I) The Insurgency of Positivania
o Positivania a peaceful nation
Let us imagine an independent sovereign nation somewhere in the world. The liberal democratic government of this nation respects all the rules of due process and the people can live freely and peacefully under a law that treats all citizens equally. I will therefore call this country Positivania. Positivania is a modern state with an infrastructure that is very similar to most of the civilized countries and has a population of about ten million people.
Positivania`s economy is relatively weak, except one region which is called “Minerich”, where a lot of mineral resources are located and which therefore has the strongest economy with the brightest future prosperities in the state. Minerich has a population of approximately one million people. But, since Positivania is interested in having as much prosperity as possible for all of its citizens, Minerich has to subsidise the poorer parts of the country with a substantial amount of money every year. This is and has never been a problem for a majority of the population of Minerich.
o Beginning of the Insurgency
A small underclass minority of the population of Minerich, however, started opposing the subsidy in 1994. Instead of alleviating poverty of other regions they wanted to be more selfish and use the money to support only the residents of Minerich.
These disruptive forces were not allowed to operate on the political level because the Constitution of Positivania forbids the foundation of a party that has the aim to split the country. Hence, the opponents of the subsidy founded a terrorist organisation in 1995, called the “Free Minerich Terrorists” (FMT). The FMT, having no more than some dozens of members at that time, started assassinating politicians and also attacking some civilians, who opposed the growth of the FMT. The aim of the activities was not primarily to eliminate those who were killed but to frighten the whole community of people, who were against the separation of the country.
o Positivania charts a new course
As a reaction to this threat and consistent to the general tendency all over the world to fight against terrorism The Positivania legislature enacted an “Anti Terrorist Act” (ATA) in 2001, part of it is the implementation of the INTERNATIONAL CONVENTION FOR THE SUPPRESSION OF THE FINANCING OF TERRORISM of the UN in 1999 into Positivanian national law.. But the ATA differs from all the other laws that were enacted in the course of the new “War against Terrorism” proclaimed by the governments of The United States of America and Great Britain in 2001. The statute authorized the authorities of Positivania to squeeze terrorists for information using the instrument of torture, in order to get information about planed activities or structure of a terrorist organisation. The ATA additionally allows torturing everybody, who is under suspicion of supporting a particular terrorist personally or a terrorist organisation as a whole. Additionally the statutes also entitle the government to call up the military to defeat any insurgency. They adopted the legislation without heeding objections by the United Nations, even though Positivania had signed off all international treaties that prohibit torture.
o The Positivanian War against Terrorism
After the first assassinations in 1995, the police of Positivania incarcerated some of FMT`s leaders and condemned them, applying the national criminal law in ordinary trials, to life imprisonment. Although the FMT went ahead and killed many more people in the following years. the police of Positivania imprisoned many fighters. Nevertheless, the number of terrorists although increased and reached about a one thousand in 1998 and more than two thousand two years later.
The FMT did not have problems in recruiting young men from the poor underclass, thus more than replacing loss of members because of imprisonment. The police just did not have the means under the criminal law of Positivania in force at that time defeat the FMT
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In 2001 the situation changed completely with the enactment of the ATA. The police had now the right to put suspected terrorists and even families of FMT-fighters into jail, without any trial. During the first big strike against the FMT, carried out by the police and the military in collaboration, many families of well known terrorists were imprisoned and tortured. The police used all the methods that were in accordance with the ATA to get information about the FMT.
o Reaction of FMT: Changing strategy and structure
The terrorists reacted against these new techniques in their well known way of dealing with problems. They killed and murdered many high authorities of Positivania and also started assassinating children and women which were not involved into the “war” directly. The violence did not stop with the enforcement of the ATA but in contrary reached a new peak in 2002.
That the armed forces of Positivania now acted in a distasteful way and also against the common core of international law and principles of due process, made it even easier to recruit new members for FMT. The number of fighters surged to more than five thousand until 2006. And, since the families of the fighters knew that the police had the privilege of torturing them if the police found out that a member of the family had joined the FMT, many families flew to Western Europe. The bulk of the refugees went to Switzerland, where a community of Minerichs already existed.[1] Switzerland granted most of them asylum, because the Swiss Constitution says in Art. 25 Abs. 3 that, “nobody will be brought back to a country, in which he is likely to receive torture or another sort of barbarous and inhuman treatment or punishment”.
The FMT now had to change strategy and started acting and organizing themselves hierarchically and more like an army. Their base was in the mountains and the forests of Minerich and their new targets were soldiers with high-tech weapons on the ground and bombers in the air
o The Leaders of FMT
In the very beginning, the FMT was just a small group of fighters with the same targets and the same motives but without an internal command structure. That had changed over the years and there were two rebels who where finally accepted as general commanders. Both of them started fighting for the FMT in the late nineties and decisively took part in the reorganisation of the FMT into a well organized hierarchal force.
The names of these two leaders were Dragan Drugcic and Rico Rich. Whereas Dragan Drugcic had held a high position in the international cocaine and heroin distribution, Rico Rich`s background was a completely different one. He had been one of the wealthiest business men of Minerich often trading at the Swiss Exchange (SWX) until he lost all the money because of a false estimated of the market situation of Minerich. In his eyes, the government was responsible for his loss of money. Both leaders had one thing in common, namely excellent connections to Switzerland.
o Terrorists need for Money
During the early years after the formation of the FMT, money was not a problem. First of all, the expenses on weapons had been relatively small and moderate. To construct a bomb was neither technically nor monetarily a big deal. Second the FMT’s very small logistic system, consisting mainly of some cell phones and computers, was also relatively cheap. All the money that was needed to conduct the bomb attacks and other assassinations was given by the families of the fighters and some other supporters in the population of Minerich. All in all, the FMT spent between $50,000 and $100,000 on average during the years 1995, 96 and 97.
In the following years the amount of money that was needed to arm the larger troops and to buy all the logistic things that were necessary to keep the FMT together jumped up to more $40 million per year until 2006. The guerrilla tactics were much more expensive than the occasional assassinations of individuals had been. It was necessary to look for new sources of money to finance all the armament, food and munitions for the thousands of fighters.
o Cost Structure of the Insurgency
This is a list of the needed items of the FMT:
· Weapons for the fighters. At least one ordinary automatic rifle was necessary for each fighter. Then each group of fighters needed a certain number of grenades, rockets and heavier arms. The money needed for arming the soldiers was round about $3000 per capita.
· Equipment like night-vision equipment, tents, blankets, basic medical instruments and pharmaceuticals as well as battledresses cost another $ 500 per year and fighter.
· Other logistics were extremely expensive. Radio equipment, cell phones, and computer technology was another $ 2000 per year and fighter.
· Means of Transport, such as vans and cars with features like bullet proof glass windows for the special utilization that they were thought for, required another $2000 per soldier per year.
· Food for the soldiers, $300 per fighter per year.
· The transport of the money from Switzerland to Minerich means a loss of about 5% -10% of the money originally collected.
This is just a general overview, although it is obvious that a lot of money was necessary to make the FMT effective. All in all it was close to $9000 per year per capita. That demanded a very highly developed system of collecting money and then bringing it to a certain place or person.
[1] A lot of Positivanian men had jobbed as seasonal alien workers since the late seventies for many years in Switzerland and some of them remained and founded families.