Vladimirsky, I. (2012). Weak Link: Identifying and Attacking Terrorists’ Vulnerabilities. In F. C. Shanty (Ed.), Counterterrorism: From the Cold War to the War on Terror. Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger.
Terror has become a global phenomenon, evolving from local, national, and even regional threats into a multinational and global one. Many terrorists, regardless of their education, religion, and national and political background, look for revenge for perceived injustices and humiliations.
TERRORISM AND GLOBAL RESPONSE
The global war on terrorism includes joint efforts by governments, international organizations, private sector firms, and other organizations,
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including nongovernmental organizations. Although terrorism can never be entirely eliminated, a combination of different strategies against terror on the international level may lessen considerably the ability of terrorist groups to strike their intended targets. Following the terrorist attacks on the United States in September 2001, the U.S.-led war on terror was characterized by a combination of military and government legislative actions as well as the use of other professional and international resources.
Direct military attacks on terrorists’ training camps are still an important tactic in the fight against terrorism. In October 2001 an international antiterrorist coalition was established to fight al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. As a result of a massive bombing campaign and simultaneous land operations by coalition forces, al-Qaeda and its affiliates were driven from numerous training camps, with many terrorists and Taliban members being killed.
Currently, terrorist actions are characterized by a shift from expensive attacks on highly protected targets such as planes, airports, and foreign embassies to attacks on less protected or “softer” targets. Operations that employ suicide bombers to attack public places such as nightclubs, railway stations, and subways have in the recent past been part of the terrorists’ modus operandi. Information and intelligence sharing and cooperation between states have increased considerably since the events of 9/11. However, there remains a need for in-depth intelligence on terrorists’ motivations as well as their intentions and specific funding sources. Improved information sharing between the law enforcement and intelligence communities should allow nationwide search warrants for e-mails and subpoenas for financial information. Technological breakthroughs in communications such as the Internet have ensured that information transfer is immediate. Modern technology also provides terrorists with the ability to sequence attacks and use cell phones as crude remote detonators. Many terrorist organizations and groups use the Internet to coordinate their daily activities, disseminate propaganda, and conduct operations. Some terrorist groups have more than one Internet site. International intelligence units should focus on new and innovative targets (e.g., cyberterrorism) that terrorists may attempt to exploit, such as computer databases, sites, and programs.
ATTACKING THE FINANCIAL LIFELINE
The financial war on terror likewise cannot stop any one particular terrorist attack, but it can considerably decrease terrorists’ abilities to recruit members, train operatives, and restrict their capacity to acquire and transmit information. Terror groups and organizations raise funds in a variety of different ways: charity, state funding, the drug trade, intellectual property theft, human trafficking, counterfeiting, and kidnapping. The most valuable approach to defeating terrorism is that of denying
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terrorists resources such as financing, recruits, weapons, intelligence, support groups, and propaganda media. Antiterror strategies targeting charities must be twofold. Contributors must ensure that they know the end user of their charity funds. Governments must actively pursue charities raising money for terrorism and aggressively prosecute facilitators and known contributors. States that finance and provide other channels of support to terrorist groups must also be targeted in the anti–terror funding campaign. Strong international sanctions should be applied against states that sponsor or otherwise support domestic or internationally based terrorist organizations.
The international banking system must work to ensure that international funds cannot easily be transferred to terrorist organizations, even when such funds have a legitimate origin. Legal measures can help with the forfeiture of terrorist cash, apply freezing orders, facilitate cooperation with immigration and asylum services, and attack the problem of bribery and corruption of state public officials. The Financial Action Task Force, a 29-nation group promoting policies to combat money laundering, adopted strict new standards to deny terrorists access to the world financial system. G-20 and International Monetary Fund member countries have agreed to make public the list of terrorists whose assets are subjected to freezing and the amount of assets frozen.
WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION
One of the important tasks of the international community is to prevent terrorists from acquiring weapons of mass destruction (WMD), especially biological and nuclear weapons. Access to WMD can be treated as a supply-and-demand problem: supplies must be limited, with the current huge supplies of WMDs and component material safeguarded or destroyed. Russian stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, the largest in the world, should be destroyed, while stockpiles of fissile material, both highly enriched uranium and plutonium, must be safeguarded. Moreover, preventing nation-states from developing or otherwise acquiring nuclear weapons and material should be a top priority of the international community. Additionally, preventing terrorists from acquiring such capabilities has become a major global concern since terrorists could conceivably obtain nuclear weapons or fissile material through theft.
To reduce the possibility of a terrorist group obtaining and using a nuclear weapon, a global deterrence system must be developed. The United Nations Nuclear Terrorism Convention makes the possession or use of nuclear weapons or devices by nonstate entities a criminal offence. An appropriate legal framework to criminalize nuclear terrorist-related offences, allowing for the arrest, prosecution, and extradition of offenders, should be adopted and recognized by the international community. Additionally, strict controls and international preventive measures should be
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applied to existing stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons through an expansion of the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program.
ADAPTABILITY AND PROPAGANDA
Terrorists very quickly adapt to government efforts to provide security to their citizens by using different tactics. When airplanes and airports became more protected, terrorists shifted to less protected public targets such as nightclubs, suburban trains, buses, subways, and community centers. The use of suicide bombers provides terrorist groups with live weapons that are hard to detect, deter, or defeat. It is probably not possible to completely eliminate committed suicide bombers, who represent the ultimate smart weapon, but in principle it might be possible to deter their controllers.
Many terrorists groups and organizations benefit greatly from media coverage of their activities. Terrorism is more about propaganda than violence. Terrorists pose a threat to society not only because they kill people but also, more important, because they threaten to kill people. There are several ways to cope with or lessen the influence of terrorists’ propaganda. Protocols that starve the terrorist and the hijacker of the publicity on which they depend need to be established. Obviously, this would entail cooperation between government officials and the media.
Rather than impose information control on the media, it is preferable to foster a close liaison between government, law enforcement, and the media in an effort to establish guidelines and procedures that could be employed in a predetermined type of crisis incident. Violent organizations can often influence the frequency of their coverage by the nature and timing of their actions, the target chosen, and the drama and destructiveness of their deeds.
CONCLUSION
The media need to realize that its public influence is profound and therefore tailor their reporting in a way that reduces the propaganda value to the individuals or organization responsible for the attack(s). Journalists can be a positive force in the war on terror by voluntarily regulating and being more sensitive to the propaganda value of their reporting.
See also:Volume 1, Part III:Combating Terrorist Recruitment, Propaganda, and Radicalization Campaigns;Identifying and Combating Sources of Terrorist Financing;Ideology That Spawns Islamist Militancy;Information Technologies to Combat Terrorism;Multidisciplinary Approach to Combating Terrorism;Multilateral Sanctions against State Sponsors of Terrorism;Organizational Resilience and Counterterrorism;Psychological Operations;Role of the International Community;Target Hardening;Terrorism, Counterterrorism, and the Internet.
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Part IV:Eliminating Terrorist Support Networks;Global Initiative to Combat Nuclear Terrorism;United Nations Global Counterterrorism Strategy: Significance and Limitations.Part VI:Sun Tzu’s Art of War: Lessons for 21st-Century Counterterrorism Practitioners
REFERENCES
Asad, Talal. “Thinking about Terrorism and Just War.” Cambridge Review of International Affairs 1 (2010): 3–24.
Dershowitz, Alan M. Why Terrorism Works: Understanding the Threat, Responding to the Challenge. London: Yale University Press, 2002.
“G-8 Leaders Statement on Countering Terrorism.” 2010. https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/g8_leaders_statement-countering_terrorism.pdf.
International Convention for the Suppression of Act of Nuclear Terrorism, New York, April 13, 2005. http://untreaty.un.org/cod/avl/ha/icsant/icsant.html.
Intriligator, Michael D. “The Economics of Terrorism.” Economic Inquiry 1 (2010): 1–13.
Kazimirsky, Orna, Nava Grosman,-Aloni, and Alodi Sari, eds. Heibetim al Terror uMaavak be Teror [Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism]. Tel Aviv, Israel: Misrad ha bitachon—hotzaa laor, 2004. [In Hebrew].
Kupperman, Robert H., and Darrel M. Trent. Terrorism: Threat, Reality, Response. Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 1979.
Morris, Daniel R.. “Surprise and Terrorism: A Conceptual Framework.” Journal of Strategic Studies 1 (2009): 1–27.
Narkis, Pinhas. Teumei Hateror: Halehima ba Teror baAretz, be Artzot HaBrit ubeOlam [Terror Twins: War on Terror in Israel, United States and in the World]. Nes Tsiona, Israel: Astrategiot ve Taktika, 2003. [In Hebrew.]
The Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Program, http://lugar.senate.gov/nunnlugar/.
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MLA
Vladimirsky, Irena. "Weak Link: Identifying and Attacking Terrorists’ Vulnerabilities." Counterterrorism: From the Cold War to the War on Terror. Ed. Frank C. Shanty. Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2012. ABC-CLIO eBook Collection. Web. 26 Nov 2012.
Chicago Manual of Style
Vladimirsky, Irena. "Weak Link: Identifying and Attacking Terrorists’ Vulnerabilities." In Counterterrorism: From the Cold War to the War on Terror. Edited by Frank C. Shanty. Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2012. http://ebooks.abc-clio.com/reader.aspx?isbn=9781598845457&id=A3051C-5297.
APA
Vladimirsky, I. (2012). Weak Link: Identifying and Attacking Terrorists’ Vulnerabilities. In F. C. Shanty (Ed.), Counterterrorism: From the Cold War to the War on Terror. Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger. Retrieved from http://ebooks.abc-clio.com/reader.aspx?isbn=9781598845457&id=A3051C-5297
Harvard
Vladimirsky, I. 2012 'Weak Link: Identifying and Attacking Terrorists’ Vulnerabilities' in F. C. Shanty (ed.), Counterterrorism: From the Cold War to the War on Terror, Praeger, Santa Barbara, CA, viewed 26 November, 2012, <http://ebooks.abc-clio.com/reader.aspx?isbn=9781598845457&id=A3051C-5297>
