed autocracies actually reach the second-highest victims of terrorism falling behind only multiparty autocracies. Contrasting the individual years of 2002 and 2019, closed autocracies experienced an 8155 percent increase in terrorism. While lower in raw numbers, this marks the only percentage increase in terrorism higher than that of multi-party autocracies noted above. Similarly, we observe an increase in terrorism-related casualties in closed autocracies, indicating fully autocratic regimes have become relatively less capable in terms of terrorism damage mitigation, not only terrorism prevention. These findings run counter to the old conventional notion that saw closed autocracies as the regime type least susceptible to terrorism. In sum, the data covering the years 2002-2019 broadly supports the "more violence in the middle" hypothesis, but with important caveats. The overarching visual image that emerges from the latest available data is not so much a neat inverted U-shaped relationship, but rather a "fish-hook" image, in which relatively high rates of terrorist attacks and fatalities in the middle are complemented by increased vulnerability to attacks and casualties on the closed- authoritarian side of the spectrum, coupled with a seemingly growing "democracy advantage" reserved for reasonably high-quality democracies (liberal democracies and polyarchies). In terms of the latter two categories, there does not appear a significant advantage for one over the other. Over time, liberal democracies and polyarchies appear to be equally effective at deterring or preventing terrorist attacks, as well as minimizing casualties from the relatively few attacks that they do suffer. EU and UK Empirical Realities Armed with the above set of observations about global trends, we turn to undertake a more detailed, finer-grained empirical analysis of conditions in the EU (and UK). Given that, with the singular exception of Hungary (which was downgraded to "partly free" by the Freedom House www.reconnect-europe.eu Page 15 of 64
index in 2020) all EU Member States and the UK fall within the liberal democracy / polyarchy
regime type, the nature of the analysis undertaken in the following sub-section is necessarily
somewhat different from the one relating to global trends. We link the data and analysis
between global and EU trends by presenting the figures for the number of terrorist attacks and
fatalities, but in addition present new EU-focused data on the distribution of attacks and
casualties among Member States, attack methodologies and animating ideologies for the
attacks.
As the graph below records, the number of terrorist attacks experienced by EU Member States
and the UK since the turn of the millennium has oscillated quite extensively, ranging from a low
of 45 attacks in 2004 to a high of 236 attacks in 2015. Somewhat contrary to the general global
trend over the past five years, the period 2015-2019 (the latest available figures) was marked
by an only very moderate decline in the number of attacks in Europe, falling from the 2015
peak to 192 attacks in 2019.
Total Number of Terrorist Attacks in EU Member
States and UK 2000-2019
236
216
194 192
173 173
159
148 149
136 140
127
91 92 87
72 78
54 52
45
2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019
The picture that emerges in relation to the number of casualties from terrorist attacks is
presented in the graph below. 2004 stands out as a year with relatively few attacks, but high
casualties (191 of which were caused in a single attack, the March 11 2004 al-Qaeda Madrid
train bombings). In contrast, 2015 and 2016 were years characterized by a relatively high
number of attacks and casualties, while 2006-2014 and 2018-2019 can be characterized as
years with relatively moderate to high numbers of attacks that resulted in few casualties.
www.reconnect-europe.eu Page 16 of 64Number of Terror Fatalties in EU & UK
2000-2019
194
171 166
79
60
40
22 19 19 21
10 5 6 8 3 10 6 4 7 6
2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019
Source: Global Terrorism
Database
If we adopt a somewhat broader time horizon, comparing the period of focus (2000-2019) to
earlier decades, we observe that the period 2015-2019 represents an era characterized by only
moderately high levels of terrorist attacks and fatalities. As Alex Nowrasteh (2017) illustrates
with reference to casualty rates in five European countries, compared with the 1970's and
much of the 80's, the number of terrorism fatalities suffered in Europe since 2000 is relatively
low.
Terrorism fatalities in Belgium, France, Germany, Sweden, and the United Kingdom, 1975-2017
(Source: Nowrasteh, 2017)
While every terrorist death is a tragedy and every attack an outrage, sober risk management
and political judgement requires that the nature and scope of the threat be kept firmly in
perspective. Looked at empirically, the lifetime odds of being killed by a terrorist, foreign or
domestic, in a Western democracy remain miniscule. Over the nearly 42-year period between
1975 and June 2017 examined by Nowrasteh, a total of 3,568 Americans were killed in terrorist
www.reconnect-europe.eu Page 17 of 64attacks, which means the annual chance of an American perishing from an act of terrorism was 1 in 3.24 million. That number includes the 2,983 people murdered in the 9/11 attacks, an extremely deadly outlier event. Compared to the threat of being killed by a terrorist on American soil, the average American is 29 times more likely to die from an asteroid strike, 260 times more likely to be struck down by lightning, 4,700 times more likely to perish in an airplane accident, and 407,000 times more likely to die in a motor vehicle accident. With the single exception of the UK, the odds of being killed by a terrorist in Europe are even lower. Over the same 1975-2017 period, the annual chance of a German being killed in a terrorist attack was 1 in 23.23 million, that of a Swede 1 in 19 million, a Belgian 1 in nearly 7 million, and a French resident 1 in nearly 5 million. Residents of the UK suffered the most, with almost 78 percent of European fatalities being British residents. 95 percent of those British victims died before 2001, chiefly at the hands of secular nationalist Irish terrorist groups, not Salafi jihadists or alt-right extremists. All in all, among the five European countries examined by Nowrasteh, post-2001 terrorist fatalities were substantially lower than in the 1970's and 80's. For example, in 1975 terrorists murdered 252 residents of the UK, Belgium, France, Germany and Sweden. In 2015 the number of fatalities in these countries was 172, or 32 percent lower. In 1976 there were 354 terrorist victims, whereas in 2016 the total stood at 166, or 47 percent lower than they were in 1976. Another important dimension to be considered when examining terrorism threats in the EU and UK concerns the distribution of attacks among Member States. As the graph below demonstrates, the range of susceptibility to terrorist attacks among EU Member States and the UK over the focus period (2000-2019) is very broad indeed. It extends from zero (no attacks) in Luxembourg and Slovenia, to single digits in 10 EU Member States (Croatia, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia), to 787 attacks in the UK. Among current EU Member States, only France, Germany, Greece, and Spain suffered more than 100 attacks over the entire focus period (2000-2019), with Ireland, Italy, and Sweden sustaining between 45 and 96 attacks over the same period. This broad disparity in the experience of Member State terrorism does not necessarily mean of course that common European concern or coordinated counter-terrorism action is impossible, but it does mean that Member States experience the realities of terrorist threats very differently and are likely to prioritize security attention and resource allocation to this cluster of threat differently (see section 6 of the report below). www.reconnect-europe.eu Page 18 of 64
DISTRIBUTION OF TERROR ATTACKS AMONG EUROPEAN UNION
MEMBER STATES AND THE UK, 2000 -2019
787
517
383
346
196
96
78
45
24
18
18
17
15
14
14
11
8
5
5
5
3
2
2
2
2
1
0
0
Source: Global Terrorism Database
Three additional sets of observations complete the main empirical picture needed to provide
the basis for the subsequent qualitative analysis (presented in sections 4 and 5 below) and
policy-oriented insights (section 6 below). The first relates to the methods of attack deployed
by terrorists in the EU and UK, the second captures the animating motivations for such attacks,
and the third concerns the shifting patterns in the terms of the source of terrorism in different
periods – what we might call different "waves" of terrorism violence in Europe. The three
dimensions are closely related, since the actualization of terrorist attacks, and consequent
harm, entail two core dimensions: terrorist capacity and motivation (Ganor 2005). Shifts in
animating motivations (or ideologies driving terrorism) produce different patterns of terrorist
threats (Honig and Yahel 2017).
As the graph below documents, although a range of methods have been used in attacks in the
EU and UK over the focus period, three modes of attack stand out as preferred methods,
namely bombings, incendiary attacks, and shootings. This is significant in two main respects.
First, in contrast with melee or stabbing attacks, bombings and shootings in particular carry a
high potential for mass-casualty events. At the same time, the rarity of chemical, vehicular and
hijacking attacks in Europe and the UK are welcome indicators of the denial of such capacity to
would-be attackers. And second, the relative prevalence of a small number of methods of
attack mean that EU security officials and other agencies concerned to deny terrorist capacities,
can focus on those methods with greater precision. It is to be emphasized, however, that past
methods of attack do not necessarily predict future ones and that EU counter-terrorism efforts
require preparation and anticipation of terrorist innovation in, inter alia, methods of attack (see
section 6 below).
www.reconnect-europe.eu Page 19 of 64Method of Attack in Six Most Vulnerable EU States and UK.
2000-2019
Hijacking
Vehicular…
Chemical…
Melee
Hostage Taking
Infrastructure
Incendiary…
Stabbing
Bombing
Shooting
0 200 400 600 800 1000 1200
Source: Global Terrorism Database.
Hijacking includes car, bus and plane attacks
Second, it is vital to distinguish between major motivating ideologies that drive terrorist activity
in the EU. As the graph below demonstrates, terrorist activity in the EU and UK has been
motivated by a range of animating ideological and religious forces, with a rather broad
distribution of animating ideologies. Somewhat counterintuitively, it is separatist (or
secessionist) ideology that has been the dominant animating force behind the largest share of
terrorist attacks in the EU and UK over the period 2000-2019 (44 percent of attacks). 17 pecent
of attacks have been motivated by radical Islam, followed by radical-right neo-Nazi ideology (10
percent), anarchist and radical-left (7 percent each) and anti-Muslim motivation (5 percent of
attacks). Anti-IRA, anti-Semitic, and radical animal-rights activist attacks complete the list.
www.reconnect-europe.eu Page 20 of 64Third and finally here, within the focus period (2000-2019) we can detect different "eras" or "waves" of terrorist activity in the EU and UK, motivated by different animating ideologies. While the demarcation lines between one "era" and another are never entirely clear cut, distinguishing periods characterized by different animating ideologies provides us with an important toolkit for better understanding, managing, and anticipating changes in terrorist threats. Indeed, a rich body of existing research emphasizes shifting eras of political violence and how transitions from one era to another are characterized by different formative events, tactics, funding sources, and even use of media. In his seminal "The Four Waves of Modern Terrorism", for example, David Rapaport suggested that the history of modern terrorism can be divided into four different eras, or "waves". Rapaport defines a wave as "a cycle of activity in a given time period, with international character; with similar activities occurring in different regions, driven by a common prominent energy that shapes the participating groups" (Rapaport 2004, 47). In his analysis, Rapaport views the motivating ideology as the "common prominent energy" but also observes that different waves bring with them different organizational and operational features, such as sources of funding and tactics. The four waves he identifies are as follows: the Anarchist Wave (1880-1920); the anti-Colonial Wave (1920-1960); the New Left Terrorism (1960-1979); and the Islamist/Religious wave, which Rapaport saw as triggered by the 1979 Iranian revolution and the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan. Building on Rapaport's waves scheme, subsequent scholarship has suggested that the emergence of "terrorist semi-states" (like Hezbollah, HAMAS, and ISIS in Iraq and Syria) represents a fifth- wave of terrorism (Hong and Yahel 2017). Over the period of focus (2000-2019) we can generally, and tentatively, identify three waves of terrorism in the EU and UK. The period 2000-2002 captures the fading out of a wave of terrorism which can be defined as a nationalist, independence, or secessionist wave, and that primarily involved groups such as the Irish Republican Army (IRA) as well as Basque and Corsican separatists using bombing and shooting tactics. A second wave can be defined as an al-Qaeda orchestrated wave, and is concentrated between 2004 and 2007. What defines this short-sharp wave is a relatively small number of highly organized, devastating attacks deploying sophisticated bombs (Madrid 2004) and suicide-bombings (London 2007). The March 11 2004 Madrid train bombings involved nearly simultaneous, coordinated bombings against the Cercanías commuter train system of Madrid, timed strategically to occur just three days before Spain's general elections. The explosions killed 193 people and injured around 2,000. Similarly, on July 7 2007, four suicide bombings were carried out on mass transport targets in London, killing 52 people and injuring more than 950. Between 2007 and 2014 we enter a period with no clearly defined primary motivating ideology, but rather disparate motivations – ranging from Anarchist violence in Greece, to sporadic anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim attacks. Lastly, from 2014 onwards we identify a third wave of attacks, defined by a combined era of ISIS inspired (often returning foreign fighter and "lone wolf") attacks – most notably in Paris, Nice, Brussels, London, Manchester, Barcelona, and Berlin – coupled with rising neo-Nazi and other extreme- right attacks. To more fully grasp these dual challenges of emergent terrorist threats to the EU, www.reconnect-europe.eu Page 21 of 64
sections 4 and 5 delve into the populism far-right extremism nexus, and the returning fighters
dilemma, respectively. Tying these challenges to RECONNECT's conceptual framework, we
frame these sections in terms of test cases for democracy and the rule of law.
4. A Test Case for Democracy: Populism, Far-right
Extremism, and Terrorism in Europe
Recent blows to the liberal order – the 2008 financial crisis, demographic decline and economic
stagnation in Europe and Japan, European fears of rising migration flows from Africa and the
Middle East, as well as the endemic risk of terrorism – have whipped up support for illiberal,
anti-establishment political parties and candidates across the developed world (Dalio et al.
2017). So far at least, organized challenges to the liberal order have primarily come not from
Islamist or other overtly authoritarian ideologies, but converge on variable forms of "populism"
emanating from both the far-left and far-right sides of the political spectrum (Snyer 2017).
Indeed, the vote share of populist, far-right, and far left parties in national elections for
European countries is now at its highest level since the early 1990s (Rooduijn et al., 2019).
Source: Rooduijn, M., Van Kessel, S., Froio, C., Pirro, A., De Lange, S., Halikiopoulou, D., Lewis, P., Mudde, C. &
Taggart, P. (2019). The PopuList: An Overview of Populist, Far Right, Far Left and Eurosceptic Parties in
Europe. www.popu-list.org.
www.reconnect-europe.eu Page 22 of 64Populism is an amalgam of moralistic, discursive political propositions whose cumulative
meanings are fundamentally anti-liberal and corrosive to democratic values and institutions.4
They also happen to be deeply unhelpful – and in some instances outright toxic – to the
responsible management of, inter alia, terrorist threats. Putting aside the parallels between
"populism" and "terrorism" – as contested concepts, stigma-carrying terms, and historical
phenomena5 – there are five main constitutive political propositions that make up the core of
populism:
1. Society is sharply separated into two homogenous and antagonistic groups: "the pure
people" and the "corrupt elites" ("the establishment"). Right wing populism often
includes fringe groups at the bottom of society – immigrants, recipients of social-
welfare, and religious minorities – in the castigated "out group" or "parasites" feeding
off decent folk. The "pure, innocent, hard-working people" have been downtrodden and
deprived of "their rights" by the corrupt elites and/or the "parasites". They must rise
and take what rightfully belongs to them.
2. Internationally too, society is divided sharply into "us" and "them". Economic, cultural,
and security threats emanating from outsiders endanger "us" and deprive the people
of their prosperity, equality, safety, "traditional values", culture, identity, and voice.
Protectionism, nationalism, xenophobia, antagonism, propensity for conflict and
militarism follow.
3. There is no legitimate middle-ground or opposition. Populism is essentially anti-
pluralist. Whoever opposes, or is suspected of not supporting the populists, is
castigated as not being "part of the people" and, in extremis, to be "the enemy of the
people".
4. Conspiracy: The corrupt elites and outsiders (including immigrants) have conspired
against "the people". The enemies are everywhere. There is something vast and
shadowy going on behind the scenes. The political system is rigged and so is the
4
The five-dimensions definition of populism below is drawn from a lecture given by Amichai Magen at the 2017
Special Meeting of the Mont Perelin Society titled "The Populist Threat to the Free Society and the Reconstruction
of the Liberal Project" (Stockholm, November 25-27, 2017).
5
The terms "populism" and "terrorism" share several interesting, but for our purpose secondary, parallels. First,
they are actively contested concepts, currently "enjoying" great media, policy and scholarly attention. Within the
academic world both are the subject of diverging political, sociological, and legal interpretations see for example:
(Aslanidis 2016). Second, both "populism" and "terrorism" are morally-laden terms, often used to draw sharp
dividing-lines between opposing camps, place one camp on high moral grounds and brand the other as illegitimate
and criminal. Third, historically both phenomena tend to rise and ebb every several decades. For a detailed
discussion of the history, evolution, and diversity of scholarship on populism see: (Gidron and Bonikowski 2013)
www.reconnect-europe.eu Page 23 of 64economy ("corporations", banks, and "globalization" are especially culpable). The world
is dangerous and hostile. Democracy is a sham, the security organizations that are
meant to protect us are failing, the media lies. The populists are the only one who
(bravely) expose the conspiracy and can fix it. "Political correctness", an oppressive tool
of the elites, must be cast aside and "the truth" revealed. There is a permanent state of
crisis and an apocalyptical confrontation between the forces of good and evil is coming.
5. Solutions are simple. The singular common good of the people (the volonté générale)
is clear and commonsensical, capable of being defined and implemented by "a strong
leader" or "the party". What needs to be done is obvious and decisive, "no debate about
values or weighing of empirical evidence is required (Müller 2016, 26)." Whoever
opposes "the solution" harms the people and is therefore a traitor.
Populists advance the above moralistic, discursive claims when in opposition and typically
persist in blaming "entrenched elites", the media, and other nebulous enemies long after
coming to power and becoming the ruling elite themselves.
Just as importantly, populist politics and state-craft often involve certain practices and
institutional changes that are central to an analysis of the populism-terrorism nexus. Müller
identifies three sets of practices in this context: First, the "colonization of the state" which seeks
to bring core institutions of state-power (and potential sources of effective opposition) –
particularly the military, police, secret services, civil service, public media, prosecution and
judiciary – under the control of the leader or party. Second, "mass clientelism" which seeks to
remove opponents, reward loyalists, and (as in the case of Chavez's Venezuela) effectively build
up entire classes of regime supporters by bestowing material rewards on acolytes or exempting
"the righteous" from legal scrutiny – what Müller calls "discriminatory legalism". And finally,
populist state-craft tend to involve the harassing, or even coercive suppression of dissenting
NGO's, journalists, or other critical voices deemed to be "foreign agents" inconsistent with the
volonté Générale (Müller 2016, 44-48).
The populism-terrorism nexus
With the above constitutive elements and sets of practices in mind, we can begin to unpack the
populism-terrorism nexus. Specifically, it is possible to identify four main distinctive and
pernicious effects:
Creating perverse incentives to join radical identification and activity
The essential populist proposition, which divides society (domestic and international) into two
homogenous and antagonistic camps, risks greatly expanding the number of people
incentivized (pushed and pulled) into the orbit of radical ideology and action. The pool of
www.reconnect-europe.eu Page 24 of 64potential jihadi sympathizers and recruits is vast, and extends to Muslims (including converts)
and other followers both within Western democracies and internationally.
The link between increased support for populist parties, anti-immigration and anti-Muslim
sentiments, is well established, particularly in Europe.6 The highest levels of anti-Muslim
migrant sentiments today are found in Hungary, Poland, and the Netherlands, which have all
experienced sharp rises in support for populist parties and candidates in the last decade (Wike
et al. 2016). More broadly, the platforms of right-wing political parties – such as "Alternative
for Germany", the "Party of Freedom" in the Netherlands, France's "National Front", the
"Freedom Party" in Austria, and "Jobbik" in Hungary – converge around measures to restrict
Muslim migration, partly in the name of ensuring security.
Somewhat ironically, radical Islamists and populists share an anti-pluralist stance as a key
dimension in their respective doctrines. Both advance an image of a world in which "the sons
of light and the sons of darkness" are not only absolutely and irreconcilably pitted against one
another, but are destined to clash in existential battle. Both insist that there is no neutral space
or middle-ground.
Perhaps the greatest success of free societies in the ongoing fight against terrorism, thus far at
least, is reflected in the relatively tiny number of acolytes Islamic radicals have managed to
recruit in the West. Even at the apex of their appeal, between 2011 and 2015, the total number
of foreign fighters travelling to the Middle East from Western countries to fight under the
banner of various radical Islamist groups did not exceed 5,000 individuals, and was probably
closer to 4,000.7 By maintaining pluralism, and avoiding forcing individuals with competing civic
and religious identities to make sharp choices among those competing identities, liberal-
democracy provides the vast majority of potential sympathizers of radical Islam with diffuse but
potent "opting out" possibilities from terrorism or terrorism-supporting activities – such as
participation in incitement, financing, recruitment, or providing logistical support for attacks.
At one important level, effective counter-terrorism is primarily about creating and
strengthening material and symbolic incentives – both sticks and carrots – for would-be
sympathizers of, or activists in, political violence, to eschew or exit such involvement. Liberal
democracies, though not entirely immune of course to radicalization and home-grown
terrorism, are in fact much better than illiberal, more authoritarian regimes, at minimizing
terrorist attacks and casualties. This is at least partly because they possess diffuse but powerful
6
Anti-Muslim attitudes are often located on the far-right end of the political spectrum (Fangen and Nilsen 2020).
7
Official US sources estimated that, worldwide, between 12,00 and 15,000 foreign fighters travelled to join Jihadist
activity by September 2014, but that of those between 15% and 25% emanated from Europe and North America
(see: Byman and Shapiro 2015). See also (Zelin 2013).
www.reconnect-europe.eu Page 25 of 64inhibitors to political violence. A key dimension in counter-terrorism strategy involves creating and maintaining positive and negative incentives to reduce the number of individuals who enter each of the above spheres (radicalization, mobilization, action). Populism risks creating and exacerbating perverse incentives that would reverse the desired logic and increase the number of individuals who enter each sphere. Effective counter-terrorism, in this sense, is fundamentally a numbers-game, where the sum of individuals entering processes of radicalization is minimized, and of those already radicalized the number of people graduating to active terrorist involvement is further reduced by intelligent, measured intervention. The first constitutive populist claim – that society is divided into homogenous and antagonistic groups – works in diametrical opposition to this terrorism-reducing logic. Deliberate preying on public fears to further political goals and the erosion of trust in public security The responsible management of terrorist threats requires that political and security decision- makers pursue measured, empirically-based risk-analyses and policy responses. As part and parcel of an effective counter-terrorism posture, moreover, leaders ought to assuage public fears, inspire trust in the values and institutions of the liberal democratic state, nurture unity, and promote hope for a safer more harmonious future for all members of society. This involves the careful handling of intelligence information, supporting law and order agencies while simultaneously holding them accountable for wrongful conduct, and signalling to adversaries that society is resilient and united. It also entails the development and maintenance of a credible political communication strategy that informs the public of existing levels of threat while maintaining trust in the security apparatus of the state, encouraging the continuation of normal economic and social life, and discouraging vigilantism or reprisals against minority communities. And in the immediate aftermath of a terrorist attack, responsible leadership requires the skilful balancing of rapid, decisive action and public reassurance with the avoidance of knee-jerk reactions that are likely to prove counter-productive in the longer- term. The populist instinct for antagonism and conspiracy is antithetical to these goals. In pitching "the People" against "corrupt elites", religious or ethnic minorities, and foreign bogeymen, the temptation for populists to stoke public fears, accentuate internal differences, nurture a permanent atmosphere of emergency, and encourage aggressive nationalism, xenophobia, and militarism is often overwhelming. Toxic consequences are likely to follow. The deliberate exaggeration of known terrorist dangers, for example, exacerbates the problem of threat-distraction and cultivates a public atmosphere of hyper-tension in which an inflated terror threat appears to be both omnipresent and undefeatable. Prolonged periods of uninterrupted high-alert incur public health and www.reconnect-europe.eu Page 26 of 64
economic costs, and may undermine long-term social resilience. The exaggeration of terrorist dangers can also trigger policy changes and the reallocation of resources that are either wildly out of kilter with the likelihood and severity of actual threats, or simply serve to advance some aspect of the populists' political agenda – notably the extension of surveillance and arrest powers, erosion of rule of law protections, and unwarranted anti-immigrant and anti-trade measures. In an atmosphere of fear and mistrust, furthermore, "terrorism" can readily serve as a catch-all excuse for a "strong leader" to stack intelligence services, the police, prosecution, and courts with party loyalists, and suppress dissent. In Ergodan's Turkey and Putin's Russia, for example, “terrorism” has come to mean making statements the government doesn’t agree with, terrorist attacks exploited to crack down on unrelated dissidents, and anti-terror legislation expanded and used systematically to target opposition politicians and journalists (Matthews 2017; Weise 2016). The dangerous fallacy of "magic bullet" solutions Whereas populism's tendency to nurture conspiratorial and antagonistic views of the world risks wrongly portraying the struggle against terrorism as omnipresent, eternal, and therefore unwinnable – which it is not – its penchant for oversimplifying policy "solutions" opens another set of hornet nests. An effective counter-terrorism ecology – whether local, national, or international – is built on anything but silver bullet solutions; it is a complex system requiring decades of careful development and constant adaptation. Indeed, the history of counter- terrorism is scattered with policies whose simplicity and decisiveness were matched only by the disastrousness of their outcomes. Nothing has done more harm to the U.S.'s moral leadership or eased the recruitment effort of jihadists, for instance, than the revelations of Abu Ghraib and the "extraordinary rendition" program in which foreign nationals suspected of involvement in terrorism were transferred for detention and interrogation to countries (like Egypt, Iraq, or Jordan) where, in the CIA's view, federal and international legal safeguards do not apply. Selling the illusion that terrorist threats can be neutralized quickly and decisively (Müller 2016, 26), is likely to undermine public resilience, cohesiveness, and trust. In the aftermath of a major terrorist attack in a country whose leaders have been promising silver bullet solutions to complex security threats, public morale is more likely to sink, public confidence in the security and political establishment eroded, and the risk of vigilantism and reprisals – of citizens "taking the law into their own hands" - increase. All these are potentially ruinous to the effective long- term management of terrorist threats. Populist state-craft erosion of democracy and the rule of law We can identify distinct mechanisms by which populist politics and state-craft can manipulate public fear of terrorist threats (real, inflated, or imaginary) in ways that undermine democratic www.reconnect-europe.eu Page 27 of 64
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