“There is no spontaneous generation of terrorism”

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• On this national day of tribute to the victims of terrorism, which also marks the first day of the killings perpetrated in Toulouse and Montauban in 2012, Mathieu Guidère, university professor specializing in questions of radicalization, looks back on this decade marked by terrorism.

• He discusses current threats, which are no longer limited to jihadists, but also the international context with the war in Ukraine and its impact.

Between March 11 and 19, 2012, seven people were killed in three terrorist attacks perpetrated in Toulouse and Montauban by Mohammed Merah against soldiers and the Jewish school Ozar Hatorah.

These killings marked the beginning of a decade of Islamist terrorist attacks in France.

Ten years later, the international geopolitical situation has changed, the profile and the modes of action too.

Mathieu Guidère, university professor specializing in radicalization and violent extremism, author of the Atlas of Islamist terrorism, deciphers for "

this wave of attacks and the situation today.

In 2012, did the context at the time make it possible to predict this unprecedented wave of attacks?

It was worrying to say the least: Al-Qaeda had intensified its attacks after the death of its leader, Bin Laden, in May 2011 and, above all, the Arab Spring had liberated Islamist forces and given new impetus to jihadist groups everywhere. , particularly in Syria and Libya, where France had intervened to help the rebels against Gaddafi.

The context of 2012 was very tense on both shores of the Mediterranean.

Threats were numerous against France and its nationals.

As in 2012, we are in a presidential election period.

In view of the means deployed since then by the various governments, could these attacks happen again today?

Geopolitically, the context of 2022 is even more explosive than that of 2012 because the tension is now at the heart of Europe and mixes both internal discontent with external confrontations.

In addition, as in 2012, the right-wing presidential campaign focused on the issue of Muslim immigration.

All this represents a significant risk of violent actions on the national territory.

Mohammed Merah was, at first, designated as a lone wolf by internal intelligence, before it was realized that he had received external support.

Do these radicalized lone wolves really exist?

The issue of lone wolves has been debated for a long time and its definition varies according to countries and cases.

Let's say that the lone wolf is an individual who carries out his terrorist action alone, but there is always a source of inspiration and logistical support.

In other words, there is no spontaneous generation of terrorism, there is always a favorable breeding ground and an ideology of protest.

The breeding ground for this radicalization is often anti-Semitism.

Is it more and more prevalent among these young people radicalized or in the process of being so?

Anti-Semitism is indeed a breeding ground for terrorism because it is confused with anti-Zionism.

But the situation has evolved since 2012, notably with the Abraham Accords between Israel and the Arab countries of the Gulf.

There is a certain normalization of relations which has relegated, for the moment at least, anti-Semitism as a triggering factor to the background.

But other sources of resentment are taking over, such as wokism and neo-decolonialism.

The Internet has played a major role in this decade of terrorism, whether in recruitment, training or radicalization.

Can specialized services, and do they have the means, to fight in this field?

Many efforts have been made and laws passed to give intelligence services the means to detect upstream and act against this type of threat.

But today, these services are overwhelmed and overwhelmed by new forms of radicalization that combine several motivations and grievances.

What are these new forms of radicalization?

The term "radicalized" in the field of anti-terrorism always refers to the idea of ​​using violence to impose one's point of view.

In recent years, it is no longer just the jihadists who use violence.

Animal activists, decolonialists, wokists use violence, the extreme right also to defend a cause that they consider sacred or very important.

The same services that worked on jihadists find themselves working on these militants, regardless of their type of radicalism.

Do the “de-radicalization” processes deployed in recent years, whether in prison or in the open, have a chance of working one day?

As radicalization has evolved and includes other forms represented in particular by the extreme right or eco-terrorism, it is unlikely that these programs will work in the long term because they focus on a single ideology while d Others undermine social cohesion.

Several years ago, jihadists would train in camps in Afghanistan.

With the return of the Taliban, can we fear it again and be confronted again with better prepared attacks?

Again, the context has changed a lot: today the Taliban themselves are threatened by more radicals than themselves and are under attack from terrorist organizations like the Islamic State, so they are unlikely to be tempted to harbor or support other terrorist organizations as before 2001.

We thought the Islamic State Organization was out of breath, but that is far from the case.

Is this a real threat today?

We just destroyed the military organization in Iraq.

But in Syria, Syria and Russia, continue to kill whatever they can.

But it is true that it has moved to Mali, to West Africa, Central Africa in general where the Organization is recruiting again where it has significant weight.

It has been strengthened enormously in Afghanistan since the arrival of the Taliban.

France has been one of the most targeted nations over the past decade.

Will his withdrawal from Mali or Afghanistan change the situation?

The military withdrawal is a calming factor that contributes to lowering the threat level.

But it intervenes in an internal and external context marked by a galloping radicalization of all actors, which makes the risk of violence even greater.

Do the jihadists now have other targets or France, and the West in general, remains a priority for their attacks?

The observation that we make, these are fashion effects very dependent on the geopolitical situation.

It would be enough for an important player in global geopolitics, whether it be France, the United States, Great Britain or Russia, to make them members of the Security Council, to introduce a new fact on the international scene for it's changing a lot.

Today, jihadists go to Ukraine;

we've never seen that, it's worrying.

These phenomena of terrorism are very dependent on geopolitics and consequently on the foreign policy of each country that is targeted.

What could be the impact of this war in Ukraine on terrorism?

We remember that at the beginning, when it was a question of bringing down Bashar al-Assad's regime, people were not necessarily against the French going to fight.

It was from the moment they joined the Islamic State that this began to pose a problem and that we asked ourselves questions.

It's the same for Ukraine.

From the moment you accept that people leave to use violence abroad, whatever the reason for which they go there (against other armies or countries), the question always arises of the return of these combatants.

Before it was with the Islamists, now we don't quite know why they are leaving.

There are religious reasons, sometimes humanitarian ones.

The first fighters who left against the Assad regime did so for humanitarian reasons,

their declarations at the beginning were to save the civilians who were being bombarded.

The question is therefore to accept the departure of fighters abroad and to manage after their return.

Because they return to mark the theater of war, with new skills in weapons and they are in a situation of demobilization.

"The problem is the management of the return of fighters abroad"

Whether it was the terrorism of the OAS (Secret Army Organization) in the sixties, that of the extreme left in the seventies or Islamist terrorism, studies show two things when they return because they have nothing else to do and know how to do nothing other than fight: either they join extreme parties, or they turn their skills against their country of origin because they believe that they are not recognized or thanked for their fight for freedom, for democracy, for Islam, for Syria… That's the problem: managing the return of combatants abroad.

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