Contrary to the fake news spread by Donald Trump and Fox News, Shamsud-Din Jabbar, the suspect in the attack in New Orleans on New Year's Eve, was an American citizen, born in Texas. He had even served in the Army, from 2007 to 2015, as an IT specialist then in charge of human resources, and received a “Global War on Terrorism” medal after his one-year deployment in Afghanistan. Despite these markers of American patriotism, Shamsud-Din Jabbar seems to have fallen into the jihadist spiral.
In the back of the Ford F-150 pickup that he used to drive into the crowd, investigators found an ISIS flag. The FBI also indicated this Thursday evening that the suspect had declared having joined Daesh. But the attack has not been claimed. “We do not yet know if this attack is organized, planned, remotely guided by the Islamic State, or if it is an attack of inspiration,” tempers Laurence Bindner, co-founder of the JOS Project, platform of analysis of online extremism. Nor even if the suspect “needed to be anchored in an ideology or if it was a case of losing his temper”. But the FBI believes that he “acted alone”.
Daesh, a “leading brand” of terrorism
There has not been an Islamist attack in the United States since May 22, 2020, when a man of Syrian origin attacked the Corpus Christi military base. For an attack claimed by the Islamic State, we even have to go back to the end of 2017 in New York, when an Uzbek killed 8 people in a ram van attack on October 31, before an explosive belt attack in the metro a few weeks later.
Why did Shamsud-Din Jabbar choose a reference to the Islamic State? Daesh “remains the leading brand on the cognitive radical market,” analyzes Laurence Bindner. “It’s like a franchise system, anyone who wants to carry out an attack can use the brand, and the more attacks there are, the more powerful the brand,” explains Manon Lefebvre, lecturer in civilization of States. -United at the Polytechnic University of Hauts-de-France. Even for a former soldier converted to Islam who did not go directly to the front, the “brand” can be attractive. “These are people who have seen the war on terrorism up close and may have been disgusted by the way it is happening. There is no proper war,” she points out.
More recently, if Al-Qaeda has “capitalized” more on October 7, “it has been almost two and a half years since the French authorities reassessed the threat capabilities projected by the Islamic State,” underlines Laurence Bindner. Same observation across the Atlantic, where “several American officials have recently sounded the alarm” regarding the terrorist risk. “Over the last six months, more than 200 people suspected of supporting or being linked to Daesh have been arrested,” notes Manon Lefebvre, citing an FBI report. In September, an attack planned for the anniversary of October 7 was also foiled by the authorities.
-Trump and the fight against terrorism
In Syria, in fact, American troops are still very present, despite “two attempts on the part of Trump, during his last term, to leave” the country, recalls Laurence Bindner. American troops regularly carry out strikes on Daesh bases there, and “the American presence in Syria contributes to securing places of detention of members of ISIS and their families”.
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More recently, the fall of the Bashar al-Assad regime “may increase the security vacuum in the east of the country and the Syrian desert where the Islamic State is rampant”. Can Donald Trump's return to the White House call this presence into question? For Manon Lefebvre, her announcements “are akin to isolationism”. She draws a parallel with “before September 11, at the start of the mandate of George W. Bush, who refused to listen to the Democrats' warnings about the danger represented by Al Qaeda”.
The risk is that Donald Trump “diverts funds allocated to the fight against terrorism towards the fight against immigration,” continues the expert. Can the New Orleans attack serve as a warning? “Terrorist attacks linked to ISIS will certainly remind Americans that the war against terrorism continues,” said Laurence Bindner. And contrary to what the president-elect seems to believe, closing the borders will not be enough to spare America.
