Digital Jihad

by Shelton Hull

The cell phone has proven to be one of the crucial technologies for evildoers in the post-9/11 era. After the hijackers’ extensive cell use to coordinate their attacks became widely known, government wiretaps and data-mining methods have somewhat reduced the ease of use that was once available to terrorists. Still, there remain exceptions.

European media and law-enforcement institutions have documented how cell phones were used to coordinate mass-action events like anti-war protests, flash mobs and multi-lateral riots. The burning of cars in France last year, hyped as a protest of the deaths of two immigrant youths in an altercation with French police, rose dramatically after reports of the initial riots spread, and personal communication devices were hours ahead of official sources in disseminating the information that would be relevant for anyone wishing or waiting for the chance to join in on the mayhem. The outcry that followed a European newspaper’s publishing of blasphemous cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad in the form of his misguided adherents, almost 2,000 years after his death, was also facilitated by various forms of wireless media, as was the backlash of Christian nationalists across the continent. The recent bombing of a major rail artery in Mumbai was done similarly to the Madrid Bombing, with backpack bombs detonated with cell-phone timers. These devices allow the perpetrators to get far away from the bomb site, saving the risk and expense of recruiting and training mere suicidal dupes. (Interestingly, Al-Qaeda has never done a train bombing– they’re always domestic terrorists.)

All this is worrisome enough for lovers of peace and freedom around the world. But the most dramatic innovations with digital media are occurring in places like Iraq. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the recently neutralized leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq, was widely hailed by even the Pentagon as a master of modern media propaganda techniques, employed to grisly effect in the taped murders of captives. His organization and others also claimed credit for hundreds of bombings that have killed thousands of Iraqis, Americans and others. Again, the battlegrounds of Iraq have become the new field labs for testing next-level asymmetrical warfare techniques by all sides. Hundreds of US personnel have died from bombs used more as high-powered landmines, dug into roads, ditches or culverts, rigged to pressure-sensitive triggers or timed detonators. In the latter case, cell phones are used to blow the bomb as target vehicles move across its range, allowing the bombers to achieve maximum efficiency with explosives that are likely custom made for the target.

The phones have several advantages as instruments of terror. The technology is advancing at a rapid clip, leaving thousands upon thousands of perfectly useable phones that no one wants. Pre-paid cards allow for relative anonymity of use, and the same number can be used for more than one phone, as in Madrid. Using different numbers allow the bombers to target specific trains as they move along a track. A train bombing in China last year was allegedly meant for the visiting Kim Jong-Il, whose life was spared only because his train was late to the station.

The million-dollar question, of course, is how such devices may be used to make war on the American mainland, and what we American citizens can do to stop such terror before it is made manifest on our shores. Well, there really isn’t anything the American people can do on this front. Government intervention always struggles to remain apace of the evildoers’ foul intentions, but our evolution away from the age of civil liberties has given government more options in dealing with the threat. Unfortunately, though, the cost of freedom is quickly proving too much for people to bear. Having been confronted with the reality that our nation is suffused with thousands of youthful malcontents who have already coalesced into a domestic paramilitary force, the response has so far been utter, craven submission. If civil war occurs in America, expect cell-phones to play a big part. ◼