Homegrown jihadism: How to prevent terrorist catastrophe?

Homegrown jihadism: How to prevent terrorist catastrophe?

Fighters of the group called Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant parade in Tel Abyad city in January 2014, near the border with Turkey. Most of the French who went to Syria would have joined this terrorist group. REUTERS/Yaser Al-Khodor

Données clés

Faculté	Faculté des sciences de la société
Département	Département de science politique et relations internationales
Professeur(s)	Rémi Baudoui (2011 - )
Enregistrement	2014, 2015
Cours	Terrorism and international relations

Lectures

• Terrorism or terrorisms? Some epistemological considerations
• National security and counter-terrorism: the example of Latin America
• Internationalisation of struggles and emergence of international terrorism
• International relations and the fight against international terrorism
• The United States and the New International Order
• Middle East Geopolitics
• September 11, 2001 ruptures
• Al-Qaida and the "geopolitics of radical terrorism"
• Combating terrorism and rebuilding transatlantic relations
• Arab Spring Against Terrorism: Issues and Perspectives
• Homegrown jihadism ": How to prevent terrorist catastrophe?

Homegrown jihadism is a new trend that has emerged since 2005 and 2006, becoming the central political issue in the fight against terrorism. We are also talking about terrorism from within. This is a very recent movement for modern states. It is a form of terrorism committed by individuals isolated in the name of an international theory or doctrine. This is something very complicated to take into consideration because it means that this new mode of action escapes what we had experienced in the 2000s and 9/11 with cosmopolitanism, but not a national agent.

In public policy, there is an interpretation of external action that is tantamount to implementing internal management of external threats. Therefore, it is necessary to wonder how to spot them raising the question of what is happening in their country, especially the movements that take place in conflicts is the important border crossing. At some point, there are no longer any reference points for qualifying these risks of internal violence.

There are different names referring to the same phenomenon. In the United States the term used is "homegrown terrorism", in Canada it is referred to as "domestic terrorism", in Great Britain as "domestic terrorism" and in France as "terrorism from within". There is the idea that we would be in a phenomenon that is becoming more and more widespread today as individuals who are acting in isolation in terms of organization and logistics, not as a group. This raises the problem that logistics and mode of operation are different. We're either going from an individual who goes alone. It is a universal process that would expand and at the same time they are very local organizations. It is questionable whether homegrown terrorism did not exist before homegrown jihadism, i. e. whether there would not be individuals who would fall within the scope of domestic terrorism without being radical Islamists. Even with the phenomenon of radical Islam, as in the United States, there is an extreme right-wing libertarian movement. There is already an internal terrorism that was originally right-wing and religious in nature. The RAND Corporation had published a report that between 11 September 2001 and the end of 2009,46 attempts to take action were prevented.

L'hôtel Taj Mahal à Bombay lors des attentats du 29 novembre 2008 afp.com/Pal Pillai

What will enable this concept to be taken into account are the Madrid bombings of 2004 and the London attacks of 2005, which are the two high points where for the first time it turns out that young nationals decide to place bombs in the subway on behalf of British soldiers in Iraq or Afghanistan. Homegrown Jihadism refers to homegrown terrorism raise issues of counter-terrorism. Efficiency is very strong because we have to deal with individuals within society. With homegrown terrorism and homegrown jihadism, we have to deal with locals who know the city and control their environment. The actors of the violent action have an extraordinary knowledge of the city, they have an extremely deep knowledge of the city. They can move through space because they are not detectable. By moving through space, they have more freedom to choose strategic locations with impunity. The places of operation remain the public space because, instead of an isolated act, the act of destruction of the public space is symbolically more important. Whether it is in the subway as with the sarin gas attack in Tokyo in March 1995, the attacks of the 2000's in New York, London, Madrid and Bombay, the objective is to show the power of the act of claim. The bombings in Bombay were the work of a military organization that raised opaque borders as part of the homegrown jihadism.

Les conflits entre les différentes factions sur le terrain © IDÉ

For France, the triggering event is the Syrian affair which has become an important place for the making of this jihadism. In Syria, there is a regrouping of combatants, a polarization as desired by al-Qaeda. From the moment something fails, there is an important movement towards it. There are a whole host of fighters, such as Chechen commandos, al-Qaeda brigades, Hezbollah fighters, but also Salafists and Islamic state fighters in Iraq and the Levant. There is a plethora of group muscular combatants welcoming all those who are willing to go and fight. Today, the question of the refocusing of forces in this place of combat is being repeated on a continental, Middle Eastern and even African scale, with the internationalisation of the conflict in a place where foreign and European jihadists are concentrated.

In France, about 1600 Europeans have left today to do jihad in Syria. Of these 1600 jihadists, 700 are currently on site. This map shows how this movement became polarized. In France, four cities are mainly suppliers of jihad which are cities of high immigration in order to operate its productive system and which are places in crisis, economic, social and identity. There is a logic of transition and translation between places where the conditions for the development of identity and citizenship become difficult depending on economic conditions and the ability to integrate these populations.

There is a translation since there is a fight that is becoming internationalized, since the movements say that Syria is a fundamental stake in the struggle for a new caliphate.

According to official French sources, there are 250 French fighters in Syria out of 700 who are said to have passed. Of these 700 Frenchmen who left France, analyses show that, at the outset, it was rather adult young people who, in a conversion to radical Islam, opposed the West and the orienting movement that decided to fight there in the name of Islam's values. The problem that has recently arisen is that there are minors leaving, but also girls who escape the traditional logic. In a report from 19 January 2014 at 10:37, Agence France Presse reports that "250 Frenchmen, including a dozen miners who went to jihad in Syria, 21 Frenchmen died".

This is something composite that raises the question of radical Islam with an assessment of a renewed threat of radical terrorism. Manuel Valls assesses this new threat as "individuals, generally residents of working-class neighborhoods, who take action at the end of the process of radicalisation, more or less lengthy in which delinquency, virulent anti-Semitism, exploitation of the conflicts in the Near and Middle East, etc. can mingle," he said in a speech to the Committee on Laws concerning the bill of 14 November 2012 on security and the fight against terrorism... These individuals, true enemies of the interior, represent a diffuse threat that requires a heavy and meticulous surveillance work.

There is a process that is a process-based system that is explained by societal, political and institutional mistrust and flaws. Islam in prison has long been more than tolerated by prison administrations because it is the construction of a social peace. Islam being structuring, it allows individuals to be framed by morality and the Qur' an helping the penal institution because it is convenient for it to have a structure that takes power in order to avoid conflicts. The institution played it. The passage of young people to prison means that they end up in a delinquent system, but where they find a framework that gives them a form of legitimation. There is a process of indoctrination that is being built in which we are going to sell a radical Islam devoid of any coherence that would determine the reading of the Koran. On the other hand, it works on acculturated young people who have no cultural reference points, neither with modern society nor with their parents who have abandoned their culture of origin.

The specificity of homegrown jihadism is not the threat of the character of the young people who are going to fight, but it is the return of the fighter who poses a problem. The fighter goes to combat zones, and if he survives, goes home with his battles. The threat to France is produced by the "return" effect of outside combat theatres.

French homegrown jihadism: characteristics and evolutions

Logo d'E.T.A. à Altsasu (création de Félix Likiniano).

It is questionable whether international terrorism can be defined as homegrown terrorism. The broadest definition is of "nationals" who fight most often from within and within the borders of their nation-state of nationality. It is necessary to revisit the definitions in order to understand the phenomena at stake, because the recent definition of homegrown terrorism does not conceal any innovation in the field of violence, since the forms of international terrorism in the 1970s and 1990s fall within the scope of homegrown terrorism.

The definition of homegrown jihadism introduces the religious factor, that of radical political Islam born with the political Islam of the 1970s and 1980s. In a way, homegrown jihadism existed before 9/11 for countries that had been involved internationally with Middle East issues. The recent definition of homegrown jihadism thus describes an ancient reality long before September 11,2001 that characterizes the transition from Marxist-inspired and internationalist secular terrorism to radical Islamic terrorism based on jihad.

Between 1984 and 1986, France suffered a series of attacks because of its Lebanese policy. The attacks on Hezbollah, which took place in Paris at the Claridge Hotel, Gibert Jeune's, the FNAC Sport des Halles, the RER Saint-Michel and the Tati store, were conventional attacks. The best-known case is the attacks committed between June and September 1995 by Khaled Kelkal as part of the Armed Islamic Group[GIA]. Khaled Kelkal is Franco-Algerian, spreading terror in France along the lines of an armed Islamist group claiming the constitution of an Islamic state in France.

The Roubaix gang is a group of young French "ethnic" converts to Islam who fought in the former Yugoslavia, particularly in Bosnia, to defend the Muslim populations attacked by Serbia in its aggressive and Christian hypernational. Young people appear who decide to go and fight there, becoming promoters of attacks in France when they return. Christophe Caze and Lionel Dumont are both French-born. Their trajectory at common points of the homegrown jihadism paths. It is a personal religious journey ranging from indoctrination to conversion making Islam of convenience, a fighting Islam. Their mobilization and commitment led them to military Jihad. Their autonomous logic of action is relayed by consulting jihadist sites or following the preachings of radical mosques. They have erased national values in favour of over-interpreted religious values within the framework of a cumulative logic of elements of rupture with the real social world such as structural unemployment, social relegation leading to a sense of failure in one's existence. This individual marginalisation leads to incivility or common law offences. The discovery of prison is concomitant with an indoctrination by Islam of prisons providing a sense of protection and a collective identity of refuge. It is the formation of a family with an important social system to understand.

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  Lionel Dumont à sa sortie du tribunal de Douai le 15 décembre 2005 PHILIPPE HUGUEN AFP/ARCHIVES

Khaled Kelkal © Zebar-Sipa

In an interview conducted by sociologist Dietmar Loch, who works on the Lyon suburbs entitled "Moi Khaled Kelkal" published in Le Monde on 7 October 1995, he shows a person who decides to switch to violence and explains it.

« This shows the inadequacy of our societies to take into account the social, the political and that generates places of reconstitution confirming previous analyses in the case of the French jihadists who went to fight in Syria. The process is composite and graduated with academic failure, humiliations, non-integration through work, larçines, petty delinquency, conversion to radical mosques and a sense of self-gratification leading to a personal and thoughtful commitment to the jihadist cause. »

Two half-brothers from Toulouse, Nicolas (31 years old) and Jean-Daniel (22 years old) went to Syria to join the Combattants de l' Etat islamique in Iraq and the Levant and were killed there a few months apart. After announcing to their families that they are going on holiday in Thailand, they join Barcelona, fly to Casablanca and join Istanbul. Through a route called "individual nomadism" they manage to penetrate without relay into Syria. It is interesting that the framework is not necessarily quite the same with the combatants of the radical Islam of September 11 who were educated.

Homegrown jihadism: a forgotten anti-terrorist fight after 9/11

There will be reforms aimed at integrating the issues of terrorism from within. In 2001, the fight against terrorism was fully integrated into the institutional security framework of the Second World War and Cold War. The major distinction made is between internal and external struggle. Inland combat is carried out by the Directorate of Territorial Surveillance[DST] and General Intelligence[RG] while external combat is carried out by the External Documentation and Counter Intelligence Service[SDECE]. The large administrative and institutional division was internal and external, external to monitor what is happening and internal to control what is happening. The French specificity comes under the law of 9 September 1986, which is the creation of an anti-terrorist pole at the Paris Public Prosecutor's Office - 14th Anti-Terrorism Section - with a purely anti-terrorist section which deals only with judicial issues in the field of terrorism, centralizing legal proceedings by appointing special judges and special courts of justice.

Le juge antiterroriste Jean-Louis Bruguière

The French system is considered effective, particularly in the context of the events in New York. France "warned" the Americans of the September 11 threat, hence the quality of French intelligence on human intelligence and not like the Americans on technological intelligence. The globalized jihad that Al Qaeda claims to claim is part of a classic management of terrorist violence, of the relationship between external and internal security. The terrorism of the internal struggle in France was forgotten after 9/11 because it was effective.

Source : ministère de la défense.

In the United States, there have been major security reviews with the establishment of a new security administration, the Department of Homeland Security, comprising 22 federal agencies and the adoption of the Patriot Act, which violates civil liberties. French satisfaction is expressed in reports in parliamentary reports and notably in the report of Alain Marsaud, a former magistrate and head of the central anti-terrorist service at the Paris Public Prosecutor's Office, dated November 2005 on the draft law on the fight against terrorism:"France has not discovered terrorism with the attacks in New York and Washington, which confirmed the validity of the measures put in place since 1986".

Between 1982 and 2005, the counter-terrorism machinery was structured very slowly in order to achieve better coordination and better judicial treatment of problems. In 1982 the SDCECE was founded, which became the Directorate General for External Security[DGSE], in 1984 the Anti-Terrorist Coordination Unit[UCLAT] was created to coordinate general police and national gendarmerie, in 1986 the judicial treatment of terrorist cases was consolidated within the framework of the Paris Public Prosecutor's Office, and in 1992 a Military Intelligence Directorate[DRM] was created. The general objectives of these reforms are to produce better coordination between domestic intelligence services and counter-espionage, to be able to amplify security measures and to establish an effective judicial process for the investigation of judgments.

The Recomposition of Counter-Terrorism to the Challenges of Homegrown Jihadism, 2004 - 2015

Attentat terroriste le 11 mars 2004 à Madrid CHRISTOPHE SIMON AFP/ARCHIVES

Awareness was raised between 2004 and 2005. On 11 March 2004, the Madrid bombing took place with the explosion of 10 bombs in four trains, killing 191 people and injuring more than 1400. On 7 July 2005, the London bombing took place with the explosion of four transport bombs, resulting in 56 deaths and 700 injuries.

The observation is that in Spain, the jihadists are Moroccan, but Spanish provided the explosives. In Britain, the jihadists are four young British Muslims. The problem is raised that it will be necessary to focus on populations that are apparently integrated and do not show religious fervour, have no criminal record and do not distinguish themselves from other young people. We must now watch something else that we were not used to watch. The challenge of surveillance is to target populations whose integration conditions seem real. Young people who are no longer distinguished from other young people in society.

De nouvelles reformes de structure

Le grand débat qui s’ouvre et de savoir comment peut-on faire de la surveillance de proximité et comment repenser la surveillance de proximité. C’est la méthode du community policing inspiré de méthodes britanniques. La police est dans la société n’étant pas un corps extérieur. La question de la sécurité, puisque le terrorisme a changé, doit se faire avec la société. Il faut construire un dialogique avec la population pour que la population informe la police des menaces et des informations de terrains. C’est un concept de démocratie différent. La Suisse s’est construite sur le principe de sécurité sécuritaire. La délation est vécue dans le modèle suisse comme un modèle institutionnel.

Depuis 2006, la doctrine de la lutte antiterroriste se fonde sur quatre principes :

1. consolidation de la vigilance de tous et pour tous ;
2. surveillance réaffirmée des minorités marginales et des jeunes hommes Musulmans de moins de quarante ans ;
3. création d’une culture de sécurité civile s’appuyant sur la sensibilisation scolaire à la prévention ;
4. construction d’une culture sécuritaire « proxémique » des individus garante de l’évaluation des conditions de « passage à l’acte ».

Le 1er juillet 2008 sont fusionnés la DST et les RG pour constituer ce que Nicolas Sarkozy appelle un « FBI à la française ». Est créée la Direction Centrale du Renseignement Intérieur (DCRI) pour assurer efficacement. Apparaissent des reconstructions d’organismes afin d’assurer le monopole de la connexion des informations de collecte et de l’analyse du renseignement sur le territoire national en relation avec la société. On s’interroge sur la pertinence de la séparation entre sécurité intérieure et la sécurité extérieure.

Les ratés du jeune toulousain Merah

L’affaire Merah est un raté absolu. Un jeune toulousain est surveillé par la police, convoqué par les renseignements généraux à plusieurs reprises. Il y a un paradoxe parce qu’il est repéré, mais la filature se relâche au moment le plus important. Il effectue des voyages en Syrie, en Afghanistan, en Turquie et au Pakistan qui n’éveillent aucun soupçon des services de renseignement malgré des enquêtes de circonstance. Merah était connu des services de renseignement depuis 2006, et il ne fit l’objet d’un suivi qu’entre 2009 et 2010.

L’Enquête effectuée à la demande de la DCRI par l’antenne locale met à jour son profil islamiste sans susciter la moindre réaction de la direction centrale. Le 11 mars 2012, débute les premiers meurtres alors qu’il n’est plus surveillé depuis deux mois. Cela a pour conséquence de mettre en évidence l’échec des mesures prises par la DCRI avec une surveillance inadaptée, un maillage territorial du renseignement faible, une absence de culture Commune entre acteurs. Est soulevé la nécessité de nouvelles réformes.

Une nouvelle architecture administrative de la lutte antiterroriste en 2013

On va essayer de renforcer sur le plan intérieur la sécurité et le renseignement territorial, on va chercher à combler les failles de la DCRI par la construction de systèmes de renseignement sur le terrain. On voit comment le homegrown djihadisme fait bouger les frontières du renseignement. La menace n’est plus une menace extérieure, mais c’est maintenant une menace intérieure que l’on peut saisir à travers la fabrication d’un nouveau type de renseignement intérieur qui doit aller plus loin puisqu’on ne peut pas s’appuyer sur des systèmes d’information classiques.

La réforme commence à partir de juin 2013 affectant les structures institutionnelles et le fonctionnement même des polices, car la gendarmerie nationale se voit aussi confiée une mission de renseignement intérieur. La primauté du renseignement territorial est consolidée par la capacité de la gendarmerie nationale à intégrer le renseignement intérieur. La DCRI est rebaptisée en Direction générale de la Sécurité intérieure [DGSI] pour être l’équivalent de la DGSE sur le plan intérieur. Si on a créé un espace de libre circulation intérieure avec Schengen, la naissance de nouvelles violences terroristes réinterroge cette espace de liberté.

Pour lutter directement contre le homegrown jihadism sont prises de nouvelles mesures. On voit un retour de la coopération entre États pour essayer de contrôler le flux de jeunes comme avec l’établissement d’une coopération avec la Turquie pour mieux repérer et appréhender les jeunes jihadistes français en partance pour la Syrie. Un jeune qui va combattre dans n’importe quel conflit civil est fautif aux yeux de la justice française. Ce modèle de violence restaure l’idée que les frontières fabriquent du contrôle. Ces mesures sont aussi un contrôle plus soutenu des frontières nationales pour empêcher les départs notamment des mineurs ou encore la mise en œuvre d’une politique de prévention à l’égard des personnes détectées pour leur permettre de sortir du « processus d’endoctrinement jihadiste ». Sur le modèle du programme Channel en Angleterre, est constitué un téléphone vert comme pour faire remonter du terrain toute information sur les agissements quotidiens suspects.

Le nouveau concept de sécurité fait un saut conceptuel très fort déplaçant le niveau conceptuel en disant que pour que la nouvelle sécurité antiterroriste fonctionne, il faut qu’il y ait la rencontre de deux types d’expertises c’est-à-dire l’expertise des services de sécurité doit rencontrer une expertise profane. En d’autres termes, la sécurité implique de ne plus dissocier l’expertise savante de l’expertise profane. La population possède une expertise profane parce qu’elle vit le quotidien permettant d’observer les choses. Cela justifie de ne plus considérer l’habitant ou le citadin comme un spectateur ou une victime de la violence, mais comme un acteur potentiel de la gestion de cette violence au même titre que les spécialistes de la sécurité.

Conclusion

The awareness of homegrown jihadism is recent. The attacks in London and Madrid have awakened the European chancelleries with a major event that is breaking up. It is a continuation of the discovery of Al-Qaida's globalized terrorism. It is very difficult to say to ourselves today that we are in something that is going to go up or if we are going towards something that is going to go down. For some, the Alqaidean reconfigurations as with AQIM make that homegrown terrorism would have no reason not to continue. The security issue is complicated because the evaluation makes it possible to define means is committed to the issue of resource allocation and weighting. With the Merah case is highlighted that there is structure, a system and complicity. We must get rid of the romantic idea that they are just individuals, absolutely all alone, but that homegrown jihadism must be seen as a device and a complex refocused on individuals that works well. Even in homegrown jihadism theory, it is necessary to get rid of the theory of the lone wolf to redefine the criteria that participate in the process of radicalization that engages a process of logic of action.

The paradigm of internal security - external security is being challenged. We enter into changes in policing systems based on the integration of community policing, which is the concept of field intelligence and surveillance capable of understanding local situations in real time. The armies have invested the city as an object of study, the French army has elaborated a manual to know how to intervene in the "suburbs". What is at stake is not how to get the army to intervene in the cities, but rather how to build an understanding of what is happening. We must go down to the level of the inhabitants in order to understand what is really happening.

Homegrown jihadism justifies stricter control of national and European borders. May affect the concept of free movement of persons contained for Europe in the Schengen agreements. It justifies the strengthening of international cooperation in both intelligence and mutual legal assistance as a real threat and gives rise in the rule of law to initial institutional reforms.

In October 2013, France and Spain signed a cooperation agreement aimed at promoting the exchange of information without delay by setting up joint investigation teams in charge of combating terrorism. Criminal criminalisation of terrorist acts committed abroad by its own nationals without waiting for a terrorist offence to be committed on its national soil is on the agenda of European countries. The fight against homegrown jihadism seems to be at the origin of important future changes in the field of public action and the administrative architecture of the fight against terrorism in the rule of law.

Annexes

• Malet, David. Foreign Fighters: Transnational Identity in Civil Conflicts