Inside Islamic State

Islamic State's twelfth edition of its glossy magazine, Dabiq, this week took credit for a string of terrorist attacks. The first was the bombing of the Russian airliner in Egypt; the second, last weekend's attacks in Paris.

Number three was the 15-year-old "brave knight" Farhad Jabar, who "struck the crusaders of Australia and killed one of their personnel", referring to Curtis Cheng, a 58-year-old father and civilian accountant with the NSW Police.

It's a reminder that Australia like France remains high on the militant group's hit list. But it also illustrates some stark differences. Paris was a transnational plot involving returned fighters from Syria using AK-47s and explosives. Jabar was young, untrained and untravelled, and carried out the shooting alone with a revolver.

An atrocity like Paris compels us to look at our own situation. The picture that emerges from conversations with security sources and experts is that while the international landscape is bleak, and Australia shares some vulnerabilities with France to IS's growing ambition to attack the West, this is mitigated by Australia's geography, its laws and the strength of its civil society.

"A greater external focus from IS would increase the threat to Australia, though not nearly as much as it increases the threat to the Middle East, North Africa and Europe," Andrew Zammit, a leading terrorism researcher with the University of Melbourne, said.

"Thousands of Europeans have joined IS and many more support it, creating a large number of potential terrorists the security services can't keep track of. It's an extremely serious concern."

Justice Minister Michael Keenan in interviews this week repeatedly highlighted the differences with France and the difficulty of carrying out a similarly large-scale attack here.

Expanding to Fairfax Media, he described Australia as "the most successful and most harmonious multicultural society in the world", a place where most Muslims totally reject the "religious tyranny" of groups such as IS.

"We have been able to be so successful because of a fundamental Australian value of mutual respect," he said.

"Having complete control over our immigration system and a long-standing and successful gun-control regime are also important differences ... that would make it harder for terrorists to operate here."

Indeed the Howard-era gun laws are frequently cited by police and counter-terrorism officials as a serious obstacle to mass-casualty attacks.

Extremist networks have tried unsuccessfully to buy automatic firearms. Criminal gangs often have such weapons, but they have no love for jihadists and in any event know their "world would come to an end", as one security source put it, if they ever supplied assault rifles to Islamic extremists.

On the comparison of integrating migrant communities, the most poignant observation came from French ambassador Christophe Lecourtier. He told the ABC's Q&A program Australia was the "true model" for integration while France had "probably ... not done enough in the past 20 years to fully bring [Muslim immigrants] into the nation".

There are nonetheless tensions between mainstream and Muslim Australia, shown this week in the angry reaction to the Grand Mufti's statement about Paris in which he listed "causative factors" as including "duplicitous foreign policies and military intervention" – a statement he was later forced to clarify.

But overall most Muslim leaders understand their community has a problem with extremism, security sources say. They are allies, if sometimes frustrating ones.

Meanwhile, France's open borders under the Schengen visa-free agreement allowed the Paris plotters to move easily between France and Belgium, doing much of the planning in the latter country and providing some distance from the capable French security services.

Remarkably, the suspected ringleader Abdelhamid Abaaoud was able to slip back into France despite having posed a grave enough risk that he was reportedly targeted just last month in an air strike in Syria.

Australia's lack of land borders and strict immigration system, by contrast, make such movement impossible. As a counter-terrorism source said, "We've got a big moat around us. That makes a real difference."

So there are reasons to be reassured. But there are worrying lessons out of France, not least what it says about IS and its ambitions. Previously its chief focus was on building its caliphate in Syria and Iraq.

While it may not be a dramatic shift in strategy to start launching major attacks on the West, it does appear to be a growing priority. One seasoned security insider called it "the next logical step" and another "an evolution rather than a game changer".

The seasoned insider noted that compared with forerunners al-Qaeda, IS "have a home base from which to do it ... and they've got a much, much better recruitment strategy".

Zammit, while not believing Paris represents a "sudden shift", does add: "If Islamic State is devoting resources to external attacks, one reason among many would be that it's losing territory in Syria and Iraq and needs to maintain the appearance of momentum."

Keenan says that IS is "constantly evolving" and will be "with us for generations".

"They are the most sophisticated terror organisation to emerge, with control over a country-sized territory, a rudimentary economy that finances its goals and a sophisticated social media operation that supplies a constant flow of foreign recruits."

If IS means to place greater emphasis on attacks on the West, there are vulnerabilities that Australia shares with France. The Paris atrocity was led by returned foreign fighters who managed to stay beneath the radar by evading electronic surveillance while plotting against a country making a major contribution to the fight against IS.

Australia has 110 foreign fighters, a figure which dropped for the first time (down from 120) recently as a number were killed and were not replenished by fresh recruits.

In the wake of those deaths, prominent jihadists such as Neil Prakash, who calls himself Abu Khaled al-Cambodi and has emerged as a high-profile IS recruiter, have gone quiet in their social media activity, though authorities don't count on this remaining the case. Prakash apparently was concerned that his electronic footprint was making him a beacon for air strikes.

Paris shows how dangerous these hardened and ultra-radicalised returnees can be. Even if they cannot sneak back into Australia undetected, police fear that – if they cannot be prosecuted, for lack of evidence – their street cred with vulnerable youngsters would sprout new extremist roots.

Likely they would be subjected to control orders, which allow police to slap bail-like conditions on their movements, their use of phones and internet and who they communicate with. The fifth tranche of terror laws, introduced to Parliament just before Paris, would allow police to use sensitive information such as foreign intelligence in control order court hearings without disclosing it to the subject of the order. This change, while opening the door a crack to the controversial idea of "secret courts", would be crucial to keeping track of returned foreign fighters who still pose a threat.

Another common feature with France is that Australia is a major contributor to the fight against IS. For this reason it has been singled out in past issues of Dabiq magazine, along with France and the US.

Peter Jennings, the executive director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, said the government's constant line that Australia is the second-largest contributor to the coalition, was actually drawing attention to the country as a target.

Jennings, who favours stronger military action against IS, wasn't suggesting the government stop saying it, only that leaders acknowledge that it makes the nation a bigger target and prepare accordingly.

"I think they should just realise the implications of what it means. We've given ourselves a prominent role. Absolutely should we expect that IS is out to get us," he said.

Paris has also raised questions about how extremists and criminals can use encryption apps. These are a headache for police – including Australia's – because many are next to impossible to crack.

There is little that can be done in Australia to regulate such overseas software.

Keenan said that the availability of encryption technology was "a significant challenge for intelligence and security agencies around the world" that might require further legislation.

"It is important that law enforcement and national security agencies have access to a range of powers and capabilities so we're constantly reviewing legislation to ensure they have the powers they need to deal with this challenge," he said.

Broadly though, both government and counter-terrorism sources indicate that with three waves of national security laws in place and two more in the works, the settings are now about right.

Police still believe it is a matter of when, not if, there is another successful attack in Australia. But there are good reasons to believe that when terror strikes, shocking numbers like 129 dead and 350 wounded would not be repeated here.