Norway Analysis: Questions and Lessons from Friday's Attacks in Oslo and Utoeya

Photo: GettyThe full horror of yesterday’s terror attack is now apparent as the Norwegian police have announced the deaths of at least 91 people, 84 of them shot to death on the island of Utøya.

The main suspect the police is a Norwegian citizen named Anders Behring Breivik, who is, according to the Norwegian police, a “right-wing Christian fundamentalist".

See also Norway Opinion: A Time for Restraint
Norway Follow-Up: At Least 87 Dead in Oslo Bomb, Utoeya Shootings

Some questions that will need to be answered in the next few days are:

1. Did he act alone? Perhaps he was a “lone-wolf” terrorist but such individuals are hardly produced in isolation, both ideologically and materially. Timothy McVeigh, the 1995 Oklahoma City bomber, had a convicted helper (and likely helpers) and functioned within in far right, anti-government networks for years.

2. How was Breivik able to obtain the materials needed to the bombs and the extensive arsenal of weapons that he had? According to The New York Times, he was connected to a farm business, “which the authorities said allowed him to order a large quantity of ammonium nitrate fertilizer, an ingredient that can be used to make explosives". The same point applies to the weapons. Were they legally acquired, thus indicating a problem with Norwegian gun laws? (I’ve yet to see a single mention in the media about how easy is it to obtain a gun in the country.)

3. What signs were available that an attack of this nature was being prepared? Has the suspect had military training? Were Norwegian authorities so focused on attacks from Islamic extremists that they missed other terrorist threats?

4. What does the attack say, if anything, about Norwegian and wider European society? Breivik apparently had posted on-line comments attacking multiculturalism and Muslims.

Finally, this case is an example of the dangers of a “rush to judgement” without the full facts. I am as guilty of this as anyone else with my analysis yesterday, potentially linking the attacks to Al Qaeda. Others went even further with media appearances and Twitter messages connecting the attacks to a so-called "jihadist" group that does not appear to exist. In turn, the media were only to happy to lap this up and this groundswell of misjudgements can have real consequences for ordinary people. I remember well a similar reaction in the immediate aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, as a politician and "terrorism expert" quickly appeared on CNN to blame the bombing on Muslims.

(One exception yesterday to the mistaken and dangerous rush to judgement is Professor Richard Jackson of Aberystwyth, who appeared early on the BBC soon after the explosion and mentioned that while the bombing could be linked to Islamist groups, it also could have been carried out by the far right.)

In that sense, this attack is a reminder that terrorism comes in multiple forms, including from the far right. Indeed, from 2006-2008, Islamist terrorism represented 0.4% of terrorist incidents in Europe, compared to 84.8% from "separatist" terrorism and 6.5% from "left-wing" terrorism. That is why the media should now resist what some outlets are doing as a supposed correction, labelling the attacks yesterday as the work of a "madman" rather than as "terrorism".

Terrorism is terrorism regardless of who carries out the atrocities.