Forum (Spotlight Weekly)

Countering State-sponsored Terrorism

By BOAZ GANOR

For many years, terrorism was perceived exclusively as a contest between a non-governmental organization on one side, and a sovereign state on the other. However, during the second half of the twentieth century, various countries made increasing use of terrorism organizations to promote their national interest in the international domain. Where terrorism had been thought of as "the weapon of the weak" - a tool for minority groups, liberation movements, and revolutionary organizations - it has now often become a tool of states and even of superpowers. In some cases, states established "puppet" terrorist organizations whose purpose was to act on the behalf of the sponsoring state, and to represent its positions in domestic or regional fronts. In other cases, states sponsored or supported existing terrorist organizations, thereby creating mutually profitable connections.

The sponsoring state provided its beneficiary terrorist organizations with political support, financial assistance, and other help needed to maintain and expand its struggle until its objectives had been achieved. The sponsor used the beneficiary to perpetrate acts of terrorism as a means of spreading the sponsor's ideology; or in other cases, the sponsor ultimately expected that the beneficiary would seize control of another country from a hostile government.

According to Ray S. Cline and Yonah Alexander, state-sponsored terrorism aims "to achieve strategic ends in circumstances where the use of controversial armed forces is deemed inappropriate, ineffective, too risky, or too difficult." Compared to conventional warfare, terrorism can be an effective, convenient, and generally discrete weapon for attaining state interests in the international realm because:

* It is much cheaper than modern conventional warfare;

* at least until recently, it generally avoided intervention by the superpowers;

* it avoided the risk of escalation to the point where non-conventional weapons might be used against the sponsoring country;

it avoided the danger of defeat in a conventional war;

* it allowed the sponsoring state to pursue its goals without appearing to be an aggressor.

State support for terrorism has led to greater cooperation between terrorist groups throughout the world, even where their ideological affinity was minimal. The Soviet Union was among the first sponsors of a variety of terrorist organizations, either directly or through its satellite states. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the overthrow of Shah, Iran has assumed leadership in the direct and indirect sponsorship of terrorism, both in the level and in the scope of its involvement.

Types of State Involvement in International Terrorism States are involved in terrorism in a variety of ways, from providing various levels of general assistance, to operational aid, to initiating and directing a terrorist organization's activities. The most serious involvement is the direct perpetration of terrorist attacks by official state agencies. We can classify states as "states supporting terrorism" or "terrorist states", according to their level of involvement. This kind of classification is problematic, in that it has become a political weapon used by nations to describe their rivals or by terrorist organizations to describe the actions of opposing countries.

According to the definition proposed by Cline and Alexander, state-sponsored terrorism is the deliberate employment of violence or the threat of use of violence by sovereign† states (or sub-national groups encouraged or assisted by sovereign states) to attain strategic and political objectives by acts in violation of law. These criminal acts are intended to create overwhelming fear in a target population larger than the civilian or military victims attacked or threatened.

The use of phrase, "acts in violation of the law" in this definition is problematic and highlights the difficulties surrounding the issue. Legislation and judicial systems are the products of state action, and are open to state interpretation. As such, when terrorism is defined as infringement of the law, it is made dependent on the subjective nature of legal interpretation. Thus, any nation can deny its involvement in terrorism by claiming that its actions are legal according to its own judicial system. Nor is international law sufficiently developed to be of use in this definition. Furthermore, as noted, there are various kinds of state involvement in terrorism. This means that that states need to be categorized according to their level of involvement in terrorism.

Ideological Support

The most fundamental level of state support for terrorism is "ideological support". Terrorist organization can be convenient instruments for spreading ideological doctrines, particularly revolutionary ones. States such as the former Soviet Union and Iran, which set themselves the operational and strategic aims of spreading their revolutionary ideology (communism in the former case, and Islamic fundamentalism in the latter) found valuable allies in terrorist organizations.

In some cases, radical activists were inspired to found terrorist organizations by a patron regime. In other cases, an established group has accepted the ideological sponsorship of a state in an effort to attain material assistance. In such cases, the terrorist organization is provided with political, ideological or religious indoctrination via agents of the supporting state. Alternately, the group receives training by institutions of the sponsoring state. Examples of this type of support are the various communist terrorists organizations, such as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which enjoyed support from the support from the Soviet Union, and organizations with Islamic fundamentalist outlook such as Hizballah, with close ideological and religious ties to Iran.

Financial Support

A higher level of state support for a terrorist organization is financial support. In order to operate and to grow, a terrorist organization requires large sums of money, which are sometimes unavailable through its own independent resources. In such cases, terrorist organizations rely on the generous support of sponsoring states. Today, Iran is one of the main contributors to terrorist organizations; according to recent reports, Iran's budget for financing terrorist organization is over $100 million annually (of which† $60-70 million annually are transferred to Hizballah). These funds are earmarked to terrorists organizations through the Office of Revolutionary Movements, which also transfers funds to Hamas, the Islamic Jihad, and other organizations.

Military Support

A higher level of aid is the direct providing of military support. Here, the state supplies the terrorist organization with weapons, provides military training, organizes courses for activists, and so on. Iran also falls in this category. For instance, Hassan Salame, a Hamas leader responsible for several suicides attacks in Israel, who was arrested in mid-1996, reported that he had trained in Iran. His disclosure confirms many independent accounts of Iran's extensive military and operational training networks, from which members of terrorist organizations and extremist groups from all over the world benefit.

Direct Involvement in Terrorist Attacks

The highest level of state involvement in terrorism is the direct perpetration of attacks by government agencies. In this case, the state carries out terrorist attacks in order to further its interests, using its own intelligence service and security forces, or people directly responsible for them. Iranian involvement can also be found in this category, specially regarding attacks on Iranian exiles in Europe. For example, in May 1996, an Iranian intelligence agent was arrested in Germany for the murder in Paris of Reza Masluman, a former minister in the Shah regime and a leading member of Iranian opposition, who were gunned down at the Mikonos restaurant in Berlin. Former Iranian president, Abdel Hassan Banisadr, who testified at their trial in Berlin, accused the Iranian leaders, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and Khamenei, of personal involvement in the murders.

(Excerpts from an article published by the International Policy Research Institute for Counter Terrorism, Interdisciplinary Center, Herzliya, Israel)