It has been nearly a month since the terrorist attack in Sousse, Tunisia, during which a gunman shot dead 38 people including 30 Britons.
It was the biggest Islamic State-linked attack on British citizens and was the latest terror incident in which Westerners were targeted.
And on Wednesday it was the fourth anniversary of the attack by far-Right fanatic Anders Behring Breivik, a reminder of the threat of terrorism from the far-Right as well as Islamist extremists remains.
The Telegraph asked experts and academics at King’s College London what the impact of these attacks were on the world from the US embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998 to the Tunisia attack in June this year.
US Embassy bombings in Dar es Salaam and Nairobi, August 1998
Survivors are evacuated from the American Embassy in Kenya (AP)
On August 7, al-Qaeda came to the attention of the US public after their twin attack on US embassies in Tanzania and Kenya. More than 220 people were killed and thousands injured. But what was the impact of this attack?
Pascal Carlucci, PhD researcher, department of defence studies
They were the first complex attack on the United States – a global superpower – by a transnational terrorist network called al-Qaeda. These attacks were the first chapter of what was later called the ‘War on Terror’. Striking simultaneously two US embassies in two different African countries (Kenya and Tanzania) gave geopolitical depth to the strategy Osama bin Laden had in mind: lure the US into a protracted conflict that will ultimately reduce its power in the region.
The US responded with missile strikes in Sudan and Afghanistan, and public opinion was introduced for the first time to global terrorism.
Alexander Meleagrou-Hitchens, lecturer/research fellow, International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation (ICSR)
The 1998 al-Qaeda attacks on the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania should have changed the world, but they didn’t. Instead, the group was practically ignored, with then US President Bill Clinton’s response amounting to the launch of a series of half-hearted and unsuccessful air strikes on what were thought to be al-Qaeda bases in Afghanistan and Sudan.
Unfortunately, it took the devastation of 9/11 to wake us all up to this threat. Had al-Qaeda been taken more seriously at the time, it might have been crushed before it was able to better establish itself in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
September 11 attacks, 2001
A military helicopter flies in front of the damaged Pentagon (Getty Images)
Nearly 3,000 people were killed and thousands more injured after al-Qaeda co-ordinated four attacks on the US on one day. The impact of such atrocities is still felt today in the US and the Middle East.
Jill S. Russell, department of war studies
Despite its shock and destruction, 9/11’s importance must be reckoned for its formative political effect. The policies and conflicts that followed were not the necessary responses to the threat but rather the expression of a particular sense of the American place in history, of the neo-conservative faith in the exceptionalism of American power to remake the world in its image or at least its preference.
Despite its apparent loss of favour recently, the unyielding shape of perception and action that flowed from this geopolitical ideology continues to influence world events. There is little doubt that al-Qaeda and the associated new generation of fundamentalist political violence it spearheaded is a significant problem in today’s international system, but that world of threat is as much now shaped by the American response to 9/11 as by the action of these movements.
2002 Dubrovka theatre crisis and 2004 Beslan school siege, Russia
A mother hugs her son in front of soldiers cordoning off the school building in the town of Beslan, North Ossetia (AFP)
In October 2002, 40 Chechen militants took 912 hostages at the Dubrovka Theatre in Moscow. The siege lasted for three days until sleeping gas was pumped into the hall by Russian security services. All the attackers were killed as the services stormed the theatre but 130 hostages died. According to the BBC, some apparently died because of the effects of the gas.
Two years later in September 2004, 1,200 children and adults were held hostage at a school in Beslan, North Ossetia, Russia, by Chechen gunman. The siege also ended after three days with more than 330 killed including 186 children and more than 700 injured.
But what was the impact of these attacks?
Giorgio Bertolin, PhD candidate, department of defence studies
Both the attackers and the countering forces overcame boundaries related to the involvement of civilians. At the Dubrovka theatre, Spetsnaz units stormed the building after having dispersed an incapacitating chemical agent. All of the terrorists were neutralised, and 130 hostages lost their lives.
In Beslan, terrorists deliberately targeted a primary school. The standoff between Chechen separatists and federal authorities ended up with 385 civilian casualties, including 186 children. Despite tight restrictions on media coverage, these attacks deeply unsettled Russian society. Both crises paved the way for a subsequent authoritarian tilt in Russian politics.
Beheading of Daniel Pearl in Karachi, Pakistan, 2002
Journalist Daniel Pearl
The South Asia bureau chief at the Wall Street Journal was beheaded in Pakistan after he was kidnapped in Karachi.
Zoha Waseem, PhD candidate, department of war studies
Years before Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) terrorised the world through recordings of abducted foreigners being decapitated, the video of an infamous beheading in Pakistan exposed the country’s internal vulnerabilities. It unveiled the footprints of al-Qaeda in Pakistan’s financial hub Karachi, and become the first major attack in a series against foreigners that continue.
Daniel Pearl was kidnapped in Karachi in January 2002 and decapitated nine days later. His remains were found in May, long after the video had gone viral online. The mastermind of the attack was a British-born Pakistani, Omar Saeed Shaikh who had studied at the London School of Economics. This attack changed the world in that it recognised sprawling metropolises as the new, and far more complex, battlefields in the war on terror. Further, it corrected the misunderstanding that all terrorists are uneducated, poor, or pathological.
Bali attacks, 2002 and 2005
In October 2002 in the tourist district of Kuta on the Indonesian island of Bali 202 people were killed and a similar number injured in an attack by Jemaah Islamiyah, an extremist Islamist group.
Three years later, there were further suicide and car bomb attacks in Bali during which 20 people were killed and 100 wounded committed by the same group.
Frederic Ischebeck-Baum, an intelligence and security researcher at KCL and a fellow of the Cambridge Security Initiative.
The 2002 and 2005 Bali attacks are prime examples of successful terror campaigns conducted by the known group Jemaah Islamiyah, and in the case of 2002 with the explicit backing of al-Qaeda figure Osama bin Laden. Just as the recent attack in Tunisia, these events touched the population in a much deeper place than conventional threats usually do. As for the latter, the public don’t necessarily see themselves as targets: the state is.But in the terrorism we see today, the public are the target whereas the state is an indirect one.
The attacks were meant to teach us that there is no place to hide, no place to rest, not even during Ramadan or behind the gates of a remote holiday resort far away from the big cities. One of the main intentions of terrorism along with spreading fear and panic is to initiate political change. It is indeed a very sophisticated concept to address the only authority that can make this change happen in a democratic society: the public themselves.
The West will need the help of the Islamic society in order to tackle this problem successfully. This is not only a struggle for physical security; it is first of all a struggle for ideology. In other words, to play the devil’s advocate, we are in the midst of a propaganda war.
Madrid train bombings, 2004
A police officer walks past one of the bombed trains (REUTERS)
Nearly 200 people were killed and 1,800 injured after al-Qaeda militantsbombed four trains in co-ordinated attacks.
Charles Kirchofer, PhD candidate, King’s College London
The 2004 bombing attack on Madrid commuter trains killed over 190 people and injured 1,400 or more in what the New York Times declared was ‘the deadliest terrorist attack on a European target since the Second World War’. It was also a new al-Qaeda tactic: pick off the US’s less committed allies rather than hitting the US itself. Timed right before Spanish elections, it worked: the Popular Party had backed the Iraq War and was expected to win the election. It lost.
London public transport July 7, 2005
The remains of the bus in London’s Tavistock Square (Eddie Mulholland/The Telegraph)
Fifty-two people were killed after Islamist extremists set off three explosions on London Underground trains and one later on a London bus. The four suicide bombers died but their actions left many dead and 700 people injured.
Maryyum Mehmood, PhD researcher, department of war studies
The 7/7 attacks 10 years ago had a tremendous effect on the world and how we perceive security threats. Although the international community was already in the midst of fighting global terror post-9/11, the atrocities of 7/7 altered this dynamic. Unlike 9/11, the attacks of 7/7 were carried out by native British citizens. The aftermath of 7/7 signalled a more robust role played by Britain in the war on terror.
Specifically, it meant tighter security measures to tackle extremism at home, which to some degree has unfortunately resulted in exacerbating intercommunity hostility unlike ever before.
Alexander Meleagrou-Hitchens, lecturer/research fellow, International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation (ICSR)
While it may be hyperbolic to suggest that the July 2005 attacks in London changed the world, they certainly represent a watershed moment for Britain and Europe’s perception of the threat from global jihadism. When Mohammed Siddique Khan and his fellow plotters detonated their suicide vests on the London transport system, we were all in shock. This is not only because we had just witnessed one of the worst terrorist attacks in British history, but because it was carried out by one of our own; seemingly well-integrated British-born men of Pakistani origin.
Mumbai November, 2008
Fire and smoke billow from Mumbai’s iconic Taj Hotel (EPA)
Ten Pakistani Militants associated with the terror group Lashkar-e-Tayyiba killed 164 people after storming several buildings in the Indian city. Nine were killed and then tenth was later executed for his crimes.
Tim Willasey-Wilsey, visiting senior research fellow, King’s College London and former Foreign Office director
In the “marauding attack” in Mumbai, 10 terrorists killed 164 victims at various locations across the city. Although they came from Pakistan heavily armed with assault rifles and grenades and carried out a well-prepared plan, the “marauding” element has provided the inspiration for several subsequent, less well-resourced, terrorist events; at the 2013 Westgate Mall in Nairobi, the 2014 Kunming attack in China and even the Tunisian beach attack of June 2015.
By instantly running amok and attacking members of the public, the terrorists negated the tactics which police and security services had developed for terrorist incidents since the 1970s. The aim had always been to take the heat out of an incident, cordon the area and begin tactical negotiations. Now counter-terrorist specialists are unlikely to reach the scene until after the damage has been done
Anders Behring Breivik, Norway 2011
Breivik in court (Frank Augstein/AP)
The Right-wing extremist killed 77 people in the worst peacetime atrocity in Norway, claiming he was fighting against multiculturalism and a “Muslim invasion”.
Joana Cook, PhD candidate, department of war studies
The Norway attack provided a sober reminder that it is flawed and dangerous to focus predominantly on groups who purport to be Islamic. Breivik was inspired by Right-wing ideology and fears of multiculturalism and Islamification – themes currently permeating many Right-wing extremist groups and individuals across the West. Breivik’s case also emphasises the threat that lone wolves can play, and the challenges in identifying them.
Responsible for 77 casualties, he carried out the most lethal attack by an individual actor in modern European history. Breivik had previous contact with, though no formal membership of, an extremist group in 2011.
Kunming massacre in China, March 2014
Five Muslim separatists ran amok with knives at Kunming railway station in south-west China, killing 31 and wounding 141 members of the public.
Tim Willasey-Wilsey, visiting senior research fellow
A disconcerting new dimension to terrorism emerged in March 2014 after the attack at Kunming railway station. The attack showed clearly how terrorists adapt methods they have seen on TV or online to their own local circumstances.
This attack owed much to the “marauding” method used to such brutal effect in Mumbai in November 2008 but with the lowest technology of weapons. Procurement of weapons is a dangerous moment for any terrorist plot but no security or police service can effectively monitor the possession and use of knives.
The army public school attack in Peshawar, Pakistan December 2014
Taliban gunmen stormed a military-run school in the north-western Pakistani city of Peshawar on Tuesday, killing at least 141 people, almost all of them children, in Pakistan’s bloodiest ever terror attack.
Zoha Waseem, PhD candidate
Upon the formation of the terrorist network Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan in 2007, Pakistan carried out multiple military operations against terrorists within the country. The current Operation Zarb-e-Azb suffered a huge blowback from the attack on Peshawar’s Army Public School that claimed 146 lives, including 132 children.
The attack drew widespread condemnation from across the international community, escalated Pakistan’s military operations countrywide, and became a stark reminder that terrorists can penetrate even the most secure military infrastructures in urban areas through careful co-ordination. It has also increased international focus on the growing trend of terrorist attacks on schools in countries including Nigeria, Iraq and Afghanistan.
A man carries an injured student after he received treatment at a hospital in Peshawar (Khuram Parvez/Reuters)
Charlie Hebdo attack, January 2015
The Islamist extremists outside the Charlie Hebdo offices
Seventeen people were killed in Paris during the three-day siege by Islamist extremists who stormed the French satirical magazine’s offices, killing 12. The day after, an accomplice to the Hebdo attackers killed a policeman and two days after the Hebdo attack, Amedy Coulibaly tookpeople hostage in a kosher supermarket which ended with four people killed.
Pablo de Orellana, teaching fellow, department of war studies
The attack on Charlie Hebdo, a (hilarious) defender of French republican secularism, by French-born Chérif and Saïd Kouachi revealed how Isil exploits immigrant grievances, not only luring them to Syria, but in Europe.
France’s policies of assimilation and secularism require immigrants to reject previous cultural identities and become French, to which graffiti I saw in Saint-Denis responded ‘and now what, do we become white?’
Considered in relation to frequent riots by second-generation immigrants in Paris, the Charlie Hebdo attacks suggest a dangerous link between Islamic militancy and the assimilation policies, anti-immigration sentiment and xenophobia that stigmatise immigrants and their children.
Nick Kaderbhai, MA student and research fellow at the ICSR
‘I do not condone the murder of cartoonists, but…’ This adage became a nauseating cliché in the days following the attacks. While excusing Islamist terrorism is a continued trend, ‘Charlie Hebdo’ remains unique. Unable to draw the usual causal connection back to a Western government, and refusing to acknowledge the autonomy of the attackers, a clique of commentators focused the blame on the cartoonists, thus implicating them in their own murder. This betrayal may not have changed the world, but it has compromised the world’s ability to create a united voice against an indiscriminate threat.
Charleston church shooting, June 2015
A mass shooting took place at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina during which nine African-Americans were killed by a white supremacist. Dylann Roof, the suspected gunman, now faces hate crime charges as well as nine charges of murder and three of attempted murder.
Dylann Roof appears in court
Anne Miles, PhD candidate and teaching associate
The racially and politically motivated murders of nine men and women in Charleston’s historic Emanuel AME Church exposed the post-9/11 Western tendency to define terrorism along racial and religious lines. Americans were reminded that domestic anti-terrorism activities traditionally focused on attacks carried out by white men, including the Oklahoma City and Olympic Park bombings, and that white supremacist groups are among America’s oldest continuing terrorist threats.
America’s inadequate initial response to this attack should serve as an example to the United Kingdom, France, and others whose national discourses often conflate the strategy of terrorism with the ideology of Islamic extremism.
Sousse attack, June 2015
Francesco Milan, PhD, department of war studies
Two main observations can be drawn from the recent terrorist attack that killed 38 tourists on the beaches of Sousse, Tunisia. First and foremost, it seems Seifeddine Rezgui, the 23-year old university studentwho carried out the attack, was very much closer to what Raffaello Pantucci defines a “suburban terrorist” than he was to a “traditional” one.
“This once again confirms that radicalisation now appeals to a much wider audience (by age and social background) than before. The attack also raises broader questions about regional security in north Africa, especially as Tunisia finds itself squeezed between domestic issues and growing instability in neighbouring Libya.”
Chilling pictures emerged of the Tunisia gunman on the beach (Sky News)
