03 January 2024
Counter Terrorist Trends and Analyses (CTTA) – Volume 16 Issue 01
Annual Threat Assessment
This volume assesses the 2023 trends in the violent extremist space, and will cover three broad themes: 1) significant global developments and trends; 2) notable operational trends and developments; and 3) the enduring salience of a holistic, integrated approach in dealing with violent extremism.
2023 will be best remembered for Hamas’s surprise attack from the air, sea and land on southern Israel on 7 October. The violence killed some 1,200 Israelis, injured many more, and led to the kidnapping of 240 Israeli civilian and military personnel, including several children and foreign nationals. Israel responded with a massive assault on the Gaza Strip, aiming to neutralise Hamas. Almost 1 million of Gaza’s 2.3 million population have been dislocated since, generating a huge humanitarian crisis.
The 7 October episode energised transnational Islamist threat networks, particularly Al-Qaeda and its worldwide affiliates. The group urged Muslims worldwide to participate in the fighting in Gaza. It also called for attacks on Israelis in the UAE, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, and Bahrain, and American military bases, airports, and embassies in Muslim countries. In Southeast Asia, pro-Al Qaeda social media activists in Indonesia echoed Al Qaeda’s call for Muslims to actively participate in the Israel-Hamas conflict.
Next, the re-emergence of a Taliban-run Afghanistan since August 2021 continued to worry observers. Despite the Taliban regime’s denial of links with Al Qaeda and its claims of dominance over its ideological rival, the Islamic State of Khorasan (ISK), both Al Qaeda and ISK remain active in Afghanistan. The concern that Al Qaeda or ISK could seek to conduct or influence external operations from Afghanistan also persisted.
Additionally, Central Asia remained a region of focus. While Central Asian militants have been implicated in plots in Europe, their signature has also been detected in the United States and even Southeast Asia. In March 2023, Indonesian authorities detained four Uzbek militants who had “met with an Indonesian ISIS sympathiser”. The latter suggested they become religious teachers to encourage individuals to travel abroad to support IS.
The Far Right also made strides in becoming politically more mainstream, evidenced by the rise of the far right in national politics of various Western European countries. Furthermore, 2023 evinced the globalised nature of some aspects of the extreme right wing and white supremacist movements in particular. Collaborations between putatively constitutional, non-violent Islamist political parties/civil society groups, and violent Islamist actors, were also observed, including in parts of South Asia.
In terms of attack modalities, threat groups employed a variety of methods against a range of diverse targets. In Afghanistan, ISK began to focus on mass-casualty attacks employing mostly suicide bombers. By comparison, almost all terrorist attacks and plots in Indonesia involved a combination of three types of weaponry: IEDs, firearms and sharp weapons. Other key operational trends was the continuing salience of youth, women and family networks in terrorist plots and lone actor incidents.
Finally, given the challenging transnational terrorism and extremism landscape in 2023, this survey reiterates the importance of judiciously combining hard and softer approaches. The latter is aimed at seriously addressing underlying structural grievances, to deal comprehensively with the full spectrum of the terrorism/extremism threat going forward.
HTML Article Versions
Kumar Ramakrishna – Global Threat Assessment 2023
Iftikhar Firdous – Afghanistan
Iftekharul Bashar – Bangladesh
Raffaello Pantucci – Central Asia
Kalicharan Veera Singam and Raffaello Pantucci – Extreme Right-Wing in the West
Rueben Ananthan Santhana Dass – Malaysia
Annual Threat Assessment
This volume assesses the 2023 trends in the violent extremist space, and will cover three broad themes: 1) significant global developments and trends; 2) notable operational trends and developments; and 3) the enduring salience of a holistic, integrated approach in dealing with violent extremism.
2023 will be best remembered for Hamas’s surprise attack from the air, sea and land on southern Israel on 7 October. The violence killed some 1,200 Israelis, injured many more, and led to the kidnapping of 240 Israeli civilian and military personnel, including several children and foreign nationals. Israel responded with a massive assault on the Gaza Strip, aiming to neutralise Hamas. Almost 1 million of Gaza’s 2.3 million population have been dislocated since, generating a huge humanitarian crisis.
The 7 October episode energised transnational Islamist threat networks, particularly Al-Qaeda and its worldwide affiliates. The group urged Muslims worldwide to participate in the fighting in Gaza. It also called for attacks on Israelis in the UAE, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, and Bahrain, and American military bases, airports, and embassies in Muslim countries. In Southeast Asia, pro-Al Qaeda social media activists in Indonesia echoed Al Qaeda’s call for Muslims to actively participate in the Israel-Hamas conflict.
Next, the re-emergence of a Taliban-run Afghanistan since August 2021 continued to worry observers. Despite the Taliban regime’s denial of links with Al Qaeda and its claims of dominance over its ideological rival, the Islamic State of Khorasan (ISK), both Al Qaeda and ISK remain active in Afghanistan. The concern that Al Qaeda or ISK could seek to conduct or influence external operations from Afghanistan also persisted.
Additionally, Central Asia remained a region of focus. While Central Asian militants have been implicated in plots in Europe, their signature has also been detected in the United States and even Southeast Asia. In March 2023, Indonesian authorities detained four Uzbek militants who had “met with an Indonesian ISIS sympathiser”. The latter suggested they become religious teachers to encourage individuals to travel abroad to support IS.
The Far Right also made strides in becoming politically more mainstream, evidenced by the rise of the far right in national politics of various Western European countries. Furthermore, 2023 evinced the globalised nature of some aspects of the extreme right wing and white supremacist movements in particular. Collaborations between putatively constitutional, non-violent Islamist political parties/civil society groups, and violent Islamist actors, were also observed, including in parts of South Asia.
In terms of attack modalities, threat groups employed a variety of methods against a range of diverse targets. In Afghanistan, ISK began to focus on mass-casualty attacks employing mostly suicide bombers. By comparison, almost all terrorist attacks and plots in Indonesia involved a combination of three types of weaponry: IEDs, firearms and sharp weapons. Other key operational trends was the continuing salience of youth, women and family networks in terrorist plots and lone actor incidents.
Finally, given the challenging transnational terrorism and extremism landscape in 2023, this survey reiterates the importance of judiciously combining hard and softer approaches. The latter is aimed at seriously addressing underlying structural grievances, to deal comprehensively with the full spectrum of the terrorism/extremism threat going forward.
HTML Article Versions
Kumar Ramakrishna – Global Threat Assessment 2023
Iftikhar Firdous – Afghanistan
Iftekharul Bashar – Bangladesh
Raffaello Pantucci – Central Asia
Kalicharan Veera Singam and Raffaello Pantucci – Extreme Right-Wing in the West
Rueben Ananthan Santhana Dass – Malaysia
