The anniversary of the July 7 London bombings (Terrorist Incident and Intel Report), coming on the heals of the discovery and interdiction of al-Qaeda-associated cells in Toronto and, to a lesser degree, Miami , underscores the global threat from jihadist cells emerging from within the society they eventually target. These ‘vanguard outpost’ cells are comprised of ‘homegrown’ operatives who operate at various degrees of autonomy and entrepreneurship vis-à-vis the al-Qaeda core. These forms of vanguard outpost cells include those inspired and rallied by the al-Qaeda ideology who are wholly operationally disconnected from al-Qaeda to those that seek out al-Qaeda sanction, guidance, and support for their entrepreneurial operations, to those recruited and set in motion by an al-Qaeda handler or adviser who may remain in the shadows of support while the cell conducts its operation.
The operational details surrounding the Toronto cell, as well as the disruption of an al-Qaeda-associated cell’s plans to bomb rail tunnels in the New York City area , underscore the power of the jihadist cyberspace and Internet to serve as a vehicle for proliferating the rallying ideology that, as the January 4 WAR Report states, is able to, “…transcend many of the societal and ethno-nationalist barriers and insularity long anchored to state-centric geographic space to reach pocketed communities around the world susceptible to the call to arms of jihadist militancy.” Further, the jihadist cyberspace serves not only as central medium for jihadist strategic guidance, recruitment, and organization, but also as a ‘virtual training camp’ resource (see this WAR Report), providing terrorist tradecraft expertise and guidance.
As these pages have noted, societal tensions and political grievances in Europe between Muslim immigrant communities and the ‘indigenous’ European societies in which they live have served as the central motivations for recent political violence and terrorism in Europe and the emergence of jihadist ‘vanguard outpost’ cells. These tensions and grievances include perceptions among the Muslim communities of social inequality and alienation within their society and/or anger toward the nation’s foreign policies vis-a-vis the global Muslim community. These developments include the Madrid and London subway bombings; the assassinations and death threats from Islamist terrorists against public figures and politicians in the Netherlands ; the rioting by immigrant youth immigrants in France ; and the Mohammed Cartoon tensions . In the context of the expansion of al-Qaeda’s global movement, this environment creates Muslim communities in which the empowering, avenging militant jihadist ideology resonates with and entices recruits as a sanctified path toward ameliorating their conditions.
Further, Islamist militant and terrorist groups may seek to exploit the Muslim immigrant community’s disaffection, unrest, and grievances to recruit and seek operational support for jihadist activities. Particularly concerning for counterterrorism officials is the potential leveraging of European conduits to Iraq and Afghanistan to provide either training tours for European-based militants to learn ‘state-of-the-art’ terrorist tradecraft or the deployment of veterans from these fronts to establish, participate in, or otherwise offer their battlefield-honed expertise to European cells.
Similar societal dynamics, disaffection, and political grievances among susceptible Muslim and immigrant communities in the United States and Canada underscores the threat of vanguard outpost militancy in North America. Indeed, the existence of a radicalizing environment in North America increases the potential that al-Qaeda and similar jihadism may find fertile soil in which to take root and from which vanguard outpost cells may emerge.
