International counterterrorism and a legitimacy deficit

At this critical juncture, the President appointed General David Petraeus to lead US troops in Iraq and to oversee the so-called “surge” strategy, which was based primarily on the US Army Field Manual 3–24, Counterinsurgency. General Petraeus was later promoted to head the US Central Command, and President Obama appointed him as the Commander of US forces in Afghanistan and then as the head of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). This meteoric rise certainly speaks to the relevance of the line of thinking found in the Army Field Manual drafted under his supervision.

The document was developed and written by military thinkers, and thus it is not surprising that they are primarily looking at the overseas operations launched by politicians to deal with the threat posed by terrorism. It is meant for use abroad and thus does not contemplate a legitimacy deficit at home, even if such a discussion would be most welcome. The strategy of provocation certainly manifests problems for the society and government that has been directly attacked, but the focus here is on the adversaries found abroad and the foreign theaters of operation.

Most pertinently, throughout the Field Manual there is an explicit recognition that legitimacy is the central front of the conflict at hand. This is first made clear in the very definition of the conflict: “an insurgency is an organized, protracted politico-military struggle designed to weaken the control and legitimacy of an established government, occupying power, or other political authority while increasing insurgent control” (US Army 2006: 1–1, §1–2; my emphasis).

Here, we see very clearly that the drafters of the manual are keenly aware that insurgents are attempting to weaken a government by targeting its legitimacy, and it is filled with similar references. It can thus be said that they saw the legitimacy of a government as the primary target of attack in the case of an insurgency, just as posited here. Demonstrating this point most clearly is the fact that there is an entire section that discusses this idea as central, falling under an unambiguous heading:

(US Army 2006: 1–21, §1–113; my emphasis)

Of course, it is certainly debatable whether legitimacy can be so easily summarized, then taught to a military force so as to pass along a legitimate government to an occupied territory. Furthermore, traditional humanitarian law assumes that occupying powers should respect the existing laws and economic arrangements and therefore raises questions about the validity of transformative military occupation (Roberts 2007).

The notion of what constitutes a legitimate government and how that is to be achieved has been profoundly and hotly debated for centuries by political philosophers from Machiavelli to Hobbes to Locke to Rousseau. Therefore, it can come across as hubris to suggest that such a pivotal aspect of society’s functioning has been resolved and can be moderated and manufactured by an uninvited outside military force. This is surely why foreign military operations aimed at the construction of legitimacy must be understood as nation-building, and perhaps as being beyond the capabilities of even the most powerful militaries. Consequently, before politicians commit troops to invasions abroad it should be understood that while “regime removal” is within the military’s capacities, “regime change” is far more complex, and is yet to be fully understood by humanity.

Nonetheless, from the perspective of this work, what is most important is that all of the attention here is on constructing legitimacy outside of the US, not on the attempts to weaken or destroy the legitimacy at home. Therefore, it is valuable to recognize that the idea of focusing on the destruction of legitimacy, rather than on its construction, is a less complicated task. That is not to say that undermining and weakening the legitimacy of a government is easy and obvious. Rather, as with nearly all things known in this world, destruction is less difficult than construction.

This is not uncommon for leaders of terrorist organizations in general, and of Al-Qaeda specifically. David Aaron, a diplomat who compiled a manuscript of the writings of extremists willing to target civilians, explained that:

One of the curious things about jihadism is the notable lack of articulated political or social goals beyond implementing shari’a law. […] Even such jihad writers as Sayyid Qutb focus their analyses on the shortcomings of other ideologies rather than explicating how their philosophy would translate into government structures and economic and social policy. As one jihadi notes, […] it is as if they are not really interested in governing, but only in waging jihad. Bin Laden’s only evident policy impact on the Taliban was in persuading them to blow up the historically priceless Bamiyan Buddhas.

(Aaron 2008: 109; internal citations omitted)

As a policy prescription, destroying historic religious artifacts is undoubtedly limited and patently intolerant. Yet our work is meant to focus attention at the point of attack: the US political authority. In other words, we will posit how Al-Qaeda meant to weaken or destroy the legitimacy of its enemy’s government through a strategy of provocation.

It is less familiar that this victorious uprising was followed, for the first time in history, by the event which we held, not without reason, to be impossible: All over France, for six weeks, as soon as the news from Paris was heard, all the people—peasants, workers, lower middle classes, officials, upper classes—as at a signal after a secret agreement, refused to obey.

(Ferrero 1942: 82–83)

Thus, it is Ferrero’s theory that it was the absence of any legitimate authority that spawned this particular state terror epitomized by the thousands of public beheadings at the guillotine. This is certainly not to suggest a justification for the “reign of terror” that followed in an effort to impose order on a society without any recognized commanding authority, nor is it to launch into historical disputes over the events of that time period. The point is to underline the manner in which legitimacy rests at the center of struggles to steer any society.

Unfortunately, the frailty of human memory has meant that more recent events involving attacks by non-state actors have been regarded by many to be a novel phenomenon in our history. Most important during its long existence as a tactic is the belief that such political violence must be at least public, if not spectacular. Therefore, it is not new that such political violence is a spectacle in search of an audience. Consequently, terrorism expert Brian Jenkins spoke very aptly when he stated that “terrorism is theatre” (1975: 16).

The modern employment of terrorism can be said to have an enhanced political effect which can be attributed to more recent changes that have occurred within our societies. Here we highlight two significant transformations that have directly shaped the effectiveness of terrorism as both tactic and strategy. The first is the widespread proliferation of cameras, mass media, and information-sharing tools. Hence, when Margaret Thatcher spoke of publicity being the “oxygen” on which terrorists depend she was addressing a historical fact long understood as being tied to the phenomenon (Thatcher 1985). At the same time, she was identifying an experience of modern times that has continued to increase appreciably since the statement was first made.

International law protecting individuals has undoubtedly become more conspicuous in our human consciousness over the previous decades. That is to say, its development since the end of World War II represents a palpable change in the tools that citizens can use to evaluate and scrutinize their own government’s protection of individual rights—protection to which the government is obligated by its legal commitments made to other states. And this is where new diplomacy, both public and widely disseminated, is having an intensified impact. Counterterrorism policy today is under a new type of microscope which frames and structures the scrutiny of a state that attempts to confront terrorist groups. As will become clear in what follows throughout this work, international law provides metrics for the public to employ to evaluate their own state’s exercise of force. We will see that while the increased media sources have provided a drastic increase in credible facts distributed to the citizenry about abuses by the government, international law has offered analytical tools that can and have been applied in evaluating this increased empirical data.

Next are the more divisive features of modern terrorism, which have been stumbling blocks for the arrival at a commonly accepted international legal definition of this phenomenon, deemed by the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) to be a “threat to the peace” (Resolutions 1368, 1373, 1377). The two major obstructions have been whether terrorism must be committed by a non-state group (can a state commit terrorist crimes?) and whether the “targeting of innocents” includes attacks on the security forces of a democratic regime. Although it is in conflict with the original use of the term “terror” in the context of the French Revolution, for analytical clarity and, of greater importance, due to the understanding of legitimacy as being the primary battleground of this type of conflict, it makes most sense here to limit the terrorist designation to non-state actors and only those instances when their actions target civilians without a status within the government.

As to international legality, there already exist thirteen international conventions treating specific assets or persons believed to be current or future targets of terrorism. However, although the international community has been able to create conventions to deal with the hijacking of aircraft, the taking of hostages, terrorist bombing, illicit acts against the safety of maritime navigation, crimes against persons protected internationally (including diplomatic agents), the financing of terrorism, nuclear terrorism, etc., there has not been agreement on a general antiterrorist convention. Perhaps more widely known is that this also means that there is not one single, and widely accepted, definition of terrorism in international law.

There are times when the identification of those who are not armed and not engaged in defending a regime in an official position is indeed possible to ascertain, at least to a much more reasonable degree. As just one obvious example, we can look to 9/11. There is no doubt that the flight attendants, pilots, and passengers onboard all four aircraft that day were incontrovertibly civilians. One might suggest that the American Airlines Flight 77 airplane, flown into the US military headquarters of the Pentagon in Virginia, was aimed at a non-civilian target. However, the other two projectile weapons, filled with noncombatants and enough fuel for an almost six-hour transcontinental flight, were deliberately, publicly, and violently pummeled into the symbolic World Trade Center buildings in New York City which were occupied with civilians by any measure. The death toll from that day was 2,977 people of fifty-five different nationalities (excluding the nineteen hijackers), and all were civilians except for the fifty-five military personnel out of the 125 deaths at the Pentagon.

The UNSC reacted with astounding speed in passing Resolution 1368 just one day after the attacks, affirming that it

Unequivocally condemns in the strongest terms the horrifying terrorist attacks which took place on 11 September 2001 in New York, Washington, DC and Pennsylvania and regards such acts, like any act of international terrorism, as a threat to international peace and security [original emphasis].

As such, it is indeed possible to identify certain acts as undoubtedly public and political violence by non-state actors directed against civilians, i.e., terrorism.

With that said, a credible threat can be preferable to actually carrying out the deed since provoking a reaction is based upon the sentiments, or terror, induced. Having the enemy believe in an existing menace can circumvent the need to act and can therefore avoid failure or exposing weakness. Thus, inspiring and manipulating fear for political reasons through the purposeful public targeting of noncombatants can be described as the means, or tactic, of terrorism.

To get closer to understanding the tactic of terrorism as a means for accomplishing strategic goals, some of the most persuasive analysis comes from Louise Richardson in her book What Terrorists Want (2006). Richardson’s expertise on the subject is impressive. She possesses the traditional scholar’s familiarity with the literature that comes from the greater part of a professional life dedicated to the investigation of this age-old political phenomenon. In addition, to better understand their motives, means, and ends, she has interviewed insurgents, reviewed accounts of interrogations and interviews, and studied the statements of those who have purposely targeted civilians.

One of the most interesting elements that Richardson brings to the discussion of terrorism is what she refers to as the three Rs: Revenge, Renown, Reaction. She addresses the issue of the effectiveness of terrorism and sees no clear cases being proven. Instead, she presents a much more constructive way to get at the motivations of those who attack noncombatants, sometimes in a manner that sacrifices the terrorists’ own lives. Richardson explains that “[a]ll terrorist movements have two kinds of goals: short-term organizational objectives and long-term political objectives requiring significant political change” (2006: 75). It is imperative to distinguish between the two if we are to get closer to understanding the dramatic and immoderate choice of employing the type of violence under discussion here.

The grand goal of reestablishing the Islamic caliphate has been avowed by prominent leaders of the Al-Qaeda movement. This immense political change would require a redrawing of international borders throughout the Middle East, northern Africa, and even a portion of the Iberian Peninsula in Europe. However, to present only this objective as what motivates members of Al-Qaeda to carry out their violent acts misses the more short-term immediate intentions.

Revenge

The ubiquity of the theme of revenge is so prevalent in terrorist literature and discourse that it is almost superfluous to point it out. The theme of revenge illustrates the predominance of the idea of collective punishment found in many terrorist groups, as guilt is attributed with a very wide brush. Bin Laden clearly attempted to tap into this sentiment of a desire for revenge for perceived injustices in order to recruit followers and soldiers for a jihad against both the US and its allies. A catalog of reasons for vengeance indeed runs deep in bin Laden’s rhetoric. In his 1996 fatwā, or religious opinion meant to be based on Islamic law, bin Laden wrote,

It should not be hidden from you that the people of Islam had suffered from aggression, iniquity and injustice imposed on them by the Zionist-Crusaders alliance and their collaborators; to the extent that the Muslims blood became the cheapest and their wealth as loot in the hands of the enemies.

(bin Laden 1996)

Just as intended, the list of grievances did not remain static. Following the Al-Qaeda attacks of 9/11 the US responded by invading Afghanistan within less than a month, and then Iraq in early 2003. These two wars launched in reaction to the terrorist attacks provided additional reasons for bin Laden to call for revenge against his enemies. Shortly after the invasion of Afghanistan, a challenge to the West and a rallying cry to Muslims to take up arms was broadcast on Al-Jazeera and attributed to bin Laden. In the recording bin Laden spoke of the bombing of the innocent people of Afghanistan and jumped on the language of “crusade” used by President Bush. Bin Laden hammered at this theme of retribution by emphasizing the grave slip of referencing the Crusades:

After the US politicians spoke and after the US newspapers and television channels became full of clear crusading hatred in this campaign that aims at mobilizing the West against Islam and Muslims, Bush left no room for doubts or the opinions of journalists, but he openly and clearly said that this war is a crusader war. He said this before the whole world to emphasize this fact.

(bin Laden 2001)

This means the oppressing and embargoing to death of millions as Bush Sr did in Iraq in the greatest mass slaughter of children mankind has ever known, and it means the throwing of millions of pounds of bombs and explosives at millions of children—also in Iraq—as Bush Jr did, in order to remove an old agent and replace him with a new puppet to assist in the pilfering of Iraq’s oil and other outrages.

(bin Laden 2004)

Any successful counterterrorism program must surely bear in mind this dangerous spiral of revenge and retribution.

Renown

The second short-term goal motivating groups that employ terrorism is the desire to achieve an elevated status, within one’s own community or on the greater international scene at large. In this case, militants attempt to attain renown through exposure for their actions. But there is more at play than just the simple publicity that has been discussed. It is the concept of glory for attempting to redress what is considered by some a humiliation suffered. Because glory on a local or, increasingly, global stage is particularly important to the leaders of such movements, the recent revolution in information-sharing tools has had an acute impact on this phenomenon. One analyst has explained that in Iraq this has had a particular impact because “[f]or propaganda purposes, they create their own videos of virtually every terrorist attack, often at great risk to themselves and their operations” (Aaron 2008: 268). However, unlike revenge, which terrorists take for themselves, renown is something that must be bestowed by others, and this can come from a complicit community or from their enemies.

In the media, the United States has failed to market its crusade. The US propaganda machine has been unable to defeat feelings of hatred toward the United States. It has not even managed to dispel the doubts within the United States. The immensity of the Western propaganda apparatus did not prevent its defeat at the hands of Shaykh Usama. The cameras of CNN and other Western media dinosaurs undertook the task of filming the raid [9/11] and sowing fear in its aftermath. It didn’t cost al-Qa’ida a cent. Moreover, the “terror” tapes that CNN showed later demonstrated the mujahidin’s increased capabilities and endeared them to the Islamic community.

(Al-Qurashi, quoted in Aaron 2008: 270)

Speaking of the media outlets that address the Muslim population in the Middle East, al-Qurashi continued by explaining the value of the exclusive videotapes being broadcast, which brought worldwide notoriety to the Islamic community and the entire world. Al-Qurashi also demonstrates a sophisticated understanding of the use of the Internet to transmit their own propaganda to the media outlets that cover the interaction between the two parties, as well as how these outlets operate.

So, what we see is a small band of criminals willing to attack noncombatants to publicize their grievances, viewing itself as actively engaged with the mammoth entity it considers its enemy. This belief is not completely absurd. Perusing newspapers, magazines, television news coverage, and bookshelves on the subject of terrorism would certainly bolster this argument. Yet it should be recognized that non-state actors have not often seized the full attention and activity across the institutional spectrum of a state so thoroughly. Thus, these words from one of Al-Qaeda’s leading members do not seem far off the mark. Al-Qurashi also explained the significance of the 9/11 attacks in comparison with the killing of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics in Munich by saying that “The September 11 [operation] was an even greater propaganda coup. It may be said that it broke a record in propaganda dissemination. […] With few exceptions, the entire planet heard about it” (quoted in Aaron 2008: 271).

Reaction

Those who choose to employ terrorism can be described as action-oriented groups. Yet although this is the modus operandi of an adversary, this certainly does not mean that confronting it on the same grounds is advantageous to those who are defending themselves from such attacks. Hence, because the terrorists want to provoke a reaction, one must carefully contemplate exactly how to respond to such public and political violence.

Democracies are especially susceptible to this type of provocation. They are often structured in a way that causes tension between the different branches of government over interpretation of the established constraints on their response (see generally Bianchi and Keller 2008). It is not an option for a state, nor would it be preferable, to refrain entirely from a response, as there is a legal and philosophical duty to protect citizens from such violent attacks. Of course, providing security has long been accepted as the first duty of government. Also, it is an international legal human rights obligation for states to protect individuals under their jurisdiction from terrorist attacks. However, the difficulty that arises in a democracy is that the free press and a short-term election cycle combine to push politics to the fore, and often into overreaction.

The spectacular nature of terrorist acts is meant to grab the attention of the press and to generate as much media attention as possible. Even though it is rarely the case that the press coverage produced is in any way sympathetic to the cause or plight of terrorist groups, the publicity gained relating to the event is indeed what they are seeking. With the collective eyes of a society fixed on the tragedy, the demand for an immediate and conspicuous response flows directly into the political process of a democracy, establishing a competition for who will best provide security. Unfortunately, this competition can skew and distort cool-headed reasoning since advocating swift and overwhelming force is often politically advantageous.

Many terrorist groups have promoted the use of attacks on civilians to incite a repressive reaction from the government because repressive action helps demonstrate that the ruling regime is unconstrained by limits. This can both push sympathizers to the side of the non-state actors in the psychological battle, as well as cause a government to overstep constraints that raise doubts about its legitimacy to its own citizens. As Richardson insightfully explains, “Part of the genius of terrorism […] is that it elicits a reaction that furthers the interests of the terrorists more often than their victims” (2006: 101).

[s]uccess depends less on the initial attack than on instigating an escalatory spiral, controlled not by the forces of order but by the terrorists themselves. […] Since a state will always be too strong for a cell of individuals to defeat in open battle, it must defeat itself.

(Ignatieff 2004: 62).

The conclusion is that this challenge is indeed the nemesis of liberal democracies; they must not fall into this trap of provocation and abandon law altogether.

This idea of provocation of excessive reaction is unsurprisingly prevalent in the writings of Al-Qaeda strategists and leaders, and is thus found repeatedly in David Aaron’s compilation of writings from Muslims who have taken the moral step of unabashedly and violently targeting noncombatants in an effort to promote their cause. Aaron deduces that

[m]any of the jihadi statements in this book would achieve their desired effect if they exaggerated the threat and provoked an American overreaction. Such overreaction is a principal strategic objective of jihadi “raids.” It makes the jihadis appear more powerful and threatening, which attracts recruits and enhances the message that the success of jihad is inevitable.

(2008: 302)

We also find that the idea of driving a wedge between the citizens of the US and their government is considered to be strategically important by these groups. Al-Qurashi, specializing in strategy, has clearly studied the subject of insurrection and understands the nature of the conflict that has been engaged in by Al-Qaeda. He recognizes the limits inherent in the military dominance that the US possesses and seeks to capitalize on those limitations:

Militarily, the 11 September raid is a great threat to the United States’ current military standing. The asymmetric strategy that al-Qa’ida is pursuing entails the use of means and methods that the defender cannot use, recognize, or avoid. They rendered the United States’ tremendous military superiority useless and reduced the effectiveness of US military deterrence internationally.

(Al-Qurashi, quoted in Aaron 2008: 201)

In 2002, coalition forces in Afghanistan uncovered at least two letters from Osama bin Laden to Mullah Mohamed Omar, the spiritual leader of the Taliban movement and the de facto head of state of that country from 1996 to 2001. The two men were reported to have had a relationship that went back as far as the resistance to the Soviet occupation in the 1980s, and in these letters we can find further strategic explanations for the battle that Al-Qaeda wages against the US. Since the media is the means through which this publicity occurs today, it is not surprising that bin Laden identifies the media as the central front. He even goes so far as to say that “it is obvious that the media war in this century is one of the strongest methods; in fact, its ratio may reach 90% of the total preparation for the battles” (bin Laden 2002).

In another letter of a similar nature, cited by President Bush in a speech made in 2006, a key strategic disclosure is found. Bin Laden explained that Al-Qaeda was intending to launch “a media campaign to create a wedge between the American people and their government” (bin Laden 2006; my emphasis). The idea of a wedge being driven between a government and its people coincides directly with our premise that legitimacy is a primary battleground and a target of terrorism in that the intent is to disrupt the will to obey those who have the power to command.

Osama bin Laden also presented himself as a shrewd and cunning leader when he drew a comparison with the conflict undertaken with the Soviet forces in Afghanistan and the conflict in which the US now found itself engaged. He clearly believed that it was his forces’ use of guerrilla warfare that led to the downfall of the Soviet Union in this south-central Asian country. His description of the event is that they “bled Russia for 10 years, until it went bankrupt and was forced to withdraw in defeat” (bin Laden 2004). He envisioned the current conflict with the US as taking place on this same battleground and spoke specifically about “bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy” (bin Laden 2004). While bin Laden appeared to be speaking primarily in economic terms, it is equally conceivable that this bankruptcy is figurative. An absence of funds would certainly lead to the need for military withdrawal, but, at the same time, a moral bankruptcy, or insolvency of legitimacy, would lead to the same result. Therefore, Al-Qaeda’s strategy of provocation, or a “bleed until bankruptcy” plan, should be understood as both literal and metaphorical.

Furthermore, in the speech delivered in his “Message to America” video, bin Laden extolled Al-Qaeda’s success in inciting the US to twice engage its military in this struggle in two different countries:

(bin Laden 2004)

What can also be found in this citation is reference to the wedge mentioned above. We see that bin Laden draws an explicit distinction between the people of the US and the “private companies” that have profited from the government’s policies.

Shortly thereafter bin Laden made a statement, directed to US citizens just before their presidential elections, that even more explicitly alluded to creating a rift:

It is true that this shows that al-Qaida has gained, but on the other hand, it shows that the Bush administration has also gained, something of which anyone who looks at the size of the contracts acquired by the shady Bush administration-linked mega-corporations, like Halliburton and its kind, will be convinced. And it all shows that the real loser is … you.

(bin Laden 2004)

With this unambiguous tying of the Bush administration to the private military corporations that had received contracts to assist in the war-making activities related to the “war on terror,” we can clearly see a wedge being driven between the people and their government. If we think about Ferrero’s explanation of the basic societal structure, we can easily see how the attempt to cause a division between command and obedience would put us directly on the battlefield of legitimacy.