Strategic Studies Institute

U.S. Army War College, Carlisle, PA

The Military’s Role in 

Counterterrorism: 

Examples and Implications 

for Liberal Democracies

Geraint Hughes

Letort The

Papers

Visit our website for other free publication 

downloads

http://www.StrategicStudiesInstitute.army.mil/

To rate this publication click here.
The

Letort Papers

In the early 18th century, James Letort, an explorer 

and fur trader, was instrumental in opening up the 

Cumberland Valley to settlement. By 1752, there was 

a garrison on Letort Creek at what is today Carlisle 

Barracks, Pennsylvania. In those days, Carlisle Barracks 

lay at the western edge of the American colonies. It was 

a bastion for the protection of settlers and a departure 

point for further exploration. Today, as was the case 

over two centuries ago, Carlisle Barracks, as the home of 

the U.S. Army War College, is a place of transition and 

transformation.

In the same spirit of bold curiosity that compelled the 

men and women who, like Letort, settled the American 

West, the Strategic Studies Institute (SSI) presents The 

Letort Papers. This series allows SSI to publish papers, 

retrospectives, speeches, or essays of interest to the 

defense academic community which may not correspond 

with our mainstream policy-oriented publications.

If you think you may have a subject amenable to 

publication in our Letort Paper series, or if you wish 

to comment on a particular paper, please contact Dr. 

Antulio J. Echevarria II, Director of Research, U.S. Army 

War College, Strategic Studies Institute, 632 Wright Ave, 

Carlisle, PA 17013-5046. The phone number is (717) 245-

4058; e-mail address is antulio.echevarria@us.army.mil. 

We look forward to hearing from you.
Letort Paper

THE MILITARY’S ROLE IN 

COUNTERTERRORISM:

EXAMPLES AND IMPLICATIONS

FOR LIBERAL DEMOCRACIES

Geraint Hughes

May 2011

The views expressed in this report are those of the author and do 

not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Joint 

Services Command and Staff College, the United Kingdom (UK) 

Ministry of Defence, or any other UK government agency, the 

U.S. Department of the Army, the U.S. Department of Defense, 

or the U.S. Government. Authors of Strategic Studies Institute 

(SSI) publications enjoy full academic freedom, provided they do 

not disclose classified information, jeopardize operations security, or misrepresent official U.S. policy. Such academic freedom 

empowers them to offer new and sometimes controversial perspectives in the interest of furthering debate on key issues. This 

report is cleared for public release; distribution is unlimited.

*****

This publication is subject to Title 17, United States Code, Sections 101 and 105. It is in the public domain and may not be copyrighted.
ii

*****

Comments pertaining to this report are invited and should

be forwarded to: Director, Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army 

War College, 632 Wright Ave, Carlisle, PA 17013-5046. 

*****

The author owes his thanks for critical input from and conversations with colleagues within the Defence Studies Department (DSD) of King’s College London, in particular Drs. Tim 

Bird, Huw Bennett, Katherine Brown, Warren Chin, Tracey German, Jon Hill, Bill Park, Kenneth Payne, Patrick Porter, Christian 

Tripodi, and Rachel Vincent. He has also derived immense benefit from the staff and students at the Joint Services Command 

and Staff College (JSCSC), both from the British armed forces and 

from several foreign services with whom he has had the pleasure 

of teaching and working with over the past 5 years. 

The Military’s Role in Counterterrorism has been written for 

both a professional military and a nonspecialist civilian readership. Readers should note that with certain languages (such as 

Arabic and Urdu), there is no standard method of transliteration 

into English. The author’s rendition of certain names and phrases 

therefore may not match those employed by his sources (for example, the author uses “al-Qaeda” rather than “al-Qaida,” and 

“Qasab” rather than “Kasab”). All material cited in this paper is 

in the public domain, and any factual errors in the text that have 

escaped the author’s attention are his own responsibility.

This Letort Paper is humbly dedicated to the memory of all

Coalition military and civil affairs personnel killed on operations 

in Afghanistan since October 2001.

*****

All Strategic Studies Institute (SSI) publications may be

downloaded free of charge from the SSI website. Hard copies of 

this report may also be obtained free of charge while supplies last 

by placing an order on the SSI website. The SSI website address 

is: www.StrategicStudiesInstitute.army.mil.
iii

*****

The Strategic Studies Institute publishes a monthly e-mail

newsletter to update the national security community on the research of our analysts, recent and forthcoming publications, and 

upcoming conferences sponsored by the Institute. Each newsletter also provides a strategic commentary by one of our research 

analysts. If you are interested in receiving this newsletter, please 

subscribe on the SSI website at www.StrategicStudiesInstitute.

army.mil/newsletter/.

ISBN 1-58487-489-9

v

CONTENTS

Foreword ........................................................... vii

About the Author.................................................xi.

Summary ........................................................... xiii.

Maps .................................................................... xv.

Introduction ..........................................................1.

Is Terrorism A Military

Problem? ..............................................................13.

The Military’s Role In

Counterterrorism ................................................37

Problems Arising From Military 

Involvement in Counterterrorism—

The International Context ..................................58.

Problems Arising From Military

Involvement in Counterterrorism—

The Domestic Context ........................................87.

Conclusions ........................................................120

Endnotes .............................................................143.

Glossary and Abbreviations.............................185.

Military Operations Cited in the Text.............203.

vii

FOREWORD

On the morning of September 11, 2001 (9/11), 

al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked four passenger aircraft, 

crashing three of them into the World Trade Center in 

New York City and the Pentagon in Washington, DC, 

killing up to 3,000 people in the process. Just under 3 

years later, a group of predominantly Chechen gunmen took over School Number One in Beslan, North 

Ossetia, beginning a siege that ended with the death 

of nearly 400, including 156 children. On the evening 

of November 26, 2008, 10 members of Lashkar-e-Toiba 

(LET) began a series of bomb and gun attacks in the 

Indian city of Mumbai, killing more than 170 people 

over a 48-hour period. For Americans, Russians, and 

Indians, each of these attacks was warlike in its proportions and, after each, popular and political opinion 

demanded a militarized response.

Dr. Geraint Hughes’s Letort Paper reminds us 

that in repeated cases in which liberal democratic 

states have used their armed forces to fight terrorism-

-notably Israel against successive Palestinian groups, 

Britain in Northern Ireland from 1969-98, or indeed 

America and its allies against al-Qaeda and affiliated 

groups currently--the employment of military means 

in counterterrorism has been inherently controversial. 

As Audrey Kurth Cronin notes, terrorism picks at the 

vulnerable seam between domestic law and foreign 

war, and conceptually it does not fit the paradigms of 

either criminality or warfare.1

 Although a particular 

state or a coalition of powers may use its militaries 

to protect its citizens in counterterrorist campaigns, 

the threat posed by specific terrorist groups has to be 
viii

treated sui generis, and the applicability of military 

means in counterterrorism depends on a series of 

factors--these include whether the terrorist threat is a 

domestic or an international one, the lethality of the 

groups concerned, and the threat they pose to state 

stability. Furthermore, the involvement of armed forces in counterterrorism can be problematic. One has 

only to look at the post-2001 “War on Terror” and the 

criticisms expressed by foreign governments, members of Congress, human rights activists, journalists, 

and academics regarding the treatment of detainees at 

Guantanamo Bay, Cuba; the use of unmanned aerial 

vehicles (UAVs) in air-strikes in Pakistan; and the civilian casualties caused by U.S. and North Atlantic 

Treaty Organization (NATO) military operations in 

Afghanistan.

Dr. Hughes examines the challenges of deploying 

the military in counterterrorism from both a historical 

and a contemporary perspective, outlining not only 

the specific roles that armed forces can perform either 

to prevent terrorist attacks or to mitigate their consequences, but also the strategic, constitutional, practical, diplomatic, and ethical problems that have arisen 

from a variety of counterterrorist campaigns, be they 

in Palestine, Northern Ireland, Quebec, Kashmir, Afghanistan, Pakistan, or the North Caucasus. Clausewitz reminds us that in “war everything is simple, but 

the simplest thing is difficult,”2

 and this observation is 

as true of counterterrorism as it is of interstate warfare. 

For example, the British Army interned Republican 

terrorist suspects in Northern Ireland from 1971-75, 

gaining valuable intelligence about the United Kingdom’s (UK) adversaries, but this policy also enraged 
ix

the Catholic community and poisoned relations between the UK and the Republic of Ireland. The Israeli 

Defense Force (IDF) has used targeted killings against 

the leaderships of Fatah, Hamas, and Hezbollah, but has 

been unable to translate tactical-level successes into 

outcomes that serve Israel’s overall strategic objective, 

which is a regional peace settlement that gives the Jewish state recognition and security from its neighbors.

As is the case with other democracies, America’s 

Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines are trained in 

the application of controlled and discriminate violence. Current operations in Iraq and Afghanistan 

have demonstrated repeatedly that whenever the U.S. 

military confronts irregular adversaries that conceal 

themselves within a civilian population, it is both 

ethically important and strategically sound to employ 

force with precision, and in such a manner as to minimize casualties among the wider populace. Members 

of the armed forces are also required to be accountable 

for their actions and to ensure that their operations are 

coordinated with those of civilian governmental agencies, host nation officials, and other allied powers. The 

challenges posed by the current “Long War” are many 

and, as Hughes observes, Western civilian and military officials have the hard task of resolving the dilemma facing all democratic states confronted by terrorism; namely, how they fight this threat and protect 

their citizens without undermining the constitutional, 

legal, and normative characteristics upon which government by consent is founded. In this respect, this 

paper is required reading for military practitioners 

and scholars who wish to develop an informed un-
x

derstanding of the complexities of counterterrorism, 

which will be a source of considerable deliberation 

within our defense establishment and those of allied 

countries for the foreseeable future.

DOUGLAS C. LOVELACE, JR.

 Director

Strategic Studies Institute

ENDNOTES - FOREWORD

1. Audrey Kurth Cronin, How Terrorism Ends: Understanding 

the Decline and Demise of Terrorist Campaigns, Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009, p. 116. 

2. Carl von Clausewitz, On War, Michael Howard and Peter 

Paret, eds. and trans., Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 

1984, p. 119.
xi

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

GERAINT HUGHES is a lecturer with the Defence 

Studies Department, King’s College London, and has 

taught at the Joint Services Command and Staff College, Shrivenham, United Kingdom, since July 2005. 

He served with the Territorial Army between June 

1999 and April 2005, and was deployed on an operational tour with British forces in Southeastern Iraq 

between May and November 2004. His research interests include contemporary land warfare, the use of the 

military in counterterrorism and counterinsurgency, 

and proxy war. His second book, My Enemy’s Enemy: 

Proxy Warfare in International Politics, is due to be published by Sussex Academic Press in 2012.

xiii

SUMMARY

In the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 (9/11) 

attacks, the U.S. Government was criticized for adopting a militaristic response to the threat posed by alQaeda and affiliated groups. As the Israeli-Palestinian 

conflict and that in Northern Ireland demonstrate, 

any liberal democracy that uses its armed forces to 

combat terrorism will incur controversy both domestically and internationally. The use of military power 

in counterterrorism is contentious, because historical 

and contemporary examples suggest that it can have 

the following negative strategic, political, and ethical 

effects: The state can generate indigenous resentment 

that terrorist groups can exploit, and can, by resorting 

to military force, kill or maim a substantial number of 

civilians. It can also encourage human rights abuses 

that are antithetical to the norms of a liberal democracy--such as the maltreatment and torture of detainees 

--and can (as demonstrated by Uruguay in 1973 and 

Russia currently) lead to the subversion of the constitutional order and its replacement by authoritarian 

rule. 

While addressing these criticisms, this Letort Paper also argues that there are contingencies in which 

democratic states are obliged to employ military 

means in order to protect their citizens from the threat 

of terrorism, whether in a purely domestic context or 

when facing a transnational terrorist network such 

as al-Qaeda. While outlining the specific roles that 

armed forces can perform (including hostage rescue, 

military aid to the civil authority, interdiction, and 

intelligence-gathering), this paper also describes the 

strategic, political, diplomatic, and ethical challenges 

that arise from using military means to fight terror-
xiv

ism either on one’s home soil or in the international 

arena. This paper’s principal conclusion is that democratic governments can use their armed forces if the 

existing police/judicial framework cannot address 

the threat posed by terrorists, but that military means 

have to be integrated as part of an overarching strategy to contain terrorism and to limit the capacity of its 

practitioners to conduct attacks against citizens. The 

author also outlines a series of questions that civilian 

decisionmakers should ideally resolve prior to turning counterterrorism missions over to their military 

counterparts.
xv

MAPS

The four maps are provided courtesy of the University Libraries of the University of Texas, Austin, 

Texas. The photograph comes from the author’s own 

collection.
xvi

Map 1. Northern Ireland.
xvii

Map 2. Chechnya and Neighboring Russian 

Republics.
xviii

Map 3. Israel, the Gaza Strip, and the West Bank.
xix

Map 4. The FATA, Pakistan.

1

THE MILITARY’S ROLE IN 

COUNTERTERRORISM:

EXAMPLES AND IMPLICATIONS

FOR LIBERAL DEMOCRACIES

INTRODUCTION

During an official visit to Mumbai, India, on January 15, 2009, British Foreign Secretary David Miliband 

delivered a speech which essentially condemned the 

counterterrorism policy the United States had adopted in the aftermath of al-Qaeda’s attacks on New 

York City and Washington, DC, on September 11, 

2001 (9/11). Miliband declared that “[the] belief that 

the correct response to the terrorist threat was a military one: to track down and kill a hardcore of extremists” was “misleading and mistaken,” and his criti-
2

cisms reflected the widespread view of the Western 

center-left that the War on Terror declared by former 

President George W. Bush had been entirely counterproductive.1

 Domestic political opponents accused the 

then-Foreign Secretary of cowardice and opportunism; Miliband did, after all, have plenty of opportunities to publicly express his concerns about American 

counterterrorist policy well before the end of the Bush 

administration’s tenure in office. Yet the majority of 

critics missed the key flaw in his speech, namely the 

stark contrast between his comments and the venue 

chosen for their delivery, the Taj Mahal hotel.2

This hotel was one of the five targets selected by 

the 10 heavily-armed Pakistani terrorists from Lashkar 

e-Toiba (LET) who conducted a sea-borne assault on 

Mumbai on November 26, 2008. The Taj Mahal, like 

the Trident Oberoi and the Leopold Café, had been 

chosen by LET (a jihadi group originally set up by 

the Pakistani Army to fight as insurgents in Kashmir) because they were patronized by Western tourists. But the attackers also chose Nariman House (a 

cultural center for the city’s Jewish community) and 

the Chhatrapati Shivaji train station, where many of 

their victims were commuters returning home from 

work. Over the course of 3 days, the LET terrorists 

killed over 170 people in a series of grenade and gun 

attacks at these locations, causing pandemonium and 

overwhelming the inadequately-armed and poorlytrained police. As one group of analysts noted after 

the event, the civil authorities in Mumbai were simply 

unable to cope with a terrorist atrocity that was unprecedented in scale and scope:

[The LET raid] was sequential and highly mobile. 

Multiple teams attacked several locations at once—
3

combining armed assaults, carjackings, drive-by 

shootings, prefabricated IEDs [Improvised Explosive 

Devices], targeted killings (of policemen and selected 

foreigners), building takeovers, and barricade and 

hostage situations.3

All these tactics had been implemented in previous terrorist attacks; what was unique in this instance 

was their combination. From November 26-29, Mumbai was essentially subjected to a commando raid, albeit one directed against civilian rather than military 

targets, and it required the intervention of the Indian 

Army and Special Forces to quell the LET attackers. 

Miliband not only demonstrated questionable judgment in choosing the Taj Mahal as the venue for his 

homily, but the reality of what had happened at the 

hotel—not to mention the city as a whole—suggested 

that there would be circumstances in which states 

would have no option but to adopt a military response 

to terrorism.4

Furthermore, Miliband’s implicit expectation that 

the new U.S. President would repudiate his predecessor’s apparently discredited policies were disabused 

by the continuation of the Predator Unmanned Aerial 

Vehicle (UAV) strikes into the Federally Administered 

Tribal Areas (FATA) of Northwest Pakistan, and also 

by President Barack Obama’s speech on U.S. policy 

toward Afghanistan and Pakistan on March 27, 2009. 

Although President Obama avoided the contentious 

phrase “War on Terror,” the substance of his speech 

differed little from those made by his predecessor. 

He asserted that a U.S.-North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) victory in Afghanistan was essential 

to defeat the radical Islamist ideology that inspired 

al-Qaeda, and to forestall any future mass casualty 
4

atrocities by its adherents. Furthermore, although 

Obama outlined a policy of fostering socioeconomic 

development to remove the causes of internal strife in 

both Afghanistan and Pakistan, he still emphasized 

the military contribution to stabilizing both countries, 

stressing that “we will use all elements of our national 

power to defeat al-Qaeda and to defend America, our 

allies, and all who seek a better future.”5

 The following November, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton expressed the U.S. objective in Afghanistan, which was 

to ”dismantle, eradicate and defeat those who attacked 

us [on 9/11].”6 President Obama reiterated his aim 

of defeating al-Qaeda in late-March 2010 while addressing U.S. troops in Afghanistan, and the following month he announced that the Central Intelligence 

Agency (CIA) and the U.S. military had received his 

authorization to kill Anwar al-Awlaki, an Americanborn radical cleric thought to be hiding in Yemen.7

Counterterrorism is therefore as much a priority for 

the current U.S. administration as it was for its Republican predecessors, and has retained its military aspect. According to press reports, Obama has opted to 

bolster the parts of the U.S. defense budget that are of 

direct relevance to the Long War (notably the budget 

for U.S. Special Operations Command—increasing it 

from $9bn in 2010 to $9.8bn in 2011—and assistance to 

foreign militaries, raised from $350m in 2010 to $500m 

in 2011).8

On the other side of the Atlantic, Miliband’s 

own colleague—then-Defence Secretary John Hutton—further undermined his arguments in a speech 

in late-April 2009, which advocated a “rebalancing 

of investment [within the United Kingdom’s (UK) 

armed forces] in technology, equipment and people 

to meet the challenge of irregular warfare,” notably 
5

terrorism, and increased attention to Special Forces 

and other assets that could be employed in this task.9

Although it remains to be seen whether this aspect of 

Labour policy will influence the forthcoming Strategic 

Defence and Security Review (SDSR) initiated by its 

Conservative-Liberal coalition successor, it is evident 

that both the U.S. and British governments still consider that counterterrorist policy requires a significant 

military input.10

The decade since 9/11 has seen a prolonged debate 

within the Western world—incorporating politicians, 

the professional military, academics, and the media—concerning what British political scientist Norman Geras wryly refers to as FKATWOT (“Formerly 

Known as the War on Terror”).11 The revulsion shown 

by critics toward the essential idea of a war against 

terrorism is understandable, given the manner in 

which the Bush administration (with British compliance) used 9/11 as one of the pretexts for the invasion 

of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, not to mention revelations 

about the treatment of suspected terrorists held in 

Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and CIA black prisons, in addition to those delivered by extraordinary rendition 

to Middle Eastern countries where the local security 

forces systematically torture prisoners.12 Furthermore, 

the policies of the Bush administration (in addition 

to those associated with former British Prime Minister Tony Blair) have both antagonized Muslim opinion worldwide and raised concerns about the state of 

civil liberties in both the United States and the United 

Kingdom (UK).13

As Ahmed Rashid has rightly pointed out, U.S. 

declarations of counterterrorist policy placed insufficient emphasis on the need for other policies to fight 

Islamic extremism. These included the requirement 
6

for political, economic, and social reforms within 

Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Yemen, and other countries 

where al-Qaeda has associated itself with local Islamist militants.14 David Kilcullen also notes that the 

Bush administration’s extravagant rhetoric inherently 

associated al-Qaeda with other Islamist groups such 

as Hezbollah and Hamas, thereby not only embroiling 

the United States in a protracted conflict with a multitude of foes (including many not actually aligned with 

Osama bin Laden), but also contributing to al-Qaeda’s 

propaganda claim that the War on Terror was in fact 

a war against Islam. In this respect, Obama’s conciliatory speech at Cairo University on June 4, 2009, was 

intended to repair some of the damage done to the 

U.S. reputation within the Muslim world by the previous administration’s rhetoric and policies.15

These are all pertinent criticisms of the direction of 

American (and allied) counterterrorist policies since 

2001, but there are also journalists and scholars who 

argue that all military responses to terrorism are inherently illegitimate and conceptually flawed.16 Take 

George Kassimeris’s statement that “[the] real War on 

Terror ought to be fought by means of effective police work and intelligence and a genuine hearts and 

minds campaign to separate the terrorists from the 

communities where they derive their support.”17 This 

is undoubtedly the ideal, and it certainly represents 

the model applied by West European governments 

combating domestic extremism. However, policing, 

public relations, and community outreach could not 

address the problem posed by al-Qaeda’s symbiotic 

relationship with Taliban-ruled Afghanistan from 

1996 to 2001. The idea that post-9/11 Osama bin Laden 

and the thousands of well-armed and trained fighters 

under his command could have been quashed with-
7

out resort to military force is absurd, given that diplomatic efforts to persuade the Taliban regime to expel 

al-Qaeda and cease providing it with a sanctuary had 

all come to naught. After Mumbai, it is also clear that 

when a small, indoctrinated, and well-armed group is 

able to infiltrate a major city and launch lethal attacks 

against its citizens, normal policing measures simply 

do not work. Both these cases show that there may 

be contingencies in which a government (or governments) has no choice but to involve armed forces in 

the defense of states and their societies against a terrorist organization, and to argue otherwise is to argue 

in the face of reality.18

The employment of the military in counterterrorism has been examined before, but this subject requires 

a more up-to-date analysis.19 In order to begin to comprehend this issue, scholars need to understand the 

historical background as well as the challenges posed 

by contemporary counterterrorism. Any analysis of 

this subject is complicated by the fact that terrorism often co-exists with other forms of internal conflict, and 

in practice it is often difficult to distinguish between 

counterterrorism and counterinsurgency (COIN). 

Furthermore, terrorism can also be a by-product of 

intense civil strife, as was the case with Lebanon between 1975 and 1990, and Somalia currently.20

The confusion between insurgency and terrorism 

is not helped by willful acts of conflation, such as the 

Bush administration’s insistence that the invasion and 

occupation of Iraq was part of the War on Terror.21 It 

is for this reason that, aside from specific examples 

which may be relevant in future contingencies, this 

paper will not cover the consequences of Operation 

IRAQI FREEDOM, or the course of U.S. and Coalition 

operations in Iraq since the spring of 2003. The author 
8

also does not discuss the war in Afghanistan in any 

great detail, except with reference to specific aspects 

of Operation EDURING FREEDOM that are relevant 

to the debate about military contributions to counterterrorism. A prime example (covered in the concluding chapter) is the debate within the Obama administration as to whether the U.S. military can reduce 

its commitment from the current COIN campaign in 

Afghanistan to a more restrictive focus, using UAVs, 

Special Forces, and indigenous tribal allies to cripple 

al-Qaeda and to eradicate its operatives.22

Readers also need to bear in mind the historical 

trends that have shaped terrorism as an international 

phenomenon over the past 50 years. These include 

decolonization, the end of the Cold War, the process 

of democratization (most notably in Eastern Europe, 

the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics [USSR], 

Turkey, Pakistan, Indonesia, and Latin America), and 

also the transition from old to new terrorism. The latter is a particularly worrying trend for those scholars 

and policymakers who grew accustomed to the idea 

that the violence inflicted by terrorists was limited by 

the latter’s overall objectives, and whose experiences 

were shaped by an era in which the Enniskillen and 

Omagh bombings in Northern Ireland (1987 and 1998, 

respectively) could be classified as mass casualty attacks. Recent experience—notably that of Chechnya—

shows that terrorism can also have a negative effect 

on the process of democratization, retarding political 

reform and ultimately assisting the return of authoritarianism, as has been evident in Russia under former 

President, and current Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.23

As far as research methodology is concerned, 

there are limitations in the prevailing metrics-based 
9

approach employed by political scientists. The accumulation of data sets and their statistical analysis take 

scholars only so far, and run a clear risk of sacrificing contextual understanding for reductionist assessments. In certain cases, verifiable data are a rare commodity; readers will see this for themselves in the third 

section, with reference to the varying estimates on the 

number of al-Qaeda and Taliban militants accounted 

for by Predator strikes in the FATA. One of the principal points of this paper is that the use of military force 

can only be envisaged in given circumstances, and 

that in adverse political and social conditions it can 

have a deleterious effect. For example, it is commonly 

believed that for the government side to win a counterterrorist campaign its security forces must outnumber its adversary by at least 10:1. Kilcullen reminds 

us that during the Cyprus emergency of 1955-59, the 

British Army outnumbered the Ethniki Organosi Kyprion Agoniston (EOKA) by 110:1. Yet the latter won, 

largely because it gained the passive support of the 

Greek Cypriot majority, and also because the British 

government lacked the will to conduct a campaign of 

unrestricted repression against the civilian populace, 

given domestic and international pressure in favor of 

self-determination and independence from colonial 

rule. The Cyprus example shows that if scholars and 

practitioners studying terrorism are to use history as 

an educational tool, they will need to understand the 

varying factors and developments that made the difference between the successful use of military means 

and failure.24

This paper will therefore address both the potential utility and the pitfalls of employing armed forces 

in counterterrorist roles, taking recent historical and 

contemporary examples from liberal democratic states 
10

(mainly, but not exclusively, the United States and 

UK), and also democratizing ones (notably the Russian Federation and Turkey). This is not to say that 

nondemocratic states can offer no useful examples for 

counterterrorism as a whole. For example, the Saudi 

authorities have attracted favorable attention for 

their deradicalization program, in which imams deindoctrinate imprisoned jihadis prior to their release 

and reintegration into society.25 However, the military 

record of nondemocratic states fighting terrorism is 

invariably a dismal one. The mailed-fist approach that 

characterized President Islam Karimov’s fight against 

the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) since the 

mid-1990s has only inspired further support for Islamism in Uzbekistan and its neighbors.26 The dirtywar methods employed by certain Latin American 

states and apartheid South Africa during the 1970s 

and 1980s (incorporating death squads, “disappearances,” and the extra-judicial killings of peaceful dissenters) also offer negative examples that democracies 

should avoid, not just because they are unethical, but 

because they also undermine the legal foundations 

upon which a government’s legitimacy and credibility 

with its citizens are founded.27

There are limitations to the scope of this paper 

that the author acknowledges, most notably that it 

does not examine in any detail the troubled state of 

the U.S./NATO campaign in Afghanistan (in particular, the controversial circumstances behind General Stanley McChrystal’s dismissal in June 2010). It 

is not the author’s intention to write a guide on how 

to win in Afghanistan or how to win the Long War. It 

is important to emphasize here that the United States 

and other partners may prevail in a COIN campaign, 

without necessarily achieving a strategic success in 
11

counterterrorism. Likewise, states may achieve positive results in thwarting terrorist attacks in their own 

countries without addressing the sources of instability overseas—a prime example here being the series of 

terrorist plots thwarted by the British police and MI5 

since 2006, and the impotence of the UK authorities 

in countering the training of British-Muslim militants 

in Pakistan. As Thomas Rid and Thomas Keaney observe, “succeeding against an insurgency and succeeding against specific terrorists that are part of a wider 

global ideological movement may be two different 

things.” As noted in the conclusion, the debate over 

counterterrorism and COIN in Afghanistan rests on 

two completely different strategic calculations as to 

what Operation ENDURING FREEDOM is supposed 

to achieve.28

There is also a risk that current debates on terrorism will be focused almost exclusively with reference 

to al-Qaeda and affiliated groups. It would be foolish 

to rule out a resurgence of ethno-nationalist or politically extremist terror in future decades, which is why 

this manuscript examines historical cases with reference to groups such as the Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA), Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (Basque 

Homeland and Liberty in Spain [ETA]), Fatah (the 

Movement for the National Liberation of Palestine), 

and the Red Army Faction.29 The key point here is that 

political and strategic calculations provide the context 

in which military means are employed in any form of 

conflict, and counterterrorism can either be incorporated as part of the armed forces, COIN, or stabilization doctrine, or in a domestic context within what 

the British armed forces refer to as Military Aid to the 

Civil Authority (MACA). 30

Before discussing the use of armed forces in counterterrorism, it is necessary first to define what consti-
12

tutes terrorism, and also to address the controversy 

surrounding how this phenomenon is to be addressed. 

This debate revolves around the difficult question of 

whether terrorism is a crime or an act of war, and 

whether its practitioners end their campaigns because 

they are defeated, contained, or mollified by state authorities. This manuscript will then discuss the counterterrorist framework, before critically examining 

the military contribution to counterterrorism as far as 

democracies are concerned. In this respect, a state’s 

armed forces can be employed on an ad hoc basis (in 

situations where it has specific capabilities that the 

civil authorities require in the short term), or as part 

of a prolonged engagement. The author will describe 

the full range of actions that armed forces can perform 

in counterterrorism—not merely the more sensational 

ones, such as hostage rescue, but nonkinetic operations such as deterrence, military assistance to civil 

authorities, and intelligence-gathering—and will also 

summarize the possible problems that may arise both 

in the international and domestic sphere when such 

means are employed in the fight against terrorism. 

The main conclusion of this paper is that there are 

specific scenarios and situations in which a military 

response to terrorism is essential, be it on a short-term 

or prolonged basis, but that military measures have 

to be firmly integrated within an overall, politically 

directed strategy to contain terrorism and remove 

the grievances that national and transnational terrorist groups exploit. Furthermore, democratic governments are obliged to consider the potentially negative consequences of employing military force prior 

to deciding whether to hand specific counterterrorist 

missions over to their generals and admirals. At the 

heart of this analysis is the dilemma facing all demo-
13

cratic states confronted by terrorism; namely, how 

they fight this threat and protect their citizens without 

undermining the constitutional, legal, and normative 

characteristics upon which government by consent is 

founded.31 The author does not promise to offer easy 

answers to this dilemma, nor to the challenges arising 

from it, but it is his hope that his examination of this 

topic provokes the debate and reflection that can provide the basis for both an informed consensus, as well 

as discussions about workable solutions to a perennial 

problem.

IS TERRORISM A MILITARY PROBLEM?

For nonacademics, the outlining of definitions may 

appear pedantic. Yet it is important to define our terminology, as an individual’s perception of any intellectual problem is shaped by his or her understanding 

of concepts that can otherwise be taken for granted 

(terrorism, democracy, the military, etc.). A specific 

viewpoint on the characteristics and causes of terrorism shapes perceptions about whether a state can 

employ its armed forces as part of its effort to contain 

and ultimately defeat terrorism, or whether the use of 

military means would be counterproductive.32

With few exceptions, states maintain their own 

armed forces, which are configured, trained, and organized to fight a state-based adversary, although 

they can also be employed on peacekeeping/peacesupport missions, as is the case with some Western 

countries in stabilization/COIN missions overseas.33

In the United States, the UK, and certain other Western countries, there is a clear distinction between the 

military and the constabulary services employed for 

domestic policing; the latter are civilian organizations, 
14

and are lightly armed or (in the case of the UK) largely 

unarmed when they exercise their everyday duties. 

However, other states may have internal security forces trained and equipped on paramilitary lines. While 

the French gendarmerie and the Italian carabinieri are 

recognizable as police units, the Turkish jandarma, the 

Russian Interior Ministry (MVD) troops (vnutrenniye 

voiska), and the Indian Border Security Force (BSF) and 

Rashtriya Rifles (RR) are militarized forces in terms of 

their organization and their armament, and all have 

participated in combat operations against, respectively, the Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK), Chechen 

rebels, and Kashmiri insurgents.34 In the U.S. case, 

the CIA not only has its own paramilitary arm (the 

Special Activities Division), but it also controls the 

unmanned, armed drones used in targeted killings of 

terrorist leaders.35 It is also alleged that the Blackwater

Private Military Company (or Xe Services, its current 

name) has covertly cooperated with U.S. Special Forces and the Pakistani authorities in both targeted killings and snatch operations against al-Qaeda suspects 

in Pakistan.36 These distinctions are worth noting, as 

in certain cases a military response by a democratic or 

democratizing country may not involve the employment of a regular army, navy, or air force.

This paper uses Fareed Zakaria’s definition of a liberal democracy as “a political system marked not only 

by free and fair elections, but also by the rule of law, a 

separation of powers, and the protection of basic liberties of speech, assembly, religion, and property.”37

Liberal democratic states differ from nonliberal ones 

(such as Russia), in which the formal characteristics 

of a democracy, such as regular elections for the executive and legislature, are observed, but where significant constraints exist on civil liberties and freedom 

of speech. Established liberal democracies also differ 
15

in character from democratizing states undergoing a 

transition from totalitarian/authoritarian rule to representative government—a prime example here being 

Turkey’s transition since the 1990s, and the gradual 

erosion of the military’s dominance over national politics in that nation.38 The distinction is worth noting, 

insofar as politicians and senior military and security 

force personnel conditioned to operate in a dictatorial 

system may resort to old regime methods when dealing with internal security threats. For example, the 

Russian state’s response to Chechen separatism owes 

much to the repressive traditions of the Soviet and 

Tsarist regimes.39

As noted below, there is no internationally accepted definition of terrorism, although the author 

concurs with Magnus Ranstorp and Paul Wilkinson’s 

reference to:

[The] systematic use of coercive intimidation usually, 

though not exclusively, to service political ends. It is 

used to create and exploit a climate of fear among a 

wider group than the immediate victims of the violence, often to publicise a cause, as well as to coerce a 

target into acceding to terrorist aims. Terrorism may 

be used on its own, or as part of a wider conventional 

war. It can be employed by desperate and weak minorities, by states as a tool of domestic or foreign policy, 

or by belligerents as an accompaniment or additional 

weapon in all types and stages of warfare.40

Alex Schmid identifies four intrinsic factors, which 

affect a liberal democracy’s response to nonstate terrorism: freedom of movement, freedom of association, 

abundance of targets, and the constraints of the legal 

system. Democratic norms also stress openness, tolerance, legality and the high value of each individual 

human life (hence the fact that very few liberal de-
16

mocracies have the death penalty).41 This can affect 

a state’s counterterrorist policy in a number of ways, 

as shown in the British case both by Labour’s efforts 

to introduce identity cards (which the ConservativeLiberal Democrat coalition opted to abolish soon after 

it assumed office in May 2010), and also the legal effort to block the extradition of radical Islamist clerics 

to their home countries, where they might be arrested 

and tortured. They have historically manifested themselves in instances where domestic critics highlight 

human rights abuses committed by the military and 

security services in conflicts of decolonization (as was 

the case with the British in Cyprus and the French in 

Algeria from 1954-62), and also in current cases where 

Western powers have become involved in overseas 

military interventions within the context of the War 

on Terror.42 The persistent articulation of these norms 

is a sign of a healthy democracy, but it also shows how 

intrinsically controversial it is for a state to become involved in the fight against terrorists, whether in the 

domestic or international sphere. 

The Conceptual Framework.

For Western democracies, “terrorism” traditionally occurred in wars of decolonization, such as the 

National Liberation Front’s (FLN) campaign against 

French rule in Algeria, or the series of conflicts involving the British—notably the Irish War of Independence (1918-22), the struggle against Irgun and Lehi in 

Palestine (1944-48), EOKA’s campaign for Enosis (unification) between Greece and Cyprus, and the Aden 

insurgency (1964-67). The late-1960s and early-1970s 

led to a rise in domestic terrorism in Western Europe, 

whether ethno-nationalist (notably the PIRA and its 
17

Loyalist foes in Northern Ireland and the ETA in the 

Basque region of Spain) or politically radical like the 

Red Army Faction in West Germany; [BR] in Italy, 

November 17 [N17] in Greece, and Action Directe in 

France). 

 The same period also saw the internationalization of terrorism by the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) and rival groups such as the Popular 

Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), which 

was responsible for the multiple hijacking of passenger aircraft on September 7, 1970. While this brand of 

transnational terror had the specific goal of publicizing the Palestinian cause, the globalized effort of alQaeda and its affiliates from the mid-1990s has more 

ambitious goals: to expel Western influence from the 

Islamic world, and to eventually establish a global caliphate.43

At present, there is no internationally recognized 

definition of what constitutes terrorism. Some states, 

notably Arab countries, eschew definitions that criminalize the use of violence as a tool for national self-determination, while the belief within Western left-wing 

circles that terrorism can be a legitimate means of 

self-defense on the part of oppressed peoples derives 

from Frantz Fanon’s Les Damnes de la Terre (1962).44 In 

this vein, commentators such as Noam Chomsky are 

quick to accuse the United States and certain other 

countries (such as the UK and Israel) of being terrorist states due to their employment of military force 

against weaker countries, while ignoring (or even 

excusing) cases on nonstate terrorism or examples 

of state terror which cannot be blamed on the West.45

There are more nuanced and less strident versions of 

this argument, which may deplore the characteristics 

of terrorism while recognizing that its practitioners 
18

may have justifiable motives. Terrorism is described 

as a strategy of the weak (Lawrence Freedman46) and 

as the poor man’s air force; these statements should 

not be seen as implying moral equivalence between 

state and nonstate groups, but merely recognition that 

some of the latter, and their state sponsors, use terrorism as a cheap and easy way of retaliating against a 

stronger adversary.47 A prime example of this process 

occurred when Colonel Muammar Gaddafi increased 

arms supplies to the PIRA after the British government gave its U.S. ally permission to use airbases in 

the UK to support air strikes on Libya in April 1986.48

To a certain degree, the plight of a particular ethnic or national group can be treated as a factor behind 

terrorist violence. It is possible to condemn suicide attacks against Israeli civilians, but also recognize that 

the dispossession of the Palestinian people in 1948 and 

their lack of statehood are contributory causes of Palestinian terrorism. Nevertheless, gross injustice does 

not necessarily force its victims to adopt terrorism as 

a means of resistance. From the late 1970s to July 1989, 

Solidarnosc (Solidarity) waged a campaign of civil 

disobedience against the Polish Communist regime, 

eschewing violence even when the authorities used 

force against their own citizenry; as was the case after the declaration of martial law by General Wojciech 

Jaruzelski in December 1981. This decision on the part 

of Polish dissidents was influenced to a considerable 

degree by ethical considerations and a desire to retain 

the moral high ground (a calculation reinforced by 

their ties to the Catholic Church), although Solidarnosc 

activists were also aware that a general insurrection 

could provoke a Soviet military intervention.49

The words “terrorist” and “terrorism” are pejorative, as they automatically imply amorality and bar-
19

baric ruthlessness on the part of their practitioners. 

This explains why Western media agencies such as 

the BBC employ less value-laden language in their 

news reports, employing phrases such as “militants,” 

“separatists,” “guerillas,” and “insurgents.” For the 

victims of terrorism, this approach can be seen as 

deceitful equivocation.50 Although the author of this 

manuscript offers his own definitions of what a terrorist is, he too uses other phrases to describe them 

(“gunmen,” “hostage takers,” etc.), for no underlying 

reason other than to avoid repetition.

For the purposes of this paper, the author will focus on examples where armed nonstate groups have 

employed lethal violence in order to intimidate their 

target(s)—one government or several, or a particular 

national community—into acceding to their political 

demands. Terrorism can be a domestic or an international phenomenon, and its practitioners can launch 

attacks within a specific country that are not actually 

directed against that particular government or its people. PIRA attacks in Germany and Holland in 1988-

89 were directed against British military personnel 

stationed in both countries, while the six ethnic Arab 

(Ahvaz) gunmen who took over the Iranian embassy 

in London on April 30, 1980, had no grievance with the 

UK, as opposed to the theocratic regime in Tehran.51

Nonetheless, the consequences of terrorist violence 

are often felt by innocent third parties; Al-Qaeda’s 

targets in the Nairobi and Dar-es-Salaam bombings of 

August 7, 1998, were the U.S. embassies in both cities, 

but the majority of those killed and maimed by both 

attacks were Kenyan and Tanzanian bystanders.52

Bruce Hoffman draws a distinction between old 

terrorist groups that had relatively limited objectives, 

and were comparatively more scrupulous about mini-
20

mizing casualties caused by their attacks, and new terrorists who possess global ambitions and often have 

eschatological or anti-systemic objectives.53 The latter 

no longer conform to Brian Jenkins’s statement about 

terrorists launching attacks that leave “a lot of people 

watching, and a lot of people listening, and not a lot of 

people dead.”54 There is also a contrast to be drawn between the defined hierarchical structure of traditional 

groups (notably that of PIRA, with its Army Council, 

chief of staff, general headquarters [GHQ], and other 

military trappings), and what John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt refer to as “netwar,” in which “dispersed 

organizations, small groups and individuals ... communicate, coordinate and conduct their campaign in 

an internetted manner, without a precise central command.”55 In this respect, in the aftermath of 9/11, alQaeda provides an example of franchise terrorism in 

which the Internet is used to share information on tactics and technology (notably on bomb construction), 

and in which the leadership inspires but does not 

direct sympathizers across the globe to conduct acts 

of violence against their host societies.56 The implications for this trend for any counterterrorist strategy 

are disturbing, as a protean network is far less easy 

for a state’s security forces to attack and weaken by attrition than a centrally-commanded group organized 

along quasi-military lines.57

Terrorism can also be incorporated as part of a wider campaign of insurgency, defined as a paramilitary 

and subversive effort waged by an irregular armed 

faction, or factions, to overthrow a state’s government, 

to secede from a state, or (in the case of Hamas regarding Israel) to destroy the state.58 The example set by the 

Karen and other rebel groups in Burma shows that it 

is possible for insurgents to eschew terrorism. The Pa-
21

tani United Liberation Organisation currently waging 

an insurgency in Southern Thailand has also declared 

that it will not conduct bombings beyond its Muslim 

heartland, recognizing that attacks in Bangkok or in 

tourist resorts will attract hostile international attention. It is also true that some terrorist organizations 

lack the means to threaten their adversaries with a 

wider insurgency (as was the case with European terrorist groups such as the ETA and the Red Army Faction, and also PIRA after the early 1970s).59 Yet, in other 

cases, terrorism can be merged within a wider insurgent threat to state stability or state survival, as with 

the Revolutionary Armed Forces in Colombia (FARC) 

and the Sunni Arab muqawamah (resistance) fighting 

the Coalition and the post-Baathist government in Iraq. 

Prior to its defeat in May 2009, the Liberation Tigers of 

Tamil Eelam (LTTE) posed such a significant military 

threat to the Sri Lankan government, which included 

its own small navy and air force, that the latter had to 

use its armed forces to crush it.60 The same can be said 

of the Tehrik e-Taleban Pakistan (TTP), an alliance of 

militant Pashtun tribesmen and foreign fighters that 

has not only waged an insurgency in the FATA since 

2004, but has also been responsible for supporting a 

series of terrorist attacks in Pakistan conducted by allied jihadi groups (including, Islamabad alleges, the 

suicide bombing that killed former President Benazir 

Bhutto in December 2007).61 If a terrorist group has the 

numbers, resources, and sufficient popular support 

to threaten the government’s authority, then a state’s 

counterterrorist policy has to be incorporated within a 

wider COIN strategy.

COIN involves the coordinated response of a 

state’s government and its external supporters to integrate political, socioeconomic, legal, police, and 
22

military measures to frustrate and ultimately defeat 

an insurgency. Within that framework, counterterrorism includes defensive measures to minimize the ability of a terrorist/insurgent group to inflict violence 

against the civilian population; examples here include 

emergency legislation to ban membership in an organization and its political wing, increased police and 

military patrols in public places, and information campaigns to inspire public vigilance against potential attacks. An enlightened counterterrorism policy will 

also attempt to strike a balance between public safety 

and civil liberties, and will acknowledge the need for 

policies that alleviate the causes of terrorism. This will 

involve measures to alleviate popular grievances that 

terrorist groups exploit, and promote dialogue with 

community leaders and political figures who may 

be sympathetic to the terrorists’ cause, if not their 

methods.62 Counterterrorism does, however, incorporate more offensive measures to undermine terrorist 

groups and neutralize its members. These include the 

recruitment of terrorists to inform on their comrades 

(to work as agents), and also the turning of captured 

members of a group (preferably through persuasion, 

not coercion) so that they provide intelligence on their 

former comrades.63

Democratic norms dictate that neutralization 

should ideally involve arrest, followed by the established procedures of trial by due process, conviction, 

and incarceration. Yet neutralization can also involve 

the killing of terrorists by members of the security 

forces. This can either be because the former are armed 

and resist arrest, or because they are in the process of 

committing a violent act, in which case soldiers or police act under rules of engagement (ROE) permitting 

self-defense. The British Army in Northern Ireland 
23

was theoretically bound by the Yellow Card each soldier carried, which authorized the use of deadly force 

solely in circumstances in which soldiers felt that their 

lives were at risk; for example, in a situation when a 

suspect appeared likely to use a firearm or explosive 

device against them. However, in Northern Ireland, 

as in other cases, critics allege that lethal violence is 

used because there is a specific, if undeclared, policy 

to kill suspected terrorists rather than capture them. 

As noted below, some states, notably Israel, have conducted targeted killings, and the French example in 

Algeria shows that in a permissive environment even 

a democratic state’s military and security forces can 

employ unpalatable measures such as torture and extrajudicial executions against suspected terrorists.64

The British government’s current, declared counterterrorist policy acknowledges the multifaceted nature of the terrorist threat, and the means needed to 

address it. The Ministry of Defense’s (MOD) Strategic 

Defence Review: A New Chapter (2002) and Delivering 

Security in a Changing World (2003) both committed the 

UK armed forces to a more overt role in counterterrorism, both in intervention operations overseas (notably 

Afghanistan) but also in domestic security.65 However, 

the main document expressing British government 

policy in dealing with the post-9/11 terrorist threat 

is the Counter-Terrorism Strategy (CONTEST) paper 

first published in 2006, and then revised 3 years later. 

The declared aim of British counterterrorism policy is: 

“to reduce the risk to the UK and its interests overseas 

from international terrorism, so that people can go 

about their lives freely and with confidence.66

According to CONTEST, the UK’s approach to 

counterterrorism involves (1) the prevention of terrorism by tackling its causes, (2) the pursuit of terror-
24

ists and their sponsors, (3) the protection of the public 

and key services, and (4) preparation to respond to 

and mitigate the consequences of a terrorist attack. 

CONTEST places the Home Office as the lead agency 

for domestic counterterrorism, and the Foreign and 

Commonwealth Office (FCO) as the key Ministry 

overseeing its international aspects, while the MOD 

supports both departments. CONTEST emphasizes 

the primacy of political and nonmilitary means of 

fighting terrorism. These include the need to isolate 

the terrorist physically and psychologically from the 

wider population, and to use other levers of national 

power (notably the diplomatic and economic) to resolve the grievances that cause terrorism (such as the 

radicalization of young British Muslims).67 Nonetheless, CONTEST also has an explicit military dimension. The UK’s armed forces are explicitly committed 

to prevention and pursuit (most notably in the context 

of current operations in Afghanistan). Specialist elements are committed to protection (notably the interceptors of the Royal Air Force’s Quick Reaction Alert 

[QRA] force) and, at least nominally, to preparation, 

this being the declared role of the Civil Contingency 

Reaction Force (CCRF) announced in the 2002 New 

Chapter, which is supposedly drawn from the British 

armed forces reserve units.

Criminality or Warfare?

Scholars of terrorism identify two distinct models 

that a state can employ in response to this threat. The 

criminal justice approach treats terrorism as a lawand-order issue, and although the government may 

introduce emergency legislation to bolster the state’s 

legal framework, it is the judiciary and the police that 
25

play the lead role in implementing counterterrorist 

measures. The war model, in contrast, treats terrorism 

as a mortal threat to the state, which can only be addressed by military force.68 The latter is more or less 

the default approach of an illiberal state such as postCommunist Russia. After a series of bombings in Russian cities during September 1999, which were blamed 

on Chechen separatists, President Putin declared the 

latter would be “wasted in the shit-house,” and that 

his government and its security forces would “quickly, decisively, with clenched teeth, strangle the vermin 

at the root.” In a similar vein, the Russian President 

responded to the Beslan massacre of September 2004 

with the pledge to “wipe out all terrorist scum, no 

matter where they are.” Such rhetoric reflected the 

prevailing state of public opinion within Russian society.69

As Audrey Kurth Cronin observes, terrorism picks 

“at the vulnerable seam between domestic law and 

foreign war . . . [arguing] over which paradigm best 

fits the threat—war or crime—says more about the 

rigid intellectual and bureaucratic structures of the 

state than it does about the nature of terrorism.”70 It 

is therefore unsurprising that in practice many democracies adopt counterterrorist policies that contain 

elements of both models, and the degree to which an 

individual country conforms closest to the criminal 

justice or war model depends on the following factors:

Constitutional framework and normative constraints. 

Prior to 9/11, the U.S. military operated under the 

constraints of the Posse Comitatus Act (1876), which 

imposed restrictions on the use of the armed forces in 

domestic policing.71 In contrast, Britain has a tradition 

of using its armed forces as part of a policy of Military Aid to the Civil Authority (MACA), discussed in 
26

more detail later. Aside from the small size of the Red 

Army Faction and affiliated groups, one of the principal reasons why the Federal Republic of Germany 

(FRG) made the police the lead agency in the fight 

against far-left terrorism was that its political elite 

was determined to avoid the excesses of the Nazi era, 

and to ensure that the balance between civil liberties 

and security favored the former. The Greek government’s reluctance to crack down on N17 until the late 

1990s derived in part from political and popular disgust with the repressive record of the military junta

between 1967 and 1974.72

How lethal are they? The main indicator of the threat 

that a terrorist group—or groups—poses to a particular state is proportionate to the numbers within the 

organization and its ability to mount serial and deadly 

attacks against civil society. The lowest-level example 

is that of so-called lone wolves like David Copeland, 

the British neo-Nazi responsible for three bomb attacks in London in the spring of 1999. Leftist terrorists 

in West Germany never managed recruitment beyond 

double figures (25-32 at most), and between 1969-79 

managed just 63 attacks (bombings, bank raids, kidnappings, and assassinations), which claimed 33 lives. 

There was therefore little public or political pressure 

to call in the Bundeswehr to deal with them.73

The BR was, however, a larger and deadlier group, 

being responsible for increasing terrorist violence in 

Italy during the late 1970s: 467 attacks in 1975; 685 in 

1976; 1,806 in 1977; and 2,275 in 1978. Given the extent of this activity, and the public alarm aroused by 

the kidnapping of former Prime Minister Aldo Moro 

on March 16, 1978, and his murder 54 days later, it is 

surprising that the Italian state persisted with a policecentric campaign against the BR, let alone an adherence 
27

to the rule of law. The normative constraints noted 

above (in this case, institutional and public memories 

of Fascism) clearly shaped the Italian response; hence, 

the quote attributed to carabinieri General Carlo Dalla 

Chiesa when a subordinate suggested that BR suspects could be interrogated more harshly to help the 

security forces find Moro, “Italy can survive the loss 

of Aldo Moro. It would not survive the introduction 

of torture.”74

A contrasting example can be seen with Israel’s 

reaction to Palestinian attacks from the Munich massacre of 1972 and Ma’alot atrocity of May 15, 1974—in 

which the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) massacred 22 schoolchildren—to the first 

Hamas suicide bombing in Israel on April 16, 1994. 

Between 1994 and 2007, suicide attacks have killed 

several hundred Israelis. Reprisals have included the 

targeted killings of militant leaders and key figures 

and retaliatory attacks against targets in both the occupied territories and neighboring countries.75 On the 

extreme end of the lethality scale, albeit in a nondemocratic state, one can see the example of the Armed Islamic Group (GIA) and the Group for Preaching and 

Combat (GSPC) insurgents in Algeria during the civil 

war of 1992-2002. Islamist terrorists from both groups 

were involved in a series of barbaric atrocities (including the extermination of entire villages) in a conflict 

that killed up to 100,000 people. Although the Algerian state’s own extensive human rights abuses cannot 

be condoned, it is important to note that the scale of 

GIA and GSPC violence obliged it to adopt a militarized response.76

Are they a domestic or international phenomenon? A 

terrorist group operating in one democratic state may 

be contained by the existing legal-police framework, 
28

particularly if it lacks widespread popular support. 

However, if it operates on a regional or global level, 

these means may be insufficient, particularly if the 

terrorists can rely on an overseas sanctuary. For example, in the United States, domestic terrorists from 

the Weathermen during the 1970s to the Unabomber 

and far-right militia groups of the 1990s could be contained by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). 

The same could not be said of al-Qaeda, with its global 

presence and more wide-ranging scale of activity and 

support.77

State sponsorship. State support can have a dramatic 

impact on the effectiveness and lethality of a terrorist organization. Sympathetic governments can provide sanctuary, funding, training (including specialist 

knowledge in more sophisticated techniques, such as 

bomb construction and commando-type tactics, from 

intelligence and military personnel), and arms (from 

assault rifles to surface-to-air missiles). Poorly armed 

and incompetent terrorists can be beaten by an ordinary constabulary and its criminal investigative/

Special Branch elements; they are also more liable 

to suffer from their own efforts, for example, being 

blown up by their own bombs while assembling or 

planting them. Yet state support can effect a quantitative improvement in the operational effectiveness 

of a terrorist group. A prime example is that of the 

Red Army Faction after the East German secret police, the Ministerium fur Staatssicherheit, provided the 

Faction with sanctuary and training in the former 

German Democratic Republic (GDR). The Red Army 

staged fewer attacks than before receiving East German support, but these were far more professionally 

executed than they had been previously—one example being the bombing that nearly killed the Su-
29

preme Allied Commander of NATO Forces in Europe, 

General Alexander Haig, on June 25, 1979. Likewise, 

PIRA’s capabilities were significantly enhanced when 

it received Libyan arms (including heavy weaponry 

and Semtex plastic explosive) from the mid-1980s, although as noted in the next chapter the loss of the bulk 

of these weapons with the interception of the Eksund

(October 1987) was a serious blow to this organization.78

State support can provide terrorist groups with 

significant military capabilities. The PLO (notably 

Yasser Arafat’s Fatah) and its rivals formed substantial private armies in Jordan (before September 1970) 

and Lebanon, thanks to lavish assistance from the Soviet bloc, Egypt, Syria, Libya, Algeria, Iraq, and subsequently Iran. Hezbollah’s evolution into a sophisticated guerrilla/terrorist force depended principally on 

training from Sepah e-Pasdaran (Iranian Revolutionary 

Guard Corps) cadres based in the Bekaa Valley during 

the 1980s.79

Are they a wider threat to state stability? Certain terrorist groups have a purely parasitic relationship with 

society, having no significant supporting constituency—a prime example in this regard being the German 

Red Army Faction. However, in other cases, such as 

PIRA and ETA, these organizations can rely on a support base within civil society. If a terrorist campaign 

is waged concurrently with widespread civil disorder 

and strife (for example, in Northern Ireland in the early 

1970s, or Kashmir from 1989) or it exists alongside an 

existential threat to the state—as posed by many of Israel’s neighbors historically, and Iran currently—then 

it is more likely that a government might resort to the 

military means outlined below. Israel has adopted a 

deterrence-based response to the PLO and, currently, 
30

Hamas and Hezbollah, as its political and military 

leadership fear that an irresolute response will convey 

weakness, inspiring further offensive action that may 

lead to an all-out attack on the Jewish state by its internal and external enemies.80

As far as MACA is concerned, the British Army 

was originally deployed in Northern Ireland in August 1969 because the Royal Ulster Constabulary 

(RUC) was unable to contain widespread rioting by 

Catholics and intersectarian conflict between the latter 

and the Protestants. In fact the RUC (and its B Special 

reservists) was very much part of the problem because 

of its pro-Protestant partisanship and heavy-handed 

treatment of the Catholic community—as shown by 

the excessive violence police had employed against 

peaceful civil rights demonstrations in October 1968. 

A combination of ham-fisted British policy and PIRA 

militancy led to a low-level insurgency during the 

early 1970s, but once the British Army began to contain terrorist violence, the British government moved 

toward a policy of police primacy, designating a reformed RUC (from 1976) as the lead agency over the 

military in the struggle against terrorism. Although a 

substantial military presence was required in Northern Ireland until after the Good Friday Accords, the 

British authorities were determined that the local 

police should play a more prominent role in providing security once both the threat of insurgency and 

civil war between Catholics and Protestants had been 

quelled.81

So are terrorists soldiers or criminals? Most terrorist groups, save those capable of waging an insurgency concurrently, lack the military capabilities needed 

to engage a state’s armed forces on the latter’s terms. 

Yet they still employ military nomenclature when 
31

describing their organizations and their objectives, 

and it is rare for any organization to accept the terrorist label.82 This is evident from the Irish Republican 

volunteers serving in Brigades and Companies, and 

also in the martyrdom video of the ringleader of the 

four suicide bombers involved in the July 7, 2005, attacks on London; Mohammed Siddique Khan justified 

his actions and those of his associates by stating that 

“[we] are at war, and I am a soldier.”83 This militarized 

ethos is also illustrated by bin Laden’s declaration of 

war against the Jews and Crusaders (February 23, 

1998), and in the rhetoric that his subordinates used 

to justify 9/11. The attacks on New York and Washington, DC, were lauded by al-Qaeda propaganda as 

a means of mobilizing wider Muslim opinion against 

an America simultaneously condemned for being a 

global oppressor, and derided for being internally 

weak and decadent. Furthermore, as Daniel Benjamin 

and Steven Simon note, on 9/11, al-Qaeda conducted 

an attack on the United States which was warlike in 

its dimensions, in terms of the devastation caused and 

the losses (human, material, and financial) suffered. 

Critics of War on Terror rhetoric overlook the fact that 

the militarization of this current struggle is not a onesided affair.84

If one accepts Clausewitz’s statement that “war is 

an act of violence to compel our enemy to do our will,” 

it is clear that acts of terrorism are not purely criminal 

in nature. Terrorist groups are, after all, seeking to use 

force to coerce their target(s) into acceding to their demands, whether these are for a united Ireland, a Tamil 

homeland, or the expulsion of Western influence from 

the Muslim world.85 British General Frank Kitson 

stated that, “there can be no such thing as a purely 

military solution [in COIN] because insurgency is not 
32

primarily a military activity,” there is also “no such 

thing as a wholly political solution . . . short of surrender, because the very fact that a state of insurgency exists implies that violence is involved which will have 

to be countered to some extent at least by the use of 

lethal force.” 86 The same can be said of counterterrorism. While it is understandable that some analysts of 

terrorism do not wish to legitimize this phenomenon 

by ascribing to it the characteristics of state-based 

warfare, the essentially military character of terrorism 

should be acknowledged in addition to the fact that 

if a terrorist organization poses a significant threat to 

the security of a state, then the latter’s armed forces—

as deliverers of security to the society they serve—are 

likely to be involved in countering that threat.

It is commonly agreed by Western academics and 

informed commentators that a purely militaristic focus on counterterrorism is misconceived, but there 

are equally simplistic assumptions that need to be 

dispelled. The first is the fatuous statement that “one 

man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.” 

This cliché can be dispelled by a straightforward comparison between (for example) Nelson Mandela and 

Andreas Baader. For Mandela, terrorism was a last 

resort. For Baader, it was an end in itself. Mandela 

expressed coherent and understandable reasons why 

the African National Congress’ military wing, Mkhonto we Sizwe, took up arms, namely in order to liberate 

and enfranchise a politically oppressed and socioeconomically disadvantaged majority, and to overthrow 

a despotic and racist regime. Baader provided no clear 

rationale for the Red Army Faction’s activities, other 

than expressing a vague notion of liberating a German proletariat with whom he and his comrades had 

nothing in common. Even within terrorist groups, one 
33

can see a vast difference in character, motivation, and 

technique between its members. PIRA, for example, 

could attract individuals like Francis Hughes—recognized by British Army officers as a committed professional, and one of the seven Provisional prisoners who 

starved themselves to death in the 1981 hunger strike. 

Yet the movement Hughes sacrificed himself for also 

attracted the mafia-type characters Eamon Collins 

condemned in his memoirs as a PIRA volunteer, not 

to mention the thugs who beat Robert McCartney to 

death in a Belfast pub on January 31, 2005.87

From the freedom fighter cliché comes another 

pernicious analogy: the idea that the default response 

to a terrorist campaign should be the pursuit of negotiations. Thomas Mockaitis draws a useful distinction between insurgents who have a viable cause (and 

who are ready to seek a compromise settlement with 

their foes) and terrorists whose “goals are so idealistic 

as to be virtually unattainable.”88 In contrast, former 

Northern Ireland Secretary Mo Mowlam and Jonathan 

Powell (one of Blair’s former advisors) have argued 

that the Good Friday Accords offer a template for negotiations with al-Qaeda. Powell and Mowlam presumed that PIRA’s goals and those of bin Laden were 

somehow comparable, and that it is as easy to achieve 

a nonviolent solution with those focussed on an 

apocalyptic struggle between Islam and a degenerate 

West as it is with a movement committed to a united 

Ireland.89 It is also important to distinguish between 

terrorists whose objectives involve rectifying a gross 

injustice, and those who simply seek revenge. For example, the African National Congress (ANC) did not 

want a racial war against Afrikaaners; it sought a truly 

democratic South Africa in which both whites and 

blacks had equal rights before the state and the law. 
34

The ANC was, after all, a multiracial organization, 

with white members such as Joe Slovo and Ronnie 

Kasrils. Hamas, by contrast, is an avowedly anti-Semitic organization, whose founding charter proclaims 

the inevitability of a final struggle in which “Muslims 

will fight the Jews” and destroy them. If Hamas ever 

achieved its objectives, the result would be the ethnic 

cleansing of Jews from Palestine. The argument that 

Israel is somehow duty bound to talk to enemies who 

seek its destruction is therefore an unrealistic one, 

and critics of Israel’s military actions against Hamas 

should examine whether the latter’s own ideological 

intransigence is in itself one of the sources of the current impasse in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.90

In considering the potential for negotiation and 

reconciliation, it is also instructive to bear in mind the 

contrasting examples of two Islamists who turned to 

terrorism. The first is Imad Mugniyah, a senior Hezbollah military commander killed in a car bomb attack 

in Damascus on February 12, 2008 (attributed to, but 

not admitted by, Mossad). Mugniyah was described by 

U.S. and Israeli intelligence sources as the founder of 

Hezbollah’s armed wing, the Islamic Resistance (IR), 

and the main instigator of attacks on Western targets 

in Lebanon during the 1980s. Mugniyah was also instrumental in conducting the IR’s guerrilla campaign 

against the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) in Southern 

Lebanon until the latter’s withdrawal in 2000.91 David 

Barkai, a former IDF intelligence officer, described 

Mugniyah as follows:

His is one of the most creative and brilliant minds 

I have ever come across. He is a man with deep understanding, an excellent technical grasp, and leadership ability. Unfortunately, a mixture of personal and 

geopolitical circumstances led him to channel his out-
35

standing talents into the path of blood and destruction 

and to make him into a dangerous enemy.92

Mugniyah was clearly a skilled practitioner of terrorism and guerrilla warfare, but showed no sign of 

having any overarching political perceptions, or any 

sign of compromising with his violent objectives toward the West or Israel. A contrast can be seen with 

Nasir Abbas, an Indonesian who became a member of 

Jemaah Islamiyah, al-Qaeda’s Southeast Asian network. 

Abbas became a jihadi while fighting the Soviets in 

Afghanistan during the 1980s and believed that it was 

a good Muslim’s duty to fight infidels occupying Islamic land. However, the Bali bombings on October 

12, 2002, which killed 202 civilians, led him to become 

a police informant. Abbas saw the mass murder of 

nightclub revellers as a violation of what was supposed to be a defensive jihad against godless aggressors.93 Some terrorists’ motivations may compel them 

toward violence regardless of the cost, others may 

reassess and abandon their commitment to a lost or 

discredited cause. Western governments therefore 

have more prospects of negotiating and compromising with the Abbas’s of this world than they would 

have with the Mugniyahs. 

The “negotiations work” school also misses two 

further aspects of terrorism. The first is that groups 

with originally “just” goals may fight on even when 

these objectives have been achieved. The majority 

of Spanish Basques are satisfied with the autonomy 

that they were given after the demise of Franco and 

his regime in 1975 and do not support ETA’s continued resort to violence. The second is that negotiations 

with an undefeated terrorist/insurgent organization 

can simply lead to the flouting of peace accords, as 
36

demonstrated by the failure of Colombian President 

Andres Pastrana’s efforts to seek a settlement with 

FARC in the late 1990s.94 A further example is offered 

by the Pakistani Army’s repeated efforts to negotiate 

truces with the TTP in the FATA (in 2004, 2006, and 

2008), which simply encouraged the latter to launch 

wider attacks to take over neighboring districts in the 

North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) in February 

2009. The Army’s decision to fight back and its recapture of Buner and Swat in July 2009 were applauded at 

that time by the majority of Pakistanis, who believed 

that peace agreements with the TTP inspired the latter 

toward further violence.95

Above all, claims that conflict resolution in Northern Ireland offers a model overlook the underlying 

reasons behind the Good Friday Accords. For all Sinn 

Fein’s propaganda, it is evident that by 1997 PIRA was 

militarily contained and frustrated by the British Army 

and the RUC, leaving the majority of Irish Republicans convinced that they had no option but to follow 

nonviolent political methods in pursuing their goals.96

In certain cases, military and police operations can be 

integrated as part of an overall policy of containing 

and, if necessary, neutralizing hard-core terrorists 

who wish to fight to the bitter end, while impressing 

those amenable to compromise that negotiations offer 

a more viable means of achieving objectives than the 

continuation of violence. 

To summarize, terrorism represents a strategic 

choice, namely a decision by an armed nonstate faction to use violence for political ends. Terrorists can be 

skilled guerrilla fighters or rank amateurs. They can 

be rational individuals who relate violence to the attainment of their political objectives, or sadistic thugs 

who revel in butchery for its own sake. They can be 
37

motivated by high-minded ideals or unmitigated malice toward their enemies/victims. They can adhere to 

coherent goals providing the basis for a diplomatic 

resolution, or aspire to boundlessly utopian or nihilistic ideas. Furthermore, all these types of terrorists 

can conceivably exist within one particular group or 

network. The assumption that the causes of terrorism 

can automatically be resolved by ushering its practitioners to the conference table is therefore as flawed as 

the belief that the latter can only be dealt with by force. 

In accepting that there may be conditions in which 

military power can be employed against terrorism, it 

is therefore easier to examine the specific tasks that a 

state’s armed forces can perform in a counterterrorism 

campaign, which are outlined in the next section. 

THE MILITARY’S ROLE IN 

COUNTERTERRORISM

Some of the tasks discussed here can be carried out 

by specialized police units. For example, the FRG’s 

first dedicated counterterrorist unit (GSG9) was recruited in April 1973 not from the Bundeswehr, but 

from the border guards. In the same year, the French 

authorities raised the National Gendermerie Intervention Group (GIGN) from the ranks of the gendarmerie. 

Both of these formations have successfully stormed hijacked aircraft and rescued hostages—GSG9 in Mogadishu in October 1977 following the takeover of Lufthansa Flight 181 by the PFLP, and GIGN in Marseilles 

in December 1994 to recover Air France Flight 8969, 

taken over by the GIA in Algiers. Civil police forces 

usually have bomb disposal teams, and may also 

have a Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear 

(CBRN) response capability, such as that of the Met-
38

ropolitan Police’s Tactical Support Group, which can 

respond to a CBRN emergency in London.97 However, 

there are contingencies that are beyond the capabilities or the training of a police service, and these can be 

summarized as follows:

Military Aid to the Civil Authority.

In British law, MACA is defined as the employment of the UK’s armed forces by the government in 

circumstances beyond traditional disturbances to the 

peace. MACA can be subdivided into Military Aid to 

the Civil Power (MACP), which involves the use of 

the armed forces to assist the civil authorities in the 

restoration of law and order, and Military Aid to the 

Civil Community (MACC), usually involving disaster 

relief, but also including specific responses to a mass 

casualty terrorist attack. Western armed forces have 

specialized units such as the UK’s Joint CBRN Regiment, a British Army-Royal Air Force (RAF) formation, trained in the containment and decontamination 

processes needed in the aftermath of a major CBRN 

attack. This theoretical capability was available from 

the Japanese Self-Defence Force during the Sarin gas 

attack committed by Aum Shinrikyo on the Tokyo subway system on March 20, 1995, although this incident 

was on such a small scale that the police and emergency services were able to contain and decontaminate the stations affected and also treat most casualties successfully.98

A further contingency within MACC involves the 

scrambling of fighter jets to shoot down a hijacked airliner in order to prevent a 9/11-style atrocity. In Britain’s case, the responsibility for responding to such a 

scenario is allocated to the QRA force based at RAF 
39

Coningsby. In all of these contingencies, there has to 

be a clear request from the Home Office to the MOD, 

and the decision to deploy military units on MACA 

tasks requires ministerial approval. The criteria that 

need to be met are: The use of the armed forces has to 

be an action of last resort; lives must be judged to be in 

danger if military assistance is not requested; and the 

military can only use resources under their own direct 

command and can only follow a clear request for assistance from civilian police chiefs endorsed by ministerial approval.99 The practical application of MACA 

can be seen in May 1980, during the Iranian Embassy 

siege. After the hostage takers murdered an Iranian 

diplomat, the Metropolitan Police relayed a request 

for military intervention through the emergency committee meeting in the Cabinet Office Briefing Room A 

(COBRA). COBRA was established in the aftermath 

of the Munich Olympics massacre in 1972, and its 

bureaucratic framework for crisis management still 

operates according to that initiated with the Iranian 

Embassy siege 30 years ago.100

The best-known example of MACP in a democratic 

state is that of Operation BANNER, the deployment of 

the UK armed forces (principally the British Army) to 

Northern Ireland from 1969-2007. As noted earlier, the 

problem of terrorist violence was compounded by a 

low-level sectarian civil war, while the lead civil policing agency was associated by the Catholic community 

with the discriminatory and oppressive policies of the 

Protestant/Unionist hierarchy, which dominated the 

devolved Parliament in Stormont.101 A lesser-known 

example was the deployment of Canadian troops under the War Powers Act in Quebec during October 

1970 at the request of the provincial Premier and the 

Mayor of Montreal. In this case, the Canadian Forces 
40

acted in a supporting role, leaving the task of arresting and detaining members of the separatist Front de 

Liberation du Quebec (FLQ) to the local police.102

Deterrence.

The military can also be deployed in a preventative 

role if the authorities receive intelligence indicating 

that a terrorist attack is imminent. Any public venue 

where large numbers of people congregate, such as a 

major sporting event or an airport, offers a natural target for an atrocity (for example, the attack by the Japanese Red Army on Lod Airport in May 1972; the Munich Olympics Massacre in September 1972; attacks on 

passengers by the Abu Nidal Organisation [ANO] at 

the Rome and Vienna airports in December 1985; and 

the failed attack on Glasgow airport in July 2007 by 

Islamist militants). Examples of deterrence operations 

include the deployment of troops to Heathrow airport on January 5-6, 1974, in response to an apparent 

plot by Palestinian terrorists to shoot down airliners 

with portable anti-aircraft missiles.103 As a result of the 

Lod and Munich atrocities, the British MOD drafted 

contingency plans to preempt an attack at Heathrow 

(known as Operation MARMION), and these plans 

were implemented in January 1974, with 150 soldiers 

and 180 extra police deployed to patrol London’s 

principal air terminal. In February 2003, there was a 

similar operation at the same airport, initiated by the 

Blair government in response to intelligence indicating an imminent al-Qaeda attack.104
41

Interdiction.

Maritime and air forces can be employed in the interception of terrorist personnel and arms shipments. 

The IDF has two significant successes to its credit. 

The first was the seizure of the Karine-A by the Israeli 

Navy on January 3, 2002. The vessel was carrying $15 

million worth of weapons from Iran to the Palestinian Authority, which the Israelis presumed would be 

employed in the intifada in the occupied territories. 

The second was the capture of the Francop by the Israeli Navy’s Special Forces (Shayetet 13) on November 

4, 2009. This vessel is reported to have been carrying 

rockets, mortar shells, grenades, and small arms ammunition from Iran, apparently for Hezbollah.105

The Royal Navy was involved in maritime interdiction patrols during the troubles in Northern Ireland, assisted by the Irish Naval Service (INS) as well 

as the French authorities. The INS captured two trawlers carrying arms for PIRA—the Claudia on March 

28, 1973, (with a Libyan weapons shipment) and the 

Marita Ann on September 24, 1984, (which had arms 

purchased from the United States on board) with the 

Royal Navy and RAF providing surveillance support. French customs officers intercepted the Eksund

in October 1987 (a merchant vessel carrying 150 tons 

of Libyan weaponry), but it is reported that during its 

voyage from Tripoli the Eksund was under observation from unidentified military aircraft, and its cargo 

was also betrayed to the British and Irish intelligence 

services by a mole within PIRA. Although prior to 

the autumn of 1987 PIRA had managed to smuggle in 

smaller quantities of Libyan arms, the lost of the Eksund

and its cargo was a major disaster for this group. It 

thwarted PIRA’s plans to escalate its operations with 
42

heavier weaponry, and to launch a Tet-like offensive, 

which would inflict significant losses on the British 

armed forces and the RUC, undermining Britain’s will 

to continue the anti-terrorist struggle in Northern Ireland. Furthermore, the Libyans blamed the Eksund’s 

loss on inadequate security measures, cutting off aid 

to Irish Republican terrorists as a consequence.106

More current examples include the involvement 

of NATO and other navies in Operation ACTIVE 

ENDEAVOUR since October 4, 2001. This involves a 

combination of deterrence and interdiction, patrolling 

choke points such as the Straits of Gibraltar and also 

boarding vessels suspected of carrying illicit passengers or cargo. The U.S.-led Combined Task Force 150 

(CTF150) off the Horn of Africa provides another example, although its activity has since been subsumed 

into anti-piracy operations off the coast of Somalia 

and Yemen.107 The efficacy of these operations can be 

questioned. For example, U.S. and allied naval patrols 

in the Arabian Sea/Persian Gulf region have been 

intensive (Coalition forces boarded 180 ships in the 

10 months following 9/11), but have detained no alQaeda terrorists. The scale of arms trafficking in sensitive regions, notably the Red Sea/Gulf of Aden zone, 

also suggests that naval missions such as CTF150 are 

overstretched, particularly if they are also expected to 

quell Somali pirates.108 Furthermore, maritime operations like ACTIVE ENDEAVOUR do little to stop nonstate groups from acquiring weapons within Europe, 

whether from organized criminal groups such as the 

Neapolitan Camorra, or free-lance dealers such as the 

Russian arms trafficker Viktor Bout.109

Two examples of air interdiction suggest that such 

a process works best on the basis of precise intelligence. The first involves the interception by U.S. Navy 
43

fighters of an Egyptian airliner carrying the Palestine 

Liberation Front (PLF) hijackers of the Achille Lauro on 

October 10, 1985. The plane was forced to land at Sigonella Naval Air Station in Sicily, where, after a tense 

stand-off between U.S. Special Forces and the carabinieri, the PLF terrorists were handed over to Italian 

custody. A more recent occurrence was the air-strike 

conducted on an arms convoy of around 23 trucks 

crossing Sudan in March 2009. The convoy, which was 

destroyed either by the Israeli air force or UAVs, is 

supposed to have carried Iranian arms for Hamas.110

Training Allied Forces.

Since September 2001, Western armed forces have 

become increasingly involved in providing counterterrorist training to the military and security forces 

of friendly governments in regions where Islamist 

extremists are active. This includes U.S. assistance to 

Central Asian military forces, notably those of Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan,111 and also the American-led 

Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa (CJTFHOA), located at Camp Lemonier in Djibouti, which 

trains allied African military personnel. Camp Lemonier also allegedly provides a base for U.S. Special 

Forces operations throughout the Horn of Africa and 

Yemen. Since October 2008, CJTF-HOA has been under the command of the U.S. military’s Africa Command (AFRICOM), established in response to Washington’s concerns over ungoverned spaces on the 

continent and their potential for developing as havens 

for al-Qaeda and other transnational terrorist groups. 

As of 2010, AFRICOM has a staff of 1,300 (including 170 troops on training missions), and a budget 

of $278 million.112 AFRICOM has in recent years also 
44

taken a close interest in training local security forces in 

Northwest Africa in response to the increased threat 

al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) poses to regional security. Between May 3-23, 2010, AFRICOM 

oversaw Operation FLINTLOCK, a training exercise 

in the Sahel involving 600 U.S. troops; 150 Europeans 

from France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, and 

the UK; and 400 soldiers from Burkina Faso, Chad, 

Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, and Senegal.113

Other relevant examples include U.S. assistance to 

the Yemeni security forces combating al-Qaeda in the 

Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), with reports of several 

dozen American Special Forces operatives assisting 

the Yemenis, ostensibly in noncombatant roles such 

as intelligence-gathering, and U.S. and British financial assistance to train the nascent armed forces of the 

Transitional Federal Government of Somalia (TFG).114

Hostage Rescue.

The Munich disaster of September 5-6, 1972, 

in which 11 Israeli athletes were murdered by the 

Black September Organization (BSO)—nine during a 

botched West German police attempt to free them at 

Furstenfeldbruck airfield—inspired the FRG and other states to set up specialized hostage rescue teams for 

employment in either domestic or foreign emergencies. For example, by late 1972, the British government 

had prepared contingency plans earmarking a troop 

from the 22nd Special Air Service Regiment (22SAS) 

to “supplement police resources in the event of a 

hijacking incident at an airport in the United Kingdom.”115 Declassified British government files contain 

little on the development of 22SAS’s counterterrorist 

unit (known by the codenames Snowdrop, then Pa-
45

goda), although sources show that its first exercise, 

Icon, took place in July 1973. An officer and a sergeant 

from 22SAS also accompanied GSG-9 when it stormed 

Lufthansa Flight-181 5 years later.116 The formation 

of the U.S. Army’s Delta Force in 1977 occurred after 

President Jimmy Carter, reacting to GSG9’s success 

at Mogadishu, Africa, asked his advisors whether the 

U.S. armed forces had an equivalent unit with similar 

capabilities.117

These units require well-trained personnel able to 

swiftly assault a defended location to neutralize terrorists within it and to liberate their captives. Hostage 

rescue is an intensely dangerous activity, since there is 

a clear risk that gunmen may attempt to massacre their 

prisoners once they come under attack. Their location—a public building, an aircraft, or an oil rig—can 

also be rigged for explosives, primed for detonation if 

the authorities send in troops or police. The Mogadishu and Marseilles examples cited above show that a 

specialist police or gendarmerie unit can be successfully employed in hostage rescue. However, in cases 

when an incident takes place offshore or in a foreign 

country, where the terrorists are too numerous and 

well-equipped for a police unit, or where the hostage 

takers can rely on local assistance, military forces may 

be required to conduct a successful rescue. The military also possesses specific characteristics that make 

it ideally suited to fill particular roles. For example, 

the Royal Marines and, in particular, its Special Forces 

arm, the Special Boat Service (SBS), were a natural 

choice for British maritime counterterrorist planners 

in the late 1970s, because of the former’s role as the 

Royal Navy’s maritime/amphibious infantry arm, 

and the latter’s intensive training in the hazardous 

and complex task of diving under combat conditions. 
46

Declassified documents show that the Royal Marines 

and SBS were involved in offshore exercises around 

the North Sea oil fields from the summer of 1976.118 In 

May 1980, the Royal Marines established a specialist 

unit (Commachio Company) to protect or recapture 

ships or oil rigs against armed opposition, although 

this unit’s counterterrorist duties were transferred in 

full to M Squadron, SBS in July 1987.119

Military Special Forces units have been employed 

successfully in hostage rescue missions; these include the Bijzondere Bijstands Eenheid (BBE), ending 

two hostage crises in the Netherlands: in Glimmen in 

May 1977 (when a train and school were taken over 

by South Moluccan separatists); and Assen in March 

1978 (when 70 people were taken hostage in a local 

government building by the same group). Recruited 

from the Royal Dutch Marines, the BBE freed all but 

two of the hostages at Glimmen, while at Assen the 

Marines stormed the local government offices in time 

to prevent the Moluccans from killing two of their 

captives.120 22SAS gained public notoriety when the 

Pagoda unit stormed the Iranian embassy on May 5, 

1980, with the world’s media filming the assault. Of 

the six Ahvaz gunmen, five were killed during the 

course of Operation NIMROD, and all but two of the 

21 hostages were freed.121

The most spectacular external hostage-rescue mission was conducted by the IDF’s Sayeret Maktal in June 

1976, which liberated over 100 Israeli and Jewish passengers of Air France Flight 139, held by Palestinian 

and West German terrorists at Entebbe Airport outside Kampala, Uganda. The success of this mission 

was remarkable because of its complexity—it involved 

around 100 commandos being flown a distance of 

3,800 kilometers in four C130 transport planes, sup-
47

ported by two Boeing 707s (one airborne command 

post and one hospital plane), all of which required airto-air refueling during the mission. Furthermore, in 

contrast with Mogadishu the following year, in which 

GSG9 enjoyed the full cooperation of the Somali authorities, the Israelis had to conduct a rescue on hostile 

territory. Ugandan dictator Idi Amin supported the 

hijackers and ordered his army to protect them. In a 

domestic hostage situation, or one in friendly territory 

overseas, police or military Special Forces can count 

on regular security personnel to cordon off the terrorists and their captives and to also gather intelligence 

critical to any rescue attempt—such as the number of 

hostage takers, their location, and that of their victims. 

The Israelis were denied this cooperation in Entebbe, 

and a more effective Ugandan defense, not to mention 

mechanical failure on any of the planes, could have 

led to a disastrous failure similar to the U.S. effort to 

free their embassy hostages in Iran (Operation EAGLE 

CLAW) 4 years later. 122

Clandestine Operations/Intelligence-Gathering.

One of the principal problems with deploying 

armed forces on MACA/MACP tasks is that they are 

doctrinally prepared and trained for interstate warfare, not for the hard task of identifying and tracking 

down terrorists who hide among the civilian populace. This has been a perennial problem for the British Army in particular, not only with its operations in 

Northern Ireland but also with previous conflicts such 

as Cyprus. The former commander of EOKA, General 

George Grivas, retrospectively mocked his British enemies for “hunting field mice with armoured cars.”123

British commanders in Cyprus did actually recognize 
48

the weaknesses of overt military activity. The British 

Army has a tradition of combining conventional operations—public patrolling, guarding likely targets for 

a terrorist attack, check points, etc.—with clandestine 

ones. These have included locally recruited countergangs such as the Q-Patrols (recruited from the Greek 

populace during the Cyprus Emergency), which 

caused EOKA more difficulties than Grivas was subsequently prepared to admit. The British Army also 

has a history of raising its own plain-clothes units— 

such as the Keeni Meeni patrols in Aden (1966-67)—

and similar formations were extensively employed in 

Operation BANNER.124

With clandestine operations, intelligence is gathered in an unobtrusive and discreet manner, so as not 

to attract the target’s attention. Plain-clothes military 

units can be involved in static or mobile surveillance—

on foot or in unmarked vehicles—of suspects, their safe 

houses and arms caches, and can provide time-sensitive intelligence to direct military and police patrols 

to arrest terrorists. This was the role performed by the 

British Army’s 14 Intelligence Company in Northern 

Ireland from early 1973 onward, and since April 2005, 

this is the remit of the Special Reconnaissance Regiment (SRR).125 More controversially, the Army’s Intelligence Corps also established the Force Research Unit 

(FRU) in 1980 to recruit informants among the Catholic 

and Protestant communities of Northern Ireland and 

to run agents within Republican and Loyalist terrorist 

groups. If the security forces are able to penetrate terrorist groups and recruit spies within their midst, then 

the former find it easier to contain the latter’s activities 

and frustrate their operations. Yet such intelligencegathering activity is fraught with ethical problems, 

which are discussed later.126
49

Other armies have also employed undercover 

units. The IDF’s Mista-Aravim troops have been employed as part of a strategy of targeted killing against 

Palestinian militants,127 while the U.S. Army established the Intelligence Support Activity (ISA) in the 

aftermath of the Iranian hostage crisis. ISA’s successes 

include locating American citizens held by Hezbollah 

in Lebanon during the mid-1980s—although the administration of President Ronald Reagan did not use 

this intelligence to order a mission to rescue them—

and the assistance its signals intelligence (SIGINT) 

specialists gave to the Italian police in January 1982, 

which enabled the latter to free kidnapped U.S. Brigadier General James Dozier, who was held hostage by 

the BR.128

State SIGINT agencies such as the U.S. National 

Security Agency (NSA) and the UK Government 

Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) are also involved in the interception of emails, mobile phone 

calls, and other communications between terrorist 

suspects. NSA is predominantly a military organization, whose director is a three-star officer drawn 

from the U.S. armed forces, and which is supported 

by U.S. military intelligence assets worldwide. While 

GCHQ is nominally overseen by the FCO, it also uses 

Royal Navy, RAF, and Army SIGINT units as part of 

its intelligence-gathering effort.129 NSA and GCHQ cooperate closely with each other and their Canadian, 

Australian, and New Zealand counterparts (respectively; the Communications Security Establishment, 

the Defence Signals Directorate, and the Government 

Communications Security Bureau) in the Echelon program. Although it is officially described as directed 

against terrorism and organized crime, critics suspect 

that Echelon has also been exploited for more dubious 
50

practices, such as commercial espionage. Nonetheless, 

it is clear that Western SIGINT services have been active against terrorist groups, although given the sheer 

volume of intercepted traffic—around 1.3 billion email 

users worldwide send a daily total of approximately 

210 billion messages—and limitations on the ability of 

agencies to collate and assess such material (in particular, the limited number of linguists and translators 

NSA, GCHQ, and other services employ) the SIGINT 

process is not as efficient as it is portrayed in Hollywood thrillers. Furthermore, official secrecy prevents 

an accurate assessment of the extent to which SIGINT 

enables Western states to thwart terrorist plots, although it is apparent that until a leak in the American 

media in August 1998, the NSA had a tap on one of 

bin Laden’s satellite phones.130

Preemptive Intervention.

The clandestine units discussed above can also assist operations to apprehend terrorists on the verge 

of committing an attack. In Northern Ireland, 14 Intelligence Company provided surveillance support 

to 22SAS, which, alongside the RUC’s Headquarters 

Mobile Support Unit, would intercept PIRA members 

on active service. 22SAS killed around 40 members 

of PIRA during Operation BANNER, but arrested a 

further 100, thereby belying Republican propaganda 

claims that 22SAS operated according to a shoot-tokill policy.131 The increasing reliance on preemptive 

intervention by the British Army and the RUC can be 

seen in the outcome of security force ambushes—nine 

Republican terrorists were killed by such means prior 

to 1983, and 35 were shot between this year and 1997. 

The two most effective operations were the ambush of 
51

a PIRA unit in the process of attacking the RUC station at Loughgall on May 8, 1987, during which 22SAS 

shot dead eight armed members of PIRA’s East Tyrone Brigade; and the arrest of a 4-man sniper team in 

South Armagh by SAS soldiers in April 1997.132

Given the fact that from the mid-1970s onward 

PIRA numbered around 300-400 active members at 

most, these killings and arrests had a disproportionate 

effect. Furthermore, as Ed Moloney notes, the Loughgall ambush was followed up by a series of undercover 

Army operations that led to further losses for PIRA’s 

Tyrone Brigade (renowned as the most hard-line of 

Provisional units); 28 of its members were killed in 

security force ambushes between May 1987 and February 1992. The shooting of PIRA volunteers in preemptive operations, most notoriously the Gibraltar 

killings of March 1998, did contribute to Republican 

propaganda demonizing the SAS, but these operations also had a demoralizing effect on the Provisionals and contributed to the ceasefire PIRA’s leadership 

declared in July 1997.133

A more recent example includes the use of American and British Special Forces units, including 22SAS, 

to disrupt Sunni and Shia insurgent activity in Baghdad, notably the suicide and car-bomb attacks committed by al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI). On completing his 

tour as the commander of multinational forces in Iraq 

in August 2008, General David Petraeus explicitly 

praised the efforts of Special Forces in crippling AQI 

activity in the Iraqi capital, stating that this contributed to the decline in terrorist and internecine violence 

in Baghdad which followed the surge of U.S. troops 

from February 2007.134
52

Targeted Killing.

For the purposes of this paper, the distinction 

between targeted killing and preemptive intervention missions that have ended lethally (such as the 

Northern Ireland examples noted above) needs to be 

emphasized. As Cronin states, “[naming] individuals and ordering their assassination is different from 

killing an enemy while he is engaged in an attack.” 

From a purely legal perspective, assassinations are 

illegal, since they involve extrajudicial killing, but 

in conventional warfare, it is permissible to kill key 

figures within an enemy’s command structure. Examples include the failed attack by British commandos 

on General Erwin Rommel’s headquarters in Libya 

in November 1941, and the interception and destruction of Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto’s transport plane 

by American fighter planes in April 1943 during the 

Pacific war.135 During the early phases of Operation 

IRAQ FREEDOM from March-April 2003, Coalition 

forces tried to kill Saddam Hussein by bombing his 

suspected hideouts, while the British military ordered 

an air strike on a house in Basra that was (wrongly) 

identified as the headquarters for Ali Hasan al-Majid, 

in charge of the defense of Southern Iraq.136 If states 

treat counterterrorism from a warfighting perspective, a strategy of decapitation is simply an extension 

of existing practice in interstate conflict.

Since 9/11, both the Bush and Obama administrations have conducted targeted strikes against their adversaries. This contentious policy is evident not only 

with the air strikes by Predator UAVs against al-Qaeda suspects and TTP leaders in the FATA,137 but also 

in other cases such as the UAV strike on Qaid Sunyan 

Ali al-Harithi (a senior al-Qaeda terrorist) in Yemen 
53

on November 3, 2002, and the helicopter gunship attack on a convoy carrying Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan in 

Somalia on September 15, 2009.138 The underlying calculation behind a targeted-killing strategy is that the 

elimination of key leadership and support figures (notably bomb makers and financiers) can have a critical 

effect in weakening a terrorist group. In this respect, 

U.S. and Pakistani officials hoped that the death of 

TTP leader Baitullah Mehsud in a Predator strike in 

South Waziristan on August 8, 2009, would create a 

damaging rift within this organization, although despite an apparent bout of infighting among rival TTP 

commanders, these expectations remain unfulfilled.139

The effect of such strikes on the morale of the rank and 

file of militants in Pakistan, Yemen, and elsewhere remains to be seen, although there is anecdotal evidence 

to suggest that UAV attacks have had a demoralizing 

effect on some survivors.140

The Israelis have also been consistent practitioners 

of this tactic, historically, against organizations such 

as the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ). Targeted killings 

have been conducted beyond Israel’s borders by both 

military units and the Mossad.141 Examples involving 

the IDF include the raid on Beirut, Lebanon, in April 

1973, during which the Sayeret Maktal assassinated 

three BSO leaders; the commando attack that killed 

one of Yasser Arafat’s key deputies, Khalil al-Wazir, 

at his home in Tunis; and the death of the Hezbollah 

leader, Sheikh Abas Musawi, in South Lebanon in 

February 1992 (Musawi’s vehicle convoy was intercepted and destroyed by helicopter gunships).142 The 

IDF and security forces have also conducted similar 

actions against Palestinian militants in Gaza and the 

West Bank from the early 1990s, using Mista-Aravim 

teams, uniformed Special Forces, and air strikes (such 
54

as the one that killed Hamas’s spiritual leader, Sheikh 

Ahmed Yassin, on March 22, 2004).143

Retaliation.

A state’s armed forces can be used to launch retaliatory raids or strikes against either another state that 

has supported a terrorist group, or against a nonstate 

actor based within a weak or failing state. These operations are coercive in nature, since they are intended 

to persuade an adversary to “choose between making 

concessions or suffering the consequences of continuing its present course of action.”144 In the cases discussed below, retaliatory raids are intended to compel 

terrorist groups to desist from perpetuating further 

attacks and to force their state sponsors to cease assisting them. 

Israeli forces conducted raids into Egypt during 

the early 1950s in response to attacks by the Cairobacked Palestinian Fedayeen, and also into Jordan 

during the late 1960s as a retaliation against the PLO, 

PFLP, and other groups’ attacks on Israel. The latter 

arguably contributed to King Hussein’s decision to 

crack down on the Palestinian guerrilla movement’s 

state-within-a-state in September 1970, although this 

also had the unintended effect of inspiring Arafat to 

create the BSO. It is also noteworthy that the Syrians 

would not permit Palestinian groups based on its soil 

to launch attacks directly against the “Zionist entity,” 

insisting that any such operations be staged from Lebanon or Jordan; Syria clearly preferred that other Arab 

states should face the brunt of Israeli reprisals.145 The 

U.S. air strikes on Libya on April 15, 1986 (Operation 

EL DORADO CANYON), also provide an example 

of retaliation against a state sponsor, as the opera-
55

tion was a response to the bombing of a disco in West 

Berlin earlier that month (frequented by U.S. military 

personnel), which was sponsored by Gaddafi’s intelligence services.146

With the Turkish-Syrian crisis of October 1998, the 

mere threat of military intervention forced a state to 

cease sponsoring a terrorist group. Syria had provided 

a safe haven for the PKK and its leader, Abdullah Ocalan, and PKK fighters were able to use training camps 

in the Bekaa Valley (Lebanon being under Syrian occupation at that time). After repeated attempts to persuade Damascus to expel the PKK, the Turkish government threatened Syria with war in early October 

1998, backing hostile rhetoric with military maneuvers 

near the Syrian border. Then-Syrian President Hafez 

al-Asad was fully aware that his country was diplomatically isolated and militarily weaker than Turkey 

(which was also a NATO member, and could count on 

close alliance ties with the United States and Israel). 

Ocalan was deported from Syria on October 9, 1998, 

facilitating his capture by the Turkish secret services 

in Kenya the following February, and the PKK were 

subsequently expelled from the Bekaa Valley. Success 

in this case derived not only from a credible military 

threat, but also the fact that President Asad concluded that the benefits gained from supporting the PKK 

were minimal compared to the risks.147

Examples of retaliation specifically directed 

against terrorist groups include the French air raids 

on the Bekaa Valley in October 1983, in response to 

a Hezbollah suicide bombing that killed 58 French 

paratroopers serving with the Multi-National Peacekeeping Force (MNF) in Lebanon. (A simultaneous 

attack on the same day, October 23, 1983, killed 241 

U.S. Marines also with the MNF.)148 In response to the 
56

Nairobi and Dar es-Salaam attacks, the administration 

of President Bill Clinton ordered cruise missile attacks against al-Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan 

and a suspected chemical weapons plant in Sudan, 

on August 20, 1998 (Operation INFINITE REACH).149

On March 1, 2008, the Colombian Army raided FARC 

camps in neighboring Ecuador, killing one of its senior commanders, Raul Reyes, in the process.150 The Israelis themselves have set several precedents, including the invasion of Lebanon in April 1982, intended to 

destroy the PLO’s Fatahland in Southern Lebanon; the 

July-August 2006 war against Hezbollah caused by an 

ambush against an IDF patrol in Northern Israel; and 

the December 2008-January 2009 campaign to cripple 

Hamas in Gaza (Operation CAST LEAD), in response 

to the latter’s rocket attacks on Sderot and other towns 

in Southern Israel.151

Regime Change.

The final example involves an invasion to overthrow a government that either promotes terrorism 

or provides a safe haven to terrorist groups. The only 

two examples to date have both followed the 9/11 

atrocities and the Bush administration’s declaration 

of a War on Terror. The first involved the invasion of 

Afghanistan on October 7, 2001, and the support given by U.S. and Coalition intelligence, air, and Special 

Forces to the Northern Alliance against the Taliban. 

The latter became a target for regime change, because 

it had sheltered al-Qaeda since mid-1996 and provided it with a base of operations to conduct attacks on 

U.S. targets up until 9/11. The Taliban leader, Mullah 

Omar, refused U.S. demands to hand over al-Qaeda’s 

leadership and close down its training camps, prin-
57

cipally because his regime depended not only on bin 

Laden’s largesse, but also on the thousands of foreigners who had come to train in Afghanistan, providing 

the Taliban with their most reliable and dedicated 

troops organized within al-Qaeda’s 055 Brigade.152 This 

was very much evident during the early phases of Operation ENDURING FREEDOM (October-December 

2001), when a total of around 5,000 Arab, Pakistani, 

and other foreign soldiers proved to be more effective 

and dedicated fighters for the Taliban than native Afghans—who generally defected to the Coalition and 

the Northern Alliance once it was apparent that the 

latter would prevail.153

In much the same way that the PLO handicapped 

itself in Lebanon in 1982 by organizing itself along 

conventional military lines, thereby leaving itself to 

be fixed and destroyed by the IDF, al-Qaeda fighters 

in Afghanistan in October-November 2001 chose to 

fight the Northern Alliance in positional warfare and 

suffered heavy losses from U.S. air strikes directed 

by Special Forces personnel liaising with indigenous 

anti-Taliban forces.154 By December 2001, al-Qaeda 

and its leadership had opted to disperse; hence, the 

flight of bin Laden, Zawahiri, and an estimated 1,000-

1,500 fighters across the Afghan border into the FATA 

during the battle of Tora Bora in December 2001.155

Al-Qaeda’s blunder in fighting on terms that favored 

the American way of war should be noted, as it is extremely rare for terrorists to fight on a footing which 

favors regular militaries.

The second example is the Ethiopian invasion of 

Somalia in December 2006, which was assisted by U.S. 

air power. American Special Forces units from CJTFHOA were also apparently active in supporting Ethiopian forces. The pretext for this invasion was the sup-
58

posed tolerance of the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) for 

al-Qaeda’s activities, a claim vigorously disputed by 

the ICU itself. In much the same way that Operation 

ENDURING FREEDOM led to U.S. and allied forces 

being involved in a complex stabilization mission that 

deteriorated into an insurgency against a resurgent 

Taliban, Ethiopia’s intervention drew it into a debilitating conflict in Somalia that lasted until it withdrew 

its troops in January 2009.156 Both cases show the limitations of military force as a counterterrorist tool, discussed in more detail in the next sections. 

PROBLEMS ARISING FROM MILITARY 

INVOLVEMENT IN COUNTERTERRORISM—

THE INTERNATIONAL CONTEXT

The previous section shows that in a variety of scenarios, armed forces can be employed both to support 

a state’s counterterrorist policies and also to provide 

capabilities which civilian agencies (such as the police 

and the intelligence services) may lack. For example, 

with Operation FLAVIUS in March 1988, soldiers 

from the 22SAS were sent to Gibraltar by the British 

government because the local police force lacked the 

trained personnel required to arrest the PIRA terrorists, who were planning a bomb attack on the peninsula. Military personnel often also have the physical 

and psychological stamina needed to operate in hostile environments bereft of the comforts that Western 

civilians take for granted, which makes them, and in 

particular Special Forces operatives, a tempting asset 

for policymakers envisaging a decisive strike against 

overseas terrorist groups and sanctuaries.157

Given the can-do attitude that is a characteristic of 

Western militaries, and also the fact that their person-
59

nel are prepared to endure considerable hardship and 

risk to life and limb as part of their profession, there is 

a clear temptation for governments to treat their armed 

forces as a magic bullet for solving complex problems. 

Yet, as the BBC journalist Hugh Sykes noted, the military often deals with symptoms, not causes, and the 

same can be said of counterterrorism.158 There are several potential pitfalls of employing military means to 

fight terrorism in the international arenas listed below. 

Those dealing with domestic counterterrorism are examined in the following section. These issues are often 

interlinked and should not be considered in isolation. 

Cooperation with Local Security Forces.

One of the first risks a state runs when providing 

military personnel to assist allied forces in counterterrorist training is that its own soldiers can become 

targets for attack. In February 2010, three U.S. servicemen working with the Pakistani Frontier Corps 

died in a bombing in the NWFP (two schoolgirls 

were also killed in this attack).159 Second, the ability 

of Western troops to interact effectively with indigenous personnel can vary. American counterterrorist 

cooperation with the Armed Forces of the Philippines 

(AFP) is facilitated by decades of contacts between 

an Anglophone AFP and the U.S. armed forces. An 

Economist journalist writing on this relationship noted 

that American and Filipino service personnel regular 

bonded off-duty over a few beers and a karaoke session, wryly observing that such a technique might not 

work with Yemeni soldiers. AFRICOM’s exercise in 

the Sahel in May 2010 (Operation FLINTLOCK) experienced certain practical difficulties, most notably regarding the fact that nearly all the African personnel 
60

involved were Francophone; the challenges of translating remarks by U.S. instructors were compounded 

by the difficulties in finding French phases for specific 

military terms, such as “a contact.”160

Third, there are few guarantees that training missions can prevent local security force personnel from 

going rogue, or from conducting themselves in a manner that discredits both the host nation and its Western 

ally (or allies). Operation MONOGRAM, the British 

MOD’s program for training foreign armies in counterterrorist tactics, received negative press scrutiny 

in July 2008 that focused on the Kenyan Army’s elite 

unit, 20 Para. This British-trained formation has been 

accused of numerous human rights abuses against civilians in its operations against the Sabaot Land Defence Force, a militant group active near the Ugandan 

border. For media critics, the abuses allegedly committed by 20 Para were reminiscent of the atrocities 

committed by the British colonial forces during the 

Mau Mau uprising in Kenya of 1952-57.161

As Daniel Byman notes, the task of training indigenous police and military forces to fight both terrorists 

and insurgents is fraught with problems. States beset 

by terrorism or guerrilla violence are in certain cases 

poorly governed and administered, and local security 

forces can be inadequately trained and equipped. A 

lack of professionalism—not to mention the tendency 

of some governments to coup-proof their regimes 

by creating parallel paramilitary forces, dividing the 

armed forces’ chain of command, or by promoting 

commanders on the basis of loyalty rather than competence—means that Western military trainers are often hampered in their efforts to establish professional 

and effective security forces.162 There is also a risk that 

elite units trained and funded by the United States 
61

and other Western countries might be used by autocratic governments to suppress dissent and to crush 

political opposition. The former Pakistani military 

dictator, General Pervez Musharraf, used U.S. aid intended to fight extremists in the FATA against insurgents in Baluchistan. Funds that had been provided 

to help the Pakistani Army against Islamist terrorists 

were instead used to crush a nationalist movement 

unconnected with al-Qaeda or the TTP. Regarding Yemen and its own internal problems, the government 

of President Al Abdullah Saleh is far more concerned 

with the rebellion by the Houthi tribesmen and Southern separatists than with AQAP. It is therefore likely 

that U.S. and British assistance to the Yemeni security 

forces will not actually be employed for the purposes 

intended by the donors.163

The dilemma for Western governments is that 

regional allies such as Pakistan and Uzbekistan are 

perceived to be of such strategic importance that state 

failure could have disastrous consequences for regional and international security; this is, of course, a 

particularly frightening prospect in a nuclear-armed 

Pakistan.164 This supposition is based on the debatable proposition that these states are on the verge of 

collapse. Furthermore, by funding and arming indigenous security forces, external supporters become 

automatically linked with human rights abuses and 

atrocities committed by the former, thereby becoming the focus of both international criticism and local 

resentment. President Karimov’s egregious despotism 

and corruption is an affront to civilized values, but 

Uzbekistan’s provision of host-nation logistical support for the NATO mission in Afghanistan makes him 

a necessary ally as far as Western governments are 

concerned. Karimov also has leverage over his West-
62

ern sponsors, as demonstrated in the aftermath of the 

Andijan massacre on May 13, 2005, in which hundreds 

of anti-government demonstrators were gunned 

down by his security forces. The Uzbek government 

responded to State Department condemnation of this 

atrocity by ordering American military personnel out 

of the Karshi-Khanabad air base on July 29; the base 

had been leased to the United States in the aftermath 

of 9/11. Karimov showed the United States and other 

Western powers that he was in a position to respond 

to criticisms of his domestic record by hampering NATO’s war effort against the Taliban.165 It is therefore not 

surprising that Western governments have continued 

to tolerate Uzbekistan’s abominable human rights record as the price to pay for its support for the troubled 

mission in Afghanistan, and, indeed, U.S. defense cooperation with Tashkent was subsequently resumed 

in early 2010.166

A further problem, common to COIN as well, is 

that the security forces of local allies can become infiltrated with terrorist sympathizers and informants, 

not to mention various other undesirable elements. 

During the British military occupation of Basra from 

2003-09, the local police was heavily infiltrated by 

militias and insurgents, and became a compromised 

force heavily involved in organized crime, political 

feuding, and anti-coalition attacks.167 A similar problem affects U.S. and allied policy toward Pakistan, insofar as the Pakistani Army and its intelligence wing 

(Inter-Services Intelligence [ISI]) have an unknown 

number of personnel who support the ideology of the 

Afghan Taliban and its Pakistani counterparts in the 

FATA.168 The shortcomings of the Frontier Corps in 

fighting the Taliban in the FATA became evident in 

2006-07. Not only was this paramilitary force poorly 
63

trained and equipped, but many of its ethnic Pashtun 

soldiers sympathized with the Taliban militants they 

were fighting.169

Police training is often the weak link in Western 

aid programs to indigenous security forces. It is the 

police who provide a direct link with the population, 

maintaining law and order and the writ of the government. They are of crucial importance in both COIN 

and counterterrorism because they are familiar with 

the local environment and provide a permanent presence amongst the civilian population. Yet, as current 

experience with the Iraqi Police Service (IPS) and the 

Afghan National Police (ANP) shows, police training 

is often a secondary priority to the training of local 

militaries, despite the fact that it is as important to create an effective constabulary as it is to raise an army. 

Furthermore, the culture/experience gap dividing 

Western police advisors (and military police trainers) from their indigenous recruits needs to be borne 

in mind. A U.S. civil affairs officer noted with reference to his experiences in Vietnam in 1973 that “[cement] police weren’t able to advise rice-paddy cops,” 

and these differences between developed and Third 

World policing need to be considered in any program 

training souq or arbakai cops today.170

Practicality.

In some scenarios, notably hostage rescue, counterterrorist operations can be thwarted by either a lack 

of host-nation support or even by local authorities cooperating with the terrorists. A prime example was 

the takeover of TWA Flight 847 on June 14, 1985, by 

Hezbollah. U.S. efforts to free the hostages with a military operation became impossible once the hijacked 
64

plane landed in Beirut and the crew and passengers 

were dispersed across the city.171 On December 25, 

1999, Indian Airlines Flight 814 was hijacked by Harkat ul-Mujadidin (HUM), a Pakistani group involved 

in the Kashmiri insurgency, which also had close links 

with the Taliban and al-Qaeda. The plane was flown to 

Kandahar, and the hijackers and their hostages were 

guarded by the Taliban regime. A rescue mission was 

therefore impossible, and so the Indian government 

was forced to concede to HUM’s demands and release its leader, Maulana Masud Azhar, and two other 

members from prison.172

On April 24, 1980, the Carter administration attempted to send a rescue force to liberate the U.S. 

diplomats held hostage by the Iranian revolutionary 

regime following the embassy takeover on November 

4, 1979. In retrospect, this was very much a “Mission: 

Impossible,” and its failure had more to do with the 

sheer scale of the challenge faced by the planners than 

any shortcomings within the U.S. military. Operation EAGLE CLAW involved flying a combined Delta 

Force/U.S. Army Ranger group 1,500 kilometers from 

Masirah air-base in Oman to a clandestine location in 

Iran (known as Desert One). U.S. military commanders rejected bases in Turkey for fear that the Soviets 

might pick up the helicopter and C130 flights by radar 

and alert the revolutionary regime. The rescue force 

was then to drive and helicopter to Tehran to storm 

the embassy and free the captives, making its escape 

from the Iranian capital right under the noses of the local security forces, not to mention the various militias 

that had emerged in the aftermath of Ayatollah Khomeini’s seizure of power. As one Delta Force officer 

quipped, the only difference between Operation EAGLE CLAW and the Alamo was that “Davy Crockett 
65

didn’t have to fight his way in.” The attempted rescue 

mission was aborted by President Jimmy Carter while 

it was assembling at Desert One, and eight U.S. servicemen were killed when a helicopter collided with 

a C130. Yet it can be argued that the Americans were 

lucky; if Carter had not aborted Operation EAGLE 

CLAW, there could well have been catastrophically 

high casualties among the commandos and also the 

embassy staff. The harsh fact was that nothing short of 

a full-scale military invasion of Iran, with all the diplomatic and political consequences involved, could 

have worked, and even in this instance it is likely that 

the Iranians would have murdered their captives well 

before they could have been rescued.173

Even in cases where host governments are not collaborating with terrorists, petty politics can hamper 

hostage rescue missions. During the Munich crisis of 

September 5, 1972, the Federal German government 

rejected Israeli appeals to send a Sayeret Maktal team 

to free the athletes held by the BSO, relying instead 

on the Bavarian police. While the Israeli army Special 

Forces had one successful hostage rescue mission to 

their credit (with the storming of Sabena Flight 571 at 

Lod airport on May 9, 1972), the Bavarian state police 

had no counterterrorist experience whatsoever. The 

grisly consequences of this decision were seen on the 

runway of Furstenfeldbruck the following morning. 

On November 23, 1985, the ANO hijacked EgyptAir 

Flight 648 en route from Athens to Cairo, diverting 

the plane to Luqa Airport, Malta. The Maltese government turned down American offers to send Delta 

Force to storm the plane, pleading neutrality, and 

turned instead to its Egyptian counterpart, Force 777. 

The Egyptian commandos bungled the November 

25th rescue mission, provoking a firefight in which 
66

56 out of 88 passengers were killed.174 In both cases, 

a high price was paid for observing political niceties.

Retaliatory missions can also be unfeasible if state 

sponsors are strong enough to escalate in response. 

For example, throughout the Cold War it was impossible for Western countries or Israel to take any action 

against the USSR or other Warsaw Pact states (such 

as the GDR or Czechoslovakia) that offered assistance 

to the PLO or to far-left European terrorist groups. 

Iran’s implicit threat to unleash Hezbollah, Hamas, 

and other proxies, not to mention to increase assistance to anti-Coalition forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, 

is such that the United States, Israel, and other European countries are unwilling to use military means to 

coerce Tehran.175 As noted below, the Indians face a 

similar problem regarding Pakistan’s sponsorship of 

groups (such as LET and HUM) involved since 1989 

in the insurgency in Kashmir. 

Military Reluctance.

A further obstacle to the involvement of armed 

forces in counterterrorism is the unwillingness of 

military chiefs to become involved. For example, after 

the U.S. Marine barracks bombing in Beirut in October 

1983, the U.S. Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, 

with the support of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), 

barred retaliatory strikes against IR positions in the 

Bekaa Valley. In the aftermath of the Vietnam War, 

and following the adoption of an all-volunteer force in 

1973, the U.S. Army focused its training, organization, 

and doctrine on the challenges of interstate warfare 

(with the USSR and Warsaw Pact until the end of the 

Cold War, and then with potential adversaries such as 

Iraq, Iran, and North Korea from 1990). Counterterror-
67

ism, alongside other missions such as peacekeeping 

and COIN, has been traditionally viewed by the U.S. 

military hierarchy as a distraction from missions more 

important to the national interest.176 Even in the post9/11 environment, there is still a pronounced concern 

among U.S. Army officers that a force which focuses 

too much on fighting irregular foes will lose the ability 

to fight so-called proper wars, and that the U.S. military risks a disastrous defeat if called upon to wage 

a conventional war against a state-based adversary.177

During the Clinton administration, the JCS proved 

to be particularly reluctant warriors. The chiefs repeatedly provided a negative response to White House 

queries about the feasibility of sending U.S. Special 

Forces units to capture bin Laden in Afghanistan during 1998-99, stating that such raids were militarily impossible. The chiefs were correct in this assessment; 

operations in Afghanistan since October 2001 show 

that such military operations cannot be conducted 

without the support of neighboring powers, and without a massive commitment in terms of manpower and 

logistical resources. However, critics of the JCS argued 

that the military hierarchy was also affected by an excessive timidity concerning losses (deemed the “body 

bag” mentality), and also the widespread distrust 

and dislike for the Clinton administration within the 

U.S. armed forces. The failure of the Somalia peacekeeping mission from 1992-93 impressed upon the JCS 

the suspicion that the White House would order them 

into ill-defined, insufficiently resourced, and complicated tasks, and would dodge responsibility if missions went awry and military personnel were killed.178

Although the British armed forces have a more 

sustained record of involvement in counterterrorism, 

not to mention COIN, there is also evident disquiet 
68

within the UK’s military hierarchy concerning the current operational focus on the War on Terror. Prior to 

his retirement, former head of the British Army General Sir Richard Dannatt suggested that Afghanistan 

and other commitments may sap the Army’s ability 

to conduct high-intensity military operations and maneuver warfare. The Royal Navy is also concerned that 

its current involvement in anti-piracy and Operation 

ACTIVE ENDEAVOUR-type missions may result in 

“skills fade,” particularly in areas of maritime warfare 

relevant to interstate conflict such as antisubmarine 

warfare.179

“Pin-Pricks”—The Perception of Ineffectiveness.

Retaliatory strikes may have a counterproductive effect if they are judged—not least by the targets 

themselves—to be ineffective. Operation INFINITE 

REACH failed to kill bin Laden, and therefore enabled the latter to present himself to fellow Muslims 

as someone who had defied a superpower and survived the consequences.180 For its part, the U.S. media 

automatically linked the cruise missile strikes on Afghanistan and Sudan with Clinton’s forthcoming impeachment by Congress over his affair with Monica 

Lewinsky. Operation INFINITE REACH was greeted 

by comparisons with a Hollywood satire in which a 

fictional President, beset by a sex scandal, concocts 

an artificial war to distract media attention and to exploit the patriotic response from the American public. When Secretary of Defense William Cohen faced 

a press conference after the missile strikes, one of the 

first questions asked was whether President Clinton 

had been inspired by the film, Wag the Dog.

181
69

Clinton did recognize that the use of precision 

weapons would be interpreted not as discrimination, 

but as cowardice, by bin Laden and his followers. The 

apparent unwillingness of Americans to risk the lives 

of troops in raids on al-Qaeda camps contributed to 

bin Laden’s propaganda claims that the United States 

was weak, and that its soldiers lacked the courage to 

fight. Conscious of this potential reaction, Clinton apparently cornered Chairman of the JCS General Hugh 

Shelton after a National Security Council (NSC) meeting on August 17, 1998, (following the decision to 

launch Operation INFINITE REACH) to suggest the 

following:

Hugh, what I think would scare the shit out of these 

al-Qaeda guys more than any cruise missile . . . would 

be the sight of U.S. commandos, Ninja guys in black 

suits, jumping out of helicopters into their camps, 

spraying machine guns. Even if we don’t get the big 

guys, it will have a good effect.182

Clinton’s unfamiliarity with the practicalities of 

military operations is evident here, but he also displayed a fairly accurate understanding of his enemies’ 

psyche.

Related weaknesses can be identified in military 

operations on the ground, sometimes as a consequence of inflated expectations and government spin. 

Following the clash between U.S. forces and al-Qaeda 

fighters in Operation ANACONDA in March 2002, a 

multinational task force was sent into Southeastern Afghanistan (Operation JACANA) the following month, 

its mission being to “destroy the terrorist infrastructure in South-East Afghanistan.” The bulk of this force 

came from 45 Commando Royal Marines, and prior to 

JACANA, the British government informed the media 
70

that a major battle was imminent. The failure of the 

Royal Marines to actually confront al-Qaeda fighters 

in combat was therefore treated by the press as evidence that the mission was a failure, notwithstanding 

the fact that al-Qaeda retreated and denied 45 Commando a chance to engage and destroy them.183

The third Israeli invasion of Lebanon from July 

13-August 14, 2006, also highlighted the problem 

of inflated expectations. It was counterproductive 

not merely because of the civilian casualties caused 

by IDF air strikes (these, apparently, involved 1,191 

killed and 4,409 injured), but also because the aircentric campaign was treated by Hezbollah’s propaganda as evidence of Israeli unwillingness to fight the 

IR face-to-face. IDF Chief of Staff Air Force Lieutenant 

General Dan Halutz contributed further damage to 

the Israeli war effort by proclaiming that air strikes 

alone would destroy Hezbollah’s missile sites and 

cripple the IR. In fact, Israeli ground troops had to be 

committed on July 23 to engage Hezbollah’s fighters 

in close-quarter combat. Although the IR apparently 

lost around 500 dead (to 121 IDF personnel), Hezbollah hailed the outcome of the conflict as a “divine and 

strategic victory,” with Sheikh Hasan Nasrallah gloating about “the Zionists’ failure to defeat us.”184 On the 

Israeli side, there was widespread public criticism 

of Ehud Olmert’s government, reflecting the general 

view that Israel had lost because of its failure to destroy the IR. The Lebanon war was therefore judged 

by regional opinion to have damaged the credibility of 

Israel’s deterrence strategy, and to have had the same 

effect on Hezbollah as the Karameh clash of February 

15, 1968, (an indecisive and costly IDF cross-border 

raid into Jordan that gave its target, Fatah, wider regional prestige for standing up to “the Zionists”).
71

The “Bully Effect”—The Ethical Aspect of a Military Response.

Paradoxically, military retaliation can also arouse 

international and domestic criticism, and claims that 

the states involved are resorting to disproportionate 

and indiscriminate violence. This partly arises from the 

problems involved in acquiring accurate intelligence 

identifying the perpetrators of any terrorist atrocity, 

not to mention their sponsors, and then of using such 

information to justify a retaliatory strike. With Operation EL DORADO CANYON in April 1986, the United 

States could not reveal that it could link Libyan intelligence to the West Berlin disco bombing through SIGINT intercepts, so air strikes on Libya were regarded 

even by U.S. NATO allies, with the exception of the 

UK, as unjustified. This problem becomes a more significant one for democratic states if there are substantial civilian casualties, which almost invariably occur 

as a consequence of retaliatory operations.185

The Laws of Armed Conflict (LOAC) stress that 

states do have a right to resort to military action 

(known as jus ad bellum), provided that in the process 

they can demonstrate just cause (notably the requirements of self defense: lawful authority; right intention; 

that they act in proportion to the injury received; have 

a reasonable chance of success; and are using force 

as a last resort. An examination of the U.S. attack on 

Afghanistan shows how contentious these principles 

are in practice. The Bush administration could claim 

just cause because al-Qaeda had attacked the United 

States, and the Taliban were complicit insofar as they 

had granted it a sanctuary in Afghanistan and considerable influence over the country. The Americans had 

no United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolu-
72

tion endorsing Operation ENDURING FREEDOM, 

but acted with the implicit approval of fellow permanent members of the Security Council, and indeed 

nearly all United Nations (UN) member states. The 

UNSC had already issued a resolution (SCR1267) on 

October 15, 1999, demanding that the Taliban cease 

assisting and sheltering al-Qaeda, and the passage 

of SCR1373 on September 28, 2001, and SCR1378 on 

November 14, 2001, implicitly legitimized the U.S.-led 

effort to overthrow Mullah Omar’s regime. Although 

some governments insist that Article 51 only applies 

to attacks from states, in the case of Afghanistan there 

was a near-universal consensus that al-Qaeda and the 

Taliban were de facto aggressors after 9/11.186

Critics argue that war was not a last resort because 

the Bush administration did not engage in a diplomatic alternative, such as to persuade the Taliban to 

hand over bin Laden for trial. Proponents of military 

action convincingly argue that such an effort would 

have been futile given the dependence of Mullah 

Omar’s regime on al-Qaeda, and that supposed Taliban attempts to negotiate with the United States prior 

to October 7, 2001, constituted a cynical effort to play 

for time. U.S. diplomats had, after all, repeatedly tried 

to persuade the Taliban to give up bin Laden before 

9/11, and the Taliban’s response to President Bush’s 

demands to hand over al-Qaeda’s leadership and 

close its training camps were a repetition of the bad 

faith and equivocations Mullah Omar’s envoys had 

offered over the past 3 years.187 Right intention can 

be judged to be in contention with proportionality; if

the latter is considered to be more important than the 

former, then the Afghan civilian losses caused by the 

war outweigh the intention of the United States and 

its allies to remove al-Qaeda from Afghanistan and to 
73

promote a post-Taliban government, which is representative of all ethnic groups and can maintain peace 

and security within Afghanistan’s borders. As for the 

question of whether the U.S.-led intervention had a 

reasonable chance of success, the insurgency by a revived Taliban movement is considered by critics of the 

war as proof that the United States, Britain, and other 

states involved in the conflict had no justification for 

thinking that a successful outcome was feasible. An 

alternative argument is that it was the Western Coalition’s objectives, such as democratization, rather than 

the intervention which lacked feasibility.188

Critics of military reprisals—whether governments, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) or 

the media—can employ double standards. Both the 

Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 2006 and the Gaza war 

of December 2008-January 2009 aroused international 

condemnation of the casualties that ensued (with reference to the latter, Palestinian sources claimed that 

926 civilians were killed), not to mention frequent 

allegations of IDF war crimes. In contrast, the latter 

phases of the Sri Lankan Army offensive against the 

LTTE in May 2009 attracted far less censure. The UN’s 

Human Rights Council was vocal about the former, 

but made no complaint about the latter.189 The Israeli 

government also issued furious protests when the Human Rights Council’s Fact Finding Mission, chaired by 

the South African Judge Richard Goldstone, issued its 

report on September 15, 2009, claiming that the report 

placed insufficient emphasis on Hamas’s own conduct 

during the Gaza war.190

Certain claims about the humanitarian consequences of retaliatory strikes also need to be examined 

with care. Chomsky asserts that the U.S. cruise missile strike on the al-Shifa plant in Sudan on August 
74

20 destroyed half of that country’s pharmaceutical 

supplies, and that this “one bombing, according to 

the estimates made by the German Embassy in Sudan 

and Human Rights Watch (HRW), probably led to 

tens of thousands of deaths.” In fact, neither the HRW 

nor the German diplomatic service had produced any 

such estimates. Chomsky also failed to explain how 

any source could produce such a precise assessment 

on civilian losses within a state which, at the time he 

was writing, was still undergoing a bloody civil war.191

A further example involves the IDF operation to clear 

the West Bank town of Jenin of Palestinian militants 

in response to a series of suicide bombings in Israel 

(April 2-11, 2002). Palestinian claims that the Israeli 

military were involved in a wholesale slaughter of 

hundreds of civilians continue to circulate on the Internet, despite an HRW report showing that this massacre did not take place.192

One of the first problems with military strikes involves the utility of intelligence. The Clinton administration targeted the al-Shifa plant as part of Operation 

INFINITE REACH because of inaccurate intelligence 

indicating that it was owned by bin Laden, and that 

chemical weapons were being produced there. At the 

NSC meeting on August 17, 1998, opinions were evidently swayed when Clinton’s National Security Advisor, Sandy Berger, asked “What if we do not hit [the 

al-Shifa factory] and then, after an attack, nerve gas 

is released in the New York City subway? What will 

we say then?”193 The Israeli record of retaliatory raids 

into the Palestinian territories and the West Bank, not 

to mention the closing phases of the Sri Lankan civil 

war and the MACP examples discussed subsequently, 

also illustrate the severe challenges of identifying and 

targeting terrorists and militants who fight from with-
75

in the midst of a wider civilian population.194 As with 

COIN in general, if armed forces kill large numbers 

of irregular adversaries, but also cause substantial civilian losses, then this military success is ultimately a 

counterproductive one, since it can mobilize popular 

support toward the insurgent/terrorist cause. 

A final issue here, particularly evident regarding 

the Gaza war, is the issue of proportionality. The UN 

Human Rights Council and NGOs such as HRW asserted that the IDF campaign against Hamas (Operation CAST LEAD) was a disproportionate response, 

and essentially involved the collective punishment of 

the 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza. The Israeli government’s response was that it was obliged to act in selfdefense, as Hamas and other militant groups were firing Qassam rockets from Gaza at civilians in Southern 

Israel. The Israelis also acted on the basis that a strictly 

proportionate response to the Qassams—namely, reprisal air or ground raids on suspected launch sites—

would not deter continued attacks against their people.195 A proportionate response would therefore be 

less effective than an overwhelming military response 

that forced the Hamas leadership into stopping Qassam strikes against Southern Israel. Given the reduced 

rate of rocket attacks from Gaza in the aftermath of 

Operation CAST LEAD, Israeli officials can claim that 

(in the short term) the IDF assault on Hamas was actually an effective response.196

Political Sensitivities.

Military action can be blocked by wider political 

considerations, as demonstrated by the U.S. Government’s repeated efforts between August 1998 and 

September 2001 to kill bin Laden with a cruise missile 
76

strike. The task was already a complicated one because 

intelligence on the al-Qaeda leader’s whereabouts 

was time-sensitive, and because of the time period required for the Tomahawk missiles on U.S. Navy submarines to be prepared for firing. On at least two occasions in 1999, the order to strike was not given by the 

Clinton administration for fear of substantial civilian 

casualties amongst Afghans. Reports of a desert camp 

being constructed were received by Washington, DC, 

in February 1999, and initial CIA assessments were 

that it was being prepared for bin Laden. However, 

the CIA subsequently received reports that the camp 

was for some princes from the United Arab Emirates 

(UAE) present in Afghanistan on a hunting trip. Rather than taking the risk of missing bin Laden—while 

incinerating members of the royal family of an allied 

power—the Clinton administration decided to abort 

the planned strike.197

Fears of military retaliation may block international cooperation against terrorism. One example was 

Riyadh’s response to the Khobar Towers bombing 

of June 25, 1996, that killed 19 American servicemen. 

The attack was linked to an Iranian-supported group 

recruited from the kingdom’s Shia minority; yet the 

Saudi authorities refused to assist the FBI’s investigation into the attack, apparently for fear that the United 

States, once it had proof of Tehran’s complicity, would 

launch reprisal attacks on Iran.198

In the aftermath of 9/11, U.S. drone strikes in the 

Middle East and Pakistan have had profound political implications. While regional governments may 

privately sanction and, in the case of the Pakistanis, 

actually provide base rights and intelligence to the 

Americans, the popular reaction to UAV attacks 

places U.S. allies under severe pressure. The Yemeni 
77

government acquiesced in the strike that killed Qaid 

al-Harithi in November 2002, up until the point where 

then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld publicly 

announced the U.S. role in his death; once American 

involvement was no longer plausibly deniable, the regime in Sanaa was forced by Yemeni public opinion 

to condemn the UAV strike. The reported killing of 

Rashid Rauf in a drone attack on November 21, 2008, 

also caused problems for Anglo-American relations. 

Rauf, wanted in connection with the thwarted plot to 

bomb transatlantic airliners in August 2006, had British citizenship, and reports of his death were greeted 

with considerable unease by the Labour government, 

which was conscious of the hostile reaction that UAV 

attacks in the FATA arouses among the one million 

British citizens of Pakistani descent.199 The Pakistani 

government, for its part, faced popular resentment 

that the country has been dragged into “Washington’s 

war.” Pakistani civilian and military officials are also 

becoming increasingly hostile toward Western accusations that they are not doing enough to fight terrorism, 

most notably with reference to the Afghan Taliban’s 

havens in Pakistan, pointing out that Pakastani armed 

forces have suffered thousands of casualties in their 

war against the TTP.200

Diplomatic Consequences.

Specific military measures may be treated by other 

states as a threat to their own national interests and 

can cause diplomatic implications. The establishment 

of AFRICOM as a U.S. military regional command 

has aroused a generally wary response from African 

states, hence the fact that its headquarters is still based 

in Stuttgart, Germany. Nigerian officials suspect that 
78

it is a means of undercutting their country’s regional 

influence, while the South African government has 

expressed concerns that AFRICOM will destabilize 

the continent by embroiling it in the War on Terror, 

thereby undermining the African Union. Academic 

critics also portray AFRICOM as a Trojan Horse for 

U.S. neocolonialism, and as a cover for its commercial, 

economic, and strategic competition with China and 

other powers that are developing their own stake in 

exploiting the continent’s resources.201

Some of the sensitivity surrounding AFRICOM 

can be seen with Operation FLINTLOCK. U.S. officials 

were quick to deny claims that the exercise had more 

to do with satisfying American objectives—notably reconnaissance for future intervention missions in West 

Africa—than with the training requirements of the African troops involved. Algeria refused to take part in 

Operation FLINTLOCK and has made its own efforts 

to combat AQIM with regional partners, including the 

establishment of a joint military command with Mali, 

Mauritania, and Niger based at Tamanrasset. Algerian 

suspicions of U.S. intentions in the region may prove 

to be a significant barrier to multilateral cooperation 

against AQIM.202

U.S. military assistance to the former Soviet republics of Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan also carries 

with it significant diplomatic risks, given not only the 

authoritarian nature of the regimes concerned, but the 

fact that all three states are embroiled in intractable 

disputes over territory and separatism—Armenia and 

Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh, Georgia with the 

self-declared republics of South Ossetia and Abkhazia (both backed by Moscow, with the former being 

the casus belli of the war of August 2008). American 

training and equipment may therefore be employed 
79

by its recipients in these frozen conflicts, rather than 

for counterterrorism.203

Even in a domestic context, military action can 

affect relations with neighbors, particularly if troops 

cross international borders either accidentally or 

as part of a policy of hot pursuit. During Operation 

BANNER, the poorly demarcated border between the 

UK and Eire led to a series of Anglo-Irish squabbles 

arising whenever the Irish police (Garda Siochana) and 

armed forces discovered British troops on the wrong 

side of the frontier. These incidents generally arose 

from navigational errors, notably when two carloads 

of plain-clothes soldiers from 22SAS were arrested by 

the Garda on May 5, 1976, but they also aroused suspicions on both sides of the border that British assassination squads were slipping across the border to murder 

PIRA suspects living in the Irish Republic.204 According to BBC journalist Mark Urban, a major incident 

was narrowly avoided during the late 1970s when a 

patrol of British paratroopers was landed in error by 

an RAF helicopter within Eire, and almost ended up in 

a firefight with the Irish Army. If Urban’s story is true, 

it represented a rare lapse in the cooperative, albeit 

discreet, relationship between the police and military 

forces that both states developed from the early 1970s 

onward. Close Anglo-Irish cross-border contacts ensured that accidental British incursions did not have 

wider political repercussions on bilateral relations.205

With Operation BANNER, the British government 

was dealing with a counterpart with which it had generally friendly relations. The same could not be said 

with Turkey and the Kurdish Regional Government 

(KRG) in Northern Iraq. During the 1990s, when Iraqi 

Kurdistan emerged as a de facto independent state, 

the PKK used Northern Iraq as a sanctuary in its mili-
80

tary campaign against the Turkish state, and the Turkish military conducted cross-border reprisal raids in 

1995 and 1999. In the aftermath of the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq (March-April 2003), the Turkish 

General Staff and nationalist politicians feared that 

the KRG would secede from the Iraqi state and provide the focus for a successful Kurdish secessionist 

campaign in Southeastern Turkey. The existence of 

PKK bases in Northern Iraq was therefore not only a 

source of tension between Ankara and Irbil, but also 

had a negative impact on U.S.-Turkish relations. The 

Kurdish question had the potential to destroy Washington’s relationship with one of its key regional allies, and when the Turks launched air strikes against 

PKK sites in Iraq in December 2007—followed by a 

land offensive with 10,000 troops (Operation SUN) in 

February 2008—Iraqi Kurdish politicians publicly declared that the Turkish General Staff’s real intention 

was to crush the KRG, not the PKK. Since Operation 

SUN, the KRG’s efforts to persuade Turkey that it has 

no pan-Kurdish agenda have eased tensions, although 

the PKK problem still has a potentially destabilizing 

effect on the quadrilateral relationship between Washington, Ankara, Baghdad, and Irbil.206

Making a Bad Situation Worse.

The decision to resort to military retaliation, either 

against terrorists located in a weak but friendly state, 

or against a state sponsor, can have destabilizing consequences. The IDF’s strike against the BSO in Beirut 

in April 1973 helped intensify the communal tensions 

in Lebanon at that time. The Palestinians suspected 

the Christian-dominated government of conniving in 

the Sayeret Maktal’s commando raid. This operation 
81

was therefore one of many factors that contributed to 

the outbreak of the Lebanese civil war 2 years later. 

Israeli military intervention in 1982 also contributed 

to intercommunal and sectarian violence in Lebanon; 

the most damning example being the IDF’s role in facilitating the Phalangist militia’s bloody assault on the 

Palestinian refugee camps at Sabra and Chatilla in September of that year. While Sabra and Chatilla was one 

of many atrocities committed by the warring factions 

during the Lebanese civil war (for which their Syrian, 

Iranian, Iraqi, and Libyan sponsors remain complicit), 

Menachem Begin’s Israeli government was justifiably 

pilloried by domestic and international opinion for allowing this massacre to occur.207

Aside from one Special Forces raid into South Waziristan on September 3, 2008, the Americans have 

avoided ground attacks across the Afghan border into 

the FATA, recognizing that these may well lead to a 

furious backlash in Pakistan, if not to clashes between 

U.S. and Pakistani troops.208 President Obama has, 

however, continued his predecessor’s policy of ordering Predator strikes in FATA, and firm figures on 

militant and civilian losses are difficult to obtain. Estimates vary from between 14 members of al-Qaeda and 

687 Pakistani civilians killed between January 2006 

and April 2009, to 865 al-Qaeda and Pakistani Taliban 

killed (for the loss of an additional 95 civilians) during 

the same period. A recent BBC estimate lists a total of 

700 fatalities in UAV strikes (without differentiating 

between militants and civilians) since January 2009, 

and a further 1,800 deaths caused by militant attacks 

across Pakistan during the same period.209

The following points are worth noting: First, drone 

attacks have killed a number of significant militant 

leaders between August 2009 and July 2010, including 
82

Baitullah Mehsud, Tahir Yuldashev (the leader of the 

IMU), Hussein al-Yemeni (the alleged plotter of the 

suicide bomb attack against a CIA outpost in Khost 

on December 31, 2009), and Saeed al-Masri (the commander of al-Qaeda in Afghanistan), although claims 

that the current TTP leader Hakimullah Mehsud was 

killed in February 2010 have been proven false. Second, it is impossible to independently distinguish 

between militant and civilian casualties after a strike 

because TTP fighters cordon off the scene of any attack. The FATA is also in this respect an extremely 

dangerous environment for any Western or Pakistani 

journalist or NGO activist trying to investigate the effects of drone strikes. Third, the Pakistani researcher 

Farhat Taj argues that Predator attacks are privately 

condoned by many Pashtun tribesmen, since they 

eliminate militants who have imposed a reign of terror 

across the FATA; the disadvantage being that the TTP 

and al-Qaeda are swift to hunt down and execute suspected informants after each UAV strike. But it is also 

evident that beyond the FATA, Predator attacks cause 

fierce resentment within Pakistani public opinion and 

have also led the TTP and its allies to increase their 

attacks against the authorities and the security forces, 

which they view as complicit in U.S. drone strikes. The 

challenge for American policymakers is to balance the 

tactical benefits of eliminating senior militants in the 

FATA with the strategic problem of ensuring Islamabad’s continued engagement in a struggle against the 

TTP, which has led to several thousand military and 

civilian casualties (the latter arising mainly from suicide bombings which have intensified since the Pakistani Army’s offensive into the FATA). While the vast 

majority of Pakistanis have no sympathy for the Taliban, they are also sensitive to the civilian losses and 
83

infringements of sovereignty that drone strikes entail; 

thus the United States risks beating the TTP and other 

Islamist militants in an unpopularity contest.210

The Predator strikes raise a further dilemma concerning the efficacy of decapitation attacks aimed at a 

terrorist group’s leadership. While military and civilian bureaucracies may run the risk of mirror-imaging 

in assuming that the death or incapacitation of key 

leaders in a terrorist organization will have a crippling 

effect on the latter’s operations, groups facing a combination of police and military pressure may adopt 

a more horizontal organizational structure in order 

to survive. Al-Qaeda has clearly become more networked and less hierarchical as a result of Operation 

ENDURING FREEDOM, which removed its Afghan 

sanctuary, not to mention global cooperation between 

police and intelligence services to neutralize its operatives worldwide. But as a consequence, bin Laden and 

Ayman al-Zawahiri have sacrificed their capability to 

control and direct the various branches of al-Qaeda 

worldwide. The most immediate by-product has been 

the series of atrocities against Muslims, such as those 

committed by AQI in Iraq since 2003, which have outraged Islamic opinion and caused a backlash against 

bin Laden and his cause.211

The Russians faced a problem similar to that of the 

Americans with FATA, involving the Pankisi Gorge 

in Georgia. The local population has ethnic ties with 

the Chechens, and the Gorge is described by Moscow 

as a sanctuary for Chechen separatists and a conduit 

for assistance to the insurgency in Chechnya itself. 

The Georgian government rejected Russian demands 

to station troops in Pankisi, and in the summer of 

2002 the Russians threatened to invade. From Tblisi’s 

perspective, Russia’s counterterrorist policy regard-
84

ing the Pankisi provides a pretext for the continued 

coercion of Georgia, and persistent efforts to dictate 

the terms of Georgian foreign policy and to force the 

country to remain within the Russian sphere of influence. The quarrel over Pankisi is not the sole cause of 

Russo-Georgian tensions, but it contributed to the decline in relations between Moscow and Tblisi, leading 

to war in August 2008.212

Military action can also have calamitous consequences if it is directed against the wrong target. This 

point is amply demonstrated by the manner in which 

the Bush administration exploited 9/11 to settle scores 

with Saddam Hussein, but also by the second Israeli 

invasion of Lebanon in April 1982. Begin and his Defence Minister, Ariel Sharon, used the attempted assassination of the Israeli ambassador to London by 

the ANO as the pretext for destroying the PLO. When 

Israeli Chief of Staff General Rafel Eitan was told by 

subordinates that the terrorists who shot Argov belonged to a group that loathed Arafat and Fatah, his 

intemperate response was as follows, “Abu Nidal? 

Abu Shmidal! They’re all PLO!” The Israeli intervention may have destroyed the PLO’s power in Lebanon, 

but it came at the cost of damaging the Jewish state’s 

international reputation, and also led to the creation 

of a more dangerous enemy in the form of Hezbollah 

and the IR.213

Military operations against state sponsors are usually intended to coerce the target into ceasing its assistance to terrorist groups, or its instigation of attacks, 

but does coercion work? Defenders of retaliatory 

policy can point to the Clinton administration’s response to an Iraqi plot to kill former President George 

H. W. Bush during a visit to Kuwait in April 1993. On 

June 26, the United States destroyed Iraqi intelligence 
85

headquarters with a volley of Tomahawk missiles. 

Saddam Hussein had been a persistent sponsor of terrorist organizations, notably the ANO and PLF, during the 1980s, but after the June 1993 missile strikes, he 

apparently curtailed his support for such groups. In 

contrast, Operation EL DORADO CANYON probably 

inspired Gaddafi to order the Lockerbie bombing of 

December 22, 1988, which killed 270 people, as an act 

of revenge.214

Escalation.

Reprisal raids can lead to interstate war, with the 

onus for such an outcome being shared by the state 

sponsor and the retaliating power. IDF attacks against 

the Fedayeen in Egypt during the early 1950s contributed to the worsening of tensions that preceded the Sinai 

war of October 1956. The Samu incident of November 

1966, in which Israeli and Jordanian forces clashed following an IDF cross-border attack against Fatah, had 

a wider diplomatic impact, which led to the Six Day 

War from June 5-10, 1967.215 A similar danger of escalation exists in Indo-Pakistani relations, particularly because of Pakistani sponsorship of groups like LET and 

HUM, who are involved in the Kashmir conflict and 

have launched attacks on India itself. Since May 1998, 

both India and Pakistan are declared nuclear powers, 

and a major terrorist incident on Indian soil has the 

potential to provoke a disastrous military confrontation. It was because of this that General Anthony Zinni, the then-commander in chief of U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), telephoned Pakistani Chief of 

Staff General Jehangir Karamat on August 20, 1998, to 

inform him of the decision to launch Operation INFINITE REACH; U.S. officials feared that the Pakistanis 
86

would pick up Tomahawks bound for Afghan targets 

on their radar, assume that it was an Indian preemptive strike, and retaliate.216

The potential for war reemerged on December 

13, 2001, when five terrorists from Jaish e-Mohamed

(a Pakistani-backed group) launched a suicide bomb 

and gun attack on the Lok Sabha (the lower House of 

Parliament) in New Delhi. This attempt to slaughter 

Indian parliamentarians outraged public and political 

opinion and led to the massing of the Indian armed 

forces on the border with Pakistan, meeting a similar 

response from Islamabad. From December 2001 to 

October 2002, both countries were poised for confrontation, which was mitigated only by American diplomatic mediation.217 The Mumbai attack of November 

2008 also provoked popular demands within India 

for retaliation, although both the Indian and Pakistani governments managed to avoid a major crisis. 

Nonetheless, the possibility of a subcontinental Sarajevo—of a terrorist outrage provoking a cataclysmic 

Indo-Pakistani war—still exists. Indeed, it is likely 

that the Lok Sabha raid was intended by its instigators to provoke a major crisis, forcing Pakistan to send 

troops away from the FATA toward India, assisting 

the escape of al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters from the 

Coalition offensive in Afghanistan. The Mumbai attack may likewise have been intended by its LET instigators to cause a crisis that would see the removal 

of Pakistani Army units from the Afghan to the Indian 

border, thereby reducing the threat posed to the TTP 

and other allied groups.218
87

The Price of Intervention.

As demonstrated by the Israeli occupation of 

Southern Lebanon from 1982-2000 and NATO’s current predicament in Afghanistan, a retaliatory or 

regime-change mission may lead to a prolonged occupation and the involvement of military forces in a 

debilitating and controversial struggle against insurgents. The Iraq war and current NATO operations in 

Afghanistan are also contributing to a growing sense 

among European and, to a lesser extent, U.S. public 

opinion that military intervention is in itself a source 

of insecurity, insofar as such operations alienate Islamic opinion, inciting Muslims in Western countries 

into committing atrocities such as the Madrid train 

station bombings of March 2004, and the July 7, 2005 

(7/7) bombings in London.219 While these perceptions 

may not be strictly accurate—the process of radicalization in Britain and other Western countries preceded 

the interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq—they are 

nonetheless prevalent. Such concerns, in conjunction 

with public disquiet over military losses, may compel 

the British and other allied governments into withdrawing their forces from Afghanistan, in much the 

same way as Israeli public opinion over the losses the 

IDF sustained in Southern Lebanon contributed to its 

withdrawal on May 24, 2000.220

PROBLEMS ARISING FROM MILITARY 

INVOLVEMENT IN COUNTERTERRORISM—

THE DOMESTIC CONTEXT

Turning to the internal dimension of military intervention in counterterrorism, it is important to stress 

that democracy rests on the idea that governance is 
88

based on the consent of the majority and that any political disputes are resolved nonviolently. If changes 

to the political or socioeconomic order are required to 

address popular discontent, then these need to be affected incrementally, and by consensus on the process 

of reform, and not by either the application of violence 

from below (in the form of an insurrection) or above 

(in the form of an authoritarian coup). The ability to 

debate, to reason, and ultimately to persuade is a key 

feature of liberal democratic politics, as is a clear and 

understandable distaste for those who use intimidation and the application of force to achieve their objectives. The norms of democracy also stress the importance of the rule of law, that governments are bound 

by an implicit social contract with the governed, and 

that the worst crime a state’s rulers can commit is to 

abuse the authority vested in them by the electoral 

process, and to turn governance by consent and responsibility into rule by fear.221

All of this means that the use of military means 

to fight domestic terrorism is fraught with political, 

practical, and ethical problems. No democratic politician should feel completely comfortable with the idea 

that the task of fighting terrorism should be entrusted 

to an organized body of men and women who are 

conditioned to the idea of using violence—albeit in a 

controlled and discriminate manner—to achieve set 

objectives, who adhere to principles of hierarchy and 

chain-of-command, and who are accustomed to the 

idea of identifying an enemy and planning and conducting a sequence of actions aimed at its destruction. 

The contradiction between democratic politics and 

the military ethos should be recognized. While it is 

dangerous to assume that the latter is superior to the 

former and also naïve to assume that democracy can 
89

survive against internal and external threats without 

any means of defense, the contradiction between the 

norms of the liberal democratic state and military realities is a key theme in this section. Students of civilmilitary relations in democracies recognize that the 

friction between the frock coats and the brass manifests itself in warfare against state-based adversaries.222 The same is true of democracies beset by armed 

and lethally inclined internal enemies as well.

Resources.

A key question that governments need to ask is 

whether their armed forces actually have the assets 

and manpower needed to make a valid contribution 

to a counterterrorist campaign. A prime example is 

offered in the UK’s case by the CCRF, the formation 

of which was announced in the MOD’s Strategic Defence Review: New Chapter (2002). As of December 31, 

2003, the CCRF officially consisted of 14 regional units 

500-strong, nominally drawn from the Royal Naval 

Reserve, the Territorial Army and the Royal Auxiliary 

Air Force.223 Yet the establishment of the CCRF failed 

to take account of the fact that that the British military’s reservists were overwhelmingly committed to 

operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Furthermore, the 

CCRF’s exact relationship with the emergency services 

was unclear, particularly regarding the establishment 

of communications between the two, and few CCRF 

exercises have actually been conducted beyond the 

confines of London District. The CCRF was dismissed 

as a cosmetic exercise intended purely for public consumption. As one officer involved in its establishment 

complained, “[We] have a name and a role but no 

troops and no resources.” Neither the Labour govern-
90

ment nor the MOD gave any clear indication as to the 

CCRF’s roles, or as to what assets it can rely on in responding to a major terrorist attack, and in this respect 

it is therefore fair to describe it as a “paper force.”224

Boots on the Streets.

It is a rare and disturbing sight to see armed soldiers in full battle order, complete with webbing and 

ammunition, in public in a liberal democratic state. 

The sight of troops on the streets is instinctively unsettling. The average civilian can be forgiven for assuming that he or she may be shot dead for performing 

an innocuous action that may be interpreted by soldiers as a threat, while the more politically aware may 

wonder if the sudden presence of troops precedes 

a more sinister action, such as a coup d’etat. With a 

deterrence operation, one of the key problems for a 

state is how to prove a negative. No government can 

inform the media and the populace with true certainty 

that a decision to put soldiers on the streets definitely 

thwarted a terrorist attack, given the often imprecise 

nature of the intelligence involved. It will never be 

known for certain whether an al-Qaeda militant observed the deployment of the Grenadier Guards and 

Household Cavalry to Heathrow airport in February 

2003 and decided to abort a planned attack. What is 

evident is that that this particular operation “freaked” 

several passengers out at the airport, particularly because the cavalry turned up with Scimitar reconnaissance vehicles that, to the inexpert eye, look like tanks. 

There was also widespread media skepticism about 

the alert, attributed as being an attempt by the Blair 

government to influence public opinion prior to the 

Anglo-American invasion of Iraq.225
91

The Heathrow alert of 2003 was treated by media 

critics as an example of New Labour spin. Similar operations nearly 30 years earlier aroused alarm rather 

than scorn. Following the implementation of Operation MARMION in January 1974, troops were deployed at the airport on at least three further occasions 

that year, in June, July, and September. These maneuvers occurred at a time of considerable economic and 

social upheaval, and while there were widespread 

rumors that the establishment was plotting to overthrow the Labour government. While right-wing 

commentators like former British Army General Walter Walker hysterically declared that increased trade 

union activism and industrial strikes were part of a 

Soviet-backed plot to destabilize Britain, many on the 

left believed that the armed forces were poised for a 

coup. The Heathrow deployments were therefore seen 

not as a response to a potential terrorist threat, but as 

a rehearsal for a military takeover.226

Fears of a military takeover in Britain during the 

1970s were closely linked with the conflict in Northern 

Ireland. The putsch initiated by French commanders in 

Algeria in April 1961 set a precedent in which military 

frustration with an ongoing counterterrorist/COIN 

campaign might lead to resentment at the perceived 

obstructions imposed by a democratic order, and a 

growing sense among the officer corps that in order 

to win the war, the government needed to be overthrown. The British left’s fear during the mid-1970s 

that the Army’s frustrations with its inability to defeat 

PIRA, not to mention fragmentary evidence of military disaffection with the Wilson government, could 

lead to a coup therefore reflected the wider fears of 

civil strife and social collapse that were prevalent during that time.227
92

Chain of Command.

Operation BANNER, like other cases involving 

military intervention in counterterrorism, was also 

fraught with practical problems arising from the position of the Army within the decisionmaking hierarchy. 

It is an inevitable feature of bureaucratic politics that 

government departments and official agencies clash 

over departmental roles, procedures, and lines of administrative responsibility.228 In Northern Ireland from 

1969-72, the General Officer Commanding (GOC) was 

in charge of internal security, but the Chief Constable 

of the RUC possessed considerable autonomy. The 

GOC was also accountable not only to the British government in Westminster, answering to both the MOD 

and the Home Office, but also—before the imposition 

of direct rule by London on March 27, 1972—to the 

devolved government at Stormont. Even after March 

1972, the GOC of British forces took orders from the 

MOD and the Chief of the General Staff (CGS), but 

also the Northern Ireland Office (NIO).229 This created 

several opportunities for bureaucratic infighting and 

departmental friction.

Such tensions were evident from August 1969, 

when British troops were sent to the province. While 

both the Labour and, after June 1970, the Conservative governments tried to focus on peacekeeping and 

preserving civil order, this agenda conflicted with 

Stormont’s persistence in emphasizing the need to 

crush a Republican insurrection, rather than to deal 

even-handedly with both communities and to address 

the grievances of the Catholic community.230 The first 

GOC, Lieutenant General Sir Ian Freeland, clashed 

constantly with RUC Chief Constable Arthur Young 
93

throughout 1969-70. Young had been appointed to 

reform the police—undermanned at 3,000 constables 

and compromised by its Unionist bias—but he angered Freeland by taking measures (notably disarming the force and reducing its role in public order 

control), which in the GOC’s opinion increased the 

burden on the Army for maintaining internal security. 

Young, for his part, resented the fact that the RUC was 

often not consulted by its military counterparts and 

had no say in Army planning.231

The imposition of direct rule reduced the ability 

of the Unionist establishment to block reform, but it 

did not remove the tensions that existed between the 

Army and the RUC. The introduction of police primacy in 1976 was subsequently challenged by General Sir Timothy Creasey during his tenure as GOC. 

Creasey expressed frustration at what he considered 

to be feeble security force tactics, and publicly stated 

that the Army should “stop messing around and take 

out the terrorists.” The Warrenpoint ambush on August 27, 1979, in which PIRA managed to kill 18 British 

soldiers in a skillfully planned double-bombing, only 

increased the GOC’s fury. Although the newly-elected Conservative government overruled Creasey’s 

requests to reassert Army control over the campaign 

against PIRA, his attitude was noteworthy. It is conceivable that in similar scenarios in the future other 

generals may react against what they consider to be 

unnecessary political and bureaucratic restraints on 

a counterterrorist campaign, particularly if they believe that military casualties are incurred as a consequence.232

The implementation of domestic counterterrorist 

measures in mainland Britain after 1972 was also hampered by interdepartmental wrangles. Police chiefs 
94

were initially uneasy with the prospects of calling in 

22SAS’s Pagoda troop to resolve an emergency, seeing 

the latter as a band of trigger-happy mavericks. The 

close attention 22SAS paid to liaison arrangements, 

in particular standardizing communications and arranging transport by air or land in the event of a crisis—in addition to the repeated visits paid by English, 

Scottish, and Welsh chief constables to the regiment’s 

headquarters near Hereford—helped alleviate police 

concerns and did much to ensure close cooperation 

between 22SAS and the Metropolitan Police during 

Operation NIMROD.233

Preparations for maritime counterterrorist contingencies, with particular reference to the North Sea oilfields, during the mid-1970s were subject to a more 

intense bureaucratic quarrel, particularly regarding 

command and control measures. The Home Office 

backed Scottish police chiefs, who believed that they 

could be saddled with the responsibility for protecting oil platforms, despite their lack of the resources required. The MOD and the armed forces were, for their 

part, loath to commit military units to the defense of 

offshore installations against terrorist attack, particularly at a time when they faced both budget cuts and 

other significant commitments, notably regarding 

NATO and Operation BANNER.234 The departments 

involved finally agreed in March 1977 to implement 

standard MACA principles; the Home Office would 

be responsible for handling any emergency, terroristrelated or otherwise, and the police authorities would 

only call for military assistance if they lacked the 

means to resolve it themselves. At the time of this writing, contingency preparations for a maritime terrorist 

attack off the UK coast have yet to be implemented, 

and indeed one SBS veteran expressed the view that 
95

offshore oil rigs are extremely difficult for terrorists to 

assault, not only because of their size but because of 

the character of their work force:

I always felt it would take a particularly insane terrorist to actually try to capture a North Sea oil platform 

and then hold on to it. Many of the so-called roughnecks who work on them have military backgrounds. 

It would not be like taking over a cruise ship with a 

mostly elderly clientele and soft crew. If a terrorist 

turned his back for a second on one of these roughnecks, it is likely that his next experience would be a 

wrench crashing through his skull.235

During the 1970s, British civil servants and military personnel prepared themselves for a terrorist 

attack at sea, but in Mumbai in 2008 the Indians had 

to face a seaborne attack on a major city. The Indian 

authorities were criticized not only for the intelligence 

failure preceding the LET attacks, but also for the delay in calling in military reinforcements. It took the 

Indian Army 5.5 hours to respond, by which time the 

terrorists had claimed most of their victims. The attacks started at 9:20 p.m. on November 26, and local 

army units took to the streets at 2:50 a.m. the following 

morning. The arrival of India’s elite counterterrorist 

unit, the National Security Guard (NSG), was delayed 

by nearly 10 hours; not only did the NSG have to fly 

from their base in Delhi, but it had no dedicated air 

force transport at its disposal. Since November 2008, 

the Indians have sought to enhance their capabilities 

for dealing with a similar attack, establishing joint patrol stations for the navy, police, and coastguard, as 

well as regional centers for the NSG. However, there 

are still considerable problems in interagency cooperation, not least the fact that the Indian Army, which 
96

provides officers to and training for the NSG, is loath 

to loan personnel to train and command this unit due 

to manpower shortages within its own officer corps. 236

In Britain’s case, COBRA worked well in handling the Iranian embassy siege in May 1980 mainly 

because Ministers and officials had time to deliberate 

over their actions. More recently, the Metropolitan 

Police’s former chief of anti-terrorism, Andy Hayman, 

has expressed frustration with COBRA’s sluggishness 

and the tendency of Ministers to interfere with what 

he regards as petty political considerations. Hayman’s 

recommendations involve establishing a separate 

body for the police and other key agencies to prepare 

contingency plans for consideration by COBRA.237 In 

this case, it would make sense to copy the standard 

Whitehall practice of shadowing Ministerial committees with official ones, particularly regarding advance 

preparation for and consideration of potential emergency scenarios. 

The Intelligence Aspect.

One of the principal causes of interdepartmental 

animosity involves the means needed to gather information on a terrorist organization, its collation, and 

its dissemination across various agencies. Success depends on the security forces’ ability to accurately identify terrorists, to obtain timely information about their 

operations, their objectives, and their overall strategy. 

Generating this information represents a considerable challenge, for, as Kitson noted, “the problem of 

defeating the enemy consists very largely of finding 

him.” As noted in Section 2, vital sources of human 

intelligence (HUMINT) include undercover patrols, 

informants recruited from the civilian population, 
97

and agents (turned terrorists who are supplying information to the security forces). Both insurgents and 

terrorists understand the dangers posed by HUMINT 

sources; hence, their readiness to murder suspected 

agents and informants in order to intimidate the general populace into silence.238

One striking aspect concerning the historical record of both COIN and counterterrorism is the fact 

that—despite insurgent/terrorist intimidation, not to 

mention the profound racial, ethnic, cultural, and sectarian divides that can separate state authorities from 

the general population—security forces find it easy to 

recruit informants from the civil population, and to 

encourage insurgents and terrorists, often while the 

latter are in captivity, to change sides. This has been 

demonstrated not only in Northern Ireland, but also 

with the ability of Israel’s Shin Bet to recruit Palestinian spies in the Occupied Territories.239 The motives of 

informants and agents vary, they include: monetary 

gain; fear of imprisonment or as part of a bargain to 

keep relatives out of jail; petty resentments; or even a 

sense of remorse or disgust over atrocities committed 

by their comrades. Yet spies, narks, and touts have a 

disproportionate effect on a terrorist organization, as 

even the suspicion of treachery can be enough to turn 

members against each other, or to persuade a paranoid 

leadership to purge its ranks. Abu Nidal’s destruction 

of his own organization during the late 1980s provides 

a graphic example of the paralyzing effect that the fear 

of betrayal can have on a group.240

However, if a state’s intelligence and security services are unable to cooperate, any intelligence gathered is of limited value. Ronen Bergman describes the 

chaos involving competing Israeli services—Mossad, 

Shin Bet, and IDF intelligence—engaged with Hezbol-
98

lah in Lebanon during the 1980s-1990s, quoting a Shin 

Bet officer who described the Israeli intelligence system’s workings as a “drugged octopus.” Inadequate 

cooperation was also evident in British colonial defeats 

such as Aden, where the inability of the regular Army 

and 22SAS to coordinate their intelligence-gathering 

activities led to at least one instance when undercover 

patrols mistook each other for terrorists and shot at 

each other.241

Operation BANNER involved four separate intelligence agencies: the Army’s Intelligence Corps, the 

RUC’s Special Branch (SB), MI5, and the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) (the latter’s involvement being justified by PIRA’s external sources of assistance in Eire 

and the United States). The services involved sought 

information on PIRA, splinter Republican groups such 

as the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA), and also 

the Loyalist organizations. The information sought 

included background (political) intelligence on their 

objectives; operational (military) intelligence, notably 

contact or time-sensitive information on imminent 

terrorist attacks; and criminal intelligence intended 

to assist the prosecution of suspects— the latter being 

of greater importance once police primacy came into 

effect. The obvious question was, which agency was 

responsible for generating which type of HUMINT, 

and while the Army and MI5 apparently had a good 

working relationship, the Intelligence Corps and the 

RUC SB constantly clashed over the Army’s clandestine patrolling and over agent running. The Army’s 

involvement in plain-clothes activity during the early 

1970s, with the Military Reaction Force and 14 Intelligence Company, was a product of the inadequacies 

and the demoralization of the SB at that time.242

The recovery of the RUC’s intelligence-gathering 
99

capacity from around 1975 onward led to a series of 

turf wars between the Army, derided by police officers as cowboys and amateurs, and the RUC—still 

regarded by military critics as being infiltrated by proLoyalist hard men. (One senior Army officer noted in 

the autumn of 1973 that at least 51 RUC officers were 

linked to “Protestant extremists.”) The appointment 

in 1979 of the retired SIS chief, Sir Maurice Oldfield, 

as Security Coordinator appears to have helped delineate lines of communication and responsibility 

between agencies, while another important decision 

was the pooling of raw intelligence from the Army 

and police at the RUC’s Castlereagh headquarters. Although interdepartmental friction persisted, it is clear 

that the combined British intelligence effort led to the 

penetration of PIRA and the recruitment of a network 

of agents throughout the 1980s and 1990s, the effects 

of which are discussed below.243

Two further points should be noted. The first is 

that terrorists and insurgents are fighting their own 

intelligence war as well, and the most effective organizations will penetrate the security services with their 

own double agents and recruit their own sources. This 

was as evident in Belfast in October 1972 when British 

Army undercover operations were betrayed by a Fred 

(a PIRA agent recruited by Army intelligence who decided to change sides a second time), as it was in Basra 

over 30 years later, where the Mahdi Army was able 

to breach British military security through its sources 

in the IPS and locally employed workers at Coalition 

bases.244 The second concerns the ethical dimensions 

of HUMINT-gathering, which are explored in more 

detail later in this chapter. 
100

Massacring the Innocents.

The key rationale for involving the armed forces 

in counterterrorism is to save lives. This motive is 

undermined in instances where a military intervention actually causes substantial casualties. In Russia, 

the increasing ruthlessness that Chechen separatists 

have shown during successive hostage takings—from 

the Budyonnovsk raid of June 16, 1995, in which the 

Chechens raided this Southern Russian city, taking 

over a hospital in the process; to the Beslan school 

siege of September 1-3, 2004—have presented the Russian authorities with a series of complex crises. In each 

case the civilian death toll has been high; 129 civilians 

were killed in Budyonnovsk, at least 28 in the Pervomayskoye crisis in Dagestan (January 12-18, 1996), 

130 in the Nord-Ost theatre siege (October 23, 2002), 

and a minimum of 338 (including 156 schoolchildren) 

at Beslan, North Ossetia.245 Yet these losses have not 

simply been due to Chechen brutality, but also to a 

combination of ruthlessness and official incompetence 

on the part of the Russian government and its security forces—not just the army, but the Federal Security 

Service (FSB) and the MVD.

At Budyonnovsk and Pervomayskoye, surviving 

hostages testified that many of the dead were caused 

by indiscriminate shooting on the part of the security 

forces. In the latter case, the Russians bombarded a village occupied by Chechen separatists and their Dagestani hostages with tanks and multiple rocket launchers. The Chechens were not only able to repel repeated 

attacks by MVD troops, but the bulk of them were able 

to break through the Russian cordon and escape back 

into Chechnya.246 All but two of the hostages who died 

during the Nord-Ost tragedy were killed by a suppos-
101

edly nonlethal incapacitating gas that FSB spetsnaz

troops pumped into the theatre; the Russian authorities even neglected to inform medical personnel treating casualties as to the nature of the agent they used, 

thereby hampering their ability to treat them. As for 

Beslan, while Moscow insisted that Russian soldiers 

only stormed the school after the terrorists started to 

detonate bombs, a Duma (parliamentary) commission 

reported that spetsnaz soldiers may have started the 

final firefight in which so many hostages died. While 

scholars need to treat competing claims about these 

incidents cautiously, the manner with which the Russian state has dealt with hostage crises reflects the 

over-militarized and repressive manner in which both 

the Yelstin and Putin governments fought their wars 

against Chechen separatists.247

The consequences of a bloody counterterrorist 

operation can also be seen in the aftermath of Operation BLUE STAR in India (June 3-6, 1984). The Golden 

Temple at Amritsar, the most sacred shrine of the 

Sikh faith, had been taken over and fortified by armed 

separatists fighting for an independent Kalistan. On 

June 3, the Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi ordered the army to storm the temple, and after 3 days 

of fighting (which involved a total of 70,000 troops, 

backed by tanks and armored vehicles) the Indian military recaptured the shrine and killed several hundred 

militants, including their leader, Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale. Unfortunately, Operation BLUE STAR led 

to the death of at least 1,000 people, many of them pilgrims. While the majority of Sikhs were enraged that 

separatists had defiled the Golden Temple, the Indian 

Army’s response outraged opinion in the Punjab, and 

was seen as a gross act of mass murder and sacrilege. 

Operation BLUE STAR therefore inflamed the Punjabi 
102

insurgency, and the most immediate consequence was 

Gandhi’s assassination by two of her bodyguards, 

both Sikhs, on October 31, 1984.248

The implications of killing unarmed civilians were 

also evident, albeit on a smaller scale, in Northern 

Ireland in the early 1970s. Troops involved in MACP 

missions are likely to become involved in violent 

contingencies short of outright terrorism, such as a 

public order incident (a riot) involving elements of 

the local population. In Belfast and Londonderry, the 

ability of British soldiers to contain rioters was tested 

to the limit. The British Army’s public order training 

emphasizes the controlled use of force to deescalate a 

riot, but in practice the stress of dealing not only with 

stone-throwers, but also petrol bombers and snipers 

meant that soldiers could (and did) shoot unarmed 

people, thereby inflaming Catholic hostility toward 

the military even further.249 The disastrous end to a 

Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association march in 

Londonderry on Bloody Sunday (January 30, 1972) 

was the most extreme example. Troops from Support 

Company, 1st Battalion Parachute Regiment (1PARA), 

responded to what they considered to be incoming fire 

by shooting into a crowd of demonstrators, killing 13 

of them. The result was an international scandal that 

was a propaganda coup for PIRA. Much of the blame 

for Bloody Sunday has been placed on the aggressive 

ethos of the paratroopers, who had collectively alienated the Catholic population and had even caused 

distaste and concern among other Army units. When 

1PARA deployed in Londonderry in mid-January 

1972, a soldier from another battalion who saw them 

arrive exclaimed, ”Christ, we’re here to stop protesters, not kill them!”250 The paras vigorously dispute 

claims that they were trigger-happy, and the Saville 
103

inquiry into the shootings has shown Republican gunmen did actually shoot at the soldiers prior to the killings. However, even with the advantage of hindsight, 

it is hard to dispute Thomas Hennessey’s verdict on 

Bloody Sunday:

The best that can be said is that, in an alien environment the paratroopers who opened fire saw threats 

from all quarters once they had been fired upon: rocks 

became nail bombs, rifles were seen peering out from 

barricades when in fact there were none. The alternative is that this was murder. Somewhere between the 

two is probably the truth.251

Minimum Force/Hearts and Minds.

Bloody Sunday illustrates a serious problem in 

MACP, which is that the deployment of troops can 

antagonize the civilian population, particularly if they 

are perceived by a section of the populace as being 

brutal and repressive, as was the case in Northern Ireland. The fact is, as a former British Army officer, Colonel Michael Dewar noted, “No army, however well it 

conducts itself, is suitable for police work.”252 Neither 

the problem of applying minimum force (minimum by 

whose standards?) nor the issues posed by applying 

lethal force in self-defense (When is it justified? What 

happens if a soldier misjudges a situation and shoots 

an innocent civilian?) should be regarded as unique to 

Operation BANNER. They have also been shown in 

the Kashmir insurgency from 1989 onward, with criticisms of the conduct of the Indian Army and paramilitary troops from the BSF toward Kashmiri civilians. 

One Indian Army Brigadier offered the following explanation in an interview in April 1995, which could 

be uttered by almost any military commander faced 
104

with an elusive enemy who hides amongst the civilian 

population and who only exposes himself or herself 

prior to an attack:

The aim of the soldier is to kill or capture; win or lose 

he must apply maximum force because of military 

considerations. But in Kashmir overnight he has to 

do a flip-flop. There is no enemy with whom he can 

identify. It is his own people who have taken up arms 

against him. Therefore, although you can win militarily you can lose the war.253

A similar problem appears to have manifested itself in Northwest Pakistan, judging by press reports of 

extrajudicial killings of TTP suspects following the recapture of the Swat Valley in February 2009, which are 

attributed to (and denied by) the Pakistani Army.254

The recruitment of local military forces can contribute to tensions between the armed forces and the 

civilian population, particularly if, in cases where 

terrorism exists alongside profound ethnic, racial, or 

sectarian differences, these are seen to be representative of one particular community. In 1970 the British 

established the Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR) as a 

territorial force to supplement Army operations. The 

UDR became particularly important from the mid1970s, when the British government sought to cut 

troop numbers in Northern Ireland due to the fact that 

the Army was overstretched meeting its NATO commitments.255

The problem was that the UDR was overwhelmingly Protestant in character; by 1985, out of 6,500 

soldiers, only 175 were Catholics, in spite of British 

efforts to recruit a nonsectarian force. This was partly 

due to the fact that PIRA threatened to murder potential and actual Catholic recruits, but there was also 
105

a widespread feeling within the Catholic community 

that the UDR was institutionally linked to the Loyalist movement. The involvement of some of its soldiers 

in Loyalist atrocities, shown by the conviction of 16 

of its number for murder between 1970 and 1989, did 

little to improve the UDR’s reputation. Its defenders 

may describe this as the behavior of a minority within 

its ranks, but the fact remains that the UDR was not 

seen by Catholics as an impartial force. As one councilor of the moderate Nationalist SDLP stated, “[no] 

one [in the Catholic community] considers the UDR 

to be part of the British Army . . . . They are seen as 

a Loyalist militia. They behave, in many cases, like a 

Loyalist militia.” UDR veterans would no doubt view 

this statement as a slur on their regimental honor, but 

it is clear that this force’s reputation was as much a 

disincentive for Catholics to join as threats from PIRA. 

Despite the British government’s efforts to create a 

territorial force representative of both communities, 

the UDR was seen by many Catholics as a successor to 

the disbanded B Specials.256

Accountability.

In certain cases, military intelligence and Special 

Forces units involved in counterterrorism have faced 

accusations that they have become involved in socalled “black operations.” These include assassinations and false flag attacks (atrocities committed by 

military or security force personnel, which are then 

blamed on terrorists), and they reflect the fear that the 

soldiers concerned are beyond oversight or control 

by civilian authorities. In Italy during the late 1960s, 

when the BR first emerged, left-wing critics blamed 

officers from the military intelligence service (SID) for 
106

inciting neo-Fascist terrorist outrages. The supposed 

objective of this strategy of tension was to frame the 

extreme left for the ensuing bloodshed, thereby creating the conditions for a military coup. It is difficult to 

determine to what degree these accusations were true, 

or whether they reflect the enduring appeal of dietrologia (behind-ology), the term used to describe the Italian penchant for conspiracy theories.257

Britain had its own version of the SID scandal with 

the activities of the Military Reaction Force (MRF) in 

Northern Ireland (1971-72). This plain-clothes British 

Army unit had been set up as a clandestine intelligencegathering team, but its members became involved in 

at least five incidents in which civilians were shot. 

PIRA claimed that the MRF were agents provocateurs

working to inflame sectarian tensions, so that the British state could claim that it was trying to stop a civil 

war between Catholics and Protestants. A contrasting 

view is offered by the Northern Irish journalist Martin Dillon, who described British military intelligence 

operations during the early 1970s as a product of 

amateurism and poor training. The Army hierarchy’s 

dissatisfaction with the MRF, and its determination 

to control clandestine activity and prevent individual 

battalions from engaging in piratical ventures, led to 

the formation of 14 Intelligence Company in January 

1973; this was an established unit operating under 

the command of the GOC’s deputy, the Commander 

Land Forces, Northern Ireland.258 Nonetheless, Republican propaganda and critics continued to emphasize 

the nefarious character of British military undercover 

activity, although the general tendency (notably after 

22SAS was deployed to Armagh in January 1976) was 

to attribute all clandestine operations to the “Special 

Assassination Squads.”259
107

Turkey offers a clear example where a fragile democratic state has found it difficult to control its armed 

forces. In 1952, the Turkish Army formed a Special 

Warfare Group (OHD) as a stay-behind force, a skeleton resistance group to be activated in the event of a 

Soviet invasion. However, there is evidence to suggest 

that the OHD directed organized criminal gangs and 

the far-right Grey Wolves in false flag attacks attributed to leftist terrorists during the 1970s-1980s. In Kurdistan during the 1980s-1990s a plain-clothes jandarma

intelligence unit (JITEM) used former PKK insurgents 

to assassinate former comrades, and also allegedly 

became involved in drug smuggling. Both the OHD 

and JITEM were linked to what Turks call the derin 

devlet (deep state), and are also connected with the 

current scandal involving an apparent plot by a secret 

organization of army and jandarma officers (known as 

Ergenekon) to overthrow the Adelet ve Kalkinma Partish 

(AKP) government.260

Clandestine military intelligence activity in counterterrorism will almost inevitably arouse wild rumors, conspiracy-theorizing, black propaganda, and 

genuine concerns about accountability. The likelihood 

that a state’s armed and security forces are involved in 

unsavory and destabilizing actions under the guise of 

fighting terrorism cannot always be discounted, particularly in cases where the state’s democratic foundations are weak. Yet, the array of conspiracy theories 

that 9/11 and 7/7 were false flag attacks staged by 

the U.S. and British governments, respectively, show 

that dietrologia and fears of the derin devlet are not exclusively Italian or Turkish characteristics.261 Furthermore, insurgent and terrorist groups may deliberately 

use false flag claims to absolve themselves of responsibility for civilian attacks; hence, the claim by the TTP 
108

and other Islamist militants that U.S. contractors from 

Xe Services are responsible for the bomb attacks that 

have struck Peshawar, Karachi, Rawalpindi, and other 

Pakistani cities in recent months.262

Jus in bello.

LOAC stresses that if military actions are to be legitimate in war (in bello), they must be proportionate 

and discriminate, and since 1977 the Geneva Conventions on the treatment of prisoners of war and civilians are also explicitly applicable to internal as well as 

external conflicts.263 The difficulties of applying these 

principles in practice can be seen in the controversies 

surrounding five aspects where the military have either become or are potentially involved in counterterrorism: the interception of hijacked aircraft, the legal 

status of terrorists suspects in custody, hostage rescue, preemptive intervention and targeted killing, and 

agent running.

Interception of hijacked aircraft. Since 9/11, the prospects of a similar attack—in which suicide hijackers 

take over a passenger plane and crash it into a city, a 

nuclear power plant, or another high-value target—

have led some governments to prepare contingency 

plans to shoot down hijacked aircraft. Examples include the establishment of the RAF’s QRA squadron and also the revised orders given to the Federal 

Aviation Authority and North American Air Defense 

Command (NORAD) after 9/11. On the morning of 

the al-Qaeda attacks on New York and Washington, 

DC, NORAD had only four fighters from the Air National Guard at its disposal to protect the entire U.S. 

Eastern seaboard. Prior to 9/11, NORAD contingency 

planning did not anticipate a scenario in which a do-
109

mestic airliner would be taken over and turned into 

a suicide craft. Since September 2001, NORAD operates at a higher state of readiness, and in the 2 years 

that followed 9/11, the U.S. and Canadian air forces 

scrambled jets on 1,500 occasions, mainly in response 

to false alarms, such as a temporary loss of contact 

with a passenger jet.264

Yet the prospects of another 9/11-style attack 

present democratic states with an appalling dilemma: 

Governments can either order fighter pilots to intercept and destroy hijacked planes, complete with passengers and crew, in mid-air, or accept the inevitable 

loss of civilian life when the aircraft is either driven 

into its target or runs out of fuel and crashes.265 This 

scenario also raises two further potentially disturbing possibilities. The first is that an airliner can be 

shot down if its pilot loses contact with air traffic control, and nervous officials assume that the plane has 

been hijacked. The second is that in the aftermath of a 

shoot-down, members of the terrorist group responsible for the initial hijacking can issue a statement denying that they intended to use the plane for a suicide 

attack, claiming that they intended to land the aircraft 

and issue demands. They then are able to accuse the 

responsible government of mass murder. 

Legal status of terrorist suspects. As noted above, intelligence is of crucial importance in counterterrorism, 

and one means of gaining this is the interrogation of 

suspects in custody. Even if one disregards obvious extremes, such as the French in Algeria, the issue of how 

detainees are treated in military custody is a contentious one. The British Army enraged the Catholic community and the Irish government when it introduced 

internment without trial for Republican terrorist suspects on August 9, 1971. Further outrage was caused 
110

by public disclosure of the so-called “deep interrogation” or CALABA methods—hooding, sleep deprivation, stress positions—used on some detainees. An official government inquiry reported, much to the fury 

of the then-Prime Minister Edward Heath, that the 

treatment associated with deep interrogation constituted physical ill-treatment. What was significant was 

that these interrogation methods had been used by the 

Army in previous British COIN campaigns, although 

they had been modified after a scandal involving detainee abuse in Aden. The furor surrounding deep interrogation led to the abandonment of these coercive 

methods, although this did not prevent further accusations of ill-treatment both by Sinn Fein and domestic 

critics in the UK. Furthermore, although internment 

had negative political consequences, its actual implementation, which involved 1,981 detainees between 

1971 and 1975, provided the Army and the RUC with 

crucial intelligence on PIRA and its principal Republican rival, the Official IRA. Nonetheless, the fact that 

only 107 suspected Loyalists were detained under internment contributed to the sense of persecution and 

injustice that many in the Catholic community felt. 

The fact that the British authorities treated Loyalist 

violence as, to quote Paul Dixon, “a symptom of [PIRA’s] campaign,” was a strategic blunder; internment 

may have been easier for Catholics to accept if Protestant extremists were seen to be treated to the same 

process as suspected Republican terrorists.266

The current War on Terror also highlights the 

problems involved in detaining terrorist suspects. The 

Bush administration’s decision to authorize the U.S. 

military to use similar methods on detainees in Guantanamo Bay on the grounds that al-Qaeda and Taliban 

captives are not eligible to prisoner of war status un-
111

der the terms of the Geneva Convention not only had 

a negative effect on international opinion, but it also 

created a legal quagmire for the U.S. Government. Although the U.S. military is responsible for guarding 

the detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, this controversy is not actually of its making. During the summer 

of 2003, representatives of the Judge Advocate General’s Corps (JAG) from the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, 

and Air Force vigorously protested against aggressive 

counter-resistance techniques on moral grounds, due 

to concerns about their country’s reputation and fears 

that it would set a precedent for the maltreatment of 

U.S. service personnel held prisoner in future conflicts. The implications of Guantanamo Bay would be 

best debated in a separate paper, but the key concerns 

here are not only those outlined by the JAG, but the 

fact that coercive techniques such as water-boarding 

tarnish the trials of individuals like Khalid Sheikh Mohamed, the architect of the 9/11 attacks.267 It also appears as though such guidance on counter-resistance 

techniques has led to military abuses akin to the Abu 

Ghraib scandal of 2003, such as the maltreatment of 

suspected Taliban and al-Qaeda detainees in Bagram 

and other U.S. military bases in Afghanistan, and even 

some deaths in custody.268

Hostage rescue. Traditional hostage-rescue missions can also present ethical problems, particularly 

related to the use of minimum force. With Operation 

NIMROD it is clear that then-Prime Minister Margaret 

Thatcher wanted to take a tough line with the Ahvaz 

hostage takers to ensure that the British government 

was not perceived as being soft in the face of terrorist threats. However, during Operation NIMROD, at 

least two of the gunmen shot dead are supposed to 

have laid down their arms in an attempt to surrender. 
112

One SAS veteran subsequently stated that he and his 

comrades received the following orders prior to the 

assault:

The message was that we had to resolve the situation 

and there was to be no chance of failure, and that the 

hostages absolutely had to be protected. The Prime 

Minister did not want an ongoing problem beyond 

the embassy—which we took to mean that they didn’t 

want anybody coming out alive. No surviving terrorists.269

Other ex-SAS soldiers involved cannot confirm 

that these orders were given, and the following points 

need to be considered before judging whether there 

was a policy to summarily execute the hostage takers. First, the Ahvaz gunmen had already murdered 

one of the Iranian embassy staff, and during the rescue mission they tried to kill more hostages. Second, 

one of the lessons 22SAS took from the Munich massacre was that any assault had to be conducted with 

such speed and aggression that the terrorists would 

be overwhelmed before they could either retaliate 

or start executing their captives, and this calculation 

shaped the planning and implementation of Operation NIMROD. Third, prior to this mission 22SAS had 

lost one of their officers, Captain Herbert Westmacott, 

at the beginning of a siege involving PIRA gunmen in 

Belfast. Westmacott’s death would have complemented the lessons learnt from repeated exercises, which 

was that until the Iranian Embassy was successfully 

secured, any hesitation in using lethal force against 

the terrorists could lead to the deaths of SAS personnel or hostages.270
113

Premptive intervention and targeted killing. The outcome of the Iranian embassy siege was less controversial than cases of preemptive intervention involving the Army and the RUC in Northern Ireland. The 

Loughgall ambush was regarded by military officials 

as a clean operation because the eight PIRA volunteers killed were armed and clearly involved in an imminent attack on an RUC station. An alternate view 

stresses that the terrorists could have been intercepted 

and arrested en route to Loughgall, and that the ambush also caused the unnecessary death of one civilian who was shot dead by mistake by the SAS. With 

this in mind, it appears as though the British Army 

subsequently took greater pains to try to capture 

armed terrorists alive. This was demonstrated by the 

arrest of the South Armagh sniper, Michael Caraher, 

and his three accomplices by 22SAS in April 1997.271

There were also more controversial cases in which innocent civilians were killed by British Special Forces 

soldiers, and even one case in which “ordinary decent 

criminals” ended up in the firing line, namely the three 

bank robbers killed in West Belfast by 14 Intelligence 

Company on January 13, 1990.272

The most contentious shooting remains that which 

occurred at the end of Operation FLAVIUS in Gibraltar on March 6, 1988, when three PIRA terrorists—

Mairead Farrell, Danny McCann, and Sean Savage—

were shot dead by 22SAS. Contrary to initial British 

government statements, none of the three were armed, 

and reports that they had smuggled a car bomb onto 

the peninsula were also incorrect. This device was 

supposed to be intended for a military parade, but the 

explosives and vehicle were still in Spain at the time 

the three were intercepted and killed. The Gibraltar 

shootings were cited by media critics as examples 
114

of a shoot-to-kill policy, in which both in Northern 

Ireland and overseas British forces sought to summarily execute suspects who could theoretically be 

apprehended. In response, Army sources refer to the 

hazards of trying to arrest terrorist suspects who are 

potentially armed—as one intelligence officer noted, 

PIRA gunmen did not “shoot to tickle”—and the danger that a soldier who hesitated in using force in selfdefense could endanger himself or his comrades. It is 

also worth noting that Gibraltar had a knock-on effect. 

Mourners at Farrell, McCann, and Savage’s funerals 

on March 16 were subjected to a grenade and gun attack by Michael Stone, a Loyalist terrorist. When one 

of Stone’s victims was being buried three days later, 

a mob lynched two British Army corporals in civilian 

dress. Deaths may have been prevented in Gibraltar, 

but not in Northern Ireland.273

As Peter Taylor notes, the British Army and security forces in Northern Ireland were generally “not 

in the business of going into republican or loyalist 

areas and just taking terrorists out.” In Israel’s case, 

however, there is a declared policy of targeted killing 

directed against Palestinian terrorists. For critics like 

the Israeli NGO B’Tselem, the IDF’s policy is immoral 

and illegal. B’Tselem highlights cases where innocent 

Palestinians have been shot dead, and its activists also 

argue that Mista-aravim soldiers are not entitled to 

claim shootings in self-defense, because they have deliberately placed themselves in a situation where they 

are obliged to kill. B’Tselem estimates that between 

2000 and 2008, 202 Palestinians were subjected to targeted killings by the Mista-aravim, uniformed military 

personnel, or in air strikes, with an additional 121 bystanders being killed as a consequence.274
115

Aside from the ethical debate, it is also far from 

clear whether such strikes actually significantly disrupt Hamas, PIJ, and other Palestinian militant groups. 

The principal conclusions of a statistical analysis conducted by Mohammed Hafez and Joseph Hatfield in 

2005-06 was that “targeted assassinations have no 

significant impact on the rates of Palestinian violence, 

even when time lags associated with possible retaliations are taken into account,” and that the progressive 

decline in Palestinian suicide bombings and other attacks from 2002 could be attributable to other factors 

(such as the cease-fire between Fatah and Israel, and 

the construction of a separation wall between Israel 

and the West Bank). Cronin also argues that targeted 

killings have actually had more of an effect on inflaming Palestinian anger at Israel than civilian deaths. A 

prime example was the killing of Yahya Ayyash, a 

Hamas bomb maker nicknamed “The Engineer,” by 

a booby-trapped mobile phone on January 5, 1996. 

Ayyash’s death led to a fresh wave of suicide attacks 

against Israeli citizens in the following 2 months. 

While the IDF has scored several tactical successes in 

eliminating key personnel in Hamas, PIJ and other 

terrorist organizations, these have done nothing to 

resolve Israel’s essential problem, which is the fierce 

hatred that many Palestinians feel toward the Jewish 

state, and their desire to destroy it.275

Agent running. Shooting terrorists causes enough 

trouble for a democratic government; recruiting them 

as agents poses further problems. The best source of 

HUMINT on the hierarchy, organization, personnel, 

and strategy of a terrorist group often comes from 

any of its members who can be recruited as spies. In 

Northern Ireland, Army intelligence, the RUC SB and 

MI5 were able to progressively paralyze PIRA through 
116

a combination of agent recruitment and clandestine 

surveillance. By 1992, five out of six of its planned attacks were being thwarted by the security forces. One 

senior Provisional, Brendan Hughes, confirms that the 

latter were able to “bring [PIRA] to a standstill,” stating that “they were able to effectively stop the IRA 

and contain it” by the time its leadership declared 

their ceasefire on July 19, 1997.276 Yet the operations of 

the FRU in Northern Ireland from 1980 onward highlight the ethical dangers involved in such activity. For 

agents to remain useful, they have to divert suspicion 

from themselves, and for a terrorist source this means 

remaining active and also continuing to perpetrate 

criminal acts. This was demonstrated by the FRU’s 

recruitment of PIRA members, which allegedly included Alfredo Scappaticci, the head of the organization’s internal security unit, nicknamed the “Nutting 

Squad” because it tortured and summarily executed 

suspected touts. If Scappaticci was an FRU agent, then 

it is more than likely that he murdered people, including other agents allegedly sacrificed by their security 

forces handlers, while working for the British Army.277

Even more disturbing is the case of Brian Nelson, a 

Loyalist paramilitary charged in 1990 with the murder 

of Belfast lawyer Patrick Finucane. Nelson was also 

an FRU agent, and his recruitment was regarded by 

the Catholic community as evidence of collusion; that 

Loyalist terrorists were used by the British state for 

the extrajudicial killing of Republicans and troublesome individuals like Finucane in a dirty war. The 

issue of agent recruitment therefore poses a series of 

moral dilemmas. To what extent does the recruitment 

of terrorists as government spies actually save lives by 

preventing bloody attacks? Does this justify the losses 

that are incurred by keeping such agents active? For 
117

example, the apparent guidance given to Nelson was 

to direct his comrades’ attacks against known Republican rivals, rather than Catholic civilians, and to fake 

tip-offs to protect genuine agents—such as the one in 

which the FRU was alleged to have diverted the Loyalists away from Scappaticci to another Republican 

of Italian descent, Franscesco Notarantonio, who was 

assassinated in October 1987. Furthermore, in a contemporary environment where al-Qaeda and its affiliates plan and commit atrocities far bloodier than those 

committed by PIRA and its Loyalist foes, how can the 

military and security services of any democratic state 

contemplate the long-term recruitment and cultivation of intelligence sources within jihadi groups?278

Creeping Authoritarianism.

Historical experience has shown that a counterterrorist campaign has provided the pretext for military 

commanders, or an unscrupulous civilian leadership, 

to subvert the democratic order and establish dictatorial rule. A prime example is that of Uruguay during 

the early 1970s; the army’s intervention decisively defeated the Tupamaros, but it also led to the militarysponsored dictatorship declared by President Juan 

Maria Bordaberry in June 1973.279 While Alberto Fujimori was President of Peru from 1990-2000, he oversaw the military and police campaign that curtailed 

Sendero Luminoso’s threat to the state, but he also established a corrupt authoritarian regime with the autogolpe of April 5, 1992.280

The most notorious example of this process during the latter half of the 20th century is that of Argentina during the late 1970s. Left-wing terrorist violence 

in that country was exceeded by the savagery of the 
118

dirty war waged by the armed force’s junta that seized 

power on March 24, 1976. The era of military rule, 

1976-83, was characterized by a period of lawlessness 

and barbarity in which the state showed a complete 

disregard for the distinction between terrorism and legitimate political dissent. While leftist groups such as 

the Montoneros and the Ejército Revolucionario del Pueblo were responsible for more than 3,000 kidnappings 

and murders between 1976 and 1979, the military 

junta is estimated to have killed at least 15,000 people, 

with a minimum of 9,000 “disappeared” between 1976 

and 1983. General Jorge Videla, Argentina’s dictator 

until March 29, 1981, epitomized the regime’s attitude 

when describing a terrorist as “not just someone with 

a gun or a bomb, but also someone who spreads ideas 

that are contrary to Western and Christian civilization.” The military’s torturers and executioners acted 

on this guidance. In their campaign against terrorism, 

they rejected such anti-Christian vices as mercy and 

compassion, not to mention “subversive concepts 

alien to” Western civilization such as habeas corpus and 

due process before the law.281

There is also a clear danger that states that militarize the struggle against terrorism and succumb to 

authoritarianism may well destabilize themselves. 

This has become evident with the war against Chechen separatism that the Russians have waged since 

September 1999. Although the Russian military and 

MVD’s anti-terrorist mission in Chechnya was declared over in April 2009, the Russian Federation’s security forces have stirred up further instability in the 

North Caucasus as a consequence of their crackdown 

on indigenous Islam.282 The October 13, 2005, attack 

by Islamist gunmen on Nalchik, the capital of the Republic of Karbadino-Balkar, and ongoing violence in 
119

Ingushetia and Dagestan, the North Caucasian republics neighboring Chechnya, suggest that Moscow’s resort to armed force against indigenous separatists on 

Russia’s Southern frontier has actually incited more 

armed opposition to Federal rule. Recent years have 

not only shown an increase in the rate of lethal terrorist attacks across the North Caucasus (40 in 2006, 114 

in 2007, 268 in 2008, and over 500 in 2009), but also 

the coalescence of jihadist groups across Ingushetia, 

Chechnya, Dagestan, and other neighboring republics. The implications for the Russian Federation’s stability remain to be seen.283

A similar conclusion can be drawn following the 

formal end of Colombo’s war with the LTTE in lateMay 2009. The Tamil Tigers were justly reviled for 

their use of suicide bombing, for conscripting child 

soldiers, and also for using Tamil civilians as human 

shields in the face of the Sri Lankan Army’s offensive, 

thereby contributing to the thousands of casualties 

suffered at the climax of the conflict. Former LTTE 

leader, Vellupilai Prabhakaran, also had a Stalinist attitude toward his ethnic kin manifested by his willingness to murder rival Tamil leaders who challenged his 

absolute authority over his people. Yet, the barbarity 

of the LTTE does not justify the blatant chauvinism 

of the Sinhalese-dominated government, or the appalling conditions experienced by Tamil civilians in 

Army-run refugee camps in the war’s aftermath.284 An 

additional disturbing trend includes the erosion of Sri 

Lanka’s democratic system. Journalists, medics and 

other civil society figures are subjected to state sanctioned intimidation when examining the less savory 

aspects of the LTTE’s defeat—notably the numbers 

of civilians killed in the last phases of the war, or the 

treatment of internally displaced Tamils in army-run 
120

refugee camps. Former Chief of the Defence Staff 

General Sarath Fonseka, widely credited with victory 

over the LTTE, was also imprisoned after standing in 

the February 2010 Presidential election against the incumbent, Mahinda Rajapaksa, and was charged with 

unspecified military offences.285 The suppression of legitimate opposition by President Rajapaksa, officially 

sanctioned Sinhalese chauvinism, and enduring Tamil 

grievances of deprivation and disenfranchisement 

could all contribute to the resumption of communal 

and ethnic violence in the foreseeable future. 

CONCLUSIONS

The underlying theme of this paper is that while 

the use of military means to fight terrorist organizations can have clear drawbacks and unwelcome 

consequences, this does not necessarily mean that a 

democratic state should eschew the use of the armed 

forces as part of an overall counterterrorism policy. 

The requirement to call in the military depends on a 

variety of factors: whether the terrorist threat is domestic or international; whether the civilian authorities and police/gendarmerie services can cope with 

the problem; whether positive or negative historical 

experiences, notably residual memories of Nazism 

and Fascism in post-war Germany and Italy, influence 

the ability of a government to request military support; and whether public opinion supports the use of 

such means. It is also evident that international support is crucial, whether this is with reference to the 

(admittedly wavering) levels of support for Operation ENDURING FREEDOM in the United States and 

allied countries, or the effect that Predator strikes in 

Pakistan are having on relations between Washington, DC, and Islamabad.
121

There may indeed be specific situations—such as 

MACA/MACP, hostage rescue, deterrence, training 

allied forces, and even a response to a Mumbai-style 

attack—where the military alone has the means to 

contain the threat terrorism poses to society, or to resolve a specific crisis. The problem with the post-9/11 

War on Terror is not the fact that the United States and 

its allies have employed their armed forces against 

al-Qaeda and affiliated groups; it is the fact that the 

militarization of counterterrorism has taken place in a 

political and strategic vacuum. In the case of the Bush 

administration, the conduct of the War on Terror/

Long War was governed more by party-political posturing and electoral calculations than any long-term 

thinking.286

The change in administrations in Washington in 

January 2009 appears to have encouraged a systematic reevaluation of U.S. counterterrorist and national 

security policy. Indeed, even before President Obama 

took office, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates publicly 

stated that:

What is dubbed the War on Terror is, in grim reality, a prolonged, worldwide irregular campaign—a 

struggle between the forces of violent extremism and 

moderation. In the long-term effort against terrorist 

networks and other extremists, we know that direct 

military force will continue to have a role. But we 

also understand that over the long term we cannot 

kill or capture our way to victory. Where possible, kinetic operations should be subordinate to measures 

to promote better governance, economic programs to 

spur development, and efforts to address the grievances amongst the discontented from which the terrorists recruit. It will take the patient accumulation of 

quiet successes over a long time to discredit and defeat 

extremist movements and their ideology.287
122

In Britain’s case, the Labour government did bequeath to the current coalition a declared strategy in 

the form of CONTEST, but neither Tony Blair nor Gordon Brown paid any significant attention to the consideration of how resources should be allocated to fulfill the prevent, pursue, protect, and prepare aspects 

of CONTEST—the fiasco over the CCRF being a case 

in point. As far as military means were concerned, 

the British armed forces were expected to fulfill their 

counterterrorist missions overseas—most notably in 

Afghanistan—and domestically, despite successive 

cuts which left the defense budget at 2.2 percent of 

national income.288 The current coalition administration is committed to sharp reductions in government 

expenditure, and it is inevitable that the SDSR will 

lead to further cuts for the MOD. It remains to be seen 

whether David Cameron’s government will deliver 

the integrated National Security Strategy its Ministers 

have promised, and whether this will give the UK’s 

armed forces the resources and manpower required to 

fulfill all its tasks, including those related to counterterrorism.289

Both the U.S. and British examples demonstrate 

that democratic governments dealing with a terrorist 

threat need to return to that much-overused but little 

understood term, namely strategy. In an issue as important as national security, strategy is about deciding 

what means should be employed to achieve specific 

goals. In counterterrorism, these means include economic power; diplomatic means; the legal resources 

of a state, police, and judiciary; the use of intelligence 

gained by a state’s security and foreign espionage 

services; and the employment of military power. In 

this respect, the government’s task is to decide which 
123

means are best used to resolve specific problems arising 

from terrorism, whether domestic or international.290

Yet, to begin this process of deliberation, a government needs to formulate an overall objective, an end

to which means are to be applied. The objective of any 

liberal democracy involved in any conflict against terrorism should be the preservation of constitutional order and the basic tenets of a liberal state and society; a 

government’s accountability to the elected representatives of the people; the preservation of governance by 

law and not by force, etc.; but also the protection of the 

security and the rights of its citizens, foremost among 

them the right to life. The latter applies not only to 

minimizing the ability of terrorists to kill and maim 

members of the general public, but also to ensuring 

that civilians are not exposed to excessive violence by 

the state and its agencies, as experienced by Argentina 

in the 1970s, and is evident in Russia and Sri Lanka 

today. Nearly 2 decades ago, Roland Crelinstein and 

Alex Schmid observed that “when agents of the state 

begin consistently to shoot suspects without bothering to arrest them, or to mistreat them during interrogation in order to force confessions, then the state has 

moved far along the road to a regime of terror.”291 That 

observation of the potential consequences of counterterrorism without an overarching strategic and political context has not lost its relevance.

 The identification of a strategic objective provides 

a focus for a government involved in any form of conflict against an armed foe, whether state or nonstate 

in character. However, in deciding which means are 

needed to achieve overall strategic goals, and how 

these should be related to each other, decisionmakers 

face a challenge familiar to that which a school pupil 

encounters when presented with a quadratic equa-
124

tion in a math class. The student has the hard task 

of translating an algebraic formula into arithmetic; 

the policymaking elite involved in counterterrorism 

has to resolve a series of dilemmas related to specific 

decisions. Western countries involved in the conflict 

in Afghanistan have to contend with the fact that intervention in that country is exploited by radical Islamist ideologues to radicalize would-be militants, on 

the grounds that a jihad needs to be waged to defend 

Islam. Yet, any decision to disengage militarily from 

Afghanistan also runs the risk of encouraging al-Qaeda and its affiliates at their victory, inspiring more 

support for their cause and reenergizing their efforts. 

Likewise, UAV strikes against al-Qaeda militants in 

Northwest Pakistan and Yemen might have a discernible effect in weakening their network, but it might 

also anger public opinion in both countries, and cause 

resentment among friendly governments over the infringement of their sovereignty. In a domestic context, 

the democratic state faces the problem familiar from 

Northern Ireland in the 1970s to Western Europe today, that a government’s measures to contain terrorist 

violence and to crack down on specific groups can actually alienate a section of the population and foster a 

perception of persecution and discrimination, thereby 

radicalizing future terrorists and contributing to further bloodshed and instability.

Nonetheless, it is easy to relate military power to 

political ends once a clearly articulated objective is 

defined. Policymakers also need to understand that 

strategy is a dynamic, not a static, process. Wars, particularly long ones, rarely end with the victors achieving their initial goals. The means employed by a state 

at any given time have to be reassessed constantly. 

This sets a tough challenge for any democracy, given 
125

the constraints imposed, for example, by electoral 

cycles. This problem is evident in counterterrorism 

as it is in any other type of conflict.292 For an MACP 

example, Operation BANNER shows how the British 

state struggled with the employment of military force 

in pursuit of its objectives. The Army-led policy of the 

early 1970s that antagonized the Catholic populace 

gave way to police primacy after 1976. Preemptive 

intervention operations by 22SAS and the RUC during the late 1980s-early 1990s, such as Loughgall, were 

apparently directed against elements of PIRA that 

were the most intransigent in their commitment to 

the armed struggle, notably the East Tyrone Brigade. 

Similar operations appear to have been subsequently 

conducted in a less-lethal manner in order not to disrupt negotiations leading toward a peace settlement; 

for example, the fact that the Armagh sniper team was 

captured alive in April 1997 suggests that the British 

did not want to disrupt the peace negotiations with 

Sinn Fein’s leadership that ultimately led to PIRA’s 

ceasefire. The deescalation process between the Army 

and PIRA’s Derry Brigade in Londonderry during the 

1990s, based on discreet contacts facilitated by Quaker 

intermediaries, also illustrates the flexibility of British 

military tactics on Operation BANNER. After a faltering start by the British in 1969-72, one can see the 

evolution of a process in which military force was employed to shape an eventual political outcome, namely, to encourage and coerce the Republican movement 

to pursue its objectives through the ballot box as opposed to the Armalite rifle and the bomb.293

The question of how to determine strategic priorities is evident with reference to U.S. policy in Afghanistan. Prior to the President’s announcement on December 1, 2009, that an extra 30,000 troops would be 
126

sent on COIN operations in that country, the Obama 

administration was engaged in a prolonged debate, 

with Vice President Joseph Biden proposing that UAV 

strikes, Special Forces raids, and the use of local proxies would have a greater effect on the war against 

al-Qaeda and the Taliban in both Pakistan and Afghanistan than the continued COIN campaign. Both 

Andrew Bacevich and Austin Long are vocal proponents of this counterterrorist alternative; Long has 

even produced detailed recommendations of the force 

structure involved, concluding that 13,000 U.S. and allied elite troops and supporting personnel, complete 

with air assets, can contain al-Qaeda and its affiliates 

through a series of intelligence-led raids, assisted by 

the numerous Afghan tribal militias that are hostile to 

the Taliban and external militants. Long’s argument 

is that such an approach will be far less expensive in 

blood and treasure to the United States, and will also 

achieve a greater economy of force, disrupting and 

crippling al-Qaeda and affiliated groups in Afghanistan.294

On closer analysis, the counterterrorism option 

looks less appealing. As far as its overall strategic rationale is concerned, it is fair to comment, as Michael J. 

Boyle has, that “[a counterterrorist] mission would focus exclusively on Al-Qaeda, while offering little or no 

support to the [Afghan government]; a COIN mission 

envisages a comprehensive commitment to defeating 

the Taliban and rebuilding the Afghan state while 

destroying Al-Qaeda operatives there.”295 A counterterrorist focus would achieve at best a tactical effect; 

it might eliminate substantial numbers of al-Qaeda 

militants, but it would not address the wider problem 

that Afghanistan’s instability poses for regional security. It would essentially represent a refinement of the 
127

policy that successive U.S. administrations followed 

toward that country prior to September 2001.296 Many 

of the weaknesses that Long notes in the COIN campaign could conceivably apply to his proposals. The 

deaths in combat of Delta Force or SEAL operators on 

a counterterrorist mission could have as damaging an 

effect on U.S. public opinion as the deaths of Soldiers 

and Marines in COIN operations, undermining Washington DC’s will to maintain the mission in the face 

of popular outcry. Furthermore, Long appears to be 

overly confident in the ability of U.S. and allied personnel to gain accurate intelligence on al-Qaeda and 

like-minded militant groups from Afghan warlords 

and tribal leaders, particularly given the past tendency of their number to either issue false tip-offs to coalition intelligence or to accept bribes from the enemy.297

In this respect, if U.S. and allied air strikes or Special 

Forces raids end up claiming innocent lives due to 

compromised intelligence, then their operations will 

have the same adverse effect on Afghan or Pakistani 

opinion as those reflected in recent cases in which 

large numbers of civilians have died due to International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) operations. It 

will also put further pressure on Hamid Karzai and 

Asif Zardari to distance their governments from U.S. 

actions, undermining the rationale of the counterterrorist campaign as a result.298

With reference to Afghanistan counterterrorism as 

envisaged by Bacevich and Long, it has many of the 

flaws of the COIN strategy; in this respect, the only 

alternatives for the United States and other NATO 

countries involved in Operation ENDURING FREEDOM are to continue with counterinsurgency and 

state building, or to disengage and withdraw. While 

operations in Iraq suggest that there is a role for elite 
128

units to decapitate terrorist adversaries such as AQI 

through targeted killings and intelligence-led preemptive intervention raids, it is easy to forget that these 

Special Forces operations required framework activity 

by over 150,000 U.S. troops at the height of the surge 

in 2007-08, in addition to a further 577,000 Iraqi troops 

and police. Secondly, counterterrorism is about more 

than using door-kickers and UAVs to eliminate highvalue targets; the big disadvantage with the latter is 

that dead terrorists yield less HUMINT than live ones 

under interrogation. Whether in a domestic context, 

particularly with hostage rescue or with reference to 

a COIN campaign, there is scope for military activity 

to eliminate or arrest the most hardened of terrorists 

and insurgents. Yet, these are tactical actions that have 

to be integrated within a wider strategy that incorporates political, socioeconomic, cultural and information operation calculations aimed at containing terrorist violence, frustrating the objectives of the groups 

involved, and facilitating a peaceful settlement.299 The 

Northern Ireland examples noted above can be complemented with that of Cyprus in February 1959. By 

this point in their campaign against EOKA, the British 

had acquired accurate intelligence that would enable 

them to trap and kill General Grivas, but then-Prime 

Minister Harold Macmillan vetoed an operation to 

eliminate him on the grounds that it would lead to an 

upsurge of violence from the Greek-Cypriot community which would undermine negotiations for a peace 

settlement.300 One of the paradoxes of counterterrorism 

is that there can be a strategic rationale for not killing 

an adversary, but this is an aspect a purely military 

approach to this activity may overlook.

Sections Three and Four discussed the ethical dimensions of counterterrorism (in terms of jus ad bellum

and jus in bello) when applying military means in both 
129

an international and domestic context. As is the case 

in interstate warfare, there are no easy resolutions to 

the ethical questions raised: Is this decision to retaliate against a nonstate group or a state sponsor proportionate? Does the use of military force resolve this 

problem, or complicate it? How do we avoid unnecessary deaths or human suffering? Nonetheless, for 

a democratic state involved in counterterrorism, the 

worst error a government and its officials can make 

is to assume that what is ethical and legal automatically conflicts with what is practical and necessary. 

In any action—be it the interrogation of suspects, a 

preemptive intervention mission to apprehend terrorists, or the killing of a senior al-Qaeda figure in a 

UAV attack—the question “Is this morally right?” is 

as important to ask as “Will this work?” More often 

than not, an action that is unethical is also strategically 

counterproductive. Democratic politicians involved in 

anti-terrorism need to treat strategy and ethics as intertwined. Ethics without strategy leads to indecisiveness and unproductive soul-searching, while strategy 

without ethics simply undermines a state’s reputation 

and cause. The Sri Lankan government’s treatment of 

the Tamil minority, notably the plight of around 76,000 

civilians still interned in army-run camps, is not only 

morally flawed, but it also threatens to undermine the 

policy of reconciliation needed to prevent the reemergence of Tamil separatism.301

It is also important to remember that with the debatable exception of Israel, terrorism does not pose an 

existential threat to democracy. Cronin observes that 

“except where a state overreacts or a group becomes 

strong enough to transition to another form of violence 

[such as insurgency], killing non-combatants through 

terrorist attacks is not a promising way of achieving 
130

strategic political ends.”302 The only examples that 

have achieved such goals are the cases—such as with 

Irgun and Lehi in Palestine in 1945-48, the FLN in Algeria, and EOKA in Cyprus—involving colonial powers 

who could accept defeat and withdraw without compromising essential national interests. Although the 

Israelis have long perceived that Palestinian terrorism 

threatens state survival, in practice Israel has not only 

outlasted the PLO’s challenge to its existence, but is 

arguably currently in a stronger position in relation 

to Hamas and its external backers than they realize. 

With the exception of Iran, the sponsors of the Palestinian cause have essentially conceded the rights of 

the Israelis to statehood, as shown by the Arab League 

peace initiative following the Beirut summit of March 

2002. Yet Israel shows an inability to relate military 

strength to political objectives. This is partly a product 

of its notoriously fractious politics, deriving from the 

proliferation of political parties and the challenges of 

coalition-building in the Knesset, but it is also due to 

the intransigence of the current Likud-dominated government. The challenges to a peace settlement have 

not emerged from one side in the Israeli-Palestinian 

conflict, but the current government’s reluctance to 

accept a Palestinian state based on 1967 borders and to 

curtail activities such as the building of Jewish settlements in the West Bank, which would assist peace negotiations, that demonstrates a strategic incoherence 

on the Israeli side. Palestinian leaders are not the only 

ones who, to paraphrase Abba Eban, never miss an 

opportunity to miss an opportunity and, in this case, 

the inability to relate IDF operations to strategic outcomes is clear.303

One consolation is that if the United States and its 

allies have blundered in their counterterrorist policies 
131

since 9/11, then al-Qaeda’s strategic performance has 

been lamentable. A movement that could not even 

establish control over the Sunni Triangle of Iraq without encouraging the local tribes to revolt against it, 

let alone one that forces its former supporters to condemn it for its barbarity towards fellow Muslims, is 

one that is unlikely to achieve its objective of a global 

caliphate. It is also important to recognize that alQaeda by itself is very much a parasitic entity. It can 

exploit the advantages offered by insurgency and civil 

strife in certain countries, such as Afghanistan, Iraq, 

Yemen, and Somalia, but it cannot actually incite these 

conflicts, and, in contrast with traditional insurgent 

movements, it has failed to generate the level of popular backing required to seize power in any Muslim 

country.304 What is indeed striking about the course of 

the War on Terror is the inability of al-Qaeda to capitalize on its enemies’ mistakes, and its persistence in 

committing its own. A networked terrorist group may 

be difficult to attack, but it is also difficult to control 

and direct; hence, Ayman al Zawahiri’s futile plea to 

Zarqawi in his letter of July 9, 2005, to stop slaughtering Shia “heretics.” Al-Qaeda’s most glaring failure 

is its irrelevance in the one issue guaranteed to mobilize Arab and Muslim opinion; namely Palestine. 

Not only are its members derided for their failure to 

help the Palestinian cause, but its leadership’s clumsy 

efforts to incorporate Palestine into their jihad have 

been rejected by both Fatah and Hamas. Al-Qaeda’s 

demise cannot be declared with confidence. In the immediate future, it will continue to recruit supporters 

worldwide and to plot and conduct attacks across the 

globe, and its affiliates, particularly Pakistani groups 

such as LET and HUM, will continue to destabilize 

particular regions such as the Indian subcontinent. 
132

But, as Cronin notes, “in ending terrorism, [the priority for the government’s involved] should not be to 

win people’s hearts and minds, but rather to amplify 

the natural tendency of violent groups to lose them.” 

Al-Qaeda and its allies are certainly acting in accordance with this tendency, particularly with reference 

to the increasing anger within the Muslim world at the 

pointlessness and callousness of its suicide bombings 

and other atrocities.305

Recent historical examples demonstrate that if a 

democratic state uses its armed forces in a prolonged 

counterterrorist role (in contrast to hostage rescue or 

other similar ad hoc cases), the essential mission of the 

military cannot, and should not, be the physical destruction of terrorist organizations, but their containment and frustration. This is not to say that individual 

terrorists may not be killed, but that the key process 

in the defeat of their organization is the demoralizing 

effect that military and nonmilitary operations have in 

constraining their activities. Terrorist groups can implode under pressure, and an organization that sees 

attacks consistently thwarted and members arrested 

and imprisoned or killed in intervention operations 

will become progressively less effective, and may well 

experience internal decay and discontent. Its activists may wonder if continued violence is worthwhile, 

or suspect that traitors are destroying it from within. 

This is as true of PIRA and ETA, as it was of the ANO 

and its suicidal purges during the late 1980s.306

Kilcullen is therefore correct when he argues that 

the physical elimination or incarceration of terrorists 

is a secondary task to wider nonmilitary measures to 

reduce the appeal of terrorism, notably the need to 

work with foreign governments, civil society groups 

and NGOs to address socioeconomic and political 
133

problems which may radicalize potential recruits for 

al-Qaeda. It is also advisable following the Iraq debacle to keep direct military intervention by Western 

states to an absolute minimum. But as Patrick Porter 

notes, specific military measures can be applied if they 

are related to a wider process of political engagement 

with regional powers, and also aspects of soft power 

such as public diplomacy. With reference to drone 

strikes in the FATA, for example, specific operations 

(such as the killing of Mehsud and other TTP leaders) 

are ideally employed in conjunction with Pakistani 

military operations to recover control over Waziristan. 

Arguably, these operations should also be used in as 

restricted a manner as possible, so as to ensure that 

a failed attack which kills several civilians does not 

counteract increasing public anger in Pakistan at the 

extent of the suicide bombings and other atrocities 

committed by the TTP and other militant groups.307

Democratic governments do need to consider other 

means of achieving specific counterterrorist goals. For 

example, David Gompert argues that the U.S. armed 

forces should invest more effort in developing nonlethal munitions which can be employed against terrorists and insurgents, particularly in urban conflict 

scenarios.308 Gompert’s recommendations are likely to 

meet resistance from a military hierarchy which, as 

noted in Section Three, fears the loss of core warfighting skills that are required when facing a state-based 

adversary. Furthermore, in an MACP context, the use 

of nonlethal means by an army does not necessarily prevent civil disaffection. Catholics in Belfast and 

Londonderry did not respect the British Army more 

because it generally used CS gas and water cannons 

rather than live ammunition (Bloody Sunday excepted) to quell riots during the early 1970s. Furthermore, 
134

nonlethal weapons can still be deadly; as demonstrated by occasions in which British troops and RUC 

officers firing baton rounds killed rioters in Northern 

Ireland, and also by the death of hostages through exposure to an incapacitating gas in the Nord-Ost siege 

in Moscow in October 2002. 

One area where alternative solutions can and 

should be employed is that of the aerial interception 

and destruction of hijacked passenger planes. The best 

means of preventing another 9/11 is not to order air 

forces to shoot down an airliner in mid-flight, but to 

improve airport security and prevent would-be terrorists from being in a position to take over a plane in 

the first place. Mohamed Atta and his 18 companions 

would have been thwarted if their hand luggage had 

been properly searched by security staff at Boston and 

Newark airports, and their box-cutter knives had been 

confiscated. Passenger jets with cockpits controlled 

by keypad locks—or with sky marshals armed with 

tasers, mace sprays, or other nonlethal arms—would 

also present future hijackers with a tougher target. 

In this case, the best defense against future aerial 

suicide attacks involves a global effort to coordinate 

enhanced security measures with airport authorities 

and international airlines rather than with the RAF’s 

QRA and other similar formations. Within individual 

states, close cooperation is also required between the 

intelligence and law enforcement agencies; the lack 

of interdepartmental cooperation and the lamentably 

adversarial relationship between the FBI and the CIA 

had catastrophic consequences, contributing to the 

failure of both the Clinton and Bush administrations 

to thwart the 9/11 attacks.309

As far as diplomatic measures are concerned, the 

establishment of a NATO Contact Group to liaise 
135

with other governments, such as Pakistan, or security 

structures, such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), on counterterrorism and Afghanistan, 

would help encourage international cooperation with 

both problems. An advantage NATO has with its 

struggle against the Taliban is that none of Afghanistan’s neighbors, with the possible exception of elements within the Pakistani military and ISI, actually 

want to see Mullah Omar and his movement back in 

power. Much of the friction in the West’s relationships 

with Russia and China could be assuaged by assurances that NATO will leave its bases in Central Asia 

once the Afghan government has sufficient means to 

fight the Taliban insurgency with a minimum of foreign support. With the remaining state sponsors of 

terrorist groups, the example of Libya in December 

2003 suggests that diplomatic engagement, combined 

with sanctions and other nonviolent tools of coercion, 

can cajole leaders like Gaddafi into abandoning support for terrorism. Damascus’s support for Hamas 

and other Palestinian rejectionists may diminish if 

Syria were to recover the Golan Heights as part of a 

peace deal. However, the failed attempts by U.S. officials during the late 1990s to encourage the Taliban 

regime to abandon its alliance with bin Laden’s network show that diplomacy cannot guarantee success 

in persuading a state sponsor of terrorism to abandon 

a proxy, although it is debatable whether any regime 

will allow a nonstate organization to usurp its sovereignty and authority in the way that Mullah Omar did 

with al-Qaeda.

On an international level, Western assistance in 

training indigenous military and police forces has its 

utility, but should be provided in conjunction with 

discreet diplomatic pressure to introduce political and 
136

socioeconomic reforms in countries such as Pakistan, 

Yemen, and Uzbekistan, not to mention measures to 

reduce corruption and improve governance.310 The 

Uzbek regime poses a particular challenge because 

of Karimov’s despotism, not to mention the fact that 

Western diplomatic pressure on Tashkent can be countered by Russia and China, as neither of these states 

shows any particular concern about the democratic 

or the human rights credentials of potential allies. Yet 

a combination of patience and guile can and should 

be used by U.S. and NATO partners to encourage the 

Uzbek president to at least clean up his government 

and improve the socioeconomic plight of his subjects. 

Karimov’s implicit threat to sabotage Operation ENDURING FREEDOM can be countered, insofar as if 

NATO fails in Afghanistan, his IMU foes will be the 

main beneficiaries. A resurgence of Islamist insurgencies across Central Asia may be, at present, a remote 

prospect, but it poses a potentially mortal threat to 

the ruling elites in Uzbekistan and neighboring states. 

Self-preservation and pragmatism suggest that Uzbekistan’s president may not be converted to democracy overnight, but he can be persuaded that the best 

way of avoiding the fate of the Shah of Iran would be 

to stop treating his country as a private bank/torture 

chamber. Western governments providing military 

aid to Uzbekistan have more leverage over the latter 

than they realize.

Pakistan has also been a problematic ally not only 

because of its own problems with corruption and 

governance— although Musharraf was less greedy 

and more humane than his Uzbek counterpart— but 

also because of the self-destructive notion prevalent 

within the Pakistani Army and ISI hierarchy, which 

considers the Taliban and groups such as LET and 
137

HUM as strategic assets regarding Kashmir and Afghanistan. Pakistan’s military elite has until recently 

labored under the illusion that there are bad militants 

associated with al-Qaeda, and good militants who can 

be counted upon to establish a pro-Pakistani regime in 

Kabul (the Afghan Taliban) and to wage a proxy war 

in Kashmir that weakens the eternal enemy, India. A 

state’s strategic culture cannot be changed overnight, 

but it appears as though the majority of Pakistanis 

have finally realized that jihadist and Taliban proxies 

actually destabilize their country; hence, widespread 

popular support for the Pakistani Army’s counteroffensive against the TTP.311 While this is a welcome development, American and Western aid should also be 

directed at specific social reforms as well as to the Pakistani security forces. Funding aimed at the provision 

of a more comprehensive educational system would, 

in the long term, do much to undermine the radical 

Islamist cause. If poorer Pakistanis have adequate 

secular schools to send their children to as opposed to 

madrassas, this would be as beneficial a development 

for state stability as arms supplies and training programs for the Army, police, and Frontier Corps.312

What of specific military measures in support of 

counterterrorism? On an international level, retaliation should be considered as a last resort, and regime 

change directed against a state sponsor is a rarity. 

Taliban-ruled Afghanistan was a unique case, insofar 

as it is extremely unlikely that any other government 

would allow its policies to be dictated by both an uncompromising ideology and a complete ignorance of 

the international environment. Prior to 9/11, Mullah Omar was warned by the U.S. Government that 

he would be held responsible for al-Qaeda’s actions 

because of his willingness to provide the latter with 
138

sanctuary and official support. Retaliation and targeted killings run the risk of provoking wider diplomatic 

crises and military clashes with the states involved, as 

was the case with Israel and its Arab neighbors, Turkey and Iraqi Kurdistan, and the United States with its 

Special Forces raid into Pakistan in September 2008. 

Hostage rescue missions require host-nation support 

to be successful, Entebbe being the sole exception, and 

maritime or air interdiction requires actionable intelligence to be effective.

In the domestic sphere, military means can be used 

with MACA, in particular in MACP scenarios where 

terrorism coexists with a wider threat to state stability. 

The challenge here is to ensure that military intervention is a short-term process, akin to that of the Canadian Forces in the October crisis of 1970, rather than a 

prolonged operation such as in Northern Ireland, although, depending on specific political and social circumstances, this could be easier said than done. While 

the British Army’s conduct in the first years of Operation BANNER has received justifiable criticism, in this 

case the military faced the consequence of generations 

of Catholic-Protestant strife which had brought Ulster 

to the brink of civil war. As Thomas Hennessey notes, 

the deterioration of the security situation in Northern 

Ireland during the early 1970s was not solely a product of military ineptitude and maltreatment of the 

Catholic population; it also derived from the polarization of political opinion and the decision by Republican and Loyalist groups to resort to arms to achieve 

their goals.313

Deterrence operations have their utility, although 

the deployment of troops to Heathrow in 2003 did 

cause some public alarm. After Mumbai, governments operating in 2008 needed to seriously consider 
139

the possibility of copy-cat attacks, and in the UK’s 

case, the 2012 Olympics in London present a golden 

opportunity for any terrorist organization to launch a 

spectacular attack that would command international 

attention and cause widespread public panic.314 One 

would hope that the contingency planning for 2012 

will involve consideration of cases where the British 

armed forces can be swiftly deployed in the event of 

a major emergency, whether to contain a crisis with 

the deployment of military Quick Reaction Forces 

to cordon off a terrorist incident, or to intervene in a 

hostage-taking/siege scenario. 

The principal conclusion here is to argue that there 

is a role for a state’s armed forces in counterterrorism 

even by democracies, but that the use of military force 

must form part of an overall strategy which also incorporates and prioritizes nonmilitary means. For their 

part, both the academic community and informed 

opinion in general should understand that democratic 

governments may be required as guarantors of national security to employ their armed forces in specific 

circumstances, which may be beyond the capabilities 

of the civilian authorities. Nonetheless, governments 

need to ensure that the resort to armed force does not 

dislocate or dictate counterterrorist policy, and that 

the use of the military does not undermine the constitutional and legal framework upon which a liberal democracy rests. Papers of this type usually end with a 

list of recommendations relevant to policymakers and 

professional military officers. However, one of the primary points here is that any government’s response 

to this problem depends very much on the nature of 

the terrorist group and the threat that it poses to the 

state and society. Any conclusions drawn can therefore only be generic, and in this respect, the author 
140

feels that there is more utility in concluding with a list 

of questions which policymakers of any liberal democratic state (be they in a Cabinet, National Security 

Council, or an equivalent body) need to address when 

faced with the complex phenomenon that is terrorism:

• Is this a domestic or an international problem?

• Are existing means (police, judiciary, and intelligence services) insufficient to deal with the 

threat?

• Can your chiefs of staff confirm that armed 

forces have the resources, manpower, and skills 

needed to address this specific problem?

• Would the use of the armed forces be a shortterm measure (hostage-rescue, MACA, MACC, 

preemptive intervention, or retaliation), or will 

it require a long-term commitment of manpower and resources (MACP, intervention, and regime change)?

• Do opposition parties and the general public support the involvement of the military in 

counterterrorism?

On a domestic level:

• How effective are the terrorists, as far as both 

their ability to kill and injure substantial numbers of your citizens and to disrupt civil society 

are concerned?

• Does terrorism coexist with a major threat 

to state stability (such as insurgency or civil 

strife)?

• What precisely is the military’s position within 

the counterterrorist hierarchy? Which authorities are the armed forces accountable to?

• How will information be gathered and disseminated between the military, the police and the 
141

intelligence services, and who is in charge of 

coordinating the overall intelligence-gathering 

effort?

• What ROE do service personnel work under? 

Have you ensured that your troops operate under LOAC?

• Do the armed forces have the training needed 

not only to perform their duties, but also to 

interact effectively and in sympathy with the 

public in a manner that does not arouse fear or 

resentment among civilians?

• Regarding terrorist suspects, what guidelines 

are offered to military and/or police personnel 

responsible for their custody? Are regulations 

on interrogation compatible with international 

law and, in particular, the Geneva Convention? 

Does the state have procedures designed to ensure that the interrogation of terrorist suspects 

for intelligence purposes minimize the dangers 

that the latter might be maltreated?

• Has the government planned and rehearsed responses to specific contingencies through war 

games, command post exercises, etc.? Have 

these been conducted with all the relevant 

agencies?

• Have shortcomings and problems in these exercises been identified and an attempt made to 

resolve them (relating to bureaucratic parameters, chain of command, and other logistical 

and organizational complications)?

• In circumstances short of an imminent and dire 

emergency, such as a major terrorist incident 

requiring an immediate MACC response, has 

the government consulted the parliamentary 
142

opposition on its reasons for calling out the 

armed forces?

On an international level:

• Do other governments support your resort to 

armed force? If so, will they cooperate in either 

providing their own military units in a coalition, or by other means (sharing intelligence, 

providing host-nation support and bases, etc.)?

• Can military action be justified under international law?

• If you are intervening on the territory of another sovereign state, is that country’s government 

sympathetic to the terrorists? Are you retaliating against the terrorist organization itself, or 

the regime that supports it?

• If, in the scenario described above, the indigenous government is not aligned with the terrorists, can it be persuaded to take action against 

the latter itself?

• Is it more politically sensitive and practical to 

provide indirect assistance to indigenous security forces (e.g. training, arms, intelligence 

cooperation, or air support) in their own counterterrorist campaign?

• If you are involved in training local security 

forces, can you ensure that they are employed 

in the roles you intend rather than for more nefarious purposes (such as a praetorian guard 

for a repressive regime, or as a death squad)? 

In this instance, what mechanisms do you have 

to prevent them from “going rogue”?

• If you are assisting a third-party government, 

can you also influence it to introduce the necessary socioeconomic and governance reforms 
143

that address the grievances which contribute to 

terrorist activity?

• Will the commitment of your armed forces 

overseas deprive you of the means needed to 

respond effectively to a domestic MACA emergency?

• Is a foreign intervention mission likely to be so 

controversial that it antagonizes or even radicalizes a section of your own society?

• Finally, if you are trying to overthrow a regime 

that supports terrorism, such as the Taliban, do 

you have international opinion on your side? 

Are you also prepared for the long-term stabilization and state-building effort that will inevitably follow regime change?

ENDNOTES 

1. Julian Borger, “David Miliband expands on criticism of ‘war 

on terror’ phase,” The Guardian, January 15, 2009. The author’s attempt to find a transcript of Miliband’s speech on the Foreign and 

Commonwealth Office website produced a dead link: www.fco.

gov.uk/en/newsroom/latest-news/?view=Speech&id=12175593.

2. Ibid.

3. Angela Rabasa et al., The Lessons of Mumbai, Santa Monica, 

CA: RAND, 2009, p. 5.

4. Rahul Bedi, “Country Briefing: India,” Jane’s Defence Weekly (JDW), Vol. 46, No. 3, January 21, 2009; Dispatches—Terror in 

Mumbai, broadcast on Channel 4, June 30, 2009. Only one of the 

attackers, Mohamed Ajmal Amir Qasab, was captured alive and 

put on trial, receiving a death sentence for his part in the atrocity. 

“Mumbai attack gunman Qasab sentenced to death,” BBC News, 

May 6, 2010, available from www.news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_

asia?8664179.stm.
144

5. Speech by President Barack Obama, March 27, 2009, emphasis added; available from www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/03/27/

politics/politicalhotsheet/entry4896758.shtml.

6. “Mme Clinton; le but est d ’éradiquer’ Al-Qaida” (“Mrs. 

Clinton: The mission is to ‘eradicate’ Al-Qaeda”), Le Monde, November 17, 2009.

7. “Barack Obama rallies forces on visit to Afghanistan,” BBC 

News, March 29, 2010, available from news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/

south_asia/8591866.stm; Alice Fordham, “Terror suspect’s father 

asks U.S. court to ban CIA from killing ‘al-Qaeda’ son,” The Times, 

August 27, 2010. 

8. Lolita C. Baldor, “Pentagon seeks billions to battle terror abroad,” Washington Post, February 4, 2010; David Ignatius, 

“What the partisan squabbles miss on Obama’s terror response,” 

Washington Post, February 17, 2010. 

9. John Hutton, Speech at Institute of Public Policy Research, 

London, UK, April 27, 2009, available from www.acronym.org/

docs/0904/doc13.htm; Sean Rayment, “SAS and other Special Forces 

to be expanded to defeat al Qaeda,” Daily Telegraph April 25, 2009. 

10. Reza Aslan, “Losing the ’War on Terror’,” Los Angeles 

Times, April 8, 2009.

11. Professor Geras’s examination of FKATWOT is available 

from normblog.typepad.com/normblog/2009/02/fkatwot-index.html.

12. For critical analyses of the War on Terror, see Seymour 

Hersh, Chain of Command, London, UK: Penguin, 2005; and 

Philippe Sands, Lawless World. Making and Breaking Global Rules, 

London, UK: Penguin, 2006.

13. Jesse Norman, “Tensions of Terrorism,” The World Today, 

August/September, 2005, pp. 22-24; Rohan Gunaratna, “An examination of Al-Qaeda and its methods,” Intersec, Vol. 15, No. 

3, 2005, pp. 85-87; Conor Gearty, “Dilemmas of Terror,” Prospect 

Magazine, October, 2007, pp. 34-38.
145

14. Ahmed Rashid, Descent into Chaos. The World’s Most Unstable Region and the Threat to Global Security, London, UK: Penguin, 

2009, pp. xlvii-xlviii.

15. David Kilcullen, The Accidental Guerrilla: Fighting Small 

Wars in the Midst of a Big One, London, UK: C. Hurst, 2009, pp. 274-

275, 284-286; Aslan; “Remarks by the President at Cairo University,” June 4, 2009, available from www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Remarks-by-the-President-at-Cairo-University-6-04-09/.

16. Prime examples of journalistic commentary can be seen 

in Simon Jenkins, “The ‘War on Terror’ licenses a new stupidity 

in geopolitics,” The Guardian, January 30, 2008; and Gary Younge, 

“Time for Barack Obama to retire not only the term ‘War on Terror,’ but the war itself,” The Guardian, September 14, 2009. 

17. George Kassimeris, “Introduction,” in George Kassimeris, 

ed., Playing Politics with Terrorism: A User’s Guide, London, UK: C. 

Hurst, 2007, pp. 11-12.

18. Barbara Elias, ed., “The Taliban File Part IV,” National 

Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book, No.134, August 18, 2005, 

available from www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NASEBB/NSAEBB134/index2.htm; Michael J. Boyle, “Do counterterrorism and counterinsurgency go together,” International Affairs, Vol. 86, No. 2, 2010, 

p. 342.

19. G. Davidson Smith, “Military Options in Response to 

State-Sponsored Terrorism,” Terrorism and Political Violence, Vol. 

1, No. 3, 1989, pp. 294-323. See also Paul Wilkinson, Terrorism Versus Democracy: The Liberal State Response, London, UK: Frank Cass, 

2001, pp. 102-105, 124-136.

20. Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, “The invisible war: How Somalia’s 

unending conflict became the new front in the battle against alQaida,” The Guardian, June 8, 2010; Joshua Keating, “Pirates or 

terrorists? Pick your poison,” Foreign Policy, May 4, 2010, available from www.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/05/04/pirates_or_terrorists_pick_your_poison.

21. Hew Strachan, “Making Strategy: Civil-Military Relations 

after Iraq,” Survival, Vol. 48, No. 3, 2006, pp. 59-60; Jeremy Pressman, “Power without Influence: The Bush Administration’s For-
146

eign Policy Failure in the Middle East,” International Security, Vol. 

33, No. 4, 2009, pp. 149-179.

22. Raffaello Pantucci, “Deep Impact: The effect of drone attacks on British counter-terrorism,” RUSI Journal, Vol. 154, No. 5, 

2009, p. 72.

23. Cerwyn Moore and David Barnard-Wills, “Russia and 

counter-terrorism. A critical appraisal,” in Asaf Siniver, ed., International Terrorism Post-9/11. Comparative Dynamics and Responses, 

Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2010, pp. 144-167.

24. Kilcullen, p. 181. This is not to say that the British Army 

and colonial security forces did not commit abuses against the 

Greek Cypriot population. See Panagiotis Dimitrakis, “British Intelligence and the Cyprus Insurgency, 1955-1959,” International 

Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence, Vol. 21, No. 2, 2008, 

p. 381. For the respective strengths and weaknesses of history and 

political science methodology, see Paul W. Schroeder, “History 

and International Relations Theory: Not Use or Abuse, but Fit or 

Misfit,” International Security, Vol. 22, No. 1, 1997, pp. 64-74.

25. Jason Burke, “Saudis offer pioneering therapy for exjihadis,” The Guardian, March 9, 2008. The effectiveness of these 

methods has been questioned. See “An awful lot,” The Economist, 

July 25, 2009. 

26. Ahmed Rashid, Jihad. The Rise of Militant Islam in Central 

Asia, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002, pp. 137-186; 

“The blood red revolution,” The Economist, May 21, 2005; “Fata 

Fergana,” The Economist, June 13, 2009.

27. James Sanders, Apartheid’s Friends. The Rise and Fall of South 

Africa’s Secret Services, London, UK: John Murray, 2006, pp. 198-

226, 255-281; Paul Lewis, Guerrillas and Generals. The “Dirty War” 

in Argentina, Westport CT: Praeger, 2002.

28. Michael Hastings, “The Runaway General,” Rolling 

Stone, June 22, 2010, available from www.rollingstone.com/politics/

news/17390/119236; “More than a one-man problem,” The Economist 26th June, 2010; Thomas Rid & Thomas Keaney, “Counterinsurgency in Context,” in Thomas Rid & Thomas Keaney, ed., Un-
147

derstanding Counterinsurgency: Doctrine, Operations and Challenges, 

London, UK: Routledge, 2010, pp. 256-257.

29. “The bombs of August,” The Economist, August 21, 2010. 

30. For U.S. and British examples, see Field Manual (FM) 3-24, 

Counterinsurgency, Washington DC: Department of the Army, 

2006; Field Manual (FM) 3-07, Stability Operations, Washington, 

DC: Department of the Army, 2008; Joint Publication (JP) 3-40, 

Security and Stabilization: The Military Contribution, London, UK: 

Ministry of Defence (MOD), 2010. 

31. Audrey Kurth Cronin, How Terrorism Ends: Understanding 

the Decline and Demise of Terrorist Campaigns, Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009, p. 25. 

32. For explanations as to how terrorist campaigns end (with 

reference to the degree to which these are due to state strategies to 

defeat said organizations), see Audrey Kurth Cronin, Ending Terrorism: Lessons for defeating al-Qaeda, Adelphi Paper No. 394, 2008. 

See also Cronin, How Terrorism Ends.

33. Colin Gray, War, Peace and International Relations: An Introduction to Strategic Theory, London, UK: Routledge, 2007, p. 236; 

Jim Dorschner, “Mission fatigue: The future of military intervention,” Jane’s Intelligence Review (JIR), Vol. 6, No. 19, 2007, pp. 31-35. 

Out of 192 UN member states, only 27 have no armed forces. See 

www.demilitarisation.com/Countrieswithoutarmy.htm. 

34. Andrew McGregor, “Turkey’s Gendarmerie: Reforming 

a Frontline Unit in the War on Terrorism,” Jamestown Foundation Terrorism Monitor (JFTM), Vol. 6, No. 22, November 25, 2008; 

Mark Galeotti, “Russia’s Interior Troops on the Rise,” JIR, Vol. 9, 

No. 6, 1997, pp. 243-246; Rahul Bedi, “Kashmir’s Future,” JIR, Vol.

7, No. 7, 1995, pp. 324-328. 

35. Bob Woodward, “Secret CIA Units Playing a Central 

Combat Role,” Washington Post, November 18, 2001; Jeremy Page, 

“Google Earth reveals secret history of U.S. base in Pakistan,” The 

Times, February 19, 2009; Tom Coghlan, “CIA caught in a dirty 

and secretive war against al-Qaeda on Afghan border,” The Times, 

January 1, 2010. 
148

36. Jeremy Scahill, “Blackwater’s Secret War in Pakistan,” The 

Nation, November 23, 2009, available from www.thenation.com/

doc/20091207/scahill.print.

37. Fareed Zakaria, “The Rise of Illiberal Democracy,” Foreign 

Affairs, Vol. 76, No. 6, 1997, pp. 22-43; “Coups away,” The Economist, February 13, 2010.

38. Ibid. The 19th century French political thinker Alexis de 

Tocqueville believed that “democracy” and “liberty” were not 

necessarily synonymous. See Larry Siedentop, Tocqueville (OUP 

1994) for an explanation of his ideas.

39. Vanora Bennett, Crying Wolf. The Return of War to Chechnya, New York: Macmillan, 2001, pp. 26-27, pp. 111-113; James 

Hughes, “Chechnya: The Causes of a Protracted Post-Soviet Conflict,” Civil Wars, Vol. 4, No. 4, 2001, p. 16. 

40. Magnus Ranstorp and Paul Wilkinson, “Introduction: International Conference on Terrorism and Human Rights,” Terrorism and Political Violence, Vol. 17, No. 1, 2005, pp. 3-4. 

41. Charles Townshend, Terrorism: A Very Short Introduction, 

Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press (OUP), 2002, p. 134; Alex 

P. Schmid, “Terrorism and Democracy,” in Alex P. Schmid and 

Roland Crelinstein, eds., Western Responses to Terrorism, London, 

UK: Frank Cass, 1993, pp. 14-19.

42. Afua Hirsch, “David Davis warns MPs of erosion of civil 

liberties,” The Guardian, February, 20, 2009; John Newsinger, British Counter-Insurgency, Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave, 2002, p. 101; 

Alistair Horne, A Savage War of Peace. Algeria 1954-1962, New 

York: Macmillan, 1996, pp. 232-236; “Hearts and Minds,” The 

Economist, November 14, 2009.

43. Bruce Hoffman, Inside Terrorism, 2nd Ed., New York: Columbia University Press, 2006, pp. 1-41. For a survey of terrorism’s evolution, see Michael Burleigh, Blood and Rage. A Cultural 

History of Terrorism, London, UK: HarperCollins, 2009; Randall 

Law, Terrorism: A History, Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2009.

44. Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, London, UK: MacGibbon & Kee, 1965.
149

45. See, for example, Noam Chomsky, “The United States is 

a Leading Terrorist State,” Monthly Review, Vol. 53, No. 6, 2001, 

available from www.monthlyreview.org/1101Chomsky.htm; William 

Blum, Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower, London, UK: Zed Books, 2006; and Fanon.

46. Lawrence Freedman, “Terrorism as a Strategy,” Government and Opposition, Vol. 42, No. 3, 2007, p. 319.

47. Hoffman, Inside Terrorism, pp. 22-27, 258-264; Freedman, 

p. 319. 

48. Daniel Byman, Deadly Connections: States that Sponsor Terrorism, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2005, pp. 22, 

37-38; Ed Moloney, A Secret History of the IRA, New York: Penguin, 2003, p. 14. 

49. Norman Davies, Heart of Europe. A Short History of Poland, 

OUP, 1986, pp. 18-19, 392-393, 405-407, 416; Ranstorp and Wilkinson, “Terrorism and Human Rights,” p. 6; Freedman, “Terrorism 

as a Strategy,” pp. 334-335.

50. Editorial, “Despite confession, Kasab remains ’gunman’ 

for NYT,” The Times of India, July 26, 2009.

51. Wilkinson, Terrorism Versus Democracy, pp. 1, 19; Nick 

van der Bijl, Operation Banner. The British Army in Northern Ireland 

1969-2007, Barnsley, UK: Pen and Sword Books, 2009, pp. 188-190; 

Peter Taylor, “Six days that shook Britain,” The Guardian, July 24, 

2002; SAS: Embassy Siege, broadcast on BBC2 on July 25, 2002.

52. Lawrence Wright, The Looming Tower, New York: Penguin, 

2007, pp. 270-272. Both bombs were delivered by trucks driven by 

suicide attackers. The Nairobi blast killed 213 people (12 Americans, the rest Kenyan) and wounded 4,500 more. The Dar es-Salaam attack killed 11 Tanzanians and wounded 85 Tanzanian and 

U.S. citizens. 

53. Hoffman, Inside Terrorism, pp. 38-40, 285-289.

54. Brian Jenkins, “International Terrorism: A Balance Sheet,” 

Survival, Vol. 17, No. 4, 1975, p. 158. 
150

55. John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt, “The Advent of Netwar (Revisited),” in Arquilla and Ronfeldt, eds., Networks and Netwars: The Future of Terror, Crime and Militancy, Santa Monica, CA: 

RAND Corporation, 2001, pp. 1-25.

56. Hoffman, Inside Terrorism, pp. 38-40, 285-289; Moloney, 

IRA, pp. 376-377, 573; Arquilla and Ronfeldt, “The Advent of Netwar, Revisited.”

57. Readers may be reminded here of Colonel “Philippe Mathieu” and his dissection of the FLN infrastructure in Gillo Pontecorvo’s film, The Battle of Algiers (1966). 

58. Bard O’Neill, Insurgency and Terrorism, London, UK: 

Brassey’s, 1990, p. 13; Sherifa Zuhur, Hamas and Israel: Conflicting Strategies of Group-Based Politics, Carlisle PA: Strategic Studies 

Institute, U.S. Army War College, December, 2008, available from 

www.fas.org/man/eprint/zuhur.pdf.

59. Jon Lee Anderson, Guerrillas, New York: HarperCollins 

1992, pp. 68-85; Kilcullen, p. 223. Christopher Tuck, “Northern 

Ireland and the British Approach to Counter-Insurgency,” Defence 

& Security Analysis, Vol. 23, No. 2, 2007, pp. 168-169.

60. Ahmed Hashim, Insurgency and Counterinsurgency in Iraq, 

London, UK: C. Hurst, 2006; Hans Klepak, “Colombia: Why 

doesn’t the war end?,” JIR, Vol. 12, No. 6, 2000, pp. 41-45; Jerome 

Taylor, “Tamil Tigers: Defeated at Home, Defiant Abroad,” The 

Independent, May 23, 2009; “The Corpse of the Tigers,” The Economist, May 23, 2009.

61. Peter Bergen and Katherine Tiedemann, “The Drone 

War,” The New Republic, June 3, 2009; “Profile: Baitullah Mehsud,” 

BBC News, August 8, 2009, available from news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/

fr/-/1/hi/world/south_asia/7163626.stm; Amir Rana, “Enemy of the 

state—Lashkar-e-Jhangvi and militancy in Pakistan,” JIR, Vol. 21, 

No. 9, 2009, pp. 14-19. 

62. FM 3-24, pp. 1-1 - 1-29; Army Field Manual (AFM) 1-10, 

Counter Insurgency Operations, Strategic and Operational Guidelines, 

Rev. Ed., London, UK: MOD, 2007, pp. A-2-1, B-3-1. “Counterterrorism” has been interpreted as the use of state terror to intimi-
151

date a population that shelters terrorists. See Law, Terrorism: A 

History, p. 7; and Townshend, Terrorism, pp. 114-115. But this author defines counterterrorism as all measures a state may take, of 

varying degrees of discrimination and legitimacy, in its defense. 

The British Army COIN manual is available from wikileaks.org/

wiki/Wikileaks. The U.S. manual was published by the University 

of Chicago Press in, 2007.

63. Geraint Hughes and Christian Tripodi, “Anatomy of a 

Surrogate: Historical Precedents and Implications for Contemporary Counter-insurgency and Counter-terrorism,” Small Wars and 

Insurgencies, Vol., 20, No. 1, 2009, pp. 7-10.

64. A copy of the “Yellow Card” can be found in FCO87/584, 

the National Archives, UK, NAUK. Also see Donald Macintyre, 

“Israel’s death squad: A soldier’s story,” The Independent, March 

1, 2009; General Paul Aussaresses, The Battle of the Casbah, New 

York: Enigma Books, 2006; Horne, Savage War of Peace, pp. 183-

207.

65. The Strategic Defence Review: A New Chapter, London, UK: 

The Stationary Office, 2002; Defence White Paper, 2003: Delivering 

Security in a Changing World, London, UK: The Stationary Office, 

2003. 

66. The United Kingdom’s Strategy for Countering International 

Terrorism, London, UK: The Stationary Office, 2009, p. 8.

67. Warren Chin, “The United Kingdom and the War on Terror: The Breakdown of National and Military Strategy,” Contemporary Security Policy, Vol. 30, No. 1, 2009, pp. 127-128, 141; Strategy for Countering International Terrorism. 

68. M. L. R. Smith and Sophie Roberts, “War in the Gray: Exploring the concept of Dirty War,” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism

(SC&T), Vol. 31, No. 5, 2008, pp. 385-388. Examples of enhanced 

anti-terrorist legislation include the introduction of the Diplock 

Courts in Northern Ireland in 1972, where juries were abolished 

because its members faced intimidation, and the Prevention of 

Terrorism Bill of November 1974. See van der Bijl, Operation Banner, pp. 76-77, 117. 
152

69. Hughes, “Chechnya,” p. 37; Mark Kramer, “The Perils of 

Counterinsurgency: Russia’s war in Chechnya,” International Security, Vol. 29, No. 3, 2004-05, pp. 57-58; Tracey German, Russia’s 

Chechen War, London, UK: Routledge, 2003, pp. 151-154. 

70. Cronin, How Terrorism Ends, p. 116.

71. William C. Banks, “Troops Defending the Homeland: The 

Posse Comitatus Act and the Legal Environment for a Military 

Role in Domestic Counter-Terrorism,” Terrorism and Political Violence, Vol. 14, No. 3, 2002, pp. 1-41. Posse Comitatus does not apply to the U.S. Coast Guard, which is one of the five U.S. armed 

services, but has a law enforcement mandate. It is currently under 

the jurisdiction of the Department of Homeland Security, not the 

Department of Defense, see www.uscg.mil/top/missions/.

72. Meliton Cardona, “The European Response to Terrorism,” 

in Schmid and Crelinstein, Western Responses to Terrorism, p. 260. 

George Kassimeris, Europe’s Last Red Terrorists: The Revolutionary Organisation 17th November, New York: New York University 

Press, 2001. 

73. A good survey of leftist terrorism in West Germany can be 

found on This is Baader-Meinhoff, a website maintained by Richard 

Huffman, available from www.baader-meinhoff.com.

74. Townshend, Terrorism, p. 69. The quote from Dalla Chiesa 

comes from Alan Dershowitz, Why Terrorism Works, New Haven, 

CT: Yale University Press, 2003, p. 134. Dershowitz argues that 

Moro’s subsequent death invalidated these remarks. The author 

believes instead that the General’s refusal to contemplate policestate measures actually helped preserve Italian democracy against 

a resort to authoritarianism and state terror. The Moro Affair did 

inspire conspiracy theories proclaiming that the Italian establishment had connived in his murder. For an analysis and rebuttal, 

see Richard Drake, “The Aldo Moro Murder Case in Retrospect,” 

Journal of Cold War Studies, Vol. 8, No. 2, 2006, pp. 114-125.

75. Clive Jones cites a total of 1,030 Israelis and 3,529 Palestinians killed between September 2000 and January 2005 in “Israel 

and the al-Aqsa intifada. The Conceptzia of Terror,” in Siniver, 

International Terrorism, p. 129. The Israeli human rights group 
153

B’Tselem gives figures of 4,745 Palestinian fatalities killed by Israel’s security forces between October 2000 and December 2008, 

available from www.btselem.org/English/Statistics/Casualties.asp. As 

is invariably the case, the question of how many of those killed 

were fighters as opposed to civilians is a cause for intense controversy. 

76. Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon, The Age of Sacred Terror, New York: Random House, 2003, pp. 195-198. Stathis Kalyvas, “Wanton and Senseless? The Logic of Massacres in Algeria,” 

Rationality and Society, Vol. 11, No. 3, 1999, pp. 243-285.

77. Holly Fletcher, “Militant Extremists in the United States,” 

Washington, DC: Council on Foreign Relations, April 21, 2006, 

available from www.cfr.org/publication/9236/. See also the FBI Strategic Plan, 2004-2009, available from www.fbi.gov/publications/strategicplan/stategicplantext.htm#intro.

78. Byman, Deadly Connections, pp. 53-78. David Childs and 

Richard Popplewell, Stasi: The East German Intelligence and Security Service, Basingstoke, UK: Macmillan, 1996, pp. 155-158; John 

Schneidel, “My Enemy’s Enemy: Twenty Years of Co-operation 

between West Germany’s Red Army Faction and the GDR Ministry for State Security,” Intelligence & National Security, Vol. 8, No. 

4, 1993, pp. 54-72; Moloney, pp. 17-33.

79. Uri Bar-Noi and Rami Ginat, “Tacit Support for Terrorism: 

The Rapprochment between the USSR and Palestinian Guerrilla 

Organizations Following the 1967 War,” Journal of Strategic Studies, Vol. 30, No. 2, 2007, pp. 255-284; Magnus Ranstorp, Hizb’allah 

in Lebanon. The Politics of the Western Hostage Crisis, Basingstoke, 

UK: Macmillan, 1997, pp. 33-40; Iran and the West, Part 2, broadcast on BBC2 on February 14, 2009. 

80. Boyle, “Do counterterrorism and counterinsurgency go together,” p. 344; Efraim Inbar and Shmuel Sandler, “Israel’s Deterrence Strategy Revisited,” Security Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2, 1993, pp. 

330-358; Editorial, “Testing Israel’s Deterrence,” Jerusalem Post, 

January 28, 2009. 

81. For a comprehensive account of the early phase of the 

Northern Ireland conflict, see Thomas Hennessey, The Evolution 

of the Troubles, 1970-72, Dublin, Ireland: Irish Academic Press, 
154

2007; Lieutenant-General D. G. House and Chief Constable K. 

Newman, Joint Directive by General Officer Commanding Northern 

Ireland and Chief Constable Royal Ulster Constabulary, January 12, 

1977, DEFE11/917(NAUK); Peter R. Neumann, “The Myth of Ulsterization in British Security Policy in Northern Ireland,” SC&T, 

Vol. 26, No. 5, 2003, pp. 365-378.

82. Hoffman, Inside Terrorism, pp. 21-23. Christopher Andrew 

notes that Lehi were the last group to describe themselves as “terrorists.“ See The Defence of the Realm: The Authorised History of MI5, 

London, UK: Penguin, 2010, p. 351. 

83. Cronin, How Terrorism Ends, p. 117. Khan is quoted in 

Chin, “War on Terror,” p. 141.

84. A copy of bin Laden’s fatwa can be found online on the 

Public Broadcasting Service website, available from www.pbs.org/

newshour/terrorism/international/fatwa_1998.html; Daniel R. Morris, 

“Surprise and Terrorism: A Conceptual Framework,” Journal of 

Strategic Studies, Vol. 32, No. 1, 2009, pp. 1-27; Barry Rubin, “The 

Real Roots of Arab Anti-Americanism,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 81, 

No. 6, 2002, pp. 73-85; Benjamin and Simon, Sacred Terror, p. 386.

85. Carl von Clausewitz, On War, Michael Howard and Peter 

Paret, eds and trans., Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 

1976, pp. 75-77; Cronin, How Terrorism Ends, pp. 4-8, 117.

86. Frank Kitson, Bunch of Five, London, UK: Faber and Faber, 

1977, p. 283; Cronin, How Terrorism Ends.

87. Cronin, How Terrorism Ends, p. 35; Desmond Hamill, Pig 

in the Middle. The Army in Northern Ireland 1969-1985, London, UK: 

Methuen, 1986, pp. 268-269. Three prisoners from the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) also died during the hunger strike. 

Eamon Collins (with Mick McGovern), Killing Rage, London, UK: 

Granta Books 1998, pp. 233-243; Anthony McIntyre, Good Friday: 

The Death of Irish Republicanism, New York: Ausubo Press, 2008, 

pp. 157-174.

88. Thomas R. Mockaitis, The “New” Terrorism: Myths and Reality, London, UK: Praeger, 2007, pp. 5, 7.
155

89. “Mowlam: We must talk to al-Qaeda,” BBC News, April 

8, 2004, available from news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/3611805.stm; 

“Should the Government hold talks with terrorists?” The Daily 

Telegraph, March 15, 2008; Sir Francis Richards, “The development 

of the UK intelligence community after 9/11,” Siniver, International Terrorism, p. 122.

90. Burleigh, Blood and Rage, pp. 146-151, 385-396. Despite optimistic claims to the contrary by Azzam Tamimi, Hamas has yet 

to produce a revised version of its 1988 Charter, with its explicitly 

anti-Semitic character. Orly Halpern, “Hamas working on ‘new’ 

charter,” Jerusalem Post, February 18, 2006. 

91. Robert Baer, See No Evil, London, UK: Arrow Books, 2002; 

“Israel denies assassinating Hezbollah chief,” The Daily Telegraph, 

February 13, 2008. 

92. Ronen Bergman, The Secret War with Iran, Oxford, UK: 

Oneworld Publications, 2008, p. 67. 

93. “The jihadi who turned ’supergrass’,” BBC News, 

September 13, 2006, available from news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/5334594.stm.

94. Mockaitis, “New” Terrorism, p. 14; Peter R. Neumann, “Negotiating with Terrorists,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 86, No. 1, 2007, pp. 

128-138.

95. Brian Cloughley, “Swat Team,” JIR, Vol. 21, No. 8, 2009, 

pp. 14-19; Owen Bennett Jones, “On the verge: Pakistan’s insecurity,” RUSI Journal, Vol. 155, No. 1, 2010, pp. 4-8. 

96. McIntyre, Good Friday, pp. 6-8, 293-310; Colonel Richard 

Iron, “Britain’s Longest War: Northern Ireland 1967-2007,” in 

Daniel Marston and Carter Malkasian, ed., Counterinsurgency in 

Modern Warfare, London, UK: Osprey, 2007, pp. 176-179; Henry 

McDonald, Gunsmoke and Mirrors: How Sinn Fein Dressed up Defeat 

as Victory, Dublin, Ireland: Gill & Macmillan, 2008.

97. Peter Harclerode, Secret Soldiers: Special Forces in the War 

Against Terrorism, London, UK: Cassell & Co, 2000, pp. 367-382, 

507-524; Age of Terror—Part Three, broadcast on BBC2 on June 18, 
156

2008; “Territorial Support Group,” on Metropolitan police website, available from www.met.police.uk/co/territorial_support.htm.

98. Robyn Pangi, Consequence Management in the 1995 Sarin 

Attacks on the Japanese Subway System, Belfer Center for Science 

and International Affairs (BCSIA) Discussion Paper, 2002-4, ESDP 

Discussion Paper, ESDP2002-01, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government, February, 2002, 

available from belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/files/consequence_management_in_the_1995_sarin_attacks_on_the_japanese_subway_system.pdf. The Sarin attack killed 12 people and injured 1,034; 50 of 

these were classed as severe casualties. 

99. Clive Walker and James Broderick, The Civil Contingencies Act, 2004. Risk, Resilience, and the Law in the United Kingdom, 

Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press (OUP), 2006, pp. 247-250; 

“Stark option in frontline terror flight,” BBC News, October 18, 

2005, available from news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/uk/4351622.stm. 

See also www.raf.mod.uk/rafregiment/rafregimentsquadrons/27_sqn_

history.cfm.

100. Staff reporter, “Why the siege tactics had to be switched,” 

The Observer, May 11, 1980; Joey Gardiner, “What is Cobra?,” The 

Guardian, October 21, 2002; GEN135(72)3, Use of the Cabinet Office 

Briefing Room, November 29, 1972, CAB130/620(NAUK).

101. David Benest, “Aden to Northern Ireland, 1966-76,” in 

Hew Strachan, ed., Big Wars and Small Wars: The British Army and 

Lessons of War in the Twentieth Century, London, UK: Routledge, 

2006, pp. 115-144; Hennessey, Troubles; Hamill, Pig in the Middle; 

Peter Taylor, Brits, London, UK: Bloomsbury, 2002. 

102. David Charters and James LeBlanc, “Peacekeeping and 

Internal Security: The Canadian Army in Low Intensity Operations,” in David Charters and Maurice Tugwell, eds., Armies in 

Low Intensity Conflict: A Comparative Analysis, London, UK: 

Brassey’s, 1989, pp. 150-154; Lieutenant General Romeo Dallaire, 

the UN force commander in Rwanda in 1994, witnessed the October crisis as a junior officer. See his account in Shake Hands with the 

Devil, London, UK: Arrow Books, 2005, pp. 23-27. 

103. GEN129(74)first and third meetings, January 7 and 15, 

1973; and GEN129(74)2, Protection of Airports in the United Kingdom, January 8, 1974, CAB130/636(NAUK).
157

104. GEN129(72)6, Working Group on Terrorist Activities. 

Report to Ministers, October 20, 1972, CAB130/616(NAUK); 

GEN129(74)3, Terrorist Threat at Heathrow Airport, January 18, 

1974, CAB130/636(NAUK); Nick Hopkins and Richard NortonTaylor, “Huge hunt for missile smugglers,” The Guardian, February 13, 2003. 

105. Bergman, Secret War, pp. 269-272; David Hartwell, “Ship’s 

capture increases fear of Hizbollah,” JIR, Vol. 21, No. 12, 2009, p. 

5. One controversial example that this paper does not examine 

concerns the interception of the Gaza aid convoy by the IDF on 

May 31, 2010, which culminated in a bloody clash on the MV Mavi 

Marmara between Shayetet 13 and Turkish Islamist activists. The 

author does not examine this incident, since the IDF did not treat 

it as an anti-terrorist operation, but as one conducted in support 

of the blockade on Hamas-ruled Gaza. For a careful analysis of 

this contentious event, see “Death on the Med,” a Panorama documentary broadcast on BBC1 at 8:30 p.m., August 16, 2010. See also 

“How Israel Plays into Hamas’s Hands,” The Economist, June 5, 

2010. 

106. R. A. Custis (MOD) to P. L. Gregson (MOD), April 24, 

1972, DEFE11/789(NAUK); Andrew, Defence of the Realm, pp. 622-

623, 703-704; Van der Bijl, Operation Banner, p. 84; Moloney, IRA, 

pp. 1-33, 460-461. 

107. ”Perils of the Sea,” The Economist, April 17, 2009. Richard 

Scott, “Policing the maritime beat,” JDW, Vol. 46, No. 17, April 29, 

2009; Martin Murphy, Contemporary Piracy and Maritime Terrorism: 

The Threat to International Security, International Institute of Strategic Studies: Adelphi Paper No. 388, London, UK: Routledge, 2007. 

108. Rashid, Descent into Chaos, pp. 223-224; Andrew Black, 

“Weapons for Warlords: Arms Trafficking in the Gulf of Aden,” 

JFTM, Vol. 12, No. 17, June 18, 2009. 

109. Bout was arrested in Thailand by U.S. law enforcement 

agents in March 2008. The latter were posing as members of 

FARC, and Bout is accused of planning to sell arms to this Colombian group. His extradition to the United States was announced 

on August 20, 2010. Andrew Osborn, “’Merchant of Death,’ Viktor Bout will finally face justice,” Daily Telegraph, August 21, 2010; 
158

Roberto Saviano, Gomorrah, Virginia Jewiss, trans., London, UK: 

Macmillan, 2008, pp. 181-186.

110. Timothy Naftali, Blind Spot: The Secret History of American 

Counterterrorism, New York: Basic Books, 2005, pp. 171-174; “A 

battle between two long arms,” The Economist, April 3, 2009. 

111. Ruslan Temirov, “Uzbekistan’s Army: Going Professional,” Eurasia Insight, May 14, 2004, available from www.eurasianet.

org/departments/insight/articles/eav051404.shtml; Alexander Cooley, 

“Base Politics,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 84, No. 6, November/December 2005, pp. 79-92. 

112. Monte Morin, “U.S. Trainers Prepare Ethiopians to 

Fight,”Stars and Stripes, December 30, 2006; James J. F. Forest and 

Rebecca Crispin, “AFRICOM: Troubled Infancy, Promising Future,” Contemporary Security Policy, Vol. 30, No. 1, 2009, pp. 5-27; 

“U.S. Military Calls Up Europe,” Africa Confidential, Vol. 51, No. 

6, March 19, 2010.

113. “U.S. training military in Sahara,” BBC News, May 

3, 2010, available from news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/world/africa/8658009.stm; Martin Vogl, “Train to Gain,” JDW, Vol. 47, No. 

31, August 4, 2010.

114. Lauren Gelfand, “Yemen seeks assistance but rejects 

intervention,” JDW, Vol. 47, No. 5, February 3, 2010; “Whitehall 

strengthens [Somali President] Sharif [Sheikh Ahmed],” Africa 

Confidential, Vol. 51, No. 6, March 19, 2010; Giles Whittel, “Silent 

war on militants to be extended with drones,” The Times, August 

27, 2010. 

115. GEN129(73)first meeting, October 2, 1972; and 

GEN129(72)6, CAB130/616(NAUK); Minute by D. Stephen 

(MOD), March 13, 1973, DEFE25/282(NAUK); 22SAS refers to its 

constituent Companies as Squadrons, and its platoons as troops. 

116. Icon involved a simulated hijacking at Stansted airport, 

and was used to test COBRA’s operating procedures. GEN129(73)

second meeting, July 3, 1973, CAB130/636(NAUK); Note by A. M. 

Goodenough, Maritime, Aviation, and Environment Department 

(FCO), October 24, 1977, FCO33/3186(NAUK). 
159

117. Mark Bowden, Guests of the Ayatollah, London, UK: Atlantic Books, 2006, pp. 111-113; Naftali, Blind Spot, pp. 105-109.

118. 1977, FCO76/1755(NAUK).

119. John Parker, SBS, London, UK: Headline Press, 2004, pp. 

282-283, 318; Tim Ripley, “Special Effects: UK SF unit comes into 

its own,” JDW, Vol. 46, No. 8, February 25, 2009. Commachio Company was renamed the Fleet Protection Group in March 2001. See 

also www.royalnavy.mod.uk/royalmarines/units-and-deployments/

other-royal-marine-units/fleet-protection-group-royal-marines/history/. 

120. Richard Clutterbuck, “Negotiating with Terrorists,” and 

Alex Schmid, “Countering Terrorism in the Netherlands,” in 

Western Responses to Terrorism, Schmid and Crelinstein, eds., pp. 

84-85, 270-274.

121. Minute by Miss C. A. Lane, Home Office, Inquest on the 

Five Iranian Terrorists, February 4, 1981, HO299/110(NAUK). The 

hostage takers were ethnic Arabs from Southwestern Iran and 

were Iraqi-trained. Two diplomats were killed, one during the assault, the other, Abbas Lavasani (the press attaché), prior to this 

operation. Lavasani was shot dead by the terrorists in order to 

force the British government to accede to its demands. Instead, it 

led COBRA to authorize the Army to storm the embassy. “Antiterror chief tells how siege gunmen died,” The Daily Telegraph, 

May 10, 1980. 

122. Wilkinson, Terrorism versus Democracy, p. 193; Lauren 

Gelfond Heldigger, “Back to Entebbe,” Jerusalem Post, July 29, 

2006; Martin van Crefeld, The Sword and the Olive. A Critical History of the Israeli Defense Force, New York: Public Affairs, 2002, p. 

259. The Kenyan government facilitated the rescue mission by 

clandestinely granting the IDF over-flight rights. 

123. General George Grivas-Dighenis, Guerrilla Warfare and 

EOKA’s Struggle: A Politico-Military Study, A. A. Pallis, trans., 

London, UK: Longmans, 1964. Robert Thompson makes a similar point in Defeating Communist Insurgency, London, UK: Chatto 

& Windus, 1972, pp. 119-120, comparing the futility of sending 

a large dog to catch an alley cat, instead of using another cat to 

stealthily track down and confront its rival. 
160

124. Hughes and Tripodi, “Surrogate,” p. 6; Jonathan Walker, 

Aden Insurgency. The Savage War in South Arabia, Staplehurst, UK: 

Spellmount, 2005, pp. 184-185; IRN(74)2, Memorandum by Roy 

Mason, Defence Minister, Army Plain Clothes Patrols in Northern 

Ireland, March 28, 1974, CAB134/3778(NAUK).

125. James Rennie, The Operators. Inside 14 Intelligence Company—The Army’s Top Secret Elite, London, UK: Century 1996; Mark 

Urban, Big Boys’ Rules: The Secret Struggle Against the IRA, London, UK: Faber & Faber 1992, pp. 141-143; “Special forces regiment created,” BBC News, April 5, 2005, available from news.bbc.

co.uk/1/hi/uk/4412907.stm.

126. Rob Lewis, Fishers of Men, London, UK: Hodder & 

Stoughton, 1999; Martin Ingram and Greg Harkin, Stakeknife. Britain’s Secret Agents in Northern Ireland, Dublin, Ireland: The O’Brien 

Press, 2004.

127. Ahron Bregman, Israel’s Wars. A History Since 1947, London, UK: Routledge, 2nd Ed., 2004, pp. 220-224; Sergio Catignani, 

“The Israel Defense Forces and the Al-Aqsa Intifada: When Tactical 

Virtuosity Meets Strategic Disappointment,” in Marston & Malkasian, Counterinsurgency, pp. 203-219.

128. Jeffrey Richelson, “‘Truth Conquers All Chains’: The U.S. 

Army’s Intelligence Support Activity, 1981-1989,” International 

Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence, Vol. 12, No. 2, 1999, 

pp. 168-200; Michael Smith, Killer Elite, London, UK: Cassell, 2006, 

pp. 31-46, 76-151.

129. James Bamford, Body of Secrets: How America’s NSA and 

Britain’s GCHQ Spy on the World, London, UK: Century, 2001; Michael Smith, The Spying Game: The Secret History of British Espionage, London, UK: Politico’s, 2003, pp. 305-322. In addition to its 

headquarters at Fort Meade, Maryland, the NSA has a listening 

post at RAF Menwith Hill, Yorkshire, England. GCHQ is based in 

Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, England, and is also assisted by the 

Joint Service Signal Unit, a Royal Signals/RAF formation) based 

at Akrotiri, Cyprus, which provides a SIGINT interception capability for the Middle East. The British armed forces also contribute to intelligence gathering in the following fields: The Army’s 

Intelligence Corps has a HUMINT role, while the RAF has tradi-
161

tionally operated as a gatherer of IMINT (Imagery Intelligence). 

Major General Graham Messervy-Whiting, “British armed forces 

and European Union perspectives on countering terrorism,” in 

Siniver, International Terrorism, p. 101. 

130. “Echelon: Big brother with a cause?” BBC News, July 6, 

2002, available from news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/820758.stm; 

Bamford, Body of Secrets, pp. 394-403, 410. 

131. Ken Connor, Ghost Force: The Secret History of the SAS, 

London, UK: Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1998, p. 190; Taylor, Brits, 

pp. 270-277.

132. Urban, Big Boys’ Rules, pp. 220-237; Toby Harnden, Bandit Country: The IRA and South Armagh, London, UK: Hodder & 

Stoughton 1999, pp. 418-423; Van der Bijl, Operation Banner, pp. 

174-175, 180, 193.

133. Taylor, Brits, pp. 1, 302; Bradley Bamford, “The Role and 

Effectiveness of Intelligence in Northern Ireland,” Intelligence and 

National Security, Vol. 20, No. 4, 2005, pp. 592-593; Peter R. Neumann, Britain’s Longest War. British Strategy in the Northern Ireland 

Conflict, 1969-98, Basingstoke, England: Palgrave, 2003, p. 157; 

Moloney, IRA, pp. 304-319. 

134. Deborah Haynes, “General Petraeus hails SAS after 

Iraq success over al-Qaeda car bombers,” The Times, August 11, 

2008; Speech by John Hutton, available from www.acronym.org/

docs/0904/doc13.htm; Mark Urban, Task Force Black, New York: 

Little, Brown, 2010. 

135. Cronin, How Terrorism Ends, pp. 24-25; Major General Julian Thompson, War Behind Enemy Lines, New York: Macmillan, 

1999, pp. 52-55; Peter Calvocoressi, Guy Wint, and John Pritchard, 

Total War: The Causes and Courses of World War Two: Volume II: The 

Greater East Asia and Pacific Conflict, London, UK: Penguin, 1989, 

pp. 494-495.

136. Williamson Murray, and Major General Robert Scales, Jr., 

The Iraq War: A Military History, Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2004, pp. 150-151, 154-156; Patrick Cockburn, “Chemical Ali: The end of an overlord,” The Independent, June 25, 2007. 
162

137. Trefor Moss, “U.S. strike kills al-Qaeda leaders in Pakistan,” JDW, Vol. 46, No. 2, January 14, 2009; Daniel Markey, Securing Pakistan’s Tribal Belt, Special Report No. 36, Washington, DC: 

Council on Foreign Relations, August 2008, pp. 18-19.

138. Frank Gardner, Blood and Sand, London, UK: Bantam 

Press, 2007, pp. 280-281; Tristan McConnell, “Terrorist Saleh Ali 

Saleh Nabhan killed by U.S. commandos in Somalia,” The Times, 

September 16, 2009. Nabhan is accused of complicity in the Mombasa bomb attacks of October 2002. 

139. Patrick Porter, “Long wars and long telegrams: containing Al-Qaeda,” International Affairs, Vol. 85, No. 2, 2009, p. 301; 

Omar Waraich, “‘Shoot-out’ at Taliban meeting,” The Independent, 

August 10, 2009; Saeed Shah, “Pakistani Taliban Appoints Fearsome Young Gun as New Leader,” The Daily Telegraph, August 

24, 2009.

140. Joby Warrick and Peter Finn, “Al-Qaeda is a Wounded 

and Dangerous Enemy,” Washington Post, February 8, 2010; Peter 

Taylor, “The wannabe British jihadist who said no to Al-Qaeda,” 

The Times, February 21, 2010.

141. Mossad’s operations include the killing of Mahmoud 

al-Mabhouh, a senior Hamas military commander, in Dubai on 

January 20, 2010. Alon Ben David, “Spy games: Mossad returns to 

form,” JIR, Vol. 22, No. 5, 2010, pp. 26-31.

142. Simon Reeve, One Day in September, London, UK: Faber 

& Faber, 2000, pp. 160-188; Said Aburish, Arafat; From Defender to 

Dictator, New York: Bloomsbury 1998, pp. 203-210; James Corum 

and Wray Johnson, Airpower in Small Wars; Fighting Insurgents and 

Terrorists, Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2003, p. 414.

143. Lisa Beyer, Ron Ben-Yishai, and Jamil Hamad, “Deadly 

Force,” Time Magazine, August 24, 1992; Clive Jones, “‘One Size 

Fits All’: Israel, Intelligence and the al-Aqsa Intifada,” SC&T, Vol.

26, No. 4, 2003, pp. 273-275; The Dirty War: Israel Undercover, documentary broadcast on BBC2, February 17, 2002.

144. Robert Pape, Bombing to Win; Airpower and Coercion in 

War, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996, pp. 12-13.
163

145. Yezid Sayigh, Armed Struggle and the Search for State: The 

Palestinian National Movement, 1949-1993, OUP, 1999, pp. 62-65, 

124, 176-179; Barry Rubin, Revolution until Victory? The History and 

Politics of the PLO, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 

1994, pp. 139-141.

146. Joseph T. Stanik, El Dorado Canyon: Reagan’s Undeclared 

War Against Gaddafi, Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2003.

147. Damla Aras, “The Role of Motivation in the Success of 

Coercive Diplomacy: The 1998 Turkish-Syrian Crisis as a Case 

Study,” Defence Studies, Vol. 9, No. 2, 2009, pp. 207-223.

148. Robert Fisk, Pity the Nation; Lebanon at War, OUP, 1992, 

pp. 524-525; Edgar O’Ballance, Civil War in Lebanon, 1975-92, Basingstoke, England: Macmillan, 1998, p. 133.

149. Richard A. Clarke, Against All Enemies; Inside America’s 

War on Terror, London, UK: Free Press, 2004, pp. 184-187; Steve 

Coll, Ghost Wars; The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan and bin 

Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10th, 2001, London, UK: 

Penguin, 2005, pp. 416-431.

150. Tatiana Waisberg, “The Colombia-Ecuador Armed Crisis 

of March, 2008: The Practice of Targeted Killing and Incursions 

against Non-State Actors Harbored at Terrorist Safe Havens in a 

Third Party State,” SC&T, Vol. 32, No. 6, 2009, pp. 476-488.

151. Bregman, Israel’s Wars, pp. 158-176; Bergman, Secret War, 

pp. 364-377; Alon Ben-David, “Israeli offensive seeks ‘new security reality’ in Gaza”; and Mohammed Najib, “Hamas is ‘on the 

defensive’ in Gaza crisis,” JDW, Vol. 46, No. 2, January 14, 2009.

152. Byman, Deadly Connections, pp. 209-210; Rohan Gunaratna, Inside Al Qaeda, New York: Berkley Press, 2003, pp. 78-80.

153. William Maley, The Afghanistan Wars, Basingstoke, England: Palgrave, 2002, pp. 262-268; Anthony Davis, “How the Afghan war was won,” JIR, Vol. 14, No. 2, 2002, pp. 6-13.

154. Sayigh, Armed Struggle, pp. 509-510; Stephen Biddle, “Allies, Airpower, and Modern Warfare: The Afghan Model in Af-
164

ghanistan and Iraq,” International Security, Vol. 30, No. 3, 2005-06, 

pp. 161-176; Alistair Finlan, Special Forces, Strategy and the War on 

Terror, London, UK: Routledge, 2008, pp. 111-138.

155. Peter John Paul Krause, “The Last Good Chance: A Reassessment of U.S. Operations at Tora Bora,” Security Studies, Vol. 

17, No. 4, 2008, pp. 644-684; Benjamin Lambeth, Air Power against 

Terror: America’s Conduct of Operation Enduring Freedom, Santa 

Monica CA: RAND Corporation, 2005, pp. 149-154.

156. Edmund Sanders and Abukar Albadri, “Renewed Fighting Edges Somalia Closer to Civil War,” Chicago Tribune, December 21, 2006; Lauren Gelfand, “Ethiopia starts withdrawal 

of troops from Somalia,” JDW, Vol. 46, No. 2, January 14, 2009; 

“Good-bye, maybe,” Africa Confidential, Vol. 50, No. 3, February 

6, 2009; “Al-Qaeda on the March,” The Economist, May 22, 2009.

157. Andrew, Defence of the Realm, p. 741; One CIA officer 

explaining the lack of his Agency’s attention to Afghanistan prior to 9/11—and its inability to send operatives to monitor the 

emergence of al-Qaeda during the late 1990s—wryly noted that 

“[operations] that include diarrhoea as a way of life simply don’t 

happen,” and that the majority of CIA officers were loath to experience the danger and discomfort involved in operating clandestinely in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan. Steve Hewitt, “American 

Counter-terrorism through the Rewards for Justice Program, 

1984-2008,” in Siniver, International Terrorism, p. 85. 

158. “Iraq legacy for Afghan campaign,” BBC News, September 26, 2009, available from news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/

from_our_own_correspondent/8274993.stm. Stephen Gray discusses 

the British Army’s attitude in “Cracking on in Helmand,” Prospect 

Magazine, Vol. 162, August 27, 2009.

159. Declan Walsh, “U.S. soldiers and teenage girls killed in 

bombing near Pakistan school,” The Guardian, February 3, 2010.

160. “Front Line Vets,” The Economist, January 30, 2010; Vogl, 

“Train to Gain?” 

161. Ben Rawlence, “Trained in Terror,” July 30, 2008, available from www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/jul/30/Kenya.Terrorism/print.
165

162. Daniel Byman, “Friends Like These: Counterinsurgency 

and the War on Terrorism,” International Security, Vol. 31, No. 2, 

2006, pp. 79-115.

163. Hilary Synnott, Transforming Pakistan: Ways out of Instability, Adelphi Paper No. 406, 2009, p. 123; Alistair Harris and Michael Page, “The State of Yemen,” RUSI Journal, Vol. 154, No. 6, 

2009, pp. 68-72.

164. Abdul Hameed Bakier, “Jihadis Discuss Plans to Seize 

Pakistan’s Nuclear Arsenal,” JFTM, Vol. 7, No. 14, May 26, 2009.

165. Craig Murray, Murder in Samarkand, Edinburgh, Scotland: Mainstream Publishing, 2006; “Last U.S. plane leaves Uzbek 

base,” BBC News, November 21, 2005, available from news.bbc.

co.uk, No. 1, No. hi/world/asia-pacific/4457844.stm.

166. Roger McDermott, “Uzbekistan Playing Renewed Strategic Role in NATO’s Afghanistan Mission,” Jamestown Eurasia 

Daily Monitor, Vol. 6, No. 38, February 26, 2009; Joshua Kucera, 

“U.S. seeks rapprochement with Uzbekistan,” JDW, Vol. 47, No. 

1, January 6, 2010.

167. Anthony Loyd, “Short of kit, short of support: How the 

British Army failed in Basra,” The Times, March 18, 2008; Hala Jaber, “We will spill British blood, warns Sheikh Ahmad Fartusi,” 

The Sunday Times, September 14, 2008. Sheikh Fartusi was the 

commander of the Mahdi Army in Basra. 

168. Tariq Mahmud Ashraf, “Taming the ISI: Implications for 

Pakistan’s Stability and the War on Terrorism,” JFTM, Vol. 6, No. 

20, October 24, 2008; Shuja Nawaz, Crossed Swords: Pakistan, its 

Army, and the Wars Within, OUP, 2008, pp. 438-440, 467-469, 545.

169. Tariq Mahmud Ashraf, “The Pakistan Frontier Corps in 

the War on Terrorism,” Part I in JFTM, Vol. 6, No. 15, July 25, 

2008; Part II in JFTM, Vol. 6, No. 16, August 11, 2008.

170. Paul Dixon, ““Hearts and Minds’? British Counter-Insurgency from Malaya to Iraq,” The Journal of Strategic Studies, Vol. 

32, No. 3, 2009, p. 360; William Rosenau, U.S. Internal Assistance 

to South Vietnam: Insurgency, Subversion and Public Order, London, 

UK: Routledge, 2005, pp. 90-91, 97-100.
166

171. Lawrence Freedman, A Choice of Enemies: America Confronts the Middle East, London, UK: Phoenix, 2009, pp. 170-171. 

172. J. N. Dixit, India-Pakistan in War and Peace, London, UK: 

Routledge, 2002, pp. 23-25. One of the freed militants, Omar Saeed 

Sheikh, was subsequently sentenced to death for the kidnapping 

and murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. “Profile: 

Omar Saeed Sheikh,” BBC News, July 16, 2002, available from 

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/1804710.stm.

173. Bowden, Guests of the Ayatollah, p. 138, 223-233, 431-468. 

See also the report commissioned by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, produced by a panel headed by Admiral James L. Holloway (USN), 

August 23, 1980, available from www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/

NSAEBB63/doc8.pdf. An invasion of Iran would have outraged 

regional opinion, alarmed U.S. NATO allies, and could possibly 

have provoked a major crisis with the USSR. 

174. The Sayeret Maktal killed two out of the four PFLP hijackers in the operation; three passengers were wounded, with one 

succumbing to her injuries. “1972: Israeli commandos storm hijacked jet,” available from news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/

may/9/newsid_4326000/4326706.htm; Reeve, One Day in September, 

p. 75; James Adams, Secret Armies, London, UK: Hutchinson 1988, 

pp. 89-95. 

175. Jeffrey Goldberg, ’The Point of No Return,” The Atlantic 

Monthly, September 2010. 

176. Naftali, Blind Spot, pp. 130-135, 142-143; The United 

States did subsequently launch air strikes against Syrian military 

and Druze militia targets in December 1983. See Freedman, Choice 

of Enemies, p. 144; Richard Lock-Pullan, U.S. Intervention Policy and 

Army Innovation: From Vietnam to Iraq, London, UK: Routledge, 

2006.

177. For the current debate within the U.S. Army, see Lieutenant Colonel John Nagl, “Let’s Win the Wars We’re In,” and 

Colonel Gian Gentile, “Let’s Build an Army to Win all Wars,” Joint 

Force Quarterly, Vol. 52, No. 1, 2009, pp. 20-33.

178. Benjamin and Simon, Sacred Terror, pp. 294-295; The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States: The 

9/11 Report, New York: St Martin’s Press, 2004, pp. 190-191, 196-199. 
167

179. Richard Scott, “ASW Resurfaces,” JDW, Vol. 45, No. 24, 

June 11, 2008; Comments by General Sir Richard Dannatt (GCS) at 

the Royal United Services Institute Future Land War Conference, 

June 18, 2008, p. 8, available from www.rusi.org/downloads/assets/

Dannatspeech2008.pdf.

180. Jason Burke, Al-Qaeda, London, UK: Penguin, 2007, pp. 

180-182; Gunaratna, Inside Al Qaeda, pp. 63-64; Benjamin and Simon, Sacred Terror, p. 153; “Punish and be damned,” The Economist, August 29, 1998.

181. The question came from Graydon Carter of Vanity Fair; 

Benjamin and Simon, Sacred Terror, p. 261; Clarke, Against All Enemies, p. 186. 

182. Clarke, Against All Enemies, p. 190.

183. Jane Corbin, The Base, London, UK: Simon & Schuster, 

2003, pp. 299-308.

184. “Hezbollah Leader: Militants ‘Won’t Surrender Arms’,” 

CNN News, September 22, 2006, available from edition.cnn.

com/2006/WORLD/meast/09/22/Lebanon.rally/.

185. Christopher Andrew, For the President’s Eyes Only: Secret 

Intelligence and the American Presidency from Washington to Bush, 

New York: HarperCollins, 1995, pp. 483-484; Wilkinson, Terrorism 

Versus Democracy, p. 129.

186. Michael Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, New York: Basic 

Books 1992, pp. 51-73; Waisberg, “Colombia-Ecuador Crisis,” 

p. 479. The resolutions referred to here are available from www.

un.org/Docs/sc/unsc_resolutions.html.

187. Benjamin and Simon, Sacred Terror, pp. 273-275, 315; 

Rashid, Descent into Chaos, pp. 72-73, 77-78. 

188. See Paddy Ashdown, “What We Must Do to Win this 

War in Afghanistan,” The Independent, July 22, 2009.

189. “Israel and Sri Lanka: A Media Analysis of War Crimes 

Investigations,” report by Just Journalism, June 2009, available 
168

from www.justjournalism.com/special-reports/view/israel-and-sri-lanka-a-media-analysis-of-war-crimes-allegations; Clancy Chassay and 

Julian Borger, “Guardian Investigation Uncovers Evidence of Alleged Israeli War Crimes in Gaza,” The Guardian, March 24, 2009; 

Catherine Philp, “The hidden massacre: Sri Lanka’s final offensive against the Tamil Tigers,” The Times, May 29, 2009.

190. “Israel debates response to Gaza report,” BBC News, 

October 24, 2009, available from news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_

east/8322584.stm. The Goldstone report is available from www2.

ohchr.org/english/bodies/hrcouncil/specialsession/9/docs/UNFFMGC_

Report.pdf.

191. Interview with Noam Chomsky by Suzy Hansen on 

Salon.com, January 16, 2002, available from www.chomsky.info/

interviews/20020116.htm. See comments by Carol Bogert, the 

HRW Communications Director, on January 22, 2002, available 

from dir.salon.com/story/people/leters/2002/01/22/chomsky/index.html. 

Werner Daum, the German ambassador to Sudan between 1996-

2000, offered a retrospective guess that “several tens of thousands 

of Sudanese may have died as a result of the destruction of the 

al-Shifa factory in ‘Universalism and the West’,” Harvard International Review, Vol. 23, No. 2, 2001, available from www.harvardir.

org/index.php?page=article&id=909&p=. As far as Chomsky’s methodology is concerned, this constitutes an official report endorsed 

by the German government.

192. Robert Fisk publicized the massacre claims in “The Credibility of U.S. Policy on the Conflict Has Been Shattered,” Independent on Sunday, April 14, 2002. HRW was critical of the IDF’s 

tactics but cited 52 Palestinian dead, 22 of whom were civilians, 

thereby denying Palestinian claims (reported uncritically by Fisk 

and other media sources) that hundreds of civilians had been deliberately slaughtered by the Israelis; “‘No Jenin massacre’ say 

rights group,” BBC News, May 3, 2002, available from news.bbc.

co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/1965471.stm. See also Peter Beaumont, 

“Not a Massacre, but a Brutal Breach of War’s Rules,” The Guardian, April 25, 2002. 

193. Benjamin and Simon, Sacred Terror, p. 260; Paul R. Pillar, Terrorism and U.S. Foreign Policy, Washington, DC: Brookings, 

2001, p. 108. The CIA acquired a soil sample from the site that 

showed traces of the chemical EMPTA, which is created during 
169

the production of a highly lethal nerve agent known as VX. Nerve 

agents kill through contact with the skin, and consist of persistent 

agents (notably liquid weapons such as VX) and non-persistent 

agents (which includes the Sarin gas which Aum Shinrikyo used 

in the Tokyo subway attack of 1995). 

194. Adam Roberts, “Ethics, Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism,” Terrorism and Political Violence, Vol. 1, No. 1, 1989, p. 60; 

David C. Gompert, “Underkill: Fighting Extremists amid Populations,” Survival, Vol. 51, No. 2, 2009, pp. 159-160. 

195. For contrasting views, see “Statement by Professor Richard Falk, UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories,” December 27, 2008, available from www.unhchr.

ch/huricane/huricane.nsf/view01/F1EC67EF7A498A30C125752D005

D17F7?opendocument. See also Anthony Cordesman, “The “Gaza 

War”: A Strategic Analysis,” Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies, February 2, 2009, available from 

csis.org/files/media/csis/pubs/090202_gaza_war.pdf.

196. Ethan Bronner, “Hamas shifts from rockets to culture 

war,” New York Times, July 24, 2009; Amos Harel and Avi Issacharoff, “A New Kind of War,” Foreign Policy, January 20, 2010, available from www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/01/20/a_new_kind_

of_war; Yaakov Katz and Herb Keinon, “Hamas Rockets Seen as 

Bid to Foil Talks,” August 2, 2010. 

197. 9/11 Report, pp. 191-203; Coll, Ghost Wars, pp. 445-447. 

Alongside Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, the UAE was the only 

country to recognize the Taliban regime prior to 9/11. As odd as 

it may seem to Western readers, wealthy Gulf Arabs often visited 

Taliban-ruled Afghanistan to indulge in one of their favorite pastimes, hunting with falcons. 

198. Naftali, Blind Spot, p. 248. For a partial account based 

on the then-FBI Director’s recollections, see Elsa Walsh, “Louis 

Freeh’s Last Case,” The New Yorker, May 14, 2001. 

199. Gardner, Blood and Sand, pp. 280-281; Hilary Synnott, 

“What is Happening in Pakistan?” Survival, Vol. 51, No. 1, 2009, 

pp. 65-71; Pantucci, “Deep Impact,” p. 74.
170

200. Synnott, Transforming Pakistan, pp. 12, 161; Brian Cloughley, “Uneasy partnership. The U.S. and Pakistan’s dysfunctional 

alliance,” JIR, Vol. 22, No. 5, 2010, pp. 8-13.

201. “Nigerian doubts over AFRICOM base,” BBC News, 

November 20, 2007, available from news.bbc.co.uk/1,/hi/world/

africa/7104215.stm; Laurie Nathan, “AFRICOM: A Threat to Africa’s Security,” Contemporary Security Policy, Vol. 30, No. 1, 2009, 

pp. 58-61. For a rebuttal, see Vice-Admiral Robert Moeller (U.S. 

Navy), “The Truth about AFRICOM,” Foreign Policy, July 21, 2010.

202. Vogl, “Train to Gain?”; “AFRICOM’s Operation Flintlock: 

New Partners and New Questions,” JFTM, Vol. 8, No. 22, June 5, 

2010.

203. Michael D. Milalka and Lieutenant Colonel Mark R. Wilcox, “Unintended Consequences of Security Assistance in the 

South Caucasus,” Joint Force Quarterly, Vol. 57, No. 2, 2010, pp. 

25-32.

204. GEN(76)1st meeting, Cabinet Committee on Northern Ireland, May 24, 1976, CAB130, No. 908(NAUK); J. Stewart, Northern 

Ireland Office (NIO) to P. Wright, 10 Downing Street, August 24, 

1976, PREM16, No. 1342(NAUK); Tony Geraghty, The Irish War, 

London, UK: HarperCollins 1998, p. 223.

205. Urban, Big Boys’ Rules, p. 10; Hamill, Pig in the Middle, 

pp. 162. MOD files refer to Anglo-Irish police and military cooperation as far back as 1973. Lieutenant Colonel D. Ramsbotham, 

Visit by CGS to Northern Ireland, September 28, 1973, DEFE13, No. 

990(NAUK); Van der Bijl, Operation Banner, pp. 83, 88. 

206. Bill Park, Turkey’s Policy Towards Northern Iraq: Problems 

and Perspectives, Adelphi Paper No. 374, 2005, pp. 56-61; “Turkish 

troops enter Northern Iraq,” BBC News, February 22, 2008, available from news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7258323.stm.

207. Bregman, Israel’s Wars, pp. 147-148; Ahron Bregman and 

Jihan el-Tahri, The Fifty Years War: Israel and the Arabs, London, 

UK: Penguin, 1998, pp. 156-157; Freedman, Choice of Enemies, pp. 

126-135.
171

208. Candace Rondeaux and Karen DeYoung, “U.S. Troops 

Crossed Border, Pakistan says,” Washington Post, September 4, 

2008; Pantucci, “Deep Impact,” p. 73; “Front Line Against the Taliban,” The Economist, November 26, 2009.

209. Pantucci, “Deep Impact,” p. 73; “Mapping U.S. drone and 

Islamic militant attacks in Pakistan,” BBC News, July 22, 2010, 

available from www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-10648909.

210. Dave Sloggett, “Attack of the drones: The utility of UAVs 

in fighting terrorism,” JIR, Vol. 22, No. 8, 2010, pp. 14-18; Farhat 

Taj, “Drone attacks: Pakistan’s Policy and the Tribesmen’s Perspective,” JTSM, Vol. 23, No. 10, March 11, 2010; Tom Baldwin, 

“Concern mounts over US Predator covert killings,” The Times, 

May 23, 2009. 

211. Cronin, How Terrorism Ends, p. 15; and Ending Terrorism, 

p. 32; Mette Eilstrup-Sangiovanni and Calvert Jones, “Assessing the Dangers of Illicit Networks: Why al-Qaeda May Be Less 

Threatening Than Many Think,” International Security, Vol. 33, 

No. 2, 2008, pp. 21-23.

212. Tracey German, “David and Goliath: Georgia and Russia’s Coercive Diplomacy,” Defence Studies, Vol. 9, No. 2, 2009, pp. 

230-231.

213. Bob Woodward, Plan of Attack, London, UK: Simon & 

Schuster, 2004, pp. 24-27; Bergman, Secret War, p. 56; Crefeld, 

Sword and Olive, pp. 285-306.

214. Andrew Cockburn and Patrick Cockburn, Saddam Hussein: An American Obsession, London, UK: Verso, 2002, p. 165; Con 

Coughlin, Saddam: The Secret Life, Macmillan, 2002, pp. 140-145; 

Byman, Deadly Connections, pp. 292-294.

215. Sayigh, Armed Struggle, pp. 61-66; Keith Kyle, Suez, London, UK: I. B. Tauris, 2003, pp. 55-60, 107, 301, 315, 347; Michael 

Oren, Six Days of War, London, UK: Penguin, 2003, pp. 34-35.

216. Owen Bennett Jones, Pakistan: Eye of the Storm, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002, pp. 209-210.
172

217. Victoria Schofield, Kashmir in Conflict: India, Pakistan and 

the Unending War, London, UK: I. B.Tauris, 2003, p. 235; Srinath 

Raghavan, “A Coercive Triangle: India, Pakistan, the United 

States, and the Crisis of 2001-2001,” Defence Studies, Vol. 9, No. 2, 

2009, pp. 244-258.

218. Rabasa et al, Mumbai, p. 16. U.S. Secretary of Defense 

Robert Gates has suggested that provoking an Indo-Pakistani 

war might be an al-Qaeda objective. “Gates Warns of Militants in 

South Asia,” Wall Street Journal, January 21, 2010. 

219. Chin, “War on Terror,” pp. 130, 135-136. Hassan Butt refutes this impression in “My Plea to Fellow Muslims: You Must 

Renounce Terror,” The Observer, July 1, 2007. An ex-Islamist militant, Butt states that radical Islamism is only superficially motivated by grievances such as Iraq, and that its main motivation 

is “[to fight] for the creation of a revolutionary state that would 

eventually bring Islamic justice to the world.” To offer some confirmation for Butt’s argument, a recent report by the House of 

Commons Intelligence and Security Committee notes that Siddique Khan, the 7/7 ringleader, was present at a militant training 

camp in 2001 prior to the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. See CM7617, 

Could 7/7 Have Been Prevented? Review of the Intelligence on the London Terrorist Attacks on 7 July, 2005, London, UK: The Stationery 

Office, 2009, p. 14.

220. Kim Sengupta, “Afghan War Tied to Security at Home,” 

The Independent, August 3, 2009; Bergman, Secret War, pp. 251-252.

221. S. E. Finer, The Man on Horseback; The Role of the Military 

in Politics, London, UK: Penguin, 1976, pp. 219-222; Michael Howard, War and the Liberal Conscience, London, UK: Temple Smith, 

1978, pp. 76-78, 129, 133-135; Charles Townshend, Britain’s Civil 

Wars: Counterinsurgency in the Twentieth Century, London, UK: Faber & Faber, 1986, pp. 15-23.

222. For an analysis of civil-military discord from a UK perspective, see Hew Strachan, The Politics of the British Army, Oxford, 

UK: Clarendon Press, 1997; and “Making Strategy,” pp. 59-82.

223. “Questions on CCRF answered by Lord Bach, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State (MOD), October 28, 2004,” Parlia-
173

mentary Debates Lords, available from www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200304/ldhansrd/vo041028/text/41028-03.htm; SDR 

New Chapter.

224. Neil Tweedie, “Cash and Manpower Shortages Leave 

Emergency Military Force ‘in Chaos’, “ Daily Telegraph, September 

12, 2005. The MOD’s website is bereft of references to the CCRF. 

The author participated in two London District CCRF practice 

mobilizations in February and November 2003, both of which 

could best be described as a shambles. The November 2003 exercise involved a CBRN attack, and it became clear that the Royal 

Navy reservists participating in this scenario had no Nuclear, 

Biological and Chemical (NBC) defense training whatsoever. An 

Army captain serving in the London District Training Team had 

to provide an impromptu lesson on how to wear their NBC suits, 

don respirators, and decontaminate themselves. Aside from two 

exercises conducted by London District in 2006 and 2007, the author could find no further reference to any other CCRF activity.

225. Patrick Barkham, “Heathrow show of force after terror 

alert,” The Times, February 12, 2003. An example of the widespread skepticism felt over the 2003 alert can be seen in the Guardian’s editorial cartoon on February 13, 2003, available from www.

guardian.co.uk/cartoons/stevebell/0,7371,894734,00.html.

226. Stephen Dorril and Robin Ramsay, Smear: Wilson and the 

Secret State, New York: HarperCollins, 1992, p. 268; Strachan, Politics of the British Army, pp. 187-189.

227. Roger Faligot, Britain’s Military Strategy in Ireland: The 

Kitson Experiment, London, UK: Zed Books, 1983; Paul Foot, Who 

Framed Colin Wallace? London, UK: Macmillan, 1989; Paul-Marie 

de la Gorce, Kenneth Douglas, trans., The French Army: A MilitaryPolitical History, London, UK: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1963, 

pp. 531-552.

228. Roberts, “Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism,” p. 60.

229. Rod Thornton, “Getting it Wrong: The Crucial Mistakes 

made in the Early Stages of the British Army’s Deployment in 

Northern Ireland, August 1969 to March 1972,” Journal of Strategic 

Studies, Vol. 30, No. 1, 2007, pp. 76-79.
174

230. Thornton, “Getting it Wrong,” p. 76; Meeting between the 

Defence Secretary and the Northern Ireland Government at Stormont, 

March 20, 1971, DEFE25/304(NAUK). 

231. Background note, Relations between the Army and the RUC, 

July 29, 1970, DEFE24/980(NAUK); Hennessey, Troubles, pp. 13, 

16-18. Despite a constant effort by the British authorities after 

1970 to create a neutral, bisectarian force, only 8 percent of the 

RUC consisted of Catholics by 1997. “New Cop in Town,” The 

Economist, November 5, 2009.

232. Hamill, Pig in the Middle, pp. 221-227, 231-233, 252; Tuck, 

“Northern Ireland,” pp. 169-170. 

233. GEN129(73)6, Contingency Plans, February 19, 1973; 

GEN129(73)1st meeting, February 23, 1973, CAB130, No. 

636(NAUK); General Sir Peter de la Billiere, Looking for Trouble, 

London, UK: HarperCollins 1995, pp. 280-283.

234. “Protection of Offshore Installations,” note on an interdepartmental meeting held September 25, 1974; DP18/74(Final), 

The Responsibilities of the Armed Forces for Safeguarding the United 

Kingdom’s Offshore Interests in Peace, October 18, 1974, DEFE24, 

No. 411(NAUK). 

235. Memorandum by A. S. Baker (Home Office), March 25, 1977, 

FCO76/1755(NAUK); Duncan Falconer, First Into Action: A Dramatic 

Personal Account of Life in the SBS, London, UK: Sphere, 2001, p. 322.

236. Rabasa et al, Mumbai, pp. 10-11; “India’s security—learning from Mumbai,” BBC News, November 11, 2009, available 

from news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/8373836.stm. 

237. Sean O’Neill, “Cobra emergency committee ‘slows everything down’,” The Times, June 22, 2009.

238. General Frank Kitson, Low Intensity Operations, 2nd Ed., 

London, UK: Faber & Faber 1991, pp. 95-96. Kitson served with 

the British Army in the Kenyan and Malayan campaigns, and 

was Commanding Officer, 39th Brigade (Belfast), during the early 

1970s. The importance of intelligence is also emphasized by the 

U.S. and British Army COIN manuals; FM 3-24, p. 3.1; AFM1 10, 

pp. B-6-1 - B-6-18.
175

239. One of Shin Bet’s agents was Mosab Hassan Yousef, the 

son of Hamas’s co-founder Sheikh Hassan Yousef. James Hider, 

“Son of Hamas founder spied for Israel to stop bombers,” The 

Times, February 25, 2010.

240. Hughes and Tripodi, “Surrogate,” pp. 8-9; Lawrence 

Freedman, The Transformation of Strategic Affairs, Adelphi Paper 

No. 379, 2006, pp. 90-91; Naftali, Blind Spot, pp. 198-199.

241. Bergman, Secret War, pp. 76-81; Walker, Aden Insurgency, 

pp. 184-185, 191.

242. Minute by Deputy Chief of Defence Staff (Intelligence), 

December 21, 1972, DEFE25/282(NAUK); Field Marshal Michael Carver, Out of Step, London, UK: Hutchinson, 1989, p. 

429; Lieutenant Colonel J. Biles, Chief of the General Staff’s Visit 

to Northern Ireland, Wednesday, 5 Feb 1975, February 6, 1975, 

DEFE11/917(NAUK).

243. Urban, Big Boys’ Rules, pp. 20-23, 109-110; Ramsbotham 

minute, September 28, 1973, DEFE13/990(NAUK); Bamford, “Intelligence,” pp. 593-594; Moloney, IRA, pp. 332-33, 335-336, 458-

459.

244. Dillon, Dirty War, pp. 29-45; Jaber, “We will spill British 

blood,” The Sunday Times.

245. For descriptions of these crises and the civilian casualties, see Carlotta Gall and Thomas de Waal, Chechnya; A Small Victorious War, London, UK: Macmillan, 1997, pp. 256-275, 290-304; 

Robert Saunders, “A Conjurer’s Game: Vladimir Putin and the 

Politics of Presidential Prestidigitation,” in Kassimeris, ed., Playing Politics, pp. 220-249.

246. Bennett, Crying Wolf, pp. 428-435; Anatol Lieven, Chechnya: Tombstone of Russian Power, New Haven, CT: Yale University 

Press 1998, pp. 124-125, 138-139.

247. Kramer, “Chechnya,” p. 54; Saunders, “A Conjurer’s 

Game,” pp. 234-240; “Russia: Independent Beslan Investigation 

Sparks Controversy,” RFE, No. RL report, August 29, 2006, available from www.rferl.org/content/article,/1070905.html.
176

248. Paul Wallace, “Political Violence and Terrorism in India: 

The Crisis of Identity,” in Martha Crenshaw, ed., Terrorism in Context, University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 

1995, pp. 385-386. 

249. Minute by Ian Gilmour, Under-Secretary of State for 

Army, The Shooting of Daniel O’Hagan, 31 July 1970, September 3, 

1970, DEFE24/980(NAUK). The author’s experiences of public 

order training have left him with the sincere wish that he never 

witnesses a genuine riot.

250. Hennessey, Troubles, pp. 250-253, 257-263; Thornton, 

“Getting it Wrong,” p. 99.

251. Hennessey, Troubles, p. 348. Other subunits of 1PARA in 

Londonderry that day (not to mention soldiers from other battalions) held their fire during the demonstration and the ensuing 

rioting. The Saville Inquiry presented its conclusions on “Bloody 

Sunday” on June 15, 2010. Its findings blamed soldiers from Support Company, 1 PARA, for “unjustifiable firing,” and implicitly 

repudiated an earlier inquiry by Lord Widgery (April 1972) by 

stressing that the demonstrators were unarmed, available from 

report.bloody-sunday-inquiry.org .

252. Michael Dewar, The British Army in Northern Ireland, London, UK: Arms and Armour Press 1997, p. 38.

253. Quoted in Schofield, Kashmir, p. 168. See pp. 168-170, on 

Indian military and security force abuses during the 1990s.

254. Jane Perlez and Pir Zubair Shah, “Pakistan Army is Said 

to be Linked to Many Killings in Swat,” New York Times, September 15, 2009; “The Law in Whose Hands?”The Economist, October 

3, 2009.

255. Neumann, “The Myth of Ulsterization”; Van der Bijl, Operation Banner, p. 31. 

256. Paul Dixon, “‘Hearts and Minds’? British Counter-Insurgency Strategy in Northern Ireland,” Journal of Strategic Studies, 

Vol. 32, No. 2, 2009, p. 467; Martin Dillon, The Dirty War, London, UK: Arrow Books, 1990, pp. 211-230; Tony Geraghty, The 
177

Irish War, New York: HarperCollins 1998, p. 229; Hamill, Pig in 

the Middle, pp. 299-305; Following the 1991 Defence Review, the 

UDR was incorporated into the regular army as the Home Service 

Battalions of the Royal Irish Regiment.

257. Donatella Della Porta, “Institutional Response to Terrorism: The Italian Case,” in Crelinstein and Schmid, Western Responses to Terrorism, pp. 153-154; John Dickie refers to dietrologia

in a different context in Cosa Nostra; A History of the Sicilian Mafia, 

London, UK: Hodder and Stoughton, 2007, p. 239. 

258. Dillon, Dirty War, pp. xix, 45-46, 51-55; Taylor, Brits, pp. 

128-137; Peter Carrington (Defence Secretary) to Edward Heath 

(Prime Minister), Special Reconnaissance Unit, November 28, 1972, 

DEFE25/282(NAUK); Faligot, Kitson Experiment. 

259. Raymond Murray, The SAS in Ireland, Cork, Ireland: 

Mercier Press, 1990. On the decision to deploy 22SAS, see 

MISC115(76)1st meeting, Cabinet Committee on Northern Ireland, 

January 6, 1976, CAB130, No. 908(NAUK); Memorandum by 

Fred Mulley (Defence Secretary) and Roy Mason (Northern Ireland Secretary) to James Callaghan (Prime Minister), December 3, 

1976, PREM16/1342(NAUK).

260. Frank Bovenkerk and Yucel Yesilgoz, The Turkish Mafia, 

Preston, UK: Milo Books, 2007, pp. 185, 197-198, 204-208, 214-216, 

227, 231-232; Gareth Jenkins, “Susurluk and the Legacy of Turkey’s Dirty War,” Jamestown Foundation Terrorism Monitor, Vol. 6, 

No. 9, May 1, 2008; Bill Park, “Turkey’s Deep State: Ergenekon 

and the Threat to Democratisation in the Republic,” RUSI Journal, Vol. 153, No. 5, 2008, pp. 54-59; “Turkey general denies coup 

plot,” BBC News, January 26, 2010, available from news.bbc.co.uk/

go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/world/europe/8480028.stm.

261. For a prime example of a source tainted by conspiracy 

theorizing, see Daniele Ganser, NATO’s Secret Armies; Operation 

Gladio and Terrorism in Western Europe, Frank Cass, 2005. As Leopoldo Nuti and Olav Riste delicately comment, Ganser’s “ambitious conclusions do not seem to be entirely corroborated by a 

sound examination of the sources available.” “Introduction—

Strategy of ‘Stay-Behind’,” Journal of Strategic Studies, Vol. 30, No. 

6, 2007, p. 930. This edition of the Journal is recommended reading 

for any scholar interested in the “stay-behind” networks established in Western Europe during the early Cold War period.
178

262. “A Trip Through the Borderlands,” The Economist, March 

13, 2010; Jack Barclay, “Collateral damage; Propaganda defends 

Muslim casualties,” JIR, Vol. 22, No. 5 (201), pp. 20-25.

263. “Unleashing the Laws of War,” The Economist, August 

15, 2009.

264. Interview with General Larry Arnold (USAF) by 9/11 

Commission, February 3, 2004, available from media.nara.gov/ 

9-11/MFR/t-0148-911MFR-00172.pdf; Statement of General Ralph 

E. Eberhart (USAF), CINC NORAD, to U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee, March 20, 2002, available from armed-services.senate.gov/statemnt/2002/March/Eberhart.pdf; Julian Borger, “US Civilian Planes ‘Shot Down’ Four Times a Week in Post-September 11 

Drills,” The Guardian, October 4, 2003. NORAD is a bi-national 

military command, with a U.S. Air Force chief and a deputy from 

the Canadian Forces. The combined character of NORAD is often 

forgotten, particularly by cranks who claim that it was deliberately “stood down” by the Bush administration on the morning 

of 9/11. 

265. In response to this dilemma, the Federal Constitutional 

Court of Germany has ruled that it is illegal for the Luftwaffe to 

shoot down hijacked jets. Ulf Gartzke, “Flying Blind in the Post9/11 World,” The Weekly Standard, February 3, 2006, available 

from www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000%5C000

%5C011%5C933pgtee.asp. 

266. BGS(Int)1/16, Historical Narrative of Interrogation, November 21, 1971, DEFE23/109(NAUK); Hennessey, Troubles, pp. 

129-167, 214-226; Benest, “Northern Ireland,” pp. 136-137; Dixon, 

“Northern Ireland,” pp. 448, 457. New guidelines on interrogation and detainee handling did not stop further allegations of 

physical ill-treatment described by the European Court of Human 

Rights as “inhuman and degrading treatment” in 1978. See Brice 

Dickson, “Counter-Insurgency and Human Rights in Northern 

Ireland,” The Journal of Strategic Studies,Vol. 32, No. 3, 2009, p. 487.

267. Josh White, “Military Lawyers Fought Policy on Interrogations,” The Washington Post, July 15, 2005; Memorandum by 

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Counter-Resistance Techniques in the War on Terrorism, April 16, 2003, available from 

www.humanrightsfirst.org/us_law/etn/gonzales/memos_dir/mem_
179

20030416_Rum_IntTec.pdf; JAG memos, introduced into Congressional Record by Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC), July 25, 2005, available 

from www.humanrightsfirst.org/us_law/etn/ pdf/ jag-memos-072505.pdf.

268. “The Dark Pursuit of the Truth,” The Economist, August 1, 

2009. Detainee abuses in Afghanistan are the subject of the documentary Taxi to the Dark Side (2007).

269. Taylor, “Six Days that Shook Britain.”

270. Taylor, “Six Days that Shook Britain;” Urban, Big Boys’ 

Rules, pp. 140, 171; Report by Captain A. C. Massey (22SAS), Comments on the Tactical Aspects of the Handling of the “Munich Massacre,” September 18, 1972, in GEN129(72)3, The Munich Incident, 

October 12, 1972, CAB130/616(NAUK).

271. Taylor, Brits, pp. 270-277; Harnden, Bandit Country, pp. 

418-423. In military parlance, an “ambush” is an operation to take 

an enemy force by surprise and destroy it with maximum use of 

firepower. With a preemptive intervention, the intention is to try 

and arrest the terrorist (or terrorists), although lethal force may be 

required for self-defense.

272. Tony Geraghty, Who Dares Wins: The Story of the SAS 

1950-1992, London, UK: Little, Brown & Co, 1992, pp. 232-234, 

247-252; Dillon, Dirty War, pp. 465-478.

273. Ian Jack, “Gibraltar,” in The Best of Granta Reportage, London, UK: Penguin, 1994, pp. 187-255; Urban, Big Boys’ Rules, p. 

205; Taylor, Brits, pp. 283-284. The two corporals were not members of 22SAS or 14 Intelligence Company, and their presence at 

the funeral is unexplained. Mourners evidently suspected that a 

repeat of Stone’s attack was imminent and reacted by beating and 

shooting the two soldiers.

274. Taylor, Brits, p. 309; B’Tselem Report, Activity of the Undercover Units in the Occupied Territories, Jerusalem, Israel: May 

1992; Cronin, How Terrorism Ends, pp. 30-31; Rotem Giladi, “Out 

of Context: ’Undercover’ Operations and [International Humanitarian Law] Advocacy in the Occupied Palestinian Territories,” 

Journal of Conflict & Security Law, Vol. 14, No. 3, 2010, pp. 393-439.
180

275. Jones, “Israel,” p. 275; Cronin, How Terrorism Ends, p. 53; 

Mohammed Hafez and Joseph Hatfeld, “Do Targeted Assassinations Work? A Multivariate Analysis of Israel’s Controversial Tactic during the Al-Aqsa Uprising,” SC&T, Vol. 29, No. 4, 2006, pp. 

359-382; Jones, “al-Aqsa intifada,” p. 134.

276. Taylor, Brits, pp. 1, 302; Iron, “Longest War,” pp. 177-

178; Moloney, IRA, pp. 332-33, 335-336, 458-459. Based on this evidence, the author does not subscribe to Brice Dickson’s argument 

that agent recruitment was of little practical utility, although he 

agrees with his assessments on its ethical and legal implications. 

See Dickson, “Counter-Insurgency and Human Rights,” pp. 475-

493.

277. John Ware, “Torture, Murder, Mayhem, the Dirty War 

Just Got Dirtier,” The Guardian, May 12, 2003; Matthew Teague, 

“Double Blind,” The Atlantic Monthly, April 2006, available from 

www.theatlantic.com/doc/print/200604/ ira-spy.

278. Lewis, Fishers of Men, p. 236; Ingram and Harkin, 

Stakeknife; Bamford, “Intelligence,” pp. 592-593, 600-603; Hoffman, Inside Terrorism, p. 271. For a balanced analysis of the ethical and practical problems of agent recruitment, see Jon Moran, 

“Evaluating Special Branch and the Use of Informant Intelligence 

in Northern Ireland,” Intelligence and National Security, Vol. 25, 

No. 1, 2010, pp. 1-23. 

279. Carlos Osorio, ed., “Bordaberry Condemned for 1973 

Coup,” National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 309, 

March 20, 2010, available from www.gwu.edu/-nsarchiv/NSAEBB/

NSAEBB309/.

280. Thomas Marks and David Scott Palmer, “Radical Maoist Insurgents and Terrorist Tactics: Comparing Nepal and Peru,” 

Low Intensity Conflict & Law Enforcement, Vol. 13, No. 2, 2005, pp. 

107-108; Jo-Marie Burt, “Playing Politics with Terror: The Case of 

Fujimori’s Peru,” in Kassimeris, ed., Playing Politics, pp. 62-100; 

Cronin, How Terrorism Ends, pp. 125-131.

281. Lewis, Guerrillas and Generals; Richard Gillespie, “Political Violence in Argentina: Guerrillas, Terrorists and Carapintadas,” in Crenshaw, Terrorism in Context, pp. 211-248; Videla is 

quoted on p. 243.
181

282. Dmitry Gorenburg, “Russia Confronts Radical Islam,” 

Current History, Vol. 105, No. 693, 2006, pp. 334-340; Charles King, 

“Prisoners of the Caucasus: Russia’s Invisible Civil War,” Foreign 

Affairs, Vol. 89, No. 4, 2010, pp. 20-34.

283. “Violence continues in Russian North Caucasus,” Jane’s 

Intelligence Weekly, August 19, 2009; Mairbek Vatchagaev, “More 

Russian Troops Headed to Ingushetia,” Jamestown Foundation Eurasia Daily Monitor, Vol. 6, No. 162, August 21, 2009; Unnamed author, “Northern Explosion—Violence Escalates in the North Caucasus,” JIR, Vol. 21, No. 10, 2009, pp. 8-13.

284. Rhys Blakely, “Tamil death toll ‘is 1,400 a week’ at Manik 

Farm camp in Sri Lanka,” The Times, June 10 2009; Andrew Buncombe, “Up to 40,000 Civilians ‘Died in Sri Lanka Offensive’,” 

The Independent, February 10, 2010; Nira Wickramasinghe, “In Sri 

Lanka, the Triumph of Vulgar Patriotism,” Current History, Vol. 

109, No. 726, 2010, pp. 158-161.

285. “Behind the Rajapaksa Brothers’ Smiles,” The Economist, 

August 8, 2009. This article’s title refers to both the President and 

his brother, Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa. Andrew 

Buncombe, “Wife’s Fears of General Imprisoned in Sri Lanka,” 

The Independent, February 10, 2010. 

286. Pressman, “Power without Influence,” p. 174; Bruce 

Hoffman, “A Counterterrorism Strategy for the Obama Administration,” Terrorism and Political Violence, Vol. 21, No. 3, 2009, pp. 

360-361. 

287. Speech by Secretary Robert Gates to National Defense 

University, September 29, 2008, emphasis added, available from 

www.defenselink.mil/speeches/speech.aspx?speechid=1279.

288. Chin, “War on Terror”; Hew Strachan, “The Strategic 

Gap in British Defence Policy,” Survival, Vol. 51, No. 4, 2009, pp. 

49-70.

289. Claire Taylor and Jon Lunn, Strategic Defence and Security Review, London, UK: House of Commons Library, August 

16, 2010; Speech by Liam Fox (Defence Secretary) at Royal Institute for Chartered Surveyors on August 13, 2010, available 
182

from www.mod.uk/DefenceInternet/AboutDefence/People/Speeches/

SofS/20100813/TheNeedForDefenceReform.htm.

290. Hew Strachan, “The Lost Meaning of Strategy,” Survival, 

Vol. 47, No. 3, 2005, pp. 33-54. 

291. Roland D. Crelinstein and Alex P. Schmid, “Western Responses to Terrorism: A Twenty-Five Year Balance Sheet,” Terrorism and Political Violence, Vol. 4, No. 4, 1992, p. 335.

292. Strachan, “Making Strategy,” pp. 66-67. 

293. Moloney, IRA, pp. 304-319, 368-371; Iron, “Longest War,” 

pp. 183-184.

294. Eric Schmitt and Scott Shane, “Crux of Afghan Debate: 

Will More Troops Curb Terror?” New York Times, September 8, 

2009; Austin Long, “Small is Beautiful: The Counterterrorism Option in Afghanistan,” Orbis, Vol. 54, No. 2, 2010, pp. 199-214.

295. Boyle, “Do counterterrorism and counterinsurgency go 

together,” p. 335.

296. Ibid.; Max Boot, “How We Can Win in Afghanistan,” 

Commentary, November, 2009, available from www.commentarymagazine.com/viewarticle.cfm,/how-we-can-win-in-afghanistan-15257.

297. Rashid, Descent into Chaos, p. 106; The reliability of local 

proxies is also referred to in “Afghan warlord ‘paid $2m’ by UK,” 

BBC News, January 9, 2010, available from news.bbc.co.uk/go,/pr/

fr -/1/hi/uk/8448825.stm, with reference to an anti-Taliban militia 

hired by the SIS during the initial phases of Operation ENDURING FREEDOM, who subsequently allowed al-Qaeda fighters to 

escape (for a fee) during the battle of Tora Bora in December 2001. 

The author is reminded of the cynical adage that “you cannot buy 

an Afghan—you may only rent him.” Synnott, Transforming Pakistan, p. 116. 

298. Boyle, “Do counterterrorism and counterinsurgency go 

together,” pp. 350-351; Kilcullen, Accidental Guerrilla, pp. 34-38, 

287-289. 
183

299. Matthew B; Arnold, “The US ’Surge‘ as a Collaborative 

Corrective for Iraq,” RUSI Journal, Vol. 153, No. 2, 2008, pp. 24-29; 

Boot, “How We Can Win”; Sloggett, “Attack of the drones,” p. 15. 

300. Dimitrakis, “Cyprus Insurgency,” p. 389; Richard Aldrich, The Hidden Hand: Britain, America and Cold War Secret Intelligence, London, UK: John Murray, 2001, p. 578. 

301. Robert Kaplan, “Buddha’s Savage Peace,” The Atlantic, 

September, 2009; Anthony Loyd, “New Tamil group People’s Liberation Army vows to start a fresh war,” The Times, December 7, 

2009; Joint Humanitarian Update 10-23 April, 2010, New York: UN 

Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs, April 29, 

2010. 

302. Cronin, How Terrorism Ends, p. 11.

303. “Text: Beirut Declaration,” BBC News, March 28, 2002, 

available from news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/monitoring/media_reports/1899395.stm; “Not Quite as Gloomy as They Look,” The 

Economist, August 1, 2009. 

304. Austin Long, “The Anbar Awakening,” Survival, Vol. 50, 

No. 2, 2008, pp. 67-94; Lawrence Wright, “The Rebellion Within: 

an Al-Qaeda Mastermind Questions Terrorism,” New Yorker, June 

2, 2008; Peter Bergen and Paul Cruickshank, “The Unraveling: 

The Jihadist Revolt against bin Laden,” New Republic, June 11, 

2008; Porter, “Long wars,” p. 303; Boyle, “Do counterterrorism 

and counterinsurgency go together,” p. 338. 

305. Cronin, Ending Terrorism, p. 27. A copy of Zawahiri’s letter—which was recovered by the U.S. military in Iraq—is available 

from www.globalsecurity.org/security/library/report/2005/ zawahiri-zarqawi-letter_9jul2005.htm; Barak Mendelsohn, “Al-Qaeda’s Palestinian Problem,” Survival, Vol. 51, No. 4, 2009, pp. 71-86. In a recent 

poll surveying Arab opinion on Palestine, 38 percent of those polled 

stated that the issue was the “most important” for the Arab world, 

38 percent stated it was within “the top three priorities,” 23 percent 

stated it was within “the top five” of priorities, and only 1 percent 

declared it to be “unimportant.” See “Waking From Its Sleep: A 

Special Report on the Arab World,” The Economist, July 25, 2009.
184

306. Cronin, Ending Terrorism, p. 11; Colin McInnes and Caroline Kennedy-Pipe, “The British Army and the Peace Process in 

Ireland,” The Journal of Conflict Studies, Vol. 21, No. 1, 2001, pp. 21-45. 

See also the article “Dying Spasms,” The Economist, August 8, 2009.

307. Kilcullen, Accidental Guerrilla, pp. 12-13; Porter, “Long 

Wars,” pp. 296-305. 

308. Gompert, “Underkill,” pp. 159-174.

309. Tim Weinert, Legacy of Ashes; The History of the CIA, London, UK: Penguin, 2008, pp. 539-561; Amy Zegart, “9/11 and the 

FBI: The Organizational Roots of Failure,” Intelligence & National 

Security, Vol. 22, No. 2, 2007, pp. 165-184.

310. James Hider, “’Orchard of fighters’ grows out of poverty”; and “Yemen forces shoot al-Qaeda militants as country nears 

ruin,” The Times, January 4, 2010; Ginny Hill, “What is Happening 

in Yemen,” Survival, Vol. 52, No. 2, 2010, pp. 105-116.

311. Mukhtar A. Khan, “Pakistani Government Offensive in 

Swat Heading for the Taliban of Waziristan,” JFTM, Vol. 12, No. 

17, June 18, 2009.

312. Stephen Cohen, “How a Botched US Alliance Fed Pakistan’s Crisis,” Current History, Vol. 109, No. 726, 2010, pp. 138-143. 

313. Hennessey, Troubles. 

314. Sean Rayment, “Britain unprepared for Mumbai-style 

attack, former head of SAS says,” Daily Telegraph, November 29, 

2008; Kim Sengupta, “Fear of Mumbai-style Attack Prompts UK 

Security Review,” The Independent, December 3, 2008; “UK’s National Security Strategy Needs Radical Change, says Independent 

All-Party Commission of Experts at IPPR,” London, UK: Institute 

for Public Policy Research, June 30, 2009, available from www.ippr.

org.uk/security/pressreleases.asp?id=3626&tID=2656.
185

GLOSSARY AND ABBREVIATIONS

22SAS 22nd Special Air Service

 Regiment. 

Action Directe A French far-left terrorist group

active during the 1980s.

Auto-golpe “Auto-coup.” The term given to

Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori’s assumption of authoritarian power in April 1992. 

AFRICOM Africa Command. The U.S. military’s regional command covering all of Africa (bar Egypt, which 

is still within Central Command’s 

area of operations). 

AFP Armed Forces of the Philippines.

AKP Adelet ve Kalkinma Partisi. A Turkish Political Party.

al-Qaeda Translates from Arabic as “the 

base” or “the foundation.” Originally founded by Osama bin 

Laden in the latter phases of the 

anti-Soviet jihad in Afghanistan, 

al-Qaeda is now considered by 

scholars of terrorism to consist of 

a network of groups or individuals 

drawn together by the movements’ 

common hostility to Western governments, Israel and “apostate” regimes in the Islamic world and to 
186

share the long-term goal of founding a global caliphate.

ANC African National Congress.

ANO Abu Nidal Organisation. A defunct Palestinian terrorist group 

led by Sabri el-Banna (“Abu Nidal”). El-Banna died in mysterious circumstances in Baghdad on 

August 16, 2002, either as a result 

of suicide or execution by the 

Baathist regime. 

ANP Afghan National Police.

AQAP Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

AQI Al-Qaeda in Iraq.

AQIM Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.

BBE Bijzondere Bijstands Eenheid. Dutch 

counterterrorist unit formed from 

the Royal Netherlands Marine 

Corps. 

BR Brigate Rosse. Italian Red Brigades.

BSF The Indian Border Security Force.

BSO Black September Organization. 

A terrorist network set up after 
187

the PLO’s expulsion from Jordan 

(July 1971) to conduct deniable 

attacks on behalf of Fatah. The 

organization took its name from 

the month in which King Hussein 

unleashed the Jordanian army 

against Palestinian fedayeen based 

in his country (September 1970).

B Specials The Northern Ireland police reserve force disbanded by the British in January 1970. 

Bundeswehr The Federal German armed 

forces. 

CALABA Code name given to the British

Army’s methods of “deep interrogation,” applied to some Republican terrorist suspects in Northern 

Ireland during the early 1970s. 

The methods (which included 

sensory deprivation techniques 

such as “hooding” suspects and 

subjecting them to “white noise” 

prior to interrogation) were abandoned after they were condemned 

by the European Commission on 

Human Rights in September 1972.

CBRN Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear. 

CCRF Civil Contingencies Reaction Force. 
188

Carabinieri Italian paramilitary police.

CENTCOM U.S. Central Command.

CGS Chief of the General Staff (UK).

CIA Central Intelligence Agency.

CJTF-HOA Combined Joint Task Force-Horn 

of Africa. According to NATO 

terminology, a “joint” force incorporates elements from more than 

one of the three armed services 

(Navy, Army, Air Force) while a 

“combined” force includes military units from more than one 

country (see CTF below). A CJTF 

is therefore comprised of the 

maritime, land, and/or air forces 

drawn from a coalition of states. 

COBRA Cabinet Office Briefing Room “A.” 

Established in late 1972, this is the 

British government’s principal 

deliberative body in the event of 

a crisis arising from terrorism or 

other significant emergencies. It 

is named after the room within 

the Cabinet Offices where this 

body meets. 

COIN Common acronym for COunterINsurgency. 

CONTEST Official acronym for the UK government’s COuNterTerrorism STrategy.
189

CTF Combined Task Force. U.S. and

NATO term for a multinational 

military formation drawn from 

similar services (in the case of 

CTF150, from the navies of several countries).

Dietrologia An Italian term that loosely translates as “behind-ology.” This 

phrase describes the popularity 

of conspiracy theories in Italy.

Delta Force A U.S. Army special forces unit,

specifically established for counterterrorism. 

Derin Devlet Turkish for “deep state.” A term 

given to the clique of military and 

security force officers (and their 

civilian sympathisers) which allegedly constitutes the real power behind the government in 

Ankara.

DFLP Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

Echelon An Anglo-American intelligencesharing program incorporating

GCHQ and NSA (see below), that 

also includes its Australian, Canadian, and New Zealand counterparts. 

EOKA “National Organisation of Cypriot Fighters.” The Greek Cypriot 
190

terrorist group fighting British 

rule from 1955-1959.

Ergenekon The name given to an alleged plot

organized by officials within the 

“deep state” to overthrow the 

AKP government in Turkey. The 

Ergenekon scandal has polarised 

Turkish politics since 86 suspected plotters were put on trial in 

October 2008. 

ETA Euzkadi to Askatasuna. Basque terrorist group fighting for independence from Spain.

FARC Revolutionary Armed Forces of

Colombia.

FATA The Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan. The FATA 

consists of seven agencies (Bajaur, Mohmand, Khyber, Orakzai, 

Kurram, North Waziristan, and 

South Waziristan). 

Fatah The Palestinian nationalist movement, formerly a terrorist organization, now officially committed 

to achieving a peace settlement 

with Israel. Not to be confused 

with FATA.

FBI Federal Bureau of Investigation.
191

FCO Foreign and Commonwealth 

Office.

FLN Algerian National Liberation Front.

FLQ Front de Liberation du Quebec. A 

terrorist group briefly engaged in 

1970 in a campaign for the independence of Francophone Quebec from Canada. 

FRG Federal Republic of Germany.

FRU Force Research Unit. A controversial British Army intelligence 

formation that recruited agents 

within Republican and Loyalist 

organizations in Northern Ireland 

during the 1980s-1990s. 

FSB Federalnaya Sluzhba Byezopasnosti.

Federal Security Service. The internal security service of the Russian Federation. 

Garda Siochana Police service of the Republic of

Ireland. 

GCHQ Government Communications 

Headquarters. The UK’s SIGINT 

service.

GDR German Democratic Republic.
192

GHQ General Headquarters.

GIA Groupe Islamiste Armée. A radical 

Islamist group involved in the Algerian Civil War (1992-2002).

GIGN Groupe d’Intervention de Gendarmerie Nationale. French counterterrorist unit raised from France’s 

Gendarmerie Nationale.

GOC General Officer Commanding.

GSG9 Grenzschutzgruppe-Neun. A German counterterrorist unit raised 

from the Bundespolizei (formerly 

known as the Bundesgrenzschutz).

GSPC Groupe Salafiste pour la Prédication 

et de Combat. A sister movement 

to the GIA, now part of AQIM. 

Hamas The principal Palestinian Islamist

movement, affiliated with the 

Muslim Brotherhood. 

Hezbollah “Party of God.” A hybrid political-military movement with its 

core support based within Lebanon’s Shia community.

HRW Human Rights Watch.

HUM Harkat ul-Mujahidin. Pakistani Islamist group involved in fighting 
193

the Kashmir insurgency. Known 

as Harkat ul-Ansar before 1998. 

HUMINT Human Intelligence. In this context, information gained from 

clandestine surveillance, informants within the civilian community, and agents recruited within 

a terrorist group.

ICU Islamic Courts Union. The Islamist government of Somalia 

from May to December 2006.

IDF Israeli Defense Force.

IMU Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan.

INLA Irish National Liberation Army.

INS Irish Naval Service.

IPS Iraqi Police Service.

IR Islamic Resistance. The guerrilla/

terrorist wing of Hezbollah.

ISA Intelligence Support Activity. A

U.S. Army unit formed in January 1981 to conduct clandestine 

intelligence gathering. ISA is still 

in service, although it has undergone numerous changes of name 

since the late-1980s. 
194

ISAF International Security Assistance Force, Afghanistan. The 

NATO-led security mission in 

Afghanistan.

ISI Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence 

organization.

JAG Judge Advocate Generals Corps. 

(U.S.)

Jandarma The Turkish gendarmerie.

JCS Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Jemaah Islamiyah The Southeast Asian branch of alQaeda.

JITEM Jandarme İstihbarat ve Terörle Mücadele Merkezi. A covert counterterrorist force of the jandarma, currently accused of human rights 

abuses in the war against the 

PKK, and also organized criminal 

activity. 

Knesset The Israeli parliament.

KRG Kurdish Regional Government.

Based in Irbil, Northern Iraq.

LET Lashkar e-Toiba.A Pakistani Islamist 

group active in the Kashmir insurgency, responsible for the Mumbai 

massacre (November 2008). 
195

LOAC Laws of Armed Conflict.

Loyalist In the context of Northern Ireland, this was the term applied to 

members of the Protestant community whose commitment to the 

Unionist cause was such that they 

were prepared to resort to terrorism against the local Catholic 

community. 

LTTE The Liberation Tigers of Tamil

Eelam, commonly known as the 

“Tamil Tigers.” 

MACA Military Aid to the Civil Authority. Official British government 

term for the call-up of the armed 

forces to assist in a domestic 

emergency. 

MACC Military Aid to the Civil Community. Official British government 

term for the employment of the 

armed forces for disaster relief. 

MACP Military Aid to the Civil Power.

Official British government term 

given to the use of the Army to 

preserve domestic law and order. 

MI5 The UK’s internal security

 service.

Ministerium fur The former East German secret 

Staatssicherheit police.
196

Mkhonto we “Spear of the Nation.” The miliSizwe tary wing of the African National

 Congress (until its incorporation

 into the South African National

Defence Force in 1994). 

MNF The Multinational Force (consisting of U.S., French, Italian, and 

British units) sent to Lebanon in 

1983. 

MOD UK Ministry of Defence.

Mossad Hebrew for “the Institute.” The

Israeli foreign intelligence service.

MRF Military Reaction Force (also

dubbed in secondary literature 

as the “Mobile Reconnaissance 

Force”). A controversial plainclothes British Army intelligence 

unit active in Belfast in 1971-72. 

The MRF was subsequently replaced by 14 Intelligence Company, the precursor to the SRR (see 

below). 

MVD Ministerstvo Vnutrennikh Dyel. 

Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs. The MVD has its own military arm known as the vnutrenniye voiska (“interior troops’).

NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
197

NGO Non-Governmental Organization. 

NIO Northern Ireland Office.

NORAD North American Air Defense

Command. A combined organization incorporating the U.S. Air 

Force and the Canadian Forces, 

responsible for protecting North 

American airspace.

N17 “The Revolutionary Organisation

17th November.” A far-left Greek 

terrorist group. 

NSA National Security Agency. The

U.S. SIGINT service. 

NSC National Security Council (U.S.).

NSG National Security Guard. An elite

Indian counterterrorist unit. 

NWFP The Northwest Frontier Province

of Pakistan. 

OHD Ozel Harp Dairesi. “Special Warfare Group.” A clandestine branch 

of the Turkish Army founded in 

1952 to organize resistance in the 

event of a Soviet invasion. 

PFLP Popular Front for the Liberation 

of Palestine. A rival to Fatah, and 

one of the first major terrorist 

groups to hijack airliners. 
198

PIJ Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

PIRA Provisional Irish Republican 

Army. The Provisional IRA split 

from the Official IRA in January 

1970, emerging as the principal 

Republican group fighting for a 

united Ireland.

PKK Kurdistan Worker’s Party (Partiya Karkeren Kurdistan). A terrorist/insurgent group fighting for 

Kurdish independence from Turkey.

PLF Palestine Liberation Front. A

minor group responsible for the 

Achille Lauro hijacking in October 

1985. 

PLO Palestine Liberation Organisation. The umbrella group led by 

Fatah from 1969, campaigning by 

diplomatic and military means 

for the Palestinian cause.

QRA Quick Reaction Alert force. An

RAF squadron assigned in the 

aftermath of September 11, 2001 

(9/11), to be on stand-by to react 

to a aerial hijacking in British airspace. 

RAF Royal Air Force.
199

Republicanism In an Irish context, the name given to the ideology within Northern Ireland and Eire that favors 

and end to British rule over the 

Northern six counties of Ireland 

and their reunification with the 

Irish Republic.

ROE Rules of Engagement. Regulations governing the military’s use 

of lethal force.

RR Rashtriya Rifles. An Indian paramilitary force raised specifically 

for COIN in Kashmir. 

RUC Royal Ulster Constabulary. Renamed the Police Service of 

Northern Ireland on April 4, 2001.

Sayeret Maktal Israeli army special forces.

SB Special Branch. Term given to the

branch of a British police force assigned to counterterrorism. 

SBS Special Boat Service. The special

forces unit of the Royal Marines. 

SCO Shanghai Cooperation Organization.

SDLP Social Democratic and Labour

Party. A moderate Nationalist political party in Northern Ireland, 
200

committed to the goal of a united 

Ireland through constitutional, 

nonviolent means. 

SDSR Strategic Defence and Security

Review (UK).

Sendero “Shining Path.” A Maoist insurLuminoso gent/terrorist group active inPeru from May 1980. It is still 

active, although far from its peak 

strength during the late 1980s. 

Sepah e-Pasdaran The Iranian Revolutionary Guard

Corps.

Shayetet 13 The Israeli Navy’s special forces.

Shin Bet The Israeli internal security service. 

SID Military Intelligence Service (Italy).

SIGINT Signals Intelligence.

Sinn Fein “Ourselves Alone.” The principal

political party within the Irish Republican movement, hitherto the 

political spokesmen of PIRA.

SIS Secret Intelligence Service. The

UK’s external intelligence service. 

Spetsnaz Term given to Russian military

and security services special 

forces. An abbreviation of “spet-
201

sialnovo naznachenia’ (“special 

designation”).

Solidarnosc “Solidarity.” An independent

trade union formed in Communist-era Poland in 1980, which 

was subsequently involved in a 

nonviolent campaign for civil liberties and multiparty democracy.

SRR Special Reconnaissance Regiment. A British Army unit established in April 2005 for clandestine surveillance. 

Taliban A Sunni Islamist movement

(named after the Pashto phrase 

for “madrassah students”) that 

governed Afghanistan from September 1996 to November 2001, 

and is currently waging an insurgency against the NATO-backed 

government in Kabul. 

TFG The Transitional Federal Govern 

ment of Somalia.

TTP Tehrik e-Taleban Pakistan. The alliance of Taliban-affiliated tribes 

and foreign militants currently 

fighting an insurgency in the 

NWFP and FATA. 

UAE United Arab Emirates.
202

UAV Unmanned Aerial Vehicle.

UDR Ulster Defence Regiment. Formed

in January 1970 to supplement 

the regular British Army in counterterrorist operations. The UDR 

was amalgamated with the Royal 

Irish Regiment following the UK 

Defence Review of 1991. 

Unionism The name given to political opinion within Northern Ireland 

(within the Protestant majority) 

that supports Northern Ireland’s 

constitutional status as part of the 

UK. 

UNSC United Nations Security Council.

WMD Weapons of Mass Destruction.

Popular term given to CBRN 

weapons. 
203

MILITARY OPERATIONS CITED IN THE TEXT

ACTIVE NATO maritime counterterrorist

ENDEAVOUR patrols in the Mediterranean.

BANNER The British Army’s MACP mission in Northern Ireland from 

1969-2007.

BLUE STAR The Indian Army operation to

recapture the Golden Temple in 

Amritsar (June 3-6, 1984). 

CAST LEAD The IDF incursion into Gaza in 

December 2008-January 2009.

EAGLE CLAW The abortive U.S. military attempt

to free the embassy hostages in 

Iran, April 1980.

EL DORADO U.S. air-strikes against Libya in

CANYON April 1986.

ENDURING The U.S. military name for counFREEDOM terterrorist and COIN operations

 in Afghanistan since October 

2001.

FLAVIUS An operation mounted by the

Gibraltar police, MI5, and 22SAS 

to arrest three PIRA terrorists 

planning a bombing attack in this 

crown colony (March 6, 1988).
204

FLINTLOCK A multinational exercise in

Northwest Africa, May 2010. 

INFINITE The U.S. cruise missile strikes on

REACH Afghanistan and Sudan in 

 August 1998. 

IRAQI The U.S. military term for the inFREEDOM vasion and occupation of Iraq

 (March 2003 onward). 

JACANA The multilateral military operation to clear al-Qaeda in Southeastern Afghanistan after Operation ANACONDA (March 2002). 

MARMION A British contingency plan from

the early 1970s, outlining the deployment of troops to Heathrow 

Airport in response to intelligence of a precise terrorist threat.

MONOGRAM A UK MOD program for training

overseas militaries in counterterrorism and COIN.

NIMROD The storming of the Iranian embassy in London by 22SAS on 

May 5, 1980. 

SUN The Turkish military incursion 

into Northern Iraq in February 

2008.
U.S. ARMY WAR COLLEGE

Major General Gregg F. Martin

Commandant

*****

STRATEGIC STUDIES INSTITUTE

Director

Professor Douglas C. Lovelace, Jr.

Director of Research

Dr. Antulio J. Echevarria II

Author

Dr. Geraint Hughes

Director of Publications

Dr. James G. Pierce

Publications Assistant

Ms. Rita A. Rummel

*****

Composition

Mrs. Jennifer E. Nevil