Safe Havens: How attacks on diplomatic installations affect the outcome of political movements

Rahul Bhatia is a Security Studies Masters student at UCL and former writer for the Durham History in Politics Journal and Foreign Affairs Society. Email: Uctqrkb@ucl.ac.uk

Introduction

Diplomatic installations are often seen as inviolable, a piece of sovereign territory of one country within another that, as such, should not be touched. An attack on such an installation therefore has the dual effect of constituting an attack on two nations: the nation of the installation itself, and the nation in which the installation resides - a double provocation and thus doubly shocking. This shock-factor is enhanced by their often-dramatic nature. Embassies are well-guarded, resembling small fortresses in politically unstable locations. To see these physical manifestations of one country’s presence in another attacked with bombs, overrun by gunmen or overwhelmed by mobs sends an unequivocal message to the embassy’s proprietor - your actions have been unacceptable, and you are no longer welcome here. 

From shock comes attention, the broader reason behind such dramatic operations.  Whether this be to draw attention to the attackers themselves, the cause they support or the actions of the embassy owner. But what is the result of such attention? Why undertake such a high-risk and provocative action and what is the effect of such drastic action. Largely this depends on two things: the feasibility of the attackers’ goals and the strength of one or both states involved to respond to such an attack. 

Several attacks  have punctuated the peace that embassies signify: from bombings in East Africa Beirut and Benghazi on American infrastructure; to gunmen overriding embassies in South Vietnam and London; mobs scaling the walls of the US embassy in Tehran; and lesser known attacks in Peru, targeting more than thirty different embassies over a four year period perpetrated largely by the Shining Path [1]. A variety of perpetrators, actions and goals; but all equally impactful, hurting diplomatic relations between the affected countries and attracting international attention to their respective causes. 

In Weak States

This attention can draw public support for the aggressors. Take the case of the US embassy in South Vietnam, when during the Tet Offensive, North Vietnamese ‘sappers’ entered and overran the compound, coming within a hairsbreadth of killing the Ambassador [2]. Despite having half a million troops on the ground, the Vietcong had struck at the heart of US operations, emphasising the inherent weakness of South Vietnamese state-building efforts and the overarching security situation to the American public [3]. Amplifying this was the fact that this was the first ‘Television War’, reporters on the ground beamed live footage of this abject security failure directly into American homes for the first time [4]. Discontent was sown, growing just over a year later the Kent State shootings, fueling further anti-war protests in the US and forcing the American administration to begin winding down direct intervention and employ ‘Vietnamisation’ - a success for the North Vietnamese. 

Similarly, the destruction of the US diplomatic compounds in Benghazi (2011) and Beirut (1983) greatly reduced US intelligence gathering capabilities by restricting their future movements and placing staff at so much risk that their situation in both countries became untenable [5][6]. In all of these cases, the broadly stated goal of removing US influence from the region was achieved, and was done so by organised violent groups/combatants. 

Arguably a more successful variation of this theme is when popular mobilisation performs these actions - as with the US embassy in Tehran (1979) and, to some extant Benghazi, since it was both popular mobs and militias that attacked together in this case. In Tehran, thousands of members of the public surged into the embassy, taking hostages and making clear that, swathes of Iranian society explicitly rejected American influence in the country. From two nations with an extremely close military and economic relationship through the 1950s-60s, to becoming part of the infamous ‘Axis of Evil’ - since this specific date in 1979 to the present - highlights just how effective popular mobilisation against diplomatic installations can be at curtailing relations between two countries, to an even greater extent than merely a terrorist attack. While the process of the Tet offensive leading domestic protest and Vietnamisation took time and involved many other factors beyond the attacks themselves; Benghazi and particularly Tehran curtailed US-Libyan/US-Iranian relations effectively overnight, as the untenability of operating in an environment where public hostility to US presence became so overwhelmingly apparent. 

Inherent in all of these cases though - Iran, Libya, South Vietnam and Lebanon - is a weak state riven with internal conflict. What about the unsuccessful cases, where bombings fail to alter the political direction in the desired manner of the attacker. 

In Stronger States

Crucially, the attention attracted by such attacks also attracts repression from central governments and international actors, provided the situation on the ground allows for such repression. Attacks on the Iranian Embassy by South Kuzhestani independence campaigners in London (1980) where highly dramatic, but the strength of the Iranian State and its enormous capacity for repression crushed the group almost immediately, with the group rendered defunct within 12 months [7]. 

Similarly, although a more unstable state than the UK, a series of Embassy attacks by the Communist MRTA and Shining Path groups, over twenty-five in the period 1984-87, led to an effective partition of Peru by consecutive governments into closed administrative regions, restricting freedom of movement and speech by declaring a state of emergency, creating no-go regions closed off from outsiders [8]. This cornered communist groups and consistent persecution by the US-backed Peruvian state hampered communist operations until the conflict dwindled into highly localised, remote and small-scale skirmishes by the 1990s. 

Conclusions

Attacks on diplomatic installations are therefore a spectacle of the highest order, an offense against the politically sacrosanct and a direct, double-pronged statement to both the embassy owner and the nation in which said embassy resides. The effectiveness of such bold action may depend on broader circumstances such as the feasibility of the attackers goals, or the capacity of the state to mobilise effectively. However, the drama and attention drawn by such an attack means this phenomenon is unlikely to stop, regardless of increasingly advanced security/counterterrorism efforts, or the risks associated with drawing such attention to oneself. 

Works cited:

[1] Peru Terrorism review, 1987, CIA. https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/DOC_0005370047.pdf

[2] “Viet Cong Invade American Embassy” — The 1968 Tet Offensive, 2015, https://adst.org/2013/07/viet-cong-invade-american-embassy-the-1968-tet-offensive/

[3] Spencer C. Tucker, 2011. The Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War: A Political, Social, and Military History, 2nd Edition [4 volumes] A Political, Social, and Military History

[4] Ronald Steinman, The First Televised War, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/07/opinion/the-first-televised-war.html

[5] Frederic Wehrey, Why Isn’t the U.S. in Libya?, 2023, Foreign Policy Magazine, https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/04/06/libya-us-embassy-state-department-diplomacy-wagner-group/

[6] Robert Baer, See no Evil, 2002

[7] Pam O’Toole, Iran and the hostage-takers, 2000, BBC, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/uk/2000/iranian_embassy_siege/720640.stm

[8] Kent, Robert B. “Geographical Dimensions of the Shining Path Insurgency in Peru.” Geographical Review, vol. 83, no. 4, 1993, pp. 441–54. JSTOR, https