Saudi Arabia: Islam and Saudi Arabia’s counterterrorism strategy

Saudi Arabia’s counter-terrorism strategy of the first decade on the twenty first century has been widely acclaimed as highly successful and presented as an example for other Muslim countries. The strategy was developed after the bomb attacks of AlQaida on the Arabian Peninsula in 2003. The program is however deeply religious and is based on the reconversion of terrorists from a Jihadi-Salafism to a quietist and law abiding version of Salafism. The chapter goes into the religious terminology Saudi counter-terrorism program by labelling terrorism as religious “deviation,” radicals as people who have been led by their “passions” and are no longer rational and have diverted form the “middle way”. The article also shows how prominent religious scholars have become deeply involved in the state counter-terrorism program of “intellectual security”.

Indonesia: Political violence and counterterrorism: Disputed boundaries of a postcolonial state

This chapter argues that, contrary to the rhetoric of the War on Terror, Indonesia’s counterterrorism policies are neither specific responses to transnational terror networks, nor are they simply a byproduct of the post-9/11 era. We argue, instead, that counterterrorism policies in Indonesia cannot be disentangled from historical state reactions to internal security challenges—ranging from social violence to terrorism and secessionism—since the country’s independence in 1945. While these different conflicts had diverse political, ideological, religious and territorial characteristics, they are united as disputes over the basic institutions and boundaries of the state. In light of this history, the Indonesian state’s response to contemporary political violence—such as the 2002 Bali bombings and the threat of transnational terrorism, allegedly centered on the Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) group—should be reexamined as part of these broader, historical trends in state responses to internal violence. We further argue that while the state, in seeking to maintain its territorial integrity and defend its institutions, has responded in a variety of ways to these conflicts, the particular domestic tools of coercion and repression used in President Suharto’s authoritarian New Order—from arbitrary imprisonment to forced disappearances and an all-out military campaign—have contributed to the rise of JI and its splinter groups and left a legacy of mixed responses to terror. Our examination of the evolution of internal political violence and state counterterrorism demonstrates that terrorism and counterterrorism in Indonesia are rooted within this context of the disputed postcolonial state. As such, state responses to terrorism and political violence in Indonesia have taken both a different form and function when compared to the reactions of the United States and United Kingdom. While the latter states committed their militaries abroad in an effort to exterminate foreign militants, our analysis demonstrates that the state has crafted responses to various sources of domestic violence—including different secessionist movements and JI—on an ad hoc basis and, in doing so, has utilized different security institutions, from the military to the police.

Malaysia: Adapting to the dynamic changes of terrorist threats

Threats posed by the current religiously inspired terrorist groups leave Malaysia with no choice but to adapt to new strategies and approaches. Not only the threats have become more global in terms of networking and influences, but also the use of Islam to justify their attacks produces great challenges to the country and its security enforcement apparatus. At the macro level, Malaysia’s promotion on moderation and wasatiyah, as part of its counterterrorism campaign has been widely accepted by the international community. At home, the campaign of winning heart and mind continues to become an essential strategy of the government. Malaysia’s success in countering major terror threats since independence has also been credited to the role played by the police’s Special Branch (SB) Unit and the existence of preventive laws. Yet when those preventive laws were repealed, amid changing political climate and democracy in the country, the enforcement authorities particularly the police’s Special Branch are forced to re-strategize their intelligence gatherings and to learn vigorously the legal process. They are forced to be equipped with higher legal knowledge since the new laws required reasonable evidence to be presented during the trial, failure which could have be resulted in a dismissal of the charges. At the same time, the force is also upgrading its tactical skills and surveillance technology given the current terrorists’ adaptive capability with a loosely connected decentralized network.

Iran: The state and terrorism in Iran

This paper discusses the role of 'terror' and 'terrorism' as an aspect of state policy in Iran during the twentieth century, looking at its historical context both within Qajar Iran and as an aspect of state policy during there French Revolution. The paper critically assesses Iranian state's relationship with the term, as both a perceived victim and perpetrator, and focusses on the application of political violence against both dissidents and political opponents where the term 'terror' is used in Persian as a synonym for assassination. The paper looks at the various justifications for the use of terror and political violence, the legacy of the Rushdie affair and the impact of the US led Global War on Terror on perceptions within Iran.

Algeria: Algeria’s response to violent extremism

Since the 1980s Algeria has had to respond to political extremism. In the wake of the ‘Berber Spring’ in 1980, it had to react to the Bou Yali rebellion. Then, in October 1988, countrywide discontent and an organised Islamist movement challenged the single official political party’s claim to embody the legitimacy of the Algerian revolution by leading the struggle for national independence. In late 1991, the Algerian army, fearing that the Islamist movements might win legislative elections, took control. Within a year it faced a complex insurrection in which some groups sought to restore the electoral process and others attempted to replace the state with a caliphate. Algeria’s strategy and tactics in this struggle have evolved from counter insurgency during its 1990s civil war to suppression of ‘residual terrorism’ afterwards. Although this forced the groups concerned into the Sahara and the Sahel, it did not eliminate them, so Algeria has been forced to attempt to influence group behaviour in Northern Mali, despite pressure from the United States and, latterly, France for direct engagement. One approach has been to organise a regional response despite the tensions between Algeria and Morocco over the Western Sahara. However, the Libyan crisis has forced direct Algerian intervention and pushed the country into reluctant engagement with Western paradigms of confronting non-state terrorism and violence.

India: Counterterrorism in India: An ad hoc response to an enduring and variable threat

The unprecedented overlap between terrorism and insurgency in India represents a key challenge to formulating an understanding of terrorism and counter-terrorism (CT) in this region. This chapter discusses the emergence and evolution of key terrorist threats in the country to illustrate how terrorism in the subcontinent falls into two distinct categories, i.e. ‘pure terrorism’ as practiced by what are best described as ‘incorrigible terrorist groups’ and ‘hybrid threats’, a complex amalgamation of insurgency and terrorism utilised by what are essentially ‘corrigible’ groups. I then discuss how India’s inability to distinguish between these two very different threats results in what tends towards a lethal, kinetic response characteristic of counter-terrorism even as its language remains within a population-centric ‘hearts and minds’ framework more obviously associated with traditional counter-insurgency (COIN). This tendency to ‘act CT but speak COIN’ is a key reason both India’s CT and COIN strategies remain short-sighted, muddled and under-developed. However, newly emergent threats make it imperative that India urgently recalibrate and reconsider these responses.

Japan: Terrorism and counterterrorism in Japan

Japan is unfortunately no stranger to terrorism. Indeed, within the past one hundred fifty years since the Meiji Restoration, the country has experienced political assassinations, kidnappings of innocent citizens, to strikes by apocalyptic millenarian sects. Japanese citizens too have been involved in conducting terrorist attacks, notably in affiliation with Middle Eastern groups. Yet, terrorism and counter-terrorism barely features on academic syllabi within leading Japanese universities. Nor was the term “terrorism” understood as a generic concept until recently in Japan. This chapter seeks to identify historical precedents that shape Japanese perception of terrorism; responses to historical terrorist groups such as the Red Army and Aum Shinri Kyo and the way Japanese authorities identify terrorist threat today, including that emanating from North Korea; the role of the police and the Japan Self Defence Force in resposing to terrorism; and Japan’s response to “global war on terrorism”

Lebanon: Contending notions of terrorism in Lebanon: Politico-legal manoeuvres and political Islam

Explosions, armed actions, and other militant phenomena have been a recurrent feature of Lebanese politics. The divided political landscape across sects and party formations in the absence of a strong executive institutional mechanism in the aftermath of a protracted ‘civil’ war and a hashed-up cessation of hostilities in a turbulent regional environment has all contributed to a climate where violent acts are a way to conduct politics. As a result, the struggle over meaning and naming significantly shapes political struggles and the possibility for compromise in the Lebanon. Conflicting claims as to which acts are labeled terrorism, and how this war on words is integral to the different political struggles plaguing the country involving other regional state and non-state actors. This chapter will look at two important battles at managing claims of terrorism, one regarding the assassination of Prime Minister Rafic Hariri and the establishment of an international tribunal, and the other involving a Islamist targeted campaign waged by Hizbullah against “takfiri” groups such as Al Qaeda and ISIS.

Egypt: Extremism in moderation: Understanding state responses to terrorism in Egypt

The Arab Republic of Egypt has a long history of battling jihadism in the region, and as such presents an interesting case study of counter-terrorism (CT) practices in a non-Western setting. Contrary to the conventional wisdom that reduces the Egyptian state's response to the indiscriminate use of repressive measures, the current case study offers a more nuanced analysis of Egyptian state responses to terrorism that spans the country's history since its independence. Despite repressive measures constituting the backbone of Egyptian state responses to terrorism, their use is much more strategic than is often implied in the literature. As this chapter will demonstrate, a comprehensive CT approach including select soft measures does exist in Egypt, albeit with the goal of maintaining regime interests, as opposed to necessarily eliminating the phenomenon. On the contrary, the analysis that follows suggests that regime longevity is highly dependent on the existence of an extremist opposition, and that a strategy of extremism in moderation is perhaps the most prominent, underlying strategic trend that has emerged from Egyptian CT state practices over the past six decades.

Colombia: The changing meaning of ‘terrorism’in Colombia: A matter of discourse

The use of the concept of terrorism in Colombia, especially regarding who is a terrorist, has changed through the years according to the discourse, making it difficult to understand the phenomenon as a single one. Understanding terrorism, and the responses that the Colombian state has created to address it, requires identifying how specific agents have been categorized as terrorists according to the context. This chapter argues that instead of being an objective and continuous reality through the history of Colombia’s conflicts, terrorism has appeared as a result of the construction of discourses that have positioned specific agents as terror organizations. This categorization is not a simple matter of semantics; it has brought relevant policy implications related to the forms in which the state has responded to violent actors.