Al Shabab: Predictable Pattern

Bomb Makers Dept: U.S. strikes in Afghanistan and Pakistan have diminished al-Qaeda s core, but the group s extremist ideology continues to attract and inspire adherents, Mr. Ellis said. Somalia s al-Shabab militants, who have recruited and groomed Canadians as fighters, recently said they were going to take a page from al-Qaeda s playbook and vowed to launch attacks in Canada, according to Globe and Mail. Formed in 1984 as a domestic agency to spy on Canadian extremists, CSIS is also trying to brand itself as a collector of intelligence in foreign states. In past years, the agency has claimed it has helped save Canadian Forces soldiers from Taliban bomb makers in Kandahar. While the Canadian military mission has become a Kabul-centred training deployment, CSIS has not packed its bags just yet and six months after the targeted killing of Osama bin Laden and a decade after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, CSIS s 3,000 employees are grappling with the issue of what constitutes the biggest threats to Canada. Security intelligence is a bit like microbiology, Mr. Ellis said in his speech, a copy of which was obtained by The . Just as we make gains in identifying and containing one dangerous germ, it mutates in unpredictable ways. But terrorist massacres in Mumbai, Oslo and Fort Hood, Texas, have also shown that not every terrorist is part of a wider group. We must keep in mind the lone-wolf or stray-dog threat These lone actors are some of the hardest to detect and investigate, Mr. Ellis said. CSIS analysts have devoted much brainpower to studying the phenomenon of radicalization, he said, but no one can identify a predictable pattern. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.