Background
It was all very amateurish
Counter-terrorism should match the nature of the threat, claims PhD student Teun van Dongen. But which measures are effective and when? "You mustn’t underestimate the difficulties of carrying out a terrorist attack."
Petra Meijer
Wednesday 26 November 2014
Wanted Poster for The Rote Armee Fraktion (RAF), a.k.a. the Baader-Meinhof group, (c. 1970-72).

"Terrorism has always been around", explains Teun van Dongen. "Power leads to resistance. Governments spend a lot of money on research into counter-terrorism measures, but hardly anybody checks whether those measures actually work."

Van Dongen studied the repressive measures against three types of terrorist organisations: the revolutionary groups RAF and the Weather Underground, who attempted to abolish capitalism in Germany and America; the ETA and the IRA, who strove for the independence of the Basque Country and Northern Ireland, and jihadist terrorism in Great Britain and the Netherlands.

"It was interesting to read other cases than just the recent ones. There is an incredible amount of literature on the IRA, and you can see quite clearly how they toyed with the British. Reading the memoires of IRA members is almost like reading a thriller and the fact that some former members now have seats in Parliament appeals to the imagination. A former leader, Martin McGuinness, has even shaken hands with the Queen.

"The intriguing part is the contrast between romantic notions of revolution and everyday life. Terrorists might have grand ideas but they are forced to deal with trivial matters. They always are on the lookout; they have to arrange cars and counterfeit passports.

‘They’re strapped for cash but don’t have time to earn money while relations among themselves are uneasy because no one wants to be regarded as a traitor. And then there’s the violence: the monstrous becomes normal."

The effectiveness of counter-terrorism measures depends on the terrorist group’s size, degree of isolation and "state of mind", according to Van Dongen.

"If it’s a large terrorist group with strong social ties, it’s best to use focused repression and to stand firm because the chances of escalation with groups with lots of supporters is greater than with isolated groups. You can discourage large groups so they eventually give up fighting, while small groups can be "cleaned up", as it were."

He stresses that the repression should be focused.

"To combat the IRA, the government introduced a curfew and started randomly kicking down doors, which antagonised the population. However, in the end, both the IRA and the ETA gave up after the governments managed to break their will by standing firm.

"At a certain point, terrorists start to doubt their mission: are we getting anywhere with this? If they are then offered a chance to opt out, some of them will certainly grab it. And that’s where we can see a parallel with today’s youngsters fighting in Syria: there will be quite a few who’ll be wanting to go home by now but are frightened of being arrested as soon as they arrive."

Van Dongen thinks that focused repression always works but governments should also keep an eye on the grievances of the population.

"Another thing that brought about the end of the ETA was that the Basque Country was awarded autonomous status and consequently the population had little reason to support the ETA anymore. And something similar happened with the Weather Underground.

‘Initially, the group, which opposed imperialism, received support from the people who opposed the Vietnam War. When that war ended, the total abolition of capitalism was far from what ordinary citizens had in mind. A government should listen more carefully to the grievances of a group’s supporters rather than the extreme demands of the terrorists."

According to Van Dongen, jihadist groups in the Netherlands remained small because the Muslim communities didn’t see eye to eye with the goals of the terrorist organisations. "Repression worked well here too. People often assume that decentralised organisations are less immune to infiltration but in the Netherlands and England, the intelligence services proved to be very effective and many attacks were thwarted."

To illustrate: maps of the building of the AIVD, the Dutch General Intelligence and Security Service, and the Ministry of Defence were found in aspiring terrorist Samir A.’s apartment and he was even once spotted measuring distances near the AIVD headquarters in Leidschendam.

Van Dongen smiles. "He had plenty of plans, but the question is how seriously should we take them? It was all very amateurish: the Netherlands has wishy-washy terrorists. The AIVD says: ‘There’s a swarm of them, we can’t get a grip on them’ but that also means that they never really become professional. You shouldn’t underestimate the difficulties of carrying out a terrorist attack.

"The 9/11 attack took years of preparation and even the IRA – a very professional organisation – initially scored a number of own goals: collateral damage when explosives detonated too soon."

Although a number of attacks have been prevented, the counter-terrorism policy in the Netherlands could be improved, Van Dongen claims.

"A few years ago, we had the Action Plan for Polarisation and Radicalization: the government attempted to keep the population off radical thought, by trying to organise neighbourhood barbecues, even. The plan was based on the notion that there must be something wrong with people who radicalize: they don’t have a job, a wife or don’t have an active role in society. But it’s not that simple."

"Recently, Mr Buma, the head of the CDA party, called for a ban on watching footage of beheadings on the Internet. I can’t understand why people say things like that. They base it on the assumption that the footage has an impact on the radicalization process, but I don’t think it’s founded on empirical fact.

"The footage will also put people off. And perhaps people radicalize first and then look for footage. The Internet is supposed to broaden our horizons but the truth is that people look for things they are already interested in."

From a proletarian revolution to "Londonistan"

The Rote Armee Fraktion (RAF), a.k.a. the Baader-Meinhof group, and the Weather Underground were two radical, left-wing organisations that were most active in the seventies. They hoped that attacks on symbols of capitalism would lead to a proletarian revolution. Both groups carried out bombings and the RAF even hijacked an aeroplane once.

For decades, the IRA strove for the independence of six Northern-Irish provinces. The organisation can be blamed for as many as 1,822 deaths, making it the deadliest terrorist group in Europe. The ETA wanted to free the Basque Country from what they regarded as oppression by the Spanish. In 1973, they murdered the Prime Minister, Luis Carrero Blanco, with a car bomb that was so powerful that the man who was held to be President Franco’s successor was blown – car and all – onto the top of another building. The ETA killed 118 in 1980 but continued to carry out attacks on politicians, council members, a former judge, a military governor and many civilians in the years that followed.

Jihadist terrorism in the Netherlands and England was, in contrast to other terrorist movements, quite decentralised. No distinctive centre of leadership was evident and the members arranged their own weapons, explosives and funds, which in practice did not make for very professional plans. Nonetheless, the Dutch film director Theo van Gogh was murdered by a member of the Hofstad group, Mohammed B., in 2004 while Great Britain suffered a number of terrorist attacks in London on 7 July 2005: a series of explosions on three Tube lines and a bus killed 56 people. The intelligence services of both countries managed to gain control of the terrorist movements. In the Netherlands, the members of the Hofstad group and the cell surrounding Samir A. were arrested and various radicals were deported. In England, a crackdown ensued on "Londonistan", the core of the jihadist movement in the United Kingdom.