Sabotage Attacks: The Emerging Face of Targeting States
The New Generation of Future Attacks: Between the Limits of Theory and the Rapid Pace of Reality
By S. Mohamed Amine
Doctoral Researcher in Political Science and International Relations
University of Algiers 3
Translated by Dr. Hana Saada
A close examination of recent developments across a number of countries in the region that have maintained a degree of internal stability reveals an accelerating wave of incidents bearing the hallmarks of deliberate sabotage. Their frequency and pattern make it increasingly difficult to classify them as isolated or accidental occurrences.
The repeated railway accidents witnessed in Egypt over recent years provide a telling example. The cumulative evidence has ultimately pointed to the existence of carefully orchestrated acts targeting one of the country’s most vital strategic infrastructures. Egypt’s railway network is not merely an economic asset; it is also a fundamental pillar of the country’s social fabric. Anyone familiar with Egyptian society understands the central role rail transport plays in the daily lives of citizens, whether in major urban centres, provincial towns or Upper Egypt, where millions rely on the railway system as their primary means of mobility. (See the author’s previous article on the Egyptian case.)
Targeting and disrupting such infrastructure therefore extends far beyond the realm of ordinary criminal activity. It constitutes a strategy aimed at undermining the internal foundations of society itself, directly threatening societal security and, by extension, national security. This reflects the emergence of a new category of socio-economic attacks designed to weaken the internal resilience of the state.
A similar pattern appears to be unfolding in Algeria. The recurring outbreaks of wildfires offer a striking illustration. The simultaneous ignition of fires within the same geographical area, under identical circumstances and often outside the seasonal peak of extreme temperatures, cannot readily be explained as naturally occurring incidents. Their recurring and dramatic nature instead suggests the possibility of organised sabotage akin to the pattern observed in Egypt.
Such actions increasingly target the citizen’s immediate living environment and essential means of livelihood, with the apparent objective of generating disorder and systemic disruption. This new form of sabotage seeks to revive conditions of widespread instability by pushing individuals towards behaviours that could ultimately undermine internal stability and, consequently, societal security—one of the principal pillars of national security.
From an academic perspective, scholars of political science and international relations, particularly those working within the field of critical security studies, are increasingly aware—perhaps even intuitively—of a growing deficiency in the analytical tools currently available to examine these evolving dynamics. In our assessment, this shortcoming stems primarily from the unprecedented speed at which the nature of contemporary security threats continues to evolve.
Indeed, many of the so-called “new security threats” that have dominated academic discourse over the past decades now appear themselves to have become conventional, particularly when compared with the emergence of more complex forms of threat, alongside the rapid expansion of health-related and cyber threats in the age of globalisation.
Revisiting sabotage threats through their socio-economic and societal dimensions has therefore become increasingly imperative. The accelerating pace of disruptive activities within states resembles, in many respects, a new sabotage-oriented version of the “lone wolf” phenomenon. The limited body of recent socio-security research increasingly points towards the expansion of societal threats as one of the most significant long-term challenges to national security. These threats are likely to become chronic instruments employed against targeted states with the objective of destabilising domestic conditions and driving societies towards a state of non-creative chaos, in contrast to the so-called ‘creative chaos’ once celebrated by certain theorists of international relations during the post-Cold War era.
Consequently, the rapid evolution of contemporary security, economic and social realities requires scholars in this field to develop new analytical frameworks and conceptual approaches that extend well beyond those offered by constructivist theory or Barry Buzan’s concept of societal security. Such intellectual efforts may prove particularly valuable for researchers in our region, which remains exposed to multifaceted threats originating from both near and distant actors—and, at times, from within itself—amid the emergence of destabilising regional projects supported by regimes known for their links to various overt and covert disruptive networks operating across the international system.
The implications, indeed, speak for themselves.
— 𝐄𝐍𝐃 —
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