Neutralsing The Lone Wolves! By Col NN Bhatia (Retd)

The ‘lone wolves’ are reckless deranged individual militants highly motivated to carry out acts of terrorism alone without remorse and material support from any individual or group following the radical ideology and sympathetic to a particular cause like establishment of Islamic state world over governed by the Shariat laws. They get indoctrinated by the terrorist organisations like the Liberation Tigers of the Tamil Elam (LTTE), the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), Al Qaida, Jaish-e- Muhammad (JeM) and Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and so on who are highly radicalized. Though they are loner but sometimes work in a pack called as the ‘pack of wolves’.

On 15 March 2019, the suspected 28 year Australian gunman named Brenton Tarrant attacked two  mosques in Christ Church, New Zealand wearing  a head mounted camera on  Friday during mid day prayers killing 50 Muslims. The Muslims comprise less than 1% of the New Zealand population rated as the world’s second most peaceful nation that is mourning the worst terrorist attack in its modern history. The country is also fiercely debating the prevalent gun laws and sudden overtones of religious intolerance.

In India every terrorist attacks in the Kashmir valley supported, trained and equipped by the Pakistani Army and the dreaded Inter Service Intelligence or the ISI are common by such lone or packs of wolves. Recently, on 14February 2019, a convoy of vehicles carrying Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) personnel were attacked on Pathankot- Jammu- Srinagar National Highway by the local vehicle-borne lone suicide wolf bomber Adil Ahmad Dar, member of the Pakistani based JeM terror outfit trained and operationalised by the Pakistani army and the ISI near Lethipora in the Pulwama district killing, 40 CRPF personnel. The JeM took the responsibility for this dastardly attack. On 26 February, the Indian  Air Force (IAF) retaliated targeting  Balakot  a training camp of the JeM  group in Balakot  across the Line of Control (LoC), killing large number of JeM terrorists. Both the countries were almost on the brink of war, amidst India getting ready for the general elections shortly.

The dastardly mass killing at Pulse Night Gay Club in Orlando is not a case in isolation killing 50 people and seriously injuring other 53 but a repetition of the shootings in San Bernardino some years back. In another harrowing incident suspected gunman Gokmen Tanis killed 3 and wounded another 9in an unprovoked attack on a streetcar in the Dutch city of Utrecht on 18 Mar 2019.

Lone wolf is a complex dual personality individual- on one side, he is outwardly a respectable family man or woman, mostly married with a family, transformed from a friendly teenager to generally growing as a loner, keeping aloof and an introvert, yet the other side of the coin, with split personality, he is ruthless sadist, without remorse, defiant pervert or sort, who after pumping hundreds of bullets at a crowded place, killing innocent men, women and children have a last laugh even if killed in the shootout melee. Mateen, the lone wolf of Orlando who worked as a security guard was inspired by the ISIS. Some reports suggest he was himself a perverted homosexual and visited the gay club but was infuriated when his young son saw a couple kissing intimately. It is believed shortly before Orlando nightclub shoot out, he called 9/11 pledging his support to the ISIS. His dual split personality was not even known to his parents of the Afghan descent. Unfortunately, though he was on the radar of the FBI and investigated thrice for the suspected terror links with the American suicide bomber Moner Abu and making hate speeches, yet not much was done to nip the evil in the bud. After the ghastly Orlando tragedy, the ISIS has claimed the responsibility for the dastardly act of cowardice swallowing so many innocent lives high lighting threat of lone wolves lurking every where all the times.

Why can Lone Wolves attacks cannot be stopped?

Easily available guns are the major problem in the US, Canada, the UK, most of the European Union countries, Australia and the New Zealand. If you have the money, you may get away buying any small arms with bags full of ammunition without impunity. With an assault rifles, he pumped bullets at hundreds of rounds per minute (rpm). It is time the US tightens gun laws in the country and so also all other countries like the UK, France, Australia and New Zealand. Another issue is, if you have a strict gun control regime, the lone wolves would use improvised explosive devices (IEDs) to kill people as a lone suicide bomber in a busy public place as was done by JeM terrorist Dar on 14 February 2019 in Pulwama in India.

After every lone wolf action, more military and security personnel are deployed and restrictions imposed on the Muslim community, mosques and madrassas which are counterproductive. Sudden restrictions imposed on the travel within the US or other affected countries and migration of the Muslim refugees to the US or similarly affected other countries put even the innocent Muslim women, children and sick elderlies under tremendous difficulties and suspicion while the lone wolf either dies in his deadly suicide attack or if alive watches fun of the administration and the government getting in a spin.

All Jihadi terrorists are fluent in English and operate IT to their advantage but how many citizens of the attacked country and officials read, converse and communicate in Arabic imposing impenetrable threat of the lone wolves. Often they carry satellite phones for secrecy.

Since lone wolves attack singly, very many less people are in contact with them leaving behind fewer leads making it difficult to capture them.

Internet, WhatsApp and other social media has played critical role in the spread of lone wolves. With billions of messages originating in multiple languages, often in encryption and cipher codes, it is difficult to collect, collate and interpret them. Lone wolves though work alone but they do brag on social media and give out their blogs just before the terror attack making it difficult for the security agencies to nab them.

The conventional security forces while maneuvering leave clear signals of impending operation or reacting to deadliest lone wolf attacks but lone wolves if survived, easily merge with population with minimal tell tale signs and are not traceable. Massive conventional forces against a lone wolf are counterproductive and poor strategy.

Lone wolves’ community provides shelter and the ISIS like radical groups give training, motivation and money for such ‘leaderless attacks’ making that much difficult to prevent such attacks or apprehend such lone wolves. No wonder, it had given enough ammunition to Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump to ban entry of Muslims, putting Democratic Party’s candidate Hillary Clinton on the back foot.

Night Clubs/Pornography/Gay clubs and liberal boozing, drugs and dancing with strangers are dens of criminal activities and local administration, police and intelligence agencies need to keep a close watch on such outlets. Vandalism is common at such places along with other criminal activities conducive for lone wolves to operate easily.

Too much individual freedom and liberties and human rights groups’ intervention are counterproductive.

What are the answers?

All countries need to keep surveillance and security top most in their minds and each act of such terror taken seriously and ruthlessly curbed. The US regime need to control over 300 million guns with the people and country like India needs to sanitize porous borders and check on smuggling of drugs, arms and ammunition and explosives. More guns with citizens do not make country safer. Obama’s conviction that gun control in France left country helpless after November 2015 attacks helpless has no grounds. It has given enough leverage to Trump to attack Democratic Party and its Muslims’ related policies. Trump supporters must know that one bad Muslim will not rot the society as a whole. In the liberal countries and the US ‘Wild West and ‘Cow Boy’ culture must be ended.

We need to monitor and create mechanism to check IT and social media and scrutiny on madrassas and mosques and similar radical institutions of other faiths and religions. Monitoring IT and social media is easy said than done and indeed is a Herculean task. Individual freedom and liberties if curbed becomes counterproductive. This aspect is difficult to implement with endless people communicating and chatting on Internet and WhatsApp and other social media generating billions of messages every day.

Intelligence gathering and sharing, specially the real time actionable intelligence must be faster, secure and fool proof. ‘Need to know and need to go’ principle should be the cardinal principle of intelligence and security agencies.

Character and antecedents (C&A) verification data bank need to be created in each locality’s police station of all suspected people especially of those suffering from certain key character deficiencies like 3Ws (wine, women and wealth), drug abuse or radical leanings. Such persons should be denied freedom to acquire fire arms and ammunition even for self defense.

Concept of ‘Beat Constable’ whereby police constable of each locality maintains close liaison with all its residents and keeps discreet eye on the new arrivals and those who have left it is obligatory. Involvement of citizenry in locality security needs to build in brick system upwards to form an integrated security networking and pyramid.

Corruption free good governance is need of the hours. In the Indian context, with small bribes, smuggling of guns, narcotics, hawala transactions and terrorists is feasible compromising national security.

Fourth Estate is very powerful medium to tackle terrorism. Media both print and electronic should be more responsible in reporting and avoid high lighting jihadi actions. Imagine psywar being played with every individual with hundreds of national and international channels 24×7 blaring lone wolf Mateen’s killing. Jihadis and terrorists are publicity hungry and unwittingly we lose the game giving them avoidable publicity.

World community must resolve Muslims’ problems from Afghanistan to Syria and Sudan. We should let them form governments as per their aspirations and welfare and security of its people and refrain imposing our ways of life on them. This will curb vendetta.

All nations need to ensure that common citizens irrespective of their caste, colour, creed, religion and culture are treated alike. There are no all good or bad Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Jews, Blacks or Whites. They are all citizens of that particular nation and must live without any discrimination. If in India, all the Hindus, Muslims or Christians were good, then there would not have been Godse who shot Mahatma Gandhi. Likewise. Lone wolves like Oswald shot President Kennedy, while the former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated by the lone terrorist Thenmozhi Rajaratnam nicknamed Dhanu who was the member of the Srilankan terrorist organisation LTTE and likes of Mateen, who massacred innocent people in Orlando or Kasab, who did mass killings in Mumbai 26 /11 attacks pose serious challenges to civilized societies all over the world. If Osama bin Laden, the world’s most wanted terrorist of al-Qaida was eliminated by the US Marines, Masood Azhar of the LeT and Hafiz Muhammad Saeed of JeM living and sheltered in Pakistan are declared global terrorists and need to be neutralised through the diplomatic, economic, political and militarily operations isolating Pakistan, terrorism can be greatly controlled in the South Asia. All terrorists are bad and there are no good and bad terrorists as per the Pakistani thinking.

To catch a thief, create a thief is an old saying. The governments and those responsible for the management of the violence need to think ‘lone panthers’ like highly trained, motivated sharp shooters / commandos to suddenly spring and neutralise the ‘lone wolves’.

Each country has specific, security issues but the above guidelines high light the lone wolves menace and awareness, good governance, stringent weapon laws, self defence training of the citizens, international cooperation and sharing of real time intelligence, effective policing, eye on the radical organisations and fundamentalists and self/civil defence are some of the measures to contain the  lone wolves attacks. With this food for thought, let us find the way ahead to tame and eliminate the lone wolves attacks.