Search

While major terrorism events and legislation both preceded and came after John Key's term as Prime Minister, the period of 2008-2016 saw a major shift in New Zealand's (NZ) counterterrorism discourse and approach. The political and national security discourse leading up to and after the security and legislative changes in 2014 provide a strong evidential base in support of NZ's adoption of the "Islamic terrorism" narrative. NZ adopted a misguided and disproportionate focus on "Islamic terrorism" and there was an acute lack of focus on right-wing extremism. A major finding of the research is the Key government's conflation, and at times virtual equalization, of terrorism with "Islamic terrorism." This article argues that the adoption of the "Islamic terrorism" narrative by John Key's government resulted in a problematic conceptualization of terrorism and this manifested in counterproductive counterterrorism policies, racially biased security investigations, and a disproportionate focus on Muslims. The author proposes a different approach to counterterrorism measures, known as emancipation. Emancipation is concerned with the security of all people; the resistance of oppressions; maintaining the freedom of all; and the progression of society. It demands that NZ no longer employs nor assists in the use of military force and violence and adopts a holistic approach to assessing and responding to threats of terrorism. This means that the NZ must assess each threat on its merits and empirical evidence, as opposed to concentrating unduly on Muslim groups and individuals. More substantially, however, a holistic approach means that NZ counterterrorism would seek to assess and address the deep-rooted causes of terrorism. Religious beliefs do not, on their own, cause violence. Other factors such as racism, politics, the marginalization of minorities, institutional poverty, as well as intercultural and interreligious relations, must be considered.

The study finds support for the hypothesis that liberal interventionism and counterterrorism in Kenya have led to the empowerment of state security institutions, which in turn, have engaged in practices that violate civil rights. This study examines foreign counterterrorism aid to Kenya from three major supporters--the UK, Denmark, and the U.S. While there are important similarities between the three donors, there are also key differences. The British counterterrorism strategy emphasizes civilian programs targeting crucial parts of the population in order to reduce radicalization in addition to special forces training. The Danish government not only links state fragility to terrorism but also emphasizes its comparative advantage of soft interventions, including legal advice to the judiciary and law enforcement agencies, and does not provide bilateral military assistance or training to Kenya. By contrast, the U.S. mainly relies on military instruments in combating terrorism and stabilizing states, supplemented by a democratization agenda. Compared to the UK and Denmark, U.S. programs are also more clearly driven by homeland security concerns, while the development agency USAID has relatively little influence on these imperatives. The Kenyan case shows that even though donors provided military, legal, and development aid, assistance that has concentrated on hard security has been more consequential in that it has enabled the government to expand its counterterrorism infrastructure, which in turn has been used for controversial security practices (illegal detentions) against sections of the population suspected to be prone to terrorist activities, namely the Muslim minority. The fact the the military has been involved in carrying out some development projects has not helped. These practices have mobilized opposition within Kenyan society and have also contributed to a rethinking of donor agendas where soft security and an engagement with civil society organizations are now more emphasized.

The authors find support for their hypothesis, arguing that consistent with the visual impression of the figures, the proportion of terrorist attacks that resulted in death increased sharply after September 11, 2001. The change in the proportion of all attacks that produced fatalities was especially large, rising from 23% before October 2001 to about 64% after it, a 41% increase. The 18% increase in fatal attacks after excluding Iraq and Afghanistan was less striking, but it was still statistically significant and comparatively large in magnitude. Also consistent with the figures, the proportions of attacks that produced either no casualties or injuries only both decreased in the post-intervention period. The decreases were statistically significant, but they were again much larger for the series that included attacks in Iraq and Afghanistan. All of this supports the idea that terrorist attacks against the US abroad became deadlier after September 2001. The proportion of lethal attacks against non-US targets from the control series showed no statistically significant change after September 11, 2001. Ultimately, the authors argue that the results indicate that US counterterrorism measures taken after September 11, 2001 had the unintended and undesirable consequence of creating a more lethal terrorist threat for US targets and interests abroad.

This study finds more evidence in support of the hypothesis that proactive deterrence policies are important for decreasing the terrorist attacks than against it. Proactive policies are offensive by nature with the government confronting the terrorist group directly with police forces and they can assume many forms, including retaliatory raids against safe havens, infiltrating the terrorist group and gathering intelligence, etc. Traditional studies in terrorism argue that such an approach offers the best way to limit terrorist organizations' activities. The study shows that the signing of the political pact of Ajuria-Enea, formed by all political parties with representation in the Basque Parliament with the exception of HB (the party that represented ETA), was statistically significant in reducing the number of ETA killings. Other types of proactive deterrence policies were also associated with a decrease in ETA killings, including the shutdown of the newspaper and the banning of HB. Deaths of ETA members had the opposite effect, specifically a negative effect on the elimination of terrorism, while arrests of ETA members had no impact. Finally, there is evidence that the start of French collaboration with the Spanish government in 1984 had a positive impact on reducing the number of ETA killings. The author does not discuss or present the results of the impact that the signing of the political pact of Lizarra-Garazi, formed exclusively by the Basque nationalist parties including HB, had on diminishing ETA killings.

This study does not find support for the second hypothesis, specifically that defensive deterrence policies counteract terrorism. While it is sometimes argued that defensive policies protect potential targets and thus make attacks more costly or reduce the likelihood of success. But this study shows that the general amnesty of ETA prisoners, a defensive political measure, was highly ineffective probably because at the time of this measure (October 1977) other strong repressive actions were being carried out against ETA. The setting up of a Basque police force, a defensive retaliatory policy, was also insignificant.

The authors find that although criticized and viewed pessimistically by scholars, a partnership between the Security Council and the UN member states, based on Resolutions 1368 and 1373, has attained some important objectives in the global struggle against terrorism. The authors argue that most terrorism scholars have paid little attention to the Security Council's counterterrorism efforts and are not only overly pessimistic but are also influenced by a misunderstanding of how the global counterterrorism system works. These studies pay too much attention to this system's UN actors, in particular the Security Council and the CTC/CTED, while treating UN member states as peripheral clients or ad hoc players in a more hierarchical system, managed by the Security Council. The authors present member states as being of equal importance in the system with considerable operational responsibility, alongside the Security Council and its assisting bodies. In Resolution 1368, the Security Council gave states a blank check to develop measures to defend against terrorism, but in the subsequent Resolution 1373 the Security Council required all states to criminalize terrorism, to ratify the 12 conventions on terrorism related activities and to enact a set of common counterterrorism laws. This resolution also called on states to freeze all terrorist accounts and funds. The author notes that state-Security Council partnership is working in encouraging states to make these CT changes as evident by the state's willingness to cooperate. In fact, a high number of states have returned reports about their efforts, which the author argues is a sign of effectiveness. Many also ratified the conventions on terrorism related activities. The article then examines Middle Eastern states' efforts to adopt financial regulations and finds that many states have, in fact, made progress in this area, with all 12 states in the analysis adopting money laundering laws, all 12 setting up financial intelligence units, and nine out of 12 accepting evaluation of their efforts from intergovernmental organizations and other states, and nine out of 12 adopting counterterrorism finance laws. There are no doubt differences in the seriousness with which states pursue their counterterrorism efforts, but it also seems likely that the combined work of the partnership and periphery organizations have brought progress toward the common goal of combating terrorism.

Drawing upon the effectiveness of situational crime control interventions, the author finds supports for the major conclusion that the security measures following September 11 had a large influence on targets both within and outside the US. Therefore, the displacement hypothesis that the target-hardening efforts within the US after September, 11, 2001 would reduce attacks on domestic US targets but increase attacks on US targets abroad is not supported. Terrorists are primarily committed to the successful completion of their immediate goals and operations, and make decisions in relation to their capabilities. Significantly reducing the opportunities to attack the US within its borders did little to interrupt the way of offending for most foreign terrorist groups with proclivities for targeting the US. Consequently, they need not respond by increasing their attacks against US targets so as to continue unabated with their offending. Furthermore, due to the prodigious challenges of carrying out attacks against distant targets, only a handful of anti-US terrorist organizations have conducted operations in other countries. Taken together, most foreign terrorists with deep anti-US ideology are embroiled in local conflicts and operate predominantly at home against non-US targets. Observing statistically significant reductions in both domestic and abroad terrorist attacks post September 11 convincingly rejects the displacement hypothesis.

The author finds evidence for the main hypothesis that repressive and conciliatory CT against extremists increases their involvement in terrorist activity, while repression against moderates decreases their involvement in terrorist activity. The model contributes to the current knowledge base of counterterrorism by providing empirical evidence that repressive and conciliatory CT can increase or decrease terrorism, depending on the target population's degree of solidarity with a terrorist movement. The author provides three models. The analysis for each model has three steps: running the VAR, obtaining the impulse response plots, and obtaining the variance decomposition tables. The VAR-intervention estimates exhibit the fitness of the model and provide information about effect of the intervention, A (i.e. the exogenous variable that represents the implementation of Turkey's Repentance Law in 2003). Model 1 has three time-series variables: two endogenous variables (HPTER and FORCE) and an intervention variable (A) and tests the following corollaries: (1) Turkey's conciliatory CT policy for PKK extremists is positively associated with occurrence of violent terrorist attacks and (2) Turkey's repressive CT policy against PKK extremists and the number of PKK's violent terrorist attacks are positively associated. Model 2 has three time-series variables: two endogenous variables (MURDER and FORCE) and an exogenous variable (A) and tests the following corollaries: (3) Turkey's conciliatory CT policy for PKK extremists is positively associated with the number of people killed by PKK terrorists and (4) Turkey's repressive CT policy against PKK extremists and the number of people killed by PKK extremists are positively associated. Model 3 has three time-series variables: two endogenous variables (LPTER and DET) and an exogenous variable (A) and tests the following corollary: (5) Turkey's repressive CT policy and the number of PKK's nonviolent incidents are negatively associated. Corollaries 1 and 3 demonstrate that Turkey's conciliatory CT policy (i.e. the Turkey's Repentance Law in 2003) and PKK's violent activities are positively associated. There may be several explanations for this. First, PKK's top leadership who were not being provided a conciliatory offer might have ordered the PKK militia violence to take vengeance against the state which tried to buy off supporters through the conciliatory offer. Second, perceiving that the conciliatory policy is an attempt to undermine the terrorist organization, PKK might have signaled to the state that 'the terrorists are strong enough to impose considerable costs if the enemy [state] continues a particular [conciliatory] policy'. Third, the PKK might have perceived the state's conciliatory offer as a concession. Subsequently, they increased their violence to obtain more concessions. Corollaries 2 and 4 demonstrate that Turkey's repressive CT policy against PKK's extremists, and PKK's violent activities are positively associated. Terrorists use violence to provoke the government, with disproportionate repression intended to turn the populace against it. States take the bait for various reasons such as electoral pressure over the elected decision makers, the state's low capacity or ignorance to redress grievances, and the state's limited capacity to design and employ more effective CT options. The positive association between PKK's violent activities and Turkey's repressive CT is consistent with the body of the literature arguing that repression backfires and it increases extremists' activities by provoking retaliation, catalyzing countermobilization, generating grievances, strengthening group solidarity, and generating other negative externalities. Corollary 5 demonstrates that Turkey's repressive policy, which includes police detention during PKK's nonviolent activities, is negatively associated with PKK's nonviolent activities, which were dominantly carried out by the moderates. Repression's effect of decreasing nonviolent activities can be explained by its 'direct effect', which involves inducing fear in moderates. For moderates, fear increases the cost of terrorism to a level that deters their engagement. The first four corollaries show that both Turkey's repressive and conciliatory CT policies targeting extremists were positively associated with the violent activities carried out mainly by PKK extremists. In other words, both repressive and conciliatory policies targeting PKK extremists backfire. This is because extremists' decision to use violent means is not a simple rational calculation based on individual incentives, but involves other dynamics such as existential threat to collective survival and political efficacy. Extremists perceived both repressive and conciliatory CT as threats to their collective survival, which prompts violent responses. In addition, extremists have a relatively higher level of political efficacy, which is believing that they can make changes in the political domain. Extremists, due to their relatively stronger sense of an existential threat to their collective identity and their higher levels of political efficacy undervalue the short-term cost of terrorism in their rational calculations, and thus choose violent means with long-term prospects. In other words, as the prospect theory suggests, extremists place more weight on perceived gains than perceived loses. Accordingly, when politically efficacious PKK members (i.e. extremists) face repression or conciliatory offers, they choose to take risks by escalating violence due to a small hope of winning the battle against the state. The corollaries derived from the analyses demonstrate that repressive and conciliatory CT can increase or decrease terrorism, depending on the target population's degree of solidarity with a terrorist movement. Both repressive and conciliatory CT policies exacerbated PKK's violent activities mostly carried out by extremists who have relatively higher level of existential anxiety and senses of political efficacy. On the other hand, repressive CT deterred PKK's non-violent activities mostly carried out by moderates. The findings support the prospect theory which suggests that certain groups in risky conditions (e.g. threat to collective survival) take more risky actions for a small hope of avoiding large losses.

The author finds support for the idea that Western stabilization aid to Yemen is less likely to be effective against terrorism because it provides limited incentive to the government to reform the system that is creating the underlying grievances. The government of Yemen survives through a patronage system, and with income from oil sales greatly reduced, it has relied on Western aid to sustain itself. In sustaining the government, however, Western aid is creating political barriers to reform that is badly needed to address socio-economic challenges faced by the population. AQAP has positioned itself as a conductor for entrenched grievances, which are inextricably linked to the regime's exclusionary approach to the creation and distribution of wealth. In this sense, AQAP is also succeeding in gaining supporters by portraying the government as illegitimate. Western stabilization efforts have been slow to recognize that AQAP cultivates a successful narrative of illegitimacy; such aid appears to address the manifestations of governmental weakness (socio-economic instability) but not its source. AQAP's political appeal is also heightened by the U.S. air-strikes that help the group to paint the Yemeni regime as an American puppet, thus fueling the illegitimacy narrative.