Two major lines of inquiry have emerged in the investigation into the anti-Semitic terrorist attack in Sydney on Sunday.
One is the trip made by the alleged attackers to the Philippines just before the massacre, in which 15 were killed and dozens injured.
A second is the two home-made Islamic State (IS) flags reported by officials as found in a car registered to one of the two alleged gunmen that was parked close to where they launched their bloody assault on a crowd celebrating the Jewish festival of Hanukkah next to Bondi beach.
A link has been suggested between the two because the Philippines, and more specifically the southern island of Mindanao where Sajid Akram (50) and his son Naveed (25) had apparently travelled, has struggled since the 1980s with Islamist violent extremism.
READ MORE
The most recent such group to cause problems in Mindanao is IS, which integrated networks among disaffected local Muslim communities existing since the 1970s and built new ones there when at the height of its powers a decade ago. IS has a much-reduced presence there now but there are still some militants loyal to the group as well as sympathisers.
Authorities in the Philippines have said the pair arrived there on November 1st, with the city of Davao, on Mindanao, as their final destination. They flew back to Sydney on November 28th, via Manila, two weeks before the attack.
It is not yet known what the two men did in the Philippines but for many years, security officials and analysts have described time spent overseas in the company of committed and experienced militants as the “X-factor” that can transform an amateurish ambition into a competently executed attack.
One suggestion – that they sought to have a final blowout holiday – appears unlikely. Examples of this among such attackers are vanishingly rare.
A second is that the pair sought military training from the small number of active extremist factions in Mindanao. This is more plausible but would involve two inexperienced men from Australia surmounting formidable logistic and other challenges.
It is also likely that Sajid Akram, who held a gun licence and possessed six weapons, was already competent with firearms. Theirs was not a complex operation. It involved shooting into a crowd of unarmed civilians at a religious gathering on a beach. They did not, it appears, expect to hold hostages or defend a position against security forces. Their existing skills were probably adequate for their appalling purpose.
Often the purpose of military training overseas is not to impart skills but to build a sense of camaraderie and to instil determined purpose. We know from dozens of past plots – those in Paris in 2015, the 7/7 attacks in London 2007, those of 9/11 in 2001, for example – that this is often the crucial element.
But this can be done in different ways: through intensive instruction by some charismatic and respected individual in the militants’ twisted version of religion, for example, rather than military skills. Being isolated, especially far away from familiar habitats and people, allows rapid indoctrination, particularly if the ground has been prepared by systematic consumption of online propaganda.
IS and similar groups have found it hard to launch long-range attacks in recent years because they lack the foreign recruits and secure base that would allow such conditioning. The bloody attack on a Moscow entertainment complex in July 2024 was a rare recent exception.
Instead, militant groups seek to attract followers and inspire them to launch their own attacks in a “leaderless jihad” strategy that has been employed by Islamic extremist groups for more than 20 years.
Last year an attacker allegedly inspired by IS drove a truck into a crowd in New Orleans, killing 14. Other plots have been foiled at the last moment.
Al-Qaida in the Arabian peninsula, the branch of the veteran organisation that is most interested in long-range attacks internationally, publishes an online magazine called Inspire that is full of tips for attacks from the “Lone Jihad Team”.
Jewish communities were targets for both al-Qaeda and Isis before the conflict in Gaza, but the recent surge in anti-Semitism has made their job easier. The man who attacked a synagogue in Manchester, UK, leading to the deaths of two people, claimed allegiance to IS in a phone call to police shortly before.
For the moment there is too much we do not know about the attacks on Sunday. But it is clear that the “brand” of IS and its brutal ideology is still sufficiently attractive to remain, well over a decade since its foundation, a significant challenge to security services everywhere. – Guardian
