Australia disrupts Islamist terror plot targeting airplanes.

A police officer stands guard at the site of one of the raids. Reuters. 

Australia has disrupted an Islamist terror plot to bring down an airliner. Reuters. The Australian government has conducted multiple raids and has arrested four accused terrorists. The government suspects that the plotters had connections to radical Islam. It is unclear what the specific target for the plotters was other than it was an aviation target. In response to the plot, Australia has increased airport security. The plot is one of several disrupted in Australia, along with several successful lone wolf attacks. 

My Comment:

Another major terrorist plot disrupted, this time in Australia. And this one was very serious. Plots targeting airplanes are always a major concern and they have succeeded in the past. ISIS managed to take a Russian airliner down in Egypt and killed 224 people. That attack was a gamechanger and may have had such an impact that Russia joined the war in Syria. And there was, of course, 9/11, the terrorist attack that changed everything

The fact that this attack involved explosives and multiple arrests show that this wasn't a "lone wolf" attacker. This was clearly a larger plot probably supported by a major terrorist group. A single person isn't going to be able to take down a whole plane without help. 

So which terrorist group is it? The obvious suspect is ISIS. They are large enough and well funded enough to pull this off and they have targeted airliners as well. The only other suspects are the various al-Qaeda groups, with al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). The problem with AQAP is that they mostly are active in Europe, so they aren't likely. I am guessing that this was indeed an ISIS plot. 

If so ISIS is falling into the same problem that al-Qaeda had fallen into. Taking down an airplane is not an easy thing. It's an extremely complex plot that requires multiple plotters, any of which can betray you to the authorities, and access to explosives, which are extremely hard to get. Then, assuming the plot doesn't fall apart beforehand, you have to somehow sneak a bomb onto a plane and get past security. The only reason that it worked in Egypt is that they had someone in security to help them out. 

There is a reason why that terrorism has moved away from attacking airplanes. Airports themselves are much more vulnerable. Though if you take down a plane you will kill hundreds of people, but you have almost no chance of success. Attacking a terminal before security? You might kill fewer people but you have a much bigger chance of success. The attacks in Turkey and Belgium are great examples of this working out.

Which is why I am surprised that these plotters made the choice to go after the airplanes. I guess it is possible that the headlines I have seen are misleading, but it sure seems like the targets were the planes themselves and not the airports. If so, that the plotters screwed up, trying to go for a spectacular attack that has little chance of success instead of a smaller one much more likely to work. Instead of trying to sneak a bomb into the airport they could have tried to bomb or shoot up the terminal. It's very lucky that they didn't. 

Australia isn't the first country you think of when you think of Islamic extremism, but they have had several major plots there. Which is surprising since they only have less than 500,000 Muslims, making up only 2% of their population. It just goes to show, it's not the number of Muslims, it's how many of them are radicalized and apparently enough of them are in Australia to carry out multiple terror plots...