This book is largely based upon presentations at the NATO-sponsored Advanced Research Workshop #982912 entitled “Indigenous Terrorism: Understanding and Addressing the Root Causes of Radicalisation among Groups with an Immigrant Heritage in Europe”, held March 7–9th 2008 in Budapest, Hungary. Most chapters are expanded and updated versions of the best part of these presentations. The inclusion of the chapter by Vera Kattermann is entirely serendipitous. She sent me (TMP) a paper on research she had done in South Africa on the work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. She wanted my opinion, and reading it I felt it fitted in very nicely with the theme of this book as it so happened that it reached me at the very time I was editing some of its chapters. It is not coincidental that the book's title has changed from “Indigenous” to “Home-grown” terrorism. It symbolises the fact that it is addressed to a readership much wider than the audience of the workshop consisting of experts of some kind or another. It is based upon the premise that instead of dealing with good and evil, it is essential to understand the social and psychological processes underlying acts of terrorism. Further, we are well aware of the fact that enemy images usually mirror one another, so that the terrorists we may regard as evil return the ‘compliment’ [1]. The parallel is further enhanced by the notion that in modern societies the state is endowed with sacredness, as if it stated “ours is the true God”. Thus, the same claim by another denies, as Kahn [2] hypothesises, the self-transcending truth of the nation, so one proves the truth of one's faith by murdering the other, who is subscribing to another God claiming universal validity. Hopefully, a crucial difference between ‘them’ and ‘us’ in more open societies is that we are aware of this parallel and are in a position to include it in our calculus.

No amount of military or other coercive action will, in itself, do the trick of countering terrorism effectively without remedial action based upon a thorough knowledge of the underlying processes involved. This book is meant to be a small but significant step in that direction.

Lately, indigenous or “home-grown” terrorism has moved to the forefront as the number one security threat in NATO countries. In the course of combating terrorism the aim of counteracting it will vary and should be informed by careful research on the topic. This volume will focus on understanding, and acting on, the societal mechanisms fostering the development of terrorism at the interface of the immigrant subcultures and their segments, on the one hand, and the host societies and their segments, on the other. Thus, a central aim will be to identify hot spots, understand the process of how a part of the immigrant population becomes radicalised not only in terms of its relationship to the host society, but also in terms of tensions between generations within its fold. In addition to looking at the problems short-term, longer-term aspects will also be considered. Feedback loops between terrorist acts and counter-terrorist measures will also be addressed, with a view to include this aspect in the calculus. Our database on terrorism is currently quite small, and on this narrower topic it is even more limited. One of the practical difficulties in prevention has something to do with the prediction of rare events, which lead to tragic results. You may want to make sure that you will catch all perpetrators-to-be. However, you can only do this at the cost of having an unacceptable number of false positives. If you do that, even irrespectively of moral considerations, you further alienate populations that are already alienated enough as it is. This, in turn, may facilitate the recruitment of future terrorists. There are no hard-and-fast rules for calibration, but one needs to include in the calculus the impact of any action taken on the population with immigrant heritage.

As national governments, the EU, and NATO are struggling with the problem of home-grown terrorism it becomes imperative for a common policy to be formulated and implemented. In order to come up with an appropriate response we need to understand the underlying forces, their weak links, and countervailing forces. Given a careful analysis, policies can be formulated regarding disrupting co-operation between terrorist groups as well as identifying future trouble spots with a view of prevention on the societal, group, and individual levels. It is also vitally important to understand the mode of operation of the terrorist groups, and keeping the time frame in mind (short-as against longer-term effects of counter-measures). Specifically, one needs to make sure that short-term considerations do not override long-term ones. It is our hope that this volume will contribute to advancing our understanding of indigenous terrorism to a significant extent.

While European terrorism has been around for a long time, its actions were nation-specific, and nationality-specific. In the UK they were Irish, in Spain Basque nationalists. Before, the number of groups involved in them was small. The main ones were the Baader-Meinhof Gang, or RAF in Germany 1968–1977, the IRA in Northern Ireland with “The Troubles” from 1968 through to the 1990s, the Basque ETA, also from 1968 through to 2006 and the Nov 17th Greek terrorist group reformulated in 2009 as the Revolutionary Struggle. (As of this writing there is no violence either in Northern Ireland or in either Spanish or French Basque country, and the German RAF no longer exists, however the Greek anarchists continue unabated.) There was an international aspect with these groups as well in their training. However, much of the violence, and the attendant anxiety, were nation-specific. Are there any lessons to be learnt from the success in dealing with them?

With much of the present-day terrorism in Europe, the international aspect is very much in focus, and therefore the anxiety generated by a terrorist act is also considerably more likely to jump borders. In addition, the terrorists belong to different ethnic groups: they were largely of Moroccan descent in Spain, and of Pakistani background in the UK, although Greek terrorists are still Greek. The unifying force among militant jihadis is no longer ethnicity, it is the Muslim umma (community). For this type of terrorism the problem may well be more intractable. A wise person once said that you may be able to reach a viable compromise even on such difficult matters as sharing scarce water supplies, but how do you reach a compromise on who the True God is?

This book will focus on the radicalisation of first to third generation immigrants in Europe into violent belief systems compatible with the use of the most extreme form of violence. This makes them easy targets for recruitment as terrorists. The second focus will be on the process of recruitment itself, what facilitates it and what may counteract it. The third focus will be on the problem of integration, with particular reference to the relationship of young people with an immigrant heritage to society as a whole. Why are young immigrants in Europe more radicalised than those of the US or of Australia?

European countries have always defined themselves as nation-states with an identity based on real or mythical descent, where there is really no room for immigrants unless they assimilate completely. How does this contribute to radicalisation? Is there anything we can learn from immigration countries like the USA or Australia in relation to this? Another respect in which we can learn from them is that they did not develop long-term immigrant ghettoes like Londonistan. What did they do right? Has South Africa some lessons to teach us? Answering these questions may help us in doing a better job at prevention.

Europe has a serious problem that can be resolved if individuals and groups believe that they can deal with their grievances (discrimination, religious intolerance, exclusion, etc.) effectively through peaceful political means. This objective has been achieved in all three cases mentioned before, with the RAF as well as with the IRA and the ETA. On the other hand, the present situation will only worsen if social relations with migrant communities continue to deteriorate, thus contributing to the social alienation and marginalisation of entire groups. This is an ideal breeding ground for angry young people to become easy prey for recruitment as global terrorists. As mentioned before, we need to keep in mind that measures to increase security in the here-and-now may alienate the very population we would like to steer towards de-radicalisation.

We need to understand the details of how and why Europe is such a fertile ground for radicalisation. Who is interested in joining, who joins, exactly what makes them join, what may help people in backing out from joining terrorist groups? We need to learn what we can do to destroy or interfere with the functioning of the terrorist networks, and intervene so as to counteract their so far successful methods in stirring up popular support for their cause in Europe, as well as find a practicable way to interfere with their recruitment significantly. We also need to understand their methods of communication better, especially their use of the Internet for recruitment and communication.

Although money transfer is also a major problem as much of the financial support comes from Europe, we will focus primarily on the psycho-social-political aspects of why individuals join, support and take part in such groups and what can be done about it.

The spelling is either British or American, depending on the author. Also, different authors use different transliterations of words originally written in another alphabet: their transliterations are accepted, but in the index the terms are uniform. Not all contributions are such that references are appropriate, especially with a highly sensitive subject matter such as Peter Probst's contribution.

The need for the workshop emerged in the aftermath of major terrorist attacks, first in Madrid on 11th March, 2004, then in London on 7th July, 2005. Anne Speckhard and I attended a stimulating conference on terrorism in the autumn of 2005, but both of us felt that while its content was excellent, its group dynamics were such that the synergy so important in such meetings did not develop. Anne then asked me why I did not organise one in Budapest, and I said yes to her, on the condition that she help me with it. The gestation period was considerably longer than that of an elephant, but it worked out very well in the end. The topic was determined by the fact that in contradistinction to the disastrous attack on the Twin Towers in New York in 2001, both in Spain and in London it was clear that, although some of the inspiration may have come from abroad, the perpetrators were citizens or residents of Spain and the UK respectively, and the organisation itself was local. Therefore, there was/is an urgent need to understand what accounts for young people of immigrant heritage turning to terrorism.

In inviting people to this conference we made an effort to include specialists and generalists, women and men, academics and ‘applied’ people, representatives of different countries, cultures, religious orientation, and disciplines. We do believe that the synergy of people from various backgrounds is hard to beat.

Although there is some overlap in content and purpose, the chapters fall into three categories:

Section 1: Terrorism and/or radicalisation in special areas and populations.

• Latefa Belarouci deals with the difficult situation with the North African community in France.

• Laila Bokhari presents findings on pathways of radicalisation possibly leading to terrorism in Pakistan.

• Berto Jongman describes the complex situation in Holland.

• Robert Lambert discusses dilemmas in dealing with Salafi and Islamist communities in London.

• Sherifa Zuhur deals in some detail with strategies of the New Jihad.

Section 2: Emergence and Organisation of terrorism.

• David Mandel presents findings on a distinction between instigators and perpetrators.

• Reuven Paz offers data on the use of the Internet to spread virulent Jihadi ideology and to acquire recruits for terrorism.

• Peter Probst writes about the specifics of the dangers Radical Islam and its political warfare present.

• Yoram Schweitzer deals with the influence of Al-Quaeda on local and global Jihad.

• Anne Speckhard focuses on the psychological vulnerabilities of those recruited into jihadi militancy, how these groups proliferate their ideology, gain recruits and social support for their cause.

Section 3: The societal subsoil nurturing intolerant militancy and terrorism, as against measures and processes nurturing tolerance.

• Evelin Lindner emphasizes the role of acts and cycles of humiliation in engendering rage and terrorism.

• Elena Mustakova-Possardt maintains that terrorism may, in part, represent a dysfunctional response of communal fundamentalists to an impersonal Western culture.

• Thomas Pick tells us that Europe manages its immigration poorly, not taking sufficient account of the culture clash between immigrant sub-cultures and society-at-large.

• Tom Pyszczynski shows that under life threat the response tends to be decreased tolerance and increased aggression towards the enemy other.

• Vera Kattermann focuses on religious aspects of the work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa.

In addition to providing an analytical view of the field, most contributors also have some suggestions as to what could be done to ameliorate the situation.

References

[1] Pick, Thomas M. (1993): Enemy Images. In: Third Bratislava Symposium on Politics and History. Bratislava: European Cultural Foundation.

[2] Kahn, Paul W. (2008): Sacred Violence: Torture, Terror, and Sovereignty. Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press.

Thomas M. Pick, August 2009, Budapest, Hungary

Anne Speckhard, August 2009, Athens, Greece Prague

Beatrice Jacuch, August 2009, Czech Republic