Understanding stochastic violence
On November 2 at 8:00 pm, Kujtim Fejzullai opened fire on civilians in Vienna, Austria, killing four and wounding two dozen more before being killed himself. Born in Austria and of Albanian heritage, Fejzullai became known to Austrian counterterrorism officials when he attempted to cross the Turkish border to join ISIS in Syria, a crime for which he served eight months in prison. As far as we know, Fejzullai never actually made contact with ISIS officials; he seems to have planned and carried out his terror attack completely on his own. He declared his allegiance to ISIS on social media before launching his attack. ISIS acknowledged that it was surprised by the attack, calling Fejzullai a “soldier of the caliphate” – a phrase normally reserved for previously unknown sympathizers who carry out a violent act. Thus, it appears that very little could have been done to prevent this radicalized individual, acting alone but inspired by ISIS, from carrying out his deadly rampage.
Welcome to the fourth wave of global jihad.
As my new book Global Jihad » details, there have been four distinct waves of global jihad. The most recent fourth wave is part of the broader phenomenon of stochastic violence: i.e. violence that is inspired and social media driven. Following the fall of the Taliban regime in 2001, Abu Musab al-Suri feared for the future of armed jihad itself. A committed jihadi, Suri had fought in the first round of the Syrian civil war in the early 1980s, advised the GIA in Algeria’s bloody civil war in the 1990s, and likely had a hand in some of Europe’s most notorious acts of terror. Suri wanted to create a jihadi system that could withstand the constant crush of security and military forces, built on emerging internet technologies, and held together by an always evolving wiki-narrative that made sense of all the disparate acts of jihadi violence. Nizam, la tanzim he declared: “a system, not an organization.” Jihadi organizations were too easily defeated, but a networked system that linked together individuals and small groups from around the world was a durable form of jihadi action. It required, at its center, acts of jihad fardi, or personal jihad: attacks by ‘lone wolves’ or small groups.
The idea of stochastic terror was first launched by American neo-Nazis, and only made possible by the advent of the internet and social media.
The Vienna attack appears to be a stochastic jihad fardi, inspired by ISIS but neither planned nor directed by it. Indeed, most recent acts of jihadi violence in the West have been carried out by individuals or small groups inspired by global jihad but acting on their own. Virtually all jihadi violence in North America since 9/11, from Orlando to San Bernardino to New York City and beyond, fits this same pattern.
The idea of stochastic terror was first launched by American neo-Nazis, and only made possible by the advent of the internet and social media. Stochastic violence is inspired but independently implemented violence by individuals and small groups. It is predictable in that, when a call to violence goes out, the overall level of violence in a society rises, but it is rarely known which individuals will be inspired enough to act.
Fourth-wave global jihadis share much in common with the white nationalists who have undertaken recent acts of terror from Oslo to Christchurch to Charlottesville. In each of those cases, the perpetrators were inspired to violence by outside leaders of their cause, but those leaders had no direct hand in planning the events. Charlottesville would not have happened without the inspiration of Donald Trump, but Trump played no logistical role in the violence.
tells the story of four distinct jihadi waves, each with its own program for achieving a global end.
Each wave of global jihad was similarly distinctive and different from previous iterations of global jihad. The first wave was the brainchild of Abdullah ‘Azzam, who viewed the model of resistance to the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s as having implications for the liberation of all occupied Muslim lands1. His concept of al- Qa’ida al-Sulba (“solid foundation”) evolved into one akin to the old Communist International: a ‘Jihadi International’ of pious and strong Muslim warriors who traveled the world to help Muslim communities free their lands from foreign occupation 2. Palestine would follow Afghanistan, and then there was much to choose from: Central Asia, Kashmir, Mindanao, etc. However, after ‘Azzam was assassinated in 1989, the Jihadi International concept essentially died. Usama Bin Laden tried to get the Saudi royal family to adopt the ‘Azzam model against Iraq in 1990 instead of bringing in the Americans and other ‘infidels,’ but to no avail.
A second wave of global jihad was launched in the mid-1990s by Usama Bin Laden. He focused not on liberating occupied Muslim lands, but rather on driving the Americans out of the Middle East. This would, he argued, make the ‘apostate’ regimes in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere vulnerable to being overthrown by pious Muslim forces. This second wave had its moment from 1998 to 2001, most infamously with the terror attacks of September 11, 2001. But by 2003 or so, the al-Qa’ida project of focusing on “America First” had largely been defeated, and allied groups increasingly focused on local battles. Bin Laden’s death at the hands of US Navy SEALs in 2011 marked the clear end of the second wave of global jihad.
In the third wave, ISIS focused on building an Islamic state where apostasy itself — sinful behavior — would be banished and a fully pious Muslim life – or, at least, ISIS’s version of such a life - could be lived. ISIS did not seriously try to convince Muslim scholars, the ‘ulama, of the rightness of its cause, and not a single senior Muslim cleric pledged allegiance to the new caliphate. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the founder of ISIS, did not much engage in deep philosophical or theological debate. Instead, he focused on Jihadi Cool: attracting young men to his cause by the sheer audacity of his project. He was Rambo in the desert, killing Shia with abandon, beheading Westerners, and otherwise mesmerizing young men looking for purpose and excitement in their lives. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who declared himself Caliph in 2014, likewise embodied Jihadi Cool: many people had talked about re-establishing the Caliphate since it was abolished by Turkish republicans in 1924, but only Baghdadi had the chutzpah, so to speak, to actually do it. But holding a territorial state for very long was likely never in the cards, and the third wave effectively ended with the loss of ISIS’s territorial state in 2017. ISIS as a group, however, remains lethally potent as an agent of global jihad.
In the concluding chapter of the book, I argue that global jihad is a variant form of a “movement of rage,” meaning it can be usefully compared to other violent socio- political movements, both religious and secular. The universe of cases of movements of rage is limited, but quite nasty, including the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, the Red Guards in China, Boko Haram in Nigeria (even before it latched on to the global jihad movement), the Brownshirts in 1920s Germany, and elements of the white nationalist movement today. All of these groups share a propensity for nihilistic violence and an apocalyptic, anti-Enlightenment ideology, making them a distinct form of violent movement.
Notes
1. See chapter 1 of Global Jihad: A Brief History by Glenn E. Robinson for further information on Abdullah ‘Azzam.
2. In his article “Al-Qa’ida Al-Sulba” (in the April 1988 issue of Al-Jihad), Azzam uses the fuller definitional phrase of “the faithful fraternity and pioneering vanguard” (al-‘asaba al-mu’mina w’ al-tali’a al-ra’ida).
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