Modern Warfare (Roger Trinquier 1.4)

4. Terrorism—The Principal Weapon of Modern Warfare

The war in Indochina and the one in Algeria have demonstrated the basic weapon that permits our enemies to fight effectively with few resources and even to defeat a traditional army.

This weapon is terrorism.

Terrorism in the service of a clandestine organization devoted to manipulating the population is a recent development. After being used in Morocco in 1954, it reached its full development in Algiers in December, 1956, and January, 1957. The resultant surprise gave our adversaries an essential advantage, which may have been decisive. In effect, a hundred organized terrorists were all that was necessary to cause us to give up the game quickly to the Moroccans.

Terrorism, then, is a weapon of warfare, which can neither be ignored nor minimized. It is as a weapon of warfare that we should study it.

The goal of modern warfare is control of the populace, and terrorism is a particularly appropriate weapon, since it aims directly at the inhabitant. In the street, at work, at home, the citizen lives continually under the threat of violent death. In the presence of this permanent danger surrounding him/ he has the depressing feeling of being an isolated and defenseless target. The fact that public authority and the police are no longer capable of ensuring his security adds to his distress. He loses confidence in the state whose inherent mission it is to guarantee his safety. He is more and more drawn to the side of the terrorists, who alone are able to protect him.

The intended objective, which is to cause the population to vacillate is thus attained.

What characterizes modern terrorism, and makes for its basic strength, is the slaughter of generally defenseless persons. The terrorist operates within a familiar legal framework, while avoiding the ordinary risks taken by the common criminal, let alone by soldiers on the field of battle, or even by partisans facing regular troops.

The ordinary criminal kills a certain individual, usually only one, for a specific purpose. Having achieved it, he may no longer constitute a danger to society. His crime is based on an easily discernible motive—robbery, vengeance, etc. To succeed, he quite often has to run risks sufficient to cause his arrest. His crime is thus carried out within a known framework. Well-defined police procedure can easily be applied, which takes whatever time is necessary to obtain justice, while respecting the rights of both the individual and society.

The soldier meets his adversary on the field of battle and in uniform. He fights within a framework of traditional rules that both sides respect. Aware of the dangers that confront him, the soldier has always had a high regard for his opponent, because both run the same risks. When the battle is over, the dead and the wounded of the two camps are treated with the same humanity; prisoners are withdrawn as quickly as possible from the battlefield and are simply kept from fighting again until the end of the war.

For the partisan and the irregular who oppose a regular army, the very fact that they violate the rules of warfare in fighting without a uniform (avoiding the risks involved) deprives them of the protection of these same rules. If taken prisoner while armed, they may be shot on the spot.

But the case of the terrorist is quite otherwise. Not only does he carry on warfare without uniform, but he attacks, far from a field of battle, only unarmed civilians who are incapable of defending themselves and who are normally protected under the rules of warfare. Surrounded by a vast organization, which prepares his task and assists him in its execution, which assures his withdrawal and his protection, he runs practically no risks—neither that of retailation by his victims nor that of having to appear before a court of justice. When it has been decided to kill someone sometime somewhere, with the sole purpose of terrorizing the populace and strewing a certain number of bodies along the streets of a city or on country roads, it is quite easy under existing laws to escape the police.

In Algiers, during 1956, the F.L.N. set up the clandestine warfare organization already described, and it was impossible for the police forces to arrest a single terrorist. In the face of the ever increasing number of attacks, the police ought to have acknowledged their impotence and appealed to the army.

Without the massive intervention of thef army (in particular of the Tenth Parachute Division) at the beginning of 1957, the entire city would have fallen into the hands of the F.L.N., the loss carrying with it the immediate abandonment of all Algeria.

In a large city, police forces can partly restrict the action of the terrorists and delay their complete control of the populace. Obliged to act secretly, the organization's functioning will be slow and difficult. Massive and drastic action by the army may even be able to stop it entirely, as in Algiers in 1957.

But in the unprotected regions that comprise the major portion of the national territory, particularly the vast area of inhabited countryside where police forces are small or nonexistent, terrorist action encounters no opposition at the beginning of a conflict and is most effective.

Isolated raids first reveal the existence of a partially organized movement. These attract attention and promote caution among the populace. Then, selective terrorism begins to eliminate lesser persons of influence, petty bureaucrats and various police officials who did not understand the first warnings or were slow in reacting to them. Administrative cadres are restrained or eliminated. The silence and collusion of the unprotected inhabitants have been won. Agents of the enemy have a free hand to organize and to manipulate the population at will.

From then on, within the midst of these people taken over by terrorism, the small armed bands whose task it is to wage guerrilla warfare are able to install themselves, in the phrase of Mao Tse-tung, like fish in water. Fed, informed, protected, they are able to strike without difficulty against the forces of order.

Modern warfare requires the unconditional support of the populace. This support must be maintained at any price. Here again, terrorism plays its role.

An unceasing watch is exercised over all the inhabitants. Any suspicion or indication of lack of submission is punishable by death, quite often preceded by horrible torture.

The atrocities committed by the F.L.N, in Algeria to maintain its hold over the populace are innumerable. I will cite but one example to demonstrate the degree to which they were carried in certain areas.

In the month of September, 1958, the forces of order took possession of the files of a military tribunal of one of the regions of the F.L.N. In the canton of Michelet alone, in the arrondissement (district) of Fort-National in Kabyllet more than 2,000 inhabitants were condemned to death and executed between November 1,1954, and April 17,1957.

Quite clearly, terrorism is a Weapon of warfare, and it is important to stress it.

Although quite old, until recently it has been utilized only by isolated revolutionaries for spectacular attacks, principally against high political personalities, such as sovereigns, chiefs of state, and ministers. Even in Indochina, where guerrillas achieved such a remarkable degree of development that it permitted the Vietminh finally to win, terrorism has never been systematically employed. For example, the plastic bomb attacks outside the municipal theater in Saigon, which caused the greatest number of victims, were not carried out by the Vietminh (see Graham Greene's book The Quiet American).

The terrorist should not be considered an ordinary criminal. Actually, he fights within the framework of his organization, without personal interest, for a cause he considers noble and for a respectable ideal, the same as the soldiers in the armies confronting him. On the command of his superiors, he kills without hatred individuals unknown to him, with the same indifference as the soldier on the battlefield. His victims are often women and children, almost always defenseless individuals taken by surprise. But during a period of history when the bombing of open cities is permitted, and when two Japanese cities were razed to hasten the end of the war in the Pacific, one cannot with good cause reproach him.*

The terrorist has become a soldier, like the aviator or the infantryman.

But the aviator flying over a city knows that antiaircraft shells can kill or maim him. The infantryman wounded on the battlefield accepts physical suffering, often for long hours, when he falls between the lines and it is impossible to rescue him. It never occurs to him to complain and to ask, for example, that his enemy renounce the use of the rifle, the shell, or the bomb. If he can, he goes back to a hospital knowing this to be his lot. The soldier, therefore, admits the possibility of physical suffering as part of the job. The risks he runs on the battlefield and the suffering he endures are the price of the glory he receives.

The terrorist claims the same honors while rejecting the same obligations. His kind of organization permits him to escape from the police, his victims cannot defend themselves, and the army cannot use the power of its weapons against him because he hides himself permanently within the midst of a population going about its peaceful pursuits.

But he must be made to realize that, when he is captured, he cannot be treated as an ordinary criminal, nor like a prisoner taken on the battlefield. What the forces of order who have arrested him are seeking is not to punish a crime, for which he is otherwise not personally responsible, but, as in any war, the destruction of the enemy army or its surrender. Therefore he is not asked details about himself or about attacks that he may or may not have committed and that are not of immediate interest, but rather for precise information about his organization. In particular, each man has a superior whom he knows; he will first have to give the name of this person, along with his address, so that it will be possible to proceed with the arrest without delay.

No lawyer is present for such an interrogation. If the prisoner gives the information requested, the examination is quickly terminated; if not, specialists must force his secret from him. Then, as a soldier, he must face the suffering, and perhaps the death, he has heretofore managed to avoid. The terrorist must accept this as a condition inherent in his trade and in the methods of warfare that, with full knowledge, his superiors and he himself have chosen. Once the interrogation is finished, however, the terrorist can take his place among soldiers. From then on, he is a prisoner of war like any other, kept from resuming hostilities until the end of the conflict.

It would be as useless and unjust to charge him with the attacks he was able to carry out, as to hold responsible the infantryman or the airman for the deaths caused by the weapons they use. According to Clausewitz:

War ... is an act of violence intended to compel an opponent to fulfill our will. . . , Self-imposed restrictions, almost imperceptible and hardly worth mentioning, termed usages of International Law, accompany it without impairing its power. Violence ... is therefore the means; the compulsory submission of the enemy to our will is the ultimate object. . . . In such dangerous things as war, the errors which proceed from a spirit of benevolence are the worst. As the use of physical power to the utmost extent by no means excludes the cooperation of the intelligence, it follows that he who uses force unsparingly, without reference to the bloodshed involved, must obtain a superiority if his adversary uses less vigor in its application. ... To introduce into the philosophy of war itself a principle of moderation would be an absurdity.

These basic principles of traditional warfare retain all of their validity in modern warfare.

Although violence is an unavoidable necessity in warfare, certain unnecessary violence ought to be rigorously banned. Interrogations in modern warfare should be conducted by specialists perfectly versed in the techniques to be employed.

The first condition for a quick and effective interrogation is to have interrogators who know what they can ask the terrorist under questioning. For this, it is first of all essential to place him precisely within the diagram of the organization to which he belongs. A profound knowledge of the organization is required. It is useless to ask a funds collector about caches of weapons or bombs. Every clandestine organization is strictly compartmented, and he would know nothing about them. To ask him would be a useless waste of time. On the other hand, he does know to whom he remits the funds and under what conditions. This is the only subject about which he should be questioned.

It is known that the ordinary terrorist operates as part of a three-man team; therefore he knows his comrade and his demi-cell superior. This is the only information he will be able to furnish, but he must give it quickly; otherwise, the individuals sought will have the time to disappear, the thread will be broken, and a lengthy search will quite often come to naught.

The interrogators must always strive not to injure the physical and moral integrity of individuals. Science can easily place at the army's disposition the means for obtaining what is sought.

But we must not trifle with our responsibilities. It is deceitful to permit artillery or aviation to bomb villages and slaughter women and children, while the real enemy usually escapes, and to refuse interrogation specialists the right to seize the truly guilty terrorist and spare the innocent.

Terrorism in the hands of our adversaries has become a formidable weapon of war that we can no longer permit ourselves to ignore. Tried out in Indochina and brought to perfection in Algeria, it can lead to any boldness, even a direct attack on metropolitan France. Thanks to the Communist Party, which is already on the scene and is familiar with underground operations, it would encounter no great difficulty.

Even a band of gangsters, lacking any political ideology at all, but without scruples and determined to employ the same methods, could constitute a grave danger.

In the light of present events, we can imagine in its broad outlines the unfolding of future aggression:

A few organized and well-trained men of action will carry out a reign of terror in the big cities. If the goal pursued is only to strew the streets nightly with a certain number of anonymous corpses to terrorize the inhabitants, a specialized organization would have no difficulty, within the framework of existing laws, in escaping the pursuit of the police. The numerous attacks being committed nightly in our large cities, which are nothing other than a prelude to facilitating the creation and training of an important warfare organization, demonstrate in a tangible way the inadequacy of a traditional police force against modern terrorists. Whenever a broad attack is unfolded, the police run the risk of being quickly overwhelmed.

In the countryside, and particularly in the hilly regions such as the Massif Central, the Alps, or Brittany, the population has no permanent protection. Small bands could easily block traffic through difficult passes by killing the passengers of the first two or three automobiles. A few brutalities, such as savagely executed preventive assassinations in the surrounding villages, will cow the inhabitants into providing for the maintenance of the bands and will discourage them from giving useful information to the authorities.

Occasional police operations timidly carried out with inadequate forces will fail pitifully. These failures will encourage a goodly number of adventurers to team up with the original outlaws, who will rapidly develop into rebels.

In this fashion, immense zones will be practically abandoned to our adversaries and will be lost to our control. The way will be open to the guerrilla. With terrorism in the cities and guerrillas in the countryside, the war will have begun. This is the simple mechanism, now well known, which can at any instant be unleashed against us.

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