Non-State actors in international terrorism

By B Raman

Counter-terrorism agencies are facing a new strategic threat to which they do not have a response and they are unlikely to have a satisfactory response in the short and medium terms. This threat is likely to continue till the US-led coalition succeeds in pacifying Iraq and Afghanistan and restores normalcy there.

This threat arises from individual Muslims---mostly the youth---angered over the stories of the sufferings of their co-religionists whether it be in Palestine or Iraq or Afghanistan taking to suicide terrorism in order to give vent to their anger. They were not members of any identified jihadi terrorist organisation. They were not motivated into resorting to suicide terrorism by any organisation or madrasa or religious cleric or state-sponsor of terrorism.

They were self-motivated. The decision to kill and destroy was their own, though they might have sought the assistance of well-known organisations such as Al Qaeda or madrasas or cleric or a State-sponsor after they had taken the decision in order to enable them to have it executed.

The four British youth, three of them British citizens of Pakistani origin, who carried out the London explosions of July 7, 2005, seem, in retrospect, to be such self-motivated youth who, after deciding to commit an act of suicide terrorism, sought help from elements close to the International Islamic Front (IIF) in Pakistan for executing their decision.

Despite many detentions of suspects belonging to the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET) and the Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HUJI), the Bangalore Police seem to be still groping in the dark in their efforts to identify the person who opened fire indiscriminately at a conference of scientists in January this year and establish his motivation. One should not be surprised if this also turns out to be a case of an individual, not belonging to any organisation, resorting to terrorism in order to give vent to his anger.

I had drawn attention to this new threat from what I characterised as "free-lance jihadis" in a paper titled 'From Internet To Islamnet---Net-Centric Counter-terrorism" presented by me at a conference jointly organised by the State Islamic University (UIN) of Jakarta and the Institute for Defence Analyses (IDA) of Washington DC at Bali, Indonesia, from October 19 to 21, 2005

I had stated in that paper as follows: "The military operations by the US-led coalition in Afghanistan after 9/11 not only deprived the Al Qaeda and other jihadi organisations associated with it of their training infrastructure, but it also damaged the ability of their leadership to personally interact with their cadres and motivate them. The scattered remnants of the Al Qaeda and other jihadi organisations found themselves forced to split into small groups and take shelter in different places in Pakistan as well as in other countries such as Iran, Bangladesh, Yemen etc.

The post-9/11 security measures made travel to other countries difficult, thereby drastically reducing the possibility of personal meetings. This period also saw the emergence of the phenomenon of free-lance jihadis------ individual Muslims angered by the actions of the US and other Western countries in Afghanistan and Iraq waging an individual jihad, either alone or in association with like-minded co-religionists, without necessarily belonging to the Al Qaeda and other member-organisations of the IIF. The free-lance jihadis also made their presence felt in the WWW."

The gravity of the threat posed by the free-lance jihadis arises from the fact that very often they come to the attention of the intelligence agencies only after they had committed an act of suicide terrorism, though in the case of the London explosions the persons of Pakistani origin would appear to have come to the adverse notice of the British intelligence even before they committed their act of suicide terrorism, but it did not take seriously the possibility of any threat from them.

Intelligence agencies already face considerable difficulty in penetrating terrorist organisations and collecting preventive intelligence. Many, if not most, of their successes are based on technical intelligence (TECHINT). It would be a very uphill task for them to identify individuals or small groups of individuals, not belonging to any organisation, who decide to resort to an act of suicide terrorism to give vent to their anger and to prevent them before they succeed.

The dilemma posed by these free-lance jihadis has been highlighted in the annual "Country Reports on Terrorism" for 2005 submitted by the US State Department to the US Congress in the last week of April, 2006. It refers to them as the new phenomenon of "Micro-Actors" and says as follows:

"Increasingly, small autonomous cells and individuals drew on advanced technologies and the tools of globalisation such as the Internet, satellite communications and international commerce. When combined with the motivation to commit a terrorist act, these technologically empowered small groups represented micro-actors, who were extremely difficult to detect or counter." It draws attention to the emergence of a "more diffuse world-wide movement of like-minded individuals and small groups, sharing grievances and objectives, but not necessarily organised formally. While Al Qaeda linked trainers or facilitators often acted as catalysts for terrorist activity, this was no longer strictly necessary in functional terms and self-sufficient cells have begun to emerge.

This new generation of extremists, some of whom are self-selected and self-radicalised, is not easy to categorise. Some cells are composed of individuals from the same ethnic group, often an insular band of brothers that is difficult to identify or penetrate. Others become radicalised virtually, meeting in cyberspace and gaining their training and expertise in part from what they glean from the Internet. Just as some groups in the flattened global terrorist movement are ethnically defined, other cells are mixtures, such as the July 7 London bombers, who included a convert along with second generation British citizens of South Asian descent."

It concludes: "This trend means there could be a larger number of smaller attacks, less meticulously planned and local rather than transnational in scope. An increasing number of these attacks could fail through lack of skill or equipment, in the same way that the July 21 London attack did."

While the emergence of this new threat from micro non-State actors has been identified and described, the State Department's report is silent on how to deal with it. The scope for HUMINT and TECHINT in respect of the micro non-State actors is even more limited than in the case of formally structured non-State actors. The only way of picking up indicators of the emergence of such informal cells, not associated with any terrorist organisation, is through intense police-community relations.

As the threat from Al Qaeda, the IIF and other jihadi terrorist organisations dramatically increased since 1998, the military approach to counter-terrorism has acquired greater importance than the police approach.

The same importance has not been paid to strengthening the counter-terrorism capabilities of the Police force as has been paid to those of the armed forces. Police-community relations no longer receive the attention they deserve and which they used to receive in the past.

This state of affairs has to be corrected and the important role of the police in counter-terrorism has to be restored. Fortunately, in India, the police still enjoys an important role and is viewed as the weapon of first resort in counter-terrorism. But it is not so in many other countries. The downgrading of the role of the police by successive military regimes in Pakistan is an important cause of Pakistan's degeneration into the world's most worrisome epicentre of terrorism of different hues.-(ADNI)