After Hamas Attacks, Terror Threats Are on the Rise

In the weeks since the atrocities committed by Hamas in Israel on Oct. 7, there’s been an alarming uptick in terrorist activity in Europe, with Western intelligence chiefs warning that Islamist extremists, jihadis, and antisemites, inspired by Hamas’s bold attack, could be looking for new ways to attack Western targets. Groups affiliated with al Qaeda, the Islamic State, and the Taliban, and based across Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Middle East, will likely try to demonstrate their own capabilities to secure attention in a crowded field. After all, terror groups need the publicity of high-profile attacks to attract recruits, cash, weapons, and protection.

The intelligence chiefs of the Five Eyes partners—Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States—met last week at a conference in California organized by the FBI, and they issued a joint warning that the threat of domestic attacks has risen as a direct result of the unfolding crisis in the Middle East.

“We have seen an increase in reported threats, but vigilance is heightened right now just because of the fluid and volatile environment in the Middle East and the way in which that could spin out in the U.S.,” Christopher Wray, the FBI chief, told 60 Minutes. The spy chiefs said that lone actors radicalized online, organized terrorist groups, state actors such as Iran, and far-right and neo-Nazi groups could become more active. “Make no mistake, this is a dangerous time,” Wray said.

The intelligence chiefs’ warning coincided with tightened security in Europe and elsewhere following a series of incidents linked to Islamist extremism. The Islamic State claimed responsibility after two Swedish football fans were killed in Brussels by a man, later shot dead by police, who was allegedly enraged by Quran burnings in Sweden. Italian authorities arrested two men accused of recruiting for the Islamic State. Gunmen with alleged links to the organization attacked and killed two tourists and their safari guide in Uganda. France deployed the military and raised the terrorist threat level to “urgent” after a teacher was stabbed to death and three others were injured by a Chechen man believed to be a radical Islamist. In Berlin, petrol bombs were thrown at a synagogue. The U.S. State Department issued a worldwide travel warning.

Hamas, after its surprisingly successful and deadly attack on Israeli villages, is for now on top of the terrorism tree. It adheres to an extreme ideology that blends Islamism with Palestinian nationalism, dedicated to the destruction of Israel; its “preferred methods include suicide bombings, rocket and mortar attacks, shootings, and kidnappings,” according to the the New York- and Berlin-based Counter Extremism Project.

The militant group has been designated as a terrorist organization by the United States, the United Kingdom, the European Union, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan; however, the United Nations has refrained from classifying it as such. Hamas receives ample funding from Iran, which also provides military support, and has used its substantial financial resources to build grassroots support, winning the first (and so far last) elections in Gaza in 2006. In addition, Qatar provides money to Gaza for energy and humanitarian aid, which some analysts allege helps Hamas maintain its support among Palestinians in Gaza.

But the influence of the Taliban is never far away. Analysts said it was their victory in Afghanistan in 2021 that has emboldened extremists across the globe, and the group has restored Afghanistan to the terror-safe haven it was before the 2001 U.S. invasion. Mohammad Moheq, an Islamic studies scholar and the editor in chief of the daily newspaper Hasht-e-Subh (known in English as 8AM), said that Afghanistan is an integral part of the radical Islamist narrative. The ultimate goal, he said, is “fighting in Palestine and removing Israel.”

Since retaking control, the Taliban have overhauled the education system, transforming schools into religious madrassas where boys are drilled in extremist ideology that includes anti-Israel rhetoric taught by radical mullahs, Moheq said. Al Qaeda figures from Arab states are deployed to training camps to drill recruits in military and ideological instruction. “The result of the Taliban controlling Afghanistan is providing the best opportunity to produce a new generation, and train and educate a new generation of extremist fighters,” said Moheq, who was an ambassador to Egypt and a presidential advisor before the Afghan republic collapsed.

The U.N. Security Council’s Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team has identified a large number of extremist groups that fought alongside the Taliban and now enjoy their protection in Afghanistan, including old al Qaeda, which is again active, running ministries, safe houses, and training camps.

Al Qaeda and Hamas leaders were among the first to congratulate the Taliban on their victory in 2021 and pledge allegiance to the Taliban’s supreme leader, Haibatullah Akhundzada. Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh telephoned Abdul Ghani Baradar, a senior Taliban leader and now Afghanistan’s acting deputy prime minister, to tell him that the end of the U.S. “occupation” was “a prelude to the demise of all occupation forces, foremost of which is the Israeli occupation of Palestine.”

Afghan Peace Watch, an independent research organization, reported that U.S. arms arms left behind in the 2021 retreat have turned up in the Gaza Strip, India’s Kashmir region, and Pakistan. The chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives’ Foreign Affairs Committee, Rep. Mike McCaul, told CNN he’d “seen indications that the Taliban wants to come to liberate Jerusalem, in their words, to fight the Zionists.” Moheq said that he believes more than 100 Taliban gunmen have already been dispatched to Gaza.

The broader impact of the Hamas attacks—even before a potentially escalating regional war—is the possibility that terrorist groups around the world will try to match the spectacular carnage that Hamas pulled off earlier this month, which had a death toll equivalent to multiple Sept. 11 attacks on a per capita basis in a small country such as Israel. The need for terror outfits to raise their own game is what will make them even more dangerous, said Hans-Jakob Schindler, the senior director of the Counter Extremism Project.

In Europe, most eyes turn to the Islamic State, which has been the common denominator in many arrests on the continent over the past year. “It is clearly trying to show its relevance,” Schindler said. The Islamic State morphed out of Al Qaeda’s Iraqi branch in the mid-2000s, declaring a caliphate across territory in Iraq and Syria in 2014, until it was pulverized by joint U.S., Russian, and Kurdish military operations.

The South Asian franchise, called the Islamic State-Khorasan Province (IS-K), has largely been driven out of Afghanistan by the Taliban, who regard it as a strategic competitor and have cooperated with the Biden administration, security sources said, to track down and kill operatives inside Afghanistan’s borders.

But it has had a huge impact in neighboring Pakistan, where it bombed a pro-Taliban rally in the northwestern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa on July 31, killing at least 54 people. Schindler, of the Counter Extremism Project, said the emergence of Islamic State (IS) and IS-K operatives in Europe should sound an alarm for security and intelligence services, as the Hamas attacks could portend a rise in militant activity across the world, as the 9/11 atrocities did in the years that followed.

“Hamas dominates everything now, and that’s not good for IS,” he said. “If you’re not in the news, no one is going to give you money.”

Correction, Oct. 23, 2023: This article was updated to clarify the nature of Qatar’s financial relationship with Gaza and Hamas.