3.0 terrorism

12/01/15

The murder of the French cartoonists of Charlie Hebdo which took place on January 7 by three French Muslim citizens has reawakened the attention of the international community towards a very delicate phenomenon that is difficult to define as a political-religious terrorism.

This phenomenon is a human manifestation that will most likely continue to exist and will evolve simultaneously with man understood in his anthropic form.

To envisage an evolution of the phenomenon turns out to be a rather audacious enterprise given its intrinsic unpredictability, and to carry out an explicative or predictive analysis of a strategic-operational character is certainly a prospectively ambitious challenge.

If you still want to try the business it is essential to fix some points.

The future terrorist threat will surely be different from what the events of the early years of the new century have impressed on people's minds and the facts of the 7 January 2015 in Paris prove it.

The fragmentation in multiple groups of Al Qaeda and the physiological difficulty of finding a leader as charismatic as bin Laden was who takes the reins of the organization and manages to re-channel the entire range of groups born more or less recently into a single A vertically structured macro group seems to lead to the conclusion that what analysts will be facing in the near future will be a still fragmented scenario, in which the terrorist brand's franchise structure will continue to prevail.

The failure of "spring" aspirations and the power vacuum left in some important Arab states by the revolutions initiated in the 2011 have helped to create fertile ground for criminal and terrorist groups wishing to pursue their strategic design. The fall of the vertices of power that for decades had governed undisturbed states such as Libya, Egypt, Tunisia and others did not result in the transition to a democratic state concretely founded on ideas such as democracy, freedom and economic growth. The consequential end of regimes that although pseudo dictatorial guaranteed a certain level of order and security in the various countries, and which also cost the lives of many people, has not been followed, at least for now, by the conquest of a government stability such meet the needs of the new generations of Egyptians, Libyans, Tunisians or Syrians who have initiated the changes in question.

Unemployment, the immobile economic growth, the absence of civil rights, and the gap with Western and democratic countries taken as inspirational subjects, at least with regard to the theory of their own democratic values, are doing nothing but increase the sense of dissatisfaction and frustration of populations who saw the light of a new era of development and well-being in the overthrow of the ancient regime; The sense of powerlessness and mortification, humiliation and disappointment towards the failed imagined perspectives is nothing but the fuel to attribute to terrorist groups a propulsive thrust in places where the strict management of society protected from phenomena such as terrorism itself. The weakness of the so-called states failed or in the grip of particularly bloody civil wars, accompanied by the financial crisis, it is exploited by the terrorists and the petromonarchies that finance them, to widen its geostrategic space and its network of franchisees adhering to radical causes.

The evolution of the terrorist phenomenon turns out to be, to date and in the future, more complex than it was in the past. This is because technology and new global communication techniques have also been acquired by terrorist groups. The spread of the internet, of social networks such as facebook and twitter, as well as the use of forums, blogs, chats and youtube, has allowed these organizations to extend their audience of listeners even in places and contexts previously difficult to reach.

The propaganda, misinformation and proselytism conveyed by the web is one of the main tools through which terrorists operate today in the 21st century. The preaching of a return to the origins and the more strict observance of the Koran pursued by the Sunni Wahhabi groups, which refer to the Hanbalita legal school, has not prevented them from making the most of Western technologies, the fruit of an ideology and progress capitalist base. And it is precisely the use of these technologies that is the fundamental point to realize a forecast about the future development of the phenomenon in question. First of all because even through the network an intelligence war is already underway today, in secundis because the tactical and strategic use of information technology can allow the dissemination of the radical Islamic message even outside the Muslim territories, landing in Western contexts and making proselytes both of European or Anglo-Saxon origin, whether of Islamic origin but of second or third generation. Regarding the first point, we are dealing with what can be defined as "informational trouble" of Western security systems through the input into the system of different inputs consisting of cross-media messages, procured alarms and remote-guided propaganda. The information war that takes place within virtual reality is the background to what then occurs in concrete reality. The various messages circulating in the forums, for example, must be constantly monitored in order to steal useful information to foil an attack or to understand if there are elements useful to anticipate the moves of the various terrorist groups or, again, to interpret them in the most correct way possible the internal dynamics of the various groups. Very difficult thing to do perpetually.

As far as the second point is concerned, the web turns out to be the most powerful tool for proselytizing and absorbing a growing number of followers to the Islamic cause. Nor is the phenomenon of reductionism a testimony, which represents the final moment of a journey that foresees an initial phase in which the "western" subject facing Islam takes an autonomous path of approaching the faith also through the medium of the network. .

The fighters that after having carried out a period of "apprenticeship" more or less long in the territories object of clashes return to the homeland (the so-called Foreign Fighters) will be more and more and in the time they will become a real threat for the western governments as indeed the demonstrates the Charlie Hebdo facts.

Analyzing this phenomenon, it seems that political-religious terrorism is acquiring a sort of expeditionary capacity capable of projecting staff, trained and trained in the hot spots of the planet, in the West in order to carry out attacks; all taking advantage of the use of European passports in the possession of these people which guarantee them the avoidance of European border controls (Schengen).

A multi-faceted development of these particularly sensitive organizations is currently underway.

A terrorism different from that of the years 70 - 80 or compared to that of the first years of the new millennium. A terrorism version 3.0. A phenomenon that is evolving much more rapidly than the entire political, economic, social and military apparatus of the West is doing.

The constant threat of actions perpetrated by European subjects that go to the Middle East to fight and then return and that from external subjects (never dormant) will help to force the various States subject to these threats to raise more and more their defenses causing a huge expenditure of economic resources that will inevitably affect the national budget and the freedom of citizens with a consequent impact on their lives. The sense of insecurity and frustration that will arise will clash with the different sense of frustration of foreign communities that over time will be allocated in European territories. Delimited areas will be created in which these people will live and the cultural difference with the natives will increase racist and extreme right intentions by groups that, adhering to a distorted interpretation of Christianity, will carry out aggressions against both non-EU citizens and institutions guilty of not being able to curb the phenomenon and protect the population. All this fell into an internal political scenario where the possibility that the nationalist fronts acquire ever more force will provoke a possible imbalance in the mechanisms of alliances that, at least today in our country, are fundamental for governing with consequent internal instability.

On the other hand, the sense of frustration at the humiliations suffered and the integrative failure within the host society will give rise to the phenomenon attributable to the Afghan or Palestinian shaids. The only way out of a reality full of dissatisfaction and anger will be to adhere to the fundamentalist religious cause that offers, at least in the afterlife, a peaceful life.

The current drama concerning the numerous landings of migrants arriving from the North of Africa in the regions of southern Italy testifies to the criticality of the situation. The reception centers are on their last legs and the domestic political situation in the countries of origin of these people does not seem to improve in the short to medium term. The threat of biological terrorism due to the transport and transmission of infectious diseases by migrants is very high and this will only increase the sense of insecurity of the local populations with the consequences just described.

It is likely to foresee that the new terrorist groups, each with its own new generation leader, often cultured and educated, or the same dormant European cells, will try to undertake and implement a local rather than global project that will see them structured on the basis of a finalist compartmentalization in which everyone will pursue the global aim in its local context with the ultimate goal of destabilizing Western systems and contextually bringing forward both a religious ideology, which sees Islam as a world religion, and a nationalist will (but would be more correct call it a globalist) that assumes a position of coherent consequence with the first aim through the realization of an Islamic caliphate that includes, in addition to the cd. The Islamic territory, also the territories of a traditionally western style as well as those of the Shiite faith, bringing everything back into the dār al-Islām

An expansion of the most radical Islam in the wilderness where, inevitably for reasons of fluid dynamics, with the passing of time such stains will expand until they touch themselves making a bigger global stain; the much-desired caliphate which, thanks to the work of ISIS and its charismatic leader, today seems to be an increasingly concrete and dangerous reality.

In this context, an ever-increasing role of terrorist women and children should not be excluded. Probably, regarding the first figure, the progressive use of women in aggressive operations on territories to be conquered will be increased by the voluntary transfer of European women to operational theaters in order to fight for the caliphate or plagiarism of girls linked to Muslims who convert to radical Islam to follow the destiny of one's companion.

Last summer, videos appeared showing an English girl from 22 years, who moved to Syria with her Muslim husband, hoping to be the first woman to behead a Westerner. At the end of the training in the field, or online, these people will be ready to return to their countries of origin, cover western clothes, and carry out an attack undisturbed by mixing sagaciously in the crowd.

As for the latter, the images recently shown to the world testify to the presence within the terrorist groups of very young children, 8 - 10 years, already convinced of their Islamic faith and ready to kill every infidel who will position themselves on the road to the 'final goal. The work of indoctrination of very young children or adolescents, both European and Middle Eastern, (also in this case feasible from home through internet sites or video games) is a very dangerous element because it molds the malleable mind of a child towards a distorted form of religion and society. This ensures the future of the political-religious project through the indoctrination of an entire generation ready to sacrifice their lives and to brutally kill in the name of an ideal for which, as wisely pointed out by US President Barak Obama, today, in the 21st century, there is absolutely no place.

Moreover, the possible challenge between terrorist institutions with divergent visions concerning the primacy of engraving in the Western world leads to suggest a rethinking of the tools at our disposal to face a phenomenon that is far from being stopped. Political unity at the European level appears to be the first step towards the effective contrast of the phenomenon in question.

It is not a matter of hypotheses resulting from a simple intellectual exercise. Much of what is outlined is already underway and it is imperative to find an effective solution to the problem before even the West is infected by the instability of the countries currently in crisis.

Andrea Strippoli Lanternini