Terrorist Fluidity: A new challenge for intelligence agencies

By: Sherif Abu Fadl

The current fluidity situation of terrorist organizations has led to a greater challenge for the national security apparatus of the national state in general and, at the heart of it, the intelligence apparatus. The traditional methods of the state, in terms of their use of coercive tools of power (army, police and judiciary), are no longer sufficient to track terrorist groups, eliminate them and prevent them from continuing in the future.

The post-globalization world in which we now live is characterized by clear fluidity in all aspects of life. The political, social, cultural and scientific changes surrounding us have also resonated with those extremist organizations, which have utilized them the best and developed their work and movement in order to prevent falling prey to the security apparatus waiting for them. In return, the agencies have followed these developments to track down terrorist groups and to prevent them from carrying out new terrorist operations.

Terrorist organizations have adopted the decentralized network method and recruited elements everywhere without the need for public disclosure in order to carry out terrorist operations within the framework of the idea of “international fighting” launched by the sheikh of al-Qaeda and its supreme symbol, Osama bin Laden. These organizations and individuals have moved from one place to another using the means of transportation and communication between countries. They have used the most modern technological capabilities in the world to recruit and communicate with each other, while the processes of separation and integration within terrorist organizations has also increased for various ideological reasons.

All this has forced the intelligence agencies to be more challenging and burdensome to keep pace with those changes. They do not deal with a clear enemy in a clear place, but with quicksilver entities that have the capacity to adapt and camouflage as necessary to survive in their destructive approach.

The phenomenon of terrorist fluidity will be presented as an intelligence challenge through two main components: the concept of a fluid jihadist and the development of intelligence work in the face of terrorist fluidity.

The concept of fluid jihadism:

The concept of “fluid jihadism” has recently been used by researchers and specialists. It means that people are not required to be those devoted to organizations who have embraced jihadist ideology, but they are attracted the jihadist situation in general.

They have spread more under the context of circumstantial conditions, such as the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 and the American invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003, as groups emerged during that period adopting the idea of resistance, carrying out jihadist operations against the Soviets in the first case and the Americans in the second case.

Based on this conceptual definition of fluid jihadism, it is possible to understand the nature of the fluid state of terrorist organizations, which means that these organizations have the flexibility to adopt different methods, not necessarily one or the same, but necessarily in accordance with the fundamentalist and jurisprudential reference, despite the differences among some branches and the methods of application.

The fluidity situation of the terrorist organizations, along with non-organizational individuals joining them ideologically (love wolves), has led to splits among factions and branches of the terrorist organizations themselves. The period following the emergence of the terrorist ISIS organization in Iraq and Syria has seen some splits, particularly from al-Qaeda, while the harsh blows delivered to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt led to the escape of some its elements and other Islamic groups, who then joined ISIS.

The fluid state of terrorist organizations can be addressed through the following axes:

Axis I: Decentralized Networks

The manifestations of globalization have led to the adoption of more modern and sophisticated intellectual and motorist paths by terrorist groups because nation states have been able to learn many of the traditional methods of such groups, which have led the latter to take measures to prevent them from falling prey to the state organizations that prey on them.

One of the most prominent of these is the decentralized network, which relies on developing the decentralized conception of organization, in terms of building ideological perceptions and practicing terrorist acts through local organizations that have absolute loyalty to the mother group, such as terrorist groups operating in Egypt’s Sinai, Syria, Somalia or Morocco, each of which has its own local activity and allegiance to al-Qaeda or ISIS.

The phenomenon of lone wolves is the optimal model of the decentralized network style adopted by terrorist organizations. This phenomenon is defined as a series of individual acts of aggression by individuals motivated by personal or ideological motives, with the aim of causing serious damage to the state or society, embracing a radical idea that turns into reality once they have the opportunity.

Although the idea of using lone wolves was not from Islamic organizations, they have recently started to use it strongly, with the most prominent manifestations in the era of technical development and the targeting of state organizations by all means, including security, scientific and intellectual.

The terrorist organizations, headed by al-Qaeda, have used this phenomenon well. In the past two years, many operations have been carried out in Europe, through which terrorist organizations have managed to implement their strategy of enemy aggression. It means winning against the enemy at the lowest possible cost, as a result of the exposure of ISIS in Iraq and Syria or al-Qaeda in Yemen and elsewhere.

According to the strategy, operations have unusual forms, including booby-traps and the use of knives to stab as many as possible so that a fighter can escape before being killed, or running people over, as was the case with the incidents in Berlin, Germany and Nice, France.

The use of decentralized terrorist networks has increased following the severe strikes in Syria and Iraq to ensure the continuity of the terrorist organization and carrying out terrorist attacks.

The internet is the lifeblood of terrorist organizations in the present era, through which it can facilitate its activities. It has been credited with the universality of many local terrorist organizations, which have used it to promote and propagate their ideologies and operations throughout the world, as well as attracting new fighters and funds, and communicating between fighters within a single organization and with other terrorist groups, to the extent that it has become the primary source for the promotion of terrorist organizations and their operations and objectives. It has become a means of launching electronic wars, tampering with the internal security of states, and targeting the vital and military installations of the state, which is becoming a concern for international security interests.

Axis II: Transnational Terrorism

Terrorist groups aspire to regional and global causes for many reasons. In this context, the terrorist system becomes transboundary through elements of a terrorist organization that can be transferred from one region to another or through operations carried out against targets in different countries. Of course, these organizations have a variety of funding enabling them to operate.

Transnational terrorism is based on a set of intellectual and contextual bases. This form of terrorism relies on the idea of international allegiance and fighting. The first transnational rhetoric can be found in al-Qaeda, when the former leader of the organization, Osama bin Laden, made his famous call in 1990s for Muslims to join the fight of international jihad.

Bin Laden stimulated the transnational terrorist system and gave it the required ideology. Local conflicts became part of a global struggle against “apostasy and infidelity” and an extended war between Islam and the West.

Similarly, these organizations have also called for the idea of “bayah”, or allegiance, which was originally intended to make Muslims swear allegiance to their rulers in the first centuries of Islam. ISIS strongly expressed the concept of an Islamic caliphate and giving allegiance the self-proclaimed “caliph” Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

Contextual factors have also contributed to the promotion of transnational terrorism, including the weakness of the nation state and the fragility of its grip on its entire territory, which has led to the emergence of soft areas outside its sovereignty that become hotbeds of transnational extremist groups (i.e. the border area between Pakistan and Afghanistan, Morocco, etc.), as well as the possibility of using such countries as safe passages for terrorist groups, as in Libya, along with other factors related to religious identities, such as Iran and Hezbollah with their defense of Shiites in Iraq, Syria and Yemen, or the different areas of conflict, as is the case in Syria, Yemen, Iraq, Somalia, Libya and elsewhere.

Axis III: Processes of Terrorist Organizations’ Dissolution and Integration

The processes of terrorist organizations’ dissolution and integration are the most prominent manifestation of the phenomenon of terrorist fluidity. This means dealing with the processes of dissolution and integration of terrorist organizations at the level of groups. This pattern has recently increased and Syria has been a fertile environment for it. The smaller groups usually merge into larger groups, the command and control structure unifies, and the larger group’s ideas predominate.

One example is the model of Abu Omar al-Shishani’s organization Jaish al-Muhajireen wal-Ansar (Army of Emigrants and Supporters), which emerged from the Muhajireen Battalion that began fighting Aleppo, Syria in September 2012 and other similar terrorist groups.

Between late 2013 and early 2014, Shishani merged his group into ISIS after giving allegiance to Baghdadi, while a splinter group of the organization announced that it would join al-Nasra Front.

The terrorist groups also depend on the phenomenon of dissolving the mother group for a number of reasons, which may be intellectual, due to the level of implementation and means of the main organization, the desire for a wider area of movement that is not allowed by the mother group, or the emergence of currents with more or less extreme ideas and visions.

Examples of this include the announcement by al-Nasra Front (now Tahrir al-Sham) of its secession from al-Qaeda and Ansar al-Din’s many divisions in 2012-2013, along with other such cases.

The development of intelligence work in the face of terrorist fluidity:

There is no doubt that the development of the work of terrorist organizations significantly imposes a great challenge on countries’ national security organizations to develop their work and performance more effectively. The fluidity situation of the terrorist organizations poses a great challenge for the intelligence services to track these groups. There should be no satisfaction in the traditional methods of eliminating terrorism; counter-terrorism does not only require reliance on military force but also sufficient reliance on an intelligence force that seeks to dismantle terrorist groups and prevent attacks. States fighting terrorism pursue small groups often linked to each other, in addition to following a number of individuals who conceal their identities and appear to the surface only for a short period at the time they carry out their terrorist attacks.

Military capabilities, while important, are not enough to prevent other terrorist incidents. A comprehensive confrontation with terrorism requires a secret confrontation, an authentic work of the intelligence services, which can also monitor the movement of terrorists at the local level, monitor their movements and travels in and out of the country.

The decentralized network of terrorist organizations is a new tactic that leads to the need for cooperation between the intelligence services of the region and the world in order to monitor the movements of terrorist individuals and groups. The intelligence services also need to be vigilant in tracking and identifying inert terrorist elements within the state, who are often immersed in their social environment, which requires the special capacities of these bodies to address this phenomenon.

The aspect of intelligence cooperation between states’ organizations is important in terms of the comprehensive confrontation of terrorism, because terrorist organizations are no longer static in a certain area but are characterized by fluidity in their geographical and organizational movement and transition, making it difficult to estimate their location and size. Indeed, intelligence cooperation succeeds in making significant progress in the war on ISIS and reducing the activity of al-Qaeda, having neutralized a large number of prominent ISIS leaders as a result of this endeavor.

For example, the Iraqi judiciary, in September 2018, sentenced Baghdadi’s deputy, Ismail al-Ithawi, to death by hanging. Ithawi had held a number of prominent positions in ISIS, such as an official of the advisory committee that is entrusted with the development of curricula for the organization. He was arrested in Turkey in February 2018 in a joint operation between the Iraqi, Turkish and American intelligence services. Also, Libya’s security services, in coordination with the Egyptian intelligence services, managed to arrest the terrorist Hisham Ashmawi.

The technological developments have led to terrorist groups adopting modern technology to implement their schemes, through recruitment, communication, and material and moral support. This requires intelligence agencies to monitor and follow up on the techniques used by these groups for their subversive purposes. In this context, the United Nations was called upon to formulate an international charter that would regulate social media so that terrorists could not use it as a forum for the dissemination of their ideas.

The intelligence services seek to prevent any contact between extremist groups or the recruitment of new elements by means of advertising and promoting on the internet, in addition to preventing these organizations from using modern means of funding through transfers using Bitcoin, a digital currency based on the anonymity of transactions and decentralized control.

The integration and separation of terrorist organizations requires the need to trace such groups and branches, compile comprehensive databases of all known organizations and branches, and adapt to the constant modifications as required, which would make it easy to know the terrorist map of each country on the one hand, and regional and international groups on the other, in what could be called “the global counterterrorism intelligence unit”.

The terrorist organization in general is an intelligence military system with intellectual reference, moving and carrying out its operations according to these axes. Therefore, the military, intelligence and intellectual dimensions must be taken into account in order to make the confrontation more comprehensive and more effective.