Manhattan isn’t an aberration
To stop lone wolf attacks, the State needs to rethink strategies
The recent attack in New York City is a reminder that the world is now in a second and more difficult phase of countering terrorism. The New York City attack is the seventh lethal attack after 9/11 on US soil linked to the Al Qaeda or the Islamic State. Increasingly such terrorism is associated with
“lone wolves,” radicalised individuals who do not have direct organisational connections to a terrorist group but are often motivated through the internet. This lack of a physical link has made preventing terrorism much harder.
After 9/11, a largely military strategy that deprived terrorists of safe havens and targeted the cell structure of groups like Al Qaeda had remarkable success. Terror attacks were few and far between on US soil. The number of jihadis arrested and plots uncovered in the country was in the single figures till 2009. That’s changed now. The rise of the Islamic State and its use of the internet, encryption and social media has resulted in a significant surge in Islamicist terror attacks. Studies show that most lone wolf terrorists consume a large amount of radical Islamicist propaganda online. Very few have any deeper relationship with a terrorist organisation. One saving grace, if it can be called that, is that lone wolves inflict far fewer casualties. The New York City attack is more in line with what has become a more common occurence: the use of a vehicle to knock down people, minimal or no use of firearms or explosives, and the absence of any co-conspirators. Casualties in such attacks, while horrific, are far less than in terrorist attacks in the early 2000s. But the nature of the attack also makes it much harder to detect beforehand.
Already a new wave of counterterrorism measures is being introduced. Tighter controls on vehicle rentals, greater electronic surveillance, limited censorship of the internet and, more controversially, a debate on the preventive detention of suspects and recommendations for laptops and mobile phones to have monitors at the time of manufacture. In considering such actions we must begin with the assumption that all terror cannot be stopped all the time. The alternative is an Orwellian police state.