A Fractured Continent

The recent terrorist attacks in France and Belgium have unveiled the deep concern in Europe regarding Christian-Muslim relations. Haim Tomer, formerly a senior officer of the Mossad, about the global war against Islamist terrorism that threatens the unity of the continent and the security of its inhabitants

A Fractured Continent

Security forces in Brussels (Photo: AP)

Europe is puzzled, concerned and possibly even scared. The recent attacks at the Metro station and the passenger terminal at Brussels airport, just days after the arrest of the person regarded as the "brains" behind the triple attack in Paris (November 2015), struck the consciousness of the continent's inhabitants and positioned them face-to-face with a highly acute question: will they henceforth become the random targets of terrorism as a matter of routine?

Throughout the continent, intensive discussions are under way at the government official level, but at the same time, academic conferences accessible to the public are being conducted, which reflect the deep concern about Christian-Muslim relations in most of the countries throughout the continent, where 51 to 53 million Muslims currently live.

To answer this question, it is necessary to thoroughly understand the background and operating environment of the recent terrorist attacks in the French-Belgian territories and attempt – to the maximum extent possible – to estimate the expected countermeasures the European authorities are likely to initiate. It is abundantly clear that any estimate regarding the probability of additional terrorist attacks should be based on the combined weighting of the terrorists' intentions on the one hand and the expected countermeasures on the other hand. This analysis refers to three primary points that possess the potential of affecting this estimate.

War on Two Fronts

Europe currently deals with two organizations that possess extensive experience and have an on-going interest in international terrorism. On the one hand – the veteran al-Qaeda organization, which appears to have in some way abandoned the international terrorism arena and now prefers to focus on various theaters of operations such as the Arabian Peninsula and North Africa. On the other hand – ISIS, which, over the last two years has emerged as the primary contractor of Islamist terrorism in the various theaters of operations.

At this point it should be stressed that both al-Qaeda and ISIS were smart enough to develop or adopt, fairly quickly, the "local Jihad" concept, namely – using local infrastructures that have good access to the intended attack sites, and activate them or alternately help them stage the attacks in their respective countries. The "outsourcing" phenomenon and the question of the linkage to the actual staging of the terrorist attack – be it in Brussels by a local cell or in Western Africa by Boko Haram – has not been resolved. Apparently, al-Qaeda was involved in the planning and command aspects more intensively than was reflected from the findings of some of the recent attacks by ISIS.

Assuming this is correct, two insights become apparent: firstly – terrorist attacks initiated and executed locally are more complex to uncover in advance, as they do not involve "reports to the rear" and authorizations from international terrorism command centers, which are closely monitored. Secondly – local infrastructures present a complex challenge to the counterintelligence services, as their members are familiar with their intended theater of operations and are not required to perform complex preparatory processes with regard to the operational aspect.

Two further complexities make this challenge even more difficult: the government systems in the West and their ruling concepts, along with the issue of the profound operational awareness, among some of the terrorists, of the methods of operation of the local counterintelligence agencies and the extensive operational experience they had gained in ISIS' theaters of operations in Syria and Iraq and al-Qaeda's operations in Yemen.

Colliding Values

The terrorist attacks in the heart of Europe have stressed, more than ever before, the conflict between the value and sanctity of human life and the value of human liberty in its nearly-sacred western sense. A successful effort to cope with terrorism whose objective is not intelligence-oriented but preventive, namely – obtaining information that would make it possible to stop the terrorists or neutralize their intentions in due time, necessitates deep penetration into the terrorist cells either by live agents and electronic intelligence or by preliminary questioning of suspects who surface in the context of the basic coverage maintained by every security service, wherever it may operate.

It should be pointed out that the security authorities in Europe are fully aware of Islamist terrorism and require no preaching regarding the seriousness of the problem and the literally explosive potential it possesses. The issue is not awareness and not even the legislation and regulation processes that are already making progress in some European countries. The problem is found in the inner truth according to which the politicians, security chiefs and even the individual policemen and operations specialists actually operate. The European concept maintains, justly, that every effort should be made to allow Muslim citizens to assimilate into the social-political fabric of the continent. Large-scale intrusive operations against elements of the Muslim immigrant population and the development of a realistic basic coverage capability are essentially contradictive to this concept. Today, it is far-fetched to assume that 'heavyweight' terrorists will betray their intentions over cellular communication and/or in their Internet traffic, so even if the electronic media produce some interesting findings regarding some suspect or other, and even if some John Doe should surface as an interesting subject in the reports of the live sources employed by the counterintelligence service, additional intrusive resources, such as close monitoring of the suspect's movements and assets, will still be required, as well as the summoning of the suspect and/or his close acquaintances for preliminary questioning. Apparently, this is where the primary problem regarding the current European counterterrorism concept is to be found: the willingness to apply the tool of preliminary questioning in a manner that would make it possible to close the intelligence circuit. Additionally, this tool may constitute a significant element in deterring the next local Jihad infrastructures.

Even today, after the terrorist attacks in Paris and Brussels, many still doubt whether Europe actually intends to implement this concept, as it totally contradicts the strategy of allowing the Muslim immigrant population to assimilate socially. Some people even maintain, implicitly – as voiced at the same conferences – that in a long-term strategic perspective, it will be "worth" Europe's while to sustain a major terrorist attack every year (which will "still result in a smaller number of casualties than the annual average toll of road accidents") rather than resorting to a counterterrorism policy that could lead the entire Muslim immigrant population to adopt an extremely radical stand and worsen the sense of alienation some of them experience, even after two generations of living in Europe. Regarding the assimilation of a strategic change, it should be noted that between 1968 and 1982, the Palestinian terrorist organizations (had staged dozens of severe terrorist attacks on European soil, mainly against civil aviation targets (the aircraft and offices of El-Al Israel Airlines and those of American and European airlines), up to a point where they actually transformed the entire aviation culture, worldwide. Nevertheless, the European authorities avoided acting decisively in order to effectively counter or prevent those attacks.

The 'first cousin' of this issue is the issue of European Muslims ("Mujahidin") who depart to the theaters of operations of ISIS and al-Qaeda and return after an absence of months or more, intoxicated and high on their sense of power on the one hand and on the solidarity infused into them overseas on the other hand.

Many experts maintain that nine out of ten potential attackers in Europe will come out of the ranks of those Mujahidin. At the very least, they will produce the command and initiative for future terrorist attacks. Over here, the 'playground' seems to be smaller, as there are a few thousand Mujahidin in the entire continent and hundreds or a few thousand in each and every country.

Ostensibly, this group should have been subjected to a basic coverage program as far back as after the first attack against the Jewish museum in Brussels (May 2014), and most definitely after the Charlie Hebdo shooting and the attack at Hyper Kasher in Paris (January 2015). In this case, too, the problem is not awareness or knowledge, but the willingness to apply an integrated set of tools that would enable the authorities to tag the risk potential of those Mujahidin. However, this "simple tagging" contradicts the operational concept that is biased toward human liberty/human rights. Apparently, the authorities could have earmarked anyone who is a European citizen and who departed for Turkey (through which most of those Mujahidin pass into Syria), or for Yemen or for Iraq for a period of more than three months, upon his return to the border crossing through which he chose to reenter the "Schengen Countries". It would have been even easier to earmark only returning Muslims, especially if it were possible to have them interrogated at the border crossing for about thirty minutes. Such relatively simple questions as "What have you been doing in Turkey for nine months" could have given the interrogators an idea as to the true character of the person facing them. However, as stated previously, such activities are contradictory to the spirit of "Liberté" (Liberty – one of the three fundamental principles of the French Revolution: Liberty, Equality & Fraternity), so it is doubtful whether the Europeans actually intend to implement them. If the countries of Europe could establish a true cooperative alliance with the Turkish government and security services regarding persons crossing the Turkish border into Syria, this would significantly improve their counterintelligence/counterterrorism capabilities.

The Objective: Putting together a Jigsaw Puzzle

Western countries currently employ state-of-the-art intelligence gathering resources that, given the appropriate regulation, enable a relatively high level of remote physical monitoring of subjects and understanding their daily routine patterns. Using or failing to use these resources is a matter of decision, which derives, naturally, from the willingness of the authorities to intrude on individual privacy – a matter we have addressed at length. The problem for which no technological solution has been provided yet, which is the very aspect that should bring about the change in coping with terrorism in the present era, is the "missing piece" issue. Namely – how to build an information processing machine that would significantly improve the ability of the western intelligence services to view the bits of information they obtain within the appropriate intelligence context. It should be noted that a report regarding the arrival of the Kouachi brothers from Algeria to France was delivered to the security services a few days before they staged their attack in Paris. In any case, it is obvious that most western countries have been investing the best part of their funds and technological efforts in sophisticated, costly intelligence-gathering systems. Apparently, those systems – assuming they are being employed – are not sufficient in the present era.

At this time it seems that it would be more appropriate to invest in Big Data fusion systems, in voice recognition and mainly in facial recognition systems that should be installed at border crossing points, in systems that generate automatic intelligence alerts according to predetermined indicators, and generally strengthen the terrorism analysis capabilities in all of the countries facing this threat. By just monitoring terrorism, there is no chance that a single "golden nugget" will enable early warning and prevention. The terrorism monitoring effort should consist of a process of putting together a jigsaw puzzle, and the resulting picture should be used to track down the missing link at which highly focused intelligence gathering efforts should be directed.

The bottom line – should the various governments of Europe and the European Union as a whole decide to adopt a different combat doctrine, and the preliminary questioning tool in particular, while at the same time developing and employing cutting-edge information processing systems, their chances of countering terrorist attacks will improve. Will this actually take place within the foreseeable future, in view of the contradiction between this approach and the approach that regards human liberty as sacred, even at a cost to human life? Only time will tell. 

 

Haim Tomer is a former senior officer of the Mossad, where he headed two primary divisions in the last few years prior to his retirement in January 2014.