Preserving capacity, General Tom Lawson, Chief of the Defence Staff, Keys to Canadian SAR
Issue link: http://vanguardcanada.uberflip.com/i/337874
A version of this article, "Why Even Good Counterterrorism Sometimes Falls Short," originally appeared in the Macdonald-Laurier Institute's Inside Policy magazine, February 2014. A related commentary, "The Challenge of Counterterrorism," ran in the Ottawa Citizen, February 1, 2014. www.vanguardcanada.com JUNE/JULY 2014 41 S SECURITY and facilitators taken with explicit gov- ernment approval. Most Canadians are familiar with the U.S. drone program – where remote-controlled aircraft identify and kill individual militants overseas, usu- ally in Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, and Iraq. Last November, for instance, Hakimullah Mehsud, the leader of the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) – the group responsible for the 2010 attack in Times Square, New York – was killed in a U.S. drone strike in west- ern Pakistan. Hundreds, if not thousands, of such strikes have occurred in recent years. And besides drones, targeted killings are also carried out by Special Operations Forces, like the 2011 U.S. raid that killed Osama bin laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan. There is a compelling case to be made that targeted killings effectively degrade militant capability. When leaders are killed, power struggles can emerge – as appears to have happened among TTP members fol- lowing Meshud's death. And replacement leaders are forced deeper underground, wasting time, money, and energy evading death rather than planning further atroci- ties. When skilled facilitators, like bomber makers, are eliminated, a group's compe- tence, capacity, and professionalism may be impaired. Even a group's morale can take a hit, upsetting the recruitment and reten- tion process. Despite significant legal, ethi- cal, and practical concerns, these are some of the likely counter-capability benefits of targeted killings. But on the flip side, targeted killings and drone strikes might actually radicalize indi- viduals. That is, they drive rather than di- minish recruitment, and motivate people to participate in militancy. This may be especially the case when drones mis- takenly kill civilians. For example, the Time Square bomber, Pakistani- American Faisal Shahzad, justified his recruitment to the TTP by arguing that "when the drones hit, they don't see chil- dren." He was out for vengeance, radical- ized by a perceived injustice. It is, however, far too easy to oversell this point. A lot of new social science research is going into parsing the counter-capability and potentially motivating effects targeted killings and drones have on militants and their supporters. At the moment, however, we simply do not know enough to come down with definitive findings. But the specific case does highlight the tradeoffs we face when thinking about putting our counterterrorism strategy into practice. A second paradox worth exploring is that at times our counter-capability opera- tions do not translate into counter-motiva- tions. What we think should influence or deter militants simply does not; our inten- tions and objectives appear to have little traction. Take airplane and airport security as an example. After al Qaeda turned pas- senger jets into cruise missiles on 9/11, we have taken steps to ensure that such at- tacks cannot easily happen again. Cockpit doors have been locked. Passengers are ex- tensively screened. Air Marshals sit among us. And the police presence at airports appears robust. In the counterterrorism business, we call this target hardening: we have beefed up our defenses to thwart and dissuade militant attacks on airport infra- structure. At this point commercial avia- tion is perhaps the most hardened and best protected civilian target. But time and time again, al Qaeda and other terrorist groups continue to attack airplanes and airports with new devices: 9/11 box-cutters gave way to two British shoe bombs in 2001; then to a shoulder- launched missile attack in Mombasa, Ke- nya in 2002; then to suicide attacks out of Moscow airport in 2004 and 2011; then to liquid bombs out of the U.K. in 2006; car bombs at Glasgow Airport in 2007; under- wear bombs in 2009; cartridge bombs in 2010; bus bombs at a Bulgarian airport in 2012; and a new and improved underwear bomb that same year. Despite very low odds of success, terror- ists appear hell-bent on attacking civil avia- tion. Logic tells us that they would be bet- ter off focusing their energies elsewhere, on less-hardened "soft" targets. And yet they persist. There is no easy answer for why this is. Perhaps some militants see value in con- ducting attacks that are nonetheless likely to fail because they equate the sensationalism of the attack as a value in and of itself. Al Qa- eda repeatedly targets commercial aircraft despite a losing track record, the argument goes, because the plots, even when foiled, generate value, like public fear, political em- barrassment, and government spending. If so, this presents us with a conundrum: even al Qaeda's failures can be perceived as suc- cesses. This will hamper how we operation- alize our counterterrorism strategy. In sum, we know that we will be facing al Qaeda and its allies for some time yet. Thankfully, we also know what the con- tours of good counterterrorism looks like: counter-capability and counter-motivation must go hand-in-hand. The problem is that in confronting a complex and evolv- ing security challenge, we may occasionally have trouble translating our strategy into meaningful and lasting successes. Terrorism is not just violence, but violence with a political purpose. If we expect to develop strategies that have a lasting effect, we need to challenge the logic and legitimacy of al Qaeda's ideology and goals.