The Threat of Homegrown Terrrorism

Lydia Khalil, a former counterterrorism analyst for the New York Police Department, and a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations looks at homegrown terrorism, recent plots and arrests and what they may signify.

The apprehension last week of Sudbury native Tarek Mehanna is the fifth terrorism-related arrest in the United States in as many months, putting homegrown radicalism back on the radar screen. But many question whether individuals like Mehanna are the “real deal.’’ Do they really pose a significant terrorist threat or are they acting out but lack the capability to inflict any real damage? How dangerous are homegrown radicals? Will the United States, like Europe, become more susceptible to native radicals rather than terrorist plots hatched abroad from organized groups like Al Qaeda?

Terrorism specialist Marc Sageman claims that we are facing a “leaderless jihad.’’ Al Qaeda central is not the driving force of terrorism as an operational machine but rather its ideology serves as an inspiration for self-organizing local groups to carry out their own attacks.

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Terrorism And Radicalization Going Viral On The Web

The Dallas News points out the danger thousands of websites may pose as they continue to spring up and spread a viral message of of radicalization and jihad.

Thousands of Web sites, most in Arabic but some in English, make it possible for Web surfers to soak up the tenets of violent Islamic terrorism. They can watch videos of jihadi rappers, meet like-minded radicals in chat rooms and, in one notorious case, even launch a rocket attack on U.S. troops in Iraq from anywhere in the world with the click of a mouse.

Last month’s arrest of Hosam Maher Husein Smadi, the 19-year-old Jordanian accused of trying to blow up a Dallas skyscraper, was an example of how a leaderless, virtual terror movement has become a worldwide phenomenon, counterterrorism experts say. FBI agents monitoring an Arabic Internet chat room discovered Smadi in March.

The top leaders of al-Qaeda may be living as hunted fugitives on the far edges of the world, but their ideology is available everywhere, said Yigal Carmon, a former Israeli army colonel who is president of the Washington-based Middle East Media Research Institute.

“They got from the developed world a tool, the tool of their life, to jump from their caves to the 21st century,” Carmon said.

Al-Qaeda sympathizers agree. In a column commemorating the Sept. 11 attacks, the editor of the London-based Al-Quds Al-Arabi newspaper wrote: “Al-Qaeda’s ideology is becoming a global ideology which is increasingly independent. Thanks to advanced media like the Internet, Facebook and YouTube, it can reach the widest audiences worldwide, attracting numerous supporters and recruits.”

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Fighting The Fight Against Homegrown Terrorism

Recently, numerous headlines related to domestic or homegrown terror plots have caught the public’s attention and raised awareness to the threat.
Authorities have stated that there is no evidence the plots are related, so what are the concerns? Is this an anomaly, or are these telling signs that radicalization and the threat of homegrown terrorism in the U.S. is on the rise?

The Boston Herald takes a look at what may be fueling this activity and where we may need to look to stop it.

Keeping A Lid On Homegrown Terror

Authorities in Illinois arrested Michael Finton, a 29-year-old convert to Islam in an alleged plot to blow up a federal building in Springfield. The next day a 19-year-old Jordanian national was arrested for allegedly hatching a similar plot against a Dallas skyscraper. Finally, in what has been called by authorities the most serious attempt to strike the US homeland since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, authorities indicted Najibullah Zazi, a longtime US resident of Afghan descent who had allegedly planned to carry out bombings with chemicals he had purchased in beauty supply stores. These events seem to confirm what authorities have been saying for the last few years: while the overwhelming majority of the American Muslim community abhors terrorism, a small segment is not impermeable to radicalization.

European authorities have long struggled with the same issue, as hundreds of European Muslims have been involved in terrorist activities. Over the last few years US authorities have questioned whether the emergence of large numbers of radicalized Muslims could also take place here.

via Keeping a lid on homegrown terror – The Boston Globe.