We are still waiting to learn who perpetrated the Boston Marathon bombings, but it would not be surprising to find out that the attack was the work of a lone-wolf terrorist. Lone-wolf attacks have become more common as individuals have gained the ability to strike without the training and funding traditionally provided by terrorist groups. All they need is access to the Internet. Although statistics on the number of lone-wolf attacks vary due to discrepancies in definitions and data collection, government officials and law enforcement agencies in many countries agree that the threat is growing.
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Recent lone-wolf attacks have spanned the political and religious spectrum. They include an anti-Islamic lone wolf, Anders Breivik, who set off a car bomb in Oslo and then traveled to an island to massacre scores of youths attending a summer camp, killing 77 people in all. In the United States, an Islamic extremist, Maj. Nidal Maljik Hasan, is accused of shooting fellow soldiers and others at Fort Hood, Texas. There have also been recent lone-wolf plots and attacks by neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and "single-issue" extremists.
What makes lone wolves so dangerous is their ability to think outside the box. Since they operate by themselves, there is no group pressure or decision-making process that might stifle creativity. Lone wolves are free to act upon any scenario they can dream up. This freedom has resulted in some of the most imaginative terrorist attacks in history. For example, lone wolves were responsible for the first vehicle bombing (1920), major midair plane bombing (1955), hijacking (1961), and product tampering (1982), as well as the anthrax letter attacks in the United States (2001).
Lone wolves also have little or no constraints on their level of violence. Because they are not part of a group, lone wolves are not concerned with alienating supporters (as many terrorist groups are), nor are they concerned with a potential government and law-enforcement crackdown following an attack. Lone wolves are also difficult to identify and capture. Because they work alone, there are usually no communications to intercept or co-conspirators to arrest and interrogate. That is the reason why Theodore Kaczynski, the infamous "Unabomber," was able to send package bombs throughout the United States for nearly 17 years.
The current wave of lone-wolf attacks has been propelled by the revolutionary impact of the Internet, which provides lone wolves with limitless opportunities. Online, an aspiring terrorist can find everything from instructions on building homemade bombs to maps and diagrams of potential targets. Detailed accounts of terrorist incidents around the world are also readily available, providing guidance and perhaps inspiration. In addition, websites, blogs, Facebook pages, and chat rooms all provide easy venues for cultivating extremism in a way that was previously possible only through in-person gatherings.
Who, then, are these lone wolves? There are five basic types -- secular, religious, single-issue, criminal, and idiosyncratic -- although some lone wolves fall into more than one category.
Secular lone wolves, like secular terrorist groups, commit violent attacks for political, ethnic-nationalist, or separatist causes. Timothy McVeigh, who killed 168 people at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995, was motivated by revenge for the U.S. government raid on the Branch Davidian cult's compound in Waco, Texas, which had killed 80 people two years earlier. (Terry Nichols helped build the bomb, but McVeigh acted largely alone.) Although Anders Breivik is certainly anti-Muslim, he also falls into the secular category because his main targets were not Muslims, but rather the teens attending a camp run by the ruling Labor Party, which he blamed for allowing the "Islamic colonisation and Islamisation of Western Europe."
The second type of lone-wolf terrorist is the religious lone wolf, who perpetrates terrorism in the name of Islam, Christianity, Judaism, or some other belief system. Major Hasan falls into that category, having been influenced in part through numerous e-mails he exchanged with Anwar al-Awlaki, the American-born Islamic extremist cleric who was living in Yemen before he was killed by a U.S. drone strike in 2011.
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