经济学人下载:恐袭四起,但圣战主义已然走向陨落(2)

The flurry of attacks recalls the bloodshed of 2015 to 16, when Islamist terrorists killed 12 people at Charlie Hebdo’s offices in January 2015, 131 people at multiple sites in Paris in November and 86 people in Nice the following July. Since then, however, jihadism in Europe has declined markedly. The number of completed Islamist attacks fell every year from 2017 to 2019, while the number of foiled ones rose, according to Europol, the EU’s law-enforcement agency. Ten people were killed in 2019. 

接二连三的袭击不禁让人联想到2015年至2016年之间发生的流血事件。2015年1月，伊斯兰恐怖分子在《查理周刊》的办公室杀害12人；2015年11月，伊斯兰恐怖分子在巴黎多地杀害131人；次年7月，伊斯兰恐怖分子在尼斯杀害86人。然而，从那时起，欧洲的圣战运动明显衰颓。欧盟执法机构欧洲刑警组织称，2017年至2019年间，成功发动的伊斯兰袭击事件逐年递减，而被挫败的袭击事件则呈上升趋势。2019年有10人丧生。

Much of the violence has been associated with IS, which swept through Iraq and Syria in 2014 with the help of 5,000 or so European recruits. The IS “caliphate” was crushed in 2019 and European security services feared that a flood of returning fighters would overwhelm their ability to monitor suspects back at home. In practice, IS veterans have not proven as numerous or violent as feared, even if the group’s ideology has remained potent. 

大部分暴力事件都与伊斯兰国有关。2014年，约有5千名欧洲新兵援助伊斯兰国横扫伊拉克和叙利亚。伊斯兰国“哈里发”在2019年被粉碎，但欧洲安全部门担心归国的战士人数太多，以他们的能力无法监视这些归国的嫌疑人。事实证明，这些伊斯兰国的老兵们实际上并没有人们的担心的那样人数众多或残暴不堪，即使该组织的意识形态依旧强大。

Even so, the threat continues to dominate the work of security services. In a speech in October, Ken McCallum, director- general of MI5, Britain’s domestic-intelligence service, said that Islamist extremism remained the country’s largest threat by volume, with “tens of thousands” committed to the ideology, though he added that a growing share of plots came from right-wing extremists, like the attacker in Avignon. Mr McCallum said that tracking plots had become harder in recent years “as more terrorists have gone for basic attack methods requiring little preparation”. 

即便如此，伊斯兰国的威胁仍旧不断左右着安全部门的工作。英国国内情报机构军情五处局长肯·麦卡勒姆在10月的一次讲话中说，伊斯兰极端主义依然是英国的最大威胁，有“数万人”委身于这一意识形态。不过他补充说，越来越多的阴谋来源于右翼极端分子，比如阿维尼翁市的袭击者。麦卡勒姆表示，近几年来，追踪阴谋变得愈加困难，“因为越来越多的恐怖分子选择使用基本的袭击方式，而这样的方式几乎不需要做任何准备”。