hree months now after the Boston Marathon bombings and the manhunt that gripped a nation, Americans are still struggling to come to terms with the motives and the meaning behind the event. Why did the Tsarnev brothers, seemingly of their own accord, decide to commit the act in the first place? Is this sort of attack truly here to stay, as former lieutenant general Michael Barbero told USA Today?
According to Jeffrey Simon in his latest book, Lone Wolf Terrorism: Understanding the Growing Threat, not only has the age of lone wolf terror already been here since the anarchist movements of the late 1800s, it is a movement coming into its own now as the internet democratizes access to information—from speeches by radicalists from around the world to instructions on how to build bombs from kitchen appliances.
Take, for example, Roshanara Choudhry, the oldest daughter of unemployed British and Bangladeshi parents and an exemplary student at King’s College in London. Just before she was to graduate with a first-class degree, she dropped out of school, and on May 14, 2010, stabbed MP Stephen Timms twice in the stomach, attempting to murder him for being one of the most consistent supporters for the war in Iraq. Authorities searched her home and computer, but found no connections to Islamic extremist groups; she had not attended any meetings, and did not even attend a mosque, preferring instead to pray at home. What then had driven her to turn to radical Islam?
Between November 2009 and May 2010, Choudhry downloaded and listened to more than 100 sermons by Anwar al-Awlaki, the spiritual leader of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and a man Choudhry had never once communicated with. She became caught up in al-Awlaki’s rhetoric and style, and eventually became convinced that she should show no mercy to a man who had shown no mercy to thousands of Iraqis. But to those around her, Choudhry was a sweet girl with a promising future. Like most lone wolf terrorists, she was able to fly under the radar by intentionally keeping her radicalization secret.
Such is the trouble with all lone wolves, and this is the reason why preventing such acts of terror is one of the greatest challenges in public safety. Anders Behring Breivik did not reveal his intentions until he posted his book-length manifesto online just hours before he bombed a government building and massacred 69 teenagers. The shooting attacks by Jared Lee Loughner in Arizona, by James Eagan Holmes in Colorado, and by Adam Lanza in Sandy Hook, Connecticut were all acts of lone wolf terror, and all flew under the radar of authorities until it was too late. All used information or forums online during their radicalization period and to plan their attacks.
As the internet continues to increase connectedness across the globe, reaching more and more people, lone wolf terrorism will become a more pressing problem. Simon, a former RAND Corporation analyst and current president of Political Risk Assessment Company, spends the last two chapters of his book talking about what lessons we can take from over a century of attacks by lone wolves, and how we can use these lessons to prevent more attacks.
Of all the types of terror attacks, we have the fewest resources for dealing with lone wolves—the most creative and dangerous of terrorists. However, as the internet has become a resource for lone wolves, so too can it be a resource for tracking them. Making connections and communicating with others is a basic human need, and for lone wolves, this can be their undoing. The Unabomber was caught when his brother recognized Theodore Kacznski’s writing style in the manifesto published by The Washington Post. Colleen LaRose—under the assumed moniker of “Jihad Jane”—used social media to repeatedly express her desires to become a martyr through jihad, and eventually was traced and caught through her online activity. Tamerlan Tsarnev reportedly created a YouTube list of videos dedicated to extolling the actions of Islamist terrorists, and may have been exposed through his online activity if he had delayed his Marathon attack.
The trouble with tracking down lone wolves over the internet, as Simon rightly points out, is “how to discover the lone wolves who do not frequent extremist chat rooms, yet are still using the internet to advance their plans…without violating law-abiding individuals’ civil liberties.” As the public becomes more educated about their privacy and how their information is used, and as Congress makes clumsy blunders in attempting to address such issues (through SOPA, PIPA, CISPA, or whatever the alphabet soup du jour is), a serious and well-researched conversation about how to balance freedom of speech with hunting down criminals must take place.
In his well-researched and informative book, Jeffrey Simon has taken the first steps to spark this conversation.
This article was originally published in the Diplomatic Courier's July/August 2013 print edition.
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Lone Wolf Terrorism: Understanding the Growing Threat
August 3, 2013
T
hree months now after the Boston Marathon bombings and the manhunt that gripped a nation, Americans are still struggling to come to terms with the motives and the meaning behind the event. Why did the Tsarnev brothers, seemingly of their own accord, decide to commit the act in the first place? Is this sort of attack truly here to stay, as former lieutenant general Michael Barbero told USA Today?
According to Jeffrey Simon in his latest book, Lone Wolf Terrorism: Understanding the Growing Threat, not only has the age of lone wolf terror already been here since the anarchist movements of the late 1800s, it is a movement coming into its own now as the internet democratizes access to information—from speeches by radicalists from around the world to instructions on how to build bombs from kitchen appliances.
Take, for example, Roshanara Choudhry, the oldest daughter of unemployed British and Bangladeshi parents and an exemplary student at King’s College in London. Just before she was to graduate with a first-class degree, she dropped out of school, and on May 14, 2010, stabbed MP Stephen Timms twice in the stomach, attempting to murder him for being one of the most consistent supporters for the war in Iraq. Authorities searched her home and computer, but found no connections to Islamic extremist groups; she had not attended any meetings, and did not even attend a mosque, preferring instead to pray at home. What then had driven her to turn to radical Islam?
Between November 2009 and May 2010, Choudhry downloaded and listened to more than 100 sermons by Anwar al-Awlaki, the spiritual leader of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and a man Choudhry had never once communicated with. She became caught up in al-Awlaki’s rhetoric and style, and eventually became convinced that she should show no mercy to a man who had shown no mercy to thousands of Iraqis. But to those around her, Choudhry was a sweet girl with a promising future. Like most lone wolf terrorists, she was able to fly under the radar by intentionally keeping her radicalization secret.
Such is the trouble with all lone wolves, and this is the reason why preventing such acts of terror is one of the greatest challenges in public safety. Anders Behring Breivik did not reveal his intentions until he posted his book-length manifesto online just hours before he bombed a government building and massacred 69 teenagers. The shooting attacks by Jared Lee Loughner in Arizona, by James Eagan Holmes in Colorado, and by Adam Lanza in Sandy Hook, Connecticut were all acts of lone wolf terror, and all flew under the radar of authorities until it was too late. All used information or forums online during their radicalization period and to plan their attacks.
As the internet continues to increase connectedness across the globe, reaching more and more people, lone wolf terrorism will become a more pressing problem. Simon, a former RAND Corporation analyst and current president of Political Risk Assessment Company, spends the last two chapters of his book talking about what lessons we can take from over a century of attacks by lone wolves, and how we can use these lessons to prevent more attacks.
Of all the types of terror attacks, we have the fewest resources for dealing with lone wolves—the most creative and dangerous of terrorists. However, as the internet has become a resource for lone wolves, so too can it be a resource for tracking them. Making connections and communicating with others is a basic human need, and for lone wolves, this can be their undoing. The Unabomber was caught when his brother recognized Theodore Kacznski’s writing style in the manifesto published by The Washington Post. Colleen LaRose—under the assumed moniker of “Jihad Jane”—used social media to repeatedly express her desires to become a martyr through jihad, and eventually was traced and caught through her online activity. Tamerlan Tsarnev reportedly created a YouTube list of videos dedicated to extolling the actions of Islamist terrorists, and may have been exposed through his online activity if he had delayed his Marathon attack.
The trouble with tracking down lone wolves over the internet, as Simon rightly points out, is “how to discover the lone wolves who do not frequent extremist chat rooms, yet are still using the internet to advance their plans…without violating law-abiding individuals’ civil liberties.” As the public becomes more educated about their privacy and how their information is used, and as Congress makes clumsy blunders in attempting to address such issues (through SOPA, PIPA, CISPA, or whatever the alphabet soup du jour is), a serious and well-researched conversation about how to balance freedom of speech with hunting down criminals must take place.
In his well-researched and informative book, Jeffrey Simon has taken the first steps to spark this conversation.
This article was originally published in the Diplomatic Courier's July/August 2013 print edition.
