PolicyWatch 2151
By Matthew Levitt
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The following is part 1 of a two-part series on U.S. government efforts
to counter violent extremism in America. Part 1 covers the Fort Hood
case and related issues; Part 2 will offer recommendations for
establishing a comprehensive prevention strategy.
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Last month, the United States and Turkey jointly announced the creation
of the $200 million Global Fund for Community Engagement and Resilience,
described as the "first-ever public-private global fund to support
grass-roots efforts to counter violent extremism (CVE)." The fund is a
good idea, itself the product of the Global Counterterrorism Forum
(GCTF), a consortium of nations committed to promoting international
cooperation to combat terrorism. Intended to undercut the ideological
recruiting appeal of jihadists in places like Somalia, Yemen, and
Pakistan, the fund marks the first such attempt to combine financing
from both government and nongovernment entities. The idea is to jointly
identify credible local organizations, help develop, monitor, and
evaluate their programs, and help channel the funds locally. Yet while
the State Department promotes creative ideas for combating violent
extremism around the world, those agencies and departments responsible
for doing the same at home lag far behind.
A CASE OF WORKPLACE VIOLENCE?
In August, former U.S. Army psychiatrist Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan was
convicted on forty-five counts of premeditated murder and attempted
premeditated murder for killing thirteen U.S. soldiers and shooting
thirty-two others at Fort Hood four years ago. In May, President Obama
referenced this attack in a major speech at the National Defense
University: "Deranged or alienated individuals -- often U.S. citizens or
legal residents -- can do enormous damage, particularly when inspired
by larger notions of violent jihad. That pull towards extremism appears
to have led to the shooting at Fort Hood, and the bombing of the Boston
Marathon."
This is the closest the president, or any government official from the
executive or judicial branch, has come to calling the attack in Fort
Hood what it is: an act of terrorism. Instead, the attack was classified
even in the Department of Defense's final report as a case of
"workplace violence." This is in sharp contrast to the Boston Marathon
bombing, which the president described as an "act of terror" the day
after the attack.
In fact, not only did Hasan display signs of radicalization, but acting
as his own attorney he tried to plead guilty during the trial and stated
that he had decided to "switch sides" in what he believed was a U.S.
war against Islam. Army prosecutors could have incorporated federal
terrorism charges into the case, but for reasons that are not clear,
they instead charged him with murder and attempted murder. The judge
restricted the use of evidence not related to the specific charges,
therefore dismissing the possibility of labeling the attack an act of
terrorism. In closing, the prosecutor argued that Hasan was motivated to
kill fellow soldiers (in this purported case of "workplace violence")
as part of his "jihad duty." Words matter, not only for the victims and
their families but also for the development of effective policy to
counter violent extremism.
POLICY SHORTCOMINGS IN COUNTERING VIOLENT EXTREMISM
Since he took office, President Obama has broadly continued the Bush
administration's counterterrorism policies, including the use of
indefinite detentions and defensive screening measures, but has rejected
the Bush administration's "global war on terror." Instead, the
administration has conceived a strategy to identify, isolate, and
address pockets of violent extremism. Emphasis across the government,
therefore, has been placed on collecting data on violent extremist
activities, both domestically and abroad, so that hotspots of violence
can be mapped globally. The major policy change has been to rhetorically
narrow the definition of counterterrorism while pursuing an expansive
public diplomacy effort to "restore America's image" in the world. The
administration has sought to make clear that our principal enemy is
al-Qaeda and its affiliates, to the apparent exclusion of other violent
extremists who engage in no-less-violent activities based on equally
dangerous ideologies. Counterterrorism efforts have focused on capturing
and killing al-Qaeda's leadership, mainly in Pakistan, but with
expansion to Yemen as well.
Today's global engagement and public diplomacy approach may be effective
in significant ways, but it has done demonstrably little to hamper the
spread and appeal of radical Islamic extremism. Meanwhile, here in the
United States, it remains unclear which agency or department has overall
responsibility for combating violent extremism. As analyst Bruce
Hoffmann put it, "Who in fact is responsible in the U.S. government to
identify radicalization when it is occurring and then interdict attempts
at recruitment?" The administration is still lacking a full-throated
recognition of the degree to which ideology fuels violent extremism,
especially as international borders become less relevant due to the
internet in general and social media in particular.
While not the sole tool for radicalization, the internet was certainly
an enabler for both Nidal Hasan and Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan
Tsarnaev. The late al-Qaeda recruiter Anwar al-Awlaki, himself an
American citizen, had served as the imam at the mosque Hasan attended
eight years before the attack at Fort Hood. In the year leading up to
the attack, they remained in contact via email while Awlaki was in Yemen
joining what became al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). In his
capacity as AQAP's head of foreign operations, Awlaki actively sought to
radicalize and recruit Western Muslims through AQAP's English-language
online magazine, Inspire. In the investigation of the Tsarnaev brothers,
a copy of Inspire was found at Tamerlan's home. U.S. officials also
stated that Tamerlan had become an ardent reader of jihadist websites
and extremist propaganda. His former brother-in-law stated that most of
his knowledge on Islam came from the internet and a Muslim convert he
befriended.
In both cases, authorities saw signs of possible radicalization but took
insufficient action. In Hasan's case, U.S. intelligence intercepted
emails prompting them to contact the FBI, but according to the special
Senate report conducted after the incident, "The JTTF [FBI Joint
Terrorism Task Force] that had reviewed the initial [REDACTED]
communications dismissed the second JTTF's work as 'slim' but eventually
dropped the matter rather than cause a bureaucratic confrontation." In
Tamerlan's case, the Russians had contacted the FBI in early 2011
seeking information about him based on their intelligence that he was a
follower of radical Islam, but again in the aftermath of Boston the FBI
announced in a press release that when it responded to the request, it
"did not find any terrorism activity, domestic or foreign."
Each of these cases proves that a narrowly defined, if aggressively
implemented, counterterrorism policy can only achieve so much. This
approach inevitably creates gaps in U.S. efforts to intervene early
enough in the radicalization process, especially domestically but also
abroad, to prevent individuals or segments of communities from becoming
radicalized to violence. There remains today insufficient focus on
identifying and intervening when people are still in the process of
being radicalized, in part because that is not a job for law enforcement
officers. They step in once a person crosses the line and engages in
acts of violence. As things stand today, U.S. policies do little to
empower those in the trenches seeking to defend their communities from
extremist subversion by making them more resilient.
STEPS TOWARD MORE EFFECTIVE CVE POLICY
The 2010 National Security Strategy appropriately highlights the need to
empower communities to counter radicalization, stating, "Our best
defenses against this threat are well informed and equipped families,
local communities, and institutions." It commits intelligence resources
to better understand this threat and promises to "expand community
engagement and development programs to empower local communities." But
as a broad policy document, it does not define in detail these actions
or indicate who precisely is to carry them out, how, and with whom.
There are many paths to radicalization, and there are no cookie-cutter
explanations or shared underlying conditions that explain all cases of
radicalization. Challenging and defeating the extremist ideology being
peddled by the radicalizers is necessary, but it is clear that better
integration of immigrant communities and promotion of a greater sense of
social cohesion are essential to redress local grievances and can lower
the susceptibility of these communities to radicalization.
The establishment of the Global Fund for Community Engagement and
Resilience is a step in the right direction, addressing a vital gap in
the U.S. global counterterrorism strategy. But a similar focus is needed
to combat violent extremism at home, and for such a strategy to succeed
it must be understood that words matter. Calling the Fort Hood attack a
case of workplace violence instead of an act of terrorism blurs the
stark difference between the two. Clearly, the types of policies and
plans necessary to deal with workplace violence and acts of terrorism
are different, meaning that the failure to categorize the Fort Hood
shootings as an act of terrorism is not just a semantic issue. Rather,
it undermines serious efforts to prevent the next Nidal Hassan from
being radicalized and carrying out a similar act of terrorism here in
the United States.
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Matthew Levitt directs The Washington Institute's Stein Program on
Counterterrorism and Intelligence and is the author of "Hezbollah: The
Global Footprint of Lebanon's Party of God" (http://washin.st/13Zb5a4).
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