The terrorist attacks in Paris claimed 129 victims. As President François Hollande declared such an indiscriminate massacre “an act of war”, rigorous French anti-terrorism investigations disclosed the identities of alleged jihadists and their terrorist co-conspirators involved in the Parisian atrocities. The impact of such Islamist terrorism, which received global news coverage, overshadowed the so-called discursive efforts that were made at the Valletta Migration Summit.
The Paris attacks have drastically redesigned the latest Turkish G20 summit agendas on Isis, as well as transnational cooperation among governments against the forces of transnational terrorism.
Since al-Qaeda, 9/11 and, especially, Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi’s declaration of the Isis Caliphate in June 2014, the constant threat of jihadist fanaticism was, is and will remain momentous in modern international terrorism.
Episodes of jihadist terrorism on European soil, including the 2004 Madrid-Atocha train bombings and the London 7/7 underground and bus bombings in 2005, have demonstrated how jihadist movements have transformed their organisational arrangement from being hierarchical, like the case of al-Qaeda before 9/11, into today’s leaderless resistance networks and generations of lone-wolf jihadist terrorists. The fanatical scale with which the June 2015 Sousse beach attacks were executed by a lone-wolf, young Tunisian jihadist and the Sinai terrorist bomb that downed a Russian airliner just weeks ago show how Isis can innovate terrorist strategies which, ultimately, appeal to masses of prospective jihadist perpetrators to commit any terror attack ofpervasive proportions.
The jihadist politics of retaliation against current Western coalition airstrikes around Raqqa and Mosul, together with a radicalised sense of belonging by self-styled jihadi conspirators and engaged foreign fighters to act in honour of jihad and the Islamic ummah (nation) have inspired Isis and its regional terrorist affiliates to adopt a strategic shift of escalating into a direct terrorist war of attrition against the West.
In the perspective of Salafist jihadism against manifestations of decadent Western morals, Isis has suddenly shifted its strategic terrorist context from selective beheadings of Western journalists and aid workers, as executed by (the now-killed) Jihadi John, into the systematic, high-impact bloodshed of shooting sprees, hostage-taking situations and, extraordinarily, suicide bombings that unfolded in the terror sequence of events throughout the Parisian attacks. Isis has now entered into an immediate phase of explicitly coordinating bloodshed among innocent civilians.
The Paris jihadist terrorists have sought to disturb and discourage Western democracies and make them succumb to fear as Isis publicised its jihadist cause to institute the Islamic khilafa (caliphate) by means of exploiting and accelerating this new tactical stage of jihadist atrocities.
The Paris jihadist terrorists have sought to disturb and discourage Western democracies and make them succumb to fear
Paul Wilkinson, the late British terrorism expert, was and still remains authoritative in his arguments when he said: “TV satellites have brought about a media revolution: terrorists can now exploit this by gaining an almost instant worldwide publicity for an outrage, enabling them to magnify an element of fear and to disseminate the awareness of their cause.”
In a video on the terror attacks in Paris, Isis declared its war of terrorism against the United States, particularly Washington, and other European countries through jihadists “coming with booby traps and explosives, coming with explosive belts and gun silencers”.
The critically important consideration here is the nexus between jihadist terrorism and the structure of complex societies in European countries. This is a constant dilemma in the national security agendas of democratic states.
Although Western governments, including Malta, continue to have surveillance monitoring programmes within multicultural societies, they are still limited in preventing any potential domestic lone-wolf jihadists from carrying bombs and, eventually, deciding to launch an indiscriminate kamikaze attack against civilians.
Updated French anti-terrorism investigations revealed how the Stade de France, the Boulevard Voltaire and the Bataclan jihadist suicide bombers had allegedly been identified as ‘normal’ French nationals who were self-selected and self-radicalised entities within the Muslim communities in France. The exceptional thread that united the three jihadist death squads when executing the Paris terrorist massacres was their iron will, foresight, discipline and motivation in carrying out this ‘anti-crusader campaign’ throughout Paris.
Even with enduring French military airstrikes, in direct response to the Paris terrorist attacks, Isis will undoubtedly aim to accelerate its new strategic direction to indiscriminately commit systematic acts of mass terrorism within Western and European societies.
Technological innovations, coupled with extensive globalised access to weapons, have facilitated Isis and its army of jihadist terrorists to consider and employ terrorist tactics like those in Paris.
On the long term, democratic governments will have to be very conscious that Isis is potentially progressively becoming a conventional jihadist militia at the service of the Islamic khilafa. On this note, Wilkinson concludes that “we need to be aware of the continuities in terrorist developments and even on possible lessons from past experience, which may help us to deal more effectively with such threats in the future”.
Samuel Bezzina is reading an MLitt in terrorism and political violence at the University of St Andrews, Scotland.