Counter Terrorism; Counter Insurgency Is there an effective way to fight terrorism

Pure

Fiel a Verdad
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ALSO, a way that is in according to international law, shows some principle, and avoids total demolition of everything above and below ground.?

Shang suggest a go round on this, particular with reference to the claims that invading Iraq to counter terrorism is proving counterproductive.

Let me state some problems with formulating the question: An insurgency is an armed attempt to topple or seriously affect the gov't in power. Putting down an insurgency, then, is a way that one side, usually the ruling or occupying side, tries to deflate or demolish the other. There are military and economic approaches: shooting 'bandits' as compared to making sure the families in the insurgent area have adequate food, shelter, and amenities including safety.

A related question is the use of terrorism on non-battlefield, civilian targets, e.g., the 9-11 attacks, presumably on behalf of some cause elsewhere, e.g. restoring the Islamic Caliphate. The IRA bombing of Harrods.


So there are two questions: 1) does military might work? are there alternatives to military might to eliminate resistance? 2) is the military might, the counterinsurgency, a JUST undertaking (e.g. Chinese methods in Tibet; Russian methods in Chechnya).

Let me start the ball rolling by proposing a marxist, somewhat maoist perspective: Assuming an "insurgency" represents the people, the majority and real gains for them, it cannot be suppressed over the long run: An example is Algeria. Of course this rules out nuclear demolition; poison gas on a massive scale. etc. Mr. Lansdale and all his tactics simply cannot cope, no matter how skillful or "surgical"--as the US says-- are one's methods.

Counterinsurgency is largely a gimmick or a pipe dream, whose successes, absent massive slaughter (which always 'works) are as scarce as hens teeth, e.g. Malaysia, post WWII.

As to "international terrorism", if there is any one entity: fighting it with guns and bombs (Iraq) or police measures (Northern Ireland and England) is usually going to be an exercize in futility. In cases where there is no "Home Base," it's utterly unknown how to fight it.
 
I can't "assume" insurgency actually represents the people, because it rarely does. The vast majority of Iraq isn't fighting against occupation, it's a small number of terrorists that are getting their weapons and support from Iran (if the military is to be believed). They are rarely attacking US troops, choosing instead to blow up women and children at the market, Mosques, or funeral processions (and lets not forget police headquarters). People misrepresent them by saying they're fighting for their freedom, but they're not. You can't win their support because much like our own black helicopter crowd, they will refuse to see the truth, even if you rub their noses in it. If you beat them down, you give them justification for their paranoia and hatred.

This morning there was a report from Yemen about 7 tourists from Spain being blown up by a suicide bomber. Exactly how was the terrorist striking back at his evil oppressors? You have 5 year olds in a Hammas graduation weilding machine guns (possibly loaded), to the applause of the grown-ups. There is no winning this. Fighting it will take more than our lifetimes. People who believe you can reach them with reason or humanitarian support are wrong (and will find out in due time). People who believe you can blow them into the stone age are wrong (as we're finding out today). Part of it is stupid people, part of it is poverty, part of it is religion, part of it just pure old-fashioned human need for hating his brother.

It will take freedom and education to fix, things that have to be accepted by the people currently resisting them. You can't force them to accept it, so it will just take as much time as it takes. Mistakes will happen (like many of the blundered policies in Iraq), which will make it take that much longer. But there are no answers, no easy shortcuts.
 
Yes, there is a way to fight an insurgency. Britain managed to do it in Malaya, so I understand.

Quite simply, they fortified the villages in the country side, protecting the farmers from attack and denying the insurgency the supplies it needed. The people ended up being inclined to trust the British due to the protection and distrustful of the insurgents because the insurgents were hurting them.

The US did everything in Iraq to ensure an insurgency happened. In spite of their rhetoric about freedom they made it clear that Iraq was to be a colony of the U.S. Paul Bremer even said so in front of a business audience in the States. The Iraqis were no more inclined to be a colony of the States than the U.S. was inclined to be a colony of Britain 230 years ago.

They should have gotten in and left while allowing the UN, which has lots of experience rebuilding nations, to get to work. But since the chief reason for the Iraq invasion was to show that international law no longer applied to the U.S. that wasn't going to happen.

We should separate the insurgency in Iraq from international terrorism, although one might end up increasing the other.

The insurgency in Iraq is a pretty classic liberation war of an occupied people against its occupiers. International terrorism is a loose and small network of fanatics mounting operations designed for maximum media attention to frighten its opponents into meeting whatever political agenda the terrorists follow.

There's no hope for the coaloition against the insurgency short of genocide. Time to go and hope the Iraqis can piece themselves back together.

Against international terrorism the West should fall back to an intelligence war. They have to increase their assets that understand about the areas where terrorism exists. This will allow them to pick who isn't dangerous to the West, like the Chechens and the Tamil Tigers, from the truly dangerous such as Al Qaeda.

They should increase their assets on the ground in these areas. Western intelligence relies too much on high technology, which is of less use in a conflict such as this.

This will give them more warning of operations dangerous to them. They can head off the agents sent or recruited here. They can pressure or bribe governments in these areas to act against the networks, or allow for surgical strikes against training camps. Such low profile actions will also help reduce the resentment and anger that fuels terrorism.

Plus honest efforts to improve the lives of people in the areas where terrorism is spawned can do wonders as well.

As a line in a book I read recently says, "Trust me, turtle. Most people just want the shooting to stop. That's the way it always is."
 
to s des

reply to S Des

well, where a would-be 'insurgent' group is small, unrepresentive of the majority, different in some way (e.g. race), then it may well fail, e.g. in malaysia iirc there were ethnic divisions, with the insurgent more Chinese.
Che failed in Bolivia.

the Basques in Spain only managed to keep things simmering. but perhaps the Basque cause has gained.

here in Canada, the terrorist measures of the FLQ did not exactly "work", even in a French setting. but in some way, the crisis may have stimulated the political process.

by no means do i say i support all insurgencies.

here's a point alluded to by Shanglan. another case of failure is where insurgents get just too brutal for people. this is the error corresponding to the counterinsurgent error of large scale punishment of the general populace, e.g., moving them, destroying their homes.

the last case you mention, of some worldwide movement, is particularly hard to judge. people like ami seem to forget that Osama was not after occupying NYC. he wants US troops out of SA, and Islamic governments in the old Caliphate area, in a loose alliance or empire.
clearly that's a piecemeal issue, i.e., "islamists" [just like the communists of old] have to deal with their own countries, first.

how do you fight that? can you?

Further, should you? If the Tamil tigers stay in their country, why the f*** should the US get involved, esp in the name of "fighting terrorism."
NOT all terrorists, i say, are a problem for the US, ie a threat to its interests.
 
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When he struck at the Towers bin Laden did not want the U.S. out of the Middle East. He wanted them in.

Al Qaeda wanted to recreate the conditions of Afghanistan where the Soviets got their asses handed to them. And he succeeded.

Fighting against terrorism is much like fighting against the war on drugs. It can't be 'won'. What capital are we going to march into and force the government to sign a surrender? How can we strike against their industrial infrastructure?

To 'win' it we have to take away the reasons they are fighting, what ever they are. We may not be able to do that since they're fanatics who in many ways are fighting for and against a myth. Even if we do it's not something that's going to happen in the next year. Or ever probably. It took centuries to get to this point. It will take just as long to solve them.

The best we can do is be wary and be ready.
 
rgraham666 said:
To 'win' it we have to take away the reasons they are fighting, what ever they are. We may not be able to do that since they're fanatics who in many ways are fighting for and against a myth. Even if we do it's not something that's going to happen in the next year. Or ever probably. It took centuries to get to this point. It will take just as long to solve them.

The best we can do is be wary and be ready.

Mmmm. I think that's the nub of it, for me. It seems to me that ultimately, the only way for a force from outside a country to really put an end to a force generating itself inside the country (or at least receiving substantial support from within the country) is to make the vast majority of people not agree with the goals of the internal force. But how to do that and whether it can be done are thorny questions.

Too, though, I think it's important to consider power and technology. If the vast majority of the population wants peace and goodwill, a small but well-armed minority can still prevent that from happening for a very long time provided that they control most of the military hardware and don't care if they kill civilians. It's very difficult to reason with a machine gun. I listened to an Iraqi man speaking on NPR the other day, describing how his village, where Sunni and Shiite members had long lived peacably together, was invaded by a militia that began to torture and kill people of one sect (which, I cannot remember). Those of the other sect who tried to interfere met the same fate. Now the entire town is an Hell constructed by a small number of people who weren't from there to start with - but who have found terror an excellent means of looting anything they like. How one fixes situations like that when they are occurring in thousands of small towns at once is difficult to see.
 
Without wanting to sound hard hearted, that's not our concern. There's no way we can put the genie back in the bottle. The Iraqis have to find their own solution. I'm not sure they can.

We have even less chance than they do though.

The coalition will stay there though. It's like the old George Carlin joke about the sexual aspect of Vietnam. "'Pull out? That doesn't sound manly to me. Let's keep it in there and do its job.' Which is of course what we're doing to those people." :(
 
in response to Shang,

there are two aspects of the Iraq thing, to my mind. US occupation, and civil strife.

"terrorism" can be employed in either way, i.e., against Americans by both Sunnis and Shia, and against each other by the two Muslim groups.

"terror tactics" is thus a VERY broad subject. the idea of an "international, or multinational war on "terrorism" is hopelessy confused.

Shang said //the only way for a force from outside a country to really put an end to a force generating itself inside the country (or at least receiving substantial support from within the country) is to make the vast majority of people not agree with the goals of the internal force. But how to do that and whether it can be done are thorny questions. //

The problem is with "Make the vast majority of people not agree..."

An occupier arguably cannot do this.

There are some civil wars that have been solved by neutral intervention, i.e. Cyprus--still divided, no?

The "solution" to a given civil war follows no general formula. One or both sides wear themselves out. Sometimes one side does win. BUT if it's too harsh and unforgiving, or where it's a minority, one finds an "insurgency" may begin up the road.

====

at the lowest level is a "terror tactic": you blow up a landmark or a drinking spot, maybe one frequented by the enemy. you hang the "collaborating" mayor from a lamppost, or blow up a truck carrying police trainees (Iraq).

the question how to fight is, as rg says, perhaps a matter of intelligence.
AND popular support/acquiescence.

IF there's popular support, we reach the phase of an agenda by an organized group in a particular locality or region, one of whose tactics is terrorism, e.g. the Northern Irish Catholics.

As Shang and other have said, "fighting" this group means figuring out their agenda, AND *in some way* agreeing to it, or something close.
The Quebec terrorists and the Basque terrorist, iirc, fade when the political entity gets its agenda met. "The people" find enough concessions in the new 'status quo' and are tired of bombs and firefights.

It can be seen that IF al qaeda really is an international network** with a goal for the muslim world, i.e., dozens of countries, this is a political group that's different from above; it's more like "Comintern."

Arguably, however, just as in fighting "communism", fighting "islamist international terror groups" is really a bunch of specific localized engagements. The vague terms do not help, for talk of "fighting communism" in Viet Nam and Cuba is really setting up a muddle.

---
**It's possible that this is NOT the case; that 'al qaeda' is a slogan or umbrella under which a number of militant islamic groups link, in ideas, with one another; but each with a local agenda, e.g in Egypt, the entity wants a muslim state there.
 
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Well, there are so many different things lumped together here that it is difficult to come up with a blanket strategy.

Some of this may be obvious, but bear with me.

We fear most Islamic terrorists -- they are associated with an aim to establish Islamic regimes in various areas, or to attack the decadence of the West. But, even these come in two distinct flavors. Sunni and Shi'a. Not all Moslems are fundamentalists, not all fundamntalists are terrorists. And of course we have fundamentalists of the Christian, Jewish and Hindu variety who are just as crazed as the Moslem ones, though perhaps not as prone to violence.

We have seen terrible acts of violence and terror that have little to do with religion -- in Darfur, in Cambodia, in Rawanda. Some of these can be blamed on tribal conflicts. But I saw terrorists is the making in my college years -- SDS folks who became Weathermen and eventually blew themselves up trying to make bombs. Their lust for terror was purely abstract. Columbine is another example of this kind of random terror for its own sake.

The depressing conclusion -- people WANT to do evil, stupid things and they will do them eagerly given an excuse, or, sometimes, without one. Any cause that allows them to pillage, rape and torture will be adopted with great enthusiasm. The tremendous spread of a gang culture among our youth is just another example of the same thing.

How do you stop this? We are dealing with a fundamental "feature" of human nature. We are probably going to need to channel it -- and that may look pretty ugly, but not as ugly as the alternatives.
 
rgraham666 said:
The insurgency in Iraq is a pretty classic liberation war of an occupied people against its occupiers.
This is what I'm talking about. Exactly how do you explain the tactic of blowing up a mosque, a funeral procession, or a marketplace full of women and children as people fighting their oppressors (i.e. America)? You have "enemy combatants" coming in from countries all over the region, fighting for whatever the hell reason they're doing it, and they have nothing to do with Iraq (and their attacks kill Iraqi citizens in numbers vastly greater than they even try to target Americans). Trying to assign specific motives to these people is a joke. When an Islamic terrorist blew up a wedding reception in Saudi Arabia a few years ago, it would be quite a stretch to somehow find a way to blame it on us.

There have been plenty of US policies that have contributed to the problems in the Middle East. But this is not a localized problem. You can't say, "If Iraq gets under control, everything will get better". Liberals always try to use the excuse that it has to do with poverty, but it really doesn't. Exactly what does Bin Ladin have to do with poverty again? How about the terrorists in London, evidently many of whom are doctors (well educated and probably people who came from at least decently well-off families). There are no threads that connect these people, other than their need to hate someone. Whether it's us, Britain, Russia, Israel, or Muslims who don't look like them or believe exactly the way they do, these tactics are used again and again without any concern for who gets killed. This is not going to get better until it gets a lot worse.
 
Another previous "success" in the Philippines.

The US war in the Phillipines, beginning about 1899, is a "successful" counter insurgency. Odd how another "successful" counter insurgency was to be conducted 50 years later.


See the account at {a brief summary excerpt is given below}

http://www.wooster.edu/history/jgates/book-ch3.html


From Gates, "The US Army and Irregular Warfare, Ch. 3"


The war between the United States and the forces of the Philippine revolution began in 1899 and lasted over three years. Almost every unit of the U. S. Army served in the Philippines during the conflict, as well as a number of state and federal volunteers. Of some 125,000 Americans who fought in the Islands at one time or another, almost 4,000 died there.

Of the non-Muslim Filipino population, which numbered approximately 6,700,000, at least 34,000 lost their lives as a direct result of the war, and as many as 200,000 may have died as a result of the cholera epidemic at the war's end.

The U. S. Army's death rate in the Philippine-American War (32/1000) was the equivalent of the nation having lost over 86,000 (of roughly 2,700,000 engaged) during the Vietnam war instead of approximately 58,000 who were lost in that conflict. For the Filipinos, the loss of 34,000 lives was equivalent to the United States losing over a million people from a population of roughly 250 million, and if the cholera deaths are also attributed to the war, the equivalent death toll for the United States would be over 8,000,000. This war about which one hears so little was not a minor skirmish.
 
note to WR

people WANT to do evil, stupid things and they will do them eagerly given an excuse, or, sometimes, without one. Any cause that allows them to pillage, rape and torture will be adopted with great enthusiasm. The tremendous spread of a gang culture among our youth is just another example of the same thing.

i don't think that applies to most cases under discussion. at the level of "terrorist tactics" i'd say the common reason is pragmatic: they work, or are at least perceived to. i'd say this of Mc Veigh.


Let's look at a higher lever of organization: would you really call the 9-11 attack, "stupid" and just done without a reason because Osama's boys love killing?

roughly the same argument applies to larger terrorist efforts like the FLQ in Quebec and the IRA attack on Brit soldiers in N.I., and Brit civilians in the UK. while no significant military damage is afflicted [looking at the big picture], the "people" are tremendously affected -- heck, in the US, they came to believe George Bush could and would protect the US from further attacks by invading and subduing Iraq, known homebase of the 9-11 hijackers.

to complete the thought, where people are affected, their "will" to war and their judgements are influenced, inter alia.

==revised Wed 4:25 pm EST
 
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"The way to end terrorism is to stop participating in it."

~ Noam Chomsky
 
must be reading my mind: can it be truthfully said that the US carries out--or furthers, sponsors, directs, condones-- acts of terrorism? and the same for the advanced West generally (England, France, Germany...)?

somehow the name Lumumba comes to mind.

would sponsoring or aiding or training assassins agaisnt Castro count as terrorism?

ADDED: Broader question: Can the US be correctly said to be working to oppose "interantional terrorism"? Or does it merely pick and choose WHICH terrorists to go after [or pay someone else to go after], and which others are to be left alone or even aided [no doubt as 'freedom fighters']?

==
Factoid of the Day [NYT]: The number of US-paid "contractors" in Iraq now exceeds the number of troops.
 
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Pure said:
must be reading my mind: can it be truthfully said that the US carries out--or furthers, sponsors, directs, condones-- acts of terrorism? and the same for the advanced West generally (England, France, Germany...)?

somehow the name Lumumba comes to mind.

would sponsoring or aiding or training assassins agaisnt Castro count as terrorism?

ADDED: Broader question: Can the US be correctly said to be working to oppose "interantional terrorism"? Or does it merely pick and choose WHICH terrorists to go after [or pay someone else to go after], and which others are to be left alone or even aided [no doubt as 'freedom fighters']?

==
Factoid of the Day [NYT]: The number of US-paid "contractors" in Iraq now exceeds the number of troops.

Here is something about Lumumba:
http://www.africawithin.com/lumumba/who_killed_lumumba.htm

Personally, I would say that the murder or assassination of a specific person, especially a national leader would not be defined as terrorism. John Wilkes Booth and Lee Harvey Oswald were not terrorists.

The diffference between a terrorist and a freedom fighter is a matter of tactics. The French Underground in the forties killed Germans and those who collaborated with the Germans. They were freedom fighters. If they had blown up churches and cathedrals and schools and markets, killing Frenchmen at random, they would have been terrorists. :cool:
 
thanks for the ref, box. i appreciate your respect for facts.

i'd agree every assassination of an official, e.g. of Lincoln, is not usefully designated 'terrorist,' but some seem to be, based on the political intent and the organization behind the assassination.

in Vietnam mayors were executed; i believe some chiefs of police have been executed in Iraq. the IRA once tried to blow up the hotel where Thatcher was staying, and they did get one high Brit Official, Mountbatten, in 1979 by blowing up his boat.

yet i would not say the Hitler assassination plot was 'terrorism'; in general i don't want to say every nasty violent act is "terrorist"; nor agree with some who claim destruction of property may be "terrorism." i suppose idea is that the intent, in terrorism, is to intimidate the public or make it accede to certain political demands, e.g. independence for the Basque nation.
 
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S-Des said:
[snip]
There have been plenty of US policies that have contributed to the problems in the Middle East. But this is not a localized problem. You can't say, "If Iraq gets under control, everything will get better". Liberals always try to use the excuse that it has to do with poverty, but it really doesn't. Exactly what does Bin Ladin have to do with poverty again? How about the terrorists in London, evidently many of whom are doctors (well educated and probably people who came from at least decently well-off families). There are no threads that connect these people, other than their need to hate someone. Whether it's us, Britain, Russia, Israel, or Muslims who don't look like them or believe exactly the way they do, these tactics are used again and again without any concern for who gets killed. This is not going to get better until it gets a lot worse.
I don't think the 'liberal' position is to reflexively blame poverty. Rather, I would say the common thread is alienation from societies. In that sense, poverty is just one possible cause out of many that also includes the perceived injustice towards a certain class or religion of people. Terrorism is the extreme reaction by people who have come to believe that they have no participation in the society they live in, whether in political or cultural terms. Thus, school shooters are terrorists at one end of a spectrum of non-participants in the dominant social order, who use terrorist tactics to undermine or overthrow it. Or simply to lash out against it in suicidal rage, believing their cause to be larger than the value of their own life.

If one accepts that terrorism is a tactic employed across a spectrum of differing rejections of societal circumstances, it would follow that to counter 'terrorism', one needs to adapt one's strategy to the particular conditions under which it arises.
 
Terrorism is the extreme reaction by people who have come to believe that they have no participation in the society they live in, whether in political or cultural terms.

how do the UK doctors fit into this pattern?
 
some of the official US defs. are they satisfactory?

1.U.S. Code of Federal Regulations: "...the unlawful use of force and violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives" (28 C.F.R. Section 0.85).

2.Current U.S. national security strategy: "premeditated, politically motivated violence against innocents."

3.United States Department of Defense: the "calculated use of unlawful violence to inculcate fear; intended to coerce or intimidate governments or societies in pursuit of goals that are generally political, religious, or ideological."

4.The U.S. National Counter Terrorism Center (NCTC) described a terrorist act as one which was: "premeditated; perpetrated by a subnational or clandestine agent; politically motivated, potentially including religious, philosophical, or culturally symbolic motivations; violent; and perpetrated against a noncombatant target." [2]
---
A couple comments:

1. The word "unlawful" is a fatal problem for def 1.

2. For def 4, particularly interesting is the characteristic "subnational"; this rules out state terrorism.
 
Separating Terrorism from War is easy.

If bad people perform acts of violence against people, it's terrorism.

If good people do it, it's war.

Simple. ;) :devil:
 
Pure said:
Terrorism is the extreme reaction by people who have come to believe that they have no participation in the society they live in, whether in political or cultural terms.

how do the UK doctors fit into this pattern?

How does Bin Laden fit into it? He is, or was, quite rich, but he was never any part of the Western society, in order for him to be an outcast.

Timothy McVeigh wrongheadedly avenged the deaths at Waco. He was never actually an outcast, although he was a member of a splinter group that might have felt like outcasts. Islamist terrorists come from a wide spectrum of society, with the only thing in common their religious fanaticism.
 
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