European Democracies Against Terrorism

Governmental Policies and Intergovernmental

Reinares Fernando

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781138732520
• eBook ISBN: 9781351742931
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Work
• Index: Social Sciences

This title was first published in 2000. In this multidisciplinary volume, contributors critically assess the different measures designed and implemented by western European democratic governments since the late 1960s in order to counter the challenge of terrorism. The work also analyzes the problems and perspectives surrounding intergovernmental co-operation against such evolving phenomenon, as developed within the framework of the European Union.

Part I
Governmental Policies

1
A Strategic Framework for Countering Terrorism

BRUCE HOFFMAN AND JENNIFER MORRISON-TAW

Introduction

The strategies and tactics used by governments throughout the world to counter terrorism have varied widely, from such highly visible actions as declarations of states of siege or martial law, enactment of anti-terrorist legislation, and strengthening of judicial powers, to less visible measures such as the establishment of computerized data banks, enhanced intelligence capabilities and covert operations. Some of these countermeasures, such as Italy’s use of so-called ‘penitence laws’, have been more successful than others. Some have not only failed, like Britain’s short-lived policy of interning terrorist suspects in Northern Ireland during the 1970s, but have proved counterproductive, alienating the public from the authorities and further polarizing an already fractured political environment. Other government countermeasures, such as amnesties and offers of cash rewards for information, have had mixed results.

Methodological Problems and Challenges in Assessing the Effectiveness of Various Countries’ Individual Use of Countermeasures against Terrorism

However, while much attention has been focused on the individual experiences of various countries in coping with their respective terrorist or insurgent problems,¹ relatively little research has been devoted either to broad, systematic, comparative analyses or to developing a methodology to evaluate the success of these countermeasures and their relevance to other countries with similar problems.

One approach to redressing this lacuna in terrorism and insurgency research has been the attempts to capture, through the use of models or other quantitative analytical aids, the effects of the various countermeasures used by governments and thereby to develop a methodology or criteria to gauge the success or failure of countermeasures. Although the use of quantitative methods in the social sciences has grown and some of these approaches have yielded useful results in a number of fields, terrorism and insurgency research unfortunately are not among them. To date, three key quantitative studies of these phenomena have been produced: an unpublished doctoral dissertation that examined, respectively, the effects of Britain’s, Italy’s and West Germany’s counterterrorist measures between 1970 and 1985 (Sobieck, 1990); a research effort undertaken at the behest of the US government that primarily used quantified data derived from case studies of the counterterrorist campaigns waged by Israel, France and Colombia (Hayes, 1982); and a similar study prepared for the US Department of State’s Office of Long Range Assessment and Research (subsequently published by a private academic press) that embraced a broad, systematic comparative approach in analysing the effects of counterterrorist measures in mostly urban environments in Uruguay, Cyprus, Northern Ireland, Spain and Italy (Hewitt, 1984). Despite some individually interesting conclusions, each study revealed serious shortcomings in attempting to model or quantify the effects of counterterrorist measures.

In his unpublished doctoral dissertation, Sobieck, for example, attempts to use statistics to determine the effectiveness of various governmental policies in deterring terrorist violence. Although he acknowledges problems of data collection, collation and analysis, there are additional difficulties evident in his approach. Sobieck chooses to use changes in governmental policies as his independent variable and frequency of terrorist activity as his dependent variable. This implies that governmental policies are determined independently of terrorist activity, although, to the contrary, and as Sobieck points out repeatedly in his text, governmental policies actually change in direct response to terrorist activity. Although he intends to show how changes in governmental policy can inhibit terrorist activity, what Sobieck does is describe a cycle: the government imposes increasingly stringent policies to deter continuing or increasing terrorist activities; this continues to the point at which terrorists respond by curtailing their activities. The stringency of the policy, however, is determined by the level of terrorist activity, clearly indicating that the change in policies is not an independent variable. Moreover, the existence of such an upward spiral in terrorist activity and governmental response, combined with the fact that no policy has completely deterred terrorism in any of Sobieck’s case studies, suggests that terrorism may again increase despite existing policies, leading to a situation in which the government must impose yet more stringent counterterrorist policies.

Sobieck’s results are also relative: in Northern Ireland, for example, where the most stringent governmental policies of all the case studies were imposed, the rate of terrorism is nonetheless higher than in both West Germany and Italy. Political situation, culture, socioeconomic factors, religious antagonism and so on, would therefore seem to be more sufficiently explanatory independent variables for the rate of terrorist activity than governmental policy, which could perhaps be better characterized as an ‘intervening variable’ (that is, one which seems to correlate to culture/politics/history in so far as the ‘same’ policies, according to Sobieck, are implemented differently in each case study).

Finally, Sobieck’s use of time-series analysis, with which he compares the rate of terrorism before and after the implementation of a given policy, is also problematic. Sobieck does not use a control group (a state, for example, which in the same time period did not impose a given policy to counter extant terrorism, in comparison with a state which, in the same time period, did impose the given policy to counter extant terrorism) to test the viability of other explanations for changes in the rate of terrorism. Therefore he has determined that the rate of terrorism overall decreased in the three case studies after the imposition of harsher anti-terrorist policies, but has not tested to see if the decrease in terrorism could be explained otherwise. As a hypothetical example, the incidence of terrorism worldwide could have decreased as weapons and terrorist ‘tools of the trade’ became less accessible internationally. Had Sobieck used an outlying case study (outside the 1970–85 time frame he chose for his three main case studies), his conclusions could have been tested against general trends of the period. The trouble with this approach, though, is a familiar one pertaining to terrorism research in general: the paucity of empirical data.

Hayes’ work as part of a US government-sponsored research effort avoids the problem of attributing terrorist behaviour entirely to governmental policies by explicitly identifying and incorporating into his analyses what he calls ‘ecological events’: those ‘things’ (that is, socioeconomic, political factors) that can be expected to influence terrorist behaviour but are not government policy-relevant.² Nonetheless, terrorist behaviour is still the dependent variable in Hayes’ analysis. As in Sobieck’s work, this is a simplification that fails to take into account the cycle in which terrorism drives policy, which, in turn, affects terrorism.

One drawback of Hayes’ work is that it only measures the effectiveness of government policies of which terrorists are aware; Hayes’ emphasis is on changing terrorist behaviour rather than on studying the overall effectiveness of a counterterrorist campaign which can include policies aimed at apprehending and punishing (combating) terrorists as well as at changing their behaviour (anti-terrorism).³ Finally, Hayes’ conclusions cannot be broadly generalized: indeed, they are surprisingly case-specific. For example, he found that, whereas concessionary policies in Colombia appeared to be associated with decreases in terrorism over time, similar policies in France and Israel actually led to increased terrorism. In contrast, firm, non-concessionary policies in these two countries were in fact responsible for decreases in terrorism (Hayes, 1982: 1–6).

These kinds of analyses can be made without relying on complex statistics as well as by using fewer simplifying assumptions than Hayes does in his equations. Indeed, Hayes had to extrapolate from and quantify reality in order to create statistical models, leaving his conclusions even less rooted in reality than simple observations. This can be an extremely useful technique, yet, with Hayes’ small sample size, and the numbers of intervening variables he had to deal with, as well as the complex relationship between terrorism and policy making, use of statistical analysis is misleading. Moreover, without qualitative analysis that ties such conclusions to more general counterterrorist policy making, they are merely descriptive.

Christopher Hewitt’s quantitative studies, which were originally prepared for the US Department of State are somewhat more sophisticated, and rely less on statistics. He thus avoids some of the dangers of simplification that Sobieck and Hayes run into. He does, however, quantify violence (a difficult endeavour) in order to conduct similar time-series analyses. Thus, like Sobieck and Hayes, Hewitt measures changes in the level of violence after various governmental policies are implemented.

One of the advantages of Hewitt’s work over Sobieck and Hayes is that he takes a variety of factors into account, most importantly, the type of terrorist group (nationalist, leftist, and so on) and the type of state in which the terrorism is occurring (for example, democratic or authoritarian). Nor does Hewitt assume that the independent variable is governmental policies (Hewitt, 1984). He points out, for example, that emergency powers are usually made more severe in direct response to an increase in violence. In other words, policy becomes the dependent variable, driven by the terrorist actions. Hewitt also points out that it is difficult to isolate the individual effects of a single policy, given that a government usually uses more than one emergency power simultaneously.

All in all, Hewitt’s statistical work is a good example of the way in which a quantitative approach can be used to support analysis. But, because it has little broad predictive quality, and must be used in association with qualitative data collection and analysis,⁴ it suggests that quantitative analysis at this stage in its development must remain a supportive tool rather than the basis for explanations and predictions about the effectiveness of various counterterrorist and counterinsurgency policies.

The common weakness of these quantitative methods when applied to terrorism is a reflection of the fact that this form of violent subversion erupts at various times in various places as the result of an often idiosyncratic combination of factors and conditions, including socioeconomic, political, ethnic, historical and psychological factors, to name but a few. By the same token, the governments and security apparatuses confronted by these threats often vary just as widely, from the most liberal to the most authoritarian, and, even within democracies, frequently span both extremes of the ideological spectrum.

Given this inherent incompatibility of the respective conditions of individual countries which gives rise to terrorism, the inapplicability of certain countermeasures used by repressive regimes to democratic governments, and the widely varying composition and character of both individual terrorist and insurgent organizations as well as national military, security and police forces, the pursuit of a single, analytical methodology to determine the effectiveness of individual counterterrorist and counterinsurgency measures that can be applied generally to an almost unlimited range of different countries and governments is a futile quest. This is not to suggest that constructive comparisons cannot be made across a number of cases or that an overall framework for an effective strategic counterterrorist/counterinsurgency plan, based on the individual experiences of several case studies, cannot be developed.

Methodological Approach

This chapter summarizes a qualitative analysis of seven key case studies of counterterrorist⁵ campaigns waged in Europe, Africa and Asia between the 1950s and the 1980s. The research reported here was originally conducted at the RAND Corporation for the US Department of State between 1991 and 1992. It examined specifically the three key British counterterrorist campaigns of the 1940s and 1950s, involving Malaya, Kenya and Cyprus; the more recent struggle in Northern Ireland; the urban terrorist dimension of the 1965–80 Rhodesian conflict; and the counterterrorist⁶ experiences of Germany and Italy during the 1970s and 1980s.⁷ Its purpose was to identify lessons and experiences that may be regarded as the essential prerequisites to developing a comprehensive and coherent national counterterrorist plan. The report’s conclusions are based on the analysis of the countermeasures’ apparent success or failure and on certain broad general trends that would support their use in countries similarly afflicted by violence and subversion. Each case study included a detailed historical analysis so that key idiosyncratic factors - such as leadership and personal charisma, the nature and origins of terrorist grievances and demands, the extent of popular support, and the rapidity and nature of government responses - could be examined systematically and analysed comparatively.

The drawbacks of this particular type of approach compared with a quantitative one are obvious. In this approach, no single variable can be determined to account for effective counterterrorist measures across all the cases. Moreover, no single factor can be identified to explain the success or failure of a given measure. These weaknesses notwithstanding, this type of study nonetheless offers a significant advantage in that its results can be practically applied. The assumption behind the study was that a country facing a terrorist campaign today could therefore extrapolate from these cases to its own situation, taking into account the various factors that make some measures more effective than others, alongside the considerations that suggest the probability of success.

The report’s most important conclusion was arguably that individual application of selected tactics and policies without a comprehensive national plan can prolong a conflict or even lead to complete failure. As simple and obvious as this point is, historically it has more often been ignored or forgotten than followed. The three British counterterrorist campaigns during the 1950s are cases in point. In each successive campaign, the same mistakes in organization and intelligence were repeated, with the lessons of the earlier conflict seemingly ignored. Mistakes made in Malaya, for example, were made again in Northern Ireland more than two decades later, undermining Britain’s initial response to the growing violence in that province. And in Rhodesia’s prosecution of its urban counterterrorist campaign during the 1960s and 1970s, the same pattern was repeated, despite the fact that the Rhodesian approach was based on the British model of the 1950s.

We concluded in the study that a national plan should acknowledge four elements crucial to a successful counterterrorism campaign. The first element is an effective overall command and coordination structure. A functioning command and coordination structure should be in place before terrorist violence erupts, to detect and respond to the first signs of unrest and subversion. The lack of such a structure not only gives the initiative to the terrorists, but allows confusion to develop among the security forces about their respective roles and responsibilities, leading to competition, duplication of effort, and inefficient collection and dissemination of intelligence. If such a structure is not already in place, it must be erected as soon as the violence begins and not only maintained but continually refined and adapted. The most effective structure will also be one led by...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• Part I Governmental Policies
• Part II Intergovernmental Cooperation
• Index