Al-Qaeda Versus the War on Terror :A Study on Psychological and Economic Causal Factors
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Date
2014-06
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
Enquiring why terrorism occurs is an endeavour to identify the causes and a ‘root cause’
or at least ‘root causes’ of the phenomenon. More importantly, it is also about identifying
the causation or causal analysis, the way in which the cause-events or cause-state of
affairs are linked with one another and with the effect-event or effect-state of affair, i.e.
terrorism.
This research thesis, “Al Qaeda versus the War on Terror: A Study on Psychological and
Economic Causal Factors”, is a qualitative and descriptive analysis of the psychological
and economic causation of terrorism. The research aims at scrutinizing whether
psychological or economic causes can avoid the other from causing terrorism and
become the sole causes of terrorism by themselves, as it is claimed by primarily
1 economic or primarily psychological cause-causation. Plus, it aims at scrutinizing
whether temporal precedence or causal power matters more in the causation of
terrorism and whether economic and psychological factors apply their causal power to
yield terrorism on the geographic space or on the ’mind’ entity.
The research disagrees with primary-cause and chain of causes-causation. To assert that
psychological or economic factors are the sole causes of terrorism or that they first cause
one another and then cause terrorism based on temporal precedence is unnatural for two
reasons. Firstly, this delinks the emotionality and rationality, the purposiveness and
motivation as well as the need for material and non-material gains within a single causeagent
of terrorism (the individual terrorist or the group terrorist as unified by group
think and sense of belongingness to the group). Secondly, this disregards the fact that
psychological and economic factors can cause terrorism without being correlated or
related on the basis of temporal precedence, but on the basis of causal power. Therefore,
the central argument of this thesis is for simultaneous causation of terrorism by
psychological and economic factors applying their causal power on the single entity
(‘space’) of the mind within a point of time.
1 Key words: Causation, Chain of causes causation,
primarily economic causation, primarily psychological
causation, simultaneous Causation, Terrorism
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Keywords
Primarily Economic Causation, Simultaneous Causation, Chain of Causes Causation, Primarily Psychological Terrorism