Leheny D. - 2005 - Terrorism, Social Movements, And International Security_How Al Qaeda Affects Southeast Asia

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

DAVID LEHENY

Japanese Journal of Political Science / Volume 6 / Issue 01 / April 2005, pp 87 - 109DOI: 10.1017/S1468109905001738, Published online: 04 May 2005

Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S1468109905001738

How to cite this article:DAVID LEHENY (2005). Terrorism, Social Movements, and International Security: How Al QaedaAffects Southeast Asia. Japanese Journal of Political Science, 6, pp 87-109 doi:10.1017/S1468109905001738

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Japanese Journal of Political Science 6 (1) 87109 Printed in the United Kingdom C Cambridge University Press 2005doi:10.1017/S1468109905001738

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

DAVID LEHENY

Department of Political Science, University of [email protected]

AbstractThis paper argues that international security studies can most profitably engage the

issue of international terrorism by considering terrorist groups as transnational socialmovement organizations. It takes as its case Al Qaedas role in Southeast Asia, focusingespecially on the efforts of Al Qaeda leaders to align the demands and grievancesof local Islamist movements and to spread a set of tactics and methods of politicalviolence. In so doing, the paper builds on the often-neglected literature on the politicsof terrorism while tying the argument to prevailing debates over social movements.The paper thus aims at clarifying the ways in which Southeast Asian organizations haveadopted Al Qaedas tactics and language but appear to be addressing primarily localor provincial concerns. This perspective also draws terrorism into current discussionsof international security while maintaining a detailed focus on the interactions ofindividual agents and larger violent movements.

When a massive car bomb destroyed a Bali nightclub in October 2002, suspicionimmediately fell on Al Qaeda, thousands of miles from its original base in Afghanistanand almost equally removed from the American targets that would ostensibly attractthe groups attention. In many American minds, at least, this confirmed Southeast Asiaas a second front in the conflict with Al Qaeda. And yet the Bali bombing as well asthe recent arrests and killings of Southeast Asian Islamist movements together raiseas many questions as they answer. While there is no more any doubt that Al Qaedamembers have been active in the region, the meaning for the War on Terrorism andfor our understanding of non-state political violence remains murky. Were these agentsworking under the direct control of Al Qaeda leaders? If the attack on the disco signifiesa broad Al Qaeda shift to attacks on soft targets, why have nightclub attacks not becomea more common phenomenon elsewhere? Is it possible that the target had a distinctivemeaning in Indonesia that might differentiate it from other Al Qaeda attacks? If so, thissuggests that our usual metaphors for Al Qaedas structure a military organization oran amorphous network are insufficient, perhaps because they sidestep the political

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issues involved in the links between Al Qaedas core and like-minded groups aroundthe world.

And the problem is political, not primarily religious, military, or even conven-tionally ideological. Al Qaedas leaders are strategic actors, who believe themselves tobe embedded in long-term, iterative struggles over outcomes, and they have chosentheir tactics accordingly. By the same token, terrorism itself is largely about the use ofpotent symbols to hearten supporters and to intimidate enemies, and the tactics do notmake sense outside of the symbolic contexts in which they are chosen. For scholars ofsecurity studies to deal forthrightly with this new type of conflict which Stephen Waltdescribes as the most rapid and dramatic change in the history of US foreign policy1 they will need to think creatively about how to integrate the meaning that small,violent groups attach to actions with devastating immediate impact and long-termconsequences for international security. What are most distinctive about Al Qaedasefforts are not just their effectiveness but rather their ability to link, sometimes fitfullyand imprecisely, the global interests of the core organization with the more limitedconcerns of local activists. Doing so relies on the reframing of local groups demandsand concerns, and on the diffusion of repertoires of violence that dictate appropriatemeasures and targets.

This paper uses cases of Islamist violence in Southeast Asia to argue that the mostpromising way to further the discussion of terrorism in international security maybe to draw the study of transnational social movements into security studies. Largelymarginalized within studies of international norms, social movements in internationalrelations might be conceptualized differently, to allow scholars to think more broadlyabout security threats. In this view, the threat posed by Al Qaeda comes not froma tightly controlled military organization with global reach, and not from a loosenetwork with cells operating at roughly equivalent nodes around the world twopopular interpretations discussed below. It arises instead from Al Qaedas apparentbut limited success in acting as a social movement organization, operating as a coregroup that aims at mobilizing support and cooperation from conceivably like-mindedmovements in other parts of the globe. Even social movement scholars critique themurkiness of research on movement frames, and my goal here is not to argue thatthe perspective offers a panacea for the study of terrorist organizations. Comparisonsmatter, however, and we are more likely to generate rigorous empirical research if wecan meaningfully draw on the large body of literature on other political movements,rather than assert the irreducible novelty of Al Qaeda or connect it awkwardly toprevailing theories of conflict between states.

The use of social movement theory to explain Al Qaeda activities has three merits,all of which should be important to security studies and international terrorism. First,evidence on Al Qaedas activities suggests that it has played an important role in

1 Stephen M. Walt, Beyond Bin Laden: Reshaping US Foreign Policy, International Security 26: 3 (Winter2001/2002), pp. 5678, at 56.

terrorism, social movements, and international security 89

supporting Islamist terrorism around the globe, but that these effects are qualified bythe prevailing concerns of local militants. In Southeast Asia, for example, Al Qaedamembers have clearly contributed to the rise in anti-Western violence, but the style ofviolence often implies the preoccupation of local actors rather than the movement core.Second, terrorism operates at a crucial nexus of meaning and action. To be sure, terroristgroups try to act strategically and rationally, but their attacks are usually unintelligiblewithout an understanding of the symbolic contexts in which they take place. Socialmovement theory has addressed the tension between rationalist and interpretivistapproaches for decades, and has developed several solutions that might be helpful forstudies of security.2 Finally, the sheer variety of studies of social movement theoryprovides a rich portfolio from which to analyze terrorist organizations like Al Qaeda.Because of the paucity of existing international security literature on terrorism, thetheoretical guidance available in the long history of social movement research oughtto provide a helpful point from which to think anew about non-state actors as securitythreats. At a certain level, all politics is local, and this is likely true of transnationalterrorism as well.

Competing approaches for understanding Al QaedaThis approach differs significantly from commonly used claims regarding what Al

Qaeda is and how it needs to be understood. The most in-depth work on the group,Rohan Gunaratnas Inside Al Qaeda, eschews theorizing but depicts Al Qaeda as atightly controlled organization with reach so global that it approximates a spider web.Although Gunaratna is fascinated by the extent of Al Qaeda activities, and althoughhe discusses the group as a global network, his work stresses the unusually rigorousorganization of the group as a transnational quasi-military force.3 This empiricallydense work is extremely effective at demonstrating that Al Qaeda militants have takenpart in a wide range of attacks and that their capabilities are most likely significanteven after the US-led ousting of the Taliban militia from Afghanistan in 20012002.But when the book discusses Al Qaedas connections to other organizations, it tends toleave unexamined the groups long-term relationships with local Islamist movements.For example, Gunaratna clearly demonstrates that Al Qaeda, for example, had aconnection in 1995 with a Philippine militant organization, the Abu Sayyaf Group,but what happened after that? If the connection has somehow lapsed, it suggests thatwe need to qualify our assessment of Al Qaedas control over Islamist movements.

An alternative, more theoretical, approach suggests that Al Qaeda resembles anetwork like the Internet. In one representative study, Ronald Deibert and JaniceStein argue that by understanding Al Qaeda as a distributed network, with cells of

2 David Leheny, Symbols, Strategies, and Choices for International Relations Scholarship afterSeptember 11, Dialogue-IO (Spring 2002), pp. 5770.

3 Rohan Gunaratna, Inside Al Qaeda: Global Network of Terror (New York: Columbia University Press,2002).

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similar strength and capability placed at nodes around the world, we can developmore coherent methods to disrupt or hack the system.4 The metaphorical use of theInternet provides intriguing ideas for how to counter Al Qaeda, which Deibert and Steindescribe as methods of hacking the terrorist system. They also make an innovativecontribution in discussing the network structure as an increasingly common organizingprinciple across political forms. In doing so, however, they imply a sort of organizationalequivalence: where one cell disappears, another can readily take its place. While thiscertainly has the effect of making the organization seem credibly menacing, it alsoneglects the political contexts in which these cells operate. And it is unclear that thecells in Europe in the late 1990s are comparable with those operating in Central orSoutheast Asia in the same period. Like Gunaratnas book, the network metaphor lendsitself to an unstable conclusion: that Al Qaedas activities around the globe should reflectbroad agreement either at the core or across the network of goals, tactics, and targets.Whether one assumes that the group is tightly controlled or that, like the Hydra, roughlyequivalent heads will grow to replace the severed ones, the logical implication is that itsaffiliates should behave similarly, regardless of their immediate political environments.

The difficulty in crafting a commonly used approach for terrorism owes somethingto its tenuous (and, until recently, marginal) place in international relations theory. Onewould be hard pressed to find a more idiosyncratic and clandestine research subject,meaning that close ethnographic research is nearly out of the question, and that it mightbe impossible to create generalizable results that are effective for theory formation. Putsimply, terrorism is a trickier phenomenon for social science than are many other typesof security issues. And partly because the field of international security is still largely astate-centered arena (for a variety of good reasons), non-state actors have rarely beenat the core of theory construction. Most specialists on terrorism have chosen to dealwith the problem by adopting some social scientific concepts and methods, while alsoaiming a large portion of their work at policy audiences hungry for some guidance onhow to handle this extremely vexing problem.

Research on international terrorism peaked in the 1970s and 1980s, when analystsfocused on the myriad leftist organizations in Europe, nationalist groups in LatinAmerica and the Middle East, and growing evidence of religious fundamentalismas a motive for terrorism.5 International relations scholars might have found somerecognizable elements in this literature, such as the common reference to Cold Warstructures that perpetuated US and Soviet support for certain rebel groups adoptingterrorist methods, such as, respectively, the Nicaraguan contras or the German Red ArmyFaction.6 By and large, however, international relations specialists failed to engage theproblem, preferring to focus on the higher profile aspects of Cold War antagonism and

4 Ronald J. Deibert and Janice Gross Stein, Hacking Networks of Terror, Dialogue-IO (Spring 2002),pp. 114.

5 See Walter Laqueur, The Age of Terrorism (Boston: Little, Brown, 1987).6 See, e.g., Claire Sterling, The Terror Network (New York: Holt, Rinehart, 1981).


great power politics. Terrorism specialists therefore had to turn attention away fromthe security literature and toward other fields. Among these were criminology, whichallowed analysts to group terrorist organizations with other secret, violent groups,7

and psychology, which emphasized the supposed psychological rewards offered bymembership in terrorist groups and by the use of violence.8 Among terrorism-relatedworks of this era, there were few concerted efforts to tie the problem to larger politicalconcerns.9

The perceived decline in anti-American terrorism in the years after the Cold Warsapped whatever broad interest there might have been in engaging terrorism as aninternational security topic, especially given the ghastly array of security crises thatfollowed the end of the Cold War. Security specialists sought to illuminate trendstoward ethnic violence and genocide, toward regionalism, and toward the use of lawin international security. These important topics were, of course, more susceptibleto prevailing theories and methods in political science and international security.Studies of ethnic conflict or cooperation might emphasize the cultural construction ofidentity10 or, alternatively, the rational choices of individual actors.11 Regional securitystudies could emphasize either the reduction of uncertainty through the establishmentof transnational institutions12 or the increase of tension following the collapse of thebipolar system.13 Among those works published on terrorism in the late 1990s, the mostinfluential were not works of academic scholarship but rather of policy research andguidance.14 Even those works published by university presses aimed in large part atgeneral audiences rather than at those international security specialists who, it seemed,had virtually no interest in the topic.15 An important subset of this literature emphasizedthe possibility that post-Cold War terrorists would resort to the use of weapons of mass

7 John M. Martin and Anne T. Romano, Multinational Crime: Terrorism, Espionage, Drugs, and ArmsTrafficking (Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1992).

8 Jerrold M. Post, Terrorist Psycho-Logic: Terrorist Behavior as a Product of Psychological Forces, inWalter Reich (ed.), Origins of Terrorism (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998), pp. 2540.

9 One important exception is Martha Crenshaw of Wesleyan University, who organized a 1989 conferenceon Terrorism in Context, that sought to relate terrorist campaigns to their political environments. Forthe published outcome of the conference, see Martha Crenshaw (ed.),Terrorism inContext (Harrisburg:Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995).

10 Although it aims at complementing rationalist contributions, one example of the constructivist agendais Badredine Arfi, Ethnic Fear: The Social Construction of Insecurity, Security Studies 8: 1 (Autumn1998), pp. 151203.

11 James D. Fearon and David D. Laitin, Explaining Interethnic Cooperation, American Political ScienceReview 90: 4 (December 1996), pp. 715735.

12 For one interesting example on the effort to contain China through institutionalization, see AlastairIan Johnston, The Myth of the ASEAN Way? Explaining the Evolution of the ASEAN Regional Forum,in Helga Haffendorn, Robert O. Keohane, and Celeste A. Wallander (eds), Imperfect Unions: SecurityInstitutions Over Time and Space (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1999), pp. 287324.

13 Aaron L. Friedberg, Ripe for Rivalry: Prospects for Peace in a Multipolar Asia, International Security18: 3 (Winter 1993/1994), pp. 533.

14 See, e.g., Ian O. Lesser et al., Countering the New Terrorism (Santa Monica: RAND, 1999).15 Bruce Hoffman, Inside Terrorism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998).

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destruction (WMD).16 One key concern grew from the Aum Shinrikyo cults use ofsarin gas in Tokyo in 1995, which led even some skeptics about the risk of WMDterrorism17 to rethink their positions.18

The WMD terrorism issue, however, points to the difficulties for studying terroristorganizations in empirically rigorous ways, which have likely contributed to the relativereluctance of international security specialists to engage the topic. By their nature,terrorist organizations are clandestine in at least some of their activities, and theyare usually quite small when compared to military forces, and their behavior can bedisquietingly idiosyncratic. Indeed, the WMD issue itself has evolved as a policy studytopic largely through the elaboration of low-probability, high-risk threats, which aredifficult to predict or articulate, but which appear as challenges to policymakers chargedwith ensuring national security.19 As a result, a good deal of the research on terrorismappears designed to make guesswork more educated. But it is still guesswork, and as the 11 September attacks demonstrate committed, well-educated security expertsare eminently capable of guessing wrong. An attack with a nuclear weapon might havebeen more easily detected in advance than the 11 September hijackings proved to be,in part because it would have been exactly the type of low probability/mass casualtyattack that policymakers had feared.

This is where theory might help, by providing explanatory frameworks that mightallow policy analysts to determine the conditions under which terrorist groups mightengage in a WMD or other type of attack. One intuitive approach would focus on thestrategic interaction between terrorists and their targets. In a rigorous recent example,Kydd and Walter (2002), for example, demonstrate the importance of rationalistapproaches by showing that extremist groups, such as Palestinian Hamas, can useviolence to undermine confidence in peace negotiations.20 But terrorist strategies aim atdiverse audiences. In one of the most important contributions to theories of terrorism,Martha Crenshaw adopts a modified utility-maximizing approach to examine theorganizational politics of terrorism.21 Crenshaw uses Albert Hirschmans Exit, Voice,and Loyalty to examine the different choices facing organization leaders and memberson a daily basis. This is important not just as a glimpse into the inner workings of agroup, but also as a reminder that an organizations activities may be directed internallyas well as externally. That is, a terrorist attack usually attracts the attention of the media

16 Jessica Stern,TheUltimate Terrorists (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999); Walter Laqueur,The New Terrorism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999).

17 Brian M. Jenkins, Will Terrorists Go Nuclear? Orbis29: 3 (Autumn 1985), pp. 507515.18 Brian M. Jenkins, Will Terrorists Go Nuclear? A Reappraisal, in Harvey W. Kushner (ed.),The Future of

Terrorism (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1998), pp. 225249. For a critical assessment, see Ehud Sprinzak,The Great Superterrorism Scare, Foreign Policy 112 (1998), pp. 110119.

19 Robert Dreyfuss, The Phantom Menace, Mother Jones (September/October 2000), pp. 4045, 8891.20 Andrew Kydd and Barbara F. Walter, Sabotaging the Peace: The Politics of Extremist Violence,

International Organization 56: 2 (Spring 2002), pp. 263296.21 Martha Crenshaw, An Organizational Approach to the Analysis of Political Terrorism, Orbis 29: 3

(Autumn 1985), pp. 473487.


and of a groups opponents, convincing them that the organization is trying to send amessage. Almost certainly, any attack aims at least in part to hurt a groups enemy, butit might also be undertaken specifically to recruit new members, silence debates withinthe organization, or the like. A groups primary goal might well be its own survival,which radically shifts the way that we need to consider incentives for action.22

Even a cursory glance at terrorist groups around the world demonstrates howinternal dynamics can shape external behavior. Hamas, for example, operates as bothan organization committed to violence and as an Islamic social-welfare structure thathas to rely on some tolerance from the Palestinian Authority.23 And the Troublesof Northern Ireland were continually extended because of the tendency of Catholicparamilitaries to reorganize whenever certain portions of the movement have beenseen to go soft.24 To prevent factionalization and the disruption of control, groupleaders have needed to provide selective benefits to members and to engage in specificforms of controlled violence to make sure that their organizations remain coherent. Thisimplies that selective benefits might draw some terrorists away from an organization.Indeed, in the aftermath of the 11 September attacks, political scientists David Laitinand James Fearon explained publicly how their work on rational choices in ethnic strifemight provide clues for how to deal with terrorist conflict, by informing governmentshow they might wean members from terrorist activity.25

This focus on strategic interaction, both inside and outside of a group, providesextremely valuable clues for understanding the choices that terrorist organizations face,and may be indispensable in offering a way to break the cycle of violence. But it does notprovide much guidance for grasping why a group might choose one style of violencerather than another, which may also be necessary for academic and policy analysts alike.The Basque nationalist group ETA, for example, would not have carried out anythingon the level of the 11 September attacks, making absurd the Aznar governments initialsuggestion that they were behind the 11 March 2004 attack on a Madrid train station.Indeed, when ETA carried out coordinated bombings in December 2004, it warnedpolice in advance to allow them to evacuate the areas.26 Furthermore, it is inconceivablethat the violent Japanese cult Aum Shinrikyo, which released sarin gas on the Tokyosubway in 1995, would have engaged in hijackings. Indeed, different repertoires ofviolence exist in different organizations, because they mean different things. A groupsfocus on massive, media-consuming acts of violence, such as with WMD or with the

22 David C. Rapoport (ed.), Inside Terrorist Organizations (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998).23 Shaul Mishal and Avraham Sela, The Palestinian Hamas: Vision, Violence, and Coexistence (New York:

Columbia University Press, 2000).24 On the IRAs history, see J. Bowyer Bell, The IRA, 19682000: Analysis of a Secret Army (London: Frank

Cass, 2000).25 In What Terrorists Want, The New Yorker (29 October 2001), pp. 3641, Nicholas Lemann praises

Fearons and Laitins research agenda and its potential applicability to terrorism, suggesting that theUS might provide better incentives for group members to defect.

26 Dale Fuchs, Basque Rebels Set Off 7 Bombs; Damage Light, The New York Times (7 December 2004),p. A13.

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destruction of whole buildings, should not be confused with an amplified versionof kidnapping or other low-level assaults. Indeed, millennial violence appears mostimportant to religious groups, in large part because of the transformative rather thantactical value of such attacks, just as hijackings tend to be more important to nationalistmovements.

It is largely for this reason that some scholars have turned more assiduously tothe symbolic importance of violence to terrorist groups. Mark Juergensmeyers Terrorin the Mind of God relies on his interviews with terrorist group members in orderto understand why they turn to violence. Remarkably, he finds a number of clearsimilarities between the tactics, rationalizations, and stated motives in a wide arrayof terrorist organizations, drawn from Muslim, Christian, Jewish, and even Buddhisttraditions. For Juergensmeyer, the clear issue is how massive violence on earth can helpto instigate the cosmic war that will cleanse the earth and leave the movement andits acolytes in charge.27 Robin Erica Wagner-Pacifici chooses a different route, relyingon Victor Turners theory of the social drama, to understand the murder of formerItalian Prime Minister Aldo Moro. Wagner-Pacifici emphasizes that members of theRed Brigades (as well as police, politicians, and other civilians) used inherited narrativesto understand their roles and their proper course of action. And so the entire terroristcrisis involves the way that people accept culturally inscribed stories of political conflictthat allow them to justify kidnapping, non-negotiation, and the like. She would notdispute that, at some level, the violence is strategic, but would instead suggest thatthe strategy is unintelligible without attention to the symbolic world that the Italianpolitical elites inhabited, and therefore to their understanding of their best options.28

Neither of these approaches immediately solves the problem of explaining howcertain types of violence with symbolic relevance become part of a strategic game.Juergensmeyers book avoids any reference to non-religious groups, so there is too littlevariation in his cases to provide compelling evidence that his interpretations are correct.And Wagner-Pacificis close attention to Italy virtually obviates the chance for any broadclaims about the politics of violence across contexts. But both provide valuable clues forunderstanding how a symbolic context might be important, especially when combinedwith the strategic choices available to militants.

Collective action frames in social movementsSymbolism and strategy have long been concerns for those scholars focusing

on social movements.29 At times, social movement theory has been dominated bywider prevailing concerns, including ones of mobilization, collective action, and

27 Mark Juergensmeyer, Terror in the Mind of God (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2000).28 This is not always an easy fit. See James Johnson, How Conceptual Problems Migrate: Rational Choice,

Interpretation, and the Hazards of Pluralism, Annual Review of Political Science 5 (2002), pp. 223248.29 Indeed, Donatella Della Porta discusses terrorism and social movements in Social Movements, Political

Violence, and the State: AComparative Analysis of Italy andGermany (Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress, 1995).


negotiated settlements in conflicts. But throughout the past 30 years of debate oversocial movements, scholars have dealt with the thorny issue of what participation insocial movements actually means to movement members. In part because rationalisttools often seem insufficient to explain why individuals would willingly give up theirtime and even safety to join a protest- or rebellion-minded group, some experts havefocused on the kinds of social benefits created by peoples willingness to believe thatthey belong to something larger, better, and more important than their more quotidianassociations. To be sure, the strategy-oriented social movement theorists have notgiven up their focus on the political goals and tactics of groups, and neither have theculturalists been willing to concede that only strategy matters. Instead, there is a kindof truce in which scholars of all stripes seem to agree that a full understanding of socialmovements will require some attention to both sets of issues.

Social movement theory has witnessed a great deal of intellectual evolution. In the1950s and early 1960s, uprisings were treated largely in psychological terms as instancesof panic or crowd behavior.30 The protests and riots that developed throughout theindustrialized West in the 1960s provoked scholars to think more about the connectionbetween political change and group mobilization.31 Sidney Tarrow points out that manyspecialists were drawn to the notion of political opportunity as a tool for theorizingthe connection between larger environments and the resource capabilities of movementleaders.32 By the late 1980s, as researchers expanded their notions of social movements,some turned to groups with which they likely had less sympathy.

One important contribution included a discussion of the American ChristianRights mass mobilization strategies as part of an overall view of social movementorganizations efforts to draw followers into a broader range of debates. Using ErvingGoffmans understanding of frames, Snow, Rochford, and colleagues pushed to re-theorize social movements in social psychological terms that veer close to culturalstudies.33 In their examination of conservative American organizations in the 1980s,these frame analysts argued that social movement organizations expand and buildupon their past successes by attempting to shift the ways in which potential adherentsunderstand their own interests and goals. Gun rights advocates, for example, mightbe targeted by anti-abortion organizations as possible contributors and supportersbecause of their willingness to adhere broadly to conservative principles and symbols.

30 Pamela E. Oliver and Hank Johnston, What a Good Idea! Frames and Ideologies in Social MovementResearch, Mobilization 5 (April 2002), pp. 3754.

31 One classic statement is John D. and Mayer Zald, Resource Mobilization and Social Movements: APartial Theory, American Journal of Sociology 82: 6 (May 1977), pp. 12121241. See also J. Craig Jenkins,Resource Mobilization Theory and the Study of Social Movements, Annual Review of Sociology 9(1983), pp. 527553.

32 Sidney G. Tarrow, National Politics and Collective Action: Recent Theory and Research in WesternEurope and the United States, Annual Review of Sociology 14 (1988), pp. 421440.

33 David A. Snow, E. Burke Rochford Jr, Steven K. Worden, and Robert D. Benford, Frame AlignmentProcesses, Micromobilization, and Movement Participation,American Sociological Review 51: 4 (August1986), pp. 464481, at 468469.

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By discussing anti-abortion activism in patriotic and conservative terms recognizableto National Rifle Association members, movement leaders might help to frame thedebate in ways that resonate with the experiences and prevailing ideas of tangentiallylike-minded activists.34

It is unsurprising that framing, as an analytical device, would prove to be popularwith the cultural studies specialists interested in identity-based movements of the 1990s,given its applicability to constructivist theories of politics. It is not an easy fit, of course,with rationalist or statistical approaches to social movement analysis. To some degree,the epistemological tension lying in much of the current work on social movementsreflects concerns between those scholars seeking to pursue quantitative research onresources and goals, and those trying to use discursive and textual methods to graspthe meaning of movement activity to members.35 Where the two might be fruitfullycombined, however, might be in the construction and framing of a repertoire oftactics shared among members of a social movement, and then their subsequent andstrategic employment. Because of the spread of certain types of tactics constructionof barricades, hijackings, hunger strikes, to name just three among activists, socialmovement theorists have examined how protest methods are disseminated. Beginningwith Charles Tillys research on the French Revolution, scholars have addressed therelationship between forms and cycles of protest. Social movement organizers oftenhave a limited array of tactics available to them, and will push followers to adopt tacticalchoices that seem familiar. To some extent, this can simply be a strategy of efficiency;after all, imitation is often easier than innovation. But even the more inventive socialprotests have largely been efforts to reshape the more conventional protest methodsto fit current goals and available resources.36 Frames and repertoires, however, do notreproduce on their own; their proponents need conduits for diffusing them.

Of critical but often neglected importance to social movements is the role ofnetworks in spreading frames and repertoires. Tarrow notes that those movementsoperating in clandestine environments have been forced to rely on informal networks,often facilitated by face-to-face contact.37 These informal networks allow movementleaders to try to shift the goals and preferences of colleagues and followers, whileeducating members about tactical possibilities. Secretive networks, however, aredifficult to study, and tend to be unattractive candidates for rigorous social scienceresearch. But by focusing on the ways in which known leaders of an organizationdescribe their goals and activities, while also assessing the actions and strategies ofother groups linked through informal networks, we may be able to identify the strength

34 On frame resonance, see Sarah Babb, A True American System of Finance: Frame Resonance in theUS Labor Movement, 1866 to 1886, American Sociological Review 61: 6 (December 1996), pp. 10331052.

35 Richard A. Couto, Narrative, Free Space, and Leadership in Social Movements, Journal of Politics 55: 1(February 1993), pp. 5779.

36 For a good study, see Mark Traugott (ed.), Repertoires and Cycles of Collective Action (Durham: DukeUniversity Press, 1995).

37 Sidney Tarrow, Power in Movement (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 4750.


of the connections between core groups in a social movement and their affiliates.The importance of face-to-face contact for vulnerable organizations in clandestinemovements also implies a weakness; the frames and repertoires may be most convincingto those movement members with direct connections to other organizations. Actorswith exclusively local experiences may find that their narrow and proximate concernsoutweigh the importance of global framing efforts. The experience of Southeast AsianIslamist terrorism suggests that Al Qaedas most important role may have been inframing motives and interests, but that the leadership has little control over specificdecisions or tactics.

The Afghanistan War and Al Qaedas framing effortsThe formation of Al Qaeda in the ashes of the Afghanistan War provides a clear

opportunity to examine the ways in which local violent movements can become securityproblems for superpowers as well. Al Qaeda might well be sui generis, a terrorist groupso unusual that lessons drawn from its creation and its tactics have little applicability forlarger studies of international security. But if this papers main contentions namely,that terrorism needs to be addressed in international security research, and that socialmovement theory provides the most promising avenue for doing so are correct,the lessons might be important for other potential actors as well. Al Qaedas successderives in large part from its efforts to frame religious conflict as a global rather thanlocal phenomenon, and from the deliberate diffusion of tactics from the Central Asiantheater to the global stage. Its success, however, has been limited and shaped by thegoals and symbolic contexts of local movements that it attempts to mobilize.

The role of the Afghanistan War in setting the conditions for the establishmentof Al Qaeda has been well documented and needs no lengthy recapitulation here. TheSoviet Unions decision to invade Afghanistan in 1979 to prop up the pro-Soviet regimethat had seized power was unsettling to governments in the West and the Middle Eastalike. The course seemed especially clear to the United States and Saudi Arabia alike: toprovide, respectively, military and financial support to the holy warriors (mujahedeen)who would resist the Soviet advance.38 The movements madrassas (religious schools)served as increasingly politicized training grounds for instructing young students ontheir responsibility to engage in jihad, or a struggle re-conceptualized in militaryterms. By the mid 1980s, the Afghani mujahedeen found themselves bogged down andunable to deliver a convincing coup-de-grace to the Soviet forces. Volunteers beganto arrive from around the Muslim world, particularly the Middle East. Only a fewyears after the Islamic revolution in Iran (whose influence the Saudi regime soughtdesperately to limit), this must have been a remarkable opportunity for young religiousactivists from Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, the Philippines, or Indonesia. After all, thiswas the first direct conflict between the Islamic world and a true postwar superpower,

38 See especially Gilles Kepel, Jihad: On the Trail of Political Islam, translated by Anthony F. Roberts(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002), pp. 81105, 136159, and 205236.

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and it appeared to be a war that the Muslims would win. Lured by the promise of glory,at least a nominal income, and military and religious training, these volunteers beganto form the increasingly important backbone for the Afghani resistance movement.39

After the withdrawal of Soviet forces in 1989, the mujahedeen found themselvesfacing further civil war in Afghanistan or, in the case of foreign fighters, governmentsthat were not entirely pleased to welcome them home. The most famous of them, Saudimultimillionaire Osama bin Laden, became especially critical of the Saudi governmentsdecision to host US troops during and following the 1991 Gulf War; he was ultimatelystripped of citizenship, and, after a stay in the Sudan, he returned to Afghanistan.There, Bin Laden began to work increasingly with other veterans of the Afghan War,especially with members of Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ). The EIJs members, havingbeen exiled from Egypt because of their attacks on the Mubarak regime and occasionallyon foreign tourists, sought to use Afghanistan as a safe haven from which to plan aviolent campaign against secular opponents in the Middle East. One EIJ leader, Aymanal-Zawahiri, became especially close to Bin Laden, who sought to use the Egyptiansmanpower and military tactics to achieve the expulsion of Americans from SaudiArabia, while al-Zawahiri believed that Bin Ladens wealth and charisma could beuseful in financing the campaign and recruiting new members.40

Since the mid-1990s, Bin Ladens main achievement has been the linking of localIslamist movements by using networks of veterans of the Afghanistan jihad. Bin Ladenand his colleagues accomplished this through the articulation of a new ideology for theuse of violence and through the construction of an organization that provides fundsand training for attacks on shared targets. On an ideological level, Bin Laden adoptedthe language of his mentor, a Palestinian professor named Abdullah Azzam, with whomhe had worked in Peshawar, Pakistan, during the Afghan jihad. Although Azzam wasnot a particularly original thinker after all, the promotion of jihad against outsidershad been introduced by earlier theologians he was in the right place at the righttime. As a Palestinian who had urged the destruction of Israel for religious rather thanpurely nationalist reasons, Azzam had special credibility among students and youngmujahedeen in Pakistan and Afghanistan.41 Bin Ladens language reflected Azzamsthinking, as it linked disparate Islamist campaigns of violence into a larger struggleagainst outsiders. By drawing this connection explicitly, Bin Laden hoped to overcomesome of the doctrinal differences that had separated earlier Islamist groups. Althoughhe himself focused primarily on the Americans in Saudi Arabia, he encouraged Muslims

39 On the Afghan War, Ahmed Rashid, Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil, and Fundamentalism in Central Asia(New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000).

40 Neil MacFarquhar, Islamic Jihad, Forged in Egypt, Is Seen as bin Ladens Backbone, New York Times(4 October 2001). Hisham Mubarak has documented a fascinating interview with Talat Fuad Qasim, aleader of the Islamic Group from Egypt, who discusses the EIJ/Bin Laden connection. See What Doesthe Gamaa Islamiyya Want? (Interview with Talat Fuad Qasim, in Joel Benin and Joe Stork (eds),Political Islam: Essays from Middle East Report (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1997).

41 Kepel, Jihad, pp. 144147.


from the Middle East, Central Asia, and Southeast Asia, not to mention those alreadyliving in the advanced industrial West, to think of their own problems as emblematicof the larger conflict between Islam and the outside world.

Al Qaeda moreover used the military training provided to the mujahedeen bythe United States, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan, to establish training centers throughoutAfghanistan. There, recruits from a broad variety of nations were encouraged to developsimilar tactical abilities as well as a set of other organizational skills. In additionto skills like planting bombs, using firearms, evading capture, kidnapping, and thelike, Al Qaedas members were taught to duplicate and compartmentalize aspects oftheir operations, so that the loss of one member would not compromise the largermission.42 In this way, Al Qaeda dramatically transformed the ways in which membersand recruits would engage in Islamist struggles. No longer would they focus primarilyon non-violent political organization at home, or on the use of mosques to encouragepiety, or on the possibility of civil wars, instead, they would cooperate often throughthe use of transnational cells to use coordinated, cataclysmic attacks largely againstWestern or American targets.

Al Qaeda did something far more remarkable than just carry out astonishingacts of terrorism. In the language of social movement theory, Bin Laden and hiscolleagues managed to create a new frame through which a wide variety of groupscould understand their grievances, providing a link to militants who otherwise mighthave been separated by nationality, class, language, and culture. Moreover, the carefultraining at Al Qaedas camps within Afghanistan, combined with nearly constantresearch on targets, security systems, and movement opponents, together producednewly shared repertoires of proper action. To this end, both the madrassas and thetraining camps were of crucial importance. Some Al Qaeda recruits evidently traveledto Pakistan primarily for religious instruction at madrassas, but were encouraged byteachers who were themselves inspired in part by Azzams jihadi theories to travel toAfghanistan to prepare for broader conflict. Similarly, training at camps apparently didwhat military training often does; it created an esprit-de-corps among members whobegan to see themselves as something larger.43

None of these efforts could have taken place had the clerics cooperating withAl Qaeda not redefined local violent struggles as part of the wider jihad. That is, astrike against distant foreign enemies such as the United States is a blow for Islam,a shift away from the preference of local movements for local actions. US targets couldserve as stand-ins for local secular authorities that have prevented the adoption ofthe Sharia as the organizing principle for decent societies. By enlarging the sphere inwhich actors understood their grievances from the local/national to the transnational,

42 Gunaratna, Inside Al Qaeda, pp. 7084.43 On the relationship between training and the construction of a national identity, see William H.

McNeill, The Pursuit of Power: Technology, Armed Force, and Society Since AD 1000 (Chicago: Universityof Chicago Press, 1984), pp. 117143.

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Al Qaeda and its supporters provided the philosophical basis for international co-operation against the putative enemies of Islam. Military training camps generatedboth the common collective identity and the shared tactics and repertoires that haveinformed the transnational cells operating from Jakarta to Kabul, and Dushanbe toHamburg. But informed does not mean the same as determined, and local contextstill matters.

Al Qaeda in Southeast AsiaIf religion is to be considered politically relevant, it is only because it represents

a way for people to organize their lives, their moral codes, and their understanding ofthe consequences (both in this world and the next) of their actions. Islams diversityin Southeast Asia is a crucial condition for understanding the terrain that Al Qaedamilitants face in trying to achieve support and cooperation from the regions Muslims.The ways in which Islam is lived, understood, and practiced in Southeast Asia are sodivergent as to suggest that transnational organizations such as Al Qaeda will likelyconfront populations that differ widely in their levels of commitment, interest, andtheological (let alone practical) goals.

Little agreement exists on the arrival of Islam to Southeast Asia, though it appearsthat Muslims have lived in territory populated by Malays since at least the eleventhcentury, and had extended to Mindanao and the western half of the Indonesianarchipelago by the thirteenth century. By the fifteenth century, Islamic edicts werebecoming more prominent elements of local regulations and legal codes.44 In thenineteenth and twentieth centuries, there have been some region-wide intellectual andpolitical trends in Southeast Asian Islam, among them the reformism that spread fromthe Egyptian Salifiyyah movement, which argued that strict observance of the rules ofthe Koran could help achieve critical economic, social, and political change throughstrict observance of fundamental principles from the Koran. In Southeast Asia, theadoption by key clerics of this framework helped to spearhead the local Muhammadiyahmovement, generally described as modernist Islam.45 Common trends became evenmore pronounced with national independence, economic growth, urbanization, andincreased regional travel in the second half of the twentieth century. By the 1970s and1980s, student proselytizing (dakwah) movements took on political importance acrossMuslim Southeast Asia.46

But Islam has been mapped on to a diverse territory of ethnic conflict, coloniallegacies, and troubled economic hierarchies that distinguish the region. American

44 Hussin Mutalib, Islamic Malay Polity in Southeast Asia, in Mohd. Taib Osman (ed.), IslamicCivilizationin the Malay World (Kuala Lumpur: Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka, 1997), pp. 348, at 711.

45 Raymond Scupin, The Politics of Islamic Reformism in Thailand, Asian Survey 20: 12 (December1980), pp. 12231235, at 12241225.

46 Mohamed Abu Bakar, Islamic Revivalism and the Political Process in Malaysia, Asian Survey 21: 10(October 1981), pp. 10401059; Robert W. Hefner, Civil Islam:Muslims andDemocratization in Indonesia(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000), pp. 106109.


discussions of Islam and terrorism, especially in Southeast Asia, have often distinguishedbetween moderate and fundamentalist Islam, though this is a political rather thananalytical statement. After all, in Indonesia itself, Islams practice often seems dividedbetween traditionalists who follow the guidance of ulama (Islamic scholars) andmodernists who emphasize the strict interpretation of Koranic scripture rather thaninterpreted versions. In contemporary studies of Islam and politics in Indonesia,traditionalists have ended up looking open and tolerant, where their modernistcounterparts seem closed-minded and ultimately threatening. Even here, though, thedistinction misses the divergent opinions of ulama, who may prefer narrow conformityto Koranic law or, alternatively, sufist mixtures of Islam with indigenous mysticalpractices.47 Beyond this categorization, one might also focus on differences as doesGeertz (1960) between priyayi, santri, and abangan Muslims, whose varied styles ofpracticing the faith tend also to reflect class distinctions, educational levels, and widersocial debates.48 In Indonesia alone, therefore, Islam represents an extraordinarilycomplex and diverse belief system; stereotypes become even more absurd when onebroadens the discussion to include Muslims in the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei,Singapore and Thailand.

Leaving aside the theological issues, the relationships between states and Islam alsovary widely. In Malaysia, former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammeds ruling party,the United Malay Nationalist Organization (UMNO), has used Islam as a tool to justifysome specific benefits to the roughly 50% of the population who are ethnic Malays,while maintaining the claim that the government represents the interests of Chineseand Indian minorities as well.49 Indonesias long-time dictator President Suharto triedat first to marginalize the countrys powerful Islamic organizations, seeing them as apotential threat to his military rule; over his three decades in power, he increasinglyembraced them while also demanding their willingness to adhere to the ostensiblypluralistic pancasila ideology that justified his rule.50 And in the Philippines, the Morosof Mindanao have engaged in a long secessionist struggle with the predominantlyCatholic national government.

The diversity of ethnic groups, theological positions, and political conditions facingindividual Islamic organizations has yielded an alarming kaleidoscope of political andreligious violence in the region. In Malaysia, for example, tight policing has limitedthe size and scope of Islamist organizations that might extol violence. The mostwidely noted Malaysian group is a 60-member51 movement known as the Kumpulan

47 Julia Day Howell, Sufism and the Islamic Revival, Journal of Asian Studies 60: 3 (August 2001), pp. 701729.

48 Clifford Geertz, The Religion of Java (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960).49 David Camroux, State Reponses to Islamic Resurgence in Malaysia: Accommodation, Co-Option, and

Confrontation, Asian Survey 36: 9 (September 1996), pp. 852868, at 854855.50 R. William Liddle, The Islamic Turn in Indonesia: A Political Explanation, Journal of Asian Studies 55:

3 (August 1996), pp. 613634.51 Militant Groups Growing Tentacles, The Straits Times (26 January 2002). Available at http://

straitstimes.asia1.com.sg/usattack/story/0,1870,99176-1012082340,00.html (Accessed 4 March 2003).

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Militan Mujahedeen (Chapter of Militant Holy Warriors, or KMM). The internationallyconnected KMM, however, is unusual in Southeast Asian politics, and its educated,elite members enjoy little popular support.52 Indonesias post-Suharto experience withviolent Islamist movements has been disconcertingly varied and troubled. Before theBali disco bombing, the most prominent was the brutal sectarian violence carried outby Laskar Jihad in its fight with Christians (who have themselves been responsible fora great deal of the bloodshed) in the Maluku Islands.53 In Jakarta itself, the IslamicDefenders Fronts pro-piety campaigns have used the bombings and demolition ofJakarta nightclubs and bars as efforts to intimidate those institutions consideredto violate Islamic law, particularly during the holy month of Ramadan.54 Althoughattacks by the group (which announced it would disband after the Bali bombing inOctober 2002), found legitimacy among a small set of Indonesias Muslims, they alsoreflected straightforward rent-seeking behavior; members evidently served as unofficialenforcers for military and police units extorting money from the clubs and bars.55 Inthe Philippines, the divergent approaches to secessionist violence by Moro groups oftenmirror not just theological tensions but also ethnic divisions between, for example, theMoro National Liberation Front (mostly Tausug) and the Moro Islamic LiberationFront (largely Maguindanao).56

This is a whirlwind tour of Islam and politics in Southeast Asia. And it is intended,like a whirlwind, not to create but rather to destabilize in this case, to undermine easyassumptions about what a group like Al Qaeda might be able to organize or accomplishin the region. Indeed, the links between Southeast Asian Muslims and the jihad inAfghanistan were initially modest. Although some Muslim fighters from SoutheastAsia joined the fight, most of them were not at the time movement leaders. There werenot enough of them, moreover, to represent the kind of critical mass that the Arabsdid in this new and violent expression of political Islam. In spite of occasionally violentconfrontations between Islamists and regimes in Southeast Asia, little evidence thusfar suggests that Al Qaedas efforts to create a united front among fundamentalists hasbeen successful beyond isolated cases that usually involve leadership from an AfghanWar veteran.

Before the 11 September attacks invited wider attention to the global spread ofAl Qaeda, the clearest evidence of the organizations presence in Southeast Asiancame from the work of Ramzi Yousef the Kuwaiti-born son of a Pakistani father and

52 John Gershman, Is Southeast Asia the Second Front?,ForeignAffairs 81: 4 (July/August 2002), pp. 2074.53 Michael Davis, Laskar Jihad and the Political Position of Conservative Islam in Indonesia,Contemporary

Southeast Asia 24: 1 (April 2002), pp. 1232.54 Running a Nightspot not all that Easy, Jakarta Post (7 January 2001). Accessed through Lexis-Nexis.55 Marianne Kearney, Calls for Jihad in Indonesia are all about Fame and Position , The Straits Times

(18 October 2001). Accessed through Lexis-Nexis.56 On political violence in the Philippines, see Thomas M. McKenna, Muslim Rulers and Rebels: Everyday

Politics and Armed Separatism in the Southern Philippines (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press,1999); and Marites Danguilan Vitug and Glenda M. Gloria, Under the Crescent Moon: Rebellion inMindanao (Manila: The Philippines Center for Investigative Journalism, 2000).


Palestinian mother in the Philippines in 19941995. Yousef was one of the main plottersof the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, now attributed to the then-nascent AlQaeda. After the attack, Yousef went to Manila, where he created an audacious plot todestroy 12 airliners over the Pacific, murder the pope, and assassinate the presidents ofthe United States and Philippines. In a December 1994 test run, Yousef or his associatesplaced a bomb on a Philippine jet, which managed to land safely even after the explosionthat took the life of a Japanese passenger. Yousef s plans unraveled when a fire brokeout in his Manila apartment during preparations of further explosive devices. Narrowlyescaping to Pakistan, Yousef was arrested and extradited to the United States in 1995, andthen convicted in 1997 of the first WTC bombing. During his time in the Philippines,he had worked closely on the plan with members of Abu Sayyaf (Bearer of the Sword,abbreviated below as ASG),57 headed by a young Afghan veteran named AbdurajakAbubakar Janjalani.

Janjalani created the ASG as an extremely radical offshoot of the Islamic resistancein the southern Philippines. After studying Islamic law in Saudi Arabia, Janjalani tookclasses on religion in Libya, and then traveled to take part in the Afghan jihad. Afterreturning to the Philippines, he organized the new movement, which announced itsexistence with an attack on a military checkpoint on Basilan Island in 1991.58 Havingbeen trained alongside members of Al Qaeda, Janjalani appeared eager to demonstratethe Abu Sayyaf Groups commitment to global jihad by cooperating extensively withYousef, who actually used the name Abu Sayyaf in his phone call to the Associated Pressclaiming credit for the 1994 airliner bombing.59 It was this cooperation that served tojustify the early 2002 deployment of US special forces to the Philippines, where theycooperated with the Philippine military to track down ASG members, resulting in thecapture or death of some of its top leaders.60

A closer look at the ASG, however, is instructive for understanding how thenetworks forged in the Afghan jihad have been limited by the preoccupations of localgroups, and by disagreements among members with predominantly local concerns.There is little doubt that Janjalani, who was killed in 1998, was in fact a true believer,and that he viewed the effort to split from the Philippines as part of a larger globalstruggle to establish Islamic rule over the worldwide umma, or community of thefaithful. Initially, the ASGs tactics displayed an eagerness to act as a Southeast Asianarm of the nascent Al Qaeda. But the ASGs most recent activities including an

57 David Kocieniewski, Peg Tyre, and Knut Royce, Terrorism Evidence Destroyed, Newsday (16 April1995). Accessed through Lexis-Nexis.

58 Eric Gutierrez, From Ilaga to Abu Sayaf: New Entrepreneurs in Violence and their Impact onLocal Politics in Mindanao, draft paper prepared for the European Philippine Studies Conference,912 September 2001, in Alcala de Henares, Spain. Cited with permission of author.

59 Charles Wallace, Weaving a World-Wide Web of Terror, Los Angeles Times (28 May 1995), p. A1.Accessed through Lexis-Nexis.

60 Raymond Bonner with Eric Schmitt, Philippine Officials Detail the Trap, Set with US Help, that Snareda Rebel Leader, The New York Times (22 September 2002), p. A22.

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extraordinary rash of kidnappings for ransom display a power struggle that reflectscompeting visions of the function of this violent group for southern Philippine politics.Indeed, the nickname of one of the most publicly visible protagonists in the kidnappingdrama indicates that fundamentalist Islam is merely one of a variety of forces acting onthe group.

There are two main versions for understanding how Galib Andang earned his nomde guerre, Commander Robot. In one version, it derives from his miraculous survival virtually unscathed from a gunshot that failed to penetrate his skin.61 The morecommonly accepted version, however, has it that the flamboyantly extroverted Andangused to entertain children by imitating Michael Jackson with a robot dance whenhe worked as a servant in the home of locally powerful landowners. Robot professesfaith in Islam and this is a claim that probably has some meaning to him, and is notsimply used strategically but he speaks no Arabic and is largely uninterested in thebroader theological claims made by Janjalani. By 1999, however, Robot had begun tobecome increasingly important in Abu Sayyaf, taking control of a faction that kidnappedFilipinos to collect ransom. In May 2000, Commader Robot helped the ASG leap tothe international headlines with an astonishing attack on a beach resort in Malaysia. Inthat assault, Robots men managed to kidnap over a dozen foreign nationals, includinga number of Europeans. In the negotiations that followed, the Libyan governmentevidently served as a conduit for a ransom payment from the European governmentsto the ASG.

The ASGs success in this mission may have ended up filling the organizationscoffers for jihad against the Philippine government, but it also presaged a shift towardkidnapping as a tactic for financial gain rather than clear military or tactical advantage.Indeed, Robot became a media antihero, enjoying the limelight of a Philippine celebrity.In the oddest subplot, an actress in soft-core porn films offered herself to Robotfor a week of pleasure to release the hostages.62 After the conclusion of the initialinternational kidnapping crisis, ASG members kidnapped more foreigners, includingseveral Americans; some were killed (with one, Guillermo Sobero, beheaded) by thegroup in 2001, and others died in a rescue mission gone awry in 2002. A tactical ransompayment by the US government designed to secure the release of hostages while leadingto the arrest of the ASGs leaders went awry because of internal conflicts in the ASGabout who should get the money, and by the refusal of the actual hostage-holders torelease them until Janjalanis brother shared the loot more widely.63

Al Qaedas members have clearly been in contact with ASG leaders in the past, andso the talk of a link between the groups is true in at least a very general sense. But the

61 See the interview with Mindanao specialist Thomas McKenna in George Edmonson, Q&A: The Waron Terror moves to the Philippines, 24 January 2002. Available at http://www.azstarnet.com/attack/indepth/id-philippineqa.html (accessed 4 March 2003).

62 Gutierrez, From Ilaga to Abu Sayaf has a fascinating discussion of Commander Robots life and workfor the ASG.

63 Bonner and Schmitt, Philippine Officials Detail the Trap, 2002.


ASGs behavior indicates that it is a rebel group involved in earthly struggles over landand money at least as much as it is focused on a commitment to global jihad. Mediaanalysts have repeatedly noted that the ASG might be more clearly seen as bandits thanterrorists, but this easy distinction misses the point. Al Qaeda was linked to ASG in thepast, and the ASG maintains that it is an Islamist organization committed to the useof violence to create Muslim governance under Shariah law. Does its behavior suggestthat it is a renegade? How did Al Qaeda lose control if it is a global network with tightcentral control or with nearly identical branches everywhere? Simply put, the politicalstrategies of ASG members, as well as the tactics that can be justified to members, differfrom those of other groups. Al Qaeda has been important in the groups evolution, butit does not and cannot dictate what the ASG will do.

Indonesia provides a similarly telling case. International press attention has settledon Jemaah Islamiah (Islamic Group abbreviated below as JI) as the Southeast Asianbranch of Al Qaeda. The January 2002 revelations that Singaporean police had arrested13members for planning to attack Western installations in the region indicated to manyobservers that this was, in essence, Al Qaeda-Eastern Division. JIs roots are murky.According to one version, the name JI is itself a generic label applied to a variety ofIslamist movements in Malaysia and Indonesia.64 To the extent that the name refersto the distinct group whose members have been arrested in January and September of2002, JI was creation of two Indonesian friends of Yemeni descent, Abu Bakar Bashir andAbdullah Sungkar, both born in the 1930s. Bashir is primarily a theologian whose workderives strongly from the teachings of the Muslim Brotherhood, and, until the late 1970s,his work focused primarily on the promotion of the idea of an Indonesian Islamic state.Sungkar was the political strategist who aimed at establishing networks through whichdevout Muslims could take direct political action against the secular Suharto regime.Arrested in 1979 for circulating a book critical of the government and for refusing toswear allegiance to the pancasila national ideology, Bashir and Sungkar spent three yearsin prison. Even upon their release, they were hounded by Indonesian police and fled toMalaysia in 1985. It was there that they initially began to build cross-national Islamistalliances, but not until 1995did the two begin to work with the Gamaa Islamiah (IslamicGroup, originally based in Egypt and linked with the Egyptian Islamic Jihad) and beginto think more broadly about the establishment of an Islamic state beyond Indonesianborders.65

Gunaratna claims that during his exile, Sungkar managed to meet Bin Laden duringa trip to Afghanistan, though details of the meeting are unknown.66 Although Bashirhas been regarded as the JIs sole major leader since the death of Sungkar in 1999, it is

64 Vaudine England, Rounding Up the Usual Suspects, South China Morning Post (26 April 2002), pp. 16.Accessed through Lexis-Nexis.

65 International Crisis Group, Al-Qaeda in Southeast Asia: The Case of the Ngruki Network in Indonesia,ICG Indonesia Briefing ((Jakarta/Brussels, 2002).

66 Gunaratna, Inside Al Qaeda, p. 198.

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unclear whether a movement based primarily on his efforts would be anything morethan a strictly local organization typified by virulently anti-Semitic and anti-Americanrhetoric.67 The JIs plan to attack Western installations allegedly relied on not onlythe organizational efforts of Bashir as Sungkars successor, and on the financial cloutof his strategy-minded colleague Riudan Isamuddin (a.k.a. Hambali), but also onthe recruitment activities and military skills of an Indonesian bomb-maker namedFathur Rohman al-Ghozi (a.k.a. Mike).68 The same small set of militants is accusedof carrying out a series of bombings at 24 churches during Christmas 2002, killing 19and injuring more than 100 people.69 Hambali is currently in US custody, having beenarrested in Thailand in August 2003,70 and Fathur Rohman al-Ghozi, who had escapedfrom jail in the Philippines, was killed in a firefight in October 2003.71

That there have been contacts between Al Qaeda and JI seems clear and unmistak-able. In addition to the presence of Al Qaeda-trained leaders like Al-Ghozi, the JIdemonstrates extraordinary organizational affinities with Bin Ladens organization.Like Al Qaeda, JI is organized around a central shura (council) that has madeplans, arranged financial transactions, and built links to existing Islamist groups.72

Moreover, financial transfers between Islamic charities and local organizations havebeen, along with transfers of bags of cash by couriers, major routes for channelingAl Qaeda-related funds to JI members.73 Viewing local struggles in global terms, JIaimed ostensibly at transferring anger at local regimes for not observing the Shariatoward the global enemies of Islam blamed for the failures of the regions governments.Although previously consumed with more proximate crises like the Moluccan Islandsviolence, JI militants have more recently become obsessed with the US-led War onTerror.74

67 Dan Murphy, Indonesian Cleric Fights for a Muslim State, Christian Science Monitor (2 May 2002).Accessed through Lexis-Nexis.

68 Home Affairs Ministry of Singapore, The Case Against Jemaah Islamiah, summary reprinted by TheStraits Times (31 May 2002). Accessed through Lexis-Nexis.

69 Richard Paddock, Southeast Asian Terror Exhibits Al Qaeda Traits, The Los Angeles Times (3 March2002), p. 1. Accessed through Lexis-Nexis.

70 Kathy Marks, Two-Year Hunt Tracked Al Qaida Branch Manager to Thailand, The Independent(16 August 2003), p. 13. Accessed through Lexis-Nexis.

71 He had previously escaped from a Manila prison cell, most likely with of the well-compensatedcooperation of his jailers. By some accounts, at least, he was likely executed by police who felt thatarresting, trying, and imprisoning him would be more of a bother (and multifaceted risk) than simplykilling him. See Luz Baguioro, Did al-Ghozi Die in Shoot-Out or Execution?, The Straits-Times(15 October 2003). Accessed through Lexis-Nexis.

72 Home Affairs Ministry of Singapore, The Case Against Jemaah Islamiah.73 Zachary Abuza, Funding Terrorism in Southeast Asia: The Financial Network of Al Qaeda and Jemaah

Islamiyah, Contemporary Southeast Asia 25: 2 (August 2003), pp. 169199.74 For an excellent survey, see International Crisis Group, Indonesia Backgrounder: How the Jemaah

Islamiyah Terrorist Network Operates (Jakarta/Brussels: ICG, 2002). The ICG has also produced afollow-up, Jemaah Islamiyah in South East Asia: Damaged but Still Dangerous (Jakarta/Brussels: ICG,2003).


But if the JIs goals and rhetoric seem at times to mirror Al Qaedas, its actionssuggest that local politics has made the reflection murky and imprecise. Thoughconnected at times with other groups in the region including at least MalaysiasKMM the JI network has largely been preoccupied with distinctively Indonesianconcerns. Disagreements between those convicted of the Bali bombing make it difficultto reconstruct precisely what happened, but it seems that most of the conspiratorsinvolved in the attack had been involved in the Afghan jihad and saw themselves asfighters in a worldwide struggle. Indeed, Hambalis goals have always been at leastregional and possibly global in nature, but among four of the actual bombers Amrozi,Imam Samudra, Mukhlas, and Ali Imron the Bali location appears to have reflectedmore local concerns. According to their testimony, they had considered political orconsular targets that would more directly strike at the United States, but had settledon the nightclubs in order to cause wider destruction against soft targets that wouldsymbolize non-Islamic interference in Indonesia.75 Crucially, the Bali bomb resemblesa version of the pro-piety destruction of nightclubs in Jakarta, though on a muchlarger level. Instead, the attack appears to have been a symbolic hybrid; the arrest ofSoutheast Asias main JI operatives may have meant the management of the attack byIndonesian militants at least as concerned with the intimidation of impious institutionson Indonesian territory as with the regional or global strategy of Islamic unification.The target suggests a distinctively Indonesian struggle over the nature of the Islamicfaith, at least as much as the scale implies the hand of Al Qaeda.

JIs connections with militant organizations in other parts of Southeast Asia havethus far failed to generate anything approximating a full regional network. For example,recent revelations of JI connections to the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), thelargest of the secessionist groups in the southern Philippines, have been so localizedand narrow that even the MILFs top leaders may be unaware of their existence. Toa degree, this reflects the decentralized nature of the MILFs leadership structure,76

but it also indicates the ways in which even jihadist organizations with purportedlyregional and global aims may be far more parochial in their actions. My point hereis not that JI and Al Qaeda are unconnected or that the Bali bombers thought ofthemselves primarily as defenders of Indonesian piety rather than global jihadists.Instead, I simply suggest that the meaning of jihad differs across political contexts andthat Al Qaedas role may be different than most studies suggest. If we accept, as wereally must, that Muslim experiences vary widely across political and social contexts,we need to consider the possibility that calls to violence framed in Islamist terms willlikely mean different things to different people. Islamist organizations may thereforebe susceptible to framing efforts by local and transnational actors, but it is unlikely that

75 Wayne Miller, Samudra Calls Amrozi The Brains, The Age (Melbourne) (12 June 2003), p. 4; CindyWockner, Brother Turns Against Bali Bomb Accused, Courier Mail (Queensland) (10 July 2003), p. 11.Accessed through Lexis-Nexis.

76 International Crisis Group, Southern Philippines Backgrounder: Terrorism and the Peace Process(Singapore/Brussels: ICG, 2004).

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one global core can control and direct what all its members will do. For Al Qaedasaffiliates, language may be global, but politics remains local.

Terrorists, social movements, and international securityThat Al Qaeda is a new type of terrorist group is beyond doubt. It links members

in transnational cells marked by intense secrecy, operational competence, and clearfinancial support. It is also the first terrorism movement to inflict a major attack, withthousands of lives lost, on a superpower. As such, it merits the attention it has received,and it suggests that international relations scholars need to think more creatively aboutterrorism as a problem for international security. But Al Qaeda is still a terrorist group,and many of the arguments made about terrorist organizations in the past still haverelevance for how we can think more effectively about Al Qaeda as a security topic.This paper has drawn attention to two features of terrorist groups their strategicuse of violence for internal as well as external goals, as well as the symbolic context inwhich violence occurs and argued that social movement theory provides a useful lensthrough which to view the efforts of terrorist organizations.

Social movement theory fits uncomfortably in security studies in part becauseof its identification with constructivist accounts that remain controversial to thosewho paint a darker picture of the inevitability of violent conflict. And those who usesocial movement theory to study more laudable transnational efforts, like those aimedat ending racial discrimination, sexual abuse, or land mines, might find distasteful acomparison to a violent network espousing the most reactionary of religious ideologies.The pressure in security studies to develop a framework for assessing the threat from AlQaeda has thus far yielded other responses, with some scholars seeking to fit terrorisminto prevailing rational choice epistemologies and others offering new metaphors, suchas the Internet, to capture its activity. My quarrel with these approaches is not overtheir inability to explain all of Al Qaedas actions; I certainly do not mean to suggestthat my interpretation of Al Qaedas role as a social movement organization in a largerconstellation of Islamist groups is the definitive version. After all, the groups activitiesare primarily clandestine, and all accounts remain sketchy. But I do argue that relianceon the social movement literature provides clues and intellectual tools missing fromthese other perspectives, primarily because of its situation of self-interested behaviorin local contexts that can be affected by the framing activities of external actors.

In stressing the local rather than global, I do not mean to understate the dangerthat Al Qaeda affiliates might pose. After all, the sectarian conflict in the MoluccanIslands, between Muslims and Christians, has claimed many more lives than thoselost in the 9/11 attacks. But the lives were not American lives, and they were notsnuffed out in full view of the international media; the implications for politics andinternational security differ greatly. If we are to understand terrorism as a seriousproblem in international security, we will need theoretical and conceptual tools thatallow us to distinguish between types of threats and types of violence, and we will needto think seriously about the symbols and strategies of different groups. Al Qaeda has


chosen a perilous path: that of directly challenging a superpower and framing otherconflicts in global terms to encourage Islamist actors to do the same. And, like othersocial movement organizations, it will likely find that its actions have consequences,but not necessarily those it had planned. Rather than being a network with roughlyequivalent cells everywhere, or a central organization that dominates its militants, AlQaedas leaders may find that they have set an agenda that is interpreted and manageddifferently by like-minded actors elsewhere. This still makes it a threat, but not the onethat its leaders or its enemies have imagined.

I would like to thank Peter J. Katzenstein, Paul Hutchcroft, Jon Pevehouse, and the JJPSs anonymousreviewers for their helpful comments on previous drafts.

Documents

Leheny D. - 2005 - Terrorism, Social Movements, And International Security_How Al Qaeda Affects Southeast Asia