Saturday night’s terrorist attack on London Bridge and Borough Market, the third such incident in the UK in the last three months, left seven dead and more than 30 others wounded, with 18 still in critical condition. London authorities have identified the three attackers as Khuram Shazad Butt, 27, from Barking, London, Rachid Redouane, 30, also from Barking, London, and Youssef Zaghba, 22, from East London. Butt was featured in a 2016 documentary on the British Channel 4 called “The Jihadist Next Door” and was a known figure to authorities. The Cipher Brief’s Benentt Seftel spoke with counterterrosim expert Bruce Hoffman about the recent spate of attacks in London and if it is possible to more effectively combat this threat.
The Cipher Brief: Saturday night’s terrorist attack on the London Bridge is the latest in a string of violent attacks in the UK. Could this be part of a coordinated campaign against the UK by extremists, or is it possible that it’s multiple, unconnected, lone wolves? Is there a concern that this could stem from the high number of foreign fighters who have returned to the UK?
Bruce Hoffman: Thus far, there is no indication that any of the perpetrators of the attack are foreign fighters or returnees.
It is now widely reported that Salman Abedi, the bomber responsible for the attack on the Ariana Grande concert in Manchester two weeks ago, went to Libya where he presumably met with his ISIS handlers and received detailed instructions in connection with the Manchester bombing. It also has been reported that he purchased most of the bomb components himself, and that he was the main perpetrator and lone conspirator, although there may well have been a wider support network that he was able to call upon. Whether it be just emotional or ideological support or actual material support isn’t clear yet.
Certainly, like the London attacks, the incident that occurred on Westminster Bridge and the Houses of Parliament back in March, there doesn’t appear to be the same type of specific connection or direct connection to ISIS as was the case with Abedi.
As of now, we just don’t know the backstories of the perpetrators involved in Saturday night’s attack. However, what one can say is that it was a very different kind of attack than the previous two in the UK, because there were three individuals involved in Saturday night’s tragedy, indicating clearly some level of coordination and conspiracy. The attack was also more amateurish in comparison with the Manchester incident in the sense that these weren’t suicide bombers. The only preparation required was to get some cutlery and rent a vehicle capable of mowing people down in the street. But the point needs to be made that at least two of the perpetrators were wearing faux suicide vests thus suggesting that they deliberately sought martyrdom—that they not only expected to be killed but actively hoped to be killed in the commission of their heinous acts of violence.
The fact the most recent attacks in the UK occurred so closely together is also disquieting. This is now the second summer in a row where the onset of Ramadan has triggered a series of brutal terrorist attacks. Last year, between June 13 and July 26, five ISIS inspired or directed attacks convulsed Europe: they included the carnage in Nice where an individual plowed a large truck into a crowd strolling along a seaside promenade; the attack on Istanbul’s Ataturk Airport; the cruel execution of a French police officer and his wife; and the beheading of an 84-year-old French priest. Between the Manchester bombing and the London incidents, ISIS seems intent on assuring that this year’s Ramadan is even deadlier than the last.
Finally, in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri called on al Qaeda’s followers and sympathizers to carry out precisely the same type of attacks as just occurred in London. At the time, his summons fell on deaf ears. But it now appears to have become an ingrained element in contemporary terrorist strategy and may tragically have come to fruition under ISIS’ encouragement.
TCB: What is the significance of the timing of the attack? What effect, if any, do you think this will have on the UK election this week?
BH: First of all, it is now the month of Ramadan. If 2016 is any indication, ISIS has a particular penchant, as noted above, for conducting multiple terrorist attacks during this very holy month of Islam. So it would appear that a pattern is tragically reemerging from last year of a sustained number of ISIS or ISIS-inspired attacks during this important period of religious observance.
Second, the context of the British general election this coming Thursday provides an enormous impetus to any terrorist group trying to elbow itself into the limelight and steal some of the thunder of a national electoral process. These groups understand that carrying out terrorist attacks precisely at the time of a national election exacerbates, if not significantly heightens, public stress, fear, and anxiety and prompts candidates to respond accordingly, which is exactly what terrorists want. They hope to leverage these feelings of insecurity and translate them into the power to intimidate and coerce. It certainly enhances, in their own minds, their own power. Propaganda doesn’t have to be true. It just has to be believed. Accordingly, terrorist groups striking in the run-up to elections hope to enhance their narrative by being able to claim responsibility for affecting the outcome of the election no matter how false the claim may actually be.
The third thing I would say is that even if these were lone wolves and took it upon themselves to conduct the attack, there has certainly been enough encouragement and abetting through ISIS propaganda in recent weeks—and indeed months—that would likely have facilitated or pushed people towards undertaking these attacks. On Saturday, for instance, there was an ISIS propagandistic statement that encouraged its followers to use vehicles to attack the group’s Western enemies. So this has fallen into part of a broader pattern of encouraging ordinary people who may or may not have come onto the radar of the authorities, to use very simple, readily available, and accessible means at their disposal to carry out these attacks.
TCB: How does the threat in the UK, and even France, Germany, and Belgium as well, compare to the threat in the rest of Europe?
BH: These countries have large diasporas to begin with and large immigrant communities that in the case of the UK were progressively radicalized even before the 9/11 attacks, but even more so in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, the invasion of Iraq, and the rise of ISIS and declaration of its caliphate. With the power and reach of social media, terrorists have a new means to communicate, motivate, inspire, and ultimately animate their minions to resort to violence. The ability of terrorist groups to encourage and enable attacks by people often hitherto completely unconnected to a group is much more direct and immediate and far more pervasive than in the past.
TCB: It seems ISIS claims responsibility for these attacks whether a direct link has been established between the group and the perpetrators. What does that type of claim do for the organization, and is there any way to discredit that?
BH: Once the attack is carried out, the damage is done. We can protest as much as we want that ISIS may not be directly responsible or may not have exercised any kind of linear command guidance, but what ISIS has done, just by their pervasiveness and their command of multiple social media platforms, ensures that their supporters and sympathizers are further inspired by this claim.
My view is that countering the message is not working. Controlling the dissemination of the message may become increasingly important. We know it’s like the proverbial Dutch boy attempting to plug the dike with his fingers when a new leak sprouts in that when these sites are closed down, the terrorist groups just gravitate to a new one that’s set up. Perhaps we need more efficient and more effective ways of targeting these sites. But the emergence of freely available encrypted applications has played an enormous role in facilitating terrorist recruitment and radicalization and inducing people to cross the threshold of committing acts of violence faster and with more corrosive societal consequences than before.
TCB: Over the past 2-3 years, we’ve seen lone wolves attacking soft targets with easily obtainable weapons – vehicles, knives, etc. After so many instances, have we made any progress in combatting the lone wolf phenomenon? Is this the new normal?
BH: The problem is that threat is specifically designed to overwhelm us, and it in fact has proven to be overwhelming. Our law enforcement, intelligence, and security services are being swamped by the vast proliferation of terrorist threats and people to be investigated, and if need be, monitored and surveilled. This has greatly strained and tested their capacity to keep pace with an evolving threat posed now by two terrorists movements, unlike one central group in the past.
I’m tempted to say that until Steven Spielberg’s film Minority Report – where the authorities are able to anticipate a crime before it’s committed, intervene, and arrest the perpetrator – becomes a reality, as farfetched of course as that is, it’s impossible to completely and effectively combat this threat. That statement should not be taken to mean we’re powerless or defenseless against this threat – but to recognize it’s a deliberate part of their strategy. It’s a strategy, on the one hand, of provocation to use these types of attacks to heighten public anxiety precisely because of their complicity and unpredictability and thereby provoke governments to advance policies or implement countermeasures that the terrorists hope can be manipulated in their favor. It is also designed to make populations feel defenseless and powerless. This was a very similar strategy used with suicide terrorist attacks over a decade ago.
This is enormously difficult to counter, because part of the terrorists’ strategy is to sow and inundate law enforcement and intelligence with this low hanging fruit of individuals who may or may not have some direct connections to terrorist organizations and to overwhelm them with those types of threats in hopes that some of them get through and actually perpetrate attacks, which has sadly, recently been the case in Manchester and London twice. But the threat is not just from lone wolves. This strategy of inundation or drowning the authorities with leads is also designed to facilitate the kind of November 2015 type of attack in Paris, where the French authorities were so focused on tracking these lone wolf type of threats that the terrorist organizations were able to avoid the detection of a more professional cadre of operatives, who executed a highly coordinated, planned, and sustained attack on the evening of November 13th.
So we are in essence asking the authorities to do what is almost impossible – respond effectively and tirelessly against a broad spectrum of attacks—some orchestrated and some more spontaneous. With the latter, the typical tools of law enforcement and intelligence, such as signals intercepts or the infiltration of cells or command centers, is often obviated by the independence of these actors.
TCB: Can we learn any lessons from other countries in combatting this threat?
BH: In recent decades, Israel has often been the canary in the coal mine in terms of being on the receiving end of new terrorist tactics and different targeting patterns. Certainly, Israel has had to contend with individuals using cars to mow down pedestrians and knife attacks on crowded streets and public areas, so there may be some lessons to be learned from how Israel has dealt with this threat.
TCB: What do you view as some of the biggest counterterrorism challenge moving forward?
BH: For me, one of the biggest challenges is that however disconnected these attacks may be, there is certainly a strategy apparent; one of fomenting and facilitating these types of attacks. And the threat that links them all together that does worry me profoundly is they are all an assault on Western liberal democratic values. It’s not surprising that at times of national elections, for example, terrorists understand the impact of an attack timed to coincide with national elections is heightened more than usual and thus furnishes the terrorist group behind or inspiring it with very useful propaganda.
This also plays into the terrorists’ strategy to provoke Western liberal democratic societies to embrace increasingly illiberal solutions to their security problems. This is an issue that has become part and parcel of the terrorist strategy, which we’re going to have to wrestle and contend with in the future as well. It affects our society as much as the more tactical implications and physical manifestations, such as putting bollards, for instance, on the sidewalks across all the major bridges in London. That’s an obvious next move. In the past, bollards or concrete flower pots were put outside of government buildings or the most likely terrorist targets. Now, ordinary walkways have, tragically and very depressingly I think, joined the pantheon of terrorist targets that we now need to secure. But we also have to be cognizant of the more strategic and even psychological implications of this kind of warfare that not only has become more commonplace, but which the West is locked into.
