Transaction Search Form: please type in any of the fields below.
Date: April 29, 2024 Mon
Time: 9:22 pm
Time: 9:22 pm
Results for homegrown terrorism
1 results foundAuthor: Klausen, Jytte Title: The Role of Social Networks in the Evolution of Al Qaeda-Inspired Violent Extremism in the United States, 1990-2015 Summary: 1. Purpose of Study: This report analyses the networks and organizations that mobilize and direct Americans for jihadist action, or that raise money in the US for Hamas and Hezbollah. The study employs a quasi-experimental method using a control-case design, comparing the network structures of American terrorism offenders inspired by Hezbollah with those of Sunni extremist groups aligned with Al Qaeda, and in recent years ISIL. 2. The Problem: How and why do foreign terrorist organizations recruit Americans to their cause? Three answers have been proposed to this question: Homegrown terrorism is a tactic developed by the foreign terrorist organization to further its strategic interest in attacking Western targets. Command and control is essential to all terrorist organizations. Homegrown terrorism is essentially "leaderless". The root cause of militancy lies at home. US militants may declare allegiance to foreign terrorist organizations, but this is just a matter of aspiration. Terrorist groups are comprised of leaders and foot soldiers, and tailor their operations to meet strategic goals, including, perhaps most importantly, keeping their numbers up. An emphasis on recruitment requires an open structure; fundraising requires centralized control over the flow of money; plotting attacks needs a covert and decentralized and covert organization. 2. Data and Methodology: The data were collected as part of the Western Jihadism Project (WJP), a database of Western nationals associated with terrorist plots related to Al Qaeda and aligned groups, including ISIL, from the early 1990s to the end of 2015. Over the past twenty-five years, close to 800 residents or citizens of the U.S. have committed terrorism offenses inspired by one of the many Islamist terrorist groups that have been active in this country.Of these, about 560 may be described as "homegrown" terrorists: American citizens or residents who have been arrested or have died in incidents related to Al Qaeda and its many affiliates and successors. Foreigners who have attacked the United States, e.g. the September 11 hijackers, or have been brought to trial in the United States, are excluded from this estimate, and are not considered in this study. Data were also collected on Americans convicted on charges related to Hamas and Hezbollah in order to assess differences in network organization that are related to the particular objectives of international terrorist groups operating in the United States. All data were collected from court records and other public documentation. Data collection procedures were designed to facilitate social network analysis through the comprehensive coding of information about communications and relationship between known terrorist offenders. The study uses a method termed social network analysis (SNA). Developed by sociologists to study informal network dynamics, it has proved to be helpful in ascertaining structures, variations and patterns of change in terrorist organizations. 3. Key Findings: 2015 ended with a record number of arrests in the U.S. related to Salafi-jihadist inspired terrorism, the highest count since the 9/11 attacks. The 2013 Boston Marathon Bombings and the ability of home-based if not necessarily homegrown militants to carry out successful mass shooting attacks in 2015 and 2016 are further indications that the country faces a significant and growing threat from Americans who are inspired by the Salafi-jihadist ideology and who are guided by recruiters acting on behalf of foreign terrorist organizations. Islamist terrorism in the United States has taken many different forms. These range from the pyramidal hierarchy of the Brooklyn-based cell in the 1990s to the family-based criminal fundraising schemes run by Hamas and Hezbollah and the recent decentralized pop-up cells of Americans who have become enamored of the Islamic State’s propaganda. The 1993 Brooklyn-based cell was markedly hierarchical and typical for an enclave-based terrorist organization that combines proselytizing and recruitment with planning and mobilization for terrorism. It was therefore vulnerable to prosecution and suppression, and its legacy for jihadist terrorism in the Untied States was minimal. Only actors who escaped abroad were able to carry on. Hamas and Hezbollah have used the United States as a base for raising funds, and occasionally as a safe harbor for important operatives. They retained the character of diaspora organizations focused on supporting organizations in the Middle East and eschewed domestic recruitment and mobilization for violent action in the United States. Highly centralized and vertical networks, they tend to organize around large-scale family-based fraud conspiracies involving siblings, parents and children, spouses, in-laws, uncles, cousins, and even more distant relatives. While the cells lacked broader connections within the United States, they were linked to the mother organizations in Lebanon or Gaza, often through nodes placed outside the United States. The number of Americans who die abroad in connection with terrorist actions on behalf of foreign terrorist organizations has risen sharply in recent years. Homegrown American militants nearly always first want to go abroad to fight. Later, they may be turned around to carry out attacks at home—or if they are frustrated in their ambition to go abroad, choose to commit acts of terrorism at home. After the 9/11 attacks, jihadist recruitment in the United States recovered only slowly, facilitated by travel to Al Qaeda affiliates in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia, and a web-based proselytizing and recruitment strategy. In the last two years, travel to territories controlled by ISIL produced an uptick in deaths. Recruitment networks funneling people abroad look very different from the networks of the past that were intent of organizing attacks at home. The Islamic State’s recruitment structure presents a classic pattern of what is known as a star network, i.e. a communication network in which all nodes are independently connected to one central unit, here the recruiters for the Islamic State. Flat, dispersed, and highly connected through the central hub, all traffic goes through the leadership based abroad. The peripheral nodes may be comprised of just one person linking up via a home computer or the node may be a pop-up cell of friends and family communicating with the central hub. But characteristically those on the periphery have little awareness of each other. The new network structure associated with social media recruitment prioritizes recruitment over exercising control and command of violent plots. It is inaccurate to say that it exemplified “leaderless” terrorism as all information and action scripts run through the central hub of the network, comprised of recruiters and middle-men acting on behalf of the ISIL. Jihadist recruitment has reached into small and mid-sized cities in every state of the country. The impact of online recruitment is evident in the diversity of American terrorism offenders, who today have come from forty different ethnicities and all races. In 2015 investigations related to the Islamic State were in progress in all fifty states. Given the extraordinary diversity of the American homegrown terrorism offenders, no common denominator and no common set of grievances, or even common motivations, can explain what makes a few individuals opt to join groups espousing violent jihad. 4. Inferences and Recommendations For Policy: Family members and spouses are often the first to know when a person is about to do something. American homegrown terrorists rebel against the nation and their parents, and against the American Muslim community. Establish a duty to report: State and federal laws should make it a duty to report suspicions about imminent criminal activity related to terrorism. The legal construction may mirror current rules regarding the obligation to report child abuse if the family member, teacher, or community member has “cause to believe” that a risk to the public exists. But what are bystanders supposed to see? There is a real risk that American Muslims will be unfairly stereotyped in the absence of a clearly formulated public education program that focus on signs of radicalization to violent extremism. Focus on community education: The growing involvement of converts and the diffusion of risk outside the metropolitan areas suggests a need to educate community leaders, teachers, prison wardens and social workers in the detection of the signs of dangerous radicalization. The number of Americans participating in lethal attacks abroad has increased. For this reason and because of the intimate connection between perpetrating an attack at home and going abroad—in whatever order— the expression of a desire to go abroad to fight for a jihadist organization should be treated as an immediate risk to homeland security. Disrupt and intercept travel to foreign terrorist organizations and insurgencies: Withdrawal of passports is one tool. Preventing the development of hidden communities of extremism should continue be a high priority. Radicalization takes place in online and offline networks and peer groups. Profile the networks: Social network analysis may provide a fuller picture of an individual’s risk profile if it is used to profile all contact points, ranging from social media networks to offline engagements with other militants. The focus should be on top-down suppression of the purveyors of extreme political violence rather than bottom-up elimination of militant social media activists. Many would-be terrorists are caught online. That does not mean that they radicalized online. Moreover, online data have proven of value to law enforcement. Suppress Internet Producers of Online Violent Extremism: Policy should focus on targeting and suppressing the recruiters rather than retail-level consumers of terrorist propaganda. Details: Final Report to the U.S. Department of Justice, 2016. 71p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed February 22, 2017 at: https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/250416.pdf Year: 2016 Country: United States URL: https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/250416.pdf Shelf Number: 146964 Keywords: Al QaedaExtremistsHomegrown TerrorismHomeland SecurityISILIslamRadical GroupsSocial NetworksTerroristsViolent Extremism |