The UN Reviews Its Role in Combating Terrorism

By Victor Comras

The UN is grappling anew with its role in the war on terrorism. New leadership has taken over in both the UN's Al Qaeda and Taliban Sanctions Committee and its Counter-terrorism Committee. The Security Council also established a new working group under Resolution 1566 (2004) to consider new measures that might be taken against al Qaeda and its associates. I submit as my first contribution to The Counterterrorism Blog a short piece I wrote on the UN's role in combating Terrorism. The UN Report

Lost behind the noisy swirl of the Oil for Food scandal, a special high level panel of international experts has issued its own evaluation of UN shortcomings in dealing with threats to international peace and security. That report, commissioned last year by Secretary General Kofi Annan, was meant to review the challenges, threats and changes facing the United Nations in the 21st Century. But high on its list of shortcomings is the inadequate United Nations response to international terrorism. The report finds that the United Nations �has not made the best use of its assets in the fight against terrorism and needs to articulate an effective and principled counter-terrorism strategy.�

Following the 1998 embassy bombings the United States looked to the United Nations to galvanize international cooperation in the war on terrorism. The UN response included two new Security Council committees charged with fighting terrorism. The first , The UN�s Counter-Terrorism Committee, was designed to serve as a resource to assist member countries in drafting new laws and regulations to combat terrorism and to provide a platform for mutual assistance and international cooperation in tracking down and prosecuting terrorists. Under the able leadership of then British UN Ambassador Sir Jeremy Greenstock, it brought together experts from around the world to build new domestic and international legal structures to deal with terrorism. But, the group never really found its role in coordinating member state responses to terrorism, and its original expert membership was subsequently dissipated during long periods of inaction. The UN is now trying to reconstitute this expert group under new UN Secretariat leadership.

The Security Council also established an Al Qaeda and Taliban Sanctions Committee that was charged with imposing and policing measures to cut off al Qaeda�s finances, curb its mobility and inhibit its access to weapons and explosives. But this committee also fell short in motivating full implementation for these sanctions measures. This was due, in part, to the shear difficulty in applying these measures. And many countries simply lacked the resources necessary to enforce them. The Al Qaeda Committee did away with its most effective �name and shame� tool when it dismissed its independent monitoring group after the group issued its 5th report in December 2003 largely critical of the international response to terrorism.. The Committee then constituted a new, more pliant �analytical team,� which, in its turn, also found that �the sanctions regime imposed by the Security Council has had a limited impact.�

One of the principal reasons for this limited impact is the committee's inability to update and expand its consolidated list of al Qaeda and Taliban members and supporters in a timely fashion. The UN list now includes only 176 individuals along with 114 designated entities worldwide. And there is no obligation on countries to take any of the UN sanctions measures against al Qaeda associated individuals or entities whose names are not included on the UN list.

Noting these failings, Russia, following the Beslan atrocities, won passage of a new UN resolution in October 2004, calling on all countries to take the UN�s counter-terrorism measures more seriously. The new resolution set up yet another Security Council Committee to study possible additional sanctions measures to combat terrorism. This new group is supposed to look at �practical measures� to extend UN counter-terrorism sanctions against al Qaeda members whether or not their names have been added to the UN list. They are also supposed to come up with new measures to �bring terrorists to justice through prosecution or extradition, freezing of their financial assets, preventing their movement through the territories of member States, {and} preventing supply to them of all types of arms and related material.� Despite the rhetoric, there is little expectation at the UN that this new group will actively pursue its mandate.

But there is a broader question as to just what kind of activist role the UN can or should play in the war on terrorism. The UN is ill-suited for a direct enforcement role. UN procedures are very cumbersome and political. Diplomatic niceties and political realities hamper timely and forthright action. The UN has a poor record in coping with controversy or holding its member countries accountable. And few countries have been willing to share sensitive information or intelligence on terrorism to so broad a forum.

The UN Secretariat has little grounding in counter-terrorism expertise. And secretariat hiring procedures may not be conducive to putting together the needed secure expert human resource base. During the Bosnian war, for example, the UN had to be convinced to turn over implementation to regional enforcement groups in order to get the sanctions on Serbia to work. These sanctions then became the most successful in UN history.

Perhaps the UN should concentrate, not on enforcement, but on putting together an appropriate international mandate to stimulate others to improve international and regional coordination in the war on terrorism. This should include spelling out clearer obligations on member states to act against terrorism and those that fund or facilitate it. One idea might be to promote the establishment of new regional-based interpol-like centers that would share regional intelligence gathering and police burdens and provide local platforms for sharing intelligence and investigative information. The larger countries, including the members of the G-8 working through their Counter Terrorism Action Group (CTAG) could also contribute support directly to these regional centers.

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