When and How Terrorists Get What They Want

By Brigitte L. Nacos
In the long history of political violence, terrorism has not been a success story in the sense that most terrorist organizations and movements did not realize their ultimate goals. That is hardly a reason to take terrorist threats around the world lightly. This week’s terrorist incidents in Israel and Spain demonstrated once again that this sort of violence advances the agendas of those who are determined to put obstacles on the road to peace negotiations and agreements.   

As an editorial in today’s The New York Times put it, “Hamas militants will do anything to sabotage Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts…The latest violence, coupled with the Palestinians’ bitter political schism, could doom President Bush’s peace initiative.” In the past, terrorism was instrumental in preventing possible Israeli-Palestinian peace agreements and the establishment of a Palestinian state—not only on the part of Palestinian extremists as the assassination of Israel’s Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin by Yigal Amir in late 1995 underscored.

In Spain, the assassination of Socialist politician Isaias Carraso, by the Basque terrorist group ETA was an attempt to influence this Sunday’s national elections. For starters, the latest ETA strike led to a suspension of election campaigning that was reminiscent of what happened in the wake of the Madrid train bombings four years ago an al-Qaeda inspired cell three days before of the2004 elections. Then, the conservative government’s efforts to pin the bombings on ETA in spite of contrary evidence brought the Socialist Party and Prime Minister Jose Louis Rodriguez Zapatero to power. In the wake of the assassination, Popular Party leader Mariano Rajoy’s tough stance against the Basque terrorists may be more attractive to Spaniards than Zapatero’s failed efforts to make peace with ETA. On the other hand, the brutal killing of a Socialist in the presence of his wife and daughter may result in sympathy votes for Zapatero and his party.

Ironically, though, fanatic extremists who do not want peace short of their ultimate goal—in the case of ETA in Spain a separate state, in the case of Hamas and like-minded terrorist organizations the destruction of Israel--may prefer governments in their targeted societies that promise not to negotiate but defeat the practitioners of terrorism.

Terrorists actually strive for reactions and overreactions by the authorities in targeted societies because tough measures, whether military actions or restrictions on civil liberties, tend to result in sympathies for their cause—especially among those in whose interest terrorist organizations claim to act. 

While military responses must target the architects and perpetrator of terrorism only, these sorts of actions must avoid fatalities and casualties among civilians. While this is a difficult condition, when terrorists live and hide among civilians, governments must avoid doing what terrorists do: kill and maim civilians. 
Yet, premeditated attacks on exclusively civilian targets are very different from military actions against known terrorists that unintentionally also harm civilians.

Take the Colombian military’s actions last weekend against the FARC that killed one of the most notorious leaders of the group. According to officials in Ecuador, six Mexicans with links to radical groups in Mexico were visitors in the FARC camp, when the Columbian military attacked. One of the Mexicans was injured and the fate of the other five unknown. But whereas the FARC has a history of killing and kidnapping civilians, there was no intention on the part of the Colombian military to harm civilians in this strike against the FARC.

However, following the strike against the FARC, the Colombian government and President Alvaro Uribe were sharply criticized by neighboring governments, not only Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez who is a supporter of the FARC narco-terrorists. Nobody raised their voice against the so-called rebels who are reportedly holding several hundred hostages, among them three American contractors and Colombia’s former presidential candidate Ingrid Batancourt.

And there was no agreement in the UN’s Security Council to condemn this week’s deadly attack in Jerusalem. Security Council member Libya, a long time sponsor of terrorism and with an allegedly reformed leader Muammar Qaddafi at the helm, would not agree without condemning Israel as well.

Regretfully, not a bad week for terrorism.