‘Israel is key to fighting global terrorism’
German intelligence czar says killers move faster than old sleeper-cell model
“Israel is a key piece in the puzzle” to solving the world’s growing terrorism problem, US Army Brig.-Gen. (ret.) Russell Howard said on Wednesday at the IDC Herzliya Conference on Counter-Terrorism.
Howard made the comment as part of a panel discussion on learning lessons from recent major terrorist attacks around the world.
He expressed confidence about the US’s ability to cope with the ongoing threat, but serious concern that Europe was not up to the job.
The retired general also said that Western Europe has a bigger problem than the US, as in 2015 it had around 5,000 European citizens fighting for Islamist forces in Iraq and Syria, meaning it could have 5,000 battle-hardened terrorists returning to its shores. In contrast, he put the number of American citizens fighting for the Islamists in the same area at a much more manageable 200.
Another panelist, Paul Cruickshank, editor-in-chief of CTC Sentinel, the independent flagship publication of the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, put the number of European-citizen fighters who might return as high as 6,000-9,000.
Friedrich Grommes, head of Directorate TE, International Terrorism and International Organized Crime, at Germany’s BND Federal Intelligence Service, described the threat’s evolution.
In earlier periods, a big concern was “sleeper cells,” composed of terrorists “planted” in a country long ago to rise through a country’s ranks, living normal-seeming lives, until they reached the right position and moment to strike.
Grommes said that currently “there are no real sleeper cells,” as many terrorists move fast, hitting in foreign countries as soon as they have conducted minimal surveillance of targets.
The German intelligence “czar” said this gives Western intelligence much less time in which to identify and catch terrorists, which requires legislation to give them more authority, especially in accessing private data.
He also expressed concern about the complex problems cause by the large number of Syrian migrants who have arrived in Germany, many of who may start out as harmless, but could be radicalized by ISIS while stuck without work during the long wait for their requests for refugee status to be processed.
Prof. Boaz Ganor, dean of the Lauder School of Government at the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya, provided one positive update, noting that in the Facebook era it is finally possible to track and stop some “lone wolf” terrorists by tracking postings which are pro-terrorist groups. Previously, such individuals remained completely under the radar since they had no traceable communications with other terrorists which could be intercepted.
In a later panel discussion on the dilemmas that democracies face when up against asymmetric terrorists who ignore the laws of war, former IDF international law division head Col. (res.) Daniel Reisner started with the controversial statement that “there is no legal requirement in the laws of war for a proportionate response” to being attacked.
Next, he asked about the demand for proportionality – “where is this coming from?” He said that some of it related to the bad public picture of so many Palestinian casualties in the 2014 Gaza war (Operation Protective Edge) compared to a much smaller number of Israeli casualties, but also implied that there were serious legal scholars who were demanding proportional responses in overall fighting of wars who had other agendas.
Reisner’s criticism was at the forest level of general force brought to bear over the course of an entire war. All of this is separate from the set law that a specific attack which harms civilians within a war must not cause disproportionate harm compared to the military advantage it was designed to achieve.
He said “international law doesn’t have answers” to the large and highly relevant questions he raised.
Responding, Emory international law professor Laurie Blank disagreed, saying that “we have well-established frameworks for the use of force,” while acknowledging that often applying those rules to the current challenges of fighting non-state terrorist entities was not an easy task.