A new poll shows that Australians see terrorism as a less significant threat than they used to.
In the Lowy Institute Poll 2020, which measures Australian attitudes on international affairs, 46% of respondents listed terrorism as a "critical threat" to "the vital interests of Australia". This was down from 66% just two years earlier, 68% the year before, and 73% when the poll began in 2006. More people listed issues other than terrorism as critical threats, such as climate change (59%), environmental disasters like bushfires (67%), economic downturn (71%), COVID-19 (76%) and drought (77%).
This is not a surprising development in the face of a global pandemic that has killed hundreds of thousands of people. It suggests a well-founded understanding that while terrorism remains an important threat facing Australia it is far from the most important threat.
This makes it a good time to take stock of the terrorist threat facing Australia. Periods of lower public concern about terrorism allow more room for calm reflection, while periods of heightened public concern can be characterised by reactive policy-making, questionable legislation, politicisation and polarisation.
This post takes stock by revisiting by terrorism developments for Australia during 2019. It does not discuss how COVID-19 might shape the future threat, which is being widely debated, but instead provides a clear picture of how the threat was developing before the pandemic struck.
This post notes positive developments during 2019, showing that when we confine our focus to events inside Australia, last year would appear to be a success story; extremely little terrorist activity occurred. This likely played a role in fewer Australians seeing terrorism as a critical threat. However, the post also argues that tragic events in Australia's wider region, namely the Christchurch massacre and the Colombo bombings, point to a continuously uncertain future.
Developments inside Australia
As the table below shows, 2019 saw no terrorist attacks inside Australia, for the first time in five years. 2019 also saw only two alleged terrorist plots, fewer than the previous five years.[1]
Though the situation has not returned to what it was before 2014, the rate of apparent plots has dropped well below its 2016 peak.[4]
Furthermore, only six people in Australia were charged with terrorism offences in 2019, which was slightly fewer than in 2018 (in which eight people were charged, including one person who turned out to be framed by a "jealous love rival") or any other year since 2014.
This reflects the declining fortunes of Islamic State, the violent extremist movement that had inspired or instigated most of the plots in Australia since 2014. In April 2019 the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), backed by the US-led Global Coalition against Daesh, captured the Islamic State’s last remaining stronghold in Syria. By the end of 2019, the US military had killed their leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. These setbacks in Syria and Iraq helped reduce the Islamic State’s international momentum; the number of Islamic State plots also fell in Europe, paralleling the decline in Australia.
Other good news is that some major counter-terrorism prosecutions were resolved during 2019, including the trials of the Federation Square bomb plotters and the Khayat brothers. In addition, there were no clear cases of counter-terrorism policing errors or overreach within Australia in 2019 similar to the wrongful charging of Mohamed Nizamdeen in 2018. Instead, an earlier injustice was partly rectified when Ethan Cruse (who had been assaulted by police, while handcuffed, during a counter-terrorism raid in 2015) was awarded compensation in August 2019.
So if we confine our focus just to activities inside Australia’s borders, 2019 provided strong grounds for optimism, given Islamic State’s loss of momentum.
However, the most important terrorism developments for Australia during 2019 occurred overseas.
For example, the situation for Australian Islamic State supporters and their families in the SDF-controlled refugee camps in Syria poses the potential for future threats, but also for serious injustices, particularly for the children trapped in these camps. Nor have the Syrian and Iraqi victims of Australian Islamic State supporters received justice.
Moreover, two human tragedies early in the year, the Christchurch massacre and the Colombo bombings, outweighed the developments inside Australia.
The Christchurch massacre
The Christchurch massacre was the most deadly terrorist attack inside either Australia or New Zealand for around a century (since the atrocities against Indigenous populations). The perpetrator, an Australian white supremacist, murdered 51 people by carrying out a mass shooting of worshippers at two mosques on 15 March 2019. The Christchurch attacker’s delight in livestreaming his murders through Facebook, treating his atrocity like a video game and making grotesque in-jokes for white supremacist fellow travellers, magnified the horror.
The Christchurch massacre should be considered the most important terrorism development for Australia in 2019. That it did not occur inside Australia does not change this; it happened within the jurisdiction of the Australia New Zealand Counter Terrorism Committee and the terrorist likely killed more people than any single Australian who joined Islamic State. The perpetrator acted alone but was networked with extreme-right circles both in Australia and abroad.
The massacre occurred in the context of escalating extreme-right attacks across the world, which represent the most violent manifestations of a broader movement that also involves online sub-cultures, concerts, rallies, organisation-building, paramilitary efforts, and attempts at political infiltration and mainstream influence. The extreme-right movement encompasses wildly divergent factions and worldviews, with all sorts of influences from neo-reactionary, eco-fascist, accelerationist, identitarian, neo-Nazi, traditional fascist, and various fringe religious ideas. There is such variation that it makes more sense to think of it as multiple movements (hence efforts to “Unite the Right”), but many adherents share a common commitment to white supremacy that often proves deadly.
They also draw on more mainstream influences, such as widespread anti-Muslim sentiments fanned by some political and media figures, along with national histories of racism and resurgent anti-Semitism. The Christchurch killer hated all sorts of racial and religious communities, but claimed that he targeted Muslims because "attacking them receives the greatest level of support".
His attack gave impetus to other extreme-right terrorists. While terrorists usually seek to inspire others towards violent action, they often fail. For example, Oklahoma bomber Timothy McVeigh initially failed to spark the wider wave to violence he hoped for in the mid-1990s. Similarly, Anders Breivik’s 2011 massacre in Norway failed to immediately mobilise a wider wave of violence. Breivik was "not received particularly well within the broader extreme-right movement", at least not at first.[5]
Unfortunately, the Christchurch killer may have judged his intended audience better. Six weeks after the massacre, a man carried out a shooting attack against a synagogue in California, posting his manifesto to 8chan and describing Christchurch as an inspiration. A terrorist who murdered Hispanic shoppers at a mall in El Paso in August 2019 similarly cited the Christchurch attack as an inspiration, as did a man who attacked a mosque in Norway that month. The terrorist who murdered nine young people at shisha bars in the German city of Hanua also credited the Christchurch killer in his manifesto. He carried out his atrocity only a few days after other extremists in Germany were arrested for allegedly plotting a Christchurch-style attack. In mid-June a network of suspected neo-Nazi’s inspired by the Christchurch attacker were arrested in Ukraine.
So the Christchurch massacre was far from an isolated event. It was part of a wider wave of transnational extreme-right terrorism, for which it also provided greater momentum.
The attack also foreshadowed increased concerns about the prospect of Australian extreme-right terrorist attacks in Australia. The threat has been evident for a long time, but it has recently received greater attention. On 24 February 2020 the new Director-General of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), Mike Burgess, highlighted the threat of extreme-right terrorism in a public speech. As of June 2020 Australia has only experienced one alleged terrorist plot this year, and it involved a group of suspected white supremacists allegedly plotting an attack around the anniversary of the Christchurch massacre.
The Colombo bombings
Another reason 2019 does not provide grounds for optimism was the horrendous Easter attack in Sri Lanka.
On the morning of 21 April 2019, terrorists inspired by Islamic State carried out seven roughly-simultaneous suicide bombings in Colombo. The terrorists targeted historic churches and popular hotels, killing hundreds, and then another suicide bomber targeted a hotel in the afternoon. They murdered a total of 259 people. Two Australians were among the people killed, and one of the bombers reportedly turned to jihadism while studying inside Australia.
The bombings highlight that while Islamic State suffered serious setbacks in Syria and Iraq, and now inspires far fewer terrorist attacks in Europe and Australia, the movement has not lost momentum everywhere. Since 2017, several countries in the Indo-Pacific region experienced greater Islamic State associated violence than they ever had before. The 2017 Marawi takeover in the Philippines, the May 2018 church bombings in Indonesia, and these April 2019 bombings in Sri Lanka, all contrast strongly with the Islamic State's decline in the Middle East, Europe and Australia.
The Colombo bombings also led to political turmoil and an escalation of anti-Muslim violence in Sri Lanka, and may have further fuelled anti-Muslim prejudice in the region. The governments of China, India and Myanmar have all persecuted segments of their Muslim populations, often citing terrorism as a justification. Similarly, groups like Islamic State use attacks against Muslims as a rallying cry, seeking to eliminate the “grayzone” of coexistence between Muslims and non-Muslims. Though ideas of “reciprocal radicalisation” can imply far too simple and direct a relationship, jihadist violence and anti-Muslim violence (whether by individuals or states) can feed into each other, posing a dangerous dynamic for the future.
Conclusion
What do these developments during 2019 suggest about the current terrorist threat facing Australia? Focusing on events inside Australia, 2019 provides grounds for optimism. There was a clear decline in terrorist attacks, alleged plots, and terrorism arrests. Similarly, the first half of 2020 has similarly seen few terrorism arrests and only one alleged plot.
That fewer Australians see terrorism as a critical threat should also be considered a positive development, as it suggests that terrorists are not being so effective at evoking terror. The threat has not disappeared, as the head of Victoria Police Counter Terrorism Command recently emphasised, but in the middle of a deadly global pandemic terrorism is rightly being treated as a lower priority. National security itself is being rethought in many ways.
However, events in Australia's wider region during 2019, the Christchurch massacres and Colombo bombings, suggest a darker story.
Neither attack should be treated as being of little concern for Australia. They were both human tragedies, and they had Australians among either the perpetrators or the victims. The attacks were also both examples of global threats, the importance of which goes far beyond their immediate relevance to Australia. They caused over 300 deaths and left many more maimed and traumatised. They also demonstrate the broader political impact terrorist incidents can have, setting the stage for further violence.
The attacks point to the potential for future mass-casualty attacks by extreme-right and jihadist terrorists, and also to the prospect of attacks coming from entirely unanticipated directions. New Zealand had no recent history of mass-casualty terrorism, and while Sri Lanka has a long history of terrorism and conflict the country had never experienced such large-scale violence by Islamic State supporters. As a result, the prospect of extreme-right terrorism in New Zealand, and of Islamic State supporters in Sri Lanka having such capabilities for violence, had been severely underestimated.
The Christchurch and Colombo attacks therefore also demonstrate the uncertainty of where and when terrorist threats can manifest themselves. This persistent uncertainty is the reason why the terrorist threat is so often described as “enduring”. It is unfortunately at odds with the positive developments inside Australia during 2019 and the first half of 2020. The impact the global pandemic will have on this is unclear, but it adds to the inherent uncertainty that already characterises the terrorist threat.
[1] These incidents may not tell the full story. There could have been potential plots disrupted by police actions short of prosecution, including diversion efforts or interventions by fixated threat assessment centres.
[2] For a complete list of all these incidents, with sources, see this table. For many incidents in Australia since September 2014 that resemble terrorism but were not treated as terrorism by the courts or coroners, see the discussion underneath the table in the same post. For some of the debates about whether events such as the Sydney Siege should be characterised as terrorism, see here, here, here and here.
[3] Note that for 2016 I have excluded one incident that the courts have treated as a terrorist attack, which was the firebombing of a Shia mosque (the Imam Ali Islamic Centre) in Melbourne on 11 December 2016. I am excluding it because:
1. It did not injure or kill anyone, and therefore more clearly resembles the sort of ideologically motivated firebombings that do not usually result in terrorism charges (such as white supremacist Ricky White’s burning of a Church in 2016, or the Australian Nationalist Movement’s foiled plan to firebomb four Asian restaurants in 2004) rather than a clear terrorist attack.
2. Several of the people responsible were part of the Federation Square bomb plot that same month, so including it would risk double-counting (by listing an activity that could arguably amount to part of the same plot).
3. The Australian Security Intelligence Organisation does not appear to include the incident in its official figure of “seven attacks” in Australia since September 2014.
[4] Even the threat’s peak was remarkably low by international standards. Many measures have helped contain the harm, including gun control and effective policing. For example, the November 2018 Bourke Street attack could have killed many more people had had automatic weapons or had the police not arrived within 90 seconds.
[5] Breivik's idiosyncratic mixture of ideologies and his decision to target white people rather than Muslims directly, may have limited his initial appeal among like-minded extremists. However, the Christchurch killer’s claim that he "only really took true inspiration from Knight Justiciar Breivik" may have led to a revival of Breivik’s popularity in these circles.