The media- electronic, social and print have been focusing for the past few years on the growing levels of conflict, terrorism and the toppling of regimes in different parts of the world. Observations from strategic analysts have been the basis of discussion related to events taking place in the Middle East and North Africa, as well as political violence in East Africa. This has included regimes being ousted by popular uprisings and the expropriation of foreign investors' assets. MapleCroft Political Risk Atlas has been following the evolving dimensions and monitoring political issues affecting the business environment in 197 countries.
Careful monitoring has revealed that since 2010, Syria has deteriorated the most. It now ranks second compared with a 44th place ranking in 2010. Somalia tops the rankings. Afghanistan, Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo also rank in the top five. Maple Croft has warned that Syria, Egypt and Libya are also moving towards the direction where they might be "mired in exceptionally high levels of dynamic political risk for years to come."
On the other hand, the report has suggested that a fall in political violence in the Philippines and India has contributed to the reduction in short-term political risk for these countries. Improvements in governance have also apparently helped to lower risk levels in Malaysia.
The report has also indicated that there is a higher chance for social unrest to exacerbate political instability in Belarus, China, Kazakhstan and Vietnam. It has been observed that the erosion of democratic freedoms, increasing crackdowns on political positions and protesters, compounded by rising food prices and worsening working conditions have been creating tension and functional instability. Such a scenario, it has been observed, could affect the prospect of foreign investment.
It has been suggested that instability in some of these countries has increased as the gap has grown between political freedoms and social gains, such as education and computer literacy among young people. In addition, some critics also have hinted that growing imbalance between social gains and political freedoms in Azerbaijan and South Africa might heighten the risk of instability in those countries. Unfortunately, China has also been dragged into the quagmire. It has been pointed out that while the speed of the country's governance reforms is likely to be sufficient to limit the chances of widespread social unrest that could lead to a "jasmine" revolution, its increased scrutiny of foreign business practices has created compliance challenges for companies operating there.
East African countries appear to have witnessed the biggest increase in the risk of political violence, including terrorism, poor governance, and popular uprisings. CNN in this regard have identified Somalia, Sudan and South Sudan as being in the "extreme risk" category, while Kenya and Ethiopia are "high risk." Eritrea, Tanzania and Mozambique are also seen as being within the risk category.
This interest in analyzing causes of political violence has led some geo-strategic analysts to try to understand how modern-day terrorists communicate between themselves and how they avail of cyberspace and the growth of digital technology to achieve their objectives.
In this context analyst Frank Gardner has significantly mentioned that there are essentially two categories of messages: secret and public- both of which carry a risk of detection for the original sender. Sophisticated terrorists are now apparently aware of the risks of leaving a "digital footprint" that can be traced and identified. They also know that within the paradigm of the Internet it is very difficult for law-breakers or terrorist planners to hide messages and communicate freely without fear of surveillance or interception.
It is this awareness that appears to have persuaded terrorist-prone organizations to evolve their own format. Stress is given first to undertaking such communications as 'Loners'. This is done to ensure that one leaves a minimal trail. A classic example in this regard was the convicted Norwegian mass murderer Anders Breivik who spent four years with almost no social contact while he planned his attacks of 2011.
Other more commonly known options that are being used according to Frank Gardner are as follows:
(1) Disposable Sim cards- Cheap and legally available for cash, these can be bought anonymously over the counter, inserted into a mobile phone, used once and then thrown away out of fear of having their regular phones hacked.
(2) Dead drops- An old Cold War method used by spies to drop off physical packages of information or photographs in places like hedges or behind dustbins. These are then retrieved by someone else as they walk past - a modern-day version of the dead letter drops. In today's computer age, digital dead drops are a way of one person sending a message to another over the Internet - crucially, without pressing the Send button. A message is prepared in draft but not sent.
The intended receiver is then separately given the sender's login details so they can view the draft message and if necessary, reply.
(3) Email and SMS text message- Wary terrorist planners now tend to communicate in code or use metaphors when discussing targets, knowing they may be intercepted.
(4) Social media, chat rooms and gaming- This has increasingly become a popular way of disguising messages in seemingly innocuous interchanges between online "gamers". This is sometimes preferred as many online forums are encrypted and require passwords to join. At present, these formats are being carefully monitored and sometimes infiltrated by government intelligence agents posing as online militants.
(5) USB sticks- This has become a small and discreet way to carry large quantities of data. However, they are also highly vulnerable to malware and viruses.
(6) Jpegs or Gifs- This is also known as "steganography" or the art of hiding a message within a message. Digital images are encoded as Jpegs or Gifs and then sometimes used to carry other data with them using an innocuous subject title.
(7) Satellite phones- Despite encryption technology these remain susceptible to interception. Consequently, terrorist leaders have been wary of using them even from - or perhaps especially from - remote, sparsely populated areas.
Given the entry of digital technology in Bangladesh, some of the above methods are obviously being used by terrorist-prone groups within the country. One hopes that we are able to evolve a suitable and effective cyber security matrix to ensure that terrorists and communalists do not gain the upper hand and affect our national security.
(Muhammad Zamir, a former Ambassador, is an analyst specialized in foreign affairs, right to information and good governance, can be reached at [email protected]