With machetes and axes: ISIS trains its lone wolves to kill Europeans

Doaa Emam

ISIS has been recruiting individuals within European countries and training them in unconventional methods to carry out terrorist operations in their areas of hiding, with the methods and tools used by these lone wolves varying, including run-overs, stabbings and indiscriminate shootings in gatherings.

Machetes and axes

The German Ministry of Interior announced the latest methods by revealing a terrorist cell training in a forest to use machetes and axes, stressing that they were planning to carry out terrorist attacks during the coming period after being influenced by the ideas of ISIS through the online platforms of the organization and its leaders.

Europe is afraid of sending more “kill squads” loyal to the terrorist organization to its borders, especially after the Taliban came to power in Afghanistan and the release of many ISIS elements in Afghan prisons. The German intelligence agency drew attention to the need to monitor the movement of extremists from Europe and whether they would start to move to Afghanistan to join ISIS there.

There is no doubt that ISIS and al-Qaeda have benefited from the end of the era of persecution under the rule of the Taliban, enhancing the chances of sympathizers with these organizations, which may turn Afghanistan into a place that attracts more extremists in the future.

New tactics

On more than one occasion, ISIS urged its followers to devise new methods and unexpected tactics in carrying out attacks, such as deliberate burning of cars or stabbing people with sharpened pencils. The organization’s media outlets spoke of the need to search for weapons in the areas nearby the resident elements, outside the geographical scope of ISIS’s control.

In December 2020, the terrorist organization explained some of the methods available to its members in the form of messages such as: “If they prevent you from obtaining lethal weapons, then tell them that a sharp pencil can be used… Or his motorcycle or car could be deliberately burned, which may hurt his heart. Therefore, encourage each other to such actions… It is better that you attack and hide quickly and wait for another opportunity to attack again.”

In the second issue of the ISIS-affiliated Voice of India magazine, which began in February 2020, the organization’s spokesperson encouraged attacks targeting army and police elements using simple weapons and tactics that specifically target army and police officers who have deployed in the streets and alleys, making them an easy target during the coronavirus pandemic.

In the fourth and fifth issues, ISIS urged killing people by stabbing them with scissors, as well as helping to spread the corona virus, describing it as a weapon much larger than stones and as the best opportunity to kill civilians in large numbers.

Engy Mahdi, assistant professor in the Faculty of Economics and Political Science at Cairo University, said that the method does not differ from that of al-Qaeda in terms of relying on absolute terrorism based on lone wolves and calling on sympathizers to kill nationals of the coalition countries anywhere and in any place, which is an available means that can be implemented without referring to the leadership and even without there being an organizational relationship in the first place between the perpetrator of the terrorist act and the organization.

In a study entitled “Cyber Jihad: A Study of ISIS and the US Strategy to Confront It”, Mahdi pointed out that ISIS has switched to this decentralization strategy, based on terrorism through lone wolves, after its victories receded in the areas under its control, such as the Syrian city of Raqqa, the Libyan city of Sirte, and the Iraqi cities of Fallujah and Mosul, in light of the international community’s efforts to combat it, to pursue its leaders and followers, and to bring them to account.