And another new piece, again for the Telegraph this time looking at the wave of terror incidents around the world over the past days. Also spoke to the National press agency wire and Handelsblatt about the incidents.
This worldwide day of terror shows that in the age of globalisation, nowhere is safe
Ankara, Berlin, Zurich, New York. In these cities on Tuesday four scattered but brutal events illustrated the diffuse and confusing nature of the terrorist threat we now face.
The murder of a diplomat, the driving of a truck into a crowd at a Christmas market, a shooting at a mosque and the conviction of an attempted mass murderer of Muslims in New York will all have different consequences and they involve very different groups and ideologies. Yet they are all part of the same phenomenon, both predictable and confusing at the same time. Together they show how acts of terror on random civilians now appear to have no borders, with events in far flung lands tied inextricably to our daily lives at home.
All four events are in their own ways forseeable. Anger has been building for some time across the Middle East over the siege of Aleppo, and Russia has quite clearly put itself at the forefront of supporting the Assad regime in crushing the rebellion. Such action always has consequences, especially when it is accompanied by a daily digest of civilian misery. Armed groups fighting on the ground in Syria – including the former Jabhat al-Nusra, whose slogan the Turkish assassin is reported to have shouted – they have shown they have the ability to launch asymmetric attacks behind the front lines too.
Even if the attacker only proves to have limited connections to such groups, it is not surprising that the anger stirred up by the Syrian war, only exacerbated by the apparent inability of anyone to protect its civilian population, would boil over into a lone attack. The Russian Ambassador in Turkey is, unfortunately, an obvious and relatively unfortunately soft target for such people to strike.
The full details of what has gone on in Germany and Zurich, meanwhile, are uncertain at the time of writing. What appears to be latest vehicle attack on a crowd of civilians – this time in Berlin – does not as yet have any clear attribution. But it comes after a history of such incidents, both brutally murderous like the incident in Nice in July 2016 and a series prior that were seen in the United States and in France around Christmas 2014. The idea of using a vehicle is one that has been championed by both Isil and al Qaeda (though it was rejected by the group’s leader Osama bin Laden as mass murder rather than considered terrorism); its simple horror makes it appealing. The shooting at the mosque also remains without attribution, though the choice of target suggests some grander motive than mere murder.
Finally comes a quieter but perhaps just as significant event. The sentencing of Glendon Scott Crawford of Galway, New York to 30 years’ incarceration for plotting to use a radiological device against Muslims in America shows how extreme right-wing ideologies are also growing in strength. His case is novel because he is the first to be convicted of “attempting to acquire and use a radiological dispersal device.” Yet his desire to strike minorities and the government, and claim some connection with the Ku Klux Klan, all have their roots far back in America’s history. It feels all too predictable in the wake of the hatred being stoked across the world today.
Yet what can be concluded from this roster of misery? That no place is safe – from art galleries to Christmas markets to places of worship, all are now targets for those eager to kill in the name of a cause. The reach of extremist ideologies and causes is a reflection of the intensely globalized world which we inhabit. And while distance has been shortened and international connections tightened, this brings troubles from afar increasingly into our homes and daily lives, either through news or terrorist action.
It is not clear that this new threat is more dangerous than previous ones, rather than just noisier. Some calculations show that terrorist casualties in the West are lower since the 1960s and 1970s, but we don’t know whether this means the threat is decreasing, that we are counting it differently, or that security forces have become more adept at preventing incidents. But the situation certainly appears more acute, and when dealing with a phenomenon like terrorism – for which the perception of menace and fear is essential – this can be enough.
Undoubtedly this will not be last brutal day in our time. Terrorist groups and those using terrorist methodologies to advance personal anger will continue to strike, each time more brutally, to get attention for their cause. The key question is how society responds. To respond too hard may damage the fabric of a free society, but to respond inadequately will let more people die and perhaps tear it apart entirely. This is a dilemma with no clear answer – but it is increasingly the dominant question of our time.
Raffaello Pantucci is director of international security studies at the defence think tank Rusi
Raffaello Pantucci 