terrorist activity in the region. 101 Some could argue that this has occurred with the emergence of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. This is what Boaz Ganor defines as the “boomerang effect”. 102 Employing a military model of counterterrorism may also, like the policing model, risk threatening the civil liberties of those within society. For example, aspects of the ‘war on terror’ have been considered in breach of these rights through aspects such as invasive intelligence gathering by organisations such as the National Security Agency (NSA) and Government Communication Headquarters (GCHQ). 103 Another frequent criticism of military approaches to counterterrorism is in the rhetoric used. O’Kane, for example, suggests that the ‘war on terror’ attempted to frame terrorism along similar lines to the fight against communism and fascism, and failed to recognise the distinction between them. 104 Terrorism is a strategy and thereby any attempt to understand it as an alternative to communism and fascism (political ideologies) is ill-conceived. Terrorism, unlike political ideologies, is something capable of being utilised by a wide range of groups and does not possess any political 101 Peter Bergen and Alec Reynolds, 'Blowback Revisited: Today’s Insurgents in Iraq Are Tomorrow’s Terrorists', Foreign Affairs , 84.6 (2005), 2–6. 102 Boaz Ganor, 'Are counterterrorism frameworks based on suppression and military force effective in responding to terrorism?', in Contemporary Debates on Terrorism , ed. by Richard Jackson and Samuel Justin Sinclair (Abingdon: Routledge, 2012), pp. 137–143, p. 140. 103 Timothy H. Edgar, The Good News About Spying (Foreign Affairs, 2015), <https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united- states/2015-04-13/good-news-about-spying> [accessed 7 January 2017]. 104 O’Kane, pp. 27–28.
38
Made with FlippingBook HTML5