Shouting, “Long live the King,” the man lurched toward Aleksandar I Karađorđević, ruler of Yugoslavia, along the sun-drenched Boulevard de la Corniche in Marseilles, holding a bouquet. Fingers curled around the flowers, the contract killer and revolutionary Vlado Chernozemski—Vlada the Chauffeur to his friends—pressed the trigger of his semi-automatic Mauser C96 pistol, firing 10 shots that killed the King and France’s Foreign Minister Louis Barthou. For the first time in history, that summer of 1934, newsreel cameraman Georges Mejat recorded the assassination.
French investigators soon determined that the killers had been trained at secret camps in Hungary, and frequently telephoned Ante Pavelić, the head of the Fascist Ustaše organisation. The Ustaša was known to have safe havens in Italy, where it was training the insurgents who would later rule Croatia. Italy flatly refused to extradite Pavelić to stand trial.
The great historian of terrorism Walter Laqueur has recorded that the man who ordered the killing, Fascist Italy’s ruler Benito Mussolini, attended a memorial for Alexander I in Rome in full ceremonial uniform, “shedding bitter tears.”
Even though the world knew just what had happened, it chose to do nothing.
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A killing campaign
Last week, Pakistan charged India with organising the assassination of Shahid Latif, slain in Sialkot last year, and Muhammad Riaz. Even by the standards of a country that has failed to prosecute the perpetrators of 2008 Mumbai attacks and dozens of other terrorist attacks in India, the hypocrisy was rank. Islamabad chose not to mention that the two men faced serious charges of terrorism in India, operating from safe havens in Pakistan with the protection of its intelligence services.
Latif, released from an Indian prison in 2010, was charged by India of organising the 2016 attack on an Air Force base in Pathankot, but never investigated by Pakistan. Riaz, an Indian national sought in several terrorism-related cases, received a hero’s burial at the Lashkar-e-Taiba’s headquarters near Lahore—a facility ostensibly run by the Government of Punjab province.
Though India’s intelligence services are reputed to have carried out at least 16 assassinations of wanted terrorists through 2023, the government has consistently denied its involvement.
For a number of reasons, the time might have come to reconsider this silence, and bring greater accountability and oversight to covert killing.
Living with terror
As the case of Alexander I reminds us, the problem of state-sponsored terrorism was not born in recent decades. Like Yugoslavia in 1934, India has often been pressured by global powers to refrain from military retaliation against terrorism, fearing a regional war. The crisis that followed the attack on Parliament House in 2000, and Taj hotel in 2008 are just the most egregious examples. The strategic imperative of cultivating Pakistan during the 9/11 wars and the prospect of nuclear war provided superpower shelter for Pakistan’s use of terrorism.
French newspapers were indiscreetly leaned on to hush up Mussolini’s role in Alexander I’s killing. “I have telephoned all the editors of your respective papers,” said France’s new Foreign Minister Pierre Laval, who thought coddling Mussolini might head off a German-Italian alliance, “to impress upon them the grave danger of war as a result of the assassination.”
“Listen, young fellow,” Laval told one particularly pesky reporter, “you don’t want to die for Yugoslavian honour, do you?”
There has long been suspicion among historians that Laval was even willing to countenance Mussolini’s genocidal war on Ethiopia, which involved the use of poison gas against unarmed civilians, in return for avoiding a European war. The execution of Laval in 1945 as a German collaborator, and Mussolini’s lynching by Partisans, left unresolved a long series of accusations, denials, and explanations, historian Charles Richardson notes.
Even as nationalists, Left-wing revolutionaries and anarchists targeted European states with terrorism before 1914, historian Mary Barton has observed, state-sponsored terrorism became a major concern in the inter-war period. The so-called revisionist powers—Hungary, Austria, and Bulgaria—opposed the postwar settlements and used proxies to secure their territorial ambitions. Italy and Germany provided cover.
The assassination of Alexander I was just one of many similar killings: Romanian Prime Minister Ion Duca was killed by the Fascist Iron Guard in December 1933, and the Austrian chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss was murdered by Nazis in July 1934.
The League of Nations proposed two treaties in 1937 to address the problem of terrorism, but only British-ruled India—attending as a separate entity—eventually ratified it.
As Barton’s path-breaking work makes clear, India at the time feared the impact of small arms proliferation on the Empire. In a 1917 memorandum, Colonel Mark Sykes—famous for his role in Partitioning Syria—warned of “the general problem arising out of decent weapons getting into the hands of inferior races.” There were enough weapons after World War I, he pointed out, “to arm every black man who wants a rifle.”
Even though anti-colonial uprisings after the Second World War seemed to bear out Sykes’ warnings, the West wasn’t ready to go to war just yet.
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Perils of counter-terrorism
Following the Second World War, political scientist Brian Jenkins notes that a growing number of governments saw terrorism as “a cheap means of engaging in war against domestic foes or other nations.” Terrorism was deniable, minimising the risks of outright conflict. Through the long sunset of the age of Empire and the rise of the Cold War, terrorism was liberally used both by revolutionaries, and nation-states including the US.
The term “targeted killing,” scholar Uri Friedman reminds us, was invented by the human rights organisation Americas Watch to describe the murder of non-combatants by military forces and death squads in El Salvador.
Even though the 1980s saw growing public concern over the threat of terrorism, governments remained loath to seriously act against it—in part, historian Laqueur suggests, because it claimed few lives in the West. Terrorism proved relatively easy to suppress where governments were not squeamish about the use of savagery. Turkey, Iran and Argentina, for example, ruthlessly crushed terrorism. The United Kingdom not infrequently used extra-judicial violence against its enemies in Northern Ireland.
Following the September 11 attack in the US, though, the norms related to fighting terrorism underwent radical revision. Killing to preempt terrorist violence acquired legal legitimacy as a form of self-defence, former intelligence officer Thomas Hunter notes. The political executive in the US, drawing from earlier experience in Israel, asserted the right to kill when perpetrators and potential perpetrators were beyond reach. Successive US presidents authorised the execution of terrorists when they considered a threat was imminent.
The risks of such operations, though, are not trivial. The first attack on al-Qaeda training camp in Yemen authorised by President Barack Obama, law scholar Pardiss Kebriaei reminds us, ended up claiming the lives of 41 people from two families, half of whom were children under 15. The attack was just one of dozens, which ended up giving the terrorists the halo of victimhood. The failure to acknowledge and compensate civilian casualties further legitimised jihadists.
But the so-called collateral costs of targeted killing aren’t the only argument for greater accountability. The potential for misuse of executive authority to exercise lethal force is self-evident. Lawyer Benjamin McKelvey, among others, has argued that targeted killing for all practical purposes extinguishes the legal rights of suspects. Exposure of ill-conceived or poorly-planned plots, moreover, can have damaging foreign policy outcomes.
As important, killing perpetrators doesn’t necessarily solve the problem. Terrorists in Kashmir, for example, have responded to alleged assassinations by India with multiple ambushes of Indian troops. This lures India into precisely the kind of military escalation on the Line of Control that targeted killing is intended to avoid.
Israeli analyst Yossi Melman notes that five decades of targeted killings have not weakened or deterred Israel’s adversaries. Indeed, organisations like Hamas have flourished during this period. Fighting terrorism needs nuanced political and social actions, not just an ability to kill terrorists.
The rage Indians feel at Pakistan’s long-standing policy of providing safe havens for terror is deep and legitimate. The government’s new resolve to end the impunity for terror that Islamabad has given, though, also needs new instruments to regulate its power and guard against abuse.
Praveen Swami is contributing editor at ThePrint. He tweets with @praveenswami. Views are personal.
(Edited by Ratan Priya)