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By Dennis Uba Donald
Acts of terrorism are almost a common place in today’s world. Terrorism refers to acts of violence intentionally perpetrated on civilian non-combatants with the goal of furthering some ideological, religious or political objective. There are several widely held beliefs and ideas about what causes terrorism that are simply not reliable, unproven and false. A case in point can be culled from reports revealed that there is only a weak and indirect relationship between poverty and terrorism. For instance, at the individual level, terrorists are generally not drawn from the poorest segments of their societies. Typically, individual terrorists are drawn from an average or over-average levels of education and socio-economic background (Shekau, Chemical Alli, Osama Bin Laden etc.). Terrorism is more commonly associated with countries with a medium level of economic development, often emerging in societies characterized by rapid modernization and transition.
State sponsorship terrorism has often been ostracized as an inconsequential factor in determining terrorism. This assumption is wide of the mark, because states engage terrorist as instruments in driving foreign policies. This assumption may not be far-fetched owing to the ingrained wide spread corruption. State sponsorship is evidently an enabling factor of terrorism, providing terrorist groups a platform to possess greater capacity and lethality than they would not have been able muster on their own. States have exercised varying degrees of control over the groups they have sponsored, ranging from using terrorists as ‘‘mercenaries’’ popularly referred to as ‘‘guns for hire” to having virtually no control over terrorist operations. Another suspicion is the notion that suicide terrorism is caused by religion. This assumption is mostly wrong because terrorists are motivated mainly by political goals usually to end foreign occupation or domestic domination by a different ethnic group. Their “martyrdom” is, however, frequently legitimized and glorified with reference to religious ideas and values. Islam and Christianity have denied murder as justification for their faiths. So, why do terrorists use religious justification for their act? Answers to this question, can be found in the motive and intentions of the activities of terrorists in themselves, their agitations often do not hold general consensus from the religious groups they claim to represent. This demonstrates that their actions only benefit members of their group. Another, wrongly held opinion about the terrorism, is the belief that terrorists are irrational in their actions. Studies have reported that indicators of psychopathology are not common among suicide terrorists, even though, the act itself possess the typical risk factors of suicidal behaviours. Psychologically speaking, there is no common personality profile that characterizes most terrorists, who under examination often appear to be relatively regular individuals with average and sometimes above average intelligence. It should be understood that terrorists and suicide terrorists follow their own rationalities based on extremist ideologies or particular terrorist logics, but they are not irrational. However, this assertion does not rule out the fact that some terrorist may have anti-social personality or history of mental illness. What is clear is that terrorist and suicide terrorists are not schizophrenic, rather some schizophrenic person may engage in destructive acts of terrorism but not at an organized level.
What then can be the cause or causes of terrorism? The concept of terrorism is applied to diversity of groups with different origins, interest, mode of operation, target and goals. Terrorism take place in wealthy countries as well as in less wealthy countries, in democracies, monarchical as well as in authoritarian states. Consequently, there is no mono-causal root cause of terrorism. There are, however, a number of psycho-social preconditions and precipitants for the advent of terrorism. The idea of the ‘‘root of cause’’ of terrorism should abolished for the reason that “root cause” approach is misleading, since it views terrorists as just passive pawns of the social, economic and psychological forces around them doing what these “causes” compel them to do. It is more beneficial to perceived terrorists as rational and intentional actors who develop deliberate strategies to achieve politically-motivated objectives. Terrorism requires deliberate followership, complex organization, systematic strategies that require huge funding and support for it to be sustainable.
Terrorism is better understood when it is deemed as an interaction between different parties with similar interest and motives. Against this background, it is expedient to identify and categorize pre-conditions and circumstances that give rise to terrorism. One way to achieve this, is by distinguishing between preconditions and precipitants as two ends of a continuum. This is important because, preconditions set the stage for terrorism in the long run. They are of a relatively general and structural nature, producing a wide range of social outcomes of which terrorism is only one. Preconditions alone are not sufficient to cause the outbreak of terrorism. Precipitants are much more directly implicated when it comes to issue of terrorism. These are the specific events or situations that immediately precede, motivate or trigger the outbreak of terrorism. In Nigeria, for instance, government coercion and political violence, inequality, disconcerted civil liberties and disregard for the rule of law, is perceptibly a precondition that is ‘hiding in plain sight’ as forms of domestic terrorism. Moderate levels of coercive violence from the government tend to fuel the fire of dissent within the polity. Another precipitant is the apparent failure of states to keep promises and general lack in capacity or will to exercise territorial control and maintain a monopoly of violence. For example, border communities popularly referred to as ‘ungoverned spaces’ where the presence of government is almost non-existent, with little or no access to basic infrastructure. Owing to this negligence, puts the country in a vulnerable situation that leaves a power vacuum that terrorist organizations may exploit for launching terrorist operations, such as those witnessed in Sambiza forest and other identified terrorist camps in the north-eastern part of Nigeria. The presence of ethnic or religious domination and the increase perception of inequality of power often precipitates resistance from other groups who feel left out or sidelined.
Donald (Ph.D.), Senior Lecturer, Department of Psychology, Madonna University of Nigeria, Okija, Anambra State, via [email protected]
