Geopolitics Magazine January - February 2016 | Page 81

Written by Alexandros Niklan
Sr. Security Consultant

Terrorism future and need of awareness.

Terrorism has been a part of our lives for some time now. It has been characterized as identical to
fanatic religious warriors and present an asymmetric threat which is troubling world leaders and
authorities on how to deal it, effectively. What is even more troubling is that this terrorism threat is
evolving and developing new methods of attack and connectivity to achieve its goals.
In this article there will be a very limited summary on the trends that might be emerging related to
Terrorism in near future, as tension rises and terrorism manages to intervene with our everyday lives.
This article under no circumstances is an analysis or an accurate prediction. Most cases w ill be
presented based upon recent findings and there won’t be any drill down to details on how and when of
these methods. Being able to identify those methods and patterns is a good first step towards
awareness.
In recent operations that took place by special agents
on field, there were findings that were leading experts
to believe that terrorists might have gained knowledge
to build biological weapons and dirty bombs. A finding
on a laptop in 2014, was the one that triggered the
suspicions of authorities who are still investigating the
possibility that terrorists might be able to build a
bomb. Buried in the “hidden files” section of the
computer were 146 gigabytes of material, containing a
total of 35,347 files in 2,367 folders all related to such
objectives. The information on the laptop was making
clear that its owner was a Tunisian national named
Muhammed S. who joined ISIS in Syria and who studied chemistry and physics at two universities in
Tunisia’s northeast. Even more disturbing is how he planned to use that education: “The ISIS laptop
contains a 19-page document in Arabic on how to develop biological weapons and how to weaponize
the bubonic plague from infected animals.”
But this was not the only finding. Capt. Al Shimkus,
Ret., a Professor of National Security Affairs at the
U.S. Naval War College stated in 2014 “The
individual exposed to the Ebola Virus would be the
carrier,” Shimkus told Forbes. In the context of
terrorist activity, it doesn’t take much sophistication
to go to that next step to use a human being as a
carrier.” This statement came after raised concerns
of an Ebola outbreak that reached even borders of
S. Arabia and other countries of M.East. But this
was not even a surprise as on the May 2013 issue
of the journal Global Policy, however, Amanda
Teckman, author of the paper “The Bioterrorist
Threat of Ebola in East Africa and Implications for Global Health and Security” concluded that “the
threat of an Ebola bioterrorist attack in East Africa is a global health and security concern, and should
not be ignored.”

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