Moment of reckoning

Europe's FEAR OF TERRORISM : The use of a large truck in the attack represents an evolution in the use of the tactic; indicates a higher level of ope

Western Europe is reeling as fear of terrorism stalks the streets of the continent like never before. Earlier this week, a priest in Normandy had his throat cut in the attack on a church, an attack for which Islamic State (IS) promptly took responsibility.

Chaos came back to France, in the form of a terrorist attack in Nice in July that killed 84 people gathered to watch a Bastille Day fireworks display along the city’s main promenade. A truck driven by a man French authorities identified as Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, 31, a French-Tunisian petty criminal with no known terrorist links, simply ploughed through crowds, shooting at those fleeing as he rampaged along a mile of the beachfront street before being shot dead by police.

As in the November 13 attacks in Paris, the massacre at the Charlie Hebdo offices, the travellers killed at the Istanbul and Brussels airports, or the clubgoers in Orlando, the dead were guilty only of being in public. The French government had just announced it was about to end the state of emergency begun after the November 2015 Paris attacks, but after Nice attack, French president extended it for three more months.

The Islamic State-linked propaganda outlet, Amaq news agency, released a statement by the group claiming responsibility for the attack and calling Bouhlel a “soldier” for the group. The jihadist group previously claimed Orlando shooter Omar Mateen as a “fighter” for the IS in one of its statements despite no evidence of operational support for or foreknowledge of the attack.

Truck attacks are not new. Vehicle attacks have been used by Palestinian militants in Israel, Gaza and the West Bank, and three such attacks have been conducted by suspected Islamist militants in France over the past two years.

The use of a large truck in the attack, alongside the high death toll and deliberate targeting of a large crowd at an ideologically symbolic event, represents an evolution in the use of the tactic and potentially indicates a higher level of operational planning.

In October 2010, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) released the second issue of its English-language magazine, Inspire. In it, two articles written by Yahya Ibrahim outline potential ways to carry out terrorist operations including running over groups of people with trucks. One article, titled “The Ultimate Mowing Machine,” talks about using “a pickup truck as a mowing machine, not to mow grass but mow down the enemies of Allah.”

There has also been a recent spate of attacks in Germany which began on a train in Wuerzburg in Bavaria on July 18. Five people were wounded by an axe-wielding teenager from Afghanistan who had pledged allegiance to the IS.

Last week, a Syrian immigrant detonated a bomb, killing himself and injuring 15 people. The bomber had been rejected for asylum in 2015. Germany has been the main destination of Syrian asylum seekers entering the EU, most of them arriving irregularly in Greece via Turkey.

A new tranche of Islamic State documents on foreign fighters is helping German intelligence identify returning members of the jihadist group. Recent reports have emerged of around 400 IS fighters who left the caliphate. Most of those leaving IS territory listed family and medical reasons for their departure. Around 20 of those identified in the documents are German but prosecutors face numerous legal obstacles in prosecuting them based on the smuggled information alone.

Even as the US-led coalition continues to hammer the IS in Iraq and Syria, and Iraqi and Syrian/Kurdish rebel forces push the group out of more and more towns and cities, the group’s power to inspire attacks outside of its self-declared “caliphate” appears to be increasing.

The problem that policymakers face today is that the numbers of people who have been radicalised, mostly because of social media, are larger than anything seen before, and the West seems just behind the curve. This is a problem of an order of the magnitude much larger than in the past.

Soft targets

The jihadist group has been planning to shift to carrying out terrorist attacks against soft targets in the west for some time, not out of desperation or a sign of weakness but adapting to the new environment. The IS has seen its core structure in Iraq and Syria under attack and it seems to have shifted some of its command, media and wealth structure to different countries. This is borne out by a spate of attacks outside of West Asia.

The IS is now asking those who want to join the organisation to stay in their countries and wait to do undertake attacks there. This picture has been brought into clearer focus by documents and digital media seized in raids carried out by the Syrian Arab Coalition.

The policies of the West so far have failed to stem to influx of foreign fighters flocking to the group’s cause, or from new affiliates in Egypt, Afghanistan, Lib-ya, and the Caucasus from springing up, pledging fealty to the group’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Moreover, differences continue to simmer between the US and its West European allies on the issue.

Compared to the US spending more than $650 billion on homeland security since 9/11, European spending on law enforcement, border security and other related agencies remains underwhelming. The efforts are also marred by an inability to reach a consensus on the best way forward. The result of this disarray is that states like the UK have taken a unilateral approach to manage their own security.

No wonder, politicians in Europe are getting restless. The governor of Bavaria recently urged the German government to address public concerns about security and immigration after a spate of terror attacks. Whether European governments can do that remains to be seen.

(The writer is Professor of International Relations, King’s College London)