As they say, “You have to fight fire with fire.” Indeed, it looks like terrorism will only meet its end at the hands of those who know how to terrorise terrorists, how to make them question their criminal beliefs and how to shake their unbounded conviction in their ultimate victory. The terrorist phenomenon we face may be unique in human history. True, the world has long experienced it through assassinations and the sabotaging of stable societies. But it was not until the 1970s that there emerged terrorists who were part of sprawling organisations with a global nature, in terms of recruitment, propaganda and operations. Those tiny “cells” of the past that worked to wreak terror here and there have grown into huge armies that have seized control of vast tracts of land. They use advanced technology and their chief weapon is to disseminate the culture of death, because they have declared war on life. The point here is not to trace the evolution of terrorism, but rather to underscore the fact that the “war against terrorism” must teach terrorists how to fear, to cringe and to continually doubt their ability to attain their ends. It needs to sap their self-confidence and the combat prowess of individuals who think they wear halos and are enveloped in sacred auras. We need to admit that the military knowhow of most countries in the world is based to a considerable extent on their experiences in conventional wars: World Wars I and II, the Korean War, the Arab-Israeli wars, the Iran-Iraq War, the war to liberate Kuwait and the US invasion of Iraq. These experiences combined left their imprint (along with many technological advancements) on the armies of those countries that are currently taking part in the war against terrorism. The cumulative expertise, here, is defined by combat formations with increased fire power and, in the best of cases, enhanced manoeuvrability and the capacity to take the enemy by surprise and take out identified enemy targets in the drive to erode the enemy's combat efficacy. Generally, the focus is specifically on the destruction of “equipment” — artillery, tanks, aircraft, etc — so as incapacitate the enemy and force him to yield to what he had previously found unacceptable. In the war against terrorism that “equipment” factor does not exist. Four-wheel-drive SUVs and the light artillery the terrorists carry do not rank as serious military hardware. What is serious are the terrorists themselves, with their capacities to suddenly vanish and just as suddenly re-emerge, and their grim determination to sow fear and terror in civilian areas and sometimes in combat zones, as occurred during the “invasion” of Mosul. The war against terrorism belongs to a new kind of warfare that has to contend with combatants of a different sort. These are not the guerrilla warriors that we saw during the Vietnam War and the Algerian war of liberation. Those combatants enjoyed the cover of true popular support and were motivated by national and patriotic values. The terrorists, by contrast, do not have that special bond with the people. They are a select sect of individuals so brainwashed by religious fascism that they have lost all connection to life. The US's experience with fighting terrorism was shaped by a phase of using conventional forms of combat in Afghanistan and Iraq which, in turn, compelled it to search for new means. These now come under the heading of “counterterrorism”. The vanguard of this strategy is the special forces, with their expertly trained personnel, their high-precision equipment and the grit needed to penetrate terrorist locations, to engage with the terrorists and kill them. The strategy also relies on a network of accurate intelligence and the type of weapons that can settle the outcome of a face-to-face contest in seconds. In a battle of this type, there is no such thing as a prisoner of war. Terrorists do not recognise the concept. This military strategy has succeeded in penetrating Mosul and Raqqa and, sometimes, terrorist strongholds in Somalia. Most recently, it made its mark in Libya when it took out around 50 terrorists in retribution for the terrorist attacks in Tunisia and in response to Islamic State (IS) group intentions to establish an alternative base in Libya in the event that its so-called caliphate straddling Syria and Iraq collapses. The chief difference between the US Special Forces and terrorists is that the former function within an organised military framework and bring overwhelming firepower appropriate to this new type of warfare, while the latter most commonly believe that the power of belief is enough. Accordingly, the coalition's aerial operations against terrorism, with their constant use of surveillance drones and the sustained bombardment of previously identified and photographed targets, is part of the process of instilling fear in the terrorist group and keeping it under perpetual pressure. In this context, perhaps IS's creation of a “state” was not all bad, as it generated large assemblies of terrorists in a certain place on the ground, thereby making them easier to identify and eliminate. While this vulnerability may have helped increase the speed and accuracy of operations by US Special Forces' marksmen, it should be borne in mind that such forces require fighters of a special calibre who are trained in particularly tough and gruelling conditions. Arab armies were probably taken by surprise when terrorist groups shifted their operations from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Somalia to the heart of the Arab world in the midst of the revolutions and turmoil of the past few years. In a way, Arab military thought is strongly influenced by the various experiences in resistance against colonialism, the Arab-Israeli confrontations, and the occasional limited and brief inter-Arab conflicts. As for terrorism, it took the form of major attacks, but these were not systematic and they did not seem to have a clear political agenda other than to cause disruption, acquire notoriety, and inflict a form of blackmail that aimed to disseminate religious fascism. Today the phenomenon has acquired a geopolitical and geostrategic nature connected with organisations and states with expansionist ambitions. This development, in turn, requires a major restructuring of armed forces in a way that gives special forces a far more important place than they currently occupy. Before the October 1973 War, and in light of the bitter experience of the June 1967 War, Egypt discovered the critical need to build its aerial defences to counter its strategic imbalance in air force power. It therefore established a special leadership for that task that then became an important part of the Egyptian Armed Forces. In like manner, what is needed today is a special command in all Arab armies taking part in the war against terrorism that is built on professional volunteer soldiers equipped with the necessary technology and intelligence to undertake the task of terrorising terrorists, wherever they exist and wherever they proclaim their barbaric intentions. Such special forces corps could, conceivably, be created in every country that is to form the kernel of the “Joint Arab Force”, talk of which appears to have vanished from the news recently. But whatever our thoughts on this subject, the actions we take in Syria and Libya this year will largely shape the future of us all.
The writer is chairman of the board, CEO, and director of the Regional Centre for Strategic Studies.
