European Women Join Ranks of Jihadis
10 Jan. Los Angeles Times - European Women Join Ranks of Jihadis.
Quote:
... The story of the Dutch network, 14 members of which are now on trial, reveals the increasing aggressiveness and prominence of female extremists in Europe. In a chilling trend in the Netherlands and Belgium, police are investigating militants' wives suspected of plotting suicide attacks with their husbands, or on their own.
"I think it's a very dangerous trend," said Ali, the lawmaker targeted for assassination. "Women all over the world are seen as vulnerable, as less violent. And that can make anti-terror authorities less vigilant when it comes to women."...
Anatomy of terrorist attack. London and Madrid.
Home grown Terrorism Analysis
That looks really interesting. Thanks for posting that.
EU Terrorism Situation & Trend Report 2007
The first EU Terrorism Situation and Trend Report TE-SAT 2007 produced by Europol was presented 10 April 2007 in the European Parliament in Brussels.
The report identifies three continuing trends within terrorism in EU countries: separatism, anarchism and Islamic extremism. While the vast majority of terrorist attacks reported in Europe in 2006 were separatist in nature, the largest number of arrests were linked to Islamic extremists. The report indicates that France, Spain and the UK are the countries most severely affected by terrorism, and that most terrorist incidents in Europe are designed to avoid human casualties.
The largest single category of incidents in 2006 was separatist attacks in France and the largest single category of arrests was also of separatists in France; nearly all related to the island of Corsica. Separatist attacks in Spain accounted for over one hundred incidents, despite the ceasefire maintained by Basque separatist group ETA during most of the year. Coming in a distant third in number of incidents was left-wing/anarchist attacks in Greece. At the bottom of the list were Estonia, Finland, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia and Slovenia, who all reported neither investigations nor court proceedings related to terrorism in 2006, suggesting that they are the least affected by terrorism in the region.
What happened to Blitz spirit asks survivor
After a long delay a coroners inquest into the deaths in the 7/7 LOndon attack opened last week; albeit under special rules, a judge sitting as coroner and without a jury.
There have been several reports, but this one struck me as worthy of entering here. References have been made in another thread on the "spirit of the blitz" and this indicates to the contrary:
Quote:
Mr Henning was the first survivor to give evidence at the inquest into the deaths of 52 people in four terrorist explosions on London’s transport system.
Link:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ukne...-survivor.html
Last week there was an indication that Command & Control had "issues", starting with the phone system and this 'Achilles Heel' will re-appear:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ukne...ube-chaos.html
Europe's CT hard choices (catch all)
With a sub-title 'The threat is fragmenting and budgets are shrinking', a good overview of the current CT situation in Western Europe by Raffaello Pantucci, an independent analyst:http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/kmd/.../index.php#/40
The Islamist Terrorist Threat to Europe after bin Laden’s Death
A short nineteen page analysis by Raffaello Pantucci, of ICSR, presented in July 2011 at Chatham House:http://www.chathamhouse.org/sites/de..._terrorism.pdf
Quote:
This paper will explore the current state of the threat to Europe, how it is connected to the broader threat that is faced in the United States and how it has evolved in this direction. In concluding, it will offer some thoughts on the current direction the threat is going and sketch out some problems that
Europe might face in countering it.... Nevertheless, violent Islamist terrorism with its preference for large-scale multiple strikes using suicide bombers often
coordinated by outside actors continues to be the main threat that is focused on by European security services.
Several references are made to information recovered in OBL's home.
Regarding Preventing / Countering Violent Extremism (PVE / CVE):
Quote:
the world has not yet found an effective and comprehensive solution to the problem of young people becoming excited by globalist Islamist anti-establishmentarian narratives and becoming persuaded to go and fight abroad and in some cases come back and plot terrorist acts. Broadly captured under the banner of Preventing Violent Extremism (PVE) by the British government and subsequently emulated by many, the world has notably not managed to crack this code.
Ends with:
Quote:
While it is clear that intelligence services across Europe have now begun to understand what it is that they are facing and to go
about chasing it, they remain unclear of how exactly to stamp it out. Consequently, ten years after 11 September 2001, Europe is continuing to manage its terrorist problem rather than eradicate it.
200 suicide bombers 'planning attacks in UK
Under such a lurid headline, this is a newspaper story based on 'a senior intelligence source' and a "leaked" document - which may add some context to this thread.
Quote:
The 200 British residents thought to be planning suicide attacks, either within the UK or overseas, represent one in 10 of the wider group of 2,000 terrorist plotters.
Link:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ukne...cks-in-UK.html
Blending high impact and having guns = everyone is a potential target
After the French train suspected 'lone wolf' attack analysts are chiming in on how Europe should respond, although this is a global problem IMHO.
The thread title is adapted from Raffaello Pantucci's writings (now @ RUSI):http://raffaellopantucci.com/2015/08...ential-target/
The BBC has a former French intelligence agent Claude Moniquet adding his experienced viewpoint (he left the external service DGSE in 2002):http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-34032781
He ends with:
Quote:
The only way to protect society against the terrorist threat lies in strengthening intelligence and laws.
The Soufan Group:http://soufangroup.com/tsg-intelbrie...tack-revealed/
Everyone in Europe or the UK yes is a potential target, everyone then is the first responder - as shown by the passengers on the French Thalys train. In the UK there is ample evidence that the vast majority of onlookers do not respond, indeed they simply walk on.
Several references have been made to five to six thousand former fighters who have returned from the Middle East, a number that simply overwhelms being kept under official surveillance. I am always slightly puzzled at this phrase; if they have returned do they all wish to fight again another day?
How many such incidents, with civilian deaths is tolerable?
I do wonder if imprisonment without trial, known simply as internment, is not on the horizon. Not that I today advocate this.
ISIS Operations in Europe
I'll just leave these two articles here for comparison and contrast.
From February 15, 2015 -
Quote:
ISIS threatens to send 500,000 migrants to Europe as a 'psychological weapon' in chilling echo of Gaddafi's prophecy that the Mediterranean 'will become a sea of chaos'
Italian press today published claims that ISIS has threatened to release the huge wave of migrants to cause chaos in Europe if they are attacked
And letters from jihadists show plans to hide terrorists among refugees
In 2011, Muammar Gaddafi ominously predicted war would come to Libya
He was deposed in a violent coup and killed in October of the same year
Islamic State executed 21 Egyptian Christians on Libyan beach this week
Crisis in Libya has led to surge in number of migrants heading for Europe
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...#ixzz3lT4lvGnW
From September 3rd, 2015
Quote:
The Greek coastguard has seized a ship loaded with thousands of undeclared, carefully concealed weapons, and possibly explosives, en route from Turkey to Libya. Local media claims the ship is linked to Islamic State (IS) and to companies who have previously smuggled goods to Syria – the Turkish foreign minister denies this.
The ship had come from Alexandretta in Egypt on to the Turkish port of Iskenderun, and was bound for the Libyan port of Misrata – a stronghold of the Muslim Brotherhood-linked group “Libya Dawn.”
It was raided on Tuesday 20 nautical miles off Create and has now been escorted to the port of Heraklion where searches began on Wednesday. The ship flies under a Bolivian flag, but its seven-member crew are thought to be from Syria, Egypt and India.
http://www.breitbart.com/london/2015...pons-shipment/
Afghan Emigration to Europe Seen as Setback
Afghan Emigration to Europe Seen as Setback
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The ISIS threat to the UK
Taken from CTC's Sentinel an article by Raffaello Pantucci; the Abstract says:
Quote:
While clearly at the top of the Islamic State’s targeting list, the United Kingdom so far has been spared from any major terrorist atrocities at home with direct links to the Islamic State. A review of the trials of those accused of terrorist plotting in the country between 2013 and 2015 reveals that the violent Islamist threat picture has instead been dominated by lone-actor plots, with some demonstrating connections of some sort to individuals on the battlefield in Syria or Iraq. Going forward, however, the threat is likely to become more acute as the Islamic State pivots toward international terror.
Link:https://www.ctc.usma.edu/posts/the-i...-terror-trials
Inside Europe's Terror Attacks
BBC reporter, Peter Taylor and an assistant, have a hour long 'Panorama' documentary on:
Quote:
From highly organised cells like the one that killed 130 people in Paris, to lone attackers within our own communities, Panorama reveals how the so-called Islamic State's terror network has been operating secretly in Europe, and Western intelligence agencies' battle to stop it.
Link:http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode...terror-attacks
It aapeared on TV here 23rd March 2016, it clearly relies on a number of "leaks", notably from the French, supplemented by a number of interviews and especially of an ISIS suspect in French custody.
Ex-MI6 man on: Terrorism, Europe and Brexit
Interesting contribution by Nigel Inkster, ex-SIS (MI6) and now with IISS:http://www.iiss.org/en/iiss%20voices...nd-brexit-c6ab
An interesting part:
Quote:
Last week I featured briefly in the BBC's
Panorama programme, which depicted in remarkable detail how ISIS had planned and orchestrated the complex, multi-phase Paris and Brussels attacks. As is always the way, many of my comments ended up on the cutting-room floor. But during my interview to camera I tried to explain the difficulties intelligence and security services face in dealing with transnational terrorist plots. Intelligence does not come in a regular flow and when it does come it seldom admits of only one interpretation, nor does it always lead inexorably to the next piece in the puzzle. Items of intelligence that in retrospect seem crucially important do not always seem so when they first come to light. Working in counter-terrorism is to see the world always through a glass darkly. Panorama showed that Europe's intelligence and security services knew they were facing a major problem, knew many of the actors involved and were in a desperate race with the terrorists. They were able to avert some of the plots, but could not pre-empt them all. I know from personal experience what it feels like to lose that race. Successful counter-terrorism operations involve a degree of luck. To talk of 'joining the dots', as if the complexities and uncertainties of such work can be reduced to the predictable simplicity of a child's colouring book, is not helpful.
Europe vs. America: Comparing the Terrorism Threat
Experts: Troops in Europe Could be Next Terrorist Target
Experts: Troops in Europe Could be Next Terrorist Target
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Looking at France's "homegrown" Muslim terror problem from a COIN lens
Moderator's Note
A debate on the Forum, started a couple of days ago on the current thread on French CT, deserves a thread - for the debate and wider implications, especially as savagery is a feature (hat tip to Adam G for his post) (Ends).
We've all seen the atrocity in Nice, and it is safe to assume that this is a Muslim terror attack.
Already, we have seen some calling for collective punishment (e.g. Newt Gingrich in the US) and others calling for greater intelligence coordination from French authorities.
I wanted to look at France's terror problem in the context of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Although commonly considered one of the few examples of successful counter-insurgency, I would argue that the British and the Catholic Republicans fought each other to a standstill and then a political solution was reached. Essentially, the Protestant loyalists could no longer treat their Catholic minority inequitably and use military and law enforcement powers to do so; nor could they also maintain paramilitaries who often had overlapping membership with local law enforcement. Relatively speaking, this political solution was simple and reasonable.
Note that the Catholic population (~40%) numbered roughly 640,000 during the Troubles, and the IRA only had 10,000 (1.56% of population) volunteers at any given time, of which only a small portion (300 combat, 450 support) were engaged in armed attacks. Against this, the British security forces numbered some 23,000 (RUC and military).
French Muslims number 3.5 to 5 million, but using the lower number and assuming militancy on par with the Troubles (1.56%), we come to a figure of 55,000 militants of which over 4,000 would actively participate or support a terrorist attack. This would then require over 126,000 security personnel, or 49% of the French Army and 26% of the French National Police and Gendarmerie, depending upon the breakdown. Is this possible given France's resources? And what political solution is Paris to come to? Allow for Sharia law? Create Muslim Bantu-stans? Pay off unemployed and criminal Muslim youth?
It would be much easier to simply employ collective punishment in order to ensure that French Muslims fear the state more than their own community...
And before the bleeding hearts come out, keep in mind that we've done it before to defeat the evils of slavery and Fascism.
Collective punishment was used during the American Civil War and also during World War II. We have acknowledged that not all Japanese supported the IRAA and not all Germans supported the NSDAP, and that some were civilians and some were combatants. Nevertheless, the Allies considered Axis civilians legitimate targets for strategic or terror bombing unless they acted to bring down their governments and end the war.
In fact, the Allies dropped leaflets instructing the Germans and Japanese to act against their governments if they wanted a halt in the bombing. While stories of German resistance to the NSDAP are coming to light, the fact is that there was no significant resistance of any sort after the defeat of Poland and the Western Allies: only when Germany was facing a multi-front war and was suffering due to attrition did serious opposition plots begin. While most of the populations of Germany and Japan did not conspire directly to wage aggressive war and commit unspeakable crimes, they were nevertheless complicit. In my opinion, we need to make complicity unsafe.
Thoughts?
CT after mass killing @ Nice: a debate
A debate on the Forum, started a couple of days ago on the current thread on French CT, deserves a thread - for the debate and wider implications, especially as savagery is a feature (hat tip to Adam G for his post).
This post will drop from No.1 when the posts are transferred.
The main thread on French CT is:http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/...ad.php?t=15299
A former MI6 CT senior officer says
Richard Barrett, ex-SIS, has a short article today that fits here; the actual title being 'The best defence against terrorism is to show that it does not work as a way of changing government policy or public perception'. A key passage:
Quote:
There are two strands to making terrorism less attractive. The first is to encourage public resilience to terrorism; the second is to ensure a proportionate response.
Link: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016...-it-does--not/
First responder: a BMW driver
One of the events in Germany, the machete attack on a woman @ Reutlingen, although not IS-related, but a crime of passion does have one relevant aspect:
Quote:
A BMW driver then accelerated and knocked him down. After that he lay on the ground and did not move.
In some reports the driver appeared likely to have been a Muslim. I only cite the source of the quote:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016...thern-germany/
Exposure and no "easy answers"
First the bomb attack @ Ansbach, Bavaria, Germany and a report - in an IS magazine - that the suspect:
Quote:
...had fought with al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra. It appears that Daleel later pledged allegiance to Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) after the 2013 split from Nusra....he left Syria to seek treatment after he was wounded in a mortar attack. He travelled on to Germany posing as a refugee.
(From another source) He was to be deported to Bulgaria under the EU’s Dublin rules, but the move was delayed by his claims of ill health.
Link:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016...-questions-ov/
Leaving aside whether any agency could have id'd his past in Syria, there is the scale of migration into Germany in 2015, over a million people.
Second yesterday's murderer in a church in Normandy, France:
Quote:
The 19-year-old was under police supervision and wore a tag following his release in March after 10 months of preventative custody for trying to go to Syria....Ordered to live at his parents’ home, he was allowed out between 8.30am and 12.30pm on weekdays, and from 2pm to 6pm on weekends. He was, therefore, within his rights to be out at the time of the attack...
Link:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016...adel-kermiche/
Taking a wider view a French-Algerian commentator:
Quote:
The vast majority of the terrorists who have now slaughtered some 250 people in separate incidents across France over the past 18 months were just as well known to the authorities as Kermiche. Many were meant to be in prison, or – again like Kermiche – at least reporting to their local police stations under strict bail terms. Instead they were given more than enough freedom to move across borders and acquire the arms necessary to carry out their carnage pretty much anywhere they chose.
Link:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016...-stop-jacques/
Kermiche clearly was a "hard case" to change, but France has almost no such state capability (like Germany).
German insiders add context
CTC's current issue of Sentinel has a focus on Germany and two analysts from two regional offices of the Federal Office of the Protection of the Constitution and with my emphasis:
Quote:
CTC: Several members of the Paris and Brussels attack cell transited through Germany, including through a refugee center in Ulm. To what degree has the migrant crisis produced a security threat to Europe?
Said: There has been a public outcry bringing together the two big current issues of terrorism and migration. And of course Paris, Brussels, and also Wrzburg and Ansbach showed us there has been a link between the two in some particular cases. But paranoia and hysteria are at risk of overshadowing the actual facts. Since 2015 more than one million refugees have come to Germany, but the federal police office (BKA) has so far received terrorism tips on 400 individuals and has undertaken 40 investigations in this context. The majority of the hints turned out to be unsubstantiated. So when it comes to refugees, you can speak of a very small and dwindling number of suspicious persons who are subject to investigations. Of course there is the danger that persons whom security authorities are not aware of might be involved in plots. But this was also the case before the exodus of Syrian and Iraqi people began, and it should be noted we also had a history of failed or foiled plots in Germany by German citizens or residents well before the recent migrant flows. All in all you can say that the migration wave is an additional challenge for the security apparatus, but it is not the cause for the unprecedented terror threat. The cause for that is the Islamic State and its global supporters
Link:https://www.ctc.usma.edu/posts/a-vie...fassungsschutz
In the short-term, there are unlikely to be any easy answers.
The last sentence from David Wells thoughtful column in the Australian e-bulletin of the Lowy Institute:http://www.lowyinterpreter.org/post/...Dol8CY.twitter
A "taster":
Quote:
While lone actors or self-starters were certainly a concern, they typically struggled to build explosive devices or get access to weaponry without contacting known terrorist or criminal entities. Unfortunately, isolated actors and their cheerleaders overseas have realised this too. As Nice, Orlando and potentially Wurzburg all demonstrate, these unconnected individuals or networks are instead focusing on softer and typically more local targets. And utilising an attack methodology that challenges intelligence agency notions of what behaviour makes an individual 'look like a terrorist'. After all, possessing a knife or renting a truck is no obvious precursor to a terrorist attack.