When one thinks of terrorist insurgents, the image of young cyber-experts hunched over laptops hardly springs to mind. Not surprisingly, the perception of terrorists has often been more rugged. The global imagination’s terrorist is shrouded and hidden in caves scattered along the far-flung tundra of Middle Eastern borders. His suspected training camps can be traced and monitored using Google Earth. The origins of his weaponry can be tracked. In essence, the accepted conception of a terrorist is a tangible one.
However, an increased prevalence of personal computer ownership and availability of Internet access has irrevocably altered our notions of global security. A burgeoning online world has not only made it easier to communicate across borders, but has enabled parties to collaborate on anything from software to social organisations to create an ever changing, ever improving organic product. The al Qaeda terrorist insurgency is a case in point. Facilitated by a global digital revolution, this group is changing the face of terrorist acts at a pace that leaves the United States and its allies gasping in its wake.
Applying the digital revolution to terrorism
The United States Department of Defence defines terrorism as, ‘the unlawful use of-or threatened use of- force or violence against individuals or property to coerce or intimidate governments and societies, often to achieve political, religious or ideological objectives.’ Al Qaeda, an international alliance of militant Sunni jihadist organisations, is a case in point.
Bearing the objectives of ending foreign influence in Muslim countries and creating a new Islamic caliphate, al Qaeda’s affiliates have instigated attacks on various targets. The most widely reported attack is most probably the September 11 attacks in New York and Washington DC. Following these attacks, the United States government launched a broad military and intelligence campaign known as the ‘War on Terrorism,’ with the stated aim of dismantling al Qaeda and capturing its operatives. This campaign includes various military, political and legal actions taken ostensibly to curb the spread of terrorism. The U.S.’s belief that al Qaeda is a direct security threat to its nation state is not only justified by the September 11 attacks. The U.S. government website reports that al Qaeda leaders issued a statement in February 1998 under the banner of ‘The World Islamic Front for Jihad Against the Jews and Crusaders,’ saying it was the duty of all Muslims to kill U.S. citizens, civilian and military, and their allies everywhere.
Currently, there are innate problems with this ‘War on Terrorism’ policy. Owing to its amorphous, all-encompassing target, the campaign itself is controversial. In addition to this, Al Qaeda’s size and its structure of semi-autonomous cells makes the degree of responsibility for certain attacks difficult to establish. Physical counter-terror efforts have forced al Qaeda to find refuge in the online world. This increasing online presence of the group has made counter terror policy even more difficult.
Osama bin Laden’s biographer Hamid Mir documents how, in November 2001 as the Taliban collapsed and al Qaeda lost its Afghan sanctuary, he witnessed countless al Qaeda members carrying laptop computers as they prepared to scatter into exile. This earned the group the lofty title of being the first guerrilla movement in history to migrate from physical space to cyberspace.
The outcome of this migration to the Internet has been an uprising of young code-writing jihadists who collaborate to replicate the training, communication, planning and preaching facilities they lost in Afganistan with countless new locations on the Internet. This is not dissimilar to any other social organisation on the Internet.
This means that, apart from its ideology and clandestine nature, the Jihadist cyber world is little different in structure from digital communities of role-playing games or eBay coin collectors. Continuous online contact binds dispersed individuals into sturdy communities. People who might never have met one another in the past are able to connect and communicate, and this allows for the flow of powerful ideas.
Taking it a step further: Applying open source software theory to terrorism.
Former Air Force counter terrorist John Robb extends the globalist online rhetoric to the application of open source software development as a metaphor to describe the development of online terrorist cells. His description is dependent on the interpretation of open source being a set of principles and practices that promote access to the design and production of goods and knowledge. Although the term is usually applied to the source code of software that is available to the general public, the spirit of the concept is that relaxed or even non-existent intellectual property restrictions allow users to create software content through individual effort or through collaboration. Not only a blueprint, but also an idea can be optimised and enhanced through the collaboration of users the world over.
In the case of software development, quite large groups are able to participate in the development of a software product. Low barriers to entry and high innovation rates mean that the complexity of the software tends to reach higher levels than if it were in the hands of one developer.
He argues that in the case of Iraq, similar levels of innovation can be seen that are brought about by similar fragmented groups and participants in the struggle. This ‘bazaar of violence’ functions similarly to the loose framework one witnesses in open source software development. Relatively small terrorist groups and insurgencies collaborate in a global forum to share ideas and join forces in the interests of growing and improving the efficacy of the group.
This can also function within an economic context. Robb explains, “Insurgency groups that are attacking don’t necessarily all come out of the same group. Typically there is a financier; who hires a bomb maker, to make a bomb; a spotter to find the right location; an implacer who implaces the device; and a trigger team to detonate the device at a particular point.” All these contractors work on an ad hoc basis for a single attack, and then disperse immediately after the attack. This effectively decreases the chances of being caught by law enforcement authorities.
Fighting a new war: what the U.S is doing about it
Through chat rooms, online tutorials, customised news sites, online terrorist cells, jihadi-specific web browsers and online propaganda, al Qaeda has successfully utilised the Internet to form communities and share ideologies beyond the confines of physical space. Whereas this would ordinarily be seen as a positive catalyst for democratic correspondence, the prospect of terrorists using this network to their advantage has driven fear into the U.S, which is evident in their change in policy since the September 11 attacks.
In the face of such a mass of harmful content over such a broad and uncontrolled space, the U.S has reacted by forming organisations to monitor the content. Any attempts to arrest offending webmasters have been largely thwarted and if they have been successful, it has been owed more to luck than successful Internet policy.
It seems that the U.S has chosen to focus its policy-making on more manageable tasks. In this case, this has been the formation of policy to prepare the state in the event of a ‘cyber-attack,’ which can be interpreted as a direct attack on the country’s infrastructure using online means such as computer viruses. The policy-making has assumed an organic open source framework similar to that of the al Qaeda online structure, in the way that it attempts to integrate as many businesses and individuals into the monitoring and preparation of a ‘cyber-attack’ as possible. This effort is dwarfed, however, in comparison to al Qaeda’s overwhelming grassroots support of its propaganda and ideologies.
It seems that it is in this ideological function that al Qaeda’s power lies. Experts suggest that future U.S. policy will have to involve a closer monitoring of the ideological component of the al Qaeda in the same manner that it keeps tabs on terrorist in the real world, as this is where the most logical threat to the nation state lies.
This will require a realignment of U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies, which lag behind terrorist organisations in adopting information technologies. However, at present, senior counter terrorism officials refuse to even pay lip service to the need for such reforms.
Ultimately, the U.S.’s conception of what constitutes the boundaries of the state has been dislodged. This is because a globalised online world that does not fall within any sovereign boundaries is essentially anarchic. There is no over-arching power overseeing what is exchanged and developed online. The control is seized from past hegemonic powers such as states and global conglomerates and rather placed in the hands of individuals. Usually, this rise of individuality and online social cooperation is seen as a positive development. However, the online proliferation of al Qaeda has illustrated how such developments can allow for the dispersion and fertilisation of ill intentions. And interestingly enough, although it may possess the arsenal, the manpower and intelligence to face a physical insurgency, this online insurgency has left the United States and its allies lagging two steps behind their 'Ubuntu'-driven enemies.
tags: johannesburg south africa policy-law politics terrorism al-qaeda insurgency counter-terrorism
|
send
printer-friendly version
invite to vote