Terrorism: if the threat evolves and adapts to the world around it, we should do it too

(To Denise Serangelo)
17/11/15

The 12 last November, in a double suicide attack that caused the death of 43 people in the southern suburb of Beirut, a Hizbollah stronghold, Lebanon found itself vulnerable to terrorism. The most serious attack carried out in the Lebanese capital since the end of the civil war in the 1990. In the communiqué with which the Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack, the group complimented "the soldiers of the caliphate" for having struck the "bastions of the heretics", a reference to the Shiites whom the jihadists regard as infidels.

Hezbollah has entered the Caliphate's crosshairs since it began supporting Assad with its militiamen who, thanks also to this contribution, managed to withstand the rising tide of jihadists arriving from all over the world. There likely The strategy behind these attacks in Lebanon is the interest in widening the war, to divide the forces that oppose it to the caliphate. A strategy of the multiple front that we have already had the opportunity to test in recent history, at the end of the Second World War. The results are not the most brilliant. Just as it costs the allies effort and organization to stem the wave of terrorism on several fronts, it is equally true that the terrorists themselves will have to try their hand at maintaining a high state of alert in several points. A strategy that seems overly optimistic. That Al Baghdadi is doing something wrong?

More than a misjudgment, that of the Caliph, it seems a substantial change in its terrorist strategy. A more audacious attitude but which allows an organizational structure of undoubted complexity and strategically versatile to emerge. We observe how the shadow of the caliph is widening and modifying between Lebanon and France. In the Beirut attack, the stragista group was presumably composed of 3 or 4 subjects, perhaps of Syrian nationality, equipped with rigorously crafted explosive belts. Initially the target of the terrorists was the Rasolu Al - Aazam hospital, known to be controlled by the Hezbollah group. The excessive presence of police forces has upset the plans of the attackers who have had to reinvent a new plan. With the action already underway, with the risk of being discovered, the terrorists have changed their plan by waiting for the rush hour to maximize the disruptive effect of explosive belts.

The explosions followed each other in rapid succession and at a distance no greater than 150 meters from each other. The places chosen were cafes, restaurants and bus shelters, which were particularly crowded at the time of the attack. A strategy, the Lebanese one, which allows us to catch the difference with what happened in Paris.

In the lucid re-planning of the attack the paramilitary preparation of the attackers is shown, more psychologically stable and rigorous. Putting into practice an attack in a Western country is decidedly different than perpetrating it in a country, like Lebanon, used to being hypervigilant because of terrorism. The risk taken by the attackers to wait (without being discovered) is one of the most lucid demonstrations of how these men are chameleon-like, but above all it makes us understand how lethal they can be if properly prepared.

In Paris, the situation is more uncoordinated, inaccurate and hasty. In a country that does not expect attacks, it would have been easy to wait for the flow of spectators from the stadium, without arousing suspicion. The terrorists, however, have highlighted an unusual hurry, which many have attributed to the inexperience and the little paramilitary preparation of the group, a situation that has undoubtedly saved many lives. The comparison between a stadium full of people (where the French president was also present) and a hospital in full swing is not so different: they are both very crowded places, symbols of a society closer to ordinary citizens than to ideological symbolism. The home-built explosive belts whose disastrous effect has been increased with nails and small metal fragments, are the common thread between the two attacks, an element borrowed from the first Qaedist action towards American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. These two attacks, which some consider unrelated, are the most concrete example of how the Islamic State is evolving and how its strategy is becoming more aggressive.

Having disembarked in the West, the Caliphate, he had necessarily to revise the roulette of the attack. Here, the most influential religious figures and political leaders are escorted and almost unapproachable. Thus we have the first stage of the terrorist modification of the IS, from single and representative objectives to multiple and more common objectives. When only politicians or symbolic places are struck, the population is marginally invested in the fear they cause, because they do not identify with the victim. Striking bars, restaurants and bus shelters instead involves a different reaction, all of us at least once took the bus to go to work or school, we all take a coffee with friends at the bar. We could all be unwitting victims of fundamentalist madness.

At first, the kamikazes were individual subjects, geographically close to the places where the attacks take place, men who were exploited for their poverty, with the promise of a cash reward for the family that was left alone. In Afghanistan and Iraq these subjects were motivated, for the sake of their family to carry out attacks, anywhere and by any means, terrorism was an expression of a social malaise exploited by those who had never experienced such discomfort. The footsteps of the Caliphate do not follow this line almost at all and immediately point to manipulated individuals, who are "hooked" thanks to the social discontent in which they live and to the repressed anger for a History that is ignoring them.

The strategy works. Guys are enrolled in the ranks of the IS that taking advantage of the discontent of Western governments, even hires young talent from Europe and America, thus the qualitative leap. From Syria to Iraq, we move on to Europe. At the beginning it is difficult to coordinate more people for a terrorist attack without a base in Europe, so the theory of the 'Lonely Wolf' develops, a single subject who is instructed via the web to claim victims at home. The emotional wave of second-generation immigrants is very strong, poorly integrated into a wary Europe and denied by their countries of origin that have nothing to offer, the Islamic State offers them something to believe in and fight for. A lark mirror, but this is all we know. Once a logistics and knowledge network is created in Europe, actions can be intensified and become tactically more complex.

From January 2015, with the massacre of Charlie Hebdo the lone wolf theory is skipped to reach footing in coordinated militant groups. The preparation of these subjects takes place via the internet, or through the direct experience of militants returned from training centers in Syria or Iraq. However indoctrinated they may be, they remain subjects who have learned to claim victims on the internet, they have not trained, they have not had the opportunity to learn live what it means to conduct operations that can also include mishaps. Already the sound of gunshots alone, the people screaming and running away tend to disorient anyone, the attackers also experience immense psychological stress, derived from the desire for personal redemption and the desire to prove their worth as jihad fighters. An explosive mix of superficiality and adrenaline. Small armed groups, despite a more evident coordination, cannot aim at too complex goals and limit themselves to multiple simultaneous actions in very crowded places.

The heart of evolution is found not only in the numerical but also in the concept of simultaneity which forces the police to give priority to one site over another, at least in the beginning.

(photo: NNA - the funeral of one of the victims of the Beirut attack)