Telosaes.it

“An act becomes a terrorist act not because of its effects, but for the reasons that inspired it. This statement could be legally incorrect, but it’s true politically and socially, because the effects of those attacks are both political and social since they impact on the everyday lives of those communities”.

Telos: “After the attacks in Paris we are all at risk and we have to learn to live with this situation. We have to accept uncertainty, liquidity, the fact that we don’t know how safe we are”. These were your words in November 2015: what has happened since then?

Marco Lombardi: So many things have happened since 2015, but all of them confirmed our expectations that 2016 was going to be even more problematic, and that the difficulties in 2017 would follow suit. Daesh’s propaganda asking people not to leave to fight abroad, but rather stay and bring terror into their own country, has been successful. Above all, it has succeeded in making the conflict more “middle Eastern”, teaching people to use everyday weapons against the infidels: a knife, a car, a truck, fire and, in the near future, drones.
So everything has become even more uncertain and, hence, unpredictable. Just think back to the second half of the month of March 2017: on the 17^th in Paris a man shouting “Allah Akbar” slit the throats of his brother and father; on the 18^th in Orly, Ziyed Ben Belgacem attacked the airport, wrestled a gun from policeman, and shouted: “I am here to die in the name of Allah”; on the 22^nd in Westminster, Khalid Masood used a car and a knife to attack Parliament; on the 23^rd in Antwerp a madman called Mohamed tried to run down pedestrians in a shopping street and was arrested; on April 3, in Saint Petersburg, the subway was attacked.
Those eighteen very intense days, unlike almost none other in the past, were characterised by violence always perpetrated with a reference to Islamic terrorism: either an explicit act for which the terrorist agency (Amaq) claimed responsibility, or a person shouting the name of Allah, a modus operandi successfully promoted by Daesh, or a person with a past as a radical and fighter. Five attacks in eighteen days, one single source of inspiration, and a host of different reasons behind their implementation. However, I think it’s clear that an act becomes a terrorist act not because of its effects, but for the reasons that inspired it.
This could be legally incorrect, but it’s true politically and socially, because the effects of each of those five attacks were both political and social; they impacted on the everyday lives of those communities and created an institutional problem about how to control the situation, including internationally. “Terrorism” has become the manifest expression of an ideological, religious and nationalist belief, as well as of anger, madness and distress. And anything else that is subjective, reinforced by a suitable media strategy, and requires violent implementation. In practice, terrorism is a diffuse form of conflict; terrorist organisations exploit its effects, promote this subjective form of conflict and use individuals to implement it. The result is a generalised inability to predict these attacks and a widespread increase in uncertainty.

If you mention ISIS today very few people will ask: ‘What’s that?’ Does the Caliphate have a communication plan?

The Caliphate was created to be “public” and has always “publicly” declared its goals and actions, so much so that it appears mimetic. Even before it was founded, it declared its objective: to found a Caliphate and be recognised as a State, first by the global Muslim community, and then by the international community. Its objective was manifest in the way it changed its name: ISI when it was created in Iraq (Islamic State of Iraq), ISIL or ISIS when it included Syria and the Levant, incorporating the mythical and symbolic references of the Sham into its name (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or Sham or even Levant); finally IS, simple and effectively Islamic State, when every geographical reference was superfluous because the Caliphate had become a supranational entity. Interest in its name is due not only to its geopolitical implications, but also because it is explicitly programmatic since the Islamists’ objective is now part of its name: “State”. The Daesh’s skilfully elaborated communication plan originates in the media interpretation of the Hybrid War.

You have studied international terrorism, especially Jihadist terrorism, for many years. What is the meaning of recruitment through radicalisation?

Daesh has attracted the highest number of international fighters since the Spanish War: the real issue is its ability to attract international Jihadists, foreign fighters who boost their ranks, but also people who can somehow support the Islamic State, including families. The results achieved by IS are certainly very appealing for the global jihad: the myth of a Caliphate is an extremely powerful and magnetic tool to attract people and promote radicalisation.
Today the Caliphate’s systematic proselytism towards radical Islamic groups has produced a widespread, scattered group of over forty Daesh affiliates in twenty-one countries. Some of these affiliates acknowledge the Daesh’s authority; others support it as sympathisers after declaring they belong to it. There are now many, but may I say, not very interesting channels for radicalisation, because all the reasons for affiliation (religious or political conviction, depression, anger, psychological illness, etc.) produce the same result: Daesh claims responsibility for the effects of a terrorist act, even if only instrumentally.

Terrorism has changed in recent years and the digital dimension now plays a key role. Can we use it to fight terrorism? And if so, how?

In its Report published in 2007 (Council on Global Terrorism) the US Department of Defence acknowledged that unclassified material available on the web provides 80% of the information needed to build an extremely powerful object. More recently, it’s above all cyberspace that has become an accelerator of radicalisation and recruitment. Since Internet is anonymous, numerous Islamic groups publish e-bulletins with radical contents; they exchange videos, create discussion forums and communicate using private chats. We can consider the web as a social factor for radicalisation and recruitment facilitating the creation of networks and interpersonal interaction.
The systematic monitoring of websites is also quite complicated because these sites are often temporary and have multiple levels; nevertheless, monitoring focuses meticulously on online audiovisual material but now has to also concentrate on even more “ephemeral” material, for example the material posted on social networks (FaceBook, Twitter, Youtube, etc.). The exponential development of the web has to be considered alongside all the other communication technologies available on different platforms (not just the computer, but above all smartphones); this has further simplified these operations and consolidated their daily use thanks to the celebration and pervasiveness of social networks that incorporate all the characteristics of previous systems.