Is it possible to predict where terrorists will strike next?

Aug 30, 2017

There are several ways analysts try to gaze into the future

By Michael Katungi

Analysts and intelligence officials periodically get together to anticipate what terrorists might or will do tomorrow.

Terrorists threaten mass destruction with nuclear weapons or global pandemics with design pathogens.

Will cities be contaminated with dirty bombs? Will tech savvy terrorists remotely sabotage power grids or other vital infrastructure via the internet?

Are terrorists capable of triggering electromagnetic pulses that fry electronics, reducing modern technology-dependent society to a mad max movie?

Will they shoot down airlines with hand-held missiles or bring them down with miniaturised bombs concealed in laptops or perhaps surgically implanted?

Will they attack crowds in stadiums with drones carrying grenades, or anthrax or merely white powder to provoke deadly panic and stampede?

Or might there be a mass uprising of individual fanatics ramming trucks into pedestrians, attacking diners with machetes and carrying out primitive, but nearly impossible-to-prevent attacks?

The scenarios are endless and unnerving. All the ones above have been publically discussed and if analysts can think about them, one presumes so can terrorists who fill the internet with their ambitious fantasies.

Some of these are pretensions of omnipotence that their authors feel good about, some support terrorists' campaigns to promote fear.

There are several ways analysts try to gaze into the future. One is to look at trends in terrorism itself and see where they might strike us. Extra policing does not always work.

According to data from the Global Terrorism Database, from 1970 to 2001, fatalities in the worst attacks increased by an order of magnitude every 10 to 15 years, culminating in the 9/11 attacks in which thousands died.

It was widely presumed immediately after 9/11 that terrorists would continue to escalate by orders of magnitude, pushing the analysis towards scenarios involving tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of fatalities!

Death on this scale could be achieved with the use of biological or nuclear weapons, which became a presumption.

A second way to look at the future is to try to forecast the state of world affairs and examine how this ought to affect the trajectory of terrorism.

A third approach is to look at how terrorists might exploit new technologies coming online.

Years ago, we worried about surface-to-air missiles, which terrorists have rarely used, but we missed the internet.

Then in its infancy, the internet was to have a profound impact on terrorists' communications, recruiting and strategy, underscoring that terrorism is mainly about manipulating perceptions. Analysts are currently looking at terrorists using drones and exploiting the internet.

A fourth approach is to try to think as terrorists and conjure up scenarios of future attacks. Any reviews of what we might have forecast about the future trajectory of terrorism in the past should be humbling.

Fifty years ago, who knew that the following decades would see the dramatic rise of terrorism in the contemporary form?

One of the major events was the1967 Six-Day-War, which would lead to Israeli occupation of the West Bank, contributing to the rise of Palestinian terrorism.

Who in 1977 forecast the emergence of Islamic extremism in the form of the Iranian revolution, the rise of Iranian-supported Shia extremism in Lebanon and the escalation of terrorist violence with massive vehicle bombs and suicide attacks becoming routine?

The Middle East would remain a major theatre of concern for the US during the decades and would have to increasingly resort to military force to retaliate for attacks on US marines in Lebanon, apprehend terrorist attackers escaping from Egypt and deter further Libyan support for terrorist attacks that had cost American lives.

Hardly any analysts in 1987 foresaw the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989, which would fundamentally change the world's political environment and significantly affect the course of terrorism.

And in 2007, who foresaw the uprisings that would sweep across the Arab world in 2011, destroying governments, creating new opportunities for jihadists and leading to Syria's civil war and the rise of ISIS.

In 1997, al-Qaeda had declared war on the US, but 1998 would see the dramatic escalation of that campaign, culminating in the 9/11 attacks that would lead to the global war on terror - a massive worldwide effort that continues to this day.

So what can we say in 2017?

Terrorism has become a mode of conflict - it will persist. But the worldwide growth in the volume of terrorism is misleading. It reflects the intention of the category of terrorism, better reporting worldwide and how routine employment of terrorist attacks in irregular conflicts.

Although terrorism is a global phenomenon, outside of conflicting zones, where terrorist campaigns comprise merely one aspect of ongoing wars, terrorist attack occurs only occasionally.

In 2015, more than 55% of all attacks took place in Iraq, Afghanistan, Nigeria, Syria and Pakistan

Terrorism remains concentrated in the Middle East, bordering on Africa and western Asia. Current conflicts in these areas are likely to persist and will remain the major source of the terrorism threat. Our worst fears have not been realised. Terrorists have seldom used chemical or biological weapons and then not very effectively.

There has been one incident of radiological terrorism, carried out as a publicity stunt and no nuclear weapons. Nonetheless, the lure of doom continues, with many arguing that it is not if, but when terrorists will employ such weapons.

The terrorists' arsenal has changed very little. Bombs still comprise ¾ of terrorists' attacks. Some bombs are becoming more sophisticated. Terrorist attacks still involve automatic or semi-automatic weapons, not different from half a century ago. Tactical innovations include suicide bombings, multiple suicide bombings, increasingly random attacks or soft targets and the use of vehicles in some attacks. This reflects the use of vehicles in ramming attacks.

This reflects the enlistment of remote recruits with limited capabilities, which is itself a consequence of social media.

Terrorism appears to have escalated horizontally rather than vertically. Instead of weapons of mass destruction, there has been proliferation of low level attacks-frustrating, but certainly preferable. The trick will be to use what is known about terrorism now to predict and prevent new attacks.         

Writer works with the African Union Commission

(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});