Avoiding the Terrorist Trap

The following sections are included:

• Dedication
• About the Author
• Acknowledgments
• Contents
• Glossary of Organizations

This is a book about terrorism and human rights. Or, more specifically, it is a book about why human rights matter fundamentally in the fight against terrorism. So, let me start by stating very plainly that I had only one motive in mind as I embarked on this project — and it is probably not the motive you suspect — I want to see terrorism defeated. I spent six years as an officer in the British Security Service (MI5), I have been blown up twice in attacks by armed groups, once in London and once in Baghdad, and I have spent countless hours taking statements from victims of politically-motivated violence. I understand better than most the seriousness of the threat posed by terrorism, and its human cost. So, please understand in turn that this is not so much a book about the importance of human rights, as it is a book about defeating, or at least containing, terrorism…

Terrorists and their supporters are surprisingly prolific authors. From the first, the theorists and practitioners of terrorism have been keen to explain their motivation for adopting such violent tactics. This need to explain has generated a rich universe of commentary: Public speeches by prominent users of political violence like the Irish revolutionary Michael Collins, Sendero Luminoso’s Abimael Guzmán, and Hezbollah’s Hassan Nasrallah; Operational manuals like Johann Most’s The Science of Revolutionary Warfare, Carlos Marighella’s Minimanual of the Urban Guerrilla, or the Handbook for Volunteers of the Irish Republican Army; Theoretical treatises like Abu Mus’ab al-Suri’s The Call to Global Islamic Resistance, or Nikolai Morozov’s The Terrorist Struggle; Public communiqués such as those issued by the Rote Armee Fraktion, and the Weather Underground; Captured internal documents like Umkhonto we Sizwe’s Operation Mayibuye strategy paper, or the al-Qaeda hard drives recovered during the raid on Osama bin Laden’s Abbottabad hideout; Periodicals like the nineteenth century anarchist paper L’En-dehors, the underground newspaper of Euskadi Ta Askatasuna, Zutik, or al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula’s online English language magazine Inspire; Countless interviews given by key terrorist actors like the Algerian Front de Libération Nationale’s Saadi Yacef, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine’s Leila Khaled or Susanna Ronconi, a veteran of Italy’s Brigate Rosse and Prima Linea; Courtroom statements like those by the French anarchist Émile Henry, 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed at the Military Commission hearings in Guantanamo Bay, or November 17’s Dimitris Koufodinas; And, finally, detailed memoirs such as those written by Narodnaya Volya’s Vera Figner, Irgun’s Menachem Begin, EOKA’s Georgios Grivas, and Fateh’s Abu Iyad…

As the Chief Commissioner of the Bundeskriminalamt (BKA) between 1971 and 1981, Horst Herold effectively led the West German government’s fight against the Rote Armee Fraktion. Herold was a thoughtful and successful counter-terrorism practitioner who pioneered the use of computers and big data in the hunt for terrorist suspects. He also devoted a great deal of his time to trying to understand the phenomenon of terrorism, summarizing his insights in a speech delivered during the trial of the founders of the RAF: “The first question is to decide whether terrorism, in its manifestations in Germany or indeed all over the world, is a product of the brains of its perpetrators, of the Baaders and the Meinhofs — of their sick brains, as many would say — or whether terrorism is a reflection of certain social situations in the Western and indeed in the Eastern world, so that its superstructure only mirrors problems which have an objective existence. In so doing, we would have to consider who, in that case, should be primarily engaged in the struggle against terrorism: the police or the politicians.” The answer to this question has profound public policy implications, and, in the years since, considerable effort has been devoted by practitioners and social scientists alike to identifying the root causes of terrorism and to constructing a working profile of the typical terrorist, efforts that have only redoubled since the September 11 attacks. Yet, despite the considerable effort expended, nothing approaching a professional or scholarly consensus has emerged…

Part I set out to establish how terrorist organizations use violence and what, by their own admission, they hope to achieve by doing so; Part II explored the social science of what drives some individuals to join such organizations and embrace violence as a catalyst for change, and the often unintended part that both the state and society can play in shaping this decision; Part III will explore the existing international legal regime governing states’ responses to terrorism and how this is applied, and ignored, in practice and the consequences that result…

Terrorism has been a consistent feature of national and international life for at least 150 years, and it is likely to remain so for the foreseeable future. Yet, what is so striking about even the most cursory review of the literature generated by terrorists, and the literature written about terrorism, is how the same patterns seem to repeat themselves over and over again. The social, political, and psychological motives for terrorist violence have not changed, the tactics and strategies employed by terrorists and counter-terrorist officials have also remained much the same. Protagonists on both sides of terrorist conflicts seem fated to repeat the same mistakes in credulous expectation of obtaining different results. Terrorists believe that violent action will force governments to capitulate to their demands although this rarely happens. Governments repeatedly embrace coercive or repressive measures in the belief that a tough and uncompromising response is the only solution capable of meeting the threat terrorists pose and because leaders are afraid that a more measured response might make them look weak…

The following sections are included:

• Bibliography
  • Books
  • Articles
  • Reports
• Index