French intelligence under scrutiny in wake of Paris attacks
According to Yves Trotignon, a former counter-terrorism official in the French external service, DGSE, the security services had long feared such an attack. They used as their model the terrorist assault on Mumbai in November 2008, an invasion of a crowded public building by gunmen determined to kill as many people as possible in a short time.
But being ready for such an attack scarcely makes it any easier to stop, given the vast number of potential targets.
"It is extremely difficult to defend against such an attack once it has begun to be executed," Trotignon told the Guardian. "We have seen that not only in Mumbai, but also in Nairobi and Peshawar."
"It is hard to qualify yesterday evening's events as a success for the intelligence agencies," said Trotignon, now an adviser at Risk & Co engineering and risk assessment consultancy. "But until we know more about the organisation of the attack and its authors it's impossible to blame this or that service."
The attacks in Paris came after a series of attempted strikes by Islamic militants in France over recent months were thwarted by security services. But although they successfully uncovered at least six plots, many senior French officials appear to have been deeply worried by the accelerating tempo of operations in their country and the growing involvement of French citizens in violent activities at home and abroad.
"We have now become the Islamic State's enemy number one," Marc Trevidic, outgoing examining magistrate in counter-terrorism cases, said shortly before the Paris attacks. "France is the principal target for an army of terrorists of unlimited means. Furthermore it's also clear that we are particularly vulnerable because of our geographical position, for the ease of entrance on to our territory for jihadists of European origin."
Trevidic told Paris Match: "Our darkest days are ahead of us. The real war that Isis intends to wage on our soil has not yet begun."
President François Hollande, speaking after the attempted shooting by a gunmen in the Thalys train to Brussels in August, spoke of how the nation needed to prepare itself for further terrorist strikes.
Since the shootings at the offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in January - France's worst terrorist attack for decades - a raft of measures have been brought in to reinforce security services. French counter-terrorism services have been reorganised with a new joint headquarters under the minister of the interior and new powers of surveillance. However, the measures have yet to make any significant impact. About 2,000 new posts created are still in the process of being filled.
The reinforcements are primarily aimed at allowing intelligence services to watch more individuals who are suspected of involvement in extremist activities, an acknowledgement that they were previously under-resourced. Surveillance on key figures involved in the Charlie Hebdo attacks was ended shortly before they appear to have started planning their attacks, and redirected towards suspects involved with networks linked to Syria or Iraq. More than 1,500 French citizens are believed to have travelled to one of the two countries, with about 250 returning. A database of suspect individuals has more than 11 000. Le Monde described services as "overrun" by the demands.
The new counter-terrorism measures in June were intended to increase the surveillance capacity, but Trotignon questions the effectiveness of increased surveillance without an organisational overhaul of the intelligence services so that the flow of information can be properly assessed and real threats identified. The perpetrators of several recent terrorist attacks in Europe have been "known to the intelligence services" Trotignon points out, but that had not allowed the services to stop them.
The pressure on officials to explain how they failed to stop these attacks will be increased by the possibility that plots uncovered by security services in recent months may included at least one targeting concert halls.
The man believed responsible for a planned strike on an entertainment venue was arrested in August in Paris. He had spent only six days in Syria before being wounded in the leg during fighting, L'Express Magazine reported.
A commander from the Islamic State in the city of Raqqa had told him to conduct attacks in Europe, not just France, and had indicated concert halls as possible targets, police sources said at the time.
One reason for the absence of attacks after 9/11 in France in the decade was the efficacy of intelligence services that had been quicker than their Anglo-Saxon counterparts in developing an understanding of the real nature of the threat posed by Islamic militancy. The experience of the 1990s, and the nature of French policing more generally, also meant French security authorities already had legal powers of arrest and detention that were far greater than those of their counterparts in other European countries.
A further reason for the lack of violence in France was the success of its political class in distancing the country from the US-led war on terror and its almost universal opposition to the war in Iraq.
However, those defensive advantages have now evaporated. "We can't close our eyes to it," Trevidic warned. "We are now in the eye of the hurricane. The worst is yet to come."
Source: The Guardian.com