Intelligence and the Challenge of Terrorism in the 21st Century
Introduction
Only lately has terrorism been recognized as a strategic threat to the internal stability–and even survival–of countries. Terrorism is now seen as a threat to the security of the whole international community, including the United States, the only remaining super-power in the global arena. The United States’ President, Ronald Reagan, was probably the first political leader to understand the strategic role of terrorism, but he considered it more in the framework of the Cold War between the two super-powers–a tool in the hands of the Soviet Union, rather than a phenomena. Intelligence in the field of counter-terrorism is a different–and in many aspects a more arduous and difficult–task than the classical military and political intelligence against enemy or rival states. The lives of many people are in continual danger, often in real time during the very work of the intelligence agencies. The rules of the game are cruel, for the security personnel and for the terrorists themselves. The moral and ethical problems are more intricate. Therefore, the security and intelligence agencies involved in the fight against terrorism must work in a peculiar environment and must cope with problems not encountered in other fields of intelligence.
Trends in Terrorism in the 1990’s
In order to evaluate the threats posed by terrorism at the beginning of the 21st century it is necessary to sum up and analyze the main trends of the terrorism of the 1990s
Statistically, while the number of international terrorist attacks has decreased, the lethality of the attacks has increased dramatically. The suicide and car-bomb attacks are one of the main methods used to achieve this goal. The truck-bombs used in Nairobi and Dar-es-Salam against the American embassies are only the latest example. The radical Islamic groups have become during the 1990s the main perpetrators of international terrorism.
Terrorism as a tool in political or ethnic conflicts has spread to new areas, mainly to Russia and the ex-Soviet republics and the volume of internal terrorism has sharply increased in many Arab and Muslim countries (Algeria, Egypt, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, etc.)
The first real non-conventional terrorist event, the sarin gas used by the Aum Shinrikyo cult in March 1995 for the attack in the Tokyo subway, has broken the taboo in the use of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD), and this is a very significant event and precedent in the history of modern terrorism.
The United States has been for the first time the theater of major terrorist attacks – The World Trade Center in New York and Oklahoma City bombings – and also the country where a major right-wing terrorist attack took place – in Oklahoma. In Europe there were only many minor incidents involving right-wing extremists.
The number of states sponsoring or supporting terrorism has indeed diminished, mainly as a result of the crumbling of the Communist Block and the firm stand of the American administration towards rogue states. However, Iran, Syria and lately Afghanistan continue to present a threat to their regional neighbors and the international community.
The radical left-wing terrorism of the 1970s and 1980s in South America and Europe has almost completely disappeared or has been eradicated.
The Track Record of Intelligence in the Last Decade
How have the intelligence agencies of the various countries involved, and the international intelligence community as a whole, coped with these events and trends of the 1990s?
Taking into consideration the number of very serious incidents which have occurred, it seems that in spite of all the efforts deployed by the security and intelligence services they have failed to give the right answer to some of the challenges posed by the new terrorist actors.
The identity of the perpetrators of some major terrorist attacks, such as the bombings of the Israeli embassy and the Jewish community building in Buenos Aires, as well as the bombing of the American military personnel at the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, is still unknown. Even those responsible for the deadly car-bomb attacks against the American Marines headquarters and the French military camp in Beirut in 1983, have not been yet identified and punished.
Major terrorist attacks have taken the intelligence agencies by surprise. This is true of the US, but also of Egypt, Israel and others. The major strategic surprise though was the sarin gas attack in Tokyo, although one might say that “the handwriting was on the wall” and little was done by the Japanese authorities to prevent it.
For the moment it would seem that the various security services have not found the correct response to the suicide attacks.
Intelligence Successes
However, there were also major successes and breakthroughs:
The US has invested a significant effort in identifying, tracking down and bringing to justice the perpetrators of terrorist activities against American citizens and interests. The identification and arrest of Ramzi Youssef, responsible for organizing the World Trade Center bombing, and other wanted terrorists responsible for past or present activities, are witness to the American tenacity in using intelligence in the fight against terrorism. France has done the same with the most famous international terrorist of the 1970s, Carlos, extradited from Sudan. Germany has achieved
the extradition or the arrest of some of the terrorists responsible for assassinations or hijackings in the 1970s and 1980s. Japan has also invested significant effort to bring to justice members of the Japanese Red Army which acted abroad, mainly in the Middle East.