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Date: April 30, 2024 Tue
Time: 3:10 am
Time: 3:10 am
Results for foreign fighters
2 results foundAuthor: Bjelopera, Jerome P. Title: The Islamic State's Acolytes and the Challenges They Pose to U.S. Law Enforcement Summary: Analysis of publicly available information on homegrown violent jihadist activity in the United States since September 11, 2001, suggests that the Islamic State (IS) and its acolytes may pose broad challenges to domestic law enforcement and homeland security efforts. Homegrown IS-inspired plots can be broken into three rough categories based on the goals of the individuals involved. The first two focus on foreign fighters, the last on people willing to do harm in the United States: - The Departed - Americans, often described as foreign fighters, who plan to leave or have left the United States to fight for the Islamic State. - The Returned - American foreign fighters who trained with or fought in the ranks of the Islamic State and come back to the United States, where they can potentially plan and execute attacks at home. - The Inspired - Americans lured - in part - by IS propaganda to participate in terrorist plots within the United States. At least two other categories of IS foreign fighters pose some threat to U.S. interests: - The Lost - Unknown Americans who fight in the ranks of the Islamic State but do not plot terrorist attacks against the United States. Such individuals may come home after fighting abroad and remain unknown to U.S. law enforcement. Additionally, some American IS fighters will never book a trip back to the United States. Finally, some American IS supporters will perish abroad. - The Others - Foreign IS adherents who radicalize in and originate from places outside of the United States or non-American foreign fighters active in the ranks of the Islamic State. These persons could try to enter the United States when done fighting abroad. Federal law enforcement has numerous approaches to go after each of these categories of terrorist actors. These include the following: - Watchlisting - the federal counterterrorism watchlisting regimen effectively attempts to shrink "the lost" category described above. - Preemption - efforts geared toward preemption of terrorist activity can be broadly described in terms of interdiction (stopping a suspected terrorist from entering the United States, for example), law enforcement investigation, and government activities aimed at keeping radicalized individuals from morphing into terrorists, also known as countering violent extremism. Details: Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, 2016. 18p. Source: Internet Resource: CRS Report R44521: Accessed September 6, 2016 at: https://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/terror/R44110.pdf Year: 2016 Country: United States URL: https://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/terror/R44110.pdf Shelf Number: 140169 Keywords: Foreign FightersHomeland SecurityISISIslamic StateTerrorismTerroristsViolent Extremists |
Author: Shtuni, Adrian Title: Dynamics of Radicalization and Violent Extremism in Kosovo Summary: What started in 2011 as a popular uprising against the Syrian regime escalated in the five years that followed into an intractable sectarian war that has engulfed both Syria and Iraq, drawn in a suite of regional actors and world powers, and attracted an unprecedented number of volunteer combatants from more than a hundred countries. Although so-called foreign fighters have been a common feature of conflicts in Afghanistan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Chechnya and Dagestan, Iraq, and most recently in Ukraine, their flow to Syria and Iraq is the largest influx of its kind in recent history. More than 36,500 individuals, including at least 6,600 from Western countries, are estimated to have traveled to the conflict theater since 2012, mostly to join designated terrorist organizations operating in the region. Not long after the bloody secessionist wars that brought about the disintegration of Yugoslavia in the 1990s, the Western Balkans became a prime source of foreign fighters for the Syrian conflict. More than a thousand nationals of Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia are estimated to have traveled to the battlefields of Syria and Iraq since 2012. The significance of this number becomes apparent in the context of the combined population across these small countries of less than nineteen million. Rates of mobilization relative to the population size - particularly in Kosovo but also in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Macedonia - are far higher than in western European countries most afflicted by the phenomenon. Now that the flow of those traveling to the conflict theater has subsided - for a variety of reasons - and about 37 percent of all Kosovan nationals estimated to have traveled to Syria and Iraq have returned home, the task of understanding the dynamics of their radicalization has become even more critical. This is not only in regard to managing the security challenge associated with their return but also to adopting effective strategies for their rehabilitation and reintegration into society. This report explores the dynamics of radicalization and violent extremism in Kosovo, focusing on the flow of foreign fighters as the most prominent symptom of a multifaceted religious militancy problem facing the country. It is important to emphasize from the outset that though the number of foreign fighters in itself represents a quasi-insignificant minority of the Kosovan society, it also constitutes merely a fraction of an extensive network of like-minded militants, supporters, and enablers who not only openly share the same ideology but are also actively engaged in its dissemination and recruitment efforts through physical and virtual social networks. This report shines some light on that less well-understood part of the supply chain of violent extremism. Details: Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace, 2016. 16p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed June 10, 2017 at: https://www.usip.org/sites/default/files/SR397-Dynamics-of-Radicalization-and-Violent-Extremism-in-Kosovo.pdf Year: 2016 Country: Republic of Kosovo URL: https://www.usip.org/sites/default/files/SR397-Dynamics-of-Radicalization-and-Violent-Extremism-in-Kosovo.pdf Shelf Number: 146019 Keywords: Foreign FightersRadical GroupsRadicalizationTerrorismViolent Extremism |