Beware the lone wolf amid our own flock
ould it happen here? Every time a bomb goes off in a Western city a dark character I once knew comes to mind. I remember only his first name and should admit I didn’t know him very well.
We were living in the same rented house, briefly, in Auckland in the early 1970s. The house had a transient population of 20- somethings and they were a variety of characters. But I don’t think any of us knew this guy very well. He didn’t seem to like us much: he didn’t like anything very much.
He curled his lip at just about every topic we talked about. If he laughed at all it was humourless, cynical. We were a cheerful bunch and he retreated to his room most of the time. I think he talked to me more than the others, the other guys couldn’t abide him and I don’t think he talked much to the girls.
He wasn’t what you’d call a loser, he had a personal strength about him. He didn’t lack confidence. But he was bitter. He bore some sort of grudge against the world.
He is probably long over it and a more contented character today but when I hear Kiwis express relief that we live so far from Manchester, London, Brussels and Paris, I can’t help but wonder how many young flatmates like that one are brooding in a bedroom somewhere in Auckland.
These days they will not feel alone in there. They will be on the world wide web, connected to sites that speak to their anger, suspicions and discontent.
I doubt any of them are Muslim, we are indeed a long way from the Middle East and we’ve seen no reason to think our Muslim refugees could be harbouring or nurturing jihadists. It’s even harder to believe a young native Kiwi could be attracted to the scriptural, sexual, dress, dietary and devotional requirements of an ascetic religion totally alien to them.
But they might not need to embrace Islam to sympathise with jihadist attacks on Western cities. Since the killings in London last weekend, it has been surprising to read and hear some perennial critics of America’s clumsy interventions in the Middle East argue that terrorism is an understandable response to the deaths of Syrian and Iraqi civilians in wars where Western forces are involved.
I’m not sure whether these people really see a moral equivalence between the deaths of innocent people caught in the crossfire of a civil war and random murder on the streets of a country at peace.
Perhaps if I suspend common sense and stretch credulity far enough I can connect those dots. But I suppose those people are not saying they see a moral equivalence, they just want me to see it from the terrorists’ point of view.
If good, well- meaning people can understand that point of view, imagine how appealing it must be to bitter and alienated young citizens of countries like this one. We may not have Manchester’s 22- year- old Salman Abedi, London’s Khuram Butt, 27, Rachid Redouane and Youssef Zaghba, 22, or Melbourne’s Yacqub Khayre, 29, but “lone wolves” will be here.
They will not necessarily have Muslim names. The jihad’s only appeal to them is that the enemy of my enemy is my friend.
A cybersecurity think tank in America, the Institute for Critical Infrastructure Technology, has just published a paper profiling “the selfradicalising lone- wolf terrorist”.
“Decades ago,” it says, “radicals could be monitored through the group meetings they attended, the purchases they made and the information ( blueprints, instruction books) they sought. Now active membership in organised hate groups is in decline because the internet affords troubled minds a thick layer of anonymity.”
It quotes a study by America’s Southern Poverty Law Centre that found a domestic terrorist attack, or foiled attack, occurred almost monthly and “lone wolf threat actors” were behind three quarters of them.
Roughly half were simply anti- government, the rest were white supremacists or Islamic extremists.
“Lone wolves join these communities and ideologies because they want to escape their lives and express their internal frustration, rage and resentment in service to a cause more meaningful than their existence.
“They are often remembered as uncharismatic silhouettes in the far corners of memories.”
After the suicide bombing at the Manchester pop concert, a counterterrorism source told the Daily Telegraph they had 500 active investigations under way involving 3000 potential suspects. The story was explaining why Abedi had not been under surveillance despite his family and acquaintances telling police he was dangerous at least five times before he blew himself up in the Manchester Arena.
Three thousand people in Britain are rated more dangerous than Abedi and the London Bridge killers.
Could there be anyone in this country worth mentioning to the police?
Preposterous, isn’t it?