In every conflict, be it in business, world clashes, local disputes or the upbringing of our children, we have always said: “learn from the past.”
Learning from the past
For this reason even military academies study ancient wars and tactics used therein to teach their future military leaders. In my domain, security, we do the same. We base our training on the past, scenarios that we have seen, that our instructors have lived are replayed and countered in order to make us ‘ready’ for what awaits us.
This sounds logical; we can only learn from our mistakes and praise ourselves over our victories. And to a certain level this is true. We do need to learn from our mistakes and use the past to shape the present. However, it is exactly in this last sentence that we make the biggest mistake.
As we live in the present and head towards the future, the enemy of the present lives in the future, a step ahead, always.
Look at 9/11. Aviation security has changed since those events, some might argue for the better, some might say for the worse, but is has changed. We have adapted our security measures to something that has happened in the past. We have made it virtually impossible for terrorist organizations to perpetrate such an act again. But the terrorists know this, and they will counter us using our biggest weakness, the fact that we live and train for the present.
After the 2006 August arrest of terrorists planning to blow up airliners departing from London Heathrow airport, extreme security measures were implemented based on the information available to the authorities. Liquid explosives were found on the intercepted terrorists. Even though not all suspected terrorists were intercepted that day, authorities decided that liquid explosives were the new threat to aviation.
For this, all liquids over 10 Oz. were banned causing massive problems to passengers and the airlines and security agencies dealing with this new measure. It was stated that the events in August were a dry run for the terrorists to see if they would get through security with these products. We applauded the security services for their work in intercepting the terrorists before they could carry out their plans.
However, were the liquid explosive carriers the real dry run agents, or was there something else? There was another group of terrorists that belonged to the ‘liquid-gang’ that the security services didn’t intercept. Supposing that these terrorists were decoy, nobody gave it much more thought. But what were these terrorists carrying in their dry run attempt? If an explosive device, this would be the explosive device we should all be worried about. Terrorists now know for a fact that liquids won’t work, so they surely will not try to use this agent as a solution for their explosive smuggling.
In other words, when we learn and train from the past, our adversaries do so as well and in the meantime they plan for the future.
As the 2002 movie, Minority Report, shows very well, it would be so easy to protect the world if we could see into the future. Even if it were just minutes in advance, security would be such an easy art form. But movies will stay movies and looking into the future is not possible. So, in security we keep basing our tactics, defence systems and procedures on past experience.
The Geneva Convention
In the war on terror, when military were deployed to hostile countries such as Iraq and Afghanistan, the soldiers went fighting with the Geneva Convention still freshly written in their minds. Here are three articles of the convention that they were sure to have read again and again:
- Attacks may be made solely against military objectives. People who do not or can no longer take part in the hostilities are entitled to respect for their lives and for their physical and mental integrity. Such people must in all circumstances be protected and treated with humanity, without any unfavourable distinction whatever.
- It is forbidden to kill or wound an adversary who surrenders or who can no longer take part in the fighting.
- Neither the parties to the conflict nor members of their armed forces have an unlimited right to choose methods and means of warfare. It is forbidden to use weapons or methods of warfare that are likely to cause unnecessary losses or excessive suffering.
But, after arriving in the war zone, it became clear for the soldiers that the adversary has not read the same convention. Soon, military personnel came under scrutiny due to firing at innocent civilians or non-military targets. Our laws, tactics and procedures were not ready for the fight waiting for our own soldiers. Like waiving at children to seem less aggressive and capture the hearts of the locals. But how far do you take waiving at children when these same children carry AK-47’s and know how to use them?
To get back on track, we still can’t look into the future and so we have to deal with this problem differently.
When I speak with trainers or graduate students from different security related courses they always respond in the same way at the question: “So, are you ready?” the answer is: “Yes, the training covered all aspects of the job, we have seen dozens of scenarios and we are ready!”
When I asked a group of students from a local Belgian Close Protection course if they were ready, I got the same answer. So I continued, and asked: “So what would you do, if your convoy got attacked with a shoulder launched missile on Avenue Louise (the Champs Elysee of Brussels)?” The answer was exactly what I was expecting: “euh, well, in Belgium this kind of violence is not expected!” and this is true, it hasn’t really happened yet and the governmental security services do a pretty good job in intercepting such weapons. But then again, why were we all so shocked when in December 2007 a young female police officer was violently killed by machinegun fire in a quiet town in Belgium. Surely her death was untimely and a tragedy. Everybody was shocked by the violence used against the police. But why? Because it was unprecedented for our community. For the future, it isn’t and next time machineguns are used we will not be as shocked.
Where will we go?
My question to you is, why wait for a precedent, before reacting and adjusting. It is a known fact that terrorists have an incredible amount of fantasy in creating devastating, or even better, terrorizing events. Terrorism has as goal to destabilize daily life by using whatever means necessary to do so. Unfortunately, this destabilizing happens when death and destruction occurs. Look at the IRA in Ireland. They used explosives to gain attention for their cause. But, after a while people got accustomed to these acts as they were so common. It barely broke frontline news. They were forced to use other techniques to gain attention.
The anthrax attacks and the use of poison gas occurred in the subway system of Japan. It used to be very popular, until protocols were developed to counter this threat. Terrorists stopped using this form of violence and they resorted to other forms, among them explosives. In Iraq for example, IED’s or Improvised Explosive Devices are very popular with the resistance force. As long as the military doesn’t find a system or protocol to counter this threat effectively we will stay vulnerable to it and the terrorists won’t feel the need to resort to different techniques.
Examples of precedent and change can be given without an end. However, it is much more important to find a solution for this problem. I believe that the answer lies in two things, one being training and the other using intelligence to outwit the enemy. In my business, we always say that you have to be ready for everything, any type of attack, incident or accident. However, as human nature dictates, we can only be ready for events that have had a precedent in our minds. Otherwise, our reactions are brought back to basics, which might not be the reactions that are best suited to resolve the situation. For this, the way we train and what we train needs to change. Our way of thinking needs to change. Being ahead of the enemy is what we want. The trainings as we see them today should remain unchanged, however, the material should all be considered as basic. The precedents are indeed very important because they allow for a solid training basis and give the students the necessary know how on protocols and procedures. However, the brain needs to be set into a different mindset.
It is one thing to know that you work in a certain area where the threats are limited to, for example, hand gun attacks, but why be the “first close protection officer that gets killed in the line of action while hitting an IED on a Belgian motorway?” Our adversaries will eventually know where our weaknesses are and they will exploit these weaknesses, it is a matter of time, something that professional criminals have in masses.
When training, it is important to have the students realize that anything can happen. Everything you have seen can happen, but everything that you fear, dream of or have nightmares about can and will happen eventually. You can not train too much. Most European countries don’t allow private security personnel to carry or use weapons. For this reason, very few security personnel are familiar with any type of weapon. This weapon can be a fire arm, but a knife, baton, gas, explosives are also weapons. As private security is not allowed to use any of these, they are not expected to know their functioning or even their effects. This is wrong. Because once faced with a threat involving such a weapon, your mental preparedness will be so much higher when a mental image, a CORRECT mental image has been formed.
For example, why are people all so afraid of knives? Everybody has been cut; everybody knows what a knife does, how it does it and where it does it. For this reason, people handle knives with caution. However, a pistol for this example is less known. A mental image has been created because we have all seen Arnold in action, but this image might not be correct. People experience massive trauma after being faced with a firearm, because firearms represent instant death to most people. But for example at the FBI Academy in Hungary, Budapest, officers are trained for a mental image that says not every shot is lethal, enhancing the survivability of an officer in the line of fire, because the correct mental image lets him make better choices during such an encounter.
For this reason, if we train for the most highly unlikely as well as for the common attacks, our mental images will be much more complete and our reaction to events more efficient. But, this will only help us in the field, when things have gone wrong or tend to go wrong while we are still in control.
The second thing we can do is better use of our intelligence. As we are all human beings, we all think alike and are capable of thinking up the same things. As a security community, we have to stop thinking from our point of view. We have to stop blocking out our weirdest and most nasty thoughts. If a terrorist can think up crashing two planes into the WTC in the centre of New York, so can we. When news broadcasts report that the: “Unthinkable has happened” we are wrong. It is thinkable, but we are too kind. Who thought it was possible that in the UK minors would start stabbing each other for sports, killing now over 20 teenagers? Well, it happened and it can happen again. We need people that think up these kinds of things, and in the present figure out how to react to them in the future.
The message is simple: Train for today, but teach for the future!