Jason Burke
eldiario.es
The attack on tourists in Barcelona followed a repeated pattern and demonstrates the indiscriminate character of the current terrorist attacks
The terrorist attack in Barcelona shows three hard lessons learned by the security forces and by Citizens in general in the last months and years.
Firstly, that the use of vehicles as weapons is already a consolidated tactic for extremists, one of the many used in the last two decades, and that should be considered standard in the terrorist arsenal. In the last 13 months there have been similar attacks in France, Germany, Sweden and the United Kingdom.
Last week, a woman was killed by a car driving a right-wing extremist at full speed in the United States in somewhat different circumstances.
The identity and motivation of the attackers of Barcelona will be known in the next hours. The Islamic State (EI) has claimed the attack through its news agency Amaq, although in recent months such claims have become very unreliable.
Active users of social networks near the IE have celebrated the attack, but that does not necessarily imply a direct connection between the attacker (or the attackers) and the terrorist group.
The tactics are spread among the militants once their operation is demonstrated. No skill is needed to drive a vehicle against a crowd and there is no difficulty in getting one. This makes a car, truck or truck an ideal weapon for today's terrorists, who are often inspired by some other group they are not part of and who generally lack training and the means to attack more complex.
The second lesson is that now they do not discriminate too much when they choose their goal. This means that tourists are also in the line of fire. A little more than ten years ago, Islamic groups sent specific messages with their violent acts. Random attacks on unarmed civilians were considered ineffective and even counterproductive in gaining public support in the Muslim world. For Al-Qaeda, the September 11 attacks were symbols of US economic, political and military power.
In 2004 Spain was the target of the bloodiest jihadist attack on European territory, when al-Qaeda supporters detonated bombs on passenger trains in Madrid. One of the objectives was to weaken Spain's support for Iraq's military intervention and influence the elections. Spain was a particular target also because of the historical repercussion that the Islamic kingdom of Andalusia, defeated by Christianity 900 years ago, had for militants.
Things are not like this anymore. The EI has led a shift to one type of attack in which the target can be anyone anywhere and any way. In public places, vulnerable by nature, people are now more at risk than ever: Manchester music fans, party people in Nice, customers of a London pub and, of course, tourists taking photos on The Westminster Bridge, resting on a beach in Tunisia or returning home on a plane from Egypt to Russia.
Western vacationers abroad have long been terrorist targets. As early as 1997, Egyptian militants staged the bloody attack on Luxor. But tourists were never the main destination of violence. At present, it seems so. Who was driving the van on the curb of Las Ramblas, one of the busiest tourist areas in the world, was trying to kill foreign tourists.
The Spanish authorities were aware of the threats and tried to reinforce security in public places at Christmas. A plan to drive a pedestrian truck was dismantled in November. Bollards, concrete blocks and other types of defenses were evaluated. The intelligence services increased the collection of information.
But little can be done against an attack of this type in a port city and Mediterranean so busy. The third lesson is this: good police surveillance can keep people safe for a while.
Partly thanks to his experience fighting Islamist militants in the 1990s, French intelligence services were way ahead of their British and American counterparts for about ten years. But with few resources and weakened by the scarce exchange of information at national and European level, the French spies had many problems to contain the threat already since 2012. They were very poorly prepared when the EI launched in 2014 the offensive against France from its enclaves Recently gained in Syria and Iraq.
The same can be said of the Spanish services, with a high reputation for their professionalism in the anti-terrorist world. After the attacks of 2014, Spain invested large amounts in intelligence agencies and developed a formidable capacity to gather information and to act from her. This has kept the country safe from Islamist terrorism for 13 years. In 2008 they managed to thwart important plots. Last year, Spain disrupted at least 10 different plans. Two more networks have been discovered this year, at least one of which has links to EI-led attackers in other parts of Europe.
As the British discovered this year, the fact that there are no successful attacks does not imply that there is no Islamist militancy. The final hard lesson is that at some point something, or someone, will accomplish its purpose.
Source: http://www.eldiario.es/theguardian/duras-lecciones-deja-atentado-Ramblas_0_677182309.html
