Terrorist Operations Research Articles

Terrorist Use of Smuggling Tunnels

This article examines terrorists’ use of smuggling tunnels to finance terrorism and/or launch terrorist operations. Israel’s Operation Pillar of Cloud and Hamas’ Operation Stones of Shale are used to illustrate both the physical structure of smuggling tunnels and social networks of the people who build and use smuggling tunnels. The sociological factors of terrorists and criminals engaged in smuggling in the same country, such as the Gaza Strip and Egypt during peaceful times and the Gaza Strip and Israel during a state of war, is examined. The article proposes the application of open-source social-network models applicable to regional and transnational tunnel analysis during times of peace and war, employing intelligence from law enforcement and national security sources to improve border security.

Does counterinsurgency fuel civil war? Peru and Syria compared

This article analyses the conflict-fuelling effects of counterinsurgency on civil war in Peru (1980–1995) and Syria (2011–2012). Despite different escalation onsets, in both cases the state's response to the increasingly armed opposition intensified and protracted the conflict. The comparative analysis reveals five interdependent factors that were particularly influential in that regard: the state's denial of demands by certain segments of society; indiscriminate police and military repression; the impunity of state forces; and the expansion of non-state armed groups driven by radical agendas. The research has implications that connect research on terrorism with peace and conflict studies: first, the more the opposition's demands were responded to by disproportionate repression, the more likely became the option of armed insurgency. Second, due to the state's superior military resources, the insurgent groups increasingly applied terrorist operations. Third, at least in the case of Peru, the terrorist tactics put the state on the edge of defeat. However, the adjustment of the counterinsurgency strategy to a more bottom-up approach eventually gained the state the upper hand. The article ends with controversial reflection on how far the recent violence intensification by Syrian insurgents justifies the end; that is, regime change.

Early detection of the lone wolf: advancement of counter-terrorism investigations with an absence or abundance of information and intelligence

The consequences of large-scale, al-Qaeda style operations have seen billions of dollars spent on military interventions; a raft of new law enforcement and intelligence agency (LEIA) powers and laws; and an exponential growth in public and private security interventions. Large-scale terrorist operations aside, lone-wolf terrorists have now become one of society's greatest threats. This is because lone wolves are fundamentally and ideologically driven to undertake terrorist activities autonomously; they generally adhere to no hierarchal structure; and they meticulously plan and prepare such acts while maintaining virtual invisibility within the community. As a result of their independence, astute preparation, and adept anonymity, the threat of lone-wolf terrorism presents a range of issues that are problematic for LEIA in their attempt at identifying those with a manifest hatred that leads to extreme violence. LEIA are further disadvantaged by a number of operational obstacles, which include the navigation of complex investigations offering limited, or conversely, an abundance of information. It is essential to recognise, however, that the lone-wolf terrorist never truly operates without the influence and/or assistance of like-minded individuals or groups; and that this may be the key to their undoing. It is the position of this paper that religion is not the sole motivating factor behind individual acts of terror, and that gathering and deciphering of information in juxtaposition with detecting, identifying, and tracking radical individuals pertains to a singular and/or combination of differing motives—political, ideological, and/or religious.

Reassessing the All-Volunteer Force

When America ended the military draft in 1973 and transitioned to the All-Volunteer Force (AVF), the success of this ambitious enterprise was not guaranteed. Yet by the early 1990s, decisive victor...

Drones over Yemen: Weighing Military Benefits and Political Costs

The future role of US drones has been the subject of considerable controversy due to their use in remote parts of the world to target individuals designated as terrorists. In his confirmation hearings, Secretary of State John Kerry expressed concerns about overseas perceptions of such activities by stating that, American foreign policy is not defined by drones and deployments alone. (1) Additionally, within the United States, many issues surrounding drone use clearly need scrupulous legal and ethical consideration. Underlying all these factors, however, must be a consideration of the issue of military effectiveness. Regulating the use of a marginally valuable weapons-system is easy, while regulating a highly effective system in a way that forecloses options can be difficult since more is at stake. Careful consideration must be given to how effectively these systems can serve US interests as well as the negative consequences of overseas backlash to their use when evaluating their optimal place in US strategy. In the case of Yemen, drones are not popular with the local population, but they do appear to have been stunningly successful in achieving goals that support the United States and Yemeni national interests by helping to defeat the radical group al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). This organization is one of the most successful affiliates of the original al Qaeda group led by Osama bin Laden until his death in 2011. AQAP became prominent in the early 2000s when it began terrorist operations in Saudi Arabia, though it was ultimately defeated in that country. Following this defeat, AQAP retained its name and regrouped in Yemen, merging with the local al Qaeda organization operating there in 2009. AQAP (which Yemenis simply call al Qaeda) has a recent history of challenging the Yemeni government as well as a long record of attempting to execute spectacular terrorist events in the United States. This agenda has made it vital for the United States to oppose AQAP and help the Yemeni government in a variety of ways, including drone use, when appropriate. Clearly fearing a domestic backlash, former Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who remained in office until early 2012, consistently denied his government was allowing the United States to conduct drone operations over Yemen. Saleh's denials regarding drones could hardly be considered credible since some extremely high profile strikes occurred while he was president. Of special importance was a successful February 2002 missile attack on six senior al Qaeda terrorists in Yemen. The Saleh government originally claimed these individuals were killed in a Yemeni Air Force bombing attack, but this story unraveled after a senior US official revealed information about the drone strike during a CNN interview. (2) In response to domestic pressure created by the CNN disclosure, Saleh eventually acknowledged that the February 2002 strike was conducted by a US drone, but he did not admit to any later strikes by the time he left power ten years later. (3) The president's continuing denials were almost universally disbelieved as there had been numerous Yemeni and international news reports of US drone warfare against AQAP, often citing seemingly credible sources on background. These press reports included a discussion of a fatal September 2011 US drone attack on AQAP planner Anwar al Awlaki. In response to such information, Saleh went so far as to claim that Yemeni forces had killed Awlaki, although virtually no one took such statements seriously. (4) In sharp contrast to Saleh, current Yemeni President Abed Rabbu Hadi has spoken glowingly of US drones used in Yemen, describing them as an effective way to strike the enemy while minimizing collateral damage to innocent civilians through precision strikes. (5) Despite Hadi's assurances, drone use remains a hotly contested domestic issue in Yemen. Achievements in Yemen Enabled by Drones The history of US drone activity in Yemen is still subject to considerable secrecy and cannot be written in full until more information has been declassified and released. …

The costs and consequences of drone warfare

One of the distinctive elements of President Barack Obama's approach to counterterrorism has been his embrace of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), or drones, to target terrorist operatives abroad. The Obama administration has used drones in active theatres of war, such as Afghanistan, but it has also dramatically increased the number of drone attacks launched by the CIA in other countries, such as Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. The conventional wisdom on drone warfare holds that these weapons are highly effective in killing terrorist operatives and disabling terrorist organizations, while killing fewer civilians than other means of attack. This article argues that much of the existing debate on drones operates with an attenuated notion of effectiveness that discounts the political and strategic dynamics—such as the corrosion of the perceptions of competence and legitimacy of governments where drone strikes take place, growing anti-Americanism and fresh recruitment of militant networks—that reveal the costs of drone warfare. Focusing particularly on drone use in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia, the article suggests that the Obama administration's counterterrorism policy operates at cross-purposes because it provides a steady flow of arms and financial resources to build up governments whose legitimacy it systematically undermines by conducting unilateral strikes on their territory. It concludes that the US embrace of drone technology is a losing proposition over the long term as it will usher in a new arms race and lay the foundations for an international system that is increasingly violent, destabilized and polarized between those who have drones and those who are victims of them.

"The Financial Support And The Administrative Needs Of Terrorist Operations "

Financing terrorism refers to a specific activity with many particular features. The financial resources it drowns are represented by both voluntary sympathizers' contributions and illegal revenues, generated by important criminal activities. Within the terrorist organization though, financial contributions of Diaspora and donations made by political and religious ideology sympathizers hold the most important role. Terrorists use similar techniques as money laundering to avoid the authorities' unwanted attention from and to protect the identities of those who lead the terrorist activities and also the people who benefit from the organization's funding. Key word: terrorism financing, criminal activities, money laundering, organized crime

Evaluation the Performance of Al-wahdaa Project Drinking Water Treatment plant: A case Study in Iraq

Al-wahdaa project drinking water treatment plant has been playing a vital role in supplying drinking water to Baghdad city since 1942s. It was designed with a design capacity 68000 m3/d So that it can cover the needs of the public properly. However, the fatal circumstances which have recently hit Baghdad city represented by wars and terrorist operations have considerably resulted in a significant deterioration in the quality of Al-wahdaa project water treatment plant in the early of 2005s and 2006s. Furthermore, the failure of the equipments and the deficiency of the crew of the power plant have dramatically caused a shortage in the efficiency of the plant. Therefore, this work is the earliest attempt in addressing the problem of this plant. In this study, the removal efficient of the filtration, sedimentation will be addressed as well as the turbidity during three years of investigation. It was found that the average value of the removal of the sedimentation basin was about (46%) and the ( R 2 0.902) which is obviously low due to the absence of the permanent maintenance and the continuous clean out for the sedimentation basin. The removal efficiency of filtration basin was as high as (75%) and the( R 2 0.445) comparatively with the removal efficiency of the sedimentation basin .The turbidity magnitudes were slightly oscillated along the study period since there has been shortage in the efficiency of sedimentation basin, it is then peaked at rainy season with about (18 NTU). The Total Dissolved Solids (often abbreviated TDS) was high but it may fall within the Limitations, it is interesting to note that it was highly increased at January due to the high turbidity discharge

Evaluation the Performance of Al-wahdaa Project Drinking Water Treatment plant: A case Study in Iraq

Al-wahdaa project drinking water treatment plant has been playing a vital role in supplying drinking water to Baghdad city since 1942s. It was designed with a design capacity 68000 m3/d So that it can cover the needs of the public properly. However, the fatal circumstances which have recently hit Baghdad city represented by wars and terrorist operations have considerably resulted in a significant deterioration in the quality of Al-wahdaa project water treatment plant in the early of 2005s and 2006s. Furthermore, the failure of the equipments and the deficiency of the crew of the power plant have dramatically caused a shortage in the efficiency of the plant. Therefore, this work is the earliest attempt in addressing the problem of this plant. In this study, the removal efficient of the filtration, sedimentation will be addressed as well as the turbidity during three years of investigation. It was found that the average value of the removal of the sedimentation basin was about (46%) and the ( R 2 0.902) which is obviously low due to the absence of the permanent maintenance and the continuous clean out for the sedimentation basin. The removal efficiency of filtration basin was as high as (75%) and the( R 2 0.445) comparatively with the removal efficiency of the sedimentation basin .The turbidity magnitudes were slightly oscillated along the study period since there has been shortage in the efficiency of sedimentation basin, it is then peaked at rainy season with about (18 NTU). The Total Dissolved Solids (often abbreviated TDS) was high but it may fall within the Limitations, it is interesting to note that it was highly increased at January due to the high turbidity discharge

Self-Defense Targeting: Blurring the Line between the Jus ad Bellum and the Jus in Bello

Conflict classification has and will continue to be one of the most complex issues arising from the intersection of national security policy and international law. From the inception of what the United States coined the “Global War on Terror,” experts have been debating the meaning of the term armed conflict, both international and non-international. The proliferation of remotely piloted warfare has only exacerbated the uncertainty associated with the meaning of these terms. In response, the concept of self-defense targeting emerged as an ostensible alternative to determining if and when a national use of armed force qualified as an armed conflict. In essence, this theory averts the need to engage in jus in bello classification of counterterror military operations by relying on the overarching jus ad bellum legal justification for these operations. Self-defense targeting, or what Professor Kenneth Anderson has called “naked self-defense,” is offered as the U.S. legal framework for employing combat power to destroy or disrupt the capabilities of transnational terrorist operatives. This essay will question the validity of substituting jus ad bellum principles for those of the jus in bello, and why this substitution is a false solution to this extremely complex conflict classification dilemma. The recent attack on Osama Bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan has exposed in stark relief the importance of defining the legal framework applicable to the use of military force as a counter-terrorism tool. The initial focus of the public debate generated by the attack was the legality of the U.S. invocation of the inherent right of self-defense to launch a non-consensual operation within the sovereign territory of Pakistan. However, that focus soon shifted to another critical legal question: even assuming legality as an exercise of national self-defense, what law regulated the execution of the operation? By virtue of his role as the leader of al Qaeda, was Bin Laden a lawful military objective within the meaning of the law of armed conflict, and thereby subject to attack with deadly force as a measure of first resort? Or was he merely an international criminal, subject to a much more limited law enforcement use of force authority? The duality of the jus belli issues implicated by the attack generated a two prong legal critique: first, did the mission violate the international legal prohibition against use of force (jus ad bellum)? Second, did the mission trigger the law of armed conflict, or was the amount of force employed during the mission resulting in Bin Laden’s death excessive to that which was necessary to apprehend him? The self-defense targeting theory may be a tempting approach to resolving these questions, but ultimately distorts the effective regulation of combat operations.

Neither Dulce Nor Decorum

Neither Dulce Nor Decorum Robert Benson (bio) The Gun by C. J. Chivers (Simon and Schuster, 2010. 496 pages. Illustrated. $28) The Avtomat Kalashnikova, ak-47, a Soviet assault rifle, is the most recognizable weapon of modern warfare and criminal violence. The 47 refers to 1947, the year the prototypes were finished in a plant in Kovrov. The term ak-47, which designates the early configuration of this rifle, is incorrectly used for a variety of the descendants of this original, including the akm, the aks, the Chinese Type 56, and others manufactured in North Korea, Egypt, Iraq, and the old members of the Warsaw Pact. Often carried by thugs, terrorists, and child soldiers when seen on the news and in movies, the Kalashnikov is on the flag of Mozambique, and in Lebanon it is the symbol of the militant Islamists of Hezbollah. Osama bin Laden used the ak as a symbolic prop in photographs and news releases. C. J. Chivers has written a long and detailed study of the creation and influence of this weapon capable of fully automatic as well as semi-automatic fire, reliable and compact, a weapon simple enough for school children to disassemble and reassemble in “less than thirty seconds flat.” These characteristics, Chivers writes, meant “the small-statured, the mechanically disinclined, the dimwitted, and the untrained might be able to wield, with little difficulty or instruction, a lightweight automatic rifle that could push out blistering fire for the lengths of two or three football fields.” (The ak is not, however, known to be a highly accurate rifle, and a number of people who have been shot at with an ak have escaped without injury.) The armorers of the Soviet Union under Stalin produced this rifle that was very effective “as a device that allowed ordinary men to kill other men without extensive training or undue complications”—a rifle that survived the collapse of the Soviet Union and continues to play a major role in criminal and terrorist operations as well as in armed conflict around the world. “The nations that made [aks] lost custody of them, and then control, and now in much of the world they are everyman’s gun.” This everyman’s gun meant that peasant soldiers in Vietnam could outgun highly trained U.S. troops equipped with fatally unreliable early versions of the M16. The ak-47 and its more modern versions are the result of a desire to make a fully automatic weapon lightweight enough to be carried and fired by a single soldier—an assault rifle that would replace bolt-action rifles and the high powered but low capacity semiautomatic rifles that most soldiers carried. Chivers attempts to write a history of this rifle’s origin and early production, a history obscured for years by Soviet secrecy and propaganda that presented Senior Sergeant Mikhail T. Kalashnikov as a proletarian hero and inventive genius “who wanted to present his nation an instrument for its defense.” Chivers sees the ak series as the culmination of attempts to miniaturize machine guns based ultimately on the designs of Richard Gatling and Hiram Maxim, the inventors [End Page lxxiv] of the first true recoil-operated machine gun. With long chapters on those two, it is odd that Chivers pays scant attention to John M. Browning, whose gas-operated M1895 was the first machine gun used by the U.S. military and whose automatic rifle, the bar, was used successfully from World War i through the Korean War by U.S. soldiers. The aks are all gas-operated. This is a readable account of a significant story of “slaughter made industrial,” and serious gun nuts will find it delightful and only occasionally irritating. As only a minor-league gun nut, I had to spend time looking up some of the weapons and cartridges that Chivers does not insult his reader by explaining. An appendix would have been most helpful. [End Page lxxv] Robert Benson Robert Benson has regularly contributed reviews, poetry, and reminiscences to the SR for three decades. This fall he will teach the Divine Comedy for the Catholic Chaplaincy at Vanderbilt. Copyright © 2011 University of the South, Sewanee, Tennessee, 37383

Dirty hands or dirty decisions? Investigating, prosecuting and punishing those responsible for abuses of detainees in counter terrorism operations

It is well established that in response to the events of 11 September 2001, the US routinely and systematically used torture and other forms of ill-treatment against terrorist suspects and that this was authorised at the highest levels of the Bush administration. The authors of that policy have vociferously defended the use of so called enhanced interrogation techniques with dirty hands justifications. Cheney, for instance, has aggressively defended the necessity of ‘tough, mean, dirty, nasty tactics’ to keep the country safe and this is mirrored in academic justifications for torture as dirty hands decisions in extreme circumstances. This article will: (1) dispute that the use of torture and ill-treatment were genuine cases of dirty hands; and (2) even if they were, it is a feature of dirty hands justifications that there is focus on the abiding wrong of the necessary evil and punishment is necessary to acknowledge the wrong that has been done. In the light of this, it will be argued that those who ordered, designed and applied the policy should be held to account in criminal investigations or in some appropriate socially sanctioned proceedings.

The Imperial War For Drugs

AmericanWarMachine represents a fitting culmination to Peter Dale Scott’s work as our leading geopolitical sleuth if, as his disarming introductory note suggests, this turns out to be the eighty-one-year-old author’s last major political book. The subtitle prefigures the theme of the book, which is to contend that the war in Afghanistan (along with several other long-lasting political conflicts) is driven by the underside of American foreign policy, consisting of drug-connected violence arising from many covert operations carried out over many years by the CIA.Scott is an indefatigable researcher, and to the extent that open sources permit documentation, the controversial thesis of the book is sustained by well-evidenced and lucid analysis. He quotes Dennis Dayle, a former top U.S. government investigator in the Middle East, who told a conference audience that “in my thirty-year history in the Drug Enforcement Administration ... the major targets of my investigation almost invariably turned out to be working for the CIA.” The line of argument is that the CIA role in linking American influence to foreign drug operations is a constant in American foreign policy throughout the countries of the global South, whether it be Vietnam and Laos in the 1960s and 1970s, or Afghanistan today.Underpinning Scott’s analysis is the startling insistence that the transnational network of drug connections is often directly responsible for keeping in power the most oppressive rulers around the world: the drug network, he argues, works with a series of prominent banks to obtain money-laundering facilities that in turn allow the funding of a variety of terrorist operations. What Scott contends so convincingly is that the deep forces of the American state that act without accountability (and are aligned with criminal and intelligence agencies here and elsewhere) are working in exact opposition to the proclaimed anti-drug and anti-terrorist priorities of the U.S. government. In this fundamental respect, the war in Afghanistan—as was the case with other American wars, most spectacularly the Vietnam War—is intrinsically doomed to fail. On this basis, Scott asserts that if the government were genuinely committed to security against terrorism or to the emergence of stability in Afghanistan, it would immediately decriminalize drugs and renounce military options in the conduct of its foreign policy toward countries of the global South.As Scott knows, much would have to change for any of this to happen. In the meantime, Afghanistan is only the latest reminder that our country is trapped in a bloody maelstrom that is leading to decline from within and without. Scott presents many damning examples of the extent to which America’s allies in the Afghanistan War are deeply implicated in drug operations and receive protection against eradication efforts from the CIA, making American policy completely incoherent with respect to opium, which is the essential source of wealth for many Afghan warlords and even government officials. Scott goes on to argue that American anti-drug campaigns do not seek to eradicate the drug trade, but only “to target specific enemies and thus ensure that drug traffic remains under the control of those traffickers who are allies of the state security apparatus and/or the CIA.” American War Machine brilliantly explains why such a dysfunctional policy is not only endorsed in the face of repeated failure but becomes essentially irreversible through the normal give and take of politics.Scott never claims that the global drug/CIA nexus is an all-purpose explanation of everything that has gone wrong for the United States in the world. He acknowledges that a variety of other forces are at work, including the lure of oil, alliance relations and rivalries, and the various impacts of neoliberal globalization as linked to militarism. What he does demonstrate is shocking on its own— that American overseas interventionism is significantly driven not by the goals of the war on drugs, but more accurately by its opposite: a lethal partnership between our government and an array of criminalized drug syndicates, warlords, and oppressive rulers. This extraordinary story, with a few rare fleeting glimpses, is being withheld from the American people by the media. With this realization in mind, Scott’s book mounts a vital, Jeffersonian, eye-opening challenge to the American people. In the end, Scott is imploring his readers to become attuned to prevalent political realities. Hopefully, this book will begin laying the foundations for a new politics of citizen engagement that looks below the surface and demands a governing process that does what it says and lives within the constraints of law and morality.

Optimal Blends of History and Intelligence for Robust Antiterrorism Policy

Antiterrorism analysis requires that security agencies blend evidence on historical patterns of terrorist behavior with incomplete intelligence on terrorist adversaries to predict possible terrorist operations and devise appropriate countermeasures. We model interactions between reactive, adaptive and intelligent adversaries embedded in minimally sufficient organizational settings to study the optimal analytic mixture, expressed as historical memory reach-back and the number of anticipatory scenarios, that should be used to design antiterrorism policy. We show that history is a valuable source of information when the terrorist organization evolves and acquires new capabilities at such a rapid pace that makes optimal strategies advocated by game-theoretic reasoning unlikely to succeed.

Failed States and the Spread of Terrorism in Sub-Saharan Africa

Plagued by systematic state failure, sub-Saharan Africa's failed states have helped facilitate internationally sponsored terrorist networks and operations. However, until recently, this type of activity was primarily relegated to North Africa and the Horn. But that has begun to change. Now, what was once a seemingly benign terrorist presence in sub-Saharan Africa is starting to transform into a movement, with states such as Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Liberia, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) now lending arms, financial support, and radical militants to the extremist jihadist movement of internationally sponsored terrorist organizations such as Al Qaeda. Further, with the recent bombings in Kenya and Somalia, and the failed bombing attempt on a U.S. airliner by a Nigerian national, it is becoming increasingly evident that internationally sponsored terrorist networks have found a permanent home in sub-Saharan Africa and within the hearts and minds of its people, which poses significant challenges for the international community, given the region's patchwork of failed states, where terrorists can easily hide and thrive. Consequently, this study discusses how the conditions of state failure have fostered support for internationally sponsored terrorism in sub-Saharan Africa. Terrorist groups are now actively recruiting more militants from within the region and popular support for extremist acts is on the rise in sub-Saharan Africa. Thus, the article argues sub-Saharan Africa will soon become the site for the next generation of terrorists, and the next wave of terrorist activity.

The evolution of counterterrorism: will tactics trump strategy?

Counterterrorism efforts over the past five years have yielded important progress against Al-Qaeda abroad, even with heightened anxiety about the threat of attacks at home. There was certainly no ‘clash of civilizations’; violent Salafism engendered a muscular backlash in Muslim-majority countries, which threatened Al-Qaeda's ability to recruit and even survive. At the same time, the policies of major states became more effective and better aligned. A nascent counterterrorism coalition emerged with unprecedented sharing of intelligence, operations and deradicalization techniques (especially bilaterally). In the face of these developments, a defensive Al-Qaeda scrambled to exploit vulnerabilities so as to regain a mental edge. The result was two tactical setbacks for the allies: first, Al-Qaeda and its associates redoubled their efforts to kill civilians on western soil, focusing particularly on radicalized home grown amateurs; and second, they leaned more heavily on reinvigorated affiliates, some of whom tried to project force beyond their local operating areas for the first time. As a result, terrorist operations in the US and UK were more frequent, unpredictable and unsophisticated, but nonetheless potentially lethal. As the period drew to a close, the crucial question was whether the two western allies could maintain their nerve, luck, skill and sufficient equilibrium to both fend off a domestic attack and plan for an effective strategic response in the event that one occurred.

AN OPTIMAL DISPATCH PLANNING OF GUARDS TO COUNTER TO A SUICIDE BOMBER

Counter terrorism operations become one of the great concerns in the recent military affairs. We will propose an optimal planning method for dispatching of security personnel to protect the lives of citizen from suicide bombing. Some security staffs, such as police or military personnel, are dispatched to patrol a certain area during a designated period. The whole operation time is divided into small mission periods and the limited number of securities take turns on the patrol for each period. In each mission period, there come some citizens there. Each of the dispatched guards firstly patrols there to search for a doubtful person. When they detect the man, they communicate with each other and try to neutralize him. Under such a situation, we develop a dispatch planning tool so as to maximize the expected number of surviving guards and the citizens from detonation within each divided period.

Negotiation Schedules and Terrorist Risk Aversion

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether convex negotiation schedules that may confer positively valued concessions to terrorist organisations, make terrorist organisations more or less risk averse. Within the defence economics literature, a number of studies have utilised game theory to study bargaining or negotiation between governments and terrorist organisations. Not surprisingly, the ‘no concessions’ stance has been found not to be optimal on all occasions. And, also not surprisingly, governments have deviated from their stated ‘no concessions’ position. A stated ‘no concessions’ position may not be ultimately credible. In this paper, a simpler contingent claims and utility theoretical framework is utilised to examine whether negotiation schedules influence terrorist risk aversion. The answer is that a negotiation schedule (even one that provides positively valued concessions) cannot unambiguously make a terrorist organisation more or less risk averse. However, a negotiation schedule that immunises the terrorist organisation from the full negative consequences of failed terrorist operations will make that organisation more risk seeking. The granting of immunity, for example, is likely to have this effect.

Guerilla Warfare & Law Enforcement: Combating the 21st Century Terrorist Cell within the U.S.

Both domestic and international terrorist organizations employ guerrilla warfare tactics, techniques, and procedures. Thus, the ability to identify and defeat the members of these organizations, cripple their infrastructures, and disrupt their financial resources lies in the understanding of modern guerrilla warfare as it develops in the twenty-first century within the United States.3 The forms of asymmetric warfare4 adopted by domestic and international terrorist groups alike is no longer intended to gain simple media exposure or governmental manipulation; they want to make an overpowering impact by causing massive loss of life and severe damage to infrastructure and are often motivated by religious imperatives and political goals. As terrorism analyst Stephen Flynn has observed, "Throughout the 20th century [Americans] were able to treat national security as essentially an out-of-body experience. When confronted by threats, [America] dealt with them on the turf of our allies or our adversaries. Aside from the occasional disaster and heinous crime, civilian life [in the United States] has been virtually terror-free." With the turn of the twenty-first century, terrorist operations have become more prevalent in the United States and are taking shape in the form of modern guerrilla warfare, thus creating new challenges for federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies. After reviewing the origin and nature of these challenges, this article will offer some suggestions for countering guerilla warfare in the United States.

Confronting militant Islam in Southeast Asia: the case of the Abu Sayyaf Group in the Philippines

Abstract This article discusses the Bush administration's extension of the War on Terror in Southeast Asia and this operation's main objective-the Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG) in the Philippines. It probes the ASG's history, transnational links, and terrorist operations. Then using content analysis, the article analyzes the terrorist group's primary reading material to determine its ideological affiliation with transnational Islamic militant groups. It then argues that the transnational jihadist ideology is evident in the ASG's primary reading material. The material reflects the ideas of the late Palestinian terrorist Abdullah Azzam, and by implication, those of the late Egyptian poet Sayyid Qutb. In conclusion, the article points out that the influence of jihadist ideology on the ASG is superficial, because of the widely held view that the band is a marginalized group operating at the fringes of the mainstream militant Islamic movement in Southeast Asia.