New Age Terrorists and Accidental Jihadist

The Malaysian newspaper The Star (Feb 28, 2009) had ran a story about a 23 years old student from Malacca who was final year UTM student recruited to carry out jihad attack against the Thai military.

His profile was shocking because he was not a Malay Kelantanese as most terrorists in South Thailand shared the same DNA as reported by The Star.

And this guy is a university undergrad! A final year mechanical engineering student.

We should be familiar with our lawyer turned self-taught terrorist, Abdul Basheer Abdul Kader, aged 28 in 2007.

Others that are professional include a guy who worked with the managing agent of a condominium.

I called these people "New Age Terrorists" because despite the fact that they are tertiary educated and IT savvy, some of them, like the "Accidental Jihadist" is still naive in believing that they can defeat the military with small arms (guns) and parangs while riding a motorbike - it's like going to a gun fight while armed with a parang - they were supposed to be the future leaders and professionals because of their perceived intellectual ability.

New Age Terrorists is a new and deadly security threat because they are highly educated, IT savvy - able to do serious researches and hold discussions online - forums, social websites, emails, online chats, Skype, etc, able to come up with potent counter-security measures and make smarter intelligence information gathering, stealth penetrations and smarter surveillance using high-tech gadgets and the ability to get insiders to infiltrate into sensitive areas to gather necessary details needed to launch their successful and perhaps the first terror attack in Singapore!

We have rogue traders (most are professionals) and rogue men in uniforms (including armed guards a.k.a. auxilliary police).

So are we waiting for the first successful terror attack here in Singapore and be sitting ducks or should we take smart preemptive measures?

Remember, a former neighboring country's Prime Minister once said, "There are 101 ways to skin a cat."

And I say, "It takes a crook to catch a crook." ;-)