Islamist terrorists in the West betray a pattern of behaviour

FROM lone wolves to trained militia, recruits to jihadism share many similarities in their pre-terror lives.

French soldiers patrol in front of the Eiffel Tower on January 8, 2015 in Paris as the capital was placed under the highest alert status a day after heavily armed gunmen shouting Islamist slogans stormed French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo and shot dead at least 12 people in the deadliest attack in France in four decades. A huge manhunt for two brothers suspected of massacring 12 people in an Islamist attack at a satirical French weekly zeroed in on a northern town Thursday after the discovery of one of the getaway cars. As thousands of police tightened their net, the country marked a rare national day of mourning for Wednesday's bloodbath at Charlie Hebdo magazine in Paris, the worst terrorist attack in France for half a century. AFP PHOTO / BERTRAND GUAY

THE attack on the Charlie Hebdo office is the latest in a series of Islam­ist-inspired terrorist acts in Western countries. This is nothing new. Terrorism, ranging from Irish sectarian violence through to the acts of deranged individuals such as the Oklahoma City bombers in 1995, has been a persistent threat for decades.

During the past 18 months, a pattern has been emerging of a particular type of terrorist violence in Western countries that draws common inspiration from radical Islamist ideology. While the circumstances of each attack vary significantly, what is striking are the points of commonality.

Understanding the similarities and differences is the starting point for working out how to counter future terrorist violence.
March 2012: Seven soldiers and Jewish civilians were killed in three separate shootings at Toulouse and Montauban in France. The attacker, killed by police, was of Algerian descent and had been radicalised in prison after being jailed for criminal acts. He had travelled to Pakistan as well as Afghanistan.
May 22, 2013: British soldier Lee Rigby is killed by two assailants. Britons of Nigerian descent, Rigby’s attackers had converted to Islam. One had sought training in Kenya from the al-Shabab terror group and had been long known to police for radical and criminal ­activities.
May 24, 2014: Four people were killed at the Jewish Museum in Brussels. A French national of Algerian origin was arrested in connection with the shooting. The individual had reportedly been radicalised in jail and had returned from fighting in Syria in 2013.
September 23, 2014: Numan Haider, an Afghan Australian, was killed after stabbing two police officers at Endeavour Hills, Melbourne. He carried the flag of Islamic State during the attack. He was known to police and his passport had been confiscated.
October 22, 2014: Michael Zehaf-Bibeau kills a soldier at Canada’s war memorial and is killed in a shootout in Ottawa’s parliament. He converted to Islam in 2004, had visited Libya and had a record of criminal offences.
October 23, 2014: Zale Thompson, a self-radicalised Muslim convert, was killed as he attacked four New York policemen with a hatchet. He had watched hundreds of hours of jihadist material online.
December 15, 2014: Man Haron Monis is killed after taking people hostage at the Lindt cafe in Martin Place, Sydney. He had an extensive record of prosecutions and criminal convictions and was known for his radical Islamist views and hate mail to the families of soldiers killed in Afghanistan.
January 7, 2015: Twelve people are killed at the offices of Charlie Hebdo in Paris. The key suspects are brothers Said and Cherif Kouachi, said to be orphans of Algerian descent. French officials say they had fought in Syria and had links to the terror group al-Qa’ida in Yemen.

IN DEPTH: Taking on terror

TIMELINE: How the Paris terror attack unfolded

INTERACTIVE: The Paris victims

This list only touches the surface of a much longer list of individuals and groups on similar paths towards extremist violence. As many as 15,000 people have travelled from Western countries to Syria to fight for jihadist groups. This includes 930 fighters from France, 500 to 2000 fighters from Britain, 450 from Germany, more than 300 from the US and “at least” 70 fighters from Australia.

People sufficiently radicalised to travel to Syria and Iraq to fight come from a larger group with shared views who may provide funding and other support for fighters, develop and spread propaganda or simply provide haven for like-minded friends.

The total numbers of potential jihadists may be small relative to the populations of Western countries, but their numbers are large enough to swamp police and intelligence capabilities.

A striking common feature from the list of attacks is that in almost every case the assailants were people who had lengthy contact with the police and judicial systems, had served time in jail for non-terrorist criminal acts and were known for extremist views. A significant number had travelled overseas and had received military training. Others (Haider, Zehaf-Bibeau) had been prevented from travelling to take up jihad; denying them the opportunity to do so may have triggered their violent acts.

In many cases the records of these attackers lead one to ask why they were at liberty at the time they committed their offence. Public expectations of what the criminal justice system should do are not being met with regard to people who have criminal records and express jihadist ideologies.

Recent religious conversion to Islam is also a prominent feature. Do people use conversion as a flag of convenience to join a violent movement? Or is the core ideology the reason for embracing violence? Cause and effect is unclear here, but the fact of conversion, often not long before a violent act, is notable.

In none of the cases cited above could it be said that the violent acts came out of the blue. The timing or location of a terrorist act may have surprised us, but in every case the background of the aggressors made it clear that their growing radicalisation was putting them on a path to commit a terrorist act.

It’s also clear that a significant proportion of attacks were conducted by people who were to some degree mentally deranged. Much commentary after the Sydney siege argued that Monis should not be considered a terrorist because of his mental state. More work must be done to understand the links between mental health and the attractions of radical ideology, but being unbalanced is no bar to being a terrorist. The willingness to visit violent acts on noncombatants is an inherent part of terrorism and not something that can be regarded as sane in mainstream society.

Recent attacks suggest there are two driving forces at play in the way people become motivated to perform terrorist acts. One is the path of radicalisation towards Islamic jihad and the willingness to perform acts of violence in support of a set of ideological views. The second critical factor addresses an individual’s capacity to engage and co-operate with others.

Radicalised individuals with developed social skills will become “joining jihadists”, able to work effectively in teams, to plan collectively and perform military-style missions. The Charlie Hebdo attackers were clearly skilled fighters of this type. Every element of the attack, from its staging during the paper’s weekly editorial meeting to the cool and cold-blooded killing of the wounded policeman and the fast and effective getaway, shows careful group planning.

In contrast, the behaviour of individuals such as Monis, Zehaf-Bibeau and Zale Thompson is that of radicalised people who have a limited capacity to work with others because of their mental state. These lone wolves draw on the propaganda of organised terror groups but, lacking the skills to be useful team players, commit their terror acts alone.

Haider in Melbourne may well have had the skills to be an effective fighter for Islamic State, but he was prevented from travelling and so fought his jihad in Australia. Recent reports indicate that Islamic State has executed a number of individuals who have tried to join it. These people most likely did not have the skills to fight effectively in teams. With their randon attacks, lone wolves only have propaganda value for terror groups.

Developing a sharper understanding of the different types of mental states influencing terrorists and those on the radicalisation path will help to develop better strategies for dealing with people who are “known to police”.

It’s a worrying reality that time spent in jail probably assists radicalisation. Programs specifically designed to “de-radicalise” people jailed for terrorist violence have had little positive effect. Jails are finishing schools for terrorists.

While this is a concern in Western countries, one should also worry about places such as Indonesia, where the cohort of Jemaah Islamiah terrorists jailed after a series of bombings in the early 2000s are now finishing their terms, every bit as radical as when they were sentenced.

For Western countries facing this sustained increase in radical Islamist terror attacks there is a compelling need once again to review and strengthen counter-­terrorism policy and procedures.

The starting point is that our societies cannot, and would not want to, build security and intelligence structures of the size that might provide complete surety against attack. However, the limits of the public appetite for more security at the expense of liberty remain to be tested. Attacks here and abroad give rise to stronger public demands for protection.

Given the links between mental health and the propensity to lone-wolf violence we need a closer examination of how to handle people already in mental health treatment who may not be on the radarof the security services.

In terms of age it’s clear that Monis and the Kouachi brothers in Paris were older than many of those wanting to travel to Syria and Iraq. Many of the 70-odd Australians who have travelled overseas to fight were in their late teens or early 20s. For people in that age group there needs to be a more persuasive case made that waging jihad in the Middle East is less a romantic adventure than a one-way ticket to violent death.

If the government is serious about stopping youngsters radicalising there is a need to engage schools and universities. Teachers will need to be equipped with skills that can identify the signs of students flirting with radical ideologies, or who are struggling to engage with peers, or both. One can imagine how unpopular that discussion will be between commonwealth security agencies and state education systems.

The renewed threat of Islamist terrorism is one that ultimately forces Western countries to examine some uncomfortable political issues. Already in France there are reports of violence and other forms of reprisals against Muslim communities. As difficult as these considerations are, the persistence of terrorism requires a more open discussion about the role of Islam in countering this violence.

In Australia, some Islamic groups were quick to express genuine outrage at the Sydney siege. While that is appropriate there is surely a need for Muslim leaders to go beyond the assertion that Islam is a peaceful religion. A disturbing number of radicalised ideologues clearly do not see it that way. What is it that gives rise to such disturbing and distorted views within Islam? Some dramatic self-healing is needed.

In the Middle East, Syria and now Iraq are the epicentre for radicalising and recruiting international jihadists. With a blinkered isolationism on display in Washington the international community allowed a vacuum to be created in Syria that was filled by Islamic State, al-Nusra Front, the Khorasan Group and other cutthroat terrorist organisations.

The West will pay a price for years in dealing with returned foreign fighters who have become battle-hardened zealots. Such people will find their way back home. We will quickly see harder legal mechanisms to control movement in and out of war zones.

Western-born terrorists, especially those from Britain, are often well educated and hardly poor, but reluctant as the West is to engage in the Middle East, there will be no resolution to terrorism until that region is set on a more promising path to economic growth and development.

To defeat terrorism at its sources in the Middle East, the West will need to invest deeply in regional development and, on the battlefield, be prepared to take the fight more actively to Islamic State and others. This will only happen if the US decides to make a more concerted military effort in Iraq.

Domestically, every terrorist outrage in a Western country gives rise to the potential for copycat attacks. A tiny number of watchers are inspired rather than horrified by these events. As Prime Minister Tony Abbott said this week, it’s inevitable that more attacks will happen.

Peter Jennings is executive director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute at aspistrategist.org.au.