In the wake of the recent terror attack in Barcelona, ramming cars has become a new nightmare for security services. This is a new strategy used by terrorist organizations to achieve their objectives. Car ramming is carried out with no planning or large financial costs; all these criminal attacks may need is a rented car driven by a terrorist to kill and injure dozens after choosing a crowded place to harm the greatest number of innocent victims.
This bloody terrorist scenario was repeated in several European cities. In Paris, on August 9, a man driving a car hit a group of soldiers, wounding six of them. London in June, eight people were killed when terrorists with a small van rammed into pedestrians on the London Bridge and then stabbed some passers-by. In Stockholm, Sweden, last April, an Uzbek terrorist killed four people when he raided a store with his car. Last March, London was also the scene of a terrorist car ramming, where four people were killed when a car rammed into passers-by in the Westminster Bridge and then the driver stabbed a policeman. On December 19, 2016, a Tunisian terrorist rammed a track into crowds in Berlin, killing 12 people. Before that, a Tunisian terrorist had also committed a heinous massacre when he rammed crowds on the Promenade des Anglais during Bastille Day celebrations.
These new terrorist crimes pose many challenges for all countries of the world. The first of these challenges is the difficulty of anticipating the occurrence of such attacks. Terrorist car ramming attacks are often not preceded by measures and do not require complex information that can be monitored during the coordination phase between terrorist elements. Those involved in these terrorist attacks belong to an unregistered or classified segment of the population, who are mostly young age groups. They may have failed to travel and join Daesh organization in Iraq and Syria because of the security restrictions. They decided to reproduce the organization’s crimes in other countries and cities to achieve their objectives.
Daesh has stepped from the stage of centralization and the alleged caliphate, after the collapse and destruction of assets, to adopt a tactic of widening the circle of confrontation to deliver the message of terror, fear and horror to the largest possible number of people. The organization was keen to broadcast video footages of the slaughter and burning of their hostages. The strategy of shock and horror, which the organization derived from the book Management of Brutality, is now implemented through the processes of car ramming. Car ramming is a very dangerous process in terms of security and economic as it spreads panic among the population and tourists in several cities and countries; it seriously affects tourist flow rates.
The most pressing question now is how to counter the terrorism of successive ramming cars in several western cities, how to anticipate and respond to their perpetrators proactively? The exact answer to these questions may take some time to explore new mechanisms to prevent such crimes from occurring without affecting the touristic sector.
To encounter these attacks necessitates eradicating the sources of extremist ideology. Many of the perpetrators of these attacks were born in Western countries and were intellectually influenced by the inciting rhetoric of the Sheikhs of strife in these cities. These countries allowed some of these Sheikhs to lead the rhetoric and propaganda scene for many years, claiming freedom of expression and that they were repressed at their homelands.
The Spanish Prime Minister, Mariano Rajoy, called for a global response to terrorism after the Barcelona attack; a response that should not be limited to military operations, but must strictly address all sources of terrorist financing and prosecute any country, individual, organizations or groups that finance or provide shelter for terrorist elements.
Without a global agreement and consensus on an agenda of more stringent measures to tighten the screws on the financing of terrorism, and the countries involved -led by Qatar and its leadership that has been up to its ears in the financing of terrorist organizations- the world will continue to suffer and groan under the weight of these expanding crimes.
