Stopping Home-grown Radicalization in the Internet Age

One of our recent posts addresses the need to develop a better geo-political strategy in Iraq if one hopes to build real and lasting Sunni support in the fight against ISIS.  The threat posed by Islamic extremists, however, is not limited to the foreign battlefield.  Indeed, recent events in the U.S. and Europe have shown the potential to radicalize persons who move about freely in the U.S. or Europe.  ISIS is a media-savvy organization and, indeed, its members often spend countless hours trying to isolate and subsequently convert or radicalize Westerners.

An American in her 20s speaks with the New York Times about ISIS recruitment and conversion efforts (Source: New York Times)

ISIS is not the first Islamic terror organization to utilize the Internet to radicalize Westerners, nor will it be the last.  Indeed, this was already a well-established phenomenon by the time ISIS came on the scene.  The most prominent example was Anwar al-Awlaki, the U.S.-Yemeni dual citizen who was a senior member of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) before being killed by a U.S. drone strike.  Al-Awlaki wrote on a blog, posted YouTube videos, wrote for al Qaeda's Inspire magazine, and directly communicated with individuals online, as part of AQAP recruitment and radicalization efforts.  For example, he communicated with Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hassan online prior to Hassan's actions; recruited the Christmas day "underwear bomber" Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab in person and online; and inspired Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad's attempted car bombing in 2010.  Al-Awlaki, in a sense, paved the way for the current wave of online radicalization that includes the ISIS and/or al Qaeda-inspired Charlie Hebdo attack and the ISIS-inspired failed attack at a Mohammed cartoon contest in Texas this past May.

Internet radicalization -- either by direct communication with vulnerable persons in Western countries or by the ability of Islamic terror's message to inspire lone wolf attacks -- will continue to present a security challenge to Western countries for years to come.  This security challenge is self-apparent: it is much more difficult for a terrorist group to coordinate attacks on U.S. soil than it is for a lone-wolf U.S. citizen radicalized by such a group to carry out an attack.  This begs the question: how do we stop home-grown radicalization?

Part of the solution is tracking the communications.  This has been a touchy political subject in the United States ever since Edward Snowden leaked details of NSA data collection programs to journalists.  Still, data collected in accordance with the 2008 FISA amendments (not the Patriot Act-based surveillance program, which did not specifically authorize bulk data collection and which was ruled unconstitutional by the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit) led to, among other things, the tracking of emails by an Albanian who sent money to a Pakistani terror group and ultimately was detained trying to travel to Pakistan.  The legality of the 2008 FISA amendments will continue to be litigated even as the U.S. starts conducting its surveillance differently in accordance with the 2015 "FREEDOM Act."

Another part of the solution is stopping the radicalization itself at its roots.  Farah Pandith, an analyst with the Center for Strategic and International Studies with years of experience in the National Security Council and the State Department, strongly supports outreach efforts to counter the narrative ISIS and other Islamic extremists are presenting online:

Their narrative pits a monolithic Muslim “us” against a non-Muslim “them,” validating and valorizing the “us” under the veil of religion and purpose. Confronted by this narrative, some Muslim millennials see martyrdom as an attractive job description. Others simply support the extremist team by sporting the bumper sticker, wearing the colors; they’ll alter the cultural landscape so that everyone around them accepts extremism as the norm. 

Yes, we’re waging a military war against ISIS—a war we must win. But ISIS can’t have an army if it lacks recruits. Behind its growing physical army is a virtual army. A viable long-term strategy will devote itself to vanquishing both armies by countering the spread of the underlying ideology.

Or, put more succinctly, she notes that millennial Muslims are "having a crisis of identity [and] . . .[w]e have not flooded the marketplace with alternative narratives to move their minds."

Such efforts at combating radicalization will not be easy to quantify, and indeed, will not have such readily-identifiable benchmarks as cities recaptured or terrorists killed or detained.  However, such efforts may be just as necessary in preventing domestic terror attacks. 

Counterterrorism in North Africa: A Tale of Two Crises

Previous posts have addressed the French military intervention in Mali.  In the meantime, to the very near northeast, another former French colony has grabbed the world's attention since militants took hostages at an Algerian gas field Wednesday.  Widespread confusion has ensued, with reports Thursday suggesting some or most hostages escaped.

Today, we've learned more information -- namely, that an Algerian military operation has freed hundreds of hostages while at least 12 have died and approximately 30 remain unaccounted for (update: that number appears to now be 7 hostages still being held).  The hostage crisis and the French intervention in Mali are inextricably intertwined.  Indeed, early reports indicated that the terrorists in Algeria cited French intervention in Mali as cause for their actions, demanding that French and other Western countries cease operations in Mali.

The hostages at the gas field, many of them workers at the facility, hail from all over the world.  Most were Algerian nationals, but among the hostages are British, French, American, Japanese, Belgian, Irish, Romanian, Malaysian, Filipino, and more.  Clearly, the sheer number of countries' nationals involved in this tragedy demand a global reaction that will continue beyond the hostage crisis, but the exact nature of that reaction remains to be seen.  Some people will suggest a policy of disengagement and/or containment, where these countries are left to their own devices.  Recent history has shown us the price of failed states, however, both as a power vacuum for internal strife and a haven for outside terror and militant groups.  As the Malian government faces a threat from internal militants, the French have opted for a strong armed force to buttress Malian forces and address the threat.  This raises an interesting (and unclear) legal question, namely: under international law, what are the principles under which French or other forces might legitimately intervene and/or provide assistance to the Malian military junta?

Deborah Pearlstein over at OpinioJuris suggests the most logical legal principle would be consent from Mali, which raises its own web of complications:

Attacking anything in Mali raises territorial sovereignty concerns. Is there a government there that could lawfully consent to the U.S. use of force in country such that the U.S. wouldn't risk violating UN Charter article 2 prohibitions against the use of force? Consent, best I can tell, is the only option here. There's no UN Security Council resolution authorizing the use of force. . . . So consent it is, and it would come from, best case, a government that seized power by coup and to which we've otherwise cut off military aid. The U.S. still maintains an embassy in Mali (as does Mali in the U.S.), so perhaps consent is not legally insurmountable. But I'd wonder both what the terms of the U.S. aid cut-off were, and whether there's any precedent for this.

One possible example from recent history is U.S. involvement in Yemen.  A (hopefully) brief digression:  When looking at a legal basis for U.S. drone strikes in Yemen, one would likely look to the 2002 AUMF as justification under domestic law.  Under international law, however, the situation is trickier.  While one might claim that U.S. action in Pakistan is a logical geographic extension of action in Afghanistan, the same cannot be said of Yemen.  Rather, the most likely source of justification under international law is consent and collective self-defense.  Let me be more specific: by permitting the U.S. to engage in military actions within its borders, Yemen relinquishes its territorial sovereignty.  This doesn't solve the issue entirely, however; if Yemen's permission was all that was needed to permit U.S. drone strikes within Yemen's borders, then Yemen could theoretically permit action by the U.S. that it would not be allowed to legally commit on its own.  Instead, the U.S. must be engaging in some sort of permitted military action under international law -- in this case, Yemen's self-defense against  militants in a non-international armed conflict.  Military action in Yemen has indeed shown Yemeni forces severely battling Ansar al-Sharia and AQAP.  Although much of the U.S. involvement has been covert, enough has surfaced to indicate that U.S. military cooperation with Yemen has reached new peaks over the past year and has proven effective at targeting terrorists in the region.

U.S. military cooperation with Yemen has mostly come in the form of intelligence-sharing, aid, and U.S. drone strikes at areas Yemeni forces cannot reach themselves.  Obviously, the French involvement in Mali is a stark contrast in many respects, with over 1,000 French troops committed in Mali.  There are lessons to be learned from U.S. military cooperation with Middle Eastern countries such as Yemen (and, even  Pakistan, once upon a time, when it used to provide the U.S. with airfields and intel for drone strikes).  Those lessons can include proper levels of engagement, proper division of labor between domestic and foreign military actions, and navigating the murky waters of cooperation with a not-always-ideal domestic government.  In this case, France (and to the extent it becomes involved, the U.S.) can learn from the complex U.S. involvement in Pakistan.  The U.S. and Pakistan did not often see eye to eye, and indeed the relationship has become increasingly strained over the past two years.  However, even in the face of stark disagreements (especially over hardly-secret Pakistani military aid to Afghan Taliban forces), the U.S. and Pakistan teamed up to target Pakistani Taliban forces -- an area of overlapping interests.  Similarly, to the extent the U.S. considers involvement in Mali -- a country with whose government the U.S. has expressed serious reservations -- it might look for limited engagement in areas of shared interest.  Of course, the downside to such involvement will be that, once again, the U.S. will risk calls of hypocrisy for supporting a non-democratic government.  The alternative of extremists gaining a stronger foothold, on the other hand, is something that is in nobody's interest.

Shadow Wars: Yemen Edition

From the mid-2000s onward, the U.S. has fought a shadow war in Pakistan.  U.S. relations with Pakistan have ebbed and flowed in that time, with Pakistan often providing intelligence on targets and airstrip space while publicly decrying the drone attacks.

Fast forward to the past two years, where the U.S. has ramped up its involvement in Yemen.  While U.S. officials hem and haw, never officially acknowledging the extent of our actions and involvement there, analysts say that we're at war.  This sounds familiar: for years, the U.S. conducted the massive, covert drone (and special ops) war in Pakistan without publicly acknowledging it.  Officials have become more open about operations in Pakistan in recent years, in part in order to provide legal justification for the continued, aggressive drone campaign.

While the similarities between Pakistan and Yemen are clearly evident, there are some important differences that America must keep in mind as it tailors its response to the growing threat of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP).  First, AQAP is considered by some analysts, with good reason, to be the most active and lethal al Qaeda affiliate.  The underwear bomber, the cargo plane bomb plot (the one with the printer ink cartridges), and the failed NYC bomber were all organized or inspired by AQAP.  Even the perpetrator of the Fort Hood massacre, Maj. Hasan, conversed online extensively with now-deceased AQAP leader (and propaganda leader of al Qaeda) Anwar al-Awlaki.  Thus, the U.S. must not underestimate the threat posed by this al Qaeda affiliate, and the extent of our recent involvement there suggests that the government is well-aware of the threat and has ramped up operations accordingly.

Furthermore, military operations between U.S. and Yemeni forces is much more cooperative than that of U.S. and Pakistan military personnel.  Indeed, the level of mistrust between U.S. and Pakistani military forces (stemming from repeated Pakistani military leaks to Taliban forces) existed for years but was on display for the entire world to see during the bin Laden raid.  U.S. military, meanwhile, cooperate with Yemeni counterterrorist operations in much more direct ways:

In an escalation of America’s clandestine war in Yemen, a small contingent of U.S. troops is providing targeting data for Yemeni airstrikes as government forces battle to dislodge Al Qaeda militants and other insurgents in the country’s restive south, U.S. and Yemeni officials said.

Operating from a Yemeni base, at least 20 U.S. special operations troops have used satellite imagery, drone video, eavesdropping systems and other technical means to help pinpoint targets for an offensive that intensified this week, said U.S. and Yemeni officials who asked not to be identified talking about the sensitive operation.

The U.S. forces also advised Yemeni military commanders on where and when to deploy their troops, two senior Obama administration officials said. The U.S. contingent is expected to grow, a senior military official said.

 Clearly, we are heavily engaged in Yemen right now, but to what end?  The always-prescient writers at Danger Room raise this question, and suggest that President Obama admit we're at war and articulate the strategic.  Just as there was a time lag regarding operations in Pakistan, however, I think keeping mum about Yemen might make sense for the near future.  First, while operations are ramping up, they are nowhere near the level of activity that took place in Pakistan for years without official acknowledgement.  While this is not in and of itself a justification to keep quiet about operations, keeping quiet about Yemen allows the U.S. government to be adaptable to the quickly-changing conditions in Yemen.  Perhaps the U.S. will not decide whether its goal is "defeat" or merely containment of AQAP until more is known about the feasibility of each option.

The U.S. has already articulated reasons for providing aid to Yemen for infrastructure and civil society-building.  Meanwhile, when providing billions in aid to Pakistan for years, the U.S. openly admitted that the funds were geared toward helping our partner in the war on terror combat the threat of the Taliban and al Qaeda.  The U.S. should, at the very least, articulate a broad policy of providing counter-terrorism assistance to Yemen.  I don't know think this would necessarily involve articulating our end-game in that country, especially when the combination of the Arab Spring and the rise of AQAP make the country one of the most unstable in a very unstable region of the world.  Ultimately, while our current activities appear to be a proactive effort to tamp down the rise of AQAP, our ultimate long game in Yemen might have to be a reactionary one reflective of the realities of our ability to control the direction and fate of the country.