Before arguing about police and military responsibilities dealing with the threat, it is important to define the status of contradiction. Since the essay focuses on the initial phases of the conflict, where neither official declaration of war is announced, nor opponents declared their juridical belonging to the other state, opposing party will be called terrorists. As it was mentioned in the previous chapter during phases one to six, terrorists may have intentions to destabilize the state to create favourable condi-tions for separation of particular regions or preparation for the annexation.
First of all, it is important to define theoretical approach to the problem: is such type of terrorism treated as a criminal act or a war? When it is seen as a war, repressive measures are to be implemented, terrorists are placed outside the law and they are classified as armed combatants. In this case there is a risk to grant terrorists as legit-imate actors that are protected by Geneva Convention. When terrorism is seen as a criminal act, ‘the response is limited to the methods standard law enforcement: infil-tration, intelligence, arrest and detention’ (Duyvesteyn, 2008, p. 331). In most cases these situations cannot be clearly predicted, therefore Duyvesteyn states, that state’s counterterrorism policy …show more content…
Police and other internal security forces are the primary means to deal with the crisis. Military force can be used to assist them during the crisis. There are at least six ways in which military instrument can be used countering terrorism: assistance to civilian authorities in crisis, pre-empt terrorist attacks, deterrence, retal-iation, and assassination of key leaders or fighting war with the state which supports terrorists. Only the first approach will be analysed as it primarily contributes to the topic of this