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Date: April 30, 2024 Tue
Time: 12:34 am
Time: 12:34 am
Results for terrorist organization
1 results foundAuthor: Jenkins, Brian Michael Title: The Origins of America's Jihadists Summary: The U.S. homeland faces a multilayered threat from terrorist organizations that could try to carry out a major terrorist operation in the United States or sabotage a U.S.-bound airliner, from Americans returning from jihadist fronts or European returnees who might try to enter the United States, and from homegrown terrorists inspired by jihadist ideology to carry out attacks in the United States. Homegrown jihadists account for most of the terrorist activity in the United States since 9/11. American Muslims appear unreceptive to the violent ideologies promoted by al Qaeda and the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). A small fraction express favorable views of the tactics that those organizations use, but expressions of support for political violence do not translate to a willingness to engage in violence. Efforts by jihadist terrorist organizations to inspire terrorist attacks in the United States have thus far yielded meager results. This essay identifies 86 plots to carry out terrorist attacks and 22 actual attacks since 9/11. These involve 178 planners and perpetrators. (This total does not include those who provided material support to jihadist groups or left the United States to join jihadist groups abroad but who did not participate in terrorist attacks or plots to carry out attacks here.) American jihadists are made in the United States, not imported. Of the 178 jihadist planners and perpetrators, 86 were U.S.-born citizens. The others were naturalized U.S. citizens (46) or legal permanent residents (23)- in other words, people who had long residencies in the United States before arrest. (One more was a U.S. citizen, but it is unclear whether he was born here or naturalized.) Eight of the 178 terrorist attackers and plotters were in the United States on temporary visas, three were asylum seekers, four had been brought into the country illegally (three as small children and one as a teenager), and two were refugees. Three foreigners were participants in a plot to attack John F. Kennedy (JFK) International Airport but did not enter the United States. The status of the remaining few is unknown. The nation has invested significant resources in preventing terrorist attacks. Public statements indicate that federal and local authorities have followed hundreds of thousands of tips and conducted thousands of investigations since 9/11. An average of 11 people per year have carried out or have been arrested for plotting jihadist terrorist attacks. Authorities have been able to uncover and thwart most of the terrorist plots, keeping the total death toll under 100 during the 15-year period since 9/11-clearly a needless loss of life but a remarkable intelligence and law enforcement success. No American jihadist group has emerged to sustain a terrorist campaign. There is no evidence of an active jihadist underground to support a continuing terrorist holy war. There has been no American intifada, just an occasional isolated plot or attack. Out of tens of millions of foreign arrivals every year, including temporary visitors, immigrants, and refugees, 91 people known to have been born abroad were involved in jihadist terrorist plots since 9/11. Information on arrival dates is available for 66 of these entrants-only 13 of them arrived in the country after 9/11, when entry procedures were tightened. Vetting is not a broken system. Nationality is a poor predictor of later terrorist activity. Foreign-born jihadists come from 39 Muslim-majority countries, with Pakistan leading the list, but concern about possible attempts by returning European foreign fighters to enter the United States requires looking at a larger set of national origins. Vetting people coming to the United States, no matter how rigorous, cannot identify those who radicalize here. Most of the foreign jihadists arrived in the United States when they were very young. The average age upon arrival was 14.9 years. The average age at the time of the attack or arrest in a terrorist plot was 27.7. Determining whether a young teenager might, more than 12 years later, turn out to be a jihadist terrorist would require the bureaucratic equivalent of divine foresight. Of the 25 people involved in actual jihadist terrorist attacks, only one returned to the United States after training abroad with clear intentions to carry out an attack. Adding the "shoe" and "underwear" bombers (bringing the total to 27) makes three entering the country or boarding a U.S.-bound airliner with terrorist intentions. Six others entered or returned to the United States within several years of the attack, but subsequent investigations turned up no proof of connections with terrorist groups while they were abroad. The 18 others (72 percent) had no record of recent travel abroad. The complexity of terrorist motives defies easy diagnosis. Religious beliefs and jihadist ideologies play an important role but are only one component of a constellation of motives. Remote recruiting has increasingly made jihadist ideology a conveyer of individual discontents. Feelings of alienation, anger, vengeance, disillusion, dissatisfaction, and boredom; life crises; and even mental disabilities appear in the life stories of individual jihadists. Some of those engaged in jihadist attacks had previously come to the attention of the authorities. Several of these, including the shooter in Little Rock, Arkansas, one of the Boston bombers, and the attacker who killed 49 people in Orlando, Florida, had been interviewed by Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) officials at some point in their history and were assessed as posing no immediate danger. In some cases, that assessment might have been correct at the time, but personal circumstances changed the person's trajectory. Predicting dangerousness is difficult. Details: Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2017. 99p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed November 28, 2017 at: https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/perspectives/PE200/PE251/RAND_PE251.pdf Year: 2017 Country: United States URL: https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/perspectives/PE200/PE251/RAND_PE251.pdf Shelf Number: 148507 Keywords: Homeland SecurityJihadistsTerrorismTerrorist OrganizationTerrorists |