The Paris attacks reflect both new and existing trends

More than a week after the terrorist attacks in Paris, researchers are still debating whether the attacks demonstrate a completely new trend, and the significance of support from Islamic State. However, it is clear that there is something new and something all too familiar about the Paris attacks.

In certain respects, the Paris killings are reminiscent of the attacks on western countries by al-Qaeda in the 2000s, for example 9/11 in 2001 and the London bombings in 2005: several simultaneous attacks, use of the al-Qaeda-trademark TATP explosive, suicide attacks aimed at random passers-by, and perpetrators with direct contact to a foreign organisation; al-Qaeda, or now Islamic State.  As western security and intelligence services got to grips with the new threat from Jihadi extremists, it became more difficult to carry out these high-profile attacks, which require communication and facilities to manufacture explosives.

This is one likely reason why we have seen more unsophisticated attacks in the recent period. One branch of al-Qaeda, AQAP, encouraged just such unsophisticated solo actions in its ‘glossy’ magazine; Inspire. In these attacks, one or two perpetrators have carried out attacks using simple handguns, obtained relatively easily in criminal circles. These simple attacks have usually aimed at symbolic targets: government representatives, police officers, soldiers, symbols of free-speech, or Jewish targets. The attack in Copenhagen in February 2015 was typical of this trend. Omar el-Hussein operated alone, he used a rifle stolen from an army storage facility, and he attacked a synagogue and a meeting on free-speech. Hussein was a declared supporter of Islamic State, and after the attack, the Islamic State newsletter, Dabiq, contained a several-page report in praise of Hussein and his action in Copenhagen. However, Hussein had never personally visited Syria, nor had any contact whatsoever with IS. In recent years, only one attack has been perpetrated by someone who had visited Syria. This was Mehdi Nemmouche, accused of killing four people in an attack on a Jewish museum in Brussels in 2013.

There is no doubt that the Paris attacks were more complex than the simple attacks we have seen in recent years. Clearly, it requires more organisation and coordination to make several simultaneous attacks than it does for a single person to grab a gun. Even though it is not particularly difficult to obtain TATP, it does require more effort to manufacture and handle, than getting hold of a Kalashnikov.  To a certain extent, this was apparent in the Paris attacks, as the explosives primarily only killed the suicide bombers themselves.

There is nothing much new under the sun with regard to the perpetrators. In many ways they bring to mind the same picture as we have seen in recent years. The well-educated ideologists behind 9/11 have made way for young, maladjusted men from ghetto areas; often with a criminal background. They have often been convicted of violence or for drug-related offences, and many have been in prison. Both before and after Paris, these will usually be people who already have experience with violence and who have an opportunity to use this experience and their violent ways to serve a political cause. In a speech to the French Parliament, President Hollande described the perpetrators as “individuals who start off in crime and then become radicalized before ending up by committing acts of terrorism”.

Links to Islamic State and the French-speaking colony in Syria
One of the most important issues is about the link to Islamic State. Even though several perpetrators carried out terrorist attacks in 2015 in the name of Islamic State - the attack on a Jewish supermarket in Paris by Coulibaly, or the Copenhagen attacker - none of them had been to Syria or had direct contact with Islamic State. The latest attacks in Paris clearly differ on this point from what we have otherwise seen in recent years. The ringleader behind the attacks was a Belgian, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, who had visited Syria on several occasions. He appeared in a French-speaking IS video, and in early 2015 he gave an interview to the IS magazine, Dabiq, in which he boasts of having organised attacks in Europe and, with the security services on his heels, escaping out of Europe and back to Syria. Several of the others had either been in Syria or had tried to get there.

On the day after the attacks, the French President Hollande clearly stated that ‘Daesh’, i.e. Islamic State, was behind them and that France would be stepping up bombing missions against the organisation in Syria. Islamic State has clearly been involved in foiled attacks in Europe, but this is the first time that they have been directly involved in a successful attack.

However, the crucial issue is not whether the attacks were planned by Islamic State, but what this actually means. For example, how should we perceive the role of Abaaoud? Was he a trusted representative for Islamic State leaders, or was he just an autonomous foreign warrior who, despite clearly having been to Syria, had since developed ambitions to strike against France and his home country, Belgium?

We have no knowledge of high-ranking people in IS having given direct orders to carry out the attacks, or having taken part in the planning. In September 2014, an IS spokesman, al-Adnani, called for attacks on countries taking part in the US-led coalition against IS, including the “spiteful and filthy French”. However, direct threats against France have otherwise often come from French-speaking IS fighters located in Syria.  At the moment, it is not possible to maintain that IS was behind the attacks: that is, IS in terms of a hierarchical organisation led from the top. The voice which claimed IS was responsible for the attacks was neither Baghdadi nor Adnani, but rather someone well-known to French intelligence: Fabien Clain, a French national. Clain was a close friend of Mohammed Merah, the man behind the Toulouse shootings, and in 2009 Clain was convicted of recruiting people for Iraq. He is believed to have travelled to Syria in 2014. 

However, although it remains unclear as to whether senior members of IS played any of role at all in the Paris attacks, there is no doubt that, as something new, the attacks were carried out by a network of people from France and Belgium, and that this network had links to IS in Syria. Official figures indicate that a relatively large number of French and Belgian nationals have gone to Syria in recent years: between 1,700 and 1,800 French and around 300 Belgians. There are special reception facilities for French speaking jihad candidates at the IS headquarters in Raqqa in Syria, and there are special routes for French and Belgians over the border from Turkey to Syria. Therefore, there is a French-Belgian community in Raqqa as well as in other places in Syria. This could be one of the reasons for the high number of planned and executed attacks against France and Belgium in recent years; attacks which have involved both French and Belgian nationals across borders.

There is no doubt that there are people within these Francophone IS communities with ambitions to strike against France and Belgium. France did not start bombing Syria after the Paris attacks. They had already conducted bombing campaigns (Raqqa and Deir Ez-Zor) before the attacks. France referred to Article 51 of the UN Charter specifically, which deals with the “the right to self-defence”, and maintained that they were trying to ward off the imminent threat of attack. The French attacks were aimed directly at some of the Francophone training camps and induction facilities and against named French nationals.

Home-grown terrorists from city suburbs
Another point in which the perpetrators of the Paris attacks resemble those behind other attacks in recent years, is the so-called ‘home-grown’ terrorists, i.e. people who were born or who grew up in Europe. As many have already pointed out, this means that the problem is not only rooted in Syria and Iraq, but also in the serious problems in French and Belgian city ghettos. Following the attacks, the controversial French economy minister, Emmanuel Macron, said that France also had some responsibility, because the country was the fertile “soil” on which jihad could thrive. According to Macron, this is because there is crisis in the model of “open republican elitism” on which French society was built. The French Republic was founded on an idea that social mobility is within the reach of every French national who is willing to work and study; no matter their background. However, as Macron added, if you "have a beard or a name that could be taken for Muslim”, you are “four times less likely” to be called to a job interview.    

The terrorist attacks in Paris took place exactly ten years after the major riots in French city suburbs, which in 2005 put France in a state of emergency for the first time since the war in Algeria in 1961. In 2005 the authorities promised the moon, and roused prospects of doing something about youth unemployment, segregation of housing, and the well-known police discrimination against young men from North Africa. But these remained just promises. Ten years after the riots, there is general agreement that not much has been done to improve the situation in the French suburbs.