Commonwealth Ministers Reference Book 2007

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Commonwealth Ministers Reference Book

The Challenge of International Terrorism and its implicationsfor the Rule of Law and Human Rights

By Paul Wilkinson*

* Professor of International Relations and Chairman of the Advisory Board,Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence, University of St Andrews


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does to its use by non-states. Indeed historically regimes have been far themost lethal and destructive perpetrators of terror violence because theyhave control of the major instruments of coercion and intimidation andsome regimes have been responsible for the use of terror on a neargenocidal scale. The concept of terrorism has also been useful tohistorians as well as social scientists because it is possible to project it backin time to analyse the violence used by regimes and groups in ancient andmedieval history. We also know from a myriad of eye-witness accountsthat major acts of terror are collective experiences, often shared bythousands of people who did not experience physical injury during anattack.

However, if we examine the typology of the kinds of state and non-stateperpetrators of terrorism it is clear that one of the reasons why non-stateterrorism is such a security threat today is because the Al Qaeda networkof networks and its affiliated groups is explicitly committed to mass-killing, no-warning attacks, and because its track record shows that itcontinues to kill and injure large numbers of innocent civilians. TheSeptember 1111-1, 2001 Al Qaeda attacks on the World Trade Center in NewYork and the Pentagon in Washington DC resulted in almost 3,000 deaths,the greatest number of fatalities ever caused by a non-state terror group.The coordinated Al Qaeda attacks of the US embassies in Kenya andTanzania in August 1998 should have been a warning of the sheerinhumanity of the terrorist group. Al Qaeda failed to express remorse forkilling over 240 and injuring over 5,000, most of whom were citizens ofNairobi going peacefully about their business.

It is useful for Commonwealth ministers to be reminded of the August1998 attacks. From the perspective of the government in Nairobi and Dares Salaam the attacks came like bolts out of the blue. The lesson thatshould be drawn from this and from the history of Al Qaeda-linked


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attacks and foiled attempts at attacks is that no country should regarditself as immune from attack. Nor should countries with large Muslimpopulations regard themselves as immune from attack. As is clear fromthe history of recent attacks in Iraq, Pakistan, Algeria, Saudi Arabia andother Muslim countries, Al Qaeda linked groups appear to have nocompunction about slaughtering hundreds of their co-religionists insuicide bombings.

As far as the Commonwealth is concerned, seven of the Al Qaeda-linkedattacks between 1988 and 2005 were carried out in Commonwealthcountries or directed at Commonwealth targets. If we examine thechronology of foiled plots and failed attacks since 1993 we find that wellover 10% involved Commonwealth countries or Commonwealth targets,and some of the conspiracies uncovered have been found to be extremelyambitious and potentially destructive. For example, in December 2001 theSingapore authorities arrested 21 members of an Al Qaeda-linked group,Jemaah Islamiya, who planned to attack the Australian and British HighCommissions, water supplies, the metro, Changi airport, the Ministries ofDefence and Education and a radar station as well as a shuttle buscontaining US military personnel, US marine ships and an Americanschool. In November 2002 in Kenya, a plot to shoot down an Israeliaircraft using surface-to-air missiles narrowly failed and in August 2003 inSingapore, it was discovered that Al Qaeda was plotting to hijack a planeand crash it into Changi airport. The Australian authorities have beeninvestigating the possibility than an Al Qaeda-linked group was plottingto attack a nuclear facility.

I have emphasised the activities of the Al Qaeda network because it is byfar the most dangerous of the currently active international terroristorganisations and it has shown that it has 'global reach'. It is estimatedthat it has a presence in at least 60 countries. However, it would be foolish


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to overlook the fact that some Commonwealth countries (e.g. India and SriLanka) have to face the challenge of ethno-nationalist groups usingterrorism on a major scale, and these terrorist campaigns are often

extremely deadly, destructive and protracted. Al Qaeda is not the onlyterrorist challenge. Moreover, some of these ethno separatist groups (e.g.the Tamil Tigers) have established sophisticated international supportnetworks even though their campaigns of violence are concentrated inspecific countries or regions.

A table on the typology of terrorism, shown below, reveals the wide rangeof both state and non-state perpetrators of terror in the modern world.

State Terror Sub-State TerrorismInternational Terrorism Domestic Terrorism'New Terrorism' Traditional Terrorism'Corrigible' Terrorism 'Incorrigible' TerrorismBy Political Motivation Religio-Political (e.g. Al Qaeda,

Hamas)Ethno nationalist (e.g. ETA, Real IRA) Single Issue (e.g. Animal Rights

Extremists)Ideological terrorists (e.g. FARC,Shining Path)

State-sponsors (e.g. Iran, Syria)

Characteristics of the 'New Terrorism' (Archetype, Al Qaeda)

There are major features of the Al Qaeda network's 'global jihad' whichdifferentiate it from more traditional terrorist campaigns:

s It has an extreme fundamentalist Islamist belief system;s It aims to expel the US and other 'infidels' from the Middle East and

from Muslim lands generally;s It wants to topple Muslim regimes/governments which it accuses of

betraying the 'true Islam' and collaborating with US and its allies;


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Bin Laden and his deputy Zawahiri provide ideological and strategicleadership and direction, and they are assisted by a Shura and specialistcommittees dealing with such matters as 'military' planning, Islamist doctrineand indoctrination, the media etc. But in addition, they have a wide andcomplex network of cells and affiliated organisations (e.g. Jemaah Islamiya,GSPC) which they use as vehicles for waging terrorism around the world.

Area of Operations

Bin Laden's Al Qaeda network is more of a global movement than atraditional tight-knit terrorist organisation. From open sources we estimatethat it has a presence in at least 60 countries, but this is probably aconservative figure. What is clear is that their network makes Al Qaeda themost widely dispersed transnational terrorist movement in the history ofmodern terrorism. (Inevitably this means that this network can only beeffectively unravelled with maximum international intelligence, police andjudicial cooperation).

Future Prospects of Al Qaeda Network

Over the past few years there have been numerous highly optimistic claims tothe effect that Al Qaeda is no longer an effective force in internationalterrorism. It should be clear by now to all informed observers that theseattempts to write off Al Qaeda were, to say the least, premature. Continuingmassive suicide bombings by Al Qaeda in Iraq and a new wave of Al Qaeda-linked suicide bombings in North Africa since January 2007, claimed by theSalafist Group for Preaching and Combat, which has now renamed itself AlQaeda in the Maghreb, indicates that the Al Qaeda network is still very muchin business. In attacks in Algiers on 11th April, 2007, targeting the PrimeMinister's headquarters and the Bab Ezzouar district on the Eastern outskirts


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of the city it is believed that at least 30 people lost their lives and over 160were injured.

These deadly attacks, especially in Iraq, where the terrorism has been on ahuge scale, have caused great suffering and economic damage and disruption.However, they do not necessarily translate into success in achieving theterrorists' strategic aims. On the contrary, there is growing evidence that theindiscriminate mass slaughter of their co-religionists is leading to a backlashagainst Al Qaeda in both Shiite and Sunni communities.

Despite these blunders and setbacks, Al Qaeda continues to pose a real threatto peace and security in both the front-line states (Iraq, Afghanistan andPakistan) and in the homelands of the United States, Western Europe, as wellas the global South.

The role of bin Laden and Ayman Zawahiri, his deputy, is to provide

ideological and propaganda leadership and overall strategic direction fortheir network, but most of the detailed operational planning and fundraisingto support specific operations is done by regional and local cells and affiliatedgroups. This gives the network the great advantage of flexibility, but alsocarries the risk of tensions and 'schisms' developing between differencebranches of the movement. Again, however, we must be careful to notassume that these tensions have been a fatal blow to Al Qaeda. It would alsobe prudent to avoid the assumption that the death or capture of bin Ladenand his deputy would automatically lead to the end of Al Qaeda. The mostlikely scenario is that a new leadership would emerge and the network wouldcontinue its 'global jihad' using similar methods to those employed today.

Characteristics of Traditional Terrorist Groups


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In contrast to the Al Qaeda network, traditional terrorist groups direct theirattacks mainly against their traditional single enemy in a specific country orregion. In some cases the leaders of ethno-separatist groups are sufficientlypragmatic to consider declaring a ceasefire and using a political pathway toobtain their goals. It would be misleading to suggest that it is an easy matterto initiate an effective peace process. The Northern Ireland peace process hasmade remarkable progress since the Good Friday Agreement of 1998, but ithas take a very long time to come near to fruition and even now hostilitycould prevent or derail the final push to establish power-sharing institutions.Sadly, at the time of writing (April 2007) the major efforts to push forward theSri Lankan peace process with the Tamil Tigers appear to be in meltdown.

The sad reality is that the overwhelming majority of 'traditional' terroristgroups do not willingly abandon the terrorist weapon. They see it as arelatively low-risk, low-cost, potentially high yield way of struggling for theirgoals. They may be well aware that terrorism will not be a magic bullet forwinning their long-term strategic objectives, but they do know that they canuse it to win what for them are extremely attractive tactical gains, such as;global publicity for their cause, forcing the authorities to release theimprisoned members of their group and the obtaining of large ransoms.

The Problems of Responding to Terrorism in Ways Compatible withPreservation of Basic Human Rights and the Rule of Law

The problem of preventing and combating terrorism is made all the morecomplicated in many Commonwealth countries because they face both thethreat from the Al Qaeda network and from a range of other terrorist groups.Such countries cannot afford to abandon their vigilance and counter-measuresfor dealing with traditional terrorist threats while at the same time enhancingtheir legislation and security measures to deal with the threat from the 'NewTerrorism' of Al Qaeda and its affiliates. Of course every member of the


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finance sector in the civil aviation industry, in the private sector and betweenthe private and public sectors. The military can be of enormous value whenthey have specially trained units, equipped and configured for the purposesof counter terrorism for specific operations e.g. the toppling of the Talibanregime, which had given safe haven to Al Qaeda. But over dependence onmilitary operations and heavy - handed use of firepower in civilian areaswhich is likely to cause heavy casualties among innocent civilians is a hugestrategic blunder, fuelling support and recruitment to terrorist and otherextremist groups (e.g. the invasion and occupation of Iraq).

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Commonwealth Ministers Reference Book 2007