The Lone Wolf Terrorist

Twelve days before the terrorist attack in New Orleans in which a car ran through people celebrating a festival, the same modus operandi was employed in Magdeburg Germany where a vehicle rammed through a Christmas market. There was also something common between the two perpetrators besides the method—they operated alone in contrast to the perception that terrorism is an organised crime. They were lone wolves.

Such terrorists have a political ideology but are not directly connected to groups. They aren’t part of sleeper cells or modules. The New Orleans killer, Shamsud-Din Jabbar, had in his car a flag of the Islamic State (ISIS), the terrorist organisation that seeks to recreate a Caliphate and once occupied significant territory in the Middle East, but he was not trained or set up by them. Lone wolves radicalise themselves with material available online, and in the attack often use articles of daily use like cars or knives.

A recent study in the UK compared looked at 143 perpetrators of terror attacks between 1983 and 2021. They were analysed for ‘sociodemographics, ideological affiliation, mental health status, online activities, plot characteristics, and assessments of risk.’ Among them were those who had acted in groups or alone. The study found that lone actors were more given to mental health issues. It also said, ‘In terms of trends over time, lone-actor attacks have become increasingly prominent, while the opposite is true for group attacks. The internet was also found to play an important role in radicalization pathways and attack preparation for lone actors and lone dyads, but a lesser role for group-based attackers.’

The study found that Islamic terrorism was mostly a group phenomenon while ‘attackers affiliated with the extreme right wing were more likely to commit attacks alone or in pairs’. But there are no clear cut delineations. The Magdeburg attacker, for instance, though a Muslim was someone who was a critic of his religion and the attack might not have been rooted in religious fundamentalism. But the New Orleans attacker clearly was moved by it.

Lone wolf attacks have been common in the West but India has been mostly spared this phenomenon. But it is a threat that always looms over the horizon. When the ICC T20 World Cup was happening in New York, an ISIS splinter group had given calls for lone wolf attacks on an Indian-Pakistan match. Security had to be beefed up.

Intelligence agencies track terrorist groups and have informants within them but what do you do about someone planning it in his home by himself. The very nature of someone planning an attack by himself makes monitoring difficult. A 2017 paper in the Journal of Forensic Sciences analysed the phenomenon and found elements to such attackers that could used to used for prevention. Such terrorists weren’t very good at or didn’t care to maintain a high degree of security. Those connected to them often got glimpses of their intentions. They were not necessarily social misfits and there was a period of planning when they exposed themselves. The paper said, ’…most of the elements that are crucial to the planning and preparation of a lone actor terrorist attack begin months, if not years, beforehand, which suggests that law enforcement and security agencies need not necessarily rely on last-minute indicators of an impending strike but, given sufficient data and a correct analysis of contextual specifics, can engage in the early detection, interruption, and prevention of lone actor violence.’

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