Overview
The General Intelligence Directorate in Jordan arrested 11 individuals accused of planning a “major terrorist plot” targeting crowded shopping malls and Western diplomatic facilities in Amman. The terror plot called for the use of combined tactics, including explosives, small arms and mortars, against multiple targets. The operatives were planning to attack on November 9; the seventh anniversary of what terrorists have called “9/11 the Second.” On November 9, 2005, al Qaeda suicide bombers killed 60 in attacks against three hotels in Amman. According to reports, the U.S. embassy in Amman and Western diplomats were listed as potential targets. Jordanian authorities have been conducting surveillance of the suspects since June when the plot first emerged and made the arrests within the last few days. All 11 suspects are Jordanian citizens in their 20s and 30s, are aligned with al Qaeda ideology, and have traveled back and forth between Jordan and Syria. Although the operatives had conducted preoperational surveillance on their targets as well as decided which tactics to use, the plot was foiled in its early stages. The suspects are awaiting trial.
Key Points
- The plot included plans to attack the targets in two stages. In the first phase, suicide bombers would strike two major shopping malls and hotels to draw the first responders away from the Abdoun district where the foreign embassies are located. During the second phase, the militants would fire rockets brought in from Syria into Abdoun to attack Western diplomatic facilities and “vital national sites.”
- The operatives were seeking to devise an explosive capable of inducing maximum casualties and extensive physical destruction to use against their main targets, the diplomatic missions in Abdoun. The General Intelligence Directorate in Jordan tracked conversations between the suspects and al Qaeda explosive experts, located in Iraq and elsewhere, in which they sought advice on how to build the most destructive homemade explosives.
- As part of the plot, the militants were planning to bring in weapons from Syria including mortar shells, rockets and TNT explosives. This signals how they were looking to take advantage of the current Syrian conflict to obtain their materials for the attacks.
- The suspects’ plans included a range of tactics. Along with explosives and mortars, their plot called for submachine guns and booby-trapped cars. Additionally, the 11 individuals were going to split into teams to simultaneously attack the various targets.
Implications
Within recent years, there have been numerous terror plots calling for simultaneous attacks against multiple targets. In this particular case, the attacks against shopping malls would have served as a diversionary tactic to draw attention away from the primary targets, the Western diplomatic facilities. In the 2011 Norway attack and the 2010 Stockholm bombing, the terrorist operatives each used a diversionary tactic to enable themselves to carry out their main attack. There have also been cases that have included the use of combined tactics (small arms in conjunction with explosives), such as the 2008 Mumbai attacks, which are seen as a model for terrorist plots. Terrorists often attempt to draw on past successes to plan their future attacks. This particular plot may have been inspired in part by the recent terrorist attack against the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya, which was a successful attack against a Western diplomatic target.
Since the Syrian uprising against the Bashar al-Assad regime in 2011, more than 200,000 Syrian refugees have fled to Jordan. This has raised concerns that Syrian rebels may attempt to destabilize Jordan in order to set up a rebel base there and to wage attacks against Assad. Although Jordan has remained relatively stable, the government has taken steps to raise border security to prevent any such attempts at destabilization.