Lessons on how to fight terror

A message from the United Kingdom: Don't torture. Don't shoot boys who throw stones. And don't imagine for a moment that there is any guarantee of success.

By Andrew Brown

Sept. 19, 2001 | Britain has been fighting wars against terrorism for most of the years since the end of World War II. The longest war has been in Ireland; but British troops have also fought Jewish and Arab terrorists in Palestine, from 1945-47; Greek terrorists in Greece and Cyprus, Arabs in Aden, Yemen, Oman and Dhofar; Chinese communists in the Malaysian jungles in the 1950s, and so, almost endlessly, on. We've lost some, we've won some. In Ireland -- our most publicized grapple with terror -- I think we've fought a draw, despite being incomparably richer, more numerous and better armed than our opponents.

Here are some of the lessons we have learned:

We have learned something about wars: They go on for longer and are more expensive than anyone imagines when they start. No one could have believed, when the first troops went into Northern Ireland in 1969, that they would still be there 30 years later, still ready to fight. But the only short wars against terrorism are those that the terrorists win. So accept now that you will still be fighting in 10 or 20 years' time, because you will.

Ask now of any action you mean to take -- bombing, assassination, ground war -- whether it means there will be more or fewer terrorists when the children who are now in preschool grow up to fighting age. This is not an argument against the use of violence. Violence is absolutely essential; but it has to be used so that it conveys the right political message to the people who might become terrorists when they grow up. The state has to become as good at theater as its enemies. There's a short version of this lesson: "Don't shoot the boys throwing stones."

We've learned that terrorism demands a special kind of war, which is more like Sim City than a first-person shooter like Unreal. Just as in Sim City, you win by keeping civilization going. Killing the bad guys is a side effect. And, just as in Sim City, no single strategy works, even when it is right and necessary.

Violence on its own won't work.

Diplomacy on its own won't work.

Gathering intelligence on its own won't work.

Buying the sympathies of the people who now sympathize with the terrorists won't work on its own, whether you pay in money, blood or effort.

Any successful democratic operation against terrorism needs a blend of all these four methods, and getting the proportions right is an art: It can't be learned from newspaper columns.

Another rather counterintuitive consequence of this is that fewer troops are almost always better than more. Fighting terrorism needs really first-class soldiers. They must be braver and cleverer than their opponents, though not nearly so cruel. They need to be really highly trained, speak the local language and have medical skills. In poor countries British special forces teams are expected to have medical training so that they can bring immediate practical help to the villagers whose trust they must win.

Demoralized, lost and nervous soldiers make more recruits for the other side than ever they eliminate. All of the high-flown and complex policy considerations above have to be put into practice by troops on the ground, acting on their own initiative and understanding. Not many, in even the best armies, are going to be much good for that.

This may sound like hand-waving, but it has one immediate practical consequence: Don't use torture. Torture is the crack cocaine of anti-terrorism because, for a while, it works. The terrorists will certainly use it. But everyone tries it. The Brits did it in Northern Ireland, the Israelis use it on the Palestinians and the Palestinian Authority uses it on Palestinians too. The French, in their Algerian war against terrorism in the 1950s, turned it into an instrument of policy. But the price is higher than a democracy can pay. Either the people who have to do the torture are sickened, and spread their disillusion throughout society (this is what happened in France); or they are not sickened. They come to enjoy it; and then you have lost the values that you are fighting for. Either way, after a time, it stops working. The Russians in Chechnya can torture all they like. They still can't win the war there.

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