San Bernardino: 'pledge of allegiance' to Isis is no proof of group's involvement

The news that US investigators are evaluating evidence that Tashfeen Malik may have either “pledged allegiance to the Islamic State” or expressed support for the group before launching the attacks which killed 14 and wounded 21, in San Bernardino, California, on Wednesday prompts many questions.

If Isis were to be directly responsible, or even played a significant indirect inspirational role, the killings would be a major escalation of terrorist threat and activity on US soil. But we are far from establishing such a link – and the motives of the attackers remain extremely unclear.

At the moment, there’s no evidence Isis directed the couple to launch the attacks, officials have told media, remarking that “we believe they were more self-radicalized and inspired by the group than actually told to do the shooting”.

So far it appears that in the days leading up to the shooting, the couple took steps to delete their electronic information. Those efforts – along with stockpiled ammunition and bombs – have led authorities to believe that the shooting was premeditated.

CNN quoted one US official as saying Malik had pledged allegiance to self-appointed Isis caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in a Facebook post on the day of the San Bernardino attack, under an account that used a different name.

But at the moment we don’t know if the post was simply an expression of approval or praise for the Islamic State’s leader or activities, or a full pledge of allegiance, a bayat.

The bayat is an oath taken by an individual to obey the authority of another person, not a group and the term is mostly used when the leader of a faction pledges allegiance to the leader of a bigger organisation. One example earlier this year was when Abou Bakr Shekau, the leader of Nigeria’s Boko Haram militant group declared his loyalty to Baghdadi.

Such pledges are sometimes solicited – Isis has been making significant efforts to win over factions – and sometimes unsolicited: for the past 18 months, Isis has been making calls for individuals in the west to strike locally and individually with whatever weapons they can find.

A series of so-called “lone wolf” attackers in the west have claimed to be linked to Isis; but while some of those claims have been endorsed by the organisation, others have gone ignored.

One attack that Isis claimed as its own – even if it appears the group had no role whatsoever in its planning and execution – was the siege in January at a kosher supermarket in Paris. Amedy Coulibaly, a convicted bank robber who coordinated his attacks with those launched on the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo by two other militants, claimed in a video recorded shortly before the operation that he had pledged allegiance to Baghdadi, and thus to the Islamic State, in the summer of 2014.

He was shot dead by police in the attack but his wife, Hayat Boumedienne, surfaced weeks later in Syria, featured in the Isis magazine Dabiq.

The latest issue of that magazine advises recruits in the west to pledge allegiance, record a statement and carry a banner of Isis when they launch their attack against “the crusaders and their pagan and apostate allies wherever [they] can find them, even if he is alone”. It also lauds a series of “martyred ‘lone’ knights of the Caliphate who struck out against the [unbeliever] … enemies near them”.

The attacks in Paris earlier this month which left 130 dead appear to have been much more closely controlled by the organisation, though again, details are unclear. It involved a number of young western European veterans of the war in Syria.

We know that Isis likes to create ambiguity, anxiety and uncertainty. This serves a greater aim of terrorising its enemies through provocation of irrational fear – which is especially prevalent when there is a sense that the threat is ubiquitous. But the lack of clarity serves a tactical purpose too: the group can claim an attack if it feels such a gesture would be useful; or ignore – or even deny it – if it chooses to.

What investigators will also be aware of is that few “lone wolves” are indeed entirely solitary. One recent study examined the interactions of 120 supposed “lone wolf” terrorists from all ideological and faith backgrounds, and found that, even though they launched their attacks alone, in a large majority of the cases others were aware of the individual’s commitment to a specific extremist ideology.

Beyond this, however, is the question of motivation. Even a pledge of allegiance to Isis does not rule out a mix of other reasons for violence – personal animosity, a grudge, mental illness – or any of the myriad of factors which drive the perpetrators of mass shootings in the US.