Lone wolf attacks did not get much attention at intellectual, cultural, security and awareness levels. After the attacks of Nice and Germany, the assassination of the Russian Ambassador to Turkey, the attempted terrorist attack on the Louvre in Paris, it confirmed that dealing with lone wolf attacks requires more international cooperation.
Commenting on US President Donald Trump decisions on refugee ban, the Secretary-General of the United Nations Antonio Guterres pointed out that the US president’s decisions will not succeed in tackling terrorism, and would perhaps even aggravate it. An extremely important point he mentioned was that the terrorists will not reach the US or other targeted countries using passports of states subject to the ban, but can hold passports of other countries not associated with terrorism.
There is an unprecedented commitment towards terrorist organizations by nationals of Western countries such as Germany, Britain, France and Belgium, and the US. Specialized agencies indicate that large numbers of nationals of EU countries joined Daesh and other groups in Syria. Also, the extremely dangerous lone wolf strategy cannot be dealt with through security measures only, however tough these procedures are.
The assassination of the Russian Ambassador to Turkey and the attempted attack on the Louvre in Paris were perpetrated by individuals with no criminal record. The Egyptian who attacked the Louvre was a young man whose father was a former police officer.H is brother was a security officer in the Egyptian MoI. His other brother has also an official position.
The murderer of the Russian Ambassador to Turkey had about two hundred thousand dollars and three girls working for him. This factor helps explain that terrorists can be incentivized with money more than ideology or group membership.
Lone wolves can work through sleeper cells to commit certain crimes after providing them with money and weapons or sometimes just planning and necessary funds for this. A recent trend for terrorist organizations is to perpetrate crimes with tactics such as vehicle ramming rather than using conventional weapons. An example is the attack in Nice, France. Lone wolves can also commit acts of terror when they sympathize with the terrorist ideology but do not coordinate their attacks with the group. These are more dangerous and difficult to detect. Investigating about them makes the circle of suspicion extend greatly; every a young man who has traveled to some countries, had suspicious social networking activity, dressed in a certain fashion, is a candidate but his ideas cannot be inspected. Another matter that must be monitored is the cooperation between terrorist organizations and elements that are neither sympathetic nor ideologized but share common objectives or want to make profit.
Even strict and effective security measures against lone wolves will only meet certain levels of success. In case of failure, however, lives of many innocent people are on the line. It is necessary to elaborate better protection strategies for states and communities. The terrorist ideology should be addressed at cultural, informational, educational, and intellectual levels, and also requires political action to settle disputes and resolve crises that feed terrorist organizations and give them a pretext to kill innocents.
Rather than isolationism, exclusion, marginalization or ban, the one anti-terrorism strategy missing so far is better international cooperation. The extreme right in the West should be aware that anti-Muslims speech will not help protect their communities more than terrorism organizations that use these messages in their propaganda to attract more young people from those very communities.
Lone wolves attacks are virtually the most serious challenge facing societies and states at the present time, because they are directly linked to global mobility and movement of individuals around the world. If this phenomenon is not treated, it could result in clashes between countries because of the involvement of their nationals in terrorist activity. The worst solution in dealing with this phenomenon is to project it on people and take it as a pretext to accuse entire countries of terrorism. Such over-generalizations are not reasonable and can result in further imbalances in the relations between countries, not to mention their contribution to the dissemination of hatred and animosities, and consequently feed terrorist organizations.
