Last Wednesday a report came out in the news that indicated ‘adapted’ forms of Game Theory could be a useful tool for taking out terrorist networks. Researchers in Tilburg were contracted by the National Coordinator for Counter-Terrorism (NCCT) to check this possibility out, and they came up with a positive result. It picked up some interest around the media but no-one seems to have taken a hard look.

The claim, based on analysing the groups Jemaah Islamiyah (Indonesia) and Al-Qaeda (unspecified), is that game theory can help identify key players in these networks by focusing on particular meeting points and gatherings and seeing how individuals ‘radicalise’. In this way the leadership structure of the networks can be assembled faster than with other methods. Of course, the main conclusion is that Game Theory (and its theorists) should be rapidly drawn into the Counter-Terrorism apparatus in order to improve its effectiveness.

As a rule I hate Game Theory. Well, I don’t hate it, I just dislike its pretensions. It runs on an estimation of probability, a mathematical assessment of the likelihood of certain actions and the conclusions that can be drawn from consistent forms of behaviour. But its the abstraction from reality and the reliance on ‘data’ to make predictions on human behaviour that I can’t go along with. Basing policy on it has always been a problem – and connecting it to ‘national security’ all the more so. During the 60s it took on major significance in the nuclear strategy field as a way to (allegedly) ascertain the moves of the adversary. Then there was the US military’s infamous Project Camelot and the assumption that social change could be predicted using behavioural models. Applying approaches like Game Theory to International Relations has always run up against the problem of why politics doesn’t seem to follow the paths laid out by the models. Humans are just too erratic, and there are too many variables to really clinch the deal.

Ok, this is running ahead a bit. I can see the value of running a scaled-down – adapted – version of Game Theory to focus purely on a terrorist hierachy and radicalisation. But there is still the whiff of opportunism here – and I don’t necessarily trust that other methods can’t draw the same conclusions, or the level of probability that will be applied to ‘identify’ a suspect. The Nottingham Case in the UK is the latest in a long line to demonstrate the knee-jerk response of a security apparatus guided by some form of  ’probability’, not to mention the endless stream of anonymous victims to drone attacks on the Pakistan-Afghan border who, we are led to believe, all belong to Al-Qaeda or its alleged acolytes. In a period where the vast counter-terrorism apparatus of the US and other countries is under scrutiny, the apparatus in the Netherlands could perhaps be looking to expand into this area, and the appeal of government contracts in academia is of course rising in a period of demands for policy-relevance and general cut-backs in university funding. The idea that the answer lies in mathematical models to identify suspects early on is of course also appealing. So one wonders, in a period when the threat level to the Netherlands is limited, as the NCCT says in its latest report, where this may be going.

Food for Thought – The UK Home Office’s own figures on the arrest and conviction of terrorist suspects:

Operation of police powers under the Terrorism Act 2000 and subsequent legislation: Arrests, outcomes and stops and searches Great Britain 2010/11

a.. There were 121 terrorism arrests in 2010/11, down from 178 in 2009/10 and lower than the annual average of 206 since 1 April 2002. Since 11 September 2001 there have been a total of 1,963 terrorism arrests.

b.. Thirty-seven per cent of terrorism arrests in 2010/11 resulted in a charge. Of these, 42 per cent were under terrorism legislation.

c.. In 2010/11 no individuals were held in pre-charge detention for longer than 6 days. Six people have been held for the then maximum period of 28 days, since the extension of the pre-charge detention period in 2006. The maximum period for
pre-charge detention was reduced to 14 days on 25 January 2011.

d.. Two hundred and forty-six suspects have been convicted of a terrorism related offence since 11 September 2001.  All three of those individuals arrested and prosecuted in 2010/11 for terrorism related offences were convicted. Thirteen defendants were awaiting trial as at 31 March 2011.

e.. There were 119 prisoners (both convicted and remanded) at 31 March 2011 classified as terrorists. This total comprised 97 terrorism related prisoners (including 4 historic cases), as well as 22 domestic extremists.

f.. In 2010/11, 9,652 stops and searches were made under section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000, a fall of 91 per cent on 2009/10. This coincides with the repeal of s44 and its replacement with s47a.

g.. In 2010/11 65,684 persons were stopped and examined in a border area in Great Britain under the powers under Schedule 7 Terrorism Act 2000. Of these, 2,288 persons were held for over one hour.

Four times a year the National Coordinator for Counter-terrorism issues a report on the Terrorist Threat Level in the Netherlands (Dreigingsbeeld Terrorisme Nederland). The 20th – DTN20 – was released today.

The summary that gets the most news – for instance on DutchNews.nl - is that the terrorist threat is currently ‘limited’ but that there is a chance of pre-election violence due to a greater political and social polarisation in Dutch society (although comments to the media have emphasised that there are “no concrete indications that anything will happen”). Also, domestic radicalism is minimal (and has been for a while), thanks to lack of leadership, a lack of interest in extremism among the vast majority of Dutch Muslims, and counter-terrorism policy itself. 

However, what is more interesting is how the report characterises the current international situation. There has been a “pluriformity” of threats since the previous report, which involves Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), Al Qaeda in the Lands of the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), the shootings at Fort Hood in Texas, the attempted attack on the Danish cartooonist, and of course the failed NW Airlines bombing over Detroit. The question is to what extent these developments are related. The report doesn’t draw specific lines between them (the closest it comes is by referring several times to the radical imam Al-Awlaki as the latest figure of online inspiration), but instead gives a picture of a series of potential threats that could – that claim to have the intention to – form a genuine threat to Dutch interests at home and abroad. Thats as far as it goes.

The report suggests that AQAP may gain confidence from the Detroit scheme, but it is hard to see how. Shoe-bomber Richard Reid tried to bring down an airliner in late 2001 with the same explosive as Abdulmutallab - PETN – and both failed. What is more, there is eight years between both attempts – eight years to work out how to use PETN, which has not succeeded. Its nasty stuff, but its very difficult to ignite. I agree it would be wrong to get overconfident about this - airline security will never be fail-safe – but this statistic is worth considering.

This sums up the overall view of the report. The Al Qaeda “core” – assuming it still exists – is weakened in both organisation and finance. But this must not lead to exclusion of a mixed bag of threats that are isolated physically, connected in terms of radical ideology, and occasionally able to develop a plan that can cause havoc with confidence in Western security. Threats can rise up “unexpectedly” after a long period of calm. “Jihadists apply a time frame for combatting their enemies that is long in Western perception.” The world is a more dangerous place because its a more uncertain place. We have to take these disparate group like AQAP and AQLM seriously precisely because they can out of the blue produce an Abdulmutallab on an airliner with a bomb. While the White House assessed the failings of its post-9/11 intelligence and security framework, AQAP (and Abdulmutallab himself, in his interviews with the FBI) gleefully spread messages of further attacks to come, involving everything from false body parts to butane gas. The Dutch report is realistic on this situation – “there is no guarantee of security in modern, open societies despite all efforts.” But that can’t stop the effort to try.

Final interesting detail – it used to be that the US right would castigate Western European (failing) immigration as a source of radicalisation and so a source of threat to the United States. ‘Get your house in order’ was the message from Fox and the Washington Times, backed up by academic types like Christopher Caldwell. Well, now its the opposite. The report notes that “increasingly more Americans of foreign descent join the jihad.” While they used to be loners – remember John Walker Lindh? – but now they are getting organised, as the five Americans arrested in Pakistan not long ago show all to well. Where might this go? The report is careful: “this shift underlines, also for the Netherlands, that there are indeed important developments with far-reaching implications despite an unchanged threat level.” Hmmm. ‘There’s something happening here, but you don’t know what it is…….’

(ABC News/Handout/SaharaReporters.Com)

In the Washington Post on 10 January terrorism expert Bruce Hoffman noted the core features of AlQaeda’s latest strategy. Number three was “create divisions within the global alliance arrayed against it by targeting key coalition partners,” and he used the attacks in Madrid 2004 and London 2005 as examples. The Madrid attack of 11 March was certainly  remarkable in its timing and its effects, allegedly contributing to the swing against Aznar’s ruling Partido Popular in the general election three days later. Hoffman then went on to say that “within the last two years serious terrorist plots orchestrated by al-Qaeda’s allies in Pakistan, meant to punish Spain and the Netherlands for participating in the war on terrorism, were thwarted in Barcelona and Amsterdam.”

This was news to the Algemene Inlichtingen- en Veiligheidsdienst (AIVD), the Dutch intelligence and security service, which issued a brief repost a day later denying that there had been any thwarted attacks during that period. So is the Netherlands a sea of calm in an otherwise threatened West?

The AIVD’s website already gives some indication of the answer to this question. In December last year the service issued two reports, one claiming the impact of salafi Islam was declining in the Netherlands, mainly due to its rejection by muslims themselves, and the other indicating that the threat from local jihadi networks had also declined. Since the demise of the so-called Hofstad group in 2004, which allegedly sought to attack political targets, radical elements now seek jihad abroad instead, as illustrated by the group from The Hague who turned up near the Kenya-Somali border ‘on holiday’ in July 2009. Why this success? Firstly, the upgrading of the counter-terrorist infrastructure. AIVD recruitment went through the roof in the early 200s as terrorism became a major growth industry, and while the creation of the National Coordinator for Counter-terrorism initially caused quite a lot of bureaucratic in-fighting, it does seem to have galvanised the relevant parts of government to work together. It is quite true that communications surveillance by these bodies in the Netherlands is remarkably extensive and, as a result, very effective. But this is only the first reason. The second reason is that a vast majority of Dutch muslims have no interest in jihad, and local leaders have been effective in monitoring their communities and reducing the impact of radical teachings. So while there might at times be social unrest and difficult relations with the police among some Turks and Moroccans, it is related more to second and third generation integration problems than radical religion.      

So far so good. But the AIVD reports are not the whole story, because while the locals are covered, there are others coming in. In March 2008 the Pakistani student Aqueel Ur Rahman Abassi was arrested in Breda due to information that linked him with radical Islamic groups in Barcelona. According to Spanish police Abassi was on his way to becoming a suicide bomber, destination Frankfurt. His time as a student in the Netherlands was purely part of the cover.

Abassi’s case caused deep concern because he illustrated a whole new category of threat. As a student he could enter the Netherlands fairly easily. Many like him obtain an education visa and then disappear, making use of the loophole. Following his arrest, all known Pakistani students were screened and it has become very difficult for applicants from that country to obtain visas to study at a Dutch university. Like Abdulmutallab, Abassi was apparently using the Netherlands as no more than a transit country on the way to his eventual intended target. But with the Afghanistan debate going to heat up here in the coming months, one does wonder if it will stay that way.