Counterterrorism in Belgium: Key challenges and policy options. Egmont Paper 89, October 2016

From the Introduction. Some days can never be forgotten. Tuesday, 22 March, started just like any other day of any other week, as another grey morning followed another cold night in Belgium. But at exactly 7:58, that morning turned into a living nightmare. Two individuals detonated powerful bombs in the departure hallway of Brussels Airport. One hour later, at 9:11 a.m., a third explosion in the Brussels subway confirmed that Belgium was under attack. Thirty-two people died, and more than 300 were injured on that tragic day. For most Belgian citizens and residents, this was more than a tragedy; it was a traumatic event. Many could relate with the victims or with the location of the attacks. Most people still recall exactly where they were, and what they were doing at the moment they heard the news

Mobilising Uncertainty and the Making of Responsible Sovereigns

The past few decades have witnessed a fundamental change in the perception of threats to the security of states and individuals. Issues of security are no longer primarily framed in terms of threats posed by an identifiable, conventional enemy. Instead, post-Cold War security policies have emphasised the global and radically uncertain nature of threats such as environmental degradation, terrorism and financial risks. What are the implications of this transformation for one of the constitutive principles of international society: state sovereignty? Existing literature has provided two possible answers to this question. The first focuses on the alleged need for states to seek international cooperation and to relax claims of national sovereignty. In Ulrich Beck's terminology, this would amount to a transformation of sovereign states into cosmopolitan states. The second takes the opposite position: in response to uncertain threats states rely on their sovereign prerogatives to take exceptional measures and set aside provisions of positive law. In Beck's terminology, this would amount to the creation of a surveillance state. None of these two answers, however, does justice to the complex relation between sovereignty, power and (international) law. As this article will show, the invocation of radical uncertainty has led to a transformation in sovereignty that cannot be captured in terms of the cosmopolitan/surveillance dichotomy. What is at stake is a more fundamental transformation of the way in which sovereignty is used to counter threats. Based on a study of the UN Counterterrorism Committee, this article demonstrates how state sovereignty is used as a governmental technology that aims to create proactive, responsible subjects. © 2011 British International Studies Association

How the War Was ‘One’: Countering violent extremism and the social dimensions of counter-terrorism in Canada.

The current global “war on terror” highlights a fundamental quandary for all liberal democracies seeking to counter the violent extremism of their own citizens while maintaining civic rights and freedoms. This challenge accompanies a transformation in international conflict from inter-state war and superpower rivalry, to homegrown terrorism, radicalization-to-violence, Internet propaganda, and targeting and recruitment of vulnerable persons. These new threats shift the battlefield, as traditionally defined, to the home front, as extremist violence is nurtured by and perpetrated within public spaces, such as schools, places of religious worship, civil society and the home. Today, violence emanates from within liberal democratic society and its extremist motivations bypass the very institutions that would otherwise support civic rights, freedoms and multiculturalism. As such, attempts to counter extremist violence must appeal to the political, social, cultural, religious and familial aspects of human behavior alongside a parallel shift in efforts to keep citizens safe within their own social spaces. In recent years, Canada has been introduced to home grown and lone individual terrorism with the cases of attack against armed forces personnel in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu and Ottawa in 2014. This article identifies the social dimensions of counter-terrorism in the Canadian context, a propitious case by which to evaluate different approaches to countering violent extremism. Canadian initiatives - simultaneously proliferating and in their infancy – raise a host of questions about counter-terrorism in liberal democratic countries. For example, why do individuals radicalize-to-violence in rights-based and multicultural societies? How and when can the liberal democratic state best temper the radicalization process in ways that are effective and procedurally just? What state-society balance works best to counter radicalized viewpoints? Who are the appropriate stakeholders in mounting and monitoring counter radicalization programs? What risks accompany government engagement with communities against terrorist activity? And what are the appropriate measures of success? These questions lay the groundwork for an empirical analysis of prevalent programs in Canada against the background of the “war on terror”, multiculturalism, racial profiling, community policing and other contemporary Canadian values

Law vs. War: Competing Approaches to Fighting Terrorism

The authors address one of the fundamental assumptions underlying the conduct of the War on Terrorism - the nature of our enemy, whether perpetrators of terrorist activities are criminals or soldiers (combatants). Although the United States recognizes that terrorist acts are certainly illegal, it has chosen to treat perpetrators as combatants; but much of the world, including many of our traditional allies, have opted for a purely legalistic approach. Disagreement about assumptions is not the only basis for divergent policies for confronting terrorism, but certainly explains much of our inability to agree on strategies to overcome what we recognize as a serious common and persistent international problem. Their insights into how our respective cultures and histories influence our definitions, assumptions, and subsequent policy decisions can assist us to respect and learn from competing strategies. They correctly surmise that our current international struggle is too important for us to ignore assumptions underlying our own and competing ideas.https://press.armywarcollege.edu/monographs/1740/thumbnail.jp

The Dark Web Phenomenon: A Review and Research Agenda

The internet can be broadly divided into three parts: surface, deep and dark. The dark web has become notorious in the media for being a hidden part of the web where all manner of illegal activities take place. This review investigates how the dark web is being utilised with an emphasis on cybercrime, and how law enforcement plays the role of its adversary. The review describes these hidden spaces, sheds light on their history, the activities that they harbour – including cybercrime, the nature of attention they receive, and methodologies employed by law enforcement in an attempt to defeat their purpose. More importantly, it is argued that these spaces should be considered a phenomenon and not an isolated occurrence to be taken as merely a natural consequence of technology. This paper contributes to the area of dark web research by serving as a reference document and by proposing a research agenda

Recommendations and Report of the Task Force on US Drone Policy

This report represents a preliminary effort to offer analysis and recommendations that could help shape and guide US UAV policy going forward. It looks at the military and national security benefits of UAV technologies, analyzes our current approaches to UAV development and export, and seeks to contextualize the strategic questions relating to the use of lethal UAVs outside traditional battlefields. Ultimately, it offers eight detailed recommendations for overhauling UAV strategy; improving oversight, accountability and transparency; developing forward-looking international norms relating to the use of lethal force in nontraditional settings; and devising sound UAV export control and research and development policies

"What can be infinitely destroyed is what can infinitely survive" :literary and filmic representations of political torture from Algiers to Guantánamo

PhD ThesisThis thesis takes the post-9/11 Anglo-American torture debate as the territory for its analysis of the multiple and overlapping ways that cultural representations are implicated in political discourses regarding the practice of political torture by Western liberal democracies in the twenty-first century. Firstly, it makes the historical-political claim that the post-9/11 torture debate reveals the continuing existence and influence not only of colonial discourses and representations but of colonial political constellations and colonial forms of violence. Drawing on Giorgio Agamben’s work on the state of exception, I argue that despite claims of the newness of the post-Cold War geopolitical paradigm, political torture in the twenty-first century takes familiar concentrationary and disciplinary forms. Further, specific colonial discourses continue to frame contemporary debates about political torture; using the Algerian War of Independence as a lens, the thesis demonstrates this continuity through original readings of The Centurions (1960), The Battle of Algiers (1966), and The Little Soldier (1960/63). The dominant way that torture has been discussed in the context of the post-9/11 Global War on Terrorism is in terms that justify or normalise it. This thesis reads the revitalisation of colonial discourses in the second series of 24 (2002-3) as evidence of this. Further, it argues that anti-torture human rights texts such as Rendition (2007) have provided inadequate resistance to justificatory discourse. Nonetheless, narratives that successfully oppose political torture are possible, and this thesis sketches the beginnings of a canon of them: drawing on the phenomenological ethics of Emmanuel Levinas to perform readings of representations of Abu Ghraib – Standard Operating Procedure (2008) – and Guantánamo Bay – The Road to Guantánamo (2006), Guantánamo: Honor Bound to Defend Freedom (2004) and Guantánamo (2004) – the project explores the ways that ethical address, testimony, and an activist focus on facts can produce meaningfully resistant anti-torture narratives.Arts and Humanities Research Counci

Enhancing surveillance through the PATRIOT Act and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Amendment Act, and their impact on civil liberties: can human security be compromised by securitization?

Dissertação de mestrado em Relações InternacionaisThe post-9/11 period, particularly in the US, is demarcated by exacerbated security concerns and the emergence of a state of exception that marked the proliferation of exceptional legislative measures. The enhancement of surveillance surfaced as one the main tools to prevent future terrorist attacks. Therefore, the analysis of this dissertation will focus specifically on exceptional provisions that reinforce surveillance capabilities of American authorities: section 215 of the PATRIOT Act and section 702 of the FAA. Focusing on the US case-study and combining the securitization theory and human security framework, this dissertation intends to demonstrate that an intensification of terrorism securitization occurred after September 2001 generating exceptional legislative measures, whose impact upon civil liberties, and subsequently human security was felt. A contextual operationalization of human security is thus presented, defining it as the freedom from material violence – physical threats to security – and the freedom from immaterial violence – the disrespect for civil and political rights. The transnational character of terrorism, the ever-increasing dynamics of globalization and technological development have all contributed to the increment of transnational mass surveillance. Consequently, the aim is to focus on two groups of individuals, United States and European Union citizens, in order to scrutinize the domestic and transnational impact of these legislative provisions on civil liberties. The enactment of the PATRIOT Act and the FAA – and of particular interest for this dissertation, sections 215 and 702, respectively – are thus justified in a context of terrorism securitization associated with a nexus of exceptionality. The Snowden disclosures, on June 2013, of several secret surveillance programs once again brought to the forefront the scope of section 215 and section 702, as well as their impact upon civil liberties through the justification of PRISM and the Bulk Collection of Telephony Metadata Programs. Hence, in order to scrutinize the impact of these surveillance-enhancing sections on US and EU citizens’ civil liberties, a comparison will be made of its provisions and the fundamental guarantees of rights established; this with reference not only to the US Bill of Rights, but also to European legal tools, such as the European Convention on Human Rights, the EU Charter of Fundamental rights and the EU-US agreements on data transfers.O pós-11 de Setembro é marcado, particularmente nos Estados Unidos, por preocupações securitárias exacerbadas e pela emergência de um estado de exceção que contribuiu para a proliferação de medidas legislativas excecionais. O aperfeiçoamento da vigilância emergiu como um dos principais instrumentos de prevenção face a futuros ataques terroristas. Assim, esta dissertação foca-se especificamente em provisões excecionais que reforçam as capacidades de vigilância das autoridades norte-americanas: a secção 215 do PATRIOT Act e a seção 702 do Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Amendment Act. Tendo por base o estudo de caso dos EUA, e combinando os quadros teóricos da segurança humana e da teoria da securitização, esta dissertação pretende demonstrar que uma intensificação da securitização do terrorismo ocorreu após o 11 de Setembro, gerando medidas legislativas excecionais, cujos impactos nas liberdades civis, e subsequentemente na segurança humana, foram sentidos. Uma operacionalização contextual da segurança humana é assim apresentada, definindo-a não só como a liberdade de violência material – ameaças físicas à segurança – mas também como a liberdade de violência imaterial – o desrespeito pelos direitos cívicos e políticos. O caráter transnacional do terrorismo, as crescentes dinâmicas de globalização, bem como o desenvolvimento tecnológico têm contribuído para o incremento da vigilância transnacional em massa. Consequentemente, o objetivo desta dissertação assenta em focar dois grupos de indivíduos: cidadãos norte-americanos e cidadãos da União Europeia, a fim de analisar o impacto doméstico e transnacional destas provisões legislativas nas liberdades cívicas. O estabelecimento do PATRIOT Act e do FAA – e, de particular relevância para esta dissertação, as seções 215 e 702, respetivamente – é assim justificado num contexto de securitização do terrorismo com um nexo de excecionalidade. As revelações de Edward Snowden, em Junho de 2013, relativas à existência de inúmeros programas secretos de vigilância trouxeram mais uma vez para o domínio do debate público o escopo das seções 215 e 702, bem como o seu impacto nas liberdades civis através da justificação de programas como o PRISM e o Bulk Collection of Telephony Metadata Program. Deste modo, no sentido de descortinar o impacto destas medidas impulsionadoras de vigilância nas liberdades civis de cidadãos norte-americanos e cidadãos da União Europeia, uma comparação será estabelecida entre as suas provisões e as garantias de direitos fundamentais estabelecidas na Carta dos Direitos norte-americana e nos instrumentos legais europeus, tais como a Convenção Europeia dos Direitos Humanos, a Carta dos Direitos Fundamentais da União Europeia e os acordos transatlânticos de transferência de dados