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Policy
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B&E
The next Generation of Terror
The world’s most dangerous jihadists no longer answer to al Qaeda. The terrorists we should fear most are self-recruited wannabes who find purpose in terror and comrades on the Web. This new generation is even more frightening and unpredictable than its predecessors, but its evolution just may reveal the key to its demise.
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 The group expanded their network when they moved to other parts of the greater Toronto area, attending radical mosques and meeting like-minded young people. They also reached out in international chatrooms, eventually linking up with Irhabi007 prior to his arrest. Through his forum, they were directed to web sites providing them information on how to build bombs. Other militants across the globe also virtually connected through this forum and actively planned attacks. Again, there is no evidence of any link with al Qaeda.
What makes these examples so frightening is the ease with which marginalised youths are able to translate their frustrations into acts of terrorism, often on the back of professed solidarity with terrorists halfway around the world they have never met. They seek to belong to a movement larger than themselves, and their violent actions and plans are hatched locally, with advice from others on the Web. Without links to known terrorists, they are more difficult to discover through traditional intelligence gathering.
why they fight
Any strategy to fight these terrorists must be based on an understanding of what transforms them into fanatics? What leads them to deem themselves as part of a small vanguard trying to build their version of an Islamist utopia?
The explanation is found not in how they think, but rather in how they feel. One of the most common refrains among Islamist radicals is their sense of moral outrage. Before 2003, it was about the killings of Muslims in Afghanistan in the 1980s. In the 1990s, it was the fighting in Bosnia, Chechnya and Kashmir. Then came the second Palestinian intifada in 2000. And since 2003, it has been all about the war in Iraq, which has become the focal point of global moral outrage for Muslims. Along with the humiliations of Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo, Iraq is monopolising today’s conversations about Islam and the West.
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For this moral outrage to translate into extremism, the frustrations must be interpreted in a particular way: The violations are deemed part of a unified Western strategy, namely a “war against Islam.” That deliberately vague worldview, however, is just a sound bite. The new terrorists are interested not in theological debates but in living out their heroic fantasies.
How various individuals interpret this vision of a “war against Islam” differs from country to country. To a degree, the belief that the US is a melting pot protects it from homegrown attacks. A recent poll found that 71% of Muslim Americans believe in the “American Dream,” more than the American public as a whole (64%). This is not so in Europe, where national myths are based on degrees of “Britishness,” “Frenchness,” or “Germanness.” This excludes non-European Muslim immigrants from truly feeling as if they belong.
Feeling marginalised is, of course, no simple springboard to violence. Many people feel they don’t belong but don’t aspire to wage violent jihad. What transforms a very small number to become terrorists is mobilisation by networks. Until a few years ago, these were face-to-face groups. During the past two or three years, however, face-to-face radicalisation has been replaced by online radicalisation. Culpable online forums promote the image of the terrorist hero, link users to the online social movement, give them guidance, and instruct them in tactics. These forums have become the “invisible hand” that organises terrorist activities worldwide.
At present, al Qaeda Central cannot impose discipline on these third-wave wannabes, mostly because it does not know who they are. Without this command and control, each disconnected network acts according to its own understanding and capability, but their collective actions do not amount to any unified long-term goal or strategy. These separate groups cannot coalesce into a physical movement, leaving them condemned to remain leaderless. Such traits make them particularly volatile, and also offer a tantalising strategy for those who wish to defeat these dangerous individuals: The very seeds of demise are within the movement itself.
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