Eli Berman - Radical, Religious, and Violent The New Economics of Terrorism

Radical, Religious, and Violent

The New Economics of Terrorism

Eli Berman

The MIT Press

Cambridge, Massachusetts

London, England

2009 Massachusetts Institute of Technology

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Berman, Eli.

Radical, religious, and violent : the new economics of terrorism / Eli Berman.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-262-02640-6 (hbk. : alk. paper)

1. TerrorismEconomic aspects. 2. TerrorismReligious aspects. I. Title.

HV6431.B478 2009

363.325dc22

2009014105

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Acknowledgments

Note to Readers

1 Why Are Religious Terrorists So Lethal?

Hezbollah

The Taliban

Hamas

The Lethality of Religious Radicals

What Motivates Terrorists? The Afterlife and Other Myths

Terrorist OrganizationsWhy So Few?

Internal Economies and Organizational Efficiency

Whats Coming?

2 The Defection Constraint

Origins of the Taliban

Trade Routes and Defection

Coordinated Assault

Terrorism and DefectionHamas

The Jewish UndergroundTerrorists Who Overreached

Hezbollah and Suicide Attacks

The Mahdi Army in Iraq

3 Sects, Prohibitions, and Mutual Aid: The Organizational Secrets of Religious Radicals

Prohibitions and Sacrificesthe Benign Puzzles

Where Are the Dads?

Mutual Aid

Prohibitions and Clubs

Fertility

Pronatalist Prohibitions

Radical Islam and Fertility

4 Sect, Subsidy, and Sacrifice

Subsidized Sacrifice

Madrassas

Subsidized Prohibitions and Fertility

How Many Radical Islamists?

Recap

5 The Hamas Model: Why Religious Radicals Are Such Effective Terrorists

The Hamas Model

Origins of the Model

Hamas

Social Service Provision by the Taliban, Hezbollah, and al-Sadr

Why Religious Radicals Are Such Lethal Terrorists

Terrorist Clubs

Evidence

When Terrorists Fail

Clubs and Violence without Religion

Gratuitous Cruelty

Objections

6 Why Suicide Attacks?

Rebels, Insurgents, and Terrorists

Suicide Attacks

Evidence

Coreligionists Are Soft Targets

Clubs

Alternative Explanations

The Future of Suicide Attacks?

7 Constructive Counterterrorism

How Terrorist Clubs Succeed

Constructive Counterterrorism

Whats Wrong with the Old-Fashioned Methods?

Where to Start?

The Malayan Precedent

8 Religious Radicals and Violence in the Modern World

Radical Christians, Benign and Violent

The Supernatural and Credibility

Markets and Denominations

Jewish and Muslim Denominations

Whats Wrong with Religion in Government? Competition and Pluralism

Not about Us

Whats Our Role?

Analytical Appendix

The Defection Constraint

Clubs, Loyalty, and Outside Options

Suicide Attacks vs. Hard Targets

Protecting Hard Targets by Improving Outside Options

Notes

References

Index

If you tell almost anyone that you study religion and terrorism, they typically have a few thoughts to share. I am grateful for most of those insights, but feel particularly obliged to the following people.

The soldiers and officers of the Golani Brigade taught me counterinsurgency many years ago. They are some of the most talented and impressive colleagues Ive ever worked with. Its a tribute to their training, bravery, and professionalismand to good luckthat I returned home unscathed; many of my comrades did not return at all.

When Ruth Klinov and I first started puzzling over ultra-Orthodox economics we received critical guidance from Menachem Friedman of Bar Ilan University, the worlds expert on the Israeli ultra-Orthodox community. Since then Ive drawn many times from his deep well of knowledge. Friedman has also let me accompany him as he conducted fieldwork and interviews in ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods of Jerusalem.

Several research assistants have cleverly managed data and contributed original ideas to this project over the years, including Liang Choon Wang, Lindsay Heger and Tiffany Chou of UC San Diego, who deserve special thanks.

My friend Susan Shirk and my agent, Jill Marsal, enthusiastically encouraged me to write a book accessible to a broad audience, even when I was just as happy to follow the safer path of writing academic articles. My editor, John Covell, and the staff of the MIT Press are responsible for keeping this project moving when I strayed from the chosen path. They also enforced high standards of production and guided the manuscript in the direction of accessibility. Any remaining obscure academic formulations are the result of my own stubbornness, not of any failure on their part.

David Bermanwho managed to complete an excellent book on ethical graphic design in the time it took me to revise a drafthas been a generous sibling rival, improving and accelerating my work.

Andrea Hill of the UC Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation, and Lindsay Heger of the UC San Diego Political Science Department, read patiently through the manuscript more times than I care to mention. They provided fresh pointers each time. Shier Berman provided critical insights on the writing of the first draft.

My colleagues at Boston University, Rice University, UC San Diego, and at the National Bureau of Economic Research have supported my forays into territory not usually considered economics with cheerful and constructive advice. Ive been fortunate to be surrounded by unusually clever and creative social scientists, but Im especially indebted to Kevin Lang and Roger Gordon, who have been generous mentors.

This book would not have been written (at least by me) were it not for the influence of two daring scholars who unfortunately are no longer with us. Yoram Ben-Porath of the Hebrew University, who taught me introductory economics and later mentored me, demonstrated to his students the broad landscape that economists can aspire to explore. The late Zvi Griliches, one of my dissertation advisors at Harvard, greeted my initial decision to study the economics of ultra-Orthodox Jews with his usual excited curiosity and perceptive questions; at our next meeting he produced a pile of relevant and excellent books from his own library, both fiction and nonfiction. I like to think that Ben-Porath and Griliches would have enjoyed reading this work.

My coauthors have selflessly shared their intellectual contributions, which pervade this book. Ive tried in the text to note the major contributions of Laurence Iannaccone, Ruth Klinov, David Laitin, and Ara Stepanyan. Id like to acknowledge that the aggregate mass of their minor contributions is also critical.

Any mistakes of omission or commission are of course my own.

My parents, Shirley and Shier Berman, have supported all my adventures, however far they have taken me from home.

There is only so much time. My remarkable wife Linda Oz and our two terrific children have been generous and patient with their affection as Ive taken time that was rightfully theirs to write this book. Im especially grateful to them for letting me work quietly, even when Ive secluded myself to write on weekends and family vacations.