Terrorism has arguably been one of the defining factors of our age. It frequently makes headlines, threatening or attacking governments, private business and ordinary citizens. And in many parts of the world, it has been one of the most important threats to peace, security and stability. But what does this exactly mean? What is the nature of this threat? Who or what is threatened, how, by whom and why? What can be done about it or how can we at least limit the impact of terrorism and make sure that terrorists do not make headlines and manage to scare us? These are just a handful of questions that will be addressed in this course that consists of three parts. First it focuses on the essence of terrorism as an instrument to achieve certain goals, in addition to an exploration of this phenomenon and the difficulties in defining it. The second part provides an overview of the state of the art in (counter) terrorism studies. Since ‘9/11’ terrorism studies have grown exponentially, reflecting the rise in perceived threats. But what has academia come up with? What theories, assumptions and conventional wisdom has it produced that could be of help in understanding terrorism and dealing with it? The most interesting results are examined and compared with empirical evidence with the aim to either stress their importance or to debunk them as myths. The final part looks into the implications and possibilities for policy making. The course ends with a module specifically designed to address one of today's most topical issue: the foreign fighter phenomenon.
4.3 Assumption: Decapitation of terrorist organisations works
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En provenance du cours de Universiteit Leiden
Terrorism and Counterterrorism: Comparing Theory and Practice
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5 Assumptions on Counterterrorism
In this module, we will continue the work of module 3 and look into five assumptions on counterterrorism. It is highly relevant to keep investigating assumptions that underlie CT-policy, both from an effectiveness perspective (is it really countering terrorism?) but also because these policies often have a large impact on societies and might also have unintended consequences.
Rencontrer les enseignants
Edwin BakkerProf. dr.
Institute of Security and Global Affairs, Leiden University
Jeanine de Roy van Zuijdewijndrs.
Institute of Security and Global Affairs, Leiden University
[MUSIC]
In the last video, we discussed whether
or not it's possible to deradicalise a terrorist.
In this video, we will look into a harder, tougher and often violent type of counter
terrorism measure, which is the decapitation of terrorist organizations.
So
we're not going to look into the beheading of individuals.
We're going to look into the arrest and sometimes killing.
Of top leaders of terrorist organizations.
Well, here are a few examples of groups
that have been confronted with this particular counter-terrorism measures.
The groups include the left-wing,
rebellious terrorist organization, FARC, from
Colombia.
And one of their leaders was killed in 2011, Alfonso Cano.
And then there are quite a number of examples from France, Spain, with
regard to demilitant leaders, the terrorist
leaders of the Basque separatist organization ETA.
Many leaders were arrested in 2012 including Izaskun Lesaka, I'm
not sure if I pronounced it well, but one of the top leaders of the ETA.
And then of course, you all are aware of that, you
all have seen it probably the killing of Al Qaeda's Osama
Bin Laden, in Pakistan in operation Neptune Spear which was carried
out by Navy SEALs of the United States in Abbottabad, Pakistan,
early May in Pakistan 2011.
But a decapitation strategy or counterterrorism
measure is as old as countering terrorism.
Some historical examples include the arrest of the entire first wave of leaders
of the Rote Armee Fraktion in Germany in 1972 and the
arrest of Guzman, the leader of Sendero Luminoso, or Shining Path.
A leftist terrorist organization in
Peru in 1992, or the arrest of the leader of the Kurdish Workers Party, the
PKK, Abdullah Ocalan who was arrested in Kenya in
1999. There's several
scholars, practitioners, politicians. That have
claimed that decapitation of terrorist organization works.
One prominent scholar that looked into this particular instrument is Brian Price.
Who, in 2012, wrote the following.
He wrote, decapitation tactics which are designed to
kill or capture the key leader or leaders.
Of a terrorist group feature prominently
in counterterrorism strategies of many states,
including Israel and United States.
It's a widely practiced counterterrorism measure that's been used around the globe.
And after successful arrests or killing of
key leaders it's a very often that politicians
claim this success, they state now the
terrortist organization has been dealt a big blow.
Here are a number of examples.
The first is from Spain from the
then Spanish Prime Minister Zapatero, who in 2008
reacted after the arrest of the operational chief
of the ETA, the Basque separatists terrorist organization.
And he said that with this arrest, ETA has
suffered a severe blow in its organization and capability.
And he also said, today, ETA is weaker. An example from South America.
The Colombian president, Juan Manuel Santos, after the
killing of the FARC leader Alphonso Cano in 2011.
He said that the killing of Cano is the
hardest blow to this organization in its entire history.
And then finally, the reaction after the killing of Osama bin Laden, the leader
of Al Qaeda. Well here is the reaction of by Rudy
Giuliani, the former mayor of New York who was the mayor of that city in 2001.
And after the killing of Osama Bin Laden he said the following.
He said he was a symbol more than anything else right now, but symbols
are important.
In the long run this will be very helpful to us in defeating Islamic terrorism.
In the long run, this is a much bigger step than people realize.
Why do many influential people think that decapitation works?
Well those who regard it as an effective strategy assume
that the successive terrorist organization highly depends on effective leadership.
So when you kill the leader, you will weaken the organization.
Well, this might be the case when a
leadership struggle occurs after the death of a leader.
An organization might
need to devote a lot of time and energy to choose a new
leader and at the same time they're not able to carry out a tax.
Or it's possble that they cannot find a new leader because others don't
have the right capabilites or the right amount of experience to do so.
And it could also be related to ideas and theories about Charismatic Leadership.
Some leaders, especially those of religiously inspired groups, play
a crucial role on explaining and safeguarding the groups ideology.
Leaders like Osama Bin Laden or the leader of the Japanese Aum Sect.
for instance, being perceived as highly charismatic and a hero to some.
Many people therefore think that it is very
effective to eliminate those leaders because it will destabilize
the organization, but it will also weaken its appeal.
Why is it important to investigate whether
or not decapitation of terrorist organizations works?
I mentioned that many influential people say it does
and must be practiced around the globe, but there
are serious legal and ethical sides to it, especially
when it, it, it concerns the killing of individuals.
That's why we need to evaluate the effectiveness.
Are terrorist
organizations indeed weakened because of the arrest
or killing of some of its leaders?
Or do they simply continue to exist, or even grow stronger?
And what about human rights?
Let us look into these questions with
the help of empirical evidence And academic literature.
Let me present a study by Jenna Jordan from 2009.
It has the interesting title, When Heads
Roll: Assessing the Effectiveness of Leadership Decapitation.
In this study she investigated 300 cases
of leadership decapitation between 1945 and 2004.
And she coded decapitation as a success, when the terrorist organization
was inactive for two years following that event.
And she says that the key elements in assessing the effectiveness of
that act are age of the group, size of the group and the type of the group.
And she found that the younger and smaller the groups the more often they are
destabilized and that older and larger groups face
less consequences.
Religiously inspired terrorist organizations seem to be more
or less resilient to decapitation according to Jordan.
Separatist groups remained active in almost
90% of decapitation cases where only a
third of ideologically ideological organizations such
as left wing and right wing organizations.
Are damaged by it.
And then, in general, in 17% of the cases. So
7% of the cases, decapitation led to the collapse of an organization.
Well, that sounds interesting.
But when comparing this figure with data of non-decapitated groups She finds out
that decapitated groups do not have a particular higher decline rate.
So she therefore concludes that decapitation
is not an effective counter-terrorism measure.
And she also lists a number of side
effects such as the strengthening of the group's resolve.
They grow stronger because of it.
results in retaliation, they are very angry because of it
and increased public, increase of public sympathy for the organization.
Well let's now have a look at a more recent study, the one by Brian Price.
In 2012, he said the following.
In Targeting Top Terrorists: How Leadership Decapitation Contributes
to Counterterrorism, he said that the measure has
a prominent place in many counterterrorism strategies and
he shows why this is actually a good thing.
Price starts with the literature review
on decapitation and he shows that most.
Academics say that is not effective or even counter-productive.
And he also argues that its mainly caused by the focus of the study, the relatively
shorm-, short-term effects, like Jordan's study, a time arising of two years.
He says that is too short, to really measure and appreciate
the impact of decapitation.
The theoretical argument is that decapitation of terrorist groups could
be successful, because terrorist organizations
are different from other organizations.
They are violent, clandestine and values-based.
Simply put, leader of these types of these
organizations, compared to nonviolent, profit based organizations, businesses,
etc... are more important.
They need to be friends as charismatic
and succession is more difficult, because of the
clandestine nature and the fact that personal characteristics,
and personal ideol, ideology cannot easily be replaced.
He then tested this theoretical argument to see
the effects of leadership decapitation on the mortality of
terrorist organizations.
And this led to six conclusions of which
the following four are the most striking ones.
Price observes that in the long run
decapitated groups have a significantly higher mortality rate
then non decapitated groups and it says that
although only 30% of the decapitated groups ended.
Within two years, which was the time
horizon of Jenna Jordan, he says that Indians, they have a significantly
higher mortality rate. And the earlier the leadership
decapitation occurs in the life cycle of that group, the more effective it will be.
And he also says that the size of
the group, doesn't have any impact on its duration.
And then finally, he says that religious terrorist
groups were less resilient and easier to
destroy than nationalist groups, which is very
much in line with his observation about the importance of leaders of these groups.
the leaders of these groups play an important role
in framing and in interpreting the organizational goals and strategies.
And this leads to the following conclusion.
Price says that,
states, that are willing to employ leadership decapitation.
As part of their counter terrorism strategy.
Should target terrorist group leaders as early as possible.
These are just two important examples of
studies that look into the effectiveness of decapitation.
The authors arrive at different conclusions.
Jordan says it's not effective, while Price says it is.
But both point at the importance to look
at the features of the organizations, the differences.
Between the organizations as it might have,
or it's important for potential effectiveness of
certain CT measures, in this case decapitation.
this might be the most important lesson we can draw from these two studies.
The success of decapitation, like many other measures, depends on the context.
It's context-dependent.
It might work in one case, it might backfire in another.
And there's certainly not one size
fits all solution.
Successful examples are the arrest of the leaders of Aum Sect in Japan and that of
the leader of the Shining Path in Peru and that of the Real Irish Republican Army.
But almost or entirely cease their terrorist
activities after their leaders were killed or captured.
But we also have unsuccessful examples and that includes
the decapitation attempts, for instance, by Israel of Hamas
and that of the Rote Armee Fraktion in Germany.
And then there are still one important aspect of this assumption that
has not been addressed so far and that's the human rights dimension.
This is particularly important dimension with regards to the
drone attacks that are frequently used by the United States
to in its war on terror.
To decapitate organizations like the Taliban and
Al Qaeda, and Al Qaeda related organizations.
Many high ranking leaders have been killed in these strikes.
Is it a success or not?
Can we just now simply measure what the effect is of the organization?
Will it seize, will it destabilize or not?
These drone strikes are not
without controversy, as civilians have been killed.
for instance, according to a highly critical report by
Stanford University and New York University and this report
also states that publicly available evidence that the strikes
have made United States safer overall is ambiguous at best.
It seems when determining the effectiveness
of decapitation, either by drones or whatever type of instrument,
we also need to know more about the short-term and
long-term negative side effects, and we should not only look
at simply at, will it destabilize an organization or not?
There's more to that.
The side effects are important.
To sum up.
There is a variety of reasons to
doubt the effectiveness of decapitation of terrorist organizations.
The success depends on the type of organizations that
are attacked, and the modus operandi that are used.
Are we talking about the arrests of leaders or
the killing of persons by way of drone attacks?
And of course it depends on how you measure success.
But
I guess in some cases.
Decapitation of terrorist organizations does work.
And that's why we label this as assumption as partly true.
But again, more research is needed. In the
next video, we
will investigate
the idea that, terrorism
cannot be defeated
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