Journal of the Spanish Institute for Strategic Studies Núm. 13 / 2019 Revista del Instituto Español de Estudios Estratégicos n.º 13 - Año: 2019 - Págs.: 275 a 306 284 Mission The mission of an organization for a conventional business or for a terrorist one, defines the reason for the organization’s existence, along with the values that form the core of its foundation. It announces to the world and to its members, both exist-ing and potential, the actions, attitudes and behaviors that govern its march towards achieving its objectives. It pulls the entity together and provides guidance points in terms of conflict resolution and the strategies pursued by the leadership, with justifi-cations therein for the members to follow. ETA, for example, was founded in 1959 in opposition to the Franco regime, with the avowed mission of maintaining Basque au-tonomy and preserving Basque culture. The means of achieving the mission included using violence through the strategy of action-reaction-action6. The following table summarizes the various dimensions that underpin the mission of a terrorist organization, along with examples. Separatist ETA,LTTE Religious Radical AQI, ISIS, Hizbullah Supremacist Klu Klux Klan Socio-Economic model Extreme anti-abortion (AOG – Army of God), extreme anti-immigration (Klu Klux Klan), anti-capitalism (Anti Capitalist Action) etc. Table I – Mission of terrorist organizations. Poverty provides a key opportunity for terrorist organizations to mobilize the masses based on some illusory cause7. A more lethal brand of narrative develops when religion is at the core due to brainwashing and the capacity of such outfits to weed out those with low commitment to the cause8. A failed economy, allied with social deprivation of the masses, and wide stretches of comparatively lawless areas owing to corruption being rife in the zones, provides the organizations with a ready environment to ad-vance their goals. A popular term developed for this is the “Club Model”9 where the terrorist organization, for all intents and purposes, takes over the social environment, providing the populace with basic social necessities, carefully tying up the people in a web of organized subservience to further its own causes. The failure of governments in these instances, and in many cases, the issue of a civil war compounding the misery of 6 Tejerina, B. “Protest Cycle, Political Violence and Social Movements in the Basque Country”. Nations and Nationalism, 2001, no. 7(1), 39-57. 7 US Government Department of Defence. “Muslim Brotherhood (Al-Ikhwan) Encyclopedia: Islamist Extremism and Terrorism, Jihad and Sharia Law, Relationship to Hamas, Egyptian Uprising and the Ouster of Mubarak, Election of Mohamed Morsi”. Congress. 2012. 8 Shapiro, J. “The Terrorist’s Dilemma”. Princeton, New Jersey: Princetown University Press. 2013. 9 Berman, E., & Laitin. “Religion, terrorism and public goods: Testing the Club Model”. Journal of Public Economics. 2008.
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