Sydney siege: Terrorism is still new for Australia

Not many in Sydney would've expected events on December 15 to unfold the way they did. An unknown gunman taking 17 staff and customers hostages in the Sydney Central Business District during the morning rush to get to work, hundreds of armed police rapidly descending on the area and sealing off the usually bustling Martin Place district. Responders knew very little about the motivations and intent of the hostage taker, and uncertainty hung over the situation and did all day.

At least three people were seen inside the café with their hands up against a window holding up the "Black Standard", with the shahada inscribed in white upon it. Despite initial reports that this represented an ISIL related terrorist incident, this flag is one of the flags associated with Prophet Muhammad in the Islamic religion, and an eschatological symbol in Shia Islam. It's not a sinister symbol, but it has been hijacked by numerous Islamist Jihadist groups such as al-Qaeda, al-Shabaab, and the Islamic Courts Union as well as ISIL. Throughout the day the assembled Australian security forces attempted to gain intelligence on who this individual was and what their motivations and associations were for them to carry out such an abhorrent act.

When late in siege we were presented with the details of the hostage taker it was a man called Man HaronMonis, an Iranian immigrant who had arrived in Australia in 1996 and claimed political asylum in 2001. His background was a patchwork of past criminal offenses, Islamist extremist beliefs and mental health issues. He had been charged with sending abusive letters to the families of dead Australian Armed Forces personnel who had served in Afghanistan, and had also faced more than 50 charges sexual or indecent assault charges. To top it off he had also been granted bail for his involvement as an accessory to the murder of his ex-wife. This was clearly a violent criminal, who alongside those offenses had converted from Shia to Sunni Islam and had recently pledged allegiance to ISIS on his website. Presented with this picture of a desperate individual who was associating with ISIS ideology, the assembled security forces did well to negotiate and contain the operation in the manner in which they did.

It is tragic that two hostages died, and four were injured during the dramatic scenes that took place in the early hours of morning in Sydney, as armed officers brought the situation to a close, but the outcome could have been much worse. Already the police and intelligence agencies will be assessing lessons learned from the situation, in terms of operational responses, how Monis could have been stopped in his tracks before his actions, and what all of this means as to the nature of terrorist issues within Australia's borders. The Australian public is becoming more informed about the potential threat and nature of terrorism within its own borders, which is a difficult issue to digest. Unlike the UK which has grappled with terrorism issues from the IRA to al-Qaeda inspired groups for the past 40 years, or mainland Europe which has also dealt with many terrorist groups, the Australian public are fast understanding that this is something that they will have to become resilient to and work together to eradicate.

The last three months have seen a flurry of political explanations on the nature of the terrorist threat to Australia, which have been accompanied by expansions of the counter-terrorist legislation that the authorities have at their disposal, and a public who grapple with the nature of an evolving threat. It's vital that the public are kept informed in a clear and calm manner to lessen the anger and potential repercussions that could follow an event such as this.

The world has seen a number of individuals largely acting alone, inspired by Islamist extremist ideology, not attached to a networked grouping. This presents security forces with particularly hard issues to respond to. Unlike networked groups, which tend to have a higher potential to be detected by counter-terrorism forces due to their need for internal communications, potential physical meetings, and a wider network of individuals around them to report suspicious behaviour, an individual working alone is more difficult to detect and can be more unpredictable in their actions. 

There have been a number of cases during the past decade of individuals operating without a wider network, starting with the infamous "Shoe Bomber", Richard Reid, and most recently Michael Zehaf-Bibeau's attempted storming of the Canadian Parliament building. While it would seem that Australia is becoming more adept at successfully detecting and intercepting organised group attacks, there's a danger that the pattern of "amateurish" individuals attempting to attack could continue in years to come.

Instant media and communications mean that any attack, successful or otherwise, will receive wide coverage and gain world headlines, thus requiring a response from Government to demonstrate decisive action to the public. Therefore, to a significant degree, the power is in the hands of the would-be terrorist, knowing that even if the attempt fails, highlighting a weakness in security responses and a vulnerability in random targets can change the way that the public go about their everyday life.

Terrorism, by its very nature, is aimed to change and inconvenience our patterns of normality and hopefully make us fearful of the unknown and threats that we imagine to be ever-present. It will be vital in the coming weeks following the event that Australia shows its resilience to such incidents and refuses to be changed by such events.