Terrorists see reason in madness of targeting public events | Jason Burke

In the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks and the US-led invasion of Afghanistan, a network of young militants formed in London and discussed targets. They did not talk about embassies, army bases or planes. Instead they spoke of attacking “pubs … nightclubs”, and stockpiled enough ammonium nitrate fertiliser to build a huge bomb.

The network’s leader was secretly recorded by MI5 suggesting attacking a major shopping mall and the Ministry of Sound nightclub.

Now, as forensic experts comb through debris at the Manchester Arena, that earlier plot is a reminder that Islamic militants have long sought targets that have no obvious political, military or even economic significance. Indeed, the most attractive targets to a terrorist are often those that seem – at least to most of us – the most mundane. They are, in the words of one senior official, “lifestyle” targets.

Though the first major strikes of the new era of global Islamic terrorism were against two US embassies and a US naval vessel in 1998 and 2000, the 9/11 attacks in 2001 were against targets that symbolised both the hard and the soft power of the US: the Pentagon and the World Trade Center.

And if hundreds were killed on trains and buses in Madrid and London in 2004 and 2005, almost as many died in the bombing of a nightclub in Bali in 2002. The suicide attacker who rammed a car into Glasgow airport in 2007, did so after failing to blow up his first target: a Tiger Tiger club in London.

In recent years a shift has occurred: attacks on “lifestyle” targets have become increasingly common. In France, recent extremist attacks have occurred at the Louvre museum, on the Champs Elysées shopping street, and on the promenade of Nice during the annual 14 July celebrations.

In November 2015 members of an Isis network killed more than 150 people in a concert hall, bars and on the streets outside a football international in Paris. In Germany, it was Berlin’s Christmas market that was attacked.

Why this shift, and why are such targets so apparently attractive to a terrorist?

One reason is that the more obvious targets – the military bases, embassies, government offices, airports and so on – are better protected than they were a decade ago. Terrorist targets are often determined by what is feasible, not by what fits a master plan.

Another reason for the shift is that al-Qaida, now relatively weaker than before, and Islamic State, which has become pre-eminent among jihadis, differ on tactics and strategy, even if their aims coincide. The veterans of al-Qaida prioritise building support for their extremist project and try to strike targets that they believe potential sympathisers will regard as legitimate. They may justify some attacks as being in line with their reading of Islamic law which calls for fair retaliation – in their case for Muslim casualties of western military actions. Others can be justified by deeming citizens of western nations collectively responsible for the acts of their governments. But even al-Qaida would probably consider killing teenagers at a concert to be beyond the pale.

Not Isis however. The group relies on escalating brutality to terrorise target populations, whether in the west or the Middle East.

One factor behind the focus on “lifestyle” targets is longstanding. Isis described Monday night’s concert as “shameless”, much as it described victims of its murderous attack in Paris in 2015 as “hundreds of pagans gathered for a concert of prostitution and vice”.

Isis sees any other culture as a threat, destroying works of antiquity in its strongholds to extirpate idolatry and unbelief. This rigorously puritanical vision is a key element of the violent revivalism of all jihadi groups. It also echoes the language of conservatives throughout much of the Islamic world who see western culture as the greatest threat to young Muslims, the cohesion of local societies and what they regard as their culture.

These views are central to the western-based Islamic extremist too, who is often very young and almost always male. The language in which they are expressed is different, however, from that used by the ideologues. The leader of the 2002 plot to bomb the Ministry of Sound spoke of the “slags … dancing around” who would die.

Yet the greatest attraction that concerts or similar events may hold for Isis is that attacks on them are extremely effective.

Violent Islamic extremists want to convince us that we face a threat that is as ubiquitous as it is unpredictable. Attacking a military base does not do this because we are not all soldiers; attacking a government office, or even a major national landmark, does not either, because neither are part of our everyday existence. But attack a pub or a nightclub, attack teenagers at a concert or children in a school, and we all immediately feel endangered. This may not be entirely rational, given the actual chances of being directly affected by terrorist violence, but it is entirely understandable. And it is why terrorism often works.