The Terrorist Attack Cycle: Escape

October 25, 2005

Editor's Note: This is the sixth in a series of reports on the terrorist attack cycle.

In the beginning phases of the terrorist attack cycle, planners must make several crucial decisions that will critically affect the operation, including determining the method of escape and the precise timing for implementing the escape plan. Without such planning, those carrying out attacks are further vulnerable to detection and capture—an eventuality that risks limiting future operations due to the loss of the operatives and also to the intelligence that law enforcement can glean from the detainees. Furthermore, as far as the exploitation phase of the operation is concerned, capture is a public-relations nightmare—and a much-needed boost to the government that failed to prevent the attack in the first place.

Traditionally, militants included some form of escape in their plans and adjusted each phase of the attack cycle to account for the escape. The ideal location to carry out an attack—the attack site—not only includes a way to identify and control the target and conceal the attackers, but also will include a means for the attackers to escape unharmed and unnoticed. This, of course, will exclude some potential targets because a safe escape is deemed too risky. In the classic case of the 1989 assassination of Deutsche Bank President Alfred Herrhausen in Frankfurt, Germany, the Red Army Faction cell that surveilled him, constructed the sophisticated bomb, placed the device and then activated it as his car approached, took pains to ensure that their operatives would escape to fight—and kill—another day. Likewise, the Greek Marxist group November 17 was careful to orchestrate its shooting and bombing assassinations so that their operatives could escape. The person who activated the bomb that killed U.S. Navy Capt. William Nordeen in 1988 in Athens was able to escape from his hidden lair without detection.

Although the dynamic of this step has changed with the introduction of suicide terrorism tactics, it has not entirely vanished from the attack cycle; it has just shifted to a higher level—especially in attacks involving al-Qaeda and its jihadist allies. Under the now-standard al Qaeda attack plan, the foot soldiers—the ones on the planes on Sept. 11, the USS Cole attackers, and those who carried out the East Africa embassy bombings, for example—are entirely expendable. Therefore, planning for their post-attack getaway is not considered at the tactical level. However—and this is significant—al Qaeda suicide attacks still account for escape at the strategic level. Al Qaeda operational planners and bombmakers must plan for and execute their own escape, usually before anyone or anything is blown up. Such an escape leaves the operational knowledge and expertise of the organization intact and far out of reach of law enforcement investigators after the damage has occurred. These planners are then free to move on to the next cell of expendable suicide operatives—and continue creating death and mayhem.

The fact that al Qaeda and others who employ suicide bombers do not have to plan for tactical escape broadens their universe of possible targets and attack sites—allowing them to attack hardened sites such as embassies and government buildings, operate in restricted spaces with no means of escape, such as subway tunnels, or attack while completely exposed, such as in a boat in the harbor of Aden. The carnage inflicted by the Bali nightclub bombers in the fall of 2002 would not have been possible had the attackers planned to survive the blast, as too many people would have seen the attackers and had the opportunity to give chase. Instead, the true operational planners and the brains behind the operation—including Azahari bin Husin, Dulmatin, Hambali and Noordin Mohamed Top—likely had escaped the country and gone into hiding before the blast occurred. The July 7 London bombers likely followed the same pattern: Expendable, low-level operatives carried out the tactical details of the attack, while the operational planner likely escaped the area in the days or hours before the attack—leaving him on the loose and able to plan other attacks from a more secure location.

© Copyright 2005 Strategic Forecasting Inc.