Historical Dictionary of Terrorism Third Edition

COUNTERTERRORISM • 125held in Nicaragua in February 1990. Following the Sandinista defeatby the election of Violeta Chamorro as president, the contras begantheir demobilization, which was completed on 25 June 1990.About 20,000 former contras were settled in the northern town ofQuilalí; most of the rest settled in the 26 counties along the northernmountainous region where their forces had been most active during thecivil war. Although most contras laid down their arms after the electionof Chamorro as president in 1990, afterward some rearmed, claimingthe government had not honored promises made to them prior to theirdisarming. Although the United States has given more than $2 billionin aid to Nicaragua, with some of it earmarked to help resettle the contrasand to extend special aid to those who became physically disabledin the course of the war in Central America, many former rebels wereclaiming in 1996 that this aid had not reached them.COUNTERTERRORISM. The term counterterrorism is often used tocover two different sets of policies to oppose terrorism. Antiterrorismrefers to efforts to deter, contain, and punish terrorism by means ofdomestic law enforcement, incident response and containment, andeducation, while counterterrorism specifically refers to military andintelligence efforts to prevent or contain or to retaliate against terrorism.Generally, antiterrorism deals with terrorism as a form of criminalitywithin a domestic context, whereas counterterrorism deals withterrorism more as a national security challenge transcending nationalboundaries and jurisdictions. By acting on intelligence about an impendingterrorist attack, the targeted nation-state can deploy elitecounterterrorist military units to strike at the terrorists and their basesbefore they launch their operation. These counterterrorist measuresinvolve terrorist preemption, meaning undertaking proactive andoffensive initiatives against the terrorists or their bases to forestallplanned terrorist actions. Between antiterrorism prevention and counterterroristretaliation or preemption, there are also actions and policiesaimed at dealing with terrorist events in progress, which can bedescribed as crisis management or situation (or events) management.Counterterrorism in its widest sense covers defensive antiterrorism,reactive counterterrorism, and offensive preemptive counterterrorism,as well as management of continuing terrorist events.Two major problems face governments, private firms, and individualsseeking to develop a counterterrorism policy and strategy. First,