From characteristics and rules of terrorist activities in the region and the world, our country’s concrete condition and situation, and terrorist manifestations in the country, we could initially anticipate terrorist-related issues such as subjects, objectives, plots, tricks and methods.

Regarding the terrorist subject, there maybe international terrorist forces formed by extremist and religious organizations or aggressive hostile forces. These forces could organize themselves into armed terrorist groups, special task sections and teams to conduct activities, namely bomb suicide, air raids, hijackings. They are the exile Vietnamese reactionaries in cooperation with terrorist groups from outside to intrude into our country. They are also extremist groups from ethnics and religions in areas and regions; dangerous criminals; people opposing our regime, or people incited and bribed by aggressive hostile forces. Depending on the area’s concrete situation and condition, these people could conduct their activities independently or cooperatively, causing complexity in subjects.

Regarding the objective, different types of terrorists have their different objectives, however technically, they aim to murder, capture, and constrain foreign citizens or high-level leaders; to sabotage political, cultural, social, defence, and security targets of crucial importance. Consequently, they cause panic for the people, chaos in society, especially in important regions and areas, a “shock” in social mentality, and internal instability, undermining the people and investors’ faith in party committees and authorities at all levels. On that basis, they create pretexts and opportunities for territorial invasion, fomenting rebellions in the country, weakening and gradually abolishing the Party’s leadership and socialism. To achieve those objectives, terrorists aim at sensitive targets and times, such as political and economic centres, traffic junction areas, commercial centres, information and broadcasting centres, irrigation and hydroelectric works, fuel, chemical and explosive depots, etc,.

Regarding the method and tricks, they promote propaganda and distortion, inciting the masses, gathering force from radical ethnic and religious people, people with hatred, opportunists, malcontents, or gullible people to form secret organizations at home and abroad. Then, they secretly grasp the situation, select the target, take advantage of our carelessness (particularly in significant festivals and political events of the country), use their “special task” force, suddenly attack and occupy the target, take hostages to rock the society. Those terrorist attacks could occur synchronously or successively on several areas to create a domino effect, and to gather more force. During their process, terrorists often propagandize, spread unconfirmed rumours in order to vilify and accuse our Party and State, causing panic among the people, heightening terrorist effect to quickly achieve their objectives. Also, they make best use of diversions to mislead our investigation, i.e. taking a false name, directing afar, mingling with the people or response force to escape. The tricks they often use are combining terrorist attacks with acts of sabotage in political, economic, and diplomatic fields, and military pressurization to realize their political objectives.

The analyses above show that counter-terrorism is a long-term, drastic, and complex struggle with a lot of difficulties, requiring the leadership, direction, and implementation be close, comprehensive, prompt, and cautious both in preparation for and practice of concrete incidents. To deal with this, we need to focus on the following measures:

First, promoting propagation and education work for party committees, authorities, levels, sectors, armed forces, and all people to have sound consciousness of causes, danger, impacts caused by terrorism for national security, social order and safety.

Second, strengthening training and exercise to raise the level of expertise and the capability to mobilize and operate in complex environment, terrain, and weather for forces, particularly the forces in charge, such as mobile police, special task police, commandos, engineers, chemical force, air force, and so on, ensuring they could mobilize and deploy to control and neutralize terrorist plots and tricks right from the beginning.

Third, actively expanding international cooperation in counter-terrorism, on the basis of ensured national interests and the State law, and in accordance with the rules of international law.

Fourth, attaching great importance to building procedures; operating the mechanism, closely collaborating among forces to effectively respond to terrorist attacks.

When terrorist attacks occur, for localities nearby, it is necessary to localize, adjust traffic to isolate the scene from the neighbourhood; at the same time, taking evacuees; being ready to support other localities to protect targets, chase fleeing terrorists; actively engaging in surmounting the consequences opportunely, making contribution to steadily holding security, politics, social order and safety, restricting the terrorist attack’s negative impacts on other areas.

Special task forces, local forces, militia and self-defence force resolutely fight to protect the target, chase and annihilate terrorists as combat plan; at the same time, being the leading forces to protect and evacuate the people, and to surmount consequences.

Colonel Nguyen Dong Thuy