Thought #33
June 2009
Author: Bill Thurston
How International Terrorism Works / How We Combat It
This will be the third and the last Thought on terrorism at least for a while.
After learning about the Taliban (#30) and al-Qaeda (#31), I thought knowing how
they worked and how we combat them would be important.
The Terrorists’ Basic Structure
The Terrorist Leadership
The terrorist leadership provides the overall direction and strategy that
breathes life into a terror campaign. The leadership becomes the catalyst for
terrorist action. The loss of the leadership can cause many organizations to
collapse. Some groups, however, are more resilient and can promote new
leadership should the original fall or fail. Still others have adopted a more
decentralized organization with largely autonomous cells, making our challenge
even greater.
The Terrorist Organization
The terrorist organization is its structure, its membership, its resources, and
its security. These factors determine its capabilities and reach.
The Terrorists’ Base of Operate
Nation states around the world still offer havens, both physical (e.g., safe
houses, training grounds) and virtual (e.g., reliable communication and
financial networks), that terrorists need to plan, organize, train, and conduct
their operations. Once entrenched in a safe operating environment, the
organization can begin to solidify and expand.
The Underlying Conditions
Conditions such as poverty, corruption, religious conflict and ethnic strife
create opportunities for terrorists to exploit. Some of these conditions are
real and some manufactured. Terrorists use these conditions to justify their
actions and expand their support.
The Terrorists’ Area of Influence
The international environment defines the boundaries within which terrorists’
strategies take shape. As a result of freer, more open borders, this environment
provides access to havens, capabilities, and other support to terrorists.
The al-Qaida network is a multinational enterprise with operations in more than
60 countries. Al-Qaida exemplifies how terrorist networks have twisted the
benefits and conveniences of our increasingly open, integrated, and modernized
world to serve their destructive agenda.
Its camps in Afghanistan/Pakistan provided sanctuary and its bank accounts
served as a trust fund for terrorism. Its global activities are coordinated
through the use of personal couriers and communication technologies like
cellular and satellite phones, encrypted e-mail, Internet chat rooms, videotape,
and CD-roms. Like a skilled publicist, Bin Laden and al-Qaida have exploited the
international media to project Bin Laden’s image and message worldwide. Members
of al-Qaida have traveled from continent to continent with the ease of a
vacationer or business traveler. In an age marked by unprecedented mobility and
migration, they readily blend into communities wherever they move. They pay
their way with funds raised through front businesses, drug trafficking, credit
card fraud, extortion, and money from covert supporters. They use charitable
organizations and non-governmental organizations for funding and recruitment.
Money for their operations is transferred through numerous banks, money
exchanges, and alternate remittance systems.
Terrorists can now use the advantage of technology to disperse leadership,
training, and logistics not just regionally but globally. Establishing and
moving cells in virtually any country is relatively easy in a world where more
than 140 million people live outside of their country of origin and millions of
people cross international borders every day. In addition to finding sanctuary
within the boundaries of a state sponsor, terrorists often seek out states where
they can operate with impunity because the central government is unable to stop
them.
Our Strategy on Terrorism
The intent of our national strategy is to stop terrorist attacks against the
United States, its citizens, its interests, and our friends and allies around
the world and ultimately, to create an international environment inhospitable to
terrorists and all those who support them.
To accomplish these tasks we will simultaneously act on four fronts. The United
States and its partners will do the following:
Defeat
terrorist organizations of global reach by attacking their sanctuaries,
leadership, command, control and communications, material support, and finances.
This approach will have a cascading effect across the larger terrorist
landscape, disrupting the terrorists’ ability to plan and operate. As a result,
it will force these organizations to disperse and then attempt to reconsolidate
along regional lines to improve their communications and cooperation. As this
dispersion and organizational degradation occurs, we will work with regional
partners to implement a coordinated effort to squeeze, tighten, and isolate the
terrorists. Once the regional campaign has localized the threat, we will help
states develop the military, law enforcement, political, and financial tools
necessary to finish the task.
Deny
further sponsorship, support, and sanctuary to terrorists by ensuring other
states accept their responsibilities to take action against these international
threats within their sovereign territory. United Nations Security Council
Resolution NSCR 1373
http://www.un.org/Docs/journal/asp/ws.asp?m=S/RES/1373(2001)
establishes high standards that we and our international partners expect others
to meet in deed as well as word. Where states are willing and able, we will
reinvigorate old partnerships and forge new ones to combat terrorism and
coordinate our actions to ensure that they are mutually reinforcing and
cumulative. Where states are weak but willing, we will support them vigorously
in their efforts to build the institutions and capabilities needed to exercise
authority over all their territory and fight terrorism where it exists. Where
states are reluctant, we will work with our partners to convince them to change
course and meet their international obligations. Where states are unwilling, we
will act decisively to counter the threat they pose and, ultimately, to compel
them to cease supporting terrorism.
Diminish
the underlying conditions that terrorists seek to exploit by enlisting the
international community to focus its efforts and resources on the areas most at
risk. We will maintain the momentum generated in response to the September 11
attacks by working with our partners abroad and various international forums to
keep combating terrorism at the forefront of the international agenda.
Defend
the United States, our citizens, and our interests at home and abroad by both
proactively protecting our homeland and extending our defenses to ensure we
identify and neutralize the threat as early as possible.
When will there be Victory over Terrorism?
Victory against terrorism will not occur as a single, defining moment. It will
not be marked by the likes of the surrender ceremony on the deck of the USS
Missouri that ended World War II. However, through the sustained effort to
compress the scope and capability of terrorist organizations, isolate them
regionally, and destroy them within state borders, the United States and its
friends and allies will secure a world in which our children can live free from
fear and where the threat of terrorist attacks does not define our daily lives.
Victory, therefore, will be secured only as long as the United States and the
international community maintain their vigilance and work tirelessly to prevent
terrorists from inflicting horrors like those of September 11, 2001.
Conclusion
We cannot choose to disengage from the world, because in this globalized era,
the world will engage us regardless. The choice is really about what kind of
world we want to live in. In waging this war, therefore, we will be resolute in
maintaining our commitment to our ultimate objective. The defeat of terror is a
worthy and necessary goal in its own right. But ridding the world of terrorism
is essential to a broader purpose. We strive to build an international order
where more countries and peoples are integrated into a world consistent with the
interests and values we share with our partners’ values such as human dignity,
rule of law, respect for individual liberties, open and free economies, and
religious tolerance. We understand that a world in which these values are
embraced as standards will be the best antidote to the spread of terrorism. This
is the world we must build today.
Note: All this information came
from a CIA document dated February, 2003. Our new president and staff may make
some changes in the future.
https://www.cia.gov/news-information/cia-the-war-on-terrorism/Counter_Terrorism_Strategy.pdf
Final Thought
In order to accomplish these goals, the CIA must create national security
intelligence by having the proper tools to follow the terrorists’ money, people,
and communications. This intelligence is part of our President's Daily Brief. He
and his staff must then take appropriate action to secure the citizens’ safety
and accomplish our goals with regard to terrorism.
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