The changing face of terrorism
Al-Qaida has devolved into ‘B Teams’ of untrained Jihadists
First, two high school buddies from London, Ont., end up dead in the North African desert, accused of taking part in a four-day siege at a gas refinery that kills dozens.
Then, two brothers in Boston are accused of detonating pressurecooker bombs at a marquee marathon event that kill three, injure scores more and momentarily paralyze the city.
And now, another pair of men — one in Toronto, the other in Montreal — are accused of plotting to derail a passenger train in this country.
Experts say these recent events underscore a brand of terrorism that is more amorphous, less sophisticated, not necessarily bent on attacking major landmarks but any number of “soft” targets — and whose blurring of domestic and transnational elements make them not so easy to detect.
“The threat they pose is less severe, but they’re harder to pick up on because it’s more diffuse,” said Scott Stewart, vice-president at Stratfor, a private global intelligence firm in Texas. “They can come from almost anywhere without being tied to a group … it’s more dispersed.”
The profile of suspects who might want to carry out an attack has become a lot “fuzzier,” said Larry Busch, a Toronto security consultant and former Mountie.
Experts say in the 1980s, the rise of Sikh extremism led the intelligence community to be concerned that individuals from other conflict zones, such as Algeria and Chechnya, could be coming to Canada and “continuing the fight or struggle” from here.
Then in the 1990s, the concern shifted to al-Qaida linked terrorism with operations centred in the Pakistan/Afghanistan theatre. Attacks were more co-ordinated, involved more formal training and targeted high-value targets, including the World Trade Center in 1993, two U.S. embassies in East Africa in 1998 and the World Trade Center again in 2001.
Now, the al-Qaida core has been decimated, and has instead devolved into a bunch of affiliates, franchises and self-radicalized amateurs — second-string “B teams” that some analysts have dubbed “Kramer jihadists,” after the bumbling Seinfeld character.
But while their “tradecraft” is less sophisticated, their potential to do harm cannot be discounted, experts warn.
“It is a grave error to dismiss Kramer jihadists and assume they pose no threat,” Stewart wrote in a recent article.
“These disparate cases remind us that we continue to face the prospect of individuals being drawn into a global jihadi narrative and even further into violent action, even with the virtual eradication of alQaida as the original sponsor of this narrative and even as … (al-Qaida) affiliates focus on regional struggles,” said Wesley Wark, a national security expert at the University of Ottawa, in an email.
Experts say some amateur jihadists have found inspiration in the online magazine Inspire, published by al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula. The English-language magazine urges amateurs to undertake simple attacks in the West.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the surviving suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings, has told investigators that he and his brother Tamerlan, who was killed in a police confrontation, got instructions on how to make a bomb from Inspire, NBC News reported.
But in cases like this, the Internet isn’t likely the sole influence, experts say.
American media reports have suggested that the Tsarnaev brothers, who emigrated to the U.S. over a decade ago from Dagestan, were selfradicalized and acted out of anger over the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But The Associated Press cited relatives this week who suggested that the elder brother may also have come under the influence of a Muslim convert friend who steered him down a darker path.
Ray Boisvert, a former CSIS assistant director, said there’s no doubt in his mind that two young London, Ont., men — Xristos Katsiroubas and Ali Medlej — whose bodies were recovered from a deadly attack at an Algerian gas plant earlier this year similarly fell under the influence of someone in their community.
“The Internet is a contributor in the pathway (to radicalization), but it usually — almost always — takes someone in their lives who will shape their thinking, maybe to the point of facilitating their travel,” Boisvert said.
So far, police officials have not said publicly who, if anyone, may have had a role in shaping the behaviours and covering the travel expenses of Katsiroubas, Medlej and their friend Aaron Yoon, who is being held in a Mauritania jail on a terrorism-related conviction.
Similar questions are swirling around Raed Jaser of Toronto and Chiheb Esseghaier of Montreal, accused this week of plotting to derail a Via Rail passenger train on the Canadian side of a Canada-U.S. route.
RCMP officials have shared that the two men, neither of whom are Canadian citizens and reportedly met at a mosque, had received “direction and guidance” from al-Qaida elements in Iran. A U.S. security official, however, downplayed the support provided by individuals in Iran.
Whatever the motive, a tip from a member of the Muslim community was said to have played a role in helping investigators foil the alleged plot.
With the changing terrorism landscape, law enforcement and intelligence officials have acknowledged that they can’t do it alone, which is why they have gone to great lengths over the years to reach out to different community groups to help them identify threats.
The fact that the alleged train plot was foiled with the help of a member of the Muslim community is proof the strategy is working, said Hussein Hamdani, an Ontario lawyer and Muslim activist who was part of a group of Muslim community leaders that received a private debriefing on the case prior to a news conference on Monday announcing the arrests.
“The RCMP understands, from an operational perspective, strong relations with community leaders helps policing. It helps them do their job,” he said.
But as the Algeria gas plant attack and Boston Marathon bombing cases show, even when there are warning flags, authorities aren’t always able to intervene.
By the RCMP’s own admission, investigators had Medlej and Katsiroubas on their radar two years before the gas plant attack. It’s been reported that CSIS was looking into them as far back as 2007.
The level of investigation has to be commensurate to the threat, Boisvert said. If intelligence officials don’t see anything bad going on, they have no choice but to move on.