The truck-borne attack by the last-minute jihadi convert Mohamed Bouhlel in Nice has emphasised an inconvenient truth about public security around the world. Terror attacks can take bizarrely random forms and involve unlikely candidates, who operate under the radar of the security and intelligence agencies. It is hard to see how, for instance, intelligence agencies could have identified a low-profile under-achiever like Mohamed Bouhlel as a potential terrorist or anticipated his tragically inventive strategy of driving a truck through a holidaying throng in a southern French city to kill 84 people.
This sinister ingenuity in terror techniques is not new in the 21st century against the steady ratcheting up of tensions between hard-line political Islam and secular democracies. From Richard Reid, the British national who was overpowered trying to detonate a bomb concealed in his shoe aboard a US-France flight in 2001, to the two aircraft that were flown by Al Qaeda acolytes into the twin-towers of the World Trade Centre to suicide bombers, cell-phone-detonated devices and random people planting bombs in rucksacks (such as in Times Square in 2010), snipers with store-bought rifles or an axe-wielder aboard a local train, terrorists can be relied on to exercise the utmost resourcefulness for maximum impact. Terror attacks coinciding with notable holidays - Bastille Day, July 14, in this case - are expected, but even the most stringent security measures can rarely compensate for the bizarre ingenuity of not just committed terrorists but unknown "lone wolves" like Mohamed Bouhlel and Omar Mateen, the shooter at the Orlando nightclub in June. In spite of increasingly intrusive and sometimes objectionable security measures and unstated racial profiling at airports, stations and other public places, the grim truth is that security and intelligence agencies will remain behind the curve against global and domestic terrorism.
What is to be done? Principally, this calls for more thoughtful responses from the political establishment. These responses need to go beyond emotional grandstanding as demonstrated after the attack on the Charlie Hebdo office in 2015 to practical policies that will address realities of slow growth and joblessness rather than play to populist agenda. George Bush's pointless invasion of Iraq after 9/11 is a good example of an overreaction exacerbating a problem. It is no coincidence that terror attacks have grown in inverse proportion to economic growth, particularly in the EU, and it is axiomatic that immigrant communities are the first to feel the sting of unemployment and prejudice.
It is worth noting that several signature terror organisations of the late 20th century - such as the extremist ETA Basque separatists and the Baader-Meinhof - flourished when global growth slowed in the 1970s and 1980s and abated once growth picked up and public support for their causes waned. So far, no Western leader has made an effort to engage with the large majority of non-radical Muslim communities, who bear the brunt of fundamentalists' attacks in terms of a collective social demonisation and alienation. Talking softly does not necessarily preclude carrying a big stick. In Europe, this balance has become critical when the Islamic State stands as a ready recruiter of disaffected, unemployed youth and refugees flee in the opposite direction to a hostile reception. In the end, rigid political responses will only encourage the creativity of terrorists and other disgruntled low-life.
