Martha Crenshaw, a senior fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.
Security concerns at the Olympics have dominated headlines over the past month after private contractor G4S failed to recruit the number of guards it had promised. The British government responded by deploying military personnel, and now there are more British troops guarding the streets of London than in Afghanistan.
Martha Crenshaw , a senior fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies , explains what kinds of threats exist at the Games, the challenges of securing such a large event and whether the failure by G4S will make the Olympics an easier or more attractive target.
What motivates terrorists?
Terrorists want to make a political statement. So you have to ask, "What kind of political statement would attacking the Olympics be?" Al-Qaida could regard the Olympics the way they regard the United Nations. They attacked U.N. headquarters in Iraq and a U.N. agency in Algiers. They regard the U.N. as a tool of the oppressor. That said, they don’t talk about the Olympics the way they do about the U.S. – the great Satan, etc. And Muslim countries are competing in the Olympics. Of course they oppose many of the regimes of those countries, like Saudi Arabia.
But I’m not aware of any specific threat to the Olympics or chatter about the Olympics.
Is al-Qaida the only terrorist group to be concerned about?
People will be concerned about Hezbollah now because of the series of foiled attacks against Israel and the successful attack in Bulgaria. Hezbollah and al-Qaida have global reach. But when we talk about al-Qaida, we can’t forget the groups affiliated with the main organization: al-Qaida in Iraq and al-Qaida in Yemen, for example. There’s also the Pakistani Taliban and other al-Qaida linked groups there.
What kinds of terrorist attacks are of most concern?
We’ve tended to think, and I stress think, that al-Qaida wants spectaculars. In terms of their attacks in general, targets have often been public transportation. Think of Madrid and London. They’re also fond of multiple targets at once, and as regards the U.S., it seems they’re still focused on airplanes. We could be dead wrong and they could do something that’s totally different but this is the pattern.
It could be that they’d like a big explosion in the middle of Trafalgar Square, but it wouldn’t have to be during the Olympics. There are crowds in Trafalgar Square all the time. However, if Britain were the target, terrorists might think it’s particularly embarrassing and spectacular to attack during the Olympics because it would heighten the fear factor. On the other hand, it’s easier to mount an attack when there is not the high level of Olympics security.
Has there always been a great fear of attacks at Olympics?
The hostage taking in Munich in 1972 (of Israeli athletes) and then the bombing in Atlanta in 1996 have made us afraid that something would happen at the Olympics because it’s so prominent.
A recent study concludes that security has been effective. But we don’t really know that entirely. We don’t know what the terrorists are thinking. We don’t know whether they looked at all of the security precautions and said, "This is going to take a lot of work and we will probably fail because security is so good. Let’s do something else."
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