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Introduction
The French Revolution is often cited as witnessing the first use of the word 'terror' as a method of using violence to gain political results. It was then that Robespierre and the Jacobins launched a 'Reign of Terror' (from 1793 to 1794) which involved the mass execution of so-called enemies of the Revolution. Before then, however, there had been many examples of what might be called terrorism. Every year on 5th November the British celebrate a failed terrorist attack by Guy Fawkes and his associates to kill James I and blow up the British parliament in 1605. Earlier examples include the Zealots of Israel against the Roman Empire, or the Thugs of India
Defining terrorism Alex Schmid and Albert Jongman, in their work Political Terrorism, argued that there are over a hundred definitions of terrorism that can be identified, including 'violence', 'political goals', 'indiscrimination of targets', and 'victimization of civilians' (Schmid and Jongman, 2005). Despite numerous attempts, the United Nations has consistently struggled to agree on a definition. In the aftermath of the al-Qaeda-led attacks on the US on 11 September 2001 (known as 9/11) the UN agreed to tackle terrorism, but it could not actually agree on what it was. A common definition used is that adopted by the United States of America, which defines terrorism as 'premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against non-combatant targets by sub-national groups or clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience' (Title 22. United States Code, Section 2656f [d]). This definition could be applied to some of the American revolutionaries who fought during the American War of Independence that began in 1776. Some events attract almost universal agreement that they are terrorist attacks. A good example is 9/11, which saw nineteen men hijack four planes and then crash two of them into the World Trade Center towers and one into the Pentagon, with the fourth plane, most likely intended to hit the White House or Congress, being brought down in a field in Pennsylvania. In total almost 3,000 people were killed. Such was the international condemnation that even the French newspaper La Monde, which had been a frequent critic of American foreign policy, declared 'We are all American'. However, as Hammond noted, some Muslims viewed this as an attempt by Islam to 'fight back' against the 'imperial powers' of the US and the West (Hammond, 2003: 83). The often-quoted cliché that 'one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter', though simplistic, does shed some light on the difficulties surrounding the debate. Definitions appear to be subjective rather than objective, and are influenced by a state's domestic politics. For example, to the British government and the Ulster loyalists all violence carried out by the Irish Republican Army (IRA) was terrorism, but to Sinn Fein, the IRA's political wing, it was legitimate violence. To many Israelis, the Hezbollah suicide bombers in Jerusalem or the regular bombings of Israel carried out by Hamas are terrorist acts; to many Arabs, however, Israel is a terrorist state, illegally occupying land and targeting Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. Even Nelson Mandela was classified as a terrorist by the ruling white supremacist party in South Africa, but to many around the world he was a hero in a valid struggle against apartheid. Indeed, the existence of the African National Congress raised a fundamental question about human security. Whose security was more important - the minority whites who governed the country, or the subjugated majority black population who were defined as second-class citizens and treated accordingly? Though the ANC mostly used mass
demonstrations and industrial sabotage to further its aims, was it justified in bombing cinemas and churches used by white South Africans? As Machiavelli famously noted, today's enemy can be tomorrow's friend. Mandela is not the only example. A number of terrorist leaders have become state or political leaders, blurring the boundaries further as terrorists become legitimate leaders. Martin McGuinness, the Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland, is a good example, having previously been a member of the provisional Irish Republican Army. Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir led the terrorist groups Irgun and Lehi (Fighters for the Freedom of Israel) respectively in the 1940s. Begin would go on to win the Nobel Peace Prize with Yassir Arafat, president of the Palestinian Authority, who had been leader of the revolutionary group Fatah. Shamir would later be elected Prime Minster of Israel. Bruce Hoffman perhaps offers the best description, arguing that terrorism involves 'the deliberate creation and exploitation of fear through violence or the threat of violence in the pursuit of political change' (Hoffman, 2006: 40). This can take many forms. The psychological fear of terrorism can result in people fearing to leave their home, go to a public place, or even use a form of public transport. After the 9/ attacks in the US there was a notable decline in airline passenger numbers. In the aftermath of the 7 July 2005 (7/7) bombing of the public transport system in London, many took to the streets and cycled. The target can be economic-for example, IRA truck bombs in the City of London in 1992 and 1993 and in Manchester in 1996, the Islamic extremist attacks on the World Trade Center in 1993 and 2001, or the Bali bombing in 2002, which targeted tourism. It can take the form of political assassinations, such as those carried out by the Baader- Meinhof Gang, the Red Brigade, the IRA's assassination of Lord Mountbatten in 1979, the Irish National Liberation Army's murdering of Airey Neave in the same year, and the failed attempt to kill the British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in 1994. Alternatively the focus can be the military, such as the use of Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) against American and British troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, or the al-Qaeda-led attacks on the USS Cole in 1998 and the Pentagon in 2001. An important distinction also needs to be made between transnational or global terrorism and national or regional terrorism. Here there is a fundamental difference. According to Paul Wilkinson there are a number of different groups that can be distinguished (2006: 4). There are ethno-nationalist groups, such as the Basque separatists Euzkadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA), the Tamil Tigers of Sri Lanka, and the nationalists seeking to create a united Republic of Ireland (such as the IRA). There are ideological groups, for example the Red Brigade in Italy in the 1970s and 1980s who hoped to create a neo-communist state. Single issue groups include militant ecology groups such as the Earth Liberation Front and the Animal Liberation Front, or the anti-abortionist groups in the US. Religious groups include the Lord's Resistance Army in Uganda, the Aum Shindrikyo sect that sought to commit mass murder with the use of sarin gas on the Tokyo underground in the 1990s, Hamas in the Middle East, and, of course, al- Qaeda. In all these groups (with the exception of al-Qaeda), the demands of the terrorist groups are national or regional. Al-Qaeda is unusual in that its aims are global.
Who are the terrorists? For security analysts, the issue of who the terrorists are and why they are carrying out their violence is fundamental to addressing the problem. Here, it is important to deconstruct the myths that exist in the popular media and political debate. Public perceptions in the West are
accounting for 21% of all terrorism-related fatalities. As Bloom notes, they are attractive to certain groups because The suicide bomber is the ultimate smart bomb, a thinking and breathing missile that can change directions, cross a street, or delay detonation depending on the circumstances' (Bloom, 2011: 19). Indeed, Bloom offers an interesting analysis of who the terrorists actually are. The Western image of a terrorist is a suicide bomber who is a young, single Muslim man. Bloom argues that this needs to be challenged, because many terrorists are actually women. Female suicide bombers, for example, are often more effective than men, partly because they do not fit the male stereotype. This was particularly the case in Iraq, where women made up a third of all suicide bombers in 2007, while the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in Sri Lanka were believed to have the world's largest number of suicide bombers. Of this latter group, their supporters were Hindu, rather than Muslim, and they were nearly 40% female. Part of the reason why the role of women in terrorist organisations is not fully understood is because they tend not to rise to positions of authority. In many organisations evidence suggests that women actively seek to join terrorist groups rather than being coerced, but even in groups where women number 30-60% of the suicide bombers, they rarely achieve a significant leadership role. Though Astrid Proll and Ulrike Meinhof held important leadership positions in the Baader-Meinhof Group, they were the exception to the rule. Indeed, from a security perspective the role of women increasingly makes a mockery of so-called profiling. A good example is Muriel Degauque, a Belgian convert to Islam who on 9 November 2005 crashed her car full of explosives into a US convoy in Baquba, Iraq-becoming the first known Western women to be a suicide bomber (Bloom, 2011). She succeeded partly because she did not match what the security forces had been warned to expect.
Can states be terrorists? Any definition of terrorism must take into account the idea that states can be terrorists too. History is littered with examples. Stalin used terror systematically to consolidate his power, massacring and exiling Communist Party members and ethnic groups during the 1930s. Hitler would do the same in Germany and throughout Europe, including the genocide of over six million Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals and the disabled. The Khmer Rouge would kill over a million people in Cambodia in the mid-1970s as part of their attempt to purge the country of Western influence in its crusade to go back to 'Year Zero'. In the 1970s, so-called 'death squads' in the right-wing military dictatorships of Argentina, Chile and Greece targeted political opponents, human rights and aid workers, student groups, labour organisers, journalists, and others. Britain does not escape unscathed from this debate. During India's struggle for independence the British massacred 379 civilians in Amritsar in 1919, firing until their bullets ran out in an attempt to squash rebellion in the province of Punjab. Recently released evidence about the activities of the British in Kenya in the 1950s has also highlighted the use of violence and torture on the Mau-Mau tribe. 'What is called terrorism, Brian Jenkins argues, 'thus seems to depend on one's point of view. Use of the term implies a moral judgement; and if one party can successfully attach the label terrorist to its opponent, then it has indirectly persuaded others to adopt its moral viewpoint' (in Hoffman, 2006: 32). In other words, any definition is inevitably subjective. For example, the National Counterterrorism Centre estimates that in 2011 over 12,500 people were killed in terrorist attacks. During the Second World War, twenty-four hours of air raids
by the Allies killed five times as many in one night in Dresden. One is a crime, says international law, the other a legitimate act of war.
Terrorism and globalisation One interesting outcome of 9/11 is not just that terrorism was catapulted up the international agenda, but also that analysts were forced to examine the links between domestic and international events and to consider the existence of terrorism in the context of globalisation. There is a startling difference in the technology now available to terrorists in the twenty-first century. The global revolution in transportation, technology and communications has opened up new opportunities for terrorist groups. In particular, the internet has allowed terrorists to transport money and information and build support in an unprecedented fashion. 9/11 itself was planned in Afghanistan, incorporating terrorist cells in both Hamburg, Germany and the US, and it is estimated that 40% of the money used to carry out the attack most likely passed through the financial systems of the World Trade Center in New York. Though the terrorists used box-cutter knifes to hijack the places, they effectively turned the ultimate mode of globalised transport the plane into a missile. The attack itself was carried live through global media networks, maximising exposure, striking fear into Westerners, ensuring the event was also a successful recruiting tool, and reinforcing Osama bin Laden's position as the de facto leader of the movement against the West. Technological change and the resulting revolution in communications and information storage and retrieval has allowed a wide variety of groups to exploit a remarkable range of new approaches to enhance visibility. It is not unusual for terrorist groups to film their activities, distributing propaganda by CD, DVD and the internet. In many ways this is a natural progression from the TV coverage of hijackings in the late 1960s and early 1970s which was instrumental in bringing the cause of the Palestinian liberation groups ups to the world's attention. In the last decade the extensive coverage of the violence in Afghanistan and Iraq carried out by Western troops, broadcast via satellite television and propaganda websites and videos, has been used by radical Islamic groups to recruit further support. Prisoner abuse in Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib, with estimates suggesting that at least 100,000 people have been detained without trial, further stoked the fire. The dangers posed by new technology were highlighted further in November 2012, when the entire mobile phone network was switched off in Pakistan during a week of Shia festivals. The fear was that Sunni extremists would target Shia events. It was hoped that switching off the networks would make it harder to use IEDs, which are often detonated remotely by mobile phones. In actuality, the Sunni terrorists switched back to suicide bombing, but the point about technology had been exposed in a remarkable way. Politicians often speak of their fears that a terrorist may get their hands on a weapon of mass destruction, usually a nuclear device. This fear is made more salient by the illegal trading in nuclear materials and technology that has been exposed, most notably by a Pakistan scientist who sold secrets to other governments, and the development of weapons in rogue states, such as North Korea. This, it has been suggested, may lead to the use of a bomb in a suitcase a so-called 'dirty bomb'. However, scientists dispute whether this is possible and, more relevant to the terrorists themselves, there is the matter of cost. Developing such a weapon would take huge sums of money and expertise. A terrorist's preferred choice of weapon is one which is much cheaper-the roadside bomb, or the suicide bomber. Continuing developments in technology have raised a new concern for security analysts the 'laptop in a briefcase'. Governments now fear terrorist groups using cyberspace to hack into
its capabilities, if not force it to decline in influence. Such an approach was used by the FBI in the US when tackling such groups as the Weathermen in the late 1960s. More recently, British intelligence services were able to thwart an attempt by al- Qaeda to explode up to ten Atlantic planes in mid-flight from Heathrow to the US in 2006. Similarly, plots involving ricin in London's suburbs have been uncovered. A second approach, which is perhaps more controversial, is for governments to carry out direct military action against terrorist groups. The invasion of Afghanistan and the use of drones to target key members of al-Qaeda's leadership structure have already been noted, but there are many other examples, such as the violent defeat of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam by the Sri Lankan military in 2009, or the assassination of Hamas leaders by Israeli security forces. The military solution can prove to be unpopular, effectively becoming a recruitment tool for the terrorists. By embarking on a military strategy against al-Qaeda, for example, the Bush administration effectively elevated bin Laden to an international status vastly out of proportion to his actual power. Instead of labelling him an international criminal, the West's reaction implied that terrorism was a military problem, rather than one that could be won through patient intelligence, domestic security measures, and co-operation between governments, security and law- enforcement agencies. The West may have argued that the intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq would prevent terrorists exporting political violence into neighbouring states and elsewhere, but in actuality it has done little to bring stability or improve security in these countries. Terrorists have also been known to use unconventional or asymmetrical responses to fight against a more technologically superior opponent. In Iraq and Afghanistan, for example, a guerrilla-style conflict was launched by terrorist groups against the technologically superior coalition forces of the West, with the use of IEDs or brief battles carried out in a variety of sites. Often the objective was not to win a battle but to demoralise the enemy (both the military and the domestic audience at home), in the hope that this would lead to concessions. A third method is the political solution, addressing the underlying motivations of terrorists and those who support them. This approach has been most commonly used in Europe. In Northern Ireland all three methods were in use. An extensive policing and intelligence gathering approach was matched by a strong counter-insurgence strategy from the British Army, Northern Ireland forces, and the intelligence services. The IRA bombing of the Remembrance Day parade at Enniskillen in 1987 was a crucial moment in the decline of support for the terrorist group, which the British government sought to build on in the early 1990s by attempting to improve the lives of Catholic nationalists who had a long-standing grievance that they were treated as second-class citizens by the dominant pro-British Protestant unionists. The IRA would eventually agree to a ceasefire in 1994, which became final in 1997 in return for its political wing, Sinn Fein, being granted a voice in the Good Friday Agreement and the government that followed. It is interesting to note that before ETA announced its permanent ceasefire in 2011 it had allegedly sought the advice of the IRA as how best to do this, and how it might be able to achieve its aims within a democratic framework. In fact, international co-operation between terrorist groups is not unusual: Palestinian militants in the late 1960s and early 1970s were known to have links with terrorist groups in Western Europe and Japan, and the IRA is alleged to have had links with FARC. Many argue that a solution to the current Israeli-Palestinian conflict would remove one of the key grievances of Islamic extremists around the world. However, this is not the only issue
inspiring the ideology of a global jihad. There are significant regional differences. In Algeria, jihadists are provoked by the refusal of the pro-Western military to accept the results of elections won by Islamists in 1991. Pakistani and Kashmiri jihadists direct more of their outrage towards 'Hindu India' than Jewish Israel, while Russia is the major source of grievance for the Chechen jihadists. The British experience with the IRA is indicative of a general policy found in most European governments in their approach to national terrorism, which has usually been to take into account the political background to terrorist activities. There has always been a shared view that if terrorism is to be undermined, it requires an acceptable alternative in response to their political goals.
As the former head of Israeli military intelligence, Yehoshaphat Harkabi, once said, 'When the swamp disappears, there will be no more mosquitoes' (quoted in Chomsky, 2002). However, this in itself is complicated. A common argument is that if you tackle poverty, unemployment and a lack of education, this will reduce terrorism. However, terrorists are not always poor, and prosperity does not necessarily end terrorism. In fact, in many of the world's fifty poorest countries there is little or no terrorism. There is considerable evidence to suggest that many terrorists tend to be well- educated, and they are unlikely to be poor. In Arab countries, such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia, and in North Africa, terrorists tend to come from some of the wealthiest regions and neighbourhoods. Osama bin Laden came from a very rich family. Furthermore, the failed states model can be questioned given that ma many terrorist groups have existed, or exist, in democratic states. The IRA, Baader-Meinhof, ETA, and the Red Brigade all existed within democracies. The 7/7 bombers were British citizens. Timothy McVeigh was an American. Then there is the problem of what the West can offer a member of al-Qaeda. Often the demands of terrorists cannot possibly be met. In Ireland, the offer of political representation was a first step in leading to the Good Friday Agreement being adopted. It was enough to lead to a ceasefire. With al-Qaeda, the cause is driven by an ideology which is extreme and is not truly representative of mainstream Islam (rather like Christian extremists who target abortion clinics in the US, who are not representative of mainstream Christianity). Ultimately the West has no attractive alternative for a suicide bomber who believes that dying will result in him or her going straight to heaven and into Allah's loving embrace.
Conclusion In the West the threat of a terrorist attack haunts politicians, security analysts and the public. Though the global number of terrorist attacks increased in 2013, in the West the number continues to decline. However, the fear of a successful attack in the West remains ever-present. After all, there have been a number of attacks which have been thwarted. Richard Reid was restrained while trying to light explosives hidden in his shoes on board a flight from Paris, France to Miami on 22 December 2001. Two weeks after the 7 July 2005 bombings in London another group of terrorists attempted to replicate the attack, but were thwarted by explosives that failed to go off. On 25 December 2009 Umar Abdulmutallab unsuccessfully attempted to detonate a bomb hidden in his underwear on board a flight about to land in Detroit. As a chilling IRA statement made clear after their failed attempt to kill British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in Brighton in 1984, "Today we were unlucky, but remember we only have to be lucky once. You will have to be lucky always' (Clutterbuck, 2012). This is the nightmare security dilemma.
Definitions pose a problem when studying intelligence. To most laymen, the work of the intelligence community tends to be shaped by the extremes reflected in popular culture, such as the exciting world of Ian Fleming's James Bond, or the almost drab, shadowy underworld of the spies depicted in John LeCarré's Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. The more historically-minded might look back to the spies of Ancient Rome or the court of Queen Elizabeth I. More than ever before the general public are aware of the results of the work carried out by various intelligence services around the world. The use of drones to target terrorists in Afghanistan or Yemen, a police raid on a suspected terrorist hideout in London, or the introduction of restrictions on the liquids passengers can take on an aeroplane are all examples of intelligence which has been acted on. However, the role of intelligence agencies is controversial, particularly in democratic countries where openness and accountability are important, and most especially when agencies are collecting data about their own citizens, whether through eavesdropping or covert action, or are engaged in torture to gain information about terrorists' networks or plots.
Defining intelligence? Though the work of the intelligence community can undoubtedly be violent, and even involve death, it also involves painstaking research and the collection of information through a wide variety of means. Indeed, information is a key concept when considering intelligence, because, as Michael Warner notes, every bit of information that exists is not intelligence (2002). It is what is done with the information that makes it intelligence. Even here, however, there are differing views of what is meant by intelligence. Mark Lowenthal, once a National Intelligence Council officer in the US. defines intelligence as 'the process by which specific types of information important to national security are requested, collected, analysed, and provided to policymakers; the products of that process; the safeguarding of these processes and this information by counterintelligence activities; and the carrying out of operations as requested by lawful authorities (2012; 8). Abram Shulsky added to this definition the concept of secrecy. Warner agrees, suggesting that 'without secrecy, it is not intelligence', it is simply information (2002: 20). This secrecy is essential, Shulsky wrote, because of the ongoing 'struggle' between nations 'with an enemy who is fighting back. To put it more succinctly, as Lowenthal (2012) argues, governments seek to hide some information from other governments. This, in turn, leads to the latter seeking to find out what this information is by using methods that they themselves wish to keep secret.
The role of intelligence Secrecy is important because, as Warner argues, intelligence is a form of information that enables policymakers, or operational commanders, to make effective decisions (2002). Good intelligence should aid policymakers and military planners by providing warnings of potentially threatening events and the required information to make the correct decisions to meet those threats. As a result, intelligence becomes both an activity and a product, conducted in confidential circumstances. Traditionally, in organisations such as the CIA and MI6, intelligence was gathered and analysed to enable policymakers to understand foreign developments and the impact they might have. During the Cold War it tended to concentrate on military information, such as weapons capabilities, troop numbers and movements. Clandestine operations were carried out with the aim of causing certain effects in a foreign
land, and intelligence was designed to influence foreign governments in ways that were unattributable to the acting government. As Warner notes, if they were open, it would be diplomacy. Michael Herman (1996) defined intelligence as a form of power, similar to military and economic power, that allows states to project military force on a global scale. However, intelligence is also gathered on a whole variety of areas, including political, economic, cultural, social, and environmental. With the rapid pace and complexity of globalisation, intelligence is not just targeting states, but is increasingly tracking the actions of non-state actors such as terrorist groups, drug and human traffickers, and smugglers of nuclear materials. Indeed, the risks posed by these new threats have seen intelligence agencies increasingly cross the divide between the domestic and the international. Furthermore, as Shulsky notes, intelligence does not just relate to foreign activities. Its emphasis can be solely domestic. For example, non-democratic states may regard any form of internal political dissent as a threat, with intelligence agencies being tasked to detect and challenge or even prevent that dissent, as is the common accusation made against the intelligence and security services in China. In the former Soviet Union, the KGB served an important role as an internal law enforcer as well as coordinating foreign intelligence. Controversially, in democratic states intelligence can also be gathered on individuals or organisations that may be deemed to be a threat, or potential threat, within a state. In Britain, for example, it is well documented that M15 targeted members of the Irish Republican Army, right-wing groups, and has now become increasingly concerned about home-grown Islamic jihadists, such as those who targeted the transport network in London with a series of bombings on 7 July 2005 (7/7). One confusing element of intelligence for the general public is the fact that states spy on their allies. The US, for example, has often been accused of this. Yet it is not surprising that a state would engage in such activities. The US may have many allies in the European Union, but it is also competing with the same states for resources and markets. Alternatively, an ally may be pursuing a relationship with a third state which might put it in conflict with the first. A good example of this would be the disagreements between the US and the European Union regarding sanctions in the aftermath of the annexation of Crimea in 2014, or the US spying on friendly countries in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003. States also appear to use intelligence in different ways. As noted, British intelligence is primarily concerned with home-grown terrorism. Since the 7/7 bombings there have been a number of attacks which have been thwarted, such as an attempt to blow up at least four transatlantic aeroplanes. However, terrorism is not the only issue. In December 2007, for example, the then Director General of MI5, Jonathan Evans, warned the heads of Britain's banking interests of possible attempts at espionage by Chinese hackers. The UK government has continued to express its concern at the death of the former KGB officer Alexander Litvinenko, who was most likely murdered by Andrei Lugovoi, a KGB agent, who poisoned him with a radioactive element called polonium which was traced back to Russia. A common accusation made about Chinese intelligence is that it is engaged in espionage and cyberspace activities which seem to be centred on scientific and technological targets, whether civil or military. Indeed, both China and Russia have attempted to steal intellectual property, saving the expense and resources needed to develop their own, whether for civilian or military use. During the Cold War, West Germany experienced terrorism carried out by the Baader-Meinhof Gang, including kidnappings, bombings, murders, and hijackings, while the Munich Olympics in 1972 saw Arab extremists take Israeli athletes hostage. Today, like
allegedly agreeing to render a Libyan family from Hong Kong back to Libya where they were subsequently tortured. Indeed, the Arab Spring which eventually deposed Gadaffi posed particular dilemmas for a number of Western intelligence agencies who had previously cooperated with the security services in the region, not least the much feared 'Mukhabarat' in Jordan and Egypt. Interestingly, Herman (2001) argues that even when intelligence agencies are competing with each other, together they can create a collective, or 'international good', such as a combined effort to tackle terrorism which can result from different agencies piecing together and sharing information, creating a bigger, more coherent picture. This, of course, assumes that competing intelligence agencies are willing to share - something that did not tend to happen before 9/11. A good example would be the use of seismology and air sampling which was used to verify North Korea's three nuclear weapons tests, which drew on information collected by a number of agencies.
The problem of failure One of the major concerns for all intelligence agencies is failure - missing the terrorist plot that kills hundreds, failing to prevent an assassination, or allowing a major criminal to slip through the net. US intelligence agencies were criticised for failing to predict the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. Though the CIA predicted the outbreak and outcome of the 1967 Six Day War between Israel and neighbouring Arab states, it could not prevent it. It did not foresee the attack by Egypt and Syria on Israel in 1973, and it failed to predict the Iranian revolution of 1979. Most dramatically, the attacks of 9/11 are viewed by many as representing a massive intelligence failure. It is worth noting, however, that the threat had been predicted. During the late 1990s the US intelligence agencies had monitored al-Qaeda and bin Laden's activities, and had warned the Clinton and Bush administrations of the dangers. The problem was that information was not collated and shared, leading to a failure in joining up the relevant dots. This was demonstrated again in 2009 when Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab attempted to bring down a Northwest Airlines flight as it landed in Detroit, using plastic explosives hidden in his underpants that failed to detonate correctly. Abdulmutallab had been placed on a CIA list of suspected terrorists, but had not yet been placed on the US' 'No Fly List' at the time of his journey. Part of the problem is that there will always be events which are completely unpredictable (so-called 'black swans'), such as the Boston Marathon bombings carried out by two 'lone wolves' who were not on the intelligence radar. Events may also be too complex to model or predict. For example, US intelligence agencies did not anticipate the speed with which the Arab Spring would gather pace after Mohamed Bouazizi immolated himself in Tunisia on 17 December 2010. There will always be unpleasant surprises and new challenges. As Donald Rumsfeld famously said, there will always be 'unknown unknowns'. Furthermore, it may not be that the answers are not known - it might be that intelligence may discover that the wrong questions are being asked. Importantly, what intelligence can do is provide a strategic understanding and help manage the uncertainty, but it cannot eliminate it. Failures of intelligence may stem from other causes. As Jervis (1976) noted, states often interpret information to fit the image they have of other nations, with one state assuming that the other will always follow a predictable pattern. As such, perceptions are rigidly set. Richard Betts (1978) took this further and examined why surprise attacks might be successful. The answer, he said, was not because of the weak collection of data, but rather
because of three things: bureaucratic dysfunction, psychological perception issues or 'cognitive dissonance', and too much political interference by policymakers. As Pillar notes (2012), with regards to the foreign policy of the US, intelligence may not be a decisive factor in a President's actions. Any given President will have their own world view, personal experience and a perception of history and domestic politics which will shape the decisions they make. So despite Lyndon Johnson being warned in the mid-1960s about the weaknesses of South Vietnam's military forces and the enormous commitment that the US would be required to make, he chose to allow his fear of South East Asia falling under the spread of Communism, like a series of dominoes, to shape his decisions. He was also influenced by domestic considerations and the need to appear strong against Communist aggressors while pursing a liberal agenda at home. With regard to the invasion of Iraq in 2003, it is arguable that the intelligence community warned against the dangers of going to war in Iraq, something that Bush chose to ignore. The intelligence community reports did not see Saddam as a threat and warned of the dangers of invasion leading to collapse in the country. Thus, it was not a failure of intelligence, but rather the manipulation of information by politicians who wished to tell a particular story to the public and media. The intelligence was manufactured to justify a decision already taken. However, this was not the only reason for mistakes being made. 'Group think' appears to have been operating, with dissenters unwilling to question unsound information and judgements, and there was poor source validation particularly concerning some of the information provided by the UK government, not least the outdated claims that Saddam was seeking bomb-making materials from Africa. It appears to have been the needs of policymakers that drove the process by which intelligence was selected, analysed, and interpreted. The events of 9/11 and the failure to find WMDs in Iraq have led a number of states, notably the US, the UK, Israel and Australia, to conclude that the solution was to throw more money at a failed system. Indeed, evidence has repeatedly shown that failure to predict a major disaster tends to result in an increase in intelligence budgets. After 9/11 the US intelligence budget doubled within ten years. Today, it is estimated to spend at least $80 billion a year on intelligence, but, by nature of its activities being mostly secret, the figure may be much higher.
The 'grey' areas of intelligence Intelligence agencies not only gather information, but they seek to covertly shape events - what Henry Kissinger once called the 'grey areas of foreign policy. This might involve a political assassination, influencing the outcomes of elections, helping remove a foreign government from power, or sabotage. An early example of this was the assassination of Stalin's former rival, Leon Trotsky, in Mexico City in 1940, by Russian intelligence services. In 1973 the CIA was involved in a coup in Chile, while the Israeli intelligence services are credited with tracking down and killing the perpetrators of the terrorist attack at the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich, and are also blamed for the deaths of a number of Iranian nuclear scientists and members of Hezbollah. In addition, France targeted the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior in a harbour in New Zealand in July 1985, blowing the ship up and killing one person on board. Greenpeace activists had been campaigning against French nuclear tests in the region. Though these actions are often carried out in a way that attempts to ensure plausible deniability, i.e. the perpetrator may cover their tracks enough to deny involvement, it is the case that those who are affected will have a good idea of who the perpetrators are, or, at
and the public, ever know the truth given that the intelligence agencies have the power to declare information secret? Senator Patrick Moynihan argued in 1998 that excessive secrecy could possibly harm national security by preventing policymakers from learning valuable information required to make informed decisions, citing a case during the Truman presidency when the FBI had withheld information on intercepted communications from Soviet spies intent on espionage within the US because it was concerned that the intelligence might be leaked. The revelations of the CIA contractor Edward Snowden in 2013 drew attention to how intelligence agencies in the US and UK had gone beyond keeping the enemy at bay to becoming almost a state within a state. His leaking of thousands of documents from the National Security Agency's computers exposed how the NSA and GCHQ were involved in a mass-surveillance programme which involved carrying out warrantless wiretaps, weakening public encryption software, collecting and storing huge amounts of metadata from phones and e-mails by mass-intercepting data from fibre-optic cables, and undermining the security standards upon which the internet, commerce, and the banking sector rely. This massive collection of data was highlighted when the NSA constructed a new facility in 2003 designed to house all the internet data it could collect in three years. It filled the site in eleven months. Snowden's leaks are not without precedent. In 1971 a military analyst, Daniel Ellsberg, leaked the so-called 'Pentagon Papers to the New York Times, which exposed America's covert escalation of the war in Vietnam. In 2010 the leak of diplomatic cables stolen by Bradley Manning and made available by Wikileaks certainly embarrassed America. The problem with the latter is that they were followed by Snowden. One of the most damaging revelations was that the NSA had intercepted phone calls made by at least thirty-five allied leaders around the world, including the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, who would retaliate by expelling the CIA's station chief in Germany in 2014. The President of Brazil, Dilma Rousseff, cancelled a state visit to the US in protest. The leaks also brought together the major internet companies. including Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter and Yahoo, in December 2013 to protest against the spying revealed by Snowden. Sir John Sawers, the chief of MI6, argued that the Snowden revelations had left al- Qaeda 'rubbing their hands with glee". It is possible that Snowden's leaks, by detailing how the NSA intercepts al-Qaeda's communications, might enable the latter to avoid surveillance, but this most likely will not be for long. Many argue that Snowden's activities amount to treason, but others regard him as a valuable whistleblower who has exposed abuses being carried out by the state. A common argument is that an official who leaks may not be able to fully determine if their disclosures will serve the public interests or not. In the case of Bradley Manning. for example, there appears to have been no quality control in what Wikileaks placed online (that was introduced by the media who chose to follow the story). Snowden. however, appears to have been more careful, deliberately exposing the lengths to which intelligence agencies in the US and UK are capable of going. In doing so, he drew attention to the fact that the intelligence agencies do not feel that they have done anything illegal. What they may have done is interpreted laws passed by Congress and the UK government in a very broad manner. The collection of personal data was approved by both the President and Congress, and by the UK Parliament. The Snowden leaks have also drawn attention to another development within the intelligence community, which is the increasing link between private and public services. Evidence suggests that up to a third of CIA employees are private contractors, which means that it is no longer possible to claim that intelligence is solely a state-based activity. The intelligence
gathered by the NSA is allegedly seen by up to 850,000 private employees from 2, companies, with 483,000 contractors holding top-secret clearance. Secrecy at the highest levels is no longer the domain of state employees only. Furthermore, the laws that have been passed by governments in the US and the UK have seen private companies, such as telecommunications and internet service providers, airline companies and banks, increasingly required to become intelligence gatherers on behalf of the state by storing information on their customers. This is not without controversy. In 2014 the European Court of Justice declared invalid an EU law requiring telecoms firms to store citizens' communications data for up to two years. The Court ruled that the EU Data Retention Directive violated two basic rights respect for private life and the protection of personal data. The UK government responded by passing emergency phone and internet data laws to ensure that the police and security services could continue to access this information, citing the need to protect the public from criminals and terrorists.
We are all intelligence officers now As well as the gathering of information by intelligence agencies, many companies now gather information about the individuals who use their services. Supermarket loyalty cards keep records of how, what and when their consumers buy, often supported by personal information submitted by the customers about themselves and their family for free. 'Oyster' cards in London keep a record of where and how a person has travelled. Social media sites, such as Facebook and My Space, have introduced a new level of self-surveillance. Facebook, for example, allows an individual to gather a whole wealth of information about their friends, what they like and do not like, which is provided willingly and for free as a type of 'offermation'. Mobile phones can be used by an ordinary citizen to track the whereabouts of their friends. Per person, the UK has the highest number of CCTV cameras in the world, with 4.2 million, roughly 20% of the world's cameras. There are thirty-two of them within two hundred yards of the flat that George Orwell, the writer of 1984, lived in. According to David Lyon (2007) this has allowed surveillance to become normalised, and, by implication, it makes surveillance at a higher level more acceptable. This leads to the clichéd defence: 'If you have nothing to hide, why should the state not practise more surveillance?" Though campaign groups, such as Liberty in the UK, argue that the government is unnecessarily intruding into the privacy of individual's lives, some in the intelligence community have noted, with more than a hint of irony, that the public seem more than willing to give highly personal information to private companies over which they have no control. Though this may be true, the danger here is that where once democratic states had the view that they did not spy on their own citizens, now it appears to be the case that they increasingly do all in the name of security. Though in the past it was known that the security services tracked the activities of particular individuals or groups if they were perceived as a threat - such as members of the IRA during the 'Troubles', Nixon's list of individuals he regarded as a threat to American society, or even J. Edgar Hoover's obsession with Martin Luther King and members of the Civil Rights movement - the scale of this surveillance was minuscule in comparison to the levels Snowden revealed. Simply buying a plane ticket to the US requires the British government to share fourteen pieces of information about the purchaser with the American security services.
Intelligence agencies and cyber warfare New technologies have helped change the way in which covert activities may be carried out. John Ferris (2004) argues that the 'Revolution in Military Affairs' led by the then Secretary of
Even in the UK, though MI5 and MI6 may be on different sides of the Thames, there are now clear points of contact between the two organisations. Home-grown terrorism, for example, cannot be understood within the context of domestic or international politics alone.The growing role of private companies within intelligence organisations has increased, as has the informal role of major companies who, thanks to improvements in technology, are now able to gather mass intelligence about their customers. Unlike the secret gathering of data by intelligence agencies, customers will often offer this information both willingly and for free. In the wrong hands, this information has the potential to be misused in very damaging ways. In the West, revelations such as those by Edward Snowden have ignited a debate about privacy and transparency, while the leaking of documents implicating the US (and to some extent the UK) in extraordinary rendition, torture and secret detention sites has raised fundamental questions surrounding the legality of some activities carried out by the intelligence agericies in the name of protecting the freedom of citizens. Ultimately, the fact that secrecy is central to intelligence creates the most controversy. What methods are acceptable in seeking to guarantee the security of the state and its citizens? Is it necessary to compromise principles of human rights and individual privacy? For many non-democratic states these are not important questions. For the West, they remain central to the debate surrounding the role intelligence plays in promoting security, and they will continue to do so long into the future.
Ethnic conflict Introduction Ethnic identities have existed throughout recorded history. Even in ancient times, ethnic groups such as the Hebrews, Babylonians and Egyptians were important political actors (Smith 1986). When different linguistic and religious groups mix, political issues inevitably arise, leading to 'ethnic conflict'. These conflicts are almost always managed peacefully, however. To take onc example, the Soviet Union is said to have included 120 ethnic groups, yet with all of these points of friction, there was only a handful of cases of ethnic groups clashing violently when the Soviet Union collapsed (Fearon and Laitin 1996).Still, especially when the issue at stake is the political dominance of one group over another, violent ethnic clashes do sometimes occur. These ethnic wars are sometimes of critical international importance: Pakistan's effort to repress the Bengalis of East Pakistan in 1971. for example, provoked an Indian invasion that led to East Pakistan's becoming the independent country of Bangladesh, changing permanently the balance of power in South Asia. In the twentieth century, ethnic civil wars - indeed, civil wars of all kinds - were more important than ever before. Though they were overshadowed by the two World Wars and then the Cold War, civil wars were more common than international wars throughout the twentieth century (Correlates of War). Many of those civil wars were ethnic in fact, 45 per cent of all wars from 1919 to 2001 were fought for national liberation or ethnic autonomy. After the Cold War, the proportion rose: from 1989 to 2006, a full 75 per cent of all wars were ethnonationalist wars (Wimmer et al. 2009). Some of these conflicts were also large and very violent. On one list of the ten bloodiest civil wars of the twentieth century (Correlates of War), for example, half of the cases were ethnic conflicts: Sudan (1963-1972 and 1983-2005), Pakistan/Bangladesh (1971), Rwanda (1994), and Bosnia (1992- 1995). Nigeria's civil war of 1967-1970 was comparably bloody. Each of these conflicts is estimated to have cost upwards of a quarter of a million lives, and each was not only a catastrophe for the country that became a battlefield, but also a major source of disruption, conflict, and refugees for neighbouring countries as well. As a result, each became a major international issue, together sparking every sort of
foreign intervention from mediation efforts to direct military involvement. Ethnic conflict is therefore a central issue for security studies. Even ethnic riots can be deadly on a large enough scale to constitute a problem for international security. Hindu-Muslim riots in India in 1947 killed berween 100,000 and 200,000 people and generated about 10 million refugees. A series of riots in 1966 by Muslim northern Nigerians (mostly Hausa) against Christian Ibos from the south displaced over a million people by 1967. Rioting by Sri Lankan Sinhalese aimed against the Tamil minority in 1977 killed only about one hundred people but displaced over 50,000. All three episodes catalyzed civil war causing even more death and destruction. Other cases, such as later rounds of Hindu attacks on Muslims in northern India. do not themselves lead to war, but reflect and contribute to international tensions in this case, between India and Pakistan (Horowitz 2000).
What Is ethnic conflict? Discussions of ethnicity and ethnic conflict are notoriously imprecise because people disagree about what counts as an ethnic conflict. Are race relations between blacks and whites in the United States an example of low-violence ethnic conflict, or is racial conflict a different category altogether? If race is different, does the distinction extend to Rwanda, where Hutus and Tutsis both black referred to their difference as one of race? Are relations between Muslims and Hindus in India, or between Sunni and Shi'a Arabs in Iraq, cases of ethnic conflict, or do they belong in different categories as 'religious', 'communal', or 'sectarian' conflicts? For an anthropologist, what these cases all have in common is that the groups involved are primarily ascriptive that is, membership in the groups is typically assigned at birth and is difficult to change. In theory. Indian Muslims can convert and become Hindu, and Iraqi Sunnis can become Shi'a. but in practice few do, and the conversion of those few is not always accepted by their new co-ethnics. Such identities are 'sticky', hard to change even if they are not marked by the kind of obvious physical differences that distinguish African Americans from white Americans. Based on this commonality. I will use the broader definition of ethnicity that encompasses all of these kinds of ascriptive groups. According to Anthony Smith (1986), a group is an ethnic group if its members share the following traits: a common name, a believed common descent, elements of a shared culture (most often language or religion), common historical memories, and attachment to a particular territory. In the past, experts disagreed widely about where ethnicity comes from. Some, focusing on the evidence that many ethnic identities seem to go back hundreds or thousands of years, asserted that ethnicity was a 'primordial" identity, and implied that it was essentially unchangeable. They emphasized that groups often worked hard to make their identity unchangeable, sometimes carving that identity onto their bodies through tattoos or circumcision (Isaacs 1975). Even when they do not go that far, however, people tend to stick to the identities - especially the language and religion they learn first from their parents. This view of ethnicity implies that ethnic conflict is based on 'ancient hatreds' that are impossible to eradicate and nearly impossible to manage. There is another, more complicated side to ethnic identity, however. Most people have multiple identities that are either 'nested' (as subgroups within larger groups) or overlapping. The average Cuban-American is at the same time also an American Hispanic or Latino, an American Catholic, an American, and a member of the worldwide Catholic Church. Which identity is more important to her is likely to depend on the situation: when listening to the Pope, she is likely to respond as a Catholic; when watching the US president, as an American; and when thinking about US policy toward Cuba, as a Cuban-American. Furthermore, identities do sometimes change, with new ones
