As Nigeria continues the search for effective means of stamping out terrorism within its domain, political scientist, Dr. Thomas Brister, expert in terrorism and counter-terrorism at the Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, North Carolina, United States gave this insight on the distinction between amnesty, military option and legal approaches to tackling the insurgency. He is worried over the absence of international legal framework to deal with the menace. He spoke to KABIR ALABI GARBA.

What is the position of  ‘International Law’ on combating Terrorism?

UNFORTUNATELY, although we use the term ‘international law’, the reality is that there’s really no such thing if we are trying to equate it with ‘domestic law’. It’s really more a bundle of treaties, customs, and legal norms that most states comply with, even though there is no way of enforcing these rules. For example, there is no world government, no world police or military, and no world court with binding decisions and enforcement power.

The second difficulty is that there is thus no universally accepted definition of terrorism in the world. The United Nations in fact had to give up the effort to achieve a consensus definition in 2005. The reason for this can be seen in the well-known phrase “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter”. Because terrorism is a political crime, based on political motives, many states - especially those in the developing and post-colonial world - have problems with a very general definition, since it would turn many of their national liberation movements into ‘terrorist campaigns’. There is no consensus on what defines a ‘non-combatant’, for example. Furthermore, many states will not extradite someone accused of a ‘political crime’.

In the end, therefore, it’s almost impossible to talk about any kind of coherent ‘international law’ regarding terrorism. It remains very much something that is subjective and interpreted differently state by state.

Is there any approach recommended by international law to counter terrorism?

Because there are so many kinds of terrorist campaigns, motives, and actors, there is no one-way to ‘fight terrorism’, the distinction you are looking at here is the military versus legal approach. For some, police work, surveillance, infiltration, and the use of legal measures is the best means of finding terrorists and preventing terrorist acts. The more coercive approach - which we see with the drone campaign against Al Qaeda - sometimes results in a militarization of the campaign. We saw this in Northern Ireland, for example, in the 1970s, in Sri Lanka recently in the fight against the LTTE, in Israel, etc. Many people criticize the militarization of counter-terrorism as a tactic that will, in the longer-term, create more blowback and thus be counterproductive.

In the case of Northern Ireland, militarization in my opinion made the problem worse. In the case of Sri Lanka, the military campaign was effective - at least for now - in almost completely eliminating a group that had been committing terrorist acts since the 1980s.

In the case of Nigeria, I really don’t know enough about the situation there to comment much more, but in general, I’ve found that most counterterrorist experts advise resisting the military option as long as possible.

Is Amnesty an option? Specifically, what does International law on terrorism says on it?

This is another difficult policy choice, as it seems to reward terrorist violence. It has been tried in Saudi Arabia for former Al Qaeda militants, and has had a fair degree of success there (though not perfect). I think this depends on the types of fighters in question. Many who join these groups are actually not particularly ideological and do it for a variety of reasons. Generally, it is only a small hard core of fanatics who are probably incapable of any kind of rehabilitation or reintegration into society.

In Nigeria’s case, I think that the recent military approaches are relevant in understanding the difficulties - because there are two very distinct, almost opposing approaches to counterterrorism. The problem with militarization of counterterrorism is that - as we’ve seen recently - it can lead to charges of human rights abuses, the killing of innocent bystanders, etc. This is almost inevitable, unfortunately, we’ve seen it in just about every case where governments have escalated to this level. For example, the Russian campaign against the Chechens over the past decade. I note that Boko Haram has rejected the amnesty offer in any case.

Counterterrorism is one of the most difficult of all security operations, and I think that Nigeria is probably just at the beginning of dealing with this growing threat. I’d say taking a look at the experiences of Britain in Northern Ireland, Russia in Chechnya, and Sri Lanka against the LTTE, and the Indian government fighting Sikh separatist terrorists in Punjab in the 1980s could be useful to see if there are any lessons we have learned from these cases. It’s hard for me to say more now since I haven’t spent time in Nigeria and don’t have enough information to see which case or cases it most resembles.

Giving the carnage (human and material) the Boko Haram has unleashed, don’t you think U.S. should have tagged them a ‘terrorist organisation’?

As I understand it, the US Administration is not yet clear whether Boko Haram is really an established, coherent group - or more loosely organised and local. There are also concerns about possible human rights abuses committed by Nigerian security forces.  There is no doubt that the acts in question are ‘terrorist’. I think that some US officials fear that labeling Boko Haram a FTO (Foreign Terrorist Organization) might inflate its real power and organisation and bring it into conflict with the United States more directly. One stipulation for getting on the list is that the group must represent a direct threat to the United States. So that probably explains some of the hesitation.

However, some suspect that the group may have begun collaborating with AQIM and other groups in Mali - if this is the case, then I think that the United States should seriously reconsider the present official status of the group.