Preparing for Terror Attacks
The Case for Case Studies
An earlier version of this piece appeared in 2013 in PACEM, a ‘military journal for ethical and theological reflection’1. While the website for that journal has gone the way of Ask Jeeves, you can find a copy of the original article at the Military Learning Library.
Acts of terror disrupt routines. In particular, they disrupt the usual work of those charged with responding to such attacks. Whether they are police officers or members of the armed forces, aviators or merchant mariners, such people spend most of their professional lives engaging problems other than terrorism. Thus, when acts of terror take place, they must act in ways relatively strange to them.
The disruption caused by acts of terror owes much to their rarity. Between 1 January 2001 and 31 December 2010, only one terrorist attack took place in Norway. In the same decade, Denmark experienced three acts of terror. However, only one of these incidents, an attempt to set fire to the home of a cabinet minister, posed any danger to life or limb.2
Sweden experienced more frequent terror attacks. In the first full decade of the twenty-first century, six acts of terror took place on Swedish soil. Thus, on average, Swedish authorities had to deal with one terrorist attack every twenty months. However, three of these attacks were the work of the same group of people (Global Intifada) over the course of a short period of time (21 December 2004 to 23 March 2005), thereby forming part of a single terror operation. Thus, rather than responding to six discrete incidents, Swedish national authorities dealt with four distinct operations. This, in turn, increased the average interval between significant events from twenty months to thirty months.
The good fortune enjoyed by the three Scandinavian kingdoms does not extend, alas, to all parts of the globe. Between 1 January 2001 and 31 December 2010, the United Kingdom suffered thirty-three terrorist attacks. As eight of these were single acts of terror and six consisted of several separate attacks, British national authorities found themselves dealing with a total of fourteen distinct operations. Thus, on average, British national authorities were faced with one terror operation every eight or nine months.
As the vast majority of terror attacks that occurred within the United Kingdom took place in London, the experience of that great city was comparable to that of the United Kingdom as a whole. To be more specific, the municipal authorities of London dealt with four terror campaigns and five separate attacks, and thus, on average, one terror operation every thirteen months. Conversely, the concentration of terror attacks in a single metropolis meant that, for the fifty police departments responsible for public safety in those parts of the United Kingdom other than London, the situation with regard to terror attacks was more 'Scandinavian’ than ‘British’.
Outside of London, the vast majority of British police departments (forty-four out of fifty) had no direct experience of terrorism whatsoever. Of the six police departments that had to respond to acts of terror, one dealt with four such attacks, two dealt with two attacks apiece, and four each dealt with single acts. Thus, on average, each of the British police departments outside of London with direct experience of acts of terror dealt with one such incident every five years.