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carried out assassinations, and alleged donations to third parties needing
financial assistance. 538 For example, the group was able to secure the
equivalent of over C1,126,000 in two post office attacks alone.539 In addi-
tion, some evidence has suggested 17N s additional financial involvements,
which have included plans to open a takeaway restaurant in the popular Syn-
tagma square in central Athens,540 and the possible connections with the
film industry which were brought to light by the fact that two of the Xiros
brothers were thanked for their assistance in the credits of the Greek film
Tell Morphine I m Still Looking for Her. 541 The exact annual budget of
the group remains unknown, but was likely somewhere in the range of tens
of thousands of dollars, comparatively a rather small number. At the same
time, the group s material resources, despite having all been obtained
through self-help, by far exceeded the organization s operational capacity.
According to British investigators who significantly contributed to 17N s
collapse, the armory that was recovered in the group s safe houses following
the 2002 arrests would at a constant attack rate have lasted the group for
over 275 years.542 No evidence points to 17N s use of its financial resources
for an actual purchase of weapons, suggesting that these arms were all
obtained through the group s raids of military depots and holdups of police
officers.
With regard to human resources 17N was also dependent on self-help,
despite the numerous historical reports speculating about links with various
entities such as Carlos the Jackal, Greek intelligence services, the Abu
Nidal Organization, the Turkish Armed Propaganda Union543 or even the
Iranian government.544 The source of 17N military capability remains some-
what clouded, but according to investigators it is likely that at least some of
the group s members underwent the Greek compulsory national military
service where they had been trained to operate basic weaponry.545 Interest-
ingly, the one member who has been credited by his peers as the group s
weapons expert was Dimitris Koufondinas, who apparently kept a false name
precisely in order to avoid military service.546 Koufondinas own source of
Revolutionary Organization November 17 143
expertise thus remains unclear, even though some reports have suggested that
the technique used by the people who have made 17N s bombs had been
taught in the training camps throughout the Middle East in the 1970s.547
Either way, Koufondinas was the most capable operator within the group.
Another source of expertise can also be traced directly to Yiotopoulos, who
according to some reports was one of the ten Greek visitors who received
urban guerilla warfare training in Cuba at the end of the 1960s.548 The one
aspect that lends some credibility to these reports is the fact that this training
allegedly included instruction on covert operational procedures and on secur-
ing operational autonomy, both of which were 17N s strengths.
Looking at the professional background of its members, 17N clearly had
only a small potential for technological innovation, having been composed
of only part-time members of professions such as a beekeeper, a mathemati-
cian, a religious icon painter, two electricians, a school teacher and several
plumbers. 17N s main operational attribute clearly was not expertise but
patience, which allowed the group slowly to master the tactics of assassina-
tion, reconnaissance and disguise. The very limited background in weapons
training might have been enough to facilitate what the group was attempt-
ing to achieve, but was clearly one of the factors that made significant tacti-
cal or technological innovation on the part of the group unlikely. In
addition, the group s extremely small size confirms the hypothesis that the
level of innovativeness of a group is positively correlated with its size.
Openness to new ideas
The final variable that seems to correlate with 17N s lack of innovation is
the group s low level of openness to new ideas. This can be attributed to a
combination of many of the other variables mentioned above, including the
group s emotional attachment to a particular weapon, the low level of aware-
ness of the groups members in terms of alternative means of attack, and the
unwillingness to risk detection and apprehension resulting from experimen-
tation in the urban environment. The general attitude toward risk taking is
particularly important in this regard. Even though 17N s fairly positive atti-
tude toward risk taking with respect to personal safety was demonstrated by
the use of the close-quarter assassination technique, the group was much
more sensitive to the risks of mechanical failures and the public opinion
risks associated with operational incapability in general, and the danger of
producing undesired casualties in particular. All of the above factors con-
tributed to the low openness to new ideas within the group, directly impact-
ing the apparent lack of desire to innovate.
Durability
With regard to the durability variable it has been hypothesized that
longer-lasting organizations are likely to have more time to progress in
144 Revolutionary Organization November 17
terms of their motivation to innovate, as well as the opportunity to gather
enough experience to facilitate success in this process. This variable does not
appear relevant to 17N at all, as with 27 years of the overall period of exist-
ence 17N was one of the longest lasting terrorist organizations in history,
which makes it difficult to argue that the low level of the group s innovation
can be explained by an insufficient amount of time to facilitate the process.
Nature of the technology
With respect to the nature of the technology variable, it has been hypoth-
esized that the sophistication of selected weaponry will be negatively corre-
lated with the success of the attempts to adopt such a method. This variable
shows little relevance to the 17N case study simply because of the group s
limited attempts to make significant technological or tactical leaps. In the
absence of the decision to innovate, the obvious preconditions to successful
completion of the innovation process have not been fulfilled. At the same
time, the minimum amount of innovation that the group did demonstrate
was relatively successful, mainly because of the simplicity of the newly
adopted technologies and tactics, and therefore the nature of the technology
variable generally seems to hold despite the lack of its overall relevance to
this case study.
Conclusion
Revolutionary Organization November 17 serves as a prime example of how
a small group of individuals can acquire enough capability to carry out ter-
rorist operations and eventually achieve worldwide notoriety even without
undergoing a substantial innovation process. This case further demonstrates
that a group does not necessarily need to inflict a large number of casualties
in order to create a spectacular image for itself. 17N s innovation in this
regard was the ritualistic use of weaponry, the rigid tactics and target selec-
tion, unprecedented elusiveness, avenging nature of its attacks and an overall
resistance to the temptation to escalate. In essence, 17N was spectacular by [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] - zanotowane.pl
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