I am not trying to suggest that there is no terrorist threat … Nor am I suggesting that governments do not have a responsibility to protect their citizens from attack. Rather, what I have attempted to demonstrate … is that the current official response to the threat – the politics of fear – is unnecessarily exaggerated, damaging to participatory democracy, and corrosive of the moral community. (Jackson, 2007: 199)
The “politics of fear”, Richard Jackson calls it. From the United Kingdom to Italy, from Russia to the United States: the authors in Playing Politics with Terrorism have written gripping accounts of how ‘the terrorism threat has been deliberately and purposely exaggerated and maintained by political elites for the achievement of political goals’ (ibid.: 179). If it happened there, why not here? In our small country of the Netherlands – if those very similar countries did it, did we not too?
This has been the core underlying question of this thesis. To what extent have politics played a role in the development of the counterterrorism policies between 2001 and 2004? To answer the main research question, three sub-questions were formulated.
The first question was if politicians, in the parliamentary debates that followed the terrorist attacks, have tried to securitize the terrorist threat. The analysis undoubtingly supported the case that they indeed have done so. Throughout those three years, the dominant discourse in the parliamentary debates has been one of describing the “enormous” terrorist threat to ever vaguely described referent objects like “western society”, “democracy”, “us”, and “Europe”. Reminding Kassimeris’ notion that terrorists inherently can do no more than damage to lives and property, this showed how the threat has been exaggerated, to use an understatement. Most politicians used those notions of a terrorist threat to push forward favored governmental policies, which was in their eyes always the appropriate and necessary response. Terrorism was framed not just as a criminal act: terrorism was often a war, a war between “us” and the terrorists, or even “us” and the Islam. In discussions dominated by the governing right-of-center CDA and VVD, understanding (radicalizing factors for) terrorists was denounced, as terrorists were the embodiment of evil, and terrorism thus became embedded in the politics of anti-knowledge.
Secondly, the question was how, and to what extent, politicians in their parliamentary debates tried to put forward their own policy goals, and if those attempts led to policy change. In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks, political parties certainly did so. The CDA was the consistent front-runner, and it sometimes became awkwardly clear how much a politician’s comments were related to his own policy goals, like in the case of ChristenUnie’s Rouvoet, who connected the Madrid bombings to the Dutch tolerant coffee shop policy, arguing that international counterterrorism efforts would benefit from the Netherlands abandoning its current policy. The ruling parties, and especially the CDA and VVD, were
able to successfully push forward a conservative security agenda using the Fortuynist sentiments in the society that had forcefully shaken up the political atmosphere in 2002. That the actual counterterrorism policies outlined in this thesis were often distant from what we heard in the political debates can largely be ascribed to the non-visible participants in the governmental apparatus.
Thirdly, the question was what factual counterterrorism developments could be seen following the three terrorist attacks. Although difficult to summarize, it is apparent that these attacks resulted in “waves” of relatively ad-hoc designed measures, as to show the public that “something” was being done – evaluation and reflection were to be dealt with later. A consistent element among these measures was increasing the powers of, and cooperation between intelligence agencies. Not only was this materialized in a steady growth of personnel and resources of police and intelligence agencies, it also led to initiatives that were designed to improve the cooperation between intelligence agencies and other government agencies, of which notable examples are the NCTb and the CT-infobox, established after the attacks in Madrid. Whereas in the historical overview we could observe the reluctance of the government to implement judicial reform in the 1970s, this was not the case in the early 2000s: notable examples of such reforms include the Wet afgeschermde getuigen and the Wet verruiming mogelijkheden tot opsporing en vervolging van terroristische misdrijven. Also of interest is the focus on radicalization following the murder on Theo van Gogh, leading to initiatives like the unsuccessful imam training program and the Action Plan Polarization and Radicalization, which was in stark contrast to the narratives of “evil” expressed by the CDA and VVD in parliament.
When taking a step back, these findings show the complex interplay between politics and terrorism. Whereas terrorists are inherently political in their actions, so is their opponent. It is undoubtedly clear that domestic politicians in parliament have tried to use the terrorist attacks to push forward their own policy goals. The question that remains is if and to what extent the Dutch elites have played politics with terrorism in the meaning that it is used in Kassimeris’ work: ‘for the achievement of political goals; in this case, the social construction of fear is an exercise in power and domination’ (Jackson, 2007: 179). Thus far, the findings of this thesis do not support this view. They do show that political parties used the terrorist attacks as a coating rack to hang their policy goals on, and that the narrative being used by especially the second Balkenende cabinet certainly had a domestic political component, but to say that the political elite (willingly) exaggerated the threat in an exercise in power and domination would be a stretch.
‘This [pre-emptive] discourse on terrorism … acted as a cultural toolkit that both enabled and constrained those who constructed the response to the 9/11 attacks. The discourse did not predetermine the nation’s response to the 9/11 attacks, but it did enable certain forms of response and make others less likely’, Stampnitzky notes (2013: 174). It is interesting to, for a brief moment, “steal” this scope on 9/11, and use it on the Dutch case. When assessing the political background of the security agenda pursued between 2001 and 2004, it may also be plausible that the governing parties were “trapped” in their right-
wing discourse, which they borrowed from both the American administration as from the “Fortuynist” sentiments. It indeed enabled them to enforce this agenda, but this narrative also constrained them from pursuing radically different strategies, since it was known that that could mean political suicide. We just do not really know.
Therefore, it is too problematic to simply portray the Dutch government as one that played politics with the terrorist threat. For an accurate understanding of the political background that affected the Dutch counterterrorism developments, more research is needed. This thesis can, to that regard, only conclude that much of the counterterrorism developments in the end also were the product of the “boring” wheels of the governmental machine.
Looking forward, the securitization and politicization of terrorist attacks may be very relevant again. With notable recent attacks in, among others, Paris, Nice, Brussels and Manchester, terrorism is very much alive. In the 2016 elections, the people of the United States have voted for a president that takes a hard stance on terrorism, and right-of-center parties – some of which arguably can be described as part of the extreme right – have seen their influence increase in, among others, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and France23
. The rise of right-of-center populism combined with the presence of terrorist attacks carries the possibility of resulting in irrational and flawed security policies of which the consequences can be very damaging, as we know right-of-center politicians are more than comfortable in “their” security discussion. For example, PVV leader Geert Wilders does not hide his disdain for the Islam and has a significant electorate that seems to support that view, and the runner up of the 2016 Republican primaries, Ted Cruz, wanted to carpet-bomb the Islamic State terrorist network so much, he remarked: ‘I don’t know if sand can glow in the dark, but we’re going to find out’ (Glueck, 2015). It is a matter of waiting to see how these sentiments in western societies play out, but personally, I am happy to know that not all security rhetoric becomes policy.