By Gerald Pillai and R.Paneir Selvam
The Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris which took place in
January of 2015 placed France under siege for three days. The attacks were
carried out by the Islamic fundamentalist group branding themselves as the
Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). It was regarded as the vilest
paroxysm of terrorism on French soil since the Algerian War and was promptly labelled
as France’s 9/11. AQAP’s magazine ‘Inspire’ had explicitly
listed Charlie Hebdo and its editor in chief as targets. There
were documented reports on the brothers who had visited Yemen, a breeding
ground for terrorists highlighted by National Security Agency (NSA) and Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA). The inaction of relevant agencies to monitor and
detain them had led to the siege.
In November that same year, a series of coordinated terrorist
attacks occurred in Paris, where suicide bombers and gunmen killed and
seriously injured some 500 people, eclipsing the brutalities of Charlie
Hebdo.
Following the aftermath of these attacks, intensified worries
about the failure of French security and intelligence agencies surfaced when
reports surfaced indicating that the French and US intelligence services had
these terrorists on their radar but hadn’t acted to intercept their planning.
The attackers knew each other, were highly coordinated, were able to acquire
weapons and carry out training. They were also known to each other as was made
evident following the group’s declaration in the aftermath.
President Francois Hollande had reiterated the country’s motto
following the attacks, Liberté,
égalité, fraternité (‘liberty, equality, fraternity’). While
those terrorists, for the most part, appeared French, their backgrounds and
motivations were not. These ‘locals’ from the fringe corners of French society
had in fact been radicalised. This clearly exposed their disconnect from
Western values. The core values espoused by France as a nation had been
rejected.
Samuel Huntington’s highly controversial 1993 essay ‘The Clash of Civilisations?’ considers
how Arab and Islamic cultures are incompatible with Western liberal ideals,
such as pluralism, individualism and democracy. He expressed that the most
important conflicts of the future will occur along the cultural fault lines
separating civilizations from one another. An incendiary conjecture but it
would be remiss not to consider that correlation in France as the continued
risk of alienated youth being susceptible to radicalisation makes it vulnerable
to future attacks.
Mitigation, however, does not rest on assigning fault based on a
community’s religion or belief system, more so in a civilised society. While
granting these marginalised groups an abode which upholds the very best ideals
of Western culture, the French government’s responsibility to its nation in
ensuring the values of these newcomers mesh with theirs may have fallen short
of its necessary diligence. How were these individuals off the intelligence
services radar of France and the United States?
France, compared to its European community has objectively been
more aggressive in its surveillance of Islamists. It has shown a willingness to
seize her own citizens’ passports to prevent them from departing to Syria and
Iraq as a countermeasure in tackling jihadist movements. That notwithstanding,
there has been an escalation in the number of jihadists who travelled to Syria
and Iraq exposing the number of potential sympathisers making tracking them an
even more uphill task including categorising their threat levels based on
information at hand. The resources available do not always allow every suspect
to be monitored. This unfortunate gap is only realised after the fact and was
the reason why the Kouachi brothers were tagged as less threatening to
national security.
These gaps were also seen when American born cleric, Anwar
Al-Awlaki who headed the external operations and recruitment of European
terrorists for AQAP had financed and trained Said Kouachi during his trip to
Yemen in 2011. The French-born Kouachi brothers were also already on US no-fly
lists. This should have caused apprehension from the security and intelligence
agencies in France and the US. The role Djamel Beghal, an established recruiter
for Al-Qaeda in Europe played in the radicalisation and subsequent mentoring of
the Charlie Hebdo attackers from time spent together in prison in 2005
was similarly not prioritised by the intelligence community.
The list of local born and bred terrorists, known to authorities,
is extensive but is by no means unique to France. In 2017 alone, the UK saw
terrorists target Westminster, Manchester, London Bridge, Finsbury Park,
and Parson’s Green. Europol confirmed that most of the attackers in 2017 were home-grown and radicalised
without joining ISIS abroad. These terrorists, bred from sleeper cells, coupled
with the failures in detection all compound the challenges in curbing
terrorism.
For commentators like British journalist Robert Fisk, the argument
that sectarian war in the Middle East and the extremist Sunni groups funded by
Saudi Arabia, serves as a compelling rationale for the unprecedented rise in
global Islamic fundamentalism. It was due to the power vacuum created after the
toppling of Saddam Hussein by the West which precipitated the rise of ISIS in
Syria, leveraging on Sunni anger against the Shiites leading to a caliphate
being declared. This predicament was successfully leveraged by ISIS and
its various splinters, hate preachers and sympathisers to engage the global
multitude of disenfranchised and marginalised individuals, with social media
only accelerating the process.
But leaders such as Donald Trump have only aided in keeping the
vicious cycle of ‘Us vs. Them’ perpetuating. His declaration of Jerusalem as
Israel’s capital has done nothing to quell the raging discontent felt by many
and has certainly fuelled fundamental emotions. His sustained discriminatory
narrative, from travel restrictions to Muslim countries to his overt support of
right-wing factions, factions which enabled his election success in the first
place, makes him a potent source of inspiration for another wave of terrorists
–the right-wing kind.
These fascists have long practiced racism, xenophobia and outright
brutality in Europe. In recent times they have been preying on many faultless
refugees and immigrants fleeing war-torn areas. The New York Times recently
published that in the US, ‘ The number of hate groups rose for the
fourth year in a row in 2018, pushed to a record high by a toxic combination of
political polarisation, anti-immigrant sentiment and technologies that help
spread propaganda online…’. The number of hate groups is estimated to be
over a thousand and correlates with an increase in hate crimes.
Is a rise in right-wing violence linked to rhetoric caused by
their leader too farfetched? It certainly does not appear so.
A revived display of right-wing terrorism was seen executed on a
level of wickedness previously unimaginable, in Christchurch, New Zealand only
a few weeks ago. The attacker, a white male in his 20’s Brenton Tarrant, developed his objectives and gathered his arsenal
undetected. In part of this his
manifesto, he praised Mr. Trump as a ‘symbol of
renewed white identity and common purpose’. He also expressed his motives, a
seeming mockery of Samuel Huntington’s deeper understanding, of polarising the people in the United States and eventually
a fracturing of the US along cultural and racial lines. As much as
intelligence agencies have been struggling to keep tabs on every terrorist, the
root cause in every instance of terrorist attacks stems from hate. Leaders in a
civilised democratic world must understand this.
New Zealand’s Jacinda Ardern, amid a clear failure of their
intelligence agencies, stood out as a beacon of how important the right
‘top-down’ narrative is. In a time of absolute confusion and chaos following the attacks, she
united a nation. Although these are still early days, any knee jerk retaliation
from minority groups was averted by the inclusive manner in which she and her
administration dealt with the situation. She made people feel safe and
protected while condemning the acts in no uncertain terms.
The role played by leaders is paramount in subduing the rise of
all forms of terrorism. When such atrocities are carried out and innocent lives
perish, there is no ‘Us vs. Them’. There are no far-right extremists,
neo-Nazis, white supremacists or Salafi-Jihadists. The acts carried out by them
are all acts of terrorism. Terrorism is a tactic, not reliant on religion, race
or political ideologies and has been misused by motivated groups to attain an
objective.
It is a wonder if Malaysia’s former Prime Minister, Datuk Seri
Najib Razak, when he called for his party to emulate ISIL in overcoming its
challenges in 2014, served only to create uneasiness amongst Malaysians outside
his party especially at a time of growing terrorist threats in Malaysia and the
region.
In 2014, Ahmad Tarmimi Maliki held the ‘distinction’ of becoming
the first Malaysian suicide bomber from ISIS killing 25 Iraqi soldiers in
al-Anbar. Again in 2014, a second suicide bomber identified as Ahmad Affendi
Abdul Manaff drove a truck filled with explosives into a military installation
in Homs, Syria killing some 50 of Syrian army soldiers.
In that same year, ISIS recruiters had targeted suitable
Malaysians, as was discovered by the arrests of a senior government official, a
trainer at the now defunct National Services Training Programme, two civil
servants and two members of the security forces. Impressionable youth as young
as 14 years old, housewives and female undergraduates were also profiled for
selection. This is an unprecedented development for Malaysia’s security and
intelligence forces. The pledges of commitment to IS by regional terror groups
like the Abu Sayyaf, Jemaah Ansharut Tauhid (JAT) and Darul Islam Sabah further
congeal the threat.
With the recent fall of ISIS’ capital, scores of Malaysians who have joined ISIS in Syria are
now allowed to return, provided they comply with checks from enforcement and
complete a deradicalisation programme. Yazid Sufat, another highly specialised
Malaysian terrorist is a grim reminder of how ineffective such deradicalisation
programmes can be especially when the radical mindset has been thoroughly
internalised. When there is an understanding of the triggers, only then
can countermeasures be deployed.
The failures encountered in other countries in curbing terrorism
must be learned from. Malaysia’s leaders and enforcement must be cognisant of
the multitude of tipping points for susceptible followers, irrespective of
which side of the political divide they reside.
The narrative by leaders must first be made clear. In a
multi-racial/religious society, the fault lines between the various groups must
never be leveraged by self-serving politicians. If allowed to fester, it only
sows seeds of suspicion among people and lays fertile ground for radical
manipulators. An understanding of the most vulnerable groups targeted by terror
groups and radical teachers must be made a priority. The role of educators,
employers and parents could not be more critical at this juncture in time.
Repeatedly, the ease and success of social media being used as a tool for
recruiting and radicalising vulnerable groups has been witnessed. The
government should make a real effort to counter these messages with a new and
loud Malaysia centric narrative by utilising the modes of media under its
control.
With these efforts sitting on a foundation of effective legislation,
sane leadership, active monitoring and cooperation with various intelligence
and security agencies worldwide, Malaysia may succeed in curbing the
rising wave of terrorism.
(c) Copyright Reserved with authors. 2019
10.04.2019
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