Showing posts with label Terrorism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Terrorism. Show all posts

Monday 4 March 2019

Will Terrorism Continue To Ebb in 2019?

Lost in the headlines, rapidly accelerating news cycles and the pervasive fear generated by terrorist threats is the fact that terrorist attacks worldwide have actually been declining – in some areas substantially.

Tuesday 4 December 2018

Thursday 7 September 2017

Analysis: Boko Haram – The Fear, Conspiracy Theories, And The Deepening Crisis

The fear is palpable in northeast Nigeria as Boko Haram intensifies its war on civilians. The military’s regular claim that the jihadists are on the run is patently false, and provides no comfort to anyone.

Instead, this is the reality.
– Since January, there have been at least 83 suicide bombings by children – a figure four times higher than last year.  
– Of the four roads leading out of Maiduguri, the main city in the northeast, only the Maiduguri-Damaturu-Kano road is adjudged safe.
– In rural areas, people are not able to venture more than four kilometres out of the main towns in each local government area because of insecurity.
– In Maiduguri’s mosques, people now pray in relay. As one group prays, another keeps watch to guard against suicide bombers.
The death tolls are startling. In the last two months, high-profile Boko Haram raids have included:
– An attack on oil workers and soldiers prospecting in the Lake Chad Basin in which more than 50 reportedly died.
– The shooting and hacking to death of 31 fishermen on two islands in the Lake Chad Basin.
In response to the rising tempo of attacks, acting President Yemi Osinbajo ordered the deployment of all his military chiefs to Maiduguri in July. It hasn’t stopped the violence.
The insecurity has undermined farming in the northeast, resulting in serious food shortages in pockets of the region. Boko Haram has taken to seizing food and goods from communities in Damboa, Azir, Mungale, ForFor, Multe, Gumsiri – to mention just a few.
The military are also accused of threatening communities that do not vacate their villages and move to the poorly serviced internally displaced persons (IDP) camps.
Those that stay behind risk not only being plundered by Boko Haram, but also the confiscation of their goods and produce by the army, on the grounds that they are in league with the insurgents.
In the Lake Chad Basin in particular, Boko Haram is moving into the traditional fish and bell pepper trade. It not only helps finance their insurgency, but muddies the identification of who is a combatant.
Nowhere seems safe – even Maiduguri. In recent months there have been bomb blasts at the Dalori IDP camp, Maiduguri university, a general hospital, and a major coordinated gun attack on the city itself.

Know your enemy

The military not only appears powerless, but lacks the operational intelligence to thwart the attacks. That lack of awareness – over both the nature of the threat and how to deal with it – led the army’s head of public relations, Brigadier General Sani Usman, to accuse parents of “donating” their children to Boko haram as suicide bombers.
The raid by the military on the UN’s headquarters in Maiduguri in August was another example of woeful intelligence. The army said it was conducting a cordon and searchoperation for high-value Boko Haram suspects, and did not know it was entering a UN building because there was no insignia.
But the incident does point to the level of distrust over the work of humanitarian agencies. The word on the street in Maiduguri the morning of the raid was that the leader of one Boko Haram faction, Abubakar Shekau, was in UN House - along with a secret store of ammunition.

Conspiracy theories abound and aid workers are implicated. A common allegation is that they provide food, fuel, and drugs to Boko Haram under the guise of delivering humanitarian aid.
An additional gripe is that what aid is being delivered to the needy is not enough. The World Food Programme suspended food handouts in Borno this week after IDPs in Gubio camp rioted, destroying five vehicles belonging to International Medical Corps. They were protesting, they said, that they had not received rations in two months.
And then there are the grievances over aid agencies not employing enough locals, and that foreign aid workers do not respect local norms and traditions in what is a conservative society.
It’s an unhappy relationship. The overriding perception here is that the surge in aid agencies to the northeast is not what is required – people want security first, and then they can take care of their own needs.

Guarding the guards

But arguably the biggest problem is that the military are far from uniformly trusted to provide that security.
The most enduring conspiracy theory is that behind the eight-year war are conflict entrepreneurs in the military high command and the political class. They are accused of perpetuating the violence to feather their own nests, at the expense of the lives of Nigerian citizens.
Although there has been a series of major weapons purchases, from attack helicopters to an extremely expensive deal for ground-attack planes from the United States, it doesn’t seem to have added to the fighting capability of the military.
The confusion over who’s who is also exemplified by the tension between the army and the vigilante Civilian Joint Task Force (CJTF). It is the CJTF that has been the military’s eyes and ears, the first responders manning the roadblocks in towns and villages. Armed with little more than traditional weapons, 680 of them have been killed so far in the conflict.
Yet the military distrusts them, believing that within their ranks are Boko Haram Fifth Columnists (which is probably true, along with criminals and other miscreants). But the CJTF see themselves as community defenders. They receive little or no remuneration for their work, and no insurance cover.
The atmosphere of suspicion over the enemy within extends to the tension between IDPs and those who remained in their communities when Boko Haram arrived. As IDPs return to those areas adjudged safe, it’s easy to label those that stayed behind as collaborators, brainwashed by the insurgents’ ideology.
As the counter-insurgency campaign stumbles on, Boko Haram clearly believe it now has the momentum, after being on the ropes last year – driven from all the towns they controlled.
The propaganda war certainly seems to be going their way.
Since the beginning of the year, Shekau has released 11 videos. The more low-key Boko Haram faction led by Abu Musab al-Barnawi (who publicly shuns indiscriminate attacks on civilians) has now stirred and published two videos in the space of a month.
There was once talk of ceasefires and negotiations – that seems very distant right now.
Culled from: IRIN


Tuesday 28 March 2017

WhatsApp Encryption Helps Terrorists Hide, Says UK Home Secretary

The United Kingdom Home Secretary, speaking on the Andrew Marr show, said that encrypted platforms give terrorists “a secret place for terrorists to communicate with each other.”

Wednesday 7 December 2016

Countering Violent Extremism: Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft, and YouTube Collaborate to Remove ‘Terrorism Content’

Social media giants -  Facebook, Twitter Microsoft, and YouTube are collaborating on a project to counter violent extremism by limiting the spread of terrorist content online and on social media.

Tuesday 9 August 2016

Viewpoint: When Terror Is Not Terrorism – Ex CIA Director

Terrorism isn't just an act of violence -- it's a political statement, the politically motivated killing of innocents, writes Philip Mudd. So, random attacks by disturbed people shouldn't be falsely labeled terrorism, he says.

Thursday 7 April 2016

Who Will Become a Terrorist? Research Yields Few Clues

WASHINGTON — The brothers who carried out suicide bombings in Brussels a while ago had long, violent criminal records and had been regarded internationally as potential terrorists. But in San Bernardino, Calif., last year, one of the attackers was a county health inspector who lived a life of apparent suburban normality.

Tuesday 22 March 2016

The Brussels Attacks and the New Normal of Terrorism in Western Europe

As emergency services are still digging through the rubble of Zaventem Airport and Maelbeek Metro Station in Brussels, it is clear that the full scale of the devastation will take days if not weeks to assess. At this point there are already 28 reported dead and 151 injured. While no organization has claimed responsibility yet, the terrorist attacks seem most likely related to the recent arrest of Salah Abdeslam, the mastermind behind the Paris attacks of last year.

Wednesday 9 March 2016

US Special Forces Capture ISIS Chemical Weapons Expert

United States special forces have captured the head of the Islamic State militant group’s effort to develop chemical weapons in a raid last month in northern Iraq, two senior Iraqi intelligence officials have told the Associated Press, the first known major success of Washington’s more aggressive policy of pursuing the jihadis on the ground.

Monday 29 February 2016

Conflating Terrorism And Insurgency

Editor's Note: What if most terrorism isn’t really terrorism? In past decades, much of what we call terrorism today would have been seen as insurgent violence, revolutionary war, or civil war: a group like the Islamic State, which uses tanks as well as suicide bombing, is a prime example of an organization that is wrongly classified as a terrorist group. John Mueller of Ohio State University and Mark Stewart of the University of Newcastle in Australia unpack this definitional confusion and argue that it leads to a gross misunderstanding of the true threat we face.

Saturday 20 February 2016

European Spy Agencies To Boost Intelligence Sharing on Potential Terrorists

European intelligence agencies plan to boost their fight against Islamic militants by creating a virtual network to share information among up to 30 countries, officials said Friday.

Thursday 4 February 2016

Google To Render 'Adwords' To Counter Terrorism, Radicalization

Internet search engine giant - Google, will bring up 'AdWord' messages that seek to combat extremism when potential jihadis look for terrorist material online

Sunday 3 January 2016

ISIS Dominates Headlines, But Boko Haram Kills More Than Ever

One terror group killed nearly 11,000 people in 2015 — and it wasn't ISIS. While the Sunni militants in Syria and Iraq dominated the headlines in 2015, Boko Haram was killing more people than ever — potentially eclipsing the tally of its partner in terror.

Saturday 28 November 2015

Canadian Takes Fight Against Boko Haram To The Airwaves To Counter Sect's Narratives

A Canadian broadcaster, Mr. David Smith, has set up a radio station focused at combating Boko Haram insurgency and its ideology. The radio station named ''Dandal Kura'', will air on shortwave from Nigeria to discourage people from violence.

Wednesday 25 November 2015

Terrorist Financing: France Targets Prepaid Debit Cards In Fight Against Terrorism



French Finance Minister Michel has announced new curbs on the use of prepaid credit and debit cards in the wake of the November 13 Paris attacks in France.

Monday 16 November 2015

How Belgium Became a Terrorism Hotbed

For the past year, terrorist plot after terrorist plot has been tied back to Belgium. How did this tiny nation become ground zero?

Saturday 14 November 2015

Terrorists Hit Paris: Shootings And Explosions Leave At Least 158 Dead



At least 158 people have died in Paris in a seemingly coordinated wave of gun and suicide bomb attacks, prompting the French president, François Hollande, to declare a state of emergency and bring in controls on the country’s borders.

Sunday 18 October 2015

Cyberterrorism: Hacker's Kill List Reveals ISIS 'Crowdsourcing Terrorism'



The case of a hacker who allegedly provided ISIS with a "kill list" Americans — ranging from diplomats to lowly bureaucrats, according to an NBC News review — shows that online intrusions can put a lot more than your credit rating at risk.

Saturday 3 October 2015

Gun Violence Killed 428 Times More Americans Than Terrorism Over The Last 10 Years



And that's using a narrow definition of gun violence, which includes homicides but excludes suicides, accidents and other kinds of gun deaths. It also uses a wide definition of terrorism, including attacks in which doubt exists about a terrorist link and crimes by anti-abortion assailants.

Friday 2 October 2015

Islamic State Ties Widens Reach of Boko Haram



Nigeria predicts that Boko Haram will soon be defeated, but the militant group's ties with Islamic State mean that would probably push the fighters further into neighbouring countries, writes BBC Monitoring Africa security correspondent Tomi Oladipo.