Media Link: Interview on EveningReport.nz on the latest Snowden revelations.

EveningReport.nz is a new NZ-based online media outlet that among other valuable things offers in-depth interviews on matters of public interest.  As such t is a welcome addition and antidote to corporate media soundbites and frivolities.

I was fortunate to feature in one such interview (there is also one by Nicky Hager), which explores the latest revelations that the GCSB does a heck of a lot of spying on New Zealand’s friends and partners as well as on so-called rogue states, and it does much of this on behalf of the the US and other Five Eyes partners rather than as a matter of national security. The ramifications of the revelations about NZ’s role in 5 Eyes are one subject of the discussion, but there are other items of interest as well.

The discussion, hosted by Selwyn Manning, can be found here.

So much for intelligence community reform.

It turns out that nearly 5 months after getting re-elected, the government has decided on the composition of the Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC). Besides himself as Chair of the ISC, the Prime Minister gets to select two members from the government parties and the Opposition Leader gets to select one member from opposition parties.  In both cases the respective Leaders are expected under Section 7 (1) (c,d) of the 1996 Intelligence and Security Committee Act to consult with the other parties on their side of the aisle before selecting the remaining members of the committee. The language of the Act is quite specific: “c) 2 members of the House of Representatives nominated for the purpose by the Prime Minister following consultation with the leader of each party in Government: (d) 1 member of the House of Representatives nominated for the purpose by the Leader of the Opposition, with the agreement of the Prime Minister, following consultation with the leader of each party that is not in Government or in coalition with a Government party.” (1996 ISCA, pp. 6-7).

Not surprisingly the government has nominated two National MPs, Attorney General Chris Finlayson and Justice Minister Amy Adams, for membership on the ISC. It is not clear if ACT, the Maori Party and United Future were consulted before their selection. What is more surprising is that Andrew Little nominated David Shearer and did not consult with opposition parties before making his selection. While Shearer is a person with considerable international experience and has been a consumer of intelligence (as opposed to a practitioner) during his career, Mr. Little has been neither. In fact, it can be argued that Mr. Little has the least experience of all the proposed members when it comes to issues of intelligence and security, which means that he will have to lean very heavily on Mr. Shearer if he is not not be overmatched within the ISC.

Moreover, in past years Russell Norman, Peter Dunne and Winston Peters have been on the ISC, so the move to re-centralise parliamentary oversight in the two major parties represents a regression away from the democratisation of representation in that oversight role. Since these two parties have been in government during some of the more egregious acts of recent intelligence agency misbehaviour (for example, the Zaoui case, where intelligence was manipulated by the SIS to build a case against him at the behest of or in collusion with the 5th Labour government, and the case of the illegal surveillance of Kim Dotcom and his associates by the GCSB in collusion or at the behest of the US government under National, to say nothing of the ongoing data mining obtained via mass electronic trawling under both governments), this does not portend well for the upcoming review of the New Zealand intelligence community that this ISC is charged with undertaking.

The Greens have expressed their disgust at being excluded and have, righty in my opinion, pointed out that they are the only past members of the ISC that have taken a critical look at the way intelligence is obtained, analysed and used in New Zealand. But that appears to be exactly why they were excluded. According to John Key,  Labour’s decision was “the right call” and he “totally supports it.” More tellingly, Mr. Key said the following: “A range of opposition voices from the minor parties could railroad the process. I don’t think the committee was terribly constructive over the last few years, I think it was used less as a way of constructing the right outcomes for legislation, and more as a sort of political battleground” (my emphasis added).

In other words, Russell Norman took his membership on the ISC seriously and did not just follow along and play ball when it came to expanding state powers of search and surveillance under the Search and Surveillance Act of 2012 and GCSB Act of 2014.

That is a very big concern. Mr. Key believes that the “right” outcomes (which have had the effect of expanding state espionage powers while limiting its accountability or the institutional checks imposed on it) need to be produced by the ISC when it comes to the legal framework governing the intelligence community. Those who would oppose such outcomes are not suitable for membership, a view with which Andrew Little seems to agree.

This is so profoundly an undemocratic view on how intelligence oversight should work that I am at a loss for words to  explain how it could come from the mouth of a Prime Minister in a liberal democracy and be tacitly seconded by the Leader of the Opposition–unless they have genuine contempt for democracy. That is a trait that W. Bush, Tony Blair and John Howard shared as well, but what does that say about the state of New Zealand democracy?

Mr. Little has given his reason to exclude Metiria Turei of the Greens from ISC membership as being due to the fact the Mr. Norman is stepping down in May and Mr. Little wanted “skills, understanding and experience” in that ISC position. Besides insulting Ms. Turei (who has been in parliament for a fair while and co-Leader of the Greens for 5 years), he also gave the flick to Mr. Peters, presumably because that old dog does not heel too well. As for Mr. Dunne, well, loose lips have sunk his ship when it comes to such matters.

The bottom line is that Mr. Little supports Mr. Key’s undemocratic approach to intelligence oversight. Worse yet, it is these two men who will lead the review of the NZ intelligence community and propose reform to it, presumably in light of the debacles of the last few years and the eventual revelations about NZ espionage derived from the Snowden files.

As I said last year in the built-up to the vote on the GCSB Amendment Act,  I doubted very much that for all its rhetorical calls for an honest and thorough review process that led to significant reform, Labour would in fact do very little to change the system as given because when it is in government it pretty much acts very similar to National when it comes to intelligence and security. If anything, the differences between the two parties in this field are more stylistic than substantive.

What I could not have foreseen was that Labour would drop all pretence of bringing a critical mindset to the review and instead join National in a move to limit the amount of internal debate allowable within the ISC at a time when it finally had an important task to undertake (in the form of the intelligence community review).

As a result, no matter how many public submissions are made, or how many experts, interest groups and laypeople appear before the ISC hearings, and how much media coverage is given to them, I fear that the end result will be more of the same: some cosmetic changes along the margins, some organisational shuffles and regroupings in the name of streamlining information flows, reducing waste and eliminating duplication of functions in order to promote bureaucratic efficiency, and very little in the way of real change in the NZ intelligence community, especially in the areas of oversight and accountability.

From now on it is all about going through the motions and giving the appearance of undertaking a serious review within the ISC. For lack of a better word, let’s call this the PRISM approach to intelligence community reform.

LINK: The Intelligence and Security Committee Act 1996.

Media Link: To the point on NZ and IS.

We already know that John Key dissembles and misleads, especially on matters of security and intelligence. NZ is soon to put troops into Iraq as part of the effort to roll the Islamic Sate (Isis is an Arabic girl’s name) out of that country. For whatever reason Mr. Key will not admit to this even after the British Foreign Secretary mentioned that the NZ contribution will be a company sized (“100 odd” in his words) detachment.

The evidence of military preparation is very clear, with an especially selected infantry company training for desert warfare at Waiouru over the past few months and a detachment of SAS soldiers rumored to be already in theatre. The US and other anti-IS coalition partners have announced preparations for a Northern spring offensive against IS, centred around taking back Mosul from the jihadists.  The decision to launch the offensive and the division of labor involving participating ground forces was made at the working meeting of coalition military chiefs in Washington DC last October (the chief of the NZDF attended the meeting although at the time Mr. Key said no decision had been made to send troops). Since the NZDF cannot contribute combat aircraft, armour or even heavy lift assets, it is left for the infantry to join the fray, most likely with a fair share of combat medics and engineers.

With his misrepresentations  John Key only obscures the real issue. New Zealand has no option but to join the anti-IS coalition (which he has said is the price for being in “the club”) given the international commitments it has already made.

There are three specific reasons why NZ has to join the fight, two practical and one principled.

The practical reasons are simple: First, NZ’s major security allies, the US, UK and Australia, are all involved as are France, Germany and others. After the signing of the Wellington and Washington security agreements, NZ became a first tier security partner of the US, and as is known, it is an integral member of the 5 Eyes signals intelligence network. It therefore cannot renege on its security alliance commitments without a serious loss of credibility and trust from the countries upon which it is most dependent for its own security.

Secondly, most of New Zealand’s primary diplomatic and trading partners, including those in the Middle East, are involved in the anti-IS coalition. Having just secured a UN Security Council temporary seat at a time when the UN has repeatedly issued condemnations of IS, and having campaigned in part on breaking the logjam in the UNSC caused by repeated use of the veto by the 5 permanent members on issues on which they disagree (such as the civil war in Syria), NZ must back up its rhetoric and reinforce its diplomatic and trade relations by committing to the multinational effort to defeat IS. Refusing to do so in the face of requests from these partners jeopardises the non-military relationships with them.

The third reason is a matter of principle and it is surprising that the government has not made more of it as a justification for involvement. After the Rwandan genocide an international doctrine known as the “Responsibility to Protect” (R2P) was agreed by UN convention to prevent future horrors of that sort. It basically states that if a defenceless population is being subject to the depredations of its own government, or if the home government cannot defend the population from the depredations of others, then the international community is compelled to use whatever means, including armed force, to prevent ongoing atrocities from occurring. There can be no doubt that is the situation in parts of Iraq and Syria at the moment. Neither the Assad regime or the Iraqi government can defend minority communities such as Kurds or Yazidis, or even non-compliant Sunnis, from the wrath of IS.

That, more than any other reason, is why NZ must join the fight. As an international good citizen that has signed up to the R2P, NZ is committed in principle to the defense of vulnerable others.

So why have the Greens, NZ First and Labour (or at least Andrew Little) opposed the move?

The Greens are true to form with their pacifist and non-interventionist stance, but they are ignoring the matter of international principle at stake. NZ First is its usual isolationist self, acting blissfully unaware of the interlocking web of international networks and commitments that allow NZ to maintain its standard of living and international reputation (in spite of having Ron Mark to speak to military issues).

Most of all, why has Andrew Little run his mouth about reneging on the NZDF contribution to the anti-IS coalition (which involves formal and time-constrained commitments)? Little has previous form in displaying ignorance of international affairs, but this level of hypocrisy takes the cake. Does he not remember that the 5th Labour government started the rapprochement with the US after 9/11, and that it was the 5th Labour government that initially deceived and misled about the real nature of the SAS role in Afghanistan as well as  the true nature of the mission in Southern Iraq (which is widely believed to have involved more than a company of military engineers). Is he not aware that a responsible country does not walk away from the security alliance, diplomatic and trade commitments mentioned above? Did he not consult with Helen Clark, Phil Goff or David Shearer before this brain fart (or did they gave him the rope on which to hang himself)? Does he really believe, or expect the informed public to believe, that on defense, security and intelligence issues Labour in 2015 is really that different from National? If so, it is he, not us, who is deluded.

All this shows is that Labour is still unfit to govern, or at least Little is not. If he does not understand the core principles governing international relations and foreign affairs, or if he chooses to ignore them in favour of scoring cheap political points, then he simply is unsuited to lead NZ before the international community. There is a big difference between being a political party leader and being a statesman. It is clear that John Key is no statesman, but his glib and jocular nature gives him the benefit of international respect so long as he backs up his talk with the appropriate walk. By comparison, Andrew Little comes off as some provincial rube who cannot see further than the nearest bend in the road.

Whether we like it or not–and there are plenty of things not to like about getting involved in what could become another military morass in the Middle East–NZ has an obligation to get involved in the fight against IS. The obligation stems not just from the particular disposition of this National government but from years of carefully crafted international ties under successive governments that give practical as well as principled reasons for involvement. Andrew Little should know that, and the Greens and NZ First need to understand that this is not about belonging to some exclusive “club” but about being a responsible global citizen responding to the multinational call for help in the face of a clear and present danger to the international community. Because if IS is not a clearly identifiable evil, then there is no such thing.

In any event the fight against IS is dangerous but cannot be avoided.

 

Fighting terrorism is a matter of law enforcement.

The post 9/11 security environment has been dominated by the spectre of terrorism, mostly if not exclusively of the Islamic-inspired sort. In most liberal democracies the response to the threat of this type of extremist violence has been the promulgation of a raft of anti-terrorism laws and organisational changes in national security agencies, the sum total of which has been an erosion of civil liberties in the pursuit of  better security. Some have gone so far as to speak of a “war” on terrorism, arguing that Islamicist terrorism in particular is an existential threat to Western societies that demands the prioritisation of security over individual and collective rights.

Although ideological extremists see themselves at war, this response on the part of democratic states, and the characterisation of the fight against terrorism as a “war” marshalled along cultural or civilisation lines, is mistaken. The proper response is to see terrorism not in ideological terms, with the focus on the motivation of the perpetrators, but in criminal terms, where the focus is on the nature of the crime. Seeing terrorism as the latter allows those who practice it to be treated as part of a violent criminal conspiracy much like the Mafia or international drug smuggling syndicates. This places the counter-terrorism emphasis on the act rather than the motivation, thereby removing arguments about cause and justification from the equation.

There is no reason for Western democracies to go to war. Whatever its motivation, terrorism poses no existential threat to any stable society, much less liberal democracies. Only failed states, failing states and those at civil war face the real threat of takeover from the likes of the Islamic State or al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. For Western democracies under terrorist attack, the institutional apparatus of the State will not fall, political society will not unravel and the social fabric will to tear. But there is a caveat to this: both the democratic state and society must beware the sucker ploy.

As an irregular warfare tactic terrorism is a weapon of the militarily weak that is not only a form of intimidation but a type of provocation as well. It has a target, a subject and an objective. Here is where the sucker ploy comes into play. Terrorist attacks against defenceless targets are designed to lure democratic states into undertaking security measures out of proportion to the real threat involved. The weaker adversary commits an atrocity or outrage in order to provoke an overreaction from the stronger subject, in this case from Western liberal democracies. The overreaction victimises more than the perpetrators and legitimises their grievances. In doing so, the democratic state plays into the hands of the terrorist objectives by providing grounds for recruitment, continuation and expansion of their struggle. When democratic societies, panicked by fear, begin to retaliate against domestic minority populations from whence terrorists are believed to emanate, then the sucker ploy will have proven successful.

The sucker ploy has been at the core of al-Qaeda’s strategy from the beginning. Enunciated by Osama bin Laden, the idea behind the attacks on the World Trade Centre and Pentagon, then the Bali, Madrid and London bombings, was to cause the entire West to overreact by scapegoating all Muslims and subjecting them to undemocratic security checks, to include mass surveillance, warrantless searches and arrest and detention without charge. With the majority supporting such moves, the Muslim minorities in the West become further alienated. That serves to confirm the al-Qaeda narrative that the West is at war with all of the Muslim world, which bin Laden and his acolytes hoped would generate a groundswell of conflict between Muslims and non-Muslims on a global scale.

The US and UK duly obliged by using 9/11 as one pretext for invading Iraq, which had nothing to do with the events of that day and which had no Islamic extremists operating in its midst at the time. It does now.

After the possibility of staging spectacular large scale attacks like 9/11 became increasingly difficult due to Western counter-measures, al-Qaeda 2.0 emerged. Its modus operandi, as repeatedly outlined and exhorted by the on-line magazine Inspire, is to encourage self-radicalised jihadis born in the West to engage in low-level, small cell (2-5 people) or so-called “lone wolf” attacks by single individuals on targets of opportunity using their local knowledge of the cultural and physical terrain in which they live.

In recent years the Syrian civil war and rise of the Islamic State have provided recruits with the opportunity to sharpen their knowledge of weaponry, tactics and combat skills with an eye towards future use at home in the event that they survive the foreign adventure (although less than 50 percent of them do). With reportedly 15,000 foreign fighters joining Syrians and Iraqis in the Islamic State ranks and a number of Westerners gravitating towards al-Qaeda, that leaves plenty of returning jhadis to be concerned about.

Shopping malls, sports venues, transportation hubs, entertainment venues, non-military government offices, media outlets, houses of worship, schools and universities–all of these present soft targets with significant symbolic value where a relatively small criminal act of violence can generate waves of apprehension across the larger population, thereby prompting a government overreaction as much in an effort to calm public fears as it is to prevent further attacks. The range and number of these targets makes guarding all them very difficult, and if the perpetrators plan in secret and maintain operational secrecy up until the moment of engagement, then they are impossible to stop regardless of the security measures in place. Short of adopting a garrison state or open-air prison approach to society as a whole, there is no absolute physical defense against determined and prepared low level operators, especially when they have access to not only to weapons but common household or industrial products that can be used to untoward ends.

Although it risks detection because of the coordination and numbers involved, one variant of the low-level, decentralised terrorist strategy is the so-called “swarm” attack, whereby several small cells engage multiple targets simultaneously or in rapid sequence, even in several countries if possible. This is designed to stretch the security apparatus to its limits, thereby causing confusion and delays in response while demonstrating the attacker’s capability to strike at will virtually anywhere. At that point the military–ostensibly used for external defense–is often  called in, thereby giving all the appearance of a nation at war. Such is now happening in Belgium and France.

The evolution of terrorist tactics notwithstanding, if we strip away all the ideological gloss what is left is a transnational criminal enterprise. The response required is therefore more police than military in nature, and requires increased intelligence sharing and police cooperation amongst nations. The legislative response should be not to create a separate body of political crimes deserving of increased (and undemocratic) coercive attention from the state, but to bolster criminal law to include hard penalties for carrying out, financing, supporting or encouraging politically motivated violence. All of this can be done without militarising the state and compromising basic democratic values regarding the freedoms of speech, assembly and movement.

What is not needed but unfortunately has been the majority response in the West, is expanded anti-terrorist legislation and sweeping powers of search, surveillance and seizure that cover the entire population rather than those suspected of harbouring extremist tendencies. This violates the presumption of innocence as well as the right to privacy of the vast majority of citizens, to which can now be added restrictions on freedom of movement for those who, even without criminal backgrounds, are suspected of planning to travel to join extremist groups abroad.

Worse yet, such measures are not entirely effective, as the Boston Marathon bombings, Sydney hostage crisis (the work of a lone mentally ill individual with delusions of Islamic grandeur who was out on bail for sexual crimes and accessory to murder) and the Charlie Hebdo attacks have shown (Australia, the US and France have very strong antiterrorism measures, to include the Patriot Act and NSA/FBI mass surveillance in the US, overtly authoritarian security legislation dating back to the Fifth Republic in France–which was a response to the Algerian Crisis of 1958– and increasingly hard anti-terrorist legislation in Australia).

There is a clear need to upgrade police intelligence gathering, sharing and operational procedures in order to combat the terrorism threat. The main impediment to that has not been a public lack of cooperation or the inadequacy of extant criminal law (which needs regular upgrading in any event due to the evolution of crime–for example, 30 years ago cyber security and cyber crime were not issues that needed to be covered by law). Instead, it has mainly been due to inter-agency rivalries between domestic security and intelligence agencies and a lack of international cooperation on ideologically charged matters such as Islamic terrorism (for example, between Israel and its Arab neighbours and the US and China). Given advents in telecommunications technologies, there has to be a priority focus on social media intelligence gathering, particularly of platforms that use encryption to shield criminal behaviour. But all of that can be done without the mass curtailment of civil liberties, and without militarising the response to the point that it gives all the appearances of cultures at war.

It should be obvious that the underlying causes of terrorism in the West need to be addressed as part of a comprehensive strategy for dealing with the problem. These involve a host of socio-economic and cultural policy areas and a willingness by politicians to broach debate on sensitive topics related to them (such as the question of assimilation of migrants, minority youth unemployment etc.). But in the narrow sense of security counter-measures, the key is to not exaggerate the terrorist threat, to strip it of its political significance and to use more efficient policing and intelligence gathering backed by criminal law to treat it not as a special type of (political) crime but as just the violent acts of criminal conspirators.

Although its threat environment (including terrorist threats) is far less menacing than that of its major security partners, New Zealand has adopted antiterrorist and search and surveillance legislation that is more appropriate for the threats faced by India or Pakistan than by a small isolated democratic island state. Other small democracies outside of Europe like Costa Rica, Portugal or Uruguay have not seen the need to adopt such legislation, and Uruguay in fact has accepted released Guantanamo detainees for re-settlement. Thus the question begs as to why New Zealand has chosen to privilege security over freedom when the threat environment does not warrant it? So far, in spite of crying wolf about the spectre of home grown jihadists and returning foreign fighters, the New Zealand authorities have not provided any concrete evidence of plots or other indicators of terrorists at work that would justify the expansion of what is now a full-fledged security and surveillance state.

One can only hope that as part of the forthcoming intelligence agency review an honest discussion of terrorism and other threats can be had so that perspective can be gained and the proper response undertaken. That may well mean rolling back some of the security legislation passed during the last decade while refining specific provisions of the Crimes Act and attendant legislation so that the balance between security and civil liberties can be re-equilibrated in more even fashion.

For an interesting take on the subject, here is an article by a US security academic with clear pro-establishment views.

Media Links: The Sydney Hostage Crisis.

Amid the flurry of media interviews I did as a result of the Sydney hostage crisis, this one may not have received the attention other outlets have received.

The RNZ interview is here. The TVNZ interview is here.

Media Link: The Slater/SIS/PM’s Office OIA debacle.

Sometimes one has to speak bluntly but honestly about unethical behaviour within the NZ intelligence community. The revelations about the way in which an OIA request from a notorious right wing blogger was handled by the then Director of Security and Intelligence and the office of the Prime Minister in 2011 affords one such opportunity to do so.

Short of taking monetary or personal favours, this is official malfeasance of the first order and is corrosive of the professional integrity of the intelligence community. Shame on all involved.

Getting real about the NZDF mission in Iraq.

When John Key insists that any New Zealand military contribution to the anti-Islamic State coalition will be “behind the wire” in non-combat training roles, he is following a script written by the senior partners in that coalition–the US, UK, Australia, Canada and Germany. The governments of all of these liberal democracies have sworn off ground combat troops while simultaneously sending air power and significant numbers of ground-based military “advisors” to attack the Islamic State forces directly from the air and help train the Iraqi Army to fight rather than run from the Islamicists on the ground. The US already has a brigade’s (3000 troops) worth of advisors in Iraq and has asked Australia to up its contribution from the 200 Special Forces already deployed there.  The UK, Canada, Germany, France and other European states are contributing special operators as well, but always in a ”training” rather than combat role.

There are reasons to believe that the definition of the mission as “non-combat” is specious at best and a deliberate misrepresentation at worst. Here is why.

Consider this: The Prime Minister has said that he might send the SAS to help guard the bases in which conventional NZDF advisors will help train the Iraqi Army. That is akin to using a Lamborghini  to haul rubbish to the local tip.

SAS personnel are highly skilled, extremely well trained and acutely specialised in operating in hostile theatres and behind enemy lines. They are a precious military resource that takes a long time to develop into hardened professional soldiers. It costs much more to produce an SAS trooper than it does the average infantry soldier, airman or naval rating. Standing them on guard duty squanders their talents, especially when conventional NZDF personnel are quite capable of standing sentry duty while deployed (as they did in Afghanistan during the decade-long deployment to the Provincial Reconstruction Team located in Bamiyan Province).

The last time the SAS was in a publicly acknowledge training role they were serving as mentors to the Afghan Crisis Response Unit, the elite counter-terrorism squad in that country. In their capacity as “mentors” the SAS wound up leading the CRU into several battles and lost two troopers as a result. Even in the face of those deaths the National government insisted that the SAS was not engaged in combat, so perhaps it has a different understanding of kinetic environments than do most people–most importantly those who have felt the impact of hot lead during “non combat” operations.

Military deployments of any sort require time and preparation, a process that takes months. Even rapid response units like the SAS need time to get ready to deploy, and to do so they need to pre-position assets on the way and in the theater to which they are going. Yet given the circumstances, the fight against the Islamic State is an immediate concern, one that the US and other coalition partners say needs a response in a few weeks, not months.

It is not credible to assert that sending a few military planners over to Iraq twelve days ago will allow them to assess within a few weeks what the NZDF contribution should be—unless that has already been decided and it is the logistics of the deployment that are being worked out. Yet the Prime Minister says that he will wait until their return to decide what the NZDF role will be. That seems to be stretching the truth.

Beyond the possibility that Mr. Key is unaware of the role of different military units and the preparations required to deploy them abroad, the fiction of a non-combat ground role for all coalition partners is made evident by where they are going. Two thirds of Iraq and all of Syria are active conflict zones. This includes most of the North and Western provinces of Iraq well as the outskirts of Baghdad. The Islamic State continues to mount offensive operations throughout the North and West of Iraq, and controls Mosul, Kirkuk (including its oil fields) and Ramadi (the capital of Anbar Province).  Islamic State forces are laying siege to Fallujah, the scene of the most intense battle between US forces and Sunni militias during the Iraq occupation.  Although they have been slowed by coalition air strikes and suffered a few tactical defeats, the larger picture is that at present the Islamic State has momentum and is nowhere close to retreat in the areas that it controls.

That means that any coalition ground forces sent to train the Iraqi military will be based in active conflict zones and become primary targets wherever they are located. Knowing this, coalition military commanders operate with the expectation of being attacked. Coalition personnel are and will be armed at all times and confined to base or will have their freedom of movement greatly restricted while in theatre. They will travel in armed convoys or by air when moving between locations. Leave will be minimal.

These are the operational rules governing troop deployments in active war zones.

The only way to ease the combat conditions in which New Zealand troops will operate is to prepare and launch counter-offensives against the Islamic State that forces it to retreat from territory it now occupies or has infiltrated. That is a big task and not a short-term affair. Since the Iraqi Army has shown appalling lack of discipline and courage in the face of the Islamic State offensive, it is wishful to think that sending in a few thousand advisors and giving it a few weeks training is going to turn the tide. Instead, the up skilling of the Iraqi Army will be a protracted effort and will require coalition military leadership under fire. Even that does not guarantee that Iraqi troops will be willing to fight.

The reason that the Western liberal democracies are holding to the fiction of non-combat roles is that their respective electorates are weary of war and generally opposed to more of it. This is, after all, a fight amongst Sunni Arabs first and foremost, and then Sunni versus Shiia in the second instance. Although the weakness of Assad’s Alawite regime in Syria gave them their strategic opportunity, the Islamic State’s primary targets are the pro-Western Sunni Arab oligarchies. Its second target is Persian Iran and its Shiia co-religionists and proxies in the Arab world (including the Assad regime). The West (and Israel) are convenient foils for its ambitions, as the Western media plays up the atrocities perpetrated against Europeans and North Americans and the involvement of Western extremists in committing them. This allows the Islamic State to draw the West into the fight, thereby making the conflict more inter-religious and civilisational than it really is.

Although primordial in nature and capable of spawning small cell and lone-wolf attacks in the West, the Islamic State is a regional rather than global threat. It cannot project sustained force and control territory outside of Sunni-inhabited terrain in Syria and Iraq, and will have trouble defeating established professional militaries such as those of Egypt, Jordan or Turkey should it try to push further afield. It has not been able to make significant advances in Shiia and Kurdish-controlled territory. Yet media coverage and the rush of Western governments to emphasize the threat of Islamic State-inspired home grown jihadis and returning foreign fighters have exaggerated its impact.

Even so, New Zealand has principled and pragmatic reasons to get involved in the anti-Islamic State fight. The anti-Islamic State coalition includes all of New Zealand’s Middle Eastern trade partners as well as its closest security and diplomatic allies. The responsibility to protect vulnerable populations such as the Iraqi Hazaris is a matter of international principle. New Zealand will soon sit on the UN Security Council. In light of these realities it can do nothing other than join the conflict even if it is not directly threatened by the Islamic State.

Now that New Zealand has committed to participate in the military coalition against the Islamic State, it is best for the government to be forthright about the true nature of the mission and the real threats involved. Anything less is an insult to both the intelligence of the pubic as well as the valor of those in uniform who are about to join the fight on its behalf.

Temporary, discriminatory and an admission of failure

The PM says that the legislation his government proposes to pass under urgency allowing for the confiscation of passports of NZ citizens in order to combat the threat of returning foreign fighters will be “tightly focused” on those traveling to the Middle East in order to join jihadist groups. That phrase “tightly focused” is code for “Muslim Internationalists” as opposed to, say, Christian or non-religious fighters joining in foreign conflicts in the Middle East or elsewhere.  So if Kiwis of Croatian descent were to return to their homeland to fight Serbs they would be free to do so and then return without risk of having their passports confiscated. The same goes for Christian Nigerians who wish to return home to fight Boko Haram as members of community self-defence organisations.  And of course Jewish Kiwis already do so by traveling to join the Israeli Defense Forces.

To say the least, this law is by its nature discriminatory and temporary unless the government proposes to make it illegal for anyone to go and fight for any cause anywhere. And that clearly is not what it has in mind.

More tellingly, passing such “tightly focused” legislation under urgency is an admission of failure.

On the one hand, it tacitly is telling us that criminal law, including all of the anti-terrorist legislation passed in the last ten years, is inadequate to deal with this particular type of suspected criminal enterprise (or better said, intended criminal enterprise). On the other hand it implicitly recognises that the combined resources of the GCSB, SIS, Immigration, Customs, NZDF, Police and other security agencies, as well as those of NZ’s main security partners, are unable to monitor the activities of the dozen or so Kiwis who may have jihadist pretensions, this despite the fact that New Zealand is an isolated and relatively small archipelago with no land borders and limited access or egress by air or sea, with a very small Muslim community from which potential jihadists are drawn.

Reading between the lines of the PM’s statement, it seems that the extension of antiterrorism laws, powers of search, surveillance, seizure and domestic intelligence collection over the last decade, much less the existence of a vast array of criminal law statutes as currently exit on the books, have had no impact on the ability of the NZ security community to detect, deter and/or monitor a small group of  young men interested in fighting abroad. Hence the need for more “tightly focused” laws that if nothing else violate the presumption of innocence and freedom of movement that presumably are basic rights in liberal democracies.

That makes me wonder two things: what good do the expanded security powers awarded the state during the last decade serve if they cannot fulfil the basic functions of detection, deterrence and monitoring? And what does that say about the competence of the agencies whose powers have been expanded given New Zealand’s geopolitical location?

The answers are simple: none and a lot.

Beware the sucker ploy.

A few years back I wrote about the strategic utility of terrorism. One thing I did not mention in that post was the use of a tried and true guerrilla tactic as part of the terrorist arsenal: the sucker ploy.

In guerrilla warfare the sucker ploy is a tactic whereby the weaker irregular forces stage an incident in order to provoke an over-reaction from their stronger adversaries. Examples include killing a local official so as to have the security forces engage in mass repression of the people in the locality in which he worked. Another is firing at enemy aircraft or armour from inside villages in order to have them retaliate indiscriminately against the entire village. The objective is to alienate and erode support for the enemy by the victims.

For the last five years or so, the international jihadist movement spearheaded by al-Qaeda and now the Islamic State have evolved their tactics to suit the strategic environment they are confronted with. No longer able to carry out large scale attacks such as 9/11 or the Bali, London and Madrid bombings, would-be jihadists have been encouraged to engage in self-radicalised “lone wolf” or small-cell attacks within their respective countries using their familiarity with the local terrain and knowledge of local customs and symbology. These are low level, highly independent and autonomous operations, as was seen in the Boston Marathon bombings last year.

Attacks of this nature are tactically opportune but strategically insignificant. They do not present an existential challenge to any established state. By themselves they are tragic but politically inconsequential.

The motives and desired impact of the perpetrators may differ from those of the Islamicist leadership. Perpetrators may wish to strike a blow and sow localised fear while achieving martyrdom. The Islamicist leadership desires a strategic victory. The only way that it can do so is to use these types of attacks as a sucker ploy.

If governments respond to lone wolf and small cell low level terrorism with blanket increases in mass surveillance, national threat levels, expansion of security and anti-terrorism laws and restrictions on freedoms of association, movement and speech by groups associated with the perpetrators by virtue of religion, ethnicity or the like, then the strategic objectives of the Islamicist leadership are being served. That is because such measures target innocents, not only on an indiscriminate mass scale but often because of who they are rather than anything they have done. That further alienates and marginalises previously passive but increasingly disaffected sectors of society, thereby delegitimising governmental authority while breeding new recruits to the cause.

The temptation for democratic governments responding to such attacks to engage in large scale security tightening is overwhelming, which is of course what the Islamicists are banking on. The public needs reassurance, security agencies see opportunity and conservative politicians want their pound of flesh. Few opposition politicians want to appear soft on the threat of terrorism,  much less by opposing moves to “tighten” security in the wake of lethal attacks in the West motivated by Islam. But that urge, even if given carte blanche by the media-fed hysteria of the moment, needs to be tempered with a broader perspective and deeper analysis of what is at play.

Of course security measures need to be in place in order to thwart such low-level attacks. In Ottawa they clearly were not. But this is no excuse to engage in a knee-jerk over-reaction that results in the type of divisive measures that serve the purposes of the Islamicists more than the population at large. To do so is to fall into the trap set by the Islamicst leadership when they ordered the shift in tactics towards decentralised low level operations conducted by “home-grown” jihadis.

A couple of points worth mentioning: The Canadian threat environment and exposure to Islamic terrorism is different and greater than that of New Zealand and has been for some time. IS had directly threatened Canada before the attacks because Canada has actively joined the conflict by sending ground attack aircraft and special forces troops to the fray.

The perpetrators responsible for this week’s crimes were not returning from the killing fields of Syria or Iraq. They were native born Quebecois, evidencing mental halt issues, with prior criminal records who were known to the Canadian authorities. They were recent converts to Islam, one of whom had been placed on a so-called “watch list” and had his passport revoked because of his overt Islamicist sympathies. The other, a recovering drug addict, was waiting for a passport application to be processed, was living in a half way house, and was frustrated by the delays in securing the passport.  Unable to leave Canada, both turned their murderous gaze inwards.

This should serve as a lesson on several levels. But the foremost one is simple: beware the sucker ploy.

Media Link: The revolution will not be televised.

I had the opportunity to do a long interview with Olivier Jutel, host of the Dunedin Radio One show “The revolution will not be televised.” It is a rare occasion when one gets to converse at length about a variety of subjects on radio or television, so this was a nice opportunity to air my views on a number of issues, to include the conflict with the Islamic state, New Zealand’s potential role in it, fear mongering as a political strategy, the impact of social media on political behaviour, etc.

The podcast can be found here.