The History of Terrorism: From Antiquity to Al Qaeda (review)

The History of Terrorism: From Antiquity to Al Qaeda, edited by Gérard Chaliand and Arnaud Blin, is a worthy contribution to the literature on sub-national terrorist activity. Cast as a volume about the use of terrorism over the centuries, it contains a wealth of information in its numerous individual chapters covering subjects ranging from the first century Zealots, to anarchist groups of the 19^th century, to the history of suicide operations. Especially important contributions include a revised version of Ariel Merari's seminal paper, "Terrorism as a Strategy of Insurgency" and essays by Chaliand and Blin on the numerous manifestations of terrorism throughout history and on the "modern" history of terrorism from 1968 to the present.

Yet The History of Terrorism is more than a collection of essays on significant periods in the long history of terrorist activity. The book's real goal is to place the modern threat posed by al Qaeda and related jihadist groups in historical perspective. Chaliand and Blin's argument (the two wrote eight of the seventeen chapters, including all of those designed to summarize significant trends within defined historical periods) is that the current terrorist threat differs from previous ones in that modern jihadist groups are more interested in killing as an end in itself. While this point has been made by many others, the argument that emerges from the book is that the interest in inflicting harm on others is only partly the result of the Al Qaeda network's fanatical attachment to its particular brand of Islam. Also important, but frequently overlooked, is that the nature of target selection by terrorist organizations underwent a lengthy transformation in conjunction with the rise of mass politics and the development of technologies (e.g., dynamite) that made indiscriminate killing possible. In the past, terrorist organizations focused on tyrannicide because the key to influencing politics was influencing leaders, not citizens. Technological barriers also made relatively large-scale attacks difficult. The emergence of politically influential civilian populations and the weapons capable of injuring or killing several people at once ushered in a period in which civilians, not leaders, became the preferred targets for terrorist violence.

Chaliand and Blin's argument about the changing nature of terrorist activity echoes, but does not fully adopt, Walter Laqueuer's thesis in his widely read 1977 book, Terrorism. Whereas Laqueuer is famous for arguing that there are no historical constants when it comes to terrorism, Chaliand and Blin suggest that what has really changed are the particular tactics terrorists use to achieve their goals and the conditions under which they use them. The underlying strategy of terrorism—to intimidate an audience using a minimum of force—is reasonably stable across time whether one examines sub-national groups, like the Irish Republican Army, or state actors, like the French government under Robespierre.

If The History of Terrorism has a fault, it is that Chaliand and Blin give less attention than they should to Palestinian and Irish terrorist organizations active in the post-1967 period. Both campaigns are notable for their length and for the contributions they made to the internationalization of terrorist activity through the training of disparate groups from around the world. The Palestinian campaign of this period is particularly important because groups like the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine were central to the creation of terrorism as a mass media event that generated international attention. The Palestinian struggle against Israel is also important because of the apparent motivation it supplied non-Palestinian organizations to take up arms against Western powers. No other ethno-nationalist struggle involving the use of terrorism during the modern period produced as many violent sympathizers. Individual chapters on the Irish and Palestinian cases would have been better than the single chapter discussing both simultaneously that The History of Terrorism included.

A chapter covering the Israeli government efforts to deal with Palestinian terrorism also would have been a...