Counterterrorism


Counterterrorism, alternatively spelled counter-terrorism and also known as anti-terrorism, relates to the practices, military tactics, techniques, and strategies that governments, law enforcement, businesses, and intelligence agencies use to combat or eliminate terrorism and violent extremism.
If an act of terrorism occurs as part of a broader insurgency then counterterrorism may additionally employ counterinsurgency measures. The United States Armed Forces uses the term "foreign internal defense" for programs that support other countries' attempts to suppress insurgency, lawlessness, or subversion, or to reduce the conditions under which threats to national security may develop.

History

The first counterterrorism body to be formed was the Special Irish Branch of the Metropolitan Police, later renamed the Special Branch after it expanded its scope beyond its original focus on Fenian terrorism. Various law enforcement agencies established similar units in the United Kingdom and elsewhere.
The International Conference of Rome for the Social Defense Against Anarchists has been identified as the first international conference against terrorism.
The first tactical counterterrorism unit was GSG 9 of the West German Federal Border Protection, which was later renamed the Federal Police in 2005. GSG 9 was formed shortly after and in response to the Olympic Munich massacre of 1972.
Counterterrorist forces expanded with the perceived growing threat of terrorism in the late 20th century. After the September 11 attacks, Western governments made counterterrorism efforts a priority. This included more extensive collaboration with foreign governments, shifting tactics involving red teams, and preventive measures.
Although terrorist attacks affecting Western countries generally receive a disproportionately large share of media attention, most terrorism occurs in less developed countries. Government responses to terrorism, in some cases, tend to lead to substantial unintended consequences, such as what occurred in the above-mentioned Munich massacre.

Planning

Intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance

Most counterterrorism strategies involve an increase in policing and domestic intelligence gathering. Central techniques include intercepting communications and location tracking. New technology has expanded the range of military and law enforcement options for intelligence gathering. Many countries increasingly employ facial recognition systems in policing.
Domestic intelligence gathering is sometimes directed to specific ethnic or religious groups, which are the sources of political controversy. Mass surveillance of an entire population raises objections on civil liberties grounds. Domestic terrorists, especially lone wolves, are often harder to detect because of their citizenship or legal status and ability to stay under the radar.
To select the effective action when terrorism appears to be more of an isolated event, the appropriate government organizations need to understand the source, motivation, methods of preparation, and tactics of terrorist groups. Good intelligence is at the heart of such preparation, as well as a political and social understanding of any grievances that might be solved. Ideally, one gets information from inside the group, a very difficult challenge for human intelligence operations because operational terrorist cells are often small, with all members known to one another, perhaps even related.
Counterintelligence is a great challenge with the security of cell-based systems, since the ideal, but the nearly impossible, goal is to obtain a clandestine source within the cell. Financial tracking can play a role, as a communications intercept. However, both of these approaches need to be balanced against legitimate expectations of privacy.

Legal contexts

In response to the growing legislation.
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Since 1978 the UK's terrorism laws have been regularly reviewed by a security-cleared Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation, whose often influential reports are submitted to Parliament and published in full.
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  • Australia has passed several counterterrorism acts. In 2004, a bill comprising three acts Anti-terrorism Act, 2004, and was passed. Then Attorney-General, Philip Ruddock, introduced the Anti-terrorism bill, 2004 on March 31. He described it as "a bill to strengthen Australia's counter-terrorism laws in a number of respects – a task made more urgent following the recent tragic terrorist bombings in Spain." He said that Australia's counterterrorism laws "require review and, where necessary, updating if we are to have a legal framework capable of safeguarding all Australians from the scourge of terrorism." The Australian Anti-Terrorism Act 2005 supplemented the powers of the earlier acts. The Australian legislation allows police to detain suspects for up to two weeks without charge and to electronically track suspects for up to a year. The Australian Anti-Terrorism Act of 2005 included a "shoot-to-kill" clause. In a country with entrenched liberal democratic traditions, the measures are controversial and have been criticized by civil libertarians and Islamic groups.
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  • Israel monitors a list of designated terrorist organizations and has laws forbidding membership in such organizations and funding or helping them.
  • On December 14, 2006, the Israeli Supreme Court ruled targeted killings were a permitted form of self-defense.
  • In 2016 the Israeli Knesset passed a comprehensive law against terrorism, forbidding any kind of terrorism and support of terrorism, and setting severe punishments for terrorists. The law also regulates legal efforts against terrorism.

    Human rights

One of the primary difficulties of implementing effective counterterrorist measures is the waning of civil liberties and individual privacy that such measures often entail, both for citizens of, and for those detained by states attempting to combat terror. At times, measures designed to tighten security have been seen as abuses of power or even violations of human rights.
Examples of these problems can include prolonged, incommunicado detention without judicial review or long periods of 'preventive detention'; risk of subjecting to torture during the transfer, return and extradition of people between or within countries; and the adoption of security measures that restrain the rights or freedoms of citizens and breach principles of non-discrimination. Examples include:
  • In November 2003, Malaysia passed new counterterrorism laws, widely criticized by local human rights groups for being vague and overbroad. Critics claim that the laws put the fundamental rights of free expression, association, and assembly at risk. Malaysia persisted in holding around 100 alleged militants without trial, including five Malaysian students detained for alleged terrorist activity while studying in Karachi, Pakistan.
  • In November 2003, a Canadian-Syrian national, Maher Arar, publicly alleged that he had been tortured in a Syrian prison after being handed over to the Syrian authorities by the U.S.
  • In December 2003, Colombia's congress approved legislation that would give the military the power to arrest, tap telephones, and carry out searches without warrants or any previous judicial order.
  • Images of torture and ill-treatment of detainees in U.S. custody in Iraq and other locations have encouraged international scrutiny of U.S. operations in the war on terror.
  • Hundreds of foreign nationals remain in prolonged indefinite detention without charge or trial in Guantánamo Bay, despite international and U.S. constitutional standards some groups believe outlaw such practices.
  • Hundreds of people suspected of connections with the Taliban or Al-Qaeda remain in long-term detention in Pakistan or in U.S.-controlled centers in Afghanistan without trial.
  • China has used the "war on terror" to justify its policies in the predominantly Muslim Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region to stifle Uyghur identity.
  • In Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Yemen, and other countries, scores of people have been arrested and arbitrarily detained in connection with suspected terrorist acts or links to opposition armed groups.
  • Until 2005, eleven men remained in high security detention in the UK under the Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001.
  • United Nations experts condemned the misuse of counterterrorism powers by the Egyptian authorities following the arrest, detention, and designation of human rights activists Ramy Shaath and Zyad El-Elaimy as terrorists. The two activists were arrested in June 2019, and the first-ever renewal of remand detention for Shaath came for the 21st time in 19 months on 24 January 2021. Experts called it alarming, and demanded the urgent implementation of the Working Group's opinion and removal of the two's names from the "terrorism entities' list.
Many argue that such violations of rights could exacerbate rather than counter the terrorist threat. Human rights activists argue for the crucial role of human rights protection as an intrinsic part to fight against terrorism. This suggests, as proponents of human security have long argued, that respecting human rights may indeed help us to incur security. Amnesty International included a section on confronting terrorism in the recommendations in the Madrid Agenda arising from the Madrid Summit on Democracy and Terrorism :
While international efforts to combat terrorism have focused on the need to enhance cooperation between states, proponents of human rights have suggested that more effort needs to be given to the effective inclusion of human rights protection as a crucial element in that cooperation. They argue that international human rights obligations do not stop at borders, and a failure to respect human rights in one state may undermine its effectiveness in the global effort to cooperate to combat terrorism.