Analyzing terrorist motivations through profiling and existing theories

¶ … Terrorist Mind:

Terrorism is an issue that has existed throughout the history of mankind, but experienced significant changes in the nature and degree of threats in the past few decades due to globalization and technological advancements. The increase of the threat of terrorism has contributed to the need to develop effective measures to lessen the occurrence and impact of such threats. One of the major measures used to help deal with the threat of terrorism is analyzing the terrorist mind because terrorism is basically a psychological act involving the use of violence or threat of violence. The psychological act is fuel by various factors including ideological differences and motivational issues.

While analyzing the terrorist mind is an important part to help fight terrorism, it is very ambivalent, which results in concerns whether it's necessary to dedicate time and resources to profile and predict terrorist motivations. The dedication of time and resources to predict and profile terrorist motivations is a necessary process because of the psychological nature of terrorism. The necessity of profiling and predicting terrorist motivations despite ambivalence in analyzing terrorist mind is associated with the fact that the most appropriate weapon against terrorism is good intelligence. Profiling and predicting terrorist motivations provide value-added intelligence to fight terrorism since it separates signals from noise (O'Connor, 2013). Therefore, time and resources should be dedicated to this process because of its likelihood to be an effective counter-terrorism measure.

The tendency to neglect profiling and predicting terrorist motivations result in wastage of resources and provokes a knee-jerk reaction. The efficiency of this process is also attributed to its ability to enable investigators to understand the actual cause or reasons for terrorism rather than assuming that all terrorist attacks are motivated by the same cause.

Effective Theories of Analyzing the Mind of the Terrorist:

Theories of terrorism vary significantly in the degree with which they consider terrorists and the role of psychological differences between terrorists. The differences in focus have contributed to the development of varying conceptual frameworks in terrorism. There are various theories of analyzing the mind of the terrorist such as psychological theories, psychopathological theory, rational choice theory, sociological theories, and psychological theories. Since these theories provide varying explanations and analysis of the mind of the terrorist, some of them are more effective than others.

One of the most effective theories of analyzing the mind of the terrorist is the rational choice theory that is used when the terrorist does not meet the diagnostic criteria for a major mental illness or sociopathy (Victoroff, 2005, p.14). As a result, the theory is based on the assumption that terrorist action and behavior originates from a rational, conscious, and calculated decision. The effectiveness of the theory originates from its combination of top-down approaches with bottom-up approaches i.e. It considers policy and personal behavioral responses to the policy.