2. Defeating Terrorism
Counter-Terrorism and the Law
Charles J. Dunlap: Use of law as a weapon of war – “Lawfare”
Exploitation of real, perceived, or even orchestrated incidents of
law-of-war violations as an unconventional means of confronting a
superior military power.
Theme: Rule-of-law is impediment to, not shield from, external danger
1999: Senior Colonel Qiao Liang and Senior Colonel Wang Xiangsui (PLA)
Book: “Unrestricted Warfare”
Non-military means of national power to maneuver opponent into a
disadvantageous position
o Political action
o Economic warfare
o Network or cyber-warfare
o Terrorism
3. Secretary of State Colin Powell:
Would “reverse a century of U.S. policy and practice in supporting the
Geneva Conventions and (thereby) undermine protections of law of war
for our troops, both in this specific conflict and in general.”
18 U.S. Code §§2340 and 2340A: Criminalize use of torture, applies both
within and without territory of U.S.
John Yoo and Jay S. Bybee: President’s Article II powers as CinC.
2004: Jack Goldsmith withdrew the Yoo-Bybee series of memoranda
Resigned in protest over issue of use of torture during interrogations.
January 22, 2009: President Barack Obama issued Executive Order 13491
Abandoned legal basis in Bush administration memoranda on subject
Defeating Terrorism
Counter-Terrorism and the Law
4. 2001: USA PATRIOT Act
Broad legal authorities to combat terrorism
o Streamlined procedures to conduct specific types of intelligence
collection activities
2004: Intelligence Reform and Terror Prevention Act (IRTPA),
Reform and restructure the U.S. Intelligence Community (DNI)
2006: Military Commissions Act (MCA)
Passed in wake of Supreme Court’s decision in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld,
o “Trial by military commission for violations of the law of war."
o Sought to deprive Courts from accepting habeas corpus petitions
from detainees who had been deemed “enemy combatants.”
2008: Supreme Court ruled MCA unconstitutional
Unconstitutional restrictions on detainee seeking to invoke their rights
Detainees had right to habeas corpus to petition the Federal courts
2009: Congress addressed flaws found by Court in Boumediene decision
Defeating Terrorism
Counter-Terrorism and the Law
5. 1947: The National Security Act.
Created United States Air Force,
Re-organized the War Department into the D.O.D
Created National Security Council (NSC)
Created Central Intelligence Agency
o Director of Central Intelligence had nearly plenary control over
U.S. Intelligence Community.
President Truman: Concerned about a permanent intelligence structure
Gestapo and Soviet Union’s NKVD
Congress: Cold War environment significant trust of Intelligence and
national security communities.
1968: Title III Omnibus Crime and Control and Safe Streets Act
prohibitions against wiretaps did not apply to entire Federal government
Government’s interception of communications in connection with
foreign intelligence or terrorism was completely unregulated
Defeating Terrorism
Counter-Terrorism and the Law
6. 1978: Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA)
FISA created judicial oversight to national security ops inside U.S.
o Judges, review applications for warrants to conduct national
security missions that might involve “United States persons.”
1981: Executive Order (E.O.) 12333, “United States Intelligence Activities.”
Timely and accurate information about activities … of foreign powers,
organizations, and persons is essential to national security of the U.S.
Intelligence community required to provide for Congressional oversight
of intelligence activities
FISA: Created a false dichotomy between national security missions and LEO’s
Created situation where information gathered in course of a
national security mission was “tainted” and could not be used in the
law enforcement and prosecution process
Defeating Terrorism
Counter-Terrorism and the Law
7. 9/11/2001: Internal processes prevented information
sharing between agencies and law enforcement entities
2006: Congress passed PATRIOT re-Authorization and Improvement Act
Created within Department of Justice a National Security Division
2007: Protect America Act (PAA)
Encompass surveillance directed at person located outside of the U.S.
o No requirement to obtain a warrant from FISA Court
o PAA expired 195 days after President signed into law
2008: FISA Amendments Act
Protection for corporations cooperating with Federal government
o National security exception to general ban on wiretaps
o Authorized surveillance and collection against U.S. person outside
the US, without a FISA warrant for up to one week.
2012: President Obama extended above provisions of FISA Amend until 2017
Defeating Terrorism
Counter-Terrorism and the Law
14. 14
Defeating Terrorism
Understanding and Defeating Al Qaeda
Seminal Strategists of Holy War in the Modern Islamic World
1. Abdullah Azzam
2. Sayyid Qutb
3. Ayman al Zawahiri
4. Brigadier S. K. Malik
1979: Momentous year between West and Muslim worlds
1. Witnessed the establishment of a theocratic dictatorship in Iran
2. Extremists set siege to the Grand Mosque in Mecca, to “cleanse”
holiest sites in Islam from the influence of the apostate House of Saud
3. USSR invaded Afghanistan
15. 15
Abdullah Azzam: Mentor to Osama bin Laden
Wrote fatwa, holy war was fard ayn – an individual obligation
-believers need no permission to self-mobilize
Created Maktab al Khidamat (MAK), Afghan Services Bureau in 1984
o MAK would later become al Qaeda
Portray Holy War: War of freedom-loving guerillas vs. despotic Kremlin
Built coalition with Saudi’s who wanted to spread their puritanical
Wahabbi version of Islam beyond Arabian Peninsula
Involved Pakistan’s military, and Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI)
o Islamabad convinced Washington that it should be middle-man
providing American and Saudi assets to the Mujahedeen
Azzam and UBL: Part of much smaller Arab Mujahedeen force and
never in direct contact with US assets
CIA and BND reports placed the number of MAK fighters at 50,000
Defeating Terrorism
Understanding and Defeating Al Qaeda
16. 16
Defeating Terrorism
Understanding and Defeating Al Qaeda
Qutb: Milestones:
Muslim world lost its preeminent position and the godless infidel
nation of the United States must be destroyed in order to rid the world
of jahilliyyah, or “pagan ignorance of Allah”
o Reestablishment of the theocratic empire “Caliphate”
o Most powerful weapon is holy war, or Jihad
o Belief that Islam is not to be understood as just a religion, but
Instead as a “revolutionary party,” with mission to mobilize the
masses and capture global power
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Defeating Terrorism
Understanding and Defeating Al Qaeda
Ayman al Zawahiri, MD
Member of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB)
Became one of the leaders of Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ)
o UBL’s puritanical Wahabbi melded with Zawahiri’s MB ideology
o MAK: Changed into al-Qaeda with UBL CEO, and Zawahiri as deputy
Knights Under the Prophet’s Banner (Warriors Under Flag of Mohammad)
Islam must rejuvenate itself with an assault on all that is unIslamic
Uses example of Mujahedeen victory in Afghanistan to illustrate that
holy warriors of Islam are capable of defeating a superpower
18. 18
Defeating Terrorism
Understanding and Defeating Al Qaeda
Brigadier S. K. Malik: Wrote Quranic Concept of War
Greatest ideological and strategic thinker to Global Jihad
Clausewitz: War is “continuation of politics with an admixture of different
means.”
Malik reverses centuries of warfare perception with Quranic Concept of War
1. Instead war is to only serve one purpose
o Realization of Allah’s sovereignty here on Earth
2. Multiple centers-of-gravity in war are also fallacious, as is
insistence that the concept of refers to physical targets
o Only one C-o-G: the soul of your enemy
3. Only target that matters is the faith system of the infidel
o Most effective weapon in war is terror
19. 19
Defeating Terrorism
Understanding and Defeating Al Qaeda
Dr. Thomas A. Marks; two schools of insurgent thought
1. Che Guevara (labeled focoist)
Enemy is targeted by insurgent leader through a catalytic dynamic
o Leader inspires people to follow him to challenge the
oppressive regime through his own deeds and example
2. Mao Tse Tung (people’s war school of insurgency)
Insurgents grows through violent and non-violent means
o Build “mass-base” of support and “counter-state,” to challenge
existing state head-on
Che: Ended up on all the T-shirts and dead at age 39. A LOSER!
Mao: Died in his own bed an old man
1st Chairman of the Communist Party of China
20. 20
Defeating Terrorism
Understanding and Defeating Al Qaeda
Kuwait in 1990: Invaded by Saddam Hussein
UBL approached King of Saudi Arabia to offer services
UBL evolved from guerilla jihadist to a terrorist jihadist
o Railed openly against the House of Saud (stripped of Saudi citizenship)
UBL redefined modern Jihad to mean attack of civilians on foreign soil,
vice the 1980s guerrilla warfare against the USSR.
Failure of the WTC attack of 1993 –came al Qaeda’s international campaign of terror:
• 1993: First World Trade Center attack
• 1994: Bojinka plot in the Philippines
• 1998: U.S. embassies in East Africa
• 2000: USS Cole of the port of Aden
• September 11th 2001
• 2001: November Shoe bomber plot
• 2002: al Qaeda executed the Bali bombings
• 2004: Madrid and Khobar Towers attacks
• 2005: 7/7 attacks in London, Sharm el-Sheikh and Amman, Jordan
• 2009: Christmas Day attempted attack on Northwest flight 253
• 2010: Cargo plane
• 2011: Benghazi
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Defeating Terrorism
Understanding and Defeating Al Qaeda
Al Qaeda: Can’t out-do the mass-casualty attack of 9/11
Scouts for operatives in the U.S. with U.S. citizenship
o Faisal Shahzad: Times Square bomber
o Major Nidal Hasan: Fort Hood shooter
• Boston marathon attacks too fall under this new strategy
Key to new approach was a systematic radicalization system
Talent-spotters identify potential operatives (often in mosques)
Assist in absorption into the ideological world of the Jihad
Facilitate their “weaponization”
Religiously sanction their deployment as suicide terrorists
UBL very focoist, or Guevarist understanding of unconventional warfare.
September 11th: Meant to function as global trigger for Ummah to
rise up and follow bin Laden
22. 22
Defeating Terrorism
Understanding and Defeating Al Qaeda
Jihadi community is a learning organism
Less direct kinetic attacks but by building schools and
clinics wins hearts and minds (e.g. Hamas and Hizballah )
Support structures for counter-state, which Mao saw as indispensable
to victory using indirect approach.
Arab Spring: Rejection of authoritarian regimes to new political structures
which favored puritanical Muslim Brotherhood interpretations of Islamic law
Cold War: War more ideological than it was kinetic
Must relearn lessons and apply today without stultifying effect of P.C.
We need to understand what the enemy fights for, not just how he fights
Sun Tsu: “Tactics without strategy is merely the noise before defeat.”
23. 23
Defeating Terrorism
“Reflecting on Terror after Charlie Hebdo.
What Now?”
Abu Mohamed al-Adnani praised
Paris attacks
Sydney siege
Failed plot in Belgium
Gunman who shot soldier at Canada’s War memorial before attacking
parliament
Is violence the only way forward for Islam; Is democracy irrelevant
and every non-Muslim, and even many Muslims, legitimate targets?
Much less random and more targeted than media would have us
believe?
New vs. Old Terrorism
Visual images are not particularly aimed at indigenous population of
“western” countries, but at potentially radicalizable young people in the
Islamic world
24. 24
Defeating Terrorism
“Reflecting on Terror after Charlie Hebdo.
What Now?”
Cherif and Said Kouachi: Attacks not random (police officers, journalists,
Jewish supermarket)
Kouachi brothers fell off police radar because they had originally been
pretty criminal and appeared to have returned to old habits
Terrorist cells in the west have been ordered to be self-financing and
crime is an acceptable means for fund raising.
Week of the Charlie Hebdo murders:
Boko Haram: Killed 2000 people in a massacre in Borno province
Yemeni government given into Houthi Shia tribesmen,
Syria, Iraq, Libya in flames
o Symbolic attacks are replaced by more spontaneous acts of revenge
o May break up quickly - but the break up will be bloody
38. 38
Defeating Terrorism
Deterring and Dissuading
Nuclear Terrorism
Terrorist group may become nuclear-armed in primarily two ways.
1. May buy or steal a nuclear weapon that has fallen out of state control
2. Build an improvised nuclear device after acquiring necessary material to do so
Underlying tenant of nuclear deterrence theory
Credible and overwhelming force of using nukes
US policy: As long as nukes exist the U.S. will sustain a safe, secure and
effective nuclear arsenal both to deter and assure
Most conflicts and crises are determined by the “attitudes’ expectations,
perceptions, and behavior of antagonists”
Law of armed conflict
Customary international law
International treaty law
39. 39
Lawful targeting is based on three assumptions
1. Belligerence rights to injure the enemy are not unlimited
2. Launching attacks against civilian populations is prohibited
3. Combatants must distinguish from non-combatants spare non-combatants
injury as much as possible
Places of worship, schools, etc., lose protective status if used to support military acts
Military response should not exceed force needed to accomplish the objective
Deterrence is ineffective against terrorist leadership, since a credible US
response following an act of nuclear terrorism may not be viable
Terrorists are unlawful combatants
Not authorized by government: nonstate terrorist fall in this category
Consequently they may be killed, captured or be tried as war criminals
Defeating Terrorism
Deterring and Dissuading
Nuclear Terrorism
40. 40
U.S. must adapt by holding at risk those objects the terrorist value most.
Targets could include places holding special religious or cultural significance.
Cause terrorists leadership to determine such an act will fail at achieving desired
objectives and therefore won’t pursue a nuclear option.
Strategy of prevention should use both military and nonmilitary approaches
Military necessity are considered a nuke response would still be a viable option
If Al Qaeda believes the U.S. would seek them out, threaten their survival, they
might be deterred from employing a nuke or improvised nuclear device
Hold “fully accountable” states that enables terrorist to obtain, or facilitate the use nukes
against U.S. or its interest
Response may include a nuclear option
Strategy to cause countries or adversaries from initiating military actions
Defeating Terrorism
Deterring and Dissuading
Nuclear Terrorism
41. 41
Dissuasion activities must occur before a threat manifests itself “shaping activities”
Works outside the potential threat of military action
Seeks to convey the futility of using or proliferating nukes or nuclear material
4 Aspects:
o Interdiction
o Consequence management
o Nuclear forensics
o Monetary interception
Leaders of most terrorist organizations including Al Qaeda are rational and function
strategically - they can in fact be deterred to some degree.
Defeating Terrorism
Deterring and Dissuading
Nuclear Terrorism