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Date: April 25, 2024 Thu
Time: 5:53 am
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3 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 |
Author: Gartenstein-Ross, Daveed Title: Islamic State 2021: Possible Futures in North and West Africa Summary: The Islamic State (referred to in this report as ISIL) has seen its prospects in North and West Africa grow increasingly dim since early 2015. ISIL has experienced significant losses in North Africa in the past year, especially in Libya, which was once ISIL's most valuable territory outside of Syria and Iraq, and was home to the group’s unofficial African capital. Meanwhile, the Nigerian militant group popularly known as Boko Haram, which is ISIL's West Africa Province (ISWAP), has experienced major internal schisms, as different factions vie for resources, compete for the attention of ISIL's senior leadership, and renew longstanding personal, ideological and strategic disputes. But despite these setbacks, ISIL continues to pose a threat to North and West Africa, and is capable of mounting high-profile terrorist attacks in the region and beyond. Additionally, continued political instability and conflict in countries like Mali and Libya could undermine counter-ISIL efforts, and provide the group an opportunity to rebuild its networks and mount a resurgence. Indeed, two recent occurrences – the reemergence of ISIL in northern Mali and the group's temporary takeover of the town of Qandala in Puntland (a region in northeastern Somalia) – illustrate ISIL's ability to exploit ungoverned spaces and fragile states. It is possible that ISIL's global decline could also paradoxically help the group in North and West Africa, as state and non-state actors shift resources from combatting ISIL to other seemingly more urgent issues, giving ISIL the breathing room it needs to regenerate. Several factors will have a fundamental impact on ISIL’s future trajectory in North and West Africa: 1. The future of ISIL’s Sirte network: In order to survive and rebuild in North and West Africa, ISIL will likely need to preserve at least some of the militant infrastructure it developed during its year-plus in control of the Libyan city of Sirte. The Sirte network has been a key bridge between ISIL's Syria-Iraq leadership and its African allies, and ISIL has relied heavily on the Sirte network to maintain its patronage of its provinces (as ISIL refers to its affiliates) in the region. While ISIL has lost its foothold in Sirte, the group may be able to preserve some of the jihadist apparatus that had ruled and administered the city. 2. ISWAP's organizational dynamics: ISWAP's internal schisms threaten to cripple the group and weaken, if not sever, its ties to ISIL. The loss of its Nigerian province would be a major blow to ISIL's expansion efforts in Sub-Saharan Africa, and would further tarnish the group’s brand. Conversely, if ISWAP remains in ISIL's orbit, ISWAP could provide ISIL with a vehicle through which to expand its presence into other countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, including Senegal and Mali. 3. The resilience of ISIL in northern Mali: ISIL's recent resurgence in northern Mali gives the group a new foothold at a time when it is struggling elsewhere in the region, and across the globe. But ISIL's presence in Mali remains tenuous, as both regional and French security forces, as well as rival al-Qaeda militants, will likely target ISIL. 4. Political stability in North Africa: ISIL's prospects in North Africa hinge to a considerable extent on the future of the region's politics, especially in Libya. Ongoing tensions between rival political and armed factions in Libya continue to threaten to escalate into a high-intensity civil conflict, with destabilizing effects for the rest of the region. Spillover from Libya would test Tunisia's already fragile young democracy. Algeria’s political future is similarly uncertain, given the lack of a clear successor to the ailing president, Abdelaziz Bouteflika. Political turmoil could provide ISIL with the opening it needs to rebuild its flagging networks. Details: Washington, DC: Foundation for Defense of Democracies, 2017. 48p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed March 4, 2017 at: http://www.defenddemocracy.org/content/uploads/documents/022017_DGR_ISIL_Report.pdf Year: 2017 Country: Africa URL: http://www.defenddemocracy.org/content/uploads/documents/022017_DGR_ISIL_Report.pdf Shelf Number: 141325 Keywords: Extremist GroupsISILIslamic StateRadical GroupsRadical ViolenceTerrorismTerrorists |
Author: Clarke, Colin P. Title: Financial Futures of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant: Findings from a RAND Corporation Workshop Summary: In June 2016, RAND held a small workshop on Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) finances. Participants in the workshop included professionals with expertise in the Middle East, ISIL, counterterrorism, and economics. This report describes the likely evolution of ISIL finances under three specific scenarios: a continuation of the current campaign, a negotiated settlement in Syria and political accommodation in Iraq, and military victory without negotiated settlement or political accommodation. The discussion of potential consequences for ISIL across these three contrasting scenarios offered a number of implications for the counter-ISIL effort. These included taking actions to counter specific means of raising money within ISIL territory, using financial information to damage the group, degrading its ability to raise money across its territory, and ensuring that it does not shift to raising money from beyond its territory. Details: Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2017. 54p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed March 31, 2017 at: http://www.rand.org/pubs/conf_proceedings/CF361.html Year: 2017 Country: International URL: http://www.rand.org/pubs/conf_proceedings/CF361.html Shelf Number: 144647 Keywords: Counter-Terrorism ISILIslamic State Terrorist Terrorist Financing |