The lone-wolf terror trap.

There’s only one problem with the rising crescendo of alarm about lone wolves: most of it simply isn’t true.

Why the cure will be worse than the disease

The shadow of a new threat seems to be darkening the national security landscape: the lone-wolf terrorist.

“The lone wolf is the new nightmare,” wrote Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer recently, and the conservative pundit wasn’t alone in thinking so. “I really see [lone wolves] as being a bigger threat than al-Qaeda, or the Islamic State, or the al-Qaeda franchises,” Scott Stewart, vice president of tactical analysis at the global intelligence and advisory firm Stratfor, told VICE News. Similarly, in the aftermath of the Paris terrorist attacks, appearing on “Meet the Press,” Attorney General Eric Holder said, “The thing that I think keeps me up most at night [is] this concern about the lone wolf who goes undetected.”

You could multiply such statements many times over.  There’s only one problem with the rising crescendo of alarm about lone wolves: most of it simply isn’t true. There’s nothing new about the “threat” and the concept is notoriously unreliable, as well as selectively used.  (These days, “lone wolf” has largely become a stand-in for “Islamic terrorist,” though the category itself is not bound to any specific ideological type.)  Worst of all, its recent highlighting paves the way for the heightening of abusive and counterproductive police and national security practices, including the infiltration of minority and activist communities and elaborate sting operations that ensnare the vulnerable. In addition, the categorization of such solitary individuals as terrorists supposedly driven by ideology -- left or right, secular or religious -- often obscures multiple other factors that may actually cause them to engage in violence.

Like all violent crime, individual terrorism represents a genuine risk, just an exceedingly rare and minimal one.  It’s not the sort of thing that the government should be able to build whole new, intrusive surveillance programs on or use as an excuse for sending in agents to infiltrate communities. National programs now being set up to combat lone-wolf terrorism have a way of wildly exaggerating its prevalence and dangers -- and in the end are only likely to exacerbate the problem. For Americans to concede more of their civil liberties in return for “security” against lone wolves wouldn’t be a trade; it would be fraud.

Anatomy of the wolf

The “literature” on both terrorism and the lone wolf should be approached with a healthy degree of skepticism. To this day, there is little consensus on what exactly terrorism is; the same is true of the lone-wolf variety.

In the media and in recent academic studies, what separates the lone-wolf terrorist from the phenomenon in general is the perpetrator. Lone wolves are, by definition, solitary individuals, almost always men, often with mental health problems, who lash out violently against civilian targets. At least in some fashion, they are spurred on by belief. Researcher Michael Becker defines it this way: “Ideologically driven violence, or attempted violence, perpetrated by an individual who plans and executes an attack in the absence of collaboration with other individuals or groups.” Although you wouldn’t know it at the moment in America, the motivation for such attacks can run the gamut from religiously inspired anti-abortion beliefs to white supremacism, from animal rights to an al-Qaeda-inspired worldview.

According to the literature, lone wolves are unique in the annals of terrorism because of the solitariness with which they plan and carry out their acts. They lack peer or group pressure and their crimes are conceived and executed without assistance. In this way, they bear a strong resemblance to the individual school shooters and rampage killers that Americans are already so used to.

One practical reason many such individuals act alone, according to researchers, is fear of detection. In “Laws for the Lone Wolf,” white supremacist Tom Metzger wrote: “The less any outsider knows, the safer and more successful you will be. Keep your mouth shut and your ears open. Never truly admit to anything.” (Before 9/11, lone-wolf terrorism in America was overwhelmingly a right-wing affair.)

This isn’t to say that individuals who commit political violence don’t talk to anyone before they attack. Recent research into 119 lone-actor terrorists in the United States and Europe, who were either convicted of such a crime or died during it, finds that they often expressed their extremist beliefs, grievances, and sometimes their violent intentions to others -- mostly friends and family or online communities. The good news should be that family, friends, and colleagues might be able to help prevent those close to them from engaging in political violence if, as a society, we were to adopt strategies that built trust of law enforcement in the public, particularly affected communities, rather than fear and suspicion. (But given the record these last years, don’t hold your breath.)

On the other hand, the methods that the police and national security state seem to be exploring to deal with the issue -- like trying to determine what kinds of individuals will join terrorist groups or profiling lone wolves -- won’t work. The reasons individuals join terrorist groups are notoriously complex, and the same holds true for politically violent people who act alone. After reviewing those 119 lone-wolf cases, for example, the researchers concluded, “There was no uniform profile of lone-actor terrorists.” Even if a “profile” were to emerge, they added, it would be essentially worthless: “[T]he use of such a profile would be unwarranted because many more people who do not engage in lone-actor terrorism would share these characteristics, while others might not but would still engage in lone-actor terrorism.”

As a group, such solitary terrorists differ from society at large in one crucial way: almost one out of three had been diagnosed with a mental illness or personality disorder before engaging in political violence. Another study concentrating on 98 US perpetrators found that approximately 40% had recognizable mental health problems.  The comparable figure for the general population: 1.5%.

Given such high rates of psychological disturbance, there’s a chance individual attacks could be prevented if at-risk people got the mental health care they needed before they took a violent turn.

Fact vs. fiction

Fortunately, what makes lone wolves so difficult to detect beforehand renders them more impotent when they strike.     

Because such individuals don’t have a larger network of financing and training, and may be disturbed as well, they are likely to have a far less sophisticated skill set when it comes to arming themselves or planning attacks. Terrorism researcher Ramon Spaaij of Australia’s Victoria University created a database of 88 identified lone wolves who perpetrated attacks between 1968 and 2010 in 15 countries. What he found should dispel some of the fear now being associated with lone-wolf terrorism and so the increasingly elaborate and overzealous government planning around it.

Spaaij identified 198 total attacks by those 88 solo actors -- just 1.8% of the 11,235 recorded terrorist incidents worldwide. Since lone wolves generally don’t have the know-how to construct bombs (as the Unabomber did), they usually rely on firearms and attack soft, populated targets, which law enforcement responds to quickly. Therefore, Spaaij found that the average lethality rate was .062 deaths per attack while group-based terrorists averaged 1.6 people per attack.

Inside the United States, 136 people died due to individual terrorist attacks between 1940 and 2012 -- each death undoubtedly a tragedy, but still a microscopic total compared to the 14,000 murders the FBI has reported in each of the last five years.  In other words, you shouldn’t be losing sleep over lone-wolf attacks. As an American, the chance that you’ll die in any kind of terrorist violence is infinitesimal to begin with. In fact, you’re four more times likely to die from being struck by lightning. If anything, the present elevation of the lone-wolf terrorist to existential threat status in Washington creates the kind of fear and government overreach that the perpetrators of such attacks want to provoke.

If individual terrorists are the “new nightmare,” it’s only because we allow them to be.

Lone wolf ≠ Muslim

During the December hostage crisis at a café in Sydney, Australia, orchestrated by Man Haron Monis, an Iranian immigrant, former CIA Deputy Director Michael Morell had this dire prediction: “[W]e’re going to see this kind of attack here,” he told “CBS This Morning.” “It shouldn’t surprise people when this happens here sometime over the next year or so, guaranteed.”

This was typical of the recent rhetorical escalation by officials and former officials in the national security state when it comes to this kind of terror. But Morell’s prediction was no prediction at all.  Such attacks do occur here. One had, for instance, been solved a little more than a month earlier.  Eric Matthew Frein was apprehended the day before Halloween through an intensive search in the Pocono mountains of Pennsylvania after shooting two state troopers outside a police barracks with a sniper rifle in September. Officer Corporal Bryon K. Dickson II died, while Trooper Alex T. Douglass was wounded. Frein, whom authorities initially called an “anti-government survivalist,” was eventually charged with two terrorism counts after he told police that the shootings were a way to “wake people up.” They also found a letter he had written to his parents stating that he wanted to “ignite a fire” because only “another revolution can get us back the liberties we once had.”

Individual violence like this, whether labelled as terrorism or not, is nothing new.  It’s been dealt with for decades without the kind of panic, fear-mongering, and measures being instituted today. After all, according to Spaaij, between 1968 and 2010, 45% of all individual terrorist attacks recorded in 15 countries occurred in the United States.

However, as Spaaij and his research partner Mark Hamm discovered, these figures are distinctly bloated.  The reason is simple: included in them are numerous examples of “individual” terrorist acts inspired by al-Qaeda-style ideology that actually resulted from law enforcement-instigated or -aided plots. Spaaij and Hamm found that at least 15 of these had occurred between 2001 and 2013. In them, a “lone” perpetrator would actually be involved with, and often directed or encouraged by, a government informant or undercover agent. This adds up to about 25% of post-9/11 cases of lone wolfism in the US, though the label is hardly accurate under the circumstances. These are essentially government stings, which not only inflate the number of individual terrorism incidents in the US, but disproportionately focus law enforcement attention on American Muslim communities.

An egregious example was the case of Rezwan Ferdaus, a 26-year-old Massachusetts man and American Muslim. The FBI busted him in 2011 for conspiring with undercover agents to build crude explosive-laden drones out of remote-controlled planes to fly into the Pentagon and the Capitol Building. In reality, this was a government-concocted plot, and Ferdaus was no lone wolf.  (He was incapable of thinking this up or carrying it off on his own.) The FBI ignored clear signs that their target wasn’t a terrorist, buta mentally ill man, deteriorating rapidly. Nevertheless, he was repeatedly termed a lone wolf by law enforcement and the media. Charged with providing material support to terrorists, in 2012, he was sentenced to 17 years in prison.

By contrast, when the apparent lone wolf isn’t a Muslim or other minority, he rarely finds the fear-inducing terrorist label pinned on him by the government, the media, or security experts. Take James von Brunn, a white supremacist who murdered a security guard at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. According to the Department of Homeland Security, the act had no connection to terrorism, although it was ideologically motivated, as one FBI official acknowledged.

Or Francis Grady, who tried to burn down a Planned Parenthood clinic in Grand Chute, Wisconsin, in 2012, because, as he told a US district court judge, “They’re killing babies there.” Grady was not charged with a terrorism offence either. When asked why, Assistant United States Attorney William Roach said that Grady had tried to burn down an unoccupied room in an empty building.

Compare those reactions to the case of Zale Thompson, a disturbed African-American man who attacked four New York City police officers in October with a hatchet. Only a day after the attack, Police Commissioner Bill Bratton said, “I’m very comfortable this was a terrorist attack, certainly.” The apparent evidence: Thompson was a recent convert to Islam who had visited websites affiliated with terrorist groups like al-Qaeda and IS.

As Glenn Greenwald has pointed out, “Terrorism is simultaneously the single most meaningless and manipulated word in the American political lexicon.” The same can be said of its lone-wolf version. Not surprisingly, it has by now become essentially synonymous with being Muslim and little else, which stigmatizes American Muslims and makes their communities targets for abusive law enforcement techniques, including FBI-style sting operations and massive, intrusive surveillance. Typically, one terrorism researcher defined lone wolves as “individuals pursuing Islamist terrorist goals alone.” In reality, Muslims have no more of a monopoly on lone-wolf terrorism than they do on terrorism more generally.

Counterproductive responses

At the moment, the response to the lone-wolf hullabaloo, like so much else in recent years, is inching us further down the path toward an American police state. One government response, now being re-emphasized, comes (of course!) with its own acronym: countering violent extremism, or CVE.

The program, announced in 2011, aims to partner with communities -- almost exclusively Muslim ones in practice -- in the name of terrorism prevention. One of the ways communities are to do this is by creating safe spaces where individuals can discuss politics and religion without fear of lurking government agents. Yet members of these same communities will then be encouraged to report back to authorities about what was said and by whom in an effort to identify those at-risk of becoming violent extremists, whether alone or in concert with others. American Muslim communities have already experienced government stings and infiltration by informants, and tasking community members to report back to authorities doesn’t seem much different than directly putting agents in their midst.

If CVE’s goal is to build the capacity within communities to prevent violence and terrorism, lone or otherwise, then agencies like Health and Human Services and the Department of Education should be leading the way. They could provide social and mental health services and educational resources -- to all communities instead of singling particular ones out based on religion, race, or ethnicity. Instead, not surprisingly, the White House has put the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Justice, and the FBI in charge of executing its CVE programs, while emphasizing the coordinating role of local US Attorneys’ Offices. American Muslim communities are rightly leery of this arrangement, particularly in light of the way these outfits have recently focused on religious beliefs as a basis for suspicion and, at least in the FBI’s case, have manufactured terror plots by preying on the sick and the vulnerable. 

Other proposed solutions to the “lone-wolf” problem are even more indiscriminate.

In a recent book, former RAND Corporation analyst Jeffrey Simon offers an inventory of possible technological strategies for identifying the wolf in sheep’s clothing before he attacks. These are typical of our moment and include the widespread use of Internet-enabled smart surveillance cameras, as well as the active, suspicionless monitoring of Internet and social media usage. Another increasingly popular approach he suggests is the expansion of biometric collection, meaning the government would assemble biological traits unique to each individual, such as facial dimensions and DNA, without any evidence of wrongdoing.

It should be noted that such an approach -- and it's typical of the direction the national security state and law enforcement have taken in these years -- would represent a fundamental assault on a free society.  Such “countermeasures” should send a shiver down your spine. Simon seems to recognize this, writing, “Privacy issues will have to be addressed, including the willingness of the public to have their facial expressions, eye movements, heart rates, breathing patterns, and other characteristics captured by sophisticated sensors wherever they go in order for a decision to be made by others concerning what they might be intending to do.”

The dangers to Americans in allowing government agencies to collect such intimate information in order to discover whether any of them are possible lone wolves should be obvious in terms of the destruction of privacy, among other things. The result would be both an Orwellian world and a hopeless one in safety terms. It’s already clear that none of these expensive and advanced technological “solutions” will work. Totally innocent conduct (“false positives”) will overwhelm the truly menacing. Some of these approaches, like surveillance cameras, may help finger a perpetrator after the crime, while others, such as trying to identify who will engage in terrorism by his body language, will only further contribute to the security theater the government has staged since 9/11. 

Nevertheless, the ineffectiveness of an intrusive security state won’t stop its adherents from pushing for more power and methods of control that are ever more intrusive. "We have to put... aside... all the bleeding-heart, politically correct people who say we can't be emphasizing one community over the other," VICE quoted Congressman Peter King as saying in a radio appearance. The threat, he added, is “coming from the Muslim community and it shows that the [New York Police Department] and [former police commissioner] Ray Kelly were right for so many years when they were really saturating areas where they thought the threat was coming from."

The once-secret NYPD suspicionless surveillance program King is referring to --  it stretched from Connecticut to Pennsylvania -- never produced a single terrorism lead, much less a conviction. It was “successful” at only one thing: making American Muslim communities in the greater metropolitan area feel as if they were under siege and destroying trusting relations between them and the police.

As King demonstrates, the people who pledge to protect our lives and our liberties are often the same ones who cry wolf. With shepherds like these guarding the flock, wolves may be beside the point.

Font: Copyright 2015 Matthew Harwood. This article first appeared in TomDispatch.com

Syria's al-Nusra Front mulls cutting al-Qaeda ties in Qatar-backed plan: sources.

The Gulf kingdom would boost support for the group, which is on the UN's sanctions list, if leaders renounce links to al-Qaeda.

An image circulated by al-Nusra Front appears to show a supporter holding US-bought supplies 

captured from a moderate rebel group. 

 Syria’s al-Nusra Front is mulling withdrawing its support for al-Qaeda in return for greater investment from Qatar, according to media reports on Wednesday.

Currently al-Qaeda’s affiliate in the country, the group controls large pockets of territory mainly in Syria’s north-eastern provinces.

But al-Nusra, which is on the UN's sanctions list and has been designated a terrorist group by the US since 2012, is now considering cutting its ties to al-Qaeda amid plans to form a new group that aims to topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Qatar is reportedly at the heart of the proposal, according to al-Nusra sources who spoke to Reuters on Wednesday.

Qatar enjoys good relations with the group, claiming credit for negotiating the release of 45 UN peacekeepers taken hostage by al-Nusra in August 2014.

The tiny Gulf kingdom is also taking a leading role in negotiations for the release of a group of Lebanese soldiers captured by al-Nusra last summer.

More than 30 soldiers were captured during clashes between the militants and the Lebanese armed forces in Arsal, a small town on the Lebanese side of the border with Syria.

Four of the hostages have since been killed, and eight released – the mother of one of the men, who was allowed to visit the group last month, said her son was in a “tragic” state after months of captivity.

Al-Nusra has reportedly submitted a list of its demands to the Qatari negotiating team, comprising a list of people it wants released from prisons in Lebanon and Syria.

Sources inside Qatar’s foreign ministry said on Wednesday that they want al-Nusra to become a “purely Syrian” organisation with no ties to al-Qaeda.

In exchange, the source said, the group would receive “more support” from Qatar in the form of money and supplies.

Al-Nusra is one of the largest armed groups fighting in the ongoing civil war in Syria, where four years of conflict have left the opposition to embattled President Bashar al-Assad fractured.

The group was rocked last year by the defection of large numbers of its leadership to Islamic State, whose leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi helped to establish al-Nusra, but later parted ways from it after a falling-out between Baghdadi and al-Nusra’s leader, Abu Mohammed al-Golani.

IS subsequently assassinated large numbers of al-Nusra’s leadership, seizing the group’s territory and weaponry.

If al-Nusra accepts Qatar’s plan and is boosted by new flows of funding and equipment, many will hope that the group can put up greater resistance to IS in Syria.

However, al-Nusra has confined itself in recent months to fighting mainstream rebel groups like Harakat Hazm, a secular militia that received support and hi-tech weaponry from the US.

Harakat Hazm dissolved this month after being overrun by al-Nusra in the countryside around Aleppo. Al-Nusra later circulated images of their fighters posing in front of large caches of US-bought weaponry including missiles and heavy artillery shells.

Reports that al-Nusra could shift publicly away from al-Qaeda come two days after the US, in a major policy shift, announced that it would provide combat support to 15,000 moderate rebels it plans to train over the next three years.

Earlier reports had suggested that US support for rebel groups deemed moderate by the US had dried up, with fighters criticising Washington for failing to follow up on pledged aid.

Analysts say that the Qatari bid to change the makeup of al-Nusra speaks volumes about the efficacy of US foreign policy on Syria.

"The collapse of the US attempt to legitimise moderate militias explains why regional powers are taking a second look at al-Nusra," according to Joshua Landis, director of the Centre for Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma. 

"The only groups that have real national scope in Syria are Islamists. The US is looking for an alternative to that - they are backing losers."

In this context, says Landis, major Sunni regional powers backing the anti-Assad rebels are searching for alternative ways to back al-Nusra, a group that has a dominant position in the country's north.

"If they could get Gulf backing, al-Nusra would also be able to make inroads in the south. But the US won't let [the Gulf] do that, because al-Nusra are al-Qaeda affiliates."

However, Landis suggests that the concessions al-Nusra is willing to offer will not be enough to convince Western powers that they are a legitimate group.

"They are trying to show the West that they are on the right side, but their worldview is so dramatically different from that of US Congress as to make it naive.

"Al-Nusra will not be getting off the terror list any time soon."

Londres ordena a Gibraltar que preste máxima colaboración a España ante la amenaza yihadista.

Instrucciones a la Policía de que cese cualquier incidente con la Guardia Civil.

Aparcar cualquier enfrentamiento entre la Royal Police y la Guardia Civil y centrarse en la lucha contra la amenaza terrorista actual. Esa es la orden que ha recibido el Gobierno de Gibraltar desde Londres. La seguridad en el Peñón se ha reforzado en los últimos días.

Lanchas de la Policía de Gibraltar y de la Guardia Civil.

Lanchas de la Policía de Gibraltar y de la Guardia Civil.

Gibraltar también está en alerta por ataque terrorista. Concretamente en el nivel ‘Substantial’, que indica una “alta posibilidad de ataque”. Las autoridades del Peñón han elevado días atrás el nivel de amenaza tras recibir la orden desde Londres. El pasado fin de semana ya pudo verse por sus calles policías con chalecos antibalas, perros y armas largas.

Según fuentes relacionadas con la seguridad del Estado y conocedoras de las órdenes que ha recibido la Policía gibraltareña, el gobierno británico ha solicitado que se eviten “a toda costa” cualquier incidente con la Policía española o laGuardia Civil.

Colaborar con España

Tal y como explican estas voces, las órdenes han sido distribuidas a todos los centros de la Policía gibraltareña, incluidos los del componente marítimo. El mandato consiste en “aparcar cualquier incidente y centrarse en la vigilancia antiterrorista que impera en este momento”.

De hecho, en la última semana no se han registrado incidentes entre patrulleras de la Guardia Civil y de la Royal Police de Gibraltar. Es más, tal y como quedó reflejado en estas páginas, han llegado a mantener una inusitada colaboración a la hora de llevar a cabo una operación antidroga la pasada semana.

El yihadismo también amenaza Gibraltar

Según la Oficina de prensa de Gibraltar, el aumento del nivel de alerta no responde en esta ocasión a una amenaza concreta contra el Peñón, sino a un clima deamenaza generalizada.

Sin embargo, Gibraltar sí ha sido señalado en alguna ocasión como objetivo terrorista de grupos yihadistas. Por ejemplo, como contó ECD, Al Qaeda ha realizado un llamamiento a todos sus seguidores para que emprendan ataques terroristas contra buques petroleros a su paso por el Estrecho, que llevan combustible hacia la zona oriental del Mediterráneo y el Oriente Medio. Incluidos aquellos que fondeen en aguas de Gibraltar.

Ante la más limitada capacidad de Gibraltar para vigilar este tipo de amenazas, el Reino Unido solicitó ayudaa España para tratar de frenar cualquier complot terrorista en la línea de lo dictado por la dirección de Al Qaeda.

Ucraina e Isis: il vice di Obama rivela (per sbaglio) la verità...

Questo è un esempio di come certe informazioni non circolino sui media occidentali. Un amico che pesca molto bene online mi ha inviato la segnalazione di alcuni articoli che recavano un titolo forte: “Il vicepresidente americano Joe Biden ammette di aver obbligato i Paesi europei ad adottare le sanzioni contro la Russia”.

Come mio dovere, verifico le fonti. E scopro che a dare questa notizia sono Russia Today e altre agenzie di stampa russe. Da esperto di spin mi sorge il dubbio che si tratti di una strumentalizzazione da parte di Mosca. E verifico ulteriormente. In pochi minuti.

Sì, Biden ha tenuto un lungo discorso sulla politica estera all’università di Harvard, discorso a cui i media americani hanno dato ampio spazio ma per evidenziare una battuta, anzi una gaffe su quanto sia frustrante fare il vicepresidente, espressa con un linguaggio molto colorito. Negli articoli, però, nessun riferimento alla frase sull’Europa.

Allora indago ulteriormente, vado sul sito della Casa Bianca dove è pubblicata la trascrizione integrale del discorso di Biden. E, come potete verificare voi stessi, la frase riportata dai media russi è corretta e l’indifferenza con cui è stata accolta dai media occidentali, ma anche europei significativa. Praticamente nessun giornalista ha saputo valutare la portata delle dichiarazioni di Biden. Il che è grave professionalmente, ma non sorprendente: a dare il tono sono state le agenzie di stampa e le tv all news che si sono soffermate sull’aspetto più leggero e sensazionale ovvero la gaffe di Biden; tutto il resto è passato in secondo piano. Anche sulla stampa più autorevole. Perché Biden poteva reggere un titolo, non due. E quelle dichiarazioni formulate nell’ambito di un lungo discorso in cui Biden ha toccato molti aspetti. Gli spin doctor della Casa Bianca si sono ben guardati dall’evidenziarle e sono scivolate via assieme ad altre.

Nessuna manipolazione, nessuna censura: se conosci le logiche e le debolezze dei media puoi orientarli a piacimento, Negli Stati Uniti, ma anche in Europa.
In realtà le dichiarazioni di Biden sono davvero sensazionali,una gaffe in termini diplomatici:

“Abbiamo dato a Putin una scelta semplice: rispetta la sovranità ucraina o avrai di fronte gravi conseguenze. E questo ci ha indotto a mobilitare i maggiori Paesi più sviluppati al mondo affinché imponessero un costo reale alla Russia.   “E’ vero che non volevano farlo. E’ stata la leadership americana e il presidente americano ad insistere, tante di quelle volte da dover mettere in imbarazzo l’Europa per reagire e decidere per le sanzioni economiche, nonostante i costi”.

L’ammissione è fortissima: è stata l’America a costringere l’Europa a punire Putin, contro la sua volontà.
Poi un’altra strabiliante ammissione, sull’Isis, che l’America combatte con toni accorati salvo poi ammettere che il pericolo per gli stessi americani non è così rilevante:

“Non stiamo affrontando un pericolo esistenziale per il nostro stile di vita o la nostra sicurezza. Hai due volte più possibilità di essere colpito da un fulmine per strada che di essere vittima di un evento terroristico negli Stati Uniti”.

Dunque l’Isis non è una minaccia seria, così come non lo è più il terrorismo negli Stati Uniti.

Quando qualcuno dice la verità – e chi più di un vicepresidente americano? – il mondo appare molto diverso rispetto alla propaganda ufficiale. In Ucraina e sul terrorismo.

Ma se i media non ne parlano, la propaganda diventa, anzi resta apparente verità. E la vera verità limitata ai pochi che la sanno davvero cogliere e trasmettere.

Font: Marcello Foa su ilGiornale.it

As Caliphates Compete, Radical Islam Will Eventually Weaken...

A still from a video released by Nigerian militant group Boko
 Haram in February shows leader A
bubakar Shekau surrounded by numerous armed militants.

Summary

The rise of the Islamic State will inspire other jihadist groups to claim their own caliphates and emirates. In the long run, the extremism of these contrived dominions and the competition among them will undermine the jihadist movement. However, before that happens, the world will witness much upheaval.

Analysis

In a 52-minute video that surfaced in late August, Abubakar Shekau, the head of Nigerian jihadist group Boko Haram, spoke of an Islamic State in northeastern Nigeria. The statement came two months after Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the chief of the transnational jihadist movement in Syria and Iraq, declared the re-establishment of the caliphate, renaming the group the Islamic State. Though likely inspired by the Islamic State, Boko Haram is not simply mimicking its more powerful Syrian-Iraqi counterpart; it is taking its cue from the Nigeria-based Sokoto Caliphate, which was established in the early 1800s and existed for almost a century until Britain gained control of the region.

The Caliphate's Role in History

According to classical Muslim political theorists, there can be only one caliphate for the entire Muslim global community, or ummah. In practice, though, there have been rival claimants to authority and even competing caliphates throughout the history of Islam. In our July 1 analysis on the subject, Stratfor explained not only how multiple emirates and sultanates emerged independently of the caliphate but also that there were rival caliphates -- for example, the Abbasid in Baghdad (749-1258), Umayyad in the Iberian Peninsula (929-1031) and Fatimid in Cairo (909-1171).

These medieval-era caliphates were not just the byproduct of geographical constraints facing the original caliphate but also heavily shaped by political and religious rivalries and political evolution. These dynastic empires were the building blocks of the Muslim world, not unlike the wider international system of the time. For this reason, they endured for centuries until Europe's geopolitical push into the Muslim world in the 18th century.

I

n the past two centuries, the medieval caliphates, emirates and sultanates have been replaced by nation-states. Though artificially created and weak, these modern Muslim polities are unlikely to be swept away by radical Islamists seeking to re-establish caliphates and emirates. Although nationalism was initially a European import into the Arab/Muslim world and continues to face competition from religious and tribal identities, it is well established in the public psyche.
This can be seen in the organization of most Islamists along national lines. Most Islamists, who are aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood or some variant of it, embrace the nation-state and should not be conflated with the minority of radical Islamists and jihadists who seek to eliminate national boundaries and return to a romanticized notion of the past. Still, caliphates and emirates have emerged because of the failures of the modern Muslim nation-states to create democratic systems and, more broadly, to provide a viable political economy for their citizens -- a failure that radical Islamist forces have deftly exploited.

Deficiencies in Modern Caliphates

Radical Islamists are able to capture the imagination of the economically disadvantaged youth who understand neither politics nor Islam. The most successful jihadist entity in terms of capturing territory, the Islamic State, rose in part because of rare circumstances related to the regional geopolitical struggle between the Shiite and Sunni camps in the Middle East. However, as is evident from the international alignment of forces against the Islamic State, the transnational jihadist movement faces severe challenges moving forward.
In addition, its ultra-extremist policies and behavior are further alienating the Islamic State from the Muslim world. Al Qaeda's denunciation of the Islamic State as a deviant force underscores the competition it faces from within the jihadist movement. Furthermore, there is an entire constellation of radical Islamists beyond al Qaeda that does not accept the Islamic State's claim to a caliphate. These Islamists will seek to form their own caliphates or emirates in the same battle spaces. Meanwhile, other groups operating in different parts of the Muslim world seek to form their own caliphates.
An important concept in this context is that of the leader of the faithful, or emir al-momineen, which was the title given to the second caliph of Islam, Omar bin al-Khattab (579-644). Since then, this title has become synonymous with that of the caliph. In the contemporary age, Afghan Taliban founder Mullah Mohammad Omar assumed the title in the 1990s, when the movement ruled most of Afghanistan. Decades earlier, Morocco's constitution conferred this title upon the country's monarch.
Morocco's king only claims leadership of the country's Muslim majority. Likewise, the Afghan Taliban's status as a nationalist jihadist force meant that Mullah Omar only claimed leadership of the Muslims of Afghanistan. Al-Baghdadi's move to declare himself caliph of all the Muslims of the world therefore challenges the authority of the emirates and dynastical or republican regimes in the Islamic world.

The Fate of Jihadists and Caliphates

In the distant future, radical Islamism will likely lose its appeal because of two broad factors. First, the attempt to create caliphates and the associated difficulties of governance will force many radical Islamists to opt for pragmatism and become relatively moderate. Second, opposition from fellow Muslims also learning about politics and governance will give them less room to operate.
Yet, while this modern phenomenon of competing caliphates, emirates or Islamic states will only further weaken jihadist groups, the idea of the caliphate remains an unresolved matter. Muslims have long accepted that the notion does not connote a single state for the ummah; instead it symbolizes pan-Muslim cooperation in the form of a supra-national regime such as the European Union. This remains a desirable goal, as is evident from the Organization of Islamic Conference which, though anemic, remains intact.
Still, these developments will be the outcome of a multigenerational struggle. Until then, the social, political and economic problems of the Arab/Muslim world, along with sectarian strife, geopolitical rivalries and the interests of outside powers (especially the United States and the West), will sustain the conditions in which violent extremists thrive. Thus, radical Islamism will remain a threat globally -- and especially for Muslims themselves -- for decades.

 Font: Stratfor

I DRONI VANNO BENE E GL’INTERROGATORI CON TORTURA INVECE NO?



Barack Obama - Drone

John Rizzo, legale della Cia dopo l’11 settembre: “I terroristi catturati ci hanno fornito informazioni per prevenire attentati. Ora si spara dal cielo, ma i morti non parlano”.
Del resto i sondaggi dicono che il 71% degli americani accetta senza problemi le 2.500 vittime dei droni in Asia, mentre vive con rimorso Abu Grahib e Guantanamo…
Solo con la cattura e il sequestro del materiale in possesso  di gruppi "Terroristici" si possono avere informazioni utili all'Intelligence per sventare attacchi terroristici.
La nuova politica di ucciderli con i Droni, non permette all'Intelligence di avere materiale da analizzare e nemmeno di poter interrogare il "terrorista"...

IN MORTE DEL POLITICAMENTE CORRETTO – I DRONI VANNO BENE E GL’INTERROGATORI CON TORTURA INVECE NO? – L’EX AVVOCATO DELLA CIA ACCUSA: “L’IPOCRISIA DI OBAMA CI ESPONE A UN ATTACCO”


I terroristi vanno semplicemente uccisi o catturati e torturati per strappargli tutte le informazioni utili a salvare altre vite? Il quesito può sembrare tremendo e immorale, ma è brutalmente attuale. Soprattutto alla vigilia di un tredicesimo anniversario dell'11 settembre segnato dalla paura di un nuovo attacco. Soprattutto all'indomani della decapitazione di due cittadini americani che né la Cia, né le Forze Speciali sono riuscite a salvare. A riportare in auge parole come waterboarding e rendition sono le critiche a un'intelligence Usa accusata di non aver previsto l'ascesa dello Stato Islamico. E dietro le critiche si fa strada, negli Stati Uniti, la rivalutazione delle strategie adottate dall'amministrazione George W. Bush a fronte di un diffuso scetticismo nei confronti dei metodi adottati invece da Barack Obama.



Guantanamo: ecco le celle.
I prigionieri sono da considerare ad alto rischio,
in quanto composta da personaggi
sicuramente legati alle reti "TERRORISTICHE"
 qaedista e isis ect.

Il presidente democratico già all'indomani della sua prima elezione prese nettamente le distanze dalla strategia del predecessore. «Ritengo - disse allora Obama - che il waterbording sia una tortura e che sia stato un errore qualunque siano state le motivazioni legali e razionali». Il primo a riconoscere le inadeguatezze di un'intelligence incapace di prevedere la nascita di un Califfato del terrore tra Irak e Siria è però lo stesso Obama.

«Non c'è dubbio che la loro avanzata e i loro movimenti nel corso degli ultimi mesi - ammetteva ai primi d'agosto il presidente - sono stati molto più rapidi di quanto stimato dalla nostra intelligence». Alla base di questa impreparazione non vi sarebbe - secondo i critici dell'amministrazione Obama - solo la scelta di abbandonare l'Irak, ma anche quella di rinunciare agli «interrogatori intensificati» ovvero a vere e proprie tecniche di tortura capaci di far confessare i terroristi costringendoli a rivelare dettagli e connessioni impossibili da ottenere con altri metodi.

L'anno scorso l'avvocato John Rizzo, principale consulente legale della Cia dopo l'11 settembre, ricordava in un'intervista a Der Spiegel che la ragione per cui non si oppose all'adozione di tecniche d'interrogatorio molto prossime alla tortura fu la paura di un «nuovo attacco all'America». E soprattutto la paura di privilegiare i propri scrupoli morali a discapito di pratiche forse riprovevoli, ma capaci di salvare la vita di migliaia di americani. «Non avrei mai potuto convivere con l'idea che ...(dopo un nuovo attentato)... potesse saltar fuori che la Cia aveva preso in considerazione queste tecniche, ma io le avevo bloccate perché ritenevo troppo rischioso adottarle».

Interno del carcere di Guantanamo a Cuba

Alle certezze di Rizzo si contrappongono le analisi degli esperti d'intelligence che sottolineano da anni l'inaffidabilità delle confessioni estorte con la violenza per la tendenza di chi le subisce a soddisfare aspettative e richieste degli aguzzini. John Rizzo risponde ricordando, però, i successi ottenuti dopo l'11 settembre. «Grazie a quel programma - sostiene l'avvocato della Cia - non c'è stato un secondo attacco sul suolo americano e Bin Laden è stato ucciso. Stando comodamente seduti qui, tanti anni dopo, è troppo facile dire che lo si poteva ottenere anche senza ricorrere a quelle tecniche d'interrogatorio e senza il danno d'immagine pagato dagli Stati Uniti».

Proprio l'eccessiva considerazione per l'immagine esteriore e la maniacale attenzione ai canoni del «politicamente corretto» avrebbero spinto l'amministrazione Obama, secondo i suoi detrattori, ad adottare strategie non solo inefficaci dal punto di vista dei risultati, ma anche intrinsecamente immorale quanto le tecniche dell'era Bush. Al centro di questo dibattito c'è anche stavolta l'opzione «droni», ovvero la decisione di trasformare gli aerei senza pilota della Cia nella principale arma anti-terrorismo. Mentre il 71 per cento degli americani accetta senza problemi le 2500 vittime, tra terroristi e perdite collaterali, causate dai droni soltanto in Pakistan, gran parte dell'America continua a provare un senso di auto-riprovazione per le uscite da Abu Ghraib o Guantanamo.

La giornata trascorre così:
Colazione con possibilità di doccia
Visite mediche
Pranzo
Ora d'aria
Possibilità di scrivere lettere sotto la supervisione dei soldati,
con penne e carta fornite dai soldati, che vengono raccolte al termine
Pasto serale

«Questo perché l'immagine di un veicolo incenerito o di una casa distrutta non è sufficiente a farci realizzare - spiega Abu Bruce Hoffman, direttore del Centro per gli studi sulla Sicurezza dell'Università di Georgetown - che quella cosa capita a un esser umano come noi. In questi casi - spiega ancora Hoffman - non disponiamo degli stessi dettagli fornitici dagli articoli che ci spiegano con dovizia di particolari come Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, la mente dell'11 settembre, abbia subito il waterboarding per 183 volte di fila». Con una differenza. I terroristi uccisi dai droni non parlano. Khalid Sheik Mohammed, invece, contribuì con le sue rivelazioni alla sconfitta di Al Qaida e - nel lungo termine - all'uccisione di Bin Laden.

Found: The Islamic State's Terror Laptop of Doom...

Buried in a Dell computer captured in Syria are lessons for making bubonic plague bombs and missives on using weapons of mass destruction.

ANTAKYA, Turkey —
Abu Ali, a commander of a moderate Syrian rebel group in northern Syria, proudly shows a black laptop partly covered in dust. "We took it this year from an ISIS hideout," he says.
Abu Ali says the fighters from the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), which have since rebranded themselves as the Islamic State, all fled before he and his men attacked the building. The attack occurred in January in a village in the Syrian province of Idlib, close to the border with Turkey, as part of a larger anti-ISIS offensive occurring at the time. "We found the laptop and the power cord in a room," he continued, "I took it with me. But I have no clue if it still works or if it contains anything interesting."

As we switched on the Dell laptop, it indeed still worked. Nor was it password-protected. But then came a huge disappointment: After we clicked on "My Computer," all the drives appeared empty.

Appearances, however, can be deceiving. Upon closer inspection, the ISIS laptop wasn't empty at all: Buried in the "hidden files" section of the computer were 146 gigabytes of material, containing a total of 35,347 files in 2,367 folders. Abu Ali allowed us to copy all these files -- which included documents in French, English, and Arabic -- onto an external hard drive.

A screenshot of material found on the computer. The files appear to be videos of speeches by jihadist clerics.

The laptop's contents turn out to be a treasure trove of documents that provide ideological justifications for jihadi organizations -- and practical training on how to carry out the Islamic State's deadly campaigns. They include videos of Osama bin Laden, manuals on how to make bombs, instructions for stealing cars, and lessons on how to use disguises in order to avoid getting arrested while traveling from one jihadi hot spot to another.

But after hours upon hours of scrolling through the documents, it became clear that the ISIS laptop contains more than the typical propaganda and instruction manuals used by jihadists. The documents also suggest that the laptop's owner was teaching himself about the use of biological weaponry, in preparation for a potential attack that would have shocked the world.

The information on the laptop makes clear that its owner is a Tunisian national named Muhammed S. who joined ISIS in Syria and who studied chemistry and physics at two universities in Tunisia's northeast. Even more disturbing is how he planned to use that education:
The ISIS laptop contains a 19-page document in Arabic on how to develop biological weapons and how to weaponize the bubonic plague from infected animals.
                 "The advantage of biological weapons is that they do not cost a lot of money, while the human casualties can be huge," the document states.

The document includes instructions for how to test the weaponized disease safely, before it is used in a terrorist attack. "When the microbe is injected in small mice, the symptoms of the disease should start to appear within 24 hours," the document says.

The laptop also includes a 26-page fatwa, or Islamic ruling, on the usage of weapons of mass destruction. "If Muslims cannot defeat the kafir [unbelievers] in a different way, it is permissible to use weapons of mass destruction," states the fatwa by Saudi jihadi cleric Nasir al-Fahd, who is currently imprisoned in Saudi Arabia. "Even if it kills all of them and wipes them and their descendants off the face of the Earth."

When contacted by phone, a staff member at a Tunisian university listed on Muhammed's exam papers confirmed that he indeed studied chemistry and physics there. She said the university lost track of him after 2011, however.

A photo of Muhammed S. found on his laptop.
This image has been digitally altered. 

Out of the blue, she asked: “Did you find his papers inside Syria?” Asked why she would think that Muhammed’s belongings would have ended up in Syria, she answered, “For further questions about him, you better ask state security.”

An astonishing number of Tunisians have flocked to the Syrian battlefield since the revolt began. In June, Tunisia’s interior minister estimated that at least 2,400 Tunisians were fighting in the country, mostly as members of the Islamic State.

This isn't the first time that jihadists have attempted to acquire weapons of mass destruction. Even before the 9/11 attacks, al Qaeda had experimented with a chemical weapons program in Afghanistan. In 2002, CNN obtained a tape showing al Qaeda members testing poison gas on three dogs, all of which died.

Nothing on the ISIS laptop, of course, suggests that the jihadists already possess these dangerous weapons. And any jihadi organization contemplating a bioterrorist attack will face many difficulties: Al Qaeda tried unsuccessfully for years to get its hands on such weapons, and the United States has devoted massive resources to preventing terrorists from making just this sort of breakthrough. The material on this laptop, however, is a reminder that jihadists are also hard at work at acquiring the weapons that could allow them to kill thousands of people with one blow.

"The real difficulty in all of these weapons ... [is] to actually have a workable distribution system that will kill a lot of people," said Magnus Ranstorp, research director of the Center for Asymmetric Threat Studies at the Swedish National Defence College. "But to produce quite scary weapons is certainly within [the Islamic State's] capabilities."

The Islamic State's sweeping gains in recent months may have provided it with the capacity to develop such new and dangerous weapons. Members of the jihadi group are not solely fighting on the front lines these days -- they also control substantial parts of Syria and Iraq. The fear now is that men like Muhammed could be quietly working behind the front lines -- for instance, in the Islamic State-controlled University of Mosul or in some laboratory in the Syrian city of Raqqa, the group's de facto capital -- to develop chemical or biological weapons.

In short, the longer the caliphate exists, the more likely it is that members with a science background will come up with something horrible. The documents found on the laptop of the Tunisian jihadist, meanwhile, leave no room for doubt about the group's deadly ambitions.

"Use small grenades with the virus, and throw them in closed areas like metros, soccer stadiums, or entertainment centers," the 19-page document on biological weapons advises. "Best to do it next to the air-conditioning. It also can be used during suicide operations."

Weapons of mass destruction are the holy grail for terrorist groups, and over the years a number of organizations have announced their intentions to acquire chemical, biological, and radiological weapons. But the discovery of a laptop purportedly belonging to a member of the Islamic State is raising new questions about whether the terrorist group, which U.S. officials say is more dangerous than al Qaeda, is poised to launch a WMD attack.
 
U.S. officials and terrorism experts said that the discovery of the laptop raises troubling questions about the Islamic State's intentions and its ability to conduct a WMD strike. But they urged caution, noting that the presence of documents on building biological weapons does not necessarily add up to an actual capability to use them.
 
"I wouldn't dismiss the idea of a WMD attack by terrorists," said Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, a senior fellow with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. "It's something we should guard against. But in terms of something I worry about, it's far down the list."
 
Still, the laptop and its more than 35,000 files provide a rare and unsettling window into the Islamist State's inner workings. One U.S. official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss developing intelligence, said the files on the laptop offer some of the most precise information to date on the Islamic State's WMD aspirations. The information indicates that the Islamic State likely now has the ability to build at least some form of biological or chemical weapon, the official said.
 
The laptop, which was examined by correspondents for Foreign Policy, contains thousands of files related to planning and launching terrorist attacks. Most troubling is a document that discusses how to weaponize bubonic plague. But turning that knowledge into a working weapon requires particular expertise, and it's not clear that the Islamic State has it.
 
"That they have the capabilities and intentions [to build some WMD] is beyond dispute," Gartenstein-Ross said. But the Islamic State would still face considerable obstacles if it actually attempted to build a weapon with bubonic plague. "It's a very dangerous thing to try to harness as an offensive weapon, in part because you might kill all your own guys in the process," Gartenstein-Ross said.
 
But the risk of building WMD hasn't blunted terrorists' ambition. Only last year, Iraqi officials broke up an al Qaeda cell in Iraq that attempted to build chemical weapons for attacks in the West. Chemical weapons are potentially less dangerous than weaponized biological agents, which is what makes the files on the Islamic State's laptop so concerning.

Terrorists will always make mistakes...

Il rapper jihadista Abdel-Majed Abdel Bary

Terrorists will always make mistakes...
... and it's usually those mistakes that bring them down.

When the ISIS terrorist who murdered James Foley went on video, he managed to give away enough clues that may lead to his identity, even though he was clad in black with his face almost entirely masked.

His accent indicates that he was from south/east London and his eyes may even narrow down the hunt. Authorities can scan tons of audio recordings in the UK and match eye features to those recorded in passport photos. They've determined his age to be around 30 and that he's probably left handed.

When Palestinian terrorists killed 11 Israeli athletes in the 1972 Olympics, the Mossad set out to identify, hunt down and kill those who committed the crime or had anything to do with it. Even though their faces were also masked, the Mossad identified who they were and managed to kill all but one of them, who is still alive till this day.

It will be interesting to see whether America's FBI or the UK's MI6 can accomplish the same thing. More likely, this terrorist will meet his doom either among the Iraqis or a missile attack by the US.


http://us.cnn.com/2014/08/22/world/europe/british-jihadi-hunt/index.html?hpt=hp_t1

ISIS: The Real Threat...

In recent months the Islamic State, formerly known as the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) has managed to position itself as the most significant threat to regional stability in the Middle East. The mass executions in Iraq and Syria reflect the shock and awe strategy used by the organization in the areas it has captured. In addition, its threats to conquer other Middle East states have resounded widely, giving it the media status of a global power in the making. Indeed, the Islamic State has made itself the de facto replacement of al-Qaeda as the jihadist terror organization endangering world peace. • This article examines whether the Islamic State is indeed a rising Islamic jihadist force about to seize control of several countries in this region as part of its plan to establish an Islamic caliphate, or whether it is an organization with limited means and abilities, whose pretensions exceed its real strength and are derived from the world view of its leader.

In recent months the Islamic State (IS; formerly known as the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, or ISIS) has managed to position itself as the most significant threat to regional stability in the Middle East. The organization has become a reviled global term, a synonym for extremism and a symbol of unbridled slaughter. The mass executions carried out by IS in Iraq and Syria, documented and distributed en masse for all to see, reflect the shock and awe strategy used by IS in the areas it has captured. In addition, its threats to conquer other Middle East states have resounded widely, giving it the media status of a global power in the making. In this way, IS has made itself the de facto replacement of al-Qaeda as the jihadist terror organization endangering world peace.

In light of these developments, this article examines whether IS is indeed a rising Islamic jihadist force about to seize control of several countries in this region as part of its plan to establish an Islamic caliphate, or whether it is an organization with limited means and abilities, whose pretensions exceed its real strength and are derived from the world view of its leader.

The brutal actions of IS in Syria and Iraq are nothing new for those following its evil deeds since it announced its establishment some eighteen months ago. However, for the last two months the organization’s name has been mentioned repeatedly by world leaders as a significant threat, particularly since in recent months ISIS has conquered large swathes of Iraq and also threatened to attack and capture Baghdad, on its way to taking control of all of Iraq. These moves were accompanied by killing sprees that were extraordinary in their scope and cruelty, and that in recent weeks reached new depths with the mass slaughter of the defenseless Yazidi minority.

 

 

Without minimizing the achievements of IS, it appears that the secret of its power rests primarily on the weakness of its enemies. So far, IS has made territorial gains only in Iraq and in limited areas of Syria, two failed states whose central governments suffer from a lack of legitimacy among their citizens and ineffective control of large parts of their territory. The Iraqi army has proven a spiritless failure, while in Syria the army is mainly engaged in maintaining the survival of the regime in the country’s principal cities. This power vacuum lets IS operate with relative freedom in outlying regions and towns. Yet while in the areas it has conquered IS has apparently encountered so little opposition due to its policy of coercion and terror against the local populations, in the long run it is actually this policy that could spur many to resist it. Most Sunni Muslims are not interested in the extreme interpretations of IS, but at this stage have no choice but to obey the organization, if only for the sake of appearances. Should IS try to extend its conquests to areas of Iraq where there is an established Shiite population, such as the capital Baghdad or the holy cities of Najaf and Karbala, it may well encounter a fighting population protected by an Iranian military force and deeper involvement of Western countries, as happened when it threatened to penetrate the heart of the Kurdish region of Iraq. A similar response is expected to happen if IS dares to confront Jordan or Turkey. For that reason, its threats to make similar advances against other countries of the region – Jordan, Lebanon, and certainly Iran and Turkey – are weak.

In fact, the main danger posed by IS does not concern the integrity of countries in the region, but its ability both to channel money and advanced weapons to terror organizations active in the region, and to make the territory it controls, which connects western Iraq with northern and eastern Syria, an impervious haven. This could serve as a base for promoting subversive activity and spreading terror, which in turn would increase regional instability. An area of this sort controlled by an extremist, messianic organization such as IS will enable jihadist Salafist terror groups from all over the world to find refuge, and use it as their base for further terror activity. It will provide training, with people and weapons moving freely in and out, and will turn the al-Qaeda dream of two decades ago into the nightmare reality of this decade.

ISIS has managed to distinguish itself from other global jihadist movements that still support al-Qaeda in the bitter conflict between al-Zawahiri and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. By crowning himself caliph, Baghdadi labels anyone who does not recognize his new title and fails to obey him as a heretic. Thus it appears that in its ongoing activity in areas it has captured, IS has given new meaning to the term extremism, and this – ironically – casts al-Qaeda, the IS former patron and current enemy, in a relatively pragmatic light. IS fighters have crossed red lines and raised the already high threshold of brutality formerly pitched by al-Qaeda and its affiliates to new heights. This could become the norm in future conflicts, not only with IS but also with other terrorist organizations inspired by its methods, which at this stage appear to be successful. The thousands of young Muslims from all over the world, including Western citizens, who are present in war-torn areas in Syria and move between Syria and Iraq and participate in horrific acts in both these arenas are being indoctrinated and are acquiring battle experience and skills in terrorist and guerilla warfare, which could be translated into terrorist activity in their countries of origin. Therefore, special attention should be paid to the “evil spirit” and message that IS is spreading among its actual and potential supporters. They could continue causing harm even after the organization is ultimately blocked by stronger forces.

It appears that the fears recently expressed by the leaders of Britain, the US, and France about the export of terror from the Middle East to their own countries has a solid base. Even if IS, as expected, is confronted effectively in Iraq and Syria by stronger and better organized forces, the phenomenon of global jihad, whose main proponents until now were al-Qaeda and its affiliates and are now IS and its affiliates, will presumably continue to be strengthened by a new generation of jihadis. Their goal is to revive the international terror system that was to a large extent thwarted over the years since the September 11 attacks in the United States. It is inconceivable that thousands of young people from Western countries who are participating in the battles in Syria and Iraq will not return to their countries of origin and try to spread the militant jihadist Salafist indoctrination they have received. They stand to use their experience in terror attacks in Western cities, whether as part of IS or al-Qaeda, or by setting up independent terror networks or even acting alone. Therefore, the broad international coalition of countries that were called on belatedly to take action against the terror of al-Qaeda and its affiliates following the shock of 9/11 should now wake up in time to stop the IS phenomenon in its infancy, before they are obliged to do so under the threat of terror in their own cities.

 

 

Font: INSS Yoram Schweitzer

Is ISIS a Threat to the UK?

The murder of American journalist James Foley brought global attention to the menace of ISIS. But what kind of a threat does the group actually pose beyond the Levant?

The cruel beheading by a possibly British ISIS fighter of American journalist James Foley is the latest act of brutality by a group whose willingness to use such violence continues to reach new depths.

However, in the understandable consternation around the group and its activity, care should be taken to understand better the exact nature of the threat that this group poses. ISIS is working hard to try to overturn the current Westphalian order with its repeated invocations of destroying the Sykes-Picot borders of the Middle East and has quite successfully taken over an ever-expanding chunk of the Levant. The question is whether the group remains principally a regional threat or an international one.

The best answer is to look more closely at the group’s history. ISIS (or Islamic State as they refer to themselves) is a group that has waxed and waned over the years. Borne out of Abu Musab al Zarqawi’s group that he founded in Herat, Afghanistan in the late 1990s, it came to more international prominence in in August 2003 when they attacked the Jordanian Embassy and UN Headquarters in Baghdad and a Shia shrine in Najaf. In the process they killed hundreds including UN Special Envoy Sergio Vieira de Mello and Ayatollah Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim, the leader of the SCIRI Party and one of the leaders of Shia Iraq. In time, the group, which in 2006 changed its name to the Islamic State in Iraq (ISI) to make it sound more Iraqi, suffered public blowback at its unremitting and brutal violence with the Sahwa ‘awakening’ movement as Sunni’s grew tired of the unremitting murder and sectarian tensions that ISI was stirring up.

But for all its brutality within Iraq, the group did not much stretch beyond its domestic borders. Under Zarqawi’s watch in November 2005 they launched a series of three coordinated attacks on Western hotels in Amman, Jordan, killing 60 and injuring over 100. It was possibly linked to some attempts to attack Israel, but these amounted to little. This notwithstanding the fact that the group had the technical expertise, contacts, and fighters to use as tools to launch attacks against the West or elsewhere.

 

The Threat Today

Cut to today and we have a group that has formally severed its links with Al Qa’ida and established a dominion of sorts over chunks of Iraq and Syria. A decade on, it is still resorting to sending political messages through the brutal and public beheading of American hostages. We have yet, however, to see confirmed evidence of the group actually launching attacks outside its immediate territory (beyond possible links to incidents elsewhere in the Levant). This is not to say that we have not seen plots emanate from foreign fighter networks linked to the group. Mehdi Nemmouche, a French national, had allegedly fought alongside ISIS for some time prior to returning to Europe where he took it upon himself to murder four people at the Jewish museum in Brussels. And while his was the only successful attack, at least four other plots have been disrupted within European borders in which individuals fought in Syria (and possibly Iraq) before coming back home and undertaking plotting clearly in the direction of trying to do something within Europe rather than back in the Levant.

But absent from these reported plots is much evidence of direction by ISIS. There have been suggestions of directed plots linked to Jabhat al Nusrah, but the information around these has been sketchy. Rather, it seems as though these plots for the most part seem to be undertaken by individuals who have battlefield experience and decide to come back and do something under their own steam. In many ways, this actually reflects the historical experience with foreigners who fight or train alongside groups in Iraq: Bilal Abdulla and Taimour Abdulwahab al Abdaly both spent some time in Iraq alongside the insurgency before heading back to the UK and Sweden respectively to try to carry out attacks. In neither case was their evidence produced of direction off the battlefield, though their cases illustrate clear examples of individuals that a group like ISIS could have used had it wanted to launch attacks against Europe.

 

A Menace, Yes. But is ISIS a Threat to the West?

It is clear that ISIS is a menace that leaders rightly focus on. It has the potential to upend the Middle East and cause death and misery to thousands. But it is not as of yet clear that it is a group with the desire and intent to launch itself against the West and Europe in particular. It has the means at its disposal to launch such attacks and has rhetorically threatened such attacks, but so far we have not seen these clearly materialise.

This is of course not to say that they might not take place. Clearly, ISIS is a group that has evolved over time, and it might yet evolve in a strategic direction that leads to a concerted effort to launch attacks against the West. But as we can see from the fact that in a decade of unleashing brutality, its approach to attracting publicity has little changed, it is possible that its aims and goals have equally shifted little and it continues to be more interested in regional ambitions. 

The significance of this distinction lies in the subsequent official reaction in Western capitals to the group. Foley’s brutal murder, like the group’s earlier gains in Iraq, were predictable, but were greeted with shock which mandated major response – a product of the relative inattention that was being paid to what was happening in Syria and Iraq. The danger is that in the absence of a clear plot linked to the group, attention might fade and the group will be seen as a regional irritation that can be managed, rather than an organisation that requires focused extrication and where possible eradication.

This difficult conclusion is one that will only be achieved over a lengthy and committed timeline involving a complicated array of bolstering local forces, cutting deals with tribes to undermine the group, as well as focused counter-terrorism efforts to eliminate leaders and cut off supply routes. More strategically, an inclusive government needs to be fostered in Iraq and the civil war in Syria needs to be brought to some resolution. None of these are easy solutions, but they are long-term solutions to what is necessary to finally bring some peace to the brutalised Levant.

Font: RUSI Analysis, 21 Aug 2014By
Raffaello Pantucci, Senior Research Fellow