 We have a full room, and it's 3.30, so I'm going to start. I'd like to welcome all of you here today. My name is Rebecca Blank. I'm the Dean of the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, and I want to thank you for joining us this afternoon for the Josh Rosenthal Education Fund lecture. Josh Rosenthal was a 1979 graduate of the University of Michigan who died in September 11, 2001 in the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. In his memory, friends and family have established the Josh Rosenthal Education Fund to support lectures, seminars, research, and student internships that encourage new and deeper understandings of international issues. I'm very pleased today to have a number of members of the Rosenthal family with us, and I particularly want to recognize Marilyn Rosenthal, Josh's mother, who is a colleague here at the University of Michigan and is going to make just a few remarks. Marilyn. Let me first express my great appreciation to Dean Blank and her very hardworking staff for their patience and persistence in making the third Josh Rosenthal lecture take place. It's not exactly on September 11th, but we're thinking about that. And I also want to thank six members of my family who braved the snowstorms on the East Coast for the frigid weather in Michigan to come and join me. And I know they understand how very much it means to me that you're here. And of course, I feel the same way about each one of you in the room. It's cold outside, so thank you for coming and thank you for your interest. It has been and remains the hope of Josh's family and friends that a lecture series presented by knowledgeable experts might contribute to our understanding of the forces and dynamics behind the attack on September 11th, 2001. In the three and a half years since 9-11, my own feeling is that our need for careful and balanced information and insight is greater than it has ever been before. It has been amazing to me and to many of us, even shocking, to watch American international policy unfold in these last three years. We seem to have re-elected and re-elected a reality-resistant administration for whom ideology always trumps information and for whom information is only acceptable when it conforms to ideology. That's an applause line there. Thank you for being polite. This is the president who neglected specific pre-9-11 threat warnings from his National Terrorism Director, from his head of the CIA, and from six heads of state. Okay, by some sort of political sleight of hand are justified attacks on al-Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan have morphed into an unjustified invasion of Iraq, based this time on false information and false promises. And this is an invasion that makes our country, the Middle East, and the world a more dangerous place. Yet he won re-election by claiming he has made our country more secure, an amazing feat in what has to be an absurd world. Perhaps it represents a reaction to the well-understood fear of change, a reaction to the rapid advance of new knowledge from outer space to the inner genome. In the face of rapid change, many turn back to a romanticized set of ideas from older, even ancient times. It's amazing. Ideas that are rigid, inflexible, and inappropriate for the 21st century. It is not just our current administration that appears to be doing this, but some leaders of modern nations, religious institutions, and social movements in many parts of the world. I have come to appreciate in these last three years more than ever the credos of the public academic world, where objective, balanced, and careful research is still a treasured value. And that is why it is a special pleasure to welcome Dr. Jessica Stern as a third annual Josh Rosenthal Memorial Lecturer. Her extraordinary research on terrorists and terrorism in the three monotheistic religions is well known and widely praised as objective, balanced, and careful. And I know you will join me in listening intently to what she has to say. Am I doing that? Are you hearing a knocking noise? Okay. Let me start from the beginning. I know you're going to join me in listening intently to what she has to say about terrorism. Remember that old maxim, know your enemy? Our president has said that the terrorists are envious of our freedoms and our material success. I think Dr. Stern will provide us with a much deeper set of insights and a much broader understanding. Thank you. I am delighted to have Dr. Jessica Stern here today. Jessica is a nationally recognized expert in the motivations and causes behind terrorist movements. A professor of public policy at the Belfast Center on Science and International Affairs at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. Professor Stern spent a number of years interviewing members of extremist organizations around the world. The resulting book, Terror in the Name of God, Why Religious Militants Kill, provides an unprecedented insight into acts of terrorism and enables her to suggest how terrorism might most effectively be countered. I first met Jessica when she was doing a number of interviews with terrorists around the world in the late 1990s when I was working with her husband. And I remember at that time thinking to myself, why would anyone do this? And history has clearly proved that her interests and her knowledge of this were far, far deeper than mine because it really put her in a position post-911 to have something very important to say. Professor Stern has worked as an analyst at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and was the Superterrorism Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. Having served on the staff of President Clinton's National Security Council in 1994 and 1995, she continues as a consultant on terrorism to U.S. government agencies. She attended Bernard College for her bachelor's degree in chemistry, received her master's degree of science degree from MIT, and her doctorate in public policy from Harvard. She is someone who has moved with facility between the academic and the research world, the world of policy and practice, and the world of public writing and education. It is precisely her history of participation in all of those worlds that makes her such a valuable and an insightful analyst of international terrorism issues. The title of Professor Stern's talk today is Listening to Terrorists, and following her talk we will open the discussion to questions from the audience. Thank you very much, Dean Blank, and thank you very much, Professor Rosenpaul. I have given many lectures on this topic, and I've never done so with the family members of a victim, such an important part of the audience. And I must say that it's very moving, and I'm just, I hope I can make you feel better. I don't know that I will, but I certainly hope I can. Now what do I do? How do I? Is this? Do you feel better? I wanted to start by telling you where I went in the project, going around the world, talking to terrorists, which seemed quite eccentric not only to Becky Blank, but to many of my colleagues. I had been researching a book on the prospect for terrorists to use nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons, and I realized that some of the individuals that had attempted to acquire or actually acquired those weapons lived in the United States, and then I might be able to call or visit them. And I must say that this is a very unusual thing to do for people associated with academic institutions. We generally cite each other's works. We go to libraries, we look at other people's data, or maybe it's very unusual for us to talk to terrorists. And I tried to persuade a psychiatrist to go with me when I wanted to talk with William Pierce, a famous now dead neo-Nazi, not dead as a result of talking to me. But this psychiatrist was too sensible. He did not think this was a good way to spend an afternoon. And I can tell you that the first time I did this, I was a little bit frightened. Even before making my first phone call, I called the police and I called the neighbors of William Pierce. And soon after that, I made the acquaintance of a man who had been second in command of an identity Christian cult. And this man was very religious, he not only knew the Bible, much of the Bible by heart, he struck me as a very spiritual man, and that was very disturbing to me. I had quite a few conversations with him, and I realized that the group he'd been involved in and the ideas that that group was promoting seemed a little bit Meshugana to me, and it seemed to me that I needed some help distinguishing between Meshugana and Mentally Ill. And I persuaded a psychologist to accompany me on my first trip to a trailer park in Texas where I could meet this man who had thought that poisoning major city water supplies, including in Chicago, would persuade the Messiah to return more quickly. And this man was Steve Cole, who's a pollster, but he also has a sideline in helping people recover from distressing mystical experiences, and he seemed like the right man to accompany me. And he told me there's nothing Mentally Ill about this man, that it's a group phenomenon, that the group begins to live in a kind of fantasy world. In this case, they believed that Armageddon was imminent and that they needed to be prepared to fight the forces of evil, that God needed their assistance. And I got so curious that even though I am utterly untrained to conduct a project like this, I just couldn't stop. And I went from there. I spent quite a bit of time in Pakistan. I'm told I'm the best known American among the Mujahideen, which used to be sort of amusing and no longer feels so amusing. I'm not going back there anytime soon. I went also to Palestine. I tried to speak with Hamas in Jordan, but when they heard my name, they refused to speak with me. I actually was invited by the head of the Special Forces in Jordan to go and visit terrorists in prisons. And he took me to a lot of prisons, and I made a lot of murders, but that was it. Sometimes my attempts to meet with terrorists did not pan out. But I was able to take a bus straight into Palestine and stayed there with a family where most family members were doctors, and it became very easy to make contact with Dr. Ramteesi, who was a political leader of Hamas, was briefly the leader of Hamas and Abu Sanab, who was also a leader. Both of them now, killed by the Israelis, and a number of others from there. I went to Lebanon, met with Hezbollah. I spent some time in India talking with Bajrang Dal and other members of the extremist Sangh Parivar, the family of extremist Hindu groups. I was in Indonesia. Actually, I was in Indonesia in the summer of 2001, and came back and was certain something bad was about to happen. I felt that it felt like a very explosive situation to me, and as was the case when I came back from Pakistan the first time, my colleagues who were experts on Indonesia or on Pakistan thought, well, this woman sees a terrorist under every rock. They really thought that I had a perverted, distorted view because I really thought that terrorism was on the rise. And, of course, it's a symptom of how we often don't see what's coming, even if it, I believe, is really right in front of us. If we go and look, you can't figure it out by reading the New York Times. I talked with quite a few of the members of Bin Laden's International Islamic Front. These Pakistani Jihadi groups are now, some of them are quite well-known. Many of you have probably heard of Lashgari Taiba. But at the time I went to see them, they weren't known, and indeed they were largely ignored by the U.S. government, which was focused mainly on the groups in the Middle East. I did, as I say, meet with Hezbollah Hamas, the Jewish underground, which is no longer really existing, Jewish terrorist group. That group introduced me to individuals that are active today in the violent settler movement. This is, I'm sorry, I'm not used to doing this this way. I usually have a computer in front of me. Why can't I have a computer in front of me? Is there any reason? This is a picture. It's quite unusual that I was able to take some pictures, but this man who called himself a Sufi leader is in charge of a group that is interested in taking down the Lashgari regime. He considered himself to be such a master at meditation that he told me that while his men were out meditating, he could have lunch with me and be meditating while we had lunch. People always ask me how I found the individuals I talked to. It was actually relatively easy, and I should say that with the exception of Hamas leaders in Jordan, the problem was more getting these individuals to be quiet than it was getting them to talk. In the United States, I found who I wanted to talk to in the phone book. I met with people involved in the doctor-killer movement, people who kill abortion doctors and personnel at clinics. They have a big public banquet fundraising event. You can go even if you tell them you want to write a book about them if they approve. And these individuals, even if you are taking notes and are very clear about exactly what you're doing, who's paying for it and so on, stay the most remarkable things. I sometimes made my way through local reporters in Pakistan. I was initially going to work through Ahmed Rashid, who's very famous. I'm sure many of you have heard of him. He's written quite a bit about the Taliban in Central Asia. And he introduced me to an extremist religious party, Jama'at Islami in Pakistan, quite benign, compared with the groups I ultimately ended up seeing. I think he thought an American woman would be satisfied meeting this extremist party. And I think he probably was afraid to show me anything worse. And I don't know, to be honest, exactly which of the individuals I talked to, he'd be willing to talk to himself. But what happened was the leader of Jama'at Islami was speaking outside a prison, and I thought, well, I'll just go listen to him. And while I was waiting for him, I met a reporter who worked for a pro-Jihadi newspaper who had never talked to an American, who had never seen a Jew. And I was such a piece of exotica for him. He really wanted to spend time with me. And that was great because Ahmed Rashid's mother, he found out that evening was dying, and he had to go to London that very evening, in fact. And I was taken up by this reporter who, his career had subsequently really became, he really began to specialize on the Mujahideen. It changed his life as well as mine. I'll take the next slide. This is Sheikh Fadlallah. He is the spiritual leader of Hezbollah. I didn't write about Hezbollah because I felt that I wasn't able to meet any real terrorists. I met political leaders and I met this spiritual leader. This is a man whom the CIA reportedly tried to have killed because of his involvement in the attack on the Marine headquarters and the hostage-taking. I see this as a very important photograph because it says something important about communication. I remember I'm supposed to talk about communication here. When I went to see this man, I had someone from Hezbollah, from probably the PR wing of Hezbollah, someone I found in the phone book, accompanying me. And he told me when he brought me after I took a lot of persistence for me to persuade him that I needed to see Sheikh Fadlallah, he told me at one point, you go up that stairway and I go up this one and I thought, now I've really done it. I thought this is one of the few times where I was absolutely petrified. Well, it turned out I had to go to be searched by women and they made me take off my watch and leave my bag, but they allowed me to bring in my camera. And this to me is so emblematic of the theatrical aspect of what we're talking about here. I was supposed to be very intimidated. If I were there to bomb Sheikh Fadlallah, clearly it would be a lot easier for me to bring my bomb in my camera than in my watch. And I often felt that there was a lot of posturing. Not that these aren't really scary people and sometimes truly evil people. It's just that there is an element of theater even in a situation like this. I'll take the next slide. Why did they speak to me? This is a question that I'm always asked. They were using me. No doubt about that. And I was using them and it was kind of a contest in that regard. Some of them, especially the Americans, were very, very lonely. And in fact, I occasionally call some of the individuals I've interviewed and the Americans that is, and I would say they're still very, very anxious to talk. One of the people I interviewed early on, I called after the anthrax letter bombing to ask him who he thought was the perpetrator. And he said, obviously, someone who worked in the U.S. government. Of course, they're a bit paranoid about the U.S. government, but he felt that the person who had had that quality of material would be someone who had worked in the U.S. government, which I found quite interesting, of course, especially now that it's become clear that that is the FBI's theory as well. I did speak with a couple of individuals who were on death row, one of them, both of them since executed, one of them had killed two abortion clinic personnel and one, a Pakistani national who had killed two CIA employees and wounded several others. And in these cases, they're very lonely and they wrote me letters. Mir Amal Khanzi initially refused to talk to me unless I paid him. I told him I couldn't pay him. Then he said he would talk to me only if I would donate money to his favorite charity and I told him I couldn't do that. Then he finally wrote me and said he wanted to talk to me and he hoped that I made so much money on my book that I would be able to drive a Mercedes. So he came around and then he kept writing me and invited me to Islam and so on. In the case of one of the neo-Nazis I talked to, I really felt it was about forgiveness. I felt that this is a man who was then out of jail. I think to some extent regretted his actions and I think the fact that I was Jewish was actually of interest to him. One of the most frightening terrorists, in fact the most frightening terrorist I ever talked to is an MIT trained chemist who had it in for what he called slimeballs and miscreants, otherwise known as IRS agents. He owed a lot of back taxes and he wanted to rid the world of slimeballs and miscreants and he came up with a scheme that would allow people to donate digital cash to those who correctly predict the death of a slimeball or miscreant. When the federal authority searched his home, they found that he had an immediate precursor of a chemical agent and that he had been experimenting with biological agents. This is a very scary guy, obsessed with chemicals, very, very smart. He talked to me, he also took a while to decide to talk to me, but he wanted me to go with him to his MIT reunion and since we both went to MIT, that was a new one for me. Luckily, as far as I'm concerned, he was very soon after his release he was incarcerated again because he was stalking slimeballs and miscreants immediately upon his release. I was relieved because he started accusing me of working for the Kennedy School for protecting the government. They talked to me because they wanted their grievances to get attention and I knew that and I thought their grievances should get attention and I understood that they were going to describe their grievances in their way, maybe distorted, whatever. I thought that it was very important for us to understand the story as they see it and especially the story as they tell it to their followers. I was definitely part of their public relations effort. After I testified, after September 11th, one Jihadi group published my testimony. They really clearly took an interest in me and I am told that they think that for the most part I was fair. As much as I could, I allowed my interviewees to read over my notes, the transcript, how I wrote about them, and so on. They sometimes made corrections. In one case I had to put that the group denied any connection whatsoever with al-Qaeda. I put that in a footnote, no problem. They also clearly talked to me in some cases because they felt neglected, as I said, by the US government. They were CIA. Over time the Pakistani Jihadi groups came to consider the possibility that I actually was who I said I was. But they wanted to get a message to the US government, and that was exciting for them. I don't think I would have been able to do this if I were a man. I did exactly what Daniel Pearl did. I think being a woman was a big part of why I managed to succeed. There are many, many differences that I investigated quite dramatic differences. The MIT trained chemist would have liked to run a big organization, but he was running a virtual network. He had an internet community. Hezbollah is a gigantic organization with many wings, a military wing, a political wing, a social welfare wing, and a terrorist wing, which is all but unknown, by the way, today in Lebanon. It's not at all an important part of what Hezbollah is, Hezbollah in Lebanon. Hezbollah is the clean political party widely admired not only by Sunnis, but also by Christians. I looked across religions. Those are obvious differences. The grievances were generally a mixture of political, economic, and religious grievances all quite different. I will tell you a little bit about some of the similarities that I noted. In general, I think we can say that terrorist organizations exist on a continuum in terms of their shape between the terrorist army, what I call a command or cadre organization, which is similar to many organizations that we know. It's a bureaucracy. Centralized functions, something would look very much like something Weber thought was a good way to get things done. There would perhaps be a PR department, advertising dream interpretation department, legitimate businesses, media department, communication began, military, different military functions, different specializations, cannon fodder, skilled personnel, and so on. At the other extreme is the leaderless resistance network, that's the term used by right wing extremists, where the leader is not a commander at all. He is an inspirational leader, he's not providing money, he's not providing training, he's not providing weapons, there are no separate departments. Individuals are encouraged to take action on their own or form their own cells, acquire their own weapons and so on. In the United States was developed in order to evade law enforcement detection. And the essay on leaderless resistance, according to a colleague of mine who saw it, has been picked up by a website affiliated with Al Qaeda. The tactics they use, obviously quite different, but one thing they generally have in common is the use of the internet. It's a very, very important aspect of fundraising, public relations, advertising the mission and recruitment. And indeed the leader, the now dead leader of the National Alliance, the Neo-Nazi group told me that he gets a much more sophisticated recruit, he got a much more sophisticated recruit by recruiting on the internet than through traditional means. And this is true for all these organizations. Lasgar Jihad in Indonesia was clearly trying to recruit people with technical backgrounds extremely sophisticated website that were very successful at fundraising on the web. The grievances are in almost every case quite compelling and that may be surprising for you to hear. Especially, I have to say for the groups in the Islamic world. It's their actions that we condemn and we should not be confused about that. If you sit down and talk to these people you can follow the moral logic, actually this is true for me in any case even with regard to those who kill abortion clinic personnel. You can follow the moral logic that leads them to do what they do. You can understand their grievance. You can even sympathize with grievance even if you think that their actions are utterly wrong that violate every religious tradition. We need to understand that. We should not be confused that because we don't like their actions that we don't need to listen to their complaint. Also they have, I would say some similarities in the technology of mobilization. Could I have the next slide? It's quite common for these groups to oppose globalization. They have different ways of talking about it. One Hezbollah, a member described globalization as McDonaldization. A Hamas member told me globalization is bad for the human being. It's bad for local cultures. It's bad for all of us, all of our psychologies. A leader of Jamat Ul Mujahideen Ajmal Khadri told me he'd read Sam Huntington. He believes in a clash of civilizations globalization i.e. Americanization versus Islam and he is certain that the Islamic civilization will win because the west is rotting from within. They describe international institutions. Al-Qaeda for example, describes international institutions. The IMF the World Bank, the UN as instruments of American hegemony and the right wing extremists describe these institutions as literal manifestations of the antichrist. But both groups are fighting what they see as the new world order and when I've written about this I get letters from right wing extremists complaining that this is their enemy the new world order. How could I say that Al-Qaeda is fighting the new world order? But Al-Qaeda talks about the new world order. From the perspective of the terrorist this is a kind of collective action problem and they understand that, the leaders understand that they know that they need to provide incentives to get people to contribute to a purported public good and they do. And I want to tell you a little bit about what those rewards are. I'll take the next slide. There are material rewards, some of which you know about. There is for example in Palestine cut rate housing reduced rent. There are schools that are provided and this is something terrorist groups often provide when the government is not able to provide social services and they step in where the government is failing to do its job. They provide training, training that presumably could be used for other kinds of jobs in the future. In some cases, in poor countries salaries are a very important part of why terrorists do what they do for managers and that would actually be a regular job. It's not exactly a selective incentive. There are also bonuses for successful operations and I discovered those bonuses are not just for success on the battlefield but can also be for fundraising success and so on. And there are bonuses for donors. Major industrialists in Pakistan would be able to borrow Mujahideen when they need to show a force. This is a family again, I wish I had a lot more pictures but the fact that is remarkable. This is a family that was able to move from a mud hut into the cement house that you see. I was given a tour this is in Pakistan. I was given a tour by a charitable organization in NGO that really had no idea that I might be horrified by what they were showing me. The oldest boy in this family had donated his life to the Jihad. Two middle boys working for the father and that young boy there was prepared to donate his life. I asked him what he wanted to do when he grew up and sure enough he wanted to be a Mujahideen. I'll take the next one. There are also spiritual rewards. The most important thing is that it's critically important for the leader to persuade the follower that what he or she is doing is serving God even though it is a violation of mainstream interpretations of every religious tradition as well as everything his or her mother taught him or her about proper behavior deliberately targeting innocent non-combatants is not acceptable. Yet the leader must persuade the follower that emergency conditions obtain in a kind of walls or sense. Persuade the follower that the apocalypse is near for millenarian cults have dreams. It's useful to have dreams under those circumstances. The 72 Virgins earlier today Scott said he didn't think the virgins played much of a role. We know that some failed suicide bombers have been caught with tissue on their genitals suggesting that they took this fairly seriously. It is important of course to realize that there are, well have been involved in suicide bombing for quite some time in the Tamil Tigers and the Kurdish Worker Party but that they are now involved in suicide operations on behalf of groups purporting to promote Islamist causes. I see emotional rewards as the most important aspect of what the terrorist leader has to offer followers. We know that some individuals join these groups because they believe it's an adventure. They, we know that for example that Khartou said he joined al-Qaeda because he was training to be a chef and he thought it would be a lark. He thought it would be an adventure to go to Afghanistan. An operative for Har-Kurtl Mujahideen that I interviewed was practically vibrating. He was so excited about the work he was doing. I met him in the Pearl Continental Hotel in Lahore and like any other teenager he wanted to eat a lot of cookies and when I went back every time I would go back the way they would want to know what was going on with my book having served me and my interlocutor so many cookies. This was a boy who was burning a lot of calories and I almost had the feeling that it was almost like an outward bound experience and by the way there is of course a very important political grievance and I'm, that's obvious you know about that I'm focusing on the things that might be less obvious. The, many individuals consider what they do to be glamorous I think this new identity is a critically important reason the most important reason the idea that the leader strengthens a feeling of humiliation I'll take the next slide and is able to offer the follower a new identity with honor. I came back from this work and said to my colleagues I think humiliation is it and I was quite intrigued to discover that James Gilligan who is a colleague had been working with murderers who had been members of gang and he had exactly the same conclusion as a result of his interviews that what counted for these young men is that they felt they'd been dissed I think it's very important and the humiliation can be at a very personal level or it can be at a civilizational level and since humiliation is a feeling it's not something that we can judge objectively let me just give you a couple of examples the second in command of the covenant of the sword in the arm of the lord this identity Christian that I told you I thought was seeking forgiveness when he spoke to me it told me that he had been sickly as a child he had bronchitis he had been forced to take the girls gym class and the first time he felt strong was when he was living on an arm compound surrounded by arm men the leader and founder of the Muslim Jambas force in Kashmir told me he founded his group because of the story he heard about the humiliation of Islamic civilization at the hands of the west al-Qaeda documents make clear as I will hear he's putative autobiography makes clear that humiliation is a big part of why they're doing what they do and the political reasons that they focus on in their public missives the claim is that the west is deliberately out to humiliate the Islamic world and that violence is a kind of cleansing force it sounds so remarkably similar to Fanon this idea that we need to create a new identity that we need to that is separate from our relationship with the colonialists in this case the globalists I'll take the next slide I want to now turn to what I see as possible risk factors clearly the Bush administration has identified weak and failing states as a risk factor I think it's partly a risk factor because of when the state does not provide the social services that people need can really make inroads by providing schooling, housing, hospitals and so on that's part of it also festering conflict the Israel-Palestine conflict is not only a risk factor there but I think it's an important risk factor for the entire world it's so important symbolically and such so useful to terrorists to prove that the United States is more than standard but this is not the only conflict Chechnya, Kashmir these are clearly risk factors for terrorism not only in Iraq not only the local conflict but also the terrorists who are trained in those conflicts and will move on to others it seems that a high male to female ratio may be a risk factor for internal war or violence even though women are also terrorists radical madrasas are a risk factor for those who join at the lower levels Pakistani jihadi groups which have become more important now that they are recruiting for Iraq and are members of Bin Laden's international Islamic front I think there are some gateway organizations that can be identified organizations that are whose goal is to promote better human beings to create better Muslims that are used by terrorist organizations to recruit and those include Tablighi Jamat Hisbo Terrier I think that antipathy to the United States is a risk factor now clearly there's antipathy to the United States growing in Canada and the UK and just about everywhere and so maybe when these studies I'm putting you that as hypotheses maybe when people hear I know you guys are really good at this do the more thorough studies that one will turn out not to be a risk factor I don't know youth bulges of course have been identified as a risk factor we will be doing some of this work at Harvard to try to determine exactly how important that is the findings even the data are at this point quite controversial I'll take the next slide the extremist madrasas most madrasas are not extremist I need to say that those that I have visited I only look at extremist ones they are they take credit Hakania takes credit for having created the Taliban I don't know how important they are globally in terms of the percentage of terrorists who have gone to them I do think that it's something that shouldn't continue it's not good for local societies or for the world when children are not prepared to function in modern societies and are trained to hate it's important to realize that many of the teachers even those who claim to be teaching a broader curriculum are I mean one in particular that I met who said he was teaching mathematics he was able to add 5 plus 7 but couldn't multiply them I'll take the next slide this is a picture of a madrasa I'll take the next slide again a madrasa this is the leader of a very extreme madrasa which is not in the northwest frontier province it's not in Bluestown it's in Lahore major city this man who considers himself to be a peer a mystic very proudly showed me let me interview any of his students almost everyone of whom said he wanted to be a mujahed almost everyone of whom said he hated America when I asked him why he said everyone does that was what I heard again and again but there were two students who did not say that they wanted to be mujahedin and much to my astonishment this chancellor as he called himself was very embarrassed not by the ones who said they wanted to be mujahedin but those who said they didn't and told me that they had recently arrived and that he was sure they would change their mind I actually think I've been going on a bit too long can we skip to the end well okay I think what we're doing right clearly we had to take out al-Qaeda's headquarters in Afghanistan it was very important the law enforcement intelligence cooperation we're seeing today is truly extraordinary and very exciting but it's more important it seems to me to look at what we're doing wrong I'm very troubled by how the war on terrorism is going and I think the main problem is that we're really focusing on the stock of terrorists we're focusing on those that we can take out with military action or can incarcerate rather than paying attention to why people join these organizations and I think that Rumsfeld's question are the radical clerics creating new terrorists more quickly than we can take out the current ones is really the key question I think the answer to that question is that yes they probably are I'm actually going to stop right here because I want to have time for questions that would be if there's one piece of advice I have for those who would propose to protect us it is that we need to think a lot more about the flow of new terrorists than stock just as going to take questions and I'm going to ask that you repeat the questions so we have them on through the microphone as well thanks I'll let you call on people yes you're always going to have the recruits at least in the case of Bin Laden he's listed six things very explicit nobody's talking about it but as a matter of fact some people say well addressing grievance is rewarding terrorists so you can't do it well I think Bin Laden is actually a very good example yes I think that when the grievance is something that we think should be addressed then we should address it and I think that our the way we have treated the Israeli-Palestinian situation has been quite counter to our national security interest and by the way counter to Israel's national security interest as well and so I think our policy should be changed but not because they tell us to Bin Laden, what have his grievances been initially his goal was to force the Soviet side of Afghanistan will he finish that he said I need a new mission he had this large army he needed new grievance he said that and Saddam Hussein helped him out by invading Kuwait he also said that his main grievance was US troops in Saudi Arabia well those troops are essentially gone we have done that because it's in our national security interest not because he told us to do it and yet he keeps finding new grievances so yes I do think we must pay attention to the grievance when it is in our interest to address the grievance or for humanitarian reasons we feel that we should if it's the right thing to do for whatever reason we do it but we shouldn't imagine that that will end terrorism because some organizations like any other organization they find new missions when the first one is achieved yes I forgot to repeat the question but I guess it was clear do you think that these organizations are dynamic enough such that a bureaucratic one that has a leader, sort of a militaristic leader that if the leaders were taken out to convert to a leaderless organization or is there something particular in the makeup of people who are in these sort of organizations where they're encouraged to act on their own is there something different between them and the bureaucratic organizations that's a very good question I think we see oh sorry is there something about the sort of person who is involved in a commander cadre organization where the leader is a boss who by the way might kill operatives if they disobey him there are also negative incentives for compliance is that person different from the kind of person who would join a virtual network or a leaderless resistance organization and is it possible to convert a terrorist army into a leaderless resistance network or virtual network I think it's possible to combine the two I don't know really how to answer your question I never really thought about it I imagine that over time some people probably can run their own cells but I think we're seeing this happening to a large extent with the al-Qaeda movement we still see within this large virtual network hierarchical organizations but at the superstructure it really is a kind of virtual network where we see individuals and groups claiming that they're taking action on behalf of al-Qaeda or the al-Qaeda movement even in some cases if they've never been trained are certainly not formal members of al-Qaeda we also know that on the internet there is a deliberate attempt to encourage individuals to form their own cells so I think that's happening at a kind of superstructure whether individuals you know the cannon fodder that are brought in whether they I don't really know the answer to that I mean I think just like armies the terrorist organization needs many different types of individuals for different types of jobs and they recruit different types of individuals and if they need people who are capable of forming their own cells I think they find ways to recruit them as well yes over here well the definition of terrorism of course is very difficult and yes my definition does everyone should accept my definition but not everyone has my definition focuses on a type of violence as opposed to a perpetrator it seems to me if we limit this type of action to a particular type of perpetrator we're in danger of using the word as an epithet now the downside to using terrorism to applying the word to states is that there are also terms for states that have great laws of war and but I think it's important for us to focus on the action and the action is deliberately targeting innocent non-combatants with the aim of influencing them I actually went to the National Archives to try to figure out exactly what to determine how much this psychological impact on a target population was important to the targeters and I think it was quite important and so I think it definitely is terrorism yes, your question the question is I wanted to enter the organization and cause it to fracture, how would we do it well one thing we would have to do is pay more attention to penetrating organizations than to the list of al-Qaeda members that have been captured or killed every al-Qaeda member that is captured or killed as far as I'm concerned we're not doing a good job of course it has to be done but we would be much happier if the more individuals that can be turned it's hard no question but that is what I think we should be aiming to do and it's very important that we never stoop to publicizing captures as we may have done according to the Pakistani government in order to look like we are winning the war on terrorism when those captures when there are people who are actually working for us so that would be one important element question back there what why did I not interview European terrorist organizations which one do you have in mind okay I wanted to work on terrorists who claim that they're doing what they do in the name of God so that was the first issue the other is that I wanted to talk only to male chauvinist terrorists because I thought it was safer and that is actually the reason why even though I had access to IRA I decided it was not going to be a good idea question here this is a good example of why we can't just say let's understand our grievances and address their grievances the question is if globalization is a major grievance and if our job should be and I don't believe it is if our job should be to respond to the grievance what are we going to do about that and I think this is a good example of why we shouldn't assume that our job is to respond to the grievance our job is to understand the grievance and when it is in our interest to address the grievance for whatever reason then we should or when we can the opposition to globalization I think is partly the threat to local cultures that's something we can do something about it's partly the perception that the benefits of globalization are spreading unevenly I think that's something we can do something about and I think Dean Blank knows a lot more about that than I do the economists who are not entirely in favor of globalization seem to have a mixed reputation especially with our president that is our Harvard president who is the only president that counts especially these days in Cambridge but I think that certainly there is the perception that there is an uneven benefits to globalization those are things I think that we need to think about the way economic crises can be contagious can we stop globalization no do we want to stop globalization no do we want to think about these issues that I've just mentioned I think we certainly do do we want to reassure as much as we can and protect national cultures if we can I think we probably certainly we want to reassure and I don't think it should be our aim to destroy local cultures and I don't think it is our aim and I think we can make that clear yes here the question is is religious terrorism on the rise in the contemporary age the data suggests that religious terrorism is in fashion right now those data that were collected by WAN suggests that the data are getting better and better when I started this project there was no point trying to use data collected by governments or private entities because the data were so bad but I think people are spending more money on it Alan Kruger will go after this CIA if it makes mistakes and how it publicizes its data presents its data in its calculations and this is a very good thing so I'm not really sure but it certainly seems according to the data available now that yes religious terrorism has increased question here let me start out a corollary of what I think you've said could it be that some of the human reactions to which terrorism is a response comes from the fact that some groups pursue policies and grievances that no one will respond to because they're irrational such as stopping globalization the destruction of Israel and a number of other things I'm glad that you as you did before because for a while there was the indication in the room that one can follow and perhaps sympathize with the causes that they pursue it's only the terrorism that's bad there is a kind of chemistry there I actually don't really think there is necessarily a let me see the question is whether there is some kind of correlation between evil means and irrational ends that terrorists who use evil means that maybe the speaker was concerned that I might be buying into the grievance perhaps too much that by saying that we can follow the moral logic have I characterized your comment those with irrational objectives people the accumulation comes from the world dissing an irrational cause I don't think that's right I think that I don't think that there's anything irrational about trying to stop abortion for example I I think it's irrational to kill doctors but I don't think that we can prove that quote, insolment doesn't begin at conception it's not if you believe that insolment begins at conception then abortion is murder and I can't I don't see how I can claim irrational to oppose abortion I think it's wrong and irrational frankly to kill doctors in order to achieve that objective and in almost every case you can really there is a legitimate grievance I think opposing globalization there's nothing illegitimate it may be unachievable but the people who oppose globalization tend to have a reason sometimes their reasons are quite mixed confused but if you talk to them long enough you can sort of tease out something that makes sense I hope I answered the question yes the terrorists they have a understanding that they have a sense of history that there's success attached to this strategy for addressing that grievance the question is whether terrorists have a sense of history and whether they believe they will be successful or even care about whether they'll be successful certainly al-Qaeda believes that it was successful enforcing the Soviets out of Afghanistan forgetting the role of the CIA and the Saudis and so on they think that they brought a superpower to its knees and that history as they interpret it is very important to them and they talk about it quite a bit but at the same time I think it's a very astute question because I think that groups and individuals within groups get more or less addicted that's a word that has come up a lot in my interviews to a holy war when organizations and they stick with that organization even if most of their objectives have already been obtained as I think we can say in regard to and arguably in regard to the IRA and the IRA now I think has gone into essentially criminal activities selling its expertise to the highest bidder and I think that's something we need to be aware of what is happening now in Sri Lanka the possibility that those very very skilled terrorists might sell their expertise to the highest bidders as the peace process goes forward One more question and I'll take that one over there Yes The question is The question is The question is I think we should respond to hate groups and the student has mentioned his buttarir which I think has been involved in terrorism in Palestine and to some extent in Central Asia but many people believe it was pushed into that role as a result of extremely harsh policies against it His buttarir is a very very very interesting group to study in your communications class in particular because of their activity on the internet I think that I guess I can't say I'm not a lawyer and I'm not a human rights activist while clearly we it's horrifying how the government has responded to that group and sort of pushed it into the arms of IMU and arguably even Al Qaeda I don't feel that that's my area of expertise but what I can say is that it's a very interesting group to watch not in Central Asia but on the internet it's what it's doing in the United Kingdom it is recruiting for the caliphate you can actually see who is already joined taking jobs in the regime to come and they're extremely well educated people exactly the kind of people that you would want in your cabinet if you wanted to run a caliphate I'll stop there three thank yous I want to start by thanking Jessica Stern for being here and for sharing all of her knowledge and her insights with us and I have a blue and gold bag together which has a momentum of the occasion I thank you for being here I very much want to thank the Rosenthal family for everyone who is here today and for all of their friends as well who've created this memorial for Josh which in turn I hope provides us with an ongoing wonderful and valuable opportunity to deepen our understanding to educate ourselves about these international issues so thank you Marilyn and finally I want to thank all of you for being with us today and for your interest in Ford School activities those of you who are not faculty or students if you would like to be on our regular internet or mailing list to know about other events that are coming up in the Ford School there are cards just outside the door and you can fill one out for us and we'll make sure that you're informed and lastly I want to invite you all to a reception, stay around, talk over the issues enjoy a little bit of food and refreshment just outside here in the lobby thank you all, bye bye