Leaderless Jihad: The War That No Longer Needs an Army

Commentary

In 2003, I first coined the phrase “Leaderless Jihad” to describe how highly structured terrorist organizations would give way to loosely aligned groups and individuals motivated by ideology and directed only by the desire to attack any target they could, to create as much death and destruction as possible.

Though ISIS, in all its forms, would develop in the years between my first use of the term and when I described the same concept in a master’s thesis, the path to leaderless jihad remained, and was demonstrated repeatedly by lone wolf actors.

In the decades since I first coined the term, Western governments built their security systems around a familiar model of warfare: identify the enemy, locate its leadership, destroy its infrastructure, and disrupt its ability to command and control.

That model became dangerously incomplete when the enemy no longer required a traditional command structure.

Two disturbing incidents in recent weeks illustrate the problem.

In Britain, counterterrorism police investigating suspicious activity near RAF Fairford, the British airbase used by American forces, arrested and then released on bail a dual British Iranian national on suspicion of preparing terrorist acts. British investigators emphasize that the case could involve a foreign state.

Days later, another alarming incident occurred. On a FlyDubai flight traveling from Dubai to Tel Aviv, one pilot stabbed the other and attempted to seize control of the aircraft. Israeli officials characterized the incident as an attempted jihadist terrorist attack, although the circumstances and motivation remain under investigation.

Whether these investigations ultimately reveal direct orders from Tehran, organizational connections, personal radicalization, or some combination of those factors, they demonstrate something Western security planners cannot afford to ignore:

Modern jihad doesn’t necessarily require an army, headquarters, or even direct orders; it only needs ideological motivation mixed with technology.

Leaderless Jihad is a decentralized environment where individuals and small groups are radicalized and act on their own without the need for a traditional terrorist hierarchy. The internet accelerates that process by letting ideology, outrage, propaganda, and inspiration cross borders almost instantly. I emphasized this in my initial work, and 20 years later, the ability to radicalize individuals to action knows no boundaries or limitations.

This changes the battlefield and requires a different response.

During four deployments to Afghanistan, one to Europe and Syria, and one to North Africa, I operated in a world where military planners like me spent enormous effort understanding networks. We looked for commanders, financiers, facilitators, weapons suppliers, communications nodes, safe houses, and transportation routes.

Find the network, and you could attack the network.

But what happens when much of the network exists inside someone’s mind?

What happens when ideology alone drives one to act?

A person does not necessarily need to receive an encrypted message saying, “Attack this target.” He may absorb years of propaganda telling him who the enemy is, watch geopolitical events unfold, identify an opportunity, and act.

That is asymmetric warfare in perhaps its most difficult form.

I have written repeatedly that the next conflict will not necessarily announce itself with armored formations crossing international borders. It may appear through cyberattacks, drones, infrastructure attacks, information operations, proxies, or individuals acting with varying degrees of outside encouragement. Emerging technology and dispersed networks increasingly allow comparatively weak actors to threaten powerful nations without confronting their militaries conventionally.

The RAF Fairford investigation deserves particular attention for precisely that reason. Investigators have explicitly said they are considering possible foreign-state involvement.

That possibility highlights the ever-increasing blurred lines connecting terrorism, proxy warfare, criminal activity, espionage, and conventional state conflict.

Western governments naturally want organizational charts. We want to know who gave the order, who financed the operation, and which organization claims responsibility.

Sometimes those answers will exist.

Increasingly, they may not.

The lesson of leaderless jihad is that destroying an organization does not destroy an ideology. Killing a commander does not eliminate his influence; sometimes it increases it through martyrdom. Securing a border does not automatically secure a society when radicalization can occur inside that border.

Twenty-five years after September 11, the battlefield kept changing; an outcome I first predicted and warned about in 2003 became a reality as jihad became leaderless.

Our thinking must change with it.

The next attacker may never attend a terrorist training camp, meet a terrorist commander, or receive an operational order.

He may decide that the war is his to fight. It could be in a cockpit, an energy distribution node, a water supply facility, or even from a position in government.

And that makes every radicalized individual a potential battlefield of one.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.