How will strategic competition influence counter-terrorism? The proxy warfare problem

Australia’s current approach to national security has increasingly prioritised strategic competition between states, with ASIO suggesting that state-based threats such as espionage and foreign interference could become a greater concern than terrorism. In contrast, national security statements by the Abbott government and the Turnbull government emphasised counter-terrorism above other threats.  

Recent government statements recognise the persistence of terrorism but treat it as an inherently separate concern to strategic competition. The 2020 Defence Strategic Update acknowledges that “the threat from terrorism and violent extremism will persist”, while emphasising that “the actions of nation states, especially strategic competition, will be the principal driver of our strategic environment”.

It is appropriate that counter-terrorism no longer dominates Australian national security discussions. However, it is also important to not treat counter-terrorism and strategic competition as entirely unrelated. Instead, strategic competition can itself pose counter-terrorism challenges. This post highlights one way in which this could occur, showing how strategic competition is sometimes waged through proxy warfare, which exacerbates civil wars and provides new opportunities for transnational violent extremists.

Strategic competition and proxy warfare

Strategic competition, at its simplest, refers to how inter-state rivalry has become increasingly important in international politics.[1] In the United States the preferred term (until recently) was great power competition, given that the rivalries of greatest concern are those between powerful countries such as Russia, China and the United States, but strategic competition also involves smaller powers. 

In Australia’s defence debates, attention is given to the risk of strategic competition escalating into confrontation or outright conflict, as well as the risk of competition waged through forms of coercion below the level of overt military confrontation. Examples of these lower levels of coercive statecraft include what are currently called grey zone activities, a broad term that can cover hostage-takingdebt diplomacydisinformationcyber sabotageeconomic coerciondisruption of shippingharassment of fishing vesselsconstruction of artificial islands to make territorial claims, and more.[2] 

One particularly prominent form of coercive statecraft, with strong implications for counter-terrorism, is proxy warfare.

Proxy warfare, sometimes called surrogate warfare or vicarious warfare, refers to states supporting participants in a civil war to undermine the interests of another state. The consequences are often harmful. Political science literature shows that proxy warfare often makes civil wars last longer. Indeed, the mere expectation of proxy warfare (when political actors in a pre-conflict situation anticipate external support) can increase the likelihood of a civil war starting.

This potential for strategic competition to exacerbate, or even create, civil wars can be seen by looking back to a more cooperative era.  From the 1990s to the early 2000s, with the end of Cold War strategic competition, the great powers often proved willing to cooperate to resolve conflicts. From 1990 to 2005 there was a “six-fold increase in UN preventive diplomacy missions… [and] a four-fold increase in UN peace operations”, in contrast to the Cold War era when the great powers tended to exploit civil wars to compete against each other.  

Heightened international cooperation made these United Nations peacemaking efforts possible, which partly contributed (along with the end of Cold War proxy conflicts in Southern Africa and Central America) to a rapid declinein the number of civil wars in the world up until the early 2000s. 

The number of civil wars has increased dramatically since and international efforts at conflict resolution have declined. Now, many civil wars have become arenas for what has been termed 21st century proxy warfare or information age proxy warfare

 

The influence of proxy warfare on transnational terrorism

Proxy wars can create space for violent extremist movements with agendas far more radical than any of the states involved. The clearest example is the Syrian civil war, which rapidly became a multidirectional proxy war involving the United States, Russia, Iran, Turkey, the Gulf States and other countries. This conflict provided new opportunities (but also caused problems) for al-Qaeda, and dramatically contributed to the rise of Islamic State. The Syrian civil war likely had a greater impact on transnational terrorism than any conflict since the 1980s Soviet-Afghan war, itself a Cold War proxy conflict.

Similarly, by some accounts the Yemeni civil war, in part a proxy war involving Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Iran, served as a “big break” for al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). There have also  been warnings that the conflict in Libya, in part a Russia-Turkish proxy war, could create new space for Islamic State’s Libyan affiliate (though the group remains relatively weak). The Ukrainian civil war, in part a proxy war between Russia and the West, became a hotspot for far-right extremists. Sometimes the state-backed actors, such as Hezbollah (backed by Iran against Israel), themselves engage in transnational terrorism

Future conflicts could similarly become arenas for transnational violent extremism and terrorism, not least because these conflicts often attract foreign fighters. Historically, foreign fighter mobilisations have helped to sustain al-Qaeda and Islamic State, and returned fighters have perpetrated many of these movements’ most prominent attacks such as the December 2015 Paris massacre. There are currently thousands of foreign fighters being held by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) whose countries of origin are often unwilling to repatriate and where possible prosecute them. Should the SDF lose control of them, some may look for new conflicts to join. There are also estimated to be thousands of foreign fighters in Afghanistan, allied with various factions, and some may similarly seek new battlefields if opportunities arise.

The relationship between proxy warfare and transnational mobilisation, albeit of a different sort, is similarly demonstrated by state recruitment of foreign combatants. Turkey has deployed Syrian fighters against Armenian troops in Azerbaijan and against opposition forces in Libya. Iran has recruited Shia Muslim men from Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere to fight against rebels in Syria. Russia has similarly employed Balkan mercenaries to fight in Ukraine. In theory, foreigners recruited by states and private military companies may be more likely to have material motives than political motives, but the lines can be blurred in practice. Participants in state-orchestrated mobilisations sometimes go on to participate in transnational violent extremism.

 

Implications for Australia

If strategic competition continues to exacerbate civil wars, or contribute to the outbreak of new civil wars, it could prompt further transnational mobilisations and shape future terrorist threats facing countries such as Australia. 

This is clear from the transformative impact the Syrian civil war had on Australia’s jihadist threat, resulting in a wave of terrorist plots inspired (or sometimes guided) by Islamic State. This was also evident from earlier conflicts. In 2003 counter-terrorism authorities uncovered a terrorist plot in Sydney that was guided by Lashkar e-Toiba, a group long supported by Pakistan to fight against India in Kashmir. The plot’s suspected mastermind, Sajid Mir, allegedly went on to help organise the 2008 Mumbai massacre.

More recently Australian authorities have been concerned about far-right extremists joining the conflict in Ukraine, and cancelled at least one person’s passport on these grounds. There was also some speculation that the Christchurch murderer had received terrorist training in Ukraine, which turned out to be false. In this case the influence flowed more strongly in the opposite direction; his massacre inspired a group of neo-Nazi extremists in Ukraine, who spread copies of his manifesto and were arrested after stockpiling weapons and explosives. 

These conflicts impact Australian security even when the violence remains overseas. 298 people including 38 Australians were killed when rebels, backed by Russia as part of a proxy war against the Ukrainian government and its international supporters, shot down the MH17 airliner in July 2014. Australians have also reportedly been involved as perpetrators; in July 2012 an Australian man allegedly helped to carry out Hezbollah’s bombing of a bus in Bulgaria, targeting Israeli tourists and killing six people

New conflicts could create new counter-terrorism concerns, particularly if a proxy war develops in Australia’s geographic region, although it can never be confidently predicted where and when these conflicts will break out. Some analysts have warned that the current violence and repression in Myanmar could escalate to the point of becoming a “Southeast Asian Syria”, while others have pushed back against this interpretation. Some scholars have identified distinct ways that US-China competition risks resulting in new proxy wars, in the Indo-Pacific and elsewhere. [3]

In short, proxy warfare can exacerbate, or even help to create, civil wars which can in turn escalate transnational violent extremism. This is one way in which strategic competition can dramatically influence counter-terrorism.

Strategic competition also has other implications for counter-terrorism, beyond proxy warfare.  For example, the Australian Defence Force’s building partner capacity missions, to train, advise and assist foreign military forces for counter-terrorism, may themselves become an arena for competition (as seen by China positioning itself as an alternative counter-terrorism partner for the Philippines). 

Similarly, emerging research highlights the risk that disinformation (which can be orchestrated by states as part of strategic competition) can complicate responses to terrorist attacks and perhaps even contribute to domestic terrorism by enhancing political polarisation. Strategic competition can also risk contributing to the narratives that domestic extremists use to mobilise supporters.

However, the perils of proxy warfare deserve particular attention. Strategic competition may tempt the United States and its allies (including Australia) to become increasingly involved in proxy wars, fearing that failure to so would cede ground to a rival. Such a compete-at-all-costs approach could prove greatly harmful. The Cold War record shows and the recent Syrian conflict demonstrates that proxy wars cause tremendous human suffering, have unforeseen consequences, and often do not end up serving the long-term security interests of any of the countries involved. 


NOTES

[1] For more complex understandings of strategic competition, one place to start is the net assessment literature within strategic studies.

[2] The assumptions behind the strategic competition framing are of course open to critique on many different grounds. The notion of grey zone activities has been critiqued as conceptually muddled, and these activities are neither new nor something that the United States and its allies (including Australia) are innocent of. Nor can it be assumed that the United States or Australia are merely responding to externally imposed competition rather than actively contributing to these dynamics.  But regardless of valuable debates over the best terms to use, over whether these developments are genuinely new, or over who should be blamed most for these competitive dynamics, there is an underlying truth behind the recent emphasis on strategic competition. International politics has indeed become more competitive, and this competition is often waged through means that fall short of inter-state warfare. 

[3] The civil wars described above, in Syria, Yemen, Libya, Ukraine and elsewhere, have been battlegrounds for strategic competition between great powers (such as the US and Russia), or regional powers (such as Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Iran), but have tended not to involve China. This contrasts with the first decades of the Cold War, when China was extensively involved in the war in Korea and to a lesser extent Vietnam. However, if US-China strategic competition escalates to the point of proxy warfare similar to the early Cold War years, the potential for new conflicts in the Indo-Pacific will heighten.

“The Auckland attack and the politics of counter-terrorism”

The brutal stabbing of six people, by an Islamic State supporter in an Auckland mall, has spurred efforts to update New Zealand’s counter-terrorism laws. This is driven by concerns that the tragedy might have been prevented if there had been a specific criminal offence for plotting a terrorist attack.

New Zealand authorities had been dealing with the perpetrator, Ahamed Aathil Mohamed Samsudeen, for several years. He had expressed enthusiasm for Islamic State, and posted online statements approving their terrorist attacks, since 2016.

In May 2017 he was prevented from boarding a plane, after having told someone he was planning to fly to Syria to join Islamic State. He faced multiple charges for possessing a knife, extremist material, and refusing to cooperate with authorities. In August 2018 he was arrested again for similar offences while on bail. On 19 September 2018 he was sentenced to supervision for the first set of charges, but remained in prison while awaiting trial for the second set of charges.

In July 2020, prosecutors went to the High Court to see if he could be charged under section 6a of the Terrorism Suppression Act 2002 for having “planned or otherwise prepared to cause death or serious bodily injury.” However, on 16 July 2020 the judge ruled that the charge could not go ahead, as no such offence existed under the Act.

In July 2021, he was sentenced for several crimes and released from prison while awaiting trial for the remaining charges. After this, counter-terrorism authorities had little option but to monitor him in case he sought to act on his violent statements.

It was fortunate that they watched him closely. On 3 September 2021 he entered LynnMall shopping centre and perpetrated his attack. A police Special Tactics Group was on standby and quickly intervened, fatally shooting him before he caused more carnage.

It will never be known if the tragedy would have been prevented had New Zealand had a specific law against preparing or planning (colloquially, plotting) acts of terrorisms. After all, even if the offence existed the evidence may have been insufficient for conviction. But the attack has brought attention to this legislative gap, and it was not the first to do so.

This absence in New Zealand’s counter-terrorism laws had been raised in the final report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the terrorist attack on Christchurch. The Commission noted (pages 558-559) that if counter-terrorism authorities had discovered the Christchurch terrorist’s plan, they probably would not have been able to charge him over it.

The Commission declared forthrightly (page 557) that “New Zealand is in breach of its international obligations under Resolution 1373 of the United Nations Security Council.” This was the resolution passed shortly after the 9/11 attacks, which called on all Member States to “take necessary steps to prevent the commission of terrorist acts” and to “ensure that any person who participates in the financing, planning, preparation or perpetration of terrorist acts or in support of terrorist acts is brought to justice.”

Looking at this situation from the Australian context, with its vast body of counter-terrorism legislation criminalising a wide range of activities, the legislative gap in New Zealand might appear extremely odd. There are at least three reasons why New Zealand had not criminalised the preparation and planning of a terrorist attack. 

First, the Commission noted (pages 554-554) that the Terrorism Suppression Act 2002 was somewhat ambiguously worded, so counter-terrorism authorities may have believed that such activity was already criminalised until the 16 July 2020 court ruling clarified that it was not.

Second, terrorist activity in New Zealand was relatively rare (though far from absent) until the Christchurch massacre. This lower threat would have worked against a sense of urgency.

Third, counter-terrorism was not a popular political issue. The Commission stated (pages 419-422,612-614) that, following several controversies involving the security and intelligence agencies, counter-terrorism had become a “sufficiently toxic” issue that New Zealand’s leaders were unwilling to take “political ownership” of.

This contrasts dramatically to Australia, where governments regularly manage to make political capital out of counter-terrorism. Preparation and planning offences were among the earliest and least controversial counter-terrorism laws passed after 9/11. In the past two decades, 92 separate pieces of counter-terrorism legislation have passed through federal parliament, a frequency that has been described as “hyper-legislation”.

The Australian approach should not be assumed to be superior. There is certainly much to commend in Australia’s approach to counter-terrorism, which has saved many lives by foiling a large number of plots often in extremely difficult circumstances (where police officers themselves have been among the most common targets). Yet there is also plenty to critique.

Alongside the successes, Australia’s approach to counter-terrorism has also involved excesses and injustices; recent examples include the wrongful charging of Mohamed Nizamdeen and the mistreatment of Eathan Cruse, along with the tendency to treat Australian Islamic State supporters (and their families) in Syria as someone else’s problem. Moreover, several laws go too far and even for those that are justified in principle there remains legitimate debate about their scope.

It should not be forgotten that New Zealand’s slower, and more deliberative and inclusive, approach to counter-terrorism has helped the country to avoid some of the excesses and injustices seen in Australian counter-terrorism. 

Similarly, it is promising that the post-attack debate in New Zealand focuses not only on new laws but also on rehabilitation. While the Ardern government has promised to pass new counter-terrorism laws before the end of the month, there remains a healthy debate about whether the new legislation is being sufficiently scrutinised, suggesting that this latest attack is not likely to shift New Zealand to “tough on terrorism” politics. 

Nonetheless, the attack has brought overdue attention to the failure to criminalise preparations and planning for terrorism, twenty years after 9/11 and two years after the Christchurch massacre. It is hard to see how New Zealand’s police could continue to be expected to prevent terrorist attacks without a law against plotting terrorist attacks.

The stabbings in LynnMall, by someone the police had sought to prosecute for plotting a terrorist attack but lacked the legal power to, suggest that New Zealand can learn from Australia’s counter-terrorism experiences. This includes some of legislation used in Australia, as well as from Australia’s operational experience in disrupting terrorist plots. But there have also been many benefits to New Zealand’s cautious and inclusive approach, so Australia can likewise learn from New Zealand.

Australian connections to Islamic State in the post-“Caliphate” era

What forms do Australian connections to Islamic State take, now that the movement has lost its territory in Syria and Iraq? The Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security’s ongoing inquiry into extremist movements and radicalism in Australia has given long-overdue attention to the extreme-right, but also highlighted that Islamic State remains a serious security concern. 

To help understand the nature of Australian connections to Islamic State following the loss of its self-proclaimed “Caliphate”, this post examines the recent sentencing of Radwan Dakkak, one of the small number of Australians accused of supporting the movement during the post-“Caliphate” era. 

The post first briefly outlines Islamic State’s evolution after its territorial collapse in early 2019, and then discusses what Dakkak’s sentencing reveals about how these global events influence activities inside Australia.

 

The post-“Caliphate” context

Islamic State’s claim to have recreated the historic Caliphate rested, in part, on the sheer extent of its territorial conquests across Syria and Iraq by mid-2014. This era finally ended in March 2019 when Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, backed by the US-led Global Coalition Against Daesh, captured the movement’s last strip of territory in the Syrian village of Baghouz. The movement’s fortunes worsened in October 2019 when the United States Joint Special Operations Command killed its leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in Idlib.

However, Islamic State’s collapse in Syria and Iraq did not always lead to setbacks elsewhere in the world, as shown by the horrific Easter 2019 bombings in Sri Lanka less than a month after the fall of Baghouz, and a wave of inspired attacks in Europe throughout 2020.

Moreover, Islamic State’s public announcements increasingly downplayed the importance of territory in Syria and Iraq, and emphasised the strength of new affiliates or provinces elsewhere in the world, including EgyptLibyaYemen,AfghanistanSouth Asia, and (more ambiguouslySoutheast Asia

Many more provinces were declared throughout Africa, most recently the Central Africa Province (ISCAP) which encompasses the Democratic Republic of Congo and Mozambique.  These African provinces appear to operate with substantial autonomy from Islamic State’s leadership, which could help explain why they do not seem to have been harmed by the events in Syria and Iraq.

This makes Islamic State’s current situation somewhat similar to al-Qaeda’s situation in the early 2010s. Al-Qaeda’s senior leadership had faced serious losses in Pakistan (including the death of Osama bin Laden), but its transnational affiliates remained highly active. Analysts regularly debated how much control the Pakistan-based leadership exerted over its affiliates abroad and what this meant for the movement’s overall strength. 

Similar uncertainty surrounds the relationship between Islamic State’s Syrian-based leadership and its affiliates abroad. Uncertainty about the strength of Islamic State's leadership is exacerbated by rumours that the current leader had once been an informant and reports of intense ideological divisions within the movement.

However, there is little uncertainty about the fact that the movement persists, despite the loss of its ability to govern territory in the Middle East which had once been central to its appeal. Islamic State continues to wage an underground insurgency in both Syria and Iraq, and maintains a wide geographic reach. The growth of Islamic State’s provinces means that the movement may currently function more genuinely like a truly transnational insurgency than it did during the “Caliphate” era.

 

The case of Radwan Dakkak

These changes in the global context have altered the forms that Australian connections to Islamic State take. Most clearly, in recent years there has been little public evidence of Australians travelling to Syria or plotting attacks while receiving instructions from Syria-based operatives. Instead, the July 2019 arrest of a group of Islamic State supporters in Sydney provides an example of what current connections look like.

On Tuesday 2 July 2019, the NSW Joint Counter Terrorism Team arrested multiple men. One of them, Isaac el Matari, was charged with preparing a terrorist attack and preparing a foreign incursion, to which he later pleaded guilty.  Isaac el Matari had previously been jailed in Lebanon in 2017, after being accused of trying to join Islamic State, then deported back to Australia in 2018. According to the criminal charges that he later pleaded guilty to (but has not yet been sentenced for), prior to his arrest in July 2019 he sought to travel to Afghanistan to join Islamic State’s Khorasan province and also plotted a terrorist attack in Australia.

Another of the men, Radwan Dakkak, later pleaded guilty to associating with members of Islamic State and was sentenced on 18 December 2020 to 18 months imprisonment.  

The charge of “association” is an unusual offence that demonstrates the breadth of Australia’s proscription powers. The judge who sentenced Radwan Dakkak described it as the “least serious” of all the terrorism offences. According the judge’s statements, the law requires that the individual must have knowingly associated with the members of a terrorist organisation, must have supported the organisation by doing so, and must have intended that the support assist the organisation to expand or continue to exist.[1] Importantly, Radwan Dakkak was not accused of playing any role in Isaac el Matari’s alleged plans to carry out violence inside Australia. 

Instead, Dakkak’s conviction was based on three separate activities: communicating with an Islamic State contact in Syria to assist Isaac el Matari’s attempted foreign incursion, communicating with an Islamic State figure in Kenya to support their online outreach, and assisting with the production and distribution of an unofficial publication in support of Islamic State.[2]

Each of these three activities demonstrate different forms that Australian connections to Islamic State can take in the post-“Caliphate” era.

Assisting an attempted incursion to Islamic State affiliate territory 

Radwan Dakkak’s conviction was partly based on his support for Isaac el Matari’s intended foreign incursion. Between February and April 2019, el Matari planned to travel to Afghanistan to join Islamic State’s affiliate IS-Khorasan.

IS-Khorasan was one of Islamic State’s early transnational provinces, announced in 2015 but likely established earlier. Its origins remain debated but it appears to have been formed by Central Asian jihadists who trained in Syria with Islamic State and then recruited factions of rival Afghan insurgent groups. 

For several years IS-Khorasan repeatedly attacked both the Taliban movement and the Afghan government, along with Afghan civil society. In contrast to some Islamic State provinces which have shown some autonomy from the Syria-based leadership, IS-Khorasan appears to closely “imitate the central hub in its attacks on the Shi’a Hazara minority and urban assassination campaigns—most recently targeting female media workers”. Similarly, IS-Khorasan has been implicated in transnational terrorist plots in countries such as Indonesia and Germany.

IS-Khorasan has also recruited foreign fighters, particularly after Islamic State began to call on its supporters to longer travel to Syria and Iraq from around 2016 onwards. Multiple Islamic State videos in 2018 promoted Afghanistan as a preferable destination.

Radwan Dakkak’s activities show this shift playing out in the Australian context. According to Dakkak’s conviction, early discussions between him and Isaac el Matari were about the feasibility of el Matari travelling to Syria or Iraq. By early 2019, Dakkak sought instead to assist el Matari to join IS-Khorasan by asking an Islamic State member in Syria if they could facilitate his entry into Afghanistan.

Dakkak’s communication with an Islamic State contact in Syria, even as the movement’s territory dwindled in early 2019, shows that Syria remained relevant to Australian Islamic State supporters. But the country was no longer a promising prospect for aspiring fighters to travel to, so Afghanistan served as an alternative.

Assisting Islamic State’s outreach in Africa

Dakkak was also convicted for his communications with a Kenya-based man, Shiekh Hassan Hussein, between 14 March and 2 July 2019. Sheikh Hassan Hussein, also known as Hassan Mahat Omar, was a spiritual leader once affiliated with the Somali jihadist movement al-Shabaab. Sheikh Hassan Hussein has since reportedly switched his allegiance to Islamic State, reflecting the movement’s growing strength in Africa.

Islamic State already had a long-standing presence in Africa as early as 2014, having announced provinces in Libya, Egypt and Algeria, which expanded to Nigeria in 2015 when a major faction of Boko Haram became Islamic State’s West Africa Province (ISWAP). This expansion across Africa continued in subsequent years. Islamic State declared a new province in Somalia in December 2017 (IS-Somalia) and by 2019 insurgent groups in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Mozambique had aligned with Islamic State, forming its Central Africa Province (ISCAP). 

Given this development, it is not surprising to see some Australian connections to Islamic State figures in Africa. According to Radwan Dakkak’s conviction, he repeatedly communicated with Sheikh Hassan Hussein for several months until his arrest.

However, the court material also states that their conversation topics were doctrinal and spiritual rather than operational. Dakkak’s conviction was based on him having assisted Hussein by translating and publishing his writings, helping Islamic State to reach a wider audience. 

Therefore Dakkak’s activities do not in themselves demonstrate substantial Australian connections to Islamic State’s African affiliates, such as the recruitment of foreign fighters or involvement in terrorist plots. 

There may of course be other Australian cases with stronger links to Islamic State provinces in Africa, particularly as these affiliates have grown stronger since 2019. But there is little public evidence of this, and these affiliates have rarely sought foreign fighters from Western countries nor (with the exception of the Libyan province) been widely implicated in global terrorist attacks.

Assisting an unofficial media effort

The final activity Radwan Dakkak was convicted for was his involvement with the pro-Islamic State media outlet Ahlut-Tawhid Publications (ATP). This occurred during the same time period as his communications with Hussein, March to July 2019.

ATP has been described as an “unofficial” media outlet for Islamic State. The exact relationship between ATP and Islamic State remains unclear, but Islamic State has reportedly used the ATP magazine From Dabiq to Rome to claim responsibility for attacks.

Some new information on ATP’s relationship with Islamic State came to light on 24 March 2021 when the FBI arresteda Tennassee man, Benjamin Alan Carpenter. The FBI accused him of running ATP, which it described as “an international organization responsible for the transcription and publication of pro-ISIS media in English”. The FBI accused Carpenter of having been in regular communication with an accused Maldives-based Islamic State recruiter, Mohamed Ameen, but there is otherwise little information on ATP’s specific connections to Islamic State. 

According to Dakkak’s conviction, he assisted ATP by helping to translate, promote and distribute its material, including Dabiq to Rome. He also helped ATP to produce and distribute videos.

Dakkak’s involvement with ATP reflects a wider shift in the online pro-Islamic State ecosystem. As Islamic State’s official media output declined (due to territorial and personnel losses, tech company crackdowns and information warfare offensives such as Operation Glowing Symphony), the relative importance of unofficial outlets has increased.

 

Future implications 

The case of Radwan Dakkak provides one example of Australian connections to Islamic State in the post-“Caliphate” era. It is not necessarily a representative example; it could prove as anomalous as Haisem Zahab’s attempt to design guided missile technology for Islamic State or the Khayat brothers’ plot to bomb an international airliner and create a chemical weapon. Moreover, Dakkak is not the only Islamic State supporter to be arrested in the years after the movement’s territorial collapse in Syria and Iraq. There have been multiple alleged terrorist plots, though their specific connections to Islamic State (if any) beyond inspiration are currently unclear.

Nonetheless, Dakkak’s sentencing highlights several dimensions of how Islamic State support activities in Australia may manifest in the post-“Caliphate” era.

For example, Islamic State support activities no longer need to centre on Syria. Instead, Afghanistan remains a potential destination for Australians seeking to join Islamic State, just as it had for supporters of other jihadist movements in the 1990s and early 2000s. IS-Khorasan suffered substantial losses throughout 2020 but may be positioned to take advantage of the US withdrawal.

The case also shows that Syria nonetheless remains relevant, given Dakkak’s request to a Syrian contact to help Isaac el Matari’s travel to Afghanistan.

Dakkak’s sentencing also demonstrates a minor Australian connection to Islamic State’s expansion into Africa, but not an operational connection in the sense of recruiting foreign fighters or organising attacks. Instead, along with Dakkak’s involvement with ATP, it highlights the importance of unofficial media efforts in support of Islamic State.

More importantly, Dakkak’s activities demonstrate that Australian connections to Islamic State endured at very moment that the territorial “Caliphate” collapsed, and merely required some adjustment (such as el Matari’s travel plans changing from Syria to Afghanistan). 

These sorts of connections are likely to continue to as long as certain global conditions continue, particularly the ongoing conflicts in Somalia and Afghanistan. Islamic State did not create these wars, nor is it a dominant force in them, but the movement nonetheless continues to carve out a space for itself within these conflicts. This has had ramifications across the world, and Australia has not proved to be an exception. 


[1] So far, Radwan Dakkak is the only person to have been convicted of this offence.

[2] Dakkak has since been released from prison, placed on a Control Order, and charged with new offences. This post focuses only on the public record of the activities he was arrested for in July 2019 and sentenced for in December 2020, not on any alleged subsequent activities. 

Banning extreme-right terrorist organisations: the issues at stake

The Australian government’s recent decision to proscribe the far-right extremist group Sonnenkrieg Division as a terrorist organisation followed months of public debate about the merits of banning such groups. The debate continues, focusing on whether the government has should ban more extreme-right groups.

To help make sense of the debate, this post explains several issues that have not been sufficiently addressed so far.

First, Australia has multiple options, outlined below, for banning various groups as terrorist organisations: executive  proscription, financial sanctions, and the judicial approach. However, the debate has tended to focus only on the most severe option, executive proscription. Second, there is a crucial difference between banning groups for engaging in terrorism and banning groups for advocating terrorism. Third, comparisons between Australia’s approach and other Five Eyes countries can be misleading, as “banning” can mean different things in different legal contexts.

A few disclaimers about where I personally stand in this debate. I do not have legal training, so I am writing this post not as a legal expert but as someone who has closely observed the application of Australian counter-terrorism laws for over a decade. My own position is one of strong agreement that far-right violent extremism poses a deadly terrorist threat in Australia, that it has posed this threat for a long time, and that the government can and should do more to tackle the threat.

However, we should also be wary of reaching for the most severe powers without being completely clear about the key issues at stake: What sort of terrorist track record does a given group actually have? What sort of track record would cross a threshold where a ban is a justifiable response? And if a group’s track record does cross a chosen threshold, what is the most appropriate option for banning it, in light of the consequences that the different options have in Australia’s specific legal context?

 

Australia’s legal options for banning groups as terrorist organisations

When the Australian government seeks to ban a group posing a perceived terrorist threat, it has three options.

One option is executive proscription. This is when the Governor-General lists a group as a terrorist organisation under Part 5.3 of the Criminal Code, following a decision by the Minister for Home Affairs, based on advice from the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO). There are currently 26 proscribed organisations. 25 have a jihadist orientation, and the other is the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). Sonnenkrieg Division will be the 27th (at the time of writing this has not officially come into effect).

A group can be proscribed if the Minister for Home Affairs is satisfied that it is either “engaged in preparing, planning, assisting or fostering the doing of a terrorist act” or “advocates the doing of a terrorist act.” Once proscribed, it is a criminal offence to be a member of the organisation, or in certain circumstances to associate with members. Around eight people in Australia have been convicted for their involvement with proscribed organisations, mainly Islamic State.

A second option is financial sanctions. This is when the Minister for Foreign Affairs lists “persons or entities” under Part 4 of the Charter of the United Nations Act 1945, or the Charter of the United Nations (Dealing with Assets) Regulations 2008. This is to fulfil Australia’s “counter-terrorism targeted financial sanctions obligations” under United Nations Security Council Resolution 1373 (passed shortly after the 9/11 attacks) and Resolution 2235 (passed in 2015 in response to the rise of Islamic State).

There are over 100 organisations, and many more individuals, subjected to these sanctions. These not only include jihadist groups but a range of other organisations that have engaged in terrorism, such as the Ulster Defence Association, the Real Irish Republican Army, Aum Shinriko, Kahane Lives, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia and Shining Path.

Banning a group in this manner is a milder option than executive proscription. There are no specific offences for being a member or associate of an organisation subjected to these sanctions. However, it is a criminal offence to “to use or deal with the assets of listed persons or entities, or to make assets available to them”. Three people in Australia were convicted of this in 2010 for providing over $1 million to the LTTE, and one of these individuals also pleaded guilty to sending electronic equipment that was used to build improvised explosive devices.

A third option is the judicial approach. This is when the prosecution in a criminal trial proves that a group of people constitute an organisation that is “directly or indirectly engaged in preparing, planning, assisting or fostering the doing of a terrorist act”.

The legal penalties are severe, but the judicial approach is a milder option than executive proscription, for several reasons. First, the terrorist nature of the group must be proven in court beyond reasonable doubt. In contrast, individuals charged for being members of an executively proscribed organisation have no opportunity to argue in court that the group is not a terrorist organisation. Second, the judicial approach does not allow for a group to be deemed a terrorist organisation solely for advocating terrorism, some sort of direct or indirect engagement is required. Third, the judicial approach does not criminalise association with the group in question, whereas the executive proscription option does criminalise some forms of association.

Nine people in Australia have been convicted of being members of a terrorist organisation based on this judicial approach. All were members of Abdul Nacer Benbrika’s terrorist cell in Melbourne disrupted by Operation Pendennis in 2005.[1]

Of these three options, executive proscription, financial sanctions, and the judicial approach, the media commentary on the prospect of Australia banning extreme-right groups has focused primarily on executive proscription. This risks conveying a misleading impression of the options available.

 

Australia’s implicit threshold for executive proscription

One argument often made in the debate is that the executive proscription powers could be used to ban extreme-right groups for advocating terrorism, and that Australia has demonstrated a double standard by reserving these powers only for groups associated with Islam.

There is some truth to this. As noted above, the powers are indeed broad, allowing proscription if the Minister for Home Affairs is reasonably satisfied that the group is “engaged in preparing, planning, assisting or fostering the doing of a terrorist act” or simply “advocates the doing of a terrorist act”.

Hundreds of groups could fit those criteria, so the implicit threshold for executive proscription (that is, the threshold used in practice) has been much higher than the explicit legal threshold.

Of the 26 organisations proscribed until recently, all have been groups with substantial military capabilities and clear history of involvement in multiple terrorist attacks. Most are affiliates of Islamic State and al-Qaeda, whose terrorist track records are not in serious doubt. They are not groups that simply advocate terrorism, they are large-scale insurgent organisations that have successfully perpetrated many acts of terrorism among other violent tactics.

This distinction is important, because much of the debate has been premised on the idea that proscribing extreme-right groups would rectify a double standard. This argument can be compelling if restricted to groups directly comparable to those already proscribed: that is, extreme-right groups with substantial military capabilities and clear terrorist track records, potentially including the Russian Imperial Movement and various incarnations of Atomwaffen and The Base (which have Australian connections).

Yet some of the extreme-right groups focused on throughout the debate are not directly comparable, as they have advocated terrorism but not actually perpetrated terrorist attacks.

Proscribing extreme-right groups for advocating terrorism would not rectify a double standard. It would lower the implicit threshold used for proscribing organisations.

This might be worthwhile. It could be argued that the “leaderless” nature of many violent extreme-right groups requires lowering the implicit threshold for proscription, as these groups tend not to have central leaders claiming responsibility for attacks in the manner that Islamic State does. However, it is important to be clear that this is not simply a matter of restoring balance, it is a matter of entering new territory.

For example, judging by the Statement of Reasons given for each organisation, the Sonnenkrieg decision appears to be the first time that Australia has proscribed a group for advocating terrorism without also being “directly or indirectly engaged in, preparing, planning, or assisting in or fostering the doing of a terrorist act”.

This does not mean that the decision is unjustified. Sonnenkrieg Division is a foreign-based organisation, its advocacy of terrorism is unambiguous, and some of its members have been convicted for preparing acts of terrorism. Yet we should be wary of further lowering the implicit threshold for the use of executive proscription, as it may have unanticipated consequences in terms of civil liberties, political misuse and practical effectiveness.

The power to criminalise membership of (and some types of association with) a group, because a government minister concludes that it advocates terrorism, may be justified in various cases. The Sonnenkrieg decision certainly appears reasonable. However, this power should not be treated as the only option available to rectify a possible double standard, as it sometimes has in the debate so far.

 

How Australia compares with other Five Eyes countries

Another argument often made in the debate is that “Canada, New Zealand, the United States and the United Kingdom have all listed right-wing extremist organisations as terrorist groups” and that, until the Sonnenkrieg decision, Australia stood out as the exception.

This is again has some truth to it, yet it risks being misleading as each country has different legal contexts.

For example, Canada recently declared the Proud Boys to be a terrorist organisation, along with other extreme-right groups such as Atomwaffen Division, the Base, and the Russian Imperial Movement. Canada had earlier banned groups such as Combat 18 and Blood & Honour. This led to commentaries suggesting that Australia automatically should follow suit, again pointing to the fact that Australia’s 26 proscribed organisations (at the time) were all associated with Islam.

However, banning an organisation in Canada has much less severe consequences, as it is not actually a crime in Canada to be a member of a terrorist organisation. Canada's Public Safety website explicitly states that it “is not a crime to be listed”. Instead, it is a criminal offence to “knowingly participate in or contribute to, directly or indirectly, any activity of a terrorist group” but only if the participation is intended to “enhance the ability of any terrorist group to facilitate or carry out a terrorist activity.”

This is radically different to Australia, where it is a crime to be a member of (or sometimes associate with) a proscribed organisation. In contrast, Canada’s decision to ban the Proud Boys does not mean that all Proud Boy members in the country now face imprisonment.

Therefore, when Canada bans a group as a terrorist organisation, it is closer to Australia’s application of financial sanctions under the Charter of the United Nations Act 1945 than to Australia’s executive proscription powers. Indeed Canada’s list of banned terrorist organisations more closely resembles Australia’s list of sanctioned organisations (see the left-hand column of this document) than Australia’s list of proscribed organisations (see the right-hand column of the same document).

Comparisons to the United States can be similarly misleading. For example, the one extreme-right organisation that the United States has banned, the Russian Imperial Movement, is not actually listed as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (the closest comparable US list to Australia’s list of proscribed organisations). It has instead been listed as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist, which is a trade sanctions measure. This is again a milder form of banning that is more comparable to Australia’s financial sanctions option than the executive proscription option.

Comparisons to New Zealand can again be misleading, as New Zealand has not banned any extreme-right group as a terrorist organisation, though they have deemed the Christchurch murderer to be a terrorist entity.

More accurate comparisons can be made with the United Kingdom, which has banned a number of extreme-right groups under proscription powers at least as severe as Australia’s, where membership is a crime in itself.

Indeed the UK’s laws go even further than Australia’s, making it an offence to “express an opinion or belief that is supportive of a proscribed organisation, reckless as to whether a person to whom the expression is directed will be encouraged to support a proscribed organisation” or to “wear clothing or carry or display articles in public in such a way or in such circumstances as to arouse reasonable suspicion that the individual is a member or supporter of a proscribed organisation”. The UK laws also do not allow for the judicial approach, which may partly explain its resort to more severe measures.

In short, Australia, the UK, the US, New Zealand and Canada all have highly different counter-terrorism laws, with the result that “banning” an organisation can mean many different things. Arguments that Australia should use its executive proscription powers to ban a particular group because another Five Eyes country has banned the group, without taking the different contexts and potential consequences into account, can be highly misleading and lead to inaccurate comparisons that cause confusion rather than progress meaningful debate.

 

Conclusion

Given the rapid escalation of the threat of extreme-right terrorism both in Australia and globally, the debate over whether to ban certain extreme-right groups is necessary.

However, throughout the debate some commentary has focused on the executive proscription powers without noting other options for banning groups as terrorist organisation, or focused on ideological differences between the groups Australia has and has not proscribed without noting other important differences (including whether a group has actually perpetrated acts of terrorism), or drawn comparisons with other Five Eyes countries without noting the different legal contexts.

When this happens, the debate clouds some of the the key issues at stake and instead serves as a proxy for whether the Australian government takes the extreme-right threat seriously. The implied assumption is that the more extreme-right groups a government bans, the more seriously it takes the threat.

There are indeed many ways the Australian government can, and should, do more to tackle far-right extremism. At a bare minimum, these could include speaking clearly and transparently about the threat, no longer watering down parliamentary condemnations of far-right extremism, properly monitoring hate crimes and supporting broader anti-racism initiatives.

However, the power to ban groups as terrorist organisations should be used extremely carefully, and the public debate should be based on clear understandings of what it entails.

 

 


[1] These nine individuals are Abdul Nacer Benbrika, Aimen Joud, Fadl Sayadi, Abdullah Merhi, Ahmed Raad, Ezzit Raad, Amer Haddara, Izzydeen Atik and Shane Kent.