Previous IFPA-Fletcher Conferences

The 33rd IFPA-Fletcher Conference
on
National Security Strategy and Policy

October 16-17, 2002
The Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center
Washington, D.C.

Transcript Session 1: Security Challenges in the New Reality

Transnational Terrorism and Non-State Enemies
Address by Dr. Paul Wilkinson, Director, Center for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence, University of St. Andrews

Pfaltzgraff: So, I would like now to turn to our next speaker who will be speaking about transnational terrorism and non-state enemies. This is Dr. Paul Wilkinson. Paul is Professor of International Relations and Chairman for the Center for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland.

He has numerous publications including Political Terrorism, Terrorism in a Liberal State, The New Fascists and the Lessons of Lockerbee. I might add that together with my colleague Richard Shultz, I have had the honor in the last 10 years, a few years ago, to be Honorary Professor at the University of St. Andrews. And I have known Paul for a long time and therefore it is a great pleasure to welcome him to this meeting and to look forward to what he has to say.

Wilkinson: Thank you very much Bob for that very kind introduction. It is a great pleasure to be with you and a great privilege to contribute to this very timely and superbly organized event. I can’t think of a richer program for people with a professional interest in national security and international security issues. It is truly daunting and I have a large subject to cover. So I will try and dive into my material very quickly.

It would disappoint you if you thought that all academics, including those with very long-standing close relations, agreed about everything. And I am not going to disappoint you. I don’t agree with everything that my colleagues have said, although I agree with much of it. I do believe that it is important to make a conceptual distinction between terrorism and war in the full sense.
Of course there is a relationship between terrorism and war and I want to look at that in a moment but I think that the, if you like, pre-9/11 concept and terrorism is still valid and still applies in the post-9/11 world. To attempt to pick out the key elements in the social science usage of the concept or terrorism not only in America or in western Europe but I think internationally now, first it is seen as the use of violence or threat of violence, which is deliberately aimed at creating a climate of extreme fear or terror.

Secondly, it is aimed at a wider audience than the immediate victims of the violence. Thirdly, inherently, it involves the attack on random and symbolic targets, including civilians and it is, of course, the attack on civilians, which is seen as particularly atrocious source of outrage to those communities in which such attacks occur. And the final characteristic, almost invariably there is a political aim behind major campaigns of terrorism, that is, protracted efforts to use terror as a weapon to achieve certain goals.

Of course, there are instances of organized criminal gangs, borrowing the methodology of terrorism and that has complicated the task of fighting organized crime. And terrorists have increasingly used organized crime to fund their activities. And there is a kind of inter-meshing of terrorist violence with international organized crime, which I think we ought to note.

And it does create very serious problems not only in the countries where these organized criminal gangs and terrorists operate in their, as it were, their base areas, but the problem spills over internationally as you can see in the very obvious example of Colombia and the close relations there between Fark(?) and the drug barons and the impact that has on crime not only in America but globally.

I think it is important for us to understand the map of modern terrorism. If we look at the main varieties, we’ll see that there is still a huge variety of different types of terrorism in the international system, which we have to face up to. Obviously we can define them by political motivation, ethno-nationalist, ethno-religious, state sponsors who are still there, of course, issue groups using terror as a means of trying to reverse some particular practice or policy within a state.

All these are still part of the terrorist map. But I would like to offer you two other distinctions, which I think are very useful, particularly in view of 9/11 and the debate on how we respond to terrorism. First, there is the distinction between corrigible and incorrigible terrorism. Some causes which spawn violence and, in turn, spawn terrorist campaigns are potentially corrigible by political and diplomatic conflict resolution.

This is difficult, very arduous, requires enormous patience and effort. But if you bear in mind that there is such a process going on in Sri Lanka currently, where over 64 thousand people died in a bitter conflict, I think one can see that there is hope in some instances of finding a pathway out of the evil of terrorism by such means. And I believe they have gone beyond the cease-fire stage.

They are now in the peace talk stage and, remarkably, the Tamal Tigers have said in an early stage in these negotiations, that they are prepared to forego their original aim of total independence, which is in itself a remarkable concession. We have also got to look at the example of Northern Ireland, which I know very well. And there, although it is in an extremely frail state, hundreds of people are alive today because that peace process was embarked upon in 1998 in the Good Friday Agreement.

It has brought enormous relief to the population of the province, great prosperity, a great improvement in the quality of life. There are children growing up now who have not known what it is like to walk around the streets where bombs are going off and people are being shot in large numbers day-by-day. So, we have to think of the corrigible violence that could be addressed by such political means. It is possible in certain conflicts, particularly of an ethno-nationalist nature, to bring those methods to bear.

I would argue in the Palestinian-Israel conflict, it is possible. Let us not forget, even against the very unpromising climate in that region in the moment, that there is some chance of following that route as the September, 1993 Oslo Declaration showed. There was the beginning of a process. It did achieve some path along towards peace. It is a tragedy, in my view, that that has almost died, that process, and we have to try and find a way of reviving it.

And I’d like to pay tribute to the American diplomatic efforts, which have been all too little recognized abroad, I think, to try and get that process restarted against the most difficult background. But I think this is an instance where you can look to the possible political and diplomatic way out of a terrible conflict. Similarly in the conflict between India and Pakistan over Kashmir-- In both these areas, Middle East and in the Sub-Continent, we see what we might call old style or traditional kinds of terrorist movement which have been around quite a long time.

As possible triggers or escalators, taking us towards conventional war, conventional war which in the sub-Continent, might well take us into a nuclear conflict. That is not simply a kind of hazy scenario. Sadly, it is a real possibility if there is no break in the impasse between these countries with their forces lined up at the line of control. There is a very serious danger of that escalating into a tragic, wider conflict in which potentially hundreds of thousand could die, as opposed to the hundreds or thousands who may die from campaigns of terrorism.

So, I think we need to get some perspective on, you know, the distinction between even the most serious and tragic levels of terrorism, of the kind that have been experienced in 9/11 and in other attacks by Al Qaeda and the kind of scenario we would see develop in a full scale international war which becomes an interstate war. I don’t think you chaps in the military can give up on studying the methodology of interstate war, yet.

There is still a very real danger, a security danger to the United States and to other freedom loving countries from countries which are dedicated to following a very different agenda and which, indeed, are threatening to incorporate territories into their territory by force. And the only reason why they are not doing so is because they are deterred by the United States’ own deployment of force.

A good example of that is the island of Taiwan, which clearly is dependent entirely on the security guarantees from the United States. There are other countries, which have similarly benefited from the will and the determination of the United States to uphold their freedom. So, I think we have to look at the spectrum of conflict, not as a spectrum that is entirely being overtaken by the events of 9/11, but we need to adjust our view of the dangers of terrorism as a result of 9/11. That is what I would argue.
And it is my belief that the most dangerous threat that we face in terrorist terms is from the Al Qaeda network, which Steve Emerson and Dick Shultz analyzed so well, I hardly need to go over those points in detail. But I certainly would want to bring out a quotation from Zawi(?) Heri(?), the leading ideologist of the movement. In his latest pos-9/11 book, Nights Under the Prophet’s Banner, which I think reinforces the current danger posed by the metamorphosed Al Qaeda network, which has adapted to the grave disruptions it suffered in Afghanistan.

This is what Zawi Heri says in justifying an escalation of terrorist attacks, which is what he is advocating. “First, the need to inflict the maximum casualties against the opponent. Well, this is the language understood by the west, no matter how much how much time and efforts such operations take. Secondly, the need to concentrate on the method of martyrdom operations as the most successful way of inflicting damage against the opponent and the least costly to the Musah(?) Haden(?) in terms of casualties.

Thirdly, the targets as well as the type and method of weapons must be chosen to have an impact on the structure of the enemy and deter it enough to stop its brutality, arrogance, and disregard for all taboos and customs. It must restore the struggle to its real size. And fourthly, to re-emphasize what we have already explained. We re-iterate that focusing on the domestic enemy alone will not be feasible at this stage.”

Here you have a very clear warning from Zawi Heri that further international attacks are being advocated not simply by the Al Qaeda high command, as it were, worked out by them and carried out under their central direction. But the injunction is to their regional and local affiliates, not simply to concentrate on their internal conflicts to overthrow “an-Islamic regimes” but to embark on international terrorists attacks themselves, which is why the picture that Steve Emerson painted of a particularly dangerous global network is so accurate and so concerning to students of terrorism.

The diffusion of its global network of cells and affiliates, its ideology, which is universalistic in terms of Islam, remember it doesn’t make a distinction between Suni and Shiite involvement in these kind of campaign, it advocates that all Muslims, regardless of their particular background, should join. It is also directed at the entire state system, as we know, not only against the United States, but against many other countries which are allies of the United States and, of course, those Muslim countries which are regarded as somehow having betrayed the bin Laden version of true Islam by their cooperation with western countries.

Its modus operandi makes it particularly dangerous, the ability to survive without a state sponsor, it would seem, since they lost the protection of the Taliban regime; their supply of cash, which is still apparently sufficient through using alternative means of passing their resources around the organization, which have evaded to some extent, the taskforce measures that the ministers of finance introduced in the west; to carry out suicide, no warning, attacks, that’s another feature of their recent planning; and, of course, the meticulous planning and trade craft that goes into their preparation of terrorist attacks, which is a hallmark of the organization.

If you add to that the fact that this organization is still benefiting from the weakness that we have in human intelligence on the intentions and plans of the organization, the deficit that we all have suffered from in trying to combat this menace. If we also take into account the vulnerabilities that we have seen, not only in our civil aviation system but in the maritime dimension, the weaknesses we know exist in protection of our key infrastructure, our energy resources, our private industrial business targets, we know that we have a long way to go before we can say that we have made ourselves secure and well-protected against this very dangerous global network.

I think we therefore need to recognize that, although this new terrorism has not entirely replaced the old terrorism as a challenge for the international community, it is crucial that we develop the right kind of strategy to deal with it. And I believe the President Bush, Prime Minister Blair, and the other western leaders who are part of the coalition against terrorism have actually made the most promising progress in starting their campaign to rid the world of this menace of Al Qaeda.

There was an amazing willingness on the part of 136 countries I believe, Bob, to come forward to assist the United States immediate aftermath of the horrific attacks on the 11th of September. That is an astonishing number of countries. Many of them have, for various reasons, found that they have not been able to come up with much practical assistance. But a very large number of countries are assisting in a whole variety of ways and as Steve and Dick have pointed out, a crucial way in which they have helped is through providing intelligence.

And one of the reasons why the multi-national nature of this coalition against terrorism is so important and it is so vital that we maintain it, is that even a superpower like the United States, with all the resources that you have, cannot possibly single-handedly unravel a global network with the presence in perhaps over 60 countries. We do depend on intelligence cooperation, criminal investigation cooperation, judicial cooperation and it is forthcoming in many cases, in some cases from countries we never thought were going to assist.

Pakistan’s switch to its joining the coalition was a remarkable achievement in itself and, of course, has brought many problems for the Pakistan authorities. Nevertheless, it is a remarkable success. And we have other countries, which one might have thought would be slow to assist, offering assistance in all kinds of ways. We need to keep that coalition on board, including the Muslim members of that coalition because their contribution is so vital.

And that is why I personally take the view that if we can get the widest possible international support, including from the United Nations, for the measures to insure that Saddam has his weapons of mass destruction program destroyed. I believe that that is the best way forward to dealing with that problem if we want to keep the multi-national coalition against terrorism in a good state, make it as effective as possible, and even widen the coalition if we can to incorporate further countries.

That may not be possible. We have to see whether the U.N. is capable of coming up with a tougher resolution. But we should give it a chance, in my view, because that is a far better way of dealing with what is a somewhat different problem of a state-terror regime. The problem with groups like Al Qaeda is that they don’t have a state, they don’t have a single territory, we don’t know where their capitol city is, we can’t use technical surveillance over their military bases, their airfields and so on because they don’t have any.

With a state, at least you can exercise some degree of surveillance of monitoring to see what they are doing militarily. You can also use sanctions to limit them. You can also use a variety of other international pressures to contain them. And I would say, although counter-proliferation has proved very difficult in the case of Iraq, and undoubtedly the system has leaked, there has been proliferation to Iraq by the back door, nevertheless, the major objective of preventing Saddam from aggressing towards his neighbors, attempting again to absorb Kuwait or overtaking other countries, has been deterred and Iraq has been contained.

I am not suggesting that that is necessarily going to be enough if Saddam really has got some plan to attack, to use the weapons of mass destruction as a first strike against the United States or against some other country. But I remain to be convinced that it is really in a position to do that or that it has the materials to do that at present. I mean, let’s do our very best, by every means possible to prevent him getting those materials in order to be able to make those kind of threats.

I believe that we also need to make sure that this strategy is multi-pronged. There is no way in which there is a simple military solution to this problem of the global. The military has done a marvelous job in toppling the Taliban regime so speedily in Afghanistan, destroying so many weapons caches, making whole areas of Afghanistan impossible for Al Qaeda to operate in. But we all know that it is an elusive enemy, that many of them, including some of their leadership cadre have moved across into Pakistan and some of them beyond, many of them no doubt involved in planning the new efforts that Al Qaeda is making in parts of the world like South and Southeast Asia.

That is in some ways become the new center of gravity for the most dangerous forms of international terrorism that we face. I think that the multi-pronged effort has also got to include the enhancing of our public diplomacy. A word for it that you perhaps you know better in the military, is political warfare. We have to win the battle of ideas because Al Qaeda is undoubtedly attempting to use the language of Islam to try to justify using terrorism as a weapon against the United States and the west, generally.

And if we don’t answer the ideological arguments that are being put forward in Muslim countries, if we fail to address some of the legitimate grievances which we know exercise the minds of so many Muslim peoples, then we are failing at that level to get the necessary support and will and cooperation at the roots of Muslim society including within the Muslim Diaspora in our own countries.

So, does this mean then that the new terrorism has entirely overtaken the old as a threat that we have to deal with? Obviously not. We need to make sure that we are capable of dealing with both the more traditional forms of terrorism and this deadlier new form, the archetype of which is the Al Qaeda network. And I believe that if we do adopt a strategy of that kind, which is multi-pronged, genuinely multi-national, genuinely agreed in its major principles by the strategists of the major coalition partners, we will succeed in unraveling this devilish terrorist organization that we face.

I believe we can succeed. I am a realist. But I am also an optimist. Churchill was once asked if he was an optimist. He thought for a moment, stroked his chin, and said, “Well, I don’t really see any point in being anything else.”

And I think that is the position we should take. We have got to win this one. We really have to win it. And I believe we can with a will, and I pay tribute here to the American will to do this, to the lead that the United States has given and to the tremendous work done by the U.S. military and the civilians who are concerned in the task of counter-terrorism. I know what you do. I see what you do. I have the privilege of speaking to many of you frequently in the course of my work. And I take my hat off to the work that is being done, and particularly the dangerous work of those in the front line. Let’s remember that they are risking their lives everyday to win this war against the evil or terrorism.

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.