Global Security and Terrorism

The Nature of Terrorism

Terrorism is literally the infliction of terror, normally used against a civilian population.  Historically this has been a tactic of the armed forces of a State, or invading force, and its roots lie deep in the roots of human conflicts.  States have used terror attacks against civilian populations, as in the Luftwaffe’s attacks on Warsaw, Rotterdam and London in World War II and the British attacks on Hamburg, Berlin and Dresden, in order to undermine civilian morale and the authority of the governing power.  Ghengis Khan’s Mongol armies, used massacre and destruction to intimidate and terrify their opponents.

In the 19^th and 20^th centuries the term terrorist became to be used for those individuals who, as followers of radical political and nationalists movements, used terror against the State in which they lived.  The classic such incident was the assassination of the Arch-Duke Ferdinand in Sarajevo, in 1914, which is often regarded as the immediate cause of the outbreak of the Great War.  19^th century terrorist groups included Irish terrorists who explored bombs in London, and the People’s Will who assassinated Tsar Alexander II in 1881.

In the 20^th century active terrorist groups were often nationalists who wished to see the end of colonial occupation, or the establishment of a new State. These groups were particularly important in the middle of the 20^th century and the most successful included the Jewish terrorist groups based in Palestine, including the Lehi, who assassinated Lord Moyne in 1944 and the Etzel who bombed the King David Hotel in Jerusalem in 1946; such acts were in part responsible for the withdrawal of British forces from Palestine in 1947, which enabled the creation of the State of Israel.  Other such groups included the Irish terrorist groups, including the IRA, who secured the establishment of the Irish Free State in 1921, but whose successors continued their campaigns of violence against the United Kingdom into the 21^st century.  Britain faced terrorist violence during the decolonization process in Cyprus, Malaya, and Kenya.

During World War II the British and later the Americans encouraged armed resistance by irregulars against the German occupation in countries including France, The Netherlands, Poland, Norway, Yugoslavia, and the Czech Republic.  The Germans treated Resistance members as terrorists, and themselves used terror tactics, killing large numbers of civilians in retaliation.  This highlights the fact that there can never be an absolute definition of terrorists, as a terrorist from one perspective, may be seen by others as a patriotic freedom fighter.  A problem that became apparent in the decision of the US to arm the resistance movements in Afghanistan with sophisticated weapons to counter the Russian occupation of that country.  Some of the groups had a wider political agenda than the recovery of Afghanistan.  They also saw themselves as opposing all foreign involvement in the Middle East and wished to remove the regimes of countries like Saudi Arabia which they saw as corrupt.  In other words some of yesterday’s Afghan freedom fighters transmuted into Al-Qaeda’s terrorists.

We come back to the problem of definition.  Yesterday’s terrorist may change into a national leader, as did Menachem Begun in Israel, or the leaders of Indonesia’s resistance to the reimposition of Dutch rule in 1945. Most famously of all we have the case of Nelson Mandela, jailed for his part in the ANC terrorist campaign against the Apartheid regime in South Africa, who finally reunified South Africa, and walked from his prison cell to power.  True he was a free fighter, but not in the eyes of the government who originally jailed him.  Life’s complicated, how do you judge the morality of the cause, and the legitimacy of the state?

But there are shades of grey in all things; today the world is threatened by a series of groups who use terror, but they have different aims and use different levels of violence.  Some, like the 19^th anarchists, appear to have little idea beyond the use of terror, others seek self-determination for their nation or tribal group, other seek merely to terrorize a civilian population in order that they can loot resources and gain power, as has happened in the Congo and in Sierra Leone. Some of these groups receive support from States, although such support is normally kept secret, in the way that Libya supported the IRA and Iran has supported a number of terrorist groups in the Middle East.  

There is also a strong link between crime and terrorism, most obvious in the drug production of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), a terrorist movement with a Marxist political identity.  The IRA, according to British reports, is one of the richest criminal organizations in Europe; it has also sold its bomb-making intelligence to other terrorist and criminal groups, including the FARC.  This highlights another element of modern terrorist groups, the fact that they have established channels of communication allowing them to share intelligence and know-how.  The IRA has supplied technology to the Basque separatist group ETA.  It is impossible to understand the threat from Middle Eastern terrorist groups unless it is understood that to some degree they operate like a large network with shared intelligence.  In fact many terrorist groups appear to operate like entrepreneurial businesses in using modern technology to secure intelligence and maintain secure communications networks around the world.

Even where a particular terrorist group, like the IRA, has announced an end to its armed struggle there remains a large body of information within the organization which can enable new more radical groups to splitter off, or for disaffected members to trade their know-how with other terrorist groups.

Human beings are especially vulnerable to unknown and unqualifiable threats, we inherit from our ancestors the reflex to flee from that we see as a threat. For our ancestors the threats came from saber-toothed tigers, today it is a brown-skinned man with a large back-pack, or a car bomb. Although the existence of suitcase size nuclear devices in the old Soviet Union means that there is still a slight chance that one may be sold by the Russian Mafia to a terrorist group, or that aircraft, or an LPG tanker could be used to cause massive damage to a major city, the reality of most terrorist attacks is that home-made bombs are used to cause maximum damage to civilian installations such as railway and bus stations, airports, shopping malls, or office buildings. 

Causalities in such a situation are normally in the range of 20 to 200, so the chances of any individual in a large city being affected are small, but the effectiveness of a terrorist act is not connected with the people killed or injured, but to the extend that it can create an atmosphere of terror amongst the general population.  The aim of terrorists is to create a climate of terror and to undermine the perceived authority of the government and the authorities of the state.  A terrorist does not have to any other objective than this, demands for independence for Chechen, or for Northern Ireland to leave the United Kingdom, may or may be not part of the terrorists’ objectives.  In “Catechism of a Revolutionist” [1869] Bakunin and Nechayev wrote: “The Revolutionist is a doomed man … he has severed every link with the social order and with the entire civilized world; with the laws, good manners, conventions, and morality of that world.  He is its merciless enemy and continues to inhabit it with only one purpose – to destroy.”[1]  For revolutionist read terrorist.

The threat of continued bombings may be very effective in undermining a country’s political and economic credibility.  For example Saudi Arabia has seen the departure of many expatriates following the bombings and other attacks of the last few years.  For the terrorist it is therefore probably more important to suggest that a nuclear device could be detonated, rather than actually acquire one.  For those concerned about this, I believe that the Russians have been even more concerned than any one else to track down and control any such devices, given the threat to them from the Chechens, and that all nuclear devices have a shelf life of so many years, after which they have to be reconstructed if they are to work, a task that only a few States have the ability to do [2]. We have also lived our lives under the threat of mutually assumed destruction, from Russia, and the US, that has been the ultimate in terrorist threats, the suitcase nuclear bomb is more like a demolition device, not a city flatting weapon, but would cause extensive radioactivity, if used which could inflict severe economic damage by closing a large area.

We therefore need to put the ability of the terrorists to inflict damage in context.  The United Kingdom dealt for many years with an active IRA bombing campaign, but suffered little real economic damage, and the public only had a statistically small risk of becoming a victim of their bombs (which is no consolation if you lost family as a result of their acts).  Natural disasters and traffic accidents represent a much more significant risk to individuals than terrorism, unless you live in a war-zone like Iraq.

The modern state therefore needs to:

1.                 Work to prevent terrorists undertaking activity on their territory;

2.                 Educate their people as to the true nature and risks of terrorism, putting into context, and being honest about its ability to respond to incidents;

3.                 Deal with the causes of terrorism in so far as it can without compromising its other interests, for example by ensuring that minorities do not suffer discrimination on the grounds of race or color;

4.                 Don’t over-react, because that is what terrorist would like you to do;

5.                 At all costs to protect the liberty and freedom of the individual, because if these safeguards are thrown away then terrorism will have won more than it dreamt possible.