Posted on 03/28/2004 9:35:07 AM PST by dennisw
Insanity and terrorism New insights show terrorists are young, with little education or money. And many suffer from mental illness
Stewart Bell National Post
March 27, 2004
The terrorists who blew up four packed commuter trains in Madrid on the morning of March 11 must have marvelled at their success. With 10 bombs, triggered with cellphones, they killed about 190 people and injured another 1,750.
But how could they do it?
What kind of person can coldly plan a terrorist attack, knowing it will result in the murder of hundreds of fellow human beings? What kind of person can condemn so many innocent civilians to horrible sudden death? Who becomes a terrorist and why?
Answers to that question have been debated for many years now but new insights into the terrorist mindset -- some of them controversial -- are now emerging from research on the hundreds of terrorists captured since Sept. 11, 2001.
The conclusion: The average terrorist is young, a family outcast with little formal education or money who was raised in a region of economic and political instability. And, says a U.S. Army expert familiar with the research, many are mentally ill.
"It is surprising the number of Axis I psychological disorders we have among that population," Colonel Larry James, chief psychologist at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., said in a recent talk to Ontario psychologists in Toronto.
(The disorders classified as Axis I in the psychologists' bible, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, include most of the major mental disorders: anxiety, depression, schizophrenia and phobias.)
Last week, Jack Straw, the British Foreign Secretary, took a similar view when he described the men behind the current wave of terrorism as adherents of a "maniac" fundamentalism who suffer from a "cholera of the mind."
Such statements are controversial among both mental health and counter-terrorism experts. Previous studies have generally concluded mental illness was not a factor in determining who becomes a terrorist. Blind commitment to the cause, not a mental defect, drives terrorists, the argument goes; only Hollywood terrorists are crazy.
"Contrary to the stereotype that the terrorist is a psychopath or otherwise mentally disturbed, the terrorist is actually quite sane, although deluded by an ideological or religious way of viewing the world," said a landmark 1999 Library of Congress study, The Sociology and Psychology of Terrorism.
But that was before the war on terrorism. In particular, it was before hundreds of terrorists were captured and taken to places such as Guantanamo Bay, giving experts a rare chance to collect psychological data on a large pool of subjects and to develop a profile of what makes them tick.
"Mental illness is a factor," Col. James said in an interview. But the ones who are mentally ill are not the likes of Osama bin Laden, the late Sheikh Ahmed Yassin of Hamas or Shoko Asahara of Aum Shinrikyo, the Japanese cult that attacked the Tokyo subway with nerve gas. It is the low-level flunkies attracted to them.
"The leaders or the mastermind figures may or may not have mental illness, but again among the foot soldiers, that's where you'll see more of the psychiatric types of problems."
Col. James believes the reason why psychological disorders have not before been widely detected in terrorists is that the people testing them have not asked the right questions. "We need a new way of conceptualizing these men and women, because the categories we have, they don't fit neatly into."
The thinking that drives al-Qaeda -- that Westerners are devils and that killing them is serving God -- in itself should raise questions about the sanity of its adherents, he says. "That begs the question: Is that a normal healthy thought process?"
Radical Islamic terrorists might breeze through a standard psych test, he says, but they would surely fail what he called the New York City Taxi Driver Test: Even a cabbie with no formal training could tell that an al-Qaeda member was just "not right."
Psychologists have long argued that some high-ranking terrorists may be psychopaths or have personality disorders, while those in lower-level positions such as suicide bombers are more likely to have mental deficiencies or depression, making them easier to manipulate.
But are most terrorists mentally ill?
"Yes and no," says Steven Stein, CEO of Multi-Health Systems and a Toronto psychologist who specializes in the field. "While some terrorists may have mental health problems, I don't think it is a basic cause of terrorism.
"There are millions of people worldwide with mental health problems and only a small percentage of them are violent. Much more pervasive among terrorists is being indoctrinated in a culture of hatred. There are much stronger links between hatred and terrorism than any particular mental illness."
The Library of Congress study concluded potential recruits who showed signs of mental illness tended to be weeded out by terrorist groups because they were considered a liability: "Terrorist groups need members whose behaviour appears to be normal and who would not arouse suspicion."
But Col. James maintains mental health does seem to determine who becomes a terrorist, although it is not the only factor, just one of many. In an interview, he said he was not permitted to talk about specific cases (he was asked about the only Canadian at Guantanamo Bay, Omar Khadr) or about Guantanamo Bay but he gave his general profile of who becomes a terrorist and why.
Aside from mental illness, terrorists tend to have a low level of education, which makes it easier to indoctrinate and manipulate them, he says. "A large number of them are functionally illiterate," he says.
"The average foot-soldier terrorist is not a rocket scientist. That's a factual statement. I'm not talking about the Osama bin Ladens and the guys who are chemical engineers and have masters degrees and come from tremendously well-educated families.
"That may be one of the mastermind-type people behind it, but the person who gets on the train or the bus ... with a bomb strapped to their back typically doesn't have a PhD."
Family dynamics also play a role, he says. "The folks that are looking for a sense of belongingness, family outcasts.... This person tends to be the black sheep of the family and really doesn't connect well with the rest of the family.
"If you look at Osama bin Laden, same thing. If you look at his mother and father, he was born to an intact family, very wealthy, very well-educated but for whatever reason ... he's the one family outcast, long before he got involved in al-Qaeda. So these folks will go out and seek out other organizations, and they are ripe psychologically."
Then there is economic status.
"The average terrorist really is fairly poor and doesn't have a stable job or goes from job to job ... and so here comes an organization that's willing to take them in, feed them, clothe them, educate them and, in their interpretation of the Koran, make them a soldier for the cause and pay them some nominal wages."
Indeed, some terrorists are "soldier-of-fortune-mercenary" types, he says. "These are the more sociopathic-type characters.
"'Hey man, there's a fight and you're willing to pay for it. Sign me up, brother, I'm with you.'"
Perhaps least surprising is the finding that terrorists tend to come from regions that are in economic and political upheaval, partly because governments lack the will or the resources to challenge terrorist groups that set up shop in such environments, he says.
These parts of the world have a plentiful supply of idle youths, who are the cannon fodder of terror. "It's more likely to see younger adults and children involved in this. Why? Because they're more vulnerable."
Up to a third of the combatants in Afghanistan were under 13 years of age, he says, and many were in the 9-15 range. "This was truly a different kind of war." Many of those boys were abducted and forced to fight, and a large number were sexually abused by the commanders at terrorist camps.
"When we look at a lot of these terrorist organizations, these boys meet the criteria of all the things I just laid out. Things are not going well in their family, they're typically not doing well in school, they're kind of social outcasts, they're looking for a place to belong, they're 13, 14, 15, so they don't have a way of supporting themselves."
Some researchers have documented how terrorists gradually become divorced from reality as they live underground to evade capture, making it possible for them to kill masses of people in the name of the cause of their leader or organization.
"This is a response to the crimes that you have caused in the world and specifically in Iraq and in Afghanistan. And there will be more, God willing," according to a videotaped statement released in the aftermath of the Madrid bombings.
"You love life and we love death."
Are these the words of sane men?
Not primary cause of terror but many terrorists are nut cases. Many are raving nut cases. Many are homicidal maniacs who love the taste of blood as surely as our homegrown murderer who sneaks into a farmhouse here and shoots to death a family of 6 . AKA blood lust.
It's more than some.
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