What foiled Taylor Swift concert attack plot says about Daesh threat to Europe

Special What foiled Taylor Swift concert attack plot says about Daesh threat to Europe
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Police in Ternitz have arrested a 19-year-old Austrian man of Macedonian descent, right, thought to be the mastermind behind a plot to attack fans of US superstar Taylor Swift, bottom left, at the Ernst Happel Stadium in Vienna, top left, in echoes of earlier attacks on European concert venues, below. Despite its territorial defeat in Iraq and Syria, Daesh continues to pose a security threat. (AFP)
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Updated 19 August 2024
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What foiled Taylor Swift concert attack plot says about Daesh threat to Europe

What foiled Taylor Swift concert attack plot says about Daesh threat to Europe
  • Three young men were arrested by Austrian police on Aug. 7 for allegedly planning to target event in Vienna’s Ernst Happel Stadium
  • The plot, which echoed earlier attacks on European concert venues, showed the allure Daesh still holds for alienated youths

ATHENS: Taylor Swift fans were left disappointed earlier this month by news that the American pop star’s long-awaited tour dates in the Austrian capital, Vienna, were to be canceled owing to a terrorist threat to the concert venue by Daesh sympathizers.

On Aug. 7, Austrian authorities arrested three youths, aged 19, 17 and 15, who they claimed were involved in, or had knowledge of, a terrorist plot to attack the Ernst Happel Stadium where Swift was due to perform over the Aug. 8-10 period.




A closer view of the Austrian man of Macedonian descent, identified only as Beran A., who was arrested by Austrian police for allegedly plotting a terror attack on a stadium where American singer Taylor Swift was to hold a concert last week. (Social media photo 

After searching the home of the 19-year-old suspect, an Austrian national with North Macedonian heritage, police found an array of edged weapons and bomb-making materials, counterfeit cash and Daesh propaganda.

Although the suspects had been taken into police custody, Swift’s promoter Barracuda Music decided to cancel the superstar’s three-date run of her Eras Tour, which was expected to attract 65,000 fans inside the stadium at each concert and 30,000 onlookers outside.




Merchandising booths for items related to US mega-star Taylor Swift are closed next to the Ernst-Happel Stadium in Vienna, Austrian, on August 8, 2024, after her three concerts were cancelled following after the arrest of a Daesh sympathiser in connection with an attack plot. (AFP)

The decision was deemed prudent, especially given Daesh’s track record of attacking European concert venues. The group killed 90 at the Bataclan theater in Paris, France, in 2015. Two years later, a Daesh suicide bomber killed 22 at an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, England.

Most recently, in March of this year, a massive, coordinated attack on Moscow’s Crocus City Hall by Daesh’s Central Asian branch, Islamic State in Khorasan, or IS-K, killed 145 people and injured more than 500.

What is surprising about the Vienna plot, however, is Daesh’s ability to continue recruiting followers in Western nations — long after its territorial defeat in Iraq and Syria in 2019 and despite international efforts to smash its leadership, financing networks and online presence.

“I’m not so surprised that there are still young people who join Daesh and want to do something in Europe,” Thomas Schmidinger, a Vienna-based political scientist and expert in extremism and deradicalization, told Arab News.

“I think the failure of Daesh as a state project in Iraq and Syria may have even increased the danger of terrorist attacks in Europe, because, in 2014 and 2015, people were going to Syria to join Daesh there. Now there is no more existing state project, but the organization continues to exist. The reasons why young people were attracted by this ideology are still here.”




An image grab taken from a propaganda video released on March 17, 2014 by the Daesh's al-Furqan Media shows the group's fighters driving on a street in the northern Syrian City of Homs. (AFP)

Schmidinger, however, believes it may have been a mistake to cancel Swift’s Vienna tour dates as doing so might encourage Daesh to threaten other such events in the future.

“The way the organizers of the concert reacted was actually a victory for the terrorists, because the Austrian police did catch the possible perpetrators and there was no reason to cancel the event,” he said. “This cancelation is now at least a propaganda victory for Daesh.”

Although authorities are desperate to avoid a repeat of the attacks in Paris, Manchester and Moscow, analysts say coordinated attacks of this scale are likely to be rare. Indeed, the majority of Daesh-inspired activities in the West, particularly in recent years, can be attributed to self-radicalized individuals acting of their own accord.




This handout photograph taken and released by Russian Emergency Ministry on March 23, 2024 shows 
rescuers working inside the Crocus City Hall, a day after a gun attack in Krasnogorsk, outside Moscow. (Handout via AFP/File)

“You can tell the difference between someone who was inspired by Daesh, or just said they were Daesh, versus the ones who actually were Daesh,” Mia Bloom, professor of communication and Middle East studies at Georgia State University, told Arab News.

“There are degrees to which people claim Daesh affiliation and loyalty. They make this baya, or pledge of allegiance, to Daesh, but this doesn’t necessarily mean that Daesh has accepted it.

“For example, you can have people who are radicalized online who engage in a violent attack and they say they were inspired by watching beheading videos or propaganda that they’ve consumed.

“That’s very different from what we saw at the Bataclan in France, or in Charlie Hebdo, or in Dhaka, Bangladesh, where the perpetrators were trained in a Daesh camp. Daesh funded it, and Daesh live-streamed it on GoPro cameras.”




Rescuers carry a survivor of the Paris terrorist attack on the Bataclan theater on November 13, 2016. (Corbis via Getty Images/File)

Europe is not alone in facing an ongoing threat from Daesh. Although attacks in the US have been less common, the perpetrators of the 2015 shooting in San Bernardino, California, which left 16 dead, had pledged allegiance to Daesh on Facebook. A year later, a shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, claimed 49 lives.

However, there was no evidence that Daesh planned either attack.

“Daesh put out infographics on their successes from around 2014 to 2019,” said Bloom. “They put out a map of the US showing the attacks for which they were responsible, and they put Orlando in California and San Bernardino in Florida.

“If you don’t even know where the attack was, you probably weren’t responsible for it.” 

INNUMBERS

• 28 Completed, failed or foiled terrorist attacks recorded in the EU in 2022.

• 380 People arrested by EU member states for terrorism-related offenses in 2022.

Source: Europol

Just last week, two Somali refugees living in Arizona pleaded guilty to attempting to join Daesh. The men, who were arrested in 2019, had allegedly made plans to travel to Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, with one stating his wish to martyr himself and to become “the beheading guy.”

A June report by NBC highlighted the Department of Homeland Security’s identification of 400 Central Asian immigrants who may have been brought to the US by a Daesh-affiliated human smuggling network.

Though some of these individuals have been found, the department claims the whereabouts of at least 50 are still unknown.




US Customs and Border Patrol agents load migrants into a vehicle after groups of migrants walked into the US from Mexico at Jacumba Hot Springs, California, on June 5, 2024. The Department of Homeland Security are on the lookout for possible Daesh terrorists being smuggled into the US. (AFP/File) 

“Particularly through illegal immigration routes, that means most of the southern border, there has been an influx of people who have some degree of connection to Daesh,” Lorenzo Vidino, director of George Washington University’s Program on Extremism, told Arab News.

“This doesn’t mean that everybody smuggled in was Daesh, but nonetheless, the smuggling network had a Daesh connection, and so some individuals who have been arrested in the US have come through those routes and have known Daesh links.”

While Daesh may be able to infiltrate Western countries from overseas, Vidino says the number of native-born, self-radicalized individuals is likely to be far higher.

“If you look historically at the attacks that we’ve seen in the US over the last 10 years, most of them were perpetrated by Americans, not those who were smuggled through the southern border,” he said.




In this Daesh publicity image in 2015, a masked militant poses holding the terrorist group's banner somewhere in the deserts of Iraq or Syria. (Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

More than five years since Daesh’s defeat in its last territorial holdout of Baghouz in eastern Syria, many wonder what is drawing new recruits to the group. According to Schmidinger, there is rarely a single reason.

“The biographies of young men who join Daesh are very diverse,” he said.

“These are people who went through strong alienation from their societies. The reasons for this alienation are different. It can be psychological problems, it can be related to racism and anti-Muslim sentiment in Europe, it can be related to the failure of their educational or professional careers. It can be related to problems with their sexual orientation.

“There are different concrete reasons. But what they have in common is this alienation from European societies.”




(Source: The Soufan Group, 2014 and 2015/via European Parliamentary Research Service)

He added: “Daesh was here at the moment that they were searching for meaning, belonging and the ability to intervene in history. So you have a lot of people who feel powerless. They have the feeling that by perpetrating, for example, a terrorist attack, or by threatening European societies, they get power. They become masters of their own history.

“Especially for people who feel completely alienated and powerless, this is an attractive opportunity that gives them a kind of empowerment. I think one of the big problems for these people is that there is no other radical but humanistic alternative for them.”

Although Daesh and other extremist entities continue to pose a threat to Western states, there are ways to undermine their attack potential by eliminating their safe havens in the world’s ungoverned and unstable spaces.

Tens of thousands of Daesh-linked individuals are held in prisons and camps across northeast Syria, guarded by the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, or SDF. However, these facilities have witnessed frequent violence and escape attempts.




Syrian Kurdish soldiers guard the al-Hol camp in Syria's northeastern Hasakeh governorate, which holds relatives of suspected Daesh fighters. (AFP/File)

Sympathizers in Europe have even organized fundraising campaigns to help Daesh-affiliated women held in these camps to support themselves and even to smuggle themselves out.

Siyamend Ali, a spokesperson for the Kurdish-led People’s Protection Units — a group affiliated with the SDF — told Arab News there are areas of northern Syria where Daesh and other extremist groups “can continue to train, gather resources, issue orders and propagandize.”

Tensions in northeast Syria between the SDF, Syrian regime forces and the Turkish military are also having a destabilizing effect, said Ali, increasing the likelihood of a Daesh resurgence in the region.

In addition to eliminating Daesh’s international networks and safe havens, Schmidinger says that the threat of future attacks in Europe can also be reduced through the implementation of social policies to promote integration and inclusion.




In this photo taken on July 21, 2014, British women wait to attend a gathering in London of the "Families Against Stress and Trauma," which was formed to dissuade young people from traveling to Syria and Iraq to join the Daesh group. (Getty Images)

“You will never be able to completely stop it. We will always face some people on the fringes of society who will be attracted to extremist organizations like Daesh,” he said.

“But it is possible to reduce the number by reducing the feeling of alienation from society. By giving all people the chance for education, a proper job, and to give people — especially young people — the chance to participate in society and politics, it will keep them from feeling that they are powerless and can’t change anything.

“They won’t need an extremist organization to give them the feeling that they can change things in society.”
 

 


Pentagon watchdog to review Hegseth’s use of Signal app to convey plans for Houthi strike

Pentagon watchdog to review Hegseth’s use of Signal app to convey plans for Houthi strike
Updated 21 sec ago
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Pentagon watchdog to review Hegseth’s use of Signal app to convey plans for Houthi strike

Pentagon watchdog to review Hegseth’s use of Signal app to convey plans for Houthi strike
  • Hegseth and other members of the Trump administration are required by law to archive their official conversations

WASHINGTON: The Pentagon’s acting inspector general announced Thursday that he would review Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s use of the Signal messaging app to convey plans for a military strike against Houthi militants in Yemen.
The review will also look at other defense officials’ use of the publicly available encrypted app, which is not able to handle classified material and is not part of the Defense Department’s secure communications network.
Hegseth’s use of the app came to light when a journalist, Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic, was inadvertently added to a Signal text chain by national security adviser Mike Waltz. The chain included Hegseth, Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and others, brought together to discuss March 15 military operations against the Iran-backed Houthis.
“The objective of this evaluation is to determine the extent to which the Secretary of Defense and other DoD personnel complied with DoD policies and procedures for the use of a commercial messaging application for official business,” the acting inspector general, Steven Stebbins, said in a notification letter to Hegseth.
The letter also said his office “will review compliance with classification and records retention requirements.”
Hegseth and other members of the Trump administration are required by law to archive their official conversations, and it is not clear if copies of the discussions were forwarded to an official email so they could be permanently captured for federal records keeping.
The Pentagon referred all questions to the inspector general’s office, citing the ongoing investigation.
President Donald Trump grew frustrated when asked about the review.
“You’re bringing that up again,” Trump scoffed at a reporter. “Don’t bring that up again. Your editors probably — that’s such a wasted story.”
In the chain, Hegseth provided the exact timings of warplane launches and when bombs would drop — before the men and women carrying out those attacks on behalf of the United States were airborne.
The review was launched at the request of Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Mississippi, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and Rhode Island Sen. Jack Reed, the committee’s top Democrat.
In congressional hearings, Democratic lawmakers have expressed concern about the use of Signal and pressed military officers on whether they would find it appropriate to use the commercial app to discuss military operations.
Both current and former military officials have said the level of detail Hegseth shared on Signal most likely would have been classified. The Trump administration has insisted no classified information was shared.
Waltz is fighting back against calls for his ouster and, so far, Trump has said he stands by his national security adviser.
On Thursday, Trump fired several members of Waltz’s staff after far-right activist Laura Loomer urged the president to purge staffers she deemed insufficiently loyal to his “Make America Great Again” agenda, several people familiar with the matter said.
In his Senate confirmation hearing Tuesday, Trump’s nominee for chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Lt. Gen. Dan Caine, would not say whether the officials should have used a more secure communications system to discuss the attack plans.
“What I will say is we should always preserve the element of surprise,” Caine told senators.


Putin envoy says diplomatic solution possible but differences remain after US talks

Putin envoy says diplomatic solution possible but differences remain after US talks
Updated 28 min 25 sec ago
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Putin envoy says diplomatic solution possible but differences remain after US talks

Putin envoy says diplomatic solution possible but differences remain after US talks

WASHINGTON: A senior Russian envoy on Thursday said differences remain between the US and Russia but a diplomatic solution to bring an end to the war in Ukraine is possible.
“I think (with) the Trump administration, we are now in realm of thinking about what is possible, what can really work, and how we can find a long term solution,” Kirill Dmitriev, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s investment envoy, told CNN following talks with US President Donald Trump’s administration in Washington.


US Senate Republican pushes for congressional approval of president’s tariffs

US Senate Republican pushes for congressional approval of president’s tariffs
Updated 55 min 12 sec ago
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US Senate Republican pushes for congressional approval of president’s tariffs

US Senate Republican pushes for congressional approval of president’s tariffs
  • The Republican critics in Congress of Trump’s tariff moves remained a distinct minority

WASHINGTON: Republican US Senator Chuck Grassley introduced a bill on Thursday that would require congressional approval for new tariffs, the day after President Donald Trump unveiled sweeping new taxes on a vast array of imported goods.
Grassley, whose home state of Iowa relies heavily on the global agricultural trade, joined Democratic Senator Maria Cantwell of Washington for the “Trade Review Act of 2025” which would require Congress to sign off on new tariffs within 60 days of their imposition or automatically block their enforcement. The move, made the day after four other Senate Republicans voted for a measure that would lift Trump’s tariffs on Canadian goods, was the latest sign of dissent among Republicans as Trump’s aggressive moves fanned recessionary fears and sparked Wall Street’s worst day since 2022.
Neither Grassley’s bill nor the measure that passed the Senate on Wednesday were seen as likely to become law while Trump’s Republicans hold majorities in both the Senate and House of Representatives, where many of their members are voicing support for Trump’s moves.
Trump, who has long advocated for tariffs, said that the highest US trade barriers in more than a century would both raise federal revenue and drive manufacturing back to the US Economists have voiced deep skepticism about both possibilities.
Grassley, the longest-serving member of the US Senate, did not directly criticize Trump in introducing his bill. He noted that he had proposed a similar trade approach during Trump’s first administration, citing the US Constitution establishing congressional authority over trade issues, but that over time the legislature has ceded this power to the executive branch.
But some Republicans have indicated unease with parts of Trump’s tariff plans.
“I would have expected more targeted tariffs to meet the needs of where countries are taking advantage of us, and perhaps a more modest approach in the amounts,” Republican Senator Jerry Moran told reporters. He also expressed concerns that tariffs placed on US allies in Southeast Asia were similar to those placed on China, which he called a “damaging” economy to the US
Republican Senator James Lankford said he was surprised by the 17 percent tariff on Israel and hoped the US Trade Representative could explain why the tariff level on Israel was different from other countries. Republican senators Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Rand Paul and Mitch McConnell — the chamber’s former Republican leader — provided the votes on Wednesday to pass Democratic Senator Tim Kaine’s disapproval resolution on the Trump trade approach toward Canada.
“Tariffs drive up the cost of goods and services. They are a tax on everyday working Americans,” McConnell said in a statement on Thursday.
About half of Americans, and one in five Republicans, believe that increasing tariffs on imports will do more harm than good, a Reuters/Ipsos poll completed on Wednesday found. The Republican critics in Congress of Trump’s tariff moves remained a distinct minority. Indeed, the House earlier this month passed a measure meant to strip Congress’ power to challenge new tariffs imposed by the president.
“The president has been talking about unfair trade against the United States for 40 years, so he’s been very consistent on this,” said Senator John Barrasso, the chamber’s No. 2 Republican. “Long-term, I think this is very important for the country, bringing jobs and manufacturing back to America, focusing on our economy.”
Grassley’s Democratic co-sponsor, Cantwell, said that Trump’s tariffs risked long-term damage to the US economy.
“We can’t afford a trade war that lasts for two or three years, leaving our product off the shelves,” Cantwell said. “We cannot have arbitrary policies that create chaos and uncertainty.”


Gaza heritage and destruction on display in Paris

Gaza heritage and destruction on display in Paris
Updated 04 April 2025
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Gaza heritage and destruction on display in Paris

Gaza heritage and destruction on display in Paris
  • Bouffard said the damage to the known sites as well as treasures potentially hidden in unexplored Palestinian land “depends on the bomb tonnage and their impact on the surface and underground”

PARIS: A new exhibition opening in Paris on Friday showcases archaeological artifacts from Gaza, once a major commercial crossroads between Asia and Africa, whose heritage has been ravaged by Israel’s ongoing onslaught.
Around a hundred artifacts, including a 4,000-year-old bowl, a sixth-century mosaic from a Byzantine church and a Greek-inspired statue of Aphrodite, are on display at the Institut du Monde Arabe.
The rich and mixed collection speaks to Gaza’s past as a cultural melting pot, but the show’s creators also wanted to highlight the contemporary destruction caused by the war, sparked by Hamas’s attack on Israel in October 2023.
“The priority is obviously human lives, not heritage,” said Elodie Bouffard, curator of the exhibition, which is titled “Saved Treasures of Gaza: 5,000 Years of History.”
“But we also wanted to show that, for millennia, Gaza was the endpoint of caravan routes, a port that minted its own currency, and a city that thrived at the meeting point of water and sand,” she told AFP.
One section of the exhibition documents the extent of recent destruction.
Using satellite image, the UN’s cultural agency UNESCO has already identified damage to 94 heritage sites in Gaza, including the 13th-century Pasha’s Palace.
Bouffard said the damage to the known sites as well as treasures potentially hidden in unexplored Palestinian land “depends on the bomb tonnage and their impact on the surface and underground.”
“For now, it’s impossible to assess.”
The attacks by Hamas militants on Israel in 2023 left 1,218 dead. In retaliation, Israeli operations have killed more than 50,000 Palestinians and devastated the densely populated territory.

The story behind “Gaza’s Treasures” is inseparable from the ongoing wars in the Middle East.
At the end of 2024, the Institut du Monde Arabe was finalizing an exhibition on artifacts from the archaeological site of Byblos in Lebanon, but Israeli bombings on Beirut made the project impossible.
“It came to a sudden halt, but we couldn’t allow ourselves to be discouraged,” said Bouffard.
The idea of an exhibition on Gaza’s heritage emerged.
“We had just four and a half months to put it together. That had never been done before,” she explained.
Given the impossibility of transporting artifacts out of Gaza, the Institut turned to 529 pieces stored in crates in a specialized Geneva art warehouse since 2006. The works belong to the Palestinian Authority, which administers the West Bank.

The Oslo Accords of 1993, signed by the Palestine Liberation Organization and Israel, helped secure some of Gaza’s treasures.
In 1995, Gaza’s Department of Antiquities was established, which oversaw the first archaeological digs in collaboration with the French Biblical and Archaeological School of Jerusalem (EBAF).
Over the years, excavations uncovered the remains of the Monastery of Saint Hilarion, the ancient Greek port of Anthedon, and a Roman necropolis — traces of civilizations spanning from the Bronze Age to Ottoman influences in the late 19th century.
“Between Egypt, Mesopotamian powers, and the Hasmoneans, Gaza has been a constant target of conquest and destruction throughout history,” Bouffard noted.
In the 4th century BC, Greek leader Alexander the Great besieged the city for two months, leaving behind massacres and devastation.
Excavations in Gaza came to a standstill when Hamas took power in 2007 and Israel imposed a blockade.
Land pressure and rampant building in one of the world’s most densely populated areas has also complicated archaeological work.
And after a year and a half of war, resuming excavations seems like an ever-more distant prospect.
The exhibition runs until November 2, 2025.
 

 


Uganda’s president arrives in S.Sudan as crisis deepens

Uganda’s president arrives in S.Sudan as crisis deepens
Updated 03 April 2025
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Uganda’s president arrives in S.Sudan as crisis deepens

Uganda’s president arrives in S.Sudan as crisis deepens
  • The Ugandan leader, whose military was invited into South Sudan last month to help secure the capital, did not refer directly to the crisis in public remarks at the airport in Juba

NAIROBI: Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni arrived in neighboring South Sudan on Thursday, in the highest level mission there since clashes and the detention of the vice president triggered regional fears of a return to civil war.
Museveni was met at the airport by South Sudan’s President Salva Kiir, whose administration has accused First Vice President Riek Machar of stoking rebellion and put him under house arrest.
The Ugandan leader, whose military was invited into South Sudan last month to help secure the capital, did not refer directly to the crisis in public remarks at the airport in Juba.
The visit follows mediation missions by the African Union and an East African regional body this week to de-escalate the crisis.
Museveni told reporters he would hold talks “aimed at strengthening bilateral relations and enhancing cooperation between our two nations.”
Kiir said the two leaders would discuss “current political developments in the country.”
The standoff between Kiir and Machar, who led opposing forces in a 2013-2018 civil war that killed hundreds of thousands, has prompted the UN to warn that the world’s young nation could be on the brink of all-out conflict along ethnic lines.
Uganda backed Kiir’s forces during the civil war.
It sent troops last month amid fighting between South Sudan’s military and an ethnic Nuer militia in Upper Nile state in the northeast.
Machar’s predominantly Nuer forces were allied with the White Army militia during the civil war, but his party denies government accusations of ongoing links.
Uganda’s military chief, Muhoozi Kainerugaba, also Museveni’s son, said on Tuesday he had ordered Ugandan forces to stop attacking the White Army so long as it ceases offensives against Ugandan troops.
Machar’s party says the Ugandan intervention violates South Sudan’s arms embargo.
Analysts say Kiir, 73, appears to be attempting to shore up his position amid discontent within his political camp and speculation about his succession plan.