Intelligence key to foiling lone attacks
ONE wolf terror attacks are the stuff of nightmares for security services. Though details remain unclear, the Nice attack that claimed at least 84 lives and left more than a hundred people injured appears to have been carried out by a man acting alone.
Tunisian-born Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel was a convicted criminal known to the police for armed attacks. With French intelligence already under pressure over previous failings this latest incident will only add to criticism of the country’s security services.
Well aware of how difficult it is to guard against lone wolf terrorist, Islamic State (IS) continues to encourage its followers to do exactly what the driver in Nice did.
Bombings require planning, collaboration and execution, during all of which increasingly vigilant security forces may discover the plot and foil it. Not so with the lone wolf vehicle assaults which France has seen on a number of occasions.
Difficult as such attacks are to detect in advance, effective intelligence coordination still remains the best defence in tackling any terrorist threat whether from individuals or groups.
As former Mayor of Nice, Christian Estrosi, pointed out: “Attacks aren’t prepared alone. There is a chain of complicity.”
Experts say that knowing how lone operator attacks are formulated requires a far more sensitive detection system at the tactical, sharp-end of counterterrorism operations. That detection system needs to be far more attuned to any signals an individual with a terrorist intent inevitably gives off in preparing their attack.
Evidence on lone wolf attacks point to the fact that in many cases other people, family, friends, neighbours are often aware of the grievances that later spurred the offenders terrorist plots or actions.
Similarly, others were often aware of the individual’s commitment to a specific extremist ideology.
Working within certain communities where individuals are vulnerable to radicalisation is equally crucial, as this process does not take place in a vacuum.
Allied to this is countering terrorist propaganda at source. Inspire magazine, al-Qaeda’s online publication, last year set out the methodology for its followers to take lone wolf or combined attacks in France, knowing how easily it can motivate strikes from within the country and elsewhere.
Responding to all of this is an immense and constantly changing challenge. But there is a growing consensus that tackling the lone wolf attacker like any other terrorist threat will require intelligence analysts and gatherers to work much more closely together, both at home and on a global level.
This is especially urgent given that as the territorial caliphate ambitions of IS are increasingly thwarted in Iraq and Syria, the group shows signs of focusing on transnational strikes much as al-Qaeda has done in the past.
The intelligence communities in most countries tend not to have a sharing disposition. But if the mutual threat of Islamic-inspired terrorism is to be tackled effectively then it needs to think again about levels of cooperation.
If more horrors like that in Nice are to be avoided then accurate and effective intelligence remains key.