Author: Phil Gurski

I am fairly certain that the average citizen sees terrorists as ‘not normal’. In a strict linguistic sense this is of course true as terrorists do not hew to the ‘norm’: hence they are not ‘normal’. In a larger sense, however, it is far from clear what ‘normal’ means. Are we talking about their backgrounds […]

Is it just me or has there been a tendency of late, at least for some people, to see terrorists as victims? If you have been reading the many, many stories about those who joined Islamic State (IS) or other terrorist groups and who now want to come home, you may have noticed that they […]

I have three grown children who are all well-adjusted young adults thanks to their mother. None have followed me in their career choices, entailing that there will be no future Gurskis toiling for either CSE or CSIS or any other part of the Canadian intelligence community. While it would have been cool if one or […]

Here is the script that accompanies episode #4 of the podcast “An Intelligent Look at Terrorism”: W(h)ither Al Qaeda? There are a lot of good pieces on the status of Al Qaeda and here are links to a few of them: https://www.cnn.com/2018/09/08/opinions/where-is-bin-ladens-partner-in-crime-ayman-al-zawahiri/index.html https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/trump-isis-syria-iraq-iran-terror-islamic-state-washington-a8769936.html https://ctc.usma.edu/fighting-the-long-war-the-evolution-of-al-qaida-in-the-arabian-peninsula/ Here is a piece on the assessment of the Office of […]

At the risk of adding yet one more blog post to the burning question of whether or not Canada – and by extension other countries – has a ‘moral obligation‘ to repatriate its citizens who deliberately, consciously and with full agency left to join terrorist groups such as Islamic State (IS) in Syria and/or Iraq, […]

Remember a terrorist named Anders Breivik? He was the Norwegian self-styled Knight Templar who set off an explosion outside government buildings in Oslo in July 2011 and then proceeded to an island where the Workers’ Youth League was holding a summer camp and opened fire. 77 people in all were killed (8 in the bomb […]

This piece appeared in The Hill Times on February 18, 2019. One duty that a government or state has to treat seriously is the protection of its citizenry. Police forces, militaries, security intelligence services and other bodies are created, resourced and run by various levels of government (federal, provincial, municipal in Canada) with the goal […]

When you work in counter terrorism you do your utmost to ensure that things do not go boom! or that people who hew to violent ideologies do not succeed in killing others. You play your part – intelligence gatherers, investigators, evidence amassers, prosecutors, etc. – in the hopes that your work will contribute to a […]

A scant 48 hours ago I posted a blog in which I shared my dismay at the tone of some of the exchanges online and reactions to my posts on various aspects of terrorism. I admitted that the ad hominem attacks and nastiness had started to get to me and made me seriously ask myself […]

I’d like you to do me a favour. The next time you read a story like that of Shamima Begum, the UK Islamic State (IS) supporter who desperately wants to come home, although she does not regret her decision to join the terrorist group and thinks the Manchester bombing was justified, or see a report […]