Cheap terrorism operations after al-Baghdadi s death
Cairo- North-Press Agency
Muhammad Abu Zaid
The Observatory for Monitoring Takfiri Fatwas and Extremist Ideologies in Egypt (an official government observatory) revealed that the Islamic State terrorist group (ISIS) is heading towards "low-cost terrorist operations,” which it called "cheap terrorism,” after losing its financial resources and the lands It controlled after 2014, in addition to its loss of many of its symbolic leaders, led by "Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.”
"The group’s propaganda media machine has worked to incite a number of cheap terrorist strategies in several places, which reveals the decline in the financial capabilities of the terrorist group and its loss of human capabilities, in addition to the skills of planning and carrying out terrorist activities.” According to a report issued by the Observatory on Wednesday, of which North-Press obtained a copy.
A platform affiliated with ISIS called the "Lone wolf" called several months ago to use new methods and patterns, including killing by using "poison, smoke, poisoned arrows, and electric shock,” and other posters were released in the wake of the killing of al-Baghdadi, calling for the use of "incendiary balloons” and the use of blimps for surveys near military areas, and those platforms called for the development of these tools to be used in transport, hiding and immigration operations and the development of its capabilities via a remote control.
'Suicide' move
Commenting on these strategies, the researcher in the extremist organizations, director of the Center for Political Islam Reviews in the Egyptian capital, Cairo, Khaled al-Zaafrani, said in a statement to North-Press that such means based on the kidnapping of individuals operations called "cheap terrorism,” are ideas that have existed since the beginning of these extremist organizations, which are based on polar thought after Sayyid Qutb (one of the leading Islamist ideological thinkers of the twentieth century), who is considered as the basis of these groups.
Al-Zaafrani continued: "In the past, Takfiri groups in Egypt committed operations such as these, and they carried out similar actions in charitable arches and in cinemas, etc. These cheap acts based on treachery and betrayal are among the works of extremist organizations, especially when they go bankrupt and do not have the power to carry out major operations. These ideas stem from is the polar thought, and it is implemented when groups are unable to conduct confrontations with the armed forces or the police in general.”
Al-Zaafarani described these operations as "operations reflecting bankruptcy, and have no major effects, on the contrary, they push people themselves to more hatred for these groups and to resist these operations," he said, noting that the groups’ being directed towards the cheap terrorism strategy is a step to the end of these organizations, which he described as a "suicidal step.”
Growth
It is likely – according to the report of the Egyptian Observatory – that the incitement increase to this pattern by the elements of the group, because it achieves several benefits for the group, including: a lower cost than complex and terrorist operations, the spread of fear and terror among people, harm to economic interests and public services, economic exhaustion of countries, the ability to expand in it, reduce the number of human losses of the group, easy penetration of security alerts in a number of regions, cover the group’s plans to implement complex operations, overburden the security and intelligence services with research and tracking.