Terrorism And Hostage Negotiations

Abraham Miller

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN:
  9780367305352
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000314380
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

How effective are the methods currently used to deal with hostage situations? This study attempts to answer that question by examining the ways in which terrorists manipulate the hostage/ barricade tactic—one of the most formidable and frightening devices in their arsenal—and by analyzing the response of law enforcement officers and policymakers to its use. Drawing on case materials and interviews with high-level decision makers, both in the United States and abroad, who are involved with domestic and international terrorist operations, Professor Miller analyzes the political and psychological motifs of hostage/barricade dramas. He then looks at terrorism, particularly political terrorism, within the broader theoretical context of the general study of political violence and the operational concerns of public decision makers and law enforcement personnel.

1
Introduction: International Terrorism, a Type of Warfare

International terrorism as a type of warfare (as distinct from a tactic within a type of warfare) grew out of the failure of some national liberation movements to achieve results and their inability to develop sufficient political strength to make guerrilla warfare or a full-scale mass movement possible. Because of this political impotency, terrorists seek to attack symbolic enemies. It is generally argued that attacks by national liberation movements against uninvolved Western powers occur because terrorists see their plight as being created by omnipresent capitalist exploiters; however, this is generally a rationale to expand the scope of activity to "soft" targets and thereby assuage the terrorists' feelings of impotency. It is worth noting in this regard that Middle-Eastern spawned terrorism sprang up after the 1967 War, a war in which the Israelis devastated guerrilla bases and also exploded the myth that a Palestinian state would be brought about as a result of a military victory achieved by sympathetic and powerful Arab states. When the Palestinians, in response, changed their tactics from guerrilla warfare to terrorism, the targets were not within Israel but in the skies flown by aircraft of security casual Western nations.

In the face of overwhelming defeat, or in the face of weakness, how does a national liberation movement preserve its momentum and prevent the faithful from retiring to apathy? This is the problem which terrorist groups and all politically weak groups face. The solution is sometimes found in the substitution of symbolic victories and international publicity for the unobtainable victories that lead to real political power.

Terrorism can be seen from two perspectives: (1) a struggle for liberation from colonial domination, or perceived domination, and (2) the struggle against an allegedly oppressive domestic regime. In both cases, terrorism occurs because more potent and meaningful forms of political violence have become ineffectual or are beyond the resources of the regimes' opponents. In both cases, access to the media is an important ingredient. In the struggle against colonial domination, access to the media is required to convey a sense of fear and futility to the overseas capital of colonial power, as well as in the colony. The message of the terrorist media campaign is to portray the struggle as costly and futile. Wars against colonial masters are as likely to be won by turning around public opinion in the dominating state as on the battlefield.

Where the struggle is against domestic regimes, the use of the media is tied to the philosophical rationale based on a rather vulgar interpretation of Marx's assertion that revolutions come about because of the increasing misery of the exploited masses. The terrorists' translation of Marx's notion is that an oppressive regime when confronted with instability and insecurity through political terrorism will become even more brutal and repressive in attempting to stop terrorism. The increased oppressiveness of the regime, coupled with its declining legitimacy ensuing from its inability to preserve order, will, so the terrorists theorize, create an inevitable popular uprising. The same philosophical rationale was used in the late 1960s by the Weather Underground to launch the "days of rage" in Chicago where sporadic violence was initiated against the business district.

The events of Chicago were to prove what common sense might have dictated, the terrorists's philosophical rationale was not only bad Marxism but bad tactics. Common sense, however, was of little concern to the Weather Underground and is apparently of little concern to most doctrinaire terrorists. When a committed terrorist perceives himself operating within the framework of historical inevitability, as revealed by Marxist-Leninism, then pragmatic considerations relating to tactics are often meaningless.

The philosophical position of Marx and Engels on terrorism is actually best described as ambiguous. The Marxist doctrine is fundamentally concerned with political change through revolution. Revolutions are mass uprisings that occur in accord with specific social and historical conditions. In contrast, terrorism is generally created through individual acts of violence without the prerequisite mass base required for full-scale revolution. According to Marx, revolutions, not acts of terrorism, are the locomotives of history.

Marx and Engels bitterly parted company with Michael Bakunin and his philosophy of anarchistic terrorism, seeing it as a counterproductive force. However, Marx and Engels were not completely inflexible on their position regarding terrorism. They were able and willing to make allowances for the Russian terrorist movements of the late nineteenth century as reflective of the unique conditions that existed in Russia. Lenin and Trotsky, however, were quite opposed to the indiscriminate use of terrorism even in Russia.

In the contemporary setting, the philosophical position of Marxism has been meaningful only when communist-oriented terrorist groups can find a rationale for their activities in some interpretation of Marxist thought, even if the interpretation is convoluted. Such communist-oriented, modern terrorist groups as Baader-Meinhof, the Italian Red Brigades, or the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine have, like America's Weather Underground, found philosophical rationales in Marxism for the use of terrorism, and the Soviet KGB has been actively involved in training and funding terrorist movements. Ironically, terrorism has not generally been a threat to authoritarian Communist regimes, where terrorism is a monopoly of the state. It is liberal democracies which are most vulnerable to terrorism, and terrorists exploit the freedoms of liberal democracy to achieve their goals.

Terrorism and Democracy

Freedom of travel, association, speech, and the press, integral components of the liberal democratic state, are all subject to exploitation by terrorists. The migration of workers from one country to another and the ensuing establishment of ethnic enclaves, where terrorists from abroad find Mao's proverbial sea to swim in, is an additional vulnerability of Western democracies. The existence of such communities not only makes the foreign-looking terrorist less obtrusive, but among his fellow countrymen the terrorist might even find a fertile area for sowing the seeds of dissention. Here sympathizers, resources, and new recruits can be found.

The geographical proximity of European democracies to KGB training grounds in Eastern Europe further heightens the vulnerability of these democracies to terrorism. Indeed, one of the speculations about the lack of success of foreign terrorists in the United States has often revolved around its geographical distance from safe havens.

The liberal democracies confronted by active and continuous terrorist operations face difficult choices. The very freedoms liberal democracies value as part of their cherished sense about themselves is what enables terrorists to operate. Where the state controls the monopoly on political terrorism, anti-state terrorism is virtually non-existent, but the creation of an environment which eliminates the freedoms terrorists need to survive also means the creation of an environment which would destroy the liberal democratic state. This in effect would mean doing what the terrorists themselves set out to do but were unable to accomplish. In Uruguay, for example, the Tupamaros, a self-styled Marxist terrorist group, managed to bring about a right-wing reaction against the liberal state. The elimination of basic liberties caused greater oppression of the masses, but with the destruction of the liberal state did not come the popular uprising the Tupamaros anticipated. Instead, the right-wing coup d'etat not only eliminated the liberal state, but with it all political opposition, including the Tupamaros.

It is not, however, necessary for the liberal democracy confronted with terrorism to ignore it and continue a policy process on a "business as usual" footing. It is sometimes assumed Western democracies will have to learn to live with terrorism the way in which American cities have learned to live with street crime and violence. Such sentiments, in a certain sense, are not entirely inappropriate, for they illustrate that while terrorism is an irritant, the larger society continues to function around it. On a statistical basis, the total cost in dollars and lives by terrorism worldwide since 1968, is less that the cost of crime in any mid-sized American city for any one year. Seeing terrorism solely in these terms, however, ignores some of the more important and less calculable costs of terrorism. Terrorism, in the short run, is concerned primarily with the manipulation of political symbols as a means of getting access to or controlling the international public agenda. Terrorists design operations which by their very nature are media events, generating for the terrorists an inordinant amount of publicity. But it is not simply access to the agenda which terrorists seek, and too often terrorist activities are seen solely from that perspective; more important, and often less considered, is the control which terrorists seek over the agenda. The assassination of a major political figure is not only a media event from which a terrorist group derives much sought-after publicity, but the death of a significant political figure can cause major changes in policy and can even disrupt the world order.

The omnipresent street crime that urban Americans have of necessity learned to live with gnaws slowly at the legitimacy of the society, but major terrorist episodes can call into question the legitimacy and effectiveness of a regime to the point of shaking it to its very roots. It is not useful to view terrorism from the same exact perspective as street crime, as a contemporary problem to which the citizenry must and will acclimate.

Although Western democracies are well advised not to overreact to terrorism, they are equally well advised not to dismiss it as insignificant. In fact, despite public pronouncements to the contrary, terrorism, as viewed by the Carter administration, is not seen as a serious domestic problem. The United States has not chosen a posture of leadership among Western democracies in their conflict with international terrorism.

If the government does not take terrorism as seriously as it should, the media has rushed to overcompensate by taking terrorism too seriously. The media thrives on poignant drama, and the visual media thrives on spectacle. Terrorism, as we have come to know it, is to some extent the creation of the media. The media is the unwitting accomplice of terrorism and not without some lack of options at times in terms of its participation. After all, the media's job is to report the news, and the actions of a terrorist group are generally newsworthy. As we are all too aware, terrorism is theatre, and much of it is undertaken solely for dramatic effect. This does not put the drama outside the concern of the media. It does, however, suggest some concern about how the drama is reported. Recently, the major television networks and members of the newspaper media have acknowledged that greater responsibility is necessary, both in the media's depiction of terrorists and the manner in which the media have attempted to obtain information at the scene of terrorist incidents. Too often, the media have interfered with the police operation and released information which assisted the terrorists.

Overzealous reporters have hampered police operations, unwittingly served as the eyes and ears of terrorists, and have released information which threatened the lives of innocent victims. A number of examples are given in the course of this work. However, one of the most poignant examples comes from Thomas M. Ashwood, Chairman of Flight Security for the International Pilots Association. As Ash-wood notes, "Yesterday I spent an entire day with the head of the German pilot's association.... I am convinced that the media was involved in that hijacking over there [referring to the hijacking of an October 1977 Lufthansa flight by terrorists which was brought to an end by the daring West German raid at Mogadishu] and was to a large degree responsible for the death of the captain. The fact is that the ongoing reporting over the radio—the public radio— the fact that it was announced over the radio that the captain was passing information very cleverly with his normal radio transmission was heard by the terrorist on board the aircraft, and I believe this was a major factor leading to the captain's execution."¹

For the liberal democratic state, the problems raised by the intrusion of the media into antiterrorist operations are inordinately complex. In the United States, these problems revolve around the conflict between safeguarding lives and preserving first amendment freedoms. The tension between these two values, at least in the context of antiterrorist operations, may ultimately find its way to the courts for resolution. The news media have consistently maintained that they must be at the scene of an event in order to report the news. To some extent, this right has been upheld in the courts to the point where many urban police departments incorporate procedures which permit the press this kind of access.

The right to gather news, however, like freedom of the press, is not an absolute right. In Houchins v. KQED, Inc., Chief Justice Burger stated the United States Supreme Court's view that one cannot infer that the right to speak and publish carries with it the unrestrained right to gather information.²

In dealing with political terrorism, a democratic society must often choose between the maintenance of order and security on the one hand and freedom on the other. As Paul Wilkinson has noted, "...no liberal democrat is willing to pay the price of human freedom simply in order to achieve total political obedience or submission. To believe that it is worth snuffing out all individual rights and sacrificing liberal values for the sake of order is to fall into the error of the terrorists themselves, the folly of believing the end justifies the means."3 Wilkinson goes on to note that the attempts to abandon the structural foundation of liberal democracy when dealing with internal terrorism become tempting and must be resisted. Yet, liberal democracy, as Wilkinson further notes, must avoid the failure to uphold constitutional authority and the rule of law. Wilkinson's solution to the two-horned dilemma is to have strong security which is subjected to the democratic process within the law.

Civil libertarians, however, will respond to Wilkinson's approach by asking, "What is the rule of law?" Certainly, it is possible for a government to function within the rule of law, but what will be the content of those laws? Reasonable men will differ on the cost to society of the different emphases which the law can render. Some will emphasize freedom at the price of security and others will propose the opposite. The law, moreover, is not carved in granite but subject to the interpretation of jurists, who reflect not only their own private values but in a democracy realize the necessity of considering public values. Consequently, the rule of law can, even within the basic ethos of liberal democracy, produce dramatically different results. Former FBI Director Clarence Kelly has argued, "If we are to have any degree of success in solving the cases now confronting us in terrorism... we must have all the tools available to us, including electronic surveillance."4 And former Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau, responding to the terrorist campaign in Quebec in 1970, noted, "When terrorists and urban guerrillas were trying to provoke the secession of Quebec, I made it clear that I wouldn't hesitate to send in the army and I did, despite the anguished cries of civil libertarians."⁵ Similarly, legal scholar Robert Friedlander has argued, "If the state truly wishes to protect itself from the threat and destruction of terror violence, then social order must be strengthened at the expense of individual freedom."⁶ Those are rather strong statements, and it is highly doubtful that they would find unequivocal support among the public at large. The answer to the dilemma posed by a democratic society's need for freedom and security, however, will not be found in the context of abstract issues, but more than likely will emerge through the challenge of responding to actual terrorist events.

Terrorism and the United Nations

One arena where the challenge of the ongoing assault of terrorists on society has not been faced is within the United Nations. Nowhere is the cliche, "One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter," more in evidence than in the heated but largely unproductive debates over terrorism within the UN. The different value orientations which terrorism evokes has hampered effective action by the UN in this domain. In September 1972, the United States put forth a proposal which sought to establish several typical terrorist-type operations as punishable offenses and to be dealt with through the remedy of extradite or prosecute. The United States sponsored resolution did not pass.

In December 19 72, the United Nations did adopt a resolution on international terrorism. Unfortunately, it sounded more like a justification for terrorism than a condemnation. The document portrayed terrorism as emanating from, "misery, frustration, grievance and despair...which cause some people to sacrifice human lives, including their own, in an attempt to effect radical social change."⁷ The only type of terrorism which the resolution acknowledged was that of so-called "colonial" and "racist" regimes denying people their right to self-determination. The implication of the document is that the former type of terrorism is justified, and the UN is incapable of showing any compassion for the indiscriminate taking of innocent human life as long as the motivation for such killings is to bring about radical social change. Interestingly, the resolution also ignores state terrorism of the type so widely practiced among the majority of autocratic governments which dominate the UN.

A realistic response to the problem, or any great moral condemnation of terrorism, cannot be expected from this body. Terrorists are often clients of UN member states which have used terrorism as an extension of diplomacy. This fact wa...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• 1 INTRODUCTION: INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM, A TYPE OF WARFARE
• 2 NEGOTIATIONS FOR HOSTAGES: IMPLICATIONS FROM THE POLICE EXPERIENCE
• 3 HOSTAGE NEGOTIATIONS AND THE PROBLEM OF TRANSFERENCE
• 4 SWAT (SPECIAL WEAPONS AND TACTICS): THE TACTICAL LINK IN HOSTAGE NEGOTIATIONS
• 5 TERRORISM AND THE MEDIA: A DILEMMA
• 6 TERRORISM AND GOVERNMENT POLICY
• 7 CONCLUSION
• Bibliography
• Index