As the dust settles on the September 2013 attack on the Westgate Mall in Nairobi, Kenyans, united in grief, wrestled with the nature of the deaths visited upon the 67 people who were just going about their business that fateful weekend.

But, what kind of person commits such acts? The economically desperate? Evil monsters?

The aftermath of terror has led many, especially on social media, to view members of Al Shabaab and other extremist groups as psychopaths or lunatics, who have lost touch with the “civilised world.”

On the face of it, these arguments only serve to minimise the political or social reasons that pushed the terrorists into action.
Attacking strategic installations like police stations in northern Kenya, public transportation in Nairobi or the two-day siege in Lamu County and its surrounding areas where more than 100 people were killed, reveals a level of sophistication not normally associated with psychopaths.

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There is a lot of detail that goes into planning a terrorist attack, something that is hardly a typical characteristic of in a mentally disturbed individual.

For decades, psychologists have studied the individual characteristics of terrorists to explain why people willingly engage in mass violence. One of the earliest studies on the psychology of terrorism shows no conclusive evidence that terrorists are mentally disturbed.

Research by psychiatrist W. Rasch, who interviewed a number of West German terrorists in 1974, and psychologist Ken Heskin, who studied the psychology of terrorism in Northern Ireland, found no evidence that terrorists are diagnosably psychotic.

However extreme their views are from society, there is a general consensus among psychologists that terrorist is quite sane. In any case, psychopaths tend to be uncontrollable and could be potentially dangerous to the terrorist group itself.

While it is not entirely impossible to have a few psychotic individuals within the ranks of terrorist groups, most mentally disturbed terrorists have tended to operate alone. An example of a “lone wolf terrorist” is Anders Breivik who, driven by his hatred for Muslims, set off a bomb in Oslo, Norway and then travelled to Utoya island and murdered 69 people, mostly teenagers.

In the US, Nidal Malik Hasan, who ironically was a US Army psychiatrist, opened fire and killed 13 people at Fort Hood military base. Both of these individuals were found to be psychotic.

According to a study by the US Library of Congress in 1999, attempts to explain terrorism in purely psychological terms “ignore the very real economic, political, and social factors that have always motivated radical activists”.

Rational individuals

Speaking to The EastAfrican, Anneli Botha, a researcher on terrorism, said there are no special psychological qualities that describe individuals or groups that resort to terrorism.

“In the research I’ve done, terrorists are actually very rational. They are not mindless people who just follow the stream. They are committed, not under the influence of any drugs, and they are strongly behind a they believe in,” said Botha, who works with the Pretoria-based Institute of Security Studies.

And this is where governments fail when designing counter-radicalisation strategies. Governments do not understand what is driving Al Shabaab and other terrorist groups in the region, Botha said.

On why young people who are of sane mind and sometimes even educated, join terrorist groups, researchers seem to agree that terrorism is political violence, and authorities can only develop proper responses if they understand the social, political and economic issues as well as an individual’s life history that push people into mass violence.

In Kenya, as a new study by Botha shows, a lot of factors push individuals with terrorism. High unemployment, which seems to be the main reason according to the government, has driven a number of youth into Al Shabaab. Very few though, according to this research, are recruited for financial reasons.

Others join for religious reasons because they feel the government’s perceived mistreatment of Muslims is endangering their community and they think they have a duty to protect their people.

Ms Botha warned that copy-pasting policies just because they were successful in Afghanistan, Iraq or Pakistan will not work.

“If we want to address this issue we must first understand these groups and what drives them so that we can develop effective counter-terrorism strategies,” Botha told The EastAfrican.

According to her, terrorist groups are diverse and even within Al Shabaab itself, the branch in Somalia is vastly different from the one in Kenya, and only by understanding this difference, can governments in the region effectively tackle terrorism using localised solutions.