It is, therefore, high time that a serious, proactive, strategic effort to formulate a counter-terrorism doctrine begins in this country. Current Greek practices aren’t encouraging. Planning in every section of government lags or is non-existent. Political expediencies, partisan infighting, and the ever-present confinement of politicians and “opinion makers” behind tired slogans and language designed to answer propaganda needs of an era long past, interfere with even the thought of beginning to face realities as they truly are and look for avenues not “to manage” a crisis, but to act in order to, first, control it and, then, bring it to a successful conclusion.
Key to any such strategic effort would be real police reform. Currently, the Greek National Police (EL.AS) Greece’s main law enforcement agency, remains at the forefront of domestic counter-terrorism but with few of the requisite characteristics that could make it an effective force in battling the local gunmen and bombers. Years of underfunding, poor training, generalized public suspicion, media bashing, and political interference, not to mention legacies from the time of the military junta that ruled Greece between 1967 and 1974, have combined to spawn a bureaucratized, cumbersome, often straight-jacketed force that is poorly organized and motivated to meet the rising demands imposed by terrorism in general.
The Greek Government needs to address a host of critical areas where substantive police change and invention must be decided upon and promoted with the utmost urgency; some of the areas that we will need to place at the top of the priorities list are as follows:
Greek police, for a variety of reasons, have largely failed to develop effective adaptation strategies in response to terrorism, both domestic and international. Hamstrung by hesitant politics, low opinions among politicians of the police’s vital role, and fears of the “political cost,” Greek police have been left without much guidance on how to develop and process adaptive strategies in response to the evolving threat. This key shortcoming has been further enhanced by the bureaucratized organizational model that pesters the Greek government sector in general and robs individual organizations of quickly re-charting their course under changing socio-economic and political circumstances.
The brave efforts of individuals and isolated “cells” within the police organization to enhance the learning process; push for the development of institutional culture; search for suitable action models used by similar agencies abroad; and establish an in-house permanent process of both strategic and tactical re-configuration of existing practices are highly commendable but, almost by definition, destined to fail in the face of wider immobility and, frequently, suspicion. Reform must stress all-inclusive institutional memory, sharing of information, integration of lessons learned through local action, and the establishment of a dedicated unit addressing ongoing research into counter-terrorism on both the operational and policy planes.
Personnel selection must undergo the most radical reassessment and change. For the longest time, the Greek police shared the destiny of the broader public sector as a repository of pork-barrel appointees and engagement of the unsuitable at the expense of selecting the right people on merit alone. This is a fatal flaw for any organization, but particularly so for a law enforcement agency with “different” labor requirements and the need for special talent with unique characteristics of loyalty, mental grasp, and longer term commitment. The model of the flat-footed copper, who is “safe” because he makes no waves for his political superiors, must be discarded if any progress can be achieved, and especially if those immediately affected by the change wear heavily braided hats.
Any attempt at re-setting the Greek police must avoid the convenient excuse of “EU-dictated criteria,” which is one of the most handy tools available to our local politicians when they are confronted with the necessity of rapid and effective action -- an activity they fear and loath, in most cases, because it tends to disrupt their favorite procrastination tactics and expose the Greek political system’s creaking, unresponsive nature. While Greek police reform will unavoidably need to conform to certain broader EU-sanctioned standards, those in charge of the reform project will need a deft hand to navigate through the maze of “special EU committee findings,” “Euro task groups,” “EU guidance,” and “European Commission directives” if anything of substance can be achieved before hell freezes over twice in a row.
To say that the Greek state has been sluggish in developing a counter-terrorism doctrine, and the organizational, operational, and intelligence capabilities to effectively pursue it, would be an elegant way of putting it. Aphorisms, lamentations, bragging, macho talk, and excuses aside, our government “national command authority” must get its act together and begin thinking and acting according to the wartime imperatives imposed upon it by miniscule, but potentially deadly, political violence minorities.
Only very recently, the Citizen’s Protection ministry announced that “there is no need for another anti-terror law”. We tend to agree, if of course existing criminal and anti-terrorism statutes are implemented to the absolute fullest to charge, prosecute, and convict those who break the law, threaten and attack others, and cause harm and mayhem in the name of any “revolution”. Such a posture, however, will require the total commitment on the part of the government to go after the terrorists -- young, old, “right,” “left,” “justified,” “unjustified,” romantic, unromantic, or otherwise -- and abandon riddled mantras that have underlied a bankrupt political culture that is the core cause of our present dead end predicament.
During the attack on the police station, the gunmen fired one hundred assault rifle rounds against their targets in the middle of a densely populated area. That no “collateral damage” occurred during this particular incident is a true miracle. Miracles though cannot be depended upon to save us from the next outrage. Nothing in the prayer book would stop these, or other, maniacs from, say, graduating to a mass casualty incident, procure and deploy roadside IEDs, or aim their next ANFO car bomb at a high value critical target whose damage could certainly land this country in an intractable international predicament with debilitating political, economic, and foreign policy consequences.
Wars are not for the fainthearted or the politically correct. If dousing police station houses with automatic weapon fire, and aiming to kill as many officers as possible, is not war, then we certainly have a serious problem with definitions. Our government must prove to the overwhelming majority of this country’s peaceable citizens that it is prepared, willing, and able to do whatever it takes to stop the attackers and put them in a position where they can do no more harm to our society.
Anything short of that won’t do.