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Counterterrorism Lessons Learned from Five Countries
From: RAND
| By:
Bruce HoffmanKim Cragin |
EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION |
Removing a top-level leader of a terrorist organization may not actually result in reduced terrorist activity, argue RAND policy analyst Kim Cragin and Bruce Hoffman, vice president for external affairs at RAND and director of the Washington, D.C., office. Lessons learned from counterterrorism efforts against such organizations as Hezbollah and Hamas, for example, show that mid-level leaders can successfully rise into decisionmaking roles, sometimes strengthening the organization's operations.
In this feature excerpted from the Summer 2002 RAND Review, Hoffman and Cragin argue that the US should dedicate a new intelligence unit to identifying and targeting terrorist organizations around the world, so terrorist activities can be prevented or stopped in the early planning stages. International counterterrorism strategies should focus on discrediting a group, removing powerful operational managers at the mid-level, and blocking the resources and support networks needed to successfully plan terrorist activities. |
 survey of the counterterrorism lessons learned from several countries--Israel, the Philippines, Colombia, Peru and the United Kingdom--leads to four principal conclusions. These conclusions pertain to the functional areas of targeting mid-level terrorist leaders, discrediting top-level leaders, disrupting their support networks and countering enemy intelligence. |
1. Focus efforts at mid-level leaders in terrorist groups.
Mid-level leaders are often more important than top decisionmakers for the long-term survival of a terrorist organization. Therefore, policies aimed at removing mid-level leaders will be more effective at disrupting the control, communications and operations up and down the chain of command within an organization. Such policies may also stunt the group's long-term growth by eliminating the development of future leaders. |
Targeting the top leaders of a terrorist group is often ineffective. The success or failure of a terrorist organization's operations--and even perhaps its longevity--depends more on the ability of the mid-level leaders to step into decisionmaking roles or carry out operational objectives than on the top leaders themselves. |
Israel, for example, has often removed the top leadership of Hezbollah and Hamas. But this policy has not resulted in a dramatic decrease in terrorist attacks or the dissolution of either group. The mid-level leaders of Hezbollah, in particular, have been able to step into the new role of top decisionmakers relatively easily. In the case of Hamas, Israel managed to deport almost its entire top-level leadership in 1992, but the strategy backfired. The top-level Hamas leaders had been relatively moderate, and their removal served only to radicalize the group. The mid-level leaders that stepped up in 1992 increased the use of suicide bombers to the extent seen in the attacks against Israel today. |
Admittedly, Peru is a counter-example. There, former President Alberto Fujimori's targeting and subsequent arrest of Abimael Guzman, the top leader of the Sendero Luminoso, was one of the main characteristics of Fujimori's all-out war against terrorism between 1990 and 1993. Some analysts argue that Guzman's arrest precipitated a rapid internal collapse of the Sendero Luminoso. But there is more to the story than just the arrest of Guzman and his central command. The key to the demise of this particular group is discussed in the next section. |
2. Delegitimize--do not just arrest or kill--the top leaders of terrorist groups.
The top leaders of terrorist organizations are more than just the head policymakers of their groups. They occupy an enormously influential and important symbolic position that is often inextricably connected to the organization's very existence. Therefore, the public diplomacy campaign to discredit these leaders is as or even more important than their actual arrests or deaths. |
As mentioned above, some analysts attribute the fall of Sendero Luminoso to the arrest of Guzman. But another, often overlooked, component of Fujimori's strategy was to thoroughly discredit Guzman in the eyes of Sendero Luminoso members and their support network. Fujimori tarnished the image of Guzman by turning his own words against him, deliberately orchestrating public speeches in which Guzman first called for Sendero Luminoso members to give up their weapons and then abruptly reversed himself, telling the members instead to continue to fight the government. The discrepancies discredited Guzman, and his organization lost all forward momentum. (Turkey achieved a similar success after imprisoning Abdullah Ocalan, the founder and leader of the Kurdish insurgent group, the PKK.) |
3. Focus on disrupting support networks and their trafficking activities.
The third lesson is to target essential support and logistics networks. This tactic entails focusing on the financiers and smugglers that help terrorist organizations gain access to money and purchase supplies on the black market. Attention is often focused on front organizations and individuals that provide money directly to terrorist organizations. However, it would be more advantageous to expand this strategy by targeting, for example, the middlemen who purchase diamonds from terrorists on the black market or the merchants who sell weapons to terrorist organizations. This tactic is a more effective way of disrupting the everyday activities in which terrorist organizations must engage to maintain their operational capabilities. It hinders the ability of organizations to gather resources and plan sophisticated attacks in advance, because they cannot rely on a steady stream of money or other essential resources. |
For example, Colombian efforts to disrupt arms trafficking have been more successful than coca eradication. The Colombian military has achieved this success by focusing its intelligence and investigative resources on financiers and arms trafficking middlemen external to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). |
As a result, FARC communiqués and reported discussions indicate that the organizational leadership has become increasingly concerned about the loss of weapons shipments into the country. The Colombian armed forces may be able to deprive FARC of crucial supplies to such an extent that the group will be unable to expand or even maintain control over territory in Colombia--and therefore unable to conduct operations in the medium to long term. |
4. Establish a dedicated counterintelligence center to obstruct terrorist reconnaissance.
Relatively sophisticated terrorist groups do not attack people or places without a basic level of planning and reconnaissance. Therefore, arguably the greatest return on investment is in the identification and disruption of pre-attack planning operations. It is crucially important to intercept the terrorists' own intelligence-gathering processes. |
Yet none of the countries that we surveyed had a dedicated, stand-alone, terrorist counterintelligence unit. These countries are missing important opportunities to preempt terrorist attacks. Given the highly fluid and transnational nature of the threat faced by the United States, a separate counterterrorism unit should be established within the US intelligence community. This unit should be dedicated specifically to identifying and targeting the intelligence-gathering and reconnaissance activities of terrorist organizations. |
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