Interview: New counter-terrorism strategy demands collaboration of entire society: Italian expert

Italy has taken good counter-terrorism measures, but the terror strategy has changed and demands an active collaboration of the entire society, Sabrina Magris, a security expert and president of the Florence-based Ecole Universitaire Internationale (EUI), told Xinhua in a recent interview.

The bloody assault on Paris, Magris explained, has highlighted a transformation of the attack modality, which consists now of mixing guerrilla warfare with kamikaze, and targeting different places of the everyday life such as restaurants or concert halls as happened in France.

These new "structured sole wolves" -- as the Italian expert defined them -- are not extremists who prepare an attack by themselves and may be learning from the web, but they are first trained separately and then put together. The Paris terrorists might not even have known each other until they started collaborating at the deadly plan, she noted.

"In fact these people were individually known to security forces which unfortunately did not make an analysis of the signals of their joint project," Magris noted.

"It is impossible to think that before this attack, in France, there were not alarm signals. Such an assault needs weapons, money, many people involved and a precise knowledge of the territory. All of these separate elements should have been monitored and linked together by police," the expert added.

Therefore, she said, from now onwards a "new very high organizational coordination" is required from security forces and from the entire society. Regarding Italy, where measures have been further tightened in the wake of the Paris attacks, Magris acknowledged that the risk is high.

Yet in her view, an attack would not likely come for example at the beginning of the Catholic Church's Jubilee, set to kick off on Dec. 8, when "attention will be extremely high," but rather on a day like any other to hit the global society in the heart.

Magris insisted that today a continuous monitoring involving all players in society is the "fundamental part in the fight against terrorism." "Citizens should be encouraged to observe what happens around them and collaborate with police if they see something suspect, and find again the sense of community for the common good that they somehow had until 20 years ago and has been lost," she told Xinhua.

In her view, Italy is making the right moves regarding the perception of security. Thousands of additional policemen and troops have been deployed in cities and venues considered at highest risk. However, Magris stressed, this is not enough. "True security is a different thing and can be achieved only by looking beyond, and entering the new mindset of terrorists in order to fight and stop them," she said.

"Terrorists are now playing the opposite game. They make an analysis of the current security measures and plan attacks where police forces would not imagine," she went on saying. Her school's researches have shown, for example, that "field tests" have been conducted by the terrorists to understand how and how fast the State and police can react.

For this reason, Magris insisted, "mental flexibility" is the most efficient instrument. Only intuitive professionals, more than computers and databases, can study the enemies in their entirety and find out where the real perils are, she elaborated. Fortunately the intelligence services have been successful so far in Italy, a country that traditionally boasts "creative," thus flexible, human resources, she noted.

In her view, it does not make much sense to imagine that terror organizations may try to introduce their costly figures into Italy amid the tide of asylum seekers, putting their lives at risk in the Mediterranean sea crossing. "We should rather look at the Turkish and Balkans borders, or consider that every day there are ferries going back and forth between Spain and Morocco. We need to change our mentality," Magris said.

"Anticipating attacks is increasingly difficult and in fact the climate is becoming tenser and tenser," she noted. More controls at borders, full coordination among the various intelligences and rapid exchange of information and, most importantly, a flexible mental attitude are the only tools that can help intercept the moves that precede an assault and neutralize it, she said. Endit