UNITED24 - Make a charitable donation in support of Ukraine!

Military

14 November 2001

Byliner: Rand's Hoffman on Terrorism After September 11

(He discusses the changing nature of terrorism) (2090)
(This byliner was published in the Office of International Information
Program's electronic journal "U.S. Foreign Policy Agenda," November
14. No republication restrictions.)
Terrorism and Counterterrorism After September 11th
By Bruce Hoffman
(The author is the vice president and external affairs director,
RAND Corporation Washington Office.)
THE 9/11 ATTACKS IN CONTEXT
Until September 11th, a total of no more than perhaps 1,000 Americans
had been killed by terrorists either in this country or abroad since
1968 -- the year credited with marking the advent of the modern era of
international terrorism when the Popular Front for the Liberation of
Palestine (PFLP) hijacked an El Al flight on July 23. To put the
events of that tragic day further in context, until the attacks on the
World Trade Center and Pentagon, no terrorist operation had killed
more than 500 persons at one time.(1) Whatever the metric, the
enormity and sheer scale of the simultaneous suicide attacks of that
day eclipse anything we have previously seen -- either individually or
in aggregate. Accordingly, for that reason alone, September 11th
argues for nothing less than a re-configuration of both our thinking
about terrorism and how we both prepare and organize to counter it.
Such a change is amply justified by the unique constellation of
operational capabilities evident in that day's tragic attacks: showing
a level of planning, professionalism and tradecraft rarely seen among
the vast majority of terrorists and terrorist movements we have
known.(2) Among the most significant characteristics of the operation
were its:
-- ambitious scope and dimensions;
-- consummate coordination and synchronization;
-- professionalism and tradecraft that kept so large an operation so
secret; and
-- the unswerving dedication and determination of the 19 aircraft
hijackers who willingly and wantonly killed themselves, the passengers
and crews of the four aircraft they commandeered and the thousands of
persons working in or visiting both the World Trade Center and the
Pentagon.
The significance of the September 11th incidents from a terrorist
operational perspective is that simultaneous attacks -- using far more
prosaic and arguably conventional means of attack (such as car bombs,
for example) -- are relatively uncommon. For reasons not well
understood, terrorists typically have not undertaken such coordinated
operations. This was doubtless less of a choice than a reflection of
the logistical and other organizational hurdles that most terrorist
groups are not able to overcome. Indeed, this was one reason why we
were so galvanized by the synchronized attacks on the American
embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam three years ago. The
orchestration of that operation, coupled with its unusually high death
and casualty tolls, stood out in a way that, until September 11th, few
other terrorist actions had: bringing bin Laden as much renown as
infamy in many quarters.
During the 1990s, perhaps only one other (presumably unrelated)
terrorist incident evidenced those same characteristics of
coordination and high lethality: the series of attacks that occurred
in Bombay in March 1993, where a dozen or so simultaneous car bombings
rocked the city, killing nearly 300 persons and wounding more than 700
others.(3) Indeed, apart from the attacks on the same morning in
October 1983 of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut and a nearby French
paratroop headquarters, and the IRA's near-simultaneous assassination
of Lord Mountbatten and remote-control mine attack on British troops
in Warrenpoint, Northern Ireland, in 1979, it is hard to recall many
other significant incidents reflecting such operational expertise,
coordination and synchronization.
WHERE WE WENT WRONG IN FAILING TO PREDICT THE 9/11 ATTACKS
Accordingly, we were perhaps lulled into believing that mass,
simultaneous attacks in general, and those of such devastating
potential as we saw in New York and Washington on September 11th were
likely beyond most capabilities of most terrorists -- including those
directly connected to or associated with Osama bin Laden. The tragic
events of that September day demonstrate how profoundly misplaced such
assumptions were. In this respect, we perhaps overestimated the
significance of our past successes (e.g., in largely foiling most of
bin Laden's terrorist operations during the period between the August
1998 embassy bombings and the November 2000 attack on the USS Cole)
and the terrorists' own incompetence and propensity for mistakes
(e.g., Ahmad Ressam's bungled attempt to enter the United States from
Canada in December 1999). Indeed, both more impressive and disturbing
is the fact that there was likely considerable overlap in the planning
for these attacks and the one last November against the USS Cole in
Aden: thus suggesting a multi-track operational and organizational
capability to coordinate major, multiple attacks at one time.
Attention was also arguably focused too exclusively either on the
low-end threat posed by car and truck bombs against buildings or the
more exotic high-end threats, involving biological or chemical weapons
or cyber-attacks. The implicit assumptions of much of our planning
scenarios on mass casualty attacks were that they would involve germ
or chemical agents or result from widespread electronic attacks on
critical infrastructure and that any conventional or less extensive
incident could be addressed simply by planning for the most
catastrophic threat. This left a painfully vulnerable gap in our
anti-terrorism defenses where a traditional and long-proven tactic --
like airline hijacking -- was neglected in favor of other, less
conventional threats and the consequences of using an aircraft as a
suicide weapon seem to have been almost completely discounted.
In retrospect, it arguably was not the 1995 sarin nerve gas attack on
the Tokyo subway and nine attempts to use bio-weapons by Aum that
should have been the dominant influence on our counterterrorist
thinking, but a 1986 hijacking of a Pan Am flight in Karachi, where
the terrorists' intentions were reported to have been to crash it into
the center of Tel Aviv, and the 1994 hijacking in Algiers of an Air
France passenger plane by terrorists belonging to the Armed Islamic
Group (GIA), who similarly planned to crash the fuel-laden aircraft
with its passengers into the heart of Paris. The lesson, accordingly,
is not that we need to be unrealistically omniscient, but rather that
we need to be able to respond across a broad technological spectrum of
potential adversarial attacks.
We also had long consoled ourselves -- and had only recently begun to
question and debate the notion-that terrorists were more interested in
publicity than killing and therefore had neither the need nor interest
in annihilating large numbers of people. For decades, there was
widespread acceptance of the observation made famous by Brian Jenkins
in 1975 that, "Terrorists want a lot of people watching and a lot of
people listening and not a lot of people dead."(4) Even despite the
events of the mid-1980s-when a series of high-profile and particularly
lethal suicide car and truck-bombings were directed against American
diplomatic and military targets in the Middle East (in one instance
resulting in the deaths of 241 Marines)-- many analysts saw no need to
revise these arguments. In 1985, Jenkins, one of the most
perspicacious and acute observers of this phenomenon, again noted
that, "simply killing a lot of people has seldom been one terrorist
objective . . . Terrorists operate on the principle of the minimum
force necessary. They find it unnecessary to kill many, as long as
killing a few suffices for their purposes."(5) The events of September
11th prove such notions now to be wishful thinking, if not dangerously
anachronistic. On that day, bin Laden arguably wiped the slate clean
of the conventional wisdom on terrorists and terrorism and, by doing
so, ushered in a new era of conflict, more bloody and destructive than
before.
Finally, bin Laden himself has re-written the history of both
terrorism and probably of the post-Cold War era -- which he arguably
single-handedly ended on September 11th. At a time when the forces of
globalization, coupled with economic determinism, seemed to have
submerged the role of the individual charismatic leader of men beneath
far more powerful, impersonal forces, bin Laden has cleverly cast
himself (admittedly and inadvertently with our assistance) as a David
against the American Goliath: one man standing up to the world's sole
remaining superpower and able to challenge its might and directly
threaten its citizens. To his followers, bin Laden has proven to be
the fabled right man in the right place at the right time: possessing
the vision, financial resources, organizational skills, and flair for
self-promotion to meld together the disparate strands of Islamic
fervor, Muslim piety, and general enmity toward the West into a
formidable global force.
WHAT NEEDS TO BE DONE
The concept of proportionality has long governed American
counterterrorist policy. Its American proponents argued, and our many
allies throughout the world expected, that the American military
response would be commensurate with the terrorist attack that provoked
it. Thus, in 1986, when the Qadhafi regime was implicated in the
bombing of a West Berlin discotheque frequented by American soldiers,
the United States retaliated with air strikes directed against Libyan
military targets in Tripoli and Benghazi -- including Muammar
Qadhafi's living quarters -- in an attempt to eliminate the Libyan
leader himself. Similarly, in 1998, when bin Laden was identified as
the architect of the massive truck bombings of the American embassies
in Kenya and Tanzania, the U.S. launched nearly 100 cruise missiles
against his training camps in Afghanistan -- also in hopes of killing
him -- as well as against a pharmaceutical factory allegedly linked to
bin Laden and believed to be manufacturing chemical weapons in the
Sudan. Two Americans had lost their lives in the discotheque bombing
and twelve in Nairobi. In the latter case, the response may have been
insufficient. But our situation today leaves no room for quibbling.
As previously noted, the enormity and sheer scale of the simultaneous
suicide attacks on September 11 eclipses anything we have previously
seen -- either individually or in aggregate. It calls, unquestionably,
for a proportionate response of unparalleled determination and focus
such as we see today in our actions both in the United States and
abroad, as well as one that utilizes the full range of formidable
tools at our disposal --diplomatic, military, and economic. While much
attention is currently focused on the military options being exercised
in South Asia, they are only one instrument that the United States can
bring to bear in the struggle against terrorism. Our efforts need to
be fully coordinated, sustained, and prolonged. They will require
commitment, political will, and patience. They must have realistic
goals and not unduly raise or create false expectations. And, finally,
they must avoid cosmetic or "feel-good" physical security measures
that contribute only tangentially, if at all, to the enhancement of
national as well as international security.
In conclusion, it must be appreciated that the struggle against
terrorism is never-ending. By the same token, our search for solutions
and new approaches must be equally continuous and unyielding,
proportional to the threat posed by our adversaries in both innovation
and determination.
(footnotes)
1. Approximately 440 persons perished in a 1979 fire deliberately set
by terrorists at a movie theater in Abadan, Iran.
2. Nor is this a particularly "American-centric" view in reaction to
the stunning and tragic events of two months ago. For example, an old
friend and colleague, who is one of Israel's leading counterterrorist
experts, and who has long experience in military, the government and
academe was totally shocked by the September 11th attacks --
specifically, their coordination, daring and lethality -- remarking:
"Never could I have imagined that terrorists could or would do that"
(telephone conversation, 17 September 2001). I am also reminded of a
conversation with a senior, highly decorated Sri Lankan Armed Forces
brigade commander and military intelligence operative who once
explained in great detail the "difficulties of pulling off even a
successful, significant terrorist attack" (discussion, Batticola, Sri
Lanka, December 1997) -- not least the four orchestrated suicide
aircraft hijackings and crashes that occurred on September 11th.
3. Celia W. Dugger, "Victims of '93 Bombay Terror Wary of U.S.
Motives," New York Times, 24 September 2001.
4. Brian Michael Jenkins, "International Terrorism: A New Mode of
Conflict" in David Carlton and Carlo Schaerf (eds.), International
Terrorism and World Security (London: Croom Helm, 1975), p. 15.
5. Brian Michael Jenkins, The Likelihood of Nuclear Terrorism (Santa
Monica, CA: The RAND Corporation, P-7119, July 1985), p. 6.
(The Washington File is a product of the Office of International
Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site:
http://usinfo.state.gov)



NEWSLETTER
Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list