The Riskiest Kind of Operation

By George Russell

The Egyptian assault on the Malta hijackers was the third indication in eight weeks that governments have decided that the best way to beat terrorism is to fight fire with fire. So far the results have been mixed. In the celebrated air interception of the four Palestinians who took over the Achille Lauro, U.S. anger and decisiveness yielded a spectacular victory without bloodshed. But in the Colombian government's Nov. 6 assault on M-19 terrorists holed up in the country's Palace of Justice, and again in Malta last week, the responses produced triumphs that could just as easily be termed disasters.

Governments have good reason to be concerned about the terrorist escalation. In the first ten months of 1985, according to the U.S. State Department, the number of terrorist attacks--630--surpassed the total for all of 1984. Last year two innocent people died in hijackings; the toll this year is already 59.

The best argument for the increased use of antiterrorist force is its deterrent effect. Secretary of State George Shultz outlined the rationale most bluntly in October 1984 when he declared, "We cannot allow ourselves to become the Hamlet of nations, worrying endlessly over whether and how to respond." In July, Abraham Sofaer, the State Department's legal adviser, told a meeting of the American Bar Association in London, "The groups that are responsible for attacking us in Lebanon, El Salvador and elsewhere have openly announced their intention to keep on trying to kill Americans. To the extent that they are state-supported or beyond the capacity of their governments to control, we are entitled now to use necessary and proportionate force to end such attacks."

The U.S. has trained a variety of military units in antiterrorist tactics: the special operations Delta Force, the Army's helicopter unit Task Force 168, the Navy's SEALs (for Sea, Air and Land forces) and the Air Force's First Special Operations Wing. West Germany has its G.S.G. 9 antiterrorist group, while the British government has recently decided to station units of its highly regarded Special Air Services at five airports. As British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher told the American lawyers in July, "We have behind us many fine declarations and communiques of good intent. We need action, action to which all countries are committed until the terrorist knows that he has no haven, no escape."

The desire for action is not confined to the West. In 1983 an antiterrorist squad was flown from Moscow to Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia, after a local group killed seven people aboard a jetliner. Three of the hijackers were killed in a shoot-out and five others captured. Four of the survivors were sentenced to death.

Yet the publicity given to such commando feats as the 1976 Israeli raid at Entebbe and West Germany's 1977 rescue operation at Mogadishu, Somalia, may have inflated expectations. The fact is that such methods heighten the risk to hostages. According to a 1977 study by the California-based Rand Corp., 79% of all hostage deaths in terrorist situations occur during rescues. Says Uri Ra'anan, a professor at Tufts University's Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy: "The most difficult and risky type of operation is a rescue mission. It is the most likely to lead to loss of life."

Another problem, according to Brian Jenkins, head of Rand's security and sub-national-conflict research program, is that terrorists can learn new techniques from their clashes with antiterrorist forces. One sign of that learning process, he notes, is that would-be airline hijackers now tend to be much more heavily armed than they were in the past. Says Jenkins: "Commandos are going to run into more and more difficult situations because terrorists learn too."

While agreeing that there are no "instant Rambo solutions" to terrorism, Robert Kupperman, a senior adviser at Georgetown University's Center for Strategic and International Studies, says that "terrorism cannot be met with a bunch of Boy Scouts." Rather than a knee-jerk policy of military assault when outrages occur, Kupperman is an advocate of a pre-emptive covert war on terrorism that would include air strikes against terrorist encampments and "serious consideration" of selective assassination.

Those methods too have their problems. Last spring, for example, the Washington Post revealed that in 1984 President Reagan had approved a covert CIA operation to train and support counterterrorist units in the Middle East. About four months later, according to the Post, members of a Lebanese counterterror unit, acting without CIA authorization, hired another band of Lebanese gunmen to detonate a car bomb outside the Beirut residence of Sheik Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, a man believed to be behind the suicide bombings of the U.S. Marine headquarters and the U.S. embassy annex in Beirut. More than 80 people were killed in the car bombing, but Fadlallah was unharmed.

Many experts doubt that force will ever prevent terrorism from recurring. The Rand Corp.'s Jenkins points to the repeated raids of Palestinian commandos into Israel, with the attackers' foreknowledge of the fierce Israeli reaction, as evidence of that. Says Paul Wilkinson of Scotland's University of Aberdeen: "We may be entering an entirely new phase, in which fanatics will stop at nothing, killing for the pure joy of blowing up themselves along with innocent passengers."

In balancing the use of force against other antiterrorist tactics, the dilemma is that, as Admiral James Watkins of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff puts it, governments are still dealing with an "ideological opposite" on its own terms. "We don't know how to deal with it because they win if they die and they win if they live," he says. Agrees retired Admiral James Holloway III, executive director of President Reagan's Task Force on Combating Terrorism: "This can never be anything but a case-by-case analysis." In each and every case, the decision about what to do will never be easy. --By George Russell. Reported by Bruce van Voorst/Washington and Mary Wormley/Los Angeles, with other bureaus

With reporting by Reported by Bruce van Voorst/Washington, Mary Wormley/Los Angeles, with other bureaus