SOF and Law Enforcement Counterterrorism Partnerships

Introduction

The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 will never be forgotten by the millions of people who witnessed them—whether live or on television, whether American or foreign, whether old or young. This date has surely joined others as an infamous moment in American history. In addition to the palpable shockwaves of grief and shock that these attacks sent around the world, September 11 also ignited a sustained conflict between the United States and the forces that plot against it: the terrorist networks that exist around the world, hidden from sight. This conflict has been labeled by the United States government as a fight against terrorism, and numerous counterterrorism measures have been employed since 2001 in pursuit of success. Despite these various efforts, however, one important question remains: how should the United States government, more than a decade later, evaluate the success of its counterterrorism measures, and how should it improve upon them if necessary?

For this reason, this paper seeks to illuminate existing counterterrorism measures as well as proposed improvements, such as the potential for counterterrorism partnerships between Special Operations Forces (SOF) and Law Enforcement Agencies. The following sections will focus on governmental efforts that can enable agencies to work in complement with SOF and how such cooperation can be achieved. These issues are examined because SOF will never attain the efficiency and strategic utility necessary for combating terrorism if it disregards coordination, cooperation, and combined operations with Law Enforcement Agencies. More specifically, this paper also examines whether SOF units need to be trained in police and forensic investigative techniques in order to work with the interagency community—particularly law enforcement—to achieve mission success and, ultimately, a lasting victory for the United States.

Counterterrorism: Background and Introduction

Congress must, at some point, evaluate every governmental policy in order to determine its effectiveness and potential modifications for ensured future success. Such an evaluation came about in 2007, when the 110th Congress was presented with a report by Raphael Perl, a Specialist in the International Affairs division of the Department of Defense. This report focused on measuring the effectiveness of the country's counterterrorism policies—a very important topic in governmental debate, and one which Perl evaluated in exactly fifteen pages.

This report summarized quite succinctly how Congress should evaluate counterterrorism policies. It began by referencing not specific actions taken by the nation, but rather broad aspects of its efforts in combating terrorism, with equally broad criteria for evaluation. The report was therefore "not intended to define specific, in-depth, metrics for measuring progress against terrorism," according to Perl (2007, p. 2). Nor was it intended to expand upon or evaluate definitions, statistics, or country profiles in depth. Such issues were left to other reports, many of which are very difficult to locate. Indeed, one of the hardest reports to find is an update to Perl's 2007 overview. Counterterrorism is, thankfully, such a hotly debated topic that many others have written on it—often with more detailed analysis.

Despite its relative vagueness, the Congressional report did provide members with some background on the problem of counterterrorism and how it is addressed by the United States. Counterterrorism is defined by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) as those efforts that protect "the American people from terrorist threats"—efforts that the Department has as its founding purpose (Department of Homeland Security, 2011, p. 1). Within this scope, the DHS undertakes "efforts to battle terrorism, [which] include detecting explosives in public spaces and transportation networks, helping protect critical infrastructure and cyber networks from attack, detecting agents of biological warfare, and building information-sharing partnerships with state and local law enforcement that can enable law enforcement to mitigate threats" (Department of Homeland Security, 2011, p. 1). Though the report did not examine these definitions in depth, it did mention discrepancies in measurement mechanisms and current strategy. One of its most important sections—though brief—was that which commented on the problem of "Describing and Measuring Progress against Terrorism" and improving counterterrorism measures in the future.

Today's Counterterrorism: An Evaluation

In order to better contextualize the above-mentioned report and the issues it raises, one must understand how counterterrorism measures work at present. According to Perl, progress—and lack thereof—may be defined with certain criteria, including incidents of terrorist activities, trends toward terrorism, and public attitudes toward terrorism (Perl, 2007, p. 13). Yet these are not the only criteria that can be utilized to evaluate counterterrorism measures. In fact, it is difficult to find a uniform set of criteria, which may explain the lack of true evaluation statistics in this respect.

The point raised in the previous section is that there is significant confusion in the way counterterrorism is defined, examined, and evaluated. Whereas the DHS has, in its own view, a clear mission, the fact that this cannot be meaningfully referenced in a Congressional report raises the question of whether there is genuine agreement on the complex topic of counterterrorism and on the various characteristics used to define success. This problem may be remedied by proposing not only a uniform definition for counterterrorism processes, but also a solution for its future—the subject of the next section.

To expand upon today's counterterrorism, one need only examine academic, defense, and policy sources. It is there that one finds something truly troubling that the Congressional report did not touch upon: the monetary aspect of counterterrorism. According to a NATO report, counterterrorism is expensive in every single respect, whereas terrorism itself is "cheap, requires little manpower, captures the world's attention and gives the weak the ability to terrify the strong" (Lomborg, 2008, p. 1). Counterterrorism is expensive—and potentially ineffective—because countries spend massively simply due to political pressure and extreme risk aversion.

The question of finances in funding counterterrorism measures is perhaps one of the most important and least discussed aspects in Congressional debate. Why does the country keep spending money if the policies are effective? Where does this money go? If the policies are ineffective, why is this so and how can it be remedied? These questions have arisen repeatedly throughout research on this topic, and the next section will propose a first-step solution to this large problem.

Richard Barrett, coordinator of the United Nations Taliban and Al-Qaeda Monitoring Team, states that there are both direct and indirect consequences of the counterterrorism measures constantly enacted by various governments, especially that of the United States. These countries must all make a concerted effort to closely examine their policies to ensure they are effective first and foremost, and secondly, to ascertain that they are not harmful to the developing world (Barrett, 2006, p. 3). Other organizations agree that problems exist, including STRATFOR Global Intelligence in a 2011 report, and reporting in the Washington Post, which exposes redundancies in counterterrorism policies and the misguided manner in which they have been applied—to the detriment of the American people, who hope for security yet receive only further financial requests.

Conclusion

The complexity of protecting a nation as large as the United States is not a job for one unit, or even two or three, but rather thousands of individuals must contribute in their own separate ways in order to address every possibility of terrorism and prevent an attack on the scale of September 11 from ever occurring again. The counterterrorism community in the broadest sense—from the most elite military force down to the common police officer—cannot repeat the mistake of failing to share information and cooperate collectively. The creation of the Department of Homeland Security will help rectify this concern.

Finally, the wars in Iraq taught the military, and Special Operations Forces in particular, the importance of gathering intelligence and demonstrated that combining counterterrorism training with traditional military-style raids is far more effective than relying on military dominance alone in tracking down "shadow" organizations (Naylor, 2010). The future of counterterrorism will require integration of America's national security forces, as well as the development of forensic evidence collection and video and photographic documentation capabilities. Taking these measures in a professional manner will allow SOCOM and the intelligence community to better anticipate the challenges ahead in America's counterterrorism operations.

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