The attack on Paris newspaper Charlie Hebdo may have offered the world a glimpse of a scary new frontier in terrorism. It’s called “wolf pack” terrorism, in which a small group of people, often connected by family ties, stage an attack in their home country without getting direct orders or training from a larger organization.
“Wolf packs function without communication and in groups of often less than five, meaning they operate under the radar that counterterrorist agencies have set up,” the Soufan Group, a New York City-based security consultancy, wrote in a report last month. “They don’t travel to war zones for training or guidance but rather remain off the radar by staying local and conducting low-tech but terrorizing attacks.”
The two brothers being sought as suspects in the Charlie Hebdo attack, Chérif and Saïd Kouachi, appear to fit that profile. Both were born and raised in France, and no evidence has so far emerged that either man traveled outside the country. Chérif, 32, had planned to go to Syria in 2005, according to a report that year in French newspaper Le Figaro citing his lawyer at the time. But before he could depart he was arrested for his role in a jihadi cell that was recruiting young French people to fight in Iraq. He was convicted in 2008 and released from prison in 2011.
Even if the Charlie Hebdo attackers never trained at a terrorist camp, they were clearly skilled users of Kalashnikov rifles. Video clips of the attack suggest the gunmen were disciplined and ruthless. One of the day’s most appalling images showed a hooded gunman strolling over to a policeman who lay wounded on the ground and calmly shooting him in the head before hopping into a waiting getaway car.
Still, the attackers weren’t as meticulously prepared as, say, the perpetrators of the Sept. 11 attacks in the U.S. The Charlie Hebdo gunmen initially went to the wrong address, a few doors down from the office of the satirical newspaper. And when they located the right address, the attackers first confronted a locked door—only to catch a break when an employee arrived after picking up her child from day care. The employee punched in the entry code after the gunmen threatened her.
Haphazard preparation is a hallmark of wolf pack attacks, according to the Soufan Group report. “These attacks are intentionally crude,” the report explains, “since it is in the planning and testing phase that terrorist groups are most vulnerable.” What’s more, “the attacks might fail as often as they succeed,” the report says. “These wolf packs are not aiming for the next spectacular attack; they are trying to inflict death by a thousand small cuts.”
The risk of wolf pack attacks has risen in recent months, the Soufan Group warns, since Islamic State has called on its supporters to kill Westerners whenever possible. “If you can kill a disbelieving American or European—especially the spiteful and filthy French—or an Australian, or a Canadian, or any other disbeliever … then rely upon Allah and kill him in any matter or way, however it may be,” Islamic State spokesman Abu Muhammad al-Adnani said in September.
Since then, the Soufan Group says, there have been several other wolf pack attacks, including the murder of a French hiker in Algeria, the shootings of two Americans and a Danish citizen in Saudi Arabia, and the stabbing death of an American teacher in Abu Dhabi. Identifying people who might carry out such attacks is “as difficult as detecting exactly who will buy a car after watching a car advertisement,” the report says.
On the other hand, Chérif Kouachi was already known to French authorities as a jihadi sympathizer, so why weren’t they watching him more closely? The simple reason may be that so many other French people are suspected of involvement with terrorism. Since 2010, France has arrested more than 400 people on suspicion of plotting religious-related terrorist attacks, by far the highest number of any European country. The government estimated last fall that 1,000 French nationals had left the country to wage jihad and placed many under surveillance as they returned.
The Kouachi brothers may simply have been lost in the crowd. And, in any case, they don’t appear to have run afoul of the law since Chérif’s arrest in 2005, when he was 22.
According to the 2005 Le Figaro report, the brothers grew up in foster homes after the deaths of their Algerian-immigrant parents. At the time of Chérif’s arrest, both men were living in an apartment in a tough neighborhood in northeastern Paris. Chérif’s lawyer, Vincent Ollivier, told the newspaper that his client had been a pizza deliveryman and an “occasional Muslim” who drank alcohol and smoked pot. That stopped after Chérif fell under the influence of Farid Benyettou, a 23-year-old self-styled imam who was recruiting young people to wage jihad in Iraq.
Others recruited by Benyettou told Le Figaro they had received rudimentary instruction in the use of Kalashnikov rifles and undertook workouts, such as “jogging in a stadium,” to get in shape. Chérif was planning to go to Iraq, his lawyer said, although as the planned departure approached, his client “was scared to death.”
How could a scared young pizza deliveryman have become a perpetrator of one of the deadliest terror attacks in modern French history? That’s one of many questions lingering on a day when France remains gripped with anguish and fear as the manhunt for the gunmen continues.