Counterterrorism as a False Approach - Coursework Example

Running Head: COUNTERTERRORISM – A FALSE APPROACH Counterterrorism – A False Approach By Counterterrorism – A False Approach Since the wake of the 9/11 catastrophic incident, the United States has engaged in a frenzied game of cat-and-mouse chase against terrorists. The word game however is, without a doubt, an inappropriate word to describe the US’ gargantuan efforts to catch the perpetrators of, among others, the World Trade Center collapse and the Pentagon partial destruction. Billions of dollars went and continuously go into counterterrorism efforts, with the war being waged against terrorists going beyond the boundaries of the country. The US Administration’s resolved to search and destroy wherever and whenever was encapsulated in President George W. Bush’s 2001 speech where he declared: “No group or nation should mistake America’s intentions: We will not rest until terrorist groups of global reach have been found, have been stopped, and have been defeated” (qtd. National Strategy for Combating Terrorism 2003).Thus, since 2001 the US have invaded Afghanistan, Iraq, and in a way, many other countries coerced by President Bush to join the counterterrorism fray with his Orwellian call “either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.” However, the failure of the Administration to employ basic but sound and time tested strategies to contain terrorism has so far, proved fatal to the counterterrorism efforts. One of the objections against the present US counterterrorism strategy is that after 9/11, it has disengaged crimes from terrorism, and treated the two as separate. In the aftermath of the 9/11 cataclysm, the first move of the Bush administration was to dismantle the then existing established counterterrorism program which then incorporated transnational crimes and terrorism as necessarily related entities. Today, the fight against terrorism takes precedence over the fight against terrorism. According to Louise Shelley, of the Terrorism, Transnational Crime and Corruption Center, this is fatal because this signifies the failure of the government to recognize the crime-terror nexus. Shelley believes that the only way to detect the presence of terrorists is through their criminal activities and this is not only because they needed the profit of the crime to survive and sustain their activities but also because they need to resort to criminal acts to maintain the integrity of their organization (Shelley 2006). Criminal activities are basic to terrorist movements as they are the sine qua non of their existence. Although legitimate organizations may illegitimately and surreptitiously give financial support and backing to terrorists, the latter still need to resort to crimes like money laundering, personnel smuggling and false documents production to conceal their identities. The Hamas, for example, had annual budgetary allocations for its terrorist activities that ran in millions of dollars which it cannot have raised on its own even it goes into extensive criminal activities. According to the International Policy Institute for Counterterrorism in Herzilya, the organization received clandestine external funding from oil rich countries like Saudi Arabia, Iran and other states in the Gulf region in addition to its own funding activities in the West Gaza (Leonard 2005). The Al Qaeda, on the other hand, purportedly spent $30 million annually prior to 2001, according to the 9/11 Commission Final Report. The source of the organization allegedly came from the Persian Gulf charities (Al Qaeda Finance). This goes to show that terrorist organizations are not entirely invisible. When large chunks of money change hands, there are always paper trails involved however elaborately concealed they are. The over-emphasis on “large-scale quantitative data analysis, rather than unraveling different crime terror networks” renders, according to Shelley, the counterterrorism strategy flawed and ineffective from its conceptualization rudiments to its implementation (2004). As a result of this view, terrorism is primarily resolved by invading countries perceived to be supporting and providing safe haven for terrorists. Massive military resolution beyond domestic boundaries and suspension and even violation of civil liberties were justified alone by the war on terrorism. As a consequence, America has unwittingly justified terrorism against it in the eyes of those who were innocently caught victims of its counterterrorism strategy. As a graver consequence, America has found itself mired in a condition of escalating violence not only from its enemies but worse, violence that it itself must necessarily continue to engage in lest it loses its face completely in the eyes of the world. What the counterterrorism strategy has done is open a can of worms that the Bush Administration has trouble resealing. The fallacy that the US counterterrorism policy engendered which is to go straight to the terrorists and perceived terrorists, at all cost, with a deliberate show of all its military might will prove in the end to be costly. After billions of dollars spent by the country in the counterterrorism effort, high-profile arrests, and claims of various successes by the Administration, some experts are of the opinion that the US is losing in the global fight against terrorism. This is the consensus reached by eighty-four per cent of the 116 leading experts interviewed by Foreign Policy, a US prominent magazine. The people interviewed consisted of a balanced mixture of Democrats and Republicans, which included an ex-secretary of state, two former directors of the Central Intelligence Agency, and a considerable number of top security analysts. Worse, eighty-six percent of them believed that not only is the US’ is losing but that the world has become a more dangerous place to live in, a development which started to take shape in the last five years (Catley & Mosler 2007 pp 131-132). The scare tactics employed by the US to intimidate terrorists, potential terrorists, and terrorist supporters through a grand show of military might and hardware seemed to have an opposite effect. The invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, on the contrary, spawned more enemies for the country rather than diminish their number. According to a classified report dated April 2006, the war in Iraq had resulted in the birth of a new generation of Islamist extremists in the mold of Al Qaeda. Entitled Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States, the document revealed the growing threat of global terrorism to western countries. The significant part of the report was that although it acknowledged that the counterterrorism strategy and efforts had rendered Al Qaeda inutile and useless for the moment, a new threat, of the same magnitude of global harm or even worse, is looming in the horizon. This is the fact that Islamic radicalism is not anymore contained in specific areas but has spread like wildfire all over the globe. The report was the overall consensus of the sixteen spy services of the country (Catley & Mosler 2007 p -132). The shock-and-awe tactics being employed by the US has inadvertently not only rallied all other terrorist groups behind Al Qaeda but has spawned unknown Islamic radicals who either earned Al Qaeda’s sympathy or were enraged by what they perceived to be a US undermining of their sovereignty and integrity. In 2006, an aviation plot was uncovered by the British police. It was a transatlantic plan to down at least ten US-bound airplanes via Canada through an ingenious plan of sneaking in explosives inside the planes in liquid form which metal detectors cannot identify and exploding them while the planes are in flight. The personalities involved in the case are from Pakistan, two of which is a British citizen of Pakistan origin (Linzer 2006). Whether these suspects were actually Al Qaeda members are doubtful but what remains real is that these people are serious, willing to put at stake their lives and that of their families despite having attained relative economic success by migrating to highly industrialized countries. Michael J. Heinbach, the newly appointed assistant director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) commented that the terrorist threat does not come only from homegrown ones but all over the globe like the Hezbollah, Hamas, and terrorists from Somalia (Green 2008). The use of military power and hardware, not only failed to ‘shock and awe’ the people it matters most but according to George McFadden of the Center for the Study of the Presidency, it is a “failure by most measurement.” And the yardstick for this is the end-result after the dust has lifted off from the shock-and-awe exercise of the US military might. After invasion of Iraq, the latter poses chaos and trouble to the entire Middle East region, Afghanistan, another US invaded country is left without any lawfully organized and effective government, bin Laden has not yet been captured and as noted earlier, more and more Muslims are converting themselves into Islamic extremists of the Al Qaedan mold (McFadden 2007). The very authors themselves of the shock-and-awe strategy of the US counterterrorism policy explained the weaknesses of the tactics. Harland Ullman, professor at National Defense University and former naval officer, and James Wade pointed to this strategy as one that is largely dependent on intelligence. “One must be certain that the will and perceptions of the adversary can be manipulated. The classic backfire is the adversary who is not impressed and, instead, is further provoked to action by the unintended actions of the aggressor” (McFadden 2007). The reason of the overall malfunction of the US counterterrorism strategy is the failure of the strategists to take into account the psychological profile of the enemy and the effect of the strategy on others who may be affected by it. It also failed to take into account the basic underpinnings of the Islam religion which encompass the lives of every Islam worshipping people. Neither did the strategists read and take into account the sacred scriptures of Islam which every Islam worshipper seriously believes and almost fanatically follow literally. While Christianity preaches peace to the point of subservience as illustrated in biblical passages of ‘turning the other cheek’ and ‘throwing bread instead of stone,’ the Quran instead teaches the eye-for-an-eye philosophy. Unlike Christians, Muslims are willing to sacrifice their lives for the Islam cause. As a result of the catastrophic nature of 9/11, the US has relegated basic counterterrorism strategies that worked for other countries in the past and as stated, opted for the ostentatious and flashier shock-and-awe display of military power. This strategy may have shocked and awed the majority of the world population but not the 24.79% which constituted the world Muslim population (World Muslim Population 2006). The Strategies that Worked in other Countries Terrorism is nothing new to the world although the sheer magnitude and the shocking manner with which the 9/11 was perpetrated made terrorism a common and notorious byword to all. The British, the Italians and the Peruvian governments are certainly not stranger to terrorism having dealt with homegrown versions of their own. In their success in dealing with terrorism, these countries employed the most basic strategies with which the US government can take lessons from despite the ideological and operational differences among these terrorists. What is common to these successful handling of terrorism is the employment of two basic but effective strategies: familiarity of the enemy in all their aspects, and; confining counterterrorism strategies to achievable goals. The British and the IRA. The Irish Red Army had been a pain in the neck to the British government since early 1900. The original raison d’être of the IRA is their desire to detach Northern Ireland from the British territory and unite with the rest of Ireland. This clashed with the wishes of others, which represented the majority, to keep the status quo. Initially, the British government met this insurrection with force of military arms. After a protracted fight however, where the IRA showed that it was willing to go the distance, the British changed tactics by settling instead for containment of the terrorist group activities. Eventually, the IRA lost steam as none of the anticipated events happened like the British withdrawal from Northern Ireland. Because British intelligence was effective, almost every terrorist attacks were foiled and eventually IRA grew tired and weak (Joes 2007 p 129). The Italians and the Red Brigades. The Red Brigades initially took off as a result of the growing sentiment of some Marxist-Leninist followers for Italy to detach itself from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Many of the leaders and members of the group eventually succumbed to pressure while in prison, admitted the futility of the struggle and turned collaborators against Red Brigade members. What worked for the Italian government was the relentless pursuit of the terrorist elements treating them as serious criminals and therefore a problem of law enforcement, subjecting them to judicial control and imposing upon them the full force of the law (Moonman 1987 p 149). The Peruvians and the Shining Path. The Shining Path was a terrorist organization in Peru which was organized to replace the perceived bourgeoisie government and replace it with a communist form of government. The initial government reaction to it was to create anti-guerilla forces which proved more repressive and violent than the terrorists. Eventually, with the ascension of Alberto Fujimori as president-elect of Peru in 1990, who cleverly used the countryside peasants in its fight, the Shining Path started losing ground. It subsequently turned away its sight from the Peruvian countryside to the city of Lima instead, where it had trouble penetrating industrial organizations and labor unions. Cornered, sixty per cent of the organization’s Central Committee was captured. The arrest was made possible by an elaborate web of intelligence network headed by DINCOTE or Direcion Nacional Contra el Terorismo. Conclusion Terrorism, despite the shocking public initiation to it brought about by the September 11, 2001 incident, is not a new phenomenon to the world. Many other countries have had experienced with it and some have actually had success in at least containing it. The shock and awe tactic being employed by the United States may have initially brought success but it was merely temporary. Recent reports are replete with proof that terrorism is now more widespread than before 9/11. The implication is that the shock-and-awe tactic employed by the Bush administration had and is spawning more enemies for the country. This is not to mention the fact that the country is now mired in a state of escalating violence which it has trouble getting out of. The probable reason for this is that given by the very authors of this strategy Ullman and Wade which states to the effect that there are types of people who are not susceptible to this kind of display and may, in fact have an opposite reaction. The Bush Administration should accept that it failed to take into account this possible contingency or that its failed to consider that invading foreign countries will result in complicated situations in which getting out of will prove to be difficult because it will be a ‘damned if you do and damned if you don’t’ situation. Perhaps it is time to go back to the time tested rudiments of counterterrorism. References Al Qaeda Finance Committee. Homeland Security. GlobalSecurity.org. http://www.globalsecurity.org/security/profiles/al-qaeda_finance_committee.htm Catley, R., & Mosler, David. (2007). The American Challenge: The World Resists US Liberalism. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd, p 132. Green, J.J. (2008). Complacency worries top FBI counterterrorism official. WTOPnews.com. http://www.wtop.com/?nid=251&sid=1439724 Joes, Anthony James. (2007). Urban Guerrilla Warfare. University Press of Kentucky, p 129.  Leonard, Thomas M. (2005). Encyclopedia of the Developing World. Routledge, p. Linzer, Dafna. (2006). Airliner Plot Had Support In Pakistan, Officials Say. Washingtonpost.com. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/11/AR2006081102053.html   Mcfadden, George. (2007). Counterterrorism Beyond Shock and Awe, Part I. Foreign Policy Forum. http://www.foreignpolicyforum.com/view_article.php?aid=403 Moonman, Eric. (1987). The Violent Society. Routledge, p. 149. National Strategy for Combating Terrorism. (2003). https://www.cia.gov/news-information/cia-the-war-on-terrorism/Counter_Terrorism_Strategy.pdf Shelley, Lousie. (2006). Countering Terrorism in the US: The Fallacy of Ignoring the Crime Terror Nexus. National Counter-Terrorism Strategies: Legal, Institutional, and Public Policy Dimensions in the US, UK, France, Turkey and Russia by Robert W. Orttung, Andrey Makarychev, NATO. IOS Press. World Muslim Population. (2006). http://www.islamicpopulation.com/world_general.html Read More