Today, the Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI) released a report I wrote last December entitled “Radicalization in the U.S. Beyond al Qaeda: Treating the Disease of the Disconnection“. A big thanks from me to FPRI for sticking with the publication review and release process and for getting the article out. While the article was written last winter, I hope those analyzing current events in the domestic radicalization scene will find interest in the article’s conclusion.
Here’s a quick summary of today’s release:
Recent weeks have seen an unfortunate number of violent shootings perpetrated by armed men. The shootings in Aurora, Colorado and Oak Creek, Wisconsin shine light on ideologies and other factors inspiring violence in the U.S. In response, the Foreign Policy Research Institute is now releasing a report Radicalization in the U.S. beyond al Qaeda: Treating the Disease of the Disconnection, by FPRI Senior Fellow Clint Watts. Completed in December 2011, the report explores the efficacy and future threat of al Qaeda’s ideology in radicalizing Americans but concludes with a broader call for examining the variety of domestic ideologies inspiring violence in the United States. Watts discusses potential trends in future U.S. radicalization and outlines several recommendations for preparing the U.S. to detect and interdict violence from a host of extremist ideologies, of which al Qaeda represents only one.
For those that read this blog, you will be familiar with parts of this article as I wrote parallel blog posts (#1, #2, #3, #4) in December 2011 as I was doing background research on the alleged spike in ‘Homegrown Extremism’. I took some criticism when I wrote that militant Islam wasn’t the greatest ideological threat internal to the U.S. military and I believe the past 6 months’ events demonstrate the variety of extremist threats that might emerge from former military members.
In this article, I discuss several facets of al Qaeda radicalization, which I continue to explore (here and here), but I hope those interested in current events on the domestic scene will maybe take up the research challenge I tried to articulate at the end the piece. Here is a clip from my concluding remarks. I apologize in advance for the formatting as I took it from the pdf.
“Future Radicalization: What Can We Do?
Ten years of counterterrorism lessons learned provide the basis for reshaping a broader U.S. approach to countering violent extremism. The approach should remove some of the least productive elements of the past decade’s efforts and build resources and processes more effective and efficient for identifying and interdicting homegrown extremism.
• Cease large scale training for law enforcement officers on militant Islam
U.S. efforts to counter violent extremism since 9/11/2001 have included teaching the principles of militant Islam to law enforcement officers. In retrospect, this training appears expensive, often incorrect in its content, highly inconsistent in its delivery and quite possibly counterproductive for countering violent extremism.28 The complete lack of a standardized curriculum and certified instructors results in wildly variable militant Islam instruction enabling counterproductive stereotypes that undermine law enforcement community engagement programs and alienate vulnerable communities. Teaching of militant Islamic extremism should end and in its place should be a broader set of training on radicalization and extremism encompassing those indicators potentially precipitating violence for any and all ideologies.
• Increase information sharing from federal to local levels regarding electronic surveillance
The emergence of lone wolf extremism provides few indicators. Electronic communications and social media posts often provide some of the only clues permitting law enforcement to begin preempting homegrown extremism. U.S. federal agencies hosting advanced electronic surveillance resources able to detect these signals of radical emergence must perfect the authorized exchange of information across all law enforcement agencies.
• Continue the expansion of community engagement with and beyond Muslim communities
Community engagement programs provide additional detection capability and more importantly increased interdiction capability with homegrown radicals. U.S. law enforcement has dramatically increased its community-oriented policing strategies with the Muslim community leading to increased detection and preemption of extremism. However, as noted by Kurzman and Jenkins, the past decade’s incidents of Muslim-American extremism provide no particular profile and provide no basis to conclude that extremists will reside in Muslim communities. In addition, if an extremist does reside in a Muslim community, there is no reason to assume that the Muslim community will be aware of potential extremists in their midst. Emerging radicalization threatening the U.S. may very well emerge from vulnerable, non-Muslim communities. Law enforcement should now begin placing more emphasis on expanding their community engagement in all communities where extremist ideology may emerge.
• Sustain the use of informants and intelligence-led law enforcement approaches
Successfully countering violent extremism and its resulting attacks requires a preemptive approach. No single preemption technique works better than the expanded use of informants – a proven practice honed by law enforcement for many decades. Some recent articles argue against law enforcement’s expanded use of informants citing 1) entrapment of innocent suspects or 2) alienation of vulnerable communities.30 Both of these arguments are misguided. For the former, Brooks’ article appropriately noted that U.S. prosecutor declination rates of terrorism-related offenses has increased substantially in recent years suggesting the necessary checks to prevent the unlawful pursuit of innocent subjects are in place.31 For the latter, community engagement with vulnerable communities alone will not provide the necessary safe guards to preempt terrorist radicalization. As witnessed by the more than twenty Somali-Americans recruited to al Shabaab from Minneapolis, communities and parents know some but not all of what their young men are doing. Law enforcement’s use of informants should not be a single-point solution but complimentary to the community engagement approaches being implemented by law enforcement. Additionally, community engagement and informant operations should be planned and designed within the larger context of intelligence-led policing operations – a data driven approach focused on preventing rather than reacting to crime and terrorism.
• Detect extremists electronically and engage with them physically
The Internet provides the method for both accessing extremist content and detecting those being radicalized by extremist content. Despite this early warning mechanism, the expansion of e-investigation by both law enforcement and counterterrorism analysts has led to excessive focus on the part of many to detect, de-radicalize or disrupt terrorists through a flurry of mouse clicks in the comfort of one’s home or
office. This rearward investigative approach is costly, time-consuming, and prone to error. While Google’s calls for positive engagement may be noble, their Internet enabled countering violent extremism concepts misunderstand the process of radicalization and provide a costly indirect and less effective radicalization interdiction method to physical engagement.32 Google and others advocating Internet extremist interdiction might better use their resources and interrupt radicalization by proactively removing the vast quantities of extremist content residing on their servers and violating their own terms of service.33 (YouTube, owned by Google, being one such platform – see the endnote for additional discussion on this point.)
Electronic detection followed by physical engagement provides a more effective method for disrupting homegrown extremism. A more appropriate blend of effort and resources for countering homegrown extremism might follow a spectrum of key tasks:
1- Identify and remove extremist content from U.S. and partner nation servers through established legal processes and cooperation with the private sector.
2- Detect online extremist radicalization through electronic surveillance and rapidly share this information with law enforcement and homeland security officials to initiate physical engagement with advocates of extremism.
3- Expand community engagement across all communities for additional detection capability and further means of extremist interdiction.
4- Directly and physically engage those being radicalized. Law enforcement and their local community partners should physically preempt those
demonstrating extremist sympathies. This engagement could use a combination of intermediaries to include family, community leaders, law
enforcement, social workers, and reformed extremists who are particularly effective in deescalating extremists moving down the path of radicalization.
5- Monitor and interdict those committed to extremism through informants, surveillance and preemptive law enforcement. For some radicalized in the U.S., there is no de-escalating their intent to commit violence. Law enforcement at all levels should continue their proactive policing when direct intervention with extremists is infeasible or insufficient to deter.
• Develop countering violent extremism resources and expertise at the national level as on-call resources for state and local jurisdictions.
The U.S. is the most diverse society in the world providing freedoms that permit the pursuit of an unlimited number of ideologies and causes; the vast majority of which are peaceful. However, a certain percentage of the U.S. population at any given time will pursue an international or domestic extremist agenda against the U.S. government and its citizens. Training more than 700,000 state and local law enforcement to know, understand and detect each and every form of extremist ideology that might emerge in a local jurisdiction is impractical, expensive and ineffective. A more sensible approach may be for the federal government to provide a national package of resources and support for state and local officials to detect homegrown radicalization.
These resources might include:
a. In person and online training providing general principles for detecting radicalization processes (regardless of the ideology) with a specific focus on spotting the criminal acts and violent rhetoric correlating with extremism.
b. A resource database accessible by state and local law officials outlining the propaganda, websites, principles, and case studies of all extremist ideologies present in the U.S.
c. A national outreach capability for state and local law enforcement officers to contact experts in any given extremist ideology to obtain assistance in detecting, engaging or disrupting extremists in local communities.
d. An on-call/as needed contact team of experts and experienced practitioners capable of deploying to local jurisdictions and assisting communities facing an unfamiliar homegrown extremist threat. “