The New Terrorist: Mute, Unnamed, Bloodthirsty

The bombings in East Africa demonstrate again how dangerous a place the world has become for the United States, despite the end of the Cold War and the collapse of communism. The two attacks on U.S. embassies, moreover, underscore an emerging trend in international terrorism: the infliction of mass, indiscriminate casualties by enigmatic adversaries, striking far beyond terrorism’s traditional operational theaters in Europe and the Middle East.

Above all else, the tragic incidents in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, serve notice that terrorism is--and will remain--one of the preeminent threats to international security in the 21st century. As a highly fluid and dynamic phenomena, terrorism is likely to evolve into new and ever more dangerous forms to obviate existing security procedures and overcome the defensive barriers placed in its path.

In this most critical respect, we run the risk of setting ourselves--and our diplomats--up for future attack by concentrating on the hasty implementation of physical security measures recommended more than a decade ago without also understanding the fundamental changes that distinguish today’s terrorists from their predecessors.

In the past, terrorism was practiced by a collection of individuals belonging to an identifiable organization with a defined command-and-control apparatus. The group’s leader was often well-known. Radical leftist organizations such as the Japanese Red Army, the Red Army Faction in Germany, the Red Brigades in Italy, as well as ethno-nationalist terrorist movements like the Palestine Liberation Organization, the Irish Republican Army and the Basque separatist group ETA, conformed to this stereotype of the “traditional” terrorist group.

These organizations had a defined set of political, social or economic objectives. They generally issued communiques taking credit for, and explaining in great detail, their actions. However disagreeable or distasteful their aims and motivations were, their ideology and intentions were at least comprehensible. Even when these groups operated at the behest of, or were directly controlled by, a foreign government, the connection was always palpable, if not always proved beyond the shadow of legal doubt. For example, following the 1986 retaliatory U.S. air strike on Libya, Col. Moammar Kadafi commissioned the Japanese Red Army to carry out revenge attacks against U.S. targets. In hopes of obscuring the “contract,” the Japanese group claimed its Libyan-sponsored operations in the name of a fictitious organization. Although no one was fooled and the Libyan link was widely acknowledged, the ruse was effective in warding off additional U.S. offensive action for a time.

Most significantly, however, these more familiar terrorist groups engaged in highly selective and mostly discriminate acts of violence. Their bombing targets--embassies, banks, national airline carriers, etc.--symbolized their hated foes; they kidnapped and assassinated persons whom they blamed for economic exploitation or political repression in order to attract attention to themselves and their causes.

Only rarely did these groups venture outside their self-proclaimed “operational areas”--mostly their own or neighboring countries or established international centers and global crossroads of diplomacy and commerce--to carry out attacks. Hence: Palestinian and Lebanese terrorists frequently operated in Europe and, on occasion, the IRA might strike in Germany or the ETA in France. For nearly three decades, the loci of international terrorism remained firmly entrenched in Europe and the Middle East. Only occasionally did it spill over into Asia and Latin America and almost never into Africa.

The two U.S. embassy attacks, however, appear to depart dramatically from these established patterns. First, they occurred in a region of the world that until now had remained mercifully outside the maelstrom of international terrorism. The bombings’ masterminds probably regarded Kenya and Tanzania as irresistibly attractive operational environments precisely because of their past immunity. Both countries, they doubtless believed, were unschooled in the vast array of terrorism countermeasures routinely deployed in other parts of the world and were aloof to the need for eternal vigilance against the transnational terrorist threats so prevalent elsewhere.

Second, the operations themselves do not appear to have been undertaken by an established and identifiable terrorist organization. Suspicion has variously focused on a shadowy militant Islamic group in Egypt; the fugitive Saudi financier of jihad, Osama bin Laden, and possible Iranian and Iraqi connections. But the actual perpetrators, much less their “behind-the-scenes” architects, remain unknown. The only information surfacing so far has been in the form of a vague message that claims responsibility for the attacks in defense of the Muslim holy places in Mecca and Medina and promising to “pursue U.S. forces and strike at U.S. interests everywhere.”

This type of massive attack by an enigmatic adversary accompanied by hazy claims and broad demands conforms to a pattern of international terrorism increasingly evident in recent years. It has typically involved an ad hoc amalgamation of like-minded individuals who appear to have been brought together for a specific, sometimes only a “one-off,” mission. The terrorists, accordingly, emerge from obscurity to strike, then just as suddenly vanish into thin air. From its start, the entire operation is deliberately designed to cloak the identity of the attack’s perpetrators, effectively conceal the mastermind behind it and mask its actual sponsor, be it a foreign government or even a single individual.

Finally, this particular trend in terrorism represents a different and potentially far more lethal threat than that posed by “traditional” terrorist adversaries. The absence of a central command authority removes any inhibitions on the terrorists’ intention to inflict widespread, indiscriminate casualties. The anonymity intrinsic to this type of operation, furthermore, thwarts easy identification of the perpetrators, thereby facilitating their escape and greatly complicating their possible apprehension. It is also a useful means by which state sponsors of terrorism or individual paymasters can avoid implication and thus escape military retaliation or diplomatic and economic sanction.

The nonidentity, if you will, of these new types of adversaries is significant in terms of the measures the U.S. government can bring to bear in countering them. The most immediate challenge is to identify them. These amorphous, even transitory terrorist “entities” will not leave the “footprints” of any known terrorist organization. Accordingly, it is likely to prove more difficult for investigators and intelligence analysts not only to identify an attack’s perpetrators but to get a firm idea of their intentions and to build a complete picture of their operational dimensions and capabilities.

It follows that countering and deterring future terrorist threats will be driven by the need to continually improve intelligence capabilities. Much as terrorism itself is a dynamic and evolving phenomena, so must be our capabilities and responses. In no area is this more critical than in the realm of “HUMINT”--human intelligence. In addition, U.S. success largely will be predicated on continued--and continually strengthened--international cooperation. The extraordinary assistance provided by Kenyan and Tanzanian authorities to FBI and other U.S. investigators demonstrates the point. Although certainly positive and welcome, such cooperation is inherently reactive in nature and, in the case of the embassy bombings, akin to closing the barn door after the horse has already escaped.

Amid the confusion of vague claims and uncertain leads, multiple possible suspects and a web of tangled motives, one aspect of the tragic events in East Africa seems clear: A new era of terrorism has begun, with a potential to be both bloodier and more destructive than any experienced before. The challenge the United States faces is to avoid the fate of the apocryphal French generals who were always preparing to fight the last war. The emergence of this new breed of adversary means that nothing less than a sea change in thinking and counterterrorism policies will be required. Indeed, too often in the past, we lulled ourselves into believing that terrorism was among the least serious of complex security issues affecting this country. We surely can no longer afford to continue to do that.*