Some Lessons From Nations That Won the War On Terror

America isn’t the first, nor will it be the last nation to fight a war against terrorists. Amir Taheri argues not only that over the last 20 years, not a single terrorist organization has succeeded in overthrowing a regime and replacing it with a sympathetic government. Moreover, in Algeria and Peru, those nations won their respective wars against terrorists. How’d they do it?

While Algerian, Peruvian and other experiences in fighting terrorism show important differences, they all have several key features in common.

The first of these is a psychological determination on the part of the ruling elites to stay the course. One central aim of the terrorist, of course, is to instill fear in society in general and the elite in particular. By refusing to be frightened, society and its leaders achieve their first victory against the terrorists.

The second lesson to learn is to understand the difference in the rhythm and tempo of the terrorist organization and the state security forces. The terrorist is almost always capable of running the 100-meter course faster than his state adversaries. He aims at achieving big victories quickly and with a few spectacular operations. The state security forces, on the other hand, must be prepared to draw the terrorist into a marathon course. They need to slow things down as much as possible and to make sure that even the most spectacular attacks fail to produce the results desired by the terrorists.

The third lesson to learn is the strategy of forcing the terrorists into fixed positions before moving against them. The terrorist constantly seeks anonymity, like fish in water.

But he also needs safe havens, hospitals, recreation centers, places to hide his bigger weapons, and facilities to train new recruits or imprison potential defectors. All this means a loss of mobility which is the terrorist’s key advantage over the state.

In both Algeria and Peru, and to some extent even in Turkey and Egypt, the state decided to actually help the terrorists become fixed targets. In Algeria, for example, the anti-terror units deliberately stayed out of some areas, notably the Mitidja plain and the town of Blida, thus shooing the terrorists there. On some occasions the security forces even refused to intervene to stop terrorist operations that took place under their noses, so to speak. The idea was to convince the terrorists that they had a safe haven. In time this meant that the terrorists became fixed targets while the security forces enjoyed the advantage of mobility and the choice of the time to attack.

The fourth lesson is known to counterterrorism experts as “the onion principle.” This means treating the terrorist organizations as bodies constituted by numerous layers. The classical counterterrorist method is to look for the core of the “onion” in the hope of eliminating it. But in both Peru and Algeria, it soon became clear that it was more efficient to deal with the outer layers first.

Brilliant.