Terrorism is not an enemy. It cannot be defeated. It’s a tactic. We’re not going to win the war on terrorism.General William Odom, US Army, on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal programme, November 2002
Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi’s self-proclaimed Islamic Caliphate – also called ISIS, ISIL and Daesh – has claimed responsibility for the multiple terror strikes across Paris on November 13, 2015, in which 129 civilians were killed and over 300 seriously injured. Two weeks ago, on October 31, ISIS claimed that it had brought down an Airbus aircraft of the Russian airliner Metrojet, soon after it took off from the Sinai resort of Sharm al-Sheikh for St. Petersburg. All 224 people on board were killed.
The ISIS brand of fundamentalist terrorism is spreading gradually beyond West Asia. In Africa, ISIS fighters have been active in Algeria, Libya, South Sudan and Tunisia in recent months. Boko Haram, the militant Islamist group in Nigeria, has pledged allegiance to ISIS. As if to prove that their tentacles run wide, on a single day in the last week of June 2015, Islamic State terrorists struck targets across three continents in France, Kuwait and Tunisia, leaving many people dead and wounded.
An ISIS branch has already been established in the Indian sub-continent, led by Muhsin al-Fadhli, and based somewhere in Pakistan.
Al-Baghdadi has openly proclaimed ISIS’ intention to expand eastwards to establish the Islamic state of Khorasan that will include Afghanistan, the Central Asian Republics, eastern Iran and Pakistan. The final battle, Ghazwa-e-Hind – a term from Islamic mythology – will be fought to extend the Caliphate to India. An ISIS branch has already been established in the Indian sub-continent, led by Muhsin al-Fadhli, and based somewhere in Pakistan.
Some TTP (Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan) factions have declared their allegiance to Al-Baghdadi. The ISIS briefly captured a few districts in Afghanistan’s Nangarhar province and Afghan National Security Adviser, Mohammad Hanif Atmar, has said the militia’s presence is growing. Some ISIS flags have been seen sporadically in Srinagar.
New-Age Terrorism
- The ISIS brand of fundamentalist terrorism is spreading beyond West Asia.
- An ISIS branch has been established in the Indian sub-continent, led by Muhsin al-Fadhli and based somewhere in Pakistan.
- The ISIS is adept at fighting simultaneously on multiple fronts and has carried the war into cyberspace.
- But the age of ‘new terrorism’ began well before the ISIS began its campaign in Iraq and Syria.
‘New Terrorism’ Began Well Before ISIS
The ISIS militia comprises ultra-hardline Sunni fighters. Its leadership’s ideology is so primitive and barbaric that even Osama bin Laden reportedly declined to have anything to do with them when they approached him. The ISIS militia has proved itself adept at fighting simultaneously on multiple fronts. Not surprisingly, the ISIS has carried the war into cyberspace and is deftly exploiting the internet as an effective propaganda tool to spread its message.
The age of ‘new terrorism’ began well before the ISIS militia began its vicious campaign in Iraq and Syria. It hit India with the Mumbai serial bomb attacks of March 1993. In the same year, a group of Islamist extremists led by Ramzi Yousef launched the first attack on the World Trade Centre in New York. The London and Madrid train bombings further heightened the pervasive fear psychosis.
The September 11, 2001 attacks were a catastrophic confirmation of a major shift in the trend lines of transnational terrorism and the multiple terror strikes in Mumbai in November 2008 provided further proof of a new form of terrorism. There is now ready agreement that the age of ‘new terrorism’ is well and truly upon us.
However, ‘new terrorism’ is in many ways still a catchphrase that heralds change, as no clear understanding of its characteristics is as yet forthcoming. Even as the world attempts to enhance its understanding of what exactly has changed, four key patterns can be clearly discerned.
Defining Modern Terrorist Organisations
- First, modern terrorist organisations are both diffuse and opaque in nature. They have cellular structures that resemble networks, rather than a clearly demarcated chain of command.
- Secondly, they are increasingly more transnational in their geographical spread, with shifting centres of gravity and constantly changing recruitment bases.
- Thirdly, their ideological motivations are driven by religious fundamentalism and they seek to achieve their political objectives through radical extremism even though no religion justifies violent means.
- Fourthly, modern terrorism is far more violent than ‘old’ terrorism. In the mid-to-late 20th century, terrorist organisation wanted “a lot of people watching, not a lot of people dead” but this has changed and they now wish to inflict horrendous casualties so that they can impose their will on governments and societies.
Key to Countering Terror
Peter R Neumann has written, “Regardless of whether governments are dealing with ‘old’ or ‘new’, the aim must be to prevent terrorist attacks whilst maintaining legitimacy in the eyes of the population. In doing so, governments need to ‘harden’ potential targets, develop good intelligence in order to disrupt terrorist structures, bring to bear the full force of the law whilst acting within the law, address legitimate grievances where they can be addressed, and, not least, convey a sense of calm and determination when communicating with the public.”
This prescription cannot be faulted and policy planners across the world would do well to draw up a counter-terrorism policy on these lines as part of a comprehensive national security strategy. The defeat and disbandment of the ISIS militia, in particular, merits the international community’s immediate attention – or else, General William Odom will be proved right.
(The writer is former Director, Centre for Land Warfare Studies (CLAWS), New Delhi.)
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