RIEAS E-Book, No. 1

RIEAS E-BOOK NO.1, MARCH 2013

Prof. Tassos Symeonides (RIEAS Academic Advisor) DOMESTIC TERRORISM IN GREECE

Copyright: Research Institute for European and American Studies (RIEAS)

GREEK DOMESTIC TERRORISM: THE SAGA CONTINUES Tuesday, 22 January 2013 Tassos Symeonides (RIEAS Academic Advisor) Copyright: www.rieas.gr

Greek governments cannot be accused of pursuing terrorists, suspected and/or confirmed, persistently and effectively.

Greece, ever since the fall of the military junta in 1974, has been pestered by successive “generations” of self-appointed freedom fighters, some deadly, some a mere nuisance. The grandfathers of the “movement”, the Revolutionary Organization 17 November (17N) and the People’s Revolutionary Struggle (ELA), have been retired, either by arrests (17N) or voluntary withdrawal from “dynamic actions” (ELA).

In both cases, the investigation failed to convince that the roots and branches of these two groups have been eradicated irreversibly.

In the past few weeks, our home grown “militants” appear re-energized. A bomb explosion inside an Athens mall, with two slightly injured, and the peppering of the New Democracy political party HQ with an AK-47, without any casualties, followed in quick succession a spate of gas canister incendiaries aimed at journalists’ homes and political party constituency offices and a petrol bomb launched outside the house of the brother of the government press spokesman.

Predictably, the usual furor has risen among the media, with many “experts” returning to morning TV talk shows with a passion to “analyze” the phenomenon.

The wobbly 3-party administration of Mr. Samaras also put on its grave ancient tragedy mask to announce that the Greek state won’t be defeated by violence “irrespective of its origins” (this sound bite is one of the most fatigued in the wooden Greek political vocabulary; one would expect ‘opinion makers’ as well as politicos to make an effort to at least ‘modernize’ their language since they are all unable to offer any effective solutions otherwise).

Those who have followed Greek domestic terrorism since its beginnings won’t be impressed by all this noise, I am sure. On a more serious note though, they should be thinking about both the timing of these “dynamic actions” and the perennial question in such investigations: who benefits?

Already, observers on the left suggest that the renewed “guerrilla” activity comes at a time when the Greek people, mauled by the economic crisis and pummeled by the Mr. Samaras’s brutal austerity measures, need to be distracted with yet another, different “crisis” – that of

the “threat” of domestic terrorism.

As so many times before, these observers openly associate the various “terrorists” with Greek government security agencies, which allegedly act on orders from above to create an alternative havoc focus that can currently help re-direct public attention away from lethal legislation: a new tax law that devastates already devastated lower and middle income families; a spate of more job-killing “rationalization” aimed at the labor market; the imminent mass lay-offs in the public sector; the one and a half million unemployed and the continuing shuttering of thousands of smaller business; and a bill that offers unconditional judicial immunity to foreign lenders who wish to come in and literally confiscate Greek state assets in order to satisfy their claims.

Needless to say, the Greek “ruling class” vehemently denies such “scenaria” and accuses those who “peddle” them with nefarious aims and continuous perjury.

Those who try to be more rational point out that the Greek political and social environment has long nurtured a helpful habitat for the “angry youth” who decide to follow the road of “struggle” over working aimlessly within Greece’s desiccated democracy.

This line of analysis correctly looks at factors that mitigate the consequences for those who choose political violence and “dynamic intervention” of even the extreme kind.

Some of the more prominent elements here are: the traditional apparent insufficiency of Greek law enforcement to build solid cases against suspected terrorists; the irreversible decay of authority across Greek society; the readiness of all “democratic” political forces to intervene on the side of the accused, irrespective of their actions, and drown any, even measured, attempts to prosecute the suspects in a sea of invective and fiery charges of injury of “human rights;” the absence of a legal framework that would bring potential terrorists under special prosecutorial and juridical treatment and will deny them the flexibilities available to “common” criminals (like prison furloughs); and the general tendency of the average Greek voter to place terrorism among the subjects of least importance (along with foreign policy, defense, and national security).

Against this backdrop, there is little truly new we can say about this latest surge of random rifle shots and makeshift bombs. To the discerning eye, it all appears as a recurring routine part of a well-rehearsed play that has been staged so many times since 1974.

Indeed, if one seriously assesses the catastrophic impact of the economic crisis upon the vast majority of Greeks; the continuing blows dealt upon all but the richest and most protected; the collapse of Greek sovereignty under thinly-veiled foreign intervention; and the prospect of decades of poverty, want, and increasing encroachment upon this country’s future by outsiders, who care little about what happens to future Greek generations, then the absence of mass unrest and a violent attempt to defeat Greece’s corrupt political establishment becomes a subject of utter surprise (already expressed, quietly yet firmly, among many foreign analysts).

The only nagging question that emerges after all this replay of programmed pain and

suffering is whether this latest spate heralds a critical shift in domestic security. Those experienced in affairs Greek would most likely answer in the negative. What sort of incident then would ring a bell and raise the alarm?

The question is not difficult to answer: If the gunmen outside the governing party’s political HQ appeared in daylight, and not in the middle of the night when the building is deserted, and pointed the AK-47 at human targets with the presumed lethal affect, then many an analyst would have to rush back to the desk.

If the bomb at the mall was not timed to detonate when all shops around it were closed, and the majority of people was not concentrated on the third level outside the mall cinemas, and, instead, had gone off in the middle of a full working day causing dozens of deaths and serious injuries, then, again, the intelligence community would be facing key questions about where did this come from.

At the end of the day, I am pessimistic about the ability of the Greek state system to assess correctly signs, indications, and the fine nuances of action (or absence thereof) in constructing probability sequences that may become significant “real time events” given an opportunity.

Do we need then to worry – I mean, truly worry – about this latest “upsurge”? Probably not.

Do the proponents of the theory of “directed terrorism” as a means of political bamboozling have a point? Probably yes, if one is more in favor of conspiracy theories.

Is there a rational way of assessing Greek variables to determine the probable course of antistate, political violence? Perhaps yes, if one possesses the micro-knowledge of a culture that has frustrated and badly surprised over time even the most steadfast of its students.

Who’s up then to creating a truly new method?

(P.S one: A telling example of how the Greek legal-police system ‘works’ is the disappearance last summer of the alleged leader of the Revolutionary Struggle terrorist cell, Nikos Maziotis.

Maziotis, along with his female companion, vanished from Athens after they were both allowed to leave prison because the period of 18 months of pre-trial incarceration, provided under the law, had expired. Revolutionary Struggle was considered the most dangerous ‘post-17’ terrorist group; among its many exploits is the firing of an anti-tank rocket at the US Embassy in Athens in January 2007. After Maziotis left prison, authorities had to depend on the suspect’s civic consciousness in appearing periodically at the police station to show that he still resided at the address on record. Predictably, revolutionary fervor overcame the sense of duty under the law and Maziotis plus companion disappeared into the ether. Right now, many local ‘experts’ and their TV hosts make ‘informed’ hypotheses about whether Maziotis is behind this latest surge or whether he and unidentified others are preparing a new round of ‘revolutionary violence’).

(P.S. two: The ‘disarticulation’ of 17N in 2002 is often quoted as an example of how ‘effective’ Greek state anti-terrorist efforts can be. This is an over-simplification. Foreign intelligence experts are more or less convinced that the group’s true directing echelon simply

melted away after the arrest of the ‘soldiers’. The thousands of pages of the prosecution case left many gaps of evidentiary nature, some of which would have been enough for charges to have been thrown out if the case was judged before a Western court. Serious questions remain in regard to some of the group’s most heinous crimes. The interrogation of the arrestees failed patently to offer answers to key questions that plagued Greece for more than two decades. To this day, key material evidence – like the group’s infamous .45 caliber pistol – has not been discovered. And of the 15 17N members sentenced to prison time only six remain incarcerated. The rest have long been set free under various pretexts).

GREECE: DOMESTIC COORDINATED INTELLIGENCE? Sunday, 17 February 2013 Tassos Symeonides (RIEAS Academic Advisor) Copyright: www.rieas.gr Recent terrorist incidents in Greece have been greeted with the customary huff-and-puff from the media and the inevitable armchair “experts.” As usual, the incidents were victimless save the explosion of a makeshift bomb inside a mall in Athens, where two security guards escaped with only slight injuries.

Nevertheless, concerns that Greece’s severe depression, and the Samaras government’s continuing pressure on the Greek people through barbaric austerity, have resurrected the thought that domestic “militants” may be preparing for escalatory action beyond aiming simply to cause material damage.

To add to the stress of the days, the government is also afraid that current socio-political atmospherics could ignite larger scale violence similar to the riots that wrecked downtown Athens in December 2008. The repeat of such a devastating strike could endanger the administration’s already shaky position and trigger serious political instability.

So far, the official reaction to the terrorist upsurge continues to depend on traditional tactics, with the Greek Police’s counter-terrorist unit conducting the investigation. The Antitromokratike Yperesia, as the counter-terrorist unit is known in Greek, is responsible for both collecting and analyzing intelligence regarding terrorist action and sending out into the field action teams which take the lead in searches and arrests.

This formula has remained the same over the past several decades and has an overall average record. Observers, especially from abroad, point out though that the changing nature of terrorist strategies plus the introduction into the fray of a younger generation of “militants,” responding to new political narratives and a largely de-ideologized “theory of violence,” creates the pressing need for a thorough revamp of Greece’s intelligence response.

Ideally, any such reform should center on a unified domestic intelligence agency to act as the clearing unit of intelligence originating in other parts of the executive branch as well as the military.

Such an entity will be responsible for both oversight and coordination of intelligence action and the sharing of intelligence across government bodies, including the police, coupled with the task of accountability.

In theory, there is little dispute over the need for such a domestic intelligence agency.

Greece faces various border control and security issues and is located in a part of the world

where instability and violence are significant risks, not to mention the severe illegal immigration crisis.

Political circumstances in Greece at present, however, dictate caution concerning any move to establish a domestic intelligence arm.

The Samaras government has assumed an authoritarian approach to anti-austerity protests, a fact which justifiably raises questions as to the exact mission any such future agency would have under a government increasingly at violent odds with its society.

On the other hand, few would put their money on the Samaras government lasting long enough to affect successfully such critical steps like a major overhaul of the country’s intelligence services.

Greece is still a country where even the most monumental of tasks are assumed by governments with pitifully little planning. If, indeed, we apply a “Greek scenario” to presumed intelligence reform we would be confronted, most likely, with a lot of paper, lengthy legislative bills, and appointments directly from the pool of the “boys network” – a sequence that guarantees the failure of the initiative (and, in fact, the failure of any other initiative of any substance) from the outset.

That being said, brutal austerity raises the potential of social unrest and intensified political violence. With Mr. Samaras choosing conflict and suppression in his contest with those protesting the destruction of their livelihoods, the playing field is wide open to action that could take Greece back many decades into the past: for example, civil mobilization, an extraordinary measure for a democracy in time of peace which brings strikers under military jurisdiction, has been applied as a strike-breaking method twice in recent weeks to force workers back to work without the slightest effort to lean on the employers as well in search of a compromise.

Such government behavior fuels exponentially the popular determination to protest and, consequently, increases possibilities of widespread violence. Under these circumstances, the question of strengthening intelligence could be transformed into a key component of nascent government authoritarianism.

In view of the above, any domestic intelligence reform must carry guarantees that it won’t become part of a government strategy to suppress the vast majority of the population opposing “bailouts,” the destruction of the Greek economy, and the severe dilution of national sovereignty under orders from the country’s creditors. Agreeing to parliamentary oversight for any domestic intelligence arm, while desirable, is insufficient given the regimented rubber stamp habits Greek parliament has acquired since 2010.

It would be wise, therefore, to address the much-needed intelligence reform once democratic guarantees have been restored and the country regains the control associated with the status of an independent and functioning democracy.

In any other case, attempting to strengthen the government’s intelligence reach domestically under the present circumstances could be tantamount to opening a can of

worms that only those with nefarious intentions would prefer to see it open.

PS: What has gone completely and conveniently unnoticed, by those who insist to see “improvement” in the current chaos that surrounds Greece, is that Mr. Samaras and his accomplices in the coalition government have taken to governing through cabinet executive orders. Such orders are constitutionally allowed only in extraordinary circumstances and especially when parliament is unable to convene because of emergencies like war, natural disasters, and any other similar emergency. Such executive orders must be ratified by parliament within forty days of their signature by the president; otherwise they cease to exist within three months from the day they were introduced. The Samaras government, in its haste to push through various measures that promote austerity as dictated from abroad, has taken to issuing such orders despite the ongoing parliamentary session which can legislate regularly. An executive order of course pushes out of the way inconveniences like parliamentary votes. Criticism of such clearly unconstitutional action by a supposedly “democratic” government has bounced off the administration’s thick hide. What would be next?

ANOTHER CIVIL WAR? Monday, 25 February 2013 Tassos Symeonides (RIEAS Academic Advisor) Copyright: www.rieas.gr As the Samaras regime continues to strangle Greek society with more brutal austerity, the question of when a popular uprising may happen has returned to the forefront. News from neighboring Bulgaria, where massive demonstrations toppled the government has spurred debate concerning Greece’s “breaking point” and the form large scale violence in the streets may take.

Will there be a “Greek Spring,” in the manner of the political turmoil that has affected North African Arab societies, or will such violence -- if it occurs-- assume a more ominous turn toward conflict between Greece’s own moribund social groups?

The question is certainly not purely academic. The outbreak of unprecedented violence in Greek streets in December 2008, and the obvious inability of the government, incumbent at the time, to control it, has left the worst possible impressions on observers concerning the ability of the Greek state to protect the majority of the population from a complete breakdown of internal order.

But the lessons of December 2008 appear to have hardly dented the thick hide of Greek politicians or cause any distinct sense of insecurity among the country’s handful of longsurviving oligarchs in close relation with Greece’s cleptocratic political class. With the Samaras regime acting urgently to protect the lenders rather than its own people, the struggling Greek homeowner, pensioner, and unemployed increasingly feel abandoned and left to rot.

Although there is no quantifiable measure to determine the cut-off point of the incredible patience demonstrated by the Greek population so far, empirical data seem to suggest that we are approaching rapidly a violent crisis caused by desperation, rage, and collective agony at the obvious dead-end about the bankrupt country.

If spontaneous combustion does occur, a possible sequence of what may follow could evolve as below: 1. Massive demonstrations overwhelm police truncheons and tear gas and succeed in sacking government buildings, threaten politicians, and even lay siege on parliament. Shots by retreating police kill demonstrators.

2. The regime’s knee jerk reaction would almost certainly be to turn to the armed forces for help. However, given the catastrophic impact of austerity on the officer corps, attempting to bring the army into the streets could be more than problematic.

3. In such an event, the regime should be expected to dissolve rapidly, with its protagonists and their confederates rushing to the lifeboats and abandoning government.

4. This will spell anarchy. And anarchy may provide the opportunity for a showdown between various groups within Greek society based on perceived past grievances and/or one’s recent past as collaborator of the austerity governments since 2010.

5. The beginning of serious fighting occurs.

This hypothetical sequence may strike many Greek “experts” as “impossible” but, as usual, such assessments will be blinkered by the perennial “these-things-don’t- happen-in-Greece” pseudo-argument.

That this pseudo-argument has no legs to stand on is proved by the very experience of the austerity Armageddon itself: four years ago anyone suggesting that the Greek population as a whole would have accepted a 50% cut in family income, and unemployment of 30%, without a whimper would have been chased out of city gates as a deliberate moron and an unwanted Cassandra.

Today, this same person would have been lauded as a “true prophet” and would be receiving invitations from Ivy League universities to lecture on how the catastrophe occurred and why people cowered.

Historically, the frequency of mass internal violence demonstrates varying incubation periods. One thing that appears though consistent across this variance spectrum is that deprivation and pauperization constitute permanent triggers of internal conflict.

In the case of Greece today we meet the unprecedented example of a relatively developed country, member of such coalition giants as the EU and NATO, being forcibly reverted to a stage of underdevelopment, deprivation and pauperization through the means of asymmetrical economic warfare conducted by lenders and “saviors” wishing to deliver an “example” to other “profligate” countries.

That Greece is presently an occupied state, with its democracy crushed and its social order pummeled to death by outside intervention, would be rejected only by the deliberate political liars in Greece and in Europe, not to mention the media fools and professional claque members in Greece itself; that Greece is a “laboratory” of devastating austerity measures and “rationalization” according to Germany’s whims has already been accepted as the prevailing state of affairs.

Greece is pushed toward becoming a country of helots modeled after Third World societies.

Determinants of conflict like income distribution, ethnic homogeneity, quality of life and economic growth, are being put through the troika’s grinder. Political scientists would recognize this “model” as already pregnant with the certainty of internal violent conflict.

What remains to be accurately calculated by “analysts” is the incubation period.