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                 New, Low-tech Terror Tactics Simple and Deadly

   by Masood Farivar

   For years, al-Qaida and the Islamic State groups have been urging
   followers in Western nations to carry out attacks with whatever weapons
   come to hand, suggesting items as simple as a rock, a car or a fist.
   By killing 84 people in the French port city of Nice on Thursday, with
   a rented truck last week, Mohammed Bouhlel demonstrated just how lethal
   that crude technique can be.
   "It's a frightening moment," said Daniel Benjamin, a former
   counterterrorism coordinator the U.S. State Department, now director of
   the John Sloan Dickey Center at Dartmouth College. "How many easy and
   simple ways can we identify to kill people?"
   With Western intelligence and law enforcement having improved their
   capabilities since the 9-11 attacks on the World Trade Center,
   terrorist groups are finding it more difficult to mount the
   large-scale, complex attacks such as occurred in Bali, Madrid, and
   London. Instead, counterterrorism officials say homegrown extremists
   are increasingly using low-tech means to cause mayhem.

   ''"What we have seen over time is that [homegrown violent extremists],
   either lone actors or small insular groups, continue to gravitate
   toward simple tactics that do not require advanced skills or outside
   training," Nicholas Rasmussen, Director of National Counterterrorism
   Center, told the House Homeland Security Committee on Thursday.
   The use of a vehicle as a weapon of terror has a recent history.
   So-called car-ramming assaults by Palestinian militants have killed
   dozens in Israel in recent years.
   Less lethal have been a series of smaller-scale attacks in France,
   Britain, Canada and the United States, where Iranian-American Mohammed
   Reza Taheri-azar drove his car into a crowd of students on the campus
   of the University of North Carolina in 2006. Nine people were injured
   in the incident.
   "What's kind of unusual about this [Nice] attack is that such a large
   vehicle was used against such a large crowd, you had such a huge death
   toll," Scott Stewart the Vice President of Tactical Analysis at
   intelligence advisory Stratfor said via Skype.
   Bouhlel did not have to look hard to find inspiration or how-to tips
   online to carry out his attack.
   As early as 2010, al-Qaida urged followers to use a pick-up truck to
   mow down "the enemies of Allah."
   And in a January, 2015 address, ISIS spokesman, Mohammad al-Adnani,
   exhorted sympathizers to kill Westerners with whatever means available,
   "whether an explosive device, a bullet, a knife, a car, a rock, or even
   a boot or a fist."

   Larossi Abballa, a 25-year-old Frenchman and former jihadi recruiter,
   used a knife in January to stab a police officer and his companion in a
   suburb of Paris.''

   For U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies, a Nice-style attack
   represents a long-feared nightmare with few desirable countermeasures.
   "What are you going to do? Take people's cars away?" Colin Clarke, a
   political scientist at Rand Corp., said tongue in cheek.
   Large security barriers and dump trucks have been used in the past to
   protect government buildings, and Stewart said "people are going to
   consider using those sorts of things or large vehicles to block streets
   during large events in the future.
   Copycat attacks are likely to materialize, as extremists of all kinds,
   from militant environmentalists to violent white supremacists to
   troubled loners looking for a meaning in life resort to rudimentary
   tactics to carry out acts of terror, counterterrorism officials and
   experts say.
   "We expect some [homegrown violent extremists] will try to replicate
   the violence and potentially capitalize on the media coverage and
   attention that attacks like the one in Florida generated," Rasmussen
   said.
   With the United States teeming with so-called soft targets and
   terrorists turning to simple methods, the country needs to think
   outside the box to prevent future attacks, said Michael Rubin, a former
   Pentagon official now with the American Enterprise Institute in
   Washington.
   "I think we're missing the boat," Rubin said in an interview. "We're
   very good at preventing the last terrorist attack. We're not forward
   thinking."
   Rubin took issue with the notion of "lone wolves" as operators in a
   vacuum, arguing that many draw "institutional support" from online
   radicalization efforts.
   "Every lone wolf now has a pack behind them," he wrote in a blogpost on
   Friday.
   Michael Smith, an intelligence expert and chief operating officer of
   Kronos Advisory, said despite recent battlefield losses, ISIS remains a
   potent threat as it battles al-Qaida for supremacy over the global
   jihadist movement.
   "The fact is that a majority of [recent] terrorism-cases are Islamic
   State-related cases," Smith said. "We need to deny them real
   sanctuaries and cyber sanctuaries. That's where the near-term focus
   should be."
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References

   1. http://www.voanews.com/content/new-low-tech-terror-attacks-simple-deadly/3423383.html