Assaf Moghadam looks at the new face of terrorism in a globalized world
Assaf’s demeanor is an unassuming one. He’s pleasant, calm, smiling and collected. Unassuming, you ask? Considering that he has been studying one of the most gruesome, in-your-face and infuriating topics on the international scene, then yes, unassuming. Assaf’s dissertation thesis is on the globalization of suicide attacks. He has been fascinated with the motivations of terrorists and suicide bombers since the early 1990s, while in Jerusalem obtaining his BA from the Hebrew University. Upon graduation in 1997, a suicide bomber detonated himself at the doorstep of Assaf’s downtown Jerusalem apartment. How’s that for eye opening?
Assaf was born to an Iranian-Jewish family with roots in the Iranian town of Mashad. In the nineteenth century, all Mashadi Jews were forcibly converted to Islam, but maintained their Jewish religion in secret, earning the designation of modern Crypto-Jews. “I don’t hold a grudge,” Assaf says half-jokingly, adding that he is proud of his background and has no intention of changing the Iranian family name imposed on his ancestors. His family moved to Israel in 1949, and then to Germany in the 60s, where he was born.
After finishing his studies in Jerusalem, where his thesis focused on the radical New Left in Germany, he moved to the US and worked as a research assistant at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a think-tank in DC.
Assaf came to Fletcher after hearing of its flexible curriculum and strong Security Studies Program—and encountering the enthusiasm of current students and alumni of the school. Four months before 9/11, Assaf began building his masters thesis on the motivations of Palestinian suicide bombers and the organizations behind them—a thesis subsequently published in the leading American journal on terrorism studies.
After a year consulting for Harvard’s Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, he was drawn back to Fletcher’s PhD Program. His dissertation, tentatively titled “The Globalization of Martyrdom”, examines the shift in suicide bombings from a localized to a globalized phenomenon.
Traditional suicide bombing campaigns, he says, were closely tied to locally confined conflicts that struck close to the hearts of both the attackers and the victims. The organizations involved were local, as were the recruits and the attacks. Such was the case in places like the West Bank and Gaza, and Sri Lanka.
With the development of groups like Al Qaeda, the attacks became globalized and the grievances “virtual”. The organizations are transnational; the recruits have little or no personal ties to the conflict and are often lured through the internet. Attacks can now be launched across borders through networks of adherents to the radical Salafi ideology. In his dissertation, Assaf compares the motivations of Palestinian suicide bombers with those of the global jihad movement using a three level analysis model he developed. The individual level addresses the attacker’s personal motivations to die carrying out an attack; the organizational level looks at the sponsoring group’s strategic and tactical considerations for using suicide attacks; and the environmental level examines the influence of culture, history, religion, and the political and socio-economic context on both suicide bombers and the sponsoring organizations.
Assaf is completing his dissertation as a pre-doctoral Research Fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, where he was a fellow last year. While at Belfer, he also authored a high school and university level textbook titled The Roots of Terrorism. Assaf’s first book will be published in January 2006.
So what is to be done about suicide bombings and terrorism? Assaf recommends conducting counter-terrorism on multiple levels. ”Military means alone will not do the trick,” he says. In order to curb this phenomenon, states must effectively counter the ideologies that give rise to radical Islamist terrorism. To that end, it’s important to conduct an effective war of ideas by exposing the hypocrisy of those who organize suicide bombings, but never send themselves or their loved ones out on these deadly missions.
