© Copyright by Polski Instytut Spraw Międzynarodowych, Warszawa 2013

Editor-in-chief: Marcin Zaborowski

Managing editor: Kacper Rękawek

Copy editors: Brien Barnett, Anthony Casey

Proof-reading: Katarzyna Staniewska

Cover design: Malwina Kühn

Typeset: Dorota Dołęgowska

Contributors:

Richard English—Bishop Wardlaw Professor of Politics and Director of the Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence, University of St Andrews

Ann-Sophie Hemmingsen—research fellow at the Danish Institute for International Studies

Samuel Arbe—research fellow at the Slovak Foreign Policy Association

Wojciech Grabowski—assistant professor at the Political Science Institute at Gdansk University

Iva Kornfein—research assistant at the Institute for International Relations, Zagreb

Karolina Libront—PhD candidate at the University of Warsaw, Institute of International Relations

Ryszard Machnikowski—associate professor at the Faculty of International and Political Studies of the University of Lodz

Iztok Prezelj—research fellow and assistant professor of Security and Defence Studies at the

Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ljubljana

Peter Marton—lecturer at Corvinus University in Budapest

Dario Cristiani—Tubitak Visiting Research Fellow at Fatih University in Istanbul; reads his PhD in International Politics of the Mediterranean at King’s College in London

Philipp Munch—PhD student at the University of Munster

Asta Maskaliunaite—lecturer in War and Conflict Studies at the Baltic Defence College, Tartu

Ahmed El-Buckley—diplomat with the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs

Teun van Dongen—strategic analyst and PhD researcher at Hague Centre for Strategic Studies

Eman Ragab—researcher at Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies

Raimonds Rublovskis—lecturer in Riga Stradins University and Research Fellow of the Latvian

Institute of International Affairs

Roxana Apalaghie—research manager at the Middle East Political and Economic Institute in Bucharest

Dorota Liszczyk—analyst at the Polish Institute of International Affairs

Ryszarda Formuszewicz—analyst at the Polish Institute of International Affairs

Publisher: Polski Instytut Spraw Międzynarodowych (The Polish Institute of International Affairs)

ul. Warecka 1a, 00-950 Warszawa; tel. +48 22 556 80 00; fax +48 22 556 80 99; e-mail: pqia@pism.pl

ISSN 1230-4999

The views expressed in The Polish Quarterly of International Affairs are solely those of the authors.

The Polish Quarterly of International Affairs is regularly presented in the catalogue of International Current Awareness Services, in Ulrich’s International Periodical Directory, and in International Political Science Abstracts/Documentation Politique Internationale. Selected articles are included in the International Bibliography of the Social Sciences.

Virtualo Sp. z o.o.

A Note from the Editors

This Special Issue of The Polish Quarterly of International Affairs includes contributions from future speakers and participants of the NATO Advanced Research Workshop (ARW) “The Perseverance of Terrorism: Focus on Leaders.” The workshop will be held 24-26 April 2013 in Belgrade, Serbia. PISM analyst Kacper Rękawek serves as co-director of the ARW along with Marko Milosevic of the Belgrade Centre for Security Policy (BCSP).

The objectives of the ARW are as follows: 1. to assess the longevity and perseverance of the terrorist threat to both NATO members and NATO partner countries; 2. to establish the extent to which a terrorist threat is dependent on the leadership of a terrorist group, organisation or network; 3. to disseminate knowledge and exchange information about the recent state of scholarship and expertise related to countering terrorism; 4. to establish long-lasting links and networks amongst workshop participants; 5. to strengthen the links between academia and the think tank community; 6. to provide participants with a platform of contact with the world’s most established terrorism experts; 7. to critically assess the existing knowledge related to countering terrorism and to identify gaps; 8. to identify challenges to policy-oriented research on leadership of terrorist groups, organisations and networks in the post-bin Laden age; 9. to offer a structured set of solutions to counter-terrorism practitioners on how to approach the issue of leadership in terrorist groups, organisations and networks, and how to address this issue in the most efficient manner; 10. to produce guidelines and ideas for future research avenues in the field of terrorism studies. More information on the ARW, including the information sheet and speaker’s bios, is available at: www.pism.pl/Research/Projects/PISM-is-administering-a-NATO-grant-from-the-science-for-peace-and-security-programme-sps.

RICHARD ENGLISH
Introduction

It is arguable that terrorism research has been transformed even more than terrorism itself during the years since the atrocity of 9/11. This excellent collection of papers reflects on some of the more exciting trends that have developed, interrogates some of the more angular problems that persist, and draws deeply on case-study expertise in order to move numerous debates on terrorism and counter-terrorism very helpfully forward.

The subjects covered here are not all ones that will appeal to the squeamish. Does “decapitation” of terrorist leaderships work? If so, why, and under what circumstances, and at what cost? Is the integration of terrorists into state networks and structures justified and effective as a counter-terrorist tactic? How far should we concentrate on terrorist leaders anyway? The case studies range from Egypt to Algeria to Spain to France to Denmark. Such impressive balance helps avoid some of the problems that have hindered terrorism research in recent years, such as an overemphasis on Al Qaeda (there are probably now more people studying Al Qaeda than are actually in it), or the lack of scrutiny of those policies which have in practice worked rather well against non-state terrorist groups.

Historically, terrorism has changed world politics much more powerfully through the provocation of large-scale state reactions than it has through its own (admittedly pernicious and blood-spattered) directly violent effects. Both the 20th and 21st centuries began with incidents of terrorist violence, state reactions to which transformed politics and international relations. This was clearly far more deleterious in the case of the First World War than that of the War on Terror, but the broad and unavoidable point remains: it is state responses to terrorist atrocities that provide the most important variable in this antiphonal relationship as it changes world history in various ways.

And the connection between terrorists and counter-terrorists is indeed relational, mutually shaping, and even intimate. All scholars of terrorism who have worked close-up to their subjects and who have also dealt with counter-terrorist actors recognise the mutual yet hostile understanding that can develop between terrorists and counter-terrorists during periods of cat-and-mouse conflict. The challenge for scholars is to try to draw out from such attritional patterns of engagement historical lessons that will allow us to fast-forward towards effective policies and towards limiting human damage; this will avoid our stumbling bloodily towards answers for which we already had the information to grasp amid the emergent crises themselves.

These impressive papers, authored by participants of the NATO Advanced Research Workshop (NATO, ARW 9884495: “The Perseverance of Terrorism: Focus on Leaders”) and gathered together here by the co-director of the Workshop, the managing editor of The Polish Quarterly of International Affairs and a pioneering young Polish scholar, Dr. Kacper Rękawek, make a significant and valuable contribution to that process of understanding.