RPT: YEAR IN REVIEW - Lone Wolves Not Silenced By Pandemic, 2020 Sees Series Of Attacks

Ontrary to expert predictions that the COVID-19 pandemic might force a retreat in threat of terrorism with social distancing norms dissuading would-be attackers, the year 2020 has seen a series of shocking acts of violence by lone wolves, confronting Europe with a hard choice of how to improve its anti-terrorist policies, inextricably linked to other long-standing issues for the bloc

GENOA (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 07th January, 2021) Contrary to expert predictions that the COVID-19 pandemic might force a retreat in threat of terrorism with social distancing norms dissuading would-be attackers, the year 2020 has seen a series of shocking acts of violence by lone wolves, confronting Europe with a hard choice of how to improve its anti-terrorist policies, inextricably linked to other long-standing issues for the bloc.

FIRST COVID-19 WAVE: EUROPE SLIGHTLY WARY OF POSSIBLE NEW ATTACKS

In spring 2020, when the virus just arrived in Europe, voices were raised about the possibility of would-be terrorists exploiting the pandemic situation for future attacks. EU counterterrorism chief Giles de Kerchove said in May that right-wing and Islamist militants could potentially view attacks on healthcare facilities as a highly effective way to spread panic among the population. Some experts, at the same time, suggested that social distancing measures will reduce the number of targets for terrorist attacks, making the pandemic as rather an opportunity for Islamist, extremists and nationalist groups to increase recruitment and build up strength.

Some European countries have reported successfully disrupting several terrorist plots possibly due to higher vigilance or simply as a way to calm down the population already deeply wary and fearful because of the pandemic. In mid-April, German police arrested four men from Tajikistan accused of being members of the Islamic State (terrorist organization, banned in Russia) believed to have been planning attacks in Germany. In March, UK counterterror police reported a 33-percent increase in terror-related arrests, which is the highest number since 2017.

In general, up until the end of the first wave of the coronavirus disease, the situation in Europe was relatively calm in terms of terrorist threat, with several isolated incidents. In June, a stabbing attack took place in the UK city of Reading, perpetrated by a 25-year-old man of Libyan origin, who killed three and wounded three. It was declared a terrorist attack, unlike the gas spraying incident in Berlin in July, which injured at least 11 persons.

The situation started to heat up towards the end of summer. Days before the start of the trial over January 2015 Charlie Hebdo shooting, which resulted in 12 fatalities, French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin visited the General Directorate of Internal Security (DGSI) and announced that over 8,000 people in France had been registered in the File of Wanted People over Islamist radicalization and that the terrorist threat remained "extremely high" in the country.

WHEN RELIGION MEETS GEOPOLITICS: EVENTS AND VERBAL DUELS PRECEDING ATTACKS

With the beginning of the trial of suspects in January 2015 attacks, Charlie Hebdo weekly magazine reprinted the caricatures of Prophet Muhammad, which provoked bloodshed five years earlier. Egypt's Al-Azhar University, a leading institution of Islamic theologians, strongly condemned the republication, calling it an unjustified provocation of the feelings of nearly two billion Muslims around the world.

Muslim tradition, motivated by the desire to avoid any form of idolatry, prohibits all possible representations of religious images or of the Quran. It allows instead abstract geometric or calligraphic motives that have no figurative aspects.

In France, however, there is a freedom to blaspheme, which is the right to criticize a religious belief, symbol or dogma. Speaking after the republication of the cartoons and the start of the trial, French President Emmanuel Macron affirmed that such freedom is tightly linked to the freedom of conscience, which he, as head of state must protect.

Such statements and the republication itself could not but trigger a reaction in the hearts of the Muslim population in France, which is the largest in the Western world and stands at around 5 percent of the country's total (or 3.4 million, according to the Special Eurobarometer 493 of 2019).

On September 25, a 25-year-old Pakistani conducted a knife attack next to the former Charlie Hebdo headquarters, which left two people injured. The attacker did not know that the magazine had changed its location. Having passed through Iran, Turkey and Italy, he arrived in France in 2018, provided false information about himself and was let in as an "unaccompanied minor," head of France's National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor's Office later said.

In a few days, the French president unveiled the bill proposed by the government to fight manifestations of radical Islamism in the country, tightening control over the funding for mosques and promoting the domestic training for Imams. It also advocated intensified control over schools, homeschooling limited to that motivated by health reasons only, closures of unregistered educational structures promoting radicalism, and mandatory rule of neutrality for employees of public service companies. The draft bill, which also requires the declaration of funding from mosques if it exceeds 12,000 US Dollars, has already been approved by the Council of Ministers and will head to the parliament in early 2021 for what promises to be a heated debate.

Two weeks later, France was stunned by another attack. History teacher Samuel Paty was beheaded in the outskirts of Paris by a Chechen-teenager angered by the fact that the teacher showed a caricature of the Islamic prophet Muhammad to his students at school. The attacker was shot dead by security forces.

The brutal killing of the teacher not only triggered new widespread anti-radicalism measures by the government, but also resulted in a war of words between Macron and the Turkish leader and eventually led to a row between France and a number of Muslim states.

In the wake of Paty's killing, France tightened security in schools, carried out numerous probes into online hate and radical Islamic groups, dissolved Collective Against Islamophobia in France (CCIF) and BarakaCity groups as "enemies of the Republic," posthumously awarded the teacher with the Legion of Honor award (the highest in France), shut down a number of mosques that were spreading online messages calling for Paty to be intimidated, and pledged to deport 231 people on the list of persons representing threat to national security.

Speaking at the commemoration ceremony for Samuel Paty, the French president urged freeing islam in France from foreign influence, contending that he wanted to build an Islam in France "that can be an Islam of the Enlightenment" and to halt "repeated deviations from the values of the republic." Macron also defended the use of caricatures as a manifestation of freedom of expression and said France needed to fight "Islamist separatism."

Replying to this speech and resonating with the feelings of many angered Muslims who took the words of Macron as a call to reform Islam, Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that Macron disrespected millions of French Muslim citizens and needed "some sort of mental treatment," prompting France to recall its ambassador from Ankara for consultations.

Among the first to support Macron was Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, who said Erdogan's insults once again proved Turkey had always been far from the European Union and its values.

The geopolitical row developed further when Turkey, joined by a number of Muslim countries, including Pakistan, Libya, Jordan and Morocco, called for boycotting all French products.

A little over two weeks after the murder of Samuel Paty, on October 29, two more persons were beheaded and one stabbed to death in an attack at the Notre-Dame basilica in the French city of Nice. The terrorist shouted "Allahu Akbar" while attacking strangers in the Catholic church and continued to do so even when he was hospitalized with a gunshot injury received during the police operation. He turned out to be a 21-year-old man of Tunisian origin who arrived on a boat on the Italian island of Lampedusa in September, was ordered to leave the country in October since he had no right to refuge but managed not only to stay in the country but also to move across Italy and reach France. Italian interior ministry immediately shrugged off any responsibility.

The Nice attack was followed by two other acts of violence on the same day, namely, a knife-stabbing attempt in the French city of Avignon and another near the French consulate in Saudi Arabia.

Macron raised the terrorist threat alert level across the country, more than doubled the number of troops mobilized for the counter-terrorist Operation Sentinelle (in place since January 2015), reinforced security provisions in schools and strengthened border controls. All places of worship were ordered to close.

Just two days later, the Austrian capital was rocked by a series of terrorist attacks. Gunmen opened fire in several locations in Vienna, with the main being next to a synagogue, killing four people and injuring 22. One of the attackers was shot by the police, and at least one escaped. Austrian interior minister stated later the main attacker was a supporter of the Islamic State (terrorist organization banned in Russia) and had been previously convicted, including for his sympathies for the group. It was subsequently revealed that three persons involved in the attack held North Macedonian citizenship along with the Austrian one, and one gunman had visited Slovakia in mid-July where he purchased cartridges for his assault rifle.

Kurz claimed after the attack that Austria's main anti-terrorism agency, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution and Counterterrorism, had to be reformed.

EU REACTION: NEW LOOK AT OLD ISSUES

The sequence of terror attacks in Europe entailed a new debate over old issues within the European Union, such as migration policy, intelligence cooperation, freedom of movement within the Schengen zone, security of the borders and control of the internet. Predictably, it was France and Austria who pushed forward the discussion first of all.

In early November, Macron proposed to Kurz to set up a "pact against radical Islamism," in other words, an anti-terror alliance. Kurz declared that he joined the French leader in a "European front in the war on Islamism."

A few days later, the two leaders invited German Chancellor Angela Merkel, European Council President Charles Michel and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen to join them for a video conference on the European response to the terrorist threat. During this mini-summit, Macron raised the issue of the need to reform Schengen rules in order to make the zone more secure, as well as to reinforce control of the external borders of the Union. Apart from that, he called for the creation of a European Interior Security Council and to develop a shared database. Notably, until now the European Union does not have a common dedicated governmental unit for intelligence information sharing, and all cooperation of secret services is based only on information exchange. Another proposal, which was shortly implemented, was to immediately remove terrorist-related content from the Internet. Besides this concrete step, all participants of the mini-summit agreed that EU member states n

eeded to respond to the terrorist threat. Soon after, Charles Michel also voiced support for creating an EU institute to train imams.

On November 13, a video conference of the EU home affairs followed. They discussed the new pact on migration in Europe and agreed that the border controls did not function perfectly, and the EU needed to optimize the protection of its borders.

Italy and France were the first nations to take steps to strengthen border controls, given that the Nice attacker arrived on Lampedusa initially. The two nations set up joint border patrol brigades made up of police forces.

On November 30, the first ever Schengen Forum took place, organized by the European Commission and aimed at improving the resilience of the Schengen area. Members of the European parliament and home affairs ministers took part in the video conference. Among other topics, they discussed how to improve the current Schengen rules and make sure that any possible reimposition of controls at internal borders in future is a measure of last resort and for a limited period of time. They also discussed ways to better manage the EU's external borders and insisted that two systems (Entry/Exit System EES and the European Traveller Information and Authorization) needed to be put in place in order to give border guards necessary information on who is crossing the EU borders. The results of this summit are expected to be reflected in the Schengen Strategy that the European Commission will present in mid-2021.

On December 9, the European Commission unveiled the new EU counter-terrorism agenda for 2020 - 2025 that aims to boost the bloc's resilience to radicalism. It offers to step up risk assessment, adopt rules to tackle terrorist and extremist content online, strengthen preventive action in prisons and focus more on rehabilitation and reintegration of formerly radicalized persons. It also talks about a more effective physical protection of public spaces, systematic checks at borders, better police interaction, a stronger mandate for Europol and a balanced approach to encrypted information.

Undoubtedly, 2021 is going to see more of such discussions and possibly new decisions aimed at strengthening the European Union in the face of terrorist threat.