The identification of the third gunman at the Bataclan theatre as a 23 year-old Frenchman has served to underline the mostly homegrown nature of the 13 November Paris attacks.
At the same time, the naming of Foued Mohamed-Aggad raises more questions over whether the principal western response – the bombing of Islamic State (Isis) targets in Syria – is either appropriate or effective. Almost all the 13 November attackers travelled to Syria and fought or trained for a few weeks or months prior to the assault on Paris, but it is far from clear whether additional bombing would have prevented or dissuaded them from going.
The clear pattern emerging also adds further urgency to already heated questions over French, Belgian and European domestic intelligence and counter-radicalisation programmes.
Mohamed-Aggad’s life story fits a pattern that has become familiar over the course of the investigation into the attacks. When he was growing up near Strasbourg, he showed no signs at all of being destined for violence. “He was a calm child,” his father recalled to Le Parisien newspaper. “He was born here, grew up in France and was schooled in France.”
Yet, in 2013, when he was just 21 he went off with his elder brother and eight other friends to Syria with the intention of joining the jihad, to the great surprise of his parents.
Of the known attackers in Paris, six were born in France, although three of those had moved to Belgium at some time in their lives. Two, who blew themselves up at the Stade de France, are unidentified. Of the known accomplices, three were French and three Belgian.
There was some foreign involvement. At least one of the assailants passed through Greece, apparently among the influx of refugees. Belgian prosecutors have also revealed that Salah Abdeslam, a conspirator who is still on the run and may be in Syria, drove to Hungary in September and appears to have returned with two accomplices bearing forged Belgian identity documents, who may have been non-Europeans. But it has become clear that the rage that took murderous form on the streets of the French capital last month, was chiefly home-brewed.
“In comparison with [the threat to France from] al-Qaida, which was 75% foreign and 25% local, this is very different. Now the threat is 75% local and 25% foreign,” said Francois Heisbourg, who helped draw up an official French policy paper on counter-terrorism in 2006 and is now chairman of the International Institute for Strategic Studies.
“Daesh [the Arabic acronym for Isis] may provide training and inspiration, but the planning and execution of operations is essentially local. For me, the clear implication for counter-terrorism policy is that 75% of it should be local – French and European, with 25% outside, whereas today most of the effort is in the military response. We don’t have the same level of effort here.”
Heisbourg said the other main lessons to be drawn concern the failure of domestic counter-terrorism intelligence. He attributed the failure to prevent a slew of attacks in recent years in part to the decision in 2008 to dismantle a unit called General Intelligence (Renseignement General), which operated on a local level, mostly openly and with no power of enforcement, and which had been successful in identifying potential threats. It was merged with the state internal security directorate.
At the same time, the number of Frenchmen going abroad to wage jihad and returning home radicalised and trained has increased tenfold or more. There are many more people for the security services to keep track of.
Heisbourg did not think the bombing of Isis strongholds would have much impact on the flow of foreign fighters. “They began arriving before Daesh took Raqqa or Mosul, so people who think it will be enough to roll up Raqqa and Mosul to turn down the heat in Europe will be disappointed.”
A new report by the New America Foundation in Washington confirmed that the profile of Isis’s foreign fighters is quite different from their earlier al-Qaida counterparts. One in seven is a woman, while women were rarely if ever represented in the ranks of earlier jihadis. The average age is only 24, with one fifth teenagers, and about a third had been active online. Almost half of the male foreign fighters to have gone to Syria and Iraq have been killed.
The threat of returned foreign fighters is much less in the US than in Europe. The US attorney general, Loretta Lynch, said on Wednesday that about 70 jihadis had travelled from the US to Syria to join militant groups, a relatively small number compared with Europe, and the greater threat in the US was individuals undergoing online radicalisation by Isis. This appears to have been the case in last week’s killings at San Bernardino.
“We’ve shifted from a time where we have had the orchestrated, well-planned, large-scale 9/11 attacks of al-Qaida, though al-Qaida is still a relevant terrorist organisation and in many ways trying to remain relevant,” Lynch said, during a visit to London.
“We have shifted to the smaller, more lo-tech attacks and what we see [is] a lot of groups like [Isis] using social media, using social propaganda, seeking to broadcast their message in the hopes that it will resonate with people in the US. That has been their greater focus in the US.
“Their hope is that some individual, lost, unmoored for whatever reason, drawn to a violent ideology, will connect with theirs, and will then act on behalf of that ideology.”
