WASHINGTON In December 2014, a middle-aged man driving a car

in Dijon, France, mowed down more than a dozen pedestrians within 30

minutes, occasionally shouting Islamic slogans from his window.
The chief prosecutor in Dijon described the attacks, which left 13 injured
but no one dead, as the work of a mentally unbalanced man whose
motivations were vague and hardly coherent.
A year and a half later, after Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel slaughtered
dozens of people when he drove a 19-ton refrigerated truck through a
Bastille Day celebration on Thursday in Nice, France, the authorities did
not hesitate to call it an act of Islamic terrorism. The attacker had a record
of petty crime but no obvious ties to a terrorist group, yet the French
prime minister swiftly said Mr. Lahouaiej Bouhlel was a terrorist
probably linked to radical Islam one way or another.
The age of the Islamic State, in which the tools of terrorism appear
increasingly crude and haphazard, has led to a reimagining of the common
notion of who is and who is not a terrorist.
Instances of wanton violence by deranged attackers whether in Nice or
in Orlando, Fla. are swiftly judged to be the work of terrorists. These
judgments occur even when there is little immediate evidence that the
attackers had direct ties to terrorist groups and when they do not fit a
classic definition of terrorists as those who use violence to advance a
political agenda.
A lot of this stuff is at the fringes of what we would historically think of as
terrorism, said Daniel Benjamin, a former State Department coordinator
for counterterrorism and a professor at Dartmouth College. But, he said,
the Islamic State and jihadism has become a kind of refuge for some
unstable people who are at the end of their rope and decide they can
redeem their screwed-up lives by dying in the name of a cause.
Mr. Benjamin said this also led the news media and government officials
to treat violence like the Nice attack differently from other mass attacks,
like shootings at schools and churches that have been carried out by nonMuslims.
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If there is a mass killing and there is a Muslim involved, all of a sudden it
is by definition terrorism, he said.
The spectrum of terrorism is widening and now includes attacks loosely
inspired by the Islamic State, those carried out by its affiliate groups and
attacks directed by the groups leadership. All have drawn public

condemnation and concern, but the plots organized and executed by the
Islamic State usually prompt greater concern from the authorities.
On Saturday, a bulletin on the Islamic States Amaq News Agency channel
described Mr. Lahouaiej Bouhlel as a soldier of the Islamic State who
answered a call to attack nations involved in the military campaign against
the group. But the bulletin gave no specifics about the extent of the
attackers ties to the terrorist network.
On one hand, there is now good reason for government officials to make
immediate assumptions after some mass killings that the Islamic State has
played a role, however indirect. The groups ideology, spread widely
through social media and slick propaganda videos, appears to have
inspired a scourge of violence for more than a year: including the shooting
in December in San Bernardino, Calif.; the mass killings last month at a
gay nightclub in Orlando; and the deadly attack early this month at a cafe
in Bangladesh. These were in addition to attacks that top Islamic State
operatives apparently planned directly, like the Paris assaults in
November and the Brussels bombings in March.
In September 2014, the spokesman for the Islamic State put out a call for
the groups followers to attack Westerners by any means possible, and to
do so without awaiting further instructions from the groups leaders.

INTERACTIVE MAP

A Trail of Terror in Nice, Block by Block

Documenting devastation along a one-mile stretch of waterfront.

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Smash his head with a rock, or slaughter him with a knife, or run him
over with your car, or throw him down from a high place, or choke him, or
poison him, the spokesman, Abu Muhammad al-Adnani, said during a
42-minute recorded statement.
At the same time, governments also see a benefit in linking the Islamic
State to what are sometimes random and unconnected acts of violence. It
is a way to project order amid chaos, and to try to assure jittery citizens
that there is a strategy to end the violence. For example, in the days since
the Nice attack, French officials have pledged to increase the resources
that the country is devoting to the bombing campaign against the Islamic
State in Syria and Iraq.
Even if Daesh doesnt do the organizing, Daesh inspires this terrorist
spirit against which we are fighting, the French defense minister, JeanYves Le Drian, said Saturday, using an Arabic acronym for the Islamic
State, which is also known as ISIS or ISIL.
Similarly, American officials have cited progress in the military campaign
as a measure of success in draining the Islamic States power, resources
and influence. Brett H. McGurk, President Obamas special envoy in the
fight against the Islamic State, recently told Congress that the group had
lost 47 percent of its territory in Iraq and 20 percent in Syria: territory
used to extract oil from the ground and taxes from residents, as well as to
plot attacks against the West. Top representatives of nations participating
in the bombing campaign will meet this week in Washington to assess the
progress in the fight.
But terrorism experts caution that because the Islamic State seems to have
broad appeal to the mentally unbalanced, the displaced and others on the
fringes of society, there are limits to how much any military campaign in
Syria and Iraq can reduce violence carried out in other countries on the
groups behalf.
William McCants, a scholar at the Brookings Institution and the author of
The ISIS Apocalypse, said there was a large cadre of men and women
who have no organizational ties to ISIS but murder in its name. These
irreligious criminals and social misfits, whom he described as ISIS-ish,
are rebels looking for a cause, he said.
During congressional testimony last week, Nicholas J. Rasmussen, the
director of the National Counterterrorism Center, gave a sober assessment
of the broad campaign against the Islamic State. It is our judgment that
ISILs ability to carry out terrorist attacks in Syria, Iraq and abroad has
not to date been significantly diminished, he said.
Either lone actors or small, insular groups continue to gravitate toward
simple tactics that do not require advance skills or outside training, he
said.
The murderous truck-driving rampage by Mr. Lahouaiej Bouhlel, 31, a
Tunisian living in France, is the embodiment of this phenomenon. The

authorities in France are still trying to piece together what direct ties, if
any, Mr. Lahouaiej Bouhlel had to the Islamic State.
On Saturday, the Islamic States Bayan radio station said Mr. Lahouaiej
Bouhlel had used a new tactic to wreak havoc.
The crusader countries know that no matter how much they enforce their
security measures and procedures, it will not stop the mujahedeen from
striking, the station said.
Such ominous warnings about indiscriminate violence create formidable
challenges for world leaders, who must strike a balance of raising
awareness about the terrorist threat without gratuitously stoking fears.
168

COMMENTS
As for how governments can calm their citizens, Im at a loss, Mr.
McCants said. Every attack is discussed endlessly on television and social
media, which heightens fear of future attacks, makes citizens scared of one
another and puts pressure on governments to look tough, he said.
And, he added, it gives politicians a cudgel to club their governing
opponents when they dont react strongly enough.

Correction: July 18, 2016

An earlier version of this article referred incorrectly to the nationality of Mohamed
Lahouaiej Bouhlel. He was a Tunisian living in France, not a Tunisian-born
Frenchman.
A version of this article appears in print on July 18, 2016, on page A1 of the New
York edition with the headline: Which Attackers Are Terrorists?. Order
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RECENT COMMENTS
Optimist
14 minutes ago
It would only empower ISIS if political leaders quickly blame ISIS for every mass
killing. "And, he added, it gives politicians a cudgel to...

Susan Weiss
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This is a hugely important story. If we label every act as terrorism, we amplify the
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JL
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Simply deranged? What a hideous combination of words. There is nothing simple at
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