‘Lone wolf’ the new jihadist weapon

A wave of attacks against civilians in Europe over the past month has rekindled fears of self-radicalized, “lone wolf” perpetrators inspired by and acting in the name of Islamic State, but without having direct contact with the group.

The attacks began on July 14 in Nice, France, when a Tunisian man drove a 19-ton refrigerated truck into a large crowd watching Bastille Day fireworks, killing 84 people and injuring hundreds. It took 36 hours for Islamic State to claim responsibility for the atrocity, issuing a statement that called the attacker “a soldier of the Islamic State” who had responded to its leaders’ call “to target states participating in the Crusader coalition that fights the caliphate.” But despite the claim, French investigators have so far found no evidence that the driver had been in contact with any Islamic State operatives.

Four days after the Nice attack, a 17-year-old boy, an asylum-seeker from Afghanistan, went on a rampage on a train near the German city of Wuerzburg, wounding five people with an ax before being killed by police.

On July 24, a Syrian man who had been denied asylum in Germany blew himself up outside a wine bar in the city of Ansbach, wounding 15 people. Before the attack, the man had recorded a cell phone video in which he pledged allegiance to Islamic State and declared that Germans “won’t be able to sleep peacefully anymore.”

And on Tuesday two assailants linked to Islamic State attacked a church in northern France, killing an elderly priest by slitting his throat and seriously wounding a hostage. French police shot the perpetrators as they left the church.

Islamic State claimed responsibility for all four attacks, and it now seems that the group will be quick to adopt nearly every attack on civilians in the West. These claims of responsibility tend to be somewhat generic – they don’t show Islamic State’s involvement in the planning or execution of attacks – but they do help the group in its propaganda efforts.

These “lone wolf” attacks are not an accident. They are the result of an organized, decade-old movement within Islamic jihadism to decentralize attacks and make them more diffuse. This trend predated the emergence of Islamic State – it can be traced back to al Qaeda after the September 11, 2001 attacks. While al Qaeda was a hierarchical organization, its leader Osama bin Laden and his deputy and eventual successor, Ayman alZawahiri, realized that maintaining training camps and central control was not going to work after the group was forced out of its base in Afghanistan under U.S. bombing. Before the September 11 attacks, bin Laden had relied on recruits trained at Afghan camps, and many had personally pledged allegiance to him.

But even while in hiding, bin Laden and Zawahiri frequently addressed their supporters through dozens of videos, audiotapes and internet statements. They encouraged new recruits to act autonomously under al Qaeda’s banner, and they helped inspire hundreds of young men to carry out suicide or conventional bombings in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Spain, Britain and elsewhere.

After a large number of al Qaeda’s leaders were killed, captured or forced to flee, one of bin Laden’s former bodyguard in Afghanistan described the group’s revamped operations to an Arabic newspaper. “Every element of al Qaeda is self-activated,” he said. “Whoever finds a chance to attack simply goes ahead. The decision is theirs alone.”

Today, Islamic State has expanded and perfected this concept of the “leaderless jihad.” And it is now wreaking havoc and spreading fear, both in the West and in the Middle East. The latest wave of attacks in France and Germany fits into a series of appeals by Islamic State leaders for their supporters to carry out lone wolf assaults that use any means necessary to kill civilians, especially in the West. As the group continues to face a U.S.-led bombing campaign against its strongholds in Syria and Iraq, it is losing the territory and fighters that make up the backbone of its self-declared caliphate.

As a result, Islamic State is turning toward both centrally organized plots and individual attacks carried out by sympathizers to reassert its claim as the world’s leading jihadist movement. One of the major inspirations for this strategy is Abu Musab al-Suri, a veteran jihadist ideologue and an al Qaeda leader who worked with bin Laden and Zawahiri in the 1990s. After he became disillusioned with al Qaeda’s leaders and direction following the September 11 attacks, Suri published a 1,600-page manifesto titled, “A Call to a Global Islamic Resistance,” on the internet in 2005.

In the document, which is still widely shared in jihadist circles, Suri calls for a wave of “individual jihad” in which independent operatives – sometimes self-radicalized and other times assisted by recruiters on the web – would target Western civilians in an effort to sow chaos and terror. Suri described his jihadist philosophy as “no organizations, just principles.”

With a $5 million U.S. bounty on his head, Suri was captured by Pakistan’s security services in late 2005. He was reportedly turned over to the CIA, and was then renditioned to his native Syria, where he was wanted by Bashar al-Assad’s regime. After the Syrian war began in 2011, there were reports that Suri was among hundreds of al Qaeda and other militant operatives freed by the Assad regime. Many of those militants went on to become leaders of Islamic State and the Nusra Front, al Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria. But other reports, including statements by al Qaeda leaders, say that Suri is still being held by Assad’s regime.

Regardless of his status, Suri’s conception of the individual, or leaderless, jihad continues to resonate. In relying on lone wolf attacks by individuals who are selfradicalized and have only a tangential understanding of jihadist ideology – and, in some cases, are mentally disturbed – Islamic State is able to project a greater reach than it actually has. A guessing game is going on in the Congress as to who out of the two Gandhi siblings, Rahul or Priyanka, would ultimately call the shots given the controversial decision to have 78-year-old Sheila Dikshit as the party’s chief ministerial candidate in the country’s most populous state of Uttar Pradesh, which has elected eight Indian Prime Ministers. Dikshit’s candidature was finalised after political strategist Prashant Kishor insisted on a Brahmin face to woo the upper caste votes and Priyanka consented to the proposal to field the former Delhi Chief Minister due to her extensive experience and high media visibility. Reluctantly, Rahul endorsed his sister’s choice, though personally he would have preferred a younger face, someone like Jitin Prasada or Rajeshpati Tripathi, party sources have maintained. Moreover, the brother and sister did not wish to give an impression in the public that they had differences on important matters, so as a consequence Dikshit got a new lease of life in the political arena despite her humiliating defeat in the Delhi Assembly polls of 2013, where she was trounced by Arvind Kejriwal by over 26,500 votes and in the process had to forfeit her deposit.

However, Dikshit’s selection has set into motion internal politics in the grand old party. Last week’s no holds barred attack on the Delhi Pradesh Congress Committee president Ajay Maken by his colleague and former CM’s son Sandeep Dikshit is merely not a result of a long standing rivalry between the two leaders as a senior functionary of the party attempted to portray in order to play down the episode. In fact, it is a well measured move by Sandeep to gauge whether Maken has the full backing of Rahul Gandhi in view of the changing political scenario, where his mother has been resurrected in the organisation. Without bringing his name to the fore, Sandeep has accused Maken of trivialising his mother’s contribution. Speaking about his options, he wrote in a blog, “The Delhi Congress presents a difficult picture to me. It is led by a person who has consistently and directly attacked Sheila Dikshit, with his stories, innuendoes and defamatory propaganda—when such a person is rewarded and placed at the helm of affairs of Delhi Congress, where does that leave any space for me to graze in?”

Maken, on his part, has not reacted to the vitriolic assault on him, but his supporters are confident that Sandeep would shortly be sent a notice by the high command to explain his conduct and for washing dirty linen in public. If this is not done, it would make Maken vulnerable to more attacks of this genre by party workers, some of whom have already expressed their reservations regarding his non inclusive brand of politics. Therefore, the only way Maken can survive this attack is if Rahul, directly or indirectly, supports him and thus sends a strong message of his absolute confidence in his abilities to lead the party in Delhi. So far as the flip side goes, a public reprimand for Sandeep would indicate that the Congress leadership would, under no circumstances, tolerate any act of indiscipline. This kind of action would also have long ranging ramifications for his future, including his virtual exile from the political arena of the national capital. It is not for the first time that Sandeep has been outspoken about the party’s affairs. Early last year, he took a dig at the Congress leadership for its failure to have any strategy in place in between the period of elections.

While it is a given that Rahul and Priyanka or for that matter their mother would never allow their differences to surface in the public domain, the Sandeep-Maken confrontation is a test case to determine where the family stands. Party sources said that Priyanka has a soft corner for the Dikshits, which has been nurtured over a span of time by various political aides including Pawan Khera, former adviser to the Delhi Chief Minister. On the other hand, Maken’s rise is due to the patronage he has received from Rahul. Thus Sandeep’s blog and its fallout would determine the thinking within the Gandhi household and the manner in which they address it. For the ordinary Congress worker, Priyanka would be a more acceptable leader to face the challenge from the BJP in the 2019 polls, though the party president is keen that Rahul should take over the leadership as early as possible. Various media groups in UP are currently engaged in pitting the Gandhis against each other, without realising that if Rahul in their perception has failed to deliver, Priyanka too has yet to prove herself as public figure in the political scenario. Yes it is true that Priyanka does remind the people of her grandmother Indira Gandhi, the greatest mass leader of the last century and Rahul is viewed as an extension of his mother Sonia, who is the longest ever serving party president having held this post for over 18 years. In the last couple of months, Priyanka has provided indications of her growing interest in politics and insiders believe that she would be now contesting the next Parliamentary polls not from Rae Bareli, as was the original plan, but from Amethi. Rahul would move to Rae Bareli, which has been the constituency of his mother and grandparents—Feroze and Indira Gandhi.

The Maken-Sandeep spat also reflects the state of affairs within the party where the high command seems to be losing control. Therefore, it is very essential that this impression is immediately eliminated. If this is not done, similar spats would come into the open in the faction ridden Congress. The latest altercation, thus has posed a dilemma for the high command. Between us.