THE LONER TERRORIST

How do we respond to an enemy who has no fixed address, no recognizable uniform? There is no obvious hierarchy, no one in particular is giving orders. Their appearances vary. Like water changing to steam or freezing, the members of a single group may look different one from the other. Or they may be hard to tell from the ordinary civilian population. When Hezbullah took over civilian homes in southern Lebanon from which to bombard Israel, they dressed in casual civilian clothes, so they could easily fade into their surround.

In the United States, there's the lone-wolf killer. The FBI swears the loner awoke one morning with what Daniel Pipes calls Sudden Jihad Syndrome. We are told there is absolutely no connection between him and any other lone-wolf or terror group. He is just deranged or he is responding to how badly society has treated him. The Press routinely ignores that these loners do seem to have some commonalities. They are usually born Muslim or are recent converts to Islam. They have a history of frequenting mosques run by rabid mullahs who have ranted on and on about the importance of making Islam supreme in the world. They often yell allah akbar as they commit murder -- a fact seldom reported in the news. They seemed to have more money than they could have earned. Or they had no money but yet take trips to the Middle East and Far East. They seem more clever than the media in understanding that 'Islam is a peaceful religion' actually means its opposite. Islam sanctions violence. Islam gives meaning to their warped lives. To date, we have been lucky. In most cases little damage has been done by the loners and they have been quickly apprehended.

There are two places infested by terrorists with inadequate identification where damage control is more difficult. One is in Israel. The other is on the high seas. They are the subject of this essay.

In Israel, the loner Arab climbs onto a tractor and mows down civilians, shoots families -- including babies and toddlers -- asleep in their beds, snipes at passing cars or knifes his boss, who has been a friend to him for years. His major targets are areas of religious or historic significance: Hebron and the rest of Biblical Israel, and Jerusalem. The accepted excuse isn't that the terrorist is crazy or environmentally bruised but that he's revenging some injury or other, so it's all Israel's fault.

On the water -- the Somali pirates are a dreaded example -- it's not a single person, but a small group. Multiply the number of these small groups, and it's amazing how much damage they can cause to commercial shipping and recreational boating. It is a puzzling fact that unlike the Arab terrorist in Israel and the Lone Wolf Muslim terrorist in the West, the Somali pirates attract few groupies. The news media have yet to provide us with heart-rendering reasons why the pirates are forced to do what they do.

The problem of dealing with an enemy that wears no distinguishable clothes or weaponry is difficult enough in asymmetrical warfare -- when the Civil Authority is forced to fight against a guerilla group or one or more lone terrorists or a rush of unknown attackers. It is even more difficult when the potential victim, a civilian, has to face the difficult-to-identify terrorist with inadequate resources because, for one reason or another, his government is reluctant to deal effectively with the problem.

THE MANAGERS AND INSTIGATORS

The Somali Pirates and the Arab murderers of Israeli men, women and children have in common that they only appear to be unconnected independents. In point of fact, they are sponsored, trained, equipped and payed by organizations: states such as Iran; terrorist groups such as Fatah or Hamas who have been given governing authority; or by powerful groups and government officials in dysfunctional entities such as Somalia.

J. Peter Pham (see here) has pointed out that

"[w]hile it is wealthy Somali businessmen who provide the operating capital necessary to acquire and outfit the pirate 'mother ships' and skiffs and to recruit and arm their crews — and, ultimately, reap the largest share of the ransoms paid — enough of cash flows to the rest of society to obtain widespread social buy-in. [...] Subcontractors — ranging from the elders of local clans who permit the pirates to operate in their territory or to bring the vessels they capture there to the gunmen guarding the hijacked ships, caterers serving food to captors and prisoners alike, and even prostitutes providing assorted services while the ransoms are being negotiated — also get a cut of the proceeds, as do corrupt government officials and even Islamist insurgents."

The Arab loners or small bunch who come to murder civilians are also trained and equipped. And they have the wholehearted support of their family and the local community. The Palestinian Authority (PA) names streets after them and teaches the children to emulate them.[1] The PA even spends millions of dollars in monthly payments to Hamas prisoners in Israeli jails. Recall that the PA and Hamas are supposed to hate each other so much they kill each other's ground troops. They do kill each other. But they also cooperate. So if the USA gives funds to the PA, and the PA gives funds to Hamas people, then we in the States are supporting Hamas.[2]

The quandary is that we haven't developed good ways of fighting the culprits managing the terrorists. We don't have good ways of fighting the instigating governments and virtual governments and religious clerics, because they do not declare war in a traditional way. They don't put their country on a war-footing and mobilize the troops. They do not directly control the sequence of processes and events between policy making and implementation.

If we can't readily identify the instigators -- or perhaps accuse would be more accurate -- how do we deal effectively with the unpredictable, the seemingly random act of terror? We don't know when it's coming. Or when.

THE STATE'S PREROGATIVE AND THE CITIZEN'S SELF-HELP

States insist they, and not individual citizens, be the ones to protect their citizens. They have the legitimate power. But often they are not eager to use their power. The situation may be complex because a proper response would involve international agencies or other countries. A State may be reluctant because the regime in power disapproves of the particular citizens in need of protection. The State may not have the resources. It may not want to open a can of worms. Israel, for example, is reluctant to act against Arab terrorists shielded by "world opinion"; they know they will need to face yet another hasty, unfair and time-wasting resolution by the UN blaming Israel and ignoring the terror. For many reasons, denying there's a serious problem or letting it age slowly in committee is easier than dealing with it.

So for many reasons, the State may do a poor job protecting the citizen at the INSTANT he needs help. Avenging his death afterwards doesn't bring him back to life.

When a State is incapable of protect its citizens engaged in legitimate business, it would seem logical that it encourage the citizen to help protect himself. It doesn't work that way. Partly, it's because States fear the chaos of vigilantism. But vigilantes usually don't operate during an attack. They act after the fact to prevent future acts of violence or to punish a guilty person who's escaped punishment. And there have indeed been cases where a vigilante mob hung the wrong man. But does vigilantism apply when a boat captain sees a fast boat heading right at him? If he warns the boat off and it keeps coming, is there any way he could be identifying the wrong boat?

On the high seas, where order is maintained by ships authorized by local countries or multinational organizations, yachts and freighters may not be well protected. When not actually forbidden to protect themselves when attacked, they are hamstrung by well-intentioned but unrealistic rules and regulations that restrict their weaponry and weaken their ability to respond in a timely fashion.

Defending Ships From Somali Pirates:

On the face of it the armed ships of the some 20 nations that patrol the gulf of Aden and Western Indian Ocean to thwart piracy have all the advantages. But the pirates of Tunisia and Somalia have no problems circumventing them, as J. Peter Pham points out in his article in this Section.[3]

In 2010, while attacks in the Gulf of Aden dropped off by more than 50 percent due to the naval patrols and better security measures by commercial vessels, overall the number of attacks by Somali pirates increased and a total of 49 vessels being successfully hijacked. The marauders seem to be more than on their way to besting these figures with more than a dozen seizures so far this year. According to the most recent report by the European Union Naval Force (EU NAVFOR), Somali pirates currently hold 32 hijacked ships and an estimated 692 hostages, not counting "an unknown number of unconfirmed dhows and smaller vessels."

"SELF-DEFENSE" does not appear in the 202 pages of "United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea" (UNCLOS) of Dec 10, 1982 produced by the U.N. Division for Ocean Affairs and the Law of the Sea. It was last updated July 21, 2010.[4]

There is a section "Piracy Under International Law" updated September 9, 2010.[5] It defines piracy -- it's just what you think it is -- and it tells us: "The General Assembly has also repeatedly encouraged States to cooperate to address piracy and armed robbery at sea in its resolutions on oceans and the law of the sea." Gee. That's helpful.

American merchant ships have traditionally been armed[6] provided the arms were few in number and gun caliber was no more than 6 inches. And they weren't allowed much ammunition. Moreover, within another country's territorial waters, American law doesn't apply. The National Rifle Association has encouraged training merchant mariners to defend themselves.[7] But the International Maritime Organization (IMO) Maritime Safety Committee (MSC) continued to discourage carrying firearms for personal protection because it could escalate an already dangerous situation![8] As if the pirates were salivating over the prospects of seizing some personal weaponry. As if they themselves didn't already have superior heavy armament. And just a few weeks ago, six U.S. seagoing unions opined it was the responsibility of the government to suppress piracy but they did urge the Coast Guard to develop standard rules for self-defense.[9]

The Coast Guard recognizes the need for carrying arms especially when attacked by pirates off the coast of Somalia, but "deadly force may only be employed when lesser means have failed or are not reasonably available ..." and so on and so forth, and the crew is subject to prosecution.[10] So the crew needs always to decide which is worse: being hijacked or doing the paper work entailed by defending themselves. The amount of paperwork in itself becomes a deterrent to mounting an effective response to piracy. On the other hand, the pirates have speed and superior weaponry. They are ruthless. They don't worry about justifying their actions in the future.

Defending Israeli Towns From Marauding Arabs:

A good way to protect Israeli citizens living in towns in Samaria and Judea is by manning a nearby hilltop outpost that is on the alert for sneak attacks by Arabs. In Israel, most Jews have been in the army and have been taught how to fire a gun carefully. The young idealistic hilltop settlers[11] are no exception. They put up ramshackle housing or live in trailers or in caves. They can be an early warning system to protect the settled towns and villages. They are also determined to hold the land that is rightfully Jewish by international law, by history, by Bible and by conquest.

 

Two hilltop youth take time out from building to study an ancient holy text inside the cave at the Shvut Ami outpost, Samaria. The cave has since been destroyed by the Israeli army in the hopes that these kids would give up and leave. They stay. (Photo: Shomrom Central Blog).

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