Counterterrorism Blog

The UN General Assembly’s 60th Session was supposed to lay the foundation for a new Counter-Terrorism Strategy to re-enforce, and better coordinate international efforts against terrorism and terrorism financing. Secretary General Kofi Annan put forth a plan of action earlier this year that was intended to reform and better focus UN efforts in this regard. These measures were based, in turn on the recommendations of the High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change which issued its report in December 2004.

The culmination of this effort is a new UN Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy and “plan of action” adopted by the General Assembly on September 8th, 2006. It lays out admirable objectives that need to be addressed and achieved. But it provides really little that can be deemed a “plan of action.”

The document focuses on what the UN can and should do best – providing an international basis for criminalizing terrorism and terrorism financing and support for, and legitimizing bilateral and multilateral efforts to deal with terrorism. What is lacking is a framework for accomplishing these goals. These details are apparently being left to Kofi Annan during his final months as Secretary General. Nevertheless the document is quite interest for what it says and doesn’t say.

The first objective set forth in the document is a renewed call for adoption of a clear definition of terrorism. The absence of such a definition has undercut the effectiveness of so many measures already adopted by the General Assembly and Security Council since it leaves each country free to pick and choose who they wish to deem terrorists and who they prefer to call ‘freedom fighters.(see my previous blog) Also high on the list of priorities are calls for greater efforts to encourage compliance with UN counter-terrorism resolutions and to build States' capacity to prevent and combat terrorism. In this regard Kofi Annan is expected to push for some sort of consolidation between the activities of the UN’s Counter Terrorism Committee and Al Qaeda and Taliban Sanctions Committee.

Missing from the Strategy are plans to enhance accountability and consequences for State failure to implement and enforce previously adopted Chapter VII measures against al Qaeda and terrorism. These measures include prohibition on terrorism financing, freezing assets, denial of economic resources, and the ban on travel. The UN needs to reconstitute an independent watchdog or monitoring group to oversee what countries are actually doing, or not doing, to implement effectively these measures. Such a group would bring increased transparency and credibility to the sanctions enforcement process. It would also place increased pressure on countries to comply with the sanctions measures.

There is also some corridor talk of giving the Counter Terrorism Committee and the CTED an increased role in terrorism sanctions enforcement. In my view the group is ill-suited to taking on such a role. 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. Few countries are willing to channel sensitive intelligence and investigative information through such a group. Enforcement is better left to more discrete national and regional operations.

Combating terrorism and terrorism financing takes more than strategies and plans of action. It requires a dogged determination to implement these strategies and to go after those that support terrorism. That requires political will to act against those who commit or support terrorism, even if there might be support their ultimate goals. Whatever the UN can do to fortify such action and political will is a positive step in the right direction. But action will speak louder than words.