RAND Review
Five Years After 9/11
Grassroots Defenses
Community Leaders, Businesses, and Citizens Can Help Prevent Suicide Attacks
By Bruce Hoffman
Bruce Hoffman holds the RAND corporate chair in counterterrorism and counterinsurgency and is director of the RAND Washington office until September 2006. This essay is drawn from his new book, Inside Terrorism (revised and expanded edition).
Suicide tactics have been adopted by a growing number of terrorist organizations around the world because the tactics are shocking, deadly, cost-effective, and very difficult to stop. There are only two requirements that an organization must be able to satisfy to get into the game: a willingness to kill and a willingness to die. Indeed, it is the ease and simplicity of suicide bombings that make them so appealing to terrorists.
The challenge in responding to suicide terrorism is not to fall victim to the psychological paralysis and sense of defenselessness or powerlessness that the terrorists hope to achieve. With the proper attention, focus, preparations, and training, this threat can be countered.
Suicide bombers are rarely lone outlaws. They are preceded by long logistical trains. |
Perhaps most important is the realization that suicide terrorism is an instrument of war that is not going to end suddenly, so we in the West need to accept that a long struggle faces us. Suicide terror attacks are rational acts undertaken as part of a deliberately calculated and orchestrated campaign to undermine confidence in government and leadership, to crush popular morale, and to spread fear and intimidation. Responding to suicide terrorism must therefore be equally as calculated and just as instrumental in spurring contrary reactions.
Only by preparing for this threat before terrorists launch it can we effectively defend ourselves against both the psychological and the physical damage that such acts are designed to unleash. The police, the military, and intelligence agencies can take steps beginning far ahead in time and distance from a potential attack and ending at the moment and site of an actual attack. Although the importance of the following steps is widely recognized, they have been implemented unevenly by many countries, including the United States.
Understand the terrorists’ operational environment. Suicide bombers are rarely lone outlaws. They are preceded by long logistical trains. Thus, we should focus not just on suspected bombers but on the infrastructure required to launch and sustain the bombing campaigns. This essential spadework will lead to nothing, however, if concerted efforts are not made to circulate this information quickly and systematically within police forces, across regional jurisdictions, and among other government authorities charged with protection and defense against terrorist attack.
Develop strong confidence-building ties with the communities from which terrorists are most likely to come or in which they are most likely to hide, and mount communications campaigns to eradicate community support. The most useful intelligence comes from places where terrorists conceal themselves and seek to establish their infrastructure. Law enforcement officers should cultivate cooperation by building strong ties with community leaders, including elected officials, civil servants, clerics, businessmen, and teachers, and thereby enlist their assistance.
Encourage businesses from which terrorists can obtain bomb-making components to alert authorities of large or unusual purchases of such items as ammonium nitrate fertilizer or the pipes, batteries, wires, and chemicals commonly used to fabricate explosives. Information about customers who simply inquire about any of these materials can also be extremely useful to police officers. Companies that either sell or distribute materials that can be used in the construction of a terrorist device must be instructed to identify and report suspicious activity to the authorities.
Family and friends carry the coffin of 16-year-old Daniel Wultz during his funeral in Weston, Fla., on May 16, 2006. He was having lunch at a restaurant in Tel Aviv, Israel, on April 17 when a Palestinian suicide bomber detonated about 10 pounds of explosives at the entrance. Wultz died May 14 in an Israeli hospital. |
Force terrorists to pay more attention to their organizational and personal security than to planning and carrying out attacks. Specialized counterterrorism units, dedicated specifically to identifying and targeting the intelligence-gathering and reconnaissance activities of terrorist organizations, should be established within existing law enforcement agencies. Separate units should be formed and trained in community relations and assigned to be attentive to places — such as community centers, social clubs, schools, and religious institutions — at which organizations frequently recruit new members and bombers.
Make sure that ordinary materials do not become shrapnel. Ensure that windows on buses and subway cars are shatterproof and that seats and other accoutrements are not easily dislodged or splintered. Buses can be outfitted with barriers to make entry through rear exit doors impossible and to enable the driver to stop a suspicious person from entering the front door. Explosives sensors can also be installed at the point where passengers step up into the bus from the street.
Enlist the support of citizens in remaining alert for suspicious behavior of people on or around likely attack sites (buses, subways, historical landmarks, embassies, consulates, and well-known buildings) and in being aware of packages or bags left unattended at public venues. Although public awareness campaigns of this type have been instituted in some U.S. cities, in many cases the campaigns are insufficiently advertised, or they warn citizens simply to “be aware,” providing a toll-free telephone number without advising specifically what citizens should be aware of. Better educational campaigns are occurring in Israel today and were carried out in London from the 1970s to the 1990s during the bombing campaign of the Irish Republican Army.
Teach law enforcement awareness — what to do at the moment of an attack or attempted attack. Rigorous police training is needed for identifying a potential suicide bomber, confronting a suspect, and responding to and securing the area around an attack site in the event of an explosion. In the aftermath of a blast, the police must determine whether emergency medical crews and firefighters may enter the site. Concerns about a follow-up attack can dictate that first responders be held back until the area is secured.
An effective defense against suicide terrorism must be as nimble, flexible, and adaptive as are terrorist planning, reconnaissance, and attacks. Law enforcement cannot rest on past laurels in the areas of plans, procedures, and policies but must keep abreast of historical, existing, emergent, and probable future terrorist targeting patterns and modi operandi. 
Related Reading
Inside Terrorism, Bruce Hoffman, New York: Columbia University Press, revised and expanded edition, 2006, 456 pp., 24 halftones, ISBN 0-231-12698-0 hardbound, ISBN 0-231-12699-9 paperback.
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