The Charlie Hebdo Attack – A Foreshadowing of a U.S. Nightmare

At the risk of overstating causation, I have come to believe that the Jungian notion of collective unconsciousness operates like an unseen force in the world of terrorism.  This seems especially true in the context of modern, loosely affiliated terror groups.  While top-down organizational planning occurs in some cases, it is striking how many incidents are characterized as “lone wolf” exploits.  Despite this characterization, we know that these actors do not act alone in a broader sense.  Putting aside self-identification with a radical ideology, they also exhibit discernible patterns of approach and action.  Their tactics are drawn from a well of depravity over time and place, and show signs of adaptive continuity.  And, this brings me to my point.  I see a confluence of terror actions that reflect a shared vector of thinking which ought to raise alarms.  I am very worried that it is only a matter of time before a US school undergoes a commando style terrorist attack.  There are too many behavioral signals that lead in this direction.

The Paris terror attack on Charlie Hebdo magazine comes on the heels of the Pakistan school massacre where Taliban terrorists indiscriminately attacked a school and left 153 dead.  In the Pakistan school attack, a relatively few attackers were able to inflict massive casualties through a coordinated military style attack on a “soft” target.  The Charlie Hebdo attack was also a small coordinated action against a soft civilian target. But, the Paris attack also bears a similarity to the Boston Marathon bombings.  In each case, the perpetrators are disaffected immigrant bothers. Whether the Tsarnaev brothers influenced the suspected brothers in the Paris attack is not known, yet it bears a signature.

Following this Gestalt, the United States suffered the worst school shooting in history at Sandy Hook School in Connecticut in December 2012.  While not undertaken by a “terrorist” in the classical sense, the event was a proof point that very large casualties can be achieved by one actor, and schools are generally defenseless.  It also inflicted vast damage to the US national psyche.  Simply put, attack schools and you attack the very heart and soul of America.  Whether Adam Lanza inspired the Pakistan Taliban would be pure speculation, but again there is a signature of evil bearing a resemblance.  While the Taliban have routinely attacked small girls’ schools in Afghanistan under the pretense of religious offense, the Pakistan school attack had an entirely different tone. It was undertaken purely to exact great retribution and strike massive fear in the Pakistani population.  Framed differently, Sandy Hook showed feasibility and effect. A terror mind could not help but be influenced by the reality of its devastating effect.

The Paris attack has a linger to the Mumbai terror attacks in November of 2008 which resulted in 164 dead and over 300 wounded.  Mumbai was a tactical and behavioral departure point.  It showed that commando style attacks by a small coordinated group could exact large casualties on soft civilian targets.  While bombs were used, the use of automatic weapons was prominent.  The “success” of this style of attack again left its mark on the master psyche of terrorists.  The Charlie Hebdo attack just reinforced this notion. 

Going back even further though, it is possible to follow this deadly lineage and extract some lessons.  In 1998, the United States embassy bombings occurred which killed hundreds of people in simultaneous truck bomb explosions in Dar es Salaam and Nairobi. The date of the bombings marked the eighth anniversary of the arrival of American forces in Saudi Arabia.  These bombings succeeded the Khobar Tower bombing in 1996, which was an attack on a US airman residential complex.  These attacks, while striking an arguably governmental targets, were nonetheless soft targets.  In the Khobar case, a petroleum truck bomb was detonated sheering off half of the building and killed 19 airmen in Saudi Arabia.   A year earlier, in 1995, Timothy McVeigh blew up the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building with a truck bomb filled with fertilizer, collapsing half of the building and killing 168 people and injuring over 600 others.  The Oklahoma City attack was preceded by the first Twin Towers attack in 1993 when a truck bomb was driven into the belowground garage and detonated.  Even further back in time, we find the 1983 Marine Barracks attack in Beirut, which killed 229 servicemen with two truck bombs.  The Khobar attack a decade is eerily similar to it.  It is difficult to avoid the parallelism and conspiracy in thought that propels the next act of barbarity.

As far as the recent Paris attack is concerned, the perpetrators appear to have some connection with Syria.  As thousands easily move through Europe to fight with ISIS, these radicalized fighters will return as better trained, battle hardened zealots in Europe.  We can see the risks and challenges that European nations will continue to face.  But, the United States is hardly better off.  Without entering into the debate over semiautomatic weapons, the fact is powerful weapons are readily accessible and the United States’ porous borders affords small groups of terrorists relatively easy entry to the country. To assume we will remain insulated from motivated radical terrorists is a deadly mistake.  The means, proven feasibility, massive psychological terror factor and intent are all present.  The chance of commando style attach on a school by a few individuals is a real threat, as is a truck bomb attack.  While obtaining large quantities of explosive materials is difficult, hijacking or stealing a fuel tanker is not.  Driving a tanker into a school facility and detonating is a real possibility given past exploits.  Finally, using the two tactics in combination is also a possibility, given that have used similar tactics in Afghanistan and Iraq on police and army compounds.

In speaking with one law enforcement person about school safety, he indicated that most schools are not worried about active shooters, and are dealing with more practical day to day security problems.  While I can appreciate this pragmatism, there is an overarching pattern of potentiality borne out of past conduct that we ought to recognize.  I greatly fear that a terror attack on an U.S. school by militants is only a matter of time, and the effects will rock this Nation to its core.  I hope and pray that I am wrong. 

Yet, we need to heed the clarion call and continue to make changes in our security posture.  First, schools buildings need to be shielded from a truck assault.  Any large truck, like a tanker or trailer truck, needs to be routed and controlled outside a blast zone until it is verified.  Regional areas should have quick reaction counterterror swat teams that are equipped to respond and defeat well equipped and military trained terrorists.  Schools and law enforcement agencies need to have real time collaboration capabilities for situational awareness and ground truth for tactical advantage. Being able to communicate with school personnel and see inside schools is essential.  Glass windows and doors need to be upgraded to be more breach proof to delay an assault.  Reinforced safe areas should be created in schools.  More one-way exits should be installed to enable personnel and students to evacuate without going through bottleneck points and feeder spaces that create kill zones.  While many of these suggestions may seem over the top, a terrorist attack is by its nature dealing with the unthinkable.  The cost of hardening our schools is a small price to pay if it can save the lives of several hundred or more innocent children – namely ours.

New Commando Style Terror Plot Predicted in Mumbai Security Briefing

In December, 2008, I wrote an after action Mumbai Attacks Security Briefing in which I advised that the public safety agencies and high risk/high impact targets should be prepared for coordinated multi-site urban terror assaults (commando style attacks) that are modeled after the Mumbai terror attacks. Specifically, I suggested that the operational signature of the Mumbai attacks provided important information that can assist officials in preparing for and responding to potentially similar events in the future. The recently reported terror plot which appears to have been foiled should serve as a stark reminder to our public safety and emergency response agencies that the specter of a large scale coordinated terrorist attack focused on multiple soft targets remains a major concern.

Few details regarding the uncovered plot have been disclosed but some key information has been released, including the fact that the terror plot involved numerous operatives across Europe, attacks were to be coordinated and targets where possibly focused on hotels, malls and stadiums. This information suggests a fit with the Mumbai attacks. The significance of the Mumbai attacks should not be lost in that it represented a continuing departure from the historically favored terror targets of air and rail transportation, and a move towards commando style coordinated attacks. The Mumbai attacks were immensely “successful” from a terrorist perspective, causing large scale carnage and disruption across a major metropolitan region and “success” breeds emulation.

The Mumbai attacks should be seen as part of a natural progression and continuing adaptation of tactics that are moving towards exploiting soft targets using commando like operations. Predecessor events pointed to this new type of threat. These include the savage Beslan School attack in Russia on September 1, 2004, where Chechen terrorists took more than 1,100 people hostage and 334 hostages (including 186 school children) were massacred when they detonated explosives inside the school building. The Beslan attack was preceded by a similar large scale soft target attack on the Moscow Theater on October 22, 2002. The Moscow Theater attack involved over 40 Chechen terrorists taking 850 people hostage. After a two day standoff, Russian security forces conducted a raid and 170 people died. In addition to large scale attacks on soft targets involving many operatives, terrorists have shown an increased attraction towards attacking hotels. Attacks include hotels in Bali, Egypt, and Israel. The Somali terror affiliate of Al Qaeda, Al Shabab, claimed responsibility for a recent August 24, 2010 military commando style attack on the Muna Hotel in Somalia where parliamentarians were meeting, resulting in the death of 31 people.

In retrospect, it comes as little surprise that the Mumbai attacks represented an adaptation and progression of tactics which emulated components of previous attacks. The focal point of the Mumbai attacks was the Taj Hotel, in keeping with predecessor hotel bombing attacks. Borrowing from its Chechen counterparts, the Mumbai terrorists employed a commando style bloody hostage taking assault, and in keeping with Al Queda’s coordinated attack signature adapted further by undertaking coordinated attacks across 10 locations striking key response infrastructure.

There is little reason to doubt that similar plans were underway in this most recent terror plot. In terms of the future, it would seem likely that a domestic terrorist attack will be a coordinated and distributed commando style attack aimed at soft targets and possibly first responders and support response infrastructure. The likely targets appear to be schools, hotels, stadiums and high capacity facilities. Among these targets, hotels remain the most likely target because they are uniquely open to transient traffic, they house large numbers of people, and the ability to surreptitiously smuggle weapons and explosives in luggage as guest is relatively easy. Further, the rooms at the hotel become ideal operational bases from which operatives can meet, prepare and deploy to designated targets. Further, removing and transporting weapons is easy because the can be transported in innocuous looking luggage. Finally, operatives can check-in to rooms at varying intervals to appear unrelated to other conspirators and can request rooms at strategic locations where they can wire explosives and incendiary devices.

Hotels that are most a risk would appear to be larger hotel facilities which are located in metropolitan areas with more diverse populations that include Middle Eastern and African immigrant populations, so that terrorists can more easily blend in to the population. Thus, hotels in localities that serve as gateways for international air traffic like Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Detroit, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, San Francisco and Washington DC, would seem to be more at risk than others. Among these, smaller cities would seem to carry a possibly higher t risk because they have less resources and security assets at their immediate disposal to combat an attack. This would make Atlanta, Dallas, Detroit, Miami and San Francisco possibly more attractive potential targets. This pragmatic consideration, however, may be offset by the desire to attack a more significant and symbolic city.

Among types of hotels, skyscraper style hotels would seem to be more at risk than those that are more campus oriented and have more distributed entrances and exits, because it is easier to control the entire hotel facility with many floors by controlling a ground floor with limited entrance and exits. Additionally, traditional American associated brand hotels would seem to be more likely targets because of their symbolic value.

In addition to hotels, large elementary and middle schools in metropolitan areas appear to be potential targets of concern. Generally, these facilities are not well protected against sudden commando style raids. Attacking grade school level facilities also offers terrorists distinct advantages, including a hostage population that will be unable to resist in early stages of an operation, and adults who will be over taxed in attending to children. Further, great political pressure will be placed on officials to avoid any action on the part of public safety and security forces, yet it will command and tie down considerable resources due to the nature of the event. Attacking this target in concert with others will place tremendous stress on available response resources, thus giving terrorists more opportunity to inflict large scale carnage and damage at secondary targets.

As a final note, from a historical perspective it appears that early and aggressive action on the part of security forces would appear to be appropriate. The longer that time passes, the more terrorists are able to entrench, wire explosives and prepare for an assault. In most instances of radical Islamic terrorist attacks, the record indicates it is unlikely there will be a peaceful conclusion and that negotiation merely affords terrorists time to prepare for final acts of mayhem and martyrdom.

Strong emphasis should be placed on building regional terror response teams capable of responding with military like force and special operations capabilities. Response time to the scene should be gauged in minutes, not hours or days. The sooner responding forces can insert into a scene the more they can take advantage of a chaotic and unstable environment. In order to effectively deploy these types of capabilities, tools that provide real time situational awareness are key. These tools include ensuring that advanced interoperable communications and information sharing are in place. This includes enabling communications between hostages and field level responders, sharing video and communicating across multiple responding agencies.

While we all are relieved that a serious terror plot may have been stopped, we all know this is not the last in a determined effort by increasingly worldwide fanatical terror networks to strike a devastating blow against the West.