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ever again!” swore President Ronald
hostage again. We are simply too
th rUt*Ve ** target for terrorists, regardless of Motivation. What national means, then, ret aVa*^ahle to us to take the “swift
l*tion” promised by the president—and 1 u’hat
“K
^ a&an as he welcomed home the American stages from their 444 days of captivity in ,, Keagan also promised swift and t, , tVe retribution” in response to any future tertn^ ^mer*can hostages by international r r°rtsts. These declarations struck a u °ns*ve chord in the nation, hut, tak r Unate^y> Americans will inevitably he
^cr, eir are
potential cost?
^1^0r*srn, of course, is not a new phenomenon, the,. e Chinese proverb, “Kill one, frighten ten shock c*’ originated in antiquity. Surprise and tod . ^ave always been essential components. Yet cha ^S terrorism is distinguished by four new Seftsa terist*cs: transnational impact, ritualistic pQt l0nalism, intensive media coverage, and foul'd ^ f°r greater disruption. So be it. But why \ve We concerned? Terrorism, after all, is the ratlk n the weak, the few, the bizarre. It hardly as a national threat comparable to Soviet mili-
ats'bt •
kere r,,,ng demonstrators at the U. S. embassy in Tehran 0. y epical of those u ho captured America's attention via the neU s media for more than a year.
tary capabilities. And yet, because terrorism is so affordable and we Americans are so vulnerable, we may well expect a future threat of surrogate warfare in which transnational terrorists are subtly directed against our pressure points by our enemies and competitors, a development recently identified by the Reagan administration. We are an open, democratic, relatively rich, generally law-abiding, widely envied superpower, vulnerable in 10,000 corners of the world. Future hostage situations are likely.
That being the prognosis, let’s narrow the focus from terrorism in general to the taking of hostages. In the modus of terrorism there is a categorical distinction between “ordinary” kidnapping and what is known as “hostage and barricade” situations. The former process involves the forcible seizure of a prominent individual, his sequestration in a site unknown to security forces, and the usual round of demands, searches, and negotiations. Hostage/ barricade situations differ in that the seizure itself usually nets a number of hostages and the terrorists make no effort to conceal their location. The position is fortified, demands made, and negotiations begun. Often a terrorist airplane hijacking episode evolves into a stationary hostage/barricade situation at a third-nation airport. The terrorists, in effect, become hostages themselves to the surrounding security forces.
While hostage/barricade situations are not as common terrorist incidents as, say, explosive bombings, they do offer the greatest potential threat to a government. Given the likelihood of future hostage/barricade situations in which U. S. citizens are seized by terrorists who make demands, set deadlines, and demonstrate a propensity to kill—what should be our government’s response? What are the alternatives?
Crisis Response: Let’s first look at official U. S.
45
ners / July 1981
several recent cases of armed rescue operation5 consider, first, their operational effectiveness, afterward, their political consequences. , ces
► Stanleyville, Congo, November 1964■ j
under Christopher Gbenye captured the city an 1,300 American, Belgian, and other Euf0^els civilians as hostages. Negotiations failed. The ^ killed 45 hostages and threatened to maSsaCr^/jtli remainder if concessions were not forthcoming- ^ <j the permission of the legitimate government'
Air Force C-130S conducted an airdrop of .300 ^
paratroopers. Gbenye’s rebels, observing the ait began executing the hostages, killing 60 t>egejgia0 Belgians could effect the rescue. Three paratroopers were killed. jjgtS
► Munich, Germany, September 1972. Eight me^ ^ of the Black September Organization entete , t$o Israeli dormitory in the Olympic Village, ki ^Remembers of the team and took nine others ^
an1
Their demands included safe passage out plus the release from prison of Kozo
of Gem11
Oka1111
ot°’
of1
policy regarding international terrorism. “At the heart of our policy,” declares the State Department’s Director of the Office for Combatting Terrorism, “is the commitment to oppose terrorist blackmail. We will not pay ransom.” Nor, it seems, will we release prisoners, yield to extortion, or even negotiate such issues. Our official policy in this regard is similar to Israel’s. We will talk to terrorists to secure the release of hostages, but we will not negotiate. (Immediately, the question of Iran comes up, but, as will be shown, Iran was a unique case unto itself.)
In practice, decision-makers are often divided between two schools of governmental response, categorized by Edward F. Mickolus: the “no-ransom hardliners” with their emphasis on deterrence (“While we may lose the lives of a few people now, we are saving the lives and the sense of security of our citizens in the long run.”) and the flexible response negotiators. Military professionals may intuitively opt for the former policy, but the patient siege technique has a lot to recommend it. The negotiation theory holds that time, talk, and the development of a sense of closeness between captors and hostages frequently work to defuse the situation without resort to force. A spectacular example is the record of the New York Police Department in negotiating hundreds of hostage/barricade situations without casualties. Arguably, international terrorists play for more desperate stakes than common criminals in New York City, but even in the global arena, the negotiation record has been impressive. The Dutch military psychiatrist, Dr. Richard Mulder, did a remarkable job of ending the first Moluccan train siege (1975) without resort to force. The Colombian Government’s handling of the 1980 embassy seizure in Bogota provides another example of the use of flexible response to solve a hostage/barricade situation without major concessions, casualties, or unfavorable political consequences. But we should remember that each hostage/barricade situation is unique. It is dangerous to prescribe rigid policy guidelines in advance. Even the Israelis agreed to negotiate, at first, to save their children at Ma’alot in 1974 (discussed below).
When, in the management of a hostage/barricade crisis, should the use of armed force be considered? The answer is obvious: planning for armed rescue should begin as soon as hostages are seized. The covert assembling, briefing, and rehearsing of security forces should continue throughout the negotiations in order to provide decision-makers with a viable, if draconic, alternative should all else fail. This is a critical point: the resort to force is so operationally and politically risky that it should be
considered as the final alternative. Abraham summarizes police experience in these situations New York, Los Angeles, and London: • • aSsaU
are an absolute last resort. Assaults as a pft strategy do not work; negotiations do.” Indee ^ 1975 Rand study of international hostage ePls0 concluded that more hostages were killed during assault by security forces than by cold-bloo execution by terrorist captors. A classic examp this risk can be found in the case of Attica PrlS°n^e New York State on 13 September 1971- After 1 failure of four days of negotiations, state tr0°P^ were ordered to assault the inner courtyard to fr hostages held by rebellious prisoners. In j 15-minute assault, 10 hostages were killed an seriously wounded, all by “friendly fire.” jn
And yet there frequently comes a tirnetjveS hostage/barricade crises when all other alterna^ have failed. Usually at this point the terrorists their demands, as they did in Ma’alot; °r extended period of captivity raises grave cone ^ about the mental health of the hostages, jy Glimmen (see below) or Iran; or the terrorists si ^ begin killing hostages, as during last years si & ^ the Iranian embassy in London. Then, clearly’ £ time for the “court of last resort.” Lets exa
id.
surviving perpetrator of the May 1972 Lod . j,oh massacre, Andreas Baader and Ulrike leaders of the German terrorist gang, an j, ac terrorist prisoners. In the climactic a01 y Munich’s Furstenfeldbruck Airport, all hostages, five terrorists, and one policeman killed.
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what will probably stand as the most dramatic, large-scale hostage rescue action in modern times, the Israelis flawlessly executed Operation Thunderbolt, a 5,000-mile military masterpiece. In the assault at Entebbe airfield, three hostages died, five were wounded, one was missing (and later murdered). Seven terrorists and 20 Ugandan soldiers were killed. One Israeli commando was killed, and a second died of wounds.
lNTERNATIONAL
Ma’alot, Israel, May 1974, Three Arab terrorists ab 6 ^ Israeli teenagers in a school. As noted
ho°Vt' ^°r °nCe C^e ^srae^‘s agfeed to negotiate; j Wever> the terrorists then raised their demands, ’aving the prime minister the single, agonizing w;/nat‘ve of armed force. In the assault, 20 children w fe killed and all of the surviving 70 were al i tdree terrorists and one Israeli soldier
died in the assault.
terr“,nboan8a’ Philippines, May 1976. Six Maranao hStS a Philippine Airlines plane with
situ °Sta^es on board and established a barricade tt ,IOn- After two days of negotiations, the ph |.nsts “dlegedly began shooting the hostages, hus ^^’ne stoops then assaulted the plane. Ten Ma kCS died, 22 more were wounded. Three Cau a^aos were killed, the others captured. The plane
^ b t fife ancj was Jgjfj-Qygj
bus >Ue^Je' Uganda. July 1976. A French A-300B Air- Vvjle^Vas hijacked and taken, eventually, to Entebbe, re all passengers except 98 Jews were released. In
► Glimmen. the Netherlands, June 1977. Near the village of Glimmen, seven South Moluccan terrorists seized a train with 49 hostages on board. After three weeks of negotiating, the government reluctantly gave the order for a forcible rescue attempt. In a well- coordinated assault, police sharpshooters opened fire on the known positions of the terrorists, air force F-104 jets blazed 20 feet overhead, frogmen blew open access panels and marines stormed aboard. Two hostages died and seven were wounded in the assault. Six of the seven terrorists died (the leader sustained 300 bullet wounds in the firefight). The security forces had no casualties.
^ Mogadishu, Somalia, October 1977. Four terrorists hijacked a Lufthansa 737 with 92 crew and passengers on board, eventually winding up, after a 6,000-mile odyssey, in Mogadishu. The terrorists demanded the release of several imprisoned terrorists, including (again) Andreas Baader. The plane’s pilot was executed. With the specific, advance permission of Somalia, a West German special commando unit, Border Protection Group 9, flew to Mogadishu. In a flawless, well-coordinated assault, the Germans blasted open the doors, stunned all hands with concussion grenades, killed three of the terrorists, and captured the fourth. Only one hostage was wounded; two commandos received wounds. The operation was a landmark success.
► Larnaca, Cyprus. February 1978. This is the reverse case from Mogadishu. Two Arab terrorists held 15 Egyptian hostages in a hijacked Air Cyprus plane on the ground at Larnaca airport. Cypriot officials had just opened negotiations, and, in fact, had previously rejected Yasir Arafat’s offer of a Palestine Liberation Organization commando unit to rescue the hostages by force. The Egyptians then announced
A British hostage makes good his escape from the fire-homhed Iranian embassy in London when British Special Air Serrice commandos successfully assaulted the building in May 1980.
‘8s / July 198i
47
ble-
with
the
tiofl
the risks were manageal
conclusion that
they were sending some people “to help with the negotiations.” The Cypriots expected diplomats. Instead, an Egyptian C-130 landed at Larnaca, the ramp dropped, and out stormed a commando unit, guns blazing a la Entebbe. In the melee that followed, 15 Egyptian commandos were killed and the C-130 was destroyed. The hijackers, confused and outstaged, surrendered to Cypriot security forces. The hostages were not harmed.
► Kabul. Afghanistan. February 1979. U. S. Ambassador Adolph Dubs was kidnapped by right-wing Moslem terrorists who barricaded themselves in a hotel room. Despite U. S. requests for caution, Afghan security forces, allegedly coordinated by Russian advisors, stormed the hotel. Ambassador Dubs was killed in the assault.
► "Desert One," Iran, April 1980. An ambitious U. S. rescue attempt was aborted when the requisite number of helicopters did not endure the 600-mile flight from the USS Nimitz (CVN-68). Eight Americans died in the fire resulting from a collision be-
Group forwarded the Rescue Mission Report overall probability of success good, and the opef£ [0 feasible.” Under such conditions, the decis|0 carry out the mission was considered justified- \
► London. England. May 1980. Five terrorists 5 s
the Iranian embassy in London and took 2 1 ho ^ After five days of negotiating, the terrorists a ^ began executing the hostages, killing two ^ British Special Air Service commandos storttw ^ building, killing three of the terrorists and 1 ing the others. There were no casualties to t tages or the commandos in the assault. ^ Uo
► Bangkok. Thailand. March 1981. Five hfi,,r1^ c, Jihad” terrorists held 44 passengers hostage p0„ hijacked Indonesian Airways DC-9 at Bangko ' Muang Airport. With the authorization of Government, a team of Indonesian com ^[[ed stormed the plane at 0230 in the morning* ^ four terrorists, and captured the fifth. One
and one commando were critically wounded-
c&e
Political and Legal Considerations: These o suCcesS studies illustrate the extremes of operationa ^ tD and disaster which attend the resort to armed 1 rescue hostages. We need to remind oursel'^^, these incidents did not occur in a political va
Sinsider these factors: U. S. Ambassador Adlai
l V5,nson was virtually swamped with condemnation
World countries in the United Nations
(-'r the Stanleyville airdrop; a worldwide television
q lence of more than 500 million watched West
^ tntany fumble the Munich rescue attempt; the
th • 1115 *n ^'n<Jana0 have never forgiven what
for^. Perce‘ve t0 have been excessive government
trios m ZamboanSa *nc'hent; the Israelis had al-
did aS *”*‘8 a b8bt ‘n tbe Security Council as they
had °n r^e a‘rbe^b aher the Entebbe raid; the Dutch
. their hands full with an aroused and resentful Molu,
1 the Lamaca and Kabul incidents led to grave
‘hplom ■
St;
tCan population after the Glimmen assault;
“tes/s,
atic crises between Egypt/Cyprus and United
°Ur In
'Oviet Union respectively; and the results of
hum ■ an'an rescue attempt reverberated painfully at era ^ a°d amon8 our allies. Even the Mogadishu op- q °n was soured by the revengeful murder of West ^ any s Hanns-Martin Schleyer by accomplices of
b;
Th,
a’tplane terrorists.
point is this: decision-makers in a hostage/
im r!Cade crisis must be influenced as much by the irn Catlons of international law as they are by the Svyall atC tact'ca^ asPects- This is not an easy pill to tary °w for most action-oriented professional milieu Cheers. Who cares about international law? had <>Se’ ^°r example’ rhat our Iranian rescue mission mostSUcceeded, that our task force had returned with bra C tbe hostages alive. Imagine the joyous cele- de^ . ns- ^ seems we could have simply left any legal 0r *S ^)r the lawyers to sweep up the next morning.
we? What would have been the political Up0S a murderous Iran taking out its vengeance in p not only the hundreds of other Americans still the an ^Ut a^so the thousands of West Europeans in the C')u°try? What would have been the response of tutted"^ worltl to news of Moslem casualties inti^ ln the rescue—more embassies seized, busily ^ Sacbed, resources withheld? We can’t afford to Per , C lavvyers “sweep up the pieces.” (Cyrus Vance
r^d this point.)
Can learn from this. Hostage rescue operations
setls not only be fully planned in the operational
ttr but also fully grounded in customary in-
Havjn1<>na^ ^aw- The two are not mutually exclusive.
c|ear & stated this, I wish I could now produce a
ti°nsCUt bcense f°r armed hostage rescue opera-
of ^ cannot. But there exists an interesting series
Car»tl Ce<aents m international law which bear signifi-
sh°uiyd °n this problem. We military professionals
Th ^ ^miliar with their essential provisions.
t0r;„ e ^n'ted Nations, slow to define the term “ter'* i . .
’ nas at least initiated some preventive legis
lation: the “Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Crimes Against Internationally Protected Persons” (December 1973), and the “Convention Against Taking of Hostages” (drafted one month after the seizure of the U. S. embassy in Teheran). But in hostage/barricade situations we are looking less for restraints than for swift legal assistance in rescuing the hostages. This is not readily available. The Security Council is unable to take decisive action during a hostage crisis, and the United Nations charter itself prohibits the unilateral use of force (Article 2), except for cases of self-defense (Article 5 1). The loaded question in our discussion is this: does the resort to armed force in hostage rescue operations against terrorists constitute self-defense?
To answer this key question properly, we need to look beyond the United Nations charter and into the field of customary international law. We find the unilateral use of force has several subsets, including reprisal, humanitarian intervention, and forcible selfhelp. The latter subset is most relative to the issue of hostage rescue. As defined by Jeffrey A. Sheehan, forcible self-help is simply a state using force as a political response to a prior use of force. It rests on the customary legal basis of the right of a state to take necessary and proportionate measures to protect its nationals abroad. The key here is proportionality, which Lieutenant Commander Bruce Harlow defined well in the November 1966 Proceedings: “Proportionality between the harm threatened and the measures of self-defense exercised is an essential condition of the legality of self-defense.” Finally, Richard B. Lillich suggests five criteria for the concept of forcible self-help: a specific, limited purpose (a rescue); an invitation from the recognized government (lacking, obviously, in the Entebbe, Larnaca, Iran cases); limited duration; limited coercion; and the absence of any other recourse—the crisis must be in extremis.
It has been argued that the term “self-help” is too imprecise for application to hostage rescue situations. Sheehan and Alfred Rubin have recommended a new term, “rectification,” which Sheehan defines as the “violation of another State’s territorial sovereignty to protect one’s alleged interests and rights.” Sheehan’s criteria for rectification are less restrictive than Lil- lich’s, require no preliminary attempts at redress by other means, and contain similar limitations as to proportionality. This concept appears useful and realistic, but it has a long way to go before gaining acceptance as customary international law.
On what legal basis does that leave the decisionmaker? Perhaps our position was best articulated by U. S. Ambassador William Scranton during the 1976 Security Council debate on Entebbe with these
lnKs / juiy 1981
49
port
tion:
Ok>nS
. t Tettt,‘
Politics oj 1
words:
“There is a well-established right to use limited force for the protection of one’s own nationals from an imminent threat of injury or death in a situation where the state in whose territory they are located either is unwilling or unable to protect them.”
Under such circumstances, I would argue, we should interpret Article 5 1 (self-defense) to include the limited, proportionate, non-punitive use of armed force to rescue terrorist-held hostages without undue impairment of the territorial integrity or political independence of the host state.
Conclusions: These were the major differences between the successful hostage rescue at Mogadishu and the failure at Desert One. First, the political milieu. The Somalian Government gave full authorization for the West German commando unit to conduct its raid at Mogadishu. Such was obviously not the case in Iran. Second, the tactical odds. A few terrorists held a planeload of hostages on an airport runway in Mogadishu. An entire nation held the American hostages captive in an urban compound in Teheran. Third, the element of luck, the old Clausewitzian “friction.” It was our consummate bad luck that three helicopters experienced malfunctions and the collision occurred at Desert One. The luck of the West Germans was all good. A flash news bulletin announcing to the world that “A West German commando unit is now at Mogadishu airport” was effectively squelched by Reuters before the terrorists got the word. Further, the terrorists had bound the hostages and drenched them with alcohol in preparation for setting the plane on fire. It was sheer luck that the fumes were not ignited by the magnesium-based concussion grenades used by the commandos. Hostage rescue attempts are desperate affairs with very little margin for bad luck.
Finally, there are other conclusions about counter-terrorism that -can be drawn from this analysis. The chance that more Americans will be taken hostage by international terrorists in the future should be accorded a high probability. We should appreciate the fact that hostage/barricade situations are never exactly the same, that differences in political, tactical, and psychological aspects will produce widely different alternative solutions. We should not overreact to the Desert One experience. We should retain and sharpen our military strike capabilities. More importantly, we should retain and enhance our will to use armed force, as a last resort, to rescue our hostages.
The decision to use armed force should be accompanied by the selection of legal concepts to reCt'^ the threat by established means of self-defense, we should emphasize the fact that the decision to armed force is as much a political one as a taCtl^| one. These are the components, then, of a succeS ^ counter-terrorist policy for America that can President Reagan’s requirement for “swift and e five retribution:”
► Consistent top-level guidance . ^
► Realistic contingency planning by an 1
departmental crisis management team .J
► Close coordination with allied counter-tetr0 law enforcement agencies
► Flexible/graduated response
► Legal sensitivity
► Improved/unfettered intelligence gathering ^
► A global, covert, counter-terrorist strike force clear command relations, jurisdiction, and supP
► National will , uj
Admiral James L. Holloway III, Chairman ^
Special Operations Review Group, forwarded t port on the Iran Rescue Mission with this o
in the
“. . . only the United States military, alone 1 ^ world, had the ability to accomplish what out to do. It was risky and we knew it, but ^ a good chance of success. And I would close this thought, which I hope remains true America had the courage to try.”
Lieutenant Colonel Alexander was cornu11^.^,. in I960 via the NROTC program at the ^j-
assault , c aff 6°^"
He is a graduate of the Armed Forces * nVj|lf lege and earned an MAT degree from J‘lc University in 1977. A selectee for colonel, he is a 19$* 8 S- of the Naval War College and is en route to Headquarter5- Marine Corps for his next duty assignment. ^
Condensed Bibliography
Evans, Alona E. and Murphy, John F., eds. Legal Aspect: of ln
Terrorism. Lexington, Mass.: D.C. Heath, 1978. Gr°u^
Holloway, James L. Ill (Chairman, Special Operations Revie" ^ pc Iran Rescue Mission Report. Washington, D.C.: Deparfrnt' fense, 1980. U
Jenkins, Brian M. International Terrorism, a New Mode of Co
Angeles: Crescent, 1975. (>':
Miller, Abraham H. Terrorism and Hostage Negotiations. B°u
Westview, 1980.
O’Ballance, Edgar. Language of Violence: The Blood
San Rafael, Calif.: Presidio Press, 1979. if.HdP
Sheehan, Jeffrey A. "The Entebbe Raid: The Principle of 1
International Law as Justification for State Use of Armed Fletcher Forum. Spring 1977.
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