A city, Brussels, armored for days, the anxiety of seeing a game at the stadium, the anguish of a backpack lost casually by a child. After the events in Paris, no place seems safe enough to allow us to live our lives with serenity, in the end we always focus our eyes on the Middle Eastern passing by.
The sterile discussions about how much fear one needs of a Muslim neighbor have certainly not favored an honest dialogue on terrorism and its political and religious roots. At the same time, the hunt for the terrorist Muslim only feeds that state of alert and anxiety.
The attackers reason as we Westerners study us, they identify with our culture and our limits, they strike where we are most vulnerable: everyday life. Let's try then to invert the parts and propose a small analysis, based on how a terrorist could reason. The weekend seems like a good start to interrupt our weekly routine. The most recent attacks took place all near the weekend, between Thursday and Friday, perhaps perhaps more likely to be a carefully studied situation. The average citizen, a worker with family and almost normal responsibilities, dedicates himself to his social life from Friday evening to Monday morning. He relaxes, he thinks about spending, he dedicates himself to his family, taking his children to the park or going out with his wife. People spill out onto the street at the weekend, the alert level goes down. Saturday and Sunday are days that represent a concept of freedom typical of the West, leisure, carefree. Undermining the calm of the weekend between Thursday and Friday strongly destabilizes the population of each country, because security measures are raised and the threshold of attention is very high.
Cities agonize over the weekend, false alarms, the smell of blindfolded death awaiting its victims. In the street, military troops pour into war, entire countries surrender to the will of the terrorists, from a psychological point of view it is an overwhelming victory. The Jihadists have brought to Europe, cradle of democracy and contemporary and modern thought, that glimpse of the Middle East that has not seen weekends for decades. A symbolism that seems poignant if it is European capitals to live it, which is less important if we live in Beirut or Gaza. Keeping the tension high in the hours following the attacks is a zero-cost strategy. The false alarms follow one another, by now, the citizen has entered a hypervigilant mode, the same modality that ordinary citizens have always lived in the Middle East. Everything seems suspicious and is the triumph of the strategy of fear. The psychological wear and tear is just the beginning and that sense of anxiety and dismay mixed with hypervigilance are the obvious symptom of how terrorism wants our lives to underlie their will. Until now we have not yet encountered a cell capable of being able to afford a series of "post-attacks" attacks, as in the main Middle Eastern cities the most vulnerable after the first wave of attacks, they are not citizens but rescuers.
The potential of a terrorist group, they move on the edge of the internet, more disparate methods that stem less and less easily. When the logistics and the abilities will be personal of the attackers they will be ready, the maximum disruptive effect and the psychological crumbling will be had with the attack to those who should protect us. To stem the phenomenon and conceal the moves and times of reaction of rescuers, the use of drones would be conceivable. The remote piloted aircraft for aerial surveillance have worked excellently since before the 11 September abroad, their use on European or American soil, after an attack such as the one in Paris could have had a positive response.
Is the strategy of psychological attrition already in place? Making a quick overview of the terrorist events of the last 12 months, we could say yes. Some attacks have not been included in the classical scheme hypothesized by the media and by some analysts so far, that is: to hit to make victims and bring jihad to Europe.
Beirut, Mali and Tunisia (just to name a few) how do they fit into the scenario of the holy Islamic State? Since all countries are widely involved in European foreign policy, attacking them takes on a broader meaning, consistent with the theory of psychological attrition useful for establishing political mediation. Killing hundreds of people has a huge impact from the media point of view but tactically implies an important retaliation on the part of those who suffer it, France in this case. Terrorism has won twice inoculating the true fear. The real Jihad tactic is the psychological exhaustion that terrorism injects into our lives.
Tactically, a terrorist network can never win a regular war but it can exploit psychology to destabilize the West, pushing it to the negotiating table. A dirty and sneaky game that has a disproportionate number of victims.
