Paris Newspaper Attack Underscores Terrorist Shift to ‘Soft Targets’

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Analysts say there is evidence that more established and sophisticated al Qaeda-affiliated outfits also are shifting to soft targets.

The grisly 2013 siege of an upscale shopping mall in Nairobi, Kenya, for instance, was carried out by roughly a dozen gunmen from the Somalia-based terrorist group al-Shabab, suggesting that the group strategically chose its target based on the ease with which it could be attacked.

Jihadi groups in general have “sort of expanded their repertoire, so to speak, more than gotten away from one tactic in favor of another,” said Bill Roggio, an Islamic terrorism analyst who edits The Long War Journal at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington.

It may well be far more difficult today for terrorists to pursue such plots as the 2004 Madrid train bombings, in which sophisticated explosives stuffed into backpacks detonated in a coordinated series of blasts that killed 191 people and wounded nearly 2,000 others.

But, Mr. Roggio said, that does not mean al Qaeda and the Islamic State are not bent on at least encouraging different types of attacks drawing from the strengths that the groups have built over the past decade.
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