Counter-terrorism

Terrorists are illegal combatants as they target civilians, do not wear recognizable uniforms, do not carry weapons openly, and do not act under an open declaration of war by a legitimate government.

Many have suggested ideas for what probably will be a multigenerational defense against terrorists who are not part of any nation-state or who are covertly supported by one. Each idea has its strengths, weaknesses, risks, and its consequences. The first decision is whether to pursue an offensive strategy as in World War II or to employ a defensive strategy aimed at containment as was done in the Cold War. The second decision is geostrategic—where to attack under the offensive strategy, or where to draw the line under the defensive strategy. Once made, these decisions in turn drive allocation and organization of resources between military and nonmilitary elements of national defense. The fifteen suggestions below vary considerably in their likely costs, effectiveness, unintended consequences, practicality, morality, and even sanity.

1. Eliminate terrorism’s “root causes,” several of which have been suggested. Some blame poverty. However, poverty is rampant in countries that have not produced international terrorists, while wealthy and even peaceful countries and towns can experience domestic terrorism.¹⁰ As noted above, al-Qaeda’s leaders and international operatives range from wealthy to upper middle class and usually are educated and multi-lingual.

2. Interfaith dialogues and organizations such as Search for the Common Ground draw idealistic members of societies together that are in ethnic conflict. They may create a few individual friendships across sectarian lines but have contributed nothing to solving the larger problems (Chapter 16).

3. Radio Free Europe contributed to victory in the Cold War. Establishing Internet sites with persuasive, youth-oriented websites presenting anti-jihadist (but not pro-American) messages could provide an alternative and attractive vision. Former Indonesian President Wahid (30 Dec 2005) has stressed the importance of developing a counterstrategy that could be delivered by Internet to correcting Salafist misinterpretations of Islam on such matters as the benefits of modernity, freedom of conscience, human dignity, Islamic traditions inimical to fundamentalism, and sources of local and national Islamic traditions and pride.

4. Some suggest negotiation, but the fundamental conditions for success do not exist with respect to terrorists (Chapter 17). There are conflicting but no common interests to motivate ending hostilities. Terrorists often propose negotiation not to reach agreement but to buy time. Their leaders often make but cannot or will not keep agreements or a more radical subordinate may ignore any agreement and form a new even more radical group.

5. A frequent suggestion is to treat terrorism as a crime and to rely on national police and courts to control the threat. The criminal justice system is designed primarily to arrest and punish after the fact rather than to prevent attacks. Civil libertarians oppose the surveillance necessary to prevent attacks. Striking the balance between security and liberty is a legitimate issue whenever a free country goes to war. Restrictions during World Wars I and II were extreme. The confinement of Japanese Americans is particularly controversial. The first effort to combat terrorism after the 9/11 attack was the Patriot Act, hastily passed, subsequently renewed, and undoubtedly in need of revision, although exactly how is less clear.

6. The more ambitious the terrorist cell, the more it needs money to carry out its plans and the more it needs to rely on the international banking system to do so. Transactions can be followed both to identify targets and to thwart plans by interrupting them or confiscating funds.

7. Another suggestion is a strong system of civil defense to protect targets from attack, presumably the main idea behind the new US Department of Homeland Security. However, there are too many ways to attack and too many targets at home and abroad for this to succeed by itself. Regardless of how many terrorists are thwarted, a persisting attack by all-but-invisible agents will find occasional cracks in any defense.

8. Calls for exile often come with simultaneous calls for trial by the International Criminal Court [ICC].¹¹ Unsurprisingly, that combination only convinces regime members to fight to the end, resulting in a prolonged war with even greater casualties. The ICC convicted former Liberian President Taylor of war crimes in 2012. Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic died during his trial. The ICC has brought war crimes charges against former Ivory Coast President Gbagbo, who is in custody, and Sudanese President al-Bashir, who is not.

Why not combine the threat of intervention with the promise of clemency and exile (Kaplan April 1992)? It could be attractive if ex-dictators could arrive anytime at a retirement home on some remote tropical island with all their ill-gotten gains, no questions asked, but never leave. Here at the Last Resort they would find safe, luxurious accommodations with the latest amenities at exorbitant rates. Those who ran out of money would become members of the resort staff, cleaning toilets, and washing dishes for more recent arrivals (although this feature would not be publicized). This would save lives at the cost of justice denied, and it would do little to prevent the ex-dictator’s cronies becoming equally bad or even worse successors. Unfortunately, the idea is satire. Then again....

9. Some advocate assassination,¹² although just as it is easier to say than do, it does not guarantee the successor will be any better, and sets a dangerous precedent and moral tone. Under President Obama, the US is withdrawing troops from the Middle East but turning to assassination by unmanned drones. Even worse is to destroy the families or neighborhoods in which each suicide bomber originates. Stealing the Black Stone from the Kaaba in Mecca¹³ and threatening to fire it into space in the event of a future attack cannot be taken seriously. The worst ideas of all, advocated only by crackpots, are “turning Mecca into glass” or “annihilating all Arabs”—in other words, genocide directed at innocent millions to destroy guilty thousands.

10. Some want to act only with United Nations approval. However, the UN is not the fair and neutral arbiter of international justice and morality these idealists imagine, and it has no way to enforce its decisions. Rather, it is a member organization consisting of governments acting in their own national interests.

Many condemned the US for “acting unilaterally” in its 2003 invasion of Iraq. How many countries does it take to make a response “multilateral?” The US coalition to overthrow Saddam Hussein had twice as many countries as are on the Security Council and as many members as the alliance against the Axis in World War II. France, one of those that questioned the “unilateral” US intervention in Iraq, itself intervened unilaterally when Al Qaeda in the Maghreb’s attack on Mali threatened its own interests. This is a flawed syllogism: it argues that there is a threat; therefore, the response must be multilateral. The middle term required to justify the conclusion is missing.

11. Some advocate inspections and sanctions against state-supporters of terrorism. The history of sanctions in the twentieth century (see above) suggests they rarely succeed and then only under conditions that do not exist in the Middle East. Terrorist groups are even less vulnerable to containment, inspections, or sanctions than are nations.

12. Some advocate inciting rebellion to overthrow the governments of states that support terrorism. The US tried exactly this in Iraq after the 1991 Gulf War when the likelihood of success seemed high. There was a Kurdish resistance movement (divided into two main and several lesser factions). There was strong opposition to Saddam Hussein’s government among the population of the southern marshes where guerrilla resistance goes back 4000 years.

13. The US Rewards for Justice Program offers money and family relocation for information leading to the arrest of people who plan, commit, or attempt terror attacks or for information to prevent such attacks. As of 2011, it has paid out more than $100 million in rewards including $30 million for the deaths of Udai and Qusay Hussein and $11 million for leaders of the Abu Sayyaf group in the Philippines. It led to the capture of Abdel Basit, the principal leader and bomb maker in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, and of Mir Amal Kansi, captured in Pakistan, extradited, convicted, and executed in Virginia for the 1993 shooting at CIA headquarters. However, it has not led to the capture of high-profile figures, it is difficult to capture and get suspects out of areas where tribes have more control than national governments, those who can provide actionable intelligence often are true believers who can’t be bought, and the US is not trusted to keep its promises to protect informants. The arrest and imprisonment as a traitor of the doctor who revealed bin Laden’s hiding place to the Americans, and subsequent failure of the US to obtain his release reinforced that opinion and undoubtedly reduces the likelihood of similar help in the future.

14. Legal theorist Alexander Sacks suggests that a debt incurred to strengthen a despot rather than meet the needs or advance the interests of a state is “odious” and falls with the regime. The idea is to make banks less willing to give loans to dictators by putting them on notice that such loans may not be re-paid. The problem is that declaring a predecessor’s debt odious may make it impossible for the current government to obtain loans. Still, the idea has potential worth thorough consideration as to how to make it work.

15. Some advocate war to destroy states that support terrorists. President Bush did this in Afghanistan and Iraq. However, casus belli, geostrategic importance, military and political goals, and tactics were different in each case.

In Afghanistan, the US sought to destroy the Taliban when they refused an ultimatum to eject al-Qaeda, responsible for 9/11. The Americans did not follow either plan that the Taliban expected, of either sending in a few missiles immediately or of a massive invasion the next spring that the Taliban thought could be defeated in the same way as the Soviets. Instead, the attack began a mere two weeks later. The Americans did not so much fight as support the Afghans who did. CIA operatives arrived first, in late September, to prepare for the British SAS and the American Green Beret teams who traveled mainly on horseback dressed in Afghan clothes, grew long hair and beards—in Afghanistan no beard-less male is taken seriously—and gathered intelligence more by building relationships over tea than by patrolling. The heart of this force was the close air support unit within each team with their laser designators to pinpoint targets for laser-guided bombs. Their effectiveness won over the Northern Alliance and Hamid Karzai’s troops in the south. The Taliban fled in disarray within a month before the innovative integration of high technology brought by a mere 85 Special Force troops to aid native Afghans using classic low-tech unconventional warfare (Kaplan 2006).

The US invasion of Iraq in 2003 had nothing to do with 9/11 and only marginally to do with terrorism.¹⁶ Much like the Normandy “D-Day” invasion during World War II in which so much energy went into planning how to get ashore that too little went into what to do next, the Bush Administration failed to plan adequately for winning the peace or managing the factions within Iraq advantageously. There was little attention to possible reactions from former adherents of the regime, Iran, or al-Qaeda. The insurrection festered. Opposition by some US officials to the exiles of the Iraqi National Congress delayed creation of an Iraqi government and lent credibility to charges of US imperialism. These mistakes were tactical, and were belatedly recognized and eventually corrected by reviving and adapting classic anti-guerrilla tactics discussed above. Terrorist finances were badly disrupted, thousands of fundamentalist schools closed. Soon after al-Qaeda websites were complaining of “hypocrites,” suggesting some success in “turning” some of its personnel and infiltrating spies into the organization. Time will test the wisdom of pulling out of Iraq while that government still was fragile and Iran was trying to extend its influence from the Mediterranean to Afghanistan as well as to build nuclear weapons.

The US response to 9/11 had three distinct phases, two under President George W. Bush and one under President Barack Obama. The first, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s war, saw the overthrow of the Taliban in Afghanistan and the Baathist regime in Iraq. This phase depended on advanced technology and sought to transform the Middle East in much the same way the occupation and Marshall Plan transformed Japan and Germany after WWII. With the failure to control Iraq in the face of guerrilla war and widespread terrorism, the second phase began when General David Petraeus updated the old Small Wars counterinsurgency doctrine, massively increasing manpower (the “Surge”) to pursue the limited goal of a stable, pro-US regime. The third phase, Michael Vickers’s war, shifted the “Surge” to strategically unimportant Afghanistan in what to the local population looked much like an invasion, provoking Afghan resistance. A drawdown of US troops followed, along with a shift in tactics to assassination by Special Forces and drones. They in turn raise legal and moral issues and questions as to the goal and what will happen in a decade when other countries have drone capabilities. In response, al-Qaeda shifted tactics to a decentralized organization of independent “franchises” and multiple cells taking doctrine but not orders from al-Qaeda Central. Having abandoned Iraq, the US found itself poorly positioned to have any effect on the uprising in Syria, its possible impact on other countries in the region, its humanitarian costs, or, more importantly, on Iran’s pursuit of regional dominance from Lebanon to western Afghanistan.

The US Congress created Special Operations Command [SOCOM] in 1987 in the face of the growing threat from terrorism and the failure to rescue the US Embassy hostages in Iran. Successful rescues at Entebbe, Mogadishu, and the Iranian embassy in London suggested what could be done. Army Special Forces and Rangers, SEALs, Air Force Special Operations squadrons, and similar highly trained units comprised SOCOM. However, it soon was in jurisdictional conflict with area commands responsible for operations in specific geographic sectors (Kaplan 2006). Max Boot suggested that the US needed a version of World War II’s highly independent and effective Office of Strategic Services [OSS] reporting directly to the national political leadership. It would be responsible for developing and running the grand strategy against terror and like OSS combine intelligence gathering and analysis, special operations, and psychological, information, and technological warfare capabilities. It would have a strategic mission and ad hoc organization capable of rapidly recruiting personnel with mission specific skills and divesting itself of those no longer needed in an effort to remain “lean and mean.” The Defense Clandestine Service created in 2012 with a strategic military intelligence mission could grow into such an organization, capable of operating worldwide on short notice in small groups based on sophisticated linguistic, cultural, cyber, and combat skills. This would allow the Department of Defense to concentrate on traditional threats, so that the country itself remains prepared to deal with both.

Piracy

The Romans distinguished pirates, robbers, brigands, and outlaws as latrunculi—“the common enemies of mankind.” The laws of war (bellum, against legitimus hostis, a legitimate enemy) did not apply to guerra (war against latrunculi). The traditional punishment in the latter case was summary execution. As international law developed in the early modern period in Europe, this distinction continued. Grotius (1609) wrote in The Free Sea, “all peoples or their princes in common can punish pirates and others who commit derelicts on the seas against the law of nations.” Vattel (1738) wrote in The Law of Nations that “legitimate and formal warfare must be carefully distinguished from those illegitimate or informal wars, or rather predatory expeditions, undertaken either without lawful authority or without apparent cause, as likewise without the usual formalities, and solely with a view to plunder.” Under this doctrine, a sovereign state has the right to attack another if that state is unable to curtail the activities of its latruncul as the United States did in the early 1800s along the Barbary Coast. Piracy was stamped out in the nineteenth century, only to revive in our own day with the evolution of more tolerant attitudes, the shrinkage of navies with the end of the Cold War, and the vast increase in shipping with the expansion of global trade. Piracy occurs worldwide but is epidemic off Somalia (where it combines with the terrorism of al-Qaeda affiliate Harakat al-Shabaab al-Mujahideen), Indonesia, and Nigeria. Estimated annual losses now are in the $13-$16 billion range, with 200-300 ships attacked annually in the first decade of the twenty-first century, and attacks occurring further and further from “pirate ports” as they extend their range of operations and develop deep water capabilities (The International Maritime Bureau).

Much like nineteenth century whalers, modern pirates send small fast attack vessels from larger “mother ships.” In some cases, the pirates simply steal the personal belongings of the crew and the cash for payroll and port fees that ships carry. In others, the crew is forced into lifeboats and the ship hijacked, re-painted, given a new identity, and sold. Sometimes, pirates hold the crew for ransom along with the ship. On occasion, ships are hijacked for political reasons or by environmental action groups, the latter usually targeting fishing and whaling vessels. Murder is rare but increasing.

Durand and Vergne (2012) see pirates as heroic risk-takers who defy the state and have the unintended consequence of forcing capitalism to improve. In their view, piracy arises when the state seeks to impose laws and take ownership, whether it be of land, radio, or the Internet. Pirates resist, fighting against the state’s over-reach with the unintended effect of ending the state’s monopoly. St. Augustine told of a pirate telling Alexander the Great, “Because I have only one rickety ship, I’m called a bandit, and because you have a large fleet, you are called an emperor.” In the end, they overstate. Pirates are not freedom fighters.

Effective offensive and defensive methods for dealing with piracy are available if the will exists to implement them. Laws that inhibit effective responses, such as prohibiting armed merchant ships to enter many ports, requiring boarding of pirate ships rather than firing on them, prohibiting pursuit into territorial waters, and allowing pirates to claim refugee status if captured must be changed. Allowing port fees to be paid by bank transfers rather than cash would slightly reduce the profitability of piracy. Increased and well-coordinated naval patrols have virtually wiped out piracy in the Straits of Malacca, and a multistate naval coalition has reduced it near Somalia. Other tactics, some already in place, include convoys through danger areas, ships crossing dangerous waters at full speed, blockading coasts where pirates proliferate, armed guards (often former SAS commandos) and special weapons including water cannons embarked from tenders on ships in the danger zones, and Q-ships—essentially, warships disguised as cargo ships that were used against submarines in WWI. Better intelligence and sustained land-based intervention to deny bases to pirates also will help.

Equally important is changing laws to facilitate the arrest and trial of pirates. Today, there is no international court empowered to try pirates and the old Roman distinction has withered. The International Criminal Court is the most obvious, but it currently does not have that authority. Efforts to change this failed in 2009 and the 2010 Review Conference did not even raise the issue.