The Effectiveness of International Efforts in Combating Terrorism

This paper entitled “the effectiveness of International efforts in combatting terrorism” sets out to do an appraisal of already documented research works on the effectiveness of counter-terrorism initiatives. It makes use of classical literature review methods to synthesize these research recordings. This review visits major counter terrorist initiatives like the UN Counterterrorism Committee (CTC), the Counterterrorism Executive Directorate(CTED), Global Counterterrorism Strategy, and Group of Eight and in so doing generates evidence regarding the effectiveness of counter-terrorism strategies, making it clear that there has been a proliferation of anti-terrorism programs and policies as well as massive increases in expenditures toward combating terrorism. It however establishes that almost nothing is known about the effectiveness of any of these programs, as the surge in new terrorist tactics and incidents is on the rise. The paper concludes that these initiatives all bring something to the table, but fail to add up to a comprehensive regime. It is recommended primordially that the international community should develop a global counterterrorism body.


Research Evidence Regarding the effectiveness of Counter Terrorism Strategies and Programs
carried out a study on the effectiveness of counter terrorism strategies. The study focused on seven research works in the field from a total of over 20.000 pieces of literature. The following findings were obtained: They first grouped all findings related to interventions which increased detection of potential terrorism through airport security, one of the most common interventions analyzed by researchers. Specifically, these findings focused on increasing security of airports in the early1970s including the installation of metal detectors and the more general increase in security screening of passengers. Notice that the general belief of the success of metal detectors is brought into question. First, the success of metal detectors in airports have often been widely ISSN 2224-574X (Paper) ISSN 2224 Vol. 88,2020 27 recognized as reducing hijackings and the findings here support this for both short and long run measures.
As Cauley and Im (1988) and Enders and Sandler (1990;1993) have repeatedly pointed out, there may have been substitution or displacement effects of airport security on other types of terrorism. In other words, airport security may decrease airplane hijacking, but can increase miscellaneous bombings, armed attacks, hostage taking, and events which included death or wounded individuals (as opposed to non-casualty incidents) in both the short and long run. Thus, it appears that while the use of metal detectors reduces hijackings, they may also lead to displacement or substitution effects and inadvertently increase other forms of terrorism.
The second general category by which Lum et al (2006) grouped findings was evaluations of protective interventions which fortified embassies and protected diplomats, specifically United Nations General Assembly and Security Council members. In total, the findings do not indicate that the fortification of embassies and efforts to protect diplomats have been effective in reducing terrorist attacks on these targets. Landes (1978) provided the only findings concerning increasing the severity of punishment for hijackers who were apprehended. It does not appear from Landes' work that increasing the severity of punishment had a statistically discernible effect on reducing skyjacking incidents. Again, this does not mean that these strategies "don't work" and methods of time series analysis have become more advanced since Landes' work. However, given the little evidence, there appears to be no evidence to show otherwise.
 United Nations resolutions against terrorism Yet another type of intervention found in the evaluation literature concerned the use of United Nations resolutions against terrorism. Although these resolutions are more general in nature, they may provide a general deterrent effect on terrorism by establishing international norms which affect or strengthen national policy against terrorism. Enders et al. (1990) discovered that only a UN resolution against aerial hijackings that also supported the use of metal detectors in airports appeared effective in reducing the number of skyjacking events in both the short and long term. However, the second finding indicates that resolutions without the implementation of metal detectors were not useful in reducing terrorism. Further, resolutions intended to "prevent and punish crimes against internationally protected persons" did not seem to have a statistically discernible effect (Lum et al 2006:28).
 Military retaliations It is discovered that one often-researched event was the United States' 1986 attack on Libya after Libya's involvement in the bombing of the LaBelle Discotheque in West Berlin. Prunckun and Mohr (1997), suggest the possibility that the raid may have had long-term deterrent effects, specifically, reducing attacks on U.S. targets. However, Enders and his colleagues, in a series of analyses using vector autoregressive techniques, find unintended harmful consequences of the raid in the short run and non-discernible long-term effect. Again, Enders and his colleagues discovered an interesting nuance in these effects. The findings point to the short run effects of the attack on Libya (the short run distinction is suggested by the authors themselves, as unlike metal detectors, the attacks on Libya were not sustained over the time series) as well as Israeli retaliatory strikes on Palestinians. Generally, the findings show that the attack on Libya resulted in a statistically significant increase in the number of terrorist attacks in the short run. Additionally, the specific retaliations researched seemed to increase attacks on the United States, United Kingdom, and Israel. Changes in political governance Finally, Lum et al (2006) examined findings that could be grouped in the general intervention category of "political governance". While these are not interventions in the traditional sense of the term, the political nature of terrorism broadens related responses to a wide variety of arenas. For example, Barros (2003) analyzed the effects of having a Socialist party in power (which he describes as the more intolerant and harsher party against rogue political groups) in Spain on the effects of ETA terrorism, while Enders and Sandler (2000) examined the effect of the end of the cold war on terrorism time series. The combination of findings indicates an uncertainty about whether the existence of harsher parties on terrorism as well as the end of the Cold War may increase terrorism events.
 Discussion The combination of findings from the seven studies found to evaluate counter-terrorism measures using at least a moderately strong research design provides for a number of interesting discussion points across this literature. Most importantly, interventions commonly used, including military retaliation campaigns, the fortification of buildings, United Nations resolutions and other laws, as well as increasing the certainty and/or severity of punishment, may not be as promising as much of the non-evaluation terrorism literature often seems to suggest. In many cases, effects are not statistically discernible from a null effect, or can be harmful and increase the likelihood of certain types of terrorism. Furthermore, different effects may occur depending on what outcome is being measured. Metal detectors "work" in reducing airplane hijackings, but as Cauley and Im (1988) and Enders and his colleagues have emphasized, there may be displacement or substitution effects leading to increases in other types of terrorism not involving aircraft. Military retaliations can also lead to increases in terrorism, although it appears that these increases may be short-term, less lethal threats and other terrorist activities that do not use substantial resources.
From the research evidence regarding the effectiveness of counter-terrorism strategies, it is clear that there has been a proliferation of anti-terrorism programs and policies as well as massive increases in expenditures toward combating terrorism. Yet, almost nothing is known about the effectiveness of any of these programs. The seven studies here, from a total of over 20,000 pieces of literature, focus on only a handful of specific interventions, and often involve the same researchers examining similar datasets, using similar methodologies. Clearly, the most important policy recommendation to emerge from this review is that the wide array of antiterrorism policies needs to be evaluated for effectiveness or at least be better informed by existing scientific evaluations. Related to this is the importance of funding and encouragement for scientific evaluations of counterterrorism programs.

Overall Assessment of the Global Efforts in Combating Terrorism  Strengths and Weaknesses  Overall Assessment: Unprecedented attention, yet insufficient and uncoordinated
Multilateral cooperation on terrorism benefited from the renewed energy and urgency that followed the September 11 attacks on the United States and its interests, and subsequent attacks in Europe, Russia, Africa, the Middle East and around Asia. Over the past decade, the international community has developed instruments and created new initiatives to address the threat of terrorist attacks. Despite increased attention, however, several glaring gaps remain (Global Governance Monitor, 2011). These include divergent views on the legitimacy and authority of counterterrorism bodies and inadequate compliance and enforcement of standing tools. Targeting non-state actors that can easily cross borders and operate in civilian areas also poses an enormous challenge.
Today's counterterrorism regime lacks a central global body dedicated to terrorist prevention and response. The landscape for counterterrorism activity thus lacks coherence. It is multilayered-ranging from legally binding instruments and strategic guidelines, to multilateral institutions and regional frameworks. Within the United Nations (UN) alone are more than thirty agencies conducting relevant work on the issue; in the United States, sixteen departments and agencies do so. Too often, these various elements are uncoordinated and even competing. The United Nations has helped rally international efforts for counterterrorism. It now oversees sixteen conventions that target different aspects of terrorism, including terrorist financing, hijacking, acquiring weapons of mass destruction, and hostage taking, to name a few. However, threat perceptions differ as some UN member states perceive terrorism as a lesser priority in light of other challenges like HIV/AIDS or crime, while the U.S. Justice Department continues to rank terrorism as its highest priority a decade after the 9/11 attacks. These differences continue to obstruct efforts to build a comprehensive treaty that would unite all aspects of counterterrorism under one legal umbrella.
The UN Security Council (UNSC) has strengthened the international legal foundation for counterterrorism efforts by issuing numerous binding resolutions. To oversee the implementation of the bedrock counterterrorism resolutions created after September 11, the UNSC established the Counterterrorism Committee (CTC), and later the CTC Executive Directorate (CTED). The CTC, composed of all fifteen UNSC members, is tasked with assessing states' efforts to implement relevant resolutions, evaluating gaps in state capacity, and facilitating donor coordination for technical and financial counterterrorism assistance. The CTED works to strengthen and better coordinate implementation of UNSC resolutions, as well as to conduct country assessments and facilitate technical assistance from donor countries. Both bodies, however, have uneven support across the UN membership. Some countries, notably those from the global South, have considered the CTC illegitimate, given its direct mandate from the UNSC, not to mention out of touch with countries it is responsible for assisting and with donor countries that are not on the Security Council. Moreover, many UN member states simply give low priority to the counterterrorism agenda. Accordingly, countries, particularly in Africa, have not met their obligations to report to the CTC or otherwise take major steps to implement UN Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1373 (Counter Terrorism Committee, 2010).
UN-sponsored sanctions have been effective in addressing state sponsorship of terrorism, notably Libya and Sudan, but less so against non-state actors, like al-Qaeda and the Taliban since their removal from power (Global Governance Monitor, 2011). Over the last decade terrorist groups evolved to rely less on a centrally led network and adopted a more horizontal, nebulous, bottom up structure, increasing the difficulty of tracking and preventing terrorist acts. Pursuant to UNSCR 1267, the Al-Qaeda and Taliban Sanctions Committee and Monitoring Team were created to implement and enforce this and subsequent resolutions. The committee kept a consolidated list of individuals and entities subject to sanctions, until 2011, when the UNSC voted to separate the al-Qaeda and Taliban lists. However, some critics argue that the list's "name and shame" tactic has had negligible impact given the lack of regular updates and the expansion of the list, making it an inflexible mechanism in the face of the diffusion of al-Qaeda's hierarchy. Others have pointed to the lack of provisions for legal due process. A resolution adopted in June 2011 allows for an ombudsman to receive delisting requests, a positive development that, nonetheless, does little to compensate for the lack of an effective appeals mechanism.
Except for the UNSC's role in resolutions imposing sanctions, nobody is responsible for ensuring that member states meet their commitments under UN terrorism conventions or resolutions. Although the CTC and CTED monitor states' progress in implementing bedrock UNSC resolutions, they have no mandate to penalize countries and have never referred a case to the UNSC.
In an effort to increase the legitimacy and add coherence to the UN's efforts, the UN General Assembly unanimously adopted in 2006 the Global Counterterrorism Strategy (GCT). Although the GCT provides an important normative and operational foundation for counterterrorism work at the UN, a report (Cockayne et al, 2010) by the Center on Global Counterterrorism Cooperation released ahead of the 2010 review conference notes that the strategy's potential to "provide for collaborative, holistic counterterrorism efforts is either unknown or largely overlooked beyond New York, Geneva, and Vienna." That is, it has earned little attention or traction even among most UN member states.
The main onus of implementing the GCT is with member states, but its institutional operation is supported by the Counterterrorism Implementation Task Force (CTITF)-a partnership of bodies created by UN former secretary-general Kofi Annan in 2005, which includes more than thirty UN entities plus INTERPOL, to streamline and coordinate counterterrorism efforts within the UN. In addition, the CTITF has nine working groups that focus on specific elements of the UN counterterrorism work, such as countering terrorist use of the Internet and integrating human rights concerns. Because the CTITF is composed of representatives from different agencies within the UN system, each agency's mandates and priorities often take precedence, undermining the goals and effectiveness of the task force. Therefore, despite being created to help coordinate, coherence remains elusive.
Beyond the UN, other multilateral and regional bodies and initiatives have also ramped up their efforts to address terrorism in response to September 11. The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) and the Group of Eight (G8) Counterterrorism Action Group(CTAG), for example, were created and operate independently, with varying degrees of success. The FATF-created in 1989 to combat money laundering and tasked with countering terrorist financing following September 11-has resulted in countries cleaning up their financing practices to quell or limit terrorist financing within their borders. The CTAG's efforts, however, have suffered from a lack of direction and declining motivation among member states. To fill this gap, the United States has convened the Global Counterterrorism Forum, which was launched in September 2011, and, according to the G8's Deauville Declaration, strengthen "the international consensus in the fight against terrorism, creating new opportunities of cooperation and furthering the implementation of the UN Global Counterterrorism Strategy." A number of regional organizations, such as the European Union (EU), African Union, and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, have delivered formal statements outlining their shared commitment to counterterrorism. Although the EU has followed up on its statements with a robust counterterrorism framework, incorporating law enforcement and judicial apparatuses like the EU judicial cooperation unit, EUROJUST and the EU's police force, EUROPOL, other regional institutions lack capacity, funding, and political will to aggressively pursue counterterrorism strategies ( Rosand, 2007). Additionally, these organizations too often work in isolation from UN programs.
Despite the progress made through new bodies and agreements-notably the creation of the GCT and the ability of international bodies such as the International Monetary Fund and the CTC to audit and take stock of national counterterrorism capabilities-several significant weaknesses are apparent in the global counter terror regime (Rosand, 2007). First is the normative deadlock on the definition of terrorism. Terrorism, especially after the divisive political environment fostered by the U.S.-led global war on terror, continues to mean different things to different states, with strong divergence of both capacity and political will along global North-South lines. In addition, the UNSC's promotion of legal and law enforcement measures to combat terror have been perceived as overemphasizing security, resulting in intense criticism by the Group of Seventy-Seven. The GCT somewhat redresses this with its emphasis on protecting human rights and on root causes of terrorism, but it is, in the end, only a strategy and not legally binding.
Second, multilateral response suffers from inadequate compliance and enforcement of standing instruments. To date, only eight UN member states have become parties to all sixteen treaties and even ratification of these instruments is no guarantee of enforcement. This is a marked improvement from the pre-September 11 era, but there is ample room for greater participation. In particular, monitoring and enforcement of terrorist financing commitments remain uneven because countries lack governance capacity, do not prioritize the terrorist threat, or both. The effort to safeguard nuclear material remains an equally difficult challenge that, despite the efforts and initiatives of concerned states, continues to suffer from a global concerted effort. Existing instruments, such as the International Convention for the Suppression of Acts of Nuclear Terrorism, lack robust participation.
Third, despite the attention terrorist prevention has gained over the last five years, efforts are still inadequate. Recognition of the importance of root causes and counter radicalization strategies are nascent. The GCT has helped draw some attention to these issues particularly in Pillar I, which focuses on "conditions conducive to the spread of terrorism," but huge gaps remain in implementation. Terrorist groups have evolved to rely less on state support, which severely hinders efforts to fight them. To date, the efforts of the international community to help countries build their counterterrorism capacity have also been inadequate (Global Governance Strategy). In particular, countries that need counterterrorism assistance the most, such as Pakistana hotbed of terrorism, host to a nuclear arsenal, and a major base of al-Qaeda-rely on bilateral arrangements rather than multilateral aid structures.
 Combating Terrorist Financing: Major strides to disincentivize terrorist financing, but weakly addresses underground channels. Overall, the international community has responded to the terrorist threat with broad cooperation to track and cut off funding (CTITF, 2009). Experts commend a variety of counterterrorism financing (CTF) initiatives for significantly hobbling terrorist groups by restricting access to legitimate financial channels. Nevertheless, monitoring and enforcement of commitments remain spotty because some countries lack political will or governance capacity, particularly when dealing with non-state actors. Moreover, terrorists increasingly resort to informal methods of financial support that are more difficult to curtail.
The instruments tackling the financing of terrorism provide common norms for the international community, but experts question their effectiveness (U.S Treasury Department Office for Public Affairs, 2010). Corresponding preventive counterterrorism measures, enforcement mandates and monitoring capabilities exist, but their real power is limited. Furthermore, as the post-September 11 momentum wanes, garnering international support to update and strengthen CTF grows more difficult. For example, Security Council UNSCR 1267 requires UN member states to freeze funds and enforce a travel ban against entities and individuals known to be associated with the Taliban and al-Qaeda. Yet, a fierce controversy over a lack of transparency in the nomination of individuals to this consolidated list, and the inability of individuals to challenge their status as Taliban or al-Qaeda associates, significantly weakened its potency. European nations in particular protested that the European Convention on Human Rights dictates that individuals are entitled to due process and procedural protections before having their assets frozen as directed by UNSCR 1267. As such, in 2007, only eight names were added to the list, and significant assets have not been frozen since 2004. Other commonly cited problems with the Consolidated List include a large number of listed individuals and organizations lacking basic address information, the continued existence of deceased individuals on the list, and the lack of fundamental information related to entities associated with al-Qaeda.
Despite success in mitigating the risks in formal financial systems, policing finances in informal channels is an increasingly daunting task. Hawala systems, cash couriers, and donations to charity diverted to fund terrorism are nearly impossible to track. Furthermore, terrorists have adapted to circumvent official financial channels, and operate as non-state actors in contrast to the pre-9/11 era when most groups relied on state sponsorship. Evidence indicates that terrorists increasingly resort to intellectual property crime (such as selling pirated DVDs), extortion, kidnapping, and drug trafficking to raise revenue (CTITF, 2009). The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration estimates that up to 60 percent of foreign terrorist organizations may be involved in trafficking. Hezbollah, the Taliban, al-Qaeda, and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia are all known to be involved in the global drug trade-from overseeing production in Afghanistan to enforcing trade routes in West Africa to facilitating ties with criminal groups in South America.
To address this growing nexus between crime and terrorism, UNSCR 1456 explicitly instructs that terrorists must be prevented from harnessing criminal acts, but the resolution fails to provide any means to achieve this goal. The UN Office of Drugs and Crime administers the Global Program against Money-Laundering, Proceeds of Crime and the Financing of Terrorism (GPML). A February 2011 evaluation of GPML noted the general success but also the limited reach and funding of the program, highlighting the particular effectiveness of a mentoring program, which stations CTF experts in developing nations to advise governments as they collect financial intelligence and prosecute illicit activities.

Conclusion
In conclusion, the current efforts and outcomes of the UN Counterterrorism Committee (CTC), Counterterrorism Executive Directorate(CTED), Global Counterterrorism Strategy, and Group of Eight all bring something to the table, but fail to add up to a comprehensive regime. The international community should develop a global counterterrorism body. Proponents note that, without a strong mechanism for monitoring and enforcing standing counterterrorism norms and laws, the international regime for combating terrorism will remain fragmented (Rosand, 2007). With a global counter terror body, the actions of uncooperative states could be addressed and capacity-building efforts-currently scattered across bilateral and multilateral relationshipscould be brought under a single structure. If based outside the UN Security Council, such an organization could alleviate some of the tensions between the global North and South by encouraging a comprehensive and coordinated approach that places emphasis on values shared equally among member states, including security aspects, socioeconomic factors, and the human rights agenda. Furthermore, a counterterrorism body with a broad framework and global legitimacy would likely cultivate progress toward a parallel, comprehensive convention