It can be done, with strength of will, good PR, and international cooperation. It has been done, and this Monitor article gives some recent examples. Remember Abu Nidal?
In the 1980s, for instance, the Abu Nidal Organization was wreaking havoc in Europe and the Middle East. It was responsible for 900 deaths or injuries in 20 countries, including machine-gun killings at the Rome and Athens airports in 1985. The US State Department called it “the most dangerous terrorist organization in existence.”
Then, because of a coordinated international pressure campaign – as well as brass-knuckles tactics used by some intelligence services against the group’s members – Abu Nidal was kicked out of several countries, including Syria and Libya.
“We turned him into a vagabond,” says L. Paul Bremer, head of Marsh Crisis Consulting in New York and the former ambassador who chaired the National Commission on International Terrorism last year. The strain on the organization led to infighting, which thwarted its ability to carry out attacks. Abu Nidal himself is now inactive and reportedly living in Iraq.
In the blog that Matt Welch was lambasting yesterday, somebody noted that terrorism, per se, cannot be defeated, as it is a tactic, not an object. That may be true — but much of terrorism’s success has come from state sponsors, folks who are willing to pay money and/or give shelter to terror bands in exchange for being left alone, or, more often, those terror bands focusing on the state’s enemies. Syria, Iraq, Iran, all have played this game. The US and the USSR played it during the Cold War, too (the present state of Afghanistan being one outcome).
If we can create a climate where this is no longer a useful tactic to states — where to be a state sponsor of terrorism brings some real pain in return — then this sponsorship will dry up. It won’t stop individual nutcases from pursuing courses of terror, but it will limit their scope to what they can do on their own, without shelter, aid, or comfort from a government. And that’s a goal that’s both achievable and worthwhile.