The many faces of terror

There is no simple answer to the question ‘who could become a terrorist?’ The general picture of a terrorist is a man or woman brainwashed into becoming a fighter or in extreme cases, a suicide bomber.

The average terrorist is likely to be uneducated, poor, unemployed and unsophiscated. In the case of organisations such as the LTTE, most cadres have simply been conscripted while still in their teens.

However, recent acts of terror in the UK and elsewhere have perplexed terrorism experts, sociologists and criminologists as the perpetrators did not match the profile of the average terrorist.

The brains behind the ‘flaming Jeep’ attack on the Glasgow Airport and the Mercedes car bombs in London (which were fortunately found before they could be triggered off) were doctors, medical students and engineers from Iraq, Jordan and South Asia.

They were from good families that were economically stable and they apparently had no reason to harbour a grudge against the country they were in. Perhaps the one thing that united them was a belief that Islam was in danger.

The extent to which global terrorism, spearheaded by the likes of al-Qaeda and indeed, the LTTE, can influence sane individuals, can be gauged from the fact that the Glasgow Jeep attackers were doctors.

That is the last profession one would associate with killing and attempting to take one’s own life through an act of terror. Yet it happened.

Many sociologists have explained that it takes just one strong mind to indoctrinate the seeds of terror in the minds of the unwilling.

In this particular case, it appears that kingpin Bilal Abdulla brainwashed Kafeel Ahmed, his brother Sabeel Ahmed and cousin Mahommed Haneef, both doctors, into committing acts of destruction.

This type of incident can only add to the woes of law enforcement authorities striving to keep track of terror suspects. The police records of the terrorists are ‘clean’ both in the home country and the UK, the families have no connection to terror groups and consequently there are no intelligence dossiers on the suspects.

Here in Sri Lanka, the LTTE has been using this tactic for years, sending ‘sleepers’ who do mundane jobs and spend absolutely normal lives until they are instructed by the leadership to blow themselves up in Colombo along with a specified ‘target’.

They sometimes assume another ethnicity, with false papers. This is a huge challenge and a stumbling block to investigators.

Today’s terrorists have another technology at their disposal to disperse terror - the Internet. It is all too easy to use messaging/chat services and email to exchange seemingly harmless messages in code language right under the very noses of intelligence services.

Besides, monitoring the billions of emails, texts and chats that fly daily in cyberspace would be a Herculean task. It has been revealed that the Internet is widely used by al-Qaeda and other terror groups to convene cadres and plan attacks.

All these pose a dilemma to intelligence and security services that are called upon to protect the majority of peace loving citizens from the minority of terrorists. In doing so, they have to tread on a very thin line between national security and individual liberty.

Enhancing surveillance on a particular ethnic or religious community (ethnic/religious profiling) has become a rather unsavoury option for Western countries battling terrorism. Since hardly any terrorist living freely among the civilian population wears a label or uniform, such steps are inevitable in a way.

In the end, the key to fighting terrorism is good ground intelligence. As we have explained, terror groups change and evolve while terrorists themselves increasingly originate from previously unthinkable backgrounds.

This is why the global community must share information on suspects, unusual arms procurements, front organisations of terror groups etc. No country can close its eyes to terrorism in another, as it is a global network.

Judging by the recent actions against the LTTE worldwide, most countries seem to have realised that they pose a great danger to all civilised nations, just like al-Qaeda. Such international cooperation is the only way to stop terrorists in their tracks.