Introduction

The 9/11 terrorist attacks came as a shock to many. As discussed in the previous chapter, they resulted in an unprecedented amount of counter-terrorism activity by the United Nations (UN) Security Council, with little attention paid to human rights. A common narrative that emerged from 9/11 was that terrorism was taken more seriously when it came to the West. This narrative underestimated the degree of terrorism experienced in the West and, in particular, in the United Kingdom, where more than 3,000 people also died, albeit over a much longer period, in Northern Ireland. At the same time, however, the narrative was a powerful one because many democracies and the UN were prepared to enact much harsher laws in response to 9/11 than they had enacted in response to previous acts of terrorism. In his pre-9/11 comparative survey, David Charters has found that democracies were more likely to react harshly to prolonged domestic terrorism than international terrorism but that “democratic checks and balances worked” with the harshest states, Britain and Israel, limiting their response to geographically contained areas. As will be seen, the same cannot be said of the post-9/11 democratic experience as even democracies, such as Australia, that had experienced very little terrorism dramatically and quickly expanded their antiterrorism laws.