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Despite all the abominations inherent in Islamist terrorism, there is something about recent events that stands out. A school on the outskirts of Paris, a church in Nice and last night a synagogue in Vienna. The scene of the attacks is close and intimate, there are spaces in a society that should be protected.
Austria is relatively safe from terrorist attacks of this nature. In France, it is an everyday meal.
Since 2015 and less than one and for half a year the country suffered a veritable massacre of Islamist terrorist acts. It began with the attack on Charlie Hebdo in January 2015 and continued with the massacre at the Stade de France, the Bataclan concert hall and various pubs in Paris in November of the same year. After a European Soccer Championship at home (and a final place for the national team) with the highest terrorist preparation, many breathed a sigh of relief, only to have 84 dead and more than 450 injured in the truck days later bomb on the seafront in Nice on National Day on July 14, 2016.
Several people are being checked after the attacks in Vienna.
Terror affects individuals and communities and is often said to be the target; split into groups, cultivate fear everywhere in public. The outdoor cafes were empty for a long time in Paris in the fall of 2015 and the tone of the conversation lowered a bit. People are becoming softer on the brink of terrorism, but also more on guard. I remember how long I scanned each subway car for suspected terrorists, how each unexpected sound jumped.
It is irrational, of course, the risk of being the target of a terrorist attack is negligible in all parts of Europe. But this is how the majority society reacts to repeated terrorism. It is our macabre luxury in all misery; to inspect and assess people with dark hair and dark skin as possible perpetrators, without ever affecting that look.
For designated groups are what is known is another story. Last week, a woman was denied entry to a grocery store in France on the grounds that she was wearing a veil. When a friend in Paris was going to Stockholm right after the Drottninggatan attack, he asked me if he should cancel, maybe it was not a good situation to go to Sweden when you have an Arabic name?
Of all the challenges facing modern societies, condemning terrorism without making life difficult for an entire group of people is probably the most difficult. Especially since there have been new political forces on the track for some twenty years that find their vital air in these situations. In the case of immigrant minorities, that is. In the United States, young white men with far-right sympathies have faced the greatest terrorist threat and bloodiest act of the last fifteen years, usually in schools, without this group appearing to be significantly discriminated against in everyday life.
Terrorism in Europe has changed several times over the past fifty years, from far-left armed groups, religious and nationalist separatists like ETA and the IRA, right-wing extremists like Anders Behring Breivik and a long list of jihadist acts organized by al-Quaida and IS. The number of Islamist attacks has declined in Europe since the peak in the mid-2010s. Last year, they accounted for 21 of the 119 terrorist attacks carried out or planned in Europe. By far the most common are nationalist and separatist attacks, which account for almost half of all crime in Europe, but jihadist attacks are the deadliest.
Thirteen people were killed in attacks for Islamist motives in the EU in 2018, the following year the figure was ten. As a result of the rally in Vienna, eleven people have been killed by Islamists so far in 2020.
In the 1970s, it was estimated that up to 80 percent of all terrorist attacks globally occurred in Europe, something that has changed dramatically since then. In 2017, only 0.3 percent of the world’s attacks took place in our corner of the world, and the attacks here are significantly less than in the 1980s and 1990s. You can take that away now that it looks like Europe is particularly under attack.
It is often said that terrorists I hate our way of life, our religious freedom, and our tradition of the Western Enlightenment. The latest feats undoubtedly bear that stamp. But make a mistake if you think they hate us. A few hours before yesterday’s attack in Vienna, at least 22 people were killed when gunmen stormed Kabul University in an attack carried out by the Islamic State. I always hang out with a friend in Kabul, one of all the Afghan children who came to Europe as teenagers and who after years of asylum denials and wandering finally returned to Afghanistan last year when I see a whistleblower about an Afghan murder . And each time he answers something like “that was a short distance from where we live, but yesterday there was a car bomb on our street, where three died.” Since returning to Afghanistan a year ago, he has lost a cousin, brother-in-law, and several acquaintances to terror, primarily the Taliban. It is a fairly normal experience for Afghans, in one of the countries most affected by terrorism in the world.
About 95 percent of the deaths caused by terrorist attacks in recent years have occurred in Africa, the Middle East and South Asia. Perhaps it is worth thinking about the next time we speak of Islamist terrorism as “everyday” in Europe.
Of course, it makes less difference to those affected, those close to them and the general fear of teachers, Catholics and Jews in Europe at the moment. France and Austria were hit by horrific attacks just before their respective countries shut down and curfews were introduced in the fight against COVID-19. At the very moment when people need to meet and look into each other’s eyes.
Sources: Global Terrorism Database, Our World in Data, Global Terrorism Index
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