How States Fight Terrorism: Policy Dynamics in the West 9781626373594

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How States Fight Terrorism

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How States Fight Terrorism Policy Dynamics in the West

edited by

Doron Zimmermann Andreas Wenger

b o u l d e r l o n d o n

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Published in the United States of America in 2007 by Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. 1800 30th Street, Boulder, Colorado 80301 www.rienner.com and in the United Kingdom by Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. 3 Henrietta Street, Covent Garden, London WC2E 8LU © 2007 by Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data How states fight terrorism : policy dynamics in the West / Doron Zimmermann & Andreas Wenger, eds. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-1-58826-453-4 (hardcover : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 1-58826-453-X (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Terrorism—Prevention—Cross-cultural studies. 2. Terrorism—Government policy— Cross-cultural studies. 3. National security—Cross-cultural studies. I. Zimmermann, Doron, 1970– II. Wenger, Andreas. HV6431.H693 2006 363.325'17—dc22 2006021637 British Cataloguing in Publication Data A Cataloguing in Publication record for this book is available from the British Library. Printed and bound in the United States of America The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials Z39.48-1992. 5

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Contents

Acknowledgments

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1 New Perspectives on National Counterterrorism Policy Andreas Wenger and Doron Zimmermann

Part 1

The Dynamics of Counterterrorism Policy in Europe

2 Britain’s Counterterrorism Policy Laura K. Donohue 3 Germany’s Counterterrorism Policy Victor Mauer 4 Norway’s Counterterrorism Policy Tore Nyhamar

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The Dynamics of Counterterrorism Policy in North America

5 Canada’s Counterterrorism Policy Margaret Purdy 6 US Counterterrorism Policy William Rosenau

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An Integrated Approach to Counterterrorism

7 Israel’s Counterterrorism Martin van Creveld

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8 Combating Al-Qaida and Associated Groups Rohan Gunaratna

Part 4

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Conclusion

9 Toward Efficiency and Legitimacy Doron Zimmermann and Andreas Wenger

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Bibliography The Contributors Index About the Book

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THIS BOOK EVOLVED OUT OF AN ATTEMPT TO SHED NEW LIGHT ON HOW STATES fight terrorism. The tragic events of 11 September 2001 and the shock they produced around the world catalyzed a flurry of new counterterrorism policies and initiatives at both the national and the international levels. Since 9/11, many countries in the West have introduced antiterrorist legislation and expanded law enforcement and security services to enforce these new laws. The debate in the West about counterterrorism, however, has not been without controversy: governments, in the context of regional conflicts in Afghanistan and in Iraq, found it easier to agree on the view that terrorism is a common challenge than to define and implement a joint response. The research for this book began as preparation for a March 2004 conference held at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich that brought together ideas and expertise from a broad number of fields to review national counterterrorism policies two-and-a-half years after the watershed of 11 September 2001. As counterterrorism is marked by continual change, the project evolved considerably. Thus, this volume represents the product of a long journey through the troubled water of global terrorism and the quest for an appropriate response to it. Along the way, we have been fortunate to receive the support and assistance of many people in a variety of ways. We thank the authors for their patience with our comments and suggestions and for their willingness to take into account new developments that are continuously changing the counterterrorism landscape. We would like to thank all the conference participants who presented their views and provided useful comments: Stefan Brem, Jürg Bühler, Michael Chandler, Lindsey Clutterbuck, Adam Cobb, Laura Donohue, Chip Ellis, Rohan Gunaratna, Eric Herren, Michel Hess, Frank Jensen, Victor Mauer, Magnus Norell, Tore Nyhamar, Kevin O’Brien, Margaret Purdy, William Rosenau, Behram A. Sahukar, Ron Schleifer,

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Joshua Sinai, Rolf Tophoven, Martin van Creveld, Gerald Vernez, and Georg Witschel. We have been extraordinarily fortunate that our project landed in the capable hands of Lynne Rienner and Lisa Tulchin, who have managed the review and publication process with great skill and good cheer. We wish to extend our thanks to Jan Metzger, Michael Guery, and especially to Jennifer Gassmann from the Center for Security Studies for their outstanding work in preparing and organizing the conference. Although we have greatly benefited from the comments, criticism, and encouragement of all those mentioned above, the final responsibility for any error is ours alone. —Doron Zimmermann and Andreas Wenger

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1 New Perspectives on National Counterterrorism Policy ANDREAS WENGER

AND

DORON ZIMMERMANN

THIS BOOK IS ABOUT THE REACTION OF THE WEST TO RECENT INSTANCES OF mass-casualty terrorism and to the appearance of increasingly networked groups sharing the ideology of a global jihad. After the attacks of 11 September 2001, and the concurrent efforts in numerous Western countries to cope with a complex and highly dynamic threat, an international debate ensued on how to confront and counteract this latest manifestation of terrorism. This book gives new perspectives on the recent evolution of counterterrorism policy in Europe and North America. Framed against the backdrop of the perennial Israeli counterterrorism endeavor and current Western efforts at combating Al-Qaida, the book examines the dynamics of policymaking in the West. The counterterrorism policy debate has been driven by two important factors: the first is the terrorist threat and the various national and international perceptions and misperceptions about it, along with the national and international policy responses that have been drawn up and implemented as a result. The second is the convergence, or, in some instances, divergence of these national and international counterterrorism responses, along with their implications for the long-term balance between efficiency and legitimacy in the fight against national and international terrorism. Political violence perpetrated by extremists is an old threat—but the events of 11 September 2001 and subsequent attacks in Jerba, Tunisia; Karachi, Pakistan; Bali, Indonesia; Mombasa, Kenya; Riyadh, Saudi Arabia; Casablanca, Morocco; Istanbul, Turkey; Madrid, Spain; and London, England, remind us that the threat has changed for the worse. Today’s political violence movements have evolved from a national physical threat into a transnational ideological threat. The design of sensible policies that secure our societies against international terrorism presents an extraordinarily daunting task to policymakers, at both the national and international levels. First, international terrorism cuts across the dichotomies on 1

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which national security policy was traditionally based—internal versus external security, civilian versus military instruments, and state versus nonstate actors. Second, international counterterrorism policy is formulated unilaterally, bilaterally, or multilaterally in international organizations like the United Nations (UN) and the European Union (EU)—reflecting different institutional preferences and different national perceptions of the nature and relevance of the threat to the security and identities of our societies. The shock of 9/11 and the wave of worldwide solidarity that went along with it served as a catalyst for political rhetoric that has emphasized that global terrorism is a common challenge that requires a joint response. The buildup of the coalition against the Taliban regime in Kabul was based on an initially broad consensus on the immediacy of the global threat posed by Al-Qaida. Most Western countries accepted that the globalized nature of Islamist terrorism demanded a multinational response and a coordinated deployment of political, diplomatic, legal, law enforcement, and military means. But what this broad generalization meant at the level of practical policymaking remained open to debate. This became clear as soon as the efforts of Western states to overcome differences in their approaches to and policies on counterterrorism were overshadowed by the Iraq debate. Following the coalition invasion of Iraq, controversy between the United States and some of its European partners began to shape the dynamics of counterterrorism policy in the West. In fact, the current transatlantic divergence of counterterrorism policies has its origins in the political terrorism of the 1970s and 1980s. The experience of domestic terrorism prompted European governments to “criminalize” political violence movements and deny them any political status. As a consequence, the combating of terrorism in Europe came under the authority of civilian, police, and special paramilitary forces. The perception of terrorism as primarily a criminal and justice issue was reinforced in the 1990s with the establishment and strengthening of a set of multilateral counterterrorism tools within the framework of the EU Justice and Home Affairs pillar. By contrast, the principal threat that influenced US perceptions and policy was international terrorism—presumably linked to Communist state sponsors—in the context of the Cold War. In Washington’s geostrategic outlook, terrorism was more than a serious crime. As a conspiratorial political force, it threatened national security; consequently, it had to be fought by all means at the disposal of the state. Though the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the designated lead agency in combating domestic and international terrorism, the responsibility of fighting international terrorism increasingly shifted from the Department of State to the jurisdiction of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Department of Defense. The US perception of international terrorism as a global political force and

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as a potential threat to national security had been reinforced by the rise of militant Islam in the previous decades and a series of attacks on US targets. This book, while not intended to be comprehensive, distinguishes itself from earlier works in that it focuses on a set of topics relevant to both the evolution and the current dynamics of the national and international debates on counterterrorism policy in the West. A set of country case studies examines internal and external security concerns, the political debates and policy responses, and the legal, civilian, and military countermeasures of these countries. Building on an assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of Israeli counterterrorism, the book stresses the importance of an integrated approach to the combating of Al-Qaida and its associated groups. The volume consists of four sections: Part 1 covers the dynamics of counterterrorism policy in Europe, Part 2 describes the dynamics of counterterrorism policy in North America, and Part 3 discusses the need for an integrated approach to counterterrorism. Part 4 presents overall conclusions. Part 1 deals with the evolution of counterterrorism policy in three European states. The British case is of particular importance because it analyzes the reaction of a country that has dealt with domestic political violence for decades and that became a direct target of international terrorism in the aftermath of the US- and British-led military action in both Afghanistan and Iraq. The German case, by contrast, shows a country that has had its share of domestic political violence and was used as a staging ground for the 11 September 2001 attacks. However, Germany chose to base its counterterrorism response primarily on the multilateral framework of the EU and the UN, while refusing to support the Iraq intervention. The British and German case studies are complemented by one on Norway, a country with almost no experience of national or international terrorism that was nevertheless engaged in Afghanistan with its military forces. Contrary to both Britain and Germany, Norway perceived the war on terrorism primarily as an issue related to the maintenance of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Part 2 addresses the development of counterterrorism policy in North America. It deals with two countries, Canada and the United States, whose counterterrorism policies were shaped by different perceptions of the terrorist threat before 11 September 2001. Whereas in Canada terrorism was given a low priority throughout the 1990s, the debate about the so-called “new terrorism” had already begun to dominate national security policy in the United States long before 9/11 occurred. However, the two countries share a long common border and are closely linked economically, and this seemed to suggest the need for better coordination in their responses to international terrorism. The 11 September 2001 attacks exposed Canada’s open and multiethnic society to accusations by US policymakers that Canada was a likely staging

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ground for future attacks. Thus, in a dramatic realignment of government priorities, Canada moved to make its counterterrorism tools more robust, although the fact that it chose not to join the invasion of Iraq exposed the country to further criticism from Washington. In contrast, in the United States combating terrorism had become an element of national security already in the 1970s. And during Bill Clinton’s presidency, the threat of international terrorism quickly rose to prominence. But the military aspect began to dominate the US counterterrorism approach—with mixed results at best—only once George W. Bush had become president and the United States had been subjected to the 11 September 2001 attacks. Part 3 highlights some of the many challenges associated with the formulation and implementation of a truly integrated approach to counterterrorism, at both the national and international levels. The Israeli case is relevant because it reminds us that the success of all counterterrorism measures ultimately depends on the specific political context in which these measures are put to the test. Given that Israel is perceived as an occupying power in the territories under dispute, not even what is arguably the world’s most integrated counterterrorism strategy has proven enough to end Palestinian political violence. A vast and often tactically brilliant military effort has proven ultimately unsustainable and has lately given way to separation and withdrawal. The failure of the US-led coalition to win the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people also demonstrates the limits of narrow military approaches. In order to successfully combat Al-Qaida and its associated groups, the West needs a counterterrorism policy that has a more unified political vision for the wider Middle East and is acceptable to the majority of Muslims. *

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Laura K. Donohue’s chapter analyzes the reaction to the events of 11 September 2001 in Britain, which has dealt with political violence in Northern Ireland and Irish Republican Army (IRA) attacks for many decades. Although the UK responded to the attacks on the United States with a broad array of counterterrorist measures and became a target in the aftermath of military action in Afghanistan and Iraq, 11 September 2001 has not meant a radical departure from the previous state of affairs, but rather an acceleration of the state’s counterterrorist strategy. At the same time, Donohue notes, the British response originated within a much larger debate shaped by the end of the Cold War. The birth of the peace process in Northern Ireland was accompanied by an increasing emphasis on international as opposed to domestic terrorism. The fall of the Soviet empire freed up the nation’s intelligence organizations to focus on international terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs). Law

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enforcement, too, gradually shifted from a local to a national and international role. And the armed forces accelerated their transformation into an instrument ready to address asymmetrical threats. Within the legal realm, the British 2001 Terrorism Act capped a century of temporary counterterrorist provisions that had been made permanent before 11 September 2001. Measures thought unacceptable prior to 9/11 were pushed through Parliament against a background of fierce domestic battles over measures with a significant impact on individual rights, such as the introduction of identity cards, exceptional powers of arrest, and indefinite detention. Against this background, Donohue stresses the importance of maintaining the rule of law in opposition to, and despite, terrorist threats. The British intelligence community has placed an increasing emphasis on terrorism generally and Islamist extremism in particular, as well as on nonconventional weapons proliferation. While this constituted a shift in degree, the added urgency was, for example, reflected in the establishment of a new Joint Terrorism Analysis Center. In this context, Donohue points out that there is only minimal oversight of the intelligence services in practice, and she warns of the potentially negative effects of an increasing accountability gap. The instrumentalization of the intelligence community by political leaders in order to justify military aggression against Iraq may be linked to a broader trend in which the barrier between the public and the intelligence agencies is becoming increasingly porous. The British government has paid greater attention to the structures that support domestic preparedness. Responsibility in this area lies with the home secretary and two cabinet committees. Efforts in these fields remain plagued by interdepartmental communications gaps and concerns regarding the transmission of classified information. In addition, there is growing concern in the military that Britain lacks the organizational capacity and resources to respond to a large-scale catastrophic event. The debate about a growing role of the armed forces in domestic affairs has to be seen in this context. In its own way, the British government treats international institutions as part of its overall counterterrorist response. London looks to the UN in terms of practical assistance for its specialized agencies, in terms of establishing the legitimacy of interventions and in terms of providing a global forum for dialog. Within the framework of EU Justice and Home Affairs, Britain has pushed for the European arrest warrant, the acceptance of a Europe-wide definition of terrorism, and for the strengthening of the intelligence function of Europol. NATO is not a centerpiece of British counterterrorism policy. In his survey and appraisal of German counterterrorism policy, Victor Mauer takes a hard look at the unfolding developments post-9/11. Within a matter of weeks subsequent to the attacks of 11 September 2001, Mauer

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states, the German government spurred the passage into law of a variegated and partially novel program of counterterrorism legislation. But not only on the national level was Germany’s government in the forefront of supporting apposite legal reform: within the framework of international institutions, too, it took on a pioneering role. Furthermore, Germany’s government actively committed specialist resources to the coalition campaign against the Taliban regime in Afghanistan—a novelty in and of itself considering Germany’s reticence concerning foreign interventions in the postwar period. However, unlike the Soviet threat, Mauer goes on to explain, the new threat of mass-casualty terrorism did not constitute a common denominator for the West, as evidenced by the German Social-Democrat–led government’s strident opposition to the coalition campaign against Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. The German government feared that intervention in Iraq would culminate in affording Al-Qaida a new base of operations. German opposition at that time was largely rooted in the unease of the SocialDemocrat–led government with the notion of a military offensive mainly directed against the material base of terrorism (as previously witnessed in the case of Afghanistan); the attrition of Al-Qaida personnel did not adequately address the complex interdependencies between the political, diplomatic, intelligence, law enforcement, and economic dimensions of the counterterrorism effort as envisioned by the German government. In his contribution, Mauer focuses on the distinctive threat posed by the novel character of contemporary terrorism, the understanding of this new threatscape by the German intelligence community, and how this threat perception helped shape Germany’s counterterrorism policy. He then critically reviews legislative developments within the context of a comparative retrospective, linking contemporary measures to the terrorism experience of the 1970s and 1980s. Mauer reviews past and present German counterterrorism efforts through the prism of the salient “security versus liberty” debate of counterterrorism. Mauer’s contribution lays out how Germany’s numerous security organizations have exhibited a tendency to resist pressures for change in the face of post-9/11–generated reform. Further, the author notes the “remarkably uncontroversial domestic debate on the tightening of laws and legislation.” Against the backdrop of a comparatively stable domestic situation— and the fact that no Islamist terrorist attack has taken place on German soil since 9/11—Mauer purposefully omits any attempt at presenting a scorecard of German counterterrorism activity. The author’s attention centers on a multifaceted policy, subject to bureaucratic dynamics and institutional inertia. The reality of incremental—and at times arrested—development in the shaping of a new counterterrorism agenda encompassing a multifaceted approach does not come as a surprise. As Mauer concludes, leaps and

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bounds in counterterrorism were usually incentivized by occurrences of political violence that brought Europe’s democracies face to face with the specter of terrorism at home. The terrorist attacks on New York City, the Pentagon, Djerba, Madrid, and London acted as catalysts for galvanizing political will, including within the German government. For, as Mauer observes, democratic governments are typically reluctant—even reticent— to circumscribe the constitutionally safeguarded liberties of their respective citizenry unless events decisively tip the balance of the security-liberty calculus. Tore Nyhamar discusses the interesting case of a country with almost no history of domestic and international terrorism that nevertheless is engaged in the global fight against terrorism. In Norway, the war on terrorism is viewed in the context of maintaining transatlantic alliances. Norway needs allies to manage its relationship with Russia, with which Norway has territorial disputes over economic (fish/oil) zones at sea. Against this background, the Norwegian government wants to ensure that NATO remains a vehicle to provide collective defense. In discussing the Norwegian counterterrorism debate, Nyhamar highlights the central role of the armed forces. The 11 September 2001 attacks did not initiate, but acted as a catalyst for, the transformation of Norway’s armed forces from a threat-based territorial defense capability to a flexible, capacity-driven, expeditionary war-fighting capability. Counterterrorism—formerly a policy area of marginal importance—has since 2001 become an important part of Norway’s security policy. The counterterrorism engagement in Afghanistan provided Norway’s armed forces with an international role. Particularly notable in this context is the wide domestic consensus for a proactive use of military force as part of a counterterrorism policy. Using the armed forces for peacekeeping and stabilization purposes is widely accepted, even though it may increase the shortterm risk of being subject to a terrorist attack—a risk that became visible through a direct threat by Al-Qaida against Norwegian personnel and interests abroad. However, sending forces to prevent, fight, or limit terrorism outside of Norway remains controversial, Nyhamar notes. This was highlighted by the highly divisive domestic debate about the Iraq invasion, which was opposed by a majority of the Norwegian public. The greatest impact of the 11 September 2001 attacks was on legislation. Norway passed a ban on terrorist acts and introduced a law directed against the financing of terrorism. Initial legislative proposals, however, raised concerns that the expanded powers would jeopardize civil rights. As a result, the legal threshold for the definition of “planning a terrorist act” was raised, and threatening to carry out a terrorist act was no longer considered to be equivalent to engaging in terrorism. According to Nyhamar, Norway, as other states, is confronting the con-

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siderable challenge of devising a comprehensive counterterrorism strategy. A major weakness remains the fragmented responsibility and the compartmentalized thinking among various sectors and levels of government. The Department of Justice is responsible for coordinating Norway’s counterterrorism policy, and combating terrorism domestically is a police matter. For scenarios involving large-scale threats against society short of war, there are still no satisfactory lines of authority between the police and the military forces. This is particularly relevant with regard to the task of securing the vitally important offshore petroleum industry. A second weakness of Norway’s counterterrorism framework is that, as a nonmember state, it cannot take part in the full range of counterterrorism measures of the EU, although it is responsible for the control of a long section of the EU’s external borders. While the country’s membership in the Schengen area means that Norway is involved in many areas of cooperation relevant to counterterrorism, the country has no voting rights in the Schengen Executive Committee. As the first chapter in Part 2, Margaret Purdy’s work analyzes Canada’s counterterrorism policy and the dramatic realignment of government priorities in the wake of 11 September 2001. While terrorism kept a low profile through much of the 1990s, security was raised to the center stage in Canada as a result of the unprecedented attention generated by the 11 September 2001 attacks. The closing of the Canadian airspace and long lineups of trucks at the US-Canadian border made policymakers realize the linkages between security and economic performance. The Canadian government adopted a multifaceted response to a changed security landscape, realigning its priorities in relation to spending, legislation, policy, programs, and international relations. According to Purdy, Canada’s efforts to develop its counterterrorism policies as an integral element of a broad all-hazards, all-threats approach to national security were marked by two dominant challenges—the first one being the management of the country’s security relations with the United States, Canada’s closest trading partner; and the second being the shift in the balance between security and civil liberties. The security relations between Canada and the United States experienced a period of tension following the attacks on New York and Washington. Due to its proximity to the United States, the openness of its society, and its multiethnic population, Canada faced accusations that it might have been a staging ground for the attacks. By means of smart border negotiations, Canada achieved an acceptable balance between competing economic, public safety, and sovereignty interests. It was as difficult to strike the right balance between securing the nation and protecting individual rights and freedoms. Canada introduced an antiterrorism bill in late 2001 that provided the law-enforcement agencies

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with a wide array of new powers and investigative tools. These new powers led to tensions about how to deal with immigrants suspected of involvement in terrorism—an issue that has lately gained prominence in connection with the radicalization of certain groups within Europe’s immigrant communities. In discussing the policy and organizational changes that the Canadian government has implemented over the past several years, Purdy notes the development of Canada’s first integrated policy for national security and emergencies as a major achievement. To improve the coordination of counterterrorism activities of a dozen government departments and agencies, Canada created a new portfolio for a deputy prime minister with responsibility for establishing a new Department of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness. In addition, budget increases, information-sharing among policymakers and intelligence agencies, and expanding international partnerships have done much to bolster the robustness of Canadian counterterrorist efforts. Much has improved in terms of public awareness, political will, interagency cooperation, and respect for intelligence, Purdy concludes, and “it seems highly unlikely that security will return to the level of obscurity that characterized the period between the end of the Cold War and 11 September 2001.” William Rosenau starts his chapter by reminding the reader that the “global war on terrorism” as a metaphor to describe a strategy is a problematic term, because one cannot wage a war against what is, after all, a technique of armed conflict. This said, he notes that the war on terrorism is not boundless, as Bush’s critics imply: “It is first and foremost on Al-Qaida, recently characterized by the administration as a global jihadist uprising that poses the most serious terrorist threat to the United States.” Nevertheless, the threat is likely to grow, particularly if the insurgency in Iraq serves to “professionalize” a new generation of terrorists. This has compelled the US military to relearn the ABCs of counterinsurgency and counterterrorism, which they, as the author states, “enthusiastically forgot with the end of the Cold War.” Combating international terrorism became an element of US national security policy during the 1970s, even though at that time terrorism was conceptualized as essentially a law enforcement problem. The perception of the threat changed during the 1990s: President Bill Clinton perceived AlQaida as a serious, but not grave, threat. US counterterrorism policy remained focused on ending the sponsorship of terrorism by states. US counterterrorism policy tools centered on economic sanctions, travel restriction, diplomacy, and criminal prosecution. Military force was only a small part of the Clinton strategy against Al-Qaida. This changed once President Bush became convinced that a major attack was imminent by the summer of 2001. As a result, his administration’s new goal was to destroy the Al-Qaida

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group. According to Rosenau, two new features marked the Bush administration’s counterterrorism policy: first, there was the marked sense of urgency and fervent commitment on the part of the president. Second, the administration declared its policy of preemption to destroy terrorist entities with a global reach and seeking to acquire and use WMDs. While there was growing concern with regard to Hizbollah and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), Al-Qaida remained the principal focus. As summed up by Rosenau, the military aspect of Bush’s campaign against Al-Qaida in the form of the US-led intervention in Afghanistan has been highly successful. It eliminated Taliban rule in Afghanistan and closed down Al-Qaida’s most important sanctuaries. Rosenau does not discuss the Iraq intervention as part of the campaign against Al-Qaida. Instead, he notes that the likely missions of the military in the future will come in the form of intelligence-collection and advisory and training activities. The transformation of the FBI from a law-enforcement agency into an organization with a culture to prevent terrorism will take time. While there have been some intelligence successes, the biggest shortfall in this field for the foreseeable future remains in the area of human intelligence capabilities. There have also been some successes in stanching the financing of terrorism. However, charities are difficult to monitor, terrorism is a low-cost enterprise, and the self-financing nature of Al-Qaida creates severe obstacles that limit efforts in this field. Rosenau criticizes the aspect of political warfare as the weak spot in the US effort to fight global terrorism. He notes that Al-Qaida has become atomized in the wake of the Afghanistan intervention. But it continues to spread its ideology, sustaining its will and active sense of purpose and drawing new recruits into a loose network of forces. US public diplomacy as well as its black propaganda have failed. As part of a grand strategy against global terrorism, there should be a far greater effort in political warfare to delegitimize and discredit an ideological international movement that is in many ways comparable to the Soviet Communist threat. Rosenau concludes by suggesting that the tools and structures used to wage political warfare during the Cold War be reconsidered as to whether they might be applicable in opposing the Salafist jihadi groups, the former adversaries of the Soviets in Afghanistan. As the first chapter in Part 3, Martin van Creveld’s work provides an overview of Israeli attempts to deal with terrorism in Palestine. A retrospective of over eight decades of experience in counterterrorism operations leads van Creveld to a rather sobering conclusion: the second intifada has inflicted massive economic damage on Israel, lowered Israeli morale, and divided Israeli society. Against this background, van Creveld argues, most Israelis have come to realize that no amount of counterterrorist measures is likely to end Palestinian political violence. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s

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announcement to unilaterally withdraw from the Gaza Strip amounted to an admission that the fight against terrorism cannot be sustained indefinitely. Palestinian terrorism has forced Israel to withdraw from territory it occupied for 37 years. Along the Israeli-Lebanese border and around the Gaza Strip, security fences have been efficient in curbing attacks. “A fence between the West Bank and Israel,” van Creveld concludes, “followed by a withdrawal, is the only possible solution.” Already in the years of the British Mandate (1918–1948), there had been large-scale rioting in Palestine. The British, deploying well over 20,000 men, engaged in a classic counterinsurgency campaign. According to van Creveld, however, the insurgency was not put down by military means, but because the Palestinian economy collapsed and because the British agreed to most of the Palestinian demands. From 1948 on, terrorism came from outside of the newly independent state of Israel. But although the Israeli security services used much force, van Creveld notes, Israel was only moderately effective in combating terrorism. What stopped the attacks between the 1956 Suez campaign and the June 1967 war was preventive action by the rulers of Jordan and Egypt, rather than Israeli counterterrorism measures. The third period of terrorism began in 1967, when 1.5 million more Palestinians came under Israeli rule. In spite of vast military efforts and many tactically brilliant operations, van Creveld observes, Israeli attempts to put an end to cross-border terrorism from Jordan and Lebanon yielded only mediocre results. The infiltration of militants from Jordan was eventually stopped by King Hussein. Peace in Lebanon, however, was only achieved at the cost of a complete withdrawal. Whereas attacks by infiltrators from outside the country have had a limited impact on Israeli society, the political, economic, and psychological impact of the Palestinian uprisings since 1987 has been massive. Only withdrawal and separation, van Creveld concludes, can put an end to the violence. Examining the case of Al-Qaida and its associated groups, Rohan Gunaratna addresses the limitations of both muscular military projection abroad and the rule-bound civilian criminal justice system in the fight against amorphous terrorist networks. He finds that narrow approaches have failed time and again, citing as the most current example the failure of the US-led occupation force to win the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people. One unintended consequence of the US invasion in Iraq has been the creation of yet another theater for Islamist jihad. According to Gunaratna’s analysis, the key in fighting the current wave of terrorism is the development of a multipronged, multijurisdictional, multiagency, and multinational response. It is as important to address the conceptual and ideological base of Islamist extremism, Gunaratna concludes, as to target terrorists’ operational and support infrastructures.

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Political leaders and public officials have learned that, unlike their predecessors of the Cold War era, contemporary terrorists challenge the state economically, politically, socially, and ideologically. As a result of the US-led military intervention in Afghanistan, Gunaratna notes, Al-Qaida has been transformed from a group to a franchising system to a mass movement spanning the Islamic nation and the West itself. Although being operationally weak, its ideology of a global jihad is inspiring Islamist groups around the world. The movement’s ideological goal is to promote a clash of civilizations. It is therefore essential, Gunaratna concludes, that the West seek close collaboration with moderate Muslims. The threat of Muslim extremism will diminish only once the regional conflicts where Muslims and others are suffering are addressed more constructively. Gunaratna’s call for a reassessment of US policy in the Middle East as an essential precondition for a reduction of the instability and violence in the region deserves particular attention in this context. “Democracy cannot be imposed from the outside on a people not ready to embrace it. . . . The best the West could hope for is to develop the Middle East economically and empower local actors to fight for greater representation and participation.” *

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Two relevant conclusions can be drawn from this book about the evolution of counterterrorism policy dynamics in the West: The first is that the attacks of 11 September 2001 have created a window of opportunity for the formulation of a more unified counterterrorism policy. Western threat perceptions have converged with regard to the global nature and relevance of the threat posed by Islamist terrorism. For much of the twentieth century, counterterrorism policy in the West was shaped by a divide between states exposed to national and cross-border terrorism and states that were exposed neither to domestic terrorism nor to direct threats or acts of cross-border terrorism. The shock of 11 September 2001 undoubtedly narrowed this gap: by then, the Al-Qaida network had spread throughout the West, and the political, economic, and social impact of 9/11 thus affected all Western states. As a result, most Western countries have accepted the general principle that the combating of a global threat demands a multinational response and a coordinated deployment of political, diplomatic, legal, law enforcement, and military means. The second conclusion is that the implementation of a more unified counterterrorism policy experienced a serious setback in the context of the Iraq debate. In the case of Afghanistan, the clear linkage between Al-Qaida and the Taliban regime convinced a majority of Western policymakers that the use of military means was unavoidable in the short term. However, this

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consensus quickly fell apart once the United States moved to a policy of military regime change in Iraq that was conceived as the second phase in an open-ended “US War on Terrorism.” In order to be successful in the long term, the goals of multinational counterterrorism policy need to be defined on a case-by-case basis for specific political violence movements. A counterterrorism policy that is elevated to become the framework for a unilateral attempt at solving regional conflict by military means cannot provide a sustainable basis for a multinational and comprehensive Western counterterrorism strategy. Terrorism is an act of communication—the weaponization of a communicable act of terror—and thus extremist attacks are aimed at the minds of people as much as at their physical safety. Acts of terror and the response they produce affect the self-perception of societies, as well as the way societies are perceived by other political forces on the international stage. This dynamic of reciprocal threat perception explains why the pursuit of a balance between the efficiency of the chosen means to combat terrorism, on the one hand, and their legitimacy in the eyes of domestic and international constituencies, on the other, is indispensable to the long-term success of counterterrorism as a global endeavor. Within this larger normative context, the domestic counterterrorism policy debate in Western states has been dominated by three challenges. First, the strengthening of antiterrorism laws and the establishment of new powers and investigative tools have led to fierce debates about such measures and their impact on individual rights. Second, measures to increase information-sharing between police and intelligence agencies, and increasingly also across borders, have been accompanied by growing concerns about the democratic control over, and accountability of, the newly emerging authorities. Third, efforts are being made to improve the integration and coordination of the organizational structures and to assign clear responsibilities in the area of domestic preparedness. However, these efforts have met with a sense of unease about the growing role of the armed forces in domestic affairs. While all five country studies in this book suggest that these three challenges have indeed shaped the policy dynamics at the national level, they also make clear that each country’s attempt to solve these challenges has ended in a series of specific political, legal, and operational compromises. At the international level, two controversial issues remain in the counterterrorism policy debate in the West: the different perceptions of international terrorism—while some states treat it primarily as a crime that is a matter for law enforcement and the criminal-justice system, others perceive it mainly as a national-security issue—reflect the different worldviews and institutional preferences of individual Western states. Furthermore, there are two broader conceptual frameworks for integrating a military element in an

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overarching counterterrorism policy that are difficult to reconcile— although policymakers often use both frameworks at the same time: one view sees the unilateral deployment of military force against international political violence movements and their state sponsors as being in line with the idea of forward defense, while another view supports the multilateral use of military force within an agreed political and legal framework as a means for transforming regional conflicts. The global threat posed by Islamist terrorism (and potentially by other international political violence movements) demands a multidimensional and a multinational response. In order to devise an efficient counterterrorism policy, the quest for the right balance of requirements remains critical. Combating terrorism is no short-term endeavor. Thus, in the long term, legitimacy matters, both in terms of our self-perception and in terms of the political perceptions of the people affected by global terrorist forces.

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Part 1 The Dynamics of Counterterrorism Policy in Europe

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2 Britain’s Counterterrorism Policy LAURA K. DONOHUE

BRITAIN RESPONDED TO THE ATTACKS OF 11 SEPTEMBER 2001 WITH A COUNterterrorist assault: the Civil Aviation Authority banned all civilian air traffic over central London and closed City Airport in east London. The Metropolitan Police evacuated Downing Street. The government initiated a comprehensive review of the UK’s preparedness and contingency plans. Westminster outlawed an extensive list of pathogens and toxins, empowered the government to retain communications data, and reintroduced indefinite detention. The intelligence community created a Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre and directed more resources toward international terrorism and nonproliferation. The government drove new initiatives through the UN, the EU, and NATO. And twenty-six days after the attacks, Britain went to war with Afghanistan. Taken at face value, the sheer scale of the response makes it look as though something had changed radically on that date. Indeed, debates in Parliament and open-source publications frequently refer to 11 September 2001 as a watershed. But upon closer inspection, many of the measures had been in place or in the works prior to autumn 2001. The attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C., did not so much create as accelerate a process already in motion. This chapter traces the evolution of these measures prior to and immediately following the attacks. The first section highlights policy actions grounded in law, intelligence, military force, and consequence management. It notes that the 2001 Anti-terrorism, Crime, and Security Act capped a century of temporary counterterrorist provisions, which had been made permanent just seven months before the attacks. Although parliamentary debates and legislative reviews had previously taken into account the existence of Al-Qaida, in the shadow of the most recent atrocity, provisions previously thought unacceptable rapidly passed through Parliament. The intelligence community placed more emphasis on Muslim extremism. Greater resources 17

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became available to trace the threat posed by nonconventional weapons. The difference, however, was one of degree, not kind. In the military realm, the UK kept stride with the United States in its attack on Afghanistan. This antiterrorist role, anticipated in the 1998 Strategic Defence Review, brought the issue of the modernization of the British military to a head. In the realm of consequence management, the British government had already previously begun to examine its domestic ability to respond to disruptive events. The attacks underscored the importance of building capacity in this area. The next section turns to dynamics in the domestic counterterrorist debate. Some of the fiercest battles are being fought over measures with a significant impact on individual rights: identity cards, exceptional powers of arrest, and indefinite detention. The third section, which focuses on conceptions of national counterterrorism policy, notes the historical and contemporary importance of the rule of law in the counterterrorist dialog. This section helps to explain why some of the extensions in the legal, intelligence, and military realms have led to the contentious debates highlighted in the chapter’s second section. The chapter next picks up one aspect of counterterrorism policy implementation that affects the political structure: democratic accountability. The fifth section turns to an evaluation of the UK’s international relationships and efforts to focus the UN, the EU, and NATO on counterterrorism. The chapter concludes by suggesting that Britain’s response to 11 September 2001 originated within a broader dialog. The Northern Ireland peace process resulted in increased emphasis on international terrorism. Growing links between terrorism and organized crime, a gradual shift in police and intelligence functions from a local to a national emphasis, and the rapid advancement of technology further affected these sectors. Questions about the end of the Cold War and the growth of asymmetric rivals nagged the military.1 The Ministry of Defence later acknowledged that while “eleven September may have pointed to the need for enhancing existing provision [sic] in certain areas . . . it has not led to any fundamental reevaluation of the principles underpinning the [Strategic Defence Review (SDR)] or the roles and responsibilities which the SDR gave the Armed Forces.”2 Attacks in Bali, Mombasa, Riyadh, Casablanca, Istanbul, Madrid, and London underscored the importance of further developing counterterrorist capabilities. These factors combined to accelerate trends that predated the 11 September 2001 attacks.

Policy Responses Evolution of the UK’s Legal Instruments Against Terrorism The dominant twentieth-century terrorist threat in the UK was related to the political status of Northern Ireland. Between 1966 and 1999, a total of

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3,636 individuals lost their lives in violence related to the region. 3 The Northern Ireland government (until 1972) and Westminster maintained an extensive network of “temporary” special powers to address the threat posed.4 As a result, two threads of counterterrorist legislation mark British provisions prior to 11 September 2001: the first derived from Ireland and, later, Northern Ireland. The second applied primarily to Great Britain with extension to Northern Ireland. These two threads came together in the 2000 Terrorism Act.5 Despite this long history, and a rigorous inquiry just prior to the attacks, following 11 September 2001 the British government swiftly passed additional legal measures in the form of the 2001 Anti-terrorism, Crime, and Security Act. Two threads: (temporary) counterterrorist law, 1914–2001. The first

thread of British counterterrorist law originated in Ireland. Building on the 1914–1915 Defence of the Realm Act and the 1920 Restoration of Order in Ireland Act, the 1922–1943 Civil Authorities (Special Powers) Acts (SPAs) addressed paramilitary violence at the time of partition. This legislation empowered the newly formed Civil Authority to impose curfews; close premises, roads, and transportation routes; detain and intern individuals; and proscribe organizations.6 It gave the government the right to censor newspapers and radio and to ban meetings, processions, and gatherings, and the use of cars. The legislation altered the court system. The SPAs granted extensive powers of entry, search, and seizure, and, in a Draconian catch-all phrase, empowered the civilian authority “to take all such steps and issue all such orders as may be necessary for preserving the peace and maintaining order.” This clause led to over 100 new regulations, the substance of which ranged from preventing gatherings and processions to outlawing wearing an Easter lily.7 The Unionist government supplemented the SPAs, which served as the main body of counterterrorist law in the North, with additional powers. For instance, the 1921 Local Government (Emergency Powers) Act (Northern Ireland) enabled the government to replace recalcitrant local authorities with a paid official administrator until the local body could be reconstituted.8 It also provided for the redrawing of electoral boundaries and required an oath of allegiance to the state. 9 The 1922 Criminal Procedure Act (Northern Ireland) allowed for the removal of juries and the creation of special courts for trials involving serious crime.10 The state also implemented broader security measures: it swiftly supplemented the police force with the Ulster Special Constabulary. These two forces taken together had approximately 45,200 members, whose focus was the elimination of the paramilitary Republican challenge.11 After World War II, the government of Northern Ireland relinquished some of the powers in the SPAs. In the midst of growing civil unrest in the mid- to late 1960s, it reintroduced many of the counterterrorist provisions.

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However, these failed to stop the violence. In 1972, London responded to growing disorder by proroguing the Unionist government in Stormont and assuming direct control of the province. The British government almost immediately instituted a review of the emergency powers available to the state and appointed Lord Diplock to head the inquiry. 12 Although it announced that it would repeal the SPAs, the British government reissued many of the previous measures and combined them with Lord Diplock’s formal recommendations into the 1973 Northern Ireland (Emergency Provisions) Act (EPA). 13 This legislation established special criminal processes (such as nonjury trial); provided broad powers of entry, search, and seizure; allowed for the appropriation of land and blocking of roads; and empowered the government to intern suspects without trial. It included powers to prohibit marches and gatherings and to proscribe “terrorist” organizations. And it allowed for the discretionary introduction of further measures.14 The second thread derives from measures introduced to quell violence in the UK: the 1939 Prevention of Violence (Temporary Provisions) Act (PVA) came on the heels of an IRA mainland bombing campaign and targeted Irish immigrants.15 The legislation secured three central powers for the home secretary to exercise at his or her discretion: registration, expulsion, and prohibition. The act included the power to arrest and detain individuals without warrant for an initial period of 48 hours and, with the authorization of the secretary of state, for a further period of five days. The bombing campaign ceased within a year, but the statute did not lapse until 1953, and it was not repealed until 1973—only to be reintroduced following the 1974 Birmingham bombings as the 1974 Prevention of Terrorism (Temporary Provisions) Act (PTA).16 Westminster enacted both statutes with extraordinary swiftness: the 1939 PVA took 48 hours to pass through all its stages, and within eight days of the Birmingham bombing, the 1974 PTA became law. This statute outlawed the IRA, provided for extensive checks along the border with the Irish Republic, extended powers of arrest and detention, and introduced exclusion orders.17 The 1973 EPA and 1974 PTA served as the dominant legal counterterrorist framework between 1974 and 2000. Citing the continuing troubles, Westminster regularly renewed both statutes. Special committees occasionally reviewed the powers: the 1975 Gardiner Committee and the 1983 Baker Committee examined the operation of the EPA, while the 1978 Shackleton review and the 1983 Jellicoe Report looked at the PTA. These and other inquiries led to some changes: in 1983, for instance, following publication of the Jellicoe Report, Westminster expanded the PTA to address threats from nondomestic sources.18 Eventually the government instituted regular reviews focused on the manner in which the security forces and government ministers exercised powers under the acts: from 1986 until 1994, Viscount

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Colville conducted the annual PTA reviews; and from 1994 until 2000, J. J. Rowe took over this function. Weaving the two threads together: the 2000 Terrorism Act. Against

the changing political context of Northern Ireland, the state asked Lord Lloyd of Berwick, assisted by Mr. Justice Kerr, to consider the range of counterterrorist initiatives that should be maintained on a more permanent basis to address possible future terrorist challenges to the state.19 In 1998 the government welcomed many of the recommendations, which were incorporated into the 2000 Terrorism Act (TA).20 This legislation came into force in February 2001. It addressed both domestic and foreign terrorism and, with the exception of one temporary section focused on Northern Ireland, permanently ensconced counterterrorist provisions in British law. The TA establishes a broad definition of terrorism: “the use or threat of action [subsequently delineated] . . . designed to influence the government or to intimidate the public or a section of the public . . . made for the purpose of advancing a political, religious, or ideological cause.”21 An action falls within this definition if it “involves serious violence against a person, involves serious damage to property, endangers a person’s life, other than that of the person committing the action, creates a serious risk to the health or safety of the public or a section of the public, or is designed seriously to interfere with or seriously to disrupt an electronic system.”22 This action can take place either within the UK or abroad. Although there is no criminal offense directly based on this definition, it provides a basis for investigative police powers. The Terrorism Act includes powers relating to proscription, seizure of terrorist property, investigations, counterterrorism, and miscellaneous offenses, as well as measures relating to special police powers in Northern Ireland. The act includes more judicial or quasi-judicial oversight than had previously existed in counterterrorist law. Section 41 of the TA provides the police with the power to arrest and detain for up to 14 days, without warrant, any individual reasonably suspected of being a terrorist. Detention is subject to judicial approval at various stages. Legal context post–11 September 2001: the 2001 Anti-terrorism, Crime, and Security Act. Although Parliament adopted permanent coun-

terterrorist legislation seven months prior to 11 September 2001, within weeks of the attacks, the omnibus Anti-terrorism, Crime, and Security Act (ATCSA) was passed. Like the 1922–1943 SPAs, the 1973 EPA, and the 1974 PTA, the act was rushed through Parliament: following the second reading on 19 November, the committee stage took only two days (21 and 26 November), with the remaining stages also taken on 26 November. To some extent, the perception that new measures were necessary was

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derived from the belief that the nature of terrorism had shifted: from domestic separatist or nationalist violence, the threat was beginning to take on a multifaceted, unbound threat motivated by religious and cultural ideals.23 The sheer scale of the attack played a central role: 2,819 people died, 67 of whom had been British subjects.24 The attack underscored concern that terrorist organizations were using the UK to develop resources and plan for attacks on other states. Of the 19 suspected 9/11 hijackers, 11 are reported to have had British links.25 It highlighted a shift in the view of basic policing: from reactive to proactive, with security forces increasingly seen in the context of risk management. 26 And the attacks prompted a hardening in British views. The ATCSA went beyond terrorism to include measures bearing little relation to Al-Qaida. For instance, Part V of the act addresses offenses motivated by religious hatred. Although the law intended to prevent recriminations against the Muslim community, the first person to be convicted, Iftikar Ali, was taken to court for distributing anti-Semitic pamphlets.27 ATCSA provides for the retention of communications data. Parts VI to X address dangerous substances and state vulnerabilities concerning, for example, weapons of mass destruction (Part VI), pathogens and toxins (Part VII), and nuclear and airport security (Parts VIII and IX). The act also includes measures relating to specialist police forces focused on protecting the nuclear installations (Part X). The most controversial portion of the act, Part IV, addresses immigration matters and provides for the removal or indefinite detention of foreign nationals suspected of terrorist activity. For all practical purposes, it applies only to individuals suspected of participation in Al-Qaida.28 It requires that the home secretary issue a certificate indicating his or her belief that the person is an international terrorist whose presence in the UK creates a risk to national security. If such individuals cannot be deported, either because of the UK’s international obligations (e.g., the likelihood of torture or inhuman and degrading treatment accompanying the prisoner’s release to his or her home state), or for practical reasons (e.g., on grounds of national security), the statute empowers the British government to detain the individual, without trial, in high-security conditions. Alternatively, if the government is prepared to deport the individual, the individual may choose to leave the UK if another state is prepared to accept his or her presence. Individuals detained or deported can appeal against the certificate to the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (SIAC), which has the power to cancel it if it finds no grounds for the secretary of state’s claim. 29 The appeal includes two elements: an “open” stage, in which the home secretary discloses information that can be made public, and a “closed” stage, where classified information is made available to a security-cleared “special advocate.” Upon receipt of the closed-source material, the advocate is prevented

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from further communication with the suspect or his/her legal representative, although they can provide the special advocate with further materials.30 Appeals from the SIAC’s ruling can be made in relation to a point of law. The SIAC reviews the certificate at regular intervals. It can grant bail, subject to conditions. The detainee has the option of ending detention at any time by leaving the UK. Unlike most provisions in the ATCSA, this detention power is temporary. It entered into force initially for a period of 15 months, to expire unless renewed by Parliament then and on an annual basis thereafter. The secretary of state also has the authority to repeal the provision if, at any time, he or she determines that a state of emergency no longer exists. Use of the Terrorism Act since 11 September 2001. Partly due to the

long history of counterterrorist provisions in the UK, statistics are available regarding the use of the powers under both the TA and the ATCSA: law enforcement detained 544 people between 11 September 2001 and 31 January 2004 under Section 41 of the Terrorism Act.31 The state charged only 77 of these and convicted even fewer, namely seven.32 By 8 March 2004, the government had detained an additional 47 people under the port powers of the 2000 TA. 33 In late March and early April, police officers arrested nine people in southeast England,34 and on 20 April, approximately 400 police participated in a further raid, arresting ten individuals under the TA.35 There is evidence that the police quickly began to apply the powers to non–terrorist-related circumstances: for instance, police arrested 114 people at the Defence Systems and Equipment International arms fair in London’s Docklands under Section 44 of the TA. The protesters were objecting to the presence of the weapons bazaar in the UK.36 Despite the controversy that surrounded the use of these powers in this instance, the High Court upheld the decision.37 Lord Justice Brooke and Mr. Justice Maurice Kay made it clear that the judicial role in such instances was limited: questions of national security lay in the domain of the government and Parliament—not the judiciary.38 From the time the act came into force in February 2001, Parliament renewed these powers every 28 days. The Privy Counsellor Review Committee reported, “They have also been used in almost every other police area in Britain (though it has not been made public whether they have been continuously renewed outside the capital.”39 This led the committee to note, “Had Parliament envisaged such extensive and routine use of these powers, it might well have provided for different safeguards over their use.”40 British security forces also have made increasing use of TA stop and search authorities. Charges of the abuse of these powers accompanied the revelation in December 2003 that officers made 32,100 searches of suspect-

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ed terrorists in 2003—up from 9,000 the previous year.41 Less than 1 percent of those searched ended up being arrested for terrorist offenses. More than 28,000 of the searches took place in London. In addition to the detention powers described here, the TA incorporated the 1999 Terrorist Financing Convention into domestic law. 42 The core offenses are fund-raising, use and possession of funds, funding arrangements, and money-laundering.43 It is a violation for an individual to provide money or property, or to solicit such from others, with knowledge or reasonable cause to suspect that such resources will be used for terrorist purposes. The act grants the UK extraterritorial jurisdiction over these offenses. The ATCSA expanded the duty to disclose information and evidence, and those sections relating to terrorist cash; however, again, the difference post9/11 was not so much a change in kind in terms of the legal mechanisms, as merely an extension of measures already in place. Following the attacks, the UK made use of its power to freeze funds, but it did so in the context of its international obligations. The government implemented UN Security Council Resolution 1373 via an order in council granting the treasury the power to require banks and financial institutions to freeze assets. The UK listed 48 people and 77 organizations whose assets totaled £7.2 million.44 In March 2004, UK chancellor Gordon Brown directed British banks to freeze the assets of Hamas leaders. 45 As of 24 March that year, approximately £70 million in “terrorist assets” had been frozen, 38 bank accounts in UK institutions were locked, and £2.65 million allegedly to be used for funding terrorist training abroad had been intercepted.46 Use of the ATCSA since its introduction. Statistics also are available on

the ATCSA, which has been subject to annual review. Despite the controversial nature of its Part IV, the government immediately made use of the powers. The morning after the statute had been passed, police arrested ten individuals. They did not inform anyone of the arrests or of their whereabouts.47 In total, the state held more than 17 foreign nationals under the ATCSA, some for more than two years. Two men voluntarily left the country. One individual was shifted from detention under the ATCSA to detention under other state powers. In October 2003, the SIAC rejected appeals by ten of the remaining 14 prisoners.48 The Privy Council appointed a committee to review the ATCSA and concluded that the indefinite detention of foreign nationals without trial should be revoked.49 The committee voiced concern that the temporary measures forced the UK to derogate from the right to liberty under the European Convention on Human Rights. The legality of Part IV quickly came under judicial scrutiny. In July 2002 the SIAC judged that while a public emergency justified detention without trial, Part IV was unlawful and discriminatory because it only affected noncitizens and was thus in violation of Articles 5 and 14 of the

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European Convention on Human Rights. The Court of Appeal overturned the SIAC ruling in October 2002, determining that the detainees were not to be compared to British nationals. The House of Lords later found a violation of the 1998 Human Rights Act, which incorporated the European Convention into British law. As with the TA, there is already evidence that the state has not limited its use of the powers included in the ATCSA to counterterrorism. The Privy Counsellor Review Committee found in December 2003 that “most of the reported uses of the Part 10 [police] powers have not been related to counterterrorism.”50 Similarly, between January 2002 and September 2003, only 4 percent of the disclosures made by Inland Revenue to police and intelligence services under Part III Section 19 of the ATCSA related to terrorism.51 In contrast, 46 percent (9,157 disclosures) related to sex offenses, and 24 percent (4,848 disclosures) related to drug offenses.52 This phenomenon is not singular to Inland Revenue: during the same period, only 21 percent of the disclosures made by HM Customs and Excise related to terrorism.53 Observing the use of these powers, the committee concluded, “These provisions are, in our view, a significant extension of the Government’s power to use information obtained for one purpose, in some cases under compulsory powers, for a completely different purpose.”54 Continued efforts to expand counterterrorist law. Efforts to expand counterterrorist provisions continued beyond the TA and ATCSA.55 In the December 2003 Privy Counsellor Review of the ATCSA, for instance, the committee argued that the extraordinary detention powers under Part IV of the act should be replaced with broader measures so that the powers could be used against non–Al-Qaida suspects.56 The committee argued that the special procedure for warrant hearings in arrests under the TA should be extended to efforts to seize property—and that property seizures should be extended to noncash items where it could be demonstrated that they were linked to planning and preparation for acts of terror.57 The committee advocated that the ban on the use of intercepted communications in court be lifted and suggested a more intensive use of surveillance.58 In an unconscious resurrection of the 1922–1943 Special Powers Acts, the committee also suggested that the government make use of powers limiting a suspect’s freedom of movement: for example, curfews, tagging, and daily reporting to a police station.59 Following the adverse finding by the House of Lords in regard to the indefinite detention of noncitizens, the government instituted restriction orders. The Privy Counsellor Review also advocated limits on freedom of association and a suspect’s ability to access financial services.60 The committee determined that the list of pathogens and toxins was too short and should include more substances. In February 2004, the home secretary issued a policy paper that pro-

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posed lowering the burden of proof required to convict terrorist suspects (from “beyond reasonable doubt” to a “balance of probabilities”), and the use of in-camera hearings.61 He also called for the application of ATCSA powers to British subjects.62 He announced a six-month consultation on the adoption of measures such as the use of phone-tap evidence and stateappointed defense lawyers. His aim was to ensure that the powers were in place by 2006, when the temporary provisions incorporated into the ATCSA would lapse.63 The home secretary at the time, David Blunkett, cited the supposed threat posed by “new global suicide terrorism” as justification for further powers. There is strong partisan resistance in Parliament to the idea of expanding the powers any further.64 In the public domain, a recent BBC informal poll gave Internet users an opportunity to comment on Blunkett’s proposal. The majority of the approximately 150 responses strongly condemned the proposals as Orwellian, undermining the “very foundations of British justice,” and unfit for a civilized society.65 Intelligence The terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 affected the British intelligence community in at least four ways: it resulted in (1) the establishment of a new Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre, (2) an increasing emphasis on terrorism generally and Muslim extremism in particular, and (3) a greater focus on nonconventional weapons. As with the changes in law, however, these developments represented not so much a departure in kind as a shift in degree from the status quo prior to 11 September 2001. They logically followed from the history and structure of the British intelligence community. Outside of these developments, what did represent a significant departure was (4) the government’s use of intelligence to provide the authority for going to war in Iraq. To some extent, however, this reflects the increasing permeability of the barrier between the public and the intelligence community. Intelligence structure. There are three principal intelligence agencies in

the UK: the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS/MI6), Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), and the Security Service (MI5).66 The Secret Intelligence Service, run under the authority of the secretary of state, provides the government with information relating to events, individuals, and networks abroad. SIS’s powers are exercisable only in relation to national security (particularly defense and foreign policy), the economy, and the prevention or detection of serious crime.67 GCHQ focuses on signals intelligence (SIGINT), monitoring electromagnetic, acoustic, and electronic communications. Like SIS, its functions must be carried out in the interests of national security, the economic well-being of the UK, and the prevention or detection of serious crime.68 The Security Service (MI5) is responsible for

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domestic threats to the national security of the UK. At its founding in 1909, the organization primarily sought to counter German espionage. In 1931 it extended its focus to include Communism and Fascism. Over time, its remit expanded to include domestic terrorism, organized crime, illegal drugs and immigration, and benefit fraud.69 SIS and GCHQ report to the foreign secretary, and MI5 to the home secretary. The Intelligence and Security Committee, drawn from nine nonministerial members of the House of Commons and House of Lords, performs parliamentary oversight over the agencies.70 The Defence Intelligence Staff (DIS) of the Ministry of Defence (MoD) also gathers intelligence. Formed in 1964 from the merger of the three services’ intelligence staffs and, on the civilian side, the Joint Intelligence Bureau, its main function is to provide analysis, advice, and warnings to the MoD, the armed forces, and government departments. DIS reports to the secretary of state for defense. The Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC), chaired by the secretary of the cabinet, provides intelligence assessments for senior government officials.71 The JIC helps to establish intelligence priorities. Prior to 11 September 2001, terrorism, as well as the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, had been considered high-priority requirements.72 The UK also has two principal law enforcement agencies that collect intelligence related to terrorism and political violence. These organizations fall under Home Office authority. The first, SO12, was founded in 1883 by the Metropolitan Police in London in response to Fenian violence.73 SO12 branches now extend throughout the UK. Their counterpart, the AntiTerrorist Squad (SO13) is based out of the Metropolitan Police and has national responsibilities. This unit focuses on the operational aspects of threats, such as bomb disposal. Following the 11 September 2001 attacks, the overall structure of British intelligence remained largely the same. But the event underscored the importance of greater information-sharing between governmental departments. It was not until after the 2002 Bali bombing, however, that the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre (JTAC) was formed.74 JTAC is a multiagency organization housed at MI5 and staffed by personnel from the relevant agencies, law enforcement organizations, and departments. It has the lead on pooling information to determine the threat within the UK and to British subjects and interests overseas.75 The parliamentary body that oversees the agencies recognized that this additional organization came at a cost: the chair of the Intelligence and Security Committee, Ann Taylor, said of its 2003–2004 annual report, “We express concern that, because of the necessary additional effort allocated to counterterrorism, risks are being taken in the area of counter-espionage and that other important work is not being carried out as fully as Ministers and the Agencies themselves would wish.”76

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Increasing emphasis on international terrorism and Muslim extremism. Both procedural and substantive shifts underscore the increasing

emphasis on international terrorism. In relation to the former, while in the aftermath of the attacks the agencies have developed closer ties to foreign intelligence bodies, this trend had already begun before 11 September 2001.77 With regard to substantive shifts, prior to the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the SIS had mainly focused on the threat posed by the Soviet Union. As difficult as it is to see inside MI6, it has been publicly acknowledged that 9/11 overrode the organization’s focus on Northern Ireland, redirecting its emphasis toward Muslim extremists.78 This does not mean that the security and intelligence agencies had previously ignored the threat: by June 1995 the JIC had begun to evaluate the Islamist threat and to consider the implications of suicide attacks.79 In order to keep pace with this increasing emphasis on terrorism after 11 September 2001, the distribution of resources within the agencies and the total monies made available for that purpose appears also to have shifted to reflect the Islamist threat. At the agency level, two years prior to the attacks, in 1999, 30.5 percent of MI5’s workload had been concerned with terrorism in Northern Ireland, and 22.5 percent on international terrorism. Following 11 September 2001, in 2002, 28 percent of the workload focused on Northern Ireland, and 33 percent on international terrorism.80 This is a reflection not only of the nature of the attacks themselves but also of a general trend in the UK over the past decade: away from local emphasis and toward a more national one, and away from policing and toward the use of intelligence agencies.81 There has also been a net increase in the funding for the agencies across the board since 11 September 2001; however, the difference has not been sudden and dramatic. Instead, it reflects a trend that had already been present prior to the event. The most significant change in resources made available to the security and intelligence agencies came between 1998–1999 and 1999–2000 (see Table 2.1).

Table 2.1

Total Resource Budget in the UK for the Security and Intelligence Agencies (in thousands of pounds)

1998– 1999 Outturn

1999– 2000 Outturn

2000– 2001 Outturn

2001– 2002 Outturn

2002– 2003 Outturn

2003– 2004 Estimated Outturn

587,880

910,022

824,362

909,003

940,032

1,042,956 1,111,750 1,156,322

2004– 2005 Plans

2005– 2006 Plans

Source: Security and Intelligence Agencies, Supplementary Budgetary Information 2004–2005, UK Treasury, available online at http://performance.treasury.gov.uk/ sbi/sia.pdf.

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The increased resources for the security and intelligence agencies reflect expanded counterterrorist funding overall. The chancellor announced in July 2004 that the spending goal for 2007/2008 was £2.1 billion, compared to £950 million spent on security in 2001.82 The funds are to be used for border controls, radio communication, nuclear and chemical decontamination plans, the addition of more intelligence staff (1,000 new positions were announced in July 2004), and the doubling of local authority emergency planning budgets, as well as other purposes.83 Increasing emphasis on nonconventional weapons. Perhaps the most

significant shift within the intelligence community since 11 September 2001, while still not a radical departure from the previous state of affairs, is the growing emphasis on possible use of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) by political violence movements. At the heart of this concern is the confluence of Al-Qaida’s willingness to inflict large-scale casualties; growing evidence of organizations such as Al-Qaida and Aum Shinrikyo seeking and obtaining nuclear, radiological, chemical, and biological weapons; and the implications of a suicide attack. Like the other aspects of intelligence, the general trend was in place prior to 11 September 2001. However, it was late in developing: even as recently as 1989 the Joint Intelligence Committee stated: “We have no intelligence that any terrorist group makes CBW [chemical and biological warfare] agents, possesses any such agents or is currently contemplating attacks using CBW agents or other toxic chemicals,”84 and “We believe that even the most sophisticated and well-organized terrorist group is highly unlikely to be able to steal and then detonate a nuclear weapon within the foreseeable future.”85 In 1992 the JIC revisited the issue but determined that conventional weapons would be more useful for terrorist uses. In 1994, evidence emerged of fissile material being available on the black market, but the JIC still did not consider the threat to be significant. Although the attacks on the Tokyo subway by Aum Shinrikyo increased the interest in possible terrorist use of nuclear, biological, and chemical compounds, in July 1996 the JIC also reported, “There is no indication of any terrorist or other group showing interest in the use of nuclear, biological or chemical (NBC) materials against the UK.”86 Within two years, though, the JIC recognized Osama bin Laden’s growing interest in these materials, and in 1999 the organization squarely addressed the “significant increase in the quantity and quality of intelligence that some terrorists are interested in CBRN [chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear materials].” 87 Significantly, the JIC recognized that some organizations were willing to cause mass casualties, and it determined, despite the lack of specific intelligence–based evidence, that bin Laden had acquired nonconventional weapons. 88 The JIC in January 2001 again emphasized the particular threat posed by bin Laden.89

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The JIC’s analysis crystallized shortly after the 11 September 2001 attacks. The committee issued a report highlighting the way in which bin Laden’s philosophy, and the use of suicide attacks, had changed the nature of the threat posed to the UK.90 The JIC’s further assessment that bin Laden had no interest in negotiations led it to conclude that he could not be deterred.91 The UK’s previous dependence on UN Special Commission (UNSCOM) inspectors in certain regions had left the country with very little information about issues associated with proliferation at the state level, much less among terrorist organizations.92 And so, in accordance with the growing emphasis on nonconventional weapons, British intelligence agencies began to develop new techniques for gathering information on the alleged threat of international chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear terrorism.93 Role of the intelligence community and barrier permeability.

Although the other initiatives pursued by the intelligence community after 11 September 2001 do not appear to have constituted a significant departure from the previous state of affairs, what did significantly shift was the use made of the intelligence community by political leaders in order to justify military aggression against Iraq. While it could be argued that the war in Iraq had nothing to do with Al-Qaida and everything to do with nonproliferation, the use of this intelligence bears mention in the current context, as it may be linked to a broader trend in which the barrier between the public and the intelligence agencies is becoming increasingly porous. In September 2002, British prime minister Tony Blair released a dossier that laid out the government’s evidence of Saddam Hussein’s use of weapons of mass destruction. This was the first public document ever produced by the Joint Intelligence Committee. It also marked the first time that the government tried to convince both the domestic and international public to endorse international action through the authority of the British intelligence community.94 The dossier made the case for a more proactive stance, which, in the end, carried the country to war. The government’s unprecedented use of the intelligence community in this manner carried a heavy price: controversy quickly arose regarding the 45minute claim (the time in which it would take Iraq to mobilize WMDs), that Iraq had tried to procure yellowcake uranium in Africa, that Iraq was trying to procure aluminum tubes for nuclear weapons–related purposes, and the supposed presence of mobile biological agent production facilities in Iraq.95 Elimination of many of the qualifications that would otherwise accompany an intelligence assessment meant that the government presented information as unequivocal when in reality it lacked sufficient validation. The use of the JIC in this manner generated public debate over whether intelligence organizations should be completely insulated from the public political discussion.

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The war with Iraq may be said to relate broadly to counterterrorism concerns. But the direct impetus for going to war had more to do in the immediate term with preventing the Iraqi regime from pursuing its nuclear, biological, chemical, and ballistic missile programs than with countering terrorism writ large or the threat posed by Al-Qaida in particular. The JIC made it clear to the British government at the time of war with Iraq that “there was no evidence of co-operation” between Al-Qaida and Iraq.96 The Butler Report claimed that while Al-Qaida facilities in the area controlled by the Kurdish Ansar al-Islam group were engaged in developing chemical and biological agents, “they were beyond the control of the Iraqi regime.”97 In March 2002, government officials stated their objectives as “preserving peace and stability in the Gulf and ensuring energy security.”98 Preventing Al-Qaida, or any other nonstate terrorist actors, from obtaining weapons from the Iraqi regime appeared neither in the immediate objectives vis-à-vis Iraq nor in the subsidiary objectives listed by the British government at that time.99 It was only after the release of the dossier that the JIC suddenly began to focus on possible links between Iraq and international terrorism.100 Subsequent official documents nevertheless maintained the original justification for war in Iraq: the attorney general, Lord Goldsmith, addressed three UN Security Council Resolutions (UNSCRs): Resolution 678 (authorizing force against Iraq to eject it from Kuwait and to restore peace and security in the region); 687 (setting the cease-fire conditions after Operation Desert Storm relating to WMD elimination); and 1441 (giving Iraq “a final opportunity to comply with its disarmament obligations” and warning of “serious consequences” in case of failure to do so). 101 Accordingly, in Iraq: Military Campaign Objectives, the government wrote: “The UK’s overall objective for the military campaign is to create the conditions in which Iraq disarms in accordance with its obligations under UNSCRs and remains so disarmed in the long term.” Nowhere in the document does the British government even mention international terrorism, much less Al-Qaida. The context was the “creeping tide” of proliferation to states. While this logic could be extended to claim proliferation to nonstate actors as well, the central issue was whether “countries of concern” would develop these capabilities.102 Following this logic, it could be claimed that the government’s decision to release the JIC document itself was not a counterterrorism measure but rather a policy decision related to foreign policy. Three responses to this can be raised. First, the attacks formed part of the background for increasing concern about Iraq; it was in an effort to address the latter that the government released the material, with the aim of convincing the public that a more forceful stance was necessary. Second, as previously noted, immediately following the release of the dossier, the JIC focused intensely on whether there were direct links between Al-Qaida and Iraq. Third, the

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unprecedented role attached to the release of such material to the public does seem to have expanded into the counterterrorism realm in the increasingly porous barrier between the public and the intelligence agencies. Other examples can be found for the slowly expanding accessibility of intelligence bodies. In November 2002 the Home Office released a document listing possible targets for attacks within the UK.103 In July 2003 Eliza Manningham-Buller, the director-general of MI5, warned of the inevitability of terrorist attacks in the UK using chemical, biological, “radiological,” or nuclear weapons. 104 MI5, previously cloaked in extreme secrecy, launched the Unicorn Project in 2003 to engage private enterprise in counterterrorism. Stung by criticism that the agency was “incoherent,” “outdated,” and “condescending,” MI5 launched a new website with advice and information assessing the current terrorist threats faced by the UK.105 While the information provided is not particularly earth-shattering (most of the advice is directed toward mitigating the effect of possible attacks), the decision to expand online does seem to represent a greater move toward openness that preceded and followed the release of the September 2002 dossier. MI5 claims that the agency had previously only made the details available to a few organizations.106 This openness seems to have been carried over to other areas as well. Law enforcement officers, such as Sir John Stevens, the Metropolitan Police commissioner, have made similar remarks. 107 More recently, the British government released a pamphlet, particularly tailored to a possible biological or chemical terrorist attack, highlighting what to do in an emergency, implicitly acknowledging the threat posed by significant terrorist acts within domestic bounds.108 Military Initiatives As in the legal and intelligence realms, the armed forces experienced the repercussions of 11 September 2001. Within three weeks of the attacks, the Ministry of Defence announced the need to add a “new chapter” to the 1998 Strategic Defence Review.109 By 5 November 2001, the MoD had laid out preliminary terms of reference, which included a reexamination of homeland defense and the UK’s ability to counter and deter terrorism at home and abroad. It addressed the UK’s defense posture and capabilities. Efforts would be made to maintain “a sense of proportion and scale” and to avoid the assumption “that everything has changed, or that everything needs to change.”110 Nevertheless, the House of Commons Defence Committee concluded that the scale of inquiry directed under the guise of a “new chapter” far exceeded that frame of reference: it amounted to “a fundamental reappraisal of the SDR”111 that would affect the size, roles, capabilities, and resources of the military.112

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The government responded to these proposals by stating that it had no plans to conduct a new defense review.113 Nevertheless, in February 2002 the MoD published and circulated a discussion paper that generated more than 300 responses.114 It followed up on this debate in June 2002 with a second discussion paper that focused on the role of the reserves in homeland defense: it was titled A New Chapter to the Strategic Defence Review: The Role of the Reserves in Home Defence and Security. That July the MoD released a White Paper on the SDR. In a new Public Service Agreement, issued together with the release of the Public Spending Review on 15 July 2002, the MoD stated its aim to “deliver security for the people of the United Kingdom and the Overseas Territories, by defending them, including against terrorism, and act as a force for good by strengthening international peace and security.”115 In light of the need to examine the role of the military in relation to terrorism, the House of Commons Defence Committee announced that the traditional constitutional structures of the UK would have to be reevaluated.116 The committee’s second report raised the question of whether the civil authority had sufficient resources to respond to a large-scale terrorist attack, and it opened discussions on the duties of reservists and full-time service members. 117 It also suggested a role for the armed forces in domestic affairs. The committee cited the need for the UK to be able to mobilize swiftly to preempt future terrorist attacks. It also emphasized, however, that although deliberations had to move in this direction, such an evaluation must consider the need to keep British forces within the bounds of international law.118 This was not the first time that the growing strength of Al-Qaida had been brought to the attention of the military. In 1998 simultaneous attacks in Nairobi and Dar-es-Salaam illustrated the organization’s planning capacity. These and other operations prompted Jane’s Intelligence Review to publish an analysis in August 2001 focused on the principal elements that had led to Al-Qaida’s strength and resilience. But the pivotal point for the shift in military thinking rested on the sheer scale of the destruction demonstrated on 11 September 2001 and the possible marriage of intent and capabilities in the realm of nuclear, radiological, biological, or chemical weapons.119 The military community evinced growing concerns that the UK lacked the organization and resources to respond to a large-scale catastrophic event.120 As a result, the need swiftly emerged to examine not only the UK’s vulnerabilities in terms of physical points of weakness, such as financial centers, transportation systems, or information networks, but also the possible use of British resources by extremist groups training for future attacks.121 Afghanistan. The UK proved a staunch ally of the United States in its mil-

itary aggression against Afghanistan and Iraq.122 In the Afghan war, the UK

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helped to develop a broad international coalition in which Arab and Muslim states granted landing and overflight rights and shared intelligence for military maneuvers. The country contributed more than 4,500 personnel as well as submarines, ships, and aircraft. On 7 October 2001, British forces participated in the first strikes of the campaign. British attack submarines, Royal Air Force tankers, Tristars and VC-10s, and reconnaissance and early warning aircraft, as well as Canberra PR.9s and Sentry AEW Mark 1s, engaged, as did 1,700 Royal Marine Commandos. The country initially led the International Security Assistance Force, and it conducted maritime patrols in the Arabian Sea. Following the war, the British government unfroze US$100 million linked to Al-Qaida and the Taliban, and made the funds available to the new Afghan government.123 The UK continues to play a central role in attempting to stabilize the region, although significant concerns about the delicate security situation in Afghanistan persist.124 Iraq. Despite strong public opposition within the country, the UK actively supported the US-led invasion of Iraq and continues to assist in the occupation. As was previously discussed, Britain’s primary reason for going to war with Iraq had little to do with alleged links between Al-Qaida and the Iraqi regime. Despite allegations made by the Bush administration, the British Foreign Office minister at that time, Ben Bradshaw, announced to the House of Commons on 27 November 2001 that there was “no evidence of any state involvement [in the 11 September 2001 attacks].”125 The House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee later determined that British actions in Iraq had backfired: “We . . . conclude that the continued failure of the Coalition to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq has damaged the credibility of the US and the UK in their conduct of the war against terrorism.”126 In addition, the decision to go to war had undermined British subjects’ security: “We conclude that the war in Iraq has possibly made terrorist attacks against British nationals and British interests more likely in the short term.”127 Modernization. One impact of the military action in Afghanistan and Iraq has been to push the British military to modernize its fighting force. The concept had previously been discussed in great detail. But the actions in Afghanistan and Iraq brought the issue again to the forefront. The chief of the defense staff Sir Michael Walker indicated in late 2003 that there would be a substantial overhaul of the British military, cutting warships, aircraft, and heavy armor in favor of more “flexible and agile” armed forces focused on the threat posed by international terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.128 A Defence White Paper issued in 2004 reflected these changes. The same year, Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon announced the elimination of 20,000 posts.129 Integrated command and control systems, surveillance satellites, and unmanned vehicles—such as the

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Predator drone used by the United States in its assassination of Al-Qaida suspects in Yemen in November 2001—became a model for a “networkenabled” military that can be used in a counterterrorist capacity.130 Consequence Management Prior to 11 September 2001, the British government had begun to examine its ability to respond to disruptive events such as the potential millennium bug in January 2000, the fuel crisis of 2000, and the foot-and-mouth epidemic of 2001. The Civil Contingencies Secretariat (CCS) was formed in the Cabinet Office to mitigate the effects of such events.131 The 9/11 attacks led to an increase in funding for the prevention of possible catastrophic terrorist attacks and raised the general awareness of the issue. New contingency measures addressed port and airport security, the underground, the possible evacuation of London, air defense, response times, the protection of domestic and foreign military bases within the UK, and the protection of first responders.132 Complementing these efforts, the UK ran domestic and international exercises to test emergency responses. One of the largest of these exercises was conducted in April 2005 in conjunction with the US Top Officials 3 multi-incident event. In addition to the increased resource allocation in this area and the increased frequency of exercises, greater attention has been given to the structures that support domestic preparedness. The home secretary has the lead for counterterrorist policy. Two cabinet committees provide the lead on homeland defense: the Ministerial Group on Preventive and Protective Security—known as DOP(IT)(T)—and the Civil Contingencies Committee (CCC). DOP(IT)(T) focuses on preventive and precautionary counterterrorist measures. CCC centers on lessons learned from other emergencies and disasters. Additional ad hoc committees feed into DOP(IT)(T), such as civil aviation, port security, and the protection of particular areas.133 Following 11 September 2001, the prime minister also approved the creation of a new Ministerial Group on Consequence Management and Resilience, or DPP(IT)(R), to act in support of the Committee on International Terrorism. Membership extends to a wide range of agencies and departments, which in turn liaise with different industrial and economic sectors to ensure the protection of the critical infrastructure.134 In January 2004 the government proposed a Civil Contingency Bill to update the 1920 Emergency Powers Act and the 1948 Civil Defence Act, which focused on the threat posed by the former Soviet Union.135 The legislation would tighten the definition of what constitutes an emergency.136 Any special powers would lapse after 21 days, unless further approved by Parliament. These powers could include deploying the military within domestic bounds, establishing special courts, or requisitioning property.137

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The issues that continue to dog Britain’s ability to respond effectively to a possible catastrophic terrorist attack are common to other liberal democratic states: confusion about who is responsible for what, interdepartmental communication gaps and marking of territory, concerns regarding the transmission of classified information to first responders, airport security, container security, network vulnerability, decontamination equipment and training, vaccination, and the health care monitoring and response system.138

Dynamics of the Current Domestic Debate on Counterterrorism If we accept for the moment that the decision to go to war with Iraq lies outside of the immediate counterterrorist realm and belongs more properly to the world of nonproliferation, then the dominant domestic debates on counterterrorism center on measures that impact individual rights.139 Three of the most contentious of these are the introduction of identity cards, powers of arrest, and extended detention. Identity Cards In November 2003 the Queen’s Speech announced the creation of a national identity (ID) card system.140 The government subsequently announced that legislation would make the acquisition of identity cards compulsory, and that fingerprints would be included on drivers’ licenses and passports within five years as a precursor to integrating biometric data (such as iris scans) into the identity documents. A central database would house the information. Public debate immediately erupted over the compulsory nature of the system, the possible uses of this information by the public services, and the impact of the scheme on civil liberties.141 Even the highest levels of government were divided on the issue: it is reported that five members of the cabinet opposed even including it in the Queen’s Speech on grounds of cost and civil liberties.142 A poll found that 55 of 101 Labour ministers of Parliament (MPs) wanted to see more research on the costs of the system before the scheme moved forward.143 Efforts to introduce a test scheme failed when too few British subjects volunteered for the project. 144 By July 2004 the Home Affairs Select Committee, dominated by Labour MPs, had issued a damning report on the potential impact of an ID card system on civil liberties in the UK.145 Efforts to assess the percentage of the population supporting the initiative yield divergent results: while one poll suggested that 72 percent support the plan,146 another put the number closer to 61 percent. That same poll showed that nearly 28 percent of the population was so virulently opposed

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that they would join street marches to protest. It determined that an additional 16 percent would be willing to take part in civil disobedience, with 6 percent willing to go to jail to prevent ID cards from being issued. 147 Scotland has exhibited particular opposition to the cards: the devolved Scottish executive vociferously condemned the idea of a national ID card system.148 A poll held by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation in July 2004 determined that barely half of the Scottish public would support a compulsory ID card.149 What makes the discussion central to the counterterrorist debate is that, as the Privy Counsellor Review of the ATCSA noted, terrorist organizations make extensive use of crimes of identity theft (the use of false personal documentation) in their operations. False ID “enables them to evade detection, circumvent immigration controls, and raise funds illegally.”150 While broad agreement appears to have been reached that Part X of the ATCSA does not adequately address this issue, it is not clear whether the broad distribution of identity cards to the population would make identity theft more or less difficult, particularly if large amounts of biometric data must be stored and accurately associated with each and every card. Powers of arrest. Another issue in the post–11 September 2001 domestic debate centers on the broad use of the arrest powers in the TA. Of the more than 560 people arrested after 11 September 2001, by April 2004 the judiciary had convicted only seven of a terrorist offense. Five of the seven were not engaged in activities in any way connected with Al-Qaida. Critics point to the widespread detention of Muslims as evidence of racial profiling and the use of extraordinary powers to pursue other ends. The BBC reported that the courts had found 230 of those initially held under the TA guilty of non–terrorism-related offenses, such as credit card fraud and immigration irregularities.151 The manner in which counterterrorism is being handled has led some commentators to charge that government action is encouraging extremism.152 Indefinite detention. Three uses of executive detention generated intense

discussion: new powers under Part IV of the ATCSA, the US facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and the confinement of more than 13,000 Iraqis by occupation forces after the war. The incorporation of internment authority in the ATCSA forced the UK to enter a derogation under Article 15 of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. Privy Counsel wrote in 2003, “We do not believe that Part 4 is a sustainable way of addressing the problem of terrorist suspects in the UK.”153 The Joint Committee on Human Rights questioned the existence of this provision.154 And the House of Lords, as was previously discussed, found it to contradict the European Convention of Human Rights.

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The US response to the attacks of 11 September 2001 accompanies concerns raised about ATCSA detention. As of 1 March 2004, of the 680 men from 42 different countries held at Guantanamo Bay, nine were British.155 Opposition to their continued detention reached a crescendo in July 2003 when the United States announced that Feroz Abbasi, 23, and Moazzam Begg, 36, from Birmingham would be among the first to stand trial under the newly created US military tribunals. After months of negotiation and in a hand-over that coincided with a visit by David Blunkett to the United States, on 9 March 2004 the US government transferred five of the detainees to Britain.156 In addition to Abbasi and Begg, Martin Mubanga, 29, and Richard Belmar, 23, both from London, remained in Guantanamo Bay.157 These cases generated a significant amount of parliamentary scrutiny.158 In response to growing concern about the detainees, on 20 January 2004, the Guantanamo Human Rights Commission was launched at the House of Commons. Its first visit to the United States took place from 8 to 10 March 2004. There is broad support within the British political establishment for the commission.159 Similar concerns are now being voiced about the detainees held in Iraq. 160 In September 2003 it emerged that the occupation forces had detained approximately 10,000 people, most of them at Abu Ghraib prison.161 By January 2004 that number had risen to more than 13,000.162 Reflecting the immediate public outcry, the Foreign Affairs Committee scathingly stated in its annual review, It is unacceptable that comprehensive information is not available about detainees being held by the Occupying Powers in Iraq. We recommend that the British Government ensures that such information is provided as a matter of immediacy including the names of all detainees; their nationalities; where they are held; in what conditions they are held; what rights they have, including access to lawyers; the legal basis for their detention; the offences of which they are suspected or charged; and when and how they will be tried or released.163

As allegations and evidence of torture emerged in the spring of 2004, public concern intensified. While concerns about the impact of counterterrorism on human rights continue to be raised at the highest levels of government, the issue has yet to be resolved.164

Conceptions of National Counterterrorism Policy The reason why issues such as extraordinary powers of arrest, indefinite detention, and the use of torture give rise to such controversy stems from the underlying principles that drive the national counterterrorism policy: much of the official and broader, public discussion emphasizes individual

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rights and the rule of law. Prior to 11 September 2001, this translated roughly into the following principles: (1) that counterterrorist legislation should approximate ordinary criminal law and procedure, (2) that additional statutory offenses should meet the test of necessity (in which case the balance between security and freedom must still be struck), (3) that additional safeguards should be considered along with expanded powers, and (4) that the measures should help the UK to meet its international legal obligations.165 Great importance was accorded to maintaining the rule of law in opposition to—and despite—the terrorist challenge. This approach remained consistent after 11 September 2001. The crossparty committee established by the Home Secretary in April 2002 to review the operation of the ATCSA focused on two liberal democratic principles: the right to privacy, and the authorities’ duty to take steps necessary to protect people from terrorism.166 The committee concluded, “Terrorists are criminals, and therefore ordinary criminal justice and security provisions should, so far as possible, continue to be the preferred way of countering terrorism.”167 Simultaneously, there was “a continuing need for special counterterrorism legislation” that would be distinct from mainstream criminal law, limited to dealing with terrorism, accompanied by safeguards, and consistent with international counterterrorism policies.168 The committee endorsed the principles set out by Lord Falconer of Thoroton QC during the House of Lords debates in March 2003: “Our society is based on the liberty of the individual. . . . [It] should not be limited unless a proper case for limitation is established.” Thoroton continued, Any limitations on individual freedom must be proportionate to the threat; they must be sanctioned by law and cannot take place on an ad hoc basis; and they must be implemented in a way which ensures that there are safeguards and that the activities of the executive are subject to monitoring, scrutiny and accountability. If limitations are implemented excessively, the framework must ensure that the monitoring, scrutiny and accountability arrangements are likely to identify and remedy such excesses. In other words, if protections are put in place they must be effective.169

Attestations to the importance of the rule of law were accompanied by observations about liberalism and the nature of terrorism. Lord Hope noted in R. v. Director of Public Prosecutions that it is difficult to maintain such values in the face of a threat. [Terrorism] seeks to achieve its ends by violence and intimidation. It is often indiscriminate in its effects, and sophisticated methods are used to avoid detection both before and after the event. Society has a strong interest in preventing acts of terrorism before they are perpetrated—to spare the lives of innocent people and to avoid the massive damage and dislocation to ordinary life which may follow from explosions which destroy or damage property.170

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States have the right to defend their existence and their values, even if it means that some entitlements may be curtailed.171 Terrorism, moreover, is an illegitimate form of protest. It presents a unique threat: terrorist organizations are sophisticated, have the ability to intimidate large numbers of people, operate in secret, and may be remotely organized. 172 This means that atypical provisions can be applied. The acceptability of incursions into individual rights has expanded in the context of the “new terrorism.”173 Government officials have stated that, while regrettable, in the face of the threat posed by Al-Qaida—particularly after the attacks in London in July 2005—mandatory identity cards, extraordinary arrest powers, and restriction orders are necessary to meet the threat.174 Not all commentators find that the government has acted appropriately with regard to the rule of law. There has been some backlash against the concept of “new terrorism,” especially as far as claims about the threat posed by WMDs are concerned.175 Scientific experts cite the difficulties associated with the construction and dissemination of chemical and biological warfare agents, saying that such attacks are much less likely than the use of ordinary explosives.176 But for the most part, the earlier approach holds.

Aspects of Counterterrorism Policy Implementation Two aspects of counterterrorism policy of further consequence to the current discussion are the degree to which judicial processes provide a check on the assumption of government power, and the impact of counterterrorist measures on democratic accountability. In relation to the former, ongoing consideration is given to the degree to which inroads into individual and civil rights are in essence “checked” or monitored by the judicial structure. Ever since the Proroguement of Stormont, however, there have been latent concerns about placing the judiciary into a structure that might undermine its legitimacy. Democratic accountability provides the basis for full constitutional governance.177 The TA does not require any formal, scheduled review of the measures—a process that has been indispensable in the evaluation of the impact of the powers granted in the EPA and PTA in previous decades. Neither has the British government established clear criteria for determining the level of success in responding to the terrorist challenge. The government appointed Lord Carlisle as an extrastatutory reviewer; however, he serves at the pleasure of the government and lacks both a formal relationship with Parliament and the powers and resources necessary to command effective review. The lack of these tools affects the quality of parliamentary and public consideration of the measures. In contrast, the ATCSA does include provisions for a full and independent review.178 In the increasingly centralized surveillance world, the story is similar,

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further reflecting the democratic deficit. Although the 1994 Intelligence Services Act established a Parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee, there has been only minimal oversight in practice. 179 The ATCSA amends this legislation to further allow agencies traditionally focused on events outside the UK to conduct intelligence operations within domestic borders. The ATCSA also allowed MI6 to support evidence-gathering activities.180 These developments seem to contradict the notion of the barrier between the public and the intelligence agencies becoming more permeable. While this chapter is not the place for a more thorough analysis of this matter, it is worth noting these apparently contradictory tendencies as part of the manner in which counterterrorism provisions have been implemented in the post-9/11 environment.

Counterterrorism and International Cooperation The UK treats international institutions as part of the country’s overall counterterrorist response. The three most important entities here are the UN, the EU, and NATO. In addition, Britain has worked to maintain international norms against the use of weapons of mass destruction. For instance, the UK has increased its support to the International Atomic Energy Agency to help to prevent nuclear terrorism. The money will be used for nuclear security training, funding missions of the International Physical Protection Advisory Service, preparing materials to help member states improve their legal and regulatory structures, and developing a good accounting system for nuclear materials.181 The UK has similarly focused on the particular threat posed by biological or chemical materials and examined ways to strengthen international norms against their use.182 United Nations On 12 September 2001 the UN Security Council unanimously passed Resolution 1368, which condemned the attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C., and encouraged “all states to work together urgently to bring to justice the perpetrators, organizers and sponsors of these terrorist attacks and [emphasized] that those responsible for aiding, supporting or harbouring the perpetrators, organizers and sponsors of these attacks will be held accountable.”183 The General Assembly passed a parallel resolution.184 On 28 September 2001, Security Council Resolution 1373 required member states to take action against terrorism in the areas of finance and suppression of safe havens. It demanded that states report on what steps they had taken to implement the resolution by the end of December 2001. Within a week of the resolution, the UN named Sir Jeremy Greenstock, the

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UK’s permanent representative, to chair the committee monitoring the implementation of the resolution. By 19 December, Britain had submitted its own report, and by the end of the year it froze the assets of over 300 terrorist supporters and seized over £70 million.185 In addition to the immediate resolutions implemented in the aftermath of 11 September 2001, the UK remains a signatory to conventions relating to hijackings, diplomats, hostages, nuclear installations and materials, extradition, explosives, and terrorist financing.186 Senior British officials call for a UN convention creating a universal definition of terrorism and condemning such acts anywhere in the world.187 The UK’s decision to go to war in Iraq and the country’s failure to gain a UN Security Council resolution endorsing this action had a significant impact on the UN’s credibility in establishing collective security. As the terms of the UN’s special 16-member panel to study global security threats and a reform of the international system note, “The past year has shaken the foundations of collective security and undermined confidence in the possibility of collective responses to our common problems and challenges. It has also brought to the fore deep divergences of opinion on the range and nature of the challenges we face, and are likely to face in the future.” The British and US decisions to take unilateral, preemptive action spurred a heated discussion within the UN on the rules of intervention. Nevertheless, the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee concluded in early 2004 that “the United Nations has an extremely important role to play in the global campaign against terrorism, through provision of assistance through its specialized agencies, through establishing the legitimacy of interventions, and through providing the forum for dialogue between member states over the conduct of the campaign.”188 European Union The EU provides an important forum for the UK to pursue its counterterrorist efforts. As with almost all of the initiatives addressed in this chapter, a precedent had already existed for the specific provisions pursued by the EU prior to the 11 September 2001 attacks. In the mid-1990s, for example, the UK worked through the EU to advance conventions regarding extraction, mutual assistance in criminal matters, and the establishment of Europol. There is clear evidence that these efforts, like the other measures, were stepped up under the pressure of 11 September 2001. Within a fortnight of the attacks, the UK took part in a series of meetings hosted by the EU’s Justice and Home Affairs Council that focused on expanding counterterrorist provisions.189 The 20 September meeting led to two Council Framework Decision proposals: the first, on combating terrorism, created minimum requirements for the elements of criminal acts and penalties; this served as a definition of terrorism.190 The second related to the

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establishment of a pan-European arrest warrant.191 Through the Justice and Home Affairs Council, Britain participated in the Convention on Mutual Assistance on Criminal Matters, encouraged Eurojust and Europol to assume a stronger profile, participated in the new EU Intelligence Chief’s Task Force, and helped to drive a host of other measures through. These range from strengthening border controls to encouraging the creation of “Eurodac” for member states to compare asylum seekers’ fingerprints.192 Even domestically, the UK placed increasing emphasis on the Third Pillar of the (Maastricht) Treaty (Justice and Home Affairs): Westminster created a fasttrack system under the ATCSA to enable a government minister to issue regulations to implement any UK obligation created under the Third Pillar.193 The attacks in Madrid on 11 March 2004 catapulted Britain’s EU-related counterterrorist efforts forward. As with the 11 September 2001 attacks, however, the result was not so much a radical shift as an acceleration of initiatives begun prior to the event. The state redoubled its efforts to accomplish a European Common Arrest Warrant, to gain universal acceptance of an EU-wide definition of terrorism, and to strengthen Europol’s intelligence functions. In conjunction with other states’ concerns about the lack of development in these areas, the UK pushed the EU to announce on 26 March 2004 the appointment of an “anti-terror tsar” to implement agreements reached in the aftermath of 11 September 2001.194 Then–home secretary David Blunkett urged his European partners to further develop an EUwide DNA database.195 While the UK has worked through the EU to pursue its counterterrorist agenda, it has also taken steps that depart from European standards. For example, upon introduction of permanent counterterrorist law, on 19 February 2001 the UK withdrew its derogation from the European Convention in relation to extended detention.196 After the attacks, however, and the reintroduction of extended detention under the 2001 ATCSA, the British government reentered the derogation. The Note Verbale, dated 18 December 2001, recalled the events of 11 September 2001 and stated that as a result of the presence of foreign nationals in the UK suspected of being involved in the commission of acts of international terrorism, a “public emergency” existed within the UK.197 The UK’s decision to go to war in Iraq created enmity between the UK and its EU partners. In response to the growing discord, and nine months after the strongly unilateral US National Security Strategy had been released in September 2002, EU High Representative Javier Solana presented a draft EU Security Strategy. EU member states formally adopted the document in early December 2003. While the tone of the two documents radically differed, the central concerns overlapped: terrorism, proliferation of WMDs, failed states, and organized crime. The House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee endorsed the EU Security Strategy as a way to alleviate the threats facing the UK.

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On 12 September 2001, the North Atlantic Council met and decided that “if it is determined that this attack was directed from abroad against the US, it shall be regarded as an action covered by Article 5 of the Washington Treaty, which states that an armed attack against one or more of the Allies in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all.” This was the first time, in more than 50 years of NATO’s existence, that the member states had invoked the article that provided the alliance’s raison d’être. All members of NATO subsequently took part in the war on Afghanistan. Sixteen of the 19 member states took part in the US-led attack on Iraq.198 Aside from these military strikes, NATO played an immediate role visà-vis the UK on 11 September 2001: the NATO Integrated Air Defence System (NATINADS) assisted in establishing an air exclusion zone around London. Over the following days, the controls were gradually lifted, with the exclusion ending at 12 PM on 15 September. In the midst of the crisis, NATO recognized that this system, established for military purposes, was ill-suited for intercepting hijacked commercial airliners and preventing them from entering the airspace controlled by the Combined Air Operations Centres. It implemented a number of changes, one of which involved mobilizing Quick Reaction Alert aircraft to intercept suspect aircraft. Between September 2001 and March 2002, such aircraft were scrambled on three occasions.199 The final decision on whether to shoot down a civilian aircraft in British airspace remains in the hands of UK ministers, however. These actions aside, NATO does not appear to be a centerpiece in the British counterterrorist arsenal. Senior British officials, such as the foreign secretary, have suggested that the UN Security Council Resolution surpassed the importance of the NATO declaration.200 One reason for this can be found in the remark by Adm. Sir Michael Boyce, the chief of the defense staff from 2001 to 2003, that the US “requirement for high tempo operations is likely to put them outside the maximum capability capacity and potential of an institution such as NATO.”201 This does not mean that NATO is not searching for its role in countering the “new terrorism”: in the aftermath of 11 September 2001, NATO initiated a review of its role in responding to terrorism. The United States is also attempting to focus NATO on the dismal security situation in Afghanistan and Iraq. For instance, at a NATO summit in December 2003, then–US secretary of state Colin Powell stated his view that NATO’s “principal focus right now has to be Afghanistan. . . . We must . . . consider the possibility of NATO taking over all military operations in Afghanistan at some point in the future.”202 He added, “We urge the alliance to examine how it might do more to support peace and stability in Iraq” and suggested that NATO troops replace the current Polish contingent operating in the region.203 In summary, of the three central international institutions through which it has worked, the UK has been least active in the NATO arena. However, the UK has demonstrated that it is willing to make use of the alliance to build its counterterrorist capabilities. 204 It is conceivable that

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NATO may yet have a particular role to play, should an attack with a nonconventional weapon occur. Additional Mechanisms There are a number of other mechanisms through which the British government has pursued its counterterrorism agenda at an international level. For example, in the intelligence realm, despite the EU’s resolution condemning ECHELON, the UK continues to participate in the interception system. Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the UK, and the United States are the central actors sharing technological spy networks and capabilities. In the nonproliferation arena, the UK participates in the US-led Proliferation Security Initiative, launched in May 2003 as an institutionalized response to the proliferation of WMDs, their delivery systems, and related materials. Eleven other countries are part of this effort.205 Britain also continues to encourage the cooperative threat reduction programs to reduce former Soviet and North Korean stockpiles. In addition to these specific measures, the UK views the resolution and long-term stabilization of the Middle East as critical to undermining the threat posed by Al-Qaida.206 Ministers have repeatedly expressed concern about the punitive nature of Israeli actions in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.207 The House of Commons Foreign Relations Committee equally condemned the use of terrorism by Palestinian organizations and the use of force by the Israeli government. It also protested the creation of a security fence along the Green Line, the continued expansion of illegal Israeli settlements, and the deplorable conditions under which many in the West Bank and Gaza Strip currently live.208 The Foreign Affairs Committee credits the British Labour Party with convincing the Bush administration of the necessity to involve itself in the Middle East peace process. The committee further suggests that the stabilization of this region, in conjunction with continued diplomatic efforts to win and maintain Iranian and Syrian cooperation in nonproliferation and efforts to combat international terrorism—as well as the stabilization of Iraq—will contribute to success in the war on terrorism.209 The UK similarly supports efforts to help weak and threatened states toward reform. For example, the country has worked through the Global Opportunities Fund to promote the rule of law, greater female participation in civic structures, economic reform, and good governance initiatives in the Arab world.210 The British Council, BBC World Service, and Westminster Foundation for Democracy also pursue work in this area.211 Summary In general, the UK treats international institutions such as the UN as instrumental in countering the terrorist threat. The House of Commons Foreign

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Affairs committee remarked in its conclusions for the Second Report of 2002–2003 that “the United Nations still has the potential to play an important role in facilitating political transition in Iraq, and in conferring legitimacy on the process,” and, later, that “the United Nations has an extremely important role to play in the global campaign against terrorism, through provision of assistance through its specialized agencies, through establishing the legitimacy of interventions, and through providing the forum for dialogue between member states over the conduct of the campaign.”212 Similarly, NATO and peacekeeping operations are highlighted as a way in which to move forward.213 However, as the derogations and, indeed, the war in Iraq demonstrate, viewing these organizations as instrumental does not mean that the UK is not willing to take a path that might be in opposition to these international institutions when it suits its national interests.

Conclusion The UK responded to the attacks of 11 September 2001 with a broad array of counterterrorist measures. These did not so much represent a radical departure, however, as the continuation of trends that had already been under way prior to the attacks. In the legal realm, powers used under the Terrorist Act predated the attacks and embodied a century of counterterrorist initiatives. The ATCSA drew on these and introduced provisions that had been considered or used previously. In the intelligence world, the agencies’ focus on international and Islamist terrorism expanded, as did the agencies’ concern with nonproliferation. Militarily, discussions reemerged on modernization and the requirements for facing asymmetric rivals. The MoD did not initiate a new strategic review but rather used it as an opportunity to rebalance existing efforts. The prime minister had already established the Civil Contingencies Secretariat as the authority in charge of consequence management within the cabinet office. The government created some new bureaucratic entities, but it also built on preparations that had been made prior to 11 September 2001. At an international level, the UK had previously been active in the EU’s Third Pillar and had pursued a European Arrest Warrant. Underlying all of these initiatives, two principles continued to shape the public dialog: the importance of individual rights, and the rule of law. Neither the 11 September 2001 attacks nor the UK’s responses to them took place in a vacuum. They were part of a broader dialog that influenced British policy in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. The Northern Ireland peace process vitiated paramilitary efforts to continue their violent domestic campaign. Together with the end of the Cold War, this freed the intelligence organizations to focus on threats such as international terrorism and the proliferation of nuclear, radiological, chemical, and biological weapons. Increasing links between international terrorism and organized

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crime, combined with law enforcement’s gradual shift to a national—and, indeed, international—focus, paved the way for efforts to penetrate international terrorist organizations. In the aftermath of the Cold War, the armed forces had begun to consider how to address asymmetric threats. Not only did these general trends provide the context for decisions made after 11 September 2001, but subsequent attacks in Bali (October 2002), Mombasa (November 2002), Riyadh (May 2003), Casablanca (May 2003), Istanbul (November 2003), Madrid (March 2004), and London (July 2005) further shaped the UK response. Although some were geographically distant, like the 11 September 2001 attacks, their impact was felt at home: the Bali attacks killed more than 200 people, the majority of whom were citizens of Commonwealth states. In Istanbul, ten employees (both British and Turkish) of the UK consulate-general and 22 others died, prompting the assertion in Parliament that “the attacks remind us that fighting international terrorism is as crucial for British security and British interests now as it was immediately after the atrocities of 11 September 2001.”214 The ten explosions in Madrid killed 191 people and injured 1,460. 215 And the London bombing brought the issue home. It was not just successful attacks that influenced British policy: for instance, the discovery in the UK of “the Encyclopaedia of the Jihad,” which in volumes 11 and 12 dealt specifically with nuclear, radiological, biological, and chemical weapons, provided proof of Al-Qaida’s intent.216 Thwarted attacks, such as the plot to release sarin nerve gas in the European Parliament in Strasbourg, and the alleged plan to poison the water supply to the US embassy in Rome with cyanide, raised the profile of possible nonconventional attacks. Similar discoveries within the UK, such as the security forces’ recovery of ammonium nitrate osmium tetroxide in London, and the uncovering of further suicide attack plans, though not uncontested, generated calls for increasing vigilance and broader efforts to respond to the threat.217 Although British officials denied any specific threat to the UK in the immediate aftermath of 11 September 2001, Al-Qaida audiotapes distributed after the UK military actions in Afghanistan and Iraq clearly stated that the UK had become a target.218 There is awareness within the UK that issues such as difficulty of dispersal, the conservative nature of terrorist organizations in their preference for conventional weapons, and technical obstacles make it unlikely that groups would use nonconventional weapons. Nevertheless, there is increasing concern that even one attack of this nature could wreak havoc.219 It is not that the warnings themselves are new: two decades ago, President George H. W. Bush warned of the dangers of nuclear terrorism.220 What appears to be new is that 11 September 2001 demonstrated that an organization might have both the intent and capability of making good on the threat. The effect, however, has not been a radical departure from the previous state of affairs but rather an acceleration of the state’s counterterrorist strategy.

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Notes 1. The House of Commons Defence Committee acknowledged that “over the years since the end of the Cold War, there has been a significant shift in the Government’s interpretation of how the Armed Forces should discharge their fundamental responsibility for the defence of the realm. This has occurred in response both to the changing nature of the military threat to the UK and to developments in the understanding of where the UK’s Armed Forces could most effectively make a contribution.” House of Commons Defence Committee, Defence and Security in the UK, Sixth Report of Session 2001–02; Report and Proceedings of the Committee, 24 July 2002, House of Commons Debates (HC Debs) 518-I, paragraph 25. 2. House of Commons Defence Committee, Second Report: The Threat from Terrorism, HC 348, 6 December 2001, paragraph 47. 3. David McKittrick, Seamus Kelters, Brian Feeney, and Chris Thornton, Lost Lives (Edinburgh: Mainstream, 1999). 4. Laura Donohue, Counterterrorist Law and Emergency Powers in the United Kingdom 1922–2000 (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2000). 5. What is striking about the development of counterterrorism in the UK is that “temporary” measures can be traced with accuracy back to the nineteenth century. See Donohue, Counterterrorist Law and Emergency Powers. 6. 1922 Civil Authorities (Special Powers) Act (Northern Ireland), 12 & 13 Geo. V, c. 5; 1933 Civil Authorities (Special Powers) Act (Northern Ireland) 23 & 24 Geo. V, c. 12; and 1943 Civil Authorities (Special Powers) Act (Northern Ireland), 7 & 8 Geo. VI, c. 2. 7. Ibid. 8. 1921 Local Government (Emergency Powers) Act (Northern Ireland), 11 & 12 Geo. V, c. 5. 9. Ibid. and Donohue, Counterterrorist Law and Emergency Powers, 9. 10. 1922 Criminal Procedure Act (Northern Ireland), 12 & 13 Geo. V, c. 6. 11. Donohue, Counterterrorist Law and Emergency Powers, 12. 12. Report of the Commission to Consider Legal Procedures to Deal with Terrorist Activities in Northern Ireland, Cmnd. 5185 (London: 1972). 13. Northern Ireland (Emergency Provisions) Act, 21 & 22 Eliz. II, c. 53. 14. Donohue, Counterterrorist Law and Emergency Powers, 117–155. 15. Prevention of Violence (Temporary Provisions) Act, 2 & 3 Geo. VI, c. 50. 16. 1974 Prevention of Terrorism (Temporary Provisions) Act, Eliz. II, c. 56. 17. Donohue, Counterterrorist Law and Emergency Powers, 207–258. 18. Report of the Operation of the Prevention of Terrorism (Temporary Provisions) Act 1976, Cmnd. 8803 (London: 1983); see Clive Phillip Walker, “The Jellicoe Report on the Prevention of Terrorism (Temporary Provisions) Act 1976,” Modern Law Review 46 (1983): 484. One concern spurring the expansion of counterterrorist provisions was that the UK was becoming a haven to individuals engaged in violent movements elsewhere. 19. Lord Lloyd Berwick, Inquiry into Legislation Against Terrorism, Cm. 3420 (London: 1996). 20. Legislation Against Terrorism, Cm. 4178 (London: 1998); see also Clive Phillip Walker, “Policy Options and Priorities: British Perspectives,” in Marianne van Leeuwen, ed., Confronting Terrorism (Netherlands: Kluwer Law International, 2003), 11–35. 21. 2000 Terrorism Act, c. 11, paragraph 1. 22. Ibid., paragraph 2.

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23. Xavier Raufer, “New World Disorder and New Terrorism,” Terrorism and Political Violence 11, 4 (1999): 30. 24. http://www.newyorkmetro.com/news/articles/wtc/1year/numbers.htm, http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/news/2002/09/09-11_index.htm. 25. The Times, 15 September 2001, 1; and Walker, op. cit. (2003), 16. 26. Walker, “Policy Options and Priorities,” 16; HM Inspector of Constabulary, Policing with Intelligence (London: 1997/98); Richard V. Ericson and Kevin D. Haggerty, Policing the Risk Society (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997). 27. The Times, 4 May 2002, 2, cited in Walker, “Policy Options and Priorities,” 24. 28. While this assertion is not directly in the statute, it follows from the derogation entered by the UK to the European Court of Human Rights, which is based on the threat posed by Al-Qaida. The SIAC recognized this limit, finding that “in the present situation there are two reasons for supposing that the provisions of sections 21 to 23 of the 2001 Act are to be applied only to those said to be linked to Al-Qaida and its associates. First, the 2001 Act falls to be interpreted in the light of section 3 of the Human Rights Act, which would tend to prevent the powers of detention being exercised in the absence of a connection with the state of emergency. Secondly, the Attorney-General indicated to us on behalf of the government that if the powers under sections 21 to 23 of the 2001 Act were exercised against a person not said to be linked with al-Qaeda or its associates, that would be a proper basis for this Commission to set aside the certificate under section 25(2)(b) of the Act.” SIAC Appeal No: SC1 1-7/2002, paragraph 48. The Privy Counsellors Review Committee noted that “the Court of Appeal also endorsed the limitation unanimously in October 2002.” Privy Counsellor Review Committee, Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001 Review: Report, 12 December 2003, HC 100, 48, n74. 29. Britain established the SIAC in 1996 after the country’s defeat before the European Court of Human Rights. SIAC provides security-vetted attorneys, who are provided with sensitive/classified material and separated from the appellant’s legal team. Although the SIAC was rarely used prior to 11 September 2001, the government has increasingly made use of the system in the aftermath. For more information, see, e.g., “Q&A Secret Court Explained,” BBC News, Wednesday, 28 April 2004, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/3666235.stm. 30. The Special Immigration Appeals Commission (Procedure) Rules 2003, Rule 36. 31. UK Home Secretary David Blunkett, HC Debs, 8 March 2004, cols. 1256–1257. 32. Three men were convicted in June 2003 of membership in the Red Hand Commandos. In April 2003, the court found Faghdad Meziane and Brahim Benmerzouga guilty of raising money for terrorism. The defendants received 11year prison sentences. In 2002, two men were convicted of belonging to the International Sikh Youth Federation. “What Has Become of Britain’s 500 ‘Terrorist Suspects,’” BBC News, 4 December 2003, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/ 3290383.stm. 33. Blunkett, HC Debs, 8 March 2004, cols. 1256–1257. See also http://www. homeoffice.gov.uk/docs3/tatc arrest stats.html. 34. “Ninth Terror Suspect Is Arrested,” BBC News, 1 April 2004, http://news. bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/3588451.stm. 35. “Police Quiz 10 Terror Suspects,” BBC News, 20 April 2004, http://news. bbc.co.uk/1/hiuk/3641547.stm. 36. Steve Atkinson, “Protester Searches Unlawful,” The Mirror, 11 September 2003.

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37. Case 2003 EWHC 2545 (Admin). 38. See Home Secretary v. Rehman [2001] UKHL at [62]; 2003 1 AC 1534; compare R. (ProLife) v BBC [2003] UKHL 23 at [76]; 2003 2 WLR 1403, cited in Privy Counsellor Review Committee, Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001 Review: Report, 24, n14. 39. Privy Counsellor Review Committee, Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001 Review: Report, 24–25. 40. Ibid., 25. 41. Nigel Morris, “Police Accused of Abusing Powers with Rise in Terrorism Stop and Search,” The Independent, 13 December 2003. 42. Terrorist Financing Convention, 15 November 2001, UN Doc. S/2001/1274. 43. Terrorism Act 2000, c. 11, paragraphs 15–18. 44. Ilias Bantekas, “The International Law of Terrorist Financing,” American Journal of International Law 97, 2 (April 2003): 330, 315–333 (discussing the financial provisions in the context of international efforts to the same). 45. “UK Freezes Hamas Leaders’ Assets,” BBC News, 24 March 2004, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/3563989.stm. 46. Ibid. 47. Gareth Peirce, “Internment: The Truth Behind the ‘War on Terror,’” Liberty Lecture on 15 December 2003 at the London School of Economics, http://www.liberty-human-rights.org.uk. 48. Ibid. 40. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/3330221.stm. 50. Privy Counsellor Review Committee, Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001 Review: Report, 15. 51. Ibid., 44. 52. Ibid. 53. Ibid. 54. Ibid., 45. 55. Although the TA and the ATCSA are the primary legal mechanisms, additional statutes contribute to the counterterrorist framework. See, e.g., the 1883 Explosive Substances Act and 1990 Aviation and Maritime Security Act, cited in Walker, “Policy Options and Priorities,” 25. 56. Privy Counsellor Review Committee, Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001 Review: Report, 5. 57. Ibid., 10. 58. Ibid., 11. 59. Ibid., 13. 60. Ibid. 61. David Charter, “Blunkett to Spell Out Anti-terrorism Plans,” The Times, February 23, 2004. 62. Danny Shaw, “Q&A: Tougher Terror Laws,” BBC News, http://news. bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/3451505.stm. 63. Ibid. 64. See, e.g., “Terror Plans Unnecessary—Tories,” BBC News, http://news. bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/3454059.stm. 65. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/talking_point?3451063.stm. 66. National Intelligence Machinery, HMSO 2001. An additional antiterrorist role is assumed by Special Branch, the Anti-terrorist Branch (based with the Metropolitan Police), and the National Criminal Intelligence Service (created in 1992 to focus on organized crime).

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67. Ibid., paragraph 1. 68. Ibid., paragraph 3. 69. See, e.g., http://www.mi5.gov.uk/, http://www.fas.org/irp/world/uk/mi5/, and http://www.five.org.uk/security/. In 1992 the government granted MI5 authority to conduct domestic intelligence-gathering. In 1996 MI5’s portfolio was expanded with the Security Service Act, granting it a greater role in combating organized crime. See http://www.mi5.gov.uk/major_areas_work/major_areas_work_6.htm. 70. Intelligence Services Act 1994, c. 13. It is only recently that the agencies have been put on a statutory basis: in 1994, the SIS and GCHQ came under the control of the Intelligence Services Act. The 2000 Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act also governs the three organizations. For further information, see National Intelligence Machinery, HMSO 2001. 71. National Intelligence Machinery, HMSO 2001, 15. 72. Ibid., 16. 73. Rupert Allason, The Branch: A History of the Metropolitan Police Special Branch 1883–1983 (London: Secker & Warburg, 1983); see also http://www. fas.org/irp/world/uk/mps/. 74. Brian Brady, “PM and Spies at War over Iraq Report,” The Scotsman, 11 July 2004, http://news.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=793832004. 75. Review on Intelligence of Weapons of Mass Destruction, Report of a Committee of Privy Counsellors, Chairs by the Rt. Hon. the Lord Butler of Brockwell, 14 July 2004, HC 898, 36 (hereafter referred to as the Butler Report). A Privy Counsellor review into weapons of mass destruction was established by Prime Minister Tony Blair in February 2004 in the face of mounting pressure following the invasion of Iraq and the apparent absence of weapons of mass destruction, the initiation of a US inquiry into intelligence failures, and public remarks by former US weapons inspector David Kay. Available at http://www.statewatch.org/news/2004/ jul/butler-report.pdf. 76. Available at http://www.cabinet-office.gov.uk/news/2004/040629_intelligence.asp; annual report available at http://www.cabinet-office.gov.uk/reports/intelligence/annualreport.asp. 77. Compare p. 36 of the Butler Report, noting the increasingly close ties internationally, with p. 149, which states that “international counterterrorism collaboration has also been significantly enhanced in the past six or seven years.” 78. See, for instance, “Who Is Guarding Britain?” BBC News, http://news. bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/2639055.stm. 79. Butler Report, 31. 80. Ibid. 81. For further comment on this see Walker, “Policy Options and Priorities,” 28f. 82. “More Funds to Fight Terror Threat,” BBC News, 12 July 2004, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/3887129.stm. 83. Ibid. 84. JIC, 26 June 1989, quoted in the Butler Report, 29. 85. JIC, 3 July 1989, quoted in ibid. 86. JIC 4 July 1996, quoted in ibid., 31. 87. JIC, 4 July 1996, quoted in ibid. 88. JIC, 15 July 1999, quoted in ibid., 32. 89. JIC, 10 January 2001, quoted in ibid., 34. 90. JIC, 18 September 2001, quoted in ibid., 34f. 91. JIC, 18 September 2001, quoted in ibid. 92. The Butler Report addresses the use made of intelligence between 1998

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and 2002; see particularly pp. 53–64. “WMD Committee Vows to Press On,” BBC News, 2 March 2004, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/3524385.stm. 93. Butler Report, 36. 94. Butler Report, paragraphs 460–461, and p. 153. 95. Butler Report 76, paragraph 312. 96. Ibid. 97. Ibid., 156. 98. Official statement quoted in ibid., 64. 99. Ibid. 100. Ibid., 87, paragraph 343. 101. Written Answer to the House of Commons, given by the attorney general, 17 March 2003. See also “Iraq: Legal Basis for the Use of Force,” document of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, 17 March 2003. 102. Phrases in quotes drawn from the Butler Report, 63f. 103. Frank Gardner, “Why UK Is in al-Qaeda’s Sights,” BBC News, 19 May 2004, http://new.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/3727865.stm. 104. See, for instance, Nick Hopkins and Suzanne Goldenberg, “MI5 Says Dirty Bomb Attack Is Inevitable,” The Guardian, 18 June 2003, http://www. guardian.co.uk/terrorism/story/0,12780,979696,00.html; and Frank Gardner, “Why UK Is in al-Qaeda’s Sights.” 105. See, e.g., www.mi5.gov.uk; also Daniel Sandford, “MI5 One Step Closer to Public Life,” BBC News, 30 April 2004, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/3674483. stm. 106. “MI5 Security Advice Goes Online,” BBC News, 30 April 2004, http:// news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/3672221.stm. 107. See, e.g., “Suicide Bomb Risk to UK ‘Small,’” BBC News, 3 May 2004, http://new.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/3679485.stm; and “Bomb Plot ‘Justifies Terror Alert,’” BBC News, 7 April 2004, http://news.bbc.co.u k/1/hi/uk_politics/3607141.stm (suspected osmium tetroxide attack). 108. See http://www.preparingforemergencies.gov.uk/booklet/prevent.htm. The irony of this new openness is that it comes at a time when the US State Department has announced that the number of international terrorist attacks is at a 30-year low. See US State Department, Patterns of Global Terrorism 2003, April 2004, http://www.state.gov/s/ct/rls/pgtrpt/2003/. 109. Cited in House of Commons Defence Committee, Second Report: The Threat from Terrorism, HC 348, 6 December 2001, paragraph 90. Note that Labour launched the original Strategic Defence Review in 1997. 110. “11 September—The New Chapter for the Strategic Defence Review,” speech by secretary of state at King’s College London, 5 December 2001. 111. House of Commons Defence Committee, Second Report, paragraph 101. 112. Ibid., paragraph 141. 113. House of Commons Defence Committee, Fourth Special Report of Session 2001-02, HC 667, paragraph 23. 114. “The Strategic Defence Review: A New Chapter,” Public Discussion Paper; and HC Debs, 29 April 2002, col. 658; cited in House of Commons Defence Committee, Defence and Security in the UK, Sixth Report of Session 2001–02, Volume I: Report and Proceedings of the Committee, 24 July 2002, HC 518-I, nn4–5. 115. Cm 557, p. 19, cited in House of Commons Defence Committee, October 2002. 116. House of Commons Defence Committee, Second Report, particularly paragraphs 119–128.

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117. Ibid. 118. Ibid., paragraph 131. 119. Ibid., paragraphs 51–79. 120. See e.g., House of Commons Defence Committee, Defence and Security in the UK, Sixth Report. 121. See House of Commons Defence Committee, Second Report, paragraph 111. 122. For a detailed discussion of US and British military actions in Afghanistan, see 11 September 2001: The Response, Library Research Papers 01/72; Operation Enduring Freedom and the Conflict in Afghanistan: An Update, Research Paper 01/81, 31 October 2001; and Tim Youngs, Paul Bowers, and Mark Oakes, The Campaign Against International Terrorism: Prospects After the Fall of the Taliban, House of Commons Research Paper 01/112, 11 December 2001. 123. US Department of State Report, Patterns of Global Terrorism 2002, Europe Overview. For detailed discussion of the military operations, see Youngs, Bowers, and Oakes, Campaign Against International Terrorism. 124. House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, Foreign Policy Aspects of the War Against Terrorism, Second Report of Session 2003–2004, 15 January 2004, HC 81, paragraphs 277–283. 125. HC Debs, 27 November 2001, c. 821. 126. House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, Foreign Policy Aspects, paragraph 119. 127. Ibid., paragraph 123. 128. “UK Military Faces Major Overhaul,” BBC News, 10 December 2003, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/3304867.stm. 129. “20,000 Posts to Go in Defence Cuts,” BBC News, 21 July 2004, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/3912283.stm. 130. See, e.g., discussion in “The Armed Forces of the Future,” BBC News, 21 July 2004, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/3913051.stm. Support for the use of the military against terrorist threats also emerged from the EU, particularly after the Madrid bombings: following talks in Brussels, a draft declaration of the foreign ministers urged the EU to mobilize their militaries to respond to terrorism. “EU Approves Anti-terror Package,” BBC News, 22 March 2004, http://news. bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wld/europe/3555927.stm. 131. House of Commons Defence Committee October 2002, paragraph 3. 132. Regarding grounded flights, see “Al-Qaeda ‘Threat’ Grounds Flights,” BBC News, 31 January 2004, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/3447715.stm; “Q&A: Flight Terror Fears,” BBC News, 12 February 2003, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/ 3363761.stm; and “UK and French Flights ‘Targets,’” BBC News, 31 January 2004, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/3446763.stm. Regarding air marshals, see “Armed Air Marshals for UK Flights,” BBC News, 14 February 2003, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/2590309; and “Q&A: Air Marshals,” BBC News, 6 January 2004, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/3372501.stm. Regarding contingency plans, see “Mass Evacuation Plan for London,” BBC News, 15 May 2004, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/uk/2003/uk_on_terror_alert/default.stm; “Football Clubs in ‘Terror Summit,’” BBC News, 14 July 2004, http:// news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/3892053.stm; “New Vehicles to Combat Terrorism,” BBC News, 26 April 2004, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/3660797.stm (noting £2.3 million worth of new equipment for chemical monitoring gear, a portable X-ray kit, and personal radiation alarms to accompany the British Transport Police specialist unit); “Anti-terror Police to Patrol Tube,” BBC News, 15 March 2004,

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http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/3511318.stm (highlighting the introduction of plainclothes police and an increase in passengers riding the Tube and stating that 14 “rapid reaction groups” of reservist troops in the UK had been made available to assist in the event of a crisis); and “Tube Attack Exercise Shows Flaws,” BBC News, 15 December 2003, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/3320809.stm (a report finding that while some improvements had been made, many measures still needed to be implemented for public safety in the event of a terrorist attack on the Underground). 133. See House of Commons Defence Committee, October 2002, paragraph 6. 134. Ibid. 135. “Emergency Powers Plan Published,” BBC News, http://news.bbc. co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/3375711.stm. 136. Defined as “an event or situation which threatens serious damage to human welfare, the environment, or the security of the UK or a place in the UK.” 137. “Emergency Powers Plan Published,” BBC News, http://news.bbc. co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/3375711.stm. 138. See, e.g., House of Commons Defence Committee, October 2002, paragraphs 38, 86–96, 117–120, 173. This last concern spurred the government to propose a Health Protection Agency, whose remit will extend beyond infectious diseases to include measures against the possible use of chemical and radiological weapons. See paragraph 252. 139. Although not directly referenced in this text, groups such as Amnesty International have been scathing in their criticism of the arrest powers, indefinite detention, and the use made by MI5 of the detainees at Guantanamo Bay. See, e.g., UK: Rights Denied: The UK’s Response to 11 September 2001, Amnesty International 5 September 2002, EUR 45/016/2002; and Amnesty International’s Memorandum to the UK Government on Part 4 of the Anti-terorrism, Crime and Security Act 2001, Amnesty International, 5 September 2002, EUR 45/017/2002. 140. Queen’s Speech, 26 November 2003, http://politics.guardian.co.uk/ queensspeech2003/story/0,13994,1093558,00.html. 141. See, e.g., “ID Cards Plan Within 10 Years,” BBC News, 26 November 2003, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/3239556.stm. 142. Ibid. 143. Ibid. 144. Yakub Oureshi, “Identity Crisis as ID Trial Gets Brush Off,” Scotland on Sunday, 6 June 2004, http://news.scotsman.com/topics.cfm?tid=428&id= 641472004. 145. House of Commons Home Affairs Committee, Identity Cards, Fourth Report of Session 2003–2004, Volume 1, HC 130-I, http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200304/cmselect/cmhaff/130/130.pdf; see also James Kirkup, “MPs Claim ID Card Scheme Is Threat,” The Scotsman, 30 July 2004, http://news.scotsman.com/topics.cfm?tid=428&id=871842004. 146. Hamish Macdonell, “Scots Not Swayed by ID Cards,” The Scotsman, 13 July 2004, http://news.scotsman.com/topics.cfm?tid=428&id=799962004& 20040802231938. 147. James Kirkup, “Voters Split on ID Card Plans, Poll Reveals,” The Scotsman, 19 May 2004, http://news.scotsman.com/topics.cfm?tid=428&id= 567692004 (YouGov poll issued by Privacy International). 148. See “ID Cards Plan Within 10 Years,” BBC News. 149. Hamish Macdonell, “Scots Not Swayed by ID Cards,” The Scotsman, 13

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July 2004, http://news.scotsman.com/topics.cfm?tid=428&id=799962004& 20040802231938. 150. Privy Counsellor Review Committee, Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001 Review: Report, 16. 151. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/3290383.stm. 152. Dominic Casciani, “UK Extremism Threat ‘Growing,’” BBC News, 23 April 2004, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/3649137.stm, citing Khurshid Ahmed, a Commission for Racial Equality commissioner and former head of race equality in the West Midlands: “Anti-terrorism laws have given licence to racist and religious bigots employed within the security services to unleash a form of terror on innocent people up and down the country.” 153. Privy Counsellor Review Committee, Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001 Review: Report, 5. 154. Joint Committee on Human Rights, House of Commons/House of Lords, Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001: Statutory Review and Continuance of Part IV, HL Paper 38, HC 381, Sixth Report of Session 2003–2004. 155. http://www.dw-world.de/english/0,3367,1433_A_983486_1_A,00. html. 156. The five released detainees are Shafiq Rasul, 24; Asif Iqbal, 20; and Ruhal Ahmed, 21, all from Tipton, West Midlands; Jamal al-Harith, 35, from Manchester; and Tarek Dergoul, 24, from east London. http://www.religionnewsblog.com/6371-Q&A__Guantanamo_Bay_-_British_cases.html. 157. http://www.religionnewsblog.com/6371-Q&A__Guantanamo_Bay__British_cases.html. 158. See, e.g., HL Debs, 30 June, 6 October, 8 October, 16 October, 17 November, 27 November 2003 (Lord Hylton); 21 May 2003 (Lord Desai); 8 April, 28 April, 14 July 2003 (Lord Oakeshott); 18 June 2002 (Lord Dubs); 27 and 30 June 2002 (Lord Hylton); 15 March 2004 (Baroness Ludford); 17 July 2003 and 15 March 2004 (Lord Lester of Herne Hill); 6 June 2003 (Lord Goodhart). 159. Its supporters include Margaret Atwood; Sheikh Zaki Badawi; Joan Bakewell; Peter Bottomley MP; Sir Menzies Campbell MP; Robin Cook MP; Margaret Drabble; Sir Richard Eyre; Graeme Gibson; Rabbi David Goldberg; Sir David Hare; The Bishop of Oxford, Revd. Richard Harries; Seamus Heaney; Sir Ian Holm; Lord Judd; Peter Kilfoyle MP; Baroness Sarah Ludford MEP; Ahdaf Soueif; Archbishop Desmond Tutu; and Terry Waite CBE. The commission’s first delegation to the United States comprised Corin and Vanessa Redgrave, founders of the commission; Terry Waite, former adviser to the archbishop of Canterbury and former Beirut hostage; Rabbi David Goldberg, UK Jewish leader; Massoud Shadjareh, Islamic Human Rights Commission; Azmat Begg, father of UK detainee Moazzam Begg; Gareth Peirce, UK human rights lawyer and lawyer to Azmat Begg; Greg Powell, lawyer to Riasoth Ahmed; Sharon and Maxine Fiddler, sisters of returning UK detainee Jamal Al Harif; Aymen Sassi, brother of French detainee Nizar Sassi; Jacques Debray, lawyer of Aymen Sassi; Andre Gerin, the mayor of Venissieux, where the Sassi family lives, and Rhone deputy; Rabiye Kurnaz, mother of German detainee Murat Kurnaz; her lawyer Bernhard Docke; Margaret Drabble, UK author and commission patron; members of the InKlein Quartet; and Vivian Yates, Peace & Progress. http://www.guantanamohrc.org/5-3-2004.html. 160. See, e.g., House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, Foreign Policy Aspects of the War Against Terrorism, conclusion number 3. 161. “Coalition ‘Citizens’ Held in Iraq,” BBC, 16 September 2003, http://news.bbc.co.uk.

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162. The Times, 8 January 2004, 20. 163. House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, Foreign Policy Aspects of the War Against Terrorism, paragraph 27. 164. See, e.g., “Woolf’s Warning over Human Rights,” BBC News, 21 July 2004, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/3915243.stm (noting Lord Chief Justice Lord Woolf’s remarks to the lord mayor of London’s annual banquet for judges, in which he expressed concern that measures directed toward preventing acts of international terrorism should stop short of undermining human rights). 165. Berwick, Inquiry into Legislation Against Terrorism, paragraph 3.1. See also HC Debs, Vol. 341, col. 152, 14 December 1999, cited in Walker, “Policy Options and Priorities,” 17. 166. Privy Counsellor Review Committee, Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001 Review: Report, 8. See also http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_ politics/3330221.stm. 167. Ibid. 168. Ibid. 169. House of Lords Debates, 26 March 2003, cols. 851–854, cited in Privy Counsellor Review Committee, Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001 Review: Report, 26–27, n21. 170. R. v. Director of Public Prosecutors, ex p. Kebilene, 1999, 3 WLR 972, p. 1000, cited in Walker, “Policy Options and Priorities,” 18. 171. Ibid. 172. Ibid., 19. 173. Wilkinson, Memorandum. See also “Blair Vows to Fight Terror Menace,” http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/3506940.stm (addressing the “new menace of our times”). 174. See, e.g., Alfred Hermida, “Terror War ‘Could Last 50 Years,’” BBC News, 12 January 2004, available at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/3388797.stm. 175. See, e.g., Magnus Ranstorp, Select Committee on Defence, Minutes of Evidence, (highlighting the “trend towards fusion between terrorism and organized crime”). 176. See, e.g., Graham Pearson and Alastair Hay, 13 November 2001, Select Committee on Defence, Minutes of Evidence; questions 96–119. 177. Clive Phillip Walker, “Constitutional Governance and Special Powers Against Terrorism,” Columbia Journal of Transnational Law 35 (1997): 1. 178. For discussion of this point, see Walker, “Policy Options and Priorities.” 179. 1994 Intelligence Services Act, section 10, cited in Walker, “Policy Options and Priorities,” 28. 180. Walker, “Policy Options and Priorities,” 28. 181. “UK Contributes £250,000 to Anti-terrorism Fund,” Department of Trade and Industry, 18 March 2002. 182. Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Strengthening the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention, CM. 5484 (London: 2002). 183. UN Security Council Press Release SC/7143. 184. UN General Assembly Resolution A/RES/56/1. 185. “Anti-terror: ‘Good Progress, but More to Do’—Straw,” Foreign and Commonwealth Office, 27 December 2001. 186. 1982 Aviation Security Act and 1990 Aviation and Maritime Security Act, 1978 Internationally Protected Persons Act, 1982 Taking of Hostages Act, 1983 Nuclear Material (Offenses) Act, 1978 Suppression of Terrorism Act, UN Convention for the Suppression of Terrorist Bombings, and UN Convention for the

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Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism; cited in Walker, “Policy Options and Priorities,” 25f. 187. See, e.g., “Straw Calls for Anti-terror Front,” BBC News, 6 February 2004, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/3466933.stm (citing Foreign Secretary Jack Straw’s calls in India to create a universal definition of terrorism). 188. House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, January 2004, paragraph 303; and Dorine Dubois, “The Attacks of 11 September: EU-US Cooperation Against Terrorism in the Field of Justice and Home Affairs,” European Foreign Affairs Review 7 (2002): 317–335. 189. Fernando Reinares, ed., European Democracies Against Terrorism (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000); and Clive Phillip Walker, Blackstone’s Guide to the Anti-Terrorism Legislation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), ch. 10. 190. Proposed Framework Decision on Terrorism from the Commission, COM (2001) 521. 191. Decision on a European Arrest Warrant from the Commission, COM (2001) 522. 192. See Walker, “Policy Options and Priorities,” 32f. 193. 2001 ATCSA, paragraph 111. 194. See, e.g., “EU ‘Terror Tsar,’” BBC News, 26 March 2004, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/3550543.stm (clarifying the role of the new antiterrorist tsar); and Magnus Ranstorp and Jeffrey Cozzens, “The European Terror Challenge,” BBC News, 24 March 2004, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/eu ope/3563713.stm (addressing advantages and pitfalls of the new EU tsar). 195. “Blunkett Call for an EU-wide DNA Database,” The Scotsman, http://news.scotsman.com/topics.cfm?tid=428&id=770782004. 196. http://conventions.coe.int/Treaty/EN/CadreListeTraites.htm. 197. Ibid. 198. House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, January 2004, paragraph 306. 199. House of Commons Defence Committee, July 2002, paragraph 41. 200. HC Debs, 14 September 2001, c. 619, cited in House of Commons Defence Committee, December 2001. 201. Cited in House of Commons Defence Committee, December 2001, paragraph 86. 202. “US Urges NATO Support in Hotspots,” BBC News, 4 December 2003, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3291825.stm. 203. Ibid. 204. House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, January 2004, paragraph 308. 205. Member states include Australia, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain, and the United States. 206. House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, January 2004, paragraphs 124–125. 207. Ibid., paragraph 135. 208. Ibid., paragraphs 157–163. 209. Ibid., paragraphs 252–253. 210. Ibid., paragraph 317. 211. House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, First Report, Session 2003–04, Foreign Affairs Committee Annual Report 2003, HC 220. 212. Conclusions 15 and 61. 213. Conclusion 62.

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214. House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, January 2004, p. 13. 215. See, e.g., “Papers Analyse Bombing Impact,” BBC News, 13 March 2004, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/3507430.stm; and “Is UK Ready for a Terror Attack?” BBC News, 22 March 2004, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/3557813.stm. 216. Paul Wilkinson, Memorandum to the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs, Minutes of Evidence, June 2003, available at http://www.publications.parliament.uk/cgi-bin. 217. See, e.g., “Explosives Find in UK Terror Raid,” CNN, 20 March 2004, http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/europe/03/30/britain.terror/index.html (ammonium nitrate recovered by police in London); “Chemical ‘Bomb Plot’ in UK Foiled,” BBC News, 6 April 2004, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/3603961.stm (alleged terrorist plot to use osmium tetroxide); and Jon Silverman, “Analysis: War on Terror Steps Up a Gear,” BBC News, 15 January 2003, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/ 2659529.stm (noting the discovery of ricin at a flat in North London). 218. Wilkinson, op. cit (2003). 219. See, e.g., Examination of Witnesses, Select Committee on Defence, Minutes of Evidence, 13 November 2001: Magnus Ranstorp, Graham Pearson, and Alastair Hay, http://www.parliament.the-stationery-office.co.uk/pa/cm200102/ cmselect/cmdfence/348. 220. Simon Henderson, “Bush Gives Warning on Dangers of Nuclear Terrorism,” Financial Times (London), 1 July 1985.

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3 Germany’s Counterterrorism Policy VICTOR MAUER

IN SOME RESPECTS, THE INITIAL OFFICIAL GERMAN GOVERNMENT RESPONSE TO the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 followed the rhetoric of the US government. On 12 September 2001, in a special session of the German parliament, the Bundestag, Chancellor Gerhard Schröder called the attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C., a “declaration of war against the civilized community of states, . . . a declaration of war against the free world.” The chancellor was quick not only to publicly assure US president George W. Bush of Germany’s “unrestricted solidarity” with the United States but also to demand “more efficient measures in order to deprive terrorism of its worldwide breeding-ground.”1 The terms “more efficient measures” and “worldwide” became central notions in the ensuing campaign against international terrorism. Within weeks rather than months after the attacks of 11 September 2001, the German government introduced new and wide-ranging counterterrorism legislation at home, and joined in the international collaboration in multilateral institutions. It proposed new initiatives in the UN, the EU, and NATO, and contributed a contingent of Special Operations Forces (SOF) to the campaign to oust the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. However, irrespective of the close international cooperation especially in the early stages of the counterterrorist effort, the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were, as Peter Katzenstein has aptly noted, “a strong beam of light that gets filtered by national lenses, of different self-conceptions and institutional practices, which create distinctive political responses. . . . In contrast to the Cold War, the relative importance of different self-conceptions and institutional practices appears to be larger and the systemic effects constraining national divergences smaller.”2 In other words, unlike the Soviet threat in earlier times, the new phenomenon of mass-casualty terrorism is not the glue that binds the West, or indeed the civilized world, together. Different notions of what constitutes “terrorism” and different perceptions of the terrorist threat still prevail. 59

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There are also divergent opinions on how to fight it. This became particularly evident in the run-up to the US-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003. In addition to the pressure of a domestic agenda that was heavily driven by electoral concern, the German government strongly opposed the US move, not least because it feared that what the United States had designated as an exercise in counterterrorism would ultimately lead to more, not less terrorism. There were concerns in Berlin that the US assessment of the need to deprive Al-Qaida of a potential state supplier of weapons of mass destruction, and of Iraq as a central front in the campaign against terrorism, might become a self-fulfilling prophecy, in the process also heightening the terrorist threat at home. The German government coalition of Social Democrats and Greens was never at ease with the notion of a “global war on terrorism,” since that term implied a largely military effort, and thus failed to capture the full complexity of political, diplomatic, intelligence, law enforcement, economic, and military actions required to rid the world of this phenomenon. This chapter looks at German counterterrorism policy, first describing the distinctive threat the new terrorism poses and how this threat is perceived by the German intelligence community, which in turn shapes policy responses. It then describes the legislative steps taken immediately after 11 September 2001. The shift in balance from individual liberties, on the one hand, to security provided by the state, on the other, will be discussed and critically assessed against the background of similar debates in the 1970s and 1980s. This shift, which has been accompanied by a strengthening of the government’s preventive approach to terrorism, is most clearly reflected in the redefinition of the primary mission of Germany’s security organizations. At the same time, the fragmented nature of these numerous organizations has essentially remained unchanged, despite considerable efforts and new forms of cooperation. The remarkably uncontroversial nature of the domestic debate on the tightening of laws and legislation can be partly explained by the external shock of 11 September 2001, partly by the composition of the government, and partly by the fact that ultimate parliamentary oversight was preserved. The chapter’s final section analyzes the international component of German counterterrorism efforts within the UN, the EU, and NATO. The chapter deliberately refrains from assessing the success and failure of German counterterrorism policy. Measuring success in this area is difficult, since the sheer fact that—unlike in other European countries—there have so far been no Islamist terrorist attacks in Germany is just as questionable a yardstick of success as the sheer number of arrests made or the amount of terrorist funds blocked. Instead, this chapter describes a counterterrorism policy that is multifaceted and, at times, hindered by institutional constraints and inertia. This is not surprising in itself, and neither is the fact

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that coherence and cohesion in the national and international fight against the terrorist threat, as well as efforts to develop further counterterrorist capabilities, were only strengthened in the immediate aftermath of the attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C., as well as those in Djerba, Madrid, and London. Democratic governments, it seems, are only inclined to impose new security measures, which in turn tend to diminish their citizens’ civil liberties, when events outside their reach force them to do so.

The Threat The terrorist attacks on the United States did not mark the beginning of a new era. Rather, the shock of 11 September 2001, by now deeply ingrained in the world’s public memory, reflected an increasing, if often neglected, trend of the 1990s, which found its horrific and climactic expression in the collapse of the World Trade Center. The vulnerability of the United States as the world’s only superpower at the height of its military strength demonstrated that asymmetric threats have become the determining factor of a globalized security system, where the distinction between internal and external security has become increasingly blurred.3 Terrorism as a tactic offensively employed by the weak to promote a revolutionary objective had of course plagued Germany in the 1970s and 1980s.4 However, it was immediately clear even to the average citizen5 that the terrorism of 11 September 2001 had little in common with the terrorism of the Red Army Faction (RAF). Certainly, neither of these two forms of terrorism—one of which had primarily domestic roots, though with international ramifications, while the other was thoroughly transnational in nature—is amenable to negotiation, let alone to diplomatic or political compromise. This made and respectively makes it all the more important to empower moderate forces within the larger community in order to “diminish [the terrorist] constituency, its political strength and ultimately its operational efficacy.”6 The first crucial feature that markedly distinguishes the new transnational terrorism from the highly selective RAF terrorism of earlier times— the sheer appetite for mass killings irrespective of the victims’ background, and the determination to instrumentalize elements of the national infrastructure for the purpose of mass murder—might indeed diminish the global jihadist movement’s constituency by itself. The second distinguishing feature, its fundamentally different organizational, logistical, and operational structure, requires counterterrorism measures that lie beyond the reach of diplomatic, and in most cases military, instruments. German intelligence services had been aware since the second half of the 1990s of Al-Qaida’s clandestine character; its largely horizontal, multi-

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national, and heterogeneous network; its decentralized command and control; and its transnational dispersal of personnel with semiautonomous cells, which have become even more virtual and therefore even harder to identify and neutralize after the forceful expulsion of the group from Afghanistan.7 During the 1990s and especially after the official dissolution of the RAF in 1998, however, German intelligence was mainly concerned with the rise of right-wing extremism and its challenge to domestic security. Furthermore, while the official intelligence report on domestic threats (Verfassungsschutzbericht) of 2001 acknowledged that extremist and terrorist, and in particular Islamist, foreign groups did threaten “with varying intensity the domestic security of Germany,” the report also emphasized the fact that these groups were foremost intent on toppling the existing state and government structures of their respective countries of origin and replacing them with their own Islamist order.8 It was not until December 2000, when police arrested four Islamists of the so-called Meliani Group in Frankfurt and prevented an Al-Qaida plot to attack the Strasbourg Christmas market on New Year’s Eve 2000 that the intelligence services realized for the first time that Germany was being used by Muslim extremists as a base for rest, recovery, transit, preparations, and possibly recruitment. However, until the attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C., the real potential of the Islamist groups remained unclear. The attacks of 11 September 2001 revealed that the transnational terrorist threat was indeed far more dangerous than most had previously believed. Al-Qaida had moved beyond rhetoric and intention. It was able to threaten the West’s global political and military leverage. It had become a strategic threat.9

The Domestic Response Perceptions of threats may vary due to the trauma of injury and the realization of one’s own vulnerability. The 11 September 2001 attacks showed investigators that an Islamist network with fairly solid structures existed within the Federal Republic. 10 The basic propensity of these groups toward violence seems unbroken, although a number of further attacks have been prevented, many arrests have been made, and more than 170 investigations are under way against Muslim terror suspects, in addition to several court cases that have already been concluded. 11 Most significantly, investigators were unable to exclude the possibility that Germany itself could be targeted. They generally distinguish between individuals who were already members of Islamist organizations on their arrival in Germany and use the country mainly as a rest area; so-called nonaligned mujahideen who take up

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arms as mercenaries; first-generation Al-Qaida members; and finally, the most unpredictable and therefore most dangerous group of Al-Qaida adherents who, like the members of the Hamburg contingent,12 do not stand out noticeably as fanatical Islamists or have a police record: young Muslims with a middle-class background.13 The German minister of the interior at the time, Otto Schily, described the dilemma barely ten days after the terrorist attacks: We must readjust our investigative strategies. This is a difficult task when the perpetrators are individuals who hide behind the guise of completely unremarkable behavior, who . . . live ordinary middle-class lives, and when there is nothing to indicate that their lives might lead to any kind of terrorist crime. . . . This makes it all the more important to determine how we can use data sets comprehensively, how they can be linked up and synchronized, and what priority should be given to security interests.14

Schily’s comments came in the wake of opinion polls conducted just after the terrorist attacks that indicated not only that 60 percent of the German population fear attacks in Germany15 but, moreover, that 63 percent judged that the existing legal framework contained considerable security problems and deficiencies. 16 In other words, the powerful images of the terrorist attacks channeled the development of public opinion, and there seemed to be little doubt among the public that the terrorist attacks warranted immediate legislative measures. At the same time, 66 percent of Germans were confident that the Schröder government would cope well with the difficult situation.17 It was against this background that the government moved swiftly to introduce new legislation. Thus, there were a number of catalysts for major governmental legislative initiatives in autumn 2001: the external shock, which was particularly jarring in Germany because the cell around Mohamed Atta had been based in Hamburg, dovetailed with individual and collective perceptions of the terrorist threat, which underwent a radical transformation after 11 September 2001, and with a self-imposed urgency to act quickly. They resulted in two so-called security packages or “antiterror packages”—one repressive, the other one preventive in nature—and led to the introduction of the 2005 Aviation Security Act. In its judgment of 15 February 2006, the Federal Constitutional Court ruled that the latter was incompatible with the German Basic Law and hence void. The new legislation reflects that the lion’s share of counterterrorism against transnational terrorist threats is to be conducted on the law enforcement and intelligence fronts, rather than on the military battlefield. Like in the 1970s and 1980s, when Germany was plagued by domestic RAF terrorism, the new form of transnational terrorism is treated essentially as a law enforcement problem, and terrorists are regarded as criminals.

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Security Package I: Repressive Response of a Robust Democracy The attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C., accelerated, rather than initiated, a general trend in German counterterrorism policy. Some of the legislation that the cabinet adopted as early as 19 September 2001 and that the minister of the interior at the time, Otto Schily, presented to the Bundestag on 11 October 2001 had already been in the making prior to the 11 September 2001 attacks. A few measures that did not require legislative action were enacted immediately, mainly related to air traffic security. Tighter security measures restricted access to airplanes, and only days after the terrorist attacks, the Federal Border Guard began to escort German aircraft with specially trained and armed air marshals. Furthermore, the federal government engaged in discussions with representatives of all German infrastructure services in order to identify vulnerabilities and to take countermeasures, if required. A few months later, the Security Package II and the Aviation Security Act contained legal measures for background checks on personnel working in security sensitive environments. The first legislative changes and amendments, initiated before the end of September 2001, were, however, only partially related to the 11 September 2001 attacks. Mainly they were intended as mid- to long-term measures. They served the general domestic and foreign policy interests of the Federal Republic of Germany, and at the same time served as a clear signal that a robust democracy would defend itself against all kinds of terrorism and extremism. Among the most important measures were the abolition of the privileged status of religious groups and associations, changes in the penal code, and the government’s decision to make an additional DM3 billion available for counterterrorist measures in the federal budget for 2002.18 The abolition of the privileged position enjoyed by religious groups under German law was first and foremost a show of determination on the part of legislators, who wished to end the practice witnessed since the 1990s, where extremist and anticonstitutional groups were able to camouflage their activities under the guise of free religious expression. Based on the revised Association Law that went into effect on 8 December 2001, then–minister of the interior Schily on 12 December 2001 outlawed the extremist Muslim organization Caliphate State together with its associated endowments and subordinate bodies, with a total of 1,100 members. Led by Cemaleddin Kaplan and later by his son, Metin Kaplan, the adherents of the Caliphate State—seen as an alternative to the laicist Turkish state—had been agitating for two decades against the liberal democratic foundations of the Federal Republic, against people of different faith, and against Turkey, culminating in a call for jihad. Second, the changes to the Criminal Code were limited to amendments to

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Section 129a, which makes it illegal to form terrorist groups. Because the clause in question only applied to registered associations whose organizational structures were at least partially based in Germany, Section 129b was added to allow the prosecution of foreign terrorist groups even at the most basic planning stage as well as terrorist crimes committed in another country. Even though this change did not take effect until after the attacks in Djerba in April 2002, when 12 German tourists were killed by the explosion of a truck outside a synagogue, the impetus for it was ultimately derived from a 1998 EU initiative on combating transnational terrorism in Europe.19 The difficulty with this legal norm has since become evident in 80 legal cases. In several lawsuits, it has proven extremely difficult to meet the burden of proof because the legal requirements of demonstrating the formation of a terrorist group could not always be fulfilled: such an organization is defined as a syndicate of at least three people operating over a certain period of time and aiming to carry out murder, homicide, or genocide. Because many such networks are only loosely organized, it is frequently difficult to convict its members of affiliation with a terrorist group. Discussing the legitimacy of violence against “infidels” does not amount to the formation of a terrorist cell. Another decisive obstacle to legal convictions is the tendency of the intelligence services to value the secrecy of their operations higher than administrative assistance to the court system, especially to foreign courts that, in turn, take pains only to give credence to intelligence sources that can be independently confirmed. In the trials against two Moroccans who are accused of membership in the Hamburg cell, Mounir el-Motassadeq and Abdelghani Mzoudi, Washington had initially refused to even release the records of interrogations conducted during trials in the United States, let alone to allow German courts to question Ramzi bin al-Shibh, who is considered one of the chief planners of the 11 September 2001 attacks and is in US custody. Finally, the budget for 2002 increased the security services’ financial and personnel resources. The Federal Criminal Police Office (Bundeskriminalamt), the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz), the Federal Border Guard (Bundesgrenzschutz), and the Federal Office for Information Security were granted an additional 2,320 staff positions. Security expenditures had already increased by 11 percent in the legislative period from 1998 to 2002, even though the overall Interior Ministry budget was reduced as part of budgetary consolidation measures. Around 60 percent of the Interior Ministry’s budget is spent on domestic security. Security Package II: Preventive Protection Against a Depersonalized and Transregional Threat Unlike the first security package, the second one, which took effect on 1 January 2002, was a direct response to the terrorist attacks on New York

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City and Washington, D.C. With its adjustments to more than 100 regulations in 17 laws and five administrative decrees, it concentrates on preventive action and at the same time goes beyond Otto Schily’s appeal for the synchronization and comprehensive use of data sets. In this respect, the approach is similar to the one taken by previous German governments in the context of their fight against domestic terrorism in the 1970s and 1980s. The Security Package II pursues three major objectives. First, it extends the competencies of the security organizations and intelligence services. While the role of the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) as a kind of federal clearinghouse has been strengthened—the BKA no longer has to rely on the police forces of the Länder (the German states that make up the Federal Republic) for data collection—the Federal as well as the Länder Offices for the Protection of the Constitution have been given the power to access the telephone, banking, employment, and university records of individuals intent on subverting Germany’s constitutional order or of threatening the idea of international understanding and world peace. Second, it improves the cooperation between local and regional police organizations, especially concerning the exchange of data. And third, in doing so, the counterterrorism law aims at preventing the infiltration of potential terrorists into Germany, or—in cases where this fails—at better identifying those who are already in the country. Five of the 16 German Länder have reactivated the controversial dragnet approach, according to which the respective police services draw up statistical profiles of potential suspects. Future passports and identity cards will include additional biometric data such as fingerprints. Germany’s immigration laws have also been rewritten to further increase the amount of information on foreigners, “including voice recordings of asylum seekers and their fingerprints to be stored for a decade, and online access of the police to the data of the immigration and naturalization services.”20 The central index of foreigners has been remodeled to become the basis for granting or declining visas to foreign applicants. Police access to the data collection has been improved, and the religious affiliation of applicants will be stored. Tilting the Balance from Civil Liberties Toward Security The entire new legislative package was passed by the Bundestag and the Bundesrat (Federal Council) under enormous time pressure, without the parliamentary hype and controversy encountered during the intense debates of the late 1970s about the acceptable extent of restrictions on individual liberties in order to avoid future terrorist attacks, and almost unnoticed by the general public. There are five main reasons for this remarkably uncontroversial, and indeed smooth, legislative process. First, the external shock and the powerful images of 11 September 2001 channeled the development

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of political opinion and fueled legislative activism. The need for legislative action was never in doubt. A careful analysis to determine which measures could possibly have prevented the attacks and which legislative changes would have been necessary to create these measures was never attempted. Seen in this light, the counterterrorism law constitutes, above all, a political act.21 Second, the then–minister of the interior, Otto Schily, was not only the most senior, but also an enormously powerful figure in the Schröder cabinet. Schily’s double credentials as the erstwhile prominent, if controversial, and widely respected attorney of RAF terrorists in the 1970s—and in particular of Gudrun Ensslin during the Stammheim trial between 1975 and 1977—and as the master of law and order and hardliner on issues of crime and immigration seemingly combined, in an almost ideal way, the role of protector of both civil liberties and national security. Third, it was far easier for a left-wing government, especially for one including the Green Party (which owed its rise in the German party political system partly to its civil liberties and human rights agenda), to introduce new counterterrorism laws or adapt existing ones than for conservative governments, which have traditionally been confronted with history and memory as powerful effects on policy when setting out to change the delicate balance between security, on the one hand, and liberty, on the other. Fourth (and this ties in with the third argument), the conservative opposition was pushing for more drastic measures, which in turn made the government’s action seem moderate and balanced. And fifth, some controversial measures, such as the expansion of the investigative powers of the three federal intelligence services, have a sunset clause of five years. Nevertheless, the new counterterrorism laws have clearly tilted the balance from civil liberties toward security without necessarily enhancing the security of the state and society. Most of the measures taken, such as the reintroduction of the dragnet approach and the additional competencies of the federal intelligence services, reflect the traditional German counterterrorism approach of the 1970s. They aim at detecting future terrorist attacks at the earliest possible stage so as to stop them from being carried out. What these measures do not seem to take into account, however, is the fact that in the early twenty-first century, the nature of the terrorist threat has fundamentally changed. The protection of state and society through preventive measures is hampered by the severely limited knowledge that law enforcement agencies have of the perpetrators. The law tends to think in terms of concrete threats, not in terms of vague risks. Threats or dangerous individuals are usually identified by conspicuous or previous illegal behavior.22 Previous illegal behavior, however, cannot serve as an indicator of the danger emanating from individuals who make a particular effort to live law-abiding lives, only to be able to strike more efficiently when the moment is right. This not only describes the dilemma state authorities are confronted

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with in the age of mass-casualty terrorism but also explains why numerous measures, such as the reintroduction of the dragnet approach, have failed to yield results. In a dragnet, investigators systematically filter out suspicious cases by comparing one set of data with others. Following predefined criteria—a so-called grid—the overall data volume is reduced to a manageable number of cases that the police can investigate individually. Since there is often a lack of concrete clues, the search targets individuals whose existence can only be assumed. This means that the search criteria become comparatively nonspecific, and sometimes even arbitrary. Discrimination against certain population groups becomes almost inevitable, and the legal quality of some of the new counterterrorism laws turns out to be rather questionable.23 The maxim of “legitimacy and efficiency,” which the federal government claimed to follow—not least in an attempt to dissociate itself from the United States—was only partially realized in the new legislation. The efficiency principle in the fight against the terrorist threat was also impeded by the extremely heterogeneous security architecture of the Federal Republic. As part of the federal structure of police and intelligence services protecting the state, no less than 36 independent authorities deal with the protection of the state and the constitution (including federal and state offices for the protection of the constitution, federal and state criminal police offices, the Federal Intelligence Service, and Military Counterintelligence). Germany is witness to a significant tendency toward jumbling competencies. No single authority generates a complete picture, and the significance of information details is often overlooked.24 In addition to the vertical separation of power, a mandatory horizontal separation between police and intelligence services has been in place since the foundation of the Federal Republic. The bundling of regulatory and coordinating functions in central federal offices was, however, improved by two measures in particular: first of all, through the establishment of a so-called information board, which qualitatively improved the cooperation between the Federal Criminal Police Office, the Federal Intelligence Service, and the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution; but also by introducing a common counterterrorism database to be accessible to all security services and through the December 2004 establishment of a Joint Counterterrorism Center in Berlin, where nearly 200 experts from both the national and the federal offices of the police and the protection of the constitution work together with the Federal Intelligence Service, the Customs Criminological Office, and the Attorney General’s Office. In this way, information can be exchanged without delay and current threat indicators can be dealt with in a targeted manner.25 The restructuring has not yet facilitated a seamless exchange of data and cooperation. However, the attempt to subsume counterterrorist intelligence expertise and operative measures in a single institution promises to be a superior approach to the legislative quick-fix of the Security Package II.

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The 2005 Aviation Security Act: A Denial of Human Dignity When the Bundestag passed the Aviation Security Act on 18 June 2004, several experts said the law codified an unprecedented violation of a taboo in the legal foundations of society. If a state was prepared to sacrifice human lives for the sake of third parties, its members argued, it excluded the victims from the legal sphere, and indeed revoked their status as holders of basic rights.26 The severe criticism focused on Section 14.3 of the new law, which authorized the armed forces to shoot down, as a measure of last resort, aircraft that were intended to be used as weapons in crimes against human lives. Clearly, Section 14.3 of the Aviation Security Act was formulated in response to the attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C., even though it was triggered by an incident that occurred in Frankfurt/Main on 5 January 2003, when a mentally deranged man hijacked a motor glider and circled over the banking district for hours. The Federal Constitutional Court held that the national parliament lacked the legislative authority to issue such regulations in the first place. Independent of this finding, it also ruled that Section 14.3 of the Aviation Security Act was incompatible with the fundamental right to life and with the guarantee of human dignity, insofar as the use of armed force would affect persons on board the aircraft who were not participants in the crime. If the state should decide to kill them as a means to save others, they would be treated as mere objects not only by the perpetrators but also by the state. This, the Federal Constitutional Court ruled, denied the basic human dignity of the victims, who as such were in need of protection. The court ruled that the state could not justify killing innocent people by claiming that their lives, being at the mercy of utterly determined hijackers, were already forfeited anyway. According to the Constitutional Court, the state did not have the authority to decide which lives were worthy of its protection or to take the lives of people whose behavior had been perfectly lawful. While the court did rule that the direct use of armed force against pilotless aircraft, or exclusively against persons who wanted to use the aircraft to attack the people on the ground, was proportionate and therefore justified, it cautioned against the assumption that a complete picture of the factual situation would always be available.27 Clauses that allow suspicious aircraft to be intercepted or forced down and warning shots to be fired are not in contravention of the Basic Law. However, the Federal Constitutional Court has set strict boundaries for legislators who, in times of an unprecedented threat, tend to overreach, despite having preached for decades from the opposition benches the importance of protecting human and civil rights. The court denied the necessity of authorizing measures that simply have no place, name, or basis in legal principles.28 In this way, it has put an end to a tendency that appeared to run

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rampant in the aftermath of the 11 September 2001 attacks—the fundamental primacy of the state’s “national security” paradigm over the legal right to liberty.

The International Response Corresponding to the realignment at the national level, a fundamental shift is under way in Germany’s contributions to international counterterrorism efforts. Germany can thus be said to have a comprehensive and integrated counterterrorism concept that combines the national with the international level and civilian with military instruments. On the one hand, this holistic approach to national counterterrorism policy reflects the new characteristics of the terrorist threat. On the other hand, it fits in with the conceptual principles that have shaped the multilateral character of German foreign policy over the past decades—a policy that has been further enforced by the former coalition government of Social Democrats and the Green Party.29 The close international cooperation today is different from the campaign against the Red Army Faction in the 1970s and 1980s, not only because of the nature of the terrorist challenge—the RAF operated nationally, even if its members occasionally spent time and respectively trained in Arab countries, France, and the Benelux countries, while the “new terrorism” is transnational—but also because of the corresponding expansion of the concept of security. Purely national efforts to provide security are even less practical today than ever before. Since the very beginnings of the Federal Republic, German governments have pursued the multinational approach based on a shared understanding of security as the basic principle of German security policy. As a rule, German security policy has always been embedded in a multinational framework. The greatest importance in this context is accorded to the UN, the EU, and NATO. All measures taken at the national level have been coordinated with the activities undertaken by the international organizations. Especially within the EU, the German federal government had a precursor role in promoting many legal changes. However, coherent action has frequently been obstructed by national prerogatives. The UN and the EU as Forums for Consultation, Coordination, and Cooperation in the Fight Against Terrorism Immediately after the terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C., the German government moved swiftly to generate an international debate on the terrorist threat and to initiate counterterrorism legislation

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within the framework of both the UN and the EU. In doing so, it frequently utilized international efforts in the fight against terrorism in order to speed up the domestic process. In a parliamentary debate of 11 October 2001 on the introduction of new counterterrorism laws, and specifically on changes to the immigration laws, Otto Schily referred to UN Security Council Resolution 1373 of 28 September 2001 30 and the council’s decision to establish a committee to monitor the implementation of various counterterrorism measures, as well as the council’s call on member states to report to the committee no later than 90 days from the date of adoption of Resolution 1373 on the steps they had taken to implement the resolution.31 Other measures the government was at pains to synchronize on the international level included the prevention and suppression of the financing of terrorist acts as well as the freezing of funds and other financial assets or economic resources of persons who commit, or attempt to commit, terrorist acts; effective border controls; close cooperation on administrative and judicial matters; and an intensification and acceleration of the exchange of operational information, especially regarding the actions or movements of terrorists or terrorist networks. Even prior to the attacks of 11 September 2001, successive German governments had ratified ten of the 12 conventions and protocols on the fight against terrorism that the Security Council had adopted between 1963 and 1999. This circumstance, together with the German government’s lead role in hosting the first Afghanistan Conference after the fall of the Taliban between 25 November and 2 December 2001 at the request of the UN and its active engagement in the UN-mandated International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan, was to give Germany a considerable amount of both legitimacy and credibility to influence the international debate and help coordinate the international efforts in the fight against terrorism. While the UN’s involvement had, first and foremost, a legitimizing effect on Germany’s domestic and international counterterrorism action, coordination with the EU—due to its more institutionalized processes and Germany’s long-term credentials as a driving force behind European integration—gained particular prominence in Germany’s counterterrorism approach. The strategic dimension of the terrorist threat became clear on 11 September 2001, and with it the need to think beyond the notion of terrorism primarily as a challenge to national security. In a globalized world, the German government perceived the EU as a single entity that required a counterterrorism policy of its own. This policy would have to be closely coordinated with the member states’ policies. Chancellor Schröder was quick to initiate an extraordinary summit meeting of heads of state and government on 21 September 2001. The “EU Plan of Action on Combating Terrorism”32 with its almost 200 counterterrorism measures was essentially a result of this summit meeting, and as such it came to symbolize a “month

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of transformation.”33 Counterterrorism was thus firmly on the EU’s agenda, and the EU Action Plan and its revised successors of June 2004 and of February 2006 identified measures, the responsible body, and the deadline to be adhered to. Similar to the comparable UN committee, the EU Action Plan served as an instrument for monitoring the implementation and, if need be, for “naming and shaming” member states that failed to live up to their obligations. In many respects, the EU approach reflects the German counterterrorism approach. First, efforts got under way to accelerate the legislative process in order to adopt measures and activities that had long been on the EU’s agenda. Second, the new form of transnational terrorism is essentially treated as a law enforcement problem, and terrorists are regarded as criminals. The focus is therefore on legislation and the coordination of the heterogeneous activities of the member states. Germany in particular focused on the improvement of counterterrorism capabilities at the European level—be it within the realm of Europol, Eurojust, or the Police Chiefs’ Task Force, which the country had been instrumental in setting up. In addition, the German government concentrated on efforts to reduce terrorist access to finances and other economic resources and pushed for an improved exchange of information among member states. By the end of 2001, Germany alone had provided some 80 percent of the data available for the new European antiterror database and advocated a policy of making European criminal databases truly interoperable.34 This example shows that EU counterterrorism efforts, deprived of a robust executive mandate and hindered by interpillar competition, are essentially driven by national agendas. As a consequence, the respective domestic debates are multiplied on the international level, where competing visions of counterterrorism—derived from each country’s specific experience and convictions—tend to result in a policy of the lowest common denominator. The Military Component: NATO and Bilateral Cooperation with the United States Even though the struggle against terrorism is mainly conducted at the nonmilitary level, the Federal Republic participated in military counterterrorism operations from an early stage. As in the case of national and international legislation, these can be subdivided into repressive and preventive measures. Some were enacted within the framework of NATO, while others came about as part of coalitions separate from the alliance, or as the result of bilateral agreements. NATO had already assessed terrorism as a threat to peace and stability in its 1999 Strategic Concept.35 It was only consistent, then, that only one day after the attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C., on the initia-

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tive of NATO Secretary-General Lord Robertson, the alliance members invoked Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty, which states that “an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all.” This decision did not imply immediate military assistance but was rather intended primarily as a gesture of solidarity with the United States. Nevertheless, the temporary crisis that seized the alliance was due in part to the reaction of the US administration. Just when the other alliance members had invoked the collective defense clause in support of the leading power, the latter announced that such measures were “absolutely useless.”36 Based on the experience of the Kosovo war, the United States was determined to avoid a second “war by committee.” Initially, therefore, the alliance made no direct contribution to Operation Enduring Freedom. Instead, NATO took on important tasks in securing the US airspace as part of Operation Eagle Assist. German soldiers participated in Airborne Warning and Control Systems (AWACS) missions, and the German federal government granted the United States access to air bases and overflight rights. Although the crucial political question ahead of the Afghanistan campaign was whether the United States would manage to involve key regional states in the antiterrorist coalition, and although the United States was determined in the aftermath of the Kosovo war to wage war alone, one point nevertheless became clear: even if its members all share the same threat assessment as well as a determination to act, an alliance is only as useful as the capabilities and readiness of its members. In terms of security policy in the modern world, this implies interoperability, flexibility, mobility, deployability, and sustainability. Since the tectonic shifts in global politics between 1989 and 1991, the Federal Republic’s security policy has undergone a cautious development that can also be seen in the transformation of its armed forces. This process was initiated with the Defense White Paper in 1994 and resulted in a fundamental reorientation of the Defense Policy Guidelines in 2003. The mission spectrum has broadened considerably. Today, the Bundeswehr (the collective term for the German armed forces) is oriented toward the more probable tasks of international conflict prevention and crisis management. The armed forces are “categorized according to their operational readiness and availability and can be employed rapidly and effectively in combined operations with other nations’ forces.”37 As a matter of principle, military participation of the Bundeswehr in the campaign against terrorism—if deemed necessary by the government—is also understood as an expression of solidarity, reliability, and credibility. The Bundeswehr is therefore viewed as an overarching instrument of Germany’s security precautions.38 This holistic approach is reflected in the guiding precepts of German security and defense policy, which is based on

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a preventive conception of security but nevertheless does not fundamentally exclude the option of applying repressive means. Among the latter is the deployment, to some extent removed from public or parliamentary scrutiny, of the Kommando Spezialkräfte (KSK, Special Forces Command). This force has seen action together with Western allies in Afghanistan since November 2001, initially in small combat groups numbering up to 100 or 200 troops (including command and logistics), in ousting the Taliban regime. Furthermore, the operation, which was extended by another year in November 2005, aims to destroy terrorist command and training facilities, to fight and capture terrorists and bring them to justice, and to permanently prevent third parties from supporting terrorist activities.39 The authorization of force to deploy the elite KSK unit, in particular, almost brought down Chancellor Gerhard Schröder’s government when he nearly failed to secure a parliamentary majority vote in November 2001. This military cooperation has been conducted in a bilateral framework. Other military operations were of a preventive character and carried out in a multilateral framework or under the auspices of NATO. They are conducted in regions where terrorism benefits from instability and has become entrenched, and where armed forces are required to create a minimum of security in order to bring about the conditions for applying civilian instruments. This applies to the Bundeswehr’s involvement in Operation Active Endeavour in the Mediterranean as well as to Operation Enduring Freedom around the Horn of Africa, which aims at monitoring maritime traffic, disrupting the supply lines of terrorist organizations, and protecting sea lanes. The mandate for the deployment of up to 2,800 soldiers was extended by the German parliament for another year in November 2005. However, the German navy is hobbled in fulfilling its task because it is prohibited from entering the territorial waters of states bordering on its mission area, where arms smuggling is likely to be ongoing. A separate undertaking is the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan, based on UN Security Council Resolution 1386 of 20 December 2001. The German federal government regards participation in this stabilization force, which it headed together with the Netherlands between February and August 2003, as an active contribution to the long-term struggle against terrorism. It has therefore raised the troop ceiling once more from 2,250 to currently 2,700 soldiers. In a second stabilization effort, the main focus is on assembling several Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs).

Conclusion Counterterrorism is not a new phenomenon in Germany. In the 1970s and 1980s the Federal Republic was confronted with the domestic challenge that

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the Red Army Faction represented. The Islamic terrorism of the twenty-first century, however, poses a new, external—and, above all—strategic threat. The Federal Republic of Germany responded to the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 with a broad array of counterterrorist measures both on the national and international levels. Essentially, the approach tried to combine political, diplomatic, intelligence, law enforcement, economic, and military actions. Although the country has so far not been the target of an Islamist terrorist attack, its counterterrorist initiatives were as much driven by the events of 11 September 2001 and the crucial role the Hamburg cell around Mohamed Atta played therein as by the April 2002 attack in Djerba, which killed 19 German tourists. To a significant degree, the counterterrorism response has also been determined by concerns about the strength of radical Muslim organizations based in Germany. The powerful images of the terrorist attacks shaped the views of decisionmakers and public opinion alike, and there seemed to be little doubt that the terrorist attacks warranted immediate legislative measures. New legislation, which had partly been under way prior to the attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C., was largely informed by the experiences of the 1970s and 1980s. While its repressive components clearly strengthened the national security, some of its preventive components seemed, at best, to be rushed, misguided, and unsuitable, and, at worst, in violation of fundamental civil liberty rights prescribed in the German constitution. The relevant counterterrorist legislation reflects the longstanding debate between advocates of the right to liberty, on the one hand, and of the state’s interest in providing security, on the other. In the exceptional circumstances following 11 September 2001, the state’s mandate to protect its citizens was given priority over individual civil liberties in borderline cases. In those cases, the individual’s interests were thus subordinated to the collective interests of society. Despite substantial efforts by both the federation and the Länder, counterterrorism in Germany remains at times hampered by intrainstitutional competition and by the sheer number of federal institutions dealing with national security issues. Institutional inertia and fragmented security structures are also reflected on the level of the EU, where Germany has fundamentally contributed to a transformation of EU counterterrorism. Military efforts have not been at the forefront of German counterterrorism measures. Nevertheless, the German Bundeswehr, which since 2001 has learned to address asymmetric threats, has been involved in numerous missions from Afghanistan to the Horn of Africa. The integrated counterterrorist concept of the Schröder and Merkel governments has been driven by the conviction that “legitimacy and efficiency” had to coincide in order to succeed in ultimately defeating the scourge of mass-casualty terrorism. There are no indications that this is an

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approach that will be lightly abandoned. On the contrary, self-conceptions and institutional practices are likely to be adhered to—even if this implies an occasional parting of ways with allies and partners.

Notes 1. Deutscher Bundestag, Stenographischer Bericht: Plenarprotokoll 14/186, 12 September 2001, 18293–18294. The term “unrestricted solidarity” was recommended by the German ambassador in Washington, D.C., Wolfgang Ischinger; cf. “Brillanter Vordenker: Atlantik-Brücke feiert den Diplomaten Wofgang Ischinger,” Süddeutsche Zeitung, 23 March 2006. Germany’s widespread solidarity was most prominently expressed at a demonstration for New York City in Berlin on 14 September 2001, when a quarter of a million people showed up. 2. Peter J. Katzenstein, “Same War—Different Views: Germany, Japan, and Counterterrorism,” International Organization 57, 4 (Fall 2003): 732. 3. Cf. Victor Mauer, “Die geostrategischen Konsequenzen nach dem 11 September 2001,” Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte, B 3-4/2004, 18–25; Ken Booth and Tim Dunne, Worlds in Collision: Terror and the Future of Global Order (London: Palgrave, 2002); and Jonathan Friedman, ed., Globalization, the State and Violence (Oxford: AltaMira Press, 2003). 4. Butz Peters, RAF: Terrorismus in Deutschland (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1991). 5. The initial response of most Germans was one of intense fear, and this fear was reinforced by the fact that the attacks had been meticulously organized by terrorist leader Mohamed Atta and his accomplices, among others, in Hamburg, Germany; cf. “Terror in Amerika: Die Einschätzungen in Deutschland,” Allensbacher Berichte 21/2001 (13 September 2001). Three of the four pilots of the planes attacking the World Trade Center and the Pentagon had previously lived in Hamburg. 6. Jonathan Stevenson, Counterterrorism: Containment and Beyond, Adelphi Paper 367 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 11. 7. Ibid., 9–13; Rohan Gunaratna, Inside Al Qaeda: Global Network of Terror (London: Hurst, 2002); Olivier Roy, Globalised Islam: Fundamentalism, De-territorialisation, and the Search for the New Ummah (London: Hurst, 2004); Paul Wilkinson, International Terrorism: The Changing Threat and the EU’s Response, Chaillot Paper 84 (Paris: EU Institute for Security Studies, October 2005), 13–14; Herfried Münkler, Die neuen Kriege (Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 2002), 175–205; Herfried Münkler, “Terrorismus heute: Die Asymmetrisierung des Krieges,” Internationale Politik 59, 2 (February 2004): 1–11; John Gearson, “The Nature of Modern Terrorism,” in Lawrence Freedman, ed., Superterrorism: Policy Responses (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002), 7–24. 8. Bundesministerium des Innern, Verfassungsschutzbericht 2001, May 2002, 197. According to the 2001 report (p. 202), of the 7.3 million foreigners living in Germany, less than 1 percent (59,100) were organized in extremist organizations. Some 31,950 of them were organized in Islamist groups. 9. Stevenson, Counterterrorism, 7. 10. “Wer frei leben will, braucht Sicherheit vor Kriminalität und Terrorismus,” Der Spiegel, 24 September 2001. 11. Bundesministerium des Innern, Verfassungsschutzbericht 2004, May 2005,

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184–186; “Zahl der Islamisten in Deutschland gestiegen,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 18 May 2005, 1. 12. Cf. The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (New York: W. W. Norton, 2004), 160–169. 13. Cf. Rolf Tophoven, “Islamistische Netzwerkstrukturen in Deutschland,” in Kai Hirschmann and Christian Leggemann, eds., Der Kampf gegen den Terrorismus: Strategien und Handlungserfordernisse in Deutschland (Berlin: Berliner Wissenschafts-Verlag, 2003), 101–114; “‘Als wäret Ihr im Krieg,’” Der Spiegel 13/2004, 27; and Peter R. Neumann, “Europe’s Jihadist Dilemma,“ Survival 48, 2 (March 2006): 71–84. 14. “‘Ich will nicht nur Sicherheit.’ Bundesinnenminister Otto Schily über die Schwierigkeiten, eine Strategie gegen den neuen Terror zu finden,” Die Zeit, 20 September 2001. 15. “Terror in Amerika,” 3, 5. 16. “Exkurs: Der 11 September 2001 und die Folgen. Resonanz in der Bevölkerung,” in Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann and Renate Köcher, eds., Allensbacher Jahrbuch der Demoskopie 1998–2002, vol. 11 (Munich/Allensbach: K.G. Saur/Verlag für Demoskopie, 2002), 993. Oliver Lepsius, “Freedom, Security, and Terror: The Legal State in Germany,” German Law Journal: Review of Developments in German, European, and International Jurisprudence 5, 5 (May 2004): 436. 17. “Exkurs: Der 11 September 2001 und die Folgen,” 992. 18. In order to finance the extra DM3 billion, the government increased taxes on tobacco and insurance. 19. Cf. legislative initiative of the federal government—change of the Criminal Code—Section 129b, Bundestags-Drucksache 14/7025, 4 October 2001. 20. Katzenstein, “Same War—Different Views,” 750; Kirstin Hein, “Die AntiTerrorpolitik der rot-grünen Bundesregierung,” in Sebastian Harnisch et al., eds., Deutsche Sicherheitspolitik: Eine Bilanz der Regierung Schröder (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2004), 148; Heinrich Pehle, “Die Anti-Terror-Gesetze: Abschied vom Rechtsstaat?” Gesellschaft—Wirtschaft—Politik 51, 1 (2002): 88. 21. Lepsius, “Freedom, Security, and Terror,” 437. 22. Wolfgang Hoffmann-Riem, “Freiheit und Sicherheit im Angesicht terroristischer Anschläge,” Zeitschrift für Rechtspolitik 35, 12 (December 2002): 499. 23. Ibid.; Oliver Lepsius, “Freiheit, Sicherheit und Terror: Die Rechtslage in Deutschland,” Leviathan 32, 1 (March 2004): 64–88. In a ruling of 4 April 2006, the Federal Constitutional Court set strict limits on dragnet investigations. According to the decision, a “general threat situation, such as that which has persisted with respect to terrorist attacks since 11 September 2001, or tensions in foreign relations,” are not sufficient grounds for ordering a dragnet investigation; BverfG, 1 BvR 518/02, 4 April 2006, http://www.bverfg.de/entscheidungen/rs20060404_ 1bvr051802.html. 24. Eckart Werthebach, “Deutsche Sicherheitsstrukturen im 21 Jahrhundert,” Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte, B44/2004, 9. 25. “Zahl der Islamisten in Deutschland gestiegen,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 18 May 2005. 26. Reinhard Merkel, “Wenn der Staat Unschuldige opfert: Das neue Luftsicherungsgesetz erlaubt, entführte Flugzeuge abzuschieben, die das Leben von Menschen am Boden bedrohen. Das ist ein singulärer Tabubruch,” Die Zeit, 8 July 2004.

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27. BVerfG, 1 BvR 357/05, 15 February 2006, http://www.bverfg.de/entscheidungen/rs20060215_1bvr035705.html. See also “Luftsicherheitsgesetz verfassungswidrig. Karlsruhe: Der Staat darf über das Leben tatunbeteiligter Menschen nicht verfügen,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 16 February 2006; “Keine Erlaubnis zum Abschuss von Flugzeugen,” Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 16 February 2006; and “Jung will Luftwaffe einsetzen,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 18 February 2006. 28. Merkel, “Wenn der Staat Unschuldige opfert.” 29. “Weil wir Deutschlands Kraft vertrauen. . . .” Regierungserklärung von Bundeskanzler Schröder vor dem Deutschen Bundestag, 10 November 1998, http://schule.bundestag.de/download/SHOW/reden_und_dokumente/1990_2003/ schroeder_1998/. 30. United Nations Security Council Resolution 1373 (2001), 28 September 2001, http://daccessdds.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N01/557/43/PDF/N0155743. pdf?OpenElement. 31. Rede des Bundesinnenministers Otto Schily zu Gesetzentwürfen zur Bekämpfung des Terrorismus und Erhöhung der inneren Sicherheit, 11 October 2001, http://www.documentarchiv.de/brd/2001/rede_schily_1011.html. 32. EU Plan of Action on Combating Terrorism, June 2004, http://ue.eu.int/ uedocs/cmsUpload/EU_PlanOfAction10586.pdf; EU Plan of Action on Combating Terrorism, February 2006, http://register.consilium.europa.eu/pdf/en/ 06/st05/st05771-re01.en06.pdf. Cf. also the European Union Counter-Terrorism Strategy, November 2005, http://register.consilium.europa.eu/pdf/en/05/st14/ st14469-re04.en05.pdf. For the analysis of the plan, see Doron Zimmermann, “The European Union and Post-9/11 Counterterrorism: A Reappraisal,” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 29, 2 (March 2006): 123–145; Daniel Keohane, The EU and Counterterrorism, Centre for European Reform Working Paper (London: CER, May 2005); Wilkinson, International Terrorism; and Jörg Monar, “Die EU als Raum der Freiheit, der Sicherheit und des Rechts und die Herausforderung des internationalen Terrorismus,” Integration 25, 3 (July 2002): 171–186. 33. Monica den Boer, “The EU Counterterrorism Wave: Window of Opportunity or Profound Policy Transformation?” in Marianne van Leeuwen, ed., Confronting Terrorism: European Experiences, Threat Perceptions, and Policies (The Hague: Kluwer, 2003), 189. 34. Hein, “Die Anti-Terrorpolitik der rot-grünen Bundesregierung,” 157. 35. The Alliance’s Strategic Concept, Approved by the Heads of State and Government Participating in the Meeting of the North Atlantic Council in Washington DC on 23rd and 24th April 1999, http://www.nato.int/docu/pr/1999/ p99-065e.htm. 36. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, quoted in Ivo H. Daalder, “The End of Atlanticism,” Survival 45, 2 (March 2003): 155. 37. Defence Policy Guidelines, 21 May 2003, 5, http://www.bmvg.de/portal/ PA_1_0_LT/PortalFiles/C1256F1200608B1B/W268AHEH510INFOEN/VPR_en.pd f?yw_repository=youatweb. 38. Wolfgang Schneiderhahn, “Die Bundeswehr im sicherheitspolitischen Umfeld des 21 Jahrhunderts,” Sicherheit + Stabilität 3, 2 (November 2005): 20. 39. Antrag der Bundesregierung: Einsatz bewaffneter deutscher Streitkräfte bei der Unterstützung der gemeinsamen Reaktion auf terroristische Angriffe gegen die USA, Deutscher Bundestag, Drucksache 14/7296, 7 November 2001.

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4 Norway’s Counterterrorism Policy TORE NYHAMAR

NORWAY IS ENGAGED IN THE GLOBAL FIGHT AGAINST TERRORISM. THE ROLE OF the armed forces has been at the center of Norwegian counterterrorism policy debates for some time. One issue has been whether the emphasis should be on international peacekeeping missions or on developing an expeditionary war-fighting capability. A second debate has centered on the geographical boundaries within which Norwegian forces may operate. The more emphasis the respective analysts give to counterterrorism, the more likely they are to emphasize developing a war-fighting capability with few geographical limitations. Norway occupied a strategically important position during the Cold War but now finds itself on the periphery of the new conflict. Norway is a small state, with almost no experience of national or international terrorism. The issues faced by Norway are familiar to all countries, but its geographical remoteness, its NATO membership without EU membership, and its lack of experience with terrorism are factors that result in unique answers to these common challenges. In Norway, the war on terrorism is viewed in the context of maintaining the transatlantic alliance. The long-term challenge to Norway is to avoid having to manage the relationship with Russia on its own, without allies. In a collective defense organization, support from the members of the organization is guaranteed, whereas in a collective security organization, support is subject to evaluation in each case. Furthermore, a collective security organization tries above all to mediate conflict. Norwegian security policy explicitly aims at preserving NATO as an organization providing collective defense among its members and collective security on its perimeter. Norway has no history of ethnic separatism. Norwegian left-wing radical groups have rarely resorted to political violence or terrorism. Rightwing extremists are much weaker than in, for example, Sweden and have mainly engaged in individual violence against non-European immigrants. 79

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As far as events linked to international terrorism are concerned, the most well-known examples of political assassinations occurred in 1973, when a Moroccan refugee was killed by the Israeli intelligence service Mossad, probably because he was mistaken for a leading Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) member, and the attempt to assassinate William Nygaard, the Norwegian publisher of Salman Rushdie’s novel The Satanic Verses, in 1993. It has been established that plans were made for sabotage activities against the oil refinery on Slagen during the oil crises in the 1970s, and that Libyan agents planned an attack on the Egyptian and Israeli embassies in Norway in the aftermath of the Camp David Agreement in 1979.1 These few isolated incidents and indications of planned actions have left counterterrorism marginalized within Norwegian security policy.2 The impact of the 11 September 2001 attacks has been to make counterterrorism a part of Norwegian security policy. The most important immediate result of 9/11 was that a ban on terrorist acts was introduced into Norwegian law for the first time. Furthermore, a law directed against the financing of terrorism was introduced. The law against terrorism was criticized by human rights activists for being excessively vague as well as potentially open to future abuse and indeed to encroachments of human rights. As a direct result of these concerns, the definition of what constituted “terrorist acts” was narrowed, and the bar for what constituted “planning a terrorist act” was raised in the paragraph passed into law. The first section of this chapter lays out the historical context for Norway’s security policy. The role of the Norwegian armed forces in counterterrorism within the country’s security policy is then discussed. In the second section, the legislative measures are set forth, and the debates about Norway’s new laws against terrorism and the financing of terrorism are presented in some detail. In the third section, different conceptions of Norwegian counterterrorism policy are analyzed: changes in threat perceptions are set forth, the general characteristics of Norway’s counterterrorism model are described, and two fault lines between government agencies within that model are analyzed. In the fourth section, the implementation of counterterrorism is addressed. The final section discusses Norwegian views on international cooperation to combat terrorism.

Norwegian Counterterrorism Policy in a Changing International Security Environment The Cold War gave Norway natural allies to manage its relationship with the Soviet Union. It is certainly true that the demise of the Soviet Union greatly improved Norwegian security because Norwegian territory was no

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longer an arena for strategic military confrontation between East and West. However, the decline in allied interest also left Norway somewhat alone in shaping its relationship with Russia. The High North was an area of military importance to both camps in the Cold War. The confrontation with the Soviet Union ensured that the US interests in the High North were determined by the strategic concern of securing the sea lanes across the Atlantic and bottling up Soviet submarinebased intercontinental ballistic missiles as close to their bases on the Kola Peninsula as possible. Norway also had many natural allies in Europe, for example, Germany, which shared Norwegian concerns about a Soviet invasion of its territory. Today, Norway’s allies do not view their interests in the High North through the prism of the Cold War. Thus, Norway can no longer count on the United States and Europe to automatically back Norwegian views of the interests involved in the High North. The definition of the economic zones at sea is contested, giving Norway a territorial dispute with Russia. The disputed area is rich in natural resources—certainly in fish, and potentially in oil and gas. RussianNorwegian relations are typical of those between a great power and small state. The inherent need for allies is an important backdrop for Norwegian policy toward NATO in general, and toward NATO’s counterterrorism policy in particular. The latter is viewed as a new, much-needed mission to ensure that NATO remains a vehicle for managing collective defense and not merely collective security. The Role of Norway’s Armed Forces In 2001 the Norwegian armed forces were still in the process of adapting to the changed security environment after the demise of the Soviet Union a decade earlier. For decades, the Norwegian military forces had been shaped toward the sole purpose of defending the country against the Soviet military threat. This function necessitated a large territorial conscript army and an air force that could only be used in an air-to-air role, with no air-to-ground capability whatsoever. All military equipment was designed to operate in arctic or subarctic temperatures. Moreover, the armed forces had very limited capacity for transporting personnel and equipment out of Norwegian territory. By 2001 bureaucratic inertia, local interest groups, and the absence of a clear threat providing a concrete goal for the process had slowed down the transformation of the Norwegian armed forces. Although sluggish, the transformation from threat-based, personnel-intensive defense against invasion to a flexible capacity-driven expeditionary defense had begun in the early 1990s. The impact of terrorism on defense reform is hard to ascertain. The issue certainly did not initiate the transformation process that clearly began prior to the 11 September 2001 attacks, which put terrorism on the

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Norwegian security agenda in earnest. Terrorism acted as a catalyst for the transformation of the Norwegian armed forces in that it sped up a process of change that was already under way, largely for other reasons. The effort to give the Norwegian military a greater expeditionary capability has two primary objectives: the first is to enhance its capability to fight wars abroad; the second, to enhance its deployment capabilities for peacekeeping purposes. A shift in emphasis favoring developing international war-fighting capabilities was above all fueled by the war in Kosovo in 1999. Many Norwegians felt that the armed forces’ lack of readiness for war, and indeed their inability to even deploy peacekeeping forces, was an embarrassment. The move to prioritize war-fighting capacities was sustained and probably enhanced by the military needs following the 11 September 2001 attacks.3 The Impact of 9/11: A Global Role for Norway’s Military The most controversial issue raised by making the Norwegian military more capable for expeditionary tasks was the delimitation of the geographical area in which they might be deployed as part of a NATO operation. The revision of NATO’s strategic concept in 1999 led to a difficult internal Norwegian debate.4 Out-of-area operations were vigorously opposed by a coalition stretching from the radical “left wing” well into the center of the Labor Party and including important liberal groups as well. These groups shared a concern, albeit to varying degrees, that NATO might become a tool for Western interventionism. The US influence was singled out as particularly worrisome. The more extreme wing of this coalition saw a danger of Norway’s soldiers becoming “American mercenaries.”5 The Norwegian reaction to out-of-area operations mirrored the debate in most European NATO countries. NATO’s new Strategic Concept of 24 April 1999—in the middle of NATO’s only war—used the deliberately undefined phrase “the Euro-Atlantic area” to describe the geographical boundaries of the alliance’s responsibility for security and stability. The opposition was organized in an ad-hoc group named “Nei til nye NATO” (No to the new NATO) with a very visible public media presence. But the majority of Norwegians supported military action against the Taliban regime and Al-Qaida in the wake of 11 September 2001. Operation Enduring Freedom was not a NATO operation, of course, but undertaken by a US-UK–led alliance. But the 11 September 2001 attacks were widely perceived as a legitimate casus belli by Norwegian politicians and public opinion. The Norwegian figures in Gallup International’s survey of 29 countries from 2001 showed that 60 percent of Norwegians supported military action against the Taliban, if diplomatic efforts to bring the perpetrators to justice failed.6 Norway has contributed to Operation Enduring Freedom. From January to July 2002, Norway deployed 100 Special Forces in Afghanistan, and

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from April to October 2003 a portion were redeployed. Special Forces returned in the summer of 2005 for six months. This mission continued when Operation Enduring Freedom was supplemented by a stabilization operation, the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), with Norway actively taking part. Norway provided the headquarters as the framework nation for the C-130 air transport operation run together with Denmark and the Netherlands (until July 2002). Until June 2002, 15 mine clearers with mine-clearing vehicles were deployed, mainly clearing Kabul’s airfield. Norway also deployed one C-130 transport aircraft (until October 2002) and deployed six F-16 fighter aircraft (October 2002–April 2003) to Manas, Kyrgyzstan. On 11 August 2003, NATO took the lead of ISAF, enhancing Norwegian interest in the mission’s success. Since 1 December 2003, Norway has continuously deployed a company (about 200 personnel) to ISAF. Another significant additional Norwegian engagement has been the leadership in Battle Group 3, a multinational battalion with about 250 Norwegian personnel, augmented with Hungarian and Italian troops (July–December 2005). Norwegian staff officers have served in many capacities, including in civil-military cooperation (CIMIC) teams, in a medical unit (40 personnel), in the Theatre Enabling Force (TEF), and in Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs). Full uniforms for one battalion (800 personnel) were sent to the Afghan National Army.7 The fighter planes were potentially the most controversial as they carried bombs to be used to support allied forces. In that capacity, Norwegian fighters dropped two laser-guided GBU-12 bombs on a bunker held by Taliban fighters answering to Afghan warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatayar on 27 January 2003. The attack killed 18 fighters, without loss for the allied forces. This was the first time since World War II that Norwegian planes had used live ammunition against an enemy. Fighter planes were again deployed in Afghanistan in spring 2006.8 The event passed by without stirring public opinion or affecting the standing of Norway’s minority government. One can only conclude that the war on terrorism has put to rest any doubts about the geographical boundaries for the use of Norway’s military forces. The most important change in Norwegian security policy deriving from counterterrorism is a global role for its armed forces. As far as the use of military force, Norwegians no longer ask themselves where, but how and why. If flying from Kyrgyzstan to bomb a target in Afghanistan is possible, then anything goes as far as geography is concerned. Counterterrorism and the Role of the Military Norwegian politicians and public opinion alike seem to consider counterterrorism a legitimate cause for using military force. Norwegians remain wary of

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the use of force internationally, however. The Iraq question divided the political class and public opinion along familiar lines. A majority of Norwegians opposed the war in Iraq. An opinion poll taken on 18 March 2003 showed that 63 percent opposed the decision of the United States and UK to go to war, while 20 percent of respondents supported it. Among both genders, in all regions, and in all age groups, a majority was opposed to the war. However, among supporters of the populist right-wing Fremskrittspartiet (Progress Party), a majority favored the war; and in the Høyre (Conservative Party), members were split into three almost equally large groups of those who favored war, those who opposed it, and those who had no opinion.9 Two conditions must be fulfilled before a majority of Norwegians will approve the use of force. The first is that any such action must be explicitly and unequivocally mandated by the United Nations Security Council. In the absence of a UN mandate for Operation Iraqi Freedom, for example, a majority of Norwegians deemed the justifications offered for the invasion insufficient. The second prerequisite is that there must be a clear link between a concrete act of terrorism and any forceful response to it. Operation Enduring Freedom met this demand. Military force used in more general, preemptive counterterrorism operations does not appear to be considered legitimate. Thus, sending Norway’s military forces to fight or limit the actions of terrorists outside of Norwegian territory remains controversial. But forward deployment of Norwegian military forces in international operations—both traditional peacekeeping for stabilization purposes and in a proactive, preventive fashion—is Norwegian defense policy today. The forward deployment of military forces is seen as enhancing Norwegian security because it prevents the terrorists from entering Norwegian territory, it fights them before they can do any harm, and it disrupts and limits their training and planning for terrorist attacks. Critics maintain that military means do not address the root causes of why people become terrorists. Indeed, military intervention may fuel resentment among the population in the area and lead to increased recruitment by terrorist organizations. Instead of addressing the widespread feeling of humiliation in the Muslim world, slow economic growth, and high unemployment, an excessively militarized foreign policy that is often associated with the United States in general and the Bush administration in particular only makes matters worse.10 Most political parties in Norway have concluded that the fight against terrorism requires the whole gamut of means, including use of military force. The potential resentment in the Muslim world is at least ameliorated if a coalition representing the world community undertakes the military intervention rather than leaving the United States to act alone. Norway has an obligation to participate in such a coalition, even though it may increase

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the short-term risk of being subject to a terrorist attack. The majority of Norwegians (and a majority of parliamentarians) supported and still support the policy in Afghanistan. But the margin of the electorate supporting Norwegian participation in international operations is never large, and voters can easily turn against any given operation. Men, more frequently than women, favor using military force for counterterrorism purposes. Forward deployment of troops in counterterrorism operations has more support among the politically conservative than among liberal political forces.11 The fact that the ISAF has become a NATO operation, whereas the occupation force in Iraq is not, seems to have had little impact on Norwegian public opinion, but it may have made political elites more favorable to engaging in Afghanistan. Political elites may think it better to use Norway’s military forces to make NATO, the most important security organization for Norway, succeed and remain relevant, rather than a miscellaneous coalition of willing and able countries.

The Legal Debate on Counterterrorism in Norway Having no real previous experience with terrorism, Norwegians began thinking seriously about counterterrorism only after 11 September 2001. The Terrorist Law The attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C., on 11 September 2001 were the direct impetus for banning terrorism in Norway. The Norwegian government argued that the law had to be changed if Norway was to fulfill its international obligations under Security Council Resolution 1373 (28 September 2001), point 2, letter e. Thus, on 20 December 2001, the government forwarded to relevant experts and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) a proposal to include two new paragraphs in the Norwegian criminal code: Paragraph 147a, banning terrorist acts, and Paragraph 147b, directed against the financing of terrorism. It was proposed that a person carrying out an action, or threatening to carry out an action, with the intent to seriously damage the political, constitutional, economic, or societal structures of a country or the fundamental structures of an international organization to create serious fear in the population—and to wrongly force public authorities or an international organization to do, withhold, or omit something important to the country, the organization, another country, or another international organization—should be punished for engaging in terrorist activities. The actions that are punishable under the new law are homicide; grievous bodily harm; conspiracy to commit homicide or grievous bodily harm;

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deprivation of liberty; grievous vandalism; arson, collapsing, blasting, or flooding causing shipping, railroad, or air accident; hijacking of airplane, ship, or oil installation; disturbing the collection of information, energy supply, broadcasting, telecommunications, or communication in a way that causes widespread disruption of public government or public life; poisoning drinking water; illegal handling of material consisting of, or containing, plutonium or uranium; environmental crime; poisoning of objects for common use; dealings with bacteriological or chemical substances, etc.; spreading contagious diseases; and association with or dealings with explosives, firearms, or ammunition. The penalty for terrorism is imprisonment for up to 21 years (the maximum in Norwegian Criminal Law), and abetting terrorism carries the same penalty. The penalty for planning or preparing such an action is imprisonment for up to six years.12 In the first half of 2002, a lively debate ensued among experts and the public alike about the merits and flaws of the proposal, leading to amendments to the law that was finally passed. The first key issue was whether a law against terrorism was needed at all. Critics pointed out that all terrorist acts were already punishable and that nothing was to be gained by additionally labeling such behavior as “terrorist acts.” The draft law for banning terrorism in Norway was explicitly linked to Security Council Resolution 1373 (28 September 2001), but critics maintained that Norway did not need a specific injunction against terrorism to be in compliance with its international obligations. If the financing of terrorism was not comprehensively covered by current legislation, it would be sufficient to amend existing laws on assisting terrorism.13 Civil liberties and human rights groups in particular criticized the law against terrorism for being excessively vague and potentially open to future abuse and indeed to encroachments of human rights. Their concern was that enacting a special law giving the police and judicial system more powers to prosecute terrorism would undermine the very core of democratic values. If one jeopardized freedom or the rule of law in any way, the terrorists in one sense would win.14 But a more widely shared concern was that a ban on “terrorism” could jeopardize a tradition in Norwegian criminal law of banning concrete acts, and not plans or preparations. Thus, in a letter accompanying the draft version of Paragraph 147a, the Department of Justice explicitly stated that the paragraph applied to terrorist acts and addressed the elements of statutory definition that delineated terrorist acts from other crimes. 15 Nevertheless, the issue of whether the law was too generally worded and defined “terrorist acts” too broadly remained a focal point of the debate. The result of the public hearing was that the government altered the proposed wording of Paragraph 147a. First, it emphasized that an act had to be carried out with the intent of forcing the authorities to act against their

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true will, or intended to obstruct their ability to act altogether. In the final draft of the law, “terrorist acts” were defined as acts carried out with the intent: to seriously damage a function of vital importance to society, for example the legislative, executive, or judicial power, the energy supply, the secure supply of food and water, or banking and financial or health services to create serious fear in the population [and to] illegally force public authorities or an international organization to do, withhold or omit something important to the country, or the organization, or to another country, or another international organization.16

Acts of planning and preparing to carry out a terrorist act were no longer included in the concept of terrorism, unless the potential perpetrators had formed an “association” to carry out an act. In other words, the threshold for what constituted “planning a terrorist act” was raised. Moreover, threatening to carry out a terrorist act was no longer considered to be engaging in terrorist activities. The concept of terrorism was narrowed down to carrying out terrorist acts. Second, the definition of what constituted terrorist acts was narrowed down in the final wording of the paragraph that passed into law. Inflicting grievous bodily harm and gross vandalism would no longer constitute terrorist activities under the law. After the acquisition of explosives had been omitted, the list of “terrorist” activities was further reduced. The changes in the criminal court also had an effect on the criminal procedure code, enhancing the investigative powers of the police. The changes in the criminal code caused by the revision of Paragraph 147a had immediate consequences for the criminal procedure code: by increasing the maximum penalty for many crimes to ten years or more, lawmakers gave the police the automatic right to use intrusive investigative procedures—for example, surveillance—in such cases.17 The original proposal had been that the police should have the right to use intrusive investigatory methods in all cases involving national security. This proposal was not defeated but deferred to a committee headed by Supreme Court judge Ketil Lund. This committee suggested only minor amendments to Norway’s criminal court procedure. The most notable suggestion was to allow the use of anonymous witnesses in cases concerning acts of terror according to Paragraph 147a.18 Summary of the Legal Debate The main issue in the debate on the terrorist law was about whether the proposed amendments jeopardized civil rights. Skeptics also questioned whether the judicial system was the appropriate authority for defining terrorism. For example, it was pointed out that the activities of the armed wing

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of the Norwegian resistance movement during World War II (Milorg) might be defined as a form of terrorism according to the definition now introduced into Norwegian law. In fact, in the proposition forwarded to parliament, the Department of Justice stated that “Paragraph 147a must like all other criminal code provisions, be read bearing in mind that exceptions may apply. . . . Among other things, the actions carried out by the Norwegian resistance movement in 1940–45 to preserve or recreate democratic values should not be considered acts of terrorism.”19 Even so, there were many positive reactions to the law and to the original somewhat stronger wording. For example, the Norwegian Police Security Service (Politiet sikkerhetstjeneste, PST) argued that terrorists might attack Norway, creating a need for a law against terrorist attacks not only to enable the judiciary to respond appropriately but also to deter such attacks. The PST also wanted wider authority to conduct investigations. The proposed changes to Paragraph 147b of the criminal code that outlawed the financing of terrorism filled a lacuna in Norwegian law. Financing terrorism had not necessarily been a crime in Norway until this point. The new ban, the Ministry of Justice argued, was necessary because terrorist acts had become international, and accordingly the fight against terrorism had to be organized across international boundaries. Even states with no terrorism issues of their own needed effective laws against backers and financers of terrorist acts, as otherwise the latter could undertake to finance future terrorist acts elsewhere. The Ministry of Justice also maintained that the law was necessary in order to uphold Norway’s international obligations. This proposition passed into law without amendment and with little controversy.20 Norway’s new terrorist law has never been applied in the legal system. There was an investigation to determine whether the former leader of Ansar al-Islam, Mullah Krekar, should be prosecuted for terrorist acts in Iraq, but the case was shelved in 2004 without ever going to court.

Conceptions of Norwegian Counterterrorism Policy The Norwegian Police Security Service is responsible for the policing aspects of Norwegian internal security and counterterrorism tasks. Every year, it publishes an evaluation of the threats against Norway. This evaluation represents the official priorities of the Norwegian government’s counterterrorism policy. In 2002, combating international terrorism was accorded the highest priority, and this assessment has remained ever since. Primarily, fighting international terrorism involves preventing and investigating the financing of terrorism, as well as other support activities in collaboration with the intelligence services of other countries.

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Second, it means identifying and mapping groups and networks operating in Norway and planning terrorist activities within the country or abroad. Initially, preventing international terrorist groups from using Norwegian territory was perceived as a more urgent task than quashing the activities of Norwegian-based groups. The threat from international terrorism to Norway was assessed as moderate. The greater threat was that Norwegian territory could be used as a base for groups that wanted to strike elsewhere, rather than against Norwegian targets. After the Madrid attack on 11 March 2004 and after Ayman al-Zawahiri issued direct threats against Norway in May 2003 and October 2004, the PST warned of an attack on Norwegian targets at home and abroad.21 The next tasks mentioned in the evaluation for 2003 are to prevent and investigate politically motivated violence against Norwegian authorities and public persons. Among the largest and most active groups of potential perpetrators are the right-wing extremists, which advocate Nazism and racist ideas. This group is fairly small, and its activities have declined in recent years. It has never played a political role in Norway, mainly directing its limited racially motivated activity toward individuals of a non-Norwegian ethnic background in a random fashion. The tasks of the Norwegian Police Security Service include the prevention of illegal intelligence-gathering activities by other countries, including such activities as may be directed against persons seeking asylum in Norway, the prevention of weapons of mass destruction proliferation, and the prevention of industrial espionage. The evaluation of the threat facing Norway has been fairly uncontroversial. The domestic debate in Norway has focused on the most effective means to fight terrorism.22 Norway Threatened by Al-Qaida On 21 May 2003 the Arab satellite channel Al-Jazeera broadcast what it said was a tape by one of Osama bin Laden’s top aides. The three-and-ahalf-minute tape, purportedly from Ayman al-Zawahiri, the Egyptian-born doctor who is often regarded as bin Laden’s deputy, said among other things that “the crusaders and the Jews only understand the language of murder, bloodshed . . . and of the burning towers. . . . Carry arms against your enemies, the Americans and Jews. . . . Attack the missions of the United States, Britain, Australia, and Norway and their interests, companies, and employees.”23 This direct threat against Norwegian diplomatic missions and companies caused considerable consternation in Norway. The Norwegian Police Security Service publicly upgraded its evaluation of the threat against Norway and its national interests from low to “moderate to low.” The threat was explicitly directed against Norwegian personnel and interests outside of

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Norway. Consequently, the PST’s threat assessment was primarily focused abroad. The Norwegian Police Security Service thus issued a special individual threat assessment concerning foreign interests in Norway, such as embassies.24 The PST agreed with most other Norwegian analysts and politicians that the reference to Norway was neither a mistake nor a fluke. Their interpretation was that Norway probably was perceived by Al-Qaida to be supporting the United States. Hence, Norway was an enemy. However, they shared the public’s general sense of bewilderment as to what had triggered the issuing of this threat. Britain and Australia had supported the United States in the invasion of Iraq. Since Norway had not, that could not explain why Norway was included in the hit list. However, even though it had not taken part in the war in Iraq, Norway was associated more generally with pro-US policies and had sent soldiers to Afghanistan. The threat fueled the debate about whether Norway’s participation in the effort to take the war to the terrorists had really promoted Norwegian security. Those who had opposed deploying Norwegian armed forces abroad suggested that the move might actually have jeopardized Norwegian security, just as they had predicted.25 On 22 May 2003, Abdel Bari Atwan, the editor-in-chief of Britain’s largest Arabic paper, Al-Quds al-Arabi, launched a new theory about why Norway had been targeted. In his opinion, the criminal prosecution of Mullah Krekar, the former leader of Ansar al-Islam, by the Norwegian authorities was the cause of Norway being targeted. He also maintained that it was well known throughout the Muslim world that Norway treated Muslim immigrants worse than other Scandinavian countries did.26 Two weeks later, on 6 June 2003, reports surfaced that Al-Qaida’s general threat had been followed by a direct threat against the Norwegian embassy in Addis Ababa. The embassy was briefly shut down but was soon reopened. Terrorists based in Ethiopia had apparently planned to attack the embassy with a large car bomb. The attack was imminent when intelligence agents from a Western country foiled it. Allegedly, detailed plans were discovered that even included the time and date of the attack. The Nasjonal sikkerhetsmyndighet (National Security Authority, NSA), established on 1 January of that year, was “one of several” branches of the Norwegian government working intensively to counter the threat.27 More than one year later, on 1 October 2004, Norway was again mentioned on an Al-Jazeera broadcast among a small group of countries to be targeted for “organized resistance against the crusaders invading the Muslim world,” and again the source was purportedly Ayman al-Zawahiri.28 This time the Norwegian Police Security Service publicly upgraded its evaluation of the threat against Norway and domestic Norwegian interests from low to moderate. The service gave no explanation why the threats were con-

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sidered more serious this time. Analyst Tore Bjørgo suggested that it was a cause for concern that the threats were more concrete and that they had specifically referred to Norwegian troops in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as to operations undertaken by Norway.29 However, the domestic political response to the threat was more subdued than the year before. One interesting development was the response among leaders of Norwegian Muslims. Akthar Chaudry, who represents the Socialist Left Party, called for increased watchfulness from Muslims in Norway about terrorists and awareness of Muslim responsibility toward the Norwegian nation.30 In addition to Norway’s overall close relationship with the United States, statements widely perceived to be anti-Muslim by Carl I. Hagen, leader of the Progress Party, were cited as a factor contributing to the new threat against Norway.31 The re-publication of cartoons depicting the prophet Mohammed in Norway on 12 January 2006 (which originally appeared in the Danish daily Jyllandsposten) led to worldwide Muslim protest. The Norwegian embassy in Damascus, Syria, was torched (4 February) and six Norwegian ISAF soldiers slightly injured in an attack on a military camp in Meymaneh, Northern Afghanistan (7 February).32 The tense situation led the PST to “get into overdrive” mapping actions from Norwegian Islamist groups and provocation from Norwegian right-wing extremists. PST leader Jørn Holme stated that there are Muslim terrorist cells operating in Norway planning actions outside of Norway, but he had no knowledge of acts of terror being planned against domestic Norwegian targets. However, he would not rule out the existence of such plans.33 The Norwegian Counterterrorism Model There are three general criteria for national crisis management. The first is the principle of responsibility: the authorities remain in charge of their respective areas of responsibility in the case of extraordinary events. The second is the principle of equality: the handling of crises should correspond as far as possible to everyday practice. The third is the principle of proximity: a crisis should be handled and managed at the lowest level possible. However, these general principles may lead to ambiguous and indeed conflicting conclusions concerning responsibilities in a terrorist crisis. Fault Lines Between Government Agencies The military and the police. Combating terrorism domestically is a

police matter. The Department of Justice is responsible for the police, and thus it leads and is responsible for coordinating Norway’s national counterterrorism policy. Since the police have limited resources, they may well need

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assistance in a crisis situation. That assistance can only come from the Norwegian military. The military has far more manpower and equipment than does the police, making it the only organization with the capacity to establish a presence throughout Norwegian territory, including at sea and in the air. In this section we will address three issues in connection with the armed forces’ assistance of the police. The first concerns the circumstances under which the police may ask for assistance. The second is the requirement for competent leadership in counterterrorism operations. The third is the issue of authority and responsibility in counterterrorism operations. The conditions warranting assistance from the armed forces to the police were restated in the royal resolution of 13 February 2003, “New Instructions Concerning the Military Assistance to the Police.”34 The changes to the instructions they replaced, dating from 1998, were negligible. Thus, national policy has not been substantially altered by counterterrorism concerns. The common interpretation is that this issue has been satisfactorily resolved, with as clear criteria as one can hope for. The military may assist the police in the use of force in the search and arrest of dangerous persons, when it is necessary to prevent immediate danger of loss of life or bodily harm. In cases where there is a threat of large-scale or other particularly harmful attacks against society at large, the military’s role should primarily be to guard, secure, and cover, while the police carry out the actual arrests. The issue of competent leadership has been more controversial. The Norwegian constitution stipulates that the military is responsible for external security and that the police are in charge of internal security. Paragraph 99 of the constitution states that Norway’s military forces may not be used against its own citizens. In peacetime, there are two exceptions: military forces may be used when mandated by another law, and they may be used if the police fail to dissolve a riot.35 The Norwegian Defense Law specifies the circumstance under which civil authorities (the police) may hand over authority to the military. Paragraph 3 of the constitution states that authority may be transferred in war “and when there is a threat of war.”36 The latter scenario was long considered to constitute sufficient grounds for handing over limited authority to the military during a major emergency or terrorist attack, making other legal mechanisms superfluous. As recently pointed out by a government study, large-scale terrorism challenges the traditional dichotomy between war and peace, blurring the distinction.37 There is a general and growing risk of large-scale attacks against society that yet do not constitute war, and where invoking the Defense Law is simply inappropriate. Moreover, even if such a step were warranted, valuable time may be lost while doing so. The police may find itself in a situation that it is simply not able to handle on its own. Norway’s very long coastline means that its territorial waters are about six times larger than its land territory. Moreover, the vitally important petro-

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leum industry, which accounts for approximately half of Norway’s exports and 15 percent of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP), is located offshore.38 Countries such as France, Germany, and Belgium depend on imported gas from the Norwegian sector of the North Sea. The police are responsible for counterterrorism duties at sea and in the air, but they have virtually no resources to secure objects or carry out operations against terrorists. Thus, the police will need assistance from the military, under police leadership. The following dilemmas arise in large-scale counterterrorism operations: • The chief of police of the district in question will have no qualifications to lead what will be a military operation. • The military might be asked to carry out a highly dangerous and difficult operation under the leadership of someone who is not qualified. • The chief of police will be responsible for the outcome of the situation, even though leadership will inevitably drift back to the military, creating a fault line between authority and responsibility. The alternative is to give the military the leadership over an operation that is essentially their own. This is certainly what the military wants. There is a strong argument that giving the military command and responsibility of a military operation might increase the likelihood of a successful outcome. However, finding a mechanism for using the armed forces to carry out domestic police tasks has proven a controversial proposition. The police and the army’s Special Forces have practiced extensively and carry out joint exercises on a regular basis. Cooperation at the practical level is smooth and to everyone’s satisfaction. Only minor adjustments to the existing rules were necessary to clarify the circumstances under which such assistance might be given in counterterrorism situations. This is generally seen as an indication that the criteria for permissible assistance are as clear-cut as they will ever be. The issues concerning leadership and authority, however, have proved a real headache. Very little has happened in this area, in spite of several official reports indicating the difficulties.39 One can only speculate why this is so. The Department of Justice seems genuinely bewildered by the military’s insistence on the need for further scrutiny when everyday cooperation and exercises are going smoothly. Military officers suggest that the real problem is that the Department of Justice has limited experience in carrying out operational matters of any kind. They believe that police-military cooperation arrangements will not hold up to the test of a real crisis. As one officer said, “The lawyers just don’t get it. At the heart of the matter is that the police and the military are worlds apart. The police are trained to ask themselves what is the minimum

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use of force that will resolve the problem at hand; we are trained to think how we can gather the maximum force to blow the enemy to pieces.” 40 Such cultural differences will create problems for police leadership when responding to actions that put people in harm’s way. It is also noticeable that these two organizations generally do not appreciate challenges to their established authority and responsibilities. In other words, inertia reigns because the police force does not want to cede authority to the military, and the military does not want to discuss situations in which it might have to play a subordinate role to the police. Be this as it may, Norway has yet to determine satisfactory demarcations of authority between the police and the military in case of large-scale threats to society short of war. The Ministries of Justice and Defense and the National Security Authority. The National Security Authority is the coordination body for

securing information and objects against security threats, espionage, sabotage, and acts of terrorism. The NSA became a separate directorate on 1 January 2003, incorporating the Security Division that had formerly belonged to the staff of the chief of defense (which itself joined the Ministry of Defense in 2003). Among other tasks, the NSA issues security clearances for handling classified documents and information. Its primary task is handling the security of information and objects that are important to the autonomy and the security of the Norwegian state. Issues pertaining to societal security are dealt with by the Directorate for Civil Protection and Emergency Planning (Direktoratet for samfunnssikkerhet og beredskap, DSB). The DSB was established on 1 September 2003, incorporating the functions of the former Directorate for Civil Defense and Emergency Planning and the Directorate for Fire and Electrical Safety into a single new entity. The NSA is administered by the Ministry of Defense but is answerable to the Ministry of Justice concerning issues that belong in the civil sector. This division of responsibility for administration and authority over the national coordinating body is a potential liability. Moreover, the division of authority between the two ministries has become politically controversial for other reasons. The NSA issues and withdraws permits to handle classified documents, both for individuals within the public sector and for those working in private enterprises. This responsibility has made its links with the Ministry of Defense controversial. Solicitor Harald Stabell stated that he was concerned about the legal protection of people whose security clearance is revoked by the NSA. The Socialist Left Party’s defense spokesman, Kjetil Bjørklund, stated that he felt that the NSA organizationally belonged under the Ministry of Justice rather than the Ministry of Defense. He went on to say

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that his party felt that the NSA should “reflect justice thinking rather than defense thinking.”41 Both these critics are concerned that civil liberties will be at risk if the Ministry of Defense is responsible for the NSA. However, the Socialist Left Party held just 23 seats of 165 in the 2001–2005 period, and 15 of 169 in the 2005–2009 period. Parliament decided that the Ministry of Defense should be responsible for the NSA. The national strategy for information security. Coordination within a

particular policy area is perhaps the greatest challenge in the Norwegian system. To illustrate some of the challenges and potential pitfalls, we shall take a quick look at the efforts to create a national strategy for information security. The work began in spring 2002 as a joint initiative between the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Defense, and the Ministry for Commerce and Trade. After consultations with the responsible parties, the new Norwegian national strategy for information security was made public on 8 July 2002. Its objectives were to ensure, within a period of two to three years, a comprehensive approach to the work on information security as a foundation for political decisions and to facilitate better coordination among authorities working on information security. The strategy prioritized measures in 11 areas.42 The two areas dealing most directly with coordination—responsibilities for regulations and coordination of measures—deserve further scrutiny. The responsibilities for enforcing the various regulations pertaining to information security are widely dispersed among many authorities. Table 4.1 gives an overview of some of the more important ones. To coordinate inspections, regulations, and the enforcement of regulations, the government proposed the establishment of a new, permanent coordination committee for information responsibility. The Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Defense, the Ministry of Transport and Communications, and the Ministry of Labor and Government Administration were jointly tasked with establishing such a committee. A report recently published by the Norwegian Research Defense Establishment concludes: “In our opinion, Norway is far from having met its objective to achieve a unified national policy for information security covering all aspects and in which all responsibilities are clarified. The main obstacles are the fragmented responsibility of information security and compartmentalized thinking between various sectors and levels of government.”43

Counterterrorism Policy Implementation A ban on terrorism in the Norwegian criminal court law is the one counterterrorism measure that is solely attributable to the 9/11 attacks on the United

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Table 4.1

Authorities Responsible for Information Security in Norway

Authority

Relevant Regulations or Law

Ministry of Defense/National Security Authority Ministry of Transport and Communications/Norwegian Post and Telecommunication Authority [Samferdselsdepartemente/Post- og teletilsyn] Ministry for Commerce and Trade [Nærings- og tolldepartementet] Data Inspectorate [Datatilsynet] Ministry of Labor and Government Administration

Security law, IT protection regulations

Office of the Prime Minister [Statsministerens kontor] Ministry of Justice Directorate for Civil Protection and Emergency Planning [Direktoratet for sivilt beredskap] Financial Supervisory Authority of Norway [Kredittilsynet] Norges Bank Norwegian National Authority for Investigation and Prosecution of Economic and Environmental Crime [økokrim] Norwegian Police Security Service [PST] Ministry of Defense/ National Security Authority Norwegian Industrial Safety and Security Organization Directorate for Health and Social Affairs [Sosial- og helsedirektoratet] National Insurance Office [Rikstrygdeverket]

Law on Electronic Communications, with regulations

Law on Electronic Signatures, regulations for certification Supervision of the Protection of Individual Information Act, with regulations Regulation of the Protection of Individual Information Act, with regulations; regulation of the use of electronic communication with and within government Protection regulation Protection of Individual Information Act, Government Act, Public Act, etc. Law on Civil Defense Financial transaction regulation Central Bank Law Criminal Court Law and Criminal Court Process Law Police Law (paragraphs 17a, 17b, and 17c) Law on National Intelligence Law on Civil Defense, law regulating rights of employees Health personnel regulations Pension regulations (paragraph 25)

Source: Norway, Ministry of Defense, Ministry of Business and Trade, and Ministry of Justice, “National Strategy for Information Security —Challenges, Priorities and Measures,” appendix 2.

States. Other measures have undoubtedly been influenced by this event— many to a large extent—but work was already under way before 9/11. It would be an exaggeration to say that Norway has an overarching counterterrorism strategy. It is true that in various fields, effective policy

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would require expertise that a central coordination unit could not possibly have. Furthermore, there are certainly attempts at coordination in Norwegian policy. In fact, part of the problem is that several organizations have been tasked with the responsibility to coordinate national policy. Some of the attempts to coordinate efforts at the boundaries of areas of responsibility have been described earlier. The bottom line is that there are unresolved issues due to lack of national coordination. Potential side-effects of current Norwegian counterterrorism policies raised by the opposition, such as a terrorist attack or an erosion of civil liberties, have so far not materialized. Norwegian counterterrorism policy has been backed by a broad coalition commanding a large majority in parliament, and it enjoys popular support. There are few signs that current policy will change significantly, particularly not the domestic policy. The most striking change, and the most controversial issue, has been Norwegian participation in international military operations. Much of the debate has revolved around whether operations such as the invasion of Iraq serve counterterrorism purposes. The available evidence suggests that when a clear and unambiguous link to terrorist acts can be established, the majority of Norwegian public opinion will support military action. However, the margin in support of military action is thin and may prove unstable if tested.

Counterterrorism and International Cooperation Norway is largely in favor of international cooperation, including counterterrorism measures. The notion that international terrorism can only be combated by international means is widely shared. The big exception is the inherent difficulty in taking part in the counterterrorism measures of the EU as a nonmember. The Norwegian interest in NATO was discussed earlier. Norway has an even greater and more longstanding interest in strengthening the UN. Enacting counterterrorism measures is unproblematic. Indeed, they might be popular, since they are perceived to have the desirable by-product of strengthening both the UN and NATO framework. One might say that Norway has in fact seized upon the fight against international terrorism in order to vitalize both organizations by making them more relevant. This logic does not apply to the EU. Although Norway, for obvious reasons, is not fully involved in the counterterrorism measures of the EU, Norway is not fully excluded from taking part in European counterterrorism efforts either. Norway is a member of the European Economic Area (EEA) and as such is part of the internal market. More important in this context, Norway is also a member of the Schengen area and has removed checkpoints at common borders with other member states and replaced them with

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external border control. One obvious consequence is that it is Norway’s responsibility to control a long section of the EU’s external borders. Norway is also a member of the Schengen Information System (SIS), enhancing the crime investigation capacity that is essential for successful counterterrorism. Although it lacks voting rights on the Schengen Executive Committee, Norway is able to express opinions and formulate proposals. An agreement to extend that association was signed between Iceland, Norway, and the EU on 18 May 1999.44 Norway thus continues to participate in the drafting of new legal instruments building on the Schengen acquis. These acts are only adopted by the EU member states, but they apply to Iceland and Norway as well. Membership in the Schengen area has involved Norway in many areas of cooperation relevant to counterterrorism, such as border control, common definition of the rules for the crossing of borders, measures to fight illegal immigration, rules for asylum seekers, judicial cooperation, and exchange of information.45 Membership in Schengen has been supported by a broad coalition and is unlikely to change, nor are there any particular difficulties on the horizon.

Conclusion With only little experience of national or international terrorism, the war on terrorism is primarily seen in the context of NATO. Therefore, as shown in this chapter, the armed forces have had, and likely will continue to have, a key role in shaping Norwegian counterterrorism policy. The tensions resulting from the conflicting priorities of committing Norway to a course of supporting international peacekeeping missions, or of developing an expeditionary war-fighting capability, will also remain. However, Norwegian armed forces have operated in Afghanistan since 2002, some in a peacekeeping role, others in a war-fighting role. As a direct result of the terrorist attack against US landmarks, a ban against terrorist acts was enacted for the first time in Norwegian law on 28 June 2002. Paragraphs 147a and 147b ban terrorism and the financing of terrorism, respectively. In the first half of 2002, amid lively public debate of the proposal submitted by the Ministry of Justice in December 2001, the final law attempted to strike a balance between enhancing the authority of the police and of the prosecution, on the one hand, and protecting civil liberties, on the other. The place of Norwegian counterterrorism policy in the country’s overall national security policy has changed. Prior to 9/11, counterterrorism played virtually no role in Norway’s security policy. Since 9/11, counterterrorism has definitely had a role in national security policy. The changes in

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the responses to the threats attributed to Al-Qaida leader al-Zawahiri in 2003 and 2004, respectively, suggest that political leaders and public opinion alike have increasingly well-founded beliefs about counterterrorism policy. In spite of the challenge from these new threats, Norway has nevertheless managed to follow a fairly consistent policy. As explained earlier, the Norwegian government in general is organized more along functional lines than centralized ones. For example, virtually all branches of government noted in Table 4.1 are tasked with dealing directly with their international counterparts and are essentially in charge of Norway’s international policies in their particular area of responsibility. They may be overruled if they stray too far away from the general parameters of Norwegian international policy, but usually they are in charge. The obvious consequence is that Norway has considerable difficulty in formulating an encompassing national counterterrorism strategy. Thus, the fault lines between the military and the police and the ministries and NSA are likely to endure.

Notes 1. Tore Bjørgo and Daniel Heradstveit, Politisk Vald i Norge [Political Violence in Norway] (Oslo: NUPI notat 5), Norwegian Institute for International Affairs, Mimeo 5 (1988). All translations from Norwegian are by the author unless otherwise indicated. 2. Brynjar Lia and Petter Nesser, FFI/Rapport-2003/01919: “Terror mot drikkevann—En oversikt over terrorgruppers’ interesse for å ramme offentlig vannforsyning” [Terror Against Drinking Water—A Survey of Terrorists Targeting of Public Water Supplies], 7–8. 3. The rationale for the transformation can be found in Norwegian Ministry of Defense, Relevant Force—Strategic Concept for the Norwegian Armed Forces, http://odin.dep.no/fd/english/doc/handbooks/010051-120204/dok-bn.html. The concrete transformation plans are outlined in St.prp. no. 42 (2003–2004), Den videre moderniseringen av Forsvaret i perioden 2005–2008, http://odin.dep.no/fd/norsk/ dok/regpubl/stprp/010001-030030/dok-bn.html. An abbreviated English version is also available online: Norwegian Ministry of Defense, The Further Modernization of the Norwegian Armed Forces 2005–2008 (Oslo, 2004), at http://odin. dep.no/filarkiv/202797/LTP_eng_kort.pdf. 4. North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), “The Alliance’s Strategic Concept,” press release NAC-S(99)65, 24 April 1999, paragraph 48. http://www.nato.int/docu/pr/1999/p99-065e.htm 5. See, for example, Vidar Lehman, “Norge bør ikke bli med på angrepskrig” [Norway Ought Not to Join in War of Aggression in Iraq], Aftenposten, 6 December 2002. http://www.aftenposten.no/meninger/kronikker/article450912.ece. 6. Anne Kristin Hjukse and Hans Bårsgård, “Norge bør delta i væpnet aksjon” [Norway Ought to Take Part in Armed Action], Dagbladet, 19 September 2001. http://www.dagbladet.no/nyheter/2001/09/19/282685.html. 7. The facts are taken from “Norwegian Contributions to the War Against Terrorism” (as of November 2003), published by the Royal Norwegian Ministry of

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Foreign Affairs, “De norske styrkene i Afghanistan [The Norwegian Forces in Afghanistan], http://www.mil.no/fol/afg/start/styrken/; and “Norske bidrag til militære operasjoner i utlandet I annet halvår 2005” [Norwegian Contributons to Military Operations Abroad in Second Half of 2005], http://odin.dep.no/ odinarkiv/norsk/fd/2005/annet/010051-210078/dok-bn.html. 8. “Tre eller fire F-16 fly til Afghanistan” [Three or Four F-16s to Afghanistan], Aftenposten, 9 November 2005, http://www.aftenposten.no/nyheter/ iriks/politikk/article1152588.ece. 9. Håvard Narum, “Klart norsk nei til krig i Irak” [A Clear Norwegian No to War in Iraq], Aftenposten, 19 March 2003, http://www.aftenposten.no/nyheter/ uriks/irak/article511630.ece.. 10. This summarizes the sentiments of the traditional antiwar groups in Norway. In addition, the doctrine of preemptive war and, specifically, the Iraq war have given rise to a new organization, Fredsinitiativet mot angrepskrig [The Peace Initiative Against Wars of Aggression]. The Socialist Left Party is the only party represented in the parliament that is officially opposed to participation in international military action. 11. Håvard Narum, “Stort flertall bak Norges nei til krig” [Large Majority Backs Norway’s No to War], Aftenposten, 28 May 2003. http://www.aftenposten.no/ nyheter/uriks/irak/article517754.ece. 12. My translation. “Høring: Forslag til endringer i straffeloven og straffeprosessloven—lovtiltak mot terrorisme (gjennomføring av FN-konvensjonen 9 desember 1999 om bekjempelse av finansiering av terrorisme og FNs Sikkerhetsråds resolusjon 1373 [2001] mv.)” [Hearing: Proposition to Changes in the Criminal Law and Criminal Law Code—Legal Measures Against Terrorism (Implementing the UN Convention of 9 December 1999 on Combating the Financing of Terrorism and UN Security Council Resolution 1373 [2001])]. http://www.odin.dep.no/jd/norsk/ publ/hoeringsnotater/012101-080004/index-dok000-b-n-a.html. 13. See, for example, Erling Johannes Husabø, “Problemnotat til revisjonen av straffelova” [Note on the Revision of the Penal Code], http://odin.dep.no/jd/norsk/ dok/andre_dok/utredninger/012001-020025/ved002-bn.html. 14. Among the important critics were Dommerforeningen [the Association of Judges], Advokatforeningen [the Bar Association], and Institutt for Menneskerettigheter [the Institute for Human Rights]. See Vidar Hegge, “Norske anti-terror tiltak” [Norwegian Anti-Terror Measures], Høringsuttalelse fra Institutt for Menneskerettigheter [comment from the Institute for Human Rights]. The Department of Justice’s own summary of the hearings is available at http:// odin.dep.no/jd/norsk/dok/regpubl/otprp/012001-050047/hov008-bn.html. 15. http://www.odin.dep.no/jd/norsk/publ/hoeringsnotater/012101080004/index-dok000-b-n-a.htm. 16. http://odin.dep.no/jd/norsk/dok/andre_dok/nou/012001-020025/hov002bn.html. 17. http://www.lovdata.no/all/tl-19020522-010-018.html#147a. 18. The committee’s conclusions concerning wording of the law can be found in Rikets sikkerhet [The Kingdom’s Security], NOU 2003: 18 Straffelovkommisjonens delutredning VIII, http://odin.dep.no/jd/norsk/dok/andre_ dok/nou/012001-020025/ind-bn.html. 19. Ot.prp. 61 (2001-2) Forslag til lov om endringer i straffeloven og straffeprosessloven mv [Proposal for Law Concerning Changes in the Code of Criminal Procedure and the Code of Civil Procedure], http://odin.dep.no/jd/norsk/dok/regpubl/otprp/012001-050047/hov015-bn.html#hov15.vedtak1.

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20. Law of 28 June 2002, no. 54. 21. Norwegian Department of Justice, “Trusselvurdering og prioriteringer for politiets sikkerhetstjeneste for 2003” [Threat Perception and Priorities for the PST 2003], http://www.pst.politiet.no/akt/trv2003; and “Den ugraderte trusselvurdering og prioriteringer for politiets sikkerhetstjeneste 2005” [The Public Version of the PST’s Threat Perception and Priorities 2005], http://www.pst.politiet.no/akt/trusselvurdering05.doc. 22. Norwegian Department of Justice, “Trusselvurdering og prioriteringer for politiets sikkerhetstjeneste for 2002” [Threat Perception and Priorities for the PST 2003], http://www.pst.politiet.no/akt/trv2003; and “Den ugraderte trusselvurdering og prioriteringer for politiets sikkerhetstjeneste 2005” [The Public Threat Assessment and Priorities of the PST], http://www.pst.politiet.no/akt/trusselvurdering05.doc. 23. Emphasis added by the author. Quoted in The Guardian, 22 May 2003, http://www.guardian.co.uk/alqaida/story/0,12469,960962,00.html. 24. The public version of the threat assessment can be found at http://www.pst.politiet.no/. 25. Gunnar Garbo, “Skal Forsvaret produsere fiender?” [Should the Military Produce Enemies?], http://home.online.no/~ivajoha/nato/produserefiender.htm. 26. “Mener Krekar saken er årsaken” [Thinks Krekar Affair Is the Cause], Aftenposten, 22 May 2003, http://www.aftenposten.no/nyheter/uriks/ article550578.ece. 27. Ole Christian Strøm, “UD med fullstendig lokk over terrortrussel” [Ministry of Foreign Affairs with Complete Lid on Terror Threat], VG Nett, 5 June 2003, http://www.vg.no/pub/vgart.hbs?artid=62421. 28. “Til kamp mot korsfarere” [Urges Attack on Crusaders], Aftenposten, 1 October 2004, http://www.aftenposten.no/nyheter/uriks/terror/article882142. ece. 29. Henrik Stålhane Hiim, “Større terrorfare nå” [Greater Danger of Terrorism Now], Dagsavisen, 4 October 2004, http://www.dagsavisen.no/innenriks/article1274058.ece. 30. “Terrortrussel for annen gang” [Threat of Terror for the Second Time], Aftenposten, 4 October 2004, http://www.aftenposten.no/meninger/leder_morgen/ article883082.ece?service=print. 31. Reidun J. Samuelsen, “Norge et naturlig terrormål” [Norway a Natural Target for Terrorism], Aftenposten, 2 October 2004, http://www.aftenposten.no/ nyheter/iriks/article882430.ece. 32. Utenriksminister Jonas Gahr Støre Utenrikspolitisk redegjørelse for Stortinget 8 February 2006 [Foreign Policy Statement to Parliament], http://www.dep.no/ud/norsk/aktuelt/taler/minister_a/032171-090506/dok-bn.html. 33. “Politiet i høy beredskap” [The Police in High State of Readiness], Aftenposten, 14 February 2006, http://www.aftenposten.no/nyheter/iriks/article1216320.ece. 34. “Ny instruks om Forsvarets bistand til politiet,” kongelig resolusjon av 28 February 2003 til erstav kong res av 13 February 1998 [“New Instructions Concerning Military Assistance to the Police,” Royal Resolution of 28 February 2003, Replacing Royal Resolution of 13 February 1998], paragraph 15. 35. Norges riges grundlov [The Constitution of the Kingdom of Norway], http://www.lovdata.no/all/tl-18140517-000-006.html#99. 36. Beredskapsloven [Defense Law], http://www.lovdata.no/all/tl-19501215007-002.html#3.

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37. Norwegian Department of Justice, “Et sårbart samfunn [A Vulnerable Society], NOU 2000: 24, ch. 5, http://odin.dep.no/jd/norsk/publ/utredninger/NOU/ 012001-020005/index-dok000-b-n-a.html. 38. Tore Nyhamar, “Petroleumsalder: Norsk sikkerhetspolitikk etter den kalde krigen” [The Age of Petroleum: Norwegian Security Policy After the Cold War], Internasjonal politikk 57, 3 (1999): 409–428. Inge Tjøstheim, “Beskyttelse av Petroleumsinfrastruktur—hvilke ambisjoner?” [Protection of Petroleum Infrastructure—What Ambitions?], Norsk militært tidsskrift 6/7 (1998): 15–19. 39. “Et sårbart samfunn” [A Vulnerable Society]: NOU 2000: 24, http://odin.dep.no/jd/norsk/dok/andre_dok/nou/012001-020005/dok-bn.html. 40. Personal communication, Gen. Lt. (ret.) Ola Aabakken (2003). 41. “Vil ta sikkerhetsmyndigheten fra Devold” [Wants to Take the Security Authority Away from Devold], http://www.dagsavisen.no/innenriks/2002/11/ 691457.shtml (this page is no longer available). Devold was the Norwegian minister of defense from 2001 to 2005. 42. Forsvarsdepartementet, Nærings- og handelsedepartementet og justis- og tolldepartementet (2003), “Nasjonal strategi for informasjonssikkerhet— Utfordringer, priorieteringer og tiltak” [The Ministry of Defense, the Ministry of Business and Trade, and the Ministry of Justice, “National Strategy for Information Security—Challenges, Priorities and Measures”]. The 11 areas are (1) unified standards for risk and vulnerability analysis, (2) prioritizing lines of communication, (3) responsibilities for regulations, (4) coordination of measures, (5) security standards, (6) web information page, (7) warning system for digital infrastructure, (8) certification of services, (9) research, (10) public key infrastructure, and (11) international cooperation. 43. “Strategier for informasjonssikkerhet” [Strategies for Information Security], FFI/Rapport-2003/00271-1, 14. 44. Council Decision of 17 May on the conclusion of the Agreement with the Republic of Iceland and the Kingdom of Norway Concerning the Latter’s Association with the Implementation, Application, and Development of the Schengen Acquis. Official Journal CE L 176, 10 July 1999, http://ue.eu.int/cms3_ fo/showPage.asp?id=469&lang=en. 45. European Union, “The Schengen Acquis and Its Integration into the EU,” http://europa.eu.int/scadplus/leg/en/lvb/l33020.htm.

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Part 2 The Dynamics of Counterterrorism Policy in North America

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5 Canada’s Counterterrorism Policy MARGARET PURDY

THE 11 SEPTEMBER 2001 TERRORIST ATTACKS IN THE UNITED STATES GENERATED unprecedented attention for security issues in Canada. From relative obscurity, terrorism and related topics took center stage nationally and led to a dramatic and speedy realignment of government priorities across the board in terms of spending, legislation, policy, programs, and international relations. Significant changes continued through 2004, including a major restructuring of the security elements of the federal government and the issuance of the first-ever comprehensive statement of national security policy. Taken together, these initiatives accorded security the highest profile in Canada since World War II. Counterterrorism issues did not figure at all in the 2004 and 2006 federal election campaigns, and it is too soon to assess the impact of the change in government as a result of the January 2006 election. Early indications are that the new Conservative Party government may focus on strengthening coordination and oversight and on expanding Canada’s foreign intelligence collection capacity.1 While security now shares space on the Canadian political agenda with health care and other longstanding domestic issues, the events of 11 September 2001 have had a deep, fundamental, and historic impact on how Canadians perceive their safety and vulnerability and how they expect their governments to operate in the terrorism-dominated security environment of the twenty-first century. This chapter will trace the evolution of Canada’s counterterrorism policy, describing how the issue shifted from the periphery to the top of Canada’s public policy agenda following the events of 11 September 2001. The chapter will provide details of the changes introduced by two successive Liberal governments between 2001 and 2005 and will look ahead to the security agenda of the Conservative Party government elected in early 2006. 105

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The Evolution of Canadian Counterterrorism Policy in the Context of a Changing International Security Environment On the international stage, the golden age of Canada’s military and diplomatic influence was in the 1950s, when the country “punched far above its weight” and its foreign affairs minister won the Nobel Peace Prize.2 By the end of the Cold War, Canada’s overall international clout and capacity had diminished, but its citizens and political leaders remained firmly committed to the UN and multilateral approaches. When terrorism emerged in the 1980s as a global phenomenon requiring global attention, Canada supported the counterterrorism efforts of the UN, the G7/8, and other multilateral institutions—but rarely assumed a leadership role. The Post–Cold War, Pre-9/11 Period In the post–Cold War years, successive Canadian governments focused their attention largely on domestic matters—threats to national unity (in response to efforts by a separatist provincial government to remove Quebec from the Canadian federation), the national debt and deficit, health care, education, and environmental challenges. Trade dominated the relationship between Canada and the United States in the last two decades of the twentieth century, with the signing of a free trade agreement in 1989 generating the world’s largest bilateral economic relationship.3 While economically dependent on trade with its southern neighbor, Canada from time to time drew US ire by adopting independent foreign policy positions on such matters as the campaign against land mines and the establishment of the International Criminal Court, as it had in earlier years on such issues as the Vietnam War and relations with Cuba.4 Terrorism and other asymmetrical threats did not figure prominently in official statements of Canadian foreign and defense policy issued in the mid-1990s. Canada did not debate or issue a national security policy in the immediate post–Cold War period, and national legislation (including the criminal code) was almost silent on terrorism. Canada had a relatively modest security and intelligence community, with no stand-alone foreign intelligence service. While the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) had made counterterrorism its top priority in the 1990s (displacing espionage), the principal focus of the national police force was organized crime. Similarly, terrorism was of secondary interest to Canada’s signals intelligence agency throughout the 1990s. The solicitor general, traditionally not a high-profile cabinet job in Canada, was the designated lead minister for counterterrorism throughout the post–Cold War period. A special cabinet committee dedicated to security and intelligence matters met infrequently, and ministers reportedly did not

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receive intelligence assessments on a regular basis. 5 The agencies on Canada’s counterterrorism front line—those responsible for law enforcement, intelligence, security, and emergency management—were not spared during aggressive efforts in the 1990s to reduce Canada’s debt. For example, CSIS, the domestic intelligence agency, saw its workforce drop from more than 2,700 employees in 1992–1993 to just over 2,000 in 2000–2001.6 Canada had its first direct experiences with international terrorism in the 1980s; the severity of these incidents awakened the country to the reach and dangers of the terrorism phenomenon. Individuals associated with the campaign for recognition of the 1914–1915 Armenian genocide launched a siege of the Turkish embassy in Ottawa, killing a security guard. In a separate ambush, they killed a Turkish diplomat driving along an Ottawa street. Soon thereafter, two near-simultaneous air disasters were traced quickly to Sikh terrorists based in Canada. In June 1985, 329 persons died in the downing of an Air India flight outbound from Canada, and two baggage handlers died at Japan’s Narita Airport when luggage was being off-loaded from a flight originating in Canada the same day. These startling events triggered significant changes—for example, in the attention accorded to the protection of foreign diplomats and in the methods used to screen airline passengers and luggage.7 Despite the severity of these incidents, terrorism receded into the background in Canada between 1985 and 2000, at least in terms of public, political, and media attention. This is not to say that Canadian security agencies were relaxed or complacent about the seriousness of the international terrorist threat and the significant shifts in targeting, tactics, and tools. Behind the scenes, they were monitoring potential threats, as well as individuals and groups suspected of terrorist affiliations. They were expanding their international networks for information-sharing and operational cooperation, and they grew increasingly worried about the disturbing trends they detected. Canada takes pride in its reputation as a world leader in accepting refugees and immigrants. By 2001, immigration accounted for more than 50 percent of the total population growth in Canada. New arrivals increasingly came from Asia and the Middle East (not Europe, as had been the case for decades) and included many from regions experiencing turmoil, civil war, or armed conflict. For example, the top ten source countries for immigrants and refugees in 2001 included India, Pakistan, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, and Iran, as well as Colombia and the Democratic Republic of Congo.8 Included in the flow of migrants to Canada were a small number of sympathizers or more ardent supporters of various terrorist causes and organizations. In a May 2000 report, CSIS acknowledged that it was investigating the activities in Canada of approximately 350 individuals and 50 organizations, including Sunni Muslim extremist organizations, various Sikh terrorist groups, Hizbollah, Hamas, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), and the Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MEK).9

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In a report published three months before the 11 September 2001 attacks, CSIS made the following predictions: Terrorism in the years ahead is expected to become more violent, indiscriminate, and unpredictable than in recent years. The use of advanced explosive materials, in combination with highly sophisticated timers and detonators, will produce increasingly higher numbers of casualties. There will likely be terrorist attacks whose sole aim would be to incite terror itself. A hardening attitude and a willingness on the part of certain terrorist organizations to directly support terrorist operations in North America reinforce the belief that Canadians, now more than ever, are potential victims and Canada a potential venue for terrorist attacks.10

The June 2001 report received scant media or public attention and did not lead to an assessment of Canada’s readiness to deter or cope with a major attack. Canadian police, intelligence, and immigration services as well as other agencies had forged particularly close links with their US counterparts in the 1980s and 1990s, sharing intelligence, cross-posting staff, and engaging in joint investigations. Terrorism did not, however, figure prominently as a cross-border issue in North America in the post–Cold War period. Strains in Canada-US security relations surfaced in late 1999, when US customs officials uncovered bomb material in the vehicle of Ahmed Ressam as he was driving off a ferry from Canada. Ressam was sentenced in 2005 to 22 years in prison for his part in a plan to bomb the Los Angeles airport on the eve of the new millennium. Commentators in both Canada and the United States pointed to the “Ressam affair” as evidence of gaps and weaknesses in Canada’s security approaches.11 Overall, however, security and terrorism were not top issues in Canada prior to 9/11. The agencies on the front line of Canada’s counterterrorism efforts had low public profiles; their mandates and activities were not well understood among the general population. Few journalists specialized in terrorism (or even broader security issues), few university courses focused on terrorism, and security issues simply did not rank on the national political agenda. The Post-9/11 Period Terrorism shot to the top of the Canadian government’s agenda on 11 September 2001. The resulting realignment of priorities was all the more dramatic because it occurred against a decades-long background of relative obscurity, inattention, and illiteracy in relation to security-related issues in Canada. For the first time since World War II, policymakers drew linkages between security and economic performance. The immediate closing of the airspace over North America and the long lines of trucks at US-Canadian

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border crossings drew new, nontraditional players (business leaders, economic think-tanks, provincial governments, and others) into the national dialog on terrorism and security. The Canadian government adopted a multifaceted response to the altered security landscape. In crafting legislative, budgetary, policy-related, and other counterterrorism responses, the uniqueness of the Canadian situation was evident as the government sought to respond to several potentially conflicting objectives, including: • Assuring Canadians that the government was acting to keep Canada one of the safest countries in the world; • Avoiding actions that Canadians would view as trampling on civil liberties or disrupting a social order premised on tolerance, multiculturalism, and the rule of law; • Signaling to the international community that Canada supported dynamic, concrete international collaboration; • Dispelling the persistent claims of a Canadian link to the 11 September 2001 attacks and of serious deficiencies in Canadian security procedures; • Responding to expectations and worries from US government officials about the security of people and goods crossing the 6,400-kilometer (3,968-mile) shared land border. Canada was engaged in what Canadian scholar Reg Whitaker has termed a “two-front war.” As he put it, “Canada had to react not only to 9/11, but also to the American reaction to 9/11.”12 While the government led by Jean Chrétien introduced diverse and farreaching changes (including a security budget, new legislation, and a border security accord with the United States) in the final months of 2001, another round of changes came two years later when Paul Martin moved into the prime minister’s office. Martin announced the most dramatic structural shake-up of Canada’s public safety and emergency preparedness sectors in decades.13 While not focused narrowly on terrorism, these 2003 changes responded to continuing Canadian concerns about the threat of terrorism and to the inseparable links between Canada’s security posture and its economic security and prosperity.

The Dynamic of the Current Domestic Debate on Counterterrorism The severity and shock of the events of 11 September 2001 generated unprecedented levels of media coverage, political attention, public dialog,

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and debate about terrorism and related matters in Canada. National polling in the summer of 2001 had found that Canadians considered health care, unemployment, and taxes to be the most important issues facing the country. Less than 1 percent of those polled mentioned world conflict or war. In similar polls conducted after 11 September 2001, terrorism and security issues topped the ratings of important national issues.14 Over time, concern about terrorism has slipped in the ratings. A Canadian polling firm, EKOS Research Associates, has been tracking Canadian views and perceptions of security since October 2001. According to EKOS polling, the percentage of Canadians who believed that Canada would suffer from a terrorist attack in the coming year dropped by 50 percent (from 12 to 6 percent) between 2003 and 2005. In the United States, the drop over the same period was also in the 50 percent range, although by April 2005, 27 percent of US respondents still expected an attack in the next 12 months.15 According to EKOS chair Frank Graves, despite some fluctuations and controversies, “a deeply embedded security ethic is now a fundamental feature of contemporary Canadian and US outlooks.” 16 But a comparative assessment of threat perceptions in the two countries by EKOS and the American Enterprise Institute highlighted some stark differences. An overarching difference is that, for most Canadians, risk does not simply equal terrorism. Terrorism is seen as a fairly modest, even minor, component of a much broader and more multidimensional security hierarchy in Canada. Indeed, for nearly half of Canadians, the “war on terror” is an apocryphal exaggeration, whereas this remains a key national project in the United States. Despite the more tepid concern about terrorism in Canada, support for security measures remains stalwart. We suspect this resolve is largely conditioned by an uneasy blend of empathy and self-interest about the ramifications of another terrorism event in the United States (which is considered highly probable by Canadians).17

Throughout the post-9/11 period, the domestic debate on counterterrorism has focused on two core issues: Canada’s security partnership with the United States, and striking the appropriate balance between security and civil liberties. Canada-US Security Relations In the days immediately following the tragic events of 11 September 2001, Canadians were united in sympathy for their southern neighbors. Canadian communities warmly welcomed thousands of passengers stranded after more than 200 flights had been diverted to Canada. On 14 September 2001, more than 100,000 people gathered on Parliament Hill as part of a national day of mourning.

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Fissures in the relationship appeared soon thereafter, however, as the economic impact of airspace and land border restrictions sunk in and as reports emerged that one group of hijackers may have crossed into the United States from Canada.18 Subsequent investigations have unearthed no connection between the terrorists and Canada, but concerns about Canada’s counterterrorism performance have persisted on both sides of the border. An early turning point in Canadian attitudes came during a 20 September 2001 speech by US president George Bush, when he did not include Canada in a long list of nations cited for their support and sympathy. Reaction in Canada ranged from disappointment to outrage. Reid Morden, a former deputy foreign minister and a former CSIS director, has commented that 11 September 2001 brought Canadians face to face with what he termed “stark realities”: A Canada that had become accustomed to an almost automatic exemption from punitive trade measures aimed at the rest of the world found that this was no longer the case; a Canada that assumed a special relationship and a sympathetic ear from succeeding US administrations found neither; and a Canada often free with gratuitous advice and criticism found it prudent to select more carefully the issues on which it wishes to be actively at odds with the US.19

In the subsequent weeks and months, four broad categories of Canadians spoke out on the Canada-US security file: • Those who viewed more integrated security cooperation as an imperative for Canada in view of the highly integrated North American economy. This was a dominant view in Canadian boardrooms, where business leaders were preoccupied with maintaining the critical flow of people (more than 200 million a year) and trade (valued at CA$1.2 billion per day) across the border. Some Canadian companies had lost staff in the collapse of the World Trade Center, while many more suffered downturns in business, delays in their supply cycle, or bankruptcies. • Those who interpreted the economic fallout from 11 September 2001 as grounds for a dramatic reorientation of North American affairs. Perimeter security, a notion that had been floated in Ottawa policy circles from time to time in the 1990s, reappeared and gained considerable support among some Canadian business leaders, as did several other “big ideas.” Wendy Dobson, a prominent Canadian economist, called for Ottawa to strike what she termed “a strategic bargain” with Washington,20 while Allan Gotlieb, a former Canadian ambassador to Washington, called for “a North American community of law.”21

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• Those who encouraged Canadians to be more self-confident and to recognize that they have much to gain by working with the United States to enhance North American security. Yves Fortier, a former Canadian ambassador to the UN, observed: We are a noble nation, born in peace, forged in war, the envy of much of the world. If only we begin to realize just how true this is and cease demonizing the US, we will finally merit fully the reputation and laurels that we have struggled so hard to attain and that have been bestowed upon us. . . . It is time for Canadians to stop looking out the window, as opposed to in the mirror, to know who we are.22

• Those who criticized the United States for bullying and pressuring Canada (and other close allies) and who viewed enhanced bilateral cooperation as serious erosion of Canadian sovereignty and independence. For example, former foreign affairs minister Lloyd Axworthy commented in January 2002 that Canada’s “freedom to manoeuvre and to maintain some independence is really getting into some red zones.”23 The “Smart Border” negotiations led by Canada’s deputy prime minister and the US homeland security chief were among the most visible components of Canada’s post-9/11 actions, leading to a joint declaration and a 30-point action plan in December 2001.24 The overall aims were to ensure the security of the shared border and to expedite the movement of low-risk shipments and travelers. Most observers agree that Canadian negotiators managed to find an acceptable balance among the competing economic, public safety, and sovereignty interests. On the heels of the 2001 Smart Border initiative, President Vicente Fox of Mexico joined President Bush and Prime Minister Martin in announcing a “Security and Prosperity Partnership” in March 2005. The “Partnership” documents describe hundreds of collaborative actions aimed at strengthening security and economic relationships among the three North American partners.25 A new front opened on the US-Canada security relationship in 2003. Maher Arar, a Syrian Canadian, alleged that US authorities had deported him to Syria, where he had been tortured for many months. Questions swirled around the role of Canadian law enforcement and intelligence agencies in the deportation and the subsequent efforts by Canadian diplomats to secure his release. Early in 2004, the government established a formal commission of inquiry to investigate and report on the actions of Canadian officials in relation to Maher Arar.26 Also in 2003, the US decision to attack Iraq had a significant impact on Canadian perceptions of the US-led “war on terrorism.” Many Canadians were offended by the US reaction to then–prime minister Chrétien’s deci-

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sion not to join the war, and also by what they considered lack of appreciation for the Canadian contributions to North American security, to the military campaign in Afghanistan, and to security and reconstruction efforts there. The Canadian military contingent sent to Afghanistan and the Persian Gulf region starting in October 2001 represented the largest overseas deployment of Canadian forces since the Korean conflict. In terms of development assistance, Afghanistan has been the single largest recipient of Canadian bilateral aid since January 2002. Canada’s commitments between 2001 and 2009 total CA$616.5 million.27 Five years after the events of 11 September 2001, the counterterrorism partnership with the United States remains a preoccupation for Canadian security officials. Despite dedicating senior-level political and bureaucratic attention to bilateral security relations and spending billions of dollars on new and enhanced security initiatives, Canada is still fighting US perceptions that it is a haven for terrorists. The Security–Civil Rights Balance A second persistent theme in the domestic counterterrorism debate in Canada has been the effort to find the appropriate balance between securing the nation and protecting individual rights and freedoms. Canada’s former deputy minister of justice commented in 2002 that the security–civil rights equilibrium point is highly contextual, with Canada’s legal framework providing the means to assess responsibly how that balance should be struck.28 The central plank in this framework is the 1982 Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedom that sets out and protects legal, linguistic, multicultural, aboriginal, employment-related, and other essential rights and freedoms.29 Starting long before 11 September 2001, critics inside and outside Canada had expressed the view that the balance was tipping too far in favor of individual rights and that Canada had become “soft on terrorists.” Canadian journalist and author Stewart Bell claimed in a 2004 book that Canada had become the best country in the world for terrorists to make their home. According to Bell, Canada had earned a reputation as “a safe haven, a country with an unguarded open back door, where extremists are tolerated and are free to conspire and act.” 30 By way of example, Bell and Rohan Gunaratna have pointed to what they consider Canada’s lenient attitude toward the activities of the LTTE. Both authors have criticized Canadian government support for LTTE front organizations, lack of enforcement action to deal with LTTE intimidation within Canada’s Tamil communities, and the lack of controls on LTTE fundraising in Canada.31 The protection of the rights guaranteed under the 1982 charter dominated the public debate in Canada on the introduction of an antiterrorism bill in late 2001, encompassing a wide array of new powers and authorities. The

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bill drew immediate criticism from those who deemed it an overreaction, unnecessary, and too sweeping in scope. 32 While the government’s timetable did not allow for lengthy public and parliamentary debate, feedback did lead to major amendments to the bill, which received royal assent in December 2001. The criticism continued, however, with the participation of several prominent Canadians. In a November 2003 article, former CSIS director Reid Morden criticized the definition of “terrorist activity” in the Canadian legislation, claiming that it is “so wide that it could easily include behaviour that doesn’t remotely resemble terrorism.”33 Morden also criticized the process for designating terrorist “entities,” a process that can trigger enforcement action under several new criminal offenses introduced via the Anti-terrorism Act. “It is no secret that the communities most vulnerable to being listed are those which are visibly identifiable as racial, ethnic or political minorities, recently arrived in Canada as immigrants and refugees.”34 Post-9/11 actions by Canadian police, security, and intelligence agencies have generated complaints about overzealous investigations, unjustified data gathering, and ethnic profiling of Muslim Canadians and other visible minorities. Similarly, Canadian diplomats have come under fire for their handling of several cases involving the detention, arrest, and/or alleged torture of Muslim Canadians outside Canada. For example, a coalition of civil rights groups has raised the cases of three men (in addition to Maher Arar) who claim that following investigation or questioning in Canada by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) or CSIS, they were “severely tortured” during subsequent travel to Syria.35 As a December 2003 Washington Post article pointed out, cases involving Canadians of Muslim or Arab descent underscored tensions in Canada about how to deal with immigrants suspected or accused of involvement in terrorism: “Canadians pride themselves on ideals of tolerance, inclusion and the belief that immigrants should have the same rights as Canadian citizens. At the same time, the country is wrestling with how to protect national security and answer critics who contend that the country’s liberal immigration policies make Canada easy prey for terrorists.”36 Although the Martin government had initially resisted calls for a public inquiry into the Arar case, it agreed to this course of action in February 2004, appointing a senior judge “to assess the actions of Canadian officials in dealing with the deportation and detention of Mr. Arar.” The Arar commission of inquiry amassed 30,450 pages of testimony during 127 days of hearings from 85 witnesses in 2004–2005, and is scheduled to submit its findings to the government in 2006.37 The Anti-terrorism Act of 2001 included a mandatory parliamentary review of its provisions and operations after three years. Starting in December 2004, two reviews commenced—one by a standing committee of

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the House of Commons and the second by a special Senate committee. This work came to a halt in November 2005, when a national election call brought the parliamentary session to an end. The review work resumed in early 2006.

Conceptions of Canadian Counterterrorism Policy Canada’s assessment of direct threats to its security, together with a variety of geographic, demographic, societal, and other factors, have shaped Canada’s attitude about international terrorism, as well as the ways in which the country has approached counterterrorism policy, including organizational and jurisdictional issues. Appearing in Vancouver in 2002, former CSIS director Ward Elcock stated: “Our proximity and close ties to the United States, the openness of our society for the movement of both people and money, and our multi-ethnic population make our country one in which terrorists may seek to find a haven.”38 Current CSIS director Jim Judd told a parliamentary committee in 2005 that “historically, most terrorist organizations elsewhere in the world have operated or sought to operate in Canada on fundraising, propaganda, recruitment and other activities—and this certainly continues to be true today.”39 Threat Perceptions CSIS has reported regularly since the early 1990s that most terrorism-related activities in Canada are extensions of foreign conflicts, with individuals and groups using Canada as a base for supporting homeland-based struggles. Following the events of 11 September 2001, CSIS analysts had to weigh the significance of several new factors, including: • The inclusion of Canada in a November 2002 statement allegedly made by Osama bin Laden, threatening countries deserving retribution for supporting the “war on terrorism”;40 • The impact of Canada’s opposition to international terrorism and its heavy engagement in military and reconstruction operations in Afghanistan; • The potential attractiveness of certain targets in Canada, for example, infrastructure elements that supply electricity, natural gas, or oil to the United States. The tone of the CSIS threat assessment turned more ominous after 11 September 2001, as illustrated by this statement by former CSIS director Ward Elcock: “While there is currently no specific threat to Canada, Canada

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is not insulated from terrorism and, indeed, to take a lesson from Bali, threats can escalate against all of us allied in the struggle against terrorism.”41 Scholar Michael Ignatieff agreed. He used the term “naïve narcissism” to describe the stance of Canadians who considered their country invulnerable to terrorism. Ignatieff rated Canada a secondary target because “we are a secular, liberal, democratic state in the North Atlantic region and we stand for everything that al-Qaeda doesn’t like.”42 Current CSIS director Jim Judd has focused almost exclusively on AlQaida in his public statements on terrorism. In a February 2005 presentation to a parliamentary committee, he said that “nothing exempts Canada from the threat of serious violence,” and he named 16 Canadian citizens, landed immigrants, and refugee claimants with links to the Al-Qaida ideology.43 Earlier CSIS reports confirmed that the agency has also investigated the activities of Sikh terrorists, as well as supporters of Hizbollah, Hamas, the LTTE, the PKK, and the MEK. As of January 2006, the federal cabinet had endorsed the listing of 38 terrorist entities.44 Canadians noticed another shift in government statements about terrorism following the July 2005 attacks on London’s subway trains and a bus. The deputy prime minister commented a few days after the events, “I think we have for perhaps too long thought that these were things that happened somewhere else.” She said Canadians should prepare psychologically for a terrorist attack.45 Much of the public dialog in Canada since 11 September 2001 has centered on the questions of which assets need to be secured and how much security is enough. A 2003 Senate committee report concluded that Canada’s coastlines were vulnerable and largely unattended.46 Other post9/11 reports focused on the vulnerability of the energy infrastructure, including nuclear facilities. The 2001 anthrax attacks in the United States and experiences with mad cow disease and SARS generated concerns about Canada’s readiness to deal with biological or chemical terrorism. A series of disruptive computer viruses and worms, together with the cascading failures in the North American electrical grid in the summer of 2003, renewed interest in the threat of cyberterrorism. Canadian Counterterrorism Strategy Scholar Wesley Wark offered the view that too little had been done, especially after 11 September 2001, to “adjust Canadian strategy and capabilities to the era of globalization, global conflict and terror.” According to Wark, whereas the December 2001 budget had showered money on the security and intelligence community, it had “lacked strategic vision.”47 The Canadian government had aligned its immediate post-9/11 actions around what came to be called the Anti-Terrorism Plan and its five objectives:

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• To prevent terrorists from getting into Canada; • To protect Canadians from terrorist acts; • To legislate tools to identify, prosecute, convict, and punish terrorists; • To keep the Canada-US border secure and open for legitimate trade; • To work with the international community to bring terrorists to justice. When former prime minister Paul Martin unveiled his new government in December 2003, he announced plans to develop an integrated policy for national security and emergencies. The Martin government honored its commitment and in April 2004 issued Canada’s first-ever comprehensive statement of national security policy, entitled “Securing an Open Society.”48 The new policy accorded priority to building an integrated security system and to enhancing Canadian capacity and performance with respect to intelligence, emergency planning and management, public health emergencies, transportation security, and border security. While recognizing the importance of terrorism, the document reflected a much broader range of threats, including natural disasters, critical infrastructure vulnerability, and pandemics. This all-hazards, all-threats approach to national security uniquely characterizes Canada’s response to the new security environment. The 2004 policy statement announced some major enhancements, including: • • • • • •

An integrated threat assessment center; A national security advisory council; A cross-cultural roundtable on security; An around-the-clock government operations center; Marine security measures; and A public health agency.

Roles and Responsibilities In the immediate post-9/11 period, an ad hoc committee of ministers met regularly to review policies, legislation, regulations, and programs in the areas of terrorism and public security. Coordination of counterterrorism activities within the public service fell to the Privy Council Office, the arm of the Canadian public service that provides ongoing support to the prime minister. Operationally, the key Canadian players were CSIS, the RCMP, Transport Canada, Citizenship and Immigration Canada, and the Canada Customs and Revenue Agency. The most significant structural changes came in late 2003, when then–prime minister Martin created Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness Canada (PSEPC), integrating into a single portfolio the exist-

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ing Solicitor General portfolio (including the RCMP and CSIS), the Office of Critical Infrastructure Protection and Emergency Preparedness (OCIPEP, formerly part of the Defence Department), and the new Canada Border Services Agency. The PSEPC portfolio also includes six agencies and three review bodies with a total of 52,000 employees and an overall budget of CA$5 billion. In appointing his own deputy to serve concurrently as the cabinet minister responsible for the new portfolio, the former prime minister sent strong signals about the importance his government would accord to security matters. The 2003 restructuring of government also included: • Creating a full-fledged Cabinet Committee on Security, Public Health, and Emergencies; • Appointing a minister of state for civil preparedness; • Announcing an increase in military reserves available for civil preparedness duties; • Proposing a new National Security Standing Committee in the House of Commons whose members would be sworn in as Privy Councilors so that they could be briefed on national security issues; and • Creating a new position of national security adviser to the prime minister and staffing it with a veteran public servant with concurrent security responsibilities in the Privy Council Office. PSEPC has established itself at the center of Canada’s all-hazards approach and has accomplished much since its creation in 2003. The new department has moved to fill longstanding policy gaps, to consolidate Ottawa’s response to all types of public safety emergencies, and to enhance national readiness through closer relations with the provinces. Interagency coordination remains a challenge, as the new portfolio does not include all units that contribute to Canada’s counterterrorism efforts. For example, Transport Canada is responsible for transportation security, the Department of National Defence and the Communications Security Establishment conduct signals and imagery intelligence collection and analysis, and the Privy Council Office produces foreign intelligence assessments. In addition, PSEPC has had to dedicate attention to developing sound partnerships with two new entities in the Privy Council Office—a national security adviser and a new Canada-US secretariat. Looking ahead, Canada’s auditor general concluded in a 2005 report that PSEPC “faces many challenges to achieving the goals set for it by government. It will be important to ensure that the Department has the appropriate authorities, structures, and resources necessary to address current and future problems.”49

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The Anti-terrorism Act of 2001 created several new terrorism-related offenses and provided the police with new investigative tools and authorities. As the RCMP exercised some of these new authorities, two questions arose: • Was the new legislation deficient in not providing for independent review of the RCMP’s counterterrorism activities, along the lines of that applicable to CSIS? In response, the government tasked the commission of inquiry into the Arar affair to make recommendations on an arm’s-length review mechanism for the RCMP’s national security activities. These recommendations are due to be published together with the rest of the commission’s report by the end of 2006. • Has the new act blurred the distinction between the respective intelligence responsibilities of the RCMP and CSIS? One journalist thinks so. In a 2003 article, Jeff Sallot of the Globe and Mail wrote: The RCMP is a fine police force. It has two important roles to play in the war on terrorism—providing physical security to people and facilities that might be targets of attack, and apprehending those who have committed a violent act of terrorism. Police officers are not trained or equipped to deal with the many ambiguities that intelligence officers must handle daily, particularly in regard to politically motivated activities. That’s the legitimate role for CSIS.50

Fault lines between CSIS and the RCMP featured prominently in a 2005 report on outstanding questions with respect to the 1985 Air India bombing. Bob Rae, an independent adviser to the deputy prime minister, concluded that “the relationship between these institutions and the interplay between intelligence and evidence requires further review.”51 These issues are also being raised during the two parliamentary reviews of the Anti-terrorism Act and during the public inquiry into the Arar matter. While the federal government has ultimate responsibility for national security, other levels of government (provincial/territorial and municipal/city) play indispensable roles in preparing against and responding to emergencies and disasters, including those associated with terrorist threats and attacks. Since 11 September 2001, several provincial governments have introduced new legislation, restructured the government apparatus, and allocated new funds for intelligence collection, threat assessment, critical infrastructure protection, and emergency preparedness. Provincial and territorial leaders sought more money, more threat-related information, and more inclusion in discussions with the United States on security mat-

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ters. At their annual conference in 2003, Canadian premiers announced their plans to cooperate with state governments in the United States “on security and emergency preparedness/response issues” and called for a more open and collaborative partnership with the federal government.52 Enhanced cooperation with other levels of government has been a priority since 2001 for many of the Ottawa-based departments and agencies with counterterrorism responsibilities. For example, the federal government in 2005 organized the first meeting in 11 years with ministers responsible for emergency management in the provinces and territories. Civilian-Military Jurisdiction Jurisdictional conflict between military and civilian authorities has not been a feature of counterterrorism activities in Canada, for two principal reasons: • Canada perceives counterterrorism as primarily a responsibility of civilian authorities—law enforcement, intelligence, security, and emergency response agencies at the federal and local levels. • The National Defence Act and a set of Orders in Council spell out the conditions under which civilian authorities (at the federal or provincial levels) can request military assistance to help them deal with security situations. These documents also address related jurisdictional and accountability issues. Canadian military personnel have provided essential support during high-threat periods (for example, during major international gatherings such as the G8 summit in Alberta in 2002). The Canadian armed forces have several capabilities that are considered dual-use; that is, adaptable either to protect troops deployed internationally or to respond to domestic security situations. These include a special operations team, a nuclear-chemicalbiological response team, a disaster assistance response team, and scientific expertise. Certain military actions (for example, shooting down a civilian aircraft believed to be taken over by terrorists on a suicide mission) require the approval of the prime minister, and Canadian officials have reported that they tested the approval process in the hours immediately after the 11 September 2001 attacks.53 In June 2005 the former defense minister and the new chief of the defense staff announced dramatic changes in Canada’s military command structure, with a new focus on its mission within Canada. A new “Canada Command” will deploy maritime, land, and air assets to deal with crises anywhere in Canada.54 Coordination with civilian authorities, especially PSEPC and provincial governments, will be critical to the success of the new military arrangements for responding to natural disasters, terrorist attacks, and other emergency situations.

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Aspects of Counterterrorism Policy Implementation Overarching Strategy The 2004 document entitled “Securing an Open Border: Canada’s National Security Policy” had a major and sustained impact on the Canadian counterterrorism community. The new policy has served as a roadmap and anchor for decisionmaking with respect to legislation, policy, programs, and investments. In a progress report issued on the first anniversary of the new policy, the deputy prime minister acknowledged that “the job of promoting national security will never be completely finished.” She went on to say that “while progress has been made in implementing the policy, much remains to be done.”55 Political Aspects In the immediate aftermath of the 11 September 2001 attacks, the deputy prime minister served as the primary spokesperson on security issues, and the ad hoc committee he chaired was the focal point for consideration of budgetary, legislative, policy, and operational issues throughout 2002 and 2003. The December 2003 appointment of a new deputy prime minister with a concurrent assignment to set up the public safety and emergency preparedness portfolio signaled a new era of seriousness and consolidation for security issues in Canada, as did the announcement of a full cabinet committee on security, public health, and emergencies. Wesley Wark commented at the time that “the Martin security agenda creates great expectations” and that its test will come “as promises are put, always imperfectly, into action.”56 One 2005 review of the Martin government’s performance on security matters acknowledged that a sound groundwork had been laid, but that “a noticeable slackening of pace” and “an impression of failing momentum” had appeared after the June 2004 election and the loss of a Liberal majority.57 The Conservative Party included a chapter on security issues in its 2006 federal election platform document, including commitments to: • • • •

Name a national security commissioner; Create a foreign intelligence agency; Establish a National Security Review Committee; and Ensure that CSIS, the RCMP, the Canada Border Services Agency, and other agencies have adequate resources and equipment.58

Legislative Aspects Canada’s Anti-terrorism Act was drafted, reviewed, and promulgated in record time. More than 180 pages long, the statute received royal assent in December 2001. It included measures:

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• Defining and designating “entities” with terrorist affiliations; • Making it an offense to participate knowingly in, contribute to, or facilitate the activities of a terrorist group; • Making it a crime to collect knowingly or to give funds in order to carry out terrorism; and • Giving law enforcement and national security agencies new investigative tools. The proposed legislation sparked heated public debate and warnings of infringements on individual rights, unnecessary new police powers, and ethnic profiling. As law professor Kent Roach has noted, what made the opposition “more vibrant and somewhat more effective than the usual opposition to expansions of the criminal law were the contributions of various groups in civil society which were able to put a human face on those who might be harmed by the broad scope of the proposed law.” 59 Opponents included unions, aboriginal groups, Arab Canadians, Muslim Canadians, and the refugee community. Provisions for preventive detention and investigative hearings drew the loudest criticism, even following confirmation that these powers had not been used in the first four years of their existence. Despite the statute’s title, the Anti-terrorism Act contained many provisions not exclusively related to enhancing Canada’s counterterrorism performance. Little attention was initially given to those provisions that modernized the Official Secrets Act and replaced it with the Security of Information Act, provided Canada’s signals intelligence agency with a statutory mandate for the first time, and set out procedures for protecting national security information during court proceedings. It was not until January 2004 that public attention in Canada turned to the provisions of the new Security of Information Act, the successor to the outdated Official Secrets Act. Searches of the home and office of a journalist who had based some of her reporting on the Maher Arar case on leaks from “security officials” generated widespread calls for review.60 The former justice minister referred the matter to the parliamentary committees conducting three-year reviews of the Anti-terrorism Act. The work of these committees was suspended in November 2005 when a federal election was called. A new Immigration and Refugee Protection Act came into effect in June 2002. While wide-ranging in its scope, the statute was treated as part of Canada’s Anti-Terrorism Plan because of provisions for dealing with persons who pose security threats (including quicker removal from Canada and denial of access to the refugee determination process). The 2004 National Security Policy document identified the reform of Canada’s refugee determination system as a priority. One year later, the government

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reported that new visa requirements and other reforms had generated positive results.61 The most controversial security provisions of Canada’s immigration legislation are those providing a “security certificate” process to remove noncitizens from the country. This process has been in place for more than 20 years and has been used 27 times since 1991. While only five security certificates have been issued since 11 September 2001, they have generated widespread concerns about the secrecy of the process, the conditions of detention, and the risks associated with removing individuals to certain countries.62 Jim Judd, the CSIS director, acknowledged these concerns in October 2005 but added that he had yet to see “a viable alternative to the current system.”63 The pace of legislative change continued through 2005, with royal assent to a new Public Safety Act in May 2004, release of a consultation paper on modernization of the Emergency Preparedness Act in July 2005, introduction of a bill to establish a National Security Committee of Parliamentarians in November 2005, and the appointment of an external panel in the same month to review the provisions and operation of the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority Act. Budgetary Aspects The government advanced the tabling of its annual budget in 2001 in recognition of the need to inject new funds into Canada’s security programs and agencies. This was the country’s first security-oriented budget, with CA$7.7 billion allocated over five years for improved or new programs in five areas: • Air security (CA$2.2 billion); • Intelligence and frontline investigations, marine security, and coordination among police, intelligence, and national security agencies (CA$1.6 billion); • Critical infrastructure protection, emergency preparedness, and military counterterrorism capacity (CA$1.6 billion); • Border security (CA$1.2 billion); and • Screening of entrants to Canada (CA$1 billion). The security orientation of the 2001 budget and the size of the investments were remarkable, considering the absence of a national dialog and the little discernible political interest in security in the period between the Cold War and 11 September 2001. As scholar Reg Whitaker put it, the budget decisions displayed “the powerful impact of 9/11, either directly or via the perceived indirect impact through new U.S. actions harmful to Canadian economic security.”64

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Additional counterterrorism funding has been committed each year since 2001, including CA$1 billion (over five years) in the 2005 federal budget for marine transportation security, cargo security, border security, emergency management initiatives, and security at Canadian diplomatic missions abroad. That brought to more than CA$9.5 billion the federal government’s total additional investments in national security since the terrorist attacks of 2001. Machinery of Government One of the most remarkable features of the immediate Canadian government response to the 11 September 2001 attacks was the absence of structural change or reorganization. The only significant change was the creation in April 2002 of a new agency to conduct preboarding screening at major airports in Canada. The most dramatic government restructuring came more than two years after the attacks, when the new prime minister altered the longstanding assignment of security responsibilities in his office, as well as in the cabinet, the Parliament, and the public service. The issuance of the National Security Policy in 2004 included more government restructuring, including the creation of a new public health agency and an integrated threat assessment center. Law Enforcement and Intelligence The departments and agencies of Canada’s security and intelligence community were the principal beneficiaries of the legislative and budgetary attention following 11 September 2001. All received substantial multiyear injections of new money. For example, CSIS received a 32 percent increase over five years, the biggest jump since the agency’s inception in 1984.65 Canada’s financial intelligence agency saw its mandate expanded from a narrow organized crime focus to include analysis of suspicious financial transactions believed to be associated with terrorist activities,66 and the Canadian signals intelligence agency received significant new funding in recognition of its new counterterrorism focus. The post-9/11 environment was also marked by the increased attention given to information sharing among police and intelligence agencies and by the need to overcome challenges posed by multiple data systems (including many designed before the advent of conventional networking), and statutory limitations on sharing certain classes of information, especially personal information.67 Canada remains the only G8 nation without a stand-alone foreign intelligence service along the lines of the US Central Intelligence Agency or the British Secret Intelligence Service. Since 11 September 2001, some politi-

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cians (including a former minister of national defense) and independent bodies have called on the government to fill this gap.68 At the same time, CSIS has acknowledged publicly that it is active operationally outside Canada, in accordance with its legislative mandate, although it has not divulged the nature or extent of its foreign investigations.69 The new Conservative Party government committed itself in its 2006 election campaign platform to create a Canadian foreign intelligence agency “to effectively gather intelligence overseas, independently counter threats before they reach Canada, and increase allied intelligence operations.”70 The Military The tenor of the public debate in Canada around military deployments and funding reached new levels of anxiety and urgency in 2000 and early 2001. Various think tanks and parliamentary committees called for more respect for Canada’s army, navy, and air force, and for major new investments. The promilitary lobby gained even more strength with the 2001 deployment of 3,000 Canadian military personnel to Afghanistan as part of the US-led coalition. Many expected that the December 2001 federal budget would be a vehicle for the Chrétien government to start injecting significant new funds into the military. The budget disappointed proponents of a bigger, stronger Canadian military, as it allocated funds only to those components with a clear counterterrorism mandate. One of the military units receiving new funding was Joint Task Force 2, the Canadian special operations force that played a key role in the Canadian deployment to Afghanistan—the team’s first major combat role outside Canada. In its 2005 budget, the federal government made the largest reinvestment in Canada’s military in more than 20 years, totaling approximately CA$13 billion. Shortly thereafter, the government issued the first defense policy statement in more than ten years.71 Citing 11 September 2001 and the altered security environment, both the investments and the policy statement established the defense of Canada as the top priority of the Canadian armed forces. Dramatic changes in Canada’s military command structure in 2005 included the creation of Canada Command, touted as “the cornerstone” of the military transformation.72 Development Assistance Increased concern about international terrorism has influenced the orientation of Canada’s official development assistance program, with postwar Afghanistan and Iraq now among the largest recipients of Canadian financial aid. Since January 2002, Afghanistan has been the single largest recipi-

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ent of Canadian bilateral aid. Current commitments will bring Canada’s total development assistance for Afghanistan to CA$616.5 million by 2009. In the case of Iraq, early in 2003 Canada joined in the international effort to provide humanitarian and reconstruction assistance with a total commitment of up to CA$300 million. In addition, Canada supports a G7led international debt-reduction program for Iraq. Iraq’s debt to Canada stands at approximately CA$750 million, owed entirely to the Canadian Wheat Board.73

Counterterrorism and International Cooperation Counterterrorism commitments figured prominently in Canada’s International Policy Statement in 2005—the first major foreign policy revision in more than ten years. The federal government vowed to increase its assistance to states seeking help to fight terrorism, to support the resolution of regional disputes that could be exploited by terrorists, and to use public diplomacy to build alliances with political moderates in societies threatened by extremism.74 Canada belongs to more than 50 multilateral organizations, many of which were actively pursuing counterterrorism agendas before 11 September 2001. Canada has also signed and ratified all 12 international conventions that address specific terrorist acts. Canadian intelligence agencies derive enormous benefits from a longstanding alliance with their US, Australian, and British counterparts. This so-called AUSCANUKUS partnership is among the most resilient and productive international partnerships at the government level.75 Bilateral agreements and cooperation have always been cornerstones of Canada’s international efforts to curb terrorism. Canadian police, immigration, intelligence, and customs agencies sought out partners around the globe throughout the 1980s and 1990s in order to identify and prevent terrorists from entering Canada. CSIS, for example, has reported that it has cooperation agreements with about 230 agencies in 130 countries.76 The Canada-US counterterrorism partnership is the most comprehensive and productive of Canada’s bilateral relationships. Since 2001, Canada and the United States have reconfirmed their shared commitment to security by signing a bilateral Smart Border Action Plan and, with Mexico, the Security and Prosperity Partnership. All major agencies in the Canadian security community have posted officers to the Canadian embassy in Washington, D.C., and several have additional staff working directly with the US Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, and other US government entities.

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Conclusion The events of 11 September 2001 galvanized political and policy attention in Canada and highlighted the threat of international terrorism as perpetuated by those affiliated with the Al-Qaida ideology. Starting in 2001 and continuing to the present, successive Canadian governments have implemented dramatic and extensive changes across the board—in policy, legislation, resources, programs, and structures. The result is a distinctly Canadian approach to national security—an approach that is not terrorism-centric, but rather takes into account the full range of serious threats and hazards facing the country. Canada has a full counterterrorism agenda through 2006 at least. Two parliamentary reviews of the Anti-terrorism Act that were interrupted by a federal election resumed early in the year. The commission of inquiry into the activities of Canadian authorities in the Maher Arar matter will complete its report, as will the advisory panel reviewing the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority Act. A new inquiry into the 1985 terrorist bombing of Air India Flight 182 will hold public hearings. The counterterrorism relationship with the United States is expected to continue to preoccupy Canadian authorities. Agency-to-agency cooperation will continue to deepen, with the implementation of measures set out in the action plans associated with the Smart Border agenda and the Security and Prosperity Partnership, and with a growing number of joint operations involving CSIS, the RCMP, the Canadian Coast Guard, and other entities. Shifts in US counterterrorism policy, regulations, or practices will continue to be felt first in Canada, requiring constant vigilance and close personal contacts between Canadian political and public service officials and their US counterparts. An overarching concern is Canada’s counterterrorism credibility south of the border. New, more aggressive approaches may be required to counter the persistent perceptions that Canada is soft on terrorists and that some of the 11 September 2001 hijackers originated in Canada. The impact of security measures on individual rights and privacy will continue to generate considerable attention in 2006 and beyond as a result of judicial reviews of security certificate cases, the publication of the Arar inquiry report, and the ongoing parliamentary examination of the Anti-terrorism Act. At a more general level, the impact of counterterrorism activities on cohesion within Canada’s multicultural society may come under increased scrutiny, in light of reports of radicalization within many of Europe’s immigrant communities. Finally, the new Conservative Party government will have the opportunity to put its own mark on Canada’s counterterrorism policy, programs, and structural arrangements. In this environment, even in the absence of attacks

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or specific threats affecting Canada, it seems highly unlikely that security issues will return to the level of obscurity that characterized the period between the end of the Cold War and 11 September 2001.

Notes 1. Conservative Party of Canada, Stand up for Canada, Election Platform, January 2006, 26. 2. John Ibbitson, “While Canada Slept,” Globe and Mail, 3 May 2003; Lester B. Pearson was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1957 for his role at the UN in resolving the Suez Crisis. See the Nobel Foundation, http://nobelprize.org/. 3. Canadian Embassy, Washington, DC, “United States–Canada: The World’s Largest Trading Relationship,” April 2004, http://www.dfait-maeci.gc.ca/canam/washington/trade_and_investment/wltr-en.asp. 4. For background on Canada’s foreign and security policy, see Lloyd Axworthy, Navigating a New World—Canada’s Global Future (Toronto: Vintage Canada, 2004); Elinor C. Sloan, Security and Defence in the Terrorist Era (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2005); and Jennifer Welsh, At Home in the World: Canada’s Global Vision for the Twenty-first Century (Toronto: HarperCollins, 2004). 5. Wesley Wark, “Martin’s New Security Agenda,” Globe and Mail, 18 December 2003. 6. Canadian Security Intelligence Service, 2000 Public Report, 17. 7. For background on the Air India bombing, see Air India Secretariat, Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness Canada, Lessons to Be Learned (November 2005); and Kim Bolan, Loss of Faith: How the Air-India Bombers Got Away with Murder (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 2005). 8. Statistics Canada, 2001 Census; Citizenship and Immigration Canada, The Monitor (Spring 2003). 9. Canadian Security Intelligence Service, International Terrorism: The Threat to Canada, Report No. 2000/04, 3 May 2000, 2, http://www.csisscrs.gc.ca/en/publications/perspectives/200004.asp. 10. Canadian Security Intelligence Service, 2000 Public Report, 6. 11. For examples of criticism of Canada’s counterterrorism efforts, see Richard Clarke, Against All Enemies: Inside America’s War on Terror (New York: Free Press, 2004), 211–220; and Public Broadcasting Service, “Is Canada a Safe Haven for Terrorists?” Frontline, October 2001, http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/ shows/trail/etc/canada.html. 12. Reg Whitaker, “More or Less Than Meets the Eye? The New National Security Agenda,” in G. Bruce Doern, ed., How Ottawa Spends, 2003–2004: Regime Change and Policy Shift (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 2003), 45. 13. Prime Minister of Canada, “A New Approach,” news release, 12 December 2003. 14. Chris Baker, “Canada After September 11th: A Public Opinion Perspective.” Conference presentation, Robarts Centre for Canadian Studies, Toronto, 17 June 2002, http://www.yorku.ca/robarts/projects/canada-watch/. 15. The Canada Institute, One Issue, Two Voices: Threat Perceptions in the United States and Canada (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars, 2005), 12.

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16. Ibid. 17. Ibid., 10–19. 18. For examples of reporting on alleged Canadian links to 11 September 2001, see Karen Gullo, “Government Investigation Focuses on bin Laden; Police Check Whether Hijackers Entered from Canada,” Associated Press, 13 September 2001, http://www.s-t.com/daily/09-01/09-13-01/a02wn026.htm; and “Fifty Suspects in FBI Investigation,” BBC News, 13 September 2001, http://news.bbc.co.uk/ 1/hi/world/americas/1541079.stm. 19. Reid Morden, “Spies, Not Soothsayers,” Commentary 85, Canadian Security Intelligence Service, November 2003, 7. 20. Wendy Dobson, Shaping the Future of the North American Economic Space (Toronto: C. D. Howe Institute, 2002). 21. Allan Gotlieb, “A Grand Bargain with the US,” National Post, 5 March 2003. 22. Yves L. Fortier, “Un Québecois Canadien in the ROC’s Court,” 2002 Genest Lecture, Toronto: York University, 23 January 2002. 23. Shawn McCarthy, “Pulled Ever Deeper into US Orbit,” Globe and Mail, 8 January 2002. 24. Canada, Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, Smart Border Declaration, 12 December 2001. 25. Prime Minister of Canada, “Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America,” news release, 23 March 2005. 26. Commission of Inquiry into the Actions of Canadian Officials in Relation to Maher Arar, http://www.ararcommission.ca/. 27. Government of Canada, “Rebuilding Afghanistan,” background document, December 2005, http://www.canada-afghanistan.gc.ca/. 28. Morris Rosenberg, “An Effective Canadian Legal Framework.” Presentation, Canadian Association for Security and Intelligence Studies, Ottawa, 26 September 2002. 29. Department of Canadian Heritage, Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, 1982. 30. Stewart Bell, Cold Terror: How Canada Nurtures and Exports Terrorism Around the World (Toronto: John Wiley & Sons, 2004), xiii. 31. Ibid.; see also Rohan Gunaratna, “Sri Lanka: Feeding the Tamil Tigers,” in Karen Ballentine and Jack Sherman, eds., The Political Economy of Armed Conflict: Beyond Greed and Grievance (Boulder: International Peace Academy, 2003), 202–214. 32. Kent Roach, September 11: Consequences for Canada (Montreal: McGillQueen’s University Press, 2003). 33. Morden, “Spies, Not Soothsayers,” 6. 34. Ibid. 35. British Columbia Civil Liberties Association, undated five-page submission of the Committee of Organizations with Intervenor Status at the Arar Inquiry, http://www.bccla.org/temp/050509leaflet.pdf. 36. DeNeen L. Brown, “Canadians’ Culture of Tolerance Is Tested by Cases Against Arabs,” Washington Post, 17 December 2003. 37. Commission of Inquiry into the Actions of Canadian Officials in Relation to Maher Arar, “The Arar Commission Has Completed 127 Days of Testimony and Made Public Thousands of Formerly Secret Government Documents Relating to the Arar Affair,” news release, 14 September 2005. 38. Ward Elcock, presentation, Vancouver Board of Trade, Vancouver, 7 November 2002, 3, http://www.csis-scrs.gc.ca.

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39. Jim Judd, presentation, House of Commons Subcommittee on Public Safety and National Security, Ottawa, 22 February 2005, http://www.csis-scrs.gc.ca. 40. Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), 2002 Public Report, 5. 41. Elcock, Vancouver Board of Trade, 3. 42. Michael Ignatieff, “Time to Walk the Walk,” National Post, 14 February 2003. 43. Judd, House of Commons Subcommittee. 44. Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness Canada, “Currently Listed Entities,” background document, 26 January 2006, http://www.psepc-sppcc. gc.ca/prg/ns/le/cle-en.asp. 45. Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, “Canadians Should Brace for Transit Attacks, McLellan Warns,” 11 July 2005, www.cbc.ca. 46. Senate of Canada, Canada’s Coastlines: The Longest Under-Defended Borders in the World, Report of the Standing Senate Committee on National Security and Defence, October 2003, 7. 47. Wesley Wark, “Martin’s New Security Agenda: Feeling Safe Yet?” Globe and Mail, 18 December 2003. 48. Canada, Privy Council Office, Securing an Open Society: Canada’s National Security Policy, April 2004. 49. Office of the Auditor General of Canada, Report of the Auditor General of Canada to the House of Commons: Chapter 2, National Security in Canada, April 2005, 37. 50. Jeff Sallot, “Mistaking Brawn for Brains,” Globe and Mail, 26 December 2003. 51. Air India Secretariat, Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness Canada, Lessons to Be Learned, November 2005, 17. 52. Canadian Intergovernmental Conference Secretariat, “Canada–United States Relations,” news release, Forty-fourth Annual Premiers’ Conference, July 2003. 53. Shawn McCarthy, “PM Says US Attitude Helped Fuel Sept. 11,” Globe and Mail, 12 September 2002. 54. Canada, Department of National Defence, “Canada Command,” news release, 28 June 2005, http://www.forces.gc.ca. 55. Government of Canada, Securing an Open Society: One Year Later, April 2005. 56. Wesley Wark, “Martin’s New Security Agenda,” Globe and Mail, 18 December 2003. 57. Reg Whitaker, “Made in Canada? The New Public Safety Paradigm,” in How Ottawa Spends, 2005–2006, 90, 92. 58. Conservative Party of Canada, Stand Up for Canada. 59. Roach, September 11, 58. 60. Juliet O’Neill, “Canada’s Dossier on Maher Arar,” Ottawa Citizen, 8 November 2003. 61. Government of Canada, Securing an Open Society: One Year Later, 44. 62. Department of Justice Canada, joint statement by the Honourable Anne McLellan and the Honourable Irwin Cotler to the Senate Special Committee on the Anti-terrorism Act and the House of Commons Subcommittee on Public Safety and National Security, Ottawa, 14 November 2005. 63. Jim Judd, presentation, Senate Special Committee on Anti-terrorism Act, Ottawa, 31 October 2005. 64. Whitaker, “More or Less Than Meets the Eye?” 48.

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65. Peter Boehm, speaking notes, Strategies for Public Safety Transformation conference, Bal Harbor, FL, 10 March 2003, 3. 66. Department of Finance Canada, “FINTRAC Receives Increased Funding to Combat Terrorist Financing,” news release, 25 October 2001. 67. Boehm, speaking notes, 3. 68. Canadian Defence and Foreign Affairs Institute, In the National Interest: Canadian Foreign Policy in an Insecure World, 2003, 36, http://www.cdfai.org/. 69. Ward Elcock, presentation, Canadian Association for Security and Intelligence Studies Conference, Vancouver, 16 October 2003. 70. Conservative Party of Canada, Stand Up for Canada, 26. 71. Government of Canada, Canada’s International Policy Statement: A Role of Pride and Influence in the World: Defence, 2005. 72. Canada, National Defence, “Canada Command.” 73. Canadian International Development Agency, “Iraq Overview,” http://www.acdi-cida.gc.ca/iraq. 74. Government of Canada, Canada’s International Policy Statement, 2005. 75. For an account of the AUSCANUKUS partnership, see Jeffrey T. Richelson and Desmond Ball, The Ties That Bind: Intelligence Cooperation Between the United Kingdom, the United States of America, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand (New York: Routledge, 1990). 76. CSIS, 2002 Public Report, 8.

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6 US Counterterrorism Policy WILLIAM ROSENAU

THE TERM GLOBAL WAR ON TERRORISM (GWOT) IS IN FACT A MISNOMER, AS many analysts have observed, since terrorism is after all merely a tactic employed by various nonstate actors (and, arguably, by states themselves).1 In addition, the GWOT is not truly global, since some of the world’s most capable and ruthless groups, such as the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, have received relatively little of Washington’s attention. Finally, the use of the term “war” to describe the Bush administration’s counterterrorism campaign connotes a largely military effort and thus fails to capture the full complexity of the actions of the United States and its international partners since 11 September 2001. The administration has employed the term GWOT for two purposes. The first is hortatory and inspirational—it is meant to arouse the US public and signal the US government’s commitment to defeating a formidable and cruel foe. As President George Bush declared in February 2005, “We remain a nation at war. The war reached our shores on September the 11th, 2001, when our nation awoke to a sudden attack. Like generations before us, we have accepted new responsibilities, and we will confront these dangers with firm resolve.”2 The second reason is essentially negative. By describing the adversary in the most general of terms, the administration clearly hopes to deflect the charge that the United States and its allies are waging war against Islam—a favorite trope of Osama bin Laden and his fellow jihadistsalafists.3 In reality, of course, the GWOT is not a war on terrorism or Islam, nor is it a “global war on things that annoy us,” as some administration critics have charged. 4 Rather, it is a campaign against Al-Qaida. 5 Al-Qaida is something of a contested concept, having been described variously as a “franchise,” a “multinational network,” a “global insurgency,” a “clearinghouse,” and a “secret international brotherhood.”6 That said, there is a rough consensus among terrorism analysts that Al-Qaida is essentially analytical 133

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shorthand for describing an armed political movement composed of three circles: a hardcore remnant made of bin Laden and his inner circle, including his purported “second-in-command,” Ayman al-Zawahiri; affiliated regional groups, such as Gema’ah Islamiyah (GI) in Southeast Asia, as well as groups with more tenuous ties to bin Laden, such as the Chechen insurgents; and unaffiliated, self-generating jihadist cells, such as those that carried out terrorist attacks in London in July 2005, in Madrid in March 2004, and in Casablanca in May 2003.7 Although the GWOT is in reality a struggle against Al-Qaida rather than a campaign against terrorism more generally, this is not to suggest that the challenge is anything less than formidable. Combating Al-Qaida has become the central organizing principle of US national security policy,8 and it is likely to remain so for the foreseeable future. The invasion of Iraq in March 2003, misconceptualized by the administration as an exercise in counterterrorism (due in part to supposed links between the Saddam Hussein regime and Al-Qaida), has turned out to be a form of counterterrorism after all. Both home-grown and foreign jihadists have acquired valuable operational skills fighting coalition forces in Iraq, much as the indigenous mujahideen and “Afghan Arabs” did in the struggle against the Soviet army in Afghanistan during the 1980s. In Iraq, the so-called bleed-out problem may be considerable if these newly professionalized fighters—with extensive urban guerrilla warfare experience, unlike their predecessors in Afghanistan—find their way out of Iraq and build networks in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and elsewhere.9 The campaign to defeat or even contain AlQaida will remain a highly demanding one and will share many of the features of the Cold War. There are clear differences, of course. Al-Qaida, unlike the Soviet Union, is obviously not a nation-state, nor does it pose an existential threat to the United States in the way Moscow did, armed as it was with tens of thousands of nuclear weapons. But as during the Cold War, the struggle will be a protracted one, waged against a globally distributed, ideologically motivated adversary, in which all of the instruments of US national power are employed.10 Indeed, the Bush administration has also characterized the GWOT as the “Long War.”11 It goes without saying that it is impossible to capture within a single chapter the totality of US counterterrorism policy, given the wide-ranging nature of the US campaign, the variety and size of its components, and the sheer scale of the US effort. Since 11 September 2001, millions of words (and perhaps more) have been written on the topic, resulting in a mountain of scholarly, quasi-scholarly, journalistic, and polemical literature. The range of potentially relevant issues is staggering, for example, torture and other forms of prisoner abuse, port security, the role of the UN, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, and nuclear proliferation, to name just a few. This chapter has relatively modest ambitions. It will consider the origins,

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development, and central features of US policy, and along the way, touch on such topics as the domestic US debate over the GWOT/Long War, international cooperation, and the war in Iraq. Again, it should be noted that a comprehensive assessment is beyond the scope of this chapter, which will instead focus on a smaller and more manageable set of topics. As a result, important related issues, such as the counterterrorism role of NATO in Afghanistan and elsewhere,12 and US homeland security—the subject of immense post-9/11 attention and action, including the creation of a new Department of Homeland Security (DHS)—will be mentioned only in passing.13

The Evolution of US Policy Before 11 September 2001 Combating international terrorism became an element of US national security policy during the early 1970s, largely in response to a series of spectacular terrorist incidents, particularly the murder of 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympic games in Munich. During the Nixon and Ford administrations, terrorism was conceptualized as a law enforcement problem best tackled through enhanced international cooperation among police agencies and the strengthening of institutions like the International Criminal Police Organization (Interpol). Only during the administration of Ronald Reagan, who viewed international terrorism as an instrument of Soviet statecraft— much as the Kennedy administration had seen insurgency as an instrument of Moscow’s security policy—did combating terrorism become an urgent presidential priority. High-level interest in terrorism waxed and waned during the Carter and first Bush administrations, with presidential-level attention reaching its nadir in the years immediately following the end of the Cold War.14 The Clinton administration perceived the Al-Qaida challenge as a serious but not grave threat to the United States. Strikes by Islamist terrorists against US interests began in December 1992, with the bombing of a hotel in Aden, Yemen, frequented by US military personnel supporting Operation Restore Hope in Somalia. The first attack on the World Trade Center in February 1993 did comparatively little damage, although it marked the first time that foreign terrorists had carried out a major bombing on US soil. Yet for most US policymakers, international terrorism was something that happened elsewhere, in places like Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan. Terrorists were not prevented from fundraising or recruiting on US soil in any serious way, nor was there a real effort to keep suspected terrorists from entering US territory.15 Omar Abdul Rahman (and other key members of the growing jihadist internationale), the sinister “Blind Shaikh” who masterminded a thwarted plot to attack the United Nations and other New

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York landmarks, easily obtained a US visa despite a long history of terrorist activity in his native Egypt. Ayman al-Zawahiri found it similarly easy to enter the United States, reportedly to raise funds for Afghan “widows and orphans.”16 This open-door policy extended to non-Muslim terrorists as well. Despite the “special relationship” between Washington and London, not a single individual associated with the Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA) was extradited from the United States to Britain during the so-called Irish Troubles. 17 It should be noted, however, that before 11 September 2001, a laissez-faire attitude toward the presence of terrorists and their supporters was shared by other Western democracies. During the 1980s, the French government took a similar hands-off approach, allowing terrorists to operate on French territory, provided they did not carry out attacks within the country or against French interests overseas.18 Despite evidence that international terrorism was becoming “deterritorialized,” US counterterrorism policy continued to focus heavily on ending sponsorship of terrorism by states like Iran and Syria.19 Terrorism analysts, both inside and outside of government, typically defined the threat in familiar Cold War terms, in which international terrorists operated as proxies for hostile governments, who employed highly organized, hierarchical groups as instruments of national policy.20 Through the use of tools like economic sanctions, travel restrictions, diplomacy, and criminal prosecutions, the US government sought to break the nexus between international terrorists and their state patrons.21 A series of spectacular incidents during the mid-1990s, including Aum Shinrikyo’s nerve agent attack in the Tokyo subway system in 1995 and the 1996 bombing of the US Air Force’s Khobar Towers barracks in Saudi Arabia (although neither was the work of Al-Qaida), generated new official interest in the international terrorist threat. 22 The clumsily named AntiTerrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 signaled a new US commitment to combating international terrorism.23 With the new legislation, the US government could seize the assets of groups designated by the secretary of state as foreign terrorist organizations (FTOs), deny visas to members of FTOs, and prosecute individuals providing “material support” to designated groups.24 Osama bin Laden’s fatwa of February 1998, in which he announced that “the ruling to kill the Americans and their allies—civilians and military—is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it,”25 set off alarm bells among counterterrorism advisers on the National Security Council (NSC).26 Reflecting this new concern, the CIA and the FBI began devoting more operational and analytical resources to identifying, monitoring, and disrupting transnational Islamist terrorists, although as late as the summer of 1998, the CIA’s Counterterrorist Center (CTC) had only one analyst tracking Al-Qaida on a full-time basis.27

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The near-simultaneous bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in August 1998 convinced the rest of the administration that AlQaida had become a major security problem for the United States. Following the attacks, then–director of central intelligence George Tenet famously “declared war” on Al-Qaida, announcing to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in February 2001 that “bin Laden and his global network of lieutenants and associates remain the most immediate and serious threat,” as demonstrated by the East Africa bombings and the terrorist plots thwarted at the turn of the millennium.28 Shortly after the embassy attacks, Al-Qaida was for the first time designated an FTO. For its part, the FBI declared counterterrorism a “Tier One” priority, increased the number of legal attachés posted abroad, added bin Laden to its “Ten Most Wanted List,” and created a dedicated unit within the bureau to track bin Laden. By the end of 2000, departments and agencies across the US government were spending an estimated US$7 billion per annum to combat terrorism at home and abroad.29 Although the Clinton administration responded to the East Africa bombings with cruise missile attacks on terrorist training camps in Afghanistan, the use of military force was a small part of the overall US response to Al-Qaida. According to two former NSC officials, senior US military officers, including the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, were unwilling to “put boots on the ground” in Afghanistan. 30 However, bin Laden and his inner circle reportedly remained a military target for the United States. According to Clinton’s national security adviser, Samuel R. Berger, the United States kept submarines loaded with cruise missiles on “perpetual deployment” in the Arabian Sea, but never obtained sufficiently timely intelligence on bin Laden’s whereabouts to launch an attack.31 Counterterrorism was a priority for the Clinton administration, to be sure. The president spoke out frequently on the subject, most notably in the case of chemical, biological, and nuclear terrorism.32 But it was only one of many priorities that competed for the attention of senior officials, and the full range of US power was never applied against Al-Qaida.33 The overall US response was desultory and uncommitted. Afghanistan under the Taliban became the world’s first “terrorist-sponsored state,” serving as a redoubt for bin Laden and his circle and as a factory for producing international jihadists as well as guerrillas for the Taliban war against the Northern Alliance. However, law enforcement, and specifically the practice of apprehending terrorists and bringing them to trial, remained Washington’s preferred instrument for combating Al-Qaida. The results were generally unimpressive. One former Reagan administration official acidly described the Clinton administration’s law-enforcement approach that followed the August 1998 Al-Qaida bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania: “When it came to legal action . . . we pulled out the stops. We

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eventually indicted bin Laden on 224 counts of murder. Characteristically, he failed to show up for his trial.”34 Other instruments of national power, such as covert operations and political warfare, were seldom used, and when they were, they had little effect.35 Continuity rather than dramatic change marked the Bush administration’s initial response to the Al-Qaida threat.36 China and national missile defense were the new administration’s most pressing national security priorities.37 The new president did not ignore international terrorism, but his public remarks on the subject were typically made in the context of his administration’s broader arguments in favor of missile defense.38 The routine, low-profile, and relatively modest counterterrorism activities that the US government had engaged in for years—and in some cases, decades— continued. These actions included bilateral and multilateral diplomacy, intelligence cooperation with foreign services, extraditions and “extraordinary renditions” of terrorist suspects, 39 and the State Department’s Antiterrorism Assistance (ATA) program, which since 1983 had trained foreign police and security forces in techniques for preventing and responding to terrorism.40 By the summer of 2001 counterterrorism officials were increasingly convinced that a major attack, probably abroad, was imminent. During the first half of the year, the administration developed a new strategic plan for countering Al-Qaida. Rather than fight Al-Qaida cell by cell in a piecemeal fashion, the new goal was the outright destruction of the group.41 The strategy, according to one authoritative press account, placed far greater emphasis on the use of US military force to eliminate Afghanistan as a sanctuary. As debated by the national security “principals” on 4 September, the plan called for “phased escalation” of pressure that would present the Taliban leadership with the choice of either expelling Al-Qaida or facing the destruction of their regime.42 However, no decisions were taken at the meeting beyond directing the Defense Department and CIA to develop options for putting pressure on the Taliban. As of 11 September, these options had not reached the president’s desk.43

Policy After 11 September 2001 In many important respects, US counterterrorism strategy today is a continuation of the policy pursued by US governments throughout the 1980s and 1990s. Key elements of national power—military, political, economic, intelligence, and law enforcement—are being brought to bear in a global campaign to deny international terrorists safe haven, to disrupt their networks, and to apprehend their members. However, the Bush administration policy contains two important new features. The first is a marked sense of urgency,

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symbolized by the president’s fervent commitment to combating terrorism. The second is a declared policy of preemption. Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan marked the emergence of preemption as a tool for disrupting or destroying terrorist entities and preventing them from carrying out future attacks. Operation Iraqi Freedom, launched in March 2003, was justified in part as a campaign to break the supposed nexus between the regime of Saddam Hussein and international terrorists intent on acquiring weapons of mass destruction. As President Bush declared in March 2004, “we have pursued a clear strategy: We are taking the offensive against the terrorists abroad.” What are the contours of the US counterterrorism policy? Although released with no public fanfare, the Bush administration’s National Strategy for Combating Terrorism, 44 taken together with documents like The National Security Strategy of the United States of America, 45 the Quadrennial Defense Review Report, and other public pronouncements by senior government officials, offer a consistent set of ideas, plans, and programs for fighting international terrorism. In essence, the administration is carrying out a campaign of what it terms “continuous action against terrorist groups, the cumulative effect of which will initially disrupt, over time degrade, and ultimately destroy the terrorist organizations.” 46 In broad terms, components of that approach include the following: • Denying terrorists access to money, sanctuary, weapons, and other resources, including material that can be used to fabricate WMDs; • Cooperating with willing and able states, assisting willing but weak states, pressuring reluctant states, and compelling uncooperative states; • Diminishing poverty and other conditions that terrorists can exploit; • Delegitimizing terrorism as a tool of statecraft and as an instrument of nonstate actors; and • Defending the US homeland through improved border control, intelligence, and other security measures. To achieve these sub-goals, the United States employs a variety of military and nonmilitary instruments. Although some of these are unilateral in nature—according to the White House, the United States “will not hesitate to act alone” when necessary47—international cooperation remains a cornerstone of US policy. As powerful as the United States is, it simply lacks the resources to defeat the terrorist threat in all its dimensions. Washington necessarily relies on allies to serve as its frontline of defense, and so it must cooperate with a variety of governments—some of them less savory than others—to address the terrorist challenge. Major tools in the US counterterrorism repertoire are summarized as follows:

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• Military: As articulated by the administration, the military component includes combat operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. A less visible component of these operations is the use of Special Operations Forces (SOF) in “direct action” missions to hunt down and capture or kill Al-Qaida operatives, remnants of the Taliban and Ba’ath regimes, foreign jihadists, and other adversaries. Less dramatically, SOF personnel are deployed around the world on missions intended to strengthen the counterterrorism, border-control, and internal security capabilities of friendly governments. The United States, as noted in the Quadrennial Defense Review Report, “must often take an indirect approach, building up and working with others,” and so US military personnel are deployed on counterterrorism training and assistance missions from the Sahara to the Philippines.48 • Intelligence: In addition to increasing the US intelligence budget from a reported US$30 to US$40 billion a year (albeit not all for counterterrorism purposes), and greatly expanding the cadre of analysts and case officers working for the intelligence services, the US intelligence community is strengthening its ties with foreign intelligence services. According to the State Department, “the expansion of intelligence sharing and cooperation among nations since September 11 is preventing attacks, saving lives, and exposing the hiding places of terrorists.”49 A particularly notable example of intelligence cooperation, which belies the supposed schism between the United States and “old Europe,” is “Alliance Base,” which according to press accounts is a Paris-based intelligence center from which US and European officers carry out joint counterterrorism operations.50 • Law enforcement: The Bush administration, like its predecessors, is attempting to build cooperative relationships with foreign police forces through increased collaboration in the areas of information sharing, training, and investigative techniques. Through efforts like the ATA program, the United States helps friendly governments develop forensic skills, protect government leaders, and prepare for biological and chemical attacks. US law enforcement agencies have also carried out joint investigations with foreign police forces. Following the October 2002 Bali bombing, for example, the FBI and police services from Indonesia, Australia, Germany, and other nations conducted a joint investigation that led to 36 arrests and 33 convictions.51 • Financing: Preventing terrorists and their supporters from raising funds and transferring capital is a cornerstone of US counterterrorism policy. Within the US government, organizations such as the Treasury Department’s Foreign Terrorist Asset Tracking Center identify target groups, determine their fundraising sources and meth-

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ods, and provide information to police agencies. Under Executive Order 13224, the US government has blocked the assets of charities linked to Al-Qaida, such as the Benevolence International Foundation.52 Finally, the United States has worked with international bodies such as the UN, the EU, the G8, and the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) group to isolate and disrupt sources of terrorist financing. • Public diplomacy: Through international radio and television broadcasts, academic and professional exchanges, and the activities of public affairs officers at US embassies, the United States seeks to promote a favorable image of itself and its policies and to counter the beliefs of violent anti-Western Muslim extremists. According to the administration, these public diplomacy efforts, which “share and communicate America’s fundamental values,” will contribute to the broader US objective of “spreading the universal principle of human liberty.”53

Assessing Policy Implementation Measuring progress in the global counterterrorism campaign presents methodological challenges. For some politicians, journalists, and analysts, the fact that there have been no additional attacks on the scale of 11 September 2001 is an indicator of success—a nonfalsifiable proposition, and hence hard to embrace as a yardstick.54 As one congressional analyst warns, this method of assessment fails to take into account the heterogeneous nature of terrorist operations: “The often asymmetric, nonlinear nature of terrorist operations, frequently characterized by abrupt changes, increases the deadliness of the threat and necessitates measurements of progress that more accurately reflect this additional danger.”55 US policymakers have offered two other sets of evaluative criteria. The first is somewhat subjective, nonspecific, and emotive, and thus difficult to characterize as a rigorous analytical instrument. According to the National Strategy for Combating Terrorism, the United States will have achieved its objectives when it has “secure[d] a world in which our children can live free from fear and where the threat of terrorist attacks does not define our daily lives.”56 Similarly, a senior Pentagon official has asserted that victory will be won only when “terrorism as a threat to our way of life as a free and open society” is eliminated.57 The second metric is a rather crude tally of the number of arrests made, the amount of money seized, the total number of signatories to the 12 international conventions to terrorism, and so forth—what might be characterized as “body counts.”58 The body count approach is problematical for two

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reasons.59 First, the validity of the numbers themselves must be questioned. Tallying the precise amount of terrorist funds blocked or seized is at best a tricky task. More fundamentally, facts are dumb things—that is, they tell us nothing by themselves. When the State Department declares that the United States and its allies have seized or frozen some US$146 million in terroristrelated assets, this tells us nothing about the scope of the problem. 60 Put another way, is US$146 million a lot or a little with respect to terrorist financing? Even senior members of the administration, such as Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, have complained about the lack of unassailable tools for measuring progress in the campaign against Al-Qaida.61 If both the emotive and the body count yardsticks are inadequate, what might we use instead? A qualitative assessment of the campaign allows us to judge where it has succeeded and where it has not. As was mentioned earlier, a comprehensive assessment is beyond the scope of this chapter. The following sections will thus examine a limited but important set of four components in the overall campaign against Al-Qaida: military, intelligence and law enforcement, stanching terrorist financing, and public diplomacy and propaganda. The Military The first dramatic use of military power in the GWOT came in autumn 2001 during Operation Enduring Freedom, in which the Taliban regime was “taken down” by coalition air power working with special operations forces and indigenous guerrilla fighters. In Iraq, coalition combat power has been applied to literally devastating effect, for example, during Operation Al-Fajr (a.k.a. “Phantom Fury”) to retake the city of Falluja in November 2004.62 In the future, however, the direct use of US combat forces against terrorists is likely to be relatively rare, as Al-Qaida and the broader network of jihadist groups become increasingly deterritorialized and thus less vulnerable to what the US military calls “kinetic” countermeasures. As Al-Qaida increasingly assumes the characteristics of what some analysts have termed a “global insurgency,”63 providing counterinsurgency advice and training to the security forces of threatened countries will become a much more important mission for the US military.64 SOF are receiving more official attention than at any time since the early 1960s, when the Kennedy administration identified Army Special Forces (the Green Berets) as the military’s most important instrument for waging guerrilla warfare. The budget for the US Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) has nearly doubled since 2001. Special Operations Forces are scheduled to increase by 8,000 to a total of 60,000 in order to keep pace with the growing demands placed on Army Special Forces and other SOF units.65 But redirecting the US armed forces away from its traditional “big war” orientation will be a major challenge.

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Today in Iraq and Afghanistan, every service has begun to relearn the “lessons” of counterinsurgency that the military enthusiastically forgot with the end of the Cold War.66 Whether this interest will continue once the US military has disengaged from those two countries is open to question. “Foreign internal defense” or FID, as counterinsurgency is called within the US defense establishment, is a deeply unglamorous mission for mainstream military officers, and even within the US Army’s Special Forces, FID and related missions such as unconventional warfare have been neglected in the past decade in favor of more glamorous “direct-action” missions.67 Intelligence and Law Enforcement Although some policymakers and analysts have tried, it is impossible to deny that the events of 11 September 2001 represented a massive failure of intelligence. As was exhaustively and authoritatively documented in subsequent congressional and executive branch investigations, the intelligence community failed to “connect the dots” regarding the terrorist conspiracy. To be sure, in each of the years following the 1998 embassy bombings, the CIA had publicly warned about the danger to the United States posed by AlQaida. However, the intelligence community failed to uncover the specifics of the 11 September 2001 plot and take action to prevent the fatal aircraft hijackings. In broad terms, the most noteworthy security shortfalls before 11 September 2001 included the failure to share intelligence and law enforcement information in a timely fashion (attributed in part to the “Chinese wall” said to exist between criminal investigators and the intelligence community), the lack of attention given to the presence of militants within the United States, the failure to develop a coordinated plan to intercept international communications, and, more broadly, the chronic inability of intelligence personnel to read or speak relevant foreign languages and to penetrate terrorist cells.68 It is difficult for outsiders to assess the degree to which these matters have improved since 11 September 2001, given the understandable secrecy in which intelligence is shrouded. While no attacks on “hard” US targets such as embassies have taken place since 9/11, Al-Qaida has conducted a relentless campaign against “soft” targets in Indonesia, Turkey, Tunisia, Kenya, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Spain, Egypt, and the United Kingdom. There have been notable bright spots, however. Many of the efforts of the CTC to “disrupt terrorist networks and plots—partially enabled by its inhouse cadre—have been extraordinary successes,” according to the Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction (the so-called Silberman-Robb report). 69 International police and intelligence cooperation has helped neutralize AlQaida operatives throughout Southeast Asia, Western Europe, South Asia,

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and the Middle East. These operations have snared key Al-Qaida figures such as Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, described as the “mastermind” of the 11 September 2001 attacks; Abu Zubayda, a strategist and logistician; and Hambali, described in the press as Al-Qaida’s “senior operational planner” in Southeast Asia.70 In the immediate aftermath of 11 September 2001, Bush “unleashed” the CIA, reportedly giving its paramilitary Special Activities Division carte blanche to neutralize suspected Al-Qaida targets. This unleashing was demonstrated dramatically in the Yemeni hinterlands in November 2002, when a Hellfire missile fired from a CIA Predator drone killed its designated target.71 More broadly, under a program known as GST—reportedly the largest covert-action effort since the Cold War—the CIA established secret prisons, applied data mining to financial records, and worked closely with foreign “liaison” services to capture terrorist suspects.72 New structures have been created, such as the National Counter-Terrorism Center (NCTC), a multiagency body “responsible for analyzing and integrating foreign and domestic intelligence acquired from all US Government departments and agencies pertaining to terrorism,” according to the White House.73 The NCTC is overseen by the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), an intelligence “supremo” responsible for managing the country’s fractious intelligence community.74 It seems unlikely, however, that such reshuffling, and the adding of new bureaucratic layers, will do much to improve the performance of the intelligence community. The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (better known as the “9/11 Commission”) and other investigative bodies concluded correctly that the failure to “connect the dots” and other counterterrorism failures were systemic, reflecting an ossified and risk-averse culture that is likely to remain impervious to the actions of a remote intelligence “czar,” no matter how energetic and well intentioned that person may be. Within the CIA and the rest of the intelligence community, the biggest and most dangerous shortfall remains in the human intelligence (HUMINT) department, that is, the use of human sources (as opposed to electronic and other technical means) to gather information about terrorists. HUMINT is essential for developing a complete understanding of the terrorist threat, and while relatively inexpensive, it is time-consuming and dangerous, and US policymakers have traditionally preferred to invest in spy satellites, listening posts, and other electronic means and to rely on friendly intelligence services to provide information derived from human sources. One indicator of the relatively small commitment to US HUMINT collection abroad is the fact that, as of 2004, the CIA reportedly had as many case officers posted overseas— roughly 1,000—as the FBI had special agents in New York City alone.75 Although more resources are now reportedly being devoted to

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HUMINT, including a major effort to expand the clandestine service, rebuilding US capabilities is likely to be slow and painful. To be successful, this rebuilding will require dramatic changes in the CIA’s parochial and sclerotic security and personnel bureaucracy if the agency expects to recruit US citizens who can operate effectively in the souks, medinas, and madrassas of the Muslim world. But according to one former intelligence officer, a second-generation–American applicant of Middle Eastern descent, someone who might possess the needed language skills and ability to assimilate into societies to which the agency desperately needs access, is inevitably viewed less favorably than a white male candidate from the Midwest who lacks language skills or the personality traits to fit into a foreign culture. The stereotypical “full-fledged Americans” still appeal more to the agency, because of their perceived innate sense of patriotism and a strong willingness to serve.76

FBI Director Robert S. Mueller has launched an ambitious program to transform the bureau from a law-enforcement agency that in the past has downplayed its counterterrorist responsibilities into an organization that considers the prevention of terrorism its paramount duty.77 Yet developing a “culture of prevention” within the FBI is likely to take years if not decades, and media reports suggest that the bureau remains mired in a prosecutorial mindset.78 Rather than turn suspected terrorists into assets that can be used to supply additional information about terrorist plots, motivations, and methods of operations, the FBI continues to emphasize arrests and indictments, and, according to critics, the bureau continues to neglect intelligence analysis and other critical aspects of its counterterrorism role.79 The administration’s counterterrorism initiatives at home and abroad have sparked serious debate within the United States, particularly with respect to their impact on civil liberties. The renewal of the Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism (USA PATRIOT) Act of 2001, which inter alia expands the ability of law enforcement to conduct terrorism investigations through the use of “roving wiretaps” and other techniques, faced major bipartisan opposition within the Congress. 80 The treatment of detainees at Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere—including the question of how long they could be held without trial—has been a perennial concern to civil libertarians.81 Finally, press accounts in late 2005 that revealed that the NSA was conducting warrantless eavesdropping on electronic communications within the United States as part of a “special collection program” sparked a major public outcry reminiscent of the mid-1970s, when revelations about domestic spying abuses led to new restrictions on intelligence operations at home and abroad.82

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Financing The United States and its allies have enjoyed some important successes in their campaign to interdict and disrupt the financing of terrorist activities. Mainstream commercial banking is now subject to far greater scrutiny; formerly wide-open jurisdictions like the Bahamas, Liechtenstein, and the Cayman Islands have enacted legislation aimed at controlling elusive and shadowy “correspondence accounts”; and the use of “naming and shaming” by the nongovernmental Financial Action Task Force has exposed dubious banking practices. But while progress has been made in restricting the use of commercial banks by political violence groups, the informal banking system remains readily available to terrorists and their supporters. Al-Qaida also continues to rely on charities, wealthy individual donors, and criminal activities such as credit card fraud. Charities are a particularly intractable problem. Many organizations that support Al-Qaida also engage in legitimate humanitarian relief, making many governments reluctant to take action, fearing that doing so will offend religious sensibilities.83 Counterterrorism officials certainly need to do whatever they can to raise and reinforce hurdles for terrorists. At the same time, they need to recognize the ultimately intractable nature of the problem they face. Although some funds are required to recruit, organize, train, and equip terrorists, provide safe houses, and spread propaganda, terrorism is by its nature a lowcost enterprise. The marginal cost of an operation is frighteningly low. As bin Laden declared in October 2004, “Al-Qaida spent US$500,000 on the event [the 9/11 attacks] while America lost in the event and its subsequent effects more than US$500 billion; that is to say that each of Al-Qaida’s dollars defeated one million American dollars, thanks to Allah’s grace.”84 The increasingly self-financing nature of Al-Qaida and the broader jihadist movement has advantages and disadvantages for the terrorist. Purely local fundraising operations are below the radar of authorities looking to interdict international financial transactions, and are thus in some respects more secure.85 At the same time, credit card fraud, identity theft, smuggling, welfare fraud, and other crimes designed to generate terrorist funds are likely to attract the attention of police agencies, provided they are alert to the connection between “precursor” crimes and terrorist operations.86 Propaganda and Political Warfare Underpinning Al-Qaida is a well-defined ideology defined by Gilles Keppel as “jihadist-salafism,” that is, a “respect for the sacred texts in their most literal form [combined with] an absolute commitment to jihad, whose number-one target had to be America, perceived as the greatest enemy of the faith.”87 This ideology—perhaps even more so than bin Laden himself— was instrumental in the development of Al-Qaida during the 1990s.

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International pressure against Al-Qaida has mounted substantially since 11 September 2001, and Al-Qaida has become increasingly atomized, with its central leadership on the run and expending resources to stay alive and avoid capture. 88 Ideology serves as the glue that binds the movement together and enables it to expand into new regions and populations. AlQaida continues to spread this ideology, both as an instrument for sustaining the will and sense of purpose of active terrorists, and for drawing in new recruits.89 Key ideological themes, such as the Manichean struggle between Islam (as defined by jihadist-salafism) and the “Crusaders and Jews,” the depredations of “apostate” Muslim regimes in Saudi Arabia and Egypt, and the need to attack the “far enemy” in the United States and Western Europe, resonate in some parts of the Muslim world. Although the Bush administration has recognized the importance of ideology in sustaining and building the Al-Qaida movement,90 the United States has done little to counter and delegitimize this worldview, either openly through public diplomacy or covertly through the use of “gray” or “black” propaganda, front groups, and subsidies for useful nongovernmental organizations—what US officials during the early years of the Cold War termed “psychological” or “political warfare.”91 The jihadist-salafists have fashioned a powerful narrative, but so far the United States and its allies have failed to create a compelling counternarrative. In the aftermath of the Cold War, policymakers dismantled many of the radio and television stations, libraries, and exchange programs used to transmit the US worldview abroad, dismissing such tools as costly anachronisms. As a result, concludes one member of the US Congress, “When the United States needed a strong voice to counter the toxic antipathy emanating from radical factions and terrorists in the Middle East, the world often heard only a hoarse fragmented whisper.”92 The State Department’s public diplomacy activities have been feeble, having done little beyond portraying the United States to international audiences as a land of tolerance and opportunity for Muslims—perfectly true, to be sure, but unlikely to persuade potential jihadist-salafists to abandon their hysterical hatred of the “Crusaders” and Zionists. Many broadcasts funded by the US government, such as the Arab-language Radio Sawa, offer an anodyne mix of pop music and occasional news reports, and like the broader US public diplomacy campaign also seem focused on countering “antiAmericanism”—an understandable impulse, but one that overlooks the fact that being hated and feared is inter alia the inevitable by-product of greatpower status.93 In operational terms, an overemphasis on combating antiAmericanism could easily lead policymakers to ignore many of the clerics, journalists, and academics in the Muslim world who, while opposing US foreign policy and many features of US life, might prove to be extremely useful in countering extremist ideology.

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The US government’s ability to use darker propaganda arts to combat and discredit Al-Qaida’s ideology also appears to be severely limited. The Pentagon’s Office of Strategic Influence, an attempt by Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld to create an apparatus for waging the so-called war of ideas, was shut down by nervous Bush administration officials in the aftermath of leaks claiming that the office would spread disinformation and black propaganda.94 For its part, the CIA—the US agency that waged covert and clandestine information operations against the Soviet Union and its allies—reportedly has only a handful of officers devoted to propaganda activities.95 Applying lessons from the Cold War in a rigid fashion is obviously unwise, but there are lessons to be learned from anti-Communist propaganda operations during this period. First among these is the recognition that our enemies have opponents that are likely to be much more effective critics than we are. Just as the United States supported Western European Social Democrats—who were on the political left but were staunchly anti-Communist—today the United States should help the foes of jihadist-salafism within the Muslim world reach the widest possible audience.96

Conclusion In defending the interrogation techniques employed by his administration, President Bush declared that the United States was faced with an adversary “that lurks and plots and plans, and wants to hurt America again. And so, you bet, we’ll aggressively pursue them.”97 Although critics across the US political spectrum have attacked the administration’s treatment of detainees, its intelligence collection practices within the United States, and the expansion of investigative powers under the Patriot Act, the general public appears to be largely untroubled by these aspects of the “Long War.” Iraq is another matter, however; the erosion of public support for that campaign has been steady, with some 65 percent of those surveyed saying that Bush has no plan for victory in Iraq.98 Whether support for the broader counterterrorism campaign will decline is difficult to predict, although absent another large-scale terrorist strike within the United States, it is easy to imagine that the public’s appetite for an apparently limitless “global war on terrorism” will diminish. But as suggested earlier, much of that “war” is largely invisible. The subterranean and frequently grubby nature of day-to-day counterterrorism—for example, intelligence operations abroad, military training missions, joint police investigations—is unlikely to be of interest or concern to most US citizens. Although the Bush administration spoke of the need for national sacrifice in the days following 11 September 2001, the theme was quickly jettisoned and has not reappeared in official administration discourse.

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Concern about the need to sustain the popular will may be behind the administration’s frequent use of the Cold War imagery in its public communications. As Rumsfeld has argued, it took more than 40 years to defeat the “expansionist, empire-seeking effort of the Soviet Union.”99 Such rhetorical flourishes have an obvious appeal to policymakers, since ultimately, at the cost of millions of lives (in Korea, Vietnam, sub-Saharan Africa, and elsewhere), and after the expenditure of trillions of dollars, the United States and its allies prevailed over a determined and exceedingly dangerous foe armed with a potentially world-destroying nuclear arsenal. But drawing Cold War analogies can have perverse consequences. Terrorism is ugly, brutal, and immoral, and preventing it and responding to it is expensive, time-consuming, and sometimes dangerous. However, terrorism, even as it is employed by Al-Qaida, poses no existential threat to the United States. Apocalyptic hyperbole during the Cold War was understandable, and even justified, particularly during the late 1950s and early 1960s, when the world was rocked by a series of major superpower crises over Taiwan, Berlin, and Cuba. Terrorism poses no such peril, and as John Mueller reminds us, “Hysteria and hysterical overreaction about terrorism are hardly required and can be costly and counterproductive.” 100 Specifically, such overreactions can heighten public anxiety and fear and thus contribute to terrorism’s psychological effect—a key element in most terrorist strategies.

Notes 1. See, for example, Rami G. Khouri, “American Presence in Iraq Is ‘Generating More Terrorists,’” Daily Star (Beirut), 14 July 2005, http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=10&categ_id=16&article_id=16741. 2. US Department of State, “President Addresses American Legion, Discusses Global War on Terror,” 24 February 2006, http://www.state.gov/ r/pa/ei/wh/rem/62075.htm#terror. 3. The phrase is from Gilles Keppel, Jihad: The Trail of Political Islam (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002), 220. 4. Quoted in Steve Kraske and Rick Montgomery, “Be Patient in Terror War, Rumsfeld Says,” Kansas City Star, 3 March 2006, http://www.kansascity. com/mld/kansascity/archives. For a more sophisticated expression of this view, see Jeffrey Record, Bounding the Global War on Terrorism (Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, US Army War College, December 2003). 5. The administration’s high level of attention to Al-Qaida relative to other terrorist groups is reflected in the State Department’s annual Country Reports on Terrorism (formerly titled Patterns of Global Terrorism), the US government’s most comprehensive and definitive statement on counterterrorism policy and programs. Office of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism (hereafter cited as S/CT), Country Reports on Terrorism 2005 (Washington, DC: Department of State, April 2005). 6. Xavier Raufer, “Al Qaeda: A Different Diagnosis,” Studies in Conflict and Terrorism 26, 6 (November-December 2003), 393.

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7. See, for example, Philippe Errera, “Three Circles of Threat,” Survival 47, 1 (Spring 2005): 71–88. 8. See, for example, White House, “National Security Council Staff Reorganization,” 28 March 2005, http://www.fas.org/irp/news/2005/03/nscreorg.pdf. 9. National Intelligence Council, Mapping the Global Future: Report of the National Intelligence Council’s 2020 Project (Washington, DC: National Intelligence Council, December 2004), 94; and Porter J. Goss, director of central intelligence, “Global Intelligence Challenges 2005: Meeting Long-Term Challenges with a Long-Term Strategy,” Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, 16 February 2005, http://www.cia.gov/cia/public_affairs/speeches/2004/Goss_testimony_02162005.html. 10. François Heisbourg, “How the West Could Be Won,” Survival 44, 4 (Winter 2002/2003): 145–156. 11. Simon Tisdall and Ewen MacAskill, “America’s Long War,” The Guardian (London), 15 February 2006, 19. For a recent expression of the administration’s views on the “Long War,” see US Department of Defense, Quadrennial Defense Review Report (Washington, DC: Department of Defense, 6 February 2006). 12. On NATO’s counterterrorism role, see “NATO and the Fight Against Terrorism,” http://www.nato.int/issues/terrorism/index.html; and Richard A. Clarke, Barry R. McCaffrey, and C. Richard Nelson, NATO’s Role in Confronting International Terrorism (Washington, DC: Atlantic Council of the United States, 2004). 13. On homeland security, see Office of Homeland Security, National Security for Homeland Security (Washington, DC: White House, 2002); Benjamin Friedman, “Leap Before You Look: The Failure of Homeland Security,” Breakthroughs: The Research Journal of the MIT Security Studies Program 13, 1 (Spring 2004); and “Flynn: Disturbing Lack of Attention Paid to America’s Security Vulnerabilities,” http://www.cfr.org/publication/9471/flynn.html. 14. For a history of US counterterrorism policy, see David Tucker, Skirmishes at the Edge of Empire: The United States and International Terrorism (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1997), particularly 1–50. 15. Rohan Gunaratna, Inside Al Qaeda: Global Network of Terror (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), 231. 16. Nimrod Raphaeli, “Radical Islamist Profiles (3): Ayman Muhammad Rabi’ Al-Zawahiri: The Making of an Arch Terrorist,” Middle East Media Research Institute, 11 March 2003, http://www.memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Area=ia&ID= IA12703. 17. Rod Liddle, “Cowboy Justice,” Spectator (London), 25 February 2006, 18. 18. Jeremy Shapiro and Bénédicte Suzan, “The French Experience of CounterTerrorism,” Survival 45, 1 (Spring 2003): 69. 19. Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon, The Age of Sacred Terror (New York: Random House, 2002), 222. 20. Anonymous, Through Our Enemies’ Eyes: Osama Bin Laden, Radical Islam, and the Future of America (Washington, DC: Brassey’s, 2004), 18. 21. Within the US government, Al-Qaida “was not commonly identified as a group until the late 1990s,” according to a senior US intelligence official. John L. Helgerson, “The Terrorist Challenge to US National Security,” 23 March 2002, http://www.cia.gov/nic/speeches_terrorchallenge.html. 22. Tucker, Skirmishes, 48. 23. Raphael Perl, “Terrorism, the Future, and US Foreign Policy,”

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Congressional Research Service, 11 April 2003, 5, http://www.fas.org/irp/crs/ IB95112.pdf. 24. S/CT, Patterns of Global Terrorism: 2003 (Washington, DC: Department of State, 2004), 144. 25. “Bin-Ladin, Others Sign Fatwa to ‘Kill Americans’ Everywhere,” http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/news/osama.htm. 26. Benjamin and Simon, Age of Sacred Terror, 256. 27. Author’s interview with former CIA analyst, Washington, DC, 5 May 2004. 28. George J. Tenet, “Worldwide Threat 2001: National Security in a Changing World,” Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, http://www.cia.gov/cia/public_ affairs/speeches/2001/UNCLASWWT_02072001.html. 29. Neil King and David Cloud, “On High Alert: Casting a Global Net, US Security Forces Survive Terrorist Test,” Wall Street Journal, 8 March 2000, A1. 30. Benjamin and Simon, Age of Sacred Terror, 318–319. 31. Shaun Waterman, “US Tried to Kill Bin Laden, Report Says,” Washington Times, 25 July 2003, 3. 32. See, for example, Richard Sisk, “A Plan to Cope with Doomsday,” Daily News (New York), 21 February 1999, 44. 33. National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, 9/11 Commission Report (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 2004), 215. 34. Quoted in Daniel Byman, Deadly Connections: States That Sponsor Terrorism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 73. 35. “Statement of Daniel Byman to the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, March 31, 2003,” http://www.globalsecurity.org/ security/library/congress/9-11_commission/030331-byman.htm. 36. For more on this point, see 9/11 Commission Report, particularly 198–214. 37. The definitive expression of candidate Bush’s national security policy can be found in Condoleezza Rice, “Promoting the National Interest,” Foreign Affairs, January-February 2000. 38. See, for example, Barton Gellman, “A Strategy’s Cautious Evolution,” Washington Post, 19 January 2002, A01. 39. For more on renditions, see Jane Mayer, “Outsourcing Torture,” New Yorker, 14 February 2005, http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?050214fa_fact6. 40. ATA activities are described in US General Accounting Office, Combating Terrorism: Department of State Programs to Combat Terrorism Abroad, GAO-021021 (Washington, DC: General Accounting Office, 2002). 41. Gellman, “Strategy’s Cautious Evolution,” A01. 42. Ibid. 43. Ibid. 44. White House, National Strategy for Combating Terrorism (Washington, DC: White House, 2003). 45. White House, National Security Strategy of the United States of America (Washington, DC: White House, 2002). 46. White House, National Strategy for Combating Terrorism, 2. 47. Ibid. 48. Department of Defense, QDR Report, 11–12. 49. S/CT, Patterns of Global Terrorism 2002 (Washington, DC: Department of State, 2003), iv. 50. Dana Priest, “Help from France Key in Covert Operations,” Washington Post, 3 July 2005, 1. 51. John Lawler, “The Bali Bombing: Australian Law Enforcement Assistance

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to Indonesia,” Police Chief, August 2004, http://policechiefmagazine.org/magazine/ index.cfm?fuseaction=print_display&article_id=354&issue_id=82004. 52. For more on the executive order, see S/CT, “Executive Order 13224,” 20 December 2002, http://www.state.gov/s/ct/rls/fs/2002/16181.htm. 53. White House, “President’s Statement on Karen Hughes,” 14 March 2005, http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/03/20050314-2.html. 54. The administration also points to major plots that have allegedly been thwarted, e.g., a 2002 plan to fly an airplane into the US Bank Building, the tallest building on the West Coast. Bob Deans, “Bush Details Foiled 2002 Plot for West Coast Attack,” Cox News Service, 10 February 2006, http://www.coxwashington. com/reporters/content/reporters/stories/BC_BUSH10_1STLD_COX.html. 55. Raphael Perl, “Combating Terrorism: The Challenge of Measuring Effectiveness,” CRS Report for Congress, 23 November 2005, 7. 56. White House, National Strategy for Combating Terrorism, 12. 57. Under Secretary for Defense for Policy Douglas J. Feith, “Council on Foreign Relations: Progress in the Global War on Terrorism,” 13 November 2003, http://www.defenselink.mil/speeches/2003/sp20031113-0682.html. 58. See, e.g., White House, Progress Report, 1. 59. Daniel Byman, “Measuring the War on Terrorism: A First Appraisal,” Current History (December 2003): 411. 60. The figure is taken from S/CT, Country Reports, 12. 61. Bradley Graham, “Rumsfeld Questions Anti-Terrorism Efforts,” Washington Post, 23 October 2003, 1. 62. For more on this operation, see “Operation al-Fajr (Dawn),” http://www. globalsecurity.org/military/ops/oif-phantom-fury-fallujah.htm. 63. See, for example, John Mackinlay, Globalisation and Insurgency, Adelphi Paper (London: International Institute for Strategic Studies, December 2002). 64. David Ochmanek, Military Operations Against Terrorist Groups Abroad: Implications for the United States Air Force, MR-1738-AF (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2003), 33. 65. “Pentagon Plans Major Increase in Special Forces,” New York Times, 24 January 2006, http://www.newyorktimes.com/. For more on SOF and SOCOM, see Andrew Feickert, “US Special Operations Forces (SOF): Background and Issues for Congress,” Congressional Research Service, 9 June 2005; Paul de la Garza, “Special Ops’ Expanding Role,” St. Petersburg Times, 24 September 2005, 1, http://www.sptimes.com/2005/09/24/Tampabay/Special_Ops__expandin.shtml; and United States Special Operations Command: 2005 Annual Report, n.p., n.d. 66. See, for example, Robert M. Cassidy, “Back to the Street Without Joy: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Vietnam and Other Small Wars,” Parameters 34, 2 (Summer 2004). 67. International Institute for Strategic Studies, “US Military Doctrine and Counterinsurgency,” in Strategic Survey 2003/4 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 38–48. 68. For a critique of the Directorate of Operations by a former CIA case officer, see Reuel Marc Gerecht, “A New Clandestine Service: The Case for Creative Destruction,” in Peter Berkowitz, ed., The Future of American Intelligence (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 2005). For more on institutional shortfalls within the US intelligence community, see Garrett Jones, “It’s a Cultural Thing: Thoughts on a Troubled CIA, Part One,” http://www.fpri.org/enotes/20050628. americawar.jones.ciaculture.html; Linda Robinson and Kevin Whitelaw, “Seeking Spies: Why the CIA Is Having Such a Hard Time Keeping Its Best,” US News &

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World Report, 13 February 2006, 35–41; and Douglas Jehl, “Bleak Prognosis by CIA Nominee,” New York Times, 15 April 2004, 1. 69. Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction, Report to the President of the United States (Washington, DC: The Commission, 31 March 2005), 284. 70. George J. Tenet, “The Worldwide Threat 2004: Challenges in a Changing Global Context,” Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, 24 February 2004, http://www.cia.gov/cia/public_affairs/speeches/2004/dci_speech_02142004.html. 71. Jack Shafer, “A Gitmo for Journos,” Slate, http://www.slate.com/id/ 2138058/?nav=fix. The target, Qaed Salim Sinan al-Harethi, was the alleged mastermind behind the bombing of the USS Cole in October 2000. 72. Dana Priest, “CIA Writes Its Own Letter of the Law,” Irish Times (Dublin), 2 January 2006, 11. 73. White House, “Fact Sheet: Making America Safer by Strengthening Our Intelligence Capabilities,” 2 August 2004, http://www.whitehouse.gov/news /releases/2004/08/20040802-7.html. 74. The DNI’s authorities are described in Richard A. Best Jr., Alfred Cumming, and Todd Masse, “Director of National Intelligence: Statutory Authorities, CRS Report for Congress, 11 April 2005, 1–6. 75. John Diamond, “CIA’s Spy Network Thin,” USA Today, 22 September 2004, 13A. 76. Lindsay Moran, “More Spies, Worse Intelligence?” New York Times, 12 April 2005, A21. 77. See, e.g., Mueller testimony before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, 24 January 2004. 78. For a discussion on the “culture of prevention” within the security services of other democracies, see Peter Chalk and William Rosenau, Confronting the “Enemy Within”: Security Intelligence, the Police, and Counterterrorism in Four Democracies, MG-100-RC (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2004). 79. See, e.g., Siobhan Gorman, “Harsh Critique of Mueller Issued,” Baltimore Sun, 21 October 2005, 1A. 80. For more on this legislation and the surrounding controversy, see Department of Justice, “The USA Patriot Act: Preserving Life and Liberty,” http://www.lifeandliberty.gov; American Civil Liberties Union, “Keep America Safe and Free,” http://www.aclu.org//safefree/resources/17343res20031114.html; and Timothy Lynch, “More Surveillance Equals Less Liberty: Patriot Act Reduces Privacy, Undercuts Judicial Review,” http://www.cato.org/research/articles/lynch030910.html. 81. For more on detainees, see Josh White, “Rights Groups Reject Prison Abuse Findings,” Washington Post, 24 April 2005, A20; Ariel Cohen, “Gitmo Is No Gulag,” http://www.heritage.org/Press/Commentary/ed061605c.cfm; and Maggie Farley, “Report: US Is Abusing Captives,” Los Angeles Times, 13 February 2006, http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-gitmo13feb13, 0,3215042.story?coll=la-home-headlines. 82. For more on the NSA uproar, see Thomas and Klaidman, “Full Speed Ahead,” 22; and John Files, “Senator to Propose Censure of Bush Over Spy Program,” New York Times, 13 March 2006, A17. 83. For a discussion of terrorist exploitation of charities, see United Nations Security Council, Fourth Report of the Monitoring Group (established pursuant to Resolution 1267 [1999] concerning Al-Qaida and the Taliban and associated individuals and entities) (New York: United Nations, 8 March 2006), 25.

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84. Middle East Media Research Institute, “Full Version of Osama bin Laden’s Speech,” http://memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=subjects&Area=jihad&ID= SP81104. 85. Anonymous, Through Our Enemies’ Eyes, 35. 86. Safe Cities Project, Hard Won Lessons: How Police Fight Terrorism in the United Kingdom (New York: Manhattan Institute, 2004), 6–7. 87. Keppel, Jihad, 220. 88. Tenet, “Worldwide Threat 2004.” 89. United Nations Security Council, Fourth Report of the Monitoring Group, 1. 90. See, for example, White House, “Fact Sheet: President Bush Remarks on the War on Terror,” 6 October 2005, http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/10/print/20051006-2.html. 91. Gregory Mitrovich, Undermining the Kremlin: America’s Strategy to Subvert the Soviet Bloc, 1947–1956 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000), 8. For a discussion of the role of information operations in the campaign against terrorism, see Carnes Lord, “Psychological-Political Instruments,” in Audrey Kurth Cronin and James M. Ludes, eds., Attacking Terrorism: Elements of a Grand Strategy (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2004), 220–234. 92. “[US Rep.] Shays Hearing on Public Diplomacy in the Middle East,” http://www.house.gov/shays.news/2004/February/febdip.htm. 93. For more on Radio Sawa and related activities, see Government Accountability Office, US Public Diplomacy: State Department and the Broadcasting Board of Governors Expand Efforts in the Middle East but Face Significant Challenges, GAO-04-435T (Washington, DC: Government Accountability Office, 10 February 2004). 94. J. Michael Waller, “US Message Is Not Getting Out,” Insight, 14 April 2003, 26. 95. J. Michael Waller, “Losing a Battle for Hearts and Minds,” Insight, 22 April 2002, 18. 96. For more on this point, see William Rosenau, “Waging the ‘War of Ideas,’” in David G. Kamien, ed., The McGraw-Hill Homeland Security Handbook (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2005), 1141–1142. 97. “President Bush Meets with President Torrijos of Panama,” 7 November 2005, http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/11/20051107.html. 98. Peter Baker, “Bush Sets Target for Transition in Iraq,” Washington Post, 14 March 2006, 1. 99. Quoted in Kathleen T. Rhem, “Rumsfeld: Ending Terrorism Could Take Long Time,” American Forces Press Service, 9 September 2004, http://www. defenselink.mil/news/Sep2004/n09092004_2004090909.html. 100. John Mueller, “Six Rather Unusual Propositions About Terrorism,” Terrorism and Political Violence 17, 3 (October 2005): 487–505.

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Part 3 An Integrated Approach to Counterterrorism

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7 Israel’s Counterterrorism MARTIN

VAN

CREVELD

THE OBJECTIVE OF THIS CHAPTER IS TO PROVIDE A BRIEF OVERVIEW OF JEWISHIsraeli attempts to deal with terrorism in Palestine, attempts that started about 85 years ago and continue to the present day. To this end, it is divided into four chronologically arranged sections. The first section covers the period from 1920 to 1967, that is, from the beginning of the British Mandate to the Six Day War. The second section opens with that war, which for the first time brought large numbers of Palestinians under Israeli control, and ends with the outbreak of the first Palestinian uprising (intifada) in 1987. Section three takes the story from that point until the end of 2005, thus covering the first (1987–1993) and second intifadas (2000–the present). The final section offers conclusions concerning the way Israel has fought the battle, how effective its responses have been, and where these developments may lead in the future.

Israeli Counterterrorism, 1920–1967 In one sense, the roots of Israeli counterterrorism go back almost to the very beginnings of Zionism itself. While it is always possible to find predecessors and predecessors to predecessors, perhaps the proper point to start is the beginning of the British Mandate in 1918–1919. During the 30 years that the mandate lasted, three major periods of unrest occurred, in 1920–1921, 1929, and 1936–1939. Whereas under Ottoman rule before World War I most clashes between Jews and Arabs (this was decades before the concept of “Palestinians” emerged) had been socially and economically motivated, under the mandate this was no longer true.1 All three outbreaks of violence were marked by large-scale rioting directed partly against the British and partly against the Jewish settlers. In all three episodes, some of the more important riots took 157

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place in urban centers such as Haifa, Jaffa, Jerusalem, and Hebron, while other attacks were directed against isolated settlements and roads. All three were aimed against the Jews, but the last spell of violence was also directed against the British. All three violent episodes were dealt with mainly by the mandatory authorities rather than by the Jewish community, which at that time did not yet have the necessary means to defend itself. Between 1936 and 1939 in particular, the British, deploying well over 20,000 men, engaged in a classic counterinsurgency campaign. 2 Among other measures, they built a fence along Palestine’s northern border to intercept infiltrators from Lebanon. They gathered overt and covert intelligence on the insurgents. They controlled the media, set up roadblocks all over the country, fortified and guarded critical buildings and installations, mounted patrols, attacked villages, imposed curfews, searched for arms, and arrested suspects. They also tried and executed captured terrorists and demolished thousands of homes in order to open up fields of fire or, perhaps more often, in retaliation for terrorist acts. The main Jewish paramilitary force at that time was Haganah (Defense), founded in 1920–1921.3 Compared with the British army, its forces were small, disorganized, and lacked both military experience and heavy weapons of any kind. Nevertheless, it cooperated with the authorities. It provided auxiliary personnel (especially guides) and organized squadsized units that mounted patrols and ambushed marauders; from Moshe Dayan down, some of the future commanders of the Israeli armed forces received their initial training in these operations. Another Jewish paramilitary organization of the time, Irgun Zvai Leumi (ETZEL, National Military Organization), went much further. It adopted a policy of retaliation against Arab communities by ambushing and shooting up vehicles, placing explosive devices in crowded markets, and the like. There is no proof that any of these activities played a decisive role in putting down the insurgency. In the end it was terminated because the Palestinian economy collapsed, but also because the British authorities, aware that World War II was coming and anxious to end the revolt, granted most of the Arabs’ demands. The years 1940–1945 were almost completely free of terrorism. When it resumed, it was a question of Jewish terrorism directed against the British, a subject not included in the present discussion. Suffice it to say that, among Israel’s subsequent prime ministers, at least two (Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir) started their career as terrorists; the former as commander of ETZEL, the latter as a member of the even more extreme Lohamei Herut Yisrael (LEHI, Fighters for the Freedom of Israel). 4 Terrorism certainly played a role in ending the mandate, though just how important it was is moot. 5 Nor was terrorism a problem during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, given that it was overshadowed by much larger Israeli conventional military operations, first against the Palestinians and then

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against the invading Arab armies. Terrorism did, however, resume almost immediately after the war had ended and Israel had gained its independence. The difference was that instead of coming from within, it now came from outside the country’s borders.6 In contemporary Israeli parlance, terrorists were known as “infiltrators” (mistanenenim). Many of these people were simply trying to go back to the towns and villages from which they had been driven during the war, but some came armed and with the intent to take lives and destroy property if they could. Initially, they acted mainly on their own, with or without the knowledge of the authorities in the countries whence they came; but later some of them were trained, armed, and sent on their missions by the intelligence services of Egypt, Jordan, and Syria. With the possible exception of the area immediately around Tel Aviv, no part of the country was safe from their depredations. Between 1949 and 1956, about 200 Israelis were killed, whereas damage to property was assessed in millions of Israeli pounds. Most seriously, however, terrorism made the population feel insecure. Some parts of the country could not be accessed by night. Some roads, notably the one to Beersheba, could only be traveled by convoys, and some settlements, especially in the corridor that leads to Jerusalem, suffered so many attacks that they came close to being abandoned. Responsibility for dealing with terrorism was divided between the Security Service (Shin Bet), the police, the Border Guard, the Israel Defense Force (IDF), and local organizations of vigilantes set up by each rural settlement. Of these five groups, the first and the fourth came directly under the authority of David Ben Gurion in his dual capacity as prime minister and minister of defense. The second and the third came under the authority of the Ministry of the Interior; the fifth was organized, armed, and trained—to the extent that it got any training at all—by the IDF, which was very reluctant to allocate resources for this purpose. Three of the five organizations—the Border Guard, the police, and the vigilantes—operated exclusively inside Israeli territory; their tasks included guarding, patrolling, ambushing “infiltrators,” and responding to incidents as they took place. By contrast, responsibility for launching retaliatory raids outside the country’s borders rested with the IDF. It was assisted by the Security Service, which had its informers, popularly known as “shtinkers,” across every border. Between them, these organizations ambushed and captured, or killed, thousands of “infiltrators,” but more kept coming. In its attempt to stop them, the IDF launched dozens of raids into the neighboring countries, especially Jordan (the West Bank) and Egypt (the Gaza Strip). Sometimes it targeted villages and refugee camps from which the terrorists were alleged to have come. Sometimes it attacked Jordanian and Egyptian police stations and army installations whose commanders, as the Israelis saw it, had failed

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in their duty to prevent incursions. In these raids, hundreds of Arabs lost their lives and hundreds of houses were demolished, all to no avail. In the end, what stopped the “infiltrators” were not so much the Israeli measures but the fact that having been thoroughly frightened by the display of Israeli military power during the 1956 Suez campaign, the rulers of Jordan and Egypt finally took effective action to rein in their own people. As a result, the years from 1957 to 1967 were the quietest in Israeli history; during that entire decade, only 35 Israelis were killed by hostile action. Still terrorism did not cease entirely. “Infiltrators,” some of them inspired by Syrian intelligence, kept coming, and they played an important role in the chain of events that led to the June 1967 war.7 In summary, before 1948 terrorism coming from within the country was dealt with mainly by the British. Using classic counterinsurgency methods and sometimes acting with great brutality, the latter registered some success. However, in the end, the British were only able to put down the Arab Revolt of 1936–1939 by conceding practically all of its leaders’ demands, including, above all, “evolution toward statehood” within ten years. From 1948 on, most terrorism came from outside the country, and dealing with it was the responsibility of the various Israeli security organs. Though they used much—some would say, excessive—force, the results were mediocre. As a comparison between Jordan and Egypt on the one hand and Syria on the other shows, the decisive factor was not what Israel could or could not do, but the attitude of the neighboring countries. Perhaps there was a lesson there. If so, it was destined to be often ignored in the future.

Israeli Counterterrorism, 1967–1987 The 1967 war changed the situation, bringing an additional 1.5 million Arabs—who were increasingly starting to call themselves “Palestinians”— under Israeli control. Though resistance to the occupation started almost immediately, at first it was muted. In part, this was due to effective action by the IDF; using the Security Service as its eyes and ears, it eliminated militants such as the leaders of the newly established Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), which had also been persecuted by King Hussein of Jordan. In the main, however, the fact that resistance did not grow out of hand was due to the very rapidly improving economic situation. The crowds of half-naked, barefooted, rheumy-eyed, youthful beggars that infested the streets of East Jerusalem after 1967 quickly disappeared. In spite of everything that has happened since, they have not returned. From 1968 to 1970, the PLO, now firmly entrenched in Jordan’s refugee camps, did what it could to destabilize the situation so as to drag the Middle East into another war. The most important means it used were infil-

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trating parties of terrorists across the Jordan River and firing Katyusha rockets across it. The former were effectively dealt with by the IDF, which built a fence along the entire length of the Jordan Valley—the first of many to come—patrolled it, and mounted ambushes along it. The rocket barrages were more difficult to counter, and countless artillery bombardments, air attacks, and occasional large-scale raids into Jordan failed to end them. Finally, feeling the refugee camps slipping from his control and his throne threatened, it was King Hussein of Jordan who broke the power of the terrorists by using his army against them. 8 The events during the “Black September” of 1970 proved a turning point. During the 36 years since then, the two sides have cooperated in preventing terrorists from crossing the Jordan River into the West Bank; on the whole, they have done so with great success. Its bases in Jordan having been eliminated, the PLO was able to reestablish itself in Lebanon. From there, it engaged in harassment by sending raiding parties to Israel to kill and kidnap, by mining roads, and, above all, by launching Katyusha rockets against Israeli settlements. 9 The IDF fought in this sector for 30 years. It used the best available units, from the famous Sayeret Matkal (General Staff reconnaissance unit) down. It also used the best available weapons systems, from sophisticated ground radar to fighter aircraft and from missile boats to attack helicopters firing missiles so accurate that they could go through individual windows of a high-rise building. Israeli commandos raided Beirut, killing terrorist leaders. Israeli forces occupied southern Lebanon, turning it into an Israeli protectorate. The Palestinian refugee camps were shelled and bombed hundreds, perhaps thousands, of times, all to no avail. Each time the Israelis advanced, their opponents retreated. As each group of terrorist leaders was killed, others took their place. The largest of all Israeli antiterrorist operations was the brainchild of Ariel Sharon, then minister of defense under Menachem Begin. It got under way on 5 June 1982 and took the Israelis all the way to Beirut.10 Terrorism, however, was not brought to an end; instead, it redirected itself against the IDF’s communication lines. After 18 years, the Israelis—having incurred huge financial expenses, turned southern Lebanon into a sea of ruins, and lost approximately 1,500 men in dead alone—withdrew to the international border, which they then proceeded to fortify. The move, which was carried out by then–prime minister Ehud Barak, was opposed by many inside and outside of the army, who feared that terrorism might continue and even increase. Instead, the move turned out to be a success both for the Israelis and for the Lebanese who are rebuilding their country. In spite of sporadic incidents, some on the initiative of the Lebanese Hizbollah terrorist group and others in response to Israeli aircraft flying over Lebanese territory,11 between 2000 and 2006 fewer rounds were being fired in a year than used to be launched in a week.

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Another form of terrorism that emerged during those years was attacks on Israeli and Jewish targets abroad. Aircraft, passengers embarking or disembarking at air terminals, embassies, and Jewish synagogues as well as community centers around the world were attacked with gunfire or explosives. Responsibility for dealing with these attacks was divided between the Security Service on the one hand and the Mossad (which corresponds roughly to the CIA in the United States) on the other. The former was responsible for tasks such as protecting embassies and other Israeli targets abroad, providing both the technical means and the personnel. The latter sought to deal with terrorist attacks by gathering intelligence and launching operations to disrupt the other side’s plans and, if possible, neutralize or kill its leaders. Over the years, the two organizations, working together, have developed an extremely comprehensive security system. As is evident from the fact that other countries have often sent their security personnel to take courses in Israel, and that Israeli firms are helping run aviation security all over the world, on the whole that system has been a great success. In the more than three decades since the attacks started, no Israeli airliner has been destroyed, and only one was successfully hijacked (in 1968). One or two aircraft that tried to enter Israeli airspace without authorization were shot down. No Israeli ship has been hijacked or sunk by terrorists, and Israel’s embassies and consulates have usually been able to fend off the occasional attacks directed against them and have continued functioning. The price was high: every corner of every installation had to be fortified and guarded, and teams of Mossad agents went out to hunt for intelligence and kill terrorists worldwide. Much of this would not have been possible without cooperation on the part of the host countries. The latter often provided auxiliary personnel and intelligence. Occasionally, they also carried out arrests after receiving tips from Israeli agents. In late 1967, Dayan, asked by a foreign journalist how long he thought it would take before serious resistance got under way in the occupied territories, said he thought it would take two to four years.12 He was wrong; the territories remained relatively quiet for two full decades. In 1970 there was an upsurge of terrorism, amounting almost to civil war, in the Gaza Strip. However, it was brutally put down by Ariel Sharon, who at that time was serving as head of the IDF’s Southern Command. He used bulldozers to carve roads through the crowded refugee camps, demolishing thousands of homes. In addition, his special units, relying on intelligence provided by local collaborators, captured and killed hundreds of terrorists.13 Here was a lesson he would not forget. Three decades later he used similar methods to subdue Jenin, although in this case the IDF operated on a considerably smaller scale. This episode aside, Israeli rule in the territories was a great success.

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The first bombs exploded in Jerusalem in 1968, and such attacks have occurred sporadically ever since. However, they were rare enough not to disrupt daily life, which went on much as usual; partly because the attacks represented mere pinpricks, and partly because of the policy, consistently applied, of removing their visible results as fast as possible. The Israeli response was as varied as the attacks themselves. It consisted of covert and overt gathering of intelligence, setting up permanent and temporary roadblocks, surrounding cities and imposing curfews, conducting house-tohouse searches for arms and suspects, and capturing and killing terrorists. Here and there Israel’s judiciary put a spoke in the wheels of the authorities, for example, by forbidding them to take over private Palestinian property or, much later, ruling on the specific course of the fence between Israel and the West Bank. For the most part, however, it has proved to be rather pliant; even authorizing the Security Service to use “mild physical pressure” in interrogating suspects.14 For many years after 1967, the number of troops needed for these operations was very small—never more than a few battalions. They were helped by the fact that the country, though densely populated and topographically difficult, is small. It is also covered by a relatively good road network consisting of major west-east arteries, many of them built or improved by the Israelis, and smaller roads that now reach practically every village. The Palestinians, in contrast, did not have an industry capable of producing anything more sophisticated than knives, axes, explosives, and some detonating devices. Practically the only way they could obtain firearms was by smuggling them across the borders, which meant that their arms stocks were always quite small and lacked any weapons over a yard or so long. Furthermore, unlike some other state actors that have tried to engage in counterinsurgency, Israel enjoys the advantage of having large numbers of Arabic speakers among its own population. Finally, Palestinian society itself was, and remains, extremely fragmented. 15 This is not a civil society in the Western sense of the term. Instead, there are countless crisscrossing loyalties, some to families or clans, some to religious organizations, some to political parties, and some to various terrorist organizations, among whom relations have by no means been always harmonious. As in all Arab countries, corruption is present everywhere. Israel on its part has always been able to provide incentives in the form of working permits, building permits, exit permits, and much more. All this meant there was never any shortage of Palestinians who could be seduced or coerced into cooperating with the intelligence services. However, when they were caught by their compatriots, their fate was often a wretched one. Looking back, and as already mentioned, the most important reason why the territories remained quiet for so long was the economic upswing

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that Israel experienced after 1967. The boom benefited the Palestinians as well, attracting tourists and enabling tens of thousands of Palestinians to work inside Israel, where wages were much higher. In this context, it should by no means be overlooked that the West Bank and the Gaza Strip had constituted occupied territory even before 1967. King Hussein at one point had not hesitated to use artillery in order to make his unwilling subjects pay taxes; the residents of the Gaza Strip had been under a nighttime curfew throughout the 19 years that the Egyptian occupation lasted. Compared with this, the Israeli presence was at first experienced as a relief.16 To these factors should be added the shock of defeat, the absence of leadership, and Israeli policies that, initially at least, were designed to avoid friction by leaving the Palestinians to rule themselves as far as possible. All this, together with effective covert action against what limited terrorism did exist, explains why during the first 20 years after the victory of 1967, parties of Israelis and even individuals were able to go almost anywhere in the occupied territories in complete safety. It also explains why, when the storm finally did break in December 1987, Israel’s defense establishment was taken completely by surprise.17

Israeli Counterterrorism, 1987–2005 Along with his subordinates, then–minister of defense Yitzhak Rabin was taken totally by surprise by the first intifada—as was apparent from the fact that the day after it broke out, he flew to the United States to negotiate the price of some new F-16 fighters that Israel was about to buy. In his absence, the army struggled with massive, very violent, Palestinian demonstrations that used everything from rocks to dustbins and from knives to axes to injure and kill as many Israeli soldiers as they could lay their hands on.18 The Israeli soldiers themselves were totally unprepared for the attacks and did not know how to respond. In some instances, they left the crowds free rein as far as possible, while in other cases, they tried to overawe them by a display of power or charged straight into them. Sometimes they used lead bullets, sometimes rubber bullets, and sometimes, on Rabin’s orders, they used their batons for “breaking arms and legs.” Depending on availability, but also on whether the order of the day emphasized restraint or harsh action, regular IDF units, reserve IDF units, and Border Guard units were used. The latter in particular acquired a bad reputation among the Palestinian population. In part, this was because they were hard-bitten professionals; it also was because they were made up largely of low-class personnel, including many Bedouin and Druze used by the Israelis to do their dirty work for them. Between them, Israel’s various “defense arms,” as the phrase goes, killed hundreds and injured thousands

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of people. They also arrested so many tens of thousands that the prisons became overcrowded and special camps had to be built to contain them. After a year or two, the demonstrations started declining in number and size, although new ones still broke out on special occasions such as feast days (when excited crowds would emerge from the mosques, ready to kill), memorial days proclaimed by the leadership, and funerals of fallen Palestinians. By now, this form of resistance had served its purpose; the demonstrations had shown the whole world that the Palestinian people had not acquiesced, nor would ever acquiesce, to Israeli rule. The protests were replaced by growing doses of “ordinary” terrorism, such as knifings, occasional shootings, very occasional kidnappings, and, of course, bombings. To counter these activities both in the territories and in Israel itself, the Israelis employed the methods already described. The number of troops serving in the territories was increased from a few battalions to entire brigades and, later, divisions. Most acted openly, guarding sensitive installations, manning roadblocks, patrolling roads, and developing the typical defensive, not to say defeatist, mentality that such operations generate.19 Some were trained to look, speak, and behave like Palestinians,20 the bestknown “Arabist” unit being known as Duvdevan (Cherry). These and other units snatched or killed suspects, looked for kidnapped Israelis, and conducted other similar operations. From time to time, the Israelis also raided Palestinian targets abroad, including on one occasion the PLO headquarters in Tunis. Some of the raids were decidedly brilliant, technically speaking. Still, overall, none of them made much of a difference. During most of this period, the man in charge was Yitzhak Rabin, first as minister of defense (1987–1990), and later as prime minister and minister of defense (1992–1995). As demonstrated by his repeated statements that Israel would combat the intifada until the Palestinians became convinced they would gain nothing by force, he was a hard-liner. The fact that he lost office in 1990 was the result of an intrigue mounted by the Labor Party leader, Shimon Peres, and had nothing to do with the way he dealt with the intifada; it did, however, give him time to think things over. By the time he first gave the order to seal off the territories in May 1993, he must have realized that the attempt to defeat the Palestinians by force had failed. As prime minister, Rabin was not responsible for the Oslo talks, which were initiated behind his back, but when their existence was revealed to him, he jumped at the opportunity. The agreement that was signed at the White House on 13 September 1993 was supposed to put an end to terrorism. By opening the road to negotiations and the establishment of a Palestinian state within five years, it was also supposed to lead to peace. Whether the Oslo Agreement was doomed to fail, as some claim,21 will not be discussed here. I personally believe that it stood a fair chance of succeeding; if that did not happen, then the blame must be shared by both

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sides.22 Contrary to its obligations as spelled out in the agreements, the Palestinian Authority, with Yasser Arafat at its head, never stopped its incitement against Israel and never did much to combat continued terrorism mounted by some of their own people. Contrary to their obligations, the Israelis continued to build settlements in the territories. Nor did they cease to hunt terrorists. For example, in December 1995, then–prime minister Shimon Peres ordered the assassination of Palestinian militant Shaki, nicknamed “The Engineer,” thereby triggering a series of bombings. Above all, Binyamin Netanyahu as prime minister spun out negotiations so much that, by the time he left office six years after the Oslo Agreement, progress toward a settlement was infinitesimal and a Palestinian state appeared almost as far away as ever. Reflecting the growing importance of the terrorist threat, as opposed to all other security concerns, Israel’s security apparatus was reorganized under Netanyahu. A new Ministry for Home Security was established with control over the police, the Border Guards, and various other units. This quickly led to turf wars. The ministry’s first head was Tsahi Hanegbi. He would have liked to extend his control over a whole series of other organizations such as the Fire Brigades, the Medical Emergency Services, Melah (responsible for ensuring the continuity of public services such as food supply, water supply, and transportation in an emergency), and more. Even if he had succeeded, his control would have remained incomplete, because the two main organizations responsible for intelligence, the Security Service and the Mossad, still remain under the direct control of the prime minister, who is not about to relinquish them. In the event, Hanegbi did not succeed. In Israel as in other countries, experience shows that no amount of organization can prevent fault lines—as Mahatma Gandhi once put it, no system will work unless the people in it are good. These problems are sometimes mitigated by the fact that Israel is, after all, a small society where everybody knows everybody else. In August 2000, US president Bill Clinton, Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak, and chairman of the Palestinian Authority Yasser Arafat met at Camp David to try to bring the conflict between the two peoples to an end. Why the summit failed, whether it could have succeeded, and who was to blame will not be considered here.23 Suffice it to say that almost as soon as it failed, the second intifada broke out. Some claim that this was because the “treacherous” Arafat had been preparing it all along. However, much of the violence appears to have been spontaneous; perhaps it simply reflected the Palestinians’ despair and their realization, seven years after the Oslo Agreement, that they could only remove their enemies by force. Compared to the previous uprising, this one was much more violent. In part, this was because many Palestinians had become disillusioned with Arafat and the Palestinian Authority, lending their support to the religiously

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motivated, politically more extreme Hamas and Islamic Jihad movements instead. In part, the violence of the second intifada was due to the fact that the Palestinians were now much better armed. Among other weapons, they had some 30,000 assault rifles they had been given by the Israelis themselves as part of the Oslo deal; in addition, they may have received some weapons from Syria and Iran. The Israelis were likewise much better prepared than before, having had several years to study the first intifada and draw lessons from it. Even so, they were taken aback by the size of the uprising and by the amount of violence that it unleashed. The signal for the uprising was given by a massive demonstration that took place on Temple Mount in Jerusalem. On the whole, though, such demonstrations played a smaller role in the second intifada than in the first one; the same was true of cold weapons, stabbings, and the like. Being much better armed than before, the Palestinians expended relatively enormous amounts of ammunition, including not just small-arms ammunition but some antitank and homemade mortar rounds as well. Being untrained, undisciplined, and often unorganized to boot, their rate of success in killing or wounding Israelis, compared to the amount of ammunition they expended, was very low. As time went on, the number of demonstrations declined, as did that of shootings. It became increasingly clear that bombings were the Palestinians’ most effective weapon. This included a growing number of suicide bombings. In sending women on such missions, the Palestinians set a historical precedent that was soon followed in other places, such as Chechnya and Iraq; to this author’s mind, all this showed how strongly motivated they were. The focus on bombs, most of which were planted in public places such as markets, clubs, and restaurants, explains why the vast majority of Israelis hit were not soldiers, but civilians. Of the victims in both categories, most were killed or wounded inside Israel proper, rather than in the occupied territories. When the uprising started, the IDF was commanded by Shaul Mofaz, the most hawkish chief of staff in years.24 Known to the Arabs as “Rambo,” he responded with much greater violence than any of his predecessors had, inflicting many casualties and starting a process that undermined the Palestinian Authority’s rule. One reason why he could do so was that the equipment at the IDF’s disposal had undergone considerable development. Among the most important additions were improved ceramic body armor; portable concrete shelters used to protect soldiers in roadblocks; heavier belly-armor for tanks that is able to withstand even the largest explosive devices; and sophisticated spotter aircraft, some manned and others not, capable of spotting individual terrorists even in urban areas and by night.25 Compared to the previous period, the Security Service also enjoyed the advantage that many Palestinians were now emulating the widespread use of cellular telephones by their Israeli fellow-residents of the Holy Land. In

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so doing, they provided the intelligence service with vastly increased opportunities to listen in on people’s conversations and track their movements. When none of this worked, the Israelis were driven to extraordinary measures that gradually made much of the Gaza Strip and the land west of the Jordan look more like a war zone than like countries at peace. The number of troops in the occupied territories grew to three divisions; on paper, this force was not much smaller than the one that had defeated the entire Egyptian army back in 1967 and fended off its attack in 1973. To these were added two brigades of Border Guards, the ordinary police, any number of special police, the Security Service, and civilian guards. In 2003 the latter numbered 50,000, more than those employed by Israel’s three largest industrial corporations combined. Security officers “guard” the door to every theater, movie house, coffeehouse, restaurant, hotel, supermarket, bank, central bus station, school, college, and university. Receiving minimum wages, their qualifications are low to begin with. Badly disciplined and badly trained—training is expensive—their effectiveness is debatable. It could be argued that by causing people to line up in queues, they create as many targets as they protect. From time to time, they have also killed the wrong person by mistake. As terrorism escalated, so did Israeli counteractions. Barak was the first prime minister to send attack helicopters, strike aircraft, and tanks to deal with the Palestinian revolt; this policy was intensified by his successor, Ariel Sharon. Most of this firepower was aimed at individual targets such as terrorist leaders. Sometimes, though, lethal weapons were used in the midst of urban areas, causing civilian casualties; while there have been some attempts to make the judiciary intervene and stop these attacks, they have not been successful. Trying to cope, the IDF repeatedly sealed off Palestinian cities by drawing up security cordons around them. It blocked the main roads in so many places as to make travel all but impossible, and it choked off most economic activity, so that driving from Ramallah to Jerusalem could take three hours instead of 15 minutes. It built fences and placed guards around every military installation and every Jewish settlement in the territories; demolished thousands of houses, either to open fields of fire or by way of retaliation; killed between 4,000 and 5,000 Palestinians; and injured and imprisoned tens of thousands. Israel’s own casualties amounted to somewhat over 1,000 dead, less than 10 percent of whom were military or police personnel. Some of these measures worked better than others. Perhaps the single most effective one has been the erection of a security fence all around the Gaza Strip. 26 Like the fence that now separates northern Israel from Lebanon, this one is working very well. Over a period of three and one-half years, out of approximately 125 successful bombings, only two originated in the Gaza Strip, and even those were only able to get through because the

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perpetrators were carrying British passports and permitted to enter Israel without a thorough check.27 While Qassam rockets coming from Gaza continue to pose a threat of sorts, so far it has been limited. One must also concede that, compared to what many other armies in similar situations have been doing, the Israeli success in gathering intelligence has been extraordinary. Using a variety of methods, some human, some technical, often they are able to pinpoint individual terrorist leaders in their cars or homes and eliminate them in what are known as “targeted killings.”28 Even so, intelligence has not been good enough to put a complete end to bombings. In part, this is because so many alarms prove to be false and merely cause resources to be spent and daily life to be disrupted; it is also because the bombings that do take place tend to be attacks of which no prior warning has been received. The success of other countermeasures, such as sealing off entire cities, patrolling, guarding every spot, demolishing houses, and the like, has been much more debatable and has indeed given rise to a lively debate among Israelis, many of whom question both their effectiveness and their morality. As already noted, some of these measures provide no more than token protection and are not really able to deter or stop a determined, well-trained terrorist. Other measures affect far more bystanders than terrorists; by making the life of the population extremely difficult, they probably do as much to enrage it as to cause it to cease its resistance. In both Gaza and the West Bank, by far the most successful antiterrorist measure has been the erection of a fence or wall and, in the case of Gaza, withdrawal. That, in any case, provides hope for the future.

Conclusion Looking back on all this and trying to draw some general conclusions, it is perhaps useful to distinguish three distinct periods in Zionist and Israeli history. The first covered the period from about 1920 to 1967. The second lasted from 1967 to 1987; and the third, from 1987 to the present day. As these dates indicate, the most important events that affected terrorism took place either inside Israel’s borders or in the wider Middle East. By contrast, world events, such as the end of the Cold War or the attacks of 11 September 2001, only had a relatively minor impact. When the 9/11 attacks showed the whole world how inadequate arrangements for protecting civil aviation and other targets had been, some Israelis were even able to feel a certain satisfaction by saying, “We told you so.” During the period before 1948, terrorism, on a greater or smaller scale, was an almost constant threat, with peaks in 1920–1921, 1929, and 1936–1939. Though Jewish groups participated in combating it, the main responsibility for doing so was in the hands of others, primarily the British.

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In 1920–1921, and again in 1929, the latter did succeed in bringing terrorism under control. The same was true in 1936–1939, although the effort was much harder and required many more troops. By the time the uprising finally ended, the government of the British Mandate had been compelled to grant almost all the Palestinians’ demands; including most significantly strict limits on Jewish immigration that came into force just as the Holocaust was getting under way. Still, at no point during this period did terrorism present a real danger to the existence of the Jewish community. To the contrary, that community continued to prosper and increase. The establishment of the state of Israel in 1948, which was accompanied by the expulsion of several hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, opened a new chapter. As the term “infiltrators” shows, from then until 1967 almost all terrorism originated outside Israel’s borders. The nuisance it presented was real enough, but it did not even come close to putting the state itself in danger. During this period, Israel’s own defense establishment, the IDF in particular, was only moderately effective in combating terrorism. If the years between the 1956 Suez campaign and the June 1967 war were largely terrorism-free, this was mainly due to preventive action taken by the governments of Jordan and Egypt; the same remains true to the present day. The second period opened in 1967, when a victorious war brought 1.5 million more Palestinians under Israeli rule. Although resistance to the occupation started almost immediately, for 20 years it remained muted. This was partly due to the relatively benign character of Israeli rule, which also benefited from a rapidly improving economic situation. In addition, it reflected the effectiveness of Israel’s security services. This was not nearly as true of its attempt to put an end to cross-border terrorism. In spite of vast efforts and many tactically brilliant operations, the results were no more than mediocre; in the end, it was the Arab Legion that managed to clamp down on infiltration.29 In Lebanon, Israel’s attempt to combat terrorism led to 30 years of low-intensity warfare, one full-scale invasion, and one major air and ground campaign against Hizbollah. Here, too, the measures taken were only partly successful. Still, as of the autumn of 2006, there is some reason to hope that the rain of death and destruction inflicted on Lebanon in the previous months will cause Hizbollah to see the light—or why else has the ceasefire proclaimed in August 2006 been held? It was during this period, too, that terrorism started gaining an international dimension, spreading to Israeli and Jewish targets located as far apart as Berlin (where the embassy came under attack) and Buenos Aires (where a Jewish community center was blown up with great loss of life). On the whole, the protection extended to Israeli assets has been very successful, but the security measures extended to Jewish assets have been considerably less effective. What successes were achieved were largely due to Israel’s own efforts and partly due to the efforts of the authorities in the countries in

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question. Though there was some cooperation with the French during the 1950s,30 for a long time cooperation with foreign intelligence services and police organizations was difficult because terrorism was often seen as a specific Israeli problem. However, now that Islamic terrorism has become a worldwide phenomenon, that cooperation may improve. This even applies to the security services of Arab countries such as Egypt and Jordan, which have as much of an interest in combating terrorism as Israel does.31 Though the measures taken against them were quite extensive and very expensive, terrorist actions that originated outside the country, like those coming from Lebanon, generally did not have much of an impact on the great majority of Israelis. This was not true of the Palestinian uprising that began in 1987. It fell into two distinct periods with an interval in between. Although it is less intensive today than it was in 2002–2003, it continues. As of 2006, there was absolutely no sign that the Israelis were winning. To the contrary, Palestinian terrorism gained a great victory in making Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, a hard-liner if ever there was one, decide to withdraw from the Gaza Strip in summer 2005. One reason why the second intifada was able to achieve this result was because, much more than the first one, it succeeded in inflicting massive direct and indirect economic damage. Between 2000 and the middle of 2003, it was one of the factors that caused Israel’s GDP to decline by about 4–5 percent per year.32 It is true that since then, things have improved; still, it is patently obvious to all but the most blinkered Israelis that should the intifada resume, the economy might soon be in real jeopardy again. Perhaps most important of all, the futile struggle against the Palestinians has lowered Israeli morale and divided Israeli society. Seeking to deflect attention away from their failure, Israel’s military-political leaders like to blame terrorism on the Syrians and have often threatened retaliation.33 More realistically, most Israelis now realize that no amount of counterterrorist measures is likely to bring Palestinian resistance to an end. In sum, Palestinian terrorism, mounted by very small parties of brave men and women, has achieved what neither Arab tanks nor Arab aircraft and missiles could: namely, to force Israel to withdraw from a piece of land (the Gaza Strip) it had occupied for 38 years. Although Sharon’s demise has left his party in disarray, in the long run there is no question that Israel will have to withdraw from most of the West Bank as well. This in spite of the fact that the Palestinians, a small and weak people with almost no land borders to link them with friendly neighboring countries, have been fighting with a severe handicap and facing one of the world’s strongest armed forces with decades of experience in counterterrorist operations and few scruples as to the means it employed. A security fence already exists along the Israeli-Lebanese border, and it is quite effective. There is also a security fence around the Gaza Strip, and apart from occasional Qassam rocket

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strikes, it works even better. Without any doubt, a fence between the West Bank and Israel, followed by a withdrawal, is the only possible solution. The sooner these measures are carried out, the better for all parties concerned.

Notes 1. See Yehoshua Porath, The Emergence of the Palestinian Arab National Movement, 1918–1929 (London: Frank Cass, 1987), 123–257. 2. The best work on the British antiterrorist campaign in Palestine is Yigal Eyal, The Suppression of the Arab Revolt by the British Army, 1936–1939 [Hebrew] (Tel Aviv: Ministry of Defense, 1998). 3. For a short account of Haganah’s development, see Martin van Creveld, The Sword and the Olive: A Critical History of the Israel Defense Force (New York: Public Affairs, 2002), 21–22, 25–35, 38–41. 4. Begin’s recollections of this period are available in The Revolt (New York: Dell, 1951). 5. Cf. Michael Joseph Cohen, Palestine: Retreat from the Mandate (London: Elek, 1978), 187–191. 6. For this period, cf. Benny Morris, Israel’s Border Wars (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 28–68. 7. Cf. Michael B. Oren, Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 11, 30, 34. 8. Edgar O’Ballance, Arab Guerrilla Power, 1967–1972 (London: Faber & Faber, 1974), 161–190. 9. For this period, see ibid., 91–116. 10. On Operation “Peace for Galilee,” as it was called, see Ze’ev Schiff and Ehud Yaari, Israel’s Lebanon War (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1984). 11. Dr. Daniel Sobelman, Tel Aviv University, quoting Lebanese papers, Israel television, news bulletin, 10 August 2003. 12. Joseph Alsop, “Moshe Dayan’s Motto,” Washington Post, 8 December 1967. 13. Cf. Ariel Sharon, Warrior (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001), 247–262. 14. Cf. Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, “Judgments of the Israel Supreme Court: Fighting Terrorism Within the Law,” Jerusalem, January 2005, http:// www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/Government/Law/Legal+Issues+and+Rulings/Fighting+ Terrorism+within+the+Law+2-Jan-2005.htm. 15. For these problems cf. Shmuel L. Gordon, Israel Against Terror: A National Assessment [Hebrew] (Tel Aviv: Melzer, 2002), 48–50. 16. See Shabtai Teveth, The Cursed Blessing: Israel’s Occupation of the West Bank (New York: Random House, 1971). 17. The day before the intifada broke out, the coordinator of operations in the occupied territories, Shmuel Goren, was able to say that Israeli rule in the territories had been “a brilliant success”: “The Shock of the Territories,” Yedioth Ahronoth, special supplement, 14 January 1988. 18. The best account of the early years of the first intifada is by Ze’ev Schiff and Ehud Yaari, Intifada: The Palestinian Uprising—Israel’s Third Front (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1991), 17–179.

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19. Ofer Shelach, “No Initiative, No Mobility, No Surprise,” Yedioth Ahronoth, weekend supplement, 28 December 2000, 15. 20. See Gordon, Israel Against Terror, 74–75; and, for a Palestinian account, Saleh Abdel Jawad, “License to Kill,” Between the Lines, February 2001, http://www.between-lines.org/archives/2001/feb/Dr_Saleh_Abdel_Jawad.htm. 21. See above all Efraim Karsh, “The Oslo War: The Anatomy of a Delusion” [Hebrew], BEZA Paper No. 56, Ramat Gan, Bar Ilan University, 2003. 22. See Abdel Monem Said Aly and Shai Feldman, Ecopolitics: Changing the Regional Context of Arab-Israeli Peacemaking (Cambridge, MA: Beler Center, Harvard University, 2003), 9–17. 23. On this failure, cf. Jeremy Pressman, “Visions in Conflict: What Happened at Camp David?” International Security 28, 2 (Fall 2003): 5–43. 24. For his career, see the related entry in the Jewish Virtual Library at http://www.us-israel.org/jsource/biography/mofaz.html. 25. These devices were first used in Lebanon: Uzi Etzion, “The RPV Took Off Before the Operation,” Israel Air Force Gazette [Hebrew] 108 (April 1996): 26. 26. According to Avi Dichter, head of the Security Service; Shaul Shmueli, “Avi Dichter: A Physical Barrier Is Required by the Security Service” [Hebrew], Ynet, 12 February 2002. 27. According to General (ret.) Matan Vilnai, Israel TV evening news bulletin, 13 November 2002. On 29 June 2003 the assertion was repeated by former prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu; Israel Radio news bulletin. 28. For some details, see Yossi Melman, “The Security Service: More Technology, Fewer Agents,” H’aaretz [Hebrew], 2 September 2001, A4; and Oded Erez, “The Role of an Air Force in Counter-Insurgency,” in M. Hough and Mark van der Merwe, eds., Contemporary Air Strategy, Ad Hoc Publications No. 23 (Pretoria: Institute for Strategic Studies, University of Pretoria, 1986), 21–22. 29. Cf. O’Ballance, Arab Guerrilla Power, 161–190. 30. Cf. Motti Golani, Israel in Search of a War: The Sinai Campaign, 1955–1956 (Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 1998), 33–35. 31. Cf. Gordon, Israel Against Terrorism, 88–89. 32. Research by Dr. Rafi Melnik as reported in Yedioth Ahronoth weekend magazine [Hebrew], 29 November 2002, 12–13; Ma’ariv Finance [Hebrew], 9 June 2003, 3; and Yedioth Ahronoth, 23 June 2003, 11. 33. “Israel’s Foray into Syria Demonstrates Tel Aviv’s Foreign Policy Leverage,” Power and Interest News Report, 7 October 2003, http://pinr.com/ report.php?ac=view_printable&report_id=99&language_id=1.

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8 Combating Al-Qaida and Associated Groups ROHAN GUNARATNA

S INCE A L -Q AIDA ATTACKED THE MOST ICONIC US LANDMARKS ON 11 September 2001, the limitations of using military force as well as the criminal-justice and prisons system in combating terrorism have become increasingly apparent. Governments and civil society both must think of a more preventive and comprehensive response. Contemporary terrorist groups are multidimensional organizations that require a multipronged response. Compared to the Cold War terrorist groups of the 1970s and 1980s, the post–Cold War groups engage the state and society using both military and nonmilitary instruments and strategies. In addition to confronting government and society with the traditional militant tactics of guerrilla warfare (attacks against combatants), terrorism (attacks against noncombatants), sabotage (infrastructure attacks), kidnapping, hijacking, and hostage taking, contemporary terrorists challenge us economically, politically, socially, and ideologically. 1 To manage the threat posed by contemporary terrorist groups, it is essential for the state in all its operational and organizational facets to engage and wear down the terrorist groups. Developing a multipronged and a multijurisdictional response demands a multiagency and a multinational response. It must involve a significant understanding of the terrorism issue by political leaders and public officials. Most important, there must be willingness on the part of governments to allocate resources and provide sound and timely leadership. In developing a multifaceted, comprehensive response, governments must be able and willing to develop their response beyond the traditional police and intelligence approaches. They must consider applying a range of tools and the power of a range of bodies. These include the immigration, customs, and other enforcement authorities; the coast guard (or the marine police); the military; port, airport, and other transportation authorities; the private security industry; the financial and banking sector; the media; the telecommunications sector; community and other influential leaders; and 175

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religious and educational institutions. Failure by the government, as the primary actor, to enlist the collaboration of a wide range of secondary actors will perpetuate the terrorist threat, and may even escalate it. Such a transformation in response from a single-pronged approach to a multipronged approach involving a range of actors across multiple jurisdictions is necessary, especially after 9/11. The persistence of the threat—as demonstrated by the deadly attacks in Madrid, Spain, on 11 March 2004 and the London bombings of 7 July 2005, as well as the failed bombing attempts in London on 21 July 2005—makes the development of a multifaceted response critical. As opposed to clearly defined terrorist groups and their support bases, most twenty-first–century governments are confronting amorphous terrorist networks. The formation of partnerships—loose cooperative networks and alliances between terrorist groups—has increased the staying power of terrorist groups and their ideologies. Three and a half years before US president George W. Bush formed a global coalition to combat Al-Qaida and its associates in October 2001, Osama bin Laden formed an alliance of Islamist groups—Al-Jabha al-Islaamiyya lil-Jihad Dudda al-Yahood wal-Saliibiyeen (World Islamic Front for Jihad Against the Jews and the Crusaders)—in February 1998. 2 The expanding ideological and operational linkages between local, regional, and global extremist networks are belatedly forcing governments to develop a better understanding of who is talking to whom and who is working with whom. Instead of only monitoring and reporting on such groups, even the security services are moving toward a truly operational agenda. Due to the growing linkages between domestic and foreign terrorist groups, governments have no option but to aggressively target and erode the ideological, personnel, and physical infrastructures of threat groups and their networks. To be successful, governments should move from traditional cooperation to collaboration. A matrix of terrorist networks can be effectively targeted only by a matrix of government networks. Unless governments realize that terrorism is a common threat that requires an international and comprehensive response, they will fail to stem the global rise in terrorism. To reduce the threat of political violence, governments should closely monitor and counter both the development and the transfer of terrorist capabilities across regions, conflicts, and groups.

The Context Two landmark events, both in 1979, precipitated the global rise of Muslim extremism and terrorism. 3 After the successes of the Iranian revolution (1979) and the anti-Soviet multinational Afghan campaign (1979–1989), where one superpower was defied and another defeated, some Muslim

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youth believed that they could take on the United States. A year before the Soviet army, the world’s largest army, withdrew in humiliation from Afghanistan, Abdullah Azzam, the principal ideologue of the anti-Soviet Afghan campaign (and a Palestinian Jordanian), conceptualized Al-Qaida al-Sulbah (The Solid Base) as the vanguard of the Islamic movements. Azzam and his deputy and protégé Osama bin Laden wanted the group to act as a vanguard in conflict zones where Muslims were suffering.4 Al-Qaida evolved from the Afghan Service Bureau (Makhtab alKhidamat), an organization that Azzam and bin Laden had established at the height of the anti-Soviet multinational Afghan campaign, in 1984. Therefore, the Al-Qaida rank and file directly benefited from and drew on an earlier generation of organizational and operational expertise and experience. However, the true strength of Al-Qaida is in its appealing ideology of global jihad involving Al-Qaida as well as other Islamist parties and groups. To date, the ideology drawn from historical events, and tested by fire (Afghanistan, Chechnya, Iraq), continues to find resonance in the Muslim world. They remain the principal sources of inspiration for the Islamists directly engaged in the fight and for the wider support base sustaining the fight. In addition, the Iranian revolution, the anti-Soviet campaign, and now Iraq have politicized a few hundred thousand Muslims worldwide. Muslim radicalization in migrant communities worldwide continues today. Even today, after the total destruction of the Al-Qaida training and operational infrastructure in Afghanistan, neither Al-Qaida nor other Islamists have had any difficulty in recruitment to replace their casualties or in replenishing their expenses (for example, for ammunition or financing operations). AlQaida and other groups have managed to build in the strictest of secrecy a robust and resilient organizational structure. Five years after 9/11, Al-Qaida per se—a group estimated in October 2001 to have 4,000 members—is operationally weak and is unable to mount 9/11-style attacks on Western soil anymore. Nonetheless, several Middle Eastern, South Asian, Southeast Asian, Central Asian, and African groups have adopted Al-Qaida technologies, tactics, and techniques. Although AlQaida’s strength is limited to a few hundred members today, its ideology of a global jihad is inspiring and instigating three dozen Islamist groups worldwide. Al-Qaida’s single biggest contribution has been its ability to inspire and instigate Islamist groups worldwide to fight at two levels: against the near or domestic enemy—their own governments—as well as the distant or the far enemy—the United States and its allies. While refusing to die, AlQaida, the most hunted terrorist group in history, is contributing to the sustenance of a global Islamist insurgency. In the post-9/11 strategic environment, especially the post-Iraq environment, multiple new groups have emerged. They are expanding the Islamist space, increasing the threat exponentially.

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In order to reduce the terrorist threat, the international community forged and implemented a wide range of security and countersecurity measures after 9/11. They offer no permanent solution, but military action in Afghanistan has dismantled the Islamist training infrastructure, and increased intelligence and law enforcement measures in target countries have reduced the immediate threat for the next one to two years. But while terrorist capabilities have suffered, their intentions remain the same. After painstakingly identifying the post-9/11 security architecture, the terrorists identified its loopholes and gaps and attacked Europe, namely in Madrid and London. As a result of the US-led coalition intervention in Afghanistan, both AlQaida and its associated members have dispersed from the core of Afghanistan and Pakistan into lawless zones around the world. These include Iraq, especially its border with Iran; Somalia, a conflict of international neglect; Yemen, where only 35 percent of the country’s territory is under government control; Kashmir, a conflict zone bordering Afghanistan; the Myanmar-Bangladesh border; and the southern Philippines. Al-Qaida and its associate members are using these bases to launch attacks against the United States and its allies. Since the arrest of Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, the former head of the Al-Qaida military committee, several commanders have emerged in Southeast Asia, South Asia, the Persian Gulf, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, the Levant, the Caucasus, and so on. Though some of them have been killed or captured, others still operate. For instance, Isamuddin Riduan, alias Hambali, was captured by the Thai Special Branch II in central Thailand on 11 August 2003, and Khalid Ali al-Haji alias Hazim alSh’ir, the chief of Gulf operations, was killed by Saudi security forces in Saudi Arabia on 15 March 2004. Fazul Abdullah Mohammad, alias Haroon, the chief of East Africa operations, however, is still alive and operating. A new de facto operational commander of the Al-Qaida network has taken the place of Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, the head of its military committee, who was captured in Rawalpindi by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence and the CIA on 1 March 2003. After 9/11, especially after the beheading of Nick Berg, Ahmad Fadil Nazal al-Khalayleh alias Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian from Zarqa, imposed himself as a rising figure in the Al-Qaida network. Although his main base was Iraq, he built a network that extended into Europe and North America. Given the extent of the networks he was able to assemble after 9/11, he was considered the de-facto operational chief for the Al-Qaida movement. Despite his differences with Osama bin Laden over the targeting of Shi’ite Muslims, alZarqawi managed to absorb multiple Islamist support networks or transform them into operational networks. Subsequently, Al-Zarqawi’s relentless campaign suffered from internal divisions. Ultimately, he was

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killed in a US air raid on 7 June 2006. Yet the insurgency persists without his leadership. Al-Zarqawi, a veteran of the multinational jihad against the Soviets in Afghanistan, was not known in the 1980s. He came to the attention of the security services after he started to work with Al-Qaida in 1999. While jailed in Jordan from 1992–1997, al-Zarqawi came under the indoctrination of Abu Mohammad Maqdisi in Jordan, and thereafter of Abu Qatada in London.5 From 1997 to 1999, al-Zarqawi planned to overthrow the regime in Jordan and attempted to conduct operations against Israel. Like three dozen other Islamist groups, al-Zarqawi’s organization also received facilities and funds from Al-Qaida to train Jordanians and Palestinians—nationalities that had not featured prominently in Al-Qaida. After establishing al-Tawhid in Europe, primarily in Germany, and joining forces with Ansar al-Islam in northern Iraq, al-Zarqawi established a working relationship with several other groups in the region and beyond. For instance, an al-Zarqawi cell in the Pankisi Gorge in Georgia provided training to North Africans tasked with conducting chemical and biological attacks in France and the UK.6 In preparation to target Europe and beyond, training and experiments to build chemical and biological weapons were also conducted in the Khurmal chemical plant and training camp in an area controlled by Ansar al-Islam in the Halabja district, Sulaimaniyah province, Kurdish Iraq. In addition to Iraq, al-Zarqawi either absorbed or had begun to influence several other networks in Europe. As such, the Salafist Jihad networks influenced or controlled by al-Zarqawi prior to his death have become the most pressing terrorist threat to the European continent and even beyond, to North America. Due to an excessive focus on Al-Qaida by governments worldwide, other groups, such as the Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group (GICM), and newer networks such as al-Zarqawi’s emerged. The New Face of Al-Qaida In waging global jihad, Al-Qaida has a specific role. Its larger-than-life role seeks to promote a “clash of civilizations” between the West and Islam. As the proclaimed vanguard of the Islamic movements, Al-Qaida’s intermittent attacks on symbolic, strategic, and high-profile targets are intended to inspire and instigate the Islamists and the wider Muslim community to enter into perpetual conflict with the West. Whereas Al-Qaida carried out, on average, one attack every year before 9/11, Al-Qaida or its associated groups managed to carry out one attack every three months in the post-9/11 environment. With 9/11, both the frequency and scale of threat posed by terrorist groups dramatically changed. Prior to 9/11, terrorism was perceived as a public nuisance and a law-and-order problem. After 9/11, terrorism was

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a national security issue. Due to the potential for mass destruction and mass disruption, terrorism remains on top of the national agendas or is at least included on the political agendas of the targeted states. Most national security agencies regard political extremism as their top priority, followed by organized crime and then proliferation. Although governments continue to focus on the Al-Qaida group, the terrorist threat has moved to the Al-Qaida network or movement. Since 9/11, the bulk of the terrorist attacks are not conducted by Al-Qaida but by its associated groups such as Gema’ah Islamiyah, Ansar al-Islam, the alZarqawi group, the Salafi Group for Call and Combat, the Abu Sayyaf Group, the Special Purpose Islamic Regiment, the Islamic International Brigade, the Riyudes-Salikhin Reconnaissance and Sabotage Battalion of Chechen Martyrs, Lashkar-e-Taiba, Jaish-e-Mohammed, and so on. Many of these groups have been indoctrinated, armed, trained, and financed by Al-Qaida or the Taliban in Afghanistan and other conflict zones throughout the 1990s. Today, Al-Qaida has lost operational control of many of the groups it assisted when Afghanistan was a terrorist Disneyland from February 1989, after the Soviets withdrew, until the US invasion in October 2001. Despite Al-Qaida’s loss of command with the loss of its Afghan haven, the Islamist groups associated with it continue to use the ideological and logistical infrastructure built by Al-Qaida during the 1990s. In addition to increased motivation and capabilities to attack the West, the violent Islamists are determined to target Middle Eastern regimes they perceive as un-Islamic. Islamist strength is growing in Saudi Arabia and Yemen, two countries that have produced the largest number of Al-Qaida members. On average, pre-9/11 Saudi Arabia witnessed one terrorist attack each year. Since the US invasion of Iraq in March 2003, Saudi Arabia has witnessed a terrorist encounter or attack every month. There are marked differences in ideology and strategy between the disparate Islamist groups. However, many of them feed off each other and, more important, learn from one another. To create a civil war within Iraq, al-Zarqawi wanted to target the Shi’ite Muslims in Iraq, but bin Laden always campaigned for an inclusive rather than an exclusive policy. Nonetheless, Al-Qaida, and especially its leader, bin Laden, are still held in respect and awe by many Muslims working for and with the al-Zarqawi group. Faraj Ahmad Najmuddin, alias Saleh Krekar, alias Abu Sayed Fateh, alias Fateh Krekar, alias Mullah Krekar, the founder of Ansar al-Islam, currently living in Norway, said in 2000 that bin Laden represented the “crown of the Islamic nation.” Ansar al-Islam was established by the merger of Jund al-Islam (Soldiers of Islam) and the Islamic Unity Movement, a faction of the Islamic Movement of Iraqi Kurdistan.7 Similarly, the late Ibn ul-Khattab, the longtime commander of the Islamic International Brigade in Chechnya, described bin Laden as “one of

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the major scholars of jihad, as well as being a main commander of the mujahideen worldwide.” Khattab added: The West, and the rest of the world, are accusing Osama bin Laden of being the primary sponsor and organizer of what they call “international terrorism” today. But as far as we are concerned, he is our brother in Islam. He is someone with knowledge and a mujahid fighting with his wealth and his self for the sake of Allah. He is a sincere brother, and he is completely opposite to what the disbelievers are accusing him of. We know that he is well established with the mujahideen in Afghanistan and other places in the world. What the Americans are saying is not true. However, it is an obligation for all Muslims to help each other in order to promote the religion of Islam. He fought for many years against the Communists and is now engaged in a war against American imperialism.8

The penetration of local and regional conflicts by transnational Islamist groups such as al-Zarkawi’s organization or the Gema’ah Islamiyah networks has given domestic groups new capabilities and increased the staying power of the transnational groups. Until recently, many in the West perceived the conflict in Chechnya not as an Islamist but as a separatist campaign. To date, many Western governments permit Chechen groups to disseminate propaganda, raise funds, and procure supplies on Western soil. Similarly, Kashmir, Algeria, Mindanao in the Philippines, Iraq, and other conflict zones have been effectively penetrated by Al-Qaida and other transnational networks. Little did governments realize that after the loss of Afghanistan, these conflict zones would be used by the Islamists to partially compensate for the loss of Afghanistan. Today, it is difficult to totally separate some of the regional conflicts with local grievances and indigenous roots from the global jihad. Local conflict zones from the Philippines to Kashmir and Yemen to Somalia to Algeria have been used by Al-Qaida and its associated groups. For instance, Al-Qaida’s strategy of attacking not only their local governments but also the United States and its allies has influenced the Southeast Asian groups. Since Al-Qaida began influencing Southeast Asian groups with training, finance, and ideology, some have begun to behave like Al-Qaida. After Gema’ah Islamiyah started to work with Al-Qaida, its Singapore leader Ma Salamat Kasthari planned to hijack an Aeroflot aircraft from Bangkok, Thailand, and crash it into the Changi International Airport in Singapore. This is clearly an Al-Qaida tactic. Many Southeast Asian Islamist groups had never even considered the tactic of mass-casualty attacks against Western targets or suicide attacks until Al-Qaida began to influence them. As a direct result of their interaction with Al-Qaida, a number of local Islamist groups worldwide are becoming violent, and some are becoming as violent as Al-Qaida.

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The global fight against Islamist extremism and terrorism will be the defining conflict of the early twenty-first century. Bin Laden has built an organization that functions both operationally and ideologically at the local, national, regional, and global levels. Defeating Al-Qaida and its associated groups will be a key challenge that will dominate not only the international security and intelligence community, law enforcement authorities, and national military forces, but a range of other actors in the foreseeable future. To terrorize Western governments, their societies, and their enemies in the Muslim world, violent Islamist ideologues such as Abu Qatada, Abu Hamza al-Masri, Abu Mohommad al-Masri, Safar al-Hawali, and Salman al-Ouda have recruited and generated support from territorial and migrant Muslim communities worldwide. Al-Qaida, which has now transformed from a group to a movement, poses an unprecedented terrorist threat to international peace and security. Even if bin Laden should eventually be killed or die of illness, he will have crafted and popularized an ideology that is continuing to inspire and instigate his Muslim followers to oppose the “enemies of Islam.” The largely military response of the international community during the years after 9/11 has failed to reduce the threat. In fact, the terrorist threat has escalated several times over since 9/11. Understanding the Challenge Since the United States invaded Afghanistan on 7 October 2001, Al-Qaida and its associate groups have successfully sought and generated wider support for their campaign against the United States and its allies. There were worldwide demonstrations immediately after US and UK bombings and cruise missile attacks on targets near Kabul, Kandahar, and Jalalabad. To attract recruits and support, Al-Qaida and its associate groups continue to generate confidence among Muslim youths, building on the impressive record of the mujahideen during the past two decades, when they successfully fought the Soviets and the Northern Alliance (primarily backed by Russia) in Afghanistan, the Russians in Chechnya, and US and other foreign troops in Iraq. In Islamist literature and propaganda, “holy war by the brothers against the infidel West” is presented as a continuation of a Muslim’s duty. The decade-long anti-Soviet Afghan campaign culminated in the collapse of the Soviet empire and the end of the Cold War. Al-Qaida and its associated groups present Islamism as a political ideology that can fight against—and defeat—yet another superpower. Although the heavy bombing disrupted and degraded the physical infrastructure of Al-Qaida and the Taliban in Afghanistan, 9 segments of the Muslim territorial and migrant communities from Australia to the Middle East and Canada provide recruits and finance.10 The future survival of the Islamist networks will depend on the continuing appeal of its radical ideolo-

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gy that sustains a fledgling global support network. In the virtual absence of counterpropaganda, both literate and illiterate Muslims view the global jihad ideology as being compatible with Muslim theology. To counter the ideological capability of the Islamists, the antiterrorist coalition needs both a strategic vision and tactical direction. The antiterrorist coalition currently lacks the capacity to counter Al-Qaida’s broad strategy, as formulated by Ayman al-Zawahiri, bin Laden’s principal strategist. In his last will, titled “The Knights Under the Prophet’s Banner,” he chartered the future direction of the Islamic movements. 11 As the United States assembled its multinational coalition and deployed troops in Afghanistan, the Philippines, Yemen, and Georgia, Islamists were building multinational alliances from the Far East to the Caucasus. Advancing the concept of the universality of the battle, al-Zawahiri has successfully widened the conflict from the regional to the global level. He has sought to counter US initiatives by expanding the existing alliance made up of the “jihad movements in the various lands of Islam as well as [Afghanistan and Chechnya] that have been liberated in the name of jihad for the sake of God.” 12 To quote alZawahiri, the alliance represents a “growing power that is rallying under the banner of jihad for the sake of God and operating outside the scope of the new world order. It is free of the servitude for the dominating Western empire. It promises destruction and ruin for the new Crusades against the lands of Islam.”13 In an effort to mobilize the “Muslim nation,” Al-Qaida projected the confrontation in Afghanistan as a battle between “Islam and the infidels.” Reviewing the lack of support by Islamist movements immediately after 9/11, Al-Qaida emphasized the need for perseverance, patience, steadfastness, and adherence to a firm set of principles. In keeping with the belief that the key to victory is the example set by the leadership, Al-Qaida placed the responsibility for the campaign on the leadership, and the responsibility for the quality of leadership on the members. In the words of the Quran, “O ye who believe. Endure, outdo all others in endurance, be ready, and observe your duty to Allah, in order that ye may succeed.”14 Al-Zawahiri justifies an escalation in the methods of strikes and tools of resistance by stressing four points in his post-9/11 book, Knights Under the Prophet’s Banner—Meditations on the Jihadist Movement. First, the need to inflict the maximum number of casualties against the opponent, no matter how much time and effort such operations take, for this is the language understood by the West. Second, the need to concentrate on the method of martyrdom (suicide) operations as the most successful way of inflicting damage against the opponent and the least costly to the mujahideen in terms of casualties. Third, the requirement that the targets as well as the type and method of weapons used must be chosen to have an impact on the structure of the enemy and deter it enough to stop its “brutali-

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ty, arrogance, and disregard for all taboos and customs.” Fourth, a focus on “the domestic enemy alone will not be feasible at this stage,” meaning that local Islamist groups must strike not only against domestic targets but also against foreign ones, both at home and overseas.15 Islamist organizations have fizzled out in the past because they did not have battle-hardened and tested structures. Previously, Islamists had relied on the traditional loyalties of a village, clan, or tribe. The Islamists of the twentieth century lacked a modern, robust, and resilient organization. By adapting preexisting models and seamlessly adjusting them to modern requirements, postmodern Islamists build organizations full of vitality. AlQaida’s politically clandestine structure is built on the idea of internationalism. Using techniques drawn from Leninism and operating on the Marxist militant model, Al-Qaida and its associates use battle names (pseudonyms), adhere strictly to a cell structure, follow the idea of a cadre party, maintain tight discipline, promote self-sacrifice and reverence for the leadership, and are guided by a program of action.16 Al-Qaida and its associate groups are self-reproducing and, therefore, hard to defeat. As there is no historical precedent to Al-Qaida or its networks, the past offers very little guidance. The success or failure of the US-led antiterrorist campaign will depend on the ability and willingness of the United States, its allies, and its coalition partners to learn as they progress. In an ever-changing environment, they will have to prevail against a determined enemy willing to kill and die. Specialists in counterrevolutionary warfare and counterterrorism lack a plan or a model to fight Al-Qaida and its associate groups. In the cabinets of US president George Bush or British prime minister Tony Blair, there is no strategist with a vision and a mission equivalent to that espoused by Ayman al-Zawahiri.

Threat and Response Cycles The threat of terrorism has steadily escalated after the end of the Cold War. In the years that followed, state sponsors lost control over nonstate armed actors. An ideological vacuum was created. With the confrontation between the United States and the USSR coming to an end, the black and the gray markets became saturated with vast quantities of conventional and unconventional weapons. Furthermore, the increased pace of globalization heralded an era of inexpensive travel and communication. Both within and outside the conflict zones, terrorist groups developed front, cover, and sympathetic organizations to harness the forces of globalization. These organizations, under the guise of human rights, humanitarian, commercial, economic, social, cultural, media, labor, recreational, political, religious, and other community organizations, were able and willing to

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exploit both their communities and other resources. Due to the sustained suppression of terrorist groups and their support bases in the global south of Asia, Africa, the Middle East, the Caucasus, and Latin America, many members and supporters of groups moved to the West. Exploiting the liberal values of the West, foreign terrorist groups created vast support networks on Western soil that funded their campaigns from Algeria to Sri Lanka. Terrorists even tapped into grants or aid given by Western countries to finance their operations, particularly in Africa and South Asia. Following the Cold War approach of monitoring spies, Western governments monitored terrorist groups on Western soil, but did little to erode their strength. Until 9/11, most foreign terrorist groups used North American and European countries for refuge and support activity, and not to conduct terrorist attacks against the West. Many Western governments, notably Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, monitored militant support activities but took no action to suppress them. After 9/11, with Osama bin Laden stating that it is “the duty of Muslims to wage jihad,” many support cells transformed into attack cells. Since the East Africa bombings of August 1998, the threat of a masscasualty attack in the United States has been apparent, but Washington lacked the necessary domestic and international support to invade Afghanistan. After the Soviet withdrawal in February 1989, Afghanistan replaced the Syrian-controlled Bekaa Valley in Lebanon as the world’s premier training center for about 40 militant groups. With no vital interests in this remote corner of Asia, the West was impervious to the suffering of the Afghan people, who have endured death and destruction for two decades. Human civilization progressed in many directions in the previous century, but like a shadow the conflicts it neglected and ignored are returning with a vengeance. With the continuing international neglect of regional conflicts, the center of gravity of terrorism shifted to Afghanistan throughout the 1990s. Although terrorist groups steadfastly grew in strength, size, and influence throughout the 1990s, governments failed to understand the developments on the ground. For instance, the primary US domestic law enforcement agency—the Federal Bureau of Investigation—had placed organized and serious crime above terrorism. Similarly, the Central Intelligence Agency closed down a number of its overseas stations and did not invest adequately in human intelligence or recruitment operations. A multitude of other factors also contributed to 9/11: US disengagement from world affairs, the Western myth that it could protect its borders from the rest of the world, international neglect of protracted conflicts, and so on. Traditionally, countermeasures have always been developed in reaction to a breach of security. European governments, for instance, developed elite forces to combat terrorism in response to Germany’s failure to prevent the PLO’s

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massacre of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympic Games on 5 September 1972.17 Thirty years later, the gravity of international terrorism had shifted from the Middle East to Asia, but terrorist groups could still conduct longrange, deep-penetration operations against the West. The horror, fear, and anger of 9/11 triggered unprecedented security, intelligence, and judicial cooperation worldwide. To combat bin Laden’s alliance, the World Islamic Front for Jihad Against Crusaders and Jews, the international community has belatedly formed an antiterrorist coalition. At the heart of the Islamist alliance is the ideology of global jihad articulated by Al-Qaida and its associates. At the core of the counterterrorist coalition are the Western and Asian liberal democracies—in North America, Europe, Australia, and Japan—the wealthiest and the most powerful governments that can sustain a protracted campaign against terrorism in the years ahead. Until 9/11 the Western response to terrorism had been reactive. The Western mindset was the “fisherman model” and not the “hunter model.” In the fisherman model, government enforcement authorities wait until an attack occurs to respond. Many government enforcement authorities had to wait for a lead to start an investigation. Counterterrorism operations were lead-driven and not intelligence-driven. In the post-9/11 hunter model, government enforcement authorities working closely with their intelligence counterparts proactively targeted terrorist cells engaged in planning and preparing operations. This mindset was forced to change after 9/11 and the Madrid train bombings of 11 March 2005. Unfortunately, for countries to develop robust measures, their governments and societies had to be affected by terrorism. Otherwise, there would have been no public support for such legislation, and politicians would have lacked the courage to do what was necessary to combat terrorism. Problems of Response To sustain campaigns of politically motivated violence (insurgency, terrorism, guerrilla warfare, assassination, sabotage, and ethnocide), their proponents and perpetrators build support as well as operational networks. Whereas support networks generate support, operational networks prepare and execute attacks. When fighting terrorism, it is essential that governments and the public understand that operational cells cannot survive without support cells. Usually the range of measures necessary to operationally shut down an organization includes neutralizing the leadership and simultaneously dampening public support to prevent any revival of the group. These approaches target both the terrorist group, especially the top tier, and the support base. As the extremist ideology and support networks ensure the survival of the group, targeting these components is critical. The intelligence community,

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military forces, and law enforcement authorities alone cannot combat terrorism and extremism. In a terrorist support network, propaganda is the key to recruitment and generation of support. Terrorists enjoy vast support networks. For instance, Mohammed Mansour Jabarah, a Canadian assigned to coordinate the AlQaida attacks in Southeast Asia, was recruited by Sulaiman Abu Gaith, a Kuwaiti, who showed him propaganda videos about the war in Chechnya and told him about Abdullah Azzam, one of the founders of extremist Islamist philosophy. Jabarah returned to Canada, but his heart was already with jihad. . . . Jabarah began raising money in southern Ontario for the Islamic fighters in Chechnya, which he sent to Abu Gaith . . . [who] released a videotaped statement in which he called the 9/11 attacks “a good deed. . . . The Americans should know that the storm of plane attacks will not abate, with God’s permission. There are thousands of the Islamic nation’s youth who are eager to die, just as the Americans are eager to live.”18

However, some governments may tolerate terrorist support networks as long as they pose no direct and immediate threat. Cooperation to Collaboration With the globalization of terrorism throughout the 1990s, the nature, quality, and scale of international cooperation in combating terrorism has changed dramatically. The international cooperation against both domestic and international terrorism has proven to be one of the most important pillars of effective response. The factors driving contemporary international cooperation include the increased reach of terrorist organizations and the severity of the terrorist threat. Due to increased globalization, terrorist groups have been able to operate across borders with relative ease. Many groups have established support or operational cells in other countries. Some groups cooperate with like-minded groups worldwide. The Al-Qaida group, with its global reach, has become the classic example of a “terrorist conglomerate.” Besides conducting mass-fatality and -casualty attacks, terrorist groups are developing their capabilities to conduct mass-disruption attacks.19 Some groups, such as the al-Zarqawi network, may have successfully acquired, developed, and are likely to use chemical, biological, and radiological agents in the immediate future.20 They strive for both in-house and externally supported production, according to manuals discovered on the Internet and in conflict zones. To those who thought that terrorists would not kill, maim, injure, and traumatize in large numbers, 9/11 amply exemplified current and future terrorist intentions.

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After 9/11 the scope of matters, the range of actors, and the scale of cooperation changed dramatically. The areas of interaction include (1) security and intelligence, (2) law enforcement, (3) military, (4) judicial, (5) diplomatic, and (6) political cooperation. In addition to the alliance between Australia, Canada, Britain, the United States, and New Zealand, the number of actors cooperating on combating terrorism has increased. The civilian and the military intelligence agencies of the NATO countries, the largest collectors of counterterrorism intelligence, are working together with countries outside of North America and Europe to combat terrorism. Despite past and present ideological differences, Russia and China have cooperated with the United States. Besides Egypt, which has bilateral ties with NATO governments, the Mediterranean countries of Mauritania, Morocco, Algeria, Jordan, and Israel have engaged in dialog with Europe and North America. Even Libya, Sudan, and Iran, former active sponsors of terrorism, have provided information to the United States and to other states. For instance, Iran cooperated with Jordan on prosecuting the al-Zarqawi network. Although the US State Department continues to label Syria as a state sponsor of terrorism, Damascus has selectively cooperated with the United States. The Commercial Bank of Syria is actively participating with the United States on terrorist finance controls. On Al-Qaida and its associates, the US government is cooperating with 120 countries. Britain is cooperating with nearly 100 countries. Similarly, Pakistan is cooperating with 70 countries. Still, the bulk of the sharing and operating occurs between the Anglo-Saxon countries, followed by third-country partnerships between New Zealand and Singapore, Australia and New Zealand, the United States and Israel, the United States and Pakistan, Britain and India, and so on. With Middle Eastern and Asian countries providing sound and timely intelligence to the West, the traditional barrier that prevented the West from sharing intelligence with the Muslim world has been broken. Despite setbacks such as the US unilateral invasion of Iraq, the US failure to mediate the IsraeliPalestinian conflict, and the torture of Iraqi prisoners at the hands of US interrogators in the notorious Abu Ghraib prison, counterterrorism cooperation has continued. Furthermore, counterterrorism cooperation is undergoing a transformation from coordination to collaboration. Traditionally, security and intelligence services have shared information on extremists’ movements, financing, and weapons. As terrorists operated across borders, security services coordinated the timing of their counterterrorist operations. Today, security services are moving from coordinating on operations into collaborating on targeting of terrorist networks. The areas of collaboration include (1) the exchange of personnel, (2) joint training, (3) joint and combined operations,

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(4) sharing expertise, (5) sharing experience, (6) the transfer of resources, and (7) the development of common databases. Like the other security services, law enforcement authorities are building relationships with their counterparts by sharing data, posting their officers overseas, and engaging in joint training and investigations. In addition to the FBI increasing the number of officers posted around the world, local law enforcement authorities such as the New York Police Department have posted intelligence officers to Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. In law enforcement cooperation, there has been a sea change both in mindset and practice. For instance, for the first time, police officers are being rewarded for turning terrorists and their supporters into informants, instead of for building cases and conducting successful prosecutions. The exchange of information remains at the heart of counterterrorism cooperation. Traditionally, information exchange has taken place between heads of services or designated persons. Due to the severity of the threat, cooperation today is both formal and informal. Counterterrorism officials are willing to violate government rules and regulations in order to share especially time-sensitive intelligence with their counterparts. As a request for the records of a bank account or a phone intercept may take several months or years through the traditional legal channels, officials who realize the threat are willing to dispense with the bureaucracy and informally help their counterparts. In the US camps X-ray and Delta at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, foreign counterterrorism intelligence officers have received access to detainees from their own countries and from other foreign countries. Whether or not intelligence is shared ultimately depends not on the appointment or the rank of the requesting party but on “whom you know and how well you know that person.”21 As a function, the collection of counterterrorism intelligence has been traditionally within the security services. Counterterrorism intelligence responsibilities are closely and sometimes jealously guarded among some services. Nonetheless, in countries that have directly suffered from terrorism, the security and intelligence services have decided to share intelligence within the different agencies—internal, external, civilian, and military—as well as with their law enforcement and military counterparts. For instance, Israel’s internal security service Shin Bet operates within Israel and in the Occupied Territories in an intelligence capacity and overseas in a security role. Due to the high threat Israel faces every day, Shin Bet will share and work closely with Aman, the military intelligence service that works both inside Israel and overseas. On a daily basis, Shin Bet and Aman will share intelligence with the Mossad, Israeli’s foreign intelligence agency responsible for both information collection and covert action overseas. Unfortunately, government agencies only begin to cooperate with other

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agencies, even in their own country, if they have directly experienced terrorism and perceive that they are under continuous threat. Intra-agency cooperation is pivotal to domestic interagency cooperation. Domestic interagency cooperation is the building block of international interagency cooperation. With globalization of terrorism and the development of terrorist networks, governments have no option but to build frameworks for multiagency cooperation.22 Without developing multiagency intelligence collection and sharing, it will be difficult for current and future governments to target terrorist networks before they strike.

New Threshold Terrorism Security and intelligence services and law enforcement agencies have thwarted over 100 low- and high-scale terrorist incidents since 9/11, the details of which are usually protected to secure convictions and protect intelligence sources. Although conventional terrorist attacks will dominate, the coming years will witness low-probability, high-consequence attacks that are unpredictable and difficult to prevent. To remain effective, terrorist masterminds are formulating strategies and tactics for operating below the intelligence radar screen. The terrorist propensity to conduct attacks using chemical, biological, and radiological agents has grown, as demonstrated through attempts to acquire capability and flourishing of terrorist Internet sites that promote their use. In March and April 2004, the Jordanian security service foiled a plot that involved a coordinated simultaneous attack on high-profile, symbolic, and strategic targets in Jordan involving multiple chemical-laden vehicles. Had the bombs, rendered more deadly by the use of chemical agents, been employed, the result would have been catastrophic. The weight of the explosives recovered, and the estimates of both the suspects and the prosecution, suggest they would have killed at least 20,000 persons and maimed and injured 80,000 persons living within a half-mile radius. A terrorist cell led by al-Zarqawi, the most active terrorist in Iraq, had purchased 20 metric tons of chemicals and was planning to execute the operation when they were detected by security services. Having assisted the United States in the hunt against Al-Qaida, Jordan and Pakistan are the closest Muslim counterterrorism partners of the United States and allies in the fight against terrorism. The attack team, which named itself “al-Ashara,” or “The Ten,” intended to launch suicide operations against the Royal Palace, the Security Services’ Headquarters, leisure centers frequented by US troops recuperating during military exercises, the Israeli and US embassies, and other Israeli targets on the Jordan–West Bank border. During the operation to capture members of the cell, four members were killed. Azmi al-Jayyousi, the head

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of the Jordanian cell, had met with al-Zarqawi—first in Afghanistan, and then in neighboring Iraq—to plan the operation that could have killed 20,000 people. On his televised “confession” in Jordan, al-Jayyousi admitted that alZarqawi, for whom the US government had offered a US$10 million reward, had paid him about US$170,000 to buy 20 metric tons of chemicals and organize the operation. Another Jordanian, car mechanic Hussein Sharif Hussein, confessed that al-Jayyousi had asked him to buy vehicles and modify them so that they could crash through gates and walls surrounding the targets. Although al-Zarqawi denied the operation in a statement, evidence indicated that he contributed guidance and financial support. While conventional incidents will be the most frequent form of attack, it is very likely that cells of al-Zarqawi’s group and of his successor and current incumbent, Abdallah Rashid al-Baghdadi, both in the Middle East and in Europe will again attempt an operation of this scale in the coming years. With the difficulty of transporting conventional firearms and explosives to target countries after 9/11, Al-Qaida and its associate groups are moving in a significant way toward using chemical, biological, and radiological agents, which are not necessarily immediately detectable in airport checks and can be created from ingredients that are not by themselves suspicious. In addition to developing sensors for the early detection of chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear material, penetration of terrorist organizations and periodic arrest and debriefing of terrorists could prevent attacks. For instance, timely intelligence from Abu Zubaida, an Al-Qaida detainee, led US and Pakistani intelligence communities to disrupt a post-9/11 operation by the Al-Qaida–trained Muslim convert and US citizen Jose Padilla, alias Abdullah al-Muhajir, to use a radiological dispersal device on US soil. Instead of investing billions of US dollars on protection—evidence of a reactive mindset—it is necessary to invest in seeking out the enemy to prevent an attack. The answer to combating new-threshold terrorism does not rest only with developing protective suits, detection equipment, vaccines, and antidotes, but in a range of measures. These should include a deeper understanding of terrorists’ willingness to kill and die. Although terrorist capabilities to mount high-impact attacks have been reduced, they are not powerless, and the terrorist intentions to attack are still considerable. The challenge is to target both their physical and conceptual infrastructures. The West is best at tactically going after terrorist cells, not seeking to alter the mindset of the terrorists. This approach is insufficient to reduce the threat, especially in the medium to long term. Combating terrorism should be a partnership between the East and the West rather than a burden to be borne only by the West. As the bulk of the terrorists originate from the Arab and the Muslim world, they have the know-how and the tools to counter the terrorist mindset. By working with community and religious leaders, Arab

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and Asian Muslim governments, leaders, and thinkers should seek to send the message that violent or extreme jihad will only bring misery and pain to the Muslims. The West must work with the rest of the world, especially the Muslim world, and clearly state that the fight against terrorism is not a “clash of civilizations” but a clash between moderate and extremist Muslims. The West must seek to work closely with the moderate Muslim intellectuals and the progressive Muslim parties. Only by empowering them over the extremist ideologues and the violent groups can the threat be challenged. Without planting seeds of peace in the minds of the Muslims in the Muslim communities of the Middle East, Africa, and Asia, support for extremism and terrorism will remain and will grow. The Muslims in the diaspora and migrant communities are equally or even more vulnerable to supporting and participating in terrorism. To target the conceptual infrastructure of the violent Islamists, it is equally important for Western governmental and nongovernmental organizations to work even more closely with Muslim leaders living in the host countries. Only by creating a powerful ethic and norm against the use of violence and spawning and sustaining a culture of toleration and moderation can extremism and violence be marginalized. Islamist Vision and Mission In many respects, the violent Islamists are ahead of their opponents. The most influential terrorist theoretician, al-Zawahiri, who understands both the East and the West, is thinking ahead. For instance, immediately after US troops entered Afghanistan, Al-Qaida anticipated how the United States would use intergovernmental, governmental, and nongovernmental actors to strengthen its position in Afghanistan, especially as the Afghan people had already suffered for two decades. Restoration of normalcy was dependent on the Western powers working with a multitude of other actors. To justify targeting them, al-Zawahiri identified categories of actors as Western “tools to fight Islam”:23 • • • • • • • •

The United Nations; Muslim regimes that work with the West; Multinational corporations; International communications; Data exchange systems; International news agencies; Satellite media channels; and International relief agencies.

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Since al-Zawahiri’s call, construction workers, journalists, and International Red Cross personnel have been killed in Afghanistan, as have aid and relief workers in Chechnya, and the UN headquarters in Iraq has been bombed. The events in Afghanistan, Chechnya, and Iraq amply demonstrated that alZawahiri’s call was being followed. The past twenty-five years also witnessed al-Zawahiri’s claim about an alliance of jihad movements in the various “lands of Islam” against the antiterrorist coalition. This meant that the threat to these agencies would come not only from Al-Qaida but also from its associated groups located in Asia, the Middle East, and sub-Saharan Africa, and also those operating in the West. A tape by Osama bin Laden issued immediately after 9/11 informed us of the next wave of attacks on economic targets. He argued that The events that happened on Tuesday 11 September in New York and Washington, that is truly a great event in all measures, and its claims until this moment are not over and are still continuing. . . . According to their own admissions, the share of the losses on the Wall Street Market reached 16 percent. They said that this number is a record, which has never happened since the opening of the market more than 230 years ago. . . . The loss that affected the stocks, it reaches $640 billion of losses from stocks . . . so this amount, for example, is the budget of Sudan for 640 years. They have lost this, due to an attack that happened with the success of Allah lasting one hour only. The daily income of the American nation is $20 billion. The first week they didn’t work at all due to the psychological shock of the attack, and even until today some don’t work due to the attack. So if you multiply $20 billion by 1 week, it comes out to $140 billion, and it is even bigger than this. If you add it to the $640 billion, we’ve reached how much? Approximately $800 billion. The cost of the building losses and construction losses? Let us say more than $30 billion. Then they have fired or liquidated until today, or a couple of days ago, from the airline companies more than 170,000 employees. That includes cargo plane companies, and commercial airlines, and American studies and analysis have mentioned that 70 percent of the American people even until today still suffer from depression and psychological trauma, after the incident of the two towers, and the attack on the Defense Ministry, the Pentagon—thanks to Allah’s grace. One of the well-known American hotel companies, Intercontinental, has fired 20,000 employees—thanks to Allah’s grace. Those claims cannot be calculated by anyone due to their very large scale, multitude and complexity—and it is increasing thanks to Allah’s grace—so watch as the amount reaches no less than $1 trillion by the lowest estimate—thanks to Allah’s grace—due to these successful and blessed attacks.24

The attacks on the Sari and Paddy nightclubs in Bali, Indonesia, in October 2002, and in Jimbaran and Kuta in October 2005; on the Neptune Paradise Hotel and a chartered aircraft of tourists in Mombassa, Kenya, in November 2002; on a bank of the Hong Kong Shanghai Banking Corporation in

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November 2003 in Istanbul, Turkey; and in Sharm-el-Sheikh in July 2005 demonstrated the threat to the economic well-being of nations. In future target selection, violent Islamists will take into account the national economies of their enemies. Considering the increased threat from governments to Islamist terrorist groups, underground Islamist terrorist groups as well as legitimate political parties will play decisive roles. Instead of Islamist terrorist groups alone shouldering the burden of politicizing, radicalizing, and mobilizing the Muslims, Islamist political parties are taking over duties of propaganda, recruitment, and fundraising. This frees the Islamist terrorist groups to concentrate on the planning, preparation, and conduct of attacks. The doctrine of Al-Qaida calls on them to “expose” the “rulers” who fight Islam; to highlight the “importance of loyalty to the faithful and relinquishment of the infidels in the Muslim creed”; to hold “every Muslim responsible for defending Islam, its sanctities, nation, and homeland”; to caution against the “ulema of the sultan and reminding the nation of the virtues of the ulema of jihad and the imams of sacrifice and the need for the nation to defend, protect, honor, and follow them”; and to expose “the extent of aggression against our creed and sanctities and the plundering of our wealth.”25 It is difficult to prevent extremists among Muslim migrant communities in North America, Europe, and Australasia from advancing their political aims and objectives nonviolently. While operating with tight security and vigilance, Al-Qaida’s post-Iraq strategy is for Islamist parties to hide beneath the political veil and to produce a generation of recruits and supporters to sustain the fight in Iraq. Until favorable conditions emerge, AlQaida will operate through mosques, madrassas, community centers, charities, and bookshops in Western Europe and North America. Afghanistan and Iraq The lack of commitment of the international community in Afghanistan and Iraq has prevented the creation of state-of-the-art twenty-first–century nations in Asia and in the Middle East. Weak institutional processes, and the failure to create a strong security environment and legislative controls, are being exploited: several years after intervention in Afghanistan and invasion in Iraq, the security situation on the ground remains weak and prone to exploitation by insurgents. When Taliban leader Mullah Muhammad Omar joined forces with Osama bin Laden in October 2001, the anti-US force multiplied. Similarly, Hezb-i-Islami leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar joined forces with the Islamic Movement of Taliban and Al-Qaida. Compared to Al-Qaida, a foreign force, the Taliban and Hezb-i-Islami enjoy significant support in Afghanistan.26 Today, Al-Qaida—essentially an Arab force—is able to infiltrate,

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probe, and strike against targets because of the linkages it has developed in the Afghan community through its alliance members in the Taliban and Hezb-i-Islami, local forces. The ground situation would have been very different had Pakistan prevented the Taliban, a regime closer to Pakistan than to Al-Qaida, from joining its forces with Al-Qaida. Similarly, without thinking ahead, the US government disbanded the Iraqi army, the only national institution that could have operated effectively across the Sunni, Shi’ite, and Kurdish regions. The US government’s shortsighted decision to disband the Iraqi army, a traditional foe, has strengthened the anti-US resistance and weakened the multinational coalition. The international outrage following Al-Qaida’s multiple attacks on US landmarks on 9/11 provided the community of nations with a framework for fighting a multiheaded hydra. Nonetheless, the US unilateral invasion of Iraq has weakened the coalition against terrorism and given a new lease on life to Islamist extremist terrorist groups worldwide. Despite these initial drawbacks, the United States, its allies, and its friends have learned. Two successive tiers of Al-Qaida’s operational leadership have been virtually obliterated. However, the multigenerational character of the Islamist campaigns ensures the survival of Al-Qaida and its associated groups. The Islamist groups have adapted to the new threat, replacing their losses and wastage and continuing the fight. Al-Qaida’s interface with Islamist guerrilla and terrorist groups worldwide has prolonged its own life cycle and also reoriented its counterparts to target the United States, its allies, and its friends. Although the pressure on its leadership in Afghanistan has severed Al-Qaida’s command and control of its vast global terrorist network, the post-Iraq environment has created new and strengthened networks that are influencing and controlling the Al-Qaida support structures. After the loss of Afghanistan, “a liberated land of jihad,” the Islamists desperately needed a new theater to wage jihad. Without another land of jihad, it was impossible to train a new generation of fighters physically and psychologically. The US unilateral invasion of Iraq provided the ideal conditions for jihadis. The influx of foreign fighters—both guerrillas and terrorists—bringing virulent ideologies and tactics such as suicide terrorism has fueled the Iraqi insurgency several times over. The blueprint for fighting in Iraq was crafted by the Saudi-born Al-Qaida ideologue and operative Yousef al-Aiyyeri. Aiyyeri, a former bodyguard in Sudan, instructor at alFarooq training camp in Afghanistan, and later webmaster of Alneda.com, the Al-Qaida website, was killed on 31 May 2003. Urging Muslims to fight the “invading crusader,” al-Aiyyeri wrote that if democracy was established in Iraq that would be the death of Islam. Most foreign insurgents in Iraq, estimated at a few thousand, have come from the Levant, from Iraq’s neighboring countries, the Gulf, and North Africa. From Europe, a few hundred established and convert Muslims

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have arrived in Iraq to support, train, fight, and attain martyrdom. In time, in the true spirit of jihad, Asian and North American Muslims will join them. Rich Muslims in Western Europe are paying for poor Muslims in Eastern Europe to travel to Iraq. Diaspora Muslims in Germany, France, Italy, and the UK are urging, funding, and providing the logistics for migrant Muslims, many without proper identity documents from Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, and Poland, to undertake jihad. The third-country recruitment includes Bosnia-Herzegovina and the rest of the Balkans. They communicate by one-on-one meetings and via the Internet. Some travel by road through Turkey to Syria with passengers under the guise of providing humanitarian assistance, sell the vehicle at the Iraq border, and enter the new land of jihad. Unlike the Arabs who went to wage a guerrilla campaign against the Soviets in Afghanistan, the European Muslims are learning terrorist tactics from day one in Iraq. When the Arabs returned home to the Middle East, they tried to topple the “false Muslim” rulers and “corrupt Muslim” regimes and replace them with Islamic states. When the European Muslims return home to Europe, they will engage in terrorism against the West. Like Afghanistan, Bosnia and Chechnya produced the current generation of mujahideen, and Iraq will produce the next generation of terrorists and extremists. Western responses to the lands of jihad will determine the future trends and patterns in Islamist terrorism and extremism.

Conclusion The threat of terrorism will not diminish in the short term. Unless and until government leaders and bureaucrats better understand radical Islam, the threat of terrorism and extremism will grow. Addressing the tactical aspects—approaching the issue like a technician—will only lead to an escalation of the threat. As much as targeting the terrorists’ operational and support infrastructures, governments must seek to target their conceptual infrastructures. As much as neutralizing the planning, preparations, and supporting operations of terrorist cells, it is necessary to target extremist ideologies and ideologues. At the heart of fighting terrorism is countering extremism, the virulent ideologies that generate funds, recruits, and—more important—justify violence. In addition to countering propaganda, the international community should seek to address regional conflicts and their contribution to wider global instability. The conflicts in Palestine, Kashmir, Chechnya, Mindanao, Afghanistan, and now Iraq provide the ideological rationale and fuel for extremism and terrorism. The key to fighting the contemporary wave of terrorism is in the development of a holistic approach where enduring nonmilitary political, eco-

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nomic, and informational strategies are regarded as priorities. Furthermore, military measures should be coordinated with nonmilitary measures. The reason for the US failure in Iraq is that only a handful of the US military generals were capable of conceiving strategies for fighting an unconventional opponent unconventionally. As opposed to the situation in Iraq, the US-led coalition in Afghanistan has developed intelligence dominance due to the widespread cruelty of the Islamic Movement of the Taliban and the presence of the Northern Alliance on the ground. Iraq has demonstrated to the world that without winning hearts and minds, winning firefights and battles assures no real victory. As much as fighting the physical enemy, working on the enemy mind and his actual and potential support base is critical. How many US personnel at Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad understood that every Iraqi tortured and released from detention would turn into an enemy and galvanize countless others to join the cause? Investing billions of US dollars in the military realm but neglecting or ignoring the social, cultural, and religious realities offers no victory. Without winning the goodwill of the Iraqi public, Iraq will be a lost war. Iraq should offer to the world the single important lesson that war-fighting alone is inadequate for an army to succeed in its mission. The unintended consequence of the US invasion of Iraq is the current dangerous situation that the world will have to live with in the coming years. Democracy cannot be imposed from outside on a people not ready to embrace it. Though the elections in Iraq are evidence of some active participation in the political process, the effects on the general security atmosphere remain to be seen. The best the West could hope for is to economically develop the Middle East and empower local actors to fight for greater representation and participation themselves. With upward social mobility, the public will hope for leaders worthy of representing their ideas and values. Investment in education and the market economy is likely to work better than imposing a Western system of governance. Furthermore, a democracy would offer Islamist political parties an opportunity to capture political power. As US pressure in the 1970s on the shah of Iran to reform facilitated the Iranian revolution, the current US project to democratize the Middle East and Central Asia is likely to embolden the Islamists and undermine pro-Western regimes and governments. A reassessment of US policy in the Middle East is essential to reduce the instability and violence in the Middle East. The US invasion of Iraq has created in the heart of the Middle East a new land of jihad. Just like the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan produced the conditions for the creation of a generation of terrorists, the fallout from Iraq will destabilize the region and beyond for a decade at least. Much like the Afghan alumni who destroyed iconic US landmarks in 2001, Iraqi alumni will seek to harm the United States, its allies, and its friends in the

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coming months and years. Against the growing anger, suffering, and resentment of the Muslim world, Islamism will flourish like Communism did in the previous century. Only by seeking to change the reality of regional conflicts where Muslims are suffering will the threat of terrorism diminish. Most moderate Muslims will be reluctant to challenge the terrorist ideologues and propagandists who misinterpret and misrepresent Islam because of the fear of harm from the extremists and terrorists. Furthermore, the moderates will be challenged by the extremists and even by ordinary Muslims as to their engagement on behalf of the Palestinians, Kashmiris, Chechens, and other downtrodden Muslims. Exercising their rights accorded them by the First Amendment to the US Constitution and by the freedom of speech and similar values enshrined in Western liberal democracies, Islamist ideologues will continue to offer a corrupt version of the religious texts including the Quran, politicizing, radicalizing, and mobilizing Muslims against the West. Therefore, the challenge facing the West and the Muslim world from the Islamist terrorists and their ideologues is formidable, robust, and long. As the situation is dynamic, a greater understanding of the opponent, a deeper knowledge of the issues, and sustained investment in training and education are essential to win the fight.

Notes The author would like to thank Doron Zimmermann of the Center for Security Studies for his comments and suggestions after reading a draft of this chapter and for the invitation to contribute to this volume, and also to Sarah Jaime Burnell for her assistance with research. 1. Bruce Hoffman, Inside Terrorism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998); and Paul Wilkinson, Terrorism Versus Democracy: The Liberal State Response (London: Frank Cass, 2001). 2. World Islamic Front for Jihad Against Jews and Crusaders, released by AlQaida, February 1998. 3. For a survey of Muslim fundamentalism, see Lawrence Davidson, Islamic Fundamentalism (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1998). 4. Reuven Paz, Tangled Web: International Networking of the Islamist Struggle (Washington, DC: Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 2002), app. 1. 5. European intelligence services monitored Said Mansour, a Moroccan living in Denmark, facilitating the introductions between Maqdisi and Abu Qatada. 6. Interview, Investigative Judge Jean-Louis Bruguiere, February 2004. 7. Among the CNN recoveries from the Al-Qaida registry in Afghanistan, the author identified and examined two videotapes by the Islamic Movement of Iraqi Kurdistan. 8. Ibn-ul-Khattab, “Europe: We Are Still at the Beginning of Jihad in This Region,” Azzam Publications, 27 September 1999. 9. Philip Smucker, Al-Qaeda’s Great Escape: The Military and the Media on Terror’s Trail (Washington, DC: Brassey’s, 2004). Smucker’s account provides

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operational details of Al-Qaida’s great escape against the backdrop of the US-led coalition intervention. 10. Michael Isikoff, “9-11 Hijackers: A Saudi Money Trail: The Feds Probe a Possible New Saudi Link to Al Qaeda,” Newsweek, 22 November 2002. 11. Ayman al-Zawahiri, “Knights Under the Prophet’s Banner,” Internet copy in English, released in November 2001, made available by Al-Sharq al-Awsat, 2 December 2001. 12. Ibid. 13. Ibid. 14. Ibid. 15. Ibid. 16. For red models, see Noemi Gal-Or, “Revolutionary Terrorism,” Encyclopedia of Terrorism, vol. 1 (n.p., n.d), 194–196. 17. Hoffman, Inside Terrorism, 124; and Wilkinson, Terrorism Versus Democracy, 190. 18. Stewart Bell, Cold Terror: How Canada Nurtures and Exports Terrorism Around the World (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2004), 194–195. 19. Gilbert King, Dirty Bomb: Weapons of Mass Disruption (New York: Chamberlain Brothers, 2004), 184. 20. Example below. 21. Interview, Lt. Col. Mike Dolamore, head, Army School of Ammunition, UK, December 2002. 22. As a real-life example, an Asian intelligence agency may recruit a student traveling to the Middle East to study. A Middle East station of a European intelligence agency collaborating with the Asian agency will manage the informant. Another real-life example is that a European agency may recruit a European Muslim and task him to infiltrate a group of Muslims traveling to Iraq to fight coalition forces. Upon arrival in Iraq, the European Muslim will be arrested by US troops. The informant will be isolated, debriefed by coalition forces on the networks facilitating and the routes used to transport fighters to Iraq, and then either freed to develop an even better understanding of the Iraqi battlefield or transported back to the host country for future operations. 23. Al-Zawahiri, “Knights Under the Prophet’s Banner.” 24. Tayseer Allouni [Kabul correspondent of Al-Jazeera], transcript of previously unaired interview with Osama bin Laden on 21 October 2001. Translated from Arabic by the Institute for Islamic Studies and Research. Available at www.alneda.com. 25. Al-Zawahiri, “Knights Under the Prophet’s Banner.” 26. It was an unfortunate alliance that could have been disrupted had the United States given more time for Pakistan to negotiate with the then–Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan to hand over bin Laden to Islamabad immediately after 9/11. The US-led antiterrorist coalition initiated its campaign by not giving adequate opportunity for diplomatic efforts by Pakistan to drive a wedge between the Taliban and Al-Qaida. US leaders were looking for a clear and physical target at which to vent their anger and revenge—if they could not have bin Laden, at least the Taliban seemed like a target with enough profile to satisfy the Bush administration. Although the Taliban and Al-Qaida combined forces in combat against the Northern Alliance, the relationship had its ups and downs. At the request of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) service, after the East Africa bombings the Taliban imposed restrictions on bin Laden’s activities, particularly his terrorist operations and press interviews. Although not strictly enforced, these measures led to significant tensions, creating pro– and anti–bin Laden divisions within the Taliban. Under the lead-

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ership of Mullah Omar, the Taliban would not have handed over bin Laden for trial to a non-Islamic court. However, the Pakistanis could have prevented the formation of the Taliban–Al-Qaida alliance. Had the US intelligence community developed an accurate assessment of the numerical strength of Al-Qaida and the Taliban, and had it understood the implications of unity between a relatively unpopular Al-Qaida and a popular Taliban, it could have avoided the US strikes.

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9 Toward Efficiency and Legitimacy DORON ZIMMERMANN

AND

ANDREAS WENGER

THE ATTACKS AGAINST US LANDMARKS ON 11 SEPTEMBER 2001, AND THEIR global impact on politics and society, have given rise to discussions weighing the effectiveness of counterterrorism measures against the integrity of the liberal democratic values that underpin open societies. Since September 2001, this debate and the questions it continues to raise have clearly affected the shaping of Western counterterrorism policies and strategies at both the national and the international levels. The heterogeneity in national and international responses to terrorism reflects diverging threat perceptions and differences in perspectives on the question of effectiveness versus legitimacy in counterterrorism that go back to the rise of political terrorism during the Cold War. The purpose of this chapter is to provide an understanding of the shaping of Western counterterrorism policy in its formative years from the late 1960s to the transatlantic developments in counterterrorism after 9/11. In the first and second segments, we will discuss issues and challenges encountered during the evolution of counterterrorism policy from the 1970s to the 1990s before moving on to the post-9/11 era. Finally, we will focus on balancing different considerations in the fight against terrorism.

Counterterrorism in the 1970s and the 1980s The Threat In the aftermath of decolonization, various Western and other governments found themselves in confrontation with a new type of political violence that was not unconnected to, but rather quite distinct from, the struggles of national liberation. When political terrorism took center stage, it did so in various guises. Although the agendas of political violence movements were 203

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varied and frequently steeped in ideologies with impeccable Socialist pedigrees, couched in the rhetoric of national liberation (usually with a view to separatist goals), or even a combination of the two paradigms, their modus operandi was invariably the same. From Ulster in the north of Ireland to the Basque provinces in Spain to the Federal Republic of Germany, the authorities themselves, members of government, symbols of state authority and of Western wealth (i.e., “imperialism”), and innocent bystanders became the choice targets of carefully orchestrated mediagenic attacks by political terrorists. Increasingly well prepared and often spectacularly successful acts of arson, kidnapping, hijacking, hostage taking, and political assassination, all of which were distilled into frequently disseminated communiqués, guaranteed this new breed of political violence movement a slot in the headlines. And with this increased presence in the consciousness of so many readers and viewers of the media, the terrorists’ political grievances entered into the lives and considerations of many an ordinary citizen. Whether achieved by the use of an assault rifle, plastic explosives, or chemical incendiaries, it was the adroit weaponization of a communicable act of terror that became an effective tool in the hands of the few discontents: it gave them the power to impress and sway the minds of the masses. Against the backdrop of the second Cold War (after Ronald Reagan came to power), another recognizable and distinct feature of the political terrorist groups of the 1980s was their evolution from domestic physical force opposition—that is, an internal security issue—to a transnational ideological threat. The distinction between domestic and transnational terrorism stood in the way of a comprehensive government response: the political terrorism of this age thrived and banked on the separation of internal and external security, which for historical reasons is a basic principle in the constitutions of many Western democracies. Thus international terrorism was born. In its beginnings, the Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA) was content with attacking the British in Ulster. By the mid-1970s it had evolved into a full-fledged urban guerrilla organization that was able to harass and temporarily even stave off the regular military. It then turned toward mainland Britain and the European continent to attack new and greater targets, such as the Tory Party conference in Brighton (1984) and the British Army on the Rhine (1989 and again in 1996). In 1986 the PIRA received in excess of 100 tons of arms from the Libyan government. This was Col. Muammar Ghaddafi’s response to the decision of British prime minister Margaret Thatcher to grant basing rights for the US fighter jets that attacked Tripoli in retaliation to a terrorist attack against a Berlin discotheque frequented by US military personnel.1 Similarly, the activities of the Red Army Faction in West Germany evolved from antiestablishment performance violence to coordination of training and operations with battle-

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hardened Palestinian militant groups in the Levant. The Italian Red Brigades, too, collaborated with Palestinian political violence movements engaged in terrorist attacks.2 The Response In order to meet an escalating, geographically expanding, and increasingly interlinked threat, Western democracies were compelled to formulate adequate responses beyond launching criminal proceedings through their police services. This adjustment was not easily encompassed and was the result of a gradual process. In the beginning, measures taken in liberal democracies against terrorism proved inadequate; the failures of early counterterrorism efforts galvanized European democracies and the United States to devise comprehensive strategic frameworks underpinned by political will on executive levels and supported by specialized operational capabilities. Examples illustrative of these shortcomings are the botched attempt at freeing Israeli hostages at Fürstenfeldbrück in Germany during the 1972 Olympic Games and the hostage-siege situation at the US embassy in Iran (1979–1980), as well as the abortive US rescue mission that failed to resolve the standoff. Germany responded by establishing a specialized operational capability that was compliant with its strict separation of the military and the police.3 Meanwhile, by the time the last US hostages were set free in 1981, Ronald Reagan promised “swift and effective retribution” against terrorists. The adoption of National Security Directive 138 of 26 April 1984 obligated the US government to employ force and move from the “defense to the offense.”4 The trend toward forceful confrontation was evident even before the hostage drama in Iran. When next the antagonists met after Munich, as in Entebbe, Uganda (1976); Djibouti (1976); or Mogadishu, Somalia (1977); the Western states generally proved willing and able to use sufficient muscle and demonstrate determination in the face of terrorist violence.5 This transformation took place in the vastly different contexts of the US and the European democracies. Understandably, early Western responses to terrorism were neither harmonious nor necessarily mutually compatible. However, in the two decades after the attack on the Munich Olympics, the response of Western liberal democracies to terrorism on both sides of the Atlantic began to change. This process, namely the incremental expansion and specialization of the means of police repression, internal security, diplomacy, and the military to combat terrorism, was the result of several debacles that were attributed to tenuous political will and organizational inadequacies. It lasted for the better part of a decade, from 1979 to 1986, culminating in the momentous US decision to take recourse to military force against Libya, which had instigated and perpetrated a terrorist attack against off-duty US military personnel in Berlin. The

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upshot of this development was a transformation toward—or arguably even the inception of—modern counterterrorism policy: an interlocking strategy based on an increasingly coordinated deployment of the full spectrum of political, diplomatic, police, and military means. With a view to the present, and the post-9/11 campaign against global terrorism, this trend toward a robust counterterrorist strategy is also partially responsible for a widening transatlantic gulf concerning perspectives on global security policy. Traditionally in European democracies the combating of terrorism came under the remit of civilian, police, and other constabulary forces (e.g., third-force paramilitaries as part of the border police) throughout the period discussed here. After World War II, the democratization and demilitarization of state repressive powers was a natural response to the flagrant abuse of the executive monopoly on force by the Fascist regimes of the Axis powers. From this past experience, Europe’s democracies had learned the hard way that the troika of democratic and parliamentary accountability, transparency, and control constitutes the critical formula in the legitimate wielding of force by the state, especially in situations of asymmetric conflict beneath the threshold of war. Based on this logic, European states have generally tended to downplay and “criminalize” political violence, such as terrorism, in order to deal with terrorist violence as a criminal offense punishable under the civilian criminal code (where applicable). This course was deliberately adopted in opposition to casting political terrorism in terms of treasonable insurgent violence directed at overthrowing the liberal democratic state and its institutions; and thus having to “elevate” the terrorist threat to the “status” of a national security issue, which, in turn, would arguably necessitate the participation of armed forces. The problem with this approach was realized and addressed by the Council of Europe’s European Convention for the Suppression of Terrorism (1977), the purpose of which was—ironically enough—to circumscribe the standard interpretation of terrorism as an explicitly political, and therefore jurisdictionally speaking “internal,” act rather than a felony or criminal act. Provisos exempting political transgressions had already allowed many European states to void extradition commitments with respect to defendants charged with committing terrorist acts.6 The subsuming of terrorism under the criminal code has, in turn, allowed many democracies to entrust the mandate of combating political terrorism to civilian police and constabulary organizations; the resulting dynamic frequently has also tended to reinforce the circular logic where the terrorist threat is framed as being intrinsically internal and part of an exclusive police jurisdiction, as opposed to an international menace with implications for state security, or, by extension, for national defense. By and large, the United States engaged in the same practice during this period by giving responsibility for the prosecution of domestic terrorism to the federal police

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organization, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Since the 1970s the United States has remained consistent in designating the FBI as the lead agency in combating internal terrorism. In contrast to European police forces and regional and international police organizations such as Interpol, however, the FBI has also had a mandate since the mid-1980s that suggests extraterritorial jurisdiction, in recognition of the transnational nature of the terrorist threat.7 The seeds of disagreement concerning Western counterterrorism policy can be found in the 1980s. Overwhelmingly, the experience that impelled various European governments toward fighting terrorism collectively in the 1970s and 1980s was that of domestic terrorism. Consequently, European governments addressed the threat of political terrorism through a “criminal justice model”—for example, through intergovernmental forums such as TREVI (Terrorism, Radicalism, Extremism, Violence International) and the still more informal PWGOT (Police Working Group on Terrorism). Most European governments affected by terrorism expediently circumvented the provision that maximum force should only be an instrument of last resort vested in the military by militarizing their police capabilities.8 While the United States generally shared the European concerns in the age of political terrorism, the principal threat to influence US perception and policy was that of international terrorism in the context of the global Cold War.9 As most terrorist organizations threatening the United States were not indigenous to either North America or Europe, the bulk of noninvestigative US counterterrorism activity (i.e., operations sponsored by the national security community) did not come under the remit of the FBI, in spite of its enhanced jurisdictional powers. Instead, responsibility for countering international terrorism, though nominally in the hands of the US Department of State, increasingly shifted into the jurisdiction of the Central Intelligence Agency’s Directorate of Operations and the Department of Defense’s multiple specialist agencies, reflecting the “war model” rather than the “criminal justice model” favored by the Europeans.10 While a common ground of sorts was established between Western European states affected by internal terrorism from the left and the right and the United States, which had also experienced anti-American and antiWestern terrorism abroad, the perceived nature of the challenge remained fundamentally different throughout the second half of the period under review. To many European governments, the fact that the widely publicized motives of the political violence movements they confronted were gradually transcending the borders of their own countries was secondary to the shared understanding that many groups involved in terrorist acts expediently employed a reddish-hued gloss in order to draw broader support for their local or national grievances. European governments were tightly focused on the domestic “internal” aspect of the terrorism threat. In contrast, the US

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perception from an early date was intrinsically geostrategic. From the US point of view, political terrorism depended on multiple linkages between individual groups, on the one hand, and many state sponsors, on the other— with the Soviet Union taking pride of place, although not to the exclusion of other malefactors. An extreme and simplistic US view, albeit not endorsed by public officials, was that all threads of international terrorism ultimately came together in Moscow—that terrorism was the Soviet Union’s weapon against the Free World.11 In spite of differing perspectives on the nature and extent of the menace represented by political terrorism in the three decades before 9/11, Western governments slowly came to share a basic understanding of the terrorist threat: because of terrorism’s undeniable transnational modus operandi by the 1980s and its increasing lethality, it could only be fought effectively if the response proved equally able to transcend borders and match political violence with legitimate force. Although a common definition of terrorism could not be achieved, limited progress toward context- and situation-specific legal measures was obtained. The will to multilaterally combat terrorism on the international level was expressed in the nine universal legal instruments developed by the UN until the end of the Cold War.12 To this day, the problem with the UN conventions is that “there is no broad-based means of enforcing them.”13 Thus, the question arose whether the show of unanimity at the UN was only declaratory, despite an international recognition of the necessity to combat terrorism cooperatively. Either way, under the pressure of unabated terrorist violence, the Western response to terrorism needed to be adapted to the threat and had to become increasingly collective to counter converging terrorist alliances (e.g., Euro-Terrorism).

Counterterrorism After the Cold War The end of the Cold War heralded a period of transformation in the security policy community around the globe. Indubitably, the sense of hope and change was profound in the West, where the “End of History” (to cite the book by Francis Fukuyama) and the victory of liberalism were eagerly anticipated. With the advantage of hindsight, one could argue that the collapse of the Soviet Union caused a feeling of euphoria in all Western countries and that it raised unreasonable expectations for a new and peaceful era. The threat of the Soviet Union had evaporated, leaving behind a legacy of multiple fractured threats that would rush in to fill the vacuum created by the demise of the bipolar system. This awareness, however, was slow to percolate down the ranks in the Western governments. The focus of national and regional defense organizations in the early 1990s was on the perceived new and complex security-political environment, and on such bodies’ quest

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to redefine their institutional identities and roles: they had only little time to spare for political violence movements, especially for old ones that were mistakenly but widely associated with Cold War dynamics. In the wake of the Cold War, terrorism dropped to the bottom of the US threat priority list. Meanwhile, with the dissolution of the Red Army Faction and the waning of the Red Brigades (as opposed to ETA and splinter Republican groups in the UK and Ireland), European countries were witnessing the demise of extreme left- and right-wing political terrorism. But against all expectations and hopes for a new world order, terrorism, whose resilience, adaptability, and sheer virulence have been underestimated time and again, endured. With regard to counterterrorism, the period between 1989 and 2001 was characterized on the one hand by the supplanting of political terrorism in its “Euro-terrorist” and new left or Fascist right manifestations by extraregional religious-political and indigenous or spatially proximate separatist-irredentist groups; and on the other by a concomitant threat perception that was marked by its diffusiveness. The first World Trade Center attack in 1993 and the bombing of a federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995 left an indelible mark on the collective consciousness of the United States. In a dizzying leap, terrorism—in the US government’s perception in the early 1990s— advanced from a waning legacy problem to a fast-developing, urgent national security concern. In this situation of heightened alertness, much of the governmental counterterrorism response, especially in the United States, hinged on the authorities’ understanding of the nature of a threat that should have become obsolete. Thus, the reinvigorated debate on terrorist threat perception itself became embattled. Though in part responsible for distorting and exaggerating the threat, the debate itself had an influence—direct and indirect, intentionally and inadvertently—on the formulation of Western counterterrorism strategies. The discussion about the “new terrorism” in policy and academic circles is elementary to any understanding of the development of counterterrorism in the West after the Cold War. The Threat The first attempt at bombing the World Trade Center in 1993 catapulted the terrorist threat back to center stage. A sign of an abruptly changing threat perception was the promotion of the “new terrorism” paradigm in the United States, which was hailed as an appropriate conceptual apparatus for portraying the next generation of terrorism. This comment, made by one of the proponents of the new terrorism thesis writing at the end of the 1990s, is symptomatic of the notion of terrorism having undergone a fundamental transformation: “Much of the discussion on terrorism remains tied to

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images drawn from previous epochs.”14 In an oversimplification that epitomized the generally superficial understanding of the nascent post–Cold War terrorism threat, the proponents of the new terrorism postulated: “This new terrorism has different motives, different actors, different sponsors. . . . Terrorists are organizing themselves in new, less hierarchical structures and using ‘amateurs’ to a far greater extent.” 15 The ostensible novelty of post–Cold War terrorism was justification enough to marginalize conventional wisdom. This unfortunate overemphasis found ample expression in the undue value attached to vulnerability analysis and signals intelligence over threat analysis and human intelligence: the US government was so preoccupied with the chinks in its armor that it almost forgot about the terminus a quo of terrorism, that is, the terrorist actor. The notion that terrorism’s potential lethality had increased was one of the principal arguments of the new terrorism paradigm. Substantiated by statistical data, this idea was arguably the new terrorism school’s most productive contribution to the debate. A controversial query arose as a corollary of this so-called disquieting trajectory thesis—although not because of the actual argument advanced by Bruce Hoffman16—over whether the advent of mass-casualty terrorism was exclusively due to the rise of a dominant religious component in the motivational makeup of terrorism, and by extension, whether this trend really indicated a development toward terrorist attacks with weapons of mass destruction.17 The contentions advanced by the new terrorism school did not go unchallenged and were eventually put into perspective. In a seminal article, Martha Crenshaw cautioned, “A focus on the prospect of a ‘new’ catastrophic terrorism should not be allowed to . . . obscure the fact that much terrorism is still of the familiar variety, with pragmatic and comprehensible aims.”18 Ehud Sprinzak’s “The Great Superterrorism Scare,” published in Foreign Policy in 1998, questioned the wisdom and validity of a linkage between the rise of mass-casualty terrorist attacks and “superterrorism”— terrorism with chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear (CBRN) weapons. He ascribed the growing fear of “superterrorism” throughout the 1990s to “sloppy thinking,” “vested interest,” and “morbid fascination.”19 The only attack with weapons of mass destruction in the period under discussion is the botched attempt by the Aum Shinrikyo sect. The IRA’s successful operation of independent command structures (Active Service Units) since the early 1970s, and the PLO’s function as an umbrella organization running its own local franchises decades before the coming of AlQaida, are historical facts that need to be weighed against the contention that the flat hierarchies of the new terrorists are a new development.20 Notwithstanding this debate, successive US administrations have perceived all aspects of terrorism in the 1990s as being new and dangerously different from the past. How else could terrorism’s resuscitation from the

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doldrums of the late 1980s and in the immediate post–Cold War era be explained? How else could its resilience and continued destructive potential be understood in a world in which the state sponsors of terrorism had themselves been reduced to truncated proxies of the former Soviet Union? What struck many as “new” about the renewed rise of terrorism in the 1990s, when terrorist attacks were periodically at a low ebb, was in fact due to surprise and doubts as to the possibility of a terrorist comeback. One example of how exaggerated the alleged novelty of the new terrorism really was can be seen in the scare over asymmetric attacks using CBRN, notwithstanding the documented interest of some extremists in acquiring weapons of mass destruction as far back as the 1970s. The sudden concern of the Clinton administration with potential terrorist attacks using unconventional arms, reinforced by Aum Shinrikyo’s attacks on the Tokyo underground in March 1995, showed how unexpected the terrorist comeback was.21 The Response The United States and the European Community were both confronted with continued terrorist violence after the end of the Cold War. Each chose its own particular way to deal with the terrorist threat. The development of different counterterrorism strategies on the one hand reaffirmed the continuity of the protean approaches of the preceding period and, on the other, deepened and perpetuated the transatlantic divide regarding policy concerning terrorism. Successive US governments pushed a counterterrorism approach that framed terrorism primarily as an international, conspiratorial, political force that had to be countered on every existing or conceivable battlefield. Terrorism was not simply a crime, but a credible global threat. By contrast, the European Community (and later the EU and its institutions) emphasized the criminal nature of terrorism and the importance of not conceding any political status to terrorism. In the eyes of many, if not most, European governments, terrorism, perpetrated for whatever reason, thus constituted first and foremost a severe crime. Following the sea change in US counterterrorism policy under President Ronald Reagan, the United States, by contrast, perforce continued to perceive terrorism not only as a serious crime but primarily as a challenge to national security that had to be fought with all means at its disposal: diplomatic, military, and civilian. The “war model” of terrorism as a military and ideological threat—a perception influenced by the Cold War—was thus even more firmly ensconced in Washington. In line with this fundamental assessment, Reagan had elevated counterterrorism to an important item on the US foreign policy agenda. After a hiatus during the first Bush administration, which largely preserved and corroborated Reagan’s policies, the next big push in the development of US counterterrorism policy

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occurred under the Clinton presidency. The principal novelty in the Clinton administration’s policy approach was a new awareness “that terrorism could—and did—happen on US soil, where both international and domestic elements struck.”22 In addition to fighting terrorism abroad, the homeland had to be secured. In Presidential Decision Directive (PDD) No. 39 of 21 June 1995, President Clinton clearly stated that as far as the US government was concerned, terrorism was a crosscutting national security–level issue with domestic and international implications that warranted an interlocking, well-coordinated response: It is the policy of the United States to deter, defeat and respond vigorously to all terrorist attacks on our territory and against our citizens, or facilities, whether they occur domestically, in international waters or airspace or on foreign territory. The United States regards all such terrorism as a potential threat to national security as well as a criminal act and will apply all appropriate means to combat it.23

One indirect result of the new terrorism debate was the prominence given by the US government to the perceived threat of terrorists using weapons of mass destruction.24 Under the Clinton administration, the US government undertook to secure the homeland by hardening potential US targets at home and abroad. Wide-ranging reforms instituted under Clinton were enunciated in Presidential Decision Directives No. 62 and No. 63, both issued on 22 May 1998. PDD No. 62 outlined the office of a National Coordinator for Security, Infrastructure Protection, and Counterterrorism.25 PDD No. 63 introduced sweeping changes to the organization of domestic US counterterrorism security. It was based on the recommendations of the President’s Commission on Critical Infrastructure Protection of 1997 that outlined “a national effort to assure the security of the US’ increasingly vulnerable and interconnected infrastructures.”26 The presidential commission itself was established as a result of the greatest single terrorist attack on US soil before 9/11, the Oklahoma City bombing on 19 April 1995. By attempting to reorganize and introduce advanced coordination among the multiple agencies mandated with counterterrorism tasks, Clinton’s reforms did more than pay lip service to the truism that terrorism knows no borders. This was to be accomplished by securing potential domestic and foreign targets and by establishing an interlocking, multiagency counterterrorism apparatus capable of covering the full pre- to postincident spectrum of conventional or unconventional attacks. One aspect of the desire to harden targets—or, as the phrase went, mitigate vulnerabilities—was Clinton’s fascination with bioterrorism after reading Richard Preston’s fictional account of a bioterrorist attack in The Cobra Event.27 This also helps explain the president’s energetic drive toward the

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stockpiling of vaccines to decrease US vulnerability vis-à-vis a terrorist attack with CBRN weapons, an idea that was shelved in the end because it proved unfeasible.28 US spending on counterterrorism in the period discussed is indicative of the rise of terrorism to prominence on the national security agenda. The cumulative cost of US counterterrorism programs in the 1990s exploded from an average static figure of US$5 billion to no less than US$11.3 billion proposed for fiscal year 2001.29 The shift away from the perception of terrorism as an international phenomenon best countered with diplomatic or law enforcement capabilities is also reflected in US government resource allocation and spending. According to a breakdown furnished by the US Government Accounting Office, lead US counterterrorism agencies requested a combined US$8.6 billion dollars for fiscal year 2000, excluding Critical Infrastructure Protection programs: more than US$5 billion by the national security community, US$838 million by the Department of Justice, the same amount by the Department of the Treasury, US$648 million by the Department of Energy, and, surprisingly, only US$524 million by the Department of State.30 If juxtaposed with the total expenditures of the national security community, the relatively low figure quoted for the Justice and State Departments serve as a clear indicator for US government priorities in counterterrorism. The two US institutions most frequently associated with the national security community are, of course, the Department of Defense and the CIA. The governmental focus in this period shifted from terrorism as a foreign-policy issue to terrorism—both domestic and imported—as a homeland security threat. Nevertheless, throughout the 1990s, the war model—in its guise as a military force projection and intervention capability abroad and as an asset for domestic preparedness—was given preference over law enforcement and diplomacy as tools to combat terrorism. While emphasis on a strong defense establishment at the expense of the law enforcement apparatus has been the hallmark of several US administrations, the imbalance between defense and diplomacy also suggests that the United States ultimately preferred the strength to act alone over its ability to create multilateral counterterrorist tools in concert. In stark contrast, the European governments focused on multilateral cooperation against terrorism within the evolving political framework of the EU. By the time the EEC became the EU following the signing of the Maastricht Treaty and its ratification (1992/1993), member states of the European Community had actively participated in multilateral consultative forums, such as TREVI and PWGOT, for the better part of two decades. By November 1979, following another spate of terrorist violence, the European Community commenced a process within the framework of the Dublin Agreement to strictly apply the 1977 European Convention for the

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Suppression of Terrorism (ECST).31 The Schengen Agreement in all its developmental stages, although not exclusively aimed at the prevention of terrorism, constitutes one of the milestones in the history of European counterterrorism cooperation. Schengen I was signed in 1985 and removed controls along the common borders of Germany, France, and the Benelux countries. Moreover, en route to Schengen II, signed five years later, which included all member states of the EU except Denmark, Ireland, and the UK, the participating states worked toward a major computerized repository on potentially dangerous persons or goods transiting through “Schengenland.”32 This database became known as the Schengen Information System (SIS). Since its inception, it has evolved into a critical component advancing the coordination of European counterterrorism activity. After the establishment of the EU in 1993, many of the multilateral counterterrorism tools were subsumed under the so-called Third Pillar of the EU, which is also known by its more formal appellation of judicial and home affairs cooperation. The inter-European police and judicial cooperation as part of the Third Pillar was a logical consequence of the EU’s headline goal to establish the free movement of people and goods within the territories of its member states (as opposed to the Schengen Area). The incentive behind the Third Pillar cooperation was an EU-wide consensus that increased security cooperation was necessary for the headline goal of free transit. However, by then “the issue of terrorism had been returned to the back-boiler.”33 By the time the Amsterdam Treaty on EU (signed in 1997, ratified in 1999) corroborated and deepened the commitment of the member states, terrorism was at least acknowledged (Title VI, Article 29) as an important item in the context of the Provisions on Police and Judicial Cooperation.34 Integral to the situating of counterterrorism competencies in the Third Pillar was the notion that terrorism, if no longer exclusively a domestic criminal issue of member states, was certainly an internal security problem of the EU.35 With regard to counterterrorism and the continued adoption of the criminal justice model by the EU, the nature of the Third Pillar reflected two important convictions of a majority of the EU member states: first, it was widely believed that illegal immigration, drug trafficking, and other types of organized crime were closely linked with terrorism and that it made no sense to deal with each of these criminal activities separately; second, European countries in general were deeply suspicious of allowing any organization, supranational or intergovernmental, to interfere in their politically sensitive internal security, as opposed to criminal justice, affairs. This is irrefutably borne out by the necessity of the Dublin Agreement: terrorists came under national jurisdiction; only apolitical criminals could be extradited. Two conclusions follow from the pressures created by the outlined positions. First, the institutionalized arm of the EU’s counterterrorism activities did acknowledge the existence of terrorism but was reluctant to formal-

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ly distinguish politically motivated terrorism from economically motivated crime, organized or other, in its legislation; and, second, the reason for the EU’s ambivalence toward the political nature of terrorist violence, despite being fully cognizant of terrorism’s intrinsic political purpose, was that the “criminalization” of terrorism had become the implicit political sine qua non of cooperation between member states. The “criminalization,” or rather the “depoliticization,” of terrorism had become a necessary precondition for EU intergovernmental counterterrorism collaboration in particular, and for counterterrorism cooperation among EU member states in general. Against the backdrop of the increasingly forceful US response to terrorism in the 1990s, the dynamic toward multilateral action by the EU, which was itself favored by the growth of EU territory and the abolition of internal borders, did not bode well for a future Western strategy against terrorism. The roots of the transatlantic divergence on counterterrorism are closely tied to the question of differing and even conflicting terrorism threat perceptions, and idiosyncratic national/supranational priorities. The respective perceptions of terrorism espoused on both sides of the Atlantic, in turn, were, and continue to be, closely linked to national and supranational political interests. One example illustrative of the differing transatlantic perspectives on terrorism is the rise of militant Islam after the Cold War. To the United States, the attacks carried out by Muslim militants against its interests, such as the bombings of the World Trade Center (1993), Khobar Towers in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia (1996), the US embassies in Dar-es-Salaam and Nairobi (1998), and the USS Cole (2000), were evidence of a global terrorist network—a political substate actor—that was engaged in an asymmetric war against the United States. The European countries primarily saw the rise of Islamism in terms of a domestic migration and illegal immigration issue; the abolition of the EU’s internal borders confirmed this perspective. Curbing illegal immigration and religious extremism in expatriate communities therefore came primarily under police jurisdiction: its most political aspect was the debate on the legal aspects of regulations concerning asylum seekers. While the US focused on the link between ostensibly “new” terrorists and weapons of mass destruction, and tried to carry the war to the terrorists by employing strong-arm diplomacy and the strategic projection of military force, the EU concerned itself with the politically and institutionally decreed equation of terrorism and organized crime.

9/11 and the Reconfiguration of Counterterrorism Policy: The Reemergence of Transatlantic Tensions The attacks of 11 September 2001 on the US cities of New York and Washington, D.C., created a window of opportunity for the formulation of a

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unified counterterrorism strategy, or at least a convergence of transatlantic threat perceptions. Moreover, in the period immediately after the attacks, the US perspective on terrorism as a political as well as military threat had been vindicated in that the attackers had converted a passenger airliner into a one-kiloton kerosene bomb and thereby committed a warlike attack on landmarks associated with US economic and military power. The solidarity shown by many nations and international organizations around the globe, including the EU, appeared to bear the potential for closing the transatlantic gap on counterterrorism policy. NATO’s invocation of Article V, and the so-called month of transformation in the highest EU decisionmaking bodies, gave rise to the belief that the West would build a united political front against global terrorism.36 On an intergovernmental level, the EU and its institutions embarked on a course of forging a broad consensus on the combating of terrorism. Above and beyond the EU’s framework decision on terrorism, legal and operational counterterrorism measures were included in the “antiterrorism road map” developed in late 2001. Among these measures were the acceleration and consolidation of the Eurojust and Europol initiatives and the quick adoption but painfully incremental ratification of the European Common Arrest Warrant that rendered many tedious and conflictive extradition procedures superfluous.37 On 20 September 2001 an agreement was reached between the EU and the United States on intelligence sharing pertaining to transport security, police and judicial cooperation, terrorism financing, export control, nonproliferation, border control, and access to police investigation data. On 16 November 2001 the EU entered into a cooperation agreement with the United States that included the exchange of police liaison officers.38 What impelled both the Europeans and the United States toward rapprochement was the sense of urgency born of a mutual understanding that 9/11 had marked the beginning of a new era: the age of a catastrophic terrorism perpetrated without any regard for who and how many its victims were, and which was ideologically directed at Western countries and their interests. The beginnings of what later became know as the Al-Qaida network were relatively humble. The core of Al-Qaida formed around a group of mujahideen battling the Soviet Union in Afghanistan during the mid-1980s. The Mukhtab al-Khidamat (MAK)—the “Bureau of Services”—provided basic support to the mujahideen, such as room and board in guest houses, travel opportunities, and other logistics services necessary for the war effort. The group that coalesced around one of its leading figures—Osama bin Laden—after the Soviets withdrew in 1989 eventually evolved into the core of Al-Qaida, which is frequently translated as “The Base.” During the 1990s, Al-Qaida spread across the globe and became a transnational organization linking many Islamist groups and individuals. In the 1990s, because

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of the penetration of two Maghrebian political violence movements (the Groupe Islamique Armé [GIA] and the Groupe Salafiste pour la Prédication et le Combat [GSPC]) by Al-Qaida, the Al-Qaida network extended to many EU member states and, after the crackdown on Egyptian Islamists in the 1980s, to the United States as well. However, during the decade before 9/11, Al-Qaida did possess a “political” center of gravity and a local paramilitary capability—first in Sudan, and toward the end of the decade in Afghanistan. In both cases Al-Qaida was sponsored by the local government, with the telling difference that while in Sudan the group was state-sponsored, by the late 1990s it increasingly appeared that Al-Qaida was sponsoring the Afghan Taliban regime, not the other way round. The evolution of Al-Qaida certainly perturbed Western intelligence services, which saw it as an increasingly dangerous child of the Cold War gone bad. But ultimately it was the attack of 9/11 that sent shock waves through the West. Overnight, striking at Islamist terrorism in particular and terrorism in general had become paramount. This added sense of urgency was made manifest on many levels, including the national political, intergovernmental, legal, and operational levels of counterterrorism. It took on many forms, from the unusually unanimous acceptance of counterterrorism-related UN Security Council Resolutions and the rapid intergovernmental adoption of the EU antiterrorism road map down to the deepening of functional bilateral collaboration. Once it became clear who was responsible for the attacks of 11 September 2001, a politically robust US-led alliance invaded Afghanistan in order to overthrow the autocratic Taliban regime and purge the country of Al-Qaida. Nine days after the attack on the United States, President George W. Bush addressed a joint session of Congress, where he reaffirmed the nation’s holistic vision of counterterrorism policy: “We will direct every resource at our command—every means of diplomacy, every tool of intelligence, every instrument of law enforcement, every financial influence, and every necessary weapon of war—to the destruction and defeat of the global terror network.” 39 With no less than 14 other allied nations besides the United States and UK participating in the Afghanistan campaign, operations Infinite Justice/Enduring Freedom, Veritas, and Anaconda, although spearheaded by Anglo-American troops, exemplified the broad consensus prevalent immediately after 9/11. 40 At its 4415th meeting, the UN Security Council, in a rare show of unity, adopted Resolution 1378, which condemned “the Taliban for allowing Afghanistan to be used as a base for the export of terrorism by the Al-Qaida network and other terrorist groups.”41 As the most intense hostilities fizzled out in Afghanistan, yet another multilateral endeavor, the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), was established by UN Security Council Resolution 1386 of 20 December 2001 in order to support the interim Afghan government, the reconstruction of the country, and

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the formation of Afghan national security forces. No less than 18 countries have participated in ISAF since its inception; ISAF 3 was conducted under the auspices of NATO, itself a collective security organization.42 Looking back, the shock created by 9/11 infused the global community with the energy and urgency to communally confront terrorism. The flurry of multilateral activism after 9/11 was evidently based on a genuine, albeit temporally limited, consensus and an initially broad acceptance of the threat posed by a terrorist-sponsored state. The clear linkage between the Islamic terrorism of Al-Qaida and the Taliban regime in Kabul provided robust legitimacy for the use of the “war model” on this particular occasion. In the case of Afghanistan, the West and its regional allies demonstrated a strong sense of shared responsibility in confronting a mutual threat. In the context of the Al-Qaida sanctuary in Afghanistan, the divergence between the United States and the European states was partially bridged, as manifested in the shift from outright rejection of, toward qualified support for, US force projection. Moreover, the war model proved its efficiency in this specific situation: Al-Qaida was atomized, more than two-thirds of its leadership were either killed or captured by the United States and its allies, and the bulk of the training camps and sanctuaries in Afghanistan were destroyed. Clearly this was an achievement of military force projection. Only 19 months after the invasion of Afghanistan, the successful overthrow of the Taliban extremists, and the eviction of Al-Qaida, however, the stance of the EU and other European states shifted toward reservations and then outright criticism against forceful US foreign policy in the shape of the invasion of Iraq. The fact that the United States choose to frame the invasion as a second phase in the “global war against terrorism” damaged transatlantic counterterrorism collaboration by raising tensions and polarizing positions. In the case of the Iraq invasion, the war model had no legitimacy in the eyes of the majority of states. Moreover, the fact that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq proved how politicized the use of intelligence information had become in the context of the Iraq debate. With democratic transparency and accountability under pressure regarding the interrogation of terrorist detainees and the issue of domestic surveillance hotly contested, the political and moral authority of the United States was badly damaged. Clearly, the transatlantic discord concerning the combat of global terrorism became more pronounced in the aftermath of the Iraq invasion. European analysts who had warned that a war would lead to an intensification of Islamist terrorism in the region and beyond felt vindicated. The occupation forces lost the battle for the hearts and minds of the Sunni minority in Iraq, though US, British, and other Coalition forces have been reasonably successful in keeping the Shi’ites and Kurds from engaging in the insurgency. In combination with the relatively unrestricted movement of

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foreign Islamists and Ba’ath party sympathizers across the porous and largely undefended Syrian-Iraqi frontier, the insurgents executed effective information operations after March 2003, making the occupation forces a recruitment magnet for the insurgency and, to some extent, turning the USUK invasion into a catalyst for out-of-area radicalization. If Afghanistan proved the limits of the criminal justice model in the fight against global terrorism, in Iraq the war model proved neither legitimate nor efficient from the perspective of counterterrorism policy. Against this background, we argue that transatlantic tensions over the US-led “war on global terrorism” are mainly linked to one pervasive challenge: weighing unilateralism versus multilateralism, military force projection versus law enforcement, and functionalist bilateral intelligence cooperation versus institutionalized multilateral intelligence cooperation in pursuit of balancing considerations of efficiency against legitimacy in fighting terrorism. Striking such a balance under the present conditions in the short term is a process involving not only security policy but also the much broader issues of the fundamental rights of individuals and the democratic values of (Western) societies.

Basic Problem: Balancing Efficiency and Legitimacy in the Fight Against Terrorism At the global level, the UN acts as the platform for achieving broad consensus and establishing norms.43 This is also true with regard to the shaping of a common position and establishing the lowest common denominator on terrorism and counterterrorism. The UN was therefore the obvious forum for achieving a badly needed common stance on how to confront global terrorism. But although a number of steps toward a multilateral strategy were indeed taken after 9/11, the UN failed to live up to expectations that it would in fact provide a vehicle for the building and harmonizing of effective counterterrorism capacities in the international community. Despite a good start, multilateralism in counterterrorism is, as so often in the past 30 years, in danger of underperforming yet again. Security Council Resolution 1378 lent legitimacy to the AngloAmerican–led invasion of Afghanistan; the establishment of the Counter Terrorism Committee (CTC) by dint of Security Council Resolution 1373 effectively authorized an institutionalized “audit” of counterterrorism resources among UN member states with a view to encouraging standards through a strategy of naming and shaming.44 Moreover, the UN Security Council established a “Rockefeller Foundation of counterterror” by mandating the CTC to catalog best practices and coordinate activities among national, regional, and international counterterrorism organizations and

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forums—analogous to the interrelationship between Al-Qaida and its franchises all over the Islamic world and beyond. In this sense the UN lived up to the idea of fighting a network with a network. Furthermore, the UN has been running a number of operational initiatives to curb terrorism, not the least of which are the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), the UN Terrorism Prevention Branch (TPB), and the Center for International Crime Prevention (CICP).45 But as the authors of a recent paper pointed out, “The CTC got off to a hopeful start due to the recognition of many states of their own vulnerability to catastrophic terror.”46 In other words, the early successes of counterterrorist multilateral action, as exemplified by the CTC, have to be ascribed to the shock that the 9/11 attacks created in the international community. Moreover, the remorseless yardstick of recent terrorist “successes” suggests that in the interim, Islamist terrorism has proven far more proficient at using its networks than the UN. In the West, and especially in the United States, the waning of the multilateralism tide in the wake of the US-led invasion of Iraq does not instill confidence in prospective international counterterrorism cooperation within multilateral institutions. This continued and historically entrenched skepticism toward multilateralism can be gleaned from the behavior of the United States. For effective multilateralism in the field of counterterrorism will inevitably remain in the doldrums as long as serious US reservations toward multilateral policymaking in general continue to be expressed by an attitude of “sign yes, ratify no.”47 Domestically, US skepticism toward the preventive powers of multilateral counterterrorism action has resulted in the reinforcement of a second line of defense, the homeland security apparatus. In a sense, the establishment of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was the next step in a logical progression begun with the Clinton administration’s blueprint for the reorganization of domestic security in 1995 and the subsequent establishment of the office of the National Coordinator for Security, Infrastructure Protection, and Counter Terrorism in 1998. The tight coordination, even centralization, of domestic security capabilities in the gargantuan DHS exemplifies the trend toward autonomous US counterterrorism policy. Established by Executive Order 13284 and based on the Homeland Security Act of 2002, the establishment of the DHS with 180,000 employees constitutes the most sweeping administrative reorganization in US history since the reforms instituted by the National Security Act of 1947.48 On the operational level, the United States does work closely with Europeans both bilaterally and, through the EU, via intergovernmental channels dedicated to counterterrorism issues. While this may be true for the EU on the civilian law-enforcement end of the spectrum (e.g., Europol and Eurojust), it certainly does not extend to intelligence or military cooper-

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ation, except with specific bilateral partners. US reticence regarding operational intelligence and military collaboration with Europe on any other but the bilateral level is evident from representative arguments for a more selective approach advanced in the United States: The European Union (EU) is limited in its military and intelligence capabilities. . . . The United States should pursue military and intelligence cooperation on a bilateral basis, and it should increasingly pursue financial and law enforcement on a multilateral basis. Bilateral cooperation will remain necessary in the military and intelligence realms. . . . NATO currently lacks the political will to embrace counterterrorism as a new mission, and the EU does not intend to build centralized structures and offensive capabilities that would be required.49

The intellectual position reflected in this assessment, which enjoys considerable credibility in the US national security establishment, contributed significantly to the corresponding European perception that the US foreign and security policy establishment had actively militarized its counterterrorism policy. This European perspective had presumably gained currency long before the US-UK–led attack on Afghanistan, but it was certainly reinforced and taken to new heights in March 2003, just before the invasion of Iraq. The transatlantic stalemate on counterterrorism policy at elite levels was due to European charges of US unilateralism regarding Iraq as well as the overt disdain shown by the second Bush administration for multilateral institutions. This disdain applied to the UN at the global level and to the European security institutions at the regional level. The principal result, as perceived by many US allies, was that the balance between efficiency and legitimacy in the fight against terrorism had been tilted in favor of efficiency for the sake of perceived short-term gains. This erosion of legitimacy may weaken the effectiveness of US action in the longer term, and it is also threatening to undermine two decades of US leadership in the fight against terrorism—a development that bodes ill for the future of a common stand against terrorism in the West. What, then, is to be done in the face of an ostensibly insoluble impasse? First, there is reason for hope that both sides may realize that the challenges of stability in the Middle East and Africa and of nuclear proliferation in Iran demand joint action and mutual support. Second, both sides should undertake an effort to shield counterterrorism as far as possible from the dynamics of daily politics; they ought to strive for sustainable counterterrorism cooperation instead. New organizational structures to fight global terrorism must satisfy the twin requirements of effectiveness and acceptability based on a pragmatic vision of the achievable. The authors of a recent paper have proposed a new functionalist multilateral organization. They have pointed out that a dedicated multilateral counterterrorism vessel would permit the

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depoliticization of counterterrorism policy and help create an opportunity to remove the perceived stigma of the “made in USA” label attached to the current US administration’s all-means/all-hazards approach.50 Daniel Benjamin, Thomas McNamara, and Steven Simon have helpfully reviewed the question of what kind of organization would best serve the interests of effective multilateral counterterrorism. Juxtaposing an International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and a Missile Technology Control Regime/Financial Action Task Force (MTCR/FATF)–type structure, they have concluded that the latter would constitute the better option. The reasons they cite for their choice (interspersed with some of our own reflections) are as follows: • In spite of the evident strengths of an IAEA model, the discussion that would precede the constitution would confine such an organization to the realm of long-term planning. By contrast, the MTCR/FATF-type option, being more selective and exclusive, would stand a realistic chance of being instituted. This would potentially eliminate the “spoil-sport” effect practiced in multilateral organizations such as the United Nations General Assembly by states with agendas potentially hostile to a collective counterterrorism capability. • The MTCR/FATF-type option could skirt the definitional question by leaning on the functionalist mandate established by the 12 UN conventions against terrorism. 51 If successful, the functionalist dynamic may well lead to what is known as a “spillover” effect to other areas of cooperation, or even effect a consolidation of cooperative institutional structures. • Given the success of a more informal organization, such a structure could then be upgraded to a treaty-based, obligatory organization at a later stage. • Its leverage over members and, to a lesser extent, over nonmembers would be the ability to “name and shame.” This is especially effective against state actors, or rather state sponsors, of terrorism. However, the overwhelming number of currently active substate terrorist organizations with no traceable ties to state organizations certainly shows the limits of this type of organization. • The MTCR/FATF option may well thrive on the distinction between members and nonmembers, with more states seeking to join in. Membership, of course, would be made conditional upon meeting the organizations’ standards. Beyond seeking to compensate for the lack of binding enforcement provisions by naming and shaming, the member/nonmember differentiation could be turned into advantageous political and diplomatic leverage.

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• Finally, an institutional link with the UN Security Council would give the MTCR/FATF-type organization leverage beyond the inclusion-exclusion status mechanism and the naming and shaming of transgressors.52 While this proposal is based on the lessons learned by the limits of multilateralism, it would still be missing a critical component. It does not resolve the basic problem of balancing effectiveness, for which such an organization would likely qualify, against legitimacy, which it almost certainly would lack by virtue of excluding “outsiders” from its councils. The charges leveled against TREVI in a previous age, and the current accusations that counterterrorism measures enacted in the Third Pillar of the EU lack transparency and accountability, serve as a dissuasively instructive example.53 A MTCR/FATF-type counterterrorism organization would have to serve as a forum for the promotion of the legitimacy of the measures that are enacted under its aegis, albeit in a functionalist capacity. Decisionmaking in such an organization, we suggest, should require neither unanimity nor the inclusion of all states, but certainly ought to be rooted in a clear majority consensus and should treat the participation of all key players as an indispensable prerequisite. Bearing in mind as a caveat the protracted problem of shaping a sustainable and common Western counterterrorism policy in the current global, transregional, regional, and subregional organizations, from which multilateral action could consistently flow, the concept advanced by Benjamin, McNamara, and Simon shows considerable promise. This leaves us with the root problem of transatlantic divergence on counterterrorism policy. The challenge of shaping counterterrorism policy, in the context of balancing efficiency and legitimacy of the means employed, consists of several elements: • The perception of the threat in an encompassing conceptual framework such as the “US war on global terrorism,” as opposed to an actor-centered analysis of individual political violence movements. • The conduct of immediate unilateral policy without allied endorsement, as opposed to the mid- to long-term creation of a broad consensus as a basis for multilateral action. • The deployment of military force against terrorism abroad in line with the idea of forward defense, and in furtherance of foreign and security policy objectives, as opposed to treating occurrences of terrorism as internal problems and serious crimes and, accordingly, placing them in the remit of national and international law enforcement agencies. • The widespread usage of limited bilateral intelligence collaboration

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for reasons of national and operational security, at the expense of indubitably beneficial multilateral intelligence cooperation. In the West, the application of multi- or bilateralism is made dependent on the policy field in question. While the advantages of this approach are readily visible, the drawbacks begin with US reservations to countenance multilateral cooperation in policy fields of vital importance to its national security, such as foreign and security policy. Conversely, against the backdrop of the slow pace of supranational and regional multilateral achievement, Europeans have to carefully rethink the accountability problem created by advances in intergovernmental cooperation that have long since outpaced the EU representative institutions’ capacity to lend legitimacy to counterterrorism measures. Reflecting on the EU’s introduction of counterterrorism measures after 9/11, Marianne van Leeuwen recently observed that “it is of great importance that the consequences of these changes [i.e., the adoption of counterterrorism measures] are carefully supervised, as the sweeping measures recently adopted to increase the security of the people may affect fundamental rights if they are not accompanied by strengthened checks and balances.”54 Moreover, on the European end, a genuine reappraisal of the need of a durable alliance for maintaining security and stability in the transatlantic and contiguous regions has become paramount. The two Balkan wars avidly illustrated the dependence of European states on US military assets in support of regional crisis management in asymmetric conflicts in general, and in the future stabilization of trouble spots in the wider Middle East and in North Africa in particular. At the same time, the United States must realize that the EU’s Third Pillar is a multilateral policy field, and insofar as it pertains to international terrorism and for lack of any realistic alternative, that it is a policy field vital to US short- and long-term transatlantic interests. In order to further consolidate the Third Pillar and other intergovernmental multilateral endeavors, the United States has to commit itself to working through EU institutions, to embrace them as valid partners in the fight against terrorism, to refrain from influencing or otherwise intervening in EU agenda-setting, and not to undermine the EU’s own efforts by taking independent unilateral military action.55 US endorsement of intra-EU cooperation is of critical importance in the field of intelligence sharing. The United States should encourage the member states of the EU to fundamentally question the overemphasis on bilateralism for operational security reasons, and to honestly reevaluate obligatory multilateral approaches to institutionalized intelligence cooperation. Accordingly, the United States should also desist from undermining the development of multilateral intelligence sharing in the context of EU institutions by way of preferring established bilateral channels with EU member

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states. But even if the United States should prove supportive of EU efforts not only at coordinating but at centralizing intelligence resources, the EU member states themselves fundamentally disagree on how to improve intelligence cooperation. Thus the EU Big Three—Britain, France, and Germany—opposed a recent proposal carried by Austria, Belgium, and the Netherlands for “a fullblown European intelligence and security service, dubbed the European CIA.”56 Each of these states (not only the UK) has its own reasons for its reticent behavior, but notably they all share a functionalist agenda that is invariably linked to their concern about operational security. The EU’s approach to the debate on how to formulate counterterrorism policy after the Madrid attacks was to sideline it through a simple expedient that recently allowed the EU to claim that it had done something: the creation of the office of Counterterrorism Coordinator, albeit without any real powers.57 Whatever the present objections of the Big Three, the establishment of an overarching intelligence organization within the EU constitutes a long-term counterterrorism objective. Last but not least, the role of the military in counterterrorism policy must be reappraised on both sides of the Atlantic, for where one side may be overemphasizing its utility, the other might be ignoring it. Just as there is a need for a long-term diplomatic and political solution to regional conflicts involving terrorist violence, there may again arise—as in the case of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan—a necessity for the forceful short-term interdiction of terrorism. Civilian organizations have historically been neither designed nor adequately trained or equipped for such purposes.58 Conversely, any credible and sustainable multilateral military response to terrorism must be predicated upon a transregional conception of the problem: if the agenda-setting capability and the military forces committed to counterterrorism activity retain their center of gravity in the West—especially in the US-UK nexus—the stigma of a narrow political agenda will continue to cling to Western counterterrorism efforts. It is principally for this reason that the West would do well to remember that the historical Western alliance (e.g., the United States, France, and Britain) arguably constitutes the lowest common denominator toward a viable and sustainable military counterterrorism coalition, together with the traditional Atlantic powers and out-of-area partners.

Conclusion A balance is required between the efficiency of the legal, political, civilian, and military means used to combat terrorism, on the one hand, and their legitimacy in the eyes of the affected constituencies, on the other. The pur-

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suit of this balance is indispensable to the long-term success of counterterrorism, regardless of whether this struggle is conceived of as a teleological process, such as the “US war on global terrorism,” or perceived as an ongoing crisis management problem. Either way, combating terrorism is no short-term endeavor. This balance will be predicated on a set of related challenges. First, the difficulty of balancing threat perception and self-perception—the juxtaposition of the gravity of the terrorist threat and the values of political and national identity—is not a new phenomenon. In fact, this is an old problem, having bedeviled liberal democracies throughout the twentieth century. We should not be complacent in this regard, or too confident about the outcome. More often than not in the past, striking this balance has proven an insuperable problem, as illustrated by the failure of democracy and the attendant rise of Fascism in the 1920s and 1930s.59 Achieving and, subsequently, maintaining and calibrating the balance between efficiency and legitimacy is a prerequisite for a second challenge: managing a correlated and reciprocal balance of requirements. What are the vital components of effective counterterrorism, the so-called must-haves, and what are the imperatives of liberal democracy? What renders this query still more complex is the circumstance that requirements of operational effectiveness and political success, as well as the full range of democratic indispensables, are dynamic, context-sensitive, and not always apparent. Nevertheless, the constant weighing of these diverse requirements is at the heart of shaping effective, sustainable counterterrorism policy in the liberal state. We must hone our skills toward the devising of a pragmatic counterterrorism policy without loosing sight of what we want to be. If history and experience are any indication, failure to meet these taxing requirements will invariably result not only in the vindication and proliferation of terrorism but also in the advent of an age of political, intellectual, and moral benightedness. Posterity could well recall such an era for the sake of its hapless architects whose failure to uphold the tensions germane to the liberal democratic order conceded victory to the terrorists by unrestrainedly opting either for efficiency or legitimacy in counterterrorism, and invariably one at the expense of the other.

Notes 1. Peter Taylor, Provos: The IRA and Sinn Fein (London: Bloomsbury, 1998), 277–278. 2. Ely Karmon, “The Red Brigades: Cooperation with the Palestinian Terrorist Organizations, 1970–1990,” http://www.ict.org.il/articles/red_brigadespalestinians.htm. See also Ely Karmon, “German and Palestinian Terrorist Organizations: Strange Bedfellows. An Examination of the Coalitions Among Terrorist Organizations,” http://www.ict.org.il/articles/articledet.cfm?articleid=120.

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3. Cf. Doron Zimmermann, “The Best of Two Worlds: The Role of Third Force Paramilitaries in the Combating of Political Violence Movements,” in Rohan Gunaratna, ed., Combating Terrorism: Military and Non-Military Options (Singapore: Marshall Cavendish, 2005), 296–317. 4. Philip C. Wilcox Jr., “United States,” in Yonah Alexander, ed., Combating Terrorism: Strategies of Ten Countries (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2002), 44. A full-text version of NSD 138 is available at http://www.fas.org/irp/ offdocs/nsdd/23-2229a.gif. 5. Interestingly enough, special operations forces belonging to allied countries, such as Israel, Germany, and the UK, carried out the Entebbe and Mogadishu missions. 6. Peter Chalk, West European Terrorism and Counterterrorism: The Evolving Dynamic (Basingstoke, UK: Macmillan, 1996), 123. 7. Laura K. Donohue, “In the Name of National Security: US Counterterrorist Measures, 1960–2000,” Terrorism and Political Violence 13, 3 (Autumn 2001): 45. For reference pertaining to the FBI’s extraterritorial jurisdiction, see the 1997 Congressional Hearings on Intelligence and Security, “Opening Statement of Robert M. Bryant, Assistant Director, Federal Bureau of Investigation Before the House Committee of the Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime,” http://www.globalsecurity. org/intell/library/congress/1997_hr/h970212b.htm. 8. Cf. Zimmermann, “The Best of Two Worlds.” 9. Monica den Boer, “The EU Counterterrorism Wave: Window of Opportunity or Profound Policy Transformation?” in Marianne van Leeuwen, ed., Confronting Terrorism: European Experiences, Threat Perceptions, and Policies (The Hague: Kluwer, 2003), 187; see also the Vice President’s Task Force on Combating Terrorism, Terrorist Group Profiles (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1988), introduction by then–vice president George Bush. 10. The White House, National Strategy of Combating Terrorism (Washington, DC: The White House, 2003), 17. The expanded role of the US Department of Defense in conjunction with other agencies, notably the CIA, can be seen in the military invasions of Afghanistan (2001) and Iraq (2003), as well as in US-sponsored counterterrorism capability building in Southeast Asia. 11. The best-known popular example is that of Claire Stirling, The Terror Network (New York: Berkley Books, 1982), 269–280. 12. Rebecca Cox, “The Role of the UN in the Fight Against Terrorism,” Royal United Services Institute Newsbrief 24, 5 (May 2004): 56. At the time of this writing, the UN has added three more universal legal instruments to its counterterrorist legal arsenal. 13. Daniel Benjamin, Thomas E. McNamara, and Steven Simon, “The Neglected Instrument: Multilateral Counterterrorism,” unpublished paper, “Prosecuting Terrorism: The Global Challenge” conference, Rome, Italy, 3–5 June 2004, 7. 14. Ian O. Lesser, “Changing Terrorism in a Changing World,” in Ian O. Lesser, Bruce Hoffman, John Arquila, David F. Ronfeldt, Michele Zanini, and Brian Michael Jenkins, Countering the New Terrorism (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 1999), 1. 15. Ibid. 16. Ibid. 17. Ibid., 37. 18. Martha Crenshaw, “The Psychology of Terrorism: An Agenda for the Twenty-first Century,” Political Psychology 21, 2 (June 2000): 417. 19. Ehud Sprinzak, “The Great Superterrorism Scare,” originally published in Foreign Policy, Fall 1998. Retrieved from http://www.findarticles.com/cf_0/m1181/ 1998_Fall/56021078/print.jhtml.

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20. Doron Zimmermann, The Transformation of Terrorism: The “New Terrorism,” Impact Scalability, and the Dynamic of Reciprocal Threat Perception, Zurich Contributions to Security Policy and Conflict Research 67 (Zurich: Center for Security Studies, 2003), 31–44. See also David Tucker, “What Is New About the New Terrorism and How Dangerous Is It?” Terrorism and Political Violence 13, 3 (Autumn 2001): 1–14. 21. Cf. Jonathan B. Tucker, ed., Toxic Terror: Assessing Terrorist Use of Chemical and Biological Weapons (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001). This edited volume contains multiple examples of political violence movements’ consideration of, and express interest in, chemical and biological weapons throughout the 1970s and after. 22. Donohue, “In the Name of National Security,” 17. 23. William J. Clinton, Presidential Decision Directive PDD-39, The White House, 21 June 1995, 1. 24. Ibid., 9. 25. The White House, Fact Sheet: Presidential Decision Directive PDD-62, 22 May 1998. 26. Ibid. 27. Gordon Prather, “Universal Anthrax Coverage,” WorldNetDaily, 14 October 2000, http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID= 20091. Cf. Richard Preston, The Cobra Event (New York: Ballantine, 1998). 28. Martha Crenshaw, “Counterterrorism Policy and the Political Process,” Studies in Conflict and Terrorism 24 (2001): 330–334. 29. Donohue, “In the Name of National Security,” 18. 30. Government Accountability Office, Combating Terrorism: Observations on Federal Spending to Combat Terrorism, Statement of Henry L. Hinton Jr., Assistant Comptroller General, National Security and International Affairs Division (Washington, DC, 11 March 1999), 5. 31. Chalk, West European Terrorism and Counterterrorism, 123. 32. Ibid., 125–127. 33. Den Boer, “The EU Counterterrorism Wave,” 188. 34. Ibid. 35. Peter Chalk, “The Third Pillar on Judicial and Home Affairs Cooperation, Anti-terrorist Collaboration, and Liberal Democratic Acceptability,” in Fernando Reinares, ed., European Democracies Against Terrorism: Governmental Policies and Intergovernmental Cooperation (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2000), 175. 36. Den Boer, “The EU Counterterrorism Wave,” 189. 37. Ben Hayes, “EU Anti-Terrorism Action Plan: Legislative Measures in Justice and Home Affairs,” Statewatch Post 11.9.01 Analyses 6 (October 2001); Tony Bunyan, “EU Anti-Terrorism Action Plan: ‘Operational Measures,’” Statewatch Post 11.9.01 Analyses 7 (October 2001). Cf. also den Boer, “The EU Counterterrorism Wave,” 190. Notably, by the time of the Madrid attacks in March 2004, Germany, Italy, Greece, Austria, and the Netherlands had not “enacted its [the Common Arrest Warrant’s] enforceable provisions.” Magnus Ranstorp with Jeffrey Cozzens, “The European Terror Challenge,” BBC News, 24 March 2004, http://newswww.bbc.net.uk/1/hi/world/europe/3563713.stm. 38. Natalie Pauwels, “The EU Takes on Terrorism,” European Security Review 8 (October 2001); cf. also den Boer, “The EU Counterterrorism Wave,” 194. 39. “Transcript of President Bush’s Address,” CNN.com, 20 September 2001, http://www.cnn.com/2001/US/09/20/gen.bush.transcript. 40. Cf. “US Invasion of Afghanistan,” http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary. com/U.S.%20invasion%20of%20Afghanistan.

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41. United Nations Security Council, Resolution 1378 (2001), 14 November 2001. 42. CDI Terrorism Project, “Fact Sheet: International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan,” 14 February 2002, http://www.cdi.org/ terrorism/isaf.cfm. For NATO assumption of command over ISAF, cf. press conference with Afghan foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah, German defense minister Peter Struck and NATO deputy secretary general Minuto Rizzo, http://www.nato. int/docu/speech/2003/s030811h.htm. 43. The G8’s Counter Terrorism Action Group (CTAG), the G7’s Financial Action Task Force (FATF), and other regional initiatives of the Organization for Security and Cooperation (OSCE), the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), the Organization of American States (OAS), the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), the Gulf Cooperation Council, and others will not be discussed here. 44. Cox, “The Role of the UN in the Fight Against Terrorism,” 56. 45. Ibid., 56–57. 46. Benjamin, McNamara, and Simon, “The Neglected Instrument,” 8. 47. Cox, “The Role of the UN in the Fight Against Terrorism,” 57. 48. Cf. history page on the DHS website, http://www.dhs.gov/dhspublic/display?theme=59&content=409. 49. Nora Bensahel, The Counterterror Coalitions: Cooperation with Europe, NATO, and the European Union (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2003), x. 50. Benjamin, McNamara, and Simon, “The Neglected Instrument,” 11. 51. Bibi T. van Ginkel, “The United Nations: Towards a Comprehensive Convention on Combating Terrorism,” in Marianne van Leeuwen, ed., Confronting Terrorism: European Experiences, Threat Perceptions, and Policies (The Hague: Kluwer, 2003), 211–213. 52. Ibid., 12–15. 53. Doron Zimmermann, “Reappraising Joint Action in the Fight Against Terrorism,” in International Security—Cooperation Views and Visions (Bern: Swiss Ministry for Foreign Affairs, 2004), 31–34. 54. Marianne van Leeuwen, “Democracy Versus Terrorism: Balancing Security and Fundamental Rights,” in Marianne van Leeuwen, ed., Confronting Terrorism: European Experiences, Threat Perceptions, and Policies (The Hague: Kluwer, 2003), 230–231. Cf. Hayes, “EU Anti-Terrorism Action Plan”; Bunyan, “EU AntiTerrorism Action Plan.” 55. Den Boer, “The EU Counterterrorism Wave,” 205. 56. Anthony Brown and Rory Watson, “EU Divided over Proposal for New Anti-Terror Czar,” TimesOnline, 17 March 2004, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,12589-1041361,00.html. 57. Alok Rashmi Mukhopadhyay, “EU Counterterrorism Coordinator Office: A Non-Starter?” Observer Research Foundation, n.d. [before March 2004], www.observerindia.com/analysis/A170.htm. 58. Cf. Doron Zimmermann, “The Best of Two Worlds,” 297, 304–305. 59. Cf. Mark Mazower, The Dark Continent (New York: Vintage, 2000).

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Laura K. Donohue is a fellow at Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation. Prior to Stanford, she was a fellow at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, where she served on the Executive Session for Domestic Preparedness and the International Security Program. Author of Counter-terrorist Law and Emergency Powers in the United Kingdom 1922–2000, she currently is completing a manuscript analyzing British and US counterterrorist law. Rohan Gunaratna is head of the International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research at the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies in Singapore and senior fellow at the United States Military Academy’s Combating Terrorism Center. He is author of eight books, including Inside Al Qaeda: Global Network of Terror, and the lead author of Jane’s Counter Terrorism. He serves on the editorial boards of the journals Terrorism and Political Violence and Studies in Conflict and Terrorism. Victor Mauer is deputy director and director of research of the Center for Security Studies at ETH Zurich (the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology). Recent publications include Securing Europe? Implementing the European Security Strategy (coedited with Anne Deighton); “Von der Hegemonie zum kooperativen Gleichgewicht: Die transatlantischen Beziehungen im Wandel,” in Johannes Varwick, ed., Die Beziehungen zwischen NATO und EU: Partnerschaft, Konkurrenz, Rivalität? and “Diskursanalyse,” in Methoden der sicherheitspolitischen Analyse (with Myriam Dunn). Tore Nyhamar is senior analyst at the Norwegian Defense Research Establishment (FFI) at Kjeller, just outside of Oslo. He works on security and defense studies, leading the project “Counter Terrorism and Military Technology: Changing Frames for Norwegian Security.” Recent publica251

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tions include “The Security Policies [of the Nordic Countries]: From Constraints to Choice,” in Knut Heidar, ed., Nordic Politics; and “UN, International Law, and American Military Power,” in John Kristen Skogan, ed., What Now US and Europe? Margaret Purdy is currently special adviser on security at Transport Canada. She has held appointments as director general of counterterrorism with the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, deputy secretary to the Cabinet for Security and Intelligence, and associate deputy minister of National Defence. William Rosenau is a political scientist in the RAND Corporation’s Washington, D.C., office, and an adjunct professor in the Security Studies Program at Georgetown University. His publications include Confronting the “Enemy Within”: Security Intelligence, Police, and Counterterrorism in Four Democracies; Trends in Outside Support to Insurgent Movements; and US Internal Security Assistance to South Vietnam: Insurgency, Subversion, and Public Order. Martin van Creveld is one of the world’s leading experts on military history and strategy. He has been a faculty member in the History Department at Hebrew University since 1971. He has authored seventeen books, including Supplying War; Command in War; The Transformation of War; and The Rise and Decline of the State. Andreas Wenger is a professor of international security policy and director of the Center for Security Studies at ETH Zurich (the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology). He is coauthor of International Relations: From Cold War to the Globalized World and Conflict Prevention: The Untapped Potential of the Business Sector. He recently coedited War Plans and Alliances in the Cold War: Threat Perceptions in the East and the West and Transforming NATO in the Cold War: Challenges Beyond Deterrence in the 1960s. Doron Zimmermann is a senior researcher at the Center for Security Studies at ETH Zurich (the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology). He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society in 2003. His publications include Iran and Syria as State Supporters of Political Violence Movements in Lebanon and the Palestinian Territories and The European Union and Post-9/11 Counterterrorism. He is coauthor of International Relations: From the Cold War to the Globalized World.

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Abu Ghraib prison, indefinite detention in, 38 Afghan war, 139; Al-Qaida’s mobilization for, 183; EU-US consensus on, 217; German stabilization troops in, 74; Norway’s contribution to, 82–83, 84, 90; UK’s involvement/military action in, 18, 33–34 Afghanistan: Canada’s bilateral aid to, 113, 125–126; as global terrorist training center, 185; security situation in, 194 Aiyyeri, Yousef al-, 195 Al-Qaida, 22, 47, 175–198; Afghan community linkages with, 195; and British military initiatives, 33; campaign against “soft” targets, 143; clandestine character of, 61–62; and Cold War political warfare, 10; command of, 178; conceptualization and evolution of, 133–134, 177; counterterrorist approaches to, 9–10, 11, 137, 184; financing, 10, 146; FTO designation of, 137; initial response to, 138; jihadist-salafism ideology of, 146–147, 179; law-enforcement approach to, 135, 137; and Middle East stabilization, 45; military response to, 82, 142–143; organizational structure of, 177, 184; origins and evolution of, 216–217; post-Iraq strategy of, 194; pre-9/11 responses to, 9–10, 138; strategic methods and tools of, 29, 183–184; threat to

Canada, 116; transformed into a movement, 182 Ansar al-Islam terrorist group, 88, 179, 180 Anti-terrorism Act (Canada): and designation of terrorist entities, 114; mandatory reviews of, 114–115, 119; opponents of, 122; overview of, 121–123; terrorism-related offenses and authorities in, 119 Antiterrorism Assistance (ATA) (US), 138 Anti-terrorism, Crime, and Security Act (ATCSA), 21–23, 26; and identity theft crimes, 37; misuse of, 24–25; and intelligence operations, 41; Part IV detention authority in, 22–23, 24–25, 37, 43 Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (US), 136 Anti-Terrorism Plan (Canada), 116–117 Arab Legion, 170 Aum Shinrikyo (terrorist group), 29, 136, 210 Azzam, Abdullah, 177, 187 Bali bombing (2002), 193; Britain’s response to, 27; joint investigation into, 140 Barak, Ehud, 161, 166; counterterrorism policy of, 168 Begin, Menachem, 158 Ben Gurion, David, 159 bin Laden, Osama, 29–30, 115, 134, 193,

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194, 216; FBI tracking of, 137; fellow terrorists’ views of, 180; and formation of Al-Qaida, 177; 1998 fatwa against Americans, 136; US indictment of, 137–138; World Islamic Front alliance of, 176 Blair, Tony, 30 Bush administration: Canada relations of, 111; and global war on terrorism (GWOT) terminology, 9, 133. See also Counterterrorism policy, United States Caliphate State, Germany’s outlawing of, 64 Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), 106, 107–108; foreign investigation of, 125; funding for, 124; and RCMP relations, 119; threat assessment of, 115–116 Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), 144; counterterrorist activities of, 136; Directorate of Operations, 207; personnel recruitment practices of, 145; propaganda activities of, 148; and terrorist threat, 185 Chrétien, Jean, 109, 112, 125 Civil Authorities (Special Powers) Acts (Britain), 19–20, 25 Clinton administration: and Al-Qaida threat, 135; and East African bombings, 137; and homeland security, 212–213 Counterterrorism policy, Britain, 3, 4–5, 17–47; conceptions of, 38–40; and continuing terrorist attacks, 47; democratic accountability measures in, 40–41; domestic issues and dynamics in, 36–38; and EU counterterrorist efforts, 43; and indefinite detention, 37–38, 43; individual rights and rule of law in, 38–40; and international cooperation, 41–46; and judiciary checks on government power, 40; legal instruments in, 18–26, 35; military modernization and, 18, 34–35; military’s role in, 32–33; national identity card system proposal in, 36–37; NATO’s role in, 44–45; and Northern Ireland’s terrorist threat, 18–21, 28; and post-9/11 contingency

measures, 35; power to freeze funds in, 24; powers of arrest in, 37; review provisions for, 40; and Special Powers Acts, 19–20, 25; and UN failure to endorse war in Iraq, 42; and US aggression against Afghanistan and Iraq, 33–34. See also Anti-terrorism, Crime, and Security Act (ATCSA); Terrorism Act (TA) Counterterrorism policy, Canada, 3–4, 8–9, 105–109; all-hazards, all-threats security approach in, 117, 118; Arar affair and, 112, 114, 119, 127; border security in, 111, 112; and civil rights– security balance, 113–115; civilianmilitary jurisdiction in, 120; credibility of, 113, 127; current domestic debate on, 109–115; and development assistance, 125–126; extremist/terrorist groups in, 107, 113, 116; and government perceptions of threat, 115–116; and government restructuring, 117–118, 124; and immigration policies/legislation, 107, 113, 114, 122–123; implementation of, 121– 126; and individual rights and privacy, 113, 127; intelligence and, 119, 124, 126; and international cooperation, 126; law enforcement services and, 119, 124, 126; legislative aspects of, 113–114, 121–123; military command structure and, 120; and military deployments and funding, 125; and national security policy, 117, 121, 124; and new Conservative Party government, 105; political aspects of, 121; post—Cold War/pre-9/11 period, 106–108; post-9/11 objectives in, 109; provincial and territorial governments’ roles in, 119–120; public perceptions of security and, 110; and public service agencies’ roles in, 117–120; Ressam affair and, 108; security relations with United States, 106, 108, 110–113, 126; security vulnerabilities in, 114–116; and security-oriented budgeting, 123–124; and US counterterrorism policy, 127; and US war on terror, 112–113 Counterterrorism policy, Europe: antiterrorism road map of, 216; criminal jus-

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tice model of, 206, 207–208, 214–215; and domestic terrorism, 2, 207; and Dublin Agreement, 213, 214; and intelligence sharing, 216, 224– 225; logic of, 206; militarization of police capabilities in, 207; multilateral cooperation focus of, 213–214; and political nature of terrorist violence, 214–215; Schengen Agreement and, 214; Security Strategy in, 43; and Third Pillar (judicial and home affairs) cooperation, 214, 224 Counterterrorism policy, Germany, 3, 5–7, 59–76; air traffic security measures in, 64; and Al-Qaida/Islamic terrorist threats, 61–62; and Aviation Security Act, 69–70; balance between security and liberty in, 66–68; changing nature of terrorist threat and, 67; domestic responses in, 62–70; efficiency principle and, 68; federal security structure and, 68; and financing of terrorism, 71; and German Basic Law, 63, 69; intelligence services and, 61–62, 65; and international cooperation, 70–74; and intrainstitutional competition, 75; investigative strategies and results in, 62–63; military component in, 72–74; and new transnational terrorism, 61–62; nonmilitary approach in, 63; obstacles to legal convictions in, 65; and Olympic Games massacre (1972), 186, 205; penal code changes in, 64–65; police profiling (dragnet approach) in, 66, 67, 68; preventive conception of security in, 73–74; and radical Muslim organizations, 75; and religious groups’ privileged status, 61; and responses to 9/11 attacks, 59, 65–66; security measures and legislation in, 63–70; and Security Package II preventive action, 60 Counterterrorism policy, Israel, 10–11, 157–172; and Arab Revolt of 1936–1939, 158, 160; and British counterinsurgency campaign, 158; and cross-border terrorism, 170; of demolishing Palestinian houses/ refugee camps, 162, 168; and erection of security fences, 163, 168, 169, 171;

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and events of 1967–1987, 160–164; first intifada responses of, 164–165; intelligence operations in, 162, 163, 166, 168, 169; and international terrorism, 170; and Israeli/Jewish targets abroad, 162; and Jewish paramilitary organizations, 158; and Lebanon operations/occupation, 161; and military deployment in Occupied Territories, 168; openings for negotiations/establishment of Palestinian state, 165; and Oslo Agreement failure, 165–166; and Palestinian bombings/suicide bombings, 167, 168, 169; and Palestinian tactical and societal disadvantages, 163; peak periods of terrorism in, 169; and post—World War II terrorist “infiltrators,” 159–160; public debate on, 169; and retaliation against Arab communities, 158, 168; and second intifada, 166–169; security organizations/system of, 159–163, 164–165, 166, 167–168; successful measures in, 169; of targeting terrorist leaders, 169; and violence of British Mandate period, 157–158 Counterterrorism policy, Norway, 3, 7–8, 79–99; and Al-Qaida threat, 89–91; authority and responsibility issues in, 93; and competent leadership requirement, 94; conceptions of, 88–95; and crime investigation capacity, 98; Department of Justice coordination of, 91; and European counterterrorism efforts, 97; and external border control, 97–98; and fault lines between government agencies, 91–94; and High North concerns, 81; historical context for, 80–81; information security strategy and, 95, 96tab; and international cooperation, 97–98; international security environment and, 80–81; and international terroristrelated events, 80; Iraq question and, 84; Justice and Defense Ministries’ role in, 94–95; and lack of terrorist experience, 79; and mapping of local Muslim terrorist cells, 91; and national coordination, 96–97; overall national security policy, 98–99; and NATO relations, 79, 81, 82–83; 9/11 attacks’

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impact on, 80, 82–83; police-military cooperation arrangements in, 92, 93; and responses to prophet Mohammed cartoon depictions, 91; and root causes of terrorism, 84; and Russia relations, 79; and societal security, 94; and support for military action in Afghanistan, 82–83; threat assessment in, 88–90; transatlantic alliance and, 79 Counterterrorism policy, United States, 4, 133–149; and bilateral/multilateral cooperation, 220–221, 224–225; and Cold War views/analogies, 135; diplomacy in, 213; domestic intelligence collecting in, 148; and EU rapprochement, 216; failure to counter extremist ideology in, 147; and first World Trade Center attack, 135, 209; focused on transnational Islamist terrorists, 136; geostrategic perspective in, 208; and global war on terrorism, 133–134; and GST covert-action efforts, 144; homeland security apparatus in, 220; human intelligence (HUMINT) shortcomings in, 144–145; intelligence component of, 140, 143–145; and intelligence sharing, 216, 224–225; international focus and cooperation in, 139, 207, 208; and laissez-faire attitude toward terrorism, 135–136; interrogation techniques and detainee treatment in, 148; law enforcement activities and performance in, 140, 143–145; legislation in, 136; major tools in, 139–141; methods and criteria for assessing, 141–142; military component of, 137, 140, 142–143; and “new terrorism” paradigm, 209–211; offensive position in, 205; preemption policy in, 139; post-9/11 campaign and goals, 139; pre-9/11 evolution of, 135–138; public diplomacy in, 141, 147; resource allocation and spending on, 213; Special Operation Forces’ missions in, 140, 142; and state sponsorship of terrorism, 136; and systemic counterterrorism failures, 144; and terrorism as threat to national security, 2–3; and terrorist financing, 140–141, 146; and unconventional

warfare, 142–143, 212–213; war model of, 207, 211, 213, 221 Counterterrorism policy, Western, 203–226; and chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear (CBRN) weapons, 187, 190–191, 210; counterpropaganda as overlooked tool in, 183, 191–192, 196, 197; defined on case-by-case basis, 13; domestic challenges in, 13; focus on operational agenda in, 176, 191–192; and holistic nonmilitary approaches, 196–197; international-level controversial issues in, 13–14; legal measures in, 208; liberal democracies’ early failures in, 205; military deployment debate in, 13–14; need for multifaceted/multinational response to, 11, 175–176; 1970–1980 evolution of, 203–208; post–Cold War period (1990s), 208–215; post-9/11 reconfiguration of, 215–219; security-political environment focus in, 208–209; separation of internal and external security in, 204; terrorist threat perception debate in, 209; transatlantic divergence on, 215–216; trend toward forceful confrontation in, 205; and US unilateralism, 195. See also Multinational counterterrorism alliances Dayan, Moshe, 162 Department of Homeland Security (DHS) (US), 135, 220 ECHELON (interception system), UK participation in, 45 European Common Arrest Warrant, 216 European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, 24, 37 European Convention for the Suppression of Terrorism (ECST), 206, 213– 214 European Union Plan of Action on Combating Terrorism, 71–72 Europol, 42, 43 Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), 189; counterterrorist activities of 136, 145; domestic terrorism prosecution

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of, 206–207; and extraterritorial jurisdiction, 207; and terrorist threat, 185 Gema’ah Islamiyah terrorist group, 134, 180, 181 Ghaddafi, Muammar, 204 Guantanamo Bay prisoners: British citizens as, 38; foreign intelligence officers’ access to, 189; mistreatment/ civil liberties violations of, 145, 148 Guantanamo Human Rights Commission (Britain), 38 Hamas: freeze on funds of, 24; Palestinian support for, 166–167 Hezb-i-Islami, Afghan support of, 194–195 Hizbollah terrorist group, 10, 161, 170 Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (Canada), 122 Intelligence community, British, 26–32; and agency funding, 28–29; Al-Qaida evaluation, 28; expanded accessibility in, 32; international terrorism/Islamist threat focus in, 28; law enforcement agencies in, 27; and military aggression against Iraq, 29–32; and nonconventional weapons threat, 29–30; oversight, 41; post-9/11 changes in, 26, 28; principal agencies in, 26–27 International Atomic Energy Agency, UK support for, 41 International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), 83, 85, 217–218 Iran, prosecution of Al-Zarqawi network in, 188 Iraq: blueprint for insurgency in, 195–196; development assistance for, 126; future of, 197–198; reason for US failure in, 197; security situation in, 194; war model against terrorism in, 219 Iraqi war, 134; jihadists’ acquisition of operational skills in, 134; Norway’s responses to, 84; UK support for, 34 Islamic Jihad movement, Palestinian support for, 166–167 Islamist political parties, terrorist propaganda activities of, 194 Islamist terrorist groups: in Afghan cam-

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paign, 182; Al-Qaida tactics adopted by, 177; commanders of, 178–179; contemporary instruments and strategies of, 175, 178; cross-border operations of, 187; designated Western targets of, 192–193; dispersed to lawless conflict zones, 178, 181; as external and strategic threat, 75; financing of, 146, 185; global jihad ideology of, 12, 177, 182; global operations and support network of, 176–177, 182–183; ideological and strategic differences between, 180; mass disruption capabilities of, 187; Middle Eastern regimes targeted by, 180; Muslim radicalization and, 177; networks and alliances of, 176, 186, 187, 220; post–Cold War impacts on, 183–184; recruitment and generation of support in, 187; self-financing nature of, 146; Southeast Asian, 181; strategies to operationally shut down, 186; survival of, 195; transnational, and local/regional conflicts, 181; vision/mission in, 192–194. See also Al-Qaida; Terrorist threat Israel Defense Force (IDF), 159, 160, 161, 164, 168 Italian Red Brigades, 205, 209 Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) (Britain), 27, 29–32 Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre (JTAC) (Britain), oversight of, 27 Jordan, foiled chemical agent attack on, 190–191 Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, 144, 178 Krekar, Mullah, 88, 90, 180 Lebanon, Israeli antiterrorist campaign in, 161, 170 Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), 10, 133; Canadian presence of, 107, 113, 116 Libyan terrorism, US military response to, 205–206 Martin, Paul, 109, 112, 117–118, 121 Middle East jihad, and US invasion of Iraq, 197–198

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Ministry of Defence (MoD) (Britain): Defence Intelligence Staff (DIS) of, 27; and Strategic Defence Review, 32–33 Missile Technology Control Regime/ Financial Action Task Force (MTCR/FATF), as model for multilateral counterterrorism structure, 222–223 Mossad, intelligence sharing of, 189 Multinational counterterrorism alliances: choice of structure for, 222–223; divergent views of terrorism in, 59–60, 223–224; and “fisherman” versus “hunter” response models, 186; functionalist multilateral organization proposed for, 221–222; and individual worldviews, 13–14; intelligence sharing in, 188, 189–190, 220; 9/11 as catalyst for formation of, 186; range of actors and areas of interaction in, 188; security and law enforcement collaboration in, 188–189; US skepticism toward, 220 National Counter-Terrorism Center (NCTC) (US), 144 National crisis management, general criteria for, 91 National Security Directive 138 (US), 205 Netanyahu, Binyamin, 166 9/11 attacks: and British counterterrorism policy, 17–18; contributing factors in, 185; costs of, 146; as massive failure of intelligence, 143; and unified counterterrorist approaches, 12–13 North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), 9; Afghanistan war and, 44, 73; and British counterterrorist policy, 44–45; and Norway’s military deployment, 82–83; Norwegian policy toward, 81, 97; response to 9/11 attacks, 72–73; and united Western front against terrorism, 216 Northern Ireland, and UK counterterrorist framework, 18–21, 28 Northern Ireland Emergency Provisions Act (EPA), 20–21 Norwegian armed forces: debates over roles of, 79; expeditionary capability

of, 82; forward deployment of, 84; and international use of force, 83–85; in Operation Enduring Freedom, 82–83, 84; police assistance by, 92; post— Cold War transformation of, 81 Norwegian Defense Law, 92 Norwegian terrorist law, 85–88; ban on terrorist acts in, 80, 85; and civil rights concerns, 87; and criminal procedure code changes, 87; criticisms and alterations of, 86–87; and deterrence of attacks, 88; and financing of terrorist acts, 80, 85, 86, 88; positive reactions to, 88; punishable actions under, 85–86; “terrorist acts” defined in, 86–88 Nuclear terrorism, UK’s response to, 41 Oklahoma City bombing, 212 Oman, Mullah Muhammad, 194 Operation Iraqi Freedom, launching of, 139 Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), and resistance to Israeli occupation, 160–161 Peres, Shimon, 165, 166 Police Security Service (PST) (Norway), responsibilities of, 88–91 Prevention of Terrorism and Prevention of Violence Acts (Britain), 20–21 Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA), 204 Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness Canada (PSEPC), 117–118, 120 Rabin, Yitzhak: and first Palestinian intifada, 164, 165 Rahman, Omar Abdul, 135–136 Reagan, Ronald, 205; counterterrorism policy under, 211 Red Army Faction (West Germany), 204–205, 209 Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), and counterterrorism policy, 114, 117, 118, 119 Rumsfeld, Donald, 148, 149 Salafist Jihad, as primary terrorist threat to the West, 179, 180

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Saudi Arabia, terrorist attacks in, 180 Schengen Information System (SIS), 98, 214 Schily, Otto, 63, 64, 66, 67, 71 Schröder, Gerhardt, 71, 74 Security and Prosperity Partnership (USCanada-Mexico), 112, 126 Sharon, Yitzhak: antiterrorist activities of, 161, 162 counterterrorism policy of, 168; terrorist background of, 158 Shin Bet, intelligence sharing of, 189 Smart Border Action Plan (Canada-US), 112, 126 Solana, Javier, 43 Special Immigration Appeals Commission (SIAC) (Britain), 22–23, 24–25 Strategic Defense Review (SDR) (Britain): and 9/11 attacks, 18; proposed reappraisal of, 32 Sudan, Al-Qaida sponsorship of, 217 Taliban regime: Afghan support of, 194–195; Al-Qaida and, 217 Terrorism Act (TA) (Britain), 19; arrest powers in, 37; lack of review measures in, 40; police powers in, 21; post9/11 use of, 23–24; proposals to expand, 25–26; terrorism defined in, 21; and terrorist financing, 24 Terrorist Financing Convention (Britain), 24 Terrorist threat: and diaspora and migrant Muslim communities,

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192–194, 196; escalation of, 182; frequency and scale of, 179–180; and future attacks, 190; and international neglect of regional conflicts, 185, 196, 198; of mass casualty attacks, 187, 190–191, 210; to national economies, 193–194 United Nations: Counter Terrorism Committee (CTC), 219–220; Germany’s counterterrorism cooperation with, 71; legal instruments on combating terrorism, 208; multilateral counterterrorist strategy and, 219–220; operational initiatives to curb terrorism in, 220; strengthening of, 97; and war in Iraq, 46 United Nations Security Council, and states’ terrorism responses, 41–42 US Department of Defense, 207 USA PARTIOT Act of 2001: bipartisan opposition to, 145; expanded investigative powers under, 148 Washington Treaty, and 9/11 attacks, 44 World Islamic Front for Jihad Against Crusaders and Jews, 186 Zarqawi, Abu Musab al-, 180, 190–191; network capabilities of, 178–179, 187 Zawahiri, Ayman al-, 89, 90, 134, 136, 183, 192

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About the Book

AS NATIONAL GOVERNMENTS STRUGGLE TO COPE WITH THE COMPLEX THREAT OF mass-casualty terrorist attacks, there is an ongoing debate about the best approaches to counterterrorism policy. The authors of How States Fight Terrorism explore the dynamics of counterterrorism policy development in Europe and North America. A series of case studies examine security concerns, political debates and policy responses, and military countermeasures at both the national and international levels while emphasizing the need for integrated approaches. The book provides new insights into the tension between efficiency and legitimacy as one of the core dilemmas in shaping counterterrorism policy. Doron Zimmermann is a senior researcher for the Political Violence Movements and Integrated Risk Analysis projects at the Center for Security Studies at ETH Zurich (the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology). He is coauthor (with Andreas Wenger) of International Relations: From the Cold War to the Globalized World and author of Iran and Syria as State Supporters of Political Violence Movements in Lebanon and the Palestinian Territories. Andreas Wenger is a professor of international security policy and director of the Center for Security Studies at ETH Zurich. His publications also include Conflict Prevention: The Untapped Potential of the Business Sector and Transforming NATO in the Cold War: Challenges Beyond Deterrence in the 1960s.

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