Combating terrorism (боротьба з тероризмом)

There is much confusion over what terrorism is and is not. The following is an essay from the US Army's Command & General Staff College in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. The essay does an excellent job of explaining not only the basics of terrorism, but also details the US policy towards this phenomenon. U.S. Army, Field Manual 100-20, Stability and Support Operations, (Final Draft),”Chapter 8: Combating Terrorism.” Introduction Terrorism is a special type of violence. It is a tactic used in peace, conflict, and war. The threat of terrorism is ever present, and an attack is likely to occur when least expected. A terrorist attack may be the event that marks the transition from peace to conflict or war. Combating terrorism is a factor to consider in all military plans and operations. Combating terrorism requires a continuous state of awareness; it is a necessary practice rather than a type of military operation. Detailed guidance for establishing an organizational program to combat terrorism, including preventive and protective measures and incident response planning, can be found in Joint Publication 3-07.2 (1993). Terrorism is a criminal offense under nearly every national or international legal code. With few exceptions, acts of terrorism are forbidden in war as they are in times of peace. See, for example, the Hague Regulation of 1907 and the Geneva Conventions of 1949. The DOD definition of terrorism is "the calculated use of violence or the threat of violence to inculcate fear; intended to coerce or to intimidate governments or societies in the pursuit of goals that are generally political, religious, or ideological." This definition was carefully crafted to distinguish between terrorism and other kinds of violence. The act of terrorism is defined independent of the cause that motivates it. People employ terrorist violence in the name of many causes. The tendency to label as terrorism any violent act of which we do not approve is erroneous. Terrorism is a specific kind of violence.

The official definition says that terrorism is calculated. Terrorists generally know what they are doing. Their selection of a target is planned and rational. They know the effect they seek. Terrorist violence is neither spontaneous nor random. Terrorism is intended to produce fear; by implication, that fear is engendered in someone other than the victim. In other words, terrorism is a psychological act conducted for its impact on an audience.

Modern terrorism offers its practitioners many advantages. First, by not recognizing innocents, terrorists have an infinite number of targets. They select their target and determine when, where, and how to attack. The range of choices gives terrorists a high probability of success with minimum risk. If the attack goes wrong or fails to produce the intended results, the terrorists can deny responsibility.

Ironically, as democratic governments become more common it may be easier for terrorists to operate. The terrorist bombings of the New York City World Trade Center and the Oklahoma City Federal Building prove how easy it is for terrorists to operate in a free and democratic society. Authoritarian governments whose populace may have a better reason to revolt may also be less constrained by requirements for due process and impartial justice when combating terrorists. As commanders and staffs address terrorism, they must consider several relevant characteristics. First is that anyone can be a victim. (Some terrorists may still operate under cultural restraints, such as a desire to avoid harming women, but the planner cannot count on that. Essentially, there are no innocents.) Second, attacks that may appear to be senseless and random are not. To the perpetrators, their attacks make perfect sense. Acts such as bombing public places of assembly and shooting into crowded restaurants heighten public anxiety. This is the terrorists' immediate objective. Third, the terrorist needs to publicize his attack. If no one knows about it, it will not produce fear. The need for publicity often drives target selection; the greater the symbolic value of the target, the more publicity the attack brings to the terrorists and the more fear it generates. Finally, a leader planning for combating terrorism must understand that he cannot protect every possible target all the time. He must also understand that terrorists will likely shift from more protected targets to less protected ones. This is the key to defensive measures.

 

COMBATING TERRORISM PROGRAM

Combating terrorism involves two sets of actions to oppose terrorism: antiterrorism (defensive measures) and counterterrorism (offensive measures). Antiterrorism is defined as "defensive measures used to reduce the vulnerability of individuals and property to terrorist acts, to include limited response and containment by local military forces." Counterterrorism involves those offensive measures taken to prevent, deter, and respond to terrorism. Counterterrorism programs, which will not be addressed here, are classified and addressed in various national security decision directives, national security directives, and contingency plans. This publication addresses only antiterrorism.

The principles of stability and support operations offer guidance about the range of combat and noncombat operations in peace and conflict. In the following paragraphs, these requirements for success are applied to various aspects of combatting terrorism.

Objective The general objective of combatting terrorism programs is neutralizing terrorist groups. As in most stability and support operations, neutralization in this context means rendering the source of threat benign, not necessarily killing the terrorists. In antiterrorism, the objective can be further refined as preventing attacks and minimizing the effects if one should occur. It includes any action to weaken the terrorist organization and its political power and to make potential targets more difficult to attack. Counterterrorism includes spoiling action, deterrence, and response. As in all stability and support operations, interagency action is required to combat terrorism. Unity of effort requires ways to integrate the actions of various responsible agencies of the US and foreign governments. Intelligence is particularly important and sensitive. International cooperation in combatting terrorism has advanced to the point at which it is not unusual for a deployed US Army unit to interact with several US government intelligence agencies which, in turn, are interacting with multiple international systems. An Army unit is also likely to have close intelligence relations with host country military and civilian agencies. Unfortunately, it is easier to prescribe unity of effort than to achieve it.

In combating terrorism, intelligence is extraordinarily important. The essential elements of information (EEI) differ somewhat from those normally found in traditional combat situations. In addition to the terrorists' strength, skills, equipment, logistic capabilities, leader profiles, source of supply, and tactics, more specific information is needed. This includes the groups' goals, affiliations, indication of their willingness to kill or die for their cause, and significant events in their history, such as the death of martyrs or some symbolic event. The specific EEI are particularly important because most terrorist groups are interested in symbolically significant targets rather than in targets that would be operationally more damaging to US forces. For example, a communications center is operationally significant, but a terrorist interested in publicity to influence US policy might find a few off-duty personnel or a motor pool more appealing and probably less protected. Unless terrorists' specific interests are known, predicting the likely target is pure chance.

1.s	Answer the questions.

1. What is the DOD definition of terrorism?

2. What do you know about the tactics of terrorists?

3. Is it easier for terrorists to operate in democratic countries? Why?

4. What do you know about combating terrorism program?

5. What are the objectives of combating terrorism program?

 

2.	Translate words and word combinations into English

 

Політика, стабільність, боротьба з тероризмом, загроза, ймовірність, превентивні заходи, насилля, визначення, страх, жертва, перевага, вільне демократичне суспільство, авторитарний уряд, справедливість, програма боротьби з тероризмом, розвідка.

 

TEXT 15

FUTURE OF TERRORISM

Possibly, we will see a relative decline, perhaps even extinction, of what we traditionally considered "ideological" terrorism: namely, the phenomenon that brought terrorism to the global stage via hijackings and bombings beginning around 1968, perpetrated by such groups as Red Army Faction, Red Brigades, Japanese Red Army, etc. The end of the Cold War has resulted in the drying of the well of support for anti-Democratic/anti-Capitalist, Marxist-based ideologically motivated political terrorists. Although there are a few of these ideologically motivated groups still active (particularly in Peru), the world will see these groups become extinct one by one, though possibly not without each one perpetrating one last paroxysm of violence before they disappear.

At the end of the Cold War, ideological terrorism lost its support and raison d'etre, however, the "depolarization" of the world has allowed several ethno-religious conflicts, some centuries old, to manifest themselves in terrorism, insurgency, regional instability, and civil war. Ethno-religious terrorism will not die away, and could respond to several future stimuli. Examples of these stimuli include: an increasing US presence in the Middle East and Pacific Rim, Western development of the Caspian oil reserves, and flourishing Western technological development (and attendant cultural exposure) in the Middle East and Pacific Rim. Former Soviet Republics (especially Transcaucasus) might grow less stable as outside influences increase (economic, political and technological/media), Russia's ability to suppress insurgency lessens, economic conditions in those republics decline, and political power becomes a commodity for corruption and organized crime. As stability weakens in Central Asia, and Islamic fundamentalism gains political power the result of "protest votes" in governments from Turkey to Indonesia but especially in Central Asia, relations among countries in the region could become more strained.

However, two other forms of terrorism (ethno-religious and ideological), single-issue terrorism will rise disproportionately, especially with US domestic terrorism, including groups oriented around or against technology (e.g. neo-Luddites). In the post-print age, groups, even nationalities, will organize themselves without geographic constraints, bringing diaspora together and uniting issue-oriented groups and religions through the course of globalization, which will paint clearer pictures of who and what has the ability to affect and influence masses of people. This, coupled with the general evolution of state sovereignty (in which many super- and sub-state organizations, including corporations, could challenge the state-centered international system), will likely drive terrorism and guerrilla warfare into being more broadly rejectionist: attacking more than just the general legitimacy of states, but also Non-Governmental Organizations, Multi-National Corporations, etc. Furthermore, access to weapons and methods of increasing lethality, or methods targeting digital information systems that attract wildly disproportionate effects and publicity, will allow terrorists to be "non-affiliated" with larger, better financed subversive organizations or state sponsors. This could result in terrorist cells that are smaller, even familial, and thus harder to infiltrate, track, or counter. Terrorism will be increasingly networked, with smaller and more self-sufficient cells, and will globally integrate parallel to digital global integration, and will permeate geographic boundaries and state sovereignties just as easily. Also, keyed in with the rise in single-issue terrorism will be the rise in "true" guerrilla movements within the US: that is, movements that seek the destruction of the US government, rather than movements that seek to influence government, a particular policy or population. This also includes movements that are geographically centered, rather than cellular and sparse, operating in rural areas rather than urban centers.

1.s	Answer the questions.

1. What is ideological terrorism?

2. What is the future of ethno-religious terrorism?

3. What forms of terrorism do you know?

4. What is guerilla warfare?

5. How do you understand the term Cold War?

 

2.	Translate words and word combinations into English

 

Занепад, зникнення, ідеологічний тероризм, мотивація, холодна війна, релігійний конфлікт, громадянська війна, зовнішні впливи, здатність протистояти тероризму, форми тероризму, партизанська війна.

TEXT 16

MOTIVATIONS OF TERRORISM

In addition to commenting on post-Cold War terrorism in general, Prof. Wilkinson puts forth some very specific views on terrorism in the Middle East, threats from the extreme right, and issue-specific terrorism as well. He concludes with five principles "which have the best track record in reducing terrorism". Disclaimer: Publication of an article in the COMMENTARY series does not imply CSIS authentication of the information nor CSIS endorsement of the author's views. Despite the end of the Cold War and the faltering beginnings of a peace process in the Middle East, terrorism still remains a serious threat in many countries, not surprisingly, given that the underlying causes of the bitter ethnic and religious struggles which spawn terrorism pre-dated the Cold War, and most of these conflicts remain unresolved.

While the former Soviet Union sponsored terrorism on an opportunistic basis, the idea that all international terrorism was concerted by the KGB during the Cold War is clearly an over-simplification. The overthrow of the communist dictatorships did remove an important cluster of state sponsors of terrorism. However, one of the main attractions of terrorism to its perpetrators is that it is a low-cost but potentially high-yield weapon, and it is generally possible to find weapons and cash from alternative sources, including militant supporters and sympathizers in your own home base and those living and working in prosperous countries in the West, as well as from racketeering, extortion and other forms of criminal activity, and in some cases, alternative state sponsors. Moreover, the end of the Cold War has also had a major negative effect on political violence: the removal of communist one-party rule has unleashed numerous long-suppressed, bitter ethnic conflicts.

WESTERN EUROPE

In Western Europe it is the historic separatisms of Irish republicanism in Northern Ireland and Basque nationalism in Spain that have spawned the most lethal and protracted terrorism. In Northern Ireland the IRA and Loyalist cease-fires are still holding, and the British and Irish governments and the Social Democratic and Labour Party leader, John Hume, deserve credit for their efforts towards peace. But the cease-fire is still extremely fragile, and it is going to be very difficult indeed to convert it into a lasting and honorable peace. The declared objectives of IRA/Sinn Fein and the Unionists are as far apart as ever, and the terrorist para-militaries still have their stocks of weapons and explosives. In Spain ETA has been greatly weakened by improved Franco-Spanish police co-operation, but the terrorists show no signs of giving up.

EASTERN EUROPE

In the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe the removal of communist dictatorship has taken the lid off many simmering ethnic rivalries and hatreds. The most horrific example of mass terror being used as weapon is Bosnia. Less well-known in the West are the conflicts in Nagorno-Karabakh and Georgia. The recent attempt by the Russian Army to suppress Chechen separatism is a dramatic reminder that the Russian Federation itself is full of ethnic groups that bitterly reject Moscow's right to rule them.

 

AFRICA

The most tragic examples of conflicts in which mass terror has been used are to be found in Africa. In Rwanda it has been seen on a genocidal scale, causing hundreds of thousands to flee or to face massacre at the hands of their tribal enemies. Typically, ethnic wars of this kind are waged by armed militias and are marked by extreme savagery towards the civilian population, including the policy of "ethnic cleansing" to terrorize whole sectors of the civilian population into fleeing from their homes, and the use of massacre, rape and torture as weapons of war.

Ethnic conflict is the predominant motivation of political violence in the post-Cold War era. It is important to recognize that the concept of the "security dilemma", conventionally applied by realists solely to relations between states, applies equally well to the rivalries of ethnic groups. When one group looks at its neighbours and decides to enhance its weapons and security forces in the name of self-defense of the group, neighbours are likely to see such moves as a threat to their own security, and will set in train the enhancement of their own power, thus very probably triggering the conflict they sought to avoid.

 

MIDDLE EAST

The area of conflict which has generated the most significant and ruthless spillover of terrorist violence since 1968 is, of course, the Middle East. This may seem surprising in view of the astonishing breakthrough in negotiations between Israel and the PLO, the agreement on the Declaration of Principles in September 1993, the agreement between Israel and Jordan, and the continuing efforts by Israel and Syria, encouraged by the USA, to resolve the prolonged dispute over the Golan Heights. Nonetheless, if one defines the Middle East as including Algeria and Turkey, both of which have spawned conflicts involving considerable terrorist violence, including some international spillover, this region remains the most dangerous source of terrorist challenges to the wider international community, accounting for over 21% of all international terrorist incidents worldwide in 1992, and over 23% in 1993. Middle East Terrorism

1.s	Answer the questions.

1. What state sponsors of terrorism do you know?

2. What are the main motives of terrorism?

3. Do you consider terrorism a high-yield weapon? Why?

4. What do you know about IRA and ETA?

5. Is it possible to stop violence in Middle East?

 

2.	Translate words and word combinations into English

 

Принцип, боротьба, невирішений конфлікт, спрощення, диктатура, мотив, високоефективна зброя, процвітаючі країни, самооборона, безпека, жорстокість.

TEXT 17

WHAT IS AL-QAEDA? (АЛЬ-КАЇДА)

Al-Qaeda is an international terrorist network led by Osama bin Laden. It seeks to rid Muslim countries of what it sees as the profane influence of the West and replace their governments with fundamentalist Islamic regimes. After al-Qaeda’s September 11, 2001, attacks on America, the United States launched a war in Afghanistan to destroy al-Qaeda’s bases there and overthrow the Taliban, the country’s Muslim fundamentalist rulers who harbored bin Laden and his followers. “Al-Qaeda” is Arabic for “the base.”

Al-Qaeda grew out of the Services Office, a clearinghouse for the international Muslim brigade opposed to the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. In the 1980s, the Services Office—run by bin Laden (killed in 2011) and the Palestinian religious scholar Abdullah Azzam—recruited, trained, and financed thousands of foreign mujahadeen, or holy warriors, from more than fifty countries. Bin Laden wanted these fighters to continue the "holy war" beyond Afghanistan. He formed al-Qaeda around 1988.

According to a 1998 federal indictment, al-Qaeda is administered by a council that "discussed and approved major undertakings, including terrorist operations." At the top is bin Laden. Ayman al-Zawahiri, the head of Egyptian Islamic Jihad, is thought to be bin Laden's top lieutenant and al-Qaeda's ideological adviser. The Jordanian radical Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who has directed a series of deadly terror attacks in Iraq—including the beheadings of kidnapped foreigner—is also associated with al-Qaeda. Zarqawi pledged his allegiance to bin Laden in October 2004, and bin Laden has praised Zarqawi as "the prince of al Qaeda in Iraq." At least one senior al-Qaeda commander, Muhammad Atef, died in the U.S. air strikes in Afghanistan, and another top lieutenant, Abu Zubaydah, was captured in Pakistan in March 2002. In March 2003, the alleged mastermind of the September 11 attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and al-Qaeda's treasurer, Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi, were also captured in Pakistan.

There is no single headquarters. From 1991 to 1996, al-Qaeda worked out of Pakistan along the Afghan border, or inside Pakistani cities. Al-Qaeda has autonomous underground cells in some 100 countries, including the United States, officials say. Law enforcement has broken up al-Qaeda cells in the United Kingdom, the United States, Italy, France, Spain, Germany, Albania, Uganda, and elsewhere.

It’s impossible to say precisely, because al-Qaeda is decentralized. Estimates range from several hundred to several thousand members.

al-Qaeda is connected to other terrorist organizations?

Among them:

Egyptian Islamic Jihad

The Libyan Islamic Fighting Group

Islamic Army of Aden (Yemen)

Jama'at al-Tawhid wal Jihad (Iraq)

Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Muhammad (Kashmir)

Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan

These groups share al-Qaeda's Sunni Muslim fundamentalist views. Some terror experts theorize that al-Qaeda, after the loss of its Afghanistan base, may be increasingly reliant on sympathetic affiliates to carry out its agenda. Intelligence officials and terrorism experts also say that al-Qaeda has stepped up its cooperation on logistics and training with Hezbollah, a radical, Iran-backed Lebanese militia drawn from the minority Shiite strain of Islam.