ubiwar . conflict in n dimensions

According to a report by Joe Charlaff at Homeland Security Today, an al-Qaeda cell has been uncovered and dismantled in Jerusalem.

What interests me about this story of the arrest last week by Shin Bet and Israeli police of two students of Israeli citizenship and four Palestinians is some of the detail:

Using their cell phone they filmed helicopters taking off and landing at the sports stadium on the university campus at Givat Ram in Jerusalem from their dormitory window, which overlooks the area. The stadium is frequently used as a helipad by government officials and visiting dignitaries. They posted queries on Al Qaeda linked web sites asking for advice on how to shoot down a helicopter with the idea of downing President George Bush’s helicopter during his visit to Israel in January of this year.

The helipad on the campus was used by Bush’s entourage due its proximity to strategic destinations.

Following the police raid in the early hours of Friday morning, July 18, 2008, an indictment was issued against the suspects at the Jerusalem District Court on charges of membership in a terrorist organization, possessing propaganda material supporting a terror organization, and attempting to form a local Al Qaeda cell in Jerusalem.

Investigators found that some of the suspects had surfed Al-Qaeda web sites featuring radical Islamic content, and had also downloaded instructions from the internet on their computer on bomb making.

There was no indication that the suspects’ activities ever passed the planning stage and they do not face charges of active involvement in any attacks [...]

Eitan Azani, deputy director of the Institute for Counter-Terrorism in Herzliya, said “The arrests demonstrate the virtual process Al-Qaeda is using to build an infrastructure in the Middle East, including in Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon and now Israel.

Azani’s right of course about the unstated notion of ‘virtual community’ but it’s a bit of a non-quote (no fault of his). The rest of the article does go on to say:

no surprise was expressed by other students [at Hebrew University] who spoke about an atmosphere of radicalism on the campus that encouraged such activities. One of the students who did not want his name published, spoke of radical groups holding political meetings all the time. He said that he knew the suspects and that they were very quiet, kept to themselves, and did not encourage other students to socialize with them.

This is another example of how the internet is being used by the media as a hook on which to hang stories of real life, face-to-face radicalisation. There’s still that element of surprise about it. I’m sure Azani’s perfectly well aware of the role the internet plays in radicalisation, and also that it doesn’t happen in isolation. Not only is the internet firmly embedded in social context but its use is also. While it’s interesting that these guys used a mobile phone in this way - actually, it’s fascinating - it would have been far more interesting to find out what they did with the video next. That would really give us some insight into how the internet is being used, not just the fact that people in Jerusalem have access to it.

In another way though, this is actually a very good article and the key, perhaps counter-intuitively, is that “there was no indication that the suspects’ activities ever passed the planning stage and they do not face charges of active involvement in any attacks.” Evidence increasingly suggests that this is the case, and that exposure to such materials is part of the radicalisation process rather than an operational or training vehicle.

Anne Stenersen of the FFI in Oslo has written a very good paper in Terrorism & Political Violence, The Internet: A Virtual Training Camp?:

This study aims to investigate how Al Qaeda uses the Internet for military training and preparation. What kind of training material is available on jihadi webpages, who produces it, and for what purpose? The article argues that in spite of a vast amount of training-related literature online, there have been few organized efforts by Al Qaeda to train their followers by way of the Internet. The Internet is per today not a “virtual training camp” organized from above, but rather a resource bank maintained and accessed largely by self-radicalized sympathizers.

One of the implications of her research is that there is little attempt to train people with this material, because that’s not what it’s for. The material is there to create a ‘virtual community’, to act as a vector of radicalisation, rather than to impart any solid, operational knowledge to those who download and read it, even perhaps digest and understand it. As with the young men in Jerusalem, if you create a jihadi environment then this is the more powerful factor in radicalisation, not that one of these guys could actually shoot down a helicopter based on an AK-47 schematic and a cellphone recce.